The Sordid Seven
(The Worst Movies of 2003)
Not since Battlefield Earth has one film been so loathed by so many. But to tell you the truth, Gigli isn’t even the worst film on this list! That dubious honour goes to The Cat in the Hat, a movie so awful it had us asking, “Mr. Brown can boo! Can you?”
The Magnificent Seven
(The Best Movies of 2003)
Superheroes, serial killers, and… a spelling bee? This year’s best movies were once again a variety showcase. There was also a great mix of different genres, from fantasy and documentary to… a romantic comedy? Give us a romantic comedy set against the turbulent backdrop of a spelling bee, and we’ll officially have seen it all.
The tag line for this film reads, “Every legend has its dark side.” And when you think about it, that’s true. Take the Tooth Fairy, for instance. On the surface, she’s just a benevolent spirit who runs a presumably respectable business trading kids’ unwanted baby teeth for cash. But exactly how does she manage to steal undetected into their bedrooms at night, and why aren’t kids supposed to peek at her? Or more creepy to ponder, exactly what does she want with all those baby teeth? Kind of casts her in a whole new light, doesn’t it?
That’s the idea behind Darkness Falls, a would-be grim fairy tale that gives the Tooth Fairy a nasty image makeover. The revised legend, narrated at the beginning, casts her as the malevolent ghost of an eccentric, burn-scarred old woman out to avenge her own wrongful lynching more than a century earlier. (It seems there was a misunderstanding about a couple of missing kids.) Having cursed the town of Darkness Falls, she now visits children on the night after they’ve lost their last baby tooth—and in the following sequence, a promisingly creepy bit of business directly descended from an earlier short by writer Joe Harris, we see what happens when a young boy named Kyle Walsh (Joshua Anderson) makes the fatal mistake of peeking.
What is The Animatrix? If you have to ask, you’re probably not ready to know yet, but here goes anyway: a made-in-Japan Heavy Metal wired into The Matrix‘s mind-altered universe, The Animatrix is a series of nine animated short films designed to give the 1999 movie’s huge fan base a quick fix of their favorite red pill between heavier feature-film doses.
But unlike most straight-to-video tie-ins (like the rash of inferior “sequels” Disney has been crapping out with alarming regularity), The Animatrix isn’t merely knocked-off “further adventures” filler with cheaper productions values and low-rent voices. Spearheaded by Matrix writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski, the animated anthology boasts voice cameos by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, and artwork by some of the biggest names in Japanese anime.
If you thought a telemarketer was the worst thing that could happen when you answer the phone, this film’s high-concept premise might change your mind. Set almost entirely in and around a single New York City pay phone, Phone Booth is essentially a one-act morality play about lies and infidelity, disguised as a thriller.
Ang Lee’s Hulk is a lot like the titular green goliath and his mild-mannered scientist alter ego, Bruce Banner: it’s a wimpy psychological drama that occasionally transforms into a monstrously enjoyable summer action movie. But as was the case with the Taiwanese director’s last feature, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the psychological stuff adds a surprising (and surprisingly welcome) level of depth to the genre material.
Of course, that depth was already there for the mining. Whether in his original comic form, or as Lou Ferrigno in the now-classic TV series, the Hulk has always represented something that has universal psychological appeal. He’s the ultimate expression of repressed rage, an ultra-powerful Hyde lurking just beneath the surface of our civilized Jekyll manners, waiting for some jackass to provoke us so he can literally burst out of our clothing (except for those torn purple shorts, that is) and start smashing everything in sight.
As thrillers go, Red Dragon isn’t bad at all. It may not be in the same league as 1991′s The Silence of the Lambs—a film it tries very hard to look and feel like—but it does maintain some of the same mood of tense dread. Too bad it’s also the least essential thriller remake since Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised 1998 revision of Psycho.
When I think back to the Daredevil comics I read in my childhood, I remember that they were somehow less interesting than they should have been. The premise was undeniably cool—the idea of a man’s blindness giving him superhuman sensory powers was original, and it provided the ultimate cover for his secret identity as a crusading lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen—but there was always something lacking compared to other comics like Spider-Man. In that respect, at least, the Daredevil film is just like the comic.
Like its two most obvious influences—Tim Burton’s Batman and Alex Proyas’s The Crow—the film wants to be a dark superhero story for adults, the kind of thing that takes place in a crime-ridden dystopia where the sun never seems to shine, and where the hero is a costumed variation on the flawed detective of film noir. Unfortunately, those movies are both tough acts to follow, even without the added pressure from a more recent superhero flick—Sam Raimi’s spectacular Spider-Man. To make matters worse, Daredevil bears all the scars of studio tampering. But if you can see through the heavy editing, watered-down script and of-the-moment cast, just enough remains to make for a moderately entertaining movie.
Considering how high director Bryan Singer set the bar three years ago with his adaptation of the X-Men comic book series, it’s not surprising that subsequent live-action Marvel mayhem like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil haven’t topped it. Only Singer, it seems, could outdo Singer—and that’s just what he’s done with X2. Upping the ante in cast, plot, action, and effects, Singer serves up a movie that is everything a superhero sequel should be.
The film starts strong—with an exhilarating, brilliantly edited sequence involving a politically motivated attack on the President inside the White House—and stays in high gear throughout. When the X-Men find out the attack was carried out by a mutant, their search leads them to a certain devilish-looking teleporter that fans of the comic will know and love (especially when they see the makeup job on Alan Cumming). Meanwhile, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, considerably meaner than he was in the first film) is called upon first to babysit a pack of young mutants at Professor Charles Xavier’s school for “gifted youngsters,” then to defend them when the school comes under siege by soldiers led by William Stryker (Brian Cox), a military man whose hatred for mutants stems from a past that involves both Wolverine and Xavier (Patrick Stewart).
The Core is like one of those Fizz candies. There’s a brittle surface of sci-fi premise and save-the-world adventure plot, and a few effervescent special effects that provide a brief sensory thrill once you bite it, but after that quick burst of fizzy stuff wears off, you’re left with nothing but a hollow centre and an upset stomach.
The reason for the save-the-world adventure plot is that the earth’s molten outer core has stopped spinning, and the resultant deterioration of our planet’s electromagnetic field is causing all sorts of weird “events” to happen. Early on, a tranquil scene of people feeding pigeons in London’s Trafalgar Square turns into an outtake from Hitchcock’s The Birds. Later, things get worse—mainly so we can be treated to a thoroughly unconvincing sequence in which some of Rome’s more important historical monuments get obliterated by the mother of all lightning storms.