Why The Judge Fails.

The Good: Adequate performances
The Bad: Very predictable plot and character arcs, Nothing stellar on the acting front, Contrived romantic subplots
The Basics: The Judge suffers more from the fact that we’ve seen it all before . . . as opposed to the fact that the previews showed the entire flick.


Lately when I find myself bitching about Oscar Pandering Season, I find myself making the consistent argument that this time of year is just shameless for the studios’ attempts to get awards nominations by releasing their “star” films as close to the nominating time as possible. In recent years, this process has become so transparent that many of the studios release their September through December offerings on the festival circuit to build the hype for their Oscar hype films. The Judge is one of those films; it did very well on the film festival circuit and seems to be the darling of critics everywhere now that it has been released theatrically.

I, for one, am at a loss as to why.

Having seen the preview trailers for The Judge for the last six months in front of various movies, I was shocked by Warner Brothers. In addition to making The Judge an obvious attempt to garner award nominations by playing to the festivals and then having a wide theatrical release during Oscar Pandering Season, Warner Brothers made a preview trailer that shows almost the entire film. Seriously; Warner Brothers not only thinks that viewers are so stupid now that if they do not see their Oscarbait proximate to nomination time, but if they don’t show the entire movie in the trailer, people won’t even bother with the full film! Unfortunately, in the case of The Judge there is a self-defeating aspect to this approach; more than any other film this year, watching the trailer to The Judge is watching the full substance of the film. The only aspects not included in the trailer are the subplots involving Dale Palmer (who either autistic or mentally retarded, it is not clear) and the actual verdict to the trial. As insulting as it may seem, the two hour, twenty minute film is rather thoroughly reduced to a two minute trailer and the “extended” version does not actually add anything of substance.

But the reason for Warner Brothers’s approach is actually fairly clear when one watches The Judge. The family drama is one that virtually everyone has seen before. Even before the trailers gut the film of its big moments, viewers have seen The Judge. We’ve seen the estranged son return to the family only to find some value there (in fact, last year at Oscar Pandering Season, there were several films like that!), we’ve seen the obvious legal drama films, and we’ve even seen Robert Downey Jr. playing the apparently callous lawyer with a heart of gold. Seriously, Ally McBeal (reviewed here!) was huge; we’ve seen every element in The Judge before. Why did Warner Brother think that making this film would be Oscar-worthy news? (And why are so many critics falling for it?)

Hank Palmer is a Chicago lawyer who is successful and cold, getting apparently guilty people off without remorse by using legal technicalities. As he is about to get the verdict on a case he might just lose, he gets a phone call from his brother telling him that his mother has died. Leaving his estranged wife and daughter behind, Hank heads to his home town of Carlinville, Indiana. There, he finds his father (the Judge Palmer) on the bench, but he is unable to remember the name of his bailiff (who has been working for him for twenty years). Hank’s siblings are a little cold to him, mostly for the fact that he abandoned the family years before. But Hank’s older brother warms to him when Hank stops a bar fight before it begins by talking to the would-be assailants. After the funeral, the Judge remains distant to Hank and Hank gives up on his relationship with his father once again.

But right before his plane will take him away, Hank gets another phone call and learns that his father is being questioned by the police for a vehicular homicide that occurred while Hank and his brothers were out at the bar. Despite his father rejecting his help, Hank intervenes with the police and sits in when Judge Palmer meets with his part-time lawyer, C.P. Hank stays in town when the prosecution hires a special prosecutor from out of town. With C.P. recusing himself, Hank takes over the case. Despite his father’s desire to let the truth win out, Hank starts to build a defense using his familiar tactics. In the search for the truth about how Blackwell died, Hank begins to learn more about his father and the two begin to accept one another for who they are.

The Judge is packed with problems, the most significant of which is how the narrative is diluted. A few years ago, there was a wonderful episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (reviewed here!), where the writing staff leaves and on their way out the door, the one remaining writer/executive producer gives a note to the departing writer for his new project. He advises him to avoid using voiceovers (good advice always, as far as I am concerned!) and give the hero a sidekick to talk to. This, he argues, will allow him to get a lot of the exposition out of the way in the form of dialogue. Ever since seeing that, I’ve kept an eye on peripheral characters in television shows and movies and I am shocked by how many works have illegitimate characters; The Judge is one such work.

The Judge includes Hank’s daughter, Lauren, and Hank’s ex-girlfriend, Samantha, and both serve much more the purposes of plot exposition than they enhance the characters. Lauren becomes a tool by which Hank is able to make explicit references to the causes for the fall-out between himself and the Judge. It is not enough that Hank and his father have a terrible relationship; Hank has to explain why and the only “outsider” in the film is Hank’s daughter, so she becomes an expository tool and it is pretty obvious if one knows what to look for (not the least of which is that the performers seem to have minimal emotional connection!).

In a similar fashion, Vera Farmiga’s Samantha becomes a tool to explain the backstory of the Blackwells and how they relate to the Palmers. The case against the Judge is fraught with history and Samantha becomes the conduit by which the animosity of the Blackwells is fully explained. The characters of Samantha and Lauren dilute and explain the narrative and they do so in an unfortunately obvious way.

