Movie Warp Up: A Review of Summer 2000

The Patriot

SC: Can someone pllleeaassee do a little research? Is it that hard to produce a movie about The Revolutionary War that actually maintains a shred of historical accuracy and dignity? Why are filmmakers so afraid of complexity? Those were just a few of the torrent of questions that flooded my brain while enduring the mind-numbing Mel Gibson epic, The Patriot, over the Fourth of July weekend. I didnt hate the movie, I just didn't understand the point of it. Why make an American Revolution epic if you aren't going to imbue it with at least a semblance of the truth? According to Mel's version, one man basically brought down the British army (the British, meanwhile, were themselves controlled by a single man who was inexplicably sadistic and decidedly un-British in decorum). I got so bored during the film (I even yawned during the infamous cannonball decapitation) that I started thinking about what might have happened if we had lost the American Revolution. We'd probably still be controlled by the British, we'd have better movies, Jude Law would thankfully be playing all of Mel Gibson's roles, our clubs would be hipper, our music edgier, our people smarter, our culture more respectable - in short, we'd be better off. Inducing such thoughts surely wasn't the filmmakers intent.

WG: Otherwise known as the Mel Gibson tutorial in American history. The Patriot is a big, rousing cornball of a movie, rampant with cliches, bombast, and historical inaccuracy. It was also one of the best movies of the summer. Far closer to a colonial Braveheart than the American Revolution of tea and powdered wigs and declarations drawn up with quill-feathered pens, The Patriot is epic in every sense of the word. It's robust form of sweeping, old-fashioned entertainment that knows exactly which buttons to push and has, unlike the much more remote Gladiator, an honest-to-goodness heart. Okay, so Gibson was a Southern planter who didn't own slaves and the British were so villainous that they burned people in churches-who goes to the movies for their history lesson anyway? Director Roland Emmerich will never be much more than flashy blockbuster peddler, but he certainly knows how to handle a project with daunting logistics and he makes the most of some lavish production values. The Patriot has too many flaws to be called a great piece of filmmaking, but I'd say it's a superb piece of moviemaking. And yes, there is a difference-the former is what you look for in the fall and the latter is what you hope for in a season committed solely to the box office.

The Perfect Storm

SC: As I exited the movie theater with a friend after seeing The Perfect Storm, both of us were silent for a second, perhaps pondering the lives of the six crew members who died aboard the Andrea Gail. 'I'm really craving sushi,' he said, breaking the silence. 'I gotta stop at Barnes and Nobles afterwards.' 'Oh, can I borrow your cellphone?' etc. etc. Neither of us brought up the movie for the rest of the night. Why would we? The Perfect Storm had absolutely nothing going for it-no character development, no suspense (we all knew the real story), no payoff. It would have played better as an IMAX two-hour CGI wave fest. And just as I tuned out in The Patriot to start asking myself important questions about the film's subject matter, I did the same for The Perfect Storm. Did they slaughter real fish for the packing sequences? Did the PETA get upset - or are fish fair game for slaughter? Can you ever rid yourself of the fish stench if you're a fisherman? Would you get less dates if you can't get rid of the stench? Maybe a really strong cologne could hide it?

WG: Going into The Perfect Storm, and already knowing the fate of the Andrea Gail and her six crew members, I was skeptical that the film could be anything more than an exercise in high-priced special effects. Well, I was certainly wrong and I credit veteran director Wolfgang Peterson for making the movie as good as it is. The selling point may have been the titanic waves, but what makes Perfect Storm work is the opening half hour, in which Peterson not only establishes his characters but, more importantly, establishes the life of the Gloucester fishermen. Their precarious economic existence lends much needed dramatic weight to the visually enthralling storm sequence that occupies the bulk of the movie. Indeed, the posters may have been adorned with the mammoth final wave, but the real 'money shot' is the wall engraved with the names of those who died at sea for their trade. Admittedly the film lapses into sentimentality at the end and Peterson never finds a particularly smooth way to shift between the Andrea Gail and the Coast Guard rescue, but with The Perfect Storm, he delivers a haunting ode to the life of the fisherman rather than just another soulless blockbuster.

