Surrogates raises some very interesting issues but unfortunately, does not do it in a very effective way. There is very little differentiating this film from the the average Sci-Fi/Action blockbuster. A bit less action and a few more thought-provoking moments perhaps, but still too much bad acting, poor casting and awfully written scenes that make you gasp in astonishment at such lack of respect for plausibility and consistency.

Nonetheless, for anyone interested in transhumanism, Surrogates will be somewhat stimulating. Human enhancement and the rise of artificial intelligence, along with the explosion of Genetics, Information Systems and Nanotechnology (the so-called GRIN technologies), will lead in the near future to some of the most complicated and important ethical questions that mankind has ever faced.

Surrogates describes a future where people’s only way of interacting with others and with their surroundings is through the use of Surrogates, robotic or cybernetic entities that look like younger versions of their human owners. All one needs to do is to lay at home on a comfy sofa, put on a not-very-fancy headpiece and one is immediately connected to their avatar and thus, to their ‘immortal’ younger, better looking and stronger selves. The difference with today’s virtual reality or simply net-based avatars is that these surrogates ‘live’ in the ‘real’ world, although once again, we start getting into all kinds of speculations about what real is. Surrogates is about the future but it is a critique of the present. Our increasing dependence on social media and virtual worlds is turning our conception of the word reality upside down. More and more people are choosing web and virtual-based reality over traditional reality. Some people are scared, while the younger generation plunges head fist into this new way of socializing and of experiencing life. We can not stop this pattern but we can discuss its ethics and fight for ways to make it better. Ultimately, virtual reality will become a natural part of existence, perhaps the only one and we will learn to upload our minds and to exist outside the confines of our fragile and limited bodies. After all, humankind, on the whole, has always wished for immortality and this is one way to do it.
But Surrogates does not discuss the possibility of mind uploading and presents us with a world that seems content to rot away at home while their Surrogates live on their behalf. I find that there is a logic flaw here, unless, of course, one can ultimately leave their dying body behind and just continue to live on by going from one new Surrogate model to the next. The film does not go into this level of detail - this is after all a big budget action film - which is a shame as the concept of Surrogates is fascinating.

I just had a flashback to 1982. I am coming out of the movie theater having just watched Blade Runner with some friends. My head is spinning, my imagination flowing. Blade Runner has just taken me to another world, a world richer than that created by any other movie before, and very few since. And all i can think about is that Ridley Scott is perhaps my favorite director. Or maybe third, after Kubrick and Coppola.

Forward to 2009. I just finished watching Body of Lies, Scott’s take on terrorism, intelligence services and the US’s involvement in the Middle East. And all i can think about is that Ridley Scott has become one of my least favorite directors. I still like him more than Michael Bay though.

Scott has become the expert in, and has perhaps invented, a new genre in cinema. The false epic. The shallow political deepness. The smoke and mirrors saga. Whatever. Films such as 1492, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Gladiator, and Body of Lies are nothing but big commercial vehicles shrouded in a pretension of intelligence and resting on a fairly unstable historical base. That is not to say that they are bad films. Scott is an extremely talented filmmaker, and his films are always perfectly crafted. But they have lost so much of their uniqueness and artistic inclinations since Scott started as a film maker. Where is the envelope pushing and non-conformity of The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner, and even of Legend? Well, it is long gone, perhaps when Scott found fame with Thelma and Louise. Scott may have pulled a Nicolas Cage on us, succumbing to the dark forces of fame and commercial appeal. In this he resisted only a little bit longer than his brother Tony who has been making blatantly commercial films for the past 30 years (True Romance and The Hunger aside).

Body of Lies tells the story of an American intelligence agent in the Middle East, played by DiCaprio, who sets up a fake terrorist organization in an attempt to capture the mastermind behind several bombings in the West. DiCaprio does a fairly good job, as he usually does, although he unfortunately rarely seems to rise anymore above the level of fairly good. But i admire his on-screen professionalism and his off-screen political activism. Russell Crowe plays DiCaprio’s boss, a cultural stereotype who almost by himself is supposed to tell us everything that is wrong with the US’s policy in the Middle East. But the role is poorly written and Crowe’s performance ends up being for the most part boring and uninteresting.

