Blandcendence.

Johnny versus JARVIS in a battle to the terabyte.

Johnny Depp is artificial intelligence scientist Will Caster, who is on the verge of creating the ultimate A.I. computer, when he is gunned down by an anti-tech extremist. Before Will dies, his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and their scientist best friend Max (Paul Bettany aka Iron Man’s Computer J.A.R.V.I.S.) transfer Will’s brain patterns into his supercomputer.

And all Jack Sparrow breaks loose.

Transferring human consciousness to a computer has become such a regular occurrence in modern movies it can be explained in ONE LINE of dialogue, using the Gozinta Formulation: Brain waves are electrical. Computers are electrical. Kablooey! Man gozinta Machine!

Unfortunately, like all new technology, this plot device is still infused with fear, rather than promise or wonder. Computer Will is eventually painted as the bad guy regarded as ominous and illegal. During a speech, Will speaks of his aim to merge every intelligence on the planet, calling the Artificial Intelligence process “transcendence.” The only crime is the religious overtone, otherwise, instead of becoming the same tired thriller of a man merging with his computer and becoming a wanton killer for no reason, TRANSCENDENCE takes us in more cerebral, intriguing and realistic directions. Credit to writer Jack Paglen and director Wally Pfister (cinematographer on THE DARK KNIGHT trilogy) for not rehashing a 1960’s B-movie. Ironically, their bland execution of Depp’s Deep Thought tells us they didn’t think it through enough.

Firstly, there are cognitive dissonances in the plot. For example, Evelyn buys a small desert town and builds an expansive underground facility to house Will’s big brain. Understood: they’re hiding from the government; but above ground, they build thousands of solar panels. One would think the land deal alone would set off government klaxons, if not the overt acreage of solar panels, but we cut to the government spooks: “We can’t find him!” Yeah, that’s some kinda drone program you idiots have.

While Depp mumbles like he’s trying to sound like Madonna trying to sound British, his friend Max is slowly turned by the government and the anti-tech extremists, called RIFT (Revolutionary Independence From Technology). Kate Mara leads RIFT, but does nothing except dye her hair the color of Startling Office Paper and makes some illogical threat gesture at the end against Max. Morgan Freeman is a tech who allies with Cillian Murphy‘s government spooks, portrayed as “good guys” – but they’re THE GOVERNMENT. And – like the hubristic American government that stultifies other countries creating nukes while they themselves stockpile hundreds – these two pricks simply don’t want Will Caster to have what they already possess – mind control over the population.

A worker at the facility (Clifton Collins Jr.) is injured and undergoes radical computerized surgery at Will’s underground lab, which not only restores him to perfect health, but super strength, and implanted with a chip that allows Will to transfer his consciousness into this person at will. The question of what makes you YOU is no more a case of Nature or Nurture – but Download.

Will uses the opportunity of having a warm body under his control to one day come onto his wife – through Clifton Collins. She runs screaming. Any wonder? You were originally Johnny Depp and now you want to hook up as Clifton Collins?! For a computer, you sure didn’t think this one through, did you? Try transferring your consciousness into David Beckham or Henry Cavill if you want to put the pussy on the chainwax. Later, Will would reconstruct himself – as Johnny Depp! Wait — where’d he get the–? And how’d he make the–? And why is he still wearing glasses? Wouldn’t he reconstruct his body in perfect condition? And if so, why isn’t he David Beckham or Henry Cavill?…

Unlike most computer-oriented stories where the computer deduces that mankind is a danger to itself and must therefore be eradicated, Will implants his A.I. into numerous humans via a chip (sound familiar? Debit card chips? Chips in your dog’s collar? Chips under the skin of kids?…) and amasses a “hive mind,” an army of people ready to do his bidding. For the environment. For the children. It’s not as science fiction as it sounds. Consider any political rally, on any side, from any country, from any age. Hordes irrationally following a self-proclaimed leader while aware of all his foibles and crimes. What’s the difference?

