ARTHUR: The Film Babble Blog Review

ARTHUR (Dir. Jason Winer, 2011) The one and only improvement that this remake of the fine but slight 1981 Dudley Moore comedy contains is that rich drunken playboy Arthur Bach doesn’t cackle obnoxiously at his own jokes throughout the entire movie.

That’s not to say that Russell Brand isn’t obnoxious in the role, don’t get me wrong. He really is.

His schtick gets increasingly more annoying as the film progresses through its lazily arranged set-pieces, that stick closely to the original’s basic plot points, even recycling key dialogue, and even touches on elements of the 1988 sequel (i.e. Arthur tries to get sober and get a job).

The film does have a handful of decent one-liners mostly in the exchanges between Brand and Helen Mirren as Arthur’s nanny, but they’re not enough to justify this rancid re-imagining.

So Arthur is stuck in the pickle of having to marry a woman he’s not in love with (Jennifer Garner) or else losing his family fortune of $900 million. Indie “it” girl Greta Gerwig gets mixed up in this in the role formerly played by Liza Minnelli, but the character is now an unlicensed NYC tour-guide instead of a shoplifting waitress.

It was an inspired choice, one of the film’s few, to cast the Oscar winning Mirren, in a gender/job title change from butler to nanny, as Hobson, the role that won an Oscar for John Gielgud way back in the day. Her stern and acidic performance really helps the film through some tedious stretches.

Gerwig does good work with what she’s given, but there’s zero chemistry between her and Brand. Her aspiring children’s book author character is just a convention, and the film really isn’t very interested in her. Nor Garner, whose part is pretty insulting especially in the film’s worst bit – a sitcom-style bedroom scene that has the actress in a metal corset stuck to the bottom of Brand’s magnetic bed.

For some reason Nick Nolte appears as Garner’s grizzled father, and I don’t think I’ve seen him invested less in a part. Ditto Geraldine James as Brand’s disapproving mother, a thankless role in a movie full of them.

None of those other roles matter, of course, because it’s Brand’s show. He gets to slosh around doing wacky things like dressing up as Batman with his chauffeur (an extremely mis-used Luis Guzmán) as Robin leading the police in a high-speed chase in the Batmobile, drive the BACK TO THE FUTURE Delorean (he collects movie cars, you see), and strut down the street wearing President Lincoln’s top hat, coat, and cane he just purchased at an auction.

Unfortunately none of this is very funny, and Brand can be funny (see FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL and bits of GET HIM TO THE GREEK), but this role which I admit looked good on paper, is just too broad, too obvious, and much too irritating to elicit genuine laughter. It’s just too painfully apparent and Brand just simply doesn’t have the ginormous charm that Dudley Moore had – I mean, the original was a vehicle completely built around that charm.

ARTHUR ’11 is such a predictable conventional modernized rehash, that I’m surprised there wasn’t a remix of the theme song from the original (Christopher Cross’s “Arthur’s Theme ‘Best That You Can Do’”) with a well known hip hop artist rapping over it about his billionaire boy Arthur and how he rolls.

BTW this new ARTHUR does feature the inevitable cover of “Arthur’s Theme” by Fitz and the Tantrums, which now joins the film it graces in the bulging file of unnecessary remakes.

More later…

RED: The Film Babble Blog Review

RED (Dir. Robert Schwentke, 2010)

Sometimes it seems like every other movie opening this year at the multiplex is a comic throwback to ‘80s action movies or based on a graphic novel I wasn’t aware of before.

To its credit RED is both. But that’s the only credit I’ll give this unfunny overblown mess though.

RED is titled after the stamp on agent Frank Moses’ (Bruce Willis) file, meaning “retired, extremely dangerous.”

Willis leads a mundane life as a former Black Ops CIA agent who tears up his retirement checks just so he can continue to call customer service representative Mary Louise Parker because he has a crush on her.

Before you know it Willis is on the run from government assassins and he abducts Parker for the ride. She goes along with it in her typical jaded Weeds fashion, but the unbelievable and incredibly contrived nature of her role never convinces for a second.

Parker’s life before was boring and now she’s caught up in a world of espionage – I get it, but it’s such a cringing cliché with a capital C.

He re-unites his old crew – the all star cast of Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Ernest Borgnine and John Malkovich – to fight the attackers and it’s one shoot-em-up after another.

The film is solidly staged but it’s a joyless affair with really poorly written dialogue and a distinct lack of laughs.

At this point in Willis’s career it’s surprising he would be attracted to this boring by-the-numbers material.

Willis just sleep walks (sometimes in slow motion) through a barely interesting plot handled with a hodgepodge of styles and clashing tones. The narrative involves a cover-up of Guatemalan slayings orchestrated by the Vice President (Julian McMahon).

