A mid-month trip and other stuff lead to a light month of movie-watching.
June 4 - Resident Evil: Retribution (3/10); The Boondock Saints (4/10)
June 5 - The Heat (7.5/10)
June 10 - Overnight (6/10); Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (8/10)
June 17 - This Is The End (7/10)
June 18 - Man of Steel (7/10)
Most Enjoyed: The Heat
Least Enjoyed: Resident Evil: Retribution
Month's Movies Watched: 7
Previously Unseen: 7
Theatrical: 3
Home: 4
=====
Year-To-Date: 37
YTD First-Timers: 33
YTD Theatrical: 10
YTD Home: 27
"Man of Steel" Review
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
After what seemed to be a decade of post-production, Zac Snyder's epic scale reboot of Superman, Man of Steel, flies into theaters weighed down by the gloominess of producer and Dark Knight mastermind Christopher Nolan.
The first shocks come early with the portrayal of Krypton. We've only seen it as an icy Styrofoam world in the original Superman, so to see animals (that seem left over from Avatar) and a culture that has babies like The Matrix is both jarring and surprisingly unoriginal. In this telling, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife have had the first natural birth in centuries (of course), but since the planet is dying, he's going to send this last son of Krypton to Earth, but this time also carrying the genetic code for all Kryptonians with him in a slightly different form.
Instead of recounting young Clark Kent's upbringing in Smallville, Kansas in the usual linear manner, David S. Goyer's script (with the story co-written by Nolan) uses a flashback structure showing a bearded Clark wandering around like Bruce Banner, trying to find his place in the world and experiencing the same things he did as a boy raised by the Worst Father Ever, Kevin Costner. Seriously, when you sum up the totality of his terrible advice - "Let kids die to hide your power. Let me die because." - it's a miracle Clark didn't become Superemo. While this structure spares us some of the boredom, it only really works because everyone knows Superman's origin story so well, these broad sketches suffice, but also prove unnecessary.
In mashing up the plots of the first two Christopher Reeve movies, General Zod (Michael Shannon) comes to Earth looking for Kal-El and decides that Earth would be a fine place to regenerate Krypton, even if it requires exterminating the indigenous population of the planet (that would be us humans) via terraforming with a giant "world engine" that looks like the Reaper ships from the Mass Effect games. Much destruction ensues.
The old Superman movies were hampered by the limited special effects technology of the late-Seventies. The slogan was, "You will believe a man can fly," but while the flying was sort of OK most of the time, the fights in Superman II were just painful to watch in their sluggish non-glory. That's fixed here as you definitely get the sensation of superpowered beings pounding the bejeebers out of each other. You want train engines being thrown like toys? You got it! The problem is that Snyder rapidly sails into the pure noise zone as Metropolis is pounded into dust. Forget the hundreds of billions in damage and the tens of thousands of people who are probably lost in the chaos, it's simply finely rendered particle system VFX static after a certain point. It loses its capacity for visceral impact early on and gets less exciting, not more.
As with Brandon Routh in Superman Returns, the question is whether Henry Cavill can adequately fill Reeve's cape and the answer is yes despite the problematic script. (Same as it was with Routh, whose career suffered through no fault of his own when his turn flopped; it's not like Clooney in Batman and Robin.) Saddled with lots of doubts due to his crappy upbringing, he manages to make Kal/Clark/Supes work. The rest of the cast - Shannon, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Amy Adams as Pulitzer Prize-winning (as she is forced to say) Lois Lane - are solid, though why did they have to make Diane Lane as Ma Kent look so weathered.
While I was watching Man of Steel, I was enjoying the huge scale but as the noise factor worked against it and things dragged on to the conclusion, I realized that I wasn't having much fun. There are perhaps two laughs in the whole movie and that's not enough for an over two-hour comic book flick. I'm not demanding an Avengers-style laugh riot, but as with Nolan's The Dark Knight Reloaded, this "dark and gritty" take on things is getting to be a drag.
Score: 7/10. Catch a matinee.
The first shocks come early with the portrayal of Krypton. We've only seen it as an icy Styrofoam world in the original Superman, so to see animals (that seem left over from Avatar) and a culture that has babies like The Matrix is both jarring and surprisingly unoriginal. In this telling, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife have had the first natural birth in centuries (of course), but since the planet is dying, he's going to send this last son of Krypton to Earth, but this time also carrying the genetic code for all Kryptonians with him in a slightly different form.
Instead of recounting young Clark Kent's upbringing in Smallville, Kansas in the usual linear manner, David S. Goyer's script (with the story co-written by Nolan) uses a flashback structure showing a bearded Clark wandering around like Bruce Banner, trying to find his place in the world and experiencing the same things he did as a boy raised by the Worst Father Ever, Kevin Costner. Seriously, when you sum up the totality of his terrible advice - "Let kids die to hide your power. Let me die because." - it's a miracle Clark didn't become Superemo. While this structure spares us some of the boredom, it only really works because everyone knows Superman's origin story so well, these broad sketches suffice, but also prove unnecessary.
In mashing up the plots of the first two Christopher Reeve movies, General Zod (Michael Shannon) comes to Earth looking for Kal-El and decides that Earth would be a fine place to regenerate Krypton, even if it requires exterminating the indigenous population of the planet (that would be us humans) via terraforming with a giant "world engine" that looks like the Reaper ships from the Mass Effect games. Much destruction ensues.
The old Superman movies were hampered by the limited special effects technology of the late-Seventies. The slogan was, "You will believe a man can fly," but while the flying was sort of OK most of the time, the fights in Superman II were just painful to watch in their sluggish non-glory. That's fixed here as you definitely get the sensation of superpowered beings pounding the bejeebers out of each other. You want train engines being thrown like toys? You got it! The problem is that Snyder rapidly sails into the pure noise zone as Metropolis is pounded into dust. Forget the hundreds of billions in damage and the tens of thousands of people who are probably lost in the chaos, it's simply finely rendered particle system VFX static after a certain point. It loses its capacity for visceral impact early on and gets less exciting, not more.
As with Brandon Routh in Superman Returns, the question is whether Henry Cavill can adequately fill Reeve's cape and the answer is yes despite the problematic script. (Same as it was with Routh, whose career suffered through no fault of his own when his turn flopped; it's not like Clooney in Batman and Robin.) Saddled with lots of doubts due to his crappy upbringing, he manages to make Kal/Clark/Supes work. The rest of the cast - Shannon, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Amy Adams as Pulitzer Prize-winning (as she is forced to say) Lois Lane - are solid, though why did they have to make Diane Lane as Ma Kent look so weathered.
While I was watching Man of Steel, I was enjoying the huge scale but as the noise factor worked against it and things dragged on to the conclusion, I realized that I wasn't having much fun. There are perhaps two laughs in the whole movie and that's not enough for an over two-hour comic book flick. I'm not demanding an Avengers-style laugh riot, but as with Nolan's The Dark Knight Reloaded, this "dark and gritty" take on things is getting to be a drag.
Score: 7/10. Catch a matinee.
"This Is The End" Review
Monday, June 17, 2013
A bunch of Hollywood stars riding out the Apocalypse is the premise of the frequently funny, but slightly disappointing This Is The End the co-directorial debut of co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg whose previous works include Superbad (cool), Pineapple Express (OK) and The Green Hornet (uh-oh).
Originally a four-minute short called Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse, This Is The End stars Rogen and Jay Baruchel (She's Out of My League, Undeclared) as old Canadian friends getting together after a year apart. Rogen is in L.A. making movies and Jay stays in Canada because he doesn't like the Hollywood scene and Seth's new friends including Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and James Franco. After smoking pot and playing videogames, Rogen drags a reluctant Baruchel to Franco's house-warming party where a ton more stars make cameos as outlandish caricatures of themselves, especially Michael Cera as a coked-out lunatic.
As promised by the trailer, the Apocalypse occurs and the surviving party members hunker down in Franco's place. What does it all mean? How long will the food last, especially with Danny McBride with them? Is this really the end and, if so, how do these selfish Hollywood celebs redeem themselves and get to Heaven? Of course, hijinks ensue.
While my girlfriend and friend absolutely loved it, I was left a little chilly by This Is The End. It's not that it's not funny - it's very funny when it clicks - it's just that in trying to root the story in a human exploration of friendship, it kept the pace a bit slower than it should've. A perfect comparison is last year's Ted (the obscene teddy bear movie) which managed to be warm AND throw a zillion jokes at you non-stop.
Comedy is naturally subjective, so even though I laughed more at The Heat than This Is The End, don't take this as a lukewarm endorsement. It's just that I could've stood for some more random funny.
Score: 7/10. Rent it and hope there's an hour of alternate takes.
Originally a four-minute short called Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse, This Is The End stars Rogen and Jay Baruchel (She's Out of My League, Undeclared) as old Canadian friends getting together after a year apart. Rogen is in L.A. making movies and Jay stays in Canada because he doesn't like the Hollywood scene and Seth's new friends including Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and James Franco. After smoking pot and playing videogames, Rogen drags a reluctant Baruchel to Franco's house-warming party where a ton more stars make cameos as outlandish caricatures of themselves, especially Michael Cera as a coked-out lunatic.
As promised by the trailer, the Apocalypse occurs and the surviving party members hunker down in Franco's place. What does it all mean? How long will the food last, especially with Danny McBride with them? Is this really the end and, if so, how do these selfish Hollywood celebs redeem themselves and get to Heaven? Of course, hijinks ensue.
While my girlfriend and friend absolutely loved it, I was left a little chilly by This Is The End. It's not that it's not funny - it's very funny when it clicks - it's just that in trying to root the story in a human exploration of friendship, it kept the pace a bit slower than it should've. A perfect comparison is last year's Ted (the obscene teddy bear movie) which managed to be warm AND throw a zillion jokes at you non-stop.
Comedy is naturally subjective, so even though I laughed more at The Heat than This Is The End, don't take this as a lukewarm endorsement. It's just that I could've stood for some more random funny.
Score: 7/10. Rent it and hope there's an hour of alternate takes.
"Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" Review
Monday, June 10, 2013
The latest HBO Documentary Series kicks off with Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, an interesting film documenting the persecution of the Russian feminist punk rock/performance art collective Pussy Riot, who pop up in public places protesting the government of former KGB strongman Vladimir Putin and the heap of trouble they found themselves in when they decided to stage one of their happenings in a Russian Orthodox Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012.
Told even-handedly by a pair of filmmakers who clearly were already documenting the group (UPDATE: Apparently not; this EW interview indicates they got on the case after their arrest, so the other footage was done by others) when they stumbled into the crosshairs of the Russian "justice" system, it follows the three girls who were arrested for their shenanigans as they face up to five years in a penal colony for what is basically a disturbing the peace and trespassing rap worthy of a wrist slap and fine, not a trip to the gulag. Interviews with the girls' parents, offended Orthodox members who view the incident as reminiscent of the Bolsheviks persecution of them, as well as prosecuting and defense lawyers round out the copious footage of the trial and subsequent appeals which led to one member being released while the other two serve two years in prison.
What's fascinating is how the legal system, whether at the direction of Putin or not, never seems to consider the ramifications of what over-prosecution may cause to stir up further protests. This isn't to say that what they did was totally harmless and being obnoxious brats in sacred places doesn't deserve some sanction, but what the Russian system did was take an unknown group and turn them into international symbols as prisoners of conscience. (If you think that making martyrs isn't bad for business, you should talk to Pontius Pilate.)
It's also interesting to compare the opprobrium cast against Putin for his treatment of these dissenters with the ongoing situation of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the Egyptian filmmaker whose crappy video was chosen as the official scapegoat by the Obama administration for the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. In a tight race for reelection after a failed first term, Obama sent the police to grab this poor chump on a probation violation and send him to prison for a year.
The difference between the cases is that while the artistic world has collectively rallied to the banner of Pussy Riot and against the thuggish reign of Putin, none of those voices are being raised against Obama as it's been learned how he's used the vast, powerful machinery of government to spy on, threaten, bully, persecute and punish those who dare speak against him. Somehow I don't think we'll be seeing an HBO documentary anytime soon about those who challenge the system here. It appears bravery is situational.
Back to Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer - I wish they'd delved into how the music was recorded and played back at their performances and what the story was about the English-fluent husband of Nadia, the strikingly beautiful member - seriously, check her out...
...who never showed up in court looking bad after months in jail as if she had a stylist the others passed on. I knew that one member of the band had been let out and I joked to my girlfriend, "Wanna bet that they let the hot one out?" (Spoiler alert: They don't. Whoa. And wait until you see the "exhibition" she took part in before. Yikes!)
