Friday 31 December 2010

Movie Review: American Graffiti (1973)


George Lucas achieves his first mainstream, global success, with a most unlikely small movie. American Graffiti is a slice of teen-age Americana circa 1962: the small-town culture of cars, girls, and the search for the meaning of life.

It's the last night in Modesto, California for a group of high school graduates. In the morning, Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfus) are scheduled to leave for the greener pastures of a big-city college.

The night starts with Curt having second thoughts about leaving; but Steve is sure that he wants out of small-time life, although this means leaving behind his girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams), his car, and his other friend Terry "The Toad" (Charles Martin Smith).  Also being left behind is the town's legendary street-car racing champion John (Paul Le Mat).

Over the course of one night that takes place in and around Mel's Drive-In and the surrounding streets, Steve and Laurie fight and make up more than once, arguing about the future of their relationship. While cruising, Curt catches repeated glimpses of a beautiful blond in a white Thunderbird; he does not know who she is, but she captivates him.  Curt also finds himself entangled with three members of a local street gang, the Pharaohs. The nerd Terry gets the use of Steve's car and soon picks up his antithesis, the blond bombshell Debbie (Candy Clark).

The mismatched Terry and Debbie share numerous misadventures through the night, while the tough and ultra-cool John finds himself with his own version of a polar opposite: Carol (Mackenzie Phillips), barely a teenager, jumps into John's roadster and refuses to leave. John's destiny is to end the night with another street race against his latest rival, the persistent Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford). Morning finally comes with slightly revised destinies for Steve, Curt, Terry and John.

The adventures of the teenagers in American Graffiti play out against the backdrop of a nostalgic, non-stop soundtrack of classic rock 'n' roll music from the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Wolfman Jack is the legendary DJ playing the tunes,and he makes a surprising appearance during Curt's long night.

With producer Francis Ford Copolla's helpful inspiration, George Lucas keeps American Graffiti humming to the music, and conveys a wonderful small-town feel, with great use of streets and cars filled with personality.  He is aided by one of the best young cast of relative unknowns to ever grace a movie.

American Graffiti was the breakout role for Richard Dreyfus, and he establishes his screen persona perfectly as the smart but slightly overwhelmed Curt, rolling along with the events that come his way but keeping his eye on the big picture.  Ron Howard also established his pleasant, falsely over-confident screen personality in American Graffiti, and went on to perfect it for years on television's Happy Days, the adaptation of the movie for the small screen, before turning into one of Hollywood's top directors.  Harrison Ford would re-emerge in a much more prominent role in a future Lucas film.

While Paul Le Mat and Charles Martin Smith did enjoy some film roles after American Graffiti, they both deserved better careers.  Both add immeasurably to the depth of the film, Le Mat infusing the tough John with self-doubt and Smith nailing the nerd desperately, but joyfully, out of his depth for one night.

Cindy Williams also deserved much better than simply being known as Shirley from TV's Laverne and Shirley.  Particularly in the early scenes of American Graffiti, Williams shines as Steve's girlfriend, walking a tightrope between love and defiance in the face of impending separation.

American Graffiti is a film about nothing and everything. Sometimes, driving around in circles is exactly the route needed to figure out the future.






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Thursday 30 December 2010

Movie Review: How The West Was Won (1962)


A well-intentioned flag-waving epic, How The West Was Won unfortunately falls flat. The film has all the narrative sophistication and character depth of an amateur high school play, with a script devoid of texture and intelligence. All the characters spout their lines convinced they are playing a part in the grand scheme of unfolding history, resulting in an endless succession of overly-dramatic, theatrical, wooden, and sometimes sadly comical scenes.

A series of sketches chronicling the history of America over about 60 years in the heart of the 1800's, How The West Was Won generally follows the adventures of the Prescott family. After tangling with bandits and being saved by mountain man Linus Rawlings (James Stewart), Ma and Pa Prescott are killed in a rafting accident making their way west. Their down-to-earth daughter Eve (Carroll Baker) marries Linus and establishes a homestead at the site where her parents died. The other daughter, free spirited singer/dancer Lily (Debbie Reynolds), continues west, joins a wagon trail to California, and marries compulsive gambler Cleve Van Halen (Gregory Peck). Lily and Cleve settle in San Francisco where they make and lose many fortunes.

The Civil War erupts, Eve's son Zeb (George Peppard) joins the Unionists and has a serendipitous encounter with General Grant. After the war Zeb stays in the army and attempts to keep the peace between the expanding rail companies and the native tribes whose land is being seized. Disillusioned, Zeb eventually becomes a Marshall, helping to bring law and order to the wild land, and eventually tangling with bandit Charlie Gant (Eli Wallach).

In How The West Was Won the good guys are all-good, the bad guys are all-bad, and good always triumphs over bad. The film presents a most naive, sugar-coated and earnest view of the old world. Despite the sophomoric storytelling, some reasonable highlights do emerge: the Civil War scenes are impressively staged and the unleashing of a buffalo stampede as a weapon against the rail companies is memorable. The stunt work during the final train heist also deserves recognition.

The all-star cast includes a few walk-on roles for the likes of John Wayne and Henry Fonda. Gregory Peck and James Stewart play their parts with little conviction and an ever-present smirk. Debbie Reynolds and George Peppard have the most prominent roles, and they are far from capable of holding the film together. John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall directed the various segments, preventing any coherent vision from permeating through the movie.

