Your Highness

Your Highness

After the success of Pineapple Express, director David Gordon Green and actors Danny McBride and James Franco decided to take a risk - let's make a rated-R fantasy comedy, something that is just as down and dirty as their first film together, but this time with dragons.  The result was almost a complete box office flop.  Maybe Green and McBride misjudged their audience; Your Highness was catering to the same crowd that enjoyed Pineapple Express and that's not necessarily the audience that cares much for swords and sorcery, even when there is weed involved...

Thadeous (McBride) and Fabious (Franco) are princes of the realm, but they couldn't be more different.  Fabious is brave and charismatic, beloved by the entire kingdom.  Thadeous, on the other hand, is a complete loser who is committed to a life of leisure, recreational drugs, and torturing his manservant, Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker).  When Fabious' fiance, Belladonna (New Girl's Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by an evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux, American Psycho), the two brothers must team up on the ultimate quest to rescue the girl, defeat the wizard, and save the kingdom.  Along the way, they of course run into a whole slew of characters, including a badass warrior, Isabel (Natalie Portman) who is on a quest of her own.

Overall, the movie is a bit of a mixed bag.  It is nowhere near as bad as its thrashing at the box office would suggest.  For one thing, the cast is great and throw themselves into the insanity with relish.  I expected fine comedy from the leads, but I was surprised to also see more serious actors such as Toby Jones (Captain America), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) and Damien Lewis (Band of Brothers) making fine contributions to the craziness.  Everyone looks like they are having a great time, which of course makes the movie more enjoyable.

I suppose that maybe the cast and crew were having so much fun that they didn't think through the movie enough. The storyline is amusing and the number of possibilities is endless, but Your Highness is really just a series of naughty jokes, one after another after another.  Some of them I have to admit are hilarious (especially a handful of really raunchy jokes related to a minotaur they battle in a labyrinth), but way too many of them are misfires.  It is a bit of a surprise, actually, considering that much of the primaries were brought over from Pineapple Express, which deftly mixed the raunch with some genuine wit and cleverness.  I just feel that there are so many missed opportunities to poke fun at the genre here.  Perhaps David Gordon Green should have let Justin Theroux have a hand in the script. In addition to being a fine comedian (and he does make a very funny villain here), Theroux is a very witty writer, having worked on Iron Man 2 and Tropic Thunder.  Maybe giving Theroux a whack at the script would have helped.

So there you go.  Your Highness is not awful, but it is also nowhere near as good as it could have been.  Overall, it's just okay.  At some point, it will be making the rounds on FX.  I think that would be a good time to check it out. 


BEST LINE:
Leezar to Belladonna: "I'm just not attracted to you right now!!!"

MVP:
With great comedians like McBride, Franco, and Deschanel running around, I was surprised that they were all outgunned by Rasmus Hardiker as Courtney, Thadeous' hapless manservant.  I have never heard of this dude before, but he is terrific, bringing the right amount of absurd pathetic loyalty to the role.  This is a hard role to play.  Hapless manservants are often the comic relief in other films, and I have always found them to be annoying.  I am also generally bothered by their unending loyalty, despite how mean or selfish the master is.  I just never really buy it.  But I never once doubted Courtney's unconditional love for his master.  And he just nails it.  He's terrific.  Plus, he can make Triangle Face, which I think is hilarious, even if Thadeous is terrified of it!

TRIVIA: 
This movie came out of a little game Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green would play.  Someone would name a random title and the other would come up with a story to match it.  Someone suggested "Your Highness" and the storyline suggested was about "a prince who gets stoned and fights dragons."

Now, most importantly, not meaning to make a shameless plug, but I think it relates to what we are talking about, and especially about what does not work about Your Highness.  My brother wrote a book!  He has been working on it for the better part of a decade and it attempts the same type of parody as Your Highness, only with a real sense of wit and cleverness.  While Your Highness tends to fall back on raunch, this book genuinely tackles the cliches of the fantasy genre and twists their funny bone.  The book is called The Armpit of Evil and it is super inexpensive on Amazon (only $2.99!!), so I think you should all check it out!!!  I am also including the link to Your Highness, but I highly recommend you gravitate towards Armpit instead.  Here is the link:

Black Death

Black Death

Well, it is October again, which means I am returning to the wonderful world of horror films for a few weeks!  First on the list is the recent Black Death, a low budget horror film that came out of England last year.  The film never really found an audience here in the United States, though I am willing to bet that a wide theatrical release with a real marketing campaign would have helped.  It is a pity no studio got behind Black Death, but it is actually really quite good.

