[Happy 95th Birthday!] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

Director: John S. Robertson

Cast: John Barrymore, Martha Mansfield, Charles Lane, Nita Naldi

Screenplay: Clara Beranger

49 mins. Not Rated.

Today we are going to step way back in time to a silent film that is now a part of public domain as it celebrates 95 years of viewings. That film is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of dozens of adaptations from the original story by Robert Louis Stevenson. This version stars John Barrymore (Grand Hotel, Twentieth Century) in the iconic role as Dr. Henry Jekyll, a scientist who experiments with bringing forth a new personality that dwells within him, a monster of a man named Edward Hyde.

There are a few versions of this silent picture floating around the world of public domain, but I prefer the one that resides on Netflix. It is a slightly longer version of the tale, but the pictures looks as crisp as it can and the horrific transformation between Jekyll’s dual personalities shine through.

Like many of the early silent pictures, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sticks to the crib-notes and tells the basic story so I can’t really tell you that the screenplay is unforgettable, but the story does provide elements reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which has often been compared to Stevenson’s story in the past.

The beauty of this 1920 classic is in its simplicity. It tells the tale of a man who wants what many of us want: to see another side of ourselves. Its morality play works well under the guidance of director John S. Robertson and lead Barrymore, and it has indeed stood the test of time (a lot more that its 1951 sequel The Son of Dr. Jekyll, but we’ll get to that another time).

4/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

March 18, 2015 0

[Happy 20th Birthday!] Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight (1995)

Director: Ernest R. Dickerson

Cast: Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett Smith, Thomas Haden Church, CCH Pounder, John Kassir

Screenplay: Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris, Mark Bishop

92 mins. Rated R for gore, horror violence, sexuality and language.

Only a series like Tales from the Crypt can make a joke about going postal into a plot point. Seriously.

It’s been twenty years since the first in a planned (but cancelled) trilogy of Tales from the Crypt films was released in theaters. Demon Knight is the story of an age-old battle between good and evil, following Brayker (William Sadler, The Shawshank Redemption, Machete Kills), a man who has lived far past his years, as he is hunted throughout the forgotten roads of western civilization by a being known only as The Collector (Billy Zane, Titanic, The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption). Brayker is in possession of a mystical relic, a key, and The Collector will stop at nothing to retrieve it. As Brayker holds up in an old church turned into a motel, owner Irene (CCH Pounder, TV’s NCIS: New Orleans, Avatar) fears he is dangerous and accidentally brings The Collector right to their door. Now, Brayker, Irene, and the rest of the motel residents, including ex-con Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith, TV’s Gotham, Collateral) and Roach (Thomas Haden Church, Sideways, Heaven is for Real), a guy just looking for a good time, to stop The Collector from unleashing hell on Earth in this full-length tale told by the menacing Crypt Keeper (John Kassir, Pocahontas, The Smurfs 2).

It is tough to judge a film based on campiness when camp is the overall goal in mind. The movie is goofy, but has a solidly enjoyable screenplay, though it gets a little muddled at the end. Some of the rules created don’t exactly make sense (kind of like Gremlins, you don’t really need to care). The performances are all loopily over-the-top, sometimes too much so. This whole movie exists to service the fans, and half of them weren’t even serviced all in all. I happened to enjoy it, but I agree that it may have worked better as a longer episode rather than a feature. I will say, though, it’s still a pretty damn fun time.

3/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

January 13, 2015 4

[Happy 60th Birthday!] Ordet (1955)

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Cast: Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Cay Kristiansen, Preben Lerdorff Rye

Screenplay: Kaj Munk

126 mins. Not Rated.

Religion is still a tough subject to tackle as a filmmaker. We see it now in our time. Freedom of speech will only get you so far. We have situations like the one that happened just a few days ago for the people of Charlie Hebdo. Such a tragic time. I myself am a religious person but I also accept that others have different beliefs and it is our freedom to question it and challenge and I believe it makes us better people and stronger in the beliefs we have to challenge them.

Sixty years ago today, the film version of Kaj Munk’s play Ordet was released. It challenged religion too.

The Borgen family has a lot of different views on life. Patriarch Morten (Henrik Malberg) is a patron of the local church. His eldest son Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen) has no faith but is married to Inger who is very religious. Morten’s youngest son Anders (Cay Kristiansen) is in love with a woman of a different religious sect and both his father and hers do not allow the marriage. Then there is Johannes (Pebren Lerdorff Rye), who has lost his touch with reality and believes himself to be Jesus Christ. The Borgen family’s differing beliefs are about to collide with the oncoming birth of Mikkel’s third child.

