Movie Omelet

Sucker Punch Review

2011-03-27T00:42:00.000-04:00

Some plot discussion, but probably not too many spoilers 'til the end.

The beginning set-up was great. The music (Tainted Dreams) perfectly suited it and was a great introduction to the movie. Our introduction to Baby Doll showed her to be capable and very protective. I should have realized it also set her up to not always make the best decisions.

This movie has awesome visuals. I loved the kick-ass action and the pin-up girl outfits. Those worked great. The music was very cool, but unlike what I've heard other reviews say, the music doesn't sync with the action (like in Scott Pilgrim) at all. The action sequences take place during dance seqences, yet the action isn't reminiscent of dance moves at all.

I'm about to go into the structure of the movie and how it sets up the action sequences. Understand, I saw this movie because I saw Alex Pardee's concept art, then the live action posters based on it, and decided this movie needed to be seen. I also decided I didn't want to know anything about it plot-wise. I wanted to go into a movie without knowing anything besides that it looked kick-ass. When I accidentally found out it was set in an old-time asylum, I started to wonder how they were going to connect these awesome genre-blending images into an asylum. I imagined things like Alice in Wonderland, or more apt, American McGee's Alice.

The movie has three layers- real world, burlesque/brothel, and imagine spot. The problem is we only see the real world twice- at the beginning, and at the end. We don't cut back to see how the other two things are happening in the real world, so when we hear dialogue or action that we know corresponds to some real-world event, we wonder how it's actually playing out. It wouldn't be so bad except we cut into the other two layers too soon. The other girls are not introduced in a group therapy session or at a lunch table, etc so we can find out why they were committed or what they are like. We don't know why they have burlesque-layer nicknames like Baby Doll, Rocket, or Sweet Pea. Amber is at least a real name and Blondie for a brunette could just be ironic.

In the concept art by Alex Pardee, "Madame Gorski" is introduced with a whip, so I figured she was some sort of authoritative figure, maybe even a cruel one, in charge of the asylum and a sexier Nurse Ratched. Instead, she's benevolent, which is okay, but in the brothel level, she isn't authoritative, instead being another victim of a horrible orderly (who in this level is a club manager and pimp.) However, in the real world level, she's a doctor, he's an orderly. Yet, when Baby Doll hears her evil step-father and the orderly discuss forging Dr. Gorski's signature to get Baby Doll lobotomized so the cops can't get any info out of her, she doesn't do to the doctor, she just keeps it a secret. That might not have worked in burlesque-world, but here she's in charge of the institution. Why not go to her? Surely she's had therapy during the week prior to the lobotomy appointment. She's even shown interacting with her in the burlesque level, so she's definitely had spoken with her in some way.

Speaking of therapy, that would have created a better story and structure for the action sequences: have each girl in therapy, she can either straight-out tell us her back-story, or the action sequence can reflect it. I was positive each girl was going to be the star of her own sequence, which didn't really happen. They might have gotten a little more spot-light, but the sequences didn't add anything to character development.

Spoilers now as I discuss the ending and some earlier things.

As for the dance sequences being the segue into the action sequences: this isn't some magical dance that enables them to enter another world. In one sequence the girls are alone with the cook in the kitchen, and they need to steal a knife from him. They bolt the doors with broomsticks, throw things off the table, and Baby Doll climbs up and starts dancing. Suddenly, this man who should be terrified these mental patients are going to harm him sits down and gives into watching the sexy dance. Also, when the radio cuts out and we're taken from the action to the brothel level, then it works again and suddenly we are teleported back... what's with that? It's not like music is some sort of mental cue for Baby Doll to go back to the 3rd level. It isn't a switch flipping between worlds literally. It only happens so we can see an awesome portrayal of a sacrificial death rather than a mundane and sad death.

As for the ending:
Why does Baby Doll give up? All she has to do (besides the obvious tell the therapist idea) is wait for the cops to show up. Why does she give herself up for Sweet Pea? This is a character no one likes. She never redeemed her snotty behavior. Deciding to help out wasn't much. To really redeem herself, she should have distracted the guards so Baby Doll (who can now go find cops and get her inheritance) can escape. The entire goal of the movie was to escape. Why did the lobotomist say she looked like she wanted him to do it? Why give up? Yes, her sister is dead and she was almost raped, but that isn't any reason to stop fighting now. How is becoming brain-dead an escape? Her life wasn't hellish just yet.

It occurs to me this vaguely resembles One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which I watched once over a decade ago, so forgive me if my details are off) in that she wasn't crazy yet ends up lobotomized while another patient escapes. The downer ending works in OFotCN, but not here. I can't remember the why of Jack Nicholson's character being lobotomized, but it was supposed to be tragic. The point of Sucker Punch was her escaping and things turning out well. Why did the movie suddenly say Sweet Pea was the main character all along? We knew nothing about her except protective-of-sis. I understand her and Baby Doll are similar for that, but why should she get away (alone)?

Overall, an awesome action movie with an incredibly lousy story structure and plot. Go see it in theaters for two reasons: so Hollywood will give us awesome genre movies, and because the action is awesome and deserves to be seen on a huge screen.

Alternatives to the Twilight Saga

2010-07-04T09:48:00.000-04:00

So I realized something the other day. Each time a new Twilight movie came out, I ended up discovering a new movie or book with a basically similar plot but infinitely better.

Twilight has a vampire/human romance. Let the Right One In has a budding relationship between a 13 year old boy and 12-for-a-long-time vampire girl.

New Moon introduced werewolves. I had started reading The Kitty Norville series, starting with Kitty & the Midnight Hour, with vampires and werewolves with a werewolf as the main character.

Eclipse came out and I realized something, the book I am currently reading, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, also has a war with vampires and werewolves teaming up against other vampires and werewolves.

So there, three alternatives with much better filming, plot, and storytelling and accuracy to what werewolves and vampires are.

Also, the night Twilight came out, LemonVampire introduced me to Shadow of the Vampire. I don't recall what I watched out of spite when New Moon came out, but I started reading 30 Days of Night the day Eclipse came out.

The Curse of the Werewolf

2010-03-04T22:10:00.001-05:00

I want to talk about werewolves for a second.
There aren't a lot of great werewolf movies. If pressed, I could think of a top ten, of course, but I don't think there are ten that I would consider truly great films. I think there are really only about four that I would call great: An American Werewolf in London, The Company of Wolves, Dog Soldiers, and the recent remake of The Wolfman. Yes, I'm counting the remake over the original, but not without a love of the original. But let's face it, the original was silly. It was always silly. My fondness for it is through the rose-tinted lenses of a love for film history, which is why I love the remake.
The recent remake of Universal's Classic The Wolfman has been getting mixed reception from critics and filmgoers. Generally the reception seems to very from either loving it or feeling it falls just short of being really good. The detractors generally still hold that it's decent but not great, citing as the key faults Del Toro's performance and bland pacing. And one other thing, which is the subject of this discourse.
I'm talking about the monster's design.
Rick Baker's makeup design for this film isn't just meant to be evocative of the original, it is the original. Essentially. So a lot of people are complaining that the wolfman's design is just too silly. This is completely understandable since it's based on the original which really was incredibly silly.
Let's look at Lon Chaney's version. Chaney's transformation consisted of just getting really hairy, yet well groomed, and changing into nicer clothes than whatever he happens to be wearing. Chaney literally goes from a white undershirt to a perfectly buttoned up dress shirt tucked into his nice, straight, crease-free pants. Then he stalks around on his toes and strangles/shakes people to death.
That's not what happens with Del Toro's wolfman. This version has him shredding his clothes as he twists and contorts, as his bones break and shift, into a ferocious beast, which goes about occasionally on all fours, eviscerating his victims with his ferocious claws or leaping onto them like a pit bull. This wolfman is fast, fierce and scary, in a film full of rich atmosphere. But, to a modern audience used to mainstream films like Underworld and Van Helsing, or even more savvy genre fans familiar with Dog Soldiers or American Werewolf in London, this just isn't enough.
And that's the problem with werewolves. You have to be careful with your design style. If you make something that looks too human, you get Lon Chaney, or worse, Teen Wolf. If you make something too wolf-like you get Twilight New Moon, with it's bulky shirtless teens whose idea of a transformation into just large dogs comes via exploding pants.
You have to find that line where you have a creature that's not quite a wolf, but definitely more than just a hairy man. This is where the original Wolf Man fails, and many, many other werewolf films until An American Werewolf in London. In fact, Wolf Man's predecessor, Werewolf of London, had even less makeup, effecting more of a Jekyll/hyde appearance.
Everything changed in the 70s though, when we got AAWIL and The Howling, films featuring horrific monsters and transformations brought to life through animatronics. These would be the benchmark of effects in the genre for years. Until . . .
When CGI effects really took hold, we started seeing the technology applied liberally to monster films. Suddenly we didn't have to hide our monsters in the shadows. Instead filmmakers relished in the ability to show off their creations in fully lit action sequences. This meant a revolution for fantasy/scifi films, but it meant something different for the monster horror genre.
That's the other problem werewolves face. You see, CGI makes for some really cool creature effects, but that's just what it is, an effect, a spectacle. In a fantasy film that's just what you want, but in a horror film it can be a disaster. As good as some CG creatures may look, there's always that telltale element about them that stands out as CG. It's hard to define, but we know a CG effect when we see one, especially in the early years. And especially for werewolf movies.
Werewolf fans are some of the most vocal detractors of CGI effects, and for good reason. CG werewolves can be pretty cool, but they can almost never be scary. And werewolf fans want scary.
Two notable examples are An American Werewolf in Paris, the awful sequel to the London classic, and Van Helsing, the action film starring Hugh Jackman. Paris had some great CG effects for its time and some damn good looking werewolves, but the movie was so terrible that it's best viewed with friends who love that sort of thing. Van Helsing however, though a better movie overall, if you can accept it as a fun adventure film rather than horror, had werewolves that looked cool, but were far too obviously CG, and not at all scary.
One notable exception, in my personal opinion, was Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. His werewolf managed to be one of the most eery, frightening werewolves I've ever seen, and the best example of a werewolf in CG.
So to recap, you're doing a werewolf movie. How do you design your werewolf? Do you use CG or practical effects? If you use CG you can have a lot more variety in your design process, but you risk losing your credibility with horror fans.
But if you use no CG, you're limited to what you can achieve through animatronics or else a man in a costume.
Which brings me back to The Wolfman. Like I said, some don't like it because the design is "silly." I loved it because it pays homage to the original while successfully making it genuinely frightening. But I understand why some would think it was unsuccessful.
What I have to wonder though, is whether this film would have been aided by a newer, different design? If it had used CG, would it have been considered a failure like so many before it?
It probably doesn't help that unlike any other werewolf film of the last twenty years, this is the only werewolf that doesn't shed his clothes as he transforms, keeping the trademark shirt and pants of the original. Would shedding the clothes have improved fan reaction?
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the trouble with werewolf movies.

The Wolfman

2010-02-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

Until a couple of years ago, I’d never really been into werewolves. I always thought vampires were cooler (not Twilight, I mean real vampires). I’ve always loved gothic horror. The whole vampires/werewolves/ghouls/monsters combination has always excited me, but growing up I always liked vampires more.
Recently though, not so much. Whether because of my burning hatred for Twilight, or a general tiring of the popularity of the genre, or just the fact that vampires no longer hold as much appeal to me, I just haven’t been into the whole vampire thing lately. So that brings me to werewolves to get my gothic horror fix.
Still there are a lot more great vampire movies than there are decent werewolf movies. Sadly, the werewolf has been notoriously misrepresented in film. To date, I can only think of about four great werewolf films: An American Werewolf in London, Dog Soldiers, The Company of Wolves, and of course, The Wolf Man (1941). Four isn’t very many in comparison to vampire films. Other notable mentions include Ginger Snaps, a popular movie but I didn’t enjoy it, and The Howling, which I also didn’t care for. I absolutely hated the Underworld movies. The werewolves in those looked more like gorillas on the very few occasions they decided to show them transform rather than run around shooting each other like a bunch of street thugs. Underworld was just a bad gang war movie with a supernatural element tacked on as an afterthought. Van Helsing may have been incredibly campy and over-laden with CGI, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and thought the werewolves were well designed with a cool transformation style. And I also loved the design of the werewolf in the third Harry Potter, the way it was lean and gangly, as though it were starving. Nothing is scarier than a wild animal that’s visibly hungry. And that’s about all there is for werewolf movies.
So I was extremely excited to here about the remake of the original Wolfman, with make-up wizard Rick Baker transforming Benicio Del Toro into an updated incarnation of the classic Lon Chaney Jr design.
The film’s had a rough production, changing directors just weeks before filming began, abandoning the original plans for an all-makeup-no-CG classical ideal in favor of mixing in CGI to help it along. Still, I never lost hope for this movie. Just the fact that it was based on the story of the original Wolf Man and moved to Victorian England made it hard to ruin in my mind.
Maybe that’s a problem. Maybe I was too optimistic. Now that the film is out, I’m seeing almost universally negative reviews for it, but I don’t understand why. For me it was perfect.
The movie uses darkness in the way that most monster movies don’t. The nights here are black, not merely light blue. The overall atmosphere of the film is as dark and haunting as it should be. The best scenes are the ones where the wolf man is running through the woods, chasing down his prey. Most werewolf movies tend to put the monster in a populated setting, rather than his natural element.. I love the eeriness of a monster running through a dense, dark forest.
As for the wolf man himself, This version is almost exactly like the original. This is both a good and a bad thing. Whether you love this design depends entirely on how you feel about the original film, which is probably why it’s been getting a lot of negative reviews.
Let’s face it, the original wolf man didn’t look like a wolf at all. At all. He just looked like a really hairy guy. And even worse, whenever he transformed he would always change from whatever he was wearing in the transformation scene into a clean, buttoned up black shirt tucked into a pair of black trousers in the next scene. As if we weren’t going to notice that he’d changed clothes? I guess this was meant to give him a more consistent look, so that as the monster he was all dark and scary, but instead it just makes you imagine that, after transforming, he walked over to his closet, pulled out his black shirt and trousers and carefully put them on. I mean, the shirt was even tucked in! The big, savage, scary Wolf Man, and he’s in a clean, buttoned and tucked shirt!
And to make things even worse, the other characters just pretended that he looked exactly like a regular wolf, when we can clearly see how much he doesn’t. And when he attacked people, it was never with claws or fangs, he just strangled them.
So, yeah, the original Wolf Man was silly. But it remains a classic because something about it transcends the silliness the same way that the original Dracula does. It’s iconic.
Now, however, we demand a little more. You can’t have a werewolf that looks like that now.
That was the biggest challenge of this film, to use the original Wolf Man design, but somehow update it so that it works. And I’m happy to say that they pulled it off gloriously. Yes, this Wolfman is almost exactly the same as the original design, but it works by the portrayal of the monster as fast, powerful and vicious. This Wolfman is not well dressed. This Wolfman doesn’t strangle his victims. This Wolfman is a monster. We get to see him tear through a gypsy camp, ripping off limbs and spilling guts. And you get a real sense of danger and panic. It’s fast. It’s chaotic. It’s scary.
Sure, the movie relies on a lot of jump scares which won’t hold up with repeat viewings, but I think it’s still a strong movie overall.
Keep an eye out for the new wolf’s head cane. It doesn’t play any kind of significant role in this film beyond just looking awesome, which it does. Anthony Hopkins is brilliant in this, portraying Sir John Talbot by way of playing Malcolm Mcdowell playing Hannibal Lecter. Trust me, it’s great. And Hugo Weaving steals the show as Detective Aberline, the lead investigator on the Jack the Ripper case. My favorite part about his character was that they didn’t link this story to the story of Jack the Ripper. I was totally expecting it and it never happened. Aberline is just here on another case.
As remakes go, this is among the best.

