Once (2007)

Strip away the visual effects, the fancy camera work, the MTV editing, and you're for better or worse left with the essence of what makes a film truly work: the people on the screen and the story they tell.

Early on in the film ONCE the two main characters (simply called the Guy and the Girl) sit down in a music shop. The Guy, a vacuum repairman who wants to be known as a songwriter, softly explains the chord progression and melody of the his song to the Girl, a shy immigrant from the Czech Republic who cleans homes to make ends meet while dreaming of the days she would play piano. He begins to play, quietly at first as the Girl tentatively picks out a few notes on the piano. As the song progresses, the music becomes the story of the love that will blossom between these two people, echoing the twists and turns that make up the most extraordinary of loves. It's a hearbreakingingly beautiful scene, one of the best this year.

And all the more amazing when you consider that the acting is by two unknowns, indeed the people who were originally commissioned to just do the soundtrack. Glen Hansard of The Frames, an Irish indie-rock band, was assisting his friend, former bass player John Carney when a lack of funds turned into film magic. And that's really what this is: magic. Relaying solely on the music and performances of its leads, ONCE is at once a true and fantastical look at the funny turns love can take you in over the course of a week. It's to the credit of Hansard and his co-writer/co-star Marketa Irglova that the music tells the story of their love with such simple passion, unadorned by sweeping strings and sentimentality.

All the requisite romance items are on display: the "meet-cute" with a broken Hoover, the jaded music producer who is turned around by the innocence and beauty of the music, the quiet duet where love is proclaimed. And if like the best love songs the ending is bittersweet, the feeling you leave with is one to treasure. In a summer of sequels, robots and $200 million blockbusters, the best film of the year works with two voices, a vacuum, and a piano.

Once (2007)

Strip away the visual effects, the fancy camera work, the MTV editing, and you're for better or worse left with the essence of what makes a film truly work: the people on the screen and the story they tell.

Early on in the film ONCE the two main characters (simply called the Guy and the Girl) sit down in a music shop. The Guy, a vacuum repairman who wants to be known as a songwriter, softly explains the chord progression and melody of the his song to the Girl, a shy immigrant from the Czech Republic who cleans homes to make ends meet while dreaming of the days she would play piano. He begins to play, quietly at first as the Girl tentatively picks out a few notes on the piano. As the song progresses, the music becomes the story of the love that will blossom between these two people, echoing the twists and turns that make up the most extraordinary of loves. It's a hearbreakingingly beautiful scene, one of the best this year.

And all the more amazing when you consider that the acting is by two unknowns, indeed the people who were originally commissioned to just do the soundtrack. Glen Hansard of The Frames, an Irish indie-rock band, was assisting his friend, former bass player John Carney when a lack of funds turned into film magic. And that's really what this is: magic. Relaying solely on the music and performances of its leads, ONCE is at once a true and fantastical look at the funny turns love can take you in over the course of a week. It's to the credit of Hansard and his co-writer/co-star Marketa Irglova that the music tells the story of their love with such simple passion, unadorned by sweeping strings and sentimentality.

All the requisite romance items are on display: the "meet-cute" with a broken Hoover, the jaded music producer who is turned around by the innocence and beauty of the music, the quiet duet where love is proclaimed. And if like the best love songs the ending is bittersweet, the feeling you leave with is one to treasure. In a summer of sequels, robots and $200 million blockbusters, the best film of the year works with two voices, a vacuum, and a piano.

Attack of the Clones Revisited (1999 to 2007)

I think we're going to have to go with shorter reviews. At this rate, I'll get around to reviewing EPISODE III sometime in the summer of 2009.

Anyway, upon second viewing STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES leaves me with mixed feelings. I honestly think Lucas took a long, hard look at some of the problems of PHANTOM MENACE and tweaked them here. Having the (dubious?) honor of being the first film shot entirely in a high definition digital 24-frame system, the film's startling visual effects and locations feel much more organic and a part of the film, rather than a distraction. In fact some locations, such as the "lost" planet of Kamino, look incredible.

