Dear reader, please forgive me if this review of Lady in the Water trails off and ends abruptly. If reviewing the film is anything like watching the film, there's a very good chance that I'll nod off before I'm done.
Not that I did fall asleep while watching Lady in the Water. I managed to stay awake all the way through it by sheer willpower. I'm sure the caffeine in my Diet Pepsi helped, too. Nonetheless, I left the theater convinced that nobody should be allowed to see Lady in the Water without a prescription. This is one powerful sedative.
Still, I suppose that a sedative is better than a placebo. M. Night Shyamalan's last film, The Village was just that: a placebo. A fake. A scam. A sugar-coated nothing. After seeing The Village, I left the theater feeling disgusted. After Lady in the Water I left the theater feeling… well, nothing at all.
All of this is really quite disappointing when you consider that the three films Shymalan made previous to The Village (1999's The Sixth Sense, 2000's Unbreakable, and 2002's Signs) were all outstanding films. In fact, I'd call them three of the best films of the past ten years. Maybe the problem with making three great movies back to back is that you set yourself up for a terrible height from which to fall.
So, maybe, in a way, Shymalan should be commended for Lady in the Water. It really is an ambitious undertaking for a storyteller. Maybe the most ambitious thing a story-teller can ever try to pull off. With this new film, Shymalan has tried to create his own mythology out of whole-cloth. Essentially, that's what this story is; a new mythology, analogous to nothing and allegorical to nothing. That's a mighty task to take on. With Lady in the Water, Shymalan has tested (and found) the limits of his abilities as a storyteller.
Here's the story in a nutshell… or, if you like, on the half-shell: In ancient times, mankind always lived close to the water and was guided in all things by a powerfully spiritual race of water-dwelling people. Over the years, mankind moved further inland, motivated by selfish conquest. By the modern day, man has lost contact with the water people, although they continue to try to make contact with us and guide us back to our original innocent ways. Bryce Dallas Howard plays one of the sea people who has somehow come to live in the pool of an apartment building managed by Paul Giamatti.
Of course, if you've got supernatural good guys (angels, basically), you're going to need supernatural bad guys. The demons in Lady in the Water are, to be fair, interesting looking monsters. They look like werewolves made out of shrubbery. Half lycanthrope, half leafy-green vegetable. It sounds corny, but they did look neat.
The plot hinges on the people in the apartment building and their attempts to save the sea nymph from the werebush, and to meanwhile learn the big spiritual message that she'd come to teach them in the first place. I hope that by the time the film was over, they did figure out the sea nymph's big spiritual message… because Lord knows I never did.Here's the thing: If you're telling a story about interactions between real-world people and supernatural beings, it doesn't matter if the interactions are positive (ala Cocoon) or negative (ala Fire in the Sky). What does matter is that the circumstances and the events of the story are meaningful. The events that unfold have to have some kind of resonance with the viewer, and the characters have to be people that we have a reason to care about. That's hard to pull off. When a movie maker does pull it off, the final product is a wonderful film, such as Signs. When the movie maker can't pull it off, he does have the option of covering up his shabby story with a special effects spectacular. When that happens, you end up with hollow-but-fun spectacles like the recent War of the Worlds remake.
There is, of course, a third option: That's when the movie maker comes up with a crappy, lame story but tries like crazy to sell it because he seems convinced that his story simply must be a good story because, after all, it's HIS story. When that happens, you end up with cinematic Ambian, Such as Lady in the Water.
This movie simply never should have happened. The story is flimsy and silly, and it seems like the "mythology" is being made up along the way. The actors don't seem to care about the story any more than I did, even the always reliable Giamatti really phoned it in here. Bryce Dallas Howard in the title role was… well, she was in the movie. That's the only impression she made on me.
Most frustratingly, Shymalan continues to insist on acting in his own movies, and he's just not a particularly inspired or inspiring actor. His on-screen presence in Lady in the Water was less of a distraction here, though, than it was in Signs… mostly because none of the other actors seemed to care enough about the story to act well enough to show him up. Remember that one scene in Signs… that one painfully cringe-inducing scene involving a critical exchange between Shymalan's character and Mel Gibson's character? I remember feeling embarrassed for Shymalan, who didn't seem to realize how downright silly he looked on screen, trying to hold his own with Gibson, a far superior actor. Here's my point: The best thing I can say about Lady in the Water is that the indifference that seemed to afflict all of the other actors was sufficient enough to make Shymalan's performance not seem embarrassing by comparison.I hate to say it, but I think Shymalan is done. Still, look on the bright side: inside of four years, he made three wonderful films. Plenty of movie makers have thirty year careers and never make even one film that compares to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, or Signs. There are very few Hitchcocks, Kubricks and Spielbergs. The great majority of directors never make an exceptional film. Shymalan made three of them, back to back, between 1999 and 2002. That is really a worthy achievement. Let's give him a big hand… and let's show him the door.
¶ 7:20 PM 7 comments
What do I know about anime? Not much. I know it's a word used to describe a distinctly Japanese style of animation (at least according to Wikipedia), and I know that what I've seen of it has been stuff that I don't like.
Now, what I've seen of it consists of the television shows our kids watch. Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z... Oh, and the Teen Titans, which, from what I can tell, is anime as well.
