Read more of Hal's reviews HERE

 _________________________ 

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN  

Directed by: Ang Lee.
Written by: Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry.
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Linda Cardellini, Anna Faris.
Country: USA

Two and a half campfires

Reviewed by Hal Gray

The Gay Ranchero

Perhaps the pitch was an easy sell to the money boys: two cowboys find a forbidden love (and thank god they don’t take off their denim and chaps while doing it). Okay, so Disney passed, but there were enough other studio greenlighters who thought it was a neat idea. Homosexuality in film and cable television has gone just about as far as it can go. But we haven’t done cowboys on cowboys yet! (Next: A topical remake of the Wild Bunch or Dale Evans and Buttermilk tell Roy what’s really been going on in the barn.) 

Okay, so a good film is a good film no matter what the subject and Brokeback Mountain excels on a couple of levels. It is a technically proficient picture. It looks great.

The time (1963) and place (Wyoming) is nailed down neatly. At least it seemed pretty realistic to me. That’s the same time I lived on a ranch in southern Alberta and chased a cow or two through the foothills and took a battered pick up to town on Saturday nights. (Brokeback Mountain was filmed largely in Alberta). So, kudos to the set decoration, costumes and the cinematography.

And the casting was mostly spot on. What really took my breath away was Randy Quaid as a surly trail boss running his operation out of a single-wide. He’d sooner spit in your eye as look at you. Heath Ledger as a taciturn range rider was very good, too. I knew men like this, and the depiction of them here took me back in a visceral heartbeat.

So why is Brokeback Mountain only an ordinary film at best? For one, it’s yawn inducing. The pacing is as flat as the beeping electrocardiograph line when you die. You can string a taut rope from the first scene to the last—it’s over a two-hour film—and not hit a peak or valley.

Also, the love story—even though it’s the love that shall not speak its name—is not enough to carry the film. The ‘50s and ‘60s was an interesting time for cowboys. Their job description and life-style was undergoing a major change. Brokeback Mountain doesn’t touch this dynamic much, leaving it just over the horizon. For another example, the exciting Lonely are the Brave—actually made in (and about)1962—uses this western societal underpinning to move forward the ‘A’ story of friendship between two cowpokes (and a horse).

I have to admit there was one suspension of belief I couldn’t make from the get-go. No self-respecting cowboy would have had to look at another cowboy with all those sheep around.

_________________________

KING KONG  

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson.
Starring: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrian Brody, Thomas Kretchmann, Andy Serkis.
Country: USA 

Three and a half bananas

Reviewed by Hal Gray

The Return of the King 

The story (as if you didn’t know): A shameless, in hock film promoter escapes the clutches of his backers and sets sail on a tramp steamer for a lost island where he’s going to shoot the adventure movie of all time. He finds more than he expected and the actors and ship’s crew get more than they bargained for. For starters, the lead actress, Anne Darrow, finds love in the arms of a giant simian. Using this love for his base capitalistic desires, the promoter captures Kong and brings him back to the States as an exhibit for the monied classes. There’s not a happy ending.

(The making of the original King Kong in 1933 raises some interesting questions on the state of literary playwriting in America. For one, does Tennessee Williams get the idea for the brutish Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire from King Kong? Stella does call Stanley a ‘big ape’. Just a thought…)

Standing at the urinal after you get out of a three-hour plus movie may be the best place to get initial and therefore, the most honest feedback. Essentially, at this point, your mind is clear as you feel a rush of, er, spontaneity. Thus, in the case of King Kong (2005), the guy next to me looked over and said, "The cinematography was sensational." I waited for more, but that was the sum total of his review. I could have added the set design was spectacular, but why bother. We’d both given it a faint, but no less effective, kiss of death.

If a film ‘looks’ good it does wonders for a thin plot, just like good actors can carry a poor script a mile. Unfortunately, these seem to be the ingredients of all $200m Hollywood movies: a plethora of form and a drop of substance. Ergo, King Kong reredux looks great and is less filling.

But it takes a while for the hope of a good film to die. Besides the amazing camera work and wonderfully pathological attention to time and place, the first twenty minutes of this new Kong is Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking at its best. It starts with a swift montage that sets up 1930s New York City and its social conditions to a tee. Then, with director Peter Jackson out-Spielberging Spielberg, he turns the screws on the protagonists—acted by Jack Black, the crazed producer, and Naomi Watts, the starving vaudevillian—so that they, and we, can hardly catch our breath. Included are several neat cinematic transitions that deftly move the action forward.

So, the set up is great, and very funny. But then something more substantive has to take over. Alas, when the tramp steamer puts to sea, so does the story. Jackson uses the time to introduce us to the rest of the cast: the taciturn Captain, the stalwart first-mate, the cowardly leading man, the retiring, but inwardly brave screenwriter (hah!). Underscoring the dearth of material, Jackson sets up a ‘B’ story between a mysterious ship’s boy and the first-mate, which seems like it’s about something, but in the end isn’t about anything at all. This is, of course, a remake of Lord of the Rings, but Jackson has much less material to work with here and he’s not quite so good as making things up as Tolkien. And the humour, so prevalent in the beginning, essentially disappears.

When the ship finally arrives at foggy Skull Island, the action picks up for a bit. There’s a tribe of zombie-like natives who kill one of the crew and kidnap Anne to sacrifice to Kong who finally makes an appearance. (One can’t help but think Jackson was again copying Spielberg—in Jaws this time, where the great white doesn’t show up until midway. It doesn’t work so well here as Kong is never a looming presence as the shark was.) Kong splits with Anne and some of the crew follow, led by Jack, the screenwriter (yea!).

This is where the film truly starts to drag. Kong is not the only denizen on the island. There are prehistoric lizards, brontosauri, velociraptors, and T-Rex’s (yes, Spielberg, again.) There are scenes where the crew is chased by big plant-eating dinosaurs being chased by smaller flesh-eating ‘raptors though narrow cannons. Then they get chased again. And again. It’s interminably boring. Meanwhile, Kong fights off three T-Rex’s that only have eyes for Anne. When Kong sweeps her away from those snapping teeth once, it’s great. But they keep snapping and snapping and snapping. Are we afraid for Anne? No. We know she’s not going to get eaten up. More tensionless boredom. There’s more than a half hour of this kind of stuff. And believe me, the great SPFX don’t help a bit.

The scenes that do work in this section are when Anne and Kong, alone for once, form their relationship. She goes from abject terror, to frightened but calculating, to thankful, to platonic love. Kong, all powerful, finds his love through the equal force and intelligence of a being much smaller. The progression works for both and is—with the suspension of belief we must allow ourselves in a movie of this kind—believable. When they finally look at one another deeply in an epiphanous moment we should be happy except for the fact that that look is about to driven into our consciousness more times than we care to see over the last half of the film. Yawn.

So, Carl Denham (Black), uses Kong’s love for Anne to effect his capture and Anne feels suitably guilty in her part in the scheme and off they sail to New York where Kong rips the town apart and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building where he’s shot down by gunners in bi-planes. Each scene is played out eternally to the tired, bitter end.

Of course, the classic final line is delivered over the dead Kong: "Twas beauty that killed the beast." This is uttered by Denham whose every word is suspect throughout the film and is suspect now. It was good old American capitalism that did in Kong, just like it did in this picture. Jackson could have made a much better picture for say, oh, a measly $100m instead of the $200m it took.

_________________________

Read all of our recent film reviews HERE.

The opinions expressed by our reviewers are their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Publisher, the Editor or staff of zineCAT. If you have a comment please email it to info@icatmedia.com