All Over Now

If you felt at least somewhat satisfied or soothed by the last two dud Star Wars films…
That is, if rock-like dialogue, mummified performances, crazy-beehive CG action scenes and a general skewing to a twelve year-old mentality hasn’t presented too much of a problem, Star Wars: Episode 3 — Revenge of the Sith probably won’t feel like too much of a burn.
For this sixth and final Star Wars feature, franchise creator and originator George Lucas hasn’t come up with any fresh surges or inspirations.

Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman in Star Wars: Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith.

Here he is taking his Last Big Shot, and he just can’t break through the restraints of his conservative instincts and modest writing-and-directing abilities.
For a lot of people out there, this will be good enough (among them my former boss Kevin Smith, who raved after seeing it last week) and it’s okay with me. You know…whatever.
The fact of what Revenge of the Sith is….the big finale of a six-part sci-fi adventure saga that began 28 years ago…delivering the Big Payoff in fulfilling a tale foretold in The Empire Strikes and Return of the Jedi…depicting at long last the beat-by-beat of Annakin Skywalker’s final descent into the fires of anger and ego, leading to his transformation into the malevolent Darth Vader…can’t help but bring a certain satisfaction.
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And it kind of does. Sort of. But oooh, man…the stuff you have to sit through. Roughly two hours and 15 minutes worth, not counting the end credits.
Which not that many people stayed for, by the way, at Thursday afternoon’s all-media screening at Manhattan’s Zeigfeld Theatre. (Which started 40 minutes late, by the way…incredible.) An awful lot of people got up and bolted as soon as the words “directed by George Lucas” hit the screen.
I wasn’t feeling much of a current in the room, frankly. There were a couple of woo-hoo! moments involving Yoda, and maybe one other. Every now and then an especially awful line was laughed at. The biggest hoot was in response to a line spoken at the very end by poor Jimmy Smits, about how he and his wife have always….whoops, forgot. No spoilers.

The immaculate CG delivers the usual eye-candy splendor, as usual, but c’mon…this is another woefully stiff, broomstick-up-the-butt sci-fi soap opera with the actors clearly suffering from having to mouth George Lucas’s hokey dialogue, and the only relief coming from the frantically busy visuals and the numerous action scenes.
These are more or less the same things that people were complaining about with The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, right?
Sith is not a flat-out disappointment, but for anyone looking for that Big Uptick, for that sense of profound fulfillment and emotional finality with everything falling into place with and the meaning of it all….jeez, enough with the verbose pussyfooting. As the output of George Lucas goes, this is a somewhat grander, slightly more emotional, probably more necessary-to-see piece of shit.
The trades are already out with their reviews, and I’m presuming the dailies will run early-bird reviews (as they did with Phantom Menace and Clones), and David Poland went up last night with a reaction, so it seems fair to run something now as long as I don’t spoil.
Sith is critic-proof and certain to whup box-office ass, so what difference does it make what anyone says now or next week or the day before it opens (May 19th)?
The problem…the menace…is George Lucas, the big Star Wars Kahuna over the last 30 years who unfortunately insisted writing (with the help of polishers) and directing the three prequels.

It wasn’t his determination to make the Star Wars play like Saturday-matinee serials that messed things up, but his inability to make the dialogue (even with alleged ghost-writer Tom Stoppard doing polishes) feel the least bit alive or angular in any way, or direct his actors in a way that doesn’t feel like showroom furniture arrangement.
Not to mention Lucas’s catastrophic decision to cast Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen as the two Annakin Skywalkers.
I’m not even sure the visuals are all that great, really. For all the ambitious design and detail and organic-looking textures, it basically belongs to the video-game world. All the fervor and inspiration that comes from having lots and lots of money to spend on complicated digital effects is relentlessly on view.
Remember those creaky old action sequences in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back when, say, three or four Empire star-fighters were chasing the Millenium Falcon here and there? Now we have scenes with hundreds of different vessels roaming around and blasting each other willy-nilly.
The idea seems to be that more is more. Over and over we’re shown this and that variation of a galactic traffic jam, and I don’t understand why Lucas and his ILM flunkies think that visual busy-ness and chaos in the skies is so cool.
Star Wars: Episode 3 — Revenge of the Sith is a prisoner- of-war movie. It’s about war (or, according to the narration crawl at the very beginning, “War!”) and the actors are prisoners in it. Jailed by George Lucas’s down-on-your-knees dreadful dialogue, and being well paid for their trouble.

