Sunday 29 November 2009

Movie Review: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966)


"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig." Blondie (Clint Eastwood), talking to Tuco (Eli Wallach).

After the success of A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone finally gets his hands on the budget of his dreams, and assembles the first western opera to conclude the Dollars trilogy.

Driven by an Ennio Morricone music score featuring the two-note coyote yell that has since become legend, and with every scene a lesson in framing, actor dynamics, and fluid camera motion, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is an all-time classic.

It's a sprawling epic about three men chasing after buried gold coins in the midst of the American Civil War. Tuco (Wallach, as the Ugly) is a common bandit with a bounty on his head; Blondie (Eastwood, as the Good, although the term is only relative) is a bounty hunter; and Angeleyes (Lee Van Cleef, as the Bad) is a brutal henchman who is single-mindedly pursuing the buried loot. The three men wage a triangular battle against an unforgiving desert landscape littered with desperate, colourful and disposable secondary characters fully aware they are bit players in a masterpiece of storytelling.

Tuco and Blondie start out as partners but their relationship quickly deteriorates. They are soon engaged in a deadly personal feud when they stumble onto the clues needed to locate the treasure. Angeleyes is mercilessly abusing or mowing down anyone who gets in his way. The three men, after taking turns to brutalize each other, need to make their way to the cemetery where the gold awaits, while guarding against each other in a deadly game of shifting alliances, with the added inconvenience of avoiding the brutality of the Civil War raging around them.

Leone could now afford a third American actor, and Eli Wallach gives the performance of his life as Tuco. While Eastwood and Van Cleef nail their stoic and tough personas, Wallach takes over the heart of the film as the scrambly, shifty bandit scratching out a form of survival. He is also afforded the only back-story in the movie in a sequence where he meets his brother. Tuco's subsequent description of his relationship with his sibling as he rides away with Blondie is the trilogy's most human moment.

The film has two enormous, drawn-out showcase scenes, and both come in the final hour of this 160 minute epic. In the first, Tuco and Blondie stumble upon a stand-off at a bridge between the Union and Confederate armies, and need to resolve the meat-grinding battle hindering their progress . The second showcase occupies the final 30 minutes, and takes place at the cemetery. Here Leone conjures up one of the best scenes in the history of movie-making. As Ennio Morricone unspools the magnificent The Ecstasy of Gold theme, Leone's cameras alternate their focus between Tuco sprinting through the cemetery and the whirling multitudes of headstones. The end-result is spine-tingling, hypnotizing and brilliant, all at once.

Leone follows this with the classic triangular showdown between the three men in the middle of the cemetery, unimaginably stretched in time and filled with trademark tight close-ups. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is a breath-taking conclusion to a magnificent trilogy, and also one of the best films ever made.






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Saturday 14 November 2009

Movie Review: Zombieland (2009)


A movie that is not pretending to be anything other than a hip comedy-horror-zombie adventure had better deliver good characters at the centre of the action or else risk being nothing but a satire: Zombieland aces this test with four terrific characters in Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), portraying survivors of the zombie apocalypse who need to also survive each other.

So Mad Cow disease makes the jump and creates Mad Humans, with almost everyone transformed into manic flesh-devouring zombies. These zombies are not the undead -- they are fast, hungry, ugly and just a bloody mess. They are also thankfully easy to kill. The surviving humans who have not yet been infected can use a variety of weapons, from shotguns to banjos (you gotta see the movie to appreciate this) to avoid becoming zombie meals.

Columbus is the nerd type who survived the apocalypse mostly because he enjoys the company of his computer more than the company of people. He is making his was to Columbus, Ohio (hence the name), to check on his parents. Along the way he teams up with Tallahassee, the tough urban-cowboy type who was told by his mother a long time ago that he will eventually be good at something. That something turned out to be killing zombies, a task he accepts with a worrisome relish.

Columbus and Tallahassee eventually encounter Wichita and Little Rock, sassy street-smart sisters who are making their way to California's Pacific Playland, which is rumoured to be zombie-free. The girls twice dupe the guys before the group gels and the foursome team up on their journey west.

The movie quickly settles into a terrifically enjoyable, character-driven road movie, with frequent zombie-killing interludes, and achieves just the right balance between wry comedy and hard-edged action. The four actors play their roles to perfection, with a sparkly smile behind their eyes. They are briefly joined by Bill Murray in a cameo as himself, when the group take refuge in his Beverly Hills mansion.

Eisenberg as Columbus provides the level-headed perspective on the unhinged world, while Harrelson as Tallahassee is very close to being suitably unhinged himself. This is a career-defining Harrelson performance that will long be remembered.

Stone as the tough Wichita nails the dark elder sister who becomes the eventual target of Columbus' affection. Breslin as the younger sister manages the difficult task of portraying the capable 12-year old without the nausea-inducing wise-cracking-smarter-than-she-looks stereotype.

