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Crafty_Dog:
I don't know what happened to my original post, which included the WSJ review by Joe Morgenstern, querying about the movie "Alexander the Great", and somehow Tuhon Rafael's post wound up on the Knife thread, so here is the review once again, then Tuhon Raf's post:

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By JOE MORGENSTERN  
WSJ  
'Alexander' Grates: Stone
Delivers a Grecian Formula
That Can't Conquer Boredom

Epic Digital Battles Are Gripping,
But History Lesson Drags On;
An Inviting 'Long Engagement'
November 26, 2004; Page W1

Oliver Stone's "Alexander" is a tale of two battles -- one of them fought by Alexander the Great against the rest of the world, the other by the filmmaker against himself in an elephantine production that's constantly torn between extravagant action (elephants figure heavily in the climax) and extended history lessons. History defeats Mr. Stone. His instinct for showmanship has been throttled by his penchant for pedantry, and that comes as a real surprise. For almost two decades Mr. Stone's films have been many things, sometimes simultaneously -- smart, sharp, crazed, bizarre, ludicrous, pretentious, insightful, irresponsible, powerful, over the top, around the bend. Never, until now, have they been emotionally inert or quite so flat of foot.

 
Colin Farrell plays Alexander (who died at the age of 32) as the world's most powerful brat. Blond-wigged, Irish-brogued and a chronic brooder, this Oedipally unsettled victim of bad parenting loves a man (his boyhood friend Hephaistion, played as an adult with eyeliner by Jared Leto), though eventually he takes a beautiful Asian woman, Roxane (Rosario Dawson), for his queen. (And really takes her, in a shockingly graphic replay of the rape that he witnessed, as a little boy, when Angelina Jolie's mommy dearest was taken by Val Kilmer's drunken dad.)

Then Alexander becomes the world's most powerful bore, thus betraying the promise of the movie's preface. In that long, turgid, pseudo-scholarly equivalent of an infomercial, the narrator, an aged Ptolemy, played by Anthony Hopkins in a flowing robe, recalls the Macedonian king, 40 years after his death, as a colossus, a force of nature, a man who built an empire of the mind, and a leader in whose presence, "by the light of Apollo, we were better than ourselves." Well, by the sweet breath of Dionysus, we are worse than ourselves after suffering through the silly speechifying that defeats drama in this colossal mess.

Several outsize battle sequences provide sporadic relief from the prevailing torpor, even if the hackings and whackings are staged no more imaginatively than those in the sword-and-sandal epics of the 1960s. (These days, the standard battle formation consists of live extras to the front, digital replicants to the rear.) And Ms. Jolie's Olympias is a hoot with her Transylvanian accent and an incandescent loathing of her husband, who is finally murdered, evidently at her behest. At one point Olympias, who has always wanted her son's hot body but settles for his tortured soul, asks Alexander: "What have I done to make you hate me so?"


Elliot Cowan and Colin Farrell in "Alexander."

  
Yet there's no zest to the general depravity, no coherence to the script or the spectacle -- clarity is missing in some of the camera work -- and, most important, no character to give a Greek fig about. With writing as shallow as this, everyone is an extra. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but you won't find a single moment in the movie to match the simple humanity -- or even the suspense -- of that scene near the beginning of "The Black Stallion" when the father tells his son the classic story, with charming embellishments, of young Alexander taming the wild horse Bucephalus. (Child and horse are also trotted in by Oliver Stone, but for a retelling distinguished only by lack of surprise.)

"Alexander" cost at least $160 million, a figure that will grow by many more tens of millions for global marketing. After I cited the staggering budgets of other recent follies, including the risibly ramshackle "Troy," several readers sent e-mails to say that since it wasn't my money, it was none of my business how studios or producers chose to spend it. I take the point. More than that, I put it in the context of a Weekend Journal piece last week in which my colleague John Lippman reported that "Troy," for all its failure to connect with a domestic audience, will turn a significant profit in the global market. But the movie medium is mine -- is ours -- to care about, and to worry about. With each new heedless squandering of our interest and trust, with each monster domestic dud that justifies its shoddiness through overseas success, the movies as we've known and loved them are closer to becoming ancient history.


