Adrift Until Inevitable, Life Of Pi Is More Erratic Than Great!

The Good: Good direction, Decent plot progression, Interesting protagonist, Good acting
The Bad: More character description than actual character development, Some of the CG animals are painfully obvious.
The Basics: Visually impressive, Life Of Pi tells a somewhat predictable story that is fractured into three distinct sections that does not work in an extraordinary fashion.


My wife has been reading quite a bit lately and I swear all she is getting through are the books her mother left for her on the Nook she gave her. So, when she finished reading Life Of Pi yesterday, she put the film on our list and given that the local library actually had the DVD in today when I went in, it got knocked to the front of our queue. Life Of Pi is based upon a novel and it is worth noting up front that I have not read the book. As such, the immediate comparison for me was actually to Slumdog Millionaire (reviewed here!); not just because much of it is set in India, but rather because it tells a story of an interview in which a character relates pretty much their entire life.

Life Of Pi is a young man’s journey through the religions he encounters in India and one suspects that if the film version of Eat Pray Love and the novel upon which it was based had not already softened up the market, the film would not even have been made. As it is, Life Of Pi tells a character-driven story that explores various faiths and makes an implicit argument for faith over rationalism. As an atheist and a rationalist, Life Of Pi is entertaining fantasy, but not a work intended to sway those to any specific theistic view. It also becomes an excuse for director Ang Lee to play with a bigger cinematic and CG canvas than many of his prior films.

Opening in Winnepeg, a reporter begins to interview Pi Patel about his life. Pi explains the origin of his name (his name is a nickname, an abbreviation, for the name of the swimming pool that amazed his uncle) and describes growing up in the zoo his family owned. As a child, he was raised Hindu, but on a dare, he enters a local church to drink some of the holy water and in the process begins to ask questions (and get answers from the minister) about Christianity. Soon after he becomes fascinated with Christianity, he also begins to learn about Islam. Despite his father’s pleas for him to take a rational approach, Pi is baptized and also continues to explore his Muslim faith. He falls in love with Anandi, but shortly thereafter, his family hits hard times and decides to move. They board a Japanese ship bound for Canada with animals from the zoo that they are not able to sell.

Unfortunately, over the Mariana Trench, the ship goes down and Pi finds himself adrift in a lifeboat with the zoo’s zebra and a hyena (though he had also rescued the family’s tiger, Richard Parker). Soon, Pi has a virtual ark as an orangutan finds her way to the boat, too. When the hyena kills the zebra, Pi’s faith is shaken, though his life is saved by Richard Parker. To avoid getting eaten by the tiger, Pi takes his provisions and makes a makeshift raft, which he tethers to the boat. Adrift together, Pi and Richard Parker struggle for survival.

Life Of Pi is structured in a sensible, if obvious way. Given that the latter half of the film is devoted to Pi’s physical journey across the ocean, the first third of the movie is pretty much necessary in order to get the viewer to actually care about Pi. Unfortunately, a decent stretch of the film is a disconnect between the character at the beginning and on the journey across the ocean; Pi is not portrayed as a young man of particular spirituality for much of Life Of Pi. Instead, he’s just a guy starving for a couple of days before he starts to pray. Even after he prays, Pi spends more time detailing his survival techniques as opposed to viewing his struggle as a test of his faith. So, Pi becomes more of an everyman as opposed to a man of special ability or profound faith.

In some ways, Life Of Pi becomes a pretty archetypal buddy drama between a human and an animal. For sure, a tiger is an atypical “buddy animal,” but the plot progresses pretty much the same as it does with other stories of animal/human bonding. A decent amount of time is spent with Pi trying to fish in order to be able to feed the tiger and with Richard Parker working to get back into the boat after he takes things into his own paws!

Life Of Pi is largely a typical survival story. The standoff between Pi and Richard Parker is an interesting one, but that is mostly because it is filled with visually interesting incidents. Together they survive a glowing humpback whale, a swarm of flying fish and Pi training the tiger with a stick and leftover fish. Because the character disconnect exists (reason and classical conditioning account for much more of the pair’s survival than any influence by the Divine), the movie relies upon a decent performance to succeed. Suraj Sharma dominates Life Of Pi as Pi (though Irrfan Khan plays the adult version of the character just fine). Sharma has to interact with virtual characters and environments excessively, so his commitment to the character is intense and displays an amazing sense of performance. Despite some of the creatures looking clearly CG, Sharma’s performance never makes one believe he is not Pi in an entirely real world.