Most of it has always confused and confounded me. For one thing, I don't like the way the animation itself is done. It looks cheap and clumsy. I don't like the stories, either, because they seem to be simultaneously convoluted and silly. And, as far as the characters go, there just seemed to be nothing there. So, from what I could tell, I didn't like anime.
The thing is, I have a friend at work who has told me a thousand times that I just think I don't like anime because I haven't seen any good anime. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but until last night I never bothered to take the time to watch the movie that my friend always said was the anime by which all other anime should be judged. That movie, according to my friend, is Akira. This eighteen year old film is, from what I hear, the masterpiece of Katsuhiro Ôtomo. And, to be fair, my friend at work wasn't the only source of praise I'd heard for the film. Akira it seemed, was the film that I'd have to see before I could really say if I liked Anime or not.Well, after having watched it last night, I still can't say if I like anime in general, but I can say that I enjoyed Akira quite a bit. It was absolutely unlike anything I'd seen before.
It's not that there aren't any movies I can compare it to. In fact, a number of very good movies crossed my mind as we watched Akira. At times I found myself reminded of Blade Runner, at other times A Clockwork Orange popped into my head. I was also reminded briefly by one sequence of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and another sequence reminded me of one of my all time favorite films, Jacob's Ladder. Yes, there are a number of popular films that I can compare Akira to. The hell of it is, none of these films are animated. In fact, it's fair to say that I've never seen any animation that was quite like this.
Well, maybe the animated sequence of Kill Bill Volume 1 came close… but nothing else is comparable. This was not the cheap, silly animation that I'd seen before and thought was the sum total of "anime." This was really something else; something remarkable.
I am sure of this much, if Akira is the template by which anime should be judged, then the anime that I see when the kids watch Cartoon Network is utter garbage. I've never seen anything on any of those shows that could compare to the animation in this film. The backgrounds were the first thing to strike me as outstanding. The movie is set in a bleak future-vision of Tokyo, and it features cityscapes that are jaw-dropping. Other elements of the film really stood out on a scene by scene basis. Much of the visual design of the movie hinges on the power of hallucinatory elements. One sequence in which toys come alive inside of a hospital room and grow to gargantuan size really had my jaw on the floor. I actually found myself feeling the same tension… the same kind of action-movie anxiety… that I associate with movies like Jaws and The Bourne Identity.And this was an animated movie! Not only that, but it's an eighteen year old animated movie!
I'm still not sure if anime is my cup of tea or not. I found the plot of Akira to be quite hard to follow, but there came a point where I just happily abandoned my efforts to follow the plot and I just sat back and enjoyed the visuals and the apocalyptic overture that was unfolding in front of me. After all, who needs to really understand what's going on when you've got motorcycles and space-ships and covert government agencies and giant godlike monsters and creepy, ghostly children all fighting for the rule of Earth? Just take it in and let it do it's thing. Because I wasn't able to follow the story, I have no idea how to judge Akira in terms of story. I can say this, though… it is a feast for the eyes.
A brief warning: Don't assume that just because it's animated that it's a family friendly film. This movie is rated R, and with good reason. There is a great deal of harsh language, a few scenes that involved drug use, and some downright-upsetting animated violence, including an attempted rape. This ain't Yu-Gi-Oh!. It ain't for kids. Wait for the kids to hit the sack for the night and save this one for mom and dad's viewing only.It isn't going to be the kind of movie that everyone will enjoy. The end sequences are pretty extreme and the movie presents a dark and pessimistic view of the future. Nonetheless, it creates it's own world and inhabits it completely. Nothing that I saw in this movie struck me as implausible because I was sucked into it by the fifteen minute mark. Be careful with this movie. You might not enjoy it, you might even find it down-right troubling… but once you start watching it, you won't be able to take your eyes off of Akira.
¶ 2:19 AM 1 comments
So Bravo has put together their list of the 100 Funniest Movies Of All Time, and it is, of course, a travesty.
The show was obviously one of those "get a bunch of third-tier celebrities together and broadcast their comments" type of programs that VH1 invented. The actual list of movies was, I'm sure, a secondary consideration. The real point of the program was to get us to send four hours watching Harlan Williams and Fred Willard ramble.
How sure am I that the list itself was a secondary consideration? This sure: The remake of The Nutty Professor made the list, but the original was never even mentioned!!!
The list was a secondary consideration, thrown together without any thought or research. From henceforth, we will regard that as a fact. I found the list of films collected at this bulletin board, but if that message is gone, you can see the list as a jpg here.
Having said all of that, I'd like to present the official and authentic film geeks list of the Fifteen Funniest Movies Of All Time.
Qualifier: While reading this list, you will have to make do without the input of sage scholars such as Kevin Federline and Martha Quinn… but you will be reading a list that has actually been carefully considered and is the authentic, final word on the topic.. So say I. So say all of us.
