Category: Review

Starring Kate Winslet and Kevin Spacey

In case you haven’t seen a commercial or trailer for this movie, the basic story follows a woman reporter (Kate Winslet) who is interviewing a death row inmate (Kevin Spacey) just days before his scheduled execution. The commercials and trailers I have seen for it make it seem like she believes he is innocent and tries to save him from being executed. Even the movie poster shows her running from her dead car, trying to deliver what we presume is the evidence David Gale needs to be set free. The opening shot, with no explanation yet, shows her car breaking down, then her running towards town with a video cassette in hand, desperately trying to get … somewhere … with it before … something bad happens. So before we learn anything else, we know the end of the movie is her racing the clock to try to get the proving evidence to the people who need to see it.

I won’t tell you now how it goes, but you can guess. This IS a Hollywood movie.

OH yeah, but I will give away everything else about the movie. From here on, assume you are reading spoilers:

***

Oh, so then we finally do get introduced to the characters, David Gale is the picture of calmness and the reporter believes he is totally guilty. I mean, come on! She was murdered in an unusual way that he described in an essay he published once (he used to be a professor of philosophy) with his sperm found inside her and a partial thumbprint on the garbage bag that suffocated her! How could he NOT have killed her? Anyway, so he’s totally calm, knowing he’s going to be executed in three days and that his execution will be what his cause has been looking for for years and years but powerless to create.

Through David Gale’s retelling of the story to the reporter (presumably so she will report it all correctly, or at least put the pieces together the way he wants her to) we learn that before any of this happened, back when he was a professor of philosophy, David Gale and the woman he apparently later murders were buddies. They both worked vehemently against the death penalty. In the first discussion between them in the first flashback, for anyone who hasn’t figured out the clever twist at the end of the movie before watching it at all, they discuss that the only thing they could use to prove that the death row process was flawed would be if they could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that an innocent person had been executed. The problem with that would be that if they discovered evidence of someone’s innocence it would simply get them off death row and prove that the system works, while holding back the information would be murder and just an unethical as they view the death penalty itself.

Have you worked it out yet? I’ll spell it out so I don’t have to describe the rest of the movie in detail, and you don’t have to watch it unless you want to see excellent performances by Kevin Spacey and Laura Linney (the woman he is being killed for killing): David Gale was involved with her, and did have sex with her the night before she died, but she killed herself and had a third party video tape it and hold onto the tape until after his conviction and execution, as proof that innocents are executed, even when they try their hardest within the system to prove their innocence.

So yadda yadda yadda, the reporter and David Gale keep talking and the whole story is revealed in flashbacks while the reporter is digging up clues about his possible innocence. There’s some heavy-handed writing, but also some very excellent writing and some amazing performances. There is even a scene right before his execution, before her car breaks down and before the intensity of her trying to get there in time, that will make people cry. Well, the people who cry during movies, anyway. All very nice and well, but since I knew what the twist ending was going to be, every scene where they were setting it up seemed almost painful. Not a funny movie, not an uplifting movie. A drama. If that’s what you’re looking for, you may enjoy The Life of David Gale.

Starring Vince Vaughn, Will Farrel, Luke Wilson

I want to start by saying that this is Will Farrel’s best performance in years. he was very carefully controlled by the director here, and did not go over the top as he so often is allowed to do. Instead, he was very, very funny. Not the main character in the movie, but possibly given a better storyline and more on-screen time than the main character, played by Luke Wilson.

The basic story is that Luke’s character, who has just discovered that his girlfriend has been cheating on him with multiple partners in ‘kinky’ situations, rents a house of his own. His buddy (Vince Vaughn) throws him a huge party to celebrate his singledom, and since he now lives right near a university, the party is HUGE. The dean (played by the talented Jeremy Piven) has the house re-zoned for school use only in a ploy to try to get him out of there, but his buddies decide instead to use the house as a fraternity. Hijinks ensue.

The dean keeps trying to get them out, they keep finding loopholes in the paperwork/rules to stay, and they keep throwing great parties and are immensely popular with all the students. Luke’s real storyline follows his attempts to get into a relationship with someone less likely to participate in a gang bang, and is diappointing and predictable. Vince’s character, the rich connected buddy who knows how to party, is not the sleazebag the audience expects him to be, always doing the right thing and standing by his friends when they need him. Will’s storyline is much more interesting than Luke’s or Vince’s.

Will gets married at the beginning of the movie, then through a series of misadventures (including a great streaking scene) gets kicked out and goes to live at the fraternity. He continues to want to be with his wife, and wackiness ensues. Really, he’s just the lovable idiot we expect him to be. The things he does wrong aren’t out of malice, they’re because he’s too dumb and too much of a guy to know any better. There is an excellent mishap involving a cameo appearance by Andy Dick about which I have to say this: Yes, there are classes for that, but really they are much better than what you see in Old School.