Avatar

2010-02-08T14:49:00.001-05:00

Ah, Avatar, where to begin?  There was a lot of hype surrounding this film. Going back over a year before this film came out, I've been hearing all about the hype from Aintitcool and io9, especially Aintitcool. This was to be the first film by James Cameron in over ten years, and his first science fiction film since Terminator 2. Terminator 2 for God's sake! This guy's been doing nothing but documentaries since Titanic!  So, of course the expectations are immediately raised.   1. It's an original sci-fi action film by the guy that brought us Aliens, Terminator, Terminator 2 and The Abyss!  2. It's going to be in 3D! It's supposed to be the most spectacular 3D ever. It's using 3D technology specially developed for Cameron!  3. It's going to feature the absolute most stunning CGI you have ever seen or will ever see!  4. It will be a religious experience that will change your life and your worldview!   Okay, so clearly there was a lot of hype surrounding this movie. And all this was before we even got concept art, cast list, or the vaguest of plot synopsis.  Like most over-hyped films that I know nothing about, I didn't really pay too much attention at first. I was aware of the hype, but I didn't really seek out anything about the film. I checked out the early concept art just to see if I could figure out what the hell this thing was supposed to be about.   Then, finally we started getting some more information and at long last the first trailer hit, and it was incredibly underwhelming. A lot of my disappointment at the first trailer was probably due to hype backlash, but I also just didn't really care that much to begin with. If you're going to hype up a movie I'm not very interested in that much and then show me a mediocre trailer, I'm going to be even less interested.   The next trailer looked a lot more promising. It still didn't really wow me, but on repeat viewings it started to grow my interest. Part of me just wasn't interested because after summer gave me Star Trek and District 9 this movie had a lot to live up to.   Also, the story for Avatar just didn't sound that interesting to me. It's Mighty Whitey all the way. Cameron himself even said it was Dances With Wolves in space. Those movies never really interest me. Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, it's such a terrible cliche, especially when you consider the racist implications. I'm really kind of sick of the idea of a white guy invading another culture and then becoming not only one of them, but the best of them. And, oh God, Avatar is that idea straight through times ten with a big sign in huge papyrus letters just in case you didn't notice. (I loved the Papyrus subtitles by the way)  But still, it's James Cameron. I love The Abyss and Aliens and Terminator. So yeah, I'll totally go see it. . . maybe.
Going to the movies is expensive, especially for 3D. And I had been hearing a lot of negative stuff surrounding the film. Mostly just about how unoriginal the story was, but still. But in the end I strengthened my resolve and we went in.   I've never really been convinced on the whole 3D thing. I remember a couple of years ago hearing about how 3D was the future of filmmaking, the thing that would save the theater industry. I remember thinking that it was just a passing fad. But now, as more and more films are coming out in 3D and IMAX, it's starting to look like it's not going away.   I've seen four films in 3D now. The first was Beowulf at the IMAX. I remember leaving the theater thinking about how much I was looking forward to seeing it in 2D when it came out on disc, so that I could actually watch the movie, instead of being distracted by the blurry 3D effects. You see the problem with 3D is that if you tilt your head wrong, or if there's a lot of movement going on, everything gets kind of blurry and out of focus. Even at the best of times to a person like me, scrutinizing the CG for all the richness of detail it has to offer, the 3D effect tends to blur things just a little.   And of course, there's the issue of home video. They keep releasing these 3D films to DVD and BD with that terrible old fashioned red/blue or red/green 3D effect that renders everything in monochrome and doesn't allow anything to really pop that well. I always thought that stuff looked terrible and unconvincing even when I was five. I'm like five years old, watching a movie in "Mind-blowing 3D!" and thinking to myself God this is crap. When a five-year-old is unconvinced, you might as well give up.  I enjoyed Beowulf a lot more on DVD, but I hadn't completely given up on this whole 3D thing.  Meghann made me take her to see Coraline, which was in 3D. She loved the presentation and still swears by it. I don't remember it being that spectacular, but I guess It does stand out for me as the best 3D I've seen yet.  When we went to see A Christmas Carol in 3D, it was really more of a "what the hell" kind of move, rather than any real desire to see it in the format. As such, I was appropriately disappointed. That film, by the way, was okay, but not really that great. I don't know if it's my unrelenting love of Patrick Stewart, excuse me, Sir Patrick Stewart, but his version is still my favorite. Jim Carey delivers an incredible performance with some really original visual takes on the story.  Which brings us to Avatar.   This film was supposed to be it. This was supposed to be the deal breaker for the last of us holding out against 3D. This was supposed to blow my mind all over the guy sitting in the row behind me. Sorry about your popcorn, friend.  But, like the other, it was really just alright. The overall effect served it's purpose pretty well to immerse you in the lush world of Pandora, but it wasn't mind blowing.   I giggled a little bit every time they had the subtitles in Papyrus. Meghann giggled a lot when the movie became so much like Pocahontas that we expected the blue chick to start singing.  Okay, but what did I really think of the film?  Well, I think that the best thing I can say for it, is that it was a James Cameron film. It wasn't everything it was hyped up to be, but it was absolutely as good as all of his other films. And that's a hell of a compliment. It was just as good as The Abyss, or T2, or Aliens. It had all the gravitas of the first and all the action of the other two. It was especially awesome seeing space marines like that again.  The story? It's very, very much the classic Mighty Whitey trope all the way. But, I like to think of it as not just a, but the Mighty Whitey movie. I mean, if the cultural immersion story in question is a choice between Native Americans, Samurai, or blue aliens, it's a pretty easy call.   I loved all the characters. I really like how much I hated Jake Sully at the beginning of the movie, and found myself liking him by the end. And I hated him a lot at the beginning. He just comes off as a really stupid, bumbling asshole throughout the whole first half of the film. He never listens to anything anyone tells him, running off like a jackass into the scary murder jungle the first chance he gets with everyone yelling at him to wait before he takes the multi-million dollar avatar body into the forest of cruelty and despair. I don't care how excited you are to be able to walk again, when you've just spent all day being told that everything crawling/walking/breathing on this planet wants to eviscerate you, maybe you should hold on before immediately running off to piss in the face of the first carnivorous rage demon you can find.
Sigourney Weaver's character is the most tragic one in the whole film. I really felt for her. She just wanted to live among the Na'vi and learn about them. It became clear how much she genuinely loved them, which made me hate Jake even more when he got accepted, officially accepted into their tribe after just a month or two and had to convince them to let her visit them again. She really cares about them, but he's the only one that gets official tribe status.   The Colonel was my favorite character. He was such a badass that I was actually kind of hoping he'd win in the end. I mean, he just owns every minute that he's on screen.  The only character I really hated was the weasily executive. Not because he was the villain, but because he was a poorly crafted character. He was an obvious weasel through and through. He was just too obvious. When Sigourney explains to him the significance of the Hometree and all the plant-life, a significance that you don't have to be a scientist to understand is incredibly important and valuable, he just laughs it off like the greasy corporate weasel that he so obviously is. He might as well have had a big long mustache he could twirl.   I loved the world crafted on the screen. I loved the idea that all the living things of Pandora are connected, literally, by a massive fiber-optic network, making the whole planet one giant, interconnected computer. Which brings to mind the point some have made, that this movie is a metaphor for the computer age, where we are all connected to each other throughout the world via this global network, acting through the avatars of our internet persona.   I love the science of a world where the atmosphere is toxic to humans. That's something that is rarely addressed in science fiction.  And though I’m still not sold on 3D, the CG effects really were the best you have ever seen or ever will see. Somewhere, George Lucas is crying.

Inglorious Basterds

2010-02-08T14:48:00.002-05:00

Bon-jeer-No!
Inglorious Basterds is the latest film by Quentin Tarantino. If the trailer was to be believed, this is a film about a small group of Jewish American soldiers fighting Nazis in WWII with brutal guerilla tactics and Brad Pitt devouring an Appalachian accent. Sounds like fun right?
Well, that’s not entirely what it’s about. Though that does play a major part of the story, there is also a lot more going on here. While on the surface it appeared as though Tarantino had made an action comedy with Nazis, what we really got was a much more rich and subtly nuanced film.
It opens up with an unexpectedly slow-paced, intensely suspenseful scene in which a milk farmer in France is interrogated by Colonel Hans Landa, a top man in the SS, known to the people as “The Jew Hunter.” Landa invites himself into the farmer’s little house and they have a lengthy conversation before Landa finally gets to the point that the man is harboring Jews on his property. Through subtle threats he gets the man to admit where they are, resulting in a bloodbath. One girl escapes, though, and we follow her story, along with the story of Landa, a young German soldier-turned-actor, and of course, the Basterds.
The rest of the film shows us how the paths of all these characters will inevitably intersect at a gala movie premier where a plot is hatched to kill Hitler and end the war.
As with Tarantino’s other films, this movie relies on great characters, great humor and dialog and great cinematography. And it definitely delivers on all fronts. Just don’t go in expecting a lot of guns ‘n ‘splosions. It’s not that kind of movie.

The Man From Earth

2010-02-08T14:48:00.001-05:00

In a nutshell, The Man From Earth is a dissertation on the subject of immortality set to film. Like the classic Twelve Angry Men, the entire thing takes place entirely within a single set, an old cabin in the woods. The characters are a group of scholars discussing the possibility that one of their friends may or may not be an immortal who has walked the earth since the before civilization began.
Accordingly, the production values on this film are noticeably low. The film stock used gives it a sense of having been made in the late nineties rather than in 2007. The actors are all C-listers, with a couple of noticeable faces; Dr. Phlox and the Candyman are among the debating scholars. None of the performances really stand out, and some of the character drama comes off as somewhat forced or just outright absurd.
But what really makes this a remarkable film is not the production value, the actors, or any kind effects spectacle. This entire film is basically an excuse for the writer to have a conversation about the subject of immortality. And that’s where it shines.
A broad range of topics are brought up and discussed. Most noticeably is the point which I, and no doubt most of us, have often considered on the subject, yet which has hitherto never found mention in film. That is the way in which immortal characters are often portrayed as having been miraculously present and often involved, in all the key points of history. And though our particular immortal does speak of several key and incredibly important events that he was personally involved in, he also comments on the fact that there’s no way he could have been present at, or even aware of some things at the time they were happening. News didn’t travel fast in those days after all.
The conversation really takes off, and becomes rapidly dramatic, when the man makes a radical assertion on the topic of religion, bringing into question the foundations of what we believe, as well as who we should believe. How can we believe this man when he has no way to prove what he is saying? How can we believe anything that we’ve read, when history is so subject to interpretation? How can we be sure of the truth of anything? And most importantly, what would we be willing to believe now?
All this ultimately leads to some wise revelations about the nature of humanity, spirituality, and how we should treat new ideas and the people who come offering them.
I highly recommend this film to anyone looking for intelligent, thought-provoking science fiction.

What's the deal with priests?

2009-08-11T08:40:00.002-04:00

So, I'm finally watching the original War of the Worlds, a film I've always wanted to see but have never had the chance. There's a scene where the army is getting ready to make their first offensive strike on the invaders and this priest asks "Why don't we try to communicate with them first?" It was a line that spoke his doom. Because, like all good priests in sci-fi/fantasy action/suspense films, he was going to go try to do so himself. If you're watching any kind of sci-fi or fantasy film that involves some kind of mysterious monster, and there happens to be a priest around, you can bet that by the end that priest is going to try to face down the monster himself only to be immediately devoured. Dragonslayer, Outlander, War of the Worlds, any adaptation of Beowulf to some extent. All these films have suicidal priests. Especially fantasy films.

Harry Potter and the Declining Franchise

2009-07-20T20:39:00.001-04:00

Remember when the Harry Potter movies were worth getting excited about? As disappointing as this summer has been so far, I was actually a little excited about seeing Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Wolverine was awful. I skipped Terminator and Transformers. We have a summer with a new Terminator that finally focuses entirely on the future war with the machines, a film I've wanted to see since the first Terminator, and I just really don't care. I don't care that Christian (Batman) Bale plays John Connor. I don't care about the post-apocalyptic future that looks nothing like the original. I really don't care about the new character that they made up to replace John Connor as the hero. Gee, I wonder if Marcus, the guy that's being shown in every ad, every poster, every action figure, as a real human in a terminator's body, turns out to be a terminator.
I just don't care.
I don't care that there's another Transformers movie. I love Transformers, and the first movie was a great start. But this one just looks so awful that the fact that it's about giant robots beating the hell out of each other just isn't enough to make up for everything else anymore.
So here we go, Harry Potter, the last big outing for this disappointing summer's movie season.
Like I said, I was looking forward to this one. I've enjoyed all the movies to a degree, though I don't own any of them. I've read all but the first two books, having just not cared enough to read them after seeing the first two movies.
I loved the books, but I don't really consider myself a fan of the series. The books were very well written and thoroughly enjoyable, and that's about it. Sadly, by this point the films just seem increasingly lackluster. Even when they're great, they're just okay.
This latest installment was good, but just that. It was good. It was okay. But after going once, I just don't really care.
You see, the thing that makes the books so great is the mystery. At the core of each book is some kind of puzzling mystery that drives the plot., a mystery that spins out several little mysteries along the way. It keeps you desperately reading to find the answers. What's the Philosopher's Stone? Who's trying to kill the students this year? What's the deal with Lupin? Who's Sirius Black? Who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire?
What made the first couple of films so great was the mystery and the whimsical visuals. The films added little touches to the magic world that had you constantly fascinated.
But as the films go on, we grow more and more accustomed to this magic world and the films have been playing down the mystery subplots in favor of more aciton and character focus. I know that with the increasing length of the books it's impossible to cram everything into the movie, but what's lost is pretty damaging. And the little visual touches that were so endearing before, have just become sort of tedious. Why does absolutely EVERYTHING have to be enchanted in some way, for example? The owl statue on Dumbledore's podium, the one that's been there through all the other movies, is suddenly seen to be enchanted to move like a real owl. Why? And while they're adding all these silly little magic bits, we notice how old gags get ignored. The paintings no longer seem so lively. The moving stares don't really move anymore. And didn't those kids used to have to wear robes?
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince wasn't bad. I don't have any complaints with the film exactly. It was better than the last one, though equally as forgettable. The mystery just isn't compelling enough, with a lot of the once fascinating hints and clues watered down to blunt statements. The visuals just aren't engaging enough. This film has great effects, but it's all either stuff we've seen before, or it's something that just doesn't make sense in the established world.
I'm not upset, not even really disappointed. I'm not a big fan, so I don't have that much invested in this series. I'm sure that the last film will round this out to a wonderful series of eight movies. But this franchise is really a case of the book being so much more worthwhile than the film.
Overall, it was a fun bit of escapism. And hey, considering the competition it's easily the third best movie of the summer after Star Trek and Up.

Vampires

2009-07-15T18:01:00.003-04:00

Let's talk about vampires.

I was browsing through my local bookstore recently and stumbled through the young adult section, and it was wall to wall kiddie vampire novels. Of course this is because of how the vampire subgenre is now at an extremely heightened level of popularity, and particularly with preteens thanks to crap like Twilight.
I'm sure I don't need to expound again about the gigantic failstorm that is called the Twilight series of books (fanfics). Hurricane force winds of self-indulgent fantasy writing combined with hailstones of barely literate drivel to form a full on assault against the entire Vampire genre of modern fiction.
But, as awful as Twilight may be (a level to which, sadly no mere words could ever do justice) it is only the culmination of the decades-long degradation of the vampire from a figure of folkloric terror into a sparkly hearthrob that every twelve-year-old girl wants to bring home to meet her mother, just before marrying him in a traditional Morman ceremony.
Okay, enough Twilight bashing. The question at hand is, how did this happen? How did the vampire devolve from what was once an all-encompassing figure of fear; fear of plague, fear of sexual diseases, fear of death itself, into this?

The immediate blame falls on the shoulders of Anne Rice, but I believe that in order to more thoroughly examine this issue, we have to go back much further.

In most of the early folklore, vampires appear as life-stealing monsters, either a sort of undead ghoul, like a zombie, or a spirit. Most depictions seem to have them more as a spiritual entity, a ghost that steals your life away. this is a pretty frightening notion. Ghosts are scary enough when you don't imagine that they will drain your life from you.
The practice of staking them in the heart, by the way, was meant originally as a symbolic gesture. The bodies of people suspected to be appearing as vampires would be exhumed and a stake driven in their heart in order to "nail" them to the ground so that they do not rise again. We can thank Hollywood for the modern assumption that a wooden stake is a weapon meant for fighting rather than a tool meant for, you know, staking.

1897: Bram Stoker writes Dracula. It was to be the most influential and successful book of the entire genre, the defining version of the vampire. The character of Count Dracula is, needless to say, THE vampire. The king of the the undead, prince of darkness.
Here Dracula follows the undead styling of the vampire myth, being a physical presence representative of plague and death. We see in this book how the vampire can change shape, from bat to wolf to fog. we see him crawl up walls, and drink blood. We see how he grows young from the drinking of blood. Dracula, as a man, is described as menacing, with hairy palms, bushy eyebrows, pallid skin, hateful red eyes. He was meant to instill a sense of powerful fear.

1922: F.W. Murnau directs the first film adaptation of Dracula, Nosferatu. Here the renamed for legal reasons, Count Orlok takes on an even more monstrous appearance than in the book. He is tall, gaunt, rat-like. Max Schreck's portrayal of the character is so striking as to set him apart from Dracula, as if he were entirely his own character. Indeed, to date, this is probably the only time that a film has endeavored to portray the vampire so closely to its folkloric roots.
One notable convention that the film adds to the vampire mythos is the effect of sunlight destroying the vampire.

Okay, so far the vampire hasn't changed much. But as we enter the age of the talkies, this is where the fun begins.

1931: Tod Browning directs Universal's adaptation of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Lugosi would define the look of the character on screen. Taking the view of Dracula as a powerful and frightening aristocrat, this film portrays the character as a suave socialite. Gone are any notions of the vampire as a ghoulish or gruesome monster. After the release of this film, the only way to tell someone is a vampire depends on their choice of evening wear.

1958: Christopher Lee appears as Count Dracula in the Hammer Horror series of films. until the eighties, there will be very few vampire movies that do not feature the character. Christopher Lee does not present the character as charming, but rather as a demonic and powerful monster, full of rage.

1979: Frank Langella's portrayal of Dracula is one of the earliest films to throw a distinctly romantic light on the vampire, though at it's core, Dracula is still the villain.

1985: Fright Night. Chris Sarandon plays the vampire Jerry Dandrige, who moves into the house next to a boy who discovers his secret, though no one believes him. This represented an interesting shift in design aesthetics for monster films. Dandrige is very suave, sexy, seductive when on the hunt. But his attractiveness is matched by his horrifying ghoulishness when he reveals what he truly is. He is charming on the outside, grotesquely monstrous on the inside. some inspired makeup and latex effects make this a fairly scary movie. By this point of course, the sexuality of the vampire is in full swing, and it's only a matter of time before their ultimate downfall.