Unfortunately, like many survival stories, Life Of Pi meanders and becomes something that struggles to be entertaining. Director Ang Lee creates a visually incredible sequence wherein Pi and Richard Parker look to the bottom of the sea, but the somewhat pointless (though entirely beautiful) bit comes right before the viewer is forced to watch a tiger getting beaten up. Animals getting the crap kicked out of them and people and animals starving is hardly entertaining.

The net result is an epic film that starts philosophical, but loses its whimsy for stark realism. Life Of Pi was worth watching once, but I cannot imagine wanting to add it to my permanent collection to revisit again and again.

For other works with Rafe Spall, please visit my reviews of:
The World’s End
Prometheus
One Day

6/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Somewhere, There Is A More Miserable Version of Myself Who Would Love Brokeback Mountain!

The Good: Decent performances by the leads, Good cinematography
The Bad: Slow, Ponderous, Miserable, Message/Point
The Basics: In a disappointing movie that I'm shocked won writing awards, Brokeback Mountain is over two hours of drawn out misery for the characters and viewers.


I'm so glad I bet on Crash (reviewed here!) back in the day for Best Picture, especially now having seen Brokeback Mountain. Here's my thing (to channel Lara Means), anyone who reads a number of my reviews will easily determine I'm a liberal and quite openly supportive of gay and lesbian civil rights. Homosexuality is not some weird novelty to me. Therefore, I would just like (ONCE, at least!) to sit down to a movie involving gay characters who are actually . . . happy. Every major movie involving lgb characters at one point or another in the film comes up against homophobia, violence or self-hatred. In short, there are no real good lgb love stories that are on the order of stereotype-free, lighthearted romance that there are millions of for heterosexuals. Lesbianism is chic enough to come close and there are shows with openly lesbian characters and such, but gay men in movies only go that way - if Hollywood is any indication - because there are no other options and/or they are violent, self-hating men.

Man am I sick of that.

Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are ranchers who are charged with guarding some grazing sheep on Brokeback Mountain for a summer. This work does not pay well and they sit around complaining and eating canned beans and being generally bored. However, as the summer goes on, they hook up with some violent sex, refuse to talk about it and when the summer ends, they go their separate ways. Ennis gets married and Jack has a failed rodeo career and hooks up with a rodeo woman and years pass before Jack and Ennis see one another again. What follows then are the years they spend lonely with women and families between seeing one another on occasion again and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

My review of Brokeback Mountain might seem especially harsh, but anytime I'm fully awake watching a movie (in the daytime!) and I fall asleep and have to rewatch half of it, it makes me think it can't be the greatest movie in the world. Ang Lee, who won Best Director for this film, is on my list now for this and Hulk. What happened to the man who made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?!

The problematic aspect of Brokeback Mountain, outside being unbearably slow, is that the characters are miserable. This is not a movie about two men who love one another, this is a movie about two miserable people who hook up and spend twenty years bumping into one another to continue their misery. Their encounters are frequently laced with violence that suggests neither is very loving and again, we've seen it and it's simply tired.

What is far better than the characters is the acting. Brokeback Mountain features some pretty spectacular acting. The supporting performances, like Randy Quaid and Anne Hathaway, are decent, but the movie lives or dies on the performances of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. If the script had been better, it would have lived completely on the performances of those two men.

Gyllenhaal is able to go from being a smiling, generally cheerful persona to a moody and angry man in the blink of an eye and this ability is on full display in Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal plays Jack with exceptional range and were it not for his moments of energy, the movie would be a complete failure.

It is Heath Ledger who rules the screen, though, as Ennis. Ledger plays Ennis with dark, brooding seriousness and suppressed violence in a way that never hints at any of the other characters he has portrayed. It is Ledger who creates much of the mood of the movie with his quiet desperation and mumbled drawl. It is Ledger whose performance makes Brokeback Mountain agonizing to watch for the sheer human misery of it.

