DVD Diggers #34 - August 25th, 2005

I bet you thought I had forgotten about this, didn’t you? Heck, some of you may even have forgotten about old DVD Diggers, the little editorial that could. However I didn’t forget. Ideas for the column have constantly been in the back of my mind, fighting for a place on a page at some point.

Part of the problem I’ve had with this column is that silly podcast thing I’ve been doing. See, this column was set up as an editorial, especially once we took each week’s releases and placed them somewhere else (see: DVD Blend). That left this column wide open for me to talk about just about anything I wanted to, but I was already doing that with the podcast. The Weekly Blend Audio Show gave, and still gives, me a voice to talk about just about anything in the world of entertainment and movies, and I can speak it in less than ten minutes instead of trying to figure out what I want to write down. But I still didn’t want to give DVD Diggers completely up. So here’s the solution:

I’ve changed the format of DVD Blend slightly. I’ll use it to go a little more in depth about a subject, some subject I don’t want to take up precious podcast time for. It might be something spawned by a specific movie, or just something going on in my life. Once I’ve said my fill on whatever subject I feel like tackling, I’ll bring it back to DVDs. I think this’ll work... I mean it kind of has to. I don’t get enough e-mail to cleverly put in a mailbag section.

Glad(iator) I Didn’t Buy It The First Time

This week’s topic happens to be overrated films, something that’s been an interesting conversation on the CinemaBlend forums lately. My big pick for one of the most overrated films of all time is Gladiator, which is timely since the film sees an extended edition release this week.

Gladiator is a well known film, which it should be since it took home Academy Awards for Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, and Best Visual Effects and was nominated for seven other Oscars including Best Supporting Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Director (Ridley Scott), and Best Original Score (Hans Zimmer). Of all of those awards, the only one I can say it deserved with 100% certainty is one it didn’t win. Gladiator does have one of the best movie soundtracks of all times. I love the movie’s central theme music, and several other pieces are often used for trailers. It is a great score and a great injustice that the film lost that specific award. However, Gladiator is still an overrated film undeserving of most of the other awards it won, with the possible exception of the technical stuff, which is often a difficult topic to select unless you know what work was done in that area. Let’s be honest, the best visual effects are transparent, leaving you to wonder how something was done or unaware that any effect was used. But Best Picture? Best Actor?

Gladiator is a heavily flawed film in its composition. While the initial battle between the Romans and the Goths is an amazing moment of cinema, with the perfect combination of music, cinematography, and visual effects. Unfortunately the movie rapidly falls flat after that. Not even the music can save the film as we watch Joaquin Phoenix wax poetic sorrow about his father’s neglect and his desire for his sister, in fact the music (which I still dearly love) has a tendency to overwhelm the movie during the more dramatic scenes. Phoenix’s character is so one-dimensional, and played obviously as such, that I wonder what kind of vision the Academy had by nominating Phoenix for an award. The performance brought about by him is so poor that I lost all interest in Phoenix for quite a while, wondering if I hated the way his character was presented or Phoenix as an actor. Fortunately Signs proved to me that Joaquin was not to blame for his poor standing in Gladiator, and that maybe he did deserve his nomination after all for having to survive what could have been career suicide. For the same reason, I wonder if Richard Harris shouldn’t also have received a nomination, although his character dies early enough in the movie that his career wasn’t in as much danger as Phoenix’s.

What bothers me most about Gladiator is the cinematography, direction, and editing, where I feel Ridley Scott strongly showed the beginning of his demise as a director (which unfortunately has continued with each subsequent film Scott has put out). Dramatic scenes are assembled and composed so over the top it’s amazing the audience didn’t respond with laughter. Action sequences are lazily filmed at slower speeds, speeding up the action on screen and adding a grainy artifacted visual element to the sequences. Maybe this was done to help mask digital tigers, but the end result removes me as an audience member from the action, rather than enthralling me as it should.

Finally the name itself bothers me. “Gladiator” is quite possibly the most misleading title for a movie since The Never-ending Story (enter rim shot here). Yes, it sounds like a nitpick, but think about it. The movie is about a fallen Roman general seeking revenge for the death of his family. Does he become a gladiator? Yes, but that’s not what the movie is about. In fact, such a considerably small amount of the movie is actually about gladiators that the title really does set false expectations. It sounds silly, but I know what I heard from friends, family, and even strangers who found out I was a film fan the year it came out: “Hey, have you seen that Gladiator movie? What the hell was up with that? I was expecting some gladiator action and instead I got near-Shakespeare drama”.