These flesh out an otherwise mundane legal and family drama. Is the acting good? Yes, but it falls well within the established ranges of all the performers; will we see something new from Robert Downey Jr.? No, we’ve seen cocky and hurt from him before. Will we see anything new from Robert Duvall? No, we’ve seen him cranky, angry and somewhat emotional in roles before. Will any of the supporting cast – Vera Farmiga, Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Bob Thornton, Dax Shepard – surprise or amaze us? No; this is very much a film that gets the most out of the money being spent on Robert Downy Jr. and Robert Duvall.

The result is a bland, low-side-of-average film that is not surprising or even adequate; The Judge is certainly not award-worthy.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
To Write Love On Her Arms
Expelled
Annie
Comet
Dragons Of Camelot
Horrible Bosses 2
10,000 Days
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
Interstellar
The Mule
Hit By Lightning
Horns
Stonehearst Asylum
John Wick
Listen Up Philip
The Best Of Me
Dracula Untold
The Equalizer
The Maze Runner
This Is Where I Leave You
The Giver

4/10

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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Note To Harold Ramis: Return To Comedy (The Ice Harvest Is Frigid)

The Good: Decent acting
The Bad: Predictable story, Characters are generally awful, Not funny
The Basics: With its dark edge blunted by ridiculous humor, The Ice Harvest lacks a place to become decent at either drama or comedy or something in between.


There are several successful movies that fall outside the strict categories that most people like to classify films in. I am always perplexed when searching for Brazil to find it in the "Comedy" section, a clear mark that someone has not seen the entire film or understood it. The American President and the show Wonderfalls come right to mind of works that effectively blend comedy and drama into what is quickly becoming known as dramadies. Aaron Sorkin (The American President, Sports Night, and The West Wing) seems to be a master of dramadies, creating either comedies that aren't funny enough to be called comedies or dramas that are constantly making jokes. Aaron Sorkin is a master of the dramedy. Harold Ramis is not.

With The Ice Harvest, Ramis directs a movie that is billed as a dark comedy that seems to have forgotten the actual comedy. Or perhaps it - like Brazil - was mislabeled as a comedy. In which case, this is a drama that mortgages almost every dramatic moment with a gag or punctuates it with slapstick. I loathe slapstick. As it stands, I think The Ice Harvest is far too dramatic to be a comedy and as a result, the humor in the movie, which is very dark in tone, comes off as far too forced to be real or enjoyable.

Charlie, lawyer for the mob in Witchita Falls, is spending Christmas Eve running from the mob which he has just stolen over two million dollars from. With his partner in crime, though it's unclear why, Vic, Charlie spends the day preparing to flee Kansas and go somewhere else. In the process, he aids local strippers, the drunk who is now married to his wife, and occasionally, himself. He runs repeatedly into Officer Tyler, who wants Charlie to put in a good word for him with the mob, as he tries to out run and outwit the assassins sent to kill him and recover the mob's money.

First off, the R rating here is pretty much only for background nudity throughout the movie and some serious violence near the movie's end. Most of the movie would be perfectly appropriate for people younger than 18, but most people under 18 would not be entertained by the film. Actually, it's hard to feel entertained over 18 by The Ice Harvest.

I've no problem with violence in movies. The problem with The Ice Harvest is that in defying conventions of either comedy or drama it ends up doing neither terribly well. So, for example, at one point Vic and Charlie are moving a footlocker and Ramis continually pans back to Vic's gun, which is pointed on Charlie throughout. The audience, well before Charlie, is able to infer that Vic is planning to make a move on his partner. Not funny. This is immediately followed by a scene where someone is sent to die in freezing cold water. Also, not funny. The punctuation to it is Charlie running frantically because he realized he forgot to get something from the dying person. The joke falls flat.

In fact, the only real humor that works is in a scene between Vic and Charlie wherein the two are loading the footlocker into Charlie's borrowed car. The pair is using Charlie's car because of how roomy it is rumored to be and the dialogue in that scene is funny, even if it is predictable.

Sadly, that's the only real humor in The Ice Harvest that works. The writers and director Harold Ramis no doubt expect such characters as Pete to come across as funny. He's a drunk and he obligingly makes a spectacle of himself and vomits in the course of the movie. But he's not funny and his character is not funny. Indeed, Charlie easily uses Pete to make one of the movie's most dramatic sheerings. Pete was sleeping with Charlie's wife before she and Charlie divorced. Charlie muses about who she might be sleeping with now, a question that has not occurred to Pete before that moment.

Sadly, none of the characters are likable. The movie starts as a story of a man who lacks character who just wants to get out of Kansas (who can blame him?) and decides robbery is the way he is going to go about it. It quickly degenerates into a whole lot of killing. Charlie is clearly upset by this at first, which felt very real, but he quickly acclimates to it and that weakened his character significantly.

In fact, all that does work in this movie with consistency is the acting. Oliver Platt plays the unlikable Pete very well. Unfortunately for Platt, his character is given some lines which don't quite fit his character. So, while "Yo-ho-ho, mo-fo!" is a funny line and Platt delivers it surprisingly well, it does not fit his character's background or setting at all. Billy Bob Thornton plays Vic well enough (I seem to recall him being better in ), but is not earth shattering.

