Beware the Creeper (2003) #1

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Beware the Creeper gets by immediately on charm, though it opens with a violent assault on a sex worker, so it takes a few pages. Writer Jason Hall begins with an “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” establishing the setting. It’s post-World War I, pre-Great Depression Paris. The comic’s a who’s who of guest stars (including Hemingway; Creeper precedes Midnight in Paris’s guest list by eight years). The protagonists are twin French sisters. The French is important because when Hall’s dialogue gets a little wonky, you can just pretend it’s a lousy translation and would sound better en français.

Maddy’s the painter and the wild girl; she has dreams of demon sex. Judith’s the playwright and good sister; she has dreams of their parents dying in the war. The comic repeats their names over and over to try to differentiate the two, but since artist Cliff Chiang’s most distinct visual trait for them is hair cuts, which aren’t always necessary, it can’t quite hammer in the identifiers enough. It’s okay, the comic gets by, but it’d be nice if the characters weren’t just tragic and manic.

They’re the A plot; introducing them, getting them topless because it’s a Vertigo book and they’re French, so it’s “fine,” sending them off to a party where they can interact with the B and C plot. B plot is copper Allain. He protects the local sex workers (best he can against his corrupt department), so he’s investigating the opening assault. He’s also in love with one of the sisters; I think Maddy; doesn’t matter this issue.

Allain the copper is also where the real cracks start showing in the art. Chiang busts ass on Judith and Maddy’s scenes, but he rushes through the Inspector Allain stuff. His facial features change three times a page. As a whole, it’s still okay—Chiang’s 1925 Paris is gorgeous even when faces are inconsistent, and hairstyles and hats are not enough to distinguish the twins. But he’s clearly not working as hard on those scenes.

The C plot is somewhere in between. The C plot is shitty rich kid Mathieu, who wants to be a painter and is jealous of Maddy and might be the serial rapist. He’s certainly the main suspect so far.

The issue ends with another assault, this time someone socially valuable enough to kick off a comic series and a brief appearance of the Beware the Creeper Creeper. There’s been some foreshadowing in Maddy’s paintings, with the final splash page the pay-off.

At the open, it seems like the art’s going to be outstanding, ends up being just okay (with lots of pluses). The writing’s all setup or literary figure cameo and history lesson. They combine to make Creeper compelling without being engaging. So far, anyway.

Code 46 (2003, Michael Winterbottom)

Code 46 is a budget future-noir, down to the male lead being a fraud investigator (though it’s unclear why there’d be a third-party contractor investigating identity theft). But it’s not just a budget future-noir; it’s also a future eugenics thriller; the title refers to the legal code forbidding procreating with your near relatives. Cousins would probably be all right. The movie opens with the explanation as two title cards; it doesn’t matter for half the movie.

And once it does matter, it’s another ten or fifteen minutes before someone explains there are clones everywhere. Most people never know their birth parents—just their “nurture” parents—so you’d never know if someone was actually your genetic sibling. Though without ever really breaking it down, the exposition has to be opaque to some degree because not everyone’s going to know about the Code 46. Or at least not at the same time. Though it’s unclear how some people find out about it because Code 46 has some very broken noir-ish narration. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce writes just to the edge of the plot hole and then leaves it up to director Winterbottom to cover.

“Cover” is another of the film’s MacGuffins. To get around in the future, you need to have “cover,” which is basically either a travel pass or a living permit. Some people get to live in the nice cities, and some people live outside the nice cities. Those living outside don’t have “cover.” Though when you want to go someplace and can’t, it’s because you don’t have “cover.”

Samantha Morton works at a cover manufacturer. Since Code 46 is pre-smartphone (though people do have video phones), the “cover” is a physical object. Tim Robbins is investigating someone making counterfeit cover and giving it to undesirables. Though it turns out, they might not be so much undesirable as in danger. Code 46 doesn’t pay its oppressive future society enough attention—or define it enough—because it seems generally altruistic.

Like, preventing unnecessary deaths and in-breeding isn’t villain activity.

Such observations do not matter, however. Any observations about Code 46’s plot or any details with potential are useless; it all goes nowhere; Code 46 has a sparse script, which just draws attention to the worse aspects. Like Morton’s MacGuffin dream sequence. The film opens on her birthday and promises to be about her recurring dream and then is never, ever, ever about her recurring dream. Partially because it’s not a real detail, it’s just something to kill time.

The film’s only ninety-three minutes. It’s concerning how much time they waste.

The whole thing hinges on Robbins and Morton having chemistry, which they do not. He becomes infatuated with her and frames someone else for her crime. She apparently has a thing for much older men. Part of Robbins’s character involves him being on an “empathy virus,” which lets him read minds. Including passwords. No one in the future uses good passwords, it turns out.

The film could get away with all the future silliness and plot conveniences if it didn’t go spectacularly off the rails in the second half and then just keep going, making less and less internal sense as it goes along.

Morton and Robbins do better than expected. In the first half, anyway, when it seems like Morton’s got a character. She will not, with the film increasingly restricting and erasing her development in the second half. At the same time, it’ll turn out Robbins doesn’t have anything going on either.

There’s good photography from Alwin H. Küchler and Marcel Zyskind, though Peter Christelis’s editing is probably more impressive, even though the film uses his cutting abilities for questionable purposes. Okay music from Stephen Hilton and David Holmes. Mark Tildesley’s production design is excellent.

Winterbottom’s direction is just okay. He makes some big swings—having Morton stare directly into the camera a lot, a Coldplay song—and they don’t often connect.

