Rio Rancho Film Reviews: Ridley Scott

Films of the Decade: Adventure

Friday, February 05, 2010

Top Five Adventure Films

5. Gladiator

Sword and sandals epics have always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I love Spartacus and Ben Hur, and I even managed to derive a very meagre amount of enjoyment out of Cleopatra. Therefore I was delighted when Gladiator came around. I was hoping that it would kick ass and thankfully it did. With a big burly lump of man meat called Russell Crowe killing people in a very bloody fashion while wearing a skirt, it was kind of hard to go wrong.

4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

While a fine film in its own right, The Return of the King, for my money, is the weakest of the trilogy. The film’s major weakness is the size of the final battle sequence. It becomes unrelenting and tiring. Battle fatigue quickly sets in. The rest, though, is excellent. In particular, I love the sequence with Shelob and the scaling of Mount Doom. The latter gives the movie the epic quality that millions of trolls fighting a huge CGI battle can’t. And people might criticise the final act for going on too long and for being too teary-eyed (look at those bouncing hobbits!), but I think Jackson gets it spot on. You’ve spent so long with these characters that you can’t just quickly say goodbye to them. You need a proper resolution. And thankfully Jackson provides that.

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The Two Towers has one major flaw. Those goddamn trees. If it wasn’t for that, it would be able to challenge The Fellowship of the Ring as the best film in the trilogy. As it stands, though, it’s a wonderful piece of work. Gollum is magnificently realised and the final battle sequence is far better than the one in The Return of the King.

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Easily the best film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring raised the bar for the rest of the series – a standard that Peter Jackson wasn’t quite able to maintain. One of the reasons it’s my favourite is that it’s the only film where the Fellowship are together. Consequently there’s a lot of room for internal conflict within the group. Also the story isn’t as fragmented as the rest. In the subsequent films, there are always story threads that I preferred over the rest. For instance, I would always lose a little interest whenever those goddamn trees would turn up. But here you just have concentrated awesomeness. And the film is also a lot more atmospheric and scary than the rest. The Ring Wraiths are incredibly spooky here – a quality they lose the second they start flying on weird lizard things. And the prologue is the best thing in the entire series.

1. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

What could have been a very routine adventure movie is elevated by Peter Weir. Yes there are plentiful thrills and spills (all of which are expertly directed), but it’s the friendship between Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany’s characters that allows the film to develop into something more meaningful. Both representing opposite points of view, they’re somehow able to find a common ground. It’s a film of subtle pleasures, with the highlight being a trip to the Galapagos Islands. I also have to point out the excellent effects work. You hardly even notice the CGI, which is surely the highest compliment you can give the visual effects department – rather than look fake and phoney, they manage to make everything look like a Turner painting.

Five Worst Adventure Films

5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I was tentatively excited about the new Indiana Jones film. I mean, I love Indy, but Harrison Ford is ancient and George Lucas is a fat-necked fuck up. But with Spielberg at the helm, how bad could it be? Fucking awful was the answer. With gophers, aliens, refrigerators and idiots swinging with monkeys, Lucas and Spielberg managed to take a giant dump in Indy’s fedora and then smash it on his head. Painful to watch.

4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

I haven’t read any of the books and so therefore I went into the movie with an open mind. But what an irredeemably dull film this was. It was all set-up and no pay off. I get that there’s a bigger story that they’re trying to build, but if a film doesn’t work in a self-contained way, then the bigger story is pointless. Honestly, I think that every line in this film is exposition. There was absolutely no depth to the piece – there are no layers. And the acting from the children is atrocious. Shove those wands up your arses.

3. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean fell into the same trap as The Matrix. They took an enjoyable first film and then decided to get all po-faced about everything. Suddenly the filmmakers take the material seriously and want to build a ‘mythology’. But rather than laughs and enjoyable hijinks, we get tedious squid-faced characters and a scene concerning an incomprehensible board game that seems to go on forever. On the plus side, Keira Knightley looks good as a boy sailor. For a brief time I felt like a drooling, paedophilic old seadog that wanted to make a shipmate walk the plank…which is the only compliment I can give this film.

2. The Golden Compass

The book was pretty poor, but the film is far worse. It tinkers idiotically with the chronology of events and cuts the ending short of where the novel ended. Both my wife and I looked at one another once the credits begun, not believing that they’d decided to end the movie on such an anti-climatic note. There really aren’t any redeeming features to the film and it’s not surprising that they haven’t adapted the other two novels. They really fucked up the chance to create a franchise here.

1. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

A lame attempt to make a female Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider is a charmless, feckless piece of shit. The story is meaningless, the action is completely over the top and Angelina Jolie is uncomfortable as the heroine. She pouts and she preens but she doesn’t exude an ounce of believability. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones exuded toughness and world weariness. For all the fantastical elements of the films, you always believed in him. Angelina Jolie, though, is just pretending to be an action hero. It’s all an act. And for the teenage boy audience that the film is aiming at, it’s a relentless tease. It’s all side boob and no nipple. If you’re not going to give us anything else (like a good script or stunning action sequences) at least give us some nipple. Fuckers.

