Anime Attic: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

So earlier this year, when my friends and I were slowly but surely making our way through the season-long fight scene between Goku and Frieza in the third season of Dragon Ball Z (which is another post altogether), we saw a preview for a series called Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. Actually, there were several previews, on several different discs, so after about the third time, we turned to each other and said, “Hey, that looks pretty interesting. Let’s put it in the queue!”

(Random word ninja side note: I see so many people getting “cue” and “queue” confused. “Queue” is a waiting list or line. Your Netflix list? A queue. The line at the movie concessions? A queue. If you say something like “queue the music,” you are wrong. The word there is “cue.” Yes, I know “queue” is more fun to spell, but it’s only a verb when you’re talking about getting in line.)

Anyway. We put the whole Tsubasa series on the list, and just finished the last disc last night.

A slight tangent, for a moment:

I don’t know how many of you have watched Full Metal Alchemist, but it’s a series that is much shorter than the manga from which it is derived, and it’s excellent right up until the last three or four episodes. In the last three or four episodes, things go from good to “WTF?” in less time than it takes to say “Edward Elric.” You can practically see where the writers realized that they had about 20 plotlines they needed to wrap up and only two hours of story time in which to do it.

I bring up this because, in Tsubasa, you can see the exact episode where the writers were told that they’d run out of funding and wouldn’t be getting a third season. And you can also see the exact moment where they said, “Ah, fuck it. We won’t even bother to wrap this stuff up. Where’s a big bad guy we can bring in for a decent fight in the last two episodes?”

The series starts out promising. Syaoran is a young archaeologist and the childhood best friend of Sakura, the princess of Clow Country. Sakura is on the verge of telling Syaoran that she loves him when a mysterious noise draws her to the ruins that Syaoran has been investigating. There, Sakura sprouts giant white wings, and starts to disappear into the wall, but Syaoran saves her. The wings shatter into hundreds of feathers and vanish. Turns out the feathers are all Sakura’s memories, and now Syaoran must travel between worlds in order to find them all and save Sakura’s life.

So, they’re sent to Yuko, the Dimensional Witch, where they meet two other travelers: Fai, a wizard who never wants to return to the world he just left; and Kurogane, a fighter who will do just about anything to get back to the world he was just thrown away from. Yuko will give them all the ability to travel between worlds to search for Sakura’s feathers, but they must pay with the thing most dear to them.

Kurogane must give up Ginryu, his family’s katana. Fai gives up a tattoo on his back, which, according to Wikipedia, suppresses his magical power. (Not that I’d know if I hadn’t checked Wikipedia because they DON’T TELL YOU A DAMN THING ABOUT IT IN THE SHOW.) Syaoran’s price is his relationship with Sakura: even if they recover all of her feathers, she will never remember who he was to her before she lost her memories.

They’re joined by Mokona Modoki, a little white thing that is oh-so-cute, who can open portals to travel between worlds. So, now they’re ready to commence with the world-jumping and searching for Sakura’s feather.

However, there are two people watching them: Chick with 50 Lbs. of Black Curly Hair and Monocle Dude. They wear black and apparently have red light bulbs in every light in their lair. Who are these mysterious people? What do they have in store for our intrepid heroes?

Well, I still have no freaking idea, because they don’t tell you until the last episode that the man’s name is Fei Wong Reed. And they never tell you who the chick is (and if they do, it’s dropped in one episode and then NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN).

There are several good story arcs in the first season-and-a-half of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, enough to keep you watching and to make you care about the main characters. Unfortunately, the last 6 episodes drop the ball, and you’re left with dozens of questions even as the heroes bound off for yet another world and yet another feather.

• Who is Fei Wong?
• What does he want with the foursome, specifically Sakura?
• Who is his curly-haired friend?
• What the hell is Fai’s backstory?
• What about Seishiro, another person hunting the feathers?
• WHY THE HELL DID THE WIZARD GO 52 EPISODES WITHOUT EVER USING MAGIC?
• What on earth is the Syaoran with the eyepatch that Fei Wong and Curly Girl have in the tube?

