2005 - LADY VENGEANCE, excellent crime thriller from Korea

This is an excellent crime thriller from the director Park Chan-Wook who also took a credit on the screenplay.  Park Chan-Wood is one of Korea's most interesting directors with films like Oldboy, Stoker, Snowpiercer, and Joint Security Area to name a few. Park Chan-Wook makes very original films which are on the intense side.

Lady Vengeance is frankly a very extreme film.  The story involves a woman who has gone to prison for the murder of a five year old boy.  While serving her time in prison she develops an elaborate scheme to reek vengeance in what turns out to be a more complicated situation than was originally thought.

 

The film is flamboyantly directed and the acting is of a very high caliber with a standout performance from Lee Young-ae as the titular character.  I would have to say that the plot twists are at times surprising and quite shocking.  As I indicated before this is a very intense film.  I've been avoiding discussing the plot of this film because I am very reluctant to spoil any of the story.

The film was written by Jeong Seo-kyeong and Park Chan-wook.  The running time is 115 minutes.

2005 -KING KONG, the Peter Jackson remake

Peter Jackson's follow up to his Lord of the Rings trilogy and just about as ambitious an undertaking as those three films.  The chief complaint on this film is it's extreme length, the film comes in at almost three hours.  In spite of the length, Jackson makes sure you get your money's worth when you watch his version of King Kong.

Even for a long film like this, King Kong is never dull.  Jackson has enough of a film making instinct to know how how to keep an audience interested.  He really pulls out all of the stops when the SS Venture finally arrives at Skull Island home of the legendary King Kong and lots of other monsters with really big scary teeth.  The film thrives on monsters chewing on people and Kong ripping the heads off of anyone or anything who gets in his way in his pursuit of Ann Darrow.

 

If the film falters, it's when showman Carl Denham returns to New York City with plans to put the captured King Kong on display.  Here the special effects by Jackson's  company Weta start to look a little shaky.  Things perk up at the end when Kong climbs the Empire State Building for the big climax.

 

Frankly, it I have any issue with this Kong film or the previous version with Jessica Lange, it's the love story between the ape and Ann Darrow.  It just doesn't ever work for me.  I gigantic gorilla capable of ripping people to shreds is not my idea of a healthy relationship.

 

The film with the exception of Jack Black is very well cast.  Naomi Watts is a classic blonde Hollywood beauty, although she is actually from Australia.  She does pretty well with the role considering.  Adrien Brody is good as a playwright who is accidentally shanghaied and ends up on the SS Venture writing a script for showman Carl Denham.

The film has it flaws and Peter Jackson was apparently under enormous pressure to meet a Christmas release date, so I sense he didn't get to spend as much time on the post production of the film as he would have liked.  Still, this is a very entertaining remake of the original film.

The film was written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.  The running time is 188 minutes.

2005 - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, good Cronenberg film

 The old story about the criminal trying to go straight and start a new life but is dragged back into crime by his old gang is given a fresh update from  director David Cronenberg and the screenwriter Josh Olson.  Cronenberg was usually known for what were called "body horror films, " such as The Fly, The Brood and Rabid to name a few.  

Considering the amount of violence in this film, Cronenberg doesn't really glamorize it.  When people get hit by bullets, the end result looks pretty darn gruesome.  

Cronenberg also put together an interesting cast starting with Viggo Mortenson and Maria Bello as the supposedly ordinary middle class couple.  Ed Harris and William Hurt are the very scary bad guys and everyone is working at a high level of performance.

 

The film makes some interesting points about the ability of human beings to inflict violence on each other and Cronenberg doesn't shy away from making the point that the Viggo Mortenson character actually kind of enjoys killing people.

The film runs 96 minutes.

2005 - BUBBLE, a fascinating film on small time life amongst other things

 Steven Soderbergh who always walks a line between personal films and mainstream film making sets his sights on the story of three people who work in a doll factory in a small town in West Virginia. We observe the interaction between a woman who takes care of her aged father, a young man who clearly has a social anxiety disorder and a single mother who comes to work at the doll factor.  To give away anymore would be a crime.

 Soderbergh's production team literally found three people from the local area where the film was shot and had them improvise their dialog based on an outline prepared by the screenwriter Coleman Hough. None of the cast was a professional actor.  The result is a fascinating film experience.  This film is about audacious as a film can get to put it mildly

Running time,  73 minutes

2005 - SAHARA, an undemanding action film

 One of the biggest flops that Paramount Pictures was ever associated with.  The plan was to start up a new series with an action hero in the manner of James Bond or Indiana Jones.  What started out as a film with an 80 million dollar budget literally ended up costing $160 million dollars, not counting the $60 million dollars that was poured into marketing the film.

