Reviews

Just saw Babylon A.D. It was a whole lot better than I feared; not quite as good as I hoped.

The big thing that tickled me – I'm a sucker for the mythic narrative, and I'm a sucker for doubling. I know Diesel knows his tarot, and there was tarot imagery undergirding that movie hard core. One of the Major Arcana cards is Key 7, The Chariot. One of the many meanings of The Chariot; it's the vehicle or the urge that drives or pulls or yanks us out of the garden, out of childhood, out of a previous state of being. It's closely related to Key 16, The Tower. It shows a tower being blown apart by lightening. Again, the end of one order, the radical rupture with the previous world; the beginning of a new.

So what happens in this movie? Toorop is in his home, and he's ripped out of it – rides off in a limo tank. Gets in a car that flies to a convent in Mongolia. An idyllic garden of a place. He becomes the charioteer at last at this point, driving the car. He takes two people from the garden into a world full of broken towers. They drive, they take the train, they take a sub, they walk, they fly, they run, they go into a world full of towers, some of which need a little blowing up. Toorop and Sister Rebecka and Aurora are all playing The Chariot, all ferrying their burdens from one world to another. Even Aurora's father is something of a Charioteer. Taking Toorop from death to life, from life to death, from death to life again.

And something switches. The penultimate act, we see Toorop's childhood home. Destroyed as if it was blown apart by metaphoric lightening. The girl, the ultimate charioteer, is waiting there. Once they are reunited, it's back to the road. Ultimately, the girl delivers her burden and dies. Toorop rebuilds his home and raises the little girl. There's a storm coming; there are towers that may come down, but it's a sweet place to stop.

I like Toorop. He's got style and he may be mercenary but he's got a line he won't cross. If it turns out the girl is a weapon, he'll kill her and burn her body to stop that from happening. That's a good line. I loved Sister Rebecka's character. There simply needs to be more nun- mercenary buddy movies where the nun kicks ass.

There were some weaknesses. I don't quite buy Toorop's conversion. He takes a shower, sees the girl, they almost kiss, and all of a sudden he's gone from mercenary who's basic limit is being used to destroy a city to literally willing to die to save this girl he barely knows. It felt like a bunch of character development got deleted. I don't get why evil mom stopped trying to get her daughter back just because a couple of cars got run off the road.

But I love the fact that, as in all Vin Diesel movies I really like, the women really call the shots. I love the fact he became the solar hero, going dark and light again and again, despite himself; I like the way that I see more in this the more I think about it. Two thumbs up. And I shall eagerly await the director's cut. Eagerly.

A friend of mine gave me this for my birthday. I viewed it with some suspicion ("this doesn't look like science fiction," thought I), but it was a fine, fine film. Very much in the tradition of "But I'm a Cheerleader!" A coming of age film cum Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In this case, we learn the government is using the SAT to pick girls for special ops teams. The state seems to be making very little effort to foster any sort of moral growth in these girls, instead preferring to use peer pressure and intermittent parental approval to mold them into Super Solders. With, as near as I can tell, large clothing budgets. Subtly transgressive; these girls are essentially sorority pledges who didn't even know they were rushing. Or whatever they call it. One falls hard for the improbably named Lucy Diamond, a supervillain, who falls hard right back. The story of their love is a sweet love story in an otherwise ironic take on the way society molds us to serve its needs.

If you don't have patience for parody of the standard tropes, or you don't like Buffy, you won't like this film. I thought it was great fun.

But The Last Stand should have been great.

It has a great premise. Suddenly, the moral question of whether you assimilate, tolerate, or separate is presented starkly, and no one is ready for it, not even the Secretary of Mutant Affairs. And we find out that it's not just the charismatic anti-hero, the Holocaust survivor Magneto, who has been making moral decisions for other people, it's our pure hearted leader Charles Xavier. The special effects are fun, the actors great, and Ian McKellen rocks the house.

But the movie is disappointing. They wave at the big question, they never grapple with it. Give me more of Rogue's anguish; this incredibly powerful woman who can not shake hands or kiss or bear a child. Give me more of McCoy's loss; this man who was a research scientist who can no longer manipulate the lab equipment. Talk to me about the fact that the cure will kill Logan.

