DANGEROUS DAYS

Invisible War isn’t just a documentary about the numerous instances of rape in the military. It’s a film that explores the somewhat idealistic people that were willing to give everything to serve their country and the horrendous treatment they received from their colleagues, the justice system and various branches of the U.S. Government upon reporting a crime that should have never happened to them.

In short, I was infuriated by the eerily similar stories from women and men that describe a military culture where rape is considered an “occupational hazard”. The assaults, the retaliation and the lack of oversight is heartbreaking and makes me wonder if my tax dollars should continue to fund an institution like this.

Why am I paying to support rape culture?  If the military were a store, I’d stop shopping there.

After watching so many documentaries, I wonder if they ended up sparking the kind of change they set out to. Kirby Dick’s documentary has received critical acclaim and picked up steam online in the last year, causing Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, to change procedure in rape reporting, directing commanders to hand investigations over to a higher rank.  I guess that’s the least he could fucking do. Invisible War is on Netflix.  Watch it and let me know what you think.

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I’ve felt totally let down by the film industry.  Lately, a majority of movies have been predictable, uninspiring and poorly executed.  The medium can rarely be relied on as a source of provocative and stimulating content or even just as plain entertainment. Year after year, promising films from talented people that should be amazing, like Prometheus, just fucking suck.  Otherwise it’s a senseless remake, reboot or adaptation.  So I’m not hopeful for the year ahead, but what the fuck - here are a few of the movies I’m looking forward to, even though I should know better.


Elysium

District 9 blew my mind in plot, character, acting and effects so much that I can barely hold it together until director Neill Blomkamp’s second feature film, Elysium, arrives on August 9th.  The movie follows Matt Damon as he tries to escape a ruined Earth by earning his way to the wealthy space station of Elysium.  Blomkamp has such a visceral and action packed approach to seemingly played out sci-fi premises that his vision of future Earth will undoubtedly be a suspenseful, intense and clever commentary. No trailer yet but the cast and the pictures so far look EPIC.


 

Gravity

Gravity, the highly anticipated sci-fi thriller from Alfonso Cuaron is set to drop on October 4th.  It’s about two astronauts who lose their space shuttle and find themselves “completely alone – tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness”.  The Children of Men director redefined cinema with his one-shot action sequences that perfectly complemented stories of humanity and desperation.  No trailer yet either, but word on the street is that he’s found yet another way to tweak special effects to take that humanity and desperation to the next level in the dead of space. I’m not enthused by the casting of George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, but I’m hopeful they’ll rise to the occasion.  If not, I’ve seen Cuaron do more with less.


Pacific Rim

I was more excited for Pacific Rim before seeing the trailer.  Afterwards I can accept that it will most likely be a live action anime for kids and not the hard edge epic I was hoping for.  But if anyone can do giant robot battles masterfully, Guillermo del Toro can. Pacific Rim kicks off when mysterious monsters, known as Kaiju, rise from the sea, humanity bands together to construct massive skyscraper tall robots called Jaegers to fight the seemingly endless enemies.  The cast is the kind of cast I dream about, stacked with Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman from Sons of Anarchy, Idris Elba from The Wire and Japanese cinema hottie Rinko Kikuchi.




Stoker

Based on the trailer, I have no idea what’s happening in Stoker but it’s by Chan Wook Park, the mastermind behind Oldboy, a movie so complex and lush that its essence couldn’t possibly be conveyed by a trailer, so I’m keeping an open mind.  Boundaries will be tested as a young girl develops a questionable relationship with a long lost uncle under the watchful eye of her unstable mother.  I’m never thrilled with the results of Asian directors working with American actors, but on March 1st I’ll tolerate Nicole Kidman’s frozen face for a serving of Park’s special brand of mindfuck.




The Grandmaster

Wong Kar Wai is one of the top filmmakers of our time. He is a visionary on all levels, from the detail in each shot to the emotive soundtracks, and if you haven’t seen one of his other movies, you’re truly missing out.  The Grandmaster reunites Kar Wai with his leading man Tony Leung Chiu Wai for the long awaited biopic of Wing Chun pioneer Ip Man.  The film is set to open in the US sometime in January and it’s no doubt that the martial arts, paired with his slow, deliberate shooting style will yield an elegant visual feast.

Taken

Not to be confused with the awful TV miniseries of the same name

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my boy luc besson has done some great work in his day (leon, la femme nikita, the 5th element), but for the last few years he's been churning out a bunch of merde (the transporter, danny the dog). entertaining merde, but merde nontheless. his latest project, taken (which he co-wrote with robert mark kamen) by all appearances seemed like it was going to fall in line with that trend. kamen also co-wrote the transporter with besson and in the director's chair, yet another transporter alumnus, cinematographer pierre morel, seemed to round out the trifecta of over-the-top mediocrity. but whichever wise man once said you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover must have actually been a pretty smart motherfucker because, against all odds, taken is an awesome movie!

usually, i'm not much of a liam neeson fan. something about his delivery just never sits right with me, but i must say, the old bastard really delivers in this movie! he plays bryan, a former CIA spy or something like that, who has given up the life of espionage in order to rebuild his relationship with kim (maggie grace), the teenage daughter he was never really there for growing up. his ex-wife (famke janssen) has married up in the world, sinking her claws into some rich dude who is apparently so rich he just gives thoroughbred horses away as birthday presents to other people's kids, so bryan has effectively been cut out of his daughter's life. boo hoo. however, since she's under 18, kim needs bryan's permission to leave the country so she can go to france for the summer to hang out with her new rich friends, following U2 around on their european tour (meh, kids today and their new fangled rock n' roll music). long story short, the dumb ho flies with her equally dumb hoey friend to paris and ends up getting her ass kidnapped by some albanian gangsters who get her hooked on smack, so they can sell her as a prostitute...bet you weren't expecting that!

