I hate puns and I especially hate punny titles. Imagine taking the time to read “the Long Quiche Goodbye: A Cheese Shop Mystery” or a thriller called “Doppelgangster.” The mind reels. As such, my expectations for the animated outer space monkey movie “Spark: A Space Tail” were not high. Sadly, my expectations were met.
Once the prince of a planet of the apes called Bana (banana without the “na”), Spark (voice of Jace Norman) is a teenage chimp living on a tiny slice of his former planet, one of many blown into space thirteen years ago following a coup by the Napoleon-esque Zhong (voice of Alan C. Peterson). Spark lives with robot caretaker Bananny (voice of Susan Sarandon) and former royal guard members, Vix (voice of Jessica Biel) and Chunk (voice of Rob deLeeuw), warriors whose job is to protect, train and prepare Spark for his destiny—the recapture of the kingdom. Key to Zhong’s defeat is the Galactic Kraken, a beast whose harnessed power may be the most powerful weapon history has ever known.
An air of déjà vu hangs heavy over “Spark: A Space Tail.” Anyone over the age of four will immediately recognize story elements lightly lifted from “Star Wars,” “WALL-E” and just about any other adolescent in space movie that came before. Most of the borrowed concepts were good ideas the first, second or even third time around but feel a bit been-there-done-that here.
But it’s not just the story that feels shopworn. Space underdog stories will always find some kind of audience but other than a couple of effective scenes of interplanetary dodge ball the animation here is as unattractive as it gets. Not only is “Spark: A Space Tail” saddled with a story that would have been quite at home in an early nineties direct to video release, but it has animation to match. The a-lister cast—including Sarandon, Patrick Stewart and Hilary Swank among others—cannot compensate for visuals that redefine the word generic.
Unfortunately the punny title may be the best thing about “Spark: A Space Tail.”
A cross between an old school western and a Merrie Melodies cartoon, “The Homesman” is the latest from actor and director Tommy Lee Jones. A rough and tumble look at the harsh realities faced by women in frontier life it sheds light on a little seen aspect of life in the old west. It features a terrific performance from Hilary Swank and a spot on impression of Yosemite Sam from Jones.
Swank is Mary Bee Cuddy, a woman from New York State, now living in Loup City, Nebraska. She’s cultured, wealthy in land and know-how and unmarried. She’s well regarded in the town—one local says she’s “as good a man as many man hereabouts”—but her overtures at romance fall flat. She proposes marriage to Gam Sours (Jesse Plemons) with the caveat, “I won’t take no for an answer,” only to be rebuffed. “You’re as plain as an old tin pale,” he says, “and bossy.”
That may be so, but she has faired better than several other local women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter) whose fragile mental states have been pushed to the limit by the grim reality of life in Loup City. Cuddy volunteers to transport them on a five-week journey to Iowa where they can be cared for properly.
On the way she meets army deserter, coward and all round scoundrel George “Yosemite” Briggs (Jones). She saves his life and in return he reluctantly agrees to make the journey with them.
“The Homesman” starts off as one thing, a look at Cuddy’s life as it intertwines with these mentally ill women but shifts story wise and tonally with the introduction of Jones’s character. What could have been a tale of female empowerment does a u-turn, shifting the focus to Jones and his cartoonish portrayal of the hard-drinking, jig dancing Briggs. What begins as an unconventional western becomes even less conventional as Jones cuts ghastly scenes of women dumping babies into outhouse holes against more jocular dialogue.
Swank, when she is given something to do, does it extremely well and Tim Blake Nelson as an amorous cowhand is menacing and funny, which seems to be the offbeat tone Jones was searching for, but never quite finds.
Story and character wise “The Homesman” is muddier than the rough terrain it takes place on.
Hilary Swank makes some strange career choices. I can’t think of any other two-time Best Actress winner who gets as much press as she does and yet still remains firmly planted on the b-list.
