STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS: This is the Movie That Looks Like the TV Show But Not the TV Show That the Samurai Jack Guy Did

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) – Directed by Dave Filoni – Starring Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor, Ashley Eckstein, Tom Kane, Dee Bradley Baker, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anthony Daniels.

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS gets a lot of heat from people, but I can appreciate it. Yeah, it’s an action-centric excuse to have droids and Jedis and clones fight pretty much non-stop for 90 minutes, but that’s a bad thing why, exactly?

I’m glad we’re living in a time when George Lucas is doing something with the Star Wars universe other than collecting checks and tinkering with the past. And yes, he’s still doing both of those things, but we’re not only getting new content, I don’t really think it’s all that bad. If that’s faint praise, so be it. I can understand how some feel let down or betrayed or disgusted with a movie and show like THE CLONE WARS. (This movie is really the first few episodes of the second CLONE WARS series – the CGI one, not the one Genndy Tartakovsky did.) The original trilogy had been so lionized over the years that it had taken on an almost religious significance, and if you want to dismiss this movie out of hand, I don’t blame you, I won’t stop you, and I’m not going to try and convince you you’re wrong.

As important as STAR WARS was for the pre-teen me, though, I’ve long since lost that religion. Maybe all of us of that generation had to confront that STAR WARS wasn’t ever really anything to Lucas but a story to tell and a product to sell. Maybe it did mean more to us than it meant to him. Or maybe it just meant something different.

For me, it happened sometime during the prequel trilogy when I walked into a Walmart or Target and saw Yoda on a bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lay’s potato chips. “What part of Yoda’s nature corresponds to Sour Cream and Onion?” I wondered mockingly to myself. “Oh yeah, he’s green.”

After that, I lost the faith.

So when something like THE CLONE WARS comes along, it’s just another piece of entertainment for me. Well, maybe not “just” another piece of entertainment but like going back to my old church, it’s not what it was anymore.

THE CLONE WARS is an action film on fast forward, rarely stopping as it goes from an assault raid to a kidnapping rescue caper. Jabba the Hutt’s son has been kidnapped and the Separatists and Republic are fighting to get her back in order to curry favor with Jabba, who controls shipping lanes in the Outer Rim. The Separatists, led by Count Dooku, have actually stolen and poisoned the kid in an attempt to frame the Jedi because … well, because it’s easier for evil people to do evil things rather then just bring the little Hutt back to Jabba, I suppose.

CLONE WARS focuses on the relationship between Anakin and his new Padawan Ahsoka. He’s too young and rebellious to have a Padawan and she’s too young and rebellious to be a Padawan, so they clash.

A lot.

There’s lots of fighting and lots of clashing and while THE CLONE WARS is never really good, it is plenty diverting. The look of CLONE WARS has been dogged, but I really kind of like it. Yeah, it’s big and blocky, but it’s distinct, clean, and bright. I have a larger issue with the vocal aspect of the show; characters tend to talk a bit to simply and slowly. I get that this is a kid’s movie, but characters in other films find a way to talk at regular speed.

The movie manages to bring in Yoda, Amidala, Palpatine, R2-D2, C-3PO, and Mace Windu to keep things moving forward and uses most of them to good effect.

The big problem with CLONE WARS is that Anakin just not a very interesting character. Lucas seems to be caught between actually transforming him into Darth Vader and wanting him to be completely heroic. Given what Lucas has done to Han Solo and shooting first over the years, I’m half expecting we’ll actually find out at some point that the Anakin of Revenge of the Sith isn’t actually Anakin at all.

The Anakin-Ahsoka relationship doesn’t have much bite to it, either, but at least there’s an arc here.

On the whole, while CLONE WARS isn’t great, it is a decent shoot ‘em up and it’s fun to see all of these characters again (well, except for Anakin) in a mildly diverting story. The idea that both sides are trying to curry favor with Jabba is a good one. There might be too much violence in this film for the kids it’s intended to reach but kids are usually smarter than we give them credit for. They can handle it.

SEASON OF THE WITCH: Why?

Season of the Witch (2011) – Directed by Dominic Sena – Starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Stephen Campbell Moore, Robert Sheehan, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham, and Christopher Lee.