In addition, the author of the book the film was based on, Clive Cussler sued the production for failing to consult him on the script. As if his far fetched tale of a Civil War Confederate ship ending up in the middle of the Sahara desert was some type of documentary.

Apparently there were at some point 10 screenwriters who attempted to hammer the film's story into shape.  In the end 4 writers, Jame V Hart, Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and John C. Richards got screen credit.

 

How's the film?  Well for an over produced mess it's entertaining.  The leads Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz are a good looking couple.  The photography is nice and the action elements are fairly well done. There are some attempts at humor which is probably a good thing since the filmmakers are telling a very tall tale.

 

Really not a bad time killer, but the major flop status of the film insured there would be no more sequels.

 Running time 124 minutes.

2005 - THE PROTECTOR aka TOM-YUM-GOONG

The bone crunching followup  to Ong-Bak, with the star of that film Tony Jaa.  The story is about Jaa's love for an elephant (?) which takes him to Sydney, Australia after the elephant is stolen. 

Well, what can you say.  A lot of people get beaten up.  If you are a martial arts action fan I guess this film is for you.  I just found the whole thing to be rather silly.  Full credit should be given to Jaa and the stuntmen for the very violent action scenes.

 

Unbelievably it took four writers to put this screenplay together Napalee, Piyaros Thongdee, Joe Wannapin and  Kongdej Jaturanrasamee. the running time is 110 minutes.

2005: XXX: STATE OF THE UNION - Spy vs Spy stuff

Stuck in the house on a cold Saturday night with nothing to do, I found this piece of action movie trash.  This is the kind of film where you sit slumped in a chair watching one hyper action scene after another roll by in a plot that I would call a poor man's version of 7 Days in May.

 

Anyway, Ice Cube is some former hot shot soldier stuck in a federal prison for a crime he didn't commit.  At least I think it was a crime he didn't commit, I wasn't paying attention to closely.  Well Ice Cube is broken out of prison by the head of the NSA played by Samuel Jackson in a variation of a role he has played many times before.  It seems that evil William Dafoe who is a General or the Secretary of Defense is planning on staging a coup to overthrow the government.  Like Jackson, Dafoe has played variations on this type of role as well.

Plot, characterization and dialog in this kind of a movie really means nothing.  This is an action show from the first scene to the last.  Never mind if the scenes make any sense or are a part of the plot, they are just in the movie as a sort of violent low grade pornography.  I can sit slumped in my chair and be sort of entertained but not exactly stimulated or excited

What XXX: State of the Union comes down to is another cookie cutter action film not well made but not poorly made either.   I've seen this movie many times and I will probably spend the rest of my life watching this stuff.

101 minutes, written by Simon Kinberg.

2005 - SERENITY, an attempt to convert a TV show to a film series

Writer/director Josh Weldon developed a TV series called Firefly sort of a science fiction adventure about some mercenaries flying around the galaxy while being chased by the mysterious Alliance and some weirdo mutants called the Reavers who like to eat people.  Despite Weldon's clever way with dialog and a good cast the series never really caught on but developed a cult following.  Hoping for more mainstream success as a film series Weldon tried again with a film called Serenity featuring the same cast.

Weldon is a clever fellow who can spin witty dialog in rather fantastic films like The Avengers and it's sequel and that Buffy the Vampire series.  Here he had the impossible challenge of condensing the TV series into a film and keeping the mainstream and cult audiences entertained something he doesn't pull off.

Watching Serenity is like coming into the middle of a TV series and having the person next to you try to explain what has been going on during the past episodes.  The movie's screenplay seems very fragmented and there are so many subplots at times it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on.

Still, Weldon is good at mixing this genre stuff and adding humor to it so it isn't to be taken that seriously.  The film has action and lots of spaceships flying around shooting at each other.  Serenity comes off as an attempt to create a hipster version of Star Wars.

119 minutes.

2005 - KINKY BOOTS, the feel good cross dressing movie

This trite piece of feel good junk is the kind of thing your significant other will like as you set through and wonder at first "why is this simple little film so long?"  On additional reflection "why is this film so by the numbers?"

A old fashioned British shoe factory is about to go out of business with everyone losing their jobs and livelihood etc.  To the rescue is a cross dressing performer named Lola who manages to get the factory to manufacture a line of sexy boots for men or something like that.

As everyone works together, lessons about life are learned, feelings are hurt people make up with each other everyone works together and hey drag queens are just like you and me.