1987: The Lost Boys. Similar to Fright Night, The Lost Boys is about a bunch of teenage vampires. The sexiness is played way up and the horror pushed off to the side.

1992: Francis Ford Coppola directs Bram Stoker's Dracula. The most faithful adaptation of the book ever filmed, with the exception of turning the figure of Dracula from a clearly defined villain to a sexy and love-sick Gary Oldman. The film is much more of a tragic romance than a horror story. Dracula is sympathetic, not frightening.

1994: Interview with the Vampire. This is where it really starts running downhill. Here vampires are entirely the tragic heroes of the story. They are sad, weepy immortals who have known more love and loss than a human can see in one lifetime. Take a moment here and think back to the beginning of this list. See how far we've come? It's all a very natural progression, yet side-by-side, these vampires are nothing like Count Orlok, or the early folklore that inspired him. But, nevertheless, they are still vampires. Attention is still drawn to their unnatural existence, to the fact that they are undead creatures that feed on the blood of the living.

1998: Blade. Wesley Snipes plays the Dhampir vampire hunter, Blade. In this movie, vampires are treated as normal people mutated by a virus.

of course, by this time we are also seeing vampire comedies, like Once Bitten. Characters like Count Chocula appear on cereal boxes, and on Sesame Street the Count teaches children to . . . count. By now, vampires are only considered scary because they're supposed to be. What was once a real fear of the possibility of something sneaking into your room at night and draining your life away, is now just a laughable joke. Even in Blade, an action movie meant to show vampires as at least dangerous, presents them in a heavily watered down style. Our public perception of the vampire is only that of a person with pointy teeth and a strong nightlife.

2003: Underworld. I was very excited when this movie came out. I mean, vampires versus werewolves? awesome! then the movie comes out and the vampires don't ever do anything supernatural and the werewolves only transform a couple of times into gorillas. It's really just a guns-blazing gang war movie that sells itself as a supernatural thriller. Meanwhile the super sexy vampires are once again downplayed into just pretty people that go out at night in tight leather and act angsty.

Let me take a moment to talk about Don Henrie (aka the most infantile and pathetic excuse for a human being since Paris Hilton). You see, vampires are so popular that young people want to be them. That's understandable. The World of Darkness series of roleplaying games provide for some fun escapism in a world where you can be in control. but as with many things, some people just take it too far. People like Don Henrie, who go so far as to tell people that they really are vampires. The saddest part is that they may even believe it themselves. They claim that "Real" vampires are just normal people who "feed" on other peoples "energy," because that's a definition that conveniently makes it possible for people to call themselves vampires.
What's that? You admire a certain creature of mythic folklore, but there's no way you could ever emulate that mythic creature because it isn't possible for it to really exist? Well, just claim that "Real" vampires don't adhere to the folklore. The folklore isn't true, because that's not what "Real" vampire is. It's the same thing with Wiccans (read: retards). "Real" witches don't actually have real magic powers. "Real" witches are in touch with the nature goddess. It's the same kind of thing. "I could cast a fireball if I wanted to but the spirit goddess would send it back to me so I can't. But I totally could if I wanted to." Oh but you can cast spells that may or may not influence luck and good health by consulting the nature goddess. I'm sorry to break it to you but that's called a prayer. You're not casting spells, you're praying. You don't have magic powers, you're not special.
I'm sorry if I offend any Wiccans that might be reading this, but I just have a hard time buying something as a religion when it was just made up by some guy in the fifties in order to sell books and make money (scientology).
I understand why they do it. Everyone suffers insecurities. Everyone wants to be special. Vampires have been recast in the public eye as being powerful, sexy, immortal. Everyone wants that, and hey, maybe if you were a vampire, the other kids wouldn't tease you so much. And even if they do, you can take it, you're a powerful vampire after all. People like Don Henrie, who are such worthless bottom feeders, desperately craving the attention and admiration of others, dress up in goth clothes and take high-angle photos of themselves in pale makeup and call themselves vampires so that they can feel sexy. And if someone comes along and points out that they can't be vampires because they aren't undead ghouls, well, those people just don't know about "real" vampires.

While we're on the subject, let's talk a little about Vlad Tepes, and Elizabeth Bathory. Whenever the subject of vampires comes up, we have to give consideration to these "historical" examples. This always annoys me. I mean, the connection is there, sort of. Dracula, for example, is not based on Vlad Tepes. Bram Stoker had already written most of the book when he first heard of the real Dracula. He just appropriated the name and some of the backstory after hearing tales of the famous count's atrocities. Because of this, people assume that the character was in fact meant to be the very man, and refer to Vlad Tepes as a "real life vampire." Tepes was not, a vampire. He was a brutal dictator, whose only connection to the mythos is in his name.
But what disturbs me more is Elizabeth Bathory. Bathory's connection to the vampire legend is a lot more apparent, but equally irritating. The Bloody Countess murdered hundreds of innocent girls in Hungary, using her victims' blood as a beauty treatment. Because of this she is often referred to as a vampire. Let me repeat that; she tortured and murdered innocent girls for a beauty treatment. Real people really died. Hundreds of real girls died, alone and in pain and agony at the hands of one of history's most sadistic serial killers. And now she's romanticized by being called vampire, as though she were some sort of supernatural contrivance, rather than the sick, wretched murderer that committed those crimes. It's an insult to the memory of her victims.

Where was I?

2007: 30 Days of Night. Vampires haven't been completely ruined yet, despite the efforts of garbage like Underworld. 30 Days of Night attempts to put some of the fear back into them when a group of feral, monstrous vampires invades a town in Alaska that experiences a month of darkness.

2008: And then we come to the final insult, Twilight. Here we see the ultimate downfall of vampires. From what was once a nightmare monster that sneaks into your home at night and steals your life away, we come to an awkward pretty-boy who sneaks into your room at night and glares at you while you're asleep because that's how you show how much you love someone. Something that was once the terror of the night is now a cute boy for twelve-year-old girls and middle-aged housewives to have unhealthy sexual fantasies about. The vampire has had his power stripped away from him, to be subjugated into a sexual object. I believe the word for that is rape.

so there you have it, the progression of the vampire from soul devouring and monstrous to glitter-studded and rainbow fabulous. It's and understandable progression when you really think it through, but nevertheless, look at the beginning of that timeline and then skip to the end and it seems like an impossible leap.

Pessimistic as all this may seem, all hope is not lost for the vampire. The same year that brought us Twilight also brought us the brilliant Swedish film, Let the Right One In, a hauntingly beautiful and frightening vampire film.
Vampires are more popular now than ever before, and that means an over-saturated culture of vampire novels, television series, movies, etc. Therein lies the tragedy. Even with the occasional gem like Let the Right One In, for every one of these there is a Twilight to counter it. And too much is not a good thing. But some comfort can be taken in the fact that people have a short attention span, and soon something else will become really popular and we'll all forget about vampires as the market is flooded with something else that we'll eventually get tired of.
So, that new Star Trek movie was pretty successful . . .

Wolverine

2009-06-12T11:19:00.000-04:00

This summer is shaping up to be rather disappointing for movies. I mean, Watchmen and Star Trek were both fantastic, but the rest of this summer's releases are shaping up to be one disappointment after another. This is a summer that would bring us a movie exclusively about everyone's favorite mutant, Wolverine, a new Terminator movie that finally shows us the future that's been talked about through three other films (with Batman as John Connor no less), a new Harry Potter, and the much-awaited sequel to Transformers. And you know what, after the aforementioned release of Watchmen and Star Trek, I just don't care about any of the others. I mean, I should have been excited about Wolverine, having been a long time fan and having read the amazing Origin comic, but the more I heard about the film as it was nearing release, the more I felt like I just didn't care. I finally saw when visiting my parents and they took me to see it.
I wasn't expecting Wolverine to be a great movie. I was going in with hopes that it at least wouldn't completely suck. I hoped for too much.
Ultimately, my disappointment with this movie is that with a character like Wolverine, who's been portrayed so well in so many great comics, the producers had a chance to make a great film on the same level as Dark Knight or Watchmen, or at least a fun movie like Iron Man, but instead they opted to ignore everything that made Wolverine popular to begin with and instead made a bland, by-the-numbers forgettable action flick with shockingly bad effects, godawful character derailment, and plot holes so massive they threaten to swallow the entire film industry into a quantum suck singularity.
where to begin?
If you've read Origin, than you know the kind of rich, heartbreaking and dramatic story of Wolverine's birth and early childhood; how he came to develop his powers, how he lost touch with his humanity and became the ultimate badass we all know he is.
The trailer shows clips of this being covered in the movie, so it must be in there right? Sure, you get a glimpse of little James in the opening five minutes, plenty of time to develop all the character progression from the book.
What about the shots him fighting in WWII? That looked awesome! It sure does, for all of the six seconds of screen time dedicated to it.
So after the opening credits we see that Wolverine and his brother Sabertooth (who's now just a big guy) are part of an elite mutant squad working for the government under Stryker. Together with Ryan Reynolds they are searching for bits of Adamantium (foreshadowing anyone?). Wolverine abandons the team when he's asked to go too far, abandoning his brother as well, who's gotten too out of control.
Wolverine goes into retirement for a few years in Canada, hooking up with some woman. We're told she's a schoolteacher in one scene so that we can have just a little bit of sympathy for her, since their relationship is completely undeveloped and uninteresting.
Sabertooth comes back and kills Wolverine's lover, spurning him to join Weapon X and get the Adamantium skeleton so he can take Sabertooth down.
Let me take a moment to talk about something that always bugged me with the X-men movies. Hugh Jackman was well cast as Wolverine, but we never saw him appear as savage, as feral and animalistic as the character is often seen to be in the comics. Wolverine is a wild animal, loyal to his team but full of seething rage and vicious fury. In the movies he's more of just a rebel and a bad boy. He's James Dean with knives. That's another thing, knives. In the comics Wolverine's claws have always resembled, you know, claws. They're thin and razor sharp and pointed; claws meant for stabbing and shredding, lending to the ferocity of his character. In the movies, they just look like really thick knives that are too big to fit into his forearms as they're supposed to.
So, going into this film I'm thinking "hey, it's his origin. We're going to see the whole Weapon X thing, the way he lost his memories and his grasp of humanity." And all through the movie we hear Stryker going on about how the adamantium bonding process will destroy his mind, turning him into an animal, an unstoppable, uncontrollable killing machine. He's the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice.
He goes into the vat, we see the adamantium bonded to his skin, nearly killing him. Then he emerges, and he's exactly the same as he was before. There is never any change in his character or personality throughout this entire mess. He's always just a bike-riding rebel with a leather jacket and switchblade, I mean knives, I mean claws. Anyway, he escapes the facility, running naked into the woods. We never see the Weapon X gear, the training program, the mental manipulation that would cost him his memories and his humanity. He just runs off naked so that the ladies in the audience get a good look at Hugh Jackman's ass. Then Stryker talks about how they have to kill him, because that was apparently the plan all along: spend millions of dollars to make him un-killable, then we'll kill him. He sends Agent Zero, a mutant who's entire power revolves around being a perfect shot with guns, to do the job. then he tells some other guy how an adamantium bullet is the only thing that can bring Wolverine down now (silver bullets and holy water notwithstanding). He explains this immediately AFTER sending out the gun guy to kill him, without the aid of said bullets. So, yeah.
Wolverine takes shelter in an old couple's barn. They take him in and give him clothes and a motorcycle. We're then treated to the single most horrendous scene in the entire movie. Wolverine is cleaning up in the bathroom when his claws unexpectedly pop out, looking like they were CG'd on by the same team that handle's all of the Sci-fi channel's movies. Not surprising, since the director's only previous credits include being an actor on Sci-fi channel original series Stargate; just the person to helm Fox and Marvel's flagship franchise.
Wolverine then proceeds to wave his shiny new claws around, comedically slicing through everything in the bathroom, as though the claws have all the slicing power of a lightsaber. I don't care how sharp your knives are, they don't just cut through steel pipes by touching them.
After the pain of this scene ends, Ma and Pa Kent get killed by pursuing agents and the action continues. Wolverine goes on his quest for revenge against Sabertooth and Stryker, leading to poorly portrayed cameos from every mutant they could find, including Cyclops, Emma Frost, The Blob, Gambit and even Will. I. Am. That's right, they made up a part just so they could have a pop star in here. "Next week on Wolverine, special musical guest, Evanescence!"
Gambit gets about two minutes of screen time, with no accent and no reason to even be here.
Finally we get to the big climax, wherein Wolverine and Sabertooth temporarily team up to fight Deadpool, who has been enhanced to have a combination of several mutants' powers (apparently gained from their DNA samples, I guess mutant powers are an STD), including Wolverine's healing, Will.I.Am's teleporting, freaking laser eyes from Cyclops, and best of all, katana claws! Seriously, he has unbreakable sword's that retract into his arms. Claws are bad enough, but how the hell does he bend his elbows?!
The movie ultimately ends with Wolverine losing his memories by being shot in the head with an adamantium bullet.
so that's it, Wolverine's very own, lazy, generic, bland, surprisingly bloodless, uninspiring movie. He's the best there is at what he does. And what he does isn't very nice. And neither is this movie.

Stay Alive

2009-06-10T10:03:00.002-04:00

This is a little old, but I was just thinking about this one yesterday. Meghann has a movie called Stay Alive. It's a horror flick from a few years ago that you might get a kick of.

Stay Alive is one of those gloriously awful movies, which I can best compare to the Dungeons and Dragons movie in that it somehow manages to be a fun little flick despite completely and utterly failing on almost every conceivable level. It was terrible, but I actually kind of enjoyed it.
Alright so it starts out with a group of Gamerz getting their hands on a pre-release copy of a totally rad new game called Stay Alive. It's all over Game Informer so this movie's totally credible. The Gamerz are all a great textbook example of how Hollywood loves and yet completely fails to understand geek culture. If Hollywood is to be believed, than all gamers are totally into sports, pot and wearing polo shirts with their collars popped up. And here you've got the perfect group; the average guy (our main hero), the hardcore stoner pothead, the Chick (she's a really hot gamer who's too cool to hang out with nerds but doesn't have anyone else she can relate to, also she's a goth), and of course there's the bro, played to collar-popping excellence by Frankie (Malcolm in the Middle) Muniz. He's the totally 1337 gamer kid of the group, who wears his visor sideways and upside down and his collar up because he's just too l33t for social norms.
God, I love Halo.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right.
So they pop in the game on their alienware laptops (see, they're totally gamers bra) and the title screen comes on, Stay Alive. It's a first person shooter where you customize your character and the goal is just to be the last one alive I guess, as you wander through this mansion haunted by the ghost of Elizabeth Bathory, apparently.
In order to start the game, they have to read an incantation aloud, thus summoning the spirit of Elizabeth.
The issue with the CG in this game is tricky. Hollywood just doesn't get how video games work. The problem here is that the CG is actually really good, but that's the problem with all movies about video games: the CG is too good. These in-game graphics look as good as a fully rendered cinematic. This film is particularly egregious. The CG at times borders on photo-realism, but intentionally shies away from actually being really good to maintain that it's a game. So, it's not good enough to be great CG for a movie, but too good to be believable CG for a video game. Obviously they can't make the CG too bad or the audience will think it's just low quality effects, but by making it too good they rob the film of its credibility.
So it's not hard to guess what comes next. The gamerz play a few levels and then the next day they start dying off one by one in mysterious circumstances that mirror the way that they died in the game.
The police get involved and start investigating the video game as a lead. One of the cops goes to his local Gamestop and interrogates the clerk, who is portrayed ( I am not exaggerating) like a fidgety, low-level meth dealer who tries to hustle the cop as he walks into the store, offering to totally hook him up with an FPS just to take the edge off. But the cop doesn't have time for this scruffy, game peddling scumbag, brushing him off and leaving. Also the dealer (clerk) seems to have uncanny awareness of the film's plot, randomly (and I mean randomly) saying some line about how a game is an extension of the mind of it's creator(?). "You wouldn't want to play a game by Charles Manson would you?" he asks.
Meanwhile, our intrepid heroez are on a their own quest for info. They find an ancient book, The Malleus Demonium ("The Witches Hammer"). Apparently the Malleus Maleficarum wasn't cool enough for them so they changed the title. It's okay, no one will notice. Besides, viewers are morons.
During their research, more research as the producers seem to have done, they discover that Elizabeth Bathory apparently moved to Louisiana over 200 years ago to buy a plantation. Considering she died in Hungary around 400 years ago, she would have been pretty old when she moved here. But that's not important.
They also discover the address of the game's developer and go to talk to him. That's right, the game's one developer. Because Hollywood seems to view the game industry as a dark and shadowed underworld, wherein games are created, nay, conjured by mysterious wizards out of the aether.
And in the end they have to find and confront Bathory's body, which is ultimately defeated by the power of Alienware!
Anyway, despite all that there is some genuinely fun and novel stuff in this movie. There are quite a few really creepy scares, during which the use of obvious CG against live action characters makes great use of the Uncanny Valley. Like I said the CG is good, good enough to blend in with the real characters, but just fake enough to maintain that it is actually the enemies of the game made manifest, and the effect is actually pretty damn scary. Especially the design and effects work on Bathory, who is distinctive, menacing and terrifying. At the end She's done with a blend of live action and CG that makes her even more horrific.
So, yeah, it's a great example of a pretty fun and scary horror movie that just fails on its grasp of history and understanding of the video game industry and culture.

