Blog Archives
Vantage Point (2008)
Vantage Point presents a terrorist strike and a presidential assassination from six different perspectives (though the advertising credits 8 perspectives). The Rashoman-style idea presents enough intrigue to sustain viewer involvement, but then it seems like the movie gets tired of its own gimmick, throws its hands in the air after the fifth trip down memory lane, and says, “Ah, forget this. Here’s what really happened,” and spells it out. The perspectives are too short and there are frankly too many; the idea is good but the execution is flawed. I think having possibly three perspectives play out for around 40 minutes each would have beefed up the plot and allowed for more intriguing criss-crossing. Not all of the perspectives are equally compelling (Forest Whitaker as a tourist with a camera seems like a lame way to bridge plot points) but they do link together and each submits a bevy of new questions and surprises. The swift, 90-minute running time means there’s precious little screen time to be doled out to the many characters, so don’t get used to seeing most after their main appearance. Vantage Point careens toward a finish that ties everything and every perspective together with a fairly nifty car chase. The movie could use some extra time spent on the flaccid characters (I’m at a total loss as for the motivation of several of them), and the film strains credibility, and yet it works as a passable thriller with enough of an edge to pass the time agreeably.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Phone Booth (2003)
Colin Farrel is fast becoming the Hollywood It-boy, if he hasn’t achieved the title already. It’s hard not to agree. I’ve seen several interviews and this Irish bad boy is just so incredibly damn charming that you want to invite him to your house. He’s got that cocky grin and those eyebrows that look like they’ve been knitted. The man oozes charisma and stardom. So enough of that, let’s talk a little about the film. About 90% of the film takes place within the four walls of a phone booth, but it’s not as dull as one would expect. One reason is because of Farrel, even if his New Yawk accent can be a little grating on the ears at times. Another reason is because a sniper, with the honeyed voice of one Keifer Sutherland, has trained a rifle onto Farrel, and if he moves hes dead. Though the motivations for the sniper are quite murky, and some late revelations feel too telegraphed and forced. Director Joel Schumacher (he who destroyed the Batman franchise) delivers a mostly solid and taut thriller. Schumacher tries shoehorning in some visual flourishes with minute split-screens and some stupid statistics about phones. But, and I dont think I’m alone here, I’d have no problem spending about 80 minutes with Farrel.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Panic Room (2002)
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) is a newly divorced woman shopping around Manhattan for a new place to sow her wild oats thanks to a healthy marital settlement. The brownstone in question is truly spacious. It comes complete with four floors and a working elevator installed by the invalid former owner. Megs teenage daughter Sarah immediately takes a shine to her new digs and urges mom to sign the dotted line. It seems besides a great location the place also comes complete with a secret room that houses a separate phone line, a wall of monitors all corresponding to cameras, as well as medical supplies and a silver commode. This panic room is surrounded by four feet of concrete and sealed by an airtight steel door. It seems its the ultimate in home protection.
But before Meg and Sarah can barely unpack a trio of burglars enters the home with the hopes of securing the reclusive former owners riches. Meg grabs her daughter and scurries into the panic room just in time to seal the door behind her. She communicates to the men to take what they want and leave. One of them writes on a piece of paper that what they really want is inside the panic room. The burglars aren’t going anywhere, are well equipped and know the panic room better than she does. Meg and her daughter are safe but trapped with little voice to the outside. Thus the pieces are all set and an intricate game of moves and counter-moves takes place to see who has the upper hand, in and out of the panic room.
Panic Room is that rare treat as a movie alive and well with energy, tenacity and a double-dose worth of entertainment. The movie flies by and youre left catching your breath or checking your pulse at certain junctures. The suspense continues in an arching fashion and keeps giving the audience new situations to be taken with.
It’s been two years since the public has last seen Jodie Foster in a movie and its good to have her back. Her performance is nominal but she’s put through what must be the most physically strenuous film of her career. She has that rare versatility as an actress to wear corsets and frilly-wear one film and then to be holstering a gun and barking at transsexual serial killers the next, all while maintaining complete confidence and integrity at either.
It seems that today we have a staggering lack of female action leads that could kick your ass. Sigourney Weaver once owned this throne but now the only thing we have to offer is pinups. We have Angelina Jolie’s scary glares. We have the pout of Michelle Rodriguez, who has since blown what promise she showed in Girl Fight by starring in two horrible consecutive films about zombies (one of these said zombies being Vin Diesel). And I dont think I even need to go into Milla Jovovich. So it’s refreshing knowing that Foster, even while pregnant for part of filming, can swing with the big boys and surely roll some heads and take some names.