The Cell

SC: The trailer for The Cell is beautiful and brilliant'a startlingly perfect mixture of pictures and pitch. But a trailer only runs a couple minutes, and director Tarsem Singh finds he has a lot more to deal with when he has to produce a coherent piece 60 times as long. The problem with The Cell is that it gets so hung up on its little details and visual tricks that it loses sight of the bigger picture - the villain's motivations, the detective's emotions, logic, etc. And sure, we can applaud Singh all we want for his audacity, but what's the point if the movie doesn't have any impact? Meanwhile, Jennifer Lopez's squeaky voice is starting to get on my nerves; for a girl who prides herself on sass and ass, she's awfully shrill. But in the end, she's cast as eye candy, not as an actress. And in a movie filled with meaningless visual stunts, she simply dissolves with the rest of them.

WG: It's easy to see why music video veteran Tarsem Singh was attracted to directing The Cell, this summer's harshest piece of visual eyecandy, because so much of the movie is like a music video itself. The fil invites us to join Jennifer Lopez's sexy scientist as she journeys into the nightmarish psyche of Vincent D'Onofrio's twisted serial killer, but the invitation is just as much Tarsem's, as he bids us to enter a world in which the confines of narrative structure simply melt away. The problem with this visually arresting picture however, is that its disturbing aesthetic too often overwhelms Mark Protosevich's underwritten screenplay, which is really nothing more than a pedestrian serial killer thriller at heart. Yet so much of Tarsem's imagery - such as the first haunting glimpses of Lopez as a seductive slave to subconscious - leaves an indelible impression on the mind. He may not capture the artistic grit of Seven or the psychological intensity of Silence of the Lambs (the two films he's most obviously trying to emulate), but his roller-coaster ride through a psychedelic dream world demands to be experienced. The Cell may not be a great film, but in a summer of hand-groomed blockbusters and dishwasher safe products, you can't help but admire the one studio picture that actually attempted to do something both daring and original.

X-Men

SC: Until July 14, we couldn't buy a good movie. The early summer was just painful to endure and I went to see X-Men knowing quite well that Bryan Singer's adaptation of the comic books would be a disaster, I'd bemoan the state of Hollywood once again, and regret the $15 I spent on a ticket and JuJubees. But what a pleasant surprise - the X-Men not only saved the world, but they also saved summer movie audiences. Singer's adaptation is lyrical, elegant and wonderfully intelligent; it has nuance, something that a comic book movie usually can't afford. And even though it clocks in at a lean 101 minutes, the movie takes its time to develop the start of what should be an extremely interesting set of character dynamics. Indeed, the best thing about X-Men is that we await the sequel knowing that we won't get the same schtick from the first one - Singer cleverly delivered a movie that can both stand on its own and yet also demand more intricate resolutions.

WG: How come Hollywood has always had such a difficult time when it comes to adapting comic books? It seems like such a simple task, yet for every gem like Blade, there seem to be six or seven duds like Judge Dredd. Which is why every time I think about Bryan Singer's big-screen version of X-Men, I get more and more amazed. Facing heavy studio pressure, an ever-shifting script, and the weight of an entire legion of diehard fanboys ready to critique everything from costumes to eye color, the Usual Suspects auteur somehow managed to make a movie that was both true to the source material and self- contained in its own right. But even more importantly, the movie was pure fun - the X-Men's battle with Magneto atop the Statue of Liberty at the end perfectly captured the dazzling escapism that makes comic books so popular. Although I wish the movie were more than just a pitiful 90 minutes and the ending too blatantly tries to set up future sequels, I'll take what I can get when it comes to this genre. Finally, something must be said of Aussie newcomer Hugh Jackman, who was so utterly pitch-perfect as legendary comics icon Wolverine that he alone made me feel like I was actually watching the comic book, rather than some hackneyed interpretation of it.

