Dune (5/5 Stars)

 

Frank Herbert’s epic novel “Dune” has long been the white whale of movie adaptations. After its popular publication in 1965, several filmmakers have attempted an adaptation only for their efforts to more or less fail. Jodorowky had great ambitions but lacked funding. This became the subject of a 2013 documentary. In 1984, director David Lynch successfully produced a feature film of the book, an absolute mess of confusing exposition and fast forward plot which stood as an expensive warning to the impossibility of a coherent adaptation for over three decades. I tried to watch that movie and did not venture past the first twenty minutes. The overarching problem, once solved, is Dune’s greatest strength. Dune is a fascinating, exotic and dangerous world, but in order to tell a story of anything that occurs there, much world-building needs to occur. The 1984 version attempted to accomplish this through voiceover, a tedious succession of name dropping that succeeded in explaining thousands of years of fiction, but not why the viewer should care. Like I said, I lasted twenty minutes.

It is then with considerable acclamation that I report that this Dune, directed by Denis Villenueve, is a coherent and dramatic work of art. Yes, I understood what was going on and the exposition was paced in such a way that it did not bore me. That is not an easy feat to accomplish. I am not about to try to explain the plot in depth here. Like I said, that is a near impossible task, but I can attempt the briefest of outlines: “Dune” is a story about power, a struggle between an emperor which we do not meet, several of his vassal states, a mystical sect, and an indigenous tribe of a desert world that holds the galaxy’s most valuable resource. The emperor sets his vassals against each other to weaken them, and fight and weaken each other they do.

The vassals connive and maneuver against each other in elegant architecture, dressed in impressive fashion and surrounded by distinctive cinematography. There are also very ugly bad guys and gigantic sand worms. The look and feel of “Dune” is an artistic achievement. Denis Villeneuve, I’m sure, is a great part of that process having already made several of the best looking films of the past decade with the great cinematography Roger Deakins: “Prisoners”, “Sicario”, and “Blade Runner 2049”. I half-expected Roger Deakins to be present here, but he is not. The cinematographer is instead Greig Fraser, who I did not know on a name basis before, but whose work I have admired in “Zero Dark Thirty” “Foxcatcher” and “Lion” (He also did this thing I’ve heard of “The Mandalorian” but which I have not seen).

As striking as the architecture, fashion, and cinematography, is the excellent cast which is filled with interesting actors like Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarskgard, Javier Bardem, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian and Timothee Chalamet (presently having his breakout moment). It is a truth acknowledged in movies that the best way to procure a great cast is to make each character a main character in the scene that they find themselves in. This is usually done in one of two ways: have an episodic story in which the main characters in each part are not the same actors, or to have a character’s arc begin and completely end within the movie. I don’t necessarily mean kill the character, but good actors that have many different plans and options for work I believe will be more willing to take a bit part in a larger story if they know they don’t have to stick around for the entirety of the production. With the risk of making this paragraph even more of a spoiler than I’ve already made it, I will only say further that I believe it will be difficult for Dune Part Two to have as good a cast as Part One.

As I said, I will not bother trying to explain the plot. I will merely state that Dune mainly concerns itself with power. There are not democracies or republics present. Just empires, feudal lords, religious cults and native tribes. Frank Herbert seemed to understand the dynamics present quite well. We are somewhat removed from the contours of this world and the behaviors that inhabit it, but part of what makes science fiction fun, is that you can set up your own rules and see how people act within the made up system. Sometimes this is as pretentious as you think it would be and the science fiction element seems to just be a disguise for a straw man argument (say Star Trek or The Twilight Zone). Other times, you get something like Dune, which is so different, it hardly seems to be a commentary on anything on Earth. Earth details may have inspired it, but it is its own thing, content to have its message stay on its desert planet. It has nothing to do with anything else. It is pure escapism, which brings with its own type of pleasure.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2/5 Stars)

“Don Quixote” is a very old book. So old that it is often forgotten to be two books. The first book published in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes is a purely comic work about a crazy person and his simple sidekick roaming the countryside on a quest to bring back the lost age of chivalry. The first book proved to be enormously popular, so much so that Cervantes had to write a sequel if only to circumvent the copycats that were pretending to write sequels in his name. One of the more fantastical conceits of the second book is that everyone in it has either read or at least heard of Don Quixote’s adventures from the first book. The result is that Don Quixote is looked at by the people he meets in a completely different light in the second book. He’s still crazy, but he is also famous and his fame lends him a weird credibility. It is not uncommon that an observer in the second book will relate that they cannot tell whether Quixote is crazy or very wise. But Quixote has not changed. It is only the observer’s view of him, clouded by fame, that has changed. Unfortunately, this interesting facet of Quixote has never been developed by any movie or TV show that has adapted the story.

