Premise: Pint-sized aliens invade Earth and set their sights on a family's new vacation home. They didn't account for the kids.
Stars: A bunch of kids * Kevin Nealon * Andy Richter * Doris Roberts
Story: Four aliens invade the planet as a scout force while the Pearson family is arriving at the same location - their temporary vacation home. This sets up a conflict where the kids act to defeat the aliens while the adults are kept completely unaware of the situation. Hijinks and hilarity ensue as the battles occur throughout the film.
Review: Completely derivative of other films - from Small Soldiers to Critters to E.T.. The aliens are typical - an evil leader, a male and female warrior that bicker, and a cute & cowed engineer - as are the kids: the rebellious teen, the skater boy, a pair of tech-involved twins, and the cute daughter. Add in the typical teenage sister and her scuzzy boyfriend, and the setting is ripe for conflict and humour.
If you're ten years old perhaps.
I found the jokes flat, the performances so-so, the aliens unconvincing and sterotypical. Perhaps the only honestly funny moment is when Nana (Doris Roberts) is zombified and engages in wire-fu fighting with the scuzzy boyfriend. Even so, the film was mostly boring.
Overall: Bad.
Other Sites:
Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Showing posts with label review: bad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review: bad. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Premise: Carrie Bradshaw & Co. return. Again.
Stars: Sarah Jessica-Parker * Kim Cattrall * Cynthia Nixon * Kristin Davis * Chris Noth
Story: Carrie Bradshaw (SJP) is having a crisis in adjusting to marriage. Charlotte (Davis) is having a crisis in dealing with an attractive nanny. Miranda (Nixon) is having a crisis in balancing family and work. Samantha (Cattrall) is having a crisis dealing with menopause. After witnessing the marriage of their two gay friends Stanford and Anthony, Samantha gets an offer from a sheikh to visit Abu Dhabi and set up a PR campaign for his new hotel. She accepts only on the condition that all four women can go.
Thus the scene is set for hijinks as cultures clash.
Review: Trash.
Okay, that's coming from a guy who never watched the series (maybe all of 10 minutes of a single episode) or the first movie. But seriously. We've got four fashion mavens who extol the "virtues" of Western society, which in this case means wearing fancy and expensive (and quite commonly ugly) clothes, paying lip service to equality and fraternity with benighted minorities (gay men in the West, women in the Middle East) and avoiding the larger issues at hand.
I can't quite tell if the film is supposed to be a satire of Western values or not. Suffice it to say that the film may have had the intent of offending as many people as possible. And it succeeds.
Carrie Bradshaw serves as "Best Man" to her gay BFF Stanford and argues the point with her newly minted husband "Mr. Big" (Noth) that it's a "marriage", not a "gay marriage", yet the film portrays the wedding with lavish style and pomp, including a chorus of gay men in white suits and Liza Minelli ("Okay", she concedes later, "it's a gay wedding.") Both grooms (called "brooms" in their description, to combine "bride" and "groom") are outlandish in the extreme, and confess that Stanford gets the wedding while Anthony gets to cheat on him in the 45 states where gay marriage isn't legal.
Due to an offhanded comment by Samantha, Charlotte spends most of the film worried that her husband (played by Evan Handler, otherwise known as the dead guy in the bathrobe that visits Hurley in Lost) may cheat on her simply due to the nanny's large breasts and habit of going braless. Miranda is a successful attorney that has little time for family life, owing to a new boss. Samantha spends the running time of the movie complaining about her lack of libido due to anti-drug laws in Abu Dhabi. All three are succinctly resolved by a few lines of narration by Carrie at the end of the film. (Charlotte's nanny is a lesbian, Miranda quit and found a better job, Samantha is overwhelmed by lust for a Danish architect they met in Abu Dhabi).
The film's main concern is not any development on the part of the characters - all four start with an issue, gloss over it until the end, and have a short reconciliation of the matter due to either alcohol or narration. Apparently, the main concern is "Women need a break every once in a while from being married."
And I left out the innumerable shots of erections, men in speedos, bare-chested beefcake, fashion and glitz. I discovered I'm really not the audience for this, but apparently teenage girls (Miley Cyrus appears), women with unsatisfied lives (I can't count the number of sighs, oohs, and ahs I heard from the group of women sitting near me), and gay men (likewise).
Is this film really the appropriate venue for a discussion of how Abu Dhabi wastes its income on glitz in an attempt to become the financial hub of the Middle East? Probably not - but one sees ample food laid out untouched by the four women when they dine. The audience is treated to the method of employment used by businesses in Abu Dhabi - hire out cheap labor from other poor countries in order to serve themselves and Western visitors. Yet, it's only superficially touched upon by the film in order to serve the interests of the question of taking a break from marriage; the response by the Indian butler is that every time he and his wife get together, it is like meeting again for the first time.
Miranda spends the time in Abu Dhabi attempting to learn Arabic and some of the customs. She even tries to convince Samantha to dress modestly. Yet, in most of the shots of Carrie and Charlotte, deep cleavage is revealed, their familiarity with the men around them is suspect (apparently being intelligent doesn't lead them to hear of stories of Westerners getting arrested and/or deported for activities offensive to the natives), etc. Eventually it redounds to Samantha "kissing" the Danish architect (named Rikard Spirit, but dubbed "Dick Spurt" by Samantha) on the beach and getting arrested, which leads the women to getting basically kicked out of the country.
This sets up a slightly comic scene as the four are rushing to leave the country and Carrie discovers that during a shopping trip, she left her passport at a vendor's stand. For the last twenty minutes of the film, the four are crying about being possibly forced to fly coach (oh, the humanity) back to the States while they are subject to a) trying to locate the passport b) getting derailed into a sleazy counterfeit shop c) confronted by angry men when Samantha's purse spills condoms onto the ground (while wearing a revealing top and shorts in a "conservative" area d) discover that women in Abu Dhabi society secretly wear the latest New York fashions under their burqas and e) have to deal with ancient cabs. Not to mention that they brought a trainload of luggage to the Middle East that somehow ends up on the airplane with them, even though no effort was made to ensure its arrival at the airport.
The only thing that actually made me chuckle was the cameo by Ron White as Miranda's new boss. But even this has made me think, is this an intended slight at blue-collar America? Take a very funny comedian that rustic America likes and label him as a misogynist asshole?
The film has its audience. Perhaps they liked it. I know that I didn't.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Stars: Sarah Jessica-Parker * Kim Cattrall * Cynthia Nixon * Kristin Davis * Chris Noth
Story: Carrie Bradshaw (SJP) is having a crisis in adjusting to marriage. Charlotte (Davis) is having a crisis in dealing with an attractive nanny. Miranda (Nixon) is having a crisis in balancing family and work. Samantha (Cattrall) is having a crisis dealing with menopause. After witnessing the marriage of their two gay friends Stanford and Anthony, Samantha gets an offer from a sheikh to visit Abu Dhabi and set up a PR campaign for his new hotel. She accepts only on the condition that all four women can go.
Thus the scene is set for hijinks as cultures clash.
Review: Trash.
Okay, that's coming from a guy who never watched the series (maybe all of 10 minutes of a single episode) or the first movie. But seriously. We've got four fashion mavens who extol the "virtues" of Western society, which in this case means wearing fancy and expensive (and quite commonly ugly) clothes, paying lip service to equality and fraternity with benighted minorities (gay men in the West, women in the Middle East) and avoiding the larger issues at hand.
I can't quite tell if the film is supposed to be a satire of Western values or not. Suffice it to say that the film may have had the intent of offending as many people as possible. And it succeeds.
Carrie Bradshaw serves as "Best Man" to her gay BFF Stanford and argues the point with her newly minted husband "Mr. Big" (Noth) that it's a "marriage", not a "gay marriage", yet the film portrays the wedding with lavish style and pomp, including a chorus of gay men in white suits and Liza Minelli ("Okay", she concedes later, "it's a gay wedding.") Both grooms (called "brooms" in their description, to combine "bride" and "groom") are outlandish in the extreme, and confess that Stanford gets the wedding while Anthony gets to cheat on him in the 45 states where gay marriage isn't legal.
Due to an offhanded comment by Samantha, Charlotte spends most of the film worried that her husband (played by Evan Handler, otherwise known as the dead guy in the bathrobe that visits Hurley in Lost) may cheat on her simply due to the nanny's large breasts and habit of going braless. Miranda is a successful attorney that has little time for family life, owing to a new boss. Samantha spends the running time of the movie complaining about her lack of libido due to anti-drug laws in Abu Dhabi. All three are succinctly resolved by a few lines of narration by Carrie at the end of the film. (Charlotte's nanny is a lesbian, Miranda quit and found a better job, Samantha is overwhelmed by lust for a Danish architect they met in Abu Dhabi).
The film's main concern is not any development on the part of the characters - all four start with an issue, gloss over it until the end, and have a short reconciliation of the matter due to either alcohol or narration. Apparently, the main concern is "Women need a break every once in a while from being married."
