Review: "See No Evil"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

*1/2 stars (out of four)
100 minutes, Now Showing

If Vince McMahon is going to persist in his delusion that his success in wrestling is going to automatically be transferable to success in film production, my first suggestion would be to find someone else to write the scripts. Dan Madigan, the "writer" of the first WWE Films project, "See No Evil," has no previous credits listed on IMDB.com, save for being a writer of WWE SmackDown (exclamation point optional). And his first foray into feature film "writing" reflects an astounding lack of imagination, originality, character or even simple craft.

I do not ask a lot of my moviegoing experiences, really. What I want, first and foremost, is that the filmmakers demonstrate at some level that they actually cared about the project. Not every film has to have memorable dialogue, great characters and original situations. But even one of those things can make an utterly mediocre movie into a decent one, or make a decent film a good one. "See No Evil" is an assembly line horror film, with utterly nothing that hasn't been seen, done, re-done and re-re-done a thousand times before. It is not scary, it is not original, it is not even memorably violent for horror fans with a taste for such things. Everything in it is utterly without value.

The plot is as simple as it could be while still allowing Dan Madigan to earn a credit for "writing" it. A cop and his partner respond to a distress call in a run-down house and are assaulted by a hulking maniac with an axe. (No prizes for guessing that WWE wrestler Kane is the hulking maniac.) One of them killed, the other has his hand cut off, but then seemingly shoots the killer through the head, but (da da) no body is found. Flash forward four years, the same now-handless cop is working with troubled youths and takes a group of them to a rundown hotel for the weekend to help renovate the place so it can become a homeless shelter. The hulking maniac in question lives in the top floors and picks everyone off one by one. Plus or minus a few details, there ya go.

The cop is basically the only individual in the film that generates an even remote level of individuality. The juvenile delinquents, the supposed "leads" of the movie, each have their names and crimes flashed on screen when their characters are introduced, and that's the extent of their character development. None of them is given anything noteworthy to say beyond smug profane outbursts and screams. They are all cardboard cutouts with bare-bones traits that in most cases will prove to be their oh-so-ironic undoing (the animal rights activist will be eaten by dogs, the pickpocket will be found because the cell phone she stole rings, etc.). We cannot make any judgments of the performing ability of any of them, because acting requires something to act.

Nor can we really make a judgment of Glen "Kane" Jacobs, the supposed star of the film. The role requires little more than lumbering around wielding an axe, a hook, a chain, and plucked out eyeballs, with a mild bit of pathos thrown in toward the end (in a "plot twist" that is as obvious as the ridge on Kane's face). He plays his role just fine, I guess, but then no talent is necessary to play it. It's readily apparent that this movie is designed with creating a franchise for him in mind, but compared to the screen presence and inherent charisma of The Rock, Kane's future is shaky.

The look of the film is not bad, I suppose. The interiors of the hotel have a worn down, potentially creepy feel, but all look invariably more like a movie set rather than an actual location. The editing has a bunch of jump cuts and flash frames, like the opening of "Seven," only for the whole movie. The director, Gregory Dark, has extensive experience in music videos, apparently, as his previous credits include work with Xzibit and Britney Spears, so he has at least some nominal flair for visuals. There may be hope - David Fincher came from music videos, too, and his first project was Alien3.

I must correct myself slightly. I said earlier that the film was not at all original. I must admit that this is the first film I can recall to end with a shot of a dog urinating into an empty eye socket. I'm sure Paul Haggis is just slapping his forehead with his palm right now, wishing he had thought of that to close "Million Dollar Baby."

Review: "The Da Vinci Code"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

***1/2 stars (out of four)
148 minutes, Now Showing

One of the difficulties of reading a review of “The Da Vinci Code” is asking what aspect of the film the critic in question is reviewing. The movie brings so much baggage to the table before the opening credits even have rolled that it is difficult to discern at first what angle the reviewer might be taking in their comments. Did they read the book, and thus are analyzing it as an adaptation rather than on its own merits? Did they read the book and dislike it, and thus are negatively criticizing the story itself, outside of the work of the filmmakers? Is the reviewer of a religious bent, and thus criticizes the film for its attitude toward and theories about the church? Do they have a negative attitude toward the church, and thus praise the film based solely on those same attributes? Or do they simply review it as a movie?