Samuel L. Jackson has spoken in interviews about his character, Mace Windu, meeting his end in this film, so I don’t think this counts as a spoiler. I felt relief for the poor guy when he finally checked out. I thought to myself, “He’s free”…because he looked so miserable when alive.
There are two performances from Ian McDiarmid as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine — one very good, one excessive. He’s much better at being insinuating and diplomatic in the first half…before his character goes through a certain evolution and Lucas tells him to pull out the stops.
Natalie Portman, who seems to be suffering as much as Jackson, has a childbirth scene at the end. (C’mon…everyone knows she’s the mother of Luke and Leia.) I think it’s fair to call this scene the most unrealistic and unconvincing childbirth scene in cinema history.
There’s a scene in which a certain warrior gets his head cut off, but Lucas chickens out and doesn’t show the head rolling across the floor. I understand wanting a PG or PG-13 rating and all, but why write a beheading scene in the first place if you don’t intend to show it?
(On the other hand, Lucas was right not to show a scene in which a bunch of kids get light-sabered to death. This scene has been spoiled all over the place, by the way, so don’t yell at me.)
Just before the climactic battle between the Sith and the Jedi begins at the beginning of Act Three, there’s an order given to the Empire troops by a certain evildoer to commence “attack plan 66” (or something very close to that). I guess Lucas decided to leave off the third “6” because he didn’t want the allusion to seem too obvious.

Don’t get taken in by those clips and stills of a wookie army. Lucas has given Chewbacca the shaft in this film. He and his brethren are barely in it.
Some will be calling this the best of the prequels. Okay, maybe…but that’s not saying much.
There will be others calling this the most emotional of all six films. It is that, I suppose, but I didn’t feel all that much. And it’s not like I can’t feel anything from these films.
I don’t think the light-saber duels mean very much any more. They’re inventively staged here, but they’re just light-saber duels. They’ve burned themselves out.
Just because a franchise continues to sell tickets and merchandise doesn’t mean it’s not over. Just think…no more new Star Wars features from here on, and that’s probably for the best. It’s all going to TV next. Good move.

Stiff

“I think you can’t trust trailers any more. I think we’re all falling prey to the cutting, which can be very manipulative and often extremely false. You may remember that the Phantom Menace trailer made it look like it was on the level of the previous films, possibly even The Empire Strikes Back.
“I think Revenge of the Sith does look better than the last two pieces of shit Lucas put out but there is one warning sign that I picked up on: the dialogue scenes.
“Once again it looks boring and talky. And every line of dialogue is delivered with two people standing side by side. None of the dialogue is taking place during a real scene of any kind. Just two people standing around.
“This is exactly the horrible template Lucas used in the past two films. Some action scenes interspersed with a bunch of boring, lame after-school-special quality dialogue.
“Like you, I’m buying into the marketing and the hype but mostly the hope. I hope to God it doesn’t suck.” — Rich Elvers

Funny

Chicago Tribune writer Mark Caro ran the following interview piece about the link between Ben Affleck, Darth Vader and Revenge of the Sith in May 5. I’m rushing for a train so I can’t take the time to provide a link — I’ll put it in later today.
The article is called “Dark Lords: Anakin, Affleck”:
“For those who griped that the Star Wars movies have been too kiddie, here comes Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith.
“The flick will be the first PG-13 movie of the series, and not only features Anakin Skywalker’s bloody mutilation, but also (SPOILER ALERT!) his taking a light saber to the junior Jedis in training. It happens off-camera, though.
“Chatting Wednesday at George Lucas’ scenic Skywalker Ranch north of San Francisco, where the movie was unveiled to journalists the previous night, producer Rick McCallum came up with an interesting analogy for Anakin’s actions.