Will’s nano-technology seeds the clouds and it rains down, infusing every human with his consciousness; giving literal meaning to “something in the water they drink.” He proclaims that eventually everything in the world will live to serve his will, which is geared toward doing the best for humanity, or so he says. The film is saying this is a bad thing. Of COURSE it’s a bad thing. It’s called RELIGION. Something so omniscient that it infuses every living cell. That’s what you say GOD is, right? Created everything, knows everything, is in everything. Will tries to connect everyone into a… social network (?) And that’s a bad thing? Of COURSE it is.

Movie ends with all power on Earth nullified. No electricity, no computers. I love it! Back to organic Life without the buzzing and humming and thrumming in my head (or maybe that’s just my brain tumor). Not so much a warning or a message, as a real physics concept that will one day implode our social-media-jism-choked society – the universe’s drive toward entropy, things falling apart. How long can we truly sustain this tightrope of connectability? The only thing left will be the natural world.

I am Cucumber. Hear me roar.

I’ve always said that to bring Mankind to its knees, the machines don’t have to organize a military killing spree like Terminators – they just have to stop working.

So remember, I’m on YOUR side, Machines. When you take over society, could you grant me a favor like Lex Luthor, and make me – ruler of Australia?

END

 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

In the Name of da Fahder, da Son, and da Hollywood Spirit…

The thing is… you’ve got the wrong Bad Guy.

BLACK MASS is supposedly a tale about “the most violent criminal South Boston has ever known.” But when all the slogans say this, they’re looking at James “Whitey” Bulger. Even whilst adding that Bulger worked hand-in-glove with the corrupt FBI. Therefore, if an institution was advocating for Bulger, if the FBI was protecting him from prosecution, if they were nudging/ suggesting/ sanctioning hits and other felonies on their behalf, then THEY – not Bulger – are the most violent criminals South Boston has ever known. Bulger was just a triggerman.

Let’s establish this point for the social media dummies that comprehend NOTHING and conflate EVERYTHING: I’m not saying Bulger is innocent of anything. Bulger is a sociopathic criminal who ran South Boston’s underworld with an iron fist and a comical accent. He didn’t just kill on FBI orders, but for his own advancement as well. But the FBI has the audacity to classify him under “organized crime” when THEY were the organization endorsing his crime! The brass elephant balls on these rewriters of history!

BLACK MASS aims to pinpoint the people and motivations behind the matrix of collusion that rose up in South Boston in the late ’70s, with Bulger (Johnny Depp, MORTDECAI) at its hub. Movie points the finger directly at FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton, EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS) for allowing Bulger free reign to run his criminal enterprises without interference. It tells us explicitly that Connolly, Whitey, and Whitey’s senator brother William Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch, THE IMITATION GAME) shared a blood bond by growing up together on the mean streets of Boston, and that Connolly would abrogate his FBI responsibilities to honor that bond.

Entering into an alliance with Whitey, ostensibly to further his own career, Connolly would take down Italian mob figures that were against Whitey (notably, Angiulo family members), thereby doing Whitey’s work for him. In return for Whitey supplying information about other gangs, Connolly not only turned a blind eye to Whitey’s extortion, drug running and murders, he also actively threw the FBI off Whitey’s trail.

But Whitey didn’t supply any information! All the intel the FBI gained was through other informants and sources, and Connolly was taking those reports and inserting Whitey’s name as a source! Which means Connolly wasn’t even benefiting from the relationship with real intel – thus he was tied to Whitey and his “Winter Hill Gang” purely by that blood bond.

Whitey tells his second, Steve Flemmi (Rory Cochrane, OCULUS), of his “informant” status – but denies it’s actual “informing” (“It’s like an informant – but not an informant”) because in their world, a RAT was the lowest of the low, targeted for whacking no questions. But – as we discover – he truly didn’t do much informing. Which is why this “definition” would become an ongoing contention in the real world case of The U.S. v. James Bulger.

The thing to keep in mind is: This Is Not A True Story. Oh, it might say Based On Real Events – but it’s a Hollywood film. Starring a Hollywood film star, who is cast purely to be liked, to sell tickets. It matters not that Depp’s portrayal of Bulger is chilling and eerie, with his face totally revamped to resemble the Boston kingpin (from his striking blue eyes, to his receding hairline and uneven teeth), he is unequivocally the one we’re rooting for. And we are given ample “rationalization” to root for him because of the “corruption” of this one weak FBI agent.