In addition to the four lead performers, director Ruben Fleischer deserves a lot of credit for perfectly pacing the movie and drawing out the strengths of each of the characters. The editing is thankfully coherent and avoids epilepsy-inducing micro-cuts. The music, including crunchy heavy metal from the likes of Metallica, perfectly accompanies the action.

The movie is brave enough and good enough to pull off a running gag relating to Columbus' numbered "rules of survival" for Zombieland. Everytime he introduces us to a rule, it appears as text on the screen, and everytime the rule is put into action, it is also re-displayed on the screen. It's an audacious moviemaking stunt, and it works.

The move thankfully does not shy away from blood, gore, and foul language -- this is not a sanitized family-friendly comedy. The hard edges of the zombie apocalypse are up-front and are gruesome -- which all serves to enhance the impact of the characters and the comedy when they take centre stage.

It all ends with a massive and hyper-enjoyable zombie-killing extravaganza at Pacific Playland, complete with a large clown. It's a fittingly insane ending to a highly engaging movie.






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Sunday 18 October 2009

Movie Review: For A Few Dollars More (1965)


The middle chapter of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, For A Few Dollars More is probably the least celebrated installment, but also ironically the most complete film among the three.

While A Fistful Of Dollars is magnificent in its sparseness and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is magnificently overblown, For A Few Dollars More sets about delivering the most solid character-driven narrative, perfectly meshing Leone's style with another brilliant Morricone score and a fleshed-out story now clearly backed by a bigger budget.

There are more locales, more extras, more scenes, more characters and more background than the first installment, without yet veering into all-out opera territory.

After the remarkable and unexpected success of A Fistful Of Dollars in Europe, Leone rapidly pulled For A Few Dollars More together. He convinced Clint Eastwood to sign-up for the sequel and reprise his role as the Man With No Name, even though the first film had not even been released in the US. With more budget at his disposal, Leone was also able to afford another American actor, and Lee Van Cleef got the role of Colonel Mortimer.

The plot sees Eastwood and Van Cleef as two bounty hunters who eventually team up to take down the gang of the vicious bandit El Indio (another perfect Gian Maria Volonte villain). There are bank robberies, gun-fights, exotic guns, and a terrific hat-shooting duel. The memorable secondary characters include Klaus Kinski as a massively haunch-backed member of El Indio's gang. The film reaches a climax with a final showdown that is almost triangular, sowing the seed for the magnificent finale that Leone conjured up for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The final math puzzle resolved by The Man With No Name is a terrific cherry on top of the icing on the cake, perfectly capturing the spirit of the trilogy.

For A Few Dollars More makes use of flashbacks and a simple but haunting tune (in this case played by a pocket watch), both tools that Leone would develop to chilling perfection in Once Upon A Time in the West.

For A Few Dollars More is the meat in the sandwich of the Dollars trilogy, not the most visible part of the meal, but certainly an essential component of the experience.






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Sunday 11 October 2009

Film Review: We Loved Each Other So Much (2003)


The Lebanese Civil War erupted in 1975, and lasted for 15 years. Approximately 200,000 lives were lost in the conflict, which pitted the Lebanese against each other with a large dose of foreign intervention.

When the conflict ended, deep societal scars took hold, and exist until today.

In 2003, about 13 years after most of the shooting stopped, Dutch Director Jack Janssen took his documentary cameras to Lebanon and conducted interviews with Lebanese survivors of the war. In We Loved Each Other So Much, he captures a vivid cross-section of society: former fighters who were on opposite sides of the front lines; civilians who were caught in the cross-fire; members of the country's cultural community; an Armenian photographer; and two generations of Palestinian refugees.

The common thread that the film captures is the music of the Lebanese diva Fairuz. A brilliant singer with searing emotion in her voice, and famous throughout the Arab word before, during and after the Civil War, Fairuz did not leave Lebanon during the war, nor did she ever take sides; she simply survived the conflict along with her fellow civilians, and kept recording and performing whenever she could.

She became a symbol of hope and endurance -- ironically, for all sides of the conflict.

As the country disintegrated and Lebanon made the journey from the Switzerland of the Middle East to the world's most notorious hell hole, lives were destroyed, massacres were unleashed, buildings collapsed, society tore itself apart...and the music of Fairuz played on, often lamenting the misery unfolding around it or providing a diversion from it.

Janssen's cameras capture the full emotions of the war that the music of Fairuz unlocks in the Lebanese survivors. The interviewees gradually reveal themselves to be a range of victims and survivors, all with tender emotional wounds just below the surface. Many suffered personal losses and direct encounters with death. One former fighter sees little hope and lives in despair. Others have patched up their lives and carry on with hope for the future but a wary eye on the past. The songs of Fairuz bring back memories of life's milestones, often wrapped in the pain and suffering of a savage conflict.

