Finally!

Posted by Allen on March 31, 2005 under General | Be the First to Comment

OK, I’ve finally posted the Official Moviegeekz 2004 Year In Review. Consider that post to be a “living document”–it’s going to get updated on a regular basis as I see more and more movies from last year. I don’t want to penalize (if you can call it a “penalty” to be left off my list) flicks for the fact that I didn’t get to see them in time to include them. And hey, this ain’t print, it’s the Web–I can update it anytime I want. Which I plan to do.

Just as a “f’r instance”: Sideways doesn’t come out on DVD until next week, and given what I know about the movie, I’m pretty sure that it’s going to do very well in my lists. And you’ll notice that Jamie Foxx isn’t on my Best Actor list–that’s because I haven’t seen Ray yet. Even if he doesn’t win my Best Actor award, I’d imagine he’ll at the very least be in the running.

So anyways, go check that out and post any comments you might have. I plan on going back and doing previous years, too, and keeping those updated–I’ve already realized while compiling my list for ‘03 just how wretched a year for movies it was.

Review: Closer

Posted by Allen on March 30, 2005 under Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture | Be the First to Comment

The relationships of four damaged people come under the microscope of director Mike Nichols in Closer, a movie so obviously based on a stage play you can almost see the proscenium arch surrounding the scenes. The screenplay, which was written by Patrick Marber and was indeed based on his play, practically drips with intimacy: rarely are more than two of the four leads together in the same scene at the same time, and on those occassions where three or four are present, the movie still explores only two at a time. Closer wants us to see the particular dynamics of the way each of its characters interacts with each of the others, and those dynamics are compelling.

Closer deals largely with lying and sex and the way those two concepts are so inextricably intertwined with modern relationships; in the world of Closer, sex doesn’t come without a generous helping of lies on the side. Each of the four leads–Jude Law’s Dan, Julia Roberts‘ Anna, Clive Owen’s Larry and Natalie Portman’s Alice–lies both to themselves and to their partner of the moment; whenever the truth does come out, damage follows in its wake.

Dan meets Alice when the two lock eyes while walking toward each other on a busy London sidewalk; they meet when she’s hit by a car while crossing the street because she’s locked into that stare. And so the theme of love and sexual attraction leading to pain and disaster gets introduced early. We skip ahead in time a year or so and Dan and Alice are living together–but he finds himself drawn to Anna, a photographer assigned to his picture for a book jacket. She’s drawn to him but rebuffs him when he admits he has a girlfriend; hurt, he plays a practical joke by pretending to be Anna and having Internet sex with an anonymous man (Larry) and enticing him to meet the real Anna. The joke backfires and Larry and Anna end up together. None of that violates our No Spoilers Whenever Possible rule; that’s all setup, moving the chess pieces into position on the board. After our couples are solidly coupled off, then the emotional fireworks begin.

This movie relies on its actors even moreso than most films and the actors here do not disappoint. Both Portman (a courageous performance in a very risky role for her) and Owen were Oscar-nominated for their performaces and Roberts certainly could have (should have?) been. (It’s easy for us to forget sometimes that Julia Roberts has talent; her movie-star shine sometimes obscures her three Oscar nods and her one Best Actress win.) None of these roles stand out as showy, with the possible exception of Portman’s, and that mainly because hers is the most explicitly sexual. Each of these characters come across as a real person with all of the insecurities, flaws, comedies and tragedies that implies.

Yet while these people feel real, they don’t feel like people I’d want to spend much time with.None of them has any idea what they really want; all are manipulative and cruel in some way. Dan is selfish, shallow and suffers from a severe case of “grass-is-greener” syndrome; Anna’s a coward who doesn’t feel she’s worthy of love; Larry’s angry, hurtful and far too obsessed with sex; Alice is too needy and, later, too cold. The two hours spent in these people’s presence while watching the movie was plenty for me.

