Rating: [Rating:4/5]
Surrogates
October 18, 2009 by
Bruce Willis has spent a lot of his career kicking in doors, but I bet this is the first time he’s had to do it just to get his wife out of bed. Surrogates is a disturbing story of man kind’s dependence on technology and susceptibility to control by fear.  In the not-too-distant future, mid-Sunday A.D., 98% of all humans live vicariously through life-like robots. They lie in chairs that look like the offspring of a La-Z-Boy and a virtual reality entertainment center (“stem chairs”), and rarely leave their homes. Their work, and all other interaction, is done by their “surrogates,†androids connected to their brain stems.
You may, of course, choose your own “surry.†You can be whatever gender, race, body type, or hair color strikes your fancy. It’s sort of a universal Stepford Wives. You see what your surry sees, and feel what it feels (except the pain, of course).
In the future, all murder scenes will look like this.
Needless to say, the casting crew had their work cut out for them on this one, even by Hollywood standards, searching for enough perfect-faced, perfect-bodied people to fill out the future streets full of sculpted robots. These, of course, are to be contrasted with the recluses controlling them from home, who have really let themselves go. Willis plays Tom Greer (and his surrogate), an FBI agent whose wife refuses to even set foot outside her bedroom “in the flesh.â€
Greer plugs into a stem chair.
Greer has bigger problems, however, because early in the movie, what starts as a routine vandalism investigation (below), soon appears to be a double homicide – the first two homicides in the western world in several years. It seems that someone has developed a weapon capable of sending a signal through a surry that not only destroys the surry, but liquefies the brain of the user.
Robocop meets CSI. Got enough crackers for all that cheese?
The initial theory is that this is subversive action by “Dreddies,†members of a colony where surrogates are outlawed. The Dreddies follow the leadership of “The Prophet†(Ving Rhames, below), claim sovereignty over a small patch of ground, and spurn all advanced technology, using horses and buggies, and the like.
Ving Rhames, trying way too hard.
In chasing his man, Greer narrowly survives, and has his surry destroyed. The FBI takes him off the case and refuses to issue him a new one. Now, for the first time in years, he must leave his home and track the killer (you didn’t really think he’d obey his captain and stay off the case?) with only his own weak flesh at his command. His investigation takes him first to the Dreddie colony. But is The Prophet what he seems? (I’ll give you a hint: I brought it up.)
Would you tell this it wasn't your wife? Some guys are just never happy.
Willis could have earned a lot of kudos for this film if he’d allowed the makeup department to make his human self ugly. It appears however, that his agent fought not to lower his image one bit. Everyone else is hideous, giving a realistic portrayal of people who haven’t shaved, showered or brushed their teeth for several days. Willis’ acting is passable. His most memorable scene is probably one where he begs his wife, through the eyes of her surry, (Rosamund Pike) to let him see her again (above). The best acting in the movie is probably done by Rhada Mitchell, as the blond, buxom surry of Greer’s homely (work) partner, Peters. I say this because this surry is taken over by several different people in the course of the movie, so she’s always switching characters. She also gets a scene where she runs at incredible speed through the street, doing flips over cars, and so forth. Which raises a question that the movie never resolves: if the streets are now populated with super-strong, super-fast robots, why are there still so many cars?
It’s hard to say more without spoiling a decent flick. I’ll just say if you like sci-fi, or crime stories, Surrogates is worth a look. Not a classic, but exciting, involving and thought-provoking.
Rating: [Rating:3/5]
Land of the Lost
October 15, 2009 by
One of the worst moviegoing experiences I’ve endured this year has to be Brad Silberling’s 2009 bomb “Land of the Lost.” What a waste of talent, resources, time and budget (at $100 million). Now, I haven’t seen the classic TV-show. Subsequently, I have no basis for the film’s comparison, but I can’t imagine I would have been thrilled by the TV series after seeing the film, even if it is only vaguely reminiscent.
Will Ferrell continues his losing streak after “Semi-Pro,” “Step Brothers,” and now this botched movie. He plays Rick Marshall, a scientist with a theory involving multiple dimensions in the universe that meet in a distant space-time continuum. He explains that rather than time-travel moving forward and backwards, it moves side to side, creating a dimension where past, present and future collide at once.
