Speed Racer

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Watching “Speed Racer” is like freebasing Pixy Stix.  It’s like inserting Skittles directly under your eyelids (I can TASTE the rainbow!). It’s like diving, Scrooge McDuck-style, into a pool full of neon crayons. It’s like the nightmare you had after a three-day Red Bull bender. It’s like being beaten to death with a rolled-up blacklight poster. It’s like being locked in a glass cell that is slowly filling with gummi bears. Never has there been a film so brightly colored, so frenetically thrust at the audience, so enthusiastic to embrace the shallow source material (in this case a 1967 Japanese cartoon show) and turn it into something bombastically self-aggrandizing.

            No, that’s not quite right. Self-aggrandizing is the wrong term. “Speed Racer” is not trying to make the (admittedly shallow) premise of the original show seem like it’s important, per se (although it does try with some impenetrable plot points halfway through). It, instead, seems to be taking the feather-light, ultra-cheesy, rock-stupid conceits of the paper-thin 1967 original to logical extremes never before imagined by the likes of Hollywood or anyone else for that matter.

            Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) lives for racing. He lives with his Mom Racer (Susan Sarandon), Pops Racer (John Goodman), extremely annoying little brother Spritle Racer (Paulie Litt), and horrific diseased chimp Chim-Chim (Willy and Kenzie). He also has a few ersatz family members like the mysterious Australian live-in mechanic Sparky (Kick Gurry), and his would-be girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci). The Racer family is still smarting from Rex Racer’s death a few years before, but they’ve managed to win many car races as a family business.

            Speed is approached by a high-powered British CEO (Roger Allam) whose very Britishness (including bad teeth) imply that he’s up to no good. Speed is enlisted to race for his multinational supercompany. Speed politely refuses (He prefers racing with his family. Awwww.).  This causes the CEO to take legal action against the Racer family, which forces Speed to race in a sketchy high-stakes cross-country race, complete with jumping cars, flying buzzsaws, Ben-Hur-style side-smashings, and a scene where the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox from “Party of Five”) flips upside-down over another car just to punch the other driver in the face. There’s a lot of upside-down car flipping in this movie. And a lot of explosions. But y’know, really colorful explosions. And no one dies. It’s like a high-octane version of the “Thunderbirds” movie. A film to make “Dick Tracy” look bland. A neon-injected explosion at the Nickelodeon ooze factory.

            There are some plot complications in the middle where the villains’ motives seem to be about using the car races to drive stock prices on way or the other.

            Who is this film for? All signs point to children: only kids could get behind the assaultive, horrific cotton-candy color scheme. Only kids would find the unfunny one-liners of the abrasive Spritle funny. Only kids wouldn’t mind that the Hellspawn Chim-Chim exists in any context. Only ADD-addled kids could suspend their disbelief enough to be excited by the lightning quick cutting of the improbable races and racetracks (in addition to the car-flipping, there’s a lot of upside-down track-hugging as well).

            But then, are kids familiar with the original “Speed Racer” TV series? Heck, most adults don’t know about it. What kids could understand the dynamic of a mob employed by a big business? What kids understand the corporate need to falsely inflate stock prices? What kids even know about stocks? What kids would understand Racer X’s role as an undercover Internal Affairs agent? What kids could sit still for 129 minutes of anything but Harry Potter?

            And would any kids pick up on the irony of Speed racing to maintain his “real,” earthy connection with his family, when the entire universe in which “Speed Racer” takes place is one of the most artificial I’ve seen in any movie ever? Most fully animated films are more subdued and realistic.

            Where does “Speed Racer” take place? Well, judging by the technology, it’s clearly the future, and judging by the accents of most people, I’d say we’re in England. There are racers of various nationalities (there’s a Japanese racer played by Rain, and a German racer played by Moritz Bleibtrau, and a wacky racer played by Muttley- er… I mean Christian Oliver), but no real country is given. I’d say “Speed Racer” takes place in an alternate universe where people evolved from SweeTarts.

            The most baffling thing about the “Speed Racer” movie, is that is was concocted and executed by The Wachowski Brothers, who, in 1999 made the very popular sci-fi film “The Matrix.” They made some incredibly self-important mediocre sequels to this film, but you would think they’d be granted the good graces to take on any project they wished. Was “Speed Racer,” a multi-million dollar kids’ film, infused with some of the most cutting edge special effects technology, based on a late ‘60s Japanese property (one that even has apologists amongst its most hardcore followers) really their dream project?

            And did they really need so many shots where a talking character would slide across the screen, inducing a wipe?

            And… and… Chim-Chim.

            Die, Chim-Chim, DIE!

