Chris Holmes Online

For several years now I’ve been reading Ain’t It Cool News. Harry Knowles is the guy responsible for the website, which is the best source on the internet for early news on films and television. They have tons of “sources” providing all sorts of inside dirt on scripts, casts, directors, and anything else that has to do with making movies. The people who are primarily responsible for the web site refer to themselves as film “geeks”. They are people who love film.

I consider myself one of those people. One of my dream jobs is to make a great video game as a software developer. But if I had my true wish I’d direct movies. I simply love the medium of film.

It is through the AICN website that I learned of Butt-Numb-A-Thon. It is a 24-hour film marathon, something I hope to attend someday, if the planets align correctly.

The host theater for BNAT is the Alamo Drafthouse. In August of 2005 Entertainment Weekly did a feature on the ten best movie theaters in America. The Alamo Drafthouse was listed #1. Ever since I read that issue I’ve wanted to visit this theater and soak in the atmosphere as well as the great food.

Yes, you read that right: food. The Alamo Drafthouse is not your typical theater. It is a theater experience. It is what attending a movie theater should be like. Everything else you’ve ever been to is a disappointment compared to this.

For starters, the theaters are designed much differently than a standard theater. Every other row of seats has been removed and replaced with cabaret style tables, with narrow rows for waiters and waitresses to slide through. Viewers are encouraged to arrive 30-45 minutes before the show starts so they can order food in normal fashion (meaning, using your voice and actually talking to the waiter/waitress). Once the lights go down, if you want to order something to eat you simply write what you want on a piece of notebook paper that they provide for you on the table, and then fold your paper and affix it to a small metal rail along the table so that it sits up like a flag. Your server will come by if they spot your flag and snatch it away in the dark and then bring you your meal when it is ready. It’s all very simple, easy, and causes minimal interference with viewing the film.

Thirty minutes before the movie is over your hostess will make a last call, and then hand you your check. You can leave your credit card or cash and they will swing by and pick it up. When the house lights come up, you can sign your receipt and be off.

In addition to the cool food service, the Alamo Drafthouse doesn’t show commercials. Instead, they show clips of movies and trailers for films, most of them older. For instance, I watched about 10 minutes of a car chase scene from some movie in the 1970′s. I have no idea what film it was from, but it was great to see something that wasn’t a commercial.

And the people who attend the Alamo are, by and large, film buffs. They are people who want to have a great theater experience, so there’s no talking, cell phones, or any of that other bullshit. It was unfortunate for me, however, that the couple sitting to my left were from out of town (hey, I’m from Idaho, but at least I knew all about the Drafthouse before I showed up), so the guy talked for a few portions of the movie. Not a lot, but enough that I wanted to elbow him and tell him to shut up. They were the exception though – everyone else in the theater was stone silent, and that was totally awesome. It was definitely different from what I’m used to experiencing.

I can’t say enough good things about the Alamo Drafthouse. It was clear from talking to the waitresses and waiters that they don’t consider this exceptional; they work there everyday so this is normal for them. But for a guy like me, who loves films as much as I do, who wants to get completely lost in the theater experience, the Alamo was extraordinary. It was the best theater experience of my entire life, and I only wish I had an Alamo where I lived so I could attend movies this way all the time.

People of Austin, TX hear me: do not take the Drafthouse for granted. You have something really special there.

Oh, and what did I see? Eastern Promises, but you’ll have to wait for my review to see what I thought of the actual film

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just too different from other people to “get” stuff.

The Bourne Ultimatum grabbed a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The lone voice of dissent among the Cream of the Crop was Stephen Hunter. I thought the camera work and editing was horrible. But with such a high rating, who can argue?

Apparently, I’m not alone. Roger Ebert’s website has been flooded with people complaining about Paul Greengrass’s horrible film work.

Reading through the comments is comforting. At least I’m not the only one…

Fans of the film The Princess Bride speak of it with a reverence reserved for few movies. They have memorized it wholesale, and can recite entire scenes word for word. It has obtained a cult status among its followers; it is worshipped; it is beloved.

