IvanX Reviews

Public Enemies (2009)

never affecting, exciting, or engaging at any point

[5/10 · 6 July 2009]

Well, after the disappointment of Miami Vice I had high hopes for a rebound. After all, Michael Mann made a legendary and stylish cops and robbers movie in Heat, and Johnny Depp and Christian Bale should at a minimum provide an entertaining night at the movies.

Unfortunately, Public Enemies fails to deliver. I was pretty much in the same neutral emotional state from the first frame to the last. What's missing is detail which would make anything you're seeing interesting. Period detail, plot detail, historic detail, even actual image detail. All are absent. (You are given WAY too much pore detail, though, due to the movie's continuous, annoying use of close-ups -- again detracting from any perspective.) Rather, the whole movie feels like a big, slow montage.

You're never given enough historical context to understand the meaning of John Dillinger in American society, or why we might care; you never get a sense of how long his crime spree lasted; his bank jobs aren't laid out with any specifics; there's no genuine sense of smart cat and mouse. On the other side, you never get a strong sense of FBI methodology, what motivates Purvis, or anything that differentiates any of the supporting characters from any others. Or what it is that Dillinger's lady loves in him. There's just no...detail.

Also, fairly shockingly for a Michael Mann film, it looks terrible, especially the nighttime sequences, which look taped, like an episode of COPS. I don't know how an aesthete like Mann could be satisfied with it, but as a moviegoer, I wasn't.

The movie was also marred by an overbearing, repetitious, near-constant score. No, really. It never lets up -- a clue that what's happening on screen isn't moving enough on its own.

The good news is that despite being given so little to work with, Johnny Depp is credible and enjoyable. Christian Bale was fine too.

Public Enemies wasn't as bad as Miami Vice, but like that movie, characters and topics are presented as though you should be interested and believe in them by default, not because they earn your interest and belief. Like they did in Heat.

In sum, I don't know how you can make a movie about a legendary bank robber and fail to make it exciting. But that's exactly what Michael Mann has done here. Bummer.

Miami Vice (2006)

styled to be realistic, but at no moment is it believable

[3/10 · 6 July 2009]

Another disappointed Michael Mann fan here. Heat succeeded not by adopting an excessively serious tone, despite its genuine intensity, rich characters, thrilling action sequences, and well-developed plot. In fact, it was Mann's glossy touch -- you could see the stylistic threads of the Miami Vice television show -- that gave that movie its vital sheen.

By contrast, Miami Vice goes for gritty rather than glossy, with terrible results. The movie takes itself far too seriously, and creates continuous cognitive dissonance throughout by presenting its set pieces with almost faux-documentary realism (e.g. the shootout). Yet nothing seems at all compelling or believable. (An early death in the movie sets the tone here.) Is this how international drug law enforcement really is? Is that what the Aryan Brotherhood is really like? The movie seems to want you to think so by how it is styled, but I'm not buying it. Crocket and Tubbs aren't even convincing as archetypes, much less properly developed characters.

I hardly demand accurate portrayals of the real world for a movie to work, as long as I am able to enter the movie's world. But I couldn't here, because of its insistence that what we are watching is somehow the "real" world. In the end, you aren't engaged, you don't believe, you aren't stimulated, and there just isn't much to enjoy. Too bad.

Footnote: Michael Mann shoots the most unwatchable sex scenes in Hollywood (even in Heat), and he goes off the rails in MV. He should just stop.

Ultraviolet (2006)

Ultraviolating

[3/10 · 28 March 2006]

Spectacularly awful is the latest Milla-Jovovich-kicks-ass entry, Ultraviolet. One doesn't expect much going in to a movie like this -- at best, you're hoping for Resident Evil meets Aeon Flux. But it's no exaggeration to say either of those films are Citizen Kane in comparison to this one.

Ultraviolet is a by-the-numbers exercise in techno-scored fight sequences with moments of techno-scored non-fighting in between. It's hard to know where to begin when talking about what's wrong with this movie. The dialogue is stilted and beyond cliché; the acting is either robotic (Jovovich) or hammy (bad guy Nick Chinlund). Phrases like "My God! Look!" and "Poor bastard," are uttered without any irony whatsoever. Only reliable character actor William Fichtner comes off as vaguely human (ironically, since his character isn't).

