Month: October 2008

Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas), the director’s cut

I’m not sure if anything actually goes wrong with Dark City. There’s the significant music problem (Trevor Jones’s score seems more appropriate for a car commercial; it’s missing any subtext or delicacy), but there’s nothing else wrong. The acting is all fantastic–Richard O’Brien gives the best performance, making his evil alien human–and Alex Proyas composes fantastic shots.

The action-packed ending does seem a little off, both in terms of story and direction, I suppose. Proyas seems to be making a loud action picture instead of the quiet, peculiar one he was making a few minutes before. He’s got to visualize super-telepathy and it comes off poorly. Dark City‘s probably filled with references to other films–the one I noticed during the majority of the film was Metropolis, but the end mimics the Krypton destruction from Superman. The tone really doesn’t fit.

But where I wish Proyas had taken more time was with the characters. The last line implies the whole film’s been about characters, but it wasn’t. One of the major reveals (in this director’s cut, anyway… in the original version, there aren’t any reveals) makes the characters having great importance, overall, problematic if not impossible. And the end sort of ignores that condition, even though the end only exists because of that condition.

It’s very confusing… as is the problem of food in the film. No one seems to eat.

Proyas opens Dark City as a Panavision, vividly lighted film noir (or tries to) but there’s clearly something off. He loves the style though, as his introduction of Jennifer Connelly demonstrates. She’s a lounge singer and he goes through great lengths to bring that scene–an absolutely useless one, narratively–in as well as he can. But its narrative superfluousness is almost immediately apparent (Connelly subsequently has a real scene); tight as he is with his direction–until that last fight scene–Proyas is exceptionally loose with the script. He concentrates on the unimportant. There’s one particular scene–O’Brien and Rufus Sewell–where O’Brien tells Sewell his secret and it’s such a bad, expositional, needless line, I sat bewildered for the next thirty seconds.

The film’s very romantic–Sewell and Connelly, William Hurt’s solitary noir detective–but Proyas’s handling of the material is cynical. He’s not interested in the human component, except in minute doses. Sometimes, like O’Brien’s frequent ones, it works. Most times it simply isn’t enough.

Like I said before, all the acting’s good, with Sewell an excellent leading man, Connelly even better when she’s in the lead (but it doesn’t last long, only until Sewell can assume the protagonist role), and Hurt steady. Hurt’s performance is a fully competent, completely assured turn… but he seems the wrong choice for it. Of course he can do the performance, but it’s William Hurt–he can do a lot more. When it’s him and Connelly for the first third, it’s real good. Kiefer Sutherland’s fine as the mad scientist too. But towards the end he sort of becomes the lead character for a while and that approach might have been a better one for Proyas to take.

I haven’t seen Dark City for eight or nine years–about twenty minutes in, I remembered the original DVD was an early reference disc–and I’m not sure I watched it more than once initially. Its epical plot concerns itself so much with providing an intriguing journey–not to mention the visual sumptuousness–there’s something missing in terms of emotional engagement. The acting makes up for some of that absence, but given how often the script works intentionally and directly against such an engagement… it can only do so much.

Mission Sex Control (2006, Ahn Jin-woo)

Mission Sex Control opens as an almost farcical comedy. The Korean President (circa 1972) meets with his cabinet to discuss family planning and its effect on the GDP. The meeting devolves into a screaming match between two cabinet members, then the opening titles splash across the screen. It all seems very comic, even as the film proper gets going. After that prologue, the leads are immediately established–Kim Jeong-eun as the family planning counselor taking the message to a rural village, Lee Beom-su as the villager who helps her.

Kim and Lee play very well with each other from their first scene, which is important, since she immediately starts relying on him for help. The film’s still very funny as the two eventually convince the villagers to listen. It’s hard to see Lee as anything but a comic actor and the first half of Mission Sex Control does nothing to suggest he’s going to be doing something else. Eventually, however, he does. Some time after the halfway mark, the film takes a drastic, unexpected turn toward the dramatic and personal.

Ahn Jin-woo’s direction–and the film’s full and vivid Panavision frame–really suggests a comedy. With the transition to the tragic, Ahn introduces all the consequences the comedy in the first half disguised. It’s not a deceptive move; Kim and the viewer experiencing these repercussions in unison. There’s a good surprise at the end, maybe one I should have been expecting, but Ahn does a great job presenting it. He keeps the comedic sensibilities well into the dramatic portion of the film, only supplanting it in the very end for some key scenes. It’s in these scenes too where the characters, who have been mild caricatures, fully form.

