April 10, 2008

• ElectricMovies Movie Reviews: 1999-2003

  ElectricMovies chronicled my musings on and reviews of movies from 1999 till 2003.

  

  This is a reproduction of part of the main page and some of the review pages on my old ElectricMovies site, which went online in 1999 and which I ceased updating in 2003. When I first put my website online in May of 1999, the tagline for AllThingsMike was "movie reviews, poetry, and stuff." I have a pretty large poetry site, and all kinds of "stuff", but the last movie review was the lavish site I created for "Gangs of New York" in July of 2003 to celebrate the DVD release. I found I couldn't write regular movie reviews, so wrote the ElectricMovies Diary blog till around the time I created my Xanga blog in 2004. There is still a link on the ElectricMovies Diary to the Xanga Review page. Everything below is HIGHLY edited from the original pages. If you would like to read the complete reviews, the titles are links, and the archive page with all 33 reviews written from 1999 to 2003 are HERE.

  I have been a movie buff from as far back as I can remember. My brother and I used to watch movie showcases like Los Angeles' "Million Dollar Movie" which ran the same film each night, and then three times a row on weekends.
  At first I would, like all children, savor the immersion in the movie, but after six or seven repeat viewings, I would start to forget plotting and action, and would begin to see the movie in a different light. Then, and now, I would interpret this experience as "living in the movie". Each subsequent viewing I would pay attention to the details in each scene, the acting, costumes, set design, and direction. I would notice the construction of the scenes. Simply by noticing different aspects on repeated viewings, I began to learn the craft of filmmaking.
  This stuck with me throughout my youth. I saw my first "big screen film" in 1960 at the El Monte Drive In Theater.
  In college I minored in Film History. One of my profs at USC was Arthur Knight, a respected film critic who at that time wrote for the Los Angeles Times, among other periodicals.
  I seemed to think I would be able to review a film a week, as I saw them in the theater, but for the three years this website has been up, I haven't really written lots of reviews. The main reason, I think, is that I would rather watch movies than write about them. As I view a film, my mind connects with many elements, and I don't like to be critical of any film. I either like it or don't, and my review attempts to tell you why.

  To view a work of cinematic art is to reach out and touch the face of humanity. Hopefully I can be of help in guiding you to that art, wherever it exists in the cinema.
  Michael F. Nyiri
  poet, philosopher, fool, and film historianrewritten 7/2/03

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  Movie of the Week: Sunday, May 30, 1999
  "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" Director: George Lucas. MIKOMETER RATING: 8 of 10

  Star Wars certainly doesn't disappoint me.

  
      I had a good time at the movies, and that's all I ask of any movie. Entertain me, and I'm hooked. If I feel disappointed, then I can really start criticizing all kinds of aspects of the piece. The best movies lose me in them. I'm too entertained to entertain the idea of criticizing them. Certainly George has been entertaining me for years, and he hasn't stopped. I might start criticizing the whole aspect of "directing" a movie after seeing this, however. Certainly I can see that directing a movie from here on in is merely the ability to layer images in a Printmaster program on the computer.

  
      I found the movie to be exciting, great to look at and although it certainly could not be called original, Geroge's original idea behind the movie at the beginning back in 1977 sure shines through for me after seeing it. (The conceipt being that I think this is the only time in history that a filmmaker has essentially made the same film four times, and was successful each time.) The Phantom Menace was original in 1977 when it was called Star Wars.It was original, fresh and exciting then.  I  pooh-poohed the naysayers who reported that George would spend the rest of the millennium releasing a nine-part movie series based on this one work.. I couldn't believe it. This was the director of American Graffitti, for heaven's sake. He had showed he could work as excellently in any genre. Well, two or three up to that point, anyway. I sure didn't want him to expend that much time and energy merchandising that one movie. I felt as if he were family. I'd attended USC in the early seventies and he was certainly the boy wonder in the eyes of the film school profs.

