finnegan’s film blog

Last night I watched Venus, starring Peter O’Toole.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was that O’Toole was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

O’Toole was great — it’s the sort of role that makes you believe that the man is truly going to keel over dead at any moment. My thoughts were, “Wow. This guy was Lawrence of freaking Arabia. I can’t believe O’Toole is not dead. He’s really old, and it looks like he’s in a lot of pain.”

But the story was bizarre. Not wonderfully bizarre like a Terry Gilliam film, but bizarre in the sense that the relationship between the O’Toole’s character and the young woman was unrealistic. It simply didn’t work — not even as an unhealthy relationship, which is what I assume it was supposed to be. I never connected or sympathized or cared about any of the characters on screen, so ultimately, I ended up not liking the film very much.

I give this film a “Meh.”

I’ll review this one from two perspectives:

1) As a admirer of the book and author: I always imagined the world of Narnia a bit darker and more mysterious than it was depicted in the movie. There was no fear associated with Aslan. Right off the bat, he was this nice friendly lion. The woods were not in any way dark or mysterious (”even some of the trees are on her side”). The witches’ castle seemed almost like a nice place to visit (that’s not how I remember it in the book). The filmmakers bent over backwards to ensure there was no blood or gore in the film, but there clearly was in the book (Peter had to wipe the blood off his sword, and Aslan’s death was much more graphic in the source material… However, I didn’t mind the fact that Aslan didn’t fly and bounce around.

2) As a filmmaker and critic: The editing was terrible. That’s my biggest complaint. It seems that director Andrew Adamson was nervous about making a live-action movie and covered every scene from every possible angle during production, and in post, the editor used all of the angles instead of finding the best few and sticking with those. The pace and tone of the editing throughout the film was nervous and distracting. There are no scenes that simply flow at a natural pace. Everything feels cut short, like trying to watch TV when someone keeps flipping through the channels. Ultimately, the pacing keeps us from connecting with any of the characters.

Also, the acting was stiff. Granted, this may be the fault of the director and editor, but so much of the emotional value of this story relies on the childrens’ performances, and I never believed Peter or Susan. My guess is that Adamson shot each scene so many times from so many angles, the kids couldn’t keep it up.

On a positive note: I did like the beavers. I liked Edmund and the witch. The CG seemed to do Aslan justice. I’m also willing to admit that I might be holding the movie to some impossible standard because I liked the books so much as a child. Like I said, I’m planning on giving it another chance while it’s still in theaters.

Harry Potter has become a cultural phenomenon. Along with those rubber “causie” bracelets, cell phones, and iPods, going to see these movies is something every American (under the age of 60) does. Kids love them. College students love them. I look across the aisle on an airplane, and there’s a businessman reading one of the books. Even well-respected film critics seem to love them.

I’ve done my best to play along; to be agreeable and just enjoy the stories like everyone else, but I can’t. I’ve seen all four movies and read [most of] the first book and I can say with certainty that I do not like Harry Potter. Here are two reasons why:

1) The plots are ridiculous

Now, before you say, “they’re fantasy stories, you moron. They’re allowed to be ridiculous,” consider this: movies can be as ridiculous as you want them to be, but they have to adhere to their own rules of logic in order for me to suspend my disbelief. For example, if Luke Skywalker started flying around like Superman in Return of the Jedi and lifting up buildings and using X-ray vision to spy on the emperor, George Lucas could say “Luke’s just using the Force,” but Star Wars fans would know that was stupid.

In The Goblet of Fire, the instructors at Hogwarts are ceaselessly worried about the safety and well-being of their students. Most of the times that Harry has gotten in trouble are because he recklessly endangered himself or his peers on some unlikely quest. However, once a year, all the teachers get together and tell the students that three of them will be chosen to needlessly put themselves in harms way for some goofy treasure hunt. They will risk having their students burned to death by dragons, drowned at the bottom of a lake, or killed in some giant shrubbery maze from Hell. It’s simply not credible that the teachers would scold Harry for doing dangerous things on the one hand, while risking students’ lives for the sake of entertainment and tradition on the other.

Also, am I to believe that thousands of witches, wizards and other powerfully magical people get together to go to some giant magic festival, and can do nothing to stop ten KKK-looking guys who march through and burn the festival to the ground? Several thousand magicians couldn’t combine forces and come up with some kind of spell that would have saved the festival from a few hooded skull heads? I don’t think so.

The plots generally involve too many weakly-linked events. Why do we need to see the festival at all? It’s all in the interest of “keeping the plot moving,” but the chain of events often seems too long and tedious to keep track of. A groundskeeper who has nothing at all to do with the plot gets eaten by a giant snake. Meanwhile, Harry and friends hold hands a touch an old shoe, which propels them through a magic portal into a magic festival, where some scary face in the sky scares everyone away, which has very little to do with the rest of the plot. It’s too disjointed.

The story doesn’t flow. I don’t care if any of these characters die at any point during the movie, because we never get to spend any time really getting to know any of them. When [someone] dies at the end of Goblet, I was not emotionally moved in the slightest during the eulogy, because I didn’t even know who it was. In fact, I was kind of bored during that part.

