Lady in the Water

(big sigh) It's very difficult for me to write this review as I am being pulled from so many different directions: I love M. Night Shyamalan, I love stories that explore faith and ordinary people rising to do extraordinary things, I love movies about the supernatural, I hate movies that deny the audience a discovery of the supernatural, I hate clumsy directing and sub-par writing, I hate unneccessary monsters. This movie meets all of these criteria to create a sort of balancing act that leaves me a bit confused. I'll probably need to see it again. The sad thing is, I think I'll be the only one to see it twice.

Here's the plot (I'm not giving anything away, because this is explained in the first five minutes of the movie using cheesy hieroglyphic pictogram thingies). There was once a time when people lived in a magic land uner the sea, people left the sea and became man as we know us today, with problems and wars and such. Now the people who remained in the water (or narfs) come to us on big eagles and provide inspiration to whoever will be their vessel. The narfs are always being hunted by the scrunts, essentially big wolves with grass camo, for no explained reason except the pure evilness of it. The buddhist-like balance of the war between scrunts and narfs is maintained by the Tarturic, three monkey-looking things also complete with grass camo. They uphold rules that the scrunts and narfs must follow.

(Deep breath) So, one particular narf comes to Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) the superintendant of a Philadelphia apartment complex. And he must help her return to her world. All of the characters discover that they are a part of a bedtime story, and that they must each use their individual talents and skills to help engineer a happy ending.

Reading a movie's plot on paper is usually not an accurate experience. However, in this case, it pretty much is because Lady in the Water is almost entirely explanatory. The whole plot is one long explanation of "how things work" and there is very little style to add legitemacy to such an involved plot. This is my main complaint and I will come back to it later in detail. But first, some nice words:

Lady in the Water has some promising elements. Ever-solid Paul Giamatti delivers an excellent performance as the stuttering superintendant with a heart of gold. Bryce Dallas Howard is again dreamily beautiful as the leading lady. The rest of the cast (including Shyamalan himself) does a fair job of acting their parts. Bob Balaban is well-cast as a cynical movie critic. His incorporation into the plot is an obvious statement about the way Shyamalan must feel about such people (more on him later). The photography is really good thanks to Shyamalan's own visual flair and cinematographer Christopher Doyle (who rules. His other credits include visual masterpieces such as In the Mood for Love and Hero). The plot (while being the root of all of the film's problems) is certainly original. The plot began as a bedtime story that Shyamalan told his children, but unfortunately as evidenced in movies like The Polar Express the wonder of children's stories don't always translate to film very well.

Thematically, the film is fascinating. As a Christian, I love any filmmaker willing to explore the hugely important elements of faith, the longing for the supernatural, and ultimately, God. Lady in the Water is a largely symbolic film that deals quite intentionally with faith, mortality, and the importance of being united in faith. Shyamalan (not a Christian) is a better vessel of spiritual truth than many preachers I've heard, and his themes are not to be ignored. This film still maintains Shyamalan's place in my head as one of the top people I'd like to meet. There are several beautiful scenes in the movie that touched me on a deeper level than my desire to be entertained. Bob Balaban's character is a wonderfully accurate representation of the psyche of modernity, and many of the situations the characters find themselves in parallel my own struggles with faith in my own life. Wonderful ideas, it's too bad that the execution of these thoughts from a film perspective are in the end, clumsy and imbalanced.

Here's a general movie rule that I have yet to be proven wrong by: any plot, no matter how simple or complex can be believable if the director devotes time and creativity to the presentation of it. In the case of the supernatural world/ordinary world collision plot, an element of DISCOVERY is absolutely essential. Movies like this need a couple of unexplained "what the #*&@?" scenes to draw the audience into the plot. The Matrix is a classic example. The movie has a complicated plot that needs a lengthy explanation. However, the first half of that movie is left entirely unexplained, allowing the audience to discover the truth along with the main character. Mystery is a huge factor in a fantasy/sci-fi movie's believability. Because these movies are completely unbelievable, you need a character in the movie who is (like you) saying "I can't believe this is happening". Shyamalan has done this impeccably in the past with all of his other movies, but in this movie, he neglects this story element altogether. It should be said that Lady in the Water is not a story about discovery, it is a story about what to do after discovery has occured. One could contrast this movie with one of Shyamalan's own past films, Unbreakable, a story entirely about the discovery of something supernatural that ends with the acceptance of it. In a way Lady in the Water picks up right where Unbreakable left off. The characters bypass all disbelief and go straight to the "what do we do about it" phase.