We Loved Each Other So Much is a well-crafted testimony to the raw emotional power of music, and to the talent of Fairuz. It is also a stark and tragic human recounting of the consequences of war, and while the film focuses on Lebanon, similar wasteful tragedies unfold daily around the world.








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Sunday 4 October 2009

Movie Review: A Fistful Of Dollars (1964)


The seminal Spaghetti Western, A Fistful Of Dollars created a sub-genre, launched the career of Clint Eastwood and established Sergio Leone as a visionary director.

The Man With No Name (Eastwood), sometimes called "Joe", is an an expert gunslinger and arrives on a mule to the small town of San Miguel along the Mexico/US border. The town is dominated by two families vying for control of the cross-border illegal trade: the Baxters smuggle weapons while the Rojos deal in alcohol. The two families are busy trying to kill each other, and the coffin-maker understandably operates the only thriving business in town.

"There's money to be made in a place like this", proclaims "Joe", and he proceeds to alternately offer his services to the two families, getting rich as he plays them off against each other. Eventually the war between the families escalates to massacres and an epic final showdown between two men left standing

Despite not being able to communicate with his one English-speaking TV actor, Leone somehow harnessed the Spanish desert, a shoestring budget, and a supporting cast of Italians and Germans into a sly remake of the then-forgotten Japanese film Yojimbo. Ennio Morricone provides a sparse yet haunting soundtrack like no other, and Leone unleashes his artistry with several stylistic signatures, from tight focus shots on the eyes to dramatically staged operatic duels filmed from unique and dynamic angles.

A Fistful Of Dollars perfected the persona and image of the willing-to-kill anti-hero, a man so jaded he barely bothers to speak or introduce his name. His only virtue is that he is - perhaps - a bit less evil than all else that surrounds him. And maybe the Man With No Name is not a man at all, just a manifestation of death roaming the land as a symbol of the frontier's mortal dangers. 
With his poncho, ever-present cigarillo, and cynical soft-spoken style, Eastwood dominates the film to the point where the plot does not really matter -- only this character's next step is relevant. The colourful Rojos, with Gian Maria Volonte terrific as Ramon, are evil in the most brutally cartoonish manner. The feminine interest, in the form of Ramon's mistress Marisol (played by Marianne Koch, who says about five words in the entire film), is a suitably vague victim in this savage borderland.

Leone stages the wild set-pieces as baroque tableaux of bloody carnage fuelled by Morricone's mesmerizing music: the initial gun-fight with the Baxter cowboys; the overblown massacre by the river; the cemetery shoot-out; the prisoner exchange scene; one family slaughtering the other; and the final showdown are all over-the-top odes to death.

Hailing the merits of complex simplicity, A Fistful Of Dollars is low-budget rising to excellence.






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Sunday 27 September 2009

Film Review: He's Just Not That Into You (2009)


A group of several twenty to thirtysomething friends navigate the treacherous waters of relationships, dating and marriage in the internet age, where a multitude of communication options and modern day stresses only add to the already complicated and veiled signals that couples send to each other.

Sweet and honest Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) is desperately looking for a relationship, but seems to find all the wrong men and misinterprets all the signals. She turns to savvy bartender Alex (Justin Long) for advice on how to better understand men. Inevitably, Gigi is drawn to Alex, but is he interested in her or is he just being a friend?

Janine (Jennifer Connelly) thinks that she is happily married to Ben (Bradley Cooper). But in the midst of a home renovation project, he seems to have maybe secretly started to smoke against her strong wishes, and he maybe has also secretly started an affair with hot Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Can this marriage be saved?

Beth (Jennifer Aniston) and Neil (Ben Affleck) are the perfect couple, but they are not married, and he never wants to be, while she is longing to tie the knot. The relationship ruptures over this conflict. Can it be recovered?

Mary (Drew Barrymore), who works in marketing, is embroiled in the electronic dating age, and mostly meets, communicates and breaks up with men through various digital devices. She eventually connects with a client, real estate agent Connor (Kevin Connolly), who was one of the men to dump Gigi, and who is finding professional success by advertising to the gay community. Connor also thought that he could have a serious relationship with Anna, but she just wanted him as a casual friend. Can Mary and Connor hit it off?

Loosely based on the best-selling book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, and directed by Kevin Smith, He's Just Not That Into You is an enjoyable examination of age-old adult relationship issues with a modern gloss. The movie plays its cards well and feigns steering straight into pessimistic and cynical territory before turning sharply towards affirmation of some time-honoured values.

Smith finds the fine line where comedy is used to enhance and enrich rather than disrupt the narrative, while the excellent cast get into their characters and appear to park their egos at the studio door. The script by Behrendt and Tuccillo with help from Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein rounds out the characters and generally avoids both annoying cliches and contrived situations.