Enjoy.

106 minutes.

2005 - A SOUND OF THUNDER, B movie time.

A mighty disappointing adaptation of the very good and maybe even classic Ray Bradbury short story about time traveling hunters who journey back to the Cretaceous Era to hunt dinosaurs.  The catch is that the hunters cannot interfere in the natural development of evolution as they might cause changes to their present day time period.  Bradbury cleverly works this out and shows the consequences of interfering with history. 

What could have been the basis for a good science fiction adventure story ended up as a cheap B movie looking mess.  Apparently the budget was cut during the production of the film and it sure shows with some very poor special effects.  This is the price of computer generated imagery done on the cheap.

That said, the film stuck in some kind of B movie hell hole is actually kind of watchable.  Ray Bradbury's basic plot is such a strong one even a film as poor as this can't entirely ruin it.

What to say about the cast, really not much.  Independent filmmaker Edward Burns is our sturdy scientist hero trying to fix history and because there has to be a girl some British actress named Catherine McCormack is his little scientist helper person.  Only Ben Kingsley as the head of "Time Safari" the time traveling company is any fun as the oily head of the company who wants to make a buck, time travel history interference be damned.

110 minutes.

2005 - THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO - an OK middle class drama.

"Based on a true story" says the title card at the beginning of the film and who will ever know how true this is.  In order to support her large family because her alcoholic husband is blowing every paycheck on booze.  Evelyn Ryan enters lots and lots of contests and wins enough stuff to keep the family afloat financially.

Julianne Moore plays Evelyn Ryan and she has the look down and gives a very good performance.  The film has a few clever bits with characters breaking the 4th wall and talking directly to the viewer.  The production is modest but decent and the film has an upbeat ending with a message of sort of 50's female empowerment.

The film underperformed at the box office and it's easy to understand why.  The problem was with the casting of Julianne Moore.  Moore is a fine actress but she is not really what I would call a star.  Nobody lines up to see the latest Julianne Moore film.  She may play to the art house crowd but she is nobody's idea of a commercial star.

This film popped up on Netflix and that's probably the perfect place for it.  The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.  Plays perfectly well while sitting at home in front of the TV.

99 minutes.

2005 -SEVEN SWORDS or heads will roll and arms and torsos and other body parts.

Tsui Hark's redo of The Seven Samurai with a lot more violence.  This is one of those wuxia films where the characters slice and dice each other for a couple of hours.

Probably one of the more conventional films I've seen from Hark.  Seven Swords is well made and has very good action, it's just been done before and done way too many times.

This film is a clear attempt by Hark for a hit film something he hadn't had for a while.  Hark had announced during the making of Seven Swords that this was to be a six film series but there hasn't been a sequel since he released it. 

The lack of follow up films is probably for the best.  Even Tsui Hark couldn't stay interested in this story.

153 minutes, the film was written by Tsui Hark, Cheung Chi-sing and Chun Tin-nam.

2005 - MR AND MRS SMITH, is slick commercial junk.

A married couple are spies working for rival intelligence agencies.  Unknowningly, they have been hired to kill each other or something like that.  This is an action comedy which some critics thought was a metaphor for modern marriage.  In reality this is just another high concept soulless Hollywood film.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith has the glamor couple of Pitt and Jolie who brought a lot of their personal baggage to the production but probably pushed it over the top money wise with all the publicity they got with their off screen romantic antics on this film.

The director Doug Liman was the guy who kicked off the Bourne series with The Bourne Identity.  Liman knew his way around an action scene and they are all well done.  The problem is there are way too many of them particularly an extended shoot em up in a department store that makes this long film seem even longer.

An OK time killer that seriously wears out it's welcome after about an hour, the one joke premise would have played better at about 90 minutes or probably less.

120 minutes

2005 - THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE and the CGI.

The only good book in the very overrated C.S. Lewis Narnia series, this version is smothered in music and loaded with phony computer special effects.

After about one hour, I quite frankly had my fill of talking beavers horses, foxes and lions.  Add to the list evil wolves and polar bears. The whole thing just seems kind of stupid.  The kids aren't so great either, the two girls seem mighty affected almost like they are reading their lines from big cue cards off camera like a late night talk show host.

The computer effects of the Narnia countryside seem kind of cheesy as well which is kind of surprising since WETA the company that worked on the Lord of the Rings films was responsible for them.

The reason The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe even exists is to dip into the same fantasy adventure well as The Lord of the Rings series.  The possibility of generating buckets of money off of the six Narnia stories was too much to pass up.  The Disney studios hoping to get a piece of the "Dungeons and Dragons" nerd boy crowd that the Tolkin books and films were able to attract saw dollar signs floating in the air.