And I left out the innumerable shots of erections, men in speedos, bare-chested beefcake, fashion and glitz. I discovered I'm really not the audience for this, but apparently teenage girls (Miley Cyrus appears), women with unsatisfied lives (I can't count the number of sighs, oohs, and ahs I heard from the group of women sitting near me), and gay men (likewise).
Is this film really the appropriate venue for a discussion of how Abu Dhabi wastes its income on glitz in an attempt to become the financial hub of the Middle East? Probably not - but one sees ample food laid out untouched by the four women when they dine. The audience is treated to the method of employment used by businesses in Abu Dhabi - hire out cheap labor from other poor countries in order to serve themselves and Western visitors. Yet, it's only superficially touched upon by the film in order to serve the interests of the question of taking a break from marriage; the response by the Indian butler is that every time he and his wife get together, it is like meeting again for the first time.
Miranda spends the time in Abu Dhabi attempting to learn Arabic and some of the customs. She even tries to convince Samantha to dress modestly. Yet, in most of the shots of Carrie and Charlotte, deep cleavage is revealed, their familiarity with the men around them is suspect (apparently being intelligent doesn't lead them to hear of stories of Westerners getting arrested and/or deported for activities offensive to the natives), etc. Eventually it redounds to Samantha "kissing" the Danish architect (named Rikard Spirit, but dubbed "Dick Spurt" by Samantha) on the beach and getting arrested, which leads the women to getting basically kicked out of the country.
This sets up a slightly comic scene as the four are rushing to leave the country and Carrie discovers that during a shopping trip, she left her passport at a vendor's stand. For the last twenty minutes of the film, the four are crying about being possibly forced to fly coach (oh, the humanity) back to the States while they are subject to a) trying to locate the passport b) getting derailed into a sleazy counterfeit shop c) confronted by angry men when Samantha's purse spills condoms onto the ground (while wearing a revealing top and shorts in a "conservative" area d) discover that women in Abu Dhabi society secretly wear the latest New York fashions under their burqas and e) have to deal with ancient cabs. Not to mention that they brought a trainload of luggage to the Middle East that somehow ends up on the airplane with them, even though no effort was made to ensure its arrival at the airport.
The only thing that actually made me chuckle was the cameo by Ron White as Miranda's new boss. But even this has made me think, is this an intended slight at blue-collar America? Take a very funny comedian that rustic America likes and label him as a misogynist asshole?
The film has its audience. Perhaps they liked it. I know that I didn't.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Smokin Aces 2: Assassin's Ball (2010)
Premise: A prequel to Smokin' Aces; multiple groups of killers are out to collect on a contract.
Stars: Tom Berenger * Vinnie Jones * Tommy Flanagan
Story: Multiple bands of assassins, including the Tremor family, a beautiful solo assassin who poisons her victims, the master of disguise Lazlo Soot (from the previous film), and an assassin that specializes in knives known as The Surgeon all convene on a target protected by multiple FBI agents.
Review: The film is almost a direct rebuild of the first film. However, where the first film had a little originality, this film has none. A couple of interesting ideas (using actual human cannonballs, for example) are simply weighed down by the stereotypical character molds inherited from the first film as well as character roles previously played. Vinnie Jones plays a sophisticated killer specializing in tools of death. Sound familiar?
Avoid. Watch the first film and pretend this one doesn't exist.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie
Stars: Tom Berenger * Vinnie Jones * Tommy Flanagan
Story: Multiple bands of assassins, including the Tremor family, a beautiful solo assassin who poisons her victims, the master of disguise Lazlo Soot (from the previous film), and an assassin that specializes in knives known as The Surgeon all convene on a target protected by multiple FBI agents.
Review: The film is almost a direct rebuild of the first film. However, where the first film had a little originality, this film has none. A couple of interesting ideas (using actual human cannonballs, for example) are simply weighed down by the stereotypical character molds inherited from the first film as well as character roles previously played. Vinnie Jones plays a sophisticated killer specializing in tools of death. Sound familiar?
Avoid. Watch the first film and pretend this one doesn't exist.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Premise: Autobots vs Decepticons again, with Sam Witwicky along for the ride.
Stars: Shia LeBouef * Megan Fox * Josh Duhamel * Tyrese Gibson
Story: A couple of years after the first movie, the Autobots and a multi-national team of soldiers have been hunting down Decepticon cells across Earth. Sam Witwicky has gone through school and is about to go to college. Unfortunately, a sliver of the AllSpark remained in Sam's jacket and imprints its language on Sam's mind. The Decepticons resurrect Megatron, contact their progenitor - the Fallen - and set out to recover that knowledge from Sam. Along the way, the Autobots have a falling out with a bureaucrat over apparent suspicions of loyalty once fighting breaks out.
Review: Honestly, this movie will keep your seat vibrating with noise, explosions, small thrills, and some gratuitous skin. But it will simultaneously kill brain cells. There should be a Surgeon General's warning on this film for anyone watching this film sober.
There are enough plot holes to drive a planet through. There are enough offensive stereotypes to generously offend every member of the audience - all ages and all races. This film is a literal 'screw you' to every fan of the original series, even while it throws in everything under the sun.
For a start:
There's the Decepticon Pretender which is a Species ripoff. There are giant steel testes. I say again, giant steel testes. Decepticons which previously were impervious to all but sabot rounds are now killed by random small arms fire. Autobot commandos - including Optimus 'the idealist' - hunt down Decepticons who have not harmed anyone - when it is later shown that Decepticons can choose to be Autobots if allowed to. A small Decepticon acts like a hormonal pooch. Two Autobots talk in hip-hop slang and have gold teeth. Transformer 'heaven' acts as a deux ex machina to save the day. A transformer with a beard and cane. A transformer that has been around for 10,000 years and is a SR-71 blackbird. Sam & Co. walk through the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC and ending up in an airplane graveyard - all of which are in the American Southwest. A key Decepticon from the first movie is brought in momentarily, only to be immediately be killed. Time is literally wasted on stoner humor of the wrong variety - did we need to see Mrs. Witwicky get high?
And lastly, a very unnecessary thong which illustrated Mr. Bay showing his ass to the audience.
I don't think everything is wrong with this film and I can point out a few good things. Robots fight. There are attractive people in the film. The lighting is masterful as always in a Bay film. Robots fight.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Stars: Shia LeBouef * Megan Fox * Josh Duhamel * Tyrese Gibson
Story: A couple of years after the first movie, the Autobots and a multi-national team of soldiers have been hunting down Decepticon cells across Earth. Sam Witwicky has gone through school and is about to go to college. Unfortunately, a sliver of the AllSpark remained in Sam's jacket and imprints its language on Sam's mind. The Decepticons resurrect Megatron, contact their progenitor - the Fallen - and set out to recover that knowledge from Sam. Along the way, the Autobots have a falling out with a bureaucrat over apparent suspicions of loyalty once fighting breaks out.
Review: Honestly, this movie will keep your seat vibrating with noise, explosions, small thrills, and some gratuitous skin. But it will simultaneously kill brain cells. There should be a Surgeon General's warning on this film for anyone watching this film sober.
There are enough plot holes to drive a planet through. There are enough offensive stereotypes to generously offend every member of the audience - all ages and all races. This film is a literal 'screw you' to every fan of the original series, even while it throws in everything under the sun.
For a start:
There's the Decepticon Pretender which is a Species ripoff. There are giant steel testes. I say again, giant steel testes. Decepticons which previously were impervious to all but sabot rounds are now killed by random small arms fire. Autobot commandos - including Optimus 'the idealist' - hunt down Decepticons who have not harmed anyone - when it is later shown that Decepticons can choose to be Autobots if allowed to. A small Decepticon acts like a hormonal pooch. Two Autobots talk in hip-hop slang and have gold teeth. Transformer 'heaven' acts as a deux ex machina to save the day. A transformer with a beard and cane. A transformer that has been around for 10,000 years and is a SR-71 blackbird. Sam & Co. walk through the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC and ending up in an airplane graveyard - all of which are in the American Southwest. A key Decepticon from the first movie is brought in momentarily, only to be immediately be killed. Time is literally wasted on stoner humor of the wrong variety - did we need to see Mrs. Witwicky get high?
And lastly, a very unnecessary thong which illustrated Mr. Bay showing his ass to the audience.
I don't think everything is wrong with this film and I can point out a few good things. Robots fight. There are attractive people in the film. The lighting is masterful as always in a Bay film. Robots fight.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Land of the Lost (2009)
Premise: A comedic sendup of the 1970s children's show.
Stars: Will Ferrell * Danny R McBride * Anna Friel
Story: Professor Rick Marshall (Ferrell) has become a laughingstock in the scientific community following his publication of a work where he puts forth the idea that artificially created wormholes will solve the world's energy crisis. Disgraced, he is visited by a graduate student, Holly (Friel) who believes in him and has become an outcast herself. She convinces him to test his idea at a local road sideshow, where Will (McBride) shows visitors his 'Devil's Cave' which is little more than runoff and waste.
