The Way Back (2010) Review

Peter Weir has made an eclectic set of films in his career. There are directors that find that ‘one thing’ that they have to say and they retell the basic story over and over again. Peter Weir definitely is not one of those telling stories of war, great debates, love, cultural differences among others. If there is a common thread in some of his films, it may be individuals standing up against oppression in various forms.

I didn’t really see this as an ‘escape’ film. In fact the actual escape is almost an afterthought in the movie. The focus is on the oppressive political/governmental system and the journey to escape that. The various characters in this story are all victims of communist and socialist regimes (or occupation of their country in the lead’s case). What that really means is shown here in the loss of individual thought, religion, life and freedom, in general. This is based on one particular account, but there have been other similar stories of escape from the Soviet Gulag. “as Far As My Feet Will Carry Me” comes to mind and although that was a really good movie, it’s not of the same caliber as this one is.

The movie begins with a blurb informing the audience how a number of men in the 1940s( during World War II)  had escaped from a Soviet prison in Siberia and had managed to walk into India. You would think that that would a spoiler in some way, but it’s not. It doesn’t say that only three survived, but that’s where three of them ended up. The fact that they make it isn’t the point of the film anyway. After the blurb, the movie fades in to a dank stone room during the simultaneous Soviet and Nazi occupation of Poland. A Polish man named Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is being interrogated/interviewed by a Soviet official. He has obviously been roughed up and after denying committing any crimes, his wife is brought in. She is obviously also under great duress and tells the official what he wants to hear. He is a political prisoner, and after refusing to sign a document stating his ‘crimes against the Soviet Union’ (spying, for one), he is sent to a prison in Siberia, anyway.

Janusz is idealistic and kindhearted which makes it an extra dangerous situation for him. An American named Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) sees Janusz give some of his rations to an elderly dying man and intercedes only to warn him that ‘kindness’ will lead to his death in the prison. Mr. Smith is seen to be a very brave man by the other prisoners for his actions defying the prison guards and is definitely a survivor.

Janusz is taken under the wing of another prisoner, an actor (Mark Strong) who was sent to the Gulag for a performance in a movie (that’s the ultimate criticism I guess). The actor has plans for escape, but it only amounts to lip service. Later, both Mr. Smith and Janusz are sent to the mines (which amounted to a death sentence where the execution would be carried out little by little, and they hatch a plan to leave with a small group that featured an artist, an accountant, a priest and a young Pole suffering from night blindness (which afflicted quite a few prisoners). They figure if they die, it’ll at least be as free men. Before they leave a dangerous Russian criminal (Colin Farrell) talks his way into the group (and partially because he owns a knife, which the group will need to survive). And then the movie REALLY begins.

This cast is an exceptionally good one, starting with the film’s center, Jim Sturgess. I’ve seen him in some good movies, but this may be his best movie to date. I loved the reason that is revealed late as to what kept him (and others) going. He plays one of the rare purely good onscreen protagonists.

Ed Harris is a top talent and has long been one of my favorite actors. He makes any film better. Here, he is the American voice in the coalition of escaped political prisoners. He probably has the ‘character arc’ in the film even though the film isn’t really about him in the end.

There are other valuable supporting roles, also. Colin Farrell  is good as a Russian ‘criminal’ who despite being sent to the Gulag, still loves Stalin. He is the X factor that is in the mix, clearly to provide a sense that he may do something unexpected and detrimental to the group.

Saoirse Ronan plays a young girl and political fugitive that becomes part of the group along the way. Her character may be the most important character (outside of the main protagonist) in the story. Her character has the biggest impact on the aggregation, changing the politics of the fugitives immediately.

She kind of represents a restoration of the prisoners’ humanity. Up until that point it’s all about survival. After that, the forced expedition takes on new meaning in a number of ways.

I’m struggling with some of the European cast. I think it’s Gustaf Skarsgard that played Voss, the Latvian priest. Most of the scenes were dominated by Sturgess, Farrell and Harris, but Skarsgard quietly played an unassuming character that helped to force some of the decisons made by the group with deliberate action. His character makes the decision that changes the dynamic of how the group operated without a word spoken.