So, damn you, Heath Ledger. In a movie otherwise bereft of enjoyment, Ledger's performance pulls the movie out of the depths of garbage and forces the viewer to acknowledge how impressive his work is.

Also impressive is the cinematography. From the beginning, Brokeback Mountain looks good. Of course, Ang Lee and company are filming unspoiled, wide open spaces in the mountains, so it's hard to go wrong. As the joke in Just Shoot Me once went, "You took one of the most gorgeous women on the planet and made her look beautiful; what did you use? Some kind of film?" It's hard to go wrong with sweeping nature shots.

Sadly, it's also not enough to save a movie; the best it can pull up is a Don Henley video. Brokeback Mountain, a movie I had been looking forward to, resonates with me as one of the biggest disappointments for a serious film I've experienced in a long time. The only movie that was more unredeemably depressing I can think of was the terrible House Of Sand And Fog. I think I need to go watch Magnolia (reviewed here!) again just to remember how good a depressing movie can be.

For other works featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Love And Other Drugs
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
Donnie Darko

4/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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The Unhidden Greatness Of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

The Good: Visually stunning, Good story, Lack of predictability, Good character, Good acting
The Bad: The Lo Digression
The Basics: Finally, a beautifully shot martial arts film that doesn't cover up lacks with flash, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is all around wonderful!


Every now and then we encounter things that affect us and we want to write about them, despite the fact that is is reviewed to death. I had been hearing overwhelming praise for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for years and I have been waiting to see it. So many things I've seen lately have failed to live up to the hype. In fact, the only film that has surprised me in the last month has been Pay It Forward (reviewed here!). Well, until now, that is. The hype for The Phantom Menace killed the hype for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Pleasantly, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon lived up to my expectations.

What I had expected from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a visually amazing, character-driven magical realism film. It was all of those things.

Master Li Mu Bai has decided to hang up his sword and retire from the free-lance law enforcement job in Western China. He is accompanied to Peking by his long-time companion, Yu Shu Lien. It's obvious from the beginning that they're both repressing their romantic feelings for each other. So, Shu Lien hands Li Mu Bai's sword over to Sir Te. Then the Green Destiny (the sword) is stolen and Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien go on the case to find the thief.

What happens next begins like a pretty standard police investigation. But, instead of shoot outs, there are protracted hand to hand combat battles and they are magnificent to watch! The moment the sword is found and the thief revealed, Li Mu Bai's archenemy reappears and Li Mu Bai goes on a quest to avenge the murder of his master.

I've never been fond of martial arts films; usually, they resort to fighting to cover up defects in character development. There's usually little acting, but amazing choreography of fight scenes. As a genre, it's weakened by a habit of replacing substance with style and most people reading my reviews know style doesn't rate anywhere near as high with me as substance.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon redefines the genre. It's a compelling story; all of the characters have reasons for being where they are, doing what they do and we, the viewers, get to know them. That works wonderfully and the characters move the film. Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien are well defined, but so too are their nemesis' the Jade Fox and . . . well, I'm not going to reveal the other one, because that's a surprise. Okay, it's a predictable one if you're awake for the first few minutes of the film.

The only con I could come up with was a ten minute digression where a past romance is thoroughly explored. It's important and it develops character, but it's out of place and too long for the flashback sequence. But the thing is, Star Wars is a good analogy to this film and while the podrace scene in The Phantom Menace is ten minutes of my life I'll never be able to get back, the ten minute romance episode here accomplishes something and it builds character which is far more important than the special effects extravaganza in The Phantom Menace.

In fact, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the solution to all the faults of The Phantom Menace. It has a mentor and protege where the mentor actually helps the protege and the mentor's motivations make sense and are explored. It has politics and romance and they work.

8.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Big Green Suck - Hulk, The Movie That Makes Elektra Look Like Casablanca!

The Good: Jennifer Connelly's presence
The Bad: Effects, Directoral technique, Acting, Plot, Utter lack of real character, Pacing, Music
The Basics: With terrible acting, substandard effects, a ridiculous plot and characters that fall flat, Hulk is an incredible disappointment that should be seen only as punishment.


