“I say, Tonto, another fine day to be righteous and white, eh?”

 A stranger Ranger.

The Lone Ranger (in radio, television and film) has made Gioachino Rossini’s galloping theme so famous that the term “intellectual” has been defined as “a man who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.”
— Wikipedia.

No one’s a stranger to the Ranger. Popular in entertainment media since the 1930s, if you are alive right now, you were exposed to The Lone Ranger at some point in your life.

The story of the masked Texas Ranger who seeks Justice with his Native American sidekick has always been a pretty simplistic endeavor, which probably explains the Lone Ranger’s popularity. I remember the cartoon best. Straightforward. Baddies were one-dimensionally bad, and good guys were just as one-dimensionally good. As far as I can remember, The Lone Ranger was never shadowed by the darkness of vigilantism or moral ambiguity. Even the irony of him operating outside the Law to bring Justice is lost on his demo.

THE LONE RANGER 2013 retains this same simplistic notion of bad and good, with a little origin story thrown in, cartoonish action pieces, and a lot of people holding a gun on someone else and talking instead of shooting.

The team that brought us the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN create this kids’ adventure tale (writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and director Gore Verbinski); thus, a kid is the voice of the audience. The tale is told in flashback, after a young boy (Mason Cook) at a 1939 San Francisco fair, dressed in Lone Ranger duds, visits the Wild West exhibit and encounters an ancient Tonto (Johnny Depp) as one of the exhibits. Tonto spins a tale of what really happened 60 years ago, deconstructing the Lone Ranger legend. So the movie proper (set in 1869) is interrupted jarringly at intervals by these scenes of the boy and old Tonto, the boy voicing some plot hiccup or mythology we’d all like to point out at that juncture.

It’s like the movie is being too self-effacing; playing devil’s advocate with itself too harshly; like it’s attributing outlandish plot elements to the ravings of a senile Injun. And that old adage “If you don’t like yourself, how can anyone else like you?” works against the filmmakers, because these segments prove they do not have faith in their own product; that it needs some kind of self-conscious apologia. They seem to scoff at the childishness of the Western format and the unblemished integrity of the lead character.

Armie Hammer is the new chiseled face of the Ranger aka John Reid, a lawyer who returns from the big city to bring law to the frontier via the gavel, not the gun. Riding with his Sheriff brother (James Badge Dale), their posse is ambushed by the Butch Cavendish gang (William Fichtner). The whole posse is killed, with Reid left for dead. Tonto, also on the trail of Cavendish (believing he is a Wendigo spirit, throwing nature out of balance), finds the wounded Reid and, at the prompting of a mythic white horse, nurses Reid back to health.

Tonto urges Reid to wear a mask whilst seeking his “killers,” the rationale being: they think him dead, “better to stay that way.” Which spurs the running gag, “What’s with the mask?” A very modern phrasing that rankles on the “legend” aspect.

Tom Wilkinson is the railroad baron, laying track through hostile Comanche territory. (Wasn’t he the railroad baron laying track through hostile territory in THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS?) Ruth Wilson is the Michelle Monaghan lookalike whom Wilkinson threatens with rape and whom Reid crushes on – it’s Disney, so any chance that we’ll see rape or sex is dashed before it ever progresses to hand-holding. Helena Bonham Carter (veteran of starring alongside Depp) is a whore. And here, she plays a whore. Barry Pepper is a cavalryman with a mungabush to rival Custer’s. And Stephen Root is a councilman with a mungabush that puts Pepper’s to shame.

Saginaw Grant, legendary Native American elder, states the most profound truth, when told that attacking the white man will cause war and ultimately the death of his people: “We are already ghosts to them…”

THE LONE RANGER is best appreciated by younger folk not picky about the cartoonish nature of its bombastic action, where people escape explosions right next to them, and walk away without a bruise from massive falls that would kill a lesser Wile E. Coyote. Some of the stunts and gags are original, and the soundtrack will eventually cascade into the majestic gallop of the William Tell Overture during the final audacious chase scene. But this finale, atop two trains on two different tracks, rolling alongside each other along cliff faces, is especially made for that young audience, as I lost count of how many times I wanted to punch the movie, with its coupling and decoupling of carriages, crashes and explosions and splinterings, shooting across moving carriages, jumping on and off train roofs and generally doing all those things that only Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner can get away with.

This Western can’t quite figure if it wants to be a comedy with high action or a statement about villainy told comically. While it’s trying to decide, it keeps losing favor in many ways:

• The constant regression to the museum display with old Tonto and the young kid.
• A WHITE MAN playing a RED MAN. (Is it 1956 up in this biznatch?) Well, unlike Burt Lancaster’s APACHE, the producers don’t pretend the movie is high art, and Depp is having fun creating another eccentric role. YET… there are numerous sad nods to the Native Americans’ cruel treatment at the hands of white “pioneers” – a message that would be infinitely more impactful if a WHITE MAN were not playing a RED MAN!
• Saginaw dies – at the hands of Pepper’s mungabush. A tragic moment that led nowhere and was not teachable or plot-dependent. Maybe Pepper’s character might see how cruel it was to kill old folk in the name of the railway, but no. The moment is simply cruel.
• There are many contraventions of canon, such as “kemo sabe.” Upon researching this phrase that Tonto has used on the Lone Ranger for nearly a century, its meaning is still in contention, taken to mean anything from “trusted friend” to “soggy bush.” Tonto tells Reid it means “wrong brother” – because he wanted to save Reid’s brother, who was a better frontiersman than Reid, a book-learnin’ fella.

