the blog of nathan loding

The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia: Prince Caspian
Star­ring: Ben Barnes, William Mose­ley; Directed by: Andrew Adam­son
Rat­ing: ** 1/2 (two and a half stars out of five)

Sum­mary: The Peven­sie chil­dren are sent back to Nar­nia a mere year after return­ing back to war-time Lon­don. But more than one year has passed in Nar­nia — 1,299 more to be exact. There they find an exiled Prince (Barnes) who is strug­gling with his blood-thirsty uncle, King Miraz (Ser­gio Castel­litto) who has long been schem­ing to steal the throne from the royal fam­ily. Caspian and the Peven­sies join forces to fight the Tel­marines and restore the land to the Nar­ni­ans who have long been prosecuted.

Thoughts: Not nearly as good as the book, and, unfor­tu­nately, not nearly as good as it’s pre­quel (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)). The film­mak­ers relied on action and vio­lence rather than politl­cal intrigue and plot. The story felt extremely thin for how long the film was. The effects were astound­ing, as was to be expected, but fan­tasy epics with grand spe­cial effects are some­what cliche these days. Prince Caspian failed to find some­thing to unique to pull it apart from the rest of them. This is even more unfor­tu­nate because they are plan­ning to con­tinue turn­ing the books into movies (see here); a bril­liant direc­tor is attached, so hope­fully that’ll help. In a word: Long, with weak sto­ry­telling, but amaz­ing spe­cial effects and action mean you shouldn’t ignore it.

88 Min­utes
Star­ring: Al Pacino, Leelee Sobieski; Directed by: Jon Avnet
Rat­ing: * 1/2 (one and a half stars out of five)

Sum­mary: Jack Gramm (Pacino) is a top dog foren­sic psy­chol­o­gist. A man he recently sent to death-row is finally com­ing up on the big day and he’s main­tained his inno­cence since he was caught. On this day, the final day of the murderer’s life, Gramm receives an incred­i­bly threat­en­ing phone call telling him he has a mere 88 min­utes to live. At first he blows it off as yet another side effect of his job. It’s imme­di­ately clear that the threats are real, though, and he begins an 80 minute long chase to save his life and find who’s con­spir­ing against him (who he auto­mat­i­cally knows is related to the mur­derer). And (what a sur­prise) 88 min­utes has per­sonal mean­ing to Gramm …

Thoughts: Way too cliche, pre­dictable, and ulti­mately bor­ing to be that good. I love watch­ing Pacino on screen, and even a cliche’d mur­der mys­tery can be enter­tain­ing. This movie took itself way too seri­ously to accom­plish much enter­tain­ment at all. Your list of pos­si­ble sus­pects is imme­di­ately lim­ited to three, only two of which are at all prob­a­ble con­sid­er­ing how strongly the script tries to impli­cate one early on. When you finally reach the end, you won­der why you even cared in the first place; the end is both pre­dictable and utterly ridicu­lous. The best part is that the from the moment Gramm finds he has 88 min­utes to live, that’s the remain­ing run­time — usu­ally movie don’t stick to their own time­lines, so I enjoyed that part. In a word: Pre­dictable and thor­ougly uno­rig­i­nal mystery.

Shoot ‘Em Up
Star­ring: Clive Owen, Paul Gia­matti; Directed by: Michael Davis
Rat­ing *** (three out of five stars)

Sum­mary: Mr. Smith (Owen) is await­ing a bus when a preg­nant lady runs by, fol­lowed by some thugs with guns who are obvi­ously try­ing to kill her. Smith, ulti­mately a do-gooder, throws his food aside and saves her, the baby (which he deliv­ers), and kills a bunch of guys. Then Hertz (Gia­matti) shows up — the man in charge, who con­tin­u­ally comes up with new ways to find (and kill) Smith. Smith in the mean­time dodges these attempts and enlists the help of a lac­tat­ing pros­ti­tute to help him care for the baby. To add to the plot, it does have a con­spir­acy going on … but that’s not really important.

Thoughts: A ton of fun. Fun, inven­tive vio­lence that looks good; fun per­for­mances by Owen (who sort of relives his Sin City days) and Gia­matti. The Sub­plot (ie, the rea­son why they want to kill the baby) is utter lunacy, but it is only there to fur­ther the vio­lence. And I’m OK with that. Between this and Smokin’ Aces, I’d pick this. There’s not much to else to say, other than it worked won­der­fully for what it was and what it wanted to be. In a word: It accom­plished what it set out to do: great, strong vio­lence with a great cast.

Smokin’ Aces
Star­ring: Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds; Directed by: Joe Car­na­han
Rat­ing: ** (two out of five stars)

Sum­mary: Buddy ‘Aces’ Israel (Piven) is a stage per­former turned mafioso in Vegas. Then he turns FBI infor­mant. And then he gets a $1 mil­lion bounty put on his head by his for­mer Mafia boss. Sev­eral dif­fer­ent peo­ple decide their going to try to get the bounty, includ­ing neo-Nazi’s, a nameless/faceless pro­fes­sional assas­sin, and other hor­ri­ble, nasty peo­ple. Of course, the FBI is try­ing to pre­vent the assas­si­na­tion, and they have other inter­ests for want­ing to bring down this Mafia family.

Thoughts: Great action but not much else. I take that back; it has some good dia­logue too. But after vio­lence and some good dia­logue, it doesn’t have much else. The ‘twist’ at the end is incred­i­bly pre­dictable if you acci­den­tally think about the movie (as I did). The pace is quick and direct, and the vio­lence just as it should be: way over the top. I couldn’t right­fully give it a top rat­ing, as it’s just eye-candy, but it was def­i­nitely good eye-candy. In a word: Great, bloody, explo­sive vio­lence; some good dia­logue; noth­ing else.