dbn3 Reviews

Metropolis (1927)

Watch the Kino Video DVD; It has the Complete Storyline.

[7/10 · 1 June 2006]

Story Line:

Joh Fredersen is the leader of Metropolis, a sunny, towering city full of energy and commerce. Freder is his son who revels in the libertine freedom that he has as a son of privilege. One day, while cavorting in the Eternal Gardens with a dozen scantily clad women, Freder sees a school teacher bring a group of dirty, poor children into the garden. The staff and the women are shocked and annoyed, but Freder is captivated by the teacher's words that "we are all brothers" and, of course, her beauty.

Freder sets out to find the school teacher and investigate the world of the workers. The workers live deep underground operating the machines that keep Metropolis operating. The workers are not like the Morlocks of Wells' The Time Machine, they do not terrorize the upper dwellers, but they are rarely seen on the surface. He is searching the underground for her when he witnesses a terrible accident where dozens of workers are scalded with steam. Freder comes to see the machine as a god demanding sacrifice. He rushes to see his father to tell him of the horror, but his father is only upset that his own people didn't tell him first.

We are introduced to Rotwang, an inventor who was a suitor of Joh Fredersen's now dead wife, Hel. He has created a Machine Man whom he says is Hel still living. But before we can work that out, we find the school teacher, named Maria, leading a religious service with the workers. She tells them that a mediator will come to set them free peacefully. Rotwang and Joh Fredersen decide to make the Machine Man look like Maria, and trick the workers into attacking Metropolis so they can be put down with brutal force.

Unknown to Joh Fredersen, Rotwang is still bitter about Hel and has set Machine Maria to not only destroy the workers, but Metropolis too. Machine Maria not only convinces the workers to destroy the machines that power Metropolis but also those that keep underground water from flooding the worker's living areas. At the same time, she uses her body as a dancer to keep the people of Metropolis too distracted to know what is going on. The workers storm the machines to the strains of La Marseillaise.

The result is the destruction of the worker's homes and the imperiling of their children. When the workers realize the folly of their acts, they turn on Machine Maria and burn her at the stake as a witch.

There is a silly chase at the end (the acting has been very good up until this part), where Freder saves the real Maria, then brings both the workers and the city dwellers together to fix their city.

Metropolis as Christian Allegory:

The most obvious example of Christian symbolism is the Whore of Babylon story from Revelation, with the Machine Maria playing the part explicitly while she is distracting the city dwellers. But there are others, too.

The teacher is named Maria, a variant of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Maria is the one who finds the mediator between head and hands like Mary brings Jesus, who is said to be the mediator between God and man, into the world. In Mary's religious chapel in the depths, the symbolism is strongly Christian, with crosses and fish. One of her prayers is that "The mediator will come" just like prayers in the Bible that the messiah will come. The movie opens and closes with the quote: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart." Freder is placed as that heart, that mediator, that savior figure who beings healing.

Even pagan gods mentioned in the Bible are alluded to. The word "Moloch" flashes up in the scene where Freder sees the machine as a god demanding sacrifice. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Moloch is named in the Old Testament of the Bible as one of the pagan religions stamped out early on: "The chief feature of Moloch's worship among the Jews seems to have been the sacrifice of children, and the usual expression for describing that sacrifice was 'to pass through the fire,' a rite carried out after the victims had been put to death."

When Joh Fredersen's right hand man is fired because of his incompetence, he is sent into the depths with the workers like a person being cast out of God's sight and being damned to Hell. Freder acts the part of the Jesus the savior by offering a job and allowing him to stay. The depths where the workers live and work look like Hell with smoke, steam, and heat.

Metropolis as Foreshadowing of the Holocaust:

Although Mein Kampf was published the year before the movie was released, but it would still be several years before the Nazis came to power in Germany. Nevertheless, Metropolis is an eerie foreshadowing of the work and death camps to come. Just like prisoners in a concentration camp, the workers do not have names, only numbers. They have been dehumanized to the point where they not only look and act like a part of the machines they operate, but they are numbered like parts in a catalog. When his son tells him the plight of the workers, Joh Fredersen comments that "the workers are where they belong, in the depths" -- sounding much like the Nazis saying Jews and other undesirables belonged in ghettos and camps. During the metaphor of the machine as Moloch requiring human sacrifice, there are dozens of men marching into the gaping, flaming maw of the god like so many concentration camp victims marching to the crematorium. Finally, during the story of the Tower of Babel that Maria tells the workers, there is a depiction of thousands of nearly naked workers who were shaved bald that looked just like concentration camp workers from the Nazi era.

