In short: The Three Musketeers (2011)

I think I can spare everyone the plot synopsis. Just imagine the usual Dumas highlights as well as the additions most loved by all other adaptations of the material and add airships and a weird-ass diving suit.

You may have read that Paul W.S. Anderson’s version of the old (but grand) chestnut here is supposed to be not very good, but if you’re me, that’s not a thing that’ll stop you. Even though, in this case, it really, really should have. Now, I’m not a traditional hater of Anderson, and while I absolutely agree with the usual consensus that many of the guy’s films are not very good, I can’t help but respect a director so clearly putting everything he’s got into entertaining his audience. That the filmmaker often seems to believe the audience he is out to entertain has a all the culture of the inhabitants of a monkey cage is a bit unfortunate here, but what can you do?

Even here, Anderson clearly tries to entertain us: there are half a dozen or so relatively loud and somewhat entertaining action sequences in the film, and these are, for what it’s worth, actually pretty fun in an extremely undemanding way. Alas, there is also a version of (parts of the) rather complicated plot of Dumas’s novel, containing rather a large amount of intrigue and dialogue, and here’s where the film completely breaks down, for Anderson clearly has no idea how to stage this sort of thing at all. It doesn’t help that all those parts of the dialogue that aren’t taken word for word from earlier movie versions of the material are some of the most insipid tripe I’ve heard in a long time – and as my imaginary readers know, my tolerance for this sort of thing is usually considerable. Nor does it add to its quality that the film clearly wants to be some kind of cross between the Lester version of the Musketeers and Guy Ritchie’s big damn action approach to Sherlock Holmes; of course, what it tonally actually is,  is what our British friends know as panto, just performed by quite a few theoretically highly capable actors.

In theory, I say, for whether it’s Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans, Ray Stevenson, Udo Waltz, Juno Temple, or Mads Mikkelsen, they’re just mugging their way through every single scene, clearly trying to get through this thing as fast as possible, pretending that winking at the audience about how shit the material is will somehow magically improve matters. To add insult to injury, the capable actors stand side by side with decidedly not capable screen personalities Milla Jovovich as the worst Milady, Orlando Bloom as the worst Lord Buckingham and Logan Lerman as the worst D’Artagnan imaginable outside of nightmares so terrible, they would probably be lethal. Particularly Jovovich is so bad, only a director who is married to her would let her get away with it. Wait a minute…


So yeah, this is indeed as horrible as everyone says it is.

In short: Anna (2019)

I’ve been making fun of Luc Besson for decades now, but despite all of his flaws as a screenwriter, I’ve always taken him for a highly talented director, hell, even writer, just one who tends to be a bit lazier than he should or could be, ambitious in a sometimes self-sabotaging way, and a bit of a goofball. Who couldn’t identify with that? It’s just that most of us goofy nerds don’t get big money to bring our bad and not so bad ideas on screen, sometimes featuring major actors.

After watching Anna, however, I’m not so sure about the writer/director/producer anymore; perhaps some of us have just always cut a lazy hack too much slack and turned him into a misguided talent in our heads? Be that as it may, Anna is a full-grown catastrophe of a movie, featuring a model in the title role who can’t act, supported by a group of pros – Helen “I had a Russian grandmother” Mirren, Cillian “Like, totally American” Murphy and Luke “I am even more Russian” Evans – doing terrible accents who supposedly can act (but you wouldn’t notice), moving back and forth through a plot that is at once bland, tedious, and of course in classic Besson style dumb as a rock. Because this is a bit of a backdoor remake of Red Sparrow (but crap), the film is also full of increasingly tedious plot twists it spends an improbable amount of time explaining to the dumbest person in the audience, killing the little bit of forward momentum a film with an uninvolving story about a character without character traits can have, not once, not twice, but thrice.

Also adding to the pain are modelling sequences (fun fact: no film ever needs more than zero of those), amateurishly staged action sequences that don’t even bother to film around the fact that lead Sasha Luss clearly has even less experience as a screen fighter than she has as an actress. I’m perfectly alright with directors casting their leads on account of their cheekbones instead of their ability as actors/actresses, but directors not named Besson generally put some effort in improving their amateur actor’s game, whereas Anna seems to go out of its way to make the poor girl’s acting look as badly as possible. But then, this is a film that doesn’t get a good performance out of Helen Mirren, so what do I expect?


There’s some in theory half interesting thematic business about female freedom and independence (hello again, Red Sparrow) but that’s more or less completely sabotaged by Besson’s inability to give Anna any kind of psychology, let’s not even hope for any sort of personality. There’s nothing there, really, and unlike with old school Besson, there’s no style to become substance or at least distract from its absence here, leaving Anna empty and not even pretty to look at.

In short: Dracula Untold (2014)

Unlike a lot of people, I have no trouble at all with Sony turning the Universal version of Dracula into a fantasy adventure thingum instead of gothic horror. The original movies, or the Hammer films, and so on, aren’t going anywhere after all, and some of those weren’t any good anyway, so there’s always room for doing the classic monsters differently. Plus, it’s not as if people would suddenly stop making other vampire, werewolf, etc movies, so I don’t see the harm in this, or in Sony’s project of turning the classic monsters into a dark(ish) fantasy action movie universe. Of course, going by the actual results until now, the project has a snowball’s chance in hell to be as successful – commercially or artistically – as Marvel’s output is right now, what with the bunch of non-entity directors making them (Gary Shore, anyone?), and the scripts that never get interesting enough to even be called bad.

