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littleblackduck
Reviews
Chicago (2002)
Smoke and Mirrors
Cannibalising movies of the past seems to be the latest thing with the current crop of young directors. Having no ideas of their own, they resort to lifting composition, lighting, and framing in order to sell their movie. A modern audience, which does not know the original, will scarcely notice. Let's face it a modern audience would scarcely care. The current flavour of the month, Chicago, is a poor man's Cabaret (1972). Director Robert Marshall should stick to choreography and directing for TV and the stage because there isn't an original, fresh idea in this mess of a film. Firstly, he ditches the balance of the two stories of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart making the Hart story the focus of the film - bad move Mr Marshall. Secondly, he thinks he understands the structure of Cabaret (with its musical numbers kept to the stage of the Kit Kat club) so he exploits it, cutting songs to insert dialogue which is supposed to be clever but he just cuts, cuts, cuts and cuts jarringly and quickly (think Baz Lurhmann school of editing - a meat cleaver approach to a subtle art). If you thought that Moulin Rouge was ripe offal then you are in for a treat here. Moulin Rouge had a weak story and suffered because of it. Chicago has a strong story but you would scarcely know it because it all is delivered at the same tempo and pace so that there are no highs and lows, just the same level of frenetic cutting and annoying close ups (there are so many of these that the whole sorry mess begins to get tedious very early in the piece).
To those unfamiliar with the story, stage struck wannabe, Roxie Hart, kills her lover and is sent to gaol where she meets famous hoofer, Velma Kelly, who is doing time for the killing of her husband and her sister. Mama Morton is their prison warden and into this world comes corrupt lawyer Billy Flynn who represents the two women who become celebrities through the `work' of Morton and Flynn. The story is based on a real case in 1924 and filmed as Roxie Hart in 1942 with Ginger Rogers and Adolphe Menjou. Kander and Ebb took the original play and turned it into a musical. In 1975, Bob Fosse created his legendary version with Chita Rivera (who is in the film in a small role) and it was revived in 1996 with the original Fosse choreography intact. Along comes the current film and much has been made of how fresh and original the whole thing is. Well the ghost of Fosse is present because some of the routines are bastardisations of his great work and some parts just give in and plagiarise unashamedly. There are some good numbers (He had it comin'; Mr Cellophane,) but the excellent song `Class' has been dropped just as the final lines of dialogue: `You know, a lot of people have lost faith in America and what it stands for, they say. But we are the living examples of what a wonderful country this is'. These lines sum up ironically and cynically what the whole musical is about but sadly, they are omitted and the whole film softens the impact. American films are getting soft. They are sugar coating the pill and this is another example. This softly softly approach almost buried a fine film like The Quiet American, made Sweet Home Alabama excruciatingly banal and is a dangerous trend in sanitising movies to appeal to the right wing zeitgeist. Mass audiences will love this film because it appears fresh and innovative, it appears to have a strong message, it appears to have high production values - that it never comes close to being great will be lost as the ticket queues stretch around the block and the awards come rolling in. This is mass entertainment, folks - gush gush here, gush gush there.
