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Gluteus Maximus

Gary Lucas — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 20:30:06 +0000

Gluteus Maximus Gary Lucas November 18, 2024 - 15:30

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The 2001 GOLDEN GLOBES may best be remembered as the night that 78-year DAME ELIZABETH TAYLOR drew out the presentation of the Best Dramatic Film of the Year Award by first half-mangling the envelope containing the name of the winning film before being admonished by stagehands and production staff to announce the full slate of candidates first: Erin Brockovich, Wonder Boys, etc.. Eventually, she tore open the already half-mangled enveloped and extracted the card…and then issued forth with a high-pitched squeal of delight:

"And the winner is…GLAAAADIATOR!!"

The audience cheered. Dick Clark looked ashen and rolled his eyes—and I must confess I groaned (and not due to my empathy for poor Elizabeth's Biden-moment-like seeming cognitive infirmity gone live on national TV).

I groaned because I had recently come back from a lengthy European tour and needed to find out what all the hoo-hah was about this Gladiator thingy, the most recent cinematic gloss on ye olde Swords-and-Sandals genre, featuring Russell Crowe in a decidedly low-energy turn (his off-the-cuff mumbled "Upon my signal—unleash Hell" line being the biggest hoot of the film). And to think that THIS GUY was considered by critics and audiences of the day to be the finest actor of those years?? The whole picture stank, imho. My cup runneth over with scorn.

Now, we the commoners, of course, have grown up over many years with proper Ancient Roman displays of gratuitous violence and barbarism on the silver screen—going back to Francis X. Bushman’s and Ramon Novarro's 1926 turn in Ben Niblo's Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ…through Charles Laughton's decadent campy swish-athon as Emperor Nero in Mervyn Leroy's shockingly bloody (for 1951) Quo Vadis…touching on Stanley Kubrick's superb 1960 Spartacus with Kirk Douglas in top form …and on up through the mega-Brit 1976 television version of Robert Graves's I Claudius featuring Derek Jacobi (who is in both Gladiator's).

And truth to be told, methinks there is way more life in any of these aforementioned filmic and televised versions than in either Gladiator.

Once a world-class director with credits such as Blade Runner and Alien, Ridley Scott should seriously consider quitting at this point (ditto Francis Ford Coppola).

I mean, do either of these guys need any more buckets of ducats showered on their bloated productions??

I hate to say this because I adore Scott's early science fiction films (as well as Coppola's masterful early films like The Conversation). But like Coppola, Scott really seems way past his sell-by date, given the current climate.

Last year's Napoleon was a shameful embarrassment. Good old eccentric Joaquin Phoenix (and hey, I'm his fan, kind of) stumbling around Egypt firing loose cannonades aimed at the Sphinx (which never happened, which is true of at least 80% of the script according to the Napoleonic Code of worldwide historians and academics devoted to the Telling of Historical Truths, forsooth).

"Won't you JOIN ME?" was one of the plum moments plucked for the worldwide TV ad for Napoleon. Indeed. (A variant of this line is spoken by Paul Mescal in Gladiator in a bit of self-referential Ridley Scott-ism. Maybe they are gonna use that in the new TV ballyhoo to be rolled out this week. Would make sense, in an exhortatory kind of way).

This here movie is just a Holy Roman Empirical Mess. The CGI looks dated (blood-thirsty baboons, sharks, and rhinos cavorting in the Coliseum, notwithstanding). The soundtrack speaks in tongues, the principal actors boasting a mish-mosh of accents like in a badly-dubbed Steve Reeves Italian spectacle picture from the '60s. Denzel Washington sounds like he just stepped off the IRT, Irish hunk Paul Mescal sports the traces of his Trinity College acting school, and Pedro Pascal sounds and facially looks like he stepped out of the wrong epoch entirely.

Yet the film will run and run. It ticks all the boxes: Gross arterial spray? Check! Overly verbose exposition of key plot points? Check! Dialogue that sounds like it was run through an AI filter to remove all traces of anything resembling the way people might actually have conversed in those days? Check! And THAT my friends is Entertainment!

I was dying for the film to cut loose into pure burlesque on the order of "J. Caesar" (a one-act 19th-century farce I played Mark Anthony in up at Camp Kennebec in the early '60s).

You know, Cris Shapan-like cut-and-thrust parody/folderol:

That would have been way, way better than this po-faced exercise in Blockbuster 101. You know, camp it up!