Body of Lies is what i would call a ‘Tom Clancy’ political film, meaning that it is not a political film at all. It is an action-driven yarn with big explosions, car chases, fast editing, good cinematography, big name actors and, with regrettably, only a semblance of political depth.

I recently read about Luc Besson’s growing empire and felt a bit disheartened about the rise of French-sponsored trash and brainless cinema. So what do i do? I go and watch Taken, the latest film from Besson’s Europacorp, hoping perhaps to confirm my worst fears, but also curious about Liam Neeson, an actor i respect, playing the tough guy who stops at nothing to find his kidnapped daughter.

And the result was not overly disappointing. Less fluffly than Ransom (1996) but not as decent as Frantic (1988). Neeson makes for a credible ex-secret service (or something like that) guy who is well-versed into the art of finding foreign baddies and killing them swiftly. Taken has a violent and direct intensity that brings the last two James Bond films to mind, and it could be said that Liam Neeson would make a good older version of Bond. He ends up carrying the film and allows it to become a somewhat enjoyable experience.

Taken doesn’t fly very high but it is not made to. It is cheap cinema (literally, since one of the ways Europacorp is making a profit by keeping budgets low) aimed at a specific audience. If this sounds like Business Class 101, it’s because it is. Increase profits, keep costs low, go after a target market, spend heavily on marketing…cinema has always been a business for studios in countries where the government offers little or no subsidies. This state of affairs only becomes a serious problem when the art component of cinema is completely left out of the equation and when films become synonymous with commodity and production. Which is clearly what Europacorp is doing and that is indeed regrettable.

A regular topic on this blog is that of bad versus good trash. What makes, for example, Eagle Eye (2008) and The Day the Earth Stool Still (2008) bad trash and what makes Wanted good trash? Why are the cliches acceptable in the later but not in the first two? Even though there are many reasons why a film can be bad, there is however usually one overarching common reason: bad trash films tend to take themselves seriously and try to reach emotional and intellectual heights that are far beyond what they can achieve based on the resources available (such as skills and intelligence of the director and actors and quality of the screenplay). There is nothing more annoying than directors who have no understanding of their abilities and who end up inserting childish and immature emotional and philosophical nonsense in their action flicks.
Good trash, on the other hand, tends to know its limitations and has the intelligence to try not to pretend that it can be more than what it actually is.

Thus, Wanted does not attempt to tell us about emotions or human frailty or love or what makes the world go round or this or that. Wanted just wants to entertain through action, dark humour and visual effects. It makes no apology for what it is and it does not try to marry this action with any kind of depth; it is what i would call good and honest superficial entertainment.

One feels several influences in this film about an average young man (played perfectly by James McAvoy) who learns that he is the son of an assassin, himself a member of a secret guild that dates back hundreds of years. Part of the overall concept and many of the action scenes are reminiscent of The Matrix (1999), some of the gun-fighting sequences bring Equilibrium (2002) to mind and one can detect attempts here and there at a bit of a Flight Club (1999) pace and feel. Other action flicks will undoubtedly be mentioned in connection with Wanted, but in the end, Timur Bekmambetov who previously directed Night Watch (2004), manages to come up with enough visual candy, good acting, great action sequences and just the right amount of dark humour to make Wanted a fun experience.

Perhaps they should have added a disclaimer that no rats were harmed during the filming of this movie…

One of the many wonderful aspects of Cinema is its ability to reflect a culture’s present tendencies and fears. When studied in the context of history, Cinema offers an evolutionary roadmap of the various social and economical trends of a society. Whether German cinema of the 1920s or American cinema of the 1950s or French cinema of the 1960s, they all have something extremely powerful to say about the societal changes that took place in those times in these particular countries.

