Archer: Season One

**1/2 - Is there anything more annoying than having to listen to a bunch of screeching yahoos play the irritating children’s pool game ‘Marco Polo’? Yes, there is and that would be listening to a bunch of screeching yahoos play the irritating children’s pool game ‘Marco Polo’ from the comfort of one’s apartment while trying to watch some god damn television. That was my experience while I attempted to view the first season of the animated comedy show “Archer” on this balmy 2011 Memorial Day weekend, as there was some kind of Boy Scout jamboree or something staying at the pool-equipped Comfort Inn that is within throwing distance of my back window. I only hope that my enjoyment of the show wasn’t affected negatively by the viewing environment. The 12-episode inaugural season from the creators of “Sealab 2021” and “Frisky Dingo” follows the adventures of spy Sterling Archer and the espionage agency that he works for which is run by his mother and staffed by a slew of eccentric characters. I have never seen “Sealab 2021” but I would rate this as on par with season one of “Frisky Dingo” and probably a notch below the second season. Part of what hurts “Archer” may be the full length (22-minute) format that was used as opposed to the 11-minute format used on their previous project, as parts of these episodes tend to drag a bit and belabor marginal ideas. Plus there is a pretty high frequency of crude and extreme attempts at humor which I don’t find all that appealing. It’s not bad for the first season of a program, but I don’t have any particular desire to watch it again, although I’ll likely give the 2nd and 3rd seasons a try.

Black Dynamite

***1/2 – Some of the most identifiable features in the blaxploitation genre are things like poorly choreographed kung fu action, bizarre 70s clothes choices, forgettable soul-funk music, goofy vernaculars, whitey-funded anti-black conspiracies, rampant misogyny and gratuitous sex and gunplay. In 2009’s spoof/homage “Black Dynamite” all these factors and many more are not only present but are nitro-boosted into the stratosphere. Unlike a lot of spoof films that go for the big laughs by creating jokes that aren’t necessarily interwoven well into a genre’s story style, this movie makes just enough tweaks to an already highly laughable type of film that it accentuates the previously present ludicrousness without having to add broad gags or drastically altering the format. The acting and dialogue so precisely nail the style that if one watches this without playing much attention and ignores the notable names involved it could easily be mistaken for an actual “Shaft” or “Sweet Sweetback” type of flick straight out of 1973. Closer attention, however, will reveal the detail and nuance added to the script and action that work together to make the first hour borderline hilarious. Towards the end of the movie the silliness quotient ramped up to a point – probably around the time that Black Dynamite took on Richard Nixon in a knockdown drag-out kung fu nunchuk battle in the Oval Office – that it became a little too over-the-top for my tastes. Up until then, though, I would have to say that “Black Dynamite” was a humor-filled and entertaining romp that is an effective send-up of the type of picture that was prevalent in the early 70s heyday of blaxploitation.

Green Street Hooligans

**1/2 – I’d like to say that “Green Street Hooligans” was a thought-provoking, insightful and detailed dramatization of the seedy underworld of English football ‘firms’ – the groups of diehard fans, often referred to as hooligans, who fight and kill each other over a silly and unbelievably dull sport. I’d like to say that, but unfortunately I can’t because it was actually just a randomly strung together sequence of brawls between West Ham and Millwall supporters interrupted by the occasional whinge from Elijah Wood or the girl who played T.S.’s girlfriend in “Mallrats”. This is one of those movies in which actors might partake if they are trying to distance themselves from a role that has defined their career. That’s exactly what Frodo seems to be trying to do here by being in a movie full of tough Cockney rhyming slang spewing roughnecks and not wearing goofy-looking prosthetic feet or smoking pipe-weed with a queer wizard and a bunch of nancyboy hobbits and elves. It kind of backfired, though, seeing as throughout the first half of the movie he played his character pretty much as I imagine Frodo would if he was a real person, and then spends most of the rest of the film getting the crap kicked out of him. I kept expecting to hear Samwise Gamgee yell out “Mister Frodo!” from the background, so the likely attempt at distance from his famous portrayal wasn’t particularly successful. Still – and maybe this is the vodka talking – it was a fairly entertaining movie. It was kind of trite and formulaic, but I can accept more of that from an English movie than an American one because the accents are cooler and they didn’t elect Bush.

