Watchmen

March 6th, 2009 (3-6-9, get it?) is the date when this years films actually take off. Alan Moore's epic satirical, socio-political opus hits the big screen after more than ten years of production hell. Even with the preview out the gate, the legal mishaps with FOX made it seem like we'd never really get to see Watchmen come to life the way it was really meant to. I could go on and on about all the inconsistencies from the graphic novel and all the bits and pieces they left out and switched around, but when it comes down to it, I really did like Watchmen. Quite a bit. Was it perfect? No. Was it worth watching? Of course.

It's been a long hard road from the graphic novel to the big screen for Watchmen. Being passed between studios. Getting the green light only to get almost immediately yanked from the "in production" list. In a way, Robert Rodriguez's almost too faithful (and not in a bad way) adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City that paved the way for Watchmen's success as a film. Director Zack Snyder's previous engagement (Frank Miller's Spartan swords and sandals epic 300) proved that even without a decent narrative behind it, his visual style was well suited for the comic book movie medium. The adaptation is ultimately faithful to the source material, the only exceptions being the exclusion of a vast amount of subsidiary character material (Rorschach's therapist is a footnote in the film and the newsstand owner and the comic book reading kid are only seen once with no dialog and never expounded upon) and some of the narrative structure at the end is rearranged, I would assume to add more cinematic and dramatic weight (even though the understated subtlety was what sold the finale graphic novel, in my opinion.) Also (spoiler alert) no giant squid monster...

Visually, the movie was gorgeous. With only a slight redesign to some of the outfits (especially Night Owl II's) the characters were spot on, though Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy) could've afforded to add a few more pounds of pudge to his Dan Dreiberg, the rest of his look as the sullen ex-masked vigilante was great. Possibly the most challenging part of Watchmen to sell on the big screen is, of course, Doctor Manhattan. There are only so many ways you can handle a blue, muscle-bound demi-god (one of the earliest casting rumors from the 90's was Arnold Schwarzenegger and thank god that one never happened,) and Snyder and crew opted for a full CG-MoCap paired with the voice of a soft spoken Billy Crudup. His gentle tone conveys both a sense of all-knowing bewilderment and omniscient curiosity. Casting win on that one, for sure.

Really, my only other grievance with the film was Snyder's penchant for this whole slo-mo thing. Don't get me wrong, it has it's time and place (namely in 1999 when The Matrix came out, but that's just me.) For a film that ran over normal run-time expectations outside a rebooted Batman sequel, for the amount of material that was partitioned out of the story, the action sure took it's sweet time. If they'd run them all in real time, I may have been more impressed with it and there might've been an extra 15 minutes or so for those peripheral characters I was talking about a few paragraphs back. While I'm on the subject of the slo-mo... the sex scene was a bit much. It reminded me almost shot for shot of the sex scene between King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) in 300. While the scene is a necessary step for the characters in question, what ensued was borderline Cinemax late night material.

All in all, this is the best adaptation of Watchmen that we'll get this decade. They've taken a graphic novel that was described as "unfilmable" (and honestly, some parts of it ARE just that) and kept it as faithful to the source material as a Hollywood superhero vehicle would allow and kudos to Zack Snyder for that one. Then again, there's always the inevitable (and already announced) director's cut sporting an additional 35 minutes and the Tales of the Black Freighter/Under the Hood DVDs on the way.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

This movie tears me apart because a month and a half after the fact, I still don't have a clear opinion on it. And the sad thing about it is that I really really wanted to like it. For all intents and purposes the odds were stacked against it from the start. It comes from the guy (Darren Lynn Bousman) who directed Saw 2-4, which I did not like. At all. Also the cast was made up of actors I love, respect, couldn't care less about and downright loath.

