Movie Minds

Sorry for the delay between posts, folks. Busy times have come and gone, though there are more on the horizon. I’ve been pretty delinquent in my posting, but I haven’t seen any films in a little while either.
The last film I did make it out to see was The X-Files: I Want To Believe. I must say, after almost two weeks of reflection, I was terribly disappointed by the film.

I need to preface what comes next with this: I was a huge X-Files fan when it was on TV. I watched the show religiously from 93-97 and then watch every episode I could while a college student. Thankfully, this meant I missed most of the crappy seasons. Over the past year, through the magic of DVD, I re-watched the whole series. I rediscovered my love for the show. The early seasons had some great stories, from Flukeman to chupacabra sightings. The conspiracy arc was still a brilliantly devised bit of story-telling. I lamented the fact that Chris Carter and Co. let things go so horribly wrong in the last two seasons. I even re-watched the first X-Files movie. While no great piece of cinema, that movie stands head and shoulders above the latest outing we’ve been treated to.

At least with Fight the Future, the makers realized they needed to break out of the confines of television. What we got was a building blowing up in the first 15 minutes, a helicopter chase through a cornfield and a giant alien spaceship hidden in the ice below Antarctica. Projected onto a giant silver screen, it was a sight to behold. None of those images would have had the same impact on TV in 1998, before the advent of widescreen and HDTV.

Sadly, I Want To Believe never reaches the same scope. As many critics I read noted, this movie seemed to be TV writ large. While some shots try to emulate what Fight the Future, it just doesn’t have the same impact. A row of FBI agents trudging through a snowy meadow is not the same as a huge spacecraft rising from the Antarctic ice. In fact, I felt the shot would have had the same impact were I to see it on a TV screen.

When I first heard that the movie would be a one-off, standalone story with no ties to any story arc from the movie, I was pretty happy. The conspiracy arc became too mired in its own convuluted twists, and the ridiculous super-soldier arc from the last two season was just stupid.  That this was going to be a monster-of-the-week story made me hope for something really good, like the Flukeman episode. I thought Carter, with six years removed from the quagmire of Season 9, would go back to the show’s roots and give us a creepy freak of nature as the villain. Sadly this was not the case.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe never had me on the edge of my seat. The villains turned out fairly ordinary, if severely twisted. The big twist is so preposterous, it had me chuckling in my seat.

It’s a shame, really. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are still pitch-perfect together as Mulder and Scully. Seeing them together again was like meeting up with two old friends. Amanda Peet, who is either incredibly charming or insanely grating depending on what I see her in, does a decent job as Agent Dakota Whitney (terrible name), a quasi-Mulder disciple at the FBI. I particularly enjoyed Billy Connolly and the psychic paedophile priest. I thought he played the character perfectly. I never got the sense I could trust the character completely, I always had the inkling he was part of the villain’s gallery. I also really enjoyed Callum Keith Rennie turn as a villainous character. Everything he does is performed with cold-blooded ruthlessness, it’s chilling.

So there you have it. A potentially great film filled with actors at the top of their game, brought down by a lacklustre story. I hope that Fox will give Carter another crack at the can but the poor box office performance of the film makes me pessimistic. At least there’s the TV show and the memory of what was.

With The Dark Knight poised to rock the North American box office for a second straight weekend, I thought I’d find a movie that wasn’t sold out or packed tight with fanboys. I checked out Step Brothers. That seems unfair. I enjoyed Step Brothers, but it doesn’t hold a candle to The Dark Knight. But I digress.

Step Brothers is both the funniest movie I’ve seen this summer and the most bizarre piece of cinema I’ve seen in a long time. It’s also incredibly crass and tasteless with lots of bad language and toilet humour. The trailers that have been running since February don’t really give too much away. In fact, had I not been warned beforehand I would have been more shocked at some of the gags executed in this movie.

With all the marketing behind this film, the premise is fairly well-known by now. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play Brennan and Dale, two middle-aged men who still live at home. When their respective parents marry, the two become step brothers. Forced to live together, they initially hate each other but become fast friends fairly quickly. Hi jinks and hilarity ensue.

The story and screenplay was written by the two stars and director Adam McKay, who directed the pair in Talladega Nights.  It seems the trio decided to come up with the most awkward scenarios they could think of and film them. The two characters seem to be stuck in some sort of extremely arrested adolescence, with Dale still rocking out on a drum set and playing Guitar Hero and Brennan content to coast of his mother’s support. The two continue this, acting like children trying to adapt to a new family situation. I think this where the film gets bizarre. The movie asks you to suspend your disbelief at the idea of two adult men still living and acting like they’re 13-years-old. That’s a pretty tough spill to swallow. That they continue to act like children for the rest of the film kept the film firmly in the bizarre category.

