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dudleynomore
Reviews
Pretty Baby (1978)
Why this really is actually just child porn
The nudity doesn't ultimately add anything to the story (hence porn) and the nudity in question is of a child (hence child porn). If the movie was exactly the same but the lead actress was older, no one would make the argument that the nudity added anything, because the whole point of it is the added impact it makes thanks to Brooke Shields being twelve. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Giving the film-makers the benefit of the doubt, it seems to assume we're going to have a particular reaction to child nudity, something like "oh no, how awful it was for children in that situation back then!" But all the truly unpleasant abuse has to occur off-screen for obvious reasons, so any dramatic impact is toothless. None of the nudity is placed within a context that forces the audience to confront how awful it is, on the contrary it's all supremely tasteful, partly thanks to the whitewashed characterization of the most artificially appealing pedophile in cinema history, Bellocq. And by using real child nudity in an attempt to demonstrate how exploitative of children people were back then, the film ignores its own message.
It doesn't help that there effectively is no story. There's almost no focus on what Violet is actually feeling at all, instead there's an alternation between scenes where she acts like a child and scenes where she earns her keep as a prostitute. I got the impression I was supposed to sympathize with the character solely because she was a child in a sh!tty situation, not because the writers gave her interesting traits, or at the very least, conveyed an impression of how she saw the world.
We could argue how to define porn, of course, but I don't think that's difficult: it's where the nudity is the point. If this movie hadn't had Brooke Shields naked no one would even remember it, as there's little dramatic content and no plot. The main character has, from beginning to end, no ultimate control over her fate - and regardless of how realistic that is it still makes for a lousy story. If they had made the narrative more character-based, so it hinged on something that Violet could have some influence over, perhaps a story about a child prostitute in this era could have worked... but not like this.
1/10, one of the most pathetically misguided art-house exploitation flicks ever.
The Departed (2006)
Inferior remake
Marty, Marty, Marty, what has become of you? People are saying this is going to win him Best Director? Oh, dear. Here's a spoiler-free list of some of the horribly clichéd or absurd things you can expect from this remake of Hong Kong film INFERNAL AFFAIRS.
This movie is all about psychological complexity. Which is why they have Matt Damon insulting a bunch of firemen near the beginning: "You're a bunch of homos!" he shouts. Leo's character is a down-on-his-luck kid with no family support network. It's so complex, you can't tell who the filmmakers want you to feel sympathy for.
Remember how Braveheart ended by implying that Mel Gibson may have fathered a child who would later be raised by the estranged wife of one of the bad guys? That happens.
At the bleakly dramatic climax, Mark Whalburg shows up wearing a hairnet. It looks ludicrous.
Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb crops up on the soundtrack - but at perhaps the most intimate, sincere moment in the movie, so that the lyrics wind up being completely out-of-context.
At one point Martin Sheen's character, in fear of his life, has to bluff his way into an elevator past some thugs, which he does by pretending to be an innocent passer-by. In the original the scene was set in an apartment block where people might be coming and going all day, so this very nearly works. Here, the scene is in an abandoned building, and his actions make no sense. At all.
A criminal mole in the police force decides to marry a psychiatrist who specializes in treating the police.
Matt Damon has just personally shot someone. While he's standing there, he takes a call from the guy's girlfriend. "He's been shot" Matt tells her. Oooookay.
You know the guy Matt shoots, who he was there specifically to shoot? Matt waits for the guy to shoot first before doing anything. Like in a bad Western.
Leo, the undercover cop, feeds Martin Sheen information by text messaging him whilst there are highly tense, alert criminals standing all around him. Don't worry, he leans behind a pillar so that no one notices. What a pity the original film didn't have a cool way of doing this that would have made more sense.
You get the idea. One thing I would never criticize is the acting, which is just fine across the board, unsurprisingly considering the expensive cast. Jack and Ray are always fun, especially together. The cinematography is boring but the dialogue is entertaining; it's just that the story is mangled and it takes a ridiculous amount of time for anything to happen. It's as if 'Marty' couldn't decide who he wanted the film to be about Jack's character, the plot, Catholicism, or Boston itself so he just put everything in and we end up waiting an extra hour for the same things to happen. I've avoided mentioning the absurd, hamfistedly 'manipulative' final shot, or something else about what happens to Leo, because I don't want to spoil the ending.
