Wendi and I went to see the Escaflowne movie at the Clinton Street Theater a couple of weekends ago. And yes, I’m so lazy that it took me this long to write up the review.

“Escaflowne” is a movie about giant robots that manages to almost entirely not be a movie about giant robots. A young semi-suicidal girl is brought over to another world, Gaia, where everyone thinks she’s the Wing Goddess destined to summon the Dragon Armor known as Escaflowne to either save or destroy the world. Oh, and this loner-hero named Van is on a mission to kill his brother who usurped the throne or something.

You see, while the plot isn’t what you would call terribly complex, you’re not really given any sort of real bead on the background involved. You also get the impression that there’s an awful lot of backstory and character development that you’re missing out on so that the movie’s running time can be kept short.

Or, put another way, you feel like you’d be a lot better off watching the televised anime series instead of this movie adaptation. (For the record, I’ve only seen two episodes of the American dub on Fox Kids so I really don’t know that much about what the story’s supposed to be about.)

What was good about “Escaflowne,” the movie rendition? Great action sequences. Nice character and machine designs.

What wasn’t quite so good? The sense of missing backstory and character depth. A rushed feel to the sequencing. No sense that the heroine has any impetus for the changes she appears to go through.

It’s not a bad movie. I’m glad I was able to see a subtitled version, since adding a bad dub to an already-underwhelming film would probably have made it unwatchable. On the other hand, it’s not something I’m going to pay to own when it comes out on DVD. Maybe I’ll see about borrowing the series instead…

Escaflowne Movie Site

Here’s one of those “genre films” that a lot of fanboys like myself have been looking forward to for months… nay, years. In many ways Spider-Man has been our last, best hope to see a good movie based on a Marvel comics title. X-Men, after all, could have just been a fluke.

I’m pleased to say that Spider-Man, the movie, does not suck.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve already been inundated with hype and info and imagery and so on. I’ll spare you things you don’t need me to tell you.

Here’s what works about the movie:

• Yes, Tobey does an outstanding job. He absolutely picks up this movie and carries it on his back from start to finish. Spectacular work.
  
• The interpersonal drama outweighs the fancy CGI and fight choreography. It really does. If it didn’t, the last scene wouldn’t have worked at all. (No, I’m not giving that away, even though it gets spoiled in a lot of other reviews.)
  
• Willem Dafoe manages to work some subtlety into what would normally be Just Another Nickelson’s Joker Ripoff.
  
• There were very few played-for-laughs moments. In a weird sort of way, this makes great sense. We’re watching an origin story, and while Spider-Man is one of the original wisecracking superheroes he doesn’t quite evolve to that point in this film. We’ll probably see more of that in movies to come.
  
• Setup. There’s an awful lot of setup, both blatant and subtle, for future Spidey films. Listen for the name of the place Peter gets fired from on account of poor attendance.
  
• The organic webshooters. As used in this movie, it works. It breaks from canon, but it works.

Here’s what doesn’t (quite) work:

• Danny Elfman’s score. Soulless. Lifeless. A vague pastiche of everything else he’s ever done. Just about the only good thing I can say about it is that it never once gets in the way of the movie. I dare anyone to pick out a real melodic sequence out of that awful score. I dare anyone to remember any given series of notes. It’s that lame, folks.
  
• Kirsten Dunst. Bless her soul, it’s not really her fault that MJ didn’t have much more to do in this film than to bounce from rich brat to rich brat and get saved a few times by His Spideyness. While she’s the center of Peter Parker’s emotional existence, only a few times does she appear to have the strength or depth of character to deserve it. Again, not the fault of the actress, and she does have a few moments in the film that indicate possible greatness in future films.
  
• Some of the CGI is a bit obvious. It doesn’t detract from the movie too much, and is probably kind of unavoidable, but every so often there’s a jarring “Ah, that’s CGI” bit that takes you out of the movie for a moment. Luckily the movie pulls you right back in again, but you shouldn’t have left in the first place.
  