Ordet is perhaps not nearly as religiously challenging as more contemporary releases have been, but it allows the audience to witness the trials and tribulations that come with having differing opinions about the world. How easily issues can escalate. We can see that today more than ever.

The film runs smoothly enough. Director Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr) has subtly added his own touch to Munk’s play in his adaptation, though not truly altering the play itself. To the contrary, Dreyer’s adaptation alludes to other works by the director and through studying his films, one can see some interesting symbols playing off each other.

Rye’s performance as Johannes is equally depressing and over-the-top goofy. He adds an unnerving and maddening vibe to the proceedings.

Now, the film has some faults. I wasn’t truly invested in Anders’ story. I didn’t think he was all that multi-dimensional. And Morten Borgen is a rather infuriating character entirely, played rather dryly by Malberg.

To all end, films like Ordet are needed in our society. We need to find challenges in our beliefs and opinions in order to strengthen them. That’s what the film is about; strengthening your beliefs or finding that you believe something else entirely. If you take nothing else away from this post, take this: do not feel threatened by someone who believes something different than yourself. Believe what you want, but it is when we find violence rather than mutual appreciation that we find ourselves without out minds. Good night.

3.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

January 10, 2015 0

[Happy 35th Birthday!] Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Director: Robert Wise

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Persis Khambatta, Stephen Collins

Screenplay: Harold Livingston

132 mins. Rated PG for sci-fi action and mild language.

Academy Award Nominee: Best Art Direction – Set Direction
Academy Award Nominee: Best Effects – Visual Effects
Academy Award Nominee: Best Music, Original Score

When Firefly was cancelled prematurely, fans fought hard to have their show brought back in any way, shape, or form. Eventually, the powers that be granted us Serenity. People tend to forget that the same thing happened on an even grander scale over twenty years prior when Star Trek, about a five-year mission into space, ended abruptly after only three seasons. When, many years later, the idea came about to resurrect the Enterprise for a feature film, fans were ecstatic. If only they knew. If only they knew…

Star Trek: The Motion Picture picks up with the completion of the Enterprise’s five-year mission. Several members of the crew have gone on to other work. That is, until a mysterious presence in deep space in a massive cloud of energy destroys several Klingon ships and has its sights set for Earth. Recently promoted Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner, TV’s $#*! My Dad Says, Escape from Planet Earth) takes over command of the Enterprise from its new Captain Decker (Stephen Collins, TV’s 7^th Heaven, The Three Stooges) and joins up with Spock (Leonard Nimoy, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Land of the Lost) and the rest of the crew to discover its origins and, if need be, destroy it.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was put together with one big mistake. It tries to be two things. It tries to stretch out its television show length without adding enough in, and it tries to be 2001: A Space Odyssey. It tries and fails. This movie is a mess. I feel as though screenwriter Harold Livingston didn’t know enough about the series to craft a meaningful new chapter. I feel as though Gene Roddenberry was unwittingly burying his work under layers of convolution. I feel as though Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, West Side Story) didn’t understand what he was doing.

The cast performs admirably, and there isn’t a whole lot of issue to be had with the cinematography. What really kills this film is the editing and pacing of it all. My God, it just doesn’t end! I think they finished this film 35 years ago and that’s how long I’ve been watching it! There are sequences, like Spock’s infamous spacewalk, that are meant to build tension but just end up pooping out on trying to be spectacular.

The score here is pretty sweet, and serves to invigorate the series for future installments, but it does little to invigorate this tale.

And what’s the deal with those costumes? My girlfriend said it best. It looks like these characters are heading to a Star Trek-themed sleepover and are wearing their pajamas. Terrible look, which was thankfully rectified for the sequels.

All in all, Star Trek: The Motion Picture gave us Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and in that way, I am grateful. Unfortunately, it also gave us Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and in that way, I am angry. This is an entry which does nothing to enhance the series it is in. Best to just skip to Khan.

1.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

December 7, 2014 4

[Happy 20th Birthday!] Trapped in Paradise (1994)

Director: George Gallo

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz, Dana Carvey

Screenplay: George Gallo

111 mins. Rated PG-13 for some rude language.

