Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
  • Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009)
    Sci-Fi/Action/Drama; USA
    112 minutes


    Any reader of this site more than likely knows that my love of Ron Moore's "Battlestar Galactica" is rivaled only by my complete disdain for how the show ended its, up until then, nearly flawless run. For hardcore fans that were as disappointed with the finale as I was, "The Plan" was our last great hope for a decent send-off for the show. Unfortunately, nothing short of a flawless masterpiece of modern cinema could wash away that bad taste left by the sloppily thrown togehter ending and a flawless masterpiece "The Plan" is not.

    That's not to say it's total garbage because there is a lot to enjoy about the story. There are some great dramatic scenes, a bunch of cool post-apocalyptic imagery, a whole heaping helping of nudity as well as interesting footnotes to previous seasons presented. However, the film itself ends up feeling more like a hodgepodge of deleted scenes rather than a complete, cohesive story. The plot jumps around the timeline, spanning from the original miniseries up until the end of Season 2, using footage from the show to provide context for the new additions. It's difficult to find a sensible story running through the patchwork of scenes and as a result the film acts more like a 2-hour "previously on Battlestar Galactica" bump than a true standalone movie like "Razor".

    The one thing that holds "The Plan" together enough to be decently enjoyable is Dean Stockwell's excellent performance as Number One a.k.a. Brother John Cavil. I wasn't quite happy with the Season 4.5 turn his character made, essentially casting him as the villain in a series that up until that point had primarily been about the relative nature of good and evil, but as usual, when you flesh an idea out it becomes less black and white and that was definitely the case here. His actions and his character's psyche are the main draw of the film, which aside from that, merely retreads a lot of things that were always pretty solidly hinted at throughout the series, even if never expressly stated. Anyone who paid attention during the first two seasons of the show will already have known what the Cylon plan was and this movie does very little to shed more light on it. Actually, it makes it a little fuzzier by not dealing with or even acknowledging the Cylon's desire to reproduce naturally, which seemed to be a big part of their plan in the first few seasons.

    Final verdict - for hardcore fans only.

    Give this some time if you're into: Battlestar Galactica, boobs, ass, penis
  • Antichrist (2009)
    Psychological Drama/Horror; Denmark
    109 minutes


    "Antichrist" is the latest in a long line of bleak emotional gut wrenchers that pit a solitary female lead against a wealth of horribly scarring situations from arthouse superstar Lars von Trier. The Danish director has received a whole slew of criticisms against the perceived misogyny and shock value of "Antichrist", which only serve to illuminate just how little most people actually pay attention during movies. Is this film misogynistic? Uh, noooooo. Does it deal with misogyny as one of it's themes? Like a motherfucker it does! A subtlety that most movie-goers can't seem to pick up on.

    "Antichrist" reminded me a lot of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining". It's a very artsy take on the horror genre, relying more on psychological fear than killer-jumping-out-of-the-closet scares. It features a lead character that is a writer who loses her goddamn mind and turns violent in a secluded mountainy forest setting. Creepy, surreal imagery is abound. The husband/wife/child dynamic is explored and Charlotte Gainsbourg happens to look a lot like Shelley Duvall. The big difference is that "Antichrist" is way more overtly political in it's themes of gender roles and oppression.

    It's easy to look at a film that features such an extreme female character doing such extreme things (uh, total understatement, btw...some of this is not for the faint of heart) as being sexist or misogynistic, as many critics obviously have, but doing so completely disregards the intent of depicting those things in the first place (and also half of the other content of the film). Was "American History X" a racist movie because it depicted racism? There's a huge difference between that and, say, the two racist-ass cultural stereotypes portrayed so obliviously in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". Von Trier has a habit of putting his female leads through the ringer, but not necessarily out of some boner-inducing desire to see women suffer, but rather to illustrate just how much women do suffer in our male dominated world and how profound that suffering can be. Most importantly, he seeks to show that one, male or female, need not even be conscious of the oppression to actively participate in and contribute to it.

    Give this some time if you're into: freaky shit, artsy-fartsy cinema, genital mutilation, gender identity, severe depression


  • Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
    Action/Sci-Fi; USA
    150 uncalled for minutes


    Okay, so a lot of people called me an idiot for not liking JJ Abrams' "Star Trek", yet most people can universally agree that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a steaming pile of highly saturated, lens flaring, shaky cam shit. WTF, people? They're both written by the same motherfuckers! They both exhibit the same forays into total random stupidity. To point out the shittiness of one is to admit the same qualities exist in the other.

