2012 -LIFE OF PI, the kid on the lifeboat with the tiger epic.

I am relieved that I did not see Life of Pi in 3D there would have been only some many "tiger jumping out of the bottom of the lifeboat" 3D shots that I could have put up with after a while.  As it is this film really lards on the visual imagery with glowing fish, bright orange sunsets, and hurricane like storms all probably created or enhanced in the computer to overwhelm the already ADD movie going audience.

The Life of Pi appear to be a film that is trying to create a sort of mystical or fantasy like journey where Pi, the main character has a spiritual awakening about God or the Divine Power or "The Force."floating around on the Pacific ocean allows the viewer to be privy to lots of Pi's interior monologues which seem to consist of a lot of cut rate mystical mumbo jumbo.

Why was Tony the Tiger passed over for the part of Richard Parker?

This film was clearly a huge and expensive technical undertaking, all these computer generated animals do not come cheap and probably every scene has some type of visual enhancement to it.  The lead actor was not a trained professional and adding 3D to the mix probably complicated everything.

Life of Pi is OK however I don't think they really pulled this one off.  But, what do I know, this film is extremely successful with the movie going audience who seem to respond to the story, the religious stuff, and the special effects.  To me, Life of Pi is just a rehash of the insipid Jonathan Livingston Seagull although a lot better made.

127 minutes.

2003 - HULK, See the epic battle between the big green monster and a poodle!!

What was anyone thinking when they decided to turn the Hulk into a Ingmar Bergman like family tragedy?  Most of the film's  running time is taken up in exploring the issues of the parent child relationship, before the Hulk has his epic battle with some enraged dogs, in particular a hulk like snarling poodle.

Hiring arty director Ang Lee and his partner the Columbia University professor James Schamus to focus on the tortured inner psychological turmoil of the main characters was really going to pack the teenagers in.  Casting Jennifer Connelly the star of Requiem for a Dream and The House of Sand and Fog was kind of a dumb choice for a popcorn film.  Nick Nolte got to play the mad scientist father of Bruce Banner by channeling the actor George Zucco.

Ang Lee mimicked  the visual style of a comic book with a split screen technique throughout the film.  The problem was that everything moved so fast it was difficult to follow the action with all the jumping around between the split screens.  I know the Hulk is a comic book looking figure, but the CGI character in this film looks even more phony than usual.  In the comic, the Hulk gets around by jumping enormous distances, in the film this looks very silly.

The biggest miss in the Hulk, is that nothing happens. The first large scale action piece is literally halfway into the running time of the film. That's a hell of a lot of time sitting around waiting for the Hulk to start wrecking stuff.

Marvel knew they blew it with this version of the Hulk, they reworked the film in 2008 and turned it into a more conventional comic book movie making sure lots of stuff got destroyed throughout that film.

138 minutes.

2001, 2002 - THE HIRE, glorified, car commercials.

The marketing department at BMW got the brilliant idea to hire 8 top directors and have them shoot short films with the actor Clive Owen racing around in different model BMWs.

AMBUSH, by John Frankenheimer, a good car chase film.  Frankenheimer had directed Grand Prix and Ronin so he knew how to film exciting chases.

CHOSEN, by Ang Lee.  Also a fairly decent car chase film.  Probably the only interesting thing in it, Lee's little inside joke about The Hulk his big budget flop was the next film he directed.

THE FOLLOW, directed by the artsy fartsy Wong Kar-Wai, aims to be a mood piece but is just boring.

STAR, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring his then wife Madonna.  Madonna looks pretty bad and the film is about the driver embarrassing and humiliating her.  Almost prescient considering how Madonna and Ritchie's marriage ended.

POWDER KEG, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu wallows in it's stylization and pretentiousness, no fun.

HOSTAGE, directed by John Woo, only goes to prove that Woo should stick to filming scenes with Chow Yun-fat shooting thousands of bullets into guys instead of staging car chases.

TICKER, directed by Joe Carnahan, probably the best short film of the 2nd season, to bad Carnahan couldn't have brought this kind of interest to The A Team.

BEAT THE DEVIL, directed by Tony Scott.  The most annoying of all these short films, an attempt at a supernatural/ comedy/ action short film.  Filmed as usual by Scott like he had irritable bowel syndrome.

 Ambush and Ticker are probably the only two worth checking out.  This series is kicking around on YouTube.

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