When Pedro Pascal gets the crown of laurels put on his head publicly near the beginning of the film as a reward for his most recent rape, pillage, and slaughter, Scott should have had a member of the royal Roman retinue gasp and shout out:

"HE WEARETH THE HEAD-GEAR OF THE KING!!"

You know—foreshadowing shit.

In summa—there is more life in one frame of Howard Hawks's 1955 laff-riot Land of the Pharaohs starring Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins with a script by an in-his-cups William Faulkner than in the whole 144 minutes of this eye-and-ear-sore.

One redeeming feature: Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard's name pops up in the soundtrack credits, which was nice—so hey, I'm not a TOTAL curmudgeon here.

But overall, THUMBS WAY WAY DOWN.

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Love and Bullets and Franchises

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 09:37:37 +0000

Love and Bullets and Franchises Chet Kozlowski August 11, 2024 - 05:37

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A new movie from Neil Marshall is a reason to get excited.

The British director brought us 2005's The Descent (whose original ending is one of the most haunting in film history) and 2010's Centurion. Since then, he's directed episodes of HBO's Westworld and Game of Thrones, winning an Emmy in the process. Okay, so he did the ill-fated 2019 Hellboy reboot, but who can blame him for wanting to be a superhero cine-verse director? A guy's allowed a misfire. Besides, from the advanced materials, his new movie Duchess looked like it could be a return to form.

With Duchess, Mr. Marshall is less filmmaking than star-making. In it, Charlotte Kirk plays Scarlett, a small-time hustler with long legs, a cockney accent, and a scorpion tattoo on her spine. One evening, Rob (Philip Winchester) spots Scarlett on a nightclub dance floor, gyrating while picking pockets. He confronts her, takes her on, and brings her into his world. He's an international diamond smuggler, which means people want what he has and shoot at him to get it.

Scarlett discovers reserves of whatever-it-takes and becomes a player. Meanwhile, she falls for Rob. A sinister contact named Charlie (Stephanie Beachum) warns her not to go soft, that she has to be "three times a lady and ten times a bitch" to survive in the biz.

Sound familiar? My notes read: (1) provocative opening scene between man and hooker ends in (2) a freeze frame with a voiceover by hooker (who turns out to be Scarlett playing a role) which then (3) rewinds the action to weeks earlier. Characters are introduced in a freeze frame branded with their name. In other words: cliché, cliché, cliché. It's Guy Ritchie foo that has become a genre onto itself: the insouciant gangster laughing his—or her—way through gales of bullets, screeching tires, and flying fists, pausing only to wink at the audience.

This is Mr. Marshall's second film with Charlotte Kirk. She's more than a muse. She stars in and is credited with co-writing and producing Duchess, as well as in his The Reckoning (2020). In Duchess, she's fashioned as a female John Wick. The film is designed to expand into sequels. But this genre only looks carefree. It comes with certain criteria.

The genre requires novelty. Each entry must be bigger, louder, and have more of a body count than the one before. John Wick must break more bones in number 4 than he did in number 3. Duchess is off to a poor start. The fight scenes are graceless and blocked to mask a conspicuous lack of contact. It's often hard to tell who's fighting whom.

The genre requires a strong central figure. Think Liam Neeson, Daniel Craig, and Keanu. Think Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. Or Scarlett Johansson in Lucy. Ms. Kirk, as attractive as she is, doesn't have their density on screen, which accounts, I suppose, for the cocky cockney voiceover to claim her creds and stitch scenes together. That toughness just doesn't come through.

The genre demands displays of copious wealth. With stakes this high, the rewards should be worn on one's sleeve, so to speak. James Bond would never be caught at a toney event without a tuxedo, and nothing is more visual than shooting up a casino. Yet Rob shows little fashion sense in his golf shirt and jeans. (That can be said of his "associates" as well, who come off as a bunch of J. Crew bros rather than dangerous criminals.) And, significant action is filmed in gravel pits.

As Rob, Philip Winchester (there's a name for an action star) has beefcake good looks and the easy manner of a high school quarterback. Of the other actors, Colm Meaney, a Guy Ritchie veteran who looks like a tough customer, is the most recognizable, and he's onscreen for only minutes. Hoji Fortuna, Sean Pertwee—Rob's requisite sidekicks, each with exactly one trademark martial skill—Boré Buika, and Colin Egglesfield round out the cast.

