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Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Billion Dollar Brain - A Review
"Billion Dollar Brain" is the third installment of the Harry Palmer series and it doesn't work at all. Unlike film directors Stephen Furie and Guy Hamilton, Ken Russell seems to want this movie to be a put-on of the previous Harry Palmer movies. While there is nothing wrong with spoofing any film (Airplane!, for instance, was a wonderful spoof of disaster films), the put-on works against the film when the jokes and the embellishments fail to generate any laughs. In fact, the Harry Palmer series was more humorous when the actors played their roles straight. For instance, one of the best parts of the series had been the relationship between secret service boss Ross ( Guy Doleman) and secret agent Harry Palmer (played by Michael Caine). Ross was distant, witting, and hardly ever lets his affection for Palmer show. As a result, Ross is the ideal person for Harry Palmer to rebel against and make sarcastic quips to -- leading to some of the series' funnier moments. Yet in "Billion Dollar Brain" that tension is lost, partly because Ross does not take himself too seriously anymore and partly because Ross and Palmer appear to be on the same side. This is not what we want to see? Instead, we want to witness class warfare (of the cold war variety) between these two men, which that was one of the reasons why the series was so much fun.
But that is not the movie's only problem. The biggest flaw with "Billion Dollar Brain" is that Ken Russell repeatedly interrupts the unfolding of the plot to put in scenes of a Turkish sauna, a painting of naked women, Harry Palmer spending hours with drunk Latvians plotting revolution, and a whole host of other boring situations. Of course, interrupting the plot is not necessarily fatal to a movie provided that the scenes are funny or entertaining. Yet as with Casino Royale (1967), which tried to spoof James Bond, the scenes are boring and just accumulate and you are waiting for them to end and for the movie's plot to resume. Unfortunately, Ken Russell never learned his lesson because he relies on the same film techniques (usually done in excess) for "The Devils," "Music Lovers," and then "Mahler."
To be sure, "Billion Dollar Brain" is not all bad. Ed Begley's performance as General Midwinter who is plotting to start World War III by unleashing a biological attack on the Soviet Union (with eggs!) is a ray of sunshine, but he is brought in near the end and not given much screen time. When the movie finally ended, I asked myself, "What really happened here?" It turns out not very much, because most of the movie was about anything other than the plot just as Casino Royale (1967) was about putting a spoof of James Bond through situations that were irrelevant and a sideshow to that movie's plot.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Usual Suspects: A Conman's Tale
There are two ways to interpret the "Usual Suspects." The first way is as a whodunit. At the start of the movie, gang violence breaks out in the harbor, even though the motivation for the violence is a profound mystery. Was the violence connected to the drug trade? The Argentines and Hungarians were no strangers to illegal narcotics, but there was no "coke on that boat." Was the mysterious criminal overlord Kaiser Soze involved and, if so, then who is Kaiser Soze? Agent Kujan tries to find the answers to all these questions by conducting an interrogation of the lowlife survivor Verbal Kent (Kevin Spacey). Verbal then tells an epic saga about how he and his companions MacManus (Stephen Baldwin), Fenster (Benecio del Toro), Hockney (Kevin Pollack), and Dean Keaton (Gabriel Bryne) got involved with Kaiser Soze and were forced to do his bidding. Finally, the movie builds up to a blinding revelation on how the real Kaiser Soze is.
Yet watching the "Usual Suspect" more recently, I found myself entertained by the movie for another more subtle reason: the "Usual Suspects" is really about how the Verbal conned the police and even late film critic Roger Ebert with a story that is overly complicated and detailed. Ebert claimed, "Verbal lives up to his name by telling a story so complicated that I finally gave up trying to keep track of it" - adding that the film is an exercise in "manipulation." The interesting thing about this criticism is that it is partly right. Manipulation is the central theme of the movie, but the person doing the manipulation is Verbal rather than the screenwriter. Moreover, the story is too complicated, but that's what makes the "Usual Suspects" so much fun.
