Belle

3 Stars (out of four)

Belle actually surprised me a bit.  The ads paint this as a movie about a young, mixed-race girl in mid-1700's England and the struggles she is up against in an intolerant and very class-conscious society, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart. And while that is the main crux of the story, there is so much more.

Belle starts when a young British Admiral delivers his illegitimate daughter, Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a result of a union between him and a slave, to his father to look after her while he is away.  The father (played by Tom Wilkenson-Hollywood's go-to guy when they need a stuffy Brit) is no less than the Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice of England, one of England's highest legal positions.  He already is looking after another niece as well, and he and his wife raise the girls together as their own, but is subject to a few more rules.  She cannot eat with her family in company for one.  So she has status, but not really.  Anyway, Lord Mansfield is overseeing a case where a slave ship intentionally drowned its cargo and is attempting to collect on an insurance claim of damaged or lost cargo.  The outcome of the case would signal the beginning of the end of slavery in England as a legal institution.  The story is based on true events, but true to Hollywood style, only loosely.

The story mostly focuses on Dido and her status in English high society.  It repeatedly makes comparisons of English marriage to slavery, where marriages are economic transactions and women, the assets of that transaction.  The theme of "people are not items or property" is hammered home repeatedly in case you missed it the first nine times it was brought up, and this is the central problem with the movie.  It takes on too many themes, and cheapens them all by its ambition.  There have been a few movies that have touched on slavery and racism lately: Amistad, The Help, Lee Daniel's The Butler,12 Years A Slave, yes, even Django Unchained. While they all attempt to be great, they all fall short of the mark for one reason or another.  In Belle's case, there is a profound movie from a feminist perspective, women being treated like cattle.  This would have been a great movie on its own.  It would also have been a great anti-slavery movie as well, focusing on the crucial court case.  But the court case backstory seems shoehorned in, so as to give the movie's message more weight.  This forced plot has the effect of undercutting the impact either plot has, making both fairly ineffective and reducing what could have been a great film to sub-par status.

That doesn't mean it's all bad.  The movie is sumptuous and beautiful.  It is exquisitely acted and shot.  It is a little ham-handed in its storytelling, and is especially trite when it comes to how the soundtrack is used.  Virtually every Hollywood cliché is evident, further cheapening the film's dramatic impact in my opinion. It's sad, because this film could have had some heft, but instead is kind of forgetful.  This is unfortunate, considering the importance of the message in today's society, where we still grapple with the problems that the reprehensible practice of slavery wrought.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

3 Stars (out of four)

Don't let the rating fool you.  This is a pretty good movie.  It certainly is entertaining and thrilling, but it lacks a certain...gravitas, for lack of a better word.

Days of Future Past (from now, DOFP), is the new installment in the admittedly checkered X-Men franchise.  The plot centers around two key characters, Wolverine and Mystique.  In the future, our merry band of mutants have been virtually eliminated because of a key event that happened in the past.  This event gave rise to the anti-mutant killing machines, the sentinels.  Wolverine is sent back to the past to try to change this key event and prevent the future war.  (If this plot is beginning to sound a tad familiar, then "I'll be back!"). That's pretty much it without giving away any spoilers.  But it does reunite the old 90's cast with the newer, younger cast from First Class, a move that was both fresh and imaginative.

But is the movie good, you ask?  Well, actually, it is.  This movie has, to an extent, redeemed the franchise, with the awful X3: The Last Stand being an incredibly disappointing, almost end to the franchise considering the strength go the original source material.  The X-Men series is actually an odd part of the movies of the Marvel universe.  Marvel Studios has actually done a superb job over the last 6 years with the release of the original Iron Man in 2008. They have deftly woven a complex set of stories that can be viewed individually or collectively with just as much to the viewer without making any one story too dependent on the other.  This has been a masterful stroke, but it wasn't always so.  When Bryan Singer started the franchise in 2000, there were no other models to go by other than a couple lesser known characters like Blade, and he showed it was possible to make great Marvel movies, because at this point, there was only Superman and Batman which had both careened horribly off the rails.  The X-Men started a new optimism in super hero movies in that they could be good and entertaining.  Now, when compared to Iron Man or The Avengers, it seems downright creaky, but at that point, this was the only competition...

...so there was nowhere really to go, but up.  The problem was, they got sequelitis and they just got worse and worse.  The other odd thing is that the X-Men live in a curiously detached universe since Marvel doesn't really own them, similarly to Spider-Man.  So, while this great franchise got worse and worse, it was losing its vitality, Wolverine movies aside, which I kind of enjoyed.

