12.27.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 6:59 pm by lee1990
Ben Stiller seems to have been typecast playing down and out losers who triumph in the end. In this movie, he plays a divorcee who has drifted his way through life with one scheme after another. Desperate to avoid having visitations with his son being canceled, he takes a job as a night watchman at a natural history museum.
The job starts out routinely enough. Ben is introduced to the 3 elderly guards he is replacing. Two are played by well known venerable actors Mickey Rooney and Dick Van Dyke. They show him the ropes, but there is a hint of things to come when VanDyke warns him not to let anything in or out.
The meaning of this warning becomes evident on the first night as Ben turns around and finds the massive Tyranosaurus skeleton that dominates the museum lobby missing. He then discovers it drinking from the water fountain down the hall. The little problem that the night guards at the museum have to deal with is that all the exhibits come to life between sundown and sunrise.
What follows are encounters with:
A wisecracking Moi (Easter Island Statue) with a taste for chewing gum.
A t-rex skeleton that likes to play fetch with one of his own ribs.
A wax figure of Teddy Roosevelt (brilliantly played by Robin Williams) that has a crush on the wax figure of Pocahontas who is stuck behind the glass of her display.
An Africa exhibit filled with man-eating lions and an extremely mischievous monkey.
Rampaging huns.
Stampeding woolly mammoths.
A war between Maya, Wild West, and Roman diorama miniatures.
Out of control cavemen.
Ben must attempt to keep order, and also keep all inside the museum. Anything outside the museum at dawn will vanish in a cloud of dust.
There is another sub-plot that provides Ben a chance to be a hero, but I don’t want to give away too much of the plot.
As a side note, those familiar with the British version of the TV show “The Office” will recognize the museum director as being the smarmy boss on “The Office”. His character has essentially been transplanted, smarmy attitude and all.
The movie provides a good share of laughs and lighthearted action. Worth the admission price.
Permalink
12.23.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 4:03 pm by lee1990
Mel Gibson continues on this track of making non-foreign foreign language films with his subtitled Mayan adventure Apocalypto.
This run in the forest is no walk in the park for our hero, a hapless Mayan villager named Jaguar Paw who is taken captive following a murderous raid on his village by Maya warriors. In the midst of the raid, he hides his pregnant wife and small son down a well to save them, but is subsequently captured in the battle.
His chief antagonist is a sadistic so-and-so who gives Jaguar Paw the contemptuous nickname “almost” after he kills his father before his eyes.
Following a long journey, Jaguar Paw comes to a unnamed Maya city. Here you see a combination of all theories regarding the end of the Mayan civilization: deforestation to create lime plaster for their elaborate temples, rampaging drought, famine, disease. It is truly portrayed as a time of apocalypse. And there is death everywhere. The scenes at the top of the temple as Jaguar Paws fellow captives are sacrificed by a priest quite literally soaked in blood to the bloodthirsty sun god are not for the squeamish, and at one point you encounter the largest heap of corpses put on screen since “The Killing Fields”
Our hero is saved from sacrifice by the first of many deus ex machina moments that enter into the plot, all of which are foretold by a sickly girl who prophesies all the signs of the end of the Maya after the warriors chase her off for being ill. He manages a daring escape, and the hunt begins as the Maya track him through the jungle. He must also race back as fast a he can, for the torrential rains of Central America are coming to drown his trapped family.
The movie is very long (about 2 1/2 hours), but moves fast enough to maintain your interest. It presents an image of a once great but self-destructing civilization. There is one very historically inaccurate element at the end that I will not give away, but appears to have been placed there just to finish off the sense of approaching doom that pervades the movie, and to offer a nod to political correctness.
Altogether, worth the admission price, but would be just as enjoyable on DVD. This option may be best for those who have no tolerance for lengthy movies that do not rely on spectacular visuals best seen in theaters.
Permalink
12.07.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 6:55 pm by lee1990
Finally, a Bond that avoids all “cartoonishness” and even all the cliches that can make Bond movies both enjoyable and annoying to watch.
Bond in this movie is more realistic a spy than he ever has been portrayed as being. There is also very little of the covert action and sneaking around; while he is at the Casino, everyone, including the villain, knows who he is and why he is there.
Essentially, the franchise has been started over from scratch. This movie portrays James Bond’s first mission as a 00 agent, but sets it in contemporary times and with contemporary stakes, involving terrorist financing. The plot has been updated to reflect new geopolitical realities.
The villain is unique only in that he weeps blood from one eye. He is a financier and money handler for terrorists and revolutionaries all over the world and he has a BIG problem. He has squandered his clients money on bad stock market investments, and needs to win the 150 million dollar pot at a high stakes poker game. If he does not, his clients will make him bleed from many more places besides his eye. Bond has been sent to play in the tournament in order to defeat him. This will force him to cooperate with MI6 and give information on his clients.
The bond girl has the usual beauty, but is not a mindless trollop such as Bond usually prefers. They do not even give here a sexually suggestive pun name as all other Bond Girls have had. The writers in fact took a swipe at this tradition at one point, when bond suggest that her undercover last name be Broadchest. Without giving away the plot too much, I can just say this is the most essential, most complex Bond girl ever placed in a Bond film.
Other Bond traditions are done away with; when asked if he wants his martini shaken or stirred, he simply replies “Does it look like I give a damn?”.
The movie does not end in the stereotyped Bond girl love scene either. In fact the end is so open that they are obviously thinking sequel.
Overall the movie is by far the best “Bond” ever made, if you are looking for realism rather than escapism. Worth the ticket price.
Permalink