Marshall's tachyon emitter (the device that is intended to create wormholes) actually triggers a wormhole, sending the three to the Land of the Lost, a kind of pocket alternate universe where the 'detritus of our universe' ends up - some aliens, a run-down motel, some primitive cave men, dinosaurs, and more.
The rest of the movie follows the trio's adventure as they attempt to recover the tachyon emitter, prevent the alien Sleestak from taking over Earth, and survive attacks by an intelligent tyrannosaur.
Review: The movie is a pastiche of typical Ferrell humour: stupid toilet humour, flabby belly jokes, getting stoned/drunk, whining loudly, and supposedly comical pratfalls. Ferrell follows his tried-and-true formula, of going for the easy laughs. His partners this time around, a smart-but-naive Friel and Danny R McBride (again playing his standard shtick) are respectively his foil/love interest and smartass sidekick.
Between boorish whiny Ferrell and boorish obnoxious McBride, it's clear where this movie was aiming. Unlike its brethren - the send-ups of The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch - this movie doesn't aim for the brain, but for the belly. And for a while, it hits its mark.
Unfortunately, it just keeps going for the belly laugh over and over. Which gets old. Some jokes are simply unfunny. The plot with the Sleestak and the tachyon emitter is interesting, but is simply lifted from most films - bad guy wants the device, manipulates the protagonists to get it, protagonists save the day.
Friel is literally a waste in this movie, as the presence of an always-horny and perverted cave man - probably the funniest character in the movie - steals the show. Just not enough of it.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Stars: Will Ferrell * Danny R McBride * Anna Friel
Story: Professor Rick Marshall (Ferrell) has become a laughingstock in the scientific community following his publication of a work where he puts forth the idea that artificially created wormholes will solve the world's energy crisis. Disgraced, he is visited by a graduate student, Holly (Friel) who believes in him and has become an outcast herself. She convinces him to test his idea at a local road sideshow, where Will (McBride) shows visitors his 'Devil's Cave' which is little more than runoff and waste.
Marshall's tachyon emitter (the device that is intended to create wormholes) actually triggers a wormhole, sending the three to the Land of the Lost, a kind of pocket alternate universe where the 'detritus of our universe' ends up - some aliens, a run-down motel, some primitive cave men, dinosaurs, and more.
The rest of the movie follows the trio's adventure as they attempt to recover the tachyon emitter, prevent the alien Sleestak from taking over Earth, and survive attacks by an intelligent tyrannosaur.
Review: The movie is a pastiche of typical Ferrell humour: stupid toilet humour, flabby belly jokes, getting stoned/drunk, whining loudly, and supposedly comical pratfalls. Ferrell follows his tried-and-true formula, of going for the easy laughs. His partners this time around, a smart-but-naive Friel and Danny R McBride (again playing his standard shtick) are respectively his foil/love interest and smartass sidekick.
Between boorish whiny Ferrell and boorish obnoxious McBride, it's clear where this movie was aiming. Unlike its brethren - the send-ups of The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch - this movie doesn't aim for the brain, but for the belly. And for a while, it hits its mark.
Unfortunately, it just keeps going for the belly laugh over and over. Which gets old. Some jokes are simply unfunny. The plot with the Sleestak and the tachyon emitter is interesting, but is simply lifted from most films - bad guy wants the device, manipulates the protagonists to get it, protagonists save the day.
Friel is literally a waste in this movie, as the presence of an always-horny and perverted cave man - probably the funniest character in the movie - steals the show. Just not enough of it.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Terminator Salvation (2009)
Premise: After Judgment Day, John Connor leads the human resistance fights Skynet and its army of terminators.
Stars: Christian Bale * Sam Worthington * Moon Bloodgod * Anton Yelchin
Story: After Judgment Day, John Connor (Bale) leads an army of human resistance fighters against the machines of Skynet. On one of his raids on a Skynet base, the human fighters discover experiments being done upon humans in order to create better infiltration units (the terminators of the previous movies). After Connor escapes, a lone survivor from the site stumbles out into the world.
Marcus (Worthington), the survivor, wanders until he ends up in devastated Los Angeles, where he is nearly attacked by a terminator. Saved from certain death by young Kyle Reese (Yelchin) and his companion, Marcus ends up traveling with the duo in an attempt to reach other survivors.
Meanwhile, Connor faces opposition to his plan to save humans being experimented on by Skynet from the leaders of the resistance, and works on rigging a signal designed to stop the terminators so that his team can stage a rescue.
Marcus and Connor cross paths after Reese is captured by the terminators and taken to the Skynet base. The stage is set for a showdown as it is revealed that Marcus is one of the prototypes for the cyborg terminators. However, the two reluctantly team up to save young Reese and to find out who made Marcus into a cyborg.
Review: Christian Bale has not expanded his repertoire. Capable of gritty and serious (Reign of Fire, Batman Begins) and borderline psycho (The Machinist, American Psycho) it appears that acting human has escaped Bale - although the writing doesn't leave much for him to expand in this direction. Bale's Connor is a grizzled, borderline psychotic action hero but has none of the humanizing qualities one looks for in a story such as this.
Instead, Marcus (Worthington) fulfills the role of the wandering mysterious hero - both human and different. He recalls Jean Claude Van Damme in the Cyborg movie - and bears more than a passing resemblance to the old action star. The bonding with both Kyle Reese and Blair Williams (Bloodgod) make the cyborg seem much more human than even Connor.
This dueling characterization - the machine as the hero, the hero as the machine - may seem to reflect an aim of the writers to make the movie more of a debate about the nature of heroism, but it fails. There is no bonding to the character of John Connor by the audience, and the forced ending kills much enthusiasm for the scant storytelling.
With the lack of solid characterization on the part of the humans, the storytelling heavily relies upon the effects departments - sound and CGI. The world looks more like the setting of a video game - one can honestly pick out what levels the adventure takes place on - and the sound and violence is loud and explosive. Of course the audience is really looking for the terminators, the endoskeletons, what Skynet looks like, etc. And for the most part, the terminators are men in suits - clearly visible in a few scenes - or model robots - motorcycles, planes, and even snakes.
There are obvious shots that are throwbacks to the three earlier movies - the diesel tow truck here, the motorcycle there, even Guns & Roses 'You Could Be Mine' is heard, along with a surprise appearance near the end. It's like the writers had a checklist and went down the line, marking off the requisite effect.
Instead of this, it would have been more appealing to make a movie where the John Connor storyline is in the background, and focus on Marcus Wright. He's really the only character you begin to care about in this movie, and a well-written story centered on him would've easily been a more welcome entry in this franchise. As it stands, there is very little humanizing about the movie, and the obviously forced ending removes any appreciation for characterization. Including departures from the established Terminator storyline, the film feels like a further notch on the downward spiral since Terminator 2, the obvious high mark in this effects-driven franchise.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Stars: Christian Bale * Sam Worthington * Moon Bloodgod * Anton Yelchin
Story: After Judgment Day, John Connor (Bale) leads an army of human resistance fighters against the machines of Skynet. On one of his raids on a Skynet base, the human fighters discover experiments being done upon humans in order to create better infiltration units (the terminators of the previous movies). After Connor escapes, a lone survivor from the site stumbles out into the world.
Marcus (Worthington), the survivor, wanders until he ends up in devastated Los Angeles, where he is nearly attacked by a terminator. Saved from certain death by young Kyle Reese (Yelchin) and his companion, Marcus ends up traveling with the duo in an attempt to reach other survivors.
Meanwhile, Connor faces opposition to his plan to save humans being experimented on by Skynet from the leaders of the resistance, and works on rigging a signal designed to stop the terminators so that his team can stage a rescue.
Marcus and Connor cross paths after Reese is captured by the terminators and taken to the Skynet base. The stage is set for a showdown as it is revealed that Marcus is one of the prototypes for the cyborg terminators. However, the two reluctantly team up to save young Reese and to find out who made Marcus into a cyborg.
Review: Christian Bale has not expanded his repertoire. Capable of gritty and serious (Reign of Fire, Batman Begins) and borderline psycho (The Machinist, American Psycho) it appears that acting human has escaped Bale - although the writing doesn't leave much for him to expand in this direction. Bale's Connor is a grizzled, borderline psychotic action hero but has none of the humanizing qualities one looks for in a story such as this.
Instead, Marcus (Worthington) fulfills the role of the wandering mysterious hero - both human and different. He recalls Jean Claude Van Damme in the Cyborg movie - and bears more than a passing resemblance to the old action star. The bonding with both Kyle Reese and Blair Williams (Bloodgod) make the cyborg seem much more human than even Connor.
