The later movies (Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith) are certainly much busier than the first three.

But they aren’t any better.

It would seem that George Lucas’ sole “lesson” is “more lasers! more droids! more ships! more explosions! Oh, dear God, many more explosions!” It’s become a cliche that modern filmmakers allow special effects to overwhelm the story; George gives them a play-by-play on how to do that.

Meh.

InstaRating: 5+ stars out of 5
It took less than five minutes for this film to remind me why I miss Aaron Sorkin on TV.

Plot overview: Charlie Wilson (Hanks) is a hard-drinking womanizing liberal Congressman from Texas who finds himself increasingly concerned with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the urging of a wealthy conservative fundraiser (Roberts), he turns his attention to the ramshackle response of the US government and sets about getting things in order, primarily by relying upon the maverick CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman). The movie basically follows Wilson’s political maneuvers to secure secret but massive funding for the Afghan resistance.

I can’t imagine a story more ripe for Sorkin’s brand of writing. There’s sex; there’s hard-hitting backroom politicking; there’s opportunity for high-level intellectual repartee between serious characters; and there’s some intrinsically funny stuff. The dialog is amazing and most of the characters sharply drawn. The scenes in Wilson’s Congressional office (which is almost a DC harem) are vintage Sorkin, frenetic and funny. I miss the political and organizational spectacle from The West Wing; it’s all here. There’s even a juicy potential scandal that could derail the Congressman and hence the whole war. Watching Sorkin orchestrate the backroom ballet that allows Wilson to keep his seat (and incidentally make Rudy Guiliani look like the thug he is).

As is often the case with the workplaces Sorkin chooses to depict, Charlie Wilson’s Washington office looks like it’d be a mighty fun place to work — and not just because the Congressman kept himself surrounded by beautiful women. It was the aggressive competence and clockwork synchronicity of the staffers that made these scenes a joy to watch — again, a thing he perfect on The West Wing. I kept half-expecting to hear the voice of the late great John Spencer calling out, “Maaargaret, let’s do this thing….”

Hanks is quite good as Wilson, mixing a believable laconic drawl with real steel underneath. I was less impressed with Roberts, though she is serviceable in her role as secret Washington kingmaker. Hoffman, though, completely steals the show as the wisecracking, no-nonsense sarcastic SOB who cuts through the crap and Gets Things Done. It’s Josh Lyman on steroids.

The story itself (which is nominally true) isn’t actually Sorkin’s but I can see why he was drawn to it. I don’t know much about the conflict except what one gleans growing up during it, but I think they give a tad too much credit to Wilson. From Sorkin’s screenplay, Charlie Wilson pretty much won the Cold War single-handedly, which overstates the case. Losing in Afghanistan certainly set back Soviet expansionism and helped expose the weaknesses in the system. But the cracks that brought down the Kremlin were more systemic and had roots much further back in history. On the other hand, at least it wasn’t the typical Reagan hagiography — in fact, the darling of the neoconservatives hardly rates a mention.

The movie also closes discordantly but it’s entirely appropriate: Once the war is won, American attention moves elsewhere and — despite Avrakotos’ prescient warnings and Wilson’s best efforts — we leave the country a mess and ripe for the fundamentalist takeover that eventually produces the Taliban, al Qeada, and 9/11. Sorkin is not above driving home a final lesson about American politics here and it’s well worth the telling. (Personally, I would have cut to black immediately after Avrakotos tells the long-delayed story of the Zen master, but hey, Sorkin’s got way more experience than me, so what do I know?)

This is a rollicking good movie that makes history entertaining and teaches a little about how things get done in the Real World. I recommend it heartily.

