(for kids: ****)
DIRECTED BY Shawn Levy
STARRING Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, Amy Adams, Robin Williams
US 2009 105 mins.
Give with one hand, take away with the other. All these blockbuster sequels are alike, whether Wolverine or Angels & Demons or Night at the Museum 2: you go in with low expectations, find yourself pleasantly surprised by the level of invention, good humour or just plain professionalism – then, just when you’re ready to embrace the thing, it loses momentum or collapses into silliness, leaving a halfway-decent two-star entertainment. Which is what you expected in the first place.
The problem is simple: everyone’s way over-qualified for what they’re being asked to produce. These are ‘tent-pole movies’, so the studios pay for top talent right down the line – but they also need to make loads of money, so the studios ensure they’re pitched to the lowest common denominator. Result? Mediocrity.
The problem is especially acute in Night at the Museum 2, a superior sequel to a fairly standard kids’ movie that became a sensation. The original Night, a tale of museum exhibits coming to life, fed off the kiddie penchant for playing with soldiers and/or dolls. It offered the perfect fantasy – a museum as a giant toybox, filled with everything from dinosaurs to cowboys. Trouble is, the concept could only work once; something more was needed for the sequel – but nothing could be found, except upgrading the location to a bigger museum. Night 2 is set in the Smithsonian, a repository that includes famous paintings and sculptures, space-travel exhibits and pop-culture artefacts – Muhammad Ali’s robe, Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz – as well as the dinosaurs and cowboys.
In short, Night 2 is a failure of imagination, offering only a fancier version of what came before. But Night 2 is also a rich entertainment, a toybox packed full of bright shiny baubles. There’s no real plot; the plot is that Ben Stiller – once again playing our hero, once again negotiating a tiresome don’t-be-a-workaholic Message in between comic highlights – meets various characters. When those characters are played by a clutch of top comic actors, however, the result is bound to be fun.
The toys in this toybox include Ricky Gervais, doing his now-patented buffoonish boss. They include Alain Chabat – who wrote, directed and played Julius Caesar in the only good Asterix movie (Mission Cleopatra) – as Napoleon Bonaparte. They include Jonah Hill as a stroppy security guard, exchanging playground insults with our hero (“I don’t know – did they run out of jokes at the Interesting Jokes place you shop at?”). They include a scene where artworks come to life, our heroes ducking into ‘The Kiss’ or ‘American Gothic’. They include singing Cupids and Rodin’s ‘Thinker’. Best of all, they include Amy Adams and Hank Azaria.
Adams – decked out in Jazz Age slang and gratifyingly tight pants as intrepid aviatrix Amelia Earhart – is as joyous here as she was in Enchanted, rapidly becoming the American answer to Julie Andrews or Emma Thompson: voluble, bubbly, bursting with delight and enthusiasm. Azaria as the chief baddie – an evil Pharaoh who’s come back to life – is even better, mincing and lisping without ever toppling into pantomime ham. When Darth Vader turns up, wanting to join the villains (Al Capone and Ivan the Terrible are also on the payroll), Azaria’s firm-but-gentle putdown is imperishable. Look at yourself, he tells the Dark Lord, there’s too much going on here. You’re evil, you’re asthmatic, you’re a robot. “And why the cape? Are we going to the opera? I don’t think so…”
Moments like that make Night at the Museum 2 worth seeing – and there’s quite a few such moments, little bits of vaudeville strung together like beads. The film, however, is childish – unless you’re a child – and the final act OD’s on childishness, spiced with more pro-America boosting than I’ve seen in years (“this great country”, “good old-fashioned American ingenuity”, etc), doubtless stemming from the new mood in the White House. Night at the Museum 2 is funnier than expected, but there’s still a basic problem: it’s Night at the Museum 2.
RED CLIFF ***
DIRECTED BY John Woo
STARRING Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi
In Chinese, with Greek subtitles.
China 2008 148 mins.
“War is hell,” declared William Tecumseh Sherman. “War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means,” opined Carl von Clausewitz. “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre [It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war],” Marshal Canrobert is said to have protested re: the Charge of the Light Brigade. All fair enough – but only the Chinese have a military treatise (by Sun Tzu) called The Art of War.
War is indeed an art in Red Cliff, a lengthy war movie – the Chinese version is apparently twice as long, the two parts having been condensed into a single film for Western audiences – based on historical events from the 3rd Century, the final days of the Han Dynasty: prodded by a wily Prime Minister, the Emperor declares war on the kingdoms of the West and the South, leading to an epic conflict culminating in the Battle of Red Cliff. Despite the difference in centuries, this folk-legend could perhaps be seen as a Chinese equivalent to the Siege of Troy – making Red Cliff a kind of Iliad (or more accurately a kind of Troy, the Brad Pitt-starring Hollywood version from a few years ago): a tale of constant battle, character emerging out of action, studded with small betrayals and acts of heroism. There’s even a mention of the war having started over a woman.