The Reaping, her new supernatural thriller set in Louisiana, isn’t going to be the career tonic she desperately needs. She’s a good enough actor to be making memorable, ambitious films, but every time she gets a head of steam on—in Million Dollar Baby for example—she follows it up with rubbish like The Black Dahlia, or forgettable genre pieces like The Core or the recent inspirational teacher movie Freedom Writers.
In The Reaping Swank plays a professional debunker who investigates alleged supernatural phenomenon and provides logical explanations for them. When a small southern town experiences biblical plagues—rivers of blood, boils, frog rainstorms, that kind of thing—she is called in. The bible-thumping townsfolk believe a young, blonde devil child who lives on the bayou is responsible for their woes. Swank, who sees a resemblance to her deceased daughter in the girl tries to protect her, even as a posse of men with shotguns heads to the swamp for a good old-fashioned exorcism, bayou style.
The Reaping won’t win Swank any acting awards, but it likely won’t affect her reputation one way or the other either. It’s just that forgettable. The plagues, meant to be terrifying, are actually kind of boring. It doesn’t actually rain frogs. I’d describe it more as a light scattered shower and I’ve seen worse cases of boils while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room that we do in the movie.
The Reaping is being sold as a horror film, but with its almost complete lack of thrills or terror it seems like false advertising. There are a couple of “gotcha” moments courtesy of a swelling soundtrack and some tricky editing, but they’re a cheat, like sneaking up behind someone and yelling boo. You don’t scare them as much as piss them off.
There is a good thriller hidden in there somewhere, but the feels like the filmmakers are holding back, trying to find the balance between making a horror film and making a movie that’ll garner a family friendly rating. In the end we’re not left with much except a distinguished two-time Best Actress winner slumming through another undistinguished movie.
“Conviction,” a new true-life crime drama starring Hilary Swank as a woman who believes her brother has been wrongly convicted of murder, is the Hollywood version of real events. Actors Swank, Sam Rockwell and Juliette Lewis go hayseed with Gomer Pyle accents and blackened teeth in an inspirational story where dramatic epiphanies conveniently pop up whenever the story starts to sag.
Swank and Rockwell play Betty Ann and Kenny Waters, a closely knit brother and sister from rural Massachusetts. The Kenny is a charming hell raiser, specializing in petty crimes and prone to hanging moons in bars. When a local woman is brutally murdered, however, serious attention comes his way. Everyone believes he is guilty, everyone, that is, except Betty Ann who spends more than a decade earning a law degree to help prove her brother’s innocence.
“Conviction” is a crowd pleaser in the vein of “Erin Brockovich.” It features fine performances from Swank and Rockwell and an unhinged cameo from Lewis that proves she is as fearless as ever, coupled with a stirring story. It has some nice emotional moments but for all its crowd pleasing ways, it is about as conventional a movie as we’ll see this year. Evidence is uncovered just in the nick of time and at one point Betty Ann and her best friend Abra (a very good Minnie Driver) even dance in joy. The by-the-book retelling of this compelling story doesn’t do it any favors; the opening half hour drags, plot points seem a bit too convenient and the emotional moments a bit too standard.
It is however, almost salvaged by some very good actors, but what should have been a memorable recounting of a remarkable story fades very quickly after the closing credits have stopped rolling.
What do Coco Chanel, Queen Victoria and aviatrix Amelia Earhart have in common? All are women, made headlines and smashed barriers, becoming feminist icons in the process. They are also all being given the big screen treatment this year in big Oscar bait movies. Coco Avant Chanel is in theatres, The Young Victoria comes out in December and this weekend Hilary Swank plays Earhart in Amelia.
None are strangers to posthumous celebrity; Victoria has been portrayed on screen almost 100 times by everyone ranging from Glenda Jackson to Michael Palin, but Earhart, a pioneering female pilot who disappeared over the Pacific during a circumnavigational flight of the globe attempt in 1937, has enjoyed a particularly good pop culture run of late. She’s been featured in Apple Computer’s Think Different ads, Buck 65 rapped about her in Blood of a Young Wolf and last year Amy Adams made her flesh and blood in Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian.
