Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Is 2009 the year of the werewolf movie or year of the bad werewolf movie? In addition to Underworld: Rise of the Lycans we'll see the release of the Twilight sequel that deals with werewolves New Moon, as well as Benicio del Toro reprising the classic role of The Wolf Man; look for those to roll out in November. Meanwhile Rise of the Lycans just exhausts the means by which wolf creatures can be manipulated by computer imagery.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is the third movie of this particular series, and the thing is there's no Kate Beckinsale. Even though I've seen the other two Underworlds I couldn't tell you much about them but I do know that Kate as Selena was what the series was all about. The filmmakers of Underworld 3 want us to focus of the back story of Viktor (Bill Nighy) and Lucian (Michael Sheen). The story's set in some medieval fortress and everyone wears chain metal and most of the photography is bathed in blue. Rhona Mitry, who looks a lot like Beckinsale, plays Sonia a kind of distant past relative of Selena.
For the first third I was thinking about how Mitry played into the story and resembled Beckinsale but everybody is a type in this movie. For the second third of Underworld 3 I was fixated on how Sheen is also in Frost/Nixon and Nighy is also in Valkyrie. For the last third it was a challange to watch the final confrontation of knights in armor fighting, for want of any better words, an army of lycans without arching one's eyebrows. There's a giant guy with a bass voice, kind of a Michael Clarke Duncan type, only his words roll out of his mouth an octave lower than any human voice is capable of going.
Director Patrick Tatopoulos rose out of special effects to direct Underworld 3. He's good when depicting the werewolfs running alongside horses in the forest. There's one cool low angle shot from the perspective of the horse's hooves, and we see the creatures running along cliffs far above. But then he feels the need to grace every dramatic scene with a quick edit of Nighy's creepy blue eyes. Interestingly we see a couple of early shots of a man turning wolf that are framed old school in the sense that they harken to American Werewolf in London. The shots of the legs getting longer. The time lapse of a face getting more hirsute. But after that all the transformation effects, man to beast, are pure CGI. Computer wolfs are just not that scary, and despite Sheen's best efforts to raise the caliber of acting in the film, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans doesn't have sharp enough fangs for any sinking interest.

Michael Powell on DVD

The two-disc set The Films of Michael Powell contains A Matter of Life and Death and Age of Consent. Powell is primary viewing for film buffs and these two films deserve attention for their DVD debut. A Matter of Life and Death was released in the US as Stairway to Heaven (in 1947). The story was David Niven’s return to acting after war service and also stars Kim Hunter, Raymond Massey, Kathleen Byron and Roger Livesey.
AMOLAD revolves around an angel (Marius Goring) who missed snagging Niven for the hereafter and must now convince him to die. But Niven demands a heavenly arbitration panel and the whole issue of life and death proceeds as a spirited cosmic trial. The comedy concerns transmigration, the drama involves romance and the special effects (heaven in black and white, Earth in Technicolor) have only been copied but never surpassed. That said the film represents a throwback to earlier views of God and history, definitely from the first half of the 20th century. A Matter of Life and Death is still great viewing no matter its archaic vision.
In 1960 Powell practically ended his career with the notorious Peeping Tom (although Psycho made the same year, and featuring similar themes, only boosted Hitchcock’s career) it took several years for him to regain his film footing. The result shot on the Great Barrier Reef, Age of Consent was one of Powell's last but the first for Helen Mirren.
Mirren plays a teen nymph who provides inspiration for blocked artist (and also producer James Mason). Extras on the discs included Martin Scorsese intros for each film, commentary by film historians. Also for Age of Consent short docus focus on Mirren (with a current day interview) and on the underwater photographers Ron and Valerie Taylor, themselves responsible for most of the underwater footage of the Great Barrier Reef waters from that era.