A Day Without a Mexican (1998)

The Subtly of a Brick

[4/10 · 7 April 2006]

I watched this on the DVD of the movie. I never got around to watching the full-length version.

The idea of this short film is that all of the Mexicans (or all Latinos - its hard to tell because the characters use the terms interchangeably) have disappeared from California. It is done in bad TV documentary style. It reminded me of the screwy UFO documentaries that run late at night on SciFi or Discovery. I guess the style is supposed to be ironic, but it just doesn't work.

There is some attempt to point out that not all Mexicans or Latinos (again, they can't seem to be clear on this point) work in fields, restaurants, or car washes. However, the talk of missing Hispanic college professors is just an excuse to make a lengthy rant about California immigration policies.

I guess if I lived in California, I might appreciate it more. Maybe not. I live in Texas and work in an area that is more than 90% Hispanic. The sad thing is the only memorable character is a beer drinking redneck complaining about how there are no Mexicans to fix his car and telling stories about the "good old days" when Mexicans would do the work for cheap. That is good, subtle social commentary. The rest is over the top stupidity that just makes you roll your eyes.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

I felt like I was standing in the back of the CBS control room

[8/10 · 12 February 2006]

I knew very little about Edward R. Murrow and his battle with McCarthy. I of course knew about McCarthy and the McCarthy - Welch Exchange at the Army Hearings ("You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?") and that does make a short appearance here. The movie is educational for me in that it tells a story I never knew about those times.

Good Night does a great job of building up the tension as Murrow decides to expose McCarthy. As it rolls on, there is a feeling of excitement as most of CBS and the rest of the press back Murrow and his crew. It reminded me of _All The President's Men_ in that way.

There is plenty of jumping off points in this movie for serious discussion about the media today, but those points are better left for a college seminar than a movie review. The ending is a bit didactic, but then it seems Murrow was, too.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

A Tale of Two Movies

[6/10 · 31 October 2005]

D.W. Griffith has made two movies and put them on the same set of reels. The first half of the movie depicts antebellum south and the Civil War. The second half of the movie depicts the reconstruction of the south after the civil war. But they are more than just halves of the movie; they are really two different movies. The first part is a sincere attempt to recreate the factual events of the Civil War as told through the eyes of the Stonemans and the Camerons. The second part is just as sincere, but the focus is on the myths and emotions of the south after the civil war.

The first half of the film tracks orthodox history so closely (and there are those "AN HISTORICAL FACISIMILIE" notes on some of the slides) that it is easy to think the rest is correct history, too. Maybe that was what D.W. Griffith was trying to achieve. In any case, the real history of the second part is the true history of the fears and mythology of the white south after the war. They often did look on blacks as children who needed to be cared for to keep them from hurting themselves. They did think slavery was good for the blacks. They did think that a black man wanted nothing more badly than to live in a nice white mansion and to have a white wife. The second half of the film doesn't portray the history of events so much as the history of emotions.

Is this an outdated movie? Look at the reaction of the white establishment to popular black entertainers. They are outraged by videos on MTV or BET of strong black men who have money and sexual virility. Why is that? I think some of that outrage is the continuing echoes of the white fears of black sexuality so strongly brought out in this movie. Margaret Cameron's father Dr. Cameron is prepared to kill her before the blacks get her. Flora Cameron jumps to her death rather than be raped by a black man. The mulattoes, the products of the sexual unions Whites feared the most are depicted as the worst in the film -- from Austin Stoneman's mulatto maid who is sexually after him to the uncomfortably named Silas Lynch who is the mulatto who runs the town after the blacks take over.

Is this a racist movie? Of course, but I really didn't have any problem with the racism in the plot of the movie. It was easy to understand and absorb -- like reading a speech by Jefferson Davis in a history book. The racism that kept bugging me when I was watching the movie was the racism in Hollywood itself. All of the black and mulatto characters that get any significant amount of screen time are all white actors in blackface. When there were actually blacks used, it was only as extras -- such as when they show slaves picking cotton.

Cinematic skill - Griffith often uses some kind of mask to block out distracting edges of the picture or to frame a portrait picture of the actor. It has the effect of focusing your attention where he wants you to look. It makes for a tighter shot and probably was a substitute for a close-up lens. I assume there were no moving zoom lenses, but Griffith makes up for that by using a mask that can widen or shrink to give a zoom in or zoom out effect.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

From the Makers of Independence Day -- That's all you need to know. (4/10)

[4/10 · 10 October 2004]

For a person who is very concerned about global climate change, I sure do think this is an amazingly crappy film. Remember Independence Day where Jeff Goldbloom used an Apple laptop to upload a computer virus into a computer on an alien spaceship? The plot in this movie relies on the same hocus-pocus fake science crap as that one. The acting is just downright painful, and I'm glad I had a fast-forward button to skip ahead. There are way to many "OH MY GOD!" lines and looks. There are far too many political cheap shots that can only elicit groans from anyone even remotely informed on issues of the environment and immigration. There seems to be a sense that the only parts in the U.S. that matter are Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. No other part of the country is even mentioned. Finally, the special effects are just way over the top. Not content to have a tornado in Los Angeles, the special effects department puts in at least a dozen that are WAY more destructive than real tornadoes. Skip this junk.

