Reviews

I came to this film from a somewhat unique perspective. A close friend is a lifelong devoted social worker, a champion for the poor and the less fortunate. She is now in her twilight years, no retirement in sight. Too many babies to look after and few competent parents. Her job is special, because she sees newborns in compromised circumstances daily. Dealing with the chaos is just a part of life for these soldiers on the front line.

Watching this film, I realized that this isn't just a debate about capital punishment. It's a film about the vicious mechanism we face - with poor, unfit adults aggressively bearing offspring, damned as their ancestors, and destined to bring only misery into the world. We see a father of one of the convicted men, in a truly heartbreaking dialogue, discuss what it was like to celebrate Thanksgiving in shackles with his two sons, also incarcerated. His third son of four, Jason Burkett, faces a life sentence. With his stubborn, resolute jaw and his plight, Jason has attracted a messenger from the outside world, an advocate. She is a childlike romantic, given to unrequited love and notions of noble prisoners unjustly held captive. Deep down, we see flitters of mischief as though she is willing to do anything for Burkett and his cause, even if it means smuggling his seed outside of prison walls and proliferating his genetic instruction. When asked how many children he would like to have, Burkett's eyes widen into fevered starshells, full of biological desire. It only takes a moment to realize this isn't entirely love, but rogue impulses. Desire and passion and a primordial charter from his adrenals to keep replicating.

There is a strange, lethal innocence to Michael Perry, like a child in a more sadistic garden of eden. You can tell that only some small part of him grasps the actual consequence of his actions. That he would likely go to his early grave still in denial, a cultural fetus. Even without the confines of prison, his developmental process has long ago stopped.

To me, this film makes a stronger case for controlling the population prior to conception than it does against capital punishment.

Moviegoers above the age of 13 will recognize most of the action set pieces and plot elements from other films. There's an elevator fight, which we've seen before. Evil cops, evil suits, "big brother" danger, some running from fire and more explosions.

The fundamental problem with these movies is that you never feel like the main characters are in any danger. No matter how much of a beating Captain America takes, he's going to live to make sequels. The same goes for all of the popular cast members. Given the immortality of the good guys, the only question is How they're going to get out of peril. Don't expect anything new here.

The best writing is happening on television, sadly. Film-quality writing is going to HBO and independent networks, and television directors are moving to the big screen.

This one is all washed up. Hail hydra.

The title of this film is intentionally subversive, designed to draw attention to its contents. This is not an endorsement of socialism in any way. Its a critique of capitalism with hard proof that a regulated free economy leads to poverty and chaos. Its made by someone who loves America more than most, but that relationship, like the course of all true love, never runs entirely smooth.

See this if only because there are villains in America that want you to remain ignorant of the crimes it brings to light. If you are Christian, this is an updated Sermon on the Mount, more potent and true than what you will generally hear in church. This is Friar Tuck's film, not the Bishop of Nottingham's.

Its also great comedy. Playing Errol Flynn to the evils of corporate America is as good as it gets in these times.

At some point many years ago, big budget summer films became devoted to the central theme of the Earth's destruction. This is now ubiquitous. Look at the summer lineup. Angels and Demons, Transformers 2, Terminator: Salvation, even the documentary "Earth". Usually there is a device that the bad guys want to obtain that can destroy the planet. The villain is of course mad, and wants revenge for some transgression we're about to have explained to us. Nearly everything follows the "Paradise Lost" mould that Wrath of Khan used so well.

Screenwriters don't seem to understand that the scale of vengeance doesn't have to be so massive to be effective, to create tension. Its about the two rivals in an opposition of mind and spirit, playing chess like warring titans, leveling mountains in their path. A nemesis might know everything that a lover knows, all of the vulnerabilities, only they're willing to cross the line and twist the knife, and say "I told you so". Eliminating this as a plot element makes the story mechanical. Who cares if the world is at stake if every soul in it is generic? Show me one soul worth caring about, and I'll teeter on the brink of my seat.

