12 Years A Slave

Four stars (out of four)

Every time a movie comes out that deals with America's great sin, slavery, there is a score of reviews of such contrition, it's almost as if they never heard of slavery before.  The unfortunate thing is, this legacy will continue to dog the U.S. until there a reconciliation on both sides, and conversations like this are important to that.  The biggest problem is that there has been relatively few real depictions about slavery outside of documentaries, and this is where movies come in.  Cinema has a way of telling stories that can make things seem more real than any dry recitation of facts could ever do.  The combination of sight, emotion and sound combine to make you experience it in a way not possible before.  You no longer would have to say, "you had to be there," because you already were.  Unfortunately, the moviemaking process introduces subjectivity into the process.  Most movies that depict slavery or either insulting, like Gone With The Wind or Song of the South, or exploitive like Django Unchained.  Even movies that seriously probe the question of slavery like Amstad tend to gloss over the horror of it in favor of happy endings.  12 Years A Slave, for the first time, deals with all aspects of slavery based on a non-fiction story.

The story is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, played incredibly by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a freeman living in Saratoga, NY.  An accomplished musician, he gets an offer by two men to go on a two week circus tour through Washington, DC.  While there, they sell him to some kidnappers who send him south into slabery in Louisiana.  Over the next twelve years, he is sold to two different masters.  One, the kindly master, played by Benedict Cummerbatch, and the other, a Simon Legree-type, played by Michael Fassbinder.  Each portray a different aspect of the slaveowner, but both representing that no matter how nice you are, humans are not property or cattle.  Solomon eventually meets an itinerant handyman, Bass (played by Brad Pitt), who writes a letter back to Saratoga where his family and friends eventually get him released.  The sad postscript of the story is that Solomon tried to have the kidnappers and captors prosecuted, they evaded justice.  Also, although Solomon got back to freedom, his was a rare exception.

This movie deals unflinchingly with the evil of slavery and is not easy to watch, nor should it be, for that matter.  There is no romanticism or genteelity of the Old South, merely the ugly truth of what created the foundation of that society.  The interesting point is that the movie does not offer solutions, merely deconstructs all the myths.  Despite what some revisionists say, slaveowners did mistreat their "property," and all are deserving of condemnation, no matter how kindly an owner was.  What I found interesting was not the overt racism and cruelty which is fairly obvious, but the casual cruelty that existed as exhibited through the slaveowners' wives.  They allow the daily horrors by their inaction, but also willingly participate in it by wielding their power by virtue of their position to have slaves whipped or abused.  This is not a film to be enjoyed, but rather endured.  But this should serve as chapter one to truly understand what it is that has to be answered for.

Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

Film 4 Stars (out of four)

Live score 3 Stars (out of four)

I just saw an interesting performance of FW Murnau's 1922 film classic Nosferatu last night, 25 Oct 2013.  It was a showing of the original silent film with five musicians playing their own original score to accompany it.  They are called the Not So Silent Cinema, and they are a touring group who accompany different silent films that are presumably in the public domain.  For Halloween, they have been doing Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri (which, incidentally, I have never seen.  Still want to as being one go the great films of German expressionist cinema in the 20's).  Anyway, for those of you who don't know, Nosferatu was the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's seminal horror novel, Dracula.  The director, FW Murnau, was a genius filmmaker from the German expressionist school of filmmaking that was moving film storytelling in new and exciting directions that previously had not been imagined or attempted.  At this time, the late teens and early twenties of the twentieth century, filmmaking was in its infancy and not considered great art.  The great filmmakers at the time were working in studios in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Spain, not really in America as the large studios were not yet established.  Not much later, many of these European filmmakers would travel to America to greater acclaim, but for now, Europe was the center of filmdom.  