How The West Was Won fails to resonate, and has a ghastly ending that suddenly jumps to the present and trumpets American freeways, interchanges and concrete jungles as the most prominent signs of triumph. The times have indeed changed.






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Wednesday 29 December 2010

Movie Review: Bullitt (1968)


Bullitt has quite a few things going for it: the coolness of Steve McQueen, the chic glamour of Jacqueline Bisset, the attractive locations of San Francisco, the muscle of a Ford Mustang, and the thrills of a prolonged, legendary car chase. Yet somehow, all the pieces of the jigsaw do not make a complete picture.

San Francisco Police Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (McQueen) is personally selected by sleazy politician Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) to protect Senate Sub-Committee witness Johnny Ross, who is stashed in a dumpy motel waiting to give testimony that will damage a Chicago criminal syndicate.

But Bullitt and his team are too easily penetrated; Ross and a member of the police protection team are severely wounded. Bullitt soon realizes that all is not what it seems, a larger conspiracy is at play possibly with the aid of inside informers, and he has to reassemble the puzzle pieces to sort out the plot.

Director Peter Yates struggles with a lightweight script that relies too much on style at the expense of any character and dialogue sharpness. Sure, McQueen and Bisset look great, but they say very little of substance and are comprehensively drowned out by the roaring Mustang and the bustling streets of San Francisco.

Not having much character-driven drama to work with, Yates does the next best thing by keeping the camera work and framing interesting and highly kinetic. He delivers the rightfully highly-regarded car chase between McQueen's Mustang and the bad guys in a Dodge Charger. A total of 16 cylinders and more than 700 horsepower roar around - and often fly over - the insanely steep streets of San Francisco, burning rubber and smoking tires in a scene that set the standard for all future serious movie car chases.

And Yates ends the film by taking the action to San Francisco Airport for an elongated and almost dialogue-free climax, including Bullitt and his foe crossing active runways and mingling with giant jets getting ready for take-off.

But even by thriller movie standards, Bullitt has massive plot holes. Why do the assassins not finish-off Ross and his protection detail at the motel? Why do the assassins decide to run from Bullitt to instigate the car chase -- when they were the ones tailing him? How exactly does Bullitt uncover the destination of the phone calls that were made from a phone booth? Just by going to the same phone booth? At the climax, why does the prey give away his location by firing at a very distant Bullitt? And why is there a massive line-up and ticket-check to leave the airport? And can Bisset's character really be that clueless about the life of a police lieutenant? Does she not go to the movies?

Bullitt also suffers from the "unkonwn villain" syndrome, where the focus of the chase continuously shifts and finally lands on barely defined baddies. Since the movie provides very little reason to know or despise the enemy, a lot of the tension steadily seeps out over the final 30 minutes.

Ultimately, Bullitt is all about the visuals, but beneath the admittedly shiny surface, there is little substance.






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Tuesday 28 December 2010

Movie Review: Ben Hur (1959)


A colossal film dwarfing most other epics, Ben Hur is a towering cinematic achievement with enduring power.

The fictional story of Judah Ben Hur (Charlton Heston) takes place against the background of Jesus Christ emerging as a young man to spread his message of love among the Jews in Judea. Ben Hur is a wealthy and influential Jerusalem merchant, living with his mother and sister, and suppressing his desire for a relationship with his servant's daughter Esther (Haya Harareet).

Ben Hur's boyhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd) has fully accepted Rome's domination of the world, and after rising through the ranks of the Empire, Messala returns to command the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. The two men soon have a falling out: Ben Hur refusing to help Messala identify influential Jews who may be plotting against Rome's rule in Judea. To establish his authority among the population, Messala takes the first opportunity to arrest Ben Hur, while his mother and sister are thrown into the dungeon and left to rot.

The prisoner Ben Hur is marched in the desert. Passing through Nazareth, he collapses but is revived when a stranger, who is actually Jesus, ignores the Roman guards and gives him water. The mysterious encounter galvanizes Ben Hur, but as he serves for years as a galley slave on a Roman ship, he is single-mindedly filled with hate for Messala.

During a horrific naval battle against a Macedonian fleet, the slave Ben Hur saves the life of the Roman commander Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins). Arrius frees Ben Hur and takes him to Rome, adopts him as his son, and trains him as an expert charioteer. Once again wealthy and powerful, Ben Hur travels back to Judea to learn the fate of his mother and sister and to seek revenge, but the spreading influence of Christ also awaits.

The glamorous MGM studio bet its entire future on Ben Hur. A staggering budget of $15 million was deployed to finance 300 sets (including the largest movie set of all time for the chariot race scene), 15,000 extras, new widescreen technology, and a running length of three and a half hours. The gamble paid off: the result was a massive achievement that garnered $90 million in revenue and a record eleven Academy Awards.

Working from a script by Karl Tunberg based on the best-selling novel by Lew Wallace, director William Wyler expertly keeps the movie in control, and maintains a good focus on the human scale. As grand events are unfolding, the personalities of Judah Ben Hur, Messala, Quintus Arrius, Esther, and Sheik Ilderim allow history to be experienced through the perspective of Christ's fictional contemporaries. Wyler is helped by a cast strong enough to shoulder the weight of the movie. While neither Heston and Boyd demonstrate too much emotional range, they both bring the necessary stoic strength to handle history's drama.