John Cusak is the lead here and I wanted to like him. The Ice Harvest slides by without his charisma that he has displayed to his advantage in other movies. Instead, he seems out of place, though he plays the dramatic moments well. His ability to convey understanding with a look, communicating with his eyes, serves him well here. When the movie began, I felt that Nicolas Cage could have done the role and perhaps the reason Ramis used Cusak was because he wanted to try to sell this as a comedy. Had he gone straight drama and used Cage - or played Cusak as darker - perhaps The Ice Harvest would have worked.

But, that's not this movie. While the movie claimed to be 88 minutes long, it felt far longer with its consistent, oppressive tone.

As un-chic as it is at this point, everywhere The Ice Harvest fails - especially in character - is a place Payback succeeds. Mel Gibson may not be the most popular person right now, but Payback tells a quirky, dark, dramatic story of people of low moral caliber far better than this work did. So, Mr. Ramis, please, return to comedy and leave the dark killer stories to people who revel in that better.

For other works with Mike Starr, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Jersey Girl
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang”
Snake Eyes
Miller’s Crossing

3.5/10

For other films, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Turnaround on U Turn, Oliver Stone's Directing School Art Project

The Good: Some decent acting, Moments of character/intrigue
The Bad: Stone's directoral toying, Terrible characters, Feels long
The Basics: With violent, mean and unredeemably bad characters, U Turn tells a story of a man trapped in a backwater town that Oliver Stone sloppily creates.


When I was in college, possibly when I saw The Usual Suspects (reviewed here!) in the theater, I saw a preview for Oliver Stone's U Turn. Ever since then, it has been on my list to see and I was thrilled to find it on DVD (albeit a no-frills version) and I was excited to sit down and watch this movie. If anything, I was biased toward it from the previews I barely remembered. As the movie stretched on and on, the anticipation faded and the reality sunk in; there's a reason U Turn is almost never mentioned with Stone's classic works JFK and Natural Born Killers.

Bobby Cooper is driving through Arizona en route to paying off a gambling debt that has already cost him two fingers when the radiator tube in his car's engine ruptures and he is forced to get it repaired. In the desert, he finds the small town of Superior and a crazy hick mechanic named Darrell. While Darrell is repairing Bobby's car, he goes into the town where he encounters Grace. Grace is nice enough, recognizes his flirting and brings him back to her house. Bobby is attacked by her husband, Jake, who then approaches Bobby with a proposition; he'll give him money to kill Grace, a proposition Bobby rejects. Unfortunately for Bobby, he's at the site of a stick-up and the money he's carrying to pay off his debts gets shot up by a store owner who kills the robbers. As Bobby is tossed between Darrell and a psychopath named TNT, attracted to Grace and avoiding the law in the form of Sheriff Potter, he finds himself desperate to get out of Superior and in need of money he does not have.

U Turn has a number of elements that seem to set it up for greatness. It has a respected director (Oliver Stone), it has a decent cast that includes Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Lopez (remember when she was primarily an actress?), and Billy Bob Thornton. It has characters that are, at the very least, intriguing. It even has some truly brilliant lines. The problem is, almost none of them all come together at the same time.

Possibly the best moment - and this is in the trailer, so it's not revealing anything too big - is when Bobby, played perfectly in the scene by Sean Penn, turns to Darrell - played with gruesome perversity by Billy Bob Thornton - and with uncharacteristic wit says, "Forty thousand people die each day, how come you're not one of them?" Now that's an insult! Penn delivers the line well, to the right character at the right moment. It's a nice moment of cinematic quality that is not necessarily indicative of the rest of the film.

Bobby owes people money and they've lopped off some of his fingers so from the moment Bobby comes into the picture, the viewer knows we're not dealing with the morally upstanding citizens of the world. Writer John Ridley does not keep the viewer waiting long, with Darrell being the first character the very impatient Bobby encounters. Whatever sympathy we have for Darrell who is immediately insulted by Bobby, fades with his shifty ways and underlying meanness (to say nothing of his rotted smile).

In short, U Turn features a cast of almost entirely unlikable characters. Superior, Arizona is populated by rogues, killers and psychopaths who bully, bribe and sex their ways through life. And it gets old pretty quick. Unlike a movie like Payback (reviewed here!) where the viewer roots for the antihero because they have been, in some way, wronged and has some redeeming quality to them, U Turn has no such luck.

Throughout this movie, characters tell Bobby that they see within him the killer instinct, the ability to kill, something he claims he has never done before arriving at Superior. The thing is, whether they see it or not, Bobby's sense of desperation leads him to exercise what he's never seen within him before. It's that kind of weak characterization where there's no integrity that turns the viewer off to empathizing with him. Instead, the viewer shrugs and says, "Don't care what's coming to him now."

