A few mid-week reviews from the Herald. More Friday.
Milk.
Australia. (Dead link; review below)
by Robert Horton
Well, the title doesn’t cheat. “Australia” boasts two of Down Under’s biggest stars, is directed by the zaniest film stylist in Oz, and makes maximum use of the continent’s vast resources. In fact, the movie’s sweeping ambitions eventually trip it up. It aims big, and it falls far.
Set in the waning months of the 1930s, “Australia” begins with a scenario so old you can see dust flying off it. Straight-laced English lady Nicole Kidman comes to the Australian outback in order to arrange the sale of her husband’s cattle ranch. A rough-hewn Aussie cowboy, played by Hugh Jackman, is her guide. In some 1940s movie, these roles would be played by Greer Garson and Clark Gable, though that imaginary film would no doubt be less overblown than this one.
However, for a while, “Australia” is fun precisely because it’s overblown. Director Baz Luhrmann, who began his career with the lovely “Strictly Ballroom” and quickly got crazy with “Romeo + Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge,” plays everything in broad brushstrokes, staging entire sequences in campy quotation marks. Jackman plays the untamable renegade who’s just ripe for settling down; Kidman is a snob who will inevitably prove herself in the saddle. This is all going to go by the numbers, so Lurhmann assumes you’ll be willing to settle in and enjoy the 165-minute-long spectacle.
First, there’s the business of gettin’ the cattle from ranch to port, in defiance of the sabotaging efforts of a cattle rival (Bryan Brown) and his unbelievably loathsome henchman (David Wenham, who scored in “Return of the King” and “300”). Wenham’s role seems to be conceived on the principle that Billy Zane’s villain in “Titanic” was just a little too subtle. After dispatching the cattle-drive section in reasonably enjoyable fashion, the film ranges across a domestic interlude and the prelude to World War II. Just when you think the action might be wrapping up, the Japanese attack.
Luhrmann’s goal is to cram as much as he can into one picture, like a kangaroo stuffing its pouch. He takes on racism against Aboriginal people, and he’s got virtually every recognizable Australian character actor popping up, sometimes just for a moment: Jack Thompson, Bruce Spence, David Gulpilil. There’s also a running theme involving “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which is not one of Luhrmann’s better ideas. But when anything goes, well, everything goes.
Kidman plays it in an agreeably 1940s style, and Jackman takes his shirt off a lot. But whatever movie-star oomph they summon isn’t enough to save this goofy throwback, a movie made for an audience that no longer exists.
Transporter 3. (Dead link; review below)
by Robert Horton
According to the behind-the-scenes information on “Transporter 3,” the crew wore T-shirts reading “Less Talk, More Action.” If only they could have eliminated the dialogue altogether.
People talking is the main stumbling block for the latest sequel in Luc Besson’s automotive franchise, a series that began with a bang but fell off badly in its second outing. This one again puts ace driver Frank Martin (Jason Statham) behind the wheel of a very durable car. This time Martin is being forced to make a delivery in Eastern Europe, at the behest of a villain (Robert Knepper, from “Prison Break”) who spends most of his time barking into a cell phone. The gimmick is a good one: Frank has an explosive bracelet locked around one wrist; if he gets more than 75 feet away from the vehicle, boom goes the jewelry.
There is a live package in the car, for mysterious reasons. This is Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), a heavily-freckled Ukrainian party girl. This is Rudakova’s first acting job—a hairdresser, she was discovered by Besson walking across a Manhattan street. She’s got more spunk than acting ability, but that’s all that’s needed here.
Statham handles the fighting scenes in crisp order, fending off a seemingly endless parade of bad guys. Veteran fight choreographer Cory Yuen provides the moves, some of which are truly wild. The director is Olivier Megaton, who took his last name from the fact that he was born on the anniversary of the atomic bomb falling on Hiroshima. That level of taste will give you some idea of what you’re in for with the film, which ricochets from one unbelievable situation to the next.
Megaton certainly has a tin ear for English dialogue, written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. The love scenes, if that’s the right term, are especially clunky. But nobody’s going to this movie for the love scenes, or to hear Shakespearian dialogue. Look, there’s a good bike chase, a car plummeting on top of a moving train, and a scene where Frank drives a car on one set of wheels between two giant trucks. Now stuff cotton in your ears and enjoy.
Four Christmases. (Dead link; review below)
by Robert Horton
A few funny sequences, a shelf’s worth of Oscars, and the glorious improvising of Vince Vaughn are not enough to save “Four Christmases,” a fatally labored comedy on the holidays.
Even the clock doesn’t seem right in this one. Young unmarried couple Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) hit four different holiday parties in the course of one epic Christmas day…which seems to last about 36 hours. Brad and Kate mean to fly off to Fiji that morning, specifically to avoid visiting the homes of their four sets of divorced parents. But fog has socked in the San Francisco airport, and they’re stuck.
Among the many improbable elements of the script is the fact that even though all the homes are within easy driving distance of each other and Brad and Kate have been involved for four years, neither has ever met the other’s families. Doesn’t sound quite right. Each of the parents is played by an Oscar-winning actor, which must be some kind of new standard in over-qualified Hollywood employment. Robert Duvall, a great actor who regularly takes dumb paychecks, is Brad’s father; his other sons are brutes (including Vaughn’s regular sparring partner, Jon Favreau). Brad’s mom is played by Sissy Spacek. The amusing twist there is that she’s now dating a much-younger childhood friend of her son’s, a joke that was fairly funny the first dozen times I saw the trailer, but had lost some of its luster by the time I actually watched the movie.
The longest bit comes at the home of Kate’s mother (Mary Steenburgen), which veers off into a visit to a “megachurch” where her new beau (Dwight Yoakum) is pastor. Vaughn creates some fine moments when pressed into service as a Nativity pageant performer. And the row of Academy Award winners is filled out by Jon Voight, in his customary weepy mode as Kate’s father. By the time we get to his place, the movie has come to some extremely predictable conclusions about Brad and Kate’s future.
Director Seth Gordon did the wonderful documentary “The King of Kong,” so maybe he got the decent jokes in, although much of the comic energy comes from Vince Vaughn’s energetic riffing. Alas, Reese Witherspoon spins her wheels. After “Fred Claus,” this might be a good time for Vaughn to retire from the mantle of Hollywood’s Santa. You don’t want him to ever get too respectable, and these movies are far too square for his rounded talents.
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Side Street (Anthony Mann, 1949). Stunning filmed-on-location shots of Manhattan, arranged around the uncompelling Farley Granger. Comedown from Mann’s string of noirs leading up to it, but a good sense of momentum.
Twilight
The Crop Duster 