Some Other Movies From 2003 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies from 2003 entry.

The following things happened in 2003:

• NASA received the last signal from Pioneer 10, which now very, very far from Earth.
• Belgium became the second country to legalize same-sex marriage.
• The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas.
• The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was reconstituted as Serbia and Montenegro.
• U.S. forces seized control of Baghdad.
• The Human Genome Project was completed.
• Myspace and 4chan were launched.
• China launched its first manned spaceflight.
• The Concorde flew its last commercial flight.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix. 

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. Memories of Murder

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho's second movie, not counting earlier credits as script writer.  Memories of Murder examines the toll that catching a killer takes on two policemen.  It's a beautifully shot film which manages to avoid the cliches normally associated with the genre.  It was based on South Korea's first recorded serial killings.

2. Monster 

Still my favorite of Patty Jenkins' movies.  Charlize Theron is captivating as a lonely woman turned serial killer, and Christina Ricci is equally good as her willfully ignorant lover.  That scene were Theron is sitting in the car, thinking about whether to kill "Daddy?"  One of the best scenes in any movie ever.

Fun Fact: That undercover cop who apprehends Aileen Wuornos (Theron) in the end is Kane Hodder, who played Jason Voorhees in several of the Friday the 13th movies.

3. Oldboy

The Korean orignal > the American reboot.  In case you haven't seen either, in Oldboy a man is imprisoned for 15 years and then released under mysterious circumstances.  His quest for vengeance is long, bloody, and well worth watching.  The director, Park Chan-wook, would go on to direct Snowpiercer in 2013.

Some Good Ones

1. Honey

Jessica Alba does her achingly beautiful thing, this time as an aspiring music video dancer in New York.  Compared to some other entries in Alba's filmography she hits this one out of the park, remaining convincing and engaging throughout.

Fun Fact: This movie was based on the life of choreographer Laurie Ann Gibson, who plays Alba's rival in the film.

2. The Core

I watched this as a double feature with the 2018 documentary Behind the Curve, about the flat Earth movement.  The two movies compliment each other well.  On the one hand you've got a highly implausible movie about a group of people traveling to the center of a round Earth to jump start the core, on the other hand you've got a documentary about people who'd probably deny that the Earth even has a core, or that an Earth vulnerable to solar winds is possible.  In a sense The Core and the flat-Earthers are doing the same thing, starting from unorthodox conclusions and working backwards to a set of circumstances which justify those conclusions.  Do the flat-Earthers succeed in this endeavor?  In scientific (empirical) terms no, but if the goal of their belief is personal affirmation then yes, they do.  Does The Core succeed in this endeavor?  In terms of the suspension of disbelief no, but if the goal of this movie is entertainment then yes, it does so as well.

Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank star in The Core, with Stanley Tucci and Delroy Lindo in supporting roles.  The acting is pretty good, even if the plot doesn't make much sense after a certain point.  I liked the beginning, the tension builds throughout, and it checks off all the disaster movie boxes.  World-ending threat?  Check.  Government conspiracy?  Check.  Disaster caused by government incompetence?  Check.  Death of red herring hero figure?  Check.  Romantic subplot?  Check.  Could checking off all these boxes mean that this movie is formulaic and uninspired?  Check.  But I do think it offers a few things new to the genre, and it's a fun ride regardless.

3. Frank Herbert's Children of Dune

TV miniseries based on Frank Herbert's book.

I'd read the novel years ago.  I didn't like it.  In my opinion it was one of the weakest, most ponderous books in that series. I enjoyed Dune, Dune Messiah, God Emperor of Dune and Heretics of Dune. But Children and Chapterhouse? Not so much.

I liked David Lynch's version of the first book. Very ambitious. I'm also looking forward to Denis Villeneuve's version of the same story. I still haven't seen the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune, but I suppose I'll get around to it one of these days.

This miniseries? It's okay. It's a deep dive into Herbert's world, and I admire the way it doesn't stoop to explaining everything. It's a medieval / futuristic world full of beautiful people, and for the most part it works. The budget was LOW, but they did a lot with what they had.

Sad Reflection: I would have watched the hell out of a God Emperor of Dune movie or miniseries.  Sadly, given the studio drama surrounding Villeneuve's upcoming adaptation, it seems like Children of Dune is as close as we'll ever get to God Emperor.