Braveheart (1995)

In Serious Need of a Good Editor (5/10)

[5/10 · 14 November 2003]

[I saw this on DVD, YMMV]

Weighing in at over three hours this movie is way too long and in need of some serious trimming. I suspect this was a Mel Gibson pet project and no one would stand up to him and tell him to leave large parts on the cutting room floor.

The plot is morally and ethically pure. Wallace is the Good Guy who plays the part of Christ (and just in case you miss the symbolism, Wallace is stretched onto a cross or in a cross-like shape no fewer than three times as he is tortured to death). King Longshanks is the Bad Guy who will stop at nothing to kill and torture all the poor Scots he can get his hands one. Conveniently Wallace has all his family killed so he has no attachments and can spend the rest of this movie trying to defeat the Bad Guy. The love story and betrayal themes are of the depth and complexity of the one in, say, Titanic.

The battle scenes were just campy. Every time one took place with the "ooofs" and "aaarghs" it sounded like fighting in Monty Python's Holy Grail. Was Gibson trying to reference that movie or was the action so bad it just looked like it? I half expected the Scots to launch a cow at the English.

All in all, this is a very over-rated movie.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Suprisingly Good (7/10)

[7/10 · 15 August 2003]

[I saw this in the theater, YMMV]

First off, I have to say I am a fan of the ride at Disneyworld and looked forward to the movie. Although there were four or five different parts of the movie I remember from the ride, the movie is not just scenes from the ride strung together inchoerently. Instead, we slowly learn the story of Captain Jack Sparrow. For a movie aimed at teenage girls with the inclusion of Orlando Bloom and a feel-good fairy-tale story ending, it is suprisingly good.

Finally, I have to say that I was suprised at the end of the movie to see this was a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. If I had known that, I would never have gone. He makes terrible, over the top action flicks like Days of Thunder, Bad Boys, The Rock, Con Air, Armageddon and Blackhawk Down. And in retrospect, his grubby fingerprints can be seen in the overly-long action sequences. The cute computer trick of having the actors move in and out of the moonlight to look whole then like a skeleton is neat the first five minutes of the final fight. But, as in all Bruckheimer movies, the action for action's sake is dragged on far too long.

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Don't Believe the Hype (6/10)

[6/10 · 15 August 2003]

Maybe they are my sacred cows, but the racist and homophobic lines in this movie are just so grating to the 21st century conscience that any "humor" in them is completely lost. In the beginning of this movie, I flinched every time the word "nigger" is shouted on screen. At the end of the movie, the gay dance routine is just boring.

There are, of course, all the famous scenes and lines. I found most of them not to be a funny as others thought them to be. So many are just pale echoes of much funnier Monty Python skits.

On the other hand, there were two laugh out loud moments toward the end of the movie. The first is the baiting of the Klansmen with the line "So where are all the white women at?" and the other is the actor playing Hitler standing in the back making Nazi salutes during the pie fight. I guess you just have to see them.

Its not that big a waste of time at only 90 minutes, but don't go out of your way to see this one.

Red Dragon (2002)

Why are the producers scared of this film? (5/10)

[5/10 · 23 May 2003]

[I rented this on DVD, have seen Silence of the Lambs but none of the other Lecter movies, so YMMV]

I liked this movie up until the end. It seems that the producers of this film couldn't leave a complex film well enough alone. They had successfully avoided the obvious horror film tricks and developed a complex serial killer. They had a great ending with Agent Graham and Reba McClane, the woman involved with the killer, debriefing in a hospital.

Not good enough. The stupid horror movie routine of the killer coming back one more time is dragged out to please the stupid masses.

Before the ending, it was good enough for a 7, now its barely good enough for a 5.

The Good Girl (2002)

I've seen this too many times before (5/10)

[5/10 · 18 February 2003]

This movie spends so much time ripping off a whole slate of recent movies from "The Royal Tennenbaums" to "American Beauty" to "Chasing Amy" that I'm not sure there is anything really original or clever left.

