R_Grey

Huge spoilers ahead.

I think this movie could have been good -- it's well paced and the opening sequence is great, but for most of the rest of it, it's insultingly dumb.

Here are just a few of the idiotic things: The apes follow traveling military units. They follow them on horseback, on open terrain (beach), and they do so from just within a few hundred feet behind. Has not one soldier looked in the rear view mirror? In what world can a little girl can walk into a supposedly guarded military installation -- through the front gate -- muck about in the middle of it (feed Cesar, give him water), never get noticed, and then escape back out? During the final battle, so the entire defense position is essentially rigged up with explosives? All it takes is one grenade to take everyone out? When the said explosion sets off an avalanche, why doesn't avalanche come immediately? They have time to pull up to the destroyed base, start to take prisoners, turn around and look at Cesar, and only THEN does the death-raining avalanche comes. How convenient.

I didn't have high hopes for this movie, but I did hope it knew what it was. To quote Walter Murch: "Film 'X' Would have been a nice little movie, perfectly suitable to its 'environment,' but in the middle of production someone got inflated idea about its possibilities, and, as a result, it became boring and pretentious. It was a chimpanzee film that someone tried to turn into a human-being film, and it came out being neither." That "someone" for this film can be no other than Joe Carnahan, who wrote, directed and produced this wreck. He is a competent technician and seems to be able to work with actors, but what he doesn't have a feel for is pacing and the higher language that makes film a unique art form.

Mundane exposition and chit-chats are shot in close-ups, life-altering decisions in mid-shots; landscape of Alaska is beautiful and has a presence with a wonderful sound design and art direction, but it's a fantasy world that tries to have realistic characters. The backstories are covered through uncreative flashbacks with poems and ambiguous phrases without enough for the audience to grab onto.

The big problem however is with the wolves, who are written to be both the metaphors for inner demons and the real-life predators. Joe doesn't seem to know when to employ which and therefore the wolves end up being overused. Without purpose, they blend into the background instead of developing into plausible threats that we can be afraid of psychologically or physically.

In the end, this could have been a great Robocop-type film with plot driving it forward while comic-book characters alluded to their human nature but who were never distracted from the action. But in addition to that, it tried to be The Tree of Life and The Exorcist and succeeding in nothing.

to say this movie is bad is an understatement. Guardian represents everything that's possible to be wrong with a movie, that's also its sole redeeming quality. The reason I gave this movie it's single star (aside from the fact that there is no option to put 0 stars) is because it has certain educational purpose. Robert Altman, when asked which movies influenced him the most, said: "the movies I hated the most," he'd see a film and think "I'll never make a movie like that." That's the case with Guardian. Watching it makes you understand how and why a movie can be bad (or oh-my-god-it-burns-my-eye bad in this instance). There is not single aspect I can start you off with, it's bad globally: every line is a cliché stolen from Buffy, Blade, or some other B vampire movie (and the ending is a word-for-word rip off from the first Blade -- I can't spoil the movie with this, it hits the bottom on the first line); the image is terrible, either they used magnifying glass for a lens or rented a wrong camcorder, because this is not shot on film with an HDCAM, not even on HDV or DVX from the looks of it; the cinematography is ...well, I don't think they thought about lighting; the set pieces and the makeup is admirably expensive for such a low budget, but the actors wearing the suits couldn't act their way out of a noose on the day of their sentence.

At first I actually thought I was watching a rerun of a Buffy episode, but then I realized that even Buffy wasn't that bad (and there weren't any commercials!). I watched further and I couldn't believe it was on a premium channel, on cable! But seeing this piece of s$@t make it this far, I now know that any film can find distribution...

Even though the aesthetics of film-making in Sexo con Amor remain vaguely familiar and borrowed -- there's the nice, clean 3-point lighting set ups for each of the scenes with a focus that's just a little soft to give the romantic feel of Barry Lyndon, shot-reverse-shot is a dominant structure of the scenes, the melodrama (although invented in cinema by D.W. Griffith, it's not really a style of Hollywood anymore, it's becoming a Spanish expressionism almost, with soap operas and Almodovar inevitably influencing rising directors more than anything else), and the adherence to story -- the cultural references are undoubtedly different and original than are those seen in the leading American films.

