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Young Speed Racer has always had a big dream of being the greatest racer in the world and living up to the high standards set by his father in the production of racing cars and his older brother, Rex. As Speed has gotten older, he’s able to face that dream, though he believes his brother Rex to have been killed living out his dream. Now Speed and his family have the chance to be part of a huge racing conglomerate, Royalton Industries, but he turns it down, because even though he knows it could be a big personal gain, in the end it’s at the expense of what he and his family believe in with this sport. Speed ends up being recruited by a secret agency to root out the corruption and at the same time, bring back some glory to the sport.
Speed Racer is the latest film from The Wachowski Brothers (at the time they were still brothers anyway) who of course gave us The Matrix trilogy, and were executive producers of the adaptation of V For Vendetta. With Speed Racer their goal was to make a family film but something that pushed their own filmmaking skills in some new directions. And while Speed Racer certainly has it’s roots in other films (I’m thinking things like Flash Gordon, Popeye, Dick Tracy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and damn near anything that Tim Burton does) it goes further than any of those ever did (no doubt by technological advancements) literally making a live-action anime that’s a sight and sound sensory overload. I can honestly say, I’ve never seen anything quite like this from American filmmakers before.
And all the while, they do it by staying true to their source material. For many of us, the original animated Speed Racer was our first exposure to Japanese animation (or anime for those that don’t know the term) and I know as a kid weened on cartoons from Warner Brothers, Filmation and Hanna-Barbera, it was something totally new and exciting. Looking back at the cartoon now, it’s hokey and corny, and the movie certainly replicates that and even though, it’s visually and aurally amped up by a factor of ten, at it’s core, it’s absolutely true to it, even maintaining the innocence that I got from it.
Now I really enjoyed this, but it’s not without a criticism and mine is that it’s a little too long. The Wachowskis do their best to keep it all moving at a rapid clip, even employing a new editing style that has it’s own rhythm to it, but still this probably could’ve been shortened by a good ten or fifteen minutes (right now the movie weighs in at 2 hours and 15 minutes long).
The Wachowskis have a good solid cast here, with Emile Hirsch in the title role and backed up by Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman and Matthew Fox amongst others. And while no one here is going to win any awards for what they’ve done, I have to give them credit for fully handing themselves over to the Wachowskis and trusting in their vision. I could see for a lot of people as a bone of contention being the characters of Speed’s little brother Spritle and his pet monkey Chim-Chim, and yet again, they’re true to the cartoon- sometimes you just hate them, sometimes they’re as funny as can be and sometimes their humor is just the pure groaner variety, but that was the same way as it was in the source as well. I really like the cast and give special kudos to both Sarandon and Goodman for some bit of weight here, especially Goodman who’s no stranger to playing an over-the-top character by any means. He’s played Fred Flinstone and any number of his characters that he’s done for the Coen Brothers can just as easily be seen as living cartoons, and Pops Racer is just another notch in his repertoire, but still he’s fun and it sure looked like he had fun here (at least to me).
Now with all this said, and again I really enjoyed this (though I’ll certainly grant that I was predisposed to as well- this was the one that I was most looking forward to seeing this season just to see what new stuff the Wachowskis had in mind), I find this hard to recommend unless you’re really, really open to it. There’s so many strikes against it as far as a general audience goes, that if you’re coming into it with any sort of bias against it, there’s everything there to feed into it- there’s the anime angle, there’s the CGI angle, there’s it’s explosion of color, there’s the corniness and there’s the whole thing that many have against the Wachowskis for the second and third Matrix films (and I’m not one of them, I’m pretty much ready to go toe-to-toe with any one that hates those movies at any time). So seriously, if you have that anti-bias on any of those levels, stay home, don’t bother. But if you’re open to some new stuff and if you’re a fan of the original cartoon (corniness and all), I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to see it in a theatre. And I was lucky enough to see this in a room with digital projection as well, so the experience was even better, actually seeing this in a way that will be even better than what I could have at home.
I’m expecting this one to be pretty polarizing, and can already picture the critics on the weekend movie shows (Ebert & Roeper and Reel Talk just chopping this one up in a big way), but I thought it was a lot of fun and look forward to watching it again and again when it makes it’s way home.
In 1988, a cool and different little genre film premiered called Alien Nation this movie which sprang from the mind of Rockne S. O’Bannon told the story of how an immense group of alien slaves (over 250,000) found themselves stranded on Earth and had now been incorporated into our society. The movie starred James Caan as Detective Matt Sykes and Mandy Patinkin as his alien partner, George Francisco, and it’s nice and different take on the cop/buddy film but with a genre twist.
The movie as a pretty moderate success and in 1989, a fledgling FOX TV network took the movie and had it modified to be a weekly series (and if memory serves, it ran on Monday nights). The series was spearheaded by producer/writer/director Kenneth Johnson who, like Rockne O’Bannon, comes with an impressive genre pedigree (O’Bannon was also a big contributer to the 80s revival of The Twilight Zone, but he’s far more famous for creating the world of Farscape). Kenneth Johnson was behind such TV hits as V and The Incredible Hulk and had worked on The Bionic Woman and The Six MIllion Dollar Man.
