Review: PEARL HARBOR

GRATE SOME CHEESE & DROP THE BOMBS…PEARL HARBOR’S HERE

(reviewed at the mecca on memorial day ((mon/tues may 27/28)) with stu + jack)

     It was late July 1998 when Steven Spielberg’s epic WWII picture Saving Private Ryan hit theaters. While it didn’t win Best Picture that year (Harvey and Bob and the voters at the Academy should be institutionalized for three to seven years for that crime), it brought forth a new era of World War II remembrances. Society got Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation book, and films like The Thin Red Line, The Enemy at the Gates, Band of Brothers, U-571, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Wind Talkers, and Pearl Harbor got made. Earlier today prez Bush even announced that finally Washington D.C. would build a monument for all those that were lost in that terrible war in in the 1940’s.
     World War II is chic. It’s popular. It’s hot. So what happens after a powerfully awesome film like Saving Private Ryan comes out. Easy. You look for the next target. SPR featured the infamous Battle of Normandy, France. The Thin Red Line did Guadalcanal. What’s a ‘cool’ and popular battle? Why, hell, what about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Uh…wait a minute Mister Hollywood Producer. We lost that battle. And…and…it wasn’t really a battle at all. Those slant-eyed Japs came flying in, blew the shit out of us, and left us crying with blood and broken glass. Those Japs made us look like common fools! Who wants to see a movie about that?
     Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckhiemer and Randall Wallace and Disney know who. And that’s why the latest $200 popcorn spectacle Pearl Harbor is showing in a bazillion screens to loathsome crowds (the crowd I saw it with seemed to loath it anyway…meaning they didn’t laugh at any of Alec Baldwin’s jokes and they didn’t clap like usual moviegoers). Saving Private Ryan showed the brutality and carnage of war that had never been shown before in World War II films. SPR was supposed to be serious enough to let us young kids that don’t know nothin’ realize that these guys died to protect the U.S. of A. SPR ushered in the call of heroism that rounded the world. SPR and the others that followed were supposed to be entertaining, yes, but also they wanted everyone living today that didn’t know what it was like back then to come to an agreement that those that fought and died and suffered deserve recognition. SPR ushered in a very positive notion of WWII vets speaking up and our generation of rioutous, out of control drunks listening.
     Pearl Harbor ruins everything. Randall Wallace wrote the horrendously by the numbers script and Michael Bay directed while Bruckheimer produced. This telling of the Pearl Harbor bombing (which was supposedly done much better in the Oscar winning famous pic From Here to Eternity…a film that made famous kissing on the beach while waves splash up and over the skin) begins by introducing two cocky and charming hunk fly boys from somewhere with cornfields. Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett want to fly so of course they eventually become two spectacular fliers in WWII who both end up in Pearl Harbor during the bombing. The only story other than the bombing involves a nurse played by the downright h-o-t-t-i-e Kate Beckinsale who ends up falling in love with the high flyers. There are other air force dudes, but they are more or less cliches like the stutterer, the idiot, and the tough as nails old man played by Tom Sizemore. Jon Voight gives an authentic performance as FDR, and Dan Akroyd even gets the part of the ‘smart’ army intelligence dude who knew the japs were going to invade Pearl Harbor. As for the ENEMY…the Japanese are given a few scenes preparing for battle, which more or less makes this a revenge popcorn film.