When watching the movie again, I was asking myself why Verbal was painting Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) as good man getting sucked into the criminal world - even though Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) insisted that Keaton was a "cold blooded." Was Agent Kujan blinded by his hatred of Keaton to the extent that he could see the good in him? Or was Verbal manipulating Kujan into focusing all his attention on Keaton so that Kaiser Soze's identity would remain a secret? As I watch these scenes again, I suspect that Keaton was a "cold blooded" and that Verbal was aware of this fact. Therefore, Verbal's insistence that the contrary was true was probably a con.
Another question that entered my mind was whether Verbal would have even mentioned Kaiser Soze, if he was not prompted into doing so by Agent Kujan. It's important to emphasize that Verbal was about to pin all the violence at the harbor on a "lawyer." Only after Agent Kujan burst into the office and asked about Kaiser Soze, was the "lawyer" transformed into the middleman for the mysterious criminal overlord himself.
Yet despite Verbal's inventive storytelling, the "Usual Suspects" does leave us with some clues which imply that not everything is what it seems. At the beginning, Verbal claims that he came up with the plan to steal money and jewels from a smuggling ring (run by police officers) without killing anybody. But in a later scene, Verbal murders the criminal boss Sol. Why does Verbal go from a conman who wants to avoid violence to a murderer? The same question applies to the "good man" MacManus. MacManus does not kill anybody when he is robbing money and jewels from the police-run smuggling run. Yet, MacManus in a later scene joins Verbal in the violence by murdering Sol's bodyguards. This critical scene implies is that Verbal, MacManus, Fenster, Dean Keaton, and Hockney are already doing murders for Kaiser Soze.
If Verbal and his three partners-in-crime were already killing for Kaiser Soze earlier than previously thought, then the scenes which follow are probably inventions. The meeting with the lawyer never happened, because it would have been unnecessary. Fenster never died, because there was no reason to kill him. Similarly, the confrontation between Verbal, MacManus, Keaton, and Hockney on the one hand and the lawyer on the other hand probably never happened either. After all, by that time, these criminals were already recruited into Soze's death squad. Verbal's claim that he and his partners in crime were tricked into thinking that they were stopping a drug deal was probably fictional too, because by then they would have already realized that they were doing murders for Kaiser Soze.
In other words, as one thinks about these contradictions, Verbal's motivations, and other interesting plot details, this film becomes much deeper than previous thought. Some might think that all this information is unnecessary and does not accumulate, but in fact it is important in terms of showing what a brilliant conman Verbal is!
Toward the end of the movie, one wonders whether Verbal's elaborate con was a success. While the "Usual Suspects" creates the impression that Verbal somehow triumphed, my view is that the triumph is a hollow one and that Verbal failed to do what he set out to do. But this is one of many questions I will let the viewers figure out for themselves.
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Will the Real Mr. Ripley Please Stand Up?
Anthony Mingella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a great film not as an entertainment, because of the different ideas it explores. The movie suggests in subtle ways that protagonist Tom Ripley (played by Matt Damon) might not be Tom Ripley at all. Instead, the protagonist has been impersonating different people for so long that his true identity has been lost somewhere in the distant past. The protagonist appears at the beginning of the film as a pianist playing alongside a female opera singer. He introduces himself to wealthy shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf as "Tom Ripley" from Princeton University, but how can we trust anything this young man says? The protagonist is not a pianist enrolled Princeton and therefore it is not a stretch for him to lie about his name as well. Furthermore, the female operate singer is unlikely to challenge the lie. She is covering up for her fellow musician (probably the real Tom Ripley) who for reasons that are unknown to us is unable to make it to the concert recital.
Consequently, this movie is really about a person who is a mystery in plain sight. The protagonist's name and origins are mysterious, because he is convinced that his own worth is inextricably linked to membership in the exclusive social circles of the super rich. And throughout this movie, we see the protagonist adopt different personas and assume greater risks as he tries to convince everyone that he has blue blood running through his veins.
It is tempting to write off Matt Damon's character as an outlier, given his penchant for violence and talent for pretending to be different characters. Yet this film and Patricia Highsmith's novel might be making a statement about our society. We live in a world of Tom Ripley's or, to put the matter more crudely, phony people. They are the employees and managers in corporations who pretend to appear smarter than they are in order to secure promotion. They appear in bureaucracies and political parties. As politicians rise to the top, they end up living in the land of the platitude. Lastly, there is no shortage of individuals who want to associate with celebrities and the amazingly wealthy in order to elevate their own status. And the overriding motivation for this superficiality is because many people are so insecure about themselves that, at a deeper level, they want to convince outsiders that they are someone else.
