Tragedy at the top of the world.

Climbing Mount Everest was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I wish I’d never gone. I suffered for years of PTSD, and still suffer from what happened. I’m glad I wrote a book about it. But, you know, if I could go back and relive my life, I would never have climbed Everest.
— Jon Krakauer, “HuffPost Live,” Aug 2015.

The only mountains worth climbing.

Mountain climbing. The most pointless pursuit in the history of human endeavors. “Because it’s there.” Really? You climbers have nothing better than George Mallory’s apocryphal “most famous three words in mountaineering”? When climbers die on mountains, or consume resources for impossible rescues, or get other people killed in the course of saving their lives, how are they any different from people on those solo yachting quests who have to call the Coast Guard to come save them when their stupid million-dollar canoe tips over? What is it achieving? Is it curing cancer? Why is it any more noble a pursuit than me in my dank basement putting one thing on top of another thing just for the hell of it?

Which brings us to – EVEREST. The mountain, the movie, the mayhem. And despite my annoyance with the pursuit of climbing-for-leisure, EVEREST the movie – is great! As is the main book this movie is based around – Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s account of the 1996 tragedy on Everest, where a total of 15 climbers died during their summit attempt. For a pursuit so slow-moving and arduous, the movie is edge-of-seat, educational, inspiring, majestic, forbidding and compelling all at once. The very act of attempting something so all-consuming and life-changing – summiting Everest – overwhelms any practicality. When we’re ensconced in this ethos, it’s not about the why, it’s about the why not.

On May 10, 1996, climbers from many international expeditions would summit Everest. This movie follows the fates of climbers from two expeditions – Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness – who would reach the summit after their prescribed “turnaround time” and encounter a devastating storm on their descent which would end many of their lives.

Jason Clarke is excellent as New Zealander Rob Hall, underplaying as the experienced tour guide, one of many guides who had summited Everest and had established Adventure Consultants to guide tourists to the top. Another such veteran was Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), of Mountain Madness, whose style was akin to his company name; he didn’t “hand-hold” (as he liked to describe the detailed, supervisory nature of Hall), but rather let his clients roam freely up and down the mountain, believing that if they couldn’t summit themselves, they had no right to be there.

Jason Clarke: star of Frozen.

Keira Knightley is Hall’s pregnant wife Jan; tearful farewell at New Zealand airport, not realizing it would be the last time she would see her husband. Emily Watson is Hall’s base camp supervisor, Helen Wilton. Josh Brolin is Beck Weathers, a climber who came back to life after being left for dead; Robin Wright is Beck’s estranged wife, Peach, who would use their wealth to chopper Beck off the mountain. (At one point, Beck chides Hall that “for $65,000” he wants better safety than clambering across rickety ladders. Immediately we realize that mountain climbing – like yachting – is for elites who have nothing better to do with their money.) Character actor John Hawkes is weak climber Doug Hansen, who would cost Hall his life; Sam Worthington cameos as Guy Cotter, a fellow New Zealander tour guide, a cool empathetic friend who cannot do anything to save Hall except apply Concerned Face No. 27. Ingvar Sigurdsson plays the tough Russian Anatoli Boukreev, who felt that using supplemental oxygen was cheating; he would play a big part in trying to rescue climbers. And Michael Kelly is author Jon Krakauer, who made the summit, only to castigate himself upon descending to base camp, unaware that so many of his fellow climbers were in distress and therefore in need of his help – which he could not give anyway due to being barely alive himself.

With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get UP this hill. The trick is to get back down alive.
— Rob Hall, head guide, Adventure Consultants.

Mount Everest towers 29,029 feet above sea level (8,848 metres), straddling the border of Nepal and Tibet. Climbers land in Kathmandu, Nepal to start their trek. It is here Hall tells the expectant troupe: “Human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747.” We hear about supplemental oxygen tanks, the strict “turnaround time,” after which the sun starts melting the ice, creating crevasses and unstable conditions. Hall makes it clear it is his job not only to get his clients UP the mountain, but DOWN again alive. As Krakauer states in his book, “Remember, the summit is the HALFWAY point!” We take it for granted that climbing casualties happen on the way up, but it’s on the way down that most deaths occur. Which was the case here.

