The Flower of My Secret

Ok, here's the deal: Marisa Paredes is a popular romance writer who can't get her serious novel, written under a different name, published. As she describes the manuscript, we learn that the story is that of VOLVER. Some of the characters and settings, we see, mirror those in the later film, suggesting that, when viewing VOLVER, we're viewing something created by the protagonist of THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET. I kind of like a world in which VOLVER (2006) and THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995) are part of the same reality, and that makes THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET worth watching for its coolness factor alone.

THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET showcases a clearly talented filmmaker who is still in the process of growing into himself. He directs the story of a talented but fragile woman who's on the road either to breakdown or rebirth, or maybe both, and he does so with empathy for her story and the sparklings of the kind of visual flair we come to expect in his later films. Interestingly, her story isn't quite as compelling as that of Penelope Cruz in VOLVER. Even in Almodovar's world, fiction can be, well, more dramatic than real life. And that's fine. Just keep 'em coming, Pedro.

Chicken Little

If CHICKEN LITTLE is set in middle America, why does the dad speak with a thick Brooklyn accent? The film establishes that said dad went to the same high school as the eponymous chicken, so ya think the accent might have dulled a bit around the edges, ya know? And here's another question: if you're Disney and you're making a decidedly average movie, do you really want to start it with references to THE LION KING and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK? Those are some pretty challenging points of reference you're putting out there.

Welcome to my inner monologue as I sit on the couch and watch CHICKEN LITTLE with my seven-year-old, who thinks it's hilarious.

Well, I'm not seven, and this movie had nothing to offer me. It had all the subtlety of a 2x4 to the nose, its music was forgettable, and its characterizations were the epitome of "meh." Am I saying that CHICKEN LITTLE is a bad movie? No, not really. I'm just saying that it's remarkably average. Sure, spend an hour and a half on the couch with it and your kids. But bring a magazine.

Stealth

Some time ago, I wrote a generally positive review of THE GUARDIAN, a bad movie that made the effort to get the little details of military aviation and culture right, thus earning it enough goodwill to overcome its inherent badness. STEALTH, a film about naval aviators flying stealth jets, was made by people who seem to never have met anyone who has ever served in the military in any capacity; further, these people never bothered to read even the most rudimentary book about stealth technology - I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that they don't even know the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum even exists. Thus, it generates so much ill will that its badness gets magnified a hundredfold. The captain of an aircraft carrier (Joe Morton, discarding the last of the credibility earned in BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET) wears a jacket patch for a different aircraft carrier. Another captain (Sam Shepard, paying the bills) wields more power than a 3-star admiral. A naval aviator, when told that his boss has lined up some liberty in Thailand, responds, "But we just got here!" (Here being the aforementioned aircraft carrier.) Note to future screenwriters: when any naval aviator, under any conditions, is told that he's going to Thailand, there is only one possible response: "Giddyup!"

STEALTH begins with an aerial sequence that demonstrates the decided unstealthiness of our heroes' aircraft. They don't even bother to baffle the exhaust ports, guaranteeing infrared signatures that'd be observable from space. From there, we're told that we're in Fallon, NV, where our heroes (Josh Lucas, Jamie Foxx, and Jessical Biel) are putting their birds through their paces. Never mind that Fallon isn't used for that. Next, we see them in town in their whites (another no no), where the guys are charming the ladies at an upscale sushi bar while Biel sits chastely, waiting for her One True Love, presumably, to reveal himself. OK, stop. I've spent significant time in Fallon. This is a town that offers three different kinds of food and two kinds of drink: rare, medium, and well-done steak; and Miller or Bud. By the time the heroes get to the boat, where they stay in CO's staterooms even though they're lieutenants, I'd gone well past suspension of disbelief and into resentment at the film's laziness. And I haven't even brought up its violations of the laws of physics, warfare, geography, and politics.

It's as if the makers of STEALTH set out to make the most aggressively stupid movie they could possibly make. Instead of shooting for themselves or anyone who might be interested, they shot for the broadest cross-section of international box office, making a movie that anyone, anywhere could understand. Problem is, they overshot understandable and wound up in stupid. When the guy who programmed the drone-gone-wild that the heroes defeat (Richard Roxburgh) chides Shepard, "You can't tell it to learn and then tell it who to learn from (sic)! Einstein, Hitler, they're all the same to him," we think, "Thanks for telling me that now, jerkoff, now that you've cashed the check. Where was this wisdom when you were writing up the technical proposal?" And don't get me started on the most lightly guarded section of the Korean border since Sgts. Lee Soo-hyeok and Oh Kyeong-pil spent their nights yucking it up in their shack.

Oh, this movie was beyond ghastly. It was beyond terrible. It was an affront to the very concept of film as an entertainment and artistic medium. I'm sorry it ever turned up on my radar.

The Hunted

What if someone remade FIRST BLOOD, and improved it in the process? We'd have THE HUNTED, a visceral and propulsive film that takes the basic premise of FIRST BLOOD (commando on the run from the law) and improves it by following the chase through both urban and wilderness milieus and punctuating it with exciting, realistic knife fights that add to the drama.

Here's the setup: Benicio del Toro is the commando. Unlike John Rambo, however, he's crazy - so there's that. Tommy Lee Jones is the guy who trained him and now shoulders the task of tracking and capturing him. Oh, yeah - the FBI and some shadowy DoD types get involved, too. But don't worry about that. This is the Benicio and Tommy show, and the two play off one another wonderfully. Jones, of course, is a master of looking like all the world's on his shoulders, and we feel his pain as he tracks down one of "his boys." del Toro, for his part, is very good at "psycho," in that he can both function in society and remain outside of it. Together, they provide all the characterization we need to keep us engaged as they run, jump, hide, fight, and generally battle across 90 minutes of solid, nonstop entertainment.

William Friedkin directed THE HUNTED, and it shows. This is first-class, professional, layered entertainment, professionally done. I enjoyed the heck out of it.