Christmas is just around the corner, so I thought it fitting to jump into the Christmas spirit by talking about a classic (at least on Comedy Central) that came to screens twenty years ago today. I’m talking about a little black comedy called Trapped in Paradise. It stars Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas, Left Behind) as Bill Firpo, the rightest of the three Firpo brothers, and the only one who can mostly ignore his temptations to commit crimes. His brothers Dave (Jon Lovitz, Happiness, Grown Ups 2) and Alvin (Dana Carvey, Wayne’s World, Jack and Jill) cannot ignore theirs, and are being released from prison due to overcrowding. Bill is begged by his paroled brethren to head to Paradise, Pennsylvania to visit the daughter of an incarcerated friend and ask her to visit her dying father. Bill eventually goes along, and for reason, he is most easily convinced to commit a bank robbery. The bank robbery goes somewhat awry, and the boys are now stuck in the town to a sweltering blizzard hitting town. They must survive being trapped in Paradise. See what I did there?

Nicolas Cage is just terrible here. He yells and screams and Cages everything in sight. His is one of the most unlikable performances in his career. He thankfully gets outshined by Lovitz and Carvey who provide a few laughs and have good chemistry, but altogether become more of a chorus than active members of the family. They provide a hokey commentary on the events going on without really bearing much weight on the story.

And what’s the deal with this bank robbery? Cage’s character Bill spends most of the film trying to keep his brothers from committing petty theft before being easily swayed into robbing a bank? C’MON! Totally unbelievable and uninspired. Prove it to me, unheard of director George Gallo! Prove it!

I enjoyed some of the tertiary characters in this film. They play as caricatures of picturesque small-town people. If the film were set a bit more to the west, I could call it Minnesota Nice to the extreme.

Director Gallo (Middle Men, Double Take) sleeps through this film. I didn’t find myself swept up in any of the events of the film. His screenplay offers far too few laughs and far too much fluff (and this isn’t good fluff, it is crap covered fluff). Even the cast in the film looks like it isn’t having any fun in this “funny Christmas” film. They referred to it as “Trapped in Bullshit” for the entirety of the strained shoot, and it shows here.

Part of me is drawn to Trapped in Paradise once every couple years, and when I finish it, I’m still not sure why. The film is dark and unfunny, it isn’t beautifully shot or acted, and it isn’t a plot that I can connect to in the slightest. This film exists somewhere above the Hallmark film releases but dreadfully below most anything else.

1.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

December 2, 2014 0

[Happy 5th Birthday!] The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Director: Ron Clements, John Musker

Cast: Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael-Leon Wooley, Jennifer Cody, Jim Cummings, Peter Bartlett, Jennifer Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard, John Goodman

Screenplay: Ron Clements, John Musker, Rob Edwards

97 mins. Rated G.

Academy Award Nominee: Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (“Almost There” by Randy Newman)
Academy Award Nominee: Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (“Down in New Orleans” by Randy Newman)
Academy Award Nominee: Best Animated Feature Film of the Year

Disney has been known for years to be the leading developer and creator in 2D animation. So even after they had essentially made the change to CG animation, it was a shock to see Disney reverting back to 2D for their next release in 2009’s The Princess and the Frog. It was a definite risk as most moviegoers had made themselves comfortable with the newest form of animating.

Tiana (Anika Noni Rose, Dreamgirls, Bag of Bones) wants, more than anything, to own a restaurant. It was a passion she shared with her father (Terrence Howard, Iron Man, Sabotage) until he passed away. Now, after years of all working and no playing, Tiana is a dull girl but has forged enough dough to buy her restaurant. It seems like everything is going her way finally, until a talking frog claiming to be the rich Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos, Mimic 2) convinces her to kiss him to turn him human. That kiss backfires, changing Tiana herself into a frog. Now, the two, along with some new friends, must find Mama Odie (Jennifer Lewis, Cars, Think Like a Man Too) in order to turn back to humans.

I happen to find The Princess and the Frog to be one of the more unique entries in the Disney Animated catalog. It also falls into one of the safer entries in that same catalog. I enjoyed the film and the stylistic choices made for the music and the characters, but I don’t feel like The Princess and the Frog takes any steps to be less generic. I feel like the Disney execs were so worried about not offending anyone by showing the first black Disney princess in an imperfect light that they turned the film rather bland, which is too bad for a film with so much flavor. It jumps back and forth in the belief that it will be approved by everyone and in that sense it doesn’t leave the audience with much. Likable? Somewhat. Memorable? Less so.