But, granted, you don't expect Shakespeare when you go to see Ultraviolet, so if that were all that were wrong, it could be forgiven. Unfortunately, it's not. The movie looks terrible. Every frame is awash in blurry-looking CG. Every single closeup of Jovovich has a massive digital vaseline smear across it -- in one shot, her nose is so washed away that her nostrils are just black dots on her face. The exterior shots don't even have the pretense of realism. Of course, the movie is supposed to be a kind of comic book (just to hammer that point home, the opening credits are a bunch of "Ultraviolet" comic book covers, and the closing credits are in a "comic book font"), but rather than an authentic vision, it feels like laziness. Aesthetically, it seems like Ultraviolet is unhappily caught somewhere between live-action and animation, and this uncertainty makes it impossible to even believe in the movie's physical reality, much less anything else.

So unoriginal plotting, bad writing, bad acting, bad cinematography. Anything else? How about that NOTHING in the movie makes any sense? At all? Most movies (and especially science-fiction movies) don't hold up logically if you think about them for too long, but Ultraviolet crumbles in the moment you're watching it. Who is Violet addressing in the opening and closing voice-over ("My name is Violet, and I was born into a world you might not understand...")? Does the virus make people stronger, or weaker? Are the infected people "hemophages" or vampires? Or are those the same? Am I supposed to know the difference? And why vampires? What does that mean? Do they drink blood? How can a virus give you fangs? Why is Milla able to hide out for so long when she's carrying a tracking device? How do you put a child in a briefcase? Can needles really be inserted into the eyeballs of humans without ill effect? Why is everyone in the movie a balletic fighter? What's the significance of Milla's magical blade with the runes and stuff on it? Where'd she get it? Most sci-fi movies might make at least a lame pass at explaining these things, so the viewer can think, "Oh, that might be dumb, at at least it's a reason." Not in Ultraviolet. All kinds of credibility-defying stuff is presented without a shred of context or explanation, and this is just a random sampling off the top of my head.

About the only positive thing that can be said about this film is that Milla's hot, and so is her fighting. But the movie's flaws leave you so uninvolved that it's impossible to even care.

In the end, Milla should have been Aeon Flux instead of Charlize, and Ultraviolet should not have been made. Flux would have kicked more ass, and we'd have one fewer awful movie.

The Ice Harvest (2005)

Seedy, moody, and enjoyable

[9/10 · 10 December 2005]

Maybe this really isn't a 9 out of 10, but at the moment I'm just really enjoying The Ice Harvest. I saw it for a second time, and enjoyed it more, once I knew what to expect. I can't think of as inaccurately marketed a movie in recent years. The trailers and posters made it looked like a caper comedy, and the quotes made it sound like this year's "Bad Santa." It's neither. As others here have said, it's a straight noir. Sure, there are some hilarious moments, but the film is not a comedy. It's dark, slow, and character driven, with John Cusack exhibiting his very best wry understatement. It's his core of sweetness -- never overtly revealed, but always present -- set against the oppressive bleakness of a rainy Christmas eve in and around Wichita strip clubs and the sordid characters who meander in and out of them, that keeps the film in balance. Connie Nielsen, Billy Bob Thornton, Randy Quaid, and Oliver Platt all turn in perfectly tuned performances, but Cusack, with his low-key, mesmerizing timing, is the center.

Anyway, if you're looking for a fast-moving comedy, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a black, mostly unredeeming movie with great performances and bone-dry wit, The Ice Harvest might be for you.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005)

Funny, but not spectacular

[6/10 · 12 November 2005]

I saw this movie on opening night last night with moderately high expectations and not a lot of knowledge about Sarah Silverman. I left amused but disappointed. Ms. Silverman is entertainingly acerbic, but ALL of this movie's strong moments come from her stand-up, and the air completely goes out of the film when she goes into her mediocre, poorly integrated songs and set pieces. (And what's up with her repeating the same punchless lines over and over in her songs?)

