Conan the Barbarian (2011)

My expectations were not high for the new Conan the Barbarian, but I was going to give it a fair fight.  It isn't right for me to compare it to the original Arnold Schwarzenegger film, which despite its problems, remains a fantasy powerhouse that still holds up today.  I could only take this film on its own merits.  But I had my doubts.  For one thing, director Marcus Nispel is not my favorite, having directed Pathfinder, which ranks high on my Top Ten Worst Films I've Ever Seen in the Theater List.  I don't even have an official list, but if I did, I know Pathfinder would be on it.

Not a remake so much as a new take on Robert E. Howard's original stories, Conan the Barbarian stars Jason Momoa (so tough as the Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones) as the ruthless warrior destined to be a king.  As a child, Conan's village is destroyed by the warlord Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang, Avatar) and his weird sorceress daughter Marique (Rose McGowan, Scream), who are searching for the shards of a magical helmet.  Once re-assembled, this helmet will allow its wearer to be all-powerful.  The shards have been spread out between all the barbarian tribes, so Khalar goes about his business of killing them all, including Conan's father (Ron Perlman, Hellboy).  Conan swears vengeance and grows up perfecting his skills as a warrior, ready at any moment to exact his avenging toll on Khalar Zym.

So what does the movie get right?  Surprisingly, more than I thought.  The movie looks pretty cool, with some nice sets and costumes.  The movie, filmed in Bulgaria, looks like a Conan movie should look.  And some of the acting is actually pretty decent, especially from Momoa, Lang and Rachel Nichols, who plays Tamara, Conan's love interest.  Momoa himself may not be Arnold, but he is a perfectly acceptable Conan.  He plays the part with real relish and panache.  And Lang looks like he is having a lot of fun as Khalar Zym, and makes for a good, entertaining villain.

A shame about the rest of the movie then!  I knew something was wrong from the very first moment when the voiceover narrator introduces the barbarous world of Conan and the narrator's voice belongs to...Morgan Freeman.  Yeah, you read that right.  Because when I want to hear about armies of ruthless barbarians raping and pillaging their way across an ancient landscape, the first voice I think of is Morgan Freeman's.

What were they thinking?

Some spoilers here, but do you actually care?  'What were they thinking' is that is the primary question in the movie.  Nispel is improving as a director and there are moments in the movie that work.  But whenever Conan the Barbarian threatens to become halfway decent, something bizarre happens and I say, "what were they thinking?!?!"  When the bad guys sneak onto Conan's boat during the dead of night, how come they are fighting in broad daylight in the next shot?  What were they thinking?  Later, Conan and his lady love leave the boat for some smoosh smoosh time on the rocky shoreline.  After said smooth smoosh time (in a little hut that happens to magically appear on the rocky shoreline, by the way), Tamara gets up and goes to the return to the boat.  Well, apparently, a massive forest has also magically sprouted between the hut and the shore.  Even though the hut was ON THE SHORE.  What were they thinking?!  How about Khalar Zym's secret weapon, the all-powerful helmet that does nothing but be heavy and make it hard for him to walk around.  It is pathetically useless.  What were they thinking?!

The main problem lies with the script.  There is some creativity buried in there, such as when Conan fights the sand warriors, but for the most part, it is a major rotten egg.  The storyline is badly constructed and the lines are pretty lame, such as Conan's life mantra: "I live.  I love.  I slay.  And I am content."  Ugh.

And I have to talk about the music.  I know I said I wouldn't compare the new Conan to the original, but with the music I have no choice.  The original Conan the Barbarian by Basil Poledouris is one of the most brilliant scores in film history.  That's a bold statement, but I am standing by it.  Full of power and passion, evoking the masters Alfred Newman and Miklos Rozca, Conan the Barbarian stands with Gone with the Wind, Star Wars, Jaws, Ben Hur, and all the other iconic titans of film scores.  What Steve Jablonsky creates for the new Conan is the epitome of blah; it is so blah that I can't remember anything about it.  I would prefer bad to completely unmemorable.  Nothing against Jablonsky, who did admirable work for Transformers and especially The Island, but he was in way over his head here.  Maybe it isn't fair for me to complain about this.  Maybe I'm just picky because I like film music.  I'll stop now.  Moving on.

