Tag: USA

Million Dollar Baby

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★★★½
“The harder they come, the harder they fall…”

The problem with boxing films is that it’s very hard to avoid the obvious cliches. Kid from the streets, initially seen as hopeless, eventually convinces a trainer to take them on, and struggles towards the goal of a shot at the big time. Million is no different, for the first two-thirds at least. Then, there is a sudden, unexpected swerve – or would have been unexpected, if our son hadn’t ruthlessly spoilered it, by wandering in and telling us of a scene in Scary Movie 4 which spoofed it. Thank you, Robert. :-) This shifts the movie in a radically different direction, though also divorcing it entirely from the action heroine genre and robbing it of at least half a grade, since reviews here center around such aspects.

What helps enormously are the three characters at the core of the film: trainer and gym owner Frankie (Eastwood), ex-fighter and general gym handyman Eddie (Freeman), and the thirty-something hillbilly waitress Maggie (Swank), who comes to the gym to learn the pugilistic arts. All three have their burdens, Frankie in particular, who blames himself for everything bad that happens to anyone he knows. Yet somehow, they fit together like crazy paving and become more whole as a result; it’s fascinating to watch, and much credit is due to all three actors. The fight scenes are well staged too. Swank looks the part – she was The Next Karate Kid, after all – as she makes her way through the ranks, ending up facing champion Billie the Blue Bear (Rijker – on the left in the pic, and in reality, 37-0 as a kickboxer, 17-0 as a boxer), and there’s little glamourous here.

You get some feeling for the appeal of the sport, and the commitment it demands, though the freak nature of the incident which drives the final third seems lazy writing. Despite a weak script, the performances, particularly Eastwood, lift this above and beyond. Recommended if you want a more thoughtful approach, and are prepared for action more to be a catalyst for drama, rather than a purpose in itself.

Dir: Clint Eastwood
Star: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Lucia Rijker

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

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★★★
“Patience is required, but decent fun when it gets going.”

Just imagine Jennifer Aniston watching this film: every time Ange appears on the screen, or gazes lovingly at Brad, Jen shrieks maniacally, “Die, sluuuuuut!” Such thoughts will keep you entertained during the sluggish first hour – you’ll need them, while you wait for the characters to realise what we know from the start: Mr. and Mrs. Smith are both assassins, now targeted by their respective agencies. For that is when the fun finally starts, not the overlong lead-up, where Brad + Angelina can only sustain the plot’s conceit (that – tee-hee! – they don’t know each other’s real jobs) by abject stupidity that flies directly in the face of their characters. She’s supposedly a top-level assassin with 300+ kills to her name, yet doesn’t notice hubby’s Batman-sized lair beneath the potting shed? Puh-lease…

But, must say, I enjoyed the action, which is directed with imagination – for example, Jolie abseiling down a building using only her handbag, provoking a rare “Wow!” from this jaded fan. Jolie is just right: it’s difficult to imagine the other options (Kidman, Zeta-Jones, Blanchett and, um, Gwen Stefani) doing as well. And the sniping banter between husband and wife has a particularly enjoyable sense of irony when its punctuated by… er, actual sniping. Some might say this both glorifies and trivializes the whole issue of domestic violence – and watching them brawl their way round the house before, naturally, tearing each other’s clothes off, it’s hard to argue. Yet at its best, this takes the “War of the Sexes” to a whole new level (she works for an agency that’s mostly women; he, for one that’s largely guys), and that angle could certainly merit more exploration.

We don’t know whether the Smiths are “good”, “bad” or independent contractors, an interesting approach (we have no moral compass beyond their actions), yet disappointing. For another weakness is that the villains are merely faceless minions, when the genre needs a Big Bad for the climax – the obvious one here is the people that ordered the terminations. Liman, whose Bourne Identity was also about a killer with a contract on his head, might appreciate this more than most, and word is two such endings were shot, just not used. Still, I suspect that the sequel – likely inevitable, given this was one of 2005’s top ten at the US box-office – could very well be more fun than the original. At least we’ll have all the tedious set-up out of the way.

