review
January 09, 2006
King Kong
By now everyone knows the story: Peter Jackson, as a young New Zealand boy, sees 1933’s King Kong on television, and from that moment is driven to become a filmmaker. I myself have never seen the entirety of the original Kong (though it’s high on my Netflix queue at the moment), so I was going into the theater with the same fresh eyes Peter Jackson had all those years ago. The fact that I didn’t come out quite as inspired as Jackson cannot dampen my sincere enjoyment of this amazing spectacle of moviemaking.
Unlike many modern remakes, King Kong is iconic enough that even if you haven’t seen the original picture. Even if you don’t know how the story begins, (Movie producer/director Carl Denham takes an intrepid crew to a mysterious island where fresh-faced Ann Darrow is sacrificed to the mighty ape), you know how the story ends (the beast is brought back to New York by Denham—in a spectacle only Broadway could play host to—and everything goes massively wrong). Knowing the story and seeing it unfold are two completely different experiences.
With King Kong, Peter Jackson moves ever closer to cementing his status as the rightful heir to Steven Spielberg’s popcorn throne. This is a massive movie—a grand adventure in old-fashioned movie making with the modern twist of dazzling special effects and stunning digital characters. Kong is filled with thousands of effects shots, but nothing is more elegantly created than the big ape himself. The original 800-pound gorilla is the most believable digital character in history, topping Jackson’s own Gollum (as well as other recent stars like Yoda and Aslan). On top of that, the movie features the best dinosaurs I’ve ever seen on film (sorry Jurassic Park), and a marvelous, vivid recreation of 1933 New York.
With all the whiz-bang effects and the thrill of the unrelenting set-pieces staged on Skull Island, lost in the shuffle are great performances by a huge cast including Jack Black as the conniving, careless Denham, Billy Elliott’s Jamie Bell as young shipmate Jimmy, Ron Livingston doppelganger Kyle Chandler as the suave movie hero Bruce Baxter and Andy Serkis as the plucky cook Lumpy. The stars of the picture shine brightest of all though: Naomi Watts progresses from wide-eyed newbie to downtrodden heroine alongside her giant beau, “played” by motion-capture hero Andy Serkis. Serkis, first with Gollum and now with King Kong, has single-handedly carried digital acting to the forefront of modern movie making. Serkis did not invent digital acting, but no one has done it better, before or since.
In a movie year known for unusual love stories, King Kong takes first prize, as the “love triangle” between Ann Darrow (Watts), Kong and the writer-turned-hero Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) is both tragic and hopeful. Jackson, with the help of his screenwriting partners Phillipa Boyens and wife Fran Walsh, create an oddly believable tension in Ann’s desire to protect Kong, even when she is happy to be saved by Jack. Though the live story drives the film forward after its long prologue in New York and at sea, the audience is really looking for action and adventure. From start to finish, the epic King Kong never fails to deliver on this promise. Peter Jackson has created the ultimate homage to the inspiration for his career: a movie that stands alongside the great popcorn movies of all-time.
Grade: A
Posted by Queuetipp at January 9, 2006 02:10 PM
review
December 15, 2005
The Island
The first movie directed by Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys) I ever saw willingly, The Island drew me in on the merits of its two stars, Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. As it turns out, I should've stuck to my instincts—and Bay should be shipped off to the "Island" for this waste of star power, millions of dollars, and theater space.
Long known for his collaborations with his slightly less reprehensible producing partner Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay knows a great setup when he sees one: The Island tells a story of organ harvesting from multi-million dollar clone "insurance policies" who operate in a utopian society of ignorance. When one of the clones, Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor) begins to question his existence, he is forced to save his friend Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) from her trip to "the Island," an even more utopian dream purported upon these clones by their god-like director Merrick (Sean Bean).
The ethics of cloning and organ harvesting are at the forefront, but the story also touches on free will and what happens when you attempt to strip the human spirit of its most natural desires (aggression, sex, curiosity). It's a great bit of science fiction, but with a terrible script and Bay's tendency to mangle an interesting story with a flurry of chase scenes, car crashes and explosions, the original concept is barely noticeable amidst all the action. When the themes do reach the surface, all the provocative ideas are shoved aside in favor of lame jokes and forced drama.
