Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides *

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush

Ian McShane, Kevin McNally, Sam Claflin

Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Richard Griffiths

Given how excruciatingly terrible the two last installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga had been, it was perhaps reasonable to expect that a fourth chapter would only be created in order to improve the series. This wasn't the case. On Stranger Tides in fact might be the worst of them all and if you've seen the other ones, you understand this is saying a lot.

Johnny Depp is back to play Captain Jack Sparrow, by this point however he seems to have become so uninterested in the character that he plays him on autopilot. Sparrow still delivers witty lines and acts like he's drunk; however by now his quirks have just become preposterous and fail to add shades to this character.

This time around Sparrow gets dragged into an expedition to find the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de León had set out to find two centuries before. Sparrow's expedition is led by the evil Blackbeard (McShane) and his newfound daughter Angelica (Cruz) who also happens to be Jack's former flame.

Of course things won't be just that easy for Sparrow and crew, given that two other teams have set out to find the fountain. One of them is led by Sparrow's perpetual enemy Hector Barbossa (Rush), the other by Spanish conquistadors. Somewhere within the movie there are inklings of a political statement meant to have been suggested with these multicultural races towards advancement.

This might be looking too much into the film's flawed screenplay though, given that so little happens over such a long time that your mind might wander and try to find things to rescue about this production.

Many questions might arise, like: why does such an expensive film feel so cheap at every turn? The visual effects fail to impress and at moments look almost dated. What are actors like McShane, Rush, Depp and Cruz doing in such a film?

Rush as usual injects Barbossa with a manic wickedness, while McShane is given so little to do and it's such a shame given his talent for delivering villains. Cruz remains enjoyable throughout the movie and is perhaps the only cast member who never seems to get bored by the ridiculous levels the plot reaches. She somehow seems to be having fun and in one of her last scenes is even able to find something that feels like an emotional core of sorts.

The biggest enigma in the film though, might be why is it so dull? From the beginning, when it throws complexly choreographed sequences at us (one even contains a Judi Dench cameo!), everything feels like something we've seen a million times before and never really liked to begin with.

While the first installment in the series brilliantly exploited the film's amusement park origins, this one feels like a very long ride down an attraction someone forgot to make fun. How can something so big, be so little fun?

Despite the film's loudness, it's almost impossible not to drift while watching it. Perhaps director Marshall tried to see too much into these characters and situations? For there is not a single character who doesn't suggest a richer backstory than they deserve (something Angelica mentions about a convent might've been a better movie than this one...) and for all these comments about past stories we get truly ridiculous attempts at humanizing these people even more. Marshall then gives us a boorish love story between a missionary (Claflin) and a mermaid (Bergès-Frisbe). He's looking for faith, she's not one of "god's creatures" and before long we have even more winks about religion by way of the conquistadors who speak exactly three Spanish words in the film.

There's dozens of plot holes, setpieces that go on and on and on without any purpose and an overall disturbing feeling of coins falling into Disney's own treasure chest. Not even Cruz's own phenomenal chest makes this any better.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides drags for so long, giving so little that by its end you will wish you found the fountain of youth, if only to recover the hours you lost watching this.

Nine ***

Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz
Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Sophia Loren