Score: 8/10. Watch it.
Told even-handedly by a pair of filmmakers who clearly were already documenting the group (UPDATE: Apparently not; this EW interview indicates they got on the case after their arrest, so the other footage was done by others) when they stumbled into the crosshairs of the Russian "justice" system, it follows the three girls who were arrested for their shenanigans as they face up to five years in a penal colony for what is basically a disturbing the peace and trespassing rap worthy of a wrist slap and fine, not a trip to the gulag. Interviews with the girls' parents, offended Orthodox members who view the incident as reminiscent of the Bolsheviks persecution of them, as well as prosecuting and defense lawyers round out the copious footage of the trial and subsequent appeals which led to one member being released while the other two serve two years in prison.
What's fascinating is how the legal system, whether at the direction of Putin or not, never seems to consider the ramifications of what over-prosecution may cause to stir up further protests. This isn't to say that what they did was totally harmless and being obnoxious brats in sacred places doesn't deserve some sanction, but what the Russian system did was take an unknown group and turn them into international symbols as prisoners of conscience. (If you think that making martyrs isn't bad for business, you should talk to Pontius Pilate.)
It's also interesting to compare the opprobrium cast against Putin for his treatment of these dissenters with the ongoing situation of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the Egyptian filmmaker whose crappy video was chosen as the official scapegoat by the Obama administration for the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. In a tight race for reelection after a failed first term, Obama sent the police to grab this poor chump on a probation violation and send him to prison for a year.
The difference between the cases is that while the artistic world has collectively rallied to the banner of Pussy Riot and against the thuggish reign of Putin, none of those voices are being raised against Obama as it's been learned how he's used the vast, powerful machinery of government to spy on, threaten, bully, persecute and punish those who dare speak against him. Somehow I don't think we'll be seeing an HBO documentary anytime soon about those who challenge the system here. It appears bravery is situational.
Back to Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer - I wish they'd delved into how the music was recorded and played back at their performances and what the story was about the English-fluent husband of Nadia, the strikingly beautiful member - seriously, check her out...
Score: 8/10. Watch it.
"Overnight" DVD Review
As I referenced in my review for The Boondock Saints, a greater part of my interest in that mess was because I wanted to see this documentary, uh, documenting the rapid self-destruction of Troy Duffy, the egomaniac writer-director who managed to snag multiple breaks and then screw them all up, ending with nothing much and unlike most rags-to-riches-to-rags stories, you're pretty much rooting for his failure the whole way.
Co-directors Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana (for real?) were pals of Duffy's and his band, The Brood, which also included his brother Terry. I'm sure the intentions when they started documenting (there's that word again!) what happened after Miramax paid $300,000 for the script and bought him the L.A. bar he was slinging brews in was to have a record of the next Tarantino's emergence upon the cinematic landscape. It starts well enough with Marky Mark, Jake Busey, Patrick Swayze, Jeff Goldblum and others coming to the bar to meet with this supposedly hot newcomer. Not only will he be allowed to direct despite no previous experience, not even film school, but his band gets offered a deal on Maverick Records, unheard. Good times, indeed!
Then Duffy works his anti-Dale Carnegie tragic and within months, Miramax has put the project into turnaround and the band's deal offer disappears. Eventually, alternate financing is secured and the movie is made and Jason Flom's Lava/Atlantic imprint signs the band and puts them in the studio with former Doobie Brother Jeff "Skunk" Baxter producing. Back on track, right? Not really, for the recording process is hampered by Duffy's ego (seems to be a theme) and when the film is screened at Cannes, no one makes an offer to pick it up for distribution. Is Harvey Weinstein having the film blackballed or does it suck that bad? Regardless, when it finally gets put out, it shows in only five theaters for a week and grosses about $10,000, making it's name on home video when easily impressed viewers glom onto it. As for the band's album, after six months it sold 670 copies. The band got dropped like a bad habit.
While Overnight is a schadenfreudetastic look at a guy who bought into his own hype, it's somewhat hampered by a one-sided perspective because it was shot to tell Duffy's tale and there is very little heard from the other side of his tantrums on the Hollywood side. We see him screaming into phones, but the targets of his wrath aren't interviewed as to what they were thinking. There is also absolutely no footage of the band performing, recording, jamming or anything; something I'm guessing was due to an inability to secure the music rights. This means we have no idea what the labels thought they were getting in signing the band. For what it's worth, the bandmates don't look too happy with their lots either, but they're not interviewed either. More perspectives are needed.
Another major question unanswered is what the unholy heck did Hollywood think they were buying with this guy. The Boondock Saints is a mediocre mess, a fifth-rate pastiche of Tarantino imitators, not even QT himself. A zillion bands pay their dues and never get a deal, but these jokers are handed a contract because one member is making a movie?!? WTF?
In an interview with the directors included as an extra, they say that a case of collective madness which led movie and music industries to fall over themselves for this twit would never happen again, but it would've helped if they had been able to explore why it happened in the first place.
Shot on Super 8 and 16 mm as well as home video, the image quality and sound is rather rough, but watchable. It's presented in non-anamorphic full frame, so if you haven't made the move into HDTV, you'll be fine.
Score: 6/10. Rent it. (Only because I doubt it will ever surface on cable.)
I couldn't find an embeddable trailer for the film, even on Tony Montana's YouTube page, but he did post Ebert & Roeper's review of the film which is where I heard of it.
Co-directors Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana (for real?) were pals of Duffy's and his band, The Brood, which also included his brother Terry. I'm sure the intentions when they started documenting (there's that word again!) what happened after Miramax paid $300,000 for the script and bought him the L.A. bar he was slinging brews in was to have a record of the next Tarantino's emergence upon the cinematic landscape. It starts well enough with Marky Mark, Jake Busey, Patrick Swayze, Jeff Goldblum and others coming to the bar to meet with this supposedly hot newcomer. Not only will he be allowed to direct despite no previous experience, not even film school, but his band gets offered a deal on Maverick Records, unheard. Good times, indeed!
Then Duffy works his anti-Dale Carnegie tragic and within months, Miramax has put the project into turnaround and the band's deal offer disappears. Eventually, alternate financing is secured and the movie is made and Jason Flom's Lava/Atlantic imprint signs the band and puts them in the studio with former Doobie Brother Jeff "Skunk" Baxter producing. Back on track, right? Not really, for the recording process is hampered by Duffy's ego (seems to be a theme) and when the film is screened at Cannes, no one makes an offer to pick it up for distribution. Is Harvey Weinstein having the film blackballed or does it suck that bad? Regardless, when it finally gets put out, it shows in only five theaters for a week and grosses about $10,000, making it's name on home video when easily impressed viewers glom onto it. As for the band's album, after six months it sold 670 copies. The band got dropped like a bad habit.
While Overnight is a schadenfreudetastic look at a guy who bought into his own hype, it's somewhat hampered by a one-sided perspective because it was shot to tell Duffy's tale and there is very little heard from the other side of his tantrums on the Hollywood side. We see him screaming into phones, but the targets of his wrath aren't interviewed as to what they were thinking. There is also absolutely no footage of the band performing, recording, jamming or anything; something I'm guessing was due to an inability to secure the music rights. This means we have no idea what the labels thought they were getting in signing the band. For what it's worth, the bandmates don't look too happy with their lots either, but they're not interviewed either. More perspectives are needed.
Another major question unanswered is what the unholy heck did Hollywood think they were buying with this guy. The Boondock Saints is a mediocre mess, a fifth-rate pastiche of Tarantino imitators, not even QT himself. A zillion bands pay their dues and never get a deal, but these jokers are handed a contract because one member is making a movie?!? WTF?
In an interview with the directors included as an extra, they say that a case of collective madness which led movie and music industries to fall over themselves for this twit would never happen again, but it would've helped if they had been able to explore why it happened in the first place.
Shot on Super 8 and 16 mm as well as home video, the image quality and sound is rather rough, but watchable. It's presented in non-anamorphic full frame, so if you haven't made the move into HDTV, you'll be fine.
Score: 6/10. Rent it. (Only because I doubt it will ever surface on cable.)
I couldn't find an embeddable trailer for the film, even on Tony Montana's YouTube page, but he did post Ebert & Roeper's review of the film which is where I heard of it.
"The Heat" Review
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
When Bridesmaids shocked Hollywood in 2011 with a global take of $288 million and a pair of Oscar-nominations for the script co-penned by SNL veteran Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. Potty-mouthed, low-brow, R-rated comedies had always been thought of a boys-only club so for women to succeed in the genre raised the question of whether it was a one-off fluke or a untapped market. The first real test of this will be The Heat which reunites Bridesmaids director (and Freaks & Geeks creator) Paul Feig and McCarthy, adding Sandra Bullock to the mix to gender-swap the well-worn buddy cop comedy formula. Can comic gold (and box office loot) be found by having girls get wild again? In this case, it just might.
The trailer sets the bar pretty low as it appears Bullock is revisiting her Miss Congeniality character as an FBI Agent who isn't respected by the boys despite her investigative chops. She doesn't have a man, practically steals her neighbor's cat for companionship, and hungers for a supervisory position promotion. Sent to Boston to work a big narcotics trafficking, she meets not-cute with local Detective McCarthy, one of those noisy loose cannon types whom we just have to accept managed to stay employed and promoted to Detective despite their obnoxious personality. (This is apparently not a documentary.) Will these two cops with their clashing styles and personalities be able to get along and crack the case while cracking heads and also cracking up audiences?
Duh.
Pretty much every beat of The Heat follows the Odd Couple Buddy Cop Flick playbook that animates these things dating back to 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon, so it comes down to execution to make it sink or swim and for the most part it swims, uh, swimmingly. That the script is by Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold provides a little insulation from criticism that what Bullock and McCarthy do is degrading to professional women, but let's be honest, when's the last time you ever heard anyone worrying about whether male cops are harmed by being fooled by a banana in the tailpipe.
As with Bridesmaids, the secret weapon is McCarthy who is utterly without vanity as she spews a torrent of F-bombs, though they manage to make her unmistakably, ummmmm...let's say zaftig figure not the cheap and easy (and offensive) gag it could've been by giving her a running gag involving spurned lovers. She's a force of nature and Bullock gamely plays the straight man (you know what I mean), but gets a few licks in. Everyone's got a mushy center and learns something in the end. You know the drill. It's just that we've seen Bullock play the "attractive woman who doesn't know she's attractive" part so many times I coined the term "Sandra Bullock Syndrome" to describe any female character played by an actress that would rate an 8 or higher on the looks scale.
With so much that is familiar in the formula, it almost seems charitable to recommend it because all they've really done to freshen it up is put women in the leads. If this was made in 1996 with Tom Hanks and Chris Farley as a retread of Turner & Hooch with Farley as the slobbering dog, would it have be notable? More damningly, would it have been as funny with someone like Kristen Wiig instead of McCarthy? Does aggressive comedy require someone of a certain size whether it be a John Belushi and Chris Farley or a McCarthy and Rebel Wilson? (Ugh, political correctness isn't very amusing to ponder.)
So The Heat is just the same old formula with a flavor we haven't seen before? Is that enough? Sure, why not because despite the familiarity of format, it delivers the funny in sufficient quantities to merit watching. (There's a quote you won't be seeing on the DVD box!) I laughed a lot and I think you will too. The studio must be expecting great things because The Heat 2 is supposedly already in the works which means the downside of successful buddy cop comedies - the unneeded sequels (does anyone remember Another 48 Hours or the sequels to Beverly Hills Cop?) - will be coming too. Why should the ladies be exempt from that?
One warning: The violence isn't too bad, but it's a little more graphic than you'd expect from a comedy starring women. If you watch The Walking Dead, it's not anything that bad, but just a warning; a heads up about the head shots.
Score: 7.5/10. Catch a matinee.
NOTE: This opens June 28, 2013. The trailer says April. Also, several of the gags are different in the movie
The trailer sets the bar pretty low as it appears Bullock is revisiting her Miss Congeniality character as an FBI Agent who isn't respected by the boys despite her investigative chops. She doesn't have a man, practically steals her neighbor's cat for companionship, and hungers for a supervisory position promotion. Sent to Boston to work a big narcotics trafficking, she meets not-cute with local Detective McCarthy, one of those noisy loose cannon types whom we just have to accept managed to stay employed and promoted to Detective despite their obnoxious personality. (This is apparently not a documentary.) Will these two cops with their clashing styles and personalities be able to get along and crack the case while cracking heads and also cracking up audiences?
Duh.
