Kids come running for the sweet taste of bird box.

What You Don’t See… sure can bird you.

BIRD BOX is the movie M. Night Shyamalan tried to make with THE HAPPENING.

When an unseen entity causes people to kill themselves, a lone woman and two kids brave the rapids to a refugee destination. Blindfolded.

The hook in this compelling thriller is so audacious it works: “something” that can’t be seen – by us viewers – is making people commit suicide; something unholy whispering in the air around them; something that calls inside their skulls, something so soul-crushing that when they “see” it, they are compelled to smash their faces into glass, walk into traffic or throw themselves out of windows… something that its murderous acolytes (who refuse to wear blindfolds), will tell you is beautiful.

This “creature” apparently appears to each person differently. One victim looks into the void and asks, “Mom?” and then climbs into a burning car; one victim asks, “What the fuck is that?” then wells up with tears as she willfully crashes her car. Other than that, no one else describes what none of us viewers will ever see…

Lovecraftian horror sure saves on production budget.

BIRD BOX opens with Malorie (Sandra Bullock) grimly telling two kids that they are all going on a dangerous journey; that no matter what happens – do not remove your blindfolds! While blindfolded, they follow a rope-line to the river into a small rowboat, and Malorie rows away from shore. Through constant flashbacks, we learn how these desperate people arrived here…

FIVE YEARS AGO… After a visit to an obstetrician with her sister (Sarah Paulson, who is stricken by the creatures in an incredibly-acted scene), heavily pregnant Malorie takes refuge in a house of disparate strangers, sheltering from chaos erupting in the streets, as news reports tell of a worldwide plague of suicides. Amongst the strangers, John Malkovich (who makes his “O” face a lot here; not his orgasm face, you know what I’m talking about – when he makes his mouth that O shape while looking blankly at you), B.D. Wong (as always, a solid supporting player), Lil Rel Howery (who attaches an old world legend to the incomprehensible creatures), Jacki Weaver, Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly), Rosa Salazar, and Danielle Macdonald as Olympia, another pregnant woman, clingy and insecure. Trevante Rhodes is also amongst the refugees as Tom (a solid leading man presence, who is yet to make his Great Movie).

The title refers to the fact that little pet birds get agitated when the creatures are around and do not die upon seeing them (we presume), and therefore make a good Early Warning Signal. Thus, on the river, Malorie insures their journey with a shoebox containing three parakeets.

From the novel by Josh Malerman, screenplayed by Eric Heisserer as compellingly as his other efforts (HOURS, ARRIVAL), and directed by Danish-born, award winning Susanne Bier (BROTHERS, IN A BETTER WORLD), the movie flits between the crises in the refugee house – how to get food, how to avoid the creatures, how to stay sane – to the danger of the present-day river.

The movie uses its non-chronological structure to create dire conundrums, as when Malorie tells the two kids in the boat that to navigate the rapids – someone has to look! As the terrified little girl and boy gaze at her with frightened eyes, a flashback gives us a clue on who Malorie might pick for the tragic sacrifice!

Black guy heading a white family = First to Die.

Edge-of-seat storytelling coupled with excellent performances across the board: Sarah Paulson is the one who asks, “What the fuck is that?” and her visage suddenly changes, her eyes glazing into tears. We wonder where she had to go in her head to transform her face like that! Was there CGI involved? I can’t tell. Can anyone be that good an actor? And later, a stressed Tom Hollander would join the refugees indoors, bringing his own esoteric fanaticism, and some malicious artist renderings of how the creature might look (as if to allude to the Lovecraftian bent of the film, one of the drawings resembles Cthulhu). Special mention to the little girl (Vivien Lyra Blair), with an adult demeanor far beyond her years.

BIRD BOX was such a hit when released on Netflix at the end of 2018, that idiotic copycats tried some of the blindfolded stunts enacted in the movie, mainly driving while blindfolded. Let these Darwin Award Winners winnow themselves out of the human race, I say.

There are a few distractions early in the movie, most notably – Sandy’s face! Like Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock must be nearing her 90s now, but her plastic surgeon is nowhere near the skill level of Nicole’s, who continues to make her look 33. Something about the way that young-woman skin is stretched across that old-woman skull – bugs me. Secondly, I hate Flip Dialogue! Thankfully, this movie avoids that trope of characters alerting us to their relationships in opening greetings, like “Hello, sis!” yet opts for Flip Dialogue which is just as skin-crawling: Bullock is painting, listening to loud music. Paulson enters and turns down the noise, Bullock playfully chides, “Asshole, I was listening to that!” (Oh, so they’re tight. Probably sisters.) Later, pregnant Bullock is lying on a table being examined by a doctor, “I’ve never slept well, even before this…condition.” Doctor replies (flippantly) “It’s called pregnancy.” Paulson chimes in (flippantly), “Don’t you know, doc, if you ignore something it goes away?” (Oh, these characters are sooooo tight. And how many viewers did we just lose?…) Thank Cthulhu that Paulson would stun us with that fear-face not two minutes from now, to keep us glued to our idiot boxes, pondering on the nature of fear, perception, death, and the cosmic horror of plastic surgeons.

END

The Good, The Bad and the Freddie.

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
— Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

We may well apply the first lines of Queen’s magnum opus Bohemian Rhapsody to the movie encomium of the same name. There is some biography in BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (“the real life”), yet much dramatic license (“just fantasy”), with particular focus on flamboyant frontman Freddie (“Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality”), who is given an Imaginary Movie Arc for the sake of biopic formula. Which is ironic, considering RHAPSODY is portraying a band renowned for defying formula.

