Sam Worthington Puts the Smash in "Clash of the Titans"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 71 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Clash of the Titans (2010)
Running time: 106 minutes (1 hour, 46 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for fantasy action violence, some frightening images and brief sensuality
DIRECTOR: Louis Leterrier
WRITERS: Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, and Matt Manfredi (based upon the 1981 screenplay by Beverley Cross)
PRODUCERS: Kevin De La Noy and Basil Iwanyk
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Peter Menzies, Jr. (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: Vincent Tabaillon and Martin Walsh

FANTASY/ACTION/THRILLER with elements of adventure

Starring: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Alexa Davalos, Mads Mikkelsen, Jason Flemyng, Nicholas Hoult, Hans Matheson, Ian Whyte, Pete Postlethwaite, Elizabeth McGovern, and Danny Huston

Released earlier this year, Clash of the Titans is a remake of the 1981 film of the same name. The original was a goofy, delightful, children’s adventure film and monster movie that featured the talents of film producer and special effects wizard, Ray Harryhausen. The 2010 version takes itself very seriously (way more seriously than the original), but is still a goofy fantasy adventure film and monster movie.

The story is set in a time that seems as if it will be the twilight of the Olympian gods, who gain their powers from the prayer, worship, and love humans give them. Humans, however, have been turning away from the gods. For instance, soldiers from the city of Argos destroy a massive statue of Zeus as their declaration of war against the gods. Hades (Ralph Fiennes), the master of the Underworld, convinces his brother, Zeus (Liam Neeson), the ruler of the Olympians, to allow him to punish Argos for the soldiers’ actions. Hades, who gains his power from human fear, threatens to unleash the monstrous Kraken on Argos unless King Kepheus (Vincent Rega) offers his beautiful daughter, Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), as a sacrifice.

In steps the hero. Raised by his foster father, the kindly fisherman, Spyros (Pete Postlethwaite), Perseus (Sam Worthington) is really a demigod – the son of Zeus and a human woman. After watching Hades kill Spyros, his foster mother, and foster sister, Perseus vows vengeance against him. When he discovers that by killing the Kraken he could strike at Hades, Perseus volunteers to lead a dangerous mission deep into forbidden worlds where he may discover a method to kill the Kraken. Kepheus’ Praetorian Guard follows Perseus, but head guard, Draco (Mads Mikkelsen), has grave doubts about Perseus, who insists that he will succeed as a man and not as a demigod. But the fate of his mission and his own survival may depend upon Perseus accepting his powers as a god.

Simply put, Clash of the Titans 2010 is mildly entertaining, but it does have some grand moments (like the battles against the Gorgon and the Kraken). Most of the time, however, it has an odd rhythm. There is no sense of urgency in the story and very little to indicate how imperative it is that the heroes successfully complete their mission in a short amount of time. Even Lord of the Rings, which is a trilogy composed of three movies, each running at over three hours in length, always feels like time is running out for the heroes. Conversely, quite a bit of Clash of the Titans’ first hour feels flat.

The special effects are either good or bad; there isn’t much in between. The Gorgon and especially the Kraken are really good. The visual effects and CGI used for Hades are embarrassingly weak; luckily, with minimal effort, the powerful Ralph Fiennes makes Hades the good villain that the effects could not.

Strangely, this film is packed with good characters and actors making the best of even small parts. Mads Mikkelsen is superb as Draco, leader of the Praetorian Guard; his performance will make you wish to see more of the character. As usual Sam Worthington is just fun to watch. There is no doubt that this movie would be a disaster without him. He could portray a fast food clerk at a drive-in window and make the role seem compelling.

Clash of the Titans often lacks drama, but the things about it that work well (Worthington, Mikkelsen, the Kraken, etc.) actually work quite well. This is a fun-in-its-own-way, wannabe epic, but it never seems overwrought. “Goofy” is a word that can describe it, but I would watch Clash of the Titans 2010 again and again – just as I do with the original 1981 film.

