.jpg)
Carroll's Comments on
Things Cinematic (fragile things, alas, and mine own entirely)
Carroll's Comments on
Things Cinematic
Back to Professor Carroll's Home Page
| Recent movies
(reviewed) |
Older movies
(reviewed) |
Movies seen, not reviewed, recommended | Film Noir pics |
|
Star War Episode I: The Phantom Menace |
The Mask of Zorro Wishmaster (video) Starship Troopers (video) |
Zero Effect (video) |
L.A. Confidential Romeo is Bleeding |
I wanted this to be a good movie. James Woods is one of my favorite actors, even if he always plays the same persona (hyper-active, wisecracking, generally self-centred) and I like horror movies, whether they take themselves seriously (like the original Hallowe'en) or not (as in Evil Dead 2, one of my all time favorites). Alas, James Carpenter's Vampires is not a good movie.
The plot: James Woods and his crew are vampire slayers in the employ of the Catholic Church. The opening scene finds them in New Mexico (where all the action of the film takes place) about to raid an vampire "nest" in an abandoned house. Generally, what they expect to find are a bunch of goons (ordinary vampires) and a master (the leader of the group, who turned each of the goons and who is linked to them telepathically). They do find a variety of goons, who are promptly killed either by stabbing them with polished wooden stakes (that look like there were ordered out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue ) or by shooting them with arrows attached to a cable (the cable is attached to a winch, the winch is turned, the vampire dragged into the sunlight and poof - vampire BBQ) There is no master in the nest, however,
It turns out that the master of this particular clutch of goons is Valek, the ORIGINAL vampire. Originally, a rebellious priest in 14th century Europe, Valek was captured and declared a heretic by the Church. He was then subjected to an exorcism. (WHY a heretic would be subjected to an exorcism is never made clear; in fact exorcisms were rarely performed on heretics). Unfortunately, Church authorities used an "ancient and forbidden form" of the exorcism ceremony which was interrupted (somehow). The result was that Valek's body died but his soul lived. He became in short, a vampire. (DAMN those ancient and forbidden forms of exorcism!!) For the past 600 years he's been looking for the cross used in the original exorcism, since by using it to complete the ceremony he can become a vampire who.....WALKS IN THE SUN.
Anyway, the night after his goons are killed, Valek shows up at the motel where Woods and his crew are partying with a group of local prostitutes (get it? - they may be in the employ o the Catholic Church, but they're not saints). Valek shows up and assaults a prostitute (Sheryl Lee) who has gone to James Wood's room for, well, sex. This is where the movie begins to go wrong. It has been an essential element of the Vampire story - going back not simply to the Bela Lugosi films but to Bram Stoker's novel - that the vampire is a highly eroticised being and that his bite is a metaphor for sexual penetration. Apparently, Carpenter felt that this was too complex a message for modern audiences. Sooo...to drive home the sexual nature of Valek's encounter with Lee, Carpenter has Valek bite the poor girl, well, not on the neck.
Valek then goes next door and massacres Wood' crew; only Woods and his right hand guy, a puffy Daniel Baldwin, escape with the Lee character. The rest of the movie is about Woods trying to figure out who betrayed his crew (it seems that vampire slayers are being anticipated and killed throughout the world) and tracking down Valek. As the movie progresses, the identity of the traitor is not hard to guess.
Some of the elements in this movie are just silly. It is established early on, for example, that bullets alone won't kill a vampire. Given that it is truly amazing just how many times Woods and Baldwin enter vampire-infested dark places armed with just a... gun. Other elements are anachronistic but probably to be expected. At one point, for instance, Valek shows up at a Franciscan convent in the desert that looks like it would have looked in the 18th century. There are friaries and monasteries in modern New Mexico, to be sure, but most of them are fairly modern. The most famous, for instance, is just outside Abiquiu and its members specialize in designing web pages for corporate clients.