There is much to be annoyed about in this film. Musicals should be about dancing and singing to advance the plot. The songs in this version intrude and are cut with dialogue and exposition which, done once is good but tedium sets in here because there is no pace or tempo, just editing to give the illusion that something grand is happening. The cinematography is amateurish and derivative. Marshall and his cinematographer have lifted entire structural devices from Cabaret (1972) and Metropolis (1927) often using them incorrectly (as in the song, Mr Cellophane). Borrowing is different to being influenced by someone's style. Fosse used camera techniques to enhance and stylise not as a gimmick. The production design and costuming are anachronistic and incorrect. Are the 1920s so long ago that we can confuse them with the 1930s? There is incorrect hair, architecture and even underwear. The casting is puzzling (while Queen Latifah is a fine performer, the idea of a black prison warden in 1924 is unconvincing) and the performances uneven. Renee Zellweger has begun to win her truckload of awards but the acting honours go to Zeta Jones who looks good, acts Zellweger off the screen and can sing and dance. La Zellweger gets her podgy face up against the prison bars a lot, pouts, shimmies and walks away with the prizes - where's the justice? To top it off she cannot dance. Her routines are edited to give the illusion of fluidity. I didn't like her other films and I sure as hell didn't like her in this one. Chicago on the stage was erotic. This version was pure high school end of year drama production - lots of huffing and puffing but no heat. Just watch Zellweger do a sexy walk and wriggle her behind and you'll crack up laughing - I did. Richard Gere is good. I always though he could act. The supporting cast works well but hey have little to do. Here are some questions to ponder: Why did the filmmakers ditch the Mary Sunshine subplot, reducing Christine Baranski to a couple of close ups and one really bad production number? Why Lucy Liu (doing her Charlie's Angels schtick)? Why the inclusion of foreign thespians (Colm Feore, Catherine Zeta Jones, Dominic West) doing their American schtick? Why do the American accents tour the country (isn't this supposed to be Illinois)? Why cast Zellweger (now there's a face for radio). This little black duck went along with high expectations but came out angry, having been duped by some shoddy filmmaking - again. Smoke and Mirrors, folks - that's Chicago.
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Spielberg in top form
In the 1960s a young man named Frank Abagnale Jr (Leonardo Di Caprio) forged his way into a lifestyle that included designer clothing, girls and flying. His story is a fascinating study of how naïve the world was then and how easy it was for an intelligent man to convince people that he was genuine. Have times really changed? Steven Spielberg is still channelling Stanley Kubrick and he delivers a dark comedy, which moves at a frenetic pace underscored by a jazzy soundtrack. On the surface, this film looks fluffy and brainless but take a look at the way the director uses things we take for granted. There are numerous references to Christmas in this film and forget the jolly holiday Christmas is presented as a dark and lonely time when bad things happen and loneliness digs its claws in. FBI Agent Hanratty (Tom Hanks) works on Christmas Eve and receives a call from a guilty Abagnale, a small Christmas tree one of the only sources of light in the room. Abagnale's discovery in France is at Christmas time while carollers sing pious songs. Abagnale is arrested outside his mother's new home; never getting to enjoy the Christmas treats inside. The world is presented according to Kubrick who believed that the world was a thoroughly unlikeable place and people cruel and self obsessed. This is one of the major themes in this film. Frank's father (an excellent Christopher Walken) is hounded by the IRS and abandoned by his French wife Paula (Nathalie Baye) and remains a broken shell of a man, still clinging to the sham that is the American Dream, never realising his full potential. His son runs away from all this pain, and running is an important motif in the film, and seeks solace through money. An ironic film reference to Forrest Gump (1994 ) involves a banknote floating in front of Tom Hanks reinforcing thematically that this race is for money, not fulfilment or spiritual comfort. Hanratty is just as obsessed as Abagnale and that the two should end up together is one of the film's strongest metaphors.
Spielberg does not show us the whole story. He cuts and jumps and never gives us the full picture what is left out is just as intriguing as what is shown. There is resonance in the gaps and silences in the film and the symbols further enhance the ride. Lots of this film takes place in temporary accommodation such as hotels and rented apartments. Hotels being the symbol for transience and impermanence, the rooms are filled with trolleys of half eaten food, consumed alone, and the family home is broken up by debt early on in the film. Everyone in the film is eager for something greener the young girls duped into becoming stewardesses, the naïve Brenda (Amy Adams) who is manipulated by parents and lovers alike and Hanratty himself, who is searching obsessively for his Holy Grail in the form of Abagnale. Hanratty never tries to understand Abagnale and even mispronounces his name. He is a loner who has no time for people only results.
The score by John Williams (unlike his usual stuff) enhances the film and there are some very clever credits, which reinforce the feel of the era. There are sloppy errors in the production design, which are annoying, but the look of the film is one of its biggest assets. Spielberg uses period camera angles and editing and the photography is a delight. Janusz Kaminski knows his way around a camera and uses it to tell a story, to characterise and to make subtle points. An example is when Frank Jr meets a young woman in a hotel corridor. The camera focuses on the shoes of each character. Shoes in themselves being sexual symbols gives the scene much more resonance that if it were conventionally filmed.