No one’s a stranger to the Ranger. But this Ranger is a stranger to us. THE LONE RANGER deconstructs the legend so thoroughly that the Ranger comes off looking like an “unwitting” hero, not the instigator of justice. Tonto is clearly the brains behind the outfit, while the Ranger is led by the aquiline nose like a righteous, vapid blonde. (Hammer played this role once before (in MIRROR MIRROR); if he’s not careful, he’s going to end up Brendan Fraser.) This rejiggering of the partnership’s power structure was not to deconstruct legend, but because it just looks screwy in this age of pc tolerance – for a red man to devote himself so unquestioningly to a white man like a – ahem – slave… In the early 1900’s, there was no question that the “noble savage” would aid the righteous white man as he trampled the beloved frontier into “civilization,” but now, that inherent subservience doesn’t wash. Hence, Tonto is boss, and on his own mission.

And even THIS doesn’t quite wash. Because the underlying reason Depp is cast as Tonto is because they couldn’t realistically cast a Native American who would be lording over an actual white man. No audience would stand for it! That’s how deep the racism river runs! They HAD to cast a white man in the role of red man because he was written to be the leader of the duo. And we can’t have an ACTUAL red man as boss now, can we, racist America?

The one time the Ranger rears up on his horse with that famous cry, “Hi-Yo, Silver!” a startled Tonto berates him, “Don’t ever do that again!” With the film’s rancid critical reception, it’s a safe bet he won’t…

END

When it’s bad being Bad.

Geez, I hope no one confuses the sex appeal and street-kewl of these Hollywood-ized detectives with the misinformed rednecks that are real cops. Too late…

BULLITT (1968), DIRTY HARRY (1971, four sequels), THE SUPER COPS (1974), BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984, two sequels), LETHAL WEAPON (1987, three sequels), COPS (1989 TV series, 27 seasons and still going strong in 2014) – the list of movies and TV shows that celebrate the phallic thrust of the bottom rung of law enforcement is literally endless. Is it any wonder that synergy continues into the 90s, with bigger explosions, bigger budgets and bigger phallic thrusts?

BAD BOYS Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are two comedians trying to make drug busts in Miami (which is basically a description of cops in Miami). On the tail of a 100 million dollar shipment for Euro badness Tchéky Karyo, they must also rescue mega-hotness Téa Leoni as a murder witness, must keep Lieutenant Joe Pantoliano out of their pantaloons, dodge Internal Affairs sexpot Marg Helgenberger, and placate Martin’s nagging wife, Theresa Randle. Their “theme song” is Inner Circle’s Bad Boys…

Michael Bay directs in his film debut, and we see all those swooping camera moves and slomo hero shots that would become a staple of his style. Maybe he was a natural extension of his predecessors, maybe a creature of his era? Maybe a copycat of some obscure European director, or a pioneer? I don’t know; I just know that this bombastic Pretty-Orange-Explosion, low-angle, guns-and-cars-and-cheese motif would inform the bulk of Hollywood blockbusters in the decades to come. We must admit, for all the chickendipshittery of it all – it looks great, with the production team of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson helming the slick affair, with a lotta laughs from the easy chemistry between Lawrence and Smith, and edge-of-your-seat thrills from Bay’s swooping cams. There’s no way we’ll ever confuse this glossy afterburner with the grit of DIRTY HARRY or the breeze of LETHAL WEAPON.

The title of the movie itself is a massive case of reappropriation (the act of taking an insult and claiming it as a badge of honor, like headbanger, jarhead, nigger, etc.). Bad Boys was a 1987 reggae song that referred to criminals as “bad boys.” However, after it was misused/overused as the COPS TV show theme song, its perception was twisted and seemed to apply to the cops as “badasses.” In fact, this movie uses the song blatantly as the epithet for Lawrence and Smith’s badass quipping buddy cops; they actually sing a snatch of the song as they roll in their souped-up Porsche 911 Turbo II 3.6. That’s what Hollywood calls realism.

But cops, policemen, baconators – whatever you want to call them – are NOT your quipping pals who would judiciously discern you are not a “bad boy” and let you walk if they accidentally bumped into you on the street or near a crime scene. And whenever you call the cops for any reason, make sure all your alcohol is hidden, all your drugs are flushed, all your porn is stashed, all the bruises on your girlfriend’s arm from Krav Maga are covered, all your traffic tickets are paid, all your clothes are expensive, all your headlights and blinkers work, all your house is painted… or they will find some reason to arrest you and/or beat the shit out of you and/or taser you. And if you’re black, then they’ll really fuck you up.

So although many cop movies are classics and highly enjoyable, cops are NOT the discerning, judicious humanitarians they are usually portrayed as. They are trained to be merely apprehenders of suspected perpetrators. They are trained not to judge, not to deliberate, not to execute. Just bring the perp in, so the SYSTEM can do all that. But it’s media like this that makes the cops think – incorrectly – that they are allowed to have discernment and an opinion and a knee on someone’s neck.

In the world of BAD BOYS, we are rooting like zealots for the cops – family man Marcus Bennett (Lawrence) and sex machine Mike Lowrey (Smith) – to track down the drugs and save the dame. And do unimaginably stupid things along the way that only Hollywood can get away with, i.e. married Marcus masquerades as the womanizer Mike Lowery so that witness Julie (Leoni) will trust him with her life. It’s not enough he’s got a badge and gun, now he’s gotta have a slap-happy tool as well. Or how about taking a page from TANGO AND CASH: Marcus is a millionaire who owns that Porsche, but still does The Job so that the other guys on the force won’t think he’s coasting through life. Hey, I got an idea: why not leave the frickin’ force and coast through life?