It is hard to criticize Shyamalan, because he does exactly what he wants to do with a movie without letting marketing or outside influence get involved. His movies turn out exactly the way he wants them to. Unfortunately, his intention here is not at all compelling. He explains away at things best shrouded in mystery and leaves no explanation to more important questions such as "grassmonkeys?!?! what the...?" If you've seen the movie you know what I mean, otherwise I'll leave you to wonder. I hope this review doesn't turn potential viewers away, as I'll need several other opinions to organize my own conflicted thoughts on this film.

A Scanner Darkly - One head trip you might be glad you took - B+



Richard Linklater's approach to Phillip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly succeeds more in its style than in its script. Let's face it, the movie would not have been very interesting if it wasn't for the animated rotoscoping. The problem of forming an opinion on this movie is the choice between treating the animation as either mere spectacle or an integral part of the film. We live in a day and age where special effects can do much to enhance a film, but what Linklater has done is use stylistic effects to better draw the audience into the experience of the characters. Because this is a movie about drug addiction this is not always pleasant, but it is important to appreciate Linklater's execution of a unique vision for storytelling.

The plot isn't too difficult to follow. It's not cut-and-dried, but anyone who has muddled through Donnie Darko will be able to handle it. Set in a near-future world where 20% of the country is addicted to a deadly drug, it's the story of an undercover cop/drug addict whose identity (hidden by a totally cool "scramble suit") is unkown to even his fellow agents. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is assigned to spy on his junkie friends and his own alter ego via holographic "scanners" (high-tech recording equipment) placed in his home. As Bob sinks deeper into his addiction he develops a split personality which accounts for all sorts of existential confusions along Darkly's trippy plot.

Linklater lightens up the seriousness of the movie with his colorful cast including Woody Harrelson, Robert Downy Jr. and Rory Cochrane as Reeve's druggie housemates. Their paranoid banter is very entertaining and depressing at the same time. Reeves does alright. It's certainly the first time I could ever describe Reeves as animated (<-- joke). Anyway, the supporting cast lightens the mood near the beginning, and then the story gets darker and more intense as things go on. There is some graphic (literally!) sexuality and nudity that lends raw and seedy feeling. Linklater is intentional about making the world of Scanner dirty and unpleasant. The end result is a semi-disturbing movie that is often not fun to watch, despite the animation.

Ahh yes the animation. Anyone who's seen Waking Life will be familiar with the technique. It's a rotoscoping (or "cutting out") technique that allows an animated effect to be applied to the characters. The result is like a moving comic book or a fluid watercolor. The animation is a lot better than in Waking Life, and It's fun to watch for a while. After about forty minutes it becomes sensually draining. The cerebral feeling of disconnectedness plays an important part in the overall effect of the story. Linklater doesn't want to just show you a film about drug addiction, he wants you to feel what it's like. There are a couple of scenes in which the animation works beautifully with the theme, creating an atmosphere of disconnected familiarity. I enjoyed it as a visual metaphor, a representation of the feeling of being a stranger in a world that we should feel at home in, but doesn't.

The themes in Scanner go deeper than "Just Say No". The story explores why people choose drug addiction and how simple law enforcement cannot win a war against drugs. The only inconsistency in the movie seems to be Dick vs. Linklater. Linklater's directing is lighthearted without forefitting thematic depth. Phillip K. Dick's story is dark and cynical. There are points in the movie when the two influences seem to collide. Is this supposed to be comedic or dark? The duality could be intentional, and I personally found it fun at times.

In the end, A Scanner Darkly is worth seeing; if anything it's just pretty to look at, but there is food for thought along with the eye candy, and real people behind the animation.

Now it's time for a Wilgus Movie Reviews special issue in which we flash back to movies that should've been good, but royally sucked.



