The Trip (**3/4)

There should be a name for the modestly burgeoning subgenre of film/movie wherein the stars play fictionalized versions of themselves with the same names. My Dinner with Andre did this 30 years ago. Neil Patrick Harris did it in the Harold and Kumar movies. Larry David does it in his HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe combine all of those (well, not so much Harold and Kumar) and you roughly get The Trip, wherein British TV stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon riff on whatever comes into their heads, especially imitating celebrity voices, as they motor around and overnight in the inns of northern England.

Also, they look at some nice scenery and eat some nice nouvelle cuisine, frequently cut in geometric shapes. They regard the fine food with near detachment, making the loving attention the camera pays to it an ironic contrast. How closely this parallels the real Coogan I don’t know, but there is a somewhat serious side in which Coogan weighs the possibilities of the United States, where a larger market and an American girlfriend beckon. I suspect the film might have worked slightly better in its original form as a six-part television series. In long form the minimal plot makes the movie seem long, but it’s often enough amusing, at least if the notion of 40ish Englishmen bickering in the voice of Michael Caine about which of them has the better Caine imitation amuses you. It also offers a perspective on adult male friendship that’s different from that of a typical buddy film, perhaps because these are such distinct personalities.

IMDB link

viewed 6/14/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/17/11

Star Trek (***)

They used to just have sequels, and then they had prequels, and now they have “reboots,” attempts to financially, and maybe artistically, resuscitate a movie series that had seemed to play itself out. New actors are cast, a new writer and director are hired, and the story returns to its origins. In this case, it returns to an even earlier period, though that happens to be over 200 years in the future. Beginning with the birth of future starship captain James T. Kirk, it ends more or less at the starting point of the original 1967–1969 series. The director is J. J. Abrams, creator of TV’s Alias and Lost.

I tend to like origin stories, but to be honest the childhood stuff is pretty perfunctory. Kirk (Chris Pine) reveals his brash nature and impulsivity via that hoariest of clichés, a bar fight. (He’s trying to pick up his future shipmate Uhura, who gets to be a love interest in this version.) Meanwhile, on planet Vulcan, Spock (Zachary Quinto) gets teased for being half-human, behavior that seems odd, and not at all alien, for such a logical race. But the series, and this movie, always seemed to have as a core theme that trying to be logical makes no sense. Hence, Spock is always the secondary hero to Kirk, who believes every battle can be won and reflects creator Gene Roddenberry‘s optimistic view of humanity.

Genocide and revenge are themes here too, but it’s not the humans but the alien Romulans who threaten both. This plot, too, is unremarkable, but provides the framework for the main characters to reveal their personalities, and for the special-effects crew to show up those 1960s TV folks and most of the earlier films based on their exploits. You don’t need to know anything about any of that to follow the film, but it probably makes it more enjoyable. Even if the story is new, it’s careful about hitting as many of the familiar touchstones as possible, from Spock’s “Live Long and Prosper” to “Bones” McCoy’s “I’m just a doctor!” schtick to the “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise” voiceover, moved from the intro to the coda. The actors, too, definitely aim to preserve some of the mannerisms of the old cast. Pine’s Kirk, especially, has more than a hint of Shatner in his movements, though there’s less of his oft-parodied halting vocal style.

With Shatner represented in spirit, Leonard Nimoy shows up in the flesh, shoehorned into a couple of scenes via a time-travel plot that Spock himself might call “highly illogical.” Again, plot is not the strong point, but with that exception the script Transformers writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have crafted is a sturdy vehicle for the action scenes (I liked the one with a wild animal) and the rivalry-cum-friendship of Kirk and Spock. Reboot successful, more or less.

IMDB link

viewed 5/26/09 at Moorestown; reviewed 5/26 and 5/29/09

Sex and the City (**3/4)

I must confess I’ve barely seen the HBO hit upon which this is based, but I can see the appeal. On the one hand, the series is a seriocomic fantasy about four wealthy Manhattan women who shop a lot, date a variety of eligible (and occasionally ineligible) gentlemen, and have frank conversations whose main subject is the one in the title. (For a series about women, it was largely a series about men, notwithstanding hedonistic Samantha’s brief same-sex experimentation.) Yet there’s some reality too; the series brought up all manner of relationship issues, many familiar and a few, like “funky spunk,” that may or may not be a problem for many viewers. But mainly, the appeal lies in having well-delineated characters, sometimes-clever writing, and an emphasis on the rarely challenged friendship among the women.