Amidst amazing cinematography, authentic backdrops and maximum chill, Hall’s clients reach the summit on May 10, well past their turnaround time. Then – as the saying goes – it’s all downhill from there…

Hall’s troupe included Michael Groom (Thomas M. Wright), with amputated toes from a previous climb, and Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori), aspiring to conquer the Seven Summits (Everest her last, after Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Carstenz and Vinson). After summiting Everest, she would die on the way down…

“It might be a fake slope – but YOU try walking up it!…”

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (2 GUNS) injects realism by throwing the actors onto the Base Camp slopes of Everest. That’s real ice. That’s real mountain. That’s real pain. It lends weight and credence to this whole endeavor. Even in the face of life-threatening stupidity…

Consider: Doug Hansen, who failed to summit last year, is back this year to try again; he can’t afford a third attempt. When Hall urges him to turn around due to the late time, Doug begs Hall to take him the last few hundred feet to the summit. There is a look in Hall’s face that says, “I will sacrifice myself for this man’s dream.” Now whether the real Rob Hall had that look on his face, it is conveyed perfectly here by Jason Clarke, in a beautiful moment of selflessness. It seems like a noble sacrifice. But hang on a minute!: Doug’s dream is not to save a children’s hospital or blow up an asteroid to save civilization – it’s to fulfill a pointless dream of standing on a high rock. After it all goes foul trying to shepherd the unconscious Hansen down the hill, heartbreaking scenes of Hall calling his wife from the high mountain, knowing he is going to die there due to this fool he helped.

For failing to listen to Hall’s advice, Doug also lost his life. As did Hall’s assistant Andy Harris (Martin Henderson), who tried to save them both. Scott Fischer, who was suffering from a stomach virus and possibly HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema – fluid in the lungs), and pushing himself past his limits, also died that day after summiting. Climbers can still see the dead bodies of Hall and Fischer on the slopes (for practical purposes, bodies in certain areas cannot be brought down without risking others’ lives).

Jake Gyllenhaal: high.

It is not stressed in the movie, but there is a morbid morality at work on Everest (and, I’m presuming, on any climbable mountain). Yes, there are many stories of heroism and sacrifice, but if a climber you encounter is in distress and not on your team – it is very rare they are given aid. It is encouraged NOT to give them aid, so that you won’t end up dying yourself for lack of resources. There is an anecdote in Krakauer’s book about a 3-man Indian team that was in distress on the way up. An ascending 3-man Japanese team passed them but offered not one whit of aid or liquids or oxygen. The Japanese passed the Indians again on the way down: one had disappeared, one was dead, one dying. Again, no aid. This is not just the Japanese treating the Indians badly – this is how EVERY TEAM treats every other team. So in EVEREST, when Hall suggests to Fischer that they “team up” due to the heavy tourism on the slopes that year, it meant they would both look out for both their companies’ clients. With that alliance, there was the unspoken directive that they would NOT look out for clients on any other teams!

Which means that even if you make it to the top of Everest – at what cost to your humanity? You are passing dead climbers that you are not allowed to bring back down respectfully; you are using supplies carried by Sherpas risking their lives for your elitist ass; you are using ropes and ladders laid by Sherpas and other tour guides who have died for your pastime; you are ignoring the plight of other teams; you are closing your conscience off to the cries of distress from other humans, you are doing something completely useless to humanity’s forward momentum. You’ve lost everything to gain what you believe is “something.” The mountain has taken everything from you and given you nothing.

“The last word always belongs to the mountain.”
— Anatoli Boukreev.

END

Bourne Impossible.

If you’ve eye-rattled through the BOURNE movies (I know I have), and if you’ve eye-spied the modern MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies (I know I have), then maybe the time you’ve set aside to eye-glaze through JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT might be better spent polishing your screenplay or your knob (I know I have), as I’m sure you’ve seen all this running-tilting-tickingclock-technology-spyware-malware-hostage-villain-aikido-shooting clusterfuckulation in some form or other…

Chris Pine (eyes the color of skyblue romance) is CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the latest in a long line of Jack Ryans (a character created by author Tom Clancy in 1984, The Hunt For Red October; SHADOW is the first film featuring this character, that is not based on a Clancy novel). This movie once again screws with the Ryan timeline (as did THE SUM OF ALL FEARS) by making Ryan a young man witnessing the Twin Towers’ destruction on 9-11. So whatever happened to the Harrison Ford Cold War years?…

9-11 spurs Ryan to join the Marines in Afghanistan, whereby he is shot down, meets nurse Keira Knightley, who gives good physical therapy with that man-jaw of hers, is recruited by Kevin Costner for the CIA, and goes to work on Wall Street as a cover for his spywork. (I don’t know what somberness gene veteran actors like Eastwood, Willis and Costner possess – as they age, they are able to do less and less onscreen, and yet retain more and more gravitas. I loved Costner’s empathetic performance in MAN OF STEEL; even his beleaguered hitman in the lumpy 3 DAYS TO KILL was enjoyable. Here, Costner walks slowly, speaks softly, does nothing and oozes importance.)

