I don't know anything verifiable about this topic, but my take on Samurai films is as follows:
1) the genre needs to be taken in a strict sense; viz., action films where the plot turns on sword-fighting
2) thus, not Rashomon, but certainly The Hidden Fortress.
3) I'm in no position to draw a timeline here, but the early films we have to associate with the genre tend to star Toshiro Mifune (Seven Samurai, the Samurai Trilogy, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Chushingura, Yojimbo, Sanjuro).
4) so, what *looks like* a "classic" period would be 1954-1962
5) afterwards, one has the highly critical samurai films: Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri, etc. in which loyalty and the samurai code are shown as deeply flawed.
6) By the end of the 1960s, this genre appears to have died out, and the notable 1970s Samurai films are the trashy and mega-violent Lone Wolf and Cub films (which are wonderful but have nothing to do with the earlier era).
Goyokin is truly a film at the end of its genre's possibilities. Big, expensive-looking, shot in color, and overlong, the film is truly "decadent" in every sense. The plot is VERY straight-forward, the character development is... not there, and the end is *about* the genre's inability-to-continue (historically, the point where samurais face their demise). In this sense, it is analogous to the later John Wayne films (The Shootist) or the Wild Bunch.
There are some beautiful shots, and the final battle is a real highlight, topped only by the weird refusal-to-end that takes up the last 10 minutes. But there are no interesting situations to remember, and the movie's strategy is akin to that of Napoleon's 1813 battles: bulk relying on what has worked before, but lazily and to little effect.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Get Smart
Two poorly-reviewed, big, dumb comedies opened this weekend, in direct competition with each other--evidently something of a rarity in the summer blockbuster season. Get Smart has taken the box office prize over The Love Guru, Mike Meyers' new project. Undoubtedly Get Smart is the better movie. But, having seen it last night, I can't help wishing I had seen the abysmally-received Love Guru instead, just to see how bad it was. Get Smart is predictably mediocre, but The Love Guru has something of the unfathomable about it. And so picking the "better" movie to see now looks like the wrong choice.
Get Smart doesn't need a lot of reviewing, so I'll just lay out the basics:
Unlike most comedies of this sort, the good jokes don't start to fall until the middle third of the movie. This is strange, because the first third is the stuff of the TV series, which should be reliably funny. Instead, the movie finds humor where it can get it, which happens to be in an extended and pointless James Bond-like crashing-an-eastern-european's-swanky-party-while-searching-his-house-for-secret-plans scene. Those are always the best part of the Bond movies, so it works here for Get Smart's first laughs. The first half-hour is weirdly unfunny, given that it is basically office politics, something Carrell is superb at.
The final third of the movie, though, is simply unrewarding. Do I care if the President (James Caan) blows up? No. Am I surprised at the identity of the double agent or in Max's and 99's budding relationship? No. And yet all these explosions and near-death escapes are thrown at me as though I do. It's all very tiresome. The naive thing to say would be, "It just turns into a regular action movie." But I LIKE regular action movies, y'know?
Carrell, Alan Arkin, and Terence Stamp are all fantastic here, while Anne Hathaway ought to have filed an injunction against the film being released. She is wooden. It is hard for me to believe this will not single-handedly destroy her career. The Rock, as usual, wears thin after about 4 minutes.
Most of all, the movie seems rushed and incoherent. In the opening credits, we see that Max's life is a mess: his milk is curdled, his goldfish is dead, etc. But, wait--in fact, he seems to be the most organized, driven, and reliable person in the fucking world. It seems the movie doesn't understand its own protagonist.
Get Smart comes out of the box already-dated and out of touch. But not, as one might expect, because its 1960s TV reference no longer sticks---rather, because it seems so very late 1990s. You know, when Mike Meyers was making those other movies.
Get Smart doesn't need a lot of reviewing, so I'll just lay out the basics:
Unlike most comedies of this sort, the good jokes don't start to fall until the middle third of the movie. This is strange, because the first third is the stuff of the TV series, which should be reliably funny. Instead, the movie finds humor where it can get it, which happens to be in an extended and pointless James Bond-like crashing-an-eastern-european's-swanky-party-while-searching-his-house-for-secret-plans scene. Those are always the best part of the Bond movies, so it works here for Get Smart's first laughs. The first half-hour is weirdly unfunny, given that it is basically office politics, something Carrell is superb at.
The final third of the movie, though, is simply unrewarding. Do I care if the President (James Caan) blows up? No. Am I surprised at the identity of the double agent or in Max's and 99's budding relationship? No. And yet all these explosions and near-death escapes are thrown at me as though I do. It's all very tiresome. The naive thing to say would be, "It just turns into a regular action movie." But I LIKE regular action movies, y'know?
Carrell, Alan Arkin, and Terence Stamp are all fantastic here, while Anne Hathaway ought to have filed an injunction against the film being released. She is wooden. It is hard for me to believe this will not single-handedly destroy her career. The Rock, as usual, wears thin after about 4 minutes.
Most of all, the movie seems rushed and incoherent. In the opening credits, we see that Max's life is a mess: his milk is curdled, his goldfish is dead, etc. But, wait--in fact, he seems to be the most organized, driven, and reliable person in the fucking world. It seems the movie doesn't understand its own protagonist.
Get Smart comes out of the box already-dated and out of touch. But not, as one might expect, because its 1960s TV reference no longer sticks---rather, because it seems so very late 1990s. You know, when Mike Meyers was making those other movies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)