The Special Effects Make The Mummy Memorable And Enjoyable

The Mummy is a remake of the 1932 motion picture of the same name. Admittedly, I have not seen the original film, and doubt I will be able to. I haven't been able to find a copy of it anywhere in my city. The only thing I can imagine is that the 1932 version is infinitely superior in every way, from acting right down to special effects. Yes, even the special effects. The film begins in 1719 B.C., when Egyptians ruled their land with the kind of authority Bill Clinton only wishes he could attain. Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) is the High Priest of Osiris, and the righthand man of Pharaoh. Unfortunately, Imhotep is also in love with Pharaoh's mistress, the hauntingly beautiful Anck-su-namun (Patricia Velasquez). This forbidden love leads to Pharaoh's death, and the subsequent execution of Anck-su-namun. Imhotep is caught and becomes the first and only man to ever suffer what many archaeologists believe to be the worst curse ever performed. His body is wrapped in bandages, his tongue is cut off, and he is buried alive to be eaten by Scarab beetles. He is to remain there until someone reads from the Book of the Dead. And being a film about a mummy, we know someone will.

That someone is Evelyn Carnarvon (Rachel Weisz), a librarian hoping to one day become a full-fledged archaeologist. The year is 1923. Over three thousand years have passed since the mummification of Imhotep, and Evelyn has desperately been searching the whereabouts of the rumored Book of Amun Ra. She has yet to find it. One fateful day, her more successful (but obviously more demented) brother Jonathan (John Hannah) brings her an artifact he stole from a prisoner in an Egyptian jail. This artifact contains a map to the lost city Hamunaptra, which is rumored to contain all the riches and wealth of the Egyptians. She travels to visit this prisoner, who claims to have actually found Hamunaptra. His name is Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser), an archaeologist who lost his entire team after finding the mythical city. Eve begs for his release, and finally gets it when she offers the warden twenty-five percent of the findings.

Rounding out the cast is the brother-sister tandem of Jonathan and Evelyn (Josh Hannah and Rachel Weisz, respectively), and Beni (Jonathan Hyde) as the cowardly, sadistic sidekick. Each of these three characters is just as enjoyable as The Mummy and Rick O’Connell. Indeed, they all bring a welcome variety to the cast, providing appropriate measures of humor and conflict at just the right times. But of course, rising to the fore is Evelyn, who becomes the love interest for O’Connell. Her character isn’t the typical damsel in distress so often seen in these kinds of films. She’s more like Marion Ravenwood (Raiders of the Lost Ark) than Willie Scott (The Temple of Doom). In fact, it’s possible to consider her character as prominently as the Mummy or O’Connell.

As for the story, it’s wonderfully paced, hitting all the right beats – beginning with a well-scripted prologue and moving through action sequences, exposition, and montages at just the right times to keep viewers engaged all the way through the film. Of course, stories about mummies are almost always compelling, so long as they are told properly. But The Mummy does indeed tell a proper story, adding in the right mixture of realism and fantasy to create a plausible narrative. It tells the tale of a group of treasure hunters who inadvertently awaken a thousands of years old monster and have to find some way to undo their handiwork before the world is destroyed.

Part of what makes the film so particularly memorable and enjoyable are its special effects. At the time, The Mummy was fairly cutting edge in its use of CGI to render the Mummy, the sandstorms, scarabs and all manner of plagues including the meteor shower. What’s most impressive about the movie is that, nearly a decade later, the film still looks good. This proves that the CGI was integrated in such a way as to enhance the film. Otherwise, cutting edge 1999 would look downright embarrassing by the time 2009 rolled around. The Mummy not only avoids that pitfall, it manages to create a look and style that perfectly complements its story.

Sommers' very own tailor made script shows that people should not buy books on 'How to Write your Screenplay in 21 Days' or 'How to Make a Movie that Sells' on a matter of principle. Sommers tries and fails at juggling Adventure, Romance, Comedy, Action, and Horror around all at once. In the desperate attempt to keep the balls from hitting him on the head, he ends up placing one-liners right next to screams of terror as a flesh-eating... BEETLE?... devours someone from the inside. Also we get to see Rachel Weisz go from sub-zero to just plain zero as she 'warms up' to Brendan Fraser.