Watch for Michael Imperioli (soon to be Christopher from THE SOPRANOS), Anna Thomson (the cut whore from UNFORGIVEN), Kevin Corrigan (as a geek scientist, before joining the Seth Rogen clan).

And you don’t really need to watch for Téa Leoni – you can’t miss her – as the screen is seared by her absolute flawless porcelain perfection and neck-crushing thighs, which the producers were canny enough to keep exposed up to the point of vagina. I thank you, Simpson/Bruckheimer! And my bad boy thanks you.

END

Highway to the Gayer Zone.

TOP GUN – the movie that wrested the crown from MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR as the Gayest Movie Ever Made.

Y’know, I had a gay comment for this picture – but it speaks for itself.

Tom Cruise is Maverick, the pop gun let loose in billion dollar taxpayer war machinery, one of the best fancypants F14 Tomcat pilots stationed onboard an aircraft carrier, though so smug, irritating and insubordinate his commanding officers want to take him down to Chinatown, but he’s the only movie star in the herd, so is begrudgingly sent to TOP GUN school, to learn how to be more smug, irritating and insubordinate.

At Top Gun Academy, Maverick is one of many hotshot pilots in competition with each other for who’s got the best hair. Their slogan is “The Best of the Best,” but no one ever says what they’re the best AT – I’d say it’s pectorals, but others might go for abs, or even toyt botties.

Maverick is not just battling other homosexual pilots with call signs like Iceman (Val Kilmer, with hair frosted so high the canopy of his Tomcat has skid marks), Slider (Rick Rossovich, whom we presume uses awesome lube), Jester (Michael Ironside, who wears bells on his head on his days off) and Commander Viper (Tom Skerritt, obviously named for his big snake), he is also battling the ghosts of his past (his pilot father froze up and got other pilots killed, for the convenience of having traumatic backstory for Maverick to overcome later).

By the way, little known fact: the other fighter pilot called Maverick who is even gayer than Tom Cruise – John McCain.

Maverick outflies everyone with his wingman Goose (Anthony Edwards, who must be a bottom with a call sign like that), and taunts Iceman, “That’s right – I’m dangerous!” That put as much fear into me as a Hello Kitty backpack. It only made Iceman want him more.

Iceman chomps his teeth at Maverick – now hold on: Was that a show of machismo or an invitation to put it in his mouth? The sexual tension is mesmerizing.

Then it’s off to the locker rooms for the homoerotic posedown – suck in gut, stick out ass. Maverick leans on the bench, his toweled ass sticking out in the direction of Iceman, his torso glistening with strawberry body oil. Director Tony Scott cuts away before anyone ejaculates.

We were hedging on whether this was truly a gay movie – until manly Kelly McGillis shows up – now we’re sure! Is that a man in women’s clothing? She’s the Pentagon instructor, Charlie (see? A man’s name), talking about thrust and negative insertion. (Oh, I get it: she’s talking about SEX WITH MAVERICK. And if you didn’t realize that two seconds into her monologue, you’re a ten-year-old girl.) Charlie constantly reminds us she’s a Pentagon instructor, or we’d break out laughing at her pretend performance as a Pentagon instructor. She’s also the love interest for the ambiguously gay guy with the Raybans… oh, sorry, you’re right, that could be anyone – she’s the love interest for Tom Cruise.

He sings to her The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling in one of filmdom’s most embarrassing moments. Kenny Loggins sings the nominal “rock” song, Highway To The Danger Zone, which sounds more like a highway to a gloryhole at a men’s truck stop. Later, Berlin’s Take My Breath Away would accompany the Maverick-Charlie slow motion romance, and then start playing on national radio. And wouldn’t stop. Ever.

The soppy love story is inserted sideways into the plot so that girlies who are not taken in by the labia-pounding afterburners of the supersonic jets will have something to cling to after the testosterone subsides.

Man, these gay jokes are just writing themselves…

Nominated for the most flesh-crawling line in a movie: “And I just don’t want anyone to know that I’ve fallen for you.” (Years later, it would take BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN‘s “I can’t quit you” to dislodge this from the top of the pile.)

And who the hell is Charlie fooling instructing fighter pilots anyway? Do they really let blondes with no flight experience yap unintelligibly to a room of semen-throbbing males while wearing those heels?

You lost me at topless male volleyball.

Meg Ryan in a small weepy role with a bad hairstyle, as Goose’s wife (her first feature film). When Goose dies, due to his frosted hair impacting the canopy, Maverick is so cut up about the death of his bum-chum that when we next see him in the locker room, he’s not sticking his butt out even half as much.

All the Top Guns, no matter their former rivalry, have to watch each other’s backs as they fly off on a Real Mission into preternaturally red skies over Russia, or somewhere where there’s a pretend war they can stick their clams into. Who cares? They’re just happy to be watching each other’s backs. The air battle dogfights are man-merizing – it’s supersonic thunder and screaming speed, those swing-wing Tomcats engineered to do one thing and one thing only: make women wet. And gay guys.

Maverick and Iceman survive the mission because of their love for watching each other’s backs. They land, and run into each other’s arms: “You can be my wingman anytime!” “You can be mine!” Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they making plans for who’s going to be the “top” gun tonight? They look so right together that the “affair” with Charlie looks like the wrong type of love.

What was that about topless male volleyball again?…

END

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Rum Diary.