Pretty much every beat of The Heat follows the Odd Couple Buddy Cop Flick playbook that animates these things dating back to 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon, so it comes down to execution to make it sink or swim and for the most part it swims, uh, swimmingly. That the script is by Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold provides a little insulation from criticism that what Bullock and McCarthy do is degrading to professional women, but let's be honest, when's the last time you ever heard anyone worrying about whether male cops are harmed by being fooled by a banana in the tailpipe.
As with Bridesmaids, the secret weapon is McCarthy who is utterly without vanity as she spews a torrent of F-bombs, though they manage to make her unmistakably, ummmmm...let's say zaftig figure not the cheap and easy (and offensive) gag it could've been by giving her a running gag involving spurned lovers. She's a force of nature and Bullock gamely plays the straight man (you know what I mean), but gets a few licks in. Everyone's got a mushy center and learns something in the end. You know the drill. It's just that we've seen Bullock play the "attractive woman who doesn't know she's attractive" part so many times I coined the term "Sandra Bullock Syndrome" to describe any female character played by an actress that would rate an 8 or higher on the looks scale.
With so much that is familiar in the formula, it almost seems charitable to recommend it because all they've really done to freshen it up is put women in the leads. If this was made in 1996 with Tom Hanks and Chris Farley as a retread of Turner & Hooch with Farley as the slobbering dog, would it have be notable? More damningly, would it have been as funny with someone like Kristen Wiig instead of McCarthy? Does aggressive comedy require someone of a certain size whether it be a John Belushi and Chris Farley or a McCarthy and Rebel Wilson? (Ugh, political correctness isn't very amusing to ponder.)
So The Heat is just the same old formula with a flavor we haven't seen before? Is that enough? Sure, why not because despite the familiarity of format, it delivers the funny in sufficient quantities to merit watching. (There's a quote you won't be seeing on the DVD box!) I laughed a lot and I think you will too. The studio must be expecting great things because The Heat 2 is supposedly already in the works which means the downside of successful buddy cop comedies - the unneeded sequels (does anyone remember Another 48 Hours or the sequels to Beverly Hills Cop?) - will be coming too. Why should the ladies be exempt from that?
One warning: The violence isn't too bad, but it's a little more graphic than you'd expect from a comedy starring women. If you watch The Walking Dead, it's not anything that bad, but just a warning; a heads up about the head shots.
Score: 7.5/10. Catch a matinee.
NOTE: This opens June 28, 2013. The trailer says April. Also, several of the gags are different in the movie
"The Boondocks Saints" Blu-ray Review
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
1999's The Boondocks Saints has carried the sobriquet of "cult classic" with legions of fans holding conventions and screenings for the past decade. My interest was more limited, mostly because I've had a DVD of the reputedly-good documentary Overnight, about how the writer-director Troy Duffy got his break to make the movie and pissed it away in a haze of ego not matched by talent, and I figured it'd make more sense after having seen the movie proper. Secondarily, co-star Norman Reedus is now the hot cool dude after three seasons playing Daryl on The Walking Dead. Now, after watching The Boondocks Saints, I'm super in the mood to have a nice bowl of schadenfreude flakes watching Overnight because this movie is a mess and those rabid fans need their heads examined.
I'm not sure what Harvey Weinstein was thinking when he paid $300,000 for the script to this thing from a Boston bartender and then allowed him to direct despite having never made anything or even attended film school, but considering he had Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith in the Miramax stable, that this illiterate mess caught his eye is a head-scratcher. The story is simplistic, the dialog inane, the whole thing sloppy, though with a few charms that help it avoid being a total washout.
Set in Boston, it stars Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery as Irish brothers who work in a meat packing plant. One night, the owner of their favored watering hole tells them that the Russian Mob is buying up properties and isn't renewing the lease. When a pair of Mob goons show up, the crowd at the bar roughs them up badly. When the Russians appear at the brothers cruddy apartment for revenge, they find themselves on the wrong end of that fight and are let go by the cops by reason of self-defense. With a sense of self-righteous justice, they embark on killing off other Russian mobsters, eventually branching out to hitting members of the Italian Mob with their numbers runner pal Rocco, played by David Della Rocco which confused me when they give him a title card introduction.
Duffy uses what he thinks is a clever structure by showing the brothers planning their hit then the cops with FBI Agent Willem Dafoe (more on him in a moment) investigating and theorizing about the crime scene before jumping back and showing us what happened. Duffy does this over and over, but it only works in an interesting fashion once when Dafoe appears in the scene, acting out what happened along with the actual participants. But even that sequence ends with a ludicrous gun fight which makes a late-film twist thoroughly ridiculous. (Also, why would the brothers be carrying ammonia to spray on their spilled blood to make evidence gathering useless?)
What saves The Boondocks Saints from total failure is Dafoe's absolutely off-the-chain performance as the gay, smacktalking, FBI Agent who begins to appreciate what the brothers are doing. I'm surprised I've never heard of this performance before as he cross-dresses and generally freaks out in every scene he's in. He's a hoot.
Reedus and Flannery are bland cyphers whom Duffy figured tattoos, some brief prayers (not the least bit ripped-off from Pulp Fiction *cough*), and thick Gaelic accents would suffice as "characters." In one scene they show off fluency in several languages, but no explanation for this skill is given. It's just some "cool" (again *cough*) business stuck in as trimming on an empty package.
Speaking of empty packages, I purchased The Boondocks Saints Truth & Justice Edition Blu-ray and upon watching it discovered I got the original pressing without the "The Boondock Saints - The Film and the Phenomenon" retrospective feature listed on the packaging. Checking reviews, I see that the old disc had the script and this one does, too. I did a search and found other people reporting getting the wrong disc, too. I'll have to chase Fox down for a replacement. Bother.
Score: 4/10. Skip it unless it's on cable when you're flipping by and Dafoe is getting his crazy on.
I'm not sure what Harvey Weinstein was thinking when he paid $300,000 for the script to this thing from a Boston bartender and then allowed him to direct despite having never made anything or even attended film school, but considering he had Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith in the Miramax stable, that this illiterate mess caught his eye is a head-scratcher. The story is simplistic, the dialog inane, the whole thing sloppy, though with a few charms that help it avoid being a total washout.
Set in Boston, it stars Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery as Irish brothers who work in a meat packing plant. One night, the owner of their favored watering hole tells them that the Russian Mob is buying up properties and isn't renewing the lease. When a pair of Mob goons show up, the crowd at the bar roughs them up badly. When the Russians appear at the brothers cruddy apartment for revenge, they find themselves on the wrong end of that fight and are let go by the cops by reason of self-defense. With a sense of self-righteous justice, they embark on killing off other Russian mobsters, eventually branching out to hitting members of the Italian Mob with their numbers runner pal Rocco, played by David Della Rocco which confused me when they give him a title card introduction.
Duffy uses what he thinks is a clever structure by showing the brothers planning their hit then the cops with FBI Agent Willem Dafoe (more on him in a moment) investigating and theorizing about the crime scene before jumping back and showing us what happened. Duffy does this over and over, but it only works in an interesting fashion once when Dafoe appears in the scene, acting out what happened along with the actual participants. But even that sequence ends with a ludicrous gun fight which makes a late-film twist thoroughly ridiculous. (Also, why would the brothers be carrying ammonia to spray on their spilled blood to make evidence gathering useless?)
What saves The Boondocks Saints from total failure is Dafoe's absolutely off-the-chain performance as the gay, smacktalking, FBI Agent who begins to appreciate what the brothers are doing. I'm surprised I've never heard of this performance before as he cross-dresses and generally freaks out in every scene he's in. He's a hoot.
Reedus and Flannery are bland cyphers whom Duffy figured tattoos, some brief prayers (not the least bit ripped-off from Pulp Fiction *cough*), and thick Gaelic accents would suffice as "characters." In one scene they show off fluency in several languages, but no explanation for this skill is given. It's just some "cool" (again *cough*) business stuck in as trimming on an empty package.
Speaking of empty packages, I purchased The Boondocks Saints Truth & Justice Edition Blu-ray and upon watching it discovered I got the original pressing without the "The Boondock Saints - The Film and the Phenomenon" retrospective feature listed on the packaging. Checking reviews, I see that the old disc had the script and this one does, too. I did a search and found other people reporting getting the wrong disc, too. I'll have to chase Fox down for a replacement. Bother.
Score: 4/10. Skip it unless it's on cable when you're flipping by and Dafoe is getting his crazy on.
"Resident Evil: Retribution" Review
After the craptastic Resident Evil: Afterlife stunk to high heaven, I can't believe there was any demand for more of this series, but apparently there is and thus Hollywood begat Resident Evil: Retribution, the penultimate chapter (meaning there's another on the way; oh joy) of the saga of Alice (Milla Jovovich) vs. the Umbrella Corporation. Please, make it stop!
The hook this time is that a whole bunch of characters who died in previous films return, but the manner they come back - as clones and simulations or something - renders all the noisy action meaningless. I had to look up a synopsis this afternoon to refresh me what I watch last night (from this writing) and now I can't recall what was what. Something about Alice having to escape from an elaborate undersea complex that Umbrella converted from post-Cold War Soviet submarine pens where they have massive virtual environments like The Truman Show recreating Moscow, Tokyo, Times Square and a generic suburban neighborhood. The mechanics of the simulation never make any sense even by the loose standards of realism of this series and it's just noise, action, boom-boom, blah-blah-woof-woof.
In my RE:A review, I slagged hacky writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson, saying, "It's a testament to his hackitude that Anderson makes wet and dirty Milla and Ali kicking ass both not hot and not entertaining." In this regard he outdoes himself by making Milla, the back-from-the-dead-Michelle Rodriguez (who also pulled a Lazarus in Furious 6), series newcomer Bingbing Li as game character Ada Wong, and Sienna Guillory (back for the 3rd time as Jill Valentine) not hot as they shoot guns and cat fight. Some of the action choreography is flashy, but it has no heft or consequence. It's just action that causes no reaction.
Milla Jovovich has a bad habit of marrying her directors, but at least Luc Besson has Le Femme Nikita, Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element on his CV. Anderson has a mostly mediocre to average genre stuff; when the first (and ONLY the first) Resident Evil and the flawed Event Horizon are your acmes, well, you hit the jackpot, Tiger. Too bad she's wasting her career making crappy movies with her hubs.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
The hook this time is that a whole bunch of characters who died in previous films return, but the manner they come back - as clones and simulations or something - renders all the noisy action meaningless. I had to look up a synopsis this afternoon to refresh me what I watch last night (from this writing) and now I can't recall what was what. Something about Alice having to escape from an elaborate undersea complex that Umbrella converted from post-Cold War Soviet submarine pens where they have massive virtual environments like The Truman Show recreating Moscow, Tokyo, Times Square and a generic suburban neighborhood. The mechanics of the simulation never make any sense even by the loose standards of realism of this series and it's just noise, action, boom-boom, blah-blah-woof-woof.
In my RE:A review, I slagged hacky writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson, saying, "It's a testament to his hackitude that Anderson makes wet and dirty Milla and Ali kicking ass both not hot and not entertaining." In this regard he outdoes himself by making Milla, the back-from-the-dead-Michelle Rodriguez (who also pulled a Lazarus in Furious 6), series newcomer Bingbing Li as game character Ada Wong, and Sienna Guillory (back for the 3rd time as Jill Valentine) not hot as they shoot guns and cat fight. Some of the action choreography is flashy, but it has no heft or consequence. It's just action that causes no reaction.
Milla Jovovich has a bad habit of marrying her directors, but at least Luc Besson has Le Femme Nikita, Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element on his CV. Anderson has a mostly mediocre to average genre stuff; when the first (and ONLY the first) Resident Evil and the flawed Event Horizon are your acmes, well, you hit the jackpot, Tiger. Too bad she's wasting her career making crappy movies with her hubs.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
May 2013 Review Roundup
Friday, May 31, 2013
Summer's here and the time is right to head to the megaplexes to see some movies the way they're meant to be seen. I nearly quadrupled my theatrical viewing total.
