Cyberspace Open 2011 Entry

Rather than rehash what this screenwriting contest is again, please read last year's entry and my comments about how the judging differed from what was advertised. I still need to post up what I sent in for the Final Round that I didn't qualify for, but still got my entry scored. Heh.

The scene prompt this year was a tricky one and I think a lot of writers are going to crash and burn on the particulars. Here's what I had to write about:

Your PROTAGONIST and his or her LOVE INTEREST are at odds. One of the protagonist’s schemes has gone terribly awry, and the love interest has had it. Write a scene in which they have it out – but in an unconventional way. Their words seem measured and reasonable; but the subtext says another thing entirely. You may use additional characters other than the ones specified.

Note From Contest Management:

This is going to take some crafty, non-on the nose writing here. For example, they can talk about boiling water, but it’s clear they’re really talking about something else. Use sarcasm or body language or timing or other means to convey your true meaning.

Egad. In case you're not sure what subtext means, it's the difference between what is being communicated by the words and what the actions convey. If someone is saying, "I love you!", while punching someone in the face, there's subtext happening.

I listened to a screenwriting seminar where the beginning of Pulp Fiction was offered as an example of text vs. subtext. The text is Vincent and Jules talking about Royale with Cheese and whether foot massages are like cheating. The subtext is two hit men driving someplace, getting out their guns, and then getting Marcelus' briefcase and killing people. Other than the comment, "We should have shotguns for this gig," there is no clue as to who Vincent and Jules are and what they're doing until they get into the apartment.

So, without further fondue, here is my entry, Afternoon Delight:

EXT. A MEADOW - DAY

We are high above a large green meadow, looking down. Dense
woods border the perimeter. The sky is blue and the clouds
are fluffy, floating over the rolling countryside.

A BURST OF FLAME appears small on the ground. The flames
rise upon a pillar of smoke toward us as a SMALL ROCKET races toward us and EXPLODES! The FIREBALL and SMOKE and DEBRIS obscure our view, but rapidly fade as we descend through it.

We near the ground and see a VAN with three people nearby -
ADRIAN (30s, average-looking scientific type), NEIL (early-
20s, indie rocker style), and SARAH (late-20s, hot librarian
type) - gazing up into the sky.

Adrian looks aghast; Neil looks annoyed; Sarah looks bemused.

SARAH
You're right. This was a totally
better use of our money than building
a deck with a hot tub.

ADRIAN
I don't understand what happened.

SARAH
Being a biochemist means I'm not as
versed in this astrophysics stuff,
honey, but I think the scientific
term is, "It blowed up real good!"

Adrian turns toward a LAPTOP perched inside the van.

NEIL
I told you we needed intermix chamber
heaters to prevent cyrofractures.

ADRIAN
They would've added too much weight.

NEIL
Not that much and it would've
prevented this.

ADRIAN
We won't know what really caused the
failure until we examine the debris.

NEIL
It looks like most of it came down
over there. Good thing it wasn't
windy. Let's go pick up the pieces.

Neil starts off but stops when he realizes he's alone. He
turns and sees Adrian scrutinizing the laptop.

NEIL (CONT'D)
Hey, you stay here. I'll go get it.

Sarah looks thoughtful as she watches Neil trudging off.
She reaches past Adrian in the van and produces a BEACH BAG,
pulls out a TOWEL and spreads it on the grass.

SARAH
Such a lovely day.

She strips off her clothes, revealing her BRA and PANTIES.
Adrian doesn't notice.

ADRIAN
(muttering to himself)
Manifold pressure at ignition was
nominal. Control surfaces were
responding nominally.

Sarah pulls a tube of SUNTAN LOTION out of the bag and begins to slather it on. She takes the CLIP off her hair, letting it cascade down her shoulders. Everything is in slow motion.

SARAH
You know he looks up to you? He
worships you like I did...at first.

Adrian is focused on the computer screen and traces the graph with his finger.

ADRIAN
Pressure builds at mark-15 seconds,
but within anticipated parameters.

Neil disappears into the woods. Sarah lays back and closes
her eyes, basking in the sunlight.

SARAH
Neil and I have a lot in common.
(quieter)
Like utterly inoperable bullshit
detectors until it's too late.

ADRIAN
There's a spike at mark-17, but it's
inconclusive when failure occurred.
The rez of the beamed telemetry isn't
fine enough. We'll need the FDR data.

He turns from the laptop and sees Sarah lying there.

ADRIAN (CONT'D)
What are you doing?

SARAH
Since you boys will be sifting clues
for a while, I'm going to do some
experiments in UV radiation exposure.

ADRIAN
Wearing that? Come on, someone will
see you.

SARAH
Who? Neil or someone investigating
whether Canada has attacked?

ADRIAN
It's not appropriate.

SARAH
My bikini covers less. Would you
care if someone saw me in that?

ADRIAN
Don't be trite.

She stares at him with a then-what's-the-problem expression.
He shrugs and turns back to the laptop. A long silence.

ADRIAN (CONT'D)
What do you think happened?

SARAH
You didn't listen.

ADRIAN
I heard him. It just wasn't a
practical idea.

SARAH
Since when has practical been a
sticking point for you?

ADRIAN
Always.

SARAH
I'm sure Felix would disagree.

INT. LABORATORY - DAY

Cages with LAB ANIMALS - RABBITS, RATS, MONKEYS - line the
walls. Nothing unusual other than the LARGE CAGE on the
floor with a sign reading "FELIX" and A RABBIT THE SIZE OF A
GERMAN SHEPHERD in it. It turns to us and speaks.

FELIX
You know, I had a computer programming
class with Mark Zuckerburg once. He
invented Facebook.

EXT. A MEADOW - DAY

Adrian turns back to the laptop, shame-faced.

ADRIAN
That was...unfortunate.
(defensively)
I apologized to him.

SARAH
I wish you'd let Walt take a look at
him. He may be able to...

ADRIAN
Mossberg is a quack and none of his
research is going to amount to
anything grand! He lacks vision,
which should be obvious to you on a
daily basis there.

SARAH
Oh, I've appreciated the differences
between you two, working there. He
is certainly not at your level.

Neil returns dragging the MANGLED TAIL SECTION of the rocket.

ADRIAN
Where's the rest of it? Where's the
nose and FDR? I need that; the
telemetry was too coarse here.

Neil tosses the wreckage at Adrian's feet.

NEIL
It's stuck up in the branches of a
tree. You're going to need a tall
ladder and a pole to knock it down.

ADRIAN
I think the school's maintenance
shed has some ladders. We'll get
one and come back.

NEIL
You do that. You should consider
bringing a rope, too.

Adrian drags the wreckage behind the van and loads it in.
Neil notices Sarah on the blanket, glistening in the sun.

NEIL (CONT'D)
Uh, hey, Sarah.

Sarah props herself up on her elbows and looks seductively
at Neil. She lightly brushes her hand down her stomach.

SARAH
Neil, have you ever considered taking
a position where your input would be
more greatly appreciated?

NEIL
Ummmm...What do you have in mind?

Adrian comes back around the van toward them.

SARAH
Well, Mossberg is looking for someone
more like you and is always interested
in exploring new ideas and techniques.

ADRIAN
(scoffs)
Yeah, someone should clue the guy
in. Let's go. If we hurry, we can
get the ladder and back here before
it's too late.
(to Sarah)
And put your clothes on, will you?
You're making Neil uncomfortable.
(to Neil)
Sorry, Neil. She doesn't get it.

NEIL
So I've gathered. You know, despite
the obvious, I think this day may
lead to a triumph.

SARAH
I agree. A notable huge success.

Adrian sighs and looks at the others.

ADRIAN
Thomas Edison had a thousand failures
while inventing the electric light.
Perhaps today should be properly
viewed as a learning experience.

NEIL
I certainly learned some things today.

ADRIAN
Excellent! One day, you'll thank me
for this, Neil.

Results are due in about a month. Stay tuned, sports fans.

January 2011 Review Roundup

Kicking off the new year with a bang and nearly a dozen movies. Got the Alien Anthology box set on Blu-ray from Amazon.UK for $25 less than US Amazon wanted; it's region-free and exactly the same discs, just in more cumbersome fold-out packaging.

