EW review: 'Kingdom' of boredom
Lots of pretty pictures, but little passion in Scott's epic film
By Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
(Entertainment Weekly) -- In "Kingdom of Heaven," Ridley Scott's handsome but curiously remote Crusades epic, the bloody holy war between Christians and Muslims surges forth with the boiling logistical fury we've come to expect from films that feature a cast of digital thousands.
Men in chain-mail armor, their white shields marked by a blood-red cross, raise their broadswords and hack away in righteous wrath. A shower of arrows fills the sky like horizontal rain, and catapults hurl flaming rocks over the walls of Jerusalem, as men, one by one, attempt to scale those walls, only to be drenched by buckets of gloppy thick oil. Giant wooden towers fall, the same spectacular way they did in "The Lord of the Rings," and you can just about see every soldier inside. It's all very teeming and hordelike and impressive.
When you hire Ridley Scott to direct an oversize medieval war movie, there's one thing you needn't worry about: The money will be there on screen. Yet as I watched "Kingdom of Heaven," a thought -- a question -- opened up in front of me like a dramatic-existential abyss: Who, or what, exactly was I rooting for?
In 1184, Balian (Orlando Bloom), a young French blacksmith with a noble wisp of beard, is drawn into the orbit of his father (Liam Neeson), a righteous Crusader who leads him to Jerusalem, the city of hallowed ground and sacred stones that the Christians took from the Muslims a hundred years before. The movie views both sides as equal in their idealism, with one or two bad apples on each team spoiling things for everybody.
The Muslims, led by the fierce and honorable desert warrior Saladin (Ghassan Massoud), have ample motive for their aggression: A band of Christian soldiers struck them first. (OK, they want Jerusalem back as well.) So God be with the Muslims!
You must understand, however, that the Christians didn't really mean it -- at least, not the devout mass led by Balian, the valiant knight whose dream is to preserve the city as a ''kingdom of Heaven,'' a multiculti paradise where Christians, Muslims and Jews can all live and worship together. The temples and the shrines mean nothing to him, at least compared with the innocent civilians inside. So God be with the Christians, too!
Watching "Kingdom of Heaven," I could feel my liberal empathy overflowing, to the point that I realized I was rooting for everyone on screen to rise up and defeat everyone else. That's not a feeling I would equate with excitement, but then, it's not every war movie that can turn the most gruesome sustained rampage in the history of mankind into a misunderstanding between rival peaceniks.
"Kingdom of Heaven" is obviously meant to be an allegory of our current global religious clashes, but Scott, working from a script by William Monahan, is so busy balancing our sympathies, making sure no one gets offended, that he has made a pageant of war that would have gotten a thumbs-up from Eleanor Roosevelt.
At the center of "Gladiator," Scott's previous ancient action spectacle, was Russell Crowe, the thinking man's bruiser, slashing all comers in the Colosseum, dominating the world with his molten contempt. It would be an understatement, though, to say that Orlando Bloom doesn't look like he has combat (or much of anything else) on his mind.
Bloom has fine soft features, a liltingly ''literate'' accent and the passive, neutral demeanor of a page boy impersonating a warrior. Just about everybody who lays eyes on him recognizes Balian as his father's son, yet how can they tell? Liam Neeson is full of dark fire, but Bloom is like invisible ink on screen. The closest thing to religious fervor he has ever inspired is the passion of magazine editors in search of a hunkalicious new movie-star-of-the-month.
Shot for shot, "Kingdom of Heaven" is infused with Scott's lyric technological grandeur, yet it lacks the entertaining vigor of political gamesmanship. When Balian arrives in Jerusalem, it's like the Land of Actors With Speaking Parts, except that none of them are developed.
Jeremy Irons as the noble Tiberias, Marton Csokas as the treacherous baron Guy de Lusignan, Eva Green as his sexy, suffering wife, who strays to be with Balian -- what should have been a tasty soap opera of power never quite comes to life.
Scott does achieve something indelible in his portrait of the Christian king Baldwin IV, a tender-souled leper who never removes his mask. His mournful, faintly disembodied voice -- an uncredited Edward Norton -- is spookier than anything in the recent "Phantom of the Opera." He's the soul of the movie, all right: a gentleman trying to halt a turf war.
What's missing from "Kingdom of Heaven" is the unholy madness of the Crusades -- the violence of men who, in their zealous desire to smite sin, were only too willing to turn themselves into apostles of blood.
