Weekend Retreat

Hercules is a legendary character regardless of who plays him. Clint Eastwood is legendary regardless of who he plays (or directs). It is here that the connections between Don Siegel’s Escape from Alcatraz and Pietro Francisci’s Hercules Unchained end. Rather, there is not really any connection between the 1979 prison break film and the MST3K treatment of the Italian sword and sandal film made 20 years earlier.

Based on J. Campbell Bruce’s book of the same name, the story needs little explaining aside from the title. The non-fiction story ends with a degree of ambiguity as to whether or not the escape was successful. The real men’s bodies were never found. Eastwood’s athletic figure figured prominently in both his casting and his un-simulated stunt work during the escape. Most of the movie is actually the preparation for what would be a daring and exciting break for freedom.

The story itself is truly fascinating and the movie does pretty well creating the rivalry between prisoner and guard. The prisoners, despite having failed at some point, are often intelligent, talented, and observant to every potentially helpful detail. What seems ironic is that the only reason for escape is the desire to do something with all that time. Yet it is precisely that time that is needed to perfect a means to escape. The fact that Alcatraz is the most infamous prison ever makes both the need to escape and its success more captivating.

On the other hand we have muscle-bound Hercules traveling the countryside until he meets someone a little bit larger and must fight him, ultimately throwing him into the sea. This time, Hercules drinks from the Fountain of Forgetfulness and is inadvertently lives with some gaudily beautiful princess. There he is forced to live the life of leisure with his own slave boy who tries to convince him he is actually the great Hercules. Fortunately, the film fell into the hands of the MST3K guys who made it slightly more bearable. With Hercules Versus the Moon Men they did not. This film does not end with a giant sandstorm. Rather, Hercules battles tigers and mercenaries with his giant chest and puts everything back in its place. The bad English dubbing doesn’t help one understand the story yet when Hercules takes to the Octagon, who cares?

I hate to say it, but I would like to see another take on the Alcatraz escape (No, not The Rock) film. If it refrained from being an adrenaline and action driven film the potential for a very psychological preparation/outwitting/escape is certainly there. If they never made another Hercules film I could probably die just fine.

Weekend Retreat

     Hooray for weekends and their abundance of free time (for once). Spent the weekend watching movies and came across two disparate films. Vincent Ward's 1998 Academy Award winning film What Dreams May Come was a visual delight and an ideology suck up, whereas Wes Anderson's "simple, yet elegant" 2001 feature The Royal Tenenbaums falls more into a category E film, leaving the audience with an ambiguous feeling.
     What Dreams May Come is a story about family values and the afterworld. One family is broken by death, first that of the children, then that of the father, and it's up to the father to figure out how to get them back together in heaven. Heaven is uniquely crafted as the most beautiful thing we admire on earth, manifested for us in Heaven. Since Robin Williams' character Chris Nielsen was an admirer of art (specifically paintings) his heaven is a world made of paint. The film won its Oscar for best visual effects, and it makes sense why. Cuba Gooding Jr. was nominated for an Oscar in his role as Nielsen's spirit guide.

     Not surprisingly, though, the film plays heavily into the dominant ideology: a whole family (One father, mother, daughter and son unit) is the goal, the father is the person who needs to bring the family together, there is a heaven and we can all get to it, all the money in the world didn't buy Nielsen and his wife happiness after they lost their children. At the end of the movie, the ideology is nearly ruined when Chris suggests that he be reborn, but resolves that issue by saying he can make it back to heaven and everything will be the same... (sorry for the elusiveness there, I'm trying not to spoil it for you).

     On the other hand, The Royal Tenenbaums appears to be a movie about family, and how it's broken, but also how death can bring the family together. Royal Tenenbaum, the father of the misfit, broken family, wants what he can't have, and currently his wife is about to marry another man, and thus he wants her to be his again. Pretending that he's dying, Royal makes his way into his wife's life, and she calls her children who have spread far and wide, each having their own life problems, and they gather around dad as he dies... But he's not dying, and when the word gets out, things go a little haywire for him and everyone involved. It's up to good ol' family values to bring them all together.
     True to the style of Wes Anderson's Oeuvre, the film puts a lot of emphasis on moving shots, whip pans, and odd color pallet. Well-chosen music plays throughout the film, asking the audience to consider not only the visuals, the story, the rhythm, or the lyrics, but also the production of the songs. Although Michale Kamen (who scored What Dreams May Come) has created beatiful music that works for Ward's film, Anderson's music seems more appropriate, and less of an extra than a complement.

   The two films tend to share similar themes, but the box office reports that maybe Dreams is a bit too sappy, and something more lighthearted is necessary to portray the family of today. What Dreams May Come had a budget of 85 million dollars and earned a measly 55 million, whereas The Royal Tenenbaums only cost $21 million and made $52 million. Take your pick.