May 3 - Iron Man 3 (8/10)
May 6 - Limitless: Unrated Extended Cut (9/10)
May 8 - Oblivion (4/10)
May 13 - Star Trek (7/10)
May 16 - Star Trek Into Oblivion (5/10)
May 27 - Fast & Furious 6 (8.5/10); The Hangover Part III (6/10)
Most Enjoyed: Furious 6
Least Enjoyed: Oblivion
Month's Movies Watched: 7
Previously Unseen: 5
Theatrical: 5
Home: 2
=====
Year-To-Date: 30
YTD First-Timers: 26
YTD Theatrical: 7
YTD Home: 23
May 3 - Iron Man 3 (8/10)
May 6 - Limitless: Unrated Extended Cut (9/10)
May 8 - Oblivion (4/10)
May 13 - Star Trek (7/10)
May 16 - Star Trek Into Oblivion (5/10)
May 27 - Fast & Furious 6 (8.5/10); The Hangover Part III (6/10)
Most Enjoyed: Furious 6
Least Enjoyed: Oblivion
Month's Movies Watched: 7
Previously Unseen: 5
Theatrical: 5
Home: 2
=====
Year-To-Date: 30
YTD First-Timers: 26
YTD Theatrical: 7
YTD Home: 23
"The Hangover Part III" Review
Monday, May 27, 2013
Following my viewing of the revved-up and better-than-ever 6th installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, I strolled down the row at the multiplex into The Hangover Part III, which is advertised as the final chapter of the Wolfpack Trilogy and we can only hope so. It's not that it sucks, it's just that there's nowhere left for this series to go.
Eschewing the blackout-and-try-to-figure-out-WTF-happened formula of the first two films, The Hangover Part III opts for a linear structure. After Alan's (Zach Galifianakanisasnuffleupagus) man-baby antics have driven his father into the grave, the family decides it's time to send him to a clinic in Arizona to get him back on his meds and the Wolfpack consents to drive him out there. On the way, their minivan is forced off the road and Doug (the one who was missing in the first movie whom no one knows the actor's name) is taken hostage by John Goodman. It seems Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) ripped off $21 million in gold bars from a heist they pulled and he thinks the Wolfpack can find him now that Chow has escaped from the Thai prison he was in and is back Stateside. They have three days to find Chow and the gold or Doug is dead.
How much you enjoy this non-hangover-induced Hangover is dependent on how much you love/like/tolerate/hate the Chow character because he gets a lot of screen time. I like Chow, so I was cool with the emphasis. Alan is more of the same and while Galafreyanklebiteris (sp?) remains fully committed to the the character, at this point I really don't know why the Wolfpack didn't skip simply skip the clinic and drive out into the desert and bury him. (Whether he was dead first is irrelevant.) Ed Helms doesn't has much to do this time and Bradley Cooper really emails his performance in. Considering how many weeks it takes to shoot a feature film, you somewhat have to respect the amount of work Cooper put in to make sure he didn't look like he wanted to be there. (Yes, that's an ironic comment.)
The Hangover Part III was a surprise box office disappointment as Furious 6 left it choking on its dust but where the Fast and Furious series was able to reinvent itself, The Hangover series can't because this chapter was the reinvention and there's simply not enough there there to make further trips to the well advisable.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
Eschewing the blackout-and-try-to-figure-out-WTF-happened formula of the first two films, The Hangover Part III opts for a linear structure. After Alan's (Zach Galifianakanisasnuffleupagus) man-baby antics have driven his father into the grave, the family decides it's time to send him to a clinic in Arizona to get him back on his meds and the Wolfpack consents to drive him out there. On the way, their minivan is forced off the road and Doug (the one who was missing in the first movie whom no one knows the actor's name) is taken hostage by John Goodman. It seems Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) ripped off $21 million in gold bars from a heist they pulled and he thinks the Wolfpack can find him now that Chow has escaped from the Thai prison he was in and is back Stateside. They have three days to find Chow and the gold or Doug is dead.
How much you enjoy this non-hangover-induced Hangover is dependent on how much you love/like/tolerate/hate the Chow character because he gets a lot of screen time. I like Chow, so I was cool with the emphasis. Alan is more of the same and while Galafreyanklebiteris (sp?) remains fully committed to the the character, at this point I really don't know why the Wolfpack didn't skip simply skip the clinic and drive out into the desert and bury him. (Whether he was dead first is irrelevant.) Ed Helms doesn't has much to do this time and Bradley Cooper really emails his performance in. Considering how many weeks it takes to shoot a feature film, you somewhat have to respect the amount of work Cooper put in to make sure he didn't look like he wanted to be there. (Yes, that's an ironic comment.)
The Hangover Part III was a surprise box office disappointment as Furious 6 left it choking on its dust but where the Fast and Furious series was able to reinvent itself, The Hangover series can't because this chapter was the reinvention and there's simply not enough there there to make further trips to the well advisable.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
"Fast & Furious 6" Review
Does anyone remember when The Fast and the Furious was this little B-movie from 2001 about street racing in the Valley? Because the series certainly hasn't over the years beginning with the conceptual reboot it received in Fast Five as The Rock appeared as a Federal agent looking to bust the Vin Diesel-powered family of ace drivers. Suddenly the series was a heist caper picture with seriously over the top action scenes culminating with a huge bank safe being dragged through the streets of Rio like a wrecking ball. With the series back firing on all cylinders, it was time to up the stakes and the result is Furious 6 (as it's credited; no relation to Grandmaster Flash's old back-ups), a movie that's big, noisy, dumb and hella fun.
Furry Sex (sp?) kicks off with The Rock and new sidekick Gina Carano (Haywire) investigating a theft of top secret technology in Moscow. (Why a U.S. lawman is there is because he was in Rio in the last movie; in other words, because.) Since the job was done by a international crew of bad guy drivers, Rock decides recruit Diesel and Company with something that was teased in the middle of the end credits of Fast Five: that Michelle Rodriguez's Letty - last seen being killed off on the 4th installment, Fast and Furious - is working with the bad guys. If Diesel et al help take down the kingpin, everyone gets pardons, but all Diesel wants is to return Letty to his family. Hijinks ensue.
While Fast Five was pretty cool in the action scenes, the in-between parts which were meant to serve has plot and stuff were slow and boring. That's been fixed this time with lots of yuks particularly between Ludacris and Tyrese. Everyone in the supporting cast gets some good jibes in and it's funny stuff.
As for the action scenes, they've ramped up the level of craziness to 12 and the realism knob to -12. The laws of physics operate on Looney Tunes rules and human bodies take so much pounding that it's a miracle half the cast doesn't die of internal injuries or that anyone dies at all from falling. I know we don't see these sorts of movies for their realistic depiction of driving - the lengthy disclaimer at the end reminding the audience that what they just watched was unrealistic and dangerous made me chuckle because wouldn't the world be better off if those who need this helpful safety tip removed themselves from the gene pool? - but stuff happens a lot that makes the "Yeah, right!" alarm threaten to go off. (The finale - which I guessed correctly the trailer spoils - must take place on a runway 20 miles long.)
Afterwards, the silliness of the plot holes will hit you - like why have a convoy which can be attacked by car when you could simply fly the target to the location? - but you'll be having too much fun while you're watching. That said, the way they cover the reintroduction of the dead Letty is actually pretty reasonable. Diesel still acts like a narcoleptic side of beef, but that's still better than Paul Walker can muster. The Rock always tickles me with how he knows exactly what sort of movie he's in and delivers a perfectly-calibrated performance. It's good to have M.Rod back playing tough chicks after a couple years off doing European art house films and the fights (yes, plural) between her and Carano are good if only it's a change to see kickass chicks who aren't skinny twigs (think: Zoe Saldana in Columbiana or Angelina Jolie in Salt) who actually look like they can deliver or take a punch without snapping a limb.
A final note: Just as a plot point of Furious 6 (i.e Letty's alive?) was teased at the end Fast Five, there's a tease for the next flick at the end here and based on the reaction of the crowd they could have gotten the budget for Fastious 7 (I'm calling dibs on that title!) from pre-sales as people filed out. It also retcons an event of Tokyo Drift and pins down for once and all where the 3rd movie in the series fits chronologically in the Fast and Furious world: sixth in line.
Score: 8.5/10. Catch a matinee.
Furry Sex (sp?) kicks off with The Rock and new sidekick Gina Carano (Haywire) investigating a theft of top secret technology in Moscow. (Why a U.S. lawman is there is because he was in Rio in the last movie; in other words, because.) Since the job was done by a international crew of bad guy drivers, Rock decides recruit Diesel and Company with something that was teased in the middle of the end credits of Fast Five: that Michelle Rodriguez's Letty - last seen being killed off on the 4th installment, Fast and Furious - is working with the bad guys. If Diesel et al help take down the kingpin, everyone gets pardons, but all Diesel wants is to return Letty to his family. Hijinks ensue.
While Fast Five was pretty cool in the action scenes, the in-between parts which were meant to serve has plot and stuff were slow and boring. That's been fixed this time with lots of yuks particularly between Ludacris and Tyrese. Everyone in the supporting cast gets some good jibes in and it's funny stuff.
As for the action scenes, they've ramped up the level of craziness to 12 and the realism knob to -12. The laws of physics operate on Looney Tunes rules and human bodies take so much pounding that it's a miracle half the cast doesn't die of internal injuries or that anyone dies at all from falling. I know we don't see these sorts of movies for their realistic depiction of driving - the lengthy disclaimer at the end reminding the audience that what they just watched was unrealistic and dangerous made me chuckle because wouldn't the world be better off if those who need this helpful safety tip removed themselves from the gene pool? - but stuff happens a lot that makes the "Yeah, right!" alarm threaten to go off. (The finale - which I guessed correctly the trailer spoils - must take place on a runway 20 miles long.)
Afterwards, the silliness of the plot holes will hit you - like why have a convoy which can be attacked by car when you could simply fly the target to the location? - but you'll be having too much fun while you're watching. That said, the way they cover the reintroduction of the dead Letty is actually pretty reasonable. Diesel still acts like a narcoleptic side of beef, but that's still better than Paul Walker can muster. The Rock always tickles me with how he knows exactly what sort of movie he's in and delivers a perfectly-calibrated performance. It's good to have M.Rod back playing tough chicks after a couple years off doing European art house films and the fights (yes, plural) between her and Carano are good if only it's a change to see kickass chicks who aren't skinny twigs (think: Zoe Saldana in Columbiana or Angelina Jolie in Salt) who actually look like they can deliver or take a punch without snapping a limb.
A final note: Just as a plot point of Furious 6 (i.e Letty's alive?) was teased at the end Fast Five, there's a tease for the next flick at the end here and based on the reaction of the crowd they could have gotten the budget for Fastious 7 (I'm calling dibs on that title!) from pre-sales as people filed out. It also retcons an event of Tokyo Drift and pins down for once and all where the 3rd movie in the series fits chronologically in the Fast and Furious world: sixth in line.
Score: 8.5/10. Catch a matinee.
"Star Trek Into Darkness" Review
Thursday, May 16, 2013
A major part of the publicity during the production and run-up to the release of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to 2009's Star Trek reboot, was the Romulan cloaking device over what character Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch was playing. Initial rumors were that he was going to be Khan, then original series figures Gary Mitchell or Robert April. When promo photos listing him as "John Harrison" were released, it sparked another round of speculation - "Who's John Harrison? Is that his real name or is he really Khan or Gary Mitchell or Robert April." Even though I'm normally adverse to spoiling things in reviews, it's not that big a deal and frankly I think you dear readers should be warned up front about what Star Trek Into Darkness is...
Cumberbatch is Khan and Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Rebooted Trek Universe Edition.†
STID kicks off with a rollicking pre-title sequence setting up how Kirk is still taking little things like the rules and the Prime Directive less-than-seriously. Then comes a nearly-silent sequence introducing Khan, er, "John Harrison" as a man offering to cure a dying little girl in exchange for her father becoming a suicide bomber of a Federation facility in London. This triggers a chain of events which naturally lead Kirk to instantly regain the Captain's chair of the Enterprise that he'd lost not 10 minutes earlier for being too impulsive and callow.
Apparently Starfleet doesn't have any other qualified personnel for critical positions which is why when Scotty resigns from the Enterprise later in the movie, Chekov is reassigned from his normal duties confusing the ship computer's voice recognition system to run Engineering since apparently no other crewmen in Engineering are qualified. (This is why Chekov, not someone whose full-time job is operating the transporters, had to rush from the bridge in the first movie to save Kirk and Sulu. Right.)
Assigned with hunting down and killing to death Khanisson, Kirk and company have to learn about balancing the desire for revenge with the needs of justice meted out by legal proceedings and if you think that sounds a little like an allegory for debates over the prosecution of the War on Terror, the script by Bad Robot house writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindeloff break out the Metaphors For Dummies flashcards to make clear that killing bad guys with drones is BAD! and there's a hidden agenda by shadowy forces to provoke war. (These guys are aware that Dubya isn't President anymore, right?)
