E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | By Christopher Stipp
May 12, 2006
Air Sickness
Can you believe I am still hooked on this little corner of The InterWeb? Head on over to MySpace and say hey. Judging by the number of views I get every Friday when this notice appears I couldn’t be more pleased that some of you are stopping by to view what NBC no doubt has made people believe is a den for pedophelia and underage solicitations. I just wish Dateline would do more of those undercover operations to catch more of those pervs who are all boner-ed up and are willing to drive two hours just to be busted by that Tele-Prom-Ter pretty boy Chris Hansen.
Speaking of sex with minors, did anyone get sick while watching UNITED 93?
I ask this as a question because, physically, I not only had to throw my eyes off the screen about half way through the picture but, when I arrived back home, I had to toss back a couple of Pepto-Bismols just to calm my stomach. A few years ago I went to see Greengrass’ BLOODY SUNDAY. I thought the story was solid, the perspective on the event really brought home the issues which triggered the events that transpired and I got just as sick watching it as I did for UNITED 93.
Now, I know I can’t be the only one. Hell, a few people exiting the theaters mentioned that they felt queasy as well but I never once was given a warning that people who might have a predilection towards this sort of thing could possibly have a crap night at the multiplex.
I don’t bring this up as a fault of Paul’s. Like I mentioned, I braved BLOODY SUNDAY and I went through this one all the way to the end. I almost didn’t make it through 93 but I did because his filmmaking represents something important and I wanted to support that. 
For ever loving God, though, I cannot say that I’m going to go out again to the movies just to have my stomach rattled. I will admit, though, I was getting a little testy by the film’s end because I just envisioned Paul’s directorial technique being that of requiring he do all his shooting on a half dozen paint shakers.
“Oooh, fer craps sake, lad, do’ya got that ting set on ‘1 gallon.’ No, pappy, no, no, no. Crank that fooker up to the ‘Industrial Behemoth’ setting. Now git from the set before you think about stealin’ me Lucky Chaaarms.”
I’d like to think he’s not trying to get anyone sick but as the movie played out I was reminded of my own swervey hand as I filmed my first full-length movie, THE TRIAL OF G.I. JOE (which I still have securely placed in a secret location where no one will ever see it), that I shot with my friend Brandon Murphy in Barrington, Illinois, in the summer of 1988. If ever there was a lesson I learned as I replayed our solidly wretched short film (I even had special effects as I lit a helpless GI Joe up in flames using rubbing alcohol) was that you’ve got to really be mindful of picture stability.
At the end of the day you do not want your audience physically reacting to your movie in a way you don’t intend but just glancing at all the reviews I am sure people like me are just a minority. There are some of us out there, though, who are not meant to sail gently on the open oceans, join the Navy or go any Disney attraction that uses the “illusion” of motion. We’ve failed the evolutionary process somehow, I know. We’re part of the weaker variety of homo sapiens but some of us just can’t take the abuse that jittery camera movements incite in our stomachs.
I’m not advocating that Greengrass’ movie somehow suffers from this style he obviously loves employing but I am disappointed that I could not fully take in his ultimate vision because of my prediliction for stablity.
Now, before you’re let to chew on this week’s trailers I have to make sure that if you’re any sort of fan of this column you must check out the trailer for THE LAKE HOUSE. After watching and rewatching and rewatching some more of this trailer I can state with a great amount of certainty that this is a chick flick I can get behind. The song “Somewhere Only We Know” is perfectly matched up with the vibe of the video shown and I have to be honest that this trailer really does deserve a spot in the Top 10 so far in 2006 for being able to delicately balance despair, hope, love, affection and that sense that you really need to see this movie in a delicious little package. Keanu and Sandra are back again and let me be the first one to state that I hope the flick is as good as the trailer.
I don’t know why this preview has such a hold on me (I’ve been sitting on the review now for almost 3 weeks) but I invariably cue up the Keane song on my iPod while working out and wish that this is really a solid romance flick. I don’t need Julia Roberts’ horsey smile, I don’t need Jennifer Aniston’s faux preening about a love lost but I am pulling for Sandra Bullock to come correct one more time like she did in CRASH and 28 DAYS to give me something to believe in.
Check out the trailer on the movie’s homepage and tell me what you think. It’s not often that I let the soft underbelly show for the world to see but I have to give credit where it’s due and it’s due right here.