Star Trek

2009-06-10T10:03:00.001-04:00

The story:
I was surprised that the story didn't elaborate on what was set up in the prequel comic (though apparently the comic came after the movie was finished). The buildup for the main villain was only just touched on in the film. But then, this film isn't about the villain, it's about the heroes. It's about the origin of the crew.
Okay, I know what you're thinking, "But the crew didn't come together that way. Their too young. That's not how it happened." Yeah, they change things a lot. This story is set in an alternate timeline, created when the main villain comes back through time from the Picard era and causes drastic, irreparable changes. Changes that effect the characters and how they come to be together.
So they basically just hit the reset button. Star Trek's done that a million times before right? Yes, but this is different. This time they're not using time travel as a means of maintaining the status quo, but as a means of upsetting it. This alternate continuity means that anything can happen and all bets are off. We are no longer bound by the inevitability of what we already know WILL happen, but the possibility of what could happen.
The main canon still exists, but this one will exist simultaneously, and we get to see how it reflects what originally happened. A lot of this movie hints at destiny and what that means in the Trek universe.

The characters:
The best part of this film is that every character gets a moment to shine. Unlike the original series and movies, where all the characters were just Idealized archetypes, and everyone that wasn't a doctor, a captain, or a vulcan, were basically useless, this time they all have a unique voice and purpose. Even Checkhov gets his moments.

First of all, Kirk is about 25 in this movie, with Spock and McCoy both older. So how old do they have to be before they're not "too young."
Kirk: this is not the kirk that you know, not exactly. This Kirk has had a drastically different life, brought on by events at the beginning of the film. This kirk is a lot more hot-headed, and a lot more cocky and agressive. He has a major problem with authority.

Spock: Zachary Quinto is an amazing spock and this film is really about Spock. He's dealing with a lot of repressed rage throughout the film as a result of him being torn between his need to be accepted as a Vulcan and his love for his human mother. He tries to maintain his cold logic but his emotions are always just beneath the surface. We see how he's had to deal with being rejected by other vulcans his whole life and what that's done to him. At one point Kirk has to provoke an emotional response from him and Spock lets him have it. He kicks Kirk's ass hard.

McCoy: This was possibly the most standout performance of the film. Not much more to be said beyond the fact that Karl Urban captures all the essence of a younger DeForest Kelley.

Uhura: Uhura gets more to do in this one film than she ever did in the entire series and subsequent movies. She's a lot more interesting and we even get to find out her first name.

Scotty: Simon Pegg is awesome in this. He does a great, distilled essence of Scotty. He's funny, energetic, and a brilliant engineer.

Sulu and Checkhov: Sulu is the Pilot. I never really got the distinction between Sulu and Checkhov before. I always thought they were like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This time it's made clear that Sulu is the Pilot and Checkhov is the navigator. Checkhov has a lot of wonderful little accent gags (he seems as though he's still learning English), and he is shown to be a navigational prodigy. He's a mathematical genius. Sulu is an ace pilot and expert Fencer.

The effects:
Okay, I love the new ship design, and the new warp effect, and of course, the CG is flawless. But these days, amazing CG space effects are a given. The only disappointment here is that we never get any really great glamour shots of Enterprise. Most of the time we only see it whizzing by really fast, or really close up. All the action is too fast and intense to follow what's supposed to be going on, a problem all too common in modern action movies. If you want to show us something amazing, let us actually see it. Shaking up the camera to make it look more intense is just lazy. Also JJ Abrams loves lens flares. Even when Kirk is running through a cave underground on a deserted planet, there are still the same amount of intense lens flares seen on the bridge of the ship. But that's really just a superficial issue.

Finally, this film makes me mourn for Picard and the Enterprise E. I was so hoping for a cameo of at least one of those characters, but it never happens. And that's it for the Next Generation Crew on the big screen. Their day is truly done and I guess we'll never again get to see the Enterprise E grace the silver screen. I think that's really the saddest part of this otherwise optimistically great film. Otherwise, it's so great to see new Star Trek stuff again. Go see the movie already!

Okay, I forgot to mention two other issues I do have with Star Trek. The first, a slight issue, as was pointed out in an article I was just reading (and something that bothered me even in the theater) is the handling of the Kobayashi Maru. it doesn't ruin the movie, but it is a little annoying. I had always imagined that Kirk cheated the test by inserting some kind of loophole that allowed him to win. But instead, as the article put it, he simpy inputs a cheat code that turns all the klingons into klingoffs, and then acts like a cocky jackass about it, as if it's the most clever thing ever. Mind you this doesn't ruin the movie for me. It's handled lightly and segues into some other really great moments. But it is a bit of a let down.
It's also been pointed out in other reviews that one of the other things that makes this such a great movie is the humor. Almost all the other star trek movies absolutely fail at comic relief. It usually feels forced and awkward.
The one thing that really let me down about this film though (again not something that really detracts from the overall film but just something missed) was the exclusion of the Enterprise's construction. The very first teaser for the film was this amazing montage of the iconic vessel under construction, giving us this incredible sense of scale. I was expecting the ship's construction to be an entire subplot for some of the film. We'd get to see some of the interiors still being built, some more shots of workers walking around on top of it, and how the hell do they get it into space? But instead we get the one wide shot of kirk looking at the ship being built in the distance, and then it skips ahead three years and the ship is already in space with no explanation as to how it got there (what a copout). So yeah, it's not a perfect movie, it doesn't have everything I wanted. I had also hoped for more of a sense of exploration and wonder instead of just a lot intense action and things going boom. But that's okay, cuz lots of things go boom in a really big way.

Twilight

2009-06-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

Now I shutter. Now my soul is wrenched from my body, to be twisted and bent. I am drained. I am a shell. I am a dried husk of a man once held incorruptible by the strength of my convictions. Alas! For the woeful sorrow of my shattered mind weeps unto itself in mournful tears for the loss of its facilities, the stretching of the tenuous threads of intellect to the very breaking point. For I have born witness to such wretched things. Out of my naive curiosity, and yes, as victim of my own sense of self righteousness, my own moral and ethic sense of duty, of honesty and of obligation, I have seen that which must surely devalue the mind and lay bare the dumb, instinct-driven creature which lies waiting beneath it.

I have seen Twilight.

To preserve my own sense of self worth, allow me to recount the reasons why, and explain that I did not do so without a great measure of reluctance. As I opened the envelope in which was sealed the evil disc, a visible shutter coursed through my spine. One look at the thing as I slid it toward its unsuspecting receptacle sent such chills through me, and I was tempted then and there to reseal the vile thing in the Pandora’s box which unleashed it, and send it screaming back to the hell that spawned it. But yet I persevered, steeling myself for what would await me.
Why did I do it? Why did I put my mind through such punishment. Well, for the most part, I did it for laughs. I thought to myself, ‘I really ought not to condemn and decry a work of fiction and it’s fandom without some kind of firsthand experience, (even though my researches had already given me ample fuel for my outrage and seeing it firsthand really, in the end did no more than reiterate all which had enraged me before), and besides it’ll be good for a laugh.’
Of the last I was not entirely wrong. At first, there were laughs. The first half hour of this train wreck was so unabashedly awful that, at times, I was not entirely unconvinced that it was not the intent of those involved to make a self-parody.
Okay, let’s take a look at this. Though surely the act of recollection for the sake of writing this is only going to add to my overall detriment.
The movie (I’m not using the word “film” here. Ever.) begins with a deer wandering through a dark forest on an overcast day, because it’s always overcast in whatever the hell town this was set (somewhere on the west coast. Washington?). You can tell it’s a cloudy and overcast day because even though the deer is being filmed in such bright sunlight that the film appears oversaturated and a little grainy, the effects wizards behind this have conveniently placed a grey filter over the entire scene. We see the deer spooked by something and it goes running off, only to be caught by one of the movies protagonists. Because these “vampires” (I really hate using that word) don’t feed on humans. Then it cuts to shots of Phoenix where we see the pale heroine of our story whining about how her mom is moving away with her new boyfriend and she has to go stay with her dad in Washington. And she’s really depressed about it.
Then we’re treated to a lot of quick cuts of her traveling and suddenly we’re in her new town. Her dad (who she has a mild disdain for, for no apparent reason) gives her a truck he bought from the mystical Indian tracker friend of his (who apparently turns out to be head of the local werewolf clan in the next book, because, you know, they’re Indians).
She goes to school, where she is greeted warmly by the local students (all of them embracing and cheerful toward her) because she’s new and she’s really pretty and really great. And everyone loves her. And yes, all the boys love her. And yet she still whines about how she’s not fitting in. But we never get to see how she ‘isn’t’ fitting in. We also never get to see any of the other students beyond the first time they’re introduced. We see her first day of school, (by the way, everyone is incredibly pale). We see her make new friends. Then, while they are all chatting it up in the lunch room, in walk the mysterious Cullen family. “Who are they!” she asks her friend coyly. “They’re the Cullens.” The friend lists them off as they stroll into the lunch room, all of them more pale than the already corpse-like cast, with hair dripping with so much styling gel they look like plastic action figures. Seriously, all “vampires” apparently love to visit the salon.
So the Cullens are introduced with Edward last. “That’s Edward Cullen” says the friend. He’s important so he can only be referred to by his full name.
So they have biology class together. Bella enters the room and a fan catches her hair as Edward glares at her. I kid you not, the camera slows down and focuses on her with her hair blowing seductively in the breeze with romantic music playing. Granted, the point is apparently that the fan blows her scent his way, but I still laughed uproariously the first time. I mean Seriously! Then she sits next to him and he glares at her menacingly through the whole class!
Shortly thereafter, the laughs begin to fade out and I don’t think I need to go into detail on the whole movie.
A couple things that stick out though.
Edward yelling at her for being clumsy (the only character flaw the author thought to give her).
Edward standing in her room and glaring at her while she sleeps. I don’t mean watching, I mean glaring.
They actually took the “I don’t like sand” line from Star Wars EP II and used it here, because we all know how beautifully written that love story was.
The baseball scene! It’s every bit as bad as it was on YouTube. Only now it’s longer.
A trio of evil “vampires” show up in town and one of them fixates on our heroine because she’s so darn special.
And of course there’s the sparkling. Oh God, the sparkling!

So there you go. Twilight: A dark and forbidden romance about glitter sparkle sunshine happy vegetarian vampires with strong Mormon values. Clearly this is highbrow literature at its finest.

Outlander

2009-05-27T23:26:00.000-04:00

So, I just watched this movie, Outlander. Holy hell it's awesome! The premise alone makes it a worthwhile rental: Ron Perlman and Jim Caviezal star alongside John Hurt in this film about a shaved-head space marine who crash lands on earth in AD 709 while hunting a demonic alien monster that killed his family. He then has to fight alongside an army of vikings to defeat this monster reminiscent of dragons.
Let me rephrase that. Jesus and Hellboy team up with vikings to fight alien dragons that crash landed on a spaceship!
Okay, so the premise is amazing, but what about the movie?
That's the thing that really gets me. How did this movie slip through the cracks? I'd heard nothing about this film until it showed up on last week's dvd releases. So my initial thought is, yeah, I have to see this just because the premise is awesome, but it'll probably be laughable in execution, with low budget sci-fi channel effects. Sure, Ron Perlman and John hurt are in it, but that doesn't guarantee high production value. After all, Perlman was in a Uwe Boll movie. So I wasn't really expecting a whole lot.
We got the disc in the mail and popped it in. I had to wait for a couple of the other guys to show up, so we watched the special features. Already I'm immensely impressed. There's no actual making of, but there is a director's commentary, effects tests, and an EXTENSIVE concept art gallery filled with some of the most amazing conceptual work I've ever seen. So, this is already a better dvd release than Dark Knight.
When the film actually starts, I am blown away by the quality of special effects. I mean, these effects are not just admirable for a low budget, indie sci-fi/fantasy film, but are in fact far beyond the level I've come to expect out of the biggest summer blockbusters. This makes Wolverine look like it was produced by Hallmark. From props to costumes to locations, from the high-tech spaceships to viking weapons, this film has the highest quality of production design, with the Moorwen monster set as the bright crowning jewel of the piece, literally glowing in its brilliance.
One of the things I've always loved about Dragonheart was that it was a film made in the early days of CG and the director and art team put a lot of special effort into the creation of Draco as a believable character. The feeling I got seeing the work on the Moorwen was the same feeling I get from Draco. Here is a creature that is truly unlike anything you've seen on screen before, brought to life in such loving craft that you will be on the edge of your seat waiting for him to reappear on screen.
I'll say it again, this is truly something you've never seen on screen before. That is a claim that Cloverfield boasted highly of, and many critics granted to it, but ultimately fell short of delivering. While many hailed the creature effects of Cloverfield as being so indiscribably unique, the actual creature that you were treated to mere glimpses of, was in fact well within the realm of description, and was not so alone in the cinematic world with The Host released within close proximity. But here, we have a monster that really is unique and wonderful.
I won't gush about the story or the writing quite as much as the visuals, but only because it is the quality of the visuals that go the furthest to sell this film for me. The story does at times adhere to some classic cliche's of sci-fi and fantasy action flicks. There's a "setting the trap" scene. There's the outsider being accepted by the native culture. There's the bumbling Christian priest that manages to find his way into every medieval monster movie in order to be eviscerated by the monster, in this particular case in a scene that almost perfectly mirrors the one in Dragonslayer. There's the obligatory explosion (though this results in only making the monster ten times more pissed off AND on fire). But the story still manages to rise above the all-action-all-the-time expectations I had from the film. There is a wealth of character development in the hero, played by Jim Caviezal, a disillusioned soldier who is plagued by the guilt of not only wiping out an innocent (and possibly sentient) race, but also of provoking a survivor of said race to butcher his family. Also, he's not just an alien that looks human, but rather he actually is human, as earth is explained to have been a failed colony that didn't take. There's a great scene where he first emerges from his crashed ship, speaking an alien tongue, and uses a device to implant the language and cultural history of the local Norse people directly into his brain. This is not a comfortable process, and Caviezal lets us know with a subtle wincing sense of anticipation.
The rest of the story also follows to some extent the story of Beowulf. There's John Hurt as King (H)Rothgar. There are also familiar names like Wiglif, Unferth, and even Boromir (who happens to be the jolly drunk bald warrior that, like the Christian priest, seems to just wander onto the set of every movie about Viking warriors).
There's the battle between a monster and it's mother, with the monster's arm torn off in the end. I love that the mead-hall has a tree growing in the middle of it, a reminder of the tale of Sigurd.
The acting in this film is superb all around. Caviezal is a great and accomplished actor with both Edmond Dantes and Jesus under his belt. Ron Perlman is even better as a Viking than he is as Hellboy. And John Hurt delivers a solid and memorable performance as well.
Over all a great Viking movie, a great Sci-fi action movie, and an even greater monster movie. Go rent it right now.

Outlander Review by Kurios

2009-05-27T12:09:00.000-04:00

I saw the movie Outlander today and it was awesome, including the special features.

It's about a space marine who crash lands in 400-something AD in Norway. He is taken to a Viking village when he is mistaken for the one responsible for massacring a neighboring village. He tells them a "dragon" (that is, an alien monster) is the one who destroyed the village and after a while manages to convince the vikings to join him in hunting it before it kills everyone.

I heard absolutely nothing about it on any website, television ad, or friends. Michael (link to his review is at the bottom) merely said "it's aliens vs vikings" and I accepted it as nothing more than an action flick. How wrong I was.

First of all, we checked out the special features. They included a lot, including a commentary, animatics, CGI tests, and production art. The last one was what we mostly cared about. Now, this wasn't just a poster or two with some stills thrown in, this was wonderful. It had fully rendered set designs, backgrounds, creature, costume, and weapons designs. Not only did they have beautifully detailed paintings showing scenery (along with three different shots of the same alien landscape under different lighting) but they included a sculptured model of the alien and several props. Everything was of the highest quality.

The movie's CGI was really good. Instead of a Lucas-esque approach where actors are standing around in a green screen warehouse, this movie focused on using actual locations and tangible props where they could. There are maybe a couple instances where the CGI is slightly off, but that is only if I want to be nitpicky. The movie has a wonderful sense of atmosphere, and details to lighting in different settings looks amazing.

The monster is bioluminescent and has neon green blood. Instead of the glowing pinks, blues, and greens looking like black-light paint from a Schumacher flick, they light up at appropriate times and allow illuminate the skin and bones surrounding the patterns used to attract prey like a deep-sea fish. There are times the blood appears too bright, but it's so...pretty if I may use the word to describe such a thing, that it isn't too striking to the setting.

This moving perfectly blends its Norse setting with a sci-fi story. The space marine never mentions space, aliens, or planets, but opts for "farther up north," "dragon," and "islands." The spaceship is later used to make swords, halberds, and axes, and while only the king sword is shown in all its glory, the rest can be viewed in the production art. Also, humans are apparently a seed colony, so there isn't the question of "well, why is he humanoid?" A real nice subversion of movies featuring people learning techniques on-the-spot (Matrix immediately springs to mind) is that when Kainan, the space marine, hooks up to a device in order to learn Norse (English for the viewers obviously) and about Earth's history, he is visibly very bothered and uncomfortable. Imagine a glaucoma test anxiety times ten. It also makes his nose bleed, which seems to be traditional for brain-use problems, and the rush makes him get sick below screen.