Kenneth Branagh with a peachy Russian accent plays a Russkie who is trying to profit from Wall Street by collapsing it through illegally moving money around. Apparently that’s “bad” – even though American Wall Street CEO Swine have been doing it for decades and not going to jail for it. But that’s not enough drama for the filmmakers, who try to insert as much intense staring at computer screens as they dare for an action spy thriller (the switching of the flash-drives, the downloading of files; the hacking of secure passwords, the progress screens moving too slowly… my heart was in my throat!). So they insert a redundant physical BOMB into the plot as well. (That oughta knuckle all those Luddites who don’t appreciate the excitement of watching a screen flash “Access Denied”…)

The changing face of Jacobim Mugatu Ryan…

So the plot is to blow up Wall Street – financially and physically. And Jack Ryan is there to stop them– [needle scratch] Hang on! Why are you trying to stop them, dude? If Wall Street is physically blown up, you know who will suffer? Wall Street. No one else. You didn’t fall for that crap about Too Big To Fail again, did you? Oh, sorry, it’s not 2008 yet… If Wall Street falls it won’t make any difference to our lives; then again, it might make a little difference – our lives would be BETTER because those slothful gluttonous avaricious pricks on Wall Street won’t be in the picture any more. Rejoice, oh frabjous day!

But wait – at Wall Street’s physical location, there are only computers and files and papers. Surely there are virtual copies of ALL Wall Street’s money crimes somewhere else, or on the cloud, allowing them to continue perpetuating/perpetrating them should the physical buildings actually fall down. That’s only common sense. Maybe Fort Knox has to have physical gold at its location, but Wall Street would have gone virtual as soon as the greedy swine figured a way to keep their money hidden in the Bahamas. I understand that the CIA might be concerned for the people in the buildings (a thin sliver of concern, to be sure), which is why they are trying to stop the bomb – but I’m not buying that concern as part of the plot for a millisecond. Not with the term “collateral damage” a reality – a term that THEY created to describe innocent bystanders.

Branagh also directs, from a script by David Koepp.  Production values are excellent, action is standard, ticking clocks are ubiquitous.

Annoying Nurse Knightley becomes Ryan’s wife – you know the stereotype: she is clueless he’s in the CIA, he lies to her during a phone call that he’s at his desk job while fighting an international assassin in a European bathroom; wackiness ensues when snoopy wife follows him to foreign country, finds his gun in desk, thinks he’s having affair. What fun we’re having rolling out the same old conventions! She gets in on the spy game as Jack’s backup because she whines loud enough. That’s believable.

Some running and jumping and driving stunts later, everyone Russian is dead, everyone American is alive, and everyone watching this movie is asleep.

END

“C’mon, blow real hard and your chest buds will pop out!”

Yaaaaaaawn–EXPLODE.

Who knew the end of the world would be so boring? With such good acting?

And apparently the soundtrack to the world ending is soft rock. Soft rock, people. The preferred music of societal chaos and megalithic destruction. So keep those Dan Fogelberg and Herb Alpert albums at the ready.

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, the first writer-director effort from Lorene Scafaria, is as cloying and maudlin as its title suggests. An asteroid is about to vaporize Earth in less than 3 weeks, and humanity takes this news in surprising, yet not surprising, ways. Whilst one man, on a quest to find his true love, finds true love on his quest.

We meet Dodge (Steve Carell) as he and his wife hear the news on the car radio, and she just ups and runs. In these first moments, we realize Carell is doing some grand underplaying, and his performance will continue to amaze throughout this meandering tale. The fact that he looks actually gaunt and handsome means he really worked hard for this movie in many ways.

There are comedic asides with Rob Corddry being his usual riotous ass-face, Patton Oswalt as a hilarious sex-perve, Adam Brody as the incognizant boyfriend (“I love you. I want to take care of you!” – then the shooting starts and he immediately uses her body as a shield!), TJ Miller camping it up as a waiter sporting champion flair, with Carell basically playing straight man to all of them. Yet stealing all their thunder elegantly. His roles in DAN IN REAL LIFE (2007) and CRAZY STUPID LOVE (2011) were leading to this pinnacle. END OF THE WORLD is his best performance on film yet, as he sells each scene with realistic “small” reactions (nothing cinematic or showy), and almost unbearable sadness, futility and pathos. (It is this performance that would enable him to move on to the darker and more showy FOXCATCHER, 2014.)