The Golden Compass

*** – While it is has less depth than the “Lord of the Rings” series “The Golden Compass” – based on the first of three books in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy - is also less frivolous and superficial than “Harry Potter” and serves nicely as a sort of anti-“Narnia”. The works of C.S. Lewis - upon which the “Narnia” films are based - sing the praises of religion and seem to have a main purpose of showing how Jesus is totally awesome and stuff (and possibly also a lion). However, this movie (and one could extrapolate, the books it is based on) is all about the struggle of an enlightened freethinking intelligentsia against the perverse and autocratic dogma of the church. For that aspect of it alone I gave this movie a nice little boost in the ratings. Unfortunately, looking at ”The Golden Compass” in just the sense of a cinematic experience leaves one wanting a bit more. It seemed to me as though the characters and storylines were not very fleshed out here. I have not read the novels on which this was based, but I get the distinct sense that a great deal was left out for the sake of having one hour forty-five minute kid-friendly film. Characters and plot points sort of jumped all over the place and practically none of what could probably be an intricate and engrossing world was explored in any way other than to give basic ideas about what was happening on screen. Despite these flaws and the fact that it ends rather abruptly this was still a solid adventure yarn, and I’d watch this over any of the “Narnia” or “Potter” films any day of the week. Including Sunday… take that, Jesus!

Burn After Reading

**1/2 – Having written, directed and produced roughly one movie per year since their glory days in the mid-90s, I get the feeling that the Coen Brothers’ prolific movie-making pace is starting to catch up with them, as most of their recent releases have been little more than mediocre. Nowadays they seem to rely almost entirely on quirky characters with goofy names played by big name stars in order to fuel their films instead of combining those facets with interesting stories and hilarious dialogue like they used to with films like “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski”. While 2009’s “A Serious Man” would be an exception to that trend (not that it was good, but that it starred Judaism instead of big name actors), their preceding film “Burn After Reading” falls squarely into the above category. It stars Clooney, Pitt, Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand all playing characters with dopey names like Linda Litzke, Chad Feldheimer, Osbourne Cox and Harry Pfarrer who have differing arrays of interaction with each other ranging from blackmail to adultery to getting shot in the face while hiding in a closet. The story has a fairly intriguing plot that kind of weaves in and out of each of the main characters’ lives and their varying levels of interplay with one another, but I never found myself able to fully commit to the idea. I chalk that up mainly to the flat dialogue and lack of humor that have been indicative of all the Coen Brothers’ movies from recent years. I can’t really say too much bad about the movie itself, but the fact that it helps to show the Coen Brothers’ continual downward slide is a bit disheartening.

Frisky Dingo: Season Two

***1/2 - In my review for season one of “Frisky Dingo” I indicated that one of my main reasons for disappointment was the fact that the show rather quickly strayed from its apparent original concept of delving comically into the minutiae of superhero and supervillain management and administration. Having now watched the second and final season of the Cartoon Network series, and realizing that it goes much farther afield than the first, I may have to rethink my reasons for my preference of season two over season one. And in looking back, I suppose the concept dropping may not have been such a big reason that I like season two much more than season one. It is probably more accurate to say that it is a combination of the improved consistency of the writing, better peripheral characters, and a bit less concentration on the Awesome X/Xander Crews character. After botching his attempt to propel the Earth into the sun – a maneuver that actually ended up moving the Earth slightly away from the sun thereby stopping global warming – Killface wins the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. Meanwhile, Awesome X finds himself living in a cardboard box until he decides to use the $20 billion check made out to ‘cash’ that he found in order to buy the Republican nomination and run against Killface. By the end of the season (which also turned out to be the end of the show) all the president stuff had fallen by the wayside and things like mutant ant-babies take over. What made this season better than the first was a combination of better, more focused writing and funnier characters, such as screechy-voiced security guard Wendell, who is one of the better animated characters I’ve come across in some time.

