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Friday, Jun. 04, 2004 - 2:25 p.m.
Flix
This is perhaps the greatest movie ever made (Quicktime movie, 18.4 megabytes and worth it)
It almost redeems that sordid trilogy.
I went to see some violent movies recently. They gave me pause to wonder about the mindset necessary to watch them. One really has to suppress one’s compassion to even be able to sit through it. Then the fighting can become sort of a dance, and the corpses become either something to drive the plot, or more often, just something for the plot to wade through, for lack of a better idea. I don't get how in a time of war, there's still a market for movies about war.
Kill Bill, Volume 1
First, I saw Kill Bill, Volume 1. I really liked it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more blood, except in Spartacus, but it was somewhat campy and very stylized. Realism was not what this film was going for, as exemplified by The Bride being allowed to fly on commercial jets with her samurai sword beside her. I guess airport security knows what's good for them. Strangely, the psychological impact of violence seems to be more an issue of quality rather than quantity. The hundred or so hacked up bodies in this film I could easily shrug off, while Tarrantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs, utterly horrified me, though it only had a few deaths and one severed ear. I still don’t think I’ve seen a movie more violent in both quality and quantity than The Wild Bunch, and that was made in the 1960s. The music in Kill Bill, Volume 1 was magnificent, with a flamenco song morphing into funk in one scene. This movie was utterly meaningless, but I felt compelled to honor it for its impeccable style.
The Return of the King
Just as it was very hard for me not to read Attack of the Clones as anything but a foreboding allegory of Bush’s duplicity and creation of enemies, The Two Towers seemed to me to depict Middle Earth as the world just prior to the Iraq War, from the point of view of Bush’s public relations campaign in the United Nations in the spring of 2003. The hobbit talking to Treebeard was like Colin Powell entreating France: “You just gotta join the coalition! You’re part of this world too!”I really hated this version of the Lord of the Rings saga as much as I hated the books. There’s just something lifeless about the whole trilogy. I really liked The Hobbit, but I got halfway through reading The Fellowship of the Ring before I became bored to tears, and put it down, never to return. I was not expecting to like this (thankfully) last installment, and verily it lived down to my low expectations. I guess I went to see it out of some grim sense of duty or something. It was big-budget, and if I hadn’t gone, I’d be left wondering what it was like. At least I snuck in, instead of paying, so all I wasted was my time.
I was unable to read any political allegories into this one. To enjoy a movie like this, one has to believe that deposing the “evil” overlord in order to install the “good” overlord is somehow a significant improvement. My disbelief in that, I was not willing to suspend. I was even less willing to see Aragon crowned than I’d be to see Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich as president. I mean, now he gets to oppress the peasants, instead of Sauron. Whoopie-do. I wonder how many beheadings to preside over just naturally come with the job.
This movie presented hacking up the enemy as a great and noble thing to do, especially if you’re a Noble. So many people sacrificing themselves out of fealty to their state. And the refusal to go to war was presented as the utmost depravity. It was even okay to kill the Oliphants, because these steeds were “evil” too.
The only part I enjoyed was seeing the introduction of the new villain, Dark Helmet, though I would have preferred if this role had been reprised by Rick Moranis. But his schwartz was not as great as the princess’.
I feel compelled to remind readers that this film was already made, in 1980, and the old one is much better; it features great songs by Maury Laws such as, “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way”, and the one that goes, “You are standing in the eye of the storm/ Move an inch and you'll be dead/ you are standing underneath/ the Towers of the Teeth/ and the eye/ blazing red/ Win the battle lose the war/ Choice of evils lie before your feet/ Retreat, retreat, retreat!”. Those songs fucking rock, and it pains me to see viewers of this new big-budget monstrosity deprived of them.
The Day After Tomorrow
Members of my class on Gaia Theory and global climate change and I were eagerly awaiting the opening of this film. We were all wondering if this would help bring climate change and greenhouse gas emissions back into the public spotlight, or would the movie’s exaggerations make the issue into a laughing stock? After seeing the movie, I still don’t know which way it could go.
I was relieved that rumors were unfounded that the movie depicted climate change causing a volcano to erupt in Los Angeles, and a tsunami to strike New York City. It was actually tornadoes in LA and just a wind-driven storm surge in NY. So while this film was hardly plausible at all, I was pleased to see it was more plausible than I had been expecting. Here’s what the film got right:
Perhaps everything else in the movie was wrong.
I was also pleased to see Donnie Darko reprising his role.
I liked seeing the RAF get their ass (or is that “arse” in this case?) kicked by global climate change. My favorite part was when the protagonists are running from fast-approaching frost, in scenes reminiscent of Aliens. No, my favorite part had to be when the American flag froze and then shattered. All in all, I enjoyed this film as much as I enjoyed The Core (another global disaster film based very loosely on science).
Troy
Man, this flick is so dreadful, you should really avoid it at all costs. I only stayed in the theater because it was too well-made to walk away from (but just barely). Not leaving was a mistake.
The acting was as wooden as the horse. Writers have the peculiar idea that since it’s obviously anachronistic to have ancient characters speaking contemporary American slang, to correct for this, the dialog must have all the life sucked out of it. This is true of the Lord of the Rings movies, where they bludgeon the audience with lines about, “the great battle,” approaching, and in Gladiator when the emperor says, “Tt vexes me; I’m terribly vexed.”
Add to this mix the character of Achilles, who apparently has no motivation. They say he’s motivated by fame, but he was unconvincing as an egotist. Achilles just stood around looking muscular. I was stunned. I’m used to thinking of Brad Pitt as a good actor, but in this film I kept wondering if I had misread the poster and this actor was instead Pitt’s lookalike, the talentless Val Kilmer. To his credit, Pitt finally does a little emoting toward the end of the film, but it’s too little, too late. Peter O’Toole gave the only performance I liked, but there wasn’t enough of him to save this film.
This movie had a couple of thin romantic subplots, but was conspicuously lacking any depictions of that special kind of love for which the Greeks are so infamous. Not that I wanted to see that, but it would have made this dreary film a little more interesting.
My foremost objective was to look for parallels to the Iraq war. Was this a pro-Bush propaganda film? Or possibly anti-Bush? Although there were some common elements:
on the whole, I saw no allegory about Iraq. It makes no particular statement for or against war. This movie is just a piece of crap. I'm glad I had the sense to sneak into this one too.
I couldn't help wondering, who would win in a fight, Achilles or The Bride? I'd put my money on The Bride.
I had to chuckle every time a character said, “Trojans”. Huh-huh-huh. He said, ”Trojans,” huh-huh.
Debut - Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
Sequential Art - Monday, Mar. 21, 2005
Alpha and Omega - Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005
Faith No More - Friday, Dec. 24, 2004
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