If you ask an American today which themes define her society, it is likely that terrorism, war, paranoia and the increasing ubiquitousness of technology in our lives and its impact on our privacy will feature prominently. In a way, the nature of the paranoia has only slightly changed from what it was in the 60s and 70s when Frankenheimer and Pakula crafted remarkable films such as The Manchurian Candidate, 7 Days in May, Seconds, Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men. But the means and methods have clearly evolved and we today live in a society that is greatly reliant on technology and where the rise of social networks and of global interconnectivity are making us vulnerable to Cyber crimes, the consequences of which have the potential to be more dangerous than what our most conservative estimates can predict. What the web knows about you today is already frightening enough to rightly justify concern for the future.

With Eagle Eye, Hollywood is showing its ability to capitalize on modern trends and on the public’s fears. Unfortunately, as is often the case, it does so in a superficial way that distorts and simplifies the issues being presented. In a film that Tony Scott would have been proud of but that would have made Stanley Kubrick vomit, an AI created by US Intelligence (a term which the film makes clear can be an oxymoron) looses its marbles and decides to take action against its own government. In doing so, it hijacks the lives of ordinary citizens and, in a series of completely preposterous and nonsensical events, assumes control of everything from airports and subway systems to cell phone networks. Only Shia LaBeouf (who seems to have a knack for playing in really bad movies) can save the world from doom. And also the ingenious idea to empty the cooling fluid that the AI depends on to survive…Even a bit of criticism at the Bush administration can’t save this film from its own mediocrity.

Back in 1989, i went to The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels reunion concert, and i remember feeling torn between accepting that some people feel the need to ‘do it again’ or to ‘do it one more time’, and not understanding why some do not seem to realize that their best is behind them and that by refusing to let bygones be bygones they run the risk of destroying something that was previously precious. It turns out that The Stones still had a few years left in them, and not everyone had been as unimpressed as i was.

Unimpressed is also the word i would use to describe my reaction after watching Indiana Jones 4. Or perhaps unenthusiastic. Or unconvinced. Or indifferent. There is enough quality in IJ4 to keep one fairly entertained, but there is also something crucial missing, something that was at the core of the previous Indiana Jones films (at least number 1 and 3). Like the Star Wars prequels, which emphasized action and visual effects over character development and dialog, Indiana Jones lost its heart (and wit) and became an unemotional succession of well-choreographed but soulless and stereotypical action scenes.

It is hard to believe that it took so long for Ford, Lucas and Spielberg to agree on the script and to finally end up with this sub par effort that for the most part recycles previous material.

So here I am, hanging out in the flavellas of Rio de Janeiro, taking some well deserved time off from my busy schedule and hoping to find inspiration for my next screenplay, when, sadly, I come across a film shoot: Hulk número duas.
I observe silently for a few minutes until Louis Letterier comes over, greets me and proceeds to tell me about how this Hulk movie is going to kick some serious ass but also how it will skilfully marry action, adventure, mystery and emotional depth. A new level in comic book adaptation, a work of such intensity that people will quickly forget the mediocrity of Ang Lee’s first Hulk, he says…a portrayal of emotionally troubled creatures who long for the acceptance of the world and the normalness of others…a story of love, betrayal, courage and sacrifice…a timeless piece that, yada yada yada yada…

At that moment, feeling a sudden craving for a Mojito, I pull one of my best disappearing acts, leaving this man behind who is still talking to no one, and knowing only too well that this Hulk film is going to be a disaster of monstrous proportions.

A friend of mine recently commented that, as a child, he couldn’t get into Iron Man because as far as super heroes went, IM was pretty lame. I also never quite got into the exoskeleton-wearing playboy myself, and I must agree that without fancy super powers, radioactive bugs, hammers from the Gods, extravagant nemesis, or mystical origins, Iron Man in fact offered very little to tickle the imagination of young men looking for something beyond what can sometimes be perceived as the boring limitations of reality.

