Writer/Director Scott Derrickson's pick for "Most Disappointing Movie of 2005"
Look who showed up in the comments on the Disappointing Movies thread!
Hi Jeffrey...and, uh...hi, Peter.
Jeffrey, I've been reading your blog pretty regularly -- it's great. Because of you I've been listening to "Ohio" by Over the Rhine for the last six weeks. Wim Wenders stayed at my house a few weeks back, and said that it's one of his current favs, and I bought him a copy of Drunkards Prayer before he went back home to Germany.
As for this list, I'd put Jarhead at the top of mine. You know David Blane -- the self-impressed, good-looking, pretentious magician who doesn't actually do any tricks? Jarhead is the David Blane of war movies: self-impressed, good-looking, pretentious war movie without any fighting. Two and half hours about tedium is, well, tedious. Profoundly disappointing given Sam Mendes talent and the fact that the trailer was one of the best I've ever seen.
Thanks, Scott! I'm glad you're enjoying Over the Rhine. They've given us so much musical treasure.
I probably would have included Jarhead in my Top Ten Disappointments if I'd seen it, but by the time it had opened I had heard so many discouraging reports that I decided to save my moviegoing dollars for other things. (I've never been a Sam Mendes fan. Talent? Oh yeah. But his choice of screenplays is consistently frustrating.) I hope you'll revisit us with your Top Ten Films of 2005. I'd love to see your list. (I'm still working on mine. Haven't quite decided on a #1 film yet.)
And congratulations again on the success of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which provoked some of the most exciting conversations about film I encountered this year! I can't wait to see what you do next.
(Anyone interested in digging into Mr. Derrickson's thoughts on filmmaking, faith, and horror, here's a link to my conversation with him for SPU's Response magazine.)
The Most Disappointing Movies of 2005
Since I'm struggling to find ten movies worth recommending in a Top Ten List, I realize now that I'm far more prepared to serve up a different kind of list...
THE TOP TEN BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS OF 2005
No, not the ten worst movies... but the ten movies that SHOULD have been GREAT.
1.
THE BROTHERS GRIMM. Terry Gilliam's first bad movie. And yikes, is it awful! If he doesn't get back on the horse and show us he can still ride, Lost in La Mancha's going to look more and more like the story of a director who's lost his touch. And I say that as a wild-and-crazy fan of Terry Gilliam.
2.
WAR OF THE WORLDS. Spielberg's first truly unpleasant movie. Capped off with a scene that feels like a complete joke... like a parody of Spielbergian sentimentality.
3.
KING KONG. He dreamed of making this movie for so many years, and yet he could only develop one interesting and engaging character... Kong himself.
4.
WALK THE LINE. Given the life story of Johnny Cash, they decided that his real triumphs were album sales and a glorious infidelity? Come on.
5.
THE CONSTANT GARDENER. Fernando Mereilles' masterful first film City of God made me eager to see this. Why did his first film about Europeans have to include cheap and easy shots at Dubya? Did it have to gaze romantically at cheap sex between "heroes" who have just met and implausibly fallen in love? Did it have to be another bleeding-heart story that oversimplifies things to a Michael-Moore level of CORPORATIONS BAD/TRUTHSEEKERS GOOD?
6.
IN MY COUNTRY. How do you take a film about the South African reconciliation hearings... one of our recent history's most important and heartbreaking events... and turn it into a movie that sends people out of the theater focused on the fact that they can't believe they just watched Samuel Jackson and Juliette Binoche having sex?
7.
MADISON. Can a film about hydroplane racing really be disappointing? Yes.
8.
BE COOL. The sequel that sucks most when compared to its predecessor.
9.
THE NEW WORLD. What's disappointing? The fact that it's probably the BEST movie of 2005, but it's going to be released too late to stand any chance of winning the Oscars it will deserve. I haven't seen it yet, but everything I'm hearing suggests it may be the first movie of the year that I love to the point of sheer enthusiasm. Release this movie!!