Details remain sketchy, but it appears Murnau never approached the Stoker estate to acquire the rights to film Dracula, simply just rewrote the plot and changed a few names.  Dracula is now Count Orlok, vamp it is now nosferatu, instead of being Romanian and traveling to London, he is now German and traveling to Bremen, etc, etc, etc.  when the Stoker estate, specifically Stoker's widow, found out the movie was made, it successfully sued for copyright infringement and a court ordered all prints destroyed.  However, several pirated copies survived and serve as a true masterpiece of gothic, expressionist cinema.  An ironic postscript to this story is that Dracula has been in the public domain in America since its publishing, due to the fact the Stoker estate never correctly filed for copyright.  Due to the controversy over the legal brouhaha, the movie got great attention and was a success and has spawned several copiers over the years.  But none of them, including the Lugosi-starring 1931 Universal production, have ever achieved such an original, and horrifying, take as the Murnau version.

The movie is truly great, although to modern eyes and sensibilities, it seems quaint, trite and campy.  The necessary overacting of silent film doesn't translate well today in the era of sound.  The challenge is to transport yourself back in time and see it how early twenties audiences saw it.  The moodiness, the use of shadow and dread, the ugly and horrifying images of Orlok, they all set precedents for all the great horror films that would follow.  The movie, for its time, was quite sophisticated.  It told parallel storytelling, which was only in its infancy at the time and had sequential editing, another new innovation at the time.  Unfortunately, most people today look at these images and laugh; the scenery chewing, the iconic images, it all comes off as stale and humorous.  It is precisely because this was the image which all the rest were built on that it seems trite.  It set the actual standard.  If you are interested in seeing cinema as it was being born, this is one of the first great films and should be seen by anyone who wants to see horror or filmmaking in its infancy.

The Not So Silent players were fun, but the score was a tad trite.  The music was also a little 

loud for the size of the room, but it was still quite fun.  This is what is great about silent cinema and gives an opportunity to interpret the story through music, and the exercise is a lot of fun.  If you get a chance to see these guys the next time they are in town, check them out.  They are a lot of fun.

Carrie (2013)

3 Stars (out of four)

Okay, I have to admit, I was surprised by this one.  Kimberly Pierce's take on one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Carrie, by one of the greatest directors ever, Brian DePalma, is no easy task.  It has huge shoes to fill, ones I thought would be impossible to fill.  When it comes to movies, I like being proved wrong and surprised.  I'm not exactly why it took so long to be released.  As you can see from the original poster, it was supposed to come out 7 months ago.  Usually that is a very bad sign when a movie is delayed that long, usually due to post-production tinkering because it wasn't playing well.  Whatever the case, the extra time served it well.  Unlike the horrible and depressingly long line of pale imitators that came before this one, Kimberly Pierce's Carrie, like Rob Zombie's Halloween, is a superlative remake.

The plot is exactly the same.  Carrie White (played by Chlöe Moretz-Hit Girl from Kick Ass), a pitifully shy and timid girl, has her first period in gym class and is mercilessly taunted and bullied by the popular girls in school.  Unfortunately for her, Carrie does not understand what is happening to her because her domineering and fanatical mother (Julianne Moore, playing at her unhinged best) didn't explain the facts of life to her.  What Carrie begins to understand as well is that she is a telekinetic, she can move objects with her mind.  The girls are punished for being so cruel to Carrie, with the leader of the gang, Chris, losing her prom privileges.  One of the gang, Sue Snell, asks her boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom in contrition to how she treated Carrie earlier.  This does not go over well for Chris or Carrie's mom.  Chris and her boyfriend rig a pail of pig's blood to drop on Carrie after she is elected prom queen.  The cruel trick is perpetrated, and in a fit of rage, Carrie unleashes her telekinesis on the crowd killing many of the attendees.  After the ordeal is over, she goes back home to find her fanatical mother believes Carrie is possessed by the Devil and must kill her.  Carrie kills her mother in self-defense, and in great sorrow, pulls down the house around her and her mother, killing herself in the process.

