Catwoman (2002) #5

Catwoman 5

New art team Brad Rader and Cameron Stewart take over for this done-in-one, which brings Slam Bradley into the series proper—he appeared in a Detective Comics backup setting up Catwoman (or at least tying in enough to be reprinted in the first trade… I think). But he and Selina team up this issue, which is a profound style clash. Rader and Stewart visualize Catwoman action scenes akin to previous artist Darwyn Cooke—with one big exception, which I’m saving for later—but their Selina and Holly investigation procedural pages are like Silver Age romance comics.

And Slam looks like a villain out of a Dick Tracy knock-off, which is some of the point. There’s the contrast in characters, come together in this weird little corner of Gotham City, but Rader’s not great at integrating the two visually. Slam always looks out of place, just slightly too much of a literal caricature to fit.

It doesn’t really matter because it’s a great issue. Ed Brubaker’s script is superb, and—aside from Slam sticking out—Rader and Stewart do a fine job. And here’s that big exception—out of nowhere in the second half, Rader bakes in this building rage in Selina. She boils over with it, even as her narration is relatively cool. It’s fantastic stuff and one heck of a success for Rader on his first issue, especially following up Cooke. When a pissed-off Selina comes across a bad guy, her anger’s palpable entirely through the art.

Very cool.

The story’s about Selina trying to shut down a drug mule operation. The bad guy is getting neighborhood kids to do it, flying down to South America with a fake parent, swallowing a bunch of dope, flying back in intestinal distress, pooping it out. I’m pretty sure there’s another way to get the drugs….

Anyway, doesn’t matter. Holly has found this bad thing going on, Selina will take care of it. Even after she collides with Slam, who’s working a case somehow involving the Mr. Big.

But then there’s also the initial bad guy, who Brubaker gives this incredibly efficient character arc. Outstanding work, with Catwoman distinguishing itself well as something other than “Darwyn Cooke’s Catwoman without Darwyn Cooke.

The creative team seems to realize they’ve got to make a good impression, and all of them do so in unison and separately. It’s real good.

More, please.

Catwoman (2002) #4

Catwoman 4

And here’s how you do a comic book. I was wondering when Catwoman was going to click and level up, and it’s this issue. It’s not just Darwyn Cooke’s pencils, though he’s got dozens of great panels in the issue. Pretty much everything except Selina fighting Clayface Y2K’s muck is great. The muck stuff is fine, but it’s gross, and it’s just muck. Worse, it’s pink flesh muck. Icky bad.

The issue starts with Selina confronting the killer and hearing some of his origin story. U.S. soldier, battlefield injury, weird experiment, dumped as a monster on the streets of Gotham by the U.S. Army. Tracks. She thinks she can talk him down and get him some help from that dickhead Batman (who does end up cameoing and is a complete piece of shit, gloriously rendered in a forties nod from Cooke and inker Mike Allred). She’s not entirely wrong, but she’s not right enough not to have a big supervillain fight. Except she’s Catwoman, and she’s not ready to fight fleshy muck monsters.

Writer Ed Brubaker does an exceptional job writing the fight scene. It’s a character development micro-arc for Selina as she realizes the new responsibilities she’s taking on; there’s doubt, regret, turmoil, all in rapid-fire as the fight progresses. Brubaker captures these snapshots into Selina’s experience through the text, tied to the visuals, and it’s phenomenal stuff. I knew Catwoman was going to get good, but I didn’t think it would get this good this fast.

Especially when the epilogue involves setting up the series proper, with Holly becoming a Kyle Investigations operative and Leslie Tompkins firmly established in the supporting cast. Except Brubaker writes it as a contrast to dickhead Batman, who doesn’t care about sex workers getting murdered and thinks writing Leslie a check fixes all the problems with the poors.

Only then Cooke (and Allred and colorist Matt Hollingsworth) turn the final splash page into this Batman visual homage deep cut. It’s so good.

This opening arc has got to be a killer trade.

Catwoman (2002) #3

Catwoman 3

There’s a lot of great Darwyn Cooke “good girl” art in this issue as Selina goes undercover to find the john who’s been killing all the girls, which I suppose could kick off an interesting discussion of how male gaze works in a non-realistic styles like Cooke’s. But it doesn’t make for a great issue. There’s a terrific opening with Selina visiting Leslie Thompkins, but after a dream sequence for Leslie.