The series starred Gary Graham as Matthew Sykes (certainly far and away a different presence than James Caan) and Eric Pierpoint as George Francisco, and these guys were really a good team on the show, I actually preferred them over the theatrical version. And while science fiction shows have really progressed since this premiered, for the time that it was on, it was certainly something that really hadn’t been seen on TV before.
I used to watch the show regularly and I was disappointed that it was only cancelled after one season, but certainly give Fox credit for sticking with this at the time and obviously for bringing it back in a series of movies (and no, I’m not one of these guys who’s going to jump on an anti-FOX bandwagon because their genre series gets cancelled).
After the series was cancelled (and on a cliffhanger no less) FOX commissioned Johnson and company for a TV movie to let them wrap everything up, that movie Dark Horizon covered a number of things, another Tenctonese ship in space looking at Earth as the spot where 250,000 of their slave class had been misplaced, the danger that the settled Tenctonese were facing from a secret virus developed by a purist political group, and further development and near resolution of the relationship that was always being teased at between Sykes and a Tenctonese doctor named Kathy (played by Terri Treas). It’s a fun film, especially if you used to watch the show. I know when I watched this, it was literally the first time I’d even given Alien Nation any thought over the years, and I have to say, I had a very pleasant time re-living this again.
This was a success for FOX and the following year, another movie came out, Body And Soul, and with this film, we sort of drop back to an expanded TV episode, this one centering around a Tenctonese/Human hybrid…
In Millennium, George’s son, Buck, who’s displayed Tenctonese loyalist qualities throughout the run, gets drawn into a cult, with of course Sikes and Francisco out to uncover the secret.
In The Enemy Within, George has to confront a some of his own prejudices after investigating the death of a lower class of Tenctonese.
And in The Udara Legacy, we get a story involving how some of the Newcomers who’ve adjust well to their new world are now committing crimes and find out if there’s a connection to the Udara, a segment of the Tenctonese who’s committed themselves to overthrowing their Overseers.
I think your satisfaction with the movies themselves will just come from whether you’re a fan of the show, though there is enough here in these films to tell you the background and overall story without having seen the first season, these do all seem now almost a little too late 80s cop/buddy fare and a modern genre fan (who’s never seen any of these shows before) might see this stuff as almost a little hokey or corny compared to shows that they see now. Well, that’s your TV history for your… when the series was on, cable wasn’t yet the beast it was today, and FOX had yet to discover American Idol gold… and they were still trying all sorts of stuff to see what would hit. I think overall, these movies are some good fun, and if you were a fan of the show, then by all means, look at picking this set up, because FOX has done a real nice job with the set.
First off, they all look fantastic, far better than you ever saw them on broadcast. I was particularly taken by the visual effects around the Tenctonese slave ship in Dark Horizon and just how crisp it looked here. The presentation is full-frame so for you folks looking for anamorphic widescreen, this was made before that was going on.
Kenneth Johnson provides commentary for all five of the movies, and Johnson is just as sharp as can be when talking about these films. He’s willing to go into technical detail as well as a little bit of personal discussion. As much fun as the movies are themselves to watch, they’re even more fun to watch with Johnson’s commentary tracks and getting a glimpse into both his production style and what it takes to shoot a TV movie.
But there’s more… Each movie also features a making of featurette that’s not the slickly produced things that you see, no what you have here is literally home movies made around the shooting of each film. These are all shot by a woman on Johnson’s staff, and here Johnson provides commentary for these films. After I saw the first of these for Dark Horizon (which was about 20-25 minutes long), I’d really thought I’d gotten a nice little bonus here.
There’s also extensive photo galleries for each film, much of these from Kenneth Johnson’s on collection, and these were pretty cool with the added bonus of seeing photos from recent Alien Nation cast reunions, so you’ve got a chance to see what Gary Graham, Eric Pierpoint, and the rest of the cast look like now. I’m not usually that big on photo galleries on DVD sets, but for this set, well these just go beyond the normal studio publicity stills and as such are a great part of seeing some of the history and production of this show.
This set gets a big thumbs up here, though I recognize the fact that it still may not be for everybody. Genre fans that like the old show shouldn’t hesitate for a moment here. Genre fans who have a sense of perspective and an appreciation of what was in the past will probably like this as well. After that, it’s hard to say who will like the set, but I can at least tell you that I think it’s fantastic. Kudos to FOX for a job well done…
Billionaire munitions manufacturer Tony Stark is living the good life, enjoying a bit of a hedonistic lifestyle from profiteering from his weapons sales. He has his justifications for it and he’s proud of it, and then one day it all goes to hell. After demonstrating his newest weapon, a landscape altering super-missile called The Jericho in the Mid-East, Stark is ambushed by a terrorist group called The Ten Rings, and taken captive where he is forced, along with another scientist named Yensin, to re-create the Jericho for his captors. Stark has different plans though, and instead makes for himself an incredible suit of armor that he eventually uses to take out this cell of The Ten Rings and free himself. Once he’s made it back home, Stark has experienced enough of a life change to want to bring his weapons-manufacturing to a close, and yet still secretly perfecting the armor that he created, now wanting to take on the role of protector. This all to the disdain of Tony’s partner in Stark Enterprises, Obadiah Stane, who has his own sinister agenda.
