Weeping's Movie Board Version 2.0

[Weeping_Guitar]

You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villiany.

[Weeping_Guitar]

Troy (*** / ****)

Troy begs to harkens back to the pure spectacle that epics used to be. It wants to be as legendary as the characters it portrays and the stories it tells. For the most part succeeds in mixing that larger than life feel, corny heroic lines, and legendary heroes in tales of honor, valor, and immortality, but seems to lack the mythic feel that makes so many others timeless and sweeping.

Helen of Troy was "the face that could launch a thousand ships" we were told and one of history's great wars was fought over her beauty. Or so it goes, though this story has little to do with her rather than it's two great warriors: the great Achilles of Greece (Pitt) and Hector of Troy (Bana), whose brother stole Helen away from Menelaus who rules Greece along with his brother Agamemnon. This is the excuse that Agamemnon has been waiting for to invade Troy and he launches the greatest fleet to Troy with his whole army including the great Achilles. I haven't read Homer's work in quite some time so I can't argue it's historical accuracies but the story present is engaging even if a bit episodic and long (or too short). There's almost too much in the story to fit into a film, but at the same time you could want it trimmed down even more to find a really tight and straight story within.

For an epic the film is quite personal. We explore the two sides rather evenly by looking at their battlefield leaders. Achilles is a rebel and uncontrollable, but so good that he's essential to taking the city of Troy. He fights not for Greece but for honor with the Gods and eventual immortality. Pitt's pretty look seems a bit miscast, but I was surprisingly taken by his performance. He seems out of place, but over the film I was sold on his character and performance. His physicality helped sell his character and the more we learned of him the more I liked him. Hector of Troy is an honorable and valiant man. He knows all too well the horrors of war but fights them nonetheless. He knows if he doesn't do it he can't rely on his prissy brother who got them into this mess to begin with. Eric Bana's performance may be the best of the film and he is able to master the epic type performance without going over the top, which is what happened to Brian Cox who chewed more scenery than Heston could ever wish to.

Troy isn't the classic epic we hoped for, but it's far from a muddled or brainless mess that becomes the fate of too many films. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it. It's never consistently thrilling, but there are sections like the Achilles/Hector fight and it's aftermath that capture the poetic and classic nature of the story. Here Peter O'Toole's Priam, King of Troy, makes his biggest impact and age the grace that made him a star in the greatest epic ever, Lawrence of Arabia, are there to remind us how it can be done.

[Mary]

Yay weeping!! I'm so glad you put this board back. I was wanting to start a movie board myself as soon as I found this place but I figured that honor belonged to you And thanks for the Troy review! I will probably go see it, enough of my female friends and gay male friends think Brad Pitt looks hot in the trailers that I can probably find someone to join me.... !! By the way have you watched Chinatown yet?

...so on another note, we just got totally stoned and watched Rosemary's Baby. Fucking stupidest idea ever. The conception scene scared the living crap out of me and I've see that movie like 20 times.

Sheer briliance though. There's not a single shot, a single set, or a single line that isn't brilliantly conceived. I hope it one some kind of cinematography award because it's just ridiculously beautiful to look at throughout. And that scene when Rosemary does the anagrams with the scrabble pieces is classic. Gives me chills every time.

Cheers,
M

[riley]

Weeps, I saw Troy last night and I think you're pretty spot on. I always approach flicks like this with what I hope is the right head space and it usually means I'm able to enjoy them far more.

I think given the historical nature of the tale, the epic factor was proportinate.

She might not have been the ultimate theme of the movie, but whoever the actress was who played Helen was really hot.

[someone]

I didn't post on your board on rs, weeping, cause I didn't know about it, and cause I'm still bitter you won fantasy football and not me.

But I saw Troy last nite.

And I read the Illiad.

Troy is more boring than Homer. It's true.

But I do agree Eric Bana's Hector was beautifully portrayed.

Brad Pitt? Well, at least he's pretty.

[Weeping_Guitar]

Mary, I did watch Chinatown last weekend, but it was like half at one time and then the other half another so I want to watch it again before I come to a certain conclusion. I enjoyed it, of course, but I'm not sure yet if it's as classic as some feel it is. Most say it only gets better the more you watch so I'm excited about that.

[rockkid]

Good morning Weeping. Hope you don’t mind if I post reviews here.
rk popcorns are TM’d.
Watched “The Cooler” last night. As I recall both Baldwin & Macy were up for awards with this one & they should have got them!
Macy is fantastically down trodden. He hasn’t stole his scenes like this since Fargo.
Baldwin is a master at slime (I’ll not give away the last ditch redeeming quality)
This puppies gritty.
Macy partially nude!! Yup it’s about what you’d expect the mental picture to be but totally non gratuitous.
A vicious little movie well worth watching. 5 full rockkid popcorns!

No desire to see Troy at this point. For me it’s the Pitt turn off factor.
I literally can’t stand the man.
Perhaps on rental, who knows.

[Meursault]

anyone seen the preview for the new Jet Li movie, looks pretty grand. I'm looking forward to seeing it. the cinematography looks really well done.

[strat-0]

I'm interested in checking out both "Troy" and "Cooler" now. I'll have to brush up on my mythology first for "Troy"; it's been quite a while.

Haven't heard about "Chinatown" - is this a remake of the classic Nicholson film? It would be hard to improve on that. ...Baaad for the glaaas...

[Mary]

Most say it only gets better the more you watch so I'm excited about that.