Dir: Doug Liman
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughn, Kerry Washington

Taking Lives

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★★½
“Another great concept is let down by depressingly obvious scripting.”

Rarely has a film started so promisingly, and gone so consistently downhill. The start is fabulous, with one of the most shocking moments I’ve seen…though if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll have had it spoiled. But regardless, the first time we meet FBI profiler Illeana Scott (Jolie), on special assignment to Montreal, she’s lying in a grave. She is hard as nails, and takes absolutely no crap from anyone: her local friend, Captain Leclair (Karyo) hardly needs to bother protecting her, despite the nicely-handled cross-border tension. The case is that of a serial killer who, as the title suggests, inhabits the lives of his victims: the crack comes when his mother (Rowlands), believing him dead for two decades, spots him in Montreal by chance. However, the only other person to have seen the suspect is art-gallery owner James Costa (Hawke), but Scott starts finding her emotions getting in the way of her work…

Which is where the film loses its way, deflating like a leaky balloon. We are forced to watch the inevitable sexual tension between these two characters; seeing Scott go about her business would be infinitely less cliched and predictable. There is a twist that is so obvious you’d need to be unconscious not to see it coming – though I’d forgive you for falling asleep during the aforementioned sexual tension – and a final act that appears to have been taken from a bad 80’s slasher movie. These failings merely open the door for you to stare more closely at the plot, and you realise large chunks of it are on wobbly ground. For example, Scott deduces from a draft that a bookcase must conceal a hidden door: er, why not simply an A/C vent? Part Se7en, part Silence of the Lambs, this comes over as taking the less effective elements from each film, leaving the potential of a female Sherlock Holmes sadly under-realised.

Dir: D.J. Caruso
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Tchéky Karyo, Ethan Hawke, Gena Rowlands

D.E.B.S.

  By

★★
“Teenage lesbians! With guns! How could they go wrong? Well…read on.”

As Kim Possible proves, there’s certainly scope for a high-school action heroine who has to save the world from evil. Unfortunately, here, the potential largely gurgles down the plughole, in favour of a smug, self-satisfied romantic comedy, that manages to be as bland as a film about teenage lesbians could be. Amy Bradshaw (Foster) gets a perfect score on the test hidden within the SAT, and is recruited into a spy academy; there, with her classmates (Good, Ritchie and the always amusing Devon Aoki), she carries out secret missions, wears plaid skirts and agonises over her relationship with her boyfriend.

So far, so good. Then, by unlikely plotting, she meets and falls for evil mastermind, Lucy Diamond (Brewster), and decides to quit school for Lucy. But does the road of true love ever run smooth? This, unfortunately, is where the film goes off the rails entirely. While I’ve no problems with homosexual love stories – okay, especially where the protagonists are cute and female – Robinson abandons wit for a series of cliches, causing nothing but slow boredom. Originally a ten-minute short, it doesn’t appear any additional ideas went into the script, meaning it’s good for about ten minutes of fun. Logic is all but non-existent, even in the “ironic” D.E.B.S. world: for example, the teachers can teleport around, but at the end, are unable to get past a locked door.

The action isn’t too bad initially, with a sprightly shootout in a restaurant. However, that’s your lot, save the “daring” lesbian angle. Though, being mainstream cinema, it’s just a couple of clothes-on kisses, and bad, unconvincing romance is no fun, regardless of a character’s orientation. This aspect is so po-faced and politically correct – it is, clearly, supposed to be taken Very Seriously – that proceedings come to a grinding halt, while what appears to be the director’s iPod on shuffle plays as a witless soundtrack. Look! An Erasure song! How appropriate! ‘Cos, y’know, they’re gay. Kill me. Kill me now. Then bring me a copy of Naked Killer.

Dir: Angela Robinson
Star: Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Jill Ritchie

Lady Jayne Killer

  By

★★★
“Unquestionably flawed but cheesily energetic fluff.”