And of all the moments of the film I think I liked the short moments where he and Ronan went inside the (forcibly) abandoned Bhudist temple the most, but then my favorite part of Ferris Beuhller’s day off was the scene in the museum where Cameron ends up getting lost in the detail of George Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”.

The movie cinematography is staggering. This is a movie meant for the big screen. This by far, the director’s most spectacularly  shot film to date. The cinematography alone makes the movie an epic film. The story of a handful of individuals is given enormous weight by the visuals. You can almost feel the elements watching it. With the shots of the desert, you realize just how insane their journey is. Just that part alone in the film had me doubting my own ability to have made the trek. My knees would have given out long before any of them do. And I’m pale. Geez. I wouldn’t have lasted an hour.

And it’s not just the scenery. The actors are shot in a way that seems to augment the nature of their journey. The dirt. Their tattered clothes. The wear. The weathered faces. Whoever did the makeup FX to make the actors look like they’ve walked a few thousand miles deserved an award for this.

You really get a sense of the vastness of the world in this. Sometimes the world seems small, but if you have to traverse the Himalayas by foot, it gets a whole lot larger. There are many struggles along the way of the journey and the miraculous nature of their journey is driven home as the group slowly dwindles from dehydration, starvation and the elements, as well as the fortunate encounters  that are unexpected and unlikely. Harrowing and never boring this is an overlooked diamond of a film.

I’m going to have to revise my Best 10 Films of 2010 list. GREAT film!

5 of 5

Cowboys And Aliens (2011) Review with Some Slight Spoilers

First and foremost, Olivia Wilde looks great in a cowboy hat….

Oh. And Cowboys and Aliens is a first rate popcorn movie that blows the recent crop of summer superhero films out of the water. In fact, I think this is Jon Favreau’s best film. Even with the extremely hokey title and subject matter, the film is taken seriously by all of the filmmakers involved. Throw in the caliber of actors that this one has and it elevates from a flimsy (and generic) sci-fi fantasy to a movie that actually has a little weight to it.

Cowboys & Aliens looks like a proper movie, unlike a lot of CGI films that were shot in green screen studios. The western backdrop gives the look of a real film. I can imagine Zack Snyder’s version of this with smokey green-yellow skies and lots of slow motion closeups of cowboys drawing their guns while leaping 50 feet over a charging alien army. Ack!

This could have very easily been made into a straight western. A very good western with the talents involved.

The story opens with a man (Daniel Craig) that awakens out on the western plains. He’s barefoot and has a strange (especially for the 1800s) bracelet on his left wrist that he can’t remove. The worst thing for him is that he can’t remember anything and when a group of mercenary-types ride up on him, they think he may be an escaped convict. In hopes that he may have a price on his head, they attempt to forcibly take him prisoner. He defends himself and kills all three men (but Favreau makes it palatable by having the three men shown to have indian scalps on them…).

I liked Craig as much in this as I liked him in Casino Royale. He has the hard nosed look of a classic gunfighter and he has no problems dropping the accent. He looks a bit haggard and has enough grime on his face throughout the film that he would have fit in very well with the characters in that Aussie western “The Proposition” where everyone seemed to be covered in sweat, blood and dirt. Craig generally plays characters with a harder edge and he does that here. His character is singleminded in his purposes.

So, the nameless man rides into the town of Absolution that at first seems like a ghost town for unexplained reasons. He lets himself in to one of the establishments only to be held at gunpoint again, this time by Meachum, a preacher played by the always interesting Clancy Brown. Brown usually plays heavies and bad guys so this was different. Meachum quickly realizes that Craig’s amnesiac isn’t a threat and helps him. Then there’s gunfire outside and people suddenly fill the formerly empty streets. A local hooligan (Paul Dano) is causing trouble with random gunfire and ends up trying to shakedown the rest of the citizens. He is the son of a local power player, the appropriately named Dolarhyde (played by superstar Harrison Ford) who is away on business. Craig’s mystery man defuses the situation and the young Dolarhyde ends up in jail.

The town’s lawman (Keith Carradine) thanks the man with no name, but soon realizes who the man is. He and his deputies try to arrest the man unsuccessfully until an equally mysterious woman named Ella (played by the sexy Olivia Wilde) gets involved.

