This town is really getting swept up in Oscar Fever. And by this town I mean Wailea, Maui. I’m on vacation. But in anticipation of the big show here’s something I needed to get off my chest.
Ang Lee certainly deserves his directing nomination for BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. But I still have to scratch my head. This is the same guy who directed THE HULK people! To refresh your memory, here was my review of that film when it came out.
*****
I made the mistake of seeing THE HULK today. Is it possible that the same guy who directed CROUCHING TIGER and ICE STORM made this steaming pile?? Maybe the worst movie since FREDDY GOT FINGERED. No, it WAS worse. An absolute career ender for all involved.
Jennifer Connelly should give back her Oscar (well, she should anyway).
Nick Nolte was so over-the-top that Bruce Dern in his most crazed "can we kill her now, daddy, can we, can we?" phase was reserved. And he looked better in his mug shot.
Sam Elliott remains the worst American actor since Neil Diamond.
And as for the Hulk itself, I never thought I'd say it but I missed Lou Ferrigno.
The artsy-fartsy scene transitions made the movie look like a Bar Mitzvah video. And it was so relentlessly disjointed, derivative, and stupid that by the end the audience was turning green.
And dialogue? Not to "spoil" anything, but after a twenty minute sequence of the Hulk bouncing from the Grand Canyon to San Francisco pursued by strafing F-16's and helicopters, then a chase sequence through downtown SF resulting in major havoc and a thousand army vehicles -- he finally reverts back to his human self when he reunites with Jennifer Connelly and says with childlike wonder "You found me." Yeah. Amazing. Thank God she had ON STAR.
His mother has a death scene by the way,that Lillian Gish would find too mawkish.
From Stan Lee to Ang Lee this was an unmitigated disaster. I should've seen KELLY & JUSTIN instead.
******
Guess I was wrong about the “career ending” prediction, huh?
Aloha.
8 comments :
Can't get 'em all right. You forget Sam Elliot's best performance. Roadhouse - great pizza and 12 beer movie. :)
cheers
Dave
I'm trying to remember, has Jennifer Connelly done anything good since The Hulk was released?
Hey--Is poi gooey? Love Hawaii. Is Dan Cooks "Cooks Hawaii" still on local TV there. He is top talent.
I think your "steaming pile" of ___ has turned into my everyday speaks. Steaming pile of x-wives, steaming pile of local radio stations.... you know. Blah, Blah, BLAH
Can you pick easier word verifications? gwljhdwd sucks.
Oh, you people. It's all the same movie.
Ang Lee always makes movies about passion breaking through the structure of a repressed society. Sometimes it's swinging. Sometimes it's big green monsters. Sometimes it's swordplay. Sometimes it's cowboy sex. Ice Storm. Crouching Tiger. Hulk. Bareback Mountain. All the same theme, same movie.
But, you know, sometimes they're good, and sometimes they're The Hulk.
(And incidentally, Jennifer Connolley has the same role in A Beautiful Mind as she did in The Hulk.)
The final nail for me in the coffin that was The Hulk was when he fought a poodle.
Btw, here's a quote from the greatest TV show of all time for you guys: "Please pass the poi, please. Please pass the poi."
Ang Lee truly has an impressive and varied resume, unblemished save for the gross miscalculation that was "Hulk".
Still, while that movie was bad (though I confess to not hating it as much as you), at least Ang Lee was TRYING. Yes, it was alternatively pretentious and trite, plodding and overblown.
But I'll take Ang Lee's pretentions any day over soulless crap like "Fantastic Four."
"Sam Elliott remains the worst American actor since Neil
> Diamond."...here's my perspective:
>
> The worst American actor today: Ben Affleck, who inherited the award
> from James Brolin, who inherited the award from Charlton Heston, who
> inherited the award from Victor Mature, who inherited the award from
> Dana Andrews, etc.etc.etc. xoxo Alexis =
Say what you will about Hulk, but personally, I found it to be a great cross-cultural experience. Let me explain.
Ever heard the old saw that black people go to a movie and talk to the screen? It's false- Bad movies make everyone talk to the screen. I saw Hulk at a second-run Cinemark theatre at the end of summer '03. The audience was black, white, whatever- what we all had in common is that we didn't want to pay much to see a movie, much less a crappy one. Halfway through, we all basically turned on the film. We were talking and laughing at the screen so hard, I have never quite had a movie experience like it.
If Universal was smart, they would have made it a Rocky Horror experience and had the thing run for years. Though the green body paint would have been messy.
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