The actors in this seem to have been chosen because of their intrinsic youthfulness. Its almost the kind of stylization you'd find in Japanese manga, with the characters in younger form having bigger, more expressive eyes. No wonder that the story shows the new Kirk being delivered by a creature with larger than life eyes.

Everything is dialed up for the MTV crowd. Instead of the minimalist camera movement in the original films, there's a lot of orbiting and rotation around the characters. Everything is done to indicate that this is a modern action film, with average values.

To really deliver the point that we're in alien locations, the angles are more obtuse, even the lenses are fish-eye at times. Kirk drives a motorcycle, is basically Matt Damon as Good Will Hunting trying to become Buck Rogers. He gets into fights in loud bars, boozes up, and gets lippy with authority figures who try to drag him out of his loser lifestyle. Because of his latent Hero Gene, and nothing more, he ascends to greatness.

The writing only aspires to pantomime the original cast using recognizable phrases and plot elements. It doesn't expand the mythos, it just plays off of what the average fan will probably remember. No chances taken, and so its like patrolling the Galaxy in a pontoon boat, remembering a world so far away it must have happened in an alternate universe, where screenwriters had vision, and directors had balls.

I saw this with low expectations, and still found it disappointing. No matter what type of action film, there are always opportunities to discover something new and entertaining. There are a few moments where this borders on being innovative, and walks away.

The biggest problem with this movie is there is too much going on, and not enough time for the audience to become invested in the world. There are some great locations where we could get to know the characters...let the atmosphere sink in, but it never lasts. In fact, we're given caricatures, not characters. We see Bryce Howard's expressive eyes and her innocence, but never get to know her character's soul. Christian Bale knows how to convey intensity, but it seems like he's forgotten how to convey the sort of passion that he showed in Empire of the Sun. That kind of desperation and resilience and fear is what I'd rather see in his character than the coarse monologues about surviving and being tough, one after another.

For a story that tries to define what it is to be human in terms of emotional registers and taking chances, it sides with the logic of the machines. It knows how to pacify audiences, but fails to win their spirit.

This is a sub-genre that has fed so well on box office that there was nothing left to devour but its own origins. If only they understood them. The new method is to make the killer bigger and more menacing, so we get Pro Wrestler Jason. The characters are introduced as faces, not as lone backpackers or ensembles, so we understand what is being advertised. Its not their circumstance that matters, its that they are high grade sacrificial material from the altars of Gap and Hollister. Then you hire a director from a music video background who can handle a tight production schedule, and you've got box office gold.

And it sucks. The original 4 may have been so plot less that it was an obscenity, but some of the suspense was done better than we've ever seen. Jason was just a physically strong lunatic with a hunter's instincts, and some primitive spiritual notions about resurrecting his mother through sacrifice. It wasn't just about revenge, it was that he possessed a sort of magical thinking, where he believed it was possible to bring her back if he killed enough. He wasn't driven by anger as much as the fear of perpetual abandonment. So he set out to find his victims, but the magic never worked. Stupid kids just kept coming. And there was always an oracle. Crazy Ralph, then the guy with the goat's eye, then the computer that tells Crispin Glover he's a "dead f***". It was a simple formula that worked because it stayed barely within the margins of belief. The only magic involved was that the prophecies came true, otherwise, it was like watching a horrible news headline unfold before your eyes. There was some ritual to the audience participation, as well. Vicariously participate in the blood-letting of Friday the 13th, and you've rid yourself of bad luck. All the ingredients of a classic fairy tale.

I can remember seeing the cardboard standups and posters in early video stores for the first four Friday the 13ths. The artwork for the first in particular sets up the folk legend perfectly. Everything you fear about being lost in the woods at dusk. It was primal and felt like it could happen on a really bad day.