Carriers

**1/2 – Seeing as this 2009 independent film isn’t really a horror film or a thriller and doesn’t have any action in it, I suppose it is best categorized as a sci-fi drama. It is very much like how I’d imagine “28 Days Later” would be with all the horror elements completely stripped from it. In fact, I think the parallels to “28 Days Later” are very apt, as both films deal with a small group of people who are trying to get to a destination while avoiding the infection that is spreading throughout the population. Where these movies are fundamentally different, though, is in the nature of the infection. “28 Days Later” had a highly contagious virus that almost immediately turned its victim into a slobbering beast that then tried to infect as many people as possible by attacking and chewing on them. On the other hand, “Carriers” portrays a similarly highly virulent disease. However, it is one that doesn’t turn its prey into zombie-like creatures but instead just slowly weakens and kills them over a period of days or weeks. While that certainly seems more realistic than the former option, it also means that there is not a whole heck of a lot going on in this movie. About the most exciting part of it was one of the lead characters getting attacked by a dog and fending it off with a shotgun. So, while I can certainly commend the movie for its realism and its avoidance of the theme of zombie-like creatures that is so common in these kind of movies nowadays, it achieves this by forfeiting a great deal of entertainment value.

The Lazarus Project

**1/2 - There is certainly no dearth of mysterious psychological thriller films out there, each trying their darnedest to one-up each other by having the most shocking twist ending. Most of these films are satisfied to have one twist at the end that may throw the less savvy viewers for a bit of a loop, but more recently these kinds of films have striven for even more twistiness by adding at least one further plot turn at the tail end. Enter 2008’s independently made direct-to-DVD “The Lazaraus Project”, which adds even another bend in the story, making a total of at least four by my count, and possibly more depending on one’s interpretation. The gist of it is that Paul Walker – best known as one of the lead lunkheads in the irredeemably horrid car-porn “Fast and the Furious” series – gets the ole lethal injection in Texas for being in the vicinity of a death (cuz that’s really all you need do down there to be executed) only to wake up some indeterminate amount of time later as a maintenance man at a psychiatric hospital in Oregon. He wanders around the manor that houses the ward and does various things like adopt a stray dog and get randomly attacked by inmates, but then maybe it turns out that he’s actually a patient, or maybe not, then he kisses some lady, but maybe actually he burned his family to death or something, but then maybe he didn’t. Anyway, it has a lot of stuff going on, but to its credit it never really feels confusing, the ambient score is quite nicely done, and Walker shows that he can do more than just drive cars and grunt like an ape. I can sit through it once.

Black Death

*** - Taking place in a 14th century Europe that is beset by the titular epidemic, this 2010 adventure/thriller/horror flick captures the time period pretty well while also presenting a relatively watchable narrative for most of its length. The story follows Boromir from the LOTR films as he and a band of about a half dozen outlaws/crusaders are on the trail of a necromancer who they – for no reason in particular – blame for the plague that has beset the land. They stop off at a monastery where they – again, for no particular reason – ask for a monk to come along with them. The smallest, skinniest, nerdiest of the monks volunteers and joins the party as they journey toward a town on the other side of a marsh. And that pretty much covers the first hour of the movie. It plays out kind of like watching somebody else complete a few quests in any given RPG set in medieval times. That may not sound all that compelling, but it was actually pretty enjoyable. However, once they reach the village and finally figure out what is going on, the horror part of the movie starts and it just shows a series of somewhat graphic torture scenes for the next little while. I can’t say that that particular aspect of the film won itself a fan in me. In the end, there is no real conclusion and the story just kind of peters out, as the surviving main characters return to the monastery, look at each other awkwardly, and the leave. It is followed by a vague and tacked-on epilogue that was kind of silly and left me wondering what point exactly the movie was trying to make. I’ve seen worse, though.