• The organic webshooters. (On both sides of the coin, yes.) My objection isn’t that it breaks from canon, but that we lose the opportunity to see that Peter Parker really is a science whiz. We sure hear about it often enough, but at no point is it actually evident. The screen time used to show him getting the hang of the organic webshooters could have been used to show him developing the mechanical/chemical ‘shooters.

Overall, it’s a great superhero movie and a better-than-average movie in its own right. If you like “genre” films in the least, you owe it to yourself to catch a showing. As for the Kerezman clan, my son Alexander stated halfway through that “we have to buy this when it comes out.” And he was saying this during one of the better Peter/MJ scenes in the movie, so it wasn’t just a reaction to the cool fight sequences. That’s my boy!

Once again Cinema 21 comes through with an anime showing here in Portland. This time around it’s Metropolis, Osamu Tezuka’s take on a visual style based on some still images from the Fritz Lang film of the same name.

Before I say anything else, I must say this: Metropolis is beautiful. Jaw-droppingly beautiful. Visually stunning. Hypnotic. Lovingly detailed. If you’re an animation fan, you’re going to love this movie. If you’re not, then at the very least you won’t find this movie to be cheap-looking in any way. This film is gorgeous.

I can almost hear you asking, “So what you’re saying, Karel, is that it’s pretty to look at. I get it. What about the rest of the movie?” To answer that question I’m going to try to name some of the influences that seem to have gone into Metropolis:

• Astroboy
• Akira
• The biblical story of the Tower of Babel
• Titanic (yes, that Titanic)
• Blade Runner
• Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

And I’m pretty sure that the above list is incomplete. You see, Metropolis is an art film, pure and simple. There is a story, and it’s not even a complex story, but the point of the film is to experiment with imagery, to dazzle the viewer with talent and technology. Plot elements are there purely as an excuse to move the viewer from one jaw-dropping visual sequence to another, or as an excuse to try something different and unique.

For the most part, Metropolis is a boy-meets-robot love story, complete with a rogue henchman who wants to destroy the robot, a devious figure who wants the robot to help him rule the world, some revolutionaries, a robot cop, the boy’s amusing and clever uncle, and random broken-down robots who inhabit the lower levels of the city. Because the movie is presented subtitled, we get to enjoy the vocal talents of the original cast, who are all well-chosen and perform admirably.

I should also point out that the use of music is fairly interesting. From Ray Charles to Dixieland jazz, each of the main sequences in the film is backed by music that is sometimes appropriate and sometimes deliberately strange. One musical moment in the film, which I won’t spoil, cost it a score point on my scale… you’ve been warned.

The film only loses a couple of points, one each for a pair of “what the?” moments near the end that leave you bewildered and laughing for the wrong reasons. Otherwise Metropolis is a delightful movie experience. See it if and when you can.

Every so often I get the urge to take in a short film at the good old “Omnimax” theater at OMSI. Yes, even with my chronic motion-perception dizziness, I still want to see what it’s like to be completely surrounded by a projected film.

Amazon takes you to South America and introduces the viewer to a huge, diverse region. More specifically, it chronicles the journeys of “medicine men,” one from the ancient traditions and one from the halls of Western science, into the Amazon to learn about the properties of its plant life from the native tribes. Along the way we’re shown some wildlife and trees and flowers and trees and fish and trees and naked natives and, er, trees. Did I mention the trees? The Amazon has lots of ‘em, and we get to fly over them very often. It’s clear, of course, that the rainforest fly-by is all from one particular flight and cuts from it are just being interspersed through the 45-minute film. There must be something about having an IMAX rig at your disposal that makes you want to strap it to an aircraft.

Lest you think I mock this movie, I’d like to point out that it does its job fairly well. What is the job this movie sets out to do? Oddly enough, it’s to show us that both ancient peoples and modern medicine view the Amazon rainforest as a bounty of incalculable value. The movie does this part of its task with surprising grace and style, never once condescending to the viewer or the native peoples it films. Even our high-country medicine man, a prime candidate for inadvertent comedy if ever there was one, is portrayed carefully and casually. He’s just a man on a quest for knowledge, trading what he has for knowledge and medicines that may be of value back home.

