Movie Review : Black Book

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Jun 172008
 

Director Paul Verhoeven is a complicated man, whose interests include violence, sex, robots, dismemberment, breasts, violence, explosions, resurrection imagery, and breasts; a set that broadly mirrors my own. So of course I have been a fan of Verhoeven’s films ever since Robocop.

Black Book is a WWII resistance movie about a Jewish woman in Nazi occupied Holland who becomes a resistance spy by seducing the local Nazi commander. However, nothing is quite what it seems and she faces betrayal from all sides as the Allies draw closer and the Nazis get more desperate.


A Nazi and a smoker? This guy is obviously a bad egg!

The film has a kind of gritty beauty about it and the recreation of The Hague during war time is very well done. Like Verhoeven’s other films, even the good guys have serious flaws and some of the Nazis are more than the slavering monsters they are usually portrayed as.

Unfortunately the Black Book is let down by a few unbelievable plot contrivances and Verhoeven’s trademark lack of subtlety. One character screwing down a coffin lid using a locket containing pictures of her dead family was a particularly eye-roll-inducing example. Another is the nigh-mandatory comment on the current American War on Terrortm, but since that is mostly deserved so I am prepared to let it slide. Having said that, Black Book is still a “serious” film, nowhere near as over the top as the director’s Hollywood productions.

Highly Recomended

Movie Review : Iron Man

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May 062008
 

Iron ManIn the pantheon of super heros, Iron Man is strictly C-list. Batman and Spider Man are the top of the heap, Superman is boring but gets a pass by being there first. Who else? Possibly Wolverine and the Hulk on a good day. Wonder Woman? Maybe. The Silver Surfer? If one was being charitable.

Beneath them are the second stringers: The Flash, Mr Fantastic, the rest of the X-Men. All good people to have on your side, but not your first phone call in the event of villain related shenanigans.

Lower still are the lame heros, unworthy of being called super. Daredevil and Electra, The Punisher, and Iron Man. Although they have their (deluded) fans, these characters are destined to see out their days fighting equally terrible bad guys in their own vapid and desperate movie franchises. Which makes the fact that Iron Man is a fantastic film all the stranger.

Tony Stark is a fantastically wealthy playboy engineering genius, but without the emo angst that makes Bruce Wanye no fun at parties. In fact, Stark is actually a bit of an asshole, and an arms dealer to boot. Circumstances conspire to compel him to change his mind about the arms dealer part, but he remains an asshole even after he invents a really cool suit. This is at least an interesting change from the usual self-sacrificing dullards that usually pollute our screens. The female characters don’t do anything, but they don’t in any of the other films either, so no change there.

All super hero movies take large amounts of time tediously establishing where the hero comes from and how they acquired their fabulous powers. Iron Man follows this mold, but takes the daring approach of actually making the origin story entertaining. The script is witty without resorting to stupid one-liners, and the special effects are great. Later one Iron Man settles down to become more of a standard goody vs baddy battle, but this is not drawn out and the film knows when to roll the credits, which is more than I can say for many hero movies.

Highly Recommended

Join the World of Steven Seagal

 Culture  1 Response »
Apr 292007
 

I was cleaning up the other day and found a small stack of old comics I bought years ago for 50 cents each. The best part of old comics isn’t the stories (in this particular case, Batman takes 4 pages to heroically beat up a blind man), but the ads. Take the specimen on the left for example – a full page ad inviting all comers to Join the World of Steven Seagal.

Back in 1991, this might have seemed an attractive proposition. But like comics, action stars do not age well, and Seagal’s stock has sunk somewhat in the intervening years. From his breakthrough movie, Under Siege, it has been a long slide from dizzying heights of mediocrity into the pits of straight-to-DVD hell.

I do not know what The World of Steven Seagal looks like these days, or whether entry to it is still worth $24:95; but judging from it’s founder I would bet it contains a few too many fast food outlets and not nearly enough hairdressers.

The following table displays the breadth and extreme depths of Seagal’s movie career to date:

Title Year Antagonists IMDB Rating Weighted Average
Under Siege 1992 Ruthless Terrorists 6.1 5.2
On Deadly Ground 1994 Ruthless Oil Corporation 3.5 4.5
Under Siege 2:Dark Territory 1995 Ruthless Terrorists 4.8 4.8
Executive Decision1 1996 Ruthless Terrorists 6.2 5.5
The Glimmer Man 1996 Ruthless Serial Killer 4.7 4.9
Fire Down Bellow 1997 Corporation Dumping Toxic Waste, Ruthlessly 4.2 4.2
The Patriot 1998 Ruthless Militia with Ruthless Virus 3.9 4.3
Exit Wounds 2001 Drug Dealers/Corrupt Cops/Terrible Rap Music (all Ruthless) 5.1 4.3
Ticker 2001 Ruthless Terrorists 3.0 3.8
Half Past Dead 2002 Ruthless Terrorists 4.1 3.4
The Foreigner 2003 Ruthless Assassins hired by Industrialist Who Is Also Ruthless 2.6 3.0
Out for a Kill 2003 Chinese Mafia, Inscrutable yet Ruthless 2.7 3.1
Belly of the Beast 2003 Ruthless Terrorists 4.3 3.7
Clementine2 2004 Ruthless Gang Kingpin 3.4 3.7
Out of Reach 2004 Ruthless Human Traffickers 3.6 3.7
Into the Sun 2005 Japanese Mafia, Ruthless yet Incsrutable 4.1 3.9
Submerged 2005 Ruthless Terrorists 3.7 3.8
Today You Die 2005 Criminals who Ruthlessly framed him 3.9 3.8
Black Dawn 2005 Ruthless Terrorists 3.7 3.9
Mercenary for Justice 2006 Ruthless Mercenaries, the old-fashioned kind who a Not For Justice 4.2 4.1
Shadow Man 2006 Ruthless Russian Gangsters 4.3 3.9
Attack Force 2006 Drug Dealers/Corrupt Military Types, both very Ruthless 2.5 3.1
Flight of Fury 2007 Its not clear from the plot summary, but the smart money says it’s Terrorists, possibly even Ruthless ones 3.4 3.1

1: This would be a typical Seagal movie except that he gets unexpectedly killed about 25 minutes into it. This only improves the movie marginally..
2: Here Seagal is more of a special guest star, playing the comparatively minor role as the bad guy’s unbeatable fighter.

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