Like three pages. Beautiful art, with Cooke doing a Will Eisner Spirit nod. It has absolutely nothing to do with the comic itself. It’s just padding. Selina’s visiting Leslie to get Oracle’s digits; Batman doesn’t give Selina his white friends’ phone numbers. It’d be something if they wrote Batman—or even could imagine writing him—as more thoughtful than a sixteen-year-old rich kid.

Oracle comes through—off-page—and Selina and Holly go undercover to interrogate the used car dealer who sold the killer his car. Selina gets to wear the costume; Holly gets to walk the Cooke “good girl” runway. Again, great art. But not a particularly good mystery development. It’s a fun, mischievous scene but has to basically hold up the comic because afterward, it’s just a chase scene.

The bad guy gets past Selina, and to pass the level in the video game, she has to search three different warehouses before he kills again. Writer Ed Brubaker intercuts Selina’s mission with the killer and his date flirting and being sweet when really we know he’s going to disintegrate the girl.

The art’s neat, and some of the dialogue’s excellent; plus, Leslie and Selina are cool pals, but it’s like half an issue with clutter to make up the rest. It’s Darwyn Cooke art, so the issue’s definitely worthwhile; it’s just not a great installment in the arc. Brubaker doesn’t have much narration from Selina this issue either. The whole thing’s a little off.

But very pretty.

Catwoman (2002) #2

Cw2

Darwyn Cooke owns this issue. It begins with an action sequence: Catwoman breaking into Gotham PD to get a look at the autopsies on the dead streetwalkers. Cooke breaks each page into a dozen or two panels, sometimes splitting a horizontal frame, more often zooming in on one particular aspect of the action. All in his “cartoony” style. There’s never better movement in comic art than the first act of Catwoman #2. It’s a masterpiece.

And he doesn’t let up the rest of the issue ambition-wise. There’s Selina and Holly’s girl talk, done in art deco—to contrast the noir—and then the finale reveal. While Selina (and the reader) have heard about what the killer’s doing to the women and then read the reports, the finale shows the immediate aftermath, complete with the cops robbing the corpse.

Cooke’s superhero noir is a genre itself. Absolutely beautiful, superior work.

Ed Brubaker’s script is mostly successful. The Selina narration’s solid (and appropriately sparse at times), but he runs into a couple hiccups. First, obviously, Selina’s characterization of Batman in her narration is one of a dick—he’d care the women were dying, but they chose that life, didn’t they? Second, when Selina does decide she’ll be the one to stop the killings, it appears to only be after the finale and seeing the latest victim. The narration comes too late in the visuals.

Otherwise, the writing’s excellent. The issue has the lengthy action open, which slows down once Selina’s broken into the morgue, then the flashback to her and Holly’s conversation after last issue, then back to the present and the latest killing. Based on the initial pacing, they could’ve gotten away without having Selina arrive at the crime scene in time. The issue’d earned its two dollars and four bits by then, but Cooke and Brubaker somehow find time (and pages) to continue.

Though had they not paced it so well, that final narration fumble might’ve been avoided. But Catwoman’s inordinately rare faults being side effects of its great successes seems on par for the book.

It’s just too good for its own good.

Catwoman (2002) #1

Catwoman 1

I’ve meant to go back and reread Brubaker’s Catwoman for literal decades now. The last time I tried, I started the post about Catwoman #1 pointing out it proves Ebert’s “no masks in noir” rule from his Batman Returns review wrong.

I’ll never be able to top that one, though it’s impossible not to think of Catwoman in those terms. With Darwyn Cooke and Mike Allred’s brisk, expressive art, Matt Hollingsworth’s lush but dark palette, Catwoman’s a visual feast. Especially once Selina gets back in “the outfit” and goes for an evening constitutional, hanging out on giant heads from a Schumacher Batman only fit to the Gothic city. It’s dark but not depressed; there are moments of such sincere joy in the comic. Not just for the reader but for Selina. She’s been struggling to get her groove back, and she’s finally got the right idea.