Jan. 1 - Cliffhanger (9/10); Vertical Limit (6/10)
Jan. 9 - The Tourist (4.5/10)
Jan. 16 - Dinner For Schmucks (4/10)
Jan. 18 - The Fighter (9/10); Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (7/10)
Jan. 22 - 127 Hours (6/10)
Jan. 24 - Aliens (Special Edition) (9.5/10)
Jan. 25 - Alien (Special Edition) (7/10)
Jan. 30 - Megamind (8/10)
Jan. 31- Unstoppable (6/10)

Month's Movies Watched: 11
Previously Unseen: 7
Theatrical: 1
Home: 10
=====
Year-To-Date: 11
YTD First-Timers: 7
YTD Theatrical: 1
YTD Home: 10

"Unstoppable" Review

While his brother Ridley gets most of the critical respect, Tony Scott has had a long career in cranking out popcorn flicks like Top Gun, Enemy of the State and True Romance. Like Martin Scorsese had Robert DeNiro and Leonardo Di Caprio and Tim Burton has Johnny Depp as repeated collaborative partners, Scott has teamed up with Denzel Washington five times in the past 15 years. After a gap of nearly a decade from their first collaboration, Crimson Tide, four of Scott's past five films have starred Washington: Man On Fire, Deja Vu, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 remake and their latest train trip, Unstoppable.

Co-starring Chris Pine (bka Captain Kirk from the Star Trek reboot), it's a simple - real simple - story of a runaway train. After fat, stupid (and typecast) Ethan Suplee lets a train loaded with explosive chemicals get away from him, it becomes a chase against time before the train hits a tight elevated curve near fuel storage tanks in Pine's hometown where his kid and estranged wife are. (Why not put an orphanage next to the tanks for giggles?) Denzel is 18 days from a forced retirement by the greedy bastard railroad company. Ya think he might die in the process? (They even remark on this trope near the end.)

While the scenario is novel and the execution slick as Scott keeps things chugging along at a breakneck clip (har!), Unstoppable is a disposable bit of fluff, beneath the talents of all involved. Never minding the unrealistic portrayal of everything like television news choppers supposedly whipping along at treetop level and the way they constantly restate what we already know via impossibly immediate computer simulations, where Unstoppable sort of goes of the tracks (har! 2X) is that the soap opera beats feel rote and despite a few cool crashes, the action never really takes off and flies. (Because it's trains, not planes. Duh.)

What is up with Denzel anyway? Has he decided that he's going to follow De Niro's career model of doing respectable, acclaimed acting in the early part of his career and then waste it all on "getting paid" parts in the back half? He was badass in the whackass The Book of Eli, but where's another Oscar-worthy performance? It also doesn't help that Jay Pharoah, a new featured player on SNL this year did a sketch as Denzel that NAILED all of his tics and mannerisms. It's so spot on, I've embedded the spoof of Unstoppable's spoof below instead of the usual trailer to do double-duty.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.

"Alien (Special Edition)" Blu-ray Review

For all it's "classic" status, I've never been overly enthused about Alien. Yes, it had that wild H.R. Giger bio-mechanical design; some all-time iconic moments like the chest-burster and knocking Ash's block off; and what 12-year-old didn't thril at the sight of Sigourney Weaver's coin slot at the end? (Though looking at it now, all I see is that she has no booty to speak of. It's a little unnerving.)

Perhaps it's because I'm more attuned to the heavy metal action of James Cameron's stellar Aliens (which I watched last night), but the deliberate pacing (my polite way of saying sloooooooow), while allowing plenty of time to soak up the details, allowed me to start getting distracted by the logical gaps as well as noticing how suspicious Ash looks all along at what's happening. (It's like when you watch The Usual Suspects the second time and realize that when they show Verbal looking around the room at the beginning, he's not killing time as much as gathering his story elements.) The damp bowels of the ship, cluttered with gear, lend a gritty authenticity as long as you don't start wondering why all that stuff is there for what is principally a big interstellar freighter with a crew of seven.

I can't remember who the big name science fiction author was with whom I read an interview in which he hated on Alien as little more than a "haunted house" picture and how stupidly the characters behaved when he wanted to yell out, "Just get in the space suits and blow the airlocks to suck it out." Given the size of the ship, that would probably have been impractical, but the way they wander off and get picked off makes them seem like teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake.

On the new Alien Anthology Blu-ray, the visuals are just about as perfect as you could hope, accurately reflecting the cinematography and look of the film. I was startled at how piercingly blue Veronica Cartwright's eyes were in the scene after Dallas gets nabbed. The audio end is frustrating, with all sorts of muffled dialog and unbalanced levels, but they're more a product of the limitations of late-Seventies technology. I popped in Alien Resurrection and watched a little and the difference between the 1997 movie's surround mix and the one made in 1979 was apparent. Yay progress.

In the intro to the Special Edition cut, Ridley Scott talks about how after a quarter-century, he's seen things that he wishes he could've tweaked. The major noticeable addition is Ripley stumbling over Dallas in a cocoon and granting his death wish, but there are a few other scene extensions that add some flavor without padding thing too badly, unlike how some of the additions to Aliens do slow things detrimentally. There is an option to have new footage indicated by an icon that pops up.

While I'm not in love with Alien, I'm glad to have a very slick copy of the film in the collection. If you're a big fan, it's a must-get.

Score: 7/10. Buy the Blu-ray.

"127 Hours" Review

Titles inform. While 127 Hours refers to the amount of time Aron Ralston spent trapped by a boulder, a more informative title would've been the book's Between a Rock and a Hard Place or, better yet, Call Me Lefty: The Story of How I Cut My Own F*cking Arm Off. Top That, Bitches!

James Franco stars as Ralston and as he's really come on as an actor in recent years, it's hard to believe this is the same guy who was so stiff and terrible as Harry Osbourne in the Spiderman movies. He anchors this story of a man anchored by a rock and how he eventually choose to survive at all costs.

Director Danny Boyle is also improving - I've pretty much thought he was overrated and incapable of not letting his films go off the rails in the third act (e.g. 28 Days Later, Sunshine) - but his follow-up to the Oscar-winning (and pretty much forgotten) Slumdog Millionaire is solid, though occasionally hallucinogenic. He's now two for two in not botching the endings of his movies.

The big problem is that we know where this is going - Ralston cuts his own arm off with a dull knife - so the trick is in making the time spent before the punchline interesting. However, even at a brief 93 minutes, it feels padded and a little self-indulgent as Boyle indulges in crazy dream sequences involving Scooby Doo and a flood. Whether Ralston imagined these things and wrote about them is unknown (didn't read the book), but it feels like padding for a story which is little more than, "Man goes hiking. Gets stuck. Cuts arm off."

Score: 6/10. Rent the DVD.



One thing I learned from news stories I looked up after watching was that a few months earlier, Rolston survived being nearly buried in an avalanche while skiing; why couldn't this have been mentioned as a sign perhaps he needed to start staying home and playing videogames? Also, 10 years earlier, a fisherman cut his leg off below the knee when trapped. I wonder if he wishes he'd written a book?

"Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" Review

Watch this trailer:



While Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work was released last year, it was shot over a year starting in 2008, the year she turned 75 and her career was in a lull. Winning The Celebrity Apprentice and Fashion Police were still over the horizon and this documentary shows the legendary comedienne (whom we learn believes herself an actress more than a comic) struggling to stay relevant as she hustles for work and tries to mount a one-woman play she's written.

As an unvarnished look at how even the rich and famous still have to slug it out, the documentary is quite effective, but as a retrospective of her life's previous 74 years, it's annoyingly thin at times. While there are plenty of vintage TV appearances shown and some testimonials, there isn't enough context for What It All Means and if someone thought that her inspiring Kathy Griffith is something to brag about, well... More This Is Your Life type content wouldn't have hurt.

Still, it's hard to deny the old broad isn't working for her living. We get to see the crappy conditions she occasionally has to work in and how she handles a heckler(!) who is offended by a Helen Keller joke. (Is it still too soon for those?) The disappearance of her long-time manager happens, but we don't get his side of the story.

Ribald and raunchy - do we really want to hear a grandmother discuss anal sex and how her daughter should've done Playboy and held out for more money and "show her [kitty]" - Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work works best at showing the soft person under the hard, mouthy exterior.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable.

"The Fighter" Review

Christian Bale is probably going to win an Oscar for his role here. In looking at the trailer, I was surprised to see that while co-stars Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo are all past nominees, Bale has never been recognized. That's right: Marky Mark was nominated for an Oscar while the latest and greatest Batman (as well as Patrick Bateman!) has never gotten recognized. Well, The Fighter is going to fix that oversight right up.