Jon Favreau’s adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Iron Man is without a doubt, one of the most anticipated movies of the year. It’s been no secret how Favreau has immersed himself in the material and made himself accessible to fans, earnestly wanting to make the best possible movie that he can, and I think for the most part, he’s succeeded wildly. Iron Man being the first Marvel Comics property controlled by Marvel Entertainment, is a pretty entertaining film with a lot of promise of what’s to come from future Marvel properties handled by Marvel Entertainment.
Favreau’s immersion in the material has some great pay-offs to fans of the character (and I am definitely a fan of the character, Iron Man was always one of my favorites as a kid, with the version by David Michelinie and Bob Layton being in my mind the definitive version of the character) and nods to just about all of the major versions of the character, from the Stan Lee origin, to the Michelinie/Layton run and even up to the version presented by Marvel’s Ultimate line, there’s a little something of everything here, and yet it’s all accessible to those who know nothing of the character as well.
Favreau’s film is stylish yet not overbearing, and with the exception of three scenes that are there for more lowest common denominator laughs, it all works really well- fortunately those scenes don’t really cause any reverse sympathy towards the character, and so much of the rest of the film is spot-on that they’re pretty forgivable.
Favreau’s best move is in his casting, and here he’s picked actor Robert Downey Jr. to portray Tony Stark, and really that’s inspired casting. Downey’s own personal problems actually play into things that affect Stark in Iron Man comics continuity, and Downey has literally thrown himself into this. Personally speaking, I think it’s one of his best parts yet. Favreau’s got a good supporting cast here as well, with Gwyneth Paltrow playing Stark’s personal assistant, Pepper Potts, and Terence Howard playing his best friend, James Rhodes, both are solid here and in particular, Paltrow does a great job. Favreau’s even put himself in the movie as Happy Hogan, one of Stark’s bodyguards- and though Hogan had a bigger part in the comics continuity, Favreau chooses not to dwell on him too much here. The final bit of main casting goes to Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane, and again, it really looks like you have another actor here who’s just eating up the part he’s in and just adding to Bridges’ own incredible diversity to what he’s done on-screen (there’s one point where I’m watching this, just enjoying Bridges’ performance and remembering this guy played The Dude in the Coen Brother’s The Big Lebowski, just thinking of the extremes that Bridges has covered in his career).
The visual effects are, of course, another big star of the film and they’re really nicely done. I particularly enjoy watching the character take flight. There’s one scene where Stark is being “suited up” so to speak by all sorts of robots attaching the armor onto him, and it made me think back to back in the day in the comics when the character used to carry the armor with him in a brief case, where he could just suit up like he was putting on another set of clothes. It’s sorta ironic in a way, because the method used in the movie certainly looks cool, but considering the technology in the Marvel Universe, the old way would actually be far more advanced, and that of course could even be extrapolated now to a point where the character, technically speaking, now wouldn’t even need a suit of armor any more to function, but I digress… that’s certainly a discussion for another time…
Still though, Iron Man is a whole lot of big-ass fun, and there’s weight here to both it’s main character and his ideas beyond just the action of the film. Highly, highly recommended… and whatever you do, stay past the end credits for one last scene, that certainly is worth seeing.
As our story starts, it’s 1997 and the place is Seattle, Washington. A man named Jon Forster has been arrested for serial killings (as the Seattle Slayer) and is being sent to jail by the damning testimony put together by FBI forensic psychologist Jack Gramm. As Forster is found guilty, he looks over to Gramm in the courtroom and mouthes the words “Tick tock, Doc.” 9 years later, on the day that Forster is to be put to death, a new crime with the same M.O. as the Settle Slayer is committed, and Jack Gramm receives a phone call telling him that he has only 88 minutes left to live, ending with the words “Tick tock, Doc.” Now Jack Gramm must put together the pieces and keep himself alive over this short, but significant to Gramm, period of time.
88 Minutes is a new thriller from director Jon Avnet starring Al Pacino in the role of Dr. Jack Gramm, and it’s premise is pretty good, but it’s execution is pretty preposterous and almost laughable in a lot of places, but for me anyway still watchable just for Al Pacino, doing the stuff that Al Pacino does best, but keep in mind, that is not a recommendation for the fim.
What it suffers from is the same thing that a lot of Hollywood thrillers suffer from today, and that’s being overly plotted to death to give out the guise of complexity, when what it boils down to is just being ridiculous and coincidental in how everything falls into place. The majority of the film runs in a bit of pseudo-real time, though there’s nothing on-screen that indicates that, you’re just reminded of it by phone calls and other means as the story unfolds. Now this isn’t a bad way to do this at all, but here it just feels that the pacing is almost casual in how stuff unfolds, and at least in my eyes, if you’re going to do something like this, things should seem just a little more frantic than how they play on-screen.