Criminals, Scoundrels, and Other Lovable Types

Film essay by: Witney Seibold

            I went to New York City with my mother in mid-October, 2001 to take in a few Broadway shows. This was shortly after the World Trade Center incident, so plane ticket prices were really low, and hotel stays could be arranged for pocket change. Our goal was to take in as many Broadway shows as we could. We figured that the New York tourist board would adjust their town’s theater tickets prices to match the thrift of the planes and hotels, further encouraging tourists to come and stay.

            Nothing doing. We still couldn’t get tickets to see “The Producers,” the biggest hit musical at the time. The New York residents wandered the streets of midtown Manhattan with alternating friendly smiles for the tourists and expressions haunted abandon at the violence of the recent building collapse. But there were still lines forming 15 hours early to get tickets for Broadway’s biggest smash.

            Everyone and their mother wanted to see “The Producers.” The show ultimately made billions. It was the one mainstream hit of the decade. My octogenarian grandmother expressed interest in it. The clean, cosmopolitan upper crust of New York, the rich WASPy types of Los Angeles, and everyone in between was eager to see this very, very popular show. So it’s almost strange to contemplate how off-kilter, off-color, and downright tasteless and subversive the original 1968 Mel Brooks film was supposed to be. I just watched “The Producers” again, and I can relievedly state that the original is still funny, still subversive, and has rightfully earned a reputation as one of the funniest films ever made.

            The story, for those who do not know it: Max Bialystock was once a high-rolling play producer in New York, but has fallen on hard times, and must make his living seducing rich old ladies for play contributions. A nervous accountant named Leo Bloom stops by to do an audit. He finds that Max had accidentally raised $2000 more than it took to produce his last play (which flopped). While brainstorming, Leo postulates that if one were to raise thousands and thousands more than it took to make a Broadway play, and it flopped, then the producers wouldn’t have to pay back the backers, and could keep the difference (“The IRS isn’t interested in a flop”). It would just be a matter of creative accounting.

            Max convinces Leo to join him in just such a scheme, and the two of them start to work on a play called “Springtime for Hitler,” which pretty much speaks for itself. No points for guessing that the offensive premise to a horrible play (written by a half-mad ex-Nazi, directed by an inept drag queen, and starring a clueless, over-the-top flower child named LSD) actually does become a hit.

            In short though, “The Producers” is about two men trying to commit a crime. It’s almost like a heist movie. Max is the greedy, vain bastard who has no second thoughts about pulling off a scam like this. Leo is the poor sucker who had previously been too nervous to talk to other people, and is now the willing co-mastermind. These are two men committed to pulling a con, and offending large numbers of people for their own avaricious gain.

            And we’re with them all the way.

            Think about that. Max is a greasy, horrible, dishonest man. He is obviously brimming with vanity. He probably thinks that horrible comb-over looks good on him, and wears his tattered old robe as if it’s still the kingly garment is no doubt once was. His only goal is to take advantage of people, and personally gain by it. His first purchase upon getting the money is a young, blonde Swedish secretary named Ulla who exists in his life as eye-candy and possible sex partner. So Max is a letch as well. And yet we’re with him all the way. We don’t laugh at Max in pity, we laugh with him in his ambitions. Max Bialystock, as played by Zero Mostel, is almost like Falstaff in his loveable scoundrelhood. He is not destroyed by his base vices, but defined and exalted by his bodily drives and appetites.

            It may be easy to write sympathetic criminals in film (look at some of the films about hero-assassins that are floating around there), but it’s really hard to write sympathetic base greasy criminal bastards.

            And it’s even harder to play them. Thank the powers that a sublime comic performer like Zero Mostel stepped into the role. Mostel, who has played low comedy, high drama, and even worked with absurdist master Samuel Beckett, knows just the right approach to playing Max Bialystock: He doesn’t let up. Mostel (along with screenwriter Brooks) are bold enough to let Max charge headlong into his own iniquities. He’s not just a bastard on paper, he’s the real thing.

            Mosel also wisely chose to play Max at the very edge of mania. Indeed, all of the characters in the film are on the brink of tipping into an uncontrolled madness. It’s astonishing how funny and well-timed Mostel can be when he’s in the midst of screaming, flailing, and, at one point, rolling around on the floor with Leo, desperately throwing punches and roughly yanking at the little man. The scene obviously plays as a manic moment, but it is not ever chaotic; never out-of-control.

            In a film that hinges on the performances of the two lead actors, their chemistry, and their ability to get us to feel sympathy, and good nature toward two sinners, Mostel is perfect.

            The film, however, would have fallen apart without Gene Wilder in the role of Leo Bloom (named, no doubt after the “hero” of James Joyce’s Ulysses). Wilder’s Leo is an introverted nebbish given to fits of hysteria, and who uses his childhood blankie to relax. When he’s not stuttering nervously, he’s wailing in fear at the top of his lungs. You can see Wilder’s face get painfully red in certain scenes. In one scene, Leo is on the floor, Max towering over him, and Leo is terrified that Max will jump on him. Max has no such intentions, but Leo has already pictured his flattened corpse.

