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Elektra (2005, Rob Bowman, USA): 22
Better than Daredevil, but then any film w/o Benaffleck is certainly better than any film w/ Benaffleck (and yes, I purposely spelled his name that way - makes hime seem more like the cinematic virus that he truly is). But enough about ole Bennifer, this is his woman's picture. Elektra was always one of my favourite characters in Marvel comics (as was Daredevil), so it irks me even more when they don't get them right - it almost seems as if I have retroactive bad taste.
There are a couple of well-done scenes here (a slow-motion violent kiss between Typhoid Mary and Elektra is a highlight - and not just from the every-guy-loves-a-lesbian aspect either), but they all seem like merely poor man rip-offs of Hero or House of Flying Daggers or Kill Bill (one or two). And as for Jen Garner, she isn't nearly as awful as was to be expected (not that I'm saying she was Meryl Streep!!).
Overall, just a rather mediocre film that, in any case, is still much better than it's prequel. But hey, Producers of Elektra, you probably won't have to worry about the Razzie awards like Catwoman did, thanx to this Summer's atrocious-looking Fantastic Four coming to a theatre near you.
-Januaray 16, 2005
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Ellie Parker (2005, Scott Coffey, USA): 74
There once was a little film called Ellie Parker. A short film that debuted at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. It starred a then-unknown actress by the name of Naomi Watts. Since that time, of course, Ms. Watts has starred in the masterpiece of this decade so far, Mulholland Drive, as well as the hit horror flicks The Ring and The Ring Two, and the rather subversively filmed 21 Grams, the highly underrated We Don't Live Here Anymore, the highly overrated I Heart Huckabees - and in doing so has become one of the most talented and versatile actors working today. Also, in the meantime, Scott Coffey, who co-starred in Mulholland Drive with Watts (one of many similarities between these two films), has turned his short film into a feature length movie, and voila - here it is.
Co-starring Coffey himself, along with a rather baffled looking Chevy Chase, Ellie Parker also stars Mark Pellegrino - yet another co-star of Mulholland Drive and the late Jennifer Syme - to whom Mulholland Drive is dedicated. There is also a "very special thanks" to David Lynch in the final credits. With all these curiosities, Ellie Parker is destined to live its entire life crouched down in the darkness of the far superior Mulholland Drive. But this may end up working in its favour.
A much too flawed film to clench its claws into anything worthwhile, as long as it hides, it may stay the curiosity that it is, and not ever have to defend its merits in any way.
Far from great and rather amateurish in places, it is Naomi Watts who peels away the silly bullshit and gives a skin-rippingly surreal performance nearly equal to her showing in the much superior film, Mulholland Drive. Halfway between the perky can do attitude of Betty Elms and the morose forboding of Diane Selwyn, Watts' Ellie Parker - yet another struggling multi-personalitied actress in the sidestreets of Hollywood - is the one saving grace of this otherwise fleeting little over-shadowed film. Now let's see what she can do against King Kong.
-November 14, 2005
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Eros (2004, Wong Kar-wai/Steven Soderbergh/Michelangelo Antonioni, Hong Kong/USA/Italy): 70
Never a big fan of the omnibous film myself, seeing it as rather a tedious affront to cinema by placing myriad shorts into one big wrapped up package of conceit, I went into Eros with more than a little trepidition - even if it did involve three talented auteurs (or two and a half if you take into account the 50/50 split of Soderbergh's oeuvre). But here it seems as if all the stars are in alignment (even Soderbergh playing on the upswing of his split), and we get three well made, albeit simplistically truncated, little films.
While Wong's The Hand, the story of a Hong Kong prostitute (played with melanchloy grace by Gong Li) who gives a hand job to a tailor's apprentice and is thereafter his one great, yet unrequited, love, is in the same quietly lyrical vein as his In the Mood for Love and 2046, it ends up being just more of the same - albeit a cinematically brilliant sameness.
Soderbergh's Equilibrium, a black & white absurdist comedy involving Robert Downey Jr. as a dream-bumfuzzled 1950's adman and Alan Arkin as his ever-distracted shrink. Probably the weakest link in the omnibal chain, Soderbergh's segment still manages to put forth quite a kitschy demeanor.
Most critics have called the three segments in one unifying order, from great (Wong Kar-wai) to good (Soderbergh) to awful (Antonioni), but I am going to go out on that proverbial limb now, and exclaim that Antonioni's segment, The Dangerous Thread of Things, is easily the best of the three. Antonioni, to whom this entire film production was created as an homage, in what may very well be his final film, has brought us such a short sweet excellent coda to his grand artistic career, that it would have brought tears to my eyes if not for the bewilderment at its naked (both literal and figurative) body and soul.
-April 29, 2005
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Fantastic Four (2005, Tim Story, USA): 11
One never has high aspirations when it comes to comic book films. Sure, I grew up reading The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and The X-Men and Daredevil (The Avengers and The Defenders were always my favourites, so luckily no films of those have been made yet), but let's face it, it is a rather low brow medium which means low aspirations. There have been a few "good" superhero movies (I purposely don't use the term film here) over the years. The first two Superman movies. The first two Batman movies. Both Spider-Man and The X-Men have made for fun movies and I may be alone in my enjoyment of Ang Lee's Hulk, but there has never been a great superhero movie - nor do I think one can be made - the genre would not allow it.