4. The Dreamers

Well, if you want to see Eva Green completely nude there's that.  But aside from a completely nude Eva Green I can't say that this is one of Bertolucci's better films.  It's dramatically interesting, but it doesn't seem to say as much as it sets out to say.  In the beginning there's a discussion of the French government's attempts to censor film, and in the end there's the specter of fascism, but between the beginning and the end there's only the suggestion of incest, and this isn't quite enough to sustain the viewer's interest for two hours.  It reminded me a lot of 1981's Endless Love, another movie about passions carried too far.

Mortal Fact: Bertolucci directed one more film, Me and You, before his death in 2018.

Fun Fact 1: This was Eva Green's first movie.  Talk about hitting the ground running!

Fun Fact 2: The "Minister Malraux" mentioned in the beginning of this movie is Andre Malraux, Minister of Cultural Affairs at the time and author of Man's Fate.

5. A Man Apart

Eh, why not just legalize it?  Without a black market how are the cartels going to operate?  I suppose they could just jump over to automatic weapons, prostitution, or something like that, but the War on Drugs always seemed somewhat pointless to me.

This Vin Diesel movie isn't Traffic, and it isn't Sicario, but it's alright.  I'm just wondering - Vin Diesel wearing a mask or Vin Diesel not wearing a mask, would you have trouble recognizing him one way or the other?

Some Bad Ones

1. Shanghai Knights 

Just couldn't do it. Chinese Communist Party apologist Jackie Chan tries to sustain the popularity generated by Rush Hour and fails, this time with Owen Wilson in tow. Anyone with a passing historical knowledge of the time period will be immediately irritated by this movie. 

Of course if it was funny all would be forgiven. But it's not funny.

2. The Haunted Mansion

This movie ends as you'd expect: Eddie Murphy's son lives to see his sister decapitated in an automobile accident, his father burned alive, and his mother slowly beheaded with piano wire.  He then learns that his body is inhabited by a demon king who will "bend others to his will."  OH WAIT.  That's the plot of Hereditary.  Sorry.  In The Haunted Mansion Eddie Murphy outwits a ghostly butler and rescues his partially reincarnated wife.  Yawn.

3. Out of Time

Is this movie really bad or was I just not feeling it?  Not sure.  Denzel Washington does "morally compromised" better than anybody, but Out of Time seemed obvious from the start.  The minute they start talking about insurance and visiting the doctor... yeah, I had it pretty much figured out from that point on. 

4. Underworld

Boring, talky vampires with a collective leather fetish battle sweaty, bearded werewolves for reasons even they don't understand.  Kate Beckinsale is of course easy to look at for two hours, but that fact alone doesn't make this movie good.

A... Fact: There are five movies in the Underworld series, with plans for a sixth.

5. Hawa

So... this woman gets raped by a ghost multiple times - once in front of her children - and she continues to stay in the house?  Uh... okay.

If nothing else this Indian horror movie borrows from the best.  The Shining, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Entity, it's all there.  Oh, and the ending is memorably bad too.  Is that guy in the end supposed to be God?  Or her father?  I have no idea.

6. The Adventures of Ociee Nash

Hey, it's Keith Carradine.  Aside from him this movie features a precocious young girl doing tomboyish things and learning how to be a lady.  AND HOW DARE Mr. Carradine force a gender identity upon his young daughter!  Shame, I say!  Shame!  Then again, it was the early 1900s, so it was probably for the best.

So Bad It's Good

1. Final Examination

Where to start with this movie?  The acting?  The script?  The countless continuity errors?  Certainly the acting is the worst (i.e. the best) part of it, right down to the lead actor's monotone delivery of every.  Single.  Line.

How Deep Into the Rabbit Hole are You Willing to Go?: Check out director Fred Olen Ray's filmography.  Then check out both star Brent Huff's Wikipedia page and his filmography.  Most of those films don't even have Wikipedia entries.

Related Entries:

Some Other Movies From 2002 (2)

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy (1878)

Leo Tolstoy.  We all know who Leo Tolstoy is, right?  He wrote War and Peace, and he is regarded alongside Dostoevsky as one of the two giants of Russian literature.  He became a Christian anarcho-pacifist later in life, and his thinking influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

I read War and Peace some time ago, so I can't say much about it.  I remember allusions to Napoleon, and characters reflecting on Tolstoy's theory of historical determinism.  I remember liking the novel, if not loving it.  It is of course famously long, but my objection to it wasn't its length but rather my difficulty in engaging with the story.

I'm happy to say that I enjoyed Anna Karenina a lot more.  This is perhaps because Anna Karenina makes a moral point rather than a philosophical one.  It also does so without preaching to the reader, instead illustrating a set of perfectly commonplace circumstances and then observing how various characters react to these circumstances.  Where War and Peace felt bogged down in historical details, Anna Karenina felt very immediate, in that one wouldn't have to change its characters or their settings too much to make the story feel modern.

