Wild Speculation About Movies I Haven’t Seen
Friday, September 28th, 2007
Despite the path blazed by classic Middle Eastern action flicks like Rambo 3, I haven’t been able to get excited about The Kingdom. Maybe it’s that Jamie Foxx with a gun reminds me too much of Stealth, or that Jennifer Garner as a soldier reminds me too much of Jennifer Garner. It’s hovering in the low 50s on Rotten Tomatoes right now. For a comedy, 50s could mean anything, but for a political action drama with a conscience—the sort of stuff movies critics are dying to love—that’s pretty bad. I sort of want to love it but for a different reason: after exhaustive research (when is IMDB going to buy Rotten Tomatoes goddamnit?) I can confirm that the director Peter Berg, is also the guy who played “Irish” Terry Conklin in The Great White Hype, one of the most underrated comedic boxing performances this side of Rocky IV (Two Stallone sequel references in one paragraph, I’m on fire!).
Also, The Darjeeling Limited is in limited release this weekend (damn you Wes Anderson for making film critics more redundant than they already are) and though it’s at 65%, the Cream of the Crop are giving it a rough ride. One critic who liked it said it’s “Somewhat funny, but in strange and subtle ways, even by Anderson’s standards.” I’m guessing this means the actors just think of a joke and the audience has to guess what it is. That’s really the only way things could get any subtler than The Life Aquatic, in which Bill Murray dressed up in a red cap and pretended like he was playing poker with the camera for two hours.
I’m guessing the Kingdom bombs (sub $10 Million opening) and Darjeeling does about what Aquatic did: make enough money to fund Anderson’s next celebration of sad people in weird clothes.