Memo to self: don’t tell your wife the star of a film was in Playboy. Chris’s interest, already somewhat on thin ice, evaporated entirely, pretty much the moment I made that mistake, and I almost had to handcuff her to the bed to prevent a sudden trip to the supermarket. The concept here is kinda cool: Mom Emily (Eleniak) vs. anti-Mom Jayne (du Page). The latter is a hitwoman for the Mob, with 20 kills to her credit when she decides to abscond with a million in cash. She ends up hitching a ride beside Emily and her 16-year old son Kerry (Lelliot) on their way to San Antonio, with the former owners of the money in hot pursuit. And the cops. And the FBI. Then Kerry – when not fantasizing about Eleniak in the shower [cue Chris’s neo-departure!] – decides to solves Mom’s financial problems with thievery of his own.

I certainly don’t blame them for changing the title from the amazingly bland original – though suspect a colon got lost somewhere on route… And this is contrived: with a cellphone, and more than enough ready cash, Jayne could easily hire a limo – or even take a cab to San Antonio. So why use Emily – then hang around, even after their car breaks down? That sound you hear is the film whistling loudly and putting its fingers in its ears. And despite a strict and straight-laced parent, underage Kerry still sports a Superman tattoo on his arm. This kind of sloppy attention to production detail damages a film which is sometimes smarter than it may appear.

For instance, Emily’s line that her son is knows about every woman who has appeared in Playboy is nicely self-aware, given Eleniak’s familiarity with the staples therein. :-) But she stays dressed here, leaving the lingerie to Du Page, and Kerry’s interaction with the babe dropped into his life are amusing – hey, in his shoes and at his age, I’d be a gibbering fool too. The plot twists its way, albeit predictably, towards the final battle between Mom and anti-Mom. As a time-passer, I found it by no means awful: while it’d have been nice if Emily had snarled “Get away from him, you bitch,” when she found Jayne holding a gun to Kerry’s head, I guess you can’t have everything.

Dir: Mark L. Lester
Star: Erika Eleniak, Julie du Page, Jeremy Lelliot, James Remar
a.k.a. Betrayal

G.I. Jane

  By

★★★½
“The training Jane stays mainly in the pain…”

The opening hour of this must be great entertainment for sadists, watching Demi Moore get pummelled, ground-down, chewed-up and beaten into a bloody pulp by the war machine, as part of Navy SEAL training. The first woman to go through it, she could open the door for others if she succeeds – which is exactly why the stops are pulled out to ensure she fails. While the most obvious face of this is Master Chief Urgayle (Mortensen – his character here would eat Aragorn for lunch), her political mentor Senator DeHaven (Bancroft) also finds the pressure coming down to pull the plug on this social experiment. But Jan…er, Jordan O’Neil (Moore), won’t give up at any cost, demanding absolutely equal treatment. Of course, after what seems like a 75-minute training montage, she wins the respect of her colleagues, overcoming the Senator’s intervention thanks to a peskily imperfect fax machine.

An eye-poppingly brutal look at what our soldiers go through (leaving me with even more respect for them), it’s the second half where the movie kicks into life. Their final training mission has the SEALS diverted to Libya to help recover a device containing weapons-grade plutonium. This “no man left behind” would be revisited by Scott – and cranked up to the max – in Black Hawk Down, but the restraint he shows here is a lot more effective. To me, showing ability in a combat situation, as our heroine does, would seem a better way of obtaining the admiration of your fellow soldiers – rather than telling Urgayle to “Suck my dick!” But, hey, I’m a civilian, and very happy to be one, so what do I know? It’s a shame there wasn’t a resulting franchise; as the last hour shows, there is a lot of potential for development, with O’Neil kicking butt in a variety of exotic foreign locals. However, at 43, Demi Moore is perhaps too old these days. What’s Jessica Alba doing?