This is a film at which I took my own advice. My advice: always get a head start on an angry mob. Hence, I watched the last thirty seconds from the back of the theatre.

As promised by the preview for The Mummy, the special effects are good. They are not, however, anything compared to what we normally see in the pre-summer gameshow. And, when I say special effects are good, you know what that normally means... It did also live up to its tagline, but not in the way intended. Let me tell you, personally, BEWARE OF THE MUMMY.

Sleepy Hollow, A Dark Fairy Tale Powered By The Pervasive Millennial Angst Of The Era

So when it comes to appearances, this dark, shivery "Sleepy Hollow" manages to be as distinctively Burtonesque as ''Edward Scissorhands'' or ''Batman.'' Offering a serenely unrecognizable take on Washington Irving's story and its famously unlucky schoolteacher, the film brings its huge reserves of creativity to bear upon matters like the severing of heads. Quaint Dutch burghers of the Hudson Valley could have bowled ninepins throughout Rip Van Winkle's sleep-in with the supply of decapitated heads sent flying here, even if Mr. Burton handles such sequences with his own brand of wit. Shot 1: Sword approaches victim. Shot 2: Blood splashes Ichabod's glasses. Shot 3: Head rolls away. Shot 4: Body pitches forward. Pause for laugh.

History will recognize the rich imagination and secret tenderness of Mr. Burton's best films. (From a purely technical standpoint, as in the award-ready cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki, this grimly voluptuous "Sleepy Hollow" must be one of them.) But it will also raise the question of what we were smoking during this period of infatuation with grisliness on screen. It is not unreasonable to admire Mr. Burton immensely without wanting to peer at the exposed brain stems of his characters, but ''Sleepy Hollow'' leaves no choice. As written by Andrew Kevin Walker, who took off Gwyneth Paltrow's head in ''Seven'' and apparently considered that small potatoes, ''Sleepy Hollow'' turns the tale of the Headless Horseman into the pre-tabloid story of a rampaging serial killer.

SLEEPY HOLLOW is less the Washington Irving story than it is Scream set in post-revolutionary times. The themes of science vs. supernatural and appearance vs. reality appear throughout the movie, as Crane must understand his own past in order to see the truth. He describes himself as "imprisoned by a chain of reasoning." He keeps coming back to a toy given to him by his mother, a spinning disk with a bird on one side and a cage on the other. As it spins, the bird appears to be inside the cage, an optical illusion, and, not by coincidence, the very illusion (persistence of vision) that makes viewers think that the people in the thousands of still pictures that make up a movie are really moving.

Depp plays Crane with the right haunted look and rigid posture. But the ludicrousness of some of the plot turns and the exaggerated fright reactions leave him with the most outrageous eye-rolling since Harvey Korman's imitation of a silent film star. Indeed, the movie frequently brings to mind those sublime "Carol Burnett Show" movie parodies, especially when the villain ultimately finds time for a detailed confession as the planned final victim is waiting for the Headless Horseman to arrive. The wonderful Christina Ricci is wasted in an ingenue part.

Depp nearly reprises his role as Edward Scissorhands as a quiet wallflower (sans scissors), and whiter-than-white Christina Ricci (as the magic-obsessed love interest) sticks out among the drab fogies in their powdered wigs like Bill Gates at the Playboy Mansion. The supporting cast is uniformly bland, just like the scenery (though the latter is intentional). The sole exception is Walken, who plays the horseman (when he has his head, at least) with typical aplomb.

So what's the sum of the parts? What should have been a Halloween treat is instead a late-November humdrum flick worthy of a glance but little more. The story is obtuse yet unsurprising. The humor is sparse and occasionally funny. And while Burton's signature is all over the film, his typical wit is not.

How will the film fare at the box office? I can't rightly say, but I do know that a legion of junior high students is going to be disappointed, missing a whole lot of questions on their English Lit exams because of this movie.

