Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 6: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or snakes. I can’t stand snakes.

According to Simpsons creator Matt Groening, the sign of a great character is its recognizability in silhouette. Early in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg blocks a shot of Harrison Ford’s shadow in his classic Indiana Jones fedora. As if we didn’t know that Indy was an iconic figure, Spielberg proves the theory right out of the chute.

But the problem with resurrecting an icon 18 years after the fact is the heightened expectation borne of years of building the legend. And it is this to which the franchise falls victim in its fourth installment. That and Spielberg and creator George Lucas’s alien fascination, which is misplaced here.

My greatest fear going into this film, having loved the classic trilogy, was whether it was truly going to feel like an Indiana Jones movie, and by consequence like one of the mid-century adventure serials on which the franchise was based. On this count the movie is successful. The passage of time was inconsequential in this regard, as Ford plays his character with his typical vigor, humor and charm, and the action sequences were made up more of traditional stunt work rather than CGI pap. Crystal Skull is one of those seat-of-the-pants thrill rides that’s always good for a fine Leonard Maltin quote. The action is fun, the throwaway lines are witty, and the characters are dynamic and finely drawn.

The story is the problem. The previous three Indiana Jones installments were focused on mainstream religious artifacts, however mythological they were, the kinds of things that would be true treasures for real life archeologists to find. While there is a whole mythos surrounding South American crystal skulls, one of which is the impetus for the plot in this film, the explanation for the allure of this one (that it is a relic of some sort of alien civilization) does not ring true within the franchise’s own self-determined boundaries. While both Spielberg and Lucas have crafted some fine films about otherworldly phenomena, in this one that whole conceit just doesn’t work.

But the more traditional Indy elements that are present here go a long way toward redeeming the film. Shia LeBeouf does a workmanlike job in his role as the son of one of Ford’s old flames (Karen Allen from Raiders of the Lost Ark). And Allen’s reprisal of her role was a delight. Cate Blanchette’s Russian scientist was a fine villain until her ultimate undoing, which was part of the film’s supremely silly climax. The two major action sequences, a campus motorcycle chase and a Jeep excursion through the Peruvian rainforest, were both highlights.

What the creators lost in all the hullabaloo surrounding the production was that some of the finer plot points just weren’t very good. And I think most of the audience noticed that. Which isn’t to say they weren’t entertained. The film grossed more than $100 million in its first four days in theaters. With the hugely anticipated Sex and the City on tap, we’ll get a real sense of how Indy was received this weekend, when it isn’t the only game in town.

Film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchette, Karen Allen, Shia LeBeouf, Ray Winstone

Viewing Situation: Weekend matinee, crowded; standard projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 78%
My Grade (Out of 10): 6

Next Up: Sex and the City or The Strangers 

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 5: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or smug British schoolchildren.

I saw the first installment in the Narnia franchise, 2005’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, at one of America’s worst theaters, the United Artists Riverview Plaza in Philadelphia. It’s known for huge crowds, lousy picture quality, and terrible service. The Saturday matinee showing was packed with young children and their parents, none of whom (adults included) would shut up for the whole 2 plus hours. I began to think my impression of the film, which I found to be a rote fantasy exploration, was colored by the moviegoing experience. Having now seen the newest picture in the franchise, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, in a much more pleasant setting, I’ve seen all my problems with the first movie duplicated.

These are mediocre adventure movies, designed to make a lot of money from unsuspecting families before fading into the blockbuster ether.

C.S. Lewis’ literary series is one of renown, but I’m not terribly familiar with it. These stories are new to me, and the only thing I was conditioned to expect the first time around was a simplistic Christian parable. And The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe delivered on that. For the most part, those themes seemed to be mostly absent from Prince Caspian. From a filmmaking standpoint, the influence seems to be much more Lord of the Rings than Christian mythology. But a lot of ink has already been spilled on that topic, and with the success of the film version of the Rings saga, duplicates are to be expected.