Increasing the bizarreness is Brennan’s brother Derek and his wife, Alice. Played by Adam Scott, Derek is, for lack a better word, a giant douchebag. Condescending, patronizing, smarmy and extremely cruel, there is little to like about Derek. Kathryn Hahn plays Alice as a defeated woman, stuck in a loveless marriage, unable to get out. Hahn doesn’t get maudlin, but she dials up the desperation to an eleven. An encounter between Dale and Derek where Dale takes Derek down a few pegs brings this poor woman to life and she begins to pursue Dale. Their encounters are so painful and awkward, you can’t help but laugh. It helps that Hahn is a talented comedienne who plays well off of Reilly.

Despite the off-centre humour, Ferrell and Reilly are great together. At times I wondered how much of the script was actually written before shooting and how much was just improvised on the set. The nighttime scenes of Brennan and Dale talking in bed, describing how one will harm the other, are actually pretty funny. Most of the dialogue between the two seems like a game of oneupsmanship, with the actors trying to top each other by saying the most outrageous thing possible. I’d say the outcome was a tie.

The best part of the movie is the series of job interviews the two men go through, on orders from their father. Wearing tuxedos, insisting on being interviewed in tandem, the sequence left me in stitches. Seth Rogen pops up as a sports store manager and the three actors riff masterfully. Of course, it’s crude as hell, but by that point in the film, it’s pretty much expected.

Leaving the theatre, I didn’t know what to think. It was a funny movie, yes, but it also seemed to carry no point. It was almost like a collection of vignettes with a common story thread. But that seems a little simplistic. Part of me wants to think it was a brilliant comment on how parents are raising their children in today’s society, with more and more adults moving back in with their parents and several never leaving home at all. Then again, it was all a little silly for that. I guess even after a day of reflection, I’m still not sure what to think.

So the movie everyone wanted to see this summer finally came out. After all the buzz, all the hype, the tragic death of one of the stars, fanboys drooling over every photo and plot point, was it worth it? I think the answer on most people’s lips is HELL YES.

Honestly, I though Batman Begins was a great reboot of the franchise. Batman and Robin was such a colossal blunder, I thought what Chris Nolan and his cast pulled off was nothing more than miraculous. But what he did with this follow-up is almost inconceivable. Nolan didn’t take the Batman mythos and turn it on its ear. That would have been too easy. No, Nolan took Batman to a far darker place than ever before, staying within the established limits of the mythology. I don’t want to give too much away for those who may not have seen the movie yet, but suffice to say, GO NOW. Go see it as soon as you can. Just get up now and go see it. Don’t wait.

Christian Bale returns, of course, and once again pulls off both Batman and Bruce Wayne masterfully. He also seems to have mastered the voice, something I thought sounded a little forced in Batman Begins. Michael Caine is still a hoot as Alfred, and grows in his role as the emotional tether to his volatile employer. Morgan Freeman, who I think could play opposite a brick wall and still be interesting, adds more layers to the character of Lucius Fox, fleshing out a character that seemed pretty one-dimensional in the first flick. Gary Oldman gets a bit more of a work out, which suited me just fine. I thought he was criminally underused in Batman Begins. Yeah, I know he got to drive the Batmobile, but he didn’t get to do much else.

The newcomers do an excellent job holding their own as well. Aaron Eckhart plays Harvey Dent as a gallant noble hero, making it easy to understand why he is the “white” knight. He and Bale have some great scenes and play off each other nicely. His transformation into Two-Face isn’t as smooth as I would have liked, but Eckhart does a far sight better than Tommy Lee Jones did in Batman Forever. He brought a lot more menace and a lot less camp. Unfortunately for Maggie Gyllenhaal, she takes on the formidable challenge of Rachel Dawes, perhaps the most undeveloped and annoying character from Batman Begins. Played by Katie Holmes, I found Rachel to be shrill and self-righteous, and overly dramatic. I also don’t think Holmes is that great an actress. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, has a lot of talent and does a great job with a role that is still underwritten. Gone is the shrillness, replaced with the conflict between her love for Bruce and her feelings on his actions.

