Mike On The Movies

I just read an interesting article that makes the argument that the Bourne trilogy of movies is the best American film trilogy around:

Why the Bourne Series is the Best American Film Trilogy Ever Made

He makes a lot of good points, and I’d be closer to agreeing with him if any individual film in the series were as strong as Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather, or The Godfather Part II.  Alas, no Bourne film is as strong as any of those films, but he makes a good point that when taken as a whole, the Bourne trilogy stands up well in the sense that each of the three films is strong, whereas both the Star Wars and Godfather trilogies suffer from one poor film each.  For me, the Star Wars trilogy essentially ends after The Empire Strikes Back, and I have a version of Return of the Jedi in my head that far surpasses the actual film.  As for The Godfather Part III, the less said, the better.  It’s a film that can be easily dismissed and forgotten, as the end of The Godfather Part II is perfectly satisfactory on its own.  (Before anyone screams The Lord of the Rings, note that the author was careful to qualify his argument by restricting his analysis to American films.  The Lord of the Rings was ostensibly financed and is owned by an American film studio, but we all know the films are essentially a Kiwi/British production.  I will include it in the following analysis anyway, because it is the quintessential trilogy that sets the standard by which all other trilogies must be compared).

What about Indiana Jones?  The second film in that trilogy is incredibly weak, one of the worst films in Steven Spielberg’s illustrious career, and while the third film rebounds nicely, it’s only in comparison to the banal second film.  The third film is no match for the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, and plays out much like a TV-movie version of the first film.  It’s a good movie, but not great, hence the trilogy really contains only one great film.  That’s not enough to qualify as a great trilogy, and I usually watch this series by watching movies one and three, skipping two altogether.

Back to the Future?  I have always been mystified by the attraction of some fans to the second and third films in this franchise.  Whereas the first Back to the Future was a fresh, inventive and entertaining diversion, the second and third movies seemed to me rather contrived and increasingly formulaic, again playing out as watered-down TV-movie versions of the original movie.  They clearly suffer from an advanced case of Sequelitis.  No, I don’t consider this a great trilogy at all – it consists of one good, not great, movie.  That’s not nearly enough.

The Matrix?  Fanboys aside, let’s not be silly.  This qualifies as one of the most disappointing movie trilogies of all time, considering how far the drop-off is from the first movie to the second and third.  The first film was a terrific science-fiction mind-bender, and a great action movie to boot.  It will always have a place on my DVD shelf.  But the second and third films are not worth the time it takes to watch them; they are poorly constructed contrivances that reek of silliness, desperation and commercial exploitation.  The first film had a somewhat open-ended conclusion, but actually didn’t leave much to build on for the sequels, and the lack of foresight shows.  If the Waschowski brothers had really wanted to compose a trilogy from the start, they should not have made a first film that was so nicely self-contained.  Closure is simply not conducive to sequels.

The Lord of the Rings is easily the best film trilogy ever made, albeit not exactly an American production.  It has a lot going for it, not least of all great consistency between each film, something that I have no doubt is directly related to the fact that the trilogy was filmed simultaneously, like one large film.  The continuity is striking, and the production values are triple-A across the board (as opposed to many special-effects laden trilogies, where the first movie was obviously cheaper to make than the followups).  Having said that, and I’m sure I’m in the minority here, I personally prefer the intimacy of the first film over the epic scope of the next two films.  The first film had me relating to the struggles of our heroes on a very personal level, while the next two films make this struggle increasingly distant due to the sheer scale the main conflict grows to.  Perhaps this was unavoidable, but any which way, it doesn’t seriously diminish the series.  Each of the three films is a masterpiece in its own right.

The Star Wars and Godfather trilogies both suffer a fatal flaw:  one poor film.  Not just a film that’s good but not as good as the others, but a flat-out bad film.  Worse, in each case it is the third and final film, the film that is supposed to provide climax and closure, the film that is built up to by two superior predecessors.  The Godfather trilogy fares better, because the last film is easily ignored, and because the first two films are both genuine American masterpieces, among the best films ever made.  It is easy to watch the first two films, and then stop after the conclusion of The Godfather Part II, which provides plenty of closure all on its own.  It helps that the third film was made so long after Part II, rendering it even more of an unnecessary afterthought (and in the end, wasn’t it exactly that?).  Unfortunately, the Star Wars trilogy does not fare so well.  The Empire Strikes Back ends with several cliffhangers, and provides no closure.  It is difficult to watch Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and then simply stop there.  But every time I move on to Return of the Jedi, I am sorry I did, and so I find myself more often than not simply trying to be content with what might have been.

