Open letter to James Horner

Dear Mr. Horner,

I was a little boy when I discovered your music. You swept me off my feet with your themes for The Land Before Time, Willow, The Rocketeer, and later, during my teen years, Braveheart, Legends of the Fall and Apollo 13. Your music was like magic; it transported me to other worlds as soon as I hit the play button. When I was ridden with angst, you lifted my spirits. When I was lost, you took me home.

These days I often wonder what happened to the James Horner of my childhood. Where did that magician go? The James Horner of the past 10 years has delivered nothing but empty tunes. I struggle when I try to think of the melodies for The Spiderwick Chronicles. I sigh at the blatant derivativeness of your score for Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius. And I can only shake my head at the greatness that your work on Avatar could have been.

Have you abandoned your creative self? Is that why you’ve been recycling your own music? Every film score aficionado would agree that you simply aren’t as good as you used to be. I can’t even begin to count how many times you’ve used that 4-note motif inspired by Rachmaninoff. Unlike your friend John Williams, who challenges himself to create innovative scores for each film he works on, you’ve settled for predictability and mediocrity. It’s frustrating to see a composer whose work I once cherished deliver one disappointment after another.

All I ask is that you infuse your work with magic again. Tap into the inspiration you had during the 80s. Please take me back to that place of awe and wonderment. Don’t let me lose faith in you.

Sincerely,

Eric

Cloned Wars

Underneath the spellbinding CGI visuals of James Cameron’s sci-fi epic, Avatar, is something we’ve all seen before. The director has compared his own film to Dances with Wolves, but it’s actually a lot closer to a 1995 historical epic starring Mel Gibson: Disney’s Pocahontas. Cameron, who has given us such classic films as Aliens, Terminator and Titanic, isn’t exactly famous for originality.

He is, however, known for his ability to create memorable characters; Sarah Connor, Jack Dawson, T-1000 — and although Ellen Ripley wasn’t his creation, it was Cameron who turned her into an iconic kick-ass heroine. Avatar is just as taut, focused and emotionally engaging as his previous films, yet you can’t help but feel as though Cameron were painting by numbers.

The hero of the film is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic war veteran who is recruited to join a mission on a distant moon called Pandora. Sully is confined to a wheelchair, and it’s the only thing Cameron gives him to distinguish him from other epic movie protagonists. Like John Smith, Sully finds himself in a new world inhabited by a different race, the Na’vi.

When he steps into the body of his “avatar” — a genetically engineered Na’vi version of himself — Sully gradually becomes one of them, not just physically but through mind and spirit as well. Like Smith, he falls in love with a member of the other race; a beautiful young Na’vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) who teaches him the ways of her culture. Sully forms an immediate bond with Neytiri and joins her tribe in a battle to protect Pandora from the greedy, violent humans.

The story unfolds briskly. You can feel, from the opening shot, that Cameron is eager to open his box. He does, indeed, deliver a vibrant, mesmerizing spectacle and nothing less. The action sequences grip you with the relentless lets-kick-some-ass suspense that the director is gifted at.  Still, Avatar feels like a genetically engineered version of itself — not quite real but most assuredly alive. Cameron uses familiar movie DNA, and the result is a flawless yet empty creation, an avatar in search of a soul.

Grade: B

Getting ‘Taken’

The hero of Taken is a retired CIA agent named Bryan Mills, a man whose years of experience shows on his weathered face and nearly every gesture he makes. When he wraps his daughter’s birthday present he does it with such immaculate precision you’d think he was trying to create a piece of modern art. It’s this kind of scrupulousness, this stunning hawk-eyed attention to detail, that keeps him alive, and it is what will eventually help him save his teenage daughter, Kim, when she is kidnapped by the Albanian mafia.