    There isn't much to say about this movie other than it's just totally wanktastic. The colors are bright and shiny, the CGI is over-the-top and almost looks like stop-motion at times (not in a good way), the writing is ridiculously stupid and the story is just like...why? I'll admit that the Decepticons are pretty cool and the stuff in space was somewhat awesome looking, but beyond that it's just a total waste of time and money. If you're going to do mindless eye-candy, then for the love of all that's holy, do it with some kind of conviction! I like to see shit blowing up as much as the next guy, but if that's all you've got then at least make it a "rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills" and not just a "slowly moving escalator of stumbles and near misses". See "G.I. Joe" instead - at least you'll be mildly entertained.

    The one thing I will say is that "T:ROTF" has some of the most heinous displays of racism portrayed on film since "Birth of a Nation".

    Meet "Mudflaps" and "Skids" (both names that evoke shit, coincidentally) - the two jive-talkin' sambo-bots that provide the slapstick comic relief and colorful commentary for the majority of the film. Why? Who the fuck knows! Because it's in the script, I guess. They'll soft-shoe their way into your hearts and then proceed to cut them out with a switchblade while raping all the white women you've ever known. But, by golly, aren't they a hoot!?

    Now, to be fair, they aren't the only robots in the movie that talk like they've heard one too many Ice Cube songs - in fact, most of the side characters are consistently reppin' their street cred for some reason. However, these are the only two characters who look like their parents downed three bottles of Nyquil and chased it with a crack pick-me-up every single day while pregnant with them.

    Give this some time if you're into: sitting through hours of crap in the hopes that you'll see a little hint of Megan Fox's boobs. (SPOILERS) YOU DON'T SEE ANY! NOT EVEN SIDE-BOOB!

    Related Posts:

    Star Trek Gets All Michael Bay'd Out
    Take Back The Movie Night
    High Revelations on Michael Bay
  • Drag Me To Hell (2009)
    Horror; USA
    99 minutes


    I dig Sam Raimi for the most part. Some minor "Spider-Man" mistakes aside, he's usually pretty entertaining in that tongue-in-cheek kind of way, so I was pretty excited by his return to the horror genre with "Drag Me To Hell".

    It was everything you expect from Sam Raimi. Some gross-out/totally-impossible-and-therefore-comic violence, some fast, quirky camera work, some humorous dialog and a few real scares...unfortunately, it just wasn't doing it for me. There were cool elements and the potential for a great movie in there, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking "huh...this movie is actually kinda racist!"

    Now, I'm not saying it's intentionally racist - they don't use any slurs or anything outright offensive - no, it's the more subtle (and much more prevalent) kind of racism that's caused by someone not even stopping to consider what they're portraying on screen. Every ethnic character in this movie is some sort of spooky mystical medium and every spooky mystical medium in this movie is some kind of ethnic, so it's like everything weird, supernatural and scary is some exotic "other" and everything "normal" is blond hair, blue eyes. I don't think the Raimi Bros. are out to make any statement with that fact - it's just something I personally find really annoying because it's such a ubiquitous form of racism that's so easily remedied. Why not make the lead chick ethnic to balance it out, for instance? Oh, but that would never happen! And that's another reason this shit is kinda racist. They fill up all the side roles with the colored folks, but the main characters are always white. So yea - double subtle racist.

    It's not a bad movie at all, it's entertaining enough - I just didn't like it.

    Give this some time if you're into: Justin Long's banter, Raimi trademarks, Evil Dead, Darkman, horror in general, seeing shadows projected onto any and everything.

  • Brüno (2009)
    Comedy/Cultural Parody; USA
    81 minutes


    It took me awhile to finally get around to seeing this movie - mostly because I'd already seen "Da Ali G Show" years ago, been underwhelmed by "Borat" and unimpressed by the trailers. "Brüno" was a lot better than I expected though.

    Of course, it wasn't all laughs. There were jokes that fell flat or felt played out, but there were also parts that were just too LOL-worthy to pass up. And best of all, it's only an hour and twenty minutes, so it doesn't get the chance to ever get too tedious.

    I heard through the grapevine that a lot of gays were offended by this movie because it portrays gay stereotypes. The only conclusion I can come to on that is that they never bothered to watch the movie or any of Sacha Baron Cohen's other projects. Or maybe they're just as ignorant as the people he parodies in this film. Either way, they totally missed the point. What's funny about Cohen's comedy isn't the stereotypes he employs, but the reactions those stereotypes elicit from people. You're supposed to laugh at how uncomfortable these people become when someone they think is a flaming queer is gyrating his crotch in hotpants mere inches from their faces - it's like Hitler himself is holding their first-born child's freshly skinned corpse over a tub of acid. They're stupid and that's funny.