The first act is enjoyable, as Scafaria poses a comedic scenario rarely seen in doomsday movies: to most people, life would go on the same as always; we are too ensconced in our pursuit of self-centered pleasures to let a small thing like the end of existence ruin our plans. But it’s all tinged with fatalism: dinner parties that turn into heroin parties, screwing a different girl every day, who (as Oswalt notes) “don’t care about getting pregnant, don’t care about diseases, don’t care about… a small dick, or – whether you’re related…”

Then the predictable love story kicks in. Oh god! Wake me when the yammering’s over.

Because as soon as the weeping Penny (Keira Knightley) enters through Dodge’s window with the cutesy line, “I won’t steal anything if you don’t rape me,” the end is surely upon us. Firstly, she’s implying that she thinks she’s worth raping, but no danger there, honey; not with that man-jaw and ironing-board chest. Secondly, even if we harbored any stray designs on those boy-like buns, they’re dashed to pieces as soon as she opens her non-stop yammering gob. Your boyfriend kicked you out? Nowhere to go tonight? These are well-understood clarion calls to the male of the species that gratitude-panty is imminent. Of course you can sleep at my place – but first let me get you a pillow and a nice hot cup of shut-the-fuck-up. I mean, really, maybe some guys just rufie chicks to get some frickin’ peace and quiet.

Dodge receives a dated letter from his high school sweetheart Olivia: “You were the love of my life.” With his wife gone, he decides to drive cross country to reconnect with her, taking Penny along to help her reconnect with family overseas. So it is quite obvious it never is about finding his sweetheart, but how to plausibly connect the two stars.

Though this is the movie’s planned direction, it has now completely lost its way. Comedy has ceased, replaced with a cynical cheerlessness. A late meeting with Martin Sheen as Dodge’s estranged dad skews the tone even more into uncomfortable.

Over the course of Dodge’s and Penny’s journey, they both come within grasp of their separate goals, but end up turning them down to be with each other. I guess the soft rock soundtrack was just too insistent, filtering them through a montage where they hold hands on a beach, and laugh and play like young lovers. The quiet moments between travel are filled with vanilla humanizing patter – more like she won’t stop yammering about irrelevancies and he won’t stop looking at her man-jaw and where her chest should be.

Enough of this yammering and he realizes he must be in love with her because hells bells he’s a 40-Year Old Virgin and there’s no one else around wearing a skirt.

A good aspect: this R-rated movie allows its protagonists to have sex before they achieve their goals. Most movies hold sex as a sacred threshold of true love; at least Scafaria respects these people as adults, saying that sex is not the reason they are together as the sky falls. However, this gives away the ending, as we now know Dodge is not going to end up with Olivia: you see, if the story was truly aiming him at Olivia, he would not have been “allowed” to have sex with anyone before Olivia, or his character’s ethics would be compromised. Immature but true. Ask any Gutless MPAA official.

An annoying aspect: No one on Earth is doing anything remotely noble EXCEPT DODGE AND PENNY – because they’re in love. Everyone else trying to fulfill their fantasies in a flash is painted as wrongheaded. Why is Oswalt screwing a different woman every day regarded as a desperate, ugly man, whilst Dodge’s parting mewl to Penny, “I love you desperately,” is regarded as something decent and righteous? (In fact, Oswalt is doing something more noble for humanity by propagating the species, whilst Dodge is the desperate one who “doesn’t want to die alone” so creates this illusion called “love” to pretend some kind of connectivity. Let’s see how not alone you are when the skin starts searing off your bones and your thinking organ is vaporized.)

Penny is a “hypersomniac,” which means she can sleep through anything. When it comes to this movie, so should you.

END

Having a threesome with the Invisible Man…

A Lecherous Method.

Ah yes, the hunt for puss. Isn’t that why we’re all here? To hunt or be hunted?

Director David Cronenberg turns what could be a grand journey into the minds of two extraordinary psychoanalysts (Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud) into angling at puss. Ironically, that’s what the grand journey of these two minds arrived at – that psychological trauma in adulthood can be traced back to sexual noxae in childhood. Now if Cronenberg and writer Christopher Hampton (from his play The Talking Cure, from the book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method) were focusing on just this “prurient” aspect of Jung’s and Freud’s studies, that would still be a compelling tale of how their theories were originally dismissed and ultimately revered as the cornerstones of psychoanalysis, but no. Movie is a lurid DAYS OF OUR LIVES episode, focusing on Jung taking a patient as a lover, while his wife keeps getting pregnant to keep the family together. How trivial.

Cronenberg secures two of the greatest current male leads to make his movie not suck (Michael Fassbender as Jung, and Viggo Mortensen as Freud, looking like Rade Sherbedgia on quaaludes), yet what might have been a sober probing (no pun intended) into the field of psychoanalysis and the methods of its star players becomes a sniggering, insular beating off (and this time, pun intended).