This dueling characterization - the machine as the hero, the hero as the machine - may seem to reflect an aim of the writers to make the movie more of a debate about the nature of heroism, but it fails. There is no bonding to the character of John Connor by the audience, and the forced ending kills much enthusiasm for the scant storytelling.
With the lack of solid characterization on the part of the humans, the storytelling heavily relies upon the effects departments - sound and CGI. The world looks more like the setting of a video game - one can honestly pick out what levels the adventure takes place on - and the sound and violence is loud and explosive. Of course the audience is really looking for the terminators, the endoskeletons, what Skynet looks like, etc. And for the most part, the terminators are men in suits - clearly visible in a few scenes - or model robots - motorcycles, planes, and even snakes.
There are obvious shots that are throwbacks to the three earlier movies - the diesel tow truck here, the motorcycle there, even Guns & Roses 'You Could Be Mine' is heard, along with a surprise appearance near the end. It's like the writers had a checklist and went down the line, marking off the requisite effect.
Instead of this, it would have been more appealing to make a movie where the John Connor storyline is in the background, and focus on Marcus Wright. He's really the only character you begin to care about in this movie, and a well-written story centered on him would've easily been a more welcome entry in this franchise. As it stands, there is very little humanizing about the movie, and the obviously forced ending removes any appreciation for characterization. Including departures from the established Terminator storyline, the film feels like a further notch on the downward spiral since Terminator 2, the obvious high mark in this effects-driven franchise.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Friday, May 29, 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Premise: The origin of Wolverine, one of the X-Men. A mutant is born into a world where the only person that understands him is his brother. Unfortunately his brother grows vicious over time, leading to a parting of the ways. Adding to his misery, his brother works for a covert ops unit that is operating beyond the law.
Stars: Hugh Jackman * Liev Schreiber * Danny Huston * Lynn Collins * Taylor Kitsch
Story: Most genre fans know of Wolverine (Jackman). Most non-genre fans know he's a supposed badass with a chip on his shoulder and steak knives attached to his knuckles. The movie serves as an origin (of sorts) for the eponymous mutant. We learn that he apparently sprouted bone blades before puberty and has an amazing healing factor. He also has a "brother" of sorts who serves as a protector and enabler for young Wolvie's tantrums. Due to a family tragedy, the two brothers set out, watching each other's backs for the next century, going through war after war as it seems they were made for killing.
Eventually Wolverine's conscience begins to show - of course - and his brother (Schreiber)'s does not - of course - setting the two on that age old Cain v Abel conflict wherein brother is pitted against brother via some mechanism - in this case, basic morality.
When the final split comes, the two brothers are members of a covert black ops team under the direction of Stryker (Huston), a military figure connected to the perceived mutant menace. Predictably, Stryker has an agenda surrounding mutants and their abilities, and this leads to personal tragedy for our hero who then undergoes a multi-million dollar process to have a rare metal bonded to his skeleton. During the process, Wolverine discovers the truth, goes berserk, escapes the military, and then sets out for revenge against all those who oppose him.
Review: The acting is sub-par on just about every facet, except Liev Schreiber. This one scene-chewing performance reminds me that even as a nice guy, Schreiber is one of those actors that just barely contains a sense of menace and general badass-ness. I really want to see him in Defiant to see how he plays a similar character in a reportedly well-done film. There really is no other actor fully portraying a character. Lynn Collins' Silverfox is a female cipher, Huston portrays a regular ham-fisted general straight out of the funny books and Jackman acts anguished or pissed-off the entire movie basically, no stretch for him, either. The actors were cashing in on their performances, but honestly, what can you expect?
The effects and scenes were easily stupefying. An escape scene turns from fleeing into motorcycle vs hummer to hummer vs helicopter. A hastily arranged combat scene between Gambit (Kitsch) and Wolverine is easily recognized as a set-piece, as do many others. Explosions, murders, torture, laser beams, etc. are all loud and noisy, presumably designed to distract you from the bad writing and acting. Sure it's a comic book movie, but honestly, this film is somewhere in that genre around the Incredible Hulk. It's hard to expect another The Dark Knight, and it's at least better than the deplorable Ghost Rider, but this is one of those films that seem designed for those who shut off their brains when they go to the theater.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Stars: Hugh Jackman * Liev Schreiber * Danny Huston * Lynn Collins * Taylor Kitsch
Story: Most genre fans know of Wolverine (Jackman). Most non-genre fans know he's a supposed badass with a chip on his shoulder and steak knives attached to his knuckles. The movie serves as an origin (of sorts) for the eponymous mutant. We learn that he apparently sprouted bone blades before puberty and has an amazing healing factor. He also has a "brother" of sorts who serves as a protector and enabler for young Wolvie's tantrums. Due to a family tragedy, the two brothers set out, watching each other's backs for the next century, going through war after war as it seems they were made for killing.
Eventually Wolverine's conscience begins to show - of course - and his brother (Schreiber)'s does not - of course - setting the two on that age old Cain v Abel conflict wherein brother is pitted against brother via some mechanism - in this case, basic morality.
When the final split comes, the two brothers are members of a covert black ops team under the direction of Stryker (Huston), a military figure connected to the perceived mutant menace. Predictably, Stryker has an agenda surrounding mutants and their abilities, and this leads to personal tragedy for our hero who then undergoes a multi-million dollar process to have a rare metal bonded to his skeleton. During the process, Wolverine discovers the truth, goes berserk, escapes the military, and then sets out for revenge against all those who oppose him.
Review: The acting is sub-par on just about every facet, except Liev Schreiber. This one scene-chewing performance reminds me that even as a nice guy, Schreiber is one of those actors that just barely contains a sense of menace and general badass-ness. I really want to see him in Defiant to see how he plays a similar character in a reportedly well-done film. There really is no other actor fully portraying a character. Lynn Collins' Silverfox is a female cipher, Huston portrays a regular ham-fisted general straight out of the funny books and Jackman acts anguished or pissed-off the entire movie basically, no stretch for him, either. The actors were cashing in on their performances, but honestly, what can you expect?
The effects and scenes were easily stupefying. An escape scene turns from fleeing into motorcycle vs hummer to hummer vs helicopter. A hastily arranged combat scene between Gambit (Kitsch) and Wolverine is easily recognized as a set-piece, as do many others. Explosions, murders, torture, laser beams, etc. are all loud and noisy, presumably designed to distract you from the bad writing and acting. Sure it's a comic book movie, but honestly, this film is somewhere in that genre around the Incredible Hulk. It's hard to expect another The Dark Knight, and it's at least better than the deplorable Ghost Rider, but this is one of those films that seem designed for those who shut off their brains when they go to the theater.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Love's Unending Legacy (2007)
Premise: A young widowed mother moves back in with her folks and takes in an orphan - and more melodrama occurs.
Stars: Erin Cottrell * Dale Midkiff * Victor Browne
Story: Missie LaHaye (Cottrell) is back (it's part of a series of Hallmark TV movies based on novels by Janette Oke). After her husband and daughter die, she goes back to her folks (Midkiff) and tries to rediscover joy in her life. Along the way, she takes up teaching at the local school, adopts an orphan, gets embroiled in the rescue of another orphan from an abusive foster family, and falls in love with the town sheriff. And the sheriff (Browne) discovers God.
Review: It's full of Western-style melodrama - the young widow woman, the smiley-happy son, God-fearing people, a wounded horse that needs to be put down, discovering God through a miracle, runaways, tomboys being ridiculed and standing up for themselves, hard day labor for kids, the separated siblings who want their parents to rescue them, the bright-blue eyes, the hard rain, the hard men and the women that love them, the young man's man of a sheriff, etc. Lawdy.
With all of that, and the fact that it's a Hallmark TV movie and a Janette Oke adaptation, I have to wonder why I watched it.
Overall: Bad
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia
Stars: Erin Cottrell * Dale Midkiff * Victor Browne
Story: Missie LaHaye (Cottrell) is back (it's part of a series of Hallmark TV movies based on novels by Janette Oke). After her husband and daughter die, she goes back to her folks (Midkiff) and tries to rediscover joy in her life. Along the way, she takes up teaching at the local school, adopts an orphan, gets embroiled in the rescue of another orphan from an abusive foster family, and falls in love with the town sheriff. And the sheriff (Browne) discovers God.
Review: It's full of Western-style melodrama - the young widow woman, the smiley-happy son, God-fearing people, a wounded horse that needs to be put down, discovering God through a miracle, runaways, tomboys being ridiculed and standing up for themselves, hard day labor for kids, the separated siblings who want their parents to rescue them, the bright-blue eyes, the hard rain, the hard men and the women that love them, the young man's man of a sheriff, etc. Lawdy.
With all of that, and the fact that it's a Hallmark TV movie and a Janette Oke adaptation, I have to wonder why I watched it.
Overall: Bad
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia
Monday, July 21, 2008
Vantage Point (2008)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A gimmicky film presenting an assassination attempt on the President of the United States viewed from multiple points of view - each character has an impact on the occurrences of the few hours surrounding the event.
