..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..RJ Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

The Mummy 3
plus reviews of Swing Vote, Step Brothers, and X-Files
Plus Quick Hits On This Week's DVDs

..Shine A Light Theatrical Review ..MCN Critics Roundup ..MCN Review Vault

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor One star
U.S.; Rob Cohen (Universal)

I’ve never liked the new Mummy series -- the first two Stephen Sommers movies seemed frenetic, under thought and herky-jerky, full of CGI fury, signifying nothing. But I held out some hope for this one. New director Rob Cohen has made some fast pop movies, the new cast included Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, (which suggests good fight choreography), and Brendan Fraser’s nicely tossed off, Fred MacMurrayish hero performance in Journey to the Center of the Earth hinted at a good time here too.

But….Yaargh! This is a real stinker: a movie that makes you feel as if you were being attacked by an army of idiots. Despite spectacular effects and shining photography, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor gives us almost nothing worth watching, and plenty that isn’t. Nothing in the script seems even vaguely salvageable, not even in the third-rate Indiana Jones knockoff terms set up here. Fraser acts as if he had a bad cold and would rather be somewhere, anywhere, else -- as if the only possible cure for his misery were a long trip far away from this movie.

O’Connell spouse Maria Bello keeps smiling inexplicably, as if she wanted us to believe she were Kate Beckinsale. Luke Ford, as their son, plays the most obnoxious juvenile to pop up in quite a while; not only is he a wildly implausible offspring of Fraser and Bello, but after a while his line readings and surly disposition make you want to see him devoured by dragons. Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh might as well have been subbed by Jet and Michelle puppets. The final ghost warrior attacks have a few good gags, but the editing drove me crazy. It’s a sign of where the movie is going, that Cohen takes us to Shangri-La only to blow it up. And though there was a war going on in China in the late ‘40s involving people like Mao Zedong, the major crisis here seems to be the plot to bring back the emperor -- a dead one.

Nobody goes to a contemporary Mummy movie for anything but cheap thrills -- or rather, expensive thrills that seem cheap. But you won’t believe this one until you see it. Which you shouldn‘t. You’d have more fun being mummified.



Swing Vote One and a half stars
U.S.; Joshua Michael Stern Disney

Hollywood may be a hotbed of leftism and liberalism. But this movie proves that they’re too chickenshit to make good heartwarming populist political comedies, as they definitely did in the heyday of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (written by ex-Communist Sidney Buchman and directed by Republican Frank Capra) -- or 1939’sThe Great Man Votes, which has a plot closer to the premise here.

And what a dopey premise it is. With visions of Florida, 2000, and hanging chads no doubt dancing in their heads, director-co-writer Joshua Michael Stern and co writer Jason Richman imagine a presidential election where there’s a dead-even tie -- and the presidency must be decided by one unemployed factory worker (Kevin Costner as Bud Johnson) in Texico, New Mexico, an unshaven, morose souse whose vote was mistakenly lost.

Just as in Billy Wilder‘s Ace in the Hole, this Southwestern backwater becomes a carnival ground for journalists and tourists, including both presidential candidates: Kelsey Grammer as Republican incumbent Andrew Boone and Dennis Hopper as Democrat Donald Greenleaf. (Their respective managers are Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane -- who might have made a good Karl Rove send-up.) Like John Barrymore in The Great Man Votes, Bud has cute family problems -- such as holding on to his precocious, adorable daughter, Molly (Madeline Carroll) and proving what a good dad and citizen he can be, not least to sexy TV correspondent Kate Madison (Paula Patton). A host of real-life TV correspondents show up as well, but we won’t embarrass any of them, except to say “Bill Maher, how could you?”

One rub though. Bud actually never even cast his crucial vote. Molly tried to do it for him while he was in his usual stupor. So how does this movie‘s intention of encouraging good citizenship and bringing out the vote square with Bud determining the country‘s fate by casting an illegal vote? And with Molly getting away with a lie?

Something you can say for Stern: He assembles good or interesting casts (including in this movie Richard Petty and Willie Nelson playing themselves). Since his next project is King Lear, with Anthony Hopkins as Lear and Keira Knightley, Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow as his daughters -- that’s not a gift to sneeze at. But I’d say Swing Vote’s premise is a dead weight you can’t cut loose; it sinks the movie, good citizenship and all.
 


Step Brothers Two stars
U.S.; Adam McKay (Columbia)

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, whom I often like (but not too much here) play two 39-40-something guys who still live in their comfortable upper middle-class homes. Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins are their mom (Ferrell‘s) and dad (Reilly‘s), who get married and, like the Brady Bunch, bring them all together. The movie, from the Apatow factory, doesn’t waste time on logic; these guys have to share bedroom space in their huge house right away because Reilly has a drum set in the only free room.

Anyway, first they meet cute, then they hate each other, then they love each other. The ending takes place at a Catalina wine festival where the step brothers are just itching to replace the Billy Joel ‘80s cover band as entertainment. (So why didn’t Ferrell sing the Sinatra-romantic ‘70s Joel hit “Just the Way You Are” to Reilly? It works for me.)

Step Brothers suggests that the Apatow group is getting lazy - which makes sense since they all basically make movies about lazy, immature guys getting high and screwing up. (Pineapple Express, by the way, proves again that formula works.) Ferrell co-wrote the script with director McKay and it isn’t much better than Semi Pro -- and not as good asTalladega Nights. It’ll make you laugh, if you have nothing better to do. But these characters are only funny when they’re losers, and Ferrell and Reilly, unfortunately, let them win. As Billy J. says, “Don’t want clever co-o-onversation. Never wanna work that hard…”



The X-Files: I Want to Believe Two stars
U.S.; Chris Carter (Fox)

In this week’s line-up of flawed big movies, this one may have a slight edge, because it’s more intelligently written and has better lead performances, by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, as that well-liked sleuth couple Mulder and Scully. We won’t get into the plot, because you’ve seen it before anyway, but Duchovny and Anderson make a sexier couple than Ferrell and Reilly.