The film’s got a lot of complexities. Lee’s character is probably the fullest, even though Kim is the protagonist. But Kim’s there to accompany the viewer on the journey (the modern viewer, the film’s only a couple years old). Kim’s got a character, but she’s also got a real narrative purpose. Ahn has a bit of trouble establishing her, using a lot of subtle moves to get it done in the end. They’re really nice moves too and he applies similar ones to other characters as well. The film has a large cast of characters and Ahn can’t give all of them the treatment, but he gives it to enough the film reveals itself to be a lot bigger than it seems throughout.

Both the film’s length–a lot happens as the plot develops–and the composition complement that unperceived depth. Something about the widescreen allows for there to be more room. It’s a strange, but natural relationship and the film might be the finest example of the genre fluidity of Korean cinema.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Ahn Jin-woo; director of photography, Kim Yun-su; edited by Park Gok-ji; music by Park Ho-jun; production designer, Chen Ihn-han; produced by Tony M. Kim; released by Lotte Entertainment.

Starring Lee Beom-su (Suk-gu), Kim Jeong-eun (Miss Park), Byeon Hie-bong (Village Chief Kang), Jeon Mi-seon (Soo-ni), Ahn Nae-sang (Chang-su) and Woo Hyeon (Chang-hyuk).

RELATED

Ground Zero (1987, Michael Pattinson and Bruce Myles)

Ground Zero opens with a title card attesting to the film’s historical relevance. The intended effect is apparently to convince the viewer of the film’s authenticity and plausibility. So, for a film featuring a cameraman who can outfight spies, Ground Zero is completely plausible until the helicopter shows up. Not the first helicopter, but the second one… in a scene straight out of Capricorn One.

The film’s first act gradually–almost in a Hitchcockian vein–introduces the viewer to the cameraman and his present situation. We find out a lot about him through nice disguised exposition (messages left on the answering machine) and because Colin Friels gives such a good leading man performance, even some of the cute stuff is acceptable. It’s probably fifteen or sixteen minutes before the first completely implausible thing happens and, when it does, it’s so well-handled, it didn’t raise my eyebrows until I got to thinking about it.

There’s a lot more preposterous scenes, but the opening text, the first act and Friels make it all seem reasonable. He really can figure it out, he really can sneak into a secure area. Maybe, as an American viewer, I just assume the Australian government doesn’t have much in the way of security measures.

Regardless, until the final third of the film, it’s going rather well.

Besides Friels, there’s Jack Thompson, who gives a nice, conflicted performance. When Donald Pleasence shows up, he’s got some nice scenes too… even if they do culminate in him shooting at a helicopter with a rifle.

The end works on some levels and fails on others. The one it works on is the non-fantastic level Ground Zero doesn’t seem to be going for–the emphasis on Friels and his son, which occasionally feels like hyperbole, comes through at the end rather effectively. So much so, it becomes one of the film’s handful of mini-cliffhangers. A number of threads go unresolved for no sensical reason, other than any explanation would be impossible in the narrative. There’s not really enough mysteriousness to them for me, but I can understand it. In a government conspiracy film–a straightforward one aiming for plausibility–the enigma level has to be kept low.

Where Ground Zero is most effective is the direction. Pattinson and Myles have solid composition throughout, really fetishizing the filmmaking gear. There’s a shot at the beginning with a Panavision camera–the film’s shot in Panavision–and it’s a clear reference. The wide frame works beautifully for the scenes on the outback, but most interesting is not the non-landscape shots. Instead, it’s the ones where Friels is alone. Friels spends a lot of the movie investigating and uncovering–Ground Zero‘s a nice detective movie in its way–and so he’s got the frame to himself a lot of the time. Myles and Pattinson give Friels a fine space to inhabit and he does.

Ground Zero‘s more a thriller than an action movie, but it’s failings are more common to the action movie. But the guy discovering something’s wrong and trying to uncover it is a thriller standard. Maybe that incongruity is the reason it doesn’t work as well as it should.

But there’s also that helicopter. There’s not much to be done with a helicopter.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Pattinson and Bruce Myles; written by Mac Gudgeon and Jan Sardi; director of photography, Steve Dobson; edited by David Pulbrook; music by Tom Bahler; production designer, Brian Thomson; produced by Pattinson; released by Avenue Pictures.