  
      Now,I understand why. George knew that in 1977 everything he had envisioned Star Wars to be couldn't happen yet. He still hadn't invented the technology. He certainly understood computers, and I know by hearing him in the infrequent interviews he granted for the release of the Phantom Menace that he admitted to seeing a completely different way of making movies. Virtual movies. Movies where you create anything in your imagination. He's a true visionary. I understand that now.   MORE.

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  Movie of the Week: Saturday, August  7, 1999
  "The Sixth Sense"  Director: M.Night Shyamalan. MIKOMETER RATING: 8 of 10

   The Sixth Sense, being marketed as , variously, a Bruce Willis picture and a horror film, or in writer-director  M.Night Shyamalan's own words, Ordinary People meets The Exorcist, delights and provocates at the same time.

  Bruce plays a child psycologist in The Sixth Sense, and I was reminded of The Color of Night. In fact, the end of the first scene in Sense reminded me of a similar scene in Color, but as this intricately structured work of art unfolds, these needless comparisons to other Bruce Willis pictures are null and void. As John Anderson in the L.A. Times wrote, this isn't a Bruce Willis picture, but he sure can be proud  he was in it. The unknown truth about Bruce is that he has evolved from wiseacre to an excellent actor over the past few years. His character, Malcolm Crowe, is a beaten man, unable after the first somewhat shocking scene (PLOT POINT ALERT) to cope with life, and especially his job as a child psychologist after his brush with mortality.  Don't read that L.A. Times review, by the way. I believe I would have had a much better shock at the scene if I hadn't known what to expect. Shame on those critics.

  He is teamed with his next case, Cole Sear, who confesses to communicating with the dead, so real are they to him that they appear as if they had just died, with wounds and burns aplenty. Just the thing to scare the young 8 year old, except he is, although really upset at his "gift", somewhat knowledgeable about the implications. For instance, he doesn't tell his mother, the always amazing Toni Collette. He suffers her punishments, instead of giving her the truth to "his secrets" because he knows that she might not be unable to understand. I cannot think of a child actor as convincing in his role as Haley Joel Osment.  He has astounding depth. The interplay between doctor Crowe and young Cole is frighteningly real. You really believe Cole when he confesses his gifts to Dr. Crowe. "I see dead people. They want me to do things for them."  You feel for him as he "sees" the dead walk around, and you sense his knowledge that he has to go through and do whatever the dead need for him to do.

  The character, although young, is world weary in this respect. And the actor conveys the character with what looks like amazing ease. I remember Linda Blair in The Exorcist, but even she doesn't convey the depth of emotion shown by Haley Joel Osment. His is a name to remember (and a hard one to remember, at that. So is M. Night Shyamalan. What is it with these names these days?). The oscar should go to him in April. He is that good.
  The audience, made up of a mix of  Saturday afternoon teens , the 18 to 49 crowd, and some more elderly types, were all "sucked in" by the plot.

  Roger Ebert likes the movie, and admits to being "blindsided by the ending". Anderson thinks the ending is overdone. In any case, the audience does not second guess The Sixth Sense. For a movie with that title, that is a wonderful thing to think of. Usually, you can "write the screenplay as the movie unspools" even if you have no senses, or any sense for that matter. This summer the films are fairly smart. Even the scares in The Haunting were self conscious. The Sixth Sense is just good storytelling. At least the movie doesn't look like it will disappear. Probably a hit. Possibly an oscar contender.  MORE.

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  Movie of the Week:  Thursday , September  30, 1999
  "American Beauty" Director: Sam Mendes. MIKOMETER RATING: 8 of 10
  

  Oscars all around.
  After wondering when I would start seeing the oscar worthy performances and films (only The Red Violin and Sixth Sense have blown me over so far) I took a vacation out of L.A. the week this film opened, and mentioned to anybody who would listen that just by seeing the trailer for American Beauty I felt it had the potential to be the first film with oscar buzz written all over it, and I am certainly not ashamed to admit that my intuitions were correct.