The voice work is fine, with extra praise to Keith David (TV’s Enlisted, Platoon) for his portrayal of Dr. Facilier and Oprah Winfrey (The Color Purple, The Butler) as Tiana’s mom.

The film deserves attention for the music by Randy Newman, usually known for a specific style which is wholly unlike what he gives us here.

Is The Princess and the Frog worth a Best Animated Feature Oscar? Probably not, but it is a fun romp which kids should enjoy and adults should be able to sit through.

2.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

November 25, 2014 0

[Happy 5th Birthday!] The Lovely Bones (2009)

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, Saoirse Ronan

Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Bowen, Peter Jackson

135 mins. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.

Academy Award Nominee: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Stanley Tucci)

Certain directors get going and when they do, they just can’t stop. Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, King Kong) is one of those directors. The last film he made that truly disappointed me was the splatter-fest Dead Alive, a gore-lovers delight from some twenty years ago. Then came cult classics like The Frighteners and major wins like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong. And like I said before, he just couldn’t stop. In 2009, he gave filmgoers something that they hadn’t seen from Jackson yet. His adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was much awaited and polarized many who saw it, but it’s Jackson’s most personal work in years. It dives to the core of human emotion and digs until it hurts.

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, Atonement, The Grand Budapest Hotel) is a pretty smart young girl living in the 1970s with parents Jack (Mark Wahlberg, Boogie Nights, Transformers: Age of Extinction) and Abigail (Rachel Weisz, The Mummy, Oz the Great and Powerful). She has a bright and shining future ahead as her most important growth period of her life looms ahead, but sadly, her light is cut short all too soon when an encounter with the strange George Harvey (Stanley Tucci, The Hunger Games, Muppets Most Wanted) leads her to an early grave. As her family struggles to grieve, Susie enters an ethereal plane of existence and must overcome her need for revenge before it tears her family to pieces.

This movie is equal parts visual candy and horrifying family tragedy. I love that its struggle in tone is much like that of its lead characters. The film goes to extremes treating little pieces of genre with the intensity of a mood swing. I find this, whether intentional or not, to be so jarring that it works. Jackson’s visual style is here and it looks gorgeous.

Now let’s talk performances. Wahlberg’s is terrible, this is easily one of the most disappointing areas of this film. He can’t handle the tragedy that Jack Salmon is supposed to experience. Rachel Weisz’s is passable but he really isn’t a fully-realized character. Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise, Tammy) is Susie’s Grandma Lynn, who jumps in as prime caretaker when Susie’s parents fail to care for the siblings. Michael Imperioli (TV’s The Sopranos, Oldboy) also does passable work as Len Fenerman, the detective charged with finding Susie’s killer.

And then you get George Harvey, played perfectly by Stanley Tucci. Tucci’s performance is so painful and disgusting to watch that every scene with him becomes a living car wreck, one that is so terrifying that you can’t look away. George Harvey is perhaps Tucci’s best work to date and remains a truly chilling piece of work.

The script-work by Fran Walsh, Philippa Bowen, and Jackson, the same writing team Jackson has used on much of his previous work, does a great job here with the source material. They helped to piss me off as the film’s events meandered through life in the 70s. That’s what this movie does best, it pushes one through the stages of grief while equally pissing me off. I hated this movie, and that’s what I loved so much about it.

When I look back on Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, I remember my anger. I also remember the film’s beauty and the search for a passable moment of happiness in a sea of sadness. If you have yet to see this strange odyssey of death, please do so, and let it anger you, but also, let it take hold of you and show you something you haven’t seen before.

3.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, click here.

November 24, 2014 8

[Happy 10th Birthday!] The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)

Director: Stephen Hillenburg, Mark Osborne

Cast: Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Clancy Brown, Roger Bumpass, Mr. Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Tambor, Alec Baldwin, David Hasselhoff

Screenplay: Derek Drymon, Tim Hill, Stephen Hillenburg, Kent Osborne, Aaron Springer, Paul Tibbitt

87 mins. Rated PG for some mild crude humor.

I think every generation has some children’s entertainment that earlier and later generations just wouldn’t quite understand. It’s for the same reason that older generation thinks that kids’ music these days aren’t good, while I can simultaneously play music that I love around younger folks today and they don’t like it either. It just existed in the right time and couldn’t have in any other.

