“So what do you guys think: Ancient Mayan temple off the beaten path?” - Jeff

Conventional wisdom says the beaten path exists for a reason: it’s safe. But conventional wisdom isn’t much of a match for a group of young travelers who wish to avoid “tourist traps” while on vacation. And so, with little reservation, best friends Amy (Jena Malone) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) head off to an ancient Mayan temple at the urging of their boyfriends, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore).

The group has been intrigued by a foreigner named Mathias whose brother, Henrich, has gone to the temple with his archaeologist girlfriend. Neither has returned, but Mathias quips that it’s probably because they’re having so much “fun”. At an old Mayan Temple. In the middle of nowhere.

Queue scary music here.

Amy gets cold feet when the group comes to an apparent dead end, only to find that the trail has been concealed with bushes. A couple of silent, young children show up several yards away in a creek bed to manufacture tension because apparently young children are scary. Amy’s intuition is to turn around and go back to the cushy confines of the hotel and pool. Why her boyfriend Jeff prefers visit dusty old ruins instead of jumping her bones at the hotel is a mystery.

No sooner does the group arrive at the foot of the ruins than some gruff looking “natives” arrive, complete with horses, guns, bows and arrows. They seem very threatening from the word “go.” A language barrier prevents either side from being able to explain themselves, and soon thereafter things turn bad. Pretty soon the tourists find themselves atop the ruins, unable to leave thanks to the folks with bows and guns.

To reveal what happens next would spoil the surprise of “The Ruins.” It is sufficient to say that it is probably what you did not see coming. In a way, “The Ruins” can thank recent horror films like “The Descent” and “28 Days Later” for priming its audience. Viewers will likely enter “The Ruins” thinking they have an idea of what to expect. They will be wrong.

Like “The Descent”, “The Ruins” doesn’t play any dirty tricks with its audience. It stays faithful to the rules it establishes early on. But unlike “The Descent”, the film only works because of a bit of manufactured drama, namely, the “natives”, who serve to keep the tourists trapped in their predicament. The film justifies this mechanism logically, but even so it still feels forced and mechanical, and detracts from the overall quality of the movie.

Still, “The Ruins” works. It achieves what it sets out to achieve and does so with a fairly creative horror device. It’s not as good as “The Descent” or “28 Days Later”, but it deserves a seat at the table.

…is bad disks.

For about the 3rd time in as many months I’m saddled with another scratched and damaged DVD that won’t play. This time it’s “Michael Clayton.”

I’m sick of this. Are you listening Netflix? You must not be, because there’s easily accessible way for me to contact you on your website and tell you THIS SUCKS!

Netflix and other online movie rental companies want you to think that having movies mailed to you is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But the basic problem is that the media is too fragile; DVD’s are too easily damaged. It’s far too easy for the average person to incidentally scratch a DVD to the point where it is unplayable. Never mind the careless folks who just don’t give a shit and scratch them up because they’re clumsy oafs.

This would be manageable if Netflix would comp you a free movie when this happens, but they don’t. Instead, they ship you out another movie on the next business day. Meanwhile, you have to eat the lost time in shipping since you got a bad disk you can’t watch.

What’s really disappointing in all of this is that no one apparently considered the fragile nature of the DVD when they were attempting to create the next great removable media. Every time I see a science fiction film or television show where the actors utilize some snazzy, futuristic removable media (think “Serenity”), the media is always a well-protected one, encased in a shell that prevents it from getting scratched (or destroyed by martial arts fighting villains).

A disappointing end to the weekend.

Savvy moviegoers know that very few films reporting to be “based on a true story” are actually real or accurate. Hollywood likes to dramatize whatever nonfiction it gets its hands on. It’s tradition. And here, with “21“, we have Hollywood doing its very best dress-up job, complete with all the standard plot devices and dramatic accessories.

The film is loosely based on the best-selling novel “Bringing Down The House” by Ben Mezrich, which itself is loosely based on real events of the MIT Blackjack Team. After a couple degrees of separation one wonders how much the film resembles the source material.

If there’s a flaw with “21″ it comes in the form of a fairly generic script that follows the standard plot points required of such films. This is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, in the film, the main character, Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) joins the Blackjack team because he needs to come up with $300,000 to pay for Harvard Medical School. In reality, Jeff Ma, the player whom Ben is based on, got involved because he thought it would be “fun”. There is no denying that the Hollywood version provides a bit more drama.