One can't really blame Neil Marshall for switching from auteur to entrepreneur. But Duchess falls short: its effects are cheesy, its action unoriginal.

More to the point is his conception: it's pretty half-hearted. This is the guy who ended one of the most innovative horror films of the '90s with a birthday cake. This is the guy who waged war on Westeros. Duchess shows little of that imagination. He shoots most of the action mid-range, as if on a body cam mounted on his chest, flattening the action. The denouement is logistically illogical and downright laughable. When Scarlett proclaims, "I'm Duchess!" she might as well be saying, "I'm a franchise!"

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Duchess. Directed by Neil Marshall. 2024. From Saban Films. On VOD and digital platforms. 113 minutes.

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Father Brawls Best

Chet Kozlowski — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 20:42:07 +0000

Father Brawls Best Chet Kozlowski July 13, 2024 - 16:42

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The new South Korean film A Man of Reason concerns a hitman named Su-hyuk who’s served ten years in jail on behalf of his gang and who now wants to lead a normal life with the woman he left behind, who was pregnant with their daughter when he went in. But the gang he ran with has other ideas. They’re now “legitimate,” known as the Kaiser Corporation. The more he tries to get out, the more they pull him back in. Carnage ensues, and many are mowed down. Amidst crashing glass and screeching tires, there’s occasional talk about the nature of “normal” and whether Su-hyuk could ever return to it.

The title A Man of Reason is meant ironically; nothing in it resembles reason (its original title is Bohoja, Korean for “guardian.”) It’s an action film and has the punch of, say, the Bourne movies, with plenty of set pieces, the best making use of the Kaiser Corporation’s massive lobby and a speeding car. But often, we are unclear about who these people are, what they want, and in some cases, even who’s fighting whom.

Putting an original spin on this standard setup would seem advisable. A Man of Reason doesn’t extend itself that far. It relies on tropes and what another reviewer once coined as “Confuso-Vision”: intentionally obscuring to mask a lack of substance. The action is staged at night or in dark shadows. Everybody wears black and is of similar stature. Characters are defined by exactly one trait: one cackles like a hyena; another, who has an unnatural attachment to his rifle (the cleaning of the weapon’s barrel is made analogous to masturbation) has a catchphrase: “You should’ve called first.” The boss keeps on expressing how much fun this all is. The poor waif, Su-hyuk’s daughter In-bi, played well by young Ryu Jian, keeps apologizing and asking him, “Who are you?” And through it all, Su-hyuk gets to remain stoic, John Wick-style.

A Man of Reason is directed by Jung Woo-sung, who also stars and is familiar as an actor to South Korean audiences. This is his first stint behind the camera. There’s a market for this sort of thing, of course—all sensation, no logic—and if you’re inclined to see it you probably won’t be disappointed. But don’t expect more than that. A Man of Reason will not linger in the mind. It plays less like a film and more like a video game, one shootout after another.

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A Man of Reason. Directed by Jung Woo-sung. 2024. From Epic Pictures. In theaters and On Demand. 99 minutes.

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Too Nice A Heist

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:41:00 +0000

Too Nice A Heist Chet Kozlowski June 27, 2024 - 15:41

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Midas is an upbeat film about a robbery that doesn’t take many risks.

The plot: Ricky is a college dropout who works a menial job delivering food orders. He’s stayed at home to care for his young sister and ailing mother, who is on a grueling program of cancer treatments. Ricky’s friends Victor and Sunita are faring better in the job market, Victor in IT and Sunita at ground level at Midas Health Insurance Company, the same place that recently laid off Ricky’s mother. Sunita invites Ricky to Midas’ company party. He shows up wearing a Harvard t-shirt as a joke and doesn’t correct the CEO’s daughter, Claire when she assumes that’s his alma mater. By evading questions and riding assumptions, Ricky is hired as a claims coordinator. Once there, he concocts a plan to hack Midas’ records and fund his mother’s surgery. And he’s stunned by what else he finds.

Midas has the bones of a heist film, beginning with its bouncy Jackie Brown-style opening and its buddy dynamic á la Ocean’s Eleven. Most of the action involves characters talking, in the bar Sunita tends (she holds down two jobs) and in the Midas offices. A few staged gatherings are set pieces, but there are no exotic locales or lifestyles (Midas was filmed in Hartford, CT.). The stakes are low because the budget is. Nothing wrong with that. It’s good to see pockets of filmmaking pop up in places other than Hollywood and Atlanta.