One of the key shifts from the historical frame of Irving's earlier narrative to the contemporary setting of the film's production is the emphasis on visual perception. Sleepy Hollow shows the relativity of perception, and how the interpretive element of perception impacts matters of truth (Nietzsche is one key figure who stands between the original story and the current film). The half-blind Notary Hardenbrook exclaims at the beginning, "seeing is believing," and Crane himself distrusts the "magic" behind the supposed headless horseman until he sees it for himself and then goes into a brief crisis of faith (in science). When he recovers he takes a somewhat different tact in his solving of the crime. Before "seeing" the non-rational actions of the undead Horseman, Crane is depicted utilizing various optical lenses—absurd contraptions that seem to be borrowed from Terry Gilliam's films. After this crisis Crane no longer utilizes his instruments, though he does keep his head about him, reasoning through the crimes, relying on a sort of "inner vision."

Another important development in the interim between Irving's story and the current film is, of course, psychoanalysis and its artistic prodigy, surrealism. Burton's films are constantly shifting between dream life and lived life—although with his films' consistent dark exposures, it is difficult to tell the difference—and the exquisite scenes here seem like dreamscapes, often borrowing from the ethereal, Romantic, Hudson River School paintings of Cole and Bierstadt. The internal, dark shades that pervade the first Batman films, or the Nightmare Before Christmas, are present here as various unconscious connections are made visible—a traditional mode of surrealism.

The film is also crippled by a terribly contrived romantic subplot involving a miscast Christina Ricci (it pains me to say that), who looks perfectly period but can't manage to wrap her mouth around the movie's formal dialogue or its highly mannered acting style. She falls for Ichabod, much to the chagrin of her beau, played by Casper Van Dien ("Starship Troopers") -- doing his very best Billy Zane-in-"Titanic" imitation. Thankfully, he gets waxed by the Horseman after only three lines of dialogue.

Other players include Miranda Richardson as Ricci's more-than-meets-the-eye stepmother and a razor-toothed, wild-eyed Christopher Walken, who plays the Hors
On the production end of things, "Sleepy Hollow" is a fabulous, high-tech homage to the moody, old-fashioned horror flicks of the 1930s, bent to fit the Burton mold. The pale, moon-lit tones generated by a perma-dusk sky; rich but somber costumes (bad teeth, even!); craggy, foggy, sound stage forests of imposing, twisted, leafless trees -- it's all quite absorbing.

As I wrote in Horror Films of the 1990s, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow opens with a droll visual joke that, in some fashion, very ably exemplifies the film's nature. Perhaps this joke is one that only the longtime horror movie enthusiast will fully understand. As the film commences, what appears to be very fake-looking red blood drips down upon a parchment. This fluid is soon revealed instead to be hot wax, used merely to seal an important letter. Yet for a fleeting -- and wonderful -- moment, the horror audience may believe it has actually returned to the wonderful and bygone world of Hammer Studios since the hot wax resembles that trademark Hammer-styled “fake” blood.

The joke is not only an example of inside baseball, so-to-speak, but an indicator that Burton has fashioned his entire 1999 film as an homage to the output of Hammer. As Michael Atkinson and Laurel Shifrin write in Flickipedia, the director “continues his unique, idiosyncratic, and very personal career project: to re-experience and revivify the toy chest of pop-culture effluvia that sustained him – and many of us – through our ‘Nam era childhoods.” (Chicago Review Press, 2007, page 21.)

Or, as Wesley Morris wrote in The San Francisco Examiner: "what Burton does perhaps better than even Steven Spielberg: transport you to a nook in your childhood, be it around a summer campfire or smack in front of a TV set on a Saturday afternoon."

In the visual language of a Hammer Studios film then, the impressive Sleepy Hollow asks its audience to contemplate the nature of life on Heaven and Earth. Is science the key to understanding it? Or is there room, yet, for magic in this world? In scenes both lyrical and poetic (particularly those involving Lisa Marie as Ichabod's mother), Burton's Sleepy Hollow seeks the answer.

The Avengers - It’s Total Delight To Just Sit Back And Enjoy The Fireworks

The dreams of comic book and superhero fanboys around the world finally come true with the arrival of Marvel team up “The Avengers”, or “Avengers Assemble” as it’s been released in some countries. Having gone through several years of development hell, anticipation peaked when it was announced that geek favourite Joss Whedon would be directing, pulling together the heavy hitting all star returning cast of Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, with Mark Ruffalo stepping in as the latest screen incarnation of the Hulk.