The movie kicks off with a stranded astronaut being hunted by a T-Rex in this other dimension, which the movie never follows up on. After the title credit, Ferrell’s character Rick gets a brain slap and a boot of embarrassment from NBC Today’s Matt Lauer. Fast forward three years and Ferrell finishes his boombox time-warp machine that transplants him and two others in another dimension with dinosaurs, primate ancestors, and several other creatures. Rick shouts, “Matt Lauer can suck it.” Of course, Rick and friends must somehow prevent the disturbances of this other-world from resulting in planet Earth’s demise, and also find an exit from the alternate world to their own.
Humor is not the film’s strong suit, and Ferrell is constantly the brunt of sight gags that have him covering himself in dinosaur urine, consistently failing to outsmart a T-Rex, and idiotic banter with the primate. The special effects in the movie also wreak. The creatures and dinosaurs look terrible, and much of the action sequences fall apart. “Land of the Lost” would have been easier to forgive as a kid’s film, but with the profanity, sexual humor, drug-related scenes, and some scary creatures–it doesn’t exactly cater to youngsters. Regardless, the movie is really an exercise in wasted time and money. It’s one of the year’s worst films.
[Rating:0.5/5]
Glory Road
October 9, 2009 by
History has often shown us the power of sports to inflame people’s passions and sway their opinions. Hollywood, of course, wouldn’t miss a chance to cash-in on this fact. One such attempt is Glory Road.
The movie is a good illustration, however, of just how hard it is for movies to do what sports do. They rarely do anything to challenge our views, but rather reinforce our comfort in what we already assume. Ironically, they have a habit of acting as if they are saying something revolutionary. Consider, for instance, the end of Remember the Titans, from Jerry Bruckheimer, also the producer of Glory Road. The end of the film jumps to several years later, at a funeral, when the narrator, Sheryl Yoast, says “They say it can’t work, black and white. But when they do, we remember the Titans.†I found myself wondering “Just who are ‘they’?â€
Glory Road sets the same mood as Titans, starting off at about the same time (mid-sixties) when schools, and therefore sports, were generally segregated. Josh Lucas of Secondhand Lions becomes a white Denzel Washington as Texas Western’s head basketball coach. What do you call a white man surrounded by five black men?
Frustrated with the lack of good players who want to play for TW, Lucas’ Don Haskins combs the ghettos and recruits seven black players for the team. This gives rise to the film’s first really cheesy line: “I don’t see color; I see skill and I see quick.†In the predictable spirit of Titans, for the most part, all black schools and black basketball teams seem to disappear, so the unsympathetic characters are all white (although they meet one team with a few black players midway through the movie). They win consistently, until the black players, angry over a graffiti incident, refuse to pass to the white ones, resulting in the season’s only loss. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, Haskins decides to play only black players in the national championship game, and they go on to narrowly beat the all-white Kentucky team. So the question becomes, is Bruckheimer trying to convey the message that he was in Titans that the discipline brought on by working through racial tension builds strength, or is he simply saying that black guys play basketball better than white guys?
Either way, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. It’s never been any secret that competitive basketball became widely black as skill began to show through prejudice, and then became almost exclusively black when television took over and skill took a backseat to image. Ironically, the film has to establish a mentor-student relationship. Consequently, there are a few scenes of Haskins schooling black players on the court.
Let’s look at some of Hollywood’s other efforts to cross-breed sports and race. In 1992, The Mighty Ducks was released. A hot shot attorney (Emilio Estevez) is caught driving drunk and has to do the community service of coaching a washed-up athletic team from a poor district. In the tradition of Hollywood happy endings, he turns the team around completely and they win the league championship. At the championship, they meet the team that haunts Estevez’s memory – his childhood team, sponsored by a wealthy district. The players on this team are all essentially identical to one another, forming a single character more than a team of individuals. The Ducks, conversely, represent a schmorgasboard of cultures and personalities and provide the colorful characters that every movie needs (and that sports teams tend to suppress for unity).
It was no accident, of course, that Disney chose the sport of hockey as a setting for this story. It was the only sport where the “bad†team could be all white with any credibility. Once hockey was used up, Little Giants and The Big Green couldn’t present quite the same hegemony. I always looked forward to a similar movie about basketball. It figures that when one finally came, it would be set in the sixties.
