Category: Directors Wa

The Matrix Revolutions (2003, The Wachowskis)

I think The Matrix! Part Trois has to be better than the second one, if only because it’s not as terribly boring in its action sequences. The second one had that highway battle and it was bad and the Keanu Reeves versus a million Hugo Weavings and it was bad. Here, Keanu Reeves fights one Hugo Weaving (in an atrocious performance, it’s a shame how the sequels degraded the fine work he did in the first film) in front of a bunch of non-participating Hugo Weavings. It’s better. And it’s a huge, CG-aided flying fight scene–it’s the Superman versus Zod scene no one ever got to see.

Reeves is okay. It’s amazing how little his eyes effect his emoting when he acts. Jada Pinkett Smith is awful and as much as I appreciate the Wachowskis’ minorities inheriting the earth thing (none of the surviving principles are white), I’m pretty sure the character they have her play is just the equivalent of Will Smith’s heroic, but definitely not revolutionary or intimidating, black guy for white audiences.

Harry Lennix is bad in this one. Maybe he was bad in the second one too. I can’t remember. He’s usually good. But he’s an idiot in this one, even though he’s supposed to be smart.

I think the script probably read well. As a movie, it’s a bit of a disaster; I’ll bet the script read well.

Except for the Wizard of Oz cameo at the end, it wasn’t completely awful.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003, The Wachowskis)

The Wachowskis get to do whatever they want with The Matrix Reloaded so they do this bombastic, pseudo-intellectual sequel and they’re totally bored with it. It’s very obviously not what they want to be doing with their time.

They got about as much mileage out of the Matrix as they could in the first one and putting a dream sequence into the second one doesn’t do them any favors.

This film has Harold Perrineau giving a bad performance. I didn’t even know it was possible for him to give a bad performance. He’s just terrible–he’s this useless, throwaway character.

Speaking of bad performances–Jada Pinkett Smith. I’ve seen her in something else and I was waiting for she to give one of the worst performances in film history and she certainly delivers.

The fight scenes are the boring and cartoonish. They’re not exciting. They look like a video game.

The film almost turns around at the end when it mocks the audience–the entire movie is invalidated in the last act, in a self-congratulatory way–not a fun way, but a wink wink. If the viewer is paying attention, he or she just realized the movie was a waste of time and money. But the cliffhanger ruins it. It’s cheap instead of cruel. Cruel is interesting. Cheap is predictable.

At least George Lucas is making a fortune off the toys. He cares about something. The Wachowskis don’t have a motive, artistic or commercial, for making this mess.

The Matrix (1999, The Wachowskis)

I have this vivid memory of seeing The Matrix in the theater. When the agents, dressed in their black suits, got out of the car, everyone groaned–they thought it was a Men in Black reference. Of course, the thing about The Matrix is it fakes being wholly original.

One of the nice things about being technically dynamic and full of great special effects is not having to worry about the actors much. Keanu Reeves is fine. Laurence Fishburne is pretty good. Carrie-Anne Moss’s only good scene is the one romantic one.

Hugo Weaving is great.

Joe Pantoliano is okay. Gloria Foster’s one scene is good. Marcus Chung, the biggest supporting cast member, is annoying and has some rather bad readings.

The Wachowskis composition is startling–it’s an exploration of what Panavision can do, in a way no one’s really done since Spielberg in the seventies.

Don Davis’s music is great.

I always notice it and don’t want to forget, especially now. The Matrix is unique in being a mainstream American movie where the leaders are black–Fishburne, Foster; looking at how Iron Man or Batman use their black characters, things have clearly gone downhill. Now, we have tokenism for the twenty-first century.

I haven’t seen the film in about nine years. It’s better than I remember it. Not as startling as the first viewing, but solid. The lack of plot originality isn’t an issue–it’s so well-made, not just technically, but as a communal filmgoing experience.

Stigmata (1999, Rupert Wainwright)

From the director of MC Hammer’s greatest hits. Seriously.

I wasn’t even going to open mocking Rupert Wainwright, but then I saw his filmography. Instead, I was going to open wondering how, with two people credited with the score (Billy Corgan and Elia Cmiral), it could be so terrible. Not really, I knew when the titles rolled the Smashing Pumpkins guy wasn’t going to turn in a good score. It’s actually okay in a few parts, for about twenty seconds, but I assume it was the other guy, Cmiral.