The plot sees Tom Hiddleston again as the villainous Asgardian Loki, who during his exile after being beaten by Thor has joined with the would-be galaxy devouring alien race the Chitauri, being promised an army to conquer the earth in return for recovering all-powerful energy source the Tesseract. Loki appears in the SHIELD facility where the cube is being held, snatches it and enslaves scientist Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and Hawkeye with his sinister glow-stick staff before vanishing. Knowing that war is surely coming, Nick Fury assembles The Avengers, a disparate band of superheroes, hoping that they will be able to overcome their various differences and personality defects and combine their talents to save the world.

The Avengers is a result of the biggest buildup in cinema history, with the quartet of Iron Man and its sequel, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger made to pave the way for an epic boss fight, and it delivers in thoroughly awesome ways. Nearly every minute of The Avengers throbs with heart-pounding fun, from the big opening apocalyptic scene at the S.H.I.E.L.D base to the gargantuan effects-soaked final battle.

Director Whedon combines extremely clever lines, bombastic CGI with unexpected character development, and elevates the overused superhero genre to something much more substantial. He completely resists the temptation to make a dark brooding drama, and in taking a more gregarious direction, the film becomes infinitely more refreshing.

Firstly, you are unlikely to find a more likable ensemble of characters in any film anywhere. Not only do you get to witness the spectacle of Iron Man and Captain America fight alongside each other, and The Hulk and Thor smashing people together, but you’re also greeted with terrific witty back and forth banter between them all. It’s clear that Whedon is crazy about comic books and he balances the large and iconic cast of characters with the passionate dexterity of a 14-year-old genius surgeon.

The plot is naturally an excuse to get the big guys together. Baddie Asgardian Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arrives on earth to rule humans and has an alien army to enforce his regime. To deal with the threat, S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) assembles the motley group of Avengers to kick copious amounts of alien buttock and defend the planet. But putting all these guys in a single room doesn’t go too smoothly initially — they bicker hilariously and bombard each other with scathing one-liners.

While Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is super serious and methodical, Tony Stark (Downey Jr) is amusingly narcissistic, Thor (Hemsworth) is a vengeful foreigner, Black Widow (Johansson) is menthol cool and sexy as hell, and unlike in her previous appearance, she is smart and suave. There’s an interesting twist to Hawkeye’s (Renner) character, but Mark Ruffalo brings a wonderful new shade to Bruce Banner and really steals the show as the Hulk.

The special effects are colossal and eye popping, and there are plenty of bigger than life moments. In fact the whole second half is one ambitious action scene grander than all the other Marvel films put together.
Hiddleston makes a very interesting villain, and a scene involving him and the Hulk towards the end will leave your face with the widest possible grin. Samuel L Jackson is his usual pulpy self and Whedon goes one step further and gives Agent Coulson (Cobie Smulders) a meatier role.

The Avengers took almost 50 years to appear on screen together, and the wait has indeed been worthwhile. It’s one of the most entertaining films ever made - it’s total delight to just sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

"The Beaver" Is A Unique And Thoughtful Project That Showcases A Charming

The Beaver, much like the film’s protagonist, has been hiding from the ugly realities of life for the last six months – after a seemingly never-ending font of bad press for star Mel Gibson.
A lot of early industry murmurs focused on the parallels between the actor and his equally self-destructive character in the film. The comparisons are certainly interesting but, without the controversy, can The Beaver stand on its own two feet as one of the better indie offerings in a summer chock-full of high profile superhero films?

Fortunately, the answer is yes. While it’s certainly hard to fully ignore some of the more on-the-nose moments of actor/character crossover (specifically a disheveled-looking Gibson pouring Vodka on a television screen), The Beaver still manages to direct the audience away from the controversy and to the story at hand – that of clinically depressed Walter Black, family man and CEO of a flailing toy company, who spends the majority of his days asleep, on medications, or sleeping because of all the medications.