"Nine" is the third incarnation of a project that was born almost half a century ago at the hands of the brilliant Federico Fellini.
His film "8 ½" chronicled the anguish of a film director upon facing creative block. The movie is considered a masterpiece of world cinema and was transformed into a Broadway musical by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit which concentrated on the effect of women in the lives of the director.
Rob Marshall's adaptation then takes the musical back to the silver screen which perhaps it should never have left to begin with.
"8 ½" was always a very personal piece, it's been largely debated whether the main character was or wasn't an alter ego of Fellini himself. Sure the similarities were vast but to imply so would also be to diminish the auteur's ability to separate himself from the characters he write.
If that was the question should we say then that Mozart shouldn't have made music about music or Shakespeare written about writers?
If Fellini put something of his' in the movie it was his distinctive cinematic touch, he creates a surrealist, documentary-like circus out of unraveling minds and Guido is Fellini, not because he's a movie director but because he's his creation.
But out of this mess he comes up with a movie about ideas, a work of art that defies all conventions because it's a perfect ode to imperfection.
Therefore "Nine" always had a rough time ahead in becoming a beast of its own, for how do you adapt something that was already so undecipherable?
"Nine" had to be more chaotic and yet organized, it had to become an oxymoron and be both messy and grounded.
But Rob Marshall, always a visual perfectionist, chose to make a beautiful, almost too polished film that never really gets to the core of the creative crisis Guido Contini (Day-Lewis) is going through.
Instead he comes up with a film that proves another point almost by accident; that some ideas should remain forever where they were born.
When the film begins we meet Guido, perhaps the most famous director in the world who is about to start shooting a film called "Italia" but has yet to write a word for its screenplay.
He starts being haunted by the women who have inspired him throughout his life: his mother (Loren) who now is dead, a prostitute he met in his childhood called Saraghina (Fergie), his leading lady Claudia Jenssen (Kidman), his confidante and costume designer Lilli (Dench), American "Vogue" reporter Stephanie (Hudson), his mistress Carla (Cruz) and his wife-and former leading lady-Luisa (Cotillard).
The movie is structured so that each of these ladies gets a musical number (two in Cotillard's case) that goes along with what Guido is going through at that moment.
Therefore when we see him remember his repressive Catholic childhood Saraghina bursts out of the sand to remind him he was meant to be a lover in "Be Italian", while his mom soothes him with the melancholic lullaby "Guarda La Luna".
Marshall stages the numbers using the same framing device he used in "Chicago" as they unfold in a studio which looks like Cinecittá but is actually inside Guido's mind.
The numbers mostly feel completely disconnected from each other as Dench's "Folies Bergere" seems more at place in a revue than a movie about movies, while Hudson's "Cinema Italiano" (a song so tacky and overdone that you might blush when you actually find yourself humming it) would fit more in an MTV crash course through the 60's.
To some this might seem a misfire but considering the movie is basically us being voyeurs to Guido, they completely make sense.
In this way Carla's "A Call from the Vatican" shows him at his most playful and Cruz is so smoldering that she might even make you break a sweat as she coos throughout an orgasm. The numbers aren't really about these women, when they sing they are not themselves as much as they are projections of Guido.
That he also happens to be a projection of them just makes for a fascinating concept considering that like the film he's making, and to a degree "Nine" itself, he's essentially a work in progress.
Day-Lewis who obviously doesn't have the Italian gene, is unable to evoke charm and sexiness but he's an expert at brooding and inner exploration.
He sings with indifference as if he knows that because he's singing to himself he can give out so-so performances and still be the star of the show.
"I would like to be here/but also there" he sings completely aware that "that's a contradiction in terms" and the same can be said for the film which has trouble adjusting itself from the switch of musical into traditional scenes.
If there is something "Nine" gets really well is the casting; Dench is a sassy scene stealer, Loren really just needs to appear to evoke class glamor (she curiously represents the idea of women Guido attempts to encompass with the film he wants to make).
Fergie is a revelation as the sexual, larger than life Saraghina and Nicole Kidman shines in a role that seems to have been made for her. "People just don't realize she's an actress as well as a star" says Guido and Kidman proves him right in the affecting "Unusual Way" where she deconstructs the image of a movie star with the simple removal of a wig.
The movie perhaps belongs to Cruz and Cotillard. Cruz would've made Fellini proud as she takes on her role in the manner of someone like Magali Noël in "Amarcord", hips and lips everywhere but she's also able to break our heart when we least expect it.
Her undeniable sexiness is nothing compared to the longing in her eyes when she looks at Guido, her performance makes us look at her love as something beyond morality.
Then there's Cotillard who makes Luisa the center of the movie. In "My Husband Makes Movies" she shows us her life without recurring to cheap martyrdom; it's as if her devotion is what keeps her heart pumping. When she sings "he needs me so/and he'll be the last to know it" it doesn't come out as delusional but as self compromise.
But bets are off when Luisa finally unravels in the spine tingling "Take It All", which is cleverly edited between takes of her asking Guido to give her back her life and the musical performance where she strips for a strange crowd.
Watching Cotillard in that scene travel fearlessly from inner to outer nakedness is watching everything we would've wanted "Nine" to be.
But asking for so much would be to become Luisa and demand love and understanding from something that probably doesn't even understand itself.

Just Because.

Be, Less, Italian...

OK, if there was an Oscar category for Best Poster design "Nine" wouldn't be getting in.
On its second poster released today we get a more cinematic feel and people who saw it without knowing what the hell it was about, would actually begin to understand the whole "oh they're movie people" thing.
However, cursed by the worst Photoshoppers in the history of the world, the Weinstein Co. artistic department came up with a preposterous, incoherent design.
For starters, who the hell would pose for the paparazzi like Marion, Nicole, Penélope and Kate are?
We get that the graphic designers were too lazy to look for any other images of the actors (they're exactly the same ones they used for the other poster) and don't get me wrong, they all look great (LOVE the Mastroiani feel of Daniel Day Lewis' hunch)...just not as a group.

This is never as evident as with the cast's gazes. Where the hell are all of them looking at? Marion apparently spotted something in Daniel's head and is doing flirty eyes at it.
Daniel is looking at Penélope's feet, while she smells her own armpit and falls down (judging from that too slanted position) and Nicole is straight out of her Chanel No. 5 ad looking for Baz.
Just look at how weird Penélope's position is. Not only do we have to wonder who can stand up like that and stay still, but what the heck did they do to her figure?
She's certainly beautiful and curvy, but by no means is she made out of plastic.

Last, but not least, there's the paparazzi. If you had those five together in the same spot, you'd want to take their picture right?
But look at the photographers in red, their eyes and their cameras? What on Earth are they taking pictures of?
It pains me that "Nine" is doing those wonderful trailers and gives no damn about posters. The whole production seems to be cursed with really, really bad Photoshopping.
Remember that "Vogue" cover?

I was appalled to learn that, contrary to what the final result looks like, the women were actually photographed together! (Watch video for proof)
As much as Italian society appreciates the extremes at which some women can take their appearance. Just look at everything Berlusconi dates or appoints to Congress.
There's still a limit to how retouched actresses should appear. Was there anything more breathtaking than Claudia Cardinale's and Anouk Aimee's natural look in Fellini's "8 1/2"?
Rob Marshall should definitely approach these designers with care, ask them to put down the airbrushing tools and pray not to be blurred or stretched in some Mac.

Bellissimo.

The "sleek" with Nicole!
The spread with Penélope!
The "Vogue" with Kate!
Someone give this to me now!

Color Me Absolutely Excited (and Surprised...)

I couldn't believe my eyes and ears when I saw how fabulous Kate Hudson looked in that preview of "Nine" (it's everywhere this week!).
She's been neglected by the presence of all those other huge, and Oscar winning, ladies, but this proves she might be a scene stealer.
For a sec or two I drooled thinking what Anne Hathaway would've done with this if she'd gotten the part (remember her rope stripping from "Bride Wars"?) but as it is I can't complain about Hudson.
She makes everything look like more fun than it should be.

Mamma Mia...

It's been published everywhere, but it rocks! Can't wait for this!

How to Achieve Multiple Orgasms in 2:30.