Watch the original instead, it's better in every way and 50 minutes shorter.
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The religious movie even an atheist can love
Obvious words of warning apply: this movie almost certainly bears as much resemblance to anything that actually happened as THE LORD OF THE RINGS does to the history of Western Europe.
The glory of this film is the way the primary-colour costumes, huge sets, magnificently portentous (but often very poetic and witty) dialogue, the special effects and the acting, manage to make believing in God seem like so much *FUN* that even I, as a Proper Atheist, finished up thinking "wow, the Bible sure has some pretty great stories in it". Note also how Mose's change from concerned member of the nobility to instrument of The Lord is traced with proper attention to every stage of the transformation until the burning bush, he's always the cautious skeptic who wants to believe, but follows the path of righteousness from the conscious choice of his heart rather than through blind religious zeal. It makes his emergence as Gandalf the White in the second half seem *so* much more earned, that I found I could cheer wholeheartedly for a character which might easily have felt two-dimensional.
This film is a better advert for Christianity than a thousand dry-as-dust Sunday School lessons. THE PASSION OF THE Christ (which, don't get me wrong, was a decent retelling of the last day of Jesus and much more 'realist' than this) doesn't come close.
Donnie Darko (2001)
It's Emperor's New Clothes Time!
SPOILERS
The people who are twisting themselves in knots trying to analyse the 'philosophy' of this movie belong in the same group as those who try to divine the meaning behind the Matrix films. Read some actual philosophy, for Christ's sake, or watch classic Art movies which engage with ideas in a coherant manner, instead of getting excited soley because a movie was made recently, marketed to your age group, and is associated with a hit single. The reality is that this is the best recent example of a pop-cultural product which is popular ONLY because it's pitched as arty and difficult to understand.
There's nothing to understand. None of the sub-plots (the infomercial guy, the *beep* about Grahame Greene, or wormholes, or the other stuff about censorship) have anything to do with the central plot about Frank, Donnie and his girlfriend. They are included to create the illusion that this movie has a message, when there is really nothing there. All of the anti-censorship arguments have been made far more effectively before, in movies dedicated to that theme; none of the other stuff links together or goes anywhere.
The plot twists in the sub-plots are all tediously obvious, as are the character's attitudes to them (like Donnie immediately seeing that Jim Cunningham is the antichrist - and look, he's found to be a pederast! Or the whole thing about Drew Barrymore's character being a saint crushed by a repressive system, or the street thug dudes, who walk into the film, gurn a bit, threaten Don with a knife, then walk out again until they're needed later). The plot twists in the main plot all come totally out of the blue by using the supernatural cop-out clause as permission for the story to go in any direction it likes. When movies like Godsend do that, everyone rightly points out how stupid it is. But then, Godsend isn't regarded as Art.
Idiots.
The worst part is the way this film wastes it's one original idea - the concept of a disturbed teenager who can see a 6' apocalyptic bunny rabbit. Wouldn't it have been great if Frank had been kept mysterious, or turned out to be some kind of demon with a direct, properly explained role in the plot? No, he takes his bunny head off halfway through, and is shown to be merely a guy in a suit who drives a car over someone at a key moment.
You need to watch more movies, people.
Stand by Me (1986)
Here are the flaws
This is a beautifully shot, very entertaining movie that everyone should watch at least once. I've given it an 8. It is also a movie which bears absolutely no resemblance to reality on any level. Loads has been said about the wonderful acting (Wheaton's and Sutherland's performances carry the movie), the excellence of the simply told story, the great one-liners, etc, so I declare that this review will focus entirely on what sucks. This is one of the cases where Stephen King, master of the dark side, whose work is sometimes but mostly not outshone by the film adaptions, was more truthful with his version.
