Hey folks, Harry here with Capone's look at FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING alongside a good deal other films. Even this bitter evil man loved it! Awesome! I won't have to give Ness his address now.
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here with a bunch of reviews for everyone. After being a bit let down at not seeing the first chapter of the LORD OF THE RINGS films at Butt-Numb-a-Thon, I managed to hit a critics screening in Chicago this week, along with a few others.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Before this year, I’d never even picked up a book with the word Hobbit in it. But I felt it was my duty to attempt to read at least “The Hobbit” and the first installment of “The Lord of the Rings” story before the film was released. It was a good idea to do so, but not an absolute necessity. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING is one of the most faithful adaptation of any book I’ve ever seen on film; faithful to the letter, the spirit, the magic, and the darkness of J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters, setting, tone, and vision. It’s also the best action film of the year. The film even has the same flaws that the book does. Tolkien is terrible at developing characters, and the movie doesn’t do much to improve that situation. Nor should it. New Zeland-born director Peter Jackson (HEAVENLY CREATURES, THE FRIGHTENERS) is really the only director that could have pulled this minor miracle off. He has devoted years of his life to this project and every second of that time has paid off handsomely. The production design, special effects, art direction, make up, and fight sequences put every STAR WARS film to shame. The meshing of live actors with digitally-created creatures is seamless. And don’t even get me started on the acting. Every one of these actors—from Elijah Wood as the ever-present hero, Frodo Baggins, to cameos by the likes of Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, and Liv Tyler—is perfectly cast and does a spectacular job. Among my favorites are Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn the human member of the fellowship charged with destroying an evil ring in the fires of Mt. Doom; Orlando Bloom as Legolas the Elf; Sean Bean as Boromir; and Ian McKellen as Gandalf the wizard.
FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING is perfectly paced without a single dull moment in all of its three-hour running time. It’s the kind of film I’m dying to see again just to look in detail at things in the background as well as the astonishing action in the foreground. The bottom line here is that everything works. I’m not freakishly obsessed with seeing “Lord of the Rings” put on the big screen, but having seen the first installment, I’m excited that Jackson and Co. shot all three parts at once and that we only have to wait a year for THE TWO TOWERS. It makes me hate George Lucas for making us wait three years between STAR WARS films. The first thought in my head after seeing FELLOWSHIP was “Anakin who?” Buy your tickets now, I heard there are some Tuesday night midnight screenings in some cities.
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
This is a tough film to get my feelings straight on. There’s an above-average cast, including Guy Pearce (MEMENTO, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL), James Caviezel (FREQUENCY, ANGEL EYES), Richard Harris, gravel-voiced Michael Wincott, and the loveable, huggable Luis Guzman (who looks terribly out of place in a period film, but we still love him). We have a classic piece of source material: Alexandre Dumas’s novel of the same name. And we have a director, Kevin Reynolds, whose last film, 187 with Samuel L. Jackson, was just about perfect. (Of course Reynolds also directed ROBIN HOOD and WATERWORLD, both with Kevin Costner. Ouch!) And with all of these positive points going for it, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO worked incredibly hard just to make me shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, it wasn’t horrible.”
Caviezel is Edmund Dantes, a common man who has worked his way up in the world of Napoleonic France. Pearce is Edmund’s best friend, Fernand Mondego, a nobleman by birth, but someone who feels lost in Edmund’s shadow. The two have a chance meeting with an exiled Napoleon on Alba (sp?) Island, where Napoleon asks Edmund to deliver a letter to someone on the mainland. Napoleon swears the letter is to a friend, and Edmund is dumb enough to believe him. Upon arriving in France, Edmund is betrayed by Fernand and thrown into the nastiest prison in all the country for treason. He spends nearly a dozen years there, slowly going insane. About seven years into his stay, he meets a fellow prisoner, the priest Faria (Harris), who has spent his many years of incarceration digging an elaborate system of tunnels throughout the prison. The two mean join forces. Fernand uses Faria to educate him; Faria needs Fernand’s physical strength to complete his tunneling. Once Fernand has escaped he sets about in an elaborate scheme to get revenge on those who wronged him.
MONTE CRISTO has always been one of Dumas’s most Shakespearian tales. Fortunately, I suppose, Reynolds did not go the route of the recent THE MUSKETEER (also based on a Dumas work), and his swordsmen do not use kung fu against each other. And while most of the film is about backstabbing, politics, and obtaining justice, there is a fair amount of well-staged action as well. Most of the special effects in MONTE CRISTO are reserved for recreating sweeping locations from 18th century France. But at well over two hours in length, the film feels neverending. I also need to criticize Pearce’s performance; he borders on campy villain type, and I don’t think it’s intentional. Particularly in the back half of the film, I wanted to laugh as his shifty-eyed characterization, as if Pearce hates the French as much as the rest of the world.
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO is a good-looking film, with strong performances overall, but not enough of whatever it takes to make a good action-adventure-period piece. A close call, but no dice.
KATE AND LEOPOLD
It’s official: I hate Meg Ryan. If I never see her in another film again, everything in the world will be just dandy. Why do I hate Ms. Cutesy Pie? Because her act and her stupid haircut are tired. Get your hair out of your eyes and get a personality transplant, oh Queen of the Rehash. To be fair, however, Ryan’s latest film, KATE AND LEOPOLD, doesn’t suck just because she’s in it. It would have sucked anyway.
Hugh Jackman (another guy that better be careful not to let his career slip away from him before it really gets going) plays Leopold, a noble man from 1876 whose family wants him married as soon as possible. But Leo is an inventor, and has little interest in women. At a party thrown by his father to announce his engagement, Leo notices a strange man lurking in the shadows of his party. When Leo confronts the man (Liev Schreiber as Stuart), the two tumble off the side of a castle and disappear into a hold in time. The wind up plopping down in Stuart’s apartment. Jackman is confused by all the modern conveniences, but learns to adjust quickly. At about this time, all the elevators in New York City starts to break down. Turns out Leo invented the elevator, and with him out of his own time stream, all the things he’s invented start to break down. I’m guessing by now, you’ve already decided to skip KATE AND LEOPOLD.
The film goes from bad to worse, when Meg enters the picture as Kate, a quirky headstrong professional woman who just happens to live upstairs from her ex-boyfriend Stuart. Stuart ends up in the hospital after injuring himself by falling down an empty elevator shaft. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if elevators are supposedly at risk for not existing in 2001, why would there even be an elevator shaft? I’ve got to stop working my brain so hard over these idiot flicks. Anyway, it doesn’t take long for Kate and Leopold to fall for each other, but it’s important that Leo get back to his own time or else the world my have to resort to stairs.
Aside from the wasted talents of Jackman, KATE AND LEOPOLD also wastes the talents of Breckin Meyer as Kate brother, Natasha Lyonne as Kate’s dopey co-worker, and “West Wing”’s Bradley Whitford as Kate’s sexist boss. But perhaps the biggest offender here is director James Mangold, who so impressed me with his first two films, HEAVY and COP LAND, and sort of won me over with GIRL, INTERRUPTED. This broad, stupid film is below his talents. These aren’t characters, they’re caricatures. The speed at which Leopold adapts to the modern age is ludicrous, and the way everyone just sort of accepts that he’s from the past is mind-blowingly lazy and dumb. There’s nothing here to recommend.
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