let me just state for a moment that i'm not being sexist by calling them "dumb hoes", they really were about as dumb as hoes come. so dumb, in fact, that they were kidnapped literally like 10 minutes after they got to paris. they had "dumb ho" written so clearly across their foreheads that they didn't even give themselves the chance to eat a fuckin' crepe or buy a souvenir beret before they were dragged kicking and screaming into the back of some greasy eastern-european dude's fiat. so ladies, i don't want to receive any insensitivity warning emails from this shit. show this to the most ardent feminist you know and i'm sure they'll concur that these were some unintelligent females preoccupied with a ho-like lust for french cock. simple statement of fact, not at all intended to be offensive. [/public service announcement]

anyway, where was i? ah yes, the dumb hoes get kidnapped...right. so liam neeson, being a former spy, proceeds to use his skills to get his daughter back. that's pretty much it as far as plot goes, but let me tell you that the result is nothing short of satisfying. for about the first 40-45 mins of the movie, everything is pretty timid, you get to know the relationships, the personalities, the general climate of these character's lives and then BAM!, bryan arrives in france and all of a sudden the movie becomes an all out action romp that is made all the more amazing by the fact that you aren't really expecting it at all. from the second liam neeson smashes some random dude's head into the side of a car it kicks into gear and never really lets up.

the action in this film is top notch. you don't get many huge effects sequences or anything like that, just class-A, well executed, well choreographed fighting, stunts, chases and shootouts. the whole time i was watching it i kept thinking, "if the bourne movies had been more like this they probably wouldn't have been so lame" and i think that's a pretty apt way to describe this movie - like the bourne identity if it wasn't lame. liam neeson is basically like jack bauer in old man jeans instead of perfectly weathered fashion denim. he kicks, he punches, he chokes, he kills, he tortures...oh man, does he torture! no cheesy one-liners here, just sheer, unabashed, unapologetic ass kickery. if someone said to you "dude, liam neeson kicks ass and takes names in this movie", you might have a hard time picturing it, as did i, but trust me...it works! he really does a great job. i don't know if he did the fighting and stunts himself, but if he did then the guy really has been making the wrong kinds of movies for all these years.

i don't want to give too much of the awesome stuff away, so i wont go into specific details, but all around this movie is really well made. when the final climactic moment happens, it's intense and it makes you just want to pump your fist in the air, 80s style...and not in that trying-too-hard-to-be-badass kind of way. you get the sense that this guy isn't trying to be a badass, he just is...and that's the best kind of badass to watch on screen.

i'm not going to sit here and lie to you saying this movie avoids all hollywood cliches to present a truly rounded and gripping portrait of the sex trafficking underworld...that would be wrong of me. there are plenty of cliches here - the lone hero trying to impress his estranged family, the bumbling goons of non-american socio-ethnic backgrounds, the convenient plot developments that allow situations to play out with the greatest of ease, the neatly wrapped happy ending...you know, that kind of shit. and sure, the general idea is a little unlikely (take note all you would-be criminals out there, kidnapping well-off american tourists is probably not the best business model for any fledgling vagina smuggling outfit) and the fact that one guy could do all this stuff without consequence is a little over the top (though not entirely impossible), but really...who cares? it is fantasy, after all. if you want a realistic portrayal of the sex trafficking business, go watch some frontline, but if you want a great action movie that takes the general concept and runs with it to create an entertaining piece of...entertainment, then by all means check out taken.

sex and the city: the movie

white people are bad role models
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carrie bradshaw is a dead beat. i'm not tryna be a hater, it's simply a statement of fact. i don't care how many women out there idolize that bitch, i'll still say it. carrie fuckin' bradshaw (sarah jessica parker) is a class A dead beat.

now, i'm not one of those guys that hates everything related to sex and the city by any means. i have a woman, so by default i've seen pretty much every episode and i try to keep an open mind about things. the series had it's high and low points. it was funny at times when it wasn't trying too hard. the characters, aside from carrie, grew on me and the supporting cast (kim cattrall, cynthia nixon and kristin davis) is pretty excellent for the most part. my main problem with the show was that it followed such a strict formula and had such a low opinion of it's audience that it became tedious at points. having the main character hold your hand and point out every single metaphor and parallel drawn by the writers through overly clever monologues lowered the show from something that could have been very smart and introspective to something that was like arm-chair psychology for people that read redbook. but like i said, it certainly isn't without it's merits.

here's what i don't get...are people, specifically women, supposed to identify with carrie bradshaw as much as it seems like the writers and producers want them to? because while she is witty and always has a biting retort to any and every passing remark, when it all comes down to it she's really quite an awful role model for anybody to aspire to. for one, she's a total fraud. she lives way above her means, using designer fashion as her ticket into the upper echelons of society so she can rub noses with and in turn be validated by people that can probably see what a fraud she is from a mile away, but are too passive aggressive to ever tell her directly to her face. and if someone ever did have the balls to tell her, she'd just pretend it didn't matter to her, get indignant for a second, issue some catty insult in return and then go home and cry while the the words eat her alive from the inside out. she lives in a crappy studio apartment with a closet filled with millions of dollars worth of clothes and shoes so that she can pretend to be a part of high society and yet she's somehow too proud to let anyone call her out on the fact.

