Lessons of Darkness

The Rundown (2003): C+

So this is what Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia would have been like had it been made with a Hollywood budget and starred a wrestler-turned-actor. The Rundown, Peter Berg’s jokey action/adventure film about a buff bounty hunter (The Rock) sent to a rundown Latin American town called El Dorado to retrieve his boss’ wayward treasure-hunter son (Sean William Scott), is the kind of film that sounds worse the more you talk about it. Nonetheless, it’s still superior to the Rock’s previous (and subsequent) outings meant to cement his status as the next Schwarzenegger – who, surprisingly, makes a blink-or-you-miss-it torch-passing cameo. Like Midnight Run, The Rundown’s primary asset is the cantankerous relationship between the Rock and Scott, whose humorous bickering includes Scott mocking his ripped-bod captor with questions like “How often do you work out?” Unfortunately, the film’s wildly uneven pace and reliance on slower expository scenes has the unfortunate effect of diffusing the comedy that keeps the mundane CGI and wire work-enhanced fisticuffs engaging. Scott is in search of a legendary gold statue known as the Gato, much to the dismay of an exploitative jungle imperialist (Christopher Walken) who fears the Gato might be used by a group of rebels to empower the poor peasant population currently enslaved in his mines. In this respect, the Rock’s whirlwind ass-kicking can be seen as an act of Marxist heroism over capitalist exploitation – if, that is, you can take the film’s proletariat call-to-arms seriously after watching juvenile scenes involving monkeys dry-humping the Rock’s face and jokes about a handcuffed Scott needing to unzip his pants to pee. Rosario Dawson sleepwalks through her nothing role as a mysterious sidekick, and those looking for Walken’s one funny moment from the film’s TV commercials – in which he disbelievingly yells “Ow!” after a gun is shot out of his hand – will be disappointed to find that Berg chose a different, less funny take for the finished film. As with Walking Tall, the Rock’s character abhors guns, but unlike that lame-o rednexploitation remake, The Rundown breaks down for one brief climactic scene and lets the big guy have a little fun blasting anonymous soldiers with a shotgun. After all, the Rock is no candy ass….

Whoa is Envy

It's hard to believe that a film with Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Amy Poehler, Rachel Weisz, and Christoper Walken could stink as bad as Envy, but Barry Levinson has nonetheless pulled of this seemingly impossible feat. Check out my Slant magazine review for the bad news...

13 Going on 30 (2004)

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

Consider 13 Going on 30 as less a movie than a demo reel for Jennifer Garner, the energetic brunette beauty of TV’s Alias. In Gary Winick’s photocopy of Big and (to a lesser extent) Freaky Friday, Garner is Jenna Rink, a thirteen-year-old girl in 1987 suburban New Jersey who, through a birthday wish enhanced by some sparkly magic dust, miraculously leaves behind her unpleasant adolescence for a perfect adult life of fortune, fame, and fashion journalism at her favorite teen woman’s magazine, “Poise.” Trapped inside a mature, frequently skimpily clothed body, Jenna goes on shopping sprees and drinks piña coladas, but all’s not right in this fantasy world – as the teenage Jenna soon realizes, her 30-year-old self has accomplished her professional goals through greedy, spiteful backstabbing. What’s a young girl to do when she finds out she’s got everything she’s ever wanted except happiness? Put on some garish eye makeup, cue those ‘80s MTV hits and – gag me with a spoon – teach everyone that materialism isn’t nearly as important as family, friends, and true love.