The movie version, written and directed by frequent series contributor Michael Patrick King, apparently without the involvement of series creator Darren Star, contains all of these threads, yet tends to the melancholy side. Suiting the transition from TV show to feature film, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has completed the transition from columnist to book author, just like her real-life alter-ego Candace Bushnell, but still provides pithy voiceovers. (“A knockoff isn’t easy to spot when it comes to love.”) Her possibly impending marriage to Chris Noth’s “Mr. Big” provides the framework for the film. A parade of wedding dresses Carrie gets to try on should serve as fashion porn for those whose interests lie in that direction. There’s another trying-on montage scene later, which had me looking at my watch.

For those of a different inclination, Samantha’s (Kim Catrall) escapades in the series had provided titillation and male eye candy. It’s unfortunate that for most of this movie her libido is sidelined, and so is she, having moved to LA in an attempt at monogamy that may be as frustrating for the viewer as it is for her. Perky Charlotte (Kristin Davis), wife and mother to an adopted three-year-old, mostly serves as a foil for the other characters, leaving the most compelling subplot to high-strung Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whose husband confesses to cheating after they’ve not slept together for six months. Hence more melancholy, but Miranda’s trust issues are easier to relate to than Carrie’s.

I won’t give away why exactly it takes over two hours before we find out whether Carrie and Big will marry after all, but to me the thing that keeps them apart is basically trivial and arguably phony. Critics have often called the series and its characters shallow, but others found it shallow and fun. Shallow and dour is not so appealing. I wouldn’t mind watching Carrie mope in Mexico, as she does when things seem to sour, so much if this storyline were better and not built around the conventional dilemma of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married. Not to say there aren’t some lighter moments. An early scene in which the four women comically use coloring with crayons as a sexual metaphor, due to the presence of Charlotte’s young daughter, has the right feel to it, at once funny and truthful. The scenes with Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie’s newly hired assistant, also have that balance between lightness and seriousness that is sometimes missing elsewhere.

The theme of the movie is forgiveness, and I’m sure most longtime fans will forgive its flaws, but notice them. (Newcomers don’t need to have seen the series to follow along.) After seeing the feature I went and watched a whole episode—the one where Charlotte meets her future husband (Evan Handler)—and enjoyed that at least as much.

IMDB link

viewed 5/30/08 at Moorestown

Speed Racer (**1/2)

In The Matrix, the Wachowski Brothers demonstrated their ability to create a stylish special-effects thriller built around a smart sci-fi premise. They redeemed themselves for its lackluster pair of sequels with V for Vendetta, another parable of totalitarianism for which they wrote the screenplay. And, in this, they shoehorn their obsession with opposing great power into an adaptation of a semi-forgotten 1970s cartoon that makes a pitch toward a family audience. That pitch will probably strike hardest at teenage boys. The younger ones may be put off by the fairly complicated plot and some of the darker textures, which somewhat harken back to the Japanese origins of the cartoon. This adaptation animates everything except the actors. Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) stars as Speed.

For those who missed Speed, or were born too late, he’s, well, a racer. In childhood flashback scenes, we see that his obsession with driving began at an early age and runs in the family. (“Mom” and “Pop” are played by Susan Sarandon and John Goodman.) He has a childhood sweetheart called Trixie (Christina Ricci), drives a car called the Mach 5, and has a mysterious friend/rival called Racer X. But the movie’s main storyline concerns Speed’s opposition to a giant corporation that seeks to control the sport for financial reasons.