Despite the film's length, Wyler never allows interest to wane, using the time wisely to add texture to his characters and events. He steers Ben Hur to three shattering climaxes: the naval battle, the chariot race, and the crucifixion. The first two are gloriously enthralling action sequences, with the chariot race in particular unmatched in its captivating drama as two men wage an individual battle in the grandest arena ever put on the screen. The crucifixion scene packs a thunderous emotional punch as Ben Hur demonstrates the courage needed for man's less refined instincts to come to terms with humanity's spiritual potential.

Ben Hur is one of the brightest highlights in the history of the movies, an example of extraordinary storytelling through the prism of a remarkable character.






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Monday 27 December 2010

Movie Review: The Runaways (2010)


The story of two girls from the wrong side of the tracks who briefly made it to the top of the music mountain, The Runaways is a wistful look back at a groundbreaking band that paved the way for a new era of women in rock.

Directed and written by Floria Sigismondi, based on the book Neon Angel: A Memoir Of a Runaway by Cherie Currie, The Runaways places the focus on guitarist Joan Jett and vocalist Currie, and does not shy away from the dysfunctional family origins, destructive drugs and sheer naivete that conspired to destroy the band.

It's 1975 in Los Angeles and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) has an unladylike ambition to play the electric guitar in an all-girl rock band.  She meets producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), who connects her with drummer Sandy West.  Fowley then goes looking for a lead singer, and finds 15 year old Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) hanging out at a club.  The group eventually includes lead guitarist Lita Ford, and are named The Runaways. Fowley helps to tutor them and co-writes their hit song Cherry Bomb.

Fronted by the dangerously under-aged sex-appeal of Currie and anchored by Jett's drive, The Runaways enjoy a meteoric rise, international success, and with drugs and jealousies taking their toll, a descent to destruction that is just as spectacular and rapid.  The band dissolved in 1979, having enjoyed success for all of three years between 1976 and 1978.

Dakota Fanning, just 15 herself when The Runaways was filmed, and Kristen Stewart, taking a welcome break from the vampires and werewolves of the Twilight series, produce impressive performances that mix equal doses of toughness, uncertainty and vulnerability. Fanning portrays Currie as fighting a losing battle to survive while out of her depth in a hostile environment that she knows little about, but also desperate to escape her depressing home, with an alcoholic father and a mother who has abandoned the family. Stewart captures the steely-eyed Jett, older than Currie, better equipped to deal with stardom and more success-oriented. Jett went on to independently achieve massive success as a solo artist.

Michael Shannon is also memorable as the conniving Fowley, a key contributor to both the creation and destruction of the band.

Sigismondi allows Fanning and Stewart to shine, and keeps her cameras tilted at interesting angles to match the soundtrack of rock music, and the energy of a group of young women attempting to take over the rock world.  And ever so briefly, they succeeded.






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Movie Review: Eight Legged Freaks (2002)


The premise of Eight Legged Freaks is way behind the starting line: escaped spiders get mixed-up with toxic waste and grow to a gigantic size, attacking and devouring the inhabitants of a small town.  The challenge for director Ellory Elkayem, working with co-scriptwriter Jesse Alexander, is to take this tired horror film concept and deliver something fresh, and they almost pull it off.

With a streak of sometimes vicious humour, Eight Legged Freaks never takes itself seriously.  The battle between the massive spiders and the humans plays out almost as a comedy; this helps the entertainment quotient, but also undermines, almost totally, the supposed horror aspects of the film.

Eight Legged Freaks also benefits from some surprisingly good computer-generated images as the gigantic spiders wage war on the town, and a cast that includes video-game favourite Kari Wuhrer and a young Scarlett Johansson, just before her breakthrough.

The strange old man who lives at the edge of the mining town of Prosperity, Arizona, keeps hundreds of dangerous spiders as pets.  Nearby, the river is contaminated with toxic waste, as the town's corrupt Mayor is running a scheme of storing toxic barrels deep in the under-performing mine.  Soon enough, the spiders escape and thanks to the cocktail of toxins, grow to a massive size.  The spiders are of course very hungry, and soon the pets, then the livestock, and finally the humans of Prosperity become their meals of choice.

Leading the battle for Prosperity's survival is Sheriff Sam Parker (Wuhrer), her rebellious daughter Ashley (Johansson) and younger son Mike (Scott Terra), who, of course, is an expert on all things spider-related.  Also in the fight are Chris McCormick (David Arquette), who is the long-lost son of the mine's owner.  Chris is interested in keeping the mine operational, and even more interested in romancing Sam.  An assortment of townfolk, including the hapless deputy sheriff, Ashley's boyfriend Brett, and the local radio DJ and conspiracy theorist, add colour and depth, and provide opportunities for endless horror movie cliches to be trotted out, always with a knowing wink.

The horror-in-a-doomed-mine premise of Eight Legged Freaks is almost identical to My Bloody Valentine.  Small towns built around mines now have to guard against both maniac killers swinging large pick-axes and hordes of toxin-charged Buick-sized man-eating spiders, in addition to mining accidents and the economic viability of their mines.  It's almost enough of an argument to ditch all that small-town charm for the safety of those nasty, big cities.





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Thursday 23 December 2010

Movie Review: The Untouchables (1987)


Written by Dave Mamet, directed by Brian De Palma, music by Ennio Morricone, and starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro and Andy Garcia; The Untouchables is a stellar crime drama with talent to spare on both sides of the camera.