So here ya go:
#15…Office Space
Before television's The Office, both the Brit and Yank versions, Mike Judge made the funniest manifesto about white-collar life ever. Office Space didn't find an audience in theaters, but on DVD the film's popularity grew like wildfire. If you've ever worked in a cube-farm it is impossible to watch this movie without recognizing it's classic types from your own life. Gary Cole's jerk of a boss… John C. McGinley's corporate axe man… and, best of all, Stephen Root's "that weird guy" character. Office Space is laugh out loud funny, both because of it's moments of reflection and it's plot about a man who, through hypnosis, actually stops caring about the office BS that had been driving him crazy. There are scenes in this movie that are impossible to forget. Once scene, involving an attempt at white-collar crime wherein the hopeful perpetrators refer to Webster's Dictionary to find out what "money laundering" actually is, makes me laugh every time I think about it.
#14…Wag The Dog
Life is marketing. Everything we see, read, hear, taste and touch has been sold to us at one point or another. That goes for our government, too. We get the leadership we elect because we've responded best to their campaign marketing. Therefore, marketing is also the primary factor behind everything from shoes to music to war. Wag The Dog takes this concept and runs with it, and the line where it crosses over from sly satire into broad parody is never clear. The premise is familiar at first: in order to distract the public from the scandal associated with his sexual shenanigans, the president (read: Bill Clinton) sends troops to intercede in the fighting in a mysterious, obscure country (read: Serbia). Of course, the president himself isn't really even aware of the war he's launched... his handlers are managing that. And, the general public doesn't know that it isn't even really a war. It's a pageant; a combination of political spin, Hollywood special effects, and, of course, marketing. Somewhere along the way the movie becomes implausible. Maybe. By the time it's over, you'll find yourself wondering just how much of what you saw was credible and how much of it was silly… and how much of it was maybe even factual.
#13…Swingers
A "coming of age" movie for guys in the '90's, Swingers both bemoans and celebrates the inept, sincere confusion of the American male in his 20's with hilarious results. On a base level, Swingers tells a story that it shares with films such as Clerks and a personal favorite of mine, Beautiful Girls. It's a story about a guy who's on the verge of real adulthood, and might even be ready for it, if only he could break away from the lifestyle, temporary goals, and the set of friends who are holding him back. But how do you make those kinds of huge changes? How do you keep your circle of friends without staying trapped in their endless, circular lifestyle? What sets Swingers a few notches above other films is John Favreau's outstanding script and the intense, hilarious, and engrossing performances of Favreau and Vince Vaughn. You'll root for the Favreau character, and you'll find yourself actually caring about the decisions he makes. Along the way, you'll laugh yourself into a hernia.
#12…About Schmidt
Few movies creep up on you with the subtle power of About Schmidt. For the first fifteen or so minutes of the movie, all I could think was how "Un-Jack-Nicholson" Jack Nicholson's performance in the film is. Nicholson amazingly becomes Warren Schmidt, leaving the classic Nicholson-qualities behind. The swagger, the knowing grin, the glint in his eye… they're all gone. Instead, When watching About Schmidt, you watch a movie about an old man who just happens to look a whole lot like Jack Nicholson. Once you get used to that, the circumstances of the film sneak up on you, and you go from giggling to laughing out loud. Warren Schmidt is a man who's retirement is the first of many dominos that suddenly fall in his life, leaving his orderly and structured existence in disarray. As he tries to put the pieces back together, Schmidt makes a series of mistakes, takes a number of side-trips, and somehow manages to accidentally do the right thing a time or two. There were scenes in this movie that were so funny that Wendy and I had to pause our DVD player so we could quit laughing, regain our composure, and then continue the film. And the last scene, involving an unexpected letter and a child's drawing, will have you laughing and crying all at once. This isn't a DVD to rent. This one is a keeper.
#11…Better Off Dead
Alright, I admit, I'm a child of the 80's and I lack the objectivity to judge 80's teen comedies with total objectivity. If a movie made me laugh when I was 15, chances are it will still make me laugh, if only out of pure nostalgia. Still, I am able to tell the difference between the times I'm laughing because my memories make me happy and the times I'm laughing because the movie is just flat-out funny. Better Off Dead is just flat-out funny. You might expect a comedy about teen suicide to preach and pontificate, but that isn't the case with this movie. Better Off Dead abandons the premise of the main character's desire to die by the end of the first act. Instead, it goes with the story that simply makes possible the maximum amount of funny jokes. And there are some funny, funny jokes here. Between the French exchange student, the psychotic paper-boy, the evil-genius little brother and the sporadic moments of animation, this movie is one funny joke after another. It was funny in the 80's, and when I saw it again a few months ago, it was as funny as I remembered. Nostalgia be damned, this movie is a genuine comic triumph.
#10…Bananas
Woody Allen fans are usually most impressed by the insightful, "poignant" comedies that Allen made in the middle of his career. And those are fine films. There's nothing wrong with Annie Hall or Hannah and Her Sisters. They're smart, they're funny, they're very, very good. But, for my money, if you want to simply laugh yourself silly, the Woody Allen movie to see is Bananas. This is broad, low-brow slapstick at it's best… and every time I see it, I laugh my head off. There's a ton of classic laughs in this movie ... Howard Cosell's out-of-the-blue narration. The jungle scenes that make the Three Stooges seem cerebral. Best of all, the manically demented speech by the dictator Esposito ("…all children under sixteen years of age are now… sixteen years of age!") Oh, it's still so funny. Sooooooo funny.