Reenter Bryan Singer.  With First Class (which he had nothing to do with), and now DOFP, the children of the atom got the shot in the arm they so desperately needed.  There's a long way to go, but this is a great start in the right direction.  Now, it's not perfect.  The plot doesn't make too much sense when you really think about it, but let's face it, what superhero movie does?  But that is no excuse foe laziness.  The movie also seems to suffer from some post-production editing gone awry, further adding to some confusion.  There are some muddled scenes and some that don't make much sense except for spectacle.  But there is great characterization and ties the older and younger casts and their plot lines seamlessly and beautifully.  This new discipline in the X-Men universe, similar to that in The Avengers is heartening, and hopefully we will see more great things from Xavier and his School for Gifted Youngsters.

The reason why the Marvel universe works so well in movies is that the characters in the source material were specifically written as metaphors to real issues with their readers, and these mythologies translate well dramatically.  We can't really relate to Superman, an alien god, or with Batman, unless you are a billionaire whose parents were gunned down in a robbery in front of you.  But Marvel characters have real problems we can relate to: gawky teenager, being ostracized by your birth characteristics, duality in nature, alcoholism, responsibility, etc.  it is the stuff of great drama, and I hope this upward trend in storytelling will continue.  I like this newfound respect Hollywood has given to superheroes and to those us fans in the audience.  No more are we seeing lazy, give-'em-crap-because-they'll-watch-anything attitude we saw in Batman & Robin (Yes, Akiva Goldsman, I'm looking at you.  How do you still have a job in Hollywood?). Hopefully, Days of Future Past is a precursor of things to come.  I think the X-Men franchise has been revitalized and off to a good, new start.

Godzilla (2014) vs. Godzilla (1998) with a tip of the hat to Godzilla (1954)

2 Stars (out of four) - For both.  There, I said it!

Okay, confession time, full disclosure.  I have never been a big Godzilla fan, and frankly, I don't get it.  I have seen four of the films all the way through: the original (groundbreaking stuff-both versions), Destroy All Monsters (incredibly awful), Roland Emmerich's much-reviled remake (I think I am the only person on Earth who enjoyed it), and now the new one.  I have seen snippets of many others, but that's it.  Now, I want to be a fan, it looks like a lot of fun to be one, but I may have missed the window of opportunity for that.  I really think you needed to be hooked as a child, and that was never possible for me.  Now, I watch the films through adult eyes and frankly, they pretty much suck consistently across the board.  Every time a new one is made, I want to be part of the spectacle, to get caught up in the collective fun of the experience, but I just can't do it.  I am a movie fan, and I love all kinds.  I have never lost the giddy feeling of sitting in a darkened theater in anticipation of a new experience.  But Godzilla, taken as a whole series or genre, really sucks.

Now, let's get this new one out of the way.  It is fun to watch. Godzilla movies, as a whole, are spectacle and pretty interchangeable from what I have seen.  The complaints I have with this new one include that it takes waaaaay too long in the reveal, both from the SPOILER ALERT! (Oh hell, it's a Godzilla film.  What does it matter?) bad-guy kaiju (or in this case, MOTU) to Godzilla himself.  The film is one big reveal for close to 90-minutes with a pretty epic 15-20 minute battle at the end.  The film also laughingly puts in a few human characters who we, I guess, are supposed to care about, but they are just as stupid as the plot itself.  Also, let's face it.  Humans don't really matter in a Godzilla film.  They are there just to move the plot along and for exposition, which truthfully, no one really cares about.  The effects are a lot of fun.  I am going to come down squarely on the CGI side of the argument.  Some of the effects are breathtaking, and CGI just adds to the epic size of the monster and makes it more real(!).

So, I am going to take on the inevitable comparison between the 1998 Roland Emmerich version and the new 2014 version (which from here on I will refer to as 98 and 14).  I will first say to all of you:  IT'S A FREAKIN' GODZILLA MOVIE!  THE DIFFERENCES DON'T MATTER!  THEY ARE BOTH EQUALLY BAD FOR THE SAME REASONS!!!  It may just be easier to take on some of the more pervasive complaints for 98 that I have seen and address them individually:

1. Godzilla looks stupid/nothing like the original:  And here we go into the suit versus CGI debate.  The whole idea of 98 was to make Godzilla more "real."  Granted, the attempt failed sort of miserably, but that is besides the point.  The filmmakers should be applauded for at least trying something new, to put their own unique stamp on the mythos to make it stand out.  It certainly looks better than another cheesy guy-in-a-suit contraption.  Unfortunately, 98's attempt seems to overly rely on the only successful model they had, which brings us to:

2.  It is a blatant ripoff of Jurassic Park:  Can't argue about this one.  From the overall design of Godzilla to the especially egregious baby Godzillas in the Madison Square Garden ending, there are scenes that are lifted almost shot-for-shot from Jurassic Park.  Speilberg should sue.  Now, that said, I remember watching the movie and marveling to myself about the advent of this new technology.  Remember, this was 1998, and CGI as we know it today was still in its infancy.  98 was the first time I remember thinking to myself that we could now do anything with CGI.  Jurassic Park didn't have quite the same impact on me because of the great, seamless integration of practical versus digital effects.  Speilberg's version is much more believable; and I think, Exhibit A on how to use CGI.  It is a tool, not a means to an end, and should be used sparingly.  An example on the other side of this spectrum is the Star Wars prequels.  The totally artificial worlds were, while eye-popping and gorgeous, were also curiously lifeless.  But in 98, the possibilities of CGI were endless.