I think that holds about as true as ever with Spongebob Squarepants. It just couldn’t have happened at any other time. But it did happen. It still is happening. There have even been two movies (the sequel is coming in 2015). Today, I’m going to discuss the first film, which celebrates 10 years of release today. I actually remember seeing it in the theater way back when. I think my buddy and I were the oldest people in the theater that weren’t parents. And that was okay. We laughed at the right times. We even cried at the right times (totally serious here). When I got out of that theater, I felt like I had learned something incredible about myself. The lesson in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie is simple, yes, but also incredible important to people finding themselves being forced to grow up when they just aren’t ready.

Spongebob Squarepants (Tom Kenny, TV’s CatDog, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) is dreaming of his new promotion running the Krusty Krab 2, the new restaurant opened by his boss Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown, The Shawshank Redemption, When the Game Stands Tall). The only problem is Mr. Krabs didn’t give him the promotion; he gave it to Spongebob’s coworker Squidward (Roger Bumpass, Monsters, Inc., The haunted World of El Superbeasto). Meanwhile, the evil nemesis Plankton (Mr. Lawrence, TV’s Rocko’s Modern Life) has discovered Plan Z, the only plan he hasn’t tried to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula, and has enacted it by stealing the crown of King Neptune (Jeffrey Tambor, The Hangover, A Merry Friggin’ Christmas). Mr. Krabs has been framed for the theft, and King Neptune isn’t a forgiving man/fish/whatever. So now, Spongebob, with the help of Patrick Star (Bill Fagerbakke, The Artist, The Babymakers), Neptune’s daughter Mindy (Scarlett Johansson, Lost in Translation, Lucy), and the ever-incredible David Hasselhoff (as himself, Click, The Devil’s Carnival: Alleluia!), needs to become a man to “Get the Crown, Save the Town, and Mr. Krabs!” But there is evil on their way as well, as Bounty Hunter Dennis (Alec Baldwin, The Departed, Blue Jasmine) has been deployed to stop them.

First of all, I love that this movie, much like the show, rides the line of batty and tragic. There are definite moments when our heroes face certain death and I honestly started tearing up. Spongebob is such a nice and caring character, and his friendship with Patrick Star is one of the guiding reasons he is able to keep going when he feels at his lowest.

The guest voices from Johansson, Tambor, and Baldwin are what helps create the atmosphere here. These are talented and seasoned performers delivering this goofy and lovable script.

The animation takes a leap in the movie as well, and still looks pretty good ten years later.

Let’s not forget the music. There isn’t a musical’s worth of musical numbers, but when they do pop up, they are incredible and rattle around in the brain long afterward.

All in all, I’ve seen a lot of people give Spongebob Squarepants, his series, and his films a lot of flak for the lack of lessons and learning, and I say to them, no, there are lessons and warm characters and just a lot of good ol’ wackiness to keep one happy. Don’t fault the show for trying to have fun. Same thing here, this movie is a ton of fun.

5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

November 19, 2014 1

[Happy 15th Birthday!] Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci

Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker

105 mins. Rated R for graphic horror violence and gore, and for a scene of sexuality.

Academy Award Winner: Best Art Direction – Set Decoration
Academy Award Nominee: Best Cinematography
Academy Award Nominee: Best Costume Design

I remember reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a kid. I remember the way it made me feel. It was a very unhappy and dreary story, as was expected to be. I remember my excitement at hearing that there was a new film version coming along in 1999. It was a new film from director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Dark Shadows), with whom I was already familiar with at a young age. I remember finding the film to be very different than the original story, much more convoluted than it needed to be. I wasn’t a great big fan of the film, though I remembered that it had several some really great moments. I thought I would look back on the film for its 15^th anniversary and see if I felt any different about it.

As it turns out, I still find numerous flaws with the film, but I feel as though it has aged very nicely over the past fifteen years.

It’s the story of Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Transcendence) as he hunts down a murderer in Sleepy Hollow who lops his victim’s heads off. Along the way, he meets Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci, Monster, Lizzie Borden Took an Ax), a woman he develops an emotional connection to even though she may have more to her past than he knows. The townspeople believe that the murders are being committed by The Headless Horseman, a mythical being who has been birthed from Hell to avenge his death.