Code 46 is an unfortunate fail; it seems like there might be a decent picture in the cast, crew, and concept, but Cottrell-Boyce’s script isn’t it. It doesn’t help Winterbottom’s checked out too. There are some solid moments and efforts, but they’re nowhere near enough to compensate for the problems.

Luba (1998) #7

This issue came out over a year after the previous one, and creator Beto Hernandez does some deck cleaning, mostly for Luba and Khamo’s so-far series-long arc about him being in trouble with the police.

But first, there’s a Steve Stransky story; Steve’s been in Luba before (and maybe New Love) as Guadalupe’s friend, but he’d been in Love and Rockets too. Only I kind of forgot. Or I had the thought he was a returning character but didn’t think it was relevant enough to look up. So this story has a bunch of Steve Stransky antics and some other returning characters from Rockets.

It also reveals Fritz was married (and divorced) at least twice, the first time to a gangster of some kind, the second time to a deadbeat musician who Steve knows. Beto’s characterization of Fritz is very different this issue than usual. It’s a little strange how Beto’s brother Jaime did a secret husband reveal in his Rockets spin-off, and now Beto’s doing it here. Or is he? If I forgot Steve Stransky, did I forget Fritz’s husband? Beto doesn’t cover character histories in the roll call.

So a meteor is going to hit the planet and presumably wipe out human life. Everyone’s acting a little weird and calling in old debts; for Steve Stransky, it means getting Fritz to meet up with her ex, who wants some money from her. The ex also knows Igor, and Igor suddenly knows Fritz, and I really don’t remember these storylines intersecting before. It’s okay, though, even if Fritz’s character’s different (there’s some continuity, however, with her model boyfriend, Enrique, showing up in a wordless part).

Even if Fritz is sympathetic to her ex, her sister Petra is very much not. Steve has a crush on both Fritz and Petra. And also Guadalupe, who’s around but without any story for herself. Because it’s a Steve story. The meteor crisis kind of lets Beto do whatever he wants. With this first story, anyway. The second is a different beast.

The second story is about Luba and Khamo’s bewildering experience regarding his criminal connections. In the last issue, Beto did a big twist: Khamo’s helping one gang against another, not the cops, and his handlers have plans for Luba. It raised many questions and made Khamo seem suspicious in ways dangerous to Luba.

If this story’s resolution holds, Beto’s not going to be doing anything with those threads. The story’s strange and discomforting, but it’s effectively done. Beto introduces one weird thing after another before wrapping up; it feels like a defeat, but the arc seemed written into a corner anyway.

The last story is about Hector. His ex-girlfriend, looking different than his first appearance where he hallucinated her, is getting a restraining order against him. Petra doesn’t like him being forgiving, while Fritz is all of a sudden upset Hector isn’t still into her, even though she gave him to Petra.

There’s a brief Venus appearance and gag at the start of the story, but it’s all Hector, including a courtroom scene where he thought balloons his way through the proceedings. The art and narrative are so disconnected it feels like Beto was doing an experiment with the Marvel Method, drawing from a plot, then adding the dialogue to the finished art. It’s also got the meteor’s impending arrival in the background.

The issue ends up being strongest for Petra, who gets a surprisingly (but maybe not unexpected) arc.

Also making the issue seem weird is the lack of Pipo, who appears but doesn’t have any lines because she doesn’t speak English and—besides Luba—no one speaks Spanish in the issue. I guess it feels more Love and Rockets than Luba.

It’s good, of course. But it’s not as good as the rest of the series has been.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003, The Wachowskis)

I understand there are reasons for The Matrix Revolutions. If that one rumor is true, it’s basically Keanu Reeves didn’t want to do sequels forever, and the Wachowskis wanted to do a long-running franchise. Old Internet gossip (oddly more reliably than some later Internet gossip, but still… Internet gossip). And then the costume changes… the Columbine shooting didn’t help with trench coats as a fashion statement. Oh, and then instead of the movies being all about freeing people trapped in their Matrix lives—so if you’re a cop, you’re working for the machine, and the good guys will have to take you out—that action kills a real person. Who, if they were a good person who took the red pill, wouldn’t be a cop. But it’s a person. It’s after 9/11. Cheering killing mindless human-faced zombies… not so easy.

So you make them all programs like TRON. Only they’re sometimes super horny and sweaty.

I get it.

Also, Gloria Foster dying and having to be replaced between the last movie and this movie, even though Revolutions takes place immediately following the last one, Reloaded. I grok it.

It’s also still godawful movie-making.

What happens to Larry Fishburne in the franchise where he was a very big deal in the first movie? He’s barely in it. Demoted to hanging out with the cast introduced in the last movie and having nothing to do with the main plotline he’s around. Though it’s not much better for “lead” Reeves and romantic interest but also action sidekick Carrie-Anne Moss. They’re nowhere near the film’s biggest action set piece. Fishburne doesn’t get to participate in the action (because he’s not a CGI flying, techno-Lovecraftian flying thing, or a machine-gunning version of the Aliens power loader) in the big set-piece. Still, he’s at least ostensibly vital to it.

He’s not because the script instead wants to be about how Harry Lennix is a joyless hard-ass who doesn’t think Reeves will turn out to be Matrix Jesus and save the day. Fishburne’s most significant scene in the movie is his debriefing. The human survivor council has some questions. This time there’s a Black lady (Francine Bell) who gets not just a close-up but also to talk. There are also the pointless old white people—bad seventies sci-fi guy Anthony Zerbe and “why didn’t you stunt cast this part” Robyn Nevin—plus Black man Cornel West doing a cameo. The movie’s just Fishburne getting less and less to do.