But while the film is pedestrian in terms of plot, it still works, for two reasons in particular. The first reason is because of all the smaller moments that ring true given a person in that situation. As Jeff Ma explained in an interview on Ain’t It Cool News:

…the transformation that Jim goes through from being a nerdy MIT guy to all of a sudden being able to land Kate Bosworth as his girlfriend… That was something that definitely happened to me through the blackjack experience, where I became much more confident in what I was doing. The first scene where they fly into Vegas and he looks out the window and sees the lights and everything like that, that was a feeling I certainly remember. That one scene where he is lying in bed and he calls and tries to get room service and he’s in his dorm room, not a hotel… Those kinds of things just happened all of the time, because of the craziness and sort of duality of our lives.

The other reason the film works is because of the strategy used by the MIT team.

Counting cards is not illegal. It is, however, frowned upon by casinos, for obvious reasons. And because casinos are private property in Las Vegas, gamblers can be asked to leave, and must do so or face trespassing charges. We learn from the film that the really difficult part of card counting is not the actual mathematics; anyone with reasonable math skills can practice it and get good. The real difficulty of the system lies in avoiding detection. For this reason “teams” are employed, which consist of various members, mainly “spotters” and big bettors. The team members work together to detect when a table is “hot”; that is, when the odds are in the players’ favor. The spotter’s job is to bet the minimum at all times and look inconspicuous while keeping track of “the count”, then signal the big bettor when the table’s count is in their favor. The bettors job is to come in and bet huge sums of money. Together, a successful team remaining undetected can rake in thousands of dollars in a weekend.

Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne do an admirable job with roles that are pretty thin. Overall the film is shot well and the acting is fair. It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but it does manage to be entertaining throughout.

I had no intentions of writing any sort of review for this film. It is over a year old now, and it is not relevant to the current release schedule. I try and only write reviews of films that are currently open. But this film arrived via NetFlix and I pushed it into the DVD player like any other.

And then something happened…

This is a rare film that touched me in a rare way. So rare that I can only recall one other film even coming close to having the same impact on me. (Which film was that? I’ll make you wait until the end.)

“The Fountain” is a film that is difficult to describe. In fact, I’d say it’s impossible; pure folly. It can’t be done without the description sounding completely and utterly ridiculous.

“The Fountain” is the rarest of films. It is ambitious, beautiful, multi-layered, and difficult to follow on the first viewing. It is a rich story with more elements than you will grasp upon the first glimpse. And therein lies its power: it is such a deep, complex, layered piece of work that words do not even begin to do it justice. It requires the visuals (and repeated viewings) for full appreciation to take effect. In fact, it requires even more than that: it requires conversation. It requires debate with other people who have seen it. Then, and only then, can it really be appreciated for what it is.

To say that “The Fountain” doesn’t follow the conventions typical of most films is an understatement. Is it a science fiction story? Yes, but not as you know science fiction. Is it a love story? Yes, it is that too, but not as you know love stories. “The Fountain” is something else entirely.

I said describing it is pure folly. It is, but I have to begin somewhere.

“The Fountain” is the story of Tom (Hugh Jackman) and Izzy (Rachel Weisz). Izzy is dying; she has a brain tumor. Tom is her husband. He also happens to be a research doctor who is trying to find a cure for the tumor. His experiments on monkeys have lead to an amazing discovery. Trapped inside the bark of a tree seems to be a way to stop aging…

But that is only one story, and already I have misrepresented what “The Fountain” is. It is not the story of Tom and Izzy. It is actually three different stories about Tom and Izzy, in three different time periods, told together in one film. That there are three stories inside this film is enough to confuse some viewers. That director Darren Aronofsky cuts back and forth between all three stories without warning, using techniques that purposely blur the differences, makes it even more difficult. But that is part of the art of the film.

The other two stories take place in different times. The second story - and the one the film opens with - is the story of Tomas the conquistador searching for the biblical “Tree of Life” hidden among the Aztec empire in a lost temple. Tomas has been sent there by the Spanish queen, Isabelle, during a time of great trouble in the Spanish empire. This story is a fiction, however, and Aronofsky doesn’t let us flounder in confusion too long before revealing to us that it is the work of Izzy, who is writing a book called “The Fountain”. There are parallels between the fiction of “The Fountain” and Izzy’s real world, as Tom discovers when he reads her manuscript.

Then there is a the third Tom. Tom Creo, traveling through space 500 years in the future, in a spaceship that looks like a glass bubble. The ship contains only a tree, Tom, and Tom’s ghosts. Tom passes time in the bubble ship by doing Tai Chi, giving himself tatoos, and conversing with his ghosts. He stays alive by eating from the bark of the tree… Is this story a fiction or real? This is part of the debate of the film…

I’ve described the three stories, and as I thought would happen I’ve done nothing to convey the power of this film. I am convinced it cannot be done with the written word.