But as a movie, Midas holds back. It doesn’t want trouble or to shake things up too much, even as it takes on a pretty gnarly idea. Ricky’s mother’s case is part of the Midas Company’s hush-hush Project Foresight: a scheme to use ancestral genetic data to reject health insurance claims. Immediate family history is no longer the only factor; the Midas Company reaches ‘way, ‘way back to mine data that provides hereditary reasons to deny claims.

And did I mention that Ricky is Black?

However, Midas isn’t a political film and has little to do with race exploitation. Ricky enlists Sunita (beautiful Indian) and Victor (handsome Hispanic) to expose Midas’ devious plan. Ricky and his pals of color move amongst the rarified white crowd with impunity. A charged situation like in Get Out might come to mind.

That isn’t to say that racial disparity needs to be the point here because it doesn’t. This also isn’t to say that all films should be woke enough to use diversity for its own sake. But Midas sets us up for something powerful, then backs off. It plays nice and doesn’t want to ruffle feathers. It doesn’t tackle issues like class structure. Given the setup, one can imagine how different it would play with an all-Black cast or if its ostensible antagonists weren’t quite so white.

The actors are attractive and mostly newcomers. As Ricky, Laquan Copeland has the most to do. Mr. Copeland has the kind of face that’s compelling on posters (see photo) and can go from homeboy to heroic when animated. Preet Kaur (Sunita) makes an elegant accomplice; she’s previously been in Finding Tony and straight-to-VOD stuff with irresistible titles like Road Wars: Max Fury. Federico Parra (Victor) is properly determined in his IT role; you’ll know him from Apple TV’s Dear Edward. Lucy Powers (Claire) has been seen on TV in Law & Order SVU and Victor vs. the Metaverse. Bob Gallagher and Eric Bloomquist round out the cast nicely as, respectively, Midas’ CEO and nepotistic nephew.

Taken on its own modest terms, Midas is extremely watchable. Its comedy is harmless, and its suspense is low-impact, coming from forging authorizations and waiting for files to download. Writer/director TJ Noel-Sullivan has directed short films, and his storytelling is confident, if not adventurous. This is the first offering of Mr. Noel-Sullivan’s Hartford Film Company. His stated purpose is to entertain, and Midas certainly does that. It's a good enough movie, but its choices imply something with more bite.

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Midas. Directed by TJ Noel-Sullivan. 2024. From The Hartford Film Company. In theaters. 85 minutes.

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Something in the Air

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 01:03:34 +0000

Something in the Air Chet Kozlowski October 30, 2023 - 21:03

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The new film Black Noise mixes Havana Syndrome lore with Predator-style pyrotechnics to create a relatively satisfying action film. Havana Syndrome is a euphemism for an incident of the disabling of U.S. diplomats in Cuba with concentrated, targeted microwaves. The diplomats reported screeching headaches from a sinister unseen source. Black Noise goes one step further, the sound producing hallucinations of past regrets, lost lovers, and tragic secrets.

The Predator reference is to the Arnold Schwarzenegger original, not the sequels. Black Noise is the sort of movie Ah-nold could make in his sleep in the '80s, defining macho ethos in military gear, in everything from The Terminator to Commando. Black Noise uses his Predator as a template, transplanting the hunting of an extraterrestrial villain from a jungle scenario to a luxurious yet mysteriously deserted beach resort.

Black Noise stars British actor Alex Pettyfer as a low-browed, square-jawed hero amongst other square-jawed heroes and formidable women whose hair is pulled tightly back. You'll recognize Pettyfer from films like Magic Mike, Everlasting Love, and Elvis and Nixon. Here, he plays the stoic, brooding member of a special forces team recruited to go to the island and find out just what the hell is going on. Wayne Gordon as the leader, Jason Rathbone as a hipster gunman, Eve Mauro, and Sadie Newman round out the cast.

The film is directed by Phillippe Martinez, who's known for Wake of Death with Jean Claude Van Damme, Modigliani with Andy Garcia, and Land of the Blind with Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland. Mr. Martinez has recently become prolific as a director of a slew of titles that go directly to VOD.

