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.