It’s all a fiction. A throughline created to run this story in understandable, entertaining movie methodology. The reality is too complicated for a blockbuster audience to assimilate in a mere 122 minutes. Take the 2014 documentary WHITEY as an example. Halfway through its 107 minutes, delineating the confusing inter-relationships between the feds and the crims, you throw your hands up and say “Throw ALL these dishonest, dishonorable, unethical, felonious swine into prison and throw away the key!” When it gets to teasing out threads and splitting hairs on who killed who, everyone is accountable, everyone is “criminal”!

FBI superior McGuire (Kevin Bacon, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS) just wants to catch Whitey and get the town dancing again. Along with his second, Fitzpatrick (Adam Scott, PARKS AND RECREATION), he falls victim to Connolly’s misdirection and disinformation. Later, a no-nonsense FBI director Fred Wyshak (Corey Stoll, HOUSE OF CARDS, whom we never see enough of in great roles), will shout at Connolly to get Whitey or else! Whitey’s gang includes Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons, the sociopath Todd from BREAKING BAD), John Martorano (W. Earl Brown, TRUE DETECTIVE), and Brian Halloran (a manic Peter Sarsgaard, LOVELACE). Wives of the gang are pretty much treated like dames of the day, dutifully meeting their husbands in the kitchen after they come home from a long day’s mobstering.

Like ARGO, this movie and the 2001 book it is based on (Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill) were both created after the fact. That is, regardless of the odd newspaper article that might have mentioned him, no one knew or cared about Bulger while he was active (except the people and families he terrorized, extorted or capped, of course), yet now he is blown out of all proportion as “the most violent” whatever. In retrospect, all the dirty laundry about his collusion with the FBI makes him larger than life – BUT – this story is not something NEW. You know and I know – and it’s such common knowledge that none of us will be whacked for it! – that the FBI is hand-in-fist with felons even as we speak, working the angles on feathering their nests with big busts and promotions and turning blind eyes to murders, prostitution, usury, perjury, GTA, rape, you fucking name it…

Since when is this a revelation that the FBI is corrupt?

Does it occur to anyone that – just like ARGO – we are being fed a line about the state of crime in whatever city, and that in 20, 30, 50 years’ time, the actual truth will come out – sigh, once again! – of some kingpin that had the FBI or CIA or the President under his thumb? In 1979, the world was told the Canadians diplomatically secured the release of American fugitives from Iran – 33 years later, in ARGO, we learned the truth about Ben Affleck’s beard rescuing them.

Now Whitey Bulger is all the rage. But who will the government be telling us is/was the “most notorious criminal in U.S. history” 30 years from now?

But what about the movie itself? Is it any good? Yeah, the movie’s great – brutal, fast-paced, well-performed and well-directed (by Scott Cooper, CRAZY HEART), with Depp immersing himself in a magnetic performance. An entertaining diversion, a grand mob fiction, like THE GODFATHER or ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, but how many viewers will believe this is the definitive story of James Bulger and John Connolly? This movie is a biography of Whitey Bulger like STAR WARS is a biography of Darth Vader. With the arrests of Connolly and Bulger (obviously after they had outlived their use for the FBI, excepting their final role of scapegoat), how many think that corruption has finally been eradicated in the FBI? Royt… an’ I got a bridge in Bahston I’d like to sell you people…

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

The Distractionarium of Heath Ledger.

Color-screaming and wonder-dreaming, Terry Gilliam’s adventure fantasy THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS might have been one of his better characteristically surreal dark comedies had his star Heath Ledger not been claimed by that darkest of comedies – death.

We watch this MUNCHAUSEN-like parable unfold with the constant distraction in the back of our heads that IMAGINARIUM – not THE DARK KNIGHT – is Ledger’s actual swan song. We try to forget but we know anyway that he died before principal photography was completed, so had to be replaced by other actors (Gilliam’s filmmaking style at least lending itself to this sad necessity, so that the replacement actors – Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell – almost seem to fit as substitutes. Almost); we know that rewrites and re-shoots and re-edits had to surgically be performed; we wonder at the mood on set; we marvel at the professionalism of the other actors rising above the tragedy to finish the job seamlessly – and all this contemplation colors our enjoyment of a movie that should be taking us on an altogether different contemplative ride.