The comic’s got full narration from Selina, with Brubaker toggling between first and second person. When Selina’s feeling good about herself, it’s first person. When she’s tearing herself down, it’s second person. Batman ethics and morals have aged terribly, even in the last twenty years—I didn’t even realize I’m starting Catwoman again on its twentieth anniversary—so Selina feeling bad for thinking her friends—poor people, marginalized people—are actually worth it no matter what Batman says… yikes. Batman does show up, and Brubaker (and Cooke) give him the swashbuckler, Zorro feel, not the fascist Frank Miller one, which is good.

But still. Yikes. Find a better role model, Selina.

And she sort of does. She’s been seeing Leslie Thompkins for talk therapy. However, Selina’s been hiding her Catwoman side even though Batman already told Leslie, so she’s known the whole time, which seems professionally questionable. Be careful, Dr. Thompkins; it’s a slippery slope ending it faking the death of the first female Robin or whatever.

The opening has a hook—someone’s killing sex workers and terrifying them before doing so—and the soft cliffhanger gets Selina into the know. She’s been hiding out in the Narrows or whatever it’s called, most people thinking she’s dead, fallen from high society, and not wanting to return to the Jim Balent days of Catwoman. It’s an earnest, speedy character development issue. Not too much backlog, but some panels showing off Cooke’s ability to mix Catwomen of all vintages and costumes; Selina’s trying to move forward and do some good.

It’s such a great first issue. It’s nice. It’s never not tough, never not potentially rough, but it’s also so damn nice.

Luba (1998) #6

This issue is primarily a comedy soap opera, expertly executed by creator Beto Hernandez. But first, he does the opening Luba story, only it’s a Khamo story. Juxtaposed against Luba and Ofelia herding the children—and getting ready for Socorro to go away to gifted school—is Khamo and the “cops” he’s helping.

It turns out he’s not helping the cops; he’s helping some mobsters, presumably using his old connections to get rid of someone’s competition. It raises many questions—the most critical being, does Khamo understand the danger he’s put his family in (because his handlers talk about it in English, so he can’t understand them), or is he a dupe, or is there something even worse going on. It’s four pages, and it haunts the rest of the issue. It’s also brilliantly paced, with Beto jumping from scene to scene as Khamo and various drug dealers discuss karma. Khamo and karma? It’s an out-of-nowhere subplot twist, and I’m already antsy worrying about the resolve (especially since Luba’s only whole conversation is about feeling impending doom).

So good.

The rest of the comic is about Hector Rivera, a new character Beto introduced last issue, only without naming him. He gets a name here. Last issue, Hector helped Socorro and Joselito get home after they have an adventure; in this issue, they run into him when they’re out with Aunt Fritz. Fritz likes Hector, much to his surprise and delight, and pretty soon, they’re getting busy.

The story’s mainly about Fritz trying to set Hector up with her sister, Petra, only Petra’s resistant. Fritz has too many boyfriends already to add a third to the mix (especially since we find out she’s added Fortunato, but he’s not a regular). So the story’s basically her having awkward conversations and sweaty sex. Meanwhile, Hector’s utterly enamored with the only temporarily attainable Fritz and trying to avoid the matchmaking too.

Beto does a whole range of scenes, like some fun ones with Petra gossiping about her sister at work, touching ones (one of Fritz’s boyfriends is more serious than she realizes), and just thoughtfully executed ones, like Hector bonding with Venus over comic books. It’s a great feature (at eleven pages, it’s the longest of the three).

Before the next longest feature, at eight pages, Beto does a one-page Doralis bit about “legged sea people.” These are the in-between merpeople and human people, whose magical origin story is similar to what Fortunato told Pipo last issue. And there’s Fortunato on the TV—a recurring visual motif—to emphasize his supernatural origin. It ends with a nice moment for Luba and Socorro; Beto’s been spotlighting their mother and daughter relationship well these last few issues.

The final story is another Hector one, although he’s sharing it with Petra this time. She’s just discovered her ex-husband is remarrying and hasn’t invited her to the wedding, so she decides to try to spoil it, only she’ll need Hector’s help.

