Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

The Interpreter was quite a good thriller, with enough plot to keep it engaging the whole way through. (Though occasionally it was a bit predictable – did anyone really have any doubts about what Nicole Kidman’s character was planning when she said she was “going home”?)

The only thing that really lifted it out of the ordinary was Sean Penn’s strong performance as a bereaved husband. And I thought the relationship between the two main characters was well done – a bit more subtle than the standard romantic subplot.

I think Sin City is the most violent movie I have ever seen. How on earth did it have an “MA” rating rather than an “R”? The violence wasn’t redundant – it was an important part of the kind of world the film was presenting – but that didn’t make it less shocking.

In some ways, the main male characters were reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. Marv, in particular, was very much descended from Moose Molloy (by way of The Maxx, with a bit of input from Wolverine), but all three of them had elements of the chivalric, protective approach towards women that is the foundation of Phillip Marlowe’s character. But they also had a sadistic side that just isn’t present in Chandler. Marv didn’t just kill people – he revelled in the slaughter and ultimately performed horrific acts of torture. And Hartigan gave way to a berserker fury when he killed the Yellow Bastard. Dwight didn’t do anything as extreme in the film, but he did casually mention that he was a murderer who had been given a new face.

Chandler said “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor – by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” In Sin City, the streets were mean, but the men were not untarnished. In a way, they were men of honour, and they might even have been the best men in their world, but they were certainly not good enough for any world. Not even Hartigan, and certainly not Dwight or Marv.

The men were definitely the centre of the film. The women were all decorative – and mostly incredibly lethal – but they were objectified. The men were doing what they did for, or because of, the women. A somewhat misogynistic world view – but, again, very Chandler.

The visuals in this film were just amazing. On the black and white film, the splashes of colour had a stunning impact. And the script and performances more than matched this. In the excerpts I’d seen on At the Movies, Clive Owen’s lines had seemed stilted and unrealistic, but somehow in the context of the film they worked. Nevertheless, Dwight was the least complex of the three main characters, or, at least, the one you gained least insight into. His part of the film was more plot-driven, which made it less interesting than the other sections – though probably also less disturbing. You got a much better idea of what was driving – and I do mean driving – Hartigan and Marv, so there was a much closer connection with their stories. Also, they both had creepier villains – amazing performances from Nick Stahl and especially Elijah Wood. The women had less to work with in terms of either character or menace, but insofar as it was possible, they all gave strong performances.

One of the reviews I read described it as “style over substance”. I don’t think this is fair. Certainly, without the visual style the film would have had far less impact, but this doesn’t mean that it was without substance, in the way that, say, Kill Bill was. In fact, it probably would have been an easier film to watch if this had been the case. Rather, the visuals combined with the writing to give a powerful and disturbing picture of a world in which everything is corrupt: in which men can have chivalric ideals yet at the same time perform – and revel in – quite horrific levels of violence. The world of Sin City was morally bankrupt. Unfortunately, I’m not totally convinced that the the film wasn’t as well.

I enjoyed War of the Worlds more than I expected. The visuals were (unsurprisingly) stunning, and the plot (more surprisingly) could have been an awful lot worse.

I found all three main characters basically unpleasant – Tom Cruise and the son particularly so. This is not necessarily a criticism – it would have been much worse if they had been nice and wonderful. However, occasionally it seemed to go a bit too far.

I really, really liked the fact that for most of the film, Tom Cruise didn’t actually play the “hero” – he basically just ran away and hid. This also had the benefit that for most of the movie you didn’t really have much of an idea of what was going on at a global level. I liked this limited view of what is happening. It’s not a new idea (off the top of my head, I can think of two episodes of Babylon 5 that took this approach, plus one of Buffy, and I’m sure there have been other feature length films as well – quite possibly, for all I know, including the original War of the Worlds) but I think it made it a much more interesting film than, say, Independence Day.

However, I did feel rather let down when, right near the end, Tom Cruise did suddenly do something heroic and managed to blow up a Tripod. I would have actually preferred it if this had been done by the soldier who was caught along with him. I liked the final defeat of the aliens (I gather this was straight out of the original H. G. Wells story), but I found the very end of the film much too sentimental.

I’m not sure what it says about my reaction to this film that I can’t actually remember the names of any of the characters – I’m just thinking of them as “Tom Cruise”, “Dakota Fanning”, “Miranda Otto”, “Tim Robbins” and “the son”.

Fantastic Four was another film that could have been worse, but could also have been a lot better.

I’m with David Stratton in finding Johnny Storm “supremely irritating”. I assume we are meant to find his arrogance likeable and amusing – and I’ll admit he had a few funny lines – but I found him a pretty repellant personality. I think I’d have to lay the blame for this on the scriptwriters rather than the actor – I’m not sure anyone could have made the character, as written, appealing to me.

