starring Sharto Copley
written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell & directed by Neill Blomkamp
Rated R for bloody violence and pervasive language.
94%

20 years ago, an enormous alien ship arrived and parked itself directly over Johannesburg, South Africa. Instead of first contact with highly-advanced beings, humanity finds the ship full of filthy, malnourished alien refugees. With international pressure mounting, the government relocates the “prawn” to a temporary camp, which soon becomes a permanent slum: District 9. Now, with human/alien relations strained to the breaking point, a chance encounter between Wikus Van De Merwe (Copley), a well-meaning but incompetent bureaucrat, and a prawn named Christopher Johnson will have volatile and unexpected consequences for everyone.

District 9 immediately drops the viewer into a fully-developed world that is at once exotic and familiar, fleshed-out with an intense attention to detail. The film begins as a documentary, using news reports and interviews to handle the details of exposition. The beauty of the technique is that it allows the setting to be developed to a point where explanations aren’t clumsy or forced, and unanswered questions don’t feel like plot holes. As the movie progresses, the film’s mode of narration gradually and gracefully slips into cinematic omniscience. Almost imperceptibly, the camera becomes a fly on the wall rather than part of the action, and the viewer is drawn completely into the story.

The illusion is maintained in part thanks to a cast of complete unknowns, most notable Copley as Wikus, the movie’s “everyman” hero. Actually, calling him an everyman might even be an overstatement. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a less-likely action hero. Wikus begins the film as a sort of South African Michael Scott (the clueless manager of TV’s “The Office”), and wanders dangerously close to self-parody during the opening scenes. Ultimately, though, he becomes a believable character precisely because he is so flawed, and so conflicted between his desire to do the right thing on the one hand, and his constant self-interest on the other. He becomes the film’s moral center, but not until he has also displayed the darker side of humanity.

Even viewers unfamiliar with the recent history of South Africa will immediately recognize the subtext here, as the prawn are abused and exploited in every way imaginable. Terms like “dehumanizing” and “human rights” don’t even seem to occur to anyone. After all, these aren’t humans. Only Wikus eventually comes to realize how wrong they have been, and how wrong he, personally, has been; an inner transformation that mirrors the external one, Wikus’ identification with “the Other” is made possible by his transformation into the Other. Wikus is not maliciously evil, as some of the other characters are. He is exemplary of a more ordinary, complacent, and banal evil. Unwilling to rock the boat, he pretends everything is fine and pursues success within a system he knows is unjust. When he finally admits as much to Christopher Johnson late in the film, we sense that it may be the most dramatic change he has experienced.

While it may not be immediately obvious, District 9 is an action movie at heart. Without Wikus’s growth as a character, and as a person, it might be easy for all of its big ideas to get lost in the sturm and drang of the climax. The final half-hour or so is fantastically entertaining, even if it does seem to shift the focus away from the film’s disturbing message about humanity. By then the point has been made, and rather than browbeat the audience with it further, Blomkamp allows room for some straightforward, adrenaline-charged fun. It helps that, unlike much of this summer’s blockbuster fare, the extended, explosion-laced firefight has been earned by the depth of the plot.

Incidentally, I should probably mention that this is not a film for the faint of heart or (more importantly) the weak of stomach. And alongside that warning, I will also add the minor complaint that the movie tries to fake its audience out a few too many times with slow motion and mournful music; a small but grating misstep in a film that otherwise manages to avoid cinematic formulas and tropes to a refreshing degree. And speaking of “refreshing,” the story of District 9‘s production is a model of what I wish we’d see more of from Hollywood. Director Neill Blomkamp was set to direct a movie based on the Halo video game franchise for producer Peter Jackson, but when funding fell through, they put this together instead on a shoestring budget (the lack of financing doesn’t show). “What’s that,” you say, “a completely original science fiction story produced in place of yet another tired video game adaptation?” Yes, indeed. More, please!

Posted in Reviews

starring Daniel Radcliffe, Michael Gambon, and Jim Broadbent
written by Steve Kloves & directed by David Yates
Rated PG for scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality.
81%

Harry Potter returns for his 6th year at Hogwarts, where a new professor, Horace Slughorn (Broadbent), has taken a position as the Potions master, allowing Professor Snape to take on the ill-fated job of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry finds unexpected academic success in Slughorn’s class thanks to a mysterious textbook that once belonged to someone called “the half-blood prince.” Meanwhile, Dumbledore reluctantly enlists Harry’s help in his quest to uncover the secrets of Voldemort’s past in the hope of discovering some weakness that could lead to the Dark Lord’s defeat.