3.  The acting performances sucked:  Maybe so, but what do you want?  It's freaking Godzilla, not Gone With The Wind!  Would 98 have benefitted from better acting?  Well, 14 had Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanbe in it, and I have to say, the answer is a resounding NO!!!  I am not trying to denigrate any actor's performance in any of the movies, but there is only so much you can do in a Godzilla movie, because actors are merely talking scenery in these films.  All you need an actor to do in these movies is to look up bug-eyed and scream, "Oh my God!" and that's really it.  You might also need to throw a white coat on one to babble on about some egg-headed pseudo-scientific blather occasionally, another one in a uniform to yell at the egghead about the uselessness of their weapons or the end of the world or something and some gal in a suit to wax philosophically about the hubris of man, blah, blah, blah.  The holy trinity of Godzilla archetypes.  Just because you have better actors in a movie will not improve a crappy story.  For example, just because Mark Wahlberg is in Transformers 4 will not make it a better film.  Transformers 3 didn't suck because Shia LeBeouf was in it.  It sucked all on its own.  So does any Godzilla film.

4.  The script was awful/the jokes sucked:  Again , no argument here.  But, really, what do you have to compare it to?  I have seen Godzilla do a flying kick through the air, Bruce Lee-style, to the back of a monster.  I have seen him have an annoying son, Star Wars Holiday Special-style.  So a Siskel & Ebert doppelgänger or the continual mispronunciation of a character's name or the American-bashing French are so much worse?  Come on...get over yourself.

5.  Godzilla doesn't use his atomic breath and various other "this isn't what he's like in the other movies" bitching:  The one complaint I will give any credence to is that 98 keeps changing his size, similar to King Kong in the original.  Again, they were trying something new.  It's a Godzilla film!  Aficionados of the earlier movies not only apologize for the cheesiness of the effects, they embrace it, citing that suitmation is an art all unto itself.  While yes, this may be true, it is an outdated art no longer keeping with the times and should not be taken seriously.  Stop-motion animation is a perfect example of this phenomenon of outdated techniques.  Younger people snicker at the stop-motion effects of films like King Kong, Jason & The Argonauts, Sinbad, and Clash of the Titans.  They say it looks fake, and in truth, when compared to the effects of today, does take you out of the movie.  Because of the realism of CGI, it has made the former great art form of stop-motion a dinosaur, appropriate for animated pics and not much else today.  So why this clinging to a guy in a suit?  I don't get it.

All in all, 98 and 14 are both perfectly acceptable and entertaining fare and there is not much difference between them and any other Godzilla flick.  All you Godzilla snobs (wow, there is something I never thought I'd write) out there need to understand that in the end, Godzilla kind of sucks.  It's all disposable entertainment, really.  It is not great entertainment by any stretch of the imagination outside of the nostalgia it engenders.  And if that is what you like, fine, watch the old ones.  But we should be demanding that new ones should be better, to keep our imagination and ultimately the genre, vital and fresh, not retreads of the same old crap time and time again.

I need to conclude this discussion with a tip of the hat to the one Godzilla film that actually is a no-kidding, serious attempt to make a point, the original 1954 film.  It truly was and is a great piece of filmmaking for a few reasons.  First and foremost, as has been repeated ad nauseum, it was a critique on the dangers of atomic power.  Remember, at the time of its development, Japan was only 8 years removed from the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  That's less time at this writing that the distance to 9/11 to today, and consider how much the effects from that attack still gnaw at us.  I'm not trying to elicit a comparison, just merely pointing out that Japan has a fairly unique view on the dangers of atomic/nuclear power, and at the time, it was still a raw, open wound for them.  Sci-fi, as a genre, has always been a good vehicle to attack controversial issues by putting them in a hyperbolic light, emphasizing the message you hope to tell without being too confrontational about it.  There have been many Japanese movies dealing with the bomb, but Godzilla, to this day, is the only one with any lasting resonance to an international audience precisely because of the universal fear of the big monster (Mother Nature gone amok) that will kill us all.  It took a serious warning and transplanted it into an entertaining, albeit frightening vision of the consequences of interfering with nature.  It is too bad the original with its serious tone and themes has devolved into a monster-of-the-week schlockfest, but that is commerce, and the inevitability of making a buck.  Toho Studios produced amazing effects for the time.  Yes, it was a man in a suit stomping around a model Tokyo, but that had never been done to such effect before.  Toho even considered stop-motion animation, but it took too long, so they came up with an inspired solution, and the rest is history.  Over the years, the Godzilla series has become similar to the James Bond series, in that it is a reflection of issues of the day.  Both, for the most part, don't stand up well to scrutiny, but that is not the point.  The point is to entertain while staying relevant.  And yes, while Godzilla has spawned some pretty horrific crap, it will be forever popular because all those little kids that continue to watch it in darkened theaters and Saturday morning marathons, and in the end, that is not such a bad thing.