Spielberg has certainly grown up as a director. AI (2001) was a great film. That the general public didn't get its cynical take on humankind says a lot about how audiences see movies and how they are manipulated to accept the trite and the banal. Minority Report (2002) was a dark, brooding satisfying film and Catch Me If You Can while not as cerebral as the previous two, still does not fail to entertain and to please. This little black duck was very pleased thank you very much.
Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
Sour Fairy Floss
Given the talent and the premise, I had a lot of expectation for this film. Sadly, it does not deliver. On the surface, this appears to be a film with a message - what it actually is, unfortunately, is a right-wing sugarcoated pill telling its audience that happiness lies in the past. Melanie Smooter (Reese Witherspoon) has invented a past to hide her white trash Hicksville origins. She is about to marry the son (Patrick Dempsey) of the Mayor of New York (Candice Bergen) and she is desperate for this blue blood recognition. She goes back home to finalise her divorce from her childhood love (Josh Lucas) and there it is in a nutshell - a good idea but not brave enough to get down and dirty. This film sinks under the weight of its own conservatism. The good folk of Pigeon Spit or Racoon Fart or whatever the darn town is called are good folks deep down 'cause they 'aint got no time for an ATM and they make damn good jam and they just can't get this ornery critter from the big smoke. Why shoot, when one of their own is outed (in a distasteful bar room scene that jars the film's rhythm), the boys just accept him like he was one of them and buy him a drink dangnabbit. Fulfilment is found in a kitchen making jam and cleaning up the family home and the poor purty while trash Lurlynn (an excellent Melanie Lynskey) is so fulfilled because she has a veritable brood of future hicks to raise and the love of coupla redneck hometown boys for company. There is a cute subplot involving lightning and glass (which contrasts nicely with some early scenes involving some `glass' from Tiffany's) and the death of a beloved dog yet this does not gel and, while not a complete waste of time, just does not rise above its own constructed fantasy. There are some really puzzling things in this film - the sloppy editing and the pedestrian photography (why it was filmed in wide screen escapes me; the composition is pure first year film school) don't help that the attention to detail is also sloppy. Melanie's fashion designs are laughable and the class divide in the town doesn't figure and why is there a problem choosing between Patrick Dempsey and Josh Lucas? The residents of the town have a few lines and mostly act as extras to the stars. If this film had been made in the early 60s, there would have been a darker edge under the floss (think Georgy Girl) but nothing is allowed to mar the proceedings (not even Candice Bergen's three zit no-neck mayor) and the fiancé is nice and understanding, an unwanted pregnancy fatalistically miscarries, a supposed murdered cat lives - yada yada yada. The film's big secret is telegraphed early but here's the positive to all this: the performances are actually very good, there are some memorable lines and a few good scenes that help move this along. However, this is still right wing value laden nostalgic cliché and this little black duck just didn't buy this purty as a mouse in a compost heap white trash down home darn tootin' yeeharr movie thang.
