Category Archives: 2004 Movies
Hellboy (2004) [Review Re-View]
Originally released April 2, 2004:
Guillermo del Toro loves things that go bump in the night. The Mexican born writer/director has shown prowess at slimy, spooky creatures with Cronos and 1997’s Mimic. He helmed the 2002 sequel to Blade, which had super vampires whose mouths would open up into four sections with rows of chattering teeth. The man sure loves his movie monsters. del Toro also loved Mike Mignola’s cult comic book Hellboy enough to turn down directing Harry Potter 3 and Blade 3 to ensure he could bring Hellboy to the big screen. Was it worth the sacrifice?
Let me just explain to you the villains of this movie as an example of how ridiculously stupid Hellboy is. The villains are … Nazis. Yes, the tried and true villains everyone can hate – Nazis. But these ain’t yo’ daddy’s Nazis; they’re immortal and led by zombie Rasputin (yes, the Rasputin). They all wish to puncture a hole into another dimension. What’s in this alternate dimension? Why nothing except for a giant floating spaceship that houses, I kid you not, the Seven Gods of Chaos, which all happen to be gigantic space squids. Why would anyone create a universe that has nothing but the imprisoned gods of evil? That seems awfully precarious. How exactly are giant squids going to take over the industrialized, nuclear-age world? Shoot ink at everyone? Sorry, space ink?
Let me not forget a Nazi assassin and his handy dandy arm-length blades. This assassin is also 100 years old and his body is filled entirely with sand. He winds himself up like a big clock. But if his body is filled completely with sand how can the clock gears work inside? You see what the normal audience member has to deal with? Plus these are just the villains, there’s a whole plot left to toil over as well.
The story revolves around a hulking, red demon named Hellboy (veteran character actor Ron Perlman). Hellboy escaped the space squid dimension in the 1940s when the Nazis unsuccessfully tried to open a dimensional hole large enough for your everyday on-the-go space squid. Now, Hellboy is an elite soldier for the government’s Bureau of Paranormal Research. He fights the creepy crawlies. He has to deal with a wide-eyed rookie, the watch of his “father” (John Hurt) and an attempt to rekindle a romance with a mentally troubled fire starter (Selma Blair). Oh yeah, and all the Nazi/Rasputin/space squid stuff mentioned before.
Perlman is really the only redeeming thing about this movie. The makeup is impressive, and he gives an enjoyably droll performance as a man who fights monsters with the same ho-hum-ness as a plumber reacts to clogged sinks. The rest of the acting runs the gamut of either being too serious (I’m looking at you Blair) or just too over-the-top silly (I’m looking at you, league of villains).
Hellboy is strung together with bizarre inanities, flat one-liners, heavy Catholic imagery, conflicting logic and contradictions, ridiculous villains, painful comic relief, half-baked romance and frustratingly ever-changing plot devices.
Watching Hellboy is like playing tag with a kid that keeps making up new rules as he goes (“You can’t tag me; I have an invisibility shield!”), and after a while you lose any interest. Late in the film, the Nazis will all of a sudden decide not to be immortal, and at a very inopportune time. Why? How? I don’t know. Hellboy also gets sudden new powers for some reason. Like he can bring people back to life by whispering otherworldly threats in their ears. For some reason nobody’s clothes burn when they’re set on fire.
Not only does Hellboy frustrate by changing the rules of its world arbitrarily, it will also frustrate out of sheer uninhibited stupidity. How come characters can’t hear or see a pendulum the size of the Chrysler building? How come during a vision of the apocalypse we see a newspaper that actually had the time and staff, during the Apocalypse, to print an issue that reads, “APOCALYPSE”? Why doesn’t Blair use her pyro superpowers immediately to vanquish all the H.P. Lovecraft creatures instead of letting Hellboy foolishly wrestle with them all? The gaping holes in Hellboy are large enough to squeeze a gigantic space squid through.
All this frustration and insanity might have been moot if the action sequences were somewhat thrilling. Sadly, they are not. del Toro’s action sequences seldom matter. There’s such little consequence of what’s going on that the action becomes stiff and lifeless. The first time we see Hellboy chase a creature through city streets it’s a fun experience, but soon the novelty wears off. The overuse of CGI wears down the audience, and after the third or fourth time we watch Hellboy battle the same monster, the audience is ready to go to sleep. There’s little entertainment in the film’s action sequences but just as much frustration and stupidity.
I have never watched a film that induced more eye rolls, shoulder shrugs, raised eyebrows, pained and confused glances and mutters of, “What the hell (boy)?” Comic book aficionados may enjoy the fruits of Hellboy but general audiences will simply shrug. I’m amazed that the majority of film critics seem to think positively about this movie. Maybe I’m the last sane person in an insane world but Hellboy is one of the worst films of the year and one of the craziest films you could ever hope to see in a lifetime.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
When I first saw 2004’s Hellboy, toward the tail end of my undergraduate years that April, I had no real familiarity with the character and went in with my pal, and fellow college newspaper entertainment critic Dan Hille. I went in a blank slate to the grumbling demonic lug created by Mike Mignola. To say I was underwhelmed would be an understatement in my original review. I had an extremely hard time gelling with the world and finding some firm internal logic, and my general astonishment colored every inch of that incredulous review from a snarky 22-year-old soon-to-be college grad. Twenty years later, we have a sequel, reboot, and a series of animated shorts and feature-length films, so the character is much better known today than back in 2004. I also think its occult-heavy, Lovecraftian world-building has also been further established through mainstream horror and science fiction projects. So, in 2024, I’m more familiar with the title character, the cultural connections and background, and especially Guilermo del Toro as a filmmaker, and I’m still left unmoved by this initial pitch to the character and his weird world.
It took del Toro and company years to get this movie made as the big studios lacked faith in the material, in Ron Perlamn as the lead, and in superhero and comic book properties period. This really was its own superhero story with outlandish villains, oversized heroes burdened with secrecy, shame, and guilt, and heavy themes reaching into religion and determinism. The concept of an underground agency of monsters to fight monsters is a good starting point for stories, and Perlman brings the right degree of curmudgeon charm to the outcast character who might become the ultimate hero of the world or its instrument of doom. The iconography of a demon trying to be a good guy provides a fun sense of irony, as well as a natural point of conflict as the wider world would have trouble seeing past the red skin, forked tail, and big curved horns. It makes me think of the gut-punch reveal from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End where the benevolent aliens look exactly like the common visualization of a hooved and horned demon. The starting point for Hellboy has potential. However, it’s the rest that ultimately lost me.
Secret agencies and hidden conspiracies working behind the scene need to, themselves, be interesting. Think of the Men in Black and their assortment of goodies and agents. With the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD), I expect more from the supporting characters and what they can unlock about our understanding of the world and the unknown. There really are only two super-powered supporting players, with Doug Jones playing Abe Sapian, a variation on the Creature from the Black Lagoon gillman, and Selma Blair as a pyrokinetic woman who checks herself into mental asylums to protect others. Both of these characters have possibility and are fellow outcasts like Hellboy, but neither feels sufficiently fleshed out and incorporated into this story. Because of Abe’s scenic limitations of being in water, he serves as more of a taste of “the world world” and narrative device. He’s not even involved in the entire final act of labyrinth misadventures. With Blair’s unstable pyro, her character is relegated to a tormented love interest for Hellboy to save, get jealous, and also save again through even more ludicrous means. For a secret agency, it all feels a little too small.
The biggest side character is John Myers (Rupert Evans, The Man in the High Castle), invented for the movie to be the audience’s entry point into learning more of this strange land of strange creatures. He’s a total bore, and he also doesn’t factor much more into the story than being a living reaction shot. He has one significant moment in the climax, and that’s simply telling Hellboy to remember who he is, ultimately convincing the big man to turn back from his destiny of enabling the apocalypse. Why do we need this character? Can’t another super-powered creature serve this same purpose? Why not Blair’s love interest figure, which would then present more attention on beginning that romantic connection between her and Hellboy? There’s a reason in X-Men that we followed a mutant to learn about other mutants and not some boring human. John Myers isn’t even included in the 2008 sequel, The Golden Army, because by that point he had served his only purpose of introducing us to a new world and being a benign romantic foil.
