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Volume 3, Issue 11
MOVIE REVIEW 
PEARL HARBORGrowing up in The United States, I never felt another country could come in and invade us. The closest war my generation has experienced was the sleepover we had about ten years ago with Iraq (from what I hear it felt more like a drill than a war). One thing is for certain: as citizens, we are not losing any sleep over the fact that some of us could be drafted tomorrow for a war, or that a country one twentieth our size could come in and hand us ours, and leave. In Pearl Harbor, director Michael Bay brings us to a time when these thoughts were a reality, and also takes us to the dawn of how we became the superpower we are today. Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett star as Rafe and Danny, two pals from Tennessee whose lifelong dream has been to fly fighter planes for our country. We first catch them as kids, playing war games in the backyard. We realize right away these guys are more than friends; they're more like brothers. In the military, Rafe is the hotshot pilot and Danny plays the quiet, shy buddy who is comfortable in the shadows. During a physical, Rafe falls for his nurse Evelyn, played by Kate Beckinsale, and the two begin writing the perfect nurse-meets-pilot love story. Unfortunately for Evelyn, Rafe loves fly-ing more than he loves her, and he decides to join The Royal Air Force and fight the Germans. During a mission, Rafe is shot down and declared MIA. As Evelyn and Danny mourn the loss of their close friend, they accidentally fall for each other. Not surprising anyone at all, Rafe returns from his mission only to learn his best friend stole his best girl. This is a critical moment in the story because as the love triangle unfolds, the Japanese begin the assault on the island. Do our heroes battle each other or do they defend our country? They choose the latter and we witness one of the greatest battles ever depicted on film (it was shot near real time). The CGI effects are probably the best ever slapped on celluloid. As we all know, the effects can only take a film so far. The love story works so well in this film because it keeps the audience interested in the characters and storyline, rather than the explosions (the attack is featured in the middle of the film, rather than the end). Personally, I feel that Ben Affleck is the worst actor of our generation. He hasn't learned how to say no to a script yet, (Reindeer Games, Forces of Nature, Phantoms) unlike his close pal Matt Damon who uses his brain. Affleck has redeemed himself in my eyes, as he does a great job of filling the shoes of a hotshot pilot. The other stars who should be rec-ognized for their great work are actors Alec Baldwin, who plays a sweaty has-been pilot, and Jon Voight, who will probably get another nod next February for his portrayal of President Roosevelt. Pearl Harbor in many ways plays out like Titanic from a few years ago. Both films are about a famous disaster and both use a love story behind the destruction. And just like James Cameron did a few years ago, anticipate seeing Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Rock) winning his own Best Director trophy come March. A --Neal James Movie Review
MOULIN ROUGEIf you say nothing else of Baz Luhrmann, you have to admit he has a distinct style. His movies emphasize bold colors, delight in anachronisms, and are filled with over-the-top visuals. His latest, Moulin Rouge, is no exception; if anything, it emphasizes all these qualities. For much of the movie, these techniques work, but the scenes that fall short are enough to drag the rest of the film down with them. What could have been entertaining surrealism all too quickly becomes cartoonish absurdity within the first 45 minutes, and the movie never quite regains its momentum before falling back on foolishness. Without the problematic scenes, Moulin Rouge is actually a very well made movie. From before the movie starts Luhrmann lets his audience know the kind of film they are in for. An onscreen curtain opens to display the Fox logo while a man at the bottom of the screen either conducts the theme music or has a seizure; it's difficult to tell for sure. This is followed by a rapid sweep over the streets of Paris, using recent digital techniques that contrast sharply with the sepiatoned film stock. The sepia tones quickly fade to Luhrmann's trademark intense color scheme for the remainder of the film. The director uses this palate along with rapid editing to effectively illustrate the extrav-agance of the titular French nightclub. When the movie's hero first enters the Moulin Rouge, his wonderment is shown not only in his facial expressions, but with stylized camera movements and edits, all set to a musical montage that includes "Lady Marmalade" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
The majority of the music, which is
strongly emphasized throughout the film,
is out of place in 1900 Paris. What makes
it work is that Luhrmann never pretends
to be telling a historically accurate story.
His characters happen to live at the end of
the 19th century and express themselves
with music for the last half of the 20th.
The fact that most of the music is performed
by bigname pop stars probably
solidifies Moulin Rouge as the MTV hit
of the summer. There are scenes in the
movie seems to exist solely to sell the
soundtrack.