In the end, "Jesus Is Magic" bogs down under the weight of its own pretension. It would seem better as an ordinary cable special, especially if you removed the fluff and focused on her stage show. The movie wants to present Silverman as something more than a mere comedian, but unfortunately fails -- the haphazard presentation and (especially) the atrocious-looking digital video (I challenge you to find a single sharply focused object in the entire movie) make it unworthy of a cinematic event.

In other words, it's worth seeing, but wait for cable or DVD.

Memento (2000)

imaginative and clever, but morally empty

[7/10 · 13 January 2002]

(PLENTY OF SPOILERS)

Memento was a neat trick, which I found to be engrossing throughout. Whether or not it was a "gimmick," I thought the gimmick added something, and did partially simulate the character's experience for the viewer; every scene unfolds without any knowledge of the scene before it, meaning you always start disoriented and need to rely on the character's notes to figure out what is going on.

In many ways, it is just a clever way of telling a detective story; detectives try to recreate what happened in the past, and this movie takes it the next step and simply tells the story backwards. Unlike the Blair Witch Project, in this movie the gimmick helped absorb me in the story.

However, the movie has a fatal flaw in my view, which is that it seems to take place in a kind of inexplicable moral vacuum, which prevents any serious identification with (or even belief in) the characters. It is not only cold, as many have noted, but positively barren in terms of anyone in the movie having any normal concern over human life. Leonard is not presented as someone who has any background which would lead him to serial killing, and yet that is what he does, and no one even questions him for a moment, as if bloody revenge is just something that everyone talks about over coffee. The movie takes at face value Leonard's conclusion that murder is the only, best, and most natural way for him to heal.

Leonard believes the world will be a better place if his wife's death is avenged, even if he has no satisfaction in knowing that it happened. At any point, he could simply choose to forget, but the fantasy of revenge gives his life purpose. Fine, I can sort of accept that. But no one challenges him; no one questions him; in fact, people use him to carry out their own dirty business. I realize there are bad people in the world and all that, and I have enjoyed a great many movies about them. However, in this movie, there is not a single person who acts honestly; no one fails to take advantage of Leonard, and no one challenges Leonard's fundamental mission, even as they are fully aware he could kill an innocent more easily than his man (which, in the end, it appears that he has).

It's like a world where honesty and loyalty have never existed, and, since it's neither sci-fi nor a movie about low-lifes or criminals, that makes it a hard world to take seriously. It would have made more sense to me if he were a cop or something, but instead he is a mild-mannered insurance adjuster who really knows his way around with a gun and has no problem assaulting people with tire irons.

But let's say, whatever, he got really messed up by his wife's assault, is hell-bent on revenge, and even though he could choose to forget, he doesn't want to. Ok. But then, if the end of the movie is to be believed, (BIG SPOILERS), it appears that he has already had his vengeance, and after ALL of his meticulous notes that he keeps for EVERYTHING, it would appear he chose to forget about it, invalidating what for him is the single most important event in the world, the thing that makes his breadcrumbs in time worth creating.

But THEN, even better, he makes the conscious decision to forget, again, and choose not just an arbitrary target but someone he knows has helped him, just so that his life has meaning. It's a great one-two sucker punch for the audience, but it makes no sense. He makes a conscious decision that the lives of others (his friends even), *and his wife's assault and death,* are less important than his need to have a mystery to solve. So in the end, he just winds up being truly pathological, which is not really that interesting; he was much more interesting as a wounded man with a mysterious and disabling condition he must push past in order to heal his wounds (if dubiously) and right his wrongs.

(Some have pointed out the "I did it" tattoo in a scene with his wife; I missed this, but since it doesn't appear elsewhere in the movie, it seems like it may have only been part of the weird impressionism of the scene, and not really there; and if he had it removed somehow, then he's even more pathological than I imagined.)