There’s some seriousness in the seams but it’s overshadowed by cloying silliness. It’s also off-putting that the film has an unbearable sense of self satisfaction.

Malkovich as a jacked up explosives expert appears to be having fun with his role, but with such lame one-liners (none of which I can remember or else I’d quote one) that feeling is far from contagious.

Freeman, who is 73, plays an 80 year old ex-agent – a role that requires no heavy lifting, just his patented homespun delivery. Borgnine is 93 and like Malkovich he’s seems to be having a good time. Maybe he’s just happy to be anywhere these days.

Then there’s Dame Helen Mirren in a white evening gown firing a machine gun. That’s supposed to be a hilarious image, but it creaks like everything else in this misguided movie.

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget Richard Dreyfuss, still channeling Dick Cheney from W, as a bad guy who is also saddled with lines that fall flat. “I did it for the money” Dreyfuss revealed in a recent interview. It sure shows.

I saw somebody on a message board refer to this film as THE EXPENDABLES but with people who can actually act.” I can go with that because just like that Sylvester Stallone all star vehicle, this is ultimately a lame package.

RED, which I think should stand for Really Excruciating Drivel, is a waste every way you can cut it.

More later…

STATE OF PLAY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Taking a break from the heat on my Vegas vacation I found a theater (United Artists Showcase 8) not too far from my hotel and decided to take in:

STATE OF PLAY (Dir. Kevin McDonald, 2009)

Literally hitting the ground running with a foot chase through a rain drenched Washington DC night resulting in multiple murder, this adaptation of the six part 2003 British miniseries never lets up from its riveting opening. In the cold light of the next day we are introduced to a scruffy haggard looking Russell Crowe as a ace old school reporter (the type who brags about using a 16 year old computer) who buys coffee to get info from the police and makes jaded quips like: “I’ll need to read a few blogs in order to form an opinion.” A nice timely touch is to then pair him up with a blogger (Rachel McAdams) for his newspaper’s online division. Crowe’s long time buddy, a congressman played surprisingly solidly by Ben Affleck, is exposed as having had an affair with one of the previous night’s victims (Maria Thayer – only seen in photos and cellphone footage) and, of course, something sinister lies in the shadows with an evil corporation possibly pulling the strings.

Yes, it’s a conspiracy movie with a “trust nobody” vibe that has many allusions to one of the all time greats, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN with its Washington DC backdrop, intense walks and talks, doors slammed in journalist’s faces, and even a shadowy parking garage sequence. The Watergate hotel gets more than just a visual shout out too. Crowe gets many terse tongue lashes from his English editor played beautifully by Helen Mirren in the cluttered newsroom of the fictional “The Washington Globe” (same typeface as The Washington Post in case one misses the connection) while he and McAdams go from lead to lead. For the up to par supporting cast we’ve got Robin Wright Penn as Affleck’s estranged wife, Jeff Daniels as a smarmy Senior Representative, Viola Davis (DOUBT) as a no nonsense pathologist, and a stand-out Jason Bateman as a bisexual fetish club promoter addicted to OxyContin.

There are contrivances and clichés galore but the movie moves so fast with such entertaining zeal that none of that matters. Crowe puts in a cantakerously crafted performance that’s strong enough to conceal that we are given virtually nothing of backstory of his character, while McAdams appealingly works those “dewey eyed cub reporter’s eyes” (as Mirren sneeringly calls them at one point) uping the ante from her previous one note roles like the love interest in WEDDING CRASHERS. There is spare but weighty commentary on the fate of print media in the era of the internets – particularly the likening of bloggers to bloodsuckers (ouch!). Through this all the supreme structure of the film is what really makes it tick. It’s played straight with a tightened pace that doesn’t ever fall out of focus. Maybe it’s not quite in the league of the classic 70’s political thrillers it pays ample homage to, but STATE OF PLAY is a worthy addition to the conspiracy cinema canon.

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Young Genghis Khan, Steroids, And A Cagey New DVD Release

MONGOL (Dir. Sergei Bodrov, 2007)

Appropriate alternate titles for this film could be THE ADVENTURES OF YOUNG GENGHIS KHAN, THE REAL WRATH OF KHAN, or perhaps most aptly GENGHIS KHAN BEGINS. At first I was just happy that this wasn’t like 300 – a videogame aestetic with not one foot in reality but despite some CGI (mostly in the spraying of blood) this epic thankfully has an old school naturalism to it. Unfortunately it is a trial to sit through with long sequences that go nowhere and characters that fail to stir any emotional connection.