Wow. Usually, we use the utterance to exclaim something incredible. When we encounter something we cannot believe, when we're trying to describe recent ecstasy and run out of words, these are the positive uses of "Wow!" Then, there's "wow." As in, "how could something so bad get made?" Or "How is it people threw millions of dollars into making this when there are people starving in the world?" In that latter sense, when I finished the unending, ponderous flick Hulk, I said "wow." Then, to cheer myself up, I began to read more of Ralph Reed's book.

Hulk tells the story of Dr. David Banner, an unethical scientist working for the military on a project to make soldiers who will regenerate (back in the mid-60s). In the process, he begins to experiment on himself and while there appear to be no effects of his genetic manipulations, when his wife has a son, it does not take David Banner long to realize he has successfully passed something on to his child, Bruce.

Thirty years later, Dr. Bruce Banner is a scientist working on much the same thing his father was. He has just lost the affections of his girlfriend, Betty and an ambitious industrialist is pressuring Betty and Bruce to sell out, work for him and make super soldiers for a private company. While saving a friend from a machine that microwaves frogs, Bruce is exposed to radiation that unlocks the potential of his genes, causing him to transform from a mild-mannered person to an impossible huge green creature that kills, maims and destroys in a ridiculously plot-convenient way.

So, wow. Where to start on how bad this movie is? Actually, first, the good. Jennifer Connelly is in the movie and it is always a pleasure to watch her. Her acting here is nothing spectacular, largely because the character she is playing is rather monolithic, but it's always nice to see Connelly getting work.

I'm rushing the review in bullet points from here on out. Why? The movie was so bad that the time it is taking for me to write this review could be better spent contemplating what I personally could do to help bring about world peace. Hulk wasted over two hours of my life (it felt more like four) and writing about it only wastes more.

The directoral style is just plain terrible. Ang Lee breaks the movie up visually much like a comic book, so there are frequently multiple "panels" on the screen. This is not consistent throughout the movie, but at various places, the film basically resorts to picture in picture. And the size and shape of the various frames continue to change, creating a sense of movement that is lacking in the story. So, as the plot plods along, the movie tries to compensate with keeping the images rapidly changing. It is distracting and annoying. The piece feels like an art school project where a bunch of students got high and went wild on a mixing board. I kept waiting for a star wipe.

Danny Elfman creates a soundtrack that is both unmemorable and uncohesive. Unlike something like the Batman Returns (reviewed here!) soundtrack that works quite well independent of the movie as a creepy, moody orchestral piece, the music backing Hulk is utterly dependent on the movie or vice versa. The film uses the music, like the directoral transitions, to move along a plot that is not headed in a direction satisfactorily.

As for that plot, "just plain terrible" does not begin to describe this one. The time leading up to the first appearance of the Hulk is slow, meandering and feels pointless. Once Hulk arrives, it just descends into ridiculous movement by the greatest cast of military idiots since Beetle Bailey. The last section of the movie, where Hulk faces off against a rather new enemy caps the movie off with an idiotic sequence that is giant in terms of special effects but makes utterly no sense from a plot perspective.

The movie asks the viewer to believe that the U.S. Army, flawed as it might be, would be so stupid as to put two genetic mutants together in essentially a giant power plant without monitoring them when one is a known criminal and psychopath. And the psychopath is not the one locked to a chair. All this without any sort of monitoring.

Sigh.

It's that bad.

And the effects, oh my gosh, the effects. Hulk is just plain terrible, making the tigers from Gladiator look like quality CG. But beyond the Hulk monster, the effects are ridiculous and grandiose in a way that translates to the screen as just plain silly. Hulk begins to leap miles at a time and the viewer watches this preposterous green dot flailing across the desert and we ask, "What's the appeal?"

But to return to the idiot characters, after half an hour of big budget special effects involving shooting everything conceivable at Hulk, it never seems to occur to the characters that this approach is not working. At the movie's climax, there is a similar - though escalated - exchange. Yet, somehow, increased force manages to work there. It buggers all reason and it makes even the imagination say "this is stupid, not creative."

I almost did not finish Hulk. You know the phrase, "You couldn't pay me to watch this?" If I didn't think people might read my review and I might make a few cents off my words of disdain for this movie, I would not have finished it. You couldn't pay me to watch it again.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

1/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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