Nothing very much happens that has any concrete repercussions in this movie - with one exception. Gordie persuades Chris to work hard at school. Chris does and becomes a successful lawyer. Chris dies wretchedly after being stabbed in a restaurant. The movie needn't have branded Gordie as being 'responsible', the point is not that Gordie murders Chris - the point in the original book is that horrendously tragic things have a habit of happening whatever you do. The failure of Gordie's attempt to save his friend is *the* key event of the book - which is why Vern and Ted die in that version. They don't die in the film (the correct decision), but the filmmakers totally glossed over this aspect. As a result, it doesn't remotely feel like Chris's character has died at the end of the film; we never see, say, a photo in the paper, of what he looked like grown up, and there's no sense of loss, because the movie concerns itself entirely with childhood. It would be easy to get heavy handed with this kind of thing (King, in fact, often, goes OTT in his fiction) but really, the movie treats the whole thing with kid gloves. There's no sense of the real darkness and terror of childhood whatsoever.
There are a couple of technical problems. The actor playing Ted looks too old when he's got his glasses off (he's was 14, Phoenix was 15). More serious is the cop out with the body itself - the body is not that of a child at all, he looks 15 at the youngest. This seriously reduced the emotional impact of that part of the story for me - the book was subtitled "Fall from innocence". If The Body itself looks as much like an adult as an innocent, what kind of falling happens? The deer scene also bugged me because I read the book first - the deer stands about three feet away from him, for God's sake! Wild animals just don't behave like that, and it wasn't necessary for the scene at all. Less important is the one fairly large plot hole: that, as Ace and co have a car, there's no reason why they couldn't just drive back into town and reveal the location of the body, get the glory, etc, long before the boys walk back.
Ultimately, though, this film succeeds in it's mission of appearing to say something deep in as nostalgic a way as possible. Cute children undergoing serious physical and emotional trials is one of the things the cinema was invented to depict (see Night Of The Hunter, E.T., Schindler's List, etc), and Will Wheaton's amazing cuteness is more than up to the job.
The Cooler (2003)
Horrific indie morass
This is one of those films that gets praised solely because, supposedly, it depicts 'real' characters, with 'real', everyday problems (loneliness, insolvency, antipathy to change), takes an extremely long time to tell what story there is, and has nice cinematography. Thanks to the description of it I read in a magazine, I expected a well-done, ironic supernatural fable a la Groundhog Day, with Macy *cursed* with good luck... but no explanation for the central idea of the film is ever given; there's no moral - unless 'getting off with Maria Bello might be good for a fella' qualifies. The characters are all either totally one dimensional (Macy's son and his pregnant girlfriend are tediously loathsome to show what a swell guy Macy is; Macy's character is at first lonely and boring then besotted and boring; the relatively likeable young casino entrepreneur is always sensible), or behave in an unmotivated manner to push some point of the screenplay, as when we're supposed to sympathise with Baldwin for opposing the improvement of his casino because of his entirely sentimental nostalgia for the old days. There are scenes where characters spin out their life stories without dramatisation. There's a horrible scene where I thought Maria Bello was crying and it turned out she was supposed to be having an orgasm. There's Sorvino's 'aging lion' speech, possibly the most pathetically trite attempt at a metaphor I've ever heard. And you get to see William H. Macy, a wonderful actor who happens to be 54 years old, naked! Grab your popcorn, folks!
Io non ho paura (2003)
Good, but doesn't quite achieved what it aimed for
This is what you might term an example of 'trying too hard' film-making, or rather one where the focus of the movie, the story itself, sometimes gets lost behind a lot of European/Arty conceits. The hook (boy finds other boy chained up down a hole) and the way it's developed are both great - a wonderful idea for a movie, the child-acting is spot on all the way through, the flawed adult characters are no less well-acted, and not significantly less likable for being flawed, and yet this film still drags for large sections - I kept getting the impression that tension which should have been introduced had failed to materialise. What there is comes from the sheer cuteness of the children - in particular, the innocent appearance of the hero's sister and little boy in the hole both make you feel deeply concerned for the characters: we are seeing naivete struggling to survive in places it should never have been put. The best scene for me is when the hero and the victim manage to have an ordinary conversation about school ("What grade are you in?") while they're at the bottom of the hole. It's a pity the director couldn't create this kind of effect more often - that scene is certainly more convincing than the poor prisoner's earlier gibbering about raccoons. Raccoons live in holes, you see. Get it?