* * *
DVD TIP: A friend who shared my dismay at "Alexander" reminded me that a model already exists for the glorious, fabulist adventure that might have captured the conqueror's spirit. It's a movie I've recommended before, John Huston's masterful "The Man Who Would Be King" (1975). Michael Caine and Sean Connery co-star as Victorian British soldiers mistaken for gods in Kafiristan, a province of Afghanistan that was once ruled by Alexander the Great.
 


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And Tuhon Raf writes:
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Film does drag a bit but not the train wreck many reviewers seem to give it. It could have used more editing. It should have included some of the more interesting aspects of Alexander that displayed his wit. For example, no scenes devoted to the Gordian Knot or the Ten Brahmins. Hopkins was phoning his work in.. a hungrier actor could have stolen the film if this was cast differently.

Focusing on the fight scenes. I liked that the film showed Alexander training at a young age. There's some snips of good work but the cinematography was better than the actual action. The copis was shown in some portions, there's some phalanx work even though the visual focus on it faded later on. There was no martial flavor between a Persian, India or Macedonian outside of visual costuming and props. There's some factual bits in the tactical end of things, but there's so many other cool and documented scenarios that the film missed. There's some poetic license in the final battle... it never happened that way. There was no battle with elephants in the woods but on open ground.

Alexander retreated rather than fighting the even larger force that was awaiting him in India. After a hard fought battle that the Macedonian/Persian forces encountered in India, they were not about to go against a much larger force consisting of 6000 elephants. That was never included in the film. Other segments that was lost was the way Alexander could exhibit mercy and then turn around and wipe out a whole city on a whim.

So cinematography was very good, costumes was good, even the directing was good in many sections. Alexander lost points in factual omission of character development, too much emphasis on his mother (then straying away from showing her wickedness) and some lackadaisical work from Hopkins who unfortunately was the person responsible for the transitions.

--Rafael--

Crafty_Dog:
This review is from whom I guessing is the son of noted Suppy Side economist Jude Wanniski upon whose site it appears ;-)

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A Review of "Alexander"

Dec  2 2004

Memo To: Website Moviegoers
     From: Matthew Wanniski
     Re: A Tantalizing Bid for Epic Greatness

Moviemaking can be like a military campaign - you spend bundles of cash to win the hearts and minds of a wary audience, marshalling a troop of actors to deliver a blockbuster and not a dud. Can a film about the most famous conqueror in history be as good as the legend of Alexander? Can $150 million buy greatness?

"Alexander" comes tantalizingly close. Directed by Oliver Stone, the film opens with a montage of graven images of Alexander and what appears to be his name in the languages of the ancient world, a subtle but effective reminder of his world-wide renown. He pushed ever further how people conceived of the world and their place within it, opening up the East and instigating the flow of ideas between the East and the West. A captivating mix of the human and the superhuman he was, a perpetual motion machine that unhappily burned itself out too soon.

The film engages both heart and mind as it explores all aspects of Alexander's life. In the role of Alexander, Colin Farrell is so natural and effortless, we almost forget he isn`t Alexander himself. We witness all the bravery, vigor, and hubris of the Greek heroes he admired and envied. We feel his visceral reaction to the overwhelming, even oppressive personalities of his mother and father, both of whom tragically used him to best suit their own personal interests and ambitions. Farrell makes Alexander accessible, while preserving the myth.

The rest of the cast is equally impressive. Anthony Hopkins, in the role of Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals, serves as the film's narrator, ensconced in the pristine luminosity of Alexandria in Egypt and reciting to his scribes the history behind Alexander's achievements. This is a great service to the audience, as it gives them a solid background in the past and puts the events of the film into their proper historical context.

