Film Babble's 100th Post!

"It's too cerebral! We're trying to make a movie here, not a film!"
- Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) BOWFINGER (Dir. Frank Oz, 1999)

No special features or self congratulatory crap for my 100th - just some good ole fashioned movie reviews. A couple of new movies I caught at the theater and a few new release DVDs - nice and simple. So let's get going -

DEATH AT A FUNERAL (Dir. Frank Oz, 2007) After one of the most misguided remakes in history THE STEPFORD WIVES, a film Nathan Rabin in his excellent My Year Of Flops column (The Onion A.V. Club) would most likely call a "fiasco", Frank Oz brings us a funeral farce. Set in and around a countryside house during what should have been a stiff-upper lip service - a cast of mostly British mourners all with their own agenda or issue clash, argue, and fret over many outrageous obstacles. Obstacles such as money matters that are driving rival brothers (Matthew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves) apart, a misplaced bottle of LSD tablets labeled as Valium, and a dwarf (little person? Trying to be PC here) played by the wonderful Peter Dinklage (THE STATION AGENT) that has a family shattering secret. There is some cringe-inducing slapstick and unnecessary scatological nonsense but through its economical brevity (it follows the unwritten rule that comedies should be 90 min) the mixed bits are happily reigned in. DEATH AT A FUNERAL contains a number of genuine big laughs and while it may never be considered a comedy classic it will be most likely fondly remembered for many seasons to come. Oh yeah - it also more than makes up for THE STEPFORD WIVES.

ROCKET SCIENCE (Dir. Jeffrey Blitz, 2007) So the first non-documentary by director Jeffrey Blitz (SPELLBOUND – 2003) is another adolescent angst movie in the tradition of Wes Anderson and Todd Solondz (especially RUSHMORE and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE respectively). Unfortunately it’s nowhere as good as those touchstones with its self conscious screenplay filled with forced humor and standard grade quirkiness. Stuttering student (Reece Daniel Thompson) is a debate club star wannabe but his speech impediment gets in the way of his academic career and love life. He pines for a cold condescending classmate played by Anna Kendrick who is way ahead of him in the debate game and also way out of his league. A huge miss-step of many is the voice-over narration by Dan Cashman which in tone and context sounds to much like Ricky Jay’s opening MAGNOLIA spiel. Not able to surpass or be the equal of its influences and peopled by characters which are hard to care about ROCKET SCIENCE misses its mark by a movie mile. It simply should have had more moxie.

Some new DVDS I've recently seen :

THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Dir. Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck, 2006)

"He knows that the party needs artists but that artists need the party even more."
- Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme)

This is an amazing and affecting wire-tapping tale set in East Germany (GDR) in 1984. A time when artists such as playwrights who were thought to have subversive tendencies are bugged and blacklisted by the secret police (Stasi) in the remaining years before the Berlin wall came down. One such playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch - who was one of the only highlights of BLACK BOOK) has a actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck) who has some too close for comfort ties to the Stasi. The real star of this piece though is the character of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) who develops a protective sympathy for the people he's assigned to spy on. More of a drama with tense moments than a thriller, THE LIVES OF OTHERS fully deserved the Best Foreign Picture Oscar that it won this year and should go right to the top of your 'must see' list or your Netflix queue which I guess is the same thing.

Postnote : This movie is going to get the American remake treatment by Sydney Pollack set for 2010. Whatever makeover they give it I hope it doesn't have that damn thriller thunder dubbed on top of it.

GHOST RIDER (Dir. Mark Steven Johnson, 2007) I honestly can't remember why I ordered this one up. I mean I like Nicholas Cage but hate his action movie crap (CON AIR, THE ROCK, NATIONAL TREASURE, etc) and I successfully dodged the bullet that was THE WICKER MAN remake - not really action I suppose but still looked like crap so I'm drawing a blank right now as to why I added this to my queue. I am completely unfamiliar with the comic book (sorry - graphic novel) that this is based on and I didn't hear anything good about it when it was released in theaters earlier this year so go figure. Cage plays Johnny Blaze - "a badass stunt cyclist" (Netflix's envelopes words not mine) who makes a deal with the Devil, played by Peter Fonda no less - who I guess shows up whenever the pitch "it's a motorcycle movie" is made. The Devil's son Blackheart (that charismatically creeply kid from AMERICAN BEAUTY - Wes Bently) wants to take over for his dad and destroy the creation made from the contract - the Ghost Rider of the title that Blaze can change into at will. "Oh, and his face was a skull and it was on fire" says a punk clad Rebel Wilson credited as 'Girl in Alley' and I couldn't say it any better. This film is supremely stupid but oddly not severely sucky - I mean as mere pop entertainment goes you could do worse with a couple of hours than watching it. Then again, that blank white space on the wall over there is looking mighty appealing.

Okay! I didn't think the word "crap" would show up 3 times in my 100th post but otherwise all is good. Hope you stick around for my next hundred posts.

More later...

5 Things Spiderman 3 Got Pretty RIGHT/5 Things It Got Drastically WRONG

Tommy (Michael Bowen): "Is this movie in 3-D?"
Randy (Nicholas Cage): "No, but your face is!"
- VALLEY GIRL (Dir. Martha Coolidge, 1983)

While I'm still tallying up the answers from the big 80th post pop-quiz last time out I thought I'd get right on back to what this blog is all about - movie review babble. So yeah, I saw SPIDERMAN 3 (Dir. Sam Raimi, 2007). It's been getting tremendous backlash - disses right and left - the New York Times calls it "aesthetically and conceptually wrung out" (Manohla Dargis 5/4/07) and many lament that the fun has gone out of the series and while I wouldn't say that I do agree that it is indeed a mixed bag so here are:


5 Things SPIDERMAN 3 Got Pretty RIGHT:

1. Much better special effects: In 1 & 2 Spiderman (Tobey Maquire) web-slinging his way from building to building through the city looked video gamey and at times borderline absurd but now has a fluid graceful believability. Nice to see that the reportedely most expensive movie ever has its money up there on the screen.