The power of “The Fountain” comes not from the three individual stories, but from how they are woven together by Aronofsky to create the larger fabric. All three stories work on their own in small, specific ways, but woven together they achieve something entirely new, and you begin to see themes overlap and ideas emerge, and then the power of the whole story begins to take hold and you realize that there is a lot more going on than what seemed to be at first. By the end of the film you’re not 100% sure what you just saw, but you know there’s more to it, and you’ll want to discover what else is out there.

The movie does not explain everything. It is not a film for the dull or slow of mind. It does not lead you down a singular path. Some portions of the story are open to interpretation by the end credits. But “The Fountain” is not really about clear cut answers. It is about impact; it is about creating emotion in the audience, and given the right audience member, it does this very well.

I should mention one other thing: “The Fountain” has some of the most jaw-dropping beautiful special effects I’ve ever seen on film. The budget for “The Fountain” was small, so to create the effects they used a technique called “micro-photography”. I do not know what that is or what it entails, only that it created imagery like I have never seen before.

I wrote at the beginning of this review that I’ve never been this affected by a film before, except once. There was another science fiction love story that I’ve seen that had a similar impact, but not nearly as great as “The Fountain.” That film was Steven Soderbergh’s “Solaris.”

“Solaris” had some powerful ideas, and I left that film feeling quietly giddy; happy that a director had created a love story with that much thought and depth, without all the cliches and predictability of similar stories. But I did not ponder on it nearly as long as I did with “The Fountain”. With “The Fountain”, I turned off the DVD player and went to bed, and for the next two days I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought about every aspect of it, every idea, every theme, every moment, every visual, and when I finally felt like I had digested it fully, I felt in awe. The only thing I could think was, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“The Fountain” is not a perfect film. Some of the transitions between the stories make it overly difficult to follow, and some of the obscurity simply isn’t necessary. Fifteen minutes into it I thought for sure I was seeing a total bomb. But while it may not be a great film, it is a powerful one. The themes and ideas in it are strong and thought provoking, and the love between these two people is of a magnitude that is incredibly rare. You will leave this film thinking that every man should be lucky enough to have an Izzy, and every woman should be lucky enough to have a Tom.

And if you’re really fortunate, you’ll leave this film with your head spinning, your brain fully engaged, and your senses overloaded. And you’ll be happy.

What if?

This is the question that famed author Stephen King asks to spark the ideas for his stories. What if an author was kidnapped by his most devoted fan? What if pets came back from the dead? What if a virus developed by the military got loose and killed 99.9% of the Earth’s population?

What if?

Cloverfield asks this question too, maybe as well as any Stephen King novel ever did. Although King had nothing to do with the creation of this film or its story (it is from the mind of up-and-coming J.J. Abrams, creator of Alias and Lost), Cloverfield is definitely from the same neighborhood that King’s creative mind lives in.

What if a giant creature attacked Manhattan? What if you were there? What if you had a video camera?

There’s a word for what Cloverfield is, and that word is creative. It’s also derivative, but derivative film has never been done this well. It is not that we haven’t seen this sort of thing before; we have, just not like this. We’ve seen giant monsters before (Godzilla) we’ve seen hand-held cameras used to tell a story (Blair Witch Project) and we’ve seen humans running in terror (28 Days Later). But we’ve never seen it done quite this way, or quite this well.

The camera isn’t just a means to view the events in Cloverfield. It is a character in the film all to itself. It is the one constant in the chaos from beginning to end. It is also possibly the best use of a video camera prop in any film to date.

Yes, this does have a drawback: The camera shakes. This is very much a home video of human beings dealing with an unbelievable, terrifying disaster that their minds can barely comprehend. And that means shaky camera shots: flashes of people running, darkness, feet, legs, rubble - everything you might expect from people who are pumped full of fear, adrenaline and shock as they run for their lives.

But unlike the intentionally shaky camera in the recent Bourne films, this works. It works because director Matt Reeves knows when to give us a big, juicy bite of the action; he knows when to give us the payoff. He has an uncanny sense of just how long to withhold the obvious camera angle from the audience while he builds the yearning, and then he knows exactly when to give them just what they’re craving.

Cloverfield is not a deep story. It doesn’t have time. There are no convoluted plots, amazing heroics or slapstick comedy. It is very much an answer to the question of “what if?” Abrams and Reeves don’t waste time with story elements that don’t fit. Instead, they ask the question “What if a monster attacked Manhattan and you were there to witness it with a video camera?”

And then they answer it. And boy, is it a great answer.

Pay special attention to the very last scene - watch the ocean very carefully…