            Leo is, in essence, a weakling. And not in an appealingly-flawed-human-being sort of way. He’s the kind of weakling that invites criticism from the sympathetic and disgust from the boorish. He may be intelligent and resourceful, but he is easily manipulated.

            And, like Mostel, Wilder plays this weakling just this side of manic. Wilder does a considerable amount of screaming in “The Producers,” and it’s astonishing to realize just how in control Wilder is of the scene. He may have to freak out, but he’s not going to let the scene freak out. The actors are master of comic timing, and are able to maintain that comic timing even in the midst of a terror-fueled rant.

            And, like Mostel, Wilder is able to make his character a lovable person. Bialystock convinces Bloom that he needs to break out of his shell, that he needs to be more of a free spirit, the kind of person who can do whatever he wants, and damn the consequences. It’s easy to see this as manipulation, but Wilder allows Bloom to actually come out of his shell. There is a montage in the film in which Bialystock and Bloom wander about New York City, Bialystock trying to refine their scheme and convince Bloom that it is the right thing to do. They eat hot dogs, they go boating, and Max incessantly tries to convince Leo that he deserves more than a grey life as an accountant. Eventually, just as night is falling over the Lincoln Center fountain, Bloom becomes convinced – not duped, but actually convinced – that he deserves more. “I want everything I’ve seen in the movies!” he shouts. The fountain blasts into the air, and Bloom, ecstatic, runs around the spraying water.

            What may have started as an exercise in manipulation became a true catharsis, and the joining of two minds in true friendship. The fountain scene is the crux of the film. It’s seeing these two at their most optimistic that makes us root for them. Their goal may be against the law, but when they are so joyously resolute, so hopefully charged, we have no choice but to smile for them and hope just as badly as they that they get away with their scam.

            And, of course, a few words to the supporting cast:

            Kenneth Mars plays Franz Liebkind, the half-mad playwright. He is welcome to chew scenery, shout, and rant about what a great dancer the Führer was. He is obviously out-of-touch with the rest of the world, and the more out-of-touch he seems, the funnier he gets. He even wears a Nazi helmet. Dick Shawn plays a flower child in an era when flower children were everywhere, on Shawn plays him like he’s still not quite hip to the lingo. He is named Lorenzo St. Dubois (LSD for short), and wears a Campbell’s soup can around his neck and thigh-high satin boots. He doesn’t really know the words or the music. He’s uncool enough for the kids to laugh at him, and clueless enough to believe in himself. Christopher Hewett and his fey sidekick played by Andréas Voutsinas may serve primarily as the source of numerous gay jokes, but inject just enough stuffy humanity into their ignorant gay stereotypes to keep them from being offensive; indeed, they can seem downright lovable. Lee Meredith does little more than undulate for the camera as the lithe Swedish secretary Ulla, but undulating is something she does well.

            Tastelessness:

            In 1968, the mere thought of making a lighthearted musical celebrating the life of Adolf Hitler was the very edge of good taste. Mel Brooks actually bothered to do it (on a small scale), violating every sense of decorum. This must have seemed, at the time, like a daring, subversive, and shocking move presented to an unready public. This was a time when Lenny Bruce had just started up, and the concept of “tasteless humor” was rarely breached in openly public settings like movie theaters. Brooks actually bothered, nay dared, to openly make a joke about a taboo subject. And what could be more taboo than making light of the Holocaust, only 20 years old at that point?

            So, in a way, “The Producers” was a bold social statement. Tasteless? Yes. Doubtless some critics lambasted it for going to far. But in 1968 tasteless humor was daring and bracing. It was used as a scalpel to dissect the Old World of established social dogma. This film isn’t an essay or a treatise by any means, of course; it’s just a goofy comedy. But one cannot criticize it for being tasteless. That is where its power lies.

            Bialystock and Bloom are clearly Jewish, but “The Producers” does little to indicate that two Jews are making a play about Hitler. There is one scene where the two heroes remove Nazi armbands (they were gifts from Liebkind), and throw them in the trash. Leo spits into the trash. Max does as well. Those are the only politics we’re given in this film, but they’re pretty clear.

            The “Springtime for Hitler” number is one of the funnier passages of any modern film. Lovably tasteless, it features a Nazi kickline, singing Aupfsturmführers, and a Busby Berkeley style dance formation in the shape of a swastika. If you’re offended by this, that’s natural. If you can’t laugh at it as well, then you need to lighten up.

            Over the years, Mel Brooks’ creation has, sadly, morphed from a daring and bracing comedy, to a family-friendly (and dare I say blander) version of its former self. Brooks was once known for cutting edge comedy: 1974 saw “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” two of his best, and 1977 saw the Hitchcock-savvy spoof “High Anxiety.” There was nothing cutting edge about the 2000 “Producers” musical. Sure, it was funny, but modern audiences had become inured to a certain brand of offensive humor. This is an era in which semen plays a regular part in mainstream comedy films. So seeing “Springtime for Hitler” remade in 2000 was just a celebration of an old joke. The edge has been worn off, and octogenarians are interested in seeing something that was previously too dark to see. By the time the 2005 film version of the musical was released (arborous anyone?), the teeth were completely worn down.