Joe

3 Stars (out of four)

Joe is being hailed as Nicholas Cage's triumphant return to Indie films, and boy, is it ever!  It is such a shame that Cage made a lot of bad career choices over the last decade.  He used to be King of the Indies, giving consistently solid performances time and again, which culminated in his incredible, and incredibly depressing, Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas.

And then something went horribly wrong.

Maybe it was the newfound job offers, but bad decision after bad decision piled higher and higher until he became somewhat of a joke.  Don't believe me?  Consider some of the stinkers he's made since then:  Ghost Rider, Season of the Witch, Astroboy, Bangkok Dangerous, National Treasure, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Wicker Man, Captain Corelli's Violin, 8MM.  All suckeroos for the most part.  And while he did some good stuff occasionally, he never really hit his stride, but hopefully Joe will put him back on the right path.

Cage plays Joe, an ex-con who is somewhat of a legend in a small town.  He is basically a good man, but has a violent temper and a comparably violent past.  He runs a work crew that clears Forest areas for lumber companies.  One day, Gary (Ty Sheridan), a 15-year-old drifter shows up at Joe's worksite asking for a job.  Joe takes him on, and as the movie progresses, becomes an unlikely role model for Gary.  Gary supports his drifter family, squatting in a condemned house, and is at loggerheads with his alcoholic and abusive father, Wade (played with son of a bitch menace by Gary Poulter).  When Wade pushes Gary and Joe too far by his actions, there is a very violent denouement that redeems Joe.

This is not an easy movie to watch.  It deals with the conflicting pulls of being a masculine man in hard times as well as the temptation and horrible consequences of dealing with problems through violence.  There is nothing heroic here, merely the ugliness of everyday violence and its often tragic ending.  It is difficult to watch scenes where Wade physically abuses his son terribly to get money for that next drink.  Yet Gary feels a responsibility, even love bordering on hate relationship with his father. It's all he knows, and he is stuck with him.  So when Joe becomes almost a surrogate father for Gary, he sees for the first time that life doesn't have to be scrounging in garbage cans and squatting in abandoned houses.  Both Cage and Sheridan are electrifying in their performances, but Cage is working with all cylinders firing in this one.  It is a performance impossible to ignore and should be seen.

Jodorowsky's Dune

4 Stars (out of four)

Jodorowsky's Dune is a documentary on one of the greatest films never made.  We all know David Lynch adapted Frank Herbert's seminal science fiction novel Dune in 1984 with Kyle MacLachlan and how he famously took his name off a reedited longer cut.  It was also adapted into a three-part miniseries by the Sci-Fi Channel in 2000.  But the first attempt to adapt the movie was made in 1974 by Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director of the Svhlockfests El Topo and The Sacred Mountain (La Montaña Sagrada).  This documentary takes you on the bizarre trip of how Jodorowski put together possibly one of the most artistically talented cast and crews ever assembled (including such people like Jean Giraud aka Mœbius, Chris Foss, Dan O'Bannon (Blade Runner, Alien), H.R. Giger (Alien, Species), Salvador Dali, David Carradine, and Orson Welles), worked for two years on the project and had the whole movie ready to go, and yet failed to raise the last $5 million and studio backing.  The film is a documentary, a how-to on making movies, a cautionary tale, and in the end, a life-affirming piece of great entertainment about a man who aspired to make a movie that would totally change the consciousness of the industry and viewers.

At the center of the film is Jodorowsky himself.  The man, despite being 84 at the time of filming, is more full of life than people 2/3 his age, and his enthusiasm is incredibly infectious.  He is a charming Svengali, which probably explains why he got so many talented people to work for him despite the fact his movies are ultra outrè, hits on the midnight circuit but little elsewhere.  He is full of charm and showmanship with a little (or not so little) bit of con man thrown in.  Whatever the secret, his charisma makes you care for him and his plight instantly.  His stories are fun, tragic, and wickedly funny.  Everyone interviewed in the movie are under his spell, and you may also find yourself there as well by the end of the film.  You certainly are rooting for him by that point.  He takes you step by step through the entire process, how he recruited his artists (he calls them spiritual warriors) both in front of and behind the camera.  He got Mœbius, already famous at this point in Europe, to do his storyboards.  He got Salvador Dali to agree to play the mad Emperor.  He got Orson Welles to agree to play Baron Harkonnen.  He got Chris Foss, an English artists who was famous for book covers, to do his vehicle designs.  He got Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger, who would later design Alien with Foss to design the sets.  It is a literal dream team of technicians.