Unlike the protagonist, the director of this revenge thriller, Pierre Morel, doesn’t seem to be interested in details. He allows the script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen to take on the proportions of a mythic, urban tale. Mills is a flawless man. Not even John McClane, the invincible hero of Die Hard, would be able to outsmart him. Mills, in fact, commits no mistakes — his revenge is as precise as the wrapping on his daughter’s birthday present. There’s no question that he’ll rescue his little girl. The thrill is in seeing how he does it.

Watching the film, I recalled the sequence in Braveheart in which the Scots recount the story of William Wallace’s ascendancy with outrageous hyperbole — “He’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse!” (Mel Gibson’s historical drama, at its core, was about revenge.) Bryan Mills has that same larger-than-life quality. The director wants us to take pleasure in every moment of violent retribution — every bolt of lightening from Mills’ arse. We even relish the moment when Mills informs his invidious ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), that their daughter has been kidnapped (the bitchy sybarite had been fiercely adamant that nothing would ever happen to her baby).

It’s as close as you can get to sadism as pop entertainment. Of course, there’s the horror genre, but horror movies thrive on fear, not vicarious sadism. Not even the other revenge flick that was released earlier this year, The Last House on the Left, could give its audience this much morbid satisfaction in watching people die. In Taken, revenge isn’t sweet — it’s freaking cool. And that, one might argue, is precisely the problem. By the end, I felt as if I just finished playing a video game — or perhaps, more accurately, the game had been playing me.

Grade: B-

Gross encounters of the third kind

The aliens in District 9 resemble slimy crustaceans. Humans call them “prawns,” a derogatory yet appropriate term. Some humans find them to be as irresistible as shrimp cocktails; a woman noisily slurps up alien blood, a man gobbles up a dismembered alien arm. These space creatures have been living in Johannesburg, South Africa for 20 years, segregated into various slums — “districts” — designated by the human government.

It’s Ellen Ripley’s worst nightmare. Luckily, these are not the same vicious predators that Signourney Weaver had to contend with. The aliens want nothing more than to go home, but until they figure out a way to refuel their ship, they are stuck in an increasingly violent co-existence with the earthlings.

Director Neill Blomkamp’s debut feature is ingeniously constructed. It starts off as a documentary, something you might see on the Discovery channel, then shifts into a conventional narrative you might call The Last Samurai meets Predator meets The Fugitive. Like the Tom Cruise film, a white male protagonist befriends his enemy, a different race (in this case, a different species), and discovers that he has something in common with them. Then he joins the enemy for some serious ass-kicking.

The unlikely hero of District 9 is Wikus, a man whose job is to shepherd 1.8 million aliens into a new district. When he inadvertently squirts alien liquid in his eyes, his DNA begins to mutate, slowly changing him into a prawn. The shocking transformation begins with his arm, which is no longer recognizable as human. The government wants his body for ungodly experiments, and so he runs.

District 9 emerged from Blomkamp’s Alive in Joburg, a six-minute short that caught Peter Jackson’s eye. Though it is Blomkamp’s vision that propels the story, District 9 carries the emotional weight of a Jackson movie. Jackson’s films are about human struggles against powerful, larger-than-life forces; the prawns are feared and misunderstood, like King Kong or the women of Heavenly Creatures.

Blomkamp is a confident director who clearly understands that good storytelling is based on emotional truth. What separates District 9 from banal films like Independence Day and Terminator Salvation is a propensity for honesty. Though the film eventually settles for typical Hollywood conventions, it never loses its authenticity. District 9 is about identity and home; the two could be synonymous — for who are we without a home? And when our very notion of “self” has been threatened, where do we go? The filmmakers don’t attempt to answer these questions, but it’s obvious, by the end, who the real aliens are.

Grade: B+

She’s off to see the world

As Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland had a breathtaking girlish elegance that mesmerized me even when I was a child. It wasn’t just her hypnotic singing voice — it was the way in which she looked at the world, as if everything around her was an unbelievable magical illusion. She was as enthralled by Oz as we were, and never once did she betray her audience with a winking self-awareness, the way many child stars do these days with their aw-shucks-I’m-in-a-movie mellifluence. Judy became a household name because she understood that moviemaking was about sharing the enchantment.

In Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, that enchantment is more palpable than ever. The filmmakers of this Emmy-winning TV mini-series not only channelled Judy Garland’s spirit, they brought the legendary actress to life. Tammy Blanchard, in her film debut, plays the young Judy, while renowned Australian actress Judy Davis resurrects the manic, drug-addicted adult Judy; both possess an uncanny resemblance to the star, and they embody her so brilliantly and effortlessly that watching them is akin to participating in a seance. You’re not just watching a movie about Judy, you’re watching Judy.

With impressive meticulousness, the biopic documents Judy’s unexpected ascendancy to fame and her tragic downward spiral towards mental and financial desperation. Hollywood was an abusive lover she had an unhealthy on-and-off relationship with. Consumed by an overpowering drug addiction and the feverish pressures of showbiz life, Judy was eventually left with nothing but a ghostly shell of herself. The movie never judges the star, nor does it patronize her; it shows us who Judy Garland was: a woman willing to sacrifice herself for her dreams.

Grade: A

Pixar won’t go down

By the time Pixar released its fifth feature in 2003, Finding Nemo, it had already become an axiom that every film produced by Pixar will invariably strike gold. Now the invincible computer-animation company has released its tenth film, Up, and the general truth remains evident: Pixar doesn’t know how to fail. Up is an endearingly old-fashioned adventure bolstered by the kind of shrewd slapstick choreography that the classic cartoons of the 1950s thrived on. It’s also disarmingly poignant. It tells the story of a grumpy old man, Carl Fredricksen, who tries to keep the spirit of his dead wife alive by reigniting the thing that brought them together: a fervent desire to explore the unknown. Determined to vanquish the festering loneliness in his heart, the reclusive Fredricksen ties thousands of balloons to his house and lifts off towards South America. Up in the air, the old man discovers a cherubic little Asian kid named Russell who has inadvertently tagged along for the ride. It soon becomes clear that the true journey is the budding friendship between the two explorers. Up is a prodding reminder that no matter how old you are, you’ll always be a kid looking for a new adventure.

Grade: A-

Zac Efron could be your father

Say what you will about Zac Efron. For all his Disneyfied, tween-heartthrob blandness, the kid is actually a decent actor. In 17 Again, the 21-year-old High School Musical star plays Michael O’Donnell, a man who magically transforms into his younger self and seizes the opportunity to undo his regrets. It’s yet another variation of Big, but the film, directed by Igby Goes Down helmer Burr Steers, is surprisingly clever.

On the verge of a bitter divorce, O’Donnell begins to form a bond with his two kids, something he never had when he was a contemptuous middle-aged man. The young O’Donnell, in essence, becomes one of them — a teenager high on the possibilities of life yet lost in his search for self-identity. In his kids’ sex-crazed world, abstinence is anathema and anti-individualism is in vogue. 

O’Donnell, spouting hilarious say-no-to-stupidity rhetoric — the kind of verbal punishment he’d inflict on his kids as a grown-up — begins to understand what it means to be himself again. It’s that sort of truthful “ah-ha” realization that distinguishes 17 Again from other teen-movie knockoffs, and Efron delivers it with delightful comic precision. Of course, the movie is not without some cringeworthy sophomoric jokes, but what’s high school without a bit of infantilism? 17 Again puts the high back in school.

Grade: B

Rage against the machines

It’s easy to dismiss Terminator: Salvation as nothing more than an empty thrill ride, because that’s exactly what McG’s film is. Still, there’s something oddly comforting in its rambunctious, “blockbuster movie” preposterousness. This is heavy metal alright, but it’s metal that’s been created with utterly defiant confidence, as if the director set out to prove that he’s as bad-ass as the characters in his movie. McG is far from becoming the visionary director he believes he is, but in Terminator: Salvation he demonstrates his burgeoning skills as an action-movie craftsman.