Anthony Hopkins

Hannibal

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

When I first watched The Silence of the Lambs, I thought how crazy it would be to have Hannibal Lecter out in the open. The mad fucker would be eating people left, right and centre. He’d be chowing down every day on entrails, brains and flabby buttocks (maybe even titties and testes). No one would be safe. You’d be walking down the street and the next thing you’d know a camp Welshman would be chewing your ear.

Alas the fantasy is a lot better than what’s presented in Hannibal. What we have here is a fat snob with a pinky ring who kills the odd person here or there. You’d hardly think that the FBI would give a shit about the guy. All the people that he kills or nibbles on are lowlifes and scumbags. This isn’t a psycho so much as someone doing a public service. So what if the odd dirty cop gets hung and gutted? And so what if a scummy FBI agent is made to eat his own brains? It’s not like Lecter is kidnapping children and feeding them to their grannies. He’s far too decent for that.

And I guess it’s the positioning of Hannibal as an anti-hero that I find hardest to swallow (pun intended). Since when was I supposed to revel in his antics? Last time I saw him he was biting the face off of some poor EMT. I don’t want to root for this tossbag. Ideally I’d like to see him get fed to some sharks.

Now here’s something that Mason Verger, the film’s main villain, gets wrong. Instead of feeding Hannibal to some sharks or to some lions, he decides to feed him to, er, pigs. Now fair enough they’re wild boars and would certainly be shit-your-pants scary in real life, but in a cinematic context, they don’t really do it. In fact, they hardly seem bothered about eating human flesh. Ferocious they ain’t.

Not that Ridley Scott doesn’t pull every trick to try and make them seem intimidating – close-ups, quick cuts and loud squeals. But try as he might, they just don’t really seem that bothered. Maybe ravenous squirrels would have been better.

But what a clot Mason Verger is. Here we have a villain who spends all of his time collecting Lecter paraphernalia (he buys Lecter’s mask for a quarter of a million dollars) and planning to capture him. But then when he has his foe in his clutches, Hannibal gets loose. But rather than get taken out by Lecter, Verger dies an infinitely more pathetic death. As he sees Lecter getting away, he decides to bully his poor assistant – the guy who does everything for him. Now if ever a time for restraint is asked for, it’s when a serial killer has just gotten loose and you’re overlooking a pit full of hungry pigs. But no, Verger decides to mouth off and the assistant pushes the hapless, deformed, kiddie-fiddling spastic over the edge so that the boars can feast on him. And as he goes over the edge, he hilariously cries the assistant’s name over and over again. ‘Cordell! Cordell!’ It’s absolutely pathetic.

But then most of the film is pathetic. For instance, the beginning titles end with a bunch of pigeons making a pattern that resembles Hannibal Lecter’s face. Ooh, ominous. Maybe they could even make Lecter’s face out of pigeon excrement.

Then you have Lecter’s annoying use of words like ‘goody-goody’ and ‘ta ta’. No wonder the FBI think that Hannibal is more bent than a nine bob note. But what are these words supposed to mean? Are they supposed to hint at refinement? Are they meant to make him sound educated? Are they meant to show how playful and humorous he is? Oh look, it’s a serial killer who talks like a Frasier Crane. Tres amusement, non?

Even more exasperating is the idea that Lecter is supposed to prefer to eat the rude. Again, what happened to the psycho in Silence of the Lambs who ate the face of a poor EMT? A cannibal who eats people for society? Don’t make me laugh. And apparently he didn’t eat his guard because his guard was civil to him. Well isn’t that doodily dandily? He does his best to only eat bastards. So does that mean that if he lived in a Utopian society he wouldn’t eat human flesh? Does he only ever get the itch to munch on someone if they’re playing their ipod too loud or if someone doesn’t open the door for a lady?

I was also disappointed at Lecter’s gaff. It’s far too ornate. It looks like Liberace’s residence. I was kind of hoping for human munchables left everywhere and for Hannibal to be marinating human skulls with his jizz while howling at the moon because he can’t take his freedom. But no, he adjusts to his freedom with ease and lives an opulent lifestyle. (Quite how he maintains this lifestyle, I don’t know. His place is too large for him to be able to look after it himself. Does that mean that he has servants? And if so, does he eat them when they leave the toilet seat up? And if that’s the case, does he sit there eating a leg while interviewing the latest candidate? ‘Don’t worry, this is rhino leg I’m consuming. They’re rather large, don’t you know and I have one hell of an appetite. Would you like to try some? Goody-goody.’)

However, the most absurd thing is the ending. Lecter drugs Ray Liotta’s scummy FBI agent and then feeds him his own brain. Yes, it’s as silly as it sounds. But because of Liotta’s glorious overacting, it actually ends up being the highlight of the film. I kind of hope that Liotta realised the ending was stupid and he decided to send the whole movie up, because his utter lack of restraint is glorious. ‘That smells great!’

