Movie Star Blog

When Donal finally makes his way to the premiere of Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Ewan McGregor's latest "romp," he spends less time interviewing celebrities, and more time getting some Swedish girls to ride his Daddle.

We’ll be honest: we had no interest in seeing The Island until liberals started trashing it. Not for its artistic shortcomings, mind you – most of them admitted it was cleverly plotted, well-acted (by Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson), and chock-full of director Michael Bay’s high-octane action sequences. No, the problem was that all this cinematic skill was at the service of a message that was … pro-life!

This movie is, quite simply, one of my favorites of the last several years. It's playful, yet has a number of thoughtful points to it, giving it more meat than the whimsical previews and DVD art might otherwise indicate. It moves along quickly enough as to not bore the viewer, yet also manages to build a fascinating picture of the father and the son. And it ties itself up nicely, finishing the story but not providing all of the answers. Ewan McGregor (young Ed), Albert Finney (old Ed), and Billy Crudup (Will) are all stellar here, managing to take what seems like a pile of whimsical fun into a suddenly powerful climax. To put it simply, this film has it all.

The story itself is pretty standard in regards to a sci-fi film. It is in the future (2019), and focuses on science that has gone bad. The world is contaminated. You live in this bubble. You can get out by winning a lottery to THE ISLAND, the only non contaminated landscape left in the outside world. The movie starts out with men and women who live in this utopian society. It kinda reminds me of the book “A Brave New World”. As the plot thickens however, some of the members of this society begin to question their life and their reason for living. In their quest to find themselves, they discover many things that cause them concern.

The story is hard to explain. The general idea is: Ewan McGregor is a psychiatrist who is trying his best to keep Ryan Gosling’s character from committing suicide. Of course, everything you think you know isn’t exactly how things are.

As cheaper technology and a seemingly inexhaustible hipness quotient have led to more filmmakers and films being produced, theatrical distribution has become more expensive, the outlets more cautious, and the returns on investments more dubious. The Internet has absorbed some of the spillover, although the bigger success stories - notably, the political films of Robert Greenwald ("Uncovered: The War on Iraq,” “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism"), or “Faster,” a highly lucrative motorcycle documentary narrated by Ewan McGregor - have been niche movies with a core audience.

The second film in the shortlist is Stay. This will probably be the most confusing movie ever made. I couldn't even begin to tell you what it is about. I can tell you that it has Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Bob Hoskins, and Naomi Watts. Good cast sometimes makes for a good movie. It was directed by Marc Forster, the Daredevil director, if that tells you anything. It is suspenseful, with a surprise ending. Thats all I got.

On the subject of Cillian Murphy, while watching 28 Days Later I got to thinking about how crappy most U.K. actors’ American accents tend to be. Ewan McGregor has sounded Scottish in every film that required him to act British, except for Big Fish, which required him to have the most stereotypical Southern accent imaginable. Keira Knightley’s voice drops several octaves when she tries to sound American. Orlando Bloom sounds like an elf no matter what he does. Even Jude Law can’t quite pull it off. Murphy’s is by far the best American accent I’ve heard in the past five years. (He has said in an interview that Irish actors have such effective American accents because of all the bad American TV they watch.) There was really no point to that last paragraph, other than to mention Cillian Murphy a couple more times in conjunction with Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, and Orlando Bloom. Just be glad I haven’t said anything about Thom Yorke in this post.

If you plan on seeing the movie The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, you might want to skip this post since it will contain a few spoilers. In my opinion, The Island is a total piece of shit. But being a science fiction movie addressing possible problems in our future, it can’t help but contain a few ideas. The biggest idea I found to wrap my mind around while the mindless chase sequences and nonsensical violence filled the screen was the idea of “the Island” itself.

“The Island”’s success can also be credited to its two main leads - Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. They are no Brad and Angelina, but there is plenty of chemistry between the two leads (kissing and love making scenes, though short, are fairly explosive). Although Scarlett is not asked to do much acting, except run around and look pretty, she somehow manages t0 convey a certain amount of levity to the movie’s tone as opposed to being a cursory “to be rescued” bimbo. Ewan, that sly dog - I think I may be falling in love with that man.