Echelon Conspiracy

**1/2 - Over the past couple of decades the power and speed of computers have increased at such an extraordinary rate that it has had the dual results of alarming the security-crazed right-wing jagoffs of the world and giving Hollywood screenwriters an absolute goldmine of movie ideas. The 2009 film “Echelon Conspiracy” starring Marcellus Wallace, the jerky guy from “Saving Private Ryan”, and some other guy takes advantage of the situation by making a movie about security-crazed right-wing jagoffs. Much like “Enemy of the State” and “Eagle Eye” this movie posits that there is an intricate and all-knowing set of computer programs housed somewhere in Washington that are hooked into wired and wireless networks all over the globe via satellite and are able to take control of anything plugged into any sort of network grid. And guess what? Yes, it has evolved to the point of being sentient and is now out of control and killing people and becoming a threat to national security and the people of the world. As it turns out, the omniscient computer system that has become so self-aware and powerful that it is on the verge of taking over the world can be easily taken care of and shut down by a wormy incompetent guy who uses the old logical paradox angle to cause the system to shut itself down. I’m going to go on record here and saying that any artificial intelligence that is advanced enough to commandeer a government is also going to be advanced enough to not fall for the logical paradox gag. Anyway, this movie was relatively boring and the plot was derivative, but I’ll give it some extra points for not relying too much on action and gunfights like a lot of these films end up doing.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

** – I’m not a film scholar and I don’t know a lot of camera/direction jargon, so the type of shot I’m going to describe next certainly has a name that I don’t know. It’s the shot where there’s a central focus point and the camera just moves around it in a circle or semi-circle. Like I said, I don’t know what it’s called, but I’m renaming it the ‘Tony fucking Scott’ in honor of its ridiculous overuse in “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3”, his 2009 remake of a 1970s thriller. This shot is used in conjunction with lightning fast edits, constant panning and zooming, and loads of jump cuts, all of which are hallmarks of a Tony Scott film, the man that I am now convinced is the worst director in the industry that unexplainably continues to get offered high-caliber projects. I can’t think of a movie that he has directed that has been improved in any way by his involvement. To make matters worse, John Travolta – whose career peaked in the mid-90s and has dropped precipitously since - is the co-lead in this along with Denzel Washington. In his role here as a train hijacking ex-Wall Street broker with goofy-looking neck tattoos and an overly groomed goatee he overacts to the point of chewing scenery like there’s no tomorrow. This movie might have been decent had the direction not been truly nauseating and Travolta’s camera muggery was toned down to an acceptable level. But seeing as that is not the case and the duo conspired along with an unnecessarily testosterone-emitting script to ruin yet another film, I am seriously considering starting a petition to see Tony Scott and John Travolta banned from the film industry. Are you in?

King Arthur

**1/2 – Purported to be a more factual representation of current theory regarding the origins of the myths involving the Knights of the Round Table, 2004’s “King Arthur” moves the setting of the classic tales from medieval times to a 5th century England that is dominated by warring groups of Romans, Saxons and Picts. Clive Warren is cast in this as the titular monarch who is a part-Roman/part-Celtic magistrate in charge of a group of Sarmatian indentured servants (the famous Knights, including Lancelot, Galahad, etc.) who go around Roman controlled Britain fighting off hordes of barbarian invaders. While there is some historical basis for many of the aspects of this revision to the story, anyone with a fair amount of historical knowledge of the period could have a field day pointing out the inaccuracies and anachronisms. For the sake of brevity I’m not going to do that, but rest assured the falsehoods and fallacies were egregious and plentiful. That doesn’t necessarily make this a bad movie, but the fact that the narration at the beginning very clearly makes that claim that this is the ‘real’ story makes the extreme artistic latitude taken by the filmmakers quite annoying. Even if you have no interest in the debate over the historical accuracy of anything that is shown here, viewing it unmarred by side-taking still yields the result of this being only a mediocre film. It has lots of action in it and each battle is introduced with a goofy rousing speech by Arthur that gets really old. The characters are pretty stereotypical and the dialogue is throwaway motivational nonsense. It has plenty of swordplay, though, so if that is good enough for you, knock yourself out.