she uses the guise of "keeping it real" to rationalize her extreme fear of failure. it happened all throughout the series and it happens in the movie as well. what i don't get though, is that the writers seem to glorify this aspect of her personality. i remember an episode from the tv show where carrie's book gets optioned for some kind of film or tv show by matthew mcconaughey. she flies out to L.A. to meet with him and eventually gets cold feet and abandons the project because she doesn't like the way mcconaughey talks about the character in her book (which, of course, is modeled on herself). essentially, what he says hits too close to the bone for her, she has a panic attack and rather than confront the flaws in her personality or admit that perhaps her own actions may be the catalyst for many of the unpleasant things that happen to her, she shuts down, chain smokes ciggs and essentially says "fuck that, i don't need this, i'm keepin' it real". then her friends all gather around to console her - "aww, don't listen to them, carrie, you're a great person, they just don't know you" when in reality she's an awful person. she isn't even a good friend. whenever one of her friends has important news like "i'm getting married!" or "i'm having a baby!" or "i have cancer!", her response is always "that's great, but let's talk about me some more now". i fucking hate people like that - always making it about themselves. who gives a fuck about your petty problems that you mostly bring upon yourself? shut up and listen to your friends once in awhile, you bitch! they're much more entertaining than you are anyway.

i'm sorry to say that the few year hiatus hasn't done anything to mature carrie bradshaw. she's still as self-centered as ever. most of the movie focuses on the huge wedding between carrie and mr. big (chris noth), whose real name was finally revealed to be...wait for it...wait for it...john james preston. how incredibly lackluster, right? but let me just break down the events of the wedding day, which of course, goes horribly awry, leaving carrie devastated.

first of all, mr. big has been married a few times already and they've all gone to shit. he admittedly wants to get married to carrie, but doesn't necessarily want to go through the whole wedding aspect again, but he humors her because...well, he loves her for some ungodly reason that i'll never fully understand. because she's such a self centered basketcase, the wedding quickly turns from a quaint, friends only affair into a massive red carpet event with hundreds of guests and naturally, john james preston begins to get cold feet. he calls her billions of times before the wedding to try to get her to talk him down, but she's so involved in herself, she misses all of them. he freaks out and bolts (actually, he's not even a big enough jerk to really bolt, he just pussyfoots outside the church about 50 feet from the front door, well within walking range). eventually, carrie finds out that he's left her hanging and instead of doing the logical thing - calling him back and being like "yo, wtf, get your ass down here and stop being a pussy", she instead throws the worlds biggest temper tantrum and runs away crying like her entire life had just been destroyed by something that technically hadn't even happened yet and was still totally fixable. as if we'd expect something different from a person that has made a career out of making it all about herself. then, of course, her friends continue to indulge her childish behavior by going on a vacation to mexico where she wallows in her own misery and completely ignores them whenever she's not treating them like servants. priceless, right?

upon returning to new york, carrie hires a personal assistant to help her move back into her crappy studio apartment and continue "keeping it real". in fact, she's so determined to "keep it real" that she doesn't just hire any assistant, she hires the realest of all possible assistants, a sassy black woman. louise, played by jennifer hudson, to this day holds the guinness world record as the longest standing non-white character ever featured on sex and the city in all it's 10 years. an honor i'm sure the academy award winning actress is incredibly humbled by.

this is where the film turns from simply being an annoying, but occasionally funny rag into an insulting, stereotypical hollywood snoozefest. the writers rely on what we in the biz like to call the "magical negro" device in which an inept white person is swept away and taught to be a decent human being by a cuddly, unintimidating minority whose sole purpose in life seems to be bestowing wisdom upon unsuspecting crackers. and she does literally just that - she shows up, teaches carrie how to manage her shit and get her life back on track, then exits abruptly, never to be seen again, as if yanked off stage by giant hook. it might not have been that bad or offensive if there had ever been another black character on the show in all it's six seasons (or any other non-white race for that matter), but no...the only two black people i can ever remember appearing on the show were in the same episode, a brother and sister, and were gone by the time the end credits rolled. you rarely see such a blatant representation of tokenism these days and frankly, i'm surprised jennifer hudson didn't back hand her agent for placing such a backwards ass script in her clutches.

showdown in little tokyo

so i guess what they're saying is, white people have bigger penises than asians?
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yea, we all know that low budget 80s action movies can be hilariously ridiculous. we've all admired the enigma that was jean-claude van damme and scoffed as he graced even the simplest line with a sense of incomparable innocence, as if totally unaware of its meaning, simply a vessel through which god himself spoke to mankind. we already know that anything starring chuck norris is going to get you through those rough, lonely patches when the world is beating you down at every turn. that stuff is old news. the 80s has been picked clean. time for something new. something fresh. something about asians...but not too much.

time for showdown in little tokyo. this isn't just another one of those cheesy 80s b-movies, this is something very different. this is dolf lundgren as you've sometimes seen him before, except this time it's the 90s and that means everything is just a little cooler, a litter funnier, a little tougher, a little manlier, a little more homo-erotic, a little more ludicrous, a little more in-your-face, but a little more sensitive as well. yes, you may have seen him in rocky IV or he-man, but you've never seen him like this before (unless you've already seen this movie).

here's the trouble, i want to tell you about all the crazy funny stuff in this movie, but at the same time i don't want to be the one that ruins the experience for you. it's gotta be a complete surprise. it's one thing to go into a movie expecting it's going to be horrible, i mean, it is dolph lundgren we're talking about here...his record speaks for itself, but you never expect something of this caliber. it's the kind of thing that slaps you in the face and makes you stop and wonder - "was this made by a bunch of crazy geniuses that crafted such a complexly intricate network of high-concept themes and infinitely relevant social commentary that they are just kicking back on a distant planet somewhere laughing at my puny attempts to make sense of it?"

things are just flying at you at break-neck speed and you're struggling to catch up: the stereotypes, the cliches, the decapitation, the body doubles, the honkey-samurai infiltration outfit, the gay...omg, the gay! i don't want to tell you, but you must know...no, no, you must see for yourself. it truly is a spectacle to behold.