The “Discovery Channel” element comes mostly from the Western scientist who is on a rather similar visit, except this questor gives frequent lectures along the way. This guy didn’t bother me too much, but his film time did feel like being in a leafy green lecture hall somehow.

When the film gets bored with the human element, it shows us some wildlife. Pink dolphins, jaguars, lots of monkeys, and various fish appear on our screen. This is one of the major problems with Amazon, unfortunately. Note to IMAX filmmakers: I’m sitting in a domed room staring upward at a 70-some-odd-foot screen that fills my field of vision. DO NOT show me extremely close-up footage, blurry even, of animals that I then must crane my neck around awkwardly to see the whole of! In addition, hold the camera extremely still if you’re going to do extreme close-up shots, since while I’m craning my neck around I’d rather not become intensely nauseous because of your inept filmwork! Oh yes, and the next person who feels it necessary to pan across a hanging bridge and then SPIN THE CAMERA for the purpose of showing me the other end of the bridge WILL BE FLOGGED MERCILESSLY.

Amazon gets full marks for a solid treatment of the major subjects it tries to tackle, those being the medicinal value of the Amazon basin and the odd history of the more-or-less indigenous peoples therein. It doesn’t even waste film time showing us the depredations of modern “progress” as so many other such programs do. They know that if we paid the bucks to see this film then we’ve probably already seen the slash-and-burn footage, thank you.

Sadly, the film loses a number of score points for needless nausea, silly wildlife vignettes and the neverending flight over green trees. (We’ve seen THAT footage too, guys. Several times. In better films.) How many monkeys-in-trees shots did the movie really need? Why was that jaguar growling so much? Why oh why did they have to spin the damned camera while showing us the canopy bridge?

If you have a strong stomach, or you’re really compelled to learn some interesting things about the area that you may not have picked up from years of watching PBS, TLC and The Discovery Channel, head down to OMSI or your local equivalent and catch a showing of Amazon. Otherwise, save your wallet and your tummy some grief.

I enjoy a fair number of what might be called “guilty pleasures” by those of higher brow than myself. Among these are anime, sword-and-sorcery programming, music by aging rock and roll bands, and swashbuckling period pieces. Monte Cristo is, of course, an example of that last category. The good news is that it actually is a pleasure and not merely guilty.

The best way I can describe this film is that it’s a straightforward tale of good guy, bad guy and lady fair. Betrayal, hardship, revenge, true love and even some light humor are all well-balanced elements in this film. There aren’t many surprises, not even for someone who hasn’t read the novels, since most of the elements that may or may not have been original in Alexandre Dumas’ original work have been used and abused in countless books and films since.

You know what? It doesn’t matter. This movie is fun, it’s good to look at, it’s pleasant to hear, and the funniest parts are the sly parts where the audience is let in on the joke that nobody else is meant to see or hear.

There’s nothing outstanding in the acting, the swordplay, the cinematography, the music or any of it, really. It’s not really meant to be a groundbreaking film, after all. It’s a throwback to the good old days of swashbuckling epics, and that is a blessing for the most part.

One thing about this movie, however, is so offensive to me that I docked an entire mark from the score on account of only a few seconds of film. When the final climactic swordfight begins, the movie suddenly rips you back into reality by pointedly reminding you that it was made during the Computer Age. Yes, that’s right, suddenly we get about 30 seconds of hyper-speed jump-cut digital editing! What the hell? The rest of the movie behaves so well, so gracefully, so like a movie that could have been made at any other time in the history of film… only to squander that grace with a lame, offensive, poorly-done attempt at heightening the intensity of the action at the last.

Nearly two hours I spent drawn cheerfully into the world of the film, only to be reminded, unpleasantly so, that I was in fact sitting in a modern movie theater. Grr. It’s a good thing that the rest of the movie is so damned good that I can almost… almost… forgive the filmmakers for that one major gaffe.

Overall, if you like period-piece swashbuckling melodrama, see Monte Cristo. If you’re into Matrix-style cyberpunk wire-fu, see something else.