No matter that these great men had dalliances – their contributions to the discipline of psychoanalysis is immeasurable, so the movie is therefore slightly disrespectful for taking one event and conflating it into the device that motivates them. It would be like making a biopic of John F. Kennedy and making his motivation Marilyn Monroe. And like most of Cronenberg’s films, there is little context of who these world-renowned men are and their place in society; they exist solely to braindance with each other, postulating theories on patients, their own dreams and why David Cronenberg is so sexually repressed.

Keira Knightley is Jung’s patient Sabina, who enters his care as a gibbering spaz and leaves a few years later as a society woman, in between, taking Jung as a dominant lover who whips her while she’s tied down naked. (The only complaint I have with these sequences is that Cronenberg opted to show Knightley topless – for flat-chested women, is that really a boon, or a deal breaker? And if there’s nothing worth seeing, why pretend that there IS, through the duplicity of the padded bra?) It’s a brave role for Knightley, stuttering painfully and going out on a limb to appear ugly, although we must take into account that she is aware – before filming ever started – that it leads to her redemption as a hottie. (I’m sure a lot of men will find that warrior’s jaw alluring but I can’t get past that ironing board chest.)

Vincent Cassel is libertine Otto Gross, who tells Jung, “Repress nothing!” (That’s apt, coming from the guy who screwed every ballerina in BLACK SWAN.) He is also a practitioner of psychoanalysis, mainly by removing the ‘psycho’ and ‘lysis’ and focusing on the ‘anal’.

Of course, in this movie about psychoses, every character reveals just a little bit of their own: Jung cannot perform sexual indiscretions without his own guilt overcoming him, even though we would imagine him above guilt, being an analyst; Freud sees weakness in his colleague Jung, so represses his opinions; Sabina replaces her father’s abuse with that of Jung as a father-figure, making him abuse her; Jung’s wife Emma (Sarah Gadon) thinks that birthing a boy-child after two girls will keep Jung from straying, “Now will you come back to us?”; and Otto Gross, well, I just wanna party with that guy.

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

Hairstyles from the 70s, 80s and 90s all in one movie!

A Legend Unravels…

Twenty years ago, I liked Michael Jackson. Everyone did. Twenty years ago, I liked STAR WARS. Everyone did.

Poff Maul

Look what happened to Michael Jackson. Look what happened to STAR WARS.

Both these entities were done in NOT by lack of funding, backstabbing competitors or unbalanced advisors. Ironically, they brought their downfalls on themselves through a surfeit of funding which removed them from any competition and tipped them into insular universes within their own strangely shaped heads.

All that said, STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE is simply amazing. It is absolutely astounding how much nothing this much money can buy.

Now remember, PHANTOM MENACE was birthed into the world long after the STAR WARS canon entered world vernacular, like red corpuscles in the Earth’s bloodstream. So it is all the more painful to see the cancer of The Prequels eating our childhood dreams away.

George Lucas (Mr. Insular himself) writes and directs and ruins as he goes. If he had just surrendered his chokehold on his writer’s pen and precious director’s chair, we wouldn’t have this facsimile of a movie sullying the legend that he himself brought to life 20 years ago.

an even longer time ago…

Qui-Gon Jinn Movie opens with two Jedi Knights, young “padawan” Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his “Master” Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, with a THUNDERDOME mullet), on a diplomatic mission to resolve a Trade Federation dispute. Immediately, we are lost: not only because George Lucas thrives on cloaking the simplicity of his stories with obfuscating politics, but because no one will admit that the Jedi translation of “padawan” is “bitchboy.”

Obiwan Kenobi Qui and Obi immediately get into trouble, like a couple of intergalactic Gilligans; lightsabers sizzle, robots frizzle, and the two flat-faced aliens who sent the robots realize they are neck-deep in shizzle. This opening sequence is actually the best part of the movie, as we get to see real Jedi in action – their prowess spoken of in three films and only marginally displayed by neophyte Luke, smug Darth and doddering Alec Guinness.

Jar Jar Binks Master and Bitchboy then flee the T-Fed conference after blowing things up and land on a planet where they meet Jar Jar Binks (voiced/mo-capped by Ahmed Best). Proof positive that George Lucas hates his fans.

Queen Amidala Meanwhile, Natalie Portman is learning her lines to play Queen Amidala, reciting them without a shred of emotion, and Lucas is filming all her rehearsal takes in funny wigs. (At least, I hope those are rehearsal takes.)

