Well I saw this on Christmas Day and I wish it had been the second film of the day rather than the first. We finished the evening with the bad taste of "Babylon" in our mouths, but the memory of earlier in the day helped because this movie is simply delightful. Sure it's a kids animated feature, but the lead is Antonio Banderas doing the Puss in Boots character and he is exactly what a movie like this needs. Sly charm, cocky confidence and a little bit of befuddlement in his voice and you have a character that everyone will recognize immediately.
Two plot lines make up the story and they converge about halfway through in a couple of unexpected ways. Puss in Boots has used up most of his nine lives and has to retire to a secret identity as a housecat to a crazy cat lady. He is being pursued by a bounty hunter who is actually a more sinister figure as we find out down the road. He is also being pursued by others who want his assistance in tracking down a map to a fallen star that will grant one last wish. So there are a few fairy tale characters who get in on the pursuit and fit this movie into the Shrek Fairy Tale Universe.
When I saw the first trailer for this movie, I was not very interested. Something in the animation looked cheap and not up to the levels that we have come to expect from theatrical animated films. The word of mouth however was pretty positive and the grim "Babylon" looked like it was going to be our main option on the holiday, so I decided to take the chance. There is something different about the animation, but it was not necessarily bad. Most of the film looks like it is pretty standard Dreamworks quality, but the action sequences are stylized very differently. They are not bad but they seem deliberately distinctive which gives the movie a little unevenness.
There are plenty of slapstick moments for the kids to enjoy but there is also a quip, look or character to give the adults something different to laugh at. That is exactly the secret to having an animated film break out of the kiddie ghetto, Mom and Dad need to get something out of the movie as well. Of course my kid is now thirty four, so maybe I need to just accept that the film wants to entertain all of us. It's been eleven years since the last "Puss in Boots" movie, and I don't think the character or Banderas have suffered at all by the decade layoff.
If like me, you want the theatrical experience to survive, you need to support movies that are aimed at a general audience and legitimately try to entertain you. Antonio Banderas' self parody is worth the price of admission, but there is more to enjoy as well. This may not have anything to teach our kids, but it won't hurt them and it can bring you together and that is a pretty good goal in itself. So put away your catnip mouse and laser pointer and go out to see a movie. It may not be purrfection, buy it will provide a Meowy Christmas memory for you.
Director Damien Chazelle is a talented visualist with a love of style. His movies "La La Land" and "Whiplash" are two of my favorite films since I started blogging. So it is with regret that I must say "Babylon" is a misfire of gigantic proportions. This movie is visually audacious and simultaneously repugnant. There are moments of great beauty, juxtaposed with some of the vilest imagery you can imagine. Chazelle may have wanted to comment on the the ugliness hiding under the veneer of movie fantasy, but instead, he has made a movie that proves that sometimes the path of success leads to excess. Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and recently Sam Mendes have learned that the the power of success gives license to shoot yourself in the foot. Whether Chazelle can recover from this self inflicted wound will take time to discover.
"Babylon" is the dark side of early Hollywood, as seen by a lover of movies but a hater of the system that produces them. Taking urban legends and real historical characters for inspiration, Chazelle has created the anti-"Singin' in the Rain". The Gene Kelly classic is the polar opposite of this movie. When Debbie Reynolds cute wannabe drops into the movie business, she is charming, full of energy and sweetness galore. Margo Robbie as Nellie LaRoy is a conniving, entitled climber, with a little talent but a big appetite for stardom. Brad Pitt is a John Gilbert stand in. Replicating his success in silent pictures, frequent marriages and loss of popularity with the coming of sound. So no Gene Kelly happy reclamation by trying his star to Kathy Selden, Pitt's Jack Conrad is a closer approximation to Gilbert than we may have seen before.
The underbelly of Hollywood is shown in it's most grotesque forms, including a scene with a Fattie Arbuckle style character, enjoying a golden shower and accidentally crushing a woman's chest cavity. Meanwhile an orgy is being entertained in the rest of the house with a lesbian chanteuse, a diarrhetic elephant, and Nellie, fearlessly dancing in an orgiastic manner with the crowd. People engage in sex amid the throngs of people at the party, and drug use is rampant. The whole purpose of the title of the film is contained in the long opening sequence. Of course there are moments of beauty as well. The jazz inflected party is pumped up by a band of black musicians who know their stuff and deliver it with verve. The double edged sword of creativity and debauchery is being wielded with a heavy hand from the very start of the movie.