  I often say that there are two types of filmed entertainment. 1) Movies, or "popcorn rides" like Star Wars (even figuring in the mythology) and the current Double Jeopardy.2) Films. Anything by Scorcese. The kinds of entertainment which teach or preach, but almost always enlighten as well as entertain. American Beauty falls in the second group, for sure. This is a work of art, directed by a stage director, Sam Mendes (Cabaret, The Blue Room) who lingers just long enough on the painful parts, and injects comedy at all the right moments.  I want to mention that the writer , Alan Ball,  has crafted a very witty screenplay which doesn't pander to any one segment of it's intended audience. This is a movie about life, and death, and the beauty which infuses both. The film speaks to all ages, and has "something for everyone". One doesn't feel at unease over the way the film progresses or the dialogue. It all seems real, and might be really depressing, but for the light touch of the director and writer, not to mention the actors, specifically Kevin Spacey and Annete Bening. I am reminded of films by Capra and Wilder.

  This is a film that certainly speaks to the audience. It is, at once, a somewhat lighthearted look at the nineties, but with the rather hard edge that seems to creep up in the best of nineties cinema. It is a film about facades, and the way that humanity wants but cannot really retain those facades. It is a film about emotion, and the power of emotion when it is let loose. It is a film about beauty, and the fact that beauty can appear where one least expects it to appear.

  American Beauty is my pick for Best Picture, and Best Actor, Spacey, and Actress, Bening, at this time.

  Before concluding, I do want to say that this film might be offputting to a lot of people. This is in no way a "conventional movie".
  I mentioned Capra and Wilder earlier, and with good reason. Their films were "warts and all " portrayals of humankind with all his foibles and faults. At the end of American Beauty, one does not applaud. One reconsiders his place in humanity, and hopefully makes any changes which need to be made. MORE.

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  Movie of the Week: Sometime in 2001

  "AI: Artificial Intelligence" Director: Stephen Spielberg. MIKOMETER RATING: 10 of 10

  The critics trashed this film. Nobody understood it. Everybody seemed to see "more Spielberg, and less Kubrick". Some, if not all, lambasted the "sexual" element, and it was derided for using childhood as a theme, and composing scenes guaranteed to scare the child in all of us.
  'A.I' while not the best movie ever made, is clearly a work of art, a revered adaptation of one respected director's ideas for a film by another. Spielberg has crafted an "intellectual" work that raises more questions than it answers, much like his serious work like Schindler's List, and less like E.T., which is what everybody assumed this would be.

  'A.I.' is a very good film. It might not have attained "classical" status, but then few films do these days. The film's journey, which takes Haley Joel Osment as the robot David from one incredible situation to the next without blinking an eye, has honest twists, unlike, say, Unbreakable, and is thoroughly entertaining, even though it lasts almost two and a half hours.
  At that length, I call most movies, "Asshurters" because I want so much to get out of my seat and rub my aching butt. I hardly noticed the length of 'A.I', my butt didn't hurt at all, and this is positive proof to me that I was truly entertained.

  
  I was reminded of the similar robot film: 'The Bicentennial Man' with Robin Williams. That movie didn't click with audiences either. I think it might be that the public doesn't want to think about the possibility of robots in the age of information. The robots of early science fiction were just that: fiction. Today, robotics is an industry, and the idea of "artificial humans" is "just on the horizon". The fable told in 'A.I.' is a good one, but people don't want to listen to it. I think that's why there was a critical backlash, and why the public didn't turn out for it like usual Spielberg fare.

  A major thematic element in the film is the Collodi fairy tale: "Pinnochio". Like Pinnochio, David embarks on a trek, and ultimately, he wants, like the little puppet, to become a real boy.

  
  Of course the movie duplicates this theme. The robot, programmed to love like a real boy, of course yearns to become one. This brings me to the critics again. They seemed to link Spielberg and Disney when discussing the subject of Pinnochio. I really don't think the Pinnochio elements of the script were meant to allude to Disney at all, but were probably in the original script. And I like the script. I read that there is more to this movie, and can't wait to see the deleted scenes on the DVD.