These are just some of the questions; I can think of others, but I won’t list them here. I realize all of these are probably answered to great detail and satisfaction in the manga, but I didn’t read the manga. I watched the anime. And one medium of storytelling should not be dependent upon another for you to understand what on God’s green earth is going on. (Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo manage to tell their stories in fewer episodes and they actually tie up all their plot threads. And Full Metal Alchemist, while going completely freaking crazy in the last three episodes, at least made an EFFORT to tie up the plot threads that were left hanging. This is not an impossible request, people.)

It’s a shame, because for about the first 10 discs, the series is really good. It’s just the ending where it so completely falls apart, and the frustration of it is enough to negate a lot of the enjoyment I got out of the first part of the series.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine – Why It’s Not as Bad as You’d Think

Yes, I realize that this movie came out in May and I’m just now posting the review. Quiet, you.

I did not like X-Men: The Last Stand, so I was understandably apprehensive about the idea to delve into the origin stories for various mutants from the X-Men series.

Fortunately, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is lightyears better than The Last Stand, although it doesn’t quite reach the first two in terms of quality.

In Wolverine, we’re following the (surprise!) backstory of Wolverine. Who is he? Where did he come from? What is his relationship with Sabretooth and Colonel Stryker? Why doesn’t he remember any of it in X-Men?

Wolverine addresses and answers those questions, some satisfactorily, some not so much.

The good:

Really, I was pretty surprised by the cast in this movie. For the whole two minutes that he gets to do anything, Ryan Reynolds steals the show as Wade Wilson. Seriously, somebody get this man to do more action movies. He’s hilarious, and he can pull off badass.

Also a pleasant surprise was Liev Schreiber. I still think of him as “the guy from the Scream movies who was kind of a dick,” so it was a shock to see him cast as Sabretooth, mostly because he struck me as more intellectual than Sabretooth. However, he did a really, really good job. Suitably fierce and feral, and a good foil for Wolverine.

Speaking of Wolverine, Hugh Jackman is a fantastic actor and he really gets to kick some ass in this movie. He also has a great tendency to run around 1) in a shirt without any sleeves, 2) without a shirt, and 3) without any clothes at all. So, ladies, enjoy your fan service.

Taylor Kitsch was an excellent choice for Gambit, and it was good to finally see him in the movie. I only had two problems with him (one being a fangirl “wah, lack of screentime” complaint, and the other being detailed below), but other than that, I liked him. I really don’t get some of the vicious Gambit hate I’ve seen online.

The middling:

The story. It’s decent, but it could’ve used some smoothing out. Certain threads pop up unexpectedly, and some of the resolution feels needlessly convoluted. Not “you need 20 minutes of explanation to even remotely understand” convoluted, just “I’m pretty sure there was an easier way to do that” convoluted.

At times, it tends to feel like mutant cameo madness. Not because they have a lot of mutants, but because they try to give nearly every single mutant in the movie a special “Yay, use your powers!” scene, which ends up feeling overdone. But, while this slightly bothered me, the two friends I saw the movie with didn’t feel that way. So, take that as you will.

Also, some cheesy dialogue. Again, this is kind of expected for just about any action movie (and most comic movies, for that matter), so it’s not a real dealbreaker.

I don’t have much of a problem with Gambit’s accent, but I wish they’d picked one and stuck with it. Southern? French? Cajun? None? Just pick one and at least get some points for consistency.

The CGI in this movie is also a little more obvious than it was in the others. There are times when Wolverine’s claws look fake, such as the bathroom scene when he’s first examining them. Those moments don’t come up often, but when they do, it’s a jolt.

The verdict:

Better than X-Men 3, not quite on par with the first two. Definitely an enjoyable film and a fun summer movie.

And tomorrow, I’m watching Star Trek. Excuse me while I go hunt down a pair of Vulcan ears.