SEASON OF THE WITCH is the kind of movie that’s neither awful enough to just stop watching, nor good enough to ever be average. It’s not engaging, it’s not scary, and it’s not fun. What it is, unfortunately, is a dreadfully depressing movie, in part because the story is told in such a lifeless way and in part because Nic Cage and his character, Behman of Bleibruck, spend the entire film with such a vacant look on their face that you half-hope the only reason Cage took this job was because he needed another shot of smack and they were holding it off-camera and wouldn’t give it to him until he got through the scene.

Cage can be an infuriating actor, but I personally like the fact that he takes all different kinds of roles in all kinds of different movies. I don’t like all of them, of course, but at times his presence can help what should be a really awful movie become something fun, such as the highly enjoyable Drive Angry. In SEASON OF THE WITCH, however, he walks lifelessly through the story, which is maybe exactly what his character needs, but in that case, they should have found a different character for the lead of the film to play.

Let’s cover the one really positive part of this film right up front: Ron Perlman. Unlike Cage’s traumatized Behman of Bleibruck (they keep saying, “of Bleibruck” like it’s supposed to mean something, but since it’s the only character in the film they ever say this about, it just comes off as self-involved and arbitrary), Perlman’s Felson hits all the right notes. Felson is an old, grizzled veteran of the Crusades, the kind of guy who’s not fighting because he believes in winning glory for God but because he was a sinner and signing up was a Get Out of Jail Free Card. Felson and Perlman have that been-there-done-that-still-love-it vibe. Nothing seems to bother him or throw him, and he’s perfectly happy being Behman’s sidekick. When they’re on the Crusades, he fights and kills, and when Behman accidentally kills a woman and deserts, Felson follows along like a loyal dog.

It’s not just Felson that deserves credit for this film’s one, shining light, but Perlman, who’s the only person associated with this film that can get Cage to show any signs of life. Perlman’s professionalism and total commitment to this character brings Cage’s acting to the surface. Cage really does look like he’s having a dreadful time making this movie, with the scenes he shares with Perlman being a lone bright spot.

As for the non-Perlan parts of WITCH, it’s a film that makes you wonder why it even got made. The protagonist of the film walks around mostly depressed and guilt-ridden, most of scenes either take place at night or are soaked in a depressing grey color palette, none of the ideas are actually scary, and there’s not much fun. It honestly feels like a movie that should have been made with C-list actors on the cheap for a straight-to-video or -cable release and then somehow got a star to sign on so they figured, what the heck, let’s try and make an actual movie out of it.

Dominic Sena directs the film and he’s a talented director who makes soulless films. His four most recent films (WITCH, Whiteout, Swordfish, and Gone in 60 Seconds) all look slick but offer little beneath the surface. Gone is his best film, but now I wonder if it’s because it had such a star-studded cast (Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Giovanni Ribisi, Delroy Lindo, Timothy Olyphant, Will Patton, Chi McBride, Christopher Eccleston, Frances Fisher, and Arye Gross) that the actors carried the story through the sheer force of their personalities while Sena did a credible job making it look cool. WITCH certainly looks slick but it’s such a muted color palette and such an improperly paced story that you can’t appreciate the slickness of it.

The plot concerns Behman and Felson get coerced by the Church into taking a witch to a monastery so the monks there can end the Black Death, and a couple others join them on the way, but this “rag tag group of adventurers” never really comes together or even interacts with one another in a meaningful way. There’s three clear Acts in WITCH – the pre-adventure where Behman and Felson fight and then leave the Crusades, the trip transporting the witch to the monastery after they’ve been forced to come back into the church’s employ, and the big fight at the monastery with the supernatural throwdown with the demon who’s been hiding inside the witch-who-isn’t-a-witch-after-all.

The first Act is pointless because it adds nothing to the film. We could very easily have junked the entire first bit with Behman and Felson cutting down enemies over several years in the Crusades because it adds nothing to the film. The bad guy of this act is a church representative who keeps giving big speeches about how everyone they fight needs to die because God wants it that way. Since this dude never shows up again, we could have done without all that screen time establishing him as the bad guy.

In the second Act, Behman and Felson transport the witch. Up to now there hasn’t been any supernatural bent to the film and the Church has been clearly signaled as being the bad guys, so when the witch shows up as the explanation for the plague, I’m thinking this is going to be revealed as more Church nonsense. Except she really is a witch – or, at least, extremely powerful for what her human body should be able to do. It offers a wonderful opportunity for the filmmakers to complicate things, but they don’t. Instead, we’ve got a seemingly unending journey (though it only takes about 30 minutes of screen time) through dark woods. The most tense part of the film is the group trying to get across a rotted bridge.

