Caseus Archivelox: Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Killer's Kiss, The Pirates of Penzance, & Jurassic Park III

2002-07-06 - 12:51 a.m.
Movies just were better in the 40s. Or maybe they're just better because they aren't the crap of today, or other remakes (EDIT: it's because I hadn't seen enough terrible movies of the time). Here Comes Mr. Jordan was a really good movie, and it had enough surprises to make it much better than I was expecting. That crappy remake with Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait (not to be confused with the excellent Gene Tierney movie of '43, also called Heaven Can Wait)) can't hold a candle to it, and I haven't seen Down to Earth (with Chris Rock (not to be confused with Here Comes Mr. Jordan's sequel (which I haven't seen) also called Down to Earth, with Rita Heyworth)).

Claude Rains is one of the best actors of all time, and I don't think I've seen a movie with him in it that I didn't really like (except for The Wolfman, which I already said was really disappointing, as it stuck to the '30s horror framework too much, without adding anything except for the voyeurism). But Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Notorious, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood (the excellent version with Rains, Olivia De Havilland, and of course, Errol Flynn): all excellent movies.

"Flynn's offscreen life was, incredibly, even more colorful than his movies. An unabashed hedonist and insatiable womanizer, he was notorious for his nonstop drinking, wenching, and general highspirited bacchanalia. In 1942, at the height of his popularity, he was charged with (but later acquitted of) statutory rape." He is also the reason for the line "In Like Flynn", referenced in the sequel (not as good as the original, but still funny) to my favorite spy spoof of all time (Our Man Flint), In Like Flint.

2002-07-08 - 10:59 p.m.
I watched Killer's Kiss and The Pirates of Penzance. Killer's Kiss was Kubrick's second feature film, and at only 67 minutes long, that's debatable. However, it was really good. Nothing compared to his later movies, but an enjoyable film noir anyway. The Pirates of Penzance was one of those movies that I had been seeing in the library for a while and I thought I should watch. It was a v. v. silly musical, but that's to be expected from a Gilbert & Sullivan musical. I'm still more familiar with most of H.M.S. Pinafore, even though I just saw The Pirates of Penzance, and only know of H.M.S. Pinafore from The Simpsons. That's still how I'm most familiar with G&S. Even though my grandparents love them. I did like the songs where they had to sing very quickly. Because they all got very red faced. I think that I really need to stop referencing everything to the Simpsons, because the only song I recognized from TPOP was the Major General song (I am the very model of the modern major general) which Barney sang when doing acrobatics when Homer and Barney were trying to go into space (Woohoo! Default! The two sweetest words in the English language!). Anyway, that's weird. The movie had Kevin Kline, who was very good, and Linda Ronstadt, and when I saw her, all I could think of was her singing the Plow King jingle in Spanish. It also had Angela Lansbury. I once said, when asked by one of my friends what my ideal woman was like, "Angela Lansbury". Immediately. This wasn't something where I tried to find some old woman and it took me a while. This was immediate. I think it's more for her role in Bedknobs and Broomsticks than for Murder She Wrote. Or maybe for The Manchurian Candidate, but that one not as much as she's an evil Communist mother. I don't think she was ever on the Simpsons. Again, too much Simpsons. Although that's impossible, unless it's from the last few seasons. Then it's quite likely to be too much. I think that The Simpsons early references in two of the best episodes (Deep Space Homer and Cape Feare) to Gilbert and Sullivan are somewhat weird, but they do show why I love the show: they're actually referencing more obscure things than I do. Which is good.

2002-07-09 - 11:03 p.m.
I also watched Jurassic Park III. The movie just had no reason to exist. It wasn't bad, but it was boring.

