Review: X-Men: The Last Stand

It's quite silly how the title of this movie was changed from X3, which indicated that this was the "third" movie in the X-Men series, to X-Men: The Last Stand. This was done in order to keep people from thinking of it as a sequel, since research shows that sequels in general tend to do worse business than the original movies. As if that would prevent people from realizing that it was a sequel! It's really quite silly reasoning on the part of the marketers.

In any case, the real reason people don't go to see sequels in as big of numbers as the originals (with a few exceptions) is that sequels tend to feel more stale and be action-packed instead of trying to introduce character- development. Directors often feel as though, since the characters have already been introduced in the first movie, the second (or third, or fourth) has to have bigger and better action sequences in order to keep people interested. And usually people aren't interested in seeing bigger and better action sequences, they want to see the characters that they love!

Many people have criticized X3 for falling into this trap, of being much less about character development and much more about bigger and louder action sequences. The reason people feel this way is because the ending of the movie leaves a bad taste in people's mouths. The last half of the movie really is just mindless action sequences, and a pretty dumb ending that pays lip service to the drama that the characters are going through but instead is just following the machinations of the plot that have already been set in motion.

That's quite sad, because the first half of the movie is just the opposite, with very careful setup of several tough decisions that the main characters must make regarding both their feelings for one another, and their feelings about themselves. The idea of a "cure" for mutants being created is truly fertile ground for the screenplay to examine what makes each character tick, and the first half of the movie really does explore the ramifications of the cure for many of the main characters. The internal battle within Jean Grey/Phoenix is also plumbed, as is Wolverine and Dr. Xavier's reactions to her rebirth.

But once all of those elements are set up, it all takes a back seat to explosions and special effects, and that is what makes the movie all the more disappointing. It really had potential. No doubt studio politics helped lead to this situation, as did the direction of Brett Ratner (not exactly known for insightful character-driven movies).

Then again, in all honesty, even the Bryan Singer-directed X-Men films got a little light on the character development towards the second-half of the movie. The idea of the X-Men has always lended itself easily to character development, but the movies have inevitably steered toward action sequences at the end that betray the character development plotlines. This has been a recurring theme of the X-Men films, and it's the reason why I think the series is less successful than the Spider-Man films, which have found a much better balance of maintaining true to the characters while producing big action sequences towards the end. (Then again, I still believe that Spider-Man should not have gotten the girl at the end of the second movie, that was completely against what the rest of the movie had so carefully set up! Grrr...)

One last thing. Much has been made about Halle Berry insisting that her character, Storm, have a bigger role in the X-Men movies. She gets her wish in this third installment, and the results are truly terrible. I have not seen the Dorothy Dandridge TV movie or Monster's Ball, but in every other movie I have seen with Halle Berry, she has been a very bad actress. I really do not see where her "Oscar-caliber" acting skills come from, because she has yet to present them to me. It's quite laughable to see how her character is imbued with additional "responsibilities" in the movie, but anytime Wolverine is in the scene with her it's obvious that he's the one who carries the weight and is the natural leader. This is not a problem with the script, but with screen presence. She should have been left as a small player, not as a leader in the new order.

Review: Nacho Libre

I have to start off by saying that in general I like Jack Black, I find him to be quite funny. Not as funny as Sean William Scott, who makes me laugh just by showing up on the screen, but funny nonetheless. As a result I rather enjoyed Nacho Libre. I thought it was silly fun, done pretty well. The world of the luchadores is apparently a little bit tongue in cheek, more so than, say, the WWE, and I think the movie really adopted that attitude and thus is sort of a tribute to the lucha libre culture.

Having said that, I can see why several people have proclaimed that this movie is racist. Is it funny to listen to Jack Black's deliberately terrible Spanish accent? Or is it insulting, kind of like Mickey Rooney's terrible aping of a Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany's? Does this movie extend the stereotype of Mexicans as being dirty and poor, or is that only because it takes place in the countryside? Not being Mexican, it's hard for me to answer these questions in any meaningful way. I do think that the movie was trying to show a surreal view of life in Mexico. The whole idea of a monastery with orphans that need food and a priest who takes up wrestling to help them out is already over-the-top, so for me it's hard to treat the depictions of Mexico and its people as being anything other than over-the-top as well. But beyond that, I can't say. I did watch this movie with a friend who is Mexican, and he was not offended by it at all, but of course that's only one person's opinion.

Regardless, I did enjoy this movie and I would say that anyone who likes silly humor has a good likelihood of enjoying this movie as well, provided they do not end up feeling like it's racist.