And there were strange continuity problems. Xavier unleashes at Wolverine for doing "something," when we just saw him do nothing. Magneto steps over the body of the woman he loves and sends devoted followers to their apparent deaths with barely a shrug. Magneto plays for keeps, but he's always had the grace to regret it before. Storm's in charge, but Wolverine's giving orders? These things didn't work for me.

There were some wonderful bits. The actors were great, especially Sir Ian. That man owned that film, and any scene with him in it was delicious. Some nicely brutal fight scenes. Kitty Pride's fight with Juggernaut was just about perfect. The slight (unintentional?) political commentary of sending a great big blue ape to the UN made me laugh. And the last scene, while not as good as Magneto quoting Malcolm X from the first film, was still nice.

But I was irritated at what it could have been. The other two movies are great; a fun surface romp with depths that go deep. This was all surface.

Worth seeing. But I don't think I'll be buying the DVD. Don't think it'll bear re-watching.

Been a long time since I saw a movie I enjoyed that much. A wonderful, whimsical, weird exploration of the conflict between the Old Night (with both its bloodiness and its potential for grace) and The Enlightenment (with both its bloodiness and its potential for liberation). With an affectionate nod towards the Catholic Church and its syncretic traditions.

I really loved what Gillian did with the historical characters, the Brothers Grimm. They were linguists who were part of the creation of the modern Germany. They were both forward looking and deeply backwards looking. Utterly modern, utterly not. Here we have two brothers who pierced the veil; saw through the myth and manipulated it for their own purposes, until the myth stepped up and snatched them back into the dark forest, and not even the flames of the Enlightenment could liberate them. Only thinking through the stories.

There were literal flames licking those forests. Napoleon's General (John Pryce; wonderful villain) tried to burn down the forest where demons lurked. Was going to burn the stories, burn the brothers, as well. But they were saved by an Angel – Angelica; the love interest; the tracker; the one who had been in the forest. Whose father was all the way into the story. She had the same twinned vision; an educated woman who knew the old stories. They too were educated men who knew the stories. And it isolated them both.

The only other person who knew the stories was the general's torturer; the Italian dude. Who saves the stories. Syncretic, like the Catholic Church, pulling the old stories into its own matrix.

It also had the oldest magic in the world; calendar magic. 12 crypts with 12 girls, their blood mingled to make a youth restoring elixir for an immortal queen who none the less aged. I'm a sucker for calendar magic. Months and moons and eclipses, oh my.

The Empress sent her champion, the Emperor, (the huntsman; the wolf man, the man who eats his own children like time eats his own children) to collect the girls. He actually gets 13, but one is rescued by our heroes. 13 moons. 13 months in the lunar year. Contrasted with the 12 months of the solar year.

The Brothers were both avatars of the archetypal Magician. The Magician as thief, story teller, and con man. They found a guide in archetypal High Priestess – in this case, a woman with a bow who guided them in and out of the trackless forest of the intuition; of the mythic imagination. The Empress was the Queen in the Tower – a dark reflection of the Queen of Heaven; the womb and the tomb. The Huntsman was also the Hanged Man, serving the Empress. And the General he General; the avatar of imperial authority. At last, it was a comedy, order restored with a kiss, even though there didn't need to be one.

And it was so meta! The story tellers were con men, using stories to trick ignorant villagers out of money. Gilliam is a story teller, using stories to trick us into going to the movie. But the story tellers save the day because they hear the story behind the con, and know how to end it.

And the number of fairy tales they wove in. Some were just tiny visual motifs, some were the entire thing. Cinderella (scrubbing floors, glass slippers on the girls in the crypts) Sleeping Beauty (pricked fingers) Little Red Ridding Hood (wandering through the forest, being eaten by a wolf); Hansel and Gretel (searching in the forest, trail of bread crumbs) . . . And older. Crows were everywhere. The Morrigan.

Having Isabella Rossellini as the queen who won immortality but not eternal youth was wonderful. The allure and the horror of the timeless stories; forever young; forever retold.

It begins "Once upon a time," and it ends "They lived happily ever after. Or maybe not."

I loved it. My kinda film.