            I weep a little inside when I realize the same thing is now happening to John Waters’ movies.

            But watching the original film again, the edge is still in tact. “The Producers” still has its original power. It has captured two of the great comic performances of cinema, still feels daring and naughty, and it’s still damn funny.

The Happening

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            This is M. Night Shyamalan’s “Happening,” and it freaks me out. Yuk yuk. Let’s just hope the popular filmmaker can continue his upswing after the truly misguided affair that was “Lady in the Water.” Despite having an (I assume) unintentionally corny 1950s B-Movie quality (or perhaps an early-Hitchcock-ian exploitation-movie quality), “The Happening” is actually a well-wrought exercise in cinematic tension. The actors may have been miscast, but Shyamalan’s undeniable skill as a filmmaker shines through any cheesy performances and contrived disaster-movie clichés that “The Happening” can throw at us. In short (and hearteningly), it’s pretty good.

            The disaster du jour: One afternoon, the people strolling through Central Park freeze in their tracks. They begin to wander aimlessly. They talk in riddles. Then, without warning or reaction, they begin to commit suicide in masses. Is it terroists? Is it a toxin? Is it just a mass change of mind?

            We then cut to a high school science teacher in Philadelphia named Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) who is perhaps about to break up with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel). Like most people in the Northeast, they mobilize to flee the area. Sadly, this plague of suicides seems to be spreading faster than they can move, and soon the beleaguered couple find themselves shouldered with a friend (John Leguizamo) and his daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez), fleeing on foot through the backwaters of Pennsylvania, trying to escape the toxin, or whatever it is.

            There is a definite explanation given for this plague of suicides, but I will reveal nothing other than to say perhaps we, as a humans, should treat the environment a little better. No, this is not a “twist” ending that Shyamalan has been accused of doing in every one of his films (He only did it in one of his films, and another has a “surprise” ending). It’s just a jab at the audience.

            Indeed, “The Happening” resembles not so much “The Sixth Sense” as “War of the Worlds,” and the 1953 version at that. Or perhaps the 1956 “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The heroes are appealingly bland everymen and are characteristically resolute. The panicked sprints across potentially toxic fields, the montages of widespread suicides… they all feel delightfully old-fashioned. Everyone speaks in modern language, of course, and the film’s R-rated level of gore could only have been produced in this decade, but “The Happening” is a 1950s paranoiac thrill-ride through-and-through.

            If you’re into that sort of thrill, then you’ll love this one. I am, so I did.

Nancy Drew

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            I didn’t read Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew books when I was a kid, but I did take in a few of the Hardy Boys’ adventures. From what I gather, even at the time the mid 1930s), the Boys and Drew were considered almost laughably wholesome in their demeanor. This seems to be the only element director Andrew Fleming and his co-screenwriter Tiffany Paulsen have adapted in tact for their 2007 film version of Nancy Drew.

            Their Nancy (played with wide-eyed pluck by Emma Roberts) is polite to everyone, has perfect posture, wears penny loafers, and exchanges delicious home-baked pastries for favors. She is often criticized by her modern-day classmates, the cynical officials at her school, and even her workaholic father Carson (Tate Donovan). They all feel she should be a “normal” teenager. She often shrugs them off with a polite smile and “I like old-fashioned things” by way of explanation, but one of the central conflicts of the film is Nancy’s compulsive need to investigate mysteries and remain as polite and as old-fashioned as possible.

            And therein lies the central problem with “Nancy Drew:” It won’t let Nancy be Nancy. It would be fine to have her be an ultra-square in modern day Los Angeles, but she is such a perfect role model for little girls, and such a non-threatening wholesome being, that her behavior should be celebrated, not compromised or questioned. I would prefer that she attract people with the strength of her character and her natural iconoclastic behavior, not her potential to be smart, but also be “normal.”

            I don’t want to see Nancy surfing the Internet to find information, I want to see her skulking about libraries. I want her to have a bigger vinyl collection. I want her to shun the cellular telephone, and embrace rotary dials. She already has a Nash Metropolitan convertible and wears penny loafers. Let’s get her into the past a little more.

            But I ramble. Onto the story: Nancy lives in Smalltown, MiddleAmerica, where she lived with her widower father, and solves more crimes and mysteries than the local law can. Her dad, a high-paid lawyer, gets a job in Hollywood, so they must move, leaving behind all that is plain and milquetoast, including Nancy’s would-be paramour Ned (Max Thieriot). Nancy got to choose the house, so she chooses one with a Mystery.