One last note: some have heralded this movie as being absolutely original. That's funny, since my Mexican friend told me that this movie is actually a remake of a Mexican film, that features the same plot: a priest at a monastery with starving orphans takes up the luchadore life to help keep the monastery going. Movies aren't about originality of idea, that is practically impossible to achieve in this day and age. Instead, they're about originality and effectiveness of the execution of the idea.

Review: Cars

I have to admit, I really was not looking forward to watching Cars. Pixar's last movie, The Incredibles, was a pretty big disappointment to me. I know that I go against the grain with that particular thinking, since everyone else I know not only liked The Incredibles, but thought it was the best Pixar movie to date. Furthermore, the problem with Cars was that I really have no affection for cars, per se. Cute furry monsters? Sure. Cute aquatic animals? Of course. But cars? To me, a car can look good and stylish, but at the end of the day it's just a tool to get me from point A to point B. Sure, it might look nice and I can appreciate how one car can be much better than another one, but I can't say that I "love" one car any more than some other car. I simply have no great affection for cars in and of themselves.

The first few minutes of Cars did not do much to change my mind. As the simple plot elements were laid out and the characters set up, it all seemed to be standard children's story stuff. Here you have the young, brash rookie who is selfish and thinks only about fame and fortune and winning. No doubt by the end of the movie he will learn the importance of friends and that winning isn't everything. Ho-hum.

But the best movies are great because at their heart they are about "something". Let's take Singing in the Rain for example. Sure, it's thoroughly enjoyable for its great dance sequences and memorable songs, as well as the snappy dialogue. But the thing that ties the whole movie together and gives it a soul is the core story about the decline of the silent film and how that affected the actors of that era. Everything is framed around that, and gives it meaning and life. It turns the movie from a simple pleasurable distraction into a touching and meaningful story.

The same thing happens slowly with Cars. While the story is ostensibly about the main character learning to embrace others and care about more than just winning, really the story is about the experience of driving and how it affects others. Just like Singing in the Rain was about the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, and how that affected the people who were left behind, Cars is about the decline of driving for the sake of driving, how society has changed to focus just on expediency, and in the process left behind an entire way of life. The town of Radiator Springs and its inhabitants represent not just things that have been left behind due to the construction of a highway, but an entire culture that has been left behind. The quaint little town servicing travelers has disappeared from relevance as people travel faster and faster down the highway. And in that way, the town also represents a central theme of American cinema: the continued erosion of man's ability to enjoy life as he ironically tries to find more time to do more with his life. The highway enables people to get where they want to go just a little bit faster, at the cost of being able to enjoy the journey there. Cars elevates itself from the mundane because of its exploration of this cost.

Doing so required Cars to emotionally connect the audience with the characters who live in the town, and this, like they have so done so expertly with their past films, they did with aplomb. All the individual characters have wonderfully shaped personalities, and their affinity both for each other and for the town they live in is well conveyed. This makes their plight all the more poignant. As usual, Pixar does a fantastic job describing these characters and then slowly showing their predicament and tying everything into a nice coherent story. All the piece fit wonderfully together.

On a technical note, there was something truly remarkable about the film as well. I watched it projected digitally with a DLP 2K projector, and for about the middle third of the movie, the part that takes place mostly in Radiator Springs, the computer animation was so good that I thought I was watching miniature cars being manipulated on a miniature set. Now, this might not sound like much of an achievement. After all, I'm sure the people at Pixar would much rather have me believe that the cars and sets are REAL, not miniatures. But realize that miniatures ARE real! You can hold a miniature, touch it with your fingers, pick it up and move it around. For me to imagine that the images on the screen were actually real things and not just fabricated computer pixels is an achievement in and of itself, at least in my eyes. I had never before imagined that what I was watching on the screen was real in any other Pixar movie. I never thought there were real fish, miniature or otherwise, in Finding Nemo. I never thought that the sets in Monsters, Inc were real. This was my main problem with The Incredibles, the animation simply could not make me believe that any of those characters were real, but the movie tried to treat them a little bit too much as if they were real. But in Cars, the lighting effects, the textures, the details, everything was so perfect for that middle third of the movie that I actually believed that those buildings in that little town existed, that the trees were dug into dirt and the little cars were lying on the side of the road. Yes, only as miniatures built to scale and filmed using macro lenses, but nonetheless REAL miniatures. That blew me away.

So overall, while I went into Cars not expecting to like it very much, ultimately it both touched my heart with its depictions of the little town's inhabitants and their plight, and it wow'ed me with its technical achievements.

I'd give it an 8 out of 10.