It's just another "bored person colides with madness and comes away changed for the better" movie that I have seen way to much of lately.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Too Irritating to Be Likeable (5/10)

[5/10 · 28 September 2002]

[I saw this on DVD, YMMV]

This movie starts out very slowly. There is a droning narration over a long sequence that introduces us (very slowly) to all the Tenenbaums (Royal and Ethel; their children Chas, Margot, and Richie; and a wannabe, Eli Cash) and their past. Not satisfied with that, the movie starts over again to introduce each of the characters to us again (very slowly) as they are 22 years later. Its an irritatingly long setup for a weak payoff.

Nothing about this film is particularly funny. The attempt at slapstick when Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) falls into a hole falls as flat as Sherman does.

Nothing about this film is particularly dramatic. Anderson cannot bring himself to write a true bastard of a man. Instead he keeps placing Royal Tenenbaum into situations where is just a likeable, selfish boob.

The characters are so flat and frigid that the incesteous relationship between Richie and Margot seems surreal. There is no passion on either part. There is nothing but a connection to the past when they ran away together as children.

One part that works is the music. I was pulled into the movie as Richie changes his appearance deliberately and dramatically while Elliot Smith's _Needle in the Hay_ floats in the air. But I started to get irritated again as the complete flatness of the characters continued.

I am not from a divorced family. Perhaps Wes Anderson is relying on people to supply reasons for the odd actions of the Tenenbaum children from their own experience. Reading other reviews here seem to suggest that intimate experience with divorce helps in connecting with this film.

Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

Good Relationship Film (7/10)

[7/10 · 27 September 2002]

[I saw this on DVD, YMMV]

Jessica Stein is a woman who just cannot find the right person to have a relationship with. When she reads a quote in the Personal Ads from a writer she likes, she calls the woman, Helen, who placed on a whim. The surprising thing to Helen and the audience is how hard Helen falls for Jessica. A movie ensues that is not as polished or as funny as Annie Hall, nor handles bisexuality as well as Chasing Amy, but is pretty good nevertheless.

Her relationship with Helen makes transformative changes in Jessica, who seems skittish about physical intimacy in general. Jessica, who was a talented artist in the past has lost something, or something has happened to her. We never really know. There are no hints. But she went from seriously pursuing painting to being a copy editor at a paper. One suspects that she is good at the job because she is so neurotic about details. It is through her relationship with Helen, both physical and, much more important, emotional intimacy that Jessica is able to rekindle that passion.

I was quite pleased and look forward to another film from this team.

K-PAX (2001)

Without Spacey, this would be direct-to-video junk (4/10)

[4/10 · 29 July 2002]

The opening is so creepy, I was soured on the rest of the movie. I get the impression that this story was written backwards from the premise that a guy that claims to be an alien will change the life of a shrink. Since the harmless little goofball doesn't want (or seem to need) help, then why would he keep seeing the shrink. Well, we'll just lock him up . ..

In the opening scene, Spacey (playing Prot, as we discover his name later) just appears in the middle of a New York City commuter rail terminal. He is a bystander when a little old lady gets her purse snatched. When the police question him, he calmly explains that he is from another planet. So far so good. But then THE POLICE ARREST HIM, CONFINE HIM FOR THREE WEEKS, AND SHOOT HIM FULL OF THORAZINE. Holy Cow! This kind of treatment of the harmlessly goofy has not even been seen in the wildest fantasies of Mayor Giuliani. Used as a throw away plot device, this kind of action is just creepy.

We then meet Bridges (Dr. Powell) the shrink. Jeff must have had something in his contract that said something like he refused to portray an overworked, underpaid social worker. So instead, we see an obsessive, wealthy shrink that the City of New York has somehow forced to see this loveable goofball that they locked up in the scene before. So we get to see Bridges in a crisp shirt and tie in a spacious high-rise office that has, for some reason, something that looks like a pharmaceutical lab in the middle of it. I guess this is supposed to look "serious" and "scientific", but I fully expected one of the little geeks in white lab coats to come running around the corner with a smoking beaker full of blue stuff that the shrink could use to cure every psychotic in the world.

The middle of the movie is pleasant enough, but there is not much to it. So we get to see a very long sequence where Spacey is riding in a cab. Some wonderful electronic trance music is scored and we get to see some beautiful shots of lemons falling out of boxes, but it was all just beautiful filler.

Finally, I won't give the ending, but suffice it to say, the writer either has to decide that Prot is an alien or he is a human. The writer did not have the guts to follow through with the choice made throughout the last half of the movie and waffles at the end. Sigh. A fitting ending to not much of a movie.