He's Just Not That Into You is a flighty yet fun film that's easy to get into.






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Saturday 19 September 2009

Movie Review: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)


The terrific Golden Turkey Awards (1980) book by Harry and Michael Medved awarded Plan 9 From Outer Space the glorious title of Grand Prize Winner for Worst Film Ever Made. This was based on a survey of movie fans, and was a remarkable achievement considering audiences usually have a bias for their more contemporary experiences.

Plan 9 From Outer Space is indeed stupefyingly bad. It is difficult to imagine that this was not a joke. The plot, the sets, the script, the acting, the directing are all worse than a high school play conceived by 16 year olds having a laugh.

It is also difficult to imagine that this film was pulled together in 1959. It comes across more like something out of the early, pre-1930's silent era of movie-making. Edward D. Wood Jr. somehow directs wooden actors to keep a straight face while spouting the most inane lines of dialogue and avoiding plastic sets assembled after a salvage trip to the local landfill.

The plot? War-loving humans are on a path to destroy the sun. Aliens who look exactly like humans have concocted a remarkable plan to kill-off humanity. They want to destroy the world in order to save the rest of the universe from the stupidity of earthlings. The aliens intend to achieve their objective by waking up the dead from the local cemetery. The undead will then stumble around with outstretched arms killing other humans. This is the ninth plan that these aliens, who may be low on budget but are obviously not short of ideas, have come up with. Movie fans eagerly await films revealing the first eight plans.

For rather unclear reasons, probably related to resource limitations, the aliens are only able to resurrect about three dead folks, including a remarkably thin Vampira and the counterweight Tor Johnson. It is left up to a bland airline pilot who lives on the edge of the cemetery and an inept army General, who looks like a satire of every other movie army general, to team up and stop the evil aliens in their tracks. The final battle apparently takes place inside the lead flying saucer, which looks suspiciously like a bland half-furnished office. It takes one small pistol and a few punches to shut down the evil plot. 

Most of the action takes place in and around the cemetery, with headstones that sway when actors run past them. Stock footage of intense army manoeuvres is trotted out at one point, apparently to demonstrate the army battling some other band of evil aliens. Plastic plates - presumably flying saucers - are shown rotating menacingly over earth.

Somewhere in there, Wood throws in unrelated scenes featuring Bela Legusi, who apparently shot some scenes with Woods for a whole other film and then died.

Plan 9 From Outer Space, while funny and entertaining in ways that were never intended, is ultimately also a bit sad: there is genuine sympathy for the stunning all-round lack of talent and lack of resources mercilessly on permanent display.






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Tuesday 18 August 2009

Movie Review: The Hangover (2009)


A group of friends head to Las Vegas for a wild bachelor party. Doug is the groom-to-be; Phil is his hip friend; Stu is his dentist friend shackled by a domineering woman; and Alan will become Doug's brother-in-law.

In Vegas, they wake up in a trashed hotel room (really trashed -- there is a rather angry tiger in the bathroom), with no memory of what happened the previous night. Oh, and Doug is missing.

The Hangover bolts together the currently hip bromedy genre with the occasionally successful technique of starting the story at the end. Rather than working backwards through time or using flashbacks, The Hangover never shows us the actual events of its central night. Rather, we join the ride as Phil, Stu and Alan try to find out what happened during the fateful few hours, while frantically looking for the missing Doug before his bride-in-waiting flips.

They also are facing the consequences of their actions, except that they have no memory of what their actions actually were. The characters and the audience together uncover the missing events, as Phil leads the group in following clues as diverse as a baby in a closet; a medical wrist-band; and Stu's missing tooth. Needless to say, they are being chased by an Asian gang, and one of them is now unexpectedly married (remember, this is Vegas) to no less than a tarty stripper (Heather Graham).

The film's story and structure are a solid foundation for a good comedy, and The Hangover is helped enormously by memorable if not quite original central characters. Phil (Bradley Cooper) is the cool friend who takes on an unlikely leadership role, while Stu (Ed Helms) is the conservative dentist fighting the shadow of an oppressive relationship. But the character of Alan (Zach Galifianakis) as the brother-in-law-in-waiting is wonderfully different. Suffice to say that Alan will always say and do the unexpected in the most awkward possible way, but he's so well developed as a character that his massive eccentricities soon emerge as consistent with his personality.

Under the guidance of patchy director Todd Phillips, The Hangover tries to generate a thick wall of jokes and funny events, and given the vast quantity, a large proportion does fall flat a bit too often. Much of the comedy is poorly developed, lacking in subtlety and sometimes just plain painful rather than funny. But the parts that do work, such as the rooftop gathering and the hotel room wake-up scene, are excellent.

Despite the uneven execution, The Hangover is worthwhile viewing, providing equal parts comedy and clever film-making.