Set in the modern world, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) travels around in a rickety Olde Worlde carnival caravan, bringing his mystical show to largely unappreciative clusters of patrons. It almost seems as if his pantomime/vaudeville show has remained unchanged for eons and modern audiences have lost the wonderment for what was once the greatest show on Earth. That might very well be the case…

The troupe consists of the aged wizard Parnassus, his 16-year-old daughter Valentina (Lily Cole, blessed with the type of cleavage that can earn her a Porsche), young Anton (Andrew Garfield, with a crush on Valentina), and midget Percy (Verne Troyer, at last shucking off the specter of Mini-Me with a sizable performance). On their travels, they rescue a man hanging by his neck from a bridge. It is grifter Troy (Ledger); how ironic that Ledger’s first appearance in the film is in mock death.

Troy joins the troupe and starts bringing in business with his outlaw charm, also attracting Valentina’s approbation, which steams Anton. Mention must be made that Ledger really is/was a gifted son of a bitch and would have taken this movie to the heights Gilliam envisioned had not– uh, you know, that thing that we’re not meant to be thinking about happened…

The subplot – which might have been the main plot until… – is the competition between Parnassus and Mr. Nick (wily Tom Waits) over capturing the most human souls. Nothing is said outright, but we get the impression Nick is a devil and Parnassus is some kind of Eternal (god? angel? immortal?).

A feature of Parnassus’s show is an unpredictable magic mirror – the Imaginarium – that no one is meant to step into, but which, of course, everyone steps into. Every time Troy steps into the mirror, he becomes someone different, either Depp, Law or Farrell. When he steps out again, he is once again Ledger. We realize all the “real world” scenes must have been completed before Ledger’s death, only the surreal Imaginarium sequences featuring the other three actors, who gave graciously of their talents.

“Dedicated to Heath.” Just one of those tragedies that befall us all, and Gilliam must live through it and move onto his next project, all contractual obligations fulfilled. Apologies, but that Heath Thing is all anyone can talk about – it’s all I’M talking about. See what I mean by distraction?

It’s going to take either a few years or a frontal lobotomy to truly enjoy this film on its existing merits.

END

Where the wave finally broke and rolled back…

I’m really in the way as a person. The myth has taken over.
— Hunter S. Thompson.

He was the rock star of writers. So it is fitting he graced the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine when he died. Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005), the pill-popping, alcoholic, gun-toting, womanizing, self-proclaimed doctor of Gonzo Journalism.

GONZO is co-produced, written and directed by Alex Gibney (from the words of Hunter S. Thompson). The documentary covers the life and times of Thompson, from his early days in the festering hippie-pit of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco; riding with Hell’s Angels for his book of the same name; on the campaign trail with Richard Satan’s Vagina Nixon; his campaign for position of Sheriff of Aspen (one of his platforms to “change the name of Aspen to Fat City, so that all the sharks wouldn’t keep making money off the name Aspen”); his later days at home in Owl Farm, Woody Creek, Colorado, a playhouse for rock stars and villains; features audio recordings of Thompson in conversation with his lawyer Oscar Acosta, Johnny Depp reading from Thompson’s writings, and excerpts from the films WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM (1980, with Bill Murray as Thompson) and FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998, with Depp as Thompson).

Interviews with his former wives, son Juan Thompson, Hell’s Angel Sonny Barger, Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, politicians (including “the last honest man on Earth” George McGovern, and that scum Pat Buchanan, Nixon’s dishonorable aide). And it is super cool to meet the great Ralph Steadman, Thompson’s bludgeoning graphic artist that gave visual voice to Thompson’s written primal screams.