My dissension may come from the venue in which I viewed the movie. Since the studio gave Repo! such a miniscule release, the writer and director took the movie on tour to small theaters across America in order to garner a fanbase. That said, this required a drive to Maryland and a stay in a hotel, so I'm already invested in this movie whether I wanted to be or not. Once at the theater there are about 20 or so people decked out in costume. There was a brief intro by the theater owner and Darren the director before then the lights went down and the movie started. First things first, apparently we'd decided to attend the showing with a theater full of would-be Mike Nelsons (MST3K) who instead of tossing clever witticisms at a movie deserving of ridicule, shouted mindless brain-vomit at the screen presenting a movie I'd paid money (and gas money and hotel stay) to view with little to no interruption. That being said, here is my assessment of the film itself.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is better in idea than execution, in fact, the trailer was more enticing and well put together than the final product. Budgetary restrictions aside (made for only $8.5 million) the script seemed a bit sophomoric and underdeveloped and the musical numbers, while diverse enough, just didn't hold together. There was a vast amount of backstory that was glossed over in illustrated comic book panel interludes that felt more like an interruption to the story than a relevant insertion of important character material. Overall, I really felt that when everything was said and done, nothing ultimately got accomplished.

On the opposite spectrum, the acting was pretty good (with the exception of Paris Hilton, but her character was meant to be obnoxious and snobby, so not a huge stretch.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Anthony Stewart Head always impresses, especially when singing (see "Once More With Feeling.") One thing this movie has going for it is diversity. You've got Sarah Brightman and Paul Sorvino, both accomplished opera professionals and then Ogre, best known for his post-industrial act Skinny Puppy. Throw in Bill Mosely and the kid from Spy Kids (Alexa Vega, she pushed me out of the way after the screening and Q&A, she is short) and you've got the weirdest ensemble I've seen since Southland Tales.

While not great, I'm sure I'd be up for watching it again in a full room if the right amount of drinks were involved. Though, it's good to see movies like this are still being made. Whether it was well received or not, this is a labor of love on the filmmaker's parts and for better or worse, they got it done the way they wanted it to be. It's just not the cup of tea I ordered.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D

So it appears that kitschy cinema fad, 3-D has reared it's head to the moviegoing public yet again, and this time with a vengeance. Not since the early 1980's have there been this many flinch-inducing, headache machines being released in such a rapid succession. Starting with last year's Beowulf, this summer's line-up looks to be packed with image-poppery (Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens and Disney/Pixar's Up leading the charge,) though the most successful projects seem to only be animated. Thus far, I've only seen one of the two live-action 3-D movies to come out, and that movie was My Bloody Valentine.

Now, I must warn you. This movie is absolutely terrible. Possibly one of the worst movies I've ever seen. But I'll be damned if I didn't have the best time ever while hating this movie. There is absolutely no reason to see this movie unless you're in a theater with those ridiculously awkward glasses draped across your nose. The acting is shoddy, the plot is practically non-existent, the dialog is laughable, etc. etc. ad nauseum. While this makes for a terrible horror movie (or movie in general) this is almost the perfect comedy. Probably because no one knew they were making a comedy. It's quite possible I laughed harder at this movie than during Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express (key word, laugh AT, not WITH.) Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer should take notes from this MBV because this is what true parody looks like.

The plot is inconsequential, really. A bunch of teens get murdered at a party at a local mine (apparently, that's the only place to party in the middle of nowhere town that this takes place in.) Murderer wears a mining suit and mask, uses a pick-axe, we've seen it all before. Flashforward ten years or so, the "friends" that survived find themselves being stalked and murdered by a similar killer. Yes, it's THAT original (after all, this IS a remake, kind of.) The kills are many, the ending is cheap but let me tell you why this is so awesome.

Aside from the veritable buffet of laughs this flick serves up, the 3-D was absolutely awesome. There were several points where I found myself actually ducking in my seat to avoid being hit in the face by whatever the character just hurled toward the screen (eyeball, pistol, tiny yapping dog...) In addition to that kind of awesomeness, the scenes that did absolutely NOTHING for the 3-D aspect became that much more funny due to the fact that it makes you feel as if you're ACTUALLY a part of the mundane, contrived BS conversations and arguments the characters are laboriously trudging through.