We first meet Khan, born as Temudgin, as a young boy played by Odnyam Odsuren. When his father is murdered he becomes hunted because he may grow up to avenge the death GODFATHER: PART II-style. He survives capture and torture and skirts across the endless mountain terrain inspired by thoughts of his young bride Börte (Bayertsetseg Erdenebat). The pace picks up a bit when he emerges as an adult in the form of Tadanobu Asano whose grace and stern focus provide the film with much needed power. He returns to the arms of Börte now portrayed by Khulan Chuluun but their reunion is short-lived as she is kidnapped by a rival clan and Temudgin goes against the advice of his best friend Jamukha (Honglei Sun) who stresses “What Mongol ever went to war for a woman?”

Several battle scenes full of slow motion slicing and the before mentioned digital blood are the most entertaining parts of MONGOL but they do not save the movie from the long uninvolving stretches that toyed with my patience. The photography of the infinite landscapes of Inner Mongolia and Kazakhstan is breath-taking much of the time but the lack of narrative drive and the detached handling of the myths of these historical figures as well as the lackluster love story left me cold. At just a little over 2 hours (but feels much longer) MONGOL moves like a bloated beast trying to find a place to sleep but still lashing half heartedly out at swirling flies. The word is that this is the first part of a trilogy – a Mongolian LORD OF THE RINGS if you will, with director Bodrov promising the rest of the tale of the legendary conquerer for your Oscar consideration (MONGOL was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award). Well if the future installments lumber like this one in such uninspired stupor over the tortuous and tedious terrain, count me out.

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER (Dir. Chris Bell, 2008)

Fancy this – a documentary about an obvious hot-button topic i.e. anabolic steroids and their impact on our national society which contains actual insights personal, political, and pop culture-wise. Take that, SUPER SIZE ME! Director Bell and his 2 body building brothers (Mike “Mad Dog” and Mark “Smelly”) have all used steroids and relate tales of near stardom in the shadows of their heroes – Arnold Swartzeneger, Sylvester Stallone, Hulk Hogan et al. Taking its name from an oft repeated line from The Six Million Dollar Man, BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER is chock full of clips of their role models in their pumped up prime – RAMBO, ROCKY, THE TERMINATOR, as well as satirical swipes at the world of performance enhancing drugs from the likes of The Simpsons and SNL. Filling out the solidly structured footage is interviews with experts pro and con on the steroid issue but the real crux is the Bell brothers’ back stories. Chris Bell cops to doing steroids (in an especially emotional dinner table scene with his parents) when he was younger and stopping because of feelings of guilt but his brothers are still users. Their confessions under the scrutiny of their brother once one of them but now a questioning documentarian are compelling and surprisingly sincere sounding: “I love steroids and will probably be on and off them forever” Mark admits matter of factly.

Bell keeps coming back to Swartzeneger who he calls “the poster boy for steroids” and reasons that the Govenator, as he’s often called, wouldn’t be where he is now if not for the controversial compound. The director even tries to get an interview with Ah-nold a la Michael Moore’s attempted Roger Smith ambush but he doesn’t bog the film down with the pursuit – it’s just an amusing sideline. Examining not only the public personas wrapped up in the use or abuse debate but statistical data and health risk misinformation (depending on who you listen to) Chris Bell has made a superlative documentary that deftly balances its viewpoints and never loses its thesis thread. BIGGER STRONGER FASTER earns its tagline: “The Side Effects Of Being American” and should be seen by everybody with even just a passing interest in its subject. It’s one of the most honest and absorbing portraits I’ve ever seen of a complicated problem with equal parts humor and pathos. With hope it won’t be forgotten when the awards season comes around again.

Newly released on DVD:

NATIONAL TREASURE 2: BOOK OF SECRETS (Dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)

The first NATIONAL TREASURE was a direct lift of “The Da Vinci Code” (the book mind you – it beat the film adaptation by 9 months) imposing an American action formula on the bestsellers puzzles and distortion of history. It was as stupid as it sounds with Nicholas Cage’s wise-cracking protagonist leading his small crew (including the supposed to be funny but isn’t Justin Bartha as his partner and Diane Kruger as the love interest) through contrived unexciting movie mechanisms but it made a ginormous amount of money; enough money to warrant a sequel apparently so here we are again with more of the lame same. I was planning on skipping this until I saw a trailer that promised the premise of a book known only to the President of The United States that contains the secrets to the nation’s greatest mysteries – the J.F.K. assassination, Area 51, and the alleged faking of the Apollo Moon landing. I’m a lover of conspiracy theory cinema and am writing a book on the subject so I felt obligated. I still shouldn’t have bothered – these famous theories or urban legends, as some would call them, are just mentioned and never used in any interesting or even amusing way. As I should’ve known the book of secrets is just a McGuffin * in another round of running from one wickedly easy to open crypt to another cipher or another implausibly placed code.