Dir: Ridley Scott
Star: Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft, Jason Beghe

Painkiller Jane (pilot)

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★★
“It’ll probably be the audience who need the painkillers to get through this tedious tale.”

This SciFi Channel original movie is based on a comic-book series, but makes some radical changes to the storyline, though the basic idea is intact: a woman becomes immune to injury after the usual mysterious something happens to her [radioactive spider bite, barrel of toxic waste – the usual graphic novel contrivances, in other words]. In the comic, she was an undercover cop; here, she is a Special Forces soldier in Chechnya who is exposed to an experimental biological agent. Naturally, she subsequently finds herself much sought after, by both good and bad factions, since she’s the first to survive the treatment.

And initially, this isn’t so bad, as she escapes from the military, encounters a gentlemen thief and his posse of sidekicks, and tries to get all her mental ducks in a row, so she knows who to trust. As a set-up, it’s fine, with its share of paranoia. However, the longer this goes on, the less interesting it gets: you’d think having a heroine who is virtually immortal, would lead to almost non-stop mayhem. Not here. The action here is very limited and when it does appear, is simply boring – unfortunately, there’s no other word for it.

Now, I know this was intended as much as a pilot for a project TV series as anything, and they have to keep their powder dry for future episodes. But unlike, say, Chameleon, there’s precious little here to make me want to watch, should they decide to bring it back. Indeed, I fell asleep as the “gripping” scene at a shopping mall unfolded. For any action film, that’s about the kiss of death, and while the performances aren’t bad – Vaugier as our heroine has a nice attitude that reminded me of Yancy Butler in Witchblade – there wasn’t nearly enough meat on these bones to satisfy me…

Dir: Sanford Bookstaver
Star: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Tate Donovan, Richard Roundtree, Eric Dane

Blood Angels

  By

★★★
“Charlie’s Angels take on The Vampire Lestat. At Coyote Ugly.”

I’ve recently seen movies involving vampires who run a strip-club (Vamps), and witches who run a strip-club (Witches’ Sabbath). Now, we have vampires who’re putting on a rave. It’s nice to see creatures of the night who keep themselves busy. Actually, here, they’re not fully-fledged vampires: indeed, the aim of the rave is a ritual to complete the job, give them shape-shifting powers, etc. – generally, upgrade from the shareware version of vampirism. Of course, one of the vamps has a sister (Baruc) turn up – she looks like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, which is fairly appropriate, as she’s definitely not in Kansas any more. And their creator, Mr. Jones (Lamas), from whom they escaped, is keen to reel them back in…

Oh, did I mention the bloodsuckers are all attractive women, and that for some reason, vampirism now includes kung-fu abilities? [Must be v2.0…] Okay, these rarely rise above “fairly crap”, but the attitude is cool, and it’s just another facet of an odd film that also includes: a Japanese guy who wants to be black, an unfunny transvestite, the Necronomicon, a Hunter S. Thompson lookalike and a final five minutes – before the final credits – which are a hip-hop music video. Bizarrely, it largely works, in a post-Buffy kind of way, with a few lines which made us laugh out loud, such as, “I’m sorry to interrupt this very special episode of Touched by a Vampire.” However, whenever the effects go above the basic level…if a script has snakes leap out of a vampire woman’s breasts and attack someone, or a world-threatening demon, your FX studio had better be able to step up to the plate, rather than fall apart.

While expecting copious nudity – “Lesbian Vampire Spank Inferno”, as Chris put it – there is surprisingly little: like the attacking breasts, perhaps a side effect of having a gay director? Looking back, there were more topless guys than gals, but at least it wasn’t an outright gayfest like David DeCoteau would’ve done. However, I imagine, say, Fred Olen Ray would have had a different vision! Co-writer Lisa Morton also basically disowned it, but while this may be light-years from her concept (the original title presumably went, because no-one had a clue what it meant), this is still more fun than anticipated.

