The Devil Wears Pirates
Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is about as good of a summer movie that we so badly need. When I say badly, I mean…Mission Impossible, Poseidon, X3, and then Superman. Whatever merits those movies had, it was not bringing something so awesomely conceived as a man with a tentacle beard that plays organ.
Let’s not even forget the indispensable Johnny Depp, who makes Captain Sparrow the very definition of breezy. He is given iconic scene after iconic scene. I don’t care if this is the middle movie, it plays even more epic than the first movie. The third is almost sure to be the greatest thing since rum.
The Devil Wears Prada is a winsome movie about how success in the big time can destroy you and build you. Meryl Streep is almost sure to get another Oscar nomination for a performance that amounts to a series of very powerful facial ticks: pursed lips, cocked eyebrows, agape mouth, evil eyes. And anyone who’s tried to break into the entertainment/fashion/media industries through internships will recognize the growing pains depicted in this film.
Strangely enough, for a film about fashion it wasn’t particularly graceful. The cinematography is pretty inconsistent, some of it being rather bad. The music supervision is adequate but not inspired. Anne Hathaway is competent, but nowhere near the “next Julia Roberts” label people are lavishing on her.
But who cares? This movie just has lots of heart. And it is a lot of name dropping, but the kind that’s not annoying. It’s always bad when names are dropped as if they make the person saying the name really smart or special. Here names are dropped matter-of-factly…it is a movie that works because it is so clearly tied to the cultural moment of right now that it’s threatening to go out of style by next month. And even so, it has made its mark and will hopefully find itself at various midnight screenings where kids get together and try to watch a story about what it was like to live in 2006.
