Ok, here's the deal. Periodically, I'll put a movie review on this page. My scale is as follows:
My rating:
O - (2001; approx. 95 mins.; reviewed 9/1/02) I always feel a
sense of morbid fascination when I read or hear that a new Shakespearean
adaptation is coming out. It's the same feeling you get when you see a bad wreck
on the interstate, and you want to look away, but you just can't. The two best
film renditions of Shakespeare in recent years have been by this generation's
Olivier, Kenneth Branagh. His Much Ado About Nothing (1993) and Hamlet
(1996) were both time-shifted from the original settings, but still captured the
spirit of the source work and made it accessible to a wide audience without
sacrificing any of the intelligence and insight into humanity of the originals.
Other film versions have been somewhat less impressive both in ambition and
achievement. Regrettably, this piece falls in the latter category. I wanted to
like it--it has received wide critical acclaim, and the leads are very
appealling. Julia Stiles (this marks her second appearance in a Shakespeare
update--see 10 Things I Hate About You) is as cute as ever in her role as
"Desi" (Desdemona). Mekhi Phifer has a powerful screen presence, and
this serves him well in his role as "Odin" (Othello). Josh
Hartnett, whose presence seems to be a nod to the teenage-girl portion of the
audience, has yet to display much of a talent for acting at this point, and he
clearly lacks the range for the role of the greatest villain in Western
literature, Iago ("Hugo"). The film is obviously aimed at a teen-aged
audience, but, even in the aftermath of Columbine, it's difficult to take some
of these things seriously. Othello is set against the backdrop of war
between Venice and Cyprus. O is set against the backdrop of a basketball
championship game between two prep schools. Perhaps it's my lack of
interest in sports, but this background of a basketball season just seems silly.
Hugo's professed motive for destroying Odin is that Hugo was passed over in
favor of "Michael" (Cassio) to be team co-captain (with Odin). The
director, Tim Blake Nelson, is apparently extremely uncomfortable with the idea
of ambiguity in Iago's character. Nelson's Hugo makes several asides that the
medium of film demands that you take seriously and at face value (they are done
as voice-overs, rather than onscreen), whereas Shakespeare's Iago makes a
sufficient number of conflicting statements that his asides are always taken
with a grain of salt, and at the very end, you still aren't really sure why he
acts as he does. Nelson nearly beats you to death with the idea that Hugo is
jealous of Odin over the attention he gets from Hugo's father (the basketball
coach, competently played by Martin Sheen) and from his girlfriend
"Emily" (Emilia, played by Rain Phoenix). He also makes no bones about
the fact that Emily is attracted to Odin, something decidedly absent from the
play. So there is never any real question about what drives Hugo to evil. The
action goes more or less as you would expect if you've read the source material
to the inevitable denouement. However, I do feel compelled to point out a scene
that is exceptionally graphic in nature. At a point in the film where Odin
begins to question Desi's fidelity, the two of them engage in sexual
intercourse. As the scene proceeds, he starts to feel that she is imagining
herself with Michael, and he begins to get very rough. It is tantamount to rape,
and it is not a scene suitable for a younger teen-aged audience. It was
also, in my view, completely unnecessary to the film. My rating:
Utter crap; a total waste of 90 minutes of your existence
Possibly worth watching if you're suicidal or drunk or high or immortal
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Slightly below par of standard Hollywood fare
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A decent movie, worth seeing once
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A good movie; a candidate for multiple viewings
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An excellent piece of cinematic work; worthy of high praise and a spot on your video rack
Dungeons and Dragons - (2000; approx. 107 mins.; reviewed 2/3/2002)
The venerable TSR/Wizards of the Coast franchise with so much creative potential
and so many vivid, richly-textured worlds whose limits were only drawn by the
imaginations of the players was long overdue for expression in a motion picture
that brought to a mainstream audience the three-dimensional characters and
complex, engaging storylines for which it is famous. This isn't it. As you might
imagine, this film was on the radar screens of many geeks the world over (myself
included) long before it came out. We had high hopes that the hours we spent in
dark computer rooms and sitting around tables rolling twenty-sided dice would be
vindicated. What we got was such a strange hodgepodge that I can only speculate
that the writers (Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright) had never actually seen
an AD&D rulebook prior to sitting down at the word processor. Their world is
one in which magic-users and non-mages form some class hierarchy all over the
world, with spellcasters dominating the thaumaturgically-challenged. This is not
only not very consistent with any existing AD&D setting, but it also doesn't
really make that much sense. After all, spellcasters are not gods--they are
typically physically underdeveloped people who cannot wear armor to protect
themselves and must carry around an assortment of scrolls, spellbooks, and
material spell components to be of any value at all. The only material component
in this movie is some sort of generic magic dust that seems to allow any user of
any level to cast any spell. Also, the dragons, who are featured rather
predominantly, are only limited to red and gold, both of whom breathe fire! None
of the other metallic or chromatic dragons are even alluded to in the story.