Only loosely inspired by real events, The Untouchables is set in the Chicago of the early 1930s: Al Capone (Robert De Niro) effectively runs the town, his empire drawing enormous wealth from control of the illegal alcohol trade and destroying any and all opponents with an iron fist wrapped around a Tommy Gun.

With all local officials and the police force on Capone's payroll, Federal Treasury Agent Elliott Ness (Costner) is dispatched to Chicago on a mission to put an end to Capone's reign.  He teams up with beat cop Jim Malone (Connery), trainee sharp shooter George Stone (Garcia) and federal accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith). After initial set-backs, the foursome succeed in disrupting Capone's operations, capturing or killing many of his men and seizing illegal alcohol shipments. Attempts to corrupt Ness and his team fail, and they earn the reputation as untouchable. With his empire threatened, Capone fights back.

The Untouchables is a high speed trip through the wild streets of a lovingly recreated and crime-infested Chicago.  With a streak of mean humour embedded deep within all the violence, Mamet's script never lags, and reaches several breathtaking highlights, artistically delivered by De Palma: Ness and his men raiding an illegal alcohol deal at the Canadian border, with Malone subsequently torturing a corpse for good effect; Malone attempting to fend-off assassins at his apartment earned Connery the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; Ness and Stone capturing Capone's well-guarded bookkeeper at the epic Union Station shoot-out is an all-time classic scene. And the final rooftop confrontation between Ness and Frank Nitti, Capone's most lethal henchman, is a satisfying end to the carnage.

With The Untouchables setting its sight firmly on capturing the spirit rather than the reality of an era, Connery and De Niro deliver the flashy performances while Costner and Garcia anchor the rest of the cast. All the actors are to varying degrees over-the-top, but in the context of a movie brimming with kinetic energy, exaggerated performances are what was needed to avoid being overwhelmed.

Morricone weaves his spaghetti western themes with a 1930s mood to provide an evocative soundtrack to the proceedings.

Elliott Ness memorably got his man; The Untouchables stylishly got all the necessary details right.






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Wednesday 22 December 2010

Movie Review: The Damned United (2009)


The wrong person, for the wrong job, at the wrong time.  The outcome is one the shortest management tenures in English football history, as Brian Clough was hired and then fired 44 days later by Leeds United in 1974.

The Damned United benefits from Michael Sheen's engrossing performance as Clough, and director Tom Hooper captures the essence of English football that drives managers, coaches, and owners to sacrifice any semblance of normal life for a shot at potential glory on muddy pitches under gloomy skies every Saturday afternoon.  Based on the book by David Peace, the film peeks into the football boardrooms, dressing rooms, and training fields where the roots of success or failure are planted.

The Damned United alternates between Clough's time at Leeds in 1974 with the story of his earlier, incredible success at Derby County between 1967 and 1973.  With his assistant Peter Taylor, Clough took Derby from the bottom of the Second Division to the English League First Division title and the semi-final of the European Cup.  The Damned United provides glimpses of what made the Clough / Taylor partnership so effective: Clough identifying exactly what type of player the team lacks; Taylor going out and finding the perfect player who would be the missing piece in the jigsaw; Clough finding a way to sign the player, often by going behind the wishes of his Chairman.

The film portrays Clough's success at Derby, perhaps simplistically, as driven by an obsession to prove himself better that Leeds manager Don Revie, and a hatred for everything that Leeds stood for. Revie had built Leeds into an all-conquering dynasty as the most successful, arrogant and brutally physical club side in England.

The Damned United also emphasizes Clough's personality and ego at the expense of demonstrating his footballing genius. There are plenty of scenes where he shoots off his mouth and leaves no doubt about how highly he thinks of himself; there are hardly any scenes revealing how he brought the best out of his players, or tactically outwitted his opponents.

Clough's big mouth and massive ego ensure that he burns all his bridges at Derby, and he temporarily also manages to destroy his relationship with Taylor. This does not stop Leeds from approaching Clough to replace Revie when the latter accepts the job as manager of England. Clough takes control at the club that he has always hated, and proceeds to say and do everything in absolutely the wrong way, immediately alienating his star-studded squad and undermining the team's playing style and spirit. After a miserable start to the 1974-75 season, Clough is unceremoniously dumped by the Leeds Board of Directors.

Clough's time at Leeds United was the chastening he needed to sort out his faults, re-group, and proceed to his subsequent greatest success, taking Nottingham Forest from the Second Division to double European Cup champions between 1975 and 1980, after he learned some humility and repaired his relationship with Taylor. Brian Clough may have failed at Leeds, but in his damnation lay the seeds of his greatest triumphs.






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Tuesday 21 December 2010

Movie Review: Chinatown (1974)


From the pen of screenwriter Robert Towne and the vision of director Roman Polanski comes a modern film noir that brings back to life the glory days of dark, complex and slow-boiling detective stories filled with seedy and shady characters, all of whom are more dangerous and desperate than smart.


Los Angeles, 1937. Private investigator Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), who formerly worked for the police department in Chinatown, is hired to confirm the infidelity of Hollis Mulwray, the Chief Engineer with the city's water company.  Los Angeles is in the middle of a drought; there is a pressure to build a new dam; Mulwray is uncovering a midnight plot to inexplicably dump large amounts of water from the city's reservoir; Jake snaps photos of Mulwray with a young woman; and soon Mulwray is very dead.