#9…The Jerk
Alright, it's a love-it-or-hate-it movie… and it might even be fair to call it a guy-film. Nonetheless, if The Jerk doesn't make you laugh at least a few times, you might check your pulse. It might be hard for people who only know Steve Martin through his recent rash of family-friendly films to believe, but there was once a time when he'd do anything for a laugh. There was no premise that was below him. In The Jerk, Martin let's the audience see him sweat in a major way, going for every possible laugh he can get… and he really lands them in a big way. The Jerk is pure nonsense, total buffoonery, and absolutely idiotic behavior, and it all works. Supporting performances by director Carl Reiner and Bernadette Peters are solid, too. Everything just jells in this movie, and Martin has never been funnier.
#8…Kingpin
The Farrelly brothers do the kind of comedy that you either love or hate. They'll go to any extremes for their laughs, and vulgarity is a given. Some of their movies have made me laugh pretty hard. Dumb and Dumber comes to mind, and of course There's Something About Mary is very funny, too. Their masterpiece, however, has got to be Kingpin. This is one of the best collections of gags, gross-out and otherwise, ever assembled into one film. Now, I should warn you, if your sensibilities are delicate, you should avoid this movie like the plague. Between Woody Harrelson's landlady, the cow-milking scene, and all the jokes involving Harrelson's missing hand, this movie doesn't care who it offends. Still, funny is funny… and if a vulgar joke is funny along with being vulgar, I'm not too haughty to laugh at it. Kingpin really is vulgar, but there's no denying that it really is funny. You might laugh in spite of yourself… you might even feel guilty about laughing… but if you're like me, Kingpin will make you laugh a whole lot.
#7…Airplane!
It's just dumb jokes. Dumb, pointless, brainless jokes. And, as dumb, pointless jokes go, Airplane! is as good as it gets. This Abrahams/Zucker classic was, in a way, a landmark. I suppose it's fair to say that Airplane! qualifies as a satire of the disaster movies from the 70's. Yet, to my knowledge, Airplane! was the first movie wherein the jokes worked because the script was purposefully and blatantly obtuse. These were just dumb jokes. One dumb joke after another, and all of them worked. I remember thinking the first time I saw Airplane! that it was probably the stupidest film I'd ever seen, and I remember that I was laughing like crazy. This was beyond simple farce. This was a movie so stupid that it might just be brilliant.
#6…Animal House
OK, so it's a guy film. I don't know a lot of women who like it, and my own wife thinks that it's terrible. Regardless, Animal House is a funny, funny movie. Bravo called it the best comedy ever, and I wouldn’t go that far, but it really is a timeless classic. Besides, it inspired about a billion imitations. Revenge of the Nerds, American Pie, and, of course, PCU all owe something to Animal House. In my opinion, they owe quite a bit to John Landis and this watershed movie. Animal House is the template for pretty much every the-losers-strike-back comedy that ever followed it. None of them get close to Animal House, though, because none of them benefit from that perfect combination of ingredients. Take John Belushi, Tom Hulce and John Vernon, stir in a very young Kevin Bacon and Karen Allen, and top generously with horse-gags, beer-gags, a sabotaged parade and a toga party. Mix well, laugh heartily.
#5…Monty Python's The Life Of Brian
It's easier than you might think to pick one Monty Python movie as their very vest. Sure, The Meaning Of Life and The Holy Grail are both classics, but The Life Of Brian is Python at their funniest, smartest and bravest. It's amazing that this movie works at all, considering that it's humor all depends on theological concepts and the viewer's understanding of the politics of Palestine circa 30 AD. It works, though. It works so well. And, contrary to what the premise might imply, the movie isn't really a lampoon of Christianity or Jesus Christ. It's more a lampoon of the combination of frailty and self-righteousness that many of us Christians often embody. Anyway, I know that I often embody that combination. So when I laugh at The Life Of Brian, I'm usually laughing at myself. But don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that this film is all heady stuff. A sequence involving a lisping Roman governor and another featuring a ride on a spaceship provide enough silliness to keep the movie from getting high-brow. By the time the Pythons end the film with a brilliantly warped send-up of the principle paradox of Christianity (a scene involving crucified men who are singing "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life"), it's impossible not to be won over.
#4…Dr Strangelove
Is this Kubrick's only comedy? I guess it is. There were blackly humorous moments in Full Metal Jacket and in A Clockwork Orange, but only Dr. Strangelove really went for the jokes in a broad and obvious way. I mentioned Wag The Dog above, and for it's time, that film really is a smart and insightful political comedy… but Dr. Strangelove is timeless. Everything about the human tendencies toward war, mistrust, insecurity and political manipulation is summed up to my satisfaction in this film. And it's all summed up with delightful, hilarious results. Dr. Strangelove's message might be that power corrupts ... and absolute power corrupts to the point of absolute insanity. It's impossible not to laugh at… and simultaneously be creeped out by… the quirks and delusions that drive the main characters here. From Sterling Hayden's obsession with "precious bodily fluids" to the President's desperately casual phone call to the Russian Premier about a base commander who's gone "a little funny in the head…" I watch this movie, I laugh sooooo hard, and for two hours I can't help but share in Kubrick's gallows humor. Top everything off with Peter Sellers in three classic roles and my favorite George C. Scott performance ever, and it's hard to top Dr. Strangelove.