Hm, actually there is only one more thing to say - apparently, the studio targeted the wrong audience for this movie.  When I saw it, I was expecting to see a lot of young teenage boys, eager for a chance to see some blood and nudity.  There were indeed a few teens in the audience.  But they were outnumbered by another constituency that I was shocked to see - middle aged women!  There were seriously more middle aged women in the theater for Conan than when I went to see The Help, all of them swooning at a buff Jason Momoa who does oblige them with a gratuitous butt shot.  This was all very strange to me.

That was a tangent there.  Sorry about that, but the tangent was more entertaining then the movie itself. It is time to reboot this franchise again.  You don't even have to go back to the drawing board.  Keep Momoa and art team, dump Nispel, Jablonsky, and definitely the writing staff.  Just re-arrange some pieces and try again.  You might come up with something worth watching.

TRIVIA: 
Brett Ratner was the original director, but dropped out.  I'm not the biggest fan of Ratner, but he has made some entertaining movies (the first Rush Hour) and he would have been an improvement.  Still, for the next Conan, they should really go after someone tough and ruthless.  Neil Marshall (Centurion) or Nicola Winding Refn (Valhalla Rising) would both be good choices.

MVP:
I'm actually not going for Momoa, but for Stephen Lang as Khalar Zym.  Momoa is a good Conan, but he can't rise beyond the ridiculous dialogue.  But Lang owns his scenes.  Recognizing the stupidity of what he is saying, he makes the right choice and goes all out.  It's a lot of fun watching him chew the scenery into chunks.  He breaths some life into the otherwise lifeless proceedings.  He even almost saves the worst scene in the whole movie, when Marique tries to seduce him.  Lang pushes her off and the look of disgust on his face is awesome - not only is he horrified at his daughter's depravity but in his own bad decision of being in this movie.  Maybe that's not what he was going for, but that's what I got out of it.  And it was cool.  Go Stephen Lang!

BEST LINE:
I am going to reverse this into the best worst line.  Time to bring back the "I live.  I love. I slay.  And I am content."  It makes me laugh.  It certainly doesn't have the badass ring of what is best to Arnold's Conan: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women."  Ah, good times.

And speaking of the lamentations of the women, have you guys seen Conan the Musical?  If not, you need to.  Check it out!!!

Morning Glory (2010)

Morning Glory

So somewhere in Morning Glory is a good movie, an entertaining comedy about a dying morning TV show called "Daybreak," which is last in the ratings and desperate for attention.  The two hosts of the show, Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) and Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) hate each other, and the hyperactive new producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) is frantically trying to keep the castle from crumbling.  I saw that movie, and I thought it was pretty good and gave me some good belly laughs.  Unfortunately, that movie is only about fifteen minutes long and is buried inside the real Morning Glory, which is a big ol' bust.

I'm not sure where to start.  I suppose the first problem is that Morning Glory makes the hyperactive producer the focus of the story.  This type of character is funny as support, but as a main character, the anxiousness gets old, and fast.  And that is doubly disappointing because the producer is played by Rachel McAdams.  For those of you who don't know me, I am a big McAdams fan: her luminous presence stole the show in Wedding Crashers, she propelled Red Eye into a genuine suspenseful winner, and she even made The Notebook watchable!  But she is misused here, and the movie's cardinal sin is that they found a way to make McAdams unlikable.  She is over anxious, talks way too much and way too fast and is constantly running around around like a headless chicken.  Characters in the film are annoyed by her spunk, and I think audiences were, too.  I know I was.  The movie is then further burdened by a gratuitous romance for Becky, a cliched subplot that adds nothing to the story and just drags on the movie like an anchor.

Why the romantic subplot is even in the film is beyond me.  It's certainly not the relationship that director Roger Michell (Notting Hill) is interested in.  He is more concerned with Becky's struggles with Pomeroy, a grumpy news anchor who cares more about hard journalism than the frothy junk morning shows often churn out.  This is a bit more interesting, and does provide some nice moments for McAdams and Ford.  But it still feels emotionally tacked on.  And it is certainly not where the fun is.

The fun is in those broadcasts.  Colleen Peck is game and willing to do anything to get the ratings up, whether it is kissing frogs or fighting someone in a sumo wrestler costume.  She hates the arrogant Pomeroy who takes everything so seriously.  At a certain point, they just stop the pretense and start openly insulting each other on the air - all while smiling professionally for the cameras.  This is fantastic stuff, and Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton play wonderfully off each other.  This is where the movie should have focused.  That would have been one great romantic comedy.