Lastly, I should briefly mention the new Star Wars “prequel” trilogy:  The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith.  Quite simply, this pale spiritual imitation of the original trilogy is one of the worst trilogies ever made, all style and little substance.  Yes, even Revenge of the Sith, which, while it greatly improved upon the previous two films, is still not a particularly good movie, especially compared to the far superior Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.  That is was a great improvement is not saying much – what is it to be better than dreck?  Enough said about this trilogy – I’m sorry Lucas ever went back to dip into the well, as he has sullied the entire franchise by adding more bad films to it.

There are more American movie trilogies, but these are the big guns.  Which brings us to Bourne.  Is is the best trilogy?  In my opinion, it is in one sense, and isn’t in another.  Aside from Rings, it is the best trilogy in the sense that it has no weak films.  In fact, each subsequent movie in the series seems an improvement on the previous, and all the films stand perfectly well on their own.  But on the other hand, no single Bourne movie is as great a movie as, say, The Godfather, and no pair of Bourne films stands up to the one-two punch of The Godfather/Part II or Star Wars/Empire.

But if I want to sit down and watch a trilogy that’s going to satisfy me from start to finish, I’m going to choose The Lord of the Rings…or the Bourne trilogy.  Frankly, that’s quite an accomplishment in my book.

You know those AFI Top 100 lists?  This guy put together a very well-done montage that counts down from 100 to 1 via movie quotes, called 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FExqG6LdWHU&rel=1]

 Fun:  how many of these movies can you identify?

An interesting take on the James Bond classic Goldfinger:

The dirty secret at the heart of Goldfinger

And you know what?  He’s right. 

(Don’t get me wrong.  I love Bond films.  Even the bad ones, because campy can be fun.  But the films did get awfully ridiculous as time went on, and with Pierce Brosnan (whom I also like), formulaic.  Daniel Craig’s turn in Casino Royale happily reinvigorated the series, but at the expense of abandoning most of the franchise’s traditional devices, many of which were established in Goldfinger.  It was an expense that, in my opinion, was necessary if the series were to survive with any dignity at all.)

William Arnold, a film critic with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer whom I respect a great deal, has written a review for The Bourne Ultimatum, which opens this weekend:

‘Bourne Ultimatum’ is spy trilogy’s final, and weakest, link

In the review, Arnold praises the movie’s effort to be different from other action movies, and notes the satisfaction it provides in terms of closure to the trilogy, but ultimately feels that the style of camerawork employed in the film undermines the entire operation:

With virtually every sequence shot like a battlefield documentary — from a jerky hand-held camera framed extremely closely — and edited like an MTV music video, the movie is so surreal it’s just not very involving. As an action extravaganza, it’s busy but dull.

…to my mind, Greengrass’ effort to make his film the last word in tightly framed, nervous-camera action scenes is fairly disastrous. Most of the sequences are such a mess that we simply can’t tell what’s happening in them. The cumulative effect is boredom.

This semidocumentary style — which tries to put the viewer right in the action, instead of viewing it from outside — is a recent trend that has been increasingly creeping into Hollywood filmmaking since “Batman Begins” in 2005.

And, used more sparingly, it worked for Greengrass in his earlier films “Bloody Sunday” and especially “United 93,” in which the claustrophobic confusion of the visuals eerily re-created the feel of what it must have been like on that ill-fated flight.

But it’s not at all suited to an epic action blockbuster. The $100 million spent on “Bourne 3″ seems a waste because most of the movie is just a blur on the screen. It cries out for a few long shots to orient us as to what the heck is going on.

The Bourne Ultimatum is directed by Paul Greengrass, who also directed the previous film in the series, The Bourne Supremacy.  That film was likewise criticized in some circles for exactly the same thing, but I think the criticism misses the point, as I posted in my comments to Arnold’s review:

Mr. Arnold, your comments on the filmmaking style are well-noted, and certainly this is largely a matter of taste. The same criticism was frequently leveled against the second film of the series, also directed by Greengrass.