Here we are now! Entertain us!
— Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

So I’m sitting there wondering how another PIRATES movie could have the audacity to rear its skull and crossbones, let alone Johnny Depp reprising his transvestite role yet again with any shred of interest from either him or the moviegoing public. Aren’t three PIRATES movies enough to keep our buckles swashed and our timbers shivered?

I imagined PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES would be a lowdown dirty shame, with nowhere to go on the story, nowhere to take the characters and no one to watch it go nowhere, but I was wrong – it’s actually quite mediocre!

Ironic that the story in this aged and worn PIRATES is – the quest for the fountain of youth.

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is pulled into a quest inadvertently by an ex-flame, Angelica (Penelope Cruz, doing her Salma Hayek with B’s instead of D’s, push-up bra working overtime to keep those puppies bouncy-bouncy). Constant nemesis and simultaneous unwilling ally to Jack, crusty Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, whose mode of acting here has devolved to scrunching up his eyes when he starts a line and then opening them wide mid-delivery) is commissioned by the British government (Richard Griffiths, trying to out-overact Geoffrey Rush) to go on the same quest – to locate the mystical waters of the fountain of youth.

Jack is advised by his father (Keith Richards in a three-minute cameo of pure zombie) to embark on the quest. Depp has always maintained that Richards was the inspiration behind Jack Sparrow, but maybe a subconscious inspiration is Depp’s admitted idolizing of Hunter S. Thompson, as we pick that influence too in Sparrow’s inebriated mumbling. So Jack/Hunter/Keith ends up onboard a dark ship captained by the legendary Blackbeard (gravel-throated Ian McShane, perfectly cast, death-blackened eyes and glorious facial hair worthy of a balrog) and proceeds doing what Jack/Hunter/Keith does best – get himself into drunken political rock and roll trouble…

Jack’s first mate Gibbs (Kevin McNally) is once again along for the ride, as is Stephen Graham (SNATCH) as a swab, Sam Claflin as a sexy priest, and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as an innocent mermaid. (But can anyone who goes around topless all day really be considered innocent? Dont worry, parents: all the mermaids suffer Disney-toplessness, which means their hair is their bra. Sorry, 17-year-old boys, frustrating but true.) Blackbeard captures this mermaid, whom the priest fawns over as if she was a 12-year-old altar boy, even though she has no lady parts that might fit his holy man-parts; although when she falls out of the water onto dry land, she inexplicably grows feet and – we presume – lady parts. (Who made up those rules? Good thing we all saw SPLASH.)

This PIRATES is missing many of the main characters that created the dynamic in the previous movies – gone are those two comic relief pirate swabs (featuring Mackenzie Crook and his eyeball), gone are the British stiff-lips Jack Davenport and Jonathan Pryce, as is the octopus-head of Bill Nighy, gone is the tragic crustiness of Stellan Skarsgård, and the imperious ineffectualness of Tom Hollander (after seeing him in the brilliant bollocking of IN THE LOOP, I was really hoping he would be here); gone is Orlando Bloom and his square-jawed manliness and gone is Keira Knightley and her square-jawed manliness.

And gone is the director of those movies, Gore Verbinski. There is slightly less cheekiness in the tone of Rob Marshall’s direction (from a script by PIRATES veterans Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio), yet he captures the action and lavishness of the previous productions. Yet all that lavishness lands with a thud when events just happen arbitrarily and characters turn up here and there with no logical purposes or throughlines.

While Blackbeard seems intent on his goal, Barbossa is intent on revenge on Blackbeard for stealing his precious Black Pearl. Jack seems caught somewhere in between, like the opportunist he is, and is involved in myriad cartoonish adventures on both sides, still running like a girl, lisping like a drunk and wearing mascara like a prostitute. He doesn’t seem to have any motivation, except maybe touching Penelope Cruz’s eternally forward-thrust push-up bra.

I guess that’s motivation enough for a tranny pirate.

END

Shiver me fey timbers.

Captain Poffy Sparrow

Johnny Depp as some kind of transvestite, in a swinging, swordfighting fey-quest over the high seas of The Caribbean, with Orlando Bloom as his blacksmith girlfriend, and Geoffrey Rush as a grumpy old man in a Halloween pirate costume. Keira Knightley’s square man-jaw causes untold distraction; Jonathan Pryce gads about in a wig slightly smaller than Dee Snider’s hair during the Stay Hungry tour, and Jack Davenport tries to take it all seriously, for which I’m sure everyone laughed at him behind his back.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is as entertaining as it is ambitious, as rollicking as it is ridiculous, as boyish-action-movie as it is gender-bendingly-ambiguous.

Supposedly based on the boring Disneyland boat ride of the same name – that doesn’t have nearly this much gender bending – if anyone ever has this much fun on that dank, irritating boat ride, I’ll eat my triangular hat. Somehow, Disney’s accursed homogenizing hand could not stultify this film’s pure adrenalin bumrush.

Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow, who rockets out of left field with his mascara on overdrive and his personality on sideways; he alone imbues this movie with its unique charm. For some reason, his aggressive effeteness lends an authenticity to the swashbuckling that none of the other “Halloween pirate” performances can. His drunken, insouciant braggadocio drives the film like a 1st rate Ship-of-the-line, beating to windward, guns blazing (and I do mean ‘blazing’).

Matter of fact, there were secret talks held with the Oxford English Dictionary on whether to replace Anthony Hopkins’s picture with Depp’s, next to the meaning of the word “fey.”

