Movies For the Whole Family -- Or Not!

Monday, January 15, 2001

Can't stop to chat now! We're on the move!

Due to problems with my OS and Blogger, this page is moving from being blogger-based to normal HTML!

You can find it (and other reviews) at http://www.eyrie.org/~frobozz/review/review.html.

This page will remain up for navigational purposes.


posted by Chris Angelini 1/15/2001 08:30:55 AM

Friday, September 29, 2000

    The Watcher

    When I left the theatre after viewing this film, I beheld one of the most beautiful sights that I've ever seen nature arrange: a long stream of crows... far more than a murder of them... flew from the horizon in a long, winding ribbon straight over the theatre. And this one moment (one and a half minutes, if my hasty watch-glance was right) of beauty gave more meaning to my life than the entire one-hundred-seven minutes of The Watcher and its confused, pretentious atomic pile-driver of a message. To properly convey how confused this film's message is, I must borrow from the esteemed Homer Simpson, as he lectures Bart on how wrong it is of him to steal:
    Homer: How _could_ you?! Haven't you learned anything from that guy who gives those sermons at church? Captain Whatshisname? We live in a society of laws. Why do you think I took you to all those "Police Academy" movies? For fun? Well, I didn't hear anybody laughing! Did you?! Except at that guy who made sound effects.
    [Homer makes some and laughs to himself]
    Where was I? Oh yeah: stay out of my booze.
    Wow, that's a long ramble before the ratings, but there's so much material to cover! Let's get on with them, okay?

    Gore: 8
    Schmaltz: 5
     Character Development: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAohGod... that's a good one...
    Sturgeon Principle: A whopping 5%!!!!!

    I have some great news for you! The cameraman who used to do the Batman TV series, and who later seemed to migrate to Battlefield: Earth, has found more work! This has been quite a banner year for the guy, let's give him a big hand! Now, I'm going to hand hold you through a few of the more notable scenes because this movie is so full of Goose-crap that to do it all would probably take twice the space that blogger allocates me for a single post.
    First and foremost, this is a Wall film. What, might you ask, is a Wall film? Quite simply, it's a film which -- like the seminal example of Pink Floyd's The Wall -- must be watched on drugs to be fully appreciated. The usual earmarks of a Wall film are sudden cutaways, confusing flashbacks, blurred shots, torturous camera angles and audiences going into Pokemon-like epileptic shock.
    So, we open this film with our erstwhile hero Joel Campell narrating over a scene of helicopters in frantic action as they fly over the Chicago bay! Suddenly, though it's likely the same scene, day turns to night! This is not a dramatic decision on the director's part, however -- this movie clearly has trouble with the concept of time as a linear phenomenon. Apparantly, both Spader and Reeves are capable of becoming unstuck in time! Or else whoever handled continuity on this film needs to be shoved back into the Bajoran Wormhole from whence they came.
    Then, Reeves is doing his cat dance in a little apartment, making devil's horns with a gun and his fingers, all the while screaming 'I AM the ONE!, I AM the ONE!'... well he doesn't, but he's probably thinking it pretty hard. But suddenly, we discover that none of this has any relevance at all to the plot at this stage in the game! Apparantly, the director decided to show it here to prove to the audience that they were watching a film in which he would make the tough choices, like making Reeves shake that moneymaker.
    Enter James Spader, the man who we are forced to accept as our hero for one-hundred and seven minutes, until reality snaps back into the comfortable form that we all recall. Someone in Hollywoodland had a great idea. One that just couldn't miss. Someone pitched the idea that 'hey, if Reeves is an actor who can't emote worth a damn and gets paid lots for it, why don't we get another actor who similarly cannot emote, and face them off against one another? Sounds like a pitch worthy of Manimal, doesn't it? Well folks, this is the kind of treat that you're in for in this game.
    Spader is a driven, near schitzophrenic, adulterous ex-FBI agent who won't even open a freakin' FedEx package that arrives under mysterious circumstances until three days after its expiration date. Naturally, because this is HIS case, the Windy City PD lets him head it up, no questions asked. See, Reeves and Spader are like those bratty brothers who squabble all the time but wouldn't know what to do if they lost the other. Or so we're supposed to believe. I dunno, just shoot me now...
    So it seems that Spader works for the division of the police that's in charge of Doing Hard Detective Work But Missing Finding Their Asses With Flashlights. They also miss the fact that they can spend five minutes in full daylight and suddenly it'll turn to night as they drive away. Wait, I know... someone invited Robin, The Boy Wonder onto this case!!!
    So meaningless stuff happens. Girls get murdered. The movie tries to teach us a lesson; but by now our brains have wandered off to the concession stand to grab some sourballs. Somehow, Spader figures out that Reeves is going to be at the cemetery where someone we keep flashing back to is buried. The flashbacks are done in full The Addiction-vision, which means that they're blurry, impossible to decypher and look like they were shot for an art-school final exam. Reeves offers Spader a beer. It seems that Reeves has captured Spader's psychiatrist and won't tell Spader where she's kept, nyah nyah. So Spader offers Reeves his gun and asks to be taken to her.
    I'll repeat that in case your brain just hit cognative dissonance. Spader hands Reeves his gun.
    Spader's character has medical problems. Apparantly he hears really loud, exciting theme music. This causes him to go into X-Men levels of angst and then convulse on the floor. Fortunately, the miracle of modern medicine has provided him with a drug that he can inject into himself; and magically, this drug stops the incidental music!
    One more time. Spader hands Reeves his loaded weapon of inflated self-esteem. No, he doesn't shoot Reeves in the knee and drag him back to the Chicago PD to get worked over by those folks who know what makes psycho-killers talk. He HANDS REEVES HIS LOADED WEAPON.
    The film just goes downhill from here. The ending scenes tie in with the opening scene, which just goes to show that the director seems to have forgotten that time works by set chronological precepts. The director steals from Backdraft. The director steals from Face/Off. The director... oh I don't know any more. This film gives me migranes, just like the main character (who looks like Nicholas Cage on a REALLY bad day) gets. Obviously he's read the script. There's a Cop Rock ballad just after a grisly scene. Films generally have a rising action and a climax and a falling action... this film instead, like an Annie Sprinkles (is that her name? Argh, can't recall no more. My brain it be worn out from this feelm...) performance, has multiple orgasms right in front of you, and you're left feeling very unsatisfied afterwards. You also wonder if any of it was NECESSARY, or even made a POINT...
    I recommend this film highly. Why? It's total Goose shit... but it's damned fun for goose shit. It's utterly atrocious. If you enjoy badfeelm, see it.
    I give this film half of a cat named Frank. Ew.

posted by Chris Angelini 9/29/2000 05:26:28 PM

Thursday, September 14, 2000

    Godzilla 2000

    Rubber suits fought. Buildings crumbled. Tokyo shook. Ugly Japanese people pointed up off-camera. CGI was little and almost non-existant.
    *happy sigh* Life is good.
    Let's get the ratings out of the way, mon frere.