One of the problems with Stigmata is knowing what to mock… first. There are easy targets–the script, which features dialogue exchanges plagiarized from the worst episodes of “One Life to Live,” the acting, where Nia Long and Jonathan Pryce go mano-a-mano for worst supporting actor, or the direction, Wainwright’s extreme close-ups and his three second shots.

I suppose I could start with Patricia Arquette. It isn’t her worst performance–but it’s one where I forgot she’s actually good. I mean, she did Bringing Out the Dead the same year. Maybe she just needs a good director. Or a good script. She’s only atrocious during some of the lamer dialogue exchanges with Gabriel Byrne and, well, all of her scenes with Long. But those scenes are so poorly written, no one could have pulled through on them.

As for Byrne, he maintains. It’s kind of amazing, given the circumstances, but Byrne’s scenes emphasize the movie’s two–relative–strongpoints. First, the conspiratorial Catholic Church (headed by the evil Pryce, who apparently doesn’t understand he’s incapable of chewing scenery) out to silence to truth–does the Catholic Church ever do anything else? I feel like I need to watch Heaven Help Us or something. Second, the quasi-romance between Byrne and Arquette is okay. Even though Byrne being attracted to goof-ball club junkie Arquette as about as believable as her playing a twenty-three year-old, there are a couple decent scenes involving it. It doesn’t involve the movie’s silliest elements, so Byrne handles it well enough for both of them.

I never did get around to discussing Nia Long. It’s an incredible performance. She’s absolutely incapable of making believe–I just realized she’s the only black person in the entire movie… in Pittsburgh… anyway–she’s playing Arquette’s best friend. That description sums up her entire character. At least she disappears from the plot once Byrne comes in (which doesn’t make any sense, Arquette’s best friend would just forget about her… but maybe it was magic).

There’s also an incredibly annoying soundtrack. I forgot about movies–even crappy low-budget MGM tripe from the late 1990s–tried to make money selling soundtracks. I guess they still do, but I see enough of those finely cross-promoted motion pictures. The use of the soundtrack is terrible. The songs are crap–MC Hammer would have been a better choice.

The real problem with Stigmata is the end. There’s no resolution to the story but worse, the whole thing is illogical. It requires extreme maliciousness from someone who doesn’t give any indication of being a bad person. It’s like a Care Bear suffocating a puppy. It’s ludicrous.

Oh, I suppose Rade Serbedzija was fine.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Rupert Wainwright; written by Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage, based on a story by Lazarus; director of photography, Jeffrey L. Kimball; edited by Michael R. Miller and Michael J. Duthie; music by Billy Corgan and Elia Cmiral; production designer, Waldemar Kalinowski; produced by Frank Mancuso Jr.; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Patricia Arquette (Frankie Paige), Gabriel Byrne (Father Kiernan), Jonathan Pryce (Cardinal Houseman), Nia Long (Donna Chadway), Enrico Colantoni (Father Dario), Dick Latessa (Father Delmonico), Thomas Kopache (Father Durning), Ann Cusack (Dr. Reston), Portia de Rossi (Jennifer Kelliho), Patrick Muldoon (Steven) and Rade Serbedzija (Marion Petrocelli).

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The Wolf Man (1941, George Waggner)

The Wolf Man‘s most lasting influence–beyond the advantages of using Larry Talbot as a synonym (Pynchon did it in Vineland) and the endlessly suffering protagonist–has to be the music. I noticed parts both John Williams (for The Empire Strikes Back) and Danny Elfman (for Batman Returns) lifted. The music is an essential part of the film, as many of Lon Chaney Jr.’s scenes are almost silent film style solo ones, where Chaney visualizes his internal turmoil.

Director Waggner’s style works for the film and against. There’s little attempt to create any sense of the uncanny. Between the booming music and Waggner’s fast-paced chase scenes, the film rushes toward its conclusion. All subtlety is lost in the last act, which is unfortunate, since the film started with so much.

Behind the film’s big story and special effects is the quiet one between Chaney–as returning, long absent son–and Claude Rains–top-billed as the father (and seventeen years older than Chaney). Rains has some lengthy monologues, which he’s good at delivering, and some other scenes involving Chaney, but at the end, when the two of them finally have a talk, The Wolf Man reveals itself. Rains then gets another nice scene on the same subject, only without Chaney. Had the film followed Rains, through his conflict over his son returning to his concern for the son’s sanity, to the fear the son might be right, The Wolf Man would have been high psychological drama.

Similarly, had it followed just Chaney, it would have been a stranger entering stranger and stranger lands.