The action is ratcheted up a notch as well, especially the chase through the streets of Coruscant after a second assassination attempt on now Senator Amidala, a.k.a Padme, a.k.a Natalie "Fence Post" Portman (see previous post), whom I already railed off about during an admittedly drunken episode of my own last week. Not only that, but in Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, who is part of a larger plot to throw the galaxy into civil war, we finally get a villain who's actually menacing. There's still some silliness and a generous helping of cheese, but overall I think CLONES succeeds more as a STAR WARS movie than PHANTOM MENACE. Especially with cool battle scenes like this:

And yet, the film still leaves you with a horrible taste in your mouth. So, a sequel with better action, more seamless visual effects, and a dip in all the politics and bureaucracy that mired the first film in mediocrity still manages to suck. What the heck happened?

This happened.

If you thought watching Darth Vader as a LITTLE RASCALS meets GOONIES kid was bad enough, wait until you meet him as a dour, sulky adolescent. I can't even begin to understand how this happened. I want to put all the blame on Hayden Christensen, who I think up until then was best known for being in LIFE AS A HOUSE. I want to completely blame him, but I thought he was great in SHATTERED GLASS. The kid CAN act. So where can we place the blame?

Because let's face it, blame needs to be placed. The core of the movie is the budding romance between Anakin and Padme, who we all know will wind up siring the Super Twins, Luke and Leia. It is absolutely crucial that this cursed love makes you believe everything that will happen as a result could be worth it because, dammit, their love is so strong he HAS to defy Jedi law! She HAS to go against all her logic telling her it's a bad idea!

Instead, we get an after-school special enacted by local kids who look as if they've never been to a movie before, let alone acted in one.

A lot of blame can fall to Lucas the screenwriter, but I think an equal amount has to fall to Lucas the director, who uses cliched images and boring shot choices to attempt to show a relationship that has to anchor all the choices that come after it.

A couple other things that get my goat about the movie. Boba Fett is completely wasted. We already saw Vader as a kid, do we really need to see the same thing enacted by our beloved bounty hunter too? I enjoyed the Jango Fett/Ben Kenobi fight on Geonosis; in fact, I think that's one of the best parts of the movie. But using him as bait to change our perceptions of his actions later (he's really just misunderstood! He saw his Daddy killed and THAT'S why he's so bad) is ridiculous. Couldn't we have just left him as the badass he was in the original trilogy?

But for me (and I know a million STAR WARS geeks will scream in rage against me), the worst laugh-out moment was...Yoda's duel with Count Dooku. I know, as soon as the teasers and trailers hit and we got that iconic glimpse of Yoda with his light sabre, the cheers were loud and proud. But upon watching the actual fight, especially when it's against an obvious stunt man with Christopher Lee's face digitally mapped on, didn't you feel kind of, well, silly? All that jumping around with Frank Oz's voice? I think I even saw Ewan McGregor laughing in the scene. I was more content being left in the dark as to how Yoda became so powerful. The Force should have been so strong in him he had no need for actual physical fighting. It's the explanation for the Force all over again. Sometimes the mystery is better than the proof.

That's it. Potential squandered by a few pieces that, ultimately, drag the whole show down. I did like it more than PHANTOM MENACE, which was thoroughly terrible on all fronts. But the errors here are more egregious, and that's a pain that cuts just as deep. My only hope of salvation is that EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH will be able to lift us up from this galactic pit of despair!

* Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...a moment in EPISODE II that is just as BATMAN-cheesy as the one in the previous post! Watch as she runs across the screen! Wheee!

Attack of the Clones Revisited (1999 to 2007)

I think we're going to have to go with shorter reviews. At this rate, I'll get around to reviewing EPISODE III sometime in the summer of 2009.

Anyway, upon second viewing STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES leaves me with mixed feelings. I honestly think Lucas took a long, hard look at some of the problems of PHANTOM MENACE and tweaked them here. Having the (dubious?) honor of being the first film shot entirely in a high definition digital 24-frame system, the film's startling visual effects and locations feel much more organic and a part of the film, rather than a distraction. In fact some locations, such as the "lost" planet of Kamino, look incredible.