It is also a cautionary tale, especially for artists who always have to deal with the art versus commerce conundrum.  The movie, and most of the interviewees, are absolutely convinced on the artistic merits of the project.  They eloquently make the case of how groundbreaking this film would have been and the effect it may have had if it had come out before Star Wars.  Remember, this was 1972-74, when the only really significant science fiction film made was 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Star Wars changed the cultural landscape for movies in general and sci-fi in particular.  Before then, sci-fi was scoffed at as not being serious, simply midnight movie schlock.  When Jodorowsky and his producers tried to sell it to Hollywood, they had two big problems: the attitude toward sci-fi and the director himself.  The only reference they had at this point was the hallucinogenic weirdness of 2001, and a director who had 1. Never produced anything remotely profitable in America and 2. wanted to create that LSD-inspired weirdness which the studios did not understand and thought that the success of 2001 was a fluke.  The lesson to artists, especially ones aspiring to showbiz, is this:  Know your audience you are speaking to.  They have a name for people who have uncompromising visions they want to share:  it's called a starving artist.  Like it or not, if you want to make a dollar and a cent in art, there are always commercial considerations.

Finally, though, it is life-affirming.  Jodorowsky extols his audience to always be ambitious.  It's better to shoot for the stars and hit the mountain than shoot at the mountain and hit the ground.  Despite that this was a life-crushing failure to Jodorowsky by his own admission, he used his designs and story to make several award-winning comic books (The Incal, The Technopriests, The Metabarons) that are universally praised and he has started filmmaking again at 84.  He even addresses the Dune projects made later (his reaction is priceless).  All in all, a fantastic movie all together and I cannot recommend more highly.  See it at your earliest convenience.  You'll be glad you did.  I know I was.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

3 Stars (out of four)

Sometimes it pays to go in with lowered expectations.  With that, you are usually pleasantly surprised.  Now I'm sure producers don't like to hear that kind of talk, but that was the exact experience I had with The Amazing Spider 2 (TAS2 for the sake of brevity).  Full disclosure now, I saw the first one and absolutely loved it, so I was excited to see what would be cranked out in TAS2.  When I saw the first posters and clips, my heart sank.  What I saw promised to be yet another overblown crapfest that collapses under its own weight a la Iron Man 2, Spider-Man 3, all three of the Star Wars prequels, and yes, even The Avengers.  But surprise of surprises, TAS2 turned out to be pretty good.  I expected a film just overblown with sequelitis, but instead got a fairly good time.

TAS2 picks up right where TAS1 left off, where Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is going into college, dealing with life, his job at the Daily Bugle and his way-out-of-his-league girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone).  The mutated spider program was killed at Oscorp and the corporation is handed over to Harry Osbourne, son of Norman, Oscorp's disgraced and now deceased founder.  Harry and Peter are childhood friends as their fathers worked together in the past.  More light is shed on the shady events surrounding Peter's parents' death.  In comes Max Dillon (Jaime Foxx), a socially inept electrical engineer who works for Oscorp and is transformed into Electro, a tragic villain who can absorb and expel electricity.  There is a big fight, Harry takes up the mantle of the Green Goblin and something else happens to Gwen to which all Spider-Man fans are aware (issue 121).

This is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.  The story is a little big for the time allowed, but it is a good one.  Andrew Garfield is an amazing standout for Peter Parker, MUCH better than Tobey Macguire, himself not half bad.  But Garfield is Peter, a gawky kid (in real life 25) who is a genius, but is struggling to deal with his two lives.  Emma Stone is great as Gwen, much closer to the original comic than Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane.  I am not trashing Macguire and Dunst.  They are fine.  But Garfield and Stone are almost cut from the pages of the source.  My only issue with them, Stone in particular, is how they are represented.  I realize this is a comic book story and some suspension of disbelief is necessary, but are we really expected to believe Gwen Stacy's character?  There is literally nothing wrong with her.  A college freshman who looks like she walked out of an Abercrombie ad, slutty-good-girl clothes and all, works as a senior lab tech for one of the most prestigious labs in the world and is being considered for an Oxford scholarship.  She is a wonderful person and is the perfect girlfriend.  I half-expected her to be volunteering at a vegan animal shelter saving kittens on the street.  There is trouble in paradise, however, as her Oxford opportunity is straining her relationship with Peter.