Stars: Dennis Quaid * Forest Whitaker * William Hurt * Matthew Fox * Sigourney Weaver
Story: Dennis Quaid plays a Secret Service agent who is recalled to duty after taking a bullet on duty. His partner, Matthew Fox, is young and has a gung-ho attitude. Forest Whitaker plays an American tourist on the scene. Weaver plays a news producer covering a presentation by the President (Hurt) in Spain.
These four - and others - all have different points of view on the events surrounding an assassination attempt on the President. Eventually it turns out that Fox is a traitor aiding the assassins (some of who are actually blackmailed into performing), and Quaid must capture or kill them all, with the aid of news cameras and Whitaker's information.
Review: The film is gimmicky - it follows the events leading up to the assassination attempt from one point of view and then switches to another point of view leading up to that same time frame. Each segment is presented as "one hour earlier", "two hours earlier" etc. The switches gets old fast, and seriously affect the viewing of the film. Quaid performs as his usual self - solid and dependable but nothing special. Whitaker, Weaver, and Fox do not inspire, and Hurt is disappointing as the President - but the script does not call for inspired acting as it over-relies on the gimmick to move the film. Once the movie stops framing everything in relation to the bombing, it quickly changes to a standard by-the-numbers chase between Quaid and Fox, while the assassins capture the real President and try to kill him.
The film is driven by the gimmick, and then conveniently wraps up all of the plotlines in a jumble towards the end, resolved by circumstance and coincidence. A poorly written, jarring film that doesn't give usually dependable actors anything to work with.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A gimmicky film presenting an assassination attempt on the President of the United States viewed from multiple points of view - each character has an impact on the occurrences of the few hours surrounding the event.
Stars: Dennis Quaid * Forest Whitaker * William Hurt * Matthew Fox * Sigourney Weaver
Story: Dennis Quaid plays a Secret Service agent who is recalled to duty after taking a bullet on duty. His partner, Matthew Fox, is young and has a gung-ho attitude. Forest Whitaker plays an American tourist on the scene. Weaver plays a news producer covering a presentation by the President (Hurt) in Spain.
These four - and others - all have different points of view on the events surrounding an assassination attempt on the President. Eventually it turns out that Fox is a traitor aiding the assassins (some of who are actually blackmailed into performing), and Quaid must capture or kill them all, with the aid of news cameras and Whitaker's information.
Review: The film is gimmicky - it follows the events leading up to the assassination attempt from one point of view and then switches to another point of view leading up to that same time frame. Each segment is presented as "one hour earlier", "two hours earlier" etc. The switches gets old fast, and seriously affect the viewing of the film. Quaid performs as his usual self - solid and dependable but nothing special. Whitaker, Weaver, and Fox do not inspire, and Hurt is disappointing as the President - but the script does not call for inspired acting as it over-relies on the gimmick to move the film. Once the movie stops framing everything in relation to the bombing, it quickly changes to a standard by-the-numbers chase between Quaid and Fox, while the assassins capture the real President and try to kill him.
The film is driven by the gimmick, and then conveniently wraps up all of the plotlines in a jumble towards the end, resolved by circumstance and coincidence. A poorly written, jarring film that doesn't give usually dependable actors anything to work with.
Overall: Bad
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Sitter (2007)
Links: IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A family hires a babysitter with a secret history.
Story: A well-to-do family hires a new babysitter off the Internet when the mother decides to go back to work. The sitter instantly bonds with the children, but the neighbors and friends of the family start suspecting something is not all-there with the babysitter after other friends start disappearing.
Review: A made-for-TV film (originally entitled When the Children Sleep) that shows its lack of polish. The story is the same as previous entries (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is a much better story) in this genre. Change the connection in the past to fit a younger woman, update the surrounding details to the Internet age, and you get the film. There's not much in the way of suspense, as the victims are telegraphed before the actions occur.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A family hires a babysitter with a secret history.
Story: A well-to-do family hires a new babysitter off the Internet when the mother decides to go back to work. The sitter instantly bonds with the children, but the neighbors and friends of the family start suspecting something is not all-there with the babysitter after other friends start disappearing.
Review: A made-for-TV film (originally entitled When the Children Sleep) that shows its lack of polish. The story is the same as previous entries (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is a much better story) in this genre. Change the connection in the past to fit a younger woman, update the surrounding details to the Internet age, and you get the film. There's not much in the way of suspense, as the victims are telegraphed before the actions occur.
Overall: Bad
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A troubled family inherits a house with a secret - a book that contains the secrets to the invisible world of faeries and goblins.
Stars: Mary-Louise Parker * Freddie Highmore * Sarah Bolger * Nick Nolte * Seth Rogen (voice) * David Strathairn * Joan Plowright * Martin Short (voice)
Story: Simon and Jared Grace (Highmore), their sister Mallory (Bolger) and mother Helen (Parker) pack up their things and move to an inherited home. Jared discovers a book by Spiderwick (Strathairn) that describes the hidden beings that inhabit the world, which leads to one of the evil beings of that world - the ogre Mulgarath (Nick Nolte) - coming after him and his family.
Review: The special effects are eye-catching - the fairies, the sylphs, even the goblins - but after a decade now of Harry Potter, Star Wars prequels, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. effects are no longer the attention-grabbing definition of a movie that some seem to believe they are. This film relies on a children's book but loses a lot of the wonder that seems to define children's movies. Even though they are entertaining, effects just can't make a movie by themselves. They should be used to enhance a film.
Highmore is definitely distracting when playing the roles of the twins. His performance as Simon is flat and uninvolving, while that of Jared appears to make the character have disconnected personalities. Sarah Bolger as the older sister does well, but Mary-Louise Parker seems miscast. As effects can't carry a movie by themselves, a decent performance by one family member can't do the supposed difficulties they are going through well enough.
I'd recommend it for the effects alone, simply because they are nice to see, but the movie falls flat. The only real delights are Hogsqueal the hobgoblin (Rogen) and Thimbletack the Brownie (Short), but like I said, they and Bolger can't carry the film by themselves.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A troubled family inherits a house with a secret - a book that contains the secrets to the invisible world of faeries and goblins.
Stars: Mary-Louise Parker * Freddie Highmore * Sarah Bolger * Nick Nolte * Seth Rogen (voice) * David Strathairn * Joan Plowright * Martin Short (voice)
Story: Simon and Jared Grace (Highmore), their sister Mallory (Bolger) and mother Helen (Parker) pack up their things and move to an inherited home. Jared discovers a book by Spiderwick (Strathairn) that describes the hidden beings that inhabit the world, which leads to one of the evil beings of that world - the ogre Mulgarath (Nick Nolte) - coming after him and his family.
Review: The special effects are eye-catching - the fairies, the sylphs, even the goblins - but after a decade now of Harry Potter, Star Wars prequels, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. effects are no longer the attention-grabbing definition of a movie that some seem to believe they are. This film relies on a children's book but loses a lot of the wonder that seems to define children's movies. Even though they are entertaining, effects just can't make a movie by themselves. They should be used to enhance a film.
Highmore is definitely distracting when playing the roles of the twins. His performance as Simon is flat and uninvolving, while that of Jared appears to make the character have disconnected personalities. Sarah Bolger as the older sister does well, but Mary-Louise Parker seems miscast. As effects can't carry a movie by themselves, a decent performance by one family member can't do the supposed difficulties they are going through well enough.
I'd recommend it for the effects alone, simply because they are nice to see, but the movie falls flat. The only real delights are Hogsqueal the hobgoblin (Rogen) and Thimbletack the Brownie (Short), but like I said, they and Bolger can't carry the film by themselves.
Overall: Bad
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Georgia Rule (2007)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A rebellious daughter is packed off to live with her grandmother when her mom can't control her any longer. As she stays in the country, the daughter reveals her pain and learns to move forward.
Stars: Jane Fonda * Felicity Huffman * Lindsay Lohan * Cary Elwes * Dermot Mulroney
The story: Rachel (Lohan) is a rebellious daughter who's broken the final straw: wrecking a new car given to her by her stepfather. Her mother Lily (Huffman), an alcoholic and also self-destructive, takes her from California to Idaho, to live with her grandmother Georgia (Fonda).
Once there, the rebellious teenager flirts and tries to seduce two men, Harlan and Simon. Harlan, presented as a young, naive and innocent Mormon about to go on a two-year missionary trip, falls victim to her big-city charms. Simon, more experienced and wiser in the ways of the world, resists her charm and remains true to his nature.
She also struggles with inner demons - being molested by her stepfather (Elwes) - and learns to move beyond the past with the assistance of Harlan, Simon and her grandmother. When she reveals the truth, her mother leaves her husband and comes back, attempting to reconcile with her daughter. But, being miserable herself, she continues drinking.
Eventually, all three come together as Lily discovers the truth when Arnold gives Rachel his prized Ferrari as a bribe to keep quiet.