The action is ratcheted up a notch as well, especially the chase through the streets of Coruscant after a second assassination attempt on now Senator Amidala, a.k.a Padme, a.k.a Natalie "Fence Post" Portman (see previous post), whom I already railed off about during an admittedly drunken episode of my own last week. Not only that, but in Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, who is part of a larger plot to throw the galaxy into civil war, we finally get a villain who's actually menacing. There's still some silliness and a generous helping of cheese, but overall I think CLONES succeeds more as a STAR WARS movie than PHANTOM MENACE. Especially with cool battle scenes like this:

And yet, the film still leaves you with a horrible taste in your mouth. So, a sequel with better action, more seamless visual effects, and a dip in all the politics and bureaucracy that mired the first film in mediocrity still manages to suck. What the heck happened?

This happened.

If you thought watching Darth Vader as a LITTLE RASCALS meets GOONIES kid was bad enough, wait until you meet him as a dour, sulky adolescent. I can't even begin to understand how this happened. I want to put all the blame on Hayden Christensen, who I think up until then was best known for being in LIFE AS A HOUSE. I want to completely blame him, but I thought he was great in SHATTERED GLASS. The kid CAN act. So where can we place the blame?

Because let's face it, blame needs to be placed. The core of the movie is the budding romance between Anakin and Padme, who we all know will wind up siring the Super Twins, Luke and Leia. It is absolutely crucial that this cursed love makes you believe everything that will happen as a result could be worth it because, dammit, their love is so strong he HAS to defy Jedi law! She HAS to go against all her logic telling her it's a bad idea!

Instead, we get an after-school special enacted by local kids who look as if they've never been to a movie before, let alone acted in one.

A lot of blame can fall to Lucas the screenwriter, but I think an equal amount has to fall to Lucas the director, who uses cliched images and boring shot choices to attempt to show a relationship that has to anchor all the choices that come after it.

A couple other things that get my goat about the movie. Boba Fett is completely wasted. We already saw Vader as a kid, do we really need to see the same thing enacted by our beloved bounty hunter too? I enjoyed the Jango Fett/Ben Kenobi fight on Geonosis; in fact, I think that's one of the best parts of the movie. But using him as bait to change our perceptions of his actions later (he's really just misunderstood! He saw his Daddy killed and THAT'S why he's so bad) is ridiculous. Couldn't we have just left him as the badass he was in the original trilogy?

But for me (and I know a million STAR WARS geeks will scream in rage against me), the worst laugh-out moment was...Yoda's duel with Count Dooku. I know, as soon as the teasers and trailers hit and we got that iconic glimpse of Yoda with his light sabre, the cheers were loud and proud. But upon watching the actual fight, especially when it's against an obvious stunt man with Christopher Lee's face digitally mapped on, didn't you feel kind of, well, silly? All that jumping around with Frank Oz's voice? I think I even saw Ewan McGregor laughing in the scene. I was more content being left in the dark as to how Yoda became so powerful. The Force should have been so strong in him he had no need for actual physical fighting. It's the explanation for the Force all over again. Sometimes the mystery is better than the proof.

That's it. Potential squandered by a few pieces that, ultimately, drag the whole show down. I did like it more than PHANTOM MENACE, which was thoroughly terrible on all fronts. But the errors here are more egregious, and that's a pain that cuts just as deep. My only hope of salvation is that EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH will be able to lift us up from this galactic pit of despair!

* Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...a moment in EPISODE II that is just as BATMAN-cheesy as the one in the previous post! Watch as she runs across the screen! Wheee!

The Phantom Menace Revisited (1999 to 2007)

I spent a good hour or two getting myself in the right frame of mind to re-visit STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE after a gap of about 8 years: no baggage from the original trilogy, no friends around who might influence my thinking, no constant barrage of trailers and commercials and merchandising tie-ins to cloud my judgment. If anything, I was ready enjoy it; in The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film it's clearly evident in early drafts that Lucas had a lot of this mapped out years ago. So over the course of about 3 nights with Baby Jack in tow, we sat down to watch.

Overall impression: It's still bad. The plot's convoluted (disputes over taxation of shipping lanes? Trade embargoes? THIS is what kicks off the greatest space saga in movie history?), and for a franchise that prides itself on its visual delights, there's way too much explaining going on that takes away from the magic Lucas wants to convey. The dialogue is dreadful (although the original STAR WARS really wasn't much better), there are more than a few dialed in performances, it's long, and there's a feeling of distance from the characters and their threads that make it difficult to really invest yourself in what's happening.

