You can read my Phoenix Magazine review here, along with my review of Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie...
Showing posts with label EWAN MCGREGOR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EWAN MCGREGOR. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2026
CLAW PATROL
It's a big dino-weekend! This week my pal Darryl and I checked out The End of Oak Street, opening today, and made a new friend at the screening...
Friday, August 3, 2018
AUGUST OCCASION
Happy August everybody! Check out this month's issue of Phoenix Magazine...
...now on the stand, for my "Four Corners" column on some newish Valley eateries. It's also this year's "Best of the Valley" issue, and several of those entries were penned by me.
And if all that isn't a potent enough dose of Your Ever-Humble Narrator, check out my reviews of McQueen and Christopher Robin.
...now on the stand, for my "Four Corners" column on some newish Valley eateries. It's also this year's "Best of the Valley" issue, and several of those entries were penned by me.
And if all that isn't a potent enough dose of Your Ever-Humble Narrator, check out my reviews of McQueen and Christopher Robin.
Friday, March 1, 2013
WALKING TALL
A story with a hero named Jack is always promising. The Ripper aside, fictional Jacks tend to be plucky, resourceful working-class fellows who overcome adversity through courage and native wit, without benefit of being knights or princes. Indeed, in latter-day retellings they sometimes even get the Princess—and while killing a giant may be impressive, being accepted by the 1% is truly the stuff of fairy tale
The Cornish folktales known since at least the 18th Century as Jack the Giant Killer have been adapted for the movies at least once already, in a pleasant 1962 version manifestly made in imitation of the Ray Harryhausen classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. The lavish new version opening today, directed by Bryan Singer and called Jack the Giant Slayer, borrows elements from the earlier film but applies them to a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk.
The new movie’s Jack is played by Nicholas Hoult of Warm Bodies, whose long, homely-handsome face lends itself to the idea of a farm-boy hero. The script, by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney, cleverly makes Jack’s acquisition of the Magic Beans plausible without either violating the spirit of the story or making him a hopeless dupe. The plot is also embellished to add a sweet Princess (Eleanor Tomlinson), a fretful King (Ian McShane), a scheming rat of a courtier-villain (Stanley Tucci, sly as ever), and a valiant guardsman (Ewan McGregor), among other secondary characters, all effective.
But of course this movie must stand or fall by its giants, and it’s nice to report that they’re terrific—squalid and scabby and scary, but with a certain uncouth grandeur and with pungently distinctive characterizations, from the two-headed alpha male (the left head voiced by Bill Nighy, the gibbering right by John Kassir) down through various aggrieved subordinates and malcontents. They have pathos and a bitter dignity along with their menace; you want to see them defeated, but you don’t hate them.
When episodic high fantasy of this sort is done right—soberly but not somberly, with unpretentious high spirits, a generous heart and a well-structured story that sticks to the rules it sets up—it can offer one of the keenest pleasures of which the movies are capable. Jack the Giant Slayer comes closer to nailing this atmosphere than any I’ve seen in a while, much closer than the remake of Clash of the Titans from a couple of years back.
I don’t think I could ever feel as warmly toward CGI effects as I do toward stop-motion, but that’s personal nostalgia. And it should be said that Giant Slayer is likely to be a little too frightening for smaller kids. But that’s not a criticism either; it just means that they’ve taken their giants with proper seriousness. Jack the Giant Slayer is a strong entertainment. Only in its final minute or two does it strike a very slightly sour note, when it links the story’s legacy to an ongoing aristocratic fetish that is unworthy of a self-respecting Jack.
But of course this movie must stand or fall by its giants, and it’s nice to report that they’re terrific—squalid and scabby and scary, but with a certain uncouth grandeur and with pungently distinctive characterizations, from the two-headed alpha male (the left head voiced by Bill Nighy, the gibbering right by John Kassir) down through various aggrieved subordinates and malcontents. They have pathos and a bitter dignity along with their menace; you want to see them defeated, but you don’t hate them.
When episodic high fantasy of this sort is done right—soberly but not somberly, with unpretentious high spirits, a generous heart and a well-structured story that sticks to the rules it sets up—it can offer one of the keenest pleasures of which the movies are capable. Jack the Giant Slayer comes closer to nailing this atmosphere than any I’ve seen in a while, much closer than the remake of Clash of the Titans from a couple of years back.
I don’t think I could ever feel as warmly toward CGI effects as I do toward stop-motion, but that’s personal nostalgia. And it should be said that Giant Slayer is likely to be a little too frightening for smaller kids. But that’s not a criticism either; it just means that they’ve taken their giants with proper seriousness. Jack the Giant Slayer is a strong entertainment. Only in its final minute or two does it strike a very slightly sour note, when it links the story’s legacy to an ongoing aristocratic fetish that is unworthy of a self-respecting Jack.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
VATICAN-DO ATTITUDE
“What a relief, the symbologist is here.”