There have been several adaptations of the original work, none of them particularly good or definitive. Orson started and failed to finish a Quixote movie. John Lithgow starred in a TV version in 2000. The most well-known is the musical “Man of La Mancha” from 1972. I don’t believe any of them were particularly funny, which is too bad because the first book of Quixote is hilarious. All of them instead dwell on the mistaken notion, only found in the second book, that there might be more to Quixote’s madness that lets on, that he may in fact be wiser than the rest of us. Terry Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” falls into this trap too and once again we have a movie that errs on the tragic side of Quixote. “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is about a present-day movie director (played by Adam Driver) who discovers that an actor he hired to play Don Quixote in a student film has since turned madman and now believes he is Don Quixote. This movie assumes the audience already knows everything about the books and many allusions are made to instances from them. However, most people won’t have read the books and there does not yet exist a definitive movie adaptation of them. Why didn’t Gilliam just make a straight adaptation? That would almost certainly have been a good movie in his hands. This one is a jumbled mess of irrelevant themes and distorted reality. And now we still don’t have a good Quixote adaptation.

It would be hard to describe the plot. The best parts involve Don Quixot. Jonathan Pryce plays the actor turned mad man with characteristic fervor and gusto. Less fun or interesting to watch is Adam Driver as the director. Movies about people who make movies belong to an oversaturated genre characterized by self-important indulgence. This one is no exception. Here, the director is beset by some sort of creative crisis and takes a vacation from an active movie shoot. He finds the madman who believes the director is Sancho Panza, a few implausible things happen, and they find themselves roaming the countryside as knight and squire.

Adam Driver is a terrible Sancho Panza. Unfortunately, this movie does not have anything that resembles a Sancho character. I say there will not be a good adaptation of Quixote until someone treats Sancha as an equally important character. To the extent they are filp sides of crazy. Quixote is a nobleman who spent way too much time reading fantastical books in his study and his ideas about the world are completely abstract. Sancho is illiterate, has never left his hometown, and thinks and acts in the most literal way possible. The odd couple relationship between Quixote and himself are the strongest comic element in the tale. What we have in “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is a journey involving two people who think in the abstract, Quixote and a movie director. There is nothing funny about their interactions.

Where the movie falls furthest from the books is in the character of the Peerless Dolcinella of Tabaso. In the books, she is just a regular woman who works on a farm. This is really all she should be because Don Quixote, if you can remember, is a crazy person. Here, like previous movies, the role has once again been given to a tragically beautiful woman. Once again, this renders the comic potential of Quixote’s madness ineffectual. Much of the plot involves this Dolcinella and her interactions with the possessive jerky men in the film. I couldn’t really understand what was going on except to say that where it went hardly seemed related to where it was going. There is a memorable moment of cruelty that was as out of place as it was uncomfortable.

I guess something has to be said about Gilliam’s thirty-year effort to get this film made. Sometimes the story behind the movie makes watching it more interesting but this generally only happens when the movie’s backstory reinforces the themes of the movie itself. It helps watching Fitzcarraldo, a story about an obsessive person trying to do an impossible thing, with the knowledge that the director Werner Herzog unnecessarily went into the jungle to recreate this impossible thing because he too is an obsessive person. Do the horror stories behind the making of this movie make it more interesting? Well, not really. I could not point out in this movie where the influence of all the dramatic delays could be felt. In ways, the fact that it took thirty years to make this movie makes it worse. You’d think with all those delays, the script at least could be cleaned up and made coherent.

The Avengers (3/5 Stars)

It’s Okay!