This is definitely true. The plot of Chinatown is so intricate, and there are so many interacting subplots, that multiple viewings definitely cast into relief how brilliantly the whole thing hangs together. It also gives you a chance to appreciate some of the stunning characterizations - John Huston's utterly brilliant take on the unthinkably malevolent Noah Cross is far more creepy and skin-crawling when you see it in the context of already knowing how the movie is going to end. And the way the scriptwriter (Robert Towne) and Polanski fuck with ordinary noir expectations about femmes fatales also seems more and more brilliant the more you watch the movie and see how perfectly Faye Dunaway plays Evelyn Mulwray. But what's ultimately shocking about the movie is how unrelentingly bleak its view of corruption is - it may well be the most pessimistic noir ever filmed, all the while without feeling like you're watching a miserably downbeat art flick or anything. It's just that the layers and layers of corruption and secrecy are utterly overwhelming in the film, and the pessimism lies in the fact that the closer and closer Jack Nicholson gets to what he thinks is the solution to the case and a way out for Evelyn, the more he traps them, the deeper he digs their hole. Listen closely in the movie for how the idea of "Chinatown" itself, as invoked by the characters, works metaphorically for the condition of corruption anywhere, especially in the human soul itself.

So for example, when Evelyn asks Jake what he used to do, he said he worked in Chinatown, where he did "as little as possible" - and she says something like "the DA gives you that kind of advice??" and he says "in Chinatown, they do" - the idea being that the more you do in a place like Chinatown, the worse you make things, uninentionally. The despair at the movie's core lies in the revelation that Jake never really got out of Chinatown, that none of us ever really do - Chinatown is everywhere and most importantly it's inside of all of us. If you're a fan of the old noirs at all, you can't help but find the way the movie evokes this utterly pessimistic message absolutely bone-chillingly brilliant.

The movie is also fascinating for L.A. history buffs. Obviously it's fictionalized, but it's very much based on authentic L.A. history. It's absolutely true, of course, that Los Angeles is basically a desert. When its population started to skyrocket in the early 20th century, it ran into precisely the problem that forms the backdrop of the movie: there wasn't a sufficient local water supply for such a rapidly growing urban space. The man assigned to solve this task was a Mr. William Mulholland (Mulholland/Mulwray... and yes, Mulholland Drive is named after this fellow) - who travelled far and wide to find a place from which to ship water into Los Angeles. He found Owens Valley, which was an elegant solution because it was on the edge of the High Sierras and water could flow to L.A. from there by simple force of gravity - an easy engineering solution. Just as you see in the movie, the farmers in Owens Valley protested and were ignored by the city (their livelihoods were utterly destroyed, sacrificed at the altar of the growing metropolis - and as in the movie, they were by and large Mexican immigrants. The protest reached crisis proportions eventually, as the farmers engaged in sabotage and violence to try and protect their livelihoods)

Second, also as in the movie, this is also where you got classic clandestine big city corruption - those in the know, in the administration of the city, promptly began buying up vast swaths of land in the San Fernando Valley, because they had advance knowledge that Mulholland's aqueduct was going to run through it. Before the aqueduct the land wasn't worth much of anything, so they bought acres and acres at ultra-cheap prices, buying out the local residents for peanuts, destroying their livelihoods, getting rich off it, and never compensating them in any way. The expansion of L.A. occurred primarily through this water plan - the city just kept buying land outside of its original borders. The movie is also brilliant here, in how it manages to dramatize an incredibly complex, hard-to-follow moment in the history of urban corruption - how it manages to be an exciting detective movie about water and power and urban planning, of all things! When Noah Cross says "either you bring the water to L.A., or you bring L.A. to the water" he is referring precisely to this history, to L.A.'s real history. God, it's brilliant.

Well this post is reaching novel proportions once again, so I'll shut up... but as you can see I could talk about why
Chinatown is brilliant all day.

Cheers,
M

[Kensterberg]

This is such good news ... I've been watching the original Tim Burton's Batman today, and wanted to say a couple of things ...

First up ... this is THE best "superhero"/comic book adaption ever put on film. Michael Keaton's performance is absolutely iconic, and Jack puts on one heck of a show as the Joker. I hadn't seen the entire film (opening credits to closing credits) since the original release back in '89 or so, and it absolutely lived up to my memories. Just a remarkable achievement.

I'm no more excited to see Troy than I was when the RS.com boards went down, but I do have my TiVo set to record some six hours of shows on the historic Troy/Bronze Age Agean period! Now THAT is something I'm excited about!


Great to see this board back ... thanks for letting me know about it, Mary!

[strat-0]

Ah, so it's the original Chinatown you're talking about. I concur with Mary's post entirely.

[Weeping_Guitar]

Is it just me or is as if Mary has been dying to let go her Chinatown discussion. Must she make us all feel so inadequate? Of course the ending is just stunningly bitter, even though we should have known better. I guess Polanski demanded they have that ending, which now only seems appropriate. One thing that caught my eye and is noticed by a lot of people is that breaks the noir tradition with darkness and much of it is quite bright, but if I remember right darkens a bit over the film as Jake learns more and more. I think my favorite aspect was that Jake interpreted his evidence right, but still didn't really know the whole picture; there's your perfectly laid out complication of a plot, which makes it classical noir.

I was watching Batman on Sci-Fi as well today, Ken, as I ate lunch. I still think X-Men 2 is the best comic/super-hero film ever, but I can't really argue against Batman.

[Weeping_Guitar]

Meursault said:

anyone seen the preview for the new Jet Li movie, looks pretty grand. I'm looking forward to seeing it. the cinematography looks really well done.

Shane, are you thinking of that Hero film? If so I saw that preview before Kill Bill Vol. 2 and thought it looked like total and absolute crap.

[Kensterberg]

Weeping --

I loved X Men 2, and it may just be the most fun comic-book adaption, but Batman is the total package. And the fact that it was done at a time when absolutely nobody had made a really good comic film before this gives it some extra points in my book. Keaton's performance is absolutely perfect, I tell ya, PERFECT!