2. The Sandman: Thomas Haden Church is beautifully cast as escaped felon Flint Marco who because he accidentally fell into an experimental particle physics site that molecularly binds him with sand he gets fantastical shape-shifting powers (though it's not widely reported that kind of thing happens everyday y'know). Like all the villains in the franchise he's really not evil deep down in his heart - he's just computer generated that way.

3. The Black Suit: Yep shiny goth Spidey looks pretty cool. That was evident in the trailers from a year ago though - sorry I'll save the cons for now. And no - I'm not gonna copy 'n paste that same ole brooding SPIDERMAN in "the thinker" pose picture and post it here.

4. Venom: Though only named in the credits - a satisfyingly scary villain (especially when he grits his teeth) albeit in a movie with one villain too many - damn I said I'd save the cons and there I went again. Anyway since the other half of this element is covered in the cons I'll just say this - Venom has bite.

5. The obligatory yet hugely satisfying Stan Lee and Bruce Campbell cameos: Appropriately cheesy Spiderman creator Stan Lee's quick pep-talk appearance to a battered soul-fried Parker hits the spot - "You know, I guess one person really can make a difference...". You tell him Marvel Man! And wouldn't we all feel cheated if we didn't get Bruce Campbell for the third time to cameo? His pretentious French Maitre d' may not have anything on John Cleese in MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE but in this film it's one of the only bits of comedy that worked - "I love romance. I am French." Now to let the disses truly fly:

5 Things SPIDERMAN 3 Got Drastically WRONG :

1. J.K. Simmons : As newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson Simmons was dead on in the first 2 installments but here his fast talking manipulative schtick is tired, unfunny and most sadly he only annoys the audience every time he appears. Maybe it was that Simpsons appearance from last season - "stop the presses, send my wife some flowers, get me an Advil - what do you mean you don't work for me? You're hired! Now that you're hired you're fired. Now that you don't work here we can be friends - now that we're friends how come you don't call? Some friend you are!" I guess once the Simpsons has got you down your gig is up.

2. The Harry Osbourn(James Franco) Amnesia Plot : As a writer I always dislike the "he lost his memory" plotline that has been a longtime cheat of sitcoms, - Hell it made me swear off the show 24 forever. It's such lazy screenwriting to have Harry conveniently have his recent revenge fueled memory erased after such an unimpressive alleyway tussle with our hero.

3. Kirsten Dunst Sings 2 Songs - Yes, I know it's from the original comic that Mary Jane Watson is an aspiring actress - a wannabe Broadway singing star but nobody and I mean nobody was buying a ticket to see her warble through 2 complete numbers. Show stoppers in the worst way.

4. The Extended Black Gunk From Outer Space Turns Peter Parker Into An Asshole Sequence. Yes the black suit looks cool as I noted above but the gunk which is an alien symbiote coming from a small meteorite that attaches itself to Spidey's suit just brings out the jerk in Parker. Looking like strands of Twistler's candy dipped in tar - the ooze infiltrates Peter's nice guy mentality and promptly makes him strut around Manhattan with an entitled atitude like Jim Carrey from BRUCE ALMIGHTY. This whole bit should have been a deleted scene.

5. Topher Grace/ The Overall Bloat : I loop these together because as scary cool as Venom was and maybe that was because it's the only less-is-more element here - the entire Topher Grace origins of the character are lame, it comes in way too late in the story to have proper impact and Grace's overall smarm kill his time on screen. The 2 and a half hour flick is crammed with too many incidental characters and go nowhere plot threads as it is - I mean do we seriously need a scene of Franco and Dunst making an omelet and repeated appearances by Peter's landlord and daughter Ursula? I mean do we really?! And did I mention Kirsten Dunst sings 2 songs?!!?

Okay good to get that out of my system. Now on with another movie I saw on the big screen since my last post:

BLACK BOOK (Dir. Paul Verhoven, 2007) Verhoven's first movie in 6 years is a far cry from the glib futuristic satire of ROBOCOP (1987) and definitely more than just timezones away from the glib psycho sexual trash thriller BASIC INSTINCT (1992). Rachel Stein (Carice Van Houten) hides from Nazi's in 1944 Netherlands hiding her Jewish-ness under a blond curly dye-job and behind her charm which is the sole saving grace of this tedious over-stated film.

Van Houten is a former singer (and she does sing beautifully in the only scenes that register emotion) who becomes embroiled in a plot by the resistance to infiltrate the SD (Sicherheitsdienst-Security Service) office run by officer Ludwig Mntze (Sebastian Koch) who is apparently a lovable Nazi (one that the movie stresses isn't as bad as the other cold blooded less attractive Nazis)therefore she falls for him. The plot thickens when members of the resistance may be as untrustworthy as their enemy. After one wades through all the supposedely purposeful unpleasantness symbolized by the bucket of shit (yes I do mean an actual bucket of shit) that's poured on top of Stein and all the close calls and near-scrapes with Nazis it's hard to care who double crossed who and for what purpose. With an almost complete lack of directorial style and affecting acting edge in an almost CATCH 22 way - it's impressive at how unimpressive BLACK BOOK is.

More later...