Starring Colin Friels (Harvey Denton), Jack Thompson (Trebilcock), Donald Pleasence (Prosper Gaffney), Natalie Bate (Pat Denton), Burnham Burnham (Charlie), Simon Chilvers (Commission president), Neil Fitzpatrick (Hooking) and Bob Maza (Walemari).

RELATED

My Sassy Girl (2008, Yann Samuell)

There is a star in My Sassy Girl–and it’s not Jesse Bradford, who handles the leading romantic comedy man role effortless–it’s cinematographer Eric Schmidt, who makes New York City vibrant. There’s a lot of good in Yann Samuell’s direction (his composition is fantastic, his fast-fowarded transitions are, no shock, atrocious), but Schmidt’s cinematography brings that composition to life. There’s a soft texture to it, almost artificial, as though the filmmakers shot in Canada and put in digital backdrops (they didn’t). Schmidt’s idealized New York never looks like Hollywood New York, which is nice. Instead, it kind of looks like Ed Burns’s New York, if Burns were doing a mainstream (though not exactly, more on it later) romantic comedy. Had Burns done this romantic comedy… even made notes on a bar napkin… I wouldn’t be leading this post raving about the cinematographer.

There are two damning defects to My Sassy Girl–and not even the stupid fast-forwarded transitions, which I too would guess as one of them. In order of importance, they’re Elisha Cuthbert and the production. Cuthbert’s got a couple problems. First, she’s awful. Second, My Sassy Girl is a remake of a Korean film–and it follows enough of that film’s story to allow for comparisons to the original actress. They aren’t just unfavorable to Cuthbert, they’re withering. Cuthbert doesn’t have a single good scene in the film–there’s one moment at the end when I thought she was going to have one, but then she pulls through and doesn’t.

Some of the problem with Cuthbert–I mean, she can’t really be unappealing all the time, right, someone cast her in the film–is the production. My Sassy Girl, besides the dumb fast-forwarding transitions, maintains a very strange tone for an attempt at a Hollywood romantic comedy. Samuell’s French and apparently the producers let him do some stuff and it really doesn’t work. But those flourishes are at the beginning and are just bad exposition. The tone for the film’s big romantic comedy ending is a clingy melancholic one, almost like a tearjerker. What works in a Korean film–which had a lot of playfulness this remake flushes–does not work in an American one, not because of culture or filmmaking skill, but because this film runs ninety minutes, the original runs two hours and twenty minutes. What’s getting cut is important stuff….

A lot of the cut material would have been for Bradford, who barely has a character. He and his movie friend–because it’s unclear how they’d ever become friends–camp out on a rooftop underneath the Empire State Building. The story of how these two guys decide to camp out on a rooftop underneath the Empire State Building… a lot more interesting than anything going on in the film. Too bad it happens off screen.

Bradford manages the narration as well as can be expected, but it’s bad. At times, he almost looks embarrassed and he should be. Bradford’s performance–as well as Chris Sarandon, in a small role–make the film’s failure for legitimacy even more glaring. It’s clear the filmmakers were going for something different than the traditional romantic comedy, something staying in the spirit of the original, but it’s incompetently handled. The title makes no sense in the remake’s context (it’s a story point in the original). Such a big oversight is something I’d think screenwriter Victor Levin would notice and remedy, but he doesn’t.

It’s not a disappointment at all (in fact, once Schmidt starts shooting those New York exteriors, it’s frequently lovely… visually anyway), just because it opens so poorly and has to get better. And Cuthbert’s bad from the start, so there’s no expectation she’ll get any better. At least it’s something standard handled with a more artful touch.

And Bradford does make a lot of it worthwhile.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Yann Samuell; screenplay by Victor Levin, based on the film by Kwak Jae-Young and the novel by Kim Ho-sik; director of photography, Eric Schmidt; edited by Anita Brandt-Burgoyne; music by David Kitay; production designer, Kalina Ivanov; produced by Paul Brooks, Mark Morgan, Guy Oseary and Jay Polstein; released by Gold Circle Films.

Starring Jesse Bradford (Charlie Bellow), Elisha Cuthbert (Jordan Roark), Austin Basis (Leo), Chris Sarandon (Dr. Roark), Jay Patterson (Roger Bellow), Tom Aldredge (Old Man), Louis Mustillo (Doorman), Brian Reddy (Mr. Phipps) and Joanna Gleason (Aunt Sally).