MEET THE ROBINSONS (2007)  Director: Stephen J. AndersonCast: Angela Bassett, Paul Butcher, Jessie Flower, Spencer Fox, Jordan Fry, Daniel Hansen, Tom Kenny, Wesley Singerman, Harland Williams Release: March 30, 2007 Synopsis: Boy genius invents a machine that recovers forgotten memories, and inadvertently travels forward in time, where he encounters a family whose survival depends on his ingenuity. View Trailer: * Large (QuickTime) Prognosis: Leery. It couldn’t be worse than CHICKEN LITTLE. I couldn’t be more sure than any animated film that utilized Pixar-like animation could have been more messed up than that turd nugget. I mean, really, when you have three discordant storylines converging in an inglorious explosion of confusion and lameness you’ve got the ingredients for a bad movie. Even if it is a kids movie the children, and the adults taking them, deserve better. This movie, though, looks a little more focused than its previous studios’ offering. One of the very first things you notice about this flick is the full-on animated rendering of the evil villain. The guy is everything you would want in a maniacal antagonist. He’s rocking a dashingly devilish cape, dons a twisty moustache that will, hopefully, be twirled from time to time and has got a mouthful of jacked teeth that any Briton would be envious of. Now, the hero of this tale is a Jimmy Neutron nerd of sorts. I could see the wagon wheels rolling off this gravy train should the kid develop an annoying parlance that includes copious amounts of the words “awesome†or “cool†but from what is revealed here there isn’t any indication of that. The kid in this movie looks like he’ll be “playing†off the eccentric family members that comprise the people who he has never known existed…until now. Yes, the heavy handed goofiness that seems to make this flick look more cartoonish than it does reflective of the smart writing which has come out of Pixar is a little disconcerting. You’ve got impossibly weird and odd moments that threaten to make this movie solely enjoyable to just the little ones but you’ve also got this one moment at the end of the trailer that made me hope there is something more to this movie. A woman extols the wonderful effects of the caffeine patch and while it’s superficially funny the general sense of goofiness and slapstick that’s employed is promising to me. Animated movies have raised the general bar insofar that the greats have challenged the accepted notion that kids movies are animated; adults are being included in the making of the films, their presence being recognized in well-written moments for them, while respecting the kids who ultimately will want to see these films. CHICKEN LITTLE failed as a film, at least in execution, because of its exclusion of material that would entertain the adults who had accompany their kids to the theater. TOY STORY knew how to play to this part of the audience and so did a handful of other memorable animated movies. These things aren’t just for kids. Disney would do well to remember that.
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THE OMEN(2006)  Director: John MooreCast: Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Mia Farrow, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Gambon, Seamus Fitzpatrick Release: June 6, 2006 Synopsis: A remake of the 1976 horror classic The Omen (1976), an American official realizes that his young son may literally be the devil incarnate. View Trailer: * Large (QuickTime) Prognosis: Ahh..No. I really didn’t see the original. I figured, Satan incarnate in a little boy, starts some smack, some people die, there’s some wicked climax and somehow, some way, the kid somehow survives; saved myself the hour and a half, I figure. The power of Christ, I guess, compelled some people to make this picture again except I don’t know who is supposed to be the evil one: Damian or Julia Stiles. One is evil on the screen and the other is just an unsuspecting little boy. Never minding my own bias against the whimsy blonde I am a fan of the opening sequence. You’ve got a full-on carnival going on in the backyard of this rich kid’s place. I don’t see any carnies or cotton candy machine so I have to call shenanigans on the realism but I am a big big fan of the nasty look our little blue eyed devil child gives one of the help as this leads to a great way to start things off: a public hanging. The woman who kills herself does it with great flair, getting people’s attention before she tosses herself of a very tall home. It’s shocking, jolting. “He’s cold as ice…†I also appreciate the following snippet of Damian riding in the car with his parents. He stares at a church steeple while Julia takes his boy’s temperature as he keeps his eyes fixated on the visage of Christ and Co. The two steps back from the one step forward occurs when Damian is let loose in the monkey house at the zoo. The path of children that cut a line away from this demon dog is wonderfully captured but when Julia asks her beanie boy what the matter is he just explains that, “They’re afraid.†I don’t paraphrase Eddie Murphy’s comedy too much but just like in Amityville Horror when the house says to get out you can be damn sure the sounds of rubber wheeling away from the house is a lot more understandable than staying with it. When you’ve got a child who tosses deadly glances, is obviously not high on life and seems to cut a path of quiet destruction wherever he goes it might be time to take the kid back from whence it came. Then, after Mia Farrow shows up (Huh?) and says that she’s there to protect Damian we get the man, the myth, the legend: Pete Postlethwaite. I wish he were in every movie to come out in 2006 but it looks like I have to settle with him being in this. His role here seems to be that of the concerned priest who knows what that little snot is capable of and wants to do what he can to subvert the kid’s lifespan. The imagery is rich with confusing and interesting moments that have NO connection to one another, nor do they add any context to the film. I’m not sure why we’re not given more about what these weird moments mean. And it’s not just a few things here or there but when we get a 80’s era synth soundtrack that is embedded underneath video clips of weird looking people, evil dudes who wear silk robes, police who figure walking into a church with their laser sights ready to shred whatever pops up in front of them or this little boy looking even more evil than he is I am not sure what the point is supposed to be. Am I supposed to be afraid or confused? I’m afraid it’s the latter. |