Lilo & Stitch (2002)

All the good parts are in the trailer (5/10)

[5/10 · 5 July 2002]

[I saw this in the theater, YMMV]

This often happens, but rarely with a Disney movie -- all the good parts are already in the trailer.

This is not a particularly complex film, even by Disney standards. Several times in the plot the writers paint themselves into a corner and have to do some hand waving to keep the movie going.

The scientist chasing Stitch (Dr. Jumba) is intent on the capture of Stitch and will settle for his destruction. But all Stitch has to do is to mumble the word "family" at Dr. Jumba and for some completely inexplicable reason the scientist joins Stitch on his quest to join a family. Another example is Mr. Bubbles, the social worker. Mr. Bubbles is the largest, wealthiest, most leasurely social worker on the planet. Hawaii must have a very light caseload. In addition, since there are aliens zooming around Hawaii and someone is bound to notice, Mr. Bubbles conveniently becomes an ex-CIA Area 51 agent (who also just happens to know the head alien when she arrives).

There is some references to "family" and "aloha", But the producers lost their nerve when they added a toss-off reference to fat people as beautiful, but placed it inside a joke.

This is not particularly funny, cute, or moraly uplifting. It is just 90 minutes of "cute and fluffy" (as Stitch refers to him(her?)self.)

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

Maybe I am getting too old for this stuff (5/10)

[5/10 · 5 July 2002]

[I saw this in the theater. YMMV]

I was bored in this movie.

B O R E D

I was so disappointed and offended by Episode One that I really had very low expectations for this movie, and I went long after the opening crush had left the theaters. So I can't truly say it was worse than I thought, because I thought it would be horrible. It wasn't horrible, just boring.

Everyone knows the plot, so I will just comment on a few points:

(1) On the opening sequence on Corrsicant (sp?): Somebody needs to tell Lucas that a car chase is just a car chase, even if it is done with millions of dollars in special effects to simulate flying traffic. A car chase works best when it is the climax when the audience has had time to develop emotions about the characters involved. Set at the beginning, it is just a bit roller-coaster ride.

(2) Anakin Skywalker. Let me start with saying this. One of the great movies in the last few years was "Boogie Nights." It showed the complete decline, fall, and destruction of a fledging porn star. The entire movie is the self-disintegration of the hero. That is what I wanted to see here. The complete disintegration of Anakin Skywalker. We saw just a glimpse of that with this:

"Anakin: I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too! They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals! I HATE THEM!"

YES! That is what I was looking for. But Lucas has no spine. He refused to show the slaughter, unlike David Lean in Lawrence of Arabia. The slaughter was critical in the decline of Anakin, but Lucas dodged the scene. Then he moved away from it as fast as possible. Anakin never lost control again.

(3) Did anyone else think of the Rancor when Obi-wan, Anakin, and Amidala were being prepared for execution? Execution by large animal? We have seen this already in Return of the Jedi. I think Lucas has run out of creative juices.

(4) Yoda. So is he faking that limp? I sure am glad that I saw his combat in the trailer so I knew it was coming, and it was placed at the end. Otherwise, the intervening was SO BORING I might have left.

I think the problem may be that Lucas is making kid movies, and I am not a kid anymore. Sigh.

The Mummy (1999)

Is there a plot here? Anywhere? Maybe under all that sand over there . . . (3/10)

[3/10 · 6 May 2002]

[I saw this on network TV, YMMV]

Well, I've seen worse (Batman and Robin and Lost in Space come to mind), but this was pretty bad.

Here is a scene that tells you all you need to know: The good guys need a plane to get back to the bad guy's hideout. They happen to find some fat Brit with an RAF biplane to help them out. Two good guys can't fit so they are tied on the end of the plane. A boatload of special effects later, the bad guy causes the plane to crash. Who survives? All of the good guys (even those strapped to the wings). Who dies? The fat Brit (the only one strapped into a seat).

The plot is nonexistant. The story is a bad guy comes back to life, steals the girl, and the good guys rescue the girl. THAT'S IT. NO MORE. Fifth graders can write better than this. The movie makers rely on a ton of ho-hum special effects to fill in all the dead time.

This movie is not funny, not scary, does not have ground-breaking special effects, and was just a waste of time and money.

Panic Room (2002)

Every Thriller You've Ever Seen (5/10)

[5/10 · 14 April 2002]

This wasn't a bad movie, but it was just like every other thriller movie you've ever seen. Without Forest Whitaker and Jodie Foster this movie could be a 'USA' Original Movie.