But then Liotta is wheeled off and we have to deal with some Hannibal/Starling nonsense. Do I really care whether he wants to pork her? Do I really care whether she wants his meat? No. Whatever fascination they have with one another isn’t shared by me. They’re just another ‘will they or wont they?’ Ross and Rachel – just quit with the annoying foreplay, bone each other, and then get the hell off my screen.

Denzel Washington

American Gangster

Monday, July 14, 2008

On the brink of death an aged gangster bemoans the state of America. He sees that corporations are taking over and that the little man is being cut out. ‘Where’s the pride of ownership?’ he wails. Damn soulless, faceless McDonald’s are everywhere.

This might seem like quite an honourable concern. It sounds like the old man is grieving over the homogenisation of the modern world. But in reality the old man is only upset because it’s nearly impossible to shake down large corporations. Shop owners are meant to be vulnerable and powerless. They’re meant to pay him a cut of their earnings. But multinationals are far more powerful than the old man will ever be. It’s impossible for him to get a piece of the action.

When the old man dies, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) decides to take over his operations. But while the old man had reached the limit of his ingenuity and had become a relic, Frank sees where the business has to go. He has to become like the large corporations. He can’t just sell random junk. That would earn him peanuts. Instead he decides to create a brand.

The heroin that Frank sells is called Blue Magic. It’s purer than anything that’s on the streets and it’s cheaper too. And Frank can do this because he cuts out the middleman. He’s both supplier and distributor. He’s taken a leaf out of the corporation’s book.

Another way that Frank is like the corporations is that he’s highly protective of his brand. One drug dealer takes Blue Magic and cuts it up in order to try and make more money. But this reflects badly on the brand. It’s no longer Blue Magic. It’s shit. Frank even says that his customers have a guarantee of quality when they buy his product. It’s like he’s talking about coffee rather than heroin.

What’s notable is that like a good businessman, Frank does his best to stay as anonymous as possible. Occasionally he has to lay down the law and make a scene to get everyone in line, but otherwise he doesn’t want to draw undue attention to himself. He just wants to blend in. However, he does have a moment of weakness. His wife buys him an expensive fur coat and hat. In a second he goes from anonymous-looking businessman to black gangster. And wearing this outlandish outfit to a boxing match, and getting the best seats in the house, he alerts himself to the cops – previously he flew under the radar. Suddenly he has the attention of both Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) and some bent cops led by Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin). And then on his wedding day, Trupo tries to shake down Frank for money. Frank’s indulgence has cost him. It’s exposed him and made him vulnerable. Therefore he burns the hat and coat while his bride sobs.

All of these details and all of these parallels between gangsters and corporations make American Gangster an interesting film, but it never really takes flight. In fact, visually it’s surprisingly bland for a Ridley Scott film. He captures the grime and squalor of 70s Harlem well enough, but with his usual widescreen frame jettisoned, it feels more like television. The film is solid but unspectacular.

Of course, that’s probably intentional. The film doesn’t want to showboat. It wants to be a more gritty, realistic depiction of the drug trade. It doesn’t want to have the glamour of The Godfather or Goodfellas. But this is still cinema and there’s nothing that’s really going to take your breath away.

Instead the film’s pleasures are smaller. There’s a nice scene where the wealthy Lucas family are sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving meal and thanking god for all they have while junkies shoot up – we even see a child crying over a parent who has overdosed. This is the product that Frank pedals: misery. He makes himself fat off other people’s weakness and stupidity.

But although this criticism is well made, you do occasionally feel that the film makes the mistake of liking Frank Lucas a little too much. Even though Scorsese’s gangster films are more cinematic and therefore more seductive, Scorsese always stays objective – he knows these people are scum; therefore he just turns on the camera and lets them hang themselves. Scott, though, seems a little seduced. At the end, as Lucas cooperates with Richie, we see him laughing and smiling. Is the film trying to show us that deep down he’s a decent guy? And there’s also a heavy focus on police corruption in the film. Don’t get me wrong. Corrupt police are just as bad as criminals such as Lucas. But you kind of get the feeling that the film is saying they’re worse. Fact is, they’re the same. The film shows that they all feed off one another. But although we get that one moment where we see junkies shooting up during Thanksgiving, the film soft pedals the misery Frank brought to the streets. He was a shitbag and instead he’s made to look like a ruthless businessman who really had a decent heart underneath it all.

Another weakness is the familiarity of Richie’s story – the cop who catches Lucas. His character has all the familiar beats – a failed marriage, a desire to be the one straight cop in the bad town, and the struggle to crack the ring. None of his scenes are bad, but you’re constantly reminded of better movies such as The French Connection. And that’s the problem with the whole film. As you watch it you’re constantly reminded of better movies. The Godfather, Goodfellas and The French Connection all pop in your head and you realise that American Gangster can’t hold a candle to any of them.

Films of the Decade: Adventure

Hannibal

American Gangster

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