This is the real problem with this movie - what should have been a simple story is artificially complicated by the most irritating of art-house trappings: Obvious Symbolism; and its retarded Hollywood cousin, the Heavy-Handed Movie Reference. We get vultures (or possibly eagles) circling overhead. We get vast landscapes stretching into the distance symbolizing the freedom of childhood, and by extension, its absence. We get 10-year-old pseudo comic-book poetry readings, which dramatize our hero's efforts to understand his family's insoluble situation in an implausible literary style. On a couple of a occasions, we go straight from a scene where our hero sits in the hole with his new fiend, sad and sympathetic, to one where he is running around ecstatically in the fields. This is presumably intended to show the emotional flexibility of children; instead it seems out-of-character and seems to blur our picture of his understanding of events, because throughout the rest of the film he seems to perceive everything very intelligently.
The worst of this is at least two very obvious and pointless references to Night Of The Hunter - in one the little girl submerges her Barbie doll in a trough, recalling Shelley Winters' water-bound death in that movie; in the other, our hero rides his bike past a bunch of animals on the way to the final showdown, a reference to the famous boat ride. These add nothing, and it's very hard to understand why they were included - the plots of "...Hunter" and "...Scared" share hardly any features at all except the use of children as protagonists, and in the case of the bike-ride I was pulled out of the movie at exactly the time when I should have been most involved. It's also worth noting that Night Of Hunter managed to tell a more complicated story in 93 minutes, while I'm Not Scared takes 108. I wonder how long this (perfectly good) film would be if it had been told in as efficient a manner. 7/10.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Highly flawed, but still very good
HUGE SPOILERS
If I were to list all the problems I had with this film, my review would be 5000 words long. TTT is much faster paced than Fellowship, in fact, it's probably paced too quickly, because it starts to feel choppy. This is not helped by the fact that only one of the storylines works all of the time (Gollem being the most consistently well-written character in the film), and that one storyline (the Ents) could probably have done with being stuck off-screen for more of the movie, with some scenes being blended into one. The final battle in Helm's Deep suffers from vast tone problems; the arming of the children during the buildup suggests that PJ is going for helpless dread, but during the fighting Gimli constantly spouts comic relief, and there's a frankly ludicrous bit with an orc that carries the Olympic torch (Orcs having apparently not invented matches or fuses). It doesn't help that whenever the battle really gets going, we always seem to cut away to the Ent storyline.
The script is patchy to say the least - there is a whole subplot involving the "common folk" of Rohan which contains not one single good line (at one point someone says "Where's mummy?"). Theodin gets some inferior character development, but I loved the 'exorcism' scene.
One major story problem is that throughout the film we encounter Sauron's forces only four times (two Nazgul attacks, two columns of troops), with the majority of the fighting being against the forces of Saruman. This means that the weight of the impending doom comes entirely from Saruman. By the end of the film, Saruman has been almost completely defeated, and because Sauron's might simply hasn't had enough screen time (bizarre fact: all the troops Sam and Frodo see seem to be marching AWAY from the goodies) the characters throughout the film are forced to constantly remind us that all is probably lost. This culminates with an extended speech from Sean Astin which unfortunately just winds up being corny - by that stage only in the Sam/Frodo/Gollem storyline are there any enemies immediately threatening the heroes.
I was disappointed to see only an incomplete version of Gandalf's fight with the Balrog - the part we see at the beginning is in all ways absolutely first class, but when it is concluded later it misses a huge section and skips straight to the top of the mountain. It should have been one of the most awesome fight scenes ever filmed. Generally, I thought the film used too much footage direct from FOTR to represent memories and flashbacks - not enough was filmed from different angles to make it fresh, even when the scene itself was great. And did we really need TWO dream sequences involving Arwen?
