Movie Review: X-Files I Want to Believe

X-Files I want to Believe (2009) 

Directed by Chris Carter 

Written by Frank Spotnitz 

Starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connelly, Xzibit

Release Date July 25th, 2009 

Published July 24th, 2009 

As a casual fan of The X-Files tv series I can't claim any unique insight into the inner workings of Mulder and Scully or understanding of thei ongoing plight. I can tell you that when you see them in the new suspense X-Files: I Want To Believe that long time fans will be geeking out over activities that might seem commonplace to the average moviegoer.

Do not fret non-X-Philes, you won't be completely left out of the fun, as you may have been by the dense, TV plot heavy, Fight The Future. X-Files: I Want To Believe is a stand alone mystery that welcomes lovers of suspense, X-phile or non.

When last we saw Fox Mulder he was drummed out of the FBI and possibly a wanted man. He's gone off the grid and only his partner Dana Scully knows how to find him. Thus why a pair of FBI agents (Amanda Peet and Xzibit) accost Scully as she deals with a very sick boy in her new life as a surgeon. She wonders if they are looking to arrest him, but they have something completely different in mind.

A young, female FBI agent has gone missing and the only clues to her disappearance are being provided by a priest (Billy Connelly) who claims psychic abiliity. After the priest lead them to a severed arm buried in the snow, thankfully not belonging to the missing agent, they begin to take seriously his psychic abilities. Of course when dealing with a psychic you need an agent who understands such things.

Enter Fox Mulder. All will be forgiven, he can rejoin the FBI if he is willing to help locate the missing agent. Among the drawbacks? The priest is a convicted pedophile who, psychic visions aside, remains a suspect in the case. Add to that Scully's unwillingness to return with him, mostly because of the creepy pedophile, and you have quite a dilemma for Mulder.

Well, if you guessed that Mulder followed Scully's lead out the door and back into seclusion you are sorely mistaken. Joining the fray he engages and quickly comes to believe the priest. When another young woman goes missing things grow even more urgent and even more disturbing.

Unlike the dense alien stoked malaise of the first X-Files feature, Fight The Future, X-Files: I Want To Believe was directed by show creator Chris Carter with an eye toward reintroducing the brand and inviting new fans. Thus we get a stand alone mystery that leaves out much of the sticky conspiracy that was the propulsive element of the show.

Having to generate energy for a stand alone mystery is not much of a challenge for Carter, some of the series best episodes were stand alone mysteries about lone psychos, alien abductions and psychic events. The central mystery of  I Want To Believe is fully contained in the films just over 100 minute runtime and aside from some of the more grizzly elements, could have made a solid two episode arc on the old TV show.

Carter's direction is seasoned and professional with just a hint of the artist behind the craftsman. A nod to, of all people, Godard, in one scene will be missed by most but is a striking image. And don't think that Carter has left behind his love of plot thickness. Watch the way he weaves Scully's new medical career into the central plot. On the surface it seems contrived but on further thought it goes deeper than you think.

The allure of The X-Files remains squarely in the chemistry of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Returning to these roles after five years apart, they slip comfortably back into their old married couple dynamic with Mulder as the bumbling husband and Scully the loving but correcting wife. As he blunders forth with the psychic she stands behind him clucking her tongue and finding flaw.

The mystery and the supernatural elements of the X-Filles makes it much more fun and slightly more complex than it sounds. Still, the Mulder-Scully connection should be familiar to anyone familiar with the conventions of your average will they or won't they dynamic from Ross and Rachel on Friends to Harry and Sally from Rob Reiner's classic. The difference being aliens, psychics, and a body count, but even the uninitiated will get the vibe.

That's the twist, iconic romance with with a sci fi bent. You don't need to be in the fan cult to have fun with that. The 'romance' is not central or essential to the plot of I Want To Believe but it's a lot of fun and Duchovny and Anderson have been having fun with it for years, teasing fans with a kiss here, a look there.