    Gore: 3
    Schmaltz: 4 rising sharply to 7
    Character development: 4
    Sturgeon Principle: Vibrato (it's crap. But it's fun crap.)

    Plot? Sure there's a plot. It had something to do with Japanese people running around doing something. Characters? Sure there were characters. I think one of them was named Kenny... wait, no, there weren't any male Kids in this film. Okay, I'm being glib -- this is one of the few Godzilla films where I actually paid attention during the Human-driven scenes. Toho has outdone itself here, my friends; the plot's something straight out of a college hack's pizza nightmares, but the characters can keep it well interesting for us.
    Plot summary? You must be mad. This plot's like a Jinga stack: pretty to look upon, sometimes eerily beautiful, but if you nudge it even a little bit the whole thing collapses with a loud crash. This isn't "Romeo and Juliet". This isn't even "Titus Andronicus". This is pure and simple the high point of the low art of giant monster movie making. So that said, I will now present the Ten Things I Learned From The Latest Godzilla Movie!
    So, I liked this movie, you ask? Yes. Yes I did. Utterly. The Big G is back... oh. Just... slip out after Godzilla wins (trust me, there could be no other outcome. If Godzilla had died in this film, a billion billion websites would already have covered this to the point of bursting). The last five minutes attempt to convey a beautiful, poignant thing. However, this is a Japanese thing, so it makes no bloody sense at all to me. The final line of the film attempts to portray Godzilla as the saviour of mankind while the footage is of Godzilla trashing town. Perhaps it was meant to be said in irony -- if it was, it was Japanese Irony and thus, I missed it. Trust me. You don't need a remake of the famous ending speech from It Conquered The World, which is exactly what this is. Avoid.
    I give this five lighthouses!
posted by Chris Angelini 9/14/2000 06:15:00 PM

Thursday, September 07, 2000

    Highlander: Endgame

    In the beginning, there could be only one.
    Secondly, there could be only a burrito-induced hallucination.
    Thirdly, there could be only a tepid-retelling of the first film.
    And finally... finally... there should be two.
    What am I talking about? Finally, there's a movie worth being called a Highlander film.
    Let's get the ratings out of the way, duuuuude.

    Gore: 6
    Schmaltz: 7
    Character Development: 8
    Sturgeon Principle: Upper 90th percentile

    I was deathly afraid that this was going to make the same mistake as Highlander: The Final Illus--er--The Sorcerer: forgetting that, despite the Gathering and the Prize and the Quickening and the blood-rain and the woo woo... (apologies to Dr Frink)... highlander was always a story about humans. It was a human drama and it concerned itself with asking the question 'what would ordinary people do if they woke up one day and discovered that they were infintitely prolongued and a part of some Game that they didn't understand'. We got to witness the progression from Connor as a frightened young man who is persecuted by those who do not understand him to the bitter, cynical man who lives within a society that has grown with him and become nearly as blasse and laissez-faire as he (there's an entire cinematography essay to be had in the examination of parallel development of Connor and society. Ten points if you can work Queen into it at least twice). Highlander III forgot this, focusing far too much on superpowers and mystic going-ons and not near enough time on Connor, an adversary and those mortals caught between them (oh those things were there, they just did't get near enough screen-time for me to accept this as a Good Highlander film). The bar was set by the first movie, and until Endgame the bar had never been met.
    The TV series has never forgotten the human lesson, and I was quite a fan of said show until it became unavailable in my area (and thus I've seen precisely one episode of Raven). This film was meant to be a fusion of the movie and the series, which was not so daunting a task as one may think: the series had already done the hard work in retconning the ending of Highlander years earlier, giving all of us a chance to just accept this fact. When I saw the trailers to Endgame, it looked as though someone was trying to remake Sorcerer. There were images of the big bad guy being split in two... there were special effects... Adrian Paul said no lines whatsoever... it looked like the filmmakers hadn't learned a damned thing. So here's what I think happened...
    I believe that there is somewhere, in some vault, a contract sitting around that states that a small cabal (possibly funded by the Illuminatus... perhaps by the Masons... perhaps even by the Knights Templar...) is required by agreement binding to be allowed to make some part of each Highlander sequels suck hard vacuum. So the Powers That Be allowed this cabal to write the trailers and then sealed these people into small Prince Albert Tobacco cans and tossed them into the sea. Then they brought in the series writers and let them write the actual movie. And believe you me, this film rocks.
    A word of warning to purists and pundits; this film is more a Highlander: The Series movie than a pure Connor vehicle with Duncan guest-starring. Oh both Lambert and Paul get plenty of screen time, but in the end, it's the Series' trappings that really dress up this film. The Watchers are in here... so is Methos... Joe... heck, they brought all the toys out of the box for this movie! Fortunately, Richie is still dead. But the film is gorgeous. This film shows just how beautiful our Earth can be if the filmmakers are able to leave the virtual realm of CGI and just go shoot wherever on location they damned well please. There are plenty of flashbacks to the past and all of these (believe me, there are a lot of flashbacks. And they're densely packed, too. I did at one point find myself saying 'woo, beautiful, but um about that plot that you were... advancing... oh never mind') are beautiful and wonderfully period. Casting has been very well done and there's only one character who plays his character over the top -- I was waiting for him to start gnawing on the scenery, really -- and he only appears in just one scene. Restraint has been used here... look at the casting/directing for H2 and tell me that this doesn't work better?
    There's so much to say about this film, but most of it is a spoiler. And a film like this does not deserve to be spoilered. There are a few editing mistakes ('I told you I'm going to cut you'? Hunh?), but so few other flaws. The fight scenes are gorgeous. They're well-choreographed 'Now *THAT* is a lightsaber duel, Lucas' sword battles. And in a move that hasn't been made in years, one of the minor characters who struck me as being very interesting actually got some development time. I nearly fainted from the shock of this. The story held my interest....and I will say this, the film is not an Armageddon plot. It's not the end of the Immortals. The writers made the right choice in not retelling the ticking down of the clock of the original film -- the simply pitted two men against one another (and a man and a woman, sorta) and let the sparks fly from that. It's personal. It's graspable (more graspable than 'oh no, the world's ending!'). It's Highlander.
    And the ending made me damned well cry. The sheer beauty of the final scene and how it uses landscape to provide emotion is sheer, total, utter brilliance.

