Note: I started writing this in the wee hours of the morning and decided to come back to it later. Thus the discrepancy between the time it was posted and the time I say I am writing it.
Though it’s after 2 a.m., I have decided to write a blog. It will be good for me as tomorrow night I may be going to the drive-in. While this activity only occurs about once a year, it usually results in my sleeping through the second movie (I don’t know if this is standard, but where I live the drive-in movies are pretty much always double features). This is the reason I have yet to see The Pirates of the Caribbean in its entirety, a fact that is only less shocking than the fact that I don’t care. Anyway, although I list the movies I have seen recently on my sidebar, along with a vague rating (based on a standard four-star scale), I am now going to give you a more in-depth, though still brief, synopsis of some recent cinematic partakings…
Surviving Christmas – zero stars
I admit, it made absolutely no sense to rent this film in the middle of May, but I won’t go into the complicated reasons for my doing so. The point is, no matter what month you may watch this, it is unbelievably bad. In fact, if you believe me, you have missed the point – it’s worse than that. The film stars Ben Affleck as a successful-but-lonely ad exec (or some crap like that) who solicits a suburban household to play his surrogate family during the holidays. The idea is promising, especially with James Gandolfini (HBO’s Tony Soprano) at the head of the hired home. But there is only so much to be said for a film whose every joke falls completely flat. Gandolfini is given next to nothing to do while Affleck fails to commit to one character, whether the wondrous little-boy-stuck-in-adult-body or the superimposing nuisance. The result is boredom. If it’s not too late, I sincerely urge to avoid this one at all costs!
House of Flying Daggers – ***½
Foreign films are not for everyone, and perhaps martial-art films are even more exclusive. This is not the type of film everyone would enjoy, but one cannot deny that it is extremely well made. (I am not much of a martial-arts fan myself.) One must remember that these films do not cater so much to realism as they do to spectacle, and this is where House of Flying Daggers is a sure-fire hit. The plot is relatively simple. A police officer, in order to find the leader of the Flying Daggers vigilante group, pretends to rescue one of its members and lead her to safety. There are twists along the way, but like a Japanese haiku, this Chinese film revels in the poetic simplicity of its plot. Of equal—if not even greater—importance is the sensory experience with which the moviegoer is constantly indulged, from magnificent arrays of color to spellbinding auditory sensations that underlie fight sequences and love scenes alike.
Crash – **½
This small-budget, big-name feature weaves together several tales of racism in a failed attempt at both poignancy and social-awareness. Unfortunately, good intentions and competent filmmaking do not salvage the film from its otherwise forced nature. At times, it can be downright trite. The biggest flaw stems from the characters themselves, most being simultaneously underdeveloped and extreme in their prejudices. Though such closed-mindedness certainly (and sadly) exists in our society, the film thereby lacks resonance with its audience, taking viewers to a level more jarring than compelling, more caricatured than convincing. I will admit, however, than I am not a big fan of movies that seek an emotional response by delving into “nitty-gritty realism.” These films tend to show how basically everything in life is tragic and crap and nobody is really happy when it comes down to it and anything that looks positive is either a mirage or a show. This film isn’t quite that extreme, but it’s close.
The Upside of Anger – *½
I almost gave this movie two-stars, but I just couldn’t do it. Despite relatively strong acting, the story and flow of the film are terrible. Joan Allen stars as the mother of four young women, her husband presumably having run off with his secretary. Kevin Costner is her near-alcoholic, retired-baseball-player, radio-DJ neighbor. As one might expect, the two find on-again-off-again companionship with one another, Allen being the uptight, often-hateful lush, and Costner being the playful, charmingly-mediocre drunk. Apparently the film is meant to take place over three years, which is probably the first mistake. Every couple of scenes takes you months ahead with no apparent rhyme or reason. Nobody ages (even the teenagers), nobody changes his/her hairstyle, nobody does anything of much importance. The film is chock full of scenes, characters, and subplots that have absolutely no significance or relevance to the whole whatsoever. In fact, throughout the film, the youngest daughter works on a class project that is clearly meant to parallel the theme of the movie itself. But given that the film takes place over three years, what kind of class project is this!?!? It’s ludicrous! There simply comes a point when the viewer must ask, “So what’s the point here?” There does not seem to be an answer.
I definitely want to see HotFD, judging from the trailer the effects and the music make it worthwhile all on their own. Thanks for the tips re the rest, they seem like ones to avoid.
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