The titular fighter is actually Wahlberg's Mickey Ward, a journeyman slugger from Lowell, MA whose older brother Dicky (Bale) was a boxer whose claim to fame was knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard in a bout, but then went on to being a crack addict. Represented by his mother (Leo), Mikey is set up with lousy matches that have sapped his will to go on. Then he meets a brassy barmaid (Adams) who inspires him to try and move beyond his co-dependent family, a development they resent even though it works best for Mickey's interests.

Director David O'Russell has gone 11 years since his last good movie (Three Kings) with only 2004's unbelievably craptastic I Heart Huckabee's in between. Fortunately, he's back on his game here with a film that makes a good back half for a double-feature with Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. (Fun Irony: Aronofsky is an executive producer here.) What is really commendable is that he manages to now succumb to the typical Hollywood temptation to overtly sneer at the lower-class blue-collar people of the town. Coastal elites hate the poor, but O'Russell manages to capture the local color without coloring them as white trash caricatures.

Bale lost over 60 pounds to play the hollowed-out (physically and spiritually) Dicky and while has the splashier role, it never devolves into ticks and nonsense. He's a screwup and eventually realizes it, but we see the charm that many addicts have that sustains their existences. Wahlberg underplays his part again and frankly I'm really bored with his schtick. When he first started in bigger movies like The Big Hit and Boogie Nights, the sight of him not being Marky Mark was enough to impress, but after over a decade of this act, it's no longer an interesting trick. Oh, he's fine in the performance and provides a quiet contrast to Bale's bigness; it's just we've seen it over and over before.

Adams is also a revelation as she kicks her sweet princess acting past to the curb as the tramp-stamped sorta floozy who tossed her athletic past away, but won't let Mickey give up. The scene where she tussles with Mickey's sisters delivers the one punch that made us go, "Ohhhh!" Leo is also fine. I've seen some criticism for the boxing scenes being lackluster, but I think it doesn't matter because O'Russell wisely doesn't attempt to ape the operatic style of Raging Bull or the visceral popcorn thrills of the Rocky flicks.

Score: 9/10. Catch a matinee.

"Dinner For Schmucks" Review

In Dinner For Schmucks (a remake of a French film with a French title). go-getting but under-appreciated investment analyst Paul Rudd wants a promotion at his firm. He gets an opportunity when invited to a dinner the boss holds where everyone brings as their guest the craziest people they can find to be made fun of with the "winner" getting a trophy and their sponsor receiving career advancement.

While Rudd is repulsed by the idea, he needs a promotion to make more money to entice his girlfriend, an art agent, to marry him; she's rebuffed previous proposals. When he accidentally hits Steve Carrell while texting and driving, he's apologetic until he learns that Carrell makes taxidermy dioramas with mice in elaborate costumes and sets. Could this sad, goofy man be his ticket to moving upstairs or lead him down the road of moral compromise and disaster?

Directed by Jay Roach - who started off well with the Austin Power series before sliding with Meet The Parents/Fockers movies - forgets Shakespeare's admonition that brevity is the soul of wit and as the film drags out to nearly two hours in length (any comedy running longer than 100 minutes is pushing its luck; hear me Judd Apatow?) it's a slow-moving muddle as it clearly doesn't have the guts to commit to being as nasty as it wants to be.

Carrell does things that make a shambles of Rudd's life, but is he really an idiot or a clumsy but decent fellow? A subplot about Rudd's girlfriend and the sex-crazed egomaniacal artist she works with doesn't work because if he thinks so easily that she's cheating with him, why is he gung-ho to marry her? The backstory about Carrell and his boss, the usually funnier Zach Galifianakis is a tonal mess, too.

The ending dinner scene is where they clearly saved all their energies for and it has the biggest laughs, albeit in a mean-spirited manner. The best is a blind swordsman who mentions, "I also paint." "Really? Are you any good?" "I have no idea." Of course a lot of wild slapstick ensues and everyone learns a valuable lesson about being themselves and blah-blah-woof-woof. It's a long walk to a not particularly interesting destination.

Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.

"The Tourist" Review

Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp together in Venice for a caper movie? Sounds awesome! What could go wrong? Well, plenty judging from the flat result that is The Tourist which manages to make two beautiful people in a beautiful city little more than an ad for why you should visit the City of Canals.

The plot, as it is, is slight despite attempts to make it convoluted: AJ is a beautiful woman (No! YES!!!) in Paris (Non! OUI!!!) being followed by agents of Scotland Yard in a surveillance van that can zoom in on her butt while the coppers speculate whether she's wearing underwear. They're following her in hopes she'll lead them to a fugitive, Alexander Pearce, who stole over £2 billion from a gangster and owes nearly £800 million in taxes to the UK. (Socialist Utopias don't pay for themselves.) She receives a note by messenger from the guy directing her to take a train to Venice and find someone on board with a similar height and build and make the cops believe it's Greene. She meets Depp, an American widower, and inserts herself into his life. Hijinks ensue.

Part of the problem people are having with The Tourist is that it's not Lara Croft and Jack Sparrow's Venetian Action Adventure. She doesn't get naked or shoot guns and he looks puffy and dour with a scraggly beard and hair that makes him look like an unemployed poet (is there any other kind?) than the math teacher he is. While they aren't doing much exciting, the quiet moments aren't very interesting either. It's nice to see a couple of good actors expressing themselves with looks and glances, but it's all soft details in the absence of a compelling narrative.

The biggest problem is that I had a sneaking suspicion as to how it was going to end up about 10 minutes in and was correct. There's a revelation about two-thirds of the way in that was a surprise, but the ultimate punchline was anti-climatic and a single point of failure which could've derailed the entire movie if one choice had gone differently. (I'll reveal it at the bottom of this review for those who've already seen this or just want to be spoiled.)

While the scenery is gorgeous and the still-too-thin Jolie looks elegant, The Tourist is sadly a trip not particularly worth going along for the ride with.

Score: 4.5/10. Rent the Blu-ray or catch at a dollar show.



*** SPOILER ALERT!!!! ***







The big twist is that Frank ends up being Pearce. Since there are only so many ways this story can play out with these stars - Frank is either a lucky stranger or the guy she loves all along - I was looking for this ending from the beginning. However, the single point of failure is this: What if she chose another guy on the train? It's not as if there aren't many 5'10" guys of average build, so it's quite possible for Pearce's scheme to reunite with his lover to go down in flames. It's a not-small detail because all the people chasing him would only have him because he was picked at random. I'm not even sure how the movie could've played if she'd chosen another; it requires an exact sequence of events to occur.

"Cliffhanger" DVD & "Vertical Limit" Blu-ray Reviews

We decided to kick off the New Year with a mountain-climbing double-feature (ooh-ooh-ohh) of Sly Stallone's 1993 Rocky Mountains-based Cliffhanger and Chris O'Donnell's 2000 Himalayan adventure Vertical Limit. I thought it'd be interesting to compare and contrast the two because I knew the former was better than the latter and shared similarities.

Both open with thrilling and elaborate climbing accident scenes that scar our hero's psyches, making them swear off climbing until adversity strikes and the reluctant men have to get back on the rocks. Cliffhanger's McGuffin is bad guy John Lithgow's gang trying to recover three cases with $100 million that fell from the sky when their crazy mid-air great plane robbery goes awry. Vertical Limit has O'Donnell racing against time to save his sister who was trapped on K2 while accompanying billionaire weasel Bill Paxton on his Richard Bransonesque ego trip. Lots of snowy hijinks ensue.

Cliffhanger is clearly the better of the two movies because director Renny Harlin never lets the chase let up once the plot ball starts rolling. While there are respites after the major set pieces, there's no rest and while some of the feats of weather-resistance are credulity-straining, it works on its own terms. It's Harlin's best film, the only one I revisit consistently.

Martin Campbell, who directed GoldenEye and The Mask of Zorro before his trip to the mountains doesn't fare as well because his script makes frequent stops for lengthy "character development" breaks which slow the tempo. One wonders why they're lollygagging around when there's a rapidly closing window to rescue the trapped climbers before they succumb to pulmonary edema from the high altitude. Also, when the final rescue is made in a nick of time, they cut back to the base camp where she's recovering - oh, did I spoil the ending because you were in doubt whether she'd be saved? - leaving out the part where this on the edge of death woman was carried back down the mountain for at least 24 hours.

