A Tale of Four Movies

Hey everyone! I am beyond thrilled that good movies are finally entering the theatres after this bleakest of years for moviegoers. The past couple of weekends I've managed to see four of them. All I had looked forward to, unfortunately all were not worth the wait.

Syriana: After all the fantasy and adventure movies that have been out, I was ripe for a good political thriller. Syriana looked to fit the bill. Great cast, I thought. But I was a little hesitant that it was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, Oscar winner of Adapted Screenplay for Traffic, a movie I enjoyed but found overrated. Gaghan's win looked especially suspicious to me after seeing the original version of Traffic, a BBC miniseries about the UK’s war on opium with Afghanistan. Gaghan's version was basically just a rewrite subbing in the US and Mexico. Almost all of Gaghan's characters, flaws and all, were lifted directly from the original Traffic. He won his Oscar simply because he was a recovering drug addict who wrote a movie about the perils of the US war on drugs. The irony, you could practically hear all the Academy members sing! Gaghan then went on to write and direct the extremely bad Katie Holmes thriller, Abandon. Any thoughts that Abandon was some kind of sophomore slump were erased by Syriana. Yep, I hated it. I really hated it. And it's pretty much impossible to hate anything George Clooney is in, but I did. It wasn't the fact that he was bearded or overweight either. It was the fact that he was boooooooring (when we was even onscreen, because despite the previews he isn't even in it all that much). As was everyone else in the movie. They acted in some kind of emotional vacuum. Not a facial expression was seen for 95% of the movie. For the first 75 minutes absolutely nothing happens except for the knee-jerk outpouring of grief that results from the accidental death of a six year old. If all else fails, I guess killing a kid is the card you have to play. The movie picks up a bit when all parties descend on Beirut and an extremely graphic torture scene livens things up. Though it was so graphic, I covered my ears and hid in my coat, so I didn't get too much enjoyment out of it. If killing a child and torture weren’t going to do it, the only thing Gaghan could do to give Syriana some depth, some meaning, some gravitas was to make it deliberately confusing. Like Traffic, it follows around ten different characters all tenuously connected to the US obsession with oil. You've got the stock parts: evil oil executive, valiant CIA agent, selfish government bureaucrat who cares only for his talking points, poor embittered Islamist, and the deal-making out for himself lawyer. There was not one scene I marveled at or enjoyed in the movie. I could have dealt with the fact that it was blatantly anti-American (America uses lots of oil, ergo America is bad, ergo all the world’s problems lie at our feet even though we've only been around a measly 230 years. Forgive me, but I'll start paying attention to the proselytizing of Hollywood hotshots when they start turning down rides on gas guzzling private jets. Until then I'll continue driving my 10 year old Saab, recycling every bizarre item Thomas comes up with (e.g., yesterday I recycled the paperboard aluminum foil container and diligently detached and disposed of the teeth-edged tin cutting strip. I was later informed by Thomas that this strip should have gone in with the aluminum cans. Who knew?) and sleeping well at night)), had Syriana not been dull as dirt. Rating: Must be paid to see.

Aeon Flux: A few years ago Thomas introduced me to MTV's animated show and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Aeon was extremely visually creative and just could not be called a cartoon. That didn't cover it. We were both excited when we heard Charlize Theron would be starring in the movie version. We realized something was amiss when the movie was not released for critics, but that didn't stop us from going. It probably should have. Where the animated tv show was visually creative, the movie, not so much. It felt like I was watching some combination of a dream and a videogame. The set up for Aeon Flux is a bit Oryx and Crakeish and timely thanks to the media's obsession with the Asian bird flu: A disease wipes out most of the world's population. A cure is finally found and the remaining survivors all live in a Utopian enclosed community. Weird things start happening, people have flashbacks that make no sense and others disappear entirely. A rebel group, including Aeon, forms to fight the government. Theron does have chemistry with relative unknown Martin Csokas who plays the leader of the government and shares a mysterious past with Aeon. Some of the visuals in the movie were interesting, the sets had a kind of Japanese elegance, but the special effects were just plain weird and v unrealistic. I cannot recommend Aeon as I was bored by a good bit of it (though not as bored as I was in Syriana). Rating: Wait for cable