In the third act, they reach the monastery, find all the monks dead (except one, that is, who promptly dies), and then the witch is revealed as a girl possessed by a demon. It’s a nice twist, and the twist that the demon has wanted to get to the monastery all along is a legitimately good one, but that’s all the cleverness the film can muster. What happens next is a battle in a cramped room with poor lighting. Think of the lamest fight scene in any Harry Potter movie and then imagine what it would look like if the people filming that scene had turned off the lighting and you’ve got an idea of this final sequence.

At the end of the day, SEASON OF THE WITCH apparently made money (the Never Wrong says it cost $40 mil and made $90 mil worldwide), so it did what it was made to do, but it’s such a joyless, dreary experience that I’m left to wonder why it was even made.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN: James Bond Will Smack a Ho … And a Midget

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) – The 9th James Bond Film; The 2nd (of 7) Roger Moore Films – Directed by Guy Hamilton – Starring Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Hervé Villechaize, Britt Eckland, Maud Adams, Soon-Tek Oh, Desmond Llewelyn, Clifton James, and Bernard Lee.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is a very underrated movie. I say this because according to the Never Wrong, IGN named GOLDEN GUN as the worst Bond movie of them all, and Entertainment Weekly chose it as fourth worst. MSN’s critic chose it as the tenth best and while I dislike lists and haven’t seen all of the Bond films recently enough to make a definitive statement on lists, I’m guessing GOLDEN GUN is much closer to #10 than #Last Place.

(Of course, as we all know, lists are stupid.)

Roger Moore’s rep over the years has become defined by his later movies, and if you only think of Moore as the self-parody that he became (lampooning himself wonderfully in Cannonball Run), you won’t recognize him in his second Bond film.

Because let us be clear on this point: Roger Moore is an absolute bad-ass in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.

This is a take-no-crap Bond that very much fits the style of the current Daniel Craig portrayal. Bond believes the world’s best assassin, Scaramanga (played wonderfully by Christopher Lee), is after him after receiving a golden bullet with “007″ trabscribed on it, and so he decides to go after Scaramanga. The twist is that that Scaramanga isn’t after Bond at all, but his mistress/lover/hooker/whatever Andrea Anders wants him dead, so she sends the bullet to MI6 in the hopes of getting Bond to kill him.

Moore spends much of the film angry and determined, generally keeping his wit restrained and tight. It’s not that there aren’t some clever lines, but Moore delivers them in a such a manner as to downplay them, rewarding you for paying attention but not pandering for a laugh.

And he’s fantastic. From start to finish and to an even greater extent than in LIVE AND LET DIE, Roger Moore owns James Bond in GOLDEN GUN. His performance is so assured, so focused that it’s a joy to watch, even when the material fails him in the film’s second half.

Sex and violence are always present in a James Bond film, but this time out they are intertwined, and sex has become almost a chore. He seduces fellow British agent Mary Goodnight (who first resists his advances and then comes running to his room), but while their starting their foreplay there’s a knock at the door and Andrea Anders arrives with the info on the plot twist. She wants Bond to kill Scaramanga and offers him anything he wants, including himself. Bond, of course, being the perfect gentleman, decides to have sex with her for the good of God and Queen, but not before pulling Goodnight out of bed (she was hiding beneath the sheets) and jamming her in the closet.

Where she spends the night while Bond and Anders have sex about ten feet away from her.

Sex with Anders is almost complete business for Bond. I’m sure he’s not all, “Oh, man, I’ve got to have sex with this hot woman? I hate my job,” but there’s no seduction here at all. Earlier in the film he’d broken into her room after tailing her pick up Scaramanga’s gold bullets, and watched her shower behind clouded glass. They end up on the bed, but it’s all business and when Anders gets evasive, Bond slaps her and twists her arm behind her back.

“You’re hurting my arm,” she wails.

“I’ll break it if you don’t tell me where those bullets go,” he threatens roughly.

When Anders visits him later she offers herself in a manner that suggests she’s a broken woman. An actual gentleman would have refused simply on the pathetic nature of her offer; she’s telling Bond in this moment that her body, her sex, is something she trades with to get what she wants. If you have an inclination to get all moralistic, you can certainly do it, but I like the film’s approach on this relationship – Bond and Anders are professionals playing a very dangerous game. Trading sex is no different than trading secrets.