The largest difference is in the leading men - or perhaps I should say the difference between the man and boy. Stallone was 46 and in prison-ripped physical shape here, yet he takes a beating and delivers a good dramatic performance. It's very much in line with Bruce Willis' more Everyman approach in Die Hard, if John McClain had worn out a couple of BowFlexes, that is. On the other hand, O'Donnell is a bland vanilla area on the screen and fresh off assisting in the murder of the Batman franchise with Batman and His Lame Vanilla Buddy vs. Ahnuld, why someone thought he'd be a compelling action hero questions the intelligence of studio suits everywhere. Only Keanu Reeves would be more inert; at least O'Donnell can modulate his voice. I always remembered that I didn't care for Vertical Limit, referring to it as "Vertical Suckage," and the tag team of dodgy and predictable pacing and a vacant lead must've been it.

As for the discs themselves, Cliffhanger on DVD is a so-so effort from the early days of the format with a lot of edge-enhancement artifacts and a so-so flatness to the contrast. I've read the Blu-ray isn't a shining example of the format's potential, but it's much better. When I see a good sale, I'll be upgrading. Vertical Limit is a pretty good transfer which makes the cinematography of New Zealand's Mt. Cook (doubling for K2) even more spectacular while showing the callow affectless mien of O'Donnell accurately. Both have a OK batch of extras, but it's the features that count and Sly trumps Robin easily.

Cliffhanger Score: 9/10. Buy it on Blu-ray.

Vertical Limit Score: 6/10. Catch on cable.

2010 Review Roundup Roundup

For ease of access, here are the monthly review roundups for every month of 2010. (You can also find these by clicking the Roundup tag.)

January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010

They were 81 reviews out of the 103 movies I watched, with a span from Sept. thru Nov. where I really slacked off.

December 2010 Review Roundup

Things picked up on both the watching and reviewing front.

Dec. 6 - Showgirls Blu-ray Bitchy Commentary
Dec. 13 - Altitude (4/10)
Dec. 14 - Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (4/10)

Dec. 15 - The Town (7/10); Rammbock (4/10)

Dec. 20 - Black Swan (5/10)

Dec. 21 - Devil (4/10)

Dec. 22 - TRON: Legacy (5/10)

Dec. 26 - Despicable Me (6/10); 30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2/10); 2010: The Year We Make Contact Blu-ray (6/10)

Dec. 27 - Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball (4/10); Push Blu-ray

Dec. 28 - The Runaways Blu-ray Commentary

Month's Movies Watched: 14
Previously Unseen: 10
Theatrical: 2
Home: 12
=====
Year-To-Date: 103
YTD First-Timers: 88
YTD Theatrical: 26
YTD Home: 77

"The Runaways" Blu-ray/Commentary Review

I've already covered The Runaways when it limped onto screens last April, so I'm just going to talk about the transfer and extras here.

The centerpiece is the feature commentary with Joan Jett, Kristen Stewart (who played Jett), and Dakota Fanning (who played Cherie Currie) and it's a disappointment as none of them are very talkative, mostly limiting their comments to how hot it was during the summer shoot and factual errors. Since Jett was an Executive Producer who was on the set at all times, why didn't she step in to straighten things out, like the fact that she says she NEVER wore leather pants like Stewart sports throughout the movie. (Might as well give her a boyfriend if you're going to take such liberties. Just goes to show that based-on-true-story biopics are less reliable than Wikipedia, such as The Social Network showing Mark Zuckerburg drinking appletinis, something he says he never had.) Fanning doesn't offer much and seems uncomfortable discussing her racier scenes.

Seriously missing from the commentary is Currie, whose book Neon Angel was the basis for the script, and toured doing Q&As. Heck a solo track with just her would've probably been nice. She does show in a 15-minute long making-of PR piece while Jett goes missing other than a couple of stills of her with Stewart. Odd.

The transfer looks good, but it's not a great showcase for Blu-ray due to the period-accurate Seventies look which goes for a darker, flatter contrast range and there is light grain owing to the Super 16mm film format. (Though it looked like digital cameras in the making-of. Had to look it up.) You could probably get a good enough look from the DVD if you aren't particular.

The one sorta neat thing exclusive to the Blu-ray is a feature called MovieIQ which Sony has reportedly been threatening to roll out for four years. Using BD-Live, it streams in trivia info and filmography info for most of the actors in the scenes and lists the soundtrack, offering to send you a playlist of the songs via email. (I didn't test this.)

One nifty gimmick is the ability to move this menu to your smartphone by browsing to a website and entering a five-digit code which then puts your phone in sync with the film's playback. I paused a few times for breaks and was watching at 1.5X playback speed and it kept up for the most part. It's superfluous, but a neat trick. The site's system requirements imply that this is iPhone/iPad only, but it worked on my Android EVO with Miren browser just fine.

The Bottom Line: Overall, while it's nice to have a bit better picture with Blu-ray and the added bell and whistle of MovieIQ, casual fans of the film would probably be satisfied picking up a used copy of the DVD.

One knock against Sony, though I've seen others starting to pull this crap as well: STOP PUTTING FORCED TRAILERS THAT WE HAVE TO MANUALLY SKIP PAST TO GET TO THE MENU!!! There are a half-dozen or so you are potentially looking at 15 MINUTES of ads before you're allowed to watch the movie. STOP IT!!!!

"Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball" Review

If the trailer and Wikipedia page didn't say so, there is no reason to think that Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball was in any way connected to the original 2007 film and other than that film's director being a producer and given "characters by" credit, I still don't see the connection other than a bunch of assassins are trying to kill the same guy and a lot of shooty-shooty-bang-bang occurs.

Tom Berenger stars as Walter Weed, a mid-level FBI agent in a wheelchair who is informed that he has been targeted with a contract that requires him to be dead by 3 a.m. April 19th. Who and why he's wanted dead is unknown, so the FBI mounts an elaborate protection operation to keep him alive until he's worthless to kill. They take him to a hidden bunker under a FBI front Chicago jazz bar and figure he's safe there. Of course, they're wrong as four assassins - Vinnie Jones, some hot Mexican babe, a creepy guy who makes death masks of his victims while they're alive, and a family of Southern redneck idiots and one hot crazy chick (Autumn Reeser) - all manage to show up at the club. Mayhem ensues.

The first film was an so-so wacky actioner with some surprising casting, but this one is mostly stylized mayhem over substance. All the killers are giving splashy intros and there is some witty bantering while they're killing time until it's killing time, but I was able to guess how it was going to play out about two minutes in, so it was just a countdown to the inevitable, Knew it," moment. The mayhem is unrealistic, but that's not the problem; it just seems so...needless. Sure, it's fun to see dynamite-loaded circus clowns used as munitions, but the fake explosions undersell the potential.

More problematic is the ending which appears to show people we saw killed sneaking away from the scene. Very weird. Oh, wait a second...I get it now, one of the killers goes on to be in Smokin' Aces. (I looked it up; I never would've made the connection because it's such an obscure player. Fail.)* Also, since when have prequels had a higher number than the original? Shouldn't it have been Smokin' Aces 0: This Isn't Necessary?

Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.



* UPDATE: After posting this review, I watched the extras and discovered that several of the characters were in the original movie, including one of the Tremor Brothers, the crazed trio of Road Warrior-looking guys who were one of the few memorable things about that movie. That I didn't realize this was the same gang really shows how this prequel/sequel/NyQuil is really for hardcore fans of the original only.

"30 Days of Night: Dark Days" Review

The original 2007 30 Days of Night was a good adaptation of the graphic novel, making the most of its premise of vampires attacking a Northern Alaska town during the month in winter the sun never rises. This direct-to-video cash-in is probably totally unrelated to any of the subsequent novels and has the distinct feel of a generic vampire flick with enough tweaks to tenuously tie it to the original, according to a reader who wrote, closely related to the second book in the series, which makes its poor execution even less excusable.

Stella, the wife of the the Josh Hartnett character played originally by Melissa George, now Kiele Sanchez (me neither), has been touring the country telling her story of what happened to disbelieving audiences. In L.A., she is met by a group of vampire hunters who, like her, have lost loved ones and are hunting the queen responsible for the Barrow events, Lilith (Mia Kirshner), in town. Stupidity ensues.

Whether it's dumping her shotgun when she's out of ammo - you can reload those, you know? - leaving her bra on during the requisite desperate situation sex scene, or being a general twit, Stella's certainly no stellar student in vampire hunting and just about every beat, twist and both endings are foreseeable from the opening credits. I'm sure the filmmakers were thinking they were clever. They weren't.

Score: 2/10. Skip it and go buy the original 30 Days of Night.