Then there are the elements in the movie that are both gratuitous and offensive (a bad combination). For example, after escaping from Valek's massacre Baldwin brings the Lee character to a hotel in a nearby town. The idea is that as she "turns" she will develop a telepathic link with Valek and will be able to tell Baldwin and Woods where Valek his. The morning after they checked into the hotel, we see Lee lying naked on the bed with her hands tied to the bedpost. She's tied up, you see, because she's a danger to Baldwin, and she's NAKED....well, that is a little harder to explain, though Baldwin does mumble something about having "cleaned her up." Such specious rationales aside, the scene seems calculated to evoke images of sadistic sex practised upon an unwilling female victim for no other purpose than to arouse males in the audience. A bit later, while Baldwin is asleep, Lee attempts to kill herself by jumping out of the window; Baldwin wakes up, struggles with her, and subdues her. After she is subdued he discovers that she bit him while they were struggling. This enrages him (which is natural, given what the bite implies) and he slugs her. Stop action. Normally, having a man slug a woman just because she gets mad would likely be seen as what in technical sociological parlance would be called a BAD MESSAGE, because it legitimates and promotes male violence against women.
Even putting these misogynistic scenes aside, this is - as I said - a bad movie. It is not scary, the standard Woods persona just doesn't seem to be as appealing or as clever at it usually is, and too many plot events are too easily figured out in advance.
A final note: As mentioned, the movie was shot in New Mexico. Carpenter, however, wisely avoided the Disneyland atmosphere of modern Santa Fe and had his characters travel around to a variety of small towns. These towns are not Hollywood backlots but rather oddly out-of-time places that really exist The town to which Baldwin and Lee flee after the initial massacre, for example, is recognizable as Las Vegas, though it's not called that (maybe the idea that there is "another" Las Vegas in the U.S. would be too confusing). Having been to Las Vegas, I know that in the park just outside the hotel where Lee and Baldwin stay is a bronze plaque which gives the text of the proclamation read to the town when General Kearny's army annexed new Mexico in 1846. In the proclamation, Kearny promises that the new U.S. government, unlike the bad old Mexican government, would protect Las Vegans from the nasty Indians who so often stole their property and their women. Too bad he didn't add something about protecting them from bad vampire movies.
This movie opens in the present as an old man strides swiftly into a cemetery for war dead in France, his children and grandchildren in tow. He comes to one particular white cross, closes his eyes in remembrance - and the scene shifts. It's D-Day at a beach in Normandy. Tom Hanks and his men land and spend the next 15 minutes or so getting ripped to shreds (literally) by German fire. Eventually, they get off the beach and shoot lots of Germans, some of whom have already surrendered. War is hell. Shortly, they get a new assignment. It seems that four brothers from the same family have been killed in action and the War Department has decided that that earns the fifth brother a ticket home. Hanks and his men are given the task of finding this guy. The rest of the movie tells the tale of their trek and what happens when they do find Private Ryan.
At one level director Steven Spielberg has made his movie by lifting material from other war movies. As gory as the opening scene on the beach are, for instance, they are little different from the scenes in Cornel Wilde's Beach Red, an underrated film made 30 years ago on a much smaller budget. The "bunch of soldier-guys walk through France/Italy and encounter lots of grief" has also been used before (the best version, for me, is still A walk in the sun). Finally, the "small number of Allied soldiers have to hold the bridge until reinforcements come" motif - which is the basis for the climactic episode in this film - has been used in films ranging from the the The Longest Day to The Bridge at Remagen..
What I find most interesting about this film is its controlling vision. First off, the film is racially homogenous: everybody's white. That may make historical sense, given the segregation that existed in the American military (and American society) during WWII - but it also provides a clue I think why the film is so appealing today. Second, there is the film's take on "intimacy." There are really only two bases for intimacy here: the mother/son bond and the brother/brother bond. And finally, in this film there are only two types of adult women: mothers and whores.
The importance of the mother/son bond is established early on: poor Mrs. Ryan has lost four sons, she can't be allowed to lose another. No mention of "Mr" Ryan. Just in case audiences miss the point Spielberg sprinkles the film with shots of at least 3 soldiers dying in agony (as in "guts hanging out" agony) and has each one calling for his mother. The importance of the brother/brother bond is established both by the references to the dead Ryan brothers but also to the solidarity that builds between the "brothers" of the soldierly group as they suffer and die for each other. The mother/whore distinction is established in the conversations these brother-soldiers with each other. Thus, when they're not talking about their mothers, they're talking about their experiences in getting a look at large-breasted women (or really getting a look at their large breasts). Private Ryan, for instance, tells of how he and three of his brothers surprised another brother in the barn taking the blouse off some neighbor girl. The poor girl, we're told, may have fallen off the ugly tree and gotten hit by every branch on the way down (such a way with words, these American fighting men!), but she DID have big breasts. It was the last thing that he and his brothers did together. Ah, memories.