While the political preening is somewhat annoying, what really kills Star Trek Into Darkness is a general sloppiness in writing and tone at a story level. Technology either works amazing levels like being able to teleport across the galaxy at one point to barely working from a few miles away at another. The opening sequence involves the Enterprise being hidden underwater (it's in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler) but why is it there other than to provide a cool visual? The whole reason Gene Roddenberry invented the transporter was because it wasn't possible to convincingly land the ship with 1960s VFX, so what purpose does this scene serve other than to do it because they can? Why wasn't a shuttle sent down if the transporters weren't an option.
The Klingons make their first appearance in the Abrams version of the Trek universe, but it doesn't amount to anything. There is a secret villain with a gigantic battleship that apparently he was able to have designed and built without anyone's knowledge. The "humor" is forced and limited, with Spock and Uhura bickering in the middle of missions like unprofessional schoolkids and vaguely racist jokes about Spock's lack of sense of humor offered as witty repartee. But it's when the story returns to regurgitating Wrath of Khan that it really bores and reveals its laziness. Not only will you be able to predict exactly how they'll get out of their predicament, but I defy you from not laughing at an iconic moment which doesn't work in its new context.
When the movie was meant to be the most thrilling was when I became the most bored because it was literally sound and fury signifying nothing. I tuned out and stopped paying attention to the Big Action Moments because there were no stakes at risk; all was going to end well in the end. It's too bad because the cast is uniformly excellent as they were last time out. Cumberbatch is the best Bond villain in ages, but he too is saddled with a script that's contradictory about his motivations. It's a testament to his thespian heft that you don't realize until the drive home how little sense his actions made.
Nerds don't like the Orci-Kurtzman-Lindeloff writing squad, calling them "hacks" for their work on the Transformers series but unlike Oscar-winning hack Akiva Goldsman (Batman & Robin, Lost In Space, A Beautiful Mind) it's not that they're terrible as much as so successful and insulated that no one has the ability to point out how lazy they've become. Their movies make tons of money, so who cares if plot canyons exist? [/raises hand to indicate that I care] It's too bad since they had an opportunity to make something unique from their rebooted universe and they chose to go with the path of least resistance.
Some may be concerned for what this portends for Abrams' next project, the hotly-anticipated-and-feared Star Wars: Episode VII - Title To Be Announced In 2014 Probably. I'm not panicking (yet) because the Bad Robot boys won't be involved in the scripting. I'm not sure what having the scribe from Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine will bring to the party, but Lawrence Kasdan is reportedly consulting and I don't think producer Kathleen Kennedy will allow the sloppy writing Abrams accepted from his pals. I'm just hoping he builds some sets instead of going with these giant factories, breweries and labs which don't look like they'd fit in a starship; it's the Enterprise, not the TARDIS!
Score: 5/10. Catch it at the dollar show.
† The whole "John Harrison" conceit was only constructed to hide that they were retelling Wrath of Kahn. Why the secrecy? Probably to preempt the inevitable year-plus of bitching about, "Why aren't they telling NEW stories? They're so lazy and unoriginal! Kahn isn't white! Lens flare rage!" It'd be like if Man of Steel's hype hid that it was General Zod, calling him "Bill Williams" so people didn't react, positively or negatively, to the Superman II recycling.
**** SPOILER-HEAVY RANTING BELOW!!! ONLY READ IF YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE OR DON'T CARE TO!!! ****
AICN's Capone liked it in his review burping up at one point with regard to Khan that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" and I posted this as a comment (thus some repetition from above):
Not only is that one of the more insipid liberal tropes - which obviously tickled Capone's happy spots about the movie; "Drone strikes bad! Marcus = Dick Cheney!" - but it's totally inapplicable here because there's no freedom Khan is fighting for. His fellow prisoners freedom? When you blow people up without announcing why - "Free my fellow prisoners from 300 years ago!*" - you don't get to claim some morally superior mantle.
Khan was thawed out to help Marcus' agenda of militarization because he's super smart and savage. Fine, so if he wants to blow the whistle, why not go to the 23rd Century version of MSNBC to tell the story rather than do a convoluted scheme to save a terminally ill child with his Magic Blood in exchange for the father being impressed into service as a suicide bomber?
What was the purpose of that plot thread? Wouldn't it have been better to have Khan himself sneak into the secret Federation weapons base, blow it up to trigger the meeting at Starfleet HQ, and then have Marcus simultaneously sending Kirk off to catch Khan and hide his connection? The only reason for the kid is to establish Khan's Magic Blood, which is then reminded of when McCoy injects the tribble, so that when Kirk is making his Noble Sacrifice, the Get Out of Death card they play at the end is set up to not seem like a total deus ex machina, like say shooting his body down to a planet which makes life from lifelessness. *cough* (Not to mention that they have a hold filled with other superpeople from Khan's ship who probably have the same Magic Blood.)
The whole "John Harrison" conceit was only constructed to hide that they were retelling Wrath of Kahn. Why the secrecy? Probably to preempt the inevitable year-plus of bitching about, "Why aren't they telling NEW stories? They're so lazy and unoriginal! Khan isn't white! Lens flare rage!" It'd be like if Man of Steel's hype hid that it was General Zod, calling him "Bill Williams" so people didn't react, positively or negatively, to the Superman II recycling. I'm wondering if I would've liked it more if I'd know for sure that they were up to instead of being let down and rapidly bored by what they did?
* I'm surprised that no one is calling out the broken math of Kahn being frozen for "300 years" since the events of Star Trek Into Darkness occur in 2259 which means Kahn would have to have been made a genetically-engineered superman and shot into space in 1959 before we had any of those capabilities. Space Seed said that Kahn was a warlord in the 1990s, but Blade Runner also presumed a far different future 37 years away, too. Orci, Kurtzman and Lindeloff could have fixed everything by freezing their Khan for 200 years, but they were too occupied with typing Bickersons dialog for Spock and Uhura to squabble with during crucial missions.
Cumberbatch is Khan and Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Rebooted Trek Universe Edition.†
STID kicks off with a rollicking pre-title sequence setting up how Kirk is still taking little things like the rules and the Prime Directive less-than-seriously. Then comes a nearly-silent sequence introducing Khan, er, "John Harrison" as a man offering to cure a dying little girl in exchange for her father becoming a suicide bomber of a Federation facility in London. This triggers a chain of events which naturally lead Kirk to instantly regain the Captain's chair of the Enterprise that he'd lost not 10 minutes earlier for being too impulsive and callow.
Apparently Starfleet doesn't have any other qualified personnel for critical positions which is why when Scotty resigns from the Enterprise later in the movie, Chekov is reassigned from his normal duties confusing the ship computer's voice recognition system to run Engineering since apparently no other crewmen in Engineering are qualified. (This is why Chekov, not someone whose full-time job is operating the transporters, had to rush from the bridge in the first movie to save Kirk and Sulu. Right.)
Assigned with hunting down and killing to death Khanisson, Kirk and company have to learn about balancing the desire for revenge with the needs of justice meted out by legal proceedings and if you think that sounds a little like an allegory for debates over the prosecution of the War on Terror, the script by Bad Robot house writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindeloff break out the Metaphors For Dummies flashcards to make clear that killing bad guys with drones is BAD! and there's a hidden agenda by shadowy forces to provoke war. (These guys are aware that Dubya isn't President anymore, right?)
While the political preening is somewhat annoying, what really kills Star Trek Into Darkness is a general sloppiness in writing and tone at a story level. Technology either works amazing levels like being able to teleport across the galaxy at one point to barely working from a few miles away at another. The opening sequence involves the Enterprise being hidden underwater (it's in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler) but why is it there other than to provide a cool visual? The whole reason Gene Roddenberry invented the transporter was because it wasn't possible to convincingly land the ship with 1960s VFX, so what purpose does this scene serve other than to do it because they can? Why wasn't a shuttle sent down if the transporters weren't an option.
The Klingons make their first appearance in the Abrams version of the Trek universe, but it doesn't amount to anything. There is a secret villain with a gigantic battleship that apparently he was able to have designed and built without anyone's knowledge. The "humor" is forced and limited, with Spock and Uhura bickering in the middle of missions like unprofessional schoolkids and vaguely racist jokes about Spock's lack of sense of humor offered as witty repartee. But it's when the story returns to regurgitating Wrath of Khan that it really bores and reveals its laziness. Not only will you be able to predict exactly how they'll get out of their predicament, but I defy you from not laughing at an iconic moment which doesn't work in its new context.
When the movie was meant to be the most thrilling was when I became the most bored because it was literally sound and fury signifying nothing. I tuned out and stopped paying attention to the Big Action Moments because there were no stakes at risk; all was going to end well in the end. It's too bad because the cast is uniformly excellent as they were last time out. Cumberbatch is the best Bond villain in ages, but he too is saddled with a script that's contradictory about his motivations. It's a testament to his thespian heft that you don't realize until the drive home how little sense his actions made.
Nerds don't like the Orci-Kurtzman-Lindeloff writing squad, calling them "hacks" for their work on the Transformers series but unlike Oscar-winning hack Akiva Goldsman (Batman & Robin, Lost In Space, A Beautiful Mind) it's not that they're terrible as much as so successful and insulated that no one has the ability to point out how lazy they've become. Their movies make tons of money, so who cares if plot canyons exist? [/raises hand to indicate that I care] It's too bad since they had an opportunity to make something unique from their rebooted universe and they chose to go with the path of least resistance.
Some may be concerned for what this portends for Abrams' next project, the hotly-anticipated-and-feared Star Wars: Episode VII - Title To Be Announced In 2014 Probably. I'm not panicking (yet) because the Bad Robot boys won't be involved in the scripting. I'm not sure what having the scribe from Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine will bring to the party, but Lawrence Kasdan is reportedly consulting and I don't think producer Kathleen Kennedy will allow the sloppy writing Abrams accepted from his pals. I'm just hoping he builds some sets instead of going with these giant factories, breweries and labs which don't look like they'd fit in a starship; it's the Enterprise, not the TARDIS!
Score: 5/10. Catch it at the dollar show.
† The whole "John Harrison" conceit was only constructed to hide that they were retelling Wrath of Kahn. Why the secrecy? Probably to preempt the inevitable year-plus of bitching about, "Why aren't they telling NEW stories? They're so lazy and unoriginal! Kahn isn't white! Lens flare rage!" It'd be like if Man of Steel's hype hid that it was General Zod, calling him "Bill Williams" so people didn't react, positively or negatively, to the Superman II recycling.
**** SPOILER-HEAVY RANTING BELOW!!! ONLY READ IF YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE OR DON'T CARE TO!!! ****
AICN's Capone liked it in his review burping up at one point with regard to Khan that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" and I posted this as a comment (thus some repetition from above):
Not only is that one of the more insipid liberal tropes - which obviously tickled Capone's happy spots about the movie; "Drone strikes bad! Marcus = Dick Cheney!" - but it's totally inapplicable here because there's no freedom Khan is fighting for. His fellow prisoners freedom? When you blow people up without announcing why - "Free my fellow prisoners from 300 years ago!*" - you don't get to claim some morally superior mantle.
Khan was thawed out to help Marcus' agenda of militarization because he's super smart and savage. Fine, so if he wants to blow the whistle, why not go to the 23rd Century version of MSNBC to tell the story rather than do a convoluted scheme to save a terminally ill child with his Magic Blood in exchange for the father being impressed into service as a suicide bomber?
What was the purpose of that plot thread? Wouldn't it have been better to have Khan himself sneak into the secret Federation weapons base, blow it up to trigger the meeting at Starfleet HQ, and then have Marcus simultaneously sending Kirk off to catch Khan and hide his connection? The only reason for the kid is to establish Khan's Magic Blood, which is then reminded of when McCoy injects the tribble, so that when Kirk is making his Noble Sacrifice, the Get Out of Death card they play at the end is set up to not seem like a total deus ex machina, like say shooting his body down to a planet which makes life from lifelessness. *cough* (Not to mention that they have a hold filled with other superpeople from Khan's ship who probably have the same Magic Blood.)
The whole "John Harrison" conceit was only constructed to hide that they were retelling Wrath of Kahn. Why the secrecy? Probably to preempt the inevitable year-plus of bitching about, "Why aren't they telling NEW stories? They're so lazy and unoriginal! Khan isn't white! Lens flare rage!" It'd be like if Man of Steel's hype hid that it was General Zod, calling him "Bill Williams" so people didn't react, positively or negatively, to the Superman II recycling. I'm wondering if I would've liked it more if I'd know for sure that they were up to instead of being let down and rapidly bored by what they did?