* For you non-film geeks – a McGuffin is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise (Wikipedia).

Anyone who doubts the quality of the latest INDIANA JONES movie should see NATIONAL TREASURE 2 because its lack of genuine wit and graceless tone makes that ole Spielberg/Lucas/Ford re-union special look like TREASURE OF THE SIERRE MADRE! The addition of Helen Mirren as Cage’s mother and Voight’s bickering ex-wife brings nothing new to this lame wannabe franchise though it is kind of cool to see her in plain duds with scraggly hair and no grand make-up for once. Then again with Mirren and other such solid respected actors as Harvey Keitel (reprising his role from the first NT as a sympathetic cop in pursuit) and Ed Harris (as the villain – uh, I guess) running around it feels like this overly slick enterprise exists to glorify cinematic slumming it.

Nicholas Cage has drifted so far from doing compelling vital work with such dreck as this and GHOST RIDER, NEXT, THE WICKER MAN et al that it is getting harder to remember how interesting and talented the guy once seemed. Since these movies make money his return to worthwhile cinema looks like it may be delayed indefinitely. I loved his performances in ADAPTATION, RAISING ARIZONA, WILD AT HEART, and various other non-action roles in his canon so this long detour into sell-out formula crapola is pretty puzzling. Though to make sense of this movie mystery wouldn’t take a cryptic McGuffin with a code to decipher unless it leads us directly to Cage’s bank vault or just gives us his bank balance statement.

More later…

Film Babble Blog’s Year-End Blogtastic Festivus!

Now it’s time for:

FILM BABBLE BLOG’S YEAR-END BLOGTASTIC FESTIVUS!

Now I ain’t claiming to be any fancy pants seen-it-all babbler – I’m just a writer who works at a movie theater and mostly sees and blogs about what I’m intersted in so no big summation of the year’s offerings here. I mean it’s pointless to make a top ten list of the year’s best at this point – many lauded big-time studio features (like LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, CHILDREN OF MEN, THE GOOD SHEPHERD, etc.) aren’t gonna be in my area ’til January or later so I’m just gonna blab blurbs ’bout a bunch o’ flicks I have seen since my last post. Such as :

THE QUEEN (Dir. Stephen Frears) Definitely one of the year’s best and most likely the definitive ‘walking on eggshells’ movie. Helen Mirren’s dead-on portrayal of her Majesty and her reaction (or at first non-reaction) to former Princess Diana’s death and Tony Blair’s (Michael Sheen) touching and funny attempts to smooth it all over with the peeved off public all plays perfectly. Not a wasted moment – this deserves every Oscar it will get.

SHUT UP & SING (Dir. Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck) Like THE QUEEN this is very much about public relations. As I’m fairly sure my readers know The Dixie Chicks made history when Natalie Maines made a fiercely anti-Bush comment between songs at a London concert at the dawn of the Iraq war. The snowballing firestorm (I don’t care if that’s a glaring contradiction) that ensued makes up the bulk of this documentary. Less a cinematic statement on the state of free speech in America than truly a sharp music doc ’bout a band dealing with backlash from a controversial quote and how that affects their touring and recording – the bit that has Bush’s response from a Tom Brokow interview – “They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out … Freedom is a two-way street” – then Maines reply to that – “what a dumbfuck. He’s a dumbfuck” – yep that bit alone makes this whole deal essential viewing.

BLOOD DIAMOND (Dir. Edward Zwick) Way too long with awfully written dialogue throughout – “In America, it’s bling bling. But out here it’s bling bang”. The scenes between Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly are TV-movie bad. Still there’s some great photography and worthwhile story elements – just unfortunate that when the dust settles it is just a big noisy empty bling bang.

CASINO ROYALE (Dir. Martin Campbell) The return of Bond – in a reboot of the series going back to the original 1953 Ian Fleming novel – yeah yeah yeah we all know the details. Daniel Craig is the new beefy blond Bond with blood on his hands, face and mind at all times. And that’s fine. Really it is. I enjoyed the movie. Grittier and harsher than the last Brosnan Bonds, sure, but…where were the babes?!!? In just about every one of the 20 Bond movies the man beds 4-5 ladies but he only has one here – okay he woos and almost does another but c’mon! I knew I was in trouble in the opening title sequence – usually a reliable orgy of nude female silouettes embracing a fully clothed Bond silhouette aiming his gun at some off screen villain was this time out a bunch of silhouetted fight sequences with playing card imagery. I mean I liked it – Craig is a good focused actor and the tone is right but next time out 007 better go to Babe Island or something.

Next time out – DVD reviews and more when filmbabble enters a brand new year!

This post is dedicated to the
Godfather of Soul
James Brown

RIP JB 1933-2006

More later…