Jack makes an impassioned speech to one of his wives about the art of cinema. The passion for film as art is shown when Robbie's character gets on a set and emotes more effectively for the silent screen than had been seen before, and her erotically charged dancing brings a spark to a melodrama that would certainly be forgettable without her. The casual friendship she struck up with Mexican immigrant and also Hollywood wannabe Manny Torres, played by Diego Calva, will become the spine for a story that brings the three leads, Calva, Robbie and Pitt, into one another's orbit on regular occasions as the movie business is transitioning to sound. Manny is no Donald O'Conner, he really wants to make movies and be a player at the executive level, his Spanish Language skills and ethnicity seem to banish him to doing the Spanish version of bigger English language films. His infatuation with Nellie, his contacts with Jack and the random insertion of a story about how blacks were treated in the era, make for a rough plot to follow.
As the story grows darker, the scenarios become more off putting. Nellie is a degenerate gambler and coke fiend who has gotten deeply in debt to a shady mobster with slight connections to the Hollywood scene. Manny's mission to help her out when she is desperate, is a trip down a rabbit hole that can literally be labeled a descent into hell. Toby Maguire, a producer on this film, plays the gangster, and he shows us a walking nightmare world that is hypnotically repugnant. This is another path that Chazelle has decided should push the boundaries of what is acceptable to portray in films. The goal may be to demonstrate the lack of humanity in Hollywood, but it really just feels like a freak show that is designed to make the audience nauseous.
There is a coda segment that may be trying to explain and justify what happened in the first two hours and fifty minutes of the movie. Foolishly, Chazelle references the film that this movie is at the polar opposite of, and instead of redeeming the character of Manny, it feels like it is mocking him. A montage of other great film moments is dumped on us as a recompense for what we have endured, and I suppose the message is that it may be all worth it, except that's not how it feels. After being shit on, vomited on, peed on and visually assaulted, it will be hard for anyone to appreciate the many dazzling moments in this movie. To get them, we have to keep stepping over piles of feces left for us by the writer-director. I'm sorry, but the fact that after to step in it, the smell follows you home, does not mean it was successful.
This is the classic Christmas film that is widely regarded as one of the best emotional experiences in movies. We covered it extensively as the Lambcast MOTM for December.
We went to a new theater complex for us which is basically a bar and restaurant with movie screens. FLIX Brewhouse is a well run place and the screening was a TCM Fathom format.
It's a Wonderful Life, doesn't need a lot of justifications. It's simply great.
You have probably already heard some of the comments, "Never doubt James Cameron", " Cameron delivered ", and “the most amazing cinematic journey” by James Cameron to date. When it comes to visual splendor and technical excellence, Cameron is "The King of the World". Now when it comes to the narrative, that may be another thing entirely. The director is sometimes criticized for simplistic story telling and cringe worthy dialogue. I don't think those are always true faults but they will certainly not be swept away by this film, which continues to wear it's heart on it's sleeve, and go for the most direct approach to your emotions possible.
"The Way of Water" is set a decade after the events of the first film, still on Pandora, so maybe the delay in arriving is appropriate. The lead characters played by Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana are in the story, but the main protagonists, especially in the second act of the film, are their children, Neteyam and Lo'ak; their biological daughter, Tuk; and adopted daughter; Kiri. They are forced to flee into hiding in a new environment with the distant tribe of Metkayina reef people. This creates a new cross cultural story, with adolescents acting more human than you might expect from the Na'vi. This is the section that will probably give critics of Cameron's storytelling, the ammunition they need to launch their attacks. Teens get jealous and act capriciously to prove themselves. Kids get alienated from peers that they don't see as like themselves, I guess growing up is the same all over.
Relocating from the forest to a seaside location gives Cameron the chance to invent more creatures and environmental twists and he runs with that opportunity. Tulkun, an intelligent and pacifistic cetacean species, is the most interesting of the new inventions. I do think this is a place where Cameron can use alien species in a non-human form, to make the future stories more creative. Like the connection with the planet itself in both films, the relationship between the tulkun and the Na'vi gives a moral center to the actions of our heroes. The "skypeople" are the hunters, the tulkun are the buffalo, being hunted only for one thing, and physically cast away once that has been acquired and the Metkayina are the Indians, shaking their heads at the horrible waste. Unlike the buffalo however, our game here is sentient and understands the threat and conveys the fears that go along with it. Cameron's allegory is not very subtle.