Black Noise's production values are strictly hang-around-the-house, staying put in the resort's buildings and beach after establishing that area as the base. The resort in this case doesn't seem so much deserted as not open for business yet. Once dispatched, each member of the troupe is, in true genre fashion, picked off until only one is left standing.

The soundtrack suggests more action than the visuals do. The mercenaries recon from room to room, their state of the art weapons drawn, trading silent hand signals, while Michael Richard Plowman’s music works overtime to create tension.

But everything takes so lonnng to accomplish, and the payoff isn't as bombastic as one might want. Still, as the genre goes, it's not a terrible waste of an hour and a half. Some impressive but low-tech special effects, interesting-looking actors, sunny locations. The viewer could do worse than to rent this.

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Black Noise. Directed by Phillippe Martinez. 2023. Released by Saban Films. 86 minutes. On digital and VOD platforms.

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Buckwild, the Movie

Brandon Judell — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 05:36:58 +0000

Buckwild, the Movie Brandon Judell January 13, 2013 - 00:36

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Even after falsely billing Billy Bob Thornton and Eva Longoria as the stars of this action-packed B-movie extravaganza (as if that would pull in the crowds), the producers and director/co-screenwriter Barry Battles have no need to apologize. This ode to Tarantino, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and Jerry Lewis marathons is deliriously silly, frenetically violent, and insanely entertaining, especially for those who prefer Mad Max over The Rules of the Game.

The actual leads are Clayne Crawford, Travis Fimmel, and Daniel Crawford, who respectively play three orphaned siblings who've grown up to be the gun-toting, bemuscled, sweaty hunks Brick, G.I., and the mute former wrestler Lincoln. These charismatic Southern rednecks work for a local sheriff (Andre Braugher) who employs them to slay on the sly his county's criminal elements.

All goes well until the applaudable opening credits, when the bros have a bloody shootout at the wrong address. It could happen to anyone, right? Despondent and out of cash, the boys accept a job from the lovely, scantily attired, bullet-scarred Celeste (Longoria), who wants the gang of sorts to re-kidnap her godson Rob (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) from her crazed ex, Carlos (Thornton), and then kill the motherfucker of a drug dealer. Uh, oh! Beware of dames in Daisy Dukes.

Our heroes do wind up slaughtering most of Carlos's gang and rescuing the "Child," a teenaged disabled lad in a wheelchair, but Carlos survives. The angered mobster immediately sends out a gang of sadistic, Hooter-esque ladies, a troop of hotheaded Nubian killers, plus a tribe of fiercely toxic Indians to kill the brothers and get Rob back. Why? When the boy turns 18, he will inherit a fortune that Carlos wants to control.

With just enough of a plot line to convince you there is a plot, The Baytown Outlaws succeeds mainly due to the efforts of Crawford and Fimmel, who are beddable Jean-Claude Van Damme types, but with acting chops. And then there's Battles's first-rate helming. Hollywood will no doubt come a-calling quickly, and within a decade, this young gent will be directing $100 million sagas about men in tights who can fly and save the masses from nuclear disaster. Or there's Sylvester Stallone and The Expendables X.

The Series That Refuses to Die

Brandon Judell — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:22:31 +0000

The Series That Refuses to Die Brandon Judell May 22, 2009 - 11:22

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Terminator Salvation asks the ever-important question, "What is it that makes us human?" The query, inspired by the discovery of a man best described as "flesh and machine," sadly is not addressed to a major philosophical mind such as Claude Levi-Strauss's. Instead, we get a bunch of pondering cardboard characters looking anguished before they revert to their primary facial expression, most ably denoted as "less anguished." A subject that might have been better delved into is "what is it that makes a good screenplay," especially for a film that few were actually begging for. Please note that the spin-off TV series was canceled this week by Fox for poor ratings. This Terminator, the fourth in the series -- (oh, my God, there was a third?) -- is an incomprehensible mess. This is clearly not a standalone vehicle. In fact, one should be forced to pass a Terminator exam before gaining entry to your local multiplex to view this celluloid delicacy.

For newbies, here's a quick primer. In the first two, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his paramount roles (although he is quite fine in Junior as a pregnant man), plays futuristic robots who come back in time to either assassinate or save the life of the man, John Connor, who will safeguard humankind from extermination. In The Terminator (1984), as an evil, killing machine, Arnold materializes in the past, which is our present, and tries to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to the aforementioned John. The father is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who is also from the future, but Kyle is part of the Resistance fighting against the computer system that is trying to wipe out Homo sapiens. Then in the masterful, truly entertaining Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Arnold returns as a good robot from the future that's programmed to keep John (Edward Furlong), who's a sensitive teenager, alive. The villain: a nasty Terminator portrayed by Robert Patrick who has trouble staying destroyed.

