Bill Condon's Kinsey (3/4 stars)

I'm not a fan of biopics because they tend to be less than accurate. I know that a good film is supposed to be more about a good story than accuracy, but when it's a bio, you expect more. Now, I have no idea how accurate Kinsey is, but it is a well-told, decently-paced, thought-provoking film.

Sexuality is one of humanity's greatest bugbears. Across the world many people remain ignorant of truths about sexuality, whether it be due to ignorance or misinformation, the latter usually due to social or religious constraints. This for me is the main draw of Kinsey - for those unfamiliar with his works, it can open a line of thinking beyond what society will allow. The two works reference by the film were published in 1948 and 1953, but the ignorance persists in many reaches of the world.

Liam Neeson is his usual excellent self. The man is underrated as a thespian. Lauray Linney also turns in a fine performance. As mentioned, I like the pacing and the editing, though there are some loose ends. But as the film was pushing 2 hours, leaving those strands on the cutting room floor may have been for the best.

Bottom line: Well worth your time. Not for the prudish or closed mind.

The LOST Rant, Part I

WARNING: SPOILERS



Hurley is bummed because his story is going nowhere.

I think that's the biggest problem of LOST in its second season.

Ever since they introduced the second group of survivors, led by Michelle Rodriguez's tepid character Anna Lucia, the quality of the story has taken a really sharp nosedive. Right now, all it seems to have produced is the reunion of Rose with her husband. Okay, it's a nice little hook, but overall it has no impact on the story.

Every single storyline of the primary group of survivors is spinning its wheels and doing nothing productive, just like punching that number into the computer. Locke? Same Locke. Sayid? Same Sayid. We've hardly seen Jack, Kate and Shannon. The three guys with the second group, Jin, Michael and Sawyer, have had no development other than Mike's psychosis about his kid. Boring and overwrought. I don't particularly care about Charlie and Claire. And most criminally, we get nothing more about Hugo, who is the glue of the whole story. Very, very frustrating.

What should have been obvious to the writers of the show is that they were already pushing it with so many characters. It was an acheivement to get viewers to care about the first group. Now you add at least two more "major" characters in Anna Lucia and Eko? And you give them the lion's share of the first eight episodes of Season Two?

Way to kill any momentum from the first season.

Now with the three-week hiatus between episodes 9 and 10, I'm losing interest in the show bigtime. I still want to know more about the stories of Kate and especially Hugo, but after episode 9, I'm not hopeful.

(More to come)

Joss Whedon's Serenity (2.5/4 stars)

I decided to go ahead and see Serenity without having seen Firefly, just for a different perspective. It seems a lot of the people who have seen Firefly rave about Serenity - I wanted to see if the film worked for someone who knew nothing about the "verse" as it is called. Someone who isn't a "browncoat".

For the most part, the film works. The universe is interesting, the storytelling moves at a decent clip, and the story, while nothing new, is sufficiently engaging. Ok, it's not much better than a big Star Trek episode, but Whedon's dialogue, the element he hangs his hat on, is present in some places.

Serenity also carries the weaknesses of the genre - the ensemble cast prevents the film from sufficiently developing any real connection with any of them, and the actors aren't allowed enough time to grow their characters. Even the lead character, Malcolm, makes a jarring character transition driven by screentime constraints. The ending leaves the story open for a sequel, or course, but from current scuttlebutt that's not in the cars as Serenity didn't make enough at the box office to justify one.

The characters a reminiscent of a regular party from a roleplaying game - the rakish, strong-willed captain of the Serenity, Malcolm, the weapons master Jayne, the tech Kaylee, the two pilots (who are a couple) Wash and Zoe, and two newcomers to the ship who are the centerpiece of the story. One is the ship's doctor, Simon, and his sister, River. River is apparently a psychic/deadly weapon that Simon broke out of the "Alliance" facility that was housing her. The Alliance has dispatched an Operative to track her down, and this is the cat and mouse game that threads through the film.

As an aside, the three girls of Serenity range from interesting (Summer Glau, River) to cute (Jewel Staite, Kaylee) to pretty hot (Brazilian babe Monica Baccarin, Inara). At least they have that over Star Wars, as they all are quite a bit more attractive than Carrie Fisher, who never did anything for me despite the Jabba bikini.

Overall, Serenity will engage any sci fi fan for its 2-hour running time. It's not as great as its fans make it out to be, but it's still pretty decent considering the difficulty Whedon had getting it distributed. Well worth the watch, but don't go in with Star Wars-caliber expectations.

Earthsea (0.5/4 stars)

I plucked this off the bargain bin on name recognition. I've not had the pleasure of reading Ursula LeGuin's books set in Earthsea, but I was willing to gamble on the reputation of the work. What I didn't notice was that this was a Sci Fi Network made for TV movie, and that would have warned me on quality.

Simply, it's not good.

The film lacks tightness and focus. It jumps around all over the place so much so that viewers are unable to make a connection either with the story or with any of the characters. The two main characters, Ged and Tenar, meet face to face around two and a half hours into the film, which is pretty horrific. There's a lot of wandering around the place, which can bore one to death. But what truly brings Earthsea to a screeching halt is the endless exposition by practically every character. A lot of it is boring and pointless and could have been excised by writing the thing properly. Show me please, don't keep telling me.

There are a lot of other things to poke fun at, including awful CGI and horrific acting on the part of everyone except for the criminally misused Isabella Rossellini. But hey, I guess everyone has to earn a paycheck, so I won't hold it against her.