Like I said, I thought this was just going to be an action flick ala Aliens vs Predator or something. Also as I said, I was wrong. This movie has really great action, and a couple huge explosions, but that isn't the main focus. It takes the time between attacks to develop the characters, some more than others, but almost all the main and supporting have enough development that you actually care about what happens to them and wonder what fate is going to wait them before the movie's end.

It's quite long at almost two hours, but it's certainly worth it. I saw it on a HDTV and can't wait for its Blu-Ray release to see it again in order to witness every little mark on the alien's skin and tendrils as it tears through the village. I didn't find the character developing parts to be too slow, and the amounts of action make up for any down parts. There are also some bits where I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen; not everyone dies at a predictable time. When people do die, it's usually in a cool or wicked way that made me leap to the edge of the couch with an exclamation of shock and excitement.

The production quality is amazingly high for a movie I heard nothing about, and has quite a good cast complete with Jim Caviezel, Sophia Myles, John Hurt, and Ron Perlmen. If you know these people from their other movies, some bits are extra amusing, such as when the Vikings are decrying Christianity when Jesus Christ himself walks in the door. Also, Hellboy and his father fight at one bit.

It's a really great movie and includes some of the coolest concept art I've seen in a while, and it's actually included on the disc. I just hope the Blu-Ray version has even more.

The concept art can also be viewed here.

The Fall

2009-03-17T23:09:00.001-04:00

3.17.2009

Here's a guest review by Meghann from what a kurios blog because I'm too damn lazy to remember to write more reviews. But hopefully I'll remember to get back into it soon.

The Fall

The Fall is a beautiful movie. I got to see it last night in Blu-Ray on a HD TV and it was the only way to see it. It's got a great story within a story. A little girl in a hospital comes across a man who starts telling her a story, and she comes back each following day to hear more of his "epic."

The epic he tells has five men all out for revenge on this Governor. Along the way they meet a few other people who are involved in some way. It's a wonderful fantasy adventure story. Each character is distinct and interesting. The entire story is being made up as the man goes along, and each character is a person the little girl knows.

Now, onto the visuals. There are at least a few motifs, especially oranges, as this is set in California. The entire thing is how the girl pictures it, and completely saturated with every color of the rainbow. The backgrounds are lush, and the costumes are well-designed and cool.

The movie isn't just eye candy either, the story, and the epic, are entertaining as details change based off the little girl's comments or events in real life are reflected in the story. The outside story with the little girl and man is very touching and fun to try and decipher dialogue and events in order to figure out why they are in the hospital and what else is going on.

It's a wonderful film and artistic without being empty and "artsy" with no plot.

Warner Bros. on DC fims.

2008-08-24T07:25:00.001-04:00

Did you hear that Warner Bros. is following in Marvel's footsteps in regards to their upcoming DC movies? A series of strong character origin films to build up to a Justice League movie. This would be great news, except that the suits who run the studio are a bunch of talking calculators who only see numbers and equations and who's final result is only measured in dollar signs. In the announcement they said that they would follow Marvel's model, but they also said that the intention was to capitalize on the success of The Dark Knight by making all their upcoming DC movies "Very dark, very gritty and hyper real." Because that's the only reason that TDK is successful. It's not as though Batman is meant to be dark and gritty, or that the film has brilliant writing and brilliant actors, or that people were brought in solely by the buzz over Heath Ledger's death. No, there's a very specific equation at work here, and that equation is Dark+Brooding+Real=$$$. So expect to see a dark and brooding Flash, a darker and brooding-er Wonder Woman, a dark and brooding Green Lantern, and a darkest and brooding-est Martian Manhunter. Also expect them to not have any superpowers, because super powers aren't "real".
But worst of all is the announcement that made official what I've been hearing rumored for some time: The Incredible Hulk inspired Superman Reboot. My heart sank at this news. I loved Superman Returns so much (It single-handedly changed my views of Superman, made me a fan of the original films and other adaptations and is still what I consider the best superhero film) and I so desperately hoped to see what Bryan Singer would do next, but the internet seems about 60/40 against it and the box office returns were lukewarm. So forget ever seeing Kevin Spacey and Brandon Routh again, and forget Bryan Singer. Instead we can expect to see the man of steel fighting drug dealers and mob bosses and serial killers on the dark and gritty streets of Metropolis in the Superman reboot, because that's what worked for Batman.
Whatever you may think of Superman Returns, I was not a big fan of Superman until "Returns" came out (mind you my brother was and so I was neither ignorant of the comics and other iterations). Since then I've come to love the original Richard Donner films like I hadn't before, and the Bruce Timm animated work, and Alex Ross' work on Kingdom Come and Justice, and Jim Lee and Michael Turner and so many other aspects of the character. And yes, I could see any of these inspiring a brilliant Superman film, but Singer's vision was what helped me discover my love for the comics and the character and I want to see that vision continued. There's so much left to the story of Superman Returns that will now never be resolved.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2008-08-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

This is a dark comed/neo-noir detective film starring Robert Downey Jr. This is one of the single most awesome movies ever. The dialog is hilarious and witty and it breaks so many cop drama tropes and cliches. Downey Jr. plays Harry, a lovable screw up who finds himself running from the cops after a botched robbery, ending up inadvertently landing a role in an upcoming movie. He's flown out to LA where he's introduced to the hilariously mean and snarky "Gay Perry", played by Val Kilmer, a private investigator who is going to teach Harry about being a detective for his upcoming role. They go out on a steakout that ends in disaster when they witness a murder and everything spirals out of control, leaving Harry in the midst of a murder conspiracy, chasing clues, evading thugs and getting his shit wrecked. The whole affair follows the serialized plot of a cheap detective novel as the story moves along, narrated in witty satirical fashion by Harry. Everyone in this movie is pissed off and sarcastic and it's awesome.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

2008-08-19T18:08:00.001-04:00

I just saw this one the other day. It's definitely better than the first, which makes it pretty great, but I can't really bring myself to get excited about it. It took me forever to get around to seeing it because I just haven't felt like seeing it until recently when I discovered the cheap discount theater in my city.
I never actually read any of the books, so my only previous childhood experience with Narnia was the old BBC movies. I was fond of them as a small child but I guess I've never really been a big fan of Narnia. I was excited when the first one came out because I really wanted to see this world re-imagined and maybe now that I have I just wasn't as excited for it the second time round.
But like I said, it was great. It was definitely better than the first, though with a woefully significant lack of Tilda Swinton, save for one brief cameo. This one took on a much more traditional fantasy feel, with a battle involving armored knights and swords and kings and all that you expect out of a classic fairy tale. If you didn't notice all the Jesus metaphors in the first one, don't worry, you'll be slapped in the face with it repeatedly in this one. That said, it doesn't weaken the film in any way. It's not really preach so much as the metaphor is just a lot more obvious.

The Dark Knight (again)

2008-08-12T07:05:00.000-04:00

So I just saw Dark Knight for the third time, and my opinion is starting to shift. It just gets better every time. I finally bought a copy of Batman Begins. I always thought it was good, but not as great as most people. However, having seen it again about nine times this past year, I finally love it as much as everyone else. It's absolutely the best Batman movie, if still not necessarily the best superhero movie. And having seen The Dark Knight again last night, I'm starting to wonder if it isn't the greatest movie I've ever seen, though that's a sentiment likely brought on by the fact that it is new and fresh in mine, and everyone's mind. But it is definitely the best film of the year. As before, every time Heath Ledger is on the screen is when the film is best, and it's a tragedy that we won't get to see him return to the role.

The Quiet Man

2008-08-12T07:03:00.000-04:00

This is my favorite John Wayne movie. Not a western, but a fun romantic comedy set against the gorgeous backdrop of Ireland. It was one of the earliest films to be shot in color with many scenes on location in Ireland. Director John Ford had to fight to get this film made, agreeing to do a western with the same cast first in order to make up for the studio's expected losses from the film he wanted to make.
The Quiet Man starts out with John Wayne as a retired boxer, returning to his ancestral home in Ireland. After accidentally beating a man to death in the ring, he's hung up the gloves for good and run away from his name to live a life of peace in the cottage he was born in.
He starts out as an awkward outsider, returning to the country that had given birth to him, which he left behind when he was so young he can barely remember it. He's a red-blooded American in a country full of customs he doesn't understand.
Early on he meets Mary Kate Danaher, played by the lovely Maureen O'Hara. The chemistry between these two is electric. Here's John Wayne, the epitome of the tough American hardass. John Wayne is the kind of man that every kid likes to imagine his dad is like, or at least I did. Growing up I always thought of my father as a mix of John Wayne and Superman. And here comes Maureen O'Hara, beautiful, strong; the only woman who can stand up to the manliest man in film history. And I defy any man to not be turned on by that accent, which is never so present as in this film set in her native land.
They follow a long courtship full of so much humor and romance and drama. And through the whole affair, O'Hara just pushes and prods and bullies Wayne about not standing up to her boisterous brother, calling him a coward until finally he gets sick of her nonsense, leading to a wonderfully hilarious climax.

Superman Returns

2008-08-12T07:02:00.000-04:00

I loved Superman Returns. It's my favorite superhero film. Like I've said, it made me a fan of the big blue boy scout, and DC comics in general (I always preferred Marvel as a kid). It renewed my interest in the works of Alex Ross and gradually opened the door to a whole pantheon of superheroes for me. The DC Universe is like a mythology, where all the superheroes are like Greek Gods. It's big and epic and wonderful.

The film starts out with Superman returning to earth after a five year journey to the remains of Krypton, in the hopes that he would find traces of his people, and finding that the world has moved on and no long feels they need a Superman. Lois has been heartbroken and has started seeing a new man, even has a kid with him. Discovering this clearly hits the man of steel harder than anything ever has. When we meet the new guy in Lois' life, we see he's actually a really great guy and a great father. By the end of the film you'll feel torn between wanting Superman to be with the woman he loves, but hoping that she stays with the other guy.
Lex Luthor is up to his old tricks, invading the Fortress of Solitude in order to steal it's secrets for another nefarious scheme. Five years in prison have turned Superman's greatest villain into a harsh, cynical and frightening genius. During one of his experiments all the power in Metropolis is knocked out, including a plane that Lois is on. It falls to Superman to once again save the day.
I love the costume in this film. The entire production design is brilliant, but I just love what they've done with the Superman costume for the same reasons I love the Spiderman costume in those movies. It's the same design he's always had, just textured and enhanced slightly. A lot of people complain about the S shield being too small, but I think it's great. This film makes Superman appear graceful and angelic, and even though I'm also fond of Alex Ross' portrayal of a big and mighty Superman, I love this version equally well.

Superman Returns presents Superman in a bigger more magnificent and yet more human way than ever before. It's a beautiful film filled with genuine feeling. And Kevin Spacey is the best Lex Luthor ever. Brandon Routh is an excellent successor to Christopher Reeve filling the red boots. I love everything about the film. It makes me so very sad, the lackluster reception it got, when it deserved so much more, and the hate I see generated for it everywhere I look online. Of course the internet is a hate machine.
I see a lot of people that hate it and lament how it isn't nearly as good as the first Superman Movie. Why, because the characters are treated seriously? Because Lex Luthor isn't just a goofy cartoon? Because Lois Lane doesn't write poetry for a fourteen-year-old girl's Myspace page? Most people complain that there isn't enough action, that Superman doesn't actually fight anything, because there's too much time spent on character development and romance. That's not at all like the first Superman, with it's intense non-stop action packed fight scenes between Superman and . . . what's that? Oh yeah, it's the origin story, and Superman has to stop Lex Luthor from killing millions of people, while spending obscene amounts of time listening to Lois reciting bad poetry.
I love Superman: The Movie, but it's not absolutely one hundred percent flawless. And just because you have an obsessive nostalgic love of that film doesn't mean that this one is garbage for trying to follow in the footsteps of it's predecessor. I think Returns is a worthy follow-up to the Donner films and a thought provoking look at the character of Superman. I'm just sad that so many people can't get past their idealized nostalgia long enough to look at it objectively, and now rumors are spreading of Singer being off the next one. Sure a different take on Superman could be better, or it could be much, much worse. But the one tragic thing is that Singer set this film up as the precursor to what was sure to be an awe-inspiring series of Superman films, which we will now likely never get to see.
Anyway, like I said Superman Returns is my favorite superhero film. It's heartwarming, with beautiful cinematography, the best effects I've ever seen in a superhero movie (I still can't tell where the CG starts and ends) and it takes the character of Superman in places no other director would have had the courage to go.

Donnie Darko

2008-08-12T07:01:00.000-04:00

I do not care for this movie. I don't hate it, or even dislike it really. I just don't generally have any preference for it. There could be a lot of reasons why which may not have to do with the quality of the film itself.
There are five films that appear on the top of every pretentious "I just got into art school and I'm sophisticated and I understand the meaning of things in a way that you don't" kid's list of greatest films. This goes as follows:

1. Donnie Darko
2. A Clockwork Orange
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. The Godfather (Because it's apparently the greatest movie of all time for a million years, bar none, forever. . . EVER. I still haven't see it all the way through so I can't comment, but OH MY GOD the hype! I don't think I've met a single person who's seen it that doesn't say it's the greatest work of cinematic art in the history of the motion picture, and shock and awe that I've not had the spiritual experience that can only be given by this film. Seriously, it can cure cancer. This makes me sad, because now it can only disappoint, and that friends is known as Hype Backlash)
5. some obscure random foreign art film they managed to find online. ("It was all the rage at Sundance, at least among the people in the know, and it's a shame it'll never get the recognition it deserves")

Yeah so, I have a friend who loves, Loves, LOVES this movie. I'd heard a lot of references to it in magazines and on the internet as being some kind of cult classic, and I never heard anything about it when it came out, so I assumed it was from the eighties. I thought it might be something like Evil Dead.
I was wrong.
"You haven't seen Donnie Darko? You have to see this movie!"
Like I said, this guy loved this movie with a passion. Not to mention all the other people at my local college telling me how brilliant it was.
The way I had this movie hyped up, I was going into it with the impression that it would be some kind of mind-altering, thought-provoking, life-changing religious experience that would herald the second coming of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ unto this earth in a shower of glory the likes of which you've never imagined! The sky will rain fire and those loved ones long gone will rise again from the earth. Nations will be united in peace and harmony and, yes, you will get laid every night from now unto the ending of time!
"So what's it about?"
"Essentially, it's about time travel" my friend explained to me. "But it's more than that. It's deep and meaningful and thought-provoking."
Okay, so I'll check it out.
This movie isn't about time travel.
I was feeling under the weather at the time that I actually got around to seeing it, and that's bound to affect a person's judgment, but here are my impressions. Also, it's been a couple of years so I don't remember all of it.
Warning SPOILERS ahead.

Donnie Darko is a messed up kid. He hates his parents. He hates his sister. He has schizophrenia. He hates his school. Do you want to know how much he hates his school? Don't worry, he'll spend the bulk of the movie whining about how much he hates it, and everything else.
He sleepwalks. He sees a scary rabbit named Frank, that tells him that the world is going to end in a month.
His house gets destroyed by part of an airplane.
He whines some more.
He starts dating some girl.
Patrick Swayze is a pedophile.
Donnie sets a house on fire.
Donnie whines some more.
He sees more of Frank the bunny. He starts researching time travel.
He goes to a Halloween party. A guy hits his girlfriend with a car.
Donnie drives off and sees a swirling vortex/tornado off in the distance. His mom's plane is caught in it. The engine is ripped off the plane and falls through the tornado. It hits Donnie's house. Donnie dies.

End of Spoilers

Okay, you should know that I hate depressing movies. There are some movies that I like, but are just so depressing and emotionally draining that they leave me feeling physically exhausted afterwards. Sin City is a great example of this. It's a great film, but I don't care to see it again. Donnie Darko is another example. Like I said, I wasn't feeling well at the time, and then I sat through a gloomy, sad, draining movie. So my initial impressions weren't altogether favorable. Couple that with the extreme hype I had been exposed to and there's no way I could have a lot of love for this movie.
That said, I don't hate it. I get what it's about, what the intention was and I love the question of whether it all really happened or was just a part of Donnie's delusions, or the significance of his sacrifice in order to save those around him. There's a lot of great complexity to this film.
But it's also a long, gloomy movie in which the main character is a depressing and angry kid with mental issues. There is no joy in this film. If this movie were a color, it would be a murky grey.
I guess I can say that yeah, it's a great movie, but I personally just don't care for it. Once was enough.
But Frank the Bunny is awesome though.

