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new_moon
Reviews
Riverworld (2003)
Pleasant adventure movie as long as you don't expect it to follow the books
It could mean that I'm a bad person, but I enjoyed this movie.
It probably helped a lot that I didn't read the books when viewing it. Without prior expectations from reading the book this is a good adventure story with a very interesting premise, good plot-turns and the usual weaknesses: the mandatory love-story (if you can call it that) is off-the-peg, and the hero is so bland and all-American that the only explanation is a file marked "all-purpose hero" which US film-makers get first day in their "shouting at actors 101" course. (But hey, if it works for 300 million movies, why not use it for another one.)
And of course a couple of logic-holes, but all of that is too common for made-for-TV fantasy movies to really complain about it.
But the supporting casts is, in my opinion, a joy: I love Sam, and the alien, and of course the main baddie. In the case of the baddie because I'm just a sucker for athletic evil bad guys making moves on the damsel in distress, extra bonus if the villain knows how to handle a sword.
Sam, because he is everything an interesting hero should be: you get to learn his whole story only after a while, and he has the doubts and weaknesses and moments of indecisiveness that the first-billed character lacks.
And the female lead is pretty good, too.
Compared to the books or to recent LotR-movies this certainly is disappointing. Viewed as a made-for-TV movie, it's entertaining, uses original ideas and is clearly above the average. Pity the series was never made/aired.
**For those who read the book before:**
The movie doesn't follow the books, and for good reasons. The books were award-winning, not bestselling because they were too realistic, too thought-provoking. Too many things in them would blow the chances of a TV series pilot to smithereens. Using some dead European guy most US-Americans never heard of as a protagonist wasn't half of the problem, but keep in mind how irreligious and pragmatic he was (remember his idea on how to get strips for binding material? See what I mean?) and the occurrence of drugs, sex and violence and it should be clear that changes had to be made. I prefer whole-hearted changes that create new heroes and situations to half-hearted ones which leave a shell of the book-character.
As it is, the movie isn't retelling the book, it's just loosely based on it. It uses the settings and some plot ideas of the book, but with changes to make sure that main stream audiences won't be put off. If that's acceptable to you, this might be an interesting movie for you.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Miss Austen's writing deserves an awful lot better than this.
What can I say? It would be tactless, prejudiced and unjust to claim that Hollywood producers can't do justice classic literature. Sadly, the sentiment sometimes crops up, and this movie does not help to disprove it.
Miss Knightley isn't my thing by a far cry, and MacFadyen's idea of playing Darcy seems to consist in trying to say as little as possible and look dark and brooding - at moments I'm getting the impression that he's looking more disorientated/drugged than anything else, but what the heck.
But what really, really gets me is that while dialog and plot are 95% book based, the producers evidently didn't even try to do justice to the English landed gentry of that time. The mistakes are so glaringly obvious that it hurts, be it that Kiera Knightley is running around with her hair open and unkempt (why?? to show off the fake long hair that has been stapled to her neck? Okay, so that was pretty the top level of hair styles occurring in that movie, but still), without a hat, and either giggling or with her mouth half-open - hair splitting? Yes, by 21st century standards it is. But in the 18th century, all of this was either questionable or down-right scandalous behavior for a girl of Elizabeth Bennet's back-ground - and anybody who read Miss Austens books would know that! Same for Mrs Bennet having rough, reddish hands and skin. Same for pigs running into the Bennet's house. Same for Elizabeth running around out of house in nothing but her sleeping wear and a coat/scarf thrown over it.
Repeat: a gentile girl of the 18th century wouldn't do that any more than a high school girl would go shopping in her undies or go to school without having combed her hair or showered for a week. And you don't have to study history to know that, just read 3 books by Jane Austen or other writers of her time, and you'll know it.
Now, all of that could still be the producers not giving a damn. But what really, really gets me is are the fake pseudo-classic statues with the late 20th-century beauty ideal of slim legs and buttocks pasted onto them. For f***s sake, if you can't deal with the fact that 18th century ideas of female beauty differed from those of today, then why make a movie that plays in that period? This has an unpleasant taste of "let's not err one step from main stream movie concepts, because the viewer's won't swallow what they aren't familiar with". I would really, really like to think that US cinema goers aren't as skittish as that. Apart from that, since those scenes have zero meaning for plot or character development and never were even hinted at in the book, I can only assume that their sole purpose was that some men who erred into this movie got to see some naked curves, even if they were marble, not flesh.
As to why I'm making such a fuss about getting the period right (or at least, trying to do so):
(1) the movie is based entirely on the book, and that was written by a woman belonging into this period, to whom the concepts of propriety and style of her time mattered. To milk Jane Austen's work for money and then represent her world in such a shoddy way is bad manners at the least.
(2) there's next to nothing redeeming about the movie: the actors are rattling down their lines as if somebody was standing behind them with a timer and a whip. Jane's most important character traits (grace and goodness of heart) are being stated at best, but apart from that she doesn't come across as anything more than your standard bottle-blond, smiling, pretty face. Mr Collins (like some other actors) seems to be at the point of falling asleep for most of his screen time, and the only two characters who have a bit of charisma to them are the two the audience is expected to dislike: Miss Bingley and Mary Bennet.
All in all? Sporking material at best. If you are after a nice, bland romance and don't mind getting a willfully warped image of English society, have at it. If you're looking for a decent representation of the book, avoid this one at all cost.
King Kong (2005)
Not that brilliant, but not that bad, either
Okay, after the LotR trilogy one had to have high expectations, right? Too high. After all, just ponder for a moment the quality of the LotR story (written over decades by an expert on English language and writing) and the King Kong story (huge, untamed beast ensnared by the charms of a white, blond sweetie).
Still, I was a bit shocked about how drenched with clichés the whole thing was. But once I adjusted to the fact that King Kong is a big-budget pop corn monster flick which doesn't miss out on one genre-cliché, I was doing fine. And one thing about Peter Jackson: he knows how to pick actors. Naomi Watts or whatever her name is might not be my cup of tea, but she's doing a decent job and actually comes over quite charming (- okay, so I think that yet another slim-as-a-reed, white-as-milk, blond-as-peroxide character is about the last thing Hollywood needs, but that's my problem). Adrian Brody was just lovely, and Jack Black as the obsessive film maker Denham is so utterly convincing that for some moments I felt like I was looking at Jackson's evil alter ego. Be that as it may, some of my favorite moments are when Jackson uses the Denham character to deal out some kicks in the direction of the entertainment industry.
Apart from highly enjoyable action, there are the usual monster/action movie ingredients: blast-your-mind CGI-action, logic holes that King Kong himself could walk through without ducking his head, likable characters build up simply to kill them off in a suitably tragic way, some really icky creepy-crawly scenes, and the aggressive more-or-less African looking natives (I'm kind of waiting for the "racism!" cry of outrage - what the heck, _I_ loved them. A girl who bites a chunk out of the hand of a suspicious man pressuring chocolate onto her is definitely one of the better female role models, compared to main stream Hollywood standards).
So: grab yourself some junk food and a few good friends with whom to snark about this movie, and enjoy.