Well, except maybe Moss. Moss, who started the franchise with less screen time than the boys but still just as important (and then more important for some other reasons), basically gets put into a freezer. She’s the damsel in distress. Even though she’s the one who hijacks the initial plot.

The movie opens with Reeves still in a coma since Reloaded ended three minutes before and a new captain (David Leonard) leading the B plot. Leonard should have been in Reloaded and may have been in Reloaded, but I’m not checking. I don’t remember him from it, so he mustn’t have had more than two lines because, at three lines, you realize how bad his performance will be. And it just gets worse and worse.

Ditto Ian Bliss, who appeared last time as a counter-revolutionary and potential traitor to the humans. He’s got the film’s most important scene… maybe second important, but it depends. Most important or second most important. And he sucks. He’s comically bad. He’s supposed to be mimicking one of the other actors in the movie, and it’s painfully obvious he’s doing it, but none of the characters notice, so they’re all taken by surprise later on. It makes all the good guys seem like they’re not actually attentive enough to pull off saving the world.

Anyway.

Reeves is in his coma, but not really; he’s in the Matrix, where he learns the programs can love, which changes everything. If they can love, they’re people too. It’s an interesting idea—the value of life extending to artificial life—and probably the only one in the entire movie? Matrix Revolutions doesn’t even try with the philosophical nonsense of the last one. Instead, there’s a bang bang, boom boom solution to things in this one.

Moss and Fishburne have to go save Reeves, returning to visit last movie’s bad guy, Lambert Wilson. The previous film started with the machines due at humanity’s last refuge in thirty-six hours to wipe them out. This movie begins with those same machines due in twelve hours. So when Wilson says, “Didn’t think I’d be a returning villain so soon?” to our heroes… it’s been like three hours since they’ve seen each other. And Wilson’s got an entirely new gang of sidekicks, who are going to do a big fight scene, and then Moss and Fishburne will have to work for him and on and on and on. Until Moss cuts the bullshit and the cliffhanger resolve is all over.

Then it’s just setting up Moss and Reeves to go to the never-before mentioned Machine City, where all the programs live, presumably, under the watchful eye of the MCP—because he’s going to convince them he’s their savior too. Fishburne, Pinkett Smith, Leonard, and still charmlessly in the movie Harold Perrineau are going to the human city to try to stop the first wave of the invasion. They’ve got the only weapon left on the planet to do it. We didn’t see the destruction of the others; Revolutions covers it in a poorly acted exposition dump. Because it’s a bad movie.

The big set-piece is the humans trying to fend off the invading metal octopus monsters while Pinkett Smith tries to make the Kessel Run less than twelve parsecs. There’s a really shitty subtext about it because Lennix, Pinkett Smith’s boyfriend, doesn’t just not think she can do it, he didn’t listen to her when she undoubtedly told him about the times she did it. I get the Fishburne, Lennix, and Pinkett Smith love triangle thing doesn’t really work out because Lennix is risibly bad, and Fishburne and Pinkett Smith repulse each other like magnets in the chemistry department… but why not fix it? Maybe there was a deadline. It’s always good to kill your darlings with a rushed finale; everyone says so.

Again, anyway.

The big battle scene is terrible. This time out, Bill Pope’s photography is slightly better than the second movie, but it’s still unbelievable he’s had other jobs, including doing the excellently photographed original. It’s a mawkish scene, all about macho battlefield stuff while playing with bad eighties toys done in not terrible CGI. Not good CGI, not well-lighted CGI, but not terrible CGI. Not well-directed future war action either. But. The CGI exhibits competence at some base levels. It’s long, it’s boring, and there’s this weird subplot with Nona Gaye and her female sidekick, who very much don’t have macho war movie bonding going on. The movie intentionally gives it to The Not-Feral Kid (Clayton Watson) to do a lousy job with it while Gaye gets action but squat as far as character. Gaye’s bad, but Watson’s much, much worse. It’s just another crappy part of the movie.

Speaking of Not-Feral Kids… there’s a genuinely awful cameo from Bruce Spence. It seems like a Road Warrior reference, making it the only time the Wachowskis fully extend the homage, but Spence is so terrible they really shouldn’t have done it. Revolutions is even worse than the last one. It’s an achievement in missing the target time after time.

And, so, finally, let’s talk Hugo Weaving. The first movie’s break-out performance. The first sequel’s pointless addition amid pointless additions. He’s now the anti-Reeves, wanting to take over the Matrix for himself by turning everyone in the Matrix—presumably humans (we never see it because dead civilians after all) and programs alike. Reeves will have to do a flying kung fu battle with him to save the world.

The flying kung fu battle’s better than you’d expect, given the rest of the movie, but Weaving’s performance isn’t just easily the worst in the film; it’s cartoonish in a way it’s unbelievable Weaving wasn’t trying to make it bad. Like he was out to sabotage the movie. It’s unspeakably bad. And utterly pointless.

The nicest thing to say about the Matrix Revolutions is Reeves, Moss, and Fishburne never embarrass themselves. Reeves and Moss get some saccharine sludge for material, and Fishburne’s got to act opposite Lennix and Leonard, but they make it through professionally. Ditto Mary Alice (replacing Foster), Lambert, Bernard White as a very special program, Gina Torres, and Collin Chou (maybe). Everyone else is bad and worse. And there’s no end to the worse.

Rupert Reid’s particularly annoying as Lennix’s sidekick, not just because he should’ve been there last time, but also because he manages to be even less charismatic than Lennix. You don’t want a performance less charismatic than Lennix’s. It’s a dangerous place.

Bad music from Don Davis.

Not bad editing from Zach Staenberg; he’s doing the best he can with insipid material.