In a story with literal living Nazis brought to life through the magic of anti-Semitic clockwork, I’m dumbfounded why so much of the movie is watching Hellboy fight these boring lizard creatures with tongue tentacles. I appreciate the emphasis on practical effects and the reality that it’s a bunch of stunt performers in monster suits rather than complete CGI. The movie is another love letter of del Toro’s to his influences. His affection for the monsters and outsiders is apparent in every movie going back to his first, 1993’s Cronos. It’s too bad then that the primary opponent are these rudimentary lizard monsters that feel like the kind of easily disposable pawns you would see heroes fighting in other superhero spectacle. They’re faceless, and the fact they can regenerate and duplicate upon death doesn’t make them more formidable, only makes them more depressing as they can’t be easily rid of. If you’re going to give me giant space squids in an alternate dimension, then give me the giant space squids. If you’re going to give me Nazi zombies led by Rasputin, then give me that crazy mess. Don’t confine these potentially interesting villains to the opening and closing only. I will also say the ending is still a rather sizable letdown as far as how formidable these evil space squid gods might prove in a world of explosive devices and a modern military with a practical blank check for its budget.
Fun fact, at the time of its release, some theaters were so worried about playing a movie with “hell” in the title during Easter weekend, and coming off the ongoing success of The Passion of the Christ that brought in more conservative ticket-buyers, they decided to re-title it “Helloboy” on their theater marquis. I find this absolutely hilarious.
Hellboy has some points of interest, as del Toro was still fine-tuning his brand of fantasy-horror into a more mass-appealing conduit. It’s got terrific makeup effects and some fun ideas, and it’s also certifiably insane. It threw me for a loop back in 2004, and I just couldn’t process this level of hyper absurd elements jumbled together, and it still makes for a bumpy viewing. I enjoyed the 2008 sequel much more, which took more of a dark fantasy bent, and I wonder if I was more accepting of that realm of material than I was for Lovecraftian sci-fi nonsense. del Toro has learned from the Hellboy experience, becoming something of a masterful chameleon. He delivered one of the best kaiju action movies of all time that made me feel like a giddy kid. He created a haunting fairy tale timed to the Spanish Civil War. He created a charming romantic fable where a woman falls in love with a fish and it won an Oscar for Best Picture and he won Best Director. He created one of the most visually impressive stop-motion animated movies of all time that can make me cry like a baby and deservedly won another Oscar. Next up, he’s got another stop-motion animated movie and another creature feature, a remake of Frankenstein. Through his versatility, creative consistency, and inherent ability to find human drama in the most peculiar places, I’ll see any movie that del Toro decides to devote his worthy attention towards. Hellboy though? I’ve seen it twice now, and I think I can leave it at that. I’ll upgrade my earlier ranking but not too higher, Hoo boy is that 2004 review a fun read.
Re-View Grade: C
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Jersey Girl (2004) [Review Re-View]
Originally released March 25, 2004:
Writer/director Kevin Smith (Dogma) takes a stab at family friendly territory with the story of Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck), a music publicist who must give up the glamour of the big city to realize the realities of single fatherhood. Despite brief J. Lo involvement, Jersey Girl is by no means Gigli 2: Electric Boogaloo. Alternating between edgy humor and sweet family melodrama, Smith shows a growing sense of maturity. Liv Tyler stars as Maya, a liberated video store clerk and Ollie’’s real love interest. Tyler and Affleck have terrific chemistry and their scenes together are a playful highlight. The real star of Jersey Girl is nine-year-old Raquel Castro, who plays Ollie’’s daughter. Castro is delightful and her cherubic smile can light up the screen. Smith deals heavily with familiar clichés (how many films recently end with some parent rushing to their child’’s theatrical production?), but at least they seem to be clichés and elements that Smith feels are worth something. Much cute kiddie stuff can be expected, but the strength of Jersey Girl is the earnest appeal of the characters. Some sequences are laugh-out-loud funny (like Affleck discovering his daughter and a neighbor boy engaging in “the time-honored game of “doctor””), but there are just as many small character beats that could have you feeling some emotion. A late exchange between Ollie and his father (George Carlin) is heartwarming, as is the final image of the movie, a father and daughter embracing and swaying to music. Jersey Girl proves to be a sweetly enjoyable date movie from one of the most unlikely sources.
Nate’s Grade: B
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
When I started putting together my list of 2004 movies to re-watch for this year’s slate, my wife was not pregnant. We had been trying for a year and experienced some heartbreaking setbacks, but now, as I write my review of Jersey Girl, my reality is that my wife is indeed pregnant, and we’re expecting a baby this October and very excited. As you can expect, I’m also nervous. Now this movie about the changes of fatherhood has significantly more meaning for me personally.
In 2004, I was but a 22-year-old soon-to-be college graduate but also a devotee of writer/director Kevin Smith since my teenage years of discovering movies in the oh-so-exciting go-go decade of 1990s independent film. This was supposed to be Smith’s career pivot, as he’d reportedly closed the book on his View Askew universe of crude comedies and stoner hi-jinks with 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. Smith had become a parent in 1999 and, naturally, this altered the kinds of stories he wanted to tell. Although this didn’t last too long. In 2004, America was sick of Bennifer 1.0 and Jersey Girl was the second movie in less than a year pairing real-life couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. The stink from 2003’s Gigli, and the tabloid overexposure, had tamped down the country’s demand for more Bennifer, so Miramax removed all publicity of Lopez from the movie, pushed the release date back half a year, and even publicly revealed that Lopez’s character dies in childbirth in the first ten minutes. Even with its relatively modest budget for a studio film, Jersey Girl under-performed, critics lambasted it, and Smith returned to his vulgar adult comedy playground with 2006’s Clerks II, the sequel to where it all began. With the occasional stop into horror, Smith has stayed in his own insular world and only gotten more insular with sequels to his early comedies for his ever-shrinking fandom.
More so than any other movie, Jersey Girl is the outlier, the oddity, the path not taken. Watching it again in 2024, I’m more forgiving of this outlier even if it proves harder to love. Much of this is likely my own relatability with the main character’s plight, a New York City workaholic publicist Ollie Trinkie (Affleck) who loses everything in a short window of time, namely his high-profile city job and his wife Gertrude (Lopez). Now he’s back living with his father Bart (George Carlin) in New Jersey and raising a little girl Gertie (Raquel Castro) on his own. It’s not a revolutionary film concept, a selfish adult takes on the responsibility of another and changes their perception of themself and the world. In a way, it likely happens to every new parent, or I would hope, a paradigm shift of perspective. The insights that Jersey Girl offers about parenthood and priorities are nothing new but that doesn’t mean they are bad or not worthwhile. Without the context of Smith’s tonal pivot, Jersey Girl would likely be forgotten, more than it already has been to history. It’s Smith’s spin on the family movie cliches we’ve seen before, and that means there’s a limit to how much further he can take the overly familiar.
It’s a little deflating to watch an artist known for his imagination and vocabulary utilizing the building blocks of maudlin family movies for his new story. Even with a different storyteller, they are still the same recognizable pieces seen before in hundreds of other feel-good movies about parents learning that children are more important than that big meeting or promotion. Of course reducing everything down in life is reductive, and maybe that big meeting could allow the parent to be more present for their kid, provide a better life being neglected, but whenever you set up the climactic choice between family and career, family always wins. Maybe David Wain (They Came Together) is the kind of subversive genre artist who could send up these age-old cliches and end with the workaholic parent choosing their selfish career. Regardless, the movie’s strengths are its sincerity rather than ironic detachment. It would be hard to make this kind of movie from a cynical smart-alecky approach, and Jersey Girl reveals what any View Askew fan has long known, that deep down at heart Smith is a big softie. It’s more apparent nowadays with Smith’s recent output of increasingly sentimental movies about relationships, as well as Smith’s copious social media posts showcasing his torrent of tears in response to a movie or TV show (as a man who frequently cries from movies and TV, this is no affront to me). Smith wanted to tell a personal story of his own life changes through the familiar family movie vehicle, and while it doesn’t entirely stretch beyond its copious influences, it’s still singing true to Smith’s sincerity.
This is far from the disaster many have made it out to be in the past twenty years. Lopez is really good in her brief opening appearance with a natural radiant charm that makes you mourn her absence just like Ollie. Liv Tyler (Armageddon reunion) shows up midway through as Maya, a sexually progressive video store clerk who becomes the next love interest for our widower. When she discovers, to Ollie’s embarrassment, that he hasn’t had sex for seven years, the entire time after his wife’s passing, she takes it upon herself to help the guy out with some charitable casual sex. The scene is funny and finally makes use of a setup Smith has taken time with prior, Gertie not flushing the toilet after use (something I can already regrettably relate to raising children). When his daughter comes home early, Ollie and Maya hide in the shower, and it appears they have gotten away with it, except Gertie finally remembers to flush the toilet, sending a burst of hot water that causes Maya to screech and reveal their half-naked tryst. From there, little Gertie sits them both down, reminiscent of what Ollie did with her and a friend when he caught them playing “doctor,” and she squares her gaze and intones, very maturely: “What are your intentions with my father?” Even the big climactic event, the children’s musical performance the parent can’t miss lest they break their child’s heart, gets a little edge when Gertie and her family perform the throat-slitting/pie-making number from Sweeney Todd. There’s a terrific exchange between Ollie and Will Smith all about the changing dynamic of fatherhood, what they do for their kids, and how rewarding it proves, and having Smith be your ace-in-the-hole is great.