A lot of the themes in this movie have been explored a lot better in recent years with films like A.I., Minority Report and Serenity. Those movies all took time to ponder the questions they raised. The Island mainly leaves you scratching your head. Set in 2050, things don't look much different from our world, except of course for the fancy Puma track suits, hovering Amtrak trains and winged-door Cadillac sports cars. Our heroes are three and two years old, respectively, and are trained to the education of 15-year-olds. When they make it outside their home facility into the real world, they are in constant awe of the things around them, but only when it's convenient for the script. In one scene, you have Jordan looking to the sky when a bartender asks if she wants her drink "straight up," and in the next she's telling the helpful McCord (Steve Buscemi) "I'm not stupid."
I, however, apparently am stupid, as I chose to see this movie knowing most of the caveats ahead of time. I ignored the warnings because of the two stars. Now I'm left wondering how they got roped into this mess. The dialogue makes that in Star Wars (which McGregor has consistently bashed for its clunkiness) sound like Shakespeare. For someone who has made few questionable choices in her career thus far, Johansson stumbles mightily here. Reduced to eye candy and expressions of varying perplexity/distress, Scarlett takes a major step down that luckily (thanks to Woody Allen) will probably be forgotten quickly. Her most memorable scene in the movie might actually have been her real Calvin Klein commercial, thrown into the movie in a weird bit of meta-reality that goes beyond even Julia Roberts playing herself in Ocean's 12.
Lots of critics have cited that this movie is a perfect example of what's wrong with modern movie-making, and while I can't totally disagree, the movie has some value. It will make for a very popular drinking game for future generations, for example. Just count how many times someone yells "Run!" or "Go!", or even more fun, count the product placements! They come often and in many forms (dialogue, backgrounds, props), so it will surely make the game harder as you get further into the movie. For icing on your drunken cake, you could even drink every time something explodes or a car flips over, but that portion of the game may need a surgeon general's warning. Caution: This movie may cause extreme drunkenness. Please monitor your blood alcohol levels often.
Grade: D
Posted by Queuetipp at December 15, 2005 01:39 PM
review
December 13, 2005
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
I watched this the other night, just a couple of weeks after I saw (and panned) the gaudy remake with Johnny Depp. Strangely, the original, while warmer and filled with less artifice, made me appreciate the new one more than I had upon first viewing. Wonka loses points for deviating often from the original story, but gains a lot from the performances of the two young girls, Denise Nickerson (Violet) and Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca), and Gene Wilder as the titular candy icon.
Even from the opening credits it is clear how this is a much less faithful adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The movie puts Willy Wonka front and center instead, an odd choice considering we don’t even see him for the first third of the film. The story still focuses on our hero, Charlie Bucket, played with a wide-eyed, if a bit ham-handed glee by Peter Ostrum.
Wonka also deviates by making the story a musical one. There are a few numbers in addition to the Oompa-Loompa songs found in the book, and while they are charming, none is really effective or memorable after the opening number, "The Candy Man." The Oompa-Loompa songs are dressed up in odd ways as well, even going so far as to display lyrics in increasingly decorative typefaces. The movie is very much a product of the era in terms of production. The song-and-dance stuff is a little to artificial, which might be said also of the special effects and set design. I would not be one saying that, however. While certainly not as massive or as detailed as in the remake, the sets and props in this Chocolate Factory have a great charm that recalls the machines of Dr. Seuss. The special effects wizardry of the remake proves once again that bigger is not always better.
Another high point of the original adaptation is Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka. Johnny Depp hung his Wonka hat on the oddity of the candy magnate, a hermit who never quite fit in. Depp’s Wonka feared was socially inept and a bit, to put it lightly, on the peculiar side. Gene Wilder plays Wonka with more whimsy, more heart. The key though, to his performance, is an undercurrent of anger and resentment, best portrayed in a scene near the end of the film, inside Wonka’s office.
After seeing this original, I realized the remake did many things right that this film did not. In Wonka, Charlie's father is inexplicably absent. While he doesn’t have much to do in the remake, the reinstatement of the father is very important to the relationships between Charlie and Grampa Joe and of course between Willy and Charlie. The remake was also wise to focus the story on the character Dahl actually calls "our hero" in the first pages of his book, young Charlie Bucket. This puts a lot of pressure on the young Freddie Highmore, but he was able to create a much stronger Charlie than Wonka's Peter Ostrum.
In the end, my enjoyment of this film over the big-budget remake comes down to the low-budget charm of the sets and production along with the great performance by Gene Wilder. The real trick of Willy Wonka, though, was to make me reassess my opinions of the remake. Somewhere in between these two movies is a great adaptation of a beloved book, but put together, they're not as bad as I once thought.
Wonka: B
Charlie: B-
Posted by Queuetipp at December 13, 2005 10:22 AM