In addition to being an insipid mishmash of action and sci-fi movie nods, kiddie pool depth philosophy, and bad acting, Revolutions is also a really boring version of that movie. Revolutions is bad, disappointing, and bored with itself.

The only bigger “Why?” than “Why watch Matrix Revolutions” is, “Why make Matrix Revolutions.”

At least be honest and call it The Matrix Contractual Obligations.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003, The Wachowskis)

I’m trying to think of something nice to say about The Matrix Reloaded. None of the returning good guys give bad performances? None of the leading returning good guys? Like, Gloria Foster’s back and, while she doesn’t give a bad performance, it’s an utterly charmless one heavily leveraging her charm in the last movie. But she’s gone from Black grandmother saving the future to… something else. The something else is a third act reveal without Foster’s participation, but the one scene she does get definitely changes the trajectory the first movie promised.

Reloaded takes place approximately six months after the first Matrix. In that amount of time, Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne have changed their outfits—Fishburne’s got a different leather jacket while Reeves goes with a cloth cassock. Carrie-Anne Moss still does the whole shiny leather thing. It might make for a great scene if they had any personality or character relationships. But there’s not a lot of character in Reloaded for the trio.

Other than Reeves and Moss being lovey-dovey and trying to find make-out time when they’re not busy saving the world. Or when people in the real world are begging Reeves to save their relatives from the Matrix. Or when they’re bringing alms to Reeves. Plus, Reeves is having dreams about Moss dying, which is how the movie starts—a lengthy action sequence with Moss falling to her death before Reeves wakes up scared and sad. He has other ominous dreams, which seem to be really happening, but he never acknowledges his prescience. Even when he and Foster talk around it.

All Fishburne gets in the character development arena is… ex-girlfriend Jada Pinkett Smith’s new boyfriend, Harry Lennox, is willing to destroy the future of humanity because he doesn’t like how Pinkett Smith used to like Fishburne. Pinkett Smith’s terrible, but Lennox is a whole other level of bad. He’d be comically bad if he weren’t actually ruining the scenes. Pinkett Smith doesn’t get enough to do to ruin them. Lennox does get enough and does ruin them.

Though the Wachowskis’ bewildering, seemingly ready for pan-and-scan composition doesn’t help. Maybe they were just bored with the political goings-on too. Lennox is the human resistance army commander and doesn’t think Reeves is the Matrix messiah, though it’s never clear why except to make Lennox more of a dick. The human settlement stuff is weird in a bad way. The only time the Wachowskis show any interest in it is when there’s a sex scene for Reeves and Moss (who apparently can’t do it on their ship because Fishburne and new crew member Harold Perrineau are around) intercut with a very sweaty dance party. Hundreds of scantily clad humans bumping and grinding. Only not the politicians who run the future settlement. Thankfully. Not sure I wanted to see Anthony Zerbe getting down with his shirt off, dripping in sweat from the subterranean heat.

Zerbe’s the council member who isn’t sure Reeves is magic but will risk it. There are some weird optics in having old white guy Zerbe bossing around all the Black people who do the work in the future city. The optics worsen when old white lady Robyn Nevin shows up and does the same thing. Because even though the council itself is diverse, it’s only those two people talking. Well, them and Cornel West, who’s a Black man, but he just parrots Niven and Zerbe. The entire subplot with the survivor city is terrible, even though it’s the de facto A plot since they’ve got thirty-six hours before the machines kill them all. Lennox wants all the ships protecting the city, but Fishburne and Reeves want to go up and into the Matrix. Specifically to see Foster, who drops some big truth bombs on Reeves, which he apparently never tells Fishburne about.

Do Reeves and Fishburne actually have any scenes together? Do they have any conversations before the epilogue? They’re around each other, they have an action scene or two in each other’s company, but they don’t have a character relationship. No time for that sort of thing in Reloaded.

The film’s a series of pseudo-intellectual monologues, seemingly divorced from the first film’s mythology—Matrix Reloaded owes more to TRON in that department than it does to its predecessor—and tedious, pointless action sequences.

Hugo Weaver comes back as a rogue agent—meaning the Matrix is after him too—who can self-replicate, so Reeves has to fight dozens of Weavers at a time for absolutely no narrative reason. The scenes just slow down the plot and create bad set pieces (Reloaded feels like three different sequel ideas glued together).

But those Weaver sequences manage to be more consequential than the eventual main plot for Reeves, which has him confronting one peculiar computer program after another. Including Lambert Wilson, who decided to affect a horny Frenchman for his Matrix avatar, much to wife Monica Bellucci’s displeasure. But Bellucci’s also got her issues.

Wilson’s got a gang of cyberpunk thugs who will fight Reeves and company. They’re not worth talking about, even though the Wachowskis try to make them more interesting by implying they started out as vampires and werewolves or some nonsense. It’s just terrible. Most of them are gone after the first too-long fight, with only Neil and Adrian Rayment sticking around for two set-pieces. I don’t want to get into the Rayments, who are terrible actors in terrible roles, but one could spend a lot of time on all the things bad about them. Maybe not even starting with them being white men with dreadlocks, but definitely getting to it.

So much lousy acting, whether Lennox, Pinkett Smith, Zerbe, Ian Bliss, the Rayments, Perrineau (who’s profoundly lacking in charisma just like his predecessor, Marcus Chong, in the last movie), Nona Gaye as Perrineau’s pointlessly overbearing wife, Collin Chou as Foster’s bodyguard (a computer program who needs to fight a man to see if they can be pals or some nonsense). Helmut Bakaitis has a singularly important part and is godawful.

It’s a terrible sequel, a terrible movie.