OK, it’s a little odd to be reviewing a movie when I’m supposed to be off on a wonderful cruise. But as mentioned before I was pretty wiped out, so I decided to take advantage of the onboard movie theater and catch Next starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel. I remember when this came out but I never got to see it, despite being a sucker for a Philip K. Dick movie

Nicholas plays Chris something, who was born with the very Dickesque talent of being to see the future but only his own future and only two minutes ahead. He’s making a living as a second-rate Vegas magic act and just trying to have a normal life. The only exception to the rules of his talent is that he saw Liz (Biel) at a diner some indeterminate time in the future. He’s been visiting that diner for a week trying to meet her, which he does, acting in a manner which he hopes isn’t too creepy (but which kind of is).
Unfortunately for Chris, there’s an FBI agent who’s somehow become aware of his talent and wants to use it to track down a missing Russian nuclear warhead which has been smuggled into the US. The movie is about bringing Chris around to the greater good and stopping the bad guys.

More below the fold.

Actually, I liked this movie quite a bit. I’ve never read the associated Dick story (“The Golden Man”) so I can’t say how well it conforms. But unlike most Hollywood adaptations of the author’s work, this one feels like a Philip K. Dick story (except not quite so psychoactive). The talent is done well – the camera gives essentially no hint that Chris is “in the future” until it stops and rewinds. Despite knowing the trick, the viewer is lulled several times into believing something horrific has occurred.

This is used to fantastic effect in the film’s “gotcha” ending, which was entirely worthy of Dick’s brand of madness. I won’t give anything away but suffice to say, the metaphysical rug is pulled out from under the viewer in the last two minutes of the film. Surprisingly this wasn’t frustrating or irritating; the scriptwriters have gotten the viewer to a place where this sleight-of-hand is acceptable. And for all the nay-sayers: There is a visual cue earlier in the movie that sets up the gotcha, if you’re paying enough attention. It has to do with the pupils in Cage’s eyes after a tender scene.

A lot is left unexplained – who stole the bomb? why are they setting it off in LA? – and that’s all to the good. Dick’s stories tend not to give you all the answers; sometimes they don’t give you any. And there are moments when the film bogs down into a standard find-the-bomb thriller. But the depiction of Chris’ ability, and the clever ways he learns to exploit it, make up for these deficiencies. It’s a pretty decent effort at a strange sci fi story, and well worth the eyeball time.

InstaRating: 2 out of 5

Having little else to do while school is out, I decided to see Eragon, this season’s epic high fantasy. I went with some trepidation, as the commercials made it seem overwhelmingly, well, cheesy. In hindsight, I had no idea…

This isn’t a bad movie, exactly. It just isn’t a good one. Apparently it is based on a series of novels much-beloved by a subset of the Net population, but I’d never heard of them before, much less read them. Pro: I went in without any preconceived notions. Con: I went in. I suspect that, had I picked up the book, I’d have known better than to shell out $8 on this movie.

The problem with Eragon is that the author Christopher Paolini (and eventually, the scriptwriter Peter Buchman) simply rehashes very very standard epic fantasy tropes. Some people on the Net accuse Paolini of ripping off directly from (take your pick) Lord of the Rings, Star Wards, or Dragonriders of Pern. I think that’s probably unfair. I don’t think Paolini consciously started out saying, “Wow! I wonder how much of Tolkein I can plagiarise and get away with it?” It isn’t just “LOTR with the serial numbers filed off”. But without getting all Campbellian, there are a limited number of standard motiffs, characters, etc. that we expect within an epic fantasy story. It’s very hard to juggle the things we know into something new. It can be done — witness, say, The Belgariad — but it’s hard.

I can’t really judge Paolini’s contribution, since I didn’t read the book. But judging from the movie, his story is about the same as every other 14-year-old who says to himself, “Hey, Tolkein is neat. I could write something like that.” I’ll admit, with only a little shame, to having thought the same myself and to have pounded out the overlong, under-developed fantasy quest novel to show for it. Looking back at the text now (which, unfortunately, I happen to have saved), I squirm a bit as I read the high school prose and the urgent attempt to Add Meaning. There are zillions of these things, with more every year, and they’re not an evil. But they’re not good. And I suspect — without, admittedly, more than this movie to back me up — that Paolini’s is one of these.

