jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Almost serviceable fantasy adventure based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. On the plus side, some nifty ideas (people’s souls walk next to them in animal, or “daemon”, form), spiffy Victorian/steampunk designs, icy Nicole Kidman, and in the lead, an adorable girl (Dakota Blue Richards) with Sarah Polley eyes, trying to save her kidnapped brother. On the down side, it all feels terribly derivative, and most of the CGI isn’t up to 2007 standards — the roar and clang of a climactic ice bear smackdown had the theater cheering but the daemons especially look lousy.

Eva Green descends on a vibrating broomstick to spout fantasy gobbledigook, Sam Elliot and Daniel Craig don’t have much to do, and once you get past the peculiar specifics of Pullman’s world, the story never strays from familiar hero’s journey territory. One key moment is lifted directly from The Empire Strikes Back, a final battle restages Minas Tirith without any emotional investment, and the strained farewell doesn’t have half the rousing ring of the Sam Gamgee speeches it’s trying to emulate. Some of us thought it was a bathroom break, not the ending. There’s just enough talk of religion, authority, and free will to get me curious about the books’ purported atheist attitudes. Opens December 7.

The Golden Compass. Chris Weitz, 2007. **

The trailer:

The second installment of the horror-fantasy trilogy that famously outgrossed The Lord of the Rings in its native Russia, Day Watch stages a timeless war between good and evil in the snowed-in streets of contemporary Moscow.

Edited in the high ADD style of the commercials and music videos director Timur Bekmambetov cut his teeth on, Day Watch heaps on fantastic concepts: “Light” and “Dark” “Others” duck in and out of “second-level gloom” while they try to preserve the “Truce” and hunt for the “Chalk of Destiny” and evade the “Inquisition.” “Great Others” chase each other with modified flash lights, somebody drives a car along the facade of the Kosmos Hotel, and sex change magic leads to some mild humor and a hilariously gratuitous girl-on-girl shower scene.

Day Watch sports a fast and exciting surface, but none of it makes a lick of sense. Bekmambetov seems to be making up the contradictory rules of his supernatural universe as he goes along–cardboard characters with mysterious powers can turn around airplanes in midflight and are said to trigger the apocalypse at the drop of a magic rubber ball, but there is no apparent interior logic to the mayhem. It’s obvious why the Matrix-in-Moscow aesthetic pleased Russian audiences; it remains to be seen if the inventively animated subtitles are enough to keep the American mainstream interested. Opens July 11.

Dnevnoy dozor. Timur Bekmambetov, 2006. **

The trailer:

Victor Nunez can’t catch a break–first, nobody wanted to distribute the third installment of his Florida Trilogy (preceded by Ruby in Paradise and Ulee’s Gold). Now that it’s finally out on DVD, we had to go and watch it as the last movie before taking off on vacation. By now, too many motoconcho rides, santo libres, and raptures of the deep later, memory just barely serves to recommend it. Sonny (Timothy Olyphant) is released from prison and returns to the Gulf Coast town where his best friend is a cop (Josh Brolin) married to his high school sweetheart Ann (Sarah Wynter.) The local gangsters Sonny took the fall for don’t want to pay up, and Ann is tempted to run away with Sonny…. A carefully observed small-town drama with a true indie feel; Nunez’ big, generous heart is as much is evidence as in the other two films.

Coastlines. Victor Nunez, 2002. ***

[tags]film, jurgen, 3 stars, victor nunez, florida, trilogy, gangsters, high school sweethearts, crime, love, adultery[/tags]

After over a year of exile from Middle-Earth, the itch was getting too strong to resist. Much too much has been said about these movies already, so here are just three thoughts: (1) If you’re going to do a marathon, I strongly recommend the theatrical versions over the extended edition. You want the epic span of the story, but you don’t want all the buttnumbing footnote scenes. Sorry, purists. (2) In retrospect, The Two Towers is the weakest of the series. Gollum is terrific and the film’s climax offers good payoff, but the subplots about Faramir, Rohan, and Treebeard just aren’t nearly as interesting as the major storylines in the other two movies. (3) Return of the King has such a wealth of incredible visuals and is pitched at such an intense level of drama that it’s bound to remain a milestone for a long time to come. It also makes King Kong seem especially pointless–everything that movie was supposed to do, Return of the King had already done much better. As epic genre film, as ensemble melodrama, as special effects extravaganza, and as literary adaptation, The Lord of the Rings still reigns supreme.

The Fellowship of the Ring. Peter Jackson, 2001. *****
The Two Towers. Peter Jackson, 2002. *****
The Return of the King. Peter Jackson, 2003. *****

• Return of the King at Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

[tags]the lord of the rings, fantasy, hobbits, peter jackson, viggo mortensen, sean astin, elijah wood, cate blanchett, orlando bloom, ian mckellen, tolkien, adaptation, trilogy, marathon, film, 5 stars[/tags]