Of course, technology, not the story, is the draw here. On that score, it’s a mixed bag. The Tokyo-insired meglaopolis where villain, Royalton, runs his megacorporation is suitably futuristic, but the race course was unimpressive. It makes perfect sense that the movie has a product tie-in with Hot Wheels—the speedways where the racers do their thing looks like nothing so much as digitally manipulated film of a Hot Wheels set-up, complete with loop-the-loops. The scenes give you neither the feel of racing nor even the feel of watching a race. It’s more like watching a video game. Nothwithstanding all of the psychedelic graphics and swirling colors that illustrate the crashes, it’s all very…cartoonish.

It’s not only the look of the movie, but yes, that story that make the big-screen Speed seem like only a little more than what it is, a retread. For all I know the Wachowskis could have dusted off a few of those 1970s scripts. Mom, Pop, brother, Trixie, and even Chim Chim, the family chimp, seem like the cast of a forgotten old sitcom. The humor runs along the lines of Trixie saying “Was that a ninja?” and Pops replying “More like a non-ja!” Okay, it’s not all that corny. Most of it is perfectly serviceable, and the centerpiece of the movie, a dangerous cross-continental race in which Royalton drivers try to take Speed out, is exciting. Hardly anyone will call the movie slow. But in a couple of months, hardly anyone will be calling it anything at all.

IMDB link

viewed 5/10/08 at Moorestown; reviewed 5/15–16/08

City of Men (***1/4)

A follow-up of sorts to the acclaimed City of God, a gritty drama set in the slums of Rio, this tells the story of two best friends turning 18. Growing up without a father in a favela called Dead End Hill, one searches for his while the other already has his own toddler of his own to contend with. Unlike most slums, the Hill, adjacent to a popular beach, looks beautiful from afar; only up close do the ramshackle buildings become clear. The place, already featured in a television series created by the directors of City of God, is almost as much a part of the story as the characters. The two friends spent much of the series steering clear of criminals, but here cannot avoid the crossfire as rival gangsters fight to be king of the Hill.

Despite that plot and the similar setting, this has a gentler feel than City of God. Though it realistically depicts the criminality and poverty that affects slums around the world, it’s not nearly as downbeat (or violent) overall. I don’t think people will be blown away by this movie the way many were by City of God, but they’ll leave the theater feeling more hopeful. The overall story arc is a familiar one, yet there was a surprise or two.

IMDB link

viewed 2/26/08; reviewed 2/29/08

Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (**3/4)

? This is the big-screen debut of the TV character created by Sacha Baron Cohen as part of Da Ali G Show. In that HBO reality show, Cohen transforms himself into three outlandish characters who interact with celebrities and others who aren’t in on the joke. The movie version incorporates a plot whereby Borat, said to be a Kazakh journalist, travels from his homeland, a misogynistic, anti-Semitic backwater, to make a documentary about the USA. (Hence the mangled syntax of the title and the cheap TV-style graphics we see.) Bookended segments take place in this fictional version of Kazakhstan, where Borat jovially introduces such figures as the town rapist and we get to see the annual “running of the Jews.” Most of the movie is a quasi-travelogue, with Borat and his manager meeting Americans in red and blue states.

+ A lot of the movie is flat-out hilarious and prompted a lot of laughter at the preview screening I attended. In the “real people” segments, Borat has it both ways. It’s funny when the people are shocked by Borat’s attitudes and/or ignorance, and funny (if disturbing) when they seem to agree. In other cases, such as when he appears on a local TV news show (which apparently aired), the people are just bewildered or made uncomfortable by the “Kazakh” customs such as men kissing on the cheek. I’m sure some people would be offended by all the anti-Jewish remarks of the sort not usually seen outside a Holocaust drama, but given that they emanate from a character who’s basically a buffoon (and played by a Jew), this seems an obtuse view.

- I was a fan of Da Ali G Show, and I think I still would rather watch that. The “documentary” segments only serve to accentuate the artificiality of the part added for the movie, which is to say the plot. I would have been happy if all or nearly all of the movie was just unsuspecting people talking to Borat, without all the stuff about having his money stolen and such. Although Cohen never breaks character, Borat does engage in some Jackass-style antics that, while comical, don’t seem like anything even an ignorant, anti-Semitic misogynist would do. All that being said, there was one particularly funny (if disturbing) sequence with Borat getting into a naked altercation.