The opening sequence was good. The camera moves through the house walls and through tiny appliance handles to show action from one side of the house to another. It was an obvious digital trick, but slick none the less. Nothing else is really worth commenting about. The movie is so predictable that it is quickly forgettable.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Black and White (5/10)

[5/10 · 26 February 2002]

(I saw this in the theater, YMMV)

I had heard how great this film was, that some people called it the greatest war film ever. Although I knew that was very unlikely to be true, I was shocked at how bad this movie was.

The first, and largest, problem is the latent racism of the movie. As has been pointed out numerous times there is a creepy racist feel about the film as wholesome, All-American white boys mow down savage, thoughtless black men. Not a single Somali is portrayed with any depth. Adid and his followers are relegated to props for the army to shoot. It is difficult to appreciate this point without seeing the movie.

The next problem is supposed to be it's strong point. The violence is so stylized, it has no depth. I never felt anything for any of the characters. For one thing, except for Tom Sizemore and Ewan McGregor, I had a difficult time telling the actors apart once they were covered in blood and grime. In addition, I never felt the frustration of the soldiers as they struggled to find the crash site. There was just one firefight after another. One part of the movie that does work is when two army snipers make a request to guard the wounded pilots of the second Blackhawk helicopter crash (erm, yes there are two Blackhawks that go down).

Finally, the script is just bad. This movie jerks the "get the boys out" and the "leave no man behind" chains throughout the entire movie. In the few parts of the movie where nobody is shooting at something, the writing is so corny it's painful.

Skip this movie. There are much better war films to rent.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

It's Greatness Crept Up On Me (9/10)

[8/10 · 21 February 2002]

(I saw this on DVD, YMMV)

I haven't seen Luhrmann's other big film, Romeo+Juliet, nor did I know anything about the film when I rented it. All I had heard is that it was a musical, a bit odd, and nominated for some Oscars.

Christian is a writer who gets drafted to write a play called Spectacular, Spectacular! when Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who is an actor, not a painter in this film) crashes through the ceiling with another actor practicing in the upstairs flat. Once the idea for the play is begun, the group of actors visit the Moulin Rouge to sell the play to the owner, Harold Zidler. There they meet Satine, a young dancer and prostitute that dreams of becoming a "real" actress someday. Here chance appears when the Duke of Monroth offers to finance Spectacular, Spectacular in return for Satine's services.

The hook here is this movie is a musical. Not a typical musical, the songs here take lines and melodies from many different songs to create new ideas. The two pieces that stand out were the opening intro of the Moulin Rouge with the intro of Satine and the actors as they were waiting for Satine to save the play by acting her part for the Duke.

The first had the women of the Moulin Rouge singing various lines from overtly sexual songs, with the men singing "here we are now, entertain us" from Nirvana. Ripped clean from it's cynical, ironic underpinnings, the line creates something totally new - call it the John's Anthem.

The second had Christian singing a song of love and jealousy while the actors danced the life of a prostitute to "Roxanne" sung in a low growl.

As I watched, I was increasingly impressed with the technique and with the ability of Kidman and McGregor to not get lost in all the music, color, and quick cuts. It was only at the end that I could look back and realize I had seen a great movie.

Memento (2000)

Interesting Concept, Flawed Execution (5/10)

[6/10 · 1 February 2002]

(I saw this on DVD, YMMV)

Summary:

Leonard Shelby is a man who has no short term memory since being injured defending his wife an attack that resulted in her rape and murder. For some reason that is not really clear, the police have never caught the attackers, so Leonard has vowed to hunt down and kill them. However, he cannot remember a thing that has happened since the day he lost his short-term memory and ten minutes ago. Therefore, he is constantly having no memory of why he is doing things and uses a series of pictures and notes to help sort it out.

To give the same feeling to the audience, the director shows the scenes in reverse order. The opening scene of the movie essentially has Leonard looking at a picture of Teddy with the words "kill him" written underneath in his handwriting. Leonard proceeds to kill Teddy. Just as that is all Leonard has to go on, that is all the audience has. Then the movie backs up a little bit and shows Leonard gleaning the last bit of information that convinces him Teddy is the killer and we see him actually writing "kill him" on Teddy's picture. This backing up continues until we find out the real secrets in the movie.

The Good:

Guy Pierce gives a very good performance as Leonard.

The transitions between the scenes are very smooth. There is just enough overlap at the start and end of each scene that the transitions are very easy to follow. In addition, there is a small part of the film that runs forward in time, mostly Leonard telling a backstory to someone on the phone. These are easily distinguished by being shot in black and white, while the rest of the film is in color.

The Bad:

There is an unrelenting lust for death that drives Leonard. No one, not even Teddy who might be a cop, discusses the idea of vigilantism. That Leonard should hunt down and kill whoever he thinks might be the killer, the justice system be damned, is never questioned. It is the mindless writing of a bad action movie at work here.

