Saturday double feature...
Jul. 14th, 2003 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mandolinOkay, yes, I saw PotC on Saturday, have only the time to post on it now. But since it was the second flick in a double feature, I'll leave my comments on both films.
Saw "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" first, and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't great either.
Got into see LXG just in time for the first matinee showing, and it was largely entertaining, and the stuff they changed was (mostly) what I'd expected they'd change. So here's the rundown:
The Good: Connery as Quartermain - yeah, it was essentially Connery playing Connery, but really, no one else could have been cast. And while the Mina of the comic (the first volume, anyway) was no vampire, I really enjoyed Peta Wilson as Mina. I truly did. Tony Curran's Invisible Man was amusing although underused (had to love Quartermain booting him out of his office on the Nautilus), the CGI on Hyde was a LOT better than I expected (and at first, we got a hint of the Hyde from the comic), and they retained one of the major twists from volume one of the comic, surprisingly.
I was also quite pleased with Captain Nemo. For one thing, I was glad the filmmakers had the sense to cast an Indian actor as Nemo, and Naseeruddin Shah underplayed him nicely. (I wish his fight scenes hadn't been hampered by the choppy editing, though; the man knows what he's doing with a sword.) While I thought the addition of Tom Sawyer was COMPLETELY unnecessary (see below), Shane West did a pretty good job.
Oh, and as for Dorian Gray? Not only was there more of a point to adding him to the League (it contributed to the main plot, for one) Stuart Townsend had a ball with the character. I was just SO highly amused with him. He's no Johnny Depp, but the man's got style.
The Not-So-Good: Now, while Shane West did a fine job with Sawyer, the fact remains that his character was COMPLETELY unnecessary. His addition felt contrived, and the whole silly subplot about Quartermain's son seemed shoved in there simply to try to make it seem like there was more of a point to have Sawyer there. Given that he knew Quartermain for three days, the subplot really failed in that regard. The character wasn't needed, he shouldn't have been included, and then the other six could have had time for a bit more development.
Also, by the time the gang hit Venice, things began to fall apart a bit. The Nautilus slipping through Venice's canals COMPLETELY UNNOTICED was ridiculous, even for a movie like this that you're not supposed to take seriously. And while Hyde's saving the Nautilus made sense (hey, if he didn't, he'd drown along with them) and got Jekyll to deal with the fact that Hyde's part of him... he also made the comment that Hyde was not necessarily a saint. And that NEVER was an issue later on. Hollywood aside, I'd have at least liked a scene where Hyde went into berserker mode while fighting for the good guys. Really, after his initial introduction, the menace he'd projected just disappeared.
The "What are they thinking?": The ending. The last 10 minutes, where they succeed in pissing you off and then resorting to a confusing copout. I'm leaving some space before I explain - skip the next four paragraphs if you don't want it spoiled for you. I am about to give away the very ending of the movie.
.
.
.
Okay. I did warn you.
So first, they have Quartermain's glasses broken and he gets stabbed from behind, so SAWYER has to take the deciding shot to stop Moriarty. Fine. Then they add injury to insult by having Quartermain apparently die from the stab wound. (Although Rodney gets some serious freaking third-degree burns saving Sawyer's ass and he's just FINE at the end...) Now usually, if they're going to turn it around, they resort to the old twist of cutting to a hospital (or showing someone else's funeral). Nope, the gang is standing around Quartermain's grave. Sigh. You'd think with the man IN THE GROUND, that would be it, no?
Ah, but we have forgotten the witch doctor's blessing, saying that "Africa would not let me die." Well, of COURSE when the gang has left, a witch doctor starts chanting somewhere, the skies cloud over, and lightning strikes Quartermain's grave.... and that's it. WTF?
People, if you're gonna leave it open for a sequel, don't make your indecisive thought processes obvious in the ending. (I can just hear the conversation now: "We're not going to do a sequel." "No, wait, Connery says he'll do it." "Oops, we may not have the budget for it." "Wait, if it's a hit we can get the money." "No sequels. End it." "Franchise. Leave it open." "End it!" "Leave it open!" "Oh, screw it, let's just settle for confusing the audience even more!")
.
.
.
First 40 minutes were fun, the rest of it had its ups and downs, the last 10 minutes gave me a headache.
So after seeing that, we decided unanimously to go see "Pirates of the Caribbean" (even though War and Death had already seen it) to recover from the ending.
All the reviews of PotC have said that Depp makes this movie, that if not for Captain Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean" would have been an average pirate flick with some eye candy *cough*Orlando Bloom*cough*.
Well, you know what? They're right.