It would be neglectful of me to forget the postscript that, nearly twenty years after the demise of their engagement, that Affleck and Lopez reunited and married in 2022. We’re in the current realm of Bennifer 2.0 (unless your version of Bennifer 2.0 was when he married Jennifer Garner, but I’ll let you decide if this era is 2.0 or 3.0) and Lopez has released a companion documentary to her 2024 visual album (a.k.a. collection of music videos) that features her relationship with Affleck, and it’s called The Greatest Love Story Never Told, and it’s gotten good reviews. Also of note, Castro grew up into a budding pop idol and appeared on The Voice and Empire.
There are things that work here, enough that Jersey Girl might honestly age better than the majority of Smith’s rude and crude comedies (see: re-reviews for Dogma and Strike Back, and Reboot). It will never garner the love of Smith’s more successful movies, but it doesn’t deserve any reputation as a forgotten stepchild among Smith’s oeuvre, especially when you consider the man also has Yoga Hosiers on that resume. In 2004, I referred to Jersey Girl as a “sweetly enjoyable date movie,” and this still stands twenty years later. I’m a little softer in several ways and more forgiving as an adult cinephile, and more welcome to genuine acts of sincerity, so the winning moments of the movie still hit their mark for me. I write this as my wife is still in her first trimester, and while the due date seems so far away I know it will rush by, and then I, like Ollie, will be juggling my life as I knew it with my life as I now know it (you better believe the scene where he loses his spouse in childbirth hit me harder as a new intrusive nightmare to occupy my mind). Jersey Girl isn’t anything new or special, but it was special for Smith, and he finds ways to make you understand what that means for him, and what it might mean for you. I’ll take that.
Re-View Grade: B-
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The Passion of the Christ (2004) [Review Re-View]
Originally released February 25, 2004:
The Passion of the Christ is a retelling of the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ’s life (perhaps you’ve heard of him?). In these final hours we witness his betrayal at the hands of Judas, his trial by Jewish leaders, his sentencing by Pontius Pilate, his subsequent whippings and torture and finally his crucifixion. Throughout the film Jesus is tempted by Satan, who is pictured as a pasty figure in a black hood (kind of resembling Jeremy Irons from The Time Machine if anyone can remember). The Passion spares no expense to stage the most authentic portrayal of what Jesus of Nazareth endured in his final 12 hours of life.
For all the hullabaloo about being the most controversial film in years (and forgive me for even using the term “hullabaloo”), I can’t help but feel a smidgen of disappointment about the final product. The Passion is aptly passionate and full of striking images, beautiful photography and production values, and stirring performances all set to a rousing score. But what makes The Passion disappointing to me is the characters. You see, Mel Gibson’s epic does not devote any time to fleshing out the central characters. They are merely ciphers and the audience is expected to plug their feelings and opinions into these walking, bleeding symbols to give them life. Now, you could argue this is what religion is all about, but as far as a movie’s story goes it is weak. The Passion turns into a well-meaning and slick spectacle where character is not an issue. And as a spectacle The Passion is first-rate; the production is amazing and the violence is graphic and gasp-inducing. Do I think the majority of people will leave the theater moved and satisfied? Yes I do. But I can’t stop this nagging concern that The Passion was devoid of character and tried covering it up with enough violence to possibly twist its message into a Sunday school snuff film.
For my money, the best Biblical film is Martin Scorsese’s 1987 The Last Temptation of Christ (also a film mired in controversy). Last Temptation, unlike Gibson’s spectacle, was all about Jesus as a character and not simply as a physical martyr. Scorsese’s film dealt with a Christ consumed by doubt and fear and the frailties of being human. But the best part is the final 20 minutes when Jesus is tempted, by Satan, to step down from the cross and live out a normal life. Jesus walks away from the cross, marries Mary Magdalene, fathers children (this is where the controversy stemmed from but they were married) and dies at an old age. Jesus is then confronted by his aging apostles who chastise him for not living up to what he was supposed to do to save mankind. Jesus wakes up from the illusion and fulfills his mission and dies on the cross. Now, with the story of Last Temptation an audience has a greater appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus because they witness his fears and they witness the normal life he forgoes to die for man’s sins. There is a sense of gravity about what Jesus is sacrificing.
With The Passion Gibson figures if he can build a sense of grand sacrifice by gruesomely portraying the tortures Jesus endured. Even if it is Jesus, and this may sound blasphemous, torturing a character to create sympathy and likeability is the weakest writing trick you can do. Yes Jesus suffered a lot, yes we should all be horrified and grateful, and yes people will likely be moved at the unrelenting violence he endured, but in regards to telling a story, I cannot feel as much for characters whose only characterization is their suffering. Sure, The Passion flashes back to some happier moments of Jesus’ life, which I like to call the Jesus Greatest Hits collection, but the movie does not show us who Jesus was, what he felt (beyond agonizing pain) or the turmoil he went through in finally deciding to give up his own life for people that despised him. The Passion is not about character but about spectacle.
So let’s talk about the violence now, shall we? Gibson’s camera lovingly lingers on the gut-churning, harrowing, merciless level of violence. But this is his only message. It’s like Gibson is standing behind the camera and saying to the audience, “You see what Jesus suffered? Do you feel bad now? FLAY HIM MORE! How about now?” What was only three sentences of description in the Gospels takes up ten minutes of flogging screen time. Mad Mel has the urge to scourge. After an insane amount of time spent watching Jesus get flayed and beaten the violence starts to not just kill whatever spiritual message Gibson may have had in mind, but the violence becomes the message. The Passion does give an audience a fair understanding of the physical torture Jesus was subjected to, but the movie does not display Christ as fully human, enjoying life and love, or fully divine. The only thing The Passion shows us about Jesus is that the son of God sure knew how to take a whuppin’. For Gibson, the violence is the message and the point is to witness what Jesus endured. Some would call that sadistic.
The actors all do a fine job and it’s impressive that everyones’ lines is in two dead languages (Latin and Aramaic, though for the life of me I can’t tell them apart). But the acting is limited because of the nature of the film. Had there been more moments of character the acting would come across better. As it stands, the acting in The Passion is relegated to looks of anguish or looks of horror, interspersed with weeping. Monica Bellucci (The Matrix sequels) really has nothing to do as Mary Magdalene but run around in the background a lot. Jim Caviezel (Frequency, Angel Eyes) gives everything he has in the mighty big shoes he tries to fill. It’s too bad that his Jesus spends most of the screen time being beaten, which kind of hampers his acting range.
Now let’s address the anti-Semitic concerns. The Passion does portray a handful of Jewish religious leaders as instigators for Jesus’ eventual crucifixion, but there are also Jewish leaders who denounce their actions and just as many people bemoaning the torture of Jesus as there are calling for it. Who really comes off looking bad are the Romans. Excluding the efforts to make Pilate look apprehensive, the Roman soldiers are always seen kicking, punching, whipping, spitting on Jesus and laughing manically with their yellow teeth.
And like I said before, most people will be extremely satisfied with the film because it’s hard to find a person who doesn’t have an opinion on Jesus. Gibson is counting on audiences to walk in and fill in the holes of the character so that The Passion is more affecting. Gibson’s film is worthy spectacle, and despite the vacuum of character I did get choked up four separate times, mostly involving Jesus and his mother. The Passion is a well-made and well-intentioned film that will hit the right notes for many. I just wish there were more to it than spectacle. I really do.
Nate’s Grade: C
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
In 2004, Mel Gibson made an R-rated foreign film that was two hours of savage brutality against Jesus, and it wound up being one of the biggest box-office hits of the decade and forged a trail for other Hollywood execs to chase after a “faith-based audience.” It could be said that this grisly movie gave the people what they wanted, and apparently what they wanted was to watch their messiah suffer physical feats that should have killed any mortal five times over. Twenty years later, The Passion of the Christ is still a curiosity, a movie with so much technical quality and devotion to a specific purpose, but that purpose is so narrow: make people feel bad. If you were being charitable, you could argue that the sacrifice of Jesus is felt stronger when every whipping, beating, scourging, and blood-letting is endured from the audience. Except I don’t believe this, because that assumes that more time spent on visual carnage equals more appreciation earned, as if our empathy has an equation. The emphasis on the death of Jesus feels like a telling insight into certain elements within mainstream American religious culture, where the focus is on violence and loss and less so the resurrection of Jesus, wherein the man conquers death and preaches forgiveness of sin for all mankind. It’s the preoccupation with grievance and brutish power over the helping of others different and less fortunate from ourselves. I’m not going to say the hard-core fans of The Passion of the Christ are valuing the wrong spiritual ideals, but it was this Jesus guy who did say everyone should love thy neighbor as thyself.