Filmed in the Caribbean (St. Vincent and the Windward Islands of the Grenadines), PIRATES somehow avoids looking anything like the Caribbean. Must be that homogenizing Disney touch.

Geoffrey Rush is aye-me-hearties Captain Barbossa who stole Sparrow’s ship, the Black Pearl, which Sparrow spends the whole movie trying to steal back.

Keira Knightley is Elizabeth Swann, daughter to the Governor (Jonathan Pryce), betrothed to a stoic British Commodore (Jack Davenport), but in love with Jack’s girlfriend, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom).

Director Gore Verbinski frames Knightley’s opening shot from an angle that makes her look busty, rather than her sad reality of being flatter than the Earth Before Columbus.

Her pancake ironing board pecs are probably the reason that with all the kidnapping she undergoes by pirates, not one of them thinks to drag her into the hold and rape her – they must think she’s a skinny boy. And since none of them are Catholic priests, she’s not considered sexual property.

It looks very eerie cinematically, but with all those holes in the sails, how does the Black Pearl ever sail? Oh, that’s right, she’s supernatural. Then why does she “sail” at all? Why engage in a “chase” to “catch up” to the Commodore’s ship? Why not just appear alongside in one fell swoop?

For once, the work of four writers looks justified (Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, Jay Wolpert) with the wealth of ideas onscreen. Bold, brash, criminal adventure, involving Aztec blood amulets, hidden treasure, lots of yo-ho-ho barrels of rum, double-crosses and triple-crosses (Sparrow: “Me? I’m dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly”) and fencing the likes of which we haven’t seen since Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn (which does get tiresome when everyone is fencing for no reason, i.e. if you can’t kill each other by fencing – due to being supernatural beings – why bother?)

Bouncy-bouncy music by Klaus Badelt (with music editing and production by Hans Zimmer), moving us like the shifting deck of a schooner: coy, ominous, frolicsome, and rope-swinging-across-chasms epic, transporting us out into the salty breeze and briny seas – or at least to a water tank in San Francisco.

I’m sure the PIRATES movie has made the Disney ride infinitely more popular – though no less boring.

END

I’m going to take a Treasure Bath!

For all its contrived clue-solving and annoying coincidences and tiresome car chases, and even Nicolas Cage‘s mourning face, NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS is a lot of fun.

Cuxocoatl

Maybe producer Jerry Bruckheimer had something to do with the fact we can hardly take a breath before the next relentless action sequence derived from chalky historical jargon disguised as clues to something only the inventor of Sudoku can understand.

Sequel to the less-fun NATIONAL TREASURE, this film finds Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) mourning-face-deep in another treasure hunt, this time for a Mayan City of Gold. Pointless outlining the roundabout manner in which the Mayan City becomes his goal, suffice to say the clues involve McGuffin piled on McGuffin piled on Abe Lincoln’s assassination with Ed Harris on top like a cherry.

Harris is villain Wilkinson, who also seeks the City for his own reasons. It is a thankless role, for he imbues the obvious “villain” with many layers. His motivations are not evil, though his actions are, and there is always doubt on how far he is willing to go for his “noble” cause. It is a subtlely shaded character that all villainous actors can learn from.

All the principal cast return, Jon Voight as Ben’s dad, Justin Bartha as Riley (given a little more to do this time round than just whine), Diane Kruger as Ben’s girl (whose stage direction was simply “whine louder than Justin Bartha”) and Helen Mirren (three times older than Diane Kruger and twice as sexy) as Voight’s estranged wife, for feisty comedic arguing. Even Harvey Keitel returns, to mill aimlessly on a professional basis.

Written by The Wibberlys (which sound like a couple of furry things from another planet) and once again directed by Jon Turteltaub, BOOK OF SECRETS takes our intrepid adventurers to Paris (where – so it says in the Foreign Director’s Handbook – the Eiffel Tower must be in every shot), to London’s Buckingham Palace, to the White House and into the Oval Office itself, to the revelation that “Mount Rushmore is a coverup…”

Nic Cage gets his Gom Jabbar moment when he puts his hand blindly into a rock orifice; the cast gets to tramp around blindly in labyrinthine passageways, but the coolest sequence by far is a Mayan death trap – a gigantic, tottering square slab that they must all balance, using each other’s weight as counterbalances.

The Book of Secrets is supposedly a Presidential tome – a captain’s log, if you will – of all the nation’s secrets tabulated by presidents for presidents, covering Area 51, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, etc. Movie plays it like a gag (with Bruce Greenwood as Pres) but we all know there really are secrets that only one president may pass onto the next, maybe not in an all-encompassing book, but surely in documentation which, if exposed, would lead to impeachment, jail, or being slapped to death with a cabbage.

When Candy Crowley of CNN asked newly-inaugurated President Obama in 2009 whether he had seen anything in his new job that had “given him pause,” he simply shot that gleaming smile at her and refused to comment. Why? Because he saw the real world analog of that Book of Secrets.

Yet the biggest mystery remains: What exactly is Harvey Keitel doing in this movie?

END

Pearl Before Swine.

In garish detail and stunning investigative probing, PEARL HARBOR digs deep below the surface of the gasoline embargoes and jingoistic fomenting and reveals exactly what this WWII conflict was all about – the love triangle between three young American Models.

You see, Ben loves Kate. And Kate loves Ben. But Ben’s best friend, Josh, also likes Kate. And there’s a war with Germany or something happening. Ben is a hot pilot, and reports to somewhere overseas that is Not America for hot dogfights that make his biceps thrum with the need to hold Kate.