Author’s Note: I’ve watched the ’90s animated series religiously, but I’ve only read a handful of the comics. Therefore, I can make no testaments as to the comic accuracy of this background story. However, one of the friends I watched the film with is familiar with comics, and he was happy with story and the changes they made, given the medium and the time constraints.

The Barenaked Archive: Chicken Little

When it comes to animation, Disney has long been a brand name. Until recently, their 2-D animated films were all fun affairs for the whole family, as well as a reliable and lucrative investment for the company. That is, until the traditionally animated films started underperforming at the box office while 3-D animated movies performed outstandingly.

Now, Disney is also putting its eggs in the 3-D basket (pardon the pun) with Chicken Little, the first 3-D animated movie they’ve done without their exceedingly talented counterpart, Pixar.

Thankfully, despite being a little heavy-handed at times, Chicken Little is overall an enjoyable, heartfelt, and hilarious little movie.

The titular chicken is practically ostracized from his small community of Oakey Oaks when he panics everybody and embarrasses his dad with his claims that the sky is falling. But when it happens a second time, it’s up to Chicken Little and his friends to convince everyone that he wasn’t crazy, and hopefully in time to save their town from alien invasion.

The original “Chicken Little” story is just the first ten or so minutes of the movie. Surprisingly, the writers were able to take a rather thin plot (“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”) and beef it up to include not only aliens, but a father-son theme (this seems to be quite a trend in movies recently) as well as the ever-reliable “believe in yourself!” theme and make it all consistently funny. The audience was all but rolling in the aisles for most of the 77-minute runtime (yes, it’s short), and the jokes struck a good balance being funny for both kids and adults. (Personal favorite: the mayor’s cue cards.)

Also, characters like Chicken Little’s friends Runt of the Litter and Fish Out of Water provide quite a few laughs. Runt of the Litter is the typical paranoid, hyperventilating friend who has to breathe in a paper bag or sing ’70s tunes to help him calm down. Fish Out of Water, on the other hand, doesn’t actually speak, but his pantomimes and utter lack of fear in the face of danger make him entertaining.

Chicken Little is one inventive little bird who comes up with unique solutions to his problems, and it’s this imaginative tendency that gets him in trouble. He also has trouble with his father, Buck, a former athlete who doesn’t quite know how to handle his much smaller, non-athletically-inclined son.

Their relationship provides the major emotional crux for the movie, and for the most part it’s handled very well. However, occasionally it gets a little overly sentimental and feels a bit like they’re beating the family issues into your head (Smack! “His father doesn’t believe in him! Do you get it yet?”). That’s about the only part that really drags the movie down.

An excellent trait that Disney picked up from Pixar is the casting of voice actors for their voices and not their names. Zach Braff, Joan Cusack, Don Knotts, Patrick Stewart, Steve Zahn, Fred Willard, and even Pixar staple Wallace Shawn all lend their talents to the film, though you wouldn’t know it unless you sat and watched the credits.

The animation in the movie is also nicely done. It’s purposefully more cartoon-ish with both its characters and backgrounds, but everything moves as it should and it’s nice to see that they’re going more for visual creativity than for something that resembles reality.

Chicken Little really is a treat for kids and adults. It’s funny and charming, and an unexpectedly good entry into the 3-D animation field for Disney.

The Barenaked Archive: End of the Spear

Last night I hit panic mode as I realized the only non-school-related stuff I’d done this week involved watching disc 2 of Neon Genesis Evangelion and playing copious amounts of board games with my brother and his roommates. In other words, I hadn’t watched a movie in almost seven days, a record for me since probably January 2004.

Thus, in desperation and with absolutely no desire to drive north to the AMC theater in Oklahoma City (where, at the time, they were showing Paradise Now, Match Point, and The Squid and the Whale), I headed to the Norman theater to catch a 7 p.m. showing of End of the Spear.