In the interest of presenting the other side (with the caveat that I have not yet seen this third installment, but it sounds an awful lot like the second film in terms of style), I think it’s important to note that the lack of “a few long shots to orient us as to what the heck is going on” is precisely the point. The purpose of this kind of cinematography is to put us inside the action, without the benefit of seeing the action from the outside as an observer. The characters would not receive this benefit even once during any of their escapades; they would never have the kind of orientation us filmgoers are used to having in our action movies. It makes us viewers as vulnerable as the characters, and I find this point-of-view to be refreshing and exhilerating.

The camerawork is frantic, but if you pay close attention, you can see that it is highly planned and shows us what we need to see at just the right time. In the second film, during the climatic car chase at the end of the film, we see Bourne inside the taxi he has just stolen, trying to outrun his pursuers (another gutsy call for the filmmakers, giving Bourne an underpowered vehicle for the film’s most important sequence and making him work with it). The camera is inside the vehicle in the passenger seat. We see Bourne desperately look at a map in his lap – the camera is on his face, then on the map, back to his face…he sees a road sign! The camera hits the sign, but it’s blurry and unreadable. The camera is back on Bourne – he couldn’t read it either, and now he doesn’t know where he’s going or how to escape. The camerawork here is quick and chaotic, but we were simply seeing things as he saw them, and we realize that we are driving blind along with him in perfect sympathy. This little sequence occupies maybe two seconds of screen time and is easily missed if one is not paying careful attention, but it’s clear the filmmakers put a lot of thought into things like this – it’s not just random handheld camera for the sake of itself. The second film was riddled with dozens of such moments, and I found them to be riveting, demanding of second and third viewings to try and catch all that was going on.

The truly refreshing thing about this series (and I asume it continues in the third film) is that Bourne is awesome at what he does, but he’s not Superman, and he’s not perfect. The style of cinematography employed makes this all the plainer, as we get to view the action from Bourne’s direct perspective, and we’re implored to sympathize with the split-second decisions and lack of tightly choreographed action that Bourne has to contend with – as well as his mistakes. If you think about it, most action movies present their action in a very contrived way – it’s just amazing how perfectly it all works out, almost as if it choreographed ahead of time! Not so in the Bourne films, and this is a direction I’d like to see more action films take.

Perhaps the camerwork does not need to be so frenetic to make the same point, but at least Greengrass is not content to make the Bourne films in typical “action movie” fashion.

As noted in the comments above, I have not seen The Bourne Ultimatum yet, so I don’t know how good the film is otherwise – it may very well be the weakest of the three.  But I would hesitate to criticize it for the reasons above, unless the camerawork renders the film completely unwatchable.  Note too that my defense comes from someone who is normally not given to tight, frantic, MTV-style camerawork – I normally find such cinematography to be claustrophobic and ultimately self-defeating, and I’ve criticized many an otherwise good film harshly for using it.  But something about the Bourne series just seems made for such filmmaking style, and for some reason I found the liberal use of it very exciting in The Bourne Supremacy.  If you study it carefully, there really is order in the chaos, and I think the technique is employed brilliantly.

Notably, despite the criticism, The Bourne Supremacy ended up with an excellent 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  The Bourne Ultimatum is currently clocking in at an even better 92% on RT, though it’s still early in the ratings with only 32 reviews counted.

A co-worker of mine has granted my wish:

The Man Who Saves the World (Turkish Star Wars)

Turkish-made film commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious bootlegging of Star Wars film clips worked into the film.  Released in 1982, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam was created in Turkey caught in the midst of massive political upheaval. As a result, American-made films were not easily acquired and were often remade with a Turkish cast and setting. The musical soundtrack is entirely lifted from Western film hits of the time, primarily using Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are also scenes incorporating the music of Moonraker, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes and Disney’s The Black Hole.

Complete with sub-titles, all 91 glorious, rotten minutes of it.  I look forward to watching with morbid fascination.

So, that Turkish Star Wars thing I posted the other day?  It’s for real.  Really.

Video Review:  Turkish Star Wars

The review seems pretty spot-on:

Years before Star Wars was ruined by Ewoks, ruined again by Episode One, and then pissed all over by Episode Two, Turkey had already done it. Turkey was light years ahead of George Lucas when they invented Star Wars-ruining technology as early as 1979. That’s the year Turkish filmmakers, using Turkish production values, remade Star Wars. They called it Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam. This is not a fabrication; this movie is real and probably worse than I will be able to convey.