RELATED

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984, Hugh Hudson), the extended version

Greystoke ought to work. From the opening, it really seems like it might. It survives a massive narrative hiccup–switching perspective from young Tarzan to explorer Ian Holm. It establishes people in ape costumes as believable, sympathetic, feeling characters. It’s got beautiful cinematography, Hugh Hudson’s a fine director, and John Scott’s got one great score for the film. But it fails in the end. It doesn’t sputter out–the second half of the film, the return to civilization, is lengthy and problematic, but it isn’t failing–the film fails in the third act. It becomes contrived and trite, something the entire civilization half always teeters on anyway.

The script’s constantly reminding the viewer of previous scenes (death is a big thing, all the major death scenes are the same) and it’s unclear why the screenwriters went the hackneyed route. There’s a lot of aversion in Greystoke–the film avoids addressing both Christopher Lambert’s loincloth and lack of facial hair–but the film’s straight-forward attempt at telling its story, with the beautifully produced ape scenes, is creative. The problem seems to be a storytelling one (there are some production problems I’ll get to in a minute) and it has to do with perspective. The film’s not comfortable making grown Tarzan (Lambert) the protagonist. He’s always the subject. When Tarzan’s a kid, he can be the dialogue-free protagonist… but as an adult capable of speech, the film abandons him. Instead, it’s all about Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm and John Wells observing him.

The Ralph Richardson scenes are fine. He and Lambert have a definite chemistry, and so do Lambert and Holm. The Holm scenes aren’t as good, because the film avoids the most interesting part–how he and Lambert get from Africa to England–but whatever. As soon as they leave the jungle, Greystoke‘s on the path toward being a BBC winter fiasco. The constant voiceovers (both Lambert and Richardson think of previous conversations in the film, to show the viewer what they’re thinking) don’t help at all.

The film doesn’t even stay with Lambert at the end, instead going with Andie MacDowell. MacDowell’s performance is poor, even with the obvious hurdle–the poorly synced dub by Glenn Close–because it’s clear MacDowell isn’t taking the film’s events seriously. Occasionally, when she’s silent and looking around, she’s fine. But mostly she’s just bad.

Lambert is good. He isn’t silly in the jungle scenes and he’s genuinely effecting in the civilization half. Some of it comes from his lack of affected accent–and lack of dialogue–but I was pleasantly surprised with his performance. It’s too bad he doesn’t get to be the main character. Again, whatever.

The film is long, though the jungle scenes are really well paced, and rather jejune. Even with Richardson’s good performance, it only goes so far. If the script is repetitive, Hudson is obvious and the combination leads to a rather unrewarding experience.

Given the film has quite a few excellent scenes, it’s a strange it isn’t a cohesive experience. Hudson doesn’t bring much unified vision to it though and that lack might be the missing glue. The film’s last scene looks entirely different from any of the previous scenes, which makes the conclusion disconnect even more.

But with John Alcott’s photography, John Scott’s score, the wonderful Rick Baker ape make-up… it should have worked.

Mutant Chronicles (2008, Simon Hunter)

Mutant Chronicles should have been better. I’m not sure it should have been good, but it should have been better. The film’s all digital, which allows for some post-production touches. Ron Perlman’s red robe, for example, appears to be done in post. I think the movie uses miniatures in combination with practical (though not many) and CG. It works to some degree… though I wonder if it would have looked better in black and white.

The reason for that musing isn’t just Thomas Jane’s presence, but also the first act’s setup of the film as a World War I picture. The opening, with trench warfare, owes more to that genre than anything else. As the story picks up–after a very British end-of-the-world section (though most of the dialogue is from John Malkovich, who manages to maintain some credibility even here, and Perlman, who affects a semi-Irish accent to decent effect)–it abandons that genre, going into a strange mix of 28 Days Later (the monsters in this movies are a mix of that film’s zombies and the Borg from “Star Trek”), the second Planet of the Apes movie and… I don’t know… something else. Maybe Hellboy, just for the giant machines.

Lots of the film is interesting to look at, even if the effects are more workman-like than superior, because of the steampunk designs. The coal-powered airships are pretty darn cool. And the special effects aren’t bad. The monsters in this one look a lot better than the video game ones in I Am Legend. The end of this movie does feature a challenge out of a video game for its characters though (I couldn’t help but think of Galaxy Quest).