It was also perhaps the only sort of fantasy movie that could have been made successfully before Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings convinced the world that the genre could be taken seriously. The Princess Bride was not just a fantasy film; it was a perfect marriage between fantasy and comedy. And it was this latter quality that made it accessible, allowing it to earn a legion of devoted fans.

Stardust is a movie for these people. It is a movie for people who hold a place in their heart for The Princess Bride, and still have shelf space left for something else.

Startdust is the story of Tristran (Charlie Cox), a boy who, unbeknown to him, is actually the son of a princess (Kate Magowan) from another world that exists on the other side of a rock wall that lies in a field near a town in England, appropriately named Wall. Or should I say the kingdom lies in another dimension on Earth. Or a parallel Earth. It doesn’t matter. These are trivial details that are mostly unexplained, and the movie works better if you don’t try and figure out the details.

Tristran is a lost cause. He’s the subject of unrequited love. His affections are targeted toward Victoria (Sienna Miller) who isn’t interested in him; she’s after another, seemingly more capable man, who appears to have better clothes and is more accomplished with a sword. Tristran doesn’t care; he’s in love, and he’s willing to go to great lengths to prove it.

On the other side of the wall, in the province of Stormhold, the king (Peter O’Toole) is dying. He’s sired seven sons, some of whom are already dead at the hands of their siblings because they all covet the crown. As his final act, the king does a bit of magic with his prized necklace: The heir who can find it and restore it will become king.

The necklace shoots off in the stars and brings one of them back down to Earth with it: Clare Danes, who has never looked this lovely in any film she has done before. Here, she is absolutely radiant as Yvaine, the literal embodiment of a star. She glows when she is happy, but even without the special effects she melts the heart.

Through devices that I will not reveal here, Tristran meets up with Yvaine and their adventure together begins. The king’s sons hunt them for the necklace that Yvaine wears, and Michelle Pfifer, in a wicked turn as the witch Lamia, hunts the star for her own reasons. Along the way they run into certain troubles, as all such plots require, but the movie never comes across as tired or long, despite its two-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time. And while describing the complete plot of Stardust would make it sound complicated, the film is never confusing or difficult to follow.

Robert DeNiro shows up about halfway through the movie as the gay pirate Captain Shakespeare of an airship that harvests lightning from the clouds. His attempts to mask his true nature from his manly pirate crew make for some of the most humorous moments in the film.

If a gay pirate captain of an airship that harvests lightening sounds strange on paper, well, that’s because it is. But it also works, largely because of DeNiro, who has as much fun with the role as the audience does, but also because that is how Stardust works as a whole. The film, despite how strange or unconventional it may sound, works in every way once transferred into visual format. This seems fitting, since the film is based on a novella by Neil Gaiman that is largely a graphical work.

Like The Princess Bride, Stardust marries a fantastic fantasy realm with comedy and a love story. The movie never takes itself too seriously and hardly misses an opportunity to make the audience laugh, yet all the while still manages to make us care about the characters.

Princess Bride fans will note that while Stardust is funny there are few memorable lines in the film. This is not a weakness however; it is just a difference of style. Stardust has more to carry it, with some very attractive special effects and a love story that takes more prominence. It is charming and beautiful, which does not make it better or worse than The Princess Bride, just different.

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) has a problem: He desperately wants to know who he really is and what happened to him (or more specifically, who made him the way he is). The Bourne Ultimatum also has a problem: It is an action film where the dialog and non-action moments are far more interesting than the action sequences. The Bourne Ultimatum, and its predecessor, The Bourne Supremacy, should be required study for all film directors on how not to make an action movie.