Overall, Old School is exactly the sort of dumb college-based humor you expect, and since it is not trying to be more, it excells. Will’s performance may be worth the price of admission, and I’d love to see him keep reigning in his talent as a comedian in future projects. There are many, many fun and funny cameos and the pace of the movie is consistant. Oh, and the bulk of the humor is not toilet humor; it remains slightly above that level most of the time. Enjoy Old School. It’s a good time.

I will be the first to admit that I am not the one who should be reviewing champagne. Or really any alcohol, for that matter. Something about reviews should be done by people who enjoy the sort of thing they’re reviewing. Like movies. I love movies. I should do movie reviews. Not this. But I had to say something, so it may as well be here. Oh, and as to why I’m drinking it at all: Someone very kindly bought me the bottle for my birthday, back in September, and since I promptly lost my job, I didn’t have much to celebrate. I was going to open it when I was offered a new job, but that hasn’t happened, and with the move to Pine I’m not really on the job market any more. So I may as well drink it now, while I’m cleaning the kitchen anyway.

I don’t typically drink. When I do drink, it is not typically wine. I’ve only tried a few different wines in my time, and I don’t recall liking any of them. Two champagnes, three not, but seriously, they’re all bad grape juice as far as I’m concerned. Oh, and I don’t like things to be fizzy, so champagne is like taking something I don’t like and adding a feature that I feel takes away from the likability of the thing.

When I take a normal mouthful of this … stuff … even the air preceding it into my mouth offends me. Little warning bells and alarms start going off in my head. See, I know what bad food smells like. I live alone and can’t possibly finish every package of food I buy; not enough things come in single serving containers. Also, I’ve recently been cleaning out my fidginator in expectation of moving out of here soon, and coming across the most interesting things I forgot I bought. And in order to get them from the fidginator to the trash, they have to pass by my nose. So I know what bad food smells like. I know what a dozen types of mold and rot smell like. The smell of this champagne falls neatly into the category of some sort of fruit or vegetable that’s gone bad. Probably something sweet, like grapes or cherries rather than something dull like celery or something rancid like meats.

The first couple of sips were interesting, if not a little misleading. You see, since my body is sure this stuff is some sort of bad food that I ought not be consuming, it let me take the first mouthful, alerted me to possible danger, and assumed I would stop consuming the stuff. The second mouthful, I think my body was too shocked that I hadn’t heeded its first warning that it didn’t know what to do with me and let me just swallow, no problem. I was able to note that it was tart and sweet at the same time, and that the bubbles were annoying.

I paused for a moment, doing other things, running some hot water for more dishes, hiding the soul-eating monster in the fidginator’s crisper for the next unsuspecting residents… When I took the next mouthful, it occurred to me that perhaps I was not properly appreciating it, so I drew air across the surface of the champagne before allowing it to gently cascade into my mouth. I then held the champagne in my mouth, swishing a bit to be sure that I experienced the full flavour experience of the wine, and finally swallowed it.

I then noticed that my face had managed to contort itself into so tight and awful a constriction of muscles that I could not prevent drool from escaping the downturned corners of my mouth. My eyes were squeezed tight, as though the vapors from the champagne might somehow rise up and blind me, and the rest of my face was reacting as though I had just swallowed a concentrated liquid nerve gas. I proceeded to ask Iain via IM why anyone would drink wine, let alone champagne, (which is like wine gone bad via bubbles) and he was little help. He suggested that champagnes tended to be sweeter than wines. I almost want to go try some of the not-sweet wines he’s referring to, see if they don’t cause my facial muscles to actually tear away from the inside of my face.

Every subsequent mouthful is proving to be a challenge. After the first three, I seriously considered just dumping the stuff, and going down to the store to buy some soda or something to drink while I work. Then it occured to me to take a deep breath away from the scent of the champagne and then to not allow air to pass through or to my nose while drinking. This would allow me to seperate the tragedy of the actual taste from the offensiveness of the odor of the champagne. This actually makes it easier to drink. The tart, biting (still screaming that something has gone bad therein, but not as loudly) taste of it actually does have two or three layers of different types of sweet hiding within it. In order to accurately judge the flavour of a thing, it is easiest to separate the flavour from the rest of the experience. To say, “Would I like to be able to get this flavour as a cream ice at the local Brooklyn Italian Ice place down on Mill?” Which, in this case, I would not. (Speaking of which, as soon as I finish this review I’m going to go see if they’re still open.)

Oooop. There goes the last mouthful of the bottle (after not eating for four or five hours, even when I don’t like it I get a good buzz) and the champagne glass I was drinking it out of into the dishwater. (Yes, I have a couple of champagne glasses. Don’t ask me why.) Overall, I would say that I am not a suitable judge of this product. Then I’ll go ahead and say that it is sweet and tart at the same time, and that if you like drinking things that smell and taste like they’ve gone so far bad they’re trying to kill you, you may like this. I’ll also ask someone else (presumably someone who likes drinking wine and/or champagne – yes, I’m talking to you, Zoe) to go get a bottle of the same stuff and write a better review as a comment to this one.

Thank you, and good night.