I'm not knocking the rest of the cast here, and I'll get to them in a minute. But whenever Depp is on screen in this movie, you can NOT stop watching him regardless of what the other characters are doing. Only Johnny Depp would base his character off of Keith Richards, and only he could turn out such an original, free-wheeling, amusing performance that was just damned fun to watch. Only Johnny Depp could get himself outfitted with the dreadlocks from hell, a mouthful of gold teeth and kohl-rimmed eyes that he insisted on bugging out half the time and still manage to be weirdly sexy. His character in the trailers intrigued me enough to make me spend my $4.50 on a matinee, and let me tell you, the trailers do not do the man justice. Given Disney's track record, I'm quite amazed that they hired him. Seems the casting directors were smarter than the majority of Disney's higher-ups.
Anyway, the rest of the film.
A lot of reviews complained that Keira Knightley didn't "smolder" enough for Jack and Will to go through so much trouble (yes, I quote directly there). I actually liked her performance. Elizabeth wasn't so overdone as to suddenly know how to use a sword - come ON, really, a lady of her station, even one who rebelled against it as much as she did, wouldn't know a damn thing about swordplay - but the times she got to do some ass-kicking were actually realistic, and she was pretty good at thinking on her feet. She didn't go into Xena-mode or anything, but she didn't fill the role of stupid screeching damsel in distress either. Loved the way she played Sparrow and signaled the fleet, especially Jack's comment - "She'll be impossible to live with after this." Heh. The corset line (that we've seen in every trailer) actually made sense, too, given that the "latest fashion" of corsets had just made it down to the Caribbean.
And I liked Orlando Bloom, too, and not merely because this movie proves that the man should never ever cut his hair short again. Yum. Hey, he had to play the straight man to Johnny Depp for most of the movie, and in that respect he did a fine job. Depp and Bloom played off each other really well.
Geoffrey Rush is the only one who comes close to Depp's exuberantly over-the-top Sparrow; the man makes teeth-gnashing an art. So having those two come up against each other in the end made the overly-long sword fight bearable.
The one main problem I had with the movie was this: the battle between the pirates and the Royal Navy at the very end. Unlike some of the earlier fights (especially Will and Jack's first meeting in the smithy), it just freaking dragged on. I spent half of it just waiting for Will to drop the missing coin in the chest already with his blood and bring an end to it.
Still, it was damned fun, and I am definitely getting this one on DVD.
'Tis all for now...
Saw "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" first, and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't great either.
Got into see LXG just in time for the first matinee showing, and it was largely entertaining, and the stuff they changed was (mostly) what I'd expected they'd change. So here's the rundown:
The Good: Connery as Quartermain - yeah, it was essentially Connery playing Connery, but really, no one else could have been cast. And while the Mina of the comic (the first volume, anyway) was no vampire, I really enjoyed Peta Wilson as Mina. I truly did. Tony Curran's Invisible Man was amusing although underused (had to love Quartermain booting him out of his office on the Nautilus), the CGI on Hyde was a LOT better than I expected (and at first, we got a hint of the Hyde from the comic), and they retained one of the major twists from volume one of the comic, surprisingly.
I was also quite pleased with Captain Nemo. For one thing, I was glad the filmmakers had the sense to cast an Indian actor as Nemo, and Naseeruddin Shah underplayed him nicely. (I wish his fight scenes hadn't been hampered by the choppy editing, though; the man knows what he's doing with a sword.) While I thought the addition of Tom Sawyer was COMPLETELY unnecessary (see below), Shane West did a pretty good job.
Oh, and as for Dorian Gray? Not only was there more of a point to adding him to the League (it contributed to the main plot, for one) Stuart Townsend had a ball with the character. I was just SO highly amused with him. He's no Johnny Depp, but the man's got style.
The Not-So-Good: Now, while Shane West did a fine job with Sawyer, the fact remains that his character was COMPLETELY unnecessary. His addition felt contrived, and the whole silly subplot about Quartermain's son seemed shoved in there simply to try to make it seem like there was more of a point to have Sawyer there. Given that he knew Quartermain for three days, the subplot really failed in that regard. The character wasn't needed, he shouldn't have been included, and then the other six could have had time for a bit more development.
Also, by the time the gang hit Venice, things began to fall apart a bit. The Nautilus slipping through Venice's canals COMPLETELY UNNOTICED was ridiculous, even for a movie like this that you're not supposed to take seriously. And while Hyde's saving the Nautilus made sense (hey, if he didn't, he'd drown along with them) and got Jekyll to deal with the fact that Hyde's part of him... he also made the comment that Hyde was not necessarily a saint. And that NEVER was an issue later on. Hollywood aside, I'd have at least liked a scene where Hyde went into berserker mode while fighting for the good guys. Really, after his initial introduction, the menace he'd projected just disappeared.