In the 1340s, the plague has descended over England, sweeping across the countryside and eventually killing 1/3 to 1/2 of the total population.  But there is one village out in the marshes that is unaffected by the plague.  No one knows why the village has been spared, but there are rumors of witchcraft and devil worship.  A group of religious warriors led by Ulric (Sean Bean, Lord of the Rings) is sent by the local bishop to investigate, guided by a young monk named Osmond (Eddie Redmayne, The Other Boleyn Girl).

First, let's talk about what's good.  I love the look of this movie.  I don't think I have seen the Middles Ages look quite so bleak and real.  Black Death does a fantastic job of depicting the bubonic plague, really showing how desperate and horrifying it was, and how it drove much of the country into paranoia and savagery.  I was impressed with this bleak setting, and would have liked to have seen even more of it.  I also really like the cast, which is uniformly great, and also includes Carice van Houten (Black Book) as Langiva, the leader of the village (and possibly a witch), Tim McInnerny (Black Adder), and a nice cameo from David Warner (Tron).

What I also like about the film is that while it is simple in story structure, there is actually a lot happening under the surface.  Now in the 21st Century, I don't think we can comprehend something as devastating as the Black Death.  Think about this - literally half the people you know dead all within the last year.  How would you react?  What would you think?  How paranoid would you be?  What if you're next?  Would such devastation drive you to religion or away from it?  These are questions that this movie asks by showing us how the warriors and the villagers react to the trying times.  Sometimes we feel like the villagers are right, sometimes we find ourselves agreeing with the warriors.  And this is probably the film's greatest strength, how it is adeptly shifts our sympathies from one side to the other, leaving us unsure of who to trust and who to root for.  It is a cleverly conceived by director Christopher Jones and writer Dario Poloni.

And I will be honest, I always preferred this style of horror film, which is more about atmosphere and the slow build, to the hack and slasher genres that most people watch today.  I would take a good Hammer Film over a Friday 13th movie any day of the week.  Black Death isn't even really scary at all, but it is eerie and unsettling, and probably has more of an impact as a result.

There are a few problems with the film, the biggest of which is an over-reliance on shaky cam.  I am tired of directors thinking that handheld cameras means the film will be more artsy.  Just hold the camera steady so I can see what's happening!!! The shaky cam (or what I call earthquake cam) gets annoying in the first third and then all but ruins the one major battle scene in the movie.  Thankfully, once Ulric and company arrive at the village, the camera work settles down a bit.

I also have some problems with the ending.  The climax bounces from some brilliant moments (most involving the kickass Sean Bean) and some highly questionable moments.  Then we are left with a coda, which while thematically is related, just seems tacked on for no other reason than to depress us.

But overall, this is a rock solid film with some great performances and atmosphere.  You should check it out!

BEST LINE:  
It's all in his delivery, but I like it when Wulfstan explains to the naive Osmond that: "A necromancer...is one who plucks the dead from the cold earth...and breaths new life into them."

MVP:
As much as I like Sean Bean, (and he does deliver the single coolest moment of the movie), I have to give the MVP to John Lynch, who plays the warrior Wulfstan.  Wulfstan was easily my favorite character.  Everyone else in the motley crew of warriors are either greedy, bloodthirsty, way too fanatical or full of wimpy angst. Wulfstan is a fighter, but he is a good man, probably the best man in the movie.  And as the crew traveled through the plague ravaged countryside and the bandit riddled forest, it was his fate that I was most concerned about.  Maybe that is a failing of the movie since I should have been more worried about Osmond and Ulric, but I prefer to view it as a testament to John Lynch's accessible performance.  Plus, he looks a bit like Scott Bakula in battle armor.  And that's kinda cool.