ok, in case you hadn't picked up on the fact already, this movie stars dolph lundgren, but it also stars brandon lee, tia carrere and about 50 other guys you've seen in a billion forgettable movies, but have never bothered to learn their names. of course when you talk about a brandon lee movie you can't help but talk about the tragedy of his death and whatnot...i'm not trying to take away from that, it was pretty sad, but i find something even more depressing about his story. yea, the guy lost his dad in a tragic accident, he lived 11 years with that sorrow only to die in a freak accident himself, but on top of all that, he never got the chance to even make a decent movie. that's a goddamn bummer if i ever heard one. you could argue that the crow was a decent movie, which it was, but you could also argue that the motherfucker never even lived to see a screening of that movie, so it doesn't really count. the fact is, at the moment of his death when his life flashed before his eyes, as far as he knew, he'd never made a good movie in his life. how seriously depressing is that? it really makes you question whether it's ethical to even write a bad review about the guy. i know i wont. it just doesn't feel right. and when you factor in how incredibly humiliating it must have been for him to play the part he plays in 'showdown in little tokyo' you feel even worse for him. it's just degrading.

still, that shouldn't stop you from acquiring this movie and laughing your ass off. in fact, sometimes it even makes it that much funnier. god, i can't believe i said that. i'm sorry, brandon.

i, robot

wasted opportunity, but not as huge of a mess as you'd expect
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i like this movie because it's safe and it's easy. is it anywhere near the level it could have been? absolutely not. does anyone but the geekiest of us care? not so much. listen, i'm a weird guy...on one hand i love sci-fi...real sci-fi, the stuff that critiques the world in that special way that only good sci-fi can, the stuff that transports you to a different time and place with it's sheer creativity and uniqueness, but at the same time, i can appreciate a good old fashion story, even if it does insult my intelligence a little. movies are first and foremost about entertainment and something doesn't necessarily have to be a masterpiece to be entertaining. this is the league i, robot is playing in. it's not amazing by any means, but you could do much worse with your 2 hours.

if you're a fan of isaac asimov's i, robot stories, chances are you hate this movie. i can't say i blame you, it steals the name and the general concept of asimov's stories and reworks them into a fairly straight forward, mystery-driven conspiracy movie format. i'm not going to go as far as saying it pisses on asimov's grave (like i've heard some claim) because it doesn't. actually, when you break it down it is really very similar to something he might have written. it's got the elijah bailey-esque biased detective spooner (will smith) who investigates a robot related crime and ends up becoming friends with a r. daneel olivaw-esque robot named "sunny" despite his machine-hating nature. there's also the lovable young street urchin (played in typically annoying fashion by shia labeouf), who could be seen to resemble raych from the foundation prequels.

it doesn't break any new ground or present any concepts the most remedial of sci-fi fans aren't overly familiar with already, but that's not the be-all, end-all of making a good movie. the story itself is well constructed and flows nicely, creating an all around neat package. director alex proyas does an almost complete 180 from his dark city, crow aesthetic, which is at once interesting and slightly disappointing. the style he brings to this film is very polished and clean, presenting a future where humanity is sort of at the brink of deteriorating, but still has the glossy sheen that allows people to keep up the illusion that everything is a-ok. you get the sense that in 10 years time this metropolis could look like a very different place. however, the film lacks a certain amount of artistic flare, something that caught me a little off guard considering proyas' style-heavy previous outings.

the main problem that holds this film back is, unfortunately, will smith. not because he's a bad actor - he brings a certain amount of charm and charisma to all his characters, but because he simply isn't right for the role. i could see the part working much better in the hands of a less charming actor, someone who could bring that gruffness to the character that i think smith was missing. his supporting cast doesn't do much to help him out either. bridget moynahan is pretty much wasted space, bringing almost nothing to the role of dr. susan calvin, one of the only characters taken directly from the asimov stories. she's stiff, uninteresting and doesn't show any of the complexity of the character as asimov wrote it. shia labeaof shows up for a few minutes here and there in an utterly useless role and does nothing as an actor to make the cameo worth the time it took to watch it. however, chi mcbride, james cromwell and alan tudyk (the voice of "sunny") all deliver with their performances.

in the end, i, robot is a movie that you walk away from thinking "hmm, that wasn't too bad". it's a good movie to watch if you're bored, but i can't see it going on anyones top 10 lists. there's nothing outright that sends it barreling into sucksville, but there also isn't anything elevating it above the level of mediocrity. with a few minor tweaks it could have been great, but as it is, it's merely good.

sunshine

the gods have gone away

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i have to admit the first time i saw 'sunshine' i didn't look too kindly upon it. if you've seen it, i'm sure you know exactly what i'm talking about, but if you haven't i'll try to explain without ruining anything for you (but honestly, if you're worried about reading spoilers you're surfin' the wrong site, so if i inadvertently go into great detail about the events in the film...uh, my bad, i guess). it was going along just fine and even starting to become really good, but at a certain point it kind of...derails, shall we say? all of a sudden it's like you're watching a completely different movie and it sorta cheapened the experience for me. i walked out feeling a little cheated...seemed like a cop-out. i couldn't logically understand why someone would tack on an ending that seemed to be a complete 180 from the rest of the film.

a few weeks later, however, i was drawn back to it mysteriously. i watched it again, noticed a bit more of the set up and the way danny boyle preps the audience for what's to come and once the crazy derailment point arrived it wasn't as bad as i remembered. this time i knew what was coming and that fact allowed me to accept it without being defensive because my movie-going experience had been interrupted. what i had originally tossed aside as a poorly thought-out, tacked on ending made a lot more sense to me. i mean, i got it the first time around - dude went crazy because he wanted to be the last man alive, alone with god, blah blah. but honestly, i thought it was just hooey - a crappy excuse to turn a hard sci-fi epic into a mainstream slasher picture. i'll admit, i was a little wrong. sunshine has more to say than that.