Die Another Day (2002)
Bore Another Way
I used to like a good Bond movie. I have forgiven everyone for Moonraker but I cannot forgive this betrayal of Bond. When the movie started, I thought the surfing sequence was clever and we were in for a treat. Then the yawnfest began as the tired old Communists were given the treatment (I particularly liked the South Korean uniforms that the North Koreans were wearing) and surprise, surprise, Bond gets caught and given 14 months of scorpion stings and ice baths by frosty Korean babelicious. Someone should have put Madonna on ice for writing the atrocious opening song and for her poor acting in the fencing club sequence. On the surface, the movie has lots of gadgets and references to the other 19 Bond films, so that it looks impressive but what we get is a poorly edited (what's with the Matrix style speeded up bits?) and directed (try assessing the continuity errors) dumb movie. I hate movies that present other cultures and countries in a stereotypical fashion. The Cuban sequences are a joke and an insult and the lovemaking in the shrine at the end is offensive. In Hong Kong, we get more stereotyping and incomprehensible plotting. This is racist cliche - why do these filmmakers insist on villains being so over the top and cardboard parodies of past Bond villains? For this pile of ordure, I blame the scriptwriters and the director for assuming that the audience would not care that the CGI was amateurish and the plot was daft and the acting so wooden and the villains so cartoonish and so on and so on and so on... I liked Bond movies because they were almost believeable but, an invisible car? a disused tube station - doesn't M have an office? a swim under ice with no protection? Puhleeese! There was evidently a lot of footage cut from this movie because some scenes did not make a lot of sense - but I forgot, the audience is not there to be discerning, only to fork out the moolah and warm the seat for a couple of hours. Don't insult this little black duck's intelligence folks. May this movie sink beneath the ice forever.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Mama Loca
I went to see this film on the strength of word of mouth - all the superlatives had been used and gush gush here, gush gush there, I thought I would get something new, something original and, as the ads promised, something erotic. Well, hush my mouth, what I got was something old, something blue and a little past its use by date. This is pretentious schoolboy smut masquerading as erotic. The camera never gets close - we see things in long shot, or the camera tilts up to avoid those 'nasty bits'. Not brave enough to deal with the issues, the homoeroticism is glossed over and dismissed and the sex is basically loud noises and overacting. The hapless female is shown in all her glory (she gets her panties ripped off with monotonous regularity) while our two boys are treated with 'respect'. There are fart jokes, pigs, symbolism (the boys have a swim race in a polluted pool - diving into their murky subconscious, geddit?), political allusions (the characters have surnames of famous Mexican political figures) and the most annoying voice over narration. This was a huge hit in its home country so I could not figure out whether this was political allegory or sex romp or road movie or what. The male leads are the ugliest teenagers (and that's pushing it) ever to grace a screen and they are grimy - you would have to be desperate to shag these two. One of them has the largest, white bottom ever seen that one could project this movie on it. Let's face it you cannot take a movie seriously that resolves its plot by a voice over in three minutes. I am lucky I saw this on cheap night because I would have cried myself to sleep. Inept, inconsistent and ultimately boring. I worry that the director has been given the task of handling the third Harry Potter film. The mind boggles - Harry and Hermione do Hogwarts, perhaps? This little black duck was not amused.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Watch the Skies!
It is interesting to note, that in these uncertain political times, creators of texts are turning more and more to themes that hark back to our darkest times; in this case, war. Charlotte Grey (2002), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), We Were Soldiers (2002) all attempt to make sense of the futility of war and the effect on the human spirit. We have since had The Lord of the Rings (2002) in which the effects of the Industrial Revolution have inexorably led to a greater global conflict. On television, programmes like The Cazalets (2001) and The 1940s House (2001) have explored the effects of World War II on the ordinary citizen. In the first Star Wars (1977 - 1983) films, George Lucas had referenced the causes and effects of World War II. Now he gives us Star Wars Episode 2: The Attack of the Clones (2002) in which, he attempts to lay some blame on the politicians who draw society into the trap of war.
Of course Lucas, like Spielberg, has always been interested in the 1930s and 1940s through the films, design, values and attitudes of the periods. These directors are not just harking back to a `golden age' of filmmaking. Instead, they are referencing them to make sense of them historically and to make modern audiences question their own values that have become blurred since WWII ended. In Clones, when Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) stands alone looking out over a balcony onto a serene lake on the planet Naboo, his posture and the camera angle reference Hitler doing much the same thing at the Berghof, Berchtesgaden. There are numerous visual references to the Nuremberg Rallies and a cinematic nod to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1934). This episode of the series is a heart on his sleeve celebration of all things cinematic. The dialogue is pure 1940s and the production design is a glorious reworking of Bauhaus, Art Deco, Frank Lloyd Wright, De Chirico and even The Trigan Empire comics.