For semi-exhibitionism to distract from the nuptials. Because Petra’s being petty, which she doesn’t tell Hector about. Meanwhile, he’s worried about telling her about his brief romance with Fritz; on the one hand, he doesn’t want to lie; on the other hand, he’s concerned about Petra’s reaction.

Though the last story established Petra at least assumes Fritz and Hector made the beast with two backs.

Beto also reveals Petra’s a born-again Christian, which I think has to be the first mention because I’d really think I’d remember. Though I don’t think she ever tells Hector she’s born-again, his bros are all gossiping about her to him. Hector can overcome Petra being a jock and religiosity, only we still don’t know how Petra actually feels.

Hector’s a fine new character, though Beto goes overboard with his thought balloons, seemingly trying to justify his shoehorning in as a protagonist. He’s not a new recurring supporting character like Fortunato; he’s an entirely new lead. One who gets lengthy thought balloons to explain his behavior, something the main cast never gets.

It’s the most traditional thing Beto’s done with Luba, but it also seems the riskiest. Or maybe I just remember his brother Jaime’s lousy luck trying to make Locos a thing.

Oh, and the back cover color comic? It’s a lengthy fart joke set at Socorro’s going away party. It’s awesome.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002, Paul Thomas Anderson)

There are probably better movies with seven-minute end credits than Punch-Drunk Love but I doubt there are any where those seven-minute end credits are padded to give the film a more respectable run time. Punch-Drunk Love is an approximately eighty-eight-minute marathon where writer and director Anderson hones in on his protagonist, played by Adam Sandler, and relates the chaos of his life.

Sandler’s a plumbing supply manufacturer in business with Luis Guzmán, his only friend. As close as Sandler has to a friend. Guzmán’s performance is profoundly, beautifully dry. He doesn’t have much to do, but when he gets something, he nails it. Guzmán is also the human side of Sandler. The film opens with Sandler alone at a desk in a corner—he has an office in the rest of the movie; it’s unclear why he’s using that phone—calling to confirm he’s read the fine print correctly on a Healthy Choice and American Airlines promotional deal; you get a five hundred mile credit for every ten items, but you can double it with a coupon, and there are no limits.

After that phone call, Sandler wanders out into his industrial park, looking at the early morning sky, and witnesses a bewildering car accident. Soon after, he meets a lady dropping off her car for a nearby mechanic; Emily Watson plays the lady. She’s the love interest. Sandler will change his entire life for Watson as the film progresses, conquering known and unknown fears.

The character definitely has OCD as well as some kind of anxiety disorder. He’s got seven sisters who call him at work to pester and berate him. They tell stories about how they bullied him to outbursts as a kid, joking about it as adults, all of them entirely indifferent to the turmoil it causes Sandler. Even when he acts out because of the teasing. All the sisters but one are only in the film’s first act. Mary Lynn Rajskub sticks around to antagonize Sander throughout.

So it’s never clear how the lifelong bullying has affected Sandler’s social behaviors, but the family’s not just indifferent to the effect of the teasing; they also don’t acknowledge the OCD. Sandler wants therapy but knows his sisters would mock him for seeking it, so it seems like he’s never been to see anyone for the OCD either. The party scene with the sisters is emotionally exhausting, both for the film and Sandler.

Home alone with no one to talk to–having been shut down by a brother-in-law Sandler mistakenly thought would be sympathetic—Sandler calls a phone sex line. Anderson shoots the scene continuous—lots of Punch-Drunk is long, complicated, moving scenes, sometimes with a single shot, often with multiple shots; great editing makes it seems like a single shot when it’s a dozen–and it’s exceptionally discomforting. Especially listening to the operator manipulate Sandler.

The next day, the operator calls back, demanding money. Sandler told her he had his own business, and she took it to mean he was wealthy; the phone sex operation is part of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s mattress and furniture sales store (important details later on), and Hoffman doesn’t take kindly to someone not wanting to be shook down.

Once Sandler starts getting the extortion calls, Punch-Drunk accelerates for the rest of the film. Jon Brion’s music initially ramps it up, seemingly the constant, relentless soundtrack in Sandler’s head. The music does slow down, but it’s set the pace, and Sandler soon finds reaching out for human connection is full of pitfalls. Particularly when his sisters, even off-screen, continue to mess with him.