As Jake noses around one of the city's water reservoirs to untangle the web of Mulwray's murder, his nose is sliced open by a knife-wielding thug hired to scare him off. In next to no time Jake finds himself unwittingly drawn into a large complex conspiracy involving a simulated water crisis being played out for a few powerful individuals to gain control over huge amounts of real-estate and shape the future of the city.

Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), the widow of Hollis, is caught in the middle between her late husband's legacy and her powerful father's pure evil, and turns to Jake for help. As another murder is committed, the police, including Jake's former partner in Chinatown, start to crawl all over Jake, and he slowly becomes aware that Evelyn is hiding a devastating secret that threatens to destroy her and anyone standing too close.

For Chinatown, Polanski re-creates a depressed Los Angeles as a small town filled with the thin veneer of respectability, but with a rotten core almost punching through to the surface. Jack Nicholson portrays Jake Gittes as a smart mouth happy to make a good living cruising through the underbelly of LA, who nevertheless soon realizes that he is facing events much bigger than he can handle. Faye Dunaway oozes, in turn, power, mystery, danger, seductiveness, and ultimately sheer vulnerability as she loses her husband and finds her life hurtling towards sudden destruction.

And in a majestic nod to the golden era of film noir, John Huston makes an appearance as Noah Cross, the mastermind behind the plot to regain the power he once held over the entire City. In 1942, Huston wrote the screenplay and directed The Maltese Falcon, one of the foundation stones of the noir style.

Towne's Chinatown script allows the film to gather the dust of depression and doom as the story unfolds. Every time Jake learns more about Hollis, Evelyn, or Noah, he realizes how little he knows about what is going on, and how much bigger the conspiracy unfolding around him really is.

With Jake trying but unable to control the overwhelming forces conspiring around him and Evelyn, the film slowly but surely edges towards a grim ending, inevitably in Jake's old Chinatown turf. In the aftermath, with no part of Jake's plan having worked out, Towne nails down in movie history the film's defeatist final line: "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."

Jake will not forget the events of that night, just as Chinatown is a brilliantly unforgettable experience.






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Movie Review: Apollo 13 (1995)


It's 1970, and public interest in the Apollo missions to the Moon is fading fast. America has beaten the Soviet Union to place a man on the Moon, and further missions are seen as either routine or a waste of resources.

Against this backdrop, astronauts Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) take off in Apollo 13.  Lovell had previously traveled to the Moon on Apollo 8, but the Apollo 13 mission would be his final opportunity to fulfill his dream of landing and walking on the lunar surface. Swigert is a late replacement for Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), who is believed to be sick.

On the way to the Moon and soon after the crew transmit an ignored television broadcast from space, an oxygen tank explodes on-board Apollo 13, causing severe damage to the Odyssey Command Module, as well as a loss of power and oxygen.  Odyssey is powered down and the three-man crew take refuge in the Lunar Module Aquarius, designed to sustain two people for a matter of hours while they hop onto the Moon's surface. For the next several days, the exhausted, sleep-deprived crew, working with the engineers at Mission Control and Flight Director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) in Houston, have to maintain their composure and frantically improvise a way to get back safely to Earth using stricken equipment and hardly any power. The grounded and quite healthy Mattingly is hastily recruited to Houston to work on the simulator and help develop solutions to the chronic power shortage on-board Apollo 13.

In recreating an epic true-life drama, director Ron Howard expertly triangulates the Apollo 13 story. The film alternates between the astronauts on-board the stricken spacecraft struggling to survive; the NASA ground control team scrambling to find solutions to a succession of never-anticipated problems; and Lovell's wife Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) dealing with the trauma of waiting to learn from the suddenly interested TV broadcasts if her husband will live or die.

The script by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert, adapting Lovell's book, delivers a triple lesson in essential leadership skills from each of the three story angles: Lovell has to hold his crew together in the face of desperately dark prospects; Kranz has to squeeze every drop of innovation and ingenuity under enormous time pressures from the brightest engineers that America has to offer; and Marilyn has to keep her family, including Jim's almost senile mother, relatively sane under the glare of the media circus that suddenly descends upon them.

Apollo 13 is a technical marvel, with the Houston Command Centre, the spaceship controls and interiors, and the astronaut suits recreated to the last detail, and the in-flight scenes filmed in actual zero gravity. Ed Harris is an unforgettable presence as Gene Kranz and emerges as a true hero, but the entire cast is comfortably flawless.

A perfect canvas for Ron Howard's talent of delivering emotionally powerful tales that focus on the exceptional abilities of the human spirit, Apollo 13 is an accomplished and rousing example of how some great triumphs are initially camouflaged as blatant disasters.






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Monday 20 December 2010

Movie Review: The Conversation (1974)


A character study revolving around a surveillance expert and a conversation that he surreptitiously records between two lovers, The Conversation resonated in 1974 due to the paranoia of secret recordings related to the Watergate scandal; the film retains its value thanks to a sterling examination of the end of privacy, as well as for a defining performance from Gene Hackman and Francis Ford Copolla's edgy directing.

Harry Caul is a San Francisco expert in secretly recording other people's conversations, and is often hired by powerful forces interested in eavesdropping on their opponents.   With the help of his team, including assistant Stan (John Cazale), Caul pulls off a difficult assignment, recording a conversation between lovers (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest) meeting at lunch.  Realizing that they may be followed, the couple spend their lunch hour walking around Union Square. Caul records their conversation anyway, using the latest technology and multiple static and mobile microphones.