Therefore, even though "The Talented Mr. Ripley" comes across as entertaining fantasy, it is also surprisingly familiar. Among the exclusive social circles of the Ivy League elites and the wealthy, an artificial distance is created between these circles and the outsider. Outsiders are made to less worthy, because they do not share in the same status and social norms of the people born into wealth, educated in the best schools, and in possession of privileged networks. The feelings of exclusion and rejection bred by these inclusive social circles are a recurring theme in literary works, such as "Marriage of Figaro", "The Great Gatsby" novel, and Patricia Highsmith's "The Talent Mr. Ripley" (which uses the glittering world of wealth and privilege as the backdrop to murder and impersonation) and are still relevant in the present day. Since the theme of exclusive social circles and snobbery is so familiar, we are almost tempted into taking a rooting interest in the protagonist without a name and his social climbing efforts.
Ludwig (1973)
Ludwig: Movie Review
Lasting for more than four hours, film director Luchino Visconti's "Ludwig" is an exhausting and unrelentingly gloomy film on the life of Bavarian king Ludwig II "the Mad." There is interesting subject matter to work with here. Ludwig's mania for Wagnerian operas and then castles resulted in him bankrupting his kingdom. Then he was forced to abdicate and seek treatment in an insane asylum, where he died along with his psychiatrist under mysterious circumstances.
Nevertheless, Visconti succeeds in making the life of Ludwig II (Helmut Berger) boring. No one can deny Visconti's artistry and attention to detail, but that is a significant reason for the film's problems. There are too many long and slow-moving scenes of Ludwig's coronation, his enigmatic conversations with Elizabeth of Austria (Romy Schneider), Richard Wagner and his operas, penetrating glances at attractive males, and so on which not appear to signify anything other than that they are events in Ludwig's life. Worse still, the film's details just accumulate rather than pay off. I have no idea why it was necessary to show that many Wagnerian operas or to show Wagner performing music for his mistress, Cosima. Equally perplexing was the scripted narration about Bavaria's lost war with Prussia, which was mentioned once and never again. We never fully grasp why these events are important, because their consequences are never made clear.
Visconti explained in an interview that his film was intended as an indictment of aristocratic power and more specifically its ability to impoverish the masses for the sake of satisfying the king's mania for opera houses and castles. Fair enough. Yet the problem is that we only see how Ludwig is affected by his own mania for operas and castles. Despite being a Marxist, Visconti left out the most important character in his story: the Bavarian people who had to shoulder the financial burden of Ludwig's building schemes. As a result, "Ludwig" has no short of scenes of Bavaria's mad king living in damp and gloomy castles or being swindled out of a small portion of his fortune by one favorite or the other. Yet nowhere in this movie do we see the oppression of the proletariat or any other outsiders. Visconti's decision to show a king living almost completely isolated from the rest of the world undercut his stated reason for making the movie.
This film also does not work on the level of generating sympathy for Ludwig himself. Sure, he is being swindled and manipulated by favorites. Yes, he looks absolutely miserable most of the time living in the midst of this gloomy luxury. But he had a choice. He decided to have a life filled with gloomy decadence.
The strength of "Ludwig" lies in the masterful movement of the film camera and the elegant and sumptuous visuals. No one can deny that Visconti was working at the peak of his ability and succeeded in creating a whole new world. He also achieved this feat without the high-tech special effects which we take for granted together. Yet even the most gorgeous visuals fail to have much of an impact on an audience, if they are not wedded to an involving story. Few people can film a coronation scene as skillfully as Visconti did, but that does not change the fact that a never-ending coronation scene is uninteresting. Few people could also illustrate the ostentatious luxury of 19th century Bavaria or Ludwig's own emotional and psychological deterioration in a gilded prison. Yet once again, these scenes lack power when no reasons are given to sympathize with Ludwig or attach importance to his actions.