I’ve been around the block enough that I’m comfortable saying a lot of black people will not find Glory Road particularly inspiring. Average black people have often complained  that the most athletic members of their culture hog the spotlight, leading their young men away from solid careers in a hopeless bid for stardom.                                                              
To round out my perspective I rented another basketball movie, Coach Carter, which addresses exactly that concern. Quite different from Road’s images of grandeur and triumph, Coach Carter ends with crushing defeat – on the court. But the epilogue shows success in much more important areas. Coach Carter is also more fun, because the team has a token white guy.
Here’s an idea for a basketball movie that would follow the standard formula, and would be a lot more fun. Start with a black coach in a ghetto neighborhood. Have him get pegged as an “Oreo,†or otherwise ostracized from the community. So he has to put his team together from neighborhoods outside his own. Naturally, this would involve including some white, Asian, and Hispanic members. Throw a few women onto the team just to shake things up. When his team goes up against a district full of all black, all male teams, no one would expect them to win – but hey, it’s a movie! Now you just need to figure out a way for the fate of the universe to hang on the championship game, and you’re set.
Can a basketball game really change the world? If it does, count on Hollywood to pretend they got there first. Perhaps the line from the Texas Western assistant coach rings true: “This is just proof that knuckle heads come in all shapes, sizes and colors.â€
[Rating:1.5/5]
Taken
September 26, 2009 by
Here is the entire premise of Taken (which, incidentally, is not unlike the premise of a Mario Bros. video game):
Girl gets kidnapped. Dad goes to save her.
While some movies would take that simple yet classic idea and slap on a host of possibly-gratuitous extras like a wisecracking sidekick, romantic subplots, globetrotting, backstabbing, and twist endings, Taken does one thing and one thing only, and that is to fulfill the expectations of its thesis. Surprisingly enough, it not only works but works very well, thanks in large part to an incredible performance from Liam Neeson as the father, Bryan Mills, who is desperate to save his daughter.
Penned by the brilliant Luc Besson (whose writing credits include Leon, The Fifth Element, and Taken’s spiritual predecessor The Transporter), the script succeeds marvelously because it provides such a unique and pure motive for Mills. His daughter Kim, played by the capable but unremarkable Maggie Grace, is kidnapped not by drug kingpins for ransom, or by an old comrade bent on revenge for a past wrongdoing, or by a shadowy corporation who is using her as leverage in order for him to do their bidding. Instead she is taken by a group of human traffickers who are in the business of selling young girls as prostitutes to the highest bidder. This not only lends a great deal of weight and seriousness to the subject matter of the movie, but provides an emotional engagement for the viewers unlike most movies of this type.
Bowser and Princess Peach? Almost...
In some ways, watching Taken is like watching an extended episode of 24. Mills, a highly trained government agent who has retired in order to live closer to his estranged family, makes Jack Bauer look like Rainbow Brite. He punches, kicks, jumps, shoots, and drives his way through so many people on the way to rescuing Kim that the body count would provably rival that of Commando. Mills is ruthless, like his CTU-based counterpart, but the consequences of failure are greater, from an emotional standpoint, than the apocalyptic scenarios portrayed so often in 24. However, Mills and Bauer (along with hundreds of action stars before them) obviously went to the same bullet-avoidance training seminar, as dozens of pistol- and uzi-wielding foot soldiers are capable of inflicting anything more than a papercut, even at point blank range.
The cinematography, like most action movies since the early part of the decade, follows the Jason Bourne playbook to a tee: cuts are fast and frantic, action is dimly-lit, and fistfights are more editing than choreography. This style works well here, and doesn’t have the nauseating side effects of some other action movies. An interrogation scene is thrown in almost as an afterthought, but mercifully is nowhere near as wince-inducing the one in Casino Royale.
Who would win in a fight between Chuck Norris and Bryan Mills? Honestly, it would be close.