* I'm surprised that no one is calling out the broken math of Kahn being frozen for "300 years" since the events of Star Trek Into Darkness occur in 2259 which means Kahn would have to have been made a genetically-engineered superman and shot into space in 1959 before we had any of those capabilities. Space Seed said that Kahn was a warlord in the 1990s, but Blade Runner also presumed a far different future 37 years away, too. Orci, Kurtzman and Lindeloff could have fixed everything by freezing their Khan for 200 years, but they were too occupied with typing Bickersons dialog for Spock and Uhura to squabble with during crucial missions.
"Star Trek (2009)" Blu-ray Review
Monday, May 13, 2013
With the impending release of Star Trek Into Darkness, there has been an uptick in hating on J.J. Abrams' reboot of the franchise with these two videos bagging on the ridiculous plot holes and stuff:
I was mindful of most of the plot holes back in 2009 when I saw it and frankly didn't mind so much because Abrams had made the first Star Trek movie in ages that looked like a MOVIE and not a higher-budgeted television episode. It moved swiftly, was fun and the cast did a great job of capturing the essence of the original cast without resorting to mere mimicry.
That said, the super-convenient manner in which every member of the crew lands in their final spots seem cheesy (in a bad way) now and stuff we're supposed to accept like Starfleet has a base close enough to Vulcan to see its destruction with the naked eye, but it's not in the same system AND it's staffed by Scotty all by himself with the Oompa Loompa from Tim Burton's Willie Wonka movie. Come on.
There's a lot Star Trek does right, but enough silly decisions to give the nerd rager's a decent-sized club to beat it with. Rewatching the Blu-ray after watching the videos above made the gaffes unignorable. Also, the lens flare has lens flare.
Score: 7/10. Buy it on sale.
I was mindful of most of the plot holes back in 2009 when I saw it and frankly didn't mind so much because Abrams had made the first Star Trek movie in ages that looked like a MOVIE and not a higher-budgeted television episode. It moved swiftly, was fun and the cast did a great job of capturing the essence of the original cast without resorting to mere mimicry.
That said, the super-convenient manner in which every member of the crew lands in their final spots seem cheesy (in a bad way) now and stuff we're supposed to accept like Starfleet has a base close enough to Vulcan to see its destruction with the naked eye, but it's not in the same system AND it's staffed by Scotty all by himself with the Oompa Loompa from Tim Burton's Willie Wonka movie. Come on.
There's a lot Star Trek does right, but enough silly decisions to give the nerd rager's a decent-sized club to beat it with. Rewatching the Blu-ray after watching the videos above made the gaffes unignorable. Also, the lens flare has lens flare.
Score: 7/10. Buy it on sale.
"Oblivion" Review
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
When the trailer for Tom Cruise's latest flick, Oblivion, came out there was a lot of snarky about how it looked like a mash-up of WALL-E and The Matrix (with Morgan Freeman in the Morpheus role) and having seen it I can only wish it had managed to make the sum equal to a fraction of the parts of those films.
Set in 2077, the Earth had been devastated by an alien invasion that started with the shattering of the Moon and the decimation of the planet by earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear weapons. (More on this later.) With the Earth trashed, the remains of the human race have relocated to Titan, a moon of Saturn because the much closer and relatively warmer Mars would've made too much sense or something. Cruise plays Jack (not because he just played Jack Reacher and couldn't learn to answer to another name or anything), a drone repair tech who fixes the armed flying death spheres that protect giant pyramids sucking the oceans up and converting them to fusion fuel to propel the exodus of the final crews to Titan from an orbiting four-sided die called the Tet (short for tetrahedron).
His base of operations is Tower 49, a slick, icy-cold, sterile tri-level structure perched thousands of feet up above the clouds, looking like an Apple store in 2001. Keeping him company in his work (and bed, it appears) is Andrea Riseborough (me neither), who sorta looks like what Tilda Swinton would look like if she was a woman and not from David Bowie's homeworld and makes me think they couldn't get Emily Blunt or Jessica Chastain for the part. She monitor's operations from their base and skinny dips in their clear swimming pool (as in you can see into it from the outside) that runs the width of the station on their "front porch" with the walkway to the glass bubble-crossed-with-dragonfly jetcopter that Jack uses to...wait, what the what?!? A SWIMMING POOL?!?!
Most of the reviews for Oblivion have singled out its design sense for praise while damning the derivative and mundane story, but while the gleaming white metal and glass construct of everything is spiffy, it doesn't jibe with what a real operations base would need. Then again, it's not surprising when you consider that the director is Joseph Kosinski who helmed the also-slick but empty TRON Legacy. (The engine exhausts are like the updated Recognizers.) There's a weird disconnect between the ruined Earth and this shining spire and their supposedly urgent mission.
Also, I've had to here with the ridiculous alterations to the landscape that this movie and shows like Defiance portray where the surface is radically transformed in impossible, but picturesque ways. As the trailer shows at 0:34 of the trailer, the Washington Monument is only slightly askew and the Capitol done is visible, but a major setting is the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building which is at ground level because supposedly 1000 feet of dirt have buried it, making the landscape look like Iceland, the current hot exotic location as its use for Prometheus and Game of Thrones shows. As with everything else, making it look cool is more important than having it make sense.
Oh yeah, I never finished recapping the story, did I? That's OK, neither did the screenwriters (working from a pitch for a graphic novel by Kosinski) and as the trailer shows, it's all nonsense about secrets and dreams and mysterious women who fall from the sky and blah-blah-woof-woof. When a movie opens with a mention that their memories had been wiped because just because that's a huge warning flag because it makes no sense; it's like having a pool in your space tower. To Oblivion's tiny credit, the explanation of what's really happening isn't what most people will guess, though when that reveal starts to hint itself, you'll leap a few minutes ahead of the storytelling. The ending and the coda are also ridiculous.
Cruise and Riseborough are fine with what they're given as is former Bond hottie Olga Kurylenko as the Woman Jack Dreams About Who You Will Not Be In The Least Bit Surprised When It's Revealed She's His Wife From Before The Apocalypse. (Whoops! Spoiler alert!) Freeman has so little to do but add useless gravitas to the Morpheus role and the guy who plays Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones has the thankless sidekick-who-doesn't-like-our-hero part. Zoe Bell is listed in the credits but I never spotted her and have no idea who that character was, not that it matters.
For some reason some people think that Kosinski is some sort of visionary director on the rise but based on TRON Legacy and Oblivion, those people are sadly mistaken. (One clown on io9.com in particular thinks he should do the next Star Trek movie. No, Bub.) A few slick sets don't substitute for solid stories well told and he's whiffed both times. I didn't get much sleep the night before, but I was dozing off at 1:30 in the afternoon while watching this and "It kept me awake" is the pass-fail for my girlfriend when she watches something. Just saying.
Normally I'd be giving this a catch it on cable recommendation, but for the luscious visuals and the super-cool sound effects for the killer drones when they're in hunting mode. If you've got a good sound system for your home theater, rent the Blu-ray; otherwise wait for cable.
Score: 4/10. Rent the Blu-ray.
Set in 2077, the Earth had been devastated by an alien invasion that started with the shattering of the Moon and the decimation of the planet by earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear weapons. (More on this later.) With the Earth trashed, the remains of the human race have relocated to Titan, a moon of Saturn because the much closer and relatively warmer Mars would've made too much sense or something. Cruise plays Jack (not because he just played Jack Reacher and couldn't learn to answer to another name or anything), a drone repair tech who fixes the armed flying death spheres that protect giant pyramids sucking the oceans up and converting them to fusion fuel to propel the exodus of the final crews to Titan from an orbiting four-sided die called the Tet (short for tetrahedron).
His base of operations is Tower 49, a slick, icy-cold, sterile tri-level structure perched thousands of feet up above the clouds, looking like an Apple store in 2001. Keeping him company in his work (and bed, it appears) is Andrea Riseborough (me neither), who sorta looks like what Tilda Swinton would look like if she was a woman and not from David Bowie's homeworld and makes me think they couldn't get Emily Blunt or Jessica Chastain for the part. She monitor's operations from their base and skinny dips in their clear swimming pool (as in you can see into it from the outside) that runs the width of the station on their "front porch" with the walkway to the glass bubble-crossed-with-dragonfly jetcopter that Jack uses to...wait, what the what?!? A SWIMMING POOL?!?!
Most of the reviews for Oblivion have singled out its design sense for praise while damning the derivative and mundane story, but while the gleaming white metal and glass construct of everything is spiffy, it doesn't jibe with what a real operations base would need. Then again, it's not surprising when you consider that the director is Joseph Kosinski who helmed the also-slick but empty TRON Legacy. (The engine exhausts are like the updated Recognizers.) There's a weird disconnect between the ruined Earth and this shining spire and their supposedly urgent mission.
Also, I've had to here with the ridiculous alterations to the landscape that this movie and shows like Defiance portray where the surface is radically transformed in impossible, but picturesque ways. As the trailer shows at 0:34 of the trailer, the Washington Monument is only slightly askew and the Capitol done is visible, but a major setting is the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building which is at ground level because supposedly 1000 feet of dirt have buried it, making the landscape look like Iceland, the current hot exotic location as its use for Prometheus and Game of Thrones shows. As with everything else, making it look cool is more important than having it make sense.
Oh yeah, I never finished recapping the story, did I? That's OK, neither did the screenwriters (working from a pitch for a graphic novel by Kosinski) and as the trailer shows, it's all nonsense about secrets and dreams and mysterious women who fall from the sky and blah-blah-woof-woof. When a movie opens with a mention that their memories had been wiped because just because that's a huge warning flag because it makes no sense; it's like having a pool in your space tower. To Oblivion's tiny credit, the explanation of what's really happening isn't what most people will guess, though when that reveal starts to hint itself, you'll leap a few minutes ahead of the storytelling. The ending and the coda are also ridiculous.
Cruise and Riseborough are fine with what they're given as is former Bond hottie Olga Kurylenko as the Woman Jack Dreams About Who You Will Not Be In The Least Bit Surprised When It's Revealed She's His Wife From Before The Apocalypse. (Whoops! Spoiler alert!) Freeman has so little to do but add useless gravitas to the Morpheus role and the guy who plays Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones has the thankless sidekick-who-doesn't-like-our-hero part. Zoe Bell is listed in the credits but I never spotted her and have no idea who that character was, not that it matters.
For some reason some people think that Kosinski is some sort of visionary director on the rise but based on TRON Legacy and Oblivion, those people are sadly mistaken. (One clown on io9.com in particular thinks he should do the next Star Trek movie. No, Bub.) A few slick sets don't substitute for solid stories well told and he's whiffed both times. I didn't get much sleep the night before, but I was dozing off at 1:30 in the afternoon while watching this and "It kept me awake" is the pass-fail for my girlfriend when she watches something. Just saying.
Normally I'd be giving this a catch it on cable recommendation, but for the luscious visuals and the super-cool sound effects for the killer drones when they're in hunting mode. If you've got a good sound system for your home theater, rent the Blu-ray; otherwise wait for cable.
Score: 4/10. Rent the Blu-ray.
"LImitless: Unrated Extended Cut" Blu-ray Review
Monday, May 6, 2013
I've been wanting to get this for over two years since it was my favorite movie of 2011, but it never seemed to go on sale until just recently, then Beast Buy never had it in stock until the other day when I was able to pick it up.
My original review is here and on second viewing it still holds up, though I was able to notice the use of color timing and camera techniques a bit more. A check online of the comparisons between the theatrical PG-13 cut and this "unrated"* cut are minor; mostly trims to sex and violence that don't seem too extreme in their unbowdlerized form. It's not profound, but it's immensely entertaining and Bradley Cooper kills it in the lead. It's also amusing to realize that he and Robert De Niro would team up in a couple of years and earn Oscar nominations for Silver Linings Playbook.
The Blu-ray looks and sounds great, but it's really thin on the extras side with a pair of fluffy short EPKs - the most techy thing mentioned is the film stocks used for different phases - that add up to about 15 minutes and an alternate ending that's remarkably not as good as what made it into theaters. (Reshoots can help!) I haven't listened to the commentary track yet.
Score: 9/10. Buy it.
* The dirty little secret of the "unrated" label is that it's meant to imply more sex and violence in a movie cut - which in the case of horror or action movies that studio demand a profit-enhancing PG-13 instead of an R-rating lives up to its implied meaning - all it really means is that the MPAA didn't rate it. If Pixar wanted to insert a few more shots of sunsets into Finding Nemo and put it out as the "Unrated Edition", they could even though there'd be nothing risque about it.