10.
ALIAS. Okay, that doesn't count. It's a television show. But it's just pure torture to watch what started as one of television's all-time-greatest shows devolve into one of television's all-time-worst shows, heading into a final season where it will die gasping and writhing from malnourishment. Jennifer Garner, how I once loved thee. J.J. Abrams, if you let Lost die like this, I'm coming after you... with some of those torture weapons you used in Alias.
Bob Dylan to host a weekly radio show on XM!
Wow. They should record these shows and sell them.Read more
Specials: Guardian defends Narnia. Malick's "New World." Haneke spoils. Earthsea animated.
Tuesday's specials:
I found most of these links at GreenCine Daily, and I'm glad I did.
GUARDIAN GUARDS CHRISTIANITY FROM GUARDIAN JOURNALISTS (AND OTHERS)
The Guardian, home of the now-notorious Polly Toynbee who used her Narnia review to bash Christianity, bashes Narnia critics!
The Bible is a narrative blueprint for a lot of western culture - if everything referencing it is dodgy then the nativity is dodgy, a lot of Shakespeare is dodgy, some of The Archers is dodgy, everything is dodgy. To what do we object, then? That CS Lewis's allegories are too obvious? That there are too many of them? That he didn't bother disguising them, as Tolkien did?
Anyone holding to this "dodgy" orthodoxy, especially those who don't explain why, is treating Christianity as inherently underhand. This is unfair to all Christians, not just hardliners. And it is not the time of year to be unfair to Christians. We've pinched their festival. We can hardly talk about "underhand".
RAVES FOR MALICK'S NEW WORLD
The best film of the year? I cannot wait.
SPOILER ALERT FOR HANEKE FANS
Here's an article you shouldn't read until you've seen Michael Haneke's excellent film Cache. It's a good interview, but it tells you too much about his mysterious new film.
EARTHSEA ANIMATED?
The studio that brought you Howl's Moving Castle is moving on to Ursula LeGuin's The Wizard of Earthsea.
Jeff Berryman discovers Donald Miller
I told a friend of mine yesterday, I feel like I'm in the process of leaving the Old Country headed for the new, but there is a long dark journey to be made inbetween. I wonder how many people decide to stay on the shores of the Old Country even though they know there is no real life there anymore. They stand longingly at the banks of an ocean they have to cross. God is calling them to cross that ocean, even providing a boat that He says would rival the ark of Noah. Problem is, he's making no promises about the weather, or about just who will survive the journey.
But it's pretty sure the old you won't.
Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz is a message from a man at sea. But by God, he makes me think there's a New World out there after all.
Ebert on Narnia: Wrong, and Right
UPDATE: Ebert has corrected his mistake!
Here's the earlier post...
The vigilant Mark Shea notes Ebert's big error:
Here's the first sentence of his review of Narnia:
C. S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia books, and J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the Ring trilogy, were friends who taught at Oxford at the same time, were pipe smokers, drank in the same pub, took Christianity seriously and hated each other's fantasy worlds.
Here is Lewis, displaying his hatred of Tolkien's fantasy:Such a book has of course its predestined readers, even now more numerous and more critical than is always realised. To them a reviewer need say little, except that here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart.
Elsewhere, he enthusiastically declared some of its scenes "as good as anything in Homer".
Tolkien, it is true, did not return the compliment to Narnia ("too allegorical"). But the Mutual Hatred meme Ebert confidently states as Fact is rather wanting in actuality and warns the informed reader that this review is going be written by a guy with a tin ear for fantasy and, in particular, Christian fantasy (he was weak in his review of The Lord of the Rings too).
But here's the part of Ebert's review that made me smile:
This involves Aslan dying for Edmund's sins, much as Christ died for ours. Aslan's eventual resurrection leads into an apocalyptic climax that may be inspired by Revelation. Since there are six more books in the Narnia chronicles, however, we reach the end of the movie while still far from the Last Days.