Frisky Dingo: Season One

**1/2 - If one examines the structure of pretty much any organization, whether it’s a government agency, a retail chain, a maintenance service or anything in between, it becomes quickly apparent that there are a large number of support personnel that are integral to the fulfillment of the group’s mandate. Administration, human resources, personnel management, and marketing are just a few of the areas that are not necessarily visible on the surface but perform important functions nonetheless. The superhero/supervillain genre of media is one area in which this aspect is almost never explored, the reason being that it is most likely going to be exceedingly dull. It is precisely the fact that first season of the crudely written and crudely animated Adult Swim series “Frisky Dingo” – which consists of thirteen 11-minute episodes – seemed at first as though it was going to focus on this oft neglected area is what gave it nearly limitless comedy potential. The show follows the largely internal struggles of the rich, mostly incompetent superhero Awesome X and his seven-foot tall, grey-skinned, heavily muscled supervillain counterpart Killface as they both attempt to keep their respective businesses afloat in a fictional world that has little to no interest in their travails. While the concept is outstanding the unfortunate truth is that the writing and voice work on this series just can’t maintain a consistent enough level of humor to allow it to fulfill its great promise. Each episode is a jumbled mess of ideas that lack refinement and have a very sloppy and rushed feel, not to mention the fact that somewhere early on it seemed to shift its concentration heavily toward the incompetence of the lead characters rather than the minutiae of their lines of work. It does have its moments, but its inconsistency is bothersome.

The International

***1/2 – After convincingly portraying the main badass antagonist to Matt Damon in “The Bourne Identity” it was only a matter of time before someone gave Clive Warren a shot at being the lead guy in his own Bourne-esque thriller. While this 2009 conspiracy potboiler directed by Tom Tykwer (of “Run, Lola, Run” fame) sort of goes that route, “The International” is much more about the investigative and procedural aspects of the genre as opposed to the Bourne films’ more action orientation. Clive plays an Interpol investigator who teams up with New York DA agent Naomi Watts to attempt to bring down a shady Luxembourg-based bank that is implied to be involved in all sorts of backroom deals with communist revolutionary groups and all the other ‘evil’ people who are floating around. With luxuriant vistas spanning Europe and briefly hopping over Stateside the scenery and photography of “The International” are splendid, with the exception of the occasional dull but plot-necessitated scene taking place wholly within a stuffy office building or cluttered apartment. It’s these types of little scenes that bring the overall entertainment value down a notch or two, though. They serve their purpose in advancing the plot, but they all too often go off on tangents relating to the lead characters’ personal lives and career histories. The little bit of action that is thrown in is mostly well done, although a massive gunfight at the Guggenheim Museum in New York is probably a little over the top in terms of believability. It’s a pretty solid flick overall, though, with a decent pace and a fairly interesting story despite its lack of originality and transparent right-wing ideology.

Red Eye

**1/2 – This 2005 Wes Craven helmed airplane-based suspense thriller starring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams is fairly entertaining but doesn’t distinguish itself enough from other entries in the genre to garner anything more than a fair rating. McAdams does a decent enough job at looking scared and crying and Murphy is a suitable antagonist in that he gives off equal amounts of charm and creepiness, but at the same time he is actually rather inept at his task in that he ends up getting stabbed in the throat, impaled by a high heel, beaten senseless with a field hockey stick and shot several times, all at the hands of a rather small woman and a sickly-looking Brian Cox. Seeing as his greatest adversaries in his kidnapping attempt are a pen and poor atmospheric conditions one has to wonder how he got into that line of work in the first place. Maybe he was a temp or something. Anyway, one thing working in this film’s favor is its sub-80 minute length, as anything more than that would have made this a bit of a chore watch. But with such a short run time I was hoping that this would be a non-stop action-packed thriller, but nearly 30 minutes at the beginning were devoted to uninteresting back story and silly attempts at humor. I know that this was theatrically released, but it had a distinct made-for-TV feel to it in most respects, from the crummy soundtrack to the workmanlike direction and cinematography to the drab set designs. I guess it’s worth a watch for fans of the genre, though.