Poffy May and The Cuke Special.

ACCORDING TO THIS MOVIE: The four members of what would become the rock band Queen find each other in London, do pub gigs, sell their van to make records by dangling speakers and banging pots, go on world tours, break up due to gayness, reunite, and play Live Aid at Wembley Stadium. And then Freddie dies of AIDS. The more I think about how wrong BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY gets the story of Queen, the more I wonder exactly who it was made for.

Writers Anthony McCarten (DARKEST HOUR) and Peter Morgan (FROST/NIXON), with directors Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher (after Singer was fired), and founding Queen members/executive producers Brian May and Roger Taylor, deliver a Stone Cold Crazy Hammer To Fall; a Headlong tribute to one of the world’s greatest bands. What they present is obviously done with a wealth of love and respect. And we Queen fans thank them for the Sheer Heart Attack.

Yet these same filmmakers seem distracted in getting ANY details right about Queen in general, pertaining to events, songs, eras, labels, fictional characters, release dates, and chronology. For example: Queen does their First U.S. Tour in 1974, and they’re playing Fat-Bottomed Girls – a song from their 1978 album, Jazz… It’s not just one detail here or there – it’s compound mistake upon compound mistake that leaves the story a Crash Dive on Mingo City.

RHAPSODY never takes the time to delve into the cornerstone of the band’s existence – its music! Yes, we hear Queen songs all over the place (Keep Yourself Alive, Seven Seas of Rhye, Now I’m Here, Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon, Under Pressure), but we are rarely made privy to Queen’s studio innovation, their unique vocal layering, Brian’s inimitable guitar dynamism and the band’s compositional savvy (except for silly montages of Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You, and the aforementioned banging of pots). For example, wouldn’t it have been cool to reveal how Queen achieved their trademark harmonies (Freddie, Brian and Roger would all sing one harmony part together on one track, then do each harmony in the same way, double- and triple-tracking until full fandango), or how Brian used the myriad pickup settings on his vaunted home-made guitar, the Red Special, to sound like an organ (the Shepard-Risset glissandos in Tie Your Mother Down) or a whole woodwind section (Good Company), or the multi-talents of Roger who produced and performed his 1981 solo album himself like a Todd or a Prince, or how John Deacon contributed to the Queen sound by combining his own home-made invention, the Deacy Amp, to Brian’s Red Special, bringing forth orchestras and thunder. But this movie is not about Brian, Roger, Deacy, or even Queen – it’s about Freddie. And even then, the Imaginary Movie Arc insults him more than it honors him…

In a belladonic haze…

A record exec chides the band in going against record industry formula, in wanting to release the six-minute Bohemian Rhapsody: “Formulas work. We like formulas.” It’s a statement meant to convey how out of touch he is with the cool kids. Then RHAPSODY, seemingly without realizing it, falls right into its own self-aware sarcasm, following every formulaic BEHIND THE MUSIC beat we’ve grown accustomed to in music docs. It’s WALK HARD with classier songs.

In the final telling, the only viewers In The Lap Of The Gods will be non-Queen fans, who will get a slick confused taste of misplaced majesty, while the truest fans remain The Loser In The End.

the men

Gwilym Lee is Brian May – exactly. (I mean, Brian IS a scientist. Did he CLONE this guy from himself?) Joseph Mazzello is John Deacon – also exact; who woulda thought the loudmouth kid from JURASSIC PARK would grow up to look exactly like the quiet Deacy? Ben Hardy is Roger Taylor – can drum, can’t act. And Rami Malek (MR. ROBOT) is Freddie Mercury. Malek’s “presence” as Freddie is an astounding work of art, a Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, easily the best aspect of the film (besides Brian May’s clone). With every hard closeup, we see a myriad of emotions flit across his face: the dissatisfaction of his buck teeth, the confidence as a vocalist, the indecision as a heterosexual. He’s done his homework with the moves and mannerisms, he tops the bill, he overkills… but was it that hard to insert brown contact lenses over his green Egyptian cat’s eyes?…

Roger is an aspiring dentist, Brian an astrophysicist, Deacon an electrical engineer, with emphasis on Freddie’s life:

Born Farrokh Bulsara, raised as an Indian Parsi (“Persian” of the Zoroastrian faith), we see clashes with Freddie’s father, who feels like he’s losing his son, especially when he changes his name to Mercury (“The family name isn’t good enough for you now?”); we see the racism toward Freddie (“You Paki!”); we follow his dreams, meet his girlfriend, his gay parties and his supposed loneliness and redemption. Cruel as it is to be this cynical, we are only following Freddie’s arc because: a) the rose-colored glow of absence, b) lead singer, c) dead, so his story has a crisp denouement, and d) he was faaaabulouuuus! Let’s face it, if Freddie were still alive, all the same loonies who laud him as the greatest rock star in history would be complaining about his voice, his gayness, his solo albums, his boyfriends, his red carpet appearances, his cats, his mustache, you name it. Fuck social media.

Mary Austin tries to look past Freddie’s teeth.

Lucy Boynton is Mary Austin, the true love of Freddie’s life, for which he would compose Love Of My Life (apparently in one take in its completed form, if this movie’s portrayal is to be believed [eye-roll]). Movie does not make it apparent, but they were together for 7 years before they parted as a couple, with Mary always in touch with, or working with, Freddie; he granting her the majority of his estate after his death (not shown here). Mary tearfully tells Freddie, “You’re gay!” He counters with, “I’m bisexual–” She interrupts: “You’re GAY, Freddie!” These words NEVER came out of Mary’s mouth. Because the very fact Freddie was with her, by definition, makes him demonstrably bisexual. Why are people so enamored with the GAY label? Freddie had no reason to embellish the truth after he was out – yet people would continue to tag him gay. In the end, I guess he just gave up and moved in with Jim Hutton.