Thus sneers a haughty Vatican bigshot when he beholds Tom Hanks as the professor hero in Angels & Demons. This was by no means the only time that the film made me laugh out loud, but I think it may have been the only time it did so intentionally.
A sequel to 2006’s The Da Vinci Code, and directed, like that film, by Ron Howard, the movie was a much better time than I expected. The Pope officially steps down tomorrow; if you’d like to mark the occasion with a tale of wild Vatican intrigue, this could be your choice.
Da Vinci Code was well-made but silly and a little slow; Angels & Demons is no less silly but is furiously fast-moving and sometimes surprisingly gruesome. It involves the Catholic Church and the Illuminati and the kidnapping of four Cardinals and a plot to blow up the Vatican right in the middle of a Conclave, using a fragment of anti-matter purloined from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland as the explosive.
Hanks’ symbologist rides to the rescue at the request of the Vatican cops, and follows a string of clues conveniently planted around Rome in Bernini’s sculptures. Hanks takes a deep breath at the beginning and pounds through his movie-star duties here with an award-worthy straight face, belting out exposition on the fly.
Aiding him is a gorgeous CERN physicist, played by Ayelet Zurer, who shows a solid grasp of such other disciplines as pathology and Renaissance art whenever the plot requires—she’s a bit like the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. I liked her a lot. Rounding out the cast are Ewan McGregor, as a fresh-faced young priest, Armin Mueller-Stahl as a cold-fish old cardinal, Stellan Skarsgaard as the chief of the Swiss Guard and the very cool-looking Pierfrancesco Favino as the Vatican police inspector.
Crazy and headlong throughout, Angels & Demons chucks any pretence of credibility in its last twenty minutes or so, climaxing in a chaos of helicopter ascensions and explosions and immolations. It’s quite absurd, but Howard kept me happily entertained throughout.
Like Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons is an adaptation, of course, of a best-selling novel by Dan Brown. How faithful it is, I can’t say, because I was completely satisfied, and felt no need to press on, after reading Brown’s stunning first sentence: “Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and knew it was his own.”
Really? He was a physicist? How interesting. I wonder what made him decide to choose physics as a career? I wonder how the lifelong study of the laws of the physical universe molded his outlook on life? Also, why was his flesh burning?
Thus sneers a haughty Vatican bigshot when he beholds Tom Hanks as the professor hero in Angels & Demons. This was by no means the only time that the film made me laugh out loud, but I think it may have been the only time it did so intentionally.
A sequel to 2006’s The Da Vinci Code, and directed, like that film, by Ron Howard, the movie was a much better time than I expected. The Pope officially steps down tomorrow; if you’d like to mark the occasion with a tale of wild Vatican intrigue, this could be your choice.
Da Vinci Code was well-made but silly and a little slow; Angels & Demons is no less silly but is furiously fast-moving and sometimes surprisingly gruesome. It involves the Catholic Church and the Illuminati and the kidnapping of four Cardinals and a plot to blow up the Vatican right in the middle of a Conclave, using a fragment of anti-matter purloined from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland as the explosive.
Hanks’ symbologist rides to the rescue at the request of the Vatican cops, and follows a string of clues conveniently planted around Rome in Bernini’s sculptures. Hanks takes a deep breath at the beginning and pounds through his movie-star duties here with an award-worthy straight face, belting out exposition on the fly.
Aiding him is a gorgeous CERN physicist, played by Ayelet Zurer, who shows a solid grasp of such other disciplines as pathology and Renaissance art whenever the plot requires—she’s a bit like the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. I liked her a lot. Rounding out the cast are Ewan McGregor, as a fresh-faced young priest, Armin Mueller-Stahl as a cold-fish old cardinal, Stellan Skarsgaard as the chief of the Swiss Guard and the very cool-looking Pierfrancesco Favino as the Vatican police inspector.
Crazy and headlong throughout, Angels & Demons chucks any pretence of credibility in its last twenty minutes or so, climaxing in a chaos of helicopter ascensions and explosions and immolations. It’s quite absurd, but Howard kept me happily entertained throughout.
Like Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons is an adaptation, of course, of a best-selling novel by Dan Brown. How faithful it is, I can’t say, because I was completely satisfied, and felt no need to press on, after reading Brown’s stunning first sentence: “Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and knew it was his own.”
Really? He was a physicist? How interesting. I wonder what made him decide to choose physics as a career? I wonder how the lifelong study of the laws of the physical universe molded his outlook on life? Also, why was his flesh burning?
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