The Dark Knight

2008-08-08T22:55:00.000-04:00

So I just saw The Dark Knight. In a word, awesome. But where to begin?
First of all, I'm not going to say that this is the best movie ever like most reviews have done (it's actually ousted The Godfather as number one of all time on IMDB's top 250).
I love the new design for Batman, and I love that it explains why he changes the design.
I'm finally starting to love Christian Bale as Batman. I didn't think Begins was as great as everyone says, and even though he's easily the best Batman in film so far, I still didn't like the film that much. Although it has been growing on me more. I never liked how insistent Hollywood is that everything has to be believable and explained. Batman Begins attempted to take Batman into the real world and make it totally believable, and I prefer the superhero movies that just embrace the characters and designs of the comics. I was weary of the way the Joker would be handled, again because I wanted to see the comics fully embraced.
Now, having seen Dark Knight, I'm sold. This film series may not embrace all the look and style of the comics (I would have loved to see an Alex Ross or Jim Lee style of thing with Batman big and epic and agile), but what they do embrace, and whole-heartedly is the essence of Batman, the character, the ambiance.
This film is dark.
Batman is a detective, a crusader, a vigilante. That's the Batman of this film. This isn't so much a superhero movie as a dark and deeply engaging crime drama. There are mob bosses, dirty cops, idealistic attorneys, a psychotic serial killer and in the middle of it all: Batman. And considering that, I loved it.
As to the Joker. This is what all the buzz is really about. Everyone is raving about how great Heath Ledger is as the joker and I think that this is due in part to the tragedy of his death. But that aside, the truth is that yes, Joker makes this movie. He is definitely the best part of the film. The Joker in this film is a villain easily on par with Hannibal Lecter in the sense that he is both evil, sadistic and yet strangely lovable as a character. You don't want to see him win, you just want to see more of him and his crazy, evil antics. As a character, Heath Ledger is to the Joker what Johnny Depp was to Jack Sparrow. He's funny, crazy, unpredictable. He has no origin story here, no explanation. He has no motive. He is a pure and glorious anarchist and a magnificent bastard. His introduction to the mafia bosses is arguably the best scene in the entire film. Also the scene with the infamous "Why so serious" tagline.
Gary Oldman continues in this film as the best Jim Gordon ever, and I'm really falling in love with Michael Caine as Alfred, especially toward the middle of the film.
Also great is the introduction of Harvey Dent. This film gives us Harvey Dent/Two-Face as a real character with an arc rather than just throwing him in arbitrarily. As the slogan says, you will believe in Harvey Dent.
As to the bad. There are a few moments that just can't work, specifically Batman jumping out of a penthouse window ten stories up without doing anything to slow his fall, yet somehow surviving after he lands on a car. I think they want you to believe that Batman just knows how to properly take a fall, but he takes some ridiculously impossible ones.
Also, even though I said I'm starting to love Bale as Batman, the way he does the voice is kind of silly at times. Specifically in a scene near the end, where he's supposed to be giving this touching soliloquy, but it just comes out comical (to the point that I really almost began to laugh) when . . . he just . . . can't . . . say more . . . than a . . . couple . . . of words in . . . a strangely . . . broken . . . sentence filled with . . . odd gaps of labored . . . breathing. It's like seeing a parody of William Shatner doing Batman, not even the actual Shatner, but the over-exaggerated parody of Shatner. Sure he's taken some damage by this point and would be out of breath, but he doesn't look hurt at all, and he's been doing this to some degree the entire movie. Maybe you should loosen the gear a little bit, Bats.
That's really my only complaints with an otherwise flawless Batman movie. Like I said before, I never thought Begins was as perfect as everyone else seems to, but this time around I'm sold and looking forward to what comes next. Here's hoping they bring the Joker back. Some people may call it disrespectful to Ledger to replace him after such stunning work, but the character lives on. I would love to see someone else take up the mantle and carry on the character in Ledger's style in the next film.

Star Trek The Motion Picture

2008-08-08T03:31:00.000-04:00

I love Star Trek. I grew up watching TNG as a kid and when I reached my jaded teenage years I went into denial about it, which lasted for too long. I recently started going through the movies again, and watching TNG reruns, and falling in love all over again. But mind you Voyager is still rubbish.
There is a lot to love about Star Trek. For one thing, there's Patrick Stewart. For another thing, there's the naval feel of starships. Space is an ocean, and the Federation is the Queen's Navy. And the Enterprise is the flagship of the naval fleet. And warp drive is a strong wind in the sails. When you look at it that way, you can't help but love it.
My favorite of the films is First Contact, because it's the most action-oriented film and the only one with a big, however brief, full-scale starship battle. Plus . . . you know . . . robot zombies in space. And James Cromwell and Patrick Stewart in the same movie!
So going back and watching the older movies again this last year was a lot of fun. I had only seen the fourth and sixth more than once when I was little so I didn't remember anything about the first three, or the much-maligned fifth.
The second and sixth one really takes the naval theme and runs with it. In the commentary for Wrath of Khan Nicholas Meyer even talks about how much he wanted the two films he directed to have a naval theme.
So I was recently in a mood for a classic sci-fi film; I wanted to see spaceships and aliens and exploration. So I got a copy of Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director's Cut.
This is a truly great sci-fi epic in the classical sense.
Now, despite all I was saying about the naval themes, this one isn't like that, and that's what makes it great. The other films are great because of the naval analogy, but in this, Star Trek's first foray into the big screen, there is something different.
The basic premise is that a mysterious, unknown entity is drifting through space, heading directly for earth and destroying anything in it's path. The USS Enterprise has just completed undergoing a refit and James T. Kirk, now an admiral, retakes command of his old ship in order to head out and investigate the mysterious entity.
This film is epic. There's a grand sense of scale and a fantastic theme of wonder and exploration. This film is about the fear of the unknown and going out boldly to face that fear in the midst of the vastness of the universe. Everything in this movie just fills me with a sense of grandeur. It's a beautiful and touching film in all the sense that 2001 is supposed to be, except without the pain-inducing boredom. It is everything that Star Trek was meant to be about, mystery, exploration, and hope for the future. Gene Roddenberry envisioned a bright, utopian future full of optimism and the human spirit, and that can be seen at the heart of the first Star Trek feature.
When the Enterprise is introduced in drydock, it's in a long series of sweeping shots that show off for the first time, the real scale of the ship. Never before or since in a "Trek" movie have we really been given such a connection to the ship, a feeling that here is a vessel, a real ship with the potential to go anywhere, the kind of feeling one gets when looking at a sailboat tied up at dock. The sails are all rolled up, just waiting to be unfurled and the voyage begun. It's a lengthy sequence, but worth every breath-taking moment.
And the effects in this movie are amazing. The main reason for the long drydock sequence was primarily to show off the detail of the gorgeous new filming model of the ship. This movie had an enormous budget for the time and the producers really wanted to show off the effects.
Now, I haven't seen this movie since I was nine, so I didn't remember much about it, besides the ending. I had heard that the Director's Cut included a lot of newly created effects shots, which I was looking forward to seeing. Introducing CG effects into older movies has not often turned out well, with the Star Wars updates resulting in mixed feelings of the "Han shot first" variety. Too often the CG looks out of place or undermines something that was originally there. So I was surprised when I found myself at the end of this movie wondering where the new effects shots were, and whether I had just misunderstood what I'd heard about the Director's Cut. The new effects shots are so well done and so well integrated that if you aren't a die hard fan of the original theatrical release, you'll never even notice them, and if you are, you'll likely be very pleased.
If you're into sci-fi and haven't ever seen Star Trek, this is a good place to start. You don't need to have seen the original series in order to get it, as long as you know the basic premise and who the main three characters are. And honestly, who doesn't know who Kirk is?
So I've found a new classic science fiction adventure film to love, a beautiful and touching epic masterpiece that's full of mystery and suspense and hope for the future.

WALL-E

2008-08-08T00:05:00.000-04:00

What can I say that hasn't already been said about WALL-E? You probably don't need me to tell you that this is a movie about the most adorable little robot you've ever seen. Anyone who looks at him can't help wanting to give him a big rusty hug.
I don't generally get excited or even very interested in Disney animated movies anymore, but as soon as the first trailers hit for this one, I had to see it, and it doesn't disappoint. Just look at that little robot, with his droopy optical sensors, and his boxy body and his pathetically adorable voice. Do you love him? Then you'll love the movie.
What's it about? Well, WALL-E is a garbage cleaning robot, the last of a line of robots designed to clean up the Earth after a giant mega-corporation polluted it beyond repair. Humanity has all left aboard giant luxury liner spaceships to wait for the Earth to be restored.
But who cares! Look at WALL-E! I mean look at him! He's adorable! There's only one reason you're going to that movie theater and that reason rolls around on treaded wheels and plays with assorted junk and debris.
. . . what? Oh, sorry. I started looking up wallpapers of the little guy and got distracted.
Okay, so where was I?
Right, so humanity abandoned Earth, leaving it in the hands of an army of cute robots. Now it's seven hundred years later and all the robots have broken down, except for WALL-E. Over the years he's developed a personality. He spends his days sifting through garbage, organizing it into neat little cubes which he stacks into towering structures, and collecting whatever odds and ends interest him. At night he goes home with his little cockroach friend and watches old movies, dreaming about having someone to share his world with.
Enter, EVE. EVE is a robot sent by the space cruiser Axiom to determine if life on earth is sustainable yet. She's a highly advanced robot made by Apple. She's sleek, shiny, compact, and fully integrated.
WALL-E is immediately smitten. After a tentative first contact with the touchy killing machine, he starts to befriend EVE, until she finds a plant in his home, causing her to shut down and await pickup. While she waits, WALL-E keeps her company. Hilarity ensues. Adorable follows.
A retrieval vessel shows up to get EVE and WALL-E follows. There's a very pretty scene of them traveling through space, and they finally reach the Axiom.
Humans have been cooped up in this ship for seven hundred years, their every need catered to by robots. Needless to say this has had some . . . results. I think there might be some kind of social commentary in this movie but I got to distracted by the sudden onset of even more senselessly cute robots. See if you can spot it, I'm gonna keep watching the tiny little cleaning robot try desperately to clean up WALL-E. It's a battle of cuteness the likes of which you haven't seen since that time you witnessed a puppy trying to wrestle a kitten in a basket full of freshly washed towels while the kitten chews on a teddy bear.
Yeah, you get the picture.
Anyway the captain of the ship finds out it's safe to return to earth, but someone doesn't want them returning. It falls to WALL-E and the misfit robots to save the day.
Hilarity ensues.
Like I said, there's only one reason to go see this movie, but along the way you'll find more reasons to love it. There are some great characters, amazing animation, a witty, if not very subtle, social commentary (if you can stop saying "Aww" long enough to see it, but maybe that's why it isn't very subtle), and, of course, the eponymous huggable robot.

Dragonheart

2008-08-07T15:13:00.000-04:00

I'm having a hard time finding where to begin with this one. It's hard for me to say which is my favorite film of all time, since this is something generally subject to change, and I love a wide variety of films in different genres. My default answer is always Lord of the Rings, because that's the one that really got me interested in film and the filmmaking process. So, push come to shove, my favorite film is Fellowship of the Ring.
This, however, is my second favorite film. Let me try to find the words to explain why.
I've always had a thing for dragons. Although growing up I was never fond of the fantasy genre, one of my fondest childhood memories is of spending a summer with my family at my Uncle's lakeside cabin. My brother and I spent most of our time that summer reading, and we found among some of our cousins' books left in the cabin, The Book of the Dragon, an art book by Ciruelo Cabral (I now have two copies). We read through it together, admiring the breathtaking paintings and becoming entranced by the tales of dragons. This book, to my young mind, was about what dragons really are, from what they look like to how they behave, to who they fought. I was enthralled.
Now, dragons have a very poor history in film. People think of them as a cliche but how many real actual dragon movies can you think of that predate the advent of CGI? As far as I know, there's only one; Dragonslayer. Dragonslayer was a great film, but I had never heard of it until finding it in the back room of my local rental store some years into my teens, at a point where the internet was still something new, and anything old that I'd never heard of seemed like a waste of my time. My brother forced me to watch it because he likes cheap, low-budget movies, and to us this looked like one.
But I digress. My point is that when Dragonheart came out, I must have been about eleven or twelve, the only exposure to dragons in film I had included, I believe, The Hobbit, Stanley's Dragon, and Dragonworld. Two were cartoons and the other was kind of a cute muppet thing.
Jurassic Park had come out recently and I was crazy for this new CGI effects thing. I really miss those days when it was still a new technique and was sparingly used. Almost all the films I can think of that used it back then had a wonderful sense of tension and build up to the big reveal shot of the creatures it was used for. Now we get the flashy effects straight away because everyone is so accustomed to them.
So fresh off the cinematic wonder that was Jurassic Park, I start hearing news about a new movie coming out called Dragonheart. My heart soared the first time I saw a rendering of the dragon. I was utterly astounded. And Sean Connery was to be voicing the magnificent creature. Wow.
Again, I didn't have internet, and even if I did, I doubt it was the kind of spoiler heavy instant news source it is today. The first time I got to see a trailer for this movie was at a theater, an experience I lament the loss of while at the same time find myself unable to resist watching them as soon as they're available online now. I was just so filled with awe and anticipation for this movie.
So, at last when I finally saw the film, I was blown away. That long buildup of teasing moments to the final grand reveal of Draco bursting out of a waterfall, it's one of my favorite moments in movie history.
Draco is magnificent. To this day I think of him as the definitive dragon design. He's unique, yet incorporates everything I think of when I think of dragons. He's mighty, majestic, regal, swift, agile. He's the perfect size and, best of all, he's voiced by Sean Connery. One of my favorite parts is when he unhinges his jaw like a snake to eat Bowen. I remember thinking to myself, "I didn't know dragons could do that!" I was just a kid, not looking at an effect, but looking at a real dragon, brought to life on screen.
And though this film is from the early days of CG, the effects not only hold up spectacularly, they outshine some of the more recent films I've seen. There's a sense of care and devotion that went into the effects of this film, which you don't see as much anymore when a lot of directors just pass it off to post. I think also what makes the earlier CG effects films like this one work is that they only had a small number of creatures to work with. This movie had one CG element, so they were able to focus more on that one element.
Of course, there's more to love here than just Draco. The rest of the cast are all fantastic as well. Dennis Quaid was my original role model of what a knight should be. Pete Postethwaite is just awesome, and adds just the right amount of comic relief with a character who nevertheless brings a great amount of emotional depth.
I love David Thewlis in this film. He gets all the best lines and delivers them with blood-chilling menace.
And of course Dina Meyer as the action girl, who never actually ends up with the hero in the end. I love that the romantic subplot, if it can even be considered to be there, is so subtle and is left unresolved. There's a wonderful chemistry between the two characters, but whether it has any romantic undertones is left up to the viewer to decide.
And, though I don't often comment on the musical score, something must be said of the touching and iconic theme of this film. It's soulful, heartfelt and memorable, and also frequently stolen for trailers of other movies.
There's so much to love about this film, and over a decade later I'm still astounded by it. I have yet to see a better dragon movie (though I am greatly anticipating Peter Jackson's take on His Majesty's Dragon).
I love this film because every time I watch it I'm suddenly a child again, watching with wide eyes as a real dragon comes to life and soars through the sky, and I still believe.

My DVD Shelf

2008-08-06T22:55:00.000-04:00

As I said, I feel that in order to give better reviews, a writer should give his readers a better understanding of what he likes or dislikes, what his tastes are, what kind of person he is. So in the interest of getting to know each other better, I have listed here the entirety of my DVD shelf, with either a brief comment or a full review for every entry. Nothing will be left out.
These are listed here relatively in the order that they appear on my shelf. So, they're not listed in alphabetical order. They're roughly arranged by preference, or genre, or director. There isn't an actual system in place here, I just put them where I feel they belong. . . .
My roommates hate me.

My Shelf

Lord of the Rings Trilogy - There's not much I can say about these films which hasn't already been said, and with better words beyond my grasp of the art of writing. A truly epic masterpiece, a revolution in the genre of fantasy films just as the books redefined fantasy literature. These are the films that solidified my love of movies and movie-making. I had always had in interest in the film industry, but never so much as when I heard that Peter Jackson would be making The Lord of the Rings. Taken as a whole, quite possibly my favorite film of all time. so. . . yeah.

Dragonheart - See the review.

Star Wars Trilogy - You know, the one that counts. Who doesn't love Star Wars? Sure, the Prequels were more than a little lackluster, but there's even some stuff to love in there too, and I'll even get them eventually. And Han shot first!

Peter Jackson's King Kong - I never saw the original King Kong until the day before I went to see Peter Jackson's remake. It was on television the night before and I'm glad I got to see it. There are so many nods and homages to the original that make this film so much more enjoyable. I loved this remake so much. It may be a little on the long side (what's the deal with Jimmy?), and sure, the effects are a little weak in some spots, especially considering it's the same director and effects studio that brought us the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I love it anyway. I love the scary, adventurous re-imagining of Skull Island, the 1933 New York. This is a very pretty movie, full of rich colors and dazzling special effects, and a truly touching story.

Jurassic Park Trilogy - I love Jurassic Park. It had a similar impact on my love of cinema as LOTR did. It was a film that forever changed the face of creature effects and filmmaking. The sequels suffer slightly from diminishing grandeur, but I love them anyway.

Serenity - If you haven't seen Firefly, drop what you're doing, go buy it (it's only about twenty bucks), watch it, then watch Serenity, then you can come back here.

Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy - Johnny Depp is my favorite actor. This is for the simple reason that when I went to see the first Pirates movie, having heard he was in it and not expecting much out of a movie based on a theme park ride, I was blown away by how amazing the film was. I was especially amazed, as everyone is, by the eccentric and lovable Captain Jack Sparrow. By the second or third time I went to see the movie, someone mentioned how great Johnny Depp was in the film, to which I asked "Where was he?" I had forgotten he was even in it, but was at a loss as to which character he was. Mind you, I'd only seen him previously in Tim Burton movies where he's made up to look like a porcelain doll, but my point is that he's one of the few actors that's actually able to really be someone else in every movie he's in, rather than just be himself in a different hat.
I thought the third one was great. I remember reading a review in Time Magazine, in which the writer complained about how terrible and complicated and confusing the plot was. You work for Time Magazine! If you work for Time Magazine and can't follow the plot of Pirates 3, it's time for you to start looking for another job. Also, Keith Richards is only in the movie for about five minutes, and he barely does anything. I got so sick of hearing all the critics complain about how awful this movie was while also raving about how great and wonderful and profound Richards' performance was. Several of them literally said that he was the ONLY reason to see the movie at all. You know what, he wasn't that great. It wasn't the second coming. Just because your favorite aging rockstar has a five minute cameo in which he (Gasp) sits down in a chair and strums a lute, doesn't make it an Oscar-calibur performance. I get it, he's a rockstar and he's old, and he's in a movie, that's just bloody great. I remember hearing the same thing about Rachel Weisz in Eragon. Just because she's been in a few art films lately, doesn't automatically maker her very presence the scene-stealing lifeblood of the movie. Not that there were any other great performances in it, but my point is hers was just as bland and lackluster as the rest of the film. I'm not saying she's not a great actress, just that she didn't bring anything to film that raised it above a boring lackluster picture.

Indiana Jones Trilogy - There are three things that I think roughly all geeks can agree on; Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Indiana Jones. There's not much else to say about the sheer awesomeness of the whip-cracking, fedora wearing archeologist. These movies define adventure. Look it up. If you type adventure into wiki, you'll get Harrison Ford in a fedora. Yes, even Temple of Doom is great in its own way. Also, Indiana shoots that guy. There's no getting out of that one, Lucas. . . At least until the ultimate special edition, where the guy's sword is digitally replaced with a gun, and Indy's gun is digitally replaced with a radio. . . I need to go lie down.

Merlin - The best adaptation I've ever seen of the Arthurian legend. Sure, there are some inconsistencies, but they are so easily unnoticed amidst the brilliant production design and stellar cast. I love Sam Neill as Merlin, and Miranda Richardson is one of the finest actresses in the business. The way the Lady of the Lake is portrayed in this film is one of the most inspired design ideas I've ever seen.

The Princess Bride - Before Shrek, before The Lord of the Rings, before CGI, there was The Princess Bride. It's a silly, funny fairy tale with some of the greatest characters.

Stardust - This film is great in the same way Princess Bride is great. It's got action, adventure, romance, and a lot of humor. It's a fairy tale love story, with airships and witches in a victorian setting with Robert Di Niro as a tough airship pirate who's not all that he seems. Plus, it's written by Neil Gaiman.

Hogfather - I love Terry Pratchett. He's absolutely my favorite author. If you haven't read any of the Discworld novels, you're really missing out on something wonderful. My favorite characters are Granny Weatherwax, Death, Nanny Ogg, Susan, and Ridcully. Discworld is a satirical fantasy world, full of adventure, laughs, and a lot of philosophy. I had always hoped to one day see a Discworld movie, but the complexity of the books, coupled with the fact that most of the humor is in the text itself, kept that hope a very dim possibility. I was talking about this with a friend of mine who said that he had heard something from someone else about a Discworld movie being made for TV in Britain. I didn't believe it, so I looked it up and found that not only was it happening, but it had already aired and was based on my second favorite book.
I had high hopes for the movie, and was not disappointed. Hogfather is roughly about an assassin being hired to kill the Hogfather (Santa Claus) and Death has to take his place while his, Death's, Granddaughter Susan tries to find out where the Hogfather is.
It's great fun, with a spot-on cast and all the hilarity and philosophy of the novel woven in.

The Golden Compass - When I first heard about this movie, I had mixed feelings. I'd never even heard of the books, but the trailer's just looked really cool. But this was also in the midst of the whole battle between Peter Jackson and New Line over some financial issues with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which was preventing the highly anticipated Jackson version of the Hobbit from going into production. One of the heads of New Line (I think it was Bob Shaye) said he'd never work with Jackson again. Then the trailers for Golden Compass start showing up, with an opening shot of the falling ring turning into the compass, and they are an obvious stab at Jackson. "Take that! We don't need you to make a successful fantasy franchise!" This soured the movie for me somewhat, as I expect it did a lot of people. So when the movie finally came out, my interest had waned somewhat, and I was too busy to go see a lot of movies at the time anyway, so I just never got around to going. And in a way I kind of hoped it would fail, just to stick it to Shaye and New LIne for preventing The Hobbit from getting off the ground. When it finally hit on DVD, I saw it and I liked it. It's not the greatest movie ever, but I find that I like it more and more every time I see it. I mean, there are battle bears in armor fighting in the arctic! That alone is enough to make it awesome, and then here comes Sam Elliot as a cowboy/airsip captain! That's a little too much awesome for one movie.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - I loved this story as a kid and was really excited when I heard about the new movie. It's a little dry at times, but still a great movie, mostly because of Tilda Swinton.

Dragonslayer - If you read the Dragonheart review, I think I said something about the lack of dragon movies. This is of course only counting theatrical films, because no one counts the dozen or so sci-fi channel ones (it makes my skin crawl just mentioning the idea). Dragonslayer is a great dragon movie. The effects were brilliant for their time, and the characters are a lot of fun. There's wizards, and knights, and princesses, and on top of all of it, Vermithrax, the most dangerous dragon in movie history. The film is actually pretty dark and gruesome at times which rounds out the overall light fantasy feel. It kind of makes me think of Disney's Sword in the Stone, but darker. And who'd have thought that Peter MacNicol could be a dragonslayer?

Reign of Fire - This is the third of what I consider to be the three great dragon movies. So you have Dragonheart, Dragonslayer, and Reign of FIre. Great special effects, unique setting, and Christian Bale before he started fighting crime in Gotham. Yeah, this movie's pretty awesome. And pretty grey. It's like the director rubbed ash on all the camera lenses. But since the idea is to convey a sense of desolation with smoke and ash everywhere, this makes sense.

Conan the Barbarian - Arnold in his glory days. I've recently become very fond of Conan, and though the movie is a little watered down from the original stories, it's still a great epic quest of vengeance. I can't think of anyone better suited to play Conan on screen than Schwarzenegger. And James Earl Jones is in one of his best roles in this film. Everything about the first movie is grand and epic. The second one drastically different in tone, becoming rather silly and campy by comparison, but still sort of a fun movie if the mood takes me.
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women!" That is good.

Beowulf - Having read the poem in high school, I'd always hoped someone would do it justice on screen, and was so surprised that it took so long to get it even close to right. The Christopher Lambert version was abysmal. I rented it hoping to see the epic tale brought to life, not knowing what the movie actually was. By the time the characters from this ancient Anglo Saxon poem started eating pot pies and spying on each other with night vision it was like watching a train wreck. I wanted to look away but was too stunned by the horror. The Gerard Butler version wasn't much more satisfying. "Gasp!" you say. "How could he not love this wonderful historical film with lush scenery filmed on location in beautiful Iceland!" Well, I didn't hate it, I was just disappointed. Sure the footage is gorgeous, even though the wind drowns out a lot of the dialog. But I'm not looking for a travel brochure for Iceland. I'm looking for a good adaptation of one of the earliest and greatest epic tales. What I got was a bunch of guys in Norse gear, cursing like sailors, ignoring the original story, and Grendel is just a big dumb guy, all in the name of historic accuracy. Gerard Butler was a great choice for Beowulf, but I'm so sick of all these movies based on classic mythology being neutered to make a historic film. I don't want the "True Story" of Troy, I want Greek Mythology. I really didn't want the "True Story" of King Arthur. And then we get the "True Story" of Beowulf and Grendel and it seemed like all hope was lost for ever seeing the actual myth brought to life.
So here's Robert Zemeckis' take on it, as written by Neil Gaiman. Unlike every adaptation that came before it, this one manages to include the entirety of the original story, from Grendel to Wiglaf to Brecca, to Grendel's Mother to even Beowulf's death in battle against a dragon, all within an action-packed reasonable film length and some of the most amazing animation I've ever seen. So yeah, I prefer this version to the Gerard Butler one. Sorry.

300 - Speaking of Gerard "THIS IS SPARTA!" Butler. This is the most awesomely awesome movie in the history of all things awesome. This entire movie is in all caps and it'll kick you straight down a well!

Transformers - Michael Bay is not the greatest director, but he did successfully bring us the Transformers. Now when you consider that it's Transformers, giant robots transforming into cars and jets and blowing the hell out of things, it's hard to go wrong. I mean, Bay did a great job, but I think even Uwe Boll would find it difficult to ruin this movie. I think Bay gives himself a little too much credit for the success of this film. If you listen to the commentary you get to hear all about how much he loves himself and how awesome he is and how he single-handedly made the entire concept of transforming robots awesome. It's a little much. But hey, it's a great movie anyway. I was especially surprised by how much I loved the Army guys. I was so expecting to be annoyed by these characters, when the first images started showing up of army characters in the desert, I was worried about seeing yet another post 9/11 "Support the troops" "Go America" movie. At the very best I was hoping that the army guys would just get overshadowed by the robots. So, I was shocked to find how much I loved these characters in the movie. I've never been so in awe of the military as during that air strike sequence. It actually made a small part of me want to join the army. I think that's the greatest success of the film, and that is something Bay brings to it.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - This movie is very pretty, but it isn't Final Fantasy. It's a pretty good movie if you just pretend that it doesn't have the Final Fantasy title attached to it. It's a decent sci-fi movie with some great CG animation.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - In this movie the laws of physics are more or less a subtle suggestion. I love that director Tetsuya Nomura addresses this by simply saying It's CG, it doesn't have to obey the laws of reality. If you've played the game, or watched someone play the game, or at least read a summary of the story of the game, you ought to love the film. A lot of people complain that it's confusing, but I don't see how.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - This film is sadly underrated. I love the 1950's sci-fi comic book aspect of this film, and the special effects are amazing. The stylized CG, the entire look of the art direction, the fun characters make this movie great.

The Fifth Element - I used to not like this movie because I was a stupid jaded teenager. It's a great sci-fi, action comedy. It's zany and funny, with lot's of action and explosions, and Milla Jovavich in nothing but bandages. What's not to love?

Die Hard - Bruce Willis is a cop trapped in a building full of terrorists. He fights them and makes snarky jokes, and swears a lot. And gets his shit wrecked a lot. A lot. It's awesome!

Die Hard 2 - Bruce Willis saves an airport from terrorists. He makes snarky jokes, and swears a lot. And gets his shit wrecked a lot. It's not quite as awesome, but still significantly cool.

Live Free or Die Hard - Bruce Willis is a hardened, grizzled old badass. Him and the Apple kid save the country from terrorists. He makes a couple of snarky comments, and doesn't swear as much. But he does get his shit wrecked more than ever before, and he wrecks a lot of other stuff on the way. It's Awesome! I thought it was just as great as the first.

Superman The Movie - Whatever you may think of Superman Returns, that movie is the reason I count myself as a DC fan today. I always preferred Batman when I was a kid, but my brother loved Superman. I was looking forward to a new Superman movie ever since I heard the first rumors about it in the early nineties, but I never really appreciated the original until I started seeing trailers for Returns. The fact that Bryan Singer based his interpretation of the man of steel on the original made me want to see them all again, even if the other two don't count. And after seeing them again, I can see why Singer wanted to follow them in style.
Richard Donner took what was at the time a somewhat silly comic book superhero, and brought him to the big screen in epic fashion. Though there are a couple of bits I could do without. I never cared for Otis, and Lex Luthor is treated as a silly joke of a villain. And I'd really prefer to pretend that the whole poetry scene never happened.

Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut - After seeing Superman 2 again, I couldn't believe how different the Richard Donner Cut is. It's like an entirely different movie. Gone is the silly pink rug, the sudden onset of telekinesis, the multiple Supermen, and worst of all, the plastic-wrap "S." Returned to us is Marlon Brando, and a much more interesting reveal of Superman to Lois. This is the only version of Superman 2 there should be. I think we should just all collectively pretend that there isn't a Lester cut.

Superman Returns - See the Review

Superman Doomsday - I love Bruce Timm's take on the DC Universe. The characters are big and mighty. You may have noticed by now that I tend to love things that are epic. This movie suffers a little from a rushed story. There's just too much to the death and rebirth of Superman to squeeze into a single movie. When he dies and returns all within fifteen minutes of the film, his sacrifice loses it's significance. The story of the death of Superman needs to be stretched out into at least two films, with him dying at the end of one, and returning halfway through the next after a lengthy period of a world without Superman. But that's likely how it'll inevitably happen in the live action films. As for this adaptation, it loses that significance but makes up for it by being really cool. And Superman is voiced by Adam Baldwin, a.k.a. Jayne Cobb, the hero of Canton. so. . . yeah.

Justice League: The New Frontier - Another DC Animated film. This one's about the Justice League set in the fifties. Not a whole lot to say about this one.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm/Sub-Zero - I picked these up because I hadn't yet, and they were both on one disc for nine dollars at Wal-Mart. Mask of the Phantasm was a great Batman movie, and so much better than the other Batman movies that were coming out at the time. I'm incredibly disappointed that this version is fullscreen and am actually considering getting it again so I can have it in widescreen. Also Kevin Conroy will always be the voice of Batman in my mind. As will Mark Hamill as the Joker.

Batman Gotham Knight - Like I said Kevin Conroy is Batman. And here he is as Batman in six interlocking shorts in various anime styles. My favorite is the last one because it's done by Madhouse.

Vampire Hunter D - The original 1985 animated film, Vampire Hunter D. An anime classic, but make sure if you insist on watching it dubbed, you at least check out the subtitles, after all it doesn't have to be in Japanese in order to turn on the subtitles. I hate when Japanophiles insist on watching anime in the original Japanese when a dub is available. I'm sorry, but even if the voice acting is weak, I'd still prefer it to having to read the entire film. But in this particular case, having tried it out, I have to agree. The English language version isn't nearly good as the subtitles. This is mostly because the subtitles follow an entirely different and better script. Overall I still occasionally prefer to watch it in English, but with the subtitles on.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust - And speaking of Madhouse, See the review.

Interview with the Vampire - I don't like Tom Cruise. There, I said it. Sure I don't know him personally and it's not fair to base an opinion of a person based solely on their public persona, and besides, he's just an actor and what he does in his personal life shouldn't matter to anyone. That said, I don't like him. I don't care what he does in his personal life, I despise tabloids and the entire concept of Hollywood gossip, but everything about his public persona says that he is a douche-bag who is intent on converting everyone to his crazy sinister evil murdering cult. That's right, Scientology is a cult. Fact. Look it up.
However, I loved this movie for a long time before one of it's stars turned into Charles Manson (that's right, I went there), and I just have to try to not let my feelings about the current frightening nature of Cruise cloud my enjoyment of it.

Queen of the Damned - I saw this one before I saw Interview, and I always thought Stuart Townsend made a better Lestat that Tom Cruise did. I'd never read any of Anne Rice's work before I saw the movie, so I saw it as just a unique and original vampire movie. Now I know that it's drastically different from the books, and the hardcore goth fans will find me and murder me for loving this film, but this was my first favorite vampire movie. This was the first vampire movie I ever saw that really portrayed vampires as being undead, rather than just being people with fangs, and that had a big impact on me. Plus I really liked the music. Of course I was in high school, was terribly unpopular (and, you know, a teenager) and was going through the extent of what you could consider a goth phase. Mind you my goth phase consisted almost entirely of listening to one Korn album a few times, but I still hate who I was at that age. Of course, who doesn't look back on their high school self with embarrassing dread?

Van Helsing - See the Review

Dog Soldiers - See the Review

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Do you really need me to tell you what a classic work of comedy gold this is? Okay . . . let's see . . . I was ten years old the first time I saw this movie. I'd heard of it before but had never seen it or anything like it. It was the strangest most hilarious thing I'd ever seen. I laughed for hours. This is the definitive comedy classic of all geekdom. It has had almost as much cultural impact as Star Wars.

The Hobbit - A friend of mine made me watch this when I was ten. I hated it. I love a lot of things now that I hated when I was a kid. It didn't help at the time that he made me sit through this and the hilariously awful Ralph Bakshi (see the review) Lord of the Rings, and the Rankin Bass Return of the King, all in one go. I was ten, it was about six hours of movie, I didn't care much for fantasy in general at the time, so yeah.
I love this movie. It's a surprisingly close adaptation of what was arguably a better book than JRR Tolkien's follow-up opus, The Lord of the Rings. It's a fun, light-hearted fantasy adventure.
I have an alternating love/hate appreciation of the Brian Froud inspired Mirkwood Elves. I love them because I like Brian Froud's style, but I also hate them because they kind of come off as German stereotypes.
I can't wait to see Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro bring The Hobbit to the big screen.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - See the Review

Star Trek VI - I used to think of this one as the most action-packed of the classic Star Trek films, with a great story filled with political intrigue. Then I got a copy of the DVD, and found so many more reasons to love it. I knew there was a lot of metaphor to this film but hearing Nicholas Meyer point out all of the key points is fascinating. This movie is about racism, intolerance, the Cold War, Gorbachev and Chernobyl all wrapped up in a science fiction setting and delivered to you via the USS Enterprise and her gallant crew, on their final farewell voyage.

Star Trek Generations - The Next Generation crew's first foray into cinema, and the tragic, and tragically disappointing death of Captain James T. Kirk. This film doesn't quite live up to the cinematic wonder that was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, or the vengeance quest of Wrath of Khan, or the political intrigue of Undiscovered Country, but . . . you know . . . Patrick Stewart. Plus we get to see the Enterprise D as we've never seen it before, and it's ultimate end. There are some really exciting moments, some wonderful themes. It's a film about growing old and the loss of loved ones. It's about trying to recapture those things you've lost.