    It's also funny that people who deem themselves qualified to run for president, who presume to represent the people of America and their interests are so easily hoodwinked by a man who has been famous all over the world for over a decade now. I'm sorry, but if you don't know who Ali G is in the year 2009 then you simply aren't relevant. What if Ahmadinejad throws you some "rezpekt" (*snap)? You're not even gonna know what he's talking about and you'll make a fool out of us in front of the whole world. Maybe Ron Paul has been too busy worrying about the Gold Standard to bother realizing what year it is, but surely someone in his entourage has flipped on a TV in the last 10 years and seen enough to go "oh hey, I recognize that dude!" But no...

    Give this some time if you're into: All things S.B.C. (not the phone company), laughing at ignorance, close ups of penises flopping in every direction
  • District 9 (2009)
    Sci-Fi; South Africa
    112 minutes


    One of my favorite sci-fi movies of the 80s was "Alien Nation". I'm not ashamed of this. But if you were to give that buddy cop flick about a race of aliens trying to integrate into life on Earth the Ron Moore style "Battlestar Galactica" reboot for modern times you'd most surely get something very close to "District 9". That's not an insult. Neil Blomkamp's directorial debut takes the same general concept as the Mandy Patinkin/James Caan movie, removes all of the hokeyness from the equation and makes it relevant to our times. It asks the question "what would happen if an alien mining ship filled with millions of hive-minded worker drones was stranded on Earth, cut off from their commanders" and then proceeds to play that concept out in a very realistic, but satirical manner.

    The result is probably the best movie I've seen this year, hands down (though there's still "Avatar" to look forward to, of course). Usually, and especially with "summer blockbusters", you have to hit up several different films to satisfy the range of your intellectual interests. You go to "G.I. Joe" to get your whiz-bang action fix and maybe to "Virtuality" to scratch that itch for high-concept, intellectual sci-fi and then to something like "Thirst" to fill that artsy fartsy "I'm a serious filmmaker" void, but "District 9" is like one stop shopping. The conceptualist in me was intrigued by the ideas presented and the conclusions drawn about human nature and the dynamics of society - and yet the total geek in me was psyched to see badass alien mechs and crazy energy weapons that make people explode into bits on contact. Even the artfag in me was in awe watching the arbitrary beauty of the documentary-style handheld cinematography that captured the patchwork slums and urban decay of Johannesburg, South Africa. All sides were equally satisfied.

    I know I've stated that there are some similarities to "Alien Nation" here, but this is not a remake or a reboot, it's not trying to cash in on your nostalgia or bank on an already successful property - it's an original concept that was widdled into an original movie by people who give a fuck about making good movies. See, Hollywood? See what happens when you come up with a cool idea and work tirelessly to bring it to life without hacking away at anything that might be deemed questionable to the lowest common denominator? You get a WIN, not a FAIL. Grab a post-it and jot that shit down.

    Give this some time if you're into: Aliens, Battlestar Galactica, Alien Nation, City of God, Cops, just plain entertaining shit.
  • Thirst (2009)
    Creepy Vampire Drama; South Korea
    133 minutes


    Chan-Wook Park, the director of "Oldboy", "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Lady Vengeance" directing a vampire movie? I'm fucking there!

    "Thirst" is the story of a middle-aged Catholic priest who contracts vampirism during a blood transfusion and then struggles with the effects it has on his life, his faith and his view of humanity as a whole. It's got everything you expect from Park - lush visuals, heavy psychological drama, surrealism, a dark bend, sex, violence...you know, all the reasons you watch movies. The only thing it's lacking from Park's usual repertoire is an amazing score, which does hinder the movie a bit. But aside from that, it's pretty great! A lot of the subtleties of "Thirst" will probably be lost on most viewers, however. There seem to be a lot of cultural things that don't really make sense to non-Koreans, but it doesn't necessarily make it any less interesting, just makes you scratch your head and wonder "WTF was that all about" at times.

    This is yet another genre film that calls into focus just how lame we Americans have become in recent years. While we're churning out angsty-emo-kid bloodsuckers a la "Twilight"** and glorified romance-novel, Elvis-meets-Fabio style vamps in "True Blood"**, the rest of the world is coming up with unique takes on the mythology like this one, "Let the Right One In" (Sweden) and hell, even "Blood: The Last Vampire" (Japan). And, as usual, the general American public doesn't even seem to give a fuck. Maybe they don't know what they're missing...or maybe they just truly like overwrought crap.**

    Give this some time if you're into: dark Korean movies, all things Chan-wook Park, vampires, religious crises, twisted acts.

    **Sorry friends...I know some of you actually love this shit, but come on...you have to admit it's crap on more levels than not.
  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)
    Action/Sci-Fi; USA
    118 minutes


    Ok, I stand corrected. When I heard they were making a live-action "G.I. Joe" movie my natural response was a little bit of 'meh' mixed with a dash of *barf* finished off with a pinch of WTF. But honestly, how could you blame me? That kind of thing usually goes horribly wrong, right? Transformers, Scooby Doo, Inspector Gadget...I mean, it's not exactly a strong track record of translating Saturday morning cartoons into live-action blockbusters.