Mace Windu I don’t know what Jules Winnfield is doing here…

Anakin Skywalker Qui, Obi and Jar crash-land on Tattooine (something to do with the hyperdrive that no one ever fixes properly) and meet an irritating slave boy called Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and his virgin mother (Pernilla August). And here, ladies and gentlemen, is George’s greatest casting mistake ever, even worse than non-actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, even worse than non-actor Hayden Christensen as teen Darth, even worse than that non-actor Empire extra with the phony looped dialogue, “Holding her is dangerous. Word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the rebellion in the senate” – here is the future Darth Vader, a puling, smartmouth, blond American non-actor kid who looks like a refugee from a ’70’s sitcom, playing the icon that haunted our nightmares as we slept on our Star Wars bedsheets.

Is anyone buying this?

Invoking the Jesus myth, Anakin’s mother simply blurts to Qui one day that she “just got pregnant” with Anakin – you’d think she’d save the high maintenance girlfriend talk until after dinner and drinks, but I guess she really had the hots for Qui and his Steven Seagal ponytail and wanted to come clean with him about her divine stretchmarks.

By now, Liam Neeson is not even phoning it in – he’s faxing it, his eyes so glazed over with boredom he never once focuses on all the imaginary CGI shit around him, his inflection never rising above audition level.

Qui-Gon discovers the irritating kid is blessed with a lot of little animals living in his blood, called midi-chlorians. Rather than produce whiter whites – which is what they sound like they do – these midi-chlorians contribute to that mystical power that runs the galaxy – The Force. *I* didn’t say it. George Lucas did. George tells us that the more midi-chlorians in your bloodstream, the stronger The Force is in you. So in EPISODE V, when Yoda speaks to Luke about The Force imbuing the rocks, he was talking about the rocks’ bloodstream? And when Ben Kenobi and Yoda speak of The Force binding the Universe together, they mean billions of these little animals floating around in space? I get it now, George. Really, I do.

We could only watch in helpless horror as George Lucas takes apart his toy and tries to put it back together again, like a retarded Rain Man.

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
— Anton Chigurh, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

At a Jedi Council, which looks more like an AA meeting for fanboys in funny masks, Qui-Gon tries to sell the midi-chlorians story about young Anakin – but no one’s buying it. They’re on a higher plane of universal consciousness – Prophesy. And we see that it really worked out well: with all their vaunted prophesies and foresight on Anakin being their “Chosen One” who would “bring balance to The Force” – he becomes DARTH VADER!

Oh, and I’m the asshole for being sarcastic?

Darth Maul Padding ensues with a pointless “pod-race,” and the Jedi win the slave boy’s freedom. Before they can leave the planet with him, they are attacked by Gene Simmons – my mistake, it wasn’t Gene, just someone from the KISS Army, Darth Maul (Ray Park). Pissed about something – maybe that KISS did that reunion tour without him. Is this guy’s red-and-black makeup meant to be his skin pigmentation? Only the Geek Squad knows for sure. We might feel sorry for Darth Vader having to intercourse his hyperbaric chamber every morning for his daily dose of breath mask – but think about this guy: every morning, waking at 3 a.m. just to “get his face on” for his badboy jeepster image. Do his co-workers snigger behind his back when he walks down the halls of Darth Center?

Chancellor Valorum Terence Stamp is Supreme Chancellor Valorum and by the looks of his fabulous robes, he’s either an intergalactic senator or a drag queen. Constant puss on his face because —

Senator Palpatine Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is allowed to act feyer than him and is plotting to take over the confused political idiotocracy that they rule over from their hovering frisbees. Political intrigue ensues, our eyes glazing over like Qui-Gon’s in front of a green screen. The Darth boy annoys the crap out of us. R2-D2 goes Action Trashcan Hero. C-3PO is naked. Samuel L. Jackson (as Jedi Mace Windu) tries to sound Shakespearean and still sounds like Jules from PULP FICTION – seems you can take the pimpmaster out of the PULP, but you can’t take the… And Yoda floats around on a hover-chair like some hedonistic Bob Dylan, quoting platitudes until we vomit like abandoned children.