I find myself referencing a lot of other films in this post simply because Mutant Chronicles is so derivative. There are a couple moments of storytelling ingenuity. Well, maybe one. The other really good moment is just because of the filmmaking. But the one well-conceived scene–no one can hear anyone, in a crisis situation, because it’s so noisy–works really well, establishing Mutant Chronicles–along with the filmmaking creativity–as a film not to dismiss outright.

The acting from Perlman, Jane (who could do better, but is solid) and Sean Pertwee is good. Benno Fürmann seems very underused. Steve Toussaint and Luis Echegaray are both all right. Devon Aoki and Tom Wu are atrocious. They have lots of lines together and trying to figure out who is worse does provide some amusement through a bad CG period.

The problem with the movie is the approach. The filmmakers go with an expository narration from Perlman, who can deliver narration just fine, but it’s stupid. It treats the viewer like an idiot… the details of the setting and the political yada yada behind it are sci-fi genre nonsense. The story’s a film standard (group of assorted people go on a suicide mission) and doesn’t require a lot of malarky attached to it. Had director Hunter–who can definitely mix film tools to decent effect, even if his direction of actors is poor and his composition is mediocre–kept with that war tone of the first act… it would have been something interesting.

Instead, Mutant Chronicles plays like something one would watch in a motel in the middle of the night, ignoring it the first time through the channels as a “Sci-Fi Original Movie” only to stop on the second time through because there’s something compelling about it….

Compelling enough for insomnia at the La Quinta anyway.

Birds of America (2008, Craig Lucas)

The sub-ninety minute indie film is practically becoming a genre (I’m assuming these short lengths have a lot to do with sales to commercial cable–ninety minutes fits perfectly into a two hour slot on TNT). Birds of America is both a part of this burgeoning genre and the post-Little Miss Sunshine indie dysfunctional family comedy genre. But it isn’t actually funny, which sets it apart. It starts out like it’s going to be funny and the abbreviated opening is one of the big problems.

Matthew Perry is the lead, even narrating the opening (which makes the film sound like a sequel to a sitcom he never made but could have–a teenager has to take care of his eccentric siblings following their parents’ deaths), but he’s absolutely ineffectual for the first fifteen minutes. In a film running, not including the end credits, eighty minutes, fifteen makes a big difference. He’s fine, but he’s not doing anything special. Worse, the supporting cast is more centrally featured in the opening and there isn’t a strong performance among them. Hilary Swank’s got a strange small role as an annoying neighbor, but Swank’s not funny enough with it (Parker Posey would have been much better). She’s nowhere near as bad as the guy playing her husband, Gary Wilmes. Wilmes seems like an infomercial presenter (for what, I can’t imagine), not someone who ought to be acting in a scene with Matthew Perry, even a disinterested Matthew Perry.

As Perry’s wife, Lauren Graham’s annoying. The characters are all poorly defined in the opening and, while Perry gets to come around into a fully drawn person, Graham’s big change is too abrupt. She does better in the end than she does in the beginning, but Elyse Friedman’s script is particularly unkind to her.

When Ben Foster and Ginnifer Goodwin show up as Perry’s siblings and Birds of America forms its trinity, it finally works. It’s not revolutionary–even though Foster and Goodwin have interesting story arcs (Goodwin in particular), Perry’s tenure-obsessed teacher story is lame–but it’s solid. The trio works great together. Foster’s amazing, Goodwin’s excellent and Perry’s subtle but assured transition to leading man makes the opening weakness hard to remember.

Birds of America takes a place in that missing American genre–the family drama. If it weren’t for the recognizable from television faces–not including Foster, who’s got to be the only character actor of his generation–Birds would be almost entirely unassuming. It presents its story straightforwardly and lets it play out for the viewer. Some things work, some things don’t. More work than not. The film’s best when it’s taking place over one night, which cuts the short running time a little slack. But the direction really doesn’t hurt.

Craig Lucas shoots Super 35, but his widescreen composition is one of the best I’ve seen for that medium (maybe even since Mann and Manhunter). Lucas is in love with the frame and since most of Birds takes place indoors–being that family drama–he composes some fantastic shots.

Birds of America isn’t any kind of singular film event, but it’s a solid picture in an era without many solid pictures.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Craig Lucas; written by Elyse Friedman; director of photography, Yaron Orbach; edited by Eric Kissack; music by Ahrin Mishan; production designer, John Nyomarkay; produced by Jana Edelbaum, Galt Niederhoffer, Celine Rattray and Daniela Lundberg Taplin; released by First Look Studios.

