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Alien Abduction (2005)
Another no-budget indie science fiction that works
After watching over two hours of Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" and Michael Bay's "The Island" I am not convinced that throwing millions of dollars at a film production means that it will be good. I actually liked "The Island" but I certainly found that the big budget helped the story to be more entertaining. I wonder if I would have liked it so much if the budget were under half a million. David Michael Latt directed a version of the War of The Worlds that came out on the heels of the Spielberg epic. I have to admit that if I stripped away the huge Spielberg budget I liked the cheap Latt version better. It had more heart. So I went to a film festival where another low budget science fiction was playing, this one was just produced by David Michael Latt. It was directed by Eric Forsberg who never did a Sci Fi before. Well, the film was called "Alien Abduction" and again I was surprised by the amount of heart and head that went into the making of it. This movie had even less money behind it than Latt's version of the War of The Worlds. In the first minute of the film I saw a space ship effect that was so cheap I began to worry what I had gotten myself into. But then I forgot about the no money home movie effects and started really sinking my teeth into the meat of the story. And it worked. It was like breaking an addiction to big glitzy special effects high budget films and going cold turkey right there in the theater. By the end of Alien Abduction I didn't even notice the cheap sets and the bad sound. I left the theater feeling like I had been part of something. Like when I was the only one in the theater for The Motorcycle Diaries. And I wonder if Michael Bay's budget had been dumped into Alien Abduction would I have been more interested in the setting of the story than the meaning of the story.
War of the Worlds (2005)
for no money it's not bad
I am not a big fan of the Spielberg/Cruise version of this film. And so I must throw in with the more humble Latt/Howel version. C Thomas Howel had more heart and more sympathy that Cruise in the lead role (at least in my opinion). Now this is hard to imagine until you strip away everything thing in the Spielberg version that cost more than a thousand dollars. There would be nothing left, no special effects, no sets, no Cruise. Because I doubt that anything cost more than a cool grand in the David Michael Latt version. So, comparing apples to turnips I guess I have to go with the turnips. At least it gives independent movies a shot at the epic science fiction disaster market.
War of the Worlds (2005)
cruel and angry
Tom Cruise usually lights up the screen for me (Last Samurai, The Firm, Far and Away) and his choice of characters is usually sympathetic. But his character in Spielberg's War of the Worlds was simply unappealing and even repugnant at times. It's too bad because the Spielberg/Cruise machine has the money and the man power to do just about anything they want to on screen. Even thought this made a heck of a lot of money it was far less successful than the original black and white version of the book, or even the 2005 version by David Latt, "HG Wells War of the Worlds". The main character in that had more heart and held more sympathy than Cruise even came close to in the Spielberg epic.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
A fantasy world that is not so dark and dismal
I entered the theater a little worried. I began reading CS Lewis when I was 12 and I had already read the first book to my 6 year old daughter so the cat was out of the bag on Christian morality in our world of myths of legends (as well as a good dose of pagan nature worship). But I was unsettled by some of the reports on the news about how the Christian right had been targeted by Disney for this film and that it managed to get a PG rating (putting it somewhere in between "Because of Win Dixie" and "Racing Stripes"). So, I feared that my beloved books would be zealously Chistianized for the sake of the massive Evangelical movement in this country and its many many dollars. To my delight, I found the same wonderful level of Chistian sentiment in the film that are in the books. Nothing offensive (to me at least), no dogma, no lectures, no secret Jesus messages beyond the original ones that Lewis included. And as I breathed a sigh of relief that this wasn't another "Vegi-Tales" the film washed over me like a bath of fantasy come to life. The mythical creatures were delightful and the world of Narnia was worth saving. And I loved Lucy (but I never felt much for Peter or Susan, not in the film, not in the books).
After having watched The Lord of the Rings many times and even the Harry Potter films way more than I needed to I was beginning to grow weary of the fantasy world that was once wonderful, now a dark and forbidding place filled with evil. Peter Jackson's love affair with Orcs, demons and the Dark Lord is forgivable (because Tolkien was obsessed with it too, although Tolkien also created a Middle Earth that was so beautiful and ancient and amazing that you wanted to go there, to live there, but who would really want to live in Jackson's Middle Earth, full of ghosts and loneliness and decay). But Narnia managed to have the villainy without creating a hopeless world of darkness. Again, it felt like the books. And I didn't miss the blood and the slime that Narnia could have had. For me it was a real success.
