The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a follow up to Brendan Fraser’s 1999 remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff classic and his subsequent 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns. Again Fraser is Rick O'Connell, now a retired gentleman in post war Oxfordshire sharing his country estate with his wife Evelyn (no longer Rachel Weitz but now Maria Bello who uses her excess leisure time to oversell a British accent). The secret service comes calling on the bored adventurers to entrust them with one final sortie – repatriate a precious artefact to China. While in Shanghai they drop into the nightclub of Evelyn’s shady, entrepreneurial buffoon brother John (reprised again by Jonathan Carnahan). They’re shocked to find their twentysomething son Alex (now Luke Ford) truant from school to lead an archaeological dig which has unearthed a terra cotta army. This turns out to be the cursed remains of the 2000 year old megalomaniac Emperor Han played by Jet Li (who PROMISED he wasn’t going to make any more action films). The package that Rick and Evelyn were tricked into returning is the key to bringing the Emperor back to life and giving him immortality. To avoid this the plot twists get cumbersome and involve Shangri-La, abominable snowmen, Lin (newcomer Isabella Leong), a beautiful and immortal ninja along with the witch Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) Lin’s equally ancient and equally hot mother (yes of course we see mommy take on the Mummy!) This franchise is getting gauze thin with characters that are actually bandage free but with a band-aid adhered plot. Examples of creative anaemia abound but perhaps most pointedly when Lin cheats death by saying “he missed!’ she could be speaking for the whole film.
Swing Vote solidifies Kevin Kostner as the new go-to-guy for the personification of rumpled. Here he’s known as Bud to everyone including his child. He’s a middle aged slacker and single father to Molly (the endearing Madeline Carroll who has an impressive resume for a 12 year old) in an arid small town with the unlikely name of Texaco New Mexico. The pre teen Molly is the Hollywood cliché child effectively raising the parent but her shenanigans in a razor close Presidential race leaves Bud as the only elector uncounted after a nation wide tie vote. The election slate is refreshingly dufus free - but not so with the lone remaining franchisee. In the few days before casting the winning ballot he’s caught up in a media feeding frenzy while being courted by a comedicly statesmanlike Kelsey Grammar typecast as the Republican President and his Democratic opponent played by Dennis Hopper. Each candidate has a handler who will stop at nothing to assure victory which leaves them pandering to nuances in remarks uttered by Bud as he’s lead on by the manipulative media to the point where each party leader is posturing contrary to his cherished ideals. Swing Vote has a great soundtrack that makes you feel the bumps and smell the dust of a border town back road. It’s an often smartly satirical condemnation of apathy and the US electoral system however it glosses over the fact that the leader of the free world is elected as the result of a deception making it ironic that the end result is an acceptance of what outrageously flawed the real election of 2002.
A Secret is a drama told in flashbacks and starts in the 1950’s post war Paris where 9 year old Francois, the son of a champion swimmer mom and gymnast father, feels the disenchantment in his father’s heart at the boy’s physical limitations. Francois invents an imaginary older brother with all the attributes that he lacks. His hero increasingly becomes a real presence in his life which is uneasily tolerated by his mother but mysteriously infuriates his father. Six years later he discovers that his vivid creation isn’t all a dream and that there is a dark unspoken part of the families past. With the holocaust as a backdrop there was a heated and illicit period in his parent life that caused traumatic results.Based on a truth inspired novel this story is told in a stylish reversal where the flashbacks are filmed in bright colour while the present appears in shades of grey. Interesting cinematography and fine performances have already made A Secret an award winning movie.
Also out this weekend:
The World According to Monsanto
The Last Continent