Crum on Showbiz

This overview of summer movies was published in The Kansas City Kansan on Aug. 18, 2004.

By Steve Crum 

Comic book sci-fi still dominates summer of 2004 movies, but other choices play on. Salt that popcorn.

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•ALIEN VS PREDATOR: What you see in the title is just what you get, although it should be called Aliens vs Predators since this is a tag teamer. Director Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil) helms the story of a scientific team (Sanaa Lathan, Lance, Henricksen, others) exploring an Antarctic pyramid housed with biters. Actually better than expected with slash and jab special effects. [GRADE C]

•CATWOMAN: Halle Berry is Patience Philips aka Catwoman in a very disappointing take on the comic book anti-heroine. Tries to be funny, tries to be S&M. Directed by a guy called Pitof. Me-owwww! [GRADE D-]

•DE-LOVELY: A handsome musical about the most ambiguous of American composers, Cole Porter. Stars Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd as his beleaguered wife. [GRADE B]

•THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR: Start engraving that Oscar for Jeff Bridges. Bridges stars as Ted Cole, all around free soul and author of children’s books. He and his wife (Kim Basinger in another Oscar-worthy performance) separate after a recent tragedy. How each deals with denial is the crux of the story. [GRADE B+]

•I, ROBOT: Will Smith is a detective who suspects subservient robots in 2035 are turning on their masters. Based on Isaac Asimov’s short story collection and directed by Alex Proyas, who did much better with Dark City and The Crow. [GRADE C+]

•THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE: Sure the original 1962 version with Sinatra was better, but still this Jonathon Demme (Adaptation) take is pretty chilling. Denzel Washington is the Army officer trying to convince his former sergeant/now running for President (Live Schreiber) that they were captured and brainwashed during the Persian Gulf War. Meryl Streep is a conniving senator and mom of the would-be Prez. [GRADE B+]

•THUNDERBIRDS: A gloomy, live action adventure yarn based on the 1960’s British puppet TV series. A villainous one called The Hood (Ben Kingsley) tries to demolish the worldwide rescue fortress of the Tracy Family, located on hidden Tracy Island, and headed by the elder Tracy (Bill Paxton). Director Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek The Next Generation) keeps the action moving amongst exotic and astro-tech sets. Not a bad family flick. [GRADE C]

•THE VILLAGE: Dreadfully disappointing and predictable, particularly with Oscar-laden stars (Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody), and writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s track record (The Sixth Sense). The snail-paced plot and dialogue grates to the point of wanting to exit the theater after the first 15 minutes. [GRADE F]

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This review was originally published in The Kansas City Kansan on Sept. 22, 2004.

By Steve Crum

Anyone under 30 years old seeing Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow will love the film for reasons different from the over 30 crowd. Those young will be dazzled by the cutting edge, digital look of the film. It is the first feature ever to be mostly shot using “blue screen” with computer graphics later added. 

Then there is the non-stop action including car-crunching, giant robots, outer space dinosaurs, and wing-flapping, drone airplanes. 

Writer-Director Kerry Conran’s debut film has a second hook for older viewers: their own movie memories.

There are not only quick references, but entire sequences, settings and dialogue cut and pasted within Sky Captain’s busy framework. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a collage of film clips from other movies. Instead it is a remarkable picture peppered with stream-of-consciousness, 1930s media imagery. And it is all wrapped around a corny, hero-to-the-rescue formula that works. It is also 98 percent animated.

Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow star as Joe “Sky Captain” Sullivan and reporter Polly Perkins. Along with a handful of actual human beings including Angelina Jolie’s eye-patched heroine, Captain Franky Cook, Law and Paltrow act in their real human skins. Director Conran has made sure their costumes are classic comic book correct, however.