This is going to be a rarity for my twenty-year re-review series, but I agree almost one hundred percent with everything I wrote in 2004. I can’t really improve upon that analysis and my explanation for the faults of the movie and its spiritual shortcomings. Some of these lines are still terrific: “…Twist its message into a Sunday school snuff film,” “The only thing The Passion shows us about the Son of God is that he sure knew how to take a whippin’,” and, “Mad Mel has the urge to scourge.” More time is spent obsessing over the blood of Jesus than any of his words. I’m still debating the exact legacy of this movie besides as a harbinger of a wider Christian marketplace as well as Jim Caviezel’s own god complex. Gibson only directed two other movies after, 2006’s Apocalypto and 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge. His personal failings also became hard for many to ignore after his anti-semetic drunken ramblings and allegations of abuse, relegating him chiefly to direct-to-streaming (13 films from 2020-2023). In many ways, The Passion of the Christ represents Gibson at his height of powers within Hollywood, and it was accomplished outside the studio system who thought he was crazy, though he proved them right for different reasons.
Some strange Passion facts lost to history. 1) This movie actually killed a viewer. During the crucifixion scene, a man suffered a fatal heart attack and later died. Sure, the man’s genetics and life-style choices are more likely at fault here, but had this man not seen Gibson’s movie he might have survived or at least been in a better capacity to deal with his eventual heart attack symptoms. 2) Gibson attempted to re-edit the movie for a PG-13 theatrical re-release in 2005, trimming five minutes of some of the more gruesome violence, yet the MPAA still said the movie was keeping its R-rating. 3) During filming, Caviezel was literally struck by lightning. 4) A sequel has been in development for almost twenty years, confirmed by Gibson’s Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace in 2016. In 2023, Gibson revealed he has multiple versions of the sequel script in the works, including one that visits hell. Caveizel has predicted the possible sequel would be the “biggest film in history,” but this is the same guy who declared Donald Trump as the modern-day Noah, so maybe let’s not regard this guy too credibly with his opinions.
The challenge with any on-screen depiction of Jesus is fleshing him out as man and god. Only focusing on one obscures the complexity of characterization, denying filmgoers a more engaging examination of the key figure of Christianity. I’d still advise everyone to watch Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ for all the important elements that The Passion of the Christ lacks. This is a movie designed only for brutal spectacle and nothing more, and it’s just as tedious and empty now as it was twenty years ago. Apparently, Scorsese feels like he still has more to say on the subject and is planning another Jesus movie based on a 2016 book by Shūsaku Endō, the same author of the source material for Silence. While I would maintain that Scorsese has already made the greatest movie about Jesus, as well as the greatest movie about the exploration and challenge of reckoning with faith (2016’s Silence), who am I to deny one of our living legends another bite from the apple? It’ll certainly be more spiritually meaningful than watching an execution of Jesus for two miserable hours designed as enlightenment.
Re-Review Grade: C-
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The Butterfly Effect (2004) [Review Re-View]
Originally released January 23, 2004:
Notice: I found Ashton Kutcher, star of The Butterfly Effect, on a trip to buy dog food, and cordially asked him to write a review. This is what he sent me. It’’s totally him. I wouldn’’t make this stuff up. That would be dumb.
“So, like, this Nate guy asked me to do a review of my new awesomest movie, The Butterfly Effect. Dude, like anyone needs a review for the most awesomest movie ever. I mean, like, the term ‘awesomest movie ever’ should say, like, everything. The only thing possibly more awesome than The Butterfly Effect would be trucker hats …… or two chicks totally making out. And I only said ‘possibly more awesome,’ which doesn’’t mean it is more awesome, because, dude, like I said before, The Butterfly Effect is the most awesomest thing ever. You can’t dispute that. Don’t even try. I’m awesome!
Like, the story goes like this, man. I play this guy, like I know big stretch there, but he’s not the most awesome guy ever, which is what you’d be thinking since it’s the most awesomest movie ever. But no, he’s like this kid who blacks out and has this wickedly twisted childhood where he stars in his neighbor’s kiddie porn, has his dog set on fire, and, like, his dad is all crazy, or, like I like to say, insane in the ole’ membrane. Ha, I totally made that up right now. I’m awesome!
So, you’re like saying, ‘Dude, that movie sounds less than awesome. Yes, sir, I am having definite doubts about the awesomeness of this movie. Like, do I need to go to the movies to, like, feel bad? I got my parents to do that for me. That and school.’ Hey man, I’m there, I know what you feel. ‘Cause right when you are like, ‘Dude, when is Demi gonna’ show up playing his mom?’ I find these old journals of mine and, dude, use them to travel back in time. I know, the awesomeness has returned. And I use the journals to go back and try and punk time, man. I try and make things better and change the future but I like totally just make it worse. I know, double punk’d, man! I try and fix the life of this hot girl in the movie (she showed her boobs in that Road Trip movie, did you see that? That part where she shows her boobs, oh man … It is awesome) but things don’’t work out. Like she becomes a crack ho at one point. Dude, total punk’d. I’m awesome!
I should be taken as a serious actor. I didn’t hit my head on something and I grew a beard, what more do people need to know I got the goods? I mean, I don’t want to keep saying it but …… beard. C’mon! When actors want to be taken seriously they, like, grow beards. That’s why all those people in movies before 1970 (I know, it surprised me too that there were older movies) got awards and stuff. Beards, dude. Beards. When Billy Dee Shakespeare, like, invented acting, he totally imagined dudes, and chicks too, with beards. That’s why girls can’t be taken as serious actors, ‘cause they can’t grow beards. Ha. I’m awesome!
So, like, if you ever wondered what it would be like to see me, Ashton Kutcher, the most awesome man alive …who ever lived, no… the most awesome human being …-the most awesome thing …- ever, as a frat boy, or like, some poor dude with no arms, then you should see my new movie, The Butterfly Effect. After all, it is the most awesomest thing ever. That’s awesome. So, like, you people reading (is that what school is for?) should go see my movie. I’ll tell you why in two words: beard.”
Nate’s Grade: C+
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
It’s hard to remember but there was a time where Ashton Kutcher was the king of the early 2000s universe. He had parlayed his excitable supporting character on a late 90s network sitcom into a successful movie career top-lining wild comedies, and he had also found success as a producer, bringing new life to the hidden camera prank TV show with his eponymous Punk’d where many of his celebrity friends would be victimized for the lols. The man even single handedly made goofy trucker hats a fashion mainstay. I know we haven’t seen much of the Kutch in a while, as he’s settled into his non-profit charities and being a family man, ceding the spotlight to his wife and former sitcom girlfriend, Mila Kunis. The Kutcher brand was stronger than ever at the time of The Butterfly Effect, enough so that Kutcher signing on as an executive producer was what finally got this widely read industry script to finally get made. You must view The Butterfly Effect as a point not just in Kutcher’s career but also in millennial edge-lord culture, the concept that anything dark is therefore compelling, and the more twisted the better. Re-watching the movie twenty years later, I wanted to laugh out loud at so many points because The Butterfly Effect is so serious while being so silly as it plumbs every depth of misery, both for its characters as well as any potential audience members still keeping track of the messy metaphysics.
Kutcher plays the adult version of Evan, a kid who has had quite a challenging upbringing to put it mildly. Mom (Melora Walters) is doing her best while Evan’s father is locked away in a mental asylum, and she’s worried her child might have inherited dad’s instability. He blacks out for extended periods and is found holding a knife or having drawn a horrible massacre at school, and even worse neighborhood tragedies (oh, I’ll get to all of them). A psychiatrist advises him to start journaling as a therapeutic means, and so he does, and when adult Evan reads his childhood journals, the words become blurry and he’s able to travel back in time to those exact moments. With this great power, adult Evan tries to right the wrongs of his life and those around him, but as all time travel stories are destined to discover, there are cruel unintended consequences to endure.