Normally, in these films, I go off on a screed about what is wrong with them and pontificate that Hollywood is out of touch.  But, this time, I'll start with what's right about it because is is shockingly good.  First, they changed very little of the story.  All the important elements are there (except for DePalma's very famous, or infamous, slow motion opening nude shower scene, but this is a new century.  Just kidding!), from Carrie's traumatic discovery of puberty, to very cruel kids mercilessly taunting her for no particular reason, to her fanatical, abusive mother who offers little solace from the slings and arrows that Carrie endures daily.  Probably the principle reason it is so good is that the original screenwriter, Leonard Cohen, wrote this one, too.  A wise decision by Pierce was taking some of the campiness out of Carrie and have the cast play it straight.  The plot of Carrie is a little out there, so with the superb cast toning it down, it grounds the movie into reality.  This is especially evident in Carrie's mother, a character that is easy to descend into camp because of her fanaticism.  I don't know if it was the feminine sensibilities of Pierce, but her portrayal of Carrie was much more frank and true.  I rematched the original Carrie to compare the two, and I identified more on an emotional level with this new Carrie.  Her feelings and state of mind come through more clearly in this version.  In my opinion, it was easier to identify and empathize with her plight, and it made a sad story even more tragic.  Also, the fact they cast real teenagers in this one instead of early twenty-somethings gives another touch of authenticity.  All in all, the film's tone was much more authentic.  It felt more real.

So why did I only give it three stars instead of four?  Two very big reasons.  Chlöe Moretz is great in this film.  She gives a wonderfully nuanced and believable performance as Carrie.  But the problem is that she is very beautiful and I don't buy her as a mousy and timid girl who would be picked on.  Sissy Spacek, at the time, was willowy and ethereal, and not that pretty in the Hollywood sense as the rest of her co-stars were.  She was heart-breakingly fragile on screen which made you feel more protective of her, and also more shocked at the end in her bloodthirsty rampage where she is an earth-bound Fury.  It is truly a horrifying performance on her part, and utterly believable duality.  Moretz is very good as well, but her beauty undercuts her vulnerability and thus doesn't ring as true.  But that said, she was still great.  Second, the movie wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants the blood-soaked, revenge-filled denouement at the end, but she only kills the bad girls.  In the original, Carrie kills everybody at the prom, friend and foe alike, and even this was toned down from the book where she kills the entire town.  I guess in an age that has seen the real-life horrors of Columbine or Sandy Hook, the movie company did not want to portray a massacre of more children then they had to.  While I am not necessarily advocating showing the slaughter of scores of children onscreen, at the same time, it cuts the horror of what we are seeing when we see Carrie selectively sparing the good people and only killing the bad.  She becomes an avenging angel of justice instead of a rage-fueled force-of-nature Fury come to life from who nobody is safe.  In the end, that is what is scary about Carrie, the randomness of her anger.  In the end, the new version felt like a cheat, and the way Hollywood made up for it was to up the gore quotient.  This, ultimately, removes the gasps of horror and only leaves the hoots and cheers of empty thrills.

Machete Kills

2 Stars (out of four)

Machete Kills is...well, what did you expect it would be?  Is it good?  Depends what you mean by good, but, in the strictest sense, not really.  It's a lot of fun.  It's stupid, it's bombastic, it's dumb, its outrageous, it's funny, it's bloody, it's ridiculous, it's racist, it's idiotic, it's full of attitude, and it's an experience to behold.  It's all these things and more.

If you took the plots of Che, Moonraker, and Superfly and threw them in a pot, stirred them up and cooked that stew for hours, Machete Kills would be the result.  It picks up not long after where Machete left off.  Machete (played again at his snarling best by Danny Trejo), is busting up some bad guy ring or another with his girlfriend (Jessica Alba), the ICE agent who taught him there's more things important than the law, and that's justice.  They are breaking up a weapons smuggling ring by the US Army to some bad guy or another.  More bad guys show up, a gunfight ensues and Alba is shot dead by a mysterious masked man.  Then other guys show up and kill the bad guys and take Machete prisoner.  Turns out they work for the President (played by newcomer Carlos Estevez-or really Charlie Sheen-for those of you who don't know, this is Charlie Sheen's real name).  He says there is a killer in Mexico that has a missile of some sort that can destroy Washington. He sends him on a mission to kill this man.  On the way, Machete is being pursued by a viscous bounty hunter, El Chameleón (played by Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr, Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderes-don't ask).  Then Machete goes to Mexico and.,,I sort of lost track of the plot by this point, but it doesn't really matter.  None of it really does, you just move from one scene to the next and go with it.