With all that in mind, we now come to The Fantastic Four, possibly the most mediocre of them all. Not near enjoyable enough to rank with the aforementioned club of movies, but also not near horrendous enough to be included with those Über-disasters, Daredevil, Catwoman and Joel Schumacher's apex of cheese, Batman & Robin (all of which shall be remembered if only for their grand idiocies). In the end it just lays there in all its mundane blandness. Fantastically miscast - although both Michael Chiklis as The Thing and Chris Evens as The Human Torch spout out a little bit of fun - The Fantastic Four will most likely just end up a teeny little footnote in the annals of cinematic history. On the other hand, a brand new Kama Sutra could probably be built around just what the stretch-bodied Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman can do to each other with their newly-given super powers. Hmmmmmmm...
-January 4, 2006
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Fever Pitch (2005, Peter & Bobby Farrelly, USA): 42
At first I was just going to skip this film in theatres - The Farrelly Brothers are pretty much the antithesis of artistic filmmaking and Drew Barrymore, well, she's Drew Barrymore - but after hearing some good reviews (and from critics I respect, not just the Leonard Maltin/Michael Medved gang), I decided to brave the cineplex and see what all the hub-bub was about, bub.
Well, it wasn't about much of all. Although easily miles above the Farrelly's Dumb & Dumber and the inexplicably well-recieved There's Something about Mary - lowbrow comedy at its lowest common denominator - Fever Pitch is still nothing more than yet another mediocre, predictably bland story-arced Hollywood average-fest. Jimmy Fallon is somewhat charming and Ms. Barrymore is slightly less annoying than usual, but still, nothing can raise the bar on this oh-so ordinary movie.
Oh, and by the way...Go Yankees!!!
-April 22, 2005
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Happy Endings (2005, Don Roos, USA): 58
Sure, it may be a cheesy - even schmarmy - film, and it may not be up to the comedic level of Roos' first film, The Opposite of Sex (we won't even bother with Roos' in-between debacle, Bounce), and many have complained of the utter annoyance of the intermingling title cards that sub for the usual voice-over, and tell the story - sometimes before the story unfolds onscreen - but I can't help it - I liked the damned thing, alright !!
Perhaps I was in a highly sensitive emotional state (my grandmother is in the hospital / my Zoloft is out and I haven't gotten more yet) or perhaps I'm getting soft in my "old age", but I found most of the film endearing - even if it is laden with subtle annoyancies. Like I said, not as funny as The Opposite of sex, but somehow deeper, just on a more shallow level. Did that even make sense ??
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lisa Kudrow and Steve Coogan - per usual - are great in their ensemble roles (of course Coogan could be funny simply reading the telephone listings of Manchester England and/or the texts of some Freudian casebook), and although the story is somewhat "sappy", Don Roos' latest achievement is a fun little romp - sort of like that girl/boy that you made out with in junior high, but wouldn't admit knowing to anyone else.
-January 7, 2006
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Haute Tension (2003, Alexandre Aja, France): 80
Once - in 1994 I believe - I saw a very strange film. It was called The Cemetary Man and starred an as-yet-unknown actor by the name of Rupert Everett. It was a little-seen - but cult-favourite - little hybrid of a film, that was shot in Italian and dubbed into English (at least in parts), and involves the telling of a cemetary groundskeeper who has the undesired job of "re-killing" the dead whence they reawake the first night being in the ground. When I left the theatre, and drove home, I kept going back and forth in my swimming head space - either this was a bizarre, yet great masterpiece or one of the worst films I had ever had the misfortune to have seen. I chose the latter by the way.
The reason I tell this story is to invigorate the point of how I felt after seeing this bizarre little French/English hybrid of a movie. I may never be sure on this one. Originally filmed in French (and there is a French language version on all-region dvd right now, that i have yet to see), but dubbed into English for the low brow American audiences - who have never liked to read in the first place (although, strangely, a few scenes are kept in French and subtitled instead ??). Anyway, I give this film a midlin score, for no better reason than I cannot decide whether it is good or not. Full of ridiculous dialogue, which may be because of the cheap dubbing, and full of enough plot holes to ram a psycho killer-driven cage van through (you'll understand that comment, once you've seen the film), but still a semi-revelation in camera technique and suspense - even if the "twist" is seen coming the proverbial mile away.
Overall, I guess it is a fun film, that makes sense at least half the time, but I think I need to see the original version to be sure of that.
-June 14, 2005
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Head-On (2004, Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey): 74
Head-On (half German / half Turkish) is a film that probably shouldn't be that good. The story of a marriage of convenience that turns into love, but a desperate impossible kind of love. It should play out as oversentimental bullshit (which is what Hollywood would turn it into, and just might if they ever remake it), but in the hands of this filmmaker (one I have not before encountered), it plays as grippingly erotic and surprisingly exotic.
