giesen_public Reviews

Let There Be Light (I) (2017)

Very good, overall

[5 November 2017]

I just had the thought that I might have padded the rating just a bit, but hold on... I thought Kevin Sorbo was excellent, while his wife, Sam, who also played his character's wife in the movie (and wrote it), was very, very good. Donielle Artese was a breath of fresh air, bringing warmth and humor in her role as Sorbo's friend and associate. For me, these three carried the film, showing the depth of character that one might expect from someone in such circumstances. Beyond them, though, the acting seemed marginal at best.

The story was well told, with nice flow from one scene to the next. Also, there were some nice twists and turns, drawing this viewer deeper and deeper into the story as it progressed. I did find the dialog a bit lacking at times, but I can say the same about most movies. What I cannot say about most movies is that they made me feel a real connection with the characters, as I felt for Kevin and Sam Sorbo's characters in this movie. Another thing I cannot say about most movies is that they leave me feeling better for having seen them, long after the final credits, as this one did.

So many movies are a fun ride from beginning to end, but leave me feeling in the end that they weren't quite worth the price of admission. Not so with "Let There Be Light." This one left me feeling that it was easily worth far more than that -- and on that basis, its shortcomings are easily overlooked.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

The Elephant in the Room... King Arthur?

[24 May 2017]

The elephant in the room is... well, there are lots of elephants in the room; let's be honest.

Before I expound further, let me say this: if you like the movie's trailers, like a fair bit of action but don't particularly care about how every bit of it fits into a story, don't particularly care about the traditional legend(s) of King Arthur, like a bunch of fantasy mixed in, and plenty of (now run-of-the-mill) CGI, you might like this movie. Reading further may unnecessarily dissuade you from watching it.

Of course, if you've seen the trailers, you know that there really are (ridiculously large, CGI) elephants in the film. The other, proverbial, elephants in the room are how far the movie strays from the legendary King Arthur story.

Now, in fairness, legends (King Arthur, in this case) being what they are, it is difficult to know where reality ends and fantasy begins. Nonetheless, even though the legend has changed somewhat over the years (as legends are wont to do), this movie bears little resemblance to the story that moviegoers familiar with Arthur will expect.

Merlin? Rendered unimportant and replaced by a (gender-PC?) beautiful female mage, who remains nameless. (I suppose the lack of a name was supposed to lend some air of irresistible mystery to her. It failed, miserably.) (sigh)

Bedivere, the handsomest of Arthur's knights (almost in the entire land), one-handed, he of the muscular build? Well, at least he had the build. Some, including Bedivere, were obviously cast in a fit of PC multiculturalism. Please. Save it for where it makes sense.

Guinevere? Lancelot? Missing. David Beckham managed to land a spot, though. Go figure.

I read Ritchie's bio here on IMDb. It's stated there that Ritchie thought film school graduates made "boring and unwatchable" films. His disdain for the work of others seems to go beyond those who've studied film art. Huh. That doesn't stop Ritchie from leaning on the creations of others to sell a flick.

Ritchie has a flashy -- often manic -- presentation style. I'll give him some benefit of doubt in presuming that he does so in an effort to create a sense of action. Unfortunately, it often serves more to make stories incoherent.

In watching Richie's Sherlock Holmes re-imaginings, I couldn't shake a feeling of Ritchie's lack of respect for Doyles' Holmes. I get the same sense of lack of respect for traditional tales of King Arthur.

I could go on and on, picking the film apart, but all of it boils down to the simple appearance that Ritchie is simply capitalizing on the popularity of someone else' story -- King Arthur and the legend of Excalibur -- by using the name in the title, then remaking the entire story to suit a flight of his fancy.

Ritchie might as well have just left the sword out of the story and dropped the name of Arthur from the story -- and title. Then he could have gone anywhere he wanted with the story without disappointing moviegoers drawn in by the title. It might have stood on its own as a fair (by no means great) action/fantasy film. As a retelling of the King Arthur legend, it is a disappointment.

On second thought, considering Richie sold the idea to the movie studio as King-Arthur-meets-The-Lord-of-the-Rings, perhaps he should have just named the movie accordingly. Then the Tolkien influence (and the use of Tolkien's oliphants) would make much more sense. Then, too, moviegoers would know better than to expect a movie simply about the King Arthur legend, which the current title implies.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Reality Check

[20 July 2008]

Why do I feel reluctant to give this movie a rating of 7 stars out of 10? The average rating on this web site has this movie rated the highest of any movie ever made. I walked out of the theater yesterday evening with the feeling that I had seen one of (yes, I said "one of") the best action movies ever made. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just watched just another installment of a new, dark interpretation of a beloved comic book hero.

The truth is, it took so long for the action to really start rolling that my ten-year-old son had fallen fast asleep watching his favorite kind of movie (yet he had seen the attention-grabbing scene where the Joker met the mob bosses and it was still only about 5:30). Once it got going, it got going like few others (and yes, I woke my boy once I knew it would keep his interest).

I think that the director worked so diligently at making the mood of the movie fit the hero's adjective in its title ("Dark"), that it worked against it in the slow spots. Almost EVERYthing about this movie seemed dark. The darkness is so pervasive that even when good things happened, they felt more like a brief relief than something to be happy about.

Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker -- aided, in no small part, by the script -- gave us a disturbing fiend. I managed a few chuckles at the character, but no real laughs. This Joker wasn't really very funny to me because I felt that an attempt was made to portray him a bit more as a "real" person with a severe psychological problem than the over-the-top comic book character that Jack Nicholson gave us. I find it hard to laugh at someone with real (or realistic) problems. (Had I wanted realism, I wouldn't have looked for it in a comic book-hero movie.) We found out, early on, that this Joker was severely twisted, and bad things happened with enough regularity that nothing he did really surprised me. There were some quality scenes, but the director seems to have favored quantity. I thought that more could have been made of some scenes, but the point eventually came where so much had thrown at us that I found myself simply sighing in anticipation of Batman putting the Joker out of our misery.

As for the rest of the main cast... Christian Bale, to me, is serviceable in the role, but not quite believable as Bruce Wayne. Bale is "cool" in the role, but a man accustomed to Bruce Wayne's kind of wealth would have an ease about him that didn't come through in this performance. If they were shooting for realism in the Joker's psyche, they should have been aiming for it here, too. (As for Batman, any of a number of actors in that costume with the voice disguiser would have seemed the same.) Also, I saw no real chemistry between him and his love interest, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Nor did I see any sparks fly between her and her other love interest, played by Aaron Eckhart. Otherwise, Eckhart was quite good as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, I thought. I think that the rest of the cast did alright in their roles. Two worth mentioning in particular were Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman -- not for their outstanding work so much as for the vanilla lines they were given. They did fine jobs with what they were given, but what a waste of talent...

Okay, so I've laid out most of what I didn't like about the movie. What I did like about it was that it did have some great action sequences and special effects. Joker plays a "social experiment" and a variety of other mind games that keep the story interesting in forcing difficult decisions on other characters. That's about it, really, but those things are done exceedingly well. I didn't really care for the pervasive darkness in the atmosphere and mood of many of the characters, but if that's what the director, cast, and crew were shooting for, they did that exceedingly well, too.

Personally, I'm ready to rent the 1989 version of Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. I remember feeling more entertained when I walked out of the theater after seeing that one for the first time than I did yesterday.