This isn’t quite the case with Reed Richards and Sue Storm. It seems that the scriptwriters decided to give them slightly different personalities from the original comic book characters. Fair enough – in fact, based on my limited knowledge of the comic, probably necessary. However, it seemed to be a rather token gesture, and I didn’t feel that either Ioan Gruffudd or Jessica Alba did anything to lift the characters beyond what was written on the page. As a result, they were both pleasant enough, but rather bland.

Ben Grimm was probably the most interesting of them – and certainly Michael Chiklis had more to work with than any of the other actors – but it still seemed to be a rather superficial presentation of a character with great tragic potential.

I guess it’s just another one to add to the growing list of films that could – and should -be about character, but are actually about special effects.

Howl’s Moving Castle had its Australian premiere on the last night of the Sydney Film Festival. I’d never been to the Festival before, but when I saw the listing I thought I’d probably go along to Howl’s. Then, a week after tickets went on sale, I read an article that said it was the fastest selling film in the whole Festival. I phoned up the next day – it was almost booked out, but I managed to get seats way up in the circle.

Although I’m not a huge Diana Wynne Jones fan, I read Howl’s Moving Castle a few months ago (see my comments on it), in preparation for the film. It didn’t make an overly strong impression on me, so going into the film I found I could only remember the broad outlines of the plot and characters. Even so, it was enough to know that the film was very different from the book – in fact, I’d hesitate to call it a “film version” of the book. I think it existed in a grey area between “based on” and “inspired by” – sort of like the Olivier film of Wuthering Heights. It took characters and events from the book, but added to, excised from and reworked the material to produce something that was fundamentally different at all levels.

Because I’m not passionate about the book, this actually didn’t bother me in the least. Although I recognised that many things were very different, I was quite happy to go along with the flow and enjoy it as a completely new story. When I did notice differences, my reaction was more along the lines of “that’s changed – what an interesting decision” rather than “that’s changed – and it’s completely wrong“. In fact, the only thing that threw me slightly was the changing of the Donne poem. Obviously once it was translated into Japanese it wouldn’t have had any cultural significance, and it didn’t have the same relevance to the plot that I remember it having in the book, but it was still odd to read in the subtitles something that looked like it had gone through a double translation process. I’d be interested to see how it is treated in the dubbed version.

I liked the mechanised Victorianism of the setting (my mental image of the book – rightly or wrongly – was set much more in “once upon a time” land) and I thought the war scenes (which, as far as I recall, were completely not-appearing-in-the-book) were incredibly visually compelling.

I also enjoyed the humour – it was enough to keep you engaged, without actually undermining the serious aspects of the plot, or becoming too Disneyfied (although I have to admit, the dog came close).

The characters of Sophie and Howl seemed (as far as I could remember) to be rather different from the book – I first thought “simplified”, but maybe it was just a significant shift in emphasis. In any case, I found them both interesting, and I cared what happened to them – one of my key criteria for whether or not I enjoy a film. And I think Howl was probably the sexiest animated character I have ever seen!

My initial reaction was that the world was a lot less rich than Spirited Away, but maybe it was just that I found it more culturally accessible. At this point I’m not prepared to say which I prefer of the two films – I think I’d need to see Spirited Away again first.

Coming out of the film, my reaction was that I liked it better than DWJ’s book. However, it has inspired me to re-read the book, and somewhat surprisingly I’m enjoying it much more than I did the first time around.

I thought Batman Begins was better than the other Batman movies by a considerable margin.

The cast was great. I liked the fact that the young Bruce Wayne wasn’t a particularly nice person. I was pleased with the way the romance subplot panned out. I thought there was a good balance between darkness and humour. I liked the bit at the end where they talked about the effect Batman would have – it sort of fit in with The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel, where someone says “if you toss in the victims of his fan club, the Batman-related body count is up there with a minor war”. Of course, it doesn’t come close to being that extreme in the film – so far, there’s only a hint of it raising the stakes for the villains, and no suggestion of a vigilante fan-club – but I like the acknowledgement of it as a possibility.

The only thing I was a bit worried about was the “I won’t kill you but I don’t have to save you” approach. It seems to be a bit ethically dodgy … especially given that Batman/Bruce Wayne created the dangerous situation in the first place. This particularly applied with the murderer he refuses to behead in the first half of the film. Although we don’t actually see the man dying in the fire, I don’t really see how he could have survived, so surely this means that Bruce Wayne is still totally responsible for his death. It almost seems like he can only kill people if he doesn’t actually see it happening … which is a line of thought I really don’t want to follow through on.

Still, at least it’s a clear statement of his moral position. In Dark Knight Returns, Batman says killing someone would mean “crossing a line I drew for myself thirty years ago”. I may not be entirely comfortable with where this Batman has drawn his line, but it’s a lot better than one of the earlier films (Batman Returns, I think) where he deliberately kills someone. That was just wrong for the character.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith was quite a fun film. The dialogue was generally amusing, and some of the action scenes were good. Others were a bit drawn out, though – especially the big one at the end, which was way too long and not particularly interesting anyway. Overall, I probably would have preferred rather more dialogue and character interplay, and rather less uninterestingly-filmed combat. In general, not too bad; but disappointing because it could – and should – have been so much better.