Now, let's hope that they are quickly shooting the next few books so that they can catch these kids before they get too old.
Syriana (2005)
Smart, real and open minded
I was fortunate enough to see a screening of this where the director did a Q&A afterwords. He explained how he had spent months traveling and writing and researching in the Middle East (including the Gulf). He insisted on shooting the film in rarely shown nations like Dubai. I could feel this reality seeping through the film. The actors too were cast from people from Morrocco to India. The director wanted real people who spoke real dialects in the roles. This detail worked for me. I have been to the Middle East and to North Africa a number of times and this film felt right. The people that I met on my travels treated me with a bizarre and mysterious mix of truth and lies, of hospitality and resentment, of graciousness and blame. The film captured this. The performances were well delivered, the story was intricate and clear enough and the end left good questions open. My favorite scene was with Christopher Plumber on the boat when he shows what real power is to the paper tiger prince. I think this is a must see. As an American it must be seen.
Walk the Line (2005)
Cash vs Ray, Booze vs Heroin, guts vs soul
When I was a boy I visited a friend in Germany whose father had the unsettling name of Adolf. He spoke very little English and he used to sit in his great-chair and listen to Johnny Cash, hour after hour. The music never grabbed me, but it sure grabbed him, seven thousand miles away in another land. So when the film came out I was overjoyed. Finally a chance to solve the mystery of why Cash was so appealing. I felt like I was about to be initiated into a secret society. Nobody would go with me so I went alone. I wore black.
I can't help but compare this musician biopic to last year's Ray. I loved Ray so very much as a film. His music was more my speed than country but the film too was a warm and loving portrayal of a man who absolutely adored his music. Ray was a musical genius, a kind soul, someone I would be friends with if I had the chance. I wasn't half way through Walk the Line when I knew, Cash was no Ray. He was angry, depressed, violent, disrespectful, and destructive. But he didn't have a fraction of the talent that Ray had to redeem himself with: Cash was not a musical genius. He just had balls. And both Cash and Ray were haunted by their childhood, and they were both addicts. But Cash was addicted to the far less exotic booze and pills rather than Ray's pot and opium. Ray was high but Cash was always low.
Walk the Line was a hard film to watch although in the end I wanted the singer to find success or at least love. This was a mean guy that I shouldn't care about or invest in, but I did, so that much of the film worked. I don't think I'll listen to his music, but I understand better whey Adolf did.
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
beautiful and exotic but uninspiring
This film promised to be so much, so many things: an historic peek into traditional Japan, the secret world of a dazzling culture revealed, a compelling story of seduction, power and duty. Some of these themes were much better explored in last years "The Last Samurai", not the greatest film but at least it did what it set out to do. "Memoirs of a Geisha" reminded me of last decade's "Hang the Red Lantern" and "Farewell My Concubine", both tales of secret Oriental worlds and deep love versus duty. And although the art direction depicting prewar Japan was moving, "Memiors of a Geisha" felt more like a clunky Kung Fu melodrama than a deeply serious unveiling of Japanese culture, so restrained, so intense.
The lack of Japanese talent in the cast and especially in the title role was the main flaw in the film (that and the abundance of white men at the helm trying to fake their way through understanding Japan's shadow world). The lead, Ziyi Zhang had little feeling for her all important part. She played it or she was directed to play it like a depressed sourpuss who had no magic, no sex-appeal and only over acting to offer. Then every 15 minutes or so we were "told" through narration that the world of a Geisha was a "shadow world", a floating world, where her every movement was a magical seduction, a ritualized perfection. And yet there she was, Sayuri, supposedly the the most celebrated Geisha alive, and she was about as magical as a mug of lite beer. I have seen woman in Akira Kurosawa films combing their hair in such a "floating world" way that tears came to my eyes and I was ready to lay my life on the line for the actress, an actress whose eyes moved just so... whose fingers arched poetically just so. Wow, where was that in this film? That's the whole movie. This magical traditional Geisha and her deep deep secrets.
I think that a fine Japanese actress would have that kind of sense of specialized Japanese tradition in her guts. She would be trained in Kabuki and Noh the way that classically trained Western performers learn Shakespeare. So, for me, all other good things were pushed aside by the fact that the lead did not succeed in the role. I wish that I could be more generous with this film, but this was such a good project, there shouldn't have been any mistakes. The only thing that they had the right to ask us was..."please forgive us for using the blue contact lenses but we had no choice". That I was willing to over look in the lead, but nothing else.