Paul Prenter uses his gay influence on all the mustaches in the room.

Tom Hollander in a brilliant calming role as Jim Beach, Queen’s lawyer – handling all of Freddie’s mercurial asides with equanimity (ha! Did you see what I did there?); Aiden Gillen is Queen’s fast-talking manager; Allen Leech is Paul Prenter, Freddie’s personal assistant, who makes sexual advances on Freddie, which Freddie turns down, until… well, until he doesn’t. Prenter, who sported Freddie’s 1980’s mustachioed look before Freddie did, is the “big gay influence” on Freddie (which is unfair to him, of course, because it took two to mustache-ride), and Queen would go on to blame Prenter for their scattershot 1982 disco album Hot Space. Roger: “Prenter very much wanted our music to sound like you had just walked into a gay club.” It was a foray into a genre where Queen became imitators not innovators, and it unfortunately slotted neatly into the “blame the gay” category. (And note that when Freddie fires Prenter, it’s in the pouring rain, to signify the nadir of his journey. Metaphor much?)

Mike Myers in heavy disguise is a fictional composite of a record exec, seemingly only here for the gag, “Kids won’t bang their heads to Bohemian Rhapsody” – a callback to WAYNE’S WORLD (which Myers wrote and starred in). The filmmakers might have instead portrayed the real villainous managers that inspired the Queen tongue-lashings Flick Of The Wrist or Death On Two Legs; instead we get a schwing inside joke. Roy Thomas Baker, Queen’s producer on five seminal albums, is never mentioned.

And Adam Lambert (Queen’s young vocalist prodigy) cameos as a trucker, that gives Freddie the eye before sauntering into a roadside bathroom!

the music

A young Brian says “We’ll mix genres and cross boundaries!” I HATE these retrospective statements in biopics! Those words NEVER came out of Brian’s mouth!

Thankfully, RHAPSODY is built from the ground up on Queen’s inimitable music. The mimed performances are almost flawless, the synch practically seamless. At one point, Rami plays the Bohemian Rhapsody Bb motif upside down on the piano – the correct notes! Later, at Wembley Stadium, he’s just hitting the G-minor over and over again and hoping we won’t notice… Apparently, Rami’s vocal performance is a combination of himself, Freddie’s actual voice, and Marc Martel (from The Queen Extravaganza, renowned for his vocal Freddie-ness, and the man most Queen loonies want to see in place of Adam Lambert). Another commendable aspect of the vocal performance is choosing to go with many of Freddie’s “live” melody lines, in lower harmonies (which were less spectacular than his recorded works), because onstage, he couldn’t reach the range of his studio voice. Also commendable to hear different mixes for the band in different locations – from recording studios to lounge rooms, to live onstage.

Movie opens with the distinctive sound of The Red Special – Brian May’s unmistakable harmonic signature, playing the 20^th Century Fox theme! Awe-inspiring curtain-raiser! We see Brian’s Vox amps, Deacy’s Fender Precisions; we see Brian and Roger onstage with Smile, performing Doing All Right, which would end up on Queen’s 1973 debut album (with Tim Staffel, their original lead singer, providing new vocal tracks just for this movie).

In the studio recording Bohemian Rhapsody, Roger ululates into a mic, “Galileo, Galileo!” while Freddie castigates him: “Higher,” to which Roger sings exactly the same note. It’s the correct note, yet Freddie entreats again, “Higher”… but Roger goes no higher, just sings the same correct note again in exactly the same way. Uh, are the moviemakers trying to convey Freddie’s perfectionism? Well, how many times are you going to make Roger sing the same note with Freddie repeating “Higher”? Freddie should be suggesting, “More resonant / different inflection / more cutting / it’s a bit flat” – or SOMETHING other than the pedestrian idiocy of “higher.”

the myth

From the moment Freddie meets Brian and Roger in Smile (– nope, he knew them already), to the moment Queen pass U2 supposedly coming offstage before them at Wembley (– nope, Dire Straits played before Queen), RHAPSODY is rife with unforced errors – because Hollywood is a Great King Rat.

There is an irrelevant origin scene for Freddie’s characteristic half-mic-stand: During a show, he struggles with an uncooperative mic-stand and wrenches out the top half, and I guess we’re all supposed to slap our thighs and go, “Man, this movie is just like SOLO, in that I never even asked for the origin of this nothing piece of hardware!” Why not an origin on why he wore his cock-ring on his bicep during Live Aid?

Freddie Mercury once said: “I have visions of actually having a film made of my life story one day, which I would have a key part in… My dears, the things I’ve done in my lifetime … it’ll be totally triple X-rated!” Sacha Baron Cohen (originally slated to play Freddie) wanted to make just such a movie, but it clashed with Brian’s and Roger’s vision, and thus we get Freddie’s PG-13 parties here, with gays and trannies and gimps (oh my!).

Freddie’s arc is: attaining success, slipping into sex drugs and rock and roll (to be more precise: homo sex, implied drugs, and solo career) before redemption at Live Aid. But each low point here garners its own demerits:

Jim Hutton with his two pussycats.