I actually saw Revenge of the Sith over a week ago, but I have been flat out updating fencing websites (Challenge Australia, Commonwealth Fencing Federation and NSW Fencing Federation), as well as preparing Circular 2 for the Australian Universities Fencing Championships, so I haven’t had time to write it up.

To do this film justice, it was better than Episode I and Episode II. And the special effects were great. But the story just … wasn’t. I felt utterly unconvinced by Anakin’s slide into the Dark Side – and, to be honest, I didn’t really care. He seemed more like a sulky little boy, stamping his foot because he couldn’t have cake and chocolate, than like a grown man struggling with conflicting emotions and loyalties. I honestly think George Lucas just doesn’t get tragedy – doesn’t understand what it is that makes, for example, Macbeth a great play. Like I and II, this film took itself far more seriously than the original trilogy, but I didn’t feel there was any real substance behind its ponderousness.

Episode I was just generally awful, and Episode II, while it had some good bits, also had some positively nausea-inducing scenes. This one, though, was funny – right up there with Mission: Impossible II in the number of times I had to stifle laughter at scenes that were meant to be taken Seriously. (The trailer for Alexander had much the same effect, although it didn’t inspire me to actually see the movie.)

A few other random general comments (which do contain spoilers):

• With all the amazing technology, why don’t they do ultrasounds at any point in a pregnancy?
• Why don’t the terrifyingly high walkways and balconies have guard rails? Has nobody ever accidentally stepped off the edge?
• Given that a replacement Death Star was built between the end of Star Wars and the start of Jedi, and since the first one was well underway at the end of this film, why did it take so long to finish it?
• It’s a pity there was no Han Solo cameo. I have no idea how much older than Luke and Leia he is, but there has to be at least 5 – 10 years (Harrison Ford is apparently about 9 years older than Mark Hamill, and 14 years older than Carrie Fisher). So surely a 10 year old Han could have had a brief appearance somewhere.
• I think between them, Obi Wan and Mace Windu completely mishandled Anakin, and they are partly to blame for his failure to see through Palpatine’s transparent attempts to manipulate him.
• And what was Obi Wan thinking of, to just walk away and leave Anakin dying slowly in agony? Surely if he cared for him, he could have made it a quick finish – or at least, stayed with him to the end. Or, if he thought Anakin was irretrievably gone to the Dark Side, he should have killed him. But to just walk away and leave him is either incredibly callous, or totally stupid – or both.
• Why did they wipe Threepio’s memory (for no readily explained reason) but not bother with Artoo? Maybe it means that those beeps are actually just random noise, and he can’t really communicate with anyone (so it therefore doesn’t matter what he knows).

Kingdom of Heaven’s visuals were great. The characterisation was thin in the extreme (people were either Good or Bad – there was nothing in between). The plot was a bit dull.

It’s always tricky seeing the film version of a book you love (and yes, I know Hitchhiker’s was a radio play before it was a book – but it was the book that I first read and loved). I find it interesting to see how close the filmmakers’ vision of the book is to my own interpretation. Normally there’s something to like, though this can often be outweighed by the aspects that just seem wrong.

I loved this film’s version of Marvin. He looked a lot more like “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be With” than the one in the TV version (though it was nice to see that one having a cameo in the film). And when you add that to Warwick Davis’s depressed slump, and the ironic world-weariness of Alan Rickman’s voice … well, I’ve never had a strong visual impression of Marvin before, but I think this one will stick with me.

I read one review that said Martin Freeman was perfect as Arthur. Well, that’s just silly. The only person who is perfect as Arthur Dent is Simon Jones. However, I ended up liking Martin Freeman more than I expected. He wasn’t Simon Jones, and he wasn’t quite middle-class enough, but he did seem to capture the essence of Arthur. The rest of the main cast were a bit more disappointing. Ford’s part was cut right back, and Zaphod was a bit too over the top (though I’ve never been much of a Zaphod fan). I quite liked Trillian, although the development of the relationship with Arthur meant that she was fundamentally a different character.

I guess I can see why they built up the Arthur-Trillian relationship, though I don’t think it was really necessary – I think the film would have still had a good linear plot without it. However, having decided to put it in, I wish it had been a bit less conventionally bland: it was pleasant enough, but it didn’t have the slightly offbeat nature of the Arthur-Fenchurch relationship in So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad film. Much of the classic Adams stuff was there (though it’s a shame they dropped “on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard“), and some of the new stuff was fun – especially the Point-of-View gun. If I’d never read the book, I would probably rate the film higher than I do – certainly, it was funny and enjoyable. But it just didn’t have the offbeat zaniness of the book, which was disappointing. In spite of the cheesy special effects of the TV version, I think I preferred that over the film – though neither of them will ever take the place of the book.