Friday, May 28, 2010
'Sex' is boring -- and how often can you say that?
Only one of the four has sex, and the city is now Abu Dhabi -- it just ain't the same "Sex and the City." The sequel is long, pointless and nothing more than an excuse to show a lot of fashions. It's not a movie, it's a fashion show. My review is here: http://www.theboomermagazine.com/component/content/article/74-movie-reviews/506-sex-and-the-city-2.html
The Sands of Stupidity
If someone were to base a movie on the most popular board game in America, we’d get a couple of hours of old roadsters and little dogs trying to buy real estate in Atlantic City.
Obviously, no one is going to pay 10 bucks to watch that, which is why no one has ever made a movie version of Monopoly. Yet studios keep making movies out of video games, which are essentially the same thing with better graphics.
As has now been proven time and time and time again, video games do not make compelling movies because they are not inherently cinematic. Video games are a test of skill and the ability to master whatever tricks you need to get you to the next level. But movies are purely emotional. It’s an entirely different kind of experience.
The latest video game movie to fail is “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which tries to re-create the gaming experience by racing from one action scene to the next. But even with all the action, it turns out to be a terrible bore.
Part of the problem is that the action scenes are largely all the same, with swordfights, dagger fights and characters leaping from one rooftop to the next (I’ve never played the original game, but I’m guessing it involves an awful lot of leaping). Director Mike Newell is obviously trying to capture the magic of adventure films of the past, but what he winds up with is “Raiders of the Least Ark.”
Once upon a time, Newell made wonderful, character-driven stories, such as “Enchanted April,” “Donnie Brasco” and the sublime “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” But apparently he has lost his touch. Where his earlier movies were smart, “Prince of Persia” is fatally banal.
Maybe it is all of those computer-generated special effects. Sure, computer effects may seem perfectly fitting in a movie based on a video game -- which is nothing but effects -- but they tend to drown out all acting and any efforts to create a character.
Suffering the most from this overabundance of effects is a buff Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars as an ancient Persian boy from the streets who was adopted by the kindly king to live as a prince. While his brothers lay siege to a holy city, he proves himself in battle (his brilliant strategy is to go in from the back). As a prize, he is given the city’s beautiful princess (Gemma Arterton) to be his future bride.
The two bicker in the time-honored tradition of romantic comedies, but without any of the humor or credibility. Meanwhile, the romance takes a back seat to the increasingly ridiculous story, which involves a dagger that has the power to turn back time, at least for a minute.
Horrifyingly, the writers tried to use this idiotic story to make political points: The Persian army invaded the sacred city because of inaccurate and trumped-up information it was hiding daggers of mass destruction. The man behind the throne (the vice king, as it were) argues that a man he knows is innocent be put to death without a trial, because a trial “will only give him a stage for his sedition.” And the fighting eventually threatens to bring on an Armageddon that will destroy all life on the planet.
The story is convoluted and periodically nonsensical, and it becomes more dull as the movie drags on. If you find yourself in the theater growing bored, you might want to spend some of your time trying to figure out why Gyllenhaal is trying to use an English accent.
Obviously, no one is going to pay 10 bucks to watch that, which is why no one has ever made a movie version of Monopoly. Yet studios keep making movies out of video games, which are essentially the same thing with better graphics.
As has now been proven time and time and time again, video games do not make compelling movies because they are not inherently cinematic. Video games are a test of skill and the ability to master whatever tricks you need to get you to the next level. But movies are purely emotional. It’s an entirely different kind of experience.
The latest video game movie to fail is “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which tries to re-create the gaming experience by racing from one action scene to the next. But even with all the action, it turns out to be a terrible bore.
Part of the problem is that the action scenes are largely all the same, with swordfights, dagger fights and characters leaping from one rooftop to the next (I’ve never played the original game, but I’m guessing it involves an awful lot of leaping). Director Mike Newell is obviously trying to capture the magic of adventure films of the past, but what he winds up with is “Raiders of the Least Ark.”