I feel obligated to say that Anna Karenina is the novel that finally decided me in favor of Tolstoy.  Up until finishing this book, I wasn't sure whether I preferred Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.  But having read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov not long ago, I can now assert that Tolstoy is better.  With Anna Karenina Tolstoy took the novel into the age of modernism, and its characters feel very fresh, and very much alive in 2021.  Dostoevsky, by contrast, never quite feels comfortable with his female characters, and characters such as Grushenka, to be found in the pages of The Brothers Karamazov, resemble nothing so much as stand-ins for women the male characters should be interacting with.

But to return to Anna Karenina, in it a married member of the Russian aristocracy falls in love with a cavalry officer.  Around her the other members of the aristocracy attempt to interpret and to orient themselves in respect to her scandal, with the author using them as a way of gazing into the society of his time.  Communism waits in the wings of this society, as the upper class scrambles for power and the lower class begins to assert its rights.

I enjoyed this book almost all the way through.  I loved the subtle way it shifted from one character's point of view to another's, and also the way it points out its characters' moral inconsistencies.  I felt like every character in this novel was a living, breathing person, and their actions always made sense - even when I didn't agree with their choices.

What I didn't like about this book was the very, very end, which occurs after Anna and her lover's fates are decided.  Instead of ending the book there, Tolstoy adds an extended reflection on both the essential goodness of God and the limits of rational thinking.  This section of the novel seemed out of tune to me, and it wasn't in keeping with Anna as its central character.  I suppose you could link the ideas of God's goodness, the failure of rationality in encountering this goodness, and Anna's desire to be loved together, but that seems like a stretch.  Linking these three ideas together also feels like rationalizing, and moreover the very kind of rationalizing that Tolstoy seems to be arguing against.

Even so, I think Anna Karenina is by far the best of the classic Russian novels.  I didn't enjoy it (if "enjoy" is the right word) nearly as much as more recent Russian novels like Master and Margerita or The Gulag Archipeligo, but it remains undeniably great, and rewards the effort required to get through it.

Related Entries:

"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens (1852)

"Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

"Man's Fate" by Andre Malraux (1934)

"The God Machine" by Martin Caidin (1968)

Some Other Movies From 2002 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2002 entry.

The following things happened in 2002:

• The Sierra Leone Civil War ended.
• The Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• The FIFA World Cup was held in South Korea and Japan.
• Switzerland and East Timor were admitted into the United Nations.
• The SARS epidemic began in China.
• The great Richard Harris passed away.
• The Queens of the Stone Age released Songs for the Deaf.  A great album.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. Talk to Her (Hable Con Ella)

It's hard to explain what this movie's about without giving something away.  Let me just say that it's one of Spanish director Almodovar's films, and it might be my favorite.  In the beginning a reporter begins a relationship with a female bullfighter, and from that point on this movie takes a sharp left turn into some serious weirdness.  If I had to reduce this movie to a theme it would be a search for intimacy, or our search to establish relationships with people who might be unable (or unwilling) to reciprocate our affections.  In terms of plot and narrative symmetry it's a deep dive, and I'll probably watch it again in the near future.  The camera work is also amazing.

Fun Fact: Geraldine Chaplin is in this.

2. The Way Home

A young Korean boy learns to appreciate his grandma and her way of life.  It's one of South Korea's highest grossing movies, and critics everywhere loved it.

On a more personal note, I thought I lived in a very rural part of Taiwan, but then I saw this movie.  At least we have electricity.  And running water.  And stores.

 Some Good Ones

1. The Sweetest Thing

Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Jason Bateman: 3 actors/actresses who've been in much funnier movies.  The Sweetest Thing attempts to inject more sex and toilet humor into the rom-com genre, but despite a couple funny moments the results are decidedly mixed.  Then again it was the early 2000s, and movies like The 40 Year-Old Virgin were built upon movies like this one.

2. The Sum of All Fears

Here's a thought: why is it always Nazis attempting to resurrect the Third Reich, or to create a fourth?  Why not a group of conspirators attempting to resurrect Imperial Japan?  Or would that topic be too sensitive?  And why?

Anyway, in 2002 it was Ben Affleck's turn to play Jack Ryan.  In The Sum of All Fears Ryan is caught between U.S. and Russian leaders on the brink of nuclear war, and as usual Ryan has to uncover a conspiracy before the world ends, or before the President is killed, or before the Lambada - also known as "the forbidden dance" - becomes popular once again.  Critics at the time - among them Tom Clancy - were not loving this movie, but I thought it was OK.