Watching this movie is like watching a checklist of events that producers thought would be dark and grisly and So Messed Up, but this movie is so self-serious that it could be a parody of what a moody teenager would think of as a “mature movie.” Let me just list some of the content the movie covers: the drunken dad next door (Eric Stoltz) is a pedophile who records his daughter and son and Evan in child porn, the kids put a firecracker in a mailbox that blows up killing a mother and her baby, an angry kid kidnaps Evan’s dog and ties him in a bag and literally sets the bag on fire killing the animal, lots of violence against young children including murder, attempted suicide, disturbing behavior in children including traumatic self-harm at school, prison rape, multiple mental asylums, disfigurement and disability, prostitution and addiction, and in the original ending, the one I re-watched, a fetus literally strangling itself with its own umbilical cord rather than being born. Wow. Just… wow. This movie is only two hours and it crams enough sundry melodrama and grimdark grist to fill out a month of the grimiest soap opera ever. Because of the sheer amount of disturbing content, every new provocative addition makes the movie’s tone teeter further and further into unintended self-parody. Once you’re starting to process the homegrown child pornographer, the movie throws animal cruelty at you, and so on. It’s not enough that Evan had a bad childhood of trauma, but does he have to experience all the traumas?
Much of the movie follows Evan’s morose quest to improve the life of his unrequited love, Kayleigh (Amy Smart as the adult version). He runs into her after several years apart and merely bringing up the past with her pedophile father filming the two of them propels her to kill herself off-screen. She’s literally introduced in one scene and then in the next she’s dead, and it’s all Evan’s fault, so says her angry brother via the answering machine clunkily informing us. Evan goes back and stops her dad from molesting her, so now dad only molests her brother Tommy instead, who Evan kills as an adult defending himself. He travels back in time and now her brother is dead and she’s become a heroin-addicted hooker and that won’t do. He travels back again and manages to improve the lives of Kayleigh, Tommy, and their friend Lenny, except in this timeline Lenny and Kayeligh are the romantic couple and Evan has no arms, having lost them in the childhood mailbox explosion. He travels back again and this time Kayleigh gets blown up as a child. Ultimately Evan concludes he cannot save her and have everything he wants, so he makes some form of sacrifice by the end; in the theatrical cut, young Evan upsets her so she chooses to live with her mother rather than her pedophile father, and in the director’s cut, he ensures Kayleigh will never meet him by killing himself in the womb (his mother reveals she’s had multiple miscarriages, leaving the impression other future siblings have done the same). I appreciate how the filmmakers have streamlined their convoluted time travel tale into a simple task of trying to get the girl, but it also becomes so overwrought that I wanted to shake my head and sigh.
These characters are put through an emotional and often physical grinder, so it’s hard not to feel sorry for them. I long felt the film’s contempt for Kayleigh ever since young Evan (a young Logan Lerman) tells her, “You don’t even know how beautiful you are,” like she’s so stupid to see the obviousness of his compliment. I think dark comedy is the best way to read the movie, laughing along the way as Evan fails time and again to improve the lives of everyone through his space-time interventions. He can save this kid but doom his mother to lung cancer. He can save this person but is locked away in prison. It’s a no-win scenario for Evan, so he decides it’s better if he was never born, negating all the possible good he’s done in his life, including maybe being a force that could keep Kayleight from living with her dad. Maybe not having that friend and an advocate push her into that decision doomed her to a life of molestation, so way to go Evan.
I kind of loathe the time travel method in this movie but at least it provides a limitation that works within the universe of The Butterfly Effect. He can only travel reading his journals, which means he’s stuck in whatever nightmare timeline he’s responsible for unless he can recapture some part of his childhood scribblings. Reading them aloud is also an unexpected source of dark comedy because it makes me question how forthcoming a child of trauma would be about writing down his experiences in simplistic shorthand (“So today Kaleigh wasn’t feeling so good. Her face blew up. I was sad”). I did like that this inherited disorder provides more mystery to his family line, a source of material not covered in either of the Butterfly Effect direct-to-DVD sequels unrelated to Evan’s troubled story. This is perhaps the second worst method of time travel I’ve found in the movies after 1980’s Somewhere in Time where Christopher Reeve uses the power of positive thinking to convince himself he’s in 1912, and lo and behold he shall be.
Watching this movie is like revisiting a Goth phase you had as a brooding teenager but have since considered a point of embarrassment (not that being Gothic is something to be ashamed of, simply that it was an overzealous step in asserting a misguided sense of what being a mature adult meant, generally disaffected and cynical and edgy for its own attention). The Butterfly Effect is an endless improv game of “yes and” where the proceedings only get worse. My original review in 2004 was one of my more unconventional reviews, and I just wanted to adopt my perception of the “Kutcher brand” persona of the era and make a bunch of dumb jokes, several of which I’m not too ashamed to admit still made me chuckle (“two words: beard.”). I’d lower my grade a tad but there is still a car-crash fascination of watching a movie try so transparently hard to be so twisted.
Re-View Grade: C
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Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Hotel Rwanda almost didn’t get off the ground. You see, veteran supporting actor Don Cheadle is a favorite actor for directors but he’s not exactly box-office gold. Initial producers of Hotel Rwanda wanted none other than Will Smith to star. I don’t know about you good people but a sobering, challenging movie shedding light on the Rwandan genocide would lose some credibility if Smith was the above-the-title star. Producers also wanted Denzel Washington as a candidate; a better choice but still not right. The true-life portrayal of Paul Ruseabagina needed to be done by an actor that didn’t look like he could kick your ass. Paul was an ordinary man that didn’t ask to be a hero, not a hero looking for a fight. Cheadle was the perfect man for Hotel Rwanda. It just took a while for it to happen.
Back in 1994, Rwanda underwent a tumultuous civil war. In Rwanda, there are two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the minority Tutsis. Though the two look indistinguishable, there is an underlying tension because way back when Rwanda was under Belgian colonial control, the Belgians separated the Rwandan people by arbitrary rules like nose size, skin tone, etc. There is a rising tide of Tutsi resentment (radio propaganda refers to them as “cockroaches” needing to be exterminated). The Rwandan president has been assassinated and Hutu radio broadcasts are already pointing the finger at Tutsis.
Paul Ruseabagina (Cheadle) is a Rwandan hotel manager that stocks up favors by scratching the backs of the right people. The wheels of Rwandan authority need to be constantly greased, and Paul knows when to deploy a well-timed gift, joke, or bribe. Paul?s wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), a Tutsi as well as their children, is concerned when she starts seeing neighbors taken away at night. Paul assures her that their Tutsi relatives will be safe. Hutu rebels begin to start corralling neighborhoods to root out any Tutsis. Paul and his family retreat back to the hotel. As the violence increases more refugees arrive at the hotel for sanctuary, but Paul must keep the illusion that the hotel is still operational to ward off violence.
The United Nations promises to do something, but they remain only peacekeepers and not peace enforcers. The commanding officer (Nick Nolte) laments that he has only a handful of U.N. peacekeepers in charge of the whole nation. The United Nations and the West does do something: they evacuate all the white people. Citizens of Western nations are escorted out of the conflict, while they leave the rest of Rwanda to its own devices. Paul?s clinging hopes for Western involvement get bleak, and he assumes the responsibility for saving as many lives as he can, Hutu or Tutsi.
Cheadle gives one of the best performances of the year and he’s been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The strength of his character’s power lies in Paul’s ordinariness. He’s not a figure of intimidation, nor is he some kind of altruistic saint. There’s more than a passing resemblance to Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List. Like Schindler, Paul is a man reluctantly pulled into risking his life for others and by the end he becomes consumed with saving as many lives as he can. Cheadle is so commanding that he can make you wince just by watching the weariness in his eyes.
There’s a moment late in Hotel Rwanda, where Paul is stalking the hallways trying to find his wife and children. And in an instant he suddenly remembers careful instructions he gave to his wife. Paul nearly bowls over with the sudden pang of terror but keeps his stride. It’s a sharp and powerful moment where the audience thinks alongside Paul and experiences the same awful gasp. In that moment, as well as countless others, Cheadle has worked his way so deep into his character that the two are one in the same. Cheadle has long been one of the most underrated actors, and now with Hotel Rwanda there is no doubt that Cheadle is one of the greatest living actors we have.
But Hotel Rwanda is not just a one-man show. Sophie Okonedo also garnered a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Okonedo is no pushover and she does more than needle Paul when it comes to the well being of their family. She’s a strong, caring, thoughtful woman. What makes her even more impressive is that, as a Tutsi, she could be murdered at any time. She gives an equally powerful performance of a woman finding strength amongst her own fear.
Writer/director Terry George keeps the emotion high by smartly relying on restraint when telling his portrait of horror. The events of the Rwandan genocide are so appalling, that it would have been so easy, and even understandable, had George loaded his film with scene after scene of graphic violence to jar the viewer. However, George refrains from numbing an audience with violent depictions, and instead chooses quieter, more somber moments that turn out to be far more terrifying than just seeing blunt violence. Hearing an aid worker recount witnessing a massacre of children to wipe out the next generation of Tutsis will chill you to the bone. There are some disturbing moments, like when Paul takes a very bumpy ride in the mists, but George refuses to numb an audience and works our emotions to a breaking point.