Passengers (2016)
Passengers: A movie with great special effects, but no story
When I saw "Passengers" for a lark, two things occurred to me. The special effects inside and outside of the spaceship look amazing, such as the interiors of the shape-ship, the internal machinery, the robots equipped with artificial intelligence, and the breathtaking pictures of space. The film also has two good-looking and likeable actors: Chris Pratt as Jim Prentice and Jennifer Lawrence as Aurora. It even has Laurence Fishburne to bring some gravitas and show up just in time to explain what is wrong with the spaceship.
As the film developed, however, I kept asking myself, "Where is the story?" $150 million was spent to create a whole new world and pay the salaries of some highly talented actors. Yet more than an hour into the movie, I developed this sinking feeling that there was not going to be any story beyond the dull plot formula used in rom-com movies. The formula (for those unfamiliar with romantic comedies) is boy meets girl, boy develops a hot and heavy romance with girl, boy almost loses girl over a secret, and boy gets back with girl by doing something heroic. That's basically the plot of this movie dressed up with some colourful special effects.
The frustrating thing about "Passengers" is that film director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Jon Spaihts did not try to make a film that could been superior to a run-of-the-mill rom com formula. They had the resources to make a great film: $100+ million. They also had great actors: Academy-awarding winner Jennifer Lawrence, Laurence Fishburne (who delivered a brilliant performance in Boyz n' the Hood), and Chris Pratt. Yet this winning combination did not produce a winning movie, because no effort was made the develop a good screenplay to make the most of these actors' talents and the great special effects.
The Accountant (2016)
The Accountant
The first forty minutes or so of "the Accountant" are interesting. As someone on the autism spectrum, I can say that Ben Affleck does a competent job at depicting Chris, an accountant who is capable of great feats of financial wizardry and yet is socially inept due to his autism. Moreover, the set up with Chris working for some of the most evil people on the planet (after all, even villains need superb accounting services ) is amusing.
Yet the movie does not work because of one fatal mistake: the filmmakers decided to make Chris into an action star and put him in a generic action picture. What I would have liked is a movie about how someone with highly functioning autism could navigate the real world, create networks, and maintain highly lucrative working relationships with drug cartels, terrorists, and other truly dangerous characters. He could succeed in this world not through violence, but by using his brilliant gifts and tendency to be loyal to gain the respect even of his most unsavory clients. A plot like that could have plenty of funny and witty dialogue and hilarious scenes which make the most of contrasting an autistic person with the personalities of hardened criminals.
Yet any possibility of doing something truly creative with this material was thrown away in favor of a purely formulaic plot. What a shame! The only scenes I liked were between Chris and Dana (Anna Kendrick), but sadly they get little screen time together and the action scenes take over. Then the filmmakers appear to cynically hedge their bets by showing a home for autistic children in order to reassure us that "The Accountant" is not an action picture really; but instead is delivering a heartfelt message that autistic people are unique human beings. This message comes across as phony because it is so incongruous with the rest of the movie. In short, "The Accountant" had interesting possibilities, but it sadly did not make the most of any of them.
Viaje al centro de la tierra (1977)
When Time Began: A Review
I am perplexed by some of the critics who claim that "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" (1959) was a great classic and the Spanish version falls short of the mark. In truth, this obscure version handled the story as well as could be expected -- even though 21st century breakthroughs with digital media obviously could have done something to make the dinosaurs and King Kong look more genuine.
The 1959 version was filled with childish situations and bad acting, ranging from Pat Boone's idiotic performance to James Mason doing a bad Scottish accent. The only interesting character in the whole film was Alrene Dahl, an attractive middle-aged woman with a independent personality.
"When Time Began" was a big improvement. The important thing to remember with these types of films is that many of the situations in them are ridiculous. It's ridiculous to think you can travel to the centre of the earth. It's even more ridiculous to think you can find dinosaurs there. Additionally, the 1959 version had a ridiculous scene where an erupting volcano lifted James Mason and his crew up to the surface. Don't you think they would have been burnt to a crisp before they even saw the mouth of the volcano?