 

MW on DVD
Picks of the Week

NEW RELEASES

Shine a Light Four stars (A)
U.S.: Martin Scorsese (Paramount)

Anyone who loves movies or rock n’ roll, or both, and doesn’t get excited at the prospect of Shine a Light -- the new concert film with the Rolling Stones, directed by Martin Scorsese -- runs the risk of cheating themselves out of an incandescent experience and a knockout show. This DVD is the vibrant record of a live 2006 concert at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre on the “Bigger Bang“ tour -- thrilling and warming and knock-you-on-your ass brilliant.

The full review from the theatrical release

CLASSIC RELEASES

The Outlaw and His Wife Four stars (A)
Sweden; Victor Sjostrom, 1918 (Kino)
with
Victor Sjostrom Three stars (B)
Sweden; Gosta Werner, 1981 (Kino)
&
A Man There Was, Three and a half stars (A-)
Sweden; Victor Sjostrom, 1917
&
Ingeborg Holm, Four stars (A)
Sweden; Sjostrom, 1913 (Kino)

Victor Sjostrom, a Viking of a 20th century Swedish artist, a great actor-director with sad, somber eyes and a granite chin, is best known for his masterful performance, at 78, as the dying, memory-tormented professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 classic, Wild Strawberries. But Bergman picked Sjostrom not just for his genius as an actor but out of reverence for his Svensk Filmindustri mentor’s massive screen achievements in the 1910s and ’20s as one of the greatest silent filmmakers. Three of Sjostrom’s early classics, two starring Sjostrom, are now being released on Kino, on two separate discs, along with a fine 1981 documentary, Victor Sjostrom, produced by Bengt Forslund (The Emigrantsand The New Land).

The masterpiece of this consistently superb set is The Outlaw and his Wife (1918), a grim yet rapturously beautiful saga of love on the run, set in Iceland’s mountains and based on the play by Johann Sigurjonsson. Outlaw's story is reminiscent of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” but it’s far sadder and more tragic -- with Sjostrom in one of his best brooding performances as Kari/Ejvind, the Jean Valjean-ish giant of a man who, like Jean, is unfairly imprisoned for years for stealing food for his family; then escapes, wins the heart of a rich widow (played by Edith Erastoff, who later married Sjostrom) and, after being exposed, is forced to flee with her into the mountains where they are pursued by an evil bailiff. Shot in Lapland by Sjostrom’s great cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, the towering snowy landscapes are rugged and stunning; the story is full of ecstasy and anguish, danger and heartbreak. This is a great, historically important film that even the cognoscenti among you may have missed -- in a finely restored print.

A Man There Was (Terje Vigen) (1917) stars Sjostrom again, as another wronged hero in a powerful adaptation of an epic poem by Henrik Ibsen. Here, Sjostrom plays a man who loses his family when he‘s caught up in the crossfire of war and imprisoned as he tries to bring food -- then years later is faced with the option of saving, from an ocean storm, the family of the officer who captured him. The brilliant snowscapes of Outlaw are replaced by equally striking shores and seascapes, shot on location (by Jaenzon) with a dark poetry that summons up Turner or Winslow Homer.

Finally Ingeborg Holm (1913), a big favorite of Bergman’s, is an annihilating tearjerker, acted with tremendous, Griffith-like emotional power -- especially by Hilda Borgstrom in the title role. It’s about another widow whose three children are torn from her by the cruel policies of the local workhouse and its heartless bureaucrats. This Dickensian tale has an elemental force that avoids the obvious sentimental pitfalls and becomes wrenchingly affecting. Taken together, Sjostrom’s three films reveal an artistic/cinematic sensibility of the highest order. The documentary, director Gosta Werner’s 1981 Victor Sjostrom is a good, sympathetic tribute to this unjustly neglected master of the silent movie. All Sjostrom-directed films are silent, with intertitles and musical scores; the documentary is in Swedish, with English subtitles.

- Michael Wilmington
August 1, 2008

July 17: The Dark Knight, Space Chimps, Mamma Mia!, Encounters At The End Of The World
July 10: Hellboy II: The Goilden Army ,Journey to the Center of the Earth, Kit Kittredge, Wanted, The Wackness, The Heartbeat Indicator, Monsieur Verdoux
July 3: Hancock, The Mother of Tears
June 26: Wall-E
June 19: Get Smart, The Love Guru, The Duchess of Langeais, Glass: A Portrait of Phillip in Twelve Parts, Up The Yangtze, The Passion of The Mao
June 12 : The Incredible Hulk,War Inc., Shotgun Stories, It Always Rains on Sundays
June 5 : Kung Fu Panda, You Don't Mess With The Zohan, Mongol, 'Tis Autumn, At The Death House Door
May 29: Sex & The City, The Strangers, Irina Palm, The Fall
May 22: Indiana Jones 4, Postal, Contempt
May 15: Prince Caspian, How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Vacation, DVD: Indiana Jones Collection
May 8: Speed Racer , Redbelt, What Happens In Vegas
May 1: Iron Man, Son Of Rambow, Flight of The Red Balloon
April 24: Tuya's Marriage, Chapter 27
April 17: My Blueberry Nights
April 10: Shine A Light, Plus Young @ Heart, Smart People, and The Forbidden Kingdom

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