Seemingly riding the fence between serendipity and surreality, Akin's tragic love story plays itself out as a sublime treacherous diatribe on the impossibilities of culture clashing romance, as well as being a highly acute microcosm of self-hatred and self-destruction. A brooding dance mix of love, anger, hate, lonliness and desperation.
-March 16, 2005
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Heights (2004, Chris Terrio, USA): 47
A film full of great ideas and wild pretensions, that never really goes anywhere at all. Shot on location on the streets and rooftops of Manhattan, Heights seems to be a film that doesn't know where it's going, or at least has no idea on how to get there. Well acted on almost all accounts - Glenn Close as a famed stage diva, currently roled as Lady Macbeth, gives an especially powerful performance - it is in its own interweaving storylines, that Heights falls ever-so-precariously close to pieces.
Stuffed so full with New York iconical cameos (George Segal, Isabella Rosselini, Eric Bogosian, Rufus Wainwright), to be considered an insideristic powerplay attempt, Terrio never knows exactly when to stop being art world chic and start being film world intelligible. Nearly every scene is set up with the oft-mentioned Shakespearian promise of glory, only to blossom into yet another oh-so-predictable let down. Sure to draw comparisons to last year's stage-to-screen triumph, Closer, it is only in Ms. Close herself that we ever see the possibilities of what this otherwise bland film could have, and should have, been.
-August 16, 2005
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Hide and Seek (2005, John Polson, USA): 27
Ridiculously camp-esque "thriller" starring Robert DeNiro, Dakota Fanning and a "twist" ending that you see coming from moment one - maybe even before. DeNiro, who hasn't exactly lit up the screen during the past decade of schlop he's starred in (O' where has the Travis Bickle of yesteryear gone?) plays tender (DeNiro?) dad to creepy little Wednesday Adams...uh, I mean Dakota Fanning, who is probably the only thing in this film worth watching (I've always thought her a bit on the creepy kid side, but she goes wonderfully way over the top here). Overall though, even with the young Miss Fanning's cheap-yet-kitsche theatrics, all we are left with is an idiotic farce of what a thriller should be.
-February 11, 2005
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House of Wax (2005, Jaume Collet-Serra, USA): 8
Sure, you would think that any film in which Paris Hilton is speared through the skull with a pointed stick has got to be good, but alas, it is not. Although finding some rather creative ways of killing people, House of Wax - a remake pretty much in name only - is a drab, mundane hour and a half, spent wondering why you are even watching the damned thing in the first place - that is until poor Paris Hilton gets it clean through the brain (would that even hurt her?).
Boring and not scary at all, which is the worst thing a horror film can be, the film just sort of lays there like a frigid woman not even pretending anymore to be getting off - that is until Paris gets hers --- ha ha ha ha ha!!! Do you think I may have something against poor-little-rich-girl Paris Hilton? Hmmm, perhaps, but in the end, even her death does not satiate my cinematic needs - not that I expected anything more from the film than what I got. Afterall, I did watch it for the express reason of placing it on my upcoming Worst of 2005 List - which I did.
-December 28, 2005
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Howl's Moving Castle (2004, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan): 70
Not quite up to the epic standards of his last film, Spirited Away, but Miyazaki's latest is far above any of the sterile animated fodder that comes out of Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks et cetera.
Drawn in 2D - yes, some people still do that, and it's better dammit - this is the fantastical story of a young girl who ended up on the wrong side of a battle between a powerful evil witch and a brash young, somewhat manic-depressed wizard. Turned into an old crone by the witch's spell, the girl travels to find the wizard Howl and his living breathing moving castle that roams about the Japanese countryside like a huffy puffy giant set of bagpipes, churning out whisps of smoke and aching grunts and grizzles.
Luckily - thanks to Al Brown, owner of the Midtown Cinema in harrisburg Pa - I was able to see this film in its original Japanese version, instead of the Disney-fied American dumbed down version (even if it was overseen by the Director himself). A vibrant inventive and never dull animated film that makes me wish we had that kind of talent in the US - and we do, as many of the Disney/Pixar animators consider Miyazaki their hugest influence, but unfortunately are merely cogs in the massive media machine that is Hollywood USA.
-July 2, 2005
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Hustle & Flow (2005, Craig Brewer, USA): 33
Ya know, it's hard out here for a pimp. Especially if said pimp has to weave his way through this stereotypical choreographed to the fucking hilt with a cookie cutter mentalit'd motion picture.
Not a bad picture per se, although there is not a single moment left to the creative bone, Hustle & Flow plays out better than it probably should have - mainly thanks to a stunning (if not cliche'd) performance from the it-guy of 2005, Terrence Howard.
As for the soundtrack (and this coming from a noted Hip-Hop hater) - it is strangely alluring, especially the Oscar nominated number (although once it was performed - horribly - at the Oscars, that love greatly waned) and almost (almost) made me like Rap.
-February 7, 2006
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