Daredevil

Let me begin by saying that I absolutely love Daredevil. His is one of the most imaginative and inventive characters ever to grace the pages of a comic book. Comic artist Frank Miller took the hero to new heights in his famous series of Daredevil and Elektra comics. The story is of one Matthew Murdock, a son of a boxer street kid who loses his sight from an accident involving strange chemicals poured over his eyes in a car accident. The chemicals do, however, enhance every other sense in his body, particularly his hearing so that his reflexes and senses are even better than before. His father, old and down on his luck, falls in with a bad crowd of gangsters working for the notorious crime-lord, the Kingpin, and ends up crossing them by winning a match that was supposed to be fixed against him. He is murdered by the Kingpin’s cronies and young Matt swears vengeance, and when he fills out, he dons a dark red suit and mask and goes by the moniker, Daredevil. By day, however, he is a criminal justice lawyer, taking on only innocent clients. A cool, not overly clichéd hero story such as this deserves a great movie. Unfortunately we didn’t get one.
It is too easy to say that Ben Affleck's sloppy acting ruined the film. To be fair, however, Ben wasn’t the one that ruined the film. It was acclaimed director Mark Steven Johnson. Yes, the one and only. This was his directorial debut although he wrote Grumpy Old Men, Simon Birch and did the story for the wildly successful Jack Frost with Michael Keaton in which the former Batman icon almost dies and is transformed into a disturbing CG rendition of a snowman. Whatever got into his head to take on a superhero film, particularly one as grittily beautiful as Daredevil, is beyond me.
Mr. Johnson begins with a cool element. A dark New York skyline, and a wounded Murdock in costume stumbling into a beautiful Catholic Church building. The tones are dark and gothic, with dark maroon digital grading, really cool. The entire movie, however, ends up being a flashback, which is annoying because there is little tension if you know that at some point the film is going to pick up again where it left off at the beginning. But I was ready to forgive, I was just happy to see Daredevil in his slick dark red action suit clutching his multi-purpose Billy Club, but then we go from the flashback to YET ANOTHER FLASHBACK through which we see Daredevil’s origin. The origin story went pretty much as afore stated. The only weird thing was that in this version, the young Matt never meets Stick, his mysterious and totally cool blind mentor. He just kind of makes himself into a little black belt and uses his all-too-perfect, highly choreographed moves to beat up on neighborhood bullies. This is the first real point in the movie where we catch a glimpse of the true lameness of this movie’s fight scenes. Here Matt does this Matrix move kind of thing where he runs up a wall and flips backwards off of it. This is where our hero, sadly, begins to look like a Neo wannabe. The movie doesn’t really start to suck until later on, though when he surfaces from the second flashback into the first flashback and meets Elektra, an overly sexy femme-fetal heiress, everything a shallow male wants in a girlfriend. Jennifer Garner’s entrance into the film seems to bring with it an overwhelming wave of idiocy with her contrived lines and macho attitude. Also this is where Ben Affleck really starts to go sour on us. His tongue-in-cheek attitude is simply NOT becoming of the Bruce Wayne-esque Matt Murdock.

The film’s first major fight scene is where the silliness begins. Murdock, who upon “seeing” the girl (he actually kind of smells and senses her aura; she could be like 300 pounds for all he knows) tries to get her to tell him her name. She doesn’t want to and he follows her out back to a vacant playground where they (I kid you not) take off their jackets and proceed to go all kung fu on each other for no particular reason IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLAYGROUND. I present to Mr. Johnson, comic book class 101: Q. how do superheroes keep their secret identity? A. They blend in with the millions of people in the city by pretending to be mild mannered. THEY DO NOT FIGHT IN PLAYGROUNDS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. Only when they change into their tights and latex do they start breaking out the kung-fu. Not here. Certainly not in broad daylight in front of thirty schoolchildren. I kept wondering why they were even fighting in the first place. There is no explanation.



Oh yeah, the villains. Colin Farrel plays Bullseye, an assassin who can turn pretty much anything into a dart or projectile of some sort, and Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin. Duncan actually does a pretty good job and doesn’t make his character look like some gangsta’. Farrel doesn’t do well at all. He fails to make his character interesting or menacing in any way. His character is always a downer to any potential coolness. His lines show just how bad the writing is.

Kingpin: "How do you kill a man without fear?"
Bullseye: "By puttin' the fear in him." Kingpin: "Ummm...okay. Or you could just throw some sharp crap at him and make him bleed to death"
Bullseye: "Yeah, yeah, that'd work, too. Hey check out my brand! Got it when I was pledging at St. Mary's"

ok ok so that's not exactly how the scene went, but given the dialogue, it darn well should've.

Bullseye's costume is really hideous. He’s got a dark Matrix-like jacket and this target shape BRANDED INTO HIS HEAD. No wonder he’s a bad guy, you just can’t be a good guy with that thing in the middle of yer head. They never really explained the gigantic and obviously painful indentions in his forehead. I kind of felt bad for him, really. Police wouldn’t have much trouble identifying him with that big bull’s eye on his noggin (except that he fools them by wearing a TOBOGGAN! How perplexing!). Apparently, Johnson thought that if Bullseye kills every guard or bystander he sees then we’ll be convinced that he’s bad. Oh we get it, Mark. He’s bad. Admittedly this is kind of what Bullseye does in the comics but Mr. Johnson does a remarkable job at making it look goofy.