Michael Moore pulls the curtains on one of Washington's longest-running vaudeville shows. This time around, we are introduced to familiar villains from previous episodes, and all new monstrosities. This time around, the heavies are the parasitic health care and pharmaceutical industry. Your blood will boil. You may wish to have yourself fumigated after having realized the extent of the HMO infestation. We knew the general nature of the problem, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. And details there are.

The lives we explore, ordinary citizens nearly broken by our plutocracy, will render an undeniable picture of corruption. Their stories will make your heart ache. Behind the bureaucracy's curtains, we see evidence of a legion of suffering Americans. They drift on the wind, from town to town, sustained by the vile organism they are literally dying to feed. Whether or not you like the man, Moore, you cannot deny his patriotism. What he has done, is brought these haunted lives into the light of public opinion for all to see. This is not an indictment of Americans, but a rally of hope. Nowhere in the world is there more potential for democracy than in America, the great experiment.

A good bed-time story is just what the ailing child of cinema needs. One with twists and stuff. Film-makers don't dream enough anymore. They are trapped in the waking nightmare of reality TV, remakes, 9/11, and so on. There is a tendency to externalize, and look outward for a savior, but a good myth will tell you - the hero exists everywhere, wearing the most absurd of masks, in the most pathetic of places. Such is the human race. And that's what this movie is about.

There's a strange mixture of what seems like heavy-handedness, and remarkable subtlety here. Cleveland Heep stuttering because he is in conflict about whether or not to tell a horrible truth. The pool he nearly drowns in that is in the shape of a tear. (Think Alice in Wonderland - Through the Looking Glass.) The central theme is the stuff of the true eastern myths. Man and woman (here represented as "narfs" and "man") divided in a temporal existence. Each is lost and trying to find their way back to the other - to that unity that existed before The Fall.

Forget that Shyamalan plays a self-aggrandizing role. This is make-believe, so we'll pretend he's a very important writer who creates a story that will make people upset. He's surrounded by great actors here. The significance of any one particular character is diminished by the importance of the ensemble. Everyone has the magic, including Night.

Weir is a fantastic director who knows how to leverage star power to the film's advantage. The result is one of Ford's best performances. This is a tragedy about a prolifically talented inventor without a shred of compromise in his soul. He is utterly true to himself and his aspirations, and can't come to terms with the industrialized world because it cherishes mediocrity. To him, that world is on the verge of extinction, and its only salvation lies in the jungle from which civilization sprang. The character of Allie Fox is an interesting contrast to his Fundamentalist adversary because they are so similar. Like Fox, Fundamentalists abhor the natural world, which is full of incongruence. Their "mission" is to terraform society by creating an architecture of straight edges and simple dichotomies. Fire from ice. Salvation from 'savagery'. Both are doomed, because nature's crooked. And that's torture for people who can't compromise.

Some playful homages to Ford's past work here. Watch how Fox faces off with Reverand Spellgood. In one shot, our point of view is like a western standoff, or something out of Star Wars. In another, he races through the jungle directly into the camera's eye. This is pure Spielbergian vocab.

This is a close kindred to a couple of Werner Herzog's films, most notably Fitzcarraldo.

Its more interesting to look back on this now that the series is complete. There were some great opportunities here that got blundered. Instead of interesting parallels between the son and the father, we have repeated stanzas -- only its clumsy; Like when a high school band plays "The Imperial March" at a homecoming game. Amateurish. Instead of foreshadowing, we trip over what is to come. We can feel Ron Howard's presence on the set. Tatooine has retroactively become Mayberry.

This is probably the best of the prequel series from a conceptual standpoint. The designs are outstanding. The first twenty minutes have some overwhelming eye candy and we're off to a great start. But by now you know the real tragedy of this series. This was the last time Lucas would ever rely on real sets to anchor his myth in something tangible. Henceforth, everything would be as digital as possible.

American audiences will perhaps be more keen on the political satire now that *Sith is out. Congressional gridlock was the biggest domestic problem we seemed to have back in '99. Here the epicenter is more China vs. Tibet -- rather blatantly. 'Amidala' is almost an anagram for Dalai Lama. Perhaps that's why her ceremonial dress is red and gold.