Even the abused Grace has moments where the viewer thinks her character might be redeemable. Alas, Ridley and director Oliver Stone mortgage that by making Grace even more shifty than her abusive husband Jake. To his credit, Stone chose well to cast Jennifer Lopez as Grace and Nick Nolte as Jake. Nolte is appropriately menacing as Jake and almost every moment he's on screen makes the viewer's skin crawl. Similarly, Powers Boothe is decent as Sheriff Potter.

What's unredeemable is Stone's directing. Stone plays with the camera like a film school student, cheapening almost every vital moment of the film by using camera techniques. A good (or great) director figures out how to use the medium to effectively tell the story they want. While I applaud experimentation, Stone's camera experiments fail to illuminate the story or more importantly the characters in U Turn. Instead, the abrupt clips are distracting, sloppy and annoying.

Whatever potential the rogues gallery of U Turn had of surviving the unlikability of the characters and the somewhat predictable (or standard) criminal underworld plot is mortgaged by Stone's direction which sinks this film out of being watchable. At least now, it's off my list. If it's on yours, you might want to take it off before you, too, are disappointed.

For other works by Oliver Stone, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Platoon
Wall Street
W.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

4/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Bandits Steals With Style

The Good: Good acting, Funny, Interesting character (Terry Collins)
The Bad: Other characters are dull, Plot is not terribly original
The Basics: A fun film, Bandits has a group of bank robbers test a new technique and become celebrities and fugitives all at once.


It seems lately that I've been watching a number of films with people on the run (Novocain) or Bruce Willis (12 Monkeys) or both (The Whole Nine Yards). What can I say? I've been watching whatever I can get my hands on.

Bandits is the story of three men who have an innovative style of robbing banks. Easy-to-anger Joe Blake and hypochondriac Terry Collins escape from prison together with the idea of opening up a nightclub in Mexico together. They enlist Joe's cousin Harvey to be the getaway driver for them in their robberies. Their tactic is smart; rather than breaking into the banks, the pair spends the night with the bank managers homes, hold them hostage for a night and take the bank out in the morning with fewer witnesses. Things are going find for the thieves until Terry is captured by Kate, a lonely housewife who decides to join the gang. This raises the pair to the level of celebrity and leads them to a final heist that appears fatal.

The problem with the film is that the characters are not nearly as interesting as the technique. Joe is pretty much your standard criminal and he doesn't have much depth. He's a prankster, but more than that, he's an angry man who it is fairly easy to see how he arrived in prison. Kate, similarly, is a pretty standard housewife character who wants an adventure. Her only redeeming character trait is more of a plot point; she is unable to decide which of the bandits she prefers as a partner. That works, but it is presented in a way that feels more like a plot technique than a character trait.

This leaves Terry. Terry is a wonderful character. He is quirky and believes himself the victim of any disease he learns of. This makes for a character that is interesting and very fun to watch. He is just plain weird and his bits in the film are the funniest parts of the movie.

The film fails on the merits of its plot. In the opening lines of the film, we learn that the "sleepover bandits" are dead, killed in a shootout in a bank robbery. The ending, then, comes only as a surprise to people who are completely asleep. That is, the careful viewer evaluates the people who say certain things against what they know to be true by what the characters do. So, when we see how intelligent and paranoid Terry is, it becomes unlikely to us that he would die in a hail of bullets as television host Darren Head would have us believe. In fact, everything in the plot in the latter two thirds of the film, we know of in the first fifteen minutes. Then, it's just a matter of watching for it until it happens.

On the plus side, the acting works well. Bruce Willis creates a character very different from other characters with similar characterization, like Jimmy Tudeski in The Whole Nine Yards. This works to the film's benefit and it reinforces the idea that Bruce Willis is a truly great actor.

Cate Blanchette does fine as Kate Wheeler, but she does not seem to add anything to the very stale role. I was a bit disappointed with her performance.

Billy Bob Thornton, on the other hand, infuses Terry with so much of his genius and he makes the film worth sitting through. Thornton has an ability to move his body and facial expressions that are unparalleled in this film. He is the strength of Bandits making his character a worthy film.

The narrative technique of Bandits is worth mentioning as well. Events do not necessarily occur in chronological order and that keeps the pace of the film up, making the movie move faster.

Funny and surprisingly non-violent for a film about robbery, Bandits is a chance to see Billy Bob Thornton create one of the weirdest characters ever in a well-directed film with a little something for anyone in the mood to root for good bad guys.

For other works by Barry Levinson, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Envy
Homicide: The Movie
Homicide: Life On The Street
Rain Man

7/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movies I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Party Of Lasting Value Is Monster’s Ball!

The Good: Acting, Plot, Character
The Bad: Obvious sense of irony, Title
The Basics: Filled with great performances, compelling characters and a great plot, Monster’s Ball takes on prejudice in an interesting, human-driven story.


Last year, Monster’s Ball offered Halle Berry her Best Actress Oscar nomination and win. Instead, Berry ought to have fought for top or at least second billing in this drama. That Heath Ledger is second in the credits over Berry is insulting. And Halle's win for Best Actress was well deserved and not just for the nudity in this flick.