#3…The Big Lebowski
I guess I didn't know what to expect from The Big Lebowski. I wasn't sure how the Coens could follow the brilliance, poignancy and hilarity of Fargo, so I guess my hopes weren't that high. In retrospect, I think the Coens did the only thing they could have done. Movies as smart, funny and meaningful as Fargo are once-in-a-lifetime achievements. So, for the followup, the Coens decided to forget the artsy-fartsy stuff in favor of pure, unadulterated comedy. The Big Lebowski won me over about two minutes into the film, when the narrator who was setting up the story lost his train of thought and had to stop and try to remember what he was talking about. From there the absurdity never stops, and never stops being funny. The Coens approached this material fearlessly and managed to get fearless performances from their actors. John Goodman in particular has never been funnier. Goodman's Walter is a walking punchline just waiting for a set-up… and those set-ups usually involve cars. Whether he's driving them, jumping out of them, or beating them with baseball bats, whenever this movie puts Goodman in a scene with a car, you can expect to laugh until your sides split. Highly quotable, delightfully screwball, and featuring a stellar cast, The Big Lebowski is spot-on.
#2…This Is Spinal Tap
How many comedies can you think of that are rife with so many jokes that you can still find new ones after watching it fifteen or twenty times? Only one comes to my mind right away. This Is Spinal Tap is beyond classic. It's one of those films that I don't think I'll ever get tired of. Each time I see it I'm either laughing at jokes I've seen over and over… or I'm laughing at some sly joke that had somehow slipped past me during previous viewings. If The Jerk and Bananas and Kingpin work because they go over the top, looking for every possible joke, then This Is Spinal Tap works in almost the exact opposite way. The jokes are small. Slight. Subtle. They're there, but only if you want to watch for them and actually pay attention to the film… and if you do, the jokes are are extremely funny. This is satire at it's finest, with characters who take themselves absolutely seriously, never once stopping to ponder the absurdity of their situation. Even the broad jokes in the film are set up in absolute seriousness. The centerpiece of the film, involving a two-foot Stonehenge monument, is painstakingly set up for ten minutes prior to the punchline. We see it coming a mile away, and the payoff still works because the characters have no idea that their situation is very, very funny. To them, their circumstances are practically life-and-death. In terms of irony, on a scale of one to ten, ...Spinal Tap goes to eleven.
#1…Blazing Saddles
This movie could never have been made today. And, if it were ever made, it would never be released by a major studio. Blazing Saddles is the smartest, funniest, most durable comedy ever made because it was the most fearless comedy ever made. In this day and age, racism rules this nation with an iron grip of fear. Race related topics are avoided at the risk of inflaming someone's sensitivity… and if race is addressed at all, it's in an effort to soothe someone's hurt feelings. Blazing Saddles was and remains a movie unlike any other. No movie before or after has had the guts to look racism dead in the eye and point out how stupid and futile it is. Blazing Saddles did for racism what the C.S. Lewis classic The Screwtape Letters did for evil: It shamed it into submission. Racism, like all forms of evil, can't abide mockery… and Blazing Saddles mocked racism and racists with a broad and honest courage that nobody has ever mustered up since.
Everything mentioned above makes Blazing Saddles the most important comedy ever made. I haven't even began to describe why it's the funniest comedy ever made. And, really, how do you do it justice in a quick paragraph? Mel Brooks's direction… the script by Brooks, Richard Pryor and others… and the pitch-perfect performances of Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, Alex Karras… everything works exactly right in Blazing Saddles. Everything. I have no idea how many times I have seen this movie, but it remains as fresh, funny and important 30 years after the fact as it was the day it was released. Blazing Saddles is the funniest, smartest, most important comedy ever made. We'll never see it's equal.
So there you have it. The fifteen funniest films ever. This list was assembled by Darrell, and Wendy would disagree with an entry here or there, but she agrees with me on the top two. Especially Blazing Saddles.
¶ 12:52 PM 14 comments
Kairo (Or, in English, Pulse) is the kind of movie that creeps up on you like late afternoon shadows. It’s darkness is real… it’s threats are always implied, never explicit, but always authentic. As the movie progresses and it’s shadows grow longer, you might find yourself trying to figure out just what it is about the movie that scares you so badly… and if it’s something you’ve actually always been afraid of in the real world as well. This is one smart, scary film.I intentionally tried to employ shadows as a literary device in that first paragraph because director Kiyoshi Kurosawa employees them with great effect in this film. The scares in Pulse don’t come from things that we really quite see… but they don’t come from things that are entirely hidden from us, either. The unsettling images in Pulse are always things that are half-hidden… such as the woman in the dark corner who is slowly walking closer, further into a light she’ll share with the viewer. Or the silhouette that we think we might have seen out of the corner of our eye, moving from one dark spot to another. Or, in one truly memorable scene, a darkness full of sinister potential just beyond a half-opened door.
Other images from the film were surprisingly moving on an emotional level. The ghosts we see in Pulse aren’t like the ghosts in any other horror film I can think of. Instead, they’re simply shadows, left stained on the walls and floors in the exact spot where some poor soul decided that life wasn’t worth the trouble. One scene involving a suicide by way of leaping from a height literally caused my heart to jump into my throat. Late in the movie there’s a scene involving the crash of an airplane that is at once stark, depressing, and strangely beautiful. Visually, this movie really excels.