HOMO SEX: In biopics, the antagonist usually whores himself out to pussy; here, Freddie’s bisexuality gives viewers added shock value as we see a montage of red-lit gay clubs and fully-clothed PG-13 parties meant to represent Freddie’s triple X-rated conCOCKtions. The irritating thing is: the gay lifestyle is represented as Freddie’s “fall,” and the band is shown derisive of Freddie’s descent into gayness, with Mary (the hetero element) absent from this era – until she tries to pull him from the abyss with news of her pregnancy (again, a “straight” condition). It is also implied Freddie threw these parties out of loneliness. But who are the filmmakers to say Freddie needed to fill some void within him? Movie is trying to find some deep-rooted psychosis on why a young, rich, virile rock star would throw triple-X parties. [Pause for effect…] ‘Nuff said.

The final straw to the “party” psychosis is when Freddie meets his future lover after a night’s festivities, Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker), who tells him, “I like you, Freddie. Come find me when you like yourself.” Those words NEVER came out of Jim’s mouth.

IMPLIED DRUGS: Guys can kiss guys onscreen nowadays (we are soooo liberated, my dears!), but we must’nt see Freddie snorting cocaine – typical Gutless MPAA. Freddie is never shown out of his head, just near some lines on a table, and in truth, his lifestyle NEVER got in the way of his music business. Yet this aspect is thrown in with the rest of the clichéd pitfalls of rock excess.

SOLO CAREER: Movie tells us that Freddie’s decision to go solo (which is portrayed as a tortured Freddie taking others’ advice) breaks up Queen. And that’s a big bowl of Chinese Torture. Because Queen never broke up. Freddie only released his first solo album, Mr. Bad Guy, three months before the July 1985 Live Aid gig. Roger, meanwhile, had released two solo albums before that date (Fun In Space and Strange Frontier), with Brian releasing a 1983 Star Fleet Project solo EP that featured Eddie Van Halen! That’s newsworthy, no? I guess not, when you can fill your movie with all that gay shit. At the band’s “reunion” meeting before Live Aid, Roger says, “We haven’t played together in years!” – when in fact, Queen in real life had just come off touring The Works album.

Riding the sea of clap-clap-spread, clap-clap-spread.

The movie holds up Live Aid as the pinnacle of Queen’s career. Considering Bob Geldof’s and Midge Ure’s worldwide charity dambuster scored Queen unanimous acclaim as “the greatest live performance in the history of rock,” that may be arguably correct, however, when the movie adds extra motivation behind the gig, such as Freddie telling his bandmates of his AIDS diagnosis (in real life, he was not diagnosed until 1987), and when Freddie goes around on gig day finding his settle-down boyfriend, reconciling with his parents, and then singing the line onstage with gravity in his gaze, “Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth…” it colors the performance in layers that were not really existent, and it insults the man Mercury.

So Freddie’s To-Do List on July 13, 1985:
1) Find Jim Hutton (after scouring the phonebook).
2) Have tea with parents and Jim (“He’s my… friend.”)
3) Reconcile with dad (“Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.”)
4) Play Wembley Stadium.

You know what you do on the day you play Wembley Stadium? NOTHING ELSE, let alone re-align your life from that of raging rock star to boring aunty.

I wouldn’t be so Killer Queen on the production if they weren’t so hubristic about everything they supposedly got right. Freddie’s personal assistant, Peter Freestone, was an advisor on set, and praises the production for “going into such great detail” like recreating the contents of Freddie’s man-purse authentically! That’s nice, Peter, for a prop which is never opened onscreen. Now how about getting the BIG details right, like: Why is Brian teaching Freddie 1977’s We Will Rock You while Freddie sports a mustache and cropped hair, a look he would not adopt until 1980? This is not ancient history – the song’s actual video shows Freddie with no mustache and shoulder-length hair! (And those precious star-shaped glasses!)

Misadventures in sensuous body-shaving.

The finale of RHAPSODY showcases the band at Live Aid, another commendable tour de force of mimicry from all involved, from the set dressers to the choreographers to the cinematographers and band actors. In essence though, it’s an exercise in redundancy. We don’t need to “see” this almost 20-minute performance to know it was a Day-Oh heard round the world; yes, the movie is capped nicely with this gig recreation, but all its onscreen time could have been used to fill in more judicious Prime Jive.

We don’t really see any progression of Queen albums (the first 11 albums are all tossed up in the air and songs land wherever they’d make good dramatic landfall), however RHAPSODY totally neglects the 3 albums made after Live Aid (A Kind Of Magic, The Miracle, Innuendo), opting to cut to final title cards, detailing Freddie’s final days. Hmm, cutting a man’s short life even shorter… Closing titles are accompanied by the Queen video for Don’t Stop Me Now (from Jazz), so we end on an optimistic note, band youthful, song energetic, sentiment momentum…

In the end, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY may just be a metaphor for Queen itself, who loved to subvert expectations, especially with Freddie’s irreverent sense of humor, as we shuffle awed to the altar, to see regal, virtuoso and educated – and then it comes out in a full jester bodysuit with a cock-ring around its bicep.

END

“Mmm, yes! I’m losing! I really tried NOT to get in this position and lose this fight! Really I did, but you’re just too good for me! Mmm, sniff, mmm!…”

Mission TomCruise-able.

You know what the real Mission: Impossible is? Trying to get insurance for Tom Cruise. Oh, there is eventually a signature in blood on the dotted line, or this film would not be greenlit, but can any layman truly speculate what devil’s percentage of the box office these insurance companies are demanding in return – to insure a celebrity almost Too Big To Insure?

And there he goes – the billion-dollar star cabled to the outside of a military airplane like a fucking lunatic – while insurance companies bite their nails in anguish that they might have to actually pay up the projected opening weekend grosses of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION should the lunatic plummet to Earth like the fallen angel he is…

Tom Cruise (EDGE OF TOMORROW) is once again Ethan Hunt. IMF Superspy. And I-do-my-own-stunts lunatic. In this fifth impossible mission – to do a movie without sensually shaving his torso. And to get insured.