Mission Impossible 2

SC: Keanu Reeves pulled off the all-black wardrobe and the funky martial arts in The Matrix simply because the boy is cool enough to look effortless and comfortable in the rockiest (and conversely, cheesiest) of situations. The word 'effortless,' however, doesn't apply to Tom Cruise. Cruise isn't a natural - every one of his pained, constipated expressions reflects his inability to just go with the flow. In a movie like Jerry Maguire, the effort pays off because the part requires unbounded earnestness. The role of Ethan Hunt in MI2 demands just the opposite - a casual aloofness, a confident grace that Cruise can't muster regardless of how hard he tries. Everything else in MI2 doesn't help to conceal his shortcomings. Woo's schtick is growing tired, Thandie Newton just barely survived one of the most thankless roles in recent memory, the plot was just barely there, the action sequences were corny, etc. . And most intolerable, of course, is that ridiculous 'mask' cop-out that they keep throwing in whenever they run into a script dead-end. I'll accept it as soon as they answer the following questions: 1) Where do they get them made? 2) Where do they store them when they're on the run? 3) Are they hypo-allergenic?

WG: With action maestro John Woo at the helm and a budget twice the size of a third world country, Mission: Impossible 2 should have been the summer's most unrelenting joyride. Instead we got a sluggish, often dim-witted action picture that wasn't even as enjoyable as the first Mission: Impossible. What happened? Well, you can start with the fact that Robert Towne, the man wrote Chinatown for God's sake, was apparently uninspired to do anything more with the screenplay than rip off Notorious and throw in a limp virus thriller. Then you can blame Tom Cruise, who, despite his rogue's haircut, is stuck in extra-bland mode as superagent Ethan Hunt (when the Cruise mask is ripped off in the opening sequence, I was praying Chow Yun-Fat and his charisma would be underneath). And how did a television show that always revolved around the 'team' concept become the Tom Cruise vanity show anyway? By the time Woo is finally allowed to unleash his bag-of-tricks near the end, he does admittedly pull off some spectacular sequences, most notably a high-octane motorcycle chase and a deliriously over-the-top kung-fu battle. But by the time we get to this sizzle, we've already had to endure far too much fizzle.

Me, Myself and Irene

SC: I saw two comedies on the weekend of June 23. One was Chicken Run. Fabulous! The other was Me, Myself, and Irene. Terrible! Every time I think of the Farrelly's follow-up to There's Something About Mary, I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach (I have the same reaction to thoughts of Scary Movie. If I think of them simultaneously, I have to pull the air sick bag from under my chair.) Though Carrey tried valiantly to up the ante on the gross-out schtick, the movie just never rose above its cheap tricks. Remember, Mary succeeded because of its pacing - in between the astounding sight gags, the Farrellys toyed with an ultrasweet romantic comedy that offered all kinds of weird nuances in Cameron Diaz' title character. Not only does Renee Zellwegger have zero personality as Irene, but the entire movie is one frenetic fart joke without even an instant of relief. And what's with the 'sticking [insert various objects here] up an ass' gags? The creators of the infamous hair gel and the Spud on speed surely can come up with something better than that.

WG: Comedic pairings don't get much more promising than Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers, so why do the gross-out antics in Me, Myself, and Irene feel so forced? There are admittedly a number of big laughs in this elaborate road farce (having Carrey dunk the snotty girl's head underwater was a stroke of malevolent genius), but too many of the jokes (chicken up the posterior; trying to finish off the wounded cow) either go on too long or feel like the Farrellys attempting to hurdle the ever-rising gross-out bar. As Carrey's schizophrenic state trooper hits the road with Renee Zellweger, the movie gets wrapped up in a nonsensical plot that no one can seem to fully explain to me - the screenplay was reportedly kicking around Hollywood for a decade, and it sure feels like it. It's unfortunate, because Jim Carrey ultimately gives one of his most inspired physical performances - by the time his split personalities began vying for control, we know he's hitting on all cylinders. In Me, Myself, and Irene, Carrey is an absolute whirlwind of energy. It's too bad the rest of the movie can't keep up.