Jack Gramm, not only works for the FBI but is also a successful college professor who teaches forensic psychology, and his students are also drawn into the events on-screen. This sets up a number of the coincedences and red herrings here that really plays into the implausibility of things, and yet oddly, I still had fun with this.
And most of that fun comes with Al Pacino. Now I’m sure that many will see this and just not think this is great work from him and in more than all likelihood, 88 Minutes is Al Pacino cashing a paycheck, but he still throws himself into this, but more as Al Pacino rather than playing a real character (and maybe it’s not entirely for the paycheck either, as another movie, Righteous Kill from director Jon Avnet is coming, teaming Pacino and Robert DeNiro together again, but I digress…). And I’m a Pacino fan so for that, it’s fun for me anyway. Pacino’s backed up with some pretty good players here including Neal MacDonough as Forster, Amy Brenneman, Leelee Sobieski, Alicia Witt, Deborah Kara Unger and William Forsythe, with MacDonough being the best of the bunch, and Amy Brenneman playing the hardest working assistant ever seen on-screen (to me, her part is almost a running gag here, the moment Jack needs anything he calls here and it comes up right away). It’s a good cast overall, it just needs a better movie to be in.
Like I said, I cannot recommend this, though if you appreciate the aspects of the character that Al Pacino has become (and a lot of that is due to an incredible impression of Pacino that comedian Craig Gass has done, made popular on The Howard Stern Show), then you might have some fun with this like I did, though I’d expect that most won’t. The biggest saving grace for me anyway is that I got to see it for free, having gotten “movie money” for this in recently buying a Special Edition DVD package for an earlier and far, far better Al Pacino film, “… And Justice For All”. Unless you did what I did, I really cannot say to make the trip to a theatre to see this, just wait for a cable run of the film. Hopefully, Avnet and Pacino will score better when Righteous Kill premieres later in the year.
Thomas Ludlow is a driven police detective, having suffered his own personal tragedy, he’s now extra hard on himself and he focuses it all into his work, doing things that other cops wouldn’t do to see that justice is served. He’s effective in his ways, and though those ways could be professionally costly to him, he’s well-protected by his direct superior, Captain Jack Wander head of L.A.’s Vice Special unit. Ludlow’s methods have cost him the friendship of his former partner, Washington, who he’s found out is informing to Internal Affairs. One afternoon, Ludlow trails Washington to simply get in his face about this, but at the conveninece store where he catches up to him, it’s suddenly under attack by two masked men, viciously killing Washington in the process. Things look bad for Tom Ludlow, because of this, and though Ludlow is protected yet again by his captain, his own sense of justice won’t let him rest on this. Now, working with an independent detective named Paul Diskant, Ludlow seeks to find the real killers of his former partner, unaware of where the whole thing will lead him.
Street Kings is the second movie from director David Ayer, who previously made Harsh Time with Christian Bale and before that wrote the Antoine Fuqua film, Training Day starring Denzel Washington, so Ayer is no stranger to this sort of hard-hitting crime drama. I thought Harsh Time was decent but somewhat lacking, but think he’s more than made up for it with Street Kings which is extremely well-paced, well-acted and very driven in getting it’s point home.
While there’s elements of the film that aren’t anything new, the way Ayer has put everything together still comes together as an effective crime thriller with one terrific ending.
Ayer’s cast really carries the day here. Keanu Reeves plays Ludlow, and manages a way to keep himself both dark and also the focus of the audience’s concern. Forest Whitaker is quite good as Jack Wander, and the scenes that both have together, especially near the film’s climax are really nicely done. Chris Evans, who put himself more on the acting map with Danny Boyle’s Sunshine goes up another notch here as Diskant, and working with Reeves, they actually make a pretty good on-screen team. The rest of the cast, filled out by guys like Hugh Laurie, Jay Mohr and Cedric The Entertainer all play their parts very well. Honestly, I don’t have a single complaint about this cast in the slightest.
If you like hard-hitting cop/crime thrillers, well then Street Kings to fill that bill. Like I said above, there’s nothing overtly original here, but it’s all put together in a very entertaining way, and it certainly gets a recommendation here.
Another review that I didn’t get posted because of the future of the show being in flux, having now listed to the latest episode, I want to sort of time this right and put it up before the show with a couple of additional notes coming from having just watched it again on DVD as well…
In a small northeastern town, a devastating storm has just hit, causing some property damage as well as knocking out some power. Local artist David Drayton has taken his son into town to stock up on a few things at the local grocery store, when suddenly, this encompassing mist starts to come through the town, with one of the townspeople running into the store, screaming that something in the mist is killing people. After the gathered people in the grocery store see this for themselves, they hunker down in the store, trying to figure what exactly is out there and what’s really happening.