Again, there is absolutely no reason to see this movie unless it's huge and 3-D. And two months after the fact, I say, good luck. Does Blu-Ray have 3-D capability? Let's hope so. And it might be cheaper than a movie theater considering they charge something like $2 for those stupidly clunky glasses.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

In development for years from a director that is shrouded in controversy and frustration, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button stumbled out from behind the curtain during the holiday season. Sadly, it just could not compete with the box-office draw of a yellow-lab puppy (if that's in fact the correct breed...) and was welcomed with lukewarm reception. Regardless, Benny Buttons managed to eke its way into my list of top films of the year on principle alone. Of everything I've seen in 2008 only this film and two others (Slumdog Millionaire, previously reviewed and Milk, review coming soon) evoked a purely visceral emotional response from me.

Using more of the lengthy narrative structure used in his 2006 sleeper hit Zodiac (a frustratingly brilliant film, I might add) Fincher captures the tragic futility and inherent beauty of the human lifespan, skewed from the eyes of a man who experiences it all backwards, and in a lot of ways more forward than anyone ever has. Drawing comparisons from screenwriter Eric Roth's previous work on Forrest Gump, which told the extraordinary story of a simple man, Button tells a similarly parallel tale of an extraordinary man who led a, more or less, simple life. The events in his life aren't groundbreaking moments in American history, but significant moments that make a person who they are, and Fincher captures it with heartbreakingly detailed precision. Drawing the parallels between childhood and old age, the similarities in mentality and the tragic contrast in seeing an old man with the curiousity and wonderment of a 6 year old and the sorrowful depiction of a small child grappling with all the fading memories that once made up who he once was.

A plethora of characters weave their way through Button's life. Benjamin's adoptive black mother, Queenie and her lover (though never husband) Tizzy. The swarthy tattooed sailor Captain Mike (executed brilliantly by Jared Harris, seen on recent episodes of FOX's sci-fi drama Fringe and 2002's Igby Goes Down) and the first person to take hold of Benjamin's heart, Elizabeth Abbott (his Burn After Reading co-star Tilda Swinton) to name a few.

Most notably in the film is Brad Pitt's transformation from a crippled and broken "old" man to the Pitt we've seen in such early 90's films as Thelma and Louise and Cool World (avoid the latter, for your own sake.) The early portion of the film achieving it's effects through the use of body actors and superimposing Pitt's face onto it (there may have been some CG tweaking to make him look extra geriatric.) After the CG scenes had run their course, the makeup for his 70's to late 30's was very well done. However, less talked about is the aging makeup and effects used on Cate Blanchett, who plays Button's lifelong love. Cast as Dakota Fanning's younger sister Elle in the first act, my only major complaint came from the fact that Blanchett's voice was used to overdub Elle's lines. Probably only executed to maintain some sort of familiarity with her later self, it came off as more distracting than anything else.

It's hard to tell what sort of moral Fincher (or adapted author F. Scott Fitzgerald) is trying to convey with this film. It can be taken a series of different ways. Most prominent are these two (a friend of mine read this somewhere, told me and I'm going to rehash it here.) This is a portrait of how beautiful life is when viewed from a different angle, or it is a testament to how tragic life can be, no matter which direction you live it.

Slumdog Millionaire

Unfortunately, I missed the advance screening of Danny Boyle's (Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Millions) latest pet project when it screened at the Virginia Film Festival back in October. Three months later it got a limited release and I was able to catch it at our local avant garde theater wishing I'd had a chance to see it on a bigger screen. Here is the conundrum that breaks my heart. How does a movie this well put together, poignantly delivered and even socially relevant get released on as few theaters as possible to the tiniest audience bracket when a blatant Hollywood pocket liner like "What Happens in Vegas," "Four Christmases" and whatever bullshit Larry the Cable Guy comes up with will release to scathing reviews and still take #1 at the box office? End Rant...

