ok, it’s movie review time. i’ll just review a few of the things i’ve seen recently, and possibly some i’ve seen before, but recently saw again. who knows? i don’t.
lord of the rings: the two towers
ah yes, quite possibly the biggest movie of the season, likely even the year. i certainly think it’s a candidate for both. since a harry potter comparison is, quite likely, inevitable, i’ll get it out of the way right up front. lord of the rings is better than harry potter. now, don’t get me wrong: i’m a big fan of the harry potter books, and i’ve enjoyed the movies, but they were, to be blunt, a little disappointing. i’ll leave WHY to another review, but suffice it to say that plot and genre aside, the lord of the rings movies are just better as films than the harry potter movies. now on to why i think lord of the rings in so great.
one of the things i’ve enjoyed most about the lord of the rings so far (henceforth referred to with the popular moniker, “lotr”) has been the – for lack of a better term – art that has gone into the composition of each and every shot. you could rent the dvd, make screen captures of any frame, and sell it as the work of master photographer. ok, actually you couldn’t since that would be heinous copyright infringement, and new line would ream you something awful, but i think it paints my picture pretty well. sadly, i didn’t get this quite so much from the two towers as i did from fellowship, but i think that may have been due to there being a hell of a lot more beating the shit out of the uruk-hai, and not so much standing around looking pretty. nonethe less, there are still some beautiful shots. just about anything involving rohan was along the lines of breathtaking. i’m usually not one to be taken by scenery, but the land of the horseman of rohan was, for lack of a better word, splendiferous. the almost obsessive-compulsive attention to detail was exceedingly apparent in the horsemen themselves. although freud might have questioned the rather large girth of their massive spears, they were nonetheless very believable, although strangely absent during the battle of helm’s deep.
ah yes, helm’s deep. the wonderful ravine fortress provides me with an avenue to discuss many things about this movie, both good and bad. i’ll start with the point i used to segue into this paragraph, namely the curious absence of the horseman of rohan at such battle. although i realize that a great many of these honorable warriors ran off with eomer (i think that was his name…i’m not good with names. they guy who was theodin’s nephew…i think. shit.), i got the impression that there were still a few who stayed behind. these few, these happy few, seemed to all but disappear as their impenetrable fortress fell under attack and just leave the blisteringly badass elves to continue the fight. and of course legolas, ghimli and aragon who, i fell, could have defended the place by themselves, one-legged, with twice as many uruk-hai. anyway, enough about that. on to another of my favorite parts: the dreadfully worthless uruk-hai.
as those of you who have seen the fellowship know, the uruk-hai are created at sauron’s behest to be “an army worthy of mordor.” if this “army” is truly “worthy of mordor”, i fail to see how a “last alliance of men and elves” actually managed to do anything to defeat sauron before he tripped over his own feet. honestly, if i was sauron, i’d be EMBARASSED. in classic stormtrooper style, the uruk-hai, with their thick armour and broad shields, seem to do little other than die in frighteningly large numbers, usually at the hands of legolas, ghimli or aragorn. oh, and the roaring/grunting. they’re also quite adept at that. now, i know they obviously havet o be pretty easy to take down or else aragorn and co. would have an exceedingly difficult time of things, but couldn’t they at least stop talking about how frightening and deadly the uruk-hai are? with the stormtroopers, at least nobody talked about how great they were, except for one or two references to them be the “crack troops of the empire”, or something like that. aside from asses, i honestly don’t see how “crack” they were.
to move on to something completely unrelated, the ents. although they were, especially in the end, pretty cool, i was still a little disappointed. for one, i thought they looked kind of…well, cheesy. i mean, they looked sort of like someone took some branches and shit sitting around in the back yard and put them together with model glue. and they looked way to human for me…i was expecting something that was way more tree-like, and just moved somehow. oh well. and i wish they’d left the ent moot all pissed off like dad informs me they did in the books. oh well.
as for good things, i’d have to nominate the beginning. by far one of the coolest openings i’ve seen in a good while. it’s actually good enough that i’d rather not ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet, so i won’t describe it. but it is extremely cool, even if gandalf does defy several of the laws of physics. but he’s a wizard, so i suppose he can get away with that. and speaking of gandalf…yeah. he was, and remains, probably my favorite thing about lord of the rings. he’s just a booty-kicking character to begin with, and ian mckellan brings a fantastic amount of depth to the character. instead of just being the badass, all-knowing wizard, ian’s gandalf is a feeling, conflicted and even confused being. he’s a bit of quintessential father/mentor figure. jumping back to fellowship again, one of the best scenes in this series has to be the short conversation in the mines of moria between frodo and gandalf. “so do all who live to see such times,” says gandalf, “but that is not for them to decide. all that we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.” well, i thought it was touching. although gandalf has lost some of his impressive beard, and no longer wears the - bar none - coolest hat in the universe, he has retained all of his former glory, humility and humanity. however, he is outshone by one of the newcomers in this episode: golum.
yes, i know that technically golum showed up in fellowship, but it was a fleeting glimpse of some glowing eyes and a silhouette. he makes his true debut in the two towers, and what a debut it is. there has been more and more CG in recent films, and even totally CG main characters in some. YOU KNOW OF WHOM I SPEAK. however, i’ve never totally been able to buy these computer actors until i saw golum. how to describe his greatness…well, to begin with, he looks completely real. i have never seen a fully CG character that looked and remained so convincing. his face is just as expressive as a real human’s; his skin looks, moves, and bends like real skin. everything about him is real, and believable. but even beyond the physical realm, golum is believable and fantastic. a scene partway through where he argues with himself is quite possibly one of the most well-done pieces of the entire film. his swings of mood and changes of heart are frighteningly believable and understandable. golum is, without a doubt in my mind, the most impressive part of this film.
