A CHRISTMAS CAROL 3D

title: A CHRISTMAS CAROL 3D

year: 2009

cast: Jim Carrey, Bob Hoskins

director: Robert Zemekis

rating: **

Amazing how much a modern 3D movie can put you RIGHT THERE, like you're experiencing every nook and cranny as a nearby observer. But that's also the problem. Everything happens as if being spied upon - taking away from any story being told... much less a classic one. I never felt the journey - of a grumpy, stingy old man being shown his past, present and future by three ghosts - had any other reason to change Scrooge from a nasty coot to the nicest guy in the world other than the fact he got the piss scared out of him by formidable CGI specters. It had little to do with his neglected childhood, his selfish present state or outlook on Christmas, his doomed future... or a little crippled boy named Tim. (Being shrunk to the size of a walnut and chased around by the Grim Reaper and his demonic black horses would have turned Hitler into a Care Bear too.) Nothing was special about Scrooge's redemption other than the fact he was forced on a trip through hell and was glad to be alive at the end. The point of the Dicken's tale is that Scrooge is SHOWN these things that alter his outlook, not force-fed them. While director Robert Zemekis got his money's worth of CGI, he overlooked everything else.

THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE

title: THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE

year: 1984

cast: Rob Lowe, Jodie Foster, Beau Bridges, Seth Green, Lisa Banes

rating: *

An oddball family running various Hotels in New Hampshire, Vienna, New York and then back to New Hampshire. The film adaptation of John Irving's novel centers on the eccentric nomadic Berry clan but focuses mainly on the teenage son (an elvish Rob Lowe) and daughter (Jodie Foster, during the purgatory of her career) of a man (Beau Bridges) who runs the hotels with an ever-optimistic look on life no matter how many bad things happen. The book delves with casual irony into subjects like terrorism, rape and incest, getting away with turning a glib cheek to all things taboo (including homosexuality, which wasn't as discussed in the early/mid eighties). The overly obvious symbolism (like a dog named Sorrow) works in the novel because it's strictly thematic and never forced. But this movie... I just can't begin to explain how bad it is. It was made because of the success (and brilliance) of Irving's "The World According to Garp", a much easier narrative to translate - it's at least about something, or rather, someone. And while "Garp" centers on a mainline story with tragic weirdness surrounding it, this centers on weird tragedy with no real story to be found. Might possibly be the worst adaptation ever made.

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

year: 1993

cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Peter Vaughan, Christopher Reeve

rating: ***

There's a funny/clever scene in Kevin Smith's CLERKS as the characters are debating whether the construction workers of the second Death Star (in STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI) were in cahoots with the Empire. After all, one guy points out, they're just hired labour. Does the same thing go for the butler of a Nazi sympathizer? He's just working there, right? This is an interesting film for about twenty-five minutes as we see the inner workings of the "help" in a British Mansion owned by Lord Darlington (James Fox), who, we learn - as the film progresses - is in cahoots with the Nazis (he wants England to deal with Germany on their terms, not fight them on England's). Anthony Hopkins, as the main character, plays the butler who remains (get it?) at Darlington's service no matter what kind of pro-German/anti-Jewish conversations arise during lunch or dinner. He's there to work, not pay attention. The audience isn't that lucky, having to be thrust into politics instead of learning more about the people the film is supposed to be about: how they work, what their lives are like - their ups, downs, and arounds. This entire pre-war main story is really a flashback - as the "present day" post-war story has Hopkins, now working for the mansion's new owner - an American dilpomat played by Christopher Reeve - going on a "vacation" to find Emma Thompson, who had worked alongside him. When they finally meet there's an awkward, dull conversation about the grand years before Lord Darlington sided with the Nazis... the only problem for the audience is: we didn't get to live in that world very long before the Nazi subplot, which much too quickly becomes the main plot, took over. The good old days meant very little since we only got a glimpse; and what REMAINS, as it were, are two characters remembering more than the audience ever got to experience.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