Even the returning crew from last time—cinematographer Bill Pope, composer Don Davis—who did excellent work there do bad work here. Pope can’t light for all the green-screened composite shots, and Davis’s score is bad.

Last thing—the CGI models for Reeves. He’s got some Superman-esque flying going on, and whenever he does it, there’s some terrible CGI head on the model.

Nothing the Wachowskis do in Reloaded works, but none of it seems like they care if it works either. It’s the pits.

Mystic River (2003, Clint Eastwood)

Mystic River is at all times a very American tragedy. Eastwood approaches it as such, both as director and composer (it’s Aaron Copland levels of romanticized, you eventually just have to go with it because Eastwood’s committed). But it’s also really just MacBeth in Bah-ston. A very, very cynical one. There’s not a single moment in Mystic River where a character doesn’t disappoint themselves, well, almost any single moment. At least, there’s never a single moment where a character doesn’t disappoint themselves or others. There; covered.

So it’s this “Bah-ston can be legitimate Americana too” crime tragedy mixed with an overwhelming sense of personal failure, starting from the first scene, which is a flashback to three tween boys playing street hockey in Boston of (late seventies) yore. Because they’ve been raised to unquestionably not challenge adult authority—or male bonding rituals—one of them ends up abducted and assaulted for four days before escaping. The other two friends go to see him when he gets home, but since he’s “damaged goods,” they fall off.

They grow up and become state police detective Kevin Bacon (state police means he’s not a Boston cop because they’re dumb), ex-con gone straight Sean Penn, and then there’s Tim Robbins, playing the abducted kid grown up. The only one of three who doesn’t have a real story is Bacon, who’s got some nonsense about his wife leaving him for a mystery reason and then calling him on the phone and not talking. I’ll spoil the stunt cast on the wife because it’s the film’s only completely obvious problem—Tori Davis isn’t good. Like. She can’t even convincingly hold a phone to her ear in close-up. It’s a thin subplot, so thin Bacon and partner Laurence Fishburne’s buddy cop antics are better and they’re incredibly muted for realism’s sake. Eastwood always positions Fishburne like he can walk off with the movie unless he’s boxed in (because Fishburne’s one of the natural protagonists; the film has many, just none of the three leads), only Bacon can’t hold up his end because his character’s thin. He doesn’t get to chomp away at his part like Penn or Robbins, who consume the film like it’s a whole chicken and they’re competing to see who can eat the most bones.

The three reunite over tragedy—someone murders Penn’s daughter, a just okay Emmy Rossum (Eastwood and Phyllis Huffman do a great job casting the film except for the kids—and the Wahlberg brother who can’t stop grinning like a jackass he’s in a real movie without his brother; the film at least needs to explain Robert Wahlberg’s goon is the comic psychopath one). The audience already knows Robbins saw her the night she died and then he came home really late covered in blood and told Marcia Gay Harden he beat up a mugger.

It hasn’t been an easy marriage for Harden and Robbins—though he’s a seemingly an outstanding dad to tween age son Cayden Boyd, something Harden doesn’t ever seem to acknowledge. If it turned out Boyd were a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf kid, it would actually make more sense. With no changes to the film whatsoever. But he can’t hold a job and he’s just, you know, “damaged goods.” The first act of the film, covering the ground situation after the initial tragedy… it’s kind of an indictment of the culture it’s presenting. Of the Americana. Eastwood and production designer Henry Bumstead don’t Catholic it up–there’s not even a priest in it—there’s religiosity and the importance of it in the character’s lives, but the only imagery is in Penn’s tattoos. It’s got to be broader than a specific denomination. More universal. Also, from the one church scene, you can tell Eastwood could give a shit. He lets kids be cute or whatever, but otherwise, he’s out of church faster than Homer Simpson.

Because Mystic River is all about the pace. It’s got to keep moving to stay ahead of the story rolling downhill faster and faster. Because another thing Eastwood and screenwriter Brian Helgeland do to keep the melodrama down is artificially constrain the amount of information presented to the audience. Characters have obtuse conversations so as not to spoil a surprise later. At one or two points, people read lists like they can’t possibly have skipped ahead to see the relevant information. And somehow, thanks to Eastwood’s pacing and the actors, they can get away with it. Right until the third act, River stays ahead of that story boulder.

It comes to a weird resolve, where they do a sequence juxtapose and Eastwood can only figure out one of them—though the other has the wanting youth performances—and then it turns out he figured out the wrong one; it wasn’t even the important one. Not really.

Then comes the initially cruel but then just the driest, most hopeless cynicism in the world and all of a sudden it works again. It’s an amazing last few minutes save from the film, leveraging the excellent pace, plus some great acting and intriguing reveals. Part of the artificial information constraint is to allow for secret after secret. Everyone in Mystic River lies. Almost everyone in Mystic River is easily manipulated. Eastwood and Helgeland find the mundane tragedies of people who seemingly have spectacular ones. Without every losing their pace.

There are stumbles, but the pace is always great.

Best acting is Tim Robbins, then Sean Penn. It’s the script’s fault; Robbins just gets better material. They cast for obvious because most of the actors are playing caricatures; it might’ve been better if they’d mixed it up, who knows. Then it’s Marcia Gay Harden and Laurence Fishburne, with Kevin Bacon coming in sixth. He’s excellent—but being excellent isn’t enough and Fishburne’s actually got less than even Bacon and does more. Laura Linney’s also great but she’s not on the list because she never get to run a scene. Ditto uncredited guest stars Eli Wallach, who’s awesome, and Kevin Conway, who’s real good but not awesome. Wallach is one of the two times Mystic River lets itself have any fun (the John Carpenter’s Vampires nod doesn’t count because it’s not fun it’s heartbreaking); the other time is this hilarious joke Penn thug buddy #1 (Kevin Chapman) tells. Chapman and thug buddy #2 Adam Nelson are both fine. Grinner Wahlberg makes three. He’s not fine.

