I, Frankenstein

Those nice folks who cooked up the Underworld pictures have been busy. Brianchild of Underworld writer and actor Kevin Grevioux, this picture is based upon his I, Frankenstein graphic novel released just last October. Grevioux made enough money off the Underworld films to start his own comic book company, so he is keeping that part of the revenue, then sold the screen rights to his pals at Lakeshore Entertainment, co-finaciers of the Underworld films, and so on, and so on.  I suppose action figures are on the way.

When it came time for a director to be signed on, I presume they thought the script still needed work, because they got ahold of a pretty successful writer of this type of thing, Stuart Beattie, who has written the scripts for a couple of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and for whom Frankenstein is his second directing job.

So while these are not the absolute best elements for quality picturemaking, I, Frankenstein turns out to be a rousing experience - if you go for this sort of thing.  I will give it this: You CAN follow it.

1. It seems that the Frankenstein (Aaron Eckhart) monster is immortal.  Why?  No idea.
2. It seems that Satan's Demon Naberius (Bill Nighy) wants to know how the Frankenstein monster was created from dead people.
3. Naberius has made a good hire: The brilliant bio-scientist Terra (Yvonne Strahovski), to carry on Dr. Frankenstein's work.
4. God's Angels (known as Gargoyles because they hang out in this enormous cathedral) are more-or-less lead by Leonore (Miranda Otto), who is trying to keep the Frankenstein monster (who she calls Adam) and his secrets out of Naberius' hands.
5. After some initial reservations, Adam joins the side of the Gargoyles, after he finds out what Naberius plans on doing with the power to re-animate the dead.
6. The Mormons will love it!

As with last week's Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, this attempt to breath new life into an old (public domain) classic is a double-edged sword: the emphasis must be on "new," and while there is much in I, Frankenstein that we have seen before, the dramatic shape of this story had me going along with it.  Maybe because I understood it - this helps.

But this method of coming up with a non-human enemy which you can show our Heroes slashing and hacking at without it being considered anything but "fantasy violence" IS beginning to get old.  The Demons, when hit over the head hard enough, turn into big, noisy fireballs, and disappear, just like that!  The Gargoyles, on the other hand, turn bright blue, and then vaporize and shoot up into the clouds (heavens?). Whatever.

We have seen the gorgeous, young, blond female scientist before too.   There is a scene where, after Adam saves Doktor Terra from an army of attacking Demons, the two repair to the most over art-directed filthy hotel room, where she proceeds to do minor surgery on one of his shoulders.  Adam is explaining to her for the first time the war between the Gargoyles and the Demons, and the entire big ugly picture.  Her instruments going into Adam's shoulder sound just exactly like what they probably were made by: moving a knife around in a jar of strawberry preserves on the foley stage.  She can't go on. The enormity of what Adam has told her is too much.  All I kept thinking about was: Would this woman REALLY operate on Adam in a room THIS filthy?  I don't think so.

Then too, there is Bill Nighy as the Big Bad Guy.  His role in the film, and the function he has in this story is so formulaic that one wishes there was some other way to do it.  And casting Bill Nighy isn't it.  I like him as a performer, and I resect him for it, but as the bad guy in a film like this - I don't think so.

Eckhart does what he can also.  But in turning the Frankenstein monster into a fairly good-looking fellow, the story has to focus on something else other than the monster's inability to play well with others.  He loses much of what makes him special, and becomes a mere participant in a larger story.  There is some interesting talk about the soul, and whether a re-animated body has a soul, and if not, why not and so on.  All of this intrigued me to the point where I felt as the though the picture was doing what a movie like this ought to do and rarely does: build up steam toward a big finish in the third act.

When we get our first glimpses of Naberius' plans, we don't see the half of it.  At the finale, the scale of his undertaking is revealed in all of its warped glory, and it is quite a sight.  I do not like to give away endings to stories here, so I will say that the dramatic shape of this story expanded considerably and with it, my interest increased accordingly.  I was really bowled over by the finish on this one.  It's wild-assed fun.

Meanwhile, I, Frankenstein is being shown in 1:1.85 in IMAX® theatres, while in non-IMAX® theatres, it is being shown in 'Scope!  We have not seen anything like this since the dawn of the widescreen age with the cropping of George Stevens' Shane!  Since when has a more narrow screen been considered the premium format?  Since when do the people in the less-expensive venues get the CinemaScope format?

Which feels like a bigger movie? 'Scope or. . .