Monster’s Ball is an inadequately titled drama that puts racist Death Row guard Hank Grotowski into a moral dilemma with himself. When he and his son, Sonny, assist in putting to death Lawrence Musgrove, Hank finds himself put into a bunch of coincidental situations with Lawrence's widow, Leticia. Like Lawrence, Leticia is a Negro living in an unlikely present day in the Southern United States. That is to say that after half the film of trying to figure out what time period Monster’s Ball is set in, it is revealed that the setting is modern day Alabama (I had been betting on early '60s based on language and clothes), while the language, locations, and gas prices tend to indicate much earlier. Leticia encounters Hank at the restaurant she works at and later when Hank comes to her rescue when her son, Tyrell is hit by a car. The body count has been rising already as Sonny kills himself in reaction to the execution of Lawrence. Leticia and Hank come together through the passion they both have to want something, anything to go right in their lives.

And it works. As unlikely as it would seem, from the initial drunken sexual encounter, the two form a legitimate, stable relationship. And the film works. Perhaps to the film's credit, the DVD has only three deleted scenes and all of them are only a minute long. Add to that two are obvious cuts that deserved to be left out and you have a fine flick.

The strength of the film is in its characters. Hank has a compelling character arc as does Leticia. They both have incredible stories. Hank's roots are deeply inbred with prejudice and anger while Leticia's soul is one encumbered by an innate desire to love and fix things. The two come together wonderfully, learning and blending with one another.

The easy strength is in the acting. Halle Berry works well doing difficult dialect throughout the film. She wonderfully creates a character quite distinct and different from the actress. And that's what great acting ought to do. Billy Bob Thorton, he makes a character that is far from the creepy, detached figure he has been in every other film I've seen him in. Billy Bob Thorton infuses Hank with both Southern prejudice and Southern hospitality. He creates a character that embodies the worst and best of Southern White culture. He does it well here, too.

And I think it's right to credit the actors here. The writers or director is working with a sense of irony that is incredibly obvious. You have a white prejudiced man ordering chocolate ice cream and black coffee, you have the bullet that slays a son being put in a jar of baby food. Come on! Everything in this film is so obviously constructed that what the actors add to the film redeems much that the visual irony takes away.

Add to that the casting. Halle Berry was wonderful as Leticia. But . . . it was an act of cowardice on the part of the casting department. Halle Berry was great as Leticia, but she is a remarkably safe black woman to be cast in a role that involves prejudice and interethnic romances. What do I mean? It lessens the impact of a white character overcoming his prejudice against black people when the person who redeems him is not terribly dark skinned. Especially in a film like this when so very much of the film sets up obvious color contrasts. Halle Berry was a safe choice designed to eliminate the argument that the film goes too far and bolster Southern box office draws. But Halle Berry does an amazing job and were the film supposed to be about anything other than color blindness, she would be an ideal actress for any role.

It's a sad thing that prejudice still exists. In fact, ideally all roles in film ought to be about character and cast based on the best actors and actresses for the roles. It would be wonderful if the color of an actors skin did not matter. In telling a story like Monster’s Ball where ethnicity is integral, casting does matter.

And outside the title, which is fully explained in the film, but matters little to the subject, this film then has no other flaws.

In fact, the plot, while it requires the suspension of disbelief, is phenomenal. While it ends on a moment that, when I saw the trailer I swore I'd be upset if it ended at, the film works great. The last line comes at an ideal moment. And Monster’s Ball further flies in the face of convention by not tearing the characters apart when the various threads come together. Instead, it works great by not shaking Leticia up any more than she is. And Hank doesn't get right over his need for plastic spoons.

It might not be anything to cheer about, a woman who wants to be dependent falling in love with an emotionally distanced man who until recently was deeply prejudiced and angry, but it's an enjoyable film to watch and it has an important message. Sure, it's obvious in parts, but until we don't need the message any longer, it would be hard to do better than this film.

For other films that explore interethnic relations, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Crash
Gentleman’s Agreement
“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”

8.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Index Page!

© 2012, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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There Are Worse Films, But Few Come Right To Mind Now: All The Pretty Horses

The Good: Cinematography, Score (I suppose)
The Bad: Horrible story, Lousy characters, Pointless direction, Misuse of talent
The Basics: All The Pretty Horses is a cinematic treat creates visual eye candy but nothing else. Not a thing. Honest.


I just sat through All The Pretty Horses. I watched it, I tried to get into it, but the bottomline is I sat through the production.

All The Pretty Horses follows John Grady Cole (who, in typical South/Southwestern fashion - at least in the media - insists on introducing himself all the time by all three names) from Texas where his mother is selling the family ranch to Mexico. He is accompanied by Lacey Rawlins, though his motives for travel are far less clear other than that they are "buddies." That simplistic logic gets old quite quickly, as is made painfully obvious only a few minutes into the film when they pick up Jimmy Blevins and decide to allow him to accompany them because he's an American. I fail to believe that even in the 40s such logic held up. So, the trio goes into Mexico and Blevins gets separated from Cole and Rawlins and the pair gets hired to break horses at Hector de la Rocha's ranch.