“Q. Do you think some audiences are going to have a problem with Anakin mowing down a bunch of kids?
“A: He has to kill those kids because that’s the only way he can get that power to be able to eventually work with Palpatine [the dark lord] to figure out a way to save his wife.
“He does it for kind of the right reasons, but if you put it in perspective, I always think of it as like watching Ben Affleck and Matt [Damon]. They wrote this thing [Good Will Hunting], they have this background together, they grew up together, they’re best friends, and they’re two totally different human beings right now. One is laid back, cool, does his work, works as best as he can, tries to be a good actor. The other one has taken the Dark Side, the dark route. It’s just amazing.
“Q: Because Ben Affleck has embraced the whole celebrity aspect?
“A: Yeah, the power thing.
“Q: He hasn’t killed little kids, though.
“A: No, but, can we take this out of [real] Ben? Take the hypothetical Ben in three or four years…career down the slide…and he’s given a choice to be able to resurrect his career, which is probably the most important thing to him, the fame aspect of it. Would he do anything? Who knows?”

Rednecks

Crash (Lion’s Gate, 5.6) is worth your attention and respect. It’s one of those films that has the Big Picture on its mind. It isn’t preachy or assaultive (not to my mind anyway), but it damn sure swings for the fences.
Directed and co-written by Paul Haggis (who also adapted Million Dollar Baby), it’s a realistic, nicely sculpted, multi-character thing about racism. L.A. racism, to put a fine point on it, but folks in other regions will relate.

Larenz Tate, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges in Paul Haggis’s Crash.

It’s not a flip or cynical film, but mulling it over made me think of Randy Newman’s “Rednecks”. The chorus of this song and what Crash is saying fit together on a certain level.
Crash is one of those multi-character, criss-crossing fate movies that most of us associate with Robert Altman (Nashville, Short Cuts , Gosford Park) or Alan Rudolph (Choose Me, Welcome to L.A.). But it’s tighter and more disciplined that Altman’s usual stuff.
The closest comparison I can think of is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, and I hope I haven’t scared anyone off by saying that.
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Crash is also about rage and mistrust and bad tempers and fatigue, but it plays in a different key. The script, by Haggis and Bobby Moresco, is very intricate and well developed, and eventually (during the last third) it starts to feel like something really sharp and extra.
There are no weak or so-so performances in Crash, and it has some ace-level ones given by Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, Terrence Howard, Ryan Phillipe (best thing he’s ever done), Larenz Tate, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Sandra Bullock and Matt Dillon.

Ryan Phillipe as a conflicted police offer…his career best so far

One of the things I really liked about Haggis and Moresco’s script is that no character is seen as just one color or tendency. People are misread and mistaken for people they’re not all through it, and they all go through these little epihanies.
Matt Dillon’s character, an L.A. patrol cop whose racist attitudes are so belligerent and sulfuric he feels like a throwback to the L.A. Confidential era, is the most offensive, but even he turns out to have traces of heroism and compassion.
Crash is broad-minded enough to even acknowledge that some racial attitudes are semi-justified, or at least understandable.
New Yorker critic David Denby said that Crash “is the first movie I know of to acknowledge not only that the intolerant are also human but, further, that something like white fear of black street crime, or black fear of white cops, isn’t always irrational.”
Here’s an interesting Geoff Pevere interview with Haggis that will bring you up to snuff on the genesis of it.

Thandie Newton, playing the wife of a successful Hollywood director (Terrence Howard) and grappling with rage and humiliation at the hands of a racist cop.

After you’ve seen a movie like Crash you know you’ve seen something. I’ve seen it twice now, and it got me thinking about who I really am, deep down, in terms of racial attitudes.
I’ve never thought of myself as a racist, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being race-conscious. I’m merely saying that I notice stuff — traits, behavior, physical characteristics — that are specific to this or that racial-cultural crew. Is that so terrible? Talk to Paul Theroux about this.
Middle-aged white people from the Midwest, for example, not only look like a very culturally specific bunch but they behave and dress in a very specific oddball way. Their bodies are a bit softer and rounder, they have appalling taste in travel attire, and they always look slightly cowed.
It’s always a fascinating game for me in European airports to try and spot which travelers are French, English, American, German or Italian.
When you’re walking around the Dallas Ft. Worth airport there’s no missing the genetic differences between the natives (who come from Irish and Scottish ancestry) and the folks you’ll see in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago.

