or: The Art and Joy of Film Criticism
Carrie
Dir. Kimberley Pierce. Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore & Judy Greer
Release date NL: June 13, 2013
Iron Man 3
Dir. Shane Black. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall & Paul Bettany (voice)
Release date NL: April 24, 2013
The Man With The Iron Fists
Dir. RZA. Starring: Russell Crowe, Jamie Chung, Lucy Liu, RZA & Pam Grier
Release date NL: February 7, 2013
If your film gets banned in Tajikistan, you know that, at least, you’ve made something people will talk about. If you dedicate your film to Kim Jong-Il and throw his ashes on the red carpet at the Academy Awards, you know that you are Sacha Baron Cohen. The controversial British comedian was not yet done mocking (or offending, depending on your tastes) the rest of the World after Ali G. Indahouse (2002), Borat (2006) and Brüno (2009) and decided to make a new film: The Dictator.
When I first heard of this film I though it would be a remake of the classic Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator (1940), in which the master of silent comedy parodied Adolf Hitler. And although The Dictator is not officially a remake of that film, it is clearly inspired by it. As in The Great Dictator, a doppelganger plays an important role…
Plot: Admiral-General Aladeen is the merciless tyrant of the fictional North-African country of Wadiya (on the map it is located more or less where Eritrea lies in the real world; I wonder how this film will play there). The West beliefs he is developing nuclear weapons, and threaten to invade Wadiya unless Aladeen travels toNew Yorkto personally address the United Nations. But in America, things go differently than planned…
Thus a simple story of a fish-out-of-water is kick-started, involving predictable issues of mistaken identity and truckloads of toilet humor, sexist, racist and God-knows-what-kind-of-ist jokes. This should not be funny. But it is. It is, honestly, a lot of fun. Much more so than Cohen’s previous work. Three factors work in its advantage.
First of all: it is merciless. Cohen’s earlier films merely mocked the ignorant, the Right and America. The Dictator does not shy away from taking the piss with the Middle East,Israel, the United Nations, intellectuals, feminists, liberals and fugitives.
Second, it is fiction. This is a major improvement in relation to Borat’s and Brüno’s semi-documentarianism. In those films real people, often easy targets, were made fun of. It wasn’t nice. It was often cringe worthy and sometimes it was embarrassing Cohen himself more than any of his targets. The Dictator, being entirely scripted and acted by professionals (Anna Faris, John C. Reilly and Ben Kingsley have significant roles), gets away with much more because you know it is just a film. And as a bonus, it is sharper and funnier too.
Finally, Aladeen is a new character. Ali G., Brüno and Borat were already familiar faces because we knew them from television. But Aladeen is new, we need time to get to know him, and learn about him. This is time that the film needs and uses. It is only 83 minutes long, but is in danger of running out of steam towards the end, in the same way as the previous films.
All in all: Sacha Baron Cohen’s best effort to date. In cinema. I still think his types work better in short fragments on television.
Things we’ve learned this week:
Scarlett Johansson not in Iron Man 3, but Guy Pearce and Jessica Chastain join RDJ, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle and Ben Kingsley
So Iron Man 3 makes the same mistake as Iron Man 2
The new Anchorman film will be set in 1978, and deal with racial issues
Pixar will wake the Mexican dead
More than one hour of IMAX footage in The Dark Knight Rises
and
London Bridge is falling down (in GI: Joe: Retaliation [approx at 2:00] at least)
Things that we’ve learned this week:
Ralph Fiennes might be ‘N’
Iron Man fights Ghandi
Hunger Games director not to return for sequel
Batman’s baddies speak up
And Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to save the Terminator
The two most Oscar-nominated flms this year are the fantastic The Artist, the big favourite that has received ten nominations, and Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s first 3D and first family film. It has received eleven nominations, mostly in technical categories, although Best Film and Best Director are also on the list. Curiously, both films are about the past of cinema. But whereas The Artist is a wonderful birthday party, Hugo is a bittersweet eulogy. At its better moments at least.
Because for the longest part of its running time, it is boring, standard fare. My list of things that I dislike about Hugo kicks off with its infuriatingly romanticized, stereotypical representation of 1930s Paris, a quality which the film curiously shares with another overhyped nominee, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. But at least Midnight in Paris admitted that this representation was a fantasy. This is literally a film in which the Eiffel tower can be seen from every window in the city.
The second problem is the story, which is strangely two-sided. There is a bit about a young boy – the titular Hugo Cabret – living in the walls of a train station, operating the clocks and trying to rebuild the automaton his late father left him. And when this story is more or less told and done with (after a little more than an hour, a proper running time for a mediocre kids’ flick) another story begins, about an old and bitter shopkeeper and his mysterious past. Needless to say, that story is much more interesting, and I would have loved to see it as a proper drama on itself.