As Alexander's strong, shrewd, and beautiful mother Olympias, Angelina Jolie sparkles. An extremely talented actress, Jolie slithers and slinks across the screen like one of the queen's pet snakes. The serpent is indeed an apt symbol for her, as she is a hypnotic and dangerous woman. Her pushing and cajoling of Alexander is not exactly motherly (he calls himself "the cracked mirror of her dreams"). Where his brilliance is on the battlefield, she is far more practical and political in domestic affairs. The relationship between mother and son, borderline incestuous and pseudo-Oedipal, is fascinating to watch play out. Alexander wavers between love and hate for Olympias, simultaneously wishing to please and to escape from her influence.

Val Kilmer plays Philip, Alexander's father and King of Macedon. Kilmer gives a glowing performance as the man whose efforts to unite Greece under one rule laid the basis for Alexander's desire to bring the rest of the world into the fold. Kilmer swaggers as the grizzled and drunken king who casts a long and terrible shadow over his son. When he tells Alexander "there is no glory without suffering," we see a man who has been tempered by loss and life, who has gained a degree of wisdom from his drive to unify the Greeks and push out their old enemy, the Persians, who had sacked and burned Athens roughly 150 years before. His wisdom offsets his brutish behavior, making him a sympathetic character that recognizes how glory and ambition can make slaves of us all. He surely winds heavy chains around Alexander, meanwhile urging him to be free. Audiences will surely have a love-hate relationship with Philip that is every bit as fierce as the one between Alexander and his mother.

All the women in Alexander's life appear to be iron-willed lionesses, including Rosario Dawson, as Roxanne, a woman from Bactria (present day Afghanistan) whom Alexander marries. Alexander had several wives and mistresses, but Dawson appears to symbolize them all, as well as all the enemies he's ever conquered and treated as equals.

The sets are lavish and on an appropriately grand scale in the spirit of Lean, DeMille, and the other epic filmmakers of Hollywood's golden years. The depiction of Babylon in particular stands out among the rest. Audiences will likely react much the same way Alexander himself did when he rode through its gates to the adulation of its citizens, all of whom turned out to welcome him-that far from being the barbarians that Aristotle and others claimed, the Persians were just as civilized, if not more so, than the Greeks believed themselves to be. That feeling of equality and respect for ones foes makes Alexander appear much more enlightened than his tutor, Aristotle.

Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography vividly brings those ancient cultures to life. Pushing the boundaries of the possible, it blends the real with the surreal to show where myth overlaps reality (eg, using infrared film to depict Alexander's near-death experience while fighting an elephant-backed tribe in India). Under Prieto's able hand, the battle scenes become bloody, brutal, and epic in scope, capturing the chaos and madness of war, and highlighting the differences in tactics between Alexander's forces and those of his enemies. Yet these scenes carry less weight than the complicated relationships between the characters. Prieto renders the more intimate and personal scenes that explore Alexander's kinships and liaisons as effectively as the battle scenes. They are what truly propel the story forward.

The film handles Alexander's bisexuality in a respectful manner, placing it in its appropriate historical context. Primarily focusing on his relationship with Hephaestion, played by Jared Leto, the film has received more than its fair share of controversy for it. Despite the fact that Greeks were well known for their lack of strict sexual mores, especially among their soldiers, who turned toward one another during the frequently long campaigns that took them far from their wives and mistresses back home. Perhaps in an effort to reach a wide audience-no doubt influenced by reports that voters cared more about morality than any other issue in the last election-Stone and Co. were forced to re-edit the love scenes between Alexander and Hephaestion. The result is that, unlike the other love scenes, the scenes between them seem nearly platonic. In fact, Alexander comes off so well, he seems even better than he may have been in life.