Dir: Ron Oliver
Star: Siri Baruc, Leah Cairns, Lorenzo Lamas, Shawn Roberts

Æon Flux (live-action)

  By

★★★
“For Flux’s sake…”

aeonflux14.jpgIt is too early to start speculating about a girlswithguns.org curse? I mean, we’ve only ever put two banners for movies on our home-page: the first was Catwoman which ended up getting Razzie nominations across the board, and now we have Æon Flux, a film deemed so bad by its studio, they decided not to show it to critics. And given some of the other dreck put out by Paramount this year, with a full promotional push…the results were probably inevitable.

For, y’see, many “proper” critics do not like being deprived of their free screenings with reserved seating, and being made to pay $9 to see the movies with (ugh!) a proper audience. I strongly suspect a significant number phoned in their review without bothering to see see – or, at least, pay attention to – the film, under oh-so-“witty” titles like “Flux Sux”. If the studio basically tells you a movie blows, why argue? [It takes phenomenal guts to go against the tide, but Flux did get some good reviews]

Truth is, of course, it’s not as bad as they’d have you imagine. Not brilliant, sure, but worse films come out, almost any weekend. I’m always happy to see a nicely-detailed take on the shape of things to come, and Flux certainly delivers there, with a Brave New World-like utopia, where everyone is happy…at least on the surface. Of course, if you’re familiar with the excellent Equilibrium, you’ve seen this kind of thing before – but say what you like about the Nazis, they had some great architects, and the same is true here. Particular kudos also to costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor, who deserves an Oscar nomination for her efforts, which have a sleek, futuristic style to them that’s undeniably impressive.

Theron also has the necessary gravitas for the role, and to my ears, even sounded like the character did. She has the tall, spindly appearance too, though the hair is definitely well wide of the mark, and her clothes are – inevitably – toned down from the “fetish wear on amphetamines” depicted in the series. That’s probably a necessity for the PG-13 rating, which also hampers the film in other ways – I’ll say more on that later. But as an adaptation in general, it’s so wide of the mark, you’d be better off ignoring this aspect entirely.

 However, it would probably have been foolish to expect otherwise. Given the dense, impenetrable nature of the series, there’s no way a studio was going to spend $60m to make something like that, to open on 2,000+ screens across America. The storyline here is much more linear, logical…and, well, probably less interesting. 400 years after a virus wipes out 99% of the world’s population, Æon is a Monican rebel, fighting the powers-that-be in Bregna, the only city left. However, when her sister is killed by the authorities, it becomes personal, and she takes on a mission to kill Trevor Goodchild (Csokas). However, when she faces him, she finds herself unable to complete her task, and from there she discovers that life is not quite what it seems. Though the revelations are more likely to provoke a shrug than any actual surprise.

aeonflux1.jpgThe main problem, however, is Karyn Kusama, whose previous work, Girlfight was very good, but was an up-close and personal character study, about as far from the sprawling SF sensibility require here as imaginable. This, I think, summarizes part of the problem with Hollywood and “girls with guns”: they appear to think all action heroines are the same. Hey, you did a film about an inner-city schoolgirl who uses boxing as an escape valve? You’d be perfect to helm an effects-packed, post-apocalyptic, science-fiction movie starring a supermodel gone berserk! No. No. A thousand times no. They should perhaps have gone with producer Gale Anne Hurd, who does at least have an action/SF background, from her work on the Terminator series, Aliens, Hulk, etc. Kusuma seems out of her depth, sad to say.

aeonflux4.jpgThere is some inspired gadgetry, such as Æon’s little explosive balls, which do tricks on command, and her eye, which can see chemical additives in a glass of water. There is also what is presumably a VR implant, letting her enter the 25th century version of a chat-room to get orders from McDormand. The hair-do on Æon’s boss is from the “through a hedge backwards” school of hairdressing, so it appears that customizable avatars were also wiped out by the pandemic. But like most of the costumes and set design, the futuristic infrastructure is generally well-realised.