CIA chief Huntley (Alec Baldwin, STILL ALICE) believes Ethan “is the arsonist and the firefighter, creating the criminal scenarios that he fixes,” so shuts down IMF in a Court Of Old Farts, where Ethan’s colleague in action pants, Brandt (Jeremy Renner, AVENGERS), represents IMF like Alberto Gonzalez testifying on torture, “I can neither confirm nor deny any details about any operation…”

A fugitive from his own government, Tom Cruise’s torso is pitted against a rogue spy organization within the world spy network, called The Syndicate. Led by Solomon Lane (weasel-featured Sean Harris, PROMETHEUS), more ruthless, more Russian and more spy-ish than IMF, Ethan’s last hope for acquittal from his government is to bring them down – and he can only depend on himself. And his torso.

His boy band from the last few outings returns: Simon Pegg (THE WORLD’S END) as Ethan’s bottom bitch slash Damsel In Distress, Ving Rhames (FORCE OF EXECUTION) as one of those blowup clowns that you can’t knock over, and Jeremy Renner as The Voice Of Reason: “I can neither confirm nor deny any details about any operation…”

Tom Hollander has gone from Commander of the British Navy (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 2), to political dust mote (IN THE LOOP), to the Prime Minister of England here, with hardly anything to do to match his wit and talent.

Balancing the raging testosterone, Rebecca Ferguson (HERCULES 2014) as Ilsa, double-agenting for Solomon Lane, or maybe the annoying British – we’ll never know, not as long as our attention is diverted by that dress too long to walk in, and her cunnilingus-karate (that fighting style created for modern movie chicks that involves opening their supple thighs indecently and closing them around a man’s grateful head. Let me guess: a MAN created this style, right? Knife fight with big guy – cutting, slashing, falling, edging forward – Ow! Ah! Orgasm sounds! Ugh! You ripped my dress! Ehh! – as soon as she uses her thigh-kwon-do, it’s all over).

By the way, if you’re here for the plane gag, that’s over and done in the cold open, before the opening credits. Unrelated to anything else in the film, purely for wow factor, an A400M airbus takes off with Mr. Cruise holding on to a closed side door, with nothing but a cable rig and Lafayette Ron Hubbard keeping him from harm. It’s interesting to note that all the posters for this movie feature a different stunt, because – Tom Cruise Tom Cruise.

Now we see the wind resistance benefits of the shaved torso.

Pursuing Solomon Lane takes Ethan to Europe (we do love our tentpole budget), where he finds himself having to deter the assassination of a Euro president during an opera, Puccini’s Turandot. During the aria Nessun Dorma, he sees two assassins from each side of the room aiming at the president and must decide which one to shoot first – no matter who he chooses, the other will then surely kill the president. The person he finally decides to shoot – which derails the assassination – is an elegant solution. Coolest part about this sequence is that the classy Nessun Dorma would be woven into the soundtrack from now on.

In a primal fear underwater sequence, Ethan must hold his breath for an impossible three minutes of exertion while he switches a coded disk. As gripping as this sequence is, does any villain organization really keep the codes to their employees in a subterranean underwater tank on waterproof disks each in their own compartment with thousands of pounds of pressure generated from artificial undertow created by spinning robotic arms? Did I just describe the Department of Motor Vehicles?

…and then hell ride a motorbike chase through oncoming traffic, with innumerable moving violations, even by European standards. (They’ve done something to The Car Chase in this movie – they’ve made it interesting!) And yes, that’s Tom Cruise really leaning through every curve on that bucking bronco, taunting his Allstate Insurance deductible. More thrilling than dry-shaving your torso…

…all while Ilsa double-crosses him, while trying not to kill him, while making it look like she is trying to kill him, while Simon Pegg helps him by stuttering, and Ving Rhames and Jeremy Renner wander around like day players.

Christopher McQuarrie (writer, THE USUAL SUSPECTS) writes and directs this lavish production with a sure grip, and keeps the action visually astounding and spatially logical (by this I mean, all his action sequences seem to take place in three dimensions – note the plane gag, opera catwalk, underwater, bike chase along side of mountain, etc.); he keeps the dialogue humorous and basic as per action movie protocol, and keeps Tom Cruise alive for insurance companies.

Still, it seems a mission impossible to make a movie without so many glaring plot inconsistencies:

• In opening scene, why does Pegg reveal himself just to talk on the comm? He never has to lift his head above the camouflaging grass. You call yourself a field agent? Stay hidden like one!
• The elusive genius Solomon has spent years working behind Ethan’s back to thwart him; at this moment, there is still no tactical reason to reveal himself to Ethan, yet he does. And Ethan’s sketch of Solomon is instrumental in Solomon’s downfall.
• Oh, add cartoonist to Ethan’s long list of annoying virtuosities.
• When Solomon trapped Ethan in a glass case of emotion, why not use POISON GAS to KILL him, instead of knocking him out just to see him tied topless to a whipping post?
• Topless? Why not naked? Are you trying to kill him, torture him or arouse him? Either way, why the modesty?
• Why is the key to Ethan’s cuffs in such close proximity to Ethan at the whipping post?
• Ethan says he’s been tailing Solomon around the world as he causes giant disasters – but in this modern world, you don’t have to physically BE in any location to make anything happen there. (Alec Baldwin was right – Ethan was just using the IMF budget to gallivant on holiday!)
• Jesus, this really annoyed me: The orchestra wouldn’t be checking their instruments in five minutes before downbeat. PRIMAL SCREAM AT IGNORANCE OF FILMMAKERS THAT SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