The Da Vinci Code, Cutthroat Island, The Long Good Friday, Executive Koala, & Purple Rain

The Da Vinci Code clearly was going to be made, based on the huge sales of the book, but is there a more useless big budget film? Ridiculous, and somehow, for some reason, they changed the ending to make it much more ambiguous that Sophie is the descendant of Jesus Christ. Too bad, because that was just about the only thing that made the story remotely interesting. Of course, it's crap, based on misrepresentations and the like. Of course, I fully subscribe to the idea that Jesus was a normal dude, and the huge gap in his life in the New Testament, along with the idea that since I believe that Jesus actually did exist, it's highly unlikely that the huge inconsistencies and mistranslations in the Bible could possibly be reconciled. It's obvious that all religions are based on earlier ones, building on myths, trying to explain things that science hadn't yet explained, so a healthy skepticism of organized religion is good, but the least you can do is at least be honest. Dan Brown may be a compulsively readable author, but he's a first class liar.
Cutthroat Island is quite simply terrible in every way. But it's a different terrible from The Singing Forest. There's some talent there, but so little of it is in evidence anywhere remotely near this film that I wonder who decided to greenlight this with such a huge budget. Really, anyone who may have, at one time or after the movie, been a good actor/director/writer/anything seriously did not know what the hell they were doing. They replaced quality movie with explosions. And extra-long boring fight scenes with pirates, a monkey, and explosions.
The Long Good Friday is a great British gangster film. Bob Hoskins gives a riveting performance as a "middle-class" gangster trying to open a casino, and deal with bombings that seem to be trying to eliminate him and his woman, Helen Mirren. It also features a young Pierce Brosnan as an assassin. Really, it's quite good.
Executive Koala is a very strange film, a Koala is a salaryman at a pickle company in Japan, and his wife disappeared three years ago and his new girlfriend just disappeared. And he works for a bunny. Telling you much more about the plot would be ruining it. There's a musical interlude, some strange cultural satire, and some breaking the fourth wall. Definitely worth watching, because I have never seen a film that so nonchalantly deals with something so utterly weird.
Purple Rain has some great Prince tracks, and some terrible acting. The bluray didn't seem like it was worth getting, as it still looked like an old DVD, so maybe they just did a crappy job with the transfer? And Morris Day is supposed to be stupid, but his pants were just too high for me to take him remotely seriously.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End & Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has Geoffrey Rush back, which is a definite step up over Dead Man's Chest. But it's also racist, with pretty much all the Asian characters complete stereotypes. At least the main pirates have some type of obvious thinking going on in their heads, every single other character is wafer thin. And do I have to mention, again, that the only female characters in the film are a god in human form and Keira Knightley? As if it needed to be more of a sausage fest. Basically, far, far, far too long, stupid, and just an insult. And still not as bad as the second one. Geoffrey Rush is just that good.

In order to get the bad pirateness out of my mouth, I went ahead and purchased Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty. Unfortunately, it was not really a search for booty (of either the pirate or rapper kind), but a search for things to make searching for Clank easier. But it was about as fun as Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which this follows in time. I hate jumping puzzles, and feel that they're there only to piss me off, due to my lack of spatial awareness, but even though I struggled with one stupid part of jumping on some moving platforms and walking along a thin beam, I still got over four hours of enjoyment from the game. And for only $15, not a particularly bad purchase. Because, as a Ratchet & Clank game, it was funny, and you can never have too many drunken robotic pirates.

ST 3: Marauder, POTC: Dead Man's Chest, Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone, & Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder was terrible. There was gratuitous nudity. But as per usual, no frontals, so sorry. That some nudity thing made me think it would just be a fleeting thing, but nope. Anyway, the film was horrible. Vagina dentata up the wazoo though, along with ridiculously stupid religious symbolism. Actually the nudity and the fact that the black guy doesn't die are about the only things to recommend it. Well, it depends on whether you actually liked the book. The return (I haven't seen the second, and both Tweaks and Meat have warned me of just how terrible it is) of the Nazi propaganda films made it somewhat enjoyable. Jolene Blalock's horribly puffed up lips detracted from that. Oh, and the main protester being named Gonif was a little bit of Yiddish humor. Gonif's hard to describe, but sort of a good-for-nothing who does things that are sort of illegal, but not really a crook.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is 2.5 hours long. For those of you keeping track, that's at least an hour too long. It just kept going and going and going. And Depp wasn't nearly as fun, and basically everything wasn't nearly as fun. The first one didn't feel like it had to live up to anything, and my expectations were pretty low. I did see it in a packed theater with a very enthusiastic audience, and this one I saw on blu-ray on my HDTV, but alone on a Sunday morning. I sort of regretted it, although now I can complain about the most important thing that the Pirates of the Caribbean films brought to light: a zombie pirate monkey. This was such a great thing in the first movie with lots of zombie pirates and then a reveal of a zombie pirate monkey at the end, and then this just shunts him off to a couple of jokes, and focuses on sea creature pirates. Which fail miserably. I like cute furry creatures, not starfish. So few films really need sequels, and most that get them screw up the expectations created by earlier films that it's just painful to see them even try.

Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone was a short documentary about Larry Flynt. And while I've never actually read/held a Hustler in my hands (as far as I can remember, it has been pretty hard to find a Hustler in Cincinnati for most of my life), I like Larry Flynt's continual fight for its right to exist. And this was a much more accurate version of the movie than The People Vs. Larry Flynt. About my only complaint (besides brief length) was that intercut with the archival footage and talking heads was a scene from a photoshoot for Hustler. This was unnecessary. I don't care what the photoshoot looks like, except in the context of what is acceptable and not within a variety of censorship laws throughout the country. I mean, is it acceptable to show nipple? Because I have this feeling that it isn't in Malaysia. Silly Muslims, nips are for kids. And yes, I just hurt everyone's brain with that. Yay!

Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House is a big love letter to the White House press corps. And it's too short. I wanted more of a press corps that cared and asked tough questions like that. Maybe less singing from Helen Thomas though. It's a good use of 40 minutes.

Also, this was the colon update. It's complicated.

Afterlife & The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

Afterlife is another heartbreaking Japanese film. Not quite as heartbreaking as Dolls, as it isn't a continually depressing film, just the entire context of only having one memory for eternity. It's a very interesting idea, and it is very well executed. It is a movie that is designed entirely to make you think about life and death. Plus, you have the concept of films capturing memories, even if the very filming makes them subjective. This is exactly the type of movie I love. A meditation of life, death, memory, and filmmaking. And it's allowed to linger on everything. Don't read the rest of this paragraph unless you've seen this movie, which I honestly can't recommend enough. And the ending of the movie is pretty sad as well, with the final memory being somewhat open to interpretation, but basically that while a character's memory is that he has had an effect on people, with the memory being the filming of his memory, the effect of his being in the purgatory is having on others is very important to them. The idea of only one memory forever depresses me, but maybe because I can't think of one I'd want to keep forever and forget all of the rest. Well, maybe one, even if that one led to one of the worst memories. That always seems to happen to me.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie has Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johansson, Alec Baldwin, and David Hasselhoff. They're all enjoyable. And the movie is 90 minutes of ridiculous. Enjoyable, in a very immature way. The pirates were also very funny. I love that I'm perfectly happy watching an amazingly powerful movie like Afterlife, and following it up with a ridiculous kids cartoon. I'm a definitely silly person. Yay me!

Land of the Dead & Visitor Q

Land of the Dead is vastly superior to Day of the Dead, but that isn't really saying that much. Romero shows that he can do the barely hidden metaphor in a zombie film better than anyone else. That it has Dennis Hopper being an evil, evil man is an added bonus. My main complaint was actually that it had too much flesh eating. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that possible. I did see the unrated version, so that could explain it. Leguizamo was actually not annoying either, which I also didn't think was possible. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the zombies getting brains and figuring out tools and the like. I know that Bub in Day of the Dead clearly was learning, but I think that the zombies learned how to do a little much in a very short period of time in this movie. I have to say that it was enjoyable, and I definitely prefer the slow zombies of this to any fast zombie movie (with the notable exception of 28 Days Later, which is the only good fast zombie movie I can think of, and that wasn't really a true zombie film). And how much better this was than the Dawn remake just goes to show that Romero is needed for any good movie in this universe (note that I'm including remakes, recuts (that horrible extended Night of the Living Dead), and movies that are supposed to happen in the same universe (the horribly nihilistic and mainly craptacular Return of the Living Dead movies)). Wow, that was horrible sentence structure. Score one for the non-writer.