All I know about the movie going in was that the production company, Every Tribe Entertainment, was based in Oklahoma City, and that the film was based on a true story of five missionaries who were killed by the very tribe they were seeking to help.

The movie opens with two men taking a canoe down a river in Ecuador’s part of the Amazon rain forest. One is Mincayani, a Waodani and native Ecuadorian. The other is Steve Saint, an American who spent most of his childhood in Ecuador thanks to his missionary father, Nate.

It’s then that the movie takes us back to 1943, to Mincayani’s boyhood in the rainforest. His Waodani tribe is considered one of the most violent in the world, and not even women and children are safe from what seems like daily attacks. They have very little contact with the outside world, and refer to everybody who comes from there as “foreigners.”

A “foreigner” is exactly what Nate Saint and his four missionary friends are. They’ve been trying for some time to make contact with the Waodani, and they live with their families in the Amazon jungle, connected to the outside world only by CB radio and Nate’s little plane. When they finally make contact, though, the Waodani attack, and all five men are killed.

Sometime later, however, Nate’s sister Rachel goes to live with the Waodani, the same family group that killed her brother. The other female family members of the missionaries and their children, including young Steve, also go to visit or live with the tribe, to continue the mission that their husbands died for.

Honestly, there’s a very moving story here about forgiveness and redemption, and by the end you may be asking yourself if you could look into the eyes of the man who killed your father and not only tell him that you forgive him, but become a part of his family. It’s a refreshing look at some real Christian ideas, instead of the minority of the crazy intolerant ones that seem to be getting all the press lately.

The problem is that that story isn’t told very well. It’s not the acting at all; the actors all do very well in their roles, especially Louie Leonardo, who plays Mincayani, and Chad Allen, who plays both Nate Saint and the grown-up version of Steve. It’s just the way the movie’s put together seems a little amateurish.

Several times, especially in the beginning during the night attack on Mincayani’s tribe, the camera seems to be too close to the action or to the characters, and it’s difficult to tell what’s going on. There are also a lot of airplane shots, where the little yellow plane is just flying around the jungle and while I do appreciate the beauty of the rain forest, it got to be just a little tedious.

And though the movie starts out with Steve and Mincayani on the river, we don’t return to them until the last few minutes of the movie. The bulk of the action takes place during Steve’s childhood. You get to know Steve (or at least Steve as a kid), and you get to know Mincayani, but you don’t see them together until the end.

The real climax of the movie is when Mincayani confesses that he killed Steve’s father, but before this point we’ve never even seen them have a conversation. What’s the relationship between Mincayani and Steve? Are they close friends? Acquaintances? Or do they not even really like each other? The climax could’ve been so much more powerful if their relationship had been established for the audience, and not just through the voiceover.

Ultimately, End of the Spear is a good story with not-so-good execution. If you go see it in the theater, you probably won’t wind up wishing for your money back, but you’d be just as well off waiting for the DVD.

The Barenaked Archives: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

How happy is the blameless Vestal’s lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.
– Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard”

Everybody’s had that relationship that turns sour. Where the fights become more frequent, harsh words are shouted, false (or true) accusations are made, and finally it ends with one or both parties violently slamming the door and wishing that they could just forget their disastrous relationship.

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which wins the “Longest Title Without a Semicolon” award), Joel (Jim Carrey) is given the chance to forget his relationship with Clementine (Kate Winslet) thanks to a memory-erasing procedure developed by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). In the midst of the erasing, though, Joel changes his mind and tries to hide Clementine from the technicians in order to keep her.

This movie is a trip, but what else would you expect from writer Charlie Kaufman, who brought the world such movies as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation? It’s not quite in chronological order, which requires the viewer to pay attention or else risk losing what’s happening on screen. For paying this sort of attention, though, said viewer is rewarded with a film that is funny, sad, intelligent, and real. This is the antithesis of Nora Ephron romantic comedies. Missing are the conventional leads, the conventional story, and the conventional ending. Talk about a welcome breath of fresh air.