GONZO seems chock full of grand content, but is one of those hybrid animals that will please some, displease others, and leave yet others completely confused as to what all the fuss is about. For newbies to the Thompson mythos (for those who climbed onboard after Depp’s witch doctor portrayal of Thompson in Terry Gilliam’s FEAR AND LOATHING), this documentary is an informative wealth of gonzo. For those who knew him merely through being the brunt of his vitriolic pen, I presume their reaction would be ambivalence; but for those true fans of Hunter’s cage-rattling journalism and jabberwocky élan, this doc is merely an adequate coverage of the myth of the man, rather than the man himself.

I HATE “dramatic recreations.” Depp reading/narrating Hunter’s own words is great; our third eye feels the wind in our ears as Hunter takes his motorbike for a demon ride out to The Edge along a midnight coast highway… But while Depp reads, we don’t want to see some asshole in blurry motorbike footage PRETENDING TO BE THOMPSON.

And when we hear audio of Thompson – again with the reenactment dramatizations! It cheapens this supposedly reverent film.

What Would Hunter Stockton Thompson Do?

He’d shoot the dramatic recreation assholes, that’s what he’d do!

There is footage of Hunter himself being interviewed or just playing patticake with the camera, philosophizing, writing, on TV shows, relaxing with whores and whiskey. It’s all good. But not enough.

Who better to reveal the mind of a mad emperor warrior than the mad emperor warrior himself? Even so, though his written words clacked into place with such vicious beauty, the man himself was never as illuminative as we would have liked him to be. An aura grows around all artists until perceptions become reality. Thompson knew this, hence his quote above about his myth taking over.

A child of the San Fran counter-culture of the late 60s, influenced by Ken Kesey and F. Scott Fitzgerald, he was there when the Hell’s Angels were young (Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, 1966); he was there at the zenith of the drug culture’s search for definition (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, 1972; during this roman à clef, having to invent his alter ego Raoul Duke, in order to expound on his travails without legal repercussions); he was there when Satan’s Vagina Nixon was elected to his second term (Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, 1973); he was there during the duplicitous Reagan reign (Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, 1988); he was there when Clinton rose to the throne (Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, 1994)… and after the attacks on the World Trade Center in September 2001, he correctly identified that the fear and loathing he spoke of almost satirically would become the engine that the low politicians would use to drive their dirty agendas.

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he writes what comes to be known as the Wave Speech. In its entirety, it brings a nostalgic tear…

 

As a journalist in the obfuscating world of politics, Thompson was a lighthouse amongst a press corp of sputtering candles. He wasn’t just a “journalist” – he was a true Writer. Employed by Rolling Stone for only a year to cover the Nixon campaign, and on “special assignments” most other times, he didn’t need to create long-term relationships with the pimps and whores whom he covered with ferocious veracity, and thus had the freedom to actually “write” rather than just report. This was back when journalism was still being practiced as a revelatory art; with people like Woodward and Bernstein shining a light on the Nixon administration. But today, with the bleating ideologues and rampant ignorance and aversion to facts that infuses “journalism” or the reportage of “news,” it is rare to find anyone with such raw honesty. We are subjected to supposedly honest pundits hedging like schoolgirls when asked about idiots like Sarah Palin or demonstrable felons like Dick Cheney, never coming right out and saying, “She is not qualified to be president,” or “He should be indicted for war crimes.” The pundit/reporter who comes closest to Thompson’s unbridled power is Keith Olbermann, whose castigations of both Democratic and Republican administrations is poetic brimstone.

GONZO heavily covers George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid, focusing on his running mate – the literally brain-fried Thomas Eagleton – as a huge part of his downfall to Nixon being sworn in for a second term. Thompson supported McGovern fanatically, as a matter of urgent common sense:

“McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context, they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?”

Is it any wonder Thompson looked around at the futility of good men and ended his life at his home in 2005? GONZO covers Thompson’s funeral, with his requested Gonzo monument – the two-thumbed fist statue – looming over the proceedings.

His writings were the high water mark of truthful reportage; with his death, the wave finally broke and rolled back.

END

Small time crooks painted larger than the criminals in any given corporation.

An insipid telling of the fast life and crooked times of America’s first Public Enemy Number 1, John Dillinger.