Review: Sold as a comedy and a feel-good movie, this film is about incest and sexual abuse. If it did not have the approach of Garry Marshall - it's advertised as being 'from the director of Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries' (both of which are decent) - and was taken as a serious drama film, it might have been worth watching. Instead, moments that are designed to be humourous are distracting and badly misplaced.
Fonda is nice, but given the role of a rock as Georgia, there's not much more than the 'crusty old country grandma/mom' the role calls for. Huffman is definitely wasted, and Lohan proved she was on a downward spiral. If her attempts at seduction are supposed to be humourous, again, they do a disservice to the film, but they are laughable - terribly unfunny but laughable.
I wonder what a serious take on this idea could've looked like.
Overall: Bad.
Premise: A rebellious daughter is packed off to live with her grandmother when her mom can't control her any longer. As she stays in the country, the daughter reveals her pain and learns to move forward.
Stars: Jane Fonda * Felicity Huffman * Lindsay Lohan * Cary Elwes * Dermot Mulroney
The story: Rachel (Lohan) is a rebellious daughter who's broken the final straw: wrecking a new car given to her by her stepfather. Her mother Lily (Huffman), an alcoholic and also self-destructive, takes her from California to Idaho, to live with her grandmother Georgia (Fonda).
Once there, the rebellious teenager flirts and tries to seduce two men, Harlan and Simon. Harlan, presented as a young, naive and innocent Mormon about to go on a two-year missionary trip, falls victim to her big-city charms. Simon, more experienced and wiser in the ways of the world, resists her charm and remains true to his nature.
She also struggles with inner demons - being molested by her stepfather (Elwes) - and learns to move beyond the past with the assistance of Harlan, Simon and her grandmother. When she reveals the truth, her mother leaves her husband and comes back, attempting to reconcile with her daughter. But, being miserable herself, she continues drinking.
Eventually, all three come together as Lily discovers the truth when Arnold gives Rachel his prized Ferrari as a bribe to keep quiet.
Review: Sold as a comedy and a feel-good movie, this film is about incest and sexual abuse. If it did not have the approach of Garry Marshall - it's advertised as being 'from the director of Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries' (both of which are decent) - and was taken as a serious drama film, it might have been worth watching. Instead, moments that are designed to be humourous are distracting and badly misplaced.
Fonda is nice, but given the role of a rock as Georgia, there's not much more than the 'crusty old country grandma/mom' the role calls for. Huffman is definitely wasted, and Lohan proved she was on a downward spiral. If her attempts at seduction are supposed to be humourous, again, they do a disservice to the film, but they are laughable - terribly unfunny but laughable.
I wonder what a serious take on this idea could've looked like.
Overall: Bad.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A girl who fled the countryside to make something out of herself in New York City has to return home to clear up some skeletons in the closet before getting married.
Stars: Reese Witherspoon * Patrick Dempsey * Fred Ward * Candice Bergen * Josh Lucas
Review: Overblown hyperbolic caricatures surround the three main cast members - Dempsey, Witherspoon, and Lucas. Witherspoon - a capable actress given the right script and cast (Fear and Legally Blonde are perhaps her best roles, imo) - is given little to play off in Dempsey's character, leading the audience to know from the start which way her heart leads. It doesn't help that her skeleton - a husband she left some seven years ago in what can only be an allusion to 'The Seven Year Itch' as the time difference played no realistic role in their relationship - is a husband who was also her childhood sweetheart.
Lucas plays the country-born jilted ex-lover to a great degree, but literally has no chemistry with Witherspoon. Dempsey - the fiancee - does little besides act as a cause for Witherspoon's bickering with Lucas.
Add in stereotypes: the gay country lad who hides his secret but then is outed by one of his supposed 'best friends' during a drunken tizzy; the bar/pool scene with Sweet Home Alabama by Skynyrd in the background; the fat man with a supposedly comic mullet; the childhood friend who's now the local sheriff; the big-city mayor with a secret bias against country-folk; the old faithful hound dog who died while the main character was gone and his replacement; the husband's got a secret passion that's moving him beyond his country roots; the father with a penchant for Civil War re-enactments; the giving mother who dreamed of bigger things for her daughter than being stuck in BFE.... there are more.
It's like the writers just grabbed different items that sounded good, threw them in a blender and hit frappe'.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A girl who fled the countryside to make something out of herself in New York City has to return home to clear up some skeletons in the closet before getting married.
Stars: Reese Witherspoon * Patrick Dempsey * Fred Ward * Candice Bergen * Josh Lucas
Review: Overblown hyperbolic caricatures surround the three main cast members - Dempsey, Witherspoon, and Lucas. Witherspoon - a capable actress given the right script and cast (Fear and Legally Blonde are perhaps her best roles, imo) - is given little to play off in Dempsey's character, leading the audience to know from the start which way her heart leads. It doesn't help that her skeleton - a husband she left some seven years ago in what can only be an allusion to 'The Seven Year Itch' as the time difference played no realistic role in their relationship - is a husband who was also her childhood sweetheart.
Lucas plays the country-born jilted ex-lover to a great degree, but literally has no chemistry with Witherspoon. Dempsey - the fiancee - does little besides act as a cause for Witherspoon's bickering with Lucas.
Add in stereotypes: the gay country lad who hides his secret but then is outed by one of his supposed 'best friends' during a drunken tizzy; the bar/pool scene with Sweet Home Alabama by Skynyrd in the background; the fat man with a supposedly comic mullet; the childhood friend who's now the local sheriff; the big-city mayor with a secret bias against country-folk; the old faithful hound dog who died while the main character was gone and his replacement; the husband's got a secret passion that's moving him beyond his country roots; the father with a penchant for Civil War re-enactments; the giving mother who dreamed of bigger things for her daughter than being stuck in BFE.... there are more.
It's like the writers just grabbed different items that sounded good, threw them in a blender and hit frappe'.
Overall: Bad
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Fool's Gold (2007)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A young couple seek Spanish treasure in the Florida Keys while being pursued by a hip-hop mogul hungry for more money.
Stars: Kate Hudson * Matthew McConaughey * Ray Winstone * Donald Sutherland * Alexis Dziena * Ewen Bremner
Review: A disappointment. I like McConaughey - sometimes called the poor man's Tom Cruise - and I like Donald Sutherland. Hudson can be alright sometimes, like in Almost Famous and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (the previous pairing of her and MM). Winstone and Bremner are solid character actors given decent roles. But the story loses its grip with Dziena and the hip-hop mogul Biggs Bunny and his hired goons (Malcolm Jamal-Warner of the Cosby Show puts in an appearance).
Okay, to be honest, it starts losing its grip earlier. Flynn (McConaughey) and Alfonz (Bremner) accidentally set fire to his boat at the same time Hudson (playing McConaughey's love interest, Tess) is filing for divorce. He's been searching for lost treasure and owes a large sum of money to a hip-hop mogul who bought his own island. He tries to prove he found the location to Biggs Bunny (inspiring name) but the mogul sends him out to be killed; the goons chain him to an anchor, then proceed to get shot by Flynn in comical fashion. Flynn falls off the boat, sinks, and comically performs underwater hops to grab the fallen gun, and shoots the chain freeing himself. He proceeds to get picked up by four partiers - who throw him a beer before they pick him up - and they rush him to court for his divorce proceedings.
Sounds impressive, but it ain't.
Flynn and Tess enlist the aid of her boss - Donald Sutherland - whose air-headed teenage (I'm not sure if she's supposed to be a teen or early twenties) daughter (Dziena) is visiting. Once the father-daughter pair sign on for the adventure, Bremner also joins the fun. While they pursue the treasure, Bunny and his hired help enlist the aid of another treasure-hunter, played by Winstone, to find the ship on their own.
Drawn by the prospect of being rich - and their smouldering passion for each other (presumably written in the screenplay but not apparent on-screen) - Tess and Flynn fall back into each other's arms - again in comic fashion. I think the director honestly had no idea when to be humourous and when not to be. Moments of passion become near-farcical. Thugs become oafish, and hip-hop mogul is hard to fathom to begin with. Characters are not true to their natures, and those natures do not change from the beginning of the film. While distracting, the only bright spot in the movie - which could've definitely been a more interesting lead angle - is the father-daughter dynamic between Sutherland and Dziena. Unfortunately, cast as the backstory to the protagonists, both actors' performances are stilted and feel lacking.
And when the daughter unexpectedly shows up at the big climax of the movie to save the day, it feels hollow because once again, characters are not true to themselves.
Bad writing. Stilted dialogue. Poor comedic timing.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A young couple seek Spanish treasure in the Florida Keys while being pursued by a hip-hop mogul hungry for more money.