Hotel Rwanda is sobering and very emotional, but you will also leave the theater with an overwhelming feeling of shame. It’s easy to watch films about dated atrocities like depictions of the Holocaust. You can say, “Well, I wasn’t alive. If I was, and people like me, surely we would not sit back and let such actions take place under our watch.” Not this time. Not with Hotel Rwanda. Everyone seeing Hotel Rwanda more than likely was alive in 1994, and we did exactly as a character warned: we watched what was happening on TV and went back to eating our dinners. Nolte’s U.N. rep tells Paul that the West refuses to see him and Rwandans as valuable (“You’re worse than a n****r [to them]; you’re an Af-ri-can.”). You?ll feel many emotions while viewing Hotel Rwanda and the deepest and longest lasting may be shame.
The film is clearly in the genre of “outrage cinema,” normally a genre that overpowers a viewer’s emotions. In lesser hands Hotel Rwanda would have been unrelenting to maintain a level of shock. George allows an audience to feel for the story’s characters before he lets the horrors loose. The result is that an audience attaches itself to characters because of who they are, not just because of the anguish they endure. As the intensity of the situation mounts we feel stronger ties to the people of Hotel Rwanda. That is good cinema.
Hotel Rwanda is an emotionally gripping portrait of the dignity found during our darkest days. George has skillfully created a sobering movie. Cheadle and Okonedo deliver wrenching performances as the faces of good amongst ongoing genocide. This isn’t like Black Hawk Down where the faces of screaming, angry black people merge into one black form the audience uneasily grows to hate. In Hotel Rwanda, the heroes are everyday Africans, the bad guys are everyday Africans, and the West is the apathetic referee unwilling to act. Hopefully after George’s film, it’ll be hard to hear about a million massacred and go back to eating your dinner.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Primer (2004)
I was intrigued about Primer because I had been told it was classy, smart sci-fi that’s so often missing in today’s entertainment line-up (see: Sci-Fi channel’s Mansquito). It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and the critical reviews had been generally very positive. So my expectations were high for a well wrought, high brow film analyzing time travel. What I got was one long, pretentious, incomprehensible, poorly paced and shot techno lecture. Oh it got bad. Oh did it get bad.
Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) run a team of inventors out of their garage. Their newest invention seems promising but they’re still confused about what it does. Aaron and Abe’s more commercially minded partners want to patent it and sell it. Aaron and Abe inspect their invention further and discover it has the ability to distort time. They invent larger versions and time travel themselves and thus create all kinds of paradoxes and loops and confusion for themselves and a viewing audience.
Watching Primer is like reading an instruction manual. The movie is practically crushed to death by techno terminology and all kinds of geek speak. The only people that will be able to follow along are those well-versed in quantum physics and engineering. Indeed, Primer has been called an attempt to make a “realistic time-travel movie,” which means no cars that can go 88 miles per hour. That’s fine and dandy but it makes for one awfully boring movie.
Primer would rather confound an audience than entertain them. There is a distinct difference between being complicated and being hard to follow. You’d need a couple volumes of Cliff Notes just to follow along Primer‘s talky and convoluted plot. I was so monumentally bored by Primer that I had to eject the DVD after 30 minutes. I have never in my life started a film at home and then turned it off, especially one I paid good money to rent, but after so many minutes of watching people talk above my head in a different language (techno jargon) I had reached my breaking point. Primer will frustrate most viewers because most will not be able to follow what is going on, and a normal human being can reasonably only sit for so long in the dark.
I did restart Primer and watched it to its completion, a scant 75 minutes long. The last 20 minutes is easier to grasp because it does finally deal with time travel and re-staging events. It’s a very long time to get to anything comprehensible. I probably should watch Primer again in all fairness but I have the suspicion that if I did my body would completely shut down on me in defense. Some people will love this and call it visionary, but those will be a very select group. It’s not just that Primer is incomprehensible but the film is also horrifically paced. When you don’t know what’s being said and what’s going on then scenes tend to drag because there is no connection. This movie is soooooo slow and it’s made all the worse by characters that are merely figureheads, dialogue that’s confusing and wooden, and a story that would rather spew ideas than a plot.
Writer/director/star Shane Carruth seems to have high ambitions but he has no empathy for an audience. Films can be dense and thought-provoking but they need to be accessible. Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko is a sci-fi mind bender but it’s also an accessible, relatable, enjoyable movie that’s become a cult favorite. Carruth also seems to think that shooting half the movie out of focus is a good idea.
I’m not against a smart movie, nor am I against science fiction that attempts to explore profound concepts and ideals. What I am against, however, is wasting my time with a tech lecture disguised as quality entertainment. Primer is obtuse, slow, convoluted, frustrating and pretentiously impenetrable. After finally finishing Primer I scanned the DVD spine and noticed it said, “Thriller.” I laughed so hard I almost fell over. The only way Primer could be a thriller is because you’ll be racing the clock for it to finish.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Closer (2004)
A funny thing happened to me when I sat in a theater to see Closer. It was packed, surely due to the film’s heavy star power. As the film played out I began to notice that my audience was laughing consistently, at moments that weren’t necessarily meant for humor. I don’t think they were laughing at the film, instead I think it was a defense. You see, I’m sure the majority of those couples read Closer to be a much different film than it is. They saw the pretty faces of Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts. They were expecting something, let’s say, lighter than the cruel savagery of Closer. When America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts compares the taste of two men’s semen, you know this isn’t any Gary Marshall movie (forgetting Exit to Eden, and please do).
Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer planning to pen a novel one of these days. He locks his eyes on Alice (Natalie Portman), a stripper from the States, while walking one day. She gets hit by a car and Dan takes her to a hospital. Flash forward and Dan and Alice are dating but his eyes are already wandering. During a photography session with Anna (Julia Roberts) he kisses her but is spurned. He takes his revenge on some soul in cyberspace, pretending to be Anna and arranging a meeting. That sap turns out to be Larry (Clive Owen), and they actually do start dating. Then things get messy. Couples leave one another, get back together, swap lovers, and come crawling and begging for forgiveness or punishment. The rest of Closer is like a long game of relationship Red Rover.
Director Mike Nichols has a definite affinity for his four actors (they are the only ones in the film with speaking parts). He shoots Closer as an actor’s showcase, with constant close-ups and no handheld camerawork. He places the emphasis on his actors. The results are more familiar to Nichols’ early films like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge. However, Closer isn’t as insightful as it thinks it is. It presents cruel characters doing dastardly acts, but this is stuff that wouldn’t impress Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men). There is intelligence to the film?s dialogue but it’s wasted on a ramshackle story.
The acting of Closer both helps and hurts the film. It seems that the two primarily wronged characters (Larry, Alice) give the better performances.
Owen is the standout performer of the ensemble. Playing the Dan role onstage has given him an intimate feel for the story’s characters. He’s the most decent of all four until the weight of circumstances finally pushes him to the limit. He’s the character the audience sees themselves in, so it helps that Owen gives a great performance of quiet dignity and slow self-destruction. He expresses more emotional turmoil in his eyes than most actors do with their whole body. Portman is having a breakthrough year for herself. First she showed pluck and grace in Garden State, and now with Closer she has graduated to the adult table. She radiates a fragility that makes you want to hug her. Portman will probably always look like a little doll (which works for her role as a stripper).
The beauty of Roberts and Law hurts the ugliness of their characters. I make no bones about my general dislike of Roberts as an actress. Her acting in Closer is like a soft-spoken, pouty child. She jumps from man to man, looking sullen or pensive, but comes off more petulant. Law is better, but his handsome devil is not in the details. Dan is a womanizing cad but we never get any understanding for why he acts as he does. Law can be hypnotizing, but like Roberts, his pretty facade takes away from the impact of Dan’s ugly behavior.
Despite the title, you get no closer to getting to know or understand the characters. It’s really almost a stretch to call them characters because they’re more accurately different positions in an argument. The only characterization Closer has to offer is suffering and inflicting suffering. Closer really has one voice coming out of the mouths of different pretty actors.
The film has the annoying habit of skipping ahead in time and not telling the audience. We’re left to catch verbal asides that time has passed. After a while you’ll get the hang of it simply by assuming that the beginning of every new scene is the start of a new date in time. Closer is nothing but a string of uncollected scenes, usually involving people leaving a lover or starting a new fling. The actors come on, do their part, then they leave and we move on to a different scene. This is not staged as a movie.