What is most astonishing about this film is how we get hardly any distance into the story. At the end, Saruman is still in his tower, and Sam and Frodo are yet to set foot in Morgul Vale. Unless Jackson is extremely careful, ROTK risks winding up a bullet-paced mess as he attempts to fit all the remaining story into the film. Nevertheless, this episode is often hugely enjoyable and even exhilarating; especially, any scene with Gollem is wonderful, despite the occasional tendency to make him look 'cute'. It might have a list of problems as long as my arm, but this is still rousing stuff.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Highly flawed, but still very good
HUGE SPOILERS
If I were to list all the problems I had with this film, my review would be 5000 words long. TTT is much faster paced than Fellowship, in fact, it's probably paced too quickly, because it starts to feel choppy. This is not helped by the fact that only one of the storylines works all of the time (Gollem being the most consistently well-written character in the film), and that one storyline (the Ents) could probably have done with being stuck off-screen for more of the movie, with some scenes being blended into one. The final battle in Helm's Deep suffers from vast tone problems; the arming of the children during the buildup suggests that PJ is going for helpless dread, but during the fighting Gimli constantly spouts comic relief, and there's a frankly ludicrous bit with an orc that carries the Olympic torch (Orcs having apparently not invented matches or fuses). It doesn't help that whenever the battle really gets going, we always seem to cut away to the Ent storyline.
The script is patchy to say the least - there is a whole subplot involving the "common folk" of Rohan which contains not one single good line (at one point someone says "Where's mummy?"). Theodin gets some inferior character development, but I loved the 'exorcism' scene.
One major story problem is that throughout the film we encounter Sauron's forces only four times (two Nazgul attacks, two columns of troops), with the majority of the fighting being against the forces of Saruman. This means that the weight of the impending doom comes entirely from Saruman. By the end of the film, Saruman has been almost completely defeated, and because Sauron's might simply hasn't had enough screen time (bizarre fact: all the troops Sam and Frodo see seem to be marching AWAY from the goodies) the characters throughout the film are forced to constantly remind us that all is probably lost. This culminates with an extended speech from Sean Astin which unfortunately just winds up being corny - by that stage only in the Sam/Frodo/Gollem storyline are there any enemies immediately threatening the heroes.
I was disappointed to see only an incomplete version of Gandalf's fight with the Balrog - the part we see at the beginning is in all ways absolutely first class, but when it is concluded later it misses a huge section and skips straight to the top of the mountain. It should have been one of the most awesome fight scenes ever filmed. Generally, I thought the film used too much footage direct from FOTR to represent memories and flashbacks - not enough was filmed from different angles to make it fresh, even when the scene itself was great. And did we really need TWO dream sequences involving Arwen?
What is most astonishing about this film is how we get hardly any distance into the story. At the end, Saruman is still in his tower, and Sam and Frodo are yet to set foot in Morgul Vale. Unless Jackson is extremely careful, ROTK risks winding up a bullet-paced mess as he attempts to fit all the remaining story into the film. Nevertheless, this episode is often hugely enjoyable and even exhilarating; especially, any scene with Gollem is wonderful, despite the occasional tendency to make him look 'cute'. It might have a list of problems as long as my arm, but this is still rousing stuff.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Passable entertainment
People have been saying this is better than the last instalment, and they're right. But it's still only average. I could write a small book on the stupid plot problems of this film (although many are also problems with the book). SPOILERS. If Harry has an invisibility cloak, why do he and Ron need to disguise themselves to get information out of anybody? Can't they just follow them around? If the first victim of the basilisk wasn't killed or injured (and it didn't even kill a squidding cat - I'm so scared), where did the blood which was painted on the wall come from? Why wasn't the phoenix affected by the basilisk's gaze, and wasn't it convenient when Tom Riddle TOLD Harry it had been blinded? Wasn't it great how Tom Riddle EXPLAINED everything to Harry? Convenient also how Harry was able to pull a sword we'd not previously been told about out of the hat - he'd have been completely screwed otherwise. Phew. How come no-one else could hear the basilisk hissing from the pipes if Harry could hear it well enough to understand?
And now a list: The basilisk was rubbish and looked too much like a snake. Dobby was irritating, although not as irritating as I expected. The Quidditch match was way OTT. The flying car/train action sequence was pointless. The phoenix looked CGI, as did the pixies. Yawn.
The acting was better this time (especially the child acting, although there were still problems). Kenneth Branaugh was great. Richard Harris was great as well, sooo much better than last time. None of the other veterans got time to do anything, although in a film this length that's a necessary sacrifice. The editing was much better near the beginning of the film, but then it went back to the slow pacing of the last instalment in order to cram everything in. I hope they paid John Cleese well for the day of acting in front of a green screen he must have done for his 10 or so seconds of screen time. The cinematography was much better (which helped a LOT), and although I've been whinging about the special effects, they were also better.