Stars: Kate Hudson * Matthew McConaughey * Ray Winstone * Donald Sutherland * Alexis Dziena * Ewen Bremner
Review: A disappointment. I like McConaughey - sometimes called the poor man's Tom Cruise - and I like Donald Sutherland. Hudson can be alright sometimes, like in Almost Famous and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (the previous pairing of her and MM). Winstone and Bremner are solid character actors given decent roles. But the story loses its grip with Dziena and the hip-hop mogul Biggs Bunny and his hired goons (Malcolm Jamal-Warner of the Cosby Show puts in an appearance).
Okay, to be honest, it starts losing its grip earlier. Flynn (McConaughey) and Alfonz (Bremner) accidentally set fire to his boat at the same time Hudson (playing McConaughey's love interest, Tess) is filing for divorce. He's been searching for lost treasure and owes a large sum of money to a hip-hop mogul who bought his own island. He tries to prove he found the location to Biggs Bunny (inspiring name) but the mogul sends him out to be killed; the goons chain him to an anchor, then proceed to get shot by Flynn in comical fashion. Flynn falls off the boat, sinks, and comically performs underwater hops to grab the fallen gun, and shoots the chain freeing himself. He proceeds to get picked up by four partiers - who throw him a beer before they pick him up - and they rush him to court for his divorce proceedings.
Sounds impressive, but it ain't.
Flynn and Tess enlist the aid of her boss - Donald Sutherland - whose air-headed teenage (I'm not sure if she's supposed to be a teen or early twenties) daughter (Dziena) is visiting. Once the father-daughter pair sign on for the adventure, Bremner also joins the fun. While they pursue the treasure, Bunny and his hired help enlist the aid of another treasure-hunter, played by Winstone, to find the ship on their own.
Drawn by the prospect of being rich - and their smouldering passion for each other (presumably written in the screenplay but not apparent on-screen) - Tess and Flynn fall back into each other's arms - again in comic fashion. I think the director honestly had no idea when to be humourous and when not to be. Moments of passion become near-farcical. Thugs become oafish, and hip-hop mogul is hard to fathom to begin with. Characters are not true to their natures, and those natures do not change from the beginning of the film. While distracting, the only bright spot in the movie - which could've definitely been a more interesting lead angle - is the father-daughter dynamic between Sutherland and Dziena. Unfortunately, cast as the backstory to the protagonists, both actors' performances are stilted and feel lacking.
And when the daughter unexpectedly shows up at the big climax of the movie to save the day, it feels hollow because once again, characters are not true to themselves.
Bad writing. Stilted dialogue. Poor comedic timing.
Overall: Bad
Monday, July 7, 2008
Hancock (2008)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A washed-up superhero reforms himself with the aid of a public relations agent.
Stars: Will Smith * Jason Bateman * Charlize Theron
Review: As everyone else notes in their reviews of this movie, this could've been an excellent deconstructionist take on the superhero movies - and in the summer of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II, and The Dark Knight what a coup that could've been.
Peter Berg's The Kingdom was excellent. The Rundown is a movie I still repeatedly watch. Friday Night Lights was good, but not a standout high school football movie.
Add in Will Smith, and it should be a no-brainer.
But what the two concocted is horrible. There's no single coherent plot throughout the movie. (Which can probably be blamed on the five years of development hell prior to its release.)
Plot 1: Drunk superhero gets a makeover
Plot 2: Drunk superhero is alone in the world and rejects it as it rejects him. He makes friends and works to improve.
Plot 3: Drunk superhero is one of a pair of angels/demigods/gods with the other being his wife who left him 80 years earlier after a vicious attack by humans.
Plot 4: Drunk superhero is a god who lives among people and is supposed to protect them. He was created simultaneously with a partner that his supposed to join him in life, make him mortal and allow him to experience life after millenia living as their protector.
Plot 5: PR man who believes in a charity he's attempting to create that will heal the world meets a drunken superhero. PR man has a hot wife who gives the drunk superhero odd looks.
Plot 6: A hidden society of god-killers has been working to eliminate them all and only two remain, a drunk amnesiac and one that remains hidden.
Plot 7: A housewife with a hidden secret has her former lover reappear in her life, threatening to expose her to her new family.
Honestly, any one of these plots could've been a great center of a movie if the other six - and I believe there are more I could write up - did not continuously show up and distract. Not only that, there are hints and lines that would serve to increase a layered back story, but they're all hit and miss - a line during the showdown and constantly referring to 'they' serve as remnants of a backstory that could've really taken this movie to another level.
The special effects are poor to mediocre. A hellish, freakish storm appears in downtown LA and does no damage - the damage comes from the combat between the two superheroes. When the superheroes are around each other, there's supposed to be heat - it is apparent in two scenes, but not in several others where they are together. Honestly, if a man's head is shoved up another's ass a) the insertee would be in the hospital for months b) the inserted would be dead of asphyxia in minutes. The constant screaming near the end - Theron and Smith - goes on way too long.
This movie could've been so much more. As it is, it's a waste.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A washed-up superhero reforms himself with the aid of a public relations agent.
Stars: Will Smith * Jason Bateman * Charlize Theron
Review: As everyone else notes in their reviews of this movie, this could've been an excellent deconstructionist take on the superhero movies - and in the summer of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II, and The Dark Knight what a coup that could've been.
Peter Berg's The Kingdom was excellent. The Rundown is a movie I still repeatedly watch. Friday Night Lights was good, but not a standout high school football movie.
Add in Will Smith, and it should be a no-brainer.
But what the two concocted is horrible. There's no single coherent plot throughout the movie. (Which can probably be blamed on the five years of development hell prior to its release.)
Plot 1: Drunk superhero gets a makeover
Plot 2: Drunk superhero is alone in the world and rejects it as it rejects him. He makes friends and works to improve.
Plot 3: Drunk superhero is one of a pair of angels/demigods/gods with the other being his wife who left him 80 years earlier after a vicious attack by humans.
Plot 4: Drunk superhero is a god who lives among people and is supposed to protect them. He was created simultaneously with a partner that his supposed to join him in life, make him mortal and allow him to experience life after millenia living as their protector.
Plot 5: PR man who believes in a charity he's attempting to create that will heal the world meets a drunken superhero. PR man has a hot wife who gives the drunk superhero odd looks.
Plot 6: A hidden society of god-killers has been working to eliminate them all and only two remain, a drunk amnesiac and one that remains hidden.
Plot 7: A housewife with a hidden secret has her former lover reappear in her life, threatening to expose her to her new family.
Honestly, any one of these plots could've been a great center of a movie if the other six - and I believe there are more I could write up - did not continuously show up and distract. Not only that, there are hints and lines that would serve to increase a layered back story, but they're all hit and miss - a line during the showdown and constantly referring to 'they' serve as remnants of a backstory that could've really taken this movie to another level.
The special effects are poor to mediocre. A hellish, freakish storm appears in downtown LA and does no damage - the damage comes from the combat between the two superheroes. When the superheroes are around each other, there's supposed to be heat - it is apparent in two scenes, but not in several others where they are together. Honestly, if a man's head is shoved up another's ass a) the insertee would be in the hospital for months b) the inserted would be dead of asphyxia in minutes. The constant screaming near the end - Theron and Smith - goes on way too long.
This movie could've been so much more. As it is, it's a waste.
Overall: Bad
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Hideaway (1995)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie
Premise: Jeff Goldblum gets psychic and has a connection to a killer who is going after his daughter.
Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Christine Lahti, Alicia Silverstone, Jeremy Sisto, Alfred Molina, Rae Dawn Chong
Review: Kind of a run-of-the-mill paint-by-numbers thriller. Goldblum is resurrected after being dead for longer than normal, and brings back a psychic connection to a serial killer (surprise!) brought back by the same means. Whereas Goldblum (surprise again!) has a good connection to the afterlife, the killer (Sisto) has an evil connection. Of course the good and evil characters will meet and have a showdown.
Goldblum is - of course - channeling the self that he always puts forth, whether it's Independence Day or Jurassic Park. Honestly, his best role is still Mr. Frost as far as I'm concerned. Sisto is slightly better than forgettable as a slick trenchcoat killer. The rest of the cast puts in paycheck performances.
The special effects at the end are honestly a big letdown.
Overall: Bad
Premise: Jeff Goldblum gets psychic and has a connection to a killer who is going after his daughter.
Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Christine Lahti, Alicia Silverstone, Jeremy Sisto, Alfred Molina, Rae Dawn Chong
Review: Kind of a run-of-the-mill paint-by-numbers thriller. Goldblum is resurrected after being dead for longer than normal, and brings back a psychic connection to a serial killer (surprise!) brought back by the same means. Whereas Goldblum (surprise again!) has a good connection to the afterlife, the killer (Sisto) has an evil connection. Of course the good and evil characters will meet and have a showdown.
Goldblum is - of course - channeling the self that he always puts forth, whether it's Independence Day or Jurassic Park. Honestly, his best role is still Mr. Frost as far as I'm concerned. Sisto is slightly better than forgettable as a slick trenchcoat killer. The rest of the cast puts in paycheck performances.
The special effects at the end are honestly a big letdown.