 I never read comic books as a kid nor did I have a ton of video games, but I did own action figures, mostly Star Wars and Legos. Action figures, unlike books and video games, do not come with their own story lines so kids had to use their imaginations in order to have fun. I do not recall any particular story of mine that is worth repeating suffice to say they all had one thing in common: continual cartoonish violence. You know the kind where you take two action figures and you harmlessly smack them against each other and make kablooie noises. I remember it fondly in that odd nostalgic way people tend to glorify the stupidity of children (or innocence, either one), but I would not insist on making a feature film out of it, which, I would argue is essentially what “The Avengers,” is: A story composed of the kind of action sequences I would have come up with when I was ten years old....and had access to several hundred million dollars.

Don’t get me wrong. “The Avengers,” is okay and I must admit I haven’t the slightest idea how they could have made it better. It seems fated to be mediocre due to the cast of characters that are included. The Avengers are composed of Iron Man/Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) a genius mechanic/billionaire who wears an indestructible suit that can fly and has plenty of machine guns and missiles. Then there is the Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (played by Scarlett Johansson) who is good at martial arts and uses pistols. Then there is Hawkeye/Clint Barton (played by Jeremy Renner) who is good at archery. Then there is The Hulk/Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffalo) who is a brilliant scientist who involuntary turns into an uncontrollable green monster with unlimited strength whenever he gets angry. Then there is Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) who is an immortal demi-god with an all-powerful hammer that can summon lightning storms. Finally, there is Captain America/Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans). He has a patriotic uniform and a nifty shield. It should be fairly obvious that these superheroes aren’t exactly equal. I mean Captain America may be strong, but not as strong as the Hulk, and he can’t fly like Iron Man, and he has no ability for stealth like the Black Widow, and he has no long range ability like Hawkeye, and he isn’t educated like Bruce Banner or Tony Stark. In fact, he really doesn’t know anything about the last fifty years because he was cryogenically frozen during that time. (He is otherwise their leader though.) Contrast that with Thor, who as an indestructible and immortal god should be able to beat the tar out of every other Avenger in every scenario. The presence of a superhero such as Thor also requires the story to have a super-villain with an almost equal amount of power as him. Enter his brother, the semi-god Loki and an army of mean-looking aliens with supposedly superior technology.

The movie stages two rather huge battle sequences. One takes place on a flying aircraft carrier (largest waste of taxpayer money EVER) and another in Midtown Manhattan. Besides the death of one person, it may surprise you that nobody else gets seriously hurt or dies. No superheroes, no military personnel, and no civilians end the movie with anything more than the faintest scrapes, cuts, or bruises. In fact, I would argue the greatest special effect used during the full scale destruction of a completely inhabited Manhattan is the framing of the shots in such a way that we never actually see anybody getting hurt. This sense of total unreality is what reminded me of playing with plastic toys as a kid. Nothing is real. Otherwise Tony Stark would be dead ground meat in his fancy suit after every battle he is in. And can the Hulk really survive a multitude of rockets launched point blank into his face without a single blemish occurring?

 For some reason it has become increasingly difficult for blockbusters to achieve the very reason they exist: to excite and thrill. It is not hard to have violence that is exciting. It simply must include actual danger or actual pain or the threat of actual pain. To demonstrate how little you need, take a look at the movie, “Black Swan.” In particular, the scene where the main character notices a cut near her nail cuticle, tries to fix it, and accidentally pulls off a strip of her skin. When I watched that it made me recoil. Why then would Thor knocking Iron Man 100 feet into the air with his magic hammer have little to no effect at all? Well, because it results in nothing but a dazed look. It must not have hurt. A movie with action sequences that have no effect on the characters is not exciting. It is desensitizing. Pretty soon it does not matter how big the explosions are, all I recognize is their impotence. What is more, when I do not understand how things happen, I stop caring pretty soon if they happen at all. I don’t get how Iron Man can survive all the blows he takes. I don’t understand how The Hulk can beat up a floating leviathan one thousand times his size. And will someone please tell me how the hell Scarlett Johansson can beat up burly men three times her size. She has no muscles. None.