Mr. Winick’s film, however, doesn’t really believe its own Pop Rocks-flavored platitudes. Despite its vilification of Jenna’s cutthroat best friend Lucy (a frighteningly gaunt Judy Greer) and surface condemnation of “Poise” magazine’s objectification of women, this morality tale hypocritically smears the very mascara it wears. From its candy-colored palette to its retro soundtrack of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” this wafer-thin trifle is the cinematic equivalent of the teen women’s magazines it supposedly wants to criticize for selling phony concepts of femininity. That Jenna will rebel against the shallow publishing business and eventually fall for the nerdy high school best friend (Mark Ruffalo) she shunned years earlier is pre-ordained from the film’s opening birthday party scene. But since our heroine’s triumphant high school yearbook-themed editorial makeover incorporates just as many suspect (if not downright dishonest) representations of ideal female teen-hood as Lucy’s competing ultra-heroin chic concept, it’s hard not to notice how this fairy tale fails to address – or willfully ignores – the ethical shortcomings of its glitzy journalistic milieu.

Even if the film’s moral compass seems terribly off-kilter, Garner is charming as the flummoxed Jenna, channeling her inner thirteen-year-old by awkwardly stumbling around her new apartment and squeamishly recoiling from her hockey player boyfriend’s “thingy.” Garner’s unreasonable goofiness occasionally makes Jenna seem six instead of thirteen, but the actress’ smile is infectious, and her buoyant presence is a relief given the supporting cast’s robotic performances (except for Andy Serkis, a.k.a. Gollum, as Jenna’s stressed-out boss). But like the impromptu dance routines that pepper 13 Going on 30’s unexceptional screenplay (by Cathy Yuspa, Josh Goldsmith, and Niels Mueller), this frivolous romance feels totally too choreographed.

Fiyah!

Is Dakota Fanning's popularity a sign of the apocalypse? The jury is still out, but there's no doubt that she's the most annoying child actor since Eight is Enough's Adam Rich. Ms. Fanning has a new film out - Tony Scott's revenge drama Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington - and at least she's mostly off-screen for the film's final two-thirds. Still, her absence doesn't greatly improve matters. My Slant magazine review provides the lowdown...

School Faze

With one month to go before graduation from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, I'm absolutely swamped with final papers/articles. Thus, I've had almost no time to watch any films (save for The Rundown, which I'll eventually get to reviewing) for fun. Nonetheless, I've been doing quite a bit of writing for Northern Colorado's premiere alternative weekly, Rocky Mountain Bullhorn, and they've been nice enough to let me reprint my reviews for their paper here on the site. The first batch can be found below.

Also below, I’ve got links to two new online reviews: my filmcritic.com review of Jim Jarmusch’s lightweight Coffee and Cigarettes, and a Slant magazine critique of the miserable The Punisher.

Time to get back to work…

Prepare for Punishment

I enjoyed Spider-Man, and I know I’m the only person in the country who really liked The Hulk, but man, what is Marvel doing? Daredevil was a joke, and the new version of The Punisher is so disastrous, it makes the 1989 Dolph Lundgren version look good. My review at Slant magazine details the wreckage.

A Drink and a Smoke

Jim Jarmusch finally returns, and this is all he's brought with him? Some coffee and cigarettes? As a wise rapper once said, "That don't sound too good, Bill Murray!"

Don't get that last line? Check out my disappointed filmcritic.com review of Coffee and Cigarettes for an explanation...

The Alamo (2004)

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

It would be too easy to just say “Forget The Alamo,” Disney’s new block-blunder about the 1836 battle for the Texas fort between Mexican conqueror Santa Ana’s army and an outnumbered group of American soldiers. But avoiding the film might not be a bad idea.

Were The Alamo’s outcome ever in doubt, a measure of anticipation and surprise might have helped mask the mechanical construction of John Lee Hancock’s ungainly debacle. Unfortunately, while designed to elicit sympathy and reverence for the brave souls who lost their lives attempting to protect The Alamo from the invading Mexican horde, the finished film – after a well-publicized rocky road to the screen – turns out to be an example of shamelessly manipulative mythmaking. A familiar if clunky tale of courage in the face of insurmountable odds, it willfully forgoes historical accuracy or narrative believability. Add in a little semi-covert racism, and what you have is a would-be epic that comes dangerously close to making the wrong kind of history.