The biggest casualties in this movie are Max and Harry.  The movie tries to portray both of their villainhoods as tragic consequences beyond their control.  But we can't get invested enough in their stories to really care because no real time is spent on their motivations.  Thus, the movie throws away a golden opportunity to use the talents of an Oscar winning actor by making him, at times, a cross between Inspector Cleuseau/Dopey on the one hand and Jesse Ventura/Hitler on the other.  Neither work particularly well, but there is some pathos there.  Harry, on the other hand, starts as a tragic figure, turns into a rich, spoiled brat, to a bizarro offspring of the Joker and Minnie Pearl.  This Goblin, while better than the original Spideys, comes off goofily scary.  They also introduce the Rhino at the end, but this feels shoehorned in so the producers can set up The Sinister Six (Non-geeks, don't worry.  It will come up later).  In the end, I say to you, don't believe the critics. It's not bad, and fairly brainless fun.  Worth a watch.

Just don't expect TOO much.

Casablanca Vs Barb Wire - Special 100th Review!!!

Casablanca -  4 Stars (out of four)

Barb Wire - BOMB

Okay, see if this plot sounds familiar.  Set in a backdrop of war in a free city in occupied country, a hard-drinking, world-weary former resistance fighter now runs the most popular club in a desperate town.  This is the last town where anyone can get a plane to freedom as long as you have the money.  This nightclub owner gas an unusual assortment of employees and has comfortable relationships with the corrupt police chief as well as the grossly overweight underworld chief.  One day, an old flame from the past steps back into the club with their spouse and asks the club owner to help get them out of the city to freedom.  See, the spouse is an important figure in the resistance, and the totalitarian government is stopping at nothing to find this leader. The club owner, scarred and heartbroken by a perceived betrayal from the old flame at first refuses to help.  But when the authorities close up and smash the club, it causes a shift in the owner's thoughts.  See, the owner is holding an item that will help anyone pass through customs without question.  Some of the owner's friends help convince the owner to help the leader by appealing to once-shunned idealism, and the old flame tries to briefly rekindle their relationship.  The owner decides to help, goes to the underworld chief to provide the means to leave, and then evades the authorities until they get near the airport.  The owner then shoots the leader of the authorities, and with the help of the corrupt police chief, get the old flame and leader on the plane.  At this point, the chief expresses his admiration go the owner.  Do you remember it?

If you answered Barb Wire, the magnum opus from Pamela Anderson Lee, you would be correct. What, you were expecting something else? Of course, most of you probably would be thinking of Casablanca, one of the greatest and iconic movies ever made.  Yes, dear readers, the mind-numbing crapfest Barb Wire is, whether anyone realizes it or not, a remake of Casablanca, with the exact same plot, characters and sequence of events.  It is interesting to note that Casablanca was a throwaway movie for Warner Bros., just another from the slate of movies they were making.  Shot in just under two weeks or so, it was a movie that was just like any other being filmed on the lot.  Yet, it became one of the best of the best ever.  Barb Wire, by contrast, was shot like most small to medium sized budget films with a respectable crew.  And it is basically the exact same movie as one of the greatest of all time.  So where does Barb Wire go so horribly wrong?

1. Never let teenagers write your script.  Well, they may not have been teenagers, but they were definitely writing for them.  I've said it before, time and again, what matters is the script.  The funny thing is, the template they used is a great one.  It was an adult romance written for adults, with a lot of subtext to what is happening in the film.  We all know that Rick and Ilsa have sex in the scene in Casablanca, but the film leaves it to your imagination with subtle hints and clues in the dialog.  Barb Wire has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the side of the head.  Barb is a club owning, resistance fighting, bounty hunting hooker with the heart of gold.  She can be vulnerable, but is also tougher than all the guys around her.  And like all late 80's and early 90's action flicks, she even has a tag line, "Don't call me babe."  A prototypical feminist icon for a new century, right?  Well...not exactly.  Which brings us to...

2. The entire film is a straight-up exploitation flick masking as an action-filled Casablanca.  Exploitation films had their heyday in the 70's and early 80's.  These cheapie films tended to be gut-churningly violent and hyper-sexualized.  Women were often protagonists and victims in these films.  They often had scenes of brutal rapes and queasy torture, often with women as the victims.  But what was important, more than anything else was shock/schlock.  They often played in midnight Grindhouse theaters and run-down drive-ins.  Plot, when present at all, was secondary to style.  Barb Wire has the grimy feeling of these old exploitation films.  It opens with Pam Anderson doing an extended strip dance with her showing a lot of boobs.  In fact, the movie really should called boobs, considering the oversized (pun intended) role they play throughout the film.  Yes, they play the role better than Pam (more on that later).  The movie's producers insisted on more nudity and violence, and thus the extended dance sequence.  But there are also some surprisingly brutal torture sequences as well, mostly directed against women.  Women are either victims or hookers in this movie with few exceptions.  It's interesting that one of the main screenwriters was a woman, Ilene Chaikin.  Now, I'm not sure what parts she did or didn't write, but I am surprised she let them use her name in the credits considering the overall tone of the pic.