Upon piecing together the recorded conversation, Caul begins to suspect that the couple may be the targets of a murder plot.  He tries to prevent the recording from falling into the hands of the client who commissioned it, a mysterious Director (Robert Duvall), who has an equally sinister Assistant (Harrison Ford), but Caul is in over his head.  Soon events unfold in unexpected directions and his secretive life is shattered.

Coppola, working from his own script, mixes a deliciously simmering plot with a detailed character study.  Hackman's portrayal of a careful loner intentionally detached from society and who is yet a recognized expert in his field is one of the performances of the 1970s.  A man attempting to maintain a calm exterior but aware that his insecurities are too close to the surface, his buttons are pushed too easily. When his carefully constructed world begins to unravel, he does not appear to be too surprised.

Caul's story is told through a plot that starts starts out in black density, as hardly any of the words of the central conversation can be heard during the recording process.  Only when Caul uses his technology to piece together the words does the premise slowly start to be unveiled, but even as Coppola peels back many of the layers, the relationships and motivations that will threaten Caul's life are never fully made clear, adding to the sense of menacing behind-the-scenes forces that could choose to seep into any life.

The Conversation is dark, humorless and unexpectedly intense.  It ushers in the era of justifiable paranoia and lost privacy, and accurately predicts the gloomy implications for both the taped and the tapers.






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Sunday 19 December 2010

Movie Review: The World Is Not Enough (1999)


The strongest Bond chapter with Pierce Brosnan in the role, The World Is Not Enough benefits from locales that are gritty rather than glamorous, two suitably dangerous villains, and a plot that, within Bond's context, remains grounded and actually makes some sense.

Directed by veteran Michael Apted, The World Is Not Enough features brisk but controlled pacing, rational editing and a complex, multi-faceted conspiracy.  Sir Robert King, an oil tycoon and a friend of M (Judi Dench), is assassinated right inside the MI6 headquarters in London.  Bond heads out to the oil fields of Central Asia to protect King's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau), who has inherited his empire and may be the next victim.  Elektra had already survived a kidnapping masterminded by Soviet terrorist Menard (Robert Carlyle), but that does not stop her from becoming Bond's latest bed companion, although it's not clear in this case if he is the seducer or the seduced.

Bond soon uncovers a Menard plot to steal a nuclear bomb with the intention of triggering an explosion that disrupts global oil supplies. As M gets personally involved, Elektra is revealed to be not all that she seems, and Bond needs to save his boss, eliminate two evil masterminds, and stop the destruction of a major oil pipeline node.

The venturing of M into the danger zone, and her kidnapping as the drama unfolds, provides Judi Dench with her biggest role yet in a Bond movie.  While this is welcome from the film's perspective, it is highly unlikely that the head of MI6 would ever get anywhere near as personally involved.

Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist who helps Bond, is unfortunate at so many levels.  Richards as an actress is never more than eye candy, and stuffing her into tight shorts and mid-riff baring tank tops at every opportunity does nothing to dispel the theory that casting her in a ultra-brainy role was a joke that missed its target.

The World Is Not Enough survives these less than perfect moments thanks to the unusual real-world intensity of the unfolding drama and the effective, seductive menace that Marceau brings to her role as Elektra King.  Bond has rarely had to tangle with women as strategically powerful, evil, and conniving as Elektra, and she is a welcome upgrade compared to the interchangeable men that typically pull the strings of the nefarious plots.

The World Is Not Enough is Bond at his best, one of the rare instances where the series pulls together its best elements, dumps most of the diversions, and delivers hard-nosed entertainment.






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Saturday 18 December 2010

Movie Review: Die Another Day (2002)


Just like it did in Moonraker in 1979, the James Bond series takes a very wrong turn towards the outer reaches of technological boundaries, stretching what is already an incredible premise into the realm of the ridiculous.

Die Another Day, the 20th Bond movie adventure, features human recreation using DNA technology; an invisible car; a battle between two cars packed with enough missiles to obliterate a small country; a killer satellite capable of zapping earth with laser weapons; and a most awful computer-generated Bond escape involving surfing with a parachute. Bond is always expected to be outlandish; Die Another Day unintentionally crosses into the territory of cheesy science fiction, and the cheese does not smell so good.

In Pierce Brosnan's fourth and final outing as Bond, he is captured, held prisoner and tortured in North Korea.  Exchanged for another spy, Bond is deactivated by MI6 and strikes out on his own to seek revenge on those who betrayed him.

His quest leads him from London to Cuba and then on to Iceland and back to North Korea, all on the trail of Sir Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), a mysterious and wealthy diamond baron intricately connected to bad guys from the secretive North Korean regime.  MI6 agent Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) has already infiltrated Graves' organization and is working with M (Judi Dench) using less lethal tactics than Bond.  Also pursuing Graves is the agent known as Jinx (Halle Berry), who both hinders and helps Bond before she finally teams up with him to bring down Graves. Jinx and Frost take turns sharing Bond's bed, as he wastes no time making up for the female deprivation he suffered during his time as a guest of North Korea's prison system.