The film moves between the real world, where the technicians are erasing Joel’s memory, and inside Joel’s head as he tries to hang on to Clementine. Sometimes things speed up, sometimes they slow down, and sometimes you’re moving backward or forward in time. Visually the movie is great, especially the sequences on the beach at Montauk, or the way things fade and blur when Joel’s memory is erased. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you’re in a memory or in reality.

Jim Carrey has finally found the perfect role for segueing into drama from comedy. Joel is shy, cautious, neurotic, about as far from Ace or Lloyd as you can get, and Carrey nails him. Kate Winslet is also outstanding as the free-spirited, spontaneous, flighty Clementine. Both characters feel so real, like people you’d run into on the street or something. They aren’t high-powered ad execs or freelance writers or journalists and they don’t live in huge loft apartments. They’re just people.

Equally good are the supporting characters: Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo as the technicians performing the erasure, Kirsten Dunst as the secretary who worships Dr. Mierzwiak, and Tom Wilkinson as the aforementioned good doctor himself. These aren’t one-dimensional supporting characters. They each have a life and problems of their own.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a romantic movie for the anti-romantic. A quirky indie film with no robots, aliens, or oversized elephants. A Jim Carrey movie more in the vein of The Truman Show than Ace Ventura. And if it sounds like it could be for you, see it immediately while it’s still in Norman.

The Barenaked Archives: Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown was always one of my most anticipated movies for this year. So when negative word came back from Toronto, I was understandably worried and a little confused, especially since other reviews had been quite positive.

Since seeing it Tuesday night, I’ve come to two hypotheses that could explain the negative reviews.

1) This is a uniquely Southern movie, very much about the heartland of America, and if you don’t have much of a connection to this area of the country, you’re probably not going to get it.

2) All the critics are just cynics.

Elizabethtown is by no means perfect, or even close to it. However, despite its flaws, it’s sentimental and funny (oh boy, is it funny) and leaves you with warm fuzzies that feel like they were earned, not coerced.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is a suicidal shoe designer who’s just cost his company nearly a billion dollars, which results in him losing both his job and his girlfriend. Before he can carry out the deed, though, Drew gets a call that his father’s died and he must go to Kentucky and pick up the body. On the flight there, he meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a perpetually perky flight attendant who might be just the person Drew needs to help him reconnect with his life.

This is definitely a Cameron Crowe movie, so obviously the music is fantastic. It’s also very personal and optimistic, which could also be construed as self-indulgent and cloyingly sentimental if you’re more of the jaded and cynical type. This is a celebration of the little things that make life worth living, not the monetary success that can so easily be taken away.

There’s almost a sense of the surreal in the beginning of the movie when we follow Drew (who steadfastly repeats the mantra “I’m fine” although he’s clearly not) to his boss’s office in a complex that’s best compared to Xanadu. Alec Baldwin is deliciously fun in the beginning, as he manages to be both a disappointed fatherly mentor and a ruthless businessman who’ll hang you out to dry without any scruples.

A lot of people are wondering how Orlando Bloom will handle a role that doesn’t require some form of ancient weaponry or elf ears. This movie is about Drew’s inner journey from depression and the verge of suicide to the point where life might actually be worth living, which means he’s in just about every scene and a good part of the movie rests on his shoulders.

Bloom really pulls it off, right down to the American accent. He gets a chance here to show his chops more than in any other movie he’s done to date. It’s hilariously morbid how determined Drew is to commit suicide. Even this trip to Kentucky is, for him, nothing more than a delay of the inevitable. As a fish out of water, he perfectly portrays the overwhelming feeling a well-meaning Southern family can inflict on an unsuspecting newcomer. And, he’s got one of the funniest scenes in the movie after getting lost on his way to Elizabethtown.

Speaking of family, the scenes involving Drew’s family, especially the extended crew gathered in Kentucky for the funeral, were some of my favorites. The overpowering crush of family members, all of whom think you look just like somebody else in the family (be it a parent, cousin, or distant relative), is something those of us subjected to yearly family reunions will quickly recognize. The family is almost as important to the movie as the romance that probably comprises the most screen time.