The Land That Time Forgot

** - This is probably the best film that the crew over at cheapo mockbuster rip-off factory ‘The Asylum’ has made. Seeing as I gave it a whopping two stars, that’s not really saying much about the wretched film distribution company. Another in a long line of their low-budget action sci-fi adventure tales with heavy involvement from washed-up B-list actors, this 2009 adaptation of a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs beats out the company’s prior efforts due to its lush tropical scenery and decent camerawork. But like the other movies that the group has been responsible for, the acting, special effects, story and dialogue are all incredibly inept. Timothy Bottoms, C. Thomas Howell and a German guy who looks like a cross between John Malkovich and John C. Reilly lead a ragtag group of people around in an attempt to extricate themselves from the dangers of the mysterious dinosaur-infested island they have all somehow wound up on. The idea here is that the island has some weird time deal going on in which it manages to ensnare people and creatures from all different eras. And there are exactly three eras represented here: the modern day, the WWII era and the Cretaceous period, with oddly nothing in between those time frames. That makes very little sense, and seeing as the original novel was written in 1918, I get the feeling that this silliness was an add-on from the filmmakers. Add to that the fact that the cartoon-like dinosaurs look so laughably out of place next to the live actors and scenery and you get yourself a pretty crummy movie overall. Plus, I got pretty sick of Howell constantly rubbing his head and futzing around with the brim of his dingy sports visor.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

** – It seems to me that the most important aspect that determines one’s level of enjoyment of a fantasy-themed film or book series is whether or not one buys into the mythology presented. I pretty much buy into the “Lord of the Rings” mythology because of its highly detailed nature and mature themes. I don’t buy into the “Harry Potter” series because I feel that it lacks depth, is far too dependent on magic, and is exceedingly child-oriented. The “Narnia” series – after giving much thought during and after the watching of the film adaptations of the first three novels – is definitely starting to feel like it is leaning far more toward the “Potter” end of the spectrum than the “LOTR” end. Looking at the film on its own merits, this is your pretty standard child adventure fare. The visuals and effects are largely solid, but the design that is brought to life by those means has been so done to death that it doesn’t affect the overall quality of the movie enough to make it a positive experience. Story-wise, I was very disappointed in this third chapter in the chain of what apparently is going to continue into at least a fourth. All it amounted to was a series of problems tossed at the protagonists at roughly ten to fifteen minute intervals that each ended with the good guys winding up victorious (usually through the help of an unexpected ally), followed by a three minute celebration complete with cheering and triumphant music. The dopey religious parallels that author C.S. Lewis jammed into the books is as present in this one as it was in the prior ones, and I have to say that it is really starting to get on my nerves.

After.Life

** - The first question that occurred to me while watching this movie was “do 25-year old women really stay in touch with their youth piano teachers so closely that they go to their funerals 15 years after their lessons come to an end?” Maybe that’s not what I should have taken away from watching this 2009 supernatural thriller starring Liam Neeson and Christina Ricci, but I use that as an example of many little goofy things about the film that all gathered together results in a two star rating. Besides all the little piddling concerns that I had along the way, this movie had its share of large faults as well. The main one of these faults would be that it seems to absolutely revel in ambiguity. Every time there is a plot important scene, decision or event the filmmakers decided to edit it in a way that there is no way to tell what really happened. I assume this was done in order to try to maintain a mystery as to what is going on. It doesn’t work. The viewer should quite easily fall onto one of two sides: either (a) Liam Neeson is a psycho who is involved in a massive conspiracy with half the town to bury people alive, or (b) he talks to dead people. It’s pretty lame, really. In fact, now that I think about it, two stars seem awfully generous. The only upshot of this film is that Ricci spends roughly half the film naked, but I don’t find her particularly attractive, so I’m not sure why that would earn it extra points. Oh well, I guess it’s too late to lower my score now.