For one, the always-taboo subject of nudity is handled very crudely (but honestly), with almost every other scene including people getting into in-depth discussions while naked or half-naked. It defies the exploitive nature of American film nudity not only because of its overwhelming amount, but the way in which it's used. At one point Luisa's (Sigrid Alegría) breast falls out of her lingerie, as it probably would in real life, while she turns in bed, and not only has it survived the cut, but was probably intentional during the making.

In another scene where uncle and niece get it on together, incest is made seen as if it's almost unnatural to live without. Though to say more about that relationship, it's probably only used in reference to sex (and niece was probably put in there to be a plot device, the sole possibility for the lone man to get access to a woman). A moral compass for that particular relationship is not shown at all. In fact, it's mostly about an older man who copes with cheating on his wife, while there is no hint he's hesitant at doing it with someone like his niece.

Although I wrote above that it adheres to a strict storyline, the conclusion of the plot is not like in the American movies as well, it's open and suggests lack of character growth rather than concluding with a specific point of original intention. And it works, a good question is better than a good answer in this case. Sexo con Amor is a different type of animal, a film rich in Chilean culture and must be viewed without bias from Hollywood-like structures.

MI 3 is good at what it does, namely, selling tickets. We see flashy trailers, Tom Cruise, helpless pretty women, dramatic music, and it looks interesting, for a 30-second trailer. Now imagine that same trailer 126 minutes long and you'll get the essence of MI 3.

Every art medium needs a sound economic foundation to have the flexibility to explore and further itself, but when economic exploitation overbears every artistic limitation, it can no longer be called anything else but a product. And as such, it serves nothing but the selfish few who have conceived it for pure profit.

I've read that Tom Cruise had a trailer even before the production began, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. MI 3 follows advertising principles first, artistic merit second, if any such thing can be found. No matter what anyone says, generally speaking, Hollywood films like you to respond to them, they are not passive experiences. Unlike films with substance which push you to respond to that substance in your own way, Hollywood likes to observe these responses, and then, bunching them in chunks, to re-compile them in a way which will attract the largest possible audience. Choose your multiple choice response to a prerecorded question, its not difficult – in fact, it's designed for everyone to get it right in the first try. Go ahead children, get it right, so we can move on to the next question. Go, ahead. Oh wait, let's circle around that one again, someone might have missed it. And so on the film continues.

MI 3 is so mathematical in its calculation of human responses that one wonders if the producers have hired Ph D psychologists and mathematicians to calculate how many laughs or tears they will get at each turn of the story. Just need to balance them out right.

Whereas first MI had the same "whodunit" plot, it was intertwined deep within the narrative; MI 3 throws this straight into your face in the opening sequence, which isn't always a terribly bad thing. Such an open construction can work say in character studies like Citizen Kane or Carlito's Way because the narrative there is not as important as the exploration of the character. In the MI series, however, plot is the most entertaining piece of the film and revealing it prematurely (without a substantial payoff) is a mistake that will defeat the film on credentials of its own genre alone.

In the end, MI 3's only purpose is like that of a collection agency, only in theater you give up your money voluntarily. You are not a person to the producers (certainly not to the studio), you are a mass, without individual goals or interests, you are a target audience – so, go ahead, pay that 8-dollar ticket like some of the reviews will tell you, buy that pop corn, cut Tom Cruise another 70-million-dollar paycheck.

Think about the movies you vote for with your dollars. Ask for substance. Proclaim your needs as an individual. Stop being a statistic.

I own two copies of this film, one purchased in Russia (no subtitles), and one I've acquired recently to show it to my wife with subtitles. She wasn't very excited about Russian cinema, she isn't a film person and hates to read subtitles, but this time she gave in.

As many reviewers mentioned before, majority of the humor relies on the verbal misunderstandings between the characters from different time eras, that of 1500's and that of 1970's.

I've paused the film no less than a dozen times to explain such details as the meaning of world "liapota," it being the ancient word for the modern equivalent of "beauty," and to explain Visotskii's (a Russian singer whom Ivan the Terrible listens) lyrics. Also, there are many little social comments that those who haven't lived in, visited, or studied Soviet Union wouldn't understand completely i.e. the obvious ridicule of the "social reports" and the black market commentary.

Nevertheless, she liked it, and I was dumbfounded.

This film is popular and remembered because of its many layers. You may enjoy it simply as slapstick, someone else can view it for the language, while yet others can view it as a social commentary. It adds up if you know the Russian language and history, but even if you don't you will still find it funny and charming because there is always something to take away.