            Her new house (fully furnished, and lambasted as being “old” and “worn out,” even though it’s an enormous mansion in Hollywood Hills that probably sold for no less than $8 million) was one the home of Hollywood recluse Dehlia Draycott (Laura Elena Harring in flashbacks), and contains secret passageways, and attics full of dusty old papers to rifle through. Nancy finds a note about an altered will, and the hunt is on to figure out what it means.

            Does it have something to do with the house’s creepy caretaker (Marshall Bell)? Or perhaps the seemingly unconnected single mom (Rachael Leigh Cook)? Or maybe the house’s realtor (Monica Parker)? Or perhaps the high-powered lawyer (Barry Bostwick)? And just who is the mysterious “Z?”

            Along the way, Nancy accumulates a horny twelve-year-old fat kid named Corky (Josh Flitter). He flirts with her, asks her out, and follows her every move. He’s serves as a kind of sidekick, giving Nancy someone to talk to. His presence in the film is really disturbing. Not only does he add sexuality to otherwise sexless PG-rated material (even the cute  boyfriend character is so bland as to make one wonder if he even has genitals), but Corky is the latest in a unnerving Hollywood trend of including a lecherous prepubescent boy into anything for kids. Are there really any tweener boys in the world who behave this way? Nancy may be an excellent role model for little girls, but this Corky kid is a really bad example for the little boys.

            Nancy will appear in more films to be sure. I guess “Nancy Drew” is harmless enough, and Nancy herself, as played by Roberts, is a delight to watch. But the film had much more potential to give an American icon of sorts some real freshness.

War, Inc.

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Ew.

            Here is a film that acts like it’s funny, when it’s really not. It also acts like it has teeth, which it doesn’t. “War, Inc.” has some very powerful things to say about corporate involvement in the Iraq war, commercialism run amok, the careful practice of keeping reporters away from the battlefield, and even the unfair, over-sexualized treatment we Americans give some of our pop stars. It’s going to make damn sure you know it has those powerful things to say.

            Take the scene in which Tamerlane (the film’s Halliburton stand-in) presents a group of de-limbed ex-soldiers dancing on their new prosthetic legs. A PR lady (Joan Cusack, the funniest performer in the film) exclaims that “Tamerlane used the same technology that went into their stinger missiles that injured them to make the very legs they’re dancing on!” Subtle.

            John Cusack, bless him, does his best in the role of Brand Hauser, a stressed-out hitman (not unlike his role in “Grosse Pointe Blank”) who is assigned to assassinate a Middle-Eastern dignitary named (tee hee) Omar Sharif (Lyubomir Neikov). Hauser takes shots of hot sauce to relax, and has painful flashbacks to when his wife was killed, and to when his old boss (Ben Kingsley) bullied him.

            This new assignment takes him to Turaqistan (the film’s Iraq) where war is raging, and Tamerlane has been tapped to provide privatized soldiery, weapons, and rebuilding materials. Tamerlane is run by the ex-vice president (Cheney shoo-in Dan Aykroyd), and he has carefully constructed an Emerald City (the film’s Green Zone) in the midst of the battles to arrange PR meetings and Press conferences. As his cover, it is Hauser’s job to run Emerald City for a few days. It’s Hauser’s job to deflect tenacious reporters like Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei), juggle the various dignitaries floating his way (he is seen in meetings with amateur film producers, emissaries, etc.), and, most oddly, to organize the wedding of a local pop-starlet named Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff, who’s been working on her abs) to a vain and callow gangsta wannabe name Ooq-Mi-Fay (Sergej Trifunovic). Is it me, or does that seem like way WAY too elaborate a cover for a CIA hitman?

            Oh, and did you see the joke in Ooq-Mi-Fay’s name? It’s Piglatin.

            Hauser, already having second thoughts about his job (he has conversations about it with his on-board directions computer played by, of all people Montel Williams), begins to fall in love with Natalie the reporter, and develops a kind of asexual regard for Yonica.

            The film has a really odd tone. It falls somewhere between the broad absurdist commercial satire of “Idiocracy” and the overstuffed self-important insanity of “Southland Tales.” It can’t seem to decide if it wants to be obvious and tasteless (which is fine, and can be funny), or stinging and hypercritical. Sadly, it doesn’t hit either mark very hard. This is a pity, too, since the film is, in all honesty, very topical. It wanted to Catch 22, and only Caught about 5. Mix into this baffling atonality some over-the-top performances (Kingsely’s “W” accent is just painful), a surprisingly earnest love story, an obvious plot twist, and Duff’s distractingly lithe midsection, and you have a perplexing, over-blended bouillabaisse of a movie.

            Perhaps screenwriters Cusack, Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser, and documentary director Joshua Seftel should have read Mad Magazine or Catch-22, but not both.

The Series Project: Introduction

By: Witney Seibold

            I have decided to start a new project here on the Darkened Years website: The Series Project.

