By Peter T. Chattaway

LIFE has been very busy at the Chattaway household lately. In January, my wife and I welcomed our third child into the world – and since our twins are not quite two years old, we were already pretty busy as it was.

As a result, I have not yet caught up on all the movies that have been winning awards and heaps of critical praise in these last weeks before the Oscar ceremonies – and thus, I have not yet prepared the top 10 list that I normally contribute to the February issue of this paper.

Ah well, perhaps I’ll get around to it in the next issue; at the very least, I will post it at my blog. In the meantime, here are some random thoughts on recent films.

* * *

There Will Be Blood has rightly been hailed as a challenging and masterful exercise in cinematic technique by writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson – but does it go any deeper than that? I have only seen the film once, so I cannot say for sure.

What I do know is that Daniel Day-Lewis gives a marvellously complex portrait of a deeply disturbed and profoundly driven oil baron, Daniel Plainview – and that Plainview’s relationships to his adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) and his possible long-lost brother Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor) suggest all kinds of interesting themes.

But the film’s portrayal of Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the preacher who demands money and respect from Plainview and gets neither, is fairly shallow – and never seems to get beyond caricature.

This need not be a weakness – it provides the film with some seriously funny, if unsettling, scenes – but it does limit the film, somewhat.

* * *

The Bucket List, which concerns a wealthy guy and a working-class guy who meet in a cancer ward and decide to make the most of their remaining days by touring the world and enjoying life to the hilt, is nothing to write home about.

The premise is implausible, the humour tepid, the special effects kind of tacky – but the film just might mark the first time director Rob Reiner has dropped his anti-religious prejudice and expressed anything resembling an openness to matters of faith.

A few of Reiner’s early films had very minor and very benign jokes at the expense of religion, but his later films turned pretty hostile; Misery, A Few Good Men and Ghosts of Mississippi all made their contributions to the religious-psycho stereotype – and, in the case of that last film, left out any reference to the real-life hero’s devout faith.

Continue article >>

But now, The Bucket List features Morgan Freeman as a man who believes in God, has faith that there is a life beyond this one, and quotes something his pastor once told him when it comes time to deliver the film’s inspirational theme – while Jack Nicholson plays the skeptic who openly says he “envies” people like Freeman.

I could say even more about the film’s portrayal of the Freeman character, and how it relates to his beliefs, but it might mean giving something away.

So for now, all I will say is this: Pay attention to the voice-over – including, not least, how it invests his character (rather than Nicholson’s) with the greater moral or spiritual authority.

* * *

Despite what you may have heard, The Golden Compass is not quite dead at the box office. The film may have grossed only $68 million so far in North America, but overseas it has earned more than $245 million, for a total of $313 million – which puts it well ahead of, say, the similarly expensive Evan Almighty, which grossed only $173 million worldwide. (Both films cost over $200 million to produce and promote.)

However, New Line Cinema won’t get to enjoy those overseas profits, because they pre-sold the foreign distribution rights to cover some of their costs. So it came as no surprise when, less than two weeks after The Golden Compass came out and flopped, the studio announced it had patched things up with Peter Jackson – and they would be working together on a big-screen version of The Hobbit after all.

The studio hasn’t had a significant hit since The Lord of the Rings trilogy came to an end four years ago. They had hoped Philip Pullman’s anti-theistic series would provide them with another major franchise, but that looks very unlikely, now – and so they have turned, once again, to Middle-Earth and its most recent interpreter.

Let’s just hope Jackson can rein in some of the self-indulgence which tainted his King Kong remake – and return to the simpler style of, say, The Fellowship of the Ring.

* * *

Rumours that the new Indiana Jones movie would turn to aliens rather than religion for its supernatural inspiration seem to be coming true. In a recent issue of Vanity Fair, George Lucas said Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – which takes place in 1957 and comes to theatres in May – would be less like a 1930s Saturday-matinee serial, and more like “a B science-fiction movie from the 50s.”

– filmchatblog.blogspot.com

February 2008