I don't really know why, but the writer and director Robert Rodriguez seems intent on being the Steven Spielberg of Ed Wood movies.  He is an auteur of sorts, writing and directing most of his movies as well as editing them, scoring them and acts as his own DP at times.  He has directed El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, From Dusk Til Dawn, Sin City, Planet Terror, Machete, and now Machete Kills.  With the possible exception of the first, every single one of them are bad, pulpy mounds of crap.  But the sad fact is, Rodriguez is a director of no small talent and capability and makes exciting films.  There are several working directors today who don't have anywhere near his considerable abilities and yet Rodriguez continues to make such drivel.  His films are kinetic, exciting, and he works with some of the best talent Hollywood has to offer.  Just consider some of the names he has worked with in the past:  Bruce Willis, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Jessica Alba, George Clooney, Maria Vergara, Harvey Keitel, Michelle Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Eva Mendez, Clive Owen, Fergie, Willem Dafoe, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Cheech Marin, Mickey Rourke. The films are fun, yes, but I see so much more in him.  He could be great, make something great.  It is almost as if he is determined to make the the best made but dumbest movies ever to be projected on the silver screen.  I don't know if he is pulling a fast one or not, but he has yet to make something good.  I have loved most of the films he has made, but I long for a good one.  Maybe A Dame To Kill For, the sequel to Sin City, will be better.  We will have to wait and see.  Until then, we may have to comfort ourselves in the upcoming Machete Kills In Space (don't ask on that one either.)

Rush

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Ron Howard does it again.  While they can't all be hits, the only other two guys in Hollywood that consistently deliver like him are John Lassiter and Steven Spielberg.  Rush is exciting, compelling, and a lot of fun.

Rush is the story of the rivalry between two Formula One drivers, Englishman James Hunt, played by Chris Hemsworth, and Niki Lauda, played by Daniel Brühl.  It takes place during the 1976 Grand Prix season.  These two men were bitter rivals up to this point, but the 1976 season brought it to a head.  Hunt, a devil-may-care thrill seeker and all around mimbo, is dangerously inconsistent, not too smart, but great driver. Lauda, an Austrian, is his polar opposite, intelligent, methodical and careful and not very amiable.  Together their rivalry electrified the world in the 1976 Grand Prix, which culminated in a horrific crash halfway though that almost killed Lauda.  Yet he pulled through and was able to make the last race.

Now, if you are doing a movie about Formula One racing, you have to show races, and boy, are there a lot.  Howard knows how to choreograph great action scenes, and the racing is phenomenal.  But the heart of all Ron Howard pictures are interesting people, and this movie is no exception.  The problem is that the characters are not particularly likable, and this is why I took off half a star.  Hunt, while his bacchanalian lifestyle is the envy of most men (racing fast cars, partying like there is no tomorrow, and does not meet a woman who will not go to bed with him in a moment), is incapable of caring about anyone other than himself.  He is just not a very good person.  He may be fun, but in the end, not a reliable friend at all.  Lauda, on the other hand, is cold, precise and has the intensity of a laser to the exclusion of all else.  He is supremely confident past the point of arrogance in his ability (and rightly so, he was the Grand Prix champion for four years), and really does not care what others think of him.  He does not care who he slights or what feelings he hurts.  Yet these men form a rivalry, and a friendship of sorts, based on mutual respect, both of whom respect very little.  What is interesting is that Lauda, during his honeymoon, says that happiness is an enemy because you then have something to lose.  But after his crash, he grows as a person realizing he does have something to live for in the end.  This is the movie's key redeeming feature and makes it a cut above the rest.  In the end, we must see growth, some change, a character arc.  We get this with Lauda's story, and it makes for a satisfying movie experience.  While these men are not exactly role models to emulate, we can learn from them, and that is what great entertainment does.