It becomes quite clear early in the viewing experience that if you're not into horses or the Southwest, this film isn't going to be for you. It's not quite a Western (genre), but it's not much more, either. The film is heavy on horse themes, trainer dialect and such. What works is the cinematography. The film is amazingly shot and there is much to look at that is quite nice.

The problem is, a lot of the visual images are pointless and baffling. The camera will suddenly pan to something that seems to have no connection with the current action, no point.

The true fault of the film is that it tries to do too much and ends up doing none of them particularly well. The reason most films focus on one theme is because 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours is a good length to actually explore an issue. All The Pretty Horses tries to take on too much, i.e. lack of civil rights in law enforcement in Mexico, the effect of prison, and word of honor vs. passion of the heart. Most of the themes end up being underdeveloped and they feel that way.

The characters are largely simplistic. Cole is somewhat developed, but it's difficult to care about him because he is such an obvious paradigm for "good, simple, hardworking folk" being set against a stern culture and such obvious evils as the Strongarmed Captain. Alejandra, Cole's love interest for whom he sacrifices much, is a pretty face with a word of honor and little else. Her character lacks soul. Rawlins is similarly ill-defined and flat.

The greatest crime is that the talent that does exist isn't used. The wonderful Ruben Blades appears far too briefly and is never returned to. Lucas Black plays Blevins wonderfully and, in fact, had the film stuck with Blevins instead of progressed into a pointless love story with Cole, the film might have been enjoyable. Penelope Cruz is in yet another film for her body which is supposed to be desirable, but comes across as obvious. There's something disturbing about watching emaciated women on screen under the pretense that they are sexy. Sigh. Matt Damon is fine as Cole, but adds little to the character.

The reason I'm giving this 2 1/2 is that the film was not completely obvious. While Cole seeks - and receives - redemption in the States from a judge, the romantic plot does not go in the usual, obvious direction. And there was a portion of the film I believed Rawlins had been killed. Looking at the IMDB, director Billy Bob Thorton was apparently quoted on Oprah saying if the film only touched 10 people, it was worth making. I'm not one of those ten and I seriously doubt that he made his personal quota.

For other films featuring Matt Damon, please check out my reviews of:
The Adjustment Bureau
The Departed
The Rainmaker
Rounders

2.5/10

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

© 2011, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Actually Better Than The Average Romantic Comedy: Love Actually Is A Great, Enduring Christmas Movie!

The Good: Excellent casting, Charming, Funny, Great theme, Interesting characters, Not entirely predictable
The Bad: What isn't unpredictable, is terribly predictable
The Basics: With its massive ensemble cast, Love Actually illustrates that love is all around by taking multiple storylines and weaving them together beautifully.


I am a bit of a fan of complex movies. If a film is done right, it can have several threads going simultaneously and I'll love it. Magnolia is a perfect example of a film that takes several different storylines and expertly weaves them together. It is with a similar appreciation - but on the love, not despair, end of the spectrum - that I watched and rewatched Love Actually. There is no film I reviewed originally that I have looked forward to going back and re-rating like Love Actually; time has certainly smoothed out the edges on this one and it is a near-perfect film in my pantheon! With Batman Returns, it is an annual Christmas tradition in my home, as far as movies go!

You might have seen previews for Love Actually and resisted it because you are not a Hugh Grant or Winona Ryder fan. For the former, Grant is not in much of the movie and where he is, he is actually interesting, charming, and genuinely funny. For the latter, Ryder is not in the movie at all; the lookalike in the previews is actually Keira Knightley, who is made up to look pretty much identical to Winona Ryder. Go figure.

Regardless, Love Actually is a surprisingly good film, especially for a romantic comedy, which is usually such an overdone, obvious genre. Instead, Love Actually begins with a simple premise; love is all around us. And it then seeks to prove it.

This is achieved through the telling of various tales of love, love lost, or near-love that loosely intersect in England in the weeks before Christmas. The stories include: David, the new Prime Minister, taking a fancy to his intern, Daniel, a widower, counseling his son on how to win the girl of his dreams, Colin going on an insane quest to the United States to find women, Sarah trying desperately to express her love to her coworker, while being plagued by a love for a mentally ill brother, and Harry and Karen's marriage coming to a crossroads when Harry finds himself more and more open to the advances of Mia. There is something for everyone here, including a reclusive writer with a broken heart finding love with the woman who is simply the nearest person to him.

These are cool stories set against a backdrop of an aging musical artist's attempt to get the number one song in the Christmas season even though he knows it is terrible. What makes it work is the writing and the characters. Whenever any one plot seems to be going on too long or going nowhere, the focus of the movie changes entirely. And when it returns to the story one might have though dull, it feels new again. The movie works out quite well in that regard, because as the film progresses, we come to wonder what is happening to other characters that we may not have seen in some time.

In short, though, the characters are interesting and it is quite cool to see how the different characters resolve their problems. David, for example, uses his feelings of love for Natalie to restore national pride to England by standing up to a bullying U.S. President (I cheered when that happened). Jamie - the writer - uses love to overcome love lost by realizing that sometimes, the most simple act of love is simply communicating with the person one loves. Daniel, the widower, experiences a profound sense of love for his son and his aid to his son allows him to overcome his own grief. And the relationship that is growing between Mia and Harry keeps the viewer guessing. Mia is the perfect example of a character that works quite extraordinarily in the movie; her character is presented as perceptive and playful, which creates a character that is quite different from the homewrecker or outright slut one might wish to brand her as.