title: The Man Who Would Be King

year: 1975

cast: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer

director: John Huston

rating: **1/2

What I assumed would be a "Lawrence of Arabia" meets "Wind and the Lion" turned out to be "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" meets "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". I enjoyed the first half hour the most as Michael Caine and Sean Connery (as two con men) and Christopher Plummer (who plays writer Rudyard Kipling: literally vanishing into the role... I didn't even recognize him) are first introduced. Then when the adventure to seek a hidden city of gold where both men (Connery and Caine) could easily become wealthy kings begins (leaving Plummer behind), the movie hits a snag. They hike a formidable snow-covered mountain with four mules; then end up with one mule; then an avalanche falls; and then they find reach their destination. Sound easy? Well it was: MUCH TOO easy. (The scenery was gorgeous but looked, and seemed, like stock footage). When they reach the city... more of a wasteland... there's a few good scenes involving our daring-duo training the natives to fight (although many of the “foreign” actors are annoyingly hammy); then a fairly decent epic battle occurs where Sean Connery is shot in the chest with an arrow, which really hits his bandolier but the people think he's overcome death. And he becomes a god and then a king (or did I get that backwards?). Connery becomes enthralled in power and madness way too suddenly. This reminded me of Bogart going gold-loco in Huston’s masterpiece "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" but unlike that film, there's very little story arc from fortune-hunter to tyrant. After one argument about Connery's "new attitude", Connery quickly realizes he's gone a bit too far but still wants to remain in power –, the two make up, there's a "royal wedding", the people find out he's NOT a god when he bleeds, and, well, he basically becomes Wile E. Coyote without the help of ACME. Huston offers a beautiful film but I didn't feel INTO it. John Milius, who wrote and directed "The Wind and the Lion" (co-starring Huston), did a much better job with big sets, lots of sand, and Sean Connery. With that film I felt PART OF the adventure; here I was merely a witness.

EAST OF EDEN

year: 1981

cast: Timothy Bottoms, Jane Seymour, Sam Bottoms

rating: ***1/2

Although flawed, this is a sometimes delicious soap operetic version of the novel, covering almost everything in the book in three parts. Timothy Bottoms plays Adam Trask, Warren Oates his father: they both do a wonderful job as both are wonderful actors. Oates gives the movie a great jump-start, and Timothy Bottoms takes the reigns nicely. Bruce Boxlitner as Charles Trask... well, let's just say he wasn't great, but wasn't bad either. He can pull-off the sexy-lonely-stud aspect in the bedroom scenes, but doesn't seem mean enough, scary enough, or tough enough for the other scenes involving the sibling rivalry. But the story is classic and this adaptation sticks to it nicely. And it was a nice treat seeing Timothy Carey in a cameo: playing a screaming tent-preacher. Carey, one of the greatest cult actors of all time, played a bodyguard in the original film who beats up James Dean, star of the 1955 film that, centering on the last quarter of the novel, pales in comparison.

THE RAZOR'S EDGE

year: 1984

cast: Bill Murray, Brian-Doyle Murray, Theresa Russell

rating: *1/2

Years before Bill Murray got "Lost in Translation" with an Oscar nod, thus being taken seriously as a serious actor, he was at the peak of his comedic talents in the early eighties, and he forced the studio into allowing him to star in "The Razor's Edge", the story (based on a novel by M. Somerset Maugham) about a turn-of-the-century slacker who winds up - after a stint as an ambulance driver in war overseas (ala Ernest Hemingway) - getting tired of high society and seeks wisdom in the mountains of Tibet. What you just read was a run-on sentence, and this is a run-on movie. The rich people are self-absorbed and unlikeable, and the working-class are nice and snuggly. The only decent part of the film has Bill's brother Brian-Doyle, who proves worthy of a character-actor who can act dramatically with ease, playing a rough-and-tumble sergeant during the war segment. Murray wouldn't do "Ghostbusters" unless the studio funded this for him... so at least we got to enjoy that film. This one's a dreadful bore with no enlightenment in sight.