THE LAKE HOUSE (2006)
Director: Alejandro AgrestiCast: Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Christopher Plummer
Release: June 16, 2006
Synopsis: An independent-minded doctor (Bullock) who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging letters with its newest resident, a frustrated architect (Reeves) and discovers that, incredibly, they are living two years apart. As they begin to reveal more of themselves to one another through their continuing correspondence, they find themselves falling in love. Determined to bridge the distance between them and unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance, they tempt fate by arranging to meet. But by trying to join their two separate worlds, they could risk losing each other forever. View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: My list of the top trailers for 2006 is getting a little crowded. For those who can stomach it, this is a glowing review of what could be a very well made drama. For those who dare not tread down this written river Styx please turn away now or feel the power of what a great pop song and some compelling visuals does to me.
I don’t like people who eschew television and feel the need to point it out.
I’m of the mindset that those people are just the kind of Luddites who need to be tossed in a raging river with a gunnysack tied taught around their feet. There’s crap, sure, on television but have any of you checked out that show, Dwell, on Fine Living? (Check your local satellite provider for times and dates…) There isn’t a lot I enjoy but when that show pops up on my television I can’t not watch. For example, a few weeks ago, I see some dudes who bought a house together in Texas because it damn near is completely see-through on an open prairie. They don’t care about showering in the open because there’s no one really around to spy on them. I don’t know about that and I sure don’t know about this movie.
Sure, Sandra Bullock proved she could do drama well last year in CRASH. I was impressed and I’m glad that she’s back again in a role that has her a little more sullen than her usual bubbly self.
“I sometimes feel as if I’m invisible…â€
Okay, Sandra’s narrating and we see people playing on a skating rink when she’s uttering some lines about how she feels so isolated and alone. I don’t know what one has to do with the other but, essentially, I get it. Then she starts going off about how “The Lake House,†this wicked awesome looking place where you could get your groove on in 360 degree delight, made her feel alive or something. In some way, shape or form she feels that the place gives her these super powers to not feel like killing herself. That’s what I take away from the conversation at least.
Then, whoa, Keanu steps in. HE owns the place too. Things get real sci-fi when we grok that Keanu and Sandra live in the same house but exist two years apart YET can communicate with one another via snail mail.
The lilting music and non-threatening storyline, one that will not garner Oscar, Golden Globe or Entertainment Tonight’s rapturous gaze, is cheesy, yes, but the trailer is doing a great job of sucking me into its world. Just assuming that this is possible in the writer’s world I like the fun the two of them are having with this relationship. It comes through really well in the preview of how both of these players see this movie as an excuse to have a little fun with one another.
And, I’ll tell you what, I’ll be goddamed if I didn’t love the way these two react to one another without ever being on screen, side-by-side. When you get these people alone, I take it, they are free to respond to the material in their own way without having to “feed off†of anyone else around them and I’d like to think that this Sandra, this Keanu, was what could have been years ago had big budget and big blockbuster expectations not been a consideration.
I just about shiat myself when we get a perfect musical selection “Somewhere Only We Know†by Keane comes on and then we get the montage that usually always plagues flicks like this. I don’t know why and I can’t really describe it but as these two kids are corresponding two years from one another yet able to get notes back and forth to one another it just starts to pull gently at you.
If you give yourself over to the notion that this could be more than just a watch it once, throw it away kind of flick, the music that begs you to listen can be something actually worth sitting through. And it’s about this time when I see this movie is coming to me from a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Not that this means a whole helluva lot but the fact that this is also where I peep this flick is happening around Chicago means two thumbs up to me; you’ve always got to appreciate when the circus comes to your town.
Besides all that this is one of the better looking dramas that will, hopefully, not require too much out of me as a viewer and for that I would be eternally grateful in this era of hysterics and SFX.
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