Furious on Film 04.19.07: Issue 85
Posted by Arnold Furious on 04.19.2007
God willing, we all return to our homes again, you're going to feel very proud of what you have achieved here in the face of great adversity. What you have done should be, and I think will be, an example to all our countrymen, soldier and civilian alike. You have survived with honor - that, and more - here in the wilderness.
Fuck the intro. You know what I'm about by now. Except I'm now using my teaser line to throw out a classic quote from a film of the past in an attempt to tie it into what I'm talking about in the column. Sort of. Last week was "Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid." Said by El Presidente Harrison Ford in Air Force One. It was due to the use of politics and terrorism in the quote in an issue headed up by Oliver Stone's World Trade Center.
Warning could well contain minor spoilers throughout. Films are rated on a ***** scale. This week we have
Superman Returns, K-19 The Widowmaker, 11/09/01 - September 11, Murderball
Top Ten Films by Decade Year
2001
You'll notice that rather controversially there's no place for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. If I'm really honest I didn't enjoy the film until the second time I saw it. I didn't see what the fuss was about first time and fell asleep during it. I've since grown fonder of it but I still think it's over rated by most people. I like the other two parts better and the trilogy works better when it's interlinked. 2001 shows some serious diversification. Amelie and Spirited Away were universally popular but not really mainstream movies. Most people haven't seen Millennium Actress, Musa or Happiness of the Katakuris. Even when I'm back Stateside the only smash hit is Ocean's Eleven. Although Donnie Darko became a tremendously popular cult film. There's also no Shrek, which I suspect will be another bone of contention. While it's a fun film it's not top 10 material. At least for me it's not. One notable absentee besides those is No Man's Land but I've not seen the film so I can't really comment.
1. Amelie
2. Spirited Away
3. Millennium Actress
4. Musa: The Warrior
5. Donnie Darko
6. Happiness of the Katakuris
7. The Majestic
8. Mulholland Drive
9. Ocean's Eleven
10. Hero
Superman Returns (2006)
EXPECTATIONS I didn't exactly rush out to see Superman Returns. I guess I've never been a big fan of the Man of Steel. For me Superman is a very one dimensional good guy. His only weakness is Kryptonite, he's super strong, he can fly, heat ray etc. I think there are far more interesting heroes who sacrifice and have problems. Superman finds it too easy to overcome. I'm fonder of Batman. I think the character is much more interesting. Although if we're talking movies then the best superhero film is Superman. The Dick Donner original from 1978 is damn near flawless. From Donner to Reeve to Hackman to Brando to Kidder everything worked. The music was perfect. The title sequence was great. The early Smallville stuff was superb. Superman was the defining moment for superhero movies. It's the one film every other superhero film has to live up to. Even nowadays. The Spiderman and X-Men films have been hugely successful but there's no comparison to Superman because it came first. It also made a tonne of money. The box office alone was $134M. Worldwide it made $300M. Plus the video rentals. Plus the merchandise. And that's in the fuckin' 70's. Not only did it make money, it was an intriguing storyline and it was a great film. Superman II followed in 1980. Unfortunately halfway through making the film Dick Donner was removed and replaced with Richard Lester. Previously he'd had success with the Three Musketeers film in 1973 and the prequel to Butch & Sundance. Lester wasn't a bad director and managed to finish up Superman II making the finished article a decent film. But it became quickly apparent he wasn't the right man for the job during interviews where he claimed, and I find this hard to believe, that he'd never heard of Superman before being offered the job. He went on to direct Superman III, which was a terrible idea. Including a super computer that tries to take control over Superman and Robert Vaughan playing the bad guy. Richard Pryor more or less replaced Margot Kidder in terms of importance so Lois Lane is reduced to a bit part. I didn't think III was that bad but I saw it recently and it's fucking awful. The franchise was so popular it still took $60M at the box office but that was such a drop off from the first two films that the producers lost faith in the series and the series ending film "The Quest for Peace" featured a serious lack of budget. Even the returning Gene Hackman couldn't save it. It was a disaster and the series was dead. That is until Bryan Singer jumped ship from the X-Men films to make this film set after Superman II. If we're looking at snowflakes then I figure they are as follows; Superman *****, Superman II ****, Superman III *1/2, Superman IV DUD. Quite the fall off there.
TRAILER
And if that doesn't get your juices flowing. Here's the full blown trailer. It's like full blown AIDS only slightly less contagious.