Mixing up the leads, not revealing too much to the audience, not wasting time intentionally misleading the audience, there are a lot of places where Mystic needs some tinkering but it’s still really damn good.

The acting—and Eastwood’s emphasis on the acting—is glorious. Mystic misses its mark, but it’s an often magnificent try.

Overnight (2003, Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana)

Overnight is occasionally amusing, often mortifying, never contextualized enough to be interesting, and always compelling. But it’s compelling only if you’re somewhat familiar with the subject of the film, Troy Duffy. Specifically, Duffy’s directorial debut, The Boondock Saints. In 1997, Harvey Weinstein bought the script for Duffy to direct at Miramax and less than a year later put the project in turnaround. Why? It’s unclear. But apparently Duffy pissed off Miramax exec Meryl Poster so much, Weinstein dropped it. How did Duffy pissed off Poster? Unclear. There’s no interviews with anyone like Poster in the film, much less Weinstein. The one person besides Duffy who badmouths him does so with a pixelated face and the producer who actually worked for Miramax on the project has voice distortion.

The documentary, made by Duffy’s band’s co-managers—oh, yeah, Duffy also had a band, which is apparently shitty. There’s none of their music in Overnight (and no clips from Boondock). So if you haven’t heard the music, if you haven’t seen the movie, you’re not going to get the full effect of the documentary because directors Smith and Montona just don’t have the right material to tell the story. It’s also not compelling unless you want to see jackass Duffy show the full shallowness of his humanity. It’s like a puddle with some old dog poop in it.

And Overnight is eighty minutes of it.

The first people Duffy turns on—so his band and ostensibly the documentary makers are all part of his crew. They’re going to take Hollywood by storm. There are multiple scenes where Duffy talks about leading the greatest group of creatives in history because he’s got his younger brother and the two guys in the band and the documentary makers slash band managers. Only once the band signs a deal, they fire the managers. There’s a long scene of Duffy and his brother berating the band mangers (you know, the guys who made Overnight) and telling them they will never get paid. Ever.

Then the movie keeps going. The movie they’re making. So even though there was this falling out, they didn’t fall out. There’s maybe less footage going forward but there’s also less story, just Duffy self-destructing more and their album sucking. Eventually Duffy will fall out with everyone and the movie ends on an upbeat note about how he didn’t get any money from the movie’s eventual video success because his agency screwed up his contracted.

Duffy’s got this conspiracy theory about how Harvey Weinstein is influencing his agency to give him bad deals when really it seems like the agency (William Morris) put an absolute tool (Jim Crabbe) in charge of Duffy’s account. Like, no one comes out of Overnight looking good. At best you’re just a dope. Even co-director Montana, who eventually contributes a lot of onscreen interviews, looks bad. Smith, the other one, he’s somewhat sympathetic still. But the guys in the band are dicks. Jake Busey is a pig. But it really does seem like, from the movie, Crabbe screwed everything up somehow.

Except what really happened was Duffy went out drinking with obviously Miramax would’ve used it as an Ewan McGregor vehicle Ewan McGregor and got in a fight about how Duffy supported the death penalty and people who don’t suck. Like McGregor. Not in the movie. At all. But apparently it’s directly responsible for Miramax dumping the project.

Anyway.

Overnight is adequately executed rubbernecking and nothing else. Kind of good music though—from Jack Livesey and Peter Nashel. It’s better than it needs to be.

Sleeper: Season One (2003-04)

Sleeper Season One 2009

Some of Sleeper doesn’t age well. There’s a whole plot line about the secret society running the world and, in 2020, it seems like a very dated trope. To be fair, it was dated in 2003 when Sleeper came out, but writer Ed Brubaker was at least utilizing the trope to sabotage it. There’s also the lack of Internet-backed technology in the futuristic setting, which was apparently where what all futurism somehow missed. And when they try to mainstream the book in the last few issues, brightening up Sean Phillips’s blacks, slimming his lines, it’s a mistake. Ditto going from the handwriting font for the protagonist’s narration to a really slick italicized font. Doesn’t read well in the context of a collection; there ought to be a footnote about how they were desperate to save the book from cancellation.

I’d also forgotten the book takes place in the Wildstorm universe, featuring TV news cameos from The Authority; Brubaker does a great job of not making those connections matter much, outside providing an established universe with super-powered good guys and bad guys. The crossover character is Machiavellian crime boss Tao (created by the Original Writer himself!), which doesn’t come up much throughout and even when Tao’s giving his origin story it’s barely a footnote.

Origin stories are a big deal in Sleeper, something the protagonist, Holden Carver—good guy spy turned double agent, posing as a bad guy super-powered spy for Tao’s organization—and his colleagues do when they’re bored. The villains sit around and tell their stories. Except it’s only for the newbs and Holden hangs out with the seasoned veterans so it takes a while to coax their origins out of them, whether it’s Holden’s best bud, Genocide Jones, or his lady friend, Miss Misery.

Where Sleeper doesn’t age—can’t age—is in Brubaker’s plotting of the series, which spends the first nine or so issues with a two steps forward, one step back approach to revealing Holden’s story. We don’t find out how exactly he got roped into the super secret mission—and we still don’t know how his handler, Lynch, got put into a coma right before the series started. Issues take place weeks apart, sometimes following up on the previous issues’ cliffhangers and finales, sometimes not. Brubaker and Phillips end each issue for effect, sometimes dramatic, sometimes tragic. So it really burns when the narration lettering gets cheesy at the end, just as Holden’s having some big moments of revelation. You want the personality of the character in those passages, not feeling like you’re being handled so DC can try to sell the book to its stupider readers.