Visitor Q is a typical Miike film. If you don't come out feeling extremely dirty after seeing one, I don't think you truly saw the movie. Incest, prostitution, beatings, lots of lactation, drugs, rape, necrophilia, loose bowels, pissing, you name it, this movie has it. Except a giant robot monkey pirate ninja zombie. They still haven't made a movie with that yet. Note that if they did, I would immediately love that movie. I think the movie is saying something about the state of reality TV and Japanese society, along with the damaging effects of violence and sex on family life. Plus, are we really supposed to think that Visitor Q is a god of some sort? Wait, that's sort of a spoiler, except that that's never really discussed in the movie itself. It just makes some sense if you try to figure out what the hell the movie is about. Because I'm not entirely sure it succeeds in what Miike's trying to do. It does succeed in being one of the most sick, twisted, weird, funny movies you're likely to see. Unless you've seen other Miike films. This is by no means a well-made movie (straight to video, boom mikes frequently visible), but it is unlike almost anything I've seen before. And for that alone, I thank Takashi Miike.

Serenity

Serenity was really, really good. I loved it, felt extremely pissed that Fox cancelled Firefly all over again (although there never would have been the nether regions line on TV, which was great and it really made me love Kaylee even more), and was extremely sad about the characters who died. I can't believe he killed them, but then again, that's typical Whedon. Always killing his characters. River kicking ass was pretty damn cool, and her just walking around showed Summer's ballet training. I think everyone should see this movie, after watching Firefly, and then Joss Whedon's brilliance will be finally accepted by the masses. Yeah, I cried and was shaking all through the final battle scenes due to a death seconds before, but it also could have been that I was soaked due to the pouring rain. I saw it with a friend who had seen half the episodes, and one who'd seen none, and they both loved it, so maybe people can see it and then they'll go and give Joss more money, but damn if they won't do better with it if they've seen the show.

Now, I'd discuss the characters who die, but I don't want to spoil anyone. So don't read this unless you've already seen the movie. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER. Killing off Book and Wash actually makes some sense, at least Book really does, since he never really fit in the rest of the show, but he did finally have his backstory explained, in a very roundabout way. That he was an Operative before hiding out and becoming a shepherd explains a hell of a lot. And I love that Whedon didn't bother to explain that, although it would have been missed by anyone who wasn't familiar with the show. Killing Wash, however, really sucked. He was my favorite character, and seeing Alan Tudyk die just blew. Really, really blew. Maybe with his newfound success as the pirate, he was becoming too famous for it. And they couldn't kill Zoe, or Mal, or Kaylee, or Simon, or River, so it was pretty much between Jayne, Wash, and Inara. Zoe is black and too kickass, Mal is the star, Kaylee just rocks everything, Simon and River are needed for plot purposes. Inara was Mal's love interest, so there goes her, Jayne is Adam Baldwin, a big star and the real muscle for the crew, plus he's funny. Wash... Wash was just my favorite character and funny and the pilot. But he was the most expendable of the rest of the main cast. Still hurts like hell.

Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn was boring. Which really surprised me, as a huge fan of Hitchcock. And it's not like he hadn't made classic films before or immediately after. It's like he was trying to get through the movie as quickly as possible, with as few characteristic Hitchcockian flourishes that might accidentally mean he had to spend more time watching Charles Laughton work broader than the Sahara Desert. Plus, what was up with Laughton's eyebrows? They looked really really fake. And Maureen O'Hara had little to do besides walk around in a wet dress thing for a few minutes and look stressed. Robert Newton should have stuck to being a pirate. All in all, just really disappointing for a Hitchcock. And I think that I got the movie confused with Under Capricorn for a really long time.