     The best aspect of this 3 hour and 3 minute disaster (in every sense of the word) is the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor. It doesn’t come fast enough (at least an hour and a half into the film…and what is really hilarious is that the real bombing was shorter than this film), but when it hits you better hold on tight. These battle scenes are nothing compared to SPR, but for the popcorn dollar they sure do deliver. The Japanese come in like an army of soldiers in the sky and start dropping bombs in the water and on the decks of the ships and firing shells. The explosions are big and the shots are loud and the special f/x are terrifically awesome, which makes me recant my theory about how f/x are ruining film (see The Mummy Returns and The Phantom Menace). There are a few f/x scenes where the camera follows a japanese plane as it swoops down between the billowing, black smoke and ships on fire and WOW…these scenes are some of the best f/x work I’ve ever seen. As we fly behind these planes it’s like we’re in a video game. Truly awesome.
     The bombing eventually has to end, and while the movie should of as well, it drags on for another hour. Maybe the writer or producer didn’t want to let everyone go home on a down note. I mean, the United States basically had their pants down and got creamed like we did in ‘Nam. There are no popcorn films in existance where the good guys lose. So, because of this concept, the film drags on to the Dolittle mission of bombing Tokyo…which is strangely only warehouses. And guess who goes on the Dolittle mission? You guessed it, Frank Stallone. Oh, no, I mean the two high flyers themselves. And yes, Kate is down on the ground ready to burst into tears at any harm’s notice.
     For my money, Pearl Harbor sucked more than an Asian whore during the rainy season. It was too long, too cheesy, too silly, too stupid, too sappy, too same old, too over the top, too All American pride-ish, and too plain bad. The characters are all likable heroes, and Kate pulls of an eye-candy performance of epic proportions, but the movie has Bay’s fingerprints all over it. This is the hack director who made Armageddon and The Rock. And while The Rock was entertaining, it wasn’t meant to be serious. Pearl Harbor is supposed to be serious, but it looks too much like a glossy Gap advertisement than a heroic war picture. The bombing, which lasts around forty-five minutes, is awesome stuff, but the hour before and after is some of the worst stuff ever put on film. Bay attempts to make this the most All-American film ever put into a projector. Kids playing baseballs. Thousands of sunsets. Trains billowing smoke. Hip jazz clubs. And to top it off, Bay adds many Hollywood hi-jink laughs to entertain the audience…and all of them are so uninspired they make Brenden Fraser’s jokes in The Mummy Returns look like Don Rickles one-liners.
     Pearl Harbor has some good action scenes, but is a terrible film. It’s almost sad that Hollywood makes a serious war disaster and turns it into a tear jerker popcorn picture just to make money. People only go see this for the action scenes. Young kids don’t give eight shits about the serious side of war after this movie. They just want to hop in a plane and shoot some Japs after a hard night of drinking and laughs.
     I kind of wish the Japs had bypassed the harbor and shot down this movie instead. *1/2