 I suppose some of this has to do with the MPAA. There is this strange rule out there that allows PG-13 movies all the gunfire, explosions, and metropolitan destruction they want just as long as you do not see anybody getting hurt. However, if you wanted to see a man realistically cut off his own arm like James Franco does in “127 Hours” you would get an R rating. In effect, violence is morally okay just as long as you don’t show the consequences of it. Oh, will someone think of the children. They are our future. But unreal hammed up violence is not in itself bad. I’ve seen plenty of movies I loved that worked just like that. The best of director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Planet Terror, Machete, Desperado) excels in that sort of thing. The difference though is that these movies are fun exploitation movies that don’t give us a bunch of scenes containing impassioned speeches about the importance of it all. “The Avengers,” needs to be more uniform in its purpose. If you are going to make the action sequences ridiculous then make the characters and dialogue ridiculous, and do it the whole way through. And please no intended-to-be-taken-seriously-patriotism. This country deserves better than that. “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” was a great action movie. So, for that matter, was “Black Dynamite.” “The Avengers,” works best when it treats itself like it should: a joke. There are enough self-referential and belittling jabs that make the movie pretty funny throughout its run time. Quite a lot of these are provided by the best character, Tony Stark, played brilliantly as always by Robert Downey Jr. Mark Ruffalo, the nth incarnation of Bruce Banner, does a solid job as well. I still wish Thor’s weakness was stupidity and not arrogance (see my review of “Thor”) and I never saw Captain America’s movie so I guess I missed the part where it makes sense for our symbol against Nazism be a guy that looks like the poster child for Aryan machismo. Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner like most interesting actors continue their star rising descent into less interesting movies.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (3/5 Stars)

Rooney Mara does not look like Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth is small, skinny, and sharp. Rooney is of average height, healthy, and round all over. She lost weight for this role and somehow managed to pinch in her cheeks a little but it is not enough. Rooney is a doe-eyed babyface. Lisbeth is not. There is no getting around it.

It is hard to say why this matters so much. For some reason I am thinking of something obscure that I saw in the special features of a completely different movie. It was in “Three Kings” a movie about the first Iraq War. One of the Iraqis (Said Taghmaoui, I just looked up his name on IMDb) that played a bad guy was speaking of meeting the actor Ice Cube for the first time and how he could tell that he came from a rough neighborhood (Compton to be exact). He said he could tell by the eyes. People who have grown up in a rough neighborhood have it ingrained around their eyes. He knew that because he grew up in a rough neighborhood in Iraq. And then he said Ice Cube knew that simply by looking at him as well. Ever since I heard that I became much more interested in eyes. Does being witness to rough things over a period of time really leave its mark on the eyes? I don’t know honestly, but as a person who watches many movies I will say that there is something about the eyes that can create a certain seriousness or desperation in a character, which incidentally can convey a history of seeing rough things. Good examples are Viggo Mortenson in “Eastern Promises,” and Charlize Theron in “Monster.” And perhaps the best example is Noomi Rapace’s take on Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Those eyes were piercing. Rooney Mara’s are not. The role has been miscast. Rooney would make more sense as a Disney princess.

This is a pity because this movie is technically better than the Swedish version. We have none other than David Fincher, one of the best American directors, at the helm here. Fincher has excelled at serial killers (Seven) and has excelled at complex subjects (The Social Network), sometimes both at the same time (Zodiac). The convoluted 40-year-old murder mystery that is the centerpiece of “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo,” is a ready made plot for the likes of Fincher. If you have a story that requires a journalist to do a realistic investigation (i.e. painstakingly go over evidence, hit the books at the library), Fincher is the guy who can make it interesting, lend it humor, and give it momentum. Here the disgraced journalist Michael Blomvist (played by Daniel Craig) is hired to solve a family mystery that involves a close-knit family with Nazi connections. The mystery is intricate to the highest degree but Fincher’s clear direction shines through it. In fact, for the first half of the movie where the mystery plotline runs parallel and separate to the introduction of Lisbeth Salander, it is the more interesting plot to watch unfold. In the Swedish version it was the other way around. Now if only we could insert Noomi Rapace into the American version.

