The Number 23 (2007) July 31, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , 2 commentsDirected by: Joel Schumacher
Jim Carrey has managed to forge some excellent performances out of serious (or at least semi-serious) roles in recent years. After emerging from an all-out comic background he has impressed in The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But here he turns his attentions to the psychological thriller, a new genre and a new challenge – ask an Ace Ventura-era Carrey where he would be in 10 years, and I don’t think even he would’ve guessed doing this.
The story centres on Walter Sparrow, a good-natured dogcatcher living an ordinary life with his wife and son. However, when Walter starts reading a mysterious book called The Number 23, he finds more than a few similarities between himself and the book’s main character, detective Fingerling. Quickly becoming obsessed by the number, Walter realises that his fate may be tied to that of the novel, in which Fingerling is driven to dementia and ultimately commits a murder. Walter decides to track down the author in an attempt to understand the story and free himself from its all-encompassing curse.
As narratives go, this one sets up its premise well, with an effective retelling of all the numerical consistencies surrounding the figure 23. Unfortunately, it quickly starts to fall apart as the ‘mystery’ gets deeper and by the end it really feels like the plot is just unspooling onto the floor under the desperate attempts to give the film a darkness and edge that it never really earns.
The script doesn’t come off well either, with characters obsessively speaking every event out-loud to make sure we’re still following what isn’t really that complex a plotline, while the remaining story is shoved in our face by a near-constant voiceover. The twists and turns in the tale are barely relevant at times, and some of them render other earlier sections of the film pointless – the actions of the mysterious dog, for example.
There are some interesting visual pieces though, as well as an attempt at film noir which, admittedly, doesn’t really work, playing out as merely a soft-focus differentiation from the main story. Still, director Joel Schumacher keeps the film on track and drops in some sly touches with the cinematography which help give this movie at least some semblance of style. The performances too, are fine, although I wonder how the cast weren’t cracking up trying to deliver some of the lines with a serious expression. I sometimes felt like Carrey may well be taking it all a bit too seriously (something I never thought I’d be able to say about him), and I hope that he doesn’t believe this is a serious thriller worthy of the genre.
All in all, it’s a bit of a mess really. Way too typical in its narrative, which is both a shame and slightly annoying given that the filmmakers had a good central premise on their hands – but when every plot point is this forced, you know something is wrong. Unfortunately, for all its style and effort the movie fails to create any form of suspense or lasting effect, which is what a good psychological thriller demands. What you’re left with neither thrills, nor taxes the brain in any real way.
The Break-Up (2006) July 28, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , 2 commentsDirected by: Peyton Reed
This romantic comedy turns the usual boy meets girl story on its head, telling the tale of two people going through the slightly more painful stages of a break-up. Obviously, and in order to keep the movie entertaining, they don’t take it amicably, which leads to a no-holds-barred battle of the sexes with each partner constantly trying to one-up the other to see who will get jealous, or relent, before they lose their apartment and their life together, forever.
Vince Vaughn is Gary Grobowski, a bus tour operator in the Chicago area, who meets and falls for Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston), an art-dealership worker. Cut to some time later and the couple are sharing an apartment together, but the relationship is under strain. Gary’s immature attitude and Brooke’s slightly overbearing nature leads to a less than harmonious separation that neither party really wants. However, with nowhere else to live and under bad advice from friends, the couple wage a war that threatens to destroy the good nature of both parties.
The story is conveyed in quite an interesting way, with a little bit of Gary and Brooke’s first meeting preceding the credits, followed by a jump forward into the ‘beginning of the end’ of their relationship. From there, the movie plays out in a series of segments that show various clashes or schemes between the couple as they are forced to live together in a state of disharmony. These pieces are woven together neatly though, making it difficult to see the joins and stopping it from becoming just a series of bad relationship sketches. The conclusion is a nice touch also, and worth sticking around for.
The film features a strong cast who easily make up for any deficiencies in the script – although it can be hard to tell where the written word stops and the improvising begins. Vince Vaughn is naturally funny, but plays very well next to Jennifer Aniston who also gets to flex her comic muscle throughout. Great too, are the supporting cast, playing the comedic aspects of their respective ‘side’ to great effect. On Brooke’s side are the slightly quirky Justin Long and an authoritative Joey Lauren Adams, while on Gary’s side, Jason Bateman and Vaughn’s Swingers comrade Jon Favreau.
It’s a pretty grounded movie, and very believable in terms of the central couple’s characterisation and attitudes. The conversations between Gary and best-friend Johnny, or Brooke and her confidant Addie, seem pretty true to life, even as the couple’s situation gets more and more bizarre. Meanwhile, Bring It On and Down With Love director Peyton Reed keeps things moving along nicely, even if the nature of this movie places more emphasis on the cast than any fancy visual stylistics.
