The Spirit
Comic book writer Frank Miller (300, Sin City) makes his directorial debut with The Spirit, which is unfortunately a colossal misfire that will likely please only his most devoted fans.
Gabriel Macht plays The Spirit, an ex-cop who became a superhero after narrowly escaping a brush with death. He does battle with villains The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) and Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson) while also pursuing his former childhood flame Sand Saref (Eva Mendes). All of the characters are in pursuit of a mysterious vase.
The movie goes wrong in so many ways it’s hard to capture them all in a short review. In the leading role, Gabriel Macht is so devoid of charisma that he makes Al Gore seem like a cross between Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, and Robert Downey, Jr. Samuel L. Jackson mails in another one of his “I’M SAMUEL L. JACKSON!!!!” performances as the villain. Scarlett Johansson just looks bored.
The writing isn’t much better. Both hero and villain are nearly immortal and survive all sorts of things that would kill a person many times over, so it never really feels like much is at stake. The faux hard-boiled narration isn’t even good enough for a TV movie.
Even Seven Pounds is preferable to The Spirit, which is easily one of the worst films of the year.
Valkyrie
After the bloated monstrosity that was Superman Returns, director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) recovers with Valkyrie, a solid thriller about a failed attempt by German officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Tom Cruise plays a disillusioned German officer who is maimed in combat in North Africa. When he returns to an administrative job in Berlin, he is recruited by some superiors (Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy) to join a group that hopes to stage a coup and forge a truce with the Allies before it’s too late. The challenge is not just assassinating Hitler, but insuring that the military and reserves fall in line after the fact. The film starts slowly, but it gains momentum and increasing sense of dread as the assassination attempt occurs at about the halfway mark – a reasonably impressive achievement since viewers already know the ultimate outcome for the protagonists.
Happily, Cruise does not even attempt a German accent. All he does exhibit his innate movie star charisma, something that was easy to forget about in recent years with his distracting behavior off-screen. He doesn’t go for the Oscar, nor does anyone else in the film, but that’s fine. Everyone involved seems only interested in making a slick, efficient thriller based on actual events. And they succeed.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Milk & Seven Pounds....
Milk
In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, Gus Van Sant’s film Milk feels especially timely. It tells the story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the country’s first openly gay politician. In the 1970s, Milk was elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
Milk generally follows the conventional bio-pic template. That being said, it’s a good formula biopic. Penn does excellent work in the lead. Even though his performance is showy, it’s never overbearing. Ditto Gus Van Sant’s direction – his most recent films (especially Last Days) have been endurance tests, but he finds a way here to inject his own quirky visual sensibility into something that could have been a TV movie of the week in the wrong hands.
All in all, this is a well-made film about a man many people know very little about. And it serves as a bracing reminder of how far the gay rights movement has come and how far it still has to go.
Seven Pounds
It’s generally a bad sign when the climax of a movie that aims to be powerful and moving elicits more giggles than tears, but that’s the case with the new Will Smith showcase, Seven Pounds.
Smith plays a tormented IRS agent who decides to play the role of fairy godmother to an assortment of down-on-their-luck types (among them Rosario Dawson and Woody Harrelson). The film has a boatload of narrative problems. Chief among them is the fact that there is very little conflict in the film’s 120 minute running time. Smith just hops from good deed to good deed with virtually no obstacles blocking his path.
In addition to this, the film is coy about revealing the source of Smith’s torment. It aims to be a mystery, but it’s one that any non-comatose viewer could see coming from a mile away. As a result, Smith’s character development is virtually non-existent and viewers are left with an agonizingly slow moving film.
In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, Gus Van Sant’s film Milk feels especially timely. It tells the story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the country’s first openly gay politician. In the 1970s, Milk was elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
Milk generally follows the conventional bio-pic template. That being said, it’s a good formula biopic. Penn does excellent work in the lead. Even though his performance is showy, it’s never overbearing. Ditto Gus Van Sant’s direction – his most recent films (especially Last Days) have been endurance tests, but he finds a way here to inject his own quirky visual sensibility into something that could have been a TV movie of the week in the wrong hands.
All in all, this is a well-made film about a man many people know very little about. And it serves as a bracing reminder of how far the gay rights movement has come and how far it still has to go.
Seven Pounds
It’s generally a bad sign when the climax of a movie that aims to be powerful and moving elicits more giggles than tears, but that’s the case with the new Will Smith showcase, Seven Pounds.
Smith plays a tormented IRS agent who decides to play the role of fairy godmother to an assortment of down-on-their-luck types (among them Rosario Dawson and Woody Harrelson). The film has a boatload of narrative problems. Chief among them is the fact that there is very little conflict in the film’s 120 minute running time. Smith just hops from good deed to good deed with virtually no obstacles blocking his path.
In addition to this, the film is coy about revealing the source of Smith’s torment. It aims to be a mystery, but it’s one that any non-comatose viewer could see coming from a mile away. As a result, Smith’s character development is virtually non-existent and viewers are left with an agonizingly slow moving film.
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