The Bourne Identity set up the premise for these films by introducing us to Damon’s character shortly after a failed mission. Jason Bourne can’t remember who he is or what he’s capable of doing to other human beings, and that sets the stage for a plethora of chase scenes, fight sequences, and close calls; just the perfect cocktail for an action franchise. But more than that, The Bourne Identity also set the standard for our expectations in regards to this character and this world. Identity was a perfectly filmed action movie. The dialog, acting, writing and directing were just as good as the action scenes themselves. Identity was a complete package, and director Doug Liman understood how to make it so.

Paul Greengrass, the director for Ultimatum and its predecessor, Supremacy, does not understand how to film an action movie. That is not to say he doesn’t know how to tell a story or direct a movie (there are some very excellent story elements/plot twists in Supremacy, and Ultimatum does not disappoint in that regard), just that he specifically does not know how to film it. His camera work is the worst in the industry.

For reasons that I cannot begin to comprehend, Hollywood directors, Greengrass chief among them, have taken to a particular visual style for filming action sequences. This style involves the use of a hand-held camera at close range. The overall effect of this technique is that action scenes are incredibly shaky, blurry, undefined and utterly disappointing. You may hear people refer to this as the “shaky-cam”. It would more aptly be named the “I don’t want you to see what I just filmed” cam.

It says something about an action film when the quiet moments, plot twists and dialog shine much more brightly than the action sequences themselves. It speaks of a failure to understand the genre.

There are moments during The Bourne Ultimatum when the action is so intense and the potential for thrills so great that we can sense, with a high amount of frustration, how incredibly great this film would be if only Greengrass would stop using the damn shaky cam. This is the first action movie I can recall watching where the blurred images became so hard to follow that I eventually gave up and just waited for the next ‘slow’ moment in the film to come along so I could actually make out what I was looking at on screen.

The horrible quality of the camera work becomes even more glaring when one slips a DVD in for The Bourne Identity, or the most recent James Bond film, Casino Royale. The directors for both of those movies understood how to actually use a camera for the action scenes. (Go back and watch the Parkour chase in Casino Royale and then watch any sequence in Ultimatum. The contrast is stark).

As if the poorly executed action scenes weren’t enough to blemish the film, it also fails in a couple other areas. Julia Stile’s character, for instance, is completely underutilized to the point where one wonders why she was in the movie to begin with. There is a minor story arc between her and Jason Bourne that is implied, but never explored, and we feel a bit cheated that Greengrass never does anything with it.

Finally, the big secrets of the movie lack impact. When they are revealed they come across as really weak, unable to support the plot engine that requires all of the running and killing. After three movies worth of secrets, we’re left scratching our heads, asking ourselves, “That’s the reason they’re trying to kill Jason Bourne? Are you kidding me?”

In the hands of another director (maybe even Identitie’s Liman) these films could be instant classics in the action movie genre. Instead, Supremacy and Ultimatum are merely visual annoyances. Try holding your eyelids open as long as you can, until they dry out. You’ll get the same effect.

If you follow the Harry Potter series you know that Harry is a reluctant hero. He’s famous for being the only person to have ever survived the Killing Curse. But he does not wear his fame proudly; he’s tormented by a celebrity that he never asked for, and mourns the loss of parents he never knew.

Harry’s fame has always been one of his biggest challenges. Because he survived Lord Voldemort’s attempt to kill him, he’s supposed to be a great wizard. Yet Harry has often succeeded more because of the talents of others than anything he has done himself. He defeated Lord Voldemort’s attempt to regain a body in The Sorcerer’s Stone largely because of the sacrifice of his mother, which gave him the “ultimate protection”. He survived a young Voldemort in the form of Tom Riddle in The Chamber of Secrets because of the deus ex machina in the form of Fawkes the Phoenix and the Sorting Hat. It wasn’t until The Prisoner of Askaban that Harry finally displayed the sort of powers that had been expected of him, when he saved his godfather from certain death at the hands of the dementors by producing a Patronus Charm, a spell of considerable difficulty for a wizard his age.