Graves as a villain is exaggerated to comic book proportions.  The dialogue exchanges between Bond and Jinx are embarrassingly sophomoric.  And Frost is one of the blandest ladies ever to catch Bond's attention.  Director Lee Tamahori brings a couple of interesting artistic touches with effective use of brief slow motion tactics, but mostly he seems to be lost among all the outrageous technology.  And both the opening sequence and the title song, by Madonna, are weak.

Die Another Day forced another reboot of the series with an new lead actor and a back-to-basics ethic in  Casino Royale (2006).  Some of the films in the series may be duds, but Agent 007 always lives to fight another day.






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Movie Review: The Guns Of Navarone (1961)


The fictional World War Two story of an Allied commando mission to blow up two massive German canons on the Greek island of Navarone, Alistair MacLean's novel receives expansive screen treatment. More than two and half hours of engrossing film-making feature human drama with sometimes harrowing, always tense action.

A flotilla of Allied ships needs to rescue 2,000 stranded men from the island of Keros. The entrenched German guns will decimate the naval rescue mission unless they are first knocked out by Captain Mallory (Gregory Peck), a rock climbing expert, leading a team that includes explosives ace Corporal Miller (David Niven) and Greek Army Colonel Stavros (Anthony Quinn).

The commandos have to land unnoticed on Navarone; scale vertical cliffs; infiltrate the island with the help of the Greek resistance; survive the treachery of a traitor; gain access to the fortress above the gun emplacement; and find a way to destroy the guns; all in a limited time-frame and despite the presence of German troops throughout the island.

With the never ending challenges of the mission more than capable of overwhelming any exploration of men at war, The Guns Of Navarone succeeds because the central characters are equally as strong as the surrounding events. What could otherwise have been a routine war movie is dramatically enhanced with a rounding out of the tension in two relationships: The mission-focused Captain Mallory clashes with the war-weary Corporal Miller; and Mallory also has an unfortunate and lingering history with the family of Colonel Stavros.

All three men emerge from behind the uniforms as human beings, and producer Carl Foreman's script gives each enough screen time to become a person rather than a role. Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn grab the opportunity to shine, and are helped by a more than capable supporting cast including Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle and Irene Papas, with Richard Harris in a small role.

The Guns Of Navarone is one of the brightest moments in director J. Lee Thompson's otherwise checkered career. He allows the action to breathe and the characters to develop, with long stretches of the movie proceeding without dialogue, demonstrating confidence in the unfolding story and the strong cast to drive the narrative.

The Guns Of Navarone is war adventurism at its best, entertaining, complex, heroic and classy.






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Movie Review: Downhill Racer (1969)


A star vehicle for Robert Redford, but the star is disinterested and the vehicle badly needs a tune-up. This is an undistinguished sports drama devoid of sophisticated character development and more interested in bodies hurtling down slopes.

As the cocky newcomer David Chappellet bursting onto the national team by virtue of possessing raw speed, Redford maintains a single expressionless expression throughout the film; which is one expression more than the rest of the cast. His teammates are interchangeably faceless. Gene Hackman as the US national ski team coach Eugene Claire is the liveliest character, but he does not work too hard for that distinction.

The love interest Carole Stahl (Camilla Sparv) emerges from nowhere and disappears almost as quickly, Sparv fulfilling the obligations of playing the required icy blonde willing to get a bit naked in return for sharing screen time with a star. And if there are any other interesting people in Downhill Racer, they are hidden behind enough ski racing gear not to matter.

Director Michael Ritchie uses a newsreel style to tell the shallow tale of a rapid rise from obscurity to Olympic glory. The skiing scenes are impressive as generic coverage of a sport, but as the skiers race downhill one-by-one with mind-numbing monotony, so does the film.






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Movie Review: Burlesque (2010)


The folks running the Cliches Are Us store in Hollywood would have closed the shop and put up the Sold Out sign after Burlesque breezed through.

The naive but spunky and talented country gal who goes to the big city.  The dishy bartender who helps her out. The legendary former star yearning for the glory days. The current prima donna performer who will do anything to keep all up-and-comers down. The heartless investor who wants to redevelop the area and end everyone's dreams.  They all occupy the stages and corners of Burlesque, a nightclub film where every idea is welcome as long as it has already been chewed up and spit out in a dozen other movies.

The screenplay, by director Steven Antin with dubious help from others, works hard and succeeds magnificently in avoiding any original scenes, characters, or plot developments.

While Christina Aguilera is appealing enough as the bright-eyed newcomer angling for her chance at the big time, Cher moves with the robotic grace allowed by mechanical joints and every inch on her skin carries the fragility of reconstitution.

The song and dance numbers on the confined nightclub stage are the main focus of the film, and entertaining as these are, Burlesque quickly becomes one endless loop of music videos filmed on the same set.  Antin at least shows some flair in capturing a cabaret feel, and combines the required brisk editing with enough finesse to respect and showcase the dancers' efforts.

If Aguilera wants to look forward to a career in film, she needs to quickly find projects that highlight her talents without the stink of re-digested tripe.






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Sunday 12 December 2010

Movie Review: Murder On The Orient Express (1974)


With lavish production values, one of the greatest ensemble casts in movie history, an exotic yet confined setting, and a convoluted murder mystery deep enough to capture and captivate all the attention, Agatha Christie's Murder On The Orient Express is a classic, old-fashioned, and timeless whodunnit.

It's 1935, and five years after the high-profile kidnapping and murder of the young child Daisy Armstrong in Long Island, New York. The Orient Express heading west from Istanbul is unusually crowded. Detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney), on his way to London and a late addition to the passenger list, is soon getting to know his assorted traveling companions, who generally seem irritated that a detective is in their midst.