Star Trek First Contact - This is easily the best of the Next Generation films. It's got lot's of action, the coolest Enterprise ever, a big space battle, and robot zombies . . . in space! And Patrick Stewart's in this one too!

Star Trek Insurrection - Not as great as First Contact, but . . . Patrick Stewart. Do you see a pattern here? It's funny how three of the four Next Generation films are in some way about the nature of time. The first one was about a tear in space that led to a place (ostensibly heaven) in which time had no meaning, and this was the entire focus of the film. The second one was about the Enterprise traveling back in time to stop the Borg from taking over the earth. This one is about a world where aging is stopped, and even reversed, where Picard learns to find a perfect moment in time and make last forever.

Star Trek Nemesis - This movie has Patrick Stewart and an evil clone of Patrick Stewart! Most people hated this one. I certainly did the first time I saw it. But I've since given it another chance and found a lot to love about it. Of the Next Generation films this one is the most epic (did I mention I like epic movies?). The Enterprise gets wrecked, there are serious consequences, people die (for real, unlike a certain vulcan). This is the darkest of the Next Generation films. But it also ends on a ray of hope the likes of which I don't think we've seen since the ending of Wrath of Khan. This is the biggest, grandest of this generation's films, and the final chapter in their history. It's sad that there won't be another one and that this one received such poor reaction from the fans. But if you give it another honest look, I think you could agree that at least they went out on an uplifting note.

The Thing - John Carpenter's best film of the eighties. A sci-fi suspense thriller about an alien creature that kills and replicates itself into its victims.

The Abyss - A thrilling and suspenseful film about the mystery of the deepest depths of the earth. Several people trapped in an underwater rig discover that they are not alone.

Enemy Mine - A science fiction film about a pilot who shoots down an alien enemy (a race he's never seen), and they both crash onto a strange planet. Assumed dead, they are forced to live together. They gradually overcome their differences, leading eventually to the beginning of peace between their people.

Gladiator - A tale of bloody vengeance played out in the grand arenas of ancient Rome. I was really in the mood for a film about ancient rome at the time so I got a copy of this one. I love Joaquin Phoenix as the tragically disturbed and disturbing Commodus. Also, Richard Harris is great.

The Count of Monte Cristo - A classic tale of revenge. This is the 2002 version starring Guy Pierce and Jesus. But who cares about them, Richard Harris is in this one too! And he's even better!

V for Vendetta - You may have noticed the revenge theme among the last several entries. I had never heard of the comic before the movie came out, and I was only mildly interested in going to the film. But the moment V steps onto the screen, as played by the brilliant Hugo Weaving, and delivers that speech with that eccentric performance, immediately followed by that awkward moment on the rooftop with Evey, conducting music that at first it seems only he can hear until the building in front of him suddenly blows up, I was awestruck. I was literally shaking with excitement at the sheer crazy awesomeness off this character! This film is a wild ride and I loved every minute of it!

Kill Bill - When I first saw trailers for this I was thrown off by how much it looked like a cheap action movie from the late seventies. I didn't get that this was partly the intention, and the only other exposure I'd had to Tarantino was From Dusk Till Dawn, so I thought it just looked stupid. I didn't finally get around to seeing, and subsequently loving, it until after both chapters hit on DVD. I'm not a big fan of Quentin Tarantino, and I still don't like From Dusk Till Dawn, but I love Kill Bill. This was also the first movie I'd ever seen David Carradine in, and he is a whole lot of cool.

The Mexican - Sort of a romantic comedy, sort of a mob film, sort of a western. It somehow makes me think of Trigun. Maybe it's the combination of the setting and the atmosphere, and the fact that Brad Pitt's character reminds me of Vash. He's a bumbling mob delivery boy who just can't get anything right.

Chicago - When this movie first hit on DVD it was the bane of my existence. My eccentric cousin, who loves music, and loves movies over and over again, had just discovered the joy of DVDs. So this meant that I spent the majority of the summer while she was visiting my family seeing various chopped up scenes skipping around and repeating over and over. I saw the movie like fifteen times without knowing at all what it was about, because I'd seen it in broken disjointed order. Despite my growing hatred of it because of this, I was actually intrigued by what I'd seen and I finally sat through the whole thing when she wasn't around. I was quite taken with it, but was loathe to endure the endless barrage of scene skipping from my cousin.
Since then, I've seen it a couple of more times, love the music and the story. A great film and my favorite musical.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - I never liked the old Gene Wilder version. It's a classic but it's also kind of disturbing. It was the stuff of nightmares for me when I was six. When I heard that Tim Burton was doing a remake I was intrigued, and when I started seeing the first posters of Johnny Depp as Wonka I was excited. I watched the original again and no wonder it gave me nightmares. You know the part where they're going through the tunnel on the boat and everything turns into crazy psychedelic colors and there's disturbing imagery, like a shot of a chicken getting decapitated?!?! They show a shot of a chicken being beheaded!
Anyway, The Tim Burton version is actually less disturbing. As previously stated, Johnny Depp is my favorite actor, and here delivers yet another stellar performance as a mysterious, child-like, easily-distracted Willy Wonka.

The Hound of the Baskervilles - I love Sherlock Holmes. This particular version of the best of the books is a Hallmark version starring Matt Frewer. It's a fairly decent adaptation. It's not perfect but I have yet to see one that is. I also have yet to see a perfect portrayal of Holmes on screen.

McLintock! - I love Maureen O'Hara. She and John Wayne star in this classic western comedy.

The Quiet Man - See the Review

X-Men - Patrick Stewart! I wasn't exactly floored by the first X-Men movie. It's really cool, and Hugh Jackman does make a great Wolverine, but it doesn't really have the feel of the comics. But then, it's grown on me more and more over the years. And Patrick Stewart was born to play Professor Xavier. Really there's no way these movies were going to be made without him. Even when I was ten years old I knew that one day Captain Picard would be the leader of the X-Men. And I almost forgot how cool Ian McKellan is as Magneto! Two of the coolest old guys playing against each other in an X-Men movie? That's a recipe for success.
Also, who doesn't love that Mystique is essentially naked in this movie?

X-Men 2 - Patrick Stewart again! Yeah, he's just that cool. The second X-men was so much better than the first. Mostly because there was just more. More action, more mutants, more Rebecca Romijn naked in blue body paint!

X-Men 3 - Patrick Ste - Oh. Well, it's a pretty good movie, especially since it takes its storyline from one of the best story arcs in X-Men history. But the poor handling of Jean Grey/Phoenix makes this one such a let down.
The one thing I do love most about it, besides Kelsey Grammar as Beast, is the fact that there is a serious issue at hand, split between three different viewpoints, and everyone is right. The people making the cure are right, because some mutants want to be cured. Magneto is right because eventually the cure would be forced on them. The government is right in using the cure as a weapon because Magneto left them no choice. The events leading up to the climax of this film are all a matter of inevitability that the characters involved ultimately have no control over.

Spider-Man - The first superhero film since Superman the movie to really get it right. I love the costume design, the fact that it is the original design from the comics only slightly modified. Tobey Maquire is a great Peter Parker. Of course the Goblin Ranger could have been handled a little better. And why did they turn Mary Jane into such a stone cold bitch?

Spider-Man 2 - Even better than the first one. Arguably the best superhero film ever. Personally it's a tossup between this, Iron Man, Superman Returns and The Dark Knight. They're all equally the best superhero films. Well, The Dark Knight may just be the best of the four, but that's probably because it just came out and I'm still in awe of it. But anyway, Doc Ock is portrayed brilliantly by Alfred Molina, Peter finally gets it together with Mary Jane, and his relationship with Harry Osborn crumbles down around him. But of course, Mary Jane is still a stone cold bitch.

Spider-Man 3 - I liked this one. I would have liked it more if Venom had been in it. Sam Raimi hates Venom, so I don't blame him for his poor handling of the character, since it was the producers who forced him try to shove the character into the film, leading to a horribly watered down version with what is ultimately just a brief cameo in a movie already suffering from an excess of villains. There are ostensibly three villains in a film series that works best with just one. Even so, I liked it overall. Not as good as the last two, but still good. I liked Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, and Thomas Haden Church was like seeing a page from the comic brought to life.
Mary Jane is justified in this one, because Peter is a dick.

Constantine - I love Tilda Swinton. She's all kinds of cool. I also love the portrayal of Lucifer in this movie. He's scary and drips blackness, but he's also kind of funny. He seems like he's a fun guy to hang around with, and that's part of what makes him so scary. And he gets to be more badass by just walking into a room than Keanu Reeves does in the entire movie.

Dune - This is the 2000 miniseries version. I like it. I'm not a big fan of Dune in general. My brother made me watch the old one when I was twelve and it was painfully boring for me. This version has some great effects, if some incredibly bland characters, and a lot of political intrigue. I picked it up on a whim when I was fourteen so I'm not going to overly defend the tastes of my fourteen-year-old self. That said, it's a pretty decent space opera. It just takes about three hours of some pretty boring stuff before it gets really interesting, so you have to be determined to sit through the whole thing.

Pitch Black - This is another movie I got when I was fourteen, as are several of the following. This was the first movie I saw Vin Diesel in and I was convinced he would be the next Schwarzenneger. This movie is so much like Predator or Aliens. Words cannot express how disappointingly, horrendously awful the follow-up was. Seriously, Necromongers?

G-Saviour - This movie sucks. Really it's awful. I really loved Gundam Wing when I was about fifteen and found this movie while sorting through an Anime rack. "A live action Gundam movie!" I said to myself. The effects looked pretty good, though I wasn't expecting anything great. so, yeah this movie is terrible. I still have though, because everyone needs to have a few awful movies. There are some bits that are kind of fun.

Highlander: The Search for Vengeance - There are only two Highlander movies. I don't have the first one because it's hard to come by, and I don't feel like getting it online yet. The first one is great, and this one takes a lot of what made the original good and then adds the animated flare of Mr. Yoshiaki Kawajiri.

Alien Anthology - Alien is really scary. Aliens is really cool. Alien 3 is really orange. Alien Resurrection is at least better than Alien 3.

Predator - This is a classic action movie. Arnold leads a team of soldiers into the South American jungle on a mission only to be ambushed and hunted by a mysterious alien on a safari. A great army action movie with a great cast of characters.

Predator 2 - Set about ten years after the first, another predator comes to earth to hunt humans, this time in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. This time he fights Danny Glover and Gary Busey, so you know, it's not as cool. Actually this one's pretty great, since it gives us a better look at the eponymous hunters.

Alien Vs. Predator - I like the first AVP movie. I liked it a lot. This film gets a lot of hate thrown at it online and I think it's really unfair. When I first heard the premise of the film, I was expecting it to be awful. Ideally an AVP movie should absolutely be set in the Aliens timeline, with colonial marines fighting the two monsters. But when I saw the film I was surprised at how great it turned out to be. Sure the Predators are too big, the aliens gestate way too quickly, and a lot of the action is too frenetic, but the overall film is a lot of fun and I love the prequel aspect of it, establishing the mysterious "Company" and the origin of its interests in the xenomorphs, as well as the inclusion of Lance Henrikson as Charles Bishop Weyland. The fact that it's rated PG-13 was a strong point of contention with a lot of fans, but that rating doesn't mean the same thing it used to. If you really think about it, if the first Alien movie came out tomorrow, it would be PG-13. Also the second AVP movie was written specifically for an R rating to make the fans happy, and it turned into a disgusting, baby eating pile of garbage that's so dark you might as well just listen to the audio track with the lights turned off.

The Terminator - Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in more groundbreaking sci-fi action movies than any other actor. Obviously this is yet another one.

Terminator 2 - Even better and even more groundbreaking than the first. More action, more effects, more characters. It's just great.

The Matrix - I didn't get to see this movie until it hit DVD. I had heard absolutely nothing about it beyond the previews, and all those showed were the action scenes. So I was just expecting some kind of action/superhero movie. The entire first act had me completely confused, then when Keanu Reeves puts his hand through the mirror and wakes up in a gelatin tube surrounded by robots, it blew my mind. This film was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and the fact that I had no idea what it was really about going in made it that much better. The sequels were disappointing. Although they also came out during my jaded teen years, so I should check them out again.

i Robot - I really liked this movie. I never read Asimov's book and I know this is an insult to the book, so I'm kind of glad I hadn't read the book before this. Also James Cromwell is in it; so. . . yeah.

Tomb Raider - A pretty good movie, and a pretty decent game adaptation. I was never a fan of the game series until Legend came out, which coincidentally retconned Lara Croft's biography to match that of the film series. It says something about a game adaptation that the changes made for the film were good enough for the future games to implement them. A fun archeology themed adventure when you just don't feel like watching Indiana Jones again. Incidentally, I bought this movie after playing Legend, (the first Tomb Raider game I've ever actually played) and the DVD was only four dollars anyway.

Tomb Raider 2 - Not as good as the first one. The first time I saw the first one I didn't care for it. I didn't remember much about this one when I picked it up, but I remembered thinking it was better than the first. I was wrong. This one really isn't as good as the first, which was already just a decently good but not overly great film. Even the badassery of Gerard Butler doesn't make up for this film's flaws. But still, there are some really amazing sequences, and it's still a fun adventure alternative to Indiana Jones.

Godzilla - I like the US version of Godzilla. I'm not going to go out of my way to defend it as a great film, it's a bit too long and the only reason I got a copy of the DVD was because I'd just seen Cloverfield and wanted another helping of giant monster destroying New York.
This movie came out in 1998, around the time that CG creature effects were still in their early days. I love all the films from that period. Between this and Jurassic Park and Dragonheart, all these films have a great sense of awe and wonder building up to the reveal of their creatures. It's something we don't really see anymore. I remember when this thing came out, none of the adds would reveal what Godzilla was going to look like until you went to see the film. You'd just see a foot or an eye. This really sold the sense of scale of the monster. He is enormous. This is the only other giant monster movie I think we have in the US besides Cloverfield.
I loved the design of Godzilla in this. He still resembles the original monster just enough to clearly be Godzilla, but the designers took what was originally a goofy rubber suit and made a creature that worked; a giant reptilian monster, swift, agile and destructive.

Cloverfield - Just brilliant. Cloverfield is the giant monster movie from the point of view (literally) of the civilians trapped in the middle of the chaos. You always see other people running for their lives in these movies, while the heroes (scientists and army guys) try to stop the monster. This movie isn't about the guys trying to stop the monster, it's about the people just trying to survive, not knowing what's going on or what to do.

Escape From L.A. - It's more or less exactly the same as Escape From New York, except a little more fast-paced, and since I saw this one first, this is the one I prefer. I love the theme music and the one-liners and everything about this movie. It's not brilliant, but it is a lot of silly fun.

Fallen - A clever supernatural thriller about a detective trying to stop a killer who could be anyone. Sort of a neo-noir film starring Denzel Washington and John Goodman. I won't say anymore about it because you should definitely check this one out. The ending is a great surprise.

Dungeons and Dragons - This movie is so very, very bad. It's terrible. But sometimes, you have to have a terrible movie. Jeremy Irons has such poor luck with fantasy movies. After this one he tried to make up for it with Eragon, which is equally as bad. I like this movie more than Eragon, because at least I can hate this one with giddy joy. Eragon is just so incredibly mediocre in every aspect, you can't quite hate it but you definitely can't like it. It's a movie that leaves you completely devoid of any strong feelings, which in a way makes it worse than a movie that's just clearly awful.

Death Note - L is really cool. Ryuk loves apples. Light is a magnificent bastard.

Mortal Kombat - Not a great movie, but a great video game adaptation. Since the game it's adapting is Mortal Kombat, there wasn't much to work with. But the surprising thing about this movie is how closely it resembles the game it's based on, in style and in spirit. I remember playing the original Mortal Kombat game when I was a kid and being so excited by the movie. Yeah, it's a dumb movie but I love it for the nostalgic value, and for the fact that it's one of the only video game movies to really get it right, even if it is based on a silly gratuitous fighting game.

Along with these I have a separate box set aside full of my holiday movies. This may not make a lot of sense, but I prefer to keep several films set aside for Christmas and Halloween. I'll post those later.

My First Blog

2008-08-06T21:38:00.001-04:00

Hello and welcome to the Movie Omelet!
This is my first ever blog post, so bare with me. I've never been into the whole Myspace blogging social networking thing, and I'm a little at a loss for what to say at the moment. You're probably asking yourself two questions right now:
1: What's all this then?
2: Why should I care?
Okay, this is a movie blog that I'm starting for the purpose of hosting my film reviews. Why? Because I'm a movie geek who prides himself on a robust and verbose grasp of the written word and who has thus far never given much endeavor to writing reviews.
Why should you care?
Right, well I love reading reviews as much as I hope you'll love reading mine, and something I've come to notice about the reviews I read is how much better they are when you have a more personal understanding of the people writing them. Not everyone's tastes are the same, and it's hard to trust someone's opinion without a better understanding of the sort of films they love, or hate. To this end I'm starting this review series with the philosophy of adding a more personal touch to the process of film reviews. My opinion is not the only one that matters, and you may like things that I don't, or I may love something that you hate. Obviously if you don't share my tastes, you don't have to come back. Hopefully, if you do, you'll enjoy my reviews enough to want to stay.
So, let's get started.