The film’s greatest achievement, however, isn’t the action. It’s Sam Worthington, who pretty much steals the show with his understated, heart-wrenching performance as Marcus Wright, an ex-prisoner who discovers he has more than a few things in common with the enemy. Worthington is on the fast-track to becoming Hollywood’s next big thing, and you can see why — the actor gets us to feel Marcus’s pain through his steely yet compassionate gaze. He makes internal agony seem effortless; unlike the director, who tries so hard that the film eventually collapses under the weight of its glossy, over-eager vacuousness.

After an unsurprising, by-the-numbers climax, the filmmakers move hastily towards a manufactured “emotional” ending, where they attempt to inject the movie with heart — literally. It only reminds us that what we’re watching is just as artificial as the T-1000. McG knows how to direct action, but he has a lot to learn about storytelling. Terminator: Salvation is about a war against machines, but the real machine is the movie itself.

Grade: B-

Where every man has gone before

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek crackles with such infectious cinematic fervor you almost forget that he and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are merely stirring up old ingredients. The film never quite transcends its source material, yet it manages to thrill us with its spry, geeky knowingess. It’s as if Abrams injected the franchise with a much-needed shot of adrenaline.  

But the true spectacle here isn’t the action or visual effects (which are, indeed, spectacular); it’s the tension-laced relationship between Starfleet students Kirk and Spock. Their competitiveness gradually allows them to form their infamous bond, and watching them get there is something that even non-Trekkies will take giddy pleasure in.

Abrams, the prolific and gifted TV producer who opened that confounding mystery box called “Lost,” understands that great storytelling isn’t about the plot, it’s about the characters. Chris Pine plays James Kirk with a sexy, rugged charm — a rebel with a twinkle in his eye, and he makes Luke Skywalker look like a wuss. Zachary Quinto, as Spock, effortlessly summons the erudite Vulcan’s hardened emotions and “logical” intellect. The rest of the cast, including Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy and Simon Pegg as Scotty, are equally inspired choices. 

If Star Trek falls short of greatness, it’s because, halfway through, the film abandons its sharp wit and opts for the conventionalism we’ve witnessed far too many times in the “Star Trek” canon. Abrams shifts gears and focuses on the explosions, as if he were afraid of losing the audience’s attention. Still, the action is directed with gleeful confidence, at times bringing to mind the early films of Spielberg.

Perhaps J.J. Abrams’ genius is due, more than anything else, to his ability to make the familiar seem new. Lost, Alias and Fringe have little to do with originality and more to do with execution. The guy’s passion for storytelling is palpable. He’s gone where every man has gone before, yet we’ll gladly follow him anywhere. For Abrams, no doubt, it’s only logical. 

Grade: B+

‘Gran’ Entrance

Clint Eastwood directs films that unfold like richly detailed novels. True, most of them are literary adaptations: The Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River. But his latest pic, Gran Torino, is an original (penned by Nick Schenk), and it is so deeply layered and powerfully thematic you feel as though its scenes are chapters of a Pulitzer prize-winning book.

Eastwood plays Korean war vet Walt Kowalski, a proud, utterly defiant loner who alienates himself from practically every living thing except his dog. The old man grunts and moans with such conviction you almost wanna hug the guy for being so brutally honest. He lives next door to a Hmong family, the Lors, and every time he sees them he spits, as if their very existence encroaches on his personal space.

To Kowalski, everything is personal. When a Hmong gang engages in a scuffle on his lawn with the Lors’ son, Thao, for failing to steal the old man’s prized car, a 1972 Gran Torino, Kowalski grabs his rifle and shows them who not to mess with. The incident is the catalyst for an increasingly violent war between Kowalski and the Hmong gang.

To say that Gran Torino is a movie about redemption would be reductive. Yes, Kowalski wants to make up for all the atrocities he committed as a soldier, but the movie, perhaps more than anything else, is about the healing power of friendship. The war vet develops a connection with Thao that becomes more real and meaningful than his relationship with his own two sons.  