For the planet Coruscant, a city much like New York emerges from the clouds, but New York was never like this. Referencing Things to Come (1936), Lucas gives us a metropolis by way of The Fifth Element (1997) and Blade Runner(1982). His opening shots are paraphrasing the conversation in Lunar Hilton in 2001 (1968) and his initial chase sequence comes out of knowledge of film noir. Lucas understands action and he knows how to cut action but he has difficulty directing people. His old-fashioned lines need an old-fashioned style. Charlton Heston can do cheesy dialogue and so can Harrison Ford but oldies such as Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid overshadow the young cast. Some of the casting is woeful - who in their right mind convinced Lucas to hire Samuel L Jackson? He looks uncomfortable, especially in his fight scenes. Lee as Dooku, the Jedi turned bad has a wonderful light sabre battle with Yoda, a highlight of the film and, once again, shows that casting is everything. The Casablanca (1942) sequence, lit almost exactly as the original, has all the ingredients - fireplace, shadows, music and Natalie Portman even does a credible Ingrid Bergman but it lacks the spark and yet, if you look at the eyes of the actors, it's all there. It needed a people's director to bring it out. You will forgive Lucas, however, because he is making a 40s film and he is referencing an age gone by, for new audiences. When he has Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman) on screen he draws his inspiration from the actresses of the past - Hepburn, Harlow, Bergman and he paraphrases the movies that must have been his formative learning and his pleasure. In an idyllic world called Naboo, we see glimpses of Camelot (1967) and The Sound of Music (1965) and he pays homage to Sergio Leone by calling his bounty hunter Jango as well as referencing Django (1966) in the Clint Eastwood poncho that Anakin wears as the lovers flee Paris, oops Coruscant.
This is a very sophisticated movie, dull in parts but high on adrenalin and full of detail and made with love. It is much darker than The Phantom Menace (1999) especially in the scene where our hero finds his abused mother in the Raiders camp and kills every male, female, child and animal within reach. He is an outcast, forever looking through windows (one of the recurring motifs in the film) and like John Wayne in The Searchers (1956), he cannot comprehend a world of double dealing and politics. Like Arthur in Camelot (1967), he toys with the idea of a benevolent dictatorship. This sequence is made the more poignant because we know how this is all going to turn out, having seen the films that follow this one.
You can be forgiven that these knights are a bit thick and the senate much like a circus (which it resembles strongly in the film) but Lucas is making a point here. These warriors belong to a chivalrous age; one that is fading before their eyes and all the technology that surrounds them is purely enslavement to a future where machines and clones rule the day. The early genesis of the Imperial Storm troopers is also eerie because we know what will happen. Lucas wants us to see what will happen when we are duped as Jar-Jar Binks is duped in the senate to allow unchallenged powers to Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) and when we are not vigilant. In ET (1982), a movie marquee warned us to Watch the Skies! (the working title for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)) and here, that warning ( itself a motif in Lucas and Spielberg films) gains further resonance with his referencing of such science fiction films as AI (2001), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Things to Come (1936), Dr Strangelove (1964), The Fifth Element, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and of course his own Star Wars films. Lucas also creates a world, which is heavily influenced by Asian culture, to make it all the more alienating (excuse the pun). This is a world that is imploding from the inside and is it any wonder that there are so many nasty creatures both humanoid and animal that inhabit it? A recurring motif in this film is the endless walking that characters do usually in corridors. They never seem to get anywhere just as their futile quest to maintain a sane, just world is doomed from the start.
One of the big set pieces is the arena sequence - a fantastic reworking of the colosseum sequence from Quo Vadis? (1951). It is here that Lucas saves his best for last. The sequence becomes a fight for the past and he throws all the WWII imagery he can at this scene. We have Lancaster Bombers, B52s, and war on a grand scale. What he does not do, however, is to give us a satisfactory comeuppance for the baddies. He shows us how the seeds of these warriors' destruction have been sown. Lucas plays with colour in this film. He uses mainly blues and colder colours to begin and ends with sunsets as twilight of the gods. As Merlin says in Excalibur (1981), `it is a time of men and their ways, our time has come. The old magic has given way to new gods'. When Annkin/Arthur marries his Padme/Guenivere, it is at sunset; a hasty marriage or a doomed lover's pact?
This film is as dark as The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and deserves to be seen in this light. Lucas is a clever filmmaker and he sometimes lets his themes and myths get in the way of good storytelling but this film is a celebration of film, a celebration of the human spirit to overcome adversity and a timely warning to heed the history lessons of the past. A class act and a must see.