But then there’s Watson, a calm amid all the chaos, even as it rages around her, even as she surprises Sandler. The plot with Hoffman and the extortion is tough, mean, absurd black comedy, and the romance with Watson, happening simultaneously, is a Technicolor romance. Albeit not in Technicolor. Sandler’s aloof but meticulous performance holds the two plots together, his intensity shared between them.

Also, obviously, Anderson doing a bunch of work to keep things synced, with lots of help from composer Brion, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and editor Leslie Jones. Punch-Drunk Love is fastidious to the extremis. So it stands out when they use some transition animation to get the third act done. It’s a jarring, wanting device, but Anderson manages to make up for it almost immediately. It’s probably the film’s most impressive accomplishment; to build off of literally nothing, rebounding from what ought to be a debilitating low. It’s exceptional.

And it’s not even over. As Sandler finally gets to the last stretch of his sprint, the last few minutes just get better and better, with a postscript lifting it even more.

Punch-Drunk Love is a singular success. Sandler grows his performance to greatness, and Watson’s a true enigma. The film marvels at her performance as it unfolds. Anderson directs the heck of it.

So incredibly, so unimaginably good.

Signs (2002, M. Night Shyamalan)

It’s impossible to overstate what a profoundly, risibly bad movie Shyamalan has made with Signs. As the end credits started rolling, after the most disappointing “epilogue” Shyamalan could’ve come up with—it’s not just disappointing, it’s also pointless (pointless is the probably the best adjective to describe scenes in Signs)—my wife joked the movie took two weeks to film. To which I responded, “Thirteen and a half days longer than it took to write.” Because even with all the bad in Signs—and there’s so much bad—the writing is the worst.

And Shyamalan does this non-committal “camera as POV” thing—cinematographer Tak Fujimoto should be ashamed of himself for enabling Shyamalan to do it and embarrassed with how poorly he shoots the thing; Signs looks terrible–so, in other words, there’s a lot of competition for what’s worst in Signs. Shyamalan’s direction of the talking heads scenes—and there so many talking heads scenes because Shyamalan, who’s ego is literally oozing from every grain of film–involves characters almost looking directly into the camera but then just a little diagonally. Shyamalan is going for something with Signs, with his very intentional direction, his very intentional casting of himself as the guy who kills star Mel Gibson’s wife in a traffic accident (Shyamalan was asleep at the wheel) and vehicular manslaughter isn’t a thing and it just turns reverend Gibson into an atheist (but they never say the a-word because while Signs is definitely a millimeter thinly veiled Christian movie, there’s still the veil and it’s never going to get confrontational about it). Also… Shyamalan wrote the movie, so he did kill the wife.

Symbolism. Pass it on. Like the dog tchotchkes at the end to remind the viewer there are dogs, even if everyone forgot about them because they don’t matter because Signs is insipid.

Signs is full of symbolism but not really full because there’s not much because Shyamalan gets frequently bored with things like mise en scène because there’s better things to do like write the awful scenes between Gibson and his family. I went into Signs at least thinking Gibson would get through it unscathed (performance-wise). No. No. Not at all. It’s a godawful performance. He is incapable of pretending to be a former reverend, a widow, a husband, a father, a brother, and a farmer. The scenes with Gibson and kids Rory Culkin (who’s kind of terrible; it’s not his fault, Shyamalan seems to be having him do a Macaulay impression circa Uncle Buck but he’s still bad) and Abigail Breslin, who gets terrible material and terrible direction, but is still phenomenal. Shyamalan can’t figure out how to direct her because she’s not terrible like the rest of his cast.

Though, not Joaquin Phoenix. He’s leagues better than Gibson, though it helps Phoenix’s character is a dope. Gibson’s ostensibly functional enough to get to this point in his life—whereas Phoenix apparently always had Gibson to lean on—yet Gibson is real dumb. Real dumb.

Other bad things about Signs? Cherry Jones. She’s awful. Ted Sutton is so bad SAG should’ve shut the production down. Bad editing from Barbara Tulliver; Tulliver’s editing, cut for cut, is probably even worse than Fujimoto’s photography. Tulliver—presumably unintentionally—screws up all of Shyamalan’s jump scares. Larry Fulton’s production design is bad.