3. Whale Rider

I was teaching a group of Paiwan kids today, and one of them started talking about how his ancestors beheaded people, and why they don't do so now.  Life is fun that way, and when you look around you realize that we're surrounded by tribal cultures, wherever in the world we happen to be.  If this isn't immediately obvious it's because they choose to keep to themselves, as I suppose "we" do in our own way.

Whale Rider follows a Maori girl as she contends with a headstrong grandfather.  I really enjoyed this movie, even if it didn't end the way I wanted it to.  Something in me wanted that girl to vanish in the end, just so her grandfather could learn how much that kind of pride really costs.  The whale, in other words, seemed like a cop-out.

Another thing I liked about this movie was Cliff Curtis.  After seeing him play such a hateful individual in Once Were Warriors it was nice to see him play a caring, concerned father in Whale Rider.

Fun Fact 1: Rachel House, one of Taika Waititi's collaborators, is in this movie.

Fun Fact 2: The director, Niki Caro would go on to direct North Country, another overlooked movie.  In 2020 she directed Disney's Mulan reboot.

4. About a Boy

Every time I see Hugh Grant I think about that time he got caught with a prostitute.  No judgment here - provided we're all of age everybody's human - but I can't help but remembering.  

Fame is a funny thing.  You could be Hugh Grant, you could be that handsome, and still feel isolated enough to go messing around with hookers in L.A.  Again, everybody's human, and he's probably a much happier person now.

In About a Boy he plays a womanizing bachelor who befriends a young boy.  And who is that young boy?  Nicholas Hoult, who is much better known in 2021.  It's a decent movie - even with the overbearing narration - and the ending isn't as predictable as you'd... predict?

5. Ghost Ship

Sure, dumb title, but it's a good movie.  It borrows a bit from The Shining, it borrows a bit from The Thing, but this film about a haunted ship was well put together.  Critics at the time hated it but it worked for me.

6. Dahmer

Jeremy Renner stars as the famous serial killer.  It's not exactly action-packed but it's an engaging character study.

The Kind of Exploitation Picture Hollywood and Hong Kong Don't Seem to Do Anymore

1. Naked Weapon

Maggie Q parades around in a series of skimpy outfits while assassinating people.  Wire work and cgi aside, what Naked Weapon really reminded me of was 70s films like The Killer Elite or Switchblade Sisters, movies that knew they were bad but realized that a certain amount of shock value goes a long way.  A lot of the dialogue in this movie is terrible, but Maggie Q is beautiful and the fight choreography is pretty good.

Fun Fact: Maggie Q's costar in this movie, Anya Wu, is married to one of Confucius' descendants.

Bad, but Does That Surprise You?

1. The Santa Clause 2

I was only halfway paying attention to this, but let's see what I can remember:

A. Santa Claus (Tim Allen) has to find a Mrs. Claus (i.e. get married) or he'll lose his Santa powers

B. He has around a month to do so.

C. Elves make lame toys that no actual kids would actually want.  Those shitty jumping dinosaurs and old timey trains might amuse Amish kids, but what about kids longing for a Sega Dreamcast?  A PlayStation 2?  A Nintendo GameCube?

D. There's some kind of "league of legendary beings" which consists of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman (NOT the Spider-man villain), Father Time, the Tooth Fairy and a black woman who I THINK is Mother Earth.  Could this "league of legendary beings" stand up to the Avengers?  To the Justice League?  That's a blog post for another day!

E. Santa's son got onto the naughty list.  Uh oh.

F. Conveniently enough for Santa, while he's dealing with his son's naughtiness he realizes that the principal of his son's school is smokin' hot.

G. While Santa is away from the north pole trying to get laid/married, his elfin underlings create a faux Santa Claus out of toy components.  Whoa.

H. The faux Santa turns out to be a fascist who wants to invade Poland... or maybe just put ALL the kids on the naughty list.  The horror!

I. In an attempt to wrest control of the north pole from the true Santa (thus making him the "anti-Santa" in truly biblical fashion), he in turn creates an army of toy soldiers.  And as it turns out these toy soldiers are far and away the most memorable things in the movie.  Why?  Because THEY ARE FREAKING NIGHTMARE FUEL, if anything in any children's movie ever was.  Really, they're worse than the rabbits choking inside the tunnels in Watership Down.

J. Santa (predictably) saves the day just after faux Santa commits suicide in his bunker.  Or maybe he's captured by north polar communist partisans, and executed by firing squad.  Either way, the movie doesn't end well for him.