EW Grade: B-
'Crash'
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum
 Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges star in "Crash." |  |
The stunning, must-see drama "Crash" is proof that words have not lost the ability to shock in our anesthetized society. I can't remember the last time I have felt so galvanized, disturbed and moved by full sentences, unadorned by gratuitous profanity, flying out of the mouths of screen characters as ordinary as you or me or the guy idling at the next traffic light on an average day in Los Angeles at Christmastime.
"Crash" is about the collision of cars, the machinery on which L.A. is built. But it's also about the collision of races, cultures and classes -- another kind of L.A. experience. White folks, black folks, Hispanics and Asians -- nobody gets by in this amazingly tough, at times unexpectedly funny and always humane movie without getting dented.
An assured directorial debut by "Million Dollar Baby" screenwriter Paul Haggis, who also produced, conceived the story and wrote the script with Bobby Moresco, "Crash" suggests, convincingly, that violent contact -- in word or on wheels -- is the only way left to reach out and touch somebody.
The pileup begins almost immediately when two young black men (Larenz Tate and rapper-turned-fine actor Chris ''Ludacris'' Bridges), walking in an upscale white enclave and talking about the perception of young black men in upscale white enclaves, efficiently carjack a Lincoln Navigator that happens to belong to the L.A. district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his rich-bitch wife (Sandra Bullock).
Bam!, that's four people linked and unmasked, in all their ugliest prejudices and most shameful fears, by the fate of one SUV -- a luxe safari truck that at first has nothing, and yet eventually everything, to do with the fate of another Navigator, owned by a rich black TV director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) and stopped for inspection by a racist white cop (Matt Dillon) and his partner (Ryan Phillippe).
How could so many lives smash into one another so quickly? How, for that matter, does the family of a Hispanic locksmith wind up linked, in danger and redemption, with that of a burgled Iranian shopkeeper? What do these strangers have to do with a black police detective (Don Cheadle) and his Latina partner and lover (Jennifer Esposito), who are investigating a homicide?
Role for role, the acting is superb, and the cinematography is strong, with a stylistic emphasis on blur and confusion interrupted by knife-carved incidents of prejudice and consequence (aurally stitched by Mark Isham's anxious electronic score). As Haggis' taut vignettes reveal "Crash's" bigger traffic pattern and the words rain down, there's little to do but grip tight and prepare for major impact.
EW Grade: A
'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum
|  Mos Def, Martin Freeman and Sam Rockwell in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." |
For a certain portion of the population, the admonition ''Don't panic!'' is a coded invitation to join a cult of like-minded fans devoted to the Monty Python-adjacent universe of science fiction and existential tomfoolery created by the daft-genius British writer Douglas Adams.
And for them (or should I say, for us), the appearance of the movie version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (as opposed to the original 1978 BBC radio version, followed by the 1979 book version, the 1981 BBC television version and the 1984 video-game version) four years after Adams' death of a heart attack at the age of 49 is like an eerie time-warped greeting from a distant galaxy: The thing feels sweetly familiar but a bit frayed around the heat shields as it re-enters our atmosphere.
For all others, the nutty, fitfully charming production, with its "Pee-wee's Playhouse" visual aesthetic, androidish pacing and idiot-proof overdelight in itself, may bemuse rather than cause a powerful disturbance in the force.
Here again is Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman, quintessential drone from the BBC's "The Office" now playing a quintessential blinkered Englishman who is cousin in obliviousness to Shaun in "Shaun of the Dead"), whose house is about to be bulldozed for the creation of an English freeway. Arthur is rescued, moments before Earth itself is bulldozed, by his pal Ford Prefect (Mos Def), who turns out to be not-so-carbon-based after all, hailing from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
Simply by sticking out his thumb to snag a ride on a passing spaceship, Ford introduces his human friend to the secrets of a really, really big cosmos that bears a hilarious resemblance to everyday earthly life, with a few modifications. Among them: The president of the galaxy (a hyperdriven Sam Rockwell) has two heads; the sour-tempered civil servants who jam the bureaucracy are lumpish, pickle-skinned creatures (created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop) from the planet Vogosphere; and the smartest creatures in the universe aren't the humans who perform experiments on mice, but rather -- well, stick around and listen to dolphins sing, ''So long, and thanks for all the fish.''
