The Darjeeling Limited:
While I agree that it could have been cut down a wee bit, and was still Wes Anderson Mad Libs, I was moved by the story of 3 brothers trying to reconnect on a train trip across India. The movie was colorful and it made me really want to visit the country. Adrien Brody's nose is bewitching and he also delivered the line that made me choke back tears: “I couldn't save mine.”

No Country For Old Men:
This is a perfect film. Perfectly cast, perfectly acted, perfectly paced, and ended exactly how and when it should. Javier Bardem is a badass. Perhaps moreso with the David Cassidy hair.

Southland Tales:
Richard Kelly's long-anticipated second film feels like a cross between a pretentious student film with Hollywood actors and a movie made by an alien who has never actually seen a movie.

Beowulf:
If this were a drinking game, the only rule you would need is to drink every time someone says “Beowulf”. It might be a neat trick to draw CG over real actors, but I still don't see the point. I'm so tired of hearing about how “hot” Angelina Jolie is in the movie when it's actually just a cartoon VERSION of Angelina Jolie. Just like Ray Winstone is actually a fat old British man. For the most part, it felt like watching the story parts of a video game, but with a moral about how history is written by liars. I'm in favor of that last bit.

He is Beowulf.

28 Weeks Later:
I know this isn't exactly topical, but I watched it last night and it really blew me away. 28 weeks after the outbreak from the first film is “contained”, the mighty U.S. military swoops in to help Britain pick up the pieces. The performances are very realistic and aided in their believability by hand-held cameras and lack of music. My one complaint would be that when there IS music, it's terrible and made-for-TV-esque. Executive producer Danny Boyle sure loves his realistic apocalypse films. There are no heroes or villains. Just people reacting to a horrible situation. In many ways, it is a superior film to the original. Though I did really miss Cillian Murphy.

November 28, 2007
Categories: Filmpinions . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Re: the production stills from Indiana Jones and the Pirate's Curse of the Magical Castle or what have you, how did you make 80-year-old Harrison Ford, who normally looks like an ad for erectile dysfunction:

resemble the sexy history teacher/explorer we knew and loved like so:

Maybe this movie won't be so bad after all. Maybe…

PS: Those pants really need tailoring.

November 27, 2007
Categories: Filmpinions . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Of course there is a huge difference between the earnest, artistic indie biopic (e.g. “24 Hour Party People”) and the one-dimensional, star-studded, bordering-on-absurd spectacle of the Hollywood biopic (e.g. “Ray” and “Walk the Line”). Perhaps it's because Hollywood sees musicians as cartoony cautionary tales whilst indies attempt to humanize their subjects. Or maybe it's simply because the British actually know how to make a biopic.

Regardless of the reasons, Control is a remarkable film. The life and death of Joy Division front man, Ian Curtis, is based on the biography “Touching from a Distance”, which was written by his widow. The stunning black and white photography is perhaps a nod to the most iconic shots of the man. The photographic resume of director Anton Corbijn, who is actually responsible for taking many of those iconic shots, makes him the perfect man for the job.

The casting is also spot on. Because there aren't many videos of the real Ian Curtis, and because actor Sam Riley is a relative unknown, there are many moments in the film which feel like a documentary. Riley's angst-filled cigarette smoking and collar-up street walking are like a poster come to life. It will be difficult for me to watch him in any other role.

Samantha Morton is also incredible as Curtis' devoted cuckquean housewife. Despite her being the only recognizable actor in the film, it's impossible not to get drawn into her character. Ditto for Alexandra Maria Lara as Curtis' Belgian journalist mistress. Her big sad eyes prevent you from hating her for her part in the affair. Your heart positively aches for everyone involved in the love triangle that played no small role in Curtis' suicide.

This is an important film because it shows that not every depressed musician who offed himself was a selfish, drug-addicted asshole. Some of them had legitimate reasons for their melancholy. Ian Curtis was a sensitive kid who's formative years were spent in a working class town in the 70's, way before Hot Topic and MTV made being sad cool. He married and became a father before he was emotionally mature enough to do so. He is correct when he admits he's not a good father. But him admitting it indicates that he could have become one.

And then there were those pesky epileptic fits for which there was no cure, only hordes of medications with crippling side effects. Before he takes his own life, Curtis writes that the fits are worsening all the time. When he wakes up from a particularly violent episode on his last day, the pain is so bad that it brings him to tears. Not that suicide was necessarily the right choice. But in this case, it may not have been so far-fetched.