    Who knew? This movie is actually pretty awesome! Sienna Miller's questionable acting aside, most everything in "G.I. Joe" works - even Marlon Waynes! I know, right? But he only really slips on a few bits of dialog, which is really impressive considering his past tendencies. Usually I hate the wacky, ethnic comic relief sidekick bit in Hollywood movies, but strangely the writers actually elevated that role in "G.I. Joe". Not only does he live through the closing credits, but he also gets the chick AND saves the day while the white guy heartthrob is basically off chasing some pussy. That rarely happens, folks!

    The element that ultimately makes this movie the shit is that the action is straight on point. That may not seem like a big deal because every summer movie has action in it these days, but rarely is it ever done right. You'll find no slow dolly tracking around choreographed martial arts battles in this film, nor will you find seizure inducing shaky-cam that renders all the action into blurs of grainy chaos. It's just old-fashioned anime influenced perfection that doesn't call too much attention to itself and just lets you sit back and go "Oh, shit!" Some of the CGI is shotty, but I've seen worse in bigger budget movies than this.

    The bottom line is - what do you expect out of a G.I. Joe movie? What do you expect from the guy who directed "The Mummy"? You expect a spectacle of things blowing up, people saying stupid shit while wearing silly outfits and doing backflips while shooting machine guns. Do you like that kind of shit? Yea? Then check it out. This isn't fucking Wim Wenders though. It is what it is and it's more fun to watch than most of the crap that tries to fill that void.

    Why the fuck does the guy that never utters a word need a mouth though?

    The world may never know.

    Give this some time if you're into: action, cartoons, anime, explosions, jets, motorcycles, power armor, British guys being the president of the US
  • The Hangover (2009)
    Comedy; USA
    100 minutes


    If you're going to do a movie where the running gag is how fucked up you got in Vegas and how many crazy antics you got into because of your extreme inebriation it'd probably be a good idea to like...show some of those hilarious antics, right? But, no, that would be the obvious choice. "The Hangover" is all about shattering your expectations.

    This movie could have been funny, but they decided to show the least humorous aspects of the story and then simply allude to all the funny stuff. It was an hour and a half long cock-tease, basically. "OMG, we've found ourselves in an incredibly awkward situation - I wonder how we got here? I don't know, but I bet it was funny..." That shtick gets pretty old after the 5th or 6th time it happens and by the time the credits role it's just plain annoying. There are certainly funny moments, but for the most part I just felt jipped. The funniest part of the movie was the ending credits where they finally showed pictures of the inebriated madness, which was indeed far more entertaining than the actual movie, as expected.

    Give this some time if you're into: doing shit halfassed.
  • Virtuality (2009)
    Sci-Fi/Drama; USA
    87 minutes


    Motherfucking FOX...you never did know a good thing when you saw it. You fucked "Firefly", killed "M.A.N.T.I.S.", tried your hardest (and eventually succeeded) to sabotage "The X-Files" and now, you've worked your magic once again on Ron Moore's "Virtuality".

    Like "Sucker Free City", this 2-hour pilot turned standalone movie suffers greatly from the fact that it was never given the chance to actually tell it's story, but had it been picked up as a series, it could have been one of the standouts of network television. The story follows a 12 person crew on a 10 year voyage to a nearby star system. In order to cope with the isolation and prevent people from flipping out and shooting the joint up, each crew member is given their own personal virtual reality device that allows them to create whatever world they want and escape there when not on duty. Sounds pretty straight forward except for one fact - this whole mission is being recorded, edited and broadcast as a reality TV show back on Earth, which in turn helps to fund the mission. When people's VR sets start going crazy and killing them in their dreams, we're never quite sure if it's a glitch in the system, one of the crew members fucking about or the network execs back on Earth trying to spice things up for ratings.

    "Virtuality"'s blend of psychological space drama, virtual-reality fantasy and "Big Brother"-esque reality TV was a truly unique concept with endless possibilities, not only for weekly episodic content, but also for cross-media promotion to drive viewers to Fox's website. But who needs increased viewer loyalty and extra ad-revenue anyway? Especially when you can just churn out another few seasons of "American Idol" or "So You Think You Can Dance" and not have to pay anybody for their talent contributions.

    But how many damn years was "Melrose Place" on again? They couldn't give this shit 1 season?

    FAIL, FOX...FAIL!

    Give this some time if you're into: Battlestar Galactica, 2001, Star Trek, heady sci-fi where a bunch of shit doesn't blow up with lasers, lamenting the possibilities.
  • Sucker Free City (2004)
    Crime/Drama; USA
    113 minutes


    One of the lesser known Spike Lee joints, "Sucker Free City" was conceived as an original series for Showtime, but for whatever reason they sat on it for awhile and never bothered to greenlight the series. Eventually, it became clear that the show had no hope and so the 2-hour pilot was released as a standalone film.