Amy Wellborn on the Narnia Film
Amy Wellborn, one of my favorite bloggers, saw the Narnia film this weekend, and she has a lot to say about it, of course.
And, of course, she's right on.
Here's an excerpt:
It was okay. I agree with most of the reviews I've read on the major points: the little actress who played Lucy was a charmer, the other child actors, not so much. It is always startling to see British child actors who are just a little beyond wooden. Tilda Swinton has just the right, naturally blank look to play a frozen, evil White Witch. Mr. Tumnus was marvelous. The scene in which Lucy first enters Narnia is a magical marvel.
But what the adaptation, with its choices, additions and omissions has done, in the end, is left the film without a clear sense of why. We know that this is about a struggle of sorts between good and evil, but the bigger picture is lost to us. White Witch: bad; Aslan: good, and there is a sacrifice of a good creature for a sinner, but...why? As one critic noted in one of the links I'm going to give you in a minute, the bigger picture is restoration, but the importance and weight of this is just not clear in the film, and it all ends up being less lastingly memorable because of it.
And she, along with plenty of other bloggers, has noticed what has become the most lively debate Looking Closer Journal has ever hosted!
Speaking of Disney disrespect to source material...
(via Chattaway's FilmChat.)
Now Disney's meddling with the Hundred Acre Wood and replacing Christopher Robin with at 6-year-old girl, because Christoher Robin "just wouldn't sell."
I need to find something to quit so I can say "I quit!" in protest.
Specials: David Brooks on "Munich." Plus, NY Online Critics' Awards, LA Critics' awards.
Sunday's specials:
In Spielberg's Middle East the only way to achieve peace is by renouncing violence. But in the real Middle East the only way to achieve peace is through military victory over the fanatics, accompanied by compromise between the reasonable elements on each side. Somebody, the Israelis or the Palestinian Authority, has to defeat Hamas and the other terrorist groups. Far from leading to a downward cycle, this kind of violence is the precondition to peace.
The best, according to the New York Online Film Critics.
Best Picture The Squid and the Whale
Best Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote)
Best Actress Keira Knightley (Pride and Prejudice)
Best Director Fernando Meirelles (Constant Gardener)
Best Supporting Actor Oliver Platt (Casanova)
Best Supporting Actress Amy Adams (Junebug)
Best Breakthrough Performer Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow, Crash, Get Rich or Die Tryin', Four Brothers)
Best Debut Director Paul Haggis (Crash)
Best Screenplay Paul Haggis (Crash)
Best Documentary Grizzly Man
Best Foreign Language Downfall
Best Animated Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Best Cinematography March of the Penguins
In L.A., they're swinging a bit differently:
Best Picture:
Brokeback Mountain
Runner-up:
A History of Violence
Best Director
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Runner-up: David Cronenberg, A History of Violence
Best Actor
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Runner-up: Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Best Actress
Vera Farmiga, Down to the Bone
Runner-up: Dame Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Best Supporting Actor
William Hurt, A History of Violence
Runner-up: Frank Langella, Good Night, and Good Luck
Best Supporting Actress
Catherine Keener, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Capote, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, & The Interpreter
Runner-up: Amy Adams, Junebug
Best Screenplay
TIE between
Dan Futterman, Capote
and
Noah Baumbach, The Squid & The Whale
Best Cinematography
Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Runner-up: Chris Doyle, Kwan Pun Leung, Yiu-Fai Lai, 2046
Best Production Design
William Chang, 2046
Runner-up: James D. Bissell, Good Night, And Good Luck.
Best Music Score
Howl’s Moving Castle, Joe Hisaishi
Runner-up: Tony Takatani, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Best Foreign-Language Film
Cache, directed by Michael Haneke
Runner-up: 2046, directed by Wong Kar Wai
Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film
Grizzly Man, directed by Werner Herzog
Runner-up: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room directed by Alex Gibney
Best Animation
Nick Park and Steve Box, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The nominations are in for the Broadcast Film Critics' Awards. Lots of interesting choices here.