After six films, I believe that Harry Potter is the longest-running franchise of directly-adapted literary material (although perhaps James Bond holds that honor). In any case, by now everyone knows exactly what they are getting when a new Harry Potter film comes out. Fans of the books and movies will be compelled to see it, people who haven’t kept up probably won’t bother. There’s really no point in reviewing the movie at all, at least for the purposes of offering guidance to a potential audience. However, there are some things about Harry Potter 6 that need to be said, and questions that need to be asked.

The most pressing question is of direct concern to what this franchise has become: Who is this movie for, exactly? That is the one thing I cannot figure out. Certainly it cannot be for fans of the books, as this latest outing leaves out so much of its source (as usual) that at times it can only be said to vaguely resemble it. The funeral of a major character which took up the entire last chapter of the book is here reduced to a terse, shocked memorial around his lifeless body. The constant attacks on good witches and wizards referred to in newspaper reports throughout the book (creating a palpable feeling of dread and of omnipresent evil) are reduced to a tepid on-screen assault on the main characters which claims no casualties. Condensation is of paramount importance to any adaptation, but coherence and meaning should never be sacrificed so cavalierly and consistently in favor of computer-generated pyrotechnics (a hallmark of the last few films).

Then again, Half-Blood Prince cannot be for anyone who has not read the books, as (here more than in any previous episode) the filmmakers have given up on any pretense of catering to an audience that has not memorized the original story. The film begins abruptly, in medias res, with no explanation or introduction (I struggled, disoriented, for some minutes to recall to mind where the end of the last book/film had left our heroes). Characters fly through scenes with bewildering rapidity and no introduction (Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, for instance, appear in a single scene and their names are not mentioned). Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather, whose death at the end of the last film devastated Harry, is never referred to directly. Bellatrix Lestrange, the witch who killed him (as you may remember, or not), does seem to be taunting Harry about it at one point (we can only assume, as the dialog doesn’t say).

So, if this film does not function as a reasonable adaptation of its source, and cannot function as a coherent, independent cinematic experience, what is its function? With all that I have said about it thus far, I ought now to be able to dismiss it as an inferior and unpleasant venture, but that would be dishonest. I did have a very good time visiting Hogwarts on the big screen once more, and for all that it got wrong, the movie did get a few very important things right. For starters, Broadbent steals every scene that he appears in. He delivers such a delightfully-broad comic rendition of the pompous, dithering British academic that one almost cannot help but revel in it with him. And, of course, the rest of the supporting cast continues to be brilliant. I would watch a far worse film than this for the pleasure of seeing Alan Rickman’s Snape in action once again.

Harry Potter movies are all about atmosphere, and Yates continues to lay it on thick. Rowling’s wizarding world is just a fun place to visit, even if nothing that’s going on in it makes a lot of sense. And, as the stakes in these films continue to rise, the battles grow more intense, and the special effects seem to have no trouble keeping up. Perhaps when all seven (no, eight . . . but that’s a different rant) films are finally released to DVD, I’ll go back and watch them all to see how they hold up, both on their own and over the life of the series. I rather doubt that the added perspective will do Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince any favors, but in the meantime, I’ll take the Potter-fix that I can get and go home happy.

Posted in Reviews

starring Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, and Simon Pegg
written by Peter Ackerman and Michael Berg & directed by Carlos Saldanha and Mike Thurmeier
Rated PG for some mild rude humor and peril.
77%

Feeling a bit left out because mammoths Manny (Romano) and Ellie (Latifah) are having a baby, Sid the Sloth (Leguizamo) inadvisably adopts three abandoned eggs which hatch into baby dinosaurs. Soon, an angry mother dinosaur appears to reclaim her offspring, and departs with babies and Sid in tow. Determined to rescue their friend, Manny, Ellie, and the rest follow the trail into a lush underground jungle full of dangerous dinosaurs and a deranged but bush-savvy weasel named Buck (Pegg).

Something must be said and gotten out of the way up-front: There was nothing special or well-done enough about the original Ice Age movie to even remotely justify one, and now two, sequels. There never was and still is not any really worthwhile story to be told involving these characters in this setting. Taking that as a given, it can be said that Dawn of the Dinosaurs is not significantly better or worse than its predecessors. Fans of the series will be happy. The mediocre standard of entertainment continues.

Each of the three main characters (Manny, Diego, and Sid) has a sort of subplot/character arc, but they are fairly weak. Manny, who talks more and more like Romano’s character from “Everybody Loves Raymond,” is adjusting to the thought of becoming a father. Diego feels that he is losing his edge. Sid struggles with motherhood. Oh, and then there’s Scrat (you know, the odd little squirrel who is eternally chasing that surprisingly elusive acorn). He has a new love interest/rival in Scratte, a female who has apparently evolved the ability to glide.