    I'd give it five swords, but there can be only one.

posted by Chris Angelini 9/7/2000 05:44:44 AM

Friday, August 25, 2000

    The Cell

    A long, long time ago when I had learned Independance without learning Causal Thought, I decided that if I mixed two of my favorite drink powders together, then I would have created some sort of a super-drink which would tantilize and thrill my taste buds. Unfortunately, my mixture involved powdered cocoa and Kool-ade dissolved into milk. Needless to say I learned a very valuable lesson on that day: test all new concoctions on your younger sister -- that's for what she was born.
    The Cell is a great deal like taking two rather volatile drink powders and mixing them in the level *wrong* medium: what you wind up with is a mess that has elements of what you'd hoped to achieve without any of the savour.
    Ever notice how modern movie-making's all about food?
    Let's get the ratings out of the way, if'n y'please, gov?

    Gore: 9
    Schmaltz: 9
    Character Development: 3
    Sturgeon Principle: Middle 50th percentile

    I wanted to like this movie a lot, you know? It's been a long time since The Matrix or The Thirteenth Floor and I've been really itching for a good movie that forces me to think about my reality. I would not have said no to a surrealistic examination of the mind of a sereal killer... a ride based upon Jungian psychotheology... I had so many expectations going into this film that I was very worried I was going to make it bad because of preconception.
    I needn't have worried -- the movie was wreched without any help from me at all.
    Mix equal parts of The Matrix with Silence of the Lambs into a water base and you'll wind up with this little darling of a dilly. Years from now, as I lie upon my death-bed, I shall look upon the one hundred seven minutes which I spent watching this film to be the only time in my life which I truly and deeply regret giving over to Hollywood's iron grasp.
    What's wrong with this film? What's not wrong with this film? Upon leaving this film I tried to press charges against everyone involved in its creation on the grounds of 'aggrevated assault', but apparantly Hollywood has City Hall in its back pocket. It's almost as if the brightest minds in the land gathered together to put together a movie that, years from now, could serve as a pariah for all other flicks. When a director releases his newest Stinkpile, finally he can point to this film and say 'well at least my film isn't The Cell! And you know what? That would become a valid defense.
    Now any of my regular readers (both of you) might be forgiven in asking 'was this film worse than Battlefield: Earth? Might be forgiven, but don't count on it. BE was a Laughable film. You could sit back and watch the Batman-esque camera angels and the rejects from the New Stroggos Finishing School For Carbon-Based Lifeforms and generally adopt the attitude of mentally smacking the Director upside the head while saying 'well that was a stupid idea'. The Cell, on the other hand, is a lot like sitting next to that ragged old man on the bus. You know, the guy who smells of body-odour never washed, who drools in his beard and starts to swear at pigeons because he knows that they've been sent by the CIA to get him? You sit there and you wonder if a three-hour shower is going to be enough to ever feel clean again and you count every last second until you can finally pull the 'Next Stop' cord and you're not there *yet*, but by God you're going to get off of this bus even if you have to walk two miles to get home, uphill!
    The storyline resembles a poor fish sauce: it separates before you've even begun and never quite seems right aftewards. There's an A storyline about saving a young woman's life and there's a B storyline about a Social Worker who is The One of Telepathic Social Work and the two storylines try to merge together and even show mirror images of one another... but unfortunately in the end, what you're left with is an inept hack job of pieces and odds and ends that never quite gel, so much as congeal. The notion of Pacing is tossed right out the window, and the audience is often left to wonder precisely why a scene has been shoehorned into place with such cavalier disregard for flow of story.
    The characters are very poorly explored. They hint of depth and background, but you learn only that one watches erotic cartoons and seems to have an aversion to wearing anything but the most revealing clothing; and the other one *likely* has a y chromosome in his genetic makeup. The antagonist of the piece goes from being presented as the devil incarnate to being the Poor Widdle Victim of Society (I'm not attempting to start an arguement about Nature Vs Nurture here -- I'm simply commenting that the movie swings left and right more violently than a yardarm during a monsoon). The entire point of the tale is... um... well various people learn lessons, like... um... er... if you... dress in ribbed plastic suits and hang yourself from the ceiling while a moistened circuit towelette covers your face, you too can take the journey into someone else's mind.
    Oh, and as if this movie didn't cheese me off enough as it is, it commits the one cardinal sin of writing technology: insufficient security for the intelligence-level of its creator. Now if you're Joe Blow who uses his computers for writing his grocery list every week and playing Unreal Tournament on the weekends over your screamin' fast cable modem connection (lucky bastard), you don't really need to worry about your Windows 98SE box being roughly as secure as a Ken and Barbie's Dreamhouse. If, however, you're in a network situation and you have many users who like to play Monkey See, Monkey Screw on your files, you're going to need something a little heftier than the Etch-A-SketchOS. What sort of person wouldn't install a secure OS like Windows NT or Linux? Answer: A stupid one. Now, imagine that you have a SINGLE PROTOTYPE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT, that you've invested years of your life into building. You're not building this thing in your basement... you're one of a team in a place that has a freakin' board of directors. You have a fancy hospital to put around your machine so it doesn't get wet when it rains. My question to you: DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT HAVE A ROOT LEVEL PASSWORD ON THIS MACHINE TO KEEP FLY-BY-THE-SEAT-OF-HER-ENORMOUS-PANTS Social Workers from locking you out of the system so they can pursue their own misguided adjendae? The answers is that if you're NOT A MORON, YOU DO! The technical sorts in this film do not seem like total idiots... so why allow a gaping hole like this one? the movie would have worked just fine without the main character playing Captain Kirk! ARRGH! This is the sort of thing that drives me banana-splits!
    So, in short, stay outta my booze.
    I give this film half a bottle of Bleach. posted by Chris Angelini 8/25/2000 06:02:14 PM

Wednesday, July 12, 2000

    Scary Movie     Some of you might remember that stuff that delis used to sell called 'sub meat'. It was basically made up of the odds and ends of every little bit of luncheon meat under the sun. And it wasn't the choicest cuts of meat that made their way into the scrapple. Well... welcome to the Sub Meat of movies.
    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, dig?