I think this character  suits Wilde more than when I last saw her in Tron:Legacy. She plays smart far better than she plays dumb. And her Ella is even smarter than she lets on. She’s a bright spot in a good movie. Favreau let her shine mostly without the obnoxious ‘Grrrrl Power!’ feminism that’s prevalent in many summer films now. Wilde didn’t need that to stand out in the film and if there’s a sequel, I would hope they’d bring her back in some capacity.

Ella keeps quiet while the stranger is being locked up. He and Dano’s character are being shipped off to another town to face a judge and jury. As they’re set to leave by prison stagecoach, the elder Dolarhyde and his men show up.

Harrison Ford plays a character that he hasn’t often played . As he said in an interview for imdb, he didn’t have to maintain the sympathies of the audience, “which is the obligation of the leading man in many cases”. He plays Dolarhyde as equally hard nosed as Craig’s character. He’s a businessman, but it he’s fully capable of breaking the law to get what he wants.

Dolarhyde has problems of his own, thinking one of his men killed two of his employees and blow up a herd of cattle in a drunken stupor, but when he aggressively arrives in Absolution he’s not just looking to get his son out of jail;  he wants the other prisoner, too. They have a history. Just when things are about to get really ugly, the other half of the title shows up and all Hell breaks loose.

I don’t usually get this intricate when describing story events. I think movies are best when they are viewed without prior information of what’s going to happen, so to continue in this vein would be giving away too much.

The movie worked, for me. It does not have the mindless CGI action scene every 7 minutes as other contemporary summer films have. I read in a snippet of someone else’s review (that did not like the film), that there is a long 2o minute lull early in the feature, but I disagree strongly. That’s only if you’ve been weened on the mindless MTV music video editing style and believe that’s the only way a film can be made.

Favreau’s film takes its time in setting up all of the key elements. He doesn’t reveal everything all at once. He lets the story unfold naturally. he takes his time in establishing the various supporting characters.

Favreau  didn’t have to try very hard to make the background characters memorable, casting actors who have all played lead roles like Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach (“Hey, Victor”) and Keith Carradine in smaller roles. Even that kid from The Last Airbender (Noah Ringer) played a lead. It actually aggravated me every time Ringer appeared on screen, because I had seen him before and couldn’t place the movie. It was the hair, I guess.

There are some weaknesses to the movie, but they’re minor in the grand scope of the movie. One, I don’t think Favreau handles scenes well where several things are happening at once, and it’s very evident in the battle scenes that involved the initial posse, a tribe of indians, a large group of outlaws and the malevolent aliens. I think it could have used a little more editing, also. It started getting repetitive and at times felt like the number of people present was 30 times what it was.

You never got a good feeling of where the action was occurring. Sometimes Ford (for example) would be depicted being overwhelmed by aliens, the film would cut away, then cut back to Ford riding free again. Favreau’s films seem to extend themselves for the sake of it sometimes, like he’s afraid that the people watching won’t feel like they got their money’s worth if the fight scene ends too quickly.

Something else that happened (and it may just be me) was that it looked like one story thread was being set up early that what Craig’s character was being accused of was just a misunderstanding, that what he was accused of was the work of the aliens. That seemed to be revealed too early since the aliens’ modus operandi had already been shown. But then you find out that he actually did steal gold and had a gang of outlaws.

But that he was wanted for his girlfriend’s murder made no sense then, because she was killed by the aliens in their secret lair. Maybe I’m just overthinking it.

You can also tell the film has comic-bookish origins just by the names in the story. Just like in the Road To Perdition, the story’s leads and even the Town where they inhabit blatantly signal who the character’s are. They might not be as fitting in this one, however, since some of the characters act in ways that are opposite of what their name prescribes.

All of these are minor complaints, though. The entire cast make the movie fun even without aliens onscreen. Cowboys and Aliens is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

If all of the principles came back I’d like to see a sequel. There, I said it. A sequel.

4.5 of 5 

Skyline (2010) Short Review

A stupid movie about nothing made with the sole intent of separating people from their cash on an opening weekend with an FX laden trailer. The filmmakers made no effort to tell any kind of real story. The characters are all bland and apparently without the ability to reason about anything beyond their 20 something banal problems. Their dialogue is limited to either stating what’s going on like a play by play, questioning what’s happening at that moment, saying something incredibly stupid (like “I’m calling the police” after witnessing lights sucking thousands of people into the sky), or just screaming. There are no philisophical questions raised. They painstakingly avoid saying the word ‘alien’, even though it’s an obvious otherworldly invasion into our own. They make irrational statements like “We have to get to the water” without any kind of evidence that that would help matters. Many of the characters are introduced CLEARLY because the film needs a victim at their point of entry. Why Jared (the semi-protagonist) has some kind of alien resistance is never explained. And it just ends.