This isn’t just a movie that works because of good visual elements, though. Pulse is a movie with smart, worthwhile ideas. The darkness in this film, a darkness that seems to be swallowing people whole, is spread like a computer virus through electronic equipment. Computers and the internet are particularly good conduits, and the darkness that issues from the PCs in the movie is truly imposing. Sometimes it consumes people slowly. Others go willingly in seeming acts of suicide. Either way, the darkness becomes something that everyone who encounters finds irresistible. If you don’t jump in with both feet, you simply sit still and let it enfold you in it’s own time.
Of course, the symbolism is obvious. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s theme is unavoidable. Our electronic culture is causing us to disengage from each other, to intentionally abandon real, meaningful contact and to simply plug into an imaginary world where we can disappear with ease. On the internet, we’re all who we want to be. Freed of the boundaries imposed by the tangible world, on the internet each of us can move fluidly and change ethereally. Thanks to the internet, each of us has option to stop being a person, to start being a ghost. Sunlight is harsh. Darkness consoles us. It’s a choice that many of us make without even realizing it.
If the ghostly elements of Pulse don’t make the theme clear enough for you, there’s one scene wherein the intent is so obvious that it’s as though Kurosawa is literally spelling it out for you. One of the characters who’s disappeared into the darkness has left behind a computer program of his own design… a computer program wherein dots move across the screen at random. The dots can’t come too close to each other without losing their individuality and disappearing. Yet they can’t go too far away from each other without fading. They crave a contact that they spend their lives trying to avoid. We are the dots. The dots are us. There’s no denying the movie’s message.
My complaints with Pulse don’t outweigh my praise. The movie does drag toward the end. The last 45 minutes or so of the film should probably have been cut down to 20 minutes. I was also frustrated by the way the film changed focus from one seemingly primary character to another on at least two occasions.There is an American remake of Pulse coming out this month. It’s going to suck, you know that. I encourage you to rent the original Japanese film and avoid the American studio’s attempt to cash in. Like The Ring and The Grudge, the American version of Pulse is just bound to suck.
In some ways, Pulse reminded me of a cross between 28 Days Later and The Matrix, if you can imagine such a thing. Both of those movies share with Pulse themes of alienation and the loss of individuality. All three movies are about fear of a kind of absorption that robs you of real life. Nonetheless, Pulse is sad and thoughtful, where as the other two movies were action-packed and fast-paced. Pulse doesn’t deliver it’s themes with a scream. It’s more like a sad, lonely whisper. It’s surprising how much that whisper resonated with me for days after I’d seen the movie.
¶ 8:04 AM 1 comments
Darrell's ReviewI saw both of the first two X-Men movies in the theater… and, both times, I left the theater feeling, well, satisfied. I think that's exactly the word I want to use. Both of the first two X-Men movies had entertained me and I was satisfied with that. I'd paid my ticket price, I'd sat in a theater for two hours and watched images flicker on the screen, and I'd found those images entertaining. Seeing X-Men and X2: X-Men United had, for me, been satisfactory exchanges of commerce.
And, yet, in both instances I'd left the theater with a vague feeling that I hadn't gotten what I'd hoped for.
After watching the first two X-Men movies, if someone had asked me what I'd thought of either movie, I'd have simply said "It was good." I'd have said that and I'd have left it at that, with no more enthusiasm than I might use to describe the Big Mac I had for lunch two days ago. That, also, had been a satisfying commercial exchange. I'd paid the price for the item and the item had satisfied me. If a Big Mac fills you up and doesn't taste bad, then it's done it's job. That's what fast-food burgers are for. That's what fast-food movies are for, too. In that regard, X-Men and X2: X-Men United are both perfectly good McMovies.
It wasn't until I saw the third movie in the franchise, X-Men: The Last Stand, that I really realized what had been missing from the first two movies: excitement.
Why had I left the theaters feeling satisfied, but not that I'd really gotten what I'd hoped for? Because neither film had excited me. Neither had delivered the goods the way a story-line in an X-Men comic book does. I realize now, in retrospect, that both of the first two movies had been restrained. Weighed down. I believe that the first two movies had suffered because their director, Bryan Singer, had wanted those two films to mean something. I think Singer was trying to have some sort of profound subtext with both of his X-Men movies, and, for me, there was simply no subtext there. There was nothing meaningful between the lines. The movies failed with regard to thematic subtext, and since they'd been so restrained (actually, suffocated is a better word), they'd failed as escapism. They both looked good enough, and neither ever really slowed down enough to be downright boring… but neither one succeeded at making me think, nor at making me stop thinking.
Brett Ratner, director of the third X-Men movie, seems to have been hell-bent on making a movie that only did one thing: Entertain. Along the way, he also manufactured genuine excitement, almost as an unintentional byproduct. There were times while watching X-Men: The Last Stand when I was literally on the edge of my seat with my jaw literally hung open in a state of wide-eyed joy. Wow! I didn't know what to expect from the third X-Men movie. I had no idea that what I'd be getting was one of the best all-out action movies of the past few years.As a fan of the X-Men comics, the third movie finally put on the screen the same characters I'd enjoyed on the page for years. Finally, in X-Men: The Last Stand, Wolverine demonstrated that famous berserker rage. It was nice to see him break free of Bryan Singer's needlessly imposed James-Dean-like moping goth mode. And, finally, Storm was really part of the action! For two movies in a row I'd watched Storm do little more than moralize. Oh, and lest I forget, finally Iceman actually ICES.