Sorry, it’s been sixteen years but I’m still not okay with how badly they bungled this series.

The first issue does a fine job establishing Holden and some of the world, enough about his mission, enough about Tao’s villainous organization, but focuses on Holden’s friendship with Genocide. Genocide’s an indestructible big lug thug. After Holden starts sleeping with Miss Misery—a chainsmoker who needs to inflict pain or damage in order to live, literally—Genocide’s the only one he can tell about it because Holden shouldn’t be sleeping with his coworkers. Especially not when she’s an occasional squeeze to Tao and Tao’s right hand man, Peter Grimm, mad crushes on her and already hates Holden.

Holden’s basically indestructible, thanks to an interdimensional artifact. His body heals, but builds up a charge of pain energy (he doesn’t feel physical sensations anymore, unless there’s some kind of pleasure and pain mix, which makes him perfect for Miss Misery). He zaps people with the pain energy; it can be lethal. Otherwise he shoots people a lot. There’s a lot of shooting in Sleeper. It’s not the most exciting visual (at some point you wonder how Phillips is still ginning up the enthusiasm for the action sequences, given none of the main characters is actually capable of being hurt).

The book starts getting really good in the last third, after the illuminati subplot, as it becomes clear just how much Holden is breaking down undercover and what’s going to happen when a lifeline appears. He’s got to question whether the lifeline’s real, but then the further question becomes… is it better or worse if the lifeline’s real. Has Holden crossed the line in his undercover operation. Sure, Genocide Jones and Miss Misery are far from the worst compatriots in a hive of scum and villainy—Genocide’s likable and even sympathetic, while Miss Misery gets the very odd combination of female tragedy and male gaze (even if it’s arty Phillips male gaze… there’s a lot of it in the comic)—but what does it say about Holden.

Brubaker’s character development work on Holden is somewhat ramshackle, thanks to the fractured timeline and narration, but once he reveals himself to be something of a softy, it’s not at all unexpected. Or unwelcome. A little sincerity goes a long way in Sleeper, which is effective, engaging, excellently executed (enough Es), but definitely feels like commercial product. Brubaker’s scripts reward the reader’s attention without ever dragging things out too long. Holden’s narration cushions the plot twists and reveals, with Phillips art capturing what usually ends up being sadness in the moment. He’s really good at tragedy and desperation. Less so the super-powered gun fights or the occasional superhero fights. They’re not bad in any sense, but they’re not where Phillips excels in the book. You can tell he’s not interested in them. The supervillain outfits, for example, get a good setup panel and then otherwise seem like a chore.

But there’s a lot for Phillips to draw in this book and it’s impressive how well he gets through it all. Like, he’s got to be doing supervillains and superheroes one panel and then Disneyland two panels later. It’s seriously globe-trotting, which isn’t always great as far as the character development goes but… delayed gratification on that front. Brubaker and Phillips don’t work to make Holden a sympathetic protagonist even after things start falling apart. He’s presented matter-of-factly, which probably hurt the book’s commercial potential to some degree. Though who knows. If the last sixteen years of DC Comics has revealed anything, it’s they actually didn’t have a chance with their dedicated reader base.

Sleeper was also one of the first comics to do the “Season One” thing, even though it wasn’t intentional… they had to try for a new number one to get the series some interest because trying to force good comics to become hits is difficult. The “season” ends on an interesting narrative note for what’s to come for sure, even if the thinner Phillips line work and the gaudy lettering leaves it in a visually far less interesting spot than it started.

Did it read better month-to-month back in 2003 and 2004? Probably. But it holds up rather well, especially given the many aforementioned caveats….

Like, I think there’s at least a boob every issue, which makes you wonder if it was an editorial mandate… did DC have data on how many copies they sold based on bare boobs? And while they’re sometimes arty boobs—Phillips is classically trained, after all—sometimes they’re just boobs for boobs sake, maybe three lines. It gets to be an eye-roll after a while.

Though… it’s not like there’s much characterization to the (two) female characters in the comic, which maybe you can get away with because it’s Holden’s perspective and all, but them both being exhibitionists is a little weird. No fetish shaming just… what are the odds. Are there odds? Do female espionage agents prefer exhibitionism? It, like an apology for that second lettering font, needs a footnote at least.

Timeline (2003, Richard Donner)

Timeline is really bad. The opening sequence starts Donner regular Steve Kahan in a terrible bit part but at least there’s the stunt casting; the rest of the poorly edited sequence has ER doctors and anonymous law enforcement looking into the mysterious death of a man who appeared in the middle of the highway for Kahan to almost hit. Of course, we the viewers know he’s somehow travelled through time because we see a knight on horseback about chop him down before cutting to Kahan in the desert.

That opening shot of the knight cutting down the time traveller should be a trailer shot, should have some kind of major visceral impact… it’s got squat. The shot’s boringly composed—somehow Donner manages to suck all the life out of his wide Panavision frame, ably assisted—unfortunately—by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, who’s never got any interesting or thoughtful lighting. Timeline looks boring, with its “renaissance village at a Six Flags” not even a Medieval Times, much less renaissance faire production design or the laughably bad costumes. The knights all look like they belong on a White Castle commercial and the time traveling heroes look like they’re trying to prove cosplay can be macho. Gerard Butler’s outfit is something else.