Here’s the section of the review that covers the 10 minutes in the video clip I posted (which I’m sure the Turkish production company won’t mind, seeing as how they obviously have no problem with the philosophy of copyright violation and all that nonsense):

Here’s where the movie goes so far beyond Earth adjectives that it kicked the ass off my face. Darth Vader appears on a hill and blasts at Luke with lasers while he jumps from trampoline to trampoline in the center of a field of yellow smoke grenades. For two minutes, there is a cloud of zero visibility while randomly alternating sound clips from Flash Gordon are mixed with random sections of the Indiana Jones song. It’s amazing. When the smoke clears he’s tearing the giant red monsters in half at the waist, chopping their heads off and kicking his foot through their chests. There’s one part where he headlocks a mummy’s head off, throws it at another mummy and it explodes. Every single monster from earlier in the movie shows up to get torn into chunks, and the entire time his gloves are disappearing, reappearing and disappearing while he’s wearing a different shirt.

“It kicked the ass off my face.”  Yeah, baby.  I gotta say, this review makes me…well, it makes me want to see the whole movie. 

By the way, finally saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday.  It was quite good (I think 3 stars out of 4, not quite as good as the last two movies, both of which I’d give 3 and a half stars), and the Harry Potter series is quickly cementing itself as the best franchise in recent memory.  If they do two more terrific movies to close out the story, it may have to go down as the best franchise of all time.  It’s already better than James Bond and – dare I say it? – Star Wars (which, for as much as I love Star Wars, only has 2 great movies out of 6).  More on that in a future post along with a full review of Harry Potter.

This just has to be seen to be believed…

Turkish Star Wars final scene

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbYczbBlatA]

Just…wow.  It’s like Ed Wood gone wild in the editing room.  The Indiana Jones music is really the crowning touch, don’t you think?

I’ll try to get around to writing some full reviews soon.  In the meantime, a list of the recent movies I’ve watched along with some brief comments and ratings (out of 4 stars possible):

Black Snake Moan *** – An earthy, uncompromising study of redemption and salvation.  Excellent performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake (yes, that’s right – Justin Timberlake) and a host of supporting players, anchored by an interesting and unpredictable script.  Dripping in southern atmosphere, this is a rather dark film that manages to be uplifting without cheating at the end.

Ratatouille **** – Pixar does it again.  Will they ever run out of steam?  Not as long as the uber-talented Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) is captain of the ship.  The difference between Pixar productions and nearly every other animated production?  Pixar doesn’t make animated films, they make films that just happen to be animated, complete with all the traditional elements that make great films great.  Ratatouille is another feather in their illustrious cap, and Bird has the surest sense of style in the business.  Look for Bird to win his second Oscar this February.

Zodiac *** 1/2 – I have long panned former MTV music video director David Fincher (Alien 3, Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room) as an overrated director who made pompously self-important, stylistically overblown films that weren’t as good as he clearly wanted us to think they were, and that are vastly overrated by his blindly loyal fans (witness the current rankings of mediocre films like Fight Club and Se7en on IMDB’s top 250 list, at #28 and #39 respectively).  With Zodiac, Fincher abandons the immaturity that hobbled his previous work and produces a riveting procedural that is leaps and bounds above his other films in terms of narrative and style.  For once, Fincher lets the film dictate the style, rather than the other way around, and he wisely avoids  artificially dramatizing this true story, opting instead for a matter-of-fact narrative that recognizes and acknowledges the story’s inherent interest.  The lack of artificial contrivances serve to make the actual depictions in the film all the more compelling, and what results is a fascinating character study of the men closest to the case.  Kudos to Fincher for maximizing his talent as a filmmaker in service of the story, rather than forcing the story to service his penchant for self-indulgence as he has in the past.  He directs with a sure and steady hand, discarding the absurdly attention-deficit MTV-style editing tricks that marred his previous work, and elicits sturdy, convincing performances from everyone involved in the large cast (this is Robert Downey Jr.’s best work in years).  It helps that he worked from a tightly focused script that packs an incredible amount of information into an efficient 2 1/2 running time that feels half as short.  This is Fincher’s best film to date, and the only one worthy of serious accolades.

Pan’s Labyrinth **** – A unique and engrossing fantasy film for adults (and I mean that – this is an R-rated film that easily deserves its rating, and is not in any way intended for the kiddies), this seems like the film that Mexican-born writer/director Guillermo del Toro was always destined to make.  Full of creative imagery, Pan’s Labyrinth turns the fairy-tale genre on its ear, and brings the darker side that’s present in nearly all fairy tales front and center for intimate examination.  This is a highly original experience that leaves an indelible impression long after the first viewing.