The humor of the will they/won't they was a welcome respite from the dense conspiracy of the series and just the kind of kick the show needed to become part of pop culture beyond the alien loving set. Now in I Want To Believe it has become the default setting, a place for the story to go when things are getting a little too grim for the non-fans.

Oh, don't be mistaken, fans will find a lot to love about this as well, for some the 'romance' is why they became fans.

X-Files: I Want To Believe is filled with suspense, viscera and a hint of romantic comedy. It's fun for fans and non-fans alike. The sci-fi suspense should be appealing to any audience and the easy breezy chemistry of Mulder and Scully only makes things more appealing. Yes, the plot has some convenient moments but what works about X-Files: I Want To Believe is far more entertaining than the flaws are irritating or nagging.

Movie Review Timeline

Timeline (2003)

Directed by Richard Donner 

Written by George Nolfi, Jeff Maguire

Starring Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Billy Connelly, David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Michael Sheen, Ethan Embry, Martin Csokas

Release Date November 26th, 2003 

Published November 26th, 2003 

It's been five years since director Richard Donner last stepped behind a camera. That was for the deathly Lethal Weapon 4, a creaky cash grab of an action movie that made even the indomitable Mel Gibson look bad. In fact, it has been nearly 10 years since Donner has directed a good movie, 1994's Maverick (also with Gibson.) In his comeback, adapting Michael Crichton's time traveling novel, Timeline, Donner continues the downward slide of his once great career.

Paul Walker stars as Chris, the son of archaeologist Professor Edward Johnston (Billy Connelly). When the professor disappears on a job, his son and his crew of archaeology students including Marek (Gerard Butler), David (Ethan Embry) and Kate (Frances O'Conner) must follow his clues to find him. The Professor's last job was working for a mysterious corporation called ITC. The corporation’s scientists have figured a way to send human beings back in time but only to one specific location: Castleberg, France in the 14th century on the eve of war between the French and British.

Well, wouldn't you these students just happen to be experts in that exact era? In fact they are excavating that very battlefield. What an amazing coincidence. ITC has sent the Professor back to the 14th century and now want to send Chris and company back there to find him and bring him back. Oh but if it were that easy, we wouldn't have a movie. Accompanied by a shady military guy played by Neal McDonough and his two soon-to-be-dead lackeys, the gang has six hours to find the professor and get back to the future.

For Donner, working entirely on autopilot, the time travel plot is merely a clothesline on which to hang one lame action sequence after another. The action has the period authenticity of a high school production of Shakespeare. When we aren't being annoyed with the lame action scene, we are treated to plot points that screenwriters Jeff Maguire and George Nolfi obviously thought were clever. The script ham-handedly sets up things in the present that will payoff in the past. When the supposed payoffs come, the actors practically scream, "see how this paid off, wow aren't we clever.”

Some of the plot points pay off so obviously you can't help but giggle at the goofiness of it all. The actors react like children who just discovered a light switch and want to explain to the audience how it works.

For his part, Walker turns in yet another young Keanu Reeves impression. All that is missing is the signature "Whoa." Walker looks about as comfortable in period garb as Dom Deluise would in a thong. The rest of the cast isn't much better, especially a slumming Frances O'Connor as Walker's love interest. O'Connor was so good in Spielberg's A.I that scripts like this should be easy to pass on but somehow, here she is.

Donner's best days are clearly behind him. The man who made Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon II, arguably the best buddy movie franchise ever, and the man who made arguably the best superhero movie of all time--Superman with Christopher Reeve--has now settled into a depressing groove of just simply picking up his check and turning out below-average action movies that make for great posters but not much else.

Movie Review The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai (2003) 

Directed by Ed Zwick 

Written by John Logan, Ed Zwick, Marshall Herskowitz 

Starring Tom Cruise, Timothy Spall, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connelly, Tony Goldwyn 

Release Date December 5th, 2003 

Published December 4th, 2003 

In his nearly 20-year career as a director, Ed Zwick has yet to show the auteur's spark that separates great directors from good directors. Like a modern Michael Curtiz, Zwick shows flairs of brilliance here and there and, like Curtiz, he makes wonderful, studio-driven pictures, but has yet to find a style of his own. Curtiz made one masterpiece: Casablanca. Zwick has yet to make his masterpiece though, his latest picture, The Last Samurai, approaches greatness, it's conventional, unmemorable style keeps it from being called a masterpiece.