The biggest flaw in the plan is that, while Narnia presents a fairly rich fantasy universe, the filmmakers fail to execute the little things that its template got right. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films were sharply and professionally acted, and seemingly small matters like costuming and set dressing were impeccable. Prince Caspian, like the first Narnia film, looks splendid from afar, with sweeping landscape shots. When the characters move into focus, the blemishes show. Close up, the film is populated with myriad different creatures, all of which are ridiculously dressed, ridiculously made up, and just look altogether silly.

The silliest creatures, though, are the humans. Picked solely for their looks and raw Britishness, the four young leads (plus Ben Barnes, picked to play Caspian for his looks and raw ethnicness) are simultaneously wooden and annoying, which really shouldn’t be possible. Though whenever any of these kids delivered some kind of boilerplate action hero line (and there were many such occasions), I laughed out loud, drawing snickers from the rest of the crowd, who somehow seemed to enjoy the film.

For the grand canvas on which this film was painted, it certainly appeared to be done on the cheap, with few name actors and a basic disregard for any visual elements that didn’t involve helicopter shots or things being set on fire.

The only performances of note were Eddie Izzard as the voice of a sword fighting mouse, who provided some laughs, and Peter Dinklage, who was dignified in his supporting role even underneath all that ridiculous costuming. Liam Neeson, reprising his role as Aslan the lion, pretty much phones this one in as he did in the first picture.

Most of the enjoyment I got from Prince Caspian was of my own making, allowing myself to embrace the more ludicrous elements, rather than allow the film to be a chore. I won’t begrudge the filmmakers that. I feel like I got my money’s worth on this one. Just please don’t make another one.

Oh, so you’re going to make this one, and this one? Excellent. Good luck with that.

Film: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Director: Andrew Adamson
Stars: Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, William Moseley, Peter Dinklage, Warwick Davis

Viewing Situation: Weekday evening, medium crowd; standard projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 65%
My Grade (Out of 10): 4 

Next Up: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

>>The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader [IMDB]
>>The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair [IMDB]

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 4: Made of Honor

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or sickening McDreamyness.

As I sat alone in the movie theater (completely alone, which was equal parts surreal and sublime) and waited for the start of today’s feature, I saw a promo for the MTV Movie Awards starring Mike Myers, in which Myers satirizes some of the more overused conventions in moviemaking, like the unnecessary celebrity cameo, or when a robot explodes as soon as it learns to feel love. It turns out they missed one: a suitor’s mad dash to stop his beloved’s wedding just before the vows are spoken. Luckily, Made of Honor was there to pick up the slack.

In the film, Patrick Dempsey (known as McDreamy to the normals) plays a hot shit socialite and serial womanizer who’s wealthy beyond necessity due to his invention of the “coffee collar,” that little cardboard sleeve that keeps you from burning your hand on a hot coffee cup. It’s a great invention, and I’d love to meet the real inventor responsible for it. I bet that person is swell, and would love to spend 100 minutes with him/her. I cannot say the same for Dempsey. Spending that much time with him was excruciating.

The thing is, Dempsey is not a particularly bad actor, and I say this as someone who’s not terribly familiar with his work. I went into Made of Honor with basically a clean McDreamy slate. His character in the film is just patently unlikable. The punny title is supposed to suggest that the protagonist is the most honorable man in the world, a sort of McDreamy the lionhearted, who will win the girl effortlessly. But Dempsey’s character begins the film prickish and juvenile, and doesn’t do too much to earn his stripes during the course of it. Yet at the end, he plays the hero anyway, in one of those tacky race to the altar moments I talked about earlier. 

Made of Honor is endlessly reductive in every way. Michelle Monaghan, an appealing actor who excelled in last year’s Gone Baby Gone, falls prey here to a script that doesn’t give her anywhere to go. Her character, Dempsey’s longtime best friend who asks Dempsey to serve as maid of honor at her wedding to a Scottish millionaire, is drawn as a pat pretty face who doesn’t so much fall in love with these men as accept their advances. When we meet her bridesmaids, one a cousin (Busy Phillips) who had had some previous sexual exploits with Dempsey (and was driven batshit crazy by the experience), and one a friend from camp (Emily Nelson) who serves as a canvas for all of the screenwriters’ worst fat jokes. For a film whose target demographic is surely women, these are incredibly insulting female characters. Also, for kicks, Monaghan’s grandmother spends most of the film wearing anal beads as a necklace. So there’s that.

