The Best Offer

The Best Offer could as easily been entitled Geoffrey Rush is a Really Good Actor.  In the film, Rush plays an art and antiques valuator and auctioneer with a tightly controlled, distant life.  He is his work, and he is very little else.

Until, that is, he meets a girl.

Once he meets a girl, the plot kicks in.  It’s a perfectly fine, if heavy handed, tale, but the tale isn’t the draw of The Best Offer.  The draw of this film is the opportunity to watch Rush assay a particular kind of solitary gentleman, then to watch him develop this character into a three-dimensional man.  He really is breathtaking, even if the film he’s in begins to fade from memory mere days after its viewing.  I do enjoy Geoffrey Rush.

Minions

We’re 2/3 of the way through Minions.  Nobody’s laughing.  Families have walked out.  My 8-year-old is reading his popcorn box.  My wife leans over and whispers, “Will this movie never end?”  I whisper back, “Two words: catastrophic failure.”

The film begins with a short history of minions, little yellow thumb-like creatures who live to serve villains.  It shows them serving a cute T-Rex, then accidentally tipping it over into boiling lava.  This is played for laughs, but nobody laughs because there’s nothing funny about falling into a pit of molten lava.  Later, it shows them serving an Egyptian pharaoh, then accidentally tipping over a carefully balanced inverted pyramid and crushing their master and his party underneath.  Again, this is played for laughs.  Nobody laughs because there’s nothing funny about being crushed to death.  Later in the film, there’s a long sequence involving hijinks in a torture chamber.  Again, nobody laughs.  With the notable exception of The Princess Bride, there’s nothing funny about torture chambers.

The whole film is filled with missteps such as these.  The bulk of the action’s set in late ‘60s / early ‘70s London, a time as alien to the average 8-year-old as medieval China.    There’s gag after gag taking the wind out of hippie culture.  There’s a Jimi Hendrix joke, complete with guitar lick, and even an “Abbey Road” cover photo joke with a complete setup, payoff, and denouement.   All this must have seemed wonderfully amusing to whatever 67-year-old executive greenlit the film, but it was lost on the young families in my theater.  I just sat there wondering who this movie was actually supposed to be for.

And yet, when the credits rolled, my 8-year-old and his friends declared that they loved it; so what do I know?  All I can say is the Minions is the worst film I, personally, have seen so far this year.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

When you sit down for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, you know exactly what you're getting: classical piratical adventure with swordfights, damsels, treasure, and men of questionable hygiene shouting "Yarrr!"

The film is competently made, it looks great, and I'm still not tired of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow.  Toss in Penelope Cruz (CDNW) as a foil and love interest, and we have a recipe for high seas adventure that ought to be worth at least a few more entries.  Did POTC IV capture my imagination as well as the surprising Wrath of the Titans?  No, but it was just the thing to help me while away a couple of hours while riding as a passenger on a transpacific flight.  You could do worse.

Finding Nemo

Oh, how I adore "Finding Nemo."

My two-year-old has just discovered it, and it's now on nearly constant rotation on the enormovision. I never tire of the film, and I suspect that's because of three reasons: compelling story, fine performances, and beautiful images.

The story is delightfully dad-centric, a rarity in this or any other genre. Marlin the clownfish is overprotective of his little Nemo and his worst fears are realized on the very first day of school: Nemo is captured by scuba divers and taken far away, and it's up to dad to find him and save him. As a dad, how can I not respond to that? How can I not relate to the conflict between Marlin's desire to shield his son from harm and his duty to expose him to risk? How can I not relate to his desperation, his determination, his no-choice-but-to-see-this-thing-through? And when Nemo learns that his dad is, in fact, supercool, well, what father doesn't want to be a hero in the eyes of his children?

This story is brought to life through well-written situations and dialogue, performed by first-class actors such as Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, and Geoffrey Rush. They hit not a single sour note, and they manage to immerse me in the goings on from start to finish.

And speaking of immersion, "Finding Nemo" immerses us in a beautiful world with a stricking color palette. It's bright and rich and endlessly interesting, and when it's on it lights up the whole basement. In fact, I have one of the DVD's special features, a virtual aquarium, going right now. This world is so captivating that it makes me want to dust off my old scuba card, fly somewhere nice, and take a plunge. This is a beautiful, beautiful film. I don't think I'll ever tire of it.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (POTC 3, henceforth) isn't very good. It wants to be an exciting, family-friendly adventure, but it begins with the hanging of a child. Now, I now that to somebody in Studio City, nothing says "entertainment" like the twitching feet of a dying juvenile. But I hate to break it to you, buddy: you hamstrung yourself very early on. The stakes are too high here, the villains too villainous, the deaths too real for POTC 3 to be fun. Yet this is a POTC movie, not NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, so it's not like you were going to sell it as a drama.

Early pall aside, POTC 3 makes no sense. It would have us believe that Pax Brittania was a bad thing, that the world is much better off with pirates disrupting the global economy than with trading vessels being able to ply the seas, and that the life of a felon is somehow noble. The earlier POTC movies at least kept the pirates morally ambiguous - here, they're good guys who do a little raping and pillaging in their spare time.

And yet, POTC 3 does have some things to recommend it. The performances are great fun, with Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy chewing the scenery with gusto comparable to Johnny Depp. The special effects are magnificent, and the set design is out of this world.

If only the movie hadn't gone so dark so early, it might have swept me away. Alas.