The characters are challenging as well. There is no firm resolution between Harry and Karen when Karen realizes she is losing Harry and that makes the conflicts and ideas they share much more interesting. The Peter, Juliet, and Mark relationship is in some ways more infuriating because of the implications of the last scene where the three of them are together. And the movie works because it is not all happy. It is, in fact, agonizing to watch Sarah as she and Karl get closer and then love - her love for her brother - tears them apart. Love is complicated and Love Actually does an excellent job of not trivializing that, but actually accepting and exploring it. Love comes with different priorities for different people and Love Actually does an excellent job of illustrating that as well.

The other thing that aids the movie spectacularly is the acting. The actors are perfectly cast to represent a decent cross-section of the population, resulting in a very diverse look and feel to the movie. The actors and actresses, furthermore, are playing at some of their best.

Alan Rickman is wonderful as Harry, playing someone both cranky and open to love in a way very different from his character in, say, Galaxy Quest. Opposite Rickman is Heike Makatsch, who is a refreshing sight without being Hollywood beautiful, and a strong Emma Thompson. Thompson carries an amazing ability to go from strong and funny to crying and vulnerable with remarkable fluidity. Hugh Grant is surprisingly good as the Prime Minister and his boyishness is accented by the dignity portrayed in the body language of Martine McCutcheon, who plays Natalie.

The couple to watch, though, has to be Collin Firth as Jamie and Lucia Moniz as Aurelia. Moniz is amazing and has an incredible ability to transform from her initially homely appearance with poor posture and a demure attitude to a strong, proud woman that is quite beautiful. She is funny and charismatic, no mean feat to pull off when the character is speaking a different language throughout the movie! Firth is great opposite her, taking his usual bland British demeanor and opening up into someone who is actually quite charming as Jamie.

At the end of the day, though, it is a romantic comedy. That means there are few surprises awaiting us in how the film resolves itself, but the truth is, it works in this context. Why? Because love truly is all around us and it is something that may fill us and be quite wonderful, no matter its context.

And writer and director Richard Curtis does a smashing job of taking what is all around us and making it genuinely entertaining.

For other Christmas movies, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas
The Muppet Christmas Carol
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

9.5/10

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

© 2010, 2005 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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A Primarily Bad Movie: Primary Colors Fails

The Good: Adrian Lester's acting, Kathy Bates' character, Occasional line of dialogue
The Bad: John Travolta, Plot, Characters, Most everything
The Basics: A huge disappointment in the crappy impression of Bill Clinton that John Travolta does, Primary Colors left me wanting the two hours, twenty-four minutes of my life back!


When I was much much younger, I got an aquarium for my birthday and I had fish for many years. At that point in my life, I wanted to be a marine biologist and my parents liked that idea. When I was twelve, I went away to a sleepaway summer camp and my parents got rid of my fish because I, in their esteemed view, hadn't been taking adequate care of them. That was their right, I suppose. Earlier this year, I was visiting my father and I got my aquarium back from him. I've put together one model in my life and my idea with all of this was, I didn't want to have to dust the model because it has fragile parts. My thought was, I would get the aquarium, clean it up, get some glass for the top and enclose the model after making a little diorama base for it. It's a good idea, but my old aquarium still has scum from that time well over a decade and a half ago when it was put in the basement.

The point to this whole story? Since I returned the aquarium to my possession and my new house, I've not gotten around to cleaning it. Removing old calcium deposits from glass is an annoying, painstaking chore. It involves using a sharp razorblade as delicate tool to scrape off the deposits and streaks and grime.

What does this have to do with the film Primary Colors? After the first forty-five minutes of this awful, awful film, I looked around my room, saw the aquarium and got out a razorblade to clean it while watching the rest of the movie. You know what? The second half of the film was no better and my aquarium finally got cleaned; I have hopes the model will soon be enshrined.

So, what's so bad about Primary Colors? First, it has John Travolta. It has John Travolta upstaging everyone else who appears in the film whom I know to be competent in other works. A perfect example would be one of my favorites, Maura Tierney. She's always upstaged by Travolta, the camera always goes from her to him and it's sad.

Second, John Travolta's character and his acting. If you were an adult during the first Bush administration back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, you might recall Dana Carvey's wonderful impersonations of George Bush. If you were even halfway astute, you might have realized that soon after Carvey's impersonation became popularized, the VAST majority of Bush impersonations became impersonations of Carvey impersonating Bush rather than actually impersonating Bush. John Travolta's character is an impression of Bill Clinton. The problem is, while he has most of the mannerisms down, he has nowhere near the charisma. Both the character and the actor fail to portray anything nearly as genuine as Bill Clinton did. Worse still is the acting; during a crucial scene near the very end, Travolta loses his Clinton-esque accent and mannerisms and delivers a speech as John Travolta. The only thing worse than his Clinton style character impersonation is Travolta being himself.