Slumdog Millionaire is a veritable art museum of cinematography and editing. Of course, this comes as no surprise as this tends to be one of veteran director Danny Boyle's trademarks. Genre experimentation has also been his strong suit during the course of his career. Adding his signature visual aesthetic to such genre pieces like 1999's underdog rom-com A Life Less Ordinary, the zombie-esque apocalypse horror film 28 Days Later (which he is currently rumored to be revisiting for the franchises 3rd outing 28 Months Later) and sci-fi mood epic Sunshine. This time he takes on Bollywood and nails it with seeming ease and precision.

Again rooting for the underdog (or Slumdog in this case,) Millionaire follows the extraordinary life of Jamal Malik. Orphaned at an extremely young age, the course of his life is established through a set of flashbacks incited by the trivia questions on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," on which he has been accused of cheating. After all, who would expect a formerly homeless orphan to know the increasingly difficult answers on the widely popular gameshow. And since this is Mumbai we're talking about, the treatment of the perpetrator is less than pleasant at times, so be ready for that, at least. Luckily, for the films benefit, it doesn't fall into a predictable pattern (question, flashback, question, flashback, etc. etc.) It sets the stage this way and then finds it's own growth and narrative structure, all the while making sure to leave no question unanswered (so to speak.)

Hopefully, Slumdog Millionaire will be able to walk away with an award or two this season. An admirable feat considering there's not a single recognizable face in the film (all Indian cast, completely unknown within the US filmgoing community.) So whether you're able to see it in a theater this winter, or have to hold off until it's domestic DVD release, be sure that this film is on your "to see..." list as soon as possible, it's worth the time/wait/whatever might be holding you back.

RockNRolla

There was a time when Guy Richie was on top of the world. He'd had a breakthrough success with his two bit petty thug crime comedy called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and the even more successful pseudo-follow up Snatch (you know, the one with Brad Pitt.) He even went as far as marrying Madonna. It was about this time that he and fellow producer Matthew Vaughn parted ways. Vaughn pursuing projects like Layer Cake (starring a pre-Bond Daniel Craig and the Neil Gaiman adaptation Stardust) and Richie going on to release Swept Away, starring his wife and Revolver, which was delayed for about 3 years and to this date, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who's actually seen it.

Returning to the well from which spawned his first two successes, RockNRolla, after much deliberation, is a particularly unfortunate spectacle. It seems Guy has come down with what I like to call "George Lucas Syndrome." A small amount of large scale success and the ego is inflated to elephantine proportions wherein a story editor or second or third draft are no longer necessary to efficiently tell a compelling story, resulting in sloppy narrative and self indulgent exposition. In short, I was BORED. That's right, bored. At a Guy Richie movie! In what kind of Bizarro universe does this happen? Though with an impending divorce, I may not be the only one to notice Richie is slipping.

First off is the pacing issue. Now, I'm all for building the mood and character in lieu of dispensing the action for the sake of the audience attention span, but the first hour of RockNRolla is convoluted at best and the exposition does little to move forward or even explain the plot. This would seem formulaic for a Guy Richie film, but his priors (Lock,Stock and Snatch) did it with a more endearing and entertaining quality that culminated in a 3rd act that revealed all loose ends to be lit fuses connected to the same stick of dynamite, which would promptly explode some time before the credits rolled. In RockNRolla, the seemingly unrelated characters and incidents remain unrelated and the plot threads never really mesh for the better part of an hour and a half and then they all get shoehorned into a finale showdown that seems forced and comes off uninteresting and kind of predictable. By the time anything really started to happen, I was more preoccupied with how hungry I was than what was happening onscreen. Either I should eat more often or I was a victim of bad storytelling.

