Showing posts with label 2005. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2005. Show all posts
 |
| T-Rex and time travelers |
In the future Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) works for an outfit that sends wealthy clients back in time to hunt dinosaurs, the animals' slayings timed to occur just before they would have died anyway. This is done to prevent anything screwing with the time stream and affecting the future. Travis meets a lady scientist, Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), who claims she not only helped create the time machine and was shut out of enjoying its success, but that Ryer and his associates are endangering the world with their time jumps, on one of which something comes back from the past. This happens because boss Charles Hatton (Sir Ben Kingsley) wants to save money by turning off the energy-using screen that would prevent this. Because of this anomaly, the world is affected by time waves that create new "prehistoric" animals and even begin affecting the human race itself. Can Travis and Sonia manage to set things right in a world beset with dangerous monsters, hysterical humans, and weird sweeping changes to the landscape and everyone else at all the wrong moments ...? A Sound of Thunder has a great idea and is entertaining for the most part, and some scenes are rather well-done (a struggle with a hungry underwater creature, for instance) but there's just something off about the movie. By no means as bad as, say, a Syfy Channel Original, there's still something second-rate about the entire enterprise. Edward Burns, who often makes and stars in smaller personal films, seems uncomfortable in the role of action hero, although Kingsley is more on the mark as slimy Hatton [although you still have to wonder what he's doing in this movie]. McCormack and the other cast members are all professional and then some. The effects are uneven, although there are a host of good-looking futuristic baboon-dinosaurs, and most of the other monsters are at least well-designed. Ultimately the movie isn't terrible, just unconvincing. Hyams has directed better movies, such as Outland and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and Kingsley has appeared in worse movies, such as Thunderbirds.
Verdict: Interesting disappointment. **1/2.
 |
| Robert clacks away at that keyboard |
"You can do anything that you want as long as you don't call it what it is."
Robert (Peter Sarsgaard), a struggling screenwriter, is inexplicably offered a million dollars for his script called The Dying Gaul, even though the producer, Jeffrey (Campbell Scott), thinks he should rewrite the gay lead characters as a straight couple. Robert takes the money, and doesn't exactly put up much resistance when the closeted "bisexual" Jeffrey comes on to him. Before long the two have entered into an affair behind the back of Jeffrey's wife, Elaine (Patricia Clarkson of Carrie). Elaine, intrigued by Robert, enters a gay web site to chat with him, and then creates a phony identity with which to send him texts and emails, pretending to be his dead lover. Then things get even more warped ... The Dying Gaul has a lot of problems, not the least of which is that Hitchcock himself would have trouble wringing drama out of a movie in which characters seem to spend most of the time clacking away at their keyboards; in fact the movie becomes tedious after awhile. However, the three leads all give good performances, although Sarsgaard's [Blue Jasmine] stereotypical "queeniness" seems to come and go like a bad accent. One scene when he starts crying when he and Jeffrey are having sex borders on camp. An even bigger problem with the movie is that these are not likable people, and the ending makes one of them, no matter how justifiably angry, seem almost psychotic. Lucas could have taken this premise, as contrived as it is, and said something about a lot of things, but this muddled movie doesn't really seem to be saying anything about anything. On the stage, this may have worked, but presented all too literally on the screen it just doesn't.
Verdict: There are times when this almost seems homophobic! **.
 |
| Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch and the Thing |
Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd of Sanctum), his ex-girlfriend Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), her brother Johnny (Chris Evans of Captain America: The First Avenger), and buddy Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) all participate in a space experiment with college acquaintance and scientist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon). Unfortunately things go a little awry and they all wind up with strange, super-human powers. Sue can become invisible and create force fields. Johnny becomes a flying, blazing Human Torch. Reed can stretch any part of his body like a latter day Plastic Man; and Ben turns into a lump of orange rocks with incredible super-strength. Together they become known as the Fantastic Four and save the city when Von Doom [aka "Dr. Doom"] mutates into a metallic maniac and goes on the rampage. Despite some changes to their origin, this often captures the feel of the old Stan Lee-Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comic books of the silver age. There's a generous amount of humor, but it generally comes from the situations and isn't forced, as well as some pathos concerning the situation of "the Thing," as Ben becomes known, who loses his sweetheart when she can't deal with his ugliness. The movie presents the inter-relationships of the foursome along the lines of the comic, with a callow, often insensitive Torch goading the Thing into destructive rages, and so on. All five of the actors, including McMahon, while they may not at first seem like perfect casting, do a fine job bringing these super-heroes to life. Alba received a lot of knocks, but she has authority and gives a perfectly good performance. The only problem with the movie is that the climax is rather short. For more information on the Fantastic Four comic see The Silver Age of Comics.
Verdict: Fun Marvel Comic Book Movie. ***.