The romance is a bit of an unorthodox one, something that comes from a chance encounter and blossoms into something more, starting with a marathon all-night phone call. Kirsten Dunst does well as the sweet and philosophical Claire, who really understands people and may know Drew better than he knows himself. But even so, her life’s not all sunny and roses and she needs rescuing almost as much as he does.

Crowe nails the setting, from the comment “Does it ever cool off?” to the noisy, noisy locusts that infest this area every summer. It warms the heart to see the South portrayed so honestly when Hollywood, for the most part, tends to ignore us. (The mere sight of Oklahoma City on a road map was enough to garner cheers from the audience at the screening.) We aren’t perfect, but we’re not a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.

However, like I said earlier, this movie has its flaws. There are some great logic-defying plot leaps, my personal favorite being the fork in the musical road map Claire gives Drew near the end of the movie. It is very self-indulgent, which might win some people over but will likely lose others. And despite being about death and suicide, it’s a surprisingly un-cynical movie, which could tickle some gag reflexes.

But, for some reason, I loved this movie despite all the faults, and this is coming from a self-professed cynic. Give Elizabethtown a chance. It may really surprise you.

The Netflix Queue: Avatar: The Last Airbender

If you like cartoons, and if you like good TV shows, then I urge you to add Avatar: The Last Airbender to your Netflix queue. Or go pick it up at Blockbuster or whatever your local rental place is.

My roommates and I have been watching this show for the past three weeks, and it is CRACK. Funny, engaging, heartwarming, heartbreaking, addictive CRACK.

We just got the final DVD in the mail today. And we’ll be watching it this evening.

I can’t wait.

All right, back to work.

The Barenaked Archives: Domino

It’s very rare that a movie practically hands me the words to describe it on a silver platter. About halfway through Domino, Mena Suvari’s character, a meek secretary for Christopher Walken’s TV producer, tells the bounty hunters to talk to her boss quickly because he has the attention span of a “ferret on crystal meth.”

This ferret and his drug addiction were apparently responsible for the movie’s cinematography: shaky cameras, quick edits, funky lighting, and close-ups so extreme you could count the pores on a person’s face. You can sit there till you’re blue in the face and say it’s a stylistic choice, meant to make the movie grittier and more realistic. I say it’s distracting and gives me a headache.

In fact, the cinematography so got on my nerves that it nearly made me miss the movie. Not that Domino was really anything to write home about in the first place.

Proclaiming to be “based on a true story (sort of),” Domino gives us an account of Domino Harvey, the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey and a model who became a bounty hunter. It’s told in flashback, as Domino (Keira Knightley) is interrogated by an FBI agent (Lucy Liu) hoping to find the whereabouts of $10 million that Domino’s team was responsible for recovering.

It’s obvious from the trailers and the extra media the studio has released (the lap dance shots, anyone?) that Keira Knightley is their biggest draw. She’s sexy, she’s a bounty hunter, and she’s what’s most appealing to the college guys they’re hoping to get in to the theaters this weekend.

Knightley does a serviceable job (nothing really outstanding), but they focus much more on the sex appeal than the bounty-hunting part of the job. That’s the only way to explain the mescaline-induced sex scene about three-quarters of the way through the movie that apparently serves no purpose other than to showcase Keira Knightley’s boobs.

Her voiceover is also hit-and-miss. Voiceovers are a dicey trick anyway, because some people always love them while others will always hate them. Occasionally Domino gets some good points in on the voiceover, but more often than not they take one phrase (most memorable: “Heads you live, tails you die. Fifty-fifty chance.”) and repeat it roughly eight million times, which becomes very annoying and the phrase loses its punch.