Actually, that polite sentiment (another key bit of "Hitchhiker" philosophy), orchestrated and choreographed in an opening number suitable for the extended cut of "The Wizard of Oz," represents director (and music-video jokester) Garth Jennings at his best, before he's tripped up by the challenge of squishing in so much other Adams arcana.
Anyhow, as often happens in such cult-hip enterprises, the devoted cast is inspired to flights of thespian bravura. Among the standouts, Alan Rickman conveys true banal sad-sackery as the voice of a depressed robot. Bill Nighy is characteristically divine as a planetary construction engineer. And in an exquisitely loony subplot new for the movie, John Malkovich outdoes himself as the leader of a religious cult devoted to the worship of a giant nose -- a spiritual movement that sums up the intersection of the improbable and the mundane where Hitchhikers feel most at home.
EW Grade: B
'House of Wax'
Reviewed by Gregory Kirschling
"House of Wax" is unusual for one reason only: Not counting the Paris Hilton sex tapes sold to all the Luddites who couldn't find it online, this is the first time you're actually being asked to pay to gape at the hotel-heiress swizzle stick who already pops up everywhere -- TV shows, parties, and film festivals -- at no cost. A few people would even pay $10 just to make her stay at home for an evening.
So it's hot when, just a few minutes into a mercenary horror remake about kids stumbling onto a fake town run by Achilles-tendon-slicing waxworkers, Hilton turns out to be a pleasant addition to the dead-meat cast (led by waxy Justin Timberlake and Kirsten Dunst look-alikes Murray and Cuthbert). Not because she gets murdered, but because scary movies thrive on a sense of play, and except for when Paris is on screen giving us the winking sex eye, "Wax" is just a museum of gory, joyless, easy shocks.
EW Grade: C
'Jiminy Glick in Lalawood'
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
As the title character of "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood," Martin Short is swathed in layers of body fat and leisure suit, with a ballooning double chin, and he flashes a crooked, V-shaped smile that lights up his face like an applause sign. That grin -- phonier than Sammy Davis Jr.'s, even more passive-aggressive than Dick Cheney's -- is Jiminy's way of ''connecting'' with whomever he's interviewing.
A roly-poly entertainment reporter from Butte, Montana, Jiminy, his arteries clogged by infotainment, tosses questions at celebrities with an eager, lispy, weirdly prefab enthusiasm that makes him sound like a female impersonator who can't decide whether he wants to be Gloria Swanson or Leeza Gibbons.
To say that stars validate Jiminy's existence wouldn't do justice to the psychotic scale of his obsession. More than a fan, he's a case of walking sublimation who lives for the moment when he can saunter up to Whoopi or Kevin Kline or introduce Forest Whitaker on the red carpet as ''the wonderful Forrest Gump!''
Jiminy worships celebrities but unconsciously hates the way they fill up his existence, and that deep ambivalence -- happy talk with hidden daggers -- forms the core of "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood." After years on Comedy Central, Jiminy may have finally earned his own movie, but I wish that it were less of a hit-or-miss affair than this one.
Dispatched to the Toronto film festival, Jiminy, after dozing through a screening of "Growing Up Gandhi," gives the film its only good review, thus landing an exclusive one-on-one with its director and star (Corey Pearson), a mishmash of Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp. Short also appears as David Lynch (yes, that David Lynch), who presides over a wispy-campy dream-and-reality nightmare plot. A haughty movie star, Miranda Coolidge (Elizabeth Perkins), has apparently been stabbed to death. Could it be Jiminy who did the deed?
Bolstered by funny improv interviews with Steve Martin and Kurt Russell, "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood" nevertheless belabors what Short did so nimbly on Comedy Central, which is to zero in on a star's weak spots under the guise that he's just funnin'. In his curdled-butterball way, Jiminy Glick may be the most acidic showbiz send-up since Andy Kaufman's Tony Clifton. This movie, though it has its moments, is a pedestal he didn't need.
EW Grade: B-
'XXX: State of the Union'
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
Ice Cube, a glowering teddy bear, is not the sort of guy you expect to erupt into whirling, gymnastic kung fu moves. Yet he turns his limbs into weapons with surprising grace in "XXX: State of the Union."
His moves grow right out of the scowling nihilism with which he plays Darius Stone, a disaffected special-ops soldier with roots in the 'hood who gets plucked from prison (by a scowlier-than-usual Samuel L. Jackson) to fight the government rogues who played him for a sucker.
