God, movies last year mostly sucked.
Oops, I meant to start with best wishes for a happy new year to one and all, and the fervent hope that 2005 will bring us a batch of really excellent movies to see. But that lingering schmutz from 2004 got in the way. So let's try again.
Yep, happy new year. Now that the rain and hail and snow and mudslides and freeway closings and flash floods and biblical disasters of your typical Southern California January have abated, I'm able to get out and report to you on some of the things I've seen since Thanksgiving. There were a few whoppers (ALEXANDER comes to mind) that deserve closer scrutiny, but let me get these few thoughts out and return to Macedonia's finest another day. Here goes the last gasps of 2004:
"1 Hairy Brit + 1 Skanky Yank X 2 = CLOSER"
Really, I should just say that Closer minus C = LOSER, but I didn't want to saddle Jude Law with another "loser" label after ALFIE. Anyway, here's the shocking thing I learned in Mike Nichols' new film, CLOSER: I'm sort of over Jude Law and more into Clive Owen now. I know it's a very personal take on a film, but I was personally really shocked to find myself loving Clive Owen's brutally male and honest "Dr" over Jude Law's sensitive, whiny, crying, indecisive Dan the obituary writer (even though Dan wore glasses, which I found very adorable on Jude).
This movie felt so brutally real it was like enduring a dinner party where the other couples are arguing or hate each other, the kind of evening that makes you want to shower when you get home. Each of the 4 people involved was manipulative and selfish and both casually and intentionally cruel. The story is basically what I've titled it above: skanky Yank photographer (Julia Roberts) of couple one meets hairy Brit obit writer (Jude Law) of couple two, they end up together, there's some interaction between the other hairy Brit doctor (Clive Owen) and skanky Yank stripper (Natalie Portman) who is Brit #1's girlfriend, then everyone switches back again. It would be more believable if they didn't live in London, a city of several million people, that would have allowed any one of them to find someone, I don't know, different. As you can imagine, the ending, she is not so happy, but everyone sort of gets what he or she deserves.
The action requires a lot of sexually frank discussion (but little sex), very foul language, smoking, an intense scene in a strip club (Princess Amadala, what are you doing with that thong?!), some Internet porn chatroom banter, and some decent real estate. The acting is superb, though Natalie Portman's character seemed the least well drawn. She was also the most likeable, which in this nest of vipers is damning with faint praise. If this sounds like your cup of tea, then this is a well crafted, but ultimately unsatisfying, brew. If you're looking for a fun, colorful, British escape for a Saturday night, tune into BBC's MI-5, which returned with new episodes (yea!) last week and only deals with drug dealers and terrorists; Closer is for those dark nights when you only want to see the worst of civilization.
"House of Flying Snores"
Maybe it's just me, but I found HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS beautiful to look at but deadly to sit through. Basically, a band of insurgents (the Flying Daggers of the title) threaten the Emperor's rule in China circa 900 AD, so the Imperial FBI is put on the job of finding them and destroying them. This story overlaps with that of a beautiful deaf Chinese girl, the daughter of the Daggers' deceased leader, who becomes involved with a handsome Imperial agent and leads him to defect for her love. As they are chased across the countryside to the Daggers' HQ, a series of epic battles takes place and, yep, daggers fly, all leading to a showdown in a lush, green bamboo forest and broken hearts aplenty in a snowy field. As much as I enjoyed the martial arts and costumes and photography and use of color, I couldn't get engaged in the emotional story, perhaps because of the subtitle translations (which somehow always make declarations of undying love seem like cheesy greeting cards). The tragedy of the ending, brought on by deceit and jealousy, should have been more heartbreaking than it was (to me, anyway).
"DVDs of No Particular Note"
MEAN GIRLS was nothing but mean spirited. It was written by and features Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey and feels just like the lame jokes that have taken over SNL in recent years. The plot involves mucho busty "fish out of water" Lindsay Lohan getting a bit too cozy with the "in" (read: fashionable, pretty, and mean) girls at her new school at the expense of making "real" (read: freaky misfit) friends. After no hilarity and very few laughs ensue, she of course gets her bearings back. Beyond my feeling that little Miss Lohan should be grounded for most of her offscreen shenanigans, this movie was a prime example of something not to take your girls to see.
I thought HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN was actually a decent movie, so much better than the previous 2 Potter installments. Of course, they were truly snore inducing, with too much time spent in fidelity to the books to create any sort of cinematic experience. By this third movie, the teen protagonists have grown into better actors, and whether because of the story or the direction of Alfonso Cuaron, it holds up even if you know nothing of the book or previous stories. Harry's back for his 3rd year at Hogwarts, and a crazed murderer has escaped Azkaban prison and is apparently on Harry's trail. But there's more to the story than meets the eye, and the resolution brings Harry new knowledge of his parents' lives and deaths. As the heroes get older, the stories get darker, and as with the others, I felt the kids are in an awful lot of frightening peril that I'm sure is inappropriate for younger children, not that my opinion will keep anyone from taking their 3-year-old to be terrorized by the werewolf, the Dementors, or the apparent execution of the Gryffenwhatever (half eagle and half horse).