Star Wars- Episode 1- The Phantom Menace-PG-***
Three stars for nostalgia value, but there is not much else in this curiously creaky 1999 classic. The reason to see this for most of the audience is to recapture a more innocent time and to introduce kids to it. The excuse for re-release is 3-D. Go for the nostalgia. The 3-D doesn’t add that much and makes the film darker, not psychologically but actually. There are many things that surprised me on recall: the story is told epigrammatically, in short chunks, often tenuously related to each other; the creatures are wonderful but often difficult to understand; the events in the film often spring from nowhere and are totally mystifying as to purpose. The acting, especially of the kids, is robotic and even a very young Natalie Portman, already gorgeous though round of face, sometimes seems as if she just learned her lines. On the other hand, Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, just at the end of his apprenticeship, have the most chemistry in the cast. Ben Burtt’s sound design is still astounding, especially considering that most of the effects were created from “found sound”—real things that make unusual sounds when recorded up close or in their own context. And the light saber sound is still one of the coolest sounds ever created anywhere. Take the kids and explain “The Force,” “The Federation” and “Naboo” to them when you get home.
Safe House- R- **
This film is almost interesting until you realize you’ve seen it all before. A test of “how much punishment can the human body take,” it features Ryan Reynolds as Matt, a bored, beginning CIA agent who mostly performs clerical duties at a safe house in Capetown, South Africa. His duties become more interesting when Tobin Frost (Denzell Washington) tries to find sanctuary there. Wrong place, Tobin! He, it turns out, is a renegade agent and his greeting at the house is immediate and repeated water boarding by other agents. There is the chief conflict of the movie: we know the bad guys are trying to kill Frost as the opening chase indicates, and the CIA isn’t treating him well either. Who’s left? Matt. We suspect, and it is later indicated, that a mole in the CIA is tipping the villains off to Frost’s location and assisting in trying to have him rubbed out. The reason, we suspect, is a microchip that he conceals inside a capsule injected into his thigh. There is the plot outline and if it seems familiar it is because it is. The only thing that makes the plot poignant is the fact that recent developments in intelligence, both here and in some of our allies, indicate that corruption, betrayal of principles and treachery is common and even rife. That may or may not be true but the nonsense many of the agencies have indulged in and the portrayal of such nonsense in film and print, makes it plausible and that’s sobering enough. We do learn something important, however: when an official of the CIA tells you “We’ll take it from here,” start looking for your own safe house.
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island- PG-**
The voiced introduction warns you: this is a story built on science fiction and fantasy. More fantasy than science fiction, and clearly made to exercise the recently developed clichés of 3-D, this is strictly for kids. 4-12 is probably the most appropriate age range. The theater was packed with a group of them when I saw this and they all seemed to enjoy most of it. Moms may (or may not) enjoy Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his “Pec Pop of Love” featured in the trailer you’ve all seen, and there might be minor swooning over Josh Hutcherson (Sean) while some dads will find Vanessa Hudgens appealing until they listen to her struggle to read her lines, but the plot is silly, and the effects juvenile (appropriate to its target audience) and there’s precious little to rave about. I saw it in 2-D and felt I didn’t miss anything. Michael Caine is making money again as the grandfather and manages to keep a straight face when he’s saved from death by a ride on Capt.Nemo’s original Nautilus. I dare you to manage a straight face when seeing it happen.
Big Miracle-PG-**
This movie is predictable from its title and every frame in it from start to finish. It’s about a real event that happened in 1988 and one of its features is the inclusion of actual footage from the time with Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and even Larry King as they covered the story. Three whales, Fred, Wilma and Bam Bam, get trapped in the ice off Barrow Alaska. They are soft-headed gray whales so they can’t poke through the encroaching ice to get the air they need to live and thus they become trapped five miles from open water. Enter Adam Carlson (John Krasinksy), intrepid reporter, on assignment from an Anchorage TV station, Rachel Kramer, (Drew Barrymore), the head of Greenpeace-Alaska and, in quick succession, the evil oil magnate, J.W. McGraw (Ted Danson), various Eskimos, and assorted others reporters (viciously competitive) friends of whales, (wonderful people) and various and sundry Reagan White House staffers, one of whom becomes a romantic factor. There are serious flaws in this film: at one point near the end the narrator tells us at everybody in Barrow went out to help free the whales but a scattered crowd of maybe twenty is in for the finish of the story. A hare-brained scheme to melt the ice thanks to two wacky brothers from Minnesota starts comic suddenly works, though nothing else does in the -50 temperatures, and characters are so broadly drawn that they become caricatures. Rachel, for example, is so rabid a conservationist that even environmentalists in the audience will tire of her carrying on. But, the whales are adorable—one doesn’t realize how big they are until Rachel jumps in to see what’s happening underwater and she swims up next to them—and, since the title of the movie includes “miracle,” you know that there is a happy ending with plenty of waving of US and Soviet flags. A Soviet ice-breaker and Gorbachev get involved, you see. Don’t expect any surprises and enjoy the look back at American television 1988 style. Fine for kids.
The Vow- PG-13-**
This is almost a good movie but proves, beyond doubt, that you can take a drop-dead cute actress, let her dimple up and even change her hair color and, if you pair her with a stump, she cannot carry a movie. Channing Tatum as Leo, is so inept and wooden that his six-pack abs cannot save him. Unfortunately for him, they are unleashed only in the last quarter of the movie. Rachel McAdams as Paige, is forced to carry the film. Can’t do it alone, honey. Briefly, because you’ve seen this plot before, Paige is sent into amnesia back to her distant past, and wakes to find no memory of Leo, her husband. She is an artist, he a recording studio owner. The rest of the movie lets us watch as Paige tries, without much enthusiasm, to find her memory, assisted clumsily by Leo, who has apparently never heard of amnesia. Leo’s character is too intellectually inert to figure out more sophisticated and subtle ways of re-introducing Paige to her past and many possible scenes are therefore reduced to the expected attempts to put her in old places to find old memories. Pity it doesn’t work. Sam Neill has a nasty turn as Paige’s father, Jessica Lange her mother and it becomes immediately apparent why Paige left posh Lake Forest for downtown Chicago. Her old flame, Jeremy, played with convincing poise by Scott Speedman, wants to begin where they left off and is so much a better actor than Tatum that you wish him luck. He is so good that he turns the emotional balance of the film. Neill and Lange are so locked into stereotypes that they establish a balance of mere expectation. This film could be good if that expectation was upset by actual plot elements or a decent actor in the lead role. Without either, it’s a movie about a cute woman with a poor memory. Seen that too often already.
Chronicle- PG-13- *
This starts out as “I Am a Camera” and morphs into “How Much of Seattle Can We Destroy With Computers” and a total insult to the intelligence of everyone save a few deluded high school students who may think they are seeing “Blair Witch III.” Three high school buddies, Matt, Andrew and Steve, discover super powers when they fall down a hole. The whole thing is recorded awkwardly and with strange edits that skip time but allow the dialogue to run uninterrupted (!) with a camera that is also under a spell: it has the power to float, change angles, subjects and even zoom on its own. Wow. The trio treats their powers as a juvenile joke, even after they get a pause by dumping a harasser into the river in his truck. almost killing him. This is a serious infringement of the “Rules” which they are supposed to live by. The script gets progressively more stupid and self-consciously “clever” until the final scenes that destroy most of Seattle when it, like the camera, takes on a life of its own. To indicate how pretentious this piece is, Schopenhauer and Jung are quoted within the first ten minutes, without relevance to anything. Looking back, that’s sort of the way this whole disaster was constructed.