Overall, this is a solid 105-minutes; both funny and heartfelt in the right places, with some quality performances from a fine set of actors and actresses, and featuring decent pacing and direction. So surely a perfect score? Well not exactly, but that’s mainly down to the simplistic nature of the plot and a need for more overtly funny moments, rather than the sly smiles and chuckles it presents. The main failing is that any time a laugh is directed at either of the characters, you never really know if you are supposed to join in, or empathise. Still, its re-working of the standard love story narrative is very effective, and although it may stray into stereotypical regions every so often, the ending still plays out very strongly. There’s certainly plenty worth seeing, but nothing worth really getting attached to.
Monster House (2006) July 25, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , 1 comment so farDirected by: Gil Kenan
Maybe the darkest of the children’s animated features from last year, this film presented a refreshing alternative from the glut of other computer generated tales which mainly consisted of cute, good-natured animals going on various adventures (see: Barnyard, Over The Hedge, Ice Age 2 [review], Happy Feet [review]). The only real worry is whether it would go too far, overstating its horror elements and alienating the audience it so needs in order to succeed.
The story takes place over the course of a couple of days in the life of two friends, DJ and Chouder, who, along with their new accomplice Jenny, discover a terrifying secret about the house across the street: it’s alive! Worse than this, it’s eating anybody who comes close to finding out. After attempts to explain the situation to adults ends in ridicule, and with Halloween night approaching (when unaccompanied children will be freely available for the house to digest), the threesome decide to take matters into their own hands – the house must be destroyed.
The first detail worth noting is the high quality of voice acting on display, from child actors Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke in the lead roles, to the host of adult talent on display. Traditional comic actors such as Jason Lee and Kevin James play very well next to those who are new to voice acting such as Maggie Gyllenhaal and Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder.
As well as this, the character animation is very good for the most part, taking a slightly plasticine-y approach to the models which helps subside the need for pin-point realism in everything else – though that’s not to say that Sony Animation don’t give it their all, putting great amounts of work into the locations and objects. They’ve also put some extra effort into the effects, which are quite spectacular, especially in the sequences where the house comes alive.
If there’s one criticism to be made it’s that sometimes the characters are slightly over-exaggerated in their motions, but given the cartoon look of the whole thing it will probably pass most people by unnoticed. It’s also interesting to note that the character performances were motion captured for this movie, which begs the question whether the actors were told to over-state their gestures for capture, or whether the animators took some liberties during production.
The movie is a comfortable 90-minutes in length, but it wastes no time in getting on with the central story, letting the characters develop alongside the main plotline. This is an admirable move as it is often the case that, for better or for worse, the opening section of a kids movie is all about meeting the characters and providing a lead-in to the actual plot. Naturally, there are a couple of sly jokes for adults dropped in, but the humour mainly directs itself either straight at kids, or to a general audience through particularly funny line readings. The film does have its share of amusing moments nonetheless; a notable achievement given the subtle creepiness that haunts much of the midsection of the movie.
It’s not perfect though, and doesn’t quite live up to the storytelling standards set by the likes of Pixar. There’s something very linear and straightforward about the plot of Monster House, so much so that towards the end it seems to be begging for a bit more. Still, it’s commendable for challenging the genre of horror and how it can be used in a family movie context, and certainly has enough to entertain both young and old for the duration.
Shrek the Third (2007) July 21, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , 3 commentsDirected by: Chris Miller
It takes two movies to ensure a franchise is working: one to establish the characters and build popularity, and another to prove that the first was not just a fluke. Conversely, it also takes two movies to kill a franchise, since the momentum built up by earlier successes will result in huge audience figures for any subsequent ‘three-quel’, regardless of its quality. It then requires a further outing for people to be able to learn from their mistake - but rarely does it get this far.
Shrek The Third provides an excellent example of this, continuing the wildly successful franchise by simply leaning on its past achievements and providing diminishing returns for those still excited to see anything Shrek-related. The plot this time around features Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots having to go on an adventure to bring back Prince Arthur from a medieval high school, so that he can take over from the recently deceased King Harold, lest Shrek take the throne himself. Meanwhile, with the ogre absent, Prince Charming returns to Far Far Away with a crew of classic villains, where he takes Princess Fiona prisoner and begins his own rule of the land.
Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of Shrek, so while I can admit that the first movie was inventive in its nature; twisting famous fairytale stories and characters, I find even the second film a little bit of a stretch. It did its job though and introduced decent new characters to the fold while playing on similar themes to the original. This time around, much of the fairytale-emphasis has been lost, maybe because the writers have hit the limit on what they can really do with that material, or maybe because it has subsequently been done to death following the success of the original Shrek. They have dropped the number of unnecessarily pop-culture references though, which is a wise move given how they quickly they age.