Starring Matthew Perry (Morrie), Ginnifer Goodwin (Ida), Ben Foster (Jay), Lauren Graham (Betty Tanager), Gary Wilmes (Paul), Daniel Eric Gold (Gary), Zoë Kravitz (Gillian) and Hilary Swank (Laura).

RELATED

Purple Rain (1984, Albert Magnoli)

I’m glad I’m not the only one who observed the pervasive misogyny in Purple Rain. Apparently, it’s a well-known feature of the movie. It’s constant from the start and frequently surprising in its intensity. At some point, that frequency wears down any reaction–the only intensifies over the running time. By the end, it’s worn the viewer down so much, there’s a detachment. The last big moments might be the worst in the movie, but I really wasn’t paying attention. The movie deserves a sociological monograph on its misogyny (taking the movie’s popularity–with young women–into account).

As a movie, however, Purple Rain barely qualifies as a narrative. It’s beyond a vanity piece–it’s telling the only time Prince’s performance isn’t terrible is when he’s on stage. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it, just because I had MTV (though it probably would have been on VH1 by the time we had cable). As a bunch of music videos strung together, it’s mildly entertaining. The videos are okay. At least Prince isn’t delivering dialogue. The stage performances are all very flashy, lots of light work. They’re fine too. What’s difficult is ascertaining what Prince’s performance is supposed to mean to the story. There’s one sequence where the song he’s performing is upsetting physically abused girlfriend Apollonia (who’s terrible, but in this movie, there isn’t a single good performance and the collective singling out of her terrible acting is unfair). I couldn’t figure out why it was upsetting her. I was still trying to figure out why she was still his girlfriend after he hit her. I’m still unclear if Prince’s hitting her is supposed to be bad. There’s a big thing about his father (Clarence Williams III is the only good actor in the movie, even if his performance isn’t good) hitting the mother. Except the movie ends with Prince lionizing the father….

The movie’s real long–almost two hours–and when I was reflecting on how movies used to run around two hours and I never thought of it as long in the 1980s, it occurred to me it does move pretty well. It’s not involving–as there’s no narrative–and I spent a lot of the running time bewildered. It’s real bad and almost completely incompetent–I can’t believe it was such a big hit.

The supporting cast, though support suggests some content, is terrible as well. Maybe because most of them are Prince’s band members and not actors. I would have thought making music videos would lead to some bad performances, but these don’t even reach this level. Morris Day’s occasionally funny, but I don’t think it’s on purpose. There’s a lengthy scene with him doing a modified “Who’s On First?” where he and the other guy can’t stop laughing through the take.

It’s too bad it isn’t funny.

King Kong (2005, Peter Jackson)

I’ll be honest–I didn’t make it very far, considering its length, into King Kong. I sat through a lot. I sat through the opening Great Depression montage, which was shockingly bad. The people who assailed Michael Bay for his glitzy Pearl Harbor gave Jackson a free pass for Kong? It’s obscene. I sat through the terrible CG. “Grand Theft Auto IV” looks better. Jackson draws attention to Kong‘s unbelievable backdrops in a way I can’t believe any modern filmmaker would. CG isn’t a new tool anymore and Jackson’s bad, 1990s video game CG is terribly misused. It’s incompetent.

I sat though the film opening with Naomi Watts, who’s weak. The tone for the film during her scenes seems to have been lifted from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a goofy cartoon rendition of the 1930s. I sat through Jack Black. His first scene, combined with James Newton Howard’s pervasive, intrusive score and Jackson and company’s script, mocks the original film. It’s stunning how it degrades and dismisses the original–but it later gets much, much worse.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong is pure, big Hollywood camp. There’s nothing else to call it.

I also sat through some of the worst filmmaking I’ve ever seen in a film not ridiculed by critics and audiences alike. The scene where Watts walks up the plank… she hesitates–it’s such a big momentous, life-changing event (something the viewer might know from that lame original Jackson so enjoys mocking). Then it gets worse. Jackson goes to close-up on her feet making the step.

But that one isn’t even the worst I saw. The slow motion close-up of Adrien Brody typing out Skull Island–ominously, of course–with each key getting a zoom, is even worse. Jackson doesn’t have any respect for his own script, which is kind of interesting, I suppose, but not particularly.

Watts and Brody, from what I saw, have absolutely no chemistry together. The fault lies with both of them. She isn’t very good and he looks incredibly embarrassed.

Black’s worse than I thought he’d be. He mugs constantly.