And, by the way, did you know that some of the X-Men can fly? You did know that if you've read X-Men comics... and Brett Ratner obviously knows it, because some of the mutants in this movie actually fly. It's as though these superheroes have broken free from some sort of tyrant. I'm so glad Bryan Singer jumped ship to go direct his hobbled version of Superman.
Best of all, finally, in X-Men: The Last Stand, the mutants were vulnerable. Vulnerable to each other, to humans, and to the world around them. I was shocked… and, surprisingly, delighted... as major mutant characters were killed off, altered, or rendered powerless along the way. Fights, conflicts and battle sequences in this third film actually meant something because it was clear from early on that this movie would dispose of characters indiscriminately. The conflicts in the third X-Men film mattered because the consequences of those conflicts had immediate, long-reaching, profound impact on the movie's world. It's the ultimate irony. Bryan Singer wanted to make exciting movies with a deep meaning, and instead made films that merely entertained on a basic, rock-bottom level. Brett Ratner, I'm convinced, wanted to make a movie that simply entertained… and, instead, he made a movie that I found completely exciting and surprisingly meaningful. How's that for mutation?
As Hank "Beast" McCoy, the most significant X-Men to make his big-screen debut here, Kelsey Grammer was in perfect pitch. His performance was exactly what it should have been, and I think that has more to do with Grammer's distinctive delivery and presence than anything else. It's not that Grammer became Hank McCoy. Grammer already is Hank McCoy.My complaints with …The Last Stand are few, but I guess I'll mention them. For starters, why wasn't Nightcrawler in this film? The storyline, about the nature of mutation and the natural desire to fit in, is perfect content for his character. Nightcrawler is my favorite X-Men mutant, and I missed him. Another classic X-Men character, Angel, was added to the movie with absolutely no meaningful effect at all. He might as well have been excluded. And, as in the first two movies, the spitfire mutant Rogue was reduced to little more than an angst-filled teenage damsel in distress.
Still, when a movie has so much to offer, complaining at all seems ungrateful. Juggernaut, for instance, is a brother of Charles (Professor X) Xavier in the comics. In this film, he was just a big, noisy bad guy. But, ya know what? Even in the comics he's never been much more than a big, noisy bad guy… and his big scene in this movie, involving a chase between him and Shadowcat, was one movie's many action packed jaw-droppers. Other mutants were mere composites of characters from the pages of the comics… but since those composite roles weren't particularly consequential, I suppose I'm indifferent about Ratner's employment of that cinematic device. Over all, if an X-Men comics fan has things to complain about with this movie, it's because he wants to have things to complain about and he's carefully looked for them.
A lot is left up in the air at the end of this movie. Major characters are dead (or are they?) or have lost their powers (or have they?) or have been abandoned (maybe). There are a number of directions this franchise can go in the fourth film. My vote? Don't make a fourth film. Leave it as it is. It's rare that a movie trilogy actually concludes with it's best installment. The only instance that I can think of is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. If they stop here, the X-Men trilogy will be able to make that same claim. The X-Men movies won't equal the Lord of the Rings movies… but, just like Return of the King, Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand will conclude the trilogy with one hell of a bang.
Wendy's Review
Here's my problem with the X-Men movies. There are so many characters to focus on that they really don't spend much time on any of them. And in each movie they introduce even more characters to not full develop. If you're not going to do anything with a character, then don't waste my time.
That's how I feel about X-Men: The Last Stand. Once again new characters are introduced to only serve as background clutter. We see Angel for the very first time. We learn just about nothing about him (well other than he has cool wings), and then he does just about nothing. Why even bother introducing him? Why not take characters from the previous movies and expand upon them some more. The one good thing about this movie was that Wolverine was more like Wolverine. He smoked. He looked tougher. He killed. He looked stockier. He wasn't as tall and slender as in the past movies. This really gives me hope for the upcoming Wolverine movie that they've been working on.
The action scenes just bored me. The film just bored me. I never once was on the edge of my seat. It didn't even look that good. And once again, how lame is Storm? Pretty darn lame.
If you feel compelled to go see a comic book movie this summer, then go see Superman Returns because you'll have a lot more fun than with this drivel.
¶ 11:44 AM 7 comments
"Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don't share their power with mankind."
That, according to Lex Luthor, is the problem with Superman. I suppose that from Luthor's point of view, that statement might be true. I'd phrase it another way: "The problem with Superman is that he basically IS a god and, therefore, doesn't share humanity with mankind."
In Superman Returns, as in all other Superman stories, the Kryptonian god known as Superman once again proves that he is indestructible. He flies. He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
He's boring.