    Gore: 8
    Schmaltz: 0
    Character Development: -33
    Sturgeon Principle: Somewhere in the bottom of the 50th percentile.

    I actually found the trailers before this film more enjoyable than the film itself. I did find it very encouraging to live in a world where finally an entire trailer reel could be taken up with nothing but fantasy and horror film. And now I'm bouncing in my seat over Blair Witch 2, though Highlander: Endgame looks like a disco remix of the last few films. What's the deal with Urban Legend: Final Cut? We didn't need a first film, much less another one where the students are (get this), making a film about urban legends. Wasn't this a Scream trope? Oh well, no one said I had to live in a world where all films were good...
    Oh, right, I should probably talk about the meat of the movie, shouldn't I? I laughed a good, solid, ten minutes in Scary Movie. Sadly, that was scattered over the movie's entire ten-billion-trillion-kazillion minute run. This is very bad news for a movie like Scary Movie because ultimately, the film has no cohesion other than being a loose collection of jokes about some films that we may or may not have seen over the past few years. Oh they're all there... I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Matrix, Scream, The Sixth Sense... but ultimately you could have gotten a much better film if you'd just taped every five-minute parody of these films that came down the pipe and spliced them into one long mess'o'film.
    This is not to say that films which are Total Conversion parodies don't work. Take for example my favorite TC parody film of all time, Hot Shots: Part Deux. This flick is very little more than a parody of war films and their Rambo subset; but ultimately it manages to achieve true beauty because it mixes some incredibly clever dialogue in with some actual (if comedic) character development and never lets up with the witty gags. And here's the key: the gags can stand on their own, outside of the framework of the movie. Oh sure, you may not get the chicken-shooting scene if you've never seen the trailers for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but you could easily understand six other japes that were going on in the same minute that one was being delivered. It was a packed film, and managed to offer some content of its own.
    Compare and contrast to Scary Movie. (Notice how much I seem to be talking about other movies than this one? It's telling, honestly it is...). I'm not even sure where to begin on this film's flaws. Let's begin with the gags... which unlike the aforementioned Hot Shots: PD, utterly flop the standing on one's own test. Every minute of this film can be divided up into a close parody of some other movie's scene, or a penis joke. That's about it. Parody and Penis. Sounds like a late night Comedy Central show, doesn't it? The parodies are mildly amusing, but lack the depth that they should have had. Only once in the whole film does Scary Movie bother to examine the shortcomings of the films that it parodies. The rest of the time it prefers to imitate them, and honestly it resembles a sixth-grade class putting on a Rockette show: you can't help but be reminded that the real thing is so bloody much better.
    The characters fail to be developed; in fact, I'm not sure I can tell them apart from one another. They suffer from being constantly re-tweaked to fit into the Gag Du Jour. There's no plot to speak of; the entire film is strung together on jokes that make no sense clustered together. For instance, since I'm sure you've seen this (and every other freakin' worthwhile joke in the whole feeeeelm) spoilered by the commercials, I'll bring up the Matrix gag. In it, the heroine and the Bad Dude get into a Reality-Bending fight wherein Neo's battle is recreated. Fine. Good. *pause* Why? There's no plot reason for it. Hell, even a comedy needs to have some degree of cohesion. I could even invent a reason for you, for the love of liver snaps. Do a Buffy the Vampire Slayer parody... remember when she gathered the faith of her friends to defeat this season's Big Bad Dude? Do a Sailor Moon parody... remember how they all came back from the dead to support Serena/Usagi at the end of season one? Oh wait... no, that wouldn't have worked. Because, you see, Scary Movie isn't aimed at that demographic at all. It's not aimed at the people who would willingly watch Scream and enjoy it. Honestly, this film is aimed directly at the pork-rind-filled heart of the people who own fifty-seven copies of Porky's in case one of them wears out.

    I give it One phallic joke.

    On the plus side, I did get some really good popcorn out of this, and it was free to boot. Let's focus on this in an effort to end this review well.
    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, shall we?

    Butter: 7
    Salt: 3
    BBQ Powder: 10+ (I gots ta have my BBQ Powder)
    Orville Redenbacher Principle: 8

posted by Chris Angelini 7/12/2000 05:24:45 PM

Monday, June 26, 2000

    Legend
    First, in Incubus, we learn that William Shatner is an innocent, pure soul.
    Then, in Legend, we learn that Tom Cruise is too.
    What gives? The world is going craaaazy!
    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, 'kay?

    Gore: 3
    Schmaltz: 7
    Character Development: 4
    Sturgeon Principle: Middle of the 90th percentile.