Adding a curious blend of sepia tones with subdued colors, the overall film really nails the period look. Plot wise, the story opens as the Hindenburg III dirigible floats near the top of New York’s Empire State Building. As clouds roll in and snow starts to fall, radio broadcasts bellow that the world’s top scientists are mysteriously disappearing. Lumbering robots fly into the city and land upright, smashing everything in their pats as they march along busy streets. Lucky for the Big Apple that Chronicle reporter Polly Perkins knows Sky Captain’s private phone line. (They have had adventures together before, you see.) Soon the air ace speeds his Flying Tiger plane toward NYC and…and—continued in the movie theatre. I can’t spoil too much of this good thing.

Be aware that there are more good guys, including Giovanni Ribisi’s Dex Dearborn. Think of Dex and his relationship with Sky Captain as what Artemus Gordon was to James West in TV’s The Wild, Wild West. There is also a really bad guy called Dr. Totenkopf, “played by” the late Laurence Olivier. Yes, Olivier died 15 years ago, but his face has been digitalized onto this animated villain! Make that a very posthumous appearance by Lord Olivier. How retro can one get?

The movie’s 107 minutes manages to layer in so many fun images and action sequences that a second viewing is advised. You are bound to enjoy it just as much the second time around. Then you can savor the clever references to classics like Metropolis, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon. Even the Fleischer Studios’ Superman cartoons (particularly “Mechanical Monsters”) are recalled. If you are familiar with Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast, you are in for another treat. 

As for main characters, Sky and Polly borrow from the Indiana Jones school of relationships. It’s the love/hate thing Indie has with all his heroines. 

Surely the duo have signed for Sky Captain’s next nail biting adventure. 

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: A

[The following review was my very first published in The Kansas City Kansan on Nov. 8, 1994. Since the now long gone Kansan was a local newspaper, the editor included the fact that I was also teaching at a local high school.]

By Steve Crum

Not far into Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, one realizes that a more apt title would be Therapy Session with the Vampire. For here is a bloodsucker in deep depression with a number of connected problems.

Using Anne Rice’s popular novel, director Jordan and screenwriter Rice open the story in a modern day San Francisco hotel room where a newspaper reporter (Christian Slater) has been “summoned” to document the last two centuries of Louis Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt). A plantation owner in 1791 New Orleans, Louis’ life is shattered when his wife and child die in childbirth. He then succumbs to vampirism as “a release from the pain of living” when Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise) sells him on the idea of a happier, and eternal, life. Louis becomes a team player, er, biter. 

During the course of the “interview,” we see the perverse Lestat teach Louis the skills of vampirism. But Louis has an aversion to human targets, preferring rats, chickens, and in one very darkly comedic scene, an elderly lady’s poodles. 

When Louis finally victimizes a human, it is 12 year-old Claudia, brilliantly played by Kirsten Dunst. Her Claudia evolves into a truly tormented soul—intellectually a woman forever trapped in a child’s body. Dunst’s performance is Oscar caliber. 

So is Cruise’s. His vampire is really wacko. Always flamboyant, Lestat is way over the top…like his dancing with Claudia’s long-dead mother’s corpse in a Beetlejuice/Fred Astaire parody. He is the mentor-friend who keeps popping in and out of Louis’ life. 

Lately, much has been said about the overt sexuality with this “family”of three vampires. There are moments of near homosexual embrace (Louis and Lestat) as well as a liaison between Claudia and Louis. 

Certainly, director Jordan’s previous work in The Crying Game had similar dealings, minus vampires. Vampirism in film and literature has always included lustful implications, homoerotic and otherwise.

Interview includes great gothic sets, marvelous period costumes and chilling vampire makeup. (Check out those varicose-like veins in Cruise and Pitt’s pallid faces.)

One of several memorable fire sequences occurs during the time Louis and Claudia spend with a decadent theatrical troupe of vampires, led by Antonio Banderas. It is unforgettably surreal.

Interview with the Vampire is the film Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities bolted from the screening in shock and disgust. Be forewarned that it is deservedly rated “R” for violence and nudity.

Maybe Oprah thought that “interview” meant “talk show.”

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: B+

(Steve Crum is the journalism teacher at Washington High School.)

