Beasts of the Southern Wild (***)

I’ve seen plenty of movies set on distant planets, but few of them have transported me as does this invented mythology set in coastal Louisiana. The story is told by a six-year-old girl named Hushpuppy, who lives with her father on an islet that’s almost equally land and sea, and looks, from a distance, like squalor. Now, a small community (black and white) scavenges and fishes, and drinks, in the case of Hushpuppy’s father. But some day soon, Hushpuppy’s narration tells us, “Water’s gonna rise, and there ain’t gonna be no bathtub.”

The setup suggests a story that seems writ on a large canvas. I elsewhere heard the picture compared to Tree of Life. But this movie lacks both the pretentiousness and the grandeur of something like that. Possibly it can be seen as a parable of Hurricane Katrina and global warming, but doesn’t seem overtly intended as either. Instead, it tells a fairly simple story of what happens to a scruffy but bright girl and her difficult but protective father. Both girl (Quvenzhané Wallis) and father (Dwight Henry) are played by first time actors, and its the first feature for director Benh Zeitlin. The title, evocative if nondescriptive, comes from Hushpuppy’s frequent visions of large ancient creatures. This fantasy aspect didn’t do much for me, but the hallucinatory scenes set up a visually arresting scene at the end. On a technical level, this is a very accomplished film. Not a slick one, but authentic, if that word can be used to describe a film about a non-existent place and people.

 

IMDb link

viewed 6/28/12 7:30 pm at Prince Music Theater and reviewed 8/13/12

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The Forbidden Kingdom (**3/4)

The big deal here is that martial arts stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li appear together for the first time. Chan has shifted between Chinese-language and American fare, but his best-known movies, like the Rush Hour series, emphasize comic elements as much as action. Li has also split his career between Chinese films, like the mythical Fearless and Hero, and mainstream Hollywood action films such as War and Cradle 2 the Grave, but isn’t at all known for comedy. So I was curious to what approach a movie with both would take, and the answer seems to be a little of everything.

Presumably helping to sell the movie to a younger audience is the presence of Michael Angarano as a kid who, in a remarkably cheesy opening segment, is magically transported from present-day Boston to long-ago China. I liked Angarano in Snow Angels, but here I kept thinking he was Shia LaBeouf. Maybe that was because his character was so petulant, though. At first he wanders around confused, with everybody speaking English. Encountering Chan’s character, he goes, “I can’t understand you,” like everyone’s being rude by not speaking modern American. But then Chan says, “That’s because you’re not listening,” and magically everyone now speaks English. And so the rude teen learns about the mythical Monkey King (Li) and his battle against an evil warlord, and becomes the student of the old master (Chan). There’s practically a Karate Kid homage, although luckily no one is forced to catch flies with chopsticks. The movie also vaguely recalls Chan’s old role as the drunken master; his character is supposed to be eternal, but only so long as he drinks.

Li has a double role as a fighting monk, and the fourth member of the anti-evil team is Sparrow, a revenge-seeking, lute-playing lass, because you always need an attractive girl. Oddly, although she has learned English like all of the other Chinese, she has sadly failed to learn first-person pronouns and so refers to herself as “she” or “her.” Li’s monk is philosophical in that he warns Sparrow about how her desire for vengeance can backfire, and that’s about as deep as the movie gets. She ignores the monk’s counsel, and when Chan mockingly calls him “master of sensitivity,” that’s almost as funny as it gets. The plot is a very simple good-versus-evil one. Chan does about three times as much kung fu as in his last three Hollywood films. Every significant character gets to fight, including an evil Jade Warrior who uses her long hair to lasso her opponents. The action scenes include realistic ones and also fantasies with flying effects. (Immortal characters know magic.) They’re fine, but none is as outstanding as the best ones in Fearless or Hero. But then, director Rob Minkoff’s best-known previous work was directing the Stuart Little movies and the Lion King. This makes sense, as the movie is simple enough to be enjoyed by children. (The violence is mostly mild, but there are bloodless stabbings.) The Forbidden Kingdom seems composed of parts of other movies and isn’t more than the sum of those parts, but is better than Chan’s lame Rush Hour 3 or Li’s turgid War, the stars’ most recent US releases.

