2005 in film: a little end-of-year stuff

A few odds and ends written by me — some ended up in New Times papers, some didn’t. All have been slightly rewritten now that a few more year-end films have been seen.

Muscling in: Wrestlers set their sites on Hollywood

In September, UPN insisted that World Wrestling Entertainment remove the controversial Arab-American character Muhammed Hassan from its Smackdown broadcasts. One might have expected Hassan, in real life an Italian-American named Mark Copani, to resurface on USA network’s Raw, or even another wrestling promotion. Instead, Copani quit the business altogether to pursue movie stardom.

Blame The Rock. For years, wrestlers avoided the big screen for fear of being mocked like Hulk Hogan in Mr. Nanny. But then the “People’s Champ” had to actually go and get himself some good reviews, and now every ring giant is following suit. Bill Goldberg, whose wrestling persona was based on not talking much, appeared prominently in three films this year — as a convict with a big schlong in The Longest Yard, an evil Father Christmas in Santa’s Slay (an idea arguably lifted from the film-within-a-film Christmas Slay in Ernest Saves Christmas), and himself in Tom Arnold’s The Kid and I. Also in The Longest Yard: Kevin Nash playing it effeminate, and Stone Cold Steve Austin, smartly tweaking his redneck-bully image.

The Rock made the best of bad projects in Be Cool and Doom, but his upcoming role in Richard Kelly’s quirky Southland Tales should erase those memories. Ironically, he was outperformed in ’05 by another self-proclaimed people’s champion, Diamond Dallas Page, whose turn as a bounty hunter in The Devil’s Rejects was equal to costar Danny Trejo’s.

In the pipeline: Eminem-wannabe-on-steroids John Cena recently wrapped the lead role in The Marine, horror-movie-inspired Kane actually gets his own horror movie called See No Evil, and Steve Austin stars in The Condemned. Copani, so far, remains unemployed.

Enough Already: When good actors make bad movies.

It’s all too easy to slam people like Cedric the Alleged Entertainer for making dumb films, as we scarcely expect better from him. But how long can we keep praising promising actors who consistently run on autopilot in mediocre crap, even though we’ve seen that they’re capable of so much more?

Exhibit A: Dakota Fanning. She wowed the world by holding the screen opposite a showboating Sean Penn in I Am Sam, and showed a natural intelligence opposite Denzel Washington in Man on Fire. Producers seem to consider her for every little girl role that comes along, and critics have been effusive in their praise. But then there’s The Cat in the Hat, and this year, the Robert De Niro stinker Hide and Seek and the godawful Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story. Sure, she was fine in War of the Worlds, but all she had to do was scream and cry. Look, she may only be 11, but if people are going to constantly praise her for “intelligence,” she needs to be making more intelligent movie choices.

Exhibit B: Jamie Bell. The star of Billy Elliot made interesting choices this year, but they were mostly interestingly bad (King Kong was not seen at press time; I’ve seen it since, and his character is a total waste in it). Exactly what the hell was he doing as a would-be 19th-century dandy with a gun fetish in Dear Wendy? And what exactly was the point of The Chumscrubber? What both films had in common was that they were made by foreign directors who don’t seem to understand America at all. Maybe Bell doesn’t either, but he was on the right track with last year’s Undertow, and needs to get back on it.

Exhibit C: Peter Sarsgaard. The intensely focused eyes that look like they might cry any second. The mildly effeminate, laid-back delivery with which he utters all his lines. It was all quite novel for a while, but now it isn’t. This year’s turn towards hammy villain roles in The Skeleton Key and Flightplan went way wrong; when Sarsgaard tries to play over-the-top, he just seems dead inside. Ditto, to a slightly lesser extent, his troubled marine character in Jarhead. Playing gay wasn’t a bad idea; unfortunately, the project he chose to do that in was The Dying Gaul, a misguided play-turned-movie that tried to get viewers excited with tense scenes of…people typing on computers!

These were by no means the only offenders in 2005 — practically the entire cast of Be Cool should have known better too (save Cedric, of course, who was lucky to be there). But they somehow still manage to get critical passes, and there comes a time to just say no. They’ll never learn otherwise.

2005’s ten “best” moments of cinematic depravity [WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MOST OF 2005'S BEST HORROR/PSYCHO FLICKS, including OLDBOY, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, and SYRIANA]

spoiler space….

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10. Snakes alive! Both Down to the Bone and The Last Eve feature scenes of snakes actually killing mice — the former by constriction, the latter by wholesale swallowing. The humane society signed off on neither.

9. Finger paining. For all the elaborate death-traps in Saw II, the most intense scene of the film occurs when the cop played by Mark Walhlberg decides to break the Jigsaw Killer’s fingers. Tobin Bell’s acting sells the pain better than any contraption.

8. Head on a Stick. Not literally what it sounds like, but rather, a spine snapping move performed by Wolf Creek’s evil outbacker, as he mocks Crocodile Dundee’s famous line with what is indisputably a knife.

7. Payback for Batman and Robin? George Clooney’s separation from his fingernails in Syriana was seriously wince-inducing. Falling to the ground later in the scene, he really injured his back.

6. Call shotgun! We’re used to seeing shotgun blasts in movies, but seldom with as much visceral splatter as the one that induces Ed Harris’ demise in A History of Violence.

5. Everything Zen? I don’t think so! Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale played a demon in Constantine, and ended up getting his face melted. Everyone who listened to music in the mid-90s rejoiced.

4. Hammer time. Oldboy not only showed how to take on a corridor full of thugs armed only with a hammer — it also demonstrated how one could painfully yank out teeth with same.

3. Fetus dumplings. The credits haven’t finished rolling on the Japanese horror anthology Three…Extremes before we see, in graphic detail, what the “secret ingredient” of Bai Ling’s special recipe is.

2. “I take his weapons. Both of them.” What do you do when confronted with a mutated, neon-yellow-skinned rapist? If you’re Bruce Willis in Sin City, you take his knife away, then rip his nuts off with your bare hands.

1. “I want to eat something alive.” It’s telling that in Oldboy, a movie which centers around a plot to trick a man into committing incest, and also involves tongue slicing and amateur dentistry, the most memorably disturbing scene was one of the simplest — hero Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), freed from years of captivity, enters a sushi bar and scarfs down a live wriggling octopus. Four cephalopods gave their lives for this scene, and live octopus tentacles briefly became a dining fad in Hollywood.

I’m still waiting to get mine.