To say that Closer is a dialogue-driven movie would be selling it short; Closer is entirely about its dialogue, about what we say to each other in the heat of anger or passion. Marber’s dialogue is straight-edge sharp, especially during the story’s darker moments. Much has been made about the movie’s “filthy” dialogue, but the language isn’t obscene for shock value. These people talk about sex the way real people talk about sex, and talking about sex tends to be dirty. (And if it’s not, then someone’s doing something wrong.) Yes, it’s a little disorienting to see Roberts and Portman using some of this language, but that incongruity helps reinforce the “real person” feeling the movie’s going for.

And speaking talking dirty, here’s something odd: for a story that centers so much around sex, there are exactly zero sex scenes in this movie; there’s barely as much as any kissing between any of its pretty leads. Closer is a very sexual movie but for the most part it’s not a sexy one.

Affleck To Direct Lehane’s Gone, Baby, Gone

Posted by Allen on March 23, 2005 under General | Be the First to Comment

Just to prove that I have an interest in movies that aren’t based on comic books, I now give you a bit of info about an upcoming movie based on a crime novel, instead.

Variety reports that Ben Affleck will apparently make his directorial debut by helming an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Gone, Baby, Gone, one of Lehane’s excellent series of novels featuring the South Boston detective duo of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. But Affleck won’t actually be appearing in the movie himself.

I’ve been wondering when someone was going to get around to making one of the Kenzie-Gennaro books into a movie, especially given the phenomenal success of Mystic River. I’ve only read two of the five thus far (Prayers for Rain and A Drink Before the War; Gone, Sacred and Darkness, Take My Hand are the others) and enjoyed both of them immensely. Lehane has a terrific feel for character and dialogue and keeps his pacing fast and tight and his suspense high, and both of the books I’ve read just felt like they’d make good flicks. And though he became a Hollywood name with Mystic River, I get the sense that these modern hard-boiled detective stories are what keeps his heart.

While I’m not surprised Affleck picked this movie as the one to use as his first project as a director, what does suprise me is that he’s not casting himself as Patrick Kenzie. For all of the mocking Affleck gets these days, it’s really less his acting that’s been the problem with his career than his choice of parts (or his inability to choose–he seems to subscribe to Michael Caine’s “I never met a script I didn’t like” philosophy) and his choice of near-spouses. He can act, at least competently, when he’s got a part that calls for it, and Kenzie’s a perfect part for him: self-effacing, not as tough as he pretends to be, surprisingly caring for a noir-ish gumshoe, and a Southie to boot. I can picture him in the role easily. Does he not want to overextend himself by acting in the first movie he’s directing? If so, I can understand that, though I feel compelled to point out how well recent history shows Zach Braff did in Garden State, also his first directing gig–and he wrote the thing, too. (Hmm, Ben’s got an Oscar on his mantle for co-writing Good Will Hunting…maybe he’ll take a stab at the screenplay, too?)

Another bit of weirdness is that Gone isn’t the first of the Kenzie-Gennaro novels, though for the most part I don’t think the order matters a whole lot; to the best of my knowledge, to date only one has had major status-quo shattering impact on the next, so if Gone is successful they could easily pick up with whichever one of the other books seemed like the best bet.

Anyway, I’m tentatively looking forward to this one, pending cast and screenplay announcements. And I can at least take comfort in the fact that Gone, Baby, Gone should be less depressing than Mystic River.

“Spider-Man 3″ Has Its Villain…Kinda

Posted by Allen on March 22, 2005 under General | Be the First to Comment

Thomas Haden Church has been cast as the Big Bad in Spider-Man 3. “Well, that could be cool,” I hear you say. “Just which of Spidey’s cruel and curious coterie of villainy will the one-time sitcom star and recent Oscar nominee be portaying? Electro? The Shocker? The Scorpion? The Rhino? The Lizard? Kraven the Hunter? The Hobgoblin? (Or dare I even say it…) Venom?”

That’s just the thing, you see…Columbia Pictures hasn’t yet said which set of tights Church will slip into. I can’t imagine they’d have cast a part that big without knowing the character they were casting, and I can’t imagine Church would have taken the gig without knowing, either–why waste your post-Oscar cache that way? So let’s go through some of the possibilities and see what we can’t suss out.

