Reviews

To quote (and with apologies to) Michael Jackson...yes, it's bad, bad, really, really, bad. Since it opened Thanksgiving Weekend, I kept on thinking...how we could have saved so many poor turkeys' lives by feeding the American public this movie instead. Three agonizingly slow hours where I kept checking my watch to see if I was going to late for my appointment to have my fingernails torn out by their roots with a dull bread knife. Colin Farrell in "Mommy Dearest 300 B.C." with the most unbelievably bad hair dye job (where is the Breck Girl when you need her?) emoting in an Irish accent in the middle of Iraq. Memorable moments such as Alexander pumping up his troops with speeches that make Braveheart sound like the passage from Henry V. Jared Leto's love and death scenes where I couldn't decide whether to laugh or throw up. Angelina Jolie in a role where she gives birth to a son at the magically young age of 3, then attends the Showgirls School of Method Acting for Bad Girls and graduates Magnum Cum Laude. Anthony Hopkins, how you have fallen from Silence of the Lambs! Val Kilmer, who had so many doughnuts training for the role I thought he was actually Jeff Bridges, kill your agent. Oliver Stone, who must have written this script after several days of really good hits of the bong, kill yourself. In fact, Alexander was known for having periodic purges where he brutally, savagely, tortured and killed all who failed him. I would counsel executives at Warner Brothers...learn from history.

OK...I had minimal expectations going into the Bourne Identity, and

I must say I was not disappointed, but rather entertained. It's got

some style, the editing is tight but not MTV-ish, the French

locations very gritty and realistic, and the action is regular, kinetic

and creative. A nice little rental movie or a cheap matinee.

Some weak points? Julia Stiles, who I liked in Last Dance, is

utterly wasted here as a glorified phone operator. The subplot of

the African dictator in exile doesn't really pay off; you really don't

care whether he lives or dies. And finally, and almost fatally, Matt

Damon is too boyish to be a realistic Jason Bourne, who I

expected to be a bit more world-weary.

All that being said, I hear there are two sequels in the works. I'll

still consider catching those, particularly if directed by Doug Liman,

who I liked in Go.

Boy, this is one movie that keeps you guessing right to the

end...and even when you think it is over, it opens yet another

Chinese box at you. After seeing Village Idiot movies like Star

Wars II, what a refreshing change to watch something that involves

you and keeps you thinking throughout the movie. Buenos Aires in

all its tangled splendor and edgy personality is personified in this

movie (although I'm not sure I'd visit it now without having a money

belt chained to my body!), even the banter and belittling and

diminutives captured the real flavour of an Argentinian

conversation. All throughout the movie you are rooting for the poor

baby faced Juan as he and his money are separated by the

cunning and experienced Marcos (who as the villain, is as likeable

as the Sheriff was in "Robin Hood:Prince of Thieves") in an

elaborately planned scam involved the sale of 9 rare stamps (the

Nine Queens of the title). To say more would ruin the surprise;

there are even some nicely plotted references to Argentina's

current financial crisis which may hit just a little too close to home

for some. You won't see the travelogue Argentina; in fact it could

have been filmed in just about any Spanish-speaking city in the

entire world and been believable from a set perspective, the real

killer is the staccato dialogue who others have compared to

Mamet and Tarantino, for the non Argentinian Spanish speakers

the subtitles really don't do it justice. In any case, go see it, you'll

feel your pocket slowly being picked for the $13 admission, but

when it is this enjoyable, you really don't mind.

Boy, I am amazed that this is in the IMDB top 250. It just goes to

show you that film goodwill in the form of Episodes 4-6 is not

easily destroyed by a movie that panders to the smash-em/blow

them up school of filmmaking that we got so tired of in the 90s. I

for one remember the wonder of seeing Episode IV back in 1977

and being absolutely blown away by its technical innovation while

identifying wholeheartedly with Luke and Chewy and gang. Now

we get a script that could have been written by shredding pages of

a New Age tome and pasting them together at random (am I the

only one who winced at everything that Yoda said?) And I thought

some of the political discussions on Crossfire on CNN were tough

to follow--has anybody figured out why there's going to be a war in

the first place (Lucas felt it was important for us to know, he spent

the better part of 15 minutes of the movie describing it to us in

detail). A pretty good cast here is more wasted than a Spring

Break student after a bottle of tequila--especially Natalie Portman,

who I am a big fan of, from the Professional through to Beautiful

Girls. Just when you think there is going to be a reprieve from the

relentless assault of the CGI and effects (the setup for when Luke

ultimately ends up living with his aunt and uncle in Episode 4

being a good example), you get another comic book battle of

millions of drones who you don't know blowing each other up. I

can paraphrase Billy Shakespeare here...this movie is full of

sound and fury, but it signified nothing, and it left me having an odd

out-of body experience. I can summarize this movie's heart in

three words--Jar Jar Binks.