Unfortunately, aside from its casual dismissal of AD&D rules and settings,
which is a rather large thing to toss aside, there still isn't much to like
about this film. The main protagonists, two exceedingly-dorky and inept thieves,
Ridley Freeborn (Justin Whalin, of Lois and Clark fame) and Snails (the
ever-dreadful Marlon Wayans) and one low-level mage (Zoe McLellan), are not
particuarly interesting and you actually find yourself wishing they would die
horribly so the movie will end and you can get on with your life. There is a
token elf (Kristen Wilson) and a dwarf (Lee Arenberg), and the
interrelationships among the three races are about the only thing that the movie
portrays in a halfway-accurate fashion. I can't understand the presence of the
two A-list actors in the film, Jeremy Irons (Profion) and Thora Birch (Savina).
Irons must have simply been bored out of his skull or really hard up for quick
cash. Birch must have taken this role on some bad advice, 'cause she surely
didn't need the money after her recent success with American Beauty. This
one's a stinker, completely unworthy of the title.
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - (2001; approx. 2 hrs., 58 mins.; reviewed 2/3/2002)
You'd think that a guy like me would have read Tolkein's LOR trilogy in the
callow days of his youth. However, you would be wrong. Having heard about the
much-hyped film trilogy, though, I decided I had put it off long enough; shortly
after arriving in Tallahassee, I obtained a copy of The Fellowship of the
Ring from the public library and read it. In it I discovered many of the
elements that made me realize why people referred to it as an archetype of the
epic fantasy genre. Familiar things like elves, dwarves, wizards, halflings,
demons, and trolls all lurked within the pages, as well as Homeric themes of
heroic triumph over adversity. Tolkein's writing style did tend to drag a bit,
but this isn't a book review. My first hint that the movie version lived up to
fans' expectations (and that I would thus be equally as dazzled by it) was the
fact that my friend Scott, who has been an avid fan of Tolkein for years, had no
complaints about the adaptation. Several weeks after discussing the matter with
him, I had the opportunity to see it myself. It was impressive. Amazingly, it
was filmed entirely in New Zealand; I, for one, had no idea that New Zealand has
such a vast diversity of landscapes. The cinematography alone may well be worth
the price of the ticket. For those who don't know, the story revolves around the
young hobbit (or halfling) Frodo Baggins (played ably by Elijah Wood), who
inherits a dangerous and potent magic ring, which the Lord of Darkness, Sauron,
covets; he can unlock its powers and use it to enslave the free races of the
world. Therefore, Frodo must take the ring on an epic journey to the very heart
of the lion's den, Sauron's homeland of Mordor, for there lies the only place
that it can be destroyed. Accompanying him on the initial leg of the journey are
the wizard Gandalf (played wonderfully by Ian McKellan), three of his hobbit
friends (Sam, Pippin, and Merry), the ranger Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the
fighter Boromir, the elven archer Legolas, and the dwarven warrior Gimli. The
movie does follow the book fairly closely with some deletions, mostly for the
good. The odd and rather nonsensical character Tom Bombadil is mercifully
absent. Also gone are some small scenes, such as the discovery in the woods of a
number of trolls that have been turned to stone by sunlight. One change I did
dislike was the scene at the river; although the new version does give Arwen (Liv
Tyler) something to do besides look pretty, it takes away from the dramatic
significance and heroic stature of the character of Frodo. In the first book,
this is perhaps the only time when he seems to be a powerful force, even if it
is only for a short period. My only other complaint about the film is that the
wizards' duel between Gandalf and Saruman (Christopher Lee) looks rather silly
at times, with the two of them just hurtling each other across the room with no
apparent effect. The cast is terrific, although I might have picked someone else
for the role of Galadriel; Cate Blanchett just doesn't come across as the proper
combination of serene, warm, wise and stunningly beautiful. McKellan is in top
form here. If it were up to me, I'd throw his conical hat in the ring for a Best
Supporting Actor Oscar. He plays the role of Gandalf as though it were written
for him. The special effects are superb, and I can't wait for December. I guess
I'd better scrounge around for a copy of The Two Towers. My rating:
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