The cast with impressive credentials does very little to impress here. They also have the trademark weirdo gang names. Gerard Butler (making yet another attempt to break into the mainstream without resorting to chick flicks) is a thug that might be gay. Tom Wilkinson has a thick accent and a bald head. Thandie Newton proves once again that she IS in fact British, and Jeremy Piven and Chris Bridges (aka Ludacris) play a couple of record producers with very little to do (apparently the tour was over and Entourage was between seasons.) Relative newcomer Toby Kebbell plays drug addled rocker Johnny Quid who also narrates the tale, for no other good reason than his thick accent, rippling abs on an emaciated skeleton and his pointless contribution to the 3rd act showdown.

I'd hate to think that Guy Richie's career was a fluke at best, but he's done nothing to prove otherwise in the last 8 years since Snatch hit the screen (though his former cohort Jason Statham has proven he can maintain muscletone and be smarmy in EVERYTHING.) With a new twist on the classic Sherlock Holmes on the way starring new fan favorite Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law we'll see if Guy Richie still has what it takes to be the cutting edge director he once was or if his ship has indeed sailed. However, the Ninja Sherlock Holmes he's been pitching sure doesn't bode well. At least RDJr's got another Iron Man in the works to soften the blow.

Quantum of Solace

2006 saw the rebirth of a classic franchise that had been molested repeatedly for close to ten years. The James Bond name became an eye-rolling Disney ride of a cartoon by the time it reached Pierce Brosnan's final chapter (and not a moment too soon, either.) Casino Royale came out the gates with not only a new face to the unmistakable name, but an entirely new feel. Gone were the gadgetry, hokey dialog and world-domination-bent mastermind super villains that have haunted Ian Fleming's slicker-than-thou spy. In it's place was a well put together adaptation of the original novel, updated to make sense in the 21st century and grounding our hero back to a more human playing field.

Since *spoiler warning* Casino ends on a relatively cliff-hangery moment, the sequel was more or less imminent (also taking into consideration the box office intake, it was damn near guaranteed.) Does Quantum of Solace live up to the standard re-set by Casino Royale? Yes and no. It really depends on what you're looking for. The casual aesthetic of Casino is absent in lieu of a more action oriented pace, as the central plot involves Bond carrying out a personal vendetta.

New 007 director Marc Forster (acclaimed director of Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and Stranger Than Fiction) gives the film a certain Bourne quality with some excessively kinetic action sequences (I'm still not sure if my confusion came from our unfortunate vicinity to the screen or just extremely shaky camerawork,) though what can be made out is some rather impressive and entertaining spy-violence. Basically picking up mere minutes where Casino left us ("Bond, James Bond..." Bad-ass...) Quantum carves the path of an agent on the verge of going rogue, torn between his loyalty to his country and his desire for a bloody revenge. And, of course, no 007 adventure is complete without the signature "Bond Girl," which even in this case moves away from type and instead of a strict love-interest/sidekick, Camille (played passably by the lovely Olga Kurylenko) acts as more of a skewed mirror image of Bond. Sometimes working together out of happenstance, though never actually working toward the same goal. Two opposing though similar means to an end, which is to say, there are technically two villains to dispatch (one with considerably more screen time than the other, for obvious reasons.) Dominic Greene (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Frenchman, Mathieu Amalric) is Bond's central target, a third world exploiting businessman with the temperment of a rabid hyena. Jeffrey Wright returns as American CIA agent Felix Leiter and 007's side source and of course, Dame Judy Dench as the cold, yet matronly M.

While sometimes a little confusing and a bit hard to piece together at times, Quantum of Solace is an ample follow up to a series reboot of Casino's magnitude (which was somewhere in the Batman Begins radius, though Quantum doesn't come close to The Dark Knight's sequel appeal, it does it's best.) There are some well placed and tasteful tributes to Ghosts Bond's Past, you may know them when you see them. While it's already debunked that the next installment will not be a further continuation of the Casino/Quantum arc, it's not a huge concern. If Casino Royale reinvented the Bond-Wheel, Quantum puts those wheels on a car, places an angry man behind the wheel and drives it through your living room wall.