All the comparisons to other movies and TV shows are necessary when reviewing Taken because, although it is a very good film with a solid and emotionally engaging plot, a hero with whom we can empathize, and a enough action to satisfy any Die Hard or Lethal Weapon fan, it brings nothing new to the table and ends up being something of a “greatest hits” collection of the best its predecessors in the genre have to offer. Perhaps the biggest surprise it does have, though, is Liam Neeson. He has always been one of my favorite actors–a classy person who picks great roles, like Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts–but I have never seen him quite like this. He is entirely convincing as Mills, and pulls off the high-speed action this film requires without missing a beat. While others could have played the role, Neeson became the role, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Kingdom of Heaven
September 17, 2009 by
With America’s eyes turning toward the battle for Rifqa Bary in Florida, it seemed fitting to pull this one out of the vault. Americans are famously clueless about history, but especially so when it comes to the history of Islam and Christianity. When I was in Bar Exam preparation, the lecturer, who was your typical American WASP, aparently felt the need to vent concerning the Crusades. He said the kings and knights went off to “teach Christianity to the heathens†in the Middle East, and how they completely destroyed the “Islamic Culture†there “that had existed for thousands of years.†He then went back to legal matters, but many listening had no doubt been entrenched more deeply in very popular and very dangerous misconceptions. Circumstances prevented me from addressing him directly, but I would have liked to point out that, at the time of the Crusades, “Islamic culture†had existed for about 400 years (Christianity, for the record, had been around for about 1000), that the Crusades had nothing to do with converting anyone or teaching anyone anything, but were about reclaiming territory and securing safe pilgrimages for the already faithful, and that they had hardly been unprovoked.
Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005) is one of many films about the Crusades. It does succumb to many of the same misconceptions of past films, but represents an improvement. One review commented that the Muslims in the film were put in a surprisingly positive light. The surprise for me was that the Christians were not portrayed as completely barbaric, as tends to be the habit of Hollywood. For instance, the Kevin Coster version of Robin Hood (1992) introduced a new character in Hazeem, a Muslim who follows Robin to England from Jerusalem (Morgan Freeman). Through Hazeem, Muslims get undeserved credit for all kinds of advances in science, including gunpowder, which came from ancient China, telescopes, which were invented in Denmark in the 17th Century, and Cesarean section. Hazeem tends to be juxtaposed against Friar Tuck, a drunken, bumbling (albeit lovable) figure of Christianity. Worst of all, at one point, Robin Makes a speech, during which he declares “One man, fighting for his home, is more powerful than 10 hired soldiers!†He then looks over at Hazeem and says “The Crusades taught me that.â€
And so it goes. Throughout history, from the class room to the silver screen, Christianity is portrayed as having spread out violently from Europe, destroying the peaceful, environmentally sound cultures in its path. Will the real story ever be told?
Balian (Bloom) at the Battle of Kerak, courtessy of Wikipedia.
Kingdom of Heaven is a definite improvement. Most of the characters we get to know are on the Christian side. Most of them are admirable. The biggest surprise was that the movie portrayed Muslims, Christians and Jews as living peacefully side by side for much of the story. One knight tells the lead, Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) that his father, Grodfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson) kept Jerusalem as a place of prayer for all faiths, just as the Muslims did before them. (At least now both sides are equally misrepresented.) The villains of the story are Guy de Lusigan (Marton Csokas) and Reynald (Brendan Gleeson), two French knights who want to provoke a war with Syria. (Those who care to check out the DVD extras will notice the real Guy, at least, wasn’t so bad) They succeed about two thirds of the way through, which leads up to the climactic battle (which, I might add, is a great piece of film-making). We don’t see enough scenes on the Muslim side to really like or dislike them. We do see a brief shot of Saladin crying over the bodies of men slain in battle. We see a lot of shots of both sides shouting “God wills it!†as they move into battle.
In the book “Unveiling Islam,†Ergun Caner, a former Muslim, comments that this cry (Dues Volt! in Latin) was only adopted in Europe after centuries of raids and colonization by the Arabs. Other features of Islam seem to have rubbed off on Christians about this time. For instance, the teaching in Islam that one who dies in jihad automatically goes to paradise (Hadith 4:73, 9:93:555) seems to have been adopted by Pope Leo IV, when he promised forgiveness of sins to any who fought the Muslims.
Saladin attacks Jerusalem in a great battle scene.
The heroes of Kingdom tend to be those who acknowledge God’s authority but insist on using cool-headed reason to end conflicts. There is a priest in Christian Jerusalem who comments “thanks to religion, I’ve seen the lunacy of madmen in every denomination be called the will of God. The kingdom God desires is here (pokes Balian in the head) and here (pokes him in the heart).†This evenhanded film is probably characteristic of the post 9/11 era where Americans want to believe all religions are the same. Today, the media can’t seem to fathom that Muslim parents, who’ve cared for their daughter for 17 years, might kill her for apostacy. As she repeatedly told an interviewer, “you guys don’t understand!”