the film is not without it's faults. yes, it bares more than a passing resemblance to event horizon and perhaps owes a few credits to 2010 and alien as well, but it isn't fair to label 'sunshine' a rip-off or imitation. for one, it presents interesting enough concepts that it can hold its own against any of the aforementioned movies (and in certain cases surpass them). 'sunshine' is first and foremost about the allure, excitement and fear of the unknown and the human desire to elevate themselves to god-like status - two concepts that are often closely entangled. it encompasses this theme in a few different ways, most obviously the main story concept of humans using their grasp of science to restart a dying star. for humans, death and what (if anything) exists after it is perhaps the ultimate unknown. it is the one thing we are all racing towards and we're universally united by our obsession with it. some fear death, some accept it as an inevitability and some welcome it, but none can say they understand it's mysteries. there's something in our nature that turns a puzzle into an obsession when it cannot easily be mastered, something about our make-up drives us to conquer what is believed impossible...but what? everyone strives to be better than the person they're comparing themselves to for no other apparent reason than self-validation. in short, we each strive to be god-like in our own minds, whether it's by asserting our intelligence, strength, virility, wealth, dominance, courage or ambivalence over another person, place or thing.

dr. searle (cliff curtis) spends hours in the observation room, drawn to an image of the sun spinning slowly in the distance, growing ever larger and brighter as they draw closer. he's entranced by its beauty, power and danger. he wants desperately to understand it, to experience it as no one else has ever done before. capa (cillian murphy) is haunted by dreams of the sun's surface, but must master it in order to save everything he holds dear. the unknown for him is not death, as he seems to be at peace with the idea of "returning to the universe". for him, the unknown is the uncertainty of his own beliefs. as a physicist, he fears that his science, being purely theoretical, could in the end prove false. his actions are guided by this fear as he makes the call to reroute the mission to improve their odds of success.

the most interesting aspect of 'sunshine' is (strangely) the very thing that initially turned me off - the character of captain pinbacker. at first glance he appears to be nothing more than a blurry version of jason voorhees in space, but the more i watched the movie and the more i thought about it, the more the character evolved in my own mind. he's much more than a slasher. he is the embodiment of what 'sunshine' strives to illuminate about humanity and their quest to become gods in their own minds. like the others, pinbacker was obsessed with the unknown. for him, the unknown is the relationship between god and man. there are many ways to read into that, of course, it doesn't have to be god in the religious or spiritual sense - it can simply represent the powers of the universe from which we were all conceived. in his mind, in the presence of god he becomes one himself - the only man ever to exist alone in the universe with his creator. while fear of the unknown kept capa, searle and the others aboard the icarus 2's obsessions in check, pinbacker's experiences seemed to elevate him above the emotion. perhaps his survival itself left him feeling he had already mastered the unknown and as such he no longer feared it.

the aspect in which 'sunshine' falls flat and what ultimately holds it back from becoming a true masterpiece is the supporting cast. the problem is not with the actors, who all give strong work in their roles, but in the script. there simply isn't much for most of the cast to do but die and as such, we never really get to know them and are fairly unaffected when they do eventually get picked off. we're thrust into the action immediately and get to know very little about any of the crew members. we get tiny bits of background on some of the major characters like capa, but not much. by the time problems start arising and lives are placed in peril, we still don't really know who any of these people are or if they're even worth worrying about. you feel bad because people are dying or getting hurt, but you don't really care about them as individuals because they really aren't anything more than glorified red-shirts. strange because it seems like a film that tackles the kinds of topics 'sunshine' attempts would have benefited greatly from some more character progression.

'sunshine' is a film that comments on the implications of the human quest for knowledge and the consequences of taking that quest too far. it's a beautiful, but flawed film that takes multiple viewings to really appreciate fully, in my opinion. if you've seen it once, give it another chance, if you've never seen it, do so, but proceed cautiously...you might not be too impressed the first time around.

big trouble in little china

its all in the reflexes.

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it's a dark and stormy night here in san francisco (well, technically it's the middle of the afternoon, but that's just semantics at this point). it's been raining heavily over the last week, streets flooding, power dying, cars crashing left and right. to put it plainly, it's a madhouse out there and it got me thinking - what would ol' jack burton do at a time like this? when the earth quakes, the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of heaven shake...what would he say?

john carpenter has unleashed many brilliant creations on the world, from his masterful reinvisioning of the thing to the gritty, futuristic dystopian escape from new york to the ever-so-slept on, but amazingly strange prince of darkness. few, however, can hold a candle to the profoundly hilarious and ingeniously zany big trouble in little china. let's just establish this right now before we go any further - kurt russell is a fuckin' genius. no ifs, ands or buts about it - just. plain. genius. if you don't agree, you're either a total poser that's never seen any of his movies or some stupid whore that's probably obsessed with matthew mcconaughey or something. regardless, your opinion means nothing.

i often find myself watching movies and thinking "this would have worked so much better if kurt russell was playing that guy". for instance, we all remember that flaming heap transformers, right? now, there really wasn't anything short of a global outbreak of alzheimer's that was going to save that rag, but just imagine if the part played so awkwardly by john turturro was instead played by kurt russell. eeeeehhhh? see what i'm sayin'? not good, but still much better, right? i don't know what it is about him, but his mere presence can elevate a movie above mediocrity. i don't know where he learned those acting chops, but my hunch is that it must have been from jesus himself. i know i'm hamming it up a bit, but i'm not being sarcastic. watch 'big trouble' again and try to imagine anyone else being able to pull that role off. imagine if dolf lundgren played jack burton. or bruce willis. sly stallone. arnold. these hot shots think they're holywood royalty, but are they worthy to even lick the ground kurt russell walks on? imagine tom cruise's sissy ass saying "son of a bitch must pay". you can't because it's just totally wrong. he'd say it all ratty-like, as if someone had just befouled the holy name of xenu. not only that, he probably would have looked like an idiot in those acid washed jeans.