The trouble with Closer is that it never really feels like it’s going anywhere. There’s no progression. Sure, couples swap, people get revenge, but the connection of sequences is lacking. The way it is, Closer could have gone on forever. It’s a series of scenes smashed together, not a story that rises and falls and builds to a climax.
Closer is an exploration into the darkness of human behavior starring some of the prettiest actors Hollywood can spare. The story goes nowhere, the ending doesn’t accomplish much, the characters lack convincing depth, but some of the acting is good and there is a ray of intelligence to the film. Fans of the above-the-title actors should enter Closer with caution. It’s a dark film with little to feel good about. Closer is brooding, moody, and probably the first and last time we?ll hear Julia Roberts talk about the taste of semen. Unless, of course, Gary Marshall starts pre-production on Exit to Eden 2: Rosie O’Donnell’s Bondage Boogaloo.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Million Dollar Baby, much like its fledgling female boxing character, has come out of nowhere and made a considerable deal of noise. This little homespun film directed by Clint Eastwood didn’t have the glitz and sheen of other awards friendly movies, but now it seems that Eastwood?s own baby may clean up come Oscar time. Can Million Dollar Baby tackle the enormous hype surrounding it? Yes and no.
]Frankie (Eastwood) is a hardened boxing trainer too concerned for his fighters’ welfare to allow them to fight in championship bouts. He’s the kind of cynical old man that enjoys pestering a priest and causing him to unleash an F-bomb. Frankie and his longtime friend Scrap (Morgan Freeman) run a rundown gym and talk un-sentimentally about their older days as prize fighters. Then along comes Maggie (Hilary Swank), a 32-year old waitress who’s got nothing to believe in except her possibility as a boxer. She wants Frank to train her into the champ she knows she can be. He refuses saying he doesn’t train girls. She’s so determined she won’t take no for an answer. Frank finally agrees, especially after some help from Scrap, and starts to teach Maggie everything she needs to know to be a star pugilist. The two begin to open up to each other emotionally and Maggie seems destined to become a force in the ring.
Million Dollar Baby‘s greasiest attribute is its trio of knockout performances. Swank owns every second of this movie. She’s unremittingly perky, conscientious but also dogged, stubborn, and irresistibly lovable. Swank embodies the role with a startling muscular physique and a million dollar smile. Her performance is equal parts charming and heartbreaking. Maggie’s the heart of Million Dollar Baby and Swank doesn’t let you forget it for a millisecond. Come Oscar time, I’m sure she will be walking onstage to grab her second Best Actress Oscar in five years.
No one does grizzled better than Eastwood, and maybe no other actor has made as much of an acting mark by squinting a lot. Million Dollar Baby is probably his best performance to date, though for a good while it sounds like Frank has something lodged in his throat (pride?). Frank has the greatest transformation, and Eastwood brilliantly understates each stop on the journey until landing in a vulnerable, emotionally needy place.
Freeman once again serves as a film’s gentle narrator. There isn’t a movie that can’t be made better by a Morgan Freeman performance. His give-and-take with Frank feels natural and casual to the point that it seems improvised on the spot. Freeman unloads some great monologues like he’s relishing every syllable, chief among them about how he lost his eye. It’s wonderful to watch such a great actor sink his teeth into ripe material and deliver a performance that may net him a long-awaited Oscar (I think he’s due, and likely so will the Academy).
For whatever reason, Eastwood is hitting a directing groove in his twilight years. First came Mystic River, an ordinary police whodunnit made exceptional by incredible acting. Now Eastwood follows up with Baby, an ordinary sports film made extraordinary by incredible acting. Hmmm, a pattern is forming. The cinematography is crisp and makes great use of light and shadow to convey emotion. Eastwood’s score is also appropriately delicate and somber. The boxing sequences are brief but efficient.
Million Dollar Baby is a very traditional story that is at times surprisingly ordinary. Maggie’s the scrappy underdog that just needs a chance, Frank’s the old timer that needs to find personal redemption, and Scrap?s the wise old black man. Once again, an old curmudgeon takes on a rookie and in the process has their tough facade melt away as the inevitable victories pile up. Million Dollar Baby is a very familiar story but then again most boxing tales are fairly the same in scope.
What eventually separates Million Dollar Baby from the pack is its third act twist. You think you know where Eastwood’s film is headed, especially given the well-worn terrain, but you have no clue where this story will wind up. The plot turn deepens the characters and their relationships to each other in very surprising ways. You may be flat-out shocked how much you’ve found yourself caring for the people onscreen. It almost seems like Eastwood and company have used the familiar rags-to-riches underdog drama to sucker punch an audience into Million Dollar Baby‘s final 30 minutes. We’re transported into an uncomfortable and challenging position, and Eastwood won’t let an audience turn away.
Million Dollar Baby is not the colossal masterpiece that critics have been drooling over. For one thing, the group of antagonists is not nearly as textured as our trio of leads. They’re actually more stock roles that further enforce the ordinary story of Million Dollar Baby. Maggie’s trailer trash family is lazy unsupportive batch of stereotypes. The evil female boxing champ just happens to be a German who doesn’t mind playing dirty. One of the boxers at Frank’s gym is an arrogant showboat just waiting to be nasty while the teacher’s back is turned. Million Dollar Baby excels at showing depth and humanity with its lead trio, yet it seems if you aren’t in that circle you’re doomed to wade in the shallow end.
Eastwood shows that great acting and great characters you love can elevate a common framework. The package may be similar to a lot of films before about scrappy underdogs, but Million Dollar Baby lacks comparison in its genre when it comes to its enthralling acting and characters. The father-daughter bond between Frank and Maggie is heartwarming. The final reveal of what her Gaelic boxing name means may just bring tears to your eyes. The results are a very fulfilling movie going experience, albeit one that regrettably may not live up to such hype.
Million Dollar Baby has been showered with heapings of praise and become a formidable Oscar contender. The story treads familiar waters but its outstanding acting and deep and humane characters elevate the material. The film can’t match the hyperbole of critics but Million Dollar Baby is an ordinary but greatly satisfying ride led by compelling acting. The film hums with professionalism and seems to just glide when everything comes together magnificently, particularly in that last 30 minutes. Eastwood is hitting an artistic stride and it’s actually exciting to see what Clint will do next. Million Dollar Baby may not be a first round knockout but it definitely wins by decision.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Beyond the Sea (2004)
I really don’t think a lot of people know Bobby Darren. It seems that today most people would recognize him from singing “Beyond the Sea” over the closing credits of Finding Nemo. He wasn’t supposed to live past 17 but went on and wrote 400 plus songs including “Mack the Knife,” “Splish Splash,” and “Dream Lover.” Seems like there could be some interesting ground for a biopic. Kevin Spacey is one of our most celebrated actors and earned two very well deserved Oscars. Spacey has a strong passion for Darren and has been dreaming of portraying his life story for years. Passion is good for a role, right? Sam Raimi had passion for Spider-Man and look how those movies turned out. Well, with Beyond the Sea it seems that Spacey is less passionate about Bobby Darren and more passionate about his love of Kevin Spacey.
The film opens with the 37-year-old Darren (Spacey) reliving his life via a biographical movie he’s filming (yes, it’s a movie-within-a-movie). With the help of a younger movie self as a guide, Darren traces his rise from the streets of Brooklyn to headlining the Cococabana club. As a young child, doctors feared that Darren wouldn’t outlive his teens with his weak heart. Bedridden often, he found inspiration in music with his flamboyant yet supportive mother (Brenda Blethyn). Darren is driven to succeed and soon lands on top of the charts with a string of hits. Next he?s starring in movies with Rock Hudson and Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth), a chickadee that Darren is just as determined to succeed with. They marry, have a child, but Darren doesn’t feel fulfilled. He needs to push his music further whether or not it alienates everyone around him.
If you thought Beyond the Sea was the story of Bobby Darren, you’d be pitifully wrong. It’s really the story of Kevin Spacey, actor/writer/director/singer/dancer. That’s why we get to see flashy, superfluous dance numbers, that’s why we get to watch Spacey sing 12-15 times, and that’s why Spacey went to the trouble of re-recording all of Darren’s songs so that?s it?s Spacey belting out the tunes. Because, remember, this is a film about Spacey, not Bobby Darren.
Spacey is also much too old to be playing Darren, who died suddenly at age 37. He comes off lechery, especially during his courtship with the young Sandra Dee. Spacey isn’t unaware of this problem because in the opening minutes of Beyond the Sea someone accuses Bobby Darren of being to old to play himself in his movie. The response: “He was born to play this part!” There you go folks, case closed.
The acting in Beyond the Sea isn’t really an issue. Spacey has a genuine bounce to his song renditions and proves to be a capable dancer. John Goodman plays yet another gruff but lovable sidekick. It’s always good to see Bob Hoskins onscreen, no matter what the role may be. Bosworth comes away the best as she shifts from stars-in-the-eyes naiveté to a harder edge (you may rethink that whole song from Grease).