Once again, the visuals are the thing that can most sell a James Cameron story. The tech weapons used by the invaders are inventive upgrades from the earlier film. The adaption of the mech suits to a water environment is clever and you will see the creatures it is based on immediately. The characters move in an underwater environment because the motion capture was done underwater. The actors and director should get all the praise they deserve for the innovation and hard work that this took. I saw the movie in 3-D and I think it was screened at the 48 fps for some sequences. I did not have any of the reservations that I experienced when looking at the Hobbit movies of a decade ago, but this is a hyper-stylized world with very few human characters, so the images my slip by a bit more easily. The 3-D effect is well worth the effort, and I don't always think that is true.
This movie looks amazing and you should see it on the biggest screen you can find, in 3-D. In the long run, this is the kind of film that may save cinemas, but only for the epic quality of their visuals. Traditional dramas may get relegated to streaming if these are the only kinds of movies that people will go out to see in a theater. The basic war adventure parts of the movie create some terrific action beats, and Cameron tops himself as well as cribbing from himself in a couple of spots. James Cameron should always be respected when it comes to the visualization of his stories, but the stories continue to be the least innovative part of his film-making.
I remember the first time I saw "Conan the Barbarian" in a theater. It was opening weekend in May, 1982, and it was at the Edwards tri-plex in Monterey Park. While we were there to see "Conan", one of the reasons I remember the event so well is that there were promotion postcard posters for "Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan" available at the theater, and I was quite excited about that movie. 40 years later, I can say I went to anniversary screenings of both films at a real theater.
We can start with the obvious, Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast in the film. I read a story many years ago about Arnold meeting with Dino DeLaurentis, the film's producer, as he was being considered for the part. According to what I read, Arnold was his usual arrogant and playful self, and inulted Dino in his office by asking him "Why does such a little man ( De Laurentiis was 5'4") need such a big desk?' In spite of that awkward opening, Arnold got the part, because who else were you going to cast? It was his big break into action films and as a lead performer. His Austrian accent might have worked for him a bit as a character, and he trained like the dickens to get the swordplay, stunts and action just right. It also helps that in a two hour or so movie, his character does not speak for the opening twenty five minutes, or in the last twenty five minutes.
Director John Milius is a favorite of mine, I am a big fan of his "Dillinger" and a huge fan of "The Wind and the Lion". This film seems to fit his sensibilities immediately. The Nietzschean attitude and the strong sense of masculinity, are very much part of his wheelhouse. When I posted that I was at a screening, the first response I got was a prompt for the famous line about what is best in life. Although Oliver Stone originated the script, Milius transformed it with several important changes and when he directed it, those changes become obvious. The opening credit sequence features the powerful Basil Poledouris theme playing over a sequence of the forging of a sword. You can see only brief ghost images of the characters in this sequence, everything is focused on the "steel" and fire of the moment.
Anyone expecting this to be a cartoonish kids adventure will be soon disillusioned. Young Conan's village is burned to the ground, his father is slain in valiant battle, and his mother is unceremoniously decapitated while she is holding his hand. This is going to be a brutal, violent story with grim surroundings and an air of doom hovering over our lead character. William Smith, who was so often the bad guy in seventies and eighties films, got a nice brief turn here as Conan's father. Smith, who passed away just a year ago, was always a favorite of mine to spot in a movie or television show.
There is a clever montage sequence where young Conan transforms into the Arnold visage, as he build his muscles and endurance as a slave at a mill site. Slowly he becomes the only surviving slave pushing the wheel, and we see shots of the child shifting to shots of the adult and finally he lifts his head and reveals the face that we all know today. A similar montage shows him developing fighting skills as a pit gladiator and training with a sword master. The muscles that Schwarzenegger is famous for come into full play as the camera captures them in sweaty, bloody combat and sleek sword play sequences in the sun.
Once Conan is freed from his captivity, he acquires companions and they embark on a series of action scenes that tell us more about the character. They are bold thieves with little regard for their own lives, much less the lives of others. Subotai, the thief he rescues from the captivity of a witch, is played by surfing champion Gerry Lopez. Lopez is fine, although his voice ends up being dubbed. Sandahl Bergman on the other hand is excellent. A professional dancer with a few acting credits prior to this film, she puts on a very good performance as Conan's love interest and thieving companion. She looks great in the action sequences and she did her prep to get the combat moments right, but her dramatic chops were solid in a couple of important moments. As she embraces Conan at one point, she talks about the loneliness of the life she has lead.
"I would look into the huts and the tents of others in the coldest dark and I would see figures holding each other in the night. And I always passed by. You and I, we have warmth. That's so hard to find in this world. Please. Let someone else pass by in the night. "
This was a terrific character moment. She gets another great scene later when she and Subotai are protecting Conan's wounded body from the spirits that are trying to take him to the next world. She is more defiant there and this is another great character piece.