I firmly believe that in this case complete disclosure is necessary for you, the reader, to properly receive and classify my opinions of the film, and decide if my views are necessarily valid for you as a moviegoer. I am a passionate agnostic, leaning toward atheist, who does not currently believe in God nor in Christ’s divinity. I am also one of the 40 million or so people who have read Dan Brown’s original novel, and I must confess, I found it fairly disappointing. It contains some interesting debate and discussion of some very hot button issues of faith, but as a story, its settings and events are contrived, its dialogue labored with the weight of the ideas it presents, and its climax, well, anti.

All of this, however, I tried to set aside as I began to view Ron Howard’s new movie based upon the novel, as I firmly believe that a film must, first and foremost, be evaluated as just that - a film. Beyond the baggage, how is it as a moviegoing experience? And I am glad I made that attempt, as the film version of “The Da Vinci Code” amounts to little short of a triumph. It takes what had seemed such a clunky and potentially unfilmable work as Brown’s potboiler, and through the efforts of Howard’s direction, Akiva Goldsman’s screenplay, and especially the acting of Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Ian McKellen, have transformed it into a tremendous thriller.

If you don’t know the plot of “The Da Vinci Code”…well, how exactly have you managed that? But, just in case, the story revolves around a Harvard professor named Robert Langdon (Hanks) visiting Paris to deliver a lecture on symbolism in history. His expertise in these matters (apparently) lead to him being called to the Louvre to examine the scene of the grisly murder of a museum curator, who, while mortally wounded, arranged a spectacular scene around himself involving bizarre symbols and hidden messages. One wonders how someone shot in the stomach knows exactly how much time they have left and intuit that they have just enough to arrange a complex series of clues for others to follow, but never mind - the whole device is just the springboard for everything else, and can be chalked up as an unavoidable contrivance of Brown’s original work.

Langdon is interrupted in his analysis of the scene by the arrival of Sophie Neveu (Tautou), who in a clever subterfuge is able to inform him that he is in danger, as the police captain named Fache (the indispensable Jean Reno) believes that Langdon committed the murder himself. Through a series of near-escapes and twists, Langdon and Neveu elude the police and begin to unravel the mystery that the curator (who was also Neveu’s grandfather) left behind.

It is really not fair to discuss the nature of the quest they are on for those unfamiliar with the story, but seeing as how pretty much every article, review, commentary and analysis of the book and/or film sees fit to bring it up (as do the film’s own trailers, pretty much), I feel blameless in proceeding. Still, spoilers ahead. The clues are arranged in a distinct order which leads Langdon to suspect that they are on the trail of the Holy Grail, which is not, as legend suggests, merely the Cup of Christ, but rather a symbol for Mary Magdalene, who was in fact Christ’s wife and the carrier of his bloodline. Langdon tells Sophie of this with the aid of an old friend, the delightfully named Sir Leigh Teabing, played with boundless enthusiasm by Ian McKellen, who is clearly loving every second of his role in this story.

The book’s theories and arguments about all of this and much more are dense and somewhat ridiculous to follow (but no more or less ludicrous than standard dogmatic theories, really), and are presented in long-winded diatribes the characters deliver to one another. The book, at regular intervals, pretty much stops its plot and begins lecturing. What Howard and Goldsman are able to do, however, is take that dialogue and condense it to its essence, taking full advantage of Goldsman’s talent for words and the nature of film as a visual medium, and successfully conveying the true nature and weight of the ideas the book presents, while contributing to, rather than distracting from, the story and characters. And in the hands of Hanks, Tautou and McKellen, scenes which played on the page as bland ciphers spouting ideas become red-blooded debates between complete characters.