. . . 1:1.85?

I have no idea how they have configured these two different versions, but I have to say that I feel that I have been done a disservice.  Soon, I suppose that all the IMAX® movies will be in 1:1.85, then we will wait for some crazy visionary to introduce a new version of Cinerama which will change the game again.  Perhaps the Chinese will have to convert to that, also.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recuit

Well folks, they have done it again. Paramount Pictures deemed that what we needed around here was a new series of Jack Ryan movies, and here it is, and it is actually pretty good.  Director Kenneth Branagh has been quoted as saying that it, "was the kind of film that I like to go and see."  We'll see if the market bears him out.

I like this sort of film as well.  A spy picture is perfect for films with their linear story lines, actors (and sometimes actresses) moving across the frame with a resolute step and clear intentions, crisp storytelling direction, along with advanced demonstrations of Griffith's cross-cutting technique.  Ryan is a marvelous example of how the Hollywood system can put together something so sharp and confident, even though the film had been in development hell for years.

Kenneth Branagh certainly knows how to deadpan.

Branagh certainly knows a lot about theatre and the movies.  This is the sort of movie where a sequence will open with a shot looking across Red Square in Moscow, and there will be a title in the corner that says "Moscow" and they move right on to other things, concentrating on the characters and their faces and their interactions, keeping the thing somewhat small and intimate.

In fact, I thought that the whole thing was being done somewhat on the cheap.  The downing of Ryan's helicopter in an Afghanistan war prelude was straight from Coppola's playbook: fast and confusing.  There is no big previsualized overdone long shot of the helicopter exploding.  You get the idea, then, it's off to Ryan being taken into a field hospital, bang.  Same thing with the sequence of Keira Knightly's Kathy being abducted.  Fast, tight, lots of shots, lots of confusion, over.

But the scale of the film changes once Ryan is recruited by Kevin Kostner's Harper character into the CIA, then sent to Moscow to infiltrate the doings of the Super Russian Bad Guy Cheverin, played by Mr. Branagh himself.

Of course, the bad guy in a picture like this has to be a formidable adversary.  The film's conception of international double-dealing and spy intrigue boils down to a personal grudge match between Cheverin and the CIA's invovlement in Afghanistan during the Soviet War in the 1980s.  These sorts of things certainly MUST be behind all of the economic turmoil we face these days, right? These story lines of the Evil Genius Who Wants to Destroy the World is getting harder and harder to sell to audiences.

So Cheverin is big, gruff, rich, has his own office tower where everything is black and so much slicker and intimidating than anything in America. He speaks in riddles, and like all bad guys, likes operatic music, paintings and literature; generally behaves like a brute.

On our side, we have Chris Pine as Jack Ryan, looking suitably rough, dashing or intelligent as the case requires, and Kevin Costner, looking quite rough and rumpled all the time.  Why should he worry? He has a two-picture deal.

In addition to the usual us-against-them, we have the contrast between the powerful black slickness of the Russians and their Land Rovers, and Our Guys, who are armed only with a bunch of over-designed laptops.

This works especially well in a variant on the Rear Window gambit: Have the CIA team watch as Ryan  sneaks into the bad guy's lair when we know Cheverin is otherwise engaged. Naturally, Cheverin, talking improbably with Keira Knightley about modern Russian literature, realizes that Ryan is breaking into his office, thereby endangering the girl, while Harper is guiding Ryan through his escape from the fortress - it's pretty good stuff. All the events flow reasonably one into the other, which is what makes me wonder: does life look like a spy movie to today's 20-year-olds?  Real life is a bit more chaotic. I wish for a few more screw-ups.

The outcome of all of this is never really in doubt. Despite some tense moments in the relationship between Ryan and his girlfriend Kathy, we know that they will be OK, that everything will work out in the end.  I also liked the scene in the CIA airplane flying back to the U.S.; Pine is enough of a smart fellow in real life to be able to pull off the gymnastic leaps of data gathering and logical conclusions demonstrated in this scene, but what I liked was Kathy's reaction to Jack's performance.  This is a side of her B.F. that she has never seen before.  Too bad this is a PG-13 movie (one "fuck" only, please), or else we should be seeing the aftermath: hot monkey sex all over the place. She likes this Jack Ryan better than the other one!

Too bad also that the finale to the picture is IN THE TRAILER!