And so the latest movie from director Frank Darabont begins, and my stretch of seeing great movies continues. The Mist is Darabont’s third adaptation of a Stephen King story (the other two are The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile) and with The Mist, Darabont travels to more horrific material than what he’s tackled before. I’ve never read the King story, but from what I’ve been able to gather, it’s almost like King is wanting to dabble in some H.P. Lovecraft type of territory. From what one of my friends has told me, Darabont has changed the ending into something way more decisive and in my opinion, much more horrifying as well.
I really like stories that involve a group of people in a confined space, and The Mist certainly delivers that in spades, with about 90% of the film taking place inside this grocery store. It allows for some real intensity in storytelling and obviously puts a much greater emphasis on the performances of the actors involved. Darabont’s style here is quite a bit different from what he’s done before as his other movies have a little more clear theatrics involved. Darabont employs a rawer style here, using more handheld photography, but not going overboard by any means, and in my opinion anyway, it actually makes this fantastic situation seem more real.
Darabont has a great cast here, headed up by actor Thomas Jane as Drayton. Jane’s the rock of the film and his final moments in the film are about the best I’ve ever seen him in a movie, really delivering a gut-wrenching performance over the ultimate horror that occurs. Others in the cast include Andre Braugher, William Sadler, Laurie Holden, Frances Sternhagen and Jeffrey DeMunn. Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden is also part of the cast, as a bible-thumper who believes this entire situation to be the judgement day at hand, and in my opinion anyway, she’s the weakest link of the film, starting off already as a bit of a hateful person and just keeping that same note throughout the film. In her part, either in the direction of the character or else by casting someone else, had that character been made a little more even-keeled starting out and grown into the hateful person they became, that would’ve actually added more to the horror of the situation.
But still, this is a very good movie, and really I can live with Harden’s performance here. What was worse was the actual audience that we saw this with, which was one of the worst audiences that I’d seen a movie with in a long time- immature to the extreme, they’re the sort of audience that just makes a seasoned filmgoer like myself believe more and more that mass audiences really can’t handle a lot of unconventional stuff, or even mature stuff thrown at them. While I really enjoyed the film, this is one instance where I almost wish I could’ve waited to discover this one at home more than anything else. The Mist certainly does get a high recommendation, but just beware the audience that you see it with…
And now a little follow up (the above was written when the movie first came out), I just bought the 2-disk package on this last week and watched The Mist again last weekend. One of the highlights, actually the main reason to buy the 2-disk package of the film, is a “Director’s Cut” from Frank Darabont here which basically presents the film as he wanted to present it- in black and white. Darabont has a little introduction as to why he wanted to make the movie this way and I have to say, the final result is far superior to how it was originally shown. A black and white presentation, especially with a film like this, just adds to it’s creepiness and actually keeps your focus more on the entire piece. I plan to watch this again in color at some point in the future, but as far as I’m concerned, the black and white print is the way to see The Mist.
Also above, I mentioned my problems with Marcia Gay Harden in the film and after watching this again, I’m actually very cool with her performance now, and part of this… again… is probably due to the black and white presentation. Obviously I cannot recommend this enough.
On top of this, I’d highly encourage watching the featurettes on the disk as well, especially the Making of The Mist featurette- they talk to everyone about all aspects of the film. The most fun here though is with Frank Darabont himself who’s literally a kid in the candy store with this movie. And for those that might have a problem with the new ending (which I didn’t have a problem with the ending), no less than Stephen King himself says it’s a great ending and if he’d thought of it, he would’ve wrote it.
The Mist 2-Disk Special Edition is one great package, if you liked the movie in theatres, don’t hesitate for a moment to buy this package.
Ben Campbell is a young MIT student who’s got dreams of being a doctor and has just been accepted into Harvard Medical School. Unfortunately for Ben, the tuition and the living expenses are astronomical, and his only hopes right now rest on getting a coveted scholarship. Ben is brilliant though, and soon gets the attention of one of his professors, Micky Rosa, who drafts Ben onto a team of students who have been trained to use their math skills to count cards int he game of Blackjack. First hesitant to engage in the game, he’s soon persuaded by a fellow member of the team who Ben is very much attracted to. And soon, Ben gets sucked into the life, enjoying his new persona for his Las Vegas expeditions as well as all the perks that go with that, even though things start to suffer for him on a more personal front back at MIT. But eventually that new persona begins to catch up with Ben in Vegas, and something goes horribly wrong for him, threatening to destroy any life that he has at all, both as a student and a gambler.
21 from director Robert Luketic (who I’m not that familiar with) is based on the book Bringing Down The House (also something that I’m not that familiar with) and I expect that the book probably contains a little more meat than what the movie gives us. The movie, at least to me anyway, is just “OK.” It’s about 15-20 minutes too long and it suffers from it’s slow pace. A movie like this should really give you more of an idea of what it’s technique (in this case, counting cards) is more like, and while it tries, at the end, I still really don’t have any sort of good idea about how it works. They’ve got their way of presenting it in the movie, but to me it’s almost like the little girl reading The Golden Compass in the movie of that same name, it works because this is the way it’s supposed to and you’re just having to accept it that way. At the same time, there’s not much that comes as a big surprise in the film either, now that’s OK, as long as there’s a little style and panache and edge that goes with it, but 21 doesn’t quite want to do that, instead more creating something that fits it’s PG-13 rating and is a little more appealing to it’s targeted younger audience. For me anyway, this ended up being more having to endure it until the end rather than getting sucked into it.