Not that all of Fincher’s choices seem to be entirely correct. There was something wrong with this movie that was hard to put my finger on while I was watching it. So I went back and rewatched several scenes from the original version. The plot is exactly the same of course. What is different may be as little as tweaked dialogue, different camera angles, or simply physical gestures. But it is unmistakable how the movies have different impacts precisely where it is most important: how it regards Lisbeth Salander. This is touchy subject because there are two scenes of sexual assault in the story, one being a rape. Now I suppose I could be like the MPAA and basically judge the difference between the two versions by how many seconds of nakedness were shown in each. (There is far more in the American version. It actually surprised me upon a second viewing how little is actually shown in the Swedish version. Only about a half-second. The rest is all inferred. Both distort and mute the screaming after awhile, a rather merciful thing to do for an audience.) But the more important differences take place before and after the rape.  The rapist is Lisbeth’s legal guardian, newly appointed after her old guardian had a stroke. The sexual assaults start as a form of extortion. Lisbeth won’t have access to her own money until complying. Now, in the Swedish version it only takes one meeting before the first sexual assault. In the American version, it takes a back-story and two meetings to get around to it. It seems as though the American version is trying to ease us into the sexual assault. A pointless exercise in futility it would seem to me. The biggest difference though is that the American version also adds scenes right after the assaults where Lisbeth dresses herself, goes into the next room where the rapist is waiting to give her check, takes it and leaves. The Swedish version simply cut from the assault to Lisbeth washing out her mouth and painfully walking home respectively. What is the point of these extra scenes? At my least cynical moment I will assume that the makers were attempting to make the rapist look pathetic (in the movie he seems a bit frightened and apologetic after the assault). But even so, who gives a shit? What does it matter how the rapist feels about what he has done? It is enough that the actions exist as they do in the world. Time to move onto the next scene. 

There are some styles and genres of movies where it is okay to objectify women (or rather people in general). I wrote about this in some length when I defended “Sucker Punch,” a comic book movie that came out earlier this year. But when the original title of the book the movie is from is called, “Men who Hate Women,” I think we have entered territory where any objectification at all should be barred entirely. Take a look at the movie poster above, which shows a topless Lisbeth Salandar. Is it really appropriate for the marketers of a movie about one of the most powerful symbols of sexual violence to sell their movie with the promise of sex? (You may also ask what exactly the poster means by “Evil shall with evil be expelled.” Are they insinuating that Blomvist and Salandar are evil or using evil? How so?) The Swedish version at least seemed to understand that sexual abuse is not such an easy thing to get over. The way Noomi Rapace played the character in the consensual sex scenes, and there a couple of those, was for lack of a better word, tragic. She could go through the motions but was incapable of intimacy. That makes sense considering the character’s history. The way Rooney Mara interacts with Daniel Craig in the American version would work much better in a James Bond flick. Rooney Mara would not make a bad Bond girl.

For the record, I still don’t fully understand how the epilogue heist worked in either version of this movie. Perhaps if I read the book.

Thor (2/5 Stars)

I find it amazing sometimes just how much faith a movie will have in the audience’s ability to accept spectacular visuals but how little faith it will have in the audience’s ability to accept spectacular audio. “Thor” takes place in three different interstellar realms. One is Earth. It looks like New Mexico. One is a name I can’t remember how to pronounce or spell. It is where a bunch of surly frost giants live. It looks like a craggly icecube. The last is Asgard, which is where all the Norse gods of mythology live. Asgard is what the earth would look like if it were flat, made entirely of a city on a mountain, and contained the most extravagant and impractical architecture ever. The inhabitants of Asgard are Norse gods. There is King Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and his two sons Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Then there is a crew of other Norsemen that aren’t very memorable. Finally there is the great Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from “The Wire”) who plays the dutiful gatekeeper that guards the realm from evil threats. Guess what? The conversations of these immortals never rise past the level of present day high school English. The sentences are short and clipped. The vocabulary is limited. The phrases are unimaginative and totally underwhelming. If the gods could speak, I would be hugely disappointed if they sounded like this. I’m making a huge point about this mostly because the movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh, a man best known for his Oscar nominated movie adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. If anyone is capable of punching up a script to include more exalted dialogue it would be this guy. The fact that this wasn’t done suggests that the makers thought the audience wouldn’t accept it. Because I guess larger-than-life steroid-toking Norse gods that hang out in gargantuan palaces and wear over-elaborate warrior costumes is one thing, but if they had intelligent conversations, well that would just be snobbish.