Yoda Y’know, Yoda is a prick. When we met him a long time ago in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, he tells us the Way of The Jedi is asceticism, simplicity, balance… So why does he live in a giant palace floating around on a hover-chair in EPISODE I? His very tenets – the tenets of his cackling religious order – are recanted in this movie. I see all the other Jedi walking, Master Yoda – even if you are saving time with the hover-disco, wouldn’t it be more in keeping with your Holy Order for one of your Bitchboys to backpack you? Seems walking or backpacking are too good for Master Yoda – until the Empire burns his frilly palace down. Let’s face it, you little green hypocrite – you were only living in a cave in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK cos you were on the lam from the Empire which YOU tell us is “evil.” Suuure, I’d consider the people who burned down my palace as evil – but that’s only half the story. Did they burn it down in the first place because you were tyrannizing the secular folk who would not bow to your precious Midi-Chlorian Religious Rule? Hmmm…

“hokey religions and ancient weapons…”

Darth KISS versus Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan! While John Williams‘s cosmo choral music ratchets the tension, Darth Maul, who studied with Jedi Master Little John of the Sherwood Forest Star System, brings it with a double-sided lightsaber quarterstaff.

It is here that Qui-Gon must die. Not because Darth Maul’s midi-chlorian count was higher (which is obvious if he bested Qui-Gon), not because it served the plot, but because Liam Neeson’s fax machine ran out of paper. Neeson showing his utter contempt for this project by not allowing Lucas to use his spirit form in any further prequels/sequels. Kenobi and Yoda appear to Luke every time he stubs his toe, to offer sage advice on how to rub the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again, yet when Kenobi was a young man in need of spiritual guidance, Qui-Gon, a supposedly powerful Jedi Master, can’t bother to scare up the ectoplasm.

But why do Qui and Obi insist on battling Maul – an obviously superior dueler – with lightsabers when they could have just as easily used a blaster on him? The Jedi ethos seems to purvey that – as in HIGHLANDER – a Jedi should not and cannot be killed unless he is swashbuckled to death by a beam of light. Or do they insist on using this obsolete lightsaber technology due to a misplaced honor code?

Han Solo says in EPISODE IV, “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster any day.” Proven time and again throughout the series: Obi-Wan himself uses a blaster against General Grievous in REVENGE OF THE SITH (and then complains, “How uncivilized!” – that “uncivilized” blaster could have saved us ten minutes of padding with the lizard-riding and redundant quadruple-lightsaber swooshing); also in SITH, Jedi across the galaxy are brought down not by lightsabers, but by blasters. Easily. Midi-chlorians on vacation that day?

If there’s that much “honor” among Jedi, why do so many of them turn to the Dark Side? And upon turning to the Dark Side, why then bother using the “honorable, civilized” lightsaber? You’ve already turned to the genocidal, dishonorable Dark Side – d’ya think killing kids with a lightsaber is more “honorable” than with a blaster?

non-aiming robots

Meanwhile, down on the planet of wimbleys or something, a completely illogical land battle is taking place between Jar Jar Binks’s Gungan race of agrarian ostrich-riders and Imperial robots who can’t aim. Illogical because the Empire’s firepower can obliterate the Gungans and they insist on taking the battle down to Gungan level by employing ineffectual ground troops – those absolutely useless, waste-of-evil-taxpayer-dollars “battle” droids. (Like these futile drogues who never hit anything even know what “battle” is.)

These things are robots – shouldn’t they have AIMING MECHANISMS? For economic purposes, shouldn’t their guns be built into their arms, with re-loadable magazines slotted into their bodies? At least those rolling droids have built-in guns – but what’s the point if the guns are programmed for “Fire Arbitrarily in General Direction of Enemy and Hope for the Best”? (And no, I don’t know what those rolling droids are called, but I’m sure you can find out on the Star Wars Information Line at 1-800-NO-GIRLFRIENDS.)

After we realize the movie has degenerated to every single pixel onscreen being a special effect, we take a nap. When we wake up, everything has worked out fine in the end, just like a big fat family sitcom in space. With no one ever figuring out just who or what the “phantom menace” actually is.

No two synopses for PHANTOM MENACE can agree on what PHANTOM MENACE is really about, except that it introduces to cinema the most annoying kid in the world and claims he’s Darth Vader. What can really be learned from these Prequels, except that there was a lot more sky traffic – and the Empire seemed to have cleared up that problem by EPISODE IV.

Big Government. Who needs it? We do. If they can clean up sky-traffic like that, go right ahead and keep phantom menacing me, midi-chlorians, maxi-chlorians, ultra-chlorians, I don’t care – as long as I can get across town for a Hefeweisen with a buddy without busting a blood vessel stuck in the belly of a steel snake and giving the finger to ten jerks who drive as if they owned the skies like the Trade Federation…

And like Big Government, PHANTOM MENACE talks too much, dazzles with special effects, overdoses on misdirection – and says nothing.

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

Captain Jack will get you high tonight…

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST is pure ham and cheese. Lots of sauce. Lots of dressing. Hold the onions.