The "What are they thinking?": The ending. The last 10 minutes, where they succeed in pissing you off and then resorting to a confusing copout. I'm leaving some space before I explain - skip the next four paragraphs if you don't want it spoiled for you. I am about to give away the very ending of the movie.
.
.
.
Okay. I did warn you.
So first, they have Quartermain's glasses broken and he gets stabbed from behind, so SAWYER has to take the deciding shot to stop Moriarty. Fine. Then they add injury to insult by having Quartermain apparently die from the stab wound. (Although Rodney gets some serious freaking third-degree burns saving Sawyer's ass and he's just FINE at the end...) Now usually, if they're going to turn it around, they resort to the old twist of cutting to a hospital (or showing someone else's funeral). Nope, the gang is standing around Quartermain's grave. Sigh. You'd think with the man IN THE GROUND, that would be it, no?
Ah, but we have forgotten the witch doctor's blessing, saying that "Africa would not let me die." Well, of COURSE when the gang has left, a witch doctor starts chanting somewhere, the skies cloud over, and lightning strikes Quartermain's grave.... and that's it. WTF?
People, if you're gonna leave it open for a sequel, don't make your indecisive thought processes obvious in the ending. (I can just hear the conversation now: "We're not going to do a sequel." "No, wait, Connery says he'll do it." "Oops, we may not have the budget for it." "Wait, if it's a hit we can get the money." "No sequels. End it." "Franchise. Leave it open." "End it!" "Leave it open!" "Oh, screw it, let's just settle for confusing the audience even more!")
.
.
.
First 40 minutes were fun, the rest of it had its ups and downs, the last 10 minutes gave me a headache.
So after seeing that, we decided unanimously to go see "Pirates of the Caribbean" (even though War and Death had already seen it) to recover from the ending.
All the reviews of PotC have said that Depp makes this movie, that if not for Captain Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean" would have been an average pirate flick with some eye candy *cough*Orlando Bloom*cough*.
Well, you know what? They're right.
I'm not knocking the rest of the cast here, and I'll get to them in a minute. But whenever Depp is on screen in this movie, you can NOT stop watching him regardless of what the other characters are doing. Only Johnny Depp would base his character off of Keith Richards, and only he could turn out such an original, free-wheeling, amusing performance that was just damned fun to watch. Only Johnny Depp could get himself outfitted with the dreadlocks from hell, a mouthful of gold teeth and kohl-rimmed eyes that he insisted on bugging out half the time and still manage to be weirdly sexy. His character in the trailers intrigued me enough to make me spend my $4.50 on a matinee, and let me tell you, the trailers do not do the man justice. Given Disney's track record, I'm quite amazed that they hired him. Seems the casting directors were smarter than the majority of Disney's higher-ups.
Anyway, the rest of the film.
A lot of reviews complained that Keira Knightley didn't "smolder" enough for Jack and Will to go through so much trouble (yes, I quote directly there). I actually liked her performance. Elizabeth wasn't so overdone as to suddenly know how to use a sword - come ON, really, a lady of her station, even one who rebelled against it as much as she did, wouldn't know a damn thing about swordplay - but the times she got to do some ass-kicking were actually realistic, and she was pretty good at thinking on her feet. She didn't go into Xena-mode or anything, but she didn't fill the role of stupid screeching damsel in distress either. Loved the way she played Sparrow and signaled the fleet, especially Jack's comment - "She'll be impossible to live with after this." Heh. The corset line (that we've seen in every trailer) actually made sense, too, given that the "latest fashion" of corsets had just made it down to the Caribbean.
And I liked Orlando Bloom, too, and not merely because this movie proves that the man should never ever cut his hair short again. Yum. Hey, he had to play the straight man to Johnny Depp for most of the movie, and in that respect he did a fine job. Depp and Bloom played off each other really well.
Geoffrey Rush is the only one who comes close to Depp's exuberantly over-the-top Sparrow; the man makes teeth-gnashing an art. So having those two come up against each other in the end made the overly-long sword fight bearable.
The one main problem I had with the movie was this: the battle between the pirates and the Royal Navy at the very end. Unlike some of the earlier fights (especially Will and Jack's first meeting in the smithy), it just freaking dragged on. I spent half of it just waiting for Will to drop the missing coin in the chest already with his blood and bring an end to it.
Still, it was damned fun, and I am definitely getting this one on DVD.
'Tis all for now...
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 04:33 pm (UTC)Forgiveness, please. I've been programming all day, with nothing to eat since last night. Coherence is about as far-flung as Sanity, at this point.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-16 08:30 am (UTC)So how many miles did you punt them THIS time around, hm?
(Last time, I think Sanity ended up somewhere in the Pacific...)