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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Well, it's better than "Temple of Doom," anyway...
Arriving 19 years after the last Indy installment ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"), this going-through-the-motions slog proves that everyone involved should have quit while they were ahead. Star Harrison Ford is now a frequently grumpy old man who seems more annoyed than adventurous. Director Steven Spielberg seems to have forgotten how to make a story engaging, relying instead on audience goodwill and nostalgia ("Hey, look, he brought back Karen Allen, and she's still feisty!"). The special effects are much more lavish, but at the expense of making many of the stunts here look utterly unbelievable (not one but three plunges off skyscraper-high waterfalls) instead of only cartoonishly exaggerated.
Also, the utterly illogical screenplay occasionally seems cobbled together from segments of spec scripts that may have made for better movies with different main characters. The opening bit on a nuclear test range, and the way Indy escapes annihilation there, seems to belong in a sequel to "Crank." A depressingly dour interrogation segment in which red-hunting FBI agents insult Indy and question the medals he won as a WW2 OSS officer feels like a heavy-handed, hammered-in allegory to today's Bush administration security state.
Worst of all, this movie's idiotic ending is sci-fi stupidity that literally makes no sense whatsoever. It's impossible to reconstruct a set of circumstances that would make the plot work. For one thing, we're apparently dealing here with all-powerful god-like beings who somehow can't even manage to keep someone from stealing one of their friggin' heads.
Shia LaBeouf isn't bad as Indy's is-he-or-isn't-he son. (Thankfully, that mystery is resolved sooner rather than later.) Cate Blanchett, in a pageboy black wig, pretty much plays things straight as a Russian military officer with a psychic bent that never amounts to anything. Allen is just kind of embarrassing as the 40-something version of her Marion Ravenwood character from the first Indy movie. Her banter with Ford here has a forced "reunion show" deliberateness instead of playfulness.
As the credits rolled, I still was sort of waiting for an actual story to kick in. That's because this movie feels more like an elaborate video game with successive levels of difficulty, rather than the tale of the charming guy who is facing those challenges.
Will it be possible for Spielberg and Ford to bounce back from this disappointing misfire with a fifth Indy flick, the way they recovered from the abysmally awful "Temple of Doom" with the likably lighthearted "Last Crusade?" As they used to say in the serials, stay tuned!
Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
Garth Ennis Comics Fans Will LOVE This Movie
In this deliriously over-the-top masterpiece of outrageously clever mayhem, star Clive Owen is an unstoppable good-guy gunman who is given to asking the question "you know what I hate?" immediately before letting all hell break loose.
You know what I hate? Dishonest, hypocritical reviewers like the one sitting two seats away from me at the "Shoot 'Em Up" screening I attended. Although he made amused grunts and other appreciative noises during the deliciously inventive stunts, laughed out loud at the jokes, gasped and groaned at all the right gasp-and-groan-worthy places, and generally appeared to be having a grand old time, he said afterward that he didn't like the movie.
What the hell is wrong with critics like that? Are they afraid the art-house crowd won't take them seriously if they express appreciation for a film in which a newborn's umbilical cord is cut with a gunshot, or a thug gets killed by having a carrot shoved in his mouth and out the back of his head? What, you mean Bergman or Antonioni never filmed a lactating hooker tearing out a ring from a Marilyn Manson lookalike's "personal area" to convince him to talk?
Ahem.
Although the posters for "Shoot 'Em Up" resemble Frank Miller comic-book drawings come to life, the actual movie has more in common with the work of another comic-book great: Garth Ennis, writer of such jaw-droppingly hyper-violent heroes as Marvel's the Punisher. (Although the awful 2004 "Punisher" movie included some supporting characters and plot points that originated with Ennis, it lacked anything resembling his very dark yet fiercely entertaining style. The guy definitely has a way of making vigilantes and their dangerous toys fascinating.)
Owen plays Mr. Smith -- and that's probably not his real name -- a guy who is simply waiting for a bus when he gets drawn into one of the wildest, most crazy-violent action opening scenes of all time. By the time the bullets stop flying, Smith is on the run with a complete stranger's targeted-for-death baby and one hell of a lot of questions.
Smith enlists a kinky "got milk" hooker (Monica Bellucci) to wet-nurse the infant. Despite some tough talk, she turns out to be more placidly sensual and maternal than kick-ass tomboy, which makes for a nice change in this kind of movie.
