Red Tails

Red Tails tells the combat story of the 332^nd Fighter Group, an Army Air Corps unit notable for the fact that its pilots were graduates of the Tuskegee Airmen program.  It was an all-black unit assigned, initially, to undemanding flying well back from the fight in the European theater.  The film dramatizes their commanding officer’s fight to get them in the war, and it lauds their remarkable success once he succeeded.  It’s a great story and one worth reading.  Unfortunately, Red Tails isn’t a particularly good film.

Even though Red Tails looks professional and its air combat sequences are sure to thrill anyone with an interest in that sort of thing, the film simply can’t overcome its leaden screenplay and one-note performances.  Its villains, American and German, are ridiculous stereotypes who induce more groans than fist-shaking.  Its heroes end the film no more heroic than they began it.  Everyone speaks dialogue so clunky that we spend half the running time wondering how much better the film could have been with a first-class screenwriter.  Nobody changes, nobody grows.  A bunch of stuff happens to a bunch of good guys.  At the end of the film, they’re just a bunch of good guys who went through a lot of stuff.

This is a shame, really, because Red Tails is such a labor of love.  Producer George Lucas worked for years to get this film made, finally fronting his own money to pay for its production and distribution.  Some shots in the film are direct recreations of archive photos of the 332^nd.  This film clearly worships them men it depicts but, by presenting them so unidimensionally, it short-serves them.

I wanted to like Red Tails.  I’ll probably show it to my boys and I hope they love it.  But its characters aren’t rich enough, its story not complex enough to do justice to the real-life heroes it lionizes.  Too bad.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The very worst thing about INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is John Hurt. Hurt plays an old friend and colleague of the Joneser, one who has lost his wits after peering too deeply into the eponymous Crystal Skull. The problem with this is that Hurt's performance recalls his Fool in the 1982 BBC production of KING LEAR. Attention filmmakers: if you want to drive a stake through the heart of your movie, cast a great character actor in a pale shadow of one of his career-high performances. It's a sure-fire way to get your audience thinking about how much better that other picture was than the one it's currently watching.

That may be the worst thing about Indy IV, but it has competition. The opening sequence, a car chase between people we don't care about and whom we'll never see again (punctuated with supposedly amusing animal reaction shots), starts the film on an offputting, wtf note. When the picture finally gets around to giving us Ford and Ray Winstone (clearly wishing he was in Ibiza), we've already nearly lost interest. Then Cate Blanchett shows up as the villain, she gets a boner joke, and the whole thing just runs off the rails.

Ok, I admit it. I wrote that whole paragraph just to find an excuse to work in a SEXY BEAST joke.

INDY IV is just plain boring. Dull. Flaccid. A yawner. And I like Spielberg. I like Ford. I like Allen, Winstone, LaBeouf, Blanchett, and Hurt. But my pulse never quickened. I never believed in what was happening. And at the climax, when I was supposed to be going, "Wow," I was only thinking, "Huh. Spielberg and Lucas didn't trust me enough to have the Blanchett speak Russian."

I may have seen this one for free, but I still want $10 back. For my time.

THX-1138

THX-1138 is solid, ‘70s experimental science fiction. It presents with an antiseptic Orwellian world and one man, THX-1138, who begins to realize that there’s more to life than he’s been led to believe. Robert Duvall plays THX-1138, and it’s a masterful, understated performance. THX lives in a society in which emotion is discouraged, and Duvall is a master of showing us the deep currents swirling beneath his character’s calm exterior.

Where THX-1138 triumphs in the performance of its lead, however, it flounders in its actual story. Though the film begins with an intriguing vision of a dystopic future, it ends as one extended chase, going from foot to high-speed vehicle to foot again. Nothing really happens during this chase, story-wise. THX doesn’t learn anything about himself, nor does he develop in any way. It’s as if the film didn’t know where to go, but figured audiences love chases and that would do as well as anything.

So, should you see THX-1138? If you’re a fan of George Lucas, whose first science fiction feature this was, then I suppose you should. If you’re a fan of Robert Duvall, then you definitely should. If you’re neither, it may be worth your while if you find it on cable. That’s good enough, I suppose.