Man, I couldn't wait to see this movie. I am a huge fan of the

battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan and was hearing that Black

Hawk Down was SPR II. And Ridley Scott, the master of kinetic

direction, in league with the King of Kinetic movies Jerry

Bruckheimer, do deliver a big rock-em sock-em battle that had me

physically shell-shocked by the end of the movie. So why am I

pulling my endorsement punch a little? The problem, which many

others have identified, is that you really don't care about this battle

or the people that fought it because nothing is exposed very much.

If a bit more of the political background and the moral ambiguities

of the Somalia situation were laid out to us, and the bitter epilogue

played out more, I think we would have been more involved.

Another problem is the multi-person cast, none of whom are given

enough screen time to bond with the audience. I would have loved

to know a little more about that Delta Force spook who gets picked

up on his bicycle to start the movie; he epitomizes cool. And the

Somali warlord/power player was a total mystery to me as to why

he was even in the movie, although he sure was a character.

Once the battle scenes start, it's tough to tell the players without a

program, the only faces I even recognized in the middle of all the

banging and explosions was Tom Sizemore (since I loved him in

SPR) and Josh Hartnett, because he is supposed to be the

Sensitive Soldier. And the Somalis were like the Germans in the

old WWII movies, just cannon fodder for the M-16s. Still, if you like

a big testosterone movie where Everything Gets Blowed Up Real

Good, I can't think of a better movie for you to see. See it in the

theatre (since I love Ridley Scott's movies, you should help

contribute to his billions) or on a really excellent DVD system in the

future.

Some critics have commented that Amelie is a portrait of an

unrealistic and fairy tale Paris, a Paris without the grime, the crime,

the racial divides. Know what? Don't care. Paris is also about

beauty, and Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, Latin Quarter, Austerlitz train

station et al never looked better than in Amelie. And the beauty in

the heart of Amelie, the chronic loner and outsider who yearns to

make a difference in people's lives (and ultimately affects her

own)is even more affecting than Paris in the sun. The meanies

get their comeuppance, the lonely hearts find warmth, the

disconnected re-connect, and for an all too brief 2 hours in the

winter, we are transplanted into a wonderful movie land. And I for

one are extremely happy about it. Highly recommended.

A dangerous, fugitive enemy running away in mountainous terrain from a massive army bent on tracking him down and killing him...hmmm...during these patriotic times it is impossible to miss the irony of this theme. It's no secret why this movie was supposedly moved up from a January release. And for a non-American, the flag-waving can get a bit much, but overall this movie, when it sticks to its narrow aims of delivering a taut chase thriller with lots of blow-em-up scenes, mainly achieves its aims. I had to double check the director--I thought Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott from Top Gun was doing a sequel, right down to the CSI-type of "what happened here based on the current evidence" flashbacks. We've seen it all before--Uncommon Valour, another Gene Hackman device comes to mind--but I thought the choice of Owen Wilson was not a bad one--he is not physically menacing like a Schwarzenegger so he draws quite a bit of empathy as a Mr. Everyman thrown into heroic circumstances. And I must say the art direction of a grey and destroyed Bosnia was quite good, as was the casting of authentic Eastern Europeans in the Serbian (?) role--the Tracker dude in particular was convincingly menacing. I would have liked a little fleshing out of the politics of the conflict, but let's face it--the bad guys are really bad, the higher-up politicos are slime, and the good guys must win in the end. See it on the big screen, get a big bag of popcorn, and promptly forget about it 30 minutes after you leave the theatre.

The trailer for the movie expected me to see the standard American movie formula; namely the typical shoot-em up blow em up waste of money that you usually see these days. Well, except for the ending which I found to be totally implausible, I was engaged and thinking (albeit not that hard) throughout the movie, which these days should be considered a victory. I thought the timing particularly after September 11th to help my appreciation of the film, that there are "enemies of the state" out there, and that there probably are covert actions and double dealing of the type that is dealt with here, although I suspect that most of the activity that happened to Redford and Pitt throughout the movie may have been experienced by a whole cadre of agents. Redford in particular I thought was effective as the jaded cynical old fox who brings all his skills to bear to help out his protege. The whole substory about Beirut was very well done; you almost felt like you were there, and the suicide bombings really hit home hard. I spent a precious ten minutes figuring out where I'd seen Pitt's girlfriend from; she's Mel Gibson's first lover in Braveheart; very good here I thought for a small role. All in all, you could do worse than plunk down (gasp!) $12.90 here in Canada to watch it on the big screen.

