Where We Stand: Nine Months in the Multiplex

It is September. We’ve had the Oscars, Cannes and the blockbuster season, and this weekend saw the end of the Venice film festival.  So, most of what was to happen in film this year has already happened. Time for a little overview then.

Last year I kept lists of the best ten and the worst ten films of the year. I’ve done the same thing for this year so far. And to start off on a good note: this year’s worst films aren’t that much worse than last year’s worst films. 2011’s Clash of the Titans was Conan the Barbarian, in terms of noisy nonsense, but Conan still offered some fun. Last year we had a Sex and the City sequel, this year we had the third Transformers movie. Those two cancel each other out. The same goes for Sucker Punch and Prince of Persia, and for Get Low and Fair Game. The ‘worst films of 2011’ list, for all the dreadful terrors that are on it, is not my main concern.

I have two main concerns. The first one is the list of films that should have been on the ‘worst film’ list, but aren’t there, because the list is already filled. I’m thinking of Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, of the superfluous The Eagle, of the failed Horrible Bosses and the incoherent The Rite (review forthcoming). That these films are now in the large bulk of ‘mediocre’ films is a problem.

My second concern is the ‘best films of 2011’ list. There are films on there that really don’t deserve to be there. Mainly because I am still to stumble upon anything resembling A Serious Man, or The Hurt Locker. True Grit, though good, was nowhere near the Coen’s best work, and Oscar grabber The King’s Speech felt strangely tame and artificial, despite outstanding performances.

So on this year’s ‘best of’ list, so far, we find such films as Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Rango. For a film to be simply exciting (Rise…) or simply funny (Rango), and for it to showcase impressive technological advances (both) is now good enough. Just compare: In 2010 the one animated movie on the list was Toy Story 3. Now it is Rango.

Of course The Fighter was excellent, and so was Black Swan. And Bridesmaids was fantastically funny, despite the excessive vomiting and diarrhea. Source Code is the closest we’ll get to an Inception this year. But it is the closest to it, not a match. Furthermore Bridesmaids doesn’t hold up to Four Lions or Kick Ass. And I am yet to find anything as emotionally charged as Winter’s Bone or El Secreto de Sus Ojos. Harry Potter 7.2 was satisfying, but not much more than that…

Nothing to feel really good about then? Well, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger were not as bad as I expected them to be. They were surprisingly entertaining actually, apart from the action scenes. X-Men: First Class lived up to its expectations, and Fast Five was an outrageous guilty pleasure. These films kinda make up for the big let down of Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides.

But in conclusion, all in all? Quite too many films did not live up to potential or expectations or the sheer common decency of meeting the lowest level of quality you can still get away with. 2011 is just not good enough. Yet.

What’s left to look forward then? Well, the award films will start pouring in, with strong contenders in We Need To Talk About Kevin, Martha Marcy May Marlene, War Horse, The Help, The Iron Lady, We Bought a Zoo and The Ides of March. And perhaps the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo remake. But I’m looking forward most to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which really should see Gary Oldman pick up a long overdue little gold statue.

Best of 2011 so far: Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, True Grit, Rango, Source Code, Bridesmaids, Harry Potter 7.2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Tree of Life.

Worst of 2011, so far: The Green Hornet, The Green Lantern, Paul, Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Unknown, Sucker Punch, Get Low, Conan the Barbarian and The Tree of Life.

Yes. Malick’s is in both categories. Everyone who has seen it will understand.

Oh captain my captain, the first reviews are in…

The first reviews are in for Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides. Is the franchise on course for box office booty? Or can reviewers sharpen the swords of witty wordplay?

The latest Pirates of the Carribean film, On Stranger Tides, premiered in Cannes this weekend. And the first reviews are, to say the least, not very positive. Reviewers seem to have been sent on a quest of their own, in competitive search for the Holy Grail of Anticipated Disappointment.

Here is Empire’s Helen O’Hara:

“An overly complicated plot and poorly thought-out characters detract from the flashes of charm that Cap’n Jack still emits. Despite quality set-pieces and the best efforts of the cast, this is dull and crossbones.”

Dull and crossbones, and merely two stars, and that from a magazine that gave Fair Game (by far the most boring film I reviewed on this website) three stars.

More ‘witty wordplay’ from Chris Laverty (Clothes on Film):

“This saturated saga is dead in the water.”

And from Robbie Colin (News of the World)

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of sleeping tablets”

It should be noted that there are some reviewers who consider the film less terrible than the third installment (At World’s End), and there is one stand-out reporter claiming that this is “the perfect summer movie and perhaps the best Pirates of them all” (Pete Hammond for Boxoffice Magazine). But this is from someone who thought Paul was any good. Well.