all in all, i found two towers to be fantastic. fantastic enough for me to see it twice (admittedly, the second time was for free), and i will likely see it again. those of you who lust for orlando bloom will get to see a good deal more of him in this film (not in THAT way), and those of us who aren’t quite so superficial will get to see the development of the relationship between ghimli, legolas and aragorn, something that was almost nonexistent in fellowship. those of you who desire battle will get a good twenty or thirty minutes of bloodshed, decapitation and heroics at helm’s deep. or if you just appreciate good filmmaking, you’ll get that in spades as well. so go see it. it’s not like peter jackson needs any more positive reinforcement, but it feels good.
chicago
for those of you who don’t know, this is a remake of a musical of the same name. it stars richard gere, cathrine zeta-jones and rene zellwigger. i think i spelled her name wrong. anyway, even if you don’t like musicals, i implore you to read on, if only because i like people to listen to me talk.
well, the impossible has happened. i watched a movies prominently featuring richard gere, and i like it. i liked HIM. in fact, on of my favorite scenes in the entire movie was HIS. to be honest, i feel a little dirty. but that may be because i need to shower. who knows. but the fact is, he did well. as billy flynn, the money-driven lawyer with a penchant for defending women accused of murder, he does as excellent job. he even – get this – does all his own singing and dancing. really. so, consequently, did rene and cathrine. it says so at the end of the movie, and the movies don’t lie.
this seems as good a time as any to talk about the singing and dancing themselves. they were, in a word, excellent. from three actors who are know for being actors, not singers or dancers, their performance was excellent. although i am by no means a connoisseur of song or dance, i think their numbers were done even on par with professionals in the field. the filmmaker did, however, use a device which i found a little strange: whenever the singing and dancing started, the characters were suddenly on stage, not in jail, or in the courthouse, or the street, or wherever they had been prior to this miraculous teleportation. although sometimes this worked excellently – for example, during gere’s tapdace or “razzle-dazzle” – other times it just seemed strange and even a bit confusing and disjointing. although i prefer a more in-context song and dance sort of deal, i think this approach has it’s merits too. although it runs the risk of looking like someone just filming a broadway show, i think that more than anything else it contributes to the sense that in this movie no one takes much of anything seriously: it’s all about showbiz.
which, really, was one of the interesting things about it. at a cursory glance, the moral might appear to be that it’s OK to backstab your friends, kill people and lie in court as long as you get away with it and are happy in the end. i mean, when you get right down to it, with the probably exception of poor, poor amos, everyone is either a prick or a bitch. and yet, they succeeded in the end, and we’re happy for them. never mind that they got away with murder. although some might scoff at my saying it because musicals are, by nature, not very deep, i’d hazard that this movie is perhaps asking us what sort of society we live in where murder is not only allowed but glorified, and it’s OK to be a steaming heap of bitch as long as you make it in the end. i mean really, how machiavellian do we want to be?
deeper connotations aside, chicago is a fun movie. sure, the main character sure aren’t people we’d want to be, but it’s kind of fun to watch them flounder, realize their mistakes, and then promptly forget them. the songs and dance numbers are joyous, energetic and colorful. the actors do excellent jobs and are clearing having a good deal of fun doing this. it’s the roaring twenties at their best and worst, and certainly worth your ticket price.
the hot chick
no, i have not seen this movie. i don’t ever plan to see this movie, unless someone pays me a large sum of money. however, i don’t need to see it to review it. it is a steamed, fetid pile of ass-cake. stay away from it at all costs. it will give you syphilis, and i am not even kidding.
amelie
duh, this is not a new release. yes, i’ve seen it before. but i got it as a christmas present, and with the aid of our new “home theatre system”, as i like to call it, i have been able to experience once again the glory that is amelie.
watching amelie is like eating a milkshake and then picking up the paper and discovering milkshakes make you thinner, keep you from loosing your hair, and make you a demon in the sack. there is nothing unhappy about it. it is a cheerful, joyous chewy nougat of a movie. why, you ask? i’ll tell you why.
style. this movie has style. great, gooey gobs of style. take the color for example. colors are supersaturated, and specially chosen. amelie apartment is made of primarily of reds and browns, occasionally offset by a single blue lamp. the subway is a brilliant green. but really, it’s hard to describe the style of amelie in words. it just IS.
hotness. audrey tantou is hot. more than that, she’s cute. she’s beautiful. she’s desirable in just about every way. yes, she’s french, but i can work around that. and not only that – well, in addition to that – she’s an excellent actress. her smile is unique, and when she grins at the camera, you feel as if she’s smiling just for you. she’s not hot in the way halle berry or rosamund pike or – if you’re brodie – shannon Elizabeth is. using the word “hot” to describe her even feels wrong somehow. she just seems like the sort of person who you’d like to meet, who would just make you feel incredibly special if she was part of your life. and although there’s a bit of a twinge of sadness when she and nico finally hook up, you’re still more happy for them than you are jealous. how could you describe audrey in a word? charm. she’s got it.
so go out and rent this movie. or borrow it from me. or, if you’re hot, you can come over here and watch it. maybe even if you’re NOT hot. because even if you don’t think you like “foreign” or “art” or “indie” films, you’ve got to like amelie. and if you can’t deal with subtitles, frankly, you can suck it down, because you will LEARN to deal with them so that you can watch this beautiful movie without the bastardizing of dubbing. which is, by the way, a tool of satan himself. now watch it!
well, i think that’s enough for now. if you actually read all this shit, then kudos to you. go make yourself a cookie. i’d give you one, but i don’t have any.