Anders comes out the better in relation to Goodnight, who’s allegedly MI6, but is nearly completely useless. She plays an MI6 staffer like she’s gotten a job at Daddy’s law firm and she’s never taken a legal course in college. Britt Eckland’s character is basically there to look cute, put on a bikini, and be stupid. She does the whole, “I will not sleep with you, James Bond because you don’t repsect me and … and … oh James, I can’t resist you.”

There’s a whole plot about a stolen part to some fancy sun-generated death ray and it’s unfortunate that the film doesn’t give us more scenes with Bond and Scaramanga. Christopher Lee is great as the assassin who kills people with a golden gun for $1 million a pop. He’s cool, casual, ambitious, and given to theatrics. He goes about his business with a disturbing professionalism, killing people without any remorse. After Bond has bedded Anders and she’s promised to bring him the fancy part to the death ray that he wants, they meet at a fighting match the next day and when Bond arrives, Anders is already dead. Nobody notices this because she’s sitting perfectly still. We don’t see the kill but we see the aftermath, with Scaramanga plopping himself down next to Bond to have a little chat about what’s what.

Scaramanga is a terrific villain and GOLDEN GUN is totally worth watching just for Bad Ass Moore and Suave Killer Lee. Unfortunately, the big showdown between them ends with a limp bang inside Scaramanga’s funhouse/killzone. Nick Nack (played spectacularly by Villechaize) hires people to come to the island to try and kill his boss as practice/fun for Scaramanga to stay sharp. The first time we see this funhouse is in the pre-credits sequence. It shouldn’t work because Scaramanga is pitted after a wiseguy that looks like he just stepped out of a 1930s mafia movie, but it does. The second time we see it is should work because Scaramanga is pitted against Bond, but this time it doesn’t.

Killing Scaramanga should be the climax, but then the movie tacks on this ridiculous stop-the-death-ray sequence that I just didn’t care about. Scaramanga is an assassin so I want to see him and Bond trying to kill each other. I don’t really care that he has aspirations to be a criminal mastermind and I certainly don’t care about his stupid death ray.

GOLDEN GUN certainly isn’t a great film. For starters, it all feels incredibly derivative of the former regime. Hey, look, let’s put “gold” in the title. Yeah, and get a Shirley Bassey knock-off to sing the song. A visually distinct henchman is always good. Ooh, and a crazy secret hideaway. It’s in these moments when GOLDEN GUN is at its worst. We don’t need to see a car fly because you’ve strapped some wings to the roof. Heck, we don’t need to see Bond driving around in a cheap ass AMC Hornet, especially not when the racist Louisiana sheriff from
LIVE AND LET DIE is back to be even more racist.

Villechaize’s Nick Nack never really devolves into “hey, let’s make a bunch of short people” jokes, either. He’s a pretty solid, clever character and it’s a shame that he ends up getting defeated by being stuffed inside a piece of luggage. Bond tells him, “I’ve never killed a midget” at one point and, as odd as it might sound (and certainly as non-PC as it may sound to our 2011 ears), it actually comes off as a sign of respect. Bond’s letting Nick Nack know he’s not going to underestimate him so he’d better not try jerking Bond around.

GOLDEN GUN gets points for a great use of Q (he’s here to explain things, not just provide the gadgets Bond will just happen to need to save the world) and a nice visual with the sunken, tilted Queen Elizabeth serving as a secret base of operations for MI6. There’s a whole kung-fu sequence that works pretty well (Bond takes advantage of one opponent’s show of respect; as he bows, Bond kicks him in the face), and the car chase is okay even with the Hornet and Sheriff Redneck Stereotype along for the ride. I like Soon-Tek Oh’s Lieutenant Hip in the “foreign agent who helps Bond” role, and the bit with him having two nieces who wear schoolgirl outfits and kick much ass as karate experts foreshadows the film fetishes of both Tarantino and Rodriguez.

While not perfect and while it loses steam at the end, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN holds up surprisingly well. Moore really is fantastic here as a rougher, driven Bond, and the subtle use of humor rewards repeat viewings. I’d never had much love for GOLDEN GUN (I probably watched it a few times as a kid without it having much effect) but I’ve got some now thanks to Moore and Lee.