The script could have been much better. The direction was boring, as expected. Nevertheless, I liked it how they avoided the problem of the giant spider talking by just not showing it below the eyes - class! The ending, which other people have complained about, was for me probably the best part of the whole movie - it was hilarious! All those kids cheering Hagrid for (drum roll) HAVING BEEN SENT TO PRISON!!! And we've never seen Hagrid speak two words to any students except for Harry and his little gang. Whatever.
Kids will love it, for now. But these stories won't last - the problems with them just become so obvious with time. Sorry about that. Me, I'm looking forward to the Two Towers, which also features animated trees and a short elf-like semi-antagonist, but will have a story that makes sense. Funny how dispensable that is to many people.
Hannibal (2001)
Misses the point...
IMHO, Hannibal the book (it's original title, if you're interested, was "The Morbidity Of The Soul", which I think is much better) was the best book of the series, but this film misses the point completely. Scenes like the brain eating at the end were done in COMPLETELY the wrong way - for shock value - when hello, people, THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY. In the book, after the meal Lector scrapes the leftovers from the plates into Paul Krendler's head to "help clear up". Similarly, the death of Pazzi was done in a shock-horror rather than an amusing revenge-thriller type way. In the book, Lector pushes Pazzi off the balcony, then stops and waves to watching tourists. Again I say: IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY.
I'd like to reserve particular condemnation for the producer's decisions over Oldman's Mason Verger (Oldman himself is blameless). Verger was always a character that should have been done with CGI and animatronics, not with some half-assed goopy makeup. He doesn't look like someone whose lost their face, he looks like someone who's had seriously amateurish plastic surgery! Also, the casting of Krendler was so off (both from the dictates of the character and the description of him in the book) that I'd like to eat Ridley Scott's brain myself. I doubt there's enough to fill more than a crepe, however. I can understand editing out Margot in a film already this long, but the way they've solved the plot holes her removal leaves is horribly underwhelming.
What Ridley obviously didn't get was that the whole point of Hannibal was to concentrate on Hannibal Lector himself (nuh!), and get inside his mind. This could easily have been done - I was very disappointed there were no scenes within Lector's "Dream Palace", given that it was such an easy and obvious visual metaphor. The movie started in the wrong place (with a shoot-out that is of only peripheral relevance to the plot and should have been done in flashback), had it's middle in the wrong place (following Pazzi around was completely pointless as it was obvious even to those who hadn't read the book he wasn't going to capture Lecter), went on too long (with the pointless sequence where Starling follows Lector around the shopping mall, amoungst other things), and ended badly. Aside from obviously redoing the brain eating, the end should have been like the book, with a attempt to resolve Starlings "issues" and a sort of slowdown to a dreamlike pace instead of attempting to provide one last scare (as it actually does). None of this happens in the film, so their relationship remains one of predator vs. prey, and is as interesting as that entails. The last bit with the brain packed lunch is truely rubbish as well.
Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (1986)
A masterpiece - make sure you see the full, Japanese version with subtitles
It's a testament to the problems of translating and dubbing foreign films that this Myazaki classic isn't far more recognised than it is. Check the ratings: over 50% of those who voted for this gave it a 10 (mean score 8.5), but it's adjusted score is much lower. This can only be accounted for by the mode of it's release in America - the film was dubbed and scenes were cut to make it more appealing to a young audience, inevitably losing something given the perfect voice acting, characterisation and pacing of the original. I can't think of an animated film I would place over this, and that includes the entire Disney back catalogue. The music alone is worth the music of any 4 Disney films you care to name (No musical numbers! No Elton John!).
In fact, this is probably a film it's best to get an import copy of if you can. However you do it, you should definitely find a way to ensure nothing has been changed "for your own enjoyment".
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Starwars-trek
Just in case anyone looking for derivative things about this film hasn't noticed this one: the clone factory bit is stolen directly from the bit in the Matrix where we see all the humans/human embryos in pods. Do I get a prize?