Meanwhile, a sadistically evil genius appropriately named Hertz (Paul Giamatti) dogs their trail with a never-ending army of hired killers and, yes, a couple of dogs. Giamatti scores as this badass with brains, who is shocked and hilariously furious about how Smith & Company keep managing to survive. "Do we suck this bad," he says at one point, "or is this guy really that good?"
Writer/director Michael Davis has loaded the film with one unforgettably imaginative image after another: spent shell casings bouncing off a pregnant woman's stomach, a gun dropping in an unflushed toilet, a hand with bullets between the fingers shoved into a fireplace as an improvised weapon. There are showdowns, standoffs, car chases, airborne gun battles and even a shootout in a firearms factory.
Best of all, the screenplay manages to both glorify in and yet subvert some of the things you'll be expecting. For example, it's a mega-body-count, blizzard-of-bullets barrage that's actually a plea for gun control at heart. Seriously. Also, although it has scenes referencing bits from movies as diverse as "Lost Highway," "The Transporter" and even "Raising Arizona" (how's that for range?), it still feels fresh and original.
And there's one perfectly done little scene that's so poignant you may actually find yourself tearing up. Don't worry, though -- a hail of gunfire follows very shortly thereafter. Heck, a hail of gunfire follows shortly after EVERYTHING in this movie, usually including other hails of gunfire!
I can't wait to see what relative newcomer Michael Davis does for his next movie, but it will be hard for him to top this one. "Shoot 'Em Up" is a flat-out joy to watch. When it was over, the first thing I said was, "I want to see this movie again RIGHT NOW!" It's that good!
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)
An Absolute Masterpiece
As of November 12, this elegantly simple and quietly beautiful movie about a meek and dejected teenage girl who becomes the maid of painter Johannes Vermeer in 1665 is my favorite movie of 2003.
That slot previously was held by "Lost in Translation." Scarlett Johansson stars in both movies, providing understated but utterly convincing portrayals of sad characters briefly awakened from resigned hopelessness by older men. Although her characters in both movies share a certain melancholy, their circumstances could not be more different.
In "Lost in Translation," Johansson's fleeting luxury-Tokyo-hotel friendship with a burned-out movie star (Bill Murray) raises her spirits while she is being ignored by her rock-star-photographer husband. She is the exact opposite of moneyed and educated in "Girl With a Pearl Earring," toiling as an illiterate bottom-rung member of Vermeer's household staff because she has to support her mother and her blind father. (Although the story is entirely fictional, its details are so convincing that you never will look at the actual painting the same way again.)
Johansson's daily drudgery in "Girl With a Pearl Earring" is broken only by the confused feelings she has for the handsome but tight-lipped painter and for his art. Her reluctance to act upon those feelings, or even to speak (in what is nearly a silent performance), gives the movie a tension that manages to be heartbreaking without once devolving into sappy melodrama. Even though the basic plot here admittedly sounds like the stuff of cheap romance ("SHE INSPIRED HIM TO PAINT...WITH THE COLORS OF LOVE!"), it is played so honestly that it overcomes its time-worn genre trappings to seem fresh and genuine. There is a reason why this kind of yearning/denial/resolution stuff has worked for a couple of millennia, after all. "Girl With a Pearl Earring" director Peter Webber finds the classic in what so often is rendered as cloying or cliche.
This also is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful movies ever filmed, with cinematography so lush and lighting so flawlessly lovely that I wondered if John ("Barry Lyndon") Alcott had come back from the dead. Nearly every frame could be a page in a picture book, but the images go beyond mere prettiness. Lingering shots of Johansson's silently radiant face, of Vermeer's studio sanctuary, of a golden canal pathway, of a candle-lit 17th-century drawing room...they are like images from dreams, full of mystery and portent. Director of Photography Eduardo Serra should win the Oscar in a walk, if there is any justice in this world.
The movie's score was composed by Alexandre Desplat, and must be singled out for avoiding easy cliches as artfully as the plot itself does. That is not to say the music is in any way cold or remote, however; it's the difference between cheap sentiment and emotional honesty. There are moments when the combination of image and music will make you get misty, but you won't feel as if you've been crudely goosed or tear-jerked-off. The final shot of the movie literally made tears run down my jaded, cynical face, but it was a case of being deeply touched, not sucker-punched. (And I'm a big enough man to admit it...sniff...)
If possible, make the effort to see this movie in a theatre. Even the biggest home-video plasma monitor cannot possibly give you the total-immersion thrill of seeing this amazingly beautiful masterpiece on the big screen. It's the difference between admiring a framed masterwork in a museum gallery versus seeing it on a postcard in the museum gift shop.