Both Evan Parke and Thomas Kretschmann seem to be good. Maybe their performances crap out after I stopped watching.

Oh, I never did get around to why I stopped watching.

There’s some foreshadowing to the event–the ship, the Venture, is out of Surabaya. I’m nearly positive Surabaya is never mentioned in the 1933 original. The 1976 remake–ridiculed by critics as campy and disrespectful of the original–opens in Surabaya. Whatever, I figured it was a coincidence.

Until Jackson rips off a monologue from the 1976 version. I didn’t let it finish. I stopped the film.

King Kong isn’t just worse than I expected, it’s worse than I could have imagined. Why Jackson chose to remake a film he doesn’t–almost forty minutes in to his remake–appear to have any regard for (save the opening title design), is inexplicable.

His direction isn’t bad. There’s some enthusiasm (but not much) and I’m sure he thinks his CG looks good.

The writing is awful, unbearable as it turns out.

I really did expect to sit through this one when I started it (it’s so bad, I’ve forgotten the last film I turned off). Then, fifteen minutes into it, I thought I’d at least make it until the big CG ape showed up. But there’s no point. It’s complete crap and a spit in the eye of the original. Jackson doesn’t even have a narrative–much less an artistic approach–his Kong exists to laugh at the original.

I know Jackson wanted Fay Wray to deliver the “it was beauty killed the beast” line at the end (she passed away before filming started, I believe). Would she have done it after Jackson spent three hours sneering her version?

Religulous (2008, Larry Charles)

As we waited for Religulous to start–my wife had confiscated my iPod touch for her own purposes–I read an article in The Onion about the coming election. The sixty million people voting for one candidate will not talk to any of the sixty million people who are voting for the other candidate. That–along with a couple George Carlin jokes I’ll save for later–sums up the Religulous experience. It’s very funny, but it’s preaching to the choir. The whole point Maher eventually gets to is to rile up his choir so they’re actually audible (this choir being the people who don’t think thermonuclear war to bring about armageddon is a good idea–in other words, people who aren’t Kirk Cameron fans).

But Religulous starts out with much loftier ambitions. The film starts as Maher somewhat listless floundering through his own experiences–as a half Jew, half Catholic–with religion. He brings his mother and sister out (Maher obviously inherited a lot from his mother) and talks to them about his upbringing. It’s all very searching–especially when Maher ends up in a “truckers’ chapel” asking questions about Jesus. The truckers are respectful of Maher, even though he is making them appear simple. After this sequence is done, he even comments on how the religion makes the nicest people seemingly babble incoherently (I’m paraphrasing).

The tone quickly changes though, while Maher interviewing some more Christian figures–subtitles appear on screen to point out their mistakes–including a U.S. senator (a Democrat, presumably because no Republicans would talk to him), an amusement park Jesus and an “ex-gay” pastor. It’s all very funny, but it’s not really telling anyone anything they don’t know. Maher’s personal search for answers has ended. Now it’s just about silly religious figures. Maher never handles the subject with the tenderness Aaron Sorkin does in “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” for instance.

There’s great stuff–I never knew Jesus was a remake of the Egyptian God Horus or the Mormon thing about God living on some planet somewhere (very “Star Trek”). There’s some funny Scientology stuff, but at the halfway point, Maher turns his focus entirely on the Middle East. He talks to an anti-Zionist Jew, a bunch of Muslims and concludes the world’s going to end if the atheists, agnostics, and non-nutso faithful don’t start standing up for sanity.

George Carlin already “told” Religulous in a couple jokes. First, he was Catholic until he “reached the age of reason.” And second, “Certain groups of people – Muslim fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, and just plain guys from Montana – are going to continue to make life… very interesting for a long, long time.” Maher’s just packaging those ideas in a feature-length effort. I’m wary to even call it a documentary, since it’s certainly propaganda. He has his favorites (the Catholics come off very well and Zionist Jews are not interviewed). He ends the film with fear-mongering. There’s a point to the film and it isn’t discovery, it’s revelation. Except Maher’s just revealing fundamentalists are nutty–the guy from the Human Genome Project comes off about as well as Charlton Heston did in Bowling for Columbine–and his audience already knows they’re nutty. It’s a pageant.

The most interesting thing about Religulous isn’t even a part of the film–the process. It’s barely addressed how Maher’s making this documentary, but given how the conclusion he reaches seems to be a result of the process… it would have been insightful.