These criticisms aside, I don’t absolutely hate Gladiator. There are some elements of the film I do like. As I noted before, the music for one thing. I also really love the idea of the theme that “what we do echoes for eternity”. The movie makes me want to gather up my guy-friends and head into some sports event tapping hands and murmuring, “Strength and Honor”. And, criticism of Phoenix aside, Russell Crowe is actually quite good in the sympathetic role of Maximus. He brings a sincerity and honesty to the character that is needed to make the movie work on any level, and while I’m not certain he’s better than Ed Harris or Geoffrey Rush (both of whom Crowe beat out for the Best Actor award that year) I’d say his statue was well earned.

I’ve said for a long time that I don’t hate Gladiator, I just don’t think it’s a great movie. I think it passes merely as being a “good” movie with some issues. It’s the type of film I’ll sit down and watch if it’s on HBO or a friend has the DVD, but would never really purchase for my collection. For my money, the Best Picture award that year would have gone to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which many others around here would tell you tops their list of overrated movies. However, history stands with Gladiator as the winner, but remember “what we do echoes for eternity”. Remember that as Ridley Scott puts out masterpieces like Matchstick Men, Kingdom of Heaven and the upcoming Domino, all so far “good films”, but not great ones.

A Few More Overrated Films Available on DVD

Annie Hall Actually, Annie Hall isn’t that overrated, but it earns its place here for one of the same crimes as Gladiator - winning an Oscar it shouldn’t have. Even die hard Woody Allen fans are hard pressed to explain Annie Hall’s 1978 victory over Star Wars for Best Picture. Revenge is sweet though. Look at the franchise Darth Vader & company started. Meanwhile, when was the last time you saw a Diane Keaton action figure? I’m not the biggest Allen fan, but I think he’s made other pictures with a lot more depth and comedy to them than Hall which may have been a good picture for its time, but doesn’t seem to connect to audiences as we leave its era behind.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining Before everyone gets all hateful towards me, I’m a fan of Kubrick’s work. Heck, I even liked some of Eyes Wide Shut for more than just the nakedness. It may be iconic to a fault (how many parodies of “Here’s Johnny!” have we seen now?), however his adaptation (and I use that word loosely) of Stephen King’s novel is a travesty. While Kubrick offers an interesting story, it leaves the concepts and ideas of King’s thriller far behind. Kubrick would have been better off to name his film something else (just calling it Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining doesn’t quite cut it) and just suffer it having a few similarities to King’s story. For a more faithful version of the book check out the TV miniseries with Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay which has the added bonus of no Shelly Duvall.

Titanic The movie that’s still the highest grossing film of all time in the United States is now one of the most overrated films. Yes, I admit, I bought into the hype of the movie and saw it no less than three (three!) times in theaters. I thought it was a great love story filled with wonderful special effects about one of the worst incidents at sea to date. Well, now all you Titanic naysayers get the last laugh. Leonardo DiCaprio has since proven that he’s a way better actor than what he was allowed to do here, and the special effects have aged badly. The film’s not even ten years old yet, and the effects look extremely poor already. The long overdue Special Edition (pictured here) hits shelves in late October, just in time for fans to stop giving a damn.

Napoleon Dynamite Will somebody explain what is so funny about this movie? I watched it and I don’t get it. It’s a stupid little movie about stupid little characters with no real plot and nothing really of interest, and yet it still has sophomoric minds captivated. Actually, that’s not fair, even the intellectually elite find interest in the sheer stupidity of the movie, just ask this year’s National Spelling Bee contestants. Sadly while lots of people find the movie funny, nobody has yet been able to explain why to me. I just find people grinning goofily and chuckling as they remember their favorite lines and tell me “It just is funny... that’s why?”. One hundred years of movies and I’m supposed to settle for “It’s funny because it just is?” That’s fine, keep laughing. Twenty years from now I won’t have to explain to my kids why I have a “Vote for Pedro” T-Shirt in my closet hidden with evidence of the resurgence of bell-bottoms and other ‘70’s styles.

about how I'm wrong and all of these movies actually rule!