6 of 10
B

Saturday, August 28, 2010

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Review: James Bond is Refreshed and Thuggin' Out in "Casino Royale"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 238 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Casino Royale (2006)
Running time: 144 minutes (2 hours, 24 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content, and nudity
DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell
WRITERS: Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Paul Haggis (based upon the novel by Ian Fleming)
PRODUCERS: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Phil Méheux, BSC
EDITOR: Stuart Baird, A.C.E.
THEME SONG: “You Know My Name” performed by Chris Cornell (written by Chris Cornell and David Arnold)
BAFTA Award winner

ACTION/DRAMA/THRILLER

Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, and Mads Mikkelsen with Jeffrey Wright and Judi Dench, and Giancarlo Giannini, Caterina Murino, Ivana Milicevic, Simon Abkarian, Sébastien Foucan, and Jesper Christensen

Back in 1995, director Martin Campbell launched the first Pierce Brosnan James Bond film, GoldenEye. Eleven years later, Campbell helms another re-launch of the James Bond franchise with Casino Royale, the 21st James Bond movie. This new film takes Bond back to early in his career, and we get a new actor playing Bond, Daniel Craig (Layer Cake, Munich), who brings a bit of the thug to the venerable secret agent.

In his first big mission as 007 (Double 0 means the agent has a license to kill… but you knew that), James Bond tackles terrorism. M (Judi Dench), the head of British Secret Service, M16, is unsure of her new agent, who tends to leave a pile of bodies in his wake. Still, Bond travels to Madagascar where he engages in a pulse pounding chase of the would-be bomber, Mollaka (Sébastien Foucan). This is the kind of hard work Bond must do to learn that the key figure in a terrorist money laundering scheme is Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a banker to the world’s terrorists.

In order to stop Le Chiffre and bring down the terrorist network, Bond eventually has to face Le Chiffre in a high-stakes poker game (Texas Hold ‘em) at Casino Royale (located in an unnamed town in Montenegro). In his corner, Bond has a beautiful British Treasurer official named Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), and of course, their initial disinterest in each other becomes a mutual attraction that goes farther. Meanwhile, dark forces have gathered around Le Chiffre, and Bond is finding that some of his own allies may be on Le Chiffre’s side.

How is Daniel Craig as James Bond? Imagine Sean Connery, but darker, edgier, and much more dangerous. Personally, I like it, but having Bond as a cold, killing machine is a bit off-putting. Still, Craig has an absolutely magnetic screen presence, and it’s hard not to focus on him even in a crowd scene. And he has a rock hard body.

Meanwhile, the overall film is pretty good. Almost gone are the sci-fi elements that have been a staple of Bond films, to one extent or another, since the beginning. Casino Royale is like the Jason Bourne films (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy), but darker still. The film has several dry spots, but the narrative makes up for that with several edge-of-the-seat action sequences – each one mesmerizing. Martin Campbell does an excellent job keeping up the heart-pounding thrills by taking us from Europe to Madagascar to the Bahamas to Miami and back to Europe again (to an eventual explosive finale in Venice). In fact, Campbell does an excellent job staging the thrills so quickly and pacing them so well that the bad moments in Casino Royale seem like a figment of the viewer’s imagination. Even the poker game, which makes up the middle act of Casino Royale, is great.

While Craig is quite good, the rest of the cast is mostly average. Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd hardly registers as a Bond girl, and Mads Mikkelsen is a half-menacing and half comic stock villain. Judi Dench, however, has a lot of bite in her as M, and Dench, a truly fine actress, hits the right note in each of her scenes – so much so that her M is missed whenever she leaves.

I’m reluctant to compare Casino Royale to other Bond films because it is so different, but judged on its own, this is a fine film. Whether this new direction will stand firm over the long run is a question for the future, but right now, Casino Royale is a good thing.