Return of the Jedi

RETURN OF THE JEDI is the film where the wheels came right off the Star Wars franchise’s cart.

It begins promisingly enough, with an all-grown-up Luke ready to wield the lightsaber in defense of his friends and general goodness. But before you know it, we’re back in another Death Star attack, somebody shrunk the Wookies, and after all this time we find out that Darth Vader is just another old fat guy. This movie has absolutely nothing going for it in terms of character or plot, and the only response it can wring from us is a sense of discomfort over Luke & Leia’s earlier flirtatiousness.

My boy’s going through a huge Star Wars phase right now, but I can’t go there with him. I love, love, love the first Star Wars movie, conveniently entitled STAR WARS: it’s everything an adventure film should be. Nothing else, unfortunately, comes close.

The Empire Strikes Back

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a perfectly fine movie, but I have one major problem with it: it isn’t really a movie. It’s two-thirds of a movie, with a great buildup to a third act that never actually happens.

I know, I know, EMPIRE existed to serve up RETURN OF THE JEDI, but I don’t care. Films should exist on their own, as self-contained entities, even if those entities exist as part of a larger whole. Even if we know another film is coming, we should walk out of the theater satisfied with the narrative experience. EMPIRE forces us to do without that satisfaction, however, leaving us with a cliffhanger that leaves so much unresolved that we feel we wasted our time in watching it.

Some people feel that EMPIRE is best of all the Star Wars films. These are the kind of people who think that all buildup with no payoff is a good thing. As for me, give me my climax and send me home happy.

Star Wars

STAR WARS is easily the best film in the franchise. While THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK usually garners more recognition, there's something about this first film that's so compelling, it's sense of wonder carries us through five inferior follow-ups.

You know how it begins: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ..." That's a great fairy tale setup, playing with our expectations by switching "galaxy" for "kingdom." But make no mistake: a fairy tale this is: you've got your farmboy who dreams of greatness, your princess in distress, your wizard, your pirate, even your trusty dog and heartless villain. You've got magic, swashbuckling, romance, even a little comedy relief, all wrapped up in a shiny sci-fi package to fool us into thinking we're actually seeing something new.

But even though we know better, we can still delight in the wonderful execution of this rightfully classic film. Its breathlessness and sense of adventure, its eager desire to please, and its genuinely likeable cast invite us along for the ride. And what a ride it is, filled with everything we could want from an adventure movie.

The film even ends with appropriate dash, jauntily saying that, yes, it has done everything it intended to do. What a delight, and what a pleasure to discover that, even after all these years, STAR WARS still delivers.

Revenge of the Sith

Last night, I got trapped on the couch. My older boy is on a Star Wars kick, and I was happy to sit down for a moment and fire up REVENGE OF THE SITH for him. Five minutes in, DB gave me the baby, and I was as thoroughly confined as Alex de Large. Here follow my ravings:

So, two Sith are conspiring together in an out-of-the-way place. "We shall have our revenge!" hisses one. "Yes!" hisses the other. This scene, from THE PHANTOM MENACE, is a head scratcher. Revenge for what? Against whom? Since the turnover rate among Sith is fairly high, who exactly is "we"?

These conundra are never addressed in STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH. Who the heck are the Sith, anyway? What does it mean to be a Sith Lord? I mean, is it a good deal? Does it come with a hunting lodge in Balmoral, or at least a view of Waikiki*? And for what slight do they continue to seek revenge? Is it the eye thing, or the James Whale fetish? Do they go hand in hand, so to speak?

These are only a few of the issues left outstanding by REVENGE OF THE SITH. To get hung up on them, however, is to focus on the wrong things when viewing this movie. Lucas would have us focus on Annakin's moral choices and bemoaning his slow turn to evil. Of course, those choices had already been made, that course inexorably set, in ATTACK OF THE CLONES, but never mind. On what should we focus, then? The pretty space battles, the ridiculously acrobatic lightsaber duels (There's one bit in which a dueling Obi-Wan and Annakin face away from one another and twirl their lightsabers for no apparent reason. I'm still trying to decide if they were auditioning for the Cheer or Synchronized Swimming squads.), and the neat costumes. Sadly, these elements aren't enough to make REVENGE OF THE SITH a particularly rousing or engaging picture.

