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Post by Phoenix on Dec 12, 2006 9:14:47 GMT -5
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Post by Heineken Skywalker on Dec 13, 2006 7:20:06 GMT -5
Funny, but MAD TV recently did a funnier sketch very similar to that with one of their cast members playing Gibson at a press conference, introducing his "recut" version of APOCALYPTO that incorporates his recent "problems" and is more sensitive to Jewish people.
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Post by Heineken Skywalker on Dec 27, 2006 12:58:37 GMT -5
Saw this last night and was pretty blown away by it.
Mel Gibson should stop drinking, keep his mouth shut, work out his inner demons and just make movies cause the guy is a bonafide great filmmaker. And this is coming from someone who wasn't the biggest fan of PASSION OF THE CHRIST.
SPOILERS!!
I was enthralled with the characters and story, and pretty much from the point the main character, Jaguar Paw's village gets raided, through the end, I was on the edge of my seat. The picture is beautiful to look at, from the locations to the sets to the costumes and makeup.
From the beginning of the film, we are knee deep in Mayan culture. A culture, that to the best of my knowledge and memory, we've never seen portrayed on film like this before. How they hunted, lived, entertained themselves, worshipped, and even their medical procedures, ie: ants are suitable for stitching a wound? Who knew??
The movie is graphic and violent, but I never thought it was gratuitous. I think it reflected their world, where you really could lose your life at any moment. The sacrificial scenes especially are gruesome and intense, but shouldn't they be? This is a warts and all R-rated film and it's all up on the screen. Some of the violence made me squirm, but it definitely adds to the experience and helps put you alongside the characters. In my opinion, it never got to the point like in THE PASSION, where I was thinking, "Okay, enough already.".
As for how original this is, that's not to say I haven't seen the main elements in this movie on screen before.
The first part is DANCES WITH WOLVES meets CONAN THE BARBARIAN. We spend some time learning about the people's culture, meet the main character, his father and his village and then the marauders come, destroy the village and many of it's inhabitants and take him away.
The second part is the Cecil B. DeMille section, where the film goes 'epic' in scope, with the Mayan temples being built by slaves and lots of graphic human sacrifice.
The third part is where Jaguar Paw goes all RAMBO on his pursuers. Using nature and his skills against his enemies.
And even though, as noted, there's not a lot that's new story-wise, it's in the presentation that Mel won me over. It all seems familiar, but brand new at the same time. Once Jaguar escapes, the movie is non-stop action and I was never bored. It's an unnexpected action-adventure movie and not at all the "history lesson" type of flick I was expecting.
Considering no one speaks English, the characters are well defined and believable with the exception of maybe one of the main "villains" being kind of a sneering, mustache twirling bad guy (The one who keeps calling Jaguar, "Almost").
There was also one head scratching line of dialogue, when one character says about another character, "He's fucked." Why not say something that would've been more believable to the time, like, "He's finished."? The line is funny, but completely takes you out of that time and place. Weird choice, but it definitely didn't ruin the film for me.
I have to say, the ending of the film was unnexpected as well. It's an ending as well as a new beginning for everyone involved. According to what I've read, that's the very definition of APOCALYPTO. The ending of something and a rebirth or new beginning, which is pretty much the theme running throughout.
Some character's station in life is forever changed. Some, who know they will probably die soon, look forward to the afterlife, and by the end of the film, we see that an entire civilization and way of life is about to end.
Kudos to Mel Gibson. He's made an introspective, thought provoking and action-filled film. Now, shut up and make another one.
9/10
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Post by Phoenix on Dec 28, 2006 10:24:21 GMT -5
This is where I disagree.  For me, the violence was gratuitous enough to ruin the film altogether for me. While I appreciated the character depth and insight into the Mayan culture the violence reached the point of being ridiculous for me. It felt Tarantino-esque (think Kill Bill where the blood spurts out of people's heads) which is just out of place in such a serious film. I felt manipulated and bored by it, like Mel was trying a bit too hard to make it nasty just to gross people out or to make it "edgy." Just not for me, I didn't buy it. I was reading the IMDB trivia (I do this for most movies I see) and saw this one: The Murals in the tunnel are nearly exact replicas of ones dating from 100 BCE - 1,700 years before the movie is supposedly set. The only difference is that the real murals don't show people brandishing bleeding, severed heads. LOL. ;D |
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