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Category: General Page 227 of 271

Ain’t Exactly Legendary: “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas”

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On April 17, 2014

In General

I suppose children over the years have enjoyed the animated Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) but I, an adult, grew tired of it.

The moral story is not that bad, but midway the disaster action gets too hokey, in my view, for grownups—something a big-screen animator really ought to avoid.  Its unexpected raciness hardly matters; Cowboy Bebop: The Movie it ain’t.

It’s rather fun watching Sinbad, voiced by Brad Pitt, sparring with Miranda, voiced by Catherine Zeta-Jones, as though the two were in a 1930s screwball comedy.  Mark Steyn of the British Spectator (formerly) is right, though:  there are too many Wonder Women in today’s action movies.  That’s what Miranda is.  Why isn’t Sinbad the hero of this thing?

Cover of "Sinbad - Legend of the Seven Se...

Cover via Amazon

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Is No B.S.

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On April 13, 2014

In General, Movies

Standing Proud |Captain America: The Winter So...

Standing Proud |Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review (Photo credit: BagoGames)

The noise made over drones and the NSA may well be fatuous,* but Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) projects these things into the future to do its scrutinizing, if that’s what it is, of What Could Come About (beware).  In light of this and the powerful action, the pic is a no-b.s. concoction (though not without humor).  Highlights include a slick, smashingly fine auto chase and a tense bait-and-switch followed by gunfire within a government building.

Robert Redford is in the film, playing an intelligence director, a glorifier of security over freedom.  Subtly commanding, he is still a remarkable actor—unlike Chris Evans, who is just okay as Capt. America.  Scarlett Johansson, on the other hand, is inspired enough to make Natasha/Black Widow (who?) more or less interesting.  Winter Soldier has two film editors and two directors, which was perhaps requisite for its technical perfection.

*Or maybe it isn’t.

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I Won’t Take A Bullet For Stallone: “Bullet to the Head”

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On April 6, 2014

In General, Movies

Presumably the makers of the 2013 crime thriller Bullet to the Head hoped to fashion something as entertaining as 24—a TV series which is flawed, exciting, good.  Unfortunately, the movie they cranked out is flawed, exciting, bad, without any of the elements that immediately save 24.

Sylvester Stallone is an arrogant actor here and is miscast as a hired killer.  He and his fellow hit man do their snuffing out, but are set up by the villains who hired them; and the reason for the set up is as dumb as everything else in the film.  Why does the double crosser try to kill Stallone and his partner with a knife instead of a gun?  Later on, Stallone grudgingly teams up with an Asian-American cop (Sung Kang) to root out Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje’s international thug (Stallone’s betrayer).  But the film has the chutzpah to make Akinnoye-Agbaje a complete idiot—not much of a match for the hit man and the cop.  Why, for example, does the thug allow a muscular baddie played by Jason Momoa to become a loose cannon?

Bullet is based on a graphic novel, which is often asking for trouble.  Yes, it is exciting . . . and raw . . . but it ain’t TV.  NOT EVEN THAT!

The Old Masterpiece, “Mutiny On The Bounty” (1935)

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On April 4, 2014

In General, Movies

Cropped screenshot of Charles Laughton from th...

Cropped screenshot of Charles Laughton from the trailer for the film Mutiny on the Bounty. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve never read Mutiny on the Bounty, but the ’35 film version, for all the sappy-silly Tahiti material, seems a well-made and even felt adaptation.

Captain Bligh is an expert seaman but also a mean fool, wanting only to impose his ruthless will.  Charles Laughton plays him with astonishing aplomb, frighteningly. . . Second in command Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) simply refuses to have men at Bligh’s mercy any longer, uncondonable though some of the Bounty’s sailors find the mutiny.  Incontestable here is an urgent need for the liberalization of the English navy, with the navy itself seen as utterly honorable and necessary by the filmmakers.  It becomes almost palpable that the film is liberal—though certifiably separate from today’s liberalism—because it is conservative.  It wants what is best for a timeless institution.

A great deal goes on in Mutiny on the Bounty, which is two hours and ten minutes long.  Frank Lloyd directed with a fine sense of seafaring adventure and of grandeur.  It is, I think, a masterpiece.

 

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We’re Game For “Game Of Thrones”

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On March 25, 2014

In General

Fire and Blood (Game of Thrones)

Fire and Blood (Game of Thrones) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Man—such an ill-fated creature.

His ill-fatedness is very much a theme in the HBO series, Game of Thrones, wherein one would expect quite a few of the major characters (not just Ned Stark and the primitive Big Boy married to Daenerys) to tragically die.  It’s a terrible world they live in, a very arduous environment, sinful and pagan, natural and magical.  There is a lot of surviving, though, and it must be said that the slender young queen, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), really knows how to triumph as a warrior, as at the recherche end of the show’s first season.

Probably Season 3 is one of the finest “movies” of 2013.  (Season 2, on the other hand, was often a lot of noise and meandering.)  The drama has engrossing and colorful incidents, such as the dwarf Tyrion’s marriage to young Sansa and the mad battle with the bear, and heart and momentum.  The acting is mostly solid: consider Peter Dinklage, Charles Dance (Daddy Lannister), Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark).  The very pretty Natalie Dormer is also on hand, flavorful and capable of coyness.

I hope it’s not an ill-fated series.

(The photo is of Emilia Clarke.)

 

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