There are a number of battles in history that I have often wished someone would make a movie out of – battles that represent some of Christian Europe’s victories over the Jihad. For instance, the Battle of Tours (A.D. 732), where the French stopped a Muslim army that had pillaged its way across northern Africa and Spain, thus saving western civilization. Or the naval Battle of Lepanto (1571) that broke the Turks’ stranglehold on the Mediterranean and liberated thousands of slaves. Or the valiant defense of Constantinople, which resisted the Ottoman empire (which terrorized the world for about 500 years) for centuries. And then, of course, there were a series of battles late in WWI that marked the final destruction of the Ottomans and the liberation of the Serbs (who are now vilified as oppressors of Muslims). Today, we’re watching the story of a young potential martyr unfold from our livingrooms.
On one hand it seems like a pipe dream to hope that these stories will ever get the remembrance and celebration they deserve in the present climate. Americans can’t seem to fathom a time when western culture was in danger of being overrun.  Still, Kingdom of Heaven might be a step in the right direction. Maybe the next Ridley Scott will read this column. Time will tell.
[Rating:5/5]
Spiderman 3
September 11, 2009 by
Spiderman 3 is everything Spiderman 2 should have been: fast-paced, hard-hitting, and dazzling. While Spiderman 2 was a testament to just how little you can do with plot and philosophy, Spiderman 3 stands as a shining example of just how much can be accomplished with mindless entertainment.
Spiderman 2 tried to cram about 10 years worth of comic book storyline into two hours, and wound up with so many subplots that it couldn’t do any of them well. Case in point: J. Jonah Jamison’s two radical changes of heart about Spiderman, separated by about 10 seconds. Worse yet, it didn’t leave room for any action.
The kickoff to one of six stellar action sequences in Spiderman 3.
In Spiderman 3, there’s no shortage of action. Whether Spidey (Toby Maguier) is diving through cranes, or surfing behind a runaway armored car, the thrills keep coming. The writers did a good job of advancing Peter’s fighting skill from movie to movie. This one marks the first time he’s fired web bolts and used a few other tactics.
In between scampering over rooftops and shaking off impossible blows, the characters find a little time for 90210-ish sexual tension. Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) falls out of love with Peter, then in love with Harry Osbourne (James Franco), then he makes her… oh, who really cares? This is definitely a busy movie, but it never loses sight of the fact that it’s all about the action.
When you turn evil, you change your hair.
There are plenty of villains, too. Harry becomes the new Goblin (the great Willem Dafoe graces the screen once more in a hallucination). Topher Grace comes aboard as the sinister Venom, and Thomas Haden Church gives a grainy performance as the Sandman, one of those comic book characters who should probably never have come to the big screen.
Church’s acting is not exactly stellar, but then, he doesn’t have much of a character to work with. He’s an escaped convict who stumbles into a particle research zone, where he is somehow atomized without being killed. This enables him to turn into sand, and seems to make him invincible, although, he still winces and grimaces an awful lot when he fights Spiderman. The police suspect him of Uncle Ben’s killing, and that moment is revisited several times in the movie. After slugging it out at the final battle, he apologizes to Peter, after which Peter acknowledges having done terrible things himself and forgives him. Sandman then blows away as a cloud of sand, leaving us with no indication that he intends to give up his life of crime, and the question of why the ridiculous villain gets to survive for another movie, while Spiderman’s evil twin dies.
Oh, well. My friends and I talked for hours after this film debuted, and every
Perhaps no villain is more intimidating than the evil in one's self.
change we proposed raised problems of its own. Venom should have had a bigger role, but the film was too full as it was. Sandman could have been left out, but that would have ruined the two-on-two at the end. Sandman could have been pure evil instead of a sympathetic villain, but that takes a crucial moment out of Peter’s journey with the black costume. Heck, it was fine as it was.
A fourth movie is reportedly in the works. There is no mention of the Sandman returning, thank goodness. The two most popular picks seem to be the Lizard and Carnage, although if the filmmakers can get the rights to the Kingpin from Fox, that wouldn’t be a bad move. Note to Marvel Studios: I’m all for more web-slinging action, but for gosh sakes, keep the soap opera stuff out of it.
[Rating:2.5/5]