My original review is here and on second viewing it still holds up, though I was able to notice the use of color timing and camera techniques a bit more. A check online of the comparisons between the theatrical PG-13 cut and this "unrated"* cut are minor; mostly trims to sex and violence that don't seem too extreme in their unbowdlerized form. It's not profound, but it's immensely entertaining and Bradley Cooper kills it in the lead. It's also amusing to realize that he and Robert De Niro would team up in a couple of years and earn Oscar nominations for Silver Linings Playbook.
The Blu-ray looks and sounds great, but it's really thin on the extras side with a pair of fluffy short EPKs - the most techy thing mentioned is the film stocks used for different phases - that add up to about 15 minutes and an alternate ending that's remarkably not as good as what made it into theaters. (Reshoots can help!) I haven't listened to the commentary track yet.
Score: 9/10. Buy it.
* The dirty little secret of the "unrated" label is that it's meant to imply more sex and violence in a movie cut - which in the case of horror or action movies that studio demand a profit-enhancing PG-13 instead of an R-rating lives up to its implied meaning - all it really means is that the MPAA didn't rate it. If Pixar wanted to insert a few more shots of sunsets into Finding Nemo and put it out as the "Unrated Edition", they could even though there'd be nothing risque about it.
"Iron Man 3" Review
Friday, May 3, 2013
Marvel's "Phase Two" - the post-Avengers slate of movies which will include the upcoming Thor: The Dark World, the shooting Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the in pre-production Guardians of the Galaxy, all leading up to Avengers 2 - kicks off with Iron Man 3 which serves as a conclusion to the trilogy; an impression that the closing credits being a greatest hits clip reel from all three Iron Man movies reinforces.
After the events of The Avengers, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. killing it as usual) is a wreck - racked by crippling anxiety attacks, unable to sleep, drifting away from his lady love Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, who's never been hotter and when you see the movie, you'll get what I mean by that), spending his nights tinkering on a literal army of suits, implanting sensors into his body to act as magnets that attract the pieces to him. The man inside the iron is corroding.
Meanwhile, a shadowy terrorist called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is reining terror via television hacks portending doom for the President as a lesson to America which is never really made clear. After Tony's pal Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is critically injured in a Mandarin attack, Tony dares the Mandarin to come and get him, which he does in a spectacular assault, showcased in all the ads and trailers, on his Malibu home. Barely escaping with his life, Tony crash lands in Tennessee where he needs to find a way to repair his broken suit and psyche and figure out what the Mandarin is up to and how it connects to soldiers working for a slick Guy Pearce who has developed a tech called Extremis which may have miraculous powers albeit with terrible side effects.
While there is plenty to like in Iron Man 3 - especially some great quippy stuff and a scene involving Rhodey's (Don Cheadle) account name and password - there are some weird flaws in the script which hurt things overall. Comic book fans who were already at Nerd Rage Level Orange over the casting of a non-Chinese actor as the Mandarin will go full Level Red/DEFCON 1 when they see how the character is handled in the movie. Non-comic fans probably won't mind, but comic fans will howl. The overarching plot of revenge targeting the President never makes sense and the motivation of the villain seems specious. They really should've had Joss Whedon do a hardcore polish on things.
When watching the Avengers, as awesome a feat it was of juggling so many balls, I felt like something was missing though I couldn't quite put my finger on what could've been improved. Here it's easy to easy to diagnose the core problem: the weakly-motivated villain who seems aimed at the wrong target. Somehow co-writer/director Shane Black (who wrote Lethal Weapon and collaboated with RDJ on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) decided that Tony Stark's nemesis should be fear and thus the villain villain was given short shrift. It's like how the awful Skyfall wanted to make Bond getting old the problem so we were given a terrible villain who was little more than a disgruntled ex-employee who should've taken his grievance to his union rep.
I've seen a lot of hyperbolic bashing of Iron Man 3 around the Internet from Manichean nerds whose binary mentality can't see anything between flawless victory and epic failure, so they're calling this the "Worst. Marvel. Movie. Ever." In a world where the first Hulk, Elektra, and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (not to mention DC's pathetic The Dark Knight Reloaded) are fighting for last place, perhaps the twerps need a trip to the optometrist to have their sense of proportion checked. There's also an element of "it doesn't feel like the other movies" from the same people who'd be first to whine that "they're just recycling the same stuff over and over instead of doing something different." Ignore them.
It comes down to this: Is Iron Man 3 good, does it have good writing, acting, action and is it worth seeing. The answers are yes; mostly, but could've been improved in the plot; yes; yes; and yes. Nuff said!
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.
While there are a couple of spoilers in the trailer, it's interesting to see how much isn't in the trailer and I've chosen to skip over those parts in the review because it's nice to be surprised.
After the events of The Avengers, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. killing it as usual) is a wreck - racked by crippling anxiety attacks, unable to sleep, drifting away from his lady love Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, who's never been hotter and when you see the movie, you'll get what I mean by that), spending his nights tinkering on a literal army of suits, implanting sensors into his body to act as magnets that attract the pieces to him. The man inside the iron is corroding.
Meanwhile, a shadowy terrorist called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is reining terror via television hacks portending doom for the President as a lesson to America which is never really made clear. After Tony's pal Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is critically injured in a Mandarin attack, Tony dares the Mandarin to come and get him, which he does in a spectacular assault, showcased in all the ads and trailers, on his Malibu home. Barely escaping with his life, Tony crash lands in Tennessee where he needs to find a way to repair his broken suit and psyche and figure out what the Mandarin is up to and how it connects to soldiers working for a slick Guy Pearce who has developed a tech called Extremis which may have miraculous powers albeit with terrible side effects.
While there is plenty to like in Iron Man 3 - especially some great quippy stuff and a scene involving Rhodey's (Don Cheadle) account name and password - there are some weird flaws in the script which hurt things overall. Comic book fans who were already at Nerd Rage Level Orange over the casting of a non-Chinese actor as the Mandarin will go full Level Red/DEFCON 1 when they see how the character is handled in the movie. Non-comic fans probably won't mind, but comic fans will howl. The overarching plot of revenge targeting the President never makes sense and the motivation of the villain seems specious. They really should've had Joss Whedon do a hardcore polish on things.
When watching the Avengers, as awesome a feat it was of juggling so many balls, I felt like something was missing though I couldn't quite put my finger on what could've been improved. Here it's easy to easy to diagnose the core problem: the weakly-motivated villain who seems aimed at the wrong target. Somehow co-writer/director Shane Black (who wrote Lethal Weapon and collaboated with RDJ on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) decided that Tony Stark's nemesis should be fear and thus the villain villain was given short shrift. It's like how the awful Skyfall wanted to make Bond getting old the problem so we were given a terrible villain who was little more than a disgruntled ex-employee who should've taken his grievance to his union rep.
I've seen a lot of hyperbolic bashing of Iron Man 3 around the Internet from Manichean nerds whose binary mentality can't see anything between flawless victory and epic failure, so they're calling this the "Worst. Marvel. Movie. Ever." In a world where the first Hulk, Elektra, and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (not to mention DC's pathetic The Dark Knight Reloaded) are fighting for last place, perhaps the twerps need a trip to the optometrist to have their sense of proportion checked. There's also an element of "it doesn't feel like the other movies" from the same people who'd be first to whine that "they're just recycling the same stuff over and over instead of doing something different." Ignore them.
It comes down to this: Is Iron Man 3 good, does it have good writing, acting, action and is it worth seeing. The answers are yes; mostly, but could've been improved in the plot; yes; yes; and yes. Nuff said!
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.
While there are a couple of spoilers in the trailer, it's interesting to see how much isn't in the trailer and I've chosen to skip over those parts in the review because it's nice to be surprised.
April 2013 Review Roundup
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Another slow month as I had other things on the plate, though this month did witness my first trips to an actual movie theater since December when I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in HFR 3D and didn't review it. Yes, I suck.
April 14 - The Big Hit (9/10)
April 15 - The Avengers (9/10)
April 21 - G.I Joe: Retaliation (6/10)
April 23 - Mimic: Director's Cut (5/10)
April 30 - Warm Bodies (6/10); Skyfall (4/10)
Most Enjoyed: The Big Hit (it's just so much fun)
Least Enjoyed: Mimic (Skyfall has such good cinematography it was at least nice to look at)
Month's Movies Watched: 6
Previously Unseen: 4
Theatrical: 2
Home: 4
=====
Year-To-Date: 23
YTD First-Timers: 21
YTD Theatrical: 2
YTD Home: 21
April 14 - The Big Hit (9/10)
April 15 - The Avengers (9/10)
April 21 - G.I Joe: Retaliation (6/10)
April 23 - Mimic: Director's Cut (5/10)
April 30 - Warm Bodies (6/10); Skyfall (4/10)
Most Enjoyed: The Big Hit (it's just so much fun)
Least Enjoyed: Mimic (Skyfall has such good cinematography it was at least nice to look at)
Month's Movies Watched: 6
Previously Unseen: 4
Theatrical: 2
Home: 4
=====
Year-To-Date: 23
YTD First-Timers: 21
YTD Theatrical: 2
YTD Home: 21
"Skyfall" Blu-ray Review
I'm calling it now: The Daniel Craig Bond era has to end. Period. Full stop. End of discussion.
I liked Pierce Brosnan just fine and while Tomorrow Never Dies was a the best of his quartet of outings, Die Another Day was OK, too. While my girlfriend can't stop fixating on Daniel Craig's ears, I just think he should be remaking Steve McQueen's catalog. I don't dislike Craig, I don't like him as Bond and while Casino Royale (with cheese!) was adequate, Quantum of Solace was an empty nothing that I can't remember a thing about. (The only reason I have it in my library is because my Bond 50 box set included it.)
Which brings us to Skyfall, the most-successful financially, but frankly worst Bond movie I can recall offhand and I'm including Moonraker and The World Is Not Enough with the ignoble tag team of a villain who's only meaningful trait is that he can't feel pain and Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in shorts. I don't claim to be a Bond connoisseur but man does Skyfall seem to utterly fail at being a Bond movie at all.
After a raucous pre-credit sequence which ends with the loss of a sensitive hard drive which was in an Istanbul hotel room for some reason, Bond is presumed dead. M (Judi Dench) is typing up Bond's obit and being eased toward retirement by the government to be replaced by Ralph Fiennes who has a name that starts with an M, so he's an obvious pick. Meanwhile, Bond is hiding out in some tropical paradise, shagging the local wahinis and participating in a ridiculous drinking game involving a live scorpion.
When a mysterious hacker blows up the MI-6 office, killing several agents, it spurs Bond to get back into the game. Unfortunately, he's out of shape and more like 003-1/2 than 007, but M puts him in the game anyway. And this is the first of many problems Skyfall has by making the villain time and age and progress making dinosaurs like Bond and M obsolete. Since a metaphysical concept isn't much of an adversary, a very campy and flamboyant (get the inference?) Javier Bardem is the supposed bad guy, Silva, who has the hard drive and a vendetta against M.
Unfortunately, his beef is similar to what happened to Bond himself during the credits of The World Is Not Enough and Bond didn't wage war on his employers over it. Frankly, it's pathetic. We've gone from Bond villains who want to rule the world to a disgruntled employee who should've filed a workplace grievance with his union rep. I'm not kidding; it's that lame.
I'm not a Bond aficionado though I do have every movie on DVD and Blu-ray (it doesn't mean I've watched them), but there are several things that typify a James Bond movie: him shagging numerous beauties (whoops, AIDS stopped that in the Eighties); nifty and impossible gadgets like invisible cars and pens that turn into guns; a super-cool villain with a diabolical scheme; and Bond being a nearly infallible and indestructible. All these things are missing for the most part in Skyfall; sorry, a pistol with a grip coded so only Bond can shoot it isn't impressive. (What's next, requiring upper and lower-case letters, a number and a special character on his MI-6 login password?) While the producers said they wanted a more realistic Bond when they tossed Brosnan for Craig, they seem to be unaware of what the audience wants from a Bond flick.
While the plot is weak, the action sequences are uniformly above-average and the cinematography by ten-time Oscar-loser Roger Deakins is simply lovely. People I know who aren't hardcore cinephiles remarked about how beautiful Skyfall is, but Deakins went home empty-handed again.While Life of Pi was a beautiful film, most of its look came from special effects and post-production wizardry and its victory over Skyfall was a bad call on the part of the Academy. Better luck next time, Roger.