Young actor Jim Sturgess (who I’m also not familiar with any of his past roles) plays Ben, and while I’m sure he’s what the filmmakers wanted here, for me anyway, he just didn’t do a whole lot to really make me care about him one way or the other. He’s typically nerdy in his MIT sections (scenes with him MIT nerd/geek friends are almost embarrassing to watch sometimes) and his Vegas transformation comes on as a bit sudden, it just didn’t quite connect with me. He’s backed up with some good performances from Kevin Spacey, Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Bosworth (this is the third movie now that Spacey and Bosworth have been in together). The Spaceman’s really good here as Micky Rosa, and I also really like Fishburne in his part as a Loss Prevention specialist for the Vegas casinos. Both of these guys suggest that there’s way more to what’s going on with this racket than what’s shown on screen, and I think that might’ve been a way more interesting story to see.
From what I’m gathering though, I think my opinion of the film is in more of a minority than most. Your own mileage may vary and you may very well enjoy it a great deal, for me though, this was another case of a great trailer, but a so-so film, a film that could’ve benefited from having a little more edge and style to it, as well as quicker pacing that would just make it more compelling to follow.
The time is 1970 and the place is London, England. Michael X, a Malcolm X-like black leader, is coming to prominence, but has both MI-5 and 6 on his tail for illegal activities, primarily drug trafficking, but they can’t do anything about it in courts because of pictures that he has of one of the Royal Family in a sexual indiscretion, held in a safe deposit box in a London bank. One up and coming MI-5 agent puts together a plan using a former model named Martine Love, who’s just been arrested for possession as she’s coming back into the country. Love has her own connections in the city and she goes to a few childhood friends, themselves no strangers to illegal activity to plan the job. These friends, run by a car dealer named Terry Leather, don’t have a clue to Martine’s real reasons, and look at this as the one big score that they’d need to get out of “the life” little suspecting that the bank holds much more than just this set of photos and large amounts of money.
And that’s the opening premise of The Bank Job the newest movie from veteran director Roger Donaldson, and let me say up front, this is really one impressive little film, extremely fast-paced with something different going on all the time. The action leading up to the actual robbery is some very nice set-up, doing a good job at establishing the characters of all involved, and once the robbery does take place, the pace really picks up further, as the secrets behind the robbery not only have mobsters involved, but also local police as well MI-5 and 6, right up to the very top of English government.
But with all that does go on in the film, none of it is confusing in the slightest, and the viewer never has any problem at all following all of the events as they unfold.
Donaldson’s got a very good cast here, led by Jason Statham as Terry Leather and Saffron Burrows as Martine Love, with the rest filled out by what I suspect to be a lot of top British character talent. Statham continues to impress me and his Terry Leather is a very grounded character, you won’t see him pulling off the fantastic moves that he has in some of his other films, here he more demonstrates that he is a good actor in addition to being a great action movie star. For most people, Statham will be the only actor that they really “know,” so it’s going to be really easy to buy what goes on with the rest.
This review is a little late in the game, as The Bank Job opened two weeks ago, the same time 10,000 B.C. opened, and this weekend was a bit of a dead one as far as new releases, so I knew I’d be able to come back and still see this in somewhat of a timely manner. The word on this was good from the start and I know for myself it’s opening weekend was a real toss-up between seeing this and 10,000 B.C. and so I opted for the bigger effects movie which I figured would have the better presentation, little suspecting what a disappointment 10,000 B.C. was going to be, but still better late than never at all (even though this had moved around at the theatre that I saw it in, going from a good room to one of the smaller rooms by the time I did see it). I’d still urge folks to seek this out, as it’s a great example of better heist movies out there, extremely well made and well performed, this one’s a whole lot of fun.
“Fiction is as just as real as reality - because you can see it.”
This line, spoken by one of the main characters of Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s 2008 remake of his own 1997 film, sums up the message of the film pretty nicely.
I had pretty high expectations walking into the theater. The original was fantastic, and forced me to consider the way I view media, which no film I had ever seen did before. I was thrilled when I sat in the back row, in my favorite seat, with about 8 other people in the theater with me. No screaming children, no one on cell phones. Because of this, I was really able to get into and enjoy the movie.
I’ll preface the rest of the review by saying this: This movie is definitely not for everyone. Four of the eight other people in the theater with me walked out within the first 45 minutes of the film. It definitely polarizes its audience.
Funny Games is about a upper middle-class family who are accosted by a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch psychopaths at their summer home and forced to play humiliating “games” in order to stay alive. The opening scene, to most people’s surprise, is extremely serene. Ann (Naomi Watts) and George Farber (Tim Roth) are driving with their son George Jr. (Devon Gearhart) to their summer house. They play guessing games with opera CDs, and then, abruptly, John Zorn’s song “Bonehead” blasts over the soundtrack, and in red, block-style lettering the title of the film is emblazoned onto the screen.