Weekend Retreat

Amidst filming a short film for class my weekend still saw the inclusion of two classic films. Kubrick’s bold 1964 military satire Dr. Strangelove is the late director’s final black and white film and boasts an intelligence noticeably absent in Tony Scott’s sophomore feature of 1986, Top Gun. The latter is a glamorized and dramatic jet fighter commercial. Kubrick is an incontrovertibly established filmmaker whose oeuvre consistently probed under the surface and in the case of Strangelove seems a bit too relevant with the questions it asks about a species who can easily and unintentionally bring about its own demise. (Let me add here the eleventh hour inclusion of Michael Bay’s almost unwatchable Armageddon, of which a watched half, as another film who toys with the theme of extinction but appropriately skips over the issue in favor of big explosions and bad dialogue.) This is perhaps his scariest film, in which ordering a nuclear strike is much easier than calling it off and the main issues and the decisions that affect the entire world are made by a round table of isolated madmen. Top Gun is only less scary in its romanticized view of midair combat and bravura showmanship with cocky attention seekers behind the controls of $30 million war machines.

While my weekend had not aimed to be saturated far more than necessary in combat it proved an interesting reflection on the duality of war films. On the one hand we have the natural and cinematic inquisition to probe into an unfamiliar and brutal environment. Compare this to the detriments of hand-to-hand, gun-to-gun, or bomb to bomb combat that becomes engaging, exciting, and at times fun. And while some films point out the inherent irony of killing our own species others highlight the fun in challenging another human to the high stakes game of training and skill. The problem is that the two conflict with one another; when something becomes action-packed gunfire, explosions, escapes, and headshots it is immediately fun and engaging. We are promoting our own demise as entertainment: a natural progression to snuff film. Conversely, we could reflect on the dangers of fighting amongst ourselves fueled by greed of possession and intolerance of ideas. The existence of a war-glamorizing film immediately challenges the psychological debate posed by other films whose intent falls more along the lines of, say, questioning the ethics of war when both sides are really the same side.
So does this mean that a carefully delivered and socially conscious Strangelove discredits a flashy Top Gun in terms of cinematic appeal? Hardly. They are both visual and thematic escapist fare that may diverge in terms of depth and content but the fact of the matter is they are both still movies. They are movies with different statements, goals, and quite assuredly different longevity.

Weekend Retreat

I took the time to watch several movies this weekend, starting with Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium (2002). As if the world was not already filled with a plethora of dystopian societies, this Matrix-like film has a dead story. Set after World War III, the world leaders of Libria force all to take "intervals" (a small injection of a drug that stops all human emotion). There are, as always, resistors, those who refuse to take the interval and therefore commit a sense offense. This is where the law enforcers (Grammaton Clerics) come into play. They are trained to kill with the highest proficiency, and must remove all EC-10 materials (objects that promote emotion (such as memorabilia from before WWIII)). Of course one Cleric begins understand the problems with the society and begins to stop taking his Prozium (the emotion stopping drug).

Christian Bale's performance is stunningly appropriate for the film (an emotionless mess similar to many of his other films). Although the introduction of a female resistance fighter is a positive, Bale's interaction with her seems forced and unnatural. In fact, the entire inclusion of her character seems wasted. We only see her several times, even though she is integral in Bale's transformation. The stylized action is pathetic. There are some unique moments, but they are generally destroyed by lame sound effects and an overall lack of realistic parameters. Lastly, there are far too many plot twists and character twists that attempt to keep the audience guessing, but simply end up confusing. In general, the film was a disappointment from start to finish.

The second film was this year's Paul Blart: Mall Cop from director Steve Carr. This rushed story of an idiot, his family, their attempt to get him a new woman, and the woman he attempts to get, is bland and childish. As the "Mall Cop" aims to woo a beautiful mall vendor, robbers take over the mall, hoping to steal the 30,000,000 dollars at the various credit stations.
Despite the fairly simple plot, the movie a few interesting surprises. Kevin James' acting was less than exciting (he does much better in his role as Doug in King of Queens), and the supporting roles were even less amazing. The bad guys in the film remind me of a souped up version of the bad guys from Home Alone 3. With acrobatics, BMX bikes, and skateboards, these bad guys were the poorest addition to the movie next to the SWAT team leader. Also full of twists, this film came as another disappointment (even if I had low expectations to begin with) if still making me laugh quite a bit.

Finally, Henry Selick's 2009 movie Coraline filled the screen of my apartment (in HD, I might add) yesterday night. Dakota Fanning's unmistakable voice is the character of Coraline, a little girl whose parents pay less attention to her than she thinks they should. When the family rents out part of a large pink Victorian house, Coraline is less than amazed by it and her new neighbors. However, her interest is sparked when she finds a strange small door in the living room, through which she can visit a better world, with an "Other Mother" in her dreams. She falls in love with this new world until Mother forces her to stitch buttons into her eyes. Things go terribly wrong, and it is up to Coraline to save not only herself, but her friend's Grandmother's sister, two other ghosts, and eventually her parents.A lively movie, full of color, humor, and several scary sequences, Coraline is the best addition to my "viewed" collection this weekend. Fanning's voice acting is decent, but Teri Hatcher and Kieth David do exceptionally well. The movie has a decent plot, but seemed to drift toward a video game feel. Not as wonderfully made as Nightmare Before Christmas, the movie still holds it's own, and is a decent watch.