What was everybody so up in arms about? This movie got trashed by the critics and turned in a disappointing box office performance. Why? Because Brad Pitt is handsome? Well...he is! Brad Pitt may single-handedly be the only reason I would ever consider 'switching sides'. He's gorgeous! Beyond that, he's a good actor. Not a great actor (I don't know who is) but a good one, routinely turning in solid performances in movies that range from o.k. (Ocean's Twelve) to good (Ocean's Eleven) to great (Twelve Monkeys).
Troy has stand-out performances by Eric Bana as Hector, prince of Troy and Brian Cox as Agamemnon, the fierce and hot-tempered ruler of Greece. Orlando Bloom is decent as the rather meak younger brother of Hector who wittingly sets the turn of events in motion by stealing Helen away from Agamemnon. And Brad Pitt as Achilles turns in a nuanced performance as a man at once committed to battle and loyal to no side. And for godsake, he's hot!
The story reminded me of Toshiro Mifune's role in Yojimbo (1961) as the samurai without a master who finds himself working for both sides in a war of rival gangs. That same story was remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars. And a third time as the Bruce Willis gangster flop Last Man Standing. Now, while I don't think any actor alive or dead has near the charisma of Toshiro Mifune, Mr. Pitt is totally believable as a warrior who sums up his life "I was born...and this is who I am." In other words, there was no choosing to be violent soldier. And his drive as a soldier is, above all, to be remembered through history.
The battle scenes are spectacular and the one-on-one fights, in particular between Hector and Achilles, are tense and gripping. And best of all, there are no gods looking down into pools of water high up in the clouds causing this or that to happen. There is a fair amount of discussion about interpreting the signs of the gods and in Hector's case, outright doubt in those interpretations.
My interpretation is that once Ridley Scott's Gladiator appeared, swept the box office and brought home a gazillion oscars, every one speculated and feared the onslaught of swords and sandals epics. By the time Troy appeared with its goddamned beautiful marquis actor, the critics were prepared to pounce and shread like hungry lions in a colloseum. And in the same way that no one cared whether or not the film was any good, those lions didn't care much whether their dinner was Christian or atheist.
I give Wolfgang Peterson's Troy starring hunk-a-licious Brad Pitt five out of six pairs of sandals and a warning to cover up those heals!
Monday, September 12, 2005
Friday, September 09, 2005
HOSTAGE (2005)
I still don’t know what to make of Bruce Willis. For someone who is politically clearly on the opposite side of the aisle from me and who has cranked out his fair share of terrible movies, I can’t help but like the guy. In the Sixth Sense he turned in a taught, understated performance whispering most of his lines and allowing the camera to study the creases of character 20 years of bad action flicks had etched into his face. I walked away from M. Night Shyamalan’s debut feature thinking I might have to reconsider Mr. Willis’ chops as an actor.
Then a remarkable thing happened: it seemed as though every movie Bruce Willis starred in after the Sixth Sense, he showed up bald and hardly speaking above a whisper. This seemed to be the new Bruce Willis, no longer the brash New Yorker dropping one-liners at every turn in Moonlighting and the original Die Hard. Now his face seems to beg the audience to take him seriously and forgive him the sins of his past. And he asks our forgiveness in progressively hushed tones.
In the opening sequence of Hostage, Mr. Willis appears with long stringy hair and a beard patched with gray. Although I was initially convinced I was actually watching George Carlin, who has yet to play an action hero but I think his time will come, he is soon seen exiting a steamy bathroom clean shaven and…bald. But happily, it soon becomes apparent our hero is going to speak at normal volume.
The movie starts off strong, the pacing electric and the narrative solid. Then, as is the case with most movies nowadays, all the other plots start unfolding. Why can’t we enforce a rule that provides one plot per movie? The simple but effective story of a trio of idiots taking over a high-tech home and holding the father and his two kids hostage apparently wasn’t enough. It seems the father possesses a DVD, this movie’s MacGuffin, that corrupt and masked federal agents want “at all cost”. Soon, Willis’ family is held hostage so that he’ll do the evil agents bidding. There are simply bad guys everywhere, appearing like munchkins in the land of Oz.
All things being equal, it held my interest although I was aware that script, direction and the big business of keeping Mr. Willis’ career on life-support hi-jacked what good have been a taught, suspenseful thriller.
Directed by Florent Emilio Siri, I give Hostage (2005) three out of five molotov cocktails.
Then a remarkable thing happened: it seemed as though every movie Bruce Willis starred in after the Sixth Sense, he showed up bald and hardly speaking above a whisper. This seemed to be the new Bruce Willis, no longer the brash New Yorker dropping one-liners at every turn in Moonlighting and the original Die Hard. Now his face seems to beg the audience to take him seriously and forgive him the sins of his past. And he asks our forgiveness in progressively hushed tones.
In the opening sequence of Hostage, Mr. Willis appears with long stringy hair and a beard patched with gray. Although I was initially convinced I was actually watching George Carlin, who has yet to play an action hero but I think his time will come, he is soon seen exiting a steamy bathroom clean shaven and…bald. But happily, it soon becomes apparent our hero is going to speak at normal volume.
The movie starts off strong, the pacing electric and the narrative solid. Then, as is the case with most movies nowadays, all the other plots start unfolding. Why can’t we enforce a rule that provides one plot per movie? The simple but effective story of a trio of idiots taking over a high-tech home and holding the father and his two kids hostage apparently wasn’t enough. It seems the father possesses a DVD, this movie’s MacGuffin, that corrupt and masked federal agents want “at all cost”. Soon, Willis’ family is held hostage so that he’ll do the evil agents bidding. There are simply bad guys everywhere, appearing like munchkins in the land of Oz.