anyway, i'm getting a little off track here. i'm supposed to be talking about one of my favorite movies of all time, so i should get to it. a lot of people just don't quite get 'big trouble in little china'. i can't blame them - it's weird and goofy and you're never quite sure if what you're watching is real or if you fell asleep halfway through the movie and your imagination concocted some outrageous, totally implausable dream world where every word out of every character's lips endlessly tickles your funny bone for no clear reason and the alleys of chinatown are magically big enough to drive semi trucks through. it's a damn weird movie and i get the feeling that the average joe just has no idea how he's supposed to process it. "wait a second...is this for real?", "is this movie really racist?", "why is he talking like that?", "did they really wear boots like that in the 80s?".

not me though, i get it. i get every single line, every single subtle detail to the point where i probably laugh at things that aren't even jokes just because i get this damn movie so much. it's one of those films that gets it right in every way possible. the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the gags work, but not so much that it becomes a spoof. obviously it's a parody of those old charlie chan type movies, but carpenter handles it in such an interesting and comical way that it's not offensive or racially insensitive. jack burton is the perfect clueless action movie oaf that simultaneously thinks the world of himself and is delightfully surprised whenever he's actually able to back up all his big talk. not to mention kim cattrall's criminally overlooked performance as gracie law, a young, conscientious civil rights lawyer that has a serious problem with her face.

the thing i love most about 'big trouble in little china' is the way it comments on how american society is still incredibly racist, ignorant and biased toward other cultures, whether they know it or not. anything more than a passing glance at the film reveals that while kurt russell's name is first and foremost on the credits, jack burton is far from the hero of the story. in fact, the film flips the tables in a really interesting way. wang chi, played to hilarious effect by dennis dun is the true hero in 'big trouble' and jack is his witless sidekick who is just tagging along to cash in on a bet. jack, who is a big man in his own little pool of truck-drivin' CV radio personalities, is of little or no consequence to the inhabitants of san francisco's chinatown. the "weirdness" of their culture persists and amplifies only because of his ignorance toward it. carpenter derives comedy from the sheer ridiculousness of the film's portrayal of chinese-american life and how little the average american actually knows about the culture. but, in pointing out this dilemma, 'big trouble' is also bittersweet, for it calls into focus the bias' of hollywood as a whole. dennis dun, donald li and victor wong all gave great performances in this film as well as carpenter's 'prince of darkness' and should by all accounts have gone on to at least have decent careers on the c-list, but what became of them? not a whole lot. it's painful to me to see the great things that can happen when hollywood isn't culturally backwards, only to be pulled violently back to the reality of the situation - these great actors are going to forever be relegated to playing nameless henchmen in the background of movies that have something vaguely to do with asians. the world may yet remember the immortal advice of jack burton on matters of importance such as how to conduct yourself when accosted by a grabby thug or how to respond when your old lady is on your case about driving too fast, but will they remember even a line of what egg shen said?

i am legend

i am a brainless movie-goer

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just a comparison i'd like to throw out there - i've heard a lot of people who praised the transformers movie going around town saying i am legend is awful. you people need to learn the difference between awful and mediocre.

'i am legend' isn't awful, it just suffers from the same fate that most modern movies do - nobody cared enough to make it a masterpiece. maybe its because they felt like they didn't have to and people would see it anyway, maybe they honestly thought they had created a masterpiece or maybe they were operating under the impression that the world wasn't ready for anything heavier, but most movies these days don't have enough put into them. there are several movies i use as a compass to judge all others by, they range from serious art house fare like 2046 to mainstream action romps like the terminator or die hard. some were considered great in their time, some were loathed, some were considered frivolous and mindless, some were simply forgotten, but regardless, in my mind there is a thread that unites all great films - care. i feel it's fairly evident when watching a movie whether or not the people making it actually gave a shit about what they were creating. as an artist and a lover of art i can tell the difference between someone's obsession and someone's paycheck. it's what differentiates blade runner from impostor. i know when the details of a movie have been labored over, even if the labor isn't apparent and that is one of the things i love discovering about movies.

'i am legend' doesn't lack detail, per say, but it definitely skimps a bit. was it as good as 'blade runner'? oh god, no. but was it as bad as 'impostor'? nah, that's a little harsh. visually it was alright, thematically it was alright (though a bit muddy in places), but it fell far short of its potential because hollywood is simply terrified of taking big risks and failing. the movie was "deep" there was substance to it, but it was very subtle and it seems like a lot of people looked right passed it because they came in half-expecting it to be meaningless hollywood garbage anyway. i mean, let's be honest, there are a lot of people in this world that wouldn't get the theme of a movie if it was right in front of them yanking their ball hairs out, but a lot of the negativity i've read regarding 'i am legend' being "terrible" seems to stem from viewers having only a superficial/completely literal understanding of what's transpiring. it appears to me that most people were too distracted by the questionable cgi choices and the ending to really give the film the amount of attention it deserved.

although i wasn't the biggest fan of 'i am legend' personally and don't feel any sort of obligation to defend it, this kind of thing really troubles me. the majority of movie viewers (even those that consider themselves discerning critics) are only able to see themes, symbolism, deeper meanings, etc. in a movie if they're made overly aware of the fact that its there by heavy-handed techniques or blabby philosophical dialogue. i suppose that's why i despise movies that rely on such methods to hold your hand through every emotion, thought and concept presented. it's my personal feeling that a movie should be entertaining first and foremost, but it should have more to it than a simple chain of events if you should choose to go looking for it. the meat is there in 'i am legend', but there isn't enough to really make it a great film.