            There is a grand tradition in filmmaking, a tradition one can often see in full effect any given summer in American multiplexes. It is a long-standing tradition of imitation, rip-offery, and beating dead horses into the ground. I refer mostly to the practice of The Sequel.

            As a general rule, I have no problems with sequels. While sequels and “follow-ups” seldom live up to the quality and shock of originality presented by the original films, I still think there can be charm in returning to the well. If you loved the characters from the first, why not spend another two hours with them? And even if a sequel is ill-advised (as is more often the case), there can be a joyous hubristic thrill is watching the filmmakers try to outdo themselves.

            Usually the first film, for whatever reason, strikes a chord. The filmmakers, realizing they have a potential “franchise” on their hands, amp up the action (and it’s usually action-based films that get sequels), bring in bigger stars, and try to make things even more exciting the second time around, with mixed success. Trying to ride the crest further, the same filmmakers try to make a second sequel, amping things up even higher yet, usually to a now-delirious effect. By the time we’ve arrived at any series’ part 4, the thesis of the original film has been lost, the filmmakers are spending less and less and making less and less. We are now in the mentality of a “series.” This is, critically, often called The Law of Diminishing Returns. We are now free to judge the films as a single unit, and can easily make base comparisons.

            I will attempt, with The Series Project, to critique a given film series entire, dwelling not just on the single installments of a given franchise, but on the series as a whole, and what it seems to say to us when the well is either dry or bottomless.

            For such an ambitious project, I must have some criteria.

            Rules:

            Rule 1: The film series must have at least five parts. This way I can get out of reviewing series that have a solid three parts, and then a fourth is dragged, unduly, back into the light for a sort of tired encore (think of “Indiana Jones,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Die Hard,” “Jaws,” and “Rambo”). By the time a series reaches part 5, we’re deep into the thick of things, and it is only then the series deserves the kind of analysis I intend.

            Rule 2: At least two of the chapters in the series must have had a theatrical release somewhere. This means that straight-to-video series like “Puppet Master” are out. Films that had a few theatrical originals, and then several straight-to-video-sequels are, however, in. Unfortunately for me, that means the “Air Bud” movies are still in.

            Rule 3: There must be some sort of central, canonical throughline to the series. A single villain, hero, or group of people. That means either remakes or so-called “spinoff” movies are out. The “American Pie Presents” movies do not count as “American Pie” movies. Ditto for “Tales from the Crypt.” Rob Zombie’s 2007 version of “Halloween” is not, canonically, part of the “Halloween” series. This rule also relieves me of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” I may, possibly, make an exception to this rule for the “Batman” movies (1966-present).

            Rule 4: No James Bond. There’s no logic to this rule. It’s just that the sheer number of James Bond movies, and the frequent rotation of 007s, is too daunting for me. I will gladly take on Santo or Zatoichi (they, at least, have a modicum of esoteric iconoclasticism), but Bond is out.

            Rule 5: I will take seriously any suggestions from you, the reader. I have many ideas with which to start this project, but perhaps you have some ideas for me. Did you need an in-depth word about the “Planet of the Apes” movies? Suggest it. Did you merely want to torture me with “Leprechaun” sequels? Suggest that as well. Keep in mind, though, that I have full veto power. I’ll just have to give a reason.

            Let’s get to serializing.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Marcus Brody is dead. Dad is dead. The Nazi regime has long since fallen, and America has fallen into the square cleanliness of the repressive 1950s. The red scare is in full swing, and nuclear tests are the word of the day. This is a very different world in which we’re used to seeing Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, slipping back into the role with professional aplomb), who is usually bashin’ the Reich and searching after holy relics.

            The holy relic in this film is not holy at all, but a rather an alien-looking cranium which is said to have come from El Dorado. After some opening rigmarole in which Indy survives an atomic blast by hiding in a lead-lined fridge, discovers the secrets of Area 51, has a falling out with his old partner (Ray Winstone), and has a few touching scenes with his school’s new headmaster (an underused Jim Broadbent), Indy teams up with a hog-riding greaser-type named Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) to find the secret of the crystal skull he has been hearing about from a minx-y Russian mentalist named Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Spalko looks and acts a lot like Isla, the She-Wolf of the SS, and Blanchett, bless her, really bites into the role.

            Indiana’s quest takes him to the Amazon where he meets an old colleague of his (John Hurt), and reteams with his old flame from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, looking very good), who is Mutt’s mother. There’s a jeep chase, a sword fight, attacks by ninjas (!), attacks by natives, attacks by killer ants, strange psychic links to the titular skull, and the obligatory scene in which our heroes all dodge ancient stone booby traps. If movies are any indicator, ancient civilizations spent all of their time constructing booby traps.