This is not the worst film ever made. The final fight scene is kind of great (but short), the backdrops look nice, Christopher Lee is in it... and, er, that's it. The problems with this film come down to a lack of connection with anything happening onscreen, thanks to non-characters, terrible dialogue, overuse of computer effects etc. Now, computer effects can look great, but they're limited because most viewers will ALWAYS 'know' when they are being used - they are too often intrusive, and if that happens the film instantly sinks to the level of an hugely expensive computer-game cutscene. Which is what much of this film resembles. One of the (many) reasons...Rings was great was because the FX were by and large seamlessly integrated - they truly enhanced the story. In ...Clones we are presented with ridiculous numbers of superfluous creatures, vehicles and environments, all of which feel carefully designed by advertising executives rather than the inhabitants of any real place. Lucas STILL can't got CGI characters right - the scene where Obi-wan goes into the 'diner' to talk to... whatever it was... was just embarrassing - you could hear the creature designers pulling their hair out. At the bit where CGI Yoda stopped fighting and picked up his stick, you could SEE the model resuming it's 'walk' animation. In the original Star Wars films Lucas used puppets, and the result was creatures that, although you knew they weren't real, actually interacted correctly with the human actors, and hence fitted believably into the fictional universe. I don't think I need to mention Jar-jar other than to say all the time he was onscreen the main dramatic tension came from the dread that he might say something.
The enormous battle scenes suffer from the same problem - how am I supposed to connect with anything that's happening onscreen when it's all so blatantly Unreal? The last battle scene is colorful and detailed, but it's still inferior to any of the battles in earlier trilogy (which used scale models), because I don't believe on any level that it's really happening. One of the reasons the creatures in LOTR looked so solid is because they were actually created by scanning solid sculpted models into a computer, and then animating them. It'll be interesting to compare the believability of the CGI Golem and Treebeard in the next LOTR film to the many "Mummy Returns"-steals in this one.
I don't think it's fair to criticize the actors for the script they had to read. Aside from the 'sand' scene and a couple of Kevin the Teenager ticks, even Hayden Christensen seemed to be having to deal with being TOLD to act that badly. Remember the scene where Hayden is having a nightmare, and Lucas imaginitively chooses to represent this by showing him lying asleep (with his nipples showing) going "No, no!"? LOL! Sam Raimi, who poked fun at that kind of thing with his Ash character in the Evil Dead series must have been cracking up (I was). All the love scenes were either unintentionally hilarious (the Yak-riding scene) or dull, but hey, nice hairstyles. Jango ("Reinhart") Fett was miscast - he looked cool but I think a Bounty Hunter sounds so WRONG with a New Zealand accent.
The best thing about this film? Two words: Christopher Lee. That guy just had to walk on to make everyone else look like pygmies, he has such screen presence, and unlike poor Ewan McGregor (who is a fine actor if given a readable script) he knows how to carry off B-movie grade dialogue like it's Shakespeare. His presence was every bit as required for the final fight scene to actually WORK as Yoda's surprise acrobatic talent - for the first time I cared about the outcome because it actually feels like Count Dooku was as powerful as the special effects would lead you to believe.
It's all roses in the wilderness, though, 'cos otherwise this is yet another extended episode of Babylon 5 (with inferior acting). When "Fellowship Of The Ring" hit several critics sneered at the very idea of Elves, Dwarfs, and Balrogs, even though the film WORKED near-perfectly. Now Clones is out, many of the same critics and much of the public seem to be going: "It may suck, but oh - it's Star Wars". Pity them.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
To answer some people's problems with this film...
I'm not a fanatical LOTR fan - I've read the books about twice in total (once all the way through, and then parts of it again, several times). I've seen the film twice (so far). Several of the problems some reviewers have with Fellowship... need dealing with.
Firstly, there are NOT "endless fight scenes" - there are in total only 4 in the whole film, 3 if you don't count the attack of the Killer Tentacle (Weathertop, the Cave Troll battle, and the forest battle with the orcs being the others). Other scenes involving enemies are frequently not fights as such (or even that fast) - the Balrog, the wizard duel and the scene where a the huge crowd of goblins surrounds the heros are NOT fight scenes in any traditional sense. As for the editing of the fights, the problems with them are down to film-goers getting used to endless carefully choreographed Kung-fu fights such as the Episode I light-saber duel, where the combatants can pull off absurdly balletic moves without any effort at all. The actual fight scenes in Fellowship feel like the combatants are performing REAL improvised attempts to kill each other, instead of slow motion 10 foot leaps and silly speeded up show-fencing moves.