 Disney cleverly marketed the film to the Christian church crowd and the film was a big hit for them. This film was followed up by a sequel, The Chronicles of Narnia:  Prince Caspian which didn't perform as well as the first film.  Disney dumped the series, 20th Century Fox picked it up and released The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which also under performed at the box office.  There have been no more sequels since.

143 minutes, written by Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson,  Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeel.

2005 - MELINDA AND MELINDA, Woody Allen mixes comedy and tragedy yet again and very obviously

Woody Allen takes on the challenge of telling one story from two different points of view, one a comedy and one a tragedy.

As if anyone doesn't already know, comedy and tragedy are very intertwined in drama.  Apparently Woody Allen has been pondering this deep thought for a while although Shakespeare had kind of beaten him to the punch in The Winter's Tale (1623) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598) by the time Allen filmed Melinda and Melinda (2005).

In the comedy part or is it the tragedy part of the story, Will Farrell gets stuck aping Woody Allen's acting style, lucky fellow.   Steve Carrell has a small part, Chloe Sevigny, Josh Brolin and Wallace Shawn among others show up although I can't remember if they are in the comedy part or the tragedy part.

The actors in this Woody Allen film get to spout lots of pretentious high faulting dialog which is more preposterous than clever or entertaining.  Some of the things they come out of their mouths about art and life are really ridiculous.  It's as if Woody Allen never spent anytime around actual people.  However this a rare Woody Allen film that has some black people in it although they might as well be white people in black face.

Woody Allen directs Randa Mitchell in the comedy part or is it the tragedy part?

The cross cutting between the comedy and tragedy stories is sort of interesting.  As usual this Woody Allen film has his typical good cast, nice photography and yet another underdeveloped script. The soundtrack is Allen's typical now tiresome selection of mainstream jazz music.   

Melinda and Melinda is just not much of a film.

100 minutes.

2005 - A BITTERSWEET LIFE, is a philosophical revenge fantasy

Another one of these violent Asian action films where everyone gets blasted with lots of bullets or repeatedly bashed in the head over and over and over and over and over and over.

A Bittersweet Life is very well made, the action scenes are at a high caliber, the acting is good and the story is pretty interesting.  For reasons I can't exactly understand these types of films always seem to have scenes where the protagonist gets all philosophical about the meaning of life and his  place and relationship to it in the world.  I call this The Guns of Navarone syndrome.

The Guns of Navarone was a large scale World War II action adventure where every so often Gregory Peck and David Niven would stop to debate the relative merits of the war they were fighting.   I believe the purpose of these scenes were to make the film seem more important than what it actually was, just another World War II movie. 

A Bittersweet Life has The Guns of Navarone syndrome in spades, there is lots of time to reflect on the meaning of life before somebody gets a burning stick shoved into his eye, or shot in the chest or has his head rammed through a car window, etc.

The film is not without a sense of humor, there is a long scene with a gun dealer that is very funny. Our so called hero and the gun dealer race to put together the guns they have taken apart so they can shoot each other, funny stuff.

Still, you get what you pay for with this film lots of over the top violence that for some reason Asian cinema is really good at pulling off.

120 minutes.

2005 - STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH, finishing up the series

Did not like this film.  It took me 4 years to finally watch the concluding film in the first trilogy.  Everyone has taken shots at the low quality of this since it first came out so there is not much more to add.  It seems the film's two biggest issues are the dialog and the acting. This is my 2 cents.

The dialog:

I don't believe what I'm hearing! Obi-Wan was right... you've changed! You have turned to the dark side! 

Army or not, you must realize, you are doomed.  

And then there's this love banter between Anakin Skywalker and Padme:

 You are so... beautiful.

 It's only because I'm so in love.
 No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
 So love has blinded you?
 Well, that's not exactly what I meant.
 But it's probably true. 

The cast was another problem.  Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Samuel L Jackson look like they want to be somewhere else.  Portman's part was particularly humiliating, she's stuck playing the traditional simpering female waiting around for her husband to come home.  Hayden Christensen, the big acting discovery, the person the whole movie should revolve around seems to be unable to generate any chemistry with any member of the cast.  If your main character is so uninteresting and bland, it's hard to work up much interest in his emotional conflict or the film he is in.  

It was almost like George Lucas's casting sense, the one that had worked so well in American Graffiti and The first Star Wars trilogy movies had deserted him completely.

Not wasting any more time thinking about this moving on.

140 long minutes.