Though Butler is something else too. Donner apparently gave Butler two directions—make it more Scottish and play it like 80s Mel Gibson. Shirt off, hair wild, soulfully love the ladies (in this case, Anna Friel, who manages to be the only person outside Billy Connolly, who’s exempt, not to embarrass or humiliate themselves it some point during Timeline).

See, Timeline, which is about locable eccentric old archeologist Connolly going back in time through Michael Crichton-stereotype modern megalomaniacal rich recluse scientist David Thewlis’s time machine. Only he gets stuck back in time and so his team—Butler, Frances O’Connor, plus Connolly’s son, bro Paul Walker, who’s around the dig site because he’s got the hots for O’Connor and trying to tempt her away from her work to apparently quit her job and marry him and pump out babies. O’Connor’s real bad in Timeline, which sucks because O’Connor’s great, and it’s not all Donner’s fault, it’s not all the script’s fault—okay, a lot of it’s both Donner and the script’s fault, like, wow, terrible character. But O’Connor’s still bad. She’s not as bad as Walker, but she’s close, although bad in an entirely different way. If the film embraced its spoof potential—bro Walker going back in time to save his dad, Indiana Jones wannabe Butler, the silly battles, Thewlis’s mad scientist–it might’ve been… good. I was going to say amusing, but I really think about the only way you could make Timeline work is to do it as a comedy of itself. Albeit with a different script, cast, director, composer, cinematographer, production designer, and costume designer. Anna Friel and Billy Connolly can stay too if they want, Friel because she’s got the ability to—if not rise above—at lease not drown. Connolly because it’s Billy Connolly, who cares if he’s any good.

At the beginning, when Connolly’s lecturing, for a moment I thought he got the part because it was going to be “Head of the Class,” which too might’ve saved Timeline, if it were actually a “Head of the Class” spin-off. But no, then Butler’s Scottish burr dominates and it seems like it’s been dubbed it’s so over the top and you don’t realize yet what you’re in for with Butler. Even when Butler’s not particularly bad he’s disappointing because of how the film positions him. It keeps giving him chances to “breakout” and Butler never takes them. O’Connor seems to understand what a mistake she’s making, Walker can’t be bothered to care, they literally have him bro-hugging fifteenth century knights and whatnot, everyone else seems to at least get they’re in trouble. But Butler keeps it together throughout. He’s a trooper.

Who gives a risible performance.

Some spectacularly bad acting from Matt Craven and Ethan Embry. Neal McDonough is quite bad. He’s the ex-Marine security guy who takes the dreamy nerds back in time and immediately loses his cool and they have to compensate. Michael Sheen’s the evil English lord. He’s bad. He’s funny but he’s bad. Sheen might get to stay for the spoof, but only if his already hilariously big armor gets bigger.

Marton Csokas is the evil guard with a secret who becomes everyone’s nemesis at one point or another. He’s awful. He and Butler’s big fight scene actually gets put on pause—with the guys passing out stunned—so the movie can catch up with Walker and O’Connor, who get paired together for a third act mission where Walker’s got to trust the smart woman and it turns out to be a bad idea because she’s just an emotional silly. Truly bad part for O’Connor, can’t emphasis it enough. Especially for 2003 or whatever. There are better female parts in male-targeted medieval action movies from the 1950s and 1960s. I’m not sure how many because it’s not a good genre, but there are at least a few. Because it’s really bad for O’Connor here.

It doesn’t help she and Walker’s romantic chemistry is at the visibly uncomfortably disinterested miscasting error level. Though Butler and Friel’s rapport isn’t much better. It’s just not as bad in such bad ways.

There is one “must be seen to be believed” sequence in Timeline. When they travel back in time, for about fifteen seconds all the actors have to make faces to show brief, unimaginably intense pain. It’s horrible but wonderfully so.

Otherwise… I mean, I knew better than to watch Timeline. It’s on me. But did those involved in its production also now better than to be involved with it; most of the experience of watching Timeline is wondering who the hell thought this something or that something was a good idea when said somethings are so obviously terrible.

Batman: Dead End (2003, Sandy Collora)

Batman: Dead End goes far in validating the idea of cosplay as successful costuming for film—well, not Andrew Koenig’s Joker—but definitely the Batman outfit. Costume designer Michael MacFarlane, cinematographer Vincent E. Toto, and director Collora do figure out a way to do a “comics accurate” (if you’re reading comics illustrated by Alex Ross) Batman costume.

Shame about Collora’s dialogue, Clark Bartram’s less than impressive performance as Batman, Koenig’s performance and appearance, and the bland fight choreography. Dead End ends up being a find proof-of-concept for a Batman vs. Predator vs. Aliens project once Disney buys DC Comics and Warner Bros., but the “first act” (it’s not even six minutes, with two minutes of end credits to beef up the runtime), which has lots of comic-inspired imagery with Batman, shows why it’s not a great idea to use that imagery on film.

At least, not when you’re on a low budget and your music is cribbed together from Alien³, Predator, and Danny Elfman Batman.

Also the radio news reports of Joker’s escape are way too pedestrian. Dead End looks really good with the Batman, the Predators, the Aliens (not the Koenig Jokers), but it’s just the costumes and the photography. Otherwise, it’s not a successful production. Even Toto’s cinematography has its limits. He’s able to shoot the costumes, but when Collora tries to do a showy establishing shot—there’s a particularly bad one of Batman’s cape “oozing” as Bartram stands up from a jump—Toto can’t make it work. He’s not a miracle worker.

If it were a bunch of great fight scenes, Dead End would at least be entertaining. It ends about two minutes after it starts feeling really silly and the long end credits are a relief.

But, hey, good costuming.