Secondly, to those who didn't like Elrond, I was pleased there was an elf in the film demonstrating an emotion other than nobility. If you can't stop thinking about Elrond as Agent Smith from the Matrix, uh, I think you must have seen that film a few too many times.
If you hate the open-ended conclusion to this film (and if you know it's a trilogy I think it's a bit sour of you, really), you'll DIE when you see the ending of The Two Towers. Hur hur. You'll go ballistic. But anyway, what's the problem? The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film, and that's completely open-ended. If it's frustrating, it shows how emotionally involved you were with the film. And that's a good thing.
Character development wise, I think those who didn't think there was enough of this are underestimating how much is shown rather than demonstrated with dialogue. The other two films will provide ample time for all the development needed.
Showing Sauron too early - it had to be done. When you're watching an action-adventure, good vs. evil type film, you just HAVE to know what the good guys are up against. If only so you can cut between the goodies progress and the baddies. It would have been impossible to get across the importance of the quest to destroy the ring without showing how powerful it would be in the wrong hands.
All in all, Rings is a fantastic visual feast which, though in a few ways flawed, manages to make those flaws somehow not matter and diminish in importance with each viewing. It's interesting how critisisms have been both that the plot is non-existent and too difficult to follow, that the ending is to ragged and that the film is too long, etc. It indicates the fine balance of the film that those that didn't like it dislike it in contradictory ways.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
To answer some people's problems with this film...
I'm not a fanatical LOTR fan - I've read the books about twice in total (once all the way through, and then parts of it again, several times). I've seen the film twice (so far). Several of the problems some reviewers have with Fellowship... need dealing with.
Firstly, there are NOT "endless fight scenes" - there are in total only 4 in the whole film, 3 if you don't count the attack of the Killer Tentacle (Weathertop, the Cave Troll battle, and the forest battle with the orcs being the others). Other scenes involving enemies are frequently not fights as such (or even that fast) - the Balrog, the wizard duel and the scene where a the huge crowd of goblins surrounds the heros are NOT fight scenes in any traditional sense. As for the editing of the fights, the problems with them are down to film-goers getting used to endless carefully choreographed Kung-fu fights such as the Episode I light-saber duel, where the combatants can pull off absurdly balletic moves without any effort at all. The actual fight scenes in Fellowship feel like the combatants are performing REAL improvised attempts to kill each other, instead of slow motion 10 foot leaps and silly speeded up show-fencing moves.
Secondly, to those who didn't like Elrond, I was pleased there was an elf in the film demonstrating an emotion other than nobility. If you can't stop thinking about Elrond as Agent Smith from the Matrix, uh, I think you must have seen that film a few too many times.
If you hate the open-ended conclusion to this film (and if you know it's a trilogy I think it's a bit sour of you, really), you'll DIE when you see the ending of The Two Towers. Hur hur. You'll go ballistic. But anyway, what's the problem? The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film, and that's completely open-ended. If it's frustrating, it shows how emotionally involved you were with the film. And that's a good thing.
Character development wise, I think those who didn't think there was enough of this are underestimating how much is shown rather than demonstrated with dialogue. The other two films will provide ample time for all the development needed.
Showing Sauron too early - it had to be done. When you're watching an action-adventure, good vs. evil type film, you just HAVE to know what the good guys are up against. If only so you can cut between the goodies progress and the baddies. It would have been impossible to get across the importance of the quest to destroy the ring without showing how powerful it would be in the wrong hands.
All in all, Rings is a fantastic visual feast which, though in a few ways flawed, manages to make those flaws somehow not matter and diminish in importance with each viewing. It's interesting how critisisms have been both that the plot is non-existent and too difficult to follow, that the ending is to ragged and that the film is too long, etc. It indicates the fine balance of the film that those that didn't like it dislike it in contradictory ways.