"A Christmas Carol"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
Before I saw the Jim Carrey version of "A Christmas Carol" I wondered why remake a story that has been done so often and so well in the past. I've seen it and I'm still wondering.
There have been at least 21 versions of the story made for the big screen and dozens more for television. Director Robert Zemeckis and his high tech bag of motion capture tricks don't add anything to the story, in fact, occasionally his CGI actually gets in the way.
Zemeckis wisely hasn't toyed around with the 166-year-old story. Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is a miserly bah humbugger who doesn't believe in the spirit of Christmas until he is visited by three spirits--the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future--and finds salvation in their terrifying visions.
"A Christmas Carol" is Zemeckis's third attempt at creating a film using motion capture--filming the actors and using their motions as a template to create a computer generated film--following "Polar Express" and "Beowulf." "Polar Express" was meant to be a heart warming Christmas tale but exposed the problem with Zemeckis's technique--dead CGI eyes. The weirdly lifeless animation was creepy, akin to a Christmas story performed by zombies. "Beowulf" was an improvement but like "A Christmas Carol" there are still kinks to be worked out. Chief among them is: Why bother with this at all?
On the plus side the CGI allows for camera moves that would otherwise be impossible--endless dolly shots through a Dickensian cityscape for example--and the Ghost of Christmas Present death scene is a spectacular scene of gothic creepiness, and is actually enhanced by the use of computer animation. On the minus side the Ghost of Christmas Future, a stand-out in the 1951 Alastair Sim version, is reduced to a show-offy platform for Zemeckis's 3-D CGI magic.
My main complaint though, is the medium itself. Much of the animation looks great--the texture of Scrooge's leather chair for instance--but there are enough artificial looking things--the flame in the fireplace or the steam from people's mouths--that remind us that we're watching flashing binary code and little else. Some of the characters are well animated but the work is inconsistent, occasionally looking photo realistic, but often not. Unlike live action or even hand drawn animation, there's nothing that feels organic about motion capture, so the moments that are supposed to strike an emotional chord--like young Ebenezer dancing with his beautiful bride to be, or old Scrooge watching Bob Cratchit's family deal with the loss of Tiny Tim--have little resonance.
Whatever impact the movie has, and it does have the occasional moment that engages not only the eye but the heart, could have just as easily achieved with a live action cast.
Perhaps Zemeckis should have taken the lead from one of the more famous lines from the story, "Mankind was my business," and made the movie's business more about mankind and less about technology.
"The Men Who Stare At Goats"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
"The Men Who Stare at Goats" is the best movie with the worst name that we'll likely see this year. Despite its silly title--which makes perfect sense in context of the movie, but will be a mystery to anyone unfamiliar with the story--this screwball George Clooney film has many serious points to make about the state of modern warfare, but does so with a healthy dose of satire.
Based on a story that is "more true than you think" it begins when journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) uncovers a story about the New Earth Army, a secret psychic battalion of super soldiers sponsored by the US government in hopes of finding a new way to fight wars. The Pentagon wants to be the first super power to develop super powers. Teaming up with Lyn Cassidy (Clooney), a veteran psychic soldier, Wilton tracks down Cassidy's mentor Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), an eccentric New Age shaman now working at a prison camp in Iraq run by Kevin Spacey's character, Larry Hooper. Hooper is a former psychic soldier who lived in Cassidy's shadow until he managed to subvert the original purpose of the New Earth's Army and take control.
Directed by hyphenate actor-turned-George Clooney's best friend-turned-writer-turned-director Grant Heslov, the pen behind "Good Night and Good Luck" the movie has a wonky feel right from the get go. Its dizzying blend of slapstick, satire and drama is a hard thing to pull off, but Heslov with the help of his lead actors and a strong supporting cast including Coen Brothers regular Stephen Root, find just the right tone for the first hour.
In fact, the first sixty minutes of "The Men Who Stare Sat Goats" is giddy good fun; as fun a ride as there is in theatres this year. Its absurdist, filled with memorable images--Clooney staring down a goat, enlisted men doing the Watusi and a montage of Jeff Bridges embarking on a journey of enlightenment--and no joke is too broad. It's as if Crosby and Hope had gone to Iraq instead of Singapore or Utopia. Then along comes Kevin Spacey who ruins all the fun.
It's as if the filmmakers were afraid to stick to their guns and make a surreal free form movie so they added Spacey's sniveling character to add in some conflict. It's meant to up the drama of the piece but it's the point at which the movie loses much of its zip. The conflict Spacey brings is simply not as interesting as the rest of the film. The final third of the film suffers for it, but it remains an unpredictable romp with some nice performances and pointed comments on the absurdity of war. I couldn't help but think that if someone like Robert Altman had made this film in 1974 the message and the madness would have been intact without the spoiler of Spacey.