2. Mr. Deeds

Product placement?  Yup.  Jokes that fail to land?  Yup.  Boring, irrelevant romantic subplot?  Yup.  Occasional funny moments?  Yup.  I can't blame Adam Sandler for this one.  He knows who he is and he knows what he's about.  Besides, the dude is RICH.

Fun Fact: This movie is a remake of the 1936 Frank Capra film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.  The "greeting card poet," Mandrake Falls and most of the plot were borrowed from the original.  The original was, however, more a commentary on the need to maintain small town values in the wake of the Great Depression.

Some Bad Ones

1. Star Trek: Nemesis

Hey, it's Tom Hardy!  This was his third movie and his first major role.  He plays a younger clone of Captain Picard, leading a team of Romulans against the Federation.

Aside from that, yawn.  This movie is boring.  I was never that into the Next Generation version of Star Trek, and this movie reminded me why.  Talk, talk, talk, arbitrary explanation, talk, talk, talk.  You could say that each crew member of the Enterprise is outfitted with his or her own suit of plot armor, to be removed only when a death makes something more dramatic.

I think that at its best the Star Trek universe offers a more science-based conception of the future, but that scientific basis is nowhere evident in this film.  The bioweapon that Tom Hardy's character wields, the transporter technology, holograms, faster than light travel, faster than light messaging, artificial intelligence, cloaking technology - it all seems to operate in the most random manner possible, seemingly bending to the will of whatever the plot wants it to do.  By the end of this movie even something like Star Wars, with all its futuristic/archaic technology, comes off seeming relatively plausible.

Fun Fact: The critical and financial failure of this movie nixed plans for a fifth Next Generation film, and prompted the J.J. Abrams reboot in 2009.  I suppose I can thank this movie for that.

2. Drumline

Zoe Saldana and Orlando Jones are MUCH better actors than the rest of the people in this movie.  Really.  So much so that it's distracting.  They'll say something, and then some other actor will say something, and the difference in delivery will take you right out of the movie.

I also have trouble understanding why the school marching band - ANY school's marching band - is such a big deal.  I get that they all want to do a good job, but the hazing?  The waking up at 4:30 in the morning?  The obsession?  I don't know, I'm just not seeing it.  Maybe this is some Southern thing that I've never heard about, but where I come from the school marching band was never that big a deal.  Especially not, you know, compared to football.

According to the internet almost everybody loves this movie except me.  Maybe there's something I'm not getting.  Maybe it really is that ridiculous.  Maybe I've seen Whiplash too many times, and this movie suffers by comparison.

3. Crossroads

Yes, we're all sympathizing with Britney Spears lately, and no, she's not a good actress.  Once again Zoe Saldana gives the best performance in a movie full of bad performances, this time with Dan Aykroyd as Britney's mechanic father.  Nothing says "star vehicle" like road trip, and in this one Spears embarks on a road trip to meet her estranged mother.

Fun Fact: At the time this movie was often compared to Mariah Carey's Glitter.  I can attest to the fact that Crossroads is a much better movie.

Ugh.

1. A Walk to Remember

Mandy Moore and... some guy star in this Christian faith-affirming romance.  I despised every person in this movie, and Mandy Moore most of all.  I kept wishing they'd all wake up in a barren warehouse room somewhere, with Jigsaw's doll staring down at them, telling them that their day of reckoning had arrived.  Alas, this never happens.

I deserve an award for sitting through most of this movie.  I really do.

Related Entries:

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

Some Other Movies From 2000 (2)

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

I have no real argument to make here, so I'll just list my thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League below.

1. It's definitely better than Joss Whedon's version.  The plot makes more sense, the characters are better developed, and the story unfolds at the right speed.  Could Justice League have been shown as two movies?  I don't think so.  Sure, that battle in the sewers takes place around the two hour mark, but ending the story there would have felt weird.

2. Darkseid could have been a cool villain.  Too bad we'll never see him again.  At least not that version.  I like how the both he and Desaad looked in the movie, even though he comes off feeling a little too similar to Thanos.  This isn't a criticism of Justice League, since it could be argued that Thanos is something of a Darkseid clone.

3. Man, did Joss Whedon ever butcher that ending.  In the Snyder Cut the Flash isn't racing around trying to save some random family in harm's way, Superman and Steppenwolf never really fight, and both the Flash and Cyborg have a lot more to do.  I thought the "Unity" idea was kind of silly, but even so the ending is MUCH better than what Whedon did.

4. The Flash is less irritating in the Snyder Cut, less deliberately quirky.  The bit where he saves Iris on the road was my favorite part of the movie.  I still don't like the costume, I'm still not an Ezra Miller fan, but the character makes more sense now.