Instead, Keaton is wasted.  She is given some good material in the first half and then just disappears as an afterthought in the second half of the film.  That an actress of her talent and stature is relegated to an afterthought is deeply annoying to me.  Keaton isn't alone.  Patrick Wilson is wasted.  Jeff Goldblum is wasted.  When it comes down to it, even Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams are wasted.  The whole movie is a missed opportunity and that is a big bummer for me.  This could have been, should have been terrific.

MVP: I guess I will give it to Harrison Ford.  People have generally ragged on Ford's comedies, and with movies like Six Days, Seven Nights, I can understand why.  But I think that has more to do with his choices as opposed to his ability.  Ford is a solid comedian, with a good sense of timing and a great growl.  When a joke works in Morning Glory, it is generally because Ford is involved somehow.  Granted, he was given the opportunity to shine, while the script pushes Keaton out of the spotlight, but I don't think that should take away from his performance.  For one thing, his deadpan reactions to the insanity happening on 'Daybreak' are priceless.  He deserves the MVP for those double takes alone!

TRIVIA: Don Roy King, plays the director of "Daybreak," and Robert Caminiti, who plays the assistant director, are the real director and assistant director on Saturday Night Live.  I thought that was kind of nifty.

BEST LINE: Mike Pomeroy: "I won't say the word, 'fluffy.'"

Last Stand at Saber River

Last Stand on Saber River

When his big screen career began to flounder in the 1990s with movies like Mr. Baseball and the underrated Quigley Down Under, Tom Selleck returned in television, a domain he once dominated as Magnum P.I.  He's made several TV films since then, but I would argue that his most memorable were a series of Westerns, including Crossfire Trail and Monte Walsh.  The first of these Westerns was Last Stand at Saber River, based on a book by Elmore Leonard and featuring a solid cast with Selleck, Suzy Amis (Titanic), David Carradine (Kill Bill), Keith Carradine (Nashville), Harry Carey, Jr. (The Searchers), and a very young Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense).

Paul Cable (Selleck) returns home from the Civil War to a world that thought him long dead.  If he was hoping to return home to a blissful family life, he was sadly mistaken.  His wife, Martha (Amis) resents him for leaving and is extremely bitter from having lost her baby to fever - all her pent-up anger is thrown in Cable's direction.  To make matters worse, Cable's family ranch is overrun by the Kidston family, including sensible Vern (Keith Carradine), the belligerent Duane (David Carradine) and refined Lorraine (Tracey Needham).  As if all this wasn't annoying enough, Confederate sympathizer Edward Janroe (David Dukes) is smuggling new and fancy rifles to the Confederacy and keeps hassling Cable to help him.

This all sounds like an interesting premise, but the film never lives up to its potential.  Unlike Crossfire Trail (reviewed here), Saber River never really feels like anything other than a little TV movie, with blah blah writing and blah blah directing and for the most part even blah blah acting.  Nothing is really developed as it should be.  The Kidstons are set up to be interesting antagonists - Vern isn't bad - he's just trying to run a business, and Duane is just a little crazy in the head.  But we hardly get to see Vern and Duane; instead we are treated to a random subplot about Lorraine trying to seduce Cable, a story thread that is dead on arrival and just a waste of time and logic.  And Edward Janroe is such an annoying and unlikable character that I'm surprised he wasn't shot in the first 5 minutes.  Ugh.

And I was surprised by the end - minor spoilers here - even though Cable has been shot in the gut during the climactic fight, he and his wife share their feelings and reconcile.  I'm fine with that.  But then Martha makes some subtle comment about the bedroom and the two walk into the house as the film fades to black, I assume for some makeup sex.  Didn't he get shot?!?!?  Why aren't you going to a doctor??!??!?!

Sigh.  Anyway.  So does the film get anything right?  Of course, it does.  Though most of the acting isn't that great, we do have a small collection of good performances in here, with Selleck leading the pack.  He may not be Wayne or Eastwood, but he makes for a great cowboy.  I also enjoyed Amis and both Carradines, especially David.  I also like how the film handles the Civil War.  Westerns are full of former Confederate heroes who now get a second chance at those 'Yankee bastards.'  I rarely see it other way around and I'm not sure why that is.  At first, I thought that was where Last Stand at Saber River was going, especially since Duane is a former Union officer.  But that is not what happens.  Part of Cable's guilt is not that he lost years away from his family because of the war; it's that he sacrificed so much for nothing because deep down, he knows he was fighting on the wrong side.  And the script and Selleck's performance is very subtle on this point.  It's intriguingly done.