Prisoners

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Prisoners is a disturbing film that raises disturbing questions.  It is almost a throwback to the 1970's, a time when events seemed to be spiraling out of our control and our movies reflected a reflexive anger against the powerlessness that we felt. We saw it with such films as Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, The Warriors, and Straw Dogs.  All of these movies are meditations, in their own way, reactions to the increasingly hostile society and our feeling of no protection from it, where the rights of criminals and anarchy reigned over the rights of the victim and law and order.  People saw an increasingly impotent police hamstrung by laws and lawyers who they felt they had no concern for the safety and well-being of society.  These movies posited the only thing one could do was lash back at that decay despite the law.  The punks versus the non-punks locked in a steel cage match with each other because the law and police would not protect us.  Whether or not this is an accurate assessment I won't get into here, because this isn't a political blog like Bill O'Reilly or Ariana Huffington.  But art should, and often does, reflect feelings and frustrations of the public, especially art driven for mass consumption.  And is it any wonder that in a day and society that can produce real-life horrors like Columbine, Sandy Hook or even the Batman theater shootings, that we should see echoes of that horror and disbelief in popular entertainment?  From TV shows as diverse as American Horror Story and Sons of Anarchy, to movies like Hostel, Saw and White Elephant, psychos are in and here to stay.  The question is, what does one do about it?  Prisoners reflects that anxiety.

Prisoners starts out where two very close families are having Thanksgiving together.  When the two youngest daughters are abducted when they go out to play, the two families are obviously thrown into a panic.  After a brief search, a probable suspect is found who is slightly developmentally challenged.   He briefly tries to run from the police in an RV, but crashes into a tree.  A lot of circumstantial evidence points to him as the culprit.  He is thoroughly questioned by the police and his RV is searched, but because he won't talk and there is no evidence to hold him in custody, he has to be released.  When he is released, one of the girls' fathers, Keller Dover, played intensely by Hugh Jackman, is convinced the man did it and kidnaps him.  With the reluctant help from the other father, Fraklin Birch, played by Terrence Howard, they torture this man ruthlessly to get him to talk.  He does not crack, but says cryptic things that may or may not have some meaning to the girls' whereabouts.  As the movie continues, and the police search progresses, the torture gets more intense.  As they torture him, it seems the man Keller and Franklin took may  be innocent.  Or maybe not.

What is interesting in this film is the question, just how far are you willing to go when you are not totally convinced you're right, but you just might be?  Each character who participates in the torture goes to their preconceived limit of acceptability, all of which are different, but they don't stop it.  Keller is obsessed and totally convinced, but doesn't want to do what he is doing.  Franklin has moral qualms about it, but he does not have the fortitude to stand up to Keller to get him to stop.  The crucial point is that Franklin is not weak, but does have serious reservations to what is happening.  The really interesting point happens when Franklin tells his wife Nancy, played by Viola Davis, about it, and after a brief outburst from the man they're holding, she goes along with it as long as Keller will not kill the man.  All layers of gray, but all asking the same question, do you trade your morality and soul for an outcome you desperately want resolved but you may not be 100% it will work.  This is obviously been a question facing our society since the allegations of torture came out of Iraq and elsewhere.  This same question was posed in the film Zero Dark Thirty, with a similar ambiguity by the filmmaker, where they leave the answer up to you, the viewer.  Neither film really takes sides, just posits the question and lets you decide for yourself.

The movie is superlative, but not perfect.  There are two reasons I deducted a half star, but neither have to do with performance.  They both have to do with the story.  The first is that it wraps up a little too neatly and ends abruptly, but is satisfying.  This is intended for mass audiences, after all, so there can't be too much to chew on at the end.  We like our stories to end, and being Americans, end fairly well.  The second is that there is a crucial bit of evidence found that really is too neat and found for no logical reason other than they needed something to set up a boogeyman at the end.  It just abruptly appears in the middle.  There is no reason the detective, played bombastically by Jake Gyllenhaal, to find it, but we needed it so we could tie all things neatly at the end.  It reminds me a little of how they caught on to John Doe in Se7en by tracking his library card.  It stretches reality a little too much and is in there because the script painted itself into a corner.  But otherwise, the movie is taut and suspenseful, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Gravity

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Gravity was not what I expected.  I had heard that it wasn't very good from a person who had seen it. I thought it was going to be like the 2003 film Open Water, a film where a shipwrecked couple ends up in shark-infested waters.  It gets more and more intense until SPOILER ALERT!!! they end up getting eaten at the end.  With the Gravity previews, the film had a similar feel.  But, to my surprise, it was something I did not expect.