The dialogue is played so straight that it’s often hilarious: “Memories are like moonbeams, we do with them what we like.” With all due respect, what the hell does that mean?! I think I get the idea but what can anyone really do with moonbeams? If this line isn’t bad enough it becomes a central idea for Beyond the Sea which Spacey/Darren uses to excuse his flagrant gaps in time and fact.
Beyond the Sea gets so caught up in the Kevin Spacey Variety Hour that it fails to tell its audience why they should even care about Darren. Was he an inspiration because he outlived doctor expectations? Did he liven up old songs? Was he a remarkably versatile talent? Who knows? You’re on your own. Spacey’s too busy singing and dancing to explain the relevancy of Bobby Darren or why this movie should even exist.
There must be some interesting facts about Darren. I did not know that he wrote “Splish Splash” let alone that he wrote the whole song in 20 minutes. I didn’t know Darren required a toupee at such a young age. That stuff is interesting. It’s too bad it all takes a back seat because Spacey wants to emphasize his singing. Seriously, I get it; you can sing, Kevin Spacey. Can I see more of Bobby Darren and less of Spacey now?
Beyond the Sea portrays Darren so single-mindedly. He’s always focused on his music and nothing else, whether that be a budding acting career (he was nominated for an Oscar), the advice of his friends, or the love of his family. Darren kind of comes across as a self-centered jerk a lot of the time in Beyond the Sea.
I don’t know which is worse, Spacey the director or Spacey the writer. It’s not that he’s inept at either end but he just makes decisions that kill the material. There has to be a better framing device than having Darren star in a movie about his life. There have to be better transitional ideas than having New York City explode into choreographed dances. To top it off, when the movie reaches its very protracted climax, we see the adult Bobby Darren in a tap duet with his younger self. Beyond the Sea loses whatever earnest intentions it had and melts away into one strange metaphysical song and dance revue.
Beyond the Sea has been a pet project for Kevin Spacey for so long that the focus has shifted from Bobby Darren to Spacey himself. This movie exists so that Spacey can celebrate himself. To say Beyond the Sea is a showcase of megalomania would be an understatement. Many scenes exist for no reason other than to give Spacey another opportunity to dance or sing. Re-dubbing all of Darrens songs seems a tad unnecessary and a whole lot about ego. Die-hard fans of Darren or Spacey may enjoy Beyond the Sea, but most people will grow tired of seeing Spacey congratulate himself for being an autuer. This is a self-indulgent nightclub act posing as a film. Memories are like moonbeams, and I’m forgetting this movie as fast as possible.
Nate’s Grade: D
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A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Deep in the heart of WWI trenches, we begin this sprawling tale by narrowing in on five French soldiers. Each man has been accused of self-inflicting a wound to escape service, and each man is sentenced to spend the rest of their likely short lives in No Man’s Land, the stretch of bare land between the two trenches. One of these men is Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), a young country boy engaged to the charming Mathilde (Audrey Tautou). When she learns his fated punishment and fails to hear word from Manech, she steps out to launch her own investigation into the possible whereabouts of Manech or the possible details of her fiancé’s demise. She enlists her family, solicits strangers, and puts ads in newspapers to unravel the truth. Along the way she hears various stories from all sorts of people and attempts to form them into a clear picture of what went on in that trench, good or bad.
A Very Long Engagement could be flippantly described as “Rashomon in a trench,” but from the get-go it grabs you by the lapels and will not let go. Once again, Jeunet tells his story in a criss-crossing narrative. Front and center we learn about each doomed man’s life in snapshot, and while the device has a slight eulogy feel, it’s a fantastic way to show the depth of characters in such brevity. A Very Long Engagement is an immeasurably rich film where each detail is threaded into the film to create a magnificent artistic tapestry beyond compare. The tiniest details in the film like Mathilde’s tuba playing (the only instrument whose sound mimics a distress call), to the mail carrier choosing to slide his bike over gravel just further enhance the vibrant, animated world of Jeunet.
Jeunet is quite possibly the most visually gifted director working today (he turned down Harry Potter 5). He couldn’t film an ugly shot composition if he tried with all his French might. As expected, A Very Long Engagement is gorgeous to look at. The production design is massively intricate, the cinematography, while computer assisted, has a shimmering radiance to it. This is simply the best looking film of all 2004, Hero be damned. You could pause any second in this film and use it as a glossy postcard. Jeunet has the technical credentials to fasten together complex and beautiful worlds. A Very Long Engagement is a technical marvel and gorgeous to experience.
Tautou, also as expected, is wonderful once more. She’s the anchor of the film and the audience feels every heartbreak and glimmer of hope this talented actress explores. The supporting cast is full of familiar Jeunet players and each performance adds to the richness of the film. They feel like characters and not stock roles or cliches.
There is some difficulty with following the storyline. There are so many subplots built upon other subplots that the film’s momentum takes a bit of a dive in the second act. A Very Long Engagement can also get very confusing when it comes to remembering so many names. There are maybe 30 characters to keep track of and as the subplots mount new characters are added to the pile, including a widow played by a surprisingly fluent Jodie Foster. It’s best to employ some kind of memory trick to keep the many colorful characters of Jeunet’s world straightened.
The focus of A Very Long Engagement is on Mathilde’s investigation into what really happened in that trench. She wants to know what happened to her beloved, and as her search picks up steam we get further glimpses of her relationship with Manech. One of my biggest problems I had with 2003’s Cold Mountain was that Jude Law was travailing through hell and back to get back to his beloved Nicole Kidman even though their relationship pre-war lasted as long as a Super Bowl commercial. It’s not that I disbelieve the overpowering nature of love, but I need more from my characters than shifty glances and a quick ejaculation of love (get your mind out of the gutter). Now, in A Very Long Engagement, Jeunet opens by showing the measures Manech will endure to return to his beloved, however, as the film goes on we also see enough peeks into the depths of their relationship beforehand, which dates all the way back to when they were children
A Very Long Engagement forges such a grand and sweeping love story that the audience gets just as immersed as Mathilde about the search for her man. There are so many lovely, intelligent moments between Mathilde and Manech, like their first sexual encounter. Every time Manech lights a new match Mathilde removes an article of clothing until, under the soft light of the newly lit match, she’s nude and blows the match out herself. The characters’ overriding love also taps into small truisms like when Mathilde makes arbitrary games for herself to ensure her love’s safety. (“If I can count to ten before that car passes, then he is alive.”) Mathilde’s faith and devotion are driving her investigation and the audience is behind her 100% of the way, fully invested in this mystery. When we reach our conclusion, I don’t mind telling you I was bawling like a baby.
The film has a merry whimsical tone during its origami-like narrative, but when it hits the trenches the film gets down and dirty. Jeunet shows a fascinating view into the hardships of everyday trench life as well as the machinery of death. Storming the other side’s trench, or “going over the top” as it was called, is seen in all its sordid features. There are hearty splashes of blood and gore that can be jarring.
There’s one terrifying scene in A Very Long Engagement involving the explosion of a makeshift hospital. The hospital is inside a hangar for zeppelins (hydrogen gas) and a missile has crashed into the roof with its nose sticking inside. One of the zeppelins becomes loose and slowly floats to the missile nose with unforgivable certainty. People are running around trying to shield themselves from the inevitable, but it does nothing. The moment is played so agonizingly slow that we become overwhelmed with terror. This was the life of WWI warfare.
Having said this, the stark war violence doesn’t exactly gel exceedingly well with the whimsical romantic elements. For some, A Very Long Engagement will seem like two very tonally different movies butting heads and intruding upon the other (perhaps Amelie Goes to War?). Sometimes it does take a while to adjust to one tone after spending time with the other. I feel that the emotional investment in the characters and the anticipation of unraveling the mystery serves as thematic glue over the disproportionate tones. Some will feel chaffed by the two stark tones, but I think the power of the love story will conquer most hearts into experiencing the bloodshed of war to earn the shedding of tears by the film’s romance.
Jeunet has re-teamed with Tautou and created another masterpiece. A Very Long Engagement took hold of me from the start and mesmerized me with its beauty, grace, cruelty, excitement, and warmth. This is a great mystery and a great love story with great visuals and great characters. The opposing tones (whimsy vs. violence) won’t work for everyone, and the film takes one too many divergent paths in the middle, but A Very Long Engagement is a film of such startling originality and feeling that it should be treasured. I was floored by what Jeunet had to offer and deeply moved by the time I had to leave the theater. They don’t make them like this much anymore. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye.
Nate’s Grade: A
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