one thing i've notice people complaining about was the ending. many compare it to the twist toward the end of signs. they say "out of nowhere this chick and kid show up for no reason and all of a sudden he discovers the cure, gets a crazy message from god, sacrifices himself and saves humanity". well...that's certainly one way to look at it, yea, but is that really what the film was trying to get across? as usual, i see things a bit differently.

robert neville (will smith) lived for 3 years on his own. he learned to survive on his own. in this case surviving involves more than just hunting food and finding shelter, he also had to learn how to exist in complete isolation and cope with the psychological impact of not only being the last human alive, but also of being partly responsible for what happened to his fellow humans. 3 years is a long time and the result of being isolated for so long is that he's become completely self sufficient. though he desires it, he no longer requires human contact and has developed ways to supplement it on his own. he has become so accustomed to existing without that when human relationships are reintroduced to him he can no longer maintain them. when anna and ethan show up, by all indicators, he should be happy, he should have a new found purpose and a skip in his step...it should have brought him hope. instead, he can only focus on how their arrival has impacted the routine he's established for himself ("i was saving that bacon"). the characters of anna and ethan are obviously meant to echo neville's wife and child and where most movies would have hammered that point home, director francis lawrence chooses a different approach. instead, neville hardly seems to be moved by their presence at all and aside from a brief caress, makes very little personal contact with either of them. the story isn't about them, after all, it is about robert neville, the legend, the allegory. it is about how his desire to survive and fulfill his duty led him on a journey away from his own humanity. with this in mind, i view the "signs" at the end of the movie less as messages from god than neville finally realizing that in his quest to survive he had turned his back on the very thing he was supposed to be protecting. in an instant he finally understood that anna and ethan weren't simple annoyances getting in the way of his work and ruining his set-up, they were human like his wife and child, they were what he was struggling to save.

i'm not trying to convince anyone that 'i am legend' was brilliant because it wasn't. it had its moments and i think in a decade or so when the cultural associations are not as fresh and we've got maybe an extended director's cut it will be looked at more positively. what i'm trying to say is, its not awful and if you have an open mind and a willingness to look past the surface of the movie there are some interesting moments, some great scenes and some introspective themes about isolation, survival and obsession, but if you go in expecting mindless drivel, you'll get just that out of it.

ps. i'm purposefully avoiding any discussion about how well the movie adapts the book because, quite frankly, this is not really a strict adaptation of the book. it's more an update of the omega man, a laughably bad, equally off the mark adaptation of 'i am legend' starring charlton heston and his machine gun. even though 'the omega man' was slightly more faithful to the source material, it completely missed the mark of what the true core of the story was, which i think 'i am legend' comes a bit closer to (even though the way they get there is much different). for the sake of this blog, i'm keeping movies removed from their source material unless the connections absolutely must be drawn.

sometimes i feel like i'm one of those pretentious douchebags that rant on and on about "outsider art" and how brilliant the crazed scribbling of some brain dead psycho drawn on a toilet seat are and all the insightful things it says about our society. sometimes i feel like that, except substitute brain dead psychos with coked-out movie industry hacks. some of you may remember my dissertation on michael bay's masterpiece "bad boys II", some of you may not. anyway, consider this part of an ongoing investigation into the enigma that is hollywood filmmaking.

don't ask me why i do it to myself, but i've given every resident evil movie to come out so far a fair chance. partly because of the potential, but also because at the very least i can be secure in the knowledge that mila will be lookin' fine and possibly gettin' naked. that said, i've never actually been able to make it through an entire film in the series. they're just so bad i have to turn them off within 30-45 mins.

recently i legally obtained a copy of the latest, resident evil: extinction. based on the trailers, this installment looked like a fairly big departure for the franchise, so i thought "hmm...maybe this time they'll finally get it right". well, having sat down and watched it (yes, the whole thing!) i can say that yes, they finally have gotten it right. the fact that i didn't shut it off 30 mins in is probably the biggest indicator that the film is light years ahead of its predecessors, but on top of that, i was actually pretty entertained by the movie. believe me, i'm just as surprised as you are.

i'm not saying its a great movie because its pretty mediocre, but for all its hackiness, it also does a lot of things well. most noticeably, the directing in this one is pretty strong. i've never heard of russel mulcahy, looking at his imdb it seems that he's done mostly TV and music videos, but the guy is pretty smart. i say this for a few reasons. first, the film is very video gamey, but its all pretty subtle and doesn't get in the way of it being a movie. little flourishes that evoke the video game experience are sprinkled throughout, so that if you've played any kind of action/adventure game before you'll notice them and smirk, but if you haven't it would just blend seamlessly into the film. second, we're all aware of the fact that mila jovovich, for all her beauty, is a pitiful actress - same goes with the rest of the cast (which includes academy award winners ashanti, ali larter and mike epps), but the thing is, whoever this dude is, russel mulcahy, is obviously aware of this as well and fully compensates for it. nobody is given the opportunity to suck. it really is astounding to watch. they either die or get distracted or the camera cuts away from them before they get a chance to unleash a lethal dose of their own individual brands of suckitude. if you'd walked up to me on the street 3 weeks ago and told me i would not only sit through, but also be vaguely entertained by a movie starring mila jovovich, ashanti, ali larter and mike epps, i probably would have said something pretty humorous about how stupid your face was (or something along those lines...its hard to say for sure). i guess it just goes to show how strange and wonderful this world can be at times.