The other major draws (whether the studio knows it or not) are Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken. Rourke has been doing pretty well since his scene-stealing turn as Marv in this spring’s Sin City, and here he gets to play another badass: bounty hunter Ed Moseley, Domino’s mentor (of sorts). Ed’s not what you’d call a very moral guy, but he’s good at what he does.

As I’ve said before, Christopher Walken’s name on a poster will get most guys I know to go see a movie, no matter the subject. He’s the “ferret on crystal meth,” a reality TV producer who wants a camera crew to follow Domino, Ed, and their other teammate Choco around as they bust the bad guys. Of course, he’s concerned more with ratings than with anything else. Sadly, he’s not in the movie much.

The movie just wound up being disappointing. You walk in expecting a possibly cool story about a team of bounty hunters taking down fugitives in California, and walk out having seen a team of bounty hunters spend most of their time chasing around $10 million, as told in flashback by the one who got captured. It may be worth checking out on DVD, but unless you are really dying to see Keira Knightley’s boobs, you can probably skip it.

The Netflix Queue: The Forbidden Kingdom

Not exactly DVD reviews, these are movies that I’ve wanted to see, but for one reason or another, had to wait till they came out on DVD to watch them. This will range from older movies that I only recently heard about to newer films that I just didn’t have the time to catch in the theater. Enjoy!

Jet Li and Jackie Chan are undoubtedly two of the most famous martial arts actors since Bruce Lee. So, when you finally put them in a movie together, it should be gold, right? Heaven knows I was looking forward to it.

Well, in the case of The Forbidden Kingdom, the martial arts sequences are indeed gold. However, the movie itself suffers from a few very noticeable flaws, including a poorly developed main character and a forced love interest, just to name a couple.

But let’s face it: that’s not what anybody is watching this for. The Forbidden Kingdom is a martial arts fantasy that’s just supposed to be fun. And it really is.

Jason (Michael Angarano) is a Boston teen who’s obsessed with old kung fu movies. He finds a special staff in the local pawn shop, and gets transported to ancient China. There, he learns that the staff he holds belongs to the Monkey King, who has been trapped in stone by the evil Jade Warlord. If Jason can free the Monkey King, he will be able to break the Jade Warlord’s 500-year reign.

The Forbidden Kingdom is a loose retelling of Journey Into The West, an ancient Chinese tale that includes myths about the Monkey King, played here in all his mischievous glory by Jet Li. The scenes where the Monkey King fights are some of the best in the movie, mostly because he constantly looks like he’s just having the time of his life. When he and the Jade Warlord fight for the first time, it’s funny to see one taking it so seriously while the other treats it like a playful game.

Jet Li and Jackie Chan both pull double duty here, with Jet Li playing both the Monkey King and the Silent Monk, and Chan playing Lu Yan, a master of the drunken style, and Old Hop, the owner of Jason’s neighborhood pawn shop. It’s a shame that they only fight each other once, but that fight is pretty much the centerpiece of the film, for obvious reasons. You watch a movie with Jet Li and Jackie Chan not only to see them fight, but to see them fight each other.

But while the fight scenes are the reason to watch the movie, other parts of it leave something to be desired. Jason isn’t exactly the most likable character in the beginning, and he spends a lot of time getting pushed around and whining about it. Every time the movie was focusing on him and not on the Monk and Lu Yan, I wanted to shoot something. It’s not until the last 10 minutes that he really comes into his own.

To make matters worse, they include a token love interest, Golden Sparrow (Yifei Liu), and shoehorn in a love story between her and Jason with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer-wielding barbarian. The filmmakers give the characters all of zero reasons to get together, and yet every time they’re alone, Sparrow and Jason are making googly eyes at each other.

Just because you have two people of the opposite sex in a film does not mean you have to make them fall for each other. Seriously.

But once you get past the weak main character and poor love story (and it is possible, I assure you), the movie is really enjoyable. The bad guys (the Jade Warlord and the witch Ni Chang) are delightfully evil and the visuals in ancient China are gorgeous.