So what's going on here? Let's see: an all white society, in which fathers are absent and sons are intimate with their mothers and brothers, and where men fantasize about big-breasted women. For me, it's a no-brainer: it's an adolescent male vision of the world that was forged in a broken family and in a white suburban culture. In short, it is EXACTLY the vision that was used to establish the setting in Spielberg's E.T. This time round, he (Spielberg, not E.T.) has simply taken that vision, projected it backwards and used it to make a war movie.
The movie ends back in the cemetery with the old man (I won't tell you who he is), surrounded by his Nordic family, including an understanding wife and several big-breasted granddaughters.
General category: horror movie. Variant: ancient evil re-emerges into modern world. For a movie of its type, Wishmaster has it all: lots of gore, some very good special effects in a number of different scenes, a no-name cast (though some of the actors will be known to horror movie afficionados), no misogyny, a reasonable plot-line, and a Linda Hamilton-type heroine who in the end defeats the monster by being clever. The premise: Djinns (Genies) are evil beings who live, well, somewhere, and who are forever (literally) trying to get into this world. The gimmick: a Djinn has power only by answering a human's wishes - the human makes the wish and the wish is granted but NEVER (well, almost never) in a way that is un-painful and desirable. A Djinn imprisoned long ago by a Persian sorcerer breaks free into this world and sets about getting the woman who set him free to ask three wishes. When the third wish is granted, all Hell will break loose (again, literally). He finesses her into making one wish, then the second and then to save those around her, her sister and (dare I say "literally) all of humanity, she is forced to make the third wish. What to do, what to do..
The fact that this is a Hollywood movie about terrorism that doesn't use the opportunity to promote racist stereotypes about Arabs and Moslems (who are nowhere to be seen here) would in itself be reason enough to say good things about the movie. But there's more...First, however, the plot: a group of former secret operatives, now at loose ends because the end of the Cold War has made a mess of the market for spies, are recruited in France to steal a suitcase. The nature of the group that HAS the suitcase, what's IN the suitcase, who WANTS the suitcase, WHY they want it...well, these things are not resolved until the end and then only in an ambiguous manner.
The appeal of this movie lies in the bonds that build (and dissolve) between the different members of the recruited group, in the unexpected plot twists (some of which are not really as unexpected as others), in two first-rate car chases and in the intensely choreographed violence. .In regard to the later: I suspect that most reviewers will liken the violent scenes in this movie to similar scenes in Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. The comparison is fair, but I think that a much better antecedent would be The Wild Bunch. Anyway, be forewarned: lots of bystanders (and others) get killed and blood flows aplenty. Also appealing is the fact that the star (in this case, Robert DeNiro) is not allowed to dominate the movie in the way, say, that Bruce Willis is allowed to dominate the Diehard movies (which I like nonetheless).
Both the movie's title, a short history lesson at the beginning, and even a character in the story who tells the story of the 47 Ronin (itself made into a good Japanese movie decades ago) - all suggest that the "Ronin" ideal is somehow important to this movie. It's not; enough said. The worst part of the movie is the ending, where new information is introduced in order to help make sense of the plot (without much success). Even so, this is a good action movie, with a good cast, and well worth seeing.
One niggling thing: like most Hollywood movies, the occasional Michael Collins notwithstanding, this movie ends by reducing the conflict in Ireland to a matter of personalities, and so precludes a wider appreciation of the historical and structural conditions that gave birth to that conflict and that have fuelled it over the centuries - and which, in my view, must be taken into consideration if a just and fair resolution of that conflict is to occur within our lifetime.