Will the Pirates of the Carribean franchise be dragged up by On Stranger Tides? Or is it a sinking ship (see what I did there?). We’ll see. I’ll sit it through and report back.

End of the year round-up: The Worst Films of 2010* **

*Dutch release dates

** As I am no professional critic I have not seen everything. Films such as The Social Network, Scott Pilgrim and Sex and the City 2 have so far managed to elude me.

10        The American                                                              

Anton Corbijn plays Sergio Leone. He gets the visuals and the pace right, but the film is far too self-conscious and overdosed on religious metaphors.

 

9          The Town                                                                    

Good action scenes and Jeremy Renner don’t make up for a bunch of clichés, terrible dialogue and way too much Ben Affleck.

 

8          Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time                             

Pretty entertaining in its own league, but earns its place in this list to that terrible plot device that makes you feel “cheated” out of the game.

 

7          Iron Man 2                                                                  

Overloaded, overloud and a mere commercial for future Marvel films. Its obsolete director has left the franchise by now.

 

6          The Expendables                                                         

Could have been a funny, high-profile JCVD. Ended up with Jason Statham reading poetry.

 

5          Green Zone                                                                 

Outdated politics are more important in this film than character and emotion, and an overdose of  shaky camera ruins the last act.

 

4          Fair Game                                                                   

A film so dull that I could easily take a toilet break. Unprecedented.

 

3          Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps                                

Shia Leboeuf compares the stock exchange bubble of 2008 to the Cambrian explosion, but the film is a massive implosion of wasted talent and opportunity.

 

2          Shrek Forever After                                                    

Disgraceful, uninspired money grabbing with not a single original idea and the worst excuse for 3D conversion of the year.

 

1          Clash of the Titans                                                       

Quote from my review: “An incoherent, ramshackle waste of celluloid”. With plenty of fierce competition Clash of the Titans manages to have been the number one contender for my worst picture of the year ever since April. Last week’s news that a sequel is planned gave me a nasty rash.

Fair Game But Dull Cinema – The Fair Game Review

Now, there’s two ways too insult a movie. The first one is walking out of it. I’ve done that a couple of times. First with Spike Lee’s terribly misogynistic She Hate Me, later with a disgusting horror flick called The Ruins and most recently when I gave Inglourious Basterds a second chance.

The second way too insult a movie is different may seem less harsh, but is actually more so. To walk out of a film at least means the film touched you, that it moved you. Not pleasantly probably, but still. It matters to walk out of it. You make a statement. You draw a line. But this second way of insulting a movie comes out of utter disinterest. Boredom. I’ve done it once before, with Avatar, and I did it again with Fair Game (dir. by Doug Liman)

I took a bathroom break.

I walked out of the film, but only to relieve myself. After that I just took up my place, looked at the screen, noticed after a minute I hadn’t missed much and sat out the ride. Fair Game is so dull and predictable that it couldn’t force me to squeeze my bladder. Now that’s quite something for a cinephile like me. At least Avatar had the excuse of being three hours long and shown without an intermission. Fair Game doesn’t even get close to the two-hour mark. And yet it is so boring.

Just to recap: Fair Game is the story, based on a real scandal a couple of years ago, of a CIA operative (Valerie Plame, played by Naomi Watts) whose cover is blown by White House officials after her diplomat husband (Joe Wilson, played by Sean Penn) publicly denies the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Eventually the scandal was exposed and White House advisor Gordon Libby was fired and prosecuted.

Penn and Watts give great performances (they played a couple under duress previously in The Assasination of Richard Nixon), it must be admitted. And it is honestly a delight to see Naomi Watts back on form after a string of weaker performances that was kick-started by her role as scream queen in King Kong in 2005 and reached its utter low when shoe voiced Suzie Rabbitt in David Lynch’s incomprehensible Inland Empire mess.

But great performances don’t make up for the many wrongs of Fair Game. First of all. The WMD plot is really, really outdated. Let’s call it the ‘Green Zone’ fallacy; when the MacGuffin that drives the plot is not really mysterious or exciting (anymore). Now that is one thing. But the biggest problem is that Fair Game should really be about Wilson and Plame and the stress put on their marriage by Wilson’s disclosure and the subsequent mud-slinging campaign and death-threats. Instead, the turning point of Plame’s cover being blown comes only after an hour or so: the first hour is spent explaining how the White House faked the evidence from the intelligence agencies. Which is really, really a passé point to make. Now the interesting part of the film hardly lasts for half an hour. This is the part that I’m interested in, this is where the actors can go from good to great, but it is cut short.

Liman has chosen to make a film about politics rather than a film about people, and the result is Michael Moore without humor but with two great actors short-changed on their talents.