Ben is shot down and reported Missing In Action back in the United States, a land where every waking hour is spent looking to get laid (if you were a nurse like Kate) or looking to get laid (if you were a flyboy like Josh). So when Ben is reported missing, Kate cannot face the next five long days wondering if she will ever get laid again, so she falls in love with Josh.

Now Josh loves Kate. And Kate loves Josh. But Ben comes back. And he hits Josh for falling in love with Kate. Then they have a beer. And then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. The end.

Don’t even want to go into the real politics behind that Day of Infamy, December 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack that wasn’t really a surprise on the American Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. God knows, director Michael Bay doesn’t.

Remember, if it weren’t for those young models in love, none of this woulda happened. Written with emotive overkill by Randall Wallace (BRAVEHEART, 1996, THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, 1998), HARBOR reminds us of TITANIC (1997), where the insufferable love story sucked all the oxygen out of the movie until James Cameron redeemed himself with that magnificent CGI boat-tipping.

Michael Bay movies are like the women I date: beautiful but stupid. Discounting the three-way pap between Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, PEARL HARBOR’s redeeming war scenes are why we go to the movies: fictional cinematography at its best! And by that I mean, this attack is not really happening, but onscreen, with CGI, models, mattes, process shots, etc., Bay has created Real War, scrappier and more authentic than every single war movie released before 1998. Spielberg never took to the air in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) – he still holds the crown for best ground skirmishes – it takes Michael Bay’s sweeping cranes to now claim the crown for best air-to-sea battles and best dogfights. Affleck gets to fly a Spitfire – the coolest fighter plane ever – in rampaging skirmishes that put us so square in his hot pilot’s combat seat that we can feel the sweat puddling on the backs of our patriotic thighs.

The scenes of the stealth Japanese planes flying low over American farmers and people out enjoying the world, thinking the war was in some other country, look surreal enough now – imagine how it must have looked in 1941. The thunderous grumble of amassed Zero engines splitting the rural morning, each plane loaded with one bomb each, tilting low over fields and schools, under American radar, Bay’s characteristic American Blond Kids in slow motion below them.

The Pearl Harbor attack is launched with a tracking shot of a bomb loosed from a Japanese plane down to the USS Arizona, silently falling, then exploding and actually undulating the ship like a steel snake spasming. From there, the incredible realism of old school battle is more exhilarating than walking in on Kate Beckinsale sandwiched between Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett.

Bay and cinematographer John Schwartzman have such a knack for creating iconic images that even whilst we cringe at the melodramatic slomo and hero framing of certain scenes, they wring a tear as well, with their beautifully evocative composition. The art overshadows the story.

Cuba Gooding Jr. fires a big deck gun. Tom Sizemore runs around his airfield and swears. Jon Voight shucks off his Republican idiocy to play Democratic president, FDR with great empathy. Obvious that Bay believes HARBOR to be his MIDWAY (that 1976 war epic with A-Listers piled on A-Listers: Heston, Fonda, Coburn, Mitchum, Mifune, Wagner…), as he populates his film with numerous “names” in smaller roles: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Garner, Mako, Colm Feore, Dan Aykroyd, Ewen Bremner…

Beckinsale – ever the female double standard bearer – asks boxer/cook, Cuba Gooding Jr., “So why do you have to fight with your fists to get respect?” completely forgetting that her own boyfriend is gunning down strangers in planes to keep her respect, with his big Spitfire-shaped penis.

Kate tells Josh as he’s going off to war, “I love you and I’ll be here waiting for you when you come back.” Of course, that’s provided you don’t go MIA and my thigh twitch compels me to turn to the Next Best Thing…

Cuba looked pretty hot on that big gun…

END

Arma Dyin’ Here.

Slomo Poffy

Imagine the worst pain and suffering ever. That’s how it’s gonna feel at the end of the world, the mythical Armageddon. Coincidentally, you can feel that exact same pain and suffering by watching Michael Bay‘s ARMAGEDDON.

ARMAGEDDON is a painful exercise in squeezing every cliché possible into 150 minutes of swooping camera moves, slomo shots of blond American farm kids, nauseous flag-waving and the movie’s heroes walking abreast towards the camera, with smoke billowing in the background in slow motion. At least twenty times.

ARMAGEDDON is also about an asteroid (“the size of Texas”) on a collision course with Earth, which only Bruce Willis’ team of oil-drillers can destroy, able to perform the requisite deep-core planting of a nuclear device on the asteroid to blow it up. You can’t train actual astronauts to do technical stuff like that, no way.

While a slightly perverted subplot revolves around Ben Affleck pursuing Willis’ daughter, Liv Tyler, a cavalcade of B-stars makes A-holes of themselves in the middle background: Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clarke Duncan, William Fichtner, Will Patton, Owen Wilson, and trusty Chris Ellis (Deke Slayton in APOLLO 13, and forever cast as Some Guy In Mission Control in all these space films).

A movie with less science than STAR WARS (if that’s even possible), less physics than MOONRAKER (which had none), less credible operating procedures than CAPRICORN ONE (which faked them), and less street cred than DEEP IMPACT (which preceded this film by two months). And – of course – ripping off Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov so bluntly and banally, the filmmakers should be roasted over an open spit when they make that big science fiction convention in the sky which Clarke and Asimov preside over.