Overarching the minutiae, I constantly wonder where Ethan and his outlaw team get access to all those neato devices as convenient as Batman’s utility belt. It seems that whether their spy agency is supporting them or not, they can easily get fake passports, vehicles, food, shelter, weapons, clothing, safe houses, ultra-tech diving gear, even those realistic facemasks THAT STILL KEEP FOOLING EVERYONE. If the plot of a movie involves everything being ripped from the hero, then the hero should not have access to anything, let alone EVERYTHING. You can’t have it both ways. When a hero has everything ripped from him, he has to use his ingenuity to survive and rise from the fall, but not Ethan – he just uses any IMF tech gear he needs, and his sensually shaved torso.

That’s why this movie – and its dangers – comes off as hollow fun.

ROGUE NATION tries for some introspection with Ilsa noting, “We only think we’re fighting for the right side because that’s what we choose to believe.” IMF calls The Syndicate a terrorist network, yet that is from their frame of reference, because The Syndicate is messing with their terrorist activity. Let’s face it, to scores of countries, the CIA is the true terrorist network– cough-Shah of Iran, cough-Saddam, cough-Cuba… if I go on, I’ll never be able to stop this coughing convulsion…

But I’m sure no one is here to ponder such truisms. It’s always a mission impossible trying to tease out the truth with so much thigh and torso to distract us. You know I’m talking about Tom Cruise.

END

So you like a little politics with your swearing…

IN THE LOOP is a thunder-paced, dialogue-driven British comedy with corruption more insidious than SYRIANA and dialogue more fierce than PULP FICTION.

Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) is a small-thinking, mealy-mouthed, indecisive, powerless British politician (i.e. your average politician, British or otherwise), craving to be taken seriously in the worst way. After a war conference between British and American movers and shakers which he is “allowed” to attend as “a piece of meat” (to his chagrin), he is accosted by reporters and sees his chance to prove he is In The Loop with the big boys.

On the spot, stuttering like a motorboat, Foster blurts a statement, “To walk the road of peace, we must be prepared to climb the mountain of conflict,” seemingly advocating Allied war with the Middle East. But the war council (euphemistically named the Future Planning Committee) spins a contrary stance; Foster’s statement goes from damage control to viral to bumper sticker in a matter of hours. And he suddenly finds himself being taken seriously. In the worst way.

From trying to get his feet wet, to trying to keep his head above water…

Foster is the foot-in-mouth device that sets IN THE LOOP in motion, but the movie belongs to one man amongst this unquestionably stellar cast: Peter Capaldi as British Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker. With his guttural denunciations and his blackly humorous manner of direct confrontation, Capaldi propels this movie like a saw-toothed shark, all in his proximity quailing before his grievous-bodily-harm loquacious embrace: “This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!” Capaldi makes IN THE LOOP the SEXY BEAST of political farces.

And everyone rises to the occasion to keep up. With four writers credited to the screenplay (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche and director Armando Iannucci), dialogue is more syrupy vicious than Tarantino’s wet dreams. It’s almost distracting. I could listen to these guys creatively insult each other all day, screw the plot.

The lovely Gina McKee is Tucker’s executive assistant; David Rasche is an American politician, playing it like an evil Ed Begley Jr.; rosy-cheeked Chris Addison is the new young junior assistant to Foster, whose reply to Foster’s summation that the situation will be “easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy” is that it will be “difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult.” And Foster’s foot-in-mouth kicks in when he repeats that to the whole war council…

When Foster flees the limelight back to his local council, where he must listen to old ladies complain about septic tanks and concerned citizen Steve Coogan complain about a council wall falling into his mother’s backyard, he realizes being a flustered meat puppet wasn’t half bad after all, and returns to the abrasive pounce of Tucker.

Tony Soprano Rising.

Only one man can stand down Tucker’s acid tongue–Tony Soprano! James Gandolfini is a three-star American General, who realizes that only those who have not experienced war crave it so glibly, and whose bearlike presence and quiet, overbearing certitude swiftly puts Tucker in his place. “You’re his little English bitch and you don’t even know it. Bet if I came to your hotel room tonight, I’d find you down on all fours, him hanging out the back of you.” Bada-bing!

There are no explosions, car chases or murders–these people are much worse; explosive, unchaste and backbiting, their covert, duplicitous war decisions apt to cost many more lives than simple explosions, car chases or murders. And the whole cast is shot through with a streetwise cynicism and amoral ambiguity that just reeks of life on the beltway.

If you like your comedy intelligent, witty and frighteningly rude, IN THE LOOP is your bacchanal.

END

Biting The Hand That Exploits You.

When movies address the supposed nobility of humanity (a fiction created by humans) we’ve got to look past the uplifting orchestration to the deep background on what is actually being sold.

With THE SOLOIST, we don’t have to look too deep. It’s the story of Los Angeles newspaper columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr), finding a story in a homeless Julliard-trained cellist, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx, foregoing smoothness on the outside for smoothness on the inside). Set in 2005 and based loosely on two real life characters, I kept wondering why Lopez insisted on trying to help Nathaniel off the streets and into a shelter, against Nathaniel’s recalcitrance and downright ungratefulness at times.

Hmm, let’s see: Lopez is a newspaper columnist. What could he possibly want?