James Newton Howard’s score, while inexplicably a complete Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock rip-off (oh, wait, was Signs in the middle of Shyamalan being the new Hitchcock era), and poorly utilized, isn’t poorly composed. It’s competent, just misapplied. Everything else is incompetent and misapplied.

I was looking through Rodale for a good, fresh adjective to describe Signs but I think vapid does the job best. It’s worse than I expected it to be, which is saying a lot, but it also surprised me. I had no idea Gibson would so spectacularly fail or Phoenix would be—with a lot of conditions—so much better. And I guess Shyamalan managed to be inventively terrible, it’s just he’s a pointless kind of inventively terrible.

Oh, you know what… there’s the word.

Puerile.

Signs is puerile.

Catch Me If You Can (2002, Steven Spielberg)

Catch Me If You Can is a spectacular showcase for Leonardo DiCaprio. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t exactly rise up to meet him, not the filmmaking, not the writing, not his costars. With the exception of co-lead Tom Hanks, who’s a whole other thing, the direction, the writing, the supporting cast, they’re all tied together in a less than impressive knot.

Let’s get the filmmaking out of the way first.

Spielberg’s direction is adequate, at least as far as the composition goes. It’s never too good, it’s never too bad. The film opens with these extremely cute animated opening titles, but they go on way too long and the accompanying John Williams music is some of the film’s least impressive as far as the score goes. And the score’s usually middling so to open on a low point… Not a great start. Then the movie goes into the framing device (getting ahead of myself on the script problems) as FBI agent Hanks is trying to get DiCaprio out of a French prison. There’s something very affected about the style, with Spielberg mimicking late fifties and early sixties style without bringing anything new to it. He and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski don’t show the mid-sixties through rose colored glasses as much as they artificially twinkle the past. Everything shimmers with unreality, which kind of hurts the true story angle as Catch Me rarely shows how DiCaprio is pulling off his cons. Plus the age discrepancies. DiCaprio’s twenty-eight playing seventeen playing twenty-eight. It mostly works, thanks to DiCaprio’s performance but against some of what Spielberg and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson throw at him; there are significant hiccups.

Like Christopher Walken as DiCaprio’s WWII vet dad. Walken’s sixty; he looks pretty good for sixty. But he was supposed to be some kind of forty-year old grunt in WWII? Again, Catch Me’s fast and loose with its hold on reality but given it’s all about the amazing things DiCaprio’s character was actually able to do… not having to constantly suspend and re-suspend disbelief would be nice. Walken’s actually good, even if he’s a stunt cast and his part is so thin he’s just doing a generic Christopher Walken performance. Nathanson doesn’t do character development or texture. Even when the story needs it. Spielberg doesn’t help with it either; it’s DiCaprio’s movie but Spielberg’s more concerned with Hanks’s FBI agent.

Let me just use that to segue into Hanks. Hanks is not good. He does a questionable and pointless accent, presumably to make the character seem less flat, and there’s nothing else to it. First act, it seems like Hanks might go someplace—and the film does try to force him into a paternal relationship with DiCaprio, which doesn’t work—but it’s a nothing part. It’s not even engaging enough to be a caricature. Nathanson’s a shockingly thin writer.

Okay, maybe not shockingly. It’s not like the script’s ever got any more potential than it delivers. But Spielberg really does just go along with it. The female roles are exceptionally thin; they’re all dumb and easy, whether it’s bank teller Elizabeth Banks, flight attendant Ellen Pompeo, working girl Jennifer Garner, or nurse Amy Adams. Worse is when DiCaprio ends up staying longterm with Adams, it’s never clear why; especially since the movie makes fun of her so much. Though, I suppose, even worse is when Adams brings her parents into the film. Martin Sheen—in a stunningly bad bit of stunt-casting—is bad. Nancy Lenehan is mom, with zip to do, which is actually much better for her than, say, Nathalie Baye as DiCaprio’s mom. Baye gets the film’s worst part by far.