The second lead of the film is the villain Thulsa Doom, He murdered Conan's parents, and heads the snake cult that is engulfing the surrounding kingdoms. James Earl Jones has that magnificent voice to convey ominous power, but his face is also very animated. He has a couple of moments where he uses his eyes to control the women he is adding to his cult. We see that first when he freezes Conan's mother at the beginning of the film. He attempts to do the same with Conan at the end, as he twists the story of his relationship to the Barbarian, in a manner that will benefit him. With the hair extensions and contact lenses, it might seem like a comic book performance, but it is really a skillful use of expression and voice that makes Thulsa Doom a character that is memorable.
King Osric, the man who sends the thieves after Thulsa Doom to return his daughter to him, is played by the late Max Von Sydow. This is an actor who had a career that spanned from the late forties to just a couple of years ago before his passing. He has been in a dozen of my favorite films over the years and I can't think of a role where he disappoints. He has only one scene in this film and he practically steals the movie. In the brief trailer above, you will get the immediate sense of fun he seemed to be having as part of this cast.
Although I have seen this movie a dozen time, I was foggy on one moment in particular. I had not remembered the animated effects in the scene on the beach when the spirits are coming for Conan. The subtle images that never look like cartoons but are clearly animated creatures, were very satisfying. I thought it worked much better on the big screen than I remembered from home viewings. Just another example of why seeing a movie in a theater is so much better. This was the thirty third film I saw this year that was a screening of an older film(Five of those films were from 1982). More than a dozen of those have been Fathom Events. Let me offer my heartfelt thanks for Fathom and the studios they work with. I know that sometimes the showings are not much more than commercials for upgraded video releases, but that's OK with me. I'll buy the 4K or Blu-Ray, but first let me re-experience it where it belongs.
I have to say that I was disappointed in this film, but not nearly as let down as I thought I might have been. I try to avoid looking at other reviews before I see a film for myself, but the Rotten Tomato scores popped up somewhere and when I was looking for guests for the podcast, a couple of preview statements on Lamb pages seemed to be discouraging. While they are mostly right, there are a few things to recommend the film, and I want to start with those.
Regular readers are aware that this site is sometimes driven by nostalgia, heck, that was most of the original purpose of the initial project, and I have continued that with a couple of other projects that you can find here. "Empire of Light" is set in 1980/81. Some of the films that get referenced are treasured favorites, from "All That Jazz" to "Being There". Sadly, the movies mentioned get short shrift from the script and the promise held out by the marketing team is broken. The power of movies to transform lives is not really the focus of the story, no matter how luminous Olivia Coleman looks while watching a film in a dark auditorium. The setting on the other hand does much to make up for these oversights. The "Empire" Theater is a glorious old movie palace, in spite of half the screens and a restaurant gone to seed. The glowing lobby, the red velvet curtains and the traditional auditorium seats, made me wish I was watching this movie in that theater.
Lighting Magician Roger Deakins does his usual fine work in making the images on screen look spectacular. From the Lobby of the theater, to the beach-side dunes, to the main character's drab apartment, we get a feeling about how to feel because of how things look. He also lights Coleman as the zoftig love interest in a way that highlights her mood swings very accurately. One moment she is sweet and longing, the next she is threatening and harsh. Coleman of course does most of the heavy lifting for these moments, but the lighting and composition make it work really well as she descends into her pit. A sex scene that is meant to be off putting is exactly that, in large part due to the unflattering lighting of a dingy office with the scent of shame washing over us in waves of shadow.
Michael Ward, who is the second lead and who the story should really be about, also looks great on screen. He has a natural charisma and he plays his character of Stephen as a real person, surprised to find himself struggling with his life but drawn to the much older Hilary. The problem is that screenwriter Sam Mendes, has given himself a schizophrenic story to direct. There are at least four plot lines that could be the spine of the story; the romance, the racial unrest, the me-too relationship and the miracle of movies thread. Unfortunately, they don't all gel together, and some are so underdeveloped that they feel like plot contrivances rather than real moments in the character's lives.
See this movie for Coleman's performance, Deakin's paintbox, and Ward's star suggesting turn. Just don't get your hopes up too much. We aren't going to finish watching this film and see a beautiful curtain close behind an ornate proscenium. Your multiplex may be nice, but it won't create the warm feeling that going to the movies used to produce. Unfortunately, neither will this film.