The plot works really well in the form of a one-paragraph pitch. Earth is a battleground between two realms of gods. One contains the frost giants and the other contains the Norse gods of Asgard. Somehow a couple of frost giants trespass into Asgard. Thor wants to escalate the mere trespass into a war. This is something Odin forbids Thor to do. Thor goes into the frost giant realm anyway and starts a big fight with his hammer. Odin, angered by such arrogance, banishes Thor to Earth. He also banishes Thor’s hammer to Earth but not before putting a curse on it. Only those worthy of the hammer will be able to pick it up and receive its power. That includes Thor at this point, who is now stranded on earth without any of his powers. The first people Thor meets on Earth is a astrophysicist played by Natalie Portman, her mentor played by Stellan Skarsgard, and a college intern played by Kat Dennings. Meanwhile in Asgard, Thor’s half brother Loki connives to usurp the throne.

This could make a really good movie I bet. Let me explain what the movie should have done. Here we have Natalie Portman playing what is said to be a brilliant scientist with social problems. It wouldn’t hurt if she acted like the description. The way she is in the movie is abnormally normal. Then there is the Stellan Skarsgard whose character basically consists of unbelieving skepticism of the existence of Norse gods in the face of increasingly obvious evidence. Almost every conversation he has with Natalie goes something like this:

Stellan: This is silly Natalie, there is no such thing as Norse gods.

Natalie: But what about the elaborate computer generated effects we saw and the man that fell from the sky that looks like Thor and even calls himself Thor.

Stellan: Oh Natalie, you silly person.

That’s paraphrased somewhat but you get the gist. There should have been only one of these exchanges. After awhile Stellan starts sounding really dumb. Finally there is Kat Dennings who is this movie’s attempt at comic relief. If the movie followed my advice in allowing Thor to speak in exalted prose and allowing Natalie to be a total nerd, then this character would have a lot more material to make jokes from. But as it is, she is just another normal person in a town of normal people. She tries, bless her heart, but there is very little to work with. It is hard to make sly wisecracks about people who act just like you.  

I am now going to suggest something that will essentially rewrite the story. How about instead of being banished for his arrogance, Thor was instead banished for being a big dumb idiot. Imagine that his foray into the Ice World was not merely macho zeal, but incredibly stupid. That instead of him going in and easily beating the frost giants (as what happens here), he instead goes in against much larger odds and has to have his ass saved by his dad. Then Odin banishes for his stupidity, sends down his hammer and curses it with hex that Thor can only lift it if he proves that he can use his brains in battle as well as his biceps. Now that he is on Earth without any powers, he will have to do just that.

This would accomplish a couple of things. One, it would make the bad guys much more formidable. Right now, the Frost Giants are kind of pushovers. Two, it would help the movie avoid melodrama and slow motion; the absence of which would have made the movie move faster and be much funnier. Three, it would make the Natalie Portman character much more useful. Here, she helps Thor overcome his arrogance by teaching him table manners. How about instead she taught him the basics of working your brain to accomplish things. Natalie Portman would then be perfectly cast. Did you know that in real life she is brilliant? She's a Harvard graduate and a bona fide scientist. Add to that the fact that she is small and weak. Portman and Thor technically complement each other very well, if only the characters could be developed in a way that allowed them to do so. Thor could help the socially inept scientist in return. For example he could improve her social standing by being a hunk that talks to her in public or perhaps he could help her move a large piece of furniture.

The way it is in the movie, Thor’s problem with arrogance can only be cured with being a more polite person. That’s great I guess but it hardly helps a summer blockbuster. You may be surprised by how many slow scenes of touchy-feely soul searching there is in this movie. Just take the climatic battle sequence. To win, the mighty Norse god Thor pulls a “Jesus.” He “turns the other cheek.” Now I do hesitate to suggest that a character shouldn’t act like Jesus, but I think something must be said about staying true to the source material. Would the Norse god of Thunder really be into self-sacrifice? Come on.

One more thing, I really have to complain about Branagh’s decision to film so much of the movie in weird tilted camera angles. The point I would think of using those angles would be to confuse perception and unsettle the audience. Sometimes that is called for in a movie like “12 Monkeys.” But in this movie? I don’t think so. This movie should be presented in a straightforward manner with confidence. This is a blockbuster about an immortal after all.