Gravity starts with Dr. Ryan Stone, Sandra Bullock's character who is assigned to a space shuttle mission testing a new sensor foe the Hubble telescope.  During an EVA mission, the Russians destroyed one of their satellites which causes a storm of space debris that destroys the shuttle and sends Ryan hurtling off into space.  George Clooney's character, Matt Kowalsky, manages to save her and gets her back to the destroyed shuttle.  They decide to go to the International Space Station to use the Soyuz capsule to get back to Earth.  Bad situation follows bad situation.  Will she get back?  Will she die?  You have to see it.

I don't want to give away the ending, but I do have to give away some details.  Ryan ends up on her own fairly quickly.  So, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, this is really an acting exercise.  Sandra must carry this film on her own, and she does it incredibly well.  But a good acting performance isn't enough.  The movie has to be compelling, it has to be entertaining, and this movie has both in spades.  It is equally exciting during the space scenes and emotional when events slow down.  The action scenes are incredible. They do, however, remind me a little of Armageddon, as thing after thing keeps going wrong, bouncing from worse to worse situation.  But the best, and most important part is, it is incredibly life-affirming.   Alfonse Cuáron is known for creating scenes of great majesty and beauty, and this film is no exception.  The only criticism I have with the film is that there really isn't a lot to it, the same as Cast Away.  There is only so much you can or can't do with only one character, so there tends to be a lot of wasted time on vistas rather than a story.  However, I would recommend that if anyone see it, see it in IMAX.  Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, it will lose a lot on a smaller screen.  Other than that, it is very tight, very watchable and worth the time.

Captain Phillips

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Captain Phillips is the first shot across the bow for this Oscar season.  It is truly a good film, and approaches great.  I am hoping we will be gretting some more shows like this during this season.  I was beginning to think that intelligence was dead in American cinema, but most times, the Christmas Oscar season restores my faith that Hollywood is still vital when it wants to be.  It may be gasping for breath, but quality still exists.

Captain Phillips' story is known to most people who have any inkling of recent events.  Phillips, ably played by Tom Hanks, was a captain of an American merchant container ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2010 while it was transiting around the Horn of Africa.  After a brief standoff on the ship, he convinces the pirates off the ship, but they take him hostage in a lifeboat.  By this time, the US Navy caught up with them and he was rescued by a team of Navy Seal sharpshooters on the open seas.  The real events were a dramatic demonstration to most Americans of how bad the situation is around Somalia since it caught the news cycle as Phillips is an American. The film is a dramatic retelling of the events.

The crucial element about Captain Phillips that makes it so good is not only does it make the events nail-bitingly compelling, but it gives a human face to the pirates.  It does not make the pirates look like good guys, but it shows what a bad situation from which these men come.  They are not evil, merely incredibly desperate.  It makes the point that most of the pirates are not criminal masterminds; they are mostly unemployed fishermen who don't know how to do anything else.  They are also not particularly smart and are also not the recipients of the ransoms they demand.  They simply are pawns for gang lords who take the money from them.  The movie is not trying to make you feel sorry for them, rather trying to let you know how complicated the situation in Somalia is.  The main Somali pirate, Muse, seems out of his depth most of the time.  From trying to prove himself to his elders and tribe, to securing the ship, to keeping a particularly psychotic member of his crew calm, to dealing with the arrival of the Navy, to finally being sentenced to prison, he always seems to just be barely keeping his head above water.  He walks around bewildered, not prepared for how fluid the situation gets, and shows he is not particularly adaptable.  What he naïvely thinks should be simple! a snatch-and-grab with an easy payoff, rapidly spins out of his ability to control.  His situation is almost pitiful.  He is just not meant for this type of work.  In the end, it is just sad more than anything.

Tom Hanks is as brilliant as ever.  But what I liked about this film was that it, however briefly, dealt with the aftermath of the kidnapping, rather than ending immediately after the rescue.  You see that, because of the stress and worry, after Phillips was rescued, he breaks down sobbing and is almost incoherent.  This is something we do not usually see in these types of stories, yet is a very real outcome in hostage situations.  The only reason this movie does not get four stars is because the director keeps using the vomit-cam (the bouncing, hand-held camera style so popular these days).  Now, I realize the movie is shot on the high seas and that they are never still, but Jaws was also shot on the ocean, and there was not the bouncing as in this one.  I know filmmakers think it gives the film a touch of realism or edginess, but to me it just looks sloppy, and literally makes me sick.  Since I don't want to be nauseous when I watch a film, I really wish people would stop using this technique except sparingly.  The movie otherwise is great and worth the time.

