The Terminal (2004)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. One of those movies I saw during a summer in Fort Worth where I saw everything, mainly because what else does one do in Fort Worth*.

Did I Like It: I seem to remember in my recent review of 1941 (1979) that I wonder what Spielberg’s career might have become if he his first comedy had been either funny or a hit. It took him the better part of twenty years to come back around to it, but he found the right combination to try again. Sure, one might argue that Always (1989) and Catch Me If You Can (2002)** are comedies, but neither is played largely for laughs.

Harnessing the pure charm which made Frank Capra’s films work, Spielberg finds the right tone. And by that pure charm, I mean having Jimmy Stewart in the film is that right combination. Given that Stewart died in 1997, putting Tom Hanks to work got the same effect done.

That all sounds like I might be denigrating the movie with some faint praise, but Spielberg utilizes some real craft to make such a gentle film feel like it is effortless. Coordinating the large set—what? airports weren’t wild about film companies shooting in their international terminals a couple years after 9/11?—to make it always seem interesting and almost never forces me to focus on just how much a multi-story Borders Bookstore ages the whole thing is something more people should be analyzing to death.

*This doesn’t even try to cover all the other summers where I committed to see anything and everything that came out. Maybe there just isn’t anything to do in Texas or Oklahoma.

**Looking over the filmography Spielberg made both Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Minority Report (2002) in the same year as each of those examples. The man may not be human.

Ocean's Twelve (2004)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. There was probably a minute there right after W. won re-election that this was the big thing I was looking forward to in life.

Did I Like It: The fundamental truth is that your mileage with film is going to be directly related to how much you can tolerate a third act that largely hinges on Julia Roberts playing someone who is trying to impersonate Julia Roberts. I’m not going to say it will depend on whether you like that plot development, because if you’re reading this review, you’re a reasonable person and that plot element isn’t going to work for you.

Now, if you can get over the film’s one, glaring flaw, it might very well be the superlative entry in the series. The plot—when it isn’t descending (and admitting it is doing so) into b-minus sitcom territory—surprises. The mise-en-scéne is also frequently a delightful surprise. Everyone would have accepted or at least forgiven if this sequel was just a cynical re-hash of Ocean’s Eleven (2001) (don’t worry, we’ll get there) but this plays out like a holiday tentpole movie that has all the trappings of a light foreign film that most of the audience would never see in the first place.

This is not to say that all of what worked in the first film is abandoned. The chemistry among the thieves and between Pitt and Zeta-Jones and Clooney and Roberts all crackles, and the old-fashioned movie-star cool exuded here is never not a pleasure to watch. Just as the way Clooney orders a double whiskey in the first film lives in my head rent free for the rest of time, so too have I never seen a movie star live so comfortably in his own skin than Clooney does in his final confrontation with Toulour (Vincent Cassel). Every time I see that scene, I am convinced that if I could ever be as comfortable as that man is at that moment, all the problems of my life would simply drift away. It was apparently filmed at Clooney’s own villa, so he very nearly wet method with feeling right at home in his surroundings.

If only they didn’t have to have the whole Julia Roberts is Julia Roberts thing, it might have gone down as one of the all-time greats.

The Legend of Zorro (2005)

Director: Martin Campbell

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rufus Sewell, Nick Chinlund

Have I Seen it Before: Yes? I remember holding the DVD in my hand once about ten years ago, but the movie disappeared from my memory as quickly as the movie finished. It came across my Prime Video suggestions, and while I didn’t have very high expectations for it, but I thought it would be a welcome distractions from the more uncertain hours of the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Then the plot (or at least the first few and last few minutes) turned out to revolve around a contentious vote with the possibility of violence in the streets erupting at any moment.

Whoops.

Did I Like It: On a positive note, I’ll probably forget again the film entirely pretty quickly. It’s difficult to quantify precisely why this movie falls so aggressively short of the imminently enjoyable <The Mask of Zorro (1998)>. That is mainly because there are so many to choose from.

The previous film’s plot was a firecracker of a revenge story, while this one wanders in and out of the process of making California a state (as noted above) and a divorce story that runs far faster than it ought to if we’re to have any hope of caring as much about Elena (Zeta-Jones) and Alejandro (Banderas) as we had tingly feelings for them in the original film.

There’s a lazy detachment to most of the pyrotechnics, leaning heavy on needless green screens and mystifying CGI, where the first was a masterclass in good stuntwork and well choreographed swordplay. Things got so bad that I actually said, “Oh no” after a particularly dodgy flourish from Banderas. The less said about the boring train sequence in the climax, the better. Anyone who complained about anything in <Back to the Future Part III (1990)> owes Robert Zemeckis an apology.

And then there’s this story. I think plenty of the guff screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have received is pretty overblown. Their work on the original <Star Trek (2009)> holds up, and despite some people’s problems with Kurtzman’s stewardship of the Trek franchise, I think things have been working out splendidly. Maybe Orci is the problem, if he were the dominant force here. As I mentioned above, the storyline is soggy and uninteresting in its own right, regardless of comparisons to the original film. But it’s the stupidity with which the film is treated which makes the film truly irritating. Historical inaccuracies are a reality when one tries to fit real history into an adventure story, or any fiction, really. I know this much for certain. As long as one roughly tries to get things right, or knows to get fuzzy with only the more arcane details, I can forgive plenty. 

But Abraham Lincoln presiding over the ceremony formalizing California statehood? Tell me, do former one term Congressmen the ones they send to finish up making states? Oh, I see. I’m supposed to believe Lincoln is president when the film takes great pains in its opening few seconds to remind me the film takes place in 1850? That’s the kind of glaring historical boner that a school child would have been able to pick out. Unbelievably stupid and needless. Maybe it wasn’t Orci and Kurtzman who made that call, but whoever did was stupid in the extreme.

It was enough to make me want to check election returns again.

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Director: Martin Campbell

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, the stuntman for Anthony Hopkins (who I think we can all agree deserves a lot more credit than he’s gotten so far)

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I like it a lot. Had it not been followed by one of the most indifferent sequels in history with The Legend of Zorro (2005), it might be remembered as a more seminal film today.

Anthony Hopkins might not be just a great actor, but also one of the more underrated movie stars in the history of cinema. Sure, he can play Hannibal Lecter and various near-Hannibals with aplomb, but the fact that such a pointedly English actor could convincingly the wit and swashbuckling bravura of Mexican California’s greatest hero. Antonio Banderas as his heir presumptive is pretty intuitive, but the star of Remains of the Day (1993)? On spec, I don’t see it, and yet, he delivers. He delivers so well that the movie lives and dies by his presence. Just see the aforementioned Legend to see how such a film without Hopkins can only generate a lifeless quality.

And yet, while he is the strongest link in the chain, there is one part of the conceit of Hopkins-as-Zorro that takes one out of the movie. At the time of filming in 1997, Hopkins was already 60. It’s pretty clear in the early goings—when Diego’s Zorro is repelling the Spanish oppressors— that he isn’t doing his own stunts.

It’s a minor quibble in movie that works by its own standards. The plot actually tracks for the most part. The bad guys are dastardly. The good guys play out their revenges in a gallant sort of way. The action is all of the firey explosion and clanging saber variety, with nary a pixel of computer generated imagery.  Which also puts it in that rare breed of films that ages in such a way that—without further context—you wouldn’t necessarily guess when it was made*. What more can really be expected of a movie?

* Unless of course you count the obligatory love ballad over a James Horner melody that places it firmly in the shadow of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), but that is only over the end credits, and should hardly count against the film as a whole.