Pegleg Poff

Director Gore Verbinski‘s sequel to his PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003) is a spectacle to behold, a hedonistic bombast of swashbuckling high-sea hijinks, sun-seared tropical environs, intricately-designed ocean-creature monsters and eyeliner enough to embarrass a prostitute.

Speaking of prostitutes, Johnny Depp, renowned for not bowing to Hollywood ethos, bows to Hollywood ethos and returns as Captain Jack Sparrow, an amalgam of Dudley Moore’s ARTHUR, a stoned transvestite and some kind of idiot savant. Orlando Bloom, whose diverse roles involve sword fighting, fighting with swords and sword fighting, is again the amorous Will Turner, whose gay blade is once more victim to coitus interruptus with his square-jawed man-bride of the support-bra bosoms, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley).

There’s treachery afoot in Olde England, and Turner is blackmailed into retrieving Jack Sparrow’s magic compass in return for his jailed bride-to-be.

Using the compass, Jack seeks the hidden Key and buried Chest of ghoulish scourge of the seas, Davy Jones (whose second mistake – after letting an octopus camp on his face – was hiding his beating heart in the chest and burying it on land; land which the screenwriter forbids him from stepping on but once every ten years).

After the plodding first hour – riddled with slapstick only a thirteen-year-old could possibly find marginally original, let alone nominally amusing – the film at last finds its sea legs (accompanied by a highly intrusive Hans Zimmer score) in the race between Sparrow, Davy Jones, Turner and Norrington (Jack Davenport) to locate the Dead Man’s Chest.

Elizabeth spends some disguised time as a boy-sailor onboard an all-male ship – the fact that the crew cannot peg her as female, or the fact that any boy that smooth-faced and round-buttocked is not raped continuously reminds us woefully of Disney’s role as production company.

Sailing an ocean eternally chlorine blue, Davy Jones (played ostentatiously by Bill Nighy, relishing the ‘pus on his face) enslaves Will Turner, through Jack’s treachery. It is while Will is onboard Davy’s Flying Dutchman that the movie offers us what meager character poignancy a summer blockbuster can afford to waste precious minutes on, when Will reunites with his father, a barnacle-encrusted Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), who sacrifices his eternal soul for Will’s freedom.

As Will steals the Key from the sleeping Davy Jones (whose tentacled face is quite the organist), we ask ourselves, “Would a supernatural creature really need to sleep? What energy resources is he replenishing?”

The same conundrum faced by people in zombie movies exists here: how do you “kill” something which is already dead? When the running and shouting and loud music starts again, Davy Jones’s crew – all ostensibly zombies, creatively visualized as nightmarish deformations of recognizable sea creatures – are scalloped and diced by everyone within sushi range.

Until the Kraken arrives. Summoned by Davy Jones via a hydrosonic boom, the giant octopoid (which lives on the ocean floor, yet somehow acclimates to our surface air pressure quite comfortably) minces Jack Sparrow’s ship – The Black Pearl – with as much zest as Jack Sparrow minces, and is rewarded with some prime ham in the form of Captain Jack himself.

Captain Jack will get you high tonight
And take you to your special island
Captain Jack will get you by tonight
Just a little push, and you’ll be smilin’…
— Billy Joel, “Captain Jack.”

Though Depp is undoubtedly this movie’s pulling power, Orlando Bloom endows his role with as much leading man bravado as Depp endows his with effeteness, at one point, even pulling the old Errol Flynn maneuver of sliding down a sail while using his knife as a brake. Seems like the wrong thing to do, as Keira’s Elizabeth has skipped from Norrington to Turner and eventually pants after Sparrow like a dog in heat – out with the fey, in with the feyer.

She can afford to. With her perfect features, Keira Knightley mocks every man who will never sweep their palms over her support-bra’d bosoms; whilst Orlando mocks those same heterosexual men, who find him disturbingly attractive. As Depp mocks every she-male who can only yearn for Jack Sparrow’s level of Freddie Mercury camp and waterproof mascara.

Don’t know why DEAD MAN’S CHEST is considered a cliffhanger – the crew quite clearly see Jack Sparrow swash his buckle into the Freudian-vaginal maw of the Kraken, while the Black Pearl is splintered into smithereens. Declaring they will “do anything” to get Jack back (and throwing down a ham-cameo in the eleventh hour) can achieve absolutely nothing if Jack is already abiding on the ocean floor as Kraken scat.

It’s all very silly really – and like heroin, it will kill you if you have too much – and if it weren’t for the fact that the lavish, overwrought production resonates with a Jack Sparrow-like insouciance, it would be entirely unbearable.

END