5. For that matter, Cyborg has more reason for being in this movie.  More of his backstory is included, and he's central to the story.  Placing his origin right after Flash's rescue of Iris felt a bit redundant, and his father's explanation of his abilities wasn't necessary, but Cyborg had more of a personality in Snyder's version.

6. Wonder Woman straight killed that dude in the beginning.  Not sure if she needed to do that or not.  Oh well, water under the bridge.

7. Batman's motivation for forming the League?  I get it now.  In Whedon's version he just seemed like some dude wandering around and stumbling into things.  His comments on faith and owing a debt to Superman made sense after BvS.

8. Superman?  I still feel like Justice League failed to use Superman properly.  He's the ace up the League's sleeve, but it's hard to get any feeling of him as a person, or of the emotions he's going through.  I get that he has amnesia for part of the movie, but it doesn't feel like he has much reason for being there.

9. Maybe too much Paradise Island?  The war that took place in ancient times looked cool, but all that narration distracted from the main thrust of the movie.  As a viewer you want this movie to get going, and there are way too many scenes on Paradise Island.

10. Marian Manhunter didn't need to be in this movie.  Including him felt like checking off a box.

11. Removing Aquaman from Justice League in favor of Shazam/Captain Marvel might have been fun.  What does Aquaman actually do in this movie anyway?  What does he contribute?  Seeing Shazam's reactions to what was going on would have been more entertaining.

12. Steppenwolf looks a lot better in this version.  The cgi used in Whedon's cut was terrible.

13. Jared Leto could have been a great Joker.  All this talk about him ruining the character is nonsense.  The guy has been excellent in so many films.  We'll never know what happened with Suicide Squad, and executives at Warner Bros. are already denying that an Ayer Cut exists, but blaming Leto for that hot mess of a movie is dumb.

Related Entries:

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

Superhero Movies From October 2018 Onward (12: The Last One)

Comic Book Interlude 12

Comic Book Interlude 11

Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2001 entry.

The following things happened in 2001:

• America Online and Time Warner merged to form AOL Time Warner.
• Wikipedia was launched.
• The U.S. and Britain bombed Iraq repeatedly.
• Pop singer Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash.
• 2,977 people died as a consequence of the September 11 attacks.
• The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was established.
• Apple introduced the iPod.
• The People's Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix. 

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Some Good Ones

1. Save the Last Dance

Julia Stiles - an actress I often find irritating - stars as a white high school student dropped into the ghetto after the death of her mother.  My chief complaint is that the high school students act way more mature than would be the case, and the "gangsta friend's" subplot is one of the most predictable things ever.  As early 2000s dance movies go, I think 2003's Honey works better.

Fun Fact: Thomas Carter, the director of this movie, also directed Coach Carter, a really underrated film.

2. Don't Say a Word

Michael Douglas stars as a psychiatrist extorted into revealing a patient's secret.  Sean Bean is in it... and guess how the movie ends for him?  Not well, my friends, not well.  It's professionally made but it seems to be missing something.

Sad Fact: This movie hit theaters right after 9/11.  Shots of the World Trade Center were removed from it just before its release.

3. Joy Ride

Paul Walker and Steve Zahn prank call the wrong guy on a CB radio.  The weird thing about this movie is that it feels like it's about to end halfway through.  Then, for whatever reason, they continue their drive without notifying the police, and of course the crazy truck driver shows up again.

4. The Score

It's interesting to see director Frank Oz attempt something darker, but this movie really falls apart toward the end.  It was Marlon Brando's last film, and seeing Brando (the elder Corleone) and De Niro (the younger Corleone) onscreen together is cool.  Edward Norton pulls up the rear as a newcomer with an idea for a new heist. 

The Score gets bogged down in its own details.  The first half hour is solid, but then you start to wonder why we need to know that much about the access codes, and why so many shots of De Niro's character mapping the sewer system were necessary.  This, and the way De Niro tricks Norton's character at the end is just stupid.  Why wouldn't he have checked the bag?  Why would he have thought De Niro was so easy to outsmart?

To make matters even worse, that's the shittiest happy ending ever.  At some point a person as smart as Norton's character is going to find De Niro and exact revenge, or he's going to get caught and tell everyone that De Niro has the scepter.  And where's Marlon Brando in that ending?  Are we supposed to assume that he got his money, too?

5. Manic

This movie needed more Don Cheadle.  Joseph Gordon Levitt is good in this look at life in a juvenile detention facility, but yeah, more Don Cheadle would have helped.  Definitely worth watching, but given that Scum explored similar subject matter with more depth I'd describe this movie as simply "Good" rather than "Excellent."