The film is also a morality tale about an alarming facet of American culture that thrives on dangerous levels of fear and hate. Kowalski is undeniably racist — he refers to the Lors as “gooks” and “chinks”; they remind of him of the Koreans he fought in the war. But when the family’s daughter, Sue, introduces him to their seemingly alien world, he soon realizes that he has more in common with them than anyone else. The old man’s hatred eventually melts away, and in its place he discovers deep affection.

Gran Torino is one of the best films of 2008. It is not driven by pretentious awards season glamour but a simple desire to tell a good story. Eastwood, like our finest novelists, crafts complex tales about the little things that make us human. His characters are deeply flawed and prone to tragic mistakes. In other words, he shows us the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Grade: A

Pushing ‘Button’

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button offers almost no surprises. All of the film’s answers are self-evident in its gimmicky storybook premise. The protagonist, Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), born old, will grow young and die young. It’s the kind of sentimental epic drama that Steven Spielberg would have been perfectly suited for. Still, this three-hour opus, adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story by Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth, is nothing short of magical. The director, David Fincher, gives us Spielbergian grandeur without the maudlin excess. Fincher, of course, is known for his stylish emotional detachment; Fight Club and Panic Room are two prime examples. Benjamin Button, however, is perhaps the least Fincher-esque: warm, charming and romantic. Yet for all its inspired earnestness, the film never achieves the greatness it aspires to. The problem is that Roth never gives us a reason to care about Benjamin’s unusual condition. And, like Benjamin, we are merely passive observers waiting for the inevitable. It’s a spellbinding journey, to be sure, but in the end we’re left wondering why this button needed to be pushed.

Grade: B

Brainspotting

Everyone’s talking about Slumdog Millionaire, and it’s not difficult to see why. Director Danny Boyle’s film is a gripping modern fairy-tale, a classic rags-to-riches story told with the kind of fervent imagination that only a truly confident storyteller could foster and unleash. Slumdog tells the story of Jamal, an orphan in Mumbai who, against all odds, becomes the most revered contestant on India’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” When he is just one question away from winning 20 million rupees, he is suddenly accused of cheating. In flashbacks, the movie reveals the key events that helped shape Jamal into a resilient whiz-kid. Ultimately though, the boy isn’t interested in the cash or fame. He gets on the most-watched television show in India to win his true prize: Latika, the girl of his dreams. Boyle moves the story along at a frenetic, suspenseful pace, much like he did with Trainspotting, and he directs with such remarkable self-assurance that there are moments when the movie feels like a true story. Slumdog Millionaire is pure fiction (it’s based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup) but the themes it explores  – poverty, faith, love — are unmistakably real. 

Grade: A

‘Road’ to perdition

Ever since American Beauty, I’ve been enamored of director Sam Mendes, whose films are always penetrating looks at the human condition. Though I don’t think Revolutionary Road is quite as satisfying, it’s still a disturbingly provocative examination of a marriage gone wrong. It asks a universal question many of us, no doubt, continue to ponder: What is happiness? Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) live a stultifying suburban life, a life so far removed from their dreams and ambitions that they begin to lose the fiery idealism that brought them together. In Revolutionary Road, suburbia is a place where dreams die and happiness is a farfetched notion. The Wheelers allow fate to drive them into insanity, but what they fail to realize is that they own the car and can drive it wherever they damn well please. Mendes, as usual, holds up a mirror, asking us to look closer.

Grade: A-

Eye, Robot

In Eagle Eye, the enjoyably preposterous thriller masterminded by Steven Spielberg, Shia LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw, a young Everyman who finds himself entangled in a high-tech terrorist conspiracy that’s so utterly absurd it wouldn’t be a surprise if the kid wakes up halfway through the movie and realizes it was all a dream.