Angels and Demons (3/5 Stars) August 26, 2009

Convoluted Exposition interrupted by Chases and Executions! 


The second movie adapted from a novel by Dan Brown, author of “The Da Vinci Code.” Ron Howard directs and Tom Hanks returns as symbology professor extraordinaire Robert Langdon. This time he is not exposing a Vatican conspiracy, he is saving it from a secret cult named the Illuminati, which apparently has somehow kidnapped four cardinals and placed a time bomb in the form of antimatter device that they stole from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. The Illuminati will kill the four cardinals in four different churches in Rome every hour until midnight when the bomb will go off and the entire Vatican will be disintegrated. The Catholic Church, apparently unaware of the Illuminati, calls on Professor Langdon to explain Church history to them. Since there is a time bomb ticking, Langdon does so in a breathless highly abbreviated (at least in comparison to the book) way. He explains that there is a riddled maze through Rome that will lead to the Secret Illuminati meeting hall where they will find the cardinals. The way is found by following the pointer fingers of sculptures of Angels that were made by an Illuminati sculptor (Bernini in this case). Langdon knows exactly where to look for the start of the maze, the notes of Galileo in the massive Vatican Archives. 

Does this sound like it was just completely made up to you. I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean if it wasn’t for a lifetime of Catholic school education and a year abroad in Italy very little of this would sound familiar to me. I know who Bernini is. Do you? Probably not right? It’s not common knowledge that he was a Baroque sculptor that did a lot of commissions from the Vatican in the 17th century. Unfortunately the movie has no time to explain why the guy was cool or important. Or why for that matter why he would be an Illuminati. He gets about three lines of dialogue explaining him before Langdon and the police need to get in their cars and rush off to the next Roman church on their manhunt/sightseeing tour. This is the main problem when trying to adapt a Dan Brown novel. Dan Brown’s novels are a unique combination of arcane knowledge, riddles, and action scenes. It’s a bit like art history on crack. But when you try to take the book and make it into a movie, the professorial academic parts (the very things that give the action scenes their purpose) are lost somewhat. Watching Professor Langdon in this movie I was truly taken aback by his Batman-ish ability to decipher codes in about a second’s time. In the book, Langdon’s thought process is much slower and deliberative. Brown takes the time to inform the reader of all the clues and provides several different explanations for confusing symbols. Then because the book is a book and not a movie it gives the reader a chance to pause his reading and perhaps try to find out the riddle themselves before Langdon has a chance. This is perhaps why a Dan Brown novel will never be as good as the book. It’s because the action movie is so fast paced that it inherently robs the audience’s ability to think long and hard about the kinds of complicated riddles that a Brown novel usually employs. Langdon’s cinematic ability to figure the clues out in a split second beat me every time. Add to that the situation we find in this movie, where the subject matter is so arcane and old that nobody in the audience will know what the riddle is even about before Tom Hanks gives the exasperated answer. And then it is so dumb-downed and simplified to save time; we can’t even critically assess it to see if it has any soundness to any logical historical context. We just sort of have to take his word for it. Having read the book I can testify that a lot of very interesting stuff had to be cut out. It’s a shame that a most of it had to do with the science part in this ‘science-religion’ feud. The very idea of anti-matter as the evidence of the God-particle that will or will not prove God’s existence in the Big Bang is gone into such important depth in the book. In the movie it is gleaned over and the importance is lost. The anti-matter is simply just another type of bomb. Again I felt that Catholic Church got preferential treatment in the adaptation of “Angels and Demons” just like it got in the adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code.” I don’t think it was purposeful, its just that for these underground theories to have any conviction in them they really need a chapter’s persuasion not just a scene. 

I must confess though that seeing the Catholic Church in a blockbuster is a sort of thrill in it of itself. The Church as everyone knows is presently the longest running institution on the face of this Earth. In that time it has accumulated a lot of incredible art, architecture, and mysteries. It is the perfect backdrop for an action picture. The movie does a very good job of recreating the extraordinary Vatican and Sistine Chapel. We also get to see the Pantheon, St. Peter’s Square, Castle de Angelos, and several other great Roman landmarks. Spectacle is provided in the murder of four cardinals and a giant explosion above the Vatican all intertwined within the structure of a fast-paced mystery plot to find a ticking time bomb that will destroy the entire church. Ron Howard may have found it impossible to make do with the professorial parts of the book but he did do a very good job with the action parts. 