And anyone can spot in a second the multi-ethnic stew (old-school Italian, Irish, African-American, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Russian, Indian, etc.) that is New York City when you’re walking through JFK or La Guardia.
I’m not being completely honest. Between the lines of my airport observations, occasional racist thoughts — call them flashes or spasms — pop through from time to time. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s true.
Jeez, I’ve written myself into a box here. I’m just trying to be frank and I’m sounding like Rod Steiger in In The Heat of the Night.
Maybe if I go even deeper I can dig myself out. This is a totally true story that happened to a friend in late ’94. In fact, now that I think about it, it could have been worked into Crash.
It involves alcoholism and reckless behavior, but the guy is over this problem now and I know he’s proud of that.
The guy is coming back from a party and half in the bag. Not blind drunk but definitely impaired. He’s on Sunset near Crescent Heights, and the car in front of him stops dead and he bangs into the car’s rear bumper. Nothing heavy, but there’s been some minor damage and insurance cards need to be exchanged.

Matt Dillon.

Two African American women get out. He says “hey” in a relaxed way, and both parties agree to pull over to the side and sort things out, so the guy gets back in his car and then starts thinking, “Wait a minute.” He’s just been in another alcohol-related car accident (which the cops never heard about, luckily for him) and he doesn’t want to submit another report to the insurance company so soon after the last banger.
Being the mature, level-headed, shake-hands-with-reality type of dude he was at the time, the guy peels out and takes a sharp left and takes off down Sunset. I can lose these guys, he figures. But they peel right out and hit the gas and are right on his ass. He drives faster and faster…no change. He panics and starts to really break the traffic laws but he can’t shake them.
After about five minutes of this, he gives up and pulls over into an empty parking lot, and the women pull up next to him…freaked.
They’re hysterical with rage, outrage, fear and everything else. One of them pulls out her cell and calls the cops. The guy tells them he’s really sorry and doesn’t know why he gave into the idiotic impulse to run away and is trying to calm them down and talk things out, but the women are volcanoes and they want him nailed but good.
A cop car pulls up a few minutes later. The guy is cool with the fuzz, telling them he’s been a jerk and that he apologizes and wants to settle things, and the women are losing it — so angry and hysterical they’re close to crying, saying “he ran off!” and “you’ve got to arrest him!” and so on.

And guess what? The cops side with the guy. Because he’s calm and the woman are so over-the-top emotional and…
They make sure the women and the guy exchange phone numbers and whatnot, and then they tell the women to calm down and chill and they’ll take care of this guy. After the women are gone they tell my friend to lock his car and walk home because they can tell he’s had a few. And then one of them says, “Don’t ever say the L.A. police never cut anyone a break.”
This happened sometime around the O.J. Simpson trial — make of this what you will.
The guy is overwhelmed with affection for these two emissaries of the law. He can’t believe they let him walk. But they did because they didn’t like those two women. My friend rejoices at the racism behind this. He feels scared and shaken up, but strangely filled with hope. He loves L.A.!
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks. We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground. We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks. We’re keeping the niggahs down.

Surprise

I went to the House of Wax all-media on Monday night, more or less expecting to hate it. I thought I might get some material for a nice rip piece. But it’s not that bad for a throwaway slasher film. It’s reasonably decent — jolting, suspenseful, inventive.
The producer, Joel Silver, sometimes hires faceless MTV hotshots to direct his second-tier movies, and Jaume Collet-Serra, an MTV guy originally from Barcelona, clearly fits the bill, but he obviously knows what he’s doing and shows some real visual flair in the third act.
Collet-Serra could follow up on this and — who knows? — make himself into the next Antoine Fuqua.

It’s a lot wilder and bloodier than the 1953 House of Wax, a 3-D horror film with Vincent Price and Carolyn Jones. There are two significant links between them — i.e., the existence of a wax museum and a hard-core technique used to create life-like human sculptures.
House of Wax is a hodgepodge of every city slickers-visit-the-hinterlands shocker flick you’ve ever seen, from Psycho to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Deliverance to Last House on the Left, with a little taste of Brian DePalma’s Sisters.
Visually, Collet-Saura and Silver have really gone to town with the wax thing. The film is covered with the stuff…sprayed with it.
The guy who pops through is Chad Michael Murray (WB’s One Tree Hill). He plays the bad-ass brother of Elisha Cuthbert’s female lead — a guy who takes no lip and has aggression problems, etc. But it’s very satisfying when these anti-social impulses come into play against the villains of the piece, and you’re left thinking that it’s not so bad to have a bad-ass malcontent around when the going gets rough.
Wolf Creek, an Australian-made horror film I saw at last January’s Sundance Film Festival (and will apparently open later this year via Dimension) is still a better thing. Grittier, tastier, more original.