"2010: The Year We Make Contact" Blu-ray Review

It's been ages since I've seen 1984's 2010; I wouldn't be surprised if it's been nearly that long since I've seen it, but I've always remembered it for the dated Cold War aspects. Upon rewatching it Blu-ray, it's even worse than I remember, bogging down an adequate follow-up to the grossly overrated Stanley Kubrick "classic" 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that I revisit every five years or so to see if it still sucks, which invariably it does.

Starting several years after 2001 (heh), Dr. Haywood Floyd (played this time by Roy Scheider) is approached by the Russians with a proposal: They know the USA is planning on sending a mission to find out what happened to the Discovery, but have a ship ready to leave now and would get to Jupiter a year sooner and are offering to take Floyd, the chief designer of the Discovery (John Lithgow), and Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), who programmed the psychotic computer HAL-9000, who killed everyone by Dave Bowman (Kier Dulea). Complicating matters are simmering tensions between the Soviet Union and America over Central America. When they get to Jupiter, they discover the giant monolith shown at the end of 2001 and then things get a little crazy.

When you strip out the preachy "We've got to trust each other; damn the politicians" claptrap that firmly roots this futuristic story in the Reagan years of 26 years ago and the somewhat slow pacing - though meth-fueled compared to Kubrick's glacial snoozer - you have a fairly straightforward space exploration tale with above-average special effects and production values. The sets and style are very reminiscent of Alien and it's a hoot to see Helen Mirren as the Soviet commander.

The best aspect of the film - which I actually forgot - concerns the reactivated HAL (again voiced by Douglas Rain) and whether he's truly in control now, what drove him to murder before, and whether he can be relied on when the mission has to escape from Jupiter space four weeks earlier than planned. Even though I knew how it was going to turn out, having read the source 2010: Odyssey Two novel and seen the movie, it was still effective.

As for the Blu-ray, the transfer is OK, with good, but not impressive detail due to the grainy source. Black levels are weak, causing a washed-out look to the live-action while the FX (which we shot in 65mm) look good, though you can spot some matte glow like the first time you saw Star Wars on tape before Lucas cleaned everything up. The only extra is a 9-minute long promo piece from when it came out. It's as informative as you could hope in such a brief time, but it's clear this minor movie didn't merit a major package to the studio.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.

"Despicable Me" Review

Steve Carrell voices Gru, a super-villain whose scheme to steal the Moon is complicated by his adoption of three little girls, in this cute, albeit predictable animated movie. It's got some cute gags and details and I liked it; it's just not as awesome as some of the reviews gushed.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.



Yeesh, they give away half the gags here.

"TRON: Legacy" Review

Most of the reviews I've seen for TRON: Legacy have been BRUTAL - like, "It sodomized my goldfish and parakeet!" levels of upset. The amount of nerd rage seemed to ratify my negative impressions from the sneak preview Disney put on a couple of months ago. Take a moment to go read that before continuing this review. I'll wait...

Back? Good. The short of it all is that TRON: Legacy isn't as bad as the haters have said; it's a better movie than its predecessor; however, it's not that good a movie for most of the reasons I laid out in the preview. While everything we were shown in that sneak happens in the first 40 minutes or so, the rest of the movie doesn't really hold much more in the way of surprises or thrills.

What's Hot:

• Two words: Olivia Wilde. As I noted, she was the most interesting thing in the preview and she's the best thing about the movie and I don't mean just because she looks like this:



No, she's the most ALIVE thing in the movie despite being a program. Wide-eyed, inquisitive, compassionate and fierce, she's the closest thing to a real PERSON in a movie full of archetypes and cardboard cutouts. That she's as hot as an overclocked CPU and one of only two women in this sausagefest doesn't hurt either.

What's Warm:

• The look of the movie, all dark and cloudy and electro-luminescent. I saw it in digital 2D (the sneak was LieMAX 3D) and frankly I don't see how it can benefit from wearing sunglasses that will make things darker. (A friend saw it in full bore IMAX 3D and tried to convince me it was worth the $9 upcharge from the twilight show I saw and to him I say, "pfffft.") The upgraded Recognizer and Solar Sailer (now some sort of freight train) are cool, but again are only meaningful to those who saw the original.

• Jeff Bridges is cool, but he's waaaaaaaaaaay too much like the Dude from The Big Lebowski for my tastes. The digitally youngified version for flashbacks and as the evil Clu program are OK, but no match for the flawless work in Benjamin Button and Avatar. It never looks natural, but like a really good special effect. Now, this lifeless version on Clu makes some sense - he's a program and only can simulate emotions - but when the other programs aren't similarly stilted, well, then it's just poor FX work.

• There are actually a few moments where the movie almost has some semi-deep things to say, but it gets buried in the gobbledygook and shiny stuff, so it doesn't matter much in the end.

Now a pause for more Olivia Wilde:



What's Cold:

• Also as predicted, Garrett Hedlund is a total stiff as Sam Flynn. As I remarked to my sidekick, McHatin, after the movie, "With all the pretty boy emo actors femming up Hollywood these days, why couldn't they find someone with some ability to emote on screen?" Hedlund is stiffer than armor panels in his suit with a constant look of inappropriate bemusement on his blank mug. That he looks nothing like his old man doesn't help, but he makes poor Hayden Christensen look like Ewan McGregor in the thespian department. I didn't like him, couldn't relate to him, didn't care a whit about him or his story. That's a hat trick of fail there.

• I've never understood the logic inside the TRON Universe and it doesn't get any clearer here. The programs act as individual people with personalities, but what is the real world (pardon the pun) analog to this? Does your Excel or Firefox exhibit any personality; what are the programs then? No one is walking around saying they're a ATM security protocol, you know? Users are treated as something more special - deities of a sort - as when Sam is nicked in a battle and bleeds instead of dropping crystalline pixels like a shattered disco ball and his opponent stops trying to kill him. Which leads to another problem: In the first movie we see Kevin Flynn (Bridges) scanned and disassembled by the laser and then re-assembled on the Grid. Here, the picture just blacks out and Sam's not in Kansas - or Vancouver - anymore. (Again, if you haven't seen the first movie...) Accepting that he's been converted into a digital entity in the computer, why is he still bleeding? Does this mean he can't be de-rezzed?

Time is explained as moving differently in the Grid - Flynn explains at one point that hours inside were mere minutes outside - so considering he's been trapped for 20 years and has aged like his son, how long in digital dog years has it been? The need for TRONland to be an alternate universe disconnects it from being a glimpse into what you're computer is doing. Another plot point involves programs going missing; it's revealed they're being converted into an army by Clu, but does that mean when I want to play Bejeweled one day it won't work because it's been conscripted to join an army meant to invade our world. It. Doesn't. Make. Sense. The Matrix got crazy in the sequels (e.g. If humanity is all locked up in the power plant pods, why are there massive gun emplacements to hold off attacking ships?), but the fundamentals had some sussable logic to them.

Compared to the original, benefiting-from-nostalgia-and-fading-memories TRON, TRON: Legacy is less cheesy and hella slicker, but doesn't bring anything compelling to the table. You don't need to see it in 3D; the plot is irrelevant and in the end a little confusing; it's obviously meant to be a giant set-up to a franchise but doesn't imply that there's anything interesting to explore on the Grid; it's just there and unlike the fervent nerd ragers venting on the Intartoobz, I can't get too worked up about it. It's just too meh to provoke much emotional response at all.

End of line.

Score: 5/10. Rent the Blu-ray if you've got a nice home theater, otherwise catch it at a dollar show.

One more for the road:



ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: Another unexplained thing is how stuff gets into the Grid like the shelf full of antique books Flynn has in his 2001 bachelor pad. When you see how he got stuck in there, it begs the question, "Where did the books come from? Gridazon.com?"

Another scene has father and son discussing what's changed about the world. The usual liberal crap - war, improper distribution of wealth - gets name-checked (for social relevance, don'tchaknow?) but the very method that's bringing these complaints to your eyes - the World Wide Web - goes totally unmentioned. Dumb.

"Devil" Review

It's a sign of just how fed up the moviegoing public is with M. Night Shyamalan - I'm not even going to bother checking if I spelled that correctly - that when the trailer for Devil appeared last summer, the mere sight of his name being connected with the project was greeted with snickers and murmurs of, "Well, it's safe to miss this one." Even though he was only producing and providing the story to another writer and director to execute, his precipitous decline from his debut tag-team of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable had made him a laughingstock, especially on the heels of his generally panned live-action version of The Last Airbender. Are the sins of the father to be visited on the cinematic progeny?

