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Elitist Thirst
Reviews
Pearl Harbor (2001)
One of the worst war movies ever made
"Pearl Harbor" is the kind of movie where a man and a woman who have just witnessed countless numbers of people getting shot and blown up can honestly look each other in the eye as they well up, sniffle, and ask in all earnest "But...what about us?" It's the kind of movie where secondary characters die by what seems like the thousands, and getting your girlfriend pregnant or getting engaged is as good as a death warrant. And it's the kind of movie that's so boring you stop caring about anyone in it less than a third of the way through.
Earlier in the year, a movie titled "Enemy at the Gates" was released, set in the battle of Stalingrad where a Soviet peasant becomes a hero by sniping Nazi officers, so in retaliation the Nazis send their own expert sniper to draw him into a showdown and crush the propaganda machine he's made of himself. It featured great standoffs between the two near the beginning and middle, but it soon dissolved into an insipid, uninteresting love triangle between the Soviet sniper, the man who made him famous, and a Russian female freedom fighter. I didn't really care for it, really, but when compared to "Pearl Harbor," "Enemy at the Gates" deserves to be seen as one of the best war movies ever made. The makers of this pile engineered the preview to make it appear as if it was 90% explosions with a love story in there somewhere, but the most uninteresting romances of the past decade take up a good two-thirds of the running time. By the end of the movie, I wasn't sure if the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor to sink ships or if they just wanted to kill people in love.
A lot has been made of the possibility of Japanese Americans being offended at the movie, but beyond ominous, evil sounding music that plays whenever scowling actors portray Japanese naval officers planning the attack, and at least fifty cries of "Yeah! Got those ba****ds!" screamed throughout the movie, there's nothing to be offended about.
*Plot spoilers ahead, although if you didn't see them all while watching the movie about five minutes in advance, I feel sorry for you*
On the love triangle, I've loved movies with romance before, but the way this is done is just sloppy. Affleck makes a pathetic plea to a nurse while getting his immunizations, she falls for him after maybe a minute of resisting, and before you know it they've exchanged lovey-dovey gifts and gone on a date by a ship in port, and they're virtual life partners. None of the slow buildup or obstacles found in real life relationships, they just fly into each others' arms. Affleck volunteers to fight in Europe, gets shot down, and word gets back that he's dead. Three months later, it's taken the nurse about two minutes to fall for his childhood pal, and they're humping like jackrabbits. Gee, ya' think Affleck is going to turn up alive, come back at a very convenient moment, and it'll all lead to a cliche`d barfight seen a thousand times before in a thousand better movies? And that they'll reconcile just in time to leap into the Pearl Harbor battle and become heroes, then chosen for a top secret mission where only one comes back?
Running as a parallel story (and I use the term loosely) is Cuba Gooding Jr.'s blank page of a black navy officer, who adds nothing to the story at all and whose character should've been scrapped. He's given no definition or personality at all, just a suit of skin to wear that the filmmakers threw in so the NAACP wouldn't complain. I can almost hear them saying "OK, that's enough of the black guy to satisfy the minorities, now back to the white people!"
Without a plot I couldn't predict or characters I cared about, I hoped that veteran director Michael Bay would use the action scenes to save it. I have to admit, the moments right before the actual attack on Pearl Harbor are ominous and fearful, and the first ten minutes are first-rate. After that, though, it's like riding a roller coaster for forty minutes. The first time you watch Japanese Zeros strafe fleeing American troops, it's exciting. The fortieth time it's redundant. The Doolittle raid on Tokyo, which takes place after the battle the movie's named after, is a pointless addition to an already overextended enterprise, which would've been a lot better off without it. Arguably the dumbest part of the movie is when they crash land in China, and a few pilots armed with pistols kill what feels like an entire company of Japanese ground troops with rifles. Must be all that apple pie they eat.
After I could plainly see the director and writer throw in the towel and give up trying to make even a decent movie, I could expect the actors to do no more. Ben Affleck can be a good actor, but his performance here borders on jaw-droppingly awful. He squints a lot, with a fake Tennessee accent that fades in and out at random and at times he emotionally inflects his face, but not his voice, giving the impression of somebody having a very emotional time choosing what detergent to use at the laundromat. Kate Beckinsale is in over her head. With her woozy, breathless style of overacting, she should be in Diet Coke commercials, not movies. Josh Hartnett isn't quite as bad, but his character is so laughably underwritten that by the time he's become a Christ-like figure, there's nothing about him to ponder except how someone with such a girly haircut became an American pilot.
A bloated, overdone studio-funded corpse this is. One of the year's worst movies.
The Cell (2000)
The most underrated movie of 2000
My friend Michael has a nickname for this: "Silence of the Matrix."
I, of course, disagree with him. "The Cell" is a visionary masterpiece in every sense of the word. I have always had a special fetish with movies about the mentally disturbed, but rather than rip off from Travis Bickle or Hannibal Lecter, Protosevich (the writer) has created a unique and, oddly, sympathetic monster out of this. Carl Stargher is an animal and a slave to his impulses, but also to his past.