The third problem lies very close to the second problem. It is the actors’ performances. As the depiction of Paris, they are so stereotypical that it hurts. Starting with the young Asa Butterfield (Hugo), who for the sake of his youth will be spared harsh criticism. And continuing with the also-very-young Chloe Moretz, who we have seen in such better form in Kick-Ass and Let Me In. Far more problematic is the supporting role of Sacha Baron Cohen as the station chief, who is a stumbling cliche of a man, and a painfully underused Jude Law as Hugo’s father. The only major cats member who fare better are Sir Christopher Lee as a bookshop owner, also much too little in the picture, and Sir Ben Kingsley, as the ill-fated shopkeeper. Also, what is it with the thick English accents in a film set in Paris? What is the point of that?
The good things then. First of all there is the 3D, which is actually justified in some moments; for instance when showing the inner mechanics of the station clocks, or in flashbacks to the first years of the twentieth century. It isn’t perfect, but it shows at least a bit of potential for the technology. Unfortunately an inferior variety of the technology is used – the one with the heavy glasses that give me headaches – instead of the more common and superior RealD.
The second good thing are those flashbacks, which are the crown jewels of the film and which belong to the second, more interesting, part of the story. Without giving away too much, these are the scenes that won Hugo its Oscar nominations, the technical ones as well as the ‘ major’ ones. They are the ones that won over the hearts of film ‘connaisseurs’ (rather than fans or the regular audience) and members of the Academy. There may be some rewriting of history going on in the process, when the First world War substitutes for copyright struggles and financial misadventures, but that fits the drama and is pardonable.
Director Martin Scorsese is a film connaisseur. A lover of the history of the medium and the art, as his many documentaries on the subject clearly show. In interviews he says that he wanted, for once, to make a film that his children could enjoy, who are too young for Taxi Driver or The Departed. But it was a mistake to make his first 3D film, and an ode to early cinema at the same time. The three objectives fit crudely together, much unlike the perfect mechanisms of the clocks and the automaton.
This is happening to me, he. The first week after I start the ‘ Trailer Tuesday’ category, the web is flooded with new trailers. The big’ un is of course for The Dark Knight Rises (see below). I’m not going to show all the others on this site, so for the next films, I just give you the links:
ParaNorman, Lockout, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Jack the Giant Killer, Plan C.
The ones I’m featuring here are:
Rock of Ages
Dir. Adam Shankman. Starring: Tom Cruise, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Malin Akerman & Alec Baldwin
Release date NL: June 7 2012
Wrath of the Titans
Dir. Jonathan Liebesman. Starring: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Rosamund Pike & Bill Nighy
Release date NL: March 29, 2012
The Expendables 2
Dir. Simon West. Starring: Stallone, Statham, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Norris, Li, Lundgren. Everybody. Everybody? Everybody: Novak Djokovic.
Release date NL: August 16, 2012
The Dictator
Dir. Larry Charles. Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, John C. Reilly, Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley & Megan Fox
Release date NL: May 10, 2012
Video game adaptations have, until now, never worked out well as films. There are plenty of examples of film makers ‘getting it wrong’. Hitman (Xavier Gens, 2007) is one, as well as Max Payne (John Moore, 2008) is another, and the absolute low must be (although I’ve never seen it) Uwe Boll’s 2007 adaptation of Dungeon Siege: In the Name of the King.
If turning a video game into a film has proven difficult, the very idea of turning a theme park ride into a blockbuster movie seemed bordering on the insane, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer believed in the idea of Pirates of the Carribean. And it proved a commercial success. So if anyone would be able to produce the first successful video game adaptation, it should be Bruckheimer.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is based on the hugely popular platform game from the 1980s and 1990s, in which the player controls a hero whose main task is to climb steep walls and jump booby trapped pits. And it must be said: such scenes feature extensively in the film and are engaging and at times even sensational.
Also good are the central performances of Jake Gyllenhaal (ridiculously beefed up) as the titular prince and Gemma Arterton, whose role is similar to that in Clash of the Titans, but much better written. Comic relief is provided by Alfred Molina, as a black market organizer of ostrich races. Ben Kingsley does the typical Ben Kingsley thing on routine and there are very creepy assassins in the form of historically misplaced Hassansins. Mike Newell is a surprising choice as a director, but a good one: as he manages to get the characters work out.