I am pleased to report that this is a quite enjoyable film.  The spy picture has been a reliable genre for a while now, it will be interesting to see if modern audiences will respond to this mixture of Us vs. Them, Guys with guns and the Gals with innocent looks than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit provides.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I will say this right upfront: the works of J.R.R. Tolkien are not my thing. I will respect the fact that Mr. Jackson's films of some of Tolkien's novels have struck a chord with people out there in Movieland, but I find the fascination puzzling nonetheless.

Having said that, I am all for anything which brings moviegoers in, seducing them into the pleasures of movie-going—whatever direction the medium is heading in.  The direction, for the present, seems to head toward what I like to call the "three-ring-circus" movie: these movies have indeed replaced the juggler, the lion-tamer, the bearded lady, and the midway.

The golden pile is almost as steep as stadium seating.

Last Christmas, my two houseguests (who were 18 and 23 or so) were free to pick the holiday movies we would go see. To my astonishment, they chose Django Unchained and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. They both loved Django,  and completely ignored The Hobbit; I mean, a 6 minute sequence of two MOUNTAINS fighting?  Come on.  I suspect that there are more similarities between the two films than was apparent at the time, but for me, Django was more interesting in that it took place in a recognizable world.

Which leads me back to my starting point. I don't get the Tolkien thing, as translated by Peter Jackson and his WETA pals. Simply saying that one group, the Dwarves, need to reclaim their golden hoard, which had been stolen from them, hidden inside an impregnable mountain, and guarded by a fire-breathing dragon, does not suggest dramatic greatness. The reason for this is simple: we all know that in a story like this, the good guys will win. Not too many moviemakers will go, say, the Chinatown route, or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or Psycho route, where your hero turns into somebody else and dies halfway through.

And this is what is at the heart of my own dissatisfaction with this sort of fantasy film. There is no dramatic content to it. I understand that it is ritual. I understand scale and pageantry. I like these things in movies. But nothing I saw in The Hobbit 2 was in any way relevant to the life I live. Perhaps modern viewers are OK with this, flocking to these admittedly visual experiences, which is what I find myself doing when the characters and story do not hold my attention: I look at the scenery.

The scenery is impressive. We visit a number of places over the course of the film, but I think Smaug's lair and the golden hoard inside the Lonely Mountain is the most interesting. In its Deco-with-Mayan styling, and relentlessly diagonal wash of golden treasure, it LOOKS like something ought to happen here, and it does. Up to a point.

For me, Hobbit 2 works best, when all the elements are working at the same level. The entrance of Bilbo in the interior of the Lonely Mountain is the most effective dramatic moment in the film.  We know that Bilbo is a much sterner fellow than the one we met at the beginning of the Hobbit story, but we also know that he is small, and weaponless; that the treasure is guarded by Smaug the dragon, and that the whole journey has centered on the need to find the Arkenstone (for whatever reason may be made clear later) thought to be within the pile of gold.

Martin Freeman could not have been a better choice to play this Bilbo Baggins character.  Many felt that the first Hobbit movie allowed for too much free reign for character-establishing foolishness and filler to make it hold our interest; an imbalance of too much character, not enough story. Perhaps Jackson was talking a longer view in that he knew that there would be less time to spend on scenes of actors inhabiting their characters in the second film.  Seen together, this might be the case.

In any event, Bilbo's entrance into the treasure area with Smaug's awakening, is very atmospheric and cinematic. It is the best example of everything working in the movie at the same level: story, performance, setting, tempo, and atmosphere.  But instead of simply eating Bilbo, like any talking dragon would do, turns out Smaug is a long-winded procrastinator, and the subsequent dialog goes on far too long, reducing what could have been a very promising sequence to overstay its welcome. This entire film is coated with bloat.

And the fans love it.

Some other quibbles. The Chinese is possibly the only theatre showing The Hobbit 2 in both IMAX® and "HFR." I did not see The Hobbit 1 at the Chinese last year, when they presented the movie in HFR also.  But the effect of shooting digital stereo images at 48 frames per second is that the image, though still film-like, seems more like it is shown on some sort of LED display, and gains a very noticeable video-like quality. Especially when there is fast movement. So now we have come full circle. The movies are mixed to sound good in our living rooms, and now, they look the same at the theatre as they do at home.  Total convergence.

I did not care for the sound mix for this movie either. Many lines of dialog (especially Smaug's) were simply unintelligible. I do not understand what it adds to a movie when dialog is so difficult to understand as it is here, but rather it shows a certain disregard for story and communication prevalent in this production.