It's not all blight and disease (eww): as a purely visual experience PHANTOM has a lot to offer - when it works the effects are jaw-dropping, and a few scenes have as much excitement and energy as anything else out there. There are a couple fun performances, notably Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid, and I'll even throw a bone to Jake Lloyd as the young Anakin Skywalker. If this had been a LITTLE RASCALS movie he would have stole the show. But Natalie Portman - what happened? Fence posts aren't that wooden (or that lovely. HOT-CHA!).

But ultimately there's a lot that gets in the way of what could have been a fun, no holds barred STAR WARS aimed at a younger generation. As great as the visual effects are, you no longer get the sense of physicality, of really being in the film. A lot was made of George Lucas's attempt to render the STAR WARS universe as completely digital as possible, but the lack of anything practical (excepting a few columns and tables) doesn't give the eye anthing to anchor on to in the scenes. I'm already watching the movie on a gigantic screen - why do I want that movie to look like it was projected on a screen as well?

In STAR WARS Lucas made a conscious decision that the environments would look lived in; everything was to feel like this was a documentary (Lucas's background) instead of something that felt contrived. That seems to have been left by the wayside as we are treated to one slick, busy image after another with scarely any room to breathe. When he scales back a bit on what's going on, it works beautifully. The shot below, of the Gungan army slowly appearing out of the fog, is gorgeous in its simplicity:

The problem with the over-abundance of the digital backdrops is , with a few exceptions, you no longer believe anyone is actually there.

And when you are content to simply believe, the movie slips into needless explanations. Why transform something as wonderfully mysterious as The Force into something so ridiculous and contrived that you're shaking your head in disbelief? Midichlorians? So The Force is nothing more than particles that can now be measured and analyzed? I guess that means that potential Jedi Knights are discovered via DNA testing. And as bad as the explanation for The Force is, I won't even begin to touch upon Anakin's "immaculate" conception...

That being said, the Pod Race sequence is fantastic, and one of the best things in any of the new films. There's a spirit of adventure and adrenaline that's lacking in many of the other action sequences. This spirit is also replicated with the light sabre duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon and the much under-utilized Darth Maul. It's a nice set-piece, but you're left feeling like all the potential for Maul was wasted; he skulks for a few scenes behind the Emperor, he rides a weird space Harley on Tatooine, and then after finally getting the chance to demonstrate his badass-ness, he's chopped in half, never to be seen again.

In fact, in PHANTOM none of the villains really work all that well. After re-watching twice, I'm still not sure if it was supposed to be a surprise that Senator Palpatine is the Dark Sith Lord. There's no real palpable (heh heh) sense of evil or foreboding anywhere in the movie. The "epic" battle between the Gungans and the droids is terrible: how did the Federation become so powerful if their droids are so inept?

Any review about THE PHANTOM MENACE can't pass unless mention is made of the aliens, and of one alien in particular. I suppose my heart's softened somewhat to Jar-Jar Binks. He is a distraction in every one of his scenes, doesn't have the sense of being a fully realized CGI character like Gollumn in LOTR or King Kong do (and I'd argue that for both the Peter Jackson-directed version as well as the 1933 original), and many of the jokes fall flat. But looking at PHANTOM as a movie geared towards children, his presence makes sense, and works as a kind of portal for the piles of exposition in the film. The rest of the aliens do feel like bad stereotypes, although the cries of bigotry and malice were a bit much, you would have though Lucas would have had a clearer head on the matter. I would have been perfectly fine with most of the aliens speak in subtitles, although that probably would have made it harder for the age group PHANTOM was geared towards.

While it's certainly not the let-down I thought it to be when it was first released, STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE is still a mediocre movie. Say what you will - Lucas can still conjure up a grand vision, but in this instance the lack of discussion and collaboration that was instrumental in making the others such as triumph (how can it not when you have Steven Spielberg, Lawrence Kasdan and Francis Ford Coppola to bounce ideas off of) is missing, and the George Lucas Show falls a little flat.

Tune in next time to see if lessons are learned and if computer-generating Yoda really was a good idea in ATTACK OF THE CLONES!

* Is it just me, or this one of the most ridiculous images in all the STAR WARS films? It's like BATMAN '66 revisited!