1. Electro or The Shocker. There’s nothing particularly memorable or exciting about either one of these guys, except maybe for Electro’s costume–as groovy as it can look in the right artistic hands in the comics, no way does that look anything less than ridiculous on screen. And the electric thing’s been played out by Storm in the X-Men flicks. Shocker’s vibratory powers don’t naturally lend themselves to the compelling visuals we’d need, so I’m going to strike him from the list, too.
2. The Rhino. Ummmm…. no. Not unless they got someone of Michael Clarke Duncan’s stature, and he’s already been The Kingpin, so that might just cause some sort of atomic-level meltdown in the heads of fanboys everywhere that could wipe out most of these movies’ core audience. So I’m thinking not a good idea.
3. Speaking of The Kingpin,… contractually, no. Since Fox had the rights to Daredevil and Sony had ‘em to Spidey, they had to split up the shared assets like children in an acrimonious divorce. Fox got DD, Kingpin, Elektra and Ben Urich, which means (barring further negotiations in the future, which seem pointless and unlikely) none of those characters can show up in Spidey’s New York. It’s almost like the pre-Crisis DC Comics universe, if you think about it… not that I’m recommeding that course of action.
4. The Lizard. Not a bad possibility here, though they’d already had an actor (veteran character guy Dylan Baker) playing Dr. Curt Connors as a bit part in Spider-Man 2. Baker could easily be considered a placeholder, though, if they wanted to go with a bigger-name actor for the role in later movies. The Lizard would work well for the same reasons Alfred Molina’s Dr. Octopus worked so well in SM2–great visuals and the conflicted human center that’s the core of the Spider-Man mythos. If done properly (and given the track record of the first two Spidey flicks, I can only assume it would be), the Lizard could be a fantastic foil and provide room for real acting, not just CGI effects. Which brings us to…
5. Venom. I know that the fanboys of the world are probably ga-ga over the possibility of getting Venom up on the big screen, but I’m not so sure it’s a good idea, especially with the way the first two movies have gone. To his credit, director Sam Raimi has tried to focus on the people and not the costumes; with Venom, what you’d get is largely just CGI. It could be some spectactularly cool CGI, I’ll admit, but this series has been about more than that so far and I’d like to see that trend continue. So while this one’s not a bad possibility, I’m casting my vote against it right now. (You hear me, Columbia Pictures?! Yeah, you!! That’s right, I said no friggin’ Venom! Got it? Don’t make me come out there!!)
6. Kraven the Hunter. Hmm, could make for an interesting story, but doesn’t have the visual appeal. And Church wouldn’t be ideal casting there. Don’t think so.
7. The Hobgoblin. They certainly seem to have set Harry Osborn up for this part, or for becoming the next Green Goblin; either way, that’s not the part Church will be playing.
8. The Black Cat. lol omfg omfg rofl!!!!1!!! Seeing Church in that costume would be worth the price of admission by itself.

A couple of other notes on this topic:

• They haven’t yet said that Church will be playing the only villain in SM3; while these movies haven’t succumbed to the Batman-esuqe Everything Plus the Evil Kitchen Sink syndrome yet, there’s certainly no saying they can’t fit two baddies into one story. So we could see, for instance, both Harry’s ascendance as a Goblin and whomever it is Church is playing.
• There’s also the possibility that Church could be playing an entirely new villain created specifically for the movie. That seems kind of like wasted effort given the vast history and untapped depths of Spidey’s canon, but you just never know with these Hollywood types.

So personally I’m voting for ol’ Lowell to be playing the Lizard–seems the best matchup of movie, character and actor. But traditionally, the major movie studios haven’t asked my opinion on such things before moving forward. You’d think they’d have learned better by now.

Cross-posted at Moviegeekz and Comicgeekz.

Link: Inside Pixar

Posted by Allen on March 17, 2005 under General | Be the First to Comment

Ain’t-It-Cool News’ Moriarty got to live out one of my life’s ambitions when we he took a tour of the Pixar campus. I’ve seen the main building a couple of times on the special features of the last couple of DVDs but I always, always want to see more. The “cottages” that the animators work in have to be the single coolest working environments I’ve seen yet. I still have never found anything that made me think that place is anything less than my dream job. If I could just get them to ignore the fact that I’m pretty sure I don’t do anything they’d need…

Review: I, Robot

Posted by Allen on under Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture | Be the First to Comment

Fresh from the Certainly Better Than I Thought It Was Gonna Be Department, we’ve got Will Smith’s I, Robot, an entertaining and surprisingly thought-provoking movie. Not too thought-provoking, of course…it’s still a movie largely about a bunch of psycho robots. But coming as it did for me hot on the heels of the abysmal Daddy Day Care, I, Robot felt downright cerebral.