Review: SHREK

OVER THE TOP SHREK CONTINUES DREAMWORKS’ WAR VS. THE MOUSE

(reviewed at Ritz 5 on Tuesday, May 15th, 2001 <sneak> with Annie)

 
   In October of 1998 Dreamworks SKG pulled a fast one. The company’s first ever computer animated picture, Antz, was set since the beginning to hit theaters in the Spring of 1999. Disney also had a computer animated bug feature, A Bug’s Life, which was set to be the first computer animated kids bug feature out of the gate when it would open in November of 1998.
    Dreamworks, and definitely Jeffrey Katzenberg in general who was fired by the mouse in ’94, declared all of a sudden that Pacific Data Images (PDI) had miraculously finished the picture months ahead of time. Antz would begin showing in October 1998, one month before A Bug’s Life.
    This was, for my money, when Dreamworks unofficially declared war on Disney, and Disney’s animation department in general. It is all ready 2001, and Dreamworks has put out The Prince of Egypt, a spectacular animated religious family film, Chicken Run, a claymation film from the creator’s of Wallace & Grommit which was one of the best films of last year, and The Road to El Dorado, a so-so animated buddy family film. Disney has gone on to put out Tarzan, Toy Story 2, Dinosaur, The Emperor’s New Groove, Fantasia 2000 and in June, Atlantis.
    But Dreamworks did one thing: it made Disney wake up from its slumber. Not only did they begin to try new things like the computer animated Dinosaur which featured photo-realistic backgrounds (like Shrek), but they also put out a new Fantasia (2000) which was shown on Imax screens across the country, and June’s offering Atlantis features no talking animals (supposedly…this one I don’t buy however) or colorful show tunes.
    Disney also tried to create a powerful and serious animated film titled Kingdom of the Sun. What happened to that? Who knows if it really sucked or if Disney was afraid it wouldn’t make any money, but that powerful animated serious film turned into the ludicrously silly Emperor’s New Groove starring the voice of David Spade.
    So the summer of 2001 is upon us and upon us once again is another classic animated showdown between Dreamworks and Disney. I all ready mentioned Atlantis, your basic animated Disney flick minus the song and dance numbers.
    What about Dreamworks new film?
    Shrek is the second PDI computer animated from Dreamworks. It features the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow, and Cameron Diaz. Myers voices a big, green, smelly, ugly ogre who lives alone in a swamp in the woods when he is suddenly faced with an adventure on his hands. Accompanying Shrek on his journey is a talking donkey voiced by Murphy who steals the show with his early 80’s style wisecracks (why isn’t Murphy as funny in his feature films these days?). The other characters include a short villain voiced by Lithgow named Lord Farquaad (yes, this is a children’s movie with a guy named Fuckwad) and a princess voiced by Diaz.
    PDI/Dreamworks’ first computer animated film was Antz, which was superior to Shrek but only because it was much more adult-oriented, what with Woody Allen’s neurotic-ness reeking throughout the film and such classic songs as Sinatra’s “High Hopes.” Shrek has a lot of jokes and touches (such as the obvious reference to Disneyworld) that are aimed at adults, but for the most part, kids will enjoy it much more than they did Antz. There are fart jokes and burp jokes and there is off-the-wall zany humor and all in all this is a children’s film.
    The best aspect of Shrek however is the animation. Wow. Before the film I caught a trailer for Disney’s Atlantis, and while I’ve always been a stickler for hand-drawn animation, Shrek makes Atlantis look like a rubber ducky vs. a gameboy advance. Shrek looks downright awesome. Yes the humans in the film are a little fake looking, but supposedly in this fairy tale world with ogres and snow white and robin hood and a dragon and what-not, humans are supposed to look a little fake. The moon and the stars, the tall dark castle above a pit of lava, the grass and the trees and Farquaad’s looming castle in the distance. This movie looks awesome…and it’s all from a friggin’ computer!
    Shrek also features the most jokes per ratio in a film since the days of Frank Dreb

bin. There is great music and some serious themes and a lot of humor and by the end if you haven’t cracked at least a small smile than you must be related to the Grinch. The only problem I saw was the over the top silliness of the film, which works for children but won’t entirely work for the majority of adults. Still, kids will love it, and it’s highly entertaining and funny and looks downright fabulous. I would not be out of line to think Michal Eisner is shakin’ in his boots. **1/2

Review: GLADIATOR

MY NAME IS GLADIATOR…AND I AM AN EPIC DISAPPOINTMENT

(reviewed at the mecca on Friday, May 12th, 2000, with Jack)