As a mix of the two, it’s awkward. The big script holes don’t help either. There’s no consistency on how to prevent werewolf transformations or how often they occur. The film’s in a hurry to get done and it plays way too loose with the time it covers.

The other primary aspect of the film–the romance between Chaney and Evelyn Ankers–actually gets enough attention. Though Chaney and Ankers infamously did not get along, they appear to have lots of chemistry in the film, to the point Ankers’s absolute devotion (in the third act, after being off-screen for a while) makes perfect sense. Chaney’s transition through the film from utterly assured to abjectly despondent is one of the more fluid character progressions I can remember. Ankers helps out quite a bit.

Curt Siodmak’s script is best during those scenes with Ankers or Rains. The overuse of the gypsies is questionable as is the wasted supporting cast. The film’s filled with characters–Universal apparently needed roles for Ralph Bellamy, Warren William and Patric Knowles–and it doesn’t have room for them. While Bellamy’s got a great, unintentionally absurd line, the film never–after mentioning it–discusses he and Chaney being childhood friends. William’s a superfluous doctor and Knowles should form a third side in a love triangle (for Ankers’s affection) but strangely does not.

There are a lot of ideas in The Wolf Man, but few of them are explored. Even the ending is strangely undercooked. The film stops rather than ends, but as it’s more in the hands of non-characters Bellamy and William, there’s really nothing else it can do.

Waggner’s got a gimmick he uses–blocking some of the frame with a lamp base or a tree–and, though it gets obvious, he uses it to great effect occasionally. The sight of Rains striking the unknown, even though the music is too bombastic, is haunting.

I was going to end there, but realized I haven’t really lauded Chaney enough. From his first moment on film, there’s nothing he can’t do here–and the script asks for a lot. He’s got to have all that turmoil in the middle and the end, but the beginning requires him to be completely different. Chaney does it all–and those silent-but-for-music scenes, as he discovers his feet getting furry or the wolf tracks in his bedroom, are amazing. He’s under-appreciated.

The King and Four Queens (1956, Raoul Walsh)

Clark Gable is an exceptional movie star. I’m not sure how good of an actor he is–his performance in The King and Four Queens is not, for instance, nuanced and textured, but he carries it from the first minute. Movie stars today–the ones who can act–rarely carry their “fluff” roles (I’m thinking of Nicolas Cage in particular). Gable does such a good job carrying the film, entertaining the audience, it’s very easy to overlook all the problems with King and Four Queens.

He’s not alone… both Eleanor Parker and Jo Van Fleet are great too. Van Fleet is given a fuller character to work with but Parker and Gable’s scenes are nice too. Parker holds up against him in these scenes, which are quite good. The film’s pacing is completely off–it’s a small story (and a short film, eighty-two minutes)–mostly because the other three actresses are light. None of them, except maybe Jean Willes, are bad, they just don’t hold up against Gable and Van Fleet. Even so, some of those scenes are very entertaining. On the scene-level, The King and Four Queens has a great script… it’s just in the whole package, there are significant pacing problems.

I know a little about the making of the film–there were significant cut scenes and it’s the only production from Gable’s company, Gabco. Even with the unsatisfying conclusion, it’s an enjoyable experience. I haven’t seen a post-war Gable film since the last time I saw this one (maybe six years ago) and it’s incredible how well he carries the film. The title–probably giving away his role as producer–refers to MGM’s title for Gable in the 1930s, “The King of Hollywood.”

The film comes on TCM every once in a while in a watchable, but visibly unrestored print. This print’s widescreen, however, and I can’t imagine seeing it pan and scan (though I once did). Raoul Walsh likes to move his camera and hold his shots. He’s another of the film’s pleasant surprises.

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998, Randall Wallace)

Now here’s an interesting Stop Button pick. (It was the fiancée’s choice, actually). Most of what I know about Wallace’s 1998 adaptation. It knocked Titanic out of the top spot in the weekend box office… That’s it. And the preview was bad, playing up DiCaprio as… a bad guy?

The bad king and the good twin present a difficulty to turning the novel into a film (I have no idea what Dumas did, but I’ve only read The Three Musketeers and I was fifteen). The ideal, of course, would to do something similar to what Boyle did in World’s End. Wallace doesn’t do that, however. This film is also interesting because it’s from the writer of Braveheart, before he became the writer of Pearl Harbor. Oddly, for all the (undeserved) shit Pearl gets, no one ever points the finger at Wallace.