Smith plays Detective Del Spooner in a typical Will Smith Action Movie Hero role. He’s got the confidence and the charm and the smarts and the likability that we come to expect, though Spoon’s got just a little more edge on him than most of Smith’s good guys. He’s also got a great deal more muscle–Will’s definitely been keeping the Ali physique going. I thought The Wife was going to Have A Moment next to me during the Fresh Prince’s numerous shirtless scenes.

Bridget Moynahan was somewhat less than successful as the theoretically-brilliant (yeah, pun intended) Dr. Susan Calvin–when she delivers her lines of Asimovian techno-speak, she sounds like an actress reciting words she doesn’t understand rather than a top-flight scientist. Picture fidgety seventh-graders standing in front of the class reciting bits of Shakespeare they were forced to memorize and you’ll get the idea. Smith’s homicide cop sounds smarter thank Moynahan’s psychologist/roboticist (though I think Smith has a hard time playing down his considerable natural intelligence).

The movie doesn’t really have a lot to do with Isaac Asimov’s collection of stories of the same name–apparently the script, about a robot suspected of murder, bounced around Hollywood for a few years until it got snapped up by the people who actually owned the rights to Asimov’s material. The screenwriters (final credit for which went to Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Vintar) munged the script and Asimov’s concepts together and came up with something that might not bear much beyond superficial relation to its namesake but ended up being a pretty solid story.

That story wound up being smarter than I was expecting–closer to Smith than to Moynahan on the Smart Screenplay Scale. Maybe I was feeling particularly dense the night I watched it, but I actually didn’t figure out the movie’s big mystery beforehand (though to my credit I did correctly guess Spooner’s personal issue early on from what I thought was a nifty visual clue by director Alex Proyas–I’d tell you what it was, but we’ve got a No Spoilers If Possible policy here at Moviegeekz).

Proyas (The Crow, Dark City) presents the kind of realistic view of the near future that always gets my imagination fired up, though I have to admit the overall look of the movie hews a little to close to the aesthetic Steven Spielberg created for Minority Report, most notably with the cars and magnetized roadways. Minor complaint, though–just how different are competing-but-complementary views of America Plus Thirty Years going to look, anyway? Proyas has a good visual flair for action and crafts some nicely intense action sequences, though I could have done out without a couple of his dizzying Spin The Camera moments.

The effects, not surprisingly, were well-done throughout. We’ve gotten to the point in the development of special effects houses that any major-studio action flick that doesn’t have gorgeous effects really must not have much of an idea how to budget their tens of millions of dollars. Buddy, the robot suspected of murdering Dr. Alfred Lanning (the man who invented the robots’ positronic brains in the first place), gets the Gollum treatment courtesy of the always-awesome-and-underrated Alan Tudyk, who infuses the robot with integrity, sweetness and soul. Funny that the CGI-animated Buddy shows more emotion and range than the live-action Moynahan.

X-Men 3, Toy Story 3 Get Directors

Posted by Allen on March 14, 2005 under General | Be the First to Comment

The guys over at The Movie Blog have posted some news indicating that the third installments of a couple of my favorite movie franchies ever both now have directors attached.

• According to Ain’t-It-Cool News, Matthew Vaughn has been picked to direct X-Men 3. I don’t honestly have much of an opinion about this one yet as I haven’t seen the one movie he’s done, Layer Cake. But he’s obviously from the Empire Award for Best British Director. We’ll see, I guess–I didn’t necessarily think Bryan Singer was going to be a great choice for the first two, but he did a fantastic job.