The premise of Devil is straightforward: Five people get into an elevator that gets stuck and then bad things happen because one of them may be...you see this coming...may be...wait for it...the DEVIL!!! (Dun-dun-DUHN!!!!) With a security camera that can see in, but the intercom not allowing for the passengers to be heard, a police detective with a lot of personal baggage that will of course be relevant to the plot twists and turns - no, he's not already dead or a super villain - races to free them and catch the killer who is (SPOILER ALERT!) whacking the occupants one by one.

For the first part of this brief (80 minutes) movie, I was having great sport yelling unheeded advice at the brain-dead doofs in the elevator (e.g. no one thinks to use their cell phones as flashlights until the cop suggests it) and until the detective gets into the game with his Sherlock hat it felt like our intelligence was going to be insulted, but it gets better though it's pretty obvious if you've seen a couple of these movies who the ultimate villain will be. There is an interesting angle of spirituality at play, but Night's puppets choose to hammer the point home in a voice-over narration to the point where whatever profundity may've been found is rendered trite.

If you don't go in expecting too much, Devil is an adequate popcorn muncher that manages to be more satisfying than anything its creator as put out in a decade, yet too slight to be really recommendable.

Score: 4/10. Catch on cable.

"Black Swan" Review

The reviews for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan have been all over the map; topping some year-end best-of-2010 lists and making some worst-of lists as well. Going in I figured it would be a love it or hate it situation - instead I managed to land in the middle as I don't think it really works out.

Natalie Portman is painfully intense as Nina, a ballerina who is tapped to play the lead in Swan Lake. Her years of tortuous practice - the physical toll taken on ballerinas is graphically illustrated - goaded on by her stage mother from Hell (Barbara Hershey) and driven her to seek perfection and probably mad in the process. It doesn't help that the smarmy director of the ballet keeps complaining that while she is technically perfect, she lacks the soul that a newcomer, Lily (Mila Kunis), possesses which would make for a better performance as the Black Swan portion of the ballet. Lily lacks Nina's technique, but has a free spirit (read: she's sex on wheels) that the tightly-wound and crazy repressed Nina seems to lack. As the pressure and paranoia mounts, Nina's grip on reality seems to slip away.

Where Aronofsky errs in my mind is to use the flat, ugly, documentary cinematic style of his previous film The Wrestler here. Why he went gritty instead of artistic for a fantasy film like this is odd since he's done that with his prior films The Fountain (which I think is an overlooked gem with an Oscar-nom worthy performance from Hugh Jackman; check it out) and Requiem For A Dream.

The second problem is Portman's performance. Mind you, she's excellent and likely to score an Oscar out of it and wipe away all the bad memories of her stiff Star Wars prequel performances, but she gave me a headache almost every moment she's on screen. Other than a girls night out sequence with Lily - leading to the widely-reported canoodling - it's almost unremitting misery. Yes, that was the idea; it's just hard on the nerves.

Kunis, Hershey, and Winona Ryder as the former prima ballerina being pushed aside due to age are all good, but they're all trapped in Aronofsky's hermetically sealed chamber of horrors. There are small glimpses of interaction with the other dancers, but there's no sense of life outside of the dance studio. Even the most dedicated pros take a breather, which again is the point about Nina, but without context, it all seems contrived. Perhaps if Aronofsky had backed away from the trees a little to see the forest.

Score: 5/10. Rent the DVD



In counter-point, my girlfriend really liked it - she would've given it an 8 or 9 score - and compared it to Carrie, which I've never seen, so I can't relate.

"The Town" Review

Ben Affleck has never been taken very seriously as an actor. While he's had some good performances in films like Chasing Amy and most recently in the little-seen-but-so-so Hollywoodland (as the doomed Superman, George Reeves), he's typically come off as callow and shallow - his "Just get me into a cockpit! bits in Pearl Harbor still amuse - and it's easy to forget that he does hold an Academy Award for co-writing with Matt Damon (say it like Team America!) Good Will Hunting and suspect he was the lesser half of that partnership.

Probably sensing his leading man days were numbered, he stepped behind the camera to direct the pretty good Gone Baby Gone, which was marred by a flat (and mysteriously overpraised) performance by his brother Casey. Now he's calling the shots again as well as starring and co-writing The Town and based on what works and what doesn't, I still think Damon was the brains of the writing department, but Affleck clearly has strong directorial chops.

The titular town refers to the Charlestown neighborhood of North Boston (Affleck's hometown) where reportedly a crazy percentage of bank robbers hail, including Affleck, The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner, and a pair of guys who are so secondary to the gang that no-names play them and I don't recall their names. After an opening heist where they take a hostage (Vicky Christina Barcelona's Rebecca Hall) that may or may not be able to identify one of the gang, Affleck strikes up a relationship with her, first to make sure the gang's in the clear, but then because he's falling for her.

While the gang perpetrates a couple more heists, FBI agent Jon Hamm is hot on their trail and that's where the script problems begin to sap the tension. Right off, seeing Renner's tightly-wound robber, you're on safe ground to assume he's not going to end up dying of old age and when Affleck is forced into doing the One Last BIG Job, all that is unknown is how he's going to end up - dead or alive or imprisoned or miserable or some combo of those. (If you're surprised about what happens with the run-down hockey rink, you really need to have you're diapers changed because you're about two years old and shouldn't be watching these kinds of movies.)

While the script with two other writers is meh, Affleck really shows solid directorial chops. The crimes and chases are clear and kinetic, not marred with tired shaky-cam and spastic editing. All the performances are solid, including his and Gossip Girl wet blanket Blake Lively as Renner's slutty, druggy sister, and he keeps the pace and tension taut. It's just that caper flick formula is so second nature that it's too bad that he didn't subvert any of our expectations in the storytelling. No matter how intense things may get, we're pretty sure we know how things will pan out and they do.

Score: 7/10. Rent the DVD.

"Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" Review

I've always had a fondness for the 2001 talking cat and dog spy flick Cats & Dogs which revealed the hidden war between the evil felines and humanity's canine protectors. Powered by the manic vocal of Sean Hayes as Mr. Tinkles who had such great, quotable lines such as, "Evil does not wear a bonnet!", and as he tells the mouse army his evil plan, "With the dogs out of the way, cats will overthrow the humans and you will receive your just reward: sixteen pounds of Monterey Jack and the continent of Australia." Awesome stuff, but pretty cult humor in my appreciation.

Flash-forward to 2010 and I'm standing in a theater lobby watching trailers when I'm surprised to see that a sequel was finally made, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore:



Definitely more kiddie-oriented in humor, but the actual movie does have some of the stuff that will make grown-ups smile starting with Dame Shirley Bassie's take on Pink's "Get The Party Started" over a slick James Bond-looking credits sequence and some throwaway gags, but overall it's clearly aiming low and going for today's Ritalin kidz with several frenetic action sequences - this must've sucked in 3D - and a general dumbness which makes scenes like The Silence of the Lambs cells with a crude animatronic Mr. Tinkles strapped up like Hannibal Lecter odd since the rugrats aren't going to - or sure better not - get the reference.

The voice cast top-lined by James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Bette Midler and featuring the likes of Roger Moore as Tab Lazenby (Get it? Only if you're not five.) is very good and some of the talking animal effects aren't too creepy, but the overall effect is still slapdash compared to the more original original movie. It's not particularly bad as much as not so good. (There's a quote for the DVD box!)

Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable. Better yet, rent or buy the original Cats & Dogs

"Altitude" Review

For most of its run time the dumb-teens-on-a-small-plane-in-trouble flick Altitude is a constant stream of dumb contrivances, on-the-nose writing, and annoying characters consistent with a low-budget B-movie, but in the last five minutes it almost becomes something pretty neat.

After a Very Important Prologue in which we see a horrifying mid-air collision between two small planes, we meet our dead meat, er, plucky characters led by rookie pilot Sara, who looks like a cross between Neve Campbell and Amanda Peet. Her mother died in the prologue and she's secretly learned to fly and is taking her four stupid, er, best friends to a Coldplay concert. (Yes, a Coldplay concert. They all deserve to die.) There's a meathead jock (signified by his varsity jacket, constant brewski guzzling, and general stupidity); his filmmaker girlfriend (she has a video camera and tells us she's a film major); and two emo guys, one a musician (he has a guitar) and the other being Really Creepy and Probably Harboring a Secret About What Really Happened to His Parents. (Hint hint hint!)