The supporting cast come off variably well. Okenodo (left) plays another rebel, with hands in place of her feet, a nice touch that deserved better exploration. “I like my shoes” is Æon’s response when asked why she doesn’t get the same surgery – that’s the kind of perfect, cool, cast-off line the film needs more of. Csokas, and Miller as his ambitious brother who will do anything to keep the status-quo, are solid; but McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite are both badly wasted in throwaway roles, the latter dressed to look embarrassingly like, as one review put it, a Hot Pocket.

Then there’s the action. Save the final battle, which actually reaches the giddy body-count levels beloved of the animated series, they’re poorly-edited – second-unit director Alexander Witt helmed Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which has exactly the same problem. You’ve got a heroine to whom calm, athletic poise is apparently second nature: why not show her for longer than two frames, without cutting somewhere else? Hell, Theron got injured making this – not that you could tell by the time this went through the MTV blender. As a result, the fights pose no threat to the heroine, since you haven’t got a clue what’s going on: your average video-game causes more concern for the participants.

This brings me back to that PG13-rating, which means the violence doesn’t have any edge to it – at one point, Trevor Goodchild takes two bullets to the torso, and it barely slows him down. In the animated series, death was an ever-present occupational hazard for Æon, and the result had a dark, tough feel that is very much missing here. Instead, the tone is indistinguishable from any other heroic SF. The sexual tension is also much reduced – though keep an eye out for Theron’s real-life squeeze, Stuart Townsend, who cameos in the opening scene, passing a message with his tongue to our heroine. That, and Æon trapping a fly with her eyelash, are about the only moments truly recognisable from the series – and, truth be told, largely prove only that some things work better in animation.

That’s a fitting summary for the film as a whole. This is not the disaster you might expect from some reviews (hell, it’s a million times better than what we watched the next night, the woeful and inept National Treasure, which somehow managed to become a smash-hit). However, there’s no denying that this is a disappointing conversion of a classic series. Its failure at the box-office puts the final nail in a very mediocre year for the action heroine at the box-office, that staggered from bad to worse: Elektra. Domino. Æon Flux. Shudder. We’ll move rapidly on, and raise a glass of Christmas cheer, in the hope that our favourite genre finds some better success in 2006. When’s Underworld: Evolution out?

Dir: Karyn Kusama
Stars: Charlise Theron, Marton Csokas, Johnny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo
a.k.a. Aeon Flux

"Not the disaster you might expect from some reviews. However, there's no denying that this is a disappointing conversion of a classic series."
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Roller Derby Mania

  By

★★★
“I love the 80’s…if not the clothes.”

This dates back to 1986, which is a little odd, as the sport was pretty much in one of its down-turns at the time – the excesses of RollerGames were still a couple of years away at that point. This isn’t probably the best place for a novice to start, as there’s no explanation at all about the sport, since it assumes you know what’s going on, how bouts are staged, scored and what the rules are . There’s a little about the history (including a cute song from the 1940’s), but it’s mostly action featuring the Los Angeles T-Birds.

It’s important to realise that this was also the era of mixed leagues – the men and women skated alternate periods – but the cover picture about sums up the significance of the sexes, with the women definitely to the fore. In contrast to the modern version, the staged elements seem more obvious, with some acrobatic stunts very clearly pre-planned – the best hits will still leave you wincing. However, the camerawork often leaves a lot to be desired, though this may be an inevitable result of the sport’s nature.

The managers of the teams are also much more prominent, in a way that also recalls pro wrestling. The likes of Georgia Hase – Miss Georgia Hase, to you – E.G. ‘Pretty Boy’ Miller, Ana Anaya and T-Birds’ manager John Hall are the focus much more than currently seems the style. But if anything sticks in your mind, it’ll be the clothes and hairstyles, which mark this as a child of the 1980’s, in indelible, luridly day-glo marker. While your feelings for this slab o’ nostalgia might thus be heavily coloured by your feeling regarding fluffy hair and sideburns, it’s entertaining enough.