The Last Samurai stars Tom Cruise as a former civil war hero named Nathan Ahlgren who has spent his time since the end of the war inside a whiskey bottle. Working for a company demonstrating firearms for pennies, Ahlgen is trying to forget the horrors of the war by drinking himself to death. Things change when his former army friend Zeb Gant (Billy Connolly) offers him an opportunity to make a lot of money doing what he does best: making war.

The job is to go to Japan and help train the Japanese army in modern warfare. The Japanese are only beginning to use guns and artillery in battle and the emperor of Japan has ordered his closest advisor, Mr. Omura (Japanese director Masato Harada), to bring in the Americans to train the peasant army. The emperor’s advisor is in a precarious situation and must ready the army for war against a rising tide of Samurai warriors who oppose the rapid modernization of their homeland.

The samurai are being displaced as the protectors of Japan by the modern army but, more importantly, their code of conduct--the Bushido--is being pushed aside by the rapid modernization that has brought an influx of foreigners to Japan looking to take advantage of a new market. The samurai don't wish to stand in the way of progress but merely to slow it to a point where history will not be forgotten or, rather, completely erased by so-called progress.

The samurai are lead by the charismatic Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), the last living head of a samurai clan. Once an advisor to the empower, he was cast aside for opposing the encroachment of foreigners. On the battlefield, his prowess as a tactician and warrior has helped his samurai army overcome an army with swords defeating guns.

When Ahlgren, under the command of his former Civil war Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn), is forced to lead an unprepared Japanese army against Katsumoto's samurai, Ahlgren is nearly killed as his platoon of soldiers are slaughtered by the samurai. Katsumoto spares Ahlgren's life after watching him hold off several samurai with merely a broken flagpole. Ahlgren is taken as a prisoner back to the samurais’ mountain enclave. There, his wounds are tended by Katsumoto's sister, Taka (Koyuki). There is a great deal of tension in their relationship for reasons that are best left unsaid.

Ahlgren is held captive throughout the winter and he and Katsumoto develop an uneasy friendship through their quiet conversations about war. Katsumoto reads Ahlgren's journals detailing the Civil War as well as the American army's eradication of the American Indian, something Ahlgren feels gravely guilty about. Gradually, Ahlgren assimilates into the samurai culture and soon he will be forced to choose sides in an inevitable war between the past and the future of Japan.

For Cruise, The Last Samurai marks yet another stellar performance that will likely be overshadowed by his stature as a sex symbol. It doesn't seem to matter how well Cruise performs in any film, his looks and image always get the attention. It's a terrible shame because Cruise is, in my opinion, turning out some of the finest work of any actor working today. His role in The Last Samurai is deserving of a Best Actor nomination and, in a weak field, he is likely to get it. He deserves to win but he deserved to win a couple of times and did not, so I won't get my hopes up.

Watanabe may actually outshine Cruise on Oscar night. His portrayal of Katsumoto is a complicated and brilliant performance that captures the essence of what Zwick wants us to understand of the samurai. Watanabe personifies the samurai warrior code, and communicates its importance to the audience with his subtle intelligence and spirit. If he doesn't win Best Supporting Actor, I will be very disappointed.

For Zwick, The Last Samurai is another signpost on the way to a potential masterpiece. It's an epic work of directorial craftsmanship. What Zwick lacks is a signature style that tells you this is an Ed Zwick film. The Last Samurai is a slave to conventional three-act filmmaking and conventional shooting styles. It is, without a doubt, a terrific work, but it comes up short of being a masterpiece because it's too slick and stylish. The film is too easily fit into a Hollywood marketing campaign to be a significant work of art.

The Last Samurai must settle for being a terrific work of pop entertainment, a conventional Hollywood work of crafty brilliance that showcases a star at the height of his abilities and a director with the potential for greatness.