    Legend is one of those films that I've been meaning to see for years, but there was always something else to take up my time. Finally, the stars aligned properly in the sky and I finally managed to see the Legendary movie. And honestly, I found myself impressed by this Ridley Scott production.
    This is one of those Oddball films that turns out to be a gem in the rough, like Labyrinth. Lots and lots of really crap films come down the pipe each year, but only a few of them actually turn out to have something that could really be polished up nice. This is one of them.
    The plot to this film is that of a faerie tale, and a beautifully done one as well: Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson are locked in a life or death struggle against one another as Jack questions Tom's ability to handle the 'Truth'... wait, no. Tom (or Jack) is a young innocent soul who's deathly in love with a lady named Lilli, and one day he tries to impress the sweet dear by showing her a unicorn. In a move that makes sense if you're committed to Bellvue, Lilli ignores all of her love's warnings and gives the unicorn biiiiiig snugglies.. but as the unicorn is the rarest of all the Pokemon, it sickens at the touch of the mortal. Must be those damned unsanitary conditions of the middle ages, hm? Meanwhile, a troupe of attack goblins steal the unicorn's horn (or alicorn) and scurry off to deliver it to their master, the Evil Tim Curry. The ETC captures Lili and only Jack and his band of rag-tag fae can retrieve the Maiden and the Horn!
    *Pause*
    Hunh. That kind of sounds like a Playboy movie. And they're supposed to be pure souls? Ooooookay....
    Right! Focusing! Focus... focus...got it. I was going to go into a rant about how choppy and poorly edited this film was. I've since read a FAQ on Legend and discovered how little of this was Ridly Scott's fault (read it here if you want to know more). So... what makes this film good?
    Music. Imagry. Vision. Let me focus on the last one before I leave this film.
    If you look at fantasy films in this day and age, upon what chassis are they all built? Either they're the AD&D type (Conan, Swords and Sorcery, etc) or else they're New Age funky self-empowerment films. All right, that's a gross overgeneralization, but I'm writing on three hours sleep and I'm incredibly cranky. Legend is an honest-to-Grud faerie tale. No one ever casts a magic missile at the darkness. Riddles fly about, unknowable faerie magic pervades the film, and darn it, it feels magical. Mysterious. Wonderful.     Like a Legend.
posted by Chris Angelini 6/26/2000 10:52:33 AM

    Titan A.E.
    Two good films in a row? Gasp, it can't be!
    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, m'kay?
    Gore: 3
    Schmaltz: 8
    Character Development: 5
    Sturgeon Principle: Falls at the bottom of the 90th percentile.

    This film isn't a great movie. If you're here to see something on the order of 2001: A Space Odyssey, save your money (but at least there isn't a five-minute-long drug-trip mind-fsck at the end!). Heck, this film ain't even quite as good as Legend of Starchaser. However, if you need a fix of some animation that Doesn't Suck, a storyline that's almost halfway compelling, and a soundtrack that's actually fun to listen to, you might want to plunk down a matinee-fee for this flick.
    T.A.E. is a Quest-film, no doubt about it. Person A is the only man in the galaxy who can find Item B to achieve Objective C, while Enemies D-Z are all buzzing around like flies on a Reform Party Booster, trying to stop them. And of course Person A will meet Female AA and they will engage in b) hostility c) banter and d) concern for one another until d) they finally intimate that soon they will have s) and e) and x). In this case, Kayle -- our protagonist -- must find his father's Magnum Opus, the USS Deux Ex Machina--er The Titan. The Dredge, a race of pure-energy beings, is out to stop them because they're afraid that humanity will... um... will...
    Anyway, Kayle is recruited by a ragtag group of aliens who are off to Save the Earth... to Saaaave the Human raaaaace... and soon enough they find their way to Iskandar, where they're given the Cosmo DNA and...
    Skip it. You've seen this film before. You've seen the characters before. You've seen the situations all before. I had the plot more or less worked out fifteen minutes into the story. OTOH, while the movie is built out of pre-made parts, it's very nicely glued together. It's watachble. You'll forget that you know what's about to happen because, heck, there's some good character interaction going on up there. And eye-candy, which oddly blends well with the Bluth animation...something that I found surprising. I really hate melding Pretty Pretty CGI with flat drawings. To me it entirely shatters the world's consistancy in my mind. I hated how it was done in Lensman and a few dozen recent animations from North America... to see it done right here makes me think that honestly, Bluth has a new trick up his sleeve and I hope to heck that it's used again soon.
    Oh, and if you're like me, there's a Switch-aroo that's supposed to take you by surprise, but really feels utterly unmotivated and like sloppy storytelling. I won't reveal what it is; but if you agree, drop me a line.

I give this film three Yamatos!
posted by Chris Angelini 6/26/2000 08:47:20 AM

Friday, June 02, 2000

    Shanghai Noon
    Some days it must seem that I will only review the worst films of all times. While that's what I like, occasionally I prove that I'm not Mr Cranky and review something that I liked.
    That day has come.

    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, neh?
    Gore: 0
    Schmaltz: 4
    Character Development: Sine Curve
    Sturgeon Principle: Falls in the middle 90th percentile.

    You don't go to see a Jackie Chan film for the plotline. Which is good -- technically this film has one, which can be boiled down to 'Buddy Movie'. You know, the kind of film where two people from different worlds -- in this case literally -- rub each other the wrong way, discover themselves and gain a grudging respect for each other's ways? Kinda what happens here. Don't watch it for that, watch it for what you really came to see...

    

KICK-TAIL MARTIAL ARTS SEQUENCES



    There are some in this film, but unfortunately the quantity isn't quite up to Chan's usual... possibly because of his need to share the stage with Not-Jackie-Chan, his co-star. Not-Jackie-Chan is at least much more tolerable than Chris Rock, but ultimately I found myself wishing that Not-Jackie-Chan would clear the screen so that Jackie Chan could do a little more of that magic that he weaves.
    The character development is so standard for a Buddy Movie that from the first strains of the opening theme, you know more or less precisely how it's going to go. The movie sends absolutely no twists and turns of plot; you will not find yourself surprised once. Er... didn't I say that I liked this film?
    Yes. Yes I did. Because in spite of all of this, convention is used in a good way. There's a reason that we have cliches... it's because for good or for bad, Strong Stories lodge themselves in our cultural subconcious. You have here a strong Buddy Film with a boatload of humour that comes faster than a pre-Spaceballs Mel Brookes flick, and to boot, a good smattering of martial arts to enjoy. If you're searching for a plot, then you've come to the wrong place. If you're looking for light entertainment, however, welcome my friend, to the New World.

I give this film four Hi-Keebas!

posted by Chris Angelini 6/2/2000 08:36:53 AM

Tuesday, May 23, 2000

    Battlefield Earth

    Love it or hate it, Battlefield Earth is the much-ballyhooed movie adaptation of the book of the same name. And either way, where there is ballyhoo... I go.

