Edge of Darkness: * 3/4 (out of 4)

Well, I guess I got the bad January Movie I was hoping for.

Should I have had any hope going into the movie? Sure, I found him quite excellent in the first two thirds of the Kill The Brits Trilogy (Braveheart and The Patriot; I'm still kindof sad he never starred in Zulu), and he did a more-than-adequate job as the lead of action thrillers like Payback and Conspiracy Theory. But the last blockbuster he starred in was Signs, one of my great movie disappointments of the last decade. Was this not a hint?

Well, it should have been. Edge of Darkness is a convoluted mess - not as bad as Signs, I suppose, but pretty bad. It started with some dream sequences, followed by a bunch of slow, atmospheric detective scenes; every now and then some shadowy political intrigue was tossed in, and all of it was punctuated with short, sharp scenes of violence. This would be fine, if, say, these pieces fit together in some way. Instead, we were treated to the shock of seeing a woman suddenly and inexplicably killed, and finding that this kind of transition was as good as we were going to get.

What went wrong here? Quite simply, the movie was over-complicated; it was trying to be a Bourne movie, without the underlying sensibility or well-thought-out source material. The plot involved too many characters, split into too many factions, many of which never interacted. While there were many geographical settings, all of these locations were in New England, and didn't offer much of a sense of diversity. The "gears within gears within gears" didn't manage to hold up to the slightest scrutiny. The supporting cast was, with one small exception ("how does it feel?"), beyond generic. And the viewer was never given any reason to care - well, except that Mel Gibson was the good guy.

(At least my instincts on Mel Gibson were good - he can still act, and even offered a fairly convincing Boston accent for most of the movie.)

So, what went wrong? Well, it became pretty obvious once I discovered one fact: the movie is based on a BBC mini-series. Aah-hah! Not only did the movie suffer from the standard British-to-American conversion problems, but it was 1/3 the length! I'm sure that most of those plot points could have been properly explored and justified with adequate time. And if the number of twists in the movie felt like a season of 24, well, that's probably because that's what they were going for.

In short: this movie tried to cut down a 5 hour mini-series into a 2 hour movie, and did it very badly. And sight unseen, I recommend renting that series before watching this movie.

I should have seen Legion.

* 3/4

As a side-note - one of the trailers was for The Losers. I want this movie to be good, if just to encourage the creation of more Vertigo Comics movies. The trailer did not fill me with hope. Oh well.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire: *** (out of 4)

It's hard to convince yourself to go to movies that you know are going to be depressing. It's just too easy to convince yourself that this is going to be a traumatic experience, rather than just a sad one; and even when it's possible that there's art in that trauma, and that the scars of previous movies were worth it, well, it's still not easy to convince yourself that it's worth the trouble. That's what kept me out of Precious during its main theatrical run; but somehow, I overcame my worry and made it for the second, pre-Oscars run.

And guess what? It was depressing! But it wasn't quite as depressing as I was expecting, and for that I am grateful.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (too long a title if ever I heard one, but I suppose it's not the film-maker's fault) is the story of an penniless, uneducated, obese, and most importantly habitually-abused African-American teenager living in New York City in the 1980s. Precious (her chosen name) is pregnant with her second child (both fathered by her father), living with her abusive mother, and failing out of high school. Her life is, as we are shown consistently and convincingly, hell. And it would all seem a bit over-the-top-depressing if it wasn't clearly based on a true story.

Of course, this is just where the movie starts; her life just gets worse from there. There were several moments during the film where the entire audience (rightfully) gasped in horror; and things are just worse in contemplation. Her nicely realized fantasy life just adds a counterpoint that accentuates the negative. And even as her story arc completes and the absolute worst is left behind, her situation is still horrible.

So how did I manage to come out of the movie without a need to cheer myself up through violent video games or a good flamewar? Well, it turns out that, at its heart, the movie is also the story of The System Working, at least a little bit. And while it may not have been uplifting as a whole, it was still satisfying to see Alternative Education programs serving those most in need, and social workers doing their jobs even after years of manipulation.

Basically, after a movie of seeing things go wrong, the ending showed a ray of light pointed off to the side. And that helped.