Better than I expected in some respects, disappointing in others, Daredevil is a plain vanilla comic-book adaptation of a much darker source. Or at least that’s what everyone keeps saying; I’ve never really read the comic book. I bought an issue or two once because I wanted to practice drawing in the art style used, but I don’t think I ever read them; I just looked at the pictures. Still, the art style was dark and gritty, and while the bulk of this movie occurred at night and the hero killed and killed and killed the bad guys, it was not a movie that i would describe as dark.

A lot of reviewers are saying that Ben Affleck was a disgracec, creating a character that was less interesting with the mask off and dialogue flowing than with the mask on and silently fighting. I will say that several of the fight sequences were impressively choreographed, and that the initial meeting/fight sequence bewteen Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) and Electra was not just well-choreographed but genuinely entertaining, funny, and endearing to both characters. The problem with that is that that was probably the only scene in which the idea that any of the characters featured had any depth of character whatsoever.

Sure, yeah, Matt’s father was killed by Kingpin, which lead him to become a vigilante in the first place, and yeah, it’s too bad he has those annoying super senses that give him perceptions superior to regular human beings, what with casual noises at a distance keeping him up nights (unless he’s just had sex, apparently), but I didn’t really care one way or the other about Matt Murdock as a person. Electra’s father was killed suddenly and unexpectedly and when I cared about his death it only made me notice that I didn’t care about Matt’s father, Electra, Matt himself, or anyone else in the movie. Which meant that my liking the movie was left in the hands of the writers’ ability to come up with clever riffs and the choreographers’ ability to come up with interesting fights.

There were some very funny and entertaining conversations in the movie. Jon Favreau was excellent and Matt Murdock’s law partner. Joe Pantoliano shined in every scene he was in, even when they were weak scenes. Colin Farell was exactly the right amount of cocky SOB to be Bullseye, yet his best moments appeared to be Colin improvising within a weak, cliched screenplay. The funny or romantic scenes between Matt Murdock and Electra were appropriately funny or romantic. Their fights (after that first one) were not, unfortunately, compelling or entertaining or especially believable.

I just want to mention one more thing about the fights, and I’ll get on with a summary: As I watched the best of the fights (the initial one-against-thirty fight and the Bullseye v. Daredevil fight in the cathedral) I was entertained and excited and drawn in by the film’s action and off-again-on-again choreography, but I kept thinking “I can’t wait to see The Matrix Sequels. They are going to blow this movie totally out of our memories.” They’re good, fun action sequences, despite DD’s tendency to move uncannily like Spiderman, but I know something better is right around the corner.

So overall I would say that Daredevil is acceptably entertaining as a vanilla comic book movie, with excellent performances from the supporting cast despite an over-worked and too-many-cooks screenplay. Kudos to the director for allowing the actors to work around it from time to time. Ben Affleck was not among those who rose above the level of the material and we do not feel his struggle – it is forced down our throats. The ‘romance’ amounts to a couple of cute-but-not-really-emotional scenes and a sex scene, and when Electra dies it seems like DD is reacting because that’s how he believes he’s supposed to react, not because he actually cares. Not a summer blockbuster or a movie I’d bother to buy, but certainly worth my time and the matinee price I paid to see it.

I’m not going to do a full and proper review of the DVD here, but I wanted to make a comment or two. I just got this DVD used yesterday in exchange for some old CDs I’ve never really cared for, and watched it tonight. My first comment is a little thing that while perhaps correctly done, seems strange to me.

Among the special features included on the DVD is “Deleted Scene.” It says “Deleted Scene” right on the back of the box, and again in the menu, and boy is it accurate. One deleted scene. Not two or three (or 16, thank you Devil’s Advocate), but one. It actually helps add not just thoughtful depth to the main character, but adds visual depth in relation to some peculiar architecture featured later in the film. I might argue that it ought to have been left in. Many who make DVD decisions believe that deleted scenes were deleted for a reason, and ought not be included on the distribution, but even they might agree that this one scene is acceptable, and of fully the same quality as the rest of the film (as opposed to the video quality of some other delted scenes I’ve seen, thank you Devil’s Advocate). Except there was another scene I wanted to see.

You may not know this, but The Time Machine’s theatrical release was pushed back something like three months because they had to totally recreate a set of special effects for the scene in 2037, where the Moon is crashing into New York city. You see, in the first rendering parts of the Moon are shown actually colliding with a tall building or two, and the buildings collapsing. Apparently their special effects were so well done that it looked remarkably like the real camcorder footage of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center and those buildings collapsing. In light of the tragedy, they had to figure out a new thing to do, and ended up with the city street cracking open and lava breaking through, which does seem a little confusing and less visually stunning. I was really hoping I could have seen at least some of the special effects visualizations of the moon crashing into the Earth on the DVD. I guess it’s still too much in bad taste, even though it was all conceptualized and rendered before the tragedy.

Do I have another comment? Not right now. Anyway, good movie, good transfer, and there are a couple of good special features including Deleted Scene.