Then this evening we went to see the Island, featuring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannsen. A photogenic pair, to be certain. I won’t spoil the film but it’s a damned good morality play. There wasn’t much swearing, and there wasn’t nearly the amount of violence you’d expect from Michael Bay. There were some very unrealistic bits in the film though. First, the idea that Los Angeles, even one hundred years from now, could ever have streets THAT empty is just too fantastic to believe. And TRAINS? In LOS ANGELES? HA! You might as well try to convince me that magical elves made from wheat grass and old memories live on the moon in a special palace made from the tears of hungry kittens, and that once a year they come to Earth and harvest the souls of people who saw-and liked-Ishtar. Otherwise it was a lot of fun.

My personal favorite part is where the two clones are fighting and the military guys come in to kill the clone, and both Ewan McGregor's point at the other one and say "Shoot him, he's the clone!"

With everything the movie had going for it though, there was still plenty against it. Not the least of which was the completely disgusting overuse of computer animation. DAMNIT George, just because you have the means, doesn't mean you need to use them for every goddamn thing. There wasn't a single real life clone in the whole movie, I think that's what pissed me off the most when it came to all that. They could have put in atleast one, for the sake of those Jerry's Kids, where's there clone huh...HUH? Not to mention the still subpar screenwriting, and the horrible deliverance of most lines. I'm not trying to say I could have done any better, but then again I'm not out there making people sit through my terribly written lines which seem to have the amazing ability to turn good actors into bad one, I know my limitations. I still completely hated the acting of one Hayden Christensen, but for this movie I forgave him, because he did such a good job of "looking the part". I honestly can't imagine anyone who would have visually been better for the part. The way he talks when he's acting though, sound like he has a dead fish in his throat, which is odd, because he wasn't that way in Life as a House. Ewan McGregor starts out just as bad as he was in the first and second, but gets a lot better towards the end. By the very end of the movie, it's almost like he's as good as he is in every other movie he's in...except maybe trainspotting.

The movie's an improvement over the last two -- and we all know that's not saying much -- but the middle is an episodic mess. It's filled with mindless action sequences, unbearably bad scenes between Anakin and Padme, and all that force-Yoda-mumbo jumbo that just leaves me cold. The end has some very strong moments and ties into Episode IV rather brilliantly: You see Obi Wan take Anakin's light sabre -- the one he'll eventually give Luke. Most impressive is how the set design and music slowly start to look and sound like the original Star Wars. Ewan McGregor does what he can with Lucas' stilted dialog, and the scenes between Palpatine and Anakin have their Faustian moments. But other than that, the movie, like it's two predecessors, is really nothing more than a melodrama, whereas the original three were not.

George Lucas's mythmaking is legendary and he does not disappoint with his latest adventure.He is more or less the godfather of special effects and modern digital filmmaking.His story constuction is sound,as is the soundtrack(John Williams can never go wrong),the Photography is breathtaking,the droid CG/Makeup amazing and the editing is top notch.The effects are par exellence,Ewan McGregor as usual delivers and Natalie Portman didnt have much to do.However,the undoubted star of the show is the Dark lord of the Sith - Darth Sidius who also doubles...

And it was the dialog itself that was partly to blame for the failings of the first half. It seemed like it was almost a dispassionate narration of the events, delivered from the actors as if speed-reading their lines. Honestly, the writing, directing, and acting were really quite awful at first. Only Ewan McGregor’s performance as Obi-wan Kenobi was consistently good; I found myself watching scenes and wishing that he would make an appearance. Things picked up overall about halfway through the movie as the plot fleshed itself out, but...

There were a few other redeeming moments. Ewan McGregor looks dazed and sounds flat in most of his line readings, mistakenly thinking a roguish twinkle in his eye will carry him through most of the technobabble, but his portrayal of Kenobi's sheer anguish on Mustafar after he cuts off Anakin's arm and legs is astonishingly good. And Ian McDiarmid's performance as Palpatine is subtle and excellent. After he bloats up from having his own Dark Force lightening turned back on him (and why does that turn him fat?), though, he hams it up in the worst...

Finally, what is missing from these last three Star Wars is what was present in the first three of the series -- a joi de vie, most explicitly characterized in the romanic tango between Princess Leia and Han Solo. The woodenness of the characters stands in stark contrast to the characters in The Lord of the Rings. In that series of three films. the core of the film is on the relationships between members of the Fellowship. They care for each other, are willing to sacrifice for one another, and are a picture of genuine diversity. ...

The movie in a nutshell without giving anything away: Ewan McGregor was superb. Hayden Christensen was horrible. The movie could have done better without the cheesy love scene between Hayden Christensen (horrible) and Natalie Portman (horrible script-writing by George Lucas). Yoda was awesome. Hayden Christensen was horrible. Ewan McGregor was awesome, the epitome of Jedi.