= **3/4 [original rating **1/2] Cohen’s characters make me a little uncomfortable, either because I’m embarrassed for him or for the people he’s fooling, not all of whom deserve it. If you like this kind of humor, which is really a variation on shows like Candid Camera, that might not bother you, nor will the uneven plot.

IMDb link

Miami Vice (**1/4)

 Resembling director Michael Mann’s recent features like Collateral more than the 1980s TV series it’s supposedly based on, this ostensible thriller is nearly devoid of either action or real drama until its decent second half.

Apparently this movie has something to do with a TV series from the 1980s that had the same name, and main characters called Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs. The show’s executive producer, Michael Mann, has even written and directed its namesake. But it’s been almost 20 years since the series ended its run. Mann’s said he’s not interested in nostalgia, a weird thing to say when that’s the most obvious selling point of your movie. The series was often described as “MTV cops” and celebrated for its incorporation of pop tunes, glitzy aesthetic, and pastel-inspired fashion sense. But silence and quiet electronica replace the pop tunes, the pastels are gone, and the aesthetic is very much the dour one of recent Mann features such as Heat, The Insider, and Collateral. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are the 21st-century Crockett and Tubbs.

With no preamble, the two Miami cops go undercover trying to fix the mess the feds made on their drug-smuggling operation. There’s supposed to be some business with skinheads and Russians and so forth, but between the accents, the jargon, and the quiet talking, I had some trouble following the details. The first half of the picture is full of talk, but no action. The two cops barely speak to each other, so there’s very little character development. Crockett does find time to hit on the businesswoman (Gong Li) who’s financing the drug deals, observing two clichés of thrillers. One, if there is only one reasonably attractive female in a movie, the unattached male lead (Tubbs isn’t single) will pair up with her. Two, if there is a woman among a group of criminals, she alone will be portrayed with moral ambiguity. Li brings a lot of credibility to the role, and is arguably more interesting than the leads, but there’s still something of the perfunctory about her character. All this is by way of saying, Miami Vice has one of the plain dullest first halves of any major motion picture of 2006. In the second half, Mann’s realistic approach pays dividends. A hostage rescue sequence is genuinely thrilling, and the final shootout isn’t half bad either. Walk in an hour late and you really won’t miss much.

IMDb link

Mission Impossible III (**3/4)

Employing acrobatics, stealth, and firepower, agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) aces three impossible missions and learns not to hide the truth from his new fiancée. Good for action fans.

This was a weird movie to see after the ultra-realistic Flight 93. Here, “IMF” [Impossible Mission Force] agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) concocts in an hour or two a series of break-and-enter missions that al-qaeda might have rejected as too complex. I guess the collective Islamofascist mind just can’t compete with good-old American know-how. Three such set pieces, and another sequence in which a barrage of artillery is unleashed against Hunt on a bridge, comprise the bulk of the action scenes, set on three continents. They’re pretty good, but not spectacular, and certainly not believable. At least two of them result in many dead bodies and explosions, though. The ever-versatile Philip Seymour Hoffman is the villain, who, as the movie begins, is threatening to kill Ethan and his beloved if he doesn’t get something called the Rabbit’s Foot. Also impressive is Laurence Fishburne as Hunt’s superior, who gets the best dialogue. (“I will bleed on the flag to make sure the stripes stay red.”) Directed by J.J. Abrams of Lost and Alias fame, this installment offers less character development than either of those TV series, but should satisfy action fans.

IMDb link

posted 8/20/13

Doogal (*1/2)

Catch this animated dog while you can, ’cause its boring self will be gone and forgotten very, very soon, notwithstanding some famous names in the cast.