Monsters

*** - It’s either the very near future or an alternate recent past (it’s never made clear which) and NASA has found evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system. Naturally, they decide to send up an exploratory probe to collect samples, but when the craft returns to Earth and crashes in Mexico all hell breaks loose. Well, all hell breaks loose after the life forms that were apparently on the craft gestate and turn into 300-foot tall giant walking squid monsters over a period of six years. That’s the premise behind this nifty little low-budget British-made 2010 sci-fi film starring no one in particular. In the midst of this accidental alien incursion - which has resulted in the quarantine of a large swath of northern Mexico and the southwestern US – the daughter of a media mogul is trapped on the Mexican side of the ‘Infected Zone’ and a rather goofy and non-heroic photographer in the gentleman’s employ is hired out to bring her back to the States. The film follows the pair’s journey full of hardships through jungles, lakes, rivers, burned-out villages and overgrown wastelands as they try to make their way back home. I think what I like most about the movie is that it has a lot more of a realistic feel to it than most of these types of movies. It is full of shady characters that are unjustly profiting off of the disastrous conditions, desperate families trying to reach safety and paranoia-crazed unfeeling government entities that overreact with much unnecessary kneejerk violence. While the monsters themselves seem rather dubious and the special effects are limited it is a movie that remains pretty enjoyable to watch even though it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Hereafter

***1/2 – Clint Eastwood directs this 2010 supernatural drama that brilliantly and ambitiously leads the viewer on a suspenseful and mysterious journey before almost completely screwing the pooch on a jumbled and miscalculated conclusion. The film has three basic story strands: Matt Damon as an American psychic who can commune with people’s dead relatives, Cecile de France as a French woman who has a near death experience after being caught in a tsunami, and some 12 year-old from London whose twin brother is killed after being shoved out in front of a car by some street toughs. I have to say that I was pretty riveted from the dramatic opening sequence showing the tsunami tearing through a small Southeast Asian town all the way up until about ten minutes before the two hour film ended. It seemed for all the world like the three plot strands (and a number of sub-strands that were also introduced at various points) were going to overlap nicely at the end and tie everything together into a nice little package. However, the final scenes show the different storylines only lightly brushing against each other and then drifting back apart almost immediately with an immensely unsatisfying conclusion that left me wondering what the whole point of sitting through this was. That being said, I can’t deny that I enjoyed just about every aspect of this movie up until then, including the acting from the largely solid cast and the direction from the aging tough guy Eastwood. All I’m saying is that the end is pretty disappointing.

Mesrine: L’ennemi public No. 1 (Mesrine, Part 2: Public Enemy #1)

**** – Picking up the story of gangster Jacques Mesrine in 1973 after the conclusion of the first part of this two-part 2008 French film, “Mesrine, part 2” takes most of what was good about its predecessor and adds even more layers of action and tension. Jacques Mesrine was not a good person. He robbed, he kidnapped, he killed, and none of it seemed to be for any real purpose despite his attempts to play everything off at times as being politically motivated. If this movie has any kernels of truth to it, I get the feeling that Mesrine really just enjoyed being a criminal, didn’t like to have laws restricting him, and was in love with the idea of his own celebrity. So, what this movie actually does is concentrates on the charm and charisma of the man that while he was most certainly quite evil, also managed to become a sort of roguish hero to many largely through his own self-aggrandizement. Vincent Cassel does a stellar job in the title role, ably imbuing the man with both charm and disdain, and the rest of the cast (especially those playing the handful of accomplices that he had in his final years) were also quite good. I guess the only real faults I can find with this movie is its considerable length (almost a half hour longer than the first part) and a narrative that seems to jump around a bit, thereby giving it a considerable disjointed quality. I’d certainly recommend giving this movie a try, and am grateful that the film makers had the sense to split it into two parts.