Blade
Vampires, you see, are an ancient race whose leaders long ago worked out a secret treaty with human politicians: vampires will keep their feeding activities discreet and the politicians will leave vampires alone. The result: the vampire aristocracy (i.e., pure bloods who were BORN vampires rather than humans having been MADE vampires) controls any number of major corporations in the United States. (If the net result is that Americans walk out of the movie thinking of Japan and Japanese businessmen as vaguely vampire-like, well, that is surely not one of the explicit concerns of the movie!).
Unfortunately, the staid inner sanctums of Vampire Inc. are disrupted by young vampire punks, led by Stephen Dorff. with an the-humans-are-just-food-and-screw-the-treaties attitude. Who will save us? Well, there's BLADE. His mom was bitten by a vampire when she was pregnant and as a result Blade combines the best of both worlds: he can function in daylight, is strong, heals quickly, etc. There is the little problem of that craving for blood, but it is (somewhat) controllable. Anyway, Blade, with the help of an aging Chris Kristofferson as Yoda, has devoted his life to killing vampires and their human flunkies. These killing-lots-of-vampires scenes are the most entertaining in the movie, not the least because of the colorful way vampire bodies decompose. (Unfortunately, vampire flunkies don't decompose in the same way, and so - presumably to save money - the director injected a number of Blade vs. flunkies only scenes that are not nearly as entertaining.) Early on, I might add, Blade acquires a female sidekick played by N'Bushe Wright .
Although the movie has gotten poor reviews, I liked it. With his tatoos, muscular build, neat-o haircut and stylish armour-pads, Blade just loo-oks good (if he could only act, he would be perfect). But the film's real strength is that Blade and the characters played by Dorf and Wright are each allowed to develop a distinct persona and a distinct agenda. The director also succeeds in creating a decaying but colorful urban environment that adds to the visual experience of the movie. (The Batman movies, which can now be regarded as white folks versions of Blade, tried to do the same thing but were less effective.)
The only silly part of the film occurs in the last 10 minutes or so. It seems that the Dorf character has discovered an ancient vampire temple that the current vampire leadership had forgotten about (this temple is on the outskirts of New York city and so was built, I suppose, by vampires who came over with Leif Erickson) and....well, I won't spoil it, except to say that the actions that unfold here are entirely predictable.
Back to the Index
The most surprising thing about this latest version of the Zorro story is found in the paragraph flashed on the screen at the beginning of the movie. We are told that the year is 1821 and that Mexico has won its independence from Spain as the result of a people's rebellion led by Santa Anna. SANTA ANNA a popular hero??? In all earlier versions of Hollywood history, Santa Ana has been demonized as the nasty dictator who led the attack on the Alamo and in the process killed those Good Old Boys (Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Col. Travis, etc.) who were trying to make Texas safe for Anglo racism. Never mind that Santa Ana was not nearly as important a figure in the 1821 War of Independence as he would become later on in Mexican politics; he did play a role in that War. For a fleeting moment at the beginning of the movie, then, I thought that maybe the time had finally come when Hollywood would make that a Zorro movie that was informed by a working knowledge of Spanish/Mexican/Hispanic history. No such luck.
The best thing about this movie is Antonio Banderas. He plays the part with just the right mix of physical comedy, acrobatic ability and Latin lover stuff that his performance will be remembered long after the rest of the movie is forgotten.
The plot is easily summarized: Just before turning over the reins of power to the new Mexican government, the evil Spanish governor Montero tricks Zorro (a puffy Anthony Hopkins) into appearing in the plaza. Zorro escapes with the help of two young boys (one of whom will grown up to be the Banderas character). No matter. The governor shows up at the home of Don Diego de la Vega, a.k.a. Zorro. In the ensuing guffufle (1) Zorro's wife is killed, (2) Zorro is sent off to rot in prison, and (3) the Evil Governor appropriates Zorro's infant daughter as his own. Fast forward 20 years: Evil Governor Guy returns with a plan to BUY California from General Santa Ana (ya see, he's fighting the French and needs the money) using gold mined by local slave labor. Zorro escapes from prison, trains Banderas as New Zorro. Together they battle and defeat Montero. Along the way, Old Zorro's daughter has become a Beautiful-But-Spirited -Young-Woman who thinks that Bad Governor is her real father. No matter; with the help of some smouldering glances from Banderas and a few (amazingly clear) memories from when she was six months old, all is set right.