Overall: Bad
Friday, July 4, 2008
Jaws 3 (Jaws 3-D) (1983)
Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A great white shark loose in SeaWorld. The Brody boys have to save the day.
Stars: Dennis Quaid, Lea Thompson, Louis Gossett, Jr., Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale
Review: Probably the worst in the series (Jaws and Jaws 2 are still the best shark films where the shark is the bad guy) as even Jaws the Revenge was nominally more intelligent than this outing (it did have Michael Caine after all).
It's got all the trappings of a Jaws film, music, occasional disappearances, big showdown scene. But it's surrounded by crap. People in a tank playing with an obviously fake shark. Simon MacCorkindale. A shark swimming backwards. Sharks with emotional connections, like love and revenge.
The 3-D effects are still obvious, even when edited for television or cable. The speargun, the teeth, the arm, the shark heading from the underwater tunnel to the control room, the breaking glass... And they really don't work when viewed in 2-D.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A great white shark loose in SeaWorld. The Brody boys have to save the day.
Stars: Dennis Quaid, Lea Thompson, Louis Gossett, Jr., Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale
Review: Probably the worst in the series (Jaws and Jaws 2 are still the best shark films where the shark is the bad guy) as even Jaws the Revenge was nominally more intelligent than this outing (it did have Michael Caine after all).
It's got all the trappings of a Jaws film, music, occasional disappearances, big showdown scene. But it's surrounded by crap. People in a tank playing with an obviously fake shark. Simon MacCorkindale. A shark swimming backwards. Sharks with emotional connections, like love and revenge.
The 3-D effects are still obvious, even when edited for television or cable. The speargun, the teeth, the arm, the shark heading from the underwater tunnel to the control room, the breaking glass... And they really don't work when viewed in 2-D.
Overall: Bad
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Meet the Spartans (2008)
Resources: IMDb * Wikipedia
Premise: A spoof of 300, with plenty of modern pop-culture references.
Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Stars: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Kevin Sorbo, Ken Davitian, Diedrich Bader
Review: Horrible. Not even a good parody along the lines of Not Another Teen Movie. Every once in a while the spoof can rise above the crap that is thrown into it, becoming something better. This is definitely not one of those times. Gags are over-used, parodies of real-life situations are ill-used; the film is simply not funny. Even if you cut out the majority of the scenes, leaving only those with Carmen Electra, and then watching it on mute, it still wouldn't be worth watching.
Avoid this movie at all costs if you want to keep your sanity.
Overall: Bad
Premise: A spoof of 300, with plenty of modern pop-culture references.
Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Stars: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Kevin Sorbo, Ken Davitian, Diedrich Bader
Review: Horrible. Not even a good parody along the lines of Not Another Teen Movie. Every once in a while the spoof can rise above the crap that is thrown into it, becoming something better. This is definitely not one of those times. Gags are over-used, parodies of real-life situations are ill-used; the film is simply not funny. Even if you cut out the majority of the scenes, leaving only those with Carmen Electra, and then watching it on mute, it still wouldn't be worth watching.
Avoid this movie at all costs if you want to keep your sanity.
Overall: Bad
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Happening (2008)
Resources: IMDb * Wikipedia
Premise: Mysterious event killing humans. How will Marky Mark survive?
Directed by: M Night Shyamalan
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Review: It's an M. Night Shyamalan film. Stylized heavily, it has his typical leaden atmosphere, and almost wooden performances from his actors. Wahlberg, who is great in unpretentious B-style movies like The Italian Job and Shooter, and Deschanel - ordinarily funny and invitingly cute and delightful in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Elf, seem to be wasted here. Leguizamo has a throwaway paycheck-style performance.
The plot itself centers on a neurotoxin emitted by plants that begins in the parks of major cities on the East Coast - which really makes very little sense considering the most threatened plants are in the rain forests, old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and other invasive industrialized regions. Not only that, the neurotoxin makes people kill themselves, but for some reason makes them walk backwards prior to doing so. While it builds a little foreboding, it makes no sense considering this is supposed to be at least a pseudo-scientific film, given the science and news that drive the end of the piece. People escape the cities, only to be dropped off in the middle of small towns where more plants surround them. The wind - ordinarily driven by movement of air pushed by pressure centers and other atmospheric phenomena, not shuffling grass or branches - which carries the toxin seemingly tracks populations of people.
Miraculously, this "sudden evolution" or "defense mechanism" peters out when moving beyond the range dictated by Shyamalan's focus. So that too, makes no sense.
I understand the psychological effect the film was going for. I get the "live while you are alive and love one another" mechanism. But someone really needs to start editing Shyalaman and paying attention to whether his films are actually going to be more than a 2000's attempt to bring back director-driven psychodramas. He's not Hitchcock, even though he's trying desperately to be.
Overall: Bad
Premise: Mysterious event killing humans. How will Marky Mark survive?
Directed by: M Night Shyamalan
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Review: It's an M. Night Shyamalan film. Stylized heavily, it has his typical leaden atmosphere, and almost wooden performances from his actors. Wahlberg, who is great in unpretentious B-style movies like The Italian Job and Shooter, and Deschanel - ordinarily funny and invitingly cute and delightful in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Elf, seem to be wasted here. Leguizamo has a throwaway paycheck-style performance.
The plot itself centers on a neurotoxin emitted by plants that begins in the parks of major cities on the East Coast - which really makes very little sense considering the most threatened plants are in the rain forests, old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and other invasive industrialized regions. Not only that, the neurotoxin makes people kill themselves, but for some reason makes them walk backwards prior to doing so. While it builds a little foreboding, it makes no sense considering this is supposed to be at least a pseudo-scientific film, given the science and news that drive the end of the piece. People escape the cities, only to be dropped off in the middle of small towns where more plants surround them. The wind - ordinarily driven by movement of air pushed by pressure centers and other atmospheric phenomena, not shuffling grass or branches - which carries the toxin seemingly tracks populations of people.
Miraculously, this "sudden evolution" or "defense mechanism" peters out when moving beyond the range dictated by Shyamalan's focus. So that too, makes no sense.
I understand the psychological effect the film was going for. I get the "live while you are alive and love one another" mechanism. But someone really needs to start editing Shyalaman and paying attention to whether his films are actually going to be more than a 2000's attempt to bring back director-driven psychodramas. He's not Hitchcock, even though he's trying desperately to be.
Overall: Bad
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Awake
Ressources: IMDb * Wikipedia
The premise: Guy under anesthetic is not fully under. While under surgery he finds out someone wants to kill him.
Directed by: Joby Harold
Actors: Terrence Howard, Jessica Alba, Lena Olin, Hayden Christensen, Fisher Stevens, Christopher McDonald, others
Review: Aside from a few jittery moments when the surgery is being performed, there's not a whole lot of energy. Christensen has always been wooden, with the one exception being his film with Kevin Kline, Life as a House. Jessica Alba is merely a pretty face, and cannot convey the malice inherent in her character. I've always liked Lena Olin. Terrence Howard is his usual "guy in a hard place but trying to be decent" self, similar to other roles.
While there's an opening factoid about anesthesia awareness, and the device is interestingly performed, there is very little suspense in the movie. Unless you weren't aware of the trailer, or the poster's dramatic dark tone, you'd expect something bad to be coming. In many movies, it's a buddy, or a girlfriend, or a seemingly throwaway character introduced early on but then brought back with a "strange revelatory twist". In this case, it's seemingly all three. But instead of going for the cliche'd "out to get his money", they're in the "out to get his organs" business.
Final analysis: Dry. Not suspenseful. See-through from about 10 minutes in. And we don't need to see close-ups of the pores on Christensen's face again.
Score: Bad
The premise: Guy under anesthetic is not fully under. While under surgery he finds out someone wants to kill him.
Directed by: Joby Harold
Actors: Terrence Howard, Jessica Alba, Lena Olin, Hayden Christensen, Fisher Stevens, Christopher McDonald, others
Review: Aside from a few jittery moments when the surgery is being performed, there's not a whole lot of energy. Christensen has always been wooden, with the one exception being his film with Kevin Kline, Life as a House. Jessica Alba is merely a pretty face, and cannot convey the malice inherent in her character. I've always liked Lena Olin. Terrence Howard is his usual "guy in a hard place but trying to be decent" self, similar to other roles.
While there's an opening factoid about anesthesia awareness, and the device is interestingly performed, there is very little suspense in the movie. Unless you weren't aware of the trailer, or the poster's dramatic dark tone, you'd expect something bad to be coming. In many movies, it's a buddy, or a girlfriend, or a seemingly throwaway character introduced early on but then brought back with a "strange revelatory twist". In this case, it's seemingly all three. But instead of going for the cliche'd "out to get his money", they're in the "out to get his organs" business.
Final analysis: Dry. Not suspenseful. See-through from about 10 minutes in. And we don't need to see close-ups of the pores on Christensen's face again.
Score: Bad
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