All things being equal, it held my interest although I was aware that script, direction and the big business of keeping Mr. Willis’ career on life-support hi-jacked what good have been a taught, suspenseful thriller.
Directed by Florent Emilio Siri, I give Hostage (2005) three out of five molotov cocktails.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
GODZILLA FINAL WARS (2004)
What just happened? There we were, Mommy, Daddy and Roy entering the Dryden Theater to see the only showing of Godzilla Final Wars in Rochester, NY. Next thing I know I’m sustaining injuries from a full frontal assault on the senses by a movie that is equal parts Godzilla, the Matrix, X-Men and Independence Day.
There are evil aliens who initially “come in peace” but whose intentions are to raise humans as cattle because “we need your mitochondria!” There’s some talk about an alien gene known as M-Base that is shared by the Xilians (the aliens), the mutants as well as Gigan, the Robocop of kaiju. There’s a token American actor who speaks his lines in English while everyone else speaks Japanese. How is that possible, you ask? We have just entered the world of Toho Productions, my friends, where all the dreams that Disney can’t realize come true!
Godzilla makes short order of the Roland Emmerich Godzilla (from the lousy 1998 flick) in a brief battle staged in Sydney, Australia which ends with the real Godzilla tossing the CGI Godzilla into the famous multi-domed opera house. Mothra brews up a wind storm in a desperate battle against a chain-saw wielding Gigan and literally defeats him in a blaze of glory. The other kaiju include Hedora (the smog monster), King Seesar, Anguirus, King Ghidora, Rodan, Ebirah (the lobster), Manda and, as comic relief (!), Minilla (Gojira’s son), who gets to ride shotgun in a pickup truck with grampa and grandson. I'm not kidding.
I looked over at my four-year-old periodically who seemed to be genetically designed to absorb everything the screen was throwing at him. My wife, however, looked at me several times with a What-do-you-think-we-should-do look which made me feel nothing but guilty.
During the long drawn-out scenes between the humans, mutants and aliens, my son often asked “Where’s Godzilla?” at which point I knew for a fact he was biologically mine. Although there are stand-out performances by the chief bad guy and the sword wielding American good guy (who for all the world looks like a cross between Jesse “the Body” Ventura and Josef Stalin), their scenes couldn’t compare to watching the four-hundred-foot men-in-rubber-suit monsters trash yet another styrofoam Tokyo.
I still don’t know what happened but I promise you there is more entertainment per square inch in this movie than X-Men, X-Men 2, Spiderman 1 & 2 and Fantastic Four combined. When the credits began to roll, Roy applauded spontaneously. Watching him watch Godzilla Final Wars without prejudice, with sheer enthusiasm, reminded me that kaiju films aren't made for the critics, for the cynics, or the even the older jaded fans. They're made for Roy, pure and simple.
We were home by 10:30 whereupon my son downed a bag of M&Ms, listened to me warble "Blackbird", asked me to stop singing, rolled over and went to sleep.
Directed by hot young director Ryuhei Kitamura, I give Gojira: Fainaru Uôzu 3 out of 4 crushed buildings and one defeated alien scumbag race.
There are evil aliens who initially “come in peace” but whose intentions are to raise humans as cattle because “we need your mitochondria!” There’s some talk about an alien gene known as M-Base that is shared by the Xilians (the aliens), the mutants as well as Gigan, the Robocop of kaiju. There’s a token American actor who speaks his lines in English while everyone else speaks Japanese. How is that possible, you ask? We have just entered the world of Toho Productions, my friends, where all the dreams that Disney can’t realize come true!
Godzilla makes short order of the Roland Emmerich Godzilla (from the lousy 1998 flick) in a brief battle staged in Sydney, Australia which ends with the real Godzilla tossing the CGI Godzilla into the famous multi-domed opera house. Mothra brews up a wind storm in a desperate battle against a chain-saw wielding Gigan and literally defeats him in a blaze of glory. The other kaiju include Hedora (the smog monster), King Seesar, Anguirus, King Ghidora, Rodan, Ebirah (the lobster), Manda and, as comic relief (!), Minilla (Gojira’s son), who gets to ride shotgun in a pickup truck with grampa and grandson. I'm not kidding.
I looked over at my four-year-old periodically who seemed to be genetically designed to absorb everything the screen was throwing at him. My wife, however, looked at me several times with a What-do-you-think-we-should-do look which made me feel nothing but guilty.
During the long drawn-out scenes between the humans, mutants and aliens, my son often asked “Where’s Godzilla?” at which point I knew for a fact he was biologically mine. Although there are stand-out performances by the chief bad guy and the sword wielding American good guy (who for all the world looks like a cross between Jesse “the Body” Ventura and Josef Stalin), their scenes couldn’t compare to watching the four-hundred-foot men-in-rubber-suit monsters trash yet another styrofoam Tokyo.
I still don’t know what happened but I promise you there is more entertainment per square inch in this movie than X-Men, X-Men 2, Spiderman 1 & 2 and Fantastic Four combined. When the credits began to roll, Roy applauded spontaneously. Watching him watch Godzilla Final Wars without prejudice, with sheer enthusiasm, reminded me that kaiju films aren't made for the critics, for the cynics, or the even the older jaded fans. They're made for Roy, pure and simple.
We were home by 10:30 whereupon my son downed a bag of M&Ms, listened to me warble "Blackbird", asked me to stop singing, rolled over and went to sleep.
Directed by hot young director Ryuhei Kitamura, I give Gojira: Fainaru Uôzu 3 out of 4 crushed buildings and one defeated alien scumbag race.
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