The story of Moulin Rouge is a cliché a beautiful woman must choose between the poor man who loves her and the evil rich man but Luhrmann does manage to cast some doubt on how happily the movie will end, keeping it from being too predictable. He even comments on the familiar storyline of the movie by paralleling it with a play within the movie, keeping the endings of both up in the air until the final scenes. Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, and Richard Roxburgh help this suspense along with decent performances, but none of them is at the top of their game here. Oddly enough, the most entertaining character in the film is John Leguizamo's turn as Toulouse Lautrec, despite the fact that his work as an artist is never men-tioned. Again, all of this would be great if there weren't those times when disbelief simply cannot be suspended. Every now and then a scene will pop up where the actors ham it up a little too much, and they aren't helped by the cartoon sound effects that accent their actions. The absurdity of these scenes really does ruin what would otherwise be a very enjoyable movie, making the experience of watching Moulin Rouge unsatisfying. C+ --Chris Ward Movie ReviewCHOPPERI vaguely remember hearing in world history class that in the 18th century or something, England and Ireland shipped off a grip of their worst criminals and their families to penal colonies in a then largely uninhabited Australia. Ironic then, perhaps, some 200 years later, career criminal Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read has become one of Australia's bestselling authors ever and a celebrated cultural icon. In primarily and out of prison since the age of 16, Read has emerged as an Australian cult-figure. His charisma and uncanny ability to tell a totally engrossing story, combined with his outlandish criminal endeavors he once held a court judge hostage using blanks to help out a friend who later stabbed him in prison have propelled him to unlikely heights for a man with his history. Out of prison since of 1998, he has written nine "Chopper" books embellished accounts of his adventures in and out of prison. Now, probably much to the chagrin of the attention hungry Read, his exploits have been surmised dramatically, using Read's written accounts and police records, by writer/ director Andrew Dominik, in the new film, Chopper. Chopper delivers a Read split down the middle by his hasty, and often vicious, actions and his deep emotional responses to them. On one hand, Read is a burly, heavily scarred, tattooed maniac who had his own ears strategically cut off in prison. On the other, he a confused boy, who, while extremely violent, has real issues with his actions. At the beginning of the film, while in prison, he shivs a fellow inmate repeatedly in the neck and then, after a good cry, offers him an apology and a cigarette while the man is flailing about in a pool of his own blood. It is this sort of behavior that makes Chopper such an interesting character. Australian stand-up comic, Eric Bana, plays chopper here with frightening fluidity. A relative newcomer to feature film, Bana has done something truly remarkable. I have a friend who does such a good Neil Diamond impression at karaoke-night, that it is as if, in reality, Neil Diamond is trying to impersonate him. Much in the same vein, I can't imagine the real Chopper being any more captivating and charismatic than Bana's interpretation ... trippy. The film does a rich job of presenting random bits of Read's sordid life in a cogent and often unsettlingly heartfelt manner. It's a good story. "Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn," says Chopper at one point in the film. Fucking A. A --Josh Tyson DVD REPORT
THE BLOB (1958)A meteorite plunges to Earth, disgorging the titular creature a protoplasmic mass that is not only carnivorous, but seemingly indestructible as well. As the creature cruises about the night-shrouded town, con-suming the unwary and growing larger and larger, two teens attempt to warn the authorities, but hey, what do they know? They're just teen-aged troublemakers, right? In the wake of Rebel Without A Cause, Hollywood was falling all over itself to incorporate the new filmic fad juvenile delinquents-- into their product. This cheeky little independent film, while not the first to combine teens and monsters, is easily the most enduring, due in no small part to being filmed in color, and to its star, some young fella named Steve McQueen, earnestly trying to play a teen at 27 years of age. This movie produced by then distributor Jack H. Harris in collaboration with a firm that, to that point, only produced short religious films had been turned down by most of the majors, until Paramount picked it up with an eye toward relegating it to the B position under their big budget sci-fi thriller, I Married A Monster From Outer Space. When The Blob tested stronger in previews, it became an A-list film, playing solo to packed houses, eventually becoming an icon; when comedians use you as a punchline, you know you have arrived. There is the mandatory theatrical trailer, which is showing its age, and unwittingly or not quotes the theme song--" It creeps! It crawls!" And, like all publicity after the film's first run, a closeup of McQueen is obviously edited in with the inserted vocal: "Starring Steve McQueen ... and a cast of talented young people!" There are two commentary tracks one by producer Jack Harris and film historian Bruce Eder; the other by director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and actor Robert Fields. These worthies were obviously taped separately, and the results edited together. They can nonetheless be enragingly spotty, and almost never have anything to do with what is occurring on screen at the moment. But taken together, they do provide a fairly complete picture of making a movie with nearly no budget ... at least when they're not telling Steve McQueen tales. The final extra "Blob-bilia!" is a collection of production and publicity stills, and photos of the Wes Schank Blob collection. Especially revealing are the forced perspective miniatures, built especially for Blob manipulation they look like non-Euclidian architecture when shot from anything but their intended angle. Any Criterion disc is worth at least a rental, and most cinephiles have at least one or two on their shelves those of us with a more macabre taste in their entertain-ment can just be glad that Criterion has turned its eye to material that can charitably be described as existing on the fringe, if not in the ghetto, of cinema. B --Dr. Freex |