Chronicles of Narnia: Like most people who read the Chronicles of Narnia as a child, they remain some of my all time favorite children's books. And after seeing previews for the film, I absolutely could not wait to see the movie. Thomas and I caught a Saturday matinee and I was thrilled that we did. The movie follows the book to the letter. The characters, the sets and the plot are uncanny in their ability to replicate what I imagined from the book. The four human siblings who visit and must then save Narnia are all very convincing. Edmund is a little jerk from the start and Lucy captures your heart and holds it with a surprisingly nuanced performance for a nine year old. Given that the movie is targeted at children, I was afraid they'd cheat us on the ending battle scene, but instead the last thirty minutes were my favorite part. They manage to capture the urgency of the situation. However, there were a couple of things that kept Narnia from being this year's LOTR. As stated above, the movie is definitely aimed at kids, kind of like the first 2 Harry Potter movies. And because of this, I got a little bored in the middle. It doesn't help that the movie is 2.5 hours long. Narnia could have been tighter and the boredom factor would have been eliminated. But I think they really wanted to be true to the book and not cut a lot. So I can understand. My other objection is with the White Witch played by Tilda Swinton. I thought Swinton was perfectly cast in this role and she does look the part. But she just wasn't that scary. Nowhere near as terrifying as Sauron from LOTR or even the Queen from Snow White. They need to up the fear factor on future movies. What I really would have loved is to have seen this movie at age ten. I'm betting my ten-year-old self would be utterly enthralled. Unfortunately, I don't run with too many ten year olds, so I can't confirm their appreciation of the film, though the ones in the theatre with us seemed to really enjoy it. And Narnia had a $108.8 million dollar world wide box office opening this weekend, second only to the final LOTR for a December weekend, so I think we can be assured that they will be filming the other six books. You can bet I’ll be in line for them. Rating: Matinee

Pride & Prejudice: Of the four movies I saw in the past two weeks, there's only one that I am tempted to return to immediately: Pride & Prejudice. However, I am just as tempted to rent the BBC version and curl up on the couch for six straight hours watching it. I don't know what it is about this particular story that I just can't get enough of. They could make ten versions of it a year and I would go see them all. Let me start out by saying that the BBC mini-series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (paired both on and off screen during filming, resulting in all that lovely chemistry) is the definitive filmed version of the book. The story requires six hours to capture all the narrative and nuances in Austen's work. And no actor ever has or will embody Darcy like Firth. Ask any woman who's seen it and you'll get an earful. Jen and I went to see the latest P&P directed by newcomer Joe Wright last Sunday. It enthralled me from the get go. I've liked Keira Knightley ever since Bend it Like Beckham, but I was a little worried about her ability to be Elizabeth Bennet, one of the best roles of all time. However, Knightley handily portrayed Elizabeth's wit, amusement, loyalty, pride and yes, prejudice. She was a wonderful Elizabeth. Matthew McFayden starred as Darcy and this could not have been an easy role for anyone to take given the public's abject love and devotion to Firth. And it must be said that McFayden is not the best looking guy to be seen in front of the camera. His was a very brooding Darcy, fortuitously balanced by the equal amount of passion beneath the brooding. There was great chemistry between the two leads. Whenever one is anywhere in the vicinity of the other, the antagonism/attraction is palpable. The other standout in P&P was Donald Sutherland as Elizabeth's father, Mr. Bennet. His is now the ultimate Mr. Bennet. His love for his daughters (especially Elizabeth) and his crass, overly dramatic wife is apparent. But Sutherland does a brilliant job at making known Bennet's flaws as well. The two actors playing Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley are also very good and good looking. Due to the length of the movie, many parts had to be cut down dramatically, particularly that of the evil Mr. Wickham and his effect on the Bennett family. For the most part the directing was well done. There are some amazing scenes of the English countryside and the director went out of his way to make his version more realistic. Befitting their financial situation, the girls' dresses are not so fine and the county balls are more rough-hewn. I personally like the pretty dresses, so this desire towards realism didn't really improve things for me. The director also tried a few fancy camera tricks that succeeded only in distracting me. But these are mere quibbles. The meat of P&P - the story of Elizabeth and Darcy - is all there and wonderful. It definitely sated this Austenatic's appetite for a short while. Rating: Night time movie

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: No war. No KKK. No fascist USA!

-sunday