Shortly after takeoff, a bolt comes loose, jamming the controls and forcing the plane to climb higher and higher into a storm front. They lose contact with the tower, the instruments go haywire, and are running out of fuel because Little Miss Spunky Pilot forget to check the gas gauge. Oh, did I mention the monster that may be hunting the plane, too? Yeah, that's a problem they have.

When the stupid people aren't doing stupid things and screaming at each other (stupidly), they're getting knocked off one-by-one and while it's always fun to see Coldplay fans die, anyone with a passing knowledge of how horror movies work can predict who the final survivor(s) are likely to be. (Nudge, wink.)

Where Altitude manages to do a little something different is at the very end when what's causing the situation and how it resolves itself plays out. I kind of predicted the cause, but the punchline was novel and almost redeems the dumb stuff that fills the other 95% of the movie. Almost.

Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.

Jeez, they actually pretty much give away the twist in the trailer, so not quite.

November 2010 Review Roundup

Hardly saw anything; wrote even less.

Nov. 8 - The Social Network (9.5/10)

Nov. 20 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (7/10)
Nov. 26 - Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (5/10)

Month's Movies Watched: 3
Previously Unseen: 3
Theatrical: 0
Home: 3
=====
Year-To-Date: 89
YTD First-Timers: 78
YTD Theatrical: 24
YTD Home: 65

October 2010 Review Roundup

Slow month without any reviews. Need to figure out why the Let Me In review didn't get posted when it looks pretty done in draft.

Oct. 2 - Let Me In (8.5/10)

Oct. 4 - Iron Man 2 Blu-ray (7/10)

Oct. 11 - Easy A (8/10)

Oct. 17 - After.Life (7/10)

Oct. 18 - Knight and Day (4/10)

Oct. 24 - Hollow Man Director's Cut Blu-ray (7/10)

Oct. 25 - Push Blu-ray/Commentary (?/10)

Month's Movies Watched: 7
Previously Unseen: 4
Theatrical: 2
Home: 5
=====
Year-To-Date: 86
YTD First-Timers: 75
YTD Theatrical: 24
YTD Home: 62

"Tron Legacy" Preview Thoughts

Tonight, Disney held a 23-minute preview for Tron Legacy in order to whip up some interest for the December release. As was done last year for Avatar, it was held at the LieMax pseudo-IMAX theater, but unlike the teaser for James Cameron's Biggest Movie Evar, I came out of this decidedly meh about it.

For starters, the Disney Gestapo wanded the audience and forced us to check our cell phones because they were afraid we'd use them to videotape the 3D IMAX picture and post it online. Morons. But what was more problematic was that after they announced we were the first people ever to see 23 minutes of 3D footage, the actual presentation opened with 8-9 minutes of 2D footage. A title card said the first scene was in 2D, but as it went on and on and on, I realized too much of this "3D" experience wasn't going to be that way.

Quick impressions:

• The kid playing Sam Flynn (I'm running out the door to a thing and don't have time to look him up; Garrett something) is stiff and not very compelling. The build-up to him being zapped into the Grid was slack and more a nostalgia kick for 40-somethings; I think today's kids are going to be restless waiting for something to happen. Using Journey's "Separate Ways" is a little on the nose.
  
• Once in the Grid, the Recognizers and tanks have been updated, but again, it relies on seeing the first one to be appreciated.
• The scene where four Galtier-looking models/programs slice off his clothes and replace them with GridWear is airless and the choreography distracting.
• Once outfitted, he's forced to play Killer Frisbees (or whatever) and of course wins because the movie would be over otherwise.
• The next scene has him escaping the Lightcycle game grid in a Lightcar driven by Olivia Wilde and she's pretty hella hot with a mischievous air. She was the most interesting anything in the whole preview.
• She takes him to meet his father, Jeff Bridges, and they have a tearful reunion which didn't move the care needle an iota with me. Perhaps there's stuff from the intervening scenes that makes this resonate, but it just plays too slowly and we know from the moment they get there who the man sitting facing away from the camera is, so teasing it out is annoying.
• Then they had a quick montage of bits that we've seen before in trailers and the recent Daft Punk soundtrack video.

As we left, a girl with a Flip camera asked the crowd if they'd like to tape testimonials. As I passed by I said, "You don't want my testimonial about this." After reclaiming our cell phones - why am I getting texts back from Chris Hansen? - another rep with a notebook asked if we had our comments. This time I shared that "It was underwhelming. For all the talk about 23 minutes of 3D we got a third of that in boring backstory. The kid can't act and the 3D wasn't that impressive. Last year when we saw the Avatar sneak peek, I couldn't wait to see what the rest looked like. This time, I'm thinking I don't need to see it in 3D and I'm not as excited as I was when I went in. Tell your masters that this didn't do them any favors." I'm sure Disney is crapping themselves over my feedback. Psyche! No, they're building another Scrooge McDuck-class vault for all the Gen Xer and their kids chedda they're going to stack when this comes out.

In the haze of nostalgia, people forget that for all the then-groundbreaking visual effects, Tron wasn't a very good movie. It was OK, but cheesy. The new darker look world reminded me of what I pictured the Metaverse in Snow Crash would look like when I read it back in 2000, but now it just seems...there. Why are their clouds over the dark cities in a COMPUTER? The 3D was alright, but after Avatar and even Step Up 3D, it didn't impress me much. They've been working on this for about 3 years and I think the tech has blazed past where they are here. After you've seen photo-realistic Thundersmurfs in a jungle, what's impressive about hard surfaces and neon?

While it remains to be seen how the full Tron Legacy plays out like, the "Tron Night" non-event didn't stoke that much interest in me. I can't declare it DOA (yet), but I'm not setting up a countdown clock here either. And whoever decided to have only one shot of the youthful CGI Bridges as the now-evil Clu - again snipped from the trailers and far less than the trailers show. There were grumbles on teh Intarwebz that it looked fake and this would've been a good means to knock them down. Instead, we're still wondering.

"Let Me In" Review

Film nerds gnashed their teeth in horror when it was announced that the pre-pubescent vampire movie Let The Right One In was being remade. "Stupid Americans won't read Swedish subtitles! Stupid Hollywood is gonna make the kids teenagers and have them be like Twilight! Stupid guy who made Cloverfield is going to film it in ShakyCamVision®! They won't be able to match the swimming pool scene! It's going to suck and be stupid! Waaaaah!!!" The casting of Kick-Ass's Chloe Moretz and footage shown at Comic Con eased some nerd fears, but doubts remained. Now that it's here, while reviews have been kinder, you still see the word "unnecessary" thrown around which is too bad because I found it more enjoyable and more than equal to the original. 

Writer-director Matt Reeves has set Let Me In in 1983 Los Alamos, NM and while there are several visual cues borrowed from the original like a snow-covered jungle gym in the apartment complex courtyard, it's clear that this is less a remake than an alternate take on the source novel. Thanks to Reeve's deliberate, tension-ratcheting direction which uses long lenses with shallow depth of field to isolate the subjects and amp up the isolation, this version feels more immediate without being too "Americanized" as the haters would say. (One notable detail is that we never really get to see Owen's mother - she's always out of focus, decapitated by the frame, or obscured by distance or obstruction.) 

It also helps that his youthful cast - Moretz and Dylan Minnette (who plays the bully and was Jack's son on Lost) are now 13, Kodi Smit-McPhee is 14 - are spot on in their performances with none of the "kiddie actor" tells. Moretz already had a fan club for her awesome turn as Hit Girl, but this cements her place in the Pantheon with freakishly precocious actresses Jodie Foster and Dakota Fanning. A lot of ADULT actors would choke on the subtleties these children portray without a lot of dialogue; very nice work all around. Richard Jenkins as the vampire's caretaker and an unrecognizable Elias Koteas as a police detective investigating the killings are also solid. 

 If there is one knock I can lay against this movie is the use of really bad CGI when Abby is in killing mode. Considering the seamless FX work in Reeves' last film, Cloverfield 

As I'm writing this a couple of days later, the movie has already bombed at the box office, opening 8th with $5.3 million, a shade behind dreck like the Case 39 and You Again. In a time where vampires are hot to the point of overexposed ubiquity, no one went to see the best, creepiest, and smartest take on vampires in ages. Was the movie marketed incorrectly? Did people think it was just another teeny-bopper vamp flick like the execrable (and obscenely lucrative Twilight series) and give it a miss - though how they could get that impression from the trailer escapes me - or did the Internet haters dissuade them from seeing it? (OTOH, Internet fanboyism didn't really put butts in seats for Snakes on a Plane, Serenity, or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, so perhaps their influence is greatly overrated.)