3.  Actors should be able to, you know, ACT.  Now, we can't put all the blame on the actors.  There's only so much you can do with lines like, "Don't call me babe."  But this movie is so dumb, that the actors call attention to the mind-numbing dumbness by delivering their lines as if they were asleep. IMDB notes in the trivia section that the first director was fired for how bad the dailies were.  If this is the acceptable finished product, I have to seriously ask about the competence of the entire cast and crew.  Everyone delivers their lines in what appears to be first takes of scripts handed to them five minutes before the camera rolled.  As stated earlier, Pam's boobs have a wider range of (e)motion than Pam herself, and as such, should awarded an Oscar all their own.  Pam Anderson can never be accused of being a master thespian in any of our roles.  Watching her in anything is akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion.  It's fascinating to behold and terrible in its consequences in the lives of all who experience it.  There are several B-List actors who do a passable job at characters they have created in the past, most notably Udo Keir and Clint Howard.  But the rest of the actors are an insult to acting in particular, and living, feeling people in general.

4.  Great stunts and atmosphere do not make up for lack of craft.  Many actors complain that crew and directors think of them as talking scenery, not serious artists who want to do their part to make the film good.  This is the exact opposite problem of Barb Wire.  The atmosphere and scenery are actually pretty good for what must have been a modest budget.  Like the earlier Flash Gordon, everything is right except for the story and actors.  All the technical stuff is pretty good.  Great lighting, some exciting stunt work, evocative ambience, great costuming given the subject matter.  See below for some examples compared to similar scenes in Casablanca:

But all the good direction in the world can't save a bad script and worse actors.

In the end, it comes down to this, Barb Wire is just Casablanca dumbed down for children who have a Ritalin-impaired attention span.  And this was a harbinger to most of today's action films' hallmarks: loud, overbearing, thought-free disposable entertainment.  Don't believe me?  Think I'm just an doddering old fart?  Witness today's masterpieces:  Battleship, White House Down, Taken 2' Transformers, Thor, the Star Wars prequels, just to name a few.  There is not a thought to be had in any of them.  That is not to say there have not been good and original action movies recently, but the style beast is eating substance whole, and I, for one, find that sad.

Draft Day

3 Stars (out of four)

So, Draft Day was a bit of a surprise.  When I saw the preview, I thought, "That could be good," and then promptly forgot about it.  Probably not the reaction the filmmakers were hoping for when they did the trailer.  I noticed it again when I was out one night and said, "Why not?  I'll check it out."  Again, probably not the rabid enthusiasm hoped for.  After all, not being one of the biggest sports fans in the world, I am baffled at why so many people love watching the NFL draft as I think it is a HUGE waste of time.  But, who am I to criticize?  I have stupid stuff I love, too.  That said, Draft Day is a surprisingly solid film.

It is the fictional story about the wheeling and dealing of the NFL draft.  It opens with the GM for the Cleveland Browns, Sonny Weaver, Jr. (Kevin Costner) being pitched a deal for which he's on the losing end.  The movie then follows him throughout the day through the draft.  That's pretty much it.  There are some subplots including a fairly dumb romantic situation that feels shoehorned in so the guys can bring their dates, something about Weaver's estrangement from his family, dealing with hopeful players and fights with his staff and the team owner.

But this movie is all Costner.  It is anchored by his very likable performance.  The movie resembles Castaway, but Wilson is substituted with real people.  A lot has been made of Costner over the years, especially that he is a bad actor and has made some of the worst, over-bloated stink bombs in cinematic history.  And while the vitriol is not as intense as that against Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner for some inexplicable reason seems to be universally loathed by movie fans.  Frankly, I don't get it.  Sure, he may not be DeNiro or Olivier, but that doesn't really matter.  His movies don't really require those kind of acting chops.  What they do require is a likable guy, and Costner does have an easygoing charisma that is pleasant to watch time and again.  The movie also has great drama in the sense that it portrays a very stressful, and usually unheralded or even reviled job at its most intense.  It proves edge-of-your-seat drama does not always have to be rooted in brainless action sequences.