Lopez discovers the homeless, scatter-brained Nathaniel near a Beethoven statue; later hears him playing violin and strikes up an uneasy acquaintance with him. He researches Nathaniel’s tall tales of Julliard attendance, tracks down Nathaniel’s family and writes about him in his daily column, whereupon a kind old lady bequeaths Nathaniel a cello.

Lopez continues to push himself onto Nathaniel and eventually gets him off the streets and into a homeless shelter called LAMP (Los Angeles Men’s Project), situated one door down from Hell in Downtown Los Angeles. Skid Row, utter squalor, black people in aimless droves, smoking crack on the streets, fighting, sex, deaths… Los Angeles is one of the nation’s leading cities for homelessness – something for which the Asshole City Of The World is very proud, I’m sure.

Yo Yo Poff

Questions are raised as to how far Lopez can intrude on Nathaniel’s life to ostensibly “help” him. Lopez tells a psychiatrist “Force him to sit down with you!” but the psych argues that you can’t force people into psych evaluation, or even force prescription meds onto them.And we keep wondering: Just what is in it for Lopez?…

In a riveting scene, Nathaniel attacks Lopez for trying to make him sign papers diagnosing him as schizoid; Downey’s face seems to register real fear – an excellent performance.

Foxx is also on top of his game – as an actor, but not a cellist. His cello miming leaves a lot to be desired. Portraying someone who is supposedly a virtuoso at the instrument, he doesn’t do enough vibrato (a violinist once told me, “Just TRY and stop a string player doing vibrato!”). Playing cello in an orchestra scene, we clearly see two cellists behind Foxx, playing the same passage, vibrato all over the place, but though Foxx mimes the right notes, his fingers are way too stiff to be convincing.

Lopez wangles Nathaniel into attending a performance of the L.A. Philharmonic (with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, no less). Lopez and Nathaniel run Nathaniel’s junk-laden shopping cart through L.A. streets, right up to the backstage door of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. (Did that really happen?) And Nathaniel’s listening experience is portrayed as euphoric explosive mind-colors – but –

How dare the filmmakers presume to show us how Nathaniel perceived the music? He was a schizoid personality whom Lopez battled constantly to keep focused. Nathaniel is portrayed as an overlooked genius purely for dramatic purposes. But he is not. He was not denied his time in the spotlight. He was a little crazy to begin with; he had his shot and he shunned it. Just because he happens to play a supposedly “noble” instrument doesn’t mean he can’t be as off-kilter as C.C. DeVille, the drug-addled guitarist of Poison, who is a great technician on his instrument, but batshit crazy nonetheless.

We discover Nathaniel needs meds to keep those Crazy Fluids in check. But he was never a “genius.” How can I be so sure? Besides the inane babbling, moody indecision, and ragged unreliability portrayed by Jamie Foxx, we meet Nathaniel Ayers himself in the DVD Special Features.

While the real life Lopez and Ayers chat together, Ayers breaks into a Beethoven cello passage. Now, it may be his mental condition that keeps him from the recording studio or joining an orchestra, but it may also be that he’s not very good. His technique is definitely that of a string player (he has that vibrato that Foxx lacks) but there are many, many notes that are quite, quite flat. And all the while, Lopez commends him on how grand he sounds! Which leads us to another surmise: that Ayers relishes his small pond (where he is a legend to his kennel-crazy fellows) and doesn’t want to risk leaving it for a stab at responsibility, studied rehearsal, and getting lost amongst other mediocre players who don’t regard him as King Pompous Ass.

So shuck off that whitey guilt that was creeping up yo spine. Nathaniel didn’t end up homeless due to extreme bad luck; his own “inner demons” put him there. (Love dat “inner demon” euphemism bullshit – means we don’t have to diagnose further or identify solutions.)

And we discover this film is “from the book by Steve Lopez.” And all motivation comes clear. After his newspaper columns, Lopez scored a BOOK DEAL!

There are people in this world who genuinely seek to help others – news columnists are not those people. Steve Lopez’s relationship with Nathaniel was similar to Truman Capote’s with Perry Smith when he wrote In Cold Blood – academia curdling against humanity, friendship mixing uneasily with exploitation.

So though the filmmakers think their movie is focused on humanity’s “nobility,” we realize that with Nathaniel still on the real life streets even after Lopez’s publishing deal and this A-List movie – it is really about humanity’s IGNOBILITY.

Lopez wraps the film: “His mental condition and his wellbeing are as precarious now as when we first met.” Doesn’t matter too much now – Lopez scored a book deal – every writer’s dream. And I’m pretty sure Nathaniel isn’t getting any residual points on it…

In the film, the tragedy of homelessness is also addressed – but that problem cannot be solved without addressing state and federal governments that create homelessness through constructs in society that retain the disparate distribution of wealth. Again: ignobility on display.

Nathaniel Ayers is not a genius in any sense of the word. Still, in Hollywood, you don’t need to be a genius to make it. Just ask Bret Michaels. What you need is a story worth telling. And that’s something that Nathanial Ayers has in spades.

Steve Lopez tells us so in his book.

END

Plight of the Valkyries.

When I heard Tom Cruise was to play a World War II Nazi, I laughed my LMAO off. Tough sell for a non-actor. And by non-actor, I mean movie star. And by movie star, I mean he can’t act.But then it all comes clear. The role was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who was involved in one of the more famous assassination plots against Hitler – so Cruise was not really being asked to extend his acting bone; he was a disenfranchised Nazi, a veritable “liberal” in America’s eyes. He was a traitor to the Germans, but you know what they say: One man’s traitor is another man’s Cruise.