The FX are really good in some ways, but lazy and unimpressive in others. It generally looked like a big screen film (even with the reportedly tiny budget of $5 million. Relative, I know), but there are many instances where it just looks like they inserted CGI animation into shots without any kind of ‘real world’ set decoration. What I mean is that the aliens appear, but rarely do any damage or interact with tactile objects. They float around (because that’s easier than showing them walk around) and make bright CGI lights and lens flares.

Many of the scenes seemed borrowed from other sci-fi films like Speilberg’s War Of the Worlds or the Matrix or maybe the other crap movie the filmmakers were working on at the time, Battle: Los Angeles. For FX guys at the helm, the movie surprisingly was devoid of any kind of real imagination. It even looks like they started getting extra lazy (or running out of money) by film’s end. Just a terrible waste of time.  I had to make room for it on my Worst 10 Films of 2010 List.

1.5 of 5

My Comic Book Update

I’m working on a comic to be released next year (it’ll be an ‘ongoing series’ with a definite end to be ready to go by San Diego Comic Con next year… I have 8 pages inked, colored, lettered (with sound FX) along with the finished logo. I also created some lettering motifs  and logos (for businesses and organizations in the story) that will run throughout. It’s been a lot of work.

I’m working on 2 pages right now. One I thought I would be finished with by now, but it’s still in the ‘flatting’ stage effectively. The other page was waiting to be lettered, but I didn’t like 3 of the finished panels (looked too cartoony), so I’m going to redraw them.

On top of that, I have another 5 pages that probably won’t be used in the first issue that aren’t lettered yet, but they are inked and colored. 348 days to go.

More Shins…

In honor of me failing to get into the San Diego Comic Convention Souvenir Book.

I Actually Won Something!

Here’s my signed copy of Spawn #200 by Todd, himself… I won it in one of Todd’s twitter contests. My click of the ‘Retweet’ button crushed all of those other wannabes out there!

I was hoping for one of the McFarlane covers, but I got the Ashley Wood cover. Listen to me, I won and I’m complaining. It’s a cool cover, though.

I won! I won!

The End (1978) Short Review

The End was a film made at a time when Burt Reynolds was a big enough box office draw that he could star in films that were really just excuses to hang out with his friends on a movie set. The stories in a lot of these are just to tie together the guest appearances. If you like Burt Reynolds when he’s in Cornball mode, then you’ll probably like this one.

FSU alumnus (just had to throw that out there) Reynolds plays Sonny Lawson,  a man that finds out that he has a terminal illness where he MAY die imminently. I say ‘may’ because the when is vague. He vows to die with some nobility, but after visiting the terminal ward at the hospital decides that he doesn’t want to see the illness through to the bitter end. So he begins contemplating the best way to end it all.

He first visits a church where he is consoled by the appropriately named Father Benson played by Robbie Benson. The scene reminded me of the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man, where the main character seeks council with a rabbi that is half his age. That one plays out similarly to this where Benson is both excited by his first confessional and by the fact that Reynolds has led an impressively sinful life.

Then he visits friends and family. Sally Field appears as the girlfriend who may not love him, but enjoys his company. Like the other people in the film, she seems as though she’s making an extended cameo. She only appears at the one location (her home) and even though she pops up again when Reynolds wants to borrow her gun, her appearances seem like it was probably filmed in a day or two.

His mother and father are played by screen legend Myrna Loy and veteran character actor Pat O’Brien. Joanne Woodward plays the ex-wife. Lawson makes it a point to be nicer to all of them than he normally is, which is part of the film’s point; that we are nicer when death looks immediate, when we should probably be that way all along. Anyway…

Teen Dream Kristy McNicholl makes an appearance as the estranged daughter. Her role is a little cliched, but then everyone in the movie is to some point. Lawson says his goodbyes, though and then sets out to do himself in… In the least painful way. It’s funny that occasional Reynolds sidekick Dom DeLuise gets second billing, because he doesn’t appear until halfway in

After Lawson’s first attempt at suicide, he ends up in the funny farm and naturally he wakes up to a pantsless DeLuise, who claims to be a paranoid schizophrenic. He quickly attaches himself to Lawson and does what he can to help speed things along.