[The following review was published in The Kansas City Kansan on Dec. 23, 1994. Since The Kansan was a local newspaper, the editor included the fact that I was also teaching at a local high school.]

By Steve Crum

It is the innocence of Nell in Nell that will squeeze tears out of most viewers. In fact, it is sometimes a rating experience to watch Nell because we know the at any minute Nell’s world will be invaded, her private life savaged. 

Jodie Foster is Nell, and Jodie Foster will surely be nominated for an Oscar. Bank on it. Foster, who also produced, is stunning as the backwoods child-woman whose link with humans has been almost solely through her late mother. Since her mother was partially paralyzed and her speech grossly distorted, Nell’s speech is similarly impaired through exposure. Add to that the mother abusive control over Nell. (She was never permitted to leave the house in daylight.) 

So what happens when a local doctor (Liam Neeson) is called to trek the boondocks after the mother’s corpse is discovered? He finds Nell in hiding, and is obsessed with trying to communicate with her. A local psychiatrist (Natashia Richardson) is also involved. Piecing together Nell’s language and personality, the two are fearful early on of a media circus once Nell’s existence is known.

Another Oscar envelope, please, to Neeson. Neeson is a fascinating actor. As Oskar Schindler in last year’s Schindler’s List, Neeson underplayed with powerful reserve. Now he excites us about discovering what makes Nell tick. He makes us care that he cares. That he knows too well how vulnerable Nell is only frustrates us more.

1948’s Johnny Belinda is the story of a deaf-mute young woman whose innocence was corrupted. Thanks to a sensitive local doctor who teaches her sign language, Belinda is able to tell him and community her story.

The parallel to Nell is striking. The joy of communication lives in both films. Nell’s doctor is driven in similar was as Belinda’s, and once the truth is known, then what? The doctor has become the protectorate—or as Nell calls Neeson’s Lovell, her “guardian angel.” It is at this point, the last third of the film, that Nell becomes contrived. Blame

the writers, William Nicholson and Mark Handley, for tacking on an epilogue (“Five years later…”). Tack on director Michael Apted as well. 

But it is the first two-thirds, encompassing the discovery of Nell that spotlights Foster, Neeson and Richardson’s ensemble performances, that clinches. 

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: B+

(Steve Crum is the journalism teacher at Washington High School.)

By Steve Crum

The Secret Agent is a fascinating, at times confusing, historical political thriller set in Brazil during 1977. Corruption and turmoil abound with a military dictatorship in power. What a not so great time for widower Armando Solimões (well played by Wagner Moura) to return home to his young son Fernando (Enzo Nunes). 

Incidentally, much of the story confusion is attributed to the film’s Brazilian Portuguese language. Sure, it is subtitled in English, but…be aware. The plot centers on Armando, who left the country some time ago due to both the death of his wife as well as his work with anti-government resistance. His son has been staying with elderly relatives. Because the police are still searching for Armando, he uses the alias Marcelo. 

It doesn’t take long for Armando/Marcelo to encounter crooked police as he stops for gasoline on the outskirts of Recife. A man’s rotting body is partially covered by a sheet as it lies where it has been for several days. And that’s a few feet from the gas pumps! No doubt the police killed him. I won’t go into detail about all the violence in The Secret Agent, but it is plentiful—based on the facts of that time. 

Produced, written and directed by Kleber Mondonça Filho, The Secret Agent follows Armando as he reconnects with his son, becomes active once again with his dissident friends, and eludes being killed when a contract is placed on his life. The action becomes even more intense and bloody. 

Along the way, expect mini-adventures with a severed leg (which makes headlines in local news), a man-eating shark, a hungry pack of dogs, open sex on the streets, and great comradery among the dissidents. 

There is also a clever conclusion, per se epilogue, featuring Wagner Moura in another surprising role. 

A supporting cast led by Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria and Robério Diógenes are pluses. Add Evgenia Alexandrova’s cinematography. And tack on that yellow VW Beetle! 

At the film’s beginning, 1977 Brazil is described as a “period of great mischiefs.” Indeed so. 

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: B+