    With the release of Dreamworks/Universal’s Gladiator, the summer movie season of 2000 has officially begun. The time when the big guns come out to play. The time when studios put out their huge budgeted, special f/x laden ultra actioneer pictures that are silly and stupid yet fun and popcorn worthy.
    Gladiator, on the other hand, came out expecting Oscar nominations. It is a 2 ½ hour epic about Ancient Rome gladiators laced in with rulers and slaves and blood and guts and amazing special effects shots showcasing Ancient Rome and the Colliseum and how clean and white it really was.
    Gladiator got a lot of extremely favorable reviews, meaning that people actually watched this and took it seriously? Gladiators? Guys in sandals with swords fighting? Okay, I enjoy action. But what about the surrounding epic plot involving the evil Caesar and the Caesar’s wife and the gladiator’s wife and kid? Give me a break. I think I took Wild, Wild, West more seriously.
    Russel Crowe is Maximus, a successful Roman general who defeats the Germanians in Germania in the opening battle scene which is horribly edited in slow motion so the audience has really no sense of what is going on whatsoever.
    Eventually things go awry and Maximus loses his rank and becomes a gladiator slave who must fight in a dusty desert town (North Africa, maybe? The movie is so lackluster it never actually lets us know where the fuck they are) against bigger, meaner guys with swords and scary looking masks.
    Things progess slowly, and he heads to Rome’s Colliseum where the evil Caesar (Joaquim Phoenix who does his best with the awful script’s dialogue) is staging 90 days of Colliseum action so the people admire him.
    Of course Maximus becomes the best gladiator there is, defeating everything the evil Caesar throws at him, including Bengal tigers, people on chariots shooting arrows, and a big brute gladiator who has come out of retirement after boasting the only undefeated streak in gladiator history. Should I even have to spell out to you that his streak is in dire straights?
    The one aspect of the film that is awesome, is the gladiator scenes. They are fucking killer! The chariot battle scene was so damn cool I was sweating that John Woo may not even be able to top that next week with the PG-13 MI:2.
    But alas, the 2 ½ hour film has maybe 25 minutes devoted to action…making me think that maybe the idiot screenwriters should have thrown out the epic storyline and just have made Russel Crowe become a gladiator in the beginning and forget about the entire evil Caesar back story. The surrounding plot only ends up producing a boring sword fight which rips off directly from Rob Roy’s final sword fight between Tim Roth and Liam Neeson anyway.
    In the Zucker brothers/ Jim Abraham’s classic spoof, Airplane!, the pilot asks a little kid a question that defines the reason Gladiator is so silly. “Do you like movies with gladiators?” Gladiators are silly. The movie is ridiculous, yet it plays out dead serious and ends up extremely preposterous and boring. I couldn’t help laughing at the supposed powerful scene where Phoenix asks Crowe what his name is. He turns around with his steel, menacing mask on and says, “My name…(dramatic pause)…is gladiator.”
    Can you take that serious? Me neither. ** (out of ****)

Review: EYES WIDE SHUT

STANLEY KUBRICK’S SWAN SONG

(reviewed on video, Tuesday, March 7th, 2000)

    Eyes Wide Shut received a lot of attention over the span of roughly three years. It got a lot of attention because Stanely Kubrick died a week after handing Warner Brothers the final print. It got a lot of press because Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman played husband and wife on screen. It got a lot of press because the plot of the movie remained elusive until it came out in July ’99. There was a ton of press about the film, and it’s mysterious circumstances. How Tom Cruise developed an ulcer and didn’t tell Stanely about it until he was done filming. How Kubrick had to digitally enhance a few sex scenes so that it would receive an R rating.
    Beyond all of the hype and all of the mysterious rumors and stories and curiosities, Kubrick’s swan song, his final, dream-like, borderline pornographic film, actually turned out to be a pretty good film.
    Tom Cruise plays Dr. Bill, a normal, beer swilling, New York City living husband to Nicole Kidman’s Alice. One night after an elegant, brightly lit dinner party, Alice and Bill get into a heated bedroom conversation about sex and lust. Alice admits one time when they were staying at a hotel she saw a guy dressed up in a military outfit and she had the hots for him. She had sex with Bill but imagined it was the admiral. This story enrages Cruise, and so he goes off in New York City on a sexual excursion to get back at his wife.
    It’s kind of funny that the story of Eyes was so confidential, because the plot is extremely thin, and the movie moves about as slow as any other Kubrick feature.
    The best scene in the entire film is really the core of the flick. Cruise ends up at a masked orgy in an upstate mansion. Kubrick had a knack for filming anything, anywhere, at any time, and making it look downright awesome. The party is shot so well, and the music is dead on, that a feeling of dread and eroticism creeps through the screen with each shot.
    Both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are decent actors, but nothing special. The plot is thin, and there are too many ridiculous coincidences, but all in all the film works because of one thing: Stanley Kubrick. He had such a knack for making good films that he could probably film a cereal box and make it engaging. The party scene is so well done it puts every other ‘art’ movie to shame. The lighting and the music and the way the steadi-cam follows everyone around every corner, it’s just great to watch and to be involved in. The movie is about dreams and real life and sex and lust and adultery and fucking.
    Stanley Kubrick hasn’t made a masterpiece with Eyes, but he has made an interesting, mysterious, dream-like piece of film that is extremely engaging and beautiful looking.
    We will all miss his Kubrickian style, his magnificent endings and his perfect music and lighting. We’ll remember Jack Nicholson yelling, “Heeeeeere’s…Johnny!” with a crazed look in his eye, we’ll never forget the Droogs out for a midnight stroll, the ape tossing a bone in the air, or Slim Pickens riding the a-bomb.
    We will miss you, Stanley Kubrick. Goodnight sweet prince. *** (out of ****)