Watching Man in the Iron Mask, it’s obvious MGM didn’t do anything to it in light of DiCaprio’s Titanic success. He’s barely in the damn thing and he ranges from inoffensively bad to decent, or maybe I just got used to him as the film moved along. I cared about the character (the good twin, of course), which means he accomplished something.

But, really, besides the first and third acts, it’s all the Musketeers’ show. Played by Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, and Gérard Depardieu, one almost thinks Wallace intended it that way (given that DiCaprio’s most commercial venture to this point was probably The Quick and the Dead). All three are excellent and Gabriel Byrne has a few nice moments as D’Artagnan (but he’s not one of the original Musketeers, which I do remember from Dumas’ novel, which was the perception of the three through his eyes).

The Man in the Iron Mask offers no depth in the end. There are some nice moments about growing old, I suppose, but no more than something like Space Cowboys. Instead of a message, instead of any solidity, Wallace offers us the Three (Four) Musketeers kicking ass. Wallace got a really naive composer for the film, so the music sounds like the Salkind productions from the 1970s… hmm, maybe that was the point.

It’s fun to watch. Irons and Malkovich hover on hamming, but never take it up fully, and it was nice to see them resisting it in this one. Mostly, however, the film reassured me that the Salkind films might be all right, as I was planning on watching them soon.

Danton (1983, Andrzej Wajda)

Period pieces and biopics tend to fail, at least ones made since 1950. I was just reading something about the growing audience want for realism in movies–this movement growing in the 1960s and 1970s (though the location shooting of the late 1940s is certainly a precursor)–that want made period pictures and biopics difficult… there needed to be reality. You couldn’t have Henry Frankenstein wearing a 1930s robe in late 18th century wherever (they never really specified in Bride of Frankenstein, did they?). Some films, obviously, managed to get around these difficulties. Kubrick embraced it fully–Barry Lyndon had a special lens adapted to shoot scenes by candlelight–while others ignored it and were ridiculed. I’m not sure how historically accurate Danton is, but it’s allegiances are to film, not to history. I’m pretty sure when the French Revolution was going bad, there wasn’t foreboding music in the background.

The film juxtaposes Danton and Robespierre, positing them as alter egos. It’s been a while since I read any French Revolution history, but I remember it both from undergrad and earlier and the Terror was not a particularly happy time and Robespierre never got a positive review. More recently I’ve watched Gance’s Napoleon and his Robespierre is insidious. I think Robespierre’s speech in that film was the scene where Gance swung the camera at him on a trapeze. Danton opines a different Robespierre, a sad one who’s just as upset as Danton about the Revolution going bad.

Danton is not a history lesson. Besides the one subtitle about the year, there’s none of the common exposition to inform the audience. I’ve found that exposition is only common in American films. Danton drops the viewer into a situation about a bunch of leading politicians and tells a story. The film’s present action is maybe two weeks, not longer. It gradually builds, introducing its large cast of characters (since it’s not a biopic, it takes the time to tell its story in scenes, not summary). While Gérard Depardieu appears in the first scene, he doesn’t do anything for the first twenty minutes or so. Depardieu is excellent as Danton, charming and resigned at the same time. Wojciech Pszoniak is better (which is hard, Depardieu’s real good) as Robespierre. The rest of the cast is fine, but since the film’s about those two men, they leave the impression.

I brought up Kubrick earlier because the director seems to have seen a few of his films, particularly Paths of Glory. Danton is good throughout, but it becomes excellent at the end, when it becomes fully filmic. Previously, the viewer could see right and wrong being done (by both the bad guys and the good), but at the end, director Wajda goes all out. There are hints something is going on earlier, a scene at the Convention when Robespierre speaks (no trapeze though) gets quiet when it should get loud. Reality takes a backseat for cinematic storytelling. The end of the film, however, embraces the medium to an extent I didn’t think possible in the film. In the last fifteen minutes, Wajda goes beyond–in terms of quality storytelling–what he’d set up in the previous 115 minutes. The end is devastating.

My fiancée said a history professor of ours said it was the finest film about the French Revolution. He’s probably right (I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen any other films about the French Revolution). In the American critical expectation, there seems to be the need for a film about the French Revolution to teach the audience something about said Revolution. Danton didn’t teach me much (except to check out more of Wajda’s films and Pszoniak’s too). It was concerned with being a fine film, not being a teaching experience… and it worked out really well for it.