It seems fitting then that in The Order of the Phoenix Harry takes the next step toward wizard greatness and begins to earn some of the reputation that has dogged him these many years.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the darkest Harry Potter film thus far. It also possesses some of the best individual moments in any Potter movie (even if it doesn’t satisfy as a whole film as much as the others), mostly because we finally get to see Harry make the transformation from reluctant hero to leader of wizards.

Hogwarts is under siege this year. The Ministry of Magic is doing everything it can to turn a blind eye toward the return of Lord Voldemort. The Minister, Cornelius Fudge, has planted one of his own among the staff: Dolorus Umbridge, brilliantly played by Imelda Staunton, the new Defense Against The Dark Arts instructor. Her mission is to wrestle control of the school away from professor Dumbledore. This she accomplishes through a series of increasingly ridiculous rules and regulations.

Umbridge is a great villain; her allegiance is to the Ministry of Magic, which puts here directly at odds with Harry. Her punishment for Harry (his crime: he doesn’t like being called a “liar”) is so vile it can only be classified as torture. She also refuses to teach the students any real magic, instead attempting to handicap them by relying solely on the text of very basic books for their learning. This infuriates Harry and his classmates, to the point where Harry reluctantly allows himself to be persuaded by his friends to teach a secret Defense Against The Dark Arts class. The students dub themselves Dumledore’s Army.

It is during these sessions that we get to see Harry grow into the sort of teacher and leader we’ve expected. He instructs his fellow students like an old pro, as if he’s been doing this as long as any of his previous Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors, and we see for the first time that Harry is indeed a great wizard. He may have ridden luck, nerve and the help and talents of his friends this far, but when it comes to combat Harry is an exceptional wizard. He begins to accept the mantle of responsibility that has been placed on his shoulders, and it is a wonderful transformation to watch on screen. I saw the movie with full house of Potter fans and it was particularly rewarding to watch them cheer a scene in which the inept Neville Longbottom finally succeeds in disarming a fellow student.

The book that the movie is based on comes in at 870 pages, the longest of the Potter books. The film, however, clocks in at 138 minutes, the shortest film in the series. While the director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg wisely trim the film of many of the side stories and sub plots from the book, it could have used another twenty or thirty minutes of development for the main story. Having read the book prior to seeing the movie, I noticed several scenes in the film that were exceptionally brief almost to the point of being unclear. Some viewers are going to feel like they’re missing out on a larger story (and they are).

That said, the core of the book is still there, and the actors do as much as they can with the limited time they are given. Gary Oldman is incredibly effective as Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black. Harry has a great deal of affection for the only person he can truly call ‘family’, and Oldman does great work here conveying their connection. Entire conversations pass between then with a look and a wink. Evanna Lynch is also pitch perfect as Luna Lovegood, so much so that one wonders if they ripped her character straight off the pages of the book. And Jason Isaacs gets more screen time as Lucius Malfoy, the unabashed ally of Lord Voldemort, now openly working for his master without fear from the Ministry of Magic or anyone else.

If there’s a flaw with the film it is in the source material. The Order of the Phoenix is widely believed to be the weakest of the Potter books. This is probably due to the unsatisfying way that Umbridge’s comeuppance is handled, and the overall lack of awe that the ‘prophecy’ inspires. But those are minor issues. The real meat of The Order of the Phoenix is in Harry’s emergence as a mentor and role model for his fellow students. Harry accepts his fate now, and that gives him a resolve that seems befitting of his reputation. The rest of the film is handled incredibly well, taking into accounted the abbreviated nature of the film. The hostile takeover of Hogwarts by Umbridge is perfectly infuriating and the final confrontation at the Ministry of Magic between Dumbledore’s Army, the Death Eaters, The Order of the Phoenix and Lord Voldemort is one of the most rewarding special effects scenes in any of the Potter films.

More than anything, this film perfectly sets up the next two. The world Harry Potter lives in is growing darker and more dangerous and The Order of the Phoenix does just about everything right to prepare us for the final encounters.