115. Gia

115. (14 May) Gia (1998, Michael Cristofer) 58

It's almost inconceivable Angelina Jolie didn't win an Emmy for Gia. Her performance is fearless, brimming with energy and an organic quality rarely seen on the small screen. While the rest of the film aspires to an edginess that's not quite achieved here, Jolie is convincing throughout. The film is engaging though, to be sure, especially at its most sexually charged. Unfortunately, the film does little to elucidate who Gia Carangi was and only occasionally seems to capture the spirit of her times.

033. Kung Fu Panda 2

033. (28 Jan) Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011, Jennifer Yuh) 28



The first Kung Fu Panda looked cheap and ugly, so it's irritating that this is more of the same. The gags here are outright awful; there's not a genuinely funny joke in the film's runtime. The voice cast is among the most underwhelming in animation's history.

The plot unfolds terribly. Action sequences become anticlimactic because of the poorness with which their handled. The characters are at the top of a collapsing tower, for instance, and somehow manage to easily slide off a building's roof below after falling more than a dozen stories. That's stupid, but what's far more objection is how the film's final moments set up another sequel.

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY

Written and Directed by Angelina Jolie

Somewhere amidst raising countless kids and attending to the demands of being a giant star, Angelina Jolie found the time to write and direct her first movie. Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian war in the early 1990’s, IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY tells the story of Danijel and Ajla (Goran Kostic and Zana Marjanovic), new lovers torn apart by the war who find themselves struggling to keep their love, or even just the idea of it, alive despite being on different sides of the conflict. Jolie shows promise as a filmmaker but she also shows us so much atrocity, that at times, the film is just relentless and borderline preachy.

Marty to Tackle Liz and Dick

Or, rather, according to Deadline New York, Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese is in talks to helm a film about the love affair between the late Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  (Just look above, aren't they the cutest couple?)  No casting has been announced, but the rumor mill is atwitter with possibilities, from Charlize Thereon, Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, and even Megan Fox.  I'm personally hoping Russell Crowe is tapped for Burton.

As you can tell from my background both on this blog and my Twitter, I'm a huge Liz and Dick fan, maybe less of their real life relationships and more of their on screen ones.  Together, when they were acting, it was like watching magic on screen.  The work they put together in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is some of the best ever in a film, and how they play off one another is remarkable.  Aside from Bogey/Bacall and Tracey/Hepburn, this is Hollywood's greatest love story.

If you existed, I'd divorce you! 

But this is said to be about their love affair.  So be it.  I won't be judgemental of this project yet, for this is a tale of Old Hollywood and recently is any director has proven himself perfectly able to tackle Old Hollywood it's The Aviator helmer Scorsese.  This type of tale doesn't need just an apt director, it needs someone who loves movies and not just making them.  Scorsese is such a man.

Who do you think should play Hollywood's most heated couple?


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THE TOURIST

Written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark

Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton

Frank Tupelo: You're ravenous.

Elise Clifton-Ward: Do you mean ravishing?

Frank: Yes, I do.

Elise: You're ravenous.

Some poor sap of a math teacher from Wisconsin is sitting on a train en route to Venice from Paris when it happens. A devastatingly beautiful woman enters his car and spots the empty seat in front of him. Her gaze throws him completely off balance and from the moment she sits down, he doesn’t stand a chance. Who is she? Why would she sit with him when she could sit with any man she wanted? You just know that by the time they get off the train, their lives will be desperately intertwined. This is how Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, two of today’s biggest stars, meet in German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s first American foray, THE TOURIST. It’s all so old Hollywood but sadly it’s also all so transparently so.

Sometimes star power can have a blinding effect. The wattage can burn so bright that you don’t necessarily see how distracting it is from the actual film. And with stars as big as Depp and Jolie in your picture, it isn’t surprising that von Donnersmark, the man behind Oscar winner, THE LIVES OF OTHERS, didn’t notice that they were not necessarily the best choices for their roles. Depp, with his beautiful hair and instinctual charm, is anything but a believable sap. Still, that charm inevitably saves him from coming off farcical and his decidedly anti-Bourne jaunt across shackled rooftops is certainly amusing. Meanwhile, Jolie seems to have been directed to walk around like a fembot of sorts, cold and false, from her perfect walk to her supposedly British accent. They are stars for a reason though and before long, the impossibly pretty people in the pretty foreign place lull you into comfortable and classical state of intrigue.