In any event, whether or not Paolini intended to steal from Tolkein, the director clearly intends to steal from Peter Jackson. This movie so very desperately wants to be The Return of the King. Alas, it is not. Its source material is not as strong and the director (Stefen Fangmeier) is not nearly as skilled — or perhaps not nearly as fanatically dedicated to the material. It’s been said that Jackson was a bit overboard in his love of things Tolkeinian. Indeed, the LOTR movies benefited greatly from the near half-century of marination in the cultural subconscious. Eragon just doesn’t have that feel.

Beyond a somewhat cardboard story, we have to include the very cardboard actors. Jeremy Irons gives a good turn as Brom, former dragonrider. The rest of the cast is eminently forgettable. This viewer, at least, felt no connection to any of them and felt no visceral thrum of danger whenever they were in peril. Much as the film has the feel of a pasted-together travelog, the actors seem like the indeterminate people you meet in airports.

Wrapping up: My advice is to skip this movie. It isn’t bad enough to be good, and it isn’t good enough to be good, either. It’s in that terrible limbo in-between, that cinematic graveyard wherein reside all the movies destined for nonstop play on the Sci Fi Channel.

Be warned: There will likely be spoilers in here.

Superman Returns is not a bad movie. It’s also not a great movie. It’s more or less just a movie. (Hence the “meh” in my headline.) It becomes clear early on that this movie is set, sort of, in the same continuity as Superman: The Movie and Superman II (but, mercifully, not Superman III or IV). Mr. Singer wisely does not drag us through yet another telling of Superman’s origins, which almost anyone could recite for you.

So, what works? Kevin Spacy as Lex Luthor. Much like Gene Hackman’s portrayal of the supervillian, Mr. Spacey’s bad guy simply steals the show. He is the center of every scene he’s in, and his absence is felt in every scene in which he is not. He has both the cold selfishness and the sometimes-manic intensity down pat. Plus his plan — to create a new supercontinent using Kryptonian technology — is exactly the right kind of cartoon supervilliany needed. (It’s also a nice homage to the first Christopher Reeve movie, wherein Lex wanted to sink California so as to create beachfront property in Nevada.)

Jimmy Olsen and Perry White are both minor but excellent characters, fulfillling their standard roles much as they did in Lois & Clark. The special effects are, for the most part, excellent. I think Singer suffers here simply because we’ve seen it all before. There are no break-out spectacular graphics like in The Matrix. A couple of times, Superman (Brandon Routh) seems almost airbrushed, but it’s not the same effect as in A Scanner Darkly.

The bad? Well, the pacing is glacial. It takes forever to develop the plot, it takes forever to get Superman into action, and there is a long, drawn-out denoument that, in my opinion, neither goes anywhere nor solves anything. This is symbolized by a moment towards the end. Superman has received a fax(!) from Lois Lane and is racing out to sea to rescue her. Before reaching the yacht on which she is being held prisoner, Superman sees a seismic wave and zips back to Metropolis. As a relatively discerning viewer, I think I know what Mr. Singer is doing: Superman has to balance his commitments; the millions in the now-tectonically-threatened city outweigh his former girlfriend. Meanwhile Lois’ new beau can arrive in his convenient seaplane and save Lois and her young son, showing that we humans can do it, too, and that we’re all in this together. But really, for me, the moment just showed Superman as indecisive and wishy-washy.

Kate Bosworth is simply uninspiring as Lois Lane. She was trying to express all the contradictions wrapped up in the character — layered now by the fact that she has borne a son with Superman but doesn’t let anyone know who the father is. (And you should really read “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” to understand why that‘s a bad idea…) Ms. Bosworth doesn’t manage to make Lois’ emotional plight very compelling, however. She seems flat and almost adrift in the material.

To be fair to Mr. Singer and his crew, it would have taken a lot for me to love this movie. I think Superman is the least interesting of all the major superheroes. It’s hard to get invested in someone who is, by definition, the epitome of perfection. Although recent efforts have tried to make Superman “edgier”, they just can’t work because the character itself won’t allow it. Give me a brooding, borderline-psychotic Batman any day. Better still, give me a working-man’s hero, a poor schlub trying to make his way through a complex world without any real clue — give me Spiderman.