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Monday 29 June 2009

Movie Review: The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)


In this remake of the 1974 film that epitomized the emerging hot, overbearing, urban and pessimistic style of the 1970's, a group of hijackers led by "Ryder" ( John Travolta) takes over a New York subway car in the middle of an underground tunnel, and demands a ransom of $10 Million to be delivered in one hour. Otherwise, one passenger will be shot every minute.

Ryder establishes contact with Garber (Denzel Washington) a subway authority dispatcher with a troubled past of his own. As the clock ticks towards the deadline, the relationship between Ryder and Garber forms the core of the film, as all around them there is panic. The New York Mayor (James Gandolfini) and his entourage wade in; a professional negotiator (John Turturro) has to work around Ryder's insistence of only talking to Garber; the SWAT teams have to deal with an unhinged hijacker who is not afraid to pull the trigger; and the police have to escort $10 million in cash across town, using a high-speed convoy through busy New York traffic.

This latter plot element is an extremely contrived addition to the movie, apparently for the sole purpose of satisfying director Tony Scott's desire for a high speed chase scene, complete with multiple crashes and cars flying off overpasses. As the mayor says halfway through, echoing the question in every viewer's mind, "couldn't they have used a helicopter?"

In keeping with modern times, this version of The Taking of Pelham 123 has a generally positive message about New York, and gently celebrates the city's services, workers, and emergency responders. It's an interesting but not unwelcome departure from the original, celebrating how far the city's image has been improved.

The two old pros Travolta and Washington both deliver polished performances, working from a script by Brian Helgeland. Travolta has the more maniacal role with not inappropriate frequent and sharp mood swings. Washington is remarkably cool throughout, in the process straining a bit at the credibility envelope of the skills under pressure that can be expected from a city employee.

The 2009 edition of The Taking of Pelham 123 is unlikely to be fondly remembered 35 years from now, like the original is. At the same time, it is a star-driven slick and entertaining hijack caper that can be enjoyed on its own merits.






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Sunday 21 June 2009

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation (2009)


The good guys are very macho, the bad guys are very macho, the women are very macho, and the machines are (of course) very macho. In the post-apocalyptic Terminator vision, those who do not drip machismo will be dropped dead and abandoned among the carnage of broken buildings, broken cars, and just plain broken civilization.

The fourth episode of this franchise that started all the way back in 1984, Salvation takes us for the first time into the future that was only hinted at in previous episodes.

The year is 2018, and human soldiers lead by John Connor (a macho Christian Bale) are fighting the war for the survival of the human race against the SkyNet machines that launched Judgement Day on the planet. A mysterious stranger called Marcus (a very macho Sam Worthington) drops into the battle, and we know from the movie's opening sequence that Marcus was a death row inmate who donated his body to science back in 2003.

You would need to be very new to the Terminator concept not to suspect that some re-incarnation of Marcus has been sent through time, this time forwards, probably with some ill intentions towards Connor.

The overall battle between humans and machines then becomes the backdrop to the evolving tension between John and Marcus, with the usual complications thrown in such as major disagreements between Connor and his submarine-dwelling commanders, and a bond that develops between Marcus and one of Connor's soldiers, female (but still macho) pilot Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood).

Bloodgood has probably the most interesting character and performance on display, but unfortunately she fades away due to neglect from the final third of the movie.

Terminator Salvation does only a few things, but it does them well. Director McG ensures that things blow up with big bangs. The war equipment looks authentically grimy, and the set-design is quite brilliant. Those familiar with the computer game Fallout 3 will instantly recognize the striking similarities in the look and feel of the movie.

Terminator Salvation does not pay too much attention to characterizations or any attempts at developing much of a emotional centre of gravity. The characters remain for the most part cardboard cut-outs with dialogue lines inspired by comic books, or previous movies. Michael Ironside as the overall leader of the resistance mails in a performance -- and dialogue -- that he has mass-produced a good dozen times in much worse productions. And there is even a mute long-haired kid here who seems to have time-warped straight in from the set of Mad Max 2 (1981).

Taken as almost a straight-ahead war story with a bit of routine human drama tossed in, Terminator Salvation certainly delivers, but do expect a bit of a hollow spot where the soul of the movie usually resides.







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Friday 29 May 2009

Movie Review: Angels and Demons (2009)


The Vatican has a few problems. The Pope has just died. Four of the Church's most senior Cardinals, the group from which the Pope's successor will emerge, have been kidnapped, and are threatened with death within hours. And an anti-matter bomb with the capability of flattening a large part of Rome is ticking away, somewhere in the Vatican, about to explode at midnight. Who're you gonna call?

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), the symbolist who was very much a thorn in the side of the Church while unravelling The Da Vinci Code.

The Vatican calls upon Langdon since the evil forces behind the kidnappings, the death threats and the ticking bomb appear to be a re-emergent Illuminati, a science-loving fraternity that locked horns with the Church centuries ago. The Vatican had brutally repressed the Illuminati, who appear to be back to extract a gruesome and final revenge.