    Set in my home turf of San Francisco, California, "Sucker Free City" is the story of 3 men from different backgrounds, living in completely different worlds that coexist just miles apart from each other in relative seclusion. A black kid growing up in the crime-ridden ghetto of Hunter's Point, a Chinese kid raised in the gang-ruled Chinatown neighborhood and the son of 2 former white hippies being forced out of their home in the newly gentrified Mission district are our windows into the vastly disparate micro-climates of modern San Francisco. Each character has his own troubles and faces his own obstacles, but in the end they are all simply trying to make something of themselves in a world that cares little about them and even less about those aforementioned obstacles. The real focus of the story, however, is not how different these characters are, but how closely their actions resemble one another and how easily someone without the feeling of hope or purpose can wind up treading a path that only acts to continue the cycles of economic and social oppression.

    For those used to seeing the shiny-happy, Rice-A-Roni depictions of "the city by the bay", Spike Lee's portrayal is a much needed reality check. The truth of the matter is San Francisco is one of the most culturally, racially and economically complex cities in the world and "SFC" is probably the first piece of popular media I've encountered that attempts to accurately show that diversity, warts and all. It's an incredibly rich tapestry of possibilities that ultimately will never have the chance to be explored because Showtime not only did this show dirty, they also did themselves dirty by passing on what could have possibly been their only answer to HBOs complete and utter domination of pay-cable programming.

    Judging "SFC" as a standalone movie is nearly impossible because watching makes it abundantly clear that we're only seeing a tiny fraction of something much, much bigger and in the end most of what is presented is never resolved. But if you watch it keeping in mind that it was meant to be so much more, you can at least appreciate the attempt to capture something on film that had never really been tackled before and is much too complex to cover in a mere 2 hours. Sorry "Sucker Free City"...if you hadn't been done so dirty, you could have been a real classic.

    *Pours some out for the homie that never even had the chance to be here.


    Give this some time if you're into: The Wire, Spike Lee's other joints, San Francisco, cultural ghettos of all shapes and sizes, racial politics...you know, standard Spike Lee shit.
  • Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)
    Superhero/Action; USA
    115 minutes


    In this week's batch of Flash Reviews we're spotlighting great shit that was done dirty by the man and you can't talk about epic filmic disses without mentioning the mother of all fuck ups, "Superman II". Long before every other movie to hit the theater was a comic book adaptation of some sort, there was only Richard Donner and his sprawling vision for an epic Superman trilogy. Unfortunately, 3/4ths of the way through filming "Superman II", Donner was booted from the project, the script was rewritten and about half of the scenes reshot by the new, studio-hired director, Richard Lester. You can read the whole sorted drama here, but the long and short of it is that the studio didn't want to give Marlon Brando a cut of the films profits, so they did everything they could to remove him from the project, resulting in a completely different film with a much different tone and a much more cartoony treatment.

    For over 20 years, Donner's footage sat in the vaults gathering dust until finally, fan pleadings and Margot Kidder's psychotic ramblings led to the creation of "The Richard Donner Cut". While this isn't the movie Donner envisioned from the start, the studio gave the director access to all his old footage and the freedom to recut it to be as close to his vision as possible. The result is a choppy, but ultimately great superhero story - probably the best superhero movie of all time, save Tim Burton's Batman movies, if you ask me.

    There are some downsides - Donner's original ending for "Superman II", Superman flying around the Earth at super fast speed to turn back time, was tacked onto the end of the first film because it was the most impressive special effect they had at the time, so now that the sequel has been re-edited and that ending replaced, both the first and second films have the exact same ending. But to Donner's credit, it works a lot better in "Superman II" than it did in "Superman". There were also a lot of scenes that were never shot, so test footage was used instead, resulting in a few discontinuities within scenes, but overall these are minor problems that you might not even notice if you're not looking for them.

    Give this some time if you're into: superhero movies, Superman, retcon, seeing things done the way they should be done.
  • Lost in Beijing (2007)
    Drama; China
    112 minutes


    I don't have a whole lot to say about "Lost in Beijing" except that you need to see this motherfucker, stat! It's a very understated movie on the surface, but it packs a lot of unexpected turns into it's unassuming facade.

    The story centers around two couples dealing with the fallout of a workplace rape, the unplanned pregnancy resulting from it and the attempted blackmail resulting from that. The handheld cinematography is top notch and the way the director captures the city and all it's many anonymous nooks and crannies on film really draws you into these characters' reality. It's a beautiful, but also incredibly engaging and entertaining film about naivety, hopelessness, desperation and the lengths people will go to for the sake of their own pride. Usually when people describe movies like that they sound wanky and overly emo, but "Lost in Beijing" manages to deal with some pretty angsty subject manner in a way that doesn't make it cheesy or heavyhanded.