Once upon a time, Newell made wonderful, character-driven stories, such as “Enchanted April,” “Donnie Brasco” and the sublime “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” But apparently he has lost his touch. Where his earlier movies were smart, “Prince of Persia” is fatally banal.
Maybe it is all of those computer-generated special effects. Sure, computer effects may seem perfectly fitting in a movie based on a video game -- which is nothing but effects -- but they tend to drown out all acting and any efforts to create a character.
Suffering the most from this overabundance of effects is a buff Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars as an ancient Persian boy from the streets who was adopted by the kindly king to live as a prince. While his brothers lay siege to a holy city, he proves himself in battle (his brilliant strategy is to go in from the back). As a prize, he is given the city’s beautiful princess (Gemma Arterton) to be his future bride.
The two bicker in the time-honored tradition of romantic comedies, but without any of the humor or credibility. Meanwhile, the romance takes a back seat to the increasingly ridiculous story, which involves a dagger that has the power to turn back time, at least for a minute.
Horrifyingly, the writers tried to use this idiotic story to make political points: The Persian army invaded the sacred city because of inaccurate and trumped-up information it was hiding daggers of mass destruction. The man behind the throne (the vice king, as it were) argues that a man he knows is innocent be put to death without a trial, because a trial “will only give him a stage for his sedition.” And the fighting eventually threatens to bring on an Armageddon that will destroy all life on the planet.
The story is convoluted and periodically nonsensical, and it becomes more dull as the movie drags on. If you find yourself in the theater growing bored, you might want to spend some of your time trying to figure out why Gyllenhaal is trying to use an English accent.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
'MacGruber'!
I'll admit it: I laughed during "MacGruber." Out loud. Several times. It's not something I'm proud of, but there you have it. My review, attempting to explain myself, is here: http://www.theboomermagazine.com/component/content/article/74-movie-reviews/487-macgruber.html
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Robin Ho-hum
The story of Robin Hood has been told on film many times, and none has surpassed the glories of the 1938 Erroll Flynn version. One wonders why they even keep trying. And the newest version is one of the worst. My review of it is here: http://www.theboomermagazine.com/component/content/article/74-movie-reviews/486-robin-hood.html
Monday, May 10, 2010
'Iron Man 2' -- The same, only less
Loved, loved, loved the original "Iron Man." The sequel is bigger and louder and far less interesting. Gwyneth Paltrow looks great, though. My review is here: http://www.theboomermagazine.com/component/content/article/74-movie-reviews/485-iron-man-2.html
One, Two, Freddy's Making You Snooze
A favorite trick in horror movies is to have a character suddenly bolt awake from a nightmare.
In the breathtakingly pointless remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” as in the original, that’s all there is. In this new version, it happens at least nine times.
Repetition is never a good idea in a movie, and it is especially bad in a horror film. Once you’ve experienced something like this in a movie, you become acclimated to it and it doesn’t have the same effect the next time you see it. Or, in this case, the next eight times you see it.
Similarly, if you watch a person fall from the ceiling to a bed once, that’s pretty cool — in fact, it’s part of the most iconic sequence in the original. But when it happens twice, you wonder if the writers just didn’t run out of ideas. And each successive time we see serial killer Freddy Krueger run his finger knives along a random surface, usually producing sparks, it becomes exponentially less scary.
Along with the groundbreaker “Friday the 13th,” the 1984 original version of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” helped pave the way for a new style of horror films. No longer would they be subjected to the same expectations of other movies. After these two films, the genre was freed from the shackles of character and story; no more would they be harshly bound to the tyranny of a script or logic. They didn’t have to be well made, or even adequately made, and no part of them had to make sense. All that mattered is that they showed young people being chased around by a faceless guy with a knife and other instruments of evisceration, that the victims screamed and squirmed as they were being killed, one by one, and that their bright red blood spread prettily across the screen.