IMDB link

viewed 4/20/08; reviewed 4/21/08

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (***)

This family film spins the Loch Ness monster myth into a gentle family film about a Scottish boy (Alex Etel, of Millions) and his secret pet. Besides that, the story revolves around a British naval company whose commander seems to think a small village might become a major front in the second World War, the boy’s recently widowed mother (Emily Watson), and a mysterious handyman who helps out both mother and child. Despite all that, and the beast given life via 21st-century effects, the movie is at heart an old-fashioned tale of a time and place where a summer, even during wartime, would allow a young boy time to while away freely.


IMDB link

reviewed 1/11/08

Beowulf (**3/4)

Ah, how well I remember not reading this back in high school when it, the earliest classic of English literature, was assigned. If only there’d been a movie version. Now there is this, one of a few adaptations in the last decade, but let us not speak of the gloomy, dreadful 13th Warrior (1999), the only other one I’ve seen. Here we have director Robert Zemeckis (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) working from a script by fantasy polymath Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.

This quasi-animated version (enhanced live action) preserves the shell of the ancient story, set in sixth-century Scandinavia, while filling the center with something new. There is the monster Grendel, all right, the one thing I vaguely recalled from class, and his reign of terror upon a king and his people is what sets the story in motion. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is the warrior who answers King Hrothgar’s (Anthony Hopkins) call for a hero. In this telling he is met not only with the beast, who comes looking like a giant man whose skin has been flayed, but by beauty, which looks a lot like what today we might call Angelina Jolie. The tale, then, is of bravery mixed with temptation, which is the new part.

The frame is sturdy, the look shiny and sharp, especially if you get to see the 3-D version, as I did not, and the climax, a one-on-one war of man and beast, rousing. There is one larger-scale battle sequence, but it’s short, and overall the movie’s only mildly action-oriented. What prevents it from being more memorable is that the temptation theme is not well-developed. A tragedy of weakness and redemption seems intended, but as the years skip by we really don’t see its full weight. Epic grandeur is needed, and lacking. Whereas perhaps we are to see Beowulf as a Samson figure succumbing to the charms of Delilah, I saw him more as Bill Clinton succumbing to the charms of Monica Lewinsky.

By no means is the film a failure, or dull. But it lacks the mythic power of 300, a rough analog of heroism and self-sacrifice set in a semi-mythic past.

IMDB link

reviewed 11/30/07

The Promise (**1/2)

Like Hero, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this fantasy martial arts movie tells of star-crossed lovers in semi-mythical past; the love story and the fight scenes are not as compelling, though.

The Promise is a fantasy action movie that attempts to appeal to the same audience as the Zhang Yimou movies Hero and House of Flying Daggers. It has the same basic elements-mythical storyline, a setting in the distant but unspecified past, gravity-defying scenes and swordplay, and the story of separated lovers at the center. The main characters are a slave who miraculously survives a massacre, the general he serves, and a beautiful woman who, in the film’s opening, makes a Faustian pact with a goddess. She will become wealthy, but all who love her will leave her. Hong King director Chen Kaige has made a number of successful imports, including  Farewell My Concubine (1993) and the similarly epic Emperor and the Assassin (1999), so it would seem that the movie might be as good as Zhang’s. There are certain excellent scenes, particularly the one in which the slave, pretending to be his master, dashingly saves the heroine while simultaneously making himself the enemy of the ruler. I also liked the massive battle scene in which the slave defies fate, even though the CGI effects are apparent. Aside from some of the effects, the movie’s gorgeous. But the martial arts battles were a disappointment. And most of all, the love story was not one for the ages. The formula for this type of movie is that the man is separated by fate from his true love. If done properly, we spend the movie in anticipation. But, perhaps because she is relatively passive, perhaps because her connection to her love is based upon one incident, I wasn’t anticipating so much as thinking, get on with it.

IMDb link

posted 8/23/13