My all-time favourite movie; I've easily seen it 50 times. The story of two lovers joined by fate who are caught in the middle of the tumult of the Russian revolution, and the people who come into and out of their lives is about as grand and sweeping an epic as has been made in Hollywood. The adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel takes its essence and presents it in such a glorious panorama of sounds and sights that it takes your breath away. Some great scenes for me personally--the schoolboys being mowed down in the field of wheat, Julie Christie in the red velvet dress waiting for Komorovsky, the famous ice palace, the funeral on the barren plain to open the movie, and of course the much-maligned final meeting of Lara and Zhivago. The dialogue is memorable because it is so sparing, and the musical score which became so famous during the 60s ties the film together. It's hard to believe that Julie Christie was only 24 when she made this movie; she convincingly ages from 17 to 40. Geraldine Chaplin as Zhivago's wife gives a terrific performance as to the counterpoint to the romance of the two leads. And of course Rod Steiger as Komorovsky seethes with anger, dissolution, disillusionment and cynicism--the dark side counterbalancing the light. I can hardly wait for the DVD version coming out in a month or so!

Well, after finally seeing Captain Corelli's Mandolin here in North

America (I noticed it was playing in France in June), I must say I

was very disappointed. I was hoping for an English Patient kind of

romance and got instead Moonstruck Moves to Greece. Nicholas

Cage is horribly miscast as the free-spirited captain, Penelope

Cruz is obviously gorgeous to look at, but doesn't quite hit the

emotional high notes that say, Kristin Scott Thomas did as the

woman torn between two lovers. At the end, I felt I had seen a

National Geographic documentary on the Greek Islands (beautifully shot by John Toll who also did Legends of the Fall and

Braveheart), but not too much else. Some nice touches of the

war-is-hell message, but at the end, not very satisfying.

This was one colossal waste of time. Some unbelievably good

make-up (was that Tim Roth under that General Thade monkey-face?) and costumes (more cool leather outfits than a

motorcycle jamboree) and art direction were thrown away on a plot

that could have been written by the proverbial 1 million

chimpanzees with typewriters and infinite time. Wahlberg just

doesn't have the majesty of Heston in the original, and comes

across as a teenager locked in the monkey cage of the zoo after

dark. Estella Warren may show someday that she can act, but you

could have placed any supermodel in her role (my vote is Heidi

Klum...but I digress) and had no ill effect on the movie. A pure

money grab for the spin-off ape dolls and the inevitable sequel. I

just got the impression that there were a lot more connecting

scenes that were lopped off in the interests of time (let's hope so,

anyway, otherwise Tim Burton's slipped on a major banana peel).

The DVD may give us clues, but in the meantime, save this one for

the discount Tuesday...

This is my favourite French movie of all time. The cycle of life and death, as symbolized at the wedding at the end while one of the characters visits the cemetary, is so poetically portrayed in this movie. Nobody is crudely and simply drawn here--you understand motivation, human nature, and the capacity for both good and evil that exists in all of us. The film would also be an excellent travelogue of Provence, and its slow, deliberate pacing enables you to envelop yourself in a story that unveils itself in its own sweet time. Even though Daniel Auteil's character was supposed to be evil, his love for Manon was so heartbreakingly portrayed you couldn't help but feel for him. And of course what can be said about Yves Montand--he can say more with one raised eyebrow on that great wrinkled face than Bruce Willis can mumble in an entire movie...the highest recommendation for both Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring

I was struck by the documentary quality of this film, and couldn't help but look back to an earlier Peterson film, Das Boot, where we got up close and intimate with all the crew of the submarine--where they slept, went to the washroom, their soaking wet clothes, the damp, the stink of unwashed clothes, the claustrophobia on board. I had absolutely no trouble believing that Mark Wahlberg and Clooney were fishermen, trying to earn a hardscrabble living against a tough and unforgiving sea. The movie even starts slowly, giving the viewers insights into their lives at home, why they fish, and why they make the decisions later on in the movie. Then the film starts to slowly build the tension as the storm builds in strength. The special effects were absolutely believable, and Peterson piles on the tension even while breaking it up by adding a parallel rescue at the same time as the Andrea Gail begins to run into trouble. An excellent summer thriller that is a real roller coaster ride--literally and figuratively--on water.

Gladiator is in the top 3 best "Roman" movies I have seen--and I have seen them all--along with Ben Hur and Spartacus. Many people talk about the opening battle in Germania, but to me the highlight was the Carthage gladiator battle in the middle. Russell Crowe is going to be hotter than those flaming balls of oil. The production values were superb, and I just cannot conceive of any film coming up this year beating Gladiator in all the technical aspects--Art Direction, Cinematography, Costumes, Score (I HAVE to get that CD!!), Film Editing, Visual Effects, and Sound. Anyone who doesn't see it in the theatre is nuts (and I have a vested interest in hoping this does well so we get some more blood and sand epics like this one!). Long live Gladiator!