    Give this some time if you're into: Down to earth, sometimes unflatteringly honest filmmaking, Wong Kar Wai's films, movies that get banned in their own country, shaky cam
  • Vexille (2007)
    Sci-Fi/Action/Animation; Japan
    109 minutes


    If you were as dissappointed with "Appleseed Ex Machina" as I was, then "Vexille" might just be the fix you've been looking for. This is one of those CGI animes in the vein of the awesome "Appleseed" remake, so if you're not into that, then don't bother checking this one out. The quality is slightly improved from the sometimes clunky looking "Appleseed", but it's still got that cartoony, cell-shaded look to it. I personally enjoy it, so whatever...works fine for me.

    What separates "Vexille" from the pack is that the concept is pretty interesting and something we haven't really seen before. Set in 2077, Japan has completely isolated themselves from the rest of the world after the UN issues a ban on the research and development of cybernetics that the country does not wish to take part in. No one has visited for decades, they've deported all foreigners and they've set up an electromagnetic field around the island to shield from probing satellites and spy planes. Nobody knows what the hell is going on over there, basically. I won't spoil it for you, but it's a pretty drastic change.

    "Vexille" is your standard "resistance" story at it's core, but there are some cool ideas in there, some great action and some stunning visuals that help propell it slightly above the level of mediocrity that has pretty much become standard in all sci-fi/action movies lately - foreign or not. That said, it's not perfect by a long shot. There are some less interesting parts and not much in the way of character development or poinient dialog, but that's not really what they're aiming for either, so I can't slag them off too much for it.

    NOTE: as with any anime recommended on this site - watch the fucking subtitled version please. Dubbed anime is unforgivable.

    Give this some time if you're into: Appleseed or Appleseed Ex Machina, Metal Gear Solid, mechs, androids, high-tech futurism, Bubblegum Crisis
  • Appleseed Ex Machina (2007)
    Sci-Fi/Action/Animation; Japan
    105 minutes


    First off I should say that I really liked Shinji Aramaki's first "Appleseed" movie. I've always had a soft spot for the franchise, ever since seeing the 80s OVA adaptation years ago. "Appleseed Ex Machina", however...not so much. I really wanted to like this one too.

    The main problem with "Ex Machina" is that it's all John Woo'd out like a motherfucker. We're talking duel weilding pistol, bullet-time, slow motion dove shots and all - John Woo'd out. And it just doesn't work. This movie is littered with "Bubblegum Crisis" nods, but even that couldn't save the totally random and ultimately lame storyline that basically amounts to "your iphone is turning you into a slave for the man". Skip this one, watch the first "Appleseed" movie instead.

    Give this some time if you're into: Shinji Aramaki, mechs, cybernetics, John Woo's tired ass camera tricks
  • Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
    Fantasy/Young Adult; UK
    153 mins


    Half-Assed Ending, Half-Assed Performances, Half-Hearted Adaptation...pick your choice.

    (Spoiler Level: Assumes you've already seen it, but doesn't assume you've read the final book)

    You'd think that with a name like "Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince" director David Yates and writer Steve Klowes would have...I don't know...focused on the Half-Blood Prince subplot of the book instead of writing it off with one cheesy line at the end. That's been the major problem with most of the Potter movie adaptations - they gloss over or throw out completely all of the interesting and important details that help the story make sense and/or provide justification for the characters motivations. Instead, they like to focus on random shit that doesn't really do anything for the story like kids making out, silly gags and Draco Malfoy being all mopey around the school (did he have any classes, btw, or is he majoring in Emo Studies?). The result is a series of movies that don't really make all that much sense together as an overall story. I mean, you can certainly follow them from one point to the next, but you're missing a lot of what makes the characters tick and what makes the individual events transpiring important to the overall story.

    The obvious problem with "HBP" as a standalone story is the complete and utter lack of a climax - another thing that was left out of the adaptation for some reason. Wouldn't you rather have seen an epic, all out battle on the Hogwarts castle - Death Eaters vs. Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army, magic flying everywhere, people getting killed, maimed and seriously fucked up? Well, that's how the shit ended in the book - and for good reason. That's what the story needs to really feel worth it. Why that was left out in favor of a less exciting, less action-packed, less engrossing sigh of an ending I have no fucking clue. I'd love to sit down and have a talk with the douchebag that made that call. It's very sad too because visually the movie looked great and really captured a lot of the mood of the books, but where was the Order of the Phoenix? Why only one pointless scene with Lupin and Tonks? Why play down the danger all the kids were in just attending Hogwarts that year? Why make half the decisions made in this movie? It just doesn't make sense.