But that's not a reason to see a whole movie.  If you love Tom Selleck or Westerns, then check it out.  For everyone else, I would definitely avoid it.

MVP:
Even though he is hardly in the movie, I have to say David Carradine.  He makes an impression in a very small amount of screen time.  Duane Kidston is an interesting character.  Drummed out of the Union army, he is still obsessed with it - he always wears his uniform and even grows a beard that resembles Ulysses S. Grant's famous facial hair.  Supposedly, he is sadistic, but his bark is really worse than his bite.  They could have done so much more with this character and with Carradine.  It is one of the film's biggest wasted opportunities. But I'll still give him MVP for his potential...

BEST LINE:
Cable: "I know one thing, I don't wanna live with a woman who don't like me.  Think on it."

Chocolate (2008)

Chocolate

What the heck did I just watch?  And why am I so happy about it??  I think Chocolate is probably a good litmus test for the action genre.  How much of an action fan are you, truly?  Can you forgive bad acting and confusing plotting if the action itself is good?  Because Chocolate will test you - oh, it will test you...

I will say this, the beginning of the movie makes no sense.  Minor spoilers here, so be warned.  In what is supposed to be a prologue, but feels like it lasts an eternity, Chocolate begins with two star-crossed lovers - the lovers being a Japanese gangster and a Thai gangster, who I think is also the lover of the Thai mob boss (though they never tell us that).  When the Thai mob boss discovers the affair, he drives to the Japanese territory, shoots up all the henchmen and then instead of shooting the lover he shoots himself in the foot, gives the lover a "let that be a lesson to you" scowl, and then leaves.  Why the hell did he shoot himself in the foot?  Was he trying to be metaphorical?

The prologue's stupidity continues, the Japanese gangster returns to his homeland and the Thai woman gives birth to Zen, an autistic little girl who does nothing but eat M&Ms and watch kung fu all day.  But here is where the movie gets interesting.  The mom gets cancer and Zen decides to visit mom's old gangster pals and get some money for her medical expenses.  They of course refuse.  And Zen, whose autism has allowed her to learn the kung fu she has seen on TV (naturally) starts kicking ass.

And WOW, does she kick ass.  JeeJa Yanin is a true discovery.  She may not win any Oscars, but her acting is certainly acceptable, and when given permission to open a can of whupass, she brings the most charisma I've seen on screen in a long, long time.  She isn't just technically good at the moves, but she also inserts her character into the kicks and punches.

The film was directed by Prachya Pinkaew, who also directed Tony Jaa's breakthrough hit, Ong Bak.  He has tried to be more artistic in his storytelling this time around, especially with the dreamlike beginning, but I have to say he failed pretty spectacularly at that.  But here is the question that I put to you, and the reason why Chocolate is such a good litmus test.  Does it matter?  Do you care that the bad guy's motivations make no sense?  Does it matter that we never really understand why the Thai gang includes a special hit squad of bad ass drag queens?

Generally, I don't care how good the action is.  If a movie stinks, it stinks.  End of story.  But there is always a line, a boundary where the action is so good, that I don't care about anything else.  For me, Chocolate crossed the line into blissful kickassery.  I don't care about the story or anything else.  I just saw a henchmen get kicked off a roof by an autistic 15-year old girl and watched as he plummeted four stories and hit the ground.  And I can't wait to see it again!

MVP: 
JeeJa Yanin.  There is no doubt.  She may not be an technically proficient or as daring as Tony Jaa, but she is oodles of more charisma.  I could watch her fight all day!

TRIVIA: 
A few critics complained that a few fights were ripoffs of famous Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee bouts.  This was actually on purpose (as if Yanin screeching like Lee in that one fight wasn't proof enough).   The original plan was to split screen this fights, and show the Chan and Lee fights on the left side while Yanin fought on the right side - just so we could see how perfectly she was mimicking their technique.  It's a neat idea, and would have reinforced how she learned to fight from TV, but unfortunately the producers couldn't afford the licensing fees.  Bummer.