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Clash of the Titans: A True Greek Tragedy

What do you mean you’re out of Chunky Monkey?!?!

Rating: 2 out of 10

People kick and scream all the time about the desire and need for original story ideas and mostly I am right alongside them, but we shouldn’t count out remakes, relaunches and re-imaginings of classic films. They do serve a grand purpose to the cinema audience (as well as the movie studios whom get twice or thrice the bang for their original buck). Some of these films are far enough back in the annals of film history to be forgotten or completely unheard of by today’s film-going audience. In cases like these, a remake can actually help drive these younger audiences, or those who just missed it the first time around, backwards into the video shelves and dusty pages of their Netflix accounts to dig up these original works. Sometimes the originals are brilliant classics that should be viewed by all film lovers, while others were great concepts but poorly executed due to the technological restraints of the time period. Some, including a handful of my favorites, are so bad they run full circle into being good. In those particular cases, remakes usually fail to capture the novelty and attempt for a more serious and quality version of the original, thereby almost guaranteeing box-office failure. If you need some recent proof, let’s take a glance at the new version of Clash of the Titans.

Clash of the Titans tells the epic tale of Perseus, born half man/half god and plunged into a quest to rally the mortals against the immortals and their control over the mortal world. Along the way he must find allies, battle incredible monsters, defy the will of the gods at every turn and decide what destiny he will write for himself.

Certain films get a good running start, but stumble in the home stretch and leave their audiences feeling unsatisfied in the end. Clash fails to even get its feet squarely underneath it. From the opening moments you get a sense of something out of place, something missing and I narrowed it down to this: quality. From front to back, every aspect of this mostly-animated adventure feels half-assed. For the points I gave for the thrilling CGI mega-monster, the Kraken, and smoke effects around Hades, I had to simultaneously remove points for terrible CGI-effects on the ferryman over the river Styx and the silly glowing around the remaining pantheon of gods. The same formula could also be used for the exciting scorpion fight scenes, which were incredibly reminiscent of the scorpion-type robot fight scene in Transformers 2, followed closely by the laughable costuming used on the mystical desert people, who just end up looking like weird tree folk. Clash never finds a balance between having crappy effects and going the novelty route or using the high-class CGI tools and attempting for action blockbuster status.

Moving away from the unreal monsters and onto the living, breathing actors unfortunately does not improve the situation. Briefly in the beginning I was thrilled to see Pete Postlethwaite, but he only gets a few brief moments on screen and even he couldn’t make the ridiculous dialogue sound palatable. Sam Worthington, starring as Perseus, continues his ascension of the blockbuster ladder (recently starring in Termination: Salvation and Avatar), but he is teetering on the edge of only being cast for his stone-cold glare and not for actual acting ability, which James Cameron was somehow able to access in and out of the ‘blue man’ suit. Liam Neeson, who some might argue was born to dictate orders from the clouds above, found his performance of Zeus  pushed off the screen throughout by the more leering and sinister Hades, played by Ralph Fiennes. I think to really find the error here, we need to climb all the way to the top, director Louis Leterrier. I am a devout fan of his work on the first two action-filled chapters of the Transporter series, but their main reason for awesomeness is their sheer logic-avoiding car chases and tracer bullet addictions. We knew they were ludicrous going in and therefore could enjoy it, but Clash tried to be something more, something meaningful along with action-packed and it ended up failing at both.

PS: Just a small note here, but if anything could actually make this movie experience worse it was the terrible quality of picture and sound at the AMC Citywalk theaters. Usually I only have to deal with the crowd being slightly more rambunctious than those found at the Arclight or Landmark theaters, but this time the sound faltered a handful of times, the coloring wavered in and out and at one point I was fairly sure the picture was about to drop off altogether during a reel change. I’m not saying avoid the AMC Citywalk screens, but if you readers begin to see a pattern of crappy sound and picture quality up there, let me know. Maybe we can rally some effective change up there.

The End of the Page recommendation: Get some popcorn, soda or possibly your alcoholic beverage of choice and rent the original Clash of the Titans instead. Relish in the wonderment of Ray Harryhausen’s amazing animation of the time period and chuckle at seeing Harry Hamlin attempt to become a Greek hero. Plus, Bubo rules!

Revolutionary Road: Could Lead to Oscar Blvd.

“Let’s take a cruise together.”

