Friday film roundup: Pirates, Pirates, Pirates… and Not Much Else
Today’s film roundup from Past the Popcorn:
Who in their right mind would want to tangle with Captain Jack Sparrow, anyway? We know that Lord Beckett, Captain Barbossa, and Davey Jones are all a bit loony… But what about director Gore Verbinski and the execs at Disney? They’ve taken enormous liberties with At World’s End, and Greg Wright says it’s “bold, bold filmmaking‖almost what you might expect from an independent filmmaker with a corporate master and a $250 million budget, if such a thing were possible.” Reading the film as a metaphor for cinematic artists struggling against Big Business, Wright is struck at Disney’s flagship franchise defiantly flaunting summer-blockbuster audience expectations.” There are surprises galore for audiences, and Wright found watching the film “rather like spending nearly three hours studying a riveted and armored butterfly as it emerges from its softer, kinder chrysalis.” In the end, Wright observes, “The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, less accomplished films though they may have been, were more fun to watch‖and more fun to think about having watched.”
Now, by wild contrast, compare Pirates’ $250 million budget to the $300K or so that Brian Jun spent filming Steel City. Jenn Wright calls this domestic drama of broken fatherhood and alcohol abuse “stunningly believable” and a great R-rated opportunity to discuss “substitutionary atonement and paying penance for one’s own sins as well as the sins of others.” John Heard turns in a great supporting performance as Carl Lee, an alcoholic imprisoned after a fatal accident.
Also new on the arthouse circuit is Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim, a somewhat surreal gloss on international intrigue. But Greg Wright’s not taking the obvious Homeland Security bait. He thinks Hartley’s trying to draw parallels between artists and politicians by making the observation that “politicians and artists all merely masquerade or temporize as garbagemen, and that international intrigue is as much poetry as is film.” Then again, Wright isn’t entirely sure; this R-rated romp is just that kind of film.