This doesn't mean the movie is free of flaws.  The movie is suffering from some post production editing.  The aforementioned subplots are all examples.  None of them give any sufficient backstory to invest the viewer with any sense on why they should care.  In the case of the players, both seasoned pros and hopeful draftees, there are some good bits of story there.  They are all archetypes from other movies, but yet they are compelling.  But this movie functions in the time space it occurs, and much like real life, there isn't exposition and unfortunately that leaves a lot of unanswered questions.  That is the biggest problem with Draft Day.  It is a collection of templates we have all seen before in better sports movies like Any Given Sunday.  In fact, most of the subplots in Draft Day are told better in Any Given Sunday, but since it casts a fairly negative portrayal of pro football, the NFL would not sponsor it.  My second biggest complaint is the romantic subplot.  Weaver is having a tryst with one of his executives, played by Jennifer Garner.  Let's just dismiss for a moment the workplace dynamics of a superior having a sexual relationship with one of his subordinates; this is another example of Hollywood catering ridiculous expectations for men and insulting ones for women.  Kevin Costner is currently 59 and Jennifer Garner 42.  He is literally old enough to be her father.  The movie opened with the aftermath of her telling him she is pregnant.  The movie then keeps cutting to them trying to work out their relationship in the middle of all the chaos of draft day.  Does this strike anyone else as a bit creepy and unsavory?  Just a thought.

So, Draft Day is surprisingly fun to watch if you don't think too much about the subplots.  But you may want to wait for video.

Zardoz

1/2 Star (out of four)

There are bad movies and there are movies so good they are bad movies.  Then there is a movie like Zardoz.  Written and directed by John Boorman, who would later make Deliverance and Excalibur, you will find yourself asking many times throughout the picture, whaaa?  I seriously asked myself many times while I was watching whether certain recreational stimulants were used during the writing and production of this film.  It is truly awful on just about every level, but the reason I gave it one-half a star instead of BOMB is because there may actually be a gem of an idea in there somewhere that I must be missing. This was 1974, after all, a time when filmmakers were trying to make their mark with arty messes that were supposed to expand our consciences.  Any film whose opening images are a flying giant rock head that says, and I quote, "The penis is evil, the gun is good," and then vomits up a volley of rifles and pistols (no, I am not kidding) is worth at least some attention, but it only gets weirder from there.

Let's see if I can briefly explain the plot.  The movie is set three hundred years in the future.  Sean Connery, arguably the most famous actor on the planet at this point having just quit the James Bond franchise a second time just 3 years before, plays Zed, an executioner for Zardoz, the aforementioned giant rock head.  These executioners ride around on horses randomly killing men and raping women In what we later find is a selective breeding program instituted by Zardoz to make more executioners.  Once a year, Zardoz appears and the executioners give a tribute.  Zed somehow gets inside the big giant rock head and kills a man inside.  The head then flies away to a sort of Heaven area called the Vortex, where Zed meets several people who seem to be a cross between hippies and communists.  Okay, this is where it gets really weird.  These people, led by Consuela (Charlotte Rampling), consider him an unevolved brute and want to kill him.  Consuela says no, they have to study him.  She and other women then proceed with a battery of tests to study his reactions to various stimuli including danger, fear, and sexual (don't ask).  For some reason, these tests are performed by beautiful women who must be topless.  They conclude they have to kill him (or not).  The movie keeps going back and forth on this verdict.  It turns out the Commu-hippies were human once, but have evolved to where they can't die or have any normal feelings.  Somehow, Zed incorporates a sort of virus into the community that wakes them up, where they alternately either try to hunt him down and kill him or have bacchanalian orgies.  But in the end, they all are lusting for their own deaths.  Somewhere, a revolution breaks out, Zed has the other executioners come into the Vortex who start shooting all the Commu-hippies who are chanting "Kill me!" all the while.  Zed and Consuela then have a child and die of old age.  The end.

And I have only scratched the surface of the depths of its weirdness.  As I said earlier, there is an inkling of a message somewhere: false gods, the arrogance of the rich, the revolution of the proletariat, the importance of feeling.  But it is a convoluted mess.  Like Pink Floyd's The Wall, I have a feeling Zardoz probably makes a lot more sense when you're high on weed.  Apparently, Burt Reynolds was up for the part of Zed, but had to bow out due to a sickness, probably one of the best things that ever happened to him career-wise.  According to the director, Connery could not find work after turning down James Bond a second time and came very cheap.  This probably also explains his now-notorious costume:

 

Remember, just 12 short years earlier, he was the epitome of cool and sexy as this guy:

Oh, how the mighty can fall.  And while he made some pretty notable films after Zardoz, like The Man Who Would Be King, A Bridge Too Far, Outland and Highlander to name a few, it would be another 13 years before his career finally resuscitated with his Oscar-winning performance in The Untouchables.  So this could be a cautionary tale on two levels.  Whatever John Boorman was trying to get at (and good luck with that)m but also for everyone and their life.  Never get so enamored of yourself and how good you are, because in a startling short time, you too could be wearing a red diaper and go-go boots doing things you will later regret and be ashamed of.  And who says the movies can't teach us anything worthwhile?