The bad guys include not only the misguided Fache, but also fringe members of a Catholic sect named Opus Dei, such as the lumbering albino named Silas (creepily played by the usually handsome Paul Bettany) guided by a shadowy figure known only as “The Teacher.” Their goal is to find the Grail before Langdon and company can, seemingly so its shocking implications about the church will never be known. Members of the real-life Opus Dei have apparently cried foul about the seeming depiction of their membership here as self-mutilating fanatics, but the film makes a point of saying that these characters and their actions are very much on the fringe of the sect - the mainstream church is left rather surprisingly unscathed, the implications about the core of their doctrine notwithstanding. Indeed, the main body of the church is seemingly completely uninvolved with the events of the story, with a small group of cardinals (lead by the always entertaining Alfred Molina) manipulating things with no apparent input from the higher-ups. (An ill-advised shot of these folks playing a game of pool should probably have been removed in post.)

I am really rather pleasantly surprised at how well all of this works as a thriller. On the page, the events of the search seemed contrived and almost perfunctory - this is how we solve this puzzle, now, onto the next one. On film, however, the same events manage, with only a minor bit of cutting and re-writing, to take on a whole new level of intensity and excitement. The use of the actual locations (or, at the very least, thoroughly convincing sets emulating the actual locations) gives the story weight and incident, and the chase for the Grail generates genuine tension, despite the basic incidents being virtually identical to the novel. Even the novel’s anticlimax, faithfully represented, represents a true emotional climax here, thanks in no small part of the memorable score by Hans Zimmer.

The result of it all is a splendidly successful film, one which manages to hit all the right notes and find all the right solutions to problems that would have torpedoed lesser filmmakers. Ron Howard and company deserve amazing credit for turning Brown’s hefty-on-ideas-but-light-on-execution novel into a truly exciting, interesting and involving thriller. Other aspects of the film will be debated in the days to come (probably, and hopefully, on this very blog by some of our other commentators), but as a film, it works, and works very well.

Review: "Art School Confidential"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

** stars (out of four)
102 minutes, Now Showing

“Art School Confidential” is moving along quite well, a well-managed train on a smooth trip, for the first half or so of its running time. Then someone puts a penny on the tracks. It is a searing and insightful depiction of art students in their first steps toward a world where almost no one necessarily knows anything about what they’re doing, and teachers who give contradictory advice and really have no artistic basis from which to be giving that advice, otherwise they wouldn’t have to be teaching. Then it all goes very, very, very wrong.

Let’s start with the good stuff, like the movie does. It stars Max Minghella as Jerome, a young artist who proclaims in his grade school class that he wants to be the next Picasso, not so much for the level of the art itself but because he wants to meet women. Not an uncommon goal for the artistically inclined. He enrolls in a prestigious if small east coast art school, not because of its reputation and pedigree, but because of the attractive female model (named Audrey, played by Sophia Myles) who is nearly naked in the brochure.

The first scenes at the school have an oddly John Hughes feel to them. Jerome meets his roommates, one of whom (Ethan Suplee) is a budding filmmaker whose overly pretentious work adds a second level to the satire. He enrolls in his first classes, where it’s clear he has a real gift in his form, but never draws a single compliment from his peers or his professors, who prefer to praise works which have no substance but a lot of flash. One student’s work looks eerily like they had simply let their infant scribble for five minutes with crayons, but it is praised as “daring.” Another simply draws a car in ink and paints red in the background, and is hailed as a master. When Jerome asks his professor named Sandiford (played with great insight by John Malkovich, also co-producer) for advice, he instructs him to experiment, try different styles, see what works. When he does, Sandiford criticizes him for being “all over the map.”

The frustrations in the classroom are balanced against Jerome’s success in meeting and wooing (to a degree) the beautiful Audrey, who is flattered by his work and begins to take to him as a result. When she also seems to show interest in the talentless Jonah (the creator of the aforementioned automobile masterpiece, played by Matt Kessler), it crushes Jerome, who begins to become more desperate in his artistic outlashings. He also is introduced to Jimmy (Jim Broadbent), a grizzled artist whose world-weary wisdom gives Jerome some direction.