The Illuminati demonstrate their cleverness by hiding clues to their intentions using riddles, and by revealing seemingly incredible ambigrams -- perfect terrain for the skills of Langdon. He needs to race against time to follow hidden religious clues to try and rescue the kidnapped Cardinals before they are sequentially and brutally eliminated, while at the same time trying to find the hidden bomb, and uncover the whole evil plot behind one very bad night.

Although novelist Dan Brown wrote Angels and Demons before The Da Vinci Code, director Ron Howard and writers David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman cleverly transform it into a sequel movie. Hanks returns as a thinner and less dour Langdon. Ewan McGregor is the Camerlengo, the stand-in papal authority dealing with the threats while a new Pope is chosen. And the token female scientist is Ayelet Zurer, who mostly rolls across the movie doing a good impersonation of a fifth wheel.

Angels and Demons is much more crisp and sharp than the mess of the movie that Howard managed to mangle out of The Da Vinci Code. Although this is helped by a more straightforward original story, the real improvements were achieved by being brave enough to streamline the movie compared to the book, eliminating characters and scenes and improving several plot twists.

The result is that Angels and Demons works just as well as a movie as it did as a book, despite being less faithful to the original story, while The Da Vinci Code was a disastrous movie trying to be too faithful to a brilliant book.

Angels and Demons will not win any prizes, but it is an entertaining Rome-set thriller, complete with modern pseudo-science, historical gobbly-gook, gruesome deaths, and a story that effectively fights its way through the Rome traffic snarls and the gathering crowds in St. Peter's Square.






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Saturday 23 May 2009

Movie Review: State of Play (2009)


State of Play cannot quite decide what it wants to be: a glorification of the newspaper industry; a reality-based political murder-and-scandal thriller; or an investigative whodunnit. It ends up being an interesting enough hybrid meal that samples several cuisines without effectively proving to be totally competent in any. Not a surprise, since there are five names on the writing credits of the movie, a perfect recipe for a somewhat bland concoction.

Russell Crowe is Cal McAffrey, an old-style slob of a journalist working for the Washington Globe, which (of course) has just been taken over by a faceless multi-national and profit-driven corporation. McAffrey starts investigating an apparently drug-related double-shooting on the streets of DC, while his young blogger colleague at the Internet edition of the Globe, Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), start poking around the apparent suicide of an aid for the rising young Senator Steven Collins (Ben Affleck).

It turns out that the death of the Senator's aid and the street-level shootings are related (of course), and Collins joins forces with Frye (cue the yawningly expected young / old; traditional / digital; ink / blog tensions) to unravel the evil behind the deaths.

Senator Collins was (of course) having an affair with his aid before she died. He also happens to have been the college roommate of McAffrey. Collins is also just about to open investigative hearings into an evil Blackwater-style mercenary conglomorate. And Collins' wife (Robin Wright Penn) once slept with McAffrey. And the Globe's editor (Helen Mirren) is torn between the need to deliver good journalism and the need to satisfy the new owners' lust for profit.

In other words, there are enough contrived layers of connective tissue between the characters' personal lives and today's real headlines to keep the plot moving, generally in a forward direction.

Let's not ask to look too much at the details of the movie, where the journalists are significantly more competent at crime-solving than the police, and professional assassins are outsmarted by over-weight journalists, and particularly let's not look too closely at the muddled ending, where the plot desperately tries to add one more sharp twist, but can only conjure up a damp tissue.

What keeps State of Play on the safe side of over-cooked is the talent on display. Crowe, Affleck, Mirren, McAdams, and Wright Penn are very watchable, and all do their bit to round out their characters. Even Jason Bateman and Jeff Daniels make an appearance and are effective in relatively small roles.

Kevin MacDonald, best known for The Last King of Scotland, directs with a slightly jittery hand-held style, enough to maintain an edge without being too annoying.

For those who enjoy good acting talent, State of Play is watchable, if not terribly memorable.







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Tuesday 5 May 2009

Movie Review: Revolutionary Road (2008)


An examination of life behind the facade of 1950's suburban normalcy, Revolutionary Road's strength and weakness lies in the performances of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Both deliver passionate and committed performances, but both exhibit continuously dramatic love/hate neck-breaking changes in emotion that are often unexplained. While the emotional roller-coaster drives the drama forward, it all rings hollow as a believable narrative.

April (Winslet) and Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) have settled into a seemingly typical suburban marriage, where she has given up on an acting career to raise two kids (who seem to conveniently disappear from the latter part of the movie) and he has settled into a typical corporate job. Looking to re-ignite a passion for life, April proposes that they leave American suburbia behind and move to Paris -- quite the radical thought for the 1950's. A relatively quick downward spiral in their fortune ensues when Frank receives the opportunity for an unexpected promotion, and April receives an unwanted surprise.