PLOT Superman (Brandon Routh) left Earth to explore the location of former planet Krypton in the hopes that something still remained. When he returns he discovers Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has avoided jail because he wasn't there to testify against him and Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has gotten together with Richard White (James Marsden) and had a son.
OPINION Not being a total mark for Superman puts me in a good position to review the film from a fairly neutral standpoint. I must admit I got quite excited while the opening credits rolled because Singer had gone out of his way to try and recapture the vibe of Superman (1978). The music and the credits set this up perfectly. I found myself marking out a lot more than I expected. I put this down to John Williams. There's no other man alive capable of eliciting such feelings by use of music. It was like I was being taken back to the first film all over again. I suspect Indiana Jones will feel right for the same reasons and it's possible I don't feel any anger towards the Star Wars prequels because the music is so good. Certainly John Williams is a guy who is invaluable when it comes to creating a good first impression. With Superman Returns it works right off the bat. There's another musical interlude I'd like to quickly mention as well and that's when Superman is dealing with the new continent (something I'll get to in more depth later) it blocks out the sun just like the Monolith in 2001 and, this is so awesome, in comes the music cue from 2001. It's only a quick change in music before the original score settles back in but it was such a fun little throwaway thing that I had to mention it. I really didn't like the scene at all but that made it work better for me. I suppose I should probably discuss some of the casting here. Routh was a good choice. I think it's better to have an unknown as Superman. I can't begin to imagine how terrible Nic Cage, a fine actor mind you, would have been as Superman. Routh just feels like Superman. Like Christopher Reeve did. The only concern is Routh really doesn't know how to play Clark Kent. He's not found his own Kent yet. He's playing Kent as if he's imagining how Christopher Reeve would do it and it comes off that way. Not great. As Superman he's fine. Larger than life. Kevin Spacey hams it up suitably as Lex Luthor. I don't think he's anywhere near Gene Hackman because Hackman had this special level of ham that he discovered and he owns it. No one else can have it. Spacey tries for it though. He overacts in ways I didn't expect from such an accomplished actor. He's definitely enjoying himself out there. Kate Bosworth worried me when I heard the name. I'd seen her in several films and I felt she lacked the kind of maturity that the slightly older Lois Lane would need and after seeing the film I feel the same way. She can't deal with some of the more emotional scenes and doesn't carry over any of Margot Kidder's confidence. It's like watching a totally different character, which would be fine if the other characters weren't almost identical to the originals. For me Lois drops the ball. I don't like Bosworth in the roll and of all the major characters I think she comes across as the most miscast. Kate is 23 years old. That just isn't mature enough for the role she's playing here and they should have realised that. If we're working from Kate being 23 then Lois was a teenager when the first Superman took place. Think about it! It's wrong. I felt the same way about Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four. While I don't object to the hotty quotient going up it shouldn't be at the expense of realism. That said the other support roles are gravy. James Marsden is great as the likeable other half for Lois. We know we shouldn't like him because he's knobbing Superman's girlfriend but at the same time it's not his fault. He does a good job of being a good guy in what is a very hard role. Parker Posey is also great as Luthor's sidekick Kitty. I always had a soft spot for Miss Teschmacher. I think Kitty does a good job filling that void. The other Luthor sidekicks are pretty bland including Kal Penn. He doesn't speak so it's ok. As for action sequences; the plane/space shuttle disaster is fantastic. The plane going into the atmosphere and everyone getting weightless only to drop right back down as the plane starts losing control was superb. And the scenes of Superman attempting to catch the plane and only ripping parts off in an attempt to slow it down. I ate that shit up with a big "this is awesome" spoon and came back for seconds. I was standing by the time Supes landed it on a baseball diamond downtown. Sadly the other big action sequence, erm sort of, doesn't belong. Superman does a lot of stuff where he's stopping minor things around Metropolis but the raising and subsequent disposal of the new continent is daft. It puts him on a level with God, although so did reversing time in Superman (1978), and with the added presence of Kryptonite making him "as weak as a kitten" he shouldn't have been capable of this feat. In fact you look at how Lex Luthor kicked his ass just minutes beforehand and nearly drowned him and then here comes Superman to carry away this enormous land mass like he's lifting bags of sugar. Shouldn't that Kryptonite be affecting him somewhat? I had issues with that. Luckily I liked most of the characters and most of the plot so I can overlook things like this.
BEST BIT Superman gets shot in the eye from point blank range. The bullet gets crushed. Superman doesn't even blink. The cap falls to the floor and the gunner looks bewildered.