And it’s right about here that the compliments must stop. Because right here is where the plot, which had been fine on its own, thank you, begins to be overtaken by an utterly unnecessary and ludicrous sub-plot about a serial killer who has been stalking the campus and strangling people. I am at a loss to explain why the brilliant director Terry Zwigoff (“Crumb,” “Ghost World,” “Bad Santa”) felt as though this whole angle was worth preserving. I haven’t read the original story by Daniel Clowes (who also wrote “Ghost World”), and maybe the killer worked better as a plot device on the page. On film, however, it is a massive violation of the tone and characters which have been established, and causes more than a few of the aforementioned characters to make decisions and choices that seem completely out of character for them, not to mention idiotic.

Another problem is that Jerome never emerges as a likeable character. I do not demand that the leads of a film be easily sympathetic or anything, but I do demand that they at least demonstrate some semblance of individuality. In the beginning of the film, Jerome’s seeming non-personality fits with the character’s fish-out-of-water confusion with everything that is going on. But by the end, when he’s making some truly bizarre decisions and some very alarming events are occurring, he’s still the vacant lot of emotion he was at the beginning. I’m more inclined to blame Zwigoff than Minghella on this one - there are moments of fire where you get the impression that Jerome COULD have been more interesting, but apparently it was a storytelling choice to keep him muted. A weak storytelling choice, in my opinion.

Seeing "Art School Confidential" with my close friend Stephanie (an amazing artist who has spent much time in art classes) was a great experience, as I could see through her eyes just how well the early part of the film worked as a satire of the whole of the art world. She was whispering to me frequently how dead-on accurate the portrayals of so many characters, situations and events were. For me, that simply underscored what a disastrous choice the plot developments of the film’s second half were. Zwigoff really had something here, and it just got away from him. He has amazing films in his past, and no doubt has amazing films in his future. In the present, however, all he has is a great idea gone wrong.

Commentary: the Da Vinci Code [redux]

by J. Michael Bestul, That Crazy Guy Who Sleeps in Theater #13

Guess what?! The church is right! This film is heretical! Over 60% of people who read the book actually believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene got busy! It's in the news!

Wow, that was a lot of exclamation points. I might need to take a breather. Okay, I think I'm better now.

The aforementioned 60% was the result of a survey on the book version of The Da Vinci Code. Of course, it's time to hand out grains of salt when we realize who conducted the survey: Opinion Research Business was commissioned by a "prominent collection of English Roman Catholic monks, theologians, nuns and members of Opus Dei." So there was no bias going into the survey, whatsoever. None.

The issue these theological types have with Dan Brown's story is that they fear people will not see it as a work of fiction. Then again, that's half the fun of speculative fiction or pseudo-nonfiction. It's exciting to watch how writers weave in fact, theory, and fiction into a "realistic" story. Then again, I've been reading this kind of fiction for years (go Lovecraftian Mythos).

And, really, the Church might want to be careful about throwing stones so close to its own stained-glass windows. As Heather Cloete's previous commentary pointed out, the historiography of the Christian religion isn't exactly founded on rock-solid facts. Ideas such as Mary Magdalene being a prostitute, Judas being the ultimate evil, or transubstantiation are all sepculative history. The main difference between these theories and the ones in Brown's book is that these have a millennium of official sanction (well, eight centuries for transubstantiation).

As Cloete mentioned, many of the "wild" theories in Brown's book have basis on centuries-old scrolls and gospels that were not sanctioned by the Church. But people believed in them. The only reason they aren't as prevalent any more is because important people quashed them.

Really, the Church needs to be careful about proclaiming the danger of people "believing" The Da Vinci Code. It might cause people to look into the history of the Church and wonder, "Wait a minute; you believe what?! How the hell did St. Augustine of Hippo get so much of his crazy ideas turned into doctrine?!"

Or some such thing...