Consequently, for me Dracula Untold’s problem isn’t that it’s a mainstream blockbuster film instead of gothic horror movie but that it’s a deeply mediocre mainstream blockbuster film that shows no feeling at all for the possibilities for Dracula as a dark(ish) action hero with bat based super powers (call him Emo Batman, and you’re done), only seldom shows much of an idea about how to do spectacle well (okay, there’s the scene where Dracs casts Summon Bat Swarm on the whole Turkish army, and I find the whole “vampires are made out of bat swarms” angle amusing), and hits the expected plot beats without any conviction, aiming for gravitas but never actually doing the work for earning it.

Too little about the film’s world is fleshed out: we learn a few things because characters exposit them but the film hits that sour spot where the things we actually get to see are neither believable enough nor interesting enough to make one willing to buy into their reality as parts of the world of the film they occur in. Worse, these elements are frequently not just dumb but also terribly dull. I am – for example - sure it would have helped the general excitement levels if the armies involved in various battles would either have used believable tactics (or any tactics at all, really) or tactics that would have been fun to watch. Instead, anything anyone does here – be it in war or in peace – generally feels designed to get the film from one plot beat to the next. Alas, plot beats do not a story make, and a mediocre blockbuster is as little worth watching as is a truly bad one. Though kudos to the film being not as bad as Michael Bay’s Ninja Turtles.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,fantasy,horror,gary shore,luke evans,sarah gadon

No One Lives (2012)

(Warning: Spoilers abound!)

Because their dumbest member Flynn (Derek Magyar) wants to prove himself after he needlessly (and dangerously) shot someone he really didn't need to kill, a backwoods clan of low-level criminals and toughs comes into possession of the car of two passing travellers in some kind of strained relationship - and, in another idiocy nobody approves of, of the travellers themselves. The situation doesn't improve at all when the female half of the couple (Laura Ramsey) uses a knife held at her throat as an opportunity for suicide. The man (Luke Evans) turns out to be a rather effective and brutal serial killer (though he sees himself as something more than just a mere serial killer, who are like kittens to his panther), and now a very angry one at that.

He is certainly not less angry once he realizes that the clan has found Emma (Adelaide Clemens), the young millionaire's daughter who was famously abducted some time ago while fourteen of her friends were slaughtered, hidden in his car. Things could still turn out okay for the crooks if they'd just do what Emma tells them to, namely to run at once and give her to the police. As it goes with people who have been tougher than anyone they ever met, the clan think they can cope with anything a single guy could throw at them, and decide to keep Emma and blackmail some money directly out of her father. They only realize too late that there's always somebody more dangerous somewhere, and they have just met him. In fact, Emma is the only person around on his level, which might be exactly what the killer wants her to be.

I think I have repeatedly aired my dislike for No One Lives director Ryuhei Kitamura's films. I may even have compared the experience of watching one of his movies to watching a monkey masturbate in slow motion, with added whooshing noises. Yes, I didn't even like Versus. So cover me surprised to realize I would describe No One Lives as great, bordering on brilliant.

Absolutely gone is Kitamura's tendency to overemphasise needlessly flashy directing tics and blunder his audience into submission by empty gestures of what's supposed to be coolness. In No One Lives, every edit, every camera movement is in service of the movie, not of stroking the director's ego via technical achievements. In fact, Kitamura leaves many of his most favourite directing tricks nearly completely in the bag, instead trusting in his ability to keep his audience interested with excellent pacing, a decidedly non-stupid script by David Cohen, and even - this has always been a particular weak spot in Kitamura's films - decent acting. Particularly the way Luke Evans turns his bland pretty boy looks into something frightening, and the way Adelaide Clemens projects complicated feelings via body language are remarkable, but even someone like America Olivo (whom I'd never have suspected of it) shows actual acting chops. Of course, we are talking about acting in the context of a horror thriller here, not a naturalistic piece about the troubles of academics, but I'm not going to complain when performances are exactly as they should be.

It's also a first in a Kitamura movie to find the director actually trusting in the performances, giving the actors just enough room to work, without getting distracted by a need to make a thousand edits a second or swirling his camera around while bullets fly in slow-motion. In this film, the director seems absolutely concentrated, using his (always unquestionably high) technical proficiency to tell a simple yet clever story excitingly. He does this much more efficiently than I ever would have expected.

It does help that Cohen's script does some rather clever things with the way it plays with the slasher and the larger "serial killer on the rampage" genres he's working in, without ever forgetting to add enough blood and gore to satisfy the baser needs of his audience. I'm not quite convinced of the film's ending, though. I see where it is going with it thematically, yet I don't think the ending as it actually happens is as satisfying as the rest of the narrative. But then I always want to see the final girl in these films win completely under her own powers and (unrealistically) not end up psychologically damaged beyond repair.

That minor quibble aside, No One Lives is quite an achievement. Suddenly, I'm even looking forward to Ryuhei Kitamura's next movie.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,ryuhei kitamura,horror,thriller,luke evans,adelaide clemens,lee tergesen