The male characters are, for the most part, not much better. Dempsey made his fortune on the coffee collar, but doesn’t appear to do much else. His cabal of bros are just a bunch of yes men who rally around the supposed hero in his time of need. They come to the conclusion that they need to help him get the Scottish fiancee out of the picture when they realize that (a) he can dunk a basketball, and (b) while inexplicably watching him use the gym shower, they realize that the Scotsman has a giant cock. Certainly these were Dempsey’s two worst fears come horrifyingly true.

Somewhere in all this morass, Sydney Pollack delivers a fine supporting performance as Dempsey’s wealthy father, who has just married his fifth trophy wife. Pollack’s scenes are sweet and earnest, and were the only parts of this film that seemed bearable. The ending, which I won’t spoil more than I already have, induces groan after groan until, eventually, it just becomes unintentionally hilarious.

It’s really amazing that a wide audience would be drawn to a film like this. I felt like I had already seen every part of this movie as it was going on. But it did give me an idea. As soon as I can get my hands on one, I’m going to take the script for Made of Honor, randomly white out all the proper names and adjectives, and turn it into the world’s fattest Mad Lib. For as long as it takes, I’ll ask everyone I see to name a color, a fruit, a song title, etc., until it’s all filled in. Then I’m going to ship it to Hollywood and ride next summer’s gravy train.

Clear your schedule, Dempsey.

Film: Made of Honor
Director: Paul Weiland
Stars: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Sydney Pollack

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, solo engagement; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 12%
My Grade (Out of 10): 1

Next Up: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian 

>>2008 MTV Movie Awards Promo [YouTube]

Editor’s Note: Stephanie Zacharek’s review was automatically linked to this post. You can read it here. She says some of the same things I say above, but I had not read her review in advance. Ms. Zacharek is one of my favorite critics, and I did not steal from her. She says it all better anyway, and she probably handled her filmgoing experience with more dignity.

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 3: Iron Man

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or Robert Downey, Jr.’s awful facial hair.

For the first time in this project, I’ve seen a movie I’ve been looking forward to, and, for the most part, it delivered on its promise.

Iron Man stars Robert Downey, Jr. in the title role, one of two major summer pictures starring Downey (the other being Tropic Thunder, an adventure comedy slated for August in which Downey dons blackface for the role; we’ll see what kind of public reaction that gets). So 2008 makes for a bit of a comeback for the veteran actor, though Downey, and his smarmy brand of on-screen pretension, have never really gone away.

Being totally unfamiliar with the Iron Man mythology, I viewed the casting of Downey as a superhero of any ilk with skepticism. But in the origin story that the Iron Man film presents, Downey holds court as the perfect choice for alter ego Tony Stark, a slick, quick witted billionaire that was quite obviously created as Marvel’s hipper, modern answer to DC Comics’ Bruce Wayne. And with the structure of the hero himself (a man completely encased in a crazily-high-tech metal shell), any actor could have filled the suit without any discernible problem. Downey makes his case for the role of Stark alone, and he has a track record of dry, wise ass characters on his resume to support it.

The appeal of the star is necessarily key to a superhero movie, and Iron Man certainly works on that level. More impressively, it works wonderfully as both a spectacle and as a film. Director Jon Favreau (Elf, Made) and his team use the kind of special effects typical of the modern blockbuster, but they don’t make the mistake of relying on the “wow” factor for their film’s success. They’ve made an honest to god movie, complete with a grounded, true to life universe and reasonably believable characters. One of those characters just happens to have a fusion reactor inside his chest and a preternatural talent for engineering. The film even provides a passable allegory on corporate malfeasance, the weapons industry, and modern warfare.

