To begin with I like going to the movies with my friends it's fun to hang out, we go to movies, we discuss, we talk about other stuff, it's a grand old time. The only down side to this is if you happen to be going into a bad movie which means the two hours of the time spent in the theatre when you're not talking to your friends are waisted. This happened to me tonight, but like a bad dream this happened twice. The three of us were ambitious tonight, we decided to have a double feature of new films that came out today: "Feast of Love" and "The Kingdom", and for me the highlight of the evening was the coffee we had in between shows. Here's a more in depth look at these two films.
Feast of Love: "Feast of Love" begins with a narration, it is not surprising that the narration is provided by Morgan Freeman who has become an expert on the art form. Freeman plays an old professor named Harry who seems to have nothing better to do with his time than hanging around at his coffee shop which is owned by his friend Bradley (Greg Kinnear). Bradley has troubles with relationships, when we first meet him he's married to Kathryn ( Selma Blair), Kathryn is playing baseball and is slapped on the butt by a female on the opposing team, the same woman sees Kathryn in a bar with Bradley and Harry and decides to flirt with her right in front of them. Bradley is blinded by love but Harry sees what's going on and knows better.
Kathryn decides (very quickly) she's a lesbian and for some reason decides to leave Bradley rather angrily...and that's the last we see of Selma Blair. No one seems to give Bradley a break even his sister for some reason is mean to him by not giving back his dog, "what kind of sister does that" you ask? I don't know I'm sure the actress playing her didn't know it was just in the script. But Bradley is a romantic and gets back on the horse falling for another woman (Radha Mitchell) who is carrying on an affair with a married man.
Meanwhile another story occurs between the young employees of Bradley's coffee shop they are Chloe and Oscar. They are a young couple deeply in love with each other, but Oscar has a very mean father (Fred Ward who is completely waisted) who makes their lives a living hell, on top of that Chloe has a very accurate psychic who gives her some bad news.
Meanwhile Harry and his wife (The wonderful Jane Alexander also waisted) are grieving over the death of their son all the while having to deal with the troubles of these younger dumber people.
I can't abide idiocy in films, and this may be the most idiotic movie I've seen all year. The characters make no lick of sense at all, I didn't get their motivations, I didn't get their problems, I didn't get their world. Worst of all it was just awful seeing all these talented people try to make sense in all this mess. Freeman here seems to struggle the most with the lines he must say. One of the most baffling scenes in the film is when Chloe asks Harry's advice about doing a porno movie for extra money, I thought I saw Freeman strain to understand what he was saying in the next scene when Harry tries to explain Chloe's predicament to his wife.
Kinnear came off the best for me, as Bradley he at least looked like he was trying to make what Bradley did look logical.
I suppose the film was trying to be some kind of existential parable about love and how we are not in control of our own destinies, but it fails miserably. Robert Benton who has made some great movies about flawed human beings before ("Kramer Vs. Kramer" "Nobody's Fool") seems to be lacking a good script. These people seemed to belong to some other dimension where psychics are 100% right, turning into a lesbian makes you mean, and Selma Blair leaves after 5 minutes.
The Kingdom: "The Kingdom" is about a crack FBI forensics team that come to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack that killed many civilians including two of the team's colleagues. If you strip away all the important glossy camera movement and realistic violence what you get is an episode of "C.S.I. Saudi Arabia". The team is made up of Jaimie Fox playing the heroic team leader, Chris Cooper as the world weary veteran, Jennifer Garner as the no-nonsense doctor, and Jason Bateman as the wise-cracking guy who does something with computers (At least I think that's his job). I could tell you these character's real names but you've seen all stereotypes before in other mindless films it wouldn't really matter.
The team comes to Saudi Arabia and is assisted by a local policeman (Ashraf Barhom) who at first gives the team a hard time, but after a bit of bonding between him and Foxx, they are all on the same page.
I guess the biggest disappointment about this movie was missing the opportunity of being something more important than it was, but instead of creating real characters with real conflicts it's reduced to a mystery action yarn. I won't go on talking about what it isn't though. What it is is a sometimes loud, sometimes lazy action movie. I think this might have played better on t.v. as some kind of two hour pilot episode of a really exciting F.B.I. show, that way at least you could tune in next week and maybe get to know the characters a bit more. Cooper, Garner, and Bateman are pretty much wasted and are given superficial personalities that bring no color to the film. I guess what makes Foxx different is we know he has a family so he has something to live for. Barhom's character is also seen as family man fighting the evils of the world and there is a slight bonding moment between him and Foxx that in its most simple way shows their similarities.
The violence is put up a notch which kinda worked against the film. Most of the images become heavy handed as if we were watching CNN or Fox News exploiting the image rather than putting a human face on it.
One thing the film has going for it is it moves fast, there is always something that catches the eye and when director Peter Berg wants to he can create an exciting action sequence. But I was mostly bored through this movie, the story has been done better with more complexity before in films like "Syrianna" and "Munich".
I can see where movies like these fit today, much like John Wayne did with his mindless World War 2 movies, films like "The Kingdom" are meant to show off the heroes, too bad they just aren't that interesting.
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