Review: DaVinci Code

The DaVinci Code has gotten blistered by both critics and regular people alike for being slow-podding and not very "thriller-ish". Most say that the book is better. Not having read the book, I can't say if I agree with the latter sentiment, but I certainly agree with the former. The biggest problem I had with the movie was that it couldn't figure out whether it wanted to be a mystery thriller, or a character-driven drama. It started out very much as a potboiler with murders and riddles and shots of mysterious religious figures. Then towards the end it tried to have us become emotionally involved with the personal and potentially religious development of one of the characters. Overall it just left me confused. The few "personal" developments sprinkled into the first half of the movie felt out of place and distracting, perfunctory if you will, and because of that when the "thriller" aspect of the movie ended about two-thirds of the way through, everything else felt anticlimactic since I had not bought into the "personal" side to the story in the beginning.

What could be the cause of this? The easy finger to point blame at would be the screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman. I'm certainly no fan of his writing. I thought A Beautiful Mind suffered from the same syndrome as this movie, with a beginning "thriller" story giving way halfway through to a rather limp emotional story. Some of his earlier films include the much derided Batman Forever and Batman & Robin movies, as well as the hammy Lost in Space. I thought the writing was one of the weaker parts of I, Robot too. So all in all it would make sense that I didn't like this movie. Then again, in the labyrinthian way that movies are actually made in the Hollywood system, the amount of power that an individual screenwriter holds over the ultimate movie is pretty minimal. Shadow writers are brought in all the time to rewrite scripts behind the scenes, and even when they aren't, directors, producers, and studio execs can all bear down upon the screenwriter and force compromises in the ultimate script that can cripple a movie.

So I think some of the blame has to go to the director as well. I subscribe to the auteur idea of filmmaking, that the movie is ultimately the director's vision and that he/she should have full control over it. Certainly, Ron Howard has a good enough reputation in Hollywood that he could exert quite a bit of control over the final cut of the movie. Of course, if the director gets all the glory when a movie is considered a masterpiece, he/she must also get all the blame if a movie turns out a mess. In this case, the director is ultimately responsible for tying together the entire film to create a coherent story, and this is the biggest problem with the film. If Goldsman's writing was flawed, then Ron Howard should have had it changed. Also, the way the film was edited is ultimately Ron Howard's responsibility, and a better editing job and flashback-visualization concept could probably have sold the emotional aspects of the story better in the first half of the movie, and thereby made the second half of the movie more credible. Let's not forget that A Beautiful Mind, which suffers from these same problems, was also a Ron Howard film.

As for acting, I think Tom Hanks did as good a job as he could with some of the real clunkers that he was forced to say. Audrey Tautou, on the other hand, seemed like a fish out of water for most of the first half of the movie. I think this was mostly due to language issues, as she never seemed comfortable delivering her lines. Her inflections and tone of voice seemed wrong for the dialogue that she was delivering, and she also spoke pretty slowly, which hindered the delivery of her lines. It seemed like as the movie wore on, she got more comfortable, or maybe it was that as the thriller aspects of the movie dissipated and the emotional story came to the forefront, she got a better grasp of her character and her lines. In any case, it was not until the very end of the movie that her natural charm was able to shine through for just a little bit. Was this a problem with her acting capabilities? Is she simply not credible as a heroine in a thriller? Was it simply English language issues? Was it the poor script? Or was it ultimately Ron Howard's fault for not recognizing exactly what the problem was and giving her the direction she needed in order to succeed? Who knows. Sir Ian McKellan certainly had no problems with his role, so maybe the problem lies more with Tautou than anything else. As for the other actors, they were only given cursory backstories in the movie so they had relatively little to work with. For a thriller this was not a problem, but when the movie veered off into its more character-driven storyline this did begin to hinder things. I simply didn't connect with most of the characters.

Finally, all the belly-aching that was made about how this movie criticized Catholicism or even Opus Dei was a little bit overblown. The movie goes quite far out of its way to show that, even if this "myth" were true, it's only a few rogue elements that are involved. Opus Dei is not involved in the killings, but is merely used as a cover by some of these rogue elements. The theories that the studio may have stoked these misbeliefs in an attempt to generate publicity for the movie may have been correct, as I don't see how even Opus Dei, nevermind the Catholic Church, could be viewed in a negative light as a result of this movie.

Ultimately, because I had not read the book, I had an enjoyable time watching the plot, with its varied machinations, unfold. However, I can easily how if someone had already read the book and already knew all the twists and turns, they would be sorely disappointed with the execution of the plot.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 6.