I'm writing this while the damned thing is still running in the background. Ged and Tenar are acting/talking about the plot yet again. Ehhhh. I'll go turn it off now.

Avoid this steaming turd. Please.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2/4 stars)

I really wasn't expecting much from Charlie, despite the pedigree of the people involved - Johnny Depp, Tim Burton and John August. There really wasn't much to the screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's well-known kids' book, as could be seen from the old Gene Wilder original. Some whimsical visuals, a bit of off-the-wall acting, and some Oompa Loompa songs were about the extent of the expectations. That's more or less what I got.

Depp got free rein to do what he wanted with the character, of course, and on the heels of the strange Jack Sparrow, we get a sort-of-predictable queer Willy Wonka. It's got a bit of the Wilder Wonka in it, this performance - that offbeat, something's not quite right with this guy effect. Depp adds a bit more queer into it, and a hint of malevolence through most of the show. It's too bad there's not much to throw the character against and see if it bounces, because the rest of the cast is either cut out from cardboard or simply nonexistent. Even the kid who plays Charlie registers no more than a 4 on the 10-point Dakota Fanning scale.

The lone interesting supporting cast member is the man who plays the Oompa Loompas, Deep Roy. The DVD special feature shows the painstaking work he put in because they had to shoot him repeatedly in the same scenes, in different locations, oftentimes doing the same things over and over again. Now that's dedication. (Burton decided that the Oompa Loompas would all be played by Roy.)

Bottom Line: All in all, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory isn't a total waste of time, but if you miss it, you're not missing much.

Napoleon Dynamite (0.5/4 stars)

It's been quite a while since I've seen a film where I didn't like a single character. That was The Big Lebowski. Fortunately, that was a fairly amusing film with some inspired dialogue and direction by the Coens. I can't say the same thing about Napoleon Dynamite.

John Heder plays Napoleon, an unsympathetic fellow with very few redeeming qualities. He's loyal... and he's loyal. And that's about it. I can't even call him a nerd or geek because he isn't very intelligent. He just looks the part. The rest of the supporting cast is simiarly unlikeable, from Napoloen's best friend Pedro, Deb, the girl who likes him, and especially his family. I was mildly pissed off halfway through the film.

The "big dance number" that has become a cult hit, especially the internet, is somewhat amusing, but it doesn't make up for the 1.5 hours of dreck that director and writer Jared Hess puts the audience through. If you're not going to invest in a character, or even find anything to like about a single character, then elements like dialogue, plot and visuals had better make up for it.

In the case of Napoleon Dynamite, they don't come anywhere close.

Bottom line: This film is bad. Avoid it like the plague.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (1/4 stars)

I've never been a fan of Robby Rodriguez's Spy Kids series. Yes, I know I'm not the target audience for these films, but I can still tell the difference between a good kiddie film and a bad kiddie film. And yes, I didn't see this in 3D, I saw it on an airplane.

In Sharkboy and Lavagirl, they're not even the main characters. The protagonist is a daydreaming kid named Max who created them as superheroes in his imagination. Rodriguez does the expected "merge imagination with reality" thing, and Max is off to save an imaginary planet with his imaginary friends. The story is awful, even for a kiddie movie.

The actors are ok, but the Taylor that plays Sharkboy (both the boy and the girl are named Taylor) got on my nerves. The little musical number that appears out of the blue in the middle of the film must have done it. (That had no place in the movie and broke what little coherence it had.) George Lopez gets to ham it up (you've probably seen him on TV) in a ludicrously over-the-top character.

Even the ending was very silly. Even for a kids' movie.

Bottom line: Skip it. This is a bad kiddie movie.

In Good Company (2.5/4 stars)

Sure, I'll admit it, I picked this out of the DVD stack just because of Scarlett Johansson. She's been one of the few actresses who's had the ability to keep me entranced, not because she's hot (that's Jessica Alba) but because she seems to be the kind of girl that I'd like to go out with if I was in that stage of life. Ever since Lost in Translation, I've been an admirer, and she has the ability to make a mundane film light up. Yeah, I should search out "A Love Song for Bobby Long." Anyway, we have In Good Company.



I like romcoms (romantic comedies) and this seemed every bit like one. The director and producer, Paul Weitz, was responsible for About A Boy, which as ok-not-great in the pantheon of romcoms. But that had Julia Roberts, and this has Scarlett. Topher Grace, minus. Dennis Quaid, plus.

Anyway, Quaid is a crusty, grizzled sales exec whose company is bought by Grace's, and Grace becomes his boss. Grace is a marketing hotshot who isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Scarlett is Quaid's daughter. Grace meets Scarlett, and they start going out. This is all until Quaid finds out. Of course he doesn't like it. This situation is exacerbated by the takeover fizzling out.

Scarlett is radiant, as always, but the role doesn't challenge her one bit and it's all very laid back. Quaid has his moments, as he always does. Grace is forgettable. There are no real sparks between Grace and Scarlett, and as a romance, it's nothing to write home about. However, In Good Company does enough to get you through its close to two hour running time without getting too impatient. Not bad. 2.5 stars, but I think that 0.5 extra is just for having Scarlett.

Upcoming Reviews

Been off the past few weeks, so there's a small backlog of films I've seen both on the plane and at home on DVD. I'll probably do a couple of posts with quick capsules just to get caught up:

The Island
War of the Worlds
The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl
Sky High
Nine Songs
Young Adam
Hellboy
Havoc

I also have a rant on the direction that LOST has been taking in the past three eppys. Preview: it's NOT good.

I'm also trying to get into the HBO series ROME, but haven't yet found the time.