Even his wife's/Sammy's wife suicide by taking advantage of the condition demonstrates a curious lack of humanity -- before ever consulting a doctor or psychologist, she finally chooses to take her own life by allowing their loved one to kill them via a cruel test. Who does this? Again, it is as if, in the world of the movie, people just don't think about life and death in the same way the rest of us do.

And the thing is, a movie is completely entitled to have that perspective -- but it doesn't serve this one very well. This movie is a murder mystery with a main character you have to be sympathetic toward in order to make it through the film, in order to make his journey yours, as well a meditation on the nature of memory. However, the life-indifferent perspective makes it hard to identify, and clouds the discussion on memory. It just gets in the way.

So, in the end, great idea, fine acting, entertaining execution, good brain candy, worth watching for sure, but ultimately hobbled by a serious lack of believability of the motivations of the characters due to an unexplainable indifference to human life and emotion, demonstrated by every character in the movie. It kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth in the end.

Videodrome (1983)

way, way ahead of its time

[21 December 2001]

Some spoilers, clearly indicated when you get to them.

The thing is about Videodrome is that it's hard to watch in the year 2001 and appreciate what it was when it came out, much as like listening to the Sex Pistols today can't possibly convey what was experienced listeners in 1976 England.

I saw it in 1985 and it just blew my mind. I had never seen such a...postmodern movie, though I don't think I would have known to call it that then. Not only is the movie more ambiguous and surreal than anything I think I had ever seen at that point (it still is way, way up there), but it was out in front in addressing many themes that we now take for granted in movies.

Videodrome is the first film I know of to implicate the viewer as a participant in the movie itself. Man Bites Dog (C'est Arrivé près de Chez Vous) and Natural Born Killers wouldn't do this for another ten years or so. Rick Baker's (brilliant) gore is itself a kind of pornography, a violent visual stimulus for the viewer, and, in case the point is missed, the S&M foibles of Max & Nikki drives it home.

The "what is reality" theme of the movie that the Matrix so broadly popularized was not only innovative, but actually more sophisticated than likeminded movies, because rather than only the characters grappling with what reality is, in Videodrome the viewer is grappling with it.

The movie plays like a sinister homage to Marshall McLuhan (cartoonishly referenced in the form of Dr. Brian O'Blivion, a man who spouts cryptic slogans about the our relationship to the television screen), ten years before Wired exhumed him.

Though the movie badly dates itself by prominently featuring the video technology of the day, it still doesn't feel like it places itself in any particular time, much as Brazil doesn't. Rather than a future dystopia, it's a now dystopia, a vision of our own society through a different lens (no accident that the architects of Videodrome are nominally eyeglass vendors).

*** VERY SLIGHT SPOILERS *** Life doesn't look any different in Videodrome; there are cars, offices, apartments, the usual stuff, and even the unusual things aren't that weird; is the Cathode Ray Mission that far a stretch? I've been to bus terminals where derelicts pump quarters into pay-TV sets. Yet despite the normal settings, there's no question the view is one of dystopia, a world that is grey and slightly unreal. It's our world, and it isn't. It's 1983, and it's not. The cinematography of the movie, while rarely flashy, is subtle and very effective. The score (by the always-excellent Howard Shore) is menacing and evocative, if you can get over the 80's synth strains.

It's fun to see Videodrome in the context of Cronenberg's other films; without being monotonous, he is almost singleminded in what he wants to say and depict. His earlier films by comparison feel like a warm-up; and both the acting and production values in Videodrome are far beyond his previous work. Though I think his later films are in some ways more accomplished (Dead Ringers surely has to be his most beautiful and emotionally evocative), I think Videodrome is the purest and most fully realized instance of Cronenberg's vision.

*** SPOILERS ABOUT OTHER CRONENBERG MOVIES *** Unfortunately, Cronenberg's vision has some ugly aspects too, and the low-grade misogyny which runs through all his films is on candid display here, second only to Dead Ringers; even though what is shown in the Videodrome is, I suppose, intended to be distasteful, it's still pretty distasteful to see screaming, naked women being beaten against an electrified clay wall by unknown, masked aggressors (and we are assured, of course, that's it's not faked). Perhaps it is an indictment of those who enjoy this sort of thing. Or perhaps by showing something that is supposed to be repulsive it's supposed to soften you up to accept the pleasures of the milder sex and violence that occurs outside of the Videodrome (in the movie, and presumably your own life), underscoring the movie's point.