Iron Man in 2008 tries to connect us to the realities of terrorism and war, attempting perhaps to distance itself from the traditional comic book approach and target market. The Man of Steel (of nano fiber would be more appropriate) can help us win the war on terrorism and the world would be a better place if all the greedy businessmen like Tony Stark, Iron Man’s alter ego, would realize that there is more to gain by helping their fellow human beings than by profiting from them. Thus, a weak and overly simple morality angle underpins a film that also happens to have very little action in it. Following unsuccessfully in the footsteps of the Spiderman franchise, Iron Man tries to be too smart for its own good and is filled with cheap lessons about life. Oh and it banks all of its coolness factor on everyone’s latest and most favourite celebrity: Robert Downey Jr.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the guy as much as anyone else. He oozes so much coolness, he ought to patent it. And ever since I watched Less than Zero (1987) eons ago, I learned to appreciate his mannerisms and the overall modus operandi that is so specific to his acting. But I have also come to understand that this is exactly where the problem is with his performances. One is always watching Robert Downey Jr., and rarely the characters that he portrays. Whatever film of his one watches, one can always expect to see Robert Downey Jr. turning up. But because he is so likeable, and now bankable, roles are made to fit around this set of mannerisms. Whether in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Fur (2006), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Zodiac (2007), and now Iron Man, the Robert Downey Jr. persona is stronger than the character he is supposed to impersonate, even if this character is perfectly suited to his mannerisms.

There are so many comic book film adaptations these days that each film must find an edge, a unique selling proposition, to make it appealing and marketable. Personally, I think the angles that they found as an excuse to resuscitate Iron Man - current world events, Robert Downey Jr., and possibly the relevance of some of the technology (building such an exoskeleton with the capacity for enhanced strength, vision, communication, endurance, etc…has today nothing to do anymore with Sci-Fi. This is one of the many things that DARPA has been working on for years) on display in the film - are not enough to make this a compelling picture. The characters are by and large poorly developed (which can sometimes be tolerated in comic book adaptations, as long as something else compensate for it), the storyline is fairly weak and predictable, and the action sorely lacking. If one is not going to include much action in such a film, they should ensure that at least other aspects of the film are strong enough to support the overall experience. The end result is that Iron Man is unfortunately a bit bland.

Taking place in the Paris of the very near future, this French cyber thriller, reminiscent of the slightly better Renaissance (2006), tries very hard to be noir, cool and hip but pretty much fails on all levels.

The de rigueur techno bluish-chrome cinematography is of little help in bringing this story about cloning and memory implants to an above average level.
The lead character can’t act even if his life depended on it, making one wonder why some directors seem to think that mediocre actors are a good choice to play unemotional black turtleneck-wearing tough guys.

There are a couple of somewhat interesting scenes where the technology discussed in the film is displayed, such as remote surgery and memory removal and implantation, but, overall, Chrysalis is a bit of a yawner.

And we would like to thank all the corporate sponsors whose brands are shamelessly and promiscuously displayed throughout the film….

As far as convincing kick-ass US presidents go, William Hurt has to rank towards the bottom of the list. I’ll chose Harrison Ford any day over Hurt whose physiognomy seems better suited to Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) type roles. Yet, Pete Travis, the director of the wasted effort Vantage Point, has no qualms about showing us Hurt, as the US president, getting into some kind of fistfight with the terrorists who kidnapped him.

Vantage Point starts intelligently enough, with the attempted assassination of the US president during a speech in Spain, being shown from different points of view. Every 10 minutes or so, we are offered a new perspective on the events, through the eyes of a new character. And each time, we seem to be getting closer to finding out what really happened. Except that after slowly raising the tension and having us fairly attentive, Travis decides, mysteriously and shamefully, to throw it all away and to turn his film into some kind of ridiculous over the top action flick. And to make things worse, Travis has the audacity to still pretend that it is intelligent by merging all the different stories into a silly denouement that reminded me of the terrible Crash (2004) in its mediocrity and pretentiousness. Rashomon (1950), this film isn’t.
Imagine a scene where for ten minutes we follow a little girl as she runs looking for her mother, and we can feel from the selection of shots and from the editing that the director is leading her towards a busy road with lots of incoming traffic. At that point, the only thought that logically must enter our mind is: no, the director cannot possibly be aiming for such a cliché scene. Something new and unexpected is going to happen, right? Well, no. Travis does indeed lead the little girl to a busy road in the middle of which she suddenly freezes and stays there screaming, waiting for a car to hit her. Didn’t Travis watch Austin Powers (1997)? Didn’t he get Mike Myers’s joke as Austin Power spends several minutes warning some guy that he is about to run him over with a bulldozer?