Then there is Heath Ledger. Whether he deserves some kind of recognition with an Oscar or not, I can’t say. His family should be proud their son accomplished so much in such short time. They should be proud that he made this movie. The people I saw the movie with seemed a little underwhelmed regarding his take on the Joker. After all the hype and stories, I think that was inevitable. Still, I was amazed at the transformation. He seemed so natural in his performance, like he really had gone through whatever trauma sent the Joker over the edge. Do I think another actor could take his place? Yes, I do. But it wouldn’t be quite the same character. Ledger didn’t overplay the character’s little twitches and tics, but incorporated them subtly. What really got me was the laugh. The Joker’s laugh left me a little nervous, a little scared. It made me believe that this person was far beyond salvation, that he had found the darkest corner of his soul and started digging even deeper. With his bare hands.

The movie itself doesn’t feel like the 2.5 hours it’s advertised to be. Maybe it’s because Nolan paces the film so well, you never have reason to look at your watch. Maybe it’s because, at any time during the movie, what’s on the screen is so compelling, you can’t help but watch.

A little heads up to movie buffs, keep an eye out for character actor Nicky Katt in a cameo as a SWAT team member.

Also, I’d just like to put in a special mention to the Studio Cinema in Belmont, MA. I saw the film there while visiting friends. I thought it was a great place to see a film. It may only have one screen, but it’s a charming little cinema house and if you live in the area, I suggest you check it out.

First post in two weeks. I’m the man. Okay, so not really, but I had to get this out before the weekend. The same day I got to meet Gordon Liu at Fantasia Fest, I also got to meet three young filmmakers from Ottawa. Trevor Matthews, Patrick White, and Jon Knautz were at the fest to present Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer. I actually got to have dinner with them prior to the screening. They were nice guys, anxious to see how their film would play to a Montreal crowd. I was tagging along with a friend who had actually press credentials to the festival, so I was happy to just be there.

What a movie. Made on a tiny budget ($2.5 million Canadian dollars someone told me), these guys paid homage to 80s horror films in style. A very funny horror comedy, Jack Brooks is the sort of film big-name Canadian producers have failed to make for years. Eschewing CGI for practical effects, the film thrives in its gory glory. Not that things go too far. The story is fairly straight forward. As a boy, Jack Brooks watches as his whole family is devoured by a forest monster. Now an adult, Jack has anger management issues that cause him to lash out violently at the drop of a hat. His science professor at the night school he attends becomes possessed by the heart of a demon. Horror and hilarity ensue. Jack must face his fears to save the day. But can he?

Far from the ridiculous teen sex hijinks of Going the Distance or the just plain awful Foolproof, this homegrown flick plays to its audience without pandering to it. There are obvious nods to films like The Evil Dead and its sequels and Friday the 13th and less obvious nods to films like The Terminator. Most of the cast is Canadian, with a few Montreal actors popping up in supporting roles. The most delightful part of the film for me was seeing Robert Englund as the science teacher, Prof. Crowley. He plays the role for laughs and scores several. That he agreed to make the film was a casting coup for Matthews, White and Knautz. The fans at Fantasia were certainly thrilled to see him in another horror film. They cheered every time he was on screen.

It’s pretty obvious that I like this movie. I’d like to see it do as well as another certain Canadian film, Bon Cop Bad Cop, another film that shrugged arty pretension for fun entertainment. Certainly, with quality movies like this being made in Canada, maybe we’ll see more entertainment films coming out and less art films.

That said, I should note that the filmmakers have managed to secure an independent theatrical release of the movie Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal on July 25. It’ll be playing at the AMC Forum 22 in Montreal. I’ll be going back I think.  As well, for my readers down in the USA, the film is getting a limited release through Anchor Bay Media, opening in Chicago on August 1, LA and NY on August 8, and more cities after that. I’ll try and keep you updated.

Seriously, go see this film. It’s got thrills and chills but enough laughs to make sure you don’t spend the night scared some one-eyed jungle monster will come bursting through your window.

I’m all about the cheesy headlines, so get used to it. This weekend, I got to meet a true living legend in the world of Hong Kong movies. Gordon Liu, who most North American movie goers will remember as Pai Mei in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 2, was in town this past weekend to present a digitally-restored version of Disciples of the 36th Chamber at Fantasia Fest. The print looked gorgeous and the stunts were immaculately choreographed. Liu introduced the film and then held a lengthy Q&A session with the audience. We were even treated to a brief kung fu demonstration. Afterwards, fans lined up in the lobby of the Hall building to meet the man, who graciously posed for countless photos and signed several autographs. Thanks to Chris Bumbray for the photo.

Hi.

This is, I hope, the start of something big. I love movies. I watch ‘em all the time. Now, I want to share my thoughts on them. Hopefully, you’ll like what I have to say. Even if you don’t, I hope you’ll take the time to express your opinion in the comments section. Thanks for stopping by.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!