Revolutionary Road creates a 1950's world where no one is very pleasant. April and Frank are mostly argumentative. Frank's co-workers and bosses are not exactly role models. The neighbours are just there to be tolerated, with the added attraction of the adult son of the local realtor, who is on leave from the local mental institution, which gives him licence to say exactly what is on his mind. It's a useful but rudimentary plot device to explicitly expose what may be going on inside the minds of April and Frank.

Do these two love each other or hate each other? Do they share the same dreams or are they just being polite while using each other? Why do they sexually betray each other with seemingly not a second thought? And is one of them actually insane? The movie just raises these questions and leaves them hanging, which would be fine if the behaviour on display is half-way believable, but when both the questions being asked and the wild swings in affection are blatantly over-the-top, it's difficult to feel much empathy for the couple.

The movie, based on the book by Richard Yates, feels quite theatrical and stage-bound, and there is not much imagination shown in filming locations outside the Wheeler's house. The performances of Winslet and DiCaprio do rise above the material, as they both demonstrate commitment to the turbulence of life.

Revolutionary Road is a companion piece to Director Sam Mendes' award winning American Pie (1999), which tackles the same themes in a contemporary setting. Mendes appears drawn to the death of individual dreams within crumbling suburban marriages. The debris from crumbled aspirations is interesting, but it's always better to build a sturdier structure before tearing it down.






All Ace Black Blog Movies Reviews are here.

Monday 4 May 2009

Movie Review: Yes Man (2008)


Yes Man occupies the harmless terrain at the intersection of comedy, romance, and lessons-in-life-as-taught-by-Hollywood. It gives Jim Carrey ample opportunities to display his comedic talent, and thankfully he stays relatively in control.

Carl Allen (Carrey) is a loan approval officer at a local bank. Since his wife left him he has become negative and depressed, avoiding all social interactions and life experiences. After he skips out on his friend's engagement party, he is convinced to attend a self-help Yes! seminar where he commits to turning his life around by saying Yes to every single opportunity that comes his way.

This of course leads to a boy-meets-girl, boy-loves-girl, boy almost-loses girl convoluted romance with a sweet artist (Zooey Deschanel); convulted success at work; and mis-adventures involving learning the Korean language; a mail-order bride from Iran; an unplanned trip to Nebraska and unwanted attention from the FBI.

The film, directed by Peyton Reed and loosely based on a true story, moves briskly, and never dwells too much after making its funny point in every scene. Carrey and the supporting cast are game, with good comic timing and general avoidance of excess. Rhys Darby as Carl's boss at the bank particularly stands out, playing a seemingly happy character with his own personality issues.

There is nothing dramatically surprising or overwhelming about Yes Man. The comedy is moderate, the romance is mellow, and the characters are refreshingly almost normal as far as movies like this go. For fans of light vanilla ice-cream with just a light dusting of chocolate sprinkles, Yes Man is satisfying.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Friday 10 April 2009

Entertainment: Train Wreck on Live Radio - the Billy Bob Thornton Q Interview


I had the pleasure of listening live to the Billy Bob Thornton interview on the CBC radio program Q, which hit the airwaves in Vancouver on Wednesday morning, April 8. Host Jian Ghomeshi had Thornton and the other members of his country music band The Boxmasters in-studio to promote a concert in Toronto.

From the instant that Thornton gave his first answer -- "I don't know what you're talking about"-- I sensed that I was about to witness a train wreck in slow motion. Was Thornton zonked out on drugs? Was he drunk?

The tension was evident over the air as the other three members of The Boxmasters tried nervously to rescue the session and answer Ghomeshi's questions. The combination of stress and anxiety in Ghomeshi's voice every time he directed a question to Thornton, not knowing what to expect and trying to salvage an interview from a clearly uncooperative subject, was riveting.

And finally when Thornton set-off on his "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine story, which was both sensationally hilarious and incredibly uncomfortable, it was clear that this interview was instantly gaining entry into the "all-time classic moments of radio" hall of fame, and it was just thrilling to be witnessing it.

So it turns out that Thornton was quite upset that his non-musical careers were mentioned by Ghomeshi in the introduction to interview. It seems that Mr. Thornton takes his musical career seriously and does not want listeners to even remember that he is also an award-winning actor and screen-writer. Whether or not he was also "under the influence" of something, we will never know.

As a semi-regular listener to parts of Ghomeshi's show, I could not help but feel a lot of sympathy for him as the drama unfolded. He ended up handling the situation brilliantly. It was one of these moments that a leader can never be prepared for, but when instincts need to take over and just the right combination of assertiveness and humility is needed to rescue the situation.