    Most of all, "HBP" is where the shortcomings of the previous few Potter films really start to show themselves. In the books it's often shown just how similar Harry and his nemesis are and just how easily Harry could become Voldemort had certain things played out slightly differently in his life. To me, this is a very important part of the story, but it's more like an afterthought in the films. They touch on it with a line here and there, but it never really sinks in because they're just saying it, not showing it. It's also due to the fact that in order to really get that kind of thing across there's a lot of other things that need to lay the groundwork, like Harry's relationship with the parents he never knew and is only coming to learn about as he matures. However, most of the background info about his parents has been cut from the movies.

    When you look at the Marauder's Map in the films, for instance, it's just a handy piece of paper that tells Harry where people are, but in the books it's more than that - it's a direct connection to the father and godfather he barely knew. Watching only the movies you wouldn't know that the map was created by Lupin, Sirius Black, Wormtail and Harry's father James. Why not? That's kind of important, I think. You also wouldn't know that Harry's dad was an animagus that could turn into a stag, hence why Harry's patronus appears as a stag in the third and fifth movies. Or that Harry's dad was an utter cunt to Snape when they were kids and Harry's mother was one of the few people that stood up for him against James' bullying, hence why Snape has such a back and forth relationship with Harry. All of these things are important to understanding the dynamics of the characters and what got them to the situations they're in currently. In comparison, is it really that important that we return to show Draco in the Room of Requirement like, 50 fucking times instead of filling in a few of those lost details?

    The other glaring problem with the film is just how little it focuses on Voldemort. The majority of the book delved into the history of Tom Riddle, where he came from, what made him who he became and what effect he's had on the wizarding world. In the film adaptation we get two flashbacks of Riddle's life, but neither scene really tells us much about the man. They never mentioned how much of a sociopath he was, how he tortured two little boys in that cave that Harry and Dumbledore travel to, how he murdered his family and how he was fixated on his own lore, placing great importance on people, places and things from his past. Why is all of this important? Well, Voldemort chose several objects to make into horcruxes (beware of spoilers) and those objects were all symbolic and premeditated on his part. He wanted to place himself alongside the great wizards in history by using a personal item from each Hogwarts founders as a horcrux. This is kind of an important detail revealed in the "HBP" book because without knowing this fact there's no possible way Harry can figure out what the horcruxes are and how to find them. That's his big clue to solving the mystery and he never got it. More importantly, the audience never got it. But hey, we did get to see Harry flirting with a cute chick in the subway station, right?

    And then, of course, there's the death of Dumbledore. This scene wasn't changed too much from the book, but what was changed just boggles my mind. In the book, Harry is in the tower with Dumbledore as Draco threatens him, as it was in the film, except he wasn't simply watching from below and keeping quiet, he was stunned by Dumbledore himself and then hidden under an invisibility cloak. It may not seem like this change makes any difference, but again, it goes to show the motivations behind the characters and why they do what they do. In the books, Harry is always afraid that he's not good enough to fulfill the role he's been given and this moment brings those feelings to a head. His mentor and arguably the closest thing he has to a father figure left in the world is brutally murdered in front of his eyes by someone he always distrusted and he can do absolutely nothing about it. That's one of the important psychological hurdles Harry has to overcome and they've written it out. Again, why? How hard would it have been to just do it the way it was supposed to be?

    It's also worth pointing out that just about every single performance in this movie was phoned in...like, seriously phoned in. At points it sounded as if the actors were reading their lines for the very first time...and we're talking about some of the top actors of our time - Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent...how is this possible? I fully expect lackluster, stiff performances from Radcliff and Watson - they've always been shit, but they're fucking kids, they have an excuse. Maybe they're just getting sick of being glorified plot devices or cameos when they once were major players in the series.

    I'm well aware that it's not the easiest thing in the world to adapt a book into a movie, but in this case the choices the filmmakers made seemed so easily remedied and the changes so incredibly pointless that it makes me wonder why they couldn't just stick to the damn script and turn out an awesome film? It would have been so easy not to screw this up that I just don't know what happened here. Maybe sabatoge was involved, I don't know, but if I were David Yates I'd sure start spreading that rumor around now for my own sake. "HBP" isn't a total shit-storm - it does have it's moments, but I'm not sure it's anything to be proud of. There are glaring mistakes that span multiple departments - story structure, writing, editing, acting, sound design - that when you put it all together, had J.K. Rowling's original concept and story not been so strong this movie would have been a complete failure.

    The only area where "HBP" didn't fall short was the visuals and even there, I don't think it surpassed Alfonzo Cuaron's "Prisoner of Azkaban", which is still the best looking Potter film as far as I'm concerned.