"Gentlemen Broncos"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
"Gentlemen Broncos" is a coming-of-age, sci fi comedy about plagiarism. It's also the latest film from "Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess. That means it's even more idiosyncratic than the description given in the first line of this review.
Written by Jared and (wife) Jerusha Hess "Gentlemen Broncos" tells the story of aspiring fantasy writer and home schooled teenage outcast Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano). He writes strange sci fi stories that lead people to ask if "some kind of weird surgery" inspired his work. After attending Cletus Fest, a fantasy convention where he hoped to pick up writing tips from his hero, writer Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), his creative life becomes complicated when his novel, "Yeast Lords," is turned into an extremely low budget film, and plagiarized by Chevalier.
Up until now Hess's films have been strange slices of life buoyed by strong comic performances and some good jokes. But what felt so fresh in "Napoleon Dynamite"--the oddball comic timing and unconventional American Grotesque casting--this time out feels gimmicky, as if Hess and company are masking a lack of original ideas with his tried and true and, by now, on his third film, somewhat tired trademarks. As a filmmaker he has a unique voice but, like the drunk guy at the party who speaks louder than everyone else to get his point across, Hess is stylistically shouting to cover a lack of jokes.
Angarano, a talented young actor in the Michael Cera mode, is fine here but gets bowled over by a cast of curiosities. Jennifer Coolidge, as Benjamin's mother rides the line between eccentric affectation and real life, raising a few laughs along the way, but Jemaine Clement, best known as half of "Flight of the Concords," is nothing but eccentric affectation and hilariously so.
His take on the �ber pretentious novelist--who sounds like "Logan's Run" era Michael York and signs off his speeches with the coda `May the glistening dome of the Borg queen shine her light on us all,"--is over-the-top and silly, but brings the funny.
In a tutorial to a class of aspiring writers he speaks of "the power of the suffix" when creating names for fantasy stories. Adding the suffix "onius," "ainous" or "anous" he says, will yield the perfect name. For example, "bronco," becomes "broncanous," probably the best new word of the 21st century.
Unfortunately that's the highlight, and that joke was given away in the trailer. "Gentleman Broncos" left me wanting more and less of Hess--more of the freshness he displayed in his earlier work, less of his clich�d trademarks.
"The Fourth Kind"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
There's a lot of hooey in "The Fourth Kind." Alien abductions and junk science but the biggest nose stretcher occurs just under a minute into the film. Milla Jovovich intros the movie calling herself "actress Milla Jovovich." She's a lot of things--beautiful woman, check, talented model, check, nice to hang out with, probably--but after seeing "The Fourth Kind" I have a hard time understanding how she and, let's say Meryl Streep, can lay claim to the same job description.
Like "Paranormal Activity," and "The Blair Witch Project" "The Fourth Kind" is a fictional story that uses alleged documentary footage as the basis for the story. In this case it is a therapist's session tapes, police surveillance video and interview footage with psychotherapist Dr. Emily Taylor, that forms the backbone of the film's case for the existence of alien abductions.
Set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, the movie stars Jovovich as Dr. Taylor, whose husband was murdered in their bed as she lay helplessly nearby. Despite her emotional trauma she elects to continue her practice, which involves hypnotherapy and repeatedly telling people to "Take a deep breath and calm down." When one of her patients kills his family and then himself, and others complain of insomnia and seeing an evil owl--How do we know its evil? Why, ominous music plays whenever it is onscreen, that's how!--she comes to the only conclusion a trained medical professional could reach--they've all been abducted by aliens and then returned to earth!
It seems Nome has a bit of a reputation as a hotbed of alleged ET activity, with dozens of people going missing there each year, never to be heard of again. Apparently even the FBI, after multiple investigations into the disappearances, hasn't been able to pinpoint why so many people vanish from the area. I don't know either, but I would guess Sarah Palin has something to do with it.
If "The Fourth Kind" was made in the 1950s by Roger Corman it would have been called "Aliens in Alaska" (or maybe the punchier "Alaskan Aliens") and it might not have taken itself so seriously. Also, Corman would have known that you can't make an alien picture and NOT SHOW ANY ALIENS! It's an unbreakable movie rule, like the one that says the first person to die in a slasher flick will always be the trashy prom queen. Also Corman might have been able to draw a performance out of Jovovich, who is completely out of her emotional depth here. If I was her agent I'd suggest sticking to the action flicks.
In its favor "The Fourth Kind" (which is an even closer encounter than the third kind) has some nice structural work, inventively blending the "real" footage in with the dramatized scenes, but since the director never met a dolly or hand held shot he didn't love, much of the film's style gets lost in hectic camerawork.
"The Fourth Kind" isn't as successful as its other "real life" cousins, "Paranormal Activity" and "The Blair Witch Project." It is, however, an inventive idea and pushes it toward camp by taking itself WAY too seriously.