The real disappointment comes as the story heats up. The action scenes are poor. They look like a stunt show. I could almost see the wires and mats. Daredevil seems to fly between buildings instead of jumping, and things get kind of sketchy. Bullseye kills Elektra’s dad and makes it look like Daredevil did it. She swears vengeance and goes after him while falling in love with his alter ego, Matt Murdock. She is in for a shock and after a fight with daredevil finds out that they are one and the same. She doesn’t have much time to think about it ‘cause that Bullseye guy comes in and kills her (best part of the movie). Anyway, Daredevil and Bullseye battle the hell out of each other all the way into the church building from the beginning in a brilliant display of cheesy Matrix-like stunts and sub-par fighting. My favorite is when Bullseye picks up a dozen shards of glass and hurls them at Daredevil who evades them by doing like two slow motion back flips. Maybe Bullseye just sucks. “Oh, man, he was MOVING, dangit!!” At the end Daredevil does something to Bullseye’s hands which pisses him off ‘cause he won’t be able to throw a dart again, and then he stands arms outstretched like a crucifix and Daredevil kicks him off the building and he falls to his death. Johnson was obviously trying to make Bullseye look like Jesus for some reason, but I don’t understand the symbolism there or any correlation between the Son of God and this lame excuse for a bad guy. Maybe it was Johnson’s weak attempt at hatin’ on some Christians, but it falls flat, looks silly and that’s when I wanted the movie to be over. No. Then Daredevil has to beat the crap out of The Kingpin in an equally lame trying-to-be-stylish fight scene with water everywhere. Then it’s over. Man I was happy to be done with that crap. Johnson, I hope you’re happy. You’ve had your way with one of the Marvel greats and now just leave us alone, please!

Pirates of the Caribbean 2
Dead Man's Chest B-

As a 5-year old kid, my favorite movie was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the scene when the giant squid attacks the submarine has long been one of my favorite cinematic sequences. Naturally, I was pretty excited about seeing another massive squid attack a crew of ill-fated seamen, and I was not disappointed. The squid scenes were nothing short of riveting, bringing fresh realism and motion to the iconic images of a mythological beast terrorizing sailors. It was freaking cool, the squid was worth 8 bucks to me. If big squids are worth that much to you too, then you'll love this movie. If you're looking for dull thespian pursuits like "plot" or "acting" then this ain't the ride for you, savvy?

Dead Man's Chest is the Empire Strikes Back of the Pirates saga (a third has already been filmed). For some reason, the film is a good deal darker. The inherent fun of a Pirate movie is not reveled in as much as in the last one. This is more of a dark fantasy epic with heroes and villains and monsters and magic. Johnny Depp is still good as Jack Sparrow, but for some reason, he doesn't seem to want to work it as much. His character is a lot more haunted this time around, and he's definitely a lot more despicable than noble. In the last movie he kind of had this balance between looking out for himself and loyalty to the heroes. In this movie he's all in it for himself which could've been funny, but instead it makes Jack seem selfish and unlikable. His redemption is a plot point at the end, but it seems a bit anticlimactic somehow.

Keira Knightly is same old same old, as trite tough-girl Elizabeth Swann. Boring! Orlando Bloom plays the same dull boy scout hero. Boring! Bill Nighy as a computer generated evil octopus man...freaking awesome! Nighy's Davey Jones is one of the coolest special effects projects ever undertaken. Having already stated my love for tentacled sea creatures, a villian with tentacles for a beard is too cool. Nighy's voice is perfect and you can just see his face under the CG tentacles. Nighy's Jones ends up being just as much fun as Geoffrey Rush's Captain Barbosa in the first film. His crew of mutated sea animal sailors are also fun to watch. The only disappointment with these great characters is an anticlimactic entrance. I loved the revelation sequence in the first movie when you find out that the pirates are actually cursed skeleton pirates. There was a good buildup of tension and a great "holy @#*&!" moment as Rush steps into the moonlight and becomes a skeleton. There is none of that in this movie. The mollusk encrusted crew just kind of appear and Bloom fights them off with his typical annoying warrior-kid attitude without a shred of disbelief or surprise that he just got jumped by twenty grotesque supernatural beings with shark heads and lobster pinchers and stuff. Well, whatever, they look cool.