  
  Nothing disappointed me at all with 'A.I.' It is masterful storytelling, and is original in intent and execution. Unlike some Spielberg movies populated with dinosaurs, 'A.I.' is not an embarrassment to it's audience. I rather think it is a shame that the film isn't making money, but perhaps this will give it more credibility in the future, when people revisit the film and ponder it's mysteries.
  There are a lot of different opinions concerning 'A.I.' I think the fact that it generates controversy is good. It doesn't treat the audience like suckers, as some Spielberg movies have done in the past. It is thoughtful and riveting. The images are memorable, and the acting is seamless. Haley Joel Osment is the perfect wide eyed Spielberg kid, and as I mentioned, this is less a wide eyed Spielberg film than, say, E.T. or Jurassic Park. I believed David had just come into the world, and I believed his journey, and his reactions and dreams and destinations. I really liked this movie, and recommend it with an 8 of 10 on the Mikometer. MORE.

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  Movie of the Week: February 11th, 2002

  "A Beautiful Mind" Director: Ron Howard. MIKOMETER RATING: 7 of 10

  
  "A Beautiful Mind" is a Beautiful Mess"" would be my "one-sentence" review of Ron Howard's follow up to the megabucks crowd pleaser, "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". Pulling a Spielberg, Howard immediately dove in after the "Grinch" shoot to lens this gritty "retelling" of the story of John F. Nash, a somewhat reclusive and uncharismatic teacher at MIT who won the Nobel Prize in 1994 for writing a then radical theory of economics while attending Princeton on a fellowship for his doctorate in 1948. While the film has been criticized for taking artistic liberties with the real person's life (and since when were movies anything resembling real?) I had no quibble with any liberties that might have been taken. . Any real person whose life is portrayed in the movies is not going to be portrayed 100 percent honestly, because life usually lasts more than two hours.

  I am giving the "A Beautiful Mind" a 7 of 10 because I can't think of any reason not to like it. Yet it is still problematical to me, and therein lies the rub .

  I was disturbed by my inability to embrace "A Beautiful Mind". It will probably be up for a lot of Oscars and I didn't care too much about it from the previews. After the Globe win, along with my favorite film this year, "Moulin Rouge", I felt I had to see it to check out the competition. From the buzz, it might win a lot of noms, and might, being the only "studio flick" in the running , win the Oscar for Best PIc. The fact that I didn't really embrace it doesn't spoil it's chances, by the way. A lot of people like the film too. I didn't really care to see this film initially.

  The movie is problematical, at best. I actually "glanced at my watch" at least two times. Parts of it drag, and parts are just cinematically troublesome. On the whole it is passable, but I thought Russell Crowe, while an excellent actor, was showboating a bit, and this role is essentially the "crazy guy with tics", and the performance belongs up there with the aforementioned Dustin Hoffman role, and Brad Pitt's turn in Gilliam's "Twelve Monkeys".

  To repeat, I'm only awarding this movie a 7 of 10. I think it could have been better lensed, processed, and structured, and a few unneccessary minutes could have been trimmed. I think the look of the film is in keeping with the time period (the fifties) but Howard has used "hyperrealistic" cinematography before, which I especially liked, and I thought "Beautiful Mind" was too subdued. (The setting is the Ivy League, so the real places aren't exactly Universal Citywalk.) Roger Deakins did the cinematography, and he's very good, but this didn't knock my socks off like say, "Backdraft"did.

  If it sounds as if I am not offering this film a recommendation, that's not true, I am. It is far better than a lot of dreck that passes for cinema these days, and it doesn't have a II or III behind the title, so that's two marks for it sight unseen.  The scenes are memorable, and the acting between Connelly and Crowe is excellent.

  I'll probably like "A Beautiful Mind" much better in a year or two when I see it again. I read that Ron took the reins of this film right after "Grinch" because his schedule permitted it, and he wasn't even tapped to direct initially. I wonder what a more artistic director might have fashioned with the material. MORE.

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