I suspect however, that it's just the director working out some ugly stuff, doing the same thing he does when he cameos as a obstetrician delivering something indescribably hideous (The Fly), or stages a gynecological operation with medieval torture devices (Dead Ringers), or has a woman grow murderous mutant children in tumors (The Brood), etc. (About Crash, what need be said.) While it has been said elsewhere (accurately) that Cronenberg is essentially a moralist, I think that his is a somewhat retrograde morality, in which sexuality, especially that of women, is itself suspicious and dangerous. Not that he would be the first to think that; and retrograde or not, his feelings give weight and bite to his movies.

*** NO MORE SPOILERS *** When I saw ExistenZ I saw the obvious Videodrome relation that others did. If they're similar thematically, then ExistenZ is the fun one, Videodrome is the scary one. ExistenZ isn't as well written; it's also not nearly as bleak. It seems telling, somehow, that ExistenZ was the first movie Cronenberg has written from scratch since Videodrome.

Anyway, for whatever the failings of Videodrome may be, it still represents a rare totality of vision which is prescient and immensely relevant; whoever made the comment about Survivor being the Videodrome was right on. And as we mediate our physical experience further each day with computers...it doesn't really matter that they're using beta tapes in the movie. It's a stand-in for whatever medium we use to program ourselves and our perceptions, which begs the question of who is doing the programming...

I think it's a must-see for anyone interested in technology and culture. Or, for that matter, gore hounds. If you are going to see one film that best represents David Cronenberg, I think it's got to be Videodrome.

Miller's Crossing (1990)

A thing of beauty

[10/10 · 11 August 2001]

I can find no flaw with this film. Every time I see it I find another subtlety, a detail, a turn of the phrase that impresses or amazes me. The plot is serpentine but never convoluted; the dialogue is superb and witty. It is beautifully shot, well-paced, a great experience for the intellect and emotions alike. While violent, it is never gratuitous (I don't know if I would say the same for Fargo). Above all, the performances are grand and fantastic; Gabriel Byrne gives one of the most perfect performances I've ever seen, one of those actors who can convey the most complex emotions by the smallest mannerism or change of expression. Everyone else is nearly as good. Every scene feels like a piece unto itself, yet vitally furthers the plot. It's serious, yet witty and wry, and somehow completely avoids being pretentious. It is the Coens' finest, as far as I am concerned, and one of the finest films ever made. I am eagerly waiting a DVD release; for the impatient, the widescreen laserdisc is quite satisfying. A rare 10.

Spaceman (1997)

if only there were more like this

[8/10 · 10 August 2001]

It's clever, it's quirky, but the amazing thing about this movie is that it exists and it is as well made as it is. It was made for nothing -- $60K -- and yet it has smart camerawork, a solid (and funny) premise, believeable (enough) acting, good lighting, pathos, satire, romance, it's all there. It's not fall-on-the-floor funny for the most part -- it is actually more subtle and deadpan. Somehow, the movie even manages to get some emotions across without being trite or sentimental about it; when Spaceman first looks off into space, longing, hoping for a sign, as an orphan hopes for the return of his parents, it's actually moving. It's weird, and stylish, but never self-conscious. The score verges on bombast but is actually effective at setting the mood -- and the director had the good taste to go with a chamber orchestra rather than taking the easy way out and dropping in a bunch of cheesy synth like many ultra-low-budget movies. Criticisms: it is seems slow, at times, though its deliberate pace does help build atmosphere and contribute to the deadpan strangeness in a Jarmuschy kind of way. Some of the acting is below par (the mob boss and his thugs, for example), but they are minor characters and it can be easily forgiven. The editing is adequate but nothing more, and occasionally seems awkward; also, not a big deal. Be sure to hit the pause button on the DVD during the newspaper articles close-up. All in all a commendable effort for all concerned.