The TV Addict 

David Duchovny, THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
If you like actors infusing the characters they play with comatose like indifference, then David Duchovny in the recent X-FILES film may just be your thing. Seriously, look up “phoning it in” or “doing it for the money” or “doing it for online porn fees” (too soon?) in the Film Encyclopedia and you’ll see a picture of Duchovny in this film. He gave us a hollow, emotionless, humorless, soulless Mulder. In other words, not Mulder at all.

John Hannah, THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
You know how some actors’ performances just steal whatever scene they are in? Well, sometimes there are performances that make you wish somebody would steal them right out of the movie. John Hannah in THE MUMMY 3 was one a case of that. Admittedly, in many ways this was more the fault of the writers writing the character, mainly because they turned an already barely tolerable goofball into an ingratiating, useless, painful punch line. Nevertheless, John Hannah could have passed on the role, and he didn’t, so he’s at least somewhat culpable. I mean really, who volunteers (well, volunteers to get paid) to have fake Yak vomit thrown all over them? Besides Laurence Olivier, no one.

Mark Wahlberg, THE HAPPENING
I like Wahlberg, but in THE HAPPENING it just seemed like he never connected with the material or the character, both because of his own initiative and some pretty poor directing on M. Night Shyamalan’s part. You know you’re in trouble when someone’s performance actually manages to be more wooden and awkward than (SPOILER) than its killer tree concept.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many things direly wrong with last weekend’s horrible THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPREROR was the fact that it was yet another example of Hollywood’s inept mishandling of Asian movie stars. Watching Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh trod their way through the film just kept on breaking my heart, because they can do so much better, and - more importantly - deserve so much better.

Instead they, and many other successful Asian action stars (Jackie Chan, especially) are usually reduced to being embarrassing sidekicks (either to other characters, the narrative, or to special effects) or their martial art skills are exploited for the exotic novelty their five minutes of on-screen fighting present to North American audiences (”Oh, look, how neat. It’s martial arts!”).

Read the rest of this entry »