This film looks pretty damn good for its age. I still find the lighting to be too little during some of the more menacing action sequences. I think it could use a bit more light in its scenes. I like Johnny Depp, pre-overused by Tim Burton here. Christina Ricci returns to the genre that made her famous in The Addams Family. I find her inert sensuality and innocence brings chilling ambience to her performance here. Then there’s Christopher Walken, who gets a lot less screentime as The Headless Horseman, but all the seem, he gives one of the most iconic and terrifying performances I have ever seen here. He is almost monstrous and beastly even as a humanoid spirit.

I also enjoyed the cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki here. He definitely deserved the nomination from making this film feel like a Hammer film and gives homage to even older films of the horror genre.

Of all the films in the Burton canon, this one feels more like the Burton we know and doesn’t tread very much new territory, but overall, I enjoy the film much more now, and part of that has to do with the awesome soundtrack and the screenplay from Andrew Kevin Walker (even with an uncredited rewrite that messed with the pacing a bit). Tim Burton has done better, but he has also done worse, and Sleepy Hollow exists somewhere in the middle.

2.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, click here.

November 17, 2014 11

[Happy 10th Birthday!] Alexander (2004)

Director: Oliver Stone

Cast: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Hopkins

Screenplay: Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle, Laeta Kalogridis

175 mins. Rated R for violence and some sexuality/nudity.

Ten years ago today, silver screens everywhere were graced with the presence of Oliver Stone’s newest film, a bold epic about Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell, Phone Booth, Winter’s Tale). Audiences and critics alike were in agreement. This was one of the worst films ever. I myself hadn’t seen Alexander until I heard that the 10^th anniversary was coming, so I took it upon myself to see if the film has aged well or if perhaps the rest of the world was wrong.

As it turns out, they weren’t.

This movie is dreck. The plot is unbearably convoluted to sift through, but essentially tells the entire life story of one of the greatest rulers in existence through the word of his general Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins, Hannibal, Noah). We get to see his uncomfortably sensual relationship with his mother (Angelina Jolie, Maleficent, Kung Fu Panda 2), his constant need to kill his father (Val Kilmer, Heat, Palo Alto), his undersensualized sexual relationship with friend Hephaistion (Jared Leto, Requiem for a Dream, Dallas Buyers Club), and his animalistic relationship with first wife Roxane (Rosario Dawson, Sin City, Cesar Chavez). Seriously, I had no idea what was going on throughout this movie. It jumps around so damn much that I couldn’t quite remember where we were in time, which wasn’t helped with the horrible makeup that showed us that in ancient times, no one actually aged; apparently Angelina Jolie is hot no matter what age she is and Anthony Hopkins was actually born an aged bearded old man (that being said, at least a younger actor was cast to play Hopkins’ role in his flashbacks, that’s about it). I feel like this film should have been released with a light up timeline that people could check off events in the movie as they happen so we knew exactly what the hell was going on.

Colin Farrell kills it in this movie. Wait, I meant to say he killed this movie. If nothing else, I was so pissed to find that he absolutely tried his hardest not to act for the entirety of this three-hour tour. Oh, I didn’t know that Alexander was Irish. Hmmm, interesting.

I also didn’t know that somehow Alexander’s mother Olympias was Russian. It certainly seemed that way from the broken accent work given by Angelina Jolie.

Val Kilmer actually gives a nice enough performance were it not for the atrocious makeup work on his eye. You can literally see the prosthetic piece’s edge. Totally takes away what he could put down.

I actually like Jared Leto’s work as well as that of Rosario Dawson, but I felt like both roles were wasted by having nothing to do (again, I’m not complaining about Rosario’s nude scene, perhaps the only scene in the film worth keeping in the finished film).

And what was going on with Anthony Hopkins in this movie? Was his performance work based on a Roomba, because it seemed to me like he was walking all around his little balcony for 175 minutes bopping back and forth like a screensaver on a DVD player. I kept waiting to see if he would bump into a corner ‘cause I just wanted to see what would happen.

Honestly, I have never seen a more wasted group of talent. This was one of those films that marked the end of Stone’s career; it really hasn’t moved much in a good direction since. From the opening overlong and boring prologue to the ending that seems to discredit any actual fact in the film, Alexander is a pointless film not worth the three different cuts the film had. Good movies are supposed to have multiple cuts, like Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Lord of the Rings films. It seemed like maybe if they kept recutting the picture, maybe they’d find a version that worked (ultimately, they did not). Avoid at all costs.

1/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

November 16, 2014 0