 Score: 8.5/10. Catch a matinee. (I'll be buying the Blu-ray when it comes out.) 

September 2010 Review Roundup

OK month of movie watching that unfortunately marked the start of a three month slack off on getting reviews posted. I'm hoping to backfill some of these if/when I get a chance.

Sept. 4 - Samurai Princess (2/10)
Sept. 5 - Breathing Room (6/10)
Sept. 6 - Machete (6/10); How To Be A Serial Killer (4/10)
Sept. 8 - Starship Troopers BD (6/10)
Sept. 11 - Sex Drive (8/10)
Sept. 16 - Galaxy Quest BD (9/10)
Sept. 27 - Teenage Paparazzo (8.5/10)
Sept. 29 - The Expendables (5/10)

Month's Movies Watched: 9
Previously Unseen: 6
Theatrical: 1
Home: 8
=====
Year-To-Date: 79
YTD First-Timers: 71
YTD Theatrical: 22
YTD Home: 57

"Sex Drive" Review

The "young virgin guy takes road trip to get laid" genre has be around for ages and includes films such as The Sure Thing and Losin' It. Since the plot is pretty obvious, what matters is the writing and execution and Sex Drive does a nice job of cutting what could've been just stupid raunch with some sincere sweetness.

Josh Zuckerman stars as your typical Dweeby Virgin. He's in love with his best friend, Amanda Crew, who can't think of him in "that way" since they've known each other forever, and is envious of his friend Clark Duke, who despite being a doughy fellow of questionable sartorial tastes manages to bag the babes and exhibit Jedi-level people skills. When a hot blonde he's met online offers to sleep with him if he comes to her (no pun), he borrows his brother's GTO and heads out on the highway for wild adventure.

What makes Sex Drive work is that it manages to walk the fine line between clever and stupid, outlandish impossible situations (e.g. a wild Amish barn party with Fall Out Boy playing) with heartfelt emotional moments. Rest assured, the laughs stick on the more juvenile side of things - with boobies! - but it's not as condescending or offensive as it could've been in lesser hands.

The director and writers went on to be involved with She's Out of My League (which was so-so) and Hot Tub Time Machine (pretty good with heart), but the best of their work is this gem that no one saw. When I described it to people, I just got blank looks until I mentioned the bit with Seth Green as a sarcastic Amish stunning them with his knowledge of cars - it's in the trailer below - at which point they had their bells rung a little.

Score: 8/10. Rent the DVD at least.

"Starship Troopers" Blu-ray Review

Picked up a used Blu-ray of this for six bucks and decided to give it a spin to see if time has been kinder to my memory of it being a mixed bag of action and silliness. It hasn't.

I read Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers back in high school and barely remembered much of it in 1997 when Paul Verhoeven's goofy film version came out. Verhoeven was returning to the sci-fi genre of his prior films Robocop and Total Recall after a detour into Joe Eszterhasville with the tag team of Basic Instinct and Showgirls.

The brightly-lit cheesiness of ST with big-teethed stars Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards along with a closer-to-Doogie Howser-than-Dr. Horrible bugged me (no pun) back then and it hasn't gotten better with time. The core problem I've always had with the movie is the utter stupidity of the military tactics: When you're fighting a monster foe on a barren planet with no cities or resources to preserve, what's the smart part of the idea that instead of just nuking the place from orbit (it's the only way to be sure) you should send legions of foot soldiers down there to shoot it out with a fast-moving, swarming, armored enemy that requires a clip of ammo to be emptied into their bodies to bring them down? Less cinematic, to be sure, but hella more sensible.

My comment about Richards when I saw the film in 1997 was, "We're supposed to believe she's this awesome starship pilot when she looks like she couldn't get the family's LeBaron station wagon out of a mall parking lot without denting the fake wood paneling." Put it this way: She makes Jessica Alba look like Helen Mirren in the acting department. Watching it now it confirms that her best performance was in Wild Things because all she had to do was be dumb and look good naked.

The Blu-ray is pretty good with a clean transfer and suitably booming sound. What's interesting to see in the clarity of high-def is how cheap the sets look. I watched Galaxy Quest a week later and what was supposedly a comic spoof had better production values. The bug special effects haven't aged that well, but are still pretty good by contemporary standards - it's just that the bar has been raised so high by films like Avatar and Transformers.

Score: 6/10. Buy it if you're a fan of the film, otherwise rent.

Note: The extras were done for a 2002 Special Edition DVD and really play up the liberal cast's take that the fascism they thought the film portrayed was being whipped up by the government post-9/11. I only started watching them, so if there's more to be gleaned, I'll update this section.

"How To Be A Serial Killer" Review

This black comedy starts off promisingly with an infomercial encouraging viewers to "stop ignoring the voices in your head" and attend the motivational seminar put on by Mike (Dameon Clarke, who's like a TV version of Edward Norton) and setting up the premise that he is willing to help a greasy video store clerk learn the dark arts of serial killing.

Using a mix of seminar snippets, straight narrative, and to-the-camera interviews with a criminal psychologist, Mike's girlfriend and the protege, it's not bad for the first 20-30 minutes and then starts to drag and lag before it gets frenetic and messy at the end. Perhaps it would've worked better as a short film of half the length.

Score: 4/10. Watch on a friend's cable.

"Breathing Room" Review

Another of my 50 cent Hollywood looting pickups, all I knew about Breathing Room was this cover...



...and the premise on the back cover. (Watch the trailer below which sets it up nicely.) For those unwilling/unable to click, a young woman (Ailsa Marshall, who looks like a prettier, more girly Katee Sackhoff) arrives naked (no skin, sorry) in a room that looks like a warehouse with 13 other people, none of whom know how they got there either. She's given a numbered jumpsuit and signs on the walls and floor warning of dire consequences for breaking the rules. Why are they there? Is this tryouts for a Slipknot tribute band or a struggle for survival in which all but one are promised to end up dead? (Survey says.....B!!!)

Shot for what looks like $50 with a camcorder - the actual budget was $25,000 according to Wikipedia and the camcorders were prosumer grade - Breathing Room benefits from having a decent, albeit unknown, cast with the ability to breathe some life into their thin-due-to-numbers characters. While you'll probably be able to figure out how it ends (though the final twist was a little less expected), the co-writing/directing team of John Suits and Gabriel Cowan pace things well and don't turn it into the Saw knockoff it could've been and it appears to be marketed as. I hate "torture porn" movies, so I'm glad to say this wasn't one in that sense.

While there are a few logical lapses - while there's a bathroom, no food or water is ever given and no one seems to complain about hunger or thirst; one player is killed and no one seems to notice their absence; people act like ninnies instead of trying to solve the puzzle of their confinement - it's to Suits' and Cowan's credit that I wasn't yelling, "Yeah, right!", more than a couple of times. While it's not a mandatory film to check out, it's far better than it could've been and it's worth checking out if you come across it.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable if it ever gets shown.

"Samurai Princess" Review

While I was looting a going-out-of-business Hollywood video, I picked up this DVD for 50 cents:



I overpaid by 50 cents and 85 minutes of my life.

With the success of gonzo mutilation Japanese horror splatter flicks such as The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, it's natural that their would be more, but unfortunately all the creativity is going into the yucky effects at the expense of the story, characters, comprehensibility and anything that would make it more than something to be cut down to a YouTube highlights reel.

Since I don't care to waste time on this, here's the plot from Wikipedia's page:

A band of criminals who have raped several school girls is attacked by the Samurai Princess. She is a cyborg, created by the scientist Madness from the parts of the gruesomely murdered girls. The criminals maintain they didn't kill them, but the princess kills them anyway. She now sets after the responsible Red Dragon and Butterfly, who see their murders as artistic.

The star, Aino Kishi (me neither), wasn't hired for her acting or martial arts skills and isn't all that hot. (BTW, she never wears the outfit on the cover.) The style of the film is utterly random: it starts off in "the Infinite Woods" with what appear to be medieval warriors, but they have video cameras, chainsaws, boob grenades (not making this up), and cybernetic enhancements. Suddenly, the two good guy characters are in what appears to be a empty hotel conference room before going into a lackluster soft-core sex scene. The end of the film ends up in warehouses.

It's all a boring mess and I wanted to shut it off several times but kept slogging on in hopes that something, anything, either really awesome crazy or hot would happen, but it never did. I've put it into my sell box. Even if you like this genre, don't waste your time on the Samurai Princess.

Score: 2/10. Skip it.