The Mist

*** - Based on one of the roughly dozen books per year that Stephen King wrote in the 80s, 2007’s Frank Darabont directed “The Mist” is probably on the short list of best movies adapted from King novels. That’s not to say it is a great film – as it certainly isn’t – but it is a decent enough piece of work and a diversion probably worth taking for about two hours if you have it to spare. Thomas Jane and his wussy eight year-old son (who cries more in this movie than anyone has ever cried in any other movie I can recall) are caught inside a grocery store in backwoods Maine with a ragtag bunch of yokels while stocking up on supplies after a devastating storm hits when the titular mist rolls in and wreaks havoc on the scared and desperate citizens. While like pretty much any King story this one has weird monsters and supernatural events and such all over the place, what is probably the focus here are the interactions between the rather large number (I’d estimate around 50 to 75) of people that are inside the store when disaster strikes. You rarely see a movie that deals with that large of a number in this kind of situation. It’s usually like five people (two couples and fifth wheel nerd, for example) or maybe a family of six or something. The large number allows the story to get into some heavier philosophical areas than your usual disaster yarn, which certainly adds to the entertainment value. My only real complaints are the tacked-on feel of the ending and the considerable length of two hours that is probably a bit much for this kind of movie.

30 Days of Night

** – Preceding by a year or two the current vampire craze that was launched by “Twilight” and the “True Blood” series but in the midst of the pre-semi-craze that was a result of the popularity of the “Underworld” films, the marginally successful 2007 film “30 Days of Night” probably missed out on a fairly good chance of cashing in. You know what, though? Even had it been released at the crest of the vampire wave, I don’t think it would have been all that popular. The main reason being that it actually goes for an unsettling vibe and contains some pretty graphic blood and gore, and is also missing the hallmarks of the non-threatening bloodsucker flicks of today: the hot young cast, the tepid and clumsy romance, and the forced vaguely menacing yet darkly faux-intriguing characterizations. Based on a graphic novel, the film stars Josh Hartnett as the sheriff of desolate Barrow, Alaska who gets more than he bargains for when a group of vampires decide to invade during the month-long night that town experiences every year. The setting alone (a dark place that rarely gets above 45 degrees even in the summer) pretty much precludes this from having the support of the “Twilight” crowd, because nobody is going to be walking around in skin-tight pants and fancy dresses in the frozen tundra. While it is nice to see a vampire movie that doesn’t go the lame emo route, features some actual violence, and makes the night-dwellers truly evil and dangerous, “30 Days of night” is still not a good movie. It plods along as we watch the main cast sneak around town from burned-out building to burned-out building while being punctuated occasionally by a vampire attack. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, either.

Black Swan

***1/2 - The culmination of his dozen or so years thus far spent in the film directing business, Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 psychological drama “Black Swan” shows like no other of his films how polarizing he can be to an audience. When I use the term ‘polarizing’ here I don’t mean it in the sense that it has the potential to be either loved or loathed depending upon the individual viewer - although it does, indeed, have that quality in spades. What I mean is that the film can polarize an individual viewer’s mind by taking a dull and pretentious plot about an art form that is – to me – completely unnecessary and combining it with an extraordinary and haunting character study of the pressures and psychoses of a frail and fragile person. All of his prior films showed flashes of this, but in none of them was it the most prevalent thing that I took away from it as a viewer. Discarding all the ballet crap in this, the only other thing I really object to is the fact that “Black Swan” shows that as his career has progressed Aronofsky has seemed to steer even farther away from intellectual story-driven fare and toward solely character-based melodrama. That may make him a darling in European cinema circles, but my own personal tastes lie elsewhere. In any event, whether you enjoy the movie’s subject matter or not (and I most definitely did not), I think it would be pretty hard for anyone with even a remote interest in film as an art form to say that “Black Swan” wasn’t one of the more effective portrayals of a descent into madness that has been attempted in a fairly significant amount of time.