2) The Deus Ex Machina

Every time Harry gets in a bind which there’s no conceivable escape from, he says some hocus-pocus and viola! He’s safe from harm. End of act. Everyone laughs and has a good time and eats magic jellybeans until something else terrible happens, at which point Harry will almost die (again) and one of his teachers will say some hocus-pocus and viola! A traitor is revealed. The new teacher isn’t who you thought he was! And I’m not just talking about Goblet of Fire. I’m referring to ever Harry Potter movie. With the exception of maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark, Deus ex Machina = bad writing.

But seriously, I don’t hate the movies. And I do respect the fans. I’m just saying I don’t understand the hype. Momma always said, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” So now it’s time for me to say something positive about Harry. The Prisoner of Azkaban was alright. It kept me pretty entertained. So there, don’t say I never said anything nice about poor ol’ Harry.

Those of you who are fans of the books might have additional information as to why a thousand wizards couldn’t ward off the skull heads. Maybe J. K. Rowling has everything explained perfectly in her books, and the movie studio screenwriters left it out of the movie. I haven’t read past the first book. But I have seen all four movies, and they don’t deserve all the praise they’ve received.

This 1973 Franco Zefirelli biopic about Saint Francis attempts to show the flowery side of the riches-to-rags monk from Assisi. But despite the director’s best conceptual efforts, Brother Sun, Sister Moon paints too campy a picture of a this real-life historical figure to earn any real credibility.

From the opening scene, it’s clear that this is more European arthouse cinema than American studio narrative. Francesco, the son of a successful merchant, returns from the crusades in a feverous stupor, too traumatized to speak. Because we observe the passage of time through Francesco’s tormented eyes, it’s difficult to connect with anyone or identify with anything on screen until his war-profiteering father attempts to speak some worldly sense into his stupefied son.

Eventually Francesco’s peculiar motive becomes clear when he rejects not only excessive materialism, but publicly renounces the very foundation of Italian class society by shedding his merchant-class clothes in front of the local bishop. As he goes into self-exile and begins to rebuild an old church he gains a faithful following, ranging from fellow ex-crusaders to the poorest beggar in Assisi. The new communal collective lives a Christ-like life of simplicity, servitude, and brotherly love. Needless to say, the local bishop is not impressed with Francis’s DIY church community. The aristocracy and clergy do their best to snuff out the proto-Marxist flame before Francis’s “new” form of Christianity spreads like wildfire.

The weakest and most distracting element of this film is the music (composed and performed by singer-songwriter Donovan). Anyone who remembers the animated Hobbit movie from the 70s will know what sort of musical interference I’m talking about. In narrative films, music serves as an aid to the plot, magnifying emotions and setting the tone for each scene. In musicals the songs are the plot. But unfortunately Brother Sun, Sister Moon falls into that no-man’s-land between the two. The actors themselves usually don’t do the singing. Instead, an off-screen voice sings flowery hippie ballads about how great love is, scene after scene. Perhaps this wouldn’t be such a negative thing if the songs themselves weren’t so unbelieveably terrible. Donovan’s strummy guitar and corny lyrics are so high in the mix, they’re impossible to ignore. It’s all so… early 70s.

Saint Francis’s life story is a compelling one, full of love and self-sacrifice. Unfortunately this film falls short of showing us just how amazing his life was. If Zeffirelli’s aim was to make Saint Francis real in any way, he failed to do so. The end result is a bizarrely mediocre portrait of an extraordinary man.

This neo-noir collaboration between director Robert “churn em out” Rodriguez and cult comic book author Frank Miller falls short in several categories.

If you object to uber-violence or that evil-vs-evil scenario, be advised to avoid this movie. Personally, the film was too dark for my taste. Call me old-fashioned, but I like tales of good vs evil. If you’ve read more than a few comic books in the last decade or two, you already know that the hero has been permanently replaced by the antihero–so that aspect was really no surprise. Sin City is a violent revenge tale, not unlike Kill Bill. However, Kill Bill had more campy panache and humanity in one frame than Sin City does in it’s entire 2 hours and 6 minutes.

On a narrative level, the film was nothing more than a series of unrelated greusome death scenes, interrupted by gratuitous T&A (a comic book geek’s wet dream world). Where was the plot? All of the geeks at AICN absolutely love it, becuase it’s so incredibly true to the comic book novel. but just becuase a film does not deviate from the source material does not make it great. If that were the case, all of those made-for-VHS Danielle Steele novella films starring Fabio and George Hamilton would be up for best picture every year.

On the plus side, I thought the CG cityscapes and effects were well-concieved and blended seamlessly into the world of the film. In terms of visuals, it’s a masterpiece. This is undoubtedly the closest a film has come to achieveing the look of the pulp comic books in the history of cinema.

Frank Miller’s world is darker than dark. If darkness and evil are your idea of a good time, then Sin City is the film for you. But I’m holding out for something better and brighter.