Although the reverse order presentation is easy to follow, it began to wear thin. Perhaps it is because, and other reviewers have mentioned, that this story told in chronological order would be weak, at best. The film relies too much on this one trick of storytelling without anything else to really back it up.

The clincher that something is desperately wrong is the pat summation speech at the end of the film. Throughout the film, the reliance is on how Leonard is going to remember some particular fact, but we are only given the quickest glances of the actual results of Leonard's investigations. In an attempt to make a rather dull story seem mysterious, the makers have told us so little about the story that they make up for the error with "the speech that explains everything."

5/10

Ali (2001)

Missed Greatness by Trying to Cover Too Much (8/10)

[8/10 · 21 January 2002]

[I saw this in the theater, YMMV]

I am in my early 30's and too young to know anything about Ali. All I really know is his Parkensen's like syndrome, the lighting of the Olympic torch, and that he was a great boxer. So I can't compare this movie to his real-life, only judge it as a movie. In addition, I have never seen Rocky (my Italian wife calls this a travesty), and the only boxing movie I can recall seeing is _Raging Bull_.

The opening sequence in this movie is one of the best I have ever seen. It lasts about 20 minutes and plays between a Sam Cooke concert, Ali's childhood, Ali's training, a pre-fight preparation routine, and Ali defeating an opponent in the ring for the heavyweight championship of the world. Almost all the themes of his character are represented in that sequence: sensuality and women; anger at oppression of blacks; determination and persistence in training; the pain of boxing; the glory of victory.

If Michael Mann could have continued this style through Ali's conversion to Islam, this would be a great movie. Instead the second quarter of the movie had me thinking "I've seen this before." The second quarter of the movie has already been completely covered by _Malcom X_, Spike Lee's movie, and Lee did it much better. I kept looking at the character playing Malcom X and wondering where Denzel Washington was.

The movie picks up again through the drama of Ali refusing the draft. The interesting thing is there seemed to be no greater principle at work than Ali wanting to be his own man, not ordered about by anyone else. Ali's struggle to continue fighting, to stay financially afloat, and to avoid jail give heart to this movie. One great scene is when, after Ali's title is taken away and Joe Louis wins it from a chump, Louis and Ali are riding in a car trying to figure out how to get a fight between them arainged.

The movie ends with "The Rumble in the Jungle." Ali means so much to the real people of Zaire. They chant his name and run along side him when he trains. Ali is pictured defeating malaria (punching mosquitoes with death masks on) and the army (punching tanks). Ali is a demi-god who can defeat all that is bad in their lives, or at least let them ignore it for a while.

Finally, I have to say this is some of the most best cinamatography I have seen in quite some time. The scenes of the boxing matches are not shot from a steady-cam from 20 yards away. It looks like there were cameras on the actor's bodies. It was amazing, the speed and disorientation of the punches as they flew on the screen.

A side note: I want LeVar Burton's agent. Burton gets maybe 45 seconds of screen time, and half of that was of a photograph, not live. And for all that he still got his name in the credits _before_ the film. Way to go Burton, can I borrow your agent?

Pi (1998)

Strange for Strangeness Sake (4/10)

[4/10 · 16 January 2002]

[I saw this on DVD, YMMV]

I had no idea what this movie was about. I thought it might be about the search for the last digit of pi, or some other similar thing.

No. Instead there is some generic bad-guy corporation want's his number analysis for stock research, some generic numerological cult wants his number analysis for religious research, and a math genious with a homemade computer (that looks straight from the set of Brazil) that just rolls around on the floor in his bathroom in obvious pain.

This movie has as little to do with math as Armageddon has to do with the science of asteroids. It is just an excuse to blow a bunch of black and white film on cream mixing into coffee and smoke floating in the air.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Too Much Action, Too Little Character Development (6/10)

[6/10 · 14 January 2002]

(I saw this in the theater, YMMV)

I really wanted to like this movie. I am probably part of the target audience. I remember sitting in the library as a child watching the animated version of the Tolken books. I read them in Middle School and High School. I had The Atlas of Middle Earth. I even tried to read the Simillarion (sp?). Although I have spent more than ten years away from fantasy and living in the real world instead, when I heard this movie was being made, I dug out the paperback boxed set I had as a child and read them again.

The books are magnificent. There is a sense of history, of a struggle between good and evil on a grand scale, and strong, believable characters. I looked forward to seeing this represented on the big screen. How disappointed I was since the movie never lives up to the book and is just pretty bad.

