Clash of the Titans: (2010. dir: Louis Leterrier) Here are the things that are good about it, in order: Mads Mikkelsen, Jason Flemyng, Liam Cunningham, and Pete Postlethwaite. I mean, there's nothing wrong with Alexa Davalos' performance, but it's such a non-role that it doesn't even register as a performance. There's a lot of that here. Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson MIGHT have done alright, but they keep repeating the same stupid conversation, so all bets are off. (Zeus: "I must have the humans' love." Hades: "It's their fear which feeds me." Zeus: "Yes, but I must have their love." Hades: "Not me. Just the fear is fine.") In a nutshell, it's a badly-scripted excuse for special effects and monster fights. OK, so was the original, and I didn't like that one, either, but the original had those lovely, sweet, Ray Harryhausen monsters, and this has CGI, which is probably OK if you're a kid and don't know better, but I'm not, and I do.
Once you wrap your mind around this director's resume (two Jason Statham action films, a Jet-Li action film, and the Edward Norton remake of the Incredible Hulk), throw in his Frenchness, and it's amazing it turned out as well as it did. The worst part is that his next film, Now You See Me, will have Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, AND Elias Koteas, which means I have to watch that, too. You think the calling of the cinephile is an easy one to follow? Sometimes it's exhausting, and this is just the aggravating sort of fellow who makes it so.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: (2010. dir: Woody Allen) Let's face it: none of us looks for the brilliance of say, Woody Allen from a Woody Allen film anymore. That way when he has an occasional piece of success (his Jules et Jim tribute Vicky Cristina Barcelona was my favorite from recent years), one enjoys it from the easy vantage point afforded by the Plateau of No Expectation. But there comes a time when a filmmaker reaches such a low point of disinterest in his own work that for the good of everyone he ought to just stop. These are actors I LIKE, for chrissake, throwing themselves up against a wall of material so incredibly badly written that it feels like he didn't bother to write it at all. This script is just an outline of the script, the bare plot-points without any finesse, any humor, any care to detail. Everyone says exactly what you think they're going to say, all the time. Everyone is snarky and selfish and no one rises above it, ever. Which would all be alright if Noah Baumbach had written it, or the young Woody Allen, or someone who cares about making films, but this guy, this aging imposter, doesn't.
They say he's redeemed himself since this, and I'm glad of it, but I hardly believe it. Folks love Midnight in Paris, because who wouldn't want to flaneur around the various arrondissements with the Hemingway expats? Plus, there're all those lovely actors: Hiddleston as Fitzgerald, Adrien Brody as Dali, Corey Stoll as Hem, and I love the conversation that Owen-Wilson-as-Woody-Allen has with Luis Bunuel, but that leads to my point, which is that it is a movie with great bits arranged in a great atmosphere with great lighting, but that does not by any stretch make it into a great movie. I believe that Allen has forgotten how do that. Which is alright, it's his prerogative, but I'm not going to bother watching the Italian one.
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