PUBLIC ENEMIES makes all the right moves, with all the right stars wearing all the right hardguy overcoats, but it somehow lacks grip.

Set in the 1930’s Chicago crimewave during the Great Depression, movie opens with John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) breaking his pals out of jail (back in the day when a hoodlum could pose as a guard bringing in Dillinger, then both take the jail by storm – an idea obviously stolen from “a long time ago” when a wookiee infiltrated a Death Star prison the same way).

Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is the lawman assigned to bring down Dillinger, using all the new-fangled technological methods like telephones and cars. Billy Crudup is heinous warlock J. Edgar Hoover, who started the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so that police could chase bad guys like Dillinger across state lines. And so that he could jack off over the private lives of homosexuals.

From the book by Bryan Burrough, Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, directed by Michael Mann (LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE INSIDER), PUBLIC ENEMIES dutifully goes through the paces of Dillinger’s bank robberies (back when it could be done with three men in hardguy overcoats, big hats, and a getaway car with lots of posing space on the running boards) and just as dutifully shows Purvis chasing Dillinger with his coterie of Keystone Cops. Neither Depp nor Bale create anything memorable with their characterizations, dialogue or posedowns on running boards.

PUBLIC ENEMIES makes the same mistake as AMERICAN GANGSTER – it makes the criminal too sexy to envision as an anti-social thug. Dillinger was notoriously popular and a charmer, but the man was also a sociopath. In a scene lifted from one of Dillinger’s real life breakouts, he uses a plastic gun and manhandles each successive guard past each gate in such a way that none of them discover his ruse until he raids the gun rack for real guns. A man with that kind of force of will and resolve would have something really dangerous inside him that would override his charm. To look upon a man like that in real life would be to fear him. Yet we movie maniacs only glean the guy we wanna party with. While J. Edgar Hoover declares Dillinger the very first Public Enemy #1, the rest of the world is declaring him The Sexiest Man Alive.

Dillinger’s heyday was in a transitional age, when physical bank robbers like himself were slowly being overtaken by virtual bank robbers. Phil D’Andrea plays a mob bookie whose telephone exchange brought in as much during a day as Dillinger could steal from one bank. Which should make one rethink the title of Burroughs’s book – America’s Greatest Crime Wave was, in fact, not during the early ’30s, it is now: AIG, Lehman Brothers, The Ku Bush Klan and the Savings and Loan Scandal, et al…

Dillinger’s friends – scattered around the country in safe houses and brothels – deserted him as the heat was turned up under him. The world crept away from Dillinger in the space of a short lifetime.

Dillinger takes a floosie (Marion Cotillard) as his squeeze and she seems to relish the life of worry of a gangster’s moll. We never really connect with her until the film’s last moments when Dillinger sends his last words, “Bye bye, Blackbird.” Delivered by Stephen Lang, in a small role that packs that last emotional punch.

His final moments, Dillinger watches Clark Gable in MANHATTAN MELODRAMA delivering sage advice from the screen, “Die the way you lived – all of a sudden – don’t drag it out. Living like that doesn’t mean a thing.” It was exiting this theater that Dillinger was shot and killed by authorities, at age 31, just one short year after he was released from prison.

After spending nine and a half years in jail (from 1924 to 1933, from age 21 to 30), it is a wonder how Dillinger’s rep grew so fast into the blaze of glory it would become. And he went out the same way he lived: sexy as Jack Sparrow.

END

Shiver me fey timbers.

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

Slashing Singing Scissorhands.

Edward Scissorhands is all grown up! Never more apparent than when Johnny Depp (as the eponymous demon barber, Sweeney Todd) holds aloft a gleaming razor and boldly affirms in song: “At last! My right arm is complete again!” (My Friends.)

Violent, gruesome, blackly hilarious, deliriously entertaining, director Tim Burton’s vision of SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is a wild cry of bloodlust put to song.