A filmmaker is in a unique position to contribute the line "Your focus determines your reality." This is where that focus started to blur.

I usually watch this show every two years to keep a fresh perspective on it. This is the first real film experience I ever had, and it remains the strongest influence on me. The thing that amazes me about this, time and again, is the ingenuity of the pacing, the orchestration, and the motion of the vehicles and ships.

This is a triumph of editing.

The motion control work is so artfully done, it puts CGI to shame. Watch how the ships move. They dance alongside the camera, swooping toward and away from us. Look at the terrain whiz by in the snowspeeder search. No CGI can convince like that. This is basically helicopter footage on fast-forward, through the cockpit of a prop ship, but it works. The amount of activity going on screen at any given time is frenetic.

And then we have Frank Oz. Forget that we live in a world where there are Yoda pajamas, animal crackers, dolls, etc., and just focus on this wonderful character in this one film. He is more lifelike than many of the actors we have working today. When he is on screen, I believe he exists. That is pure movie magic. Mark Hamill is given a tough job with this. Whenever you have a multi-million dollar film that hinges on the performance of one person and a sock puppet, there's pressure. People have blasted him for years over his acting, but it works. He pulls his share of the work and sells every scene.

From the opening crawl onward, this never lets up. The music is simply beautiful. This is why I go to the movies.

I credit this film with changing the nature of summer blockbusters more than Jaws or Star Wars. It presented a new formula that was so compelling in terms of what could be accomplished on screen, and what resources could be spared, that frugal studio moguls were bound to seize on the opportunity. I can imagine the head of every agency making the "We can have a coupon day.." remark. Spielberg saw the power of this new technology, and made the film about the discovery of CGI. There's a lot of good philosophy here. Filmmakers take note. Just because computers _can_ generate an effect, doesn't necessarily mean that they should. This is no longer a flea circus we invent in our minds based on clever suggestions of the camera. We literally see the fleas on the merry-go-round, animated like Cirque du Soleil acrobats. This allows the creators to be lazy and the audience's imagination atrophies.

Jurassic uses the technology effectively and I don't mind that it showcases itself a bit. If only these films were constrained with a lysine contingency. Now they run amok. CGI is everywhere, in the hands of dwarfs who stand on giants.

They bred raptors.

Madness is a great storyteller, especially when that pathos is fueled by actor, director, jungle, and circumstance. Werner Herzog's method here is simple: let the elements dictate the 'plot', and seize whatever visual opportunities arise. The results are satisfying because this shows almost no staging, and the environment is caught with Herzog's fevered eye. A lot of imagery here has persevered in my mind. Those long shots of the rapids, or the marooned horse on the shoreline. The metaphors are so general as to be meaningless, but the visions themselves are so uncanny to our institutionalized eye that we are hypnotized by them.

This had to have influenced the likes of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola who would later try to emulate it with Apocalypse. To a lesser degree, Peter Weir with The Mosquito Coast.

This is the part of the new series that Lucas was waiting to tell, and everyone else was waiting to see. Everything that precedes it is filler -- magnificent at times -- but something to keep fans in suspense and sustain the cliffhanger tragedy in the public mind. For all the lambasting Lucas receives, he is a good orchestrator of ideas, though he has lost touch with the energy and pacing of his earlier films. He has the same kind of foresight that Mephistopholes has in this play. It is a grand, but flawed vision, full of coercion for the fans through relentless persuasion in the media.

In a way, this film feels like a confession. It is a commentary on the dehumanization of films through technology. Gradually, these movies have lost the real actors that were the vitality of the series, and piece by piece, have been replaced with CG 'clones'. The product of this vision is now more mechanized, so it feels like it is only sustaining us, keeping us alive enough to feed the Empire. One of the last shots in the film is a chilling one. Anakin's human eyes are replaced by computer-generated vision.