Review: END OF DAYS

SCHWARZENEGGER COUNTS DOWN TO EXTINCTION

(reviewed at marple 10 on Friday, November 26th, 1999 with jack, stu, & morton)

   It didn’t matter if you wanted it or not, there had to be one. Just one, at the very least. What the hell am I talking about? Why an armageddon-apocalypse-countdown to extinction-millennium-Hollywood popcorn flick to cap off the first century with film and head into the new millennium’s uncharted territory.
    While the studios did release two asteroid films in ’98 (Armageddon, Deep Impact), this year there hasn’t been a big budget millennium flick yet…until now. Arnold Schwarzenegger no less takes on Satan in End of Days, the newest balls to the wall satanic actioneer where nothing stands in it’s way from becoming one of the stupidest movies in years.
    Schwarzenegger is Jericho Cain, even though they don’t mention his name until the climax. Arnold is a hired security guard who is wrapped up in a plot that involves Satan showing up on Earth and having unwilling sexual relations with a chosen female so that a demon spawn can be created and this in turn will create the end of days.
    “With your last breath,” the devil, in Gabriel Byrne’s body I might add, says, “You shall bear witness to the end of days.”
    So Schwarzenegger helps this 20 year old lass from being raped by Gabrielle Byrne while the whole world is against him, right up until the last possible second of the century.
    I had a lot of fun during End of Days, which is a good thing because that is usually the reason you go to the goddamned multiplex, right? But…Days falters because while they were filming they realized they could not pull this off as a dead serious film. Why? Because Schwarzenegger hasn’t mastered an English accent yet and everything that comes out of his mouth sounds funny. Because of this, the producers added intentional humor with all of this brooding end-of-the-world brewhaha seriousness and it doesn’t work. None of it.
    End of Days is your basic by the numbers action flick. It has nothing fresh or new and the script is downright horrible. The actual plot is decent and it’s great to see the first millennium flick since the excellent  Strange Days, but Schwarzenegger and Co. add nothing new except a few casual laughs and a groan when the credits hit. *1/2

Review: SLEEPY HOLLOW

‘SLEEPY HOLLOW’ IS HEADLESS & PROUD

(reviewed at marple 10 on Friday, November 19th, 1999)

 
 Tim Burton’s latest directorial effort from the fantastically wild Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven, 8MM) script plays out exactly like the sprawled, headless corpses in the film, Sleepy Hollow.
    It’s a great film to look at and to listen to and to just sit back and have a good time with, but it’s missing something vital, just like how the corpses in the flick are missing their heads.
    Johnny Depp is Ichabod Crane, a New York City constable in 1799 who uses science and new technology he has created to solve his cases. Because he is seen as different, the New York City Judge, played by horror maestro Christopher Lee, sends him to the upstate farming community known as Sleepy Hollow. The catch? Three townsfolk had their heads lopped off in only a fortnight. There is a murderer in Sleepy Hollow, so it is Depp’s job to find him and bring him to justice.
    As with any Tim Burton film, and especially with this script, the key is atmosphere. Sleepy Hollow can be described as atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. It’s all the film has going for it. It looks fucking incredible. The sets, the gnarled forest, the houses, the costumes, the time period is perfect, and of course unnatural and spooky at the same time.
    Johnny Depp eventually shows up and is told that the murderer is none other than…a headless horsemen who rides into town from the dark and supernatural western woods and gets a head, then retreats. Depp is a science and facts kind of guy, so he disbelieves this, until he sees it first hand. It is eventually up to Depp and his new found friends to uncover the mystery of the Headless Horsemen.
    The basic story, written by Washington Irving, is one of America’s best tales. While Disney’s cartoon reinforced the masterpiece it would become, the initial concept is jaw droppingly awesome in a scary as shit kind of way. Ichabod on his slow horse in the dark woods with sounds every which way. Suddenly hoof beats, heavy ones, loud noises. Oh shit! It’s a fucking headless horsemen! And depending on your version, he may or may not have a flaming pumpkin. In this one he has masterful skills with a blade he keeps twirling around.
    Tim Burton has done his homework. The movie is all atmosphere and it is very entertaining when compared to any popcorn fare. But…there is a hole in the flick. While you are watching Sleepy Hollow and even afterwards, there is just something missing from the film. It’s all show stopping magic and no heart. It also has a severe identity crisis; is it a love story, a horror story, a supernatural story, an action movie, or all or none?
    Sleepy Hollow is definitely the best eye and ear candy I’ve witnessed in years, and while there are plenty of great things to say about it, in the end it’s missing one important thing; a head. **1/2