Iron Man is the first in a series of Marvel films associated with the Avengers, a cabal of superheroes which also includes the Incredible Hulk and Captain America. The series is set to culminate with an Avengers movie in 2010. Marvel has mostly done a nice job with its recent film adaptations (anything helmed by Brett Ratner aside), and as a moviegoer, Iron Man has made me pretty excited about the continuation of this franchise, as well as Marvel’s broader plan.

In short, Iron Man was antonymous to a film like Speed Racer, which in retrospect felt like a visual stunt set to celluloid. Iron Man, like the other characters in the Marvel fold, lives in a world that is not unlike our own, where actions have real consequence and even the heroes have deep character flaws. The stunts and explosions are just for fun. In a lesser film, they’d be tedious.

Film: Iron Man
Director: Jon Favreau
Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges

Viewing Situation: Weekend matinee, 3/4 capacity, one snorer; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 93%
My Grade (Out of 10): 8

Next Up: Made of Honor 

Saturday Night Live: The Japanese Office

From the Steve Carell hosted Saturday Night Live season finale. The “original” Office from Japan:

>>SNL Digital Short: Japanese Office [hulu]

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 2: What Happens in Vegas

In her review of the Ashton Kutcher/Cameron Diaz trifle What Happens in Vegas, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times had this to say:

[I]f you know anything about the art or have ever marveled at how even the most generic of old B movies look pretty good (they were usually in focus, for starters), you may wonder how a major studio like 20th Century Fox could release something this crudely manufactured, with its graceless setups, unstable lensing and ghastly lighting. It also makes you wonder if executives at studios look at dailies, much less can hear the poetry of the English language.

It’s a pretty damning statement, and at least half true. Most of the movie was in fact in focus, though there were certainly some technical missteps. The biggest problem with the film, as Dargis goes on to argue, was that it was made with a certain baseline, lowest common denominator audience in mind.

That strategy is pretty typical of the “blockbuster” comedy, and with the star wattage provided by Diaz and Kutcher, Vegas certainly qualifies as that. Mostly, this was 90-plus minutes of the stars mugging for the cameras with the same old relationship jokes about how men don’t like to put the toilet seat up. In fact, the whole “sharing a bathroom” conceit makes up at least 50 per cent of the Diaz/Kutcher relationship tussle the whole movie is built around.

I’ve pointed before to the whole idea that the summer blockbuster is predicated on casting the widest possible net for commercial appeal. And Vegas made an attempt to reach the “not brain dead” subsection of the audience by casting comedic ringers Rob Corddry, Lake Bell and Zach Galafianakis in supporting roles. Each of them are responsible for a few laughs, the only legitimate laughs in the whole film (though the final reconciliation scene where the two principals explain all the things they have learned about themselves provides plenty of unintentional comedy). Unfortunately the filmmakers also reached out to the “freakily conservative 9/11 reactionary” demographic by casting a never-more-annoying Dennis Miller as the judge who orders the leads to serve “six months hard marriage.” After squabbling over $3 million in gambling winnings procured after their drunken Las Vegas nuptials, Miller orders the money frozen until Kutcher and Diaz prove they’ve tried to make the marriage work. Enter an uncredited Queen Latifah as their court-ordered marriage counselor (reaching out to the subsection of the audience who believes Queen Latifah knows how to act). It’s a recipe for success. Cruel, cruel success.

All in all, What Happens in Vegas is a particularly disposable film. Unlike Speed Racer (which made just slightly more box office in its opening week than did Vegas), I had a hard time remembering any details to discuss in this post. Without the fast cars and explosions, these stupid movies start leaving my brain as soon as I leave my seat. Which is really for the best.

Film: What Happens in Vegas
Director: Tom Vaughan
Stars: Ashton Kutcher, Cameron Diaz, Rob Corddry, Lake Bell, Dennis Miller

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, 6 audience members; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 29%
My Grade (Out of 10): 3

>> What Happens in Vegas (2008 ) – Review [New York Times]

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 1: Speed Racer

About halfway through Speed Racer, Emile Hirsch’s title character sits in a parked car with Christina Ricci. Even before the tone of the scene turns amorous, a five year old a few rows in front of me shouts out the word “sex.” This is the highlight of my moviegoing experience.