Peter Jackson is just not up to the task of making this movie. Three main failings are that (1) he cannot communicate the passage of time or distance; (2) he falls prey to the current Hollywood fashion of hyper-violence, and (3) he seems more interested in showing off his homeland of New Zealand, than developing characters.

The Fellowship travels many miles over many days. Jackson never effectively communicated this and the effect is that these people walked across a few fields in a day or two to reach their destination. One clue that something was horribly wrong was when Frodo's group of Hobbits was headed to Rivendel. They walk through fields in late summer and seem to make the journey i a day or two at most. When they are attacked before reaching Rivendel, it is still a late summer setting. When Frodo awakes (seemingly the next day) in Rivendel, he is told it is October. What?

Jackson is also particularly bad at arranging the action scenes. Both of the main action scenes, the attack in the Mines of Moria and the orc attack at the river, are laughable. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of enemies that attack the party. Two guys with swords and an elf with a bow kill them all. It is impossible not to watch without rolling your eyes. During the fights, the editing is jerky and nauseating. Finally, Jackson cannot even communicate the death of one of the party. Boromir (a burly man with a sword) is shot full of dozens of arrows but still fights on. "Just die already," I thought when watching it and any sense of loss was washed away by impossible action and bad use of music. The scene wasn't sad, it was pathetic.

Finally, Jackson used too many helicopter shots of the group walking through the New Zealand countryside, and not enough scenes developing the characters in the movie. The most well-developed character is Bilbo, who is only seen for the first third of the movie and will never bee seen again. There was no time spent on the relationship between the dwarf and the elf. For one second at the Council of Elrond the tension between the races is felt. This is never developed at all. Why not? More time spent on the relationship between the hobbits. Why does Sam feel the need to protect Frodo? Why are Merry and Pippin coming along on this dangerous journey?

I am afraid that the rest will be as bad as the first. I will go see them, but probably once the theaters allow discounted rates.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)

Nailed the 8-10 Year Old Boy (7/10)

[7/10 · 13 January 2002]

(I saw this in the theater, YMMV)

Your reaction to the opening scene will determine whether you like this movie or not. The movie opens with Jimmy Neutron and his buddy Carl flying a homemade rocket to the upper atmosphere to place a "communications satellite," made from a toaster and a spatula, into orbit.

Got it? Good.

Now the great thing with opening the movie this way is that from the very start, all bets are off. This is obviously going to be a little kid's dream. If you can't handle that, then get up right then because it only goes much further from there. For me, the opening scene clicked me into the right frame of mind (of suspension of disbelief) and never jarred me out of it.

Listen to any sentence that starts with "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a..." from the mouth of an 8-10 year old boy, and you would get the description of things that Jimmy Neutron makes: homemade rocketships, plants that eat girls, Burping Cola (a burp with every sip), or a robot dog. Much of the screen time is taken with Jimmy and pals playing with these, and other, things.

The plot is simple, aliens take all the parents and Jimmy Neutron and the other kids go get them back. But again, the thinking of an 8-10 year old boy is perfectly presented again. Jimmy Neutron doesn't just make any old spaceship, he turns rides from an amusement park into interstellar ships to fly off to save the parents.

This is a fun movie and just short enough to keep from getting to be stretched thin. It is not as technically beautiful as the contemporary Monsters, Inc., but, unlike that souless movie, it much more fun.

Chocolat (2000)

The antagonist is more memorable . . .(7/10)

[7/10 · 13 January 2002]

(I watched this on DVD, YMMV)

This movie was nominated all over the place for 2001 awards. I didn't get a chance to see it before the awards were presented. When none of the awards materialized, I lost interest in seeing it. About a year later, I rented it and discovered why it is a good, but not great movie. The antagonist is more memorable than the protagonist.

Yes, Vianne, the proprietor of the chocolate shop, is strikingly beautiful and she is the one who moves the plot along, but it is Alfred Molina as the mayor of the tiny town in the south of France whom I remember most.

He tries to keep his town faithful to God and is not interested in anyone stirring things up. He is the epitome of the religious and business establishment in the town. When the town gets a new priest, the mayor takes the new priest under his wing, even writing homilies that best suit the style of the town. Unlike many establishment figures in other movies that celebrate individuality, the mayor is not scripted as a hypocrite or a fascist. He desperately wants the town to be as faithful to God as he is. He shows his piety throughout the movie such as private fasting through the season of Lent. In the end, it is the priest who points out to the mayor and others that deprivation and fasting is not the exclusive path to God.

Although several other characters, including Vianne herself, make transformations through the course of the movie, their changes seem bland or overused (e.g., the doormat wife becomes an independent person). The excellent transformation of the mayor rescues this from bring a beautiful but dull film to being a beautiful and good, but not great film.