As I recently did with Jumper (2008), I will still manage to extract something interesting from this film. Aside for the MTV style shooting and editing, and terrorism aside, Vantage Point does capture a very relevant aspect of our lives. In the film, each character seems to be encountering a different reality, not only based on his or her direct sensory experience but also through their use of technology. Mobile phones and video cameras play an important role in the film as they help to assemble the various pieces of the puzzle. Yet, each version of the reality they convey is incomplete and misleading. Technology has the power to show us images that constitute only one type of reality. The question that is increasingly pertinent today is: what makes one’s reality any less significant than that of someone else? We live in a society where everyone now has the ability to be a witness and to create their own reality out of the different pieces they chose to select.

In addition, in Vantage Point, the mobile phone is used by both the terrorists to organize and implement their plan (a smartphone is used, among other things, to remotely control and trigger the riffle that is used against the president) and by the authorities to locate the terrorists and to avert their plot. This seemed particularly significant as several recent headlines have discussed terrorism and the use of mobile phones.
So, if anything else, Vantage Point does at least offer us a little something to think about in terms of how technology is affecting our lives.

This remake of the John Frankenheimer classic is a relatively decent effort by Demme and his screenwriter, who manage to somewhat preserve the sense of paranoia of the original film and the book upon which it is based, while modernizing the story with 21st century issues and themes. The criticism of the Bush administration and of its support of war profiteering corporations, while subdued, is still quite welcome in such a big budget Hollywood film.
While I tend to think that the film would have benefited from withholding the truth from the audience a little while longer, from forcing the viewer to question the authenticity and reality of more scenes, and from being more audacious in its political ‘incorrectedness’, The Manchurian Candidate nonetheless moves along at a solid and entertaining pace.
Just don’t expect the same quality as the original film.

Is 300 a racist film? Is it an allegory for the current events in the Middle East? Is Leonidas, the king who, with 300 of his best Spartans, bravely resisted for two days the attacks of the Persian king Xerxes and his hundreds of thousands of men, none other than Dubya? Or is Xerxes George W.?
300 is none of these things. It is simply a visual treat with no other pretensions, I believe, than to deliver some quality action driven entertainment. Anyone seeing more than this into 300 is probably looking too hard.

I wonder if Lars Von Trier and Mel Gibson have ever met. And if they have, I wonder if they got on well, if they talked about the human condition and the suffering that we must endure as we go through life. Or perhaps they couldn’t stand each other, Von Trier’s nihilist and atheist outlook clashing with the possibly Jansenist (see The Absolute Realism of Robert Bresson for more on this topic) and definitively radical religious conception of life that Gibson has. But at least, maybe they managed to exchange a couple of words about sado-masochism.

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There is very little I can say about The Departed, other than it is pretty much a perfect film directed by one of the true masters of modern cinema.

Scorsese is back and while The Departed may miss the perfection level of Goodfellas by a hair, it still is, I believe, one of the best thrillers ever made with one of the most furious paces and rhythms I have ever experienced in a film.

I wonder if Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong film on which The Departed is based, is as good as its remake…

Unmissable.

Flight Plan starts by pretending to be interesting, mysterious and psychologically challenging, only to quickly plummet into the banal, the boring and the unforgivably predictable.

