Movie Review — Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D

About a half hour into Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D my wife leaned over to me and blurted out, “Are you as bored with this as I am?”

Frankly, I wasn’t.  By that point, my boredom had turned into annoyance.

Things went downhill from there.

Another scene or two passed and our mutual annoyance metastasized even further — into unconditional surrender.  We had enough.  But the cinematic Rubicon was passed.

In the final scenes towards the end of an overly-long 85-minute test of patience, I found myself talking back at the movie screen mocking the performers, oblivious to those within earshot around me.  I didn’t mean to cause a disturbance, but no one else seemed to care.  Needless to say, we departed the theater in a fit of rage and disappointment.

This movie should never have been made.  It’s a testament to the old edict that if you’re going to do something, then do it right — or don’t attempt it at all.

How in the name of James Cameron — who produced this monumental mess (this one sinks faster than Titanic) — do you screw up something as spectacular as Cirque du Soleil?  Who would have thought trivializing death-defying stunts was possible?  It’s baffling to imagine a production blessed with many of the world’s most gifted performers, with such an impressive array of set designs and costumes, and some of the most innovative music ever recorded could induce a mass slumber.

How bad was it?  For those who have visited the Las Vegas airport, recall the jumbo screen inside the baggage claim area.  Think of the 45-second video clips from one show after another.  Imagine that highlight reel repeated over and over and over again and then compiled into an full-length motion picture.  Indeed, the comparison of waiting for bags at an airport might be appropriate here, except there’s actual suspense in waiting for one’s luggage.  There’s no such drama in this montage of monotony.

Movie Review: “Life of Pi”

Life of Pi is a difficult movie to review.

Certain to be one of the year’s most widely-discussed films, in part because it’s open to multiple interpretations, this is a bold cinematic achievement by a master craftsman — namely Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain).

Yet, it’s also fundamentally flawed, its most puzzling script gaps camouflaged by extraordinary special effects and first-rate performances by three actors who portray the lead character at different stages of his life.  Indeed, the varied imagery and wide range of emotional demands upon the actors are so compelling that one might actually overlook the glaring contradiction within the film’s most intriguing question — which deals with the storyteller’s relationship with God.  The film is such a powerful visual spectacle that the audience deserves an equally consistent storyline — and ultimately just as satisfying a payoff — which compliments the arduous endurance test of sitting through feels like an overly-long 2 hour and 20 minute epic journey across the world’s biggest ocean.

Movie Review: “Flight”

Imagine real-life hero pilot “Sulley” Sullenberger with a severe drug and alcohol problem and doing a few lines prior to taking controls in the cockpit, yet still managing to land his packed airplane with absolute precision on the Hudson River.  Would he still be a hero?  That’s the dilemma of the new film, “Flight,” which just hit theaters this week.

This is a difficult movie to sit through.  Yet it’s tough to decide which is more gut-wrenching — watching a doomed airliner packed full of passengers buckled down in a nosedive headed for near-certain death, or the central character played by Denzel Washington, whose personal life is just as out of control.

While Washington’s character nicknamed “Whip” manages to miraculously maneuver the aircraft towards a crash landing that undoubtedly saves lives, the captain comes under increasing scrutiny once the post-crash investigation begins.  Conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the investigation begins to reveal some troubling revelations about Whip and his conduct.  Every second of the pilot and crew’s lives are scrutinized, which uncovers some ugly secrets about how Whip spends most of his free time.  His best friends are bottles with names like Jim Beam and Jack Daniels, with a few lines of cocaine to add a little spice.

The hero-addict dichotomy is a marvelous dramatic device which helps to sustain a longer-than-average 2.5 hour movie.  The audience faces a real conflict here.  We don’t know whether to cheer for Whip to beat the rap and move on with his life (after all, he heroically saved lives), or be exposed as the fraud he is so the healing and recovery process can begin.