RATING - ***3/4. I liked Superman Returns. I thought it had a great deal of positive about it. The plane scene, the patience in character development and patience in general of the director not to rush the plot. The film spans 154 minutes and it needs that time to build everything up to that conclusion. The good news for Singer fans is that the film doesn't feel like anything close to 154 minutes. It flies by. I have a few gripes, as before mentioned, that kept niggling at me but apart from that it's all good. This was a pretty satisfying blockbuster. I'm confident that Singer can do a good job with the next Superman film. I'm really glad he got the chance to make this instead of Brett Rattner, who switched over to destroying the X-Men franchise in Singer's place. Or McG who was also attached and got dropped because he wanted a bigger budget (keeping in mind the budget for Superman Returns was $270M). Both of those guys would have done a horrible job with it and killed the re-born franchise before it had a chance.
K-19 The Widowmaker (2002)
EXPECTATIONS This has the appearance of a dream movie. The director is Point Break's Kathryn Bigelow. While she also made the rather poor Strange Days the potential for good action is there because of Point Break. The film stars both Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford. Neeson was between Gangs of New York, which was released the same year and Kinsey. Ford was coming back from a hiatus after What Lies Beneath in 2000. K-19 was him stepping back into the action genre. After this he did Hollywood Homicide and Firewall. I'm a fan of everyone involved. Especially Bigelow who managed to make a film starring three actors I don't like (Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze and Lori Petty) and not only make it passable but make it entertaining. And good! I remember being so shocked at this turn of events that I noted the director's name. She's been waiting in the wings for some time to get another big project. K-19 is it.
TRAILER Here. Sadly nothing on You Tube that I can slap into page.
WHATS IN A NAME? K-19 is the name of a Russian submarine. It was branded "the Widowmaker" by its crew after a series of freak accidents during its construction including the ship's doctor getting run over by a truck on the eve of the voyage.
PLOT Early 1960's and the Cold War is in full flow. The Soviet's become increasingly concerned that their technology is lagging behind that of the United States and rush work on a big nuclear submarine. When it tests badly under Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) he's demoted and replaced by Alexei Vostrikov (Harrison Ford). At first the two men get along fine but as soon as Vostrikov starting pushes the sub as hard as he can to test it to the limits Polenin starts to doubt his skills as a leader. The conflict between the two deepens until the overworked nuclear reactor malfunctions and the crew has to battle together to stay alive.
OPINION The first thing that really irked me about K-19 was the accents. If they were going for realism then surely it should have been recorded entirely in Russian and subtitled. Once that option has been passed on and they've decided to go with English audio then the need for accents is unnecessary. What Russian sub would be manned entirely with people speaking a different language? None. So we get some dodgy accents creeping in. Ford's wavers occasionally back into American and Neeson's is equally shaky, which is strange for someone who pulled off a German accent with great consistency for Schindler's List. It's important to remember that one of the best Russian submarine commanders of all time was Sean Connery who played it with a thick Scottish accent, much like he plays every other character, and did a fine job. Once I'd gotten over the issue with the accents then I was free to get into the film. But it must have taken about 20 minutes for the silliness of the accents to settle in. When that was out of the way I was free to follow Kathryn Bigelow's action driven plot. There have been many fine films made about submarines. In particular I think the Hunt for Red October and the seminal Das Boot need mentioning. However making a film on a submarine is no guarantee of tension just because you have a confined space. You have to make that space live and breath. K-19 doesn't make the best use of its surrounding and it comes off as superficial because of that. While the plot is quite interesting with the battle between the two captains and their subsequent verbal sparring and later the nuclear crisis the backdrop doesn't seem to matter so much. When they're acutely aware that the radiation has leaked into the submarine there isn't a feeling of dread terror. Mainly because the sub is on the surface and the sailors just get out and walk around. And when the Americans, supposedly the enemy, arrive they don't add to the situation they merely offer assistance. It felt like K-19 should be this tense and taut thriller and it's not. K-19 is based on a true story and there's a great deal of heroism and enormous decisions to be made by the crew. The radiation officer getting that dose of radiation that was so bad he went blind was pretty heartbreaking. He seemed like a nice guy although the moment where he kisses his fiancé goodbye at the start of the film just feels planted. There's foreshadowing of doom there and it happens again when he's writing to her and looking at her picture. I'm sat there thinking "this guy is dead". It only would have been complete if he was going to retire after this mission and buy a little farm. Maybe a boat and sail around the world. That's the level of cliché I felt I was dealing with. It further annoyed me that the tense nature of the constant drills that Vostrikov ran to get the men ready for potential disasters has this constant throwaway gag that ruins the atmosphere. Every time a drill starts the new doctor has something knocked out of his hands. It doesn't work. A lot of K-19 doesn't work. The clash between Ford and Neeson seems forced. The pacing is uneven. Moments of great urgency seem to be treated to differing amounts of onscreen time. The reactor breaks down twice but the second time it's repaired in a fraction of the time. Both onscreen and actual time. Although it's just a repair job it took six men thirty minutes to fix it and then one guy about ten minutes to fix up the same job. Only because the patience as been lost by this point the actual screen time for both is quick and the second one is about two minutes at the most. There were many opportunities for some fierce tension and suspense in K-19 and they're almost all blown. There's never a feeling the vessel is in any danger even when it really is. The direction just doesn't work. Although the reviews of the film were mixed it was clear there wasn't a big market for a film about a submarine if it wasn't excellent. Bigelow managed to blow $100M on K-19. It returned just $35M at the box office. I'd never even heard of it! And it was only released five years ago.