Shaw is forced, by an eerily calm, computer-like female voice over a mobile phone, to outrun the FBI, jump out of trains, tall buildings, and cars, rob an armored truck, and stow himself onto a plane headed towards the Pentagon, among other things. Forced to tag along is single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan), whose child, the woman on the phone warns, will be killed if she doesn’t obey her commands.

Make sense? The film’s director, D.J. Caruso, seems to think so. He and the screenwriters extract elements from various chase movies such as North by Northwest, I, Robot, and Live Free or Die Hard. The result is an action pic that’s shamelessly derivative and illogical but surprisingly taut. Caruso clearly revels in the sheer outrageousness of it all, and he does it with admirable directorial gusto.

LaBeouf doesn’t have much to work with here — he’s required, perhaps 98 percent of the time, to simply appear aghast — but his effortless charm keeps the movie grounded. Even when the proceedings nearly fall into the realm of self-parody, we’re able to keep most of our disbelief at bay. 

Perhaps Eagle Eye succeeds mainly because it never aspires to be more than what it is: a good ol’ fashioned chase movie. Though the writers do inject a little bit of political moralizing (George Orwell, anyone?), a film like this doesn’t require much intelligence. All it needs is a little yippie-ki-yay, and that, as John McClane might attest, is exactly what this motherf**** has.

Grade: B

Good Cop, Bat Cop

Batman, as re-imagined by director Christopher Nolan, is an angry detective with a vengeance, asserting his authority in Gotham City — as well as American cinema — with a scowling I’m-gonna-scare-the-crap-outta-you voice. The Dark Knight, Nolan’s follow-up to Batman Begins, is being hailed by fans and critics alike as gothic perfection. The film, indeed, is something to behold; Nolan stretches the boundaries of the comic book genre with complex characters, provocative ideas and deep, philosophical moralizing. But the film is a joyless experience, a two and a half hour funeral.

The only delight is Batman’s iconic nemesis, the Joker. As incarnated by Heath Ledger, he’s a depraved, rebel punk, the movie’s demented heart and soul, and Ledger plays the part with breathtaking, fiendish glee. The film deflates every time he leaves the screen. The rest of the movie feels as though it were directed in a tightly sealed container. Nolan, who has proven to be gifted at concocting dreary narratives (see Insomnia, The Prestige), seems to have no sense of humor.

Tim Burton, the highly imaginative film director whose movies are famous for their relentlessly cheerful morbidity, paved the way for the artful gloom of comic book adaptations like The Dark Knight. His 1989 Gotham was a metropolis of tragic jest, and full of mysterious grandeur. Nolan’s version feels like a perpetual rainy day. Which, of course, is exactly the point. Nolan’s Batman, unlike Burton’s, has very little to do with fantasy; in his Gotham, there is no such thing as fantasy — there is only reality. Reality with a capital R. What serves as the “Bat Cave” in The Dark Knight, for example, is the very large, brightly lit basement of a high-rise building.

Why so serious, Mr. Nolan? Yes, we all know that Bruce Wayne is dealing with some sort of identity crisis, but isn’t Batman allowed to have some fun? What is certainly appealing about Nolan’s interpretation is that it makes us forget that Joel Schumacher’s embarrassing atrocities, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, ever existed. But though we chastise Schumacher for turning the franchise into a veritable homoerotic farce, you gotta admit, the guy knows how to party.

The Dark Knight is a skillfully crafted crime drama. It is a fascinating, but not exhilarating, film. Though it captures the stylish bleakness of Frank Miller’s graphic novels, it never quite summons Miller’s devilish joy in plunging Batman into a hellish Gotham. Nolan is too ponderous, too concerned with grounding his films in “reality,” to give us anything resembling a great time. His Batman, however, will no doubt be considered the definitive one. And why not? The director knows how to tell a story. But I still have hope that someday the real Batman will swoop in and prove that this Dark Knight is nothing more than a well-disguised imposter.

Grade: B-