    In short...FAIL!
  • 30 Days of Night (2007)
    Vampire Horror; USA
    113 minutes


    "30 Days of Night" is a great vampire movie. Wait - I should rephrase that. If you turn it off about 10 minutes before the end, "30 Days of Night" is a great vampire movie. The climax is just plain stupid, but the rest of the movie is solid enough that you can just pretend that the ending isn't real and that it's nothing more than a dark childhood memory that will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life. Just repress it and you'll be fine.

    The vampires in this movie, based on a comic book of the same name, are sufficiently badass. They speak some scary vampire language, act like stone cold killers/inhuman monsters and would beat Tom Cruise's lily-white ass up and down the street and then dispose of his bruised and battered corpse in the utilidor.

    There's also a weed smoking grandma.

    Give this some time if you're into: the comic, non-sissy vampires, desolate landscapes, brutal mutilation
  • Book of Eli (2010)
    Post-Apocalyptic/Action; USA


    Let it be known that although everybody and their mom is jizzing all over this "Book of Eli" trailer, I for one am not amused. I know what you're saying, "But Chris, it's post-apocalyptic, there are bandits with machetes, rocket-launchers and dilapidated urban landscapes! How could you not be into that?"

    It's true, superficially this movie should be the dog's bollocks, but it's most assuredly going to be garbage and I'll tell you how I know that:

    1. Denzel Washington is a one-dimensional actor that plays the same character in every movie.
    2. Almost every shot in the trailer has all the focus in the center of the frame which almost always = uninspired. That immediately puts this on par with the artistic excellence that was "Ghost Rider".
    3. Stock wasteland baddies circle around the lone hero as he proceeds to take them all out one-by-one using highly choreographed martial arts and CQC as the camera tracks around the action like this is a fuckin' Jet Li movie. Remember how out of place the choreographed fighting was in "Watchmen"?
    4. The persistently sunglass-clad badass kicks open the door with a shotgun in hand and stands motionless in the door frame before entering to emphasize the badassery that drips from his every pore. I'd be very surprised if Denzel didn't drop a brooding badass one-liner at that very moment in the film. And chances are it wont be anywhere near the quality of "I came to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum".
    5. And finally - there hasn't been a big-budget genre movie in the last decade or so that looked awesome in trailers and ended up actually being good in full format, so simply by law of averages this movie will suck.

    But don't let my sour, unimpressed rantings mold your opinion - check it out for yourself:

  • The Chaser (2008)
    Crime/Thriller; South Korea
    125 minutes


    Unless you're a total square that's been living under a rock for the last 5 years, you know damn well that Korea is the awesomely-fucked-up-film capitol of the world right now. You think French New Wave is the pinnacle of crazy filmmaking? Fuck off! Korea will take your Godard, send him to crazy school, douse him in crazy juice and then rape him in the ass with crazy lube. That's how fucked up Korean filmmaking is right now. And "The Chaser" is a primo example of just how crazy Koreans are. After "Oldboy" I thought I'd run the gamut of disturbing, jaw droppingly Fruedian psycho filmmaking, but "The Chaser" gave me a serious pause. "How much deeper does this rabbit hole go?", I wondered. This movie is dark, creepy, gritty and BRUTAL. If you're not into that kind of thing, definitely pass on this one because it will probably scar you for life, but if you can stomach "Oldboy" you can probably hang with this as well.

    Give this some time if you're into: Oldboy and/or the rest of Chan Wook Park's Vengeance trilogy, Silence of the Lambs, serial killers, dark shit, Korean films

  • Outlander (2008)
    Sci-Fi/Action/Period Piece; USA
    115 minutes



    One can't help but be intrigued by the premise of "Outlander". A spaceship crash lands on Earth in the time of the vikings bringing with it a technologically advanced warrior from a far-off planet and one of the indestructable alien monsters responsible for the near eradication of his civilization. Vikings vs. aliens...sounds awesome, right?

    Well, I hate to break it to you, but it's not quite as cool as you think it will be. That's not to say it's bad, of course - it's a pretty decent flick. Unfortunately though, timing killed this movie. The basic plot arc of "Outlander" is based heavily on the epic poem Beowulf, which also happened to be adapted in a similarly adult fashion by Robert Zemeckis just a few months prior to "Outlander"'s much delayed release. As a result, the movie feels a little less original than it could have and it doesn't quite out-do Zemeckis' awesome "Beowulf" film in any particular respect. It really is a shame because aside from that, the film has a lot going for it. The budget isn't huge, but they do a lot with what they have. The writing is decent and the performances are all passable (which isn't easy considering the somewhat ridiculous scenerio being presented). It's even got Ron Pearlman in it...who can say no to that?

    Give this some time if you're into: vikings, aliens, weird concepts, monster flicks, sci-fi in general, Predator
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