There are some other cameos, too. James Best makes a short appearance as a hospital patient that doesn’t want to give up the phone. Character actor Strother Martin shows up as a looney bin doctor. Norman Fell is the doctor that gives Reynolds the bad news in nonchalant fashion. Carl Reiner is one of the movie’s highlights. He plays an extremely optimistic doctor that has a terminal illness of his own. The end of his scene was expected, but still funny.

The movie did go where I thought it would, but I was only expecting the typical slapstick, bad pun humor that goes with these types of Reynolds late 70s/early 80s vehicles. Is it a good film? Not really, but it does surprise in stating some of the typical truths that many take for granted. This is probably the lightest take on this type of subject matter… It’s devoid of any moping. If you’re not a Reynolds fan, this will probably be grating, but if you are, you’ll probably enjoy the movie to some degree. It did have a laugh out loud moment or two. Reynolds movies are always worth a few chuckles.

3 of 5

 

The Tenth Man (1988) Short Review

I regret that it has taken me this long to see The Tenth Man. The emphasis here is on the story and the acting and that’s a definite plus when you have actors like Hopkins, Thomas and Jacobi. This never felt to me like a made for TV film (if that’s what this was). Most of the film is set in a French manor and (briefly) a makeshift cell for French hostages of the NAZIs, but still has impressive production values.

Anthony Hopkins plays a wealthy French lawyer (he’s ‘old money’) named Chavel whose societal status changes dramatically  and suddenly during the German occupation of France during WWII. Chavel is one of the unfortunate citizens that are picked up randomly to serve as hostages for the NAZIs. Whenever a member of the underground French resistance  kills a German soldier, a French citizen is killed in retaliation. Who is executed is determined by chance until, an officer decides that several will be killed and tells the French prisoners to choose amongst themselves.

The prisoners wish to decide fairly, so they put 3 ‘x’s in a hat and let everyone have a shot at their own execution. Chavel, of course, fatefully draws one of the marks. He finds it unfair that he will be killed without due process and ultimately exhibits a large degree of cowardice. he begins offering up a deal with anyone who will take his place. he is wealthy, after all. He manages to strike an unlikely deal with another prisoner. His life is spared, but there are further repercussions of his cowardly deal. After the war, Hopkins returns home under another identity.

Hopkins rarely has a misstep, and he definitely doesn’t have one here, playing a very flawed man (or at least makes a very large error in a moment of weakness/fear and suffers the consequences). There is some humor, despite being such a serious film. The number of times that Thomas’ character and her mother unintentionally remind Chavel that his money and house is now theirs is funny in itself. A drinking game could be made out of it, not that that’s what I recommend.

Kristin Scott Thomas is excellent in this, also, playing the sister of the man Chavel makes a deal with. Her character plays the part of holding up a mirror for Chavel to see his own conscience. The more he gets to know her, the more he regrets his decision. When another man turns up claiming to be Chavel, the real fun begins.

This is a film that is sure to please fans of the actors involved. It relies heavily on them since this isn’t a war film of the epic variety. Its a bit more intimate than that. but it was still fun as a WWII buff to see this from the angle of occupied France. The movie didn’t quite make it into my Top 10 of 1988, but that’s only because there were so MANY great films that year. This is another one.

5 of 5

Captain America (2011) Review

 

Captain America: The First Avenger was surprisingly, at least to me, one of Marvel’s better outings. I think I may have liked it even more than Iron Man. It’s not Marvel’s best film, but is good summer fun. It has some hiccups, but overcomes those easily.