Through a series of very strange journeys into Stargher's bizarre, sadomasochistic personality, we see the abuse he went through as a child and we empathize with him. He hates the purity of the women around him and seeks to take it away, but at the same time cannot seem to so much as touch it, so he takes their lives instead. His entire attitude towards the world is based around the frustration of being unable to change what mocks him by being perfect while he sees himself as despicably flawed. Freud would have a field day with this.
The other characters aren't as well-defined, but they're adequate. Vince Vaughn gives a credible performance, at least. Jennifer Lopez is, I'm afraid (to quote DigitalBits) a "blank page." She, along with Bruce Willis in "Unbreakable," gave the most hilariously underracted performance in a good movie of 2000. Her emotional range runs the gamut from "I'm very concerned about what's going on," to "I'm extra-worried about this," with the occasional "Huh?" expression plastered on her refined, admittedly beautiful features. It isn't painful, though; just not up to par with the film.
I shouldn't complain too much about her, because this is Tarsem's movie. Unlike other major offerings from former music video directors (such as Dominic Sena's hideous "Gone in 60 Seconds"), the visual style of the jaw-dropping effects and sets, combined with a score that compliments each new scene almost to perfection gives it a very satisfying feel. Is it style over substance? Yes, and that style is absolutely incredible.
8 out of 10 for "The Cell," one of 2000's lost treasures. It's no "Almost Famous" or "American Psycho" for sure, but it will forever remain a welcome addition to my DVD library.
Whipped (2000)
Define "misogyny"
"Whipped" is one of the most awful films of all time. It is a mean, hateful piece of garbage that had me forcing myself to stay in the theater more than any other movie of 2000, besides maybe "The Grinch." It is not, as people have called it, an insightful portrait of modern relationships. That would be a little film called "High Fidelity." Whereas that movie was honest and sympathetic, "Whipped" is hostile, cynical, misanthropic cinematic poison. Avoid this like so many plagues, unless you want to see how truly bad a "comedy" can get.
Gladiator (2000)
Criminally Overrated; a Roman "Death Wish"
As I write this, I see upon my shelf of movies a true classic everyone should know; "The Raiders of the Lost Ark." It was the best Indiana Jones flick; escapism refined to its purest, most unadulterated form. I wish I had been old enough when it was released in 1983 to call it a stirring epic and one of the best movies of all time.
Was it those things? Certainly not. You know what you want to see in "Raiders," and that's Harrison Ford escape from impossible situations, stirring action sequences, and Nazis getting their just desserts. I know what I was looking for when I went to see "Gladiator," and that was testosterone-oozing killing machines lopping off arms and limbs in a plot not too intellectually stimulating where the the bad guy died and our hero won out. I saw that, and I give the movie a 6-7 as a result; professionally-done, cliche`d, brainless action and nothing more. It, too, was cheap (100 million dollar-cheap) escapism, so why is it the forerunner for Best Picture?
The Academy was duped when they saw this. There's nothing Best Picture-worthy about this film. Performances? No. Direction? No. Script? A thousand times no!
Russell Crowe for Best Actor? To his credit, he's suave and probably tough enough to grind Kirk Douglas from "Spartacus" into chum. He gives one of the best performances I've ever seen from someone who maintains the EXACT SAME facial expression and emotional state throughout 9/10 of the movie's running time. The real talent here was with Joaquin Phoenix, who transformed a character written as a whining infantile nuisance that wouldn't scare a goldfish into a truly creepy and threatening presense. He deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but not for this. He gave an even better performance in "Quills."
Speaking of Philip Kaufman's masterpiece, "Quills" is one movie on a list I would have rather seen nominated for Best Picture of 2000 than "Diehard with Sandals." "Almost Famous," "American Psycho," "High Fidelity" and "You Can Count on Me" are only a few of the well-crafted pieces of cinematic glory we received in 2000 that were overlooked by the members of the Academy that would rather get soaked in au jus and thrown into a tiger's cage than ::gasp!:: NOMINATE A MOVIE THAT MADE LESS THAN 50 MILLION DOLLARS (Miramax films excluded)!!! I guess the actors in the preceding films should've used a monotone voice and screamed a few more times.
What really irks me, though, is the nerve of the Academy nominating "Gladiator's" overcooked, cliche`s-on-parade laden script. Holy Mother of Christ, movies like this aren't driven by a script. They're driven by studio executives throwing fistfulls of money to make something that will make you go "oooh" and "aaaah."
Movies are an art form, and with that, "Gladiator" is the equivalent of the sketch artist at the mall doing portraits for ten dollars each. The Picasso of the nominees is the challenging, explosive "Traffic," and the awe-inspiring "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (a movie with a hint of human connection and feeling; Ridley Scott, take note) is Salvador Dali. I plea to any Academy Member that might by chance be reading this: please, I beg of you, leave this along with the mediocre "Erin Brockovich" and the preach-fest "Chocolat" at the bottom of the heap, and let a movie made by people who know and care take home the gold.