Fortune favors the bold, and "Alexander" is a bold film. While it leaves out some of the good and the bad, Stone deserves credit for presenting Alexander with warts and all, and allowing audiences to decide his greatness for themselves. That's the way a biopic should be, uncensored and unbiased. Audiences may have stayed away on its opening weekend in favor of more holiday family fare, but it deserves a chance to prove its greatness.

Rated "R" for violence and some sexuality/nudity.

sting:
I watched "Alexander" last weekend.  My take is that this movie is good in the theater but not worth a rental on DVD.  The massive battle scenes were visually stunning, but given the altitude of the fly-overs, the features will probably be reduced to a mass of crawly, zig-zaggy dots on a regular TV.  Most of the battle scenes were a wash of shaky, blurry action interrupted by the occasional, overly graphic spurt of blood.  "Hero" easily exceeds "Alexander" in battle.  Even "House of Flying Daggers" does a better job in small skirmishes.

As a movie about the expansion of an empire, this film was too touchy feely.  It seems as if this movie was designed for the average contemporary audience, offering a taste but not a meal for anyone:  indistinct action for the guys with an equal dose of relationship-wallowing for the gals.   The bisexual theme was repeated excessively throughout the entire movie.  The primary royal fairy displayed breasts rather than pecs, making him nearly indistinguishable from a woman.  If homosexuality is about male-male attraction, why do are all of the "guys"  in "Troy" and "Alexander" look like women ?  At least in "Fight Club", a pretty boy, also Jared Leto, was directly destroyed .

As for the female characters, the initially prominent sexual dimorphism of his East Indian bride was also effectively neutralized.  Each mammary gland (excuse me, breast) was the size of Alexander's head, yet she capably resisted Alexander and eventually held a knife to his throat.  Well, we know who wears the pants.  "Alexander" is just another instantiation of the prime-time wimp husband/boyfriend shows such "Everybody loves Raymond", "Friends", "Married with Children", that Paul Rodriguez show, etc. In yet another gender-equalization scene, the harem was again overpowered by the Alexanders's draw to the royal fairies.

As for other characters,  Angelina Jolie performed wickedly , so, I'd assign her the star role of the movie as she seemed to run the show.  Anthony Hopkins was a detached bumbler with yet another staff of pretty boy scribes.  

"Alexander" is an action movie for the metrosexual.  "There's nothing like spending a day with a good glass of Cab on my marble island in my kitchen."  I'm waiting for "Blade Trinity " .  In the meantime, I suppose I'll have to hold my breath for a car chase or some sort of demolition in a Julia Roberts movie.

Crafty_Dog:
The fully formatted report may be found at http://wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=4047

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A Review of "House of Flying Daggers"

Dec 16 2004

Memo To: Website Moviegoers
     From: Matthew Wanniski
     Re:  An Intimate Martial-Arts Romance

It is appropriate that December features films that explore beginnings and endings (see last week's review of "Closer"). The new film by Zhang Yimou, "House of Flying Daggers," is another excellent example, a real feast for the eyes and for the heart. While this summer's hit film "Hero" was a martial arts story with a romantic edge, this latest is a romance masquerading as an action film. One can argue that the action scenes in "House of Flying Daggers" are almost incidental to the story, but they are dazzling to witness and enjoy, and quicken the pulse as much as the love scenes do.
 
Set in China near the end of the illustrious T'ang Dynasty, the story revolves around a gorgeous and deadly blind assassin named Mei, played by the lovely Ziyi Zhang (she now uses the Westernized order of her first and last name), a member of the insurgent House of Flying Daggers, which is attempting to bring down the government, one official at a time. Ms. Zhang continues to make an impact with Western audiences, growing better with each performance. In such films as "Hero" and "The Road Home," (both directed by Yimou), and of course "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," she has continually proven her talent as a dramatic actress and an action star. Here again, her looks and athleticism are on fine display. With this role, she could very well become the breakout star of the year.