Moving on to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I'll have to quote from Roger Ebert for the plotline: John "meets a veterinarian named Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), and after they find they're on the same hit list from the killers of the future, they team up to fight back and save the planet." T-4, which might be mistaken by some for a Transformers sequel, takes place in the post-apocalyptic future. John (Christian Bale) now is older than his father, Kyle (Anton Yelchin), who is a teenager, who doesn't know John is his dad. Stuck in a decimated Los Angeles with his only companion being a mute little girl, Kyle teams up with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who is from our time, but was put to death for killing police officers. Having willed his body to science, he wakes up in a world he knows nothing about.

This secondary storyline is the engrossing one, especially because it keeps Bale and his pregnant love interest (the bland Bryce Dallas Howard) off the screen. Bale, an increasingly annoying presence on screen, tackles almost every role as if he's auditioning again for American Psycho. Worthington and Yelchin, however, get you emotionally involved, at least for the few minutes they're not being chased by mechanical beings. If this makes any sense to you, I'm doing you a great injustice. As already voiced, the film is basically unintelligible, and after 20 or so minutes, you'll just have to settle back and try to enjoy the chases and the explosions (all done with more finesse elsewhere).

The most frightening element here is that this film is just a setup to another sequel. Director McG, who jumped onto America's screens with the campy Charlie's Angels and the brain-numbing Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, is one of those dispiriting directors with little soul who we'll be saddled with for decades because he knows how to rake in the moolah. Here he has taken an enterprise that began with wit, originality, and an air of humanity, and cannibalized it. Unfortunately, the resulting remnants will not be buried.

Atheism for Dummies?

Brandon Judell — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:43:54 +0000

Atheism for Dummies? Brandon Judell May 15, 2009 - 10:43

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What was most surprising about attending the opening-day, 9:45 A.M. screening of Angels & Demons was not that 200 or so folks had shown up, but how many of these attendees were wolfing down buttered popcorn for breakfast. Hadn't any watched The Biggest Loser or La Grande Bouffe?

As for the 138-minute Ron Howard adaptation of Dan Brown's superbly entertaining novel? It's brisk, brutal, and absorbing. Several ticket holders even applauded as the end credits rolled. But they certainly weren't bowled over by the directorial flourishes. There are none.

Howard has always been more of a storyteller than a stylist, and he often chooses his tales wisely and humanely (Frost/Nixon; A Beautiful Mind; Splash). He seeks challenges, not assured successes.

As for Tom Hanks, he is as affable as ever, and he deserves his continued box office success. Who else could ever have attracted audiences to a feature about a gay man dying from AIDS or to a romance between a castaway and his volleyball? But star power and character development certainly aren't on the top of anyone's priority list here. Action is.

Within the first ten minutes, the Pope dies, antimatter is created and stolen, an eye is gouged out and used for ID purposes, four cardinals are kidnapped, and Hanks swims across a pool and showcases a pretty terrific torso for a 53-year-old. What's being tossed at us instead of complex souls are a black-and-white critical history of the Church (especially pertaining to the Illuminati), Italian art, and places to sightsee when in Rome.

Clearly, Brown's point of view is that the Vatican City is a tightly run little country and her major export is Faith. How many people have to be killed and manipulated and lied to to keep that faith churning out doesn't matter. The leadership's goal: Let's keep the billions of Christian believers happy and within our power.

So who makes Church leaders most jittery? Those who place science above religion. Let's get rid of the Science Channel and Michio Kaku. For a Jewish take on the matter that just came out in paperback, try A.J. Jacobs' deliciously funny memoir, The Year of Living Biblically. This secular Jewish Esquire editor tries to put aside modern technical comforts and etiquette while embracing God's word for twelve months. Will he be able to comprehend Creationism and the Bible's stance on the horrors of menstruating women, homosexuality, and the ban against wearing clothing composed of mixed fabrics (cotton and wool)? By the end of his journey, Jacobs does learn to understand the merits of a spiritual journey while not exactly giving up his former stance:

"I've started to look at life differently. When you're thanking God for every little joy -- every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water -- you can't help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all."