Ah, well. At least she didn't use eye clamps.

*Think about it.

Attack of the Clones

After the cheese grater to the eyes that was THE PHANTOM MENACE, George Lucas had no where to go but up with Episode II in the STAR WARS prequel trilogy, ATTACK OF THE CLONES. While ATTACK has serious flaws, it's more fun than PHANTOM, has niftier battles, and features Natalie Portman's midriff. In fact, I'd say it's my second-favorite STAR WARS movie, though that praise grows fainter as I grow older.

But this is a prequel movie, so let's dispense with the rest of the praise and turn, instead to the fun part: picking out all the obvious flaws in the film! Let's get started:

1. Amidala is fatally compromised when she chooses to cover up Annakin's slaughter of the Sand People.

2. Annakin's character arc is essentially completed when he (a) slaughters the Sand People and (b) refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

3. Annakin's whole deal is that he really wants to be a doctor. The guy's a super-genius who is able to design and build high-performance racing craft and advanced androids in his childhood workshop: surely, he could pass the MCATs. Besides, a Jedi doctor would be a handy asset to have around. How hard of a sell could this be?

4. Yoda is full of shit. He can't make a decision; he can't sense that the Force is strong with the villain (for that matter, he can't put together that bad guys always wear black, and there are only two black-clad guys in the neighborhood); he can't do much more than sit around and frown. Further, he fakes an injury pretty much all the time, just so he can surprise his opponents with his startling ability to turn into a superball at will.

Those are just off the top of my head - feel free to add some of your own. Nevertheless, ATTACK OF THE CLONES benefits from a propulsive energy lacked by its predecessor. That doesn't make this a great movie - hell, it doesn't even make it a particularly good movie - but it does make it a fun pulpfest. I'll take it.

The Phantom Menace

Back in 1999, I walked in to STAR WARS: EPISODE 4: THE PHANTOM MENACE with diminished, yet still living, expectations. I'd disliked the Special Editions of the original trilogy, but I thought that Lucas's vision might work better in an original film than it did in the reworks. I was wrong, and I loathed THE PHANTOM MENACE. Was that an honest evaluation, however, or was that the disappointment talking?

Well, I saw the PHANTOM MENACE again this weekend, and I think I can give the picture a fairer shake today.

It's one of the worst major motion pictures ever made.

So many things about this movie are wrong, it's hard to know where to begin. So, how about at the beginning? The opening crawl starts with, "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." That may be a great kickoff for an episode of "The McLaughlin Group," but nothing about it says Adventure. Soon, we're in a road movie. Characters fly, walk, swim, scoot, and otherwise go here and there, and the whole proceedings have the immediacy of an f/x real from a picture still a year out from its release date.

Then, we get to Tattooine and things get really bad. Young Jake Lloyd, who plays Darth Child, is not up to the task. He's horribly bad, elementary-school-recital bad, and he makes his character wholly uninteresting. Not that he had much to work with: how does a movie get an audience to invest in a character that its members hope will wind up a greasy stain on a canyon wall?

And so it goes, until THE PHANTOM MENACE climaxes with a lukewarm rehash of STAR WARS's destruction of the death star that could only satisfy someone who's first SW film this is. It's ghastly, it's creatively bankrupt, and it isn't even entertaining.

But wait, there's more: that's not even the big finish. There's a coup de grace when some retainer in a silly costume delivers the payoff line to the big villain: "So much for your trade franchise, Viceroy!" We began with "The McLaughlin Group" and we end with "Wall Street Week." It's fitting.

When I settled down for THE PHANTOM MENACE, I thought my opinion had nowhwere to go but up. Boy, was I wrong. I used to dislike this movie. Now, I loathe it. What an utter waste of time and talent.