Two men factor into Mei's life, and with her they form more than a simple love triangle, but a tightly woven web of deception, loyalty, and sacrifice. Takeshi Kaneshiro plays Jin, an undercover police captain sent to infiltrate the House of Flying Daggers. A carefree playboy, Jin would rather laze the day away with one arm around a woman and another around a wine bottle, but he fights with determination and great skill when necessary. His relationship with Mei causes him to question his duty, and sets the stage for a heated and ongoing battle between reason and passion.

While the two leads share real chemistry, Kaneshiro's charming performance as the conflicted officer isn't quite as compelling as Tony Leung's remarkable turn in "Hero" (truly one of the year's best). Of the two, Leung's role is the more memorable one. Still, Kaneshiro imbues Jin with enough substance and goodness that, combined with his inner turmoil, goes a long way toward making him a sympathetic character.

Andy Lau plays Leo, Jin's fellow officer, who in contrast to his insouciant friend, appears to reek of duty from head to toe. Lau gives a capable if largely unexceptional performance until late in the film. Then the simmering anger and desperation of a man betrayed by those he trusted most boils over with great intensity. You can feel the heat of his furious desire coming off the screen.

Emotional intensity aside, the characters could have been more rounded out and made as engaging as they deserve to be. Still, on the whole the actors manage to deliver fine performances despite the occasional thinness of their roles. It is not exactly the characters that move the story along, but the romance itself, the belief that empires may crumble, but true love endures.

That's an upbeat message, yet a deep sense of melancholy still pervades the film. The settings and the mood often create the feeling of a huge and terrible prison, the most obvious being the jail cell at police headquarters, and later the fight in the bamboo forest. The latter is the subtler of the two, and is all the more dramatic because of it.

Cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao paints a picture that is just as beautifully lavish, but less dreamlike, than "Hero." The patterns and textures of the costumes and the scenery appear to leap from the screen. Unlike "Hero," the fight scenes in this film look more grounded and less obviously exaggerated, although they are just as fantastically choreographed. No CGI was used for those scenes. Where it is used, it's entirely unnecessary and strikes a discordant note. Somehow, it's easier to accept the gravity-defying stunts and extraordinary visual effects than it is to accept a noticeably faked scene of a forest path, down which Jin travels after Mei. It adds nothing to the story and no one would miss it if it were removed.

While most theatergoers may not pick up on one very brief, computer-generated image, they may find it difficult, to say the least, to suspend their disbelief over the ending. Many may leave with a strong feeling of dissatisfaction.

"House of Flying Daggers" is a much smaller, far more intimate film than the spectacular martial arts epics we've been treated to over the last few years. Despite its weaknesses, it has a good story that keeps you engaged. While audiences will be divided over which film they prefer most, "House of Flying Daggers" stands as an excellent example of the magic of movie-making and the joy of story-telling, not just a fine addition to the martial-arts genre, but to the annals of filmdom.

Rated "PG-13" for sequences of stylized martial arts violence, and some sexuality.

Matthew Wanniski is a writer, editor and story analyst for Anonymous Content, a talent management and production company in Los Angeles. He can be reached at Mattsreviews@aol.com. His Thursday reviews here have been appearing Fridays to a much wider audience at http://www.worldnetdaily.com.


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Crafty_Dog:
A Review of ?Kung Fu Hustle?

Apr 21 2005

Memo To: Website Moviegoers
From: Matthew Wanniski
Re: A Supreme Martial-Arts Film

There?s a Chinese proverb that goes: ?A single spark can set a prairie on fire.? Hong Kong comedy/action star Stephen Chow knows this well. He used it as the moral of his latest film, ?Kung Fu Hustle,? the follow-up to last year?s state-side release of ?Shaolin Soccer? ? the most successful Hong Kong-made film ever made on its 2001 release (only to be surpassed by ?Kung Fu Hustle? in February 2005). Miramax acquired the film a few years ago along with ?Hero,? but by delaying their U.S. release, they unintentionally yet ultimately ensured very big prairie fires when they finally hit theaters here.