            “Crystal Skull” is about as good as “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984), the second Indiana Jones picture. i.e. It’s bogged down with incident, focuses way too much on theme-park-attraction-style action, and is sorely low in true exhilaration. I think the main problem lies with the film’s central artifact. In the previous three films, the sought trinket was based in ancient religious mythologies. The Ark of the Covenant and The Holy Grail are well-known enough, and even the Shankara Stones from “Temple” are surrounded by Hindu imagery. The Crystal Skull, on the other hand, plays into the “grey” alien paranoia that has only sprung up in the last 20 years. It’s not an ancient myth that is being tapped into, it’s a pop-culture reference.

            I suppose this is director Steven Spielberg’s way of bringing Indy up-to-date, though. What with the Nazis having been dealt with, and the grave-robbing aesthetic of the old-fashioned pulp serials been thoroughly paid homage to (as the previous three Indy films did with deft expertise), Spielberg is now trying to tap into the pulp sci-fi fiction of the 1950s. No holy relics now. Just spaceships and aliens, and the occasional Red to race us to the finish line.

            The film entire seems to be an excuse to revive the characters, and not a need to continue the story. In other words, it’s like most sequels; it exists only to cash in on the name and continue a franchise, not out of a burning desire to return to the lives of The Hero and his compatriots. It’s kind of a disappointing way to end a series; compulsorily. I was very fond of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” (1989) and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” remains one of my favorite action films. I guess well enough couldn’t be left alone. “Crystal Skull” is still a fun film, though. The giant ants were especially enjoyable, and there was a fun vine-swinging scene. It’s just not awe-inspiring or GRAND the same way the previous films were.

            A few more quibbles before I go: There is an attack in a graveyard by wicket ninja-like native with blowguns. They appear out of nowhere, and vanish just as quickly. No explanation is given for these people. Later in the film, Indy is chased by Amazonian natives who, likewise, appear out of nowhere, and then just as quickly are shunted out of the story. These are baffling, perfunctory action moments that should have been cut. The latter especially, since the real-life Amazon Indians have been being slaughtered by white men for years. It makes their on-screen wipeout a bit horrifying.

            Also, I own a pair of ZBS-produced radio dramas called “Dreams of the Amazon,” and “Dreams of Rio,” in which the film’s hero, Jack Flanders, must track down the origin of a crystal skull, and may have to find El Dorado. Some details of the radio drama are strikingly similar to this movie. It’s more than likely that the screenwriter David Koepp has listened to these radio dramas. Whether it was an outright ripoff or not is one of the courts, but either way, I recommend the radio dramas. Go to http://www.zbs.org.

The Fall

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            In 2000, music video director Tarsem Singh made an underrated film called “The Cell.” It featured tabloid flameout Jennifer Lopez as a psychotherapist who used a sci-fi machine to “enter” the subconscious minds of problem patients. Peoples’ subconscious minds are abstract phantasmagoriae full of strange unconnected images of stunning beauty. She eventually uses the machine to explore the mind of a comatose serial killer in order to find where his next victim may be starving to death. Roger Ebert called “The Cell” one of the best films of the year, although most critics, and even more audiences, rejected the film as needlessly arty and were unable to support Lopez. I didn’t think it was the best film of the year, but I earnestly stand behind “The Cell” as one of the more visually astonishing films of the last decade, and a solid and fascinating and beautiful thriller.

            Tarsem Singh, now just calling himself Tarsem, has now made his second feature film, and it’s every bit as beautiful and every bit as astonishing. In addition, it’s also very touching. It’s called “The Fall” and it’s about a hospitalized injured stuntman (Lee Pace), recently dumped by the love of his life, who tells a complicated adventure story to a five-year-old girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), who is staying at the same hospital, in exchange for the drugs he needs to commit suicide.

            We see the story he tells in grand complicated images. It is the story of six dejected and banished adventurer-types who all vow to kill the land’s evil king. There is the escaped slave (Marcus Wesley), the Italian explosives expert (Robin Smith), an Indian (Jeetu Verma), Charles Darwin (Leo Bill), a grime-covered mystic (Julian Bleach), and a masked bandit (Emil Hostine, then Pace later on) whose motivations seem to resemble the stuntman’s.

            The central conceit of the story-within-the-film is that we’re seeing it from inside Alexandria’s imagination. This means the film is not only endlessly creative, but full of childlike amusement. When the stuntman tells her of an Indian with a squaw and a teepee, she pictures an Indian with a turban; the kind she’s more familiar with. When he makes a mistake in the story, or gets to a part she doesn’t like, the images change to match her corrections.

            There are two climaxes, one in the story and one in the hospital, and the mix together perfectly. Unlike “The Cell,” though, which was a mere thriller, “The Fall” reaches further into human experience to pull out gems of hope. Untaru, a little girl, is not a buttony little moppet designed to tug at our syrup-encrusted heartstrings. No, she is merely, naturally, a little girl. One with a fantastic imagination.