The film ends with heart wrenching shots of those closest to Curtis, processing the wherefores of losing their friend. Thanks to Anton Corbijn allowing his audience to get to know Ian Curtis intimately for 2 hours, we have some inkling of how they must have felt. The impact is staggering.

But I really did like “La Bamba”.

November 2, 2007
Categories: Filmpinions . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

X-Posted to the the Reel.

It was always going to be tough for me to see Transformers. For 6-Year-Old Baxter, Optimus Prime was a role model, an icon and even a little bit of a crush. I both loved and was destroyed by Transformers: The Movie, the original animated feature in which my precious Optimus bravely sacrificed his life for the good of Earth and the Autobots. I was actually inconsolable about the death of Prime for weeks after my mom took me to see the film. It was one of the most unforgettable, and possibly one of the most significant moments of my childhood. There was little chance that anyone could have made a live-action Transformers film 20-some years later that would stand up to the memory of MY Transformers, and specifically my Prime.

But why, oh why did it have to be MICHAEL BAY?! You guys have all seen Pearl Harbor, right? Armageddon? The ISLAND?! Crap crap CRAP. And not in a good, Paul Verhoeven kind of way either. Unbelievably bad writing, terrible, forgettable action sequences. People are fooled into thinking his movies are exciting because (I suppose) he blows things up constantly. But they aren't good action films. Are any of those explosions as memorable as, say, the car chase scene in Bullit? (San Fransisco sure has a lot of hills!) or the foot chase scene in Point Break? (Swayze throws a DOG at Keanu to slow him down!) The answer is no. They're not. All I remember from Armageddon is the cheap tear-jerker moment when Bruce Willis is about to die so that Liv Tyler can marry Ben Afleck. All I remember from The Island are pretty people running around in white outfits and yelling a lot. All I remember from Pearl Harbor is…well, I try not to remember ANYTHING about that one.

Transformers isn't much different than the rest of the Bay catalog. He wastes plenty of time on extraneous scenes that supposedly provide Bay's idea of character development. His characters don't develop any further than if they were caricatures drawn at the carnival, engaged in their favorite activity. There's the brave solider (Josh Duhamel) who is about to risk his life to save the U.S. of A. and has a wife back home and a baby daughter he's NEVER MET! There's the hot Australian hacker chick with heavy eyeliner who discovers the Decepticon's plot to infiltrate the government's top secret files. She involves her fat funny hacker friend who loves Dance Dance Revolution because he's the ONLY ONE who can help prevent the Decepticons from getting the information! Or IS he? He never actually does anything other than eat donuts, dance with his brother and get sassed at by his mamma. But he sure is hilarious. Because he's fat.

There's also a hottie love interest who is “more than meets the eye” (new drinking game! smash a beer bottle over your head every time someone in the movie says that line!) because even though she's hot and hangs out with dumb jocks, she also has a convict for a daddy and knows how to steal cars. Great! Now she has one and a half dimensions!

Semper Memento.

And what about our main human character? I do love that Shia LaBeouf. If there were a stock market for actors, I would have bought shares in LeBeouf a long time ago. He's going to be huge. But the things Bay had him say and do in Transformers aren't doing his dramatic stock any favors.

All in all there are at LEAST 5 characters and as many scenes that could be cut completely from the 2-and-a-half hour long movie. Everything else could be tightened. How many times do we need to see robots smash into buildings? And, what would be left after a major editing overhaul would STILL suck. Even without the pilfering of my childhood, this movie is still trite, aimless, cliche, self-important, cheesy, and often, kinda boring.

And WITH the childhood pilfering? Well, I'm still not sure if it's better or worse that they used the original voice of Optimus Prime. I was happy to hear it again, but not happy to hear it come out of that pointy, unlovable re-imaging of Prime. It would have sucked to hear a new actor try to be the hero that I loved, but it was equally difficult to hear them lift dialog directly from Transformers: The Movie as Prime was about to square off with Megatron. It recalled the better film, the better version of the characters, and the heartbreakingly heroic death scene in the original. Basically, it reminded me, as if I needed more reminders, that I was watching crap.

I think I have a few happy childhood nuggets left. Does anyone want to call Baz Luhrman and have him direct a musical version of Clash of the Titans starring Dane Cook?

July 10, 2007
Categories: Filmpinions . . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment