The Descendants

Alexander Payne is not the sort of writer/director who makes iconic roles for his lead actors; he's the guy who gave Jack Nicholson a comb-over in About Schmidt.  He doesn't necessarily need star power to make a quality film, either --- he made an Oscar-winning film with the villain from Big Fat Liar and the dumb guy from Wings.  His movies are consistently surprising in subtle ways, usually thanks to good use of humor in otherwise sad stories. The Descendants is designed to follow suit; there are certainly some funny moments, but this is a film that wants the audience to feel (sad) things.

Matt King (George Clooney) is a lucky, lucky man.  He is independently wealthy, runs a successful law practice, was born and raised in Hawaii, and has a fun-loving wife and a pair of daughters.  Unfortunately, keeping himself busy with lawyering has led to a strained marriage and a self-described role of the "back-up parent" in his family, but nobody's perfect.

He owns this land.  Poor Matt!

The Descendants begins with Matt's wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), in a coma, as a result of a boating accident.  Now, you may be wondering when the humor is going to kick in, but there are some laughs in this film, I promise.  Matt learns from the doctors that his wife is only getting worse, and she is now a vegetable; in accordance with her living will, Elizabeth is going to be removed from life support and is going to die.  Ha ha!  Get it?  Comedy!  Matt now shoulders the burden of breaking the news to his rebellious teenage daughter, Alex (Shailene Woodley), his socially inept younger daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller), as well as their friends and family.  He starts with Alex, because she's older and theoretically more mature, but she has a surprise for Matt: Alex reveals that her mom was having an affair, just before the accident.  Matt's initial reaction is to awkwardly jog and look old.

But he can't run forever (or even briefly, at least not well); he has to be a rock for his kids.  No matter how furious Matt is, he will never hear Elizabeth defending or explaining herself to him; he will forever be left with unanswered questions.  And now he has to be around friends and family that are going to ramble on and on about how great she was, while trying to find the right way to break the bad news to little Scottie.  Oh, and Matt also has the burden of being the key player in a huge real estate deal that will forever change the face of Hawaii, and the rest of the players are his extended family.  Granted, these are definitely all first world problems, but these are trying times for Matt King.

There has been a lot of buzz surrounding George Clooney's performance in The Descendants, and it is well-deserved.  Clooney trades in his omnipresent charm and cool for some very believable awkwardness and grief.

Pictured above: grief

What makes Clooney so impressive in this role is that it is almost entirely made of small choices.  A story with a wife having the plug pulled should, by all rights, be a saccharine-sweet hankie-fest, but Clooney handled his character's grief in a very realistic fashion, and was not afraid to be funny, even amidst all the stress and sadness.  I've seen every movie Clooney has been in over the past decade (except, oddly, Up in the Air), and this is easily the best performance of his I have seen.  To be perfectly honest, I expected him to be good here, but I was pleasantly surprised by his two daughters.  Amara Miller was surprisingly funny and owned the most heartbreaking moment in the film.  Shailene Woodley was even better as the most believable teenager I think I have ever seen on the screen.  I thought the alternately strained and supportive relationship she had with Clooney was believable and sweet.

Yeah, I've been on the receiving end of that glare before

I was also happy with the rest of the supporting cast.  Nick Krause was initially irritating comedic relief, but his role turned out to be complex and Krause handled it well.  Robert Forster was fun as Elizabeth's grieving --- but still an asshole --- father and Beau Bridges was likable as Matt's business-minded --- and kind of an asshole --- cousin.  Established comedic actors Rob Huebel and Mary Birdsong turned in some quality supporting dramatic roles.  Even actors that normally bug the crap out of me, like Judy Greer and Matthew Lillard were surprisingly effective.

Alexander Payne made a lot of interesting choices when making The Descendants.  Despite setting the film in Hawaii, there isn't as much time devoted to showing off the beautiful location as you might expect.  I was also surprised that a two-time Sexiest Man Alive winner, Clooney, is never really shown as a dapper or typically sexy man in this film.

Sexiest Man Wearing a T-Shirt on the Beach Winner

There are a lot of little things like that in The Descendants.  You might expect gorgeous cinematography, and there are some pretty cool shots, but Payne concentrated on capturing layered emotions.  The performances all stand out in this movie, once again proving Payne's talent with ensemble casts.  The Descendants might not be a film that comes right out and grabs you, but its subtle quality definitely grew on me.  This is some of the most satisfying emotional filmmaking in recent years, and it doesn't feel overly manipulative or calculated.

My only problem with this film is the whole real estate subplot.  It does tie into the larger and far more enveloping main story, but it just never seemed very important to me.  As much as the film strives to make George Clooney into an average, over-his-head type of guy, the land deal just served to remind the audience that this is a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars and chose to be a workaholic absentee father to his children, and probably a sub-par husband to his wife.  The ultimate resolution of that subplot does serve as a sort of gauge for determining his character's development and how his values have changed, but I wish that subplot had been scrapped in favor of more quiet moments of family unity.

Simple, but effective.  But who leaves their feet uncovered?

The Descendants is still a very, very good movie that rings true on many levels.  Clooney gives a great performance, the supporting cast was lovely, and Alexander Payne once again made a quiet and touching film that packs a few surprises.

Dragon Wars: D-War

Here's a bit of wisdom I learned from the beginning of this movie: "Every 500 years, a young woman is born."  End of sentence.  Thank you for the insightful information, Dragon Wars.

Dragon Wars is a South Korean movie that actually received a theatrical release in the United States, which is pretty rare.  It was called D-War in most other countries, but I guess Americans associate "D" with "douche" when the rest of the world apparently thinks "dragon."  I wonder why that is?  And no, I do not know why the "war" is pluralized in the American title.

This movie gave me a rash inside my brain, so I'm going to try and blow through the plot pretty quickly.  In modern times, a reporter, Ethan (Jason Behr), manages to get in close to a disaster scene.  This leads to Ethan remembering something, and we flash back twenty-five years, to a day when Ethan's dad left him alone in a curiosity shop with an unsmiling man (Robert Forster) named Jack.  Don't worry, this isn't the molestation episode of Diff'rent Strokes.  Jack wants Ethan alone so he can tell him a special story.  You see, around the year 1500 AD, the Yuh-Yi-Joo --- the woman who is born with the ability to change an Imoogi dragon into a different kind of dragon, obviously --- was faced with a problem.  There are two Imoogis that want to transform, one good and one evil.  And apparently, she either didn't know which one to pick, or had stage fright, or something dumb like that.  Anyway, her guardian/boyfriend decided that the best option was for them to jump off a cliff to their deaths.  And Ethan is that guardian reincarnated.  Obviously.  It is up to Ethan to find the reincarnated Yuh-Yi-Joo and help her, I don't know, not transform the mean Imoogi?  It's not that I don't understand the plot of this movie, but he's never really given very good instructions, so I'm not sure what his master plan is supposed to be aside from not letting the bad guys win.  Back in modern times, Ethan manages to track down the new Yuh-Yi-Joo, Sarah (Amanda Brooks), just in time for a dragon-worshiping army to invade their city looking for her.  Good luck protecting Sarah from bad guys who look kind of like Uruk-hai riding giant lizards.

Promotional still from the CBS Fall replacement comedy, I Will Rape the Corpses of Your Family.

Here's first sign that this is an awful movie: any character that hears the back story to this film asks, "What are you talking about?"  It's not like they were genuinely reacting to the nonsensical story; that is what the screenwriters wanted them to say.  Another bad sign: the police in this movie refer to a giant dragon attacking a skyscraper as a "Code 3."  Really?  Three?  It's that common?  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the police are prepared for any eventuality, but that just seems unlikely.  Another clue that this isn't the great fantasy/action movie the filmmakers probably (but not definitely) had in mind?  It has this guy playing a dramatic supporting role:

Personally, I like Craig Robinson.  His presence in a comedic movie or television show doesn't guarantee quality, but I generally enjoy him when I see him.  He hasn't done much in the realm of dramatic acting, though, so his casting here is kind of puzzling.  And this isn't one of those comedian-trying-to-earn-an-Oscar roles, either; he's just Ethan's co-worker.  Robinson isn't bad in this movie, it's just that he is obviously not being used for comic relief, and yet he is not being used for dramatic effect, either.  Well, as far as comedic actors in fantasy/action movies go, it could have been a lot worse.

'Nuff said.

But enough about how weird it is for Craig Robinson to be in a Korean dragon movie.  What about the rest of the cast?  Uniformly awful.  Jason Behr does his very best Dimitri Martin impression,

Pop quiz: is he from a cancelled Comedy Central or WB show?

but his expression-free acting and ridiculous dialogue made me wonder if the part was written for Keanu Reeves.  His Yuh-Yi-Joo was played by Amanda Brooks, who adds adds a much-needed strong female role her own specialty to this film: a look of confusion that mirrors that of the audience.  I would say that Robert Forster looked embarrassed as the creepy old man that explains the back story, but that would require him to show any emotion at all, something he has never excelled at in his forty-plus years of acting.  Of course, more than a little of the blame should be given to director Hyung-rae Shim, who spent years on this movie and still ended up with final takes from his actors that other directors wouldn't include in their blooper reels.

But is anyone really interested in the acting found in Dragon Wars?  Of course not!  Dragons are the name of the game here, and this movie delivers in...um...snakes with antlers?

Okay, I get it.  Just because I think of fire-breathing dinosaurs with wings when I think of "dragons" doesn't mean that's how they are seen in Korea.  This movie opts for the more snake-like charm of traditional Chinese dragons.  They don't breathe fire and they don't fly.  Except when they do, which appears to be arbitrary.  And none of them look like European dragons.  Except for some of them.

How did it not get hit by the propeller?

If you think this is going to be a dumb action movie, you're only half right.  The action isn't worth tuning in for.  The CGI effects would have been astonishing, if this film had come out before the first Jurassic Park.  For a movie that was released (in theaters!) in 2007, this isn't what you would expect.  Even if you enjoy foreign movies (and I do) that are more than a little ridiculous (that's me again) this movie still disappoints because it's just life-suckingly bad at what it wants to do.

Now, if you're in the mood for a bad movie, Dragon Wars is certainly worth a thought.  Do you enjoy laughing at repeated acts of poor filmmaking?  Then keep an eye out for the single car that spins out whenever a CGI snake dragon is supposed to be tearing down a street; it's easy to spot, since it is the only car driving on the roads --- of Los Angeles, mind you --- in any of these scenes.  Do you like seeing huge armies that are seemingly intimately familiar with a variety of dragon-like creatures, despite having 500 years in between the last time these secret armies last rode to war?  Then you will love the lumbering, rocket launcher-carrying monsters that are equipped with old-timey football helmets for their safety.

Who forgot to fix the dinosaurs' chin straps?

It's interesting that the movie never addresses who this evil army is, or how they became such a military precision machine.  I can suspend my disbelief for a cult army of a few hundred creepy guys, but this is an organized military group, complete with uniforms, armor, and weapons --- not to mention dragons and dinosaurs, equipped with goddamned rocket launchers.  Who are these people, and where do they practice?  Of course, it's even more interesting that the movie never asks the question "Why didn't the good dragon fight the bad one 500 years ago?" 

Perhaps the greatest question comes at the end.  Ethan and Sarah are kidnapped and brought to the evil base, which is an enormous castle complex located in what appears to be Mordor.  Why they brought Ethan with is beyond me, but it's probably the same reasoning they used to attack Sarah with dragons and rockets, when they needed her alive.  Anyways, the whole climax thing happens and suddenly Ethan is left all alone, with no bad or good guys left.  He's just alone in Mordor, with fire-cracked plains stretching out in all directions, as far as the eye can see.  How is he supposed to get home?  Is he supposed to walk?  Is that supposed to be a happy ending?  The hero is going to die of dehydration and exposure.  Actually, that does make me feel a little better about watching this. 

 Of course, I love asking questions about dumb movies.  It gives me pleasure.  So, I grant Dragon Wars Lefty Gold status as entertainment despite awfulness.