Review: THE PRINCE OF EGYPT

POWERFUL ‘POE’ PUTS DREAMWORKS ON THE ANIMATION MAP

(reviewed on ppv, Fri/Sat, Nov.12/13th (holyfield-lewis-2, psu-michigan), 1999

 
 When Dreamworks was created, most film fans thought they were in for a special treat. They thought that Katzenberg and Geffen and Spielberg would redefine Hollywood. Better films, better music albums, and better animated features. Geffen has more or less failed, hasn’t he? His biggest signing contract was for George Michael. I’m guessing you understand where that went. Spielberg actually made The Lost World for Universal, and then Dreamworks two big features of the last two years, Saving Private Ryan, and Deep Impact had to get Paramount to help. Maybe it’s a good idea to share the cost, but c’mon. This is Dreamworks? What happened to the dream? Well, Prince of Egypt came out last December and I did not catch it until almost a year later, so now I can rest easy. They may not be the top money makers out there, but with American Beauty and POE, Dreamworks SKG is finally making some fantastic films to be proud of.
    The reason I adored POE, Katzenberg’s animated Biblical film, is only because of one simple thing; the animation. I have never seen a better looking cartoon in my entire life. Yes, the animals look ridiculously silly and uncoordinated, the people are all lanky and their noses are almost a foot long, but the backgrounds and the camera angles and the colors and the shadows and the entire epic is beautiful. It looks like a great movie. The backgrounds are awesome, the colors majestic. I never thought I would watch a silly little cartoon with bad songs that aren’t even catchy and watch it with my jaw dropped to the ground.
    The film takes it’s story form The Bible’s Exodus section. This is where Moses and Ramses grow up as heirs to the Egyptian Kingdom. Moses finds out that he is not the king’s son but a Hebrew slave. He soon looks at the thousands of slaves as human beings and decides he cannot take it. He travels into the desert and eventually a burning bush talks to him and persuades him to go back and free the Hebrews. Now I am not a die hard Catholic. I haven’t gone to church in years, but the majority of the stories in The Bible I am aware of. As soon as Moses sees the bright colors dancing off a cave I knew it was the burning bush. I was not sure how they would do this. Would they just have a bush on fire talking to him? The result is nothing short of spectacular. It’s powerful. I didn’t expect a stupid cartoon that isn’t made specifically for Sunday school to be so bold, so touching.
    The rest of the film sort of dips into a negative feeling and of course the ending is rejoiceful. The film is short and it seems like the movie needs a little more to it. Plus, the songs are pretty un-singable, though I didn’t hate them.
    There’s a scene where the Hebrews are walking through the parted Red Sea casually, and up in the water a whale just passes by. The light flickers on it’s massive dark shape as it swoops down and passes them. It’s a damn cartoon and I was watching it on a shitty small TV and it still proved to be epic and full of weight.
    Dreamworks definitely has something special with their animation department. I truly can’t wait for The Road to El Dorado. I haven’t been this excited about animation since Scooby Doo and the gang solved the mystery of Shadow Lake. ***1/2