Just like Troy, the film sports a flashy CGI shot of the Imperial fleet, craning up and up to reveal ships as far as the eye can see. It also has zooms, wipes, dissolves, fast cutting and constantly-changing angles, not to mention the occasional shots of doves that director John Woo makes his trademark (he used to be Hong Kong’s premier action director, famous for films like The Killer and – after he went to Hollywood – Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2). Red Cliff is a red-blooded war movie, and most of the (lavish) budget obviously went on the war scenes. There are God-shots looking down on the troops as they march into formation, hectic crowd scenes of villagers fleeing down muddy streets, lyrical interludes showing the breeze in the fields; Woo seems to be quoting equally from Kubrick, Kurosawa and The Thin Red Line.
But it’s not all action: indeed, the point is that War is Art, just like music or painting. Early on, an army is stilled by a flute-playing child, and the two chief strategists (melancholy Tony Leung and dashing Takeshi Kaneshiro) take time off from fighting to play a duet, hunched over their zithers like DJs over their decks. War needs guile and brains, based on strategy and creative misdirection (one of the best scenes finds the duo tricking the Imperial General into handing them thousands of arrows in ammunition). It requires subtlety, even a knowledge of Nature.
The film isn’t always convincing, especially in trying to square this martial philosophy with 21st-century scruples. “We have all lost,” says Leung at the end, looking around at the piles of dead bodies – but in fact Red Cliff isn’t that complex, paying lip-service to modern pacifism but happy to provide war-movie thrills and intrigue. Among the characters is a fierce warrior-chief (something of a pirate, we’re informed) who at one point berates his men for not providing big enough explosions. ‘More!’ he cries as fireballs erupt all around him; ‘Bigger! More!’. Sun Tzu readers may scoff, but the action-movie audience will identify.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on
DVD in the US and UK over the past few months. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Prices quoted don’t include shipping. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
GOMORRAH: One of the biggest European films of last year, Italian expos? of the Camorra (the Neapolitan Mafia) weaves together five stories in a vivid mosaic. Lavish extras include deleted scenes and lots of interviews, including one with Roberto Saviano who wrote the original book. Also available in Blu-Ray. [UK]
BURN AFTER READING: Familiar enough, but absurdist comedy by the Coen Brothers is so underrated it may be worth watching again, even if you saw it in the cinema. Extras include “Welcome Back, George”, a comic featurette with Mr. George Clooney. Also on Blu-Ray. [US/UK]
ANGEL: Romola Garai is superb as outrageous romantic novelist in a slippery period movie that’s neither straight melodrama nor parody, expertly directed by Francois Ozon (who made 8 Women). Definitely interesting. Extras include trailers and a making-of. [UK]
UNRELATED: A British drama that plays more like a European arthouse flick: long silences, rather chilly characters, and a plot about posh English people failing to connect at their villa in Tuscany. Worth a look. Extras include an interview with director Joanna Hogg. [UK]
PARIS: Quirky French comedy-drama starring Juliette Binoche, recently shown on pay-TV (but of course – unlike this DVD – with Greek subtitles). No extras. [UK]
OLD FILMS
GETTING STRAIGHT (1970): Counter-culture comedy starring Elliott Gould is just one of five ‘Martini Movies’ (stupid name, but still…) recently put out by Sony Pictures – the others including Our Man in Havana (1959), Vibes (1988) and the excellent Gumshoe (1971). What do they all have in common? No idea, but the films are still worth collecting. [US]
THE JOY OF SEX EDUCATION: 60 years of the British sex-education film, “from the earliest-known example, Whatsoever a Man Soweth (1917), to the comical, but ultimately serious, ’Ave You Got a Male Assistant Please Miss? (1973)”. Obviously a must-see. Features include essays by various academics and curators, this being an official release by the British Film Institute. [UK]
BEING THERE (1979): 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition: Great film, misleading packaging: the only extras on this so-called “deluxe” edition are a trailer and a featurette. Caveat emptor. [US]
PETER SELLERS 5-FILM COLLECTION: More Peter Sellers: five pre-Clouseau comedies from the 50s and early 60s, the undisputed highlight being I’m All Right Jack (1959); quite good value at $35 plus shipping. Also out on Region 1 is “Alec Guinness 5-Film Collection”, featuring a quintet of Ealing comedy classics. [US]