TRIVIA: 
Lena Headey (who also played Sean Bean's nemesis on Game of Thrones) was set to play Langiva, but was replaced by van Houten.

Monte Walsh (2003)

Monte Walsh

Obligation fulfilled!  As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I promised my mother I would review the trio of Westerns Tom Selleck made for TNT in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  The result was a bit mixed.  Last Stand at Saber River really wasn't that great, though it certainly had its moments, while Crossfire Trail was much better, though still not a classic.  But what these Westerns revealed to me was that the genre is not dead.  The films were well-reviewed and performed quite well in the ratings, and proved that if you put some work into it, people still love a good ol' fashioned Western, especially if you put someone like Tom Selleck in the saddle.

And now we have the third and final film in the trio: Monte Walsh.  Monte Walsh is a cowboy at the turn of the century, but times are changing.  Civilization is coming to the Wild West.  Railroads are now the primary method of traveling.  More and more of the open range is being fenced in by corporations every year.  It is clear that the age of the cowboy is ending.  Will Monte Walsh be able to change with the times, or just end up as a dinosaur in a world of automobiles and Wild West Circuses?

At first, I was a bit disappointed by this movie because not much happens and it is depressing.  Maybe too bleak.  But as I settled into it, I realized this was unlike any other Western I've seen.  This isn't about everything you would expect a Western to be about.  This isn't even about 'progress' and 'civilization,' which we've seen in dozens of Westerns.  Monte Walsh is about how 'progress' affects those who lived and thrived in the earlier world.  Cowboys don't know how to do anything except cowboy.  But given that times are a'changing, there is no work.  A few of the best like Monte find work on a ranch, but most of these former giants of the range are reduced to wandering the horizon, endlessly looking for any sort of job.  This is a bleak, bleak movie and really shows what people can be reduced to in tough economic times, whether it is in the 1890s or today.  And as the film finished, I had to tip my hat to a production well done and to a point well made about the passing of an age, and all the coolness we lost when those days ended.

Monte Walsh is well directed by Simon Wincer, who also directed Crossfire Trail, as well as the classic TV miniseries Lonesome Dove.  His skilled hand at Westerns is clear, giving the movie a cinematic quality.  The cast is superb, with Tom Selleck ably supported by pros like Isabella Rosselini (Blue Velvet), Keith Carradine (Last Stand at Saber River), George Eads (CSI), William Devane (Payback), John Michael Higgins (Best in Show), as well as a great cast of character actors who put in great work.

The film isn't perfect.  I was a fan of George Eads' Shorty character, for example, but don't really like the way his storyline plays out. I understand why it happens, but I feel it all happens much too quickly to be believable.  You'll know what I mean when you see it.  I don't want to spoil anything.

But other than that, I found myself watching a minor classic.  I think Selleck should get back on the horse before he gets too old and make a few more of these.  He's one of the last actors we have who can convincingly be a real cowboy.

BEST LINE: 
Monte Walsh to a horse he is about to try and break in: "When we get through, all you're gonna want to do is take a nap, sit on the porch, and wait for all the mares to come calling."

MVP:
The MVP award goes to Isabella Rosselini, who plays Martine, a European stuck in the rundown Western town and Monte's true love.  Martine really is not a deep character on paper.  She basically just sits around, waiting for Monte to show up and then graciously understands when he leaves, which is kind of lame.  But something about Rosselini's performance brings true dimensionality to her.  She's not just a cardboard cutout, a stereotypical "suffering wife" of Hollywood who is accepting of her man's oddities because that is what the script demands.  Rosselini's Martine is an understanding woman because she knows she has no choice.  Monte is going to go wandering off to Canada no matter what.  But she is stuck in this dreary world, in which Monte is the only bright spot.  It's no wonder she lights up whenever he shows up.  But the pain of that decision is clear in her eyes.  It is subtle and beautiful work.  Add to this the fact that Rosselini's natural charisma and sensuality makes her more alive and sexy at 61 than most of the plastic babes half her age in movies today, and you have a clear MVP winner.  Go Isabella Rosselini!

TRIVIA:
Based on a book by Jack Schaffer, the guy who wrote the classic book, Shane.  (P.S. I review the movie of Shane right here.)