Don't Always Disagree

                The more I see good actors giving bad performances in terrible films, the more sympathetic I get to how uncertain their chosen profession seems to be. So much of how they’re perceived and what they’re judged on is completely out of their control. Scripts get constantly rewritten, their makeup and wardrobes are a series of choices made by others, and they need to trust the directors and editors to make them look good in the final cut. The more I dig into the nuts and bolts of what on paper are completely acceptable films but which in practice are boring and nonsensical, the more a lot of trends become understandable. I never quite understood the way that actors, once they reach a certain level of success, suddenly start getting handed producer credits as part of signing on. I thought it was a way to grab a piece of the backend, and I’m sure that’s a lot of it, but I think it’s more important that they b...

                Movies are always worlds unto themselves. They operate by their own internal logic and set of rules that can swing wildly from mostly realistic to completely bananas. Even movies that are attempting to be grounded and realistic are inherently fictitious, and I don’t just mean the plot and characters. Nobody has to stand in line at the post office. Nobody has to visit three different restaurants before the wait time is acceptable. Nobody has an inconvenient burst of diarrhea during an important meeting. If anything like that does happen it’s inevitably going to become part of the plot or if it’s a comedy it’s going to end in a punchline. The gap between a straight drama like ‘Gods and Monsters’ and a fantasy adventure like ‘The Mummy’ is not all that wide, and not just because they both star Brendan Fraser.               What straight dr...

                I’m starting to form some definite opinions on Dark Castle Entertainment, the production company behind three of the recent movies I’ve watched. So far none of them have been any good, so fingers crossed for the upcoming ‘Gothika,’ I guess. The three-headed beast that rules over the still-operating company is comprised of Gilbert Adler, Joel Silver, and Robert Zemeckis. I think because I first learned of its existence right after watching ‘What Lies Beneath,’ which Zemeckis directed, I focused a lot of my attention towards his influence on their output when the person I really should have been zeroing in on was Joel Silver. This ... this isn't "The Love Boat," titles.               I keep forgetting Silver’s been around since the early 80’s. His name is slapped on a ton of classic films, such as ’48 Hrs.,’ ‘Lethal Weapon,’ and ‘The Matr...

                I’ll go ahead and say it: Gore Verbinski earned his time in director jail. I saw his version of ‘The Lone Ranger’ in theaters not because of his work with the Pirate of the Caribbean movies but because of the lingering fondness I felt from enjoying his 1997 slapstick comedy ‘Mousehunt’ in a theater. I’ve only recently learned that it was a commercial success, I’d assumed it was a flop because I remember seeing it completely alone and never noticed anyone talking about it. It made an unadjusted $128 million off of a $38 million dollar budget, and considering it’s a movie about Nathan Lane and Lee Evans chasing a CGI mouse around and doing Tom & Jerry gags that’s a very respectable return. Somewhere around the second Pirates movie, though, Verbinski kind of forgot that money was real and his budgets started to soar. His cowboy movie cost an adjusted $338 million and only brought in $351 million, and ...

                This movie is kind of special. On the one hand it’s very much of its time, a relatively low-budget horror remake that technically earns its R-rating with swearing and on-screen violence but without much nudity or any truly visceral gore. On the other hand its script could be taught as an example of a screenplay clearly reverse-engineered from producer notes. Here we clearly have the twin requirements of a specific gonzo location that everything has to bend to fit while also including as many nods and details from the 1960 original as possible. On yet a third hand it’s a badly made film from a director of commercials who clearly doesn’t know how to build a long-form narrative. If you want to cram a fourth hand in there it also contains the purest example of something I thought had been parodied into the ground: the sassy Black sidekick who’s only in the movie to make quips to the white characters. This ...