As long as you’re not expecting a brilliant script, great character development, or scintillating insight into the human psyche, you’ll enjoy The Forbidden Kingdom just fine. In fact, I would encourage you to see it. It’s a fun, relatively light adventure fantasy that promises escapism and entertainment, and it delivers exactly that.

The Barenaked Archives: The Skeleton Key

From 2003 up until 2007, I was lucky enough to have “movie reviewer” as my job description. As such, I’ve built up a *lot* of reviews for just about every movie that came out during those years, as well as reviews of classic movies.

So, I give you my very first regular feature: The Barenaked Archives. These are reviews that I did for SIN or Hollywood Elsewhere (or both). Sadly, SIN and my column on HE are both gone, so this is now the only place online you can see these old columns.

What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?

I don’t have one.

I hate horror movies. Despise, detest, loathe, abhor, pick your term. Anybody who knows me relatively well knows that is the one genre of film I flat-out refuse to watch (okay, that and any movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book).

I can count on two hands the number of horror films and/or slasher flicks I’ve seen, on one hand the ones I didn’t hate, and on no hands how many I watched voluntarily.

However, even I’m willing to overcome my intense dislike for the genre when a) the movie is free and b) I will be compensated monetarily for viewing it. Even if it may mean a sleepless night or five.

Hence, the reason I saw The Skeleton Key this week.

Bayous Are Bad

Setting is, without a doubt, one of the most important things when making a supernatural suspense movie. It’s usually best to set it in an old, creepy house that looks like it has a history. It’s even better if said old, creepy house is in the swamps of Louisiana, the only state in the Union with a rich and famous legacy of ghosts, voodoo, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night.

The Skeleton Key fully exploits the inherent creepiness of its bayou locale and the locale’s history, resulting in a relatively suspenseful mystery that at times overcomes its mediocre, been-there-done-that plot.

Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) is a New Orleans hospice worker who’s just taken on a live-in job in a decrepit old mansion out in the swamps, caring for the elderly Ben Devereaux (John Hurt) under the watchful eye of his wife, Violet (Gena Rowlands). At first Caroline is content to do her job, but strange goings-on at the mansion have her questioning what’s really going on, and lead her to investigate voodoo practices in hopes of saving Ben.

This story couldn’t have taken place anywhere but Louisiana, and it makes the most of its location. The natural history of New Orleans and its surrounding area makes it easy to bring in voodoo practices, which still have a hold on people today. Just the atmosphere down there makes it a little easier to believe that magic holds sway, even in the “real” world.

The swamps, of course, are innately eerie, between the isolation, the ghostly moss-covered trees, and animals just waiting to take a bite out of you. It makes the boonies of Oklahoma seem positively urban. There’s a sense that the swamps have only one way in and one way out, and if somebody doesn’t want you to get out, you’re not going to.

The Devereaux mansion itself makes for a great “haunted house” setting. Hidden by a long road of mossy trees, it’s fallen into neglect, with peeling paint and overgrown bushes, except for the garden out back. The inside seems dark even in the daytime, and for every door that Caroline’s skeleton key unlocks, you get the feeling there could be some secret behind it that you’re better off not knowing.

With those major setting elements combined, you have the perfect atmosphere for a movie like this, and it’s helped along by Kate Hudson and Gena Rowlands, both of whom turn in some solid performances. John Hurt is also good, considering that his performance must be primarily through his faces and gestures, since Ben can’t speak. Peter Sarsgaard also crops up as the Devereaux’s estate lawyer, Luke, and he is always worth watching.

The plot is really neither here nor there, as it’s just another “pretty white girl in trouble” mystery. Some of the twists are interesting (though not necessarily good).

The end could’ve stood for a little cutting, especially as movies like this are best left without a ton of explanation. There’s a fine line between telling just enough to let the audiences know what’s going on and insulting their intelligence.

Truth be told, The Skeleton Key is about on par for an August release: not bad but nothing to write home about. If you’re in the mood for a creepy and unsettling mystery, check it out at a matinee.