If you’re a fan of the comics you know the basic story; maybe not exactly how the origin has been told (in various ways) in the comics, but all of the familiar elements are there. The movie begins with a strange  plane being found frozen in the ice of the arctic. Inside is a frozen shield and you know what the shield will be attached to. The movie then flashes back to 1942(?) and the majority of the film remains there, which is appropriate since  World War II is where the roots of the character lie.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is introduced as a 5 foot nothing, 98 pound weakling who is awkward around women (and ignored by them), who is desperately trying to join the war effort for noble reasons, but is repeatedly rejected. His friend ‘Bucky’ Barnes who has enlisted successfully, is there to bail him out of repeated beatings and attempts to help him with his love life to no avail. Rogers’ luck changes when a military backed scientist (Stanley Tucci in full comic book scientist mode) overhears a conversation between the two friends and believes Rogers may be the perfect specimen for his secret super soldier experiments to help fight the NAZIs. And of course, he will be or we wouldn’t have the comics or the movie.

Along the way, he meets Peggy Martin, a military liaison played by the lovely Hayley Atwell. While having a few lines or actions that didn’t particularly work (the fault of the writer and director), she was still a bright spot in the film. She had the innocent appeal of starlets of the era and worked very well with Evans.

Peggy was best when they weren’t trying to make her a modern girl power action heroine. Her back and forth with Steve was clever, except for the occasional mental (lazy) lapse by the writer, as when  Peggy walks in on a newgroupie of Captain America that forces herself on him at the appropriately ‘wrong’ moment.

Tommy Lee Jones seemed (again, at least to me) a little out of place in a superhero movie, but he just proved he’s good in practically anything you put him in. He delivers quite a few one liners in the film. he demonstrates one of the biggest weaknesses of the film, though as Colonel Phillips. He is a military type of the comic book variety as he oversees the new recruits training, a secret experimentral program, front line planning as well as direct assaults that never turns out to be the NAZIs, but an offshoot called Hydra led by the villainous Johann Schmidtt a.k.a. the Red Skull.

The Red Skull has decided that Hitler’s usefulness was at an end and that he would be the new guy in charge. I was never quite sure  whether he wanted world domination or world destruction. He certainly didn’t treat his underlings very well and I have to wonder what the average Hydra soldier saw in the benefits of being part of the organization.

Even with that, Hugo Weaving was quite fun as Cap’s arch-enemy. That’s indicative of the entire film. The more I think about the film, the more it fails to hold together, but when watching it, the actors involved keep the story hopping along. I won’t nitpick the flaws or the contradictions. The Red Skull’s main flunky Arnim Zola ( Toby Jones) was good in the film, also, although he is played very sympathetically in the movie. NAZI scientists weren’t very sympathetic, trust me.

Zola is one of Marvel’s weirder villains. I was hoping to seehis robot body version in this, but that didn’t happen.

The movie would not be what it is without its star Chris Evans playing the titular character. I have long been a supporter of Evans and thought if he ever got the right role, he’ll become one of the bigger stars in Hollywood. I think this may be that role. He handles the acting as easily as the action. He’s a funny guy and comes across as genuinely humble in this, which is the essence in my opinion of who the character is. The FX used to make him short and scrawny were very well done. I found it funny that those FX were far better than many of the FX in the rest of the film. The parts where he is running barefoot at superhuman speeds reminded me of the FX in the 1978 superhero film Superman where the the young Clark Kent races the train in Smallville. It had the same kind of stop-motion jerkiness to it, but that’s fine. I actually enjoyed that.

And that’s how I felt about the film overall. There are still some glitches. It’s fairly shallow. Lightweight. But as I said. it’s fun. I liked it. They didn’t get everything right, but they got enough right with the right actors for me to have come away with a positive movie experience. I also liked the fact that the Rave theater handed out the required glasses and showed it in 3D, even though we all paid for 2D. I don’t demand 3D, but it doesn’t bother me to see it that way. I do applaud that they actually got a director to let the story unfold at its own pace. there is lots of action, but the film allows for plenty of time to get to know the characters, They tell a story instead of just making a highlight reel for CGI FX animators.

4 0f 5

 

First Shot of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus

One of the biggest things to come out of SDCC 2011 so far… The first pic from Ridley Scott’s upcoming film ‘Prometheus’. It’s the movie that started out as a prequel to Scott’s sci fi/horror film masterpiece ‘Alien’ before evolving into something else. He says it’s still in the same universe and that they still have the same film ‘DNA’. He also said he’s tackling a question that no one in any of the films has tackled. Whatever it is, I can’t wait. Anyway, here’s the first teaser still.