The film’s a scene-for-scene remake of the original, so it’s not treading new ground as far as the direction. The sets look exactly as they did in the 1997 version, and everything’s essentially the same. Where this film truly shines over the original is the casting. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play the traumatized parents brilliantly, and the pairing of Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet as the perfectly polite psychopaths Paul and Peter is awesome. Their innocent looks contrast their sociopathic tendencies.
There’s a cloud of nihilism that overcasts the entire film. There’s nothing wrong with the Farbers. They haven’t committed any real crimes, and they have a great familial bond. Paul and Peter chose them because they were next door. There’s an interaction that occurs between Paul and George Sr. just after the “games” begin. George asks, “Why?” and Paul replies quickly, “Why not?”. This is indicative of the message the film is trying to portray.
Funny Games is putting a mirror to the faces of the viewers, using the tropes of the genre to manipulate our feelings towards the film. Paul’s breaking of the fourth wall throughout the movie indicates this more than anything else. When Ann is searching for the family dog, Lucky, playing the ‘cold, warm, hot’ game with Paul, he looks at the camera and smirks. This fazed me the first time I saw the film, and took me out of the movie for a moment, forcing me to review what I’d watched so far, and more specifically, why I was watching it. What motivated me to come and watch this particular movie?
These are the questions Haneke is evoking when Paul acknowledges the film, saying things to the camera like “You’re on their side, aren’t you?”, making the audience look at who they were really behind. They came to a thriller to see the protagonists go through hell and come out the other side, so in a way, the viewer wants the villain to torture and harass the protagonists. His objective is to show you that by enjoying the film, you’re a part of it. The viewer is helping turn violence into entertainment, and Haneke delights in making his audience uncomfortable about watching his film.
My biggest problem with Funny Games is that I’ve seen it before. The message hasn’t changed at all. Although it’s still relevant today, it’s lost some of its force in the ten years between the films (especially with the success of the Saw series and its stance towards violence). Haneke’s retreading old ground here, and the question I kept asking was “Why?” There’s no reason, in my eyes, to remake this film. He’s said what he wanted to say already.
I enjoyed this movie pretty much from start to finish, but the message has been told before, by Michael himself in the original, as well as Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange. He’s not doing anything fresh, and as a fan of his work, I’m a bit disappointed that he isn’t putting his energy into new and more interesting projects. This is the only flaw I saw in this film, and were it not a remake, I would give it my full and uncompromising support.
In the near future, a deadly virus called the Reaper Virus breaks out in Scotland, which as a result, causes UK forces to erect a wall all around the nation, effectively quarantining them from the rest of the world. 30 plus years later in the year 2035, England feels the effects of what their actions has caused, with other nations turning their backs on them and the nation itself beginning to collapse under drastic economic conditions. And yet it begins to get worse, with an outbreak of Reaper Virus resurfacing in London. But continuous satellite scans of Scotland have revealed that there are a smattering of human survivors, leading officials to believe that there is a cure and that one of the architects of that cure, a Doctor Marcus Kane, still behind those walls was successful. Now, the best police operative in London, Eden Sinclair is charged to lead a team back into Scotland to find that cure.
And that’s the basic premise of Doomsday the newest movie from director Neil Marshall, who previously directed two other great genre films, the military/werewolf thriller Dog Soldiers, and the story of a spelunking trip gone awry, The Descent (my own pick as the second best movie of 2006). And at least for me, Doomsday is right up there with them, a movie that’s an homage to post-apocalyptic films of the past (in particular Escape From New York and the Mad Max movies, but a fun little ride all it’s own as well.
Marshall crams a hell of a lot in this nearly two hour film, and it’s clear to me that he, his cast and crew are having a great time with it. This isn’t just an homage to the films that I mentioned above, but also to the style of cool over-the-top B-movie, Grindhouse sort of action movies… hell, at the end of this, I thought Rodriguez and Tarantino should be inducting Marshall into the club.
There’s exploitation thrills galore in the movie, and it’s all conducted at a pretty fast pace. It absolutely looks terrific, with some really nice set pieces, including a cool gladitorial type of fight scene, and capping off with a nifty car chase that’s not quite up to what George Miller did in The Road Warrior (it’s just not as epic), but still filmed really well and just the thing that should cap off something like this. Marshall is really aided well here with the music of Tyler Bates that manages to have some echoes of John Carpenter’s music as well as some of the strains from 28 Days Later. Bates is really a rising star in film score composition and I can’t wait to hear what he does next.
Marshall’s got a really cool cast assembled here, with actress Rhona Mitra leading the way as Eden Sinclair. As far as I’m concerned, this is breakout stuff for Mitra- no she won’t win any sort of Oscar for this, but she certainly does establish herself as a presence in the film and she’s really committed herself to the over-the-top action in a big way. She’s backed up with a great assortment of UK talent, including Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell, Alexander Siddig, David O’Hara, Adrian Lister and Sean Pertwee amongst others. And again, at least for me, it looked like they were all just having a great time here.
