At the Movies: Last Chance Harvey

I'll keep this review brief, since I'm lazy.

Last Chance Harvey is a charming little diversion from your typical rom-com. I don't know how this movie was lucky enough to score such wonderful talents as Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, but it did. I think the great casting choice elevates what is otherwise an average movie.

Basically the plot is thus: Dustin Hoffman plays a down-on-his-luck, washed up, jingle writer. His boss gives him one last chance to prove himself. Meanwhile, he goes to London for his daughter's wedding. However, he's such a loser (presumably) and a failure at life that his daughter would rather have her stepfather walk her down the aisle than him. Directly after this, he desperately tries to catch his plane back to New York to save his job. He doesn't. So, loveable loser Harvey sits in an airport bar, contemplating his sucky life, when he meets Kate (Emma Thompson), a shy, lonely, single lady eating alone and reading a trashy novel. He strikes up a conversation with her and a cautious, but adoreable romance begins. I would say sparks fly, but in a slow, cozy movie such as this, it's more like a pleasant simmer. Anyhoo, during a 24-hour period the two meet cute, fall in love, and change each others lives forever. It's sort of like Before Sunrise. Only with old people.

I will say this - while this movie is cute and very pleasant, it benefits very heavily from the talents of Hoffman and Thompson. They've both proven to be great actors and make this movie something much better than it has a right to be. However, one thing did bug me...and that was the fact that a lot of Harvey's behavior, while cute in movie form, would be incredibly creepy in real life (he basically follows this woman around relentlessly until she caves in to his endless "charm"), but hey...that's the story with pretty much any romantic comedy. And it teaches the important lesson that you can find love. Even when you're old. Also, don't be racist against your Polish neighbor.

Grade: B+

At the Movies: Repo! The Genetic Opera!

I'd actually been really excited to see this movie, since it seems like the sort of bizarre thing I'd be into. I mean, I like musicals, I like mucho stylization, and I love Anthony Stewart Head. And although I've never seen a Saw movie (I'm very squeamish in regards to blood and gore), I was interested in the idea of Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed the last 3 or so Saw movies, doing a weird-ass musical.

The basic premise is thus: It's the Future and there's been a massive epidemic of organ failures. Thus, a company called GeneCo arises and sells people organs...for a price. If you're late or fail to make a payment on an organ, GeneCo sends out its Repo Man to "repossess" it. The film partially concerns Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino, suitably slimey), the president of GeneCo, who is dying and has to choose who will inherit his company. His choices among his own offspring are limited. There's Luigi (Bill Moseley) who is dumb and angry and stabs anyone who pisses him off. There's also Pavi (played by Ogre, of the band Skinny Puppy), who wears women's faces. Literally I mean. It's kind of creepy. Strangely enough, women flock to him. And lastly, there's his daughter Amber Sweet, played by Paris Hilton. Paris proves herself relatively capable in this role, surprisingly enough, but then again her character is a stuck up rich bitch who's addicted to plastic surgery, so it's not much of a stretch. Since his own children are all useless, Rotti Largo takes an interest in Shilo (Alexa Vega, of Spy Kids fame), the daughter of Nathan, the Repo Man (Anthony Stewart Head, easily the best thing in this movie). To go on to the other main plotline - Shilo allegedly has a blood disease, inherited from her late mother, and is not allowed outside by her overprotective father. Also, she's doesn't know he's the Repo Man and that he goes out everynight killing people and taking out their organs. Sarah Brightman also makes an appearance as Bling Mag, the star of the GeneCo opera.

This movie has a really interesting, unique premise and is highly stylized. There's little actual spoken dialogue, nearly everything is sung. Everything, everything is terribly excessive - the violence, the music, the drama, the overall look of the film, etc. There's many sideplots, such as the whole situation with Blind Mag, the whole Zydrate/Graverobber thing (don't ask, I was a bit confused by it all), and Rotti and Nathan's complicated past. There's just so much here and it's just not very well done. I'm a bit disappointed because I think this had great potential to be a really interesting, unique film. Instead it all feels confusing and muddled and haphazardly put together. I read some reviews that said this film was unnecessarily gross, but I wasn't bothered by it. The violence and gore made sense, given the general plotline.

The music, for the most part, is very good and catchy. I did, however, have a problem with the sung "dialogue", which is just boring. I realize that they were trying to make this an "opera" and thus have everything be sung, but most of it's just annoying and uninteresting. The actual "songs" though are quite good and all of the actors pull their own weight, vocally speaking. Anthony Stewart Head is especially adept at switching between Nathan's calm, sweet fatherly persona and the harsher, more sinister growling rock voice of the Repo Man. The soundtrack gets an added boost from the vocal prescence of Sarah Brightman. Alexa Vega also has a surprisingly good voice, portraying every bit the angst-filled, tempestuous teenager. The complicated relationship between her and her father is genuinely touching.