BEST BIT Polenin discovers that the sub isn't equipped with radiation suits and only has chemical hazard suits because that's all they had in the depot. "They might as well be wearing raincoats" he says as the film really shows up the inadequacies of the Soviet Union.
RATING - **1/2. Not a horrible waste of time or anything as ghastly as that but K-19 isn't anything special. Considering the cast and the director it should have been something very special indeed. K-19 is more U-571 than Das Boot. And I'd take U-571 over this. After all, Jon Bon Jovi gets killed.
11'09''01 - September 11 (2002)
EXPECTATIONS I really only had one interest in watching this film and that was to see Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's segment. The director of Amores Perros was profoundly affected by 9/11 and had a vision of what he wanted people to see. He wanted a perspective that covered the day through its key moments but not visually. I'll explain more later. On renting the series of short films I discovered there were also films by Ken Loach and Sean Penn. My decision to go with another film on 9/11, after both United 93 and World Trade Center in recent weeks, was based on a feeling that I wasn't getting the full picture from two feature films. It's taken me a very long time to start thinking about 9/11 so I might as well continue along these lines until I'm satisfied I've had enough.
TRAILER There isn't one. Man, I'm having a bad week for trailers.
PLOT There are 13 short films from a collection of directors from around the world. These vary from Iran to Israel to the US to Japan and have various takes on what happened.
OPINION The films contained in September 11 are all 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame in length. Such time constraints shouldn't really cause too much concern for a top notch director and indeed Inarritu's 11 minutes pass by all too quickly. As you'd expect his film is by far the best. Dealing with the events of 9/11 he shows only the bodies of falling victims from the Twin Towers interspersed with black screen and covered with this incredible music from Mexico and radio & TV commentary of events. The shots of people falling come with a powerful heartbeat type of noise, which is bodies hitting the concourse. Visually it's incredibly minimalistic but it's so effective. As his film finishes it fades from black to white moving from horror to hope. Inarritu's film is a real experience. It combined 60 different broadcasts from around the world in the audio and it's a feat of editing that makes me hope for Inarritu getting the chance to make a really big budget film one of these days. It shows why he's a great director. He doesn't need to rely on performance. Another solid effort in September 11 was Sean Penn's contribution. His film starred Ernest Borgnine as an elderly man unable to come to terms with his wife's death. His wife's flowers sit unattended to on the window ledge and he lives his life in darkness. That is until the Towers fall and the sunlight flows into the room. He suddenly becomes aware of everything and the flowers grow. It's quite a beautiful little piece from Penn. Loach also delivers an interesting piece where his Chilean friend Vladimir Vega talks at length about the 9/11 attack on the citizens of Chile in the 1970's. When the Americans deliberately undermined their society and killed their people after they voted in a Communist leader. It's the kind of thing that would make an absolutely superb film if America hadn't been the bad guys. Because no one will ever fund it. Even if it is true. There were other nations that chose a more aggressive attack on American morals without just presenting it as factual evidence. Especially the Japanese film from Shohei Imamura. His piece about a man becoming a snake because he was so horrified by war is one of the worst films I think I've ever had the misfortune to see. I thought it was a joke. Almost as bad was the Beirut film, which merely served as self felating pat on the back to the smartass film maker. There were other high's though including a group of kids in Burkina Faso getting together in an attempt to trap Osama Bin Laden so they could get themselves some reward money from the USA and could look after their parents. My pick as the second best film behind the startling Inarritu project would be that of Indian director Mira Nair. Her tale was a touching story about a missing Muslim in New York who was suspected of participating in terrorist acts until his body was found in the rubble at Ground Zero. He'd trained as a medic and rushed to the scene to help in any way he could. He died a hero and was buried with an American flag on his casket. It just shows you should never jump to conclusions.