    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, shall we?
    Gore: 6
    Schmaltz: 8
    Character Development: Niceness -999
    Sturgeon Principle: Falls in the lower 20th percentile.

    I will find the man who made this film... and then I shall give to him DEATH!
    Well how's that for an unbiased review? There is so much wrong with this film that I'm not sure where to begin. Or where to end. So let's hit...

Ten Things I Hate About You, Battlefield Earth

   10) Humans as ape men. Now let's get one thing straight; I like good imagry as much as the next man. Making the humans of the year 3000 out to be savage beasts with more in common with primates than modern people is a rather interesting prospect. The humans in this film 'ook' and leap up on their cages to shake the bars and fight for dominance and fling their fe--well maybe they don't map *exactly*, but the thought is there. However, BfE utterly fails to do anything with this at all beyond note it. "This room may look like all the others, but in fact it's not. This room has--oh wait, we took that out. It is exactly like all the others.
    9) Batman-Vision(BAT-TM). This entire film was shot in Batman-Vision(BAT-TM). What, gentle reader, is that? What is Batman-Vision(BAT-TM)? Why have I named it now thrice without explaining what Batman-Vision(BAT-TM) is? (four times now!) Batman-Vision(BAT-TM) hearkens back to the days of the campy TV version of Batman. In that show, when the villains were on-screen the camera would be tilted to show how twisted and 'out of phase with reality' the criminals really were. It was effective there because the technique was used sparingly and for camp value.     Nearly the whole of BFE seems to have been shot in Batman-Vision(BAT-TM). I was expecting the laser guns to cause a little textual 'Ber-ZAP!' to spin out onto the screen.
    8) Most Totally Annoying Director In The World. There seems to have been an edict in the BFE camp. Someone, I'm guessing the Best Boy, actually directed this film and the named director spent a six-week drinking binge to celebrate the passing away of his name's credibility. Apparantly, someone's direction style is 'take the annoyance to the MAX!'. Why have an elderly man simply point to Ancient Cave Paintings(patent-pending) when he could whirl around and then jab his torch at them? Why show a scene once when you could show it three times in slow motion? Why show a majestic scene when you could simply play grating music and entirely undercut it? Why? Why? WHY?
    7) Let's all play Quake 2! The Psychlos got sent to the Imperial Voice Training Academy of Stroggos. The sound effects in this movie all seem to be borrowed from the later levels of Q2. And sometimes the movie runs as slowly as Q2 on my Pentium 60...
    6) SLLOOOOOOWWWWWWWW... MOOOOOOO.... The philosophy of this film is apparantly that any scene which involves DRAMA should be prolonged to whatever extent possible, likely because you won't be seein' much more o'this later. It's as if everyone was outfitted with Jack Deth's Long Second watch and sent into the fray.
    5) One Night In Bankok. The human mind must be capable of ancestral memory, because Our Hero's is able to absorb the darndest things. He gets strapped into a Psychlo (alien nasty being) Teaching Machine, so that he can learn the Psychlo language. Remember this. The Psychlo language. The... Psychlo language. He then attempts to teach his fellow savage humans about mathematics... using English terms. And concepts. And worse, he refers to it as Euclidian math. No. No no no. He should be calling it SLKJLKJSDF-math, or something else equally Strog--Psychlo.
    Further, Our Hero is taken to a local library to break his will -- and allowed to read whatever he wants. Where did he pick up reading skills? The savage humans we see didn't seem to have a written language. The Psychlos can't speak or read human. Where did he pick up the ability to browse the stacks? More to the point, how does he pick up the vast array of skills that we later see him employ just by searching randomly through fallen books? The Dewey Decimal system doesn't seem to work when the stacks are disorganized and more to the point, how does he learn so much about the fallen world without accidentally picking up dross with his gold? He should have spent ages trying to figure out what the fsck "Leaves of Grass" was before moving on to maybe reading something useful. Maybe.
    4) Top Gun! We humans Rock! Did you know that we really don't need Top Gun school to learn how to engage in precision fighter combat? All we need is a week in a flight simulator and the drive to survive!
    Oh, and er... guys? If you find decades-to-centuries-old jet-fighters and feel like using them in your war, think again. The fuel is going to kind of have evapourated...
    3) The Incredibly Mixed-Up Psychlos Who Stopped Living And Became Corpses. The stupidity of the aliens in this film is incredible. If you're constantly being bit on the finger by something you consider to be unintelligent and it continues to innovate new ways to bite your finger, do you a) shoot the little bastard or b) smear BBQ sauce onto your finger and then shove it back into the thing's face? Psychlos reading this, your answer is b).
    2) Oh what fools we humans be... Look guys. If you know that a bad-guy species' atmosphere will go Splode if you introduce radiation into it, do you a) risk an all-out jet-fighter attack on the people who shot down your military in nine minutes or do you b) carry one of the Nukes that you've 'borrowed' into the alien dome that is FILLED with the stuff and and set it off at the risk of one man?
    Gods, Humans and Psychlos were just made for each other.
    And... at number one...     1) Years from now, someone is going to look back on this film with nostalgia! Ooooh, the thought of it absolutely burns my biscuits.

    Was there anything redeeming about this film? Of course there was. There was the nucleus of a damn good movie under this piece of dross. Unfortunately, what we round up with falls under the concept of... DEEEP HUUURTING!

I give this film two lead bars. Now shove it into the lake. Gotta love negative bouyancy.

posted by Chris Angelini 5/23/2000 05:08:07 AM

Saturday, April 08, 2000

    Final Destination

    My, my, my, have we got a winner this time around. Kids, listen to me now and hear me later: see this film if you're in the mood for some roll-your-own comedy. The rest of the theatre and myself couldn't stop laughing all the way through the film, and that was usually at the *ahem* scary bits.
    As an aside, I ordered a large Kool-Ade before going into the film. Whatever passes for cherry in kiddy drinks these days is head and shoulders scarier than what that feelm served up.

    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, shall we?
    Gore: 7
    Schmaltz: 9
    Character Development: 1
    Sturgeon Principle: Falls in the lower 40th percentile.