One problem with the movie is a poorly thought out plot. For instance, if the Bad Governor already KNOWS that de la Vega is Zorro (which is what showing up at his house with armed men suggests), then why does he need to stage the elaborate trap at the beginning of the movie? Especially given, we are told, that he is in a hurry to leave California? Then there are the anachronisms. Prisons where people are sent to serve life terms that stretch over 20 years or more may seem familiar to modern audiences, but such prisons did not exist in California during this period. But mainly this is a poor movie because it was constructed mechanically, by borrowing easily recognizable plot elements from other movies.
How does Evil Governor Guy lure Old Zorro into the Plaza? By tearing a page (wrong metaphor?) from any number of Robin Hood movies: arrest some innocent people and say you're gonna execute them. How does Old Zorro escape from prison? Think: Count of Monte Cristo. The scene in which the Evil Governor explains to his plan for world, eh, California domination to the Dons seated around a table is taken straight from the James Bond movies. Indeed, when one of the Dons gets up and voices some reservation, I half expected someone to pull a level and have the guy fall into a fiery pit. And where does Old Zorro (and later, the Zorros deux) hang out: in a cavernous cave accessible through the (unlit) fireplace in de la Vega's hacienda. Ay Carumba, Batman!
Back to the Index
If you made a movie by mixing together (1) what Noam Chomsky has been saying about American society for the past several decades, (2) a good sense of humor and (3) a dollop or two of interracial sex - the result would be Bullworth. The premise is that on the eve of his re-election campaign an aging California Senator (played by Warren Beatty), who was once a Kennedy-style liberal, realizes just how far to the right he has moved in order to keep getting re-elected. His disgust at what he has become sets in motion a chain of events: he hires someone to kill him AND decides to spend his remaining time telling various representatives of the rich and powerful - including members of the media - just what he thinks of what they and their masters have done to American society. Warren Beatty, himself an aging liberal, deserves a great deal of credit for making an entertaining movie which articulates a political message that rarely reaches a mass audience. My favorite political bit was the movie's account of why there are so few black leaders of national standing any more. I suspect it will lose a LOT of money.
There is apparently a story circulating in Hollywood that James Cameron was upset because people were only saying that Titanic was "one of the best pictures ever made" rather than the best. Such a story carries with it a context that would be known to anyone familiar with Hollywood history: the young Orson Welles is supposed to have been similarly upset when such a remark was made about Citizen Kane. That this same story would be told about Titanic, thus establishing an association between this film and Welles's, says a lot about what passes for quality in today's cinematic marketplace.
Titanic is a good film, with some good special effects (really, there's only one special effect, which might be labeled "VERY BIG BOAT SINKING" but it's played out in many variations), but by no stretch of the critical imagination is it a great film. There is absolutely nothing novel about its structure or execution that will have a significant influence on succeeding generations of film makers. Neither the storyline nor the evocation of the period is especially well done. Indeed, both things were handled more effectively in the TV mini-series about the Titanic sinking that was rushed to the small screen in advance of the movie and re-released recently.
The scenes set in the "present" are a simple waste of time, despite the initial appeal of the underwater shots of the Titanic as it now exists. The scenes set in the past (which comprise the bulk of the movie) have an appeal only because (1) Leonardo DiCaprio is so darned cute, and (2) the story line plays upon cliches that have always proven popular with American audiences (and American-audience-wannabes in Canada). After all, in how many movies have we been told that money doesn't buy happiness? That the rich are uptight and the poor spontaneous? That all it takes to be a success (in America) is the drive to succeed? Never mind that each of these claims is unsupported (and indeed directly contradicted) by a massive number of studies; these are the messages that American audiences want to hear and films that purvey these messages succeed.
Not content with simply telling the story of the real-life tragedy associated with the Titanic sinking, Cameron felt compelled to layer on a series of truly silly plot devices to make it worse. What would make the experience of being on a sinking boat worse? Well, let's make sure that the charming DiCaprio is HANDCUFFED to a pipe as water pours into his room. His girlfriend finally gets him loose? Well, how about making sure that as the waters surge around them in the hallway, they find themselves blocked by locked metal grate? After a few minutes of agonizing in front of the gate, let's have a crew member who happens to have a key come by but then have the crew member run away and have Leo DROP the key in the water. Ok, Ok, he eventually finds the key, but then....well, no sense in spoiling ALL of the clever things Cameron does.