Animation is the ideal tool for Science Fiction cinema since it can help create and display on the screen what does not yet exist. One of the obstacles that Science Fiction cinema has always faced is the tension between the need to stretch reality and the need to keep it believable and real in a way that most audiences can still relate to it. This is the unfortunate reason why most Sci-Fi films tend to be filled with inconsistencies and a disparity between what the story wants to show us and what it actually does show us.
Animation can relieve this tension by creating believable and abstract worlds. It can free the imagination, which is the point of Science Fiction.

Yet, this free rein of the visual creativity often comes at a price. The traditional aspects of filmmaking such as dialogue, storyline, and, when applicable, acting, have usually suffered greatly in animation films. But today, the line between animation and traditional cinema is becoming more and more blurry. With Toy Story in 1995, Pixar were the first to reach out to such a large audience with an animated film that had strong characters and a solid storyline. Finding Nemo and The Incredibles and the films of Hayao Miyazake were worthy additions and helped continue to increase the popularity of the genre.
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Recently, as I walked down a very average street of one of the most average neighbourhoods in my city, a book stood out from the outside display racks of a very average bookstore: Michael Mann, published by Taschen.

I felt that the book somehow shouldn’t have been there. In a specialized bookstore of a more artistic neighbourhood, yes. But not here, in this bourgeois, conservative area that attracts mainly tourists and bankers…Yet, there it was, and it said to me that Michael Mann had now reached a level of notoriety and access that enabled him to be known and appreciated by a very wide range of people. A democratization of the visualization of cinema, or perhaps, rather, a middle-upperclassification of the action film. Have you seen the latest Michael Mann? It is soooo beautiful to look at! Hmm, the dialogs were a bit weak….Who cares, nobody can frame a scene like Michael Mann! The screenplay was a bit dodgy…Who cares, who needs a perfect screenplay when you can bath it all in a sumptuous blanket of moody blues and grays!

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I am bewildered that this film actually received several positive reviews. And it is because of these reviews that I decided to watch it. Roger Ebert even called it ‘smart Science Fiction’. What is he smoking? I should know better than to trust him, but still, my curiosity was aroused. Yet, the film is clichés and inconsistencies-ridden and Charlie Sheen couldn’t look more out of place as the nerd who discovers the aliens’ secrets if he were playing a priest preaching abstinence. And of course, the Aliens walk on two legs, carry guns (hello?), resort to all types of absurd killing methods that never succeed (enough to make Dr Evil proud), and, last but not least, have decided that Man is a menace and must be eliminated through….the terraforming of earth. I guess these are nature loving aliens…

Cypher is, surprisingly, not based on a Philip K. Dick short story. But Brian King, the writer, and Vincenzo Natali, who previously directed the intriguing Cube, must have clearly watched Total Recall, Paycheck and Blade Runner or read the stories they are based on and decided to explore the theme that was at the centre of Dick’s oeuvre: what is reality? The premise is clever, the film moves at a strong pace and the acting keeps it all believable, in spite of a bit of overindulgence towards the end.

The big Hollywood machine at its worse…Films as pure products, with only one and simple objective: generate as much revenue as possible.

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The problem with V for Vendetta is that it uses too many ‘fear-of-the-near-future’ cliches and stereotypes to tell its story. There is nothing in its vision of the future that hasn’t been shown on screen before, and better. Still, the film has an overall good pace, some fine British actors, great production design, a few electric action/music moments which the Wachowski Brothers are so good at. And, finally, the film has that Voice. Who wants to see behind the mask when we have that Voice? I still sometimes shout ‘Mr Anderson!’ randomly, just to see if i can imitate that Voice…i could listen to Hugo Weaving all day…

This very hollywood-like French thriller could have been directed by Michael Mann.

Marchal’s Paris looks like Mann’s Los Angeles in Heat or Collateral, the city bathing in a constant mist of grays and blues, whose beauty is appropriately complimented by a moody, and, at times, overbearing score.

Behind this series of sumptuous photographs of a corrupted Paris-by-night, not enough remains in terms of coherence, dialogues or acting (even Depardieu seems out of place in a very underdeveloped role).