  My main complaint with Vaughn’s hiring is that it officially puts to an end my hopes that the people at Fox would be smart enough to hire Joss Whedon to write and direct. If Whedon had been at the helm, I think it’s quite possible that X-Men 3 might have shot somewhere toward the top of the list of my Most Anticipated Movies EVER, especially given what we know X-Men 3 has to be about (*cough*phoenix*cough*).

• On the OTHER end of my anticipation scale, Toy Story 3 also has a director (supposedly, this one’s still unconfirmed)–Bradley Raymond, veteran of such modern Disney classics as The Lion King 1 1/2 (which was at least watchable), The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and Pocahontas II. It looks like Michael Eisner’s belief that people will watch any computer-animated movie is so strong that they don’t even have to try to make this movie any good…it’ll rake in the cash regardless. I haven’t heard any cast involvement yet, but I can’t imagine either Tom Hanks or Tim Allen will want anything to do with this project.

  I have this sinking suspicion that Eisner has a Machiavellian plan to purposely try to damage Pixar’s reputation with this movie. If he can stick a stinker out there and still make money off it, that validates his reasons for letting Pixar walk–and if it’s creatively a bomb, will most people even realize that it wasn’t made by Pixar, or will they just assume the same people made it as made the first two? I don’t see any way that Toy Story 3 can be any better than mediocre in any sense, and I think it’ll have to stretch hard to make it that far–this movie’s officially on my LEAST Anticipated Movies EVER list.

The End (of Eisner) Is Nigh

Posted by Allen on under General | Be the First to Comment

Michael Eisner, nemesis of animation lovers everywhere, is leaving his gig as CEO of Disney a year early. My first thought, as I’m sure it was for many others: “What does this mean for the Pixar-Disney partnership?”

The IMDb has this to say on the subject:

The selection of Robert Iger to become CEO of the Walt Disney Company immediately touched off speculation about whether he would be able to lasso Pixar chairman Steve Jobs and Miramax co-chairmen Bob and Harvey Weinstein back into the fold. Analysts generally agreed that much depended on the amount of authority Iger would be granted with Michael Eisner remaining in his position for the next six months. Jobs has previously indicated that he intended to wait until Eisner’s successor was chosen before talking to other studios about a distribution deal. Jobs had no immediate comment on Iger’s selection. But on Sunday, Harvey Weinstein issued a statement saying, “I’ve had a great working relationship with Bob Iger and think he is a terrific choice for chief executive of the Walt Disney Company.” Wall Street took a wait-and-see attitude toward the upcoming change, with Disney shares moving up slightly at midday.

I think it’s in the best interest of both Pixar and Disney to keep that relationship intact. Not from a creative standpoint, since Pixar has traditionally done their own thing without any interference from Disney, but purely from a marketing standpoint. While Pixar’s in bed with The Mouse, they get their creations featured in the Disney parks and in all manner of Disney merchandising efforts. Do they need that promotional push now as much as they did in 1995? Of course not, but when you’re producing the best animation of your generation, having the Disney name (and marketing arm) attached helps ensure some level of legacy and permanence. To most Americans, especially those over 30 or so, “Disney” and “animation” are pretty much synonymous.

That said, I know that the financial details of their current deal are skewed heavily in Disney’s favor, and that’s not fair, especially given that over the last ten years all of the most successful of Disney’s cartoon output have been from Pixar’s. It’s pretty obvious that at this point that Disney stands to benefit more from Pixar than Pixar does from Disney; let’s hope Bob Iger understands that in a way that Eisner refused to.

Review: Shaun of the Dead

Posted by Allen on March 7, 2005 under Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture | Be the First to Comment

It’s exceedingly hard to create a movie (or any other work of fiction) that both lampoons a particular style or genre but also manages to be a great example of it at the same time; Shaun of the Dead manages to pull it off. It also manages to pull off some body parts from its cast in the process.

The makers of Shaun of the Dead bill the flick as a zom-rom-com–a romantic comedy with zombies. That’s both fair and a little misleading. Don’t go into this flick thinking you’re going to get When Harry Ate Sally… or You’ve Got Entrails; the romance part’s pretty light. What’s heavy are the laughs and the blood.