It’s rather dull, forgettable stuff for the first third or so, and then a bright spot arrives in the form of Buck the weasel. His presence in the movie might be a sign of desperation from writers who have run out of ideas for the main characters (and they have), but he injects just enough zany randomness into the film to make it all sort of work, or at least keep you laughing enough that you don’t notice it doesn’t work.

I will say this for it: unlike some of the films that have been released in 3D since the new craze began, the extra dimension is put to good use here. In fact, reflecting back on the previous installments it occurred to me that this is a franchise that ought to have been in 3D all along. Much of the films’ action revolves around set pieces where the characters are falling, flying or sliding through things. In this case there is a particularly nice sequence involving a rescue aboard a pterodactyl.

The chief fault, aside from a general sense of the unremarkable, is the fact that the movie doesn’t even pretend to resolve with any sort of finality. It is trapped in the doleful certainty that more sequels will follow (rumors of a fourth Ice Age movie in production are already circulating). The presumption of a sequel ruins the best gag in the film: a hilarious sequence that seems to perfectly wrap up the epic, three-movie story of Scrat and his acorn. But the filmmakers can’t just leave it at that because Scrat’s interludes are a central component of the franchise. I guess that’s sort of the central problem with the entire concept from the outset. It wants to be marketable more than it wants to be good.

Posted in Reviews

starring Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, and Danny McBride
written by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas & directed by Brad Silberling
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, and for language including a drug reference.
34%

Eccentric scientist Dr. Rick Marshall (Ferrell) has been laughed out of academia because of his radical theories about space, time, and parallel universes. Undaunted, he embarks on a voyage of discovery with beautiful British research assistant Holly Cantrell (Friel) and indomitable redneck Will Stanton (McBride) and winds up in a dimensional dumping ground populated by all sorts of strange and dangerous creatures. Soon it becomes clear that Marshall has stumbled on a secret that may leave the fate of the entire multiverse dangling in the balance.

It’s not at all difficult to see that this adaptation of a cheesy 1970s television show is a disastrous misfire almost from beginning to end. A far more interesting question to consider is why exactly it fails so miserably. The problem is not really that the story and characters make no sense, or that the production values are poor, or even that the humor is too whimsical and self-aware. All of these things are true, but none of them really sums up the reason that Land of the Lost is such a painful viewing experience. So where does the blame lie?

Despite reasonable suspicions to the contrary, Will Ferrell and his co-stars are not entirely to blame here. Although he is often notably excellent in supporting roles, movies in which Ferrell plays the central character are rarely received so favorably. His brand of comedy is generally loud and crude, revolving around a series of extreme situations which repeatedly deflate his brashly (or naively) overconfident persona through a combination of physical pain and gross-out humiliation. In this movie, Ferrell falls off of things and things fall on him. He deliberately douses himself in urine, downing a few swigs for good measure. He is excreted by a dinosaur (mercifully off-screen).

Ferrell is actually a funny guy, and Friel and McBride both endearing and entertaining. Many of the gags are not fundamentally and inherently unfunny. Unfortunately, in Land of the Lost the humor has a lot to accomplish and very few resources to work with. There is no context for any of these jokes, and they do not flow naturally out of or into anything. It is not entirely important that there be a coherent plot to make this idea work, but events must be connected by something more than simply the sequence they are shown in. Most of the scenes in this movie could have been scrambled into a completely random order with no loss of meaning. Perhaps they were.

Worse yet, the humor is not allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits. Instead, each joke must be hammered mercilessly into oblivion until the audience can no longer remember why they might have chuckled initially. It is not enough for Rick to be swallowed by a dinosaur and then reappear after having obviously emerged from the other end. Will must pretend to be unbelievably thick and question him for some minutes about how he escaped until Rick is forced to spell everything out. I shudder to calculate how much of the movie’s run-time consists of having its jokes meticulously explained until they have no hope of being funny (if they ever did).

The fault clearly rests with the lazy, shoddy writing. With a concept like this, the possibilities are literally almost infinite. Why then should the writers have needed to fall back on an endless string of poop jokes? It’s sad to see the opportunity wasted, because there are so many hints at what might have been. Among the movie’s producers were Sid and Marty Krofft, the creators of the original television series (which was aimed primarily at children). Throughout Land of the Lost we see people in rubber suits so cheap one can almost spot the zipper and poor computer-generated effects that the actors barely pretend to be interacting with.

There is a sustained camp aesthetic at work which seems to indicate an awareness that it is possible to tell a fun, engaging story without state-of-the-art digital effects and zillion-dollar pyrotechnics. I’m not always sure whether anyone making summer blockbusters knows that anymore. Unfortunately, a fun and engaging story never shows up, and the reliance on scatological humor signals an abandonment of the younger audience of the show and of good taste in general. Not even a late-night screening and the desire to be amused could force any genuine laughter out of me, and I was left wishing I’d stayed home and gone to bed instead.

Posted in Reviews