Almost as interesting was listening to Ghomeshi's next segment as he interviewed Canadian actor Albert Schultz. Even over the airwaves, I could sense the adrenaline gushing out of Ghomeshi as his heart beat returned to normal and his brain raced to replay what had just happened and the multitude of scenarios that could or should have happened. The veteran Schultz recognized that he had a role to help his host regain his bearings, and he did this very well.

So was Thornton following the age-old adage that "all publicity is good publicity", and recognizing that creating a bit of radio history was the best thing that he could do to boost the popularity of his otherwise obscure country music band? Maybe. But whatever his reasons, he should be thanked for creating a marvellously entertaining and memorable radio interview.

In case you missed it, here is a link to the interview.




Saturday 28 March 2009

Movie Review: The International (2009)


There is a lot to like about The International, an American - German co-production. For one, the star of the movie, Clive Owen as Interpol Agent Louis Salinger, is made to look progressively more ugly and rumpled as he relentlessly pursues the evil doers at the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). The purposeful degradation of the leading man's looks is a refreshing change, and Owen's ear joins Jack Nicholson's nose (in Chinatown) as a body part sacrificed in the search for truth and justice.

Tom Tykwer's directing, along with the cinematography (Frank Griebe) and editing (Mathilde Bonnefoy) are also commendable. The movie goes out of its way to find fresh, architecturally attractive locales, and succeeds in achieving a sleek and modern yet corporately cold look. The action scenes are edited briskly but never descend to the frantic and disorienting micro-edits that have plagued many recent action films. The prolonged shoot-out at New York's Guggenheim Museum is one of the most satisfying and well-executed action spectacles in recent years.

The International also has a reasonable plot to work with. The IBBC is a shadowy bank interested in gaining power by funding arms deals to various warring factions. Interpol Agent Salinger, helped by Naomi Watts as Eleanor Whitman from the US Justice Department, are eager to shut down IBBC's operations before game-changing missiles are delivered into the wrong hands. To keep prying eyes away, the bank's protective layers include a slimy lawyer, an executive who was a former Stassi agent, and a "consultant" who is handy with a sniper rifle.

The bank is obviously well connected into the international political - military network, and the higher-ups are as eager as the bank to thwart Salinger and Whitman. The chase takes place across Europe, as the bank chief Jonas Skarssen (coldly played by Ulrich Thomsen) tries to close the deal before Salinger and Whitman close the bank.

Underpinning the movie's fictional plot is the true story of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was finally forced out of business in 1991. In addition to extremely shadowy operating practices, BCCI was found to have links to the financing of the Abu Nidal extremist group with the involvement of notorious racketeer Marc Rich.

But the plot of The International also suffers from  some large holes, like the Italian weapon manufacturers who suddenly develop a deep moral code, and the quickest bullet trajectory analysis ever conducted, and which completely ignores the fact that one bullet actually struck and killed a target before going through a wall.

But let's not quibble with a well made, modern, entertaining, relevant and well-acted movie that avoids many cliches. After all, when was the last time we saw an international action movie without a car chase scene?






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Saturday 21 February 2009

Movie Review Index


Most recent additions:

Mar 17 2024: Fallen Angel (1945)
Mar 17 2024: Upgraded (2024)
Mar 16 2024: Father Stu (2022)

Below is the linked index to the more than 3,300 movies reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog, in chronological order. The index for selected movie stars is here.
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Manpower (1941)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Paper Bullets (1941)
Sundown (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
They Died With Their Boots On (1941)
Tobacco Road (1941)
Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

Trail Street (1947)
The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

Yellow Sky (1948)
1971 (30 reviews)
The Anderson Tapes (1971)

1972 (22 reviews)
Across 110th Street (1972)
1981 (31 reviews)
Absence Of Malice (1981)
Porky's (1981)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)
Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
Sharky's Machine (1981)

1988 (46 reviews)
Beetlejuice (1988)

1989 (32 reviews)
The Abyss (1989)


1993 (36 reviews)
The Age Of Innocence (1993)
1996 (42 reviews)
Beautiful Girls (1996)

1997 (48 reviews)
What Lies Beneath (2000)
What Women Want (2000)
Where The Heart Is (2000)


2004 (41 reviews)
13 Going On 30 (2004)
50 First Dates (2004)
The Alamo (2004)
Alexander (2004)
Along Came Polly (2004)
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (2004)
The Aviator (2004)
Where The Truth Lies (2005)

2006 (50 reviews)
300 (2006)

Ghost Town (2008)
Gigantic (2008)

2009 (76 reviews)
17 Again (2009)

2010 (86 reviews)
127 Hours (2010)
Worth (2020)

2021 (53 Reviews)
Wrath Of Man (2021)

2022 (51 Reviews)

2023 (38 Reviews)

2024 (1 Review)
Upgraded (2024)


Every movie reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog is rated on a 5-star scale:






to







The rating appears at the bottom of the review page for each movie.