            While “The Fall” is full of astonishing and impossible images, Tarsem has very rigidly steered away from the use of CGI. All the visual trickery was accomplished using old-fashioned camera tricks, elaborate sets and costumes, and the ever-reliable blue-screen. CGI can be impressive when used correctly, but “The Fall” has a visual richness that I very rarely see in special-effects-heavy CGI films.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            In the last Narnia movie, Susan Pevensie (Anna Popplewell) left behind a magical horn that, when blown, would summon her and her three siblings, previously kings and queens of Narnia, to the aid of the blower. In the opening scenes of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” the titular prince (Ben Barnes) escapes the schemes of his wicked step-father Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), and stumbles into the woods, into the den of some kickass dwarves (Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis). He blows the horn, and, back on Earth, the four Pevensie siblings, Susan, little Lucy (Georgie Henley), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Peter (William Moseley) are magically whisked out of a London train tunnel into Narnia.

            A year has passed for them since the last film, but 1300 years have passed in Narnia, and it’s now overrun by Italian-looking Telmarines. Narnians – that is to say talking animals, centaurs, Minotaurs, fauns, and the like – are thought to be extinct. Aslan the lion is long gone.

            This is an ingenious approach to a sequel, and it was wise of the filmmakers to skip straight to the fourth book in the Narnia series, where real developments have taken place. The story is fascinating, and the action is swift and solid. “Prince Caspian” is a much better-assembled film that “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” The first seemed too eager to please, and wasn’t able to fully reconcile its action to its subtle and widely talked-about (and not-so-subtle) Christian imagery. The second has some truly excellent action set pieces (the silent castle invasion is exhilarating), and a pace that never drags for the film’s first 100 minutes.

            This, sadly, also means that “Caspian” has much less on its mind that “Lion.” The first film served (in a benign sort of way) as an allegory for spirituality and the power of Christian beliefs. Aslan was resurrected and served as a savior figure. “Caspian” has no images, not even subtle ones, that relate back to spirituality at all. This doesn’t just mean that it’s a typical secular thriller (which would have been fine), it also means that it has no real themes at all. It’s just – like “The Lord of the Rings” before it – a huge spectacular action fluffiness. Even after the film has its climax and everything seems to have come to a conclusion, it continues to drag onward for about 30-40 minutes, tacking on a cameo by Tilda Swinton, an evil vulture-person, and a completely useless overwrought battle sequence with fighting trees and the appearance of a spectacular (but baffling) water god.

            Not helping things at all is Barnes in the title role. He’s a very, very handsome man, but seems to have attended the Johnny Utah school of acting. That his performance invokes the depths of Keanu Reeves-ian thespitude is no good thing. The four leads are all very good, though, especially the two boys, and Popplewell seems to be in the early stages of babehood. Eddie Izzard also has a small role as a cocky fighting mouse. The special effects are much better this time around, too.

The Band’s Visit

Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Many critics complained that Eran Kolirin’s “The Band’s Visit” was considered ineligible for the 2007 Academy Awards. It’s a film about Egyptians in Israel, but neither the Egyptians nor the Israelis speak the others’ native language, so the bulk of the film is in their common language of English. According to the rules, that’s not foreign language enough. Would it have won the Academy Award had it been eligible? Perhaps. It is very good little film.

            An Egyptian police orchestra, led by Lt. Tawfiq Zacharaya (Sasson Gabi) is hazardously traveling through Israel on the way to a concert. They get lost, and find themselves in a small city pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There is no bus leaving town until the next day, so the orchestra must rely on the kindness of the locals to find a place to stay for the night. The story unfolds in a cautious and simple way. Tawfiq has a strong connection to the beautiful restaurant owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), and they go out on a date of sorts. The orchestra’s charming lothario (Saleh Bakri) hits the night clubs in the hope of charming young ladies, but has a decidedly different journey. A trio of the police find themselves largely unwelcome at a birthday dinner.

            There are no fights. There are no huge conflicts. There are just the truly awkward situations of having to put someone out, and balancing your dignity on having to ask.

            The ages-long conflict between Israel and Egypt simmers underneath the film’s action, but “The Band’s Visit” is certainly not a film about saccharine messages of tolerance (the-other-guys-are-people-too-yadda-yadda-yadda). It manages to, instead, be about real humanity, about people finding an outlet for their sadness in the unexpected connections of other. It’s subdued. It’s almost silent.

            The film’s final scenes (where Dina and Tawfiq’s brief friendly relationship seems in question) may anger some people, but actually makes perfect sense. Why did Dina do that? Why didn’t Tawfiq? Well, that’s not really the way the film was pointing. It would go against the film’s direction and the characters’ natures for it to have worked out any differently. It is wise in allowing itself to do what it did.

            (Sorry to be so vague, but I don’t want to give anything away)

            It is a very sweet film that incorporates quietly sad moments, sweet exhilaration, and humanity. I liked it.