Overall, this movie is a mixed bag. I would say it is worth a gander, if you're into this sort of thing (and not of a weak constitution). It's a fantastic premise, interesting characters, and a good soundtrack. However, it's rather poorly executed. If they had taken some extra time to flesh things out and smooth out the rough edges, it could've been rather good. Instead it's confusing and a bit underwhelming.

Grade: C

You can watch the trailer here

At the Movies: The Spirit

I didn't have high expectations for Frank Miller's The Spirit going in, seeing as how all of the reviews I read were pretty awful. So I guess I went in with low expectations. After seeing the movie, while I'm not going to go out and say it was the best thing I've seen all year, I think most of the criticism was undeserved. The Spirit combines a pulp noir aesthetic with a camp sensibility. It's dark and kitschy at the same time. While the plot is nonsensical most of the time and the characters are rather flat, it all comes out to an entertaining, visually pleasing film.

The Spirit, based on the comics by Will Eisner, is the story of your average, everyday masked vigilante crime fighter (called, of course, The Spirit). Only, he isn't quite your average, everyday masked vigilante. The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) is actually a rookie cop named Denny Colt who was killed and somehow, miraculously, came back from the dead. Although he suffers many seemingly fatal wounds, he heals quickly and cannot be killed. However, Death, in the form of a gorgeous dame named Lorelei (Jamie King, whose character is never really adequately explained), is always on his tail. Although the Spirit feels invincible, he knows that one day Lorelei will catch up with him.

However, that's not his only problem. He also has to deal with his arch-nemesis, The Octopus (played with maniacal glee by the always awesome Samuel L. Jackson), who may or may not know the secret to the Spirit's undead-ness, an angry Commissioner Dolan (Dan Lauria) who thinks he's lost his marbles, and, of course, the requisite femme fatale or two (Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johannson, and Paz Vegas).

The plot, as stated earlier, is a bit nonsensical and pretty thin. The Octopus and his beautiful assistant Silken Floss (a wooden Scarlett Johannson) are after the blood of Heracles, which will render the Octopus immortal. However, the vase of this stuff somehow gets mixed up with a chest containing the treasure of the Argonauts (um...k?). The vase of hero blood is accidentally picked up by femme fatale Sand Sarif (a suitably vampy Eva Mendes), who was originally aiming to get the Argonaut treasure. Oh, I should also mention that Sarif is The Spirit/Denny Colt's lost childhood sweetheart, who turned bad and left Central City after her father was killed way back when. So...Octopus has the treasure and Sarif has the blood. Although you could call this an honest mix-up and just do a little switcharoo, this just won't do for our villains. There are plots to be hatched and cartoonish blood to be spilled and many, many, ridiculous costumes to wear (mostly by Samuel L. Jackson).

All the while The Spirit is trying to intercept The Octopus, whilst fending off the advances of half the women in Central City (but not really) and saving them from petty criminals, and after all his crime fighting, getting stitched up by the Commissioner's pretty surgeon daughter Helen (Sarah Paulson, probably the only decent female character in the film). The Spirit spends a lot of time being angsty about his past, about his lost childhood love, about whether he's really undead or just crazy. Heroes always got to have angst. There are many dramatic monologues of the Spirit's, which are essentially love letters to Central City ("My city, I cannot deny her. My city screams. She is my mother, my lover..." etc etc). Gabriel Macht, as the Spirit, has an old-fashioned kind of charisma. He feels very much lifted from the comic book pages or a hard-boiled detective novel.

Frank Miller, who wrote and directed this flick, is a legend for his graphic novels (the Sin City books, 300, Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, among others) and the film looks and feels very much like a comic book. It shares a similar visual aesthetic to the film adaptation of Sin City. However, Miller isn't quite able to translate his talents from the page onto the big screen. The Spirit, while visually pleasing, never really comes together. There's not really enough time giving the characters much background or motivation or making them seem anything other than caricatures. There is no real cohesiveness to the plot at all. It's a shame because I feel that under better hands, this could've gone from an OK film to a great film.

That being said, I still don't think this film deserved all the bad press. Or maybe it did. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a world in which women are called "broads" and "dames" and the men wear sharp hats and long coats. Where everything is colored in shades of grey and sepia, save for a flashing red tie. The Spirit is similar to the movie Dick Tracy, another very stylized movie (also based on a comic strip) with a flair for noir. But it's noir meets camp, with outrageous costumes and sets and characters and bizarre one-liners (my favorite being Octopus': "Do I look like I like having egg on my face?"). And, and did I forget to mention the Octopus' henchmen, a series of luggish, clownish clones, all played by Louis Lombardi. Hello, flashbacks to City of Lost Children! So, while it's not a great film, it really doesn't take itself too seriously. You might as well hush up and enjoy the bizarre world that Frank Miller is trying to transport you to.

Grade: C+
Watch the trailer here.

The Beginning

Hey, folks. I noticed that my other blog was getting too filled up with me writing about music and movies and such. So from now on, I'm putting all that stuff up here. Enjoy!