The plot is completely bonkers. There is a mythical dagger that contains the Sands of Time, which, when released, turn back time a few seconds or minutes. But there is also a huge stack of time-sand that can turn history even further back, but with the risk of starting an apocalypse. Arterton’s character is a princess-priestess who guides Gyllenhaal’s prince on a quest to safeguard the dagger and the sand, while he is also seeking to uncover the frame-up in which he got blamed for the murder of his adoption father, the King.
The bonkers plot is complicated by references to the war in Iraq and the search for secret weapons. This is completely misplaced and unnecessary. The climax in the third act produces an awful conclusion that completely plays against the logic of the quest that filled the preceding hour. The reaction to this contrived solution is: “No, they did not just do that. They can’t have, it’s a cheat.” And as, we all know, cheating ruins gameplay.
Another video game element that is very prominent is exposition. Basically, this film has two types of scenes: action sequences, and scenes in which one character (mostly Arterton’s) tells another character (mostly Gyllenhaal) what they must do in order to achieve or prevent something, so that subsequently this or that may or may not happen. These scenes really get on your nerve halfway through the film.
Still, as summer entertainment, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time succeeds. It has got exotic locations, beautiful leads, comic relief, threatening bad guys, convincing and sometimes impressive action sequences and a noisy climax.
The film will be a commercial success, and the first video game adaptation that worked out. Despite the cheating. Bruckheimer and Newell can credit themselves with that.
By the way: I previously predicted that the film would be rubbish because video game adaptations always are. I am not quite certain whether I was right or not.
Poor Leonardo DiCaprio. Not because he is a bad actor – that would be very far from the truth. But because he has made a career out of being the second or third best thing in any film he is in. He was good in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?’ but not as good as Johnny Depp. He was very good in ‘The Basketball Diaries’, but not as touching as the fact that it was based on a real story. He was fine in ‘Titanic’, but outshone by a boat and an iceberg in that film. Than there was Leo versus Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘Gangs of New York’, Leo versus Tom Hanks in ‘Catch Me If You Can’ and last year it was Leo versus Kate Winslet in ‘Revolutionary Road’. To top the sadness of, it will always be Leo versus Robert de Niro (never a fair match) in every film he will ever make with Martin Scorsese.
Of which ‘Shutter Island’ is now the fourth edition, after said ‘Gangs of New York’, ‘The Aviator’ and ‘The Departed’. ‘Shutter Island’ is set on an ominous ilsand by that same name, on which Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow run an experimental mental hospital for the criminally insane. DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels, who is sent there with his new partner (played by Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the escape of one of the patients. During the investigation the island is isolated from the mainland by a hurricane, and Daniels is plagued by nightmares of his deceased wife and the liberation of concentration camp Dachau, in which he participated during the war. And this is only the premise to a film that knows quite a number of expected plot-twists and -turns.
‘Shutter Island’ is set in the fifties and obviously references the B-thrillers of the fourties and fifties that came to be known, and got popular in retrospect, as film noirs. However, it never becomes certain if Scorsese is giving us a reenactment, a tribute or a parody. And that is a major weakness for the film. The general comment would be that it is too much. Too much reference, too much visual excess, too many ominous ship horns on the soundtrack, too many plot twists. The balance hangs to parody, but there is not a single really funny or relieving moment in the film.
Which does not mean that it is bad. There is a lot that is good about ‘Shutter Island’. DiCaprio, to start of with, is good again. Max von Sydow and Mark Ruffalo are flawless in their supporting roles. The cinematography and occasional special effects in the first, dream-like, half of the film are stunning and the soundtrack is outrageous.
On the downside there is that outrageous soundtrack. And Ben Kingsley, who talks far too much, especially considering his first act remark to DiCaprio that ‘they already have talked’. However, Sir Ben is not the one to really criticize here. It is the script, based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) that lingers on unnecessary in an overly explainative last act. The film would have been much, much better if we, and with us Teddy Daniels, would have gotten to know only the essential parts of the truth. Now, all the pieces are made to fit together, supported by an unnecessary and emotionally ineffective flashback, and leading up to a climax that is annoyingly anti-climactic. Here the makers could have learned something from the finale of ‘A Serious Man’.
Which does not mean that ‘Shutter Island’ is bad. But it is one of the weak specimens in the carreers of both DiCaprio and Scorsese, the man who once gave us such jewels in cinema history as ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Raging Bull’. But if your admission ticket goes to either ‘Shutter Island’ or the pointless nonsense that is ‘From Paris with Love’, well… I need not say more. ‘Shutter Island’ is actually really enjoyable stuff. Unfortunately it is not much more than that.
And Leonardo DiCaprio? Poor him, he is again the second best thing in this film. This time it is, after all, the cinematography that wins the day.