This version is an awful lot like the original version, but at least it tries an experiment: It wonders if it would make a difference to use a genuinely talented actor — Jackie Earle Haley — as the killer, Freddy.
All good experiments deserve an answer, and the answer to this one is: Nope. It doesn’t make a bit of difference in the long run, although the portrayal of Freddy is notably superior here.
Once again, we are brought into a typical small town where all the parents keep deadly secrets and all the children are still in high school in their mid- to late-20s. A group of these kids (think of them as being in their very late teens) realizes that they are all having the same dream. They all dream that they are being chased by a weirdo with a burned face, a goofy hat, an ugly sweater and knives on the tips of his gloves. Bizarrely, none of them has seen the original “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” but they soon realize that if they fall asleep they run the risk of being killed by this dream.
These characters are basically indistinguishable, but eventually our heroine turns out to be a waitress played by Rooney Mara, the unconventionally attractive younger sister of actress Kate Mara. The younger Mara is perfectly acceptable in her role as Nancy, which requires little more than a lot of screaming. The rest of the cast is generally worse, to varying degrees, although Haley shows promise as Freddy.
Here, as in earlier versions, Freddy is the sole character of any interest whatsoever. But the writers feel compelled to have him make little quips, like the hero of a 1980s action film, in the hopes that these will make him more frightening.
They don’t.
Note: This review originally ran at www.theboomermagazine.com
In the breathtakingly pointless remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” as in the original, that’s all there is. In this new version, it happens at least nine times.
Repetition is never a good idea in a movie, and it is especially bad in a horror film. Once you’ve experienced something like this in a movie, you become acclimated to it and it doesn’t have the same effect the next time you see it. Or, in this case, the next eight times you see it.
Similarly, if you watch a person fall from the ceiling to a bed once, that’s pretty cool — in fact, it’s part of the most iconic sequence in the original. But when it happens twice, you wonder if the writers just didn’t run out of ideas. And each successive time we see serial killer Freddy Krueger run his finger knives along a random surface, usually producing sparks, it becomes exponentially less scary.
Along with the groundbreaker “Friday the 13th,” the 1984 original version of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” helped pave the way for a new style of horror films. No longer would they be subjected to the same expectations of other movies. After these two films, the genre was freed from the shackles of character and story; no more would they be harshly bound to the tyranny of a script or logic. They didn’t have to be well made, or even adequately made, and no part of them had to make sense. All that mattered is that they showed young people being chased around by a faceless guy with a knife and other instruments of evisceration, that the victims screamed and squirmed as they were being killed, one by one, and that their bright red blood spread prettily across the screen.
This version is an awful lot like the original version, but at least it tries an experiment: It wonders if it would make a difference to use a genuinely talented actor — Jackie Earle Haley — as the killer, Freddy.
All good experiments deserve an answer, and the answer to this one is: Nope. It doesn’t make a bit of difference in the long run, although the portrayal of Freddy is notably superior here.
Once again, we are brought into a typical small town where all the parents keep deadly secrets and all the children are still in high school in their mid- to late-20s. A group of these kids (think of them as being in their very late teens) realizes that they are all having the same dream. They all dream that they are being chased by a weirdo with a burned face, a goofy hat, an ugly sweater and knives on the tips of his gloves. Bizarrely, none of them has seen the original “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” but they soon realize that if they fall asleep they run the risk of being killed by this dream.
These characters are basically indistinguishable, but eventually our heroine turns out to be a waitress played by Rooney Mara, the unconventionally attractive younger sister of actress Kate Mara. The younger Mara is perfectly acceptable in her role as Nancy, which requires little more than a lot of screaming. The rest of the cast is generally worse, to varying degrees, although Haley shows promise as Freddy.
Here, as in earlier versions, Freddy is the sole character of any interest whatsoever. But the writers feel compelled to have him make little quips, like the hero of a 1980s action film, in the hopes that these will make him more frightening.
They don’t.
Note: This review originally ran at www.theboomermagazine.com
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