The film itself is an unholy masala of Japanese anime, the pod racing scene from The Phantom Menace, and The Donna Reed Show. Also there’s a chimpanzee in it. Truly something for everyone.

In their first effort since ruining their own Matrix franchise, the Wachowski brothers have placed themselves squarely in the camp of “maybe they weren’t so good in the first place.” In the sense that Speed Racer bears an authorial signature, it’s muddled, like so many action films of its ilk, by elements that are too bright, too loud, and too much. And in this case, it’s just plain corny.

Not that the source material for Speed Racer is terribly cool to begin with. It is, after all, based on a cult 1960s anime series, enjoyed mostly ironically due to its legendarily poor animation and bad English language dubbing. The film borrows some from the visual style of the original, occasionally washing out of the action into static artificial backgrounds. The homage would be nice, if its use was not the centerpiece of the cinematography. Even at a bloated length of 2 hours, 15 minutes, the film is awash with paint by numbers exposition, accomplished by talking heads recounting events while floating about the frame against the cartoon background. It lends a feeling of montage to the whole picture. And the montage only ever ends when the film does.

The film is unabashedly artificial, which the filmmakers seem to wear as a badge of honor. The problem is that it removes any emotional weight from the proceedings. The impetus for the plot is the death of Speed Racer’s older brother, Rex Racer (also a race car driver, if you’ll believe it) in a fiery crash. But the death scene itself is the most unintentionally comic moment in the film. The whole racing world that has been created is brutal and dangerous, to the point that one could question how its participants could have anything less than a 100% fatality rate. Yet the racing scenes are so over the top that the viewer never worries that anything bad will actually happen.

So I didn’t much care for Speed Racer. It’s an idea that couldn’t have sounded much better on paper than it looked on the big screen. Yet it could have been a decent popcorn movie, even in the absence of a worthwhile plot, if the Wachowskis could have just resisted the urge to throw in so many elements. Surely it’s possible to evoke the spirit of anime without appealing directly, and out of context, to its conventions. Just tell a story, even one as simple and convoluted as this, without giving the audience the kitchen sink.

Film: Speed Racer
Director: Larry and David Wachowski
Stars: Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, John Goodman

Viewing Situation: Weekend matinee, mostly empty; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 35%
My Grade (Out of 10): 3

Summer Movie Suicide Mission: An Introduction

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or obvious suckitude.

Another summer movie season has been thrust upon us, the opening salvo having been fired by last week’s Iron Man (which, incidentally, looks totally awesome). Dozens more will follow — some entertaining, some not, but all disposable. This year, I plan to see every movie churned out by the dirty Hollywood sausage factory between May and August, 2008.

Perhaps I’m betraying my goal a bit. This is a genuinely exciting project. More than anything other than perhaps huge televised events, the summer blockbuster is society’s great shared cultural product. Billions of dollars will be spent at the box office and the entire industry will plan the film schedule for the following years based on what succeeds and what fails in the summer. During the blockbuster season, there are no niche markets — few independent or genre features are even released, let alone become successful — and the cinema becomes more of a spectacle than it already is. Summer movies are rarely the best films, but for the industry, and the general public who gladly shell out the billions, they are the most important.

On its face anyway, seeing all these films feels a bit populist; I’m throwing my lot in with the huddled masses. But, really, I just like going to the movies. In the midst of all the bombast, I find it hard to believe that any of these movies could be completely disappointing. The whole idea of the blockbuster is to throw in a little something for everyone. Mostly I just want to experience it all for myself, without hiding behind critical reviews and hearsay. Everyone is entitled to his opinion; when making mine, I’ll let the text speak for itself. I’ll write about every movie, and my thoughts on the ongoing project, in this space.

Rules and a full list of movies after the jump.

Mentos and Manatees is Back! And Improved!

This long dormant blog is back on the air. I’ve decided to expand the focus beyond television to focus on film, with additional content regarding web video.

A major project is in the works. See above.