Colonel Cuken von Poffenberg

And, ludicrous as it may sound, Cruise and director Bryan Singer (X-MEN) actually boast of the “risk” for Cruise in taking such a role. What risk? His character is the Hero, with a beautiful wife (Carice van Houten) and four loving, blond kids (cos he’s German, see); he’s principled, a born leader, and hates the Nazis so much he’s practically American. He doesn’t even speak German in the film! Associated Press actually published this stupid article: Tom Cruise taking risk with Nazi film `Valkyrie’.

In VALKYRIE, it is 1944 and Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom many on both sides regard as an “insane genius,” is not only losing the war that he started, he is committing atrocities and driving Germany’s credibility with the rest of the world straight into the toilet. Kinda like George W. Bush – without the “genius” bit. We meet Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Mr. Cruise, proudly pretending he is “taking a risk”) as a young rebel, displeased with Hitler’s management of the war, his mission impossible: “to serve Germany – or the Fuehrer – not both.”

Then the Allies bomb him. Stauffenberg loses his right hand, half his left hand, and his left eye. If that doesn’t make you wanna blow up your Chancellor, well…

Stauffenberg is recruited by a cast of “Chermans,” so upper-crust British they make your butler feel like an illegal Latino: Kenneth Branagh (as Major-General Tresckow), Bill Nighy (as General Olbricht), Tom Wilkinson (as General Fromm), Terence Stamp (as Ludwig Beck), Eddie Izzard (as General Fellgiebel), Kevin McNally (as Dr. Goerdeler). The German names won’t mean a thing unless you know the story – the joke is in the casting. It is why VALKYRIE stumbles conceptually, because it is always in the back of our minds, “No wonder they’re trying to assassinate Hitler – they’re BRITISH!”

Bad Guys are British, right? Staple of Hollywood. So casting them as Germans was no stretch, but director Singer ensures that the “good” Bad Guys (i.e. traitors) are all British actors and the “bad” Bad Guys (i.e. Nazis) are actual German actors.

Then there’s Tom. Fruiting about the authentic-looking WWII backdrop, in no way trying to inhabit the role of a one-handed, eye-patched, high-ranking German Chief of Staff. Just Being Cruise. The American accent is bad enough. (We give the filmmakers credit here for the artful way they suspended our disbelief in everyone speaking English: the opening titles are written in German, and morph into English, then we hear Cruise speaking German with English subtitles, cross-faded into him speaking English.) We get the point of the translation for our lazy Western ears, but there is more to a role than an accent; Cruise gives it nothing more than Cruise. We do not lose ourselves in this “German’s” conflict – committing the highest crimes known to man since Judas Iscariot. It’s Tom Cruise, eat your popcorn.

The two things foremost in my mind were Cruise’s ingenious bluescreen glove he’s obviously wearing, and how hard the Shakespearean vets on set must be laughing at his babyboy acting chops over lunch.

As a political thriller, VALKYRIE succeeds, though. Even with Tom just Being Cruise. Writers Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) and Nathan Alexander compress events and often just falsify events to keep it popcorn-friendly – this is not a historical document – but they do not lose too much in their streamlining because the story itself is just so entertaining. (To understand the extent of the operation, and its many complications that are not shown in VALKYRIE for brevity, one of the most authoritative sources is still William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.)

“Valkyrie” was the code-name for a plan that called for Germany’s Home Army (led by Thomas Kretschmann – he was the Euro boat captain in KONG 2005) to hold major German cities in case of a revolt from the millions of foreign laborers. Stauffenberg says, “I’ve rewritten Valkyrie” (which is ironic, considering the filmmakers re-wrote the events of Hitler’s assassination in VALKYRIE as well) – an idea which comes to Stauffenberg while listening to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries (somehow Singer squeezed it in).

The plan: to kill Hitler – with a good old-fashioned time-bomb (with no Roger Ebert Red Digital Readout!) – then report that SS radicals were trying to take over the cities, which would allow the conspirators to mobilize the Home Army to arrest all SS officials. This would nullify Hitler’s main Gestapo bulldog, Himmler.

It is a pleasure to see a modern movie that doesn’t use holo-computers, laser fields, cell phones or cockamamy technology so outlandish it might as well be magic. (I refrain from dropping the classic Arthur C. Clarke aphorism on you. Congratulate me. It’s harder than you think.)

Stauffenberg plants the bomb in a briefcase near Hitler during a staff meeting. It detonates, seemingly killing everyone in the room. The Home Army started its takeover of major cities, but just as Germany was about to become the United States of Tom Cruise – Hitler was discovered alive and made a public radio announcement to proclaim his survival was divine.

The conspirators failed by not controlling the flow of information. This was in a time when mass communications were in the form of telegrams sent to a central communications switchboard, then forwarded on. Though the conspirators had hundreds of high-ranking officers onboard Valkyrie, they failed to recruit the low-ranking message personnel. The telegram of Hitler’s death stunned these indoctrinated Nazis, but the following one about his survival made them smell that rotten something in Denmark (on accounta it’s so close to Germany…)

Just as the conspirators were saying, “I love it when a plan comes together,” the Home Army is re-claimed by the Nazis. As Stauffenberg’s orders go out over the wire to arrest SS officers, orders issue from the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s HQ) to arrest Stauffenberg. The wire operators chose to send on The Fuehrer’s orders and ignore Stauffenberg’s.

Stauffenberg’s plan had to work, so he made no effort to hide his tracks. He was discovered and executed within the 24-hour period when Valkyrie was launched on 20 July 1944. He was executed 21 July 1944.

Somewhere in Germany, there is a monument to Tom Cruise for his brave sacrifice. Or is it in Britain in the Risky Business Untrained Actor’s museum?…

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