My biggest complaint with Pirates 2 is that it's not really a movie with a beginning and an end. "It's all middle" has been the biggest indictment. While there's no rule against it, this is not a stylistic move befitting of the Erol Flynn-esque throwback that the first Pirates movie was. The franchise has gone the way of Star Wars and The Matrix, lots of characters, lots of special effects, lots of plotlines = no real conclusion, just an appetizer for the next movie. Verbinski has indicated that things will wrap up for good in the next movie, but wouldn't it be smarter to make these movies episodic and not epic? That way you could have more of them, keep the Erol Flynn matinee serial thing going and not be pressed to "wrap up" everything.

All in all, Pirates 2 is a little bizarre. To go into that statement might give away some major plot twists, but if you've seen it, you know what I mean. The plot is winding and sketchy, and kind of leaves you going "so what are they doing?" There is absolutely no conclusion, by the way. It's a bit of a sour ending that leaves our heroes in bad (mostly self-inflicted ) states. Kinda' weird, and the closing scene reveals a shocking revelation that caps all the weirdness. In the end, Pirates 2 is a bloody thrill ride, and that's about it. Even at 2 hrs. 45 min, it never loses steam, just be ready for a not-so-satisfying plot, confusions of loyalty and a weird ending.

SUPERMAN RETURNS! The Best Summer Movie so far!

Bryan Singer has landed with his career in his hand. The man has finally found his niche. After directing two fair but imbalanced X-Men films (which you can't really blame him for, the X-Men themselves being an imbalanced concept), Singer's time has come. His direction of a film about the most iconic character of all time, the one and only Superman, is a brilliant acievement.

Truth be told, the 90s was a hard decade for Supes with the advent of a darker side of pop culture, one that traded tights and a cape for black leather jackets and knives protruding from hands. The popularity of darker heroes like Batman and Wolverine left "brighter" heroes like Spiderman and Superman on the back burner. Superman scripts were thrown around all over the place with names like J.J. Abrams and Josh Hartnett attached to them, each one either heretical (one involved a non-exploded Planet Krypton) or too "updated". Many people saw films like "The Matrix" as Superman for the next generation, that a more complicated world required more complicated heroes leaving such quaint notions of good and evil behind in favor of a hero who blends the two, that a righteous avenger of truth and justice would no longer be necessary.

Singer says "of course we need superman, aren't we crying out for him?"

What Singer has done is make a movie dealing with this very concept. Rather than doing "Superman Begins", Singer's film is a continuation of the Superman story that has the Man of Steel returning to Earth after a 5-year absence in which Superman leaves to find the remains of his home planet. He returns to a world that has moved on. Lois is engaged with a kid, and has just won a Pulitzer prize for an article entitled "why the world doesn't need Superman". His conversations with the now cynical Lois deal directly with the supposed outdatedness of the character of Superman, and in the end show us why the world does need superman, which is the real climax.

The acting is good. Spacey is fun, Bosworth is good, even James Marsden (Cyclops from X-Men) does a decent job as Lois's Fiancee. Brandon Routh brings a wonderful duality as Superman/Clark Kent. He is warm and masterful in the tights; bungling and goofy in the tie, which would help to explain why Lois never figures out the difference. The main achievment is Singer's imagery which soars high above everything else in the film. The special effects are nothing short of fantastic, but the real thing that makes the action scenes take off is the great sense of build they all have. A scene in which Superman makes his returning debut saving Lois and a group of other reporters in a falling airplaine, (finally setting it down in the middle of a baseball field. How perfectly American!) is as compelling as it is exciting. Singer plays heavy on people's reactions of disbelief at the appearance of Superman in their moment of crisis. He perfectly orchestrates the deus ex machina, a "good storytelling" no-no, that just so happens to be the very thing that gets the audience going. Superman freaking invented it. Snagging a guy who has fallen from a building just before he hits the ground. Melting falling glass with his eyeballs just before it cuts people up. The movie is full of moments like these that will leave the cynical rolling their eyes, and the faithful applauding.

I must also state the fact that, on the whole, this is a quiet movie. Singer doesn't push things. Sure there are some harrowing action sequences, but the film maintains a calm mood as the relationship between Superman and Lois is explored as well as the involvment of her 5-year old son. The film is not at all boring, but it is more subdued than superhero films usually are.

In my mind, Singers best achievment is that through his skillful directing, Singer breathes new life into the first and greatest Superhero. In my mind, Superman being the first superhero, should also be the coolest. And by the end of the movie it is definitely hard to deny that Superman is, in fact, cool. Singer has managed to make a movie that proves that Superman is relevant even today without changing his look or attitude. He is still the Man of Steel, complete with blue tights and a red cape, and he's here to stay.