“Umm…actually, I have this thing about boats. They’re not really my thing.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Throughout movie history there has been a wide variety of classic couples, people you yearned to see on screen together again and again: Bogart and Bergman, Gable and Leigh, and Lancaster and Kerr to name only a few. But in 1997 another young couple cemented their right to being included on that list, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, in James Cameron‘s  record breaking film, Titanic. Even though the pair were one of the very few things in Titanic not awarded with Oscars or Golden Globes that year, they still lived on inside the hearts of the audience members who went back to see the romantic duo lean over that railing and declare their reign over the world. It only took eleven years for them to find a project to work on together again, but DiCaprio and Winslet have proven it was worth the wait.

Revolutionary Road is the story of a young passionate couple who meet, connect and yearn to spend their lives striving for the limits of experience. The story takes a only a brief look into their initial introduction to each other, instead opting to quickly jump years forward into their marriage only to find the passion has dissipated and their struggle now is against their suburban mundane existence. The couple, once wild and free, now find themselves deciding whether to stay in their current situation and try to make the best of it or to risk it all and run away to Paris in hopes of rekindling their love of life and their love for each other. It’s a war of contentment and  security versus passion and fulfillment and both sides fight dirty.

There was always one big threat looming over this film, that we, the audience, would look up at the screen and only see the Leo and Kate we remember from Titanic. The love struck duo fated to be together, but torn apart. All we would see would be longing glances full of love and hope and the rest of this new story would be lost in those memories. So, with that looming in front of director Sam Mendes, Mendes made a brilliant choice to jump very quickly into the deeply troubled marriage, nearly opening the film in a vicious fight on the side of the road. The anger and vitriol spilled on each other in that opening argument is more than enough to wipe away all previous visions of wistful gazes and romantic cuddling. DiCaprio rages against the self-imposed cage he’s stuck in, giving us the intensity and raw aggression we’ve come to expect from him (from performances such as The Basketball Diaries, Gangs of New York, The Departed, etc.). Now tie that aggression with the always impressive strength and surety of Kate Winslet and you’re locked and loaded for a true battle of the wills. Only actors who are completely trusting of each other could reach the fever pitch Leo and Kate achieve, which allows not only for touching moments of love, but also incredibly sharp attacks that cut deeper than any knife ever could.

Behind the dynamic duo there is a bevy of talented actors, including Kathy Bates, Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour, and heading into this film they had to know they were only bringing the trimmings and decorations to a party made for Leo and Kate, but one person decided to crash the party and steal some of the spotlight for himself. Michael Shannon plays John Givings, Kathy Bates’ son who happens to be on a short term visit from the local insane asylum. Now he doesn’t bash into the scenes ranting and raving, but his particular type of craziness allows him to cut through the bull and call people out on what is really going on underneath their shiny plastic veneer. Shannon has only three scenes in the film, but during each one of them you can’t take your eyes away from him. He is not only the spark-plug for those moments, but he becomes the lightning rod for the entire movie during a dinner scene which will go on my list as one of the best scenes on film in the last five years. The only shame in Michael Shannon’s performance is that he didn’t get a nomination for it. Here’s hoping the Academy voters are smarter than the Hollywood Foreign Press.

As much as I can rave about the wonderful acting on display in this film, those jewels are only achievable through the eyes and sensitivity of a talented director like Sam Mendes. Mendes keeps his tradition from American Beauty alive of painting picturesque communities of sterility and perfection, but all the while hinting and flashing light on the cracks growing underneath. There is always a deeper truth underneath the veil his characters show to the world and that’s where his real talent lies, making those people remove the masks in a believable and truthful fashion. I was on the lookout for subtle preferential treatment for Kate since she’s married to Mendes in real life, but both parties refused to pull any punches, once again proving the entire team’s commitment to powerful and honest filmmaking. Also proving that point is the completely anti-Hollywood ending, which I obviously won’t go into, but according to screenwriter Justin Haythe there was some push for it to be softened or changed, but Sam locked arms with him and demanded that it stay true to the original novel it is based on. If more people showed even half as much commitment to all the other film projects out there, the quality level we would reach would be unimaginable.

Recommendation: I’ll put this as plainly as I can: Before seeing this I was a locked in vote for Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture of the Year, now I’m not so sure. My new fear is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is going to make this choice even harder, but for the moment I am blissfully unaware of that option.