Score: 4/10. Rent the Blu-ray.
I liked Pierce Brosnan just fine and while Tomorrow Never Dies was a the best of his quartet of outings, Die Another Day was OK, too. While my girlfriend can't stop fixating on Daniel Craig's ears, I just think he should be remaking Steve McQueen's catalog. I don't dislike Craig, I don't like him as Bond and while Casino Royale (with cheese!) was adequate, Quantum of Solace was an empty nothing that I can't remember a thing about. (The only reason I have it in my library is because my Bond 50 box set included it.)
Which brings us to Skyfall, the most-successful financially, but frankly worst Bond movie I can recall offhand and I'm including Moonraker and The World Is Not Enough with the ignoble tag team of a villain who's only meaningful trait is that he can't feel pain and Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in shorts. I don't claim to be a Bond connoisseur but man does Skyfall seem to utterly fail at being a Bond movie at all.
After a raucous pre-credit sequence which ends with the loss of a sensitive hard drive which was in an Istanbul hotel room for some reason, Bond is presumed dead. M (Judi Dench) is typing up Bond's obit and being eased toward retirement by the government to be replaced by Ralph Fiennes who has a name that starts with an M, so he's an obvious pick. Meanwhile, Bond is hiding out in some tropical paradise, shagging the local wahinis and participating in a ridiculous drinking game involving a live scorpion.
When a mysterious hacker blows up the MI-6 office, killing several agents, it spurs Bond to get back into the game. Unfortunately, he's out of shape and more like 003-1/2 than 007, but M puts him in the game anyway. And this is the first of many problems Skyfall has by making the villain time and age and progress making dinosaurs like Bond and M obsolete. Since a metaphysical concept isn't much of an adversary, a very campy and flamboyant (get the inference?) Javier Bardem is the supposed bad guy, Silva, who has the hard drive and a vendetta against M.
Unfortunately, his beef is similar to what happened to Bond himself during the credits of The World Is Not Enough and Bond didn't wage war on his employers over it. Frankly, it's pathetic. We've gone from Bond villains who want to rule the world to a disgruntled employee who should've filed a workplace grievance with his union rep. I'm not kidding; it's that lame.
I'm not a Bond aficionado though I do have every movie on DVD and Blu-ray (it doesn't mean I've watched them), but there are several things that typify a James Bond movie: him shagging numerous beauties (whoops, AIDS stopped that in the Eighties); nifty and impossible gadgets like invisible cars and pens that turn into guns; a super-cool villain with a diabolical scheme; and Bond being a nearly infallible and indestructible. All these things are missing for the most part in Skyfall; sorry, a pistol with a grip coded so only Bond can shoot it isn't impressive. (What's next, requiring upper and lower-case letters, a number and a special character on his MI-6 login password?) While the producers said they wanted a more realistic Bond when they tossed Brosnan for Craig, they seem to be unaware of what the audience wants from a Bond flick.
While the plot is weak, the action sequences are uniformly above-average and the cinematography by ten-time Oscar-loser Roger Deakins is simply lovely. People I know who aren't hardcore cinephiles remarked about how beautiful Skyfall is, but Deakins went home empty-handed again.While Life of Pi was a beautiful film, most of its look came from special effects and post-production wizardry and its victory over Skyfall was a bad call on the part of the Academy. Better luck next time, Roger.
Score: 4/10. Rent the Blu-ray.
"Warm Bodies" Review
As anyone with access to the media can attest, zombies are hot. The Walking Dead is one of the hottest cable TV shows despite pretty much sucking most of the time. (Admit it: Andrea was the worst.) Zombieland is enjoying a possible second life as an Amazon show. But while zombies are hot as entertainment, no one has thought these rotting biters are sexy-hot, but that's not stopping the sweet-but-slight Warm Bodies from trying to change that up.
Nicholas Hoult, Beast from X-Men: First Class, is R (missed opportunity to make him a pirate!) for that's all he can remember of his name. He wanders around the airport with the other zombies after some plague has killed 99% of the world's population with an amusing, ironic inner monologue for our enjoyment. For some unexplained reason, he has set up house in an airplane and filled it with knick-knacks and a magical turntable that doesn't require electricity to play records.
One day, he and a zombie pack happen upon a group of humans who are raiding a medical facility for supplies and in the mayhem, he kills and eats the brain of Perry, the kinda sorta now-ex(pired)-boyfriend of Julie (Teresa Palmer). Since eating brains allows zombies to absorb the victim's memories and feelings, he falls for her (she's cute, but come on) and abducts her back to his swinging airplane pad. Despite grunting a few syllables to reassure her that he's not a threat, she attempts to escape and is almost killed, but R saves her and over time, she starts to fall for this cute dead guy even after he confesses that he killed her boyfriend. (Try that sometime if your girlfriend gets angry at you, guys; say, "At least I didn't eat your boyfriend's brain!")
As R and Julie fall in love - you did get the joke, right? If not, there's a balcony scene to really nudge you in the ribs - he starts to feel things again and is able to communicate more. Not only that, but other zombies who see them together start to feel things as well. Can love change the world or will her father (John Malkovich actually not being super crazy) who runs the city and is paranoid about its defense and the "boneys" - zombies who've given up and become mindless, desiccated and really-poorly CG-animated eating machines mess things up for our crazy life-challenged lovers?
What works best is Hoult's performance because he's got the narrowest set of behavioral options, but nails it. There is some good humor in the voiceover monologue, but they don't keep it up; they should've pitched more on the comedy side to make up for the thinness elsewhere. What didn't work is the climax when one faction suddenly seems to forget their role is to kill the other side. In the world of this story, no way would anyone suddenly say that a reversal makes total sense.
My girlfriend read the book and said it stuck pretty close to the source with some OK alterations. My friend has had a hate on for this movie since he caught wind of the concept, sneering at the idea of "sexy zombies" and I don't think anything above will sway him though it's not exactly what he thinks. I'm in the middle because it just felt too small and underwritten and cheaply done. While I may not sound super warm toward Warm Bodies, it's far from being a stiff of a flick.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
One thing that dampened my enthusiasm may be that I saw this at the thoroughly mediocre Silver Cinemas at Macomb Mall, a 2nd-run house with uniformly poor projection and sound quality in every room I've seen movies in. They run the bulbs under spec delivering a dim image, the focus is usually soft, and the sound systems are always messed up. This showing had most of the audio coming from the left side of the screen and thus whispered zombie grunts were frequently inaudible. A proper presentation won't fix the script's problems, but it won't hurt either.
I had a similar experience when I first saw The Incredibles at a now-defunct independent first-run joint. Muffled audio made for a lackluster experience. Jump ahead to when I got the DVD and watched it on a plain old standard television and could finally hear better; totally better experience.
Nicholas Hoult, Beast from X-Men: First Class, is R (missed opportunity to make him a pirate!) for that's all he can remember of his name. He wanders around the airport with the other zombies after some plague has killed 99% of the world's population with an amusing, ironic inner monologue for our enjoyment. For some unexplained reason, he has set up house in an airplane and filled it with knick-knacks and a magical turntable that doesn't require electricity to play records.
One day, he and a zombie pack happen upon a group of humans who are raiding a medical facility for supplies and in the mayhem, he kills and eats the brain of Perry, the kinda sorta now-ex(pired)-boyfriend of Julie (Teresa Palmer). Since eating brains allows zombies to absorb the victim's memories and feelings, he falls for her (she's cute, but come on) and abducts her back to his swinging airplane pad. Despite grunting a few syllables to reassure her that he's not a threat, she attempts to escape and is almost killed, but R saves her and over time, she starts to fall for this cute dead guy even after he confesses that he killed her boyfriend. (Try that sometime if your girlfriend gets angry at you, guys; say, "At least I didn't eat your boyfriend's brain!")
As R and Julie fall in love - you did get the joke, right? If not, there's a balcony scene to really nudge you in the ribs - he starts to feel things again and is able to communicate more. Not only that, but other zombies who see them together start to feel things as well. Can love change the world or will her father (John Malkovich actually not being super crazy) who runs the city and is paranoid about its defense and the "boneys" - zombies who've given up and become mindless, desiccated and really-poorly CG-animated eating machines mess things up for our crazy life-challenged lovers?
What works best is Hoult's performance because he's got the narrowest set of behavioral options, but nails it. There is some good humor in the voiceover monologue, but they don't keep it up; they should've pitched more on the comedy side to make up for the thinness elsewhere. What didn't work is the climax when one faction suddenly seems to forget their role is to kill the other side. In the world of this story, no way would anyone suddenly say that a reversal makes total sense.
My girlfriend read the book and said it stuck pretty close to the source with some OK alterations. My friend has had a hate on for this movie since he caught wind of the concept, sneering at the idea of "sexy zombies" and I don't think anything above will sway him though it's not exactly what he thinks. I'm in the middle because it just felt too small and underwritten and cheaply done. While I may not sound super warm toward Warm Bodies, it's far from being a stiff of a flick.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
One thing that dampened my enthusiasm may be that I saw this at the thoroughly mediocre Silver Cinemas at Macomb Mall, a 2nd-run house with uniformly poor projection and sound quality in every room I've seen movies in. They run the bulbs under spec delivering a dim image, the focus is usually soft, and the sound systems are always messed up. This showing had most of the audio coming from the left side of the screen and thus whispered zombie grunts were frequently inaudible. A proper presentation won't fix the script's problems, but it won't hurt either.
I had a similar experience when I first saw The Incredibles at a now-defunct independent first-run joint. Muffled audio made for a lackluster experience. Jump ahead to when I got the DVD and watched it on a plain old standard television and could finally hear better; totally better experience.
"Mimic: Director's Cut" Blu-ray Review
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The only reasons people remember 1997's Mimic is because of the trailer shot of Mira Sorvino being swept up by a giant flying bug and it was the first English-language film (and second feature overall after Chronos) by director Guillermo del Toro, who has gone on to notoriety for the Hellboy series and Pan's Labyrinth as well as the upcoming giant-robots-vs-giant-monsters flick Pacific Rim. That's pretty much it and it's not much.
The plot is as thin as you can get: A roach-borne disease is killing the children of New York City, so to eradicate the roaches etymologist Mira Sorvino genetically-engineers a special "Judas Breed" super roach using termite and other bug DNA that will exude an enzyme that will kill the roaches. It's a smashing success and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.
Not really.
Three years later, something weird is afoot (or more accurately acrawl) as a giant something drags a Skid Row priest to his doom and weird bugs start coming to Sorvino's notice. Seeking the source of the bugs, she and her CDC investigator husband and a subway cop head down into the tunnels, eventually finding out that the bugs have been very busy and gotten VERY large. Frantic battles for survival ensue.
I haven't seen Mimic since it came out in theaters and I couldn't remember what was going on or what was different about this "Director's Cut." Hunting down a comparison online, it appears to be not that much; mostly superfluous stuff involving Sorvino trying to get pregnant that's easily omitted. In the one extra I watched, an interview with del Toro, he explains what he wanted the original ending to be and while it sounds creepy, it doesn't help the overall fact that nothing is explained as to how the heck bugs would mimic people.
Somewhat creepy and moody, but mostly murky and icky, Mimic may've spawned a couple of direct-to-video sequels, but not many imitators.
Score: 5/10. Rent it (since it's not going to be on cable).
The plot is as thin as you can get: A roach-borne disease is killing the children of New York City, so to eradicate the roaches etymologist Mira Sorvino genetically-engineers a special "Judas Breed" super roach using termite and other bug DNA that will exude an enzyme that will kill the roaches. It's a smashing success and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.
Not really.
Three years later, something weird is afoot (or more accurately acrawl) as a giant something drags a Skid Row priest to his doom and weird bugs start coming to Sorvino's notice. Seeking the source of the bugs, she and her CDC investigator husband and a subway cop head down into the tunnels, eventually finding out that the bugs have been very busy and gotten VERY large. Frantic battles for survival ensue.
I haven't seen Mimic since it came out in theaters and I couldn't remember what was going on or what was different about this "Director's Cut." Hunting down a comparison online, it appears to be not that much; mostly superfluous stuff involving Sorvino trying to get pregnant that's easily omitted. In the one extra I watched, an interview with del Toro, he explains what he wanted the original ending to be and while it sounds creepy, it doesn't help the overall fact that nothing is explained as to how the heck bugs would mimic people.
Somewhat creepy and moody, but mostly murky and icky, Mimic may've spawned a couple of direct-to-video sequels, but not many imitators.
Score: 5/10. Rent it (since it's not going to be on cable).
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