The setup for THE TOURIST is straight out of a Hitchcock movie. All the elements of a tantalizing mystery are there but all the goods are given away upfront so there is nothing left to guess at. Of course, seeing as how we don’t live in classical Hollywood, modern necessities like twists and surprises must occur and they are neither twisted nor surprising but at least they aren’t insulting. And so like a real tourist on a mediocre vacation that promised to be so gorgeous in the brochure, the stay is acceptable, at times even enjoyable, but we are happy to know we are going home when the credits roll.

Wanted

“Wanted” is a film of such staggering stupidity that I could only shake my head in disbelief. The fact that this nonsense actually got favorable reviews from many critics is even more astonishing. I hated every minute of “Wanted” and don’t think I’ve had a more depressing time at the movies this year. Also jaw-dropping is the film’s truly in-your-face contempt for its audience. More on that later.

The coming attractions trailer for “Wanted” really put me off, but some friends saw it and really liked it. Roger Ebert gave it a favorable review, which counts for something. It had a Danny Elfman score and was filmed in Chicago. So that was good enough for me.

I was hoping the bad vibes from the trailer would be overcome. Money is not so plentiful that I could afford to see a film I knew I would not like. I really wanted to like “Wanted.” But as the Duke says throughout “Big Jake” (1971): “Not hardly.”

“Wanted” is a good representation of everything that’s wrong with contemporary action movies. Computer-generated imagery allows characters and vehicles to defy the laws of physics, with stunts impossible to stage in real life….because they could not possibly happen. So they’re staged in a computer instead.

Most big-budge action movies require a sense of disbelief. That’s a given. The late Cubby Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies, was quoted as saying something along the lines of, “Bond movies could be improbable, but never impossible.” The last Pierce Brosnan offering, “Die Another Day” (2002) often veered to the impossible, and suffered for it.

“Wanted” is one big, long, impossible.

Based on comic book series (God, I can’t wait for the day when producers and directors go back to adapting novels), “Wanted” tells us a secret order of assassins who have been around for 1,000 years. They get their orders to kill someone from coded words left in weaved thread from a loom, or some such nonsense. Wouldn’t a voice mail message be easier?

Mild mannered Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is a dweebish, put-upon accountant who hates his job and his life. He is recruited by Fox (Angelina Jolie) into the order. Fox tells him he is the son of one of their greatest assassins, who was killed the week before. The order is headed by Sloan (Morgan Freeman).

Good people here, and Terence Stamp shows up for a few scenes later on. It’s amazing that people of this caliber got talked into this. I’m also amazed that Jolie, who does so much great humanitarian work in real life, consented to appear in this film which is so debasing and contemptuous of humanity.

Wesley undergoes orientation sessions consisting of lots of punches to the face. The guys in “The Fight Club” didn’t undergo this much brutality. It goes on for what seems like days. He also trains with weapons, but this is actually a bearable scene, thanks to Elfman’s first-rate musical support.

We get lots of chases and gunfights here, which some critics are praising for their style and energy. Not me. The cutting is fast and everything is a blur. Favorite Chicago locations shoot by in the blink of an eye. Of course, cars and bodies fly though the air in gravity-defying detail, and a later chase scene has Fox crashing her car onto a moving train and surviving. It might look cool to a comic book reading 13-year-old boy, but for the rest of us, it’s stupid beyond words.

Equally inane is the trick they use to “curve a bullet”, meaning they shoot in such a way the bullet moves in an arc to reach its target instead of a straight trajectory. Who comes up with this stuff?

There are some twists at the end that are mildly interesting, but I had long since gotten past the point of caring.

What really pushed the film for me into the cinematic pits of utter loathing was the contempt it has for us, the audience. At one point in his narration, Wesley tells us (and I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact words), “At one time I was sad and pathetic, just like you.”

Gee, thanks a lot.

At the end, after an orgy of violence Wesley tells us about all the killing he’s done and then looks at the camera and says to us, “What the f--- have you done lately?”

Well, Wesley, I’ll tell you what the f--- I’ve done lately. I went to the show on a Sunday afternoon and saw the worst film of the year so far, a colossal dungheap of nihilistic, depressing junk. If this is what Hollywood is offering as entertainment these days, it’s no wonder the rest of the world hates America so much.

Rating for “Wanted”: Zero stars.