The actors portraying the burglars play basic criminal archetypes, but do passable jobs with them. Forest Whitaker is the soft-spoken security expert who refuses to play rough if the situation calls for it. Jared Leto is the comically impulsive grandson who feels slighted by not being granted a sum of the inheritance. Dwight Yoakam (yes the Dwight Yoakam) is the questionable addition with an itchy trigger finger and a determination to get his mitts on the money.
Director David Fincher, the auteur that gave us a head in a box with Se7en, returns with his kinetic kick and brooding finesse. Fincher is a vastly talented visual director and adds more richness to the film with lovely cinematography and an astutely mature sense of tension.
However, Fincher’s sensory excesses get the better of him the longer the film goes. Does the audience really need to have the camera travel through the handle of a coffeepot? Does anyone really need the camera to swirl into the bulb of a flashlight so we see how it works? It may come to the point where you’re anticipating the next superfluous camera movement, and praying that it isn’t plunging into Yoakam’s nostrils. Once or twice is fine, but after awhile the nomadic camera movements become far more distracting to the film. The ending is also a bit anti-climactic for my taste.
Panic Room, despite a few missteps, is a great exercise in suspense. You may get so wrapped up youll find yourself, as I surprisingly did, reverting to the annoying habit of talking to the characters on screen and trying to instruct them. Panic Room is the kind of movie you wish Hollywood made more often: something with genuine thrills that leaves you pinned to your seat and bubbling with anticipation, before turning you into a puddle of warm goo.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Battlefield Earth (2000)
I don’t have enough time nor the patience to actually write down a full review for this “movie” so instead I’m going to just list things that make this movie the toilet paper it is.
1) It’s based on a 1000+ page novel that even sci-fi purists regard as corny. Writer/Religious founder L. Ron Hubbarb certainly hasn’t found any grail in writing. The film of his novel only covers half of the book with the other half Travolta had planned for a sequel. Let me tell ya, you’d have to be a really REALLY devout Scientologist to believe that a sequel’s on its way here. There’s more of a chance that Howard’s End will be granted a sequel then Battlefield Earth.
2) Travolta has never been more nasal-voiced annoying before in his life. He’s the snarling Security head of the vastly “advanced” alien species that has enslaved Earth yet he knows nothing about his prisoners. Doesn’t sound like the person (or alien) you want in charge of… security now does it?
3) Why are the aliens 9-feet tall? Why do they have nose tubes? Why do they have long tongues — except for a really awful overt oral sex joke? Why do they do and look like anything if nothing happens? All they are is tall and that’s it. So form a basketball team out of them and tell them to watch their heads. Nothing makes sense, it’s all just added for the sake of being added – with the consistency of chicken broth.
4) Travolta hatches a plan to steal gold from the planet. My God, did we just fall into a Western? Because of course gold is worth the same amount and value on a distant alien home world as it is here. Makes total sense. This part I actually hit myself in the head over.
5) The human survivors dupe Travolta with gold bars they find at Ft. Knox — just stumbling onto it 1000 years later. Man who needs any sense of direction in a post apocalyptic war-world?
6) The humans counter the aliens in the end by flying 1000 year old ARMY aircraft. These fighter planes are spic and span and fully mobile after 1000 years of rust and mildew Cascade couldn’t touch?
7) Everything is shot tilted, I mean EVERY single shot in the damn movie — EVERYONE! You’ll come out with a stiff neck to compensate. It’s like the camera man fell asleep and nobody had the heart to wake him up during the whole picture. I know I’d want to get away.
8) The aliens figure man to be incompetent and no threat despite the fact that he was highly civilized beforehand with plenty of weapons accessible. Go fig.
9) Every action sequence in this movie is either a blithe series of close-ups or slow mo shots. And don’t forget the slanted pictures.
10) Travolta is so annoying, even his action figure I saw on a clearance sale is just as annoying, he gets mentioned twice. How the hell did he think this movie would sell I’ll never know?
11) There’s only one hot girl in the entire scavenged world and she has to end up being Barry Pepper’s love interest, probably because he is given his “knowledge” back which means he also is now only interested in hot girls. And what is her fate? Only to be eventually held hostage later… of course!
12) Travolta’s character is the greatest moron in the universe! No person would even have them in charge of anything except a cafeteria lunch line.
13) The effects are really cheesy.
14) The dialogue is BEYOND the realm of cheese.
15) Battlefield Earth tried to brainwash me into a 9-foot tall Scientologist with a thirst for gold and a requisite for calling those around me “rat brain” to mask my own insecurities and nasal voice.
I think The Washington Post said it best when they said “A million monkeys with a million crayons in a million years could write something better then Battlefield Earth,” and I’d have to agree.
Nate’s Grade: F
nathanzoebl 
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