Fun Fact: That argument about superheroes is amusing in retrospect.  Three of the people engaged in it would go on to play superhero sidekicks later on.  Don Cheadle would play War Machine in Iron Man 2, Joseph Gordon Levitt would play Robin in The Dark Knight Rises and Elden Henson would play Foggy Nelson in Netflix's Daredevil.

Pretentious Enough for Ya?

1. Waking Life

A young guy walks around listening to various people lecture on the nature of the self, human experience and perception.  Oh, and there's a lot of stuff about dreams.  I was not at all surprised to learn that Richard Linklater directed it.

And no, I'm not trying to dismiss Waking Life.  It's worth seeing.  I loved the soundtrack, and it scores serious points for referencing Philip K. Dick's V.A.L.I.S. trilogy.  Linklater would go on to direct the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly five years later, and his affinity for PKD-style paranoia is also evident in this movie.

2. Mulholland Drive

Hey, it's Laura Herring, last seen in 1990's The Forbidden Dance!

Besides her, Naomi Watts is in this one starring as... an aspiring actress?  A jilted lover?  A figment of someone's imagination?  I figment of her own imagination?  David Lynch directed, so you can probably guess how deliberately stupefying it all is.  

At least it's not long.  That's something, right?

Some Bad Ones

1. Thir13en Ghosts

All that money spent on makeup and other effects, only to squander it on an uninteresting story populated by uninteresting characters. Tony Shalhoub stars as a father of two inheriting a haunted house, with Matthew "Scooby-Doo" Lillard as a psychic.

2. Original Sin

I'd like to find the director of this film and tell him to go fuck himself.  What a nonsensical two hours.  I get why Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas purchased a ticket for this train wreck, but damn, this movie is full of the most anachronistic behavior ever captured on film.  Would people at that time have done half those things?  Made those kinds of choices?  Hell no.

Depressing Fact: Original Sin is a remake of the Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid.  I'm sure the original of this Original Sin is much better.

3. Spy Game

Yawn.  Robert Redford making phone calls.  Robert Redford sending faxes.  Even with Tony Scott directing it's not exactly a thrill ride.  This might have been a good movie if they'd focused on Brad Pitt's character instead of Redford's - there's a moral ambiguity to his character's story  that's more compelling. - but as it is the framing narrative adds nothing to the movie.

Fun Fact: Brad Pitt passed on The Bourne Identity to do this film.  Good news for Matt Damon?

4. The One

Evil, multiverse-hopping Jet Li versus non-evil, non-multiverse hopping Jet Li.  It's silly fun in the beginning, but by the end it makes almost no sense.  Hong Kong director James Wong would go on to direct Dragonball: Evolution, so you know what you're in for here.

5. Evolution

When you think about it this Ivan Reitman-directed comedy isn't all that different from Ghostbusters.  Bumbling scientists in an out-of-the-way college stumble on a new scientific phenomena, tests are conducted, the government intervenes, and bumbling scientists are called in to set things right.  It's just that Evolution, unlike Ghostbusters, just isn't funny.  David Duchovny and Orlando Jones do their best with the script, but even so most of the jokes fail to land.

6. Enemy at the Gates

Jude Law and Ed Harris star as two snipers hunting each other through the ruins of Stalingrad.  This movie reminds you how much better genuinely Russian or German movies on similar subject matter are.  And even if Stalingrad and Come and See didn't exist, there's also movies like Saving Private Ryan, which do a much better job of framing a large conflict in human terms.

So Bad It's Not Bad

1. Devil's Prey

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with murderous Satanists standing in for murderous rednecks.  And let me tell you that nothing - and I mean nothing - demonstrates your commitment to the craft of acting like mouthing some of the lines in this movie.  "We're going to have a fucking great time or a great time fucking!"  And this isn't to imply that anyone in this movie a great actor or actress - they're atrocious - but I admire their commitment nonetheless.

"Die in hell, motherfuckers!!"  Wouldn't that be a desirable outcome for Satanists?

Not Sure What's Going On Here, Not Sure If I Care

1. Swordfish

Studio Executive: "Hey, this script is terrible.  How can we keep people from noticing?"

Yes Man: "Uh, how about casting John Travolta as the bad guy?  And rising star Hugh Jackman as the hero?  And we'll have Halle Berry running around half naked for most of the movie?  Oh, and don't forget explosions!  We'll have a lot of those!"

Studio Executive: "Works for me."