Only one example of the thousands upon thousands of uneducated scenes should convince a viewer what an eye-candy fool’s joke ARMAGEDDON is: two space shuttles are launched simultaneously – okay, fine – but fifty feet apart? Just seeing them attain low Earth orbit together and jettisoning their Solid Rocket Boosters should give even the most “unscientific” bananahead (i.e. the filmmakers) an idea of why this was such a monkeybrain scene – the SRB’s are ejected via explosives which propel them away from each vehicle – into the flight path of any other vehicles in their vicinity. Of course, in the film, tragedy is averted by making the CGI SRB’s jettison AWAY from the path of the following shuttle. But anyone with common sense will look at this scene and realize what a brainless berk Michael Bay and his writers are for allowing it onscreen.

CAPRICORN ONE was an uneducated mess, but space movies made before the 90’s at least had True Ignorance on their side. The general public only knew so much about orbital mechanics and physics laws. Now there is NO EXCUSE for movies to treat outer space like a thrill ride at Six Flags. We’ve all seen footage of actual space shuttles in space – so how can Michael Bay’s shuttles fly around as if they’re in an atmosphere, following NO orbital mechanics, trajectories, or laws of physics. Why is there sound in space? Shouldn’t these people have their glare-shields down on EVA in sunlight?

We know all this via the very technology these movies flaunt, yet pretend to ignore, in order to serve the asinine plot.

Everyone in space shouting at each other like they’re actors doing something really hard and important – even though they’ve all got headset radios; everyone extolling information which should have been imparted in training (“you’re about to hit minimal gravity, so you might get nauseous” – thanks for telling me two seconds before I hit minimal gravity!); non-sequitur action, like Buscemi picking up a machine gun and firing arbitrarily, simply to cause concern for the characters (which I lost as soon as they started singing Leaving on a Jet Plane like the Oil Riggers Men’s Choir), rationalized as “space sickness.” THIS MOVIE is space sickness.

Every scene an epic moment waiting to happen, like Liv Tyler with her hand on a monitor after tearful goodbye to her father in space; camera pulls back and every single monitor in NASA is showing that same transmission – not like they have anything important to monitor, like the incoming space shuttle with a thousand malfunctions represented by all the white-hot Movie Sparks jumping off the consoles. And if the epic shot doesn’t happen, Michael Bay jumps on his Chapman crane and makes it happen, annoying inspirational music padding the faux-Six Flags thrill-ride-just-to-get-The-Shot.

Best line is when William Fichtner describes the other crashed shuttle as being “off the grid” and Buscemi retorts, “Off the grid?! What’re you, a freakin’ cyborg?!”

One redeeming factor of ARMAGEDDON is that it actually delineates what a “hero” is – for this society which tags foopball hooligans and people jumping out of buildings and army grunts doing their jobs as “heroes.” Bruce Willis stays behind to detonate the nuclear bomb. He is a hero because HE HAD THE OPTION NOT TO.

The two halves of the asteroid “miss the Earth by 400 miles” and around the globe everyone cheers, Chapman crane swooshing in ecstasy, blond American farm kids hugging their parents in slomo – with everyone once again ignoring the physics law that puts those pieces (each half the size of Texas, mind you) in orbit around Earth (unless they’re pulled out of orbit by another celestial body), which means, in Earth’s future, another flyby, another potential collision…

Let’s hope next time that ignorant human species is wiped out.

END

Just Another Con.

Nice mullet, Nic!

His pooch hairdo effectively takes attention away from his massively-developed arms and Kirk-body-oiled man-chest.

A prisoner plane, the CON AIR of the title, transporting the biggest bunch of cliched criminals this side of Blockbuster Screenwriting 101, is overrun by said archetypes, led by an exceptionally-maladjusted Malkovich. Elvis comes to the rescue in the form of morose Nicolas Cage (one of the “good” convicts – no rape, murder or listening to Hansen music – therefore the anti-hero), who eventually commandeers the craft and lands it ostentatiously on the Vegas strip amidst traffic.

Written by Scott Rosenberg (with that Blockbuster Screenwriting Guide on his lap): the twisted mastermind (John Malkovich), the quiet serial killer (Steve Buscemi), the Badd Mexx (Danny Trejo), the black guy (Ving Rhames), the gigantor redneck (M.C. Gainey), the gopher (Dave Chappelle), the sick con who is automatically regarded as “wrongfully jailed” simply because he’s sick and a friend of the Anti-Hero (Mykelti Washington), even the obligatory fruity gay guy). Simon West directs with the Michael Bay Handbook on his lap.

The great John Cusack is completely wasted as a Marshall pursuing the hijacked plane and bland Monica Potter has outdone herself – in a career of vapid, unconvincing roles, this is surely the best and blandest in her reel, as Cage’s wife, awaiting him in desperate ambivalence with a daughter who looks like she was cast five minutes before cameras rolled.

Everyone pretends to be really Hard (even the winsome Dave Chappelle!) and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of pretty orange explosions and guys diving in slow motion while shooting big guns, but ultimately this movie is just another excuse to land Nicolas Cage in Las Vegas.

So bad I accidentally grew a mullet.

END

Jack-ing the Sparrow.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END: a whole lotta something that ends up a whole lotta nothing.

Yo Ho Hum

Director Gore Verbinski puts so much effort into this summer blockbuster that it boggles the rational part of the brain – look at that cinematography, look at that set dressing, look at that costuming and attention to detail on every starboard bow and odd bodkin and shivered timber. But pull back and the fault lines appear quickly: once again, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley play star-crossed lovers; once again Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush play ham and cheese with lots of dressing, once again Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack beats you to a bloody pulp – in PIRATES 2 (2006) these elements walked the edge of the tolerable plank, but mish-mash them amongst a wretchedly convoluted storyline and unnecessary, eye-straining, computer-graphicking spectacle and what started as a good idea back in 2003’s PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is now an epileptic nightmare.

Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, AT WORLD’S END opens with the British government repressing civil liberties in the quest to eradicate piracy, not realizing that they become as villainous as the factions they are trying to overcome in the process – quashing the right to assemble, denying the right to habeas corpus – yes, exactly like modern America…

We never really “meet” the characters; more like “catch up” with them in the middle of a fine mess – why exposit when there’s so much action to get to? From the press junkets, we learn that Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) can only repel the British forces by convening nine Pirate Lords, one of them being Jack Sparrow, who is dead, which presents a problem.

Verbinski has been taking film-making lessons from George Lucas. And his film fails in exactly the same ways that Lucas’s do.

no more rules…

Firstly, there are no rules that this Caribbean universe adheres to: people die but can’t seem to stay dead; “dead souls” abandoned by Davy Jones float by in the water, then are suddenly floating by on little touristy boats (in or out, people – make up your minds!); Davy Jones himself (Bill Nighy, once again with a ‘pus on his face) suddenly gains the ability to walk through walls; Chow Yun-Fat is Pirate Lord Sao Feng – until he bequeaths his title to Elizabeth (it’s that easy to become a Pirate Lord? No wonder Jack is one).

And there is nothing at stake if you swordfight someone who can’t be killed with a sword. How stupid must the British be to threaten someone with death if they’re already dead? But being dead, what are they doing hanging around on OUR plane of existence? Who knew the dead still harbored ambitions to live like the living throughout their death?

And I guess marriage performed by a dead sea captain, mouthing unintelligible vows whilst slicing out undead people’s spleens is recognized as legal.

no more sense of wonder…

Making that age-old movie marketing mistake, Verbinski identifies his “selling point” (any layperson could tell you it is Johnny Depp as madly fey Jack Sparrow) and follows the fallacious market research on summer blockbuster sequels that informs him to then glut the screen with his selling point. After waiting twenty minutes for Depp’s Sparrow, suddenly we’re wishing he would Go Away, as we find him in Davy Jones’ Locker (i.e. Death – which is apparently an actual “place” rather than a condition), talking to himself – literally. Whereas in CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL Depp exploded out of left field with the half-drunk, half-transvestite, Keith Richards-inspired Jack Sparrow, now the joke has worn thin. And putting hundreds of him onscreen – each one feyer than the last – only makes one person happy: George (More Is Better) Lucas.

A rock turns into a CG crab. But why stop at one – when you can have a million? Why should the British armada stop at a hundred ships when you can populate the horizon with a thousand (which all might as well be a matte painting, for all the sitting there and doing nothing that they do)? A five-foot woman grows into a fifty-foot woman – for no reason, other than to explode into a million crabs (yes, “She’s got crabs” is kinda obvious – except to the screenwriters); and why stop at “inspired by” Keith Richards – when you can HAVE Keith Richards?! Keef cameos for twelve eyeblinks as Jack’s wayward pirate pater, the irony being that Richards really IS a zombie and wears enough makeup on Stones Tours to make him look alive, yet here, with his long black tresses and prostitute mascara, he actually looks alive – and he’s MEANT to be a zombie.

no more chemistry…

The PIRATES franchise started as a filthy romance between a statesman’s daughter, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, still flatter than an ironed pancake with a face that never gets dirty, hardened features so enamel-coated you could cut bread on them), and blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), while a soldier, Norrington (Jack Davenport), wooed her with “proper” British etiquette.

Then came Jack. And though the film-makers held a semblance of love quadrangle through PIRATES 2, here there is just too much bluster for the flimsy chemistry to hold. Elizabeth’s twat aches for Jack; Will is her obsolete brother and Norrington somehow pulls off the only “romantic” parlay of the film, a scant poignant moment where two people actually act like they have human feelings for each other.

The unmitigated stupidity of Will and Elizabeth’s “marriage scene whilst dueling” holds not one shred of emotion. And Will becomes the New Davy Jones, who must stay seabound and only come ashore once every ten years to spend filthy time with Elizabeth… but hang on! – Why can he only conjugate with her on land? Who made the rule that there’s no screwing onboard The Flying Dutchman? So is it because of her marriage vows that we are meant to believe Elizabeth will be faithful to Will over TEN YEARS of celibacy? Let’s see – she’s about 24 now, she could have as many as four filthy meetings with him before she also dies and then gets resurrected for no reason. That’s about the modern frequency for marriage anyway, isn’t it? And it’s quite plausible for her to remain celibate for ten year stretches hanging around pirates.

Once or twice, when Depp effects that effete run, it’s funny. Once or twice. With a sinking feeling, we ask ourselves what makes this movie so bad – but Verbinski just keeps throwing money at the problem. At one point, I wanted to succumb to my inner child and just write, “This movie sucks!”

Yes, we know we’re meant to take it all like a ripping yarn, but there’s just too much yarn and not enough ripping; how many times can people double-cross each other before we stop caring who’s on whose side and whether Orlando Bloom will ever get to touch Keira Knightley there? It’s not “fun” anymore – the rascally diversion of the PIRATES series has turned into a must-earn overblown bombast of money-raking white noise consumerism.

Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), channeling Corleone, constantly qualifies his quest to wipe out piracy by sneering, “It’s not personal. It’s just business”.

And that, swashbucklers, is why AT WORLD’S END fails.

END