The story for this third instalment feels overly simple and even verges on obvious (especially the pregnancy thread), which gives the whole film a sense of pointlessness, as if admitting to the fact that people will come to see anything with the green ogre, that donkey, and the little cat in it. The script still throws jokes in by the bucket-load, but there’s way more duds than hits, with some gags not getting enough attention, 
while others more than outstay their welcome. When it’s not trying to be funny, it’s trying to be meaningful, but even that doesn’t play well with a botched effort at doing the father-son relationship thing between Shrek and Arthur, followed by a last-minute “we should all learn to get along” speech that carries almost no weight.
Concentrating on more positive areas, the voice acting is perfectly fine, with everyone returning to their previous roles clearly comfortable enough just to get on with it, while newcomers Justin Timberlake and Eric Idle do good things with under-developed characters. Precedence is clearly given to the ‘funny’ characters though, so it is Myers, Murphy and Banderas (who by popularity of character has leapfrogged many earlier counterparts), who get 90-per-cent of the jokes, with everyone else scrapping over the rest of the comedic material.
Also, the animation is gorgeously presented, especially on Shrek himself. I was very impressed by the bobbles on his cloth undershirt – this is the kind of ‘reality’ that is often lost on CG animation, and results in it looking too clean or lacking in detail. Whether the fact that I noticed this tiny element is a good or a bad thing is probably up for debate, but at least it gave me something to do while the simplistic plot line was plodding along.
Given the general reaction, this should be the beginning of the end for DreamWorks Animation’s star project – yet another franchise driven into the ground by lack of quality control in the sequels. I say ‘should’, of course, because this will not be the last we see of these characters. Dreamworks have already put plans in place for Shrek 4 and 5, as well as the often-awkward spin-off movie – specifically for Puss In Boots. Is this franchise on its deathbed though? Will people avoid subsequent sequels now? I fear not, since what Shrek The Third offers us is a harmless 92-minutes for children, and that’s something that will always be called for in the summer holidays. Whoever takes on the task of making the next film desperately needs to put the magic back in though, if they want to win over critics and parents too.
The Fountain (2006) July 18, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , 2 commentsDirected by: Darren Aronofsky
This tale blends the unlikely elements of romance and sci-fi to tell a story of life, love and loss, taking place across three distinct time zones: the 16th century, the present day and the future of 2500. In the past, a conquistador (Hugh Jackman) searches for the mystical tree of life to serve his queen (Rachel Weisz), while in modern times, a scientist (Hugh Jackman, again) wrestles with his work on brain tumours in order to save his dying wife (Rachel Weisz). Meanwhile, a man (guess who?) travels through space towards a dying star with only his bubble spacecraft and a tree for company. All three of these quests for life converge to form an enlightening experience for everyone involved.
Just as it sounds, the Fountain is a complex tale, although thankfully it’s not told in a way that is particularly confusing. The concepts and visuals may have you scratching your head, but the meaning behind them is actually made fairly clear – certainly the main themes anyway. The finer details are then left to your imagination.
Writer and director Darren Aronofsky works hard to put his own stamp on the movie, with some visually arresting sequences that intersperse themselves amid the comparatively ordinary present-day scenes. The advantage of having a single vision behind both the dialogue and the camera is clear here, with a script that highlights the more spiritual aspects of the film, while suitably complementing its sci-fi and fantasy elements.
Central performers Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz pretty much carry the movie, while the secondary cast merely pop their heads in every so often. These are solid performances though, especially from Jackman who is required to play husband, reminiscent space-traveller, and 16th Century warrior across the course of the picture.
Even without the bizarre narrative structure, just the sheer style and mix of genres has the ability to make this a bit of a Marmite movie. Unfortunately, for me, the criticism outweighs the praise. Firstly, while I’m certainly not against open-ended stories and metaphorical plot threads, I wish this film had tied its sequences together slightly tighter – especially the scenes set in 2500 which present a somewhat ill explained version of the character of Tom. Secondly, despite the majestic visual spectacle on display during the past and future storylines, I actually thought that the strongest emotions and the best conveyance of the film’s spiritual themes came from the present day story, which plays out nicely without any interference from artistic grandeur.
This is clearly a difficult movie to assess as a whole because while I can’t say that I was a massive fan of it, there is certainly a lot to enjoy if you’re an admirer of this fantasy-art style of filmmaking. Aronofsky’s vision translates itself to the screen very well, with events that you can only get away with in a conceptual piece such as this. But enveloping a human story in fantasy elements can often have the effect of weakening, not strengthening, a film’s core values, and there are times when The Fountain maybe pushes its artistic liberties a little too far.