But having gotten past that potential pit of depression, was the movie any good? Well, yes. The movie was well-crafted and, most clearly, well-acted. The girl that played Precious did a spectacular job; Mariah Carey did a better job than I ever expected her to; even Lenny Kravitz held up his role. Of course Mo'Nique, playing the despicable mother, was a standout. The film portrayed its time period and location tastefully and clearly.

I still don't want to see the movie again. But it was worth seeing it the once, and if it really is nominated for some Oscars, it'll probably deserve it more than half of its competition.

***

The Book of Eli: ** 3/4 (out of 4)

January is the supposed to be the Time Of Bad Movies, when the studios release the movies that, for whatever reasons, they didn't want to release during "real" movie seasons. I look forward to this; it's nice to go into movies with low expectations, especially after a season of "good" movies (and more especially after an unusually long run of movies that I actually liked; how can I have not hated any movies since Capitalism: A Love Story? Even Ninja Assassin wasn't that bad!). And so I have to admit that I was disappointed. The Book of Eli was well north of watch-able, and my gripes were primarily meta-contextual.

(One prominent exception: within the first few minutes a cat had been killed. Yes, this was done in order to provide context into the state of the world and show a general moral murkiness, and it was in no way glorified; but still, this is one of those lines that I don't like to see crossed, and I've stayed away from movies and stopped watching television shows for this offense in the past. So, if you're like me, you may want to skip this movie on general principle.)

The Book of Eli shows an especially bleak post-apocalyptic world. Civilization has collapsed, and humanity has been reduced to squabbling over the few remaining resources; water, especially, is somewhere between rare and non-existent. There are virtually no population centers left, and those that do remain are both ruled by warlords and supplied by incredibly scarce and remote water supplies. Even the ammunition has been used up, for the most part. And in this world there is a lone traveller, journeying west with a pack full of scavenged gear and trading supplies.

(Mind, most of this is told to us rather than shown. In fact, most of that which is shown doesn't match up very well with those spoken descriptions; but this is a standard problem with post-apocalyptic worlds. Still, those details that are shown to us tend to be nicely under-stated and meaningful: the interesting scavenged modern technologies, the concern over cannibalism, the different attitudes towards the apocalypse between the young and old. I didn't sweat it too much during the movie.)

Visually, the movie resembles Fallout 3. (This is a compliment; I've been a huge fan of the game series, and the visuals from the last game really were spectacular). As the lone traveller follows the ancient interstates, he comes across ruined bridges and spies on scavengers below. When he looks over the top of a hill, he comes across homes standing alone in a desolate valley. The ruined city looks to be about the same size as any Fallout 3 establishment, with the main interior building looking amazingly like the converted brothel that was the seat of slaver "government" in Paradise Falls. And so forth. It was striking, and it was appropriate.

The acting was probably better than it had to be, if perhaps a bit stereotype-heavy. Denzel Washington was The Good Guy, Gary Oldman was The Ambitious Bad Guy, and Mila Kunis was The Naive Girl; but they all offered fairly nuanced performances, to the best of their abilities. The characters themselves were slightly less interesting, but really, that's to be expected in this kind of movie.

And the script... well, it was really pretty good, at least until the very ending (which is probably best not over-contemplated). Things flowed in a very character-driven way, with plot points not often coming out of left field. Questions, once asked, were generally answered. The effort spent at building up the atmosphere really did pay off with something worth thinking about. And the action scenes (which were well done) fit into the story every time, which is no mean feat nowadays...

I was pleasantly surprised. I suspect that I'm not alone on that.

** 3/4. Probably would have been *** except for the whole cat thing.

(Oh, and those meta-contextual gripes? Well, this is the first time in a while that I've gone to a Friday early-evening show, and it was also the first time in a while that I had any gripes with my fellow patrons. Please don't tell me how fine Denzel is, ladies; and kid with the cell phone, stop texting during the climax! What is it with those kinds of showings that brings out the horrible manners?)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: *** (out of 4)

(Going in, I should note that I really, really don't want to offer spoilers on this movie. What made the movie fun for me was a) the art and b) the lack of fore-knowledge of the plot and characters. While I can wax ecstatic about the former with relative safety, the latter requires more discipline than usual. As such, I don't intend to refer to anything even close to the plot itself. I might touch on the characters, or perhaps some themes.)