    I don't think I can really do this film justice in recap. Why? Because in the end it's so bare-bones that a recap would be like pulling off Ted Danson's wig in the middle of a Cheers episode (yes, Irony, Ironcy, shuttup I'm making a point here); it would reveal once and for all that under the trappings, there just all that much pretty to look at. The fast, fast recap is that seven fugitives from Dawson's Creek Island and their largely irrelevant friends are preparing to board a seven hour flight to France, for a little whorin', winin' and carousin'. And that's just what the teachers are planning to do. Our lead character (who has a name, but we'll call him Dawson because he suffers from Dawson's Creek Syndrome, that is, he looks like a high-school kid, but he speaks as though he just matriculated four years of Philosophy at Yale) forces us to sit through Crazy High-School Kid antics twice: once as he has a vision of his plane exploding (YES!!!!) and once as he relives a few moments of that event before realising that he is out of there. A total of seven people are let off the plane, which apparantly horks Death off to no end, because he spends the rest of the movie killing off the lucky septet in the order that they would have died on the plane.
    This is more or less where the film breaks down, for several reasons. The first and biggest reason is that this film, like so many other horror films before it, has the slayer - The big D himself... all the way from the stygian shores of Styx... let's give it up for DEATH! - follow a series of rules which govern how the kiddies are going to die. The main character, our Dawson clone, begins the film not knowing what those rules are but at one point that becomes inconvenient to the plot, so he magically runs Death-On-Line and gets himself patched up to Knows Everything Level 6. Also, the film bends more than three Indian Rubber Men playing Twister in trying to keep exploding heads and strangling necks while following its rather clumsy set of rules. The ending suffers greatly for this, as the filmmakers decided to tack on the usual 'make room for the sequel, we're not done yet!' surprise which of course, we were all expecting from the moment we bit into our first kernal of popcorn.
    The second reason that this film falls down is that all of the characters make you want to pin them down with iron rivets to the shoulders, grab a drill and trefinate the hell out of their skulls while making their parents watch. This is generally non-condusive to caring that a whole lotta kids are getting spattered all over the stage.
    The third reason is the nature of our slayer. Y'see... he's Death. Not only is he Death, but well, see, we have no idea who he is or what he's all about, unless the movie was trying to tell us that he was really a powerfully built black man who skulks around coroners' offices and cracks stupid jokes about himself. Aside from that one appearance, all we ever see of Death is, well, deaths. There's no feeling that he has limits (beyond being utterly entranced with overcomplicated plans that even Fred from Scooby-Doo would reject), that there's any way to defeat him permanently, that he could be faced on a human level... hell, even Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street was, for all of his powers and skills, a brilliant villan because he was in some very important ways flawed and human.
    And finally, we have the deaths themselves. We learn from these deaths that a) Death thinks no death is complete without sparks flying everywhere and b) that apparantly Death has never heard of 'heartstop' or 'brain tumors' or any other kind of passing along that doesn't involve fishing line and a big train. Here's a list of some of the people who assist death in his grim deeds.

    Of course, gentle reader, let it not be said that this movie is afraid to take certain risks. We are presented with many scenes which will simply steal your breath (but will it give it... back?)

    The sad thing is, that I could go on for hours with the Death jokes. It's really that bad. If someone coughs, it's apparantly foreshadowing. If there had been a love scene in this film, it would have been the love scene... of DEATH!

posted by Chris Angelini 4/8/2000 01:03:05 PM

Wednesday, April 05, 2000

    Wild, Wild, West

    If you're ever stood up for coronary surgery and you're searching for something equally fun to take its place in eating up a little of your valuable time, you really can't go wrong with this movie. In fact, Wild, Wild, West shares much in common with a heart bypass operation.
    In fact, had I a choice, I'd choose heart surgery over Wild, Wild, West. Why? I understand that you can finagle a lollypop out of the doctor when you're done. Which means that heart surgery leaves you with at least a sweet taste in your mouth when it's all over.

Let's get the ratings out of the way first, shall we?
Gore: 5
Schmaltz: 7
Character Development: 2
Sturgeon Principle: Falls in the middle 50th percentile.

    You know how these nostalgia films get made, right? Am I right? Someone sits back in his chair and stares blankly at his overdue allimony payment. He frowns a mighty frown and thinks to himself 'Geez Cheez, I need to make a lot of money fast!'. So he puts in a call to the ferrits down in legal who scour the last shreds of decency left in our world for something as yet unsulled to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the vaults, to be served on the dinner plate of the movie-going public. Something with name-recognition. Something updatable. Something you can cram some hot actors into and pray that they make good on your complete lack of planning and forethought in scripting, directing or producing.
    In short, you get Wild, Wild, West
    I was very prepared to love this film. Honestly, when I first saw a movie post for it, all of my favorite elements were there. Will Smith -- I'm not a rap fan, but I've developed a pretty heavy regard for his acting talents -- was there, and Holy Murphy, he might be reprising an anachronistic version of his MiB role! There was also a giant, mechanical, steam-works spider, 19th century tech, large as life and twice as heady.
    I love steampunk. I love Victorian SF. I love retro when it's done with a fresh flare and not a casual disregard for the past in the pursuit of sweet money. I was ready to love this film. So what happened?
    The movie was unfunny. The humour was juvenile. The setting tried to be both hip-pop and the West at once and failed in both. The characters tried to take everything over the top and managed to fall off of the water-tower every time. In short, there was a palmipsest of a good movie that occasionally poked through the otherwise mediocre and lacklustre film.
    Honestly, I'm glad this movie bombed. It won't send a message to Hollywood -- Hollywood has long since rendered itself inured to such things as Listening to the Public -- but perhaps it will serve as a warning to gentlemen such as Will Smith to please, read your contracts before you sign them. And get script approval. Please.
    Oh, and Smith's MiB Rap was quite well done. It gave equal time to both his character and Jones', and generally summarized the film's premise without a whole lot of ego involved. His WWW rap seems to be a valentine to his own import. I certainly hope that this isn't the beginning of the end for Smith's sense of modesty.
I give two Silence Glaives. DIE!
posted by Chris Angelini 4/5/2000 04:56:58 PM

Thursday, March 16, 2000

How better to begin my movie picks blog than to rant on the latest, great movie which I've seen. Astoundingly, that movie is not only a mainstream film, but it's also in that category from which you expect only dreck and Badfeelm to enjoy for its utter absurdity. I speak to you of the film... Pitch Black.
I love badfeelm. I wallow in it sometimes. There's something about the alchemizing process that turns gold into lead that just fascinates me, and because of that I often go to films that I know will be utter crap, simply to watch them unfurl before me like a wet and sodden flag. I truly expected Pitch Black to fall into this category, sports fans. I just knew that I'd walk out of the theatre, laughing about how they'd remade Aliens again (or possibly the excriable Aliens^3), and sniggering at the science that had been sorely abused by this tale of darkness and death...
By Grud, I was wrong.
Let's get the ratings out of the way first, shall we?
Gore: 7
Schmaltz: 6
Character Development: 9
Sturgeon Principle: Falls in the last 10 percentile.