Let me repeat, this is a good film that can be enjoyed even though you know the ending; it simply is no more than this.
Back to Index
Harrison Ford as a dynamic fists-on president seeking to rid the world of terrorism ; Gary Oldman as the suave but ultimately heartless terrorist.(It would have been a more interesting movie, I think, if Ford and Oldman had been cast against type.) Anyway, how do we know that the Americans are good and noble? Well, at the very beginning of the movie American soldiers (and some good Russians) parachute at night into the presidential palace of a Soviet Republic, machine gun the surprised guards right and left, and kidnap the Republic's president. The reason? It seems he has control over nuclear weapons. And how do we know that Oldman and his band are dirty rotten terrorists? Well, a little way into the movie, they get on Air Force One, machine gun the President's party right and left, and try to kidnap the president of the United States (who has control over nuclear weapons) in an effort to get their president (the bad one) released. Nevertheless, if you can get past the double-standard implicit in this initial premise (and that does not seem to have been a problem for very many of the people who saw this movie), the movie quickly becomes a straightforward and quite entertaining action flick.
Back to Index
I missed this one in the theaters because all the reviews seemed to be running in the same direction: some good special effects but a terrible plot. In fact, I enjoyed it more than I thought. The premise is simple: it's the future, there are bug societies in a corner of outer space that are attacking earth, earth goes to war and we see all this from the perspective of a group of high school seniors, all beautiful people, who join the armed forces and save the universe.
Some of the attempts to convey "future" are admittedly strained. Our high school heroes, for instance, are all from Buenos Aires, even though everyone speaks English, tends to look Nordic, etc. Then there is the military shower scene where "futureness" (as opposed say, to male adolescent wishful thinking) means that good looking men and women shower together and engage in un-self-conscious banter.
The best special effects involve the bugs, generally large spider/scorpion-like creatures, who have no dialogue and just snip limbs from however many humans are nearby. A few things are handled in a superficial but nevertheless adequate manner. How do bugs colonize planets? They propel their spores into space. How do they attack earth? They use "plasma" to send asteroids crashing into earth. One big problem: it takes about 4 people firing their automatic weapons into a bug for about 1 miniature to kill it. Given that humans are always outnumbered by about 10 to 1, you'd think it might be impossible for them to win these encounters, but they do.
The most puzzling aspect of the movie is that it seemed to be two movies stitched together. At the beginning, I thought there was a subtext suggesting that maybe not all was what it seemed. Earth's government is no longer democratic. Only minority of "citizens" have the right to vote, the "civilian" majority does not. Government symbols and paraphernalia evoke Nazi imagery (right down to the crew-cut officers wearing long leather coats). There was even a brief suggestion that maybe humans had provoked the Bugs by colonizing their area of space. Finally, there were scenes of overt cruelty, as when a Federal officer very calmly explains to a TV audience the best way to kill a bug by shooting at different points on the body of a bug trapped in a cage. Then it all changes....
The transition scene occurs when one of the heroes is caught by a bug as his buddies are being evacuated. The scene fades and I fully expected him to wake up amongst the bugs and discover they were different (way different) but not bad. In fact, he wakes up in a Earth hospital (how he got there is never really explained). From that point on, all implicit criticism of Earth's Government vanishes. Killing bugs is the priority, cruelty becomes even more casual and consistency becomes irrelevant. In one scene, for instance, the horrible nature of the bugs is established when a "brain bug" tries to learn about humans by inserting an appendage into some poor guy's head and sucking out his brain. Bad bug. In the last scene, however, a "brain bug" has been captured and is being examined by human scientists. We know that this particular bug is sentient and can experience emotions. So how does the examination by humans proceed? Human investigators start jabbing large jagged harpoons of one sort or another into various soft tissue areas of the thing in order, we are told, to find out what makes it tick. So MUCH more civilized than brain-sucking.
Back to Index