BEST BIT Inarritu's 11 minutes 9 seconds and 1 frame. Every time I watch something he's been responsible for I get the feeling I'm watching the work of someone very special indeed.
RATING - ***. Hit and miss. Skip Imamura's piece at the end and it's a clear thumbs up though. A variety of ideas and concepts from different countries showing that the whole world didn't see 9/11 the same way as Americans did. Perhaps we in the Western world are too quick to overlook the horror and tragedy of events that happen in the third world. Especially when we've not helped to prevent them or in some cases, Chile, caused them ourselves. It's thought provoking.
Murderball (2005)
EXPECTATIONS I first became aware of Murderball watching the Oscars a few years back. It was up for best documentary along with the Enron documentary I saw last week. Both lost out to March of the Penguins. I should watch more documentaries I figured. After all the real world is often far more engrossing than fiction.
TRAILER
PLOT We follow the Team USA (in wheelchair rugby) in their feud with Team Canada and their ex-American player coach Joe Soares. This takes them all the way to their showdown at the Paralympics in Athens.
WHATS IN A NAME? Wheelchair rugby was originally called "Murderball" but as Mark Zupan notes, it's hard to get sponsorship deals for a sport called Murderball.
OPINION Murderball is the curious combination of being touching, uplifting and violent all at the same time. It's a film about a violent sport but every person involved in it has a tragic story to tell but no one is depressed about their condition. It's incredibly heartening to see people living full lives despite having lost the use of their legs and in at least one case lost their legs and forearms entirely. And they still get to compete and have a full life. But it's not just uplifting. It's also cool. The guys that play Murderball are just typical guys. They talk about getting laid and play pranks on people. When it comes to game time they're athletes and they've highly professional about it. The shouting match between Soares and the US ace Mark Zupan was terrific. Zupan is the star of the film btw. No doubt about that. His little ginger goatee owns every scene it's in and as soon as he breaks out the leg tattoos in an early scene you know he's a big personality. It's on and off court that Zupan is the star. He's the best player and Soares is well aware of that when he tries to rile him but he's also the best story. His efforts to connect to people are great cinema. The invitation he puts out to the drunken high school buddy who crashed the truck he was in when he lost the use of his legs is emotional but it still somehow remains in the zone of sport buddydom. There's just an extra added twist. Zupan forgave this guy a long time ago and felt it was time he came and watched him play. So the guy turns up decked in the American flag and has totally overdone it. I must admit I had myself a good chuckle. But Zupan is also the guy who goes out and talks to the freshly injured paraplegics. It's one of those, a motocross rider called Keith, who gets his first taste of the Murderball chair and as Zupan notes "we couldn't get him out of the chair". He just wanted to hit stuff. It was a feeling of freedom and power that Keith thought he'd never get again. That's the beautiful thing about Murderball. It gives back strength and confidence to its players. They feel important out there on the court. But it's the personal stories that really make the difference. Everyone in this film has not let being in a wheelchair destroy their life. It's the opposite in fact. They're loving life and having more fun living it than most able bodied people. Kudos to them.
BEST BIT The first look at the game where one wheelchair warrior gets clouted badly from the side and ends up face down on the court. The guy who tackled him turns around and shouts "yeah". That's when you know it's a real sport and its fun.
RATING - ****. Entertaining and humanised look at wheelchair rugby that doesn't dip into the worrying seas of preaching. Fun movie that can be enjoyed by a range of people. It's rare for a documentary on the disabled but this is a movie for guys.
Ron Martin talks MTV in the latest Fool's Utopia. Hey, I played Rampage through the end as well. Then I played it all the way through a second time just to make sure it wasn't a trick. As in like, eight hours instead of four. You have to make sure. I had heard rumours of greatness when you complete it as well. I hate Rampage.
Will Helm has Misunderstood Masterpieces. This week it's Howard the Duck. I used to love this film but then it did come out when I was 10. I also had a rather serious crush on Lea Thompson. For something marketed by George Lucas though the special effects are absolute arse. I still like it. I think I may still have a crush on Lea Thompson.
Finally George Sirois casts his eye over Shaun of the Dead in Scene Anatomy 101.
NEXT Fear Eats the Soul, Army of Shadows, Shane and Aguirre; Wrath of God in a Chad Webb recommends' special of Furious on Film.