but wait, before you get all amped up and franticly download this movie with hopes high, let me make a disclaimer. the story itself (which was penned by paul w.s. anderson, the genius behind the first resident evil and other classics like AvP) is a total hack job. its basically 'day of the dead' verbatim, except its post apocalyptic and slightly more sci-fi. think george romero meets stephen king and you've pretty much got it. nothing original at all going on here. nothing at all. BUT, i'm not a snob, i don't think everything has to be ground breaking, its more important that it does what its trying to do right than doing it first. this film does it right...ish. there haven't been a whole lot of post-apocalyptic movies made in recent years, so we haven't really had the chance to see all those sprawling desolate landscapes in high definition with all the bells and whistles that new technology affords. first thing you notice about RE:E is that its pretty to look at. the camera work and aesthetics of the film do a good job at immersing you in the environment. the costumes are spot on. total anime ripoffs, but spot on, nonetheless.

sometimes you want to sit down and watch a really mindblowing movie that wows you and reinvigorates your love for the medium. this isn't that film. but other times you just want to sit down and meditate on something familiar, yet strangely beautiful in its mediocrity. well, maybe you don't, but i certainly do. i'm one of the few people out there in the world that understands that the movie industry is not about producing art, its about producing product that will produce money. at every step of the process, filmmakers are told "nope, you can't do that", "can't show that", "can't say that", "gotta simplify that", etc. i'm not delusional, i know that every movie i see is the product of 100 or so muddling hands, each of which has stripped away a little more of the movies original incarnation. its a sad reality, but it IS the reality. there just isn't much of a market for masterpieces these days. but to my weird, crazy, pretentious artfag brain, sometimes this debilitating meddling, censoring and restricting comes together to create something worth stepping back and admiring for what it is. and that, folks, is why i dub resident evil: extinction the best mediocre movie of the year. see it for yourselves. open your mind and don't be a stuck up cunt. you might just be slightly entertained like i was.

bad boys II

misunderstood genius or totally understood hack?

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so the other night i had the rather alarming urge to watch bad boys II. don't know why, something in my head was just telling me "watch bad boys II.....oooooooo...." so me and the lady got blazed and fired up the ol' dvd player. i should say first that in general, i love the action genre, i like will smith, i like martin lawrence...i'm not always a fan of the movies they make, but in general, they're both relatively funny, genuine and likable. i was never a fan of the bad boys movies though. just not really my thing, but recently i've been having a little bit of a philosophical dilemma regarding michael bay. i just can't figure him out. part of me wants to dismiss him as a simple hack who has very little control over his own movies (resulting in them being a mish-mash of other people's opinions on what a movie should be rather than being the cohesive vision of a director with an ultimate goal), but another part of me sees something just below the surface of his movies that is very abstract, innovative and perhaps a little brilliant. i dunno.

anyway, i was watching bad boys II, i was high and spacing out, looking at the visuals, but not really paying attention to the sound and i was really blown away by what i saw. every frame of that movie is put together meticulously in terms of moving compositions, shapes, colors, etc. almost in the way that an experimental abstract art film would. it was really strange. almost every shot in the film contains movement of abstract shapes across the screen and the beginning of each shot is just as beautifully composed as the ending of each shot. i found that if i looked passed the flashiness, the product placement and the one-liners, what i saw was actually a really artsy action film. most of the film relies on implication to determine what is going on - you piece together a cohesive idea of what's taking place based on an amalgam of abstract images shown in rapid succession. if you start to really discect the action scenes, you see that very rarely are you getting a true representation of what your mind believes is taking place on screen. you'll see a tight shot of will smith and martin lawrence in a car, then a shot of a car swerving from one side of the screen to the other, then an abstract frame of various automobiles criss-crossing around the screen, then a shot of smoke and from all those rapidly sequential images you infer that a high speed car chase is taking place with cars crashing left and right, but you don't see that many shots that actually show one vehicle chasing another. when you look at things like this out of the context of how these kinds of movies are perceived in society, its really quite a brilliant achievement.

i've always given credit to michael bay for his immeasurable influence on the action movie genre, but i've also written him off as a filmmaker because i've typically seen him more as an industry guy that happened to fall into the role of director than a true artist. lately i think i may be wrong though.
the thing is, i don't really know how much of the brilliance that occasionally shines through his films is actually michael bay's brilliance as opposed to the brilliance of whoever the director of photography happens to be or art director, etc. its hard to gauge. on one hand, i understand having to dumb your films down to appeal to the widest possible demographic and i understand that hollywood filmmaking is a business first and foremost before its an artform, but like the brilliant directors of the 30s, 40s and 50s, perhaps it is how the director chooses to work within and secretly against those confines that truly defines their artistic merit. all of michael bay's movies are disasters in their own special ways, whether it be because they are over-the-top cornball, ridiculously implausible or just helplessly middle-of-the-road perspective wise, but they each have their hidden, mysteriously profound moments as well.

let me break it down like this - transformers was all in all an awful movie, but it had a very strong theme of political commentary running through it that you don't usually see in films made for that wide an audience pool (probably more than just that, but i've only seen it once in the theater, so its hard to judge just based on that). the island fell flat in a lot of respects, but it was also a very strange concept for a film...it was an action film that had absolutely no action for 50% of the running time. the first hour of the movie has more in common with THX 1138 or logan's run than it does with bad boys. it may not have been completely successful, but it was definitely a different approach conceptually. i haven't seen his other movies in a long time, so i can't really comment on those, but i plan to rewatch them with fresh eyes soon.

so, now on to the discussion. michael bay, misunderstood genius or occasionally profound hack? do you think he has an artistic vision or do you think his movies reflect purely the muddling of producers, studio execs and people who generally have no idea what the general public truly wants to see on screen? i don't think there's going to be any debate that the scripts in all his films are formulaic and most likely written by committee, so i'm talking more about the other stuff. how much of a michael bay film is actually michael bay and how much is the combined effort of people much wiser than him?