But you're not supposed to ask questions like these, because the whole point of this film is to sit back and have fun. And on that basis, "When Time Began" is a lot more fun than the 1959 film. Two great reasons to see this film are Kenneth More's performance as the ambitious and dedicated scientist and Jack Taylor's performance as the mysterious and fascinating Olsen (who, it is inferred, might be the descendent of the first man to journey to the centre of the earth or some sort of alien being). These two actors not only create fascinating characters, but perhaps more importantly their characters seem right at home in the 19th century with their taboo attitudes. Taylor is a bit different, since he is both a 19th century man and also someone who appears to have a deeper understanding about what is going to happen in the future. Additionally, the sets look far more convincing than those of the previous film. You actually get a sense that these explorers are going down into caves, have reached an internal sea, have landed on an island with hostile tortoises, and have found a secret city. Are these sets the best ever? No, but they are an improvement over the sets of the 1959 film. Lastly, there are more interesting situations in this movie. I liked the beginning of this film where Professor Lindenbrook is talking to other academics first at a conference room and then at a huge Icelandic library. I liked the scene where they descend into the caves, the different kinds of dinosaurs, and Jack Taylor inject a bit more mystery and spice into this movie and the scientific profession.
So if you are looking for a fun version of this Jules Verne classic, this film is worth a gander. It's not the best by any means, but it is entertaining enough to inspire the imagination and hold your interest to the end.
The Greatest Showman (2017)
A Truly Horrible Night at the Movies
I decided for a lark to pick a movie at random with my buddy Chijindu and we decided to go see "The Greatest Showman." What a mistake!
"The Greatest Showman" was obviously intended as wholesome entertainment, but that only makes it a well-intended mess. The main problem with the film is that hardly any imagination went into creating a good story. The film largely replaces plot, dialogue, and character development with wall-to-wall special effects and loud and yet forgettable songs. Moreover, I can understand why the studio heads decided to jam in as many special effects and jarring songs into this picture as possible: the screenplay was rubbish and borrowed shamelessly from the plot formulas of a dozen other films. The scene where P.T. Barnum as a boy meets Charity comes straight out of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, which covers the subject of young love far more competently. Then midway through the movie, me and Chijindu called out the three plot formulas that determined the course of the rest of the film:
(1) The cliche of whether P.T. Barnum was going to embrace the snobbish aristocrats or stay true to the circus performers who made him famous.
(2) The conflict between an interracial romance and society's prejudices.
(3) The love triangle involving P.T. Barnum, an opera singer, and his wife.
As a result, this movie amounted to three half-baked plot formulas that were covered more capably in other movies. The screenplay also represents missed opportunities to explore some truly interesting areas. For instance, I would like to learn something about how P.T. Barnum and Phillip Carlyle ran their circus and managed costs. And maybe P.T. Barnum's circus could have gone on a number of extraordinary adventures all over the United States. But alas no, this film did not want to take advantage of any of these opportunities even though its ambitious budget certainly could have afforded it. The other problem with this movie is that while bigotry is one of its central themes, it is not handled in an intelligent and honest way. One of the film's unexplained conceits is that P.T. Barnum and Phillip Carlyle are virtually immune from any of the prejudices of their time and can see their world through 21st century eyes. By depicting Barnum and Carlyle in this post-modern light, the studio heads avoid the difficulties of explaining how these two characters dealt with the internal conflict between their prejudices and being exposed to the humanity of the circus performers.
To be sure, these reservations about the plot might not have weighed as heavily as they did if the wall-to-wall songs were any good. Unfortunately, the songs in "The Greatest Showman" do not belong to the tradition of great musicals. In Disney's "Little Mermaid," there was close collaboration between the people who wrote the lyrics and the people who set those lyrics to music. As a result, we still fondly remember Little Mermaid's songs like "Under the Sea." But no such collaboration took place here. Instead, what appears to have happened was that truly horrible lyrics were written and the composer had the thankless job of trying and failing miserably to set these lyrics to music. These songs are memorable only for how loud and embarrassing they are and I challenge anyone to be able to remember the tune to any of these songs -- and I bet they could not do it.
As a result, "The Greatest Showman" is a film with good character actors trapped in formulaic plot with terrible musical numbers. There are some brief moments of wonder, including some rare quiet moments where P.T. Barnum and Charity are talking with their daughters Helen and Caroline. But unfortunately those moments are completely overwhelmed by the awful musical numbers (which were clearly prerecorded and then lip synched on screen) and the absence of a great storyline. "The Great Showman," in a phrase, is anything but a great show.