The rich and ruthless American traveler Ratchett (Richard Widmark) offers Poirot a job as a bodyguard, after confiding that his life is in danger.  Poirot turns him down, and soon enough Ratchett is dead, stabbed 12 times during the night, despite Poirot's presence in a nearby cabin. The train is stranded due to snow on a mountain pass in Yugoslavia, and Poirot has a limited time window to investigate the murder and identify the killer before the Yugoslav police arrive and apprehend everyone.

Poirot soon discovers that the victim Ratchett was the evil mastermind behind the Armstrong case. Poirot interrogates the passengers, finding plenty of revenge motives and opportunities, and a lot of lying going on. He needs to sort out the complex events during the night of the stabbing, uncover the killer, and determine whether the murder of a vicious murderer can ever be justifiable.

With a long list of suspects conjured up by Christie's imagination and played by the likes of Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael York, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, and John Gielgud, director Sidney Lumet's greatest challenge is to quickly establish a persona for each, including a back-story, connection to the victim, and motive for the murder while allowing the stars to shine as they should in the limited screen time available for each. Thanks to a tight screenplay by Paul Dehn and performances that are only slightly exaggerated, Lumet succeeds brilliantly.

Finney, hidden behind layers of make-up, is a memorable Poirot, and by necessity he does push the role to extremes of animation to establish his authority over both the luxurious setting and the assembled stars.

Murder On The Orient Express is a mesmerizing journey, accompanied by a galaxy of stars and engineered by a master director.






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Movie Review: Body Of Lies (2008)


Body Of Lies brings a lot of firepower to the table, but none of it ignites and the film fizzles like a damp firecracker. The combination of Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, director Ridley Scott and the turmoil in the Middle East should sparkle. Nothing goes right as everyone appears to sleepwalk through the proceedings, hampered by a lack of inspiration in William Monahan's script and an over-dependence on tiresome cliches.

DiCaprio is CIA field agent Roger Ferris, hunting terrorists on the streets of the Middle East, assisted by locals with dubious sympathies. Ed Hoffman (Crowe) is Ferris' handler, based in DC, less clever than he thinks he is and preoccupied with shuttling his kids to their suburban activities while trying to capture terrorists by long distance. Ferris gets a handle on a terrorist safe house in Amman, and connects with Hani Salaam (Mark Strong), the head of Jordanian Intelligence. Between Hoffman's meddling, Salaam's conniving, the terrorists' plotting, and Ferris' muddling, all the plans interfere with each other and not much of anything gets achieved by anyone. This may be a true reflection of progress in the Middle East, but it wasn't the intention of this movie to artistically fall flat on its face.

Body Of Lies is a graphic metaphor for America's foreign policy being out of its depth in the world's most dangerous neighbourhood, but it lacks any sort of emotional connection, captivating drama, or genuine personal involvement. DiCaprio tries but resoundingly fails to recreate the impact of his role in Blood Diamond, as an outsider more at home in a foreign land. Crowe is distracted enough to almost bring the movie to a standstill every time he's on the screen. And the artificially appended romance between Ferris and an Iranian doctor in Amman produces nothing but cringes. There are some moderately interesting action sequences, but without any intellectual or emotional capital to draw upon, even the shoot-outs and explosions come dangerously close to tedium.

Body Of Lies is more of a skeleton, with the bones of what would have been good ideas left to rattle in the empty box of lazy execution.






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Movie Review: Matchstick Men (2003)


A startling departure from director Ridley Scott, who is usually more interested in technology and action than psychology and drama, Matchstick Men benefits from a neurotic Nicolas Cage performance, but not much else sets the movie apart.

Roy (Cage) is a master con-man with issues: under stress he stutters, suffers almost uncontrollable facial ticks, is a carpet cleanliness freak, and has paranoid habits.  Roy's wife left him while she was possibly pregnant with a child that Roy never got to meet.  But along with his partner Frank (Sam Rockwell), he manages a comfortable living pulling off relatively small-time cons selling useless junk to seniors and emptying their bank accounts.

Frank suggests that Roy visit psychiatrist Dr. Klein (Bruce Altman) for treatment.  Klein helps Roy with his medications and also helps him find and for the first time connect with his now teenage daughter Angela (Alison Lohman).  Soon Angela has moved into her father's house and is enthusiastically drawn into his life of crime.  When Frank and Roy go after a big score to con a businessman out of a large sum, Angela's involvement complicates matters to dangerous levels until Roy finds himself staring at the biggest con of all.

Matchstick Men is primarily a character study, and Cage is quickly able to make Roy a sympathetic character despite his long list of faults and weaknesses.  The physical signs of stress and paranoia are almost over-played, but since Roy exclusively occupies the centre of the movie, Cage gets away with it.  He is surrounded by a bland performance from Rockwell, and a predictable one from Lohman.  Other than Cage there is not much drama or tension being generated, but he single-handedly provides enough energy to push the film forward.

As a con movie, Matchstick Men does not try to reach for the duplicity levels of The Sting or House Of Games, and Roy's psychological issues intuitively limit his abilities to pull off a big score, and make him susceptible to the tricks of others.  Scott does the right thing to focus on the people rather than the games; it's just that there is only one interesting man among the Matchstick Men.






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