It’s at Walter’s lowest moment that the titular beaver puppet comes into the picture. The Beaver allows Walter to take back his life by speaking for him (in a British accent) and offering a safe distance between the ups and downs of everyday living: his failing company, estranged wife and resentful teenager – as well as his youngest son, who is routinely overlooked. However, even as Walter finds new life and success hiding behind The Beaver, it isn’t long before he realizes that while he may be up walking around, the Walter he wants to be still needs to wake-up.

On paper, a story like The Beaver could be laughable (we won’t even get into the title) but coupled with some thoughtful and compelling direction from Jodie Foster, Gibson delivers an especially charming and believable performance. Some of more traditionally challenging scenes, where an actor has to engage in a back and forth with an inanimate object, are surprisingly successful – with subtle adjustments to his expression, Gibson breathes life into both The Beaver as well as the heartbreakingly empty and submissive Walter.

Similarly, Gibson and Foster (through the actor’s performance and the director’s composition) give The Beaver an actual physical presence – without it coming across as a gimmick. The puppet doesn’t just make things awkward for the characters, it genuinely helps to draw-out subtle emotions in the supporting cast as well as add an exclamation point to already complicated (or humorous) situations.

Foster, who has been somewhat off the grid the last five years, works double-duty on the film as Walter’s wife Meredith and delivers a great counter-point to Gibson’s closed-off and non-adversarial character. Similarly, the film spends a significant amount of time following the story of Walter’s older son, Porter (Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin) as he attempts to purge himself of any resemblance to his father before he heads-off to college at Brown University.

The film does a good job of providing a reason for the time dedicated to Porter’s story – and the side-narrative also gives the audience a well-deserved break from the main plot as well as brings in characters we wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to see, specifically Norah (played by Jennifer Lawrence). Despite the fact that Norah isn’t directly affected by Walter’s shenanigans, she helps mirror his inner struggle – as she wrestles with her own inability to face the challenges of life. To their credit, both Lawrence and Yelchin offer-up great performances and manage to keep their senior-year storyline from falling into the same campy geek guy/popular girl conventions of a lot of films.

The performances and execution in The Beaver are on-point; however, the film is not without a few shortcomings. In general, the movie successfully chronicles Walter’s journey of self-acceptance and discovery, but at times gets bogged down in some over-the-top story beats that come across “cartoony” and could remind audiences of the overly-absurd set-up – the same one the actors have worked so hard to keep grounded and real.

The Beaver is at its best when it stays grounded, because the characters (and subsequently the performances) are deep and interesting – but once in awhile the filmmakers must have felt as though audiences needed more. An example: when one of Walter’s toy creations becomes a smash hit, it isn’t enough to just see the sold-out store shelves – The Beaver himself has to become a cultural icon for audiences to get that the puppet can’t actually bring about a true recovery.

Similarly, while the film succeeds in earning its emotional climax, The Beaver doesn’t exactly handle Walter’s descent into madness as carefully (or convincingly) as it needs to in order for the dramatic climax to be equally successful. Instead, while the final act of the film is certainly compelling from moment to moment, it’s not as carefully crafted as what came before, ultimately rocketing the main plot forward while leaving some story threads unresolved.

A few slips in the build-up of the overarching narrative  still can’t undercut the captivating performances, engaging characters, and great thematic material explored in the film. The Beaver is a unique and thoughtful project that showcases a charming, as well as unconventional, character journey. And, despite how you feel about the man, it’s also one of Gibson’s best roles to date.

"Attack The Block" Matches Music To Movie Pretty Much Perfectly

Attack the Block is an unlikely contender in the currently overcrowded ring of alien invasion flicks – which are all fighting for success at the box office (particularly the U.S. box office). The film has no real headlining stars (a small appearance by Paul star Nick Frost is about as famous as it gets); it was shot on a small budget; the main characters are a gang of young, unapologetic hoodlums; plus, they’re young hoodlums who speak in thick British accents, while dropping slang that requires Urban Dictionary to decipher.

So the question then becomes: how does this foreign indie genre flick do so well what so many big-budget Hollywood genre flicks do so poorly, so often?

