Films featuring
Orlando Bloom

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

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★★★★★[/types]]

Before the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the practice of shooting two sequels in quick succession had a short and unspectacular history. In the eighties, they tried with the Back to the Future movies and, while those sequels had some charms, they were pale imitations of the original. These efforts, however, were masterpieces compared to the Wachowski brothers’ follow-ups to The Matrix, which managed to completely suck all of our good will for the original into that blank space behind Keanu Reeves’ eyes.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

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★★★★★[/types]]

In Hollywood, success comes with its own peculiar brand of curses, most notably the expectation that one will follow that success with a sequel that will match, if not vastly exceed, the creative and commercial accomplishments of the original. Since any successful film is a matter of artistic and technical alchemy outside the control and understanding of us mere mortals, it’s little surprise that most sequels end up being pale, stunted, mutated offspring of the first movie. Continue reading →

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

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★★★★★[/types]]

Back when I was a lad, “Pirates of the Caribbean” was about the only cool ride left at Disneyland when the E tickets were all gone or the line for Space Mountain stretched to some time next Tuesday. It was either “Pirates,” “Small World” or head for parking lot. If you had suggested back then that the ride would be made into movie and that movie would not only not be rated G, but the lead actor would also pattern his character after a member of the Rolling Stones, Walt himself probably would have risen from the grave to personally throw your hippie ass out of the park.

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Black Hawk Down

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★★★★★[/types]]

You have the power to kill but not negotiate. In Somalia, killing is negotiation.

Ridley Scott’s fact-based epic is probably the most patriotic anti-war movie ever made. It successfully honors the men and their mission, while simultaneously acknowledging the politics that ultimately made their sacrifices rather futile in the end. It may be the first modern war movie about a truly modern war and watching it now, I realize that the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have either not seen this movie or have at least never internalized the lessons from the events depicted. The prior tenant may have learned the wrong lesson from the Battle of Mogadishu, but at least he was paying some attention.

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Kingdom of Heaven: The Director’s Cut

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★★★★★[/types]]

When you stand before God, you cannot say, “But I was told by others to do thus,” or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice.

When I reviewed the theatrical cut of Ridley Scott’s Crusade-era epic Kingdom of Heaven, I made note that the film was long on spectacle and short on story and compelling characters. I was not in the minority in that opinion either. Fox, in order to bring the film down to a more commercial running time, pressured director Ridley Scott to cut it, emasculating the story in the process.

At the time, there was already work being done on this director’s cut, and I hoped that this version would restore the depth and substance that the theatrical version lacked. I am now pleased to report that this is exactly the case. This new, 196-minute version restores a number of scenes, sub-plots and entire characters that answer my objections and give this film a level of resonance worthy of the images on screen.

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Elizabethtown

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★★★★★[/types]]

Let me say this up front. When I die, I’m going to have my relatives watch this film before planning my funeral. Whether I mean it to serve as a guide or warning, I haven’t decided, but rest assured, there will be no Lynard Skynard songs.

Elizabathtown proves that Cameron Crowe can make a good movie in his sleep. This is far from his best work but even though he’s coasting here, he still delivers a movie that’s equal parts funny, charming and sweet. Maybe not in the same quantities as a film like Almost Famous but second-rate Cameron Crowe is more watchable than a lot of people’s first-rate work.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

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★★★★★[/types]]

There’s little to say about Return of the King that I haven’t already said about the first two installments in Peter Jackson’s trilogy of Lord of the Rings movies. To my mind, it inherits the same virtues of the previous two movies while bringing the cycle to an epic and satisfying conclusion.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

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★★★★★[/types]]

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The middle entry in a trilogy often has the hardest job, picking up where the first story left off and leaving enough for the final part to build on. In other words, it has to hit the ground running, assuming you remember what you saw a year ago and then leave you hanging two or three hours later. I don’t count faux trilogies like the Indiana Jones movies, which are only called a “trilogy” because there just happened to be three movies. There was, however, no common narrative thread tying the films together, like there is for Lord of the Rings.

Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers successfully avoids the “middle movie” trap. Continue reading →

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

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★★★★★[/types]]

The first film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy had a tall order to fill. It had to establish the complex fantasy universe of Middle Earth and the peoples who inhabit it, while putting the story of the Ring into motion and accomplish this in the amount of time you could reasonably expect an audience to sit still for a movie. It probably would have been no problem to make a ten-hour film out of the first book alone.

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Kingdom of Heaven

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★★★★★[/types]]

When I first saw the previews of Kingdom of Heaven, having not heard of the film before that, my first reaction was, “Wow, somebody’s seen Gladiator a few too many times.” Much about the scenes in the trailer seemed like a conscious attempt to ape Ridley Scott‘s sword-and-sandals epic. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the trailer that I realized this was also a Ridley Scott film.

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