...and to add insult to injury, this movie has the audacity to compare itself to Dog Day Afternoon, and to then to imply that it's somehow better for having a morally ambiguous conclusion.  No, John Travolta.  I don't think so.

Fun Fact: Both Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry appeared in this movie between X-Men and X2.  Berry would win the Oscar for Best Actress the same year for Monster's Ball.

Related Entries:

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

Some Other Movies From 2000 (2)

Movies of the Late 90s, Ranked in the Order I Enjoyed Them

Some Other Movies From 1999 (2)

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

Those who've been reading this blog for a while might think I've given up on the superhero TV shows.  This is not the case, though I have to admit that I gave up on the Marvel Netflix shows after The Defenders.  The CW stuff never did much for me.

I did, however, recently watch the first two episodes of Superman and Lois.  The verdict?  I thought they were terrible.  Bad, bad dialogue.  Good production values, a good cast, maybe a decent story, but really bad dialogue.  Sorry to offend fans of the show, but I wasn't into it.

But maybe part of my problem was that I'd already seen the first season of The Boys long before.  After you've seen Homelander murder people it's hard to see Superman the same way.  I (fucking) loved The Boys, whereas Superman and Lois suffered by comparison.

To be more specific, I watched the first season of The Boys not long after it came out.  I was unfamiliar with Garth Ennis' comic series, though I'd read a lot of his work on Preacher, Crossed and various Punisher books.  No, what brought me to The Boys was its similarity to a much older comic series, Marshal Law.

In case you're unfamiliar with Marshal Law, and to be fair, many people aren't familiar, he appeared in the late 80s under Marvel's Epic Comics imprint.  He was a super-powered policeman operating in a world full of deranged superheroes, in the wake of a Vietnam War-style conflict overseas.  The series was written by Pat Mills and drawn by Kevin O'Neill.  Both writer and artist were British, and they used Marshal Law as a way of poking fun at American superheroes.

Marshal Law didn't last long at Epic.  Mills and O'Neill later took the character to other comic book companies, but he nevertheless remained an obscure character, known only to those versed in the adult-oriented comics from the late 80s and early 90s.

Garth Ennis, by the way, was aware of Marshal Law before he began writing The Boys.  But where Marshal Law focuses on a single character, The Boys is centered around a group of anti-supe "terrorists."  Where Marshal Law was full of pyrotechnics and adrenaline-fueled sex and gore, The Boys has more of a story.  I will always love Marshal Law, but it would have been hard to make a movie or TV show out of the original series.

What the Amazon Prime series adds to this mix is some great writing handed over to some great actors.  Jack Quaid (son of Dennis), Karl Urban, Karen Fukuhara and most of all Antony Starr, a kiwi actor who absolutely kills it as Homelander.  I don't know where they found half of these people, but they were well chosen.  Karl Urban was the only obvious choice, given his work on Dredd.

I think the first season of The Boys has the best moments, and the second season tells a better story.  That scene in the first season wherein Homelander is encouraged to breastfeed, the laser-shooting baby in the hospital, and even the way Jack's Quaid's girlfriend is killed in the first episode are all great.  I don't know which of these moments were present in the comics, but even if they were present it's not a given that they'd have the same kind of impact in the same kind of way.

The second season?  Man, there are so many twists and turns there.  Stormfront and her backstory are front and center in the second season, and I veered between hating her and feeling sorry for her.  The ending of this season, with the beatdown and the way a major character dies really sets it above the first season.  But both seasons are great in different ways.  

Going from this kind of show to Superman and Lois isn't easy.  Wandavision?  Maybe, but Wandavision also isn't on the same level as The Boys.  I could still watch and enjoy Wandavision, whereas a helping of Superman and Lois just made me wonder why nobody says "fuck" in that universe, and how such wholesome people (even their "troubled" sons) can stand to be around one another.  I get that the caustic humor present in The Boys puts a lot of people - especially religious people - off, but once you've gotten into The Boys it's hard to take Superman and Lois all that seriously.

I will say that doing a spinoff of The Boys is worrying.  This kind of move usually indicates a loss of quality.  But I'm looking forward to the third season of The Boys just the same.  Between now and then I suppose I'll have to tide myself over with The Snyder Cut, provided of course that The Boys hasn't corrupted that for me as well.

Related Entries:

Superhero Movies From October 2018 Onward (12: The Last One)

Comic Book Interlude 12

Comic Book Interlude 11

Upcoming Superhero Movies in the Order I Want to See Them 3

P.S. Here's a thought: what's preventing anyone from including Marshal Law in The Boys universe?  He's now owned by his creators, and all they need to is sign off on the inclusion.