Chow, an extremely talented and creative individual with outstanding comic timing and bold physicality (think Jackie Chan meets Buster Keaton), wrote, produced, directed, and stars in ?Kung Fu Hustle,? a story about discovering your destiny by tapping into the inner strength of the heart and the spirit. Chow plays Sing (coincidentally, the same name of the character he played in ?Shaolin Soccer?), a mop-topped wannabe gangster in 1940s Shanghai. He desperately wants to join the infamous Axe Gang, a group of top-hat wearing, Michael Jackson-style dancing thugs who are so brutal even the police hide when they stroll past. Brother Sum, the dapper leader of the Gang (gleefully played by Kwok Kuen Chan), will only accept Sing as a new member if he kills someone.

Sing?s trouble is that despite his best intentions, he?s just not very good at being bad. He?s tried, but eventually decided that a life of crime pays better. His rotund sidekick, played with a childlike innocence by Lam Tze Chung, fails to provide him with the edginess and toughness he seeks, and he?s troubled by the childhood memory of the young girl he once tried to defend (unsuccessfully) from a bunch of bullies.

Sing?s career begins to take a new path after witnessing the residents of a slum known as ?Pig Sty Alley? take on the Axe Gang and beat them black and blue. The residents are aided by the Landlord, played by martial arts veteran and Bruce Lee stuntman Yuen Wah (?The Chinese Connection?) and the perpetually house-coated Landlady, who is very humorously played by veteran actress and former Bond Girl Yuen Qiu (?The Man With the Golden Gun?). Three others join in the fight against the Axe Gang, exhibiting remarkable and improbable martial arts skills. It would appear that Pig Sty Alley is a virtual retirement home for kung fu masters, reminiscent of ?The Incredibles? superhero relocation program.

When The Axe Gang calls in the most notorious killer of them all, a man known only as ?The Beast,? to settle things once and for all, Sing ? a practitioner of the questionable ?Open Palm? style of Kung Fu ? realizes that his true destiny literally lies in the palm of his hand. Played with exceptional humor and athleticism by the famous martial arts master and 1970s actor Leung Siu Lung, The Beast ?like the Landlady? lulls his opponents into letting down their guard with his decidedly non-threatening appearance.

Stephen Chow delivers a truly amazing performance. His film combines a wonderful blend of comedy and action, and he easily draws fantastic performances from the rest of the cast. The exceptionally choreographed fight scenes are jaw-dropping in their execution and mixed with remarkable special effects that reflect Chow?s extensive influences, which include all the martial arts films he grew up watching, such as Bruce Lee?s films, but also ?The Matrix? trilogy, and (my personal favorite) Bugs Bunny. The result is a truly over-the-top movie-going experience unlike anything else out there.

Pig Sty Alley and its hardscrabble residents, including an effeminate barber with a disturbing inability to keep his rear end adequately covered, are all lovingly portrayed by Chow, in homage to the Hong Kong neighborhood where he lived as a boy. A place, he says, where ?there was much that was unknown and hidden underneath the ordinary neighborhood life.? This mirrors the unknown and untapped resources hidden within Sing as he determines what direction his life will take.

In many ways, ?Kung Fu Hustle? is very similar to ?Sin City,? in that both films are cartoonishly violent (though with very little blood and gore) and amazing visual spectacles. Both utilize revolutionary filmmaking techniques to deliver a highly unique style. Both will likely spark massive prairie fires throughout the filmmaking industry. While in the end, ?Sin City? appears to be about the never-ending cycle of violence, ?Kung Fu Hustle? is more upbeat. Despite its ?R? rating, it?s not about violence for the sake of violence or pandering to audiences? perceived bloodlust. It?s about redemption and transcendence. Of course, it also presents a world where such things are possible. It?s a hopeful message that will resonate loudly with audiences, whether they are fans of martial arts films or not. It?s one of the best films of the year.

Rated ?R,? for sequences of strong stylized action and violence.

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