Chad Michael Murray, Elisha Cuthbert in House of Wax.

I also went to Wax because I wanted to enjoy Paris Hilton being killed. Isn’t that a pretty strong motivation all around? A Warner Bros. publicist was wearing one of those “See Paris Die” T-shirts at the door. And people in the audience did titter a bit when she got it. But not me.
I felt…could it be pity? Compassion? All I know is, she’s not that bad an actress — the word is inoffensive — and I don’t hate her any more. This sounds absurd, I realize, but her acting feels natural and unaffected. She doesn’t force it.
Theoretical question: if you throw a piece of sharp pipe at a person’s head (like a javelin or something), how likely is it that it will go right into their head and come out the other side? I’m not sure this would happen if you threw an arrow-shaped lead pipe at a really rotten, gutted pumpkin.
Complaint: Jared Padalecki, the guy who plays Cuthbert’s boyfriend, is way too big for her. He’s a foot and a half taller. Next to her he looks like a Wookie. [Note: Sorry for getting mis-identifying Padalecki earlier.]

Rising Intrigue

I am a Determined Detractor of George Lucas and the Star Wars prequels. I have said this over and over, but I am a hater because, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far way, I was a lover of The Empire Strikes Back, the best film in the series.
I feel Lucas has shamed the franchise over the last 22 years (since the release of Return of the Jedi) by not even trying to measure up to Empire.
And also because I hated Jake Lloyd in The Phantom Menace. And because those memories of Jar-Jar Binks will never go away. And because I despise Hayden Christensen’s Toronto accent and those awful vowel sounds. I remember an especially irritating delivery of a line (spoken to Natalie Portman) in Attack of the Clones: “I need haahllp!”

Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman in Star Wars: Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith.

But I have to say (and I feel like a schmuck saying this because you can’t trust trailers) that the trailer or music video or whatever it is makes Star Wars: Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith (20th Century Fox, 5.19) look half decent.
I’m seeing Sith at Manhattan’s Ziegfeld on Thursday night. I have to admit that I’m feeling jazzed about this. Pretty much everyone is.
Sith is George’s last shot at restoring his reputation. If he fails with this final installment, his name as will be marginalized forever as a filmmaker who got it right with THX 1138, American Graffiti and Star Wars…and then went bad and corporate in his imaginings.
But if he succeeds…

Talk

There’s a commentary piece by Wendell Wittler in the current Newsweek listing the most memorable Star Wars moments.
His favorite Star Wars line is Harrison Ford’s “I know” to Carrie Fisher’s “I love you!” in Empire. Mine too.
My second favorite line is Ford saying to Fisher, “You like me because I’m a scoundrel.”

My third favorite line (and I realize this makes no sense at all, and I can’t even think up a good nonsensical reason right now to justify it right now) is also from The Empire Strikes Back and also spoken by Ford. It comes in the opening minutes. Han Solo is pissed at Chewbacca for letting go with one of his wookie laugh-growls at an inappropriate moment and he says…
“Laugh it up, fuzzball.” This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever copped to in this column, but I love this stupid-ass line.
I also love the sound of James Earl Jones’ electronically synthesized voice as he looks down at Solo’s carbon-frozen body and says, “Well, Kalrissian, did he survive?”
And like everyone else in the fanboy universe, I love the beautiful delivery that Jones gives to the immortal line, “No…I am your father.”
See what I mean? Empire lines, all.

Sez Who?

“When Attack of the Clones came out you posted what you thought were obvious spoilers, yet they were still spoilers. Can we have a spoiler warning this time, no matter how trivial, for the Last Lucas-directed Star Wars movie ever…please?
“Hayden’s Toronto accent doesn’t sound any better in the new trailer.
“Take this with a grain of salt, but my talent manager and an old buddy of mine from USC heard from some vp at FOX (my gut says it’s the same guy — my friend and manager don’t know each other) that the movie is terrible.
“The Fox guy also said that the people working on it couldn’t wait for it to be over.
“That said, neither friend buys this after seeing the new trailers.” — Name Withheld for Strategic Reasons