For all of the positive ways that I can describe my nuclear family, "artistic" is not one of them. On my father's side, all of that family artistic skill ended up with my Uncle Bil. I grew up with his art on my home's walls, from portraits to sketches to photo-realistic still-life (a few of which I got to take with me to my current home). Most influential were the video games - he worked for Sierra On-Line for much of its glory days, and did background art for the King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry series, amongst others. But once that phase was over, he went back to his painting. His style has changed over the years, sometimes more traditional and sometimes more trippy, but it's always been recognizably his, and I've always been fond and proud of it.

My Uncle Bil also reminds me of Terry Gilliam.

Certainly, part of this is the physical resemblance. My Uncle's hair and beard are a bit more red, but past that... well, when I watched the last Monty Python special, the similarities were striking. This coincidence encouraged me to contrast their visual styles, and somehow, I began to see some similarities. The artistic subjects, the broad light-vs-dark motifs, the massive enjoyment of the female form - they matched up, at least a bit. Perhaps none of this would get past an art student's critical eye, but it's enough for me. And besides, I've been enjoying Gilliam's art since I was a kid too.

But The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus did something I didn't expect. Through its story of a man whose art has been left behind by the world, it encouraged me to look past the art and into the artist. This was essentially a meta-auto-biography, and not a fully flattering one.

Without getting into specifics, the movie told the story of the difficulty Gilliam had in getting his film made (well, closer to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote than Parnassus, really). Part of this was that the world has moved on from his style (I miss you, Monty Python!). But more worrisome was how the world kept on throwing up obstacles to hide the art away, most prominently through the death of Heath Ledger. But his perseverance eventually got the work out there, wars and all, and into an unforgiving, unappreciative world.

And yet, it was beautiful nonetheless.

The characters were, perhaps, sketches. The designs may have less satisfying in CGI than they would have been in his signature paper cut-out style of yore. The ending may have been ambiguous. And, overall, the compromises that had to be made to get the movie out in the first place may have been more apparent then I really wanted them to be. But nevertheless, this was a strong movie, made by a talented man that, while he may have slowed down over the decades, is as singular and artistic as ever. And just as I respect that in my Uncle, I respect that in Gilliam.

***

Sherlock Holmes (2009): ** 1/2 (out of 4)

The trailer for Sherlock Holmes was one of the worst short pieces of video that I had ever seen. Its fundamental flaw was playing up the Victorian/Modern juxtaposition - fistfights! firearms! explosions! tasers! - without allowing enough context to actually make that interesting. Instead, the viewer got the (strong) impression that they were just throwing a bunch of stuff at the screen, and looking to see what stuck with the audience. The only hope I had for the movie was that most of those scenes would be left out by the director because... well, I'm not sure. It's not like I'm the target audience...

Anyway, none of it was left out. But in context, it worked out a whole lot better than the trailers had led me to believe. It still wasn't good, but it was worth watching, and certainly it was fun. And that's a start.

That said, what I really want to talk about is the Sherlock Holmes elements.

Many of the objections that I had to the trailer were, fundamentally, problems with the idea of mixing certain concepts into the character of Holmes. Since when is physical violence a strong element of the Master Detective's repertoire? Well, the answer is "since Guy Ritchie took over". It worked in the context of his direction style, it worked in the context of the actors chosen (who did a fine job), and it worked in the context of a need to still overshadow Watson in a newly action-y pairing. The violence became part of the point, and that turned out to be okay, if not great.

On the other hand, where did this fit into the mythos? Without getting into spoilers, this seemed to occur both early in Holmes' career (based on characters met), and after the stories (based on Watson's moving out and on with his life). While they were certainly going for a new mythos - something that they could make a franchise out of - it was still a bit confusing for this casual acquaintance of the original stories. I would have preferred one or the other.

And the story... was kindof Holmes-y. There were the right number of "supernatural" elements. The deductive work was pretty reasonable. The mysteries weren't, for the most part, cheats, which is a good sign. And while the story may have been a little bit more momentous than perhaps necessary, it was still something that could mostly have fit in. Mostly.

Anyway. I feel like I'm rambling, because that's how I felt coming out of the movie. I didn't feel ripped-off; that's good enough sometimes.

** 1/2