In the interests of dramatic convenience, Hancock unfailingly relies on black-and-white characterizations whenever possible. While Americans Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid, growling his way through perhaps his worst performance in a decade) and Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton, straining to lay on the good ol’ boy charm) are brave and noble to a fault, their adversary – Santa Ana (Emilio Echevarrîa), known as “The Napoleon of the West” – defiles virginal young beauties, drinks tea out of fine china, and barbarically professes “What are the lives of soldiers but so many chickens?” This kind of ridiculous stereotyping extends to the Americans’ slaves (whose bickering about their white masters turns them into hackneyed caricatures) and the decorative, uniformly weepy American wives and daughters. Even when the film flirts with shades of grey – such as the alternate visions of heroism offered by drunken knife-wielder Jim Bowie (Jason Patrick) and his foppish rival William Travis (Patrick Wilson) – Hancock’s adherence to rousing, simplistic conventions turns his story into laborious mush.

Thornton’s humane Crockett is the film’s only potentially engaging character, but because The Alamo provides multiple multicultural perspectives on the drawn-out build-up to the momentous siege, the bear-fighting legend is reduced to a colorful sideshow novelty. Still, this tame desire to be everything to everyone comfortably jibes with the bloodless, made-for-TV action, the lowlight of which is a laughable shot from the viewpoint of a hurtling cannonball that’s directly derived from similarly buffoonish cinematic history lessons Pearl Harbor and The Patriot. The Alamo might have been a defining moment in the country’s evolution, but when it comes to movie memorials, there are far better ways to immortalize American heroism than via an impromptu “battle of the bands” competition between Santa Ana’s marching band and Davy Crockett’s lively fiddle.

Blowup (1966)

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

A shallow fashion photographer (David Hemmings) in swinging‘60s London unwittingly captures a murder on film – or does he? – in Michelangelo Antonioni’s acclaimed Blowup. Hemmings’ Thomas is beset by ennui, and is only awakened from his hollow lifestyle of casual sex, materialistic excess, and inactivity after discovering – in a brilliantly edited sequence of escalating close-ups – that his photographs of a beautiful young woman (Vanessa Redgrave) and her male companion may reveal a lethal crime. In typical Antonioni fashion, wealth, fame and power cannot temper Thomas’ urban malaise, and the director’s decision to leave his existential mystery unsolved speaks to the inescapability of modern man’s emotional and spiritual alienation.

Hellboy (2004)

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

The quest for inclusion has, since the introduction of The X-Men in the ‘60s, been the predominant theme in superhero comics, and it’s certainly at the forefront of Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy, a humanistic action extravaganza (based on Mike Mignola’s cult comic book) about misfit creatures fighting on the side of good. Hellboy (a hilarious Ron Perlman) is a demon brought to Earth during a Nazi plot to harness otherworldly forces. Taken in by a professor of the paranormal (John Hurt’s Dr. Bruttenholm), Hellboy – with his fire-retardant red-clay skin, sheared devil horns, and gargantuan stone hand – becomes a superstar for the FBI’s covert monster-squashing division, which also includes a rookie agent (Rupert Evans) and a centuries-old psychic amphibian named Abe Sapian (Doug Jones, with David Hyde Pierce’s voice). The film pits Hellboy against a resurrected Rasputin (Karel Roden) who’s intent on bringing about the apocalypse, but it’s the wise-cracking hero’s sarcasm, insecurities and unrequited love for moody firestarter Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) that provides the story with its endearing emotional core. Like the crimson goliath, Liz hates that her innate powers make her a social pariah, and Hellboy’s sympathy for these alienated outcasts is matched by its belief in self-determination. Del Toro (Blade II, The Devil’s Backbone) sets much of the story in the dank subterranean tunnels and sewers that have become his directorial hallmark, and his CGI-enhanced effects have a colossal, crunching physicality. I can’t speak for Mignola’s comic, but Del Toro’s energized adventure has humor, excitement, and soul to burn.