"State of the Union" has more preposterous excitement in its opening five minutes than the first "XXX," starring Vin Diesel and his cornball monotone, did in its entire two hours. This is a B movie rooted in gut-level stirrings of power and retaliation.
Though the director, Lee Tamahori ("Die Another Day"), doesn't go 15 minutes without blowing something up, Tamahori, a lean demon of the close call, stages the slow-mo helicopter leaps and crunched-metal climaxes with a timing and finesse that turn sadism into play.
As the secretary of defense, who plans a takeover of the U.S. government, Willem Dafoe resembles Donald Rumsfeld in his hair and diamond eyes only; yet Dafoe, with his rattlesnake charm, creates a witty comic-book X-ray of American military arrogance. The central joke is that Darius, the black superspy, has zero patience for these power-mad white hypocrites, and if Ice Cube's performance keeps hitting the same note of disgruntled cool, it's a note you never doubt.
EW Grade: B
'3-Iron'
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
It takes talent to entice an audience without any dialogue. In the case of South Korea's Kim Ki-Duk, he's not just good at silence; his oddball artistry depends on it.
In "3-Iron," when he tries to cook up a scene in which a businessman is yelling at his wife to obey him, thus alienating her all the more, the effect is shrill and didactic. But when the movie follows the daily routine of Tae-suk (Jae Hee), a young vagabond with the face of a rebel angel, as he breaks into houses and apartments and explores his surroundings like a cat (the closest he comes to vandalism is playfully rejiggering a scale), we're transported into the gentle mystery of what the kid is up to. In the drifting Buddhist underworld of Kim Ki-Duk, words just get in the way.
"3-Iron" is like a Raymond Carver story that slowly, inexorably takes on the dimensions of a ghostly fairy tale. During one of his stealth invasions, Tae-suk meets Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon), a sorrowful former model and the aforementioned wife, who is only too happy to ditch her loveless marriage and join him in his ritual of breaking and entering. The two never speak to each other; in Kim's terms, they have the perfect relationship.
Unlike the writer-director's marvelous "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring," "3-Iron" is more of a conceit than a work of substance, yet it leaves you with the airy, funny sensation that the middle-class life these two have left behind is merely a dream.
EW Grade: B
'The Holy Girl'
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Spiritual longing gets tangled up with erotic fever for the teenage girls who whisper in one another's ears in Lucrecia Martel's marvelous, psychologically unnerving second feature, "The Holy Girl." And the confusion is electrifying -- as if we have peeked where we shouldn't, through a door marked ''Keep out'' or a diary labeled ''Private.''
All the girls in Martel's dreamlike follow-up to "La Cienaga" have holiness thrust at them -- they're classmates in Catholic catechism, residents of the same desire-fogged provincial Argentinean town where Martel set her outstanding debut drama. But Amalia (Maria Alche), somber daughter of a lonely divorcee (Mercedes Moran) who runs a local hotel, feels holier and more aroused than most.
When a man (Carlos Belloso) rubs up against her in a crowd -- he turns out to be a doctor attending a convention at the hotel -- the young woman is simultaneously turned on by sex as well as by what she, in her hormonal and religious daze, identifies as the Holy Spirit. Her calling from God, as she sees it, becomes to ''save'' the fallen man.
The blessings of salvation have rarely felt so mixed, the parameters of Lolita-hood so elusive -- which is exactly Martel's specialty. And as events unfold in ways that only become more charged and daringly unresolved, the filmmaker only gets wiser, her camera eye more astute at distinguishing sinners from everyday sins.
EW Grade: A-
'King's Ransom'
Reviewed by Scott Brown
Generic hip-hop soundtrack? Check. Aerial stock footage of milieu? Check. Hardy-har homophobia and misogyny? Check. Emasculated sub-Gump white dude played by Jay Mohr? Double check.
That's right, "King's Ransom" is the latest ''urban'' comedy, starring the now-ubiquitous Anthony Anderson as Chicago marketing mogul Malcolm King, a jackass with plenty of enemies. In the course of staging his own kidnapping to avoid a divorce settlement, something goes very wrong. Get out!
The script -- basically an improv scene sprawling to feature length -- is as oddly paced and loose as infant stool.
EW Grade: D+
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