This is actually a re-dubbed, misspelled, apparently director-free version of the British computer-animated movie The Magic Roundabout, which was an adaptation of a TV series about a dog called Dougal, who in turn was formerly a French dog called Pollux. Judging by the IMDB ratings, the law of entropy has led to increasing, and severe, decay. What’s bad? First, the hero has just less than no personality, and an annoying ten-year-old-boy voice. (Singer Robbie Williams was the UK Dougal.) The other voices are better. There’s a train-load of talent—and not just Chevy Chase (!), the voice of the train, and Whoopi Goldberg, but people like William H. Macy, UK holdover Ian McKellan, and, narrating the story like it’s Aesop, Judi Dench. Jon Stewart voices the villain, Zeebad, “a blue spring who tries to freeze things by shooting ice out of his mustache” in Stewart’s words. There’s a good spring, too, “Zebedee.” In this movie, even the names are annoying. The plot has something to do with Zeebad trapping Doogal’s best friend in a frozen carousel and he and his animal friends having to find some magic diamonds to rescue her. I promise that any kid who sees this movie will not give a flying snail or a dumb bunny whether they rescue her or not, especially since she already seemed like a stiff in the two minutes of the movie before she gets frozen. Doogal is also chock full of the sort of savvy/timely cultural references young children are sure to pick up on, everything from Phil Collins’s “Sussudio” and The Shining, to, of course, Iron Butterfly’s 1968 proto-metal epic “In-A Gadda-Da Vida.” At the same time, adults who might get all that (and Stewart’s lite-snarky patter), or even kids older than about seven, are not going to be enthralled by a weak animal tale with a Barney-like message about friendship. In short, this is Zeebad movie.

IMDb link

posted 9/10/13

Aeon Flux (**1/4)

Sux is more like it in this live-action version of MTV’s 1990s animated sci-fi series; some amazing visuals don’t compensate for incoherent storytelling.

This was a film that made me think. I thought, what is it that makes Oscar-winning actresses decide that a poorly received action film is the way to cement a reputation as a serious actress? (See Berry, Halle, to say nothing of Frances McDormand’s disembodied cameo here.) The actress here is Charlize Theron. She’s an assassin of 400 years’ hence whose original incarnation was in 1991 segments on MTV’s animated Liquid TV. That led to a ten-episode series in 1995. (See mtv.com for a sample episode.) The film’s (sole) strength is some amazing visuals: lithe ninja moves, curvilinear production designs, and so on. It splits the difference between the dialogue-free shorts and the talkier series.

Theron was quoted as saying “I really like telling stories with my body.” The story her body tells here is that a nearly six-foot, rail-thin woman who crops her hair, walks stiffly, and wears a black costume resembling a wet suit will look surprisingly like a stick figure. To be fair, she’d have needed the mother of all boob jobs to resemble her cartoon counterpart. The grotesque bodies and kinky eroticism are toned down from the TV show. The violence remains, but the action scenes aren’t special, and the dialogue is pedestrian and delivered woodenly. At least until the second half, there’s hardly any plot or character development, and no moral complexity that characterizes good sci-fi. Watching the series would have provided details missing here, like, what was the “industrial disease” that preceded the events in the movie, and what is the “resistance” that Aeon Flux is part of? However, I doubt most of the people who see the movie will have seen the series, and they’re apt to get impatient with the story and annoyed at all the whispery flashbacks that hint that there is one, buried somewhere.

IMDB link

viewed 12/3/05 at Moorestown and reviewed 12/05/05

Serenity (**3/4)

Serenity is a sci-fi action film from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s somewhat in the vein of Star Wars without the self-importance. (There’s even a bit of humor.) The story, set 500 years’ hence, begins when a “reader” (psychic) gets broken out of a government facility by her brother. They take refuge aboard Serenity, a fancy spaceship whose captain, a hero of a recent war, has turned to petty interstellar crime. A guy from “the Alliance” (the government) is hot on their heels, and cannibalistic “Reavers” are also marauding about the solar system. The film was clearly made with the possibility of sequels in mind, and while the story doesn’t feel incomplete, some of its elements feel underdeveloped. What was the war about? Where do the psychics’ abilities come from? Luckily, the film is well-done enough that fans of the genre will want to find out. [I suspect that many of these questions were answered in Firefly, the short-lived (2002-2003) Fox TV series on which this was based. The cast of relative unknowns is taken right from the series.] The CGI effects are solid, the action sequences fairly good, not great, and the non-psychic characters, with one exception, are standard-issue action film sorts.

IMDB link

viewed 10/1/05 at Moorestown; reviewed 10/3/05