7 of 10
B+

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

NOTES:
2007 BAFTA Awards: 1 win: “Best Sound” (Chris Munro, Eddy Joseph, Mike Prestwood Smith, Martin Cantwell, and Mark Taylor); 8 nominations: “Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film” (Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, Martin Campbell, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis), “Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music” (David Arnold), “Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects” (Steven Begg, Chris Corbould, John Paul Docherty, and Ditch Doy), “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Daniel Craig), “Best Cinematography” (Phil Meheux), “Best Editing” (Stuart Baird). “Best Production Design” (Peter Lamont and Simon Wakefield), and “Best Screenplay – Adapted” (Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis)

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Review: "After the Wedding" Offers Stunning Surprises

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 106 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

After the Wedding (2007)
Running time: 124 minutes (2 hours, 4 minutes)
MPAA – R for some language and a scene of sensuality
2007 Academy Award nominee

Original title: Efter brylluppet (2006)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Denmark/Sweden; Languages: Danish, Swedish, Hindi, and English
DIRECTOR: Susanne Bier
WRITERS: Anders Thomas Jensen; from a story by Susanne Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen
PRODUCER: Sisse Graum Jørgensen
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Stine Hein, Ole Kragh-Jacobsen, Morten Søborg, and Otto Stenov
EDITOR: Pernille Bech Christensen and Morten Højbjerg

DRAMA

Starring: Mads Mikkelson, Rolf Lassgård, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Stine Fischer Christensen, Christian Tafdrup, Frederik Gullits Ernst, Kristian Gullits Ernst, Mona Malm, Meenal Patel, and Nareel Mulchandani

The Danish film, Efter brylluppet, earned a 2007 Foreign Language Oscar nomination (as a representative of Denmark), and received a 2007 theatrical release under its international English title, After the Wedding. The film follows a Danish expatriate returning to his homeland and learning a life-altering family secret in this emotionally charged drama with a unique twist.

Jacob Pederson (Mads Mikkelson, who played “Le Chiffre” in the 2006 version of Casino Royale) runs an orphanage in India for children who would otherwise likely end up as child prostitutes, but the orphanage is failing. He travels to Copenhagen, Denmark to meet a self-indulgent billionaire businessman named Jørgen Hansson (Rolf Lassgård), who has made the offer of generous donation. Jørgen insists on meeting Jacob as a condition for getting the money, but Jørgen represents everything Jacob has come to abhor. When Jacob arrives in Denmark, he discovers that Jorgen is attaching an ever-growing list of demands to his donation.

Jørgen suddenly invites Jacob to his daughter, Anna’s (Stine Fischer Christensen) wedding, where Jacob also meets Jørgen’s wife, Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen). Getting introduced to Jørgen’s family further complicates the matter of the so-called gift, but for all the surprises that await Jacob at the wedding, it is after the wedding that the biggest shocks come.

Early on, After the Wedding comes across as a somewhat cool and aloof foreign film, but around the 30-minute mark it becomes an emotionally powerhouse of family melodrama. As the machinations and family history reveal themselves, the film becomes something of a sordid potboiler, unusual for a family drama that isn’t also a soap opera.

Director Susanne Bier masterfully mixes quality acting and raw emotions with a series of fiercely-staged intimate and personal confrontations between characters that would be uncomfortable to witness in real life. (Johan Söderqvust’s haunting score serves Bier’s goals quite well.) The film’s fault lies in that the story requires the audience to have an intimate knowledge of the characters and of the characters’ closeness with one another, but the script largely leaves the characters as mysteries or ciphers.

After the Wedding boldly addresses issues of mortality, control, and devotion. Bier doesn’t pretend that even the strongest and deepest love between two people is a perfect thing. It can be as messy and ugly as it can be beautiful and sustaining. When films deal with relationships in such a frank and candid fashion, they are treating their audiences with respect.

7 of 10
A-

NOTES:
2007 Academy Awards: 1 nomination for “Best Foreign Language Film of the Year” (Denmark)

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

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