Bad to the Bone
Ghost Rider
(PG-13)
originally published February 21, 2007
If Marvel Comics hopes to make a successful go at this whole Marvel Studios thing, Avi Arad had best discover some filmmaking talents equal to the creations of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and company, because Mark Steven Johnson is 0-for-2. Spider-Man’s Sam Raimi and X-Men and X2’s Bryan Singer aside, Marvel has done a pretty pathetic job assigning writers and directors to their characters. The beloved comics company is acting like parents so intent on going out that they don’t care who’s watching the kids so long as the sitter’s breathing. Johnson, who had already hacked up John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany into Simon Birch before blindly adapting Daredevil, is a poor director and an even worse writer. My memory of the ins and outs of Ghost Rider’s mythology is hazy, but the tale is a pretty simple one: Guy - Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) - sells soul to Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda, having a kicky time poking fun at his Easy Rider persona); guy becomes a flaming, leather-clad skeleton on a motorcycle supernaturally powerful enough to punish evil. Backstory is the easy part, and Johnson negotiates a route from Point A to Point B without wrecking. Too bad he fills out the rest of the noisy film with unnecessary explosions, villainous posturing, and pounds of cheese. Bad comic book movies insult the intelligence of comic book readers. Most people fail to realize most comics are well-written character studies. It would be hard to keep people coming back month after month if every issue were a hollow FX extravaganza.
But maybe I’m focusing my Penance Stare a bit too intensely upon Johnson - though his decisions regarding character and sound designs are shiveringly bad - when a more deserving sinner exists. Though the entire cast - save for Sam Elliott - woodenly shuffles from scene to scene, star Cage transgresses most. Cage is that worst kind of actor, a “consummate professional” and “gifted thespian” who believes adding quirks, like a penchant for the Carpenters and devouring jellybeans from a martini glass, builds character. The California native’s Texas accent delivers Johnson’s sad banter slightly better than that of Canadian costar Donal Logue, whose funny new TV show, “The Knights of Prosperity,” deserves a plug, but I’m grasping at positive straws here. (Why couldn’t the filmmakers have cast Nathan Fillion? Why?!) In spite of Cage’s every misstep, when Blaze transforms into the Rider, skull and chopper aflame, Ghost Rider changes as well, from a withered February action film into the hokey, B-list superhero fun it was meant to be. Too bad the Rider has to change back into Nicolas Cage.
Snail Mail
Letters From Iwo Jima
(R)
originally published February 21, 2007
Kazunari Ninomiya
Clint Eastwood’s Golden Globe-winning, Japanese-language companion to last October’s Flags of Our Fathers suffers a strangely similar, parallel problem. Flags - antiwar meditation, rumination on the psychological effect of an image, and most effectively, a graphic, realistic depiction of battle - is too much story for the film; Letters is not enough. The contemplative story by Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, compiled from the letters of Imperial soldiers who died on that bloody rock, too often gets lost in the thoughts of men like General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe, who should have been nominated for an Academy Award), young soldier Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), and Olympic gold medalist Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) as they prepare for inevitable death. As grenades explode, flames are thrown, and honor achieved by suicide, Kuribayashi leads his men, serving their nation honorably and without the monstrous, blind loyalty so often associated with the Japanese armed forces, in pre-war flashbacks. Not until the bombs rain from the sky like a thunderstorm of gunpowder and shrapnel do we learn anything about these soldiers’ journeys to Iwo Jima. Tediously useless, the film’s pre-battle first hour assists little in acquainting the audience with the men with whom they will serve the next hour and a half (at 156 minutes, Letters is one long tour of duty). What then does the first act accomplish? I’d venture to say far too little. Letters’ lulling first hour betrays Eastwood’s major directorial weakness, a fondness for meandering narrative rivers flowing slowly to a climactic ocean.
Gorgeously shot in colors so washed out they may as well not exist at all, Letters solidifies Eastwood - with assistance from Tom Stern, cinematographer of the Oscar-winning director’s last five films - as Hollywood’s premier photographer. Yet Eastwood does not construct his films from beautifully framed images alone. He elicits powerful performances from his actors, no matter their native language. Robert Altman’s death leaves a vacancy at the head of the “actor’s director” table, and Eastwood’s name should be atop any shortlist of replacements. “Everything comes in threes,” General Kuribayashi repeats to Saigo. As exemplary examples of filmmaking as both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima are, I hope Eastwood doesn’t feel compelled to speak of Iwo Jima a third time. Having bravely told both side’s stories without asking us to root for either (both Flags and Letters conclude that in war there are no winners), Eastwood has done more for the Greatest Generation than any filmmaker but co-producer Steven Spielberg. With such a clarity of conscience, Eastwood can now take his immense talents elsewhere.
If you are having problems with the site, or have questions or suggestions, please contact us here. Thanks!
Care to comment on this article? Click here!
You will be the first person to comment on this article.