Through it all, DiCaprio manages to keep his head up and keep Catch Me working. He contends with some questionable makeup decisions, never getting to followthrough on set pieces, and the astoundingly bad pop culture reference. There’s a truly incompetent James Bond Goldfinger sequence, which ought to be a gimme but instead Spielberg completely fumbles it.

Spielberg never takes Catch Me If You Can seriously enough, from the casting to the writing to Kaminski’s silly photography. DiCaprio takes it seriously, to good effect. Hanks takes it seriously, to… if not bad effect, at least wanting. It’s a glossy, trite trifle. Could’ve been a lot more.

Though not with the same script, supporting cast, principal crew members, or director.

Ghost Ship (2002, Steve Beck)

I am going to set a goal for myself with this post about Ghost Ship; I’m going to try to make it entertaining, which is going to be a challenge because there’s nothing entertaining about Ghost Ship. It’s badly directed and badly written. The actors are bad. They’re good actors and okay actors and mediocre actors but none of them are good, okay, or mediocre in the movie. They’re all varying degrees of bad. Some are embarrassed (Gabriel Byrne), some should be embarrassed and aren’t (Desmond Harrington), some aren’t embarrassed but also aren’t any better for it (Ron Eldard and Karl Urban), some are completely flat (Julianna Margulies), and some literally have to embarrass themselves as part of the movie, in character (Isaiah Washington and Alex Dimitriades, though Dimitriades is bad and Washington is… not always bad).

Now, at the time Ghost Ship came out before many of the cast had their greatest career successes. 2002… Byrne had peaked and maybe Eldard had too, but everyone else (not Dimitriades) had some high profile TV and film work in their near futures. Margulies had “Good Wife,” Urban had Star Trek, Washington had “Grey’s Anatomy,” Harrington had… getting another job after being so godawful in this movie. And “Dexter” and whatever. You know Ghost Ship is going to be bad in some strange way because no one’s ever talking about it, despite it having eventually successful stars. No one talks about it because it’s unspectacularly crappy. The opening’s almost good, but then quickly goes to pot because after implying the movie’s going to have a sense of humor it turns out it won’t. But real quick. Like, before we get to the present day from the Italian ocean liner in the opening sequence.

Present day is the above-mentioned cast members. Besides some ghosts, they’re it for the cast. Ghost Ship tries to be economical but it’s bad at it. Because it’s not just bad dialogue in the film, it’s the structure of the conversations. The writers don’t have an ear for dialogue in general, much less what the actors bring to it. Though the latter is more director Beck’s fault, but it’s hard to blame him because he’s so obviously incompetent it’s not his fault. No one should’ve let him drive this… car; it was irresponsible of producers Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver, and Gilbert Adler and the studio to allow this movie to happen with Beck. Whatever happened, they had it coming.

Because nothing in Ghost Ship works even though nothing’s exceptionally incompetent. Not even the CGI is incompetent. It’s not good, but it’d be a lot better if the shot composition didn’t suck. There’s no aspect of direction Beck’s good at or passing at or not offensive at; he does a real bad job. The whole movie I was waiting for one decent close-up shot of a character, any character, anyone—Beck can’t do it. He just can’t figure it out; he’s not responsible for his actions. His numerous failings as a director are often unrelated to the movie’s problems at any given time. Beck’s incompetencies don’t interact with the script’s incompetencies. There are these two tracks of bad without crossover. Ghost Ship’s greatest success is in showing how various types of badness—writing, directing, casting—don’t necessarily need to interact with one another outside coexisting.

Some of Ghost Ship is see-it-to-believe-it mundane bad. The soundtrack is quite bad, though John Frizzell’s score is one of the least unsuccessful things in the film. The songs they play are bad and poorly cut into the film. Crew-wise Gale Tattersall is a perfectly competent cinematographer, but Roger Barton’s editing is pretty janky stuff. Ghost Ship ought to move better, visually. Beck’s the big problem, Barton’s one of the smaller ones.

The end seems like it was meant to be a little more pompous in its grandiosity—grandiosity with not good CGI—but no matter how the effect would play, it’d still be on the end of Beck’s visually disinteresting movie. Would Beck being good at integrating visual effects improve the movie? No. Nothing would.