Honeymoon In Vegas

1 Star (out of four)

First off, I must apologize to Hollywood for an earlier statement.  I said when did Hollywood just assume our IQs just dropped precipitously?  Rhenish I first wrote that, I thought it was recently, but it wasn't recently.  Turns out they have always believed we were incredibly stupid if they thought this stinkburger was comedy.  Google's dictionary defines the word comedy thusly,

"professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh."

Honeymoon In Vegas meets only one of these criteria.  It is professional (sort of).  It is not entertaining, there are no jokes that I could see except for a good one at the end (which is why this gets one star instead of being a bomb), it does have satirical situations, I guess.  But the key is the second part, "intended to make the audience laugh."  On this, it fails miserably.

Honeymoon In Vegas starts off innocently enough.  A man, played by Nicholas Cage, makes a promise to his domineering mother on her deathbed he will never marry, resulting in severe commitment issues.  He meets a wonderful girl (the pretty but oh so tragically horse-faced Sarah Jessica Parker) and they date for years.  Finally he relents and takes her to Las Vegas to get married.  While there, mobster James Caan sees them and instantly falls in love with her.  He cons Cage's character in a card game.  In order for Cage to settle the debt, the mobster asks to have Parker's character for the weekend, where Caan then tries to convince her to marry him.  Cage then bounces between Nevada and Hawaii and back to Nevada in a desperate attempt to get her back.

God, where do I start?  First, at the weekend in Vegas, there is an Elvis impersonator convention going on, so the soundtrack is all Elvis music and there are Elvi everywhere.  While this is mildly amusing (and a little surreal), it gets old real fast. You see thin Elvi, fat Elvi, old Elvi, young Elvi, short Elvis, REALLT tall Elvis, black Elvis, Indian (turban and all) Elvi, a kid Elvis, Elvis, Elvis, Elvis.  I like Elvis as much as the next person, but it is possible to get too much of a good thing.  I thought the Elvis thing was done to much better effect in the quirky (and surprisingly violent) 3000 Miles To Graceland with Kevin Costner and Kurt Russel.  The one actually funny joke is that to get back to Vegas from Hawaii, Cage hitches a ride with The Flying Elvises, a skydiving team.  Their cavalier attitude towards what they do and how they dress is pretty funny, but this cannot make up for 80 minutes of not-funny that precedes this joke.

Next, it is not the actors' fault they have to read such crap.  It is their fault for agreeing to be in such a stupid movie.  Nick Cage's performance is great, James Caan plays Sonny Corleone again.  But the sad waste is Sarah Jessica Parker.  She can do comedy (as we amply saw later in Sex And The City).  While she was the weakest link in that show, she is funny and there is a certain something about her.  But she and her talents are absolutely wasted in the dumb blonde role of this movie.  Granted, she is angry to be passed off as a prize in a bet (And I take it back.  There are two good jokes in the movie.  When she realizes and then loudly proclaims that Cage has made her a whore in the middle of a crowded room, the reactions of everyone is very funny), but are we honestly expected to believe that she would go from ready to marry a fiancé whom she has dated for 2+ years to move on and marry a much older man after four days in Hawaii?  I realize comedy expects us to suspend disbelief to swallow the absurdity of whatever situation we're watching, but this stretches the bounds of reality way too much.

I could go on and on tearing apart this big steaming mass, but suffice to say it is dumb, dumb, dumb, and pretty insulting as well, to women in particular.  I guess I am so vehement in this review because I have heard for years how funny film this was supposed to be.  Maybe it is a casualty of shifting comedic tastes through the years, but it sucks, and I feel betrayed.  It all comes back to story.  If you have a good script, the rest will follow.  If you have a bad one, well, you can keep a dung beetle as a pet, but you still have two problems.  It's a bug and it eats crap, which is exactly what the producers of this film make us do by watching it.