Academy Award winner Swank’s take on the character is the eighth time Earhart has been immortalized on screen, not counting Jane Lynch’s portrayal of her in The Aviator which ended up on the cutting room floor, but she isn’t the first Oscar winner to play the fly queen.
In Flight for Freedom honorary Oscar holder Rosalind Russell played Tonie Carter, a character based on Earhart. The film and Russell’s flamboyant performance popularized the unsubstantiated notion that Earhart’s disappearance was a result of clandestine work for the U.S. Navy.
That theory was furthered by a TV movie (subsequently released as a theatrical feature) called Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight. Starring Oscar winner Diane Keaton, the movie suggested the doomed flight was financed by the navy in exchange for her reports of suspicious Japanese activity in the South Pacific.
In Close Encounters of the Third Kind Steven Spielberg suggested another reason for her disappearance—alien abduction! In the film‘s climax Earhart exits the Mothership alongside a hundred alien abduction survivors. Spielberg said this was a tribute to Earhart and others who have mysteriously vanished at sea.
Whether or not Earhart would have approved of any of these portrayals we’ll never know, but at least Swank says she tried to be respectful of Earhart’s legacy. “Any time that you play a character who was alive… you want to tell the story in a way that they would be proud of.”
The best way to describe “Amelia”, the new Hilary Swank film about the highflying life of aviatrix Amelia Earhart, is to call it old fashioned. Set in the decade leading up to her fateful rendezvous with destiny in 1937 on her failed attempt to circumnavigate the globe, the movie seems to pay homage not only to Earhart but also to the films of that era.
The film lifts off with a meeting between publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere) and the then unknown Amelia (Swank). He’s looking for the next Lindberg, only this time a woman, to make a transatlantic flight and then reap the rewards of the fame that will follow. The first flight is a public relations success, but for Earhart, who didn’t actually fly the plane it’s a hollow victory. She becomes America’s Sweetheart of the Skies, famous for something she didn’t do—she didn’t actually pilot the plane—and becomes determined to stand up for female pilots and make the journey across the ocean again, solo. In time she makes the flight, becomes the world’s most famous woman and navigates not one, but two romances. The film ends with her doomed flight.
“Amelia” is a big, handsome picture with some great aerial photography and a couple of dramatic moments, but does little more than skim over the life of one of the more interesting characters of the twentieth century. Both personally and professionally Earhart was a rebel and a groundbreaker in a man’s world, but the film is content to serve up clichéd motivational successories instead of real insight.
“Amelia” could have been many things. It could have been a study of the feminist ideal. It could have been a look at the beginnings of public relations and media celebrity. It could have been an exciting films about those magnificent women in their flying machines, but instead it a snoozy look at a woman forced to utter platitudes like, “I want to fly that beautiful bird as far as it will take me.”
This will not be Hilary Swank’s third Oscar win.
She’s working it here, putting on a clipped Kansas accent and trying to inhabit the character, but the script (and an unfortunate hairdo that makes her face look three feet long) aren’t doing here any favors. Her performance is a throwback to the kind of performances given by Rosalind Russell and Ginger Rogers in Amelia’s day. To use the vernacular of the time she’s “spunky.” Spunky, but not that interesting.
She’s playing opposite Richard Gere and honestly, is there a less interesting leading man working today? He rocks the 1930s clothes and doesn’t bump into the furniture but he and Swank have zero chemistry.
There is an interesting movie to be made from Amelia Earhart’s life. In fact a few interesting movies have already been made about her life, but “Amelia” isn’t one of them. It’s well made, reverential to it’s subject and perhaps, most excitingly, is possibly the best cure for insomnia since the discovery of St. John’s Wart.