In A&D, however, there's no transformation for Hanks's Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, a sort of academic atheist who winds up as irreligious as he starts out -- and with good reason.

At the rousing finale of Angels & Demons, the followers of Stephen Hawking, Darwin, and his ilk seem to fare far better than the Pontiff and his followers. Langdon's view (and Brown's, and apparently the filmmakers) is that religion is a house of cards that will fall in on itself if the truth is consistently told. One cardinal, though, does argue convincingly that religion is flawed because man is flawed, but those flaws need not reflect on the perfection at Christianity's core. He's possibly mirroring Einstein's take on the matter: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

First We Take Manhattan!

Alex Smith — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:04:58 +0000

First We Take Manhattan! Alex Smith October 12, 2005 - 10:04

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The Warriors - Ultimate Director's Cut

Directed by Walter Hill (Paramount Home Video)

Ask your average American male in his late thirties about Walter Hill's 1979 film The Warriors and in all likelihood, he'll reply with either a robustly barked "CAN YOU DIG IT?" or a strenuously whined "WARRIOOOORRSS....COME OUT TO PLAAAA-YAAAAAAYYY!"

I was a paltry twelve years old when The Warriors hit theaters in 1979, but even being too young to get in, I can vividly remember the sensation it caused. The movie poster alone was enough to capture my rapt, wide-eyed attention. "These are the Armies of the Night," it screamed, "they are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City." Preying upon the justified phobia of urban upheaval in a bankrupt, crime-ridden metropolis, Hill's highly stylized depiction of New York City as a violent street-gang battleground struck a major chord with audiences not just in New York, but nationwide. Despite the film's inarguably over-the-top cartoonishness, it was still perceived as a potential powder-keg, resulting in cries for its banning reminiscent of the furor over Stanley Kubrick's similarly inclined A Clockwork Orange eight years earlier.

Twenty-six years later, The Warriors portrays a New York City that is barely recognizable in its desolate, graffiti-ridden squalor. That said, Hill's painterly, apocalyptic vision wasn't especially indicative of late `70s NYC either. Rife with dated lingo, elaborate costuming, and an almost utopian innocence (Hill's gangs are harmoniously integrated and there isn't the slightest allusion to racial strife or drug abuse), The Warrriors, in its original form, now cannot help but look quite campy and almost quaint. Apart from the odd homophobic and/or misogynist epithet blurted out by James Remar's character, Ajax, there is little to be actively offended by.

The Warriors strove to display a vista of savage lawlessness, but its power to shock has long since dissipated. But to this ardent fan's mind, that's part of its charm. The failure of the film to achieve timelessness isn't a flaw but rather grounds for its inclusion in a pantheon of great films of a bygone age. The director, however, seems to disagree. In the just released "Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD, Walter Hill takes great pains to re-cast The Warriors as a purposely cartoony fable. Perhaps smarting from his studio's refusal to let him cast the gangs as exclusively African-American and Latino and subsequent accusations of the end result's irrefutable campiness, Hill now claims that he purposefully strove for an comic book approach. To this end, Hill has severely re-edited the film to include comic book elements such as paneled segues and even thought balloons. Key scenes are truncated in order to facilitate these effects, diffusing crucial atmosphere and robbing the film of any semblance of dignity. Prior to this heavy-handed approach, the film's more fanciful aspects were legitimized via passages of genuine tension-building.

In the new cut, the film loses cohesion in a spliced-up mess of unintentional self-parody. Yet another unfortunate example of revisionism, "The Ultimate Directorâ€™s Cut" of The Warriors joins the ranks of the noxious "Greedo-shoots-first" version of Star Wars. As DVDs go, this is also a bit of a cheap affair. While the "Special Features" packaging boasts "four featurettes," they essentially comprise one documentary with the same cast of interviewees in four brief chapters.

Along with the film's original trailer and a relatively unnecessary new introduction by Walter Hill (laboriously emphasizing the comic book element and force-feeding the viewer, Oliver Stone-style, the narrative's roots in Ancient Greek history), the finished product comes off as strikingly less than "ultimate." To his arguable credit, Hill does offer in his new introduction that he's perfectly fine with some viewers preferring the original version. Since he's given us that option, might I emphatically suggest skipping "The Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD in favor of its original incarnation (released on DVD in 2001) instead. - Alex Smith

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