The setup is this: A street gang in one of South London’s tougher “blocks” are out one night, up to their usual no-good-deeds. This time they happen to run across a young nurse named Sam (Jodie Whittaker), who gets into a scuffle over her ring with the gang’s leader, Moses (John Boyega). In the midst of the scuffle a strange object comes crashing down from the sky, and all of sudden, Moses’ would-be robbery has turned into a battle with a mysterious creature. Being the tough guys that they are, Moses and his gang chase the creature down and kill it – only afterward determining that the creature is most likely an alien. Not that the boys care, though: as far as they’re concerned, ET has landed in the wrong neighborhood.

However, “actions have consequences,” as the film later reminds us. Moses and the gangs’ close encounter sets into motion a chain of events that lands them in the crosshairs of the police, a local gangster, and of course, a whole swarm of invading aliens. On this night gone horribly wrong, “the block” is indeed under attack.

What sets this film high above so many others like it is the style that writer/director Joe Cornish (Ant-Man, Tintin) crafts it with. The smart story, authentic characters, hip dialogue, inventive filming choices (in place of big-budget spectacles), vibrant cinematography and even the techno-funk soundtrack, all work to create a cohesive and engrossing movie experience. This is a film that contains many familiar genre tropes (sci-fi/horror/urban-drama/comedy), yet also feels contemporary, fresh, and absolutely fun.

The characters (and the young actors playing them) get big props for making this film work. It’s a bold move to ask an audience to follow and care about a group of hard-headed young hoodlums, but the cast of young actors (Boyega in particular) do a great job of making their respective characters human and relatable, without compromising their rough-edged authenticity, or wallowing in melodrama.

Take Moses, for instance. He’s a roughneck who has inner nobility beneath his callous shell – a knucklehead who you almost believe would be a better person in another world. Only, Moses is in the world he’s in, and isn’t apologetic about the wrong he does in order to survive. Think a strong, silent, outlaw gunslinger type, transported into an urban setting. His foil is nurse Sam, a woman who has lived in “the block” all her life, despite the dangers, and still sees a distinct line between right and wrong. The sub-plot with her and Moses going from predator and victim to friends adds a level of grounded meaning and subtext to this otherwise over-the-top story.

The supporting cast in this film are keep things light and fun from moment to moment. Those supporting players include Moses’ fellow gang members (the pot-head, the geek, the asshole, etc…) and “locals” like a dope-headed weed dealer (Nick Frost), his fish-out-of-water upper-class client (Luke Treadaway), a psycho gangster/wannabe rapper (Jumayn Hunter), and two “baby gangsters,” who spend the film trying to earn their reps on the block (in truly hilarious ways).

One might worry that this urban world which Cornish imbues with such life would be compromised by the sci-fi/horror/comedy tropes that get thrown into the mix, but this is not the case. Unlike other genre-mashing movies, the filmmakers do a good job pulling off the alien invasion by using what small resources they have to the utmost and making smart decisions. The aliens themselves are presented as big, oil-black “bear/dogs”, whose only discernible feature is a mouth of fangs lit-up like neon signs. This keeps the aliens mysterious and menacing, and saves the filmmakers the burden of having to create more detailed CGI creatures. The way the aliens almost ooze in and out of the shadows works perfectly in the urban environment, where there are nooks and shadows aplenty. It’s not the best effects work (not by a mile) but it is very effective in this context.

A good soundtrack is also a crucial ingredient in creating a good movie experience, and Attack the Block matches music to movie pretty much perfectly. House music duo Basement Jaxx, working with musician Steven Price, create a score for this film that is equal parts techno, hip-hop and funk; it amplifies the authentic feeling of the urban world the film is set in, while keeping the necessary tension pulsing throughout the proceedings. Definitely one of those soundtracks you want to keep bobbing your head to, long after the credits roll.

In the end, this is a film that is just fun to experience. The small-budget production values lend it a 1980s nostalgia, which is hard not to appreciate if you’re one of those people who grew up watching movies like Gremlins. Add in the modern urban edge, entertaining characters, and a story that manages to be clever on top of fun, and you have a movie that some big-budget filmmakers should look to before trying to push out another invasion flick that’s big on spectacle, but woefully lacking in enjoyment (see: Cowboys & Aliens – or rather, see Attack the Block instead).