Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Directed by Kevin Conran

Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, and Sir Lawrence Olivier (no I am not kidding)

I went and saw SCatWoT Saturday. Other than that it was a pretty good day.

-N


Okay just kidding. Here is the real review. If you like Max Fleisher's Superman, or the original King Kong, or Flash Gordon... Go rent those movies. Unless you have a cheapo way of gaining admission rent this sucker. You're wallet will love you more for it.

Yes, this movie is visually fantastic. Yes its references are great. I love that stuff too. Max Fleisher, King Kong, THX 1138... yeah. All good. But dude, you really need an emotional connection. Otherwise its all a bunch of pretty imagery. Hooray. So... when we have a movie that is pretty but you just don't give a damn what happens? We Make Fun of the Movie! And with all the phallic sky rockets and endless King Kong references... well the jokes just wrote themselves folks.

The biggest obstacle for me was the chemistry, or lack there of, between Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Dead. Dead like a fish. There was more heat in the A/C unit of my truck. Second, NO VILLAIN! Yeah... we had the nameless doctor whose Great and Powerful Oz head was digitally played by Sir Lawrence Olivier(keep in mind, he died in 1989) and a bunch of robots... That's it. Robots. Big Digital robots. Yes, they destroy and threaten the populous, but I felt no terror. No nothing. Blah.

Oh sure Bai Ling played a silent black clad clandestine assassin. This trick worked about as well as Darth Maul in Episode One. In New Hope the Empire Blows up a planet. In Phantom Darth Maul has a double bladed Lightsaber. Cool. But not scary. Same here. Bai Ling kicks the crap out of Law, and can apparently fly. But not scary. Maybe if she had talked. Or something. I would have killed for an insidious scientist cackling. OR even a Bond villain. SOMETHING. Instead... I got THIS!

Save yourselves folks. Save yourselves.

THX 1138 (1971)

Director: George Lucas
Starring: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie

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THX 1138 is touted as Lucas' first feature length film, I believe. While a fascinating study of a bleak future of capitalism, sedatives and assembly line mentality from the micro to the macro, THX's gets lost in its own fractured structure. Ironically, the film itself handles its characters much in the same way the system handles the human beings in the film: coldly and dismissively. In a film whose statement (presumably) is that the future it portrays is a negative one, even the main characters in the film are just fodder so we can get to the next major setpiece.

Despite a complete disinterest in the characters, the film is visually gorgeous and uses sound in some very interesting ways. I saw the new remastered edition of THX with the extra digital effects (the same kind of thing they did when they re-released the Star Wars trilogy in theaters) and with digital projection. The film looked absolutely spectacular with its very sparse, sterile aesthetic.

The strange thing about the sound is that it's often coming from elsewhere in the frame or from "behind" the viewer. For example, a major component of the film's aesthetic is of spying on people using security cameras mounted in every part of the film's world. So while the camera watches a video monitor, the diegetic sound actually comes from unseen people in the room also presumably watching the monitor, though we only see--never hear--these other people. In fact, most of the soundtrack is seemingly senseless radio chatter discussing the images displayed on screens (on the monitors) and literally on the movie screen. It's actually a pretty ingenious way to alienate the view from any human being on screen by letting us see the ones farthest from us through another generation of medium (the monitors) and only allowing us to hear those people who should be spacially closest to us. Unfortunately, this is a good way to distance the viewer emotionally from any kind of story or connection one might form with the characters.

I almost feel like this line of thinking coincides with one sub-plot of the movie: the digital Jesus plotline. Though religion is spurned in the Communist totalitarian system, it is altered so that it is just a section of the system in THX. Users go into phone booth-like enclosures, kneel down before a picture of Jesus, and admit all of the ways they made mistakes while working on the assembly line. Meanwhile, the picture lights up and--no matter what ghastly things the user says about his or her own life--the voice from the picture responds with pre-recorded: "Uh-huh", "Yes", "Excellent", "Could you be more...specific?", etc. Later in the movie, one of the characters finds the studio where they film and transmit the image and sound of the digital religion. A monk comes up to the character and quickly tries to usher him out. "This isn't what you're looking for. You can't do that here." I almost feel like I'm looking for real characters in the film, but when I get too close the film pushes me away saying, "What are you doing? You can't find characters here. Look over there: a high speed chase! Through tunnels!"

If you can appreciate a film based only on its aesthetic merit, however, you'll want to check out the remastered edition of THX 1138, paying particular attention to the added CGI graphics (you'll know) and the interesting use of sound.

September 11
Arclight Theaters, evening

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D