Primary Colors is an example of a turn of the old phrase "What if we threw a party and nobody showed?"; What if you had a party filled with great guests and then tied and gagged them all? The film is filled with great actors and actresses: Maura Tierney, Kathy Bates, Billy Bob Thorton, Emma Thompson, and Adrian Lester (more on him later), but they are given horrid lines, usually bland characters (most of whom are caricatures of decent people from the Clinton administration), and stuck in a tired, predictable, plodding, depressingly simple plot.

The film, quite simply, is about Jack Stanton and his rise from Southern governor and political obscurity to Democratic presidential candidate. The film focuses quite a bit on the political machinations behind his campaign as well as his relationship with his wife. The real crux of the film is the character Henry, who is enlisted to run the grassroots campaign as the movie opens. The problem is, too often the story shifts away from him and the camera focuses on Jack.

Henry is the bright spot of the movie. The shining glimmer of hope in an otherwise murky film that feels like an un-funny Saturday Night Live sketch dragged out too long. So long it doesn't even know it's dead. Henry is played by Adrian Lester and his acting makes the character. His acting allows us to overlook the oversimplified idealism shattered story that is the essence of Henry's character arc. The closest hope the film has outside Lester's exceptional work interpreting an otherwise standard character, is in the character of Libby played by Kathy Bates. She's one of those people that was a hippie back in the day, filled with idealism and still has a glimmer in her eye about the political process and the goals of her politician. It's from her character that the film's few decent lines are delivered.

The problem is her character is also corrupted beyond believability. As one of the most important events in the film nears, she declares that Stanton's choice will be a test that will either make or break her faith in him. She declares this, he fails the test and she doesn't just leave. One might argue that the action she takes is more extreme and meaningful, but I would argue that the philosophy with which she speaks about the test before the verdict comes indicates her move would simply have been to throw her allegiance to another candidate. That is to say, she speaks of such principles and the focus and diction is on a desire to have an ideal that it's too hard to suspend the disbelief for what she ends up doing. It reads wrong. Whatever the "historical truth" beyond her character might have been, the specific lines she used indicate a different action that made sense for her character to take.

The simple truth about Primary Colors is is that it is a formulaic political film and it's populated by bad everything. It's poorly written, unimaginatively directed, filled with good actors delivering bland performances; it's not funny, it's not dramatic, it's not much of anything. The only plus side I can find in the film in the final analysis is that perhaps you'll get to that project you've been putting off while watching it. I know I'm happy my aquarium is ready to have its diorama built inside it.

For other political works, please check out my reviews of:
The West Wing
Charlie Wilson's War
The Hurt Locker

2.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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I Seem To Be The Only One Who Didn't Enjoy Princess Mononoke!

The Good: Interesting protagonist
The Bad: Pacing, Convoluted plot, Most characters, Of all things, gore
The Basics: Overall a confused attempt to be an epic, Princess Mononoke falls flat except in having a memorable protagonist.


Okay, it's not often that a film begins with a maggot/bloodworm covered demon and I'm not engaged. Unfortunately, this begins the animated adventure Princess Mononoke.

Right off the bat, the film is misleading. Princess Mononoke is a horrible title for this weird, winding film. The movie is 133 minutes and I don't think Princess Mononoke actually appears in the film. So, as we wait around for the title character to appear, it becomes clear that the protagonist is actually the disgraced Prince Ashitaka.

Ashitaka opens the film by rising to the occasion of slaying the demon that is charging toward his village. As a reward for the act of heroism, he is made an outcast from his village and given a consuming blight that is slowly killing him. So, he wanders. In his travels, he meets the wandering mercenary Jigo and the Lady Eboshi, a woman who runs a gun production factory where she employs ex-hookers.

The plot becomes quickly convoluted. And I'm someone who likes intricate stories. In Princess Mononoke, though, they feel long and unnecessarily complex. Ashitaka is in search of a cure from the Forest God or a place to die in peace. It's never truly clear which. Jigo is working for the unseen Emperor to get the head of the Forest God which will supposedly grant the Emperor immortality. Eboshi wants guns to kill off the last of the forest creatures that plague Iron Town and Princess Mononoke wants everyone dead because all humans are infringing on nature.

This is pretty much the old conflict of "human vs. nature" in its most literal sense. The film, however, falls flat because the theme is tired and it's too confused in the twisted plots. None of the characters are memorable save Ashitaka. The women employed by Eboshi are sexist and obvious and their jive and jibes are supposed to be funny but fall flat. And the wolf voiced by Gillian Anderson comes in fairly late, too. It's a disappointment for those of us who are fans of hers and sat down to watch the film because she was in it.

The film is largely unnecessary and despite the feeling that it's three times as long as it actually is, it's not unpleasant or anything. What is bothersome is the surprising level of animated gore. There are more bloodworms and maggots and creatures vomiting blood than I've probably ever seen in a single movie. And no, they don't seem terribly necessary.

For other animated films, please check out my reviews of:
Toy Story 3
The Clone Wars
Wizards

3/10

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

© 2010, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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