Simon Pegg’s Shaun perfectly personifies those people most of us in our thirties think of as “slackers” when they’re in their early twenties but haven’t yet broken out of that low-rent lifestyle by the time they hit their thirties; at this point, we begin to call them “losers.” Shaun works at a job he doesn’t much like where he doesn’t get much respect; his girlfriend wants more of him than he’s willing or able to give, even though she really doesn’t want all that much from him; his best friend has earned squatter’s rights on his couch, where he does nothing but play video games, drink beer and sell pot. Shaun is a zombie, though not of the brain-eating variety; he’s sleepwalking through his life in the slow shuffle of the undead.

At some point most of us get the kick in the pants we need to get our life in order, though, and Shaun is no different. It just so happens that what he needs to inspire him to find the strength to take control of his is a zombie rampage.

Surprisingly, in the midst of the jokes (well, “jokes” might be the wrong way to put it–this is British humor through and through, so the humor tends to be more situational) and viscera some real emotion comes through. No zombie movie would be complete without the main characters having to make tough choices about friends and family, and Shaun of the Dead is no exception. Screenwriters Pegg and Edgar Wright (who also directed) don’t make things easy on Shaun simply because the movie’s a comedy.

And that brings me back to the particular brilliance of this movie: the ability to make fun of the cliches of the zombie movie and adhere to them at the same time. Several times, for instance, Shaun or one of the other characters makes fun of the fact that the zombies move so slowly–yet that doesn’t make them any less threatening in large numbers.

Bloody good fun.

Review: The Village

Posted by Allen on March 6, 2005 under Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture | Be the First to Comment

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, while not a bad film by any stretch, suffers because of the reputation of its director: if you’ve seen any of his previous movies, you know that at some point there’s going to come a pretty major plot twist, most likely in the last reel of the movie. And if you know there’s a twist coming, it’s hard to lose yourself in the here-and-now of the film–you’re always waiting for the reveal and looking out for clues instead of simply soaking the movie in. It’s Audience-as-Detective instead of Audience-as-Spectator, which makes for a totally different experience.

That experience doesn’t have to be a bad one, of course, but in the case of The Village it turns out to be somewhat less than ideal. If I say at this point that there’s a plot twist or two along the way, I doubt that would come as any real surprise; unforunately, the twists themselves aren’t surprising, either. There are, by my estimation, four events in the movie that could count as a twist, but only one of them really caught me off-guard. The big one at the end, while perhaps not telegraphed, certainly couldn’t have been much of a shock to anyone paying attention both to the movie and to our society at large. Shyamalan also throws a couple too many Macguffins into the plot, as if he realizes that the audience is onto him by now.

The Village does have one surprising reveal, however, and her name is Bryce Dallas Howard. Don’t be fooled by Joaquin Phoenix’s name coming at the top of the credits–this movie is Howard’s all the way. She could have relied on her character’s blindness as a crutch, as an easy way to gain the audience’s sympathies, but she doesn’t. Her Ivy has more strength, courage, heart and depth of emotion than any other of Shyamalan’s characters to date. Howard isn’t traditionally pretty in that way we expect our ingenues to be–she looks far too much like her father for that–but she lights up the screen and commands attention in virtually every frame she’s in. This movie should be just the first step in a bright career for her.

The rest of the cast, however, is wasted. They all perform to the best of their considerable abilities, but Shyamalan simply doesn’t give them enough to do. He’s formed a supporting cast with actors as talented as Phoenix, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson and Judy Greer, but only Hurt and Brody gets any meat to their parts (and Brody’s is really just the kind of showy mentally-challenged role so usually loved by Oscar).

As always, Shyamalan’s sense of visual style shines through. His camerawork (with the ever-excellent cinematographer Roger Deakins) remains strong, crafting gorgeous compositions painted mainly with yellows, oranges and browns (as in The Sixth Sense, the color red takes on special significance here and is used sparingly). His camera frequently seems to catch the characters in private moments and hangs back from them, making us feel like we’re listening in on conversations we’re really not supposed to be hearing, or focuses not on the character speaking but on the one being spoken to. I’d love to see what Shyamalan could do with a straight drama, or with any movie where he wasn’t quite so worried about trying to trick his audience.