If you're going to tell a story about a god who comes to Earth to save mankind, I suppose there really is only one way to do it and make it interesting. You can do it allegorically, possibly as a reference to Christianity… or you can do it as a straight-story, allegorical to nothing, irrelevant to the human experience, and ultimately without any real point. I suppose that Bryan Singer was afraid of offending the masses by straying too far away from the traditional Superman mythos, and I'm sure that the idea of religious allegory never crossed his mind. In Superman Returns, Bryan Singer tells us another Superman straight-story about the Man of Steel's efforts to save mankind from itself. Superman loves humans, he empathizes with them and wants to protect them… so if he is a god, he is a good god, and I suppose that his motivation for protecting humanity must be a product of his own innate goodness. I have to make that supposition, however, because Superman Returns is true to every other Superman story in that it offers us no real explanation for what drives the title character. This isn't a superhero who is driven by guilt, revenge, personal fear, deeply held convictions or a lack of self control. Superman is a superhero because, along with being all-powerful, he's just a really nice guy.
Ho. Humm.
There have been a number of good superhero movies over the past ten years, and in all of them we've seen superheroes who share our humanity. The best of the recent superhero movies have been about characters that the average human can relate to because we share their experiences, emotions and motivations. Batman's pathos moves us with regard to our sense of loss and our basic human desire to overcome our fears. Spider-Man moves us because we share his self-doubt, his guilt, and his sense of personal accountability. Even the Hulk is germane to most people who've ever felt thelselves lose control. Today's movie superheroes are better than Superman because they're weaker than Superman. They're imperfect. They can be tempted, they can be scared, and they can make mistakes. They aren't gods. That's what makes them interesting.Superman returns, to the extent that it's a standard Superman story, ought to appeal to the average Superman fan. If you're entertained and moved by the idea of an all-powerful superhero who can basically do anything, you might enjoy the movie. It does, in it's own way, have a lot to offer. The special effects shots look beautiful. As Superman, Brandon Routh channels the late Christopher Reeve strongly enough to satisfy Generation X'ers who remember the 70's films with nostalgia. He ought to have a nice long career built on milking this role if he has the good sense to stay off of horses.
A lot has been made, in fact, of how much Routh resembles the late Christopher Reeve. Personally, I can think of at least one person with closer physical similarities:
For me, a movie-fan who's never been into Superman, Superman Returns was a failure of a film. I honestly can't understand some of the mistakes that Bryan Singer made with this movie. For instance, he cast Parker Posey as Kitty Kowalski, Lex Luthor's moll… and he had her dress like a drag-queen Joan Crawford imitator in her every scene. Why? Other elements of the movie seemed geared to have fun with the presence of Superman in today's modern world. People take his picture with their camera cell-phones. Fax machines and computers are featured prominently in the story. And yet every time I saw Parker Posey I had the distinct feeling that she's accidentally stumbled onto the set from a nearby remake of Mildred Pierce.
And with regard to Parker Posey, the most offensive thing about her role in this film is that she's such a better actress than Kate Bosworth, who plays Lois Lane in the new film. Kate Bosworth is so indistinct and so featureless that every time she'd show up in a scene, I'd need few seconds to remember that she was the actress who played Lois Lane in the film. I'm totally serious. She's just one more totally featureless young actress and I can't for the life of me figure out what it is about her that some people find noteworthy. If you put Kate Bosworth in a line-up with Kate Beckinsale, Kate Hudson and Katie Holmes and Jessica Biel and Keira Knightley, it would be a struggle for me to figure out which one was which.
Singer could have cast Parker Posey as Lois Lane and maybe, just maybe, he'd have made a film featuring at least one performance I cared about. As it was, the most notable thing about the best actor in this movie was her bizarre wardrobe.
Not too long ago, Kevin Spacey was one of the most promising and commendable actors in modern American movies. Remember his remarkable work in the outstanding film Glengarry Glen Ross? Remember The Usual Suspects and American Beauty? In Superman Returns, Spacey didn't even seem to want to be there. I've never seen an actor of his quality deliver such a half-hearted, inanely campy performance as the one Spacey puts across in Superman Returns. Unfortunately, given his most recent pictures, I've come to believe that Spacey is simply finished doing good work in good movies. I suppose he still hasn't been able to scrape Pay It Forward off the bottom of his shoes.
Even the set pieces in the movie were predictable elements. You see the globe atop the Daily Planet building and you just know that you're going to see Superman hold it up in an Atlas position at some point. You see a large, impressive ship and you just start counting the moments until Superman saves people from it's wrecking. At the beginning of the movie, Lois Lane has a son who was born during the sabbatical that Superman has… well, returned from. I suppose we were supposed to spend some time wondering who the boy's father was. I spent most of my time wandering why nobody had taken him for the haircut he so desperately needed.
All said, Superman Returns was a boring movie with a boring premise about a boring hero, featuring boring performances by a few actors who are above this kind of stuff and a few actors who are probably right at home in this kind of fluff. I didn't see the point… but, as I admitted earlier, I have never seen the point in Superman in the first place, so I'm probably not a good source. If you're a Superman fan, go see the movie. If you're a Superman fan, you and I might as well be from different planets, anyway.
They call Superman the Man of Steel. That's fitting, and I think it would also be fitting to call Superman Returns the Movie of Steel. It's bright and shiny… it's clearly expensive and built to last… but it's flat, emotionless, and it's a poor reflector of the human image.