First, the bad. So you'll have something to look forward to later! Pitch Black breaks very little new ground -- you've seen it all before: a group of diverse people are trapped on a planet, with a KEY ITEM (in this case, an emergency shuttle) their only way off of the world. The KEY ITEM because their primary motivation for moving from Point A to Point B and gives them a good reason to keep on questing while the BIG THREAT picks them off, one by one. In the end, you know that at least some of them will reach the KEY ITEM, prompting the film to trip into its ending mode.
Also, this film stars an old character whom it's hard to ignore. Yes, let's give it up for... THE HAND OF GOD!
Or as we know it, 'Sheer Coincidence'.
Let's face it, when a world will only become a Perilous Deathtrap every twenty-two years, and your protagonists have crash-landed on it right at the start of the danger zone, it's hard to ignore the Hand of God waving merrily at you from backstage.
Fortunately, now we hit the Good. And there's a lot of it.
First of all, the cast of characters is varied and interesting. How often have you sat, watching one of these survival films, wondering idly if there's someone, somewhere who possesses the amazing ability to tell all of these characters apart from the Architype upon which s/he was built. And if that person exists, how many Gs per year s/he's pulling down as they possess a skill which no one else does. This cast of rag-tag castaways is a delight to watch, especially because not a one of them is the All-Around Hero Type, who philosophizes, kicks-ass, is virtuous to a fault, and will risk his life to save a kitten in the path of an Evil, Satan-Possessed tractor. Conversely, none of the characters is a two-dimensional 'bad guy' either, leaving us with lots of grey shades which can make for some interesting tableaus and contrasts.
Drawing from the above point is one which I'm sure you've all noticed in a film of this sort. How often have you yawned boredly at the screen, just waiting for 'Asshole X' to buy the farm, and been proved right, every time? Sadly, this is because Hollywood believes in the architype principle of character-building. You have several distinctive positions for characters ('hero', 'love interest', 'ingenue', 'partner who gets killed to fuel the motivation for revenge', 'bad guy', 'old man who speaks in riddles', etc), and they're assembled into a fairly straightforward plot in which each character has his or her own duties to perform to fulfill the dictates of their casteing. The hero must get the girl, the bad guy must die, etc. Now fortunately, movies these days have been playing around with the castes of characters, but unfortunately, most of that playing has been superficial and surface-level.
In Pitch Black, I dare you to find the hero. I dare you to find the villian. Oh yes, I knew that character x would buy the farm, but the movie more than made up for that by killing off character y, and sparing character z... in short, say it with me, kiddies...
IT SURPRISED ME!
I thought that movies weren't allowed to do that any more.
Also, Scary Stories(tm) tend to have two other big problems that have begun to turn me off. One is the affirmation of Psychotic Killers being as Magic as Trumpy from Pod People. You know the kind... the ordinary psycho-killer gets shot at point-blank range by a pump-action, double-barreled shotgun, sans body-armour and then grasps the barrel of the gun, wrenching it out of the shooter's hands and wrapping it around the man's neck like a cartridge-fed balloon animal? Or the killer who can make bodies appear and disappear as though he'd just eaten David Copperfield's liver for inspiration? These tales suffer the problem of setting up rules for the audience (the killer is a Normal Person who just happens to like to eat your intestines with a side order of flaffles) and then *break* them. There is nothing more disconcerting to have the media in which you've suspended your disbelief just rear back and slam you full in the nards, telling you that you can have your disbelief right back. Pitch Black manages to avoid this neatly by setting up the rules for the aliens and then sticking to them. When a rule was added to the list of things that you know about these blood-thirsty hairdressers from another world, it was internally consistant with the movie (Maybe not with science, but movie-making *is* a science in of itself. There's just too many formulai running around...). You also received several nice scenes of 'the world through the aliens' eyes', which for me just made my day. Honestly, I think seeing how the aliens perceived the world helped me to buy why some of the things that worked did work. Kudos and hats off to the filmmakers for realising that I should walk a mile in the aliens' moccasins.
Now for my other problem with scary tales these days. Folks? Movie-makers? Potential movie-makers? Gather around, please. I have something to say to you all. Closer, please, so you can hear me. Closer. Closer.
Close enough? Good.
HAVING THINGS POP OUT AT ME IS NOT SCARY!
It didn't work when you were using 3D film, and it won't work now, guys! Having someone jump out and say 'boo' is the worst form of terror-making that can be imagined! What you produce is a Cheap Thrill. It's the equivalent of making humour by waiting for someone to sit down and then yanking their chair out from under them. It works once or twice, but pretty soon it gets old, and *someone* will have a sore ass by the end of it.
Fortunately, the terror in Pitch Black is generated in much the same way as the Blair Witch Project: you are invited to empathize with the journiers as they make their way through a situation which is absolutely ghastly, hopeless, and make an emotional connection with their plight. And I, for one, loved that approach both in BWP and here. I found myself on-edge due to a need to see these characters live, and truly regretted it when some of the ones for whom I was rooting died. Now I wasn't scared at any point during this film, but then again, I rarely get scared at movies so I'm a poor yardstick.
Well, in closing, if you enjoy films that manage to do some interesting things with their characters and the situations in which they find themselves, see this movie. I think it would be well worth your while.
I give it Eight Zucchini.
posted by Chris Angelini 3/16/2000 08:20:33 AM


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