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End 06/07/07

Here's a blockbuster with a brain. And I couldn't be happier. This is my type of blockbuster, the type I hope to catch on with all other blockbusters.
At world's end, we catch up with the pirates where we've left off. In almost complete confusion, people switching sides for personal gain in flurries. In my last review of Dead Man's chest I mentioned the unique ability of the screenwriters to use every single characther in their own arc. This held over in spades in this movie. Each person has their own motives and goals. What this creates is a sense of chaos that permeates the entire picture. controlled chaos I must mention, if you pay attention you will understand what's going on. But you must pay attention. How many of today's blockbusters require critical thought. My point exactly, that's what makes this franchise so special. I would take the two sequel on an equal par with the original. They are all very good. 

The only inferior parts are miniscule and forgivable. These are the muted restrained love scenes between Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. They put the film in a lull for stupid reasons, especially since you know there's no way they won't get back together. When they finally get married it's a huge relief. The second part is the Calypso charachter. Her seriousness just puts all of her scenes off. I didn't like her in the second film and still don't in the third. I think it's because every other characther is weird yet funny. She's just weird. Hopefully they get it right in the 4th installment.

Jack Sparrow is sorely missed when he's not on screen. So it was a good idea to provide more than one of him. Johnny Depp owns the charachter. The two are inseperable, and they shouldn't try a pirates film without him.
Geoffrey Rush looks like he's having a hell of a time. The pirate league is colorful. The bad guy is delightfully malignantly restrained. and the costumes are ridiculously cool. There's a summit of the main charachters on this desert island in the middle of the film where they're all dressed to the nines. It's a costume designers wet dream I'm sure. 
Overall the film is very good and exceptional in almost all areas. Most blockbuster sequels have over the top spectacle but a deceptively hollow story. This movie has over the top spectacle but with a story that is overflowing with plot. Not your average fairy tale me harty.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 07/09/06

fresh: This is one of those movies that I would be curious to see twice, because as a rule I hate sequels but I loved this one so darn much. Therefore I must have missed what I usually hate and only a second viewing would bring about my much brewed ire for this film. 
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that only a really good sequel could overcome my natural bias against sequels. This is a really good film. The best sequel since "The Empire Strikes Back."
A great part of why this film is great is because everyone came back. This seems more like a labor of love than a enterprise for more money. Here we have both producers from the first one: Walt Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer, the same Director: Gore Verbinski, the same screenwriters, the same main cast from Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley, to much of the supporting cast: each one with a place and purpose in the story. The screenwriters must have gone through hell to make this story work as a parody of a theme park ride, a action adventure with great spectacles, a witty farce in the moments where there couldn't be huge effects, a sequel as good as the first but leads charismatically into the third, lots of fun, and a great ensemble effort where each character pulls their weight, noone grandstands, and not one part of the ensemble, filled with great new charachters, does one want to quickly get off the stage. It's a great accomplishment how everything fits. I wish I knew their names. I'd mention them with great praise.
Also to mention is the way they do not fail where so many other special effect extravaganzas do. They know how to use the visuals not rely on them, and it is clear that the makers had an effective story even if there weren't any. A great moment arrives when two supporting stooges pontificate on the correct pronounciation of the word Kraken. (rack or rake) A Kraken is a large sea monster that we periodically witness killing everybody in a ship. Here we have two characters arguing on the correct grammer of the word. It reminded me of that classic moment in Ghostbusters where the characters discussed the Giant Stay Puff marshmallow man who was terrorizing the city. Future directors should pay attention. That's how to handle huge special effects. With a smile and a friendly wink. A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Just one more note: This movie has quite alot of death and destruction. Since it's a pirate movie, that's understandable. The problem is I know many parents will bring their kids (I saw quite a few in the movie theatre) and I think the creators should of had that in mind when they started slitting throats, making ravens peck out eyes, and killing people quite constantly. I myself have no problem with that, but I bet a ten year old would have nightmares.