And what a convenient and artificial ending…

May the Lord of all good cinematic things protect us from Michael Bay. This man is a menace to society. And what were McGregor and Johansson thinking? And while it is clear that there is a growing industry for product placements in films, does it have to be so in-your-face? This film is a disgrace and so are its director and producers.

Most successful actors have that defining moment in their careers, the point where they leave the obscurity in which they had been struggling for years, always wondering when that big break would come. For Nicolas Cage, that point was Leaving Las Vegas, and it was 1995.

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This film has been so discussed, so praised, and it holds such a special place in the history of cinema that hardly anything new can be said about it. It is a truly wonderful film…

There is nothing, absolutely nothing worth anything in this film. Gratuitous, empty, silly, embarrassing violence. Pompous and annoying camera movements and angles. Exagerated and exasperating acting. Repugnant…ok i stop now.

Interesting idea, beautiful cinematography. Yes, Los Angeles has never looked this good. But Collateral is not one of the most plausible and coherent film. The transformation of the Jamie Foxx character especially is not very believable, while Tom Cruise fails to convince as the i-had-a-bad-childhood-somebody-save-me-by-killing-me-assassin.

Sin City is a fairly entertaining film to watch, mostly because of its visual aspect. In a truly comic book style, separate stories seem to be taking place in parallel and connect to each other in some way.

Some stories and characters are more interesting than others (Mickey Rourke’s tale is absorbing while Bruce Willis’ is dull and uninspiring) and the violence often becomes too gratuitous.

Scorsese has done better before, but not within such traditional Hollywood setting and boundaries. This is a script he was given to work on, as opposed to coming up with the initial idea himself.

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King Kong has a lot of brilliant moments and some rather dull moments as well. Kong itself steals the show completely and is fascinating to watch. Jack Black does well and is always entertaining in spite of the stereotypical nature of his character (and of his acting style as well). But the rest of the cast is much less human than Kong, and their performances, even when adequate, become washed in a sea of unreal and overly spectacular action sequences. The entire movie stands on the performance of Kong only. Credit to Jackson and his team of CGI wizards, but credit also to Andy Serkis, the actor behind Kong.

Why would anyone be surprised that Troy is nothing else than a big Hollywood production with famous stars who can only moderately act, superficial dialogues, solid art direction and a large amount of great visual effects? Once one accepts this fact, Troy can become reasonably entertaining.

Denzel Washington plays an ex-assassin who can not make peace with his past. Tormented, alcoholic, he is hired to be the bodyguard of a young girl in Mexico City and must protect her from potential kidnappers. Will she help him regain the dignity he lost long ago? This headache inducing film will leave you spinning from its cheap and predictable melodramatic moments, empty dialogues and from its explosion of non-stop, constantly-in-your-face visual tricks.

I am actually torn between giving it a 3 and a 4. As with no. 1, Raimi tried to avoid making a brainless action and special effects-driven blockbuster and he must be credited for this. The film is in fact a character-driven piece, and Tobey Maguire makes Peter Parker the kind of guy we can relate to and understand. Doc Oc makes a great villain (his metallic tentacles are spectacular) in spite of his somewhat unbelievable quick back and forth between good and evil. However, as much as i enjoyed the morality aspect of the tale, i felt that by the end of the film we had been given too much of it, and, interestingly, i was craving for a bit more action.

This is one sorry film. Thank god i didn’t pay to watch it and that someone else made that mistake. I gave it a shot thinking that True Lies (94), another husband-wife type spy action flick had been quite entertaining, and that Swingers (96), Liman’s breakthrough film, made me start to drink Martinis when i was living in LA. Still, this is one sorry film with some sorry performances….

Despite its better than expected box office results in the UK and the US, this Walt Disney film falls way short of the hype that surrounded its release, unless of course you are taking your kids to see it, in which case the experience should be entertaining enough. However, as an ‘adult’ film, no comparison with The Lord of the Rings should be attempted. Narnia does not even come close to achieving what LOTR has done in terms of character development, plausible and interesting dialogues and solid acting. Even the CGI looked quite poor at times.