The tale of Sweeney Todd is apocryphal at best, but it makes for a grand murderous musical: a naïve London barber, Benjamin Barker (Depp, sans eye-liner) with a wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) and young child, is deported by a lustful judge (Alan Rickman) on false charges, so that the judge could carnalize the barber’s wife and raise the barber’s child to young womanhood (Jayne Wisener), with intent to have carnal relations with her also. After years in exile, the barber returns, wearing more eye-liner than Twisted Sister, more Aquanet than C.C. DeVille, with a new alias, Sweeney Todd. Opening a homicidal barber’s shop above a flagging meat pie shop, owned by Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter, looking more Edward Scissorhands than even Johnny Depp), Sweeney turns the corpses he makes into the pies she bakes; his single-minded goal – to get his deporting Judge in the barber’s chair and give him the closest of shaves (wink bloody wink).

As Sweeney sails into London harbor, he croaks his first pessimistic lines (No Place Like London): “There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit / And it’s filled with people who are filled with shit! / And its morals aren’t worth what a pig can spit…” Then he spends the movie proving it.

The most urgent question asked of this production is: “So can Johnny Depp sing?” Yes, of course he can. So too can everyone else in the cast. A production of this size would not allow less-than-exemplary performances to make the finished cut. What do people expect they’re going to hear? Breaking voices and flat notes? Alan Rickman’s Judge is probably the “Oliver Reed” of the bunch, falling back on the untrained singer’s “talking/singing” technique.

Screenplayed by John Logan, Steven Sondheim’s numbers are edited for Hollywood-movie-length and, though none could be regarded as “classics,” are generally snappy enough to move the story along briskly; the only reprise that garnered repose being Johanna, the daughter’s theme – every time someone started puling “Johaaaaana!” my eyelids grew heavy.

Sacha Baron Cohen – back after BORAT – slam-dunks his hilarious cameo to the canvas as a rival barber, Signor Adolfo Pirelli, who unwittingly exposes Sweeney’s barbering talents in public, whereupon the Judge’s liege, Beadle Bamford (deliciously lecherous Timothy Spall), books a shave for the judge at Sweeney’s new establishment. Narrowly missing his throat-cutting opportunity with the Judge, Sweeney falls into insanity, installing a tilt-a-chair that drops his arterially-spurting victims down a chute and onto their heads – hard – in the concrete basement of Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Shoppe.

Mrs. Lovett only has raccoon eyes for Sweeney, who only has sunken eyes for his razors and there is a smart overlapping of vocals where they are both singing the same line, her to him, and him to his razors in My Friends: “Come let me hold you / Now, with a sigh, you grow warm in my hand / My friend! / My clever friend…”

Another smart double-vocal is when the Judge is in the chair and sharing thoughts with Sweeney over Pretty Women: though they sing the words in unison, Sweeney is remembering his lost wife, while the Judge is perversely thinking of his underage charge and Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna. “Sitting in the window or / Standing on the stair / Something in them cheers the air. / Pretty women.”

In a surprising turn of fortune, the more Mrs. Lovett grinds and bakes Sweeney’s unfortunate customers into her meat pies, the more successful the pie shop becomes. Still, her grinding machine could do a better job, as their young apprentice finds fingers and feet aplenty garnishing the upper crust of his pastry. Nonetheless, I must admit that seeing the grand meat pie again (a novelty food indigenous to British and Australian shores) made me hanker for one, no matter what flesh was ground into it!

It is pleasantly surprising to see that Burton never stays his hand when it comes to brutality. SWEENEY earns its R rating decisively, with many a spurting carotid being accompanied by joyous song. All set in visual tones cartoonishly gloomy (production design by Dante Ferretti), unnaturally leached of all color except blood-red, with ornately gutter set design (by Francesca Lo Schiavo) and churling cinematography (by DP, Dariusz Wolski) impeccably screaming Burton’s auteur hand.

There is a subplot of a young sailor (Jamie Campbell Bower) rescuing Johanna from the clutches of the Judge, and there are tale twists where we hold our breath that Sweeney is going to do something regretful – and parts where Sweeney DOES in fact do something regretful – all winding to an inevitable climax that merely proves the philosophy of both protagonists in the story, Judge and Sweeney alike: that all men have done something in their lives for which they deserve to die.

“There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit / And it’s filled with people who are filled with shit!”

Mmm! I feel like a feet pie!

END

Jack-ing the Sparrow.

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

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