Anyway, I just thought this was brilliant fun, not just as a good high-paced action piece, but also as a great mish-mash homage to all the films that obviously have influenced Neil Marshall as a filmmaker. For me, it was as much fun finding his references as it was just watching the action unfold, and oh was it so cool to see a film like this just come in and be this incredibly fun exploitation piece. On top of all of that, nothing but cool trailers leading the way, including The Incredible Hulk and another fun looking fright-fest called The Strangers. Between this and Funny Games this is probably one of the best weekends I’ll have at the movies all year. If you’re looking for something life-defining and dramatically weighty, look elsewhere, but if you’re wanting to see some good old unapologetic genre fun, Doomsday fills the bill (and for me, after such terrible genre fare as Jumper and 10,000 B.C. this was just what the doctor ordered). Highly, highly recommended…
As our movie begins, the Farber family, George, Ann and son George Jr. are traveling to their vacation home, ready to enjoy a quiet time away from home and be with friends. As they drive to their home, they see some of their neighbors with a couple of young men visiting with them, and they think nothing of it really. Eventually though, the two young men, dressed as though they’re a couple of rich boys ready to hang out at the tennis club, work their way to the Farber house, one helping George put his sailboat in the water and the other approaching Ann to borrow some eggs. The one borrowing the eggs, drops them and gets Ann to give him some more, starting to grate on her nerves in the process and then the other then comes into scene as both young men are chased back into the house by the Farber’s dog… and from there, a night of terror begins, as the young men force themselves upon the Farbers, injuring George, and then encouraging the family to play games with them leading up to a bet they made of whether or not the Farbers will be able to survive until the next morning.
And that is how Funny Games begins, but beware, the Funny Games of the title aren’t the “games” that the young men are “playing” with the Farbers, it’s more the game that director Michael Haneke is playing with the audience in this intense study of more how voyeuristic an audience gets with the presentation of extreme violence.
Funny Games is a direct remake of Haneke’s original German language version of the film. And when I say direct, it’s just that, shot for shot but this time cast with English speaking parts. I’ve been fortunate to have seen the original (I actually own it on DVD) and I was blown away by it the first time I saw it, and I honestly think that this new version is even more effective just by the fact that it is shot in English and as such, I’m not necessarily dividing my time watching the action and reading the subtitles (which I normally don’t have a problem doing anyway). Haneke has a definite message that he’s putting forward here and I very much admire how he does it, even though I may not necessarily agree with it (Lars von Trier is the same way, I may not agree with his message in many of his films, but I certainly respect how he does it, especially considering that he’s not part of the Hollywood “machine”).
Now when I tell you that the movie is extremely violent, it’s more in your perception of that violence than anything else as much of it is handled off-camera, except for one key point in the film, and that key point will be the point that will be the deciding factor for most of the audience, there they’ll either get it, or they’ll wonder what the hell they’ve been doing in the theatre for the last hour and a half. And though this moment is set up with prior scenes, it’ll still be the one that’s the deciding factor. Prior to this version of the film, I’ve only seen this movie home alone, so actually seeing this with an audience (albeit a small one) and hearing the reaction when the moment came up was actually satisfying, and really played into Haneke’s game, but concludes in a way that the audience doesn’t want it to conclude.
Haneke’s got an incredible cast at work here, Tim Roth and Naomi Watts are George and Ann and both performances are terrific and with Watts in particular I think it’s one of the best things that she’s done yet. Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett are the young men, and they’re very good in the parts of these unlikely villains, almost seeming fragile in appearance, and playing both cloyingly polite and sadistic at the same time.
Funny Games is certainly not for everyone, I’ll tell you that straight up. It’s definitely an art house movie and the audience for the movie has got to be ready to bring something to the table as well. If you’ve been able to watch such disturbing fare as The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover or Irreversible or Man Bites Dog and have been able to “get” those movies, then Funny Games should be right up your alley. It’s certainly right up mine and so far is an early contender for one of the best movies of 2008, at least in my eyes.
10,000 B.C. tells the story of a young warrior, D’Leh (pronounced Duh-lay) and a chosen female, Evolet and their tribe, the Egal (spelling). The Egal depend on hunting down Mammoths for their survival, and at the outset, D’Leh is out to take one down and then claim Evolet as his own. After that happens and D’Leh struggles through some personal issues of his own, the tribe is attacked by a group of fearsome warriors who abduct many of them to take them to work as slaves for their masters. D’Leh manages to avoid capture but Evolet is taken, and now D’Leh begin’s his journey to save her and along the way fulfill his destiny.
And with that, you have the premise of 10,000 B.C. the latest film from popcorn filmmaker Roland Emmerich, who at least in my eyes has seemed to suffer with his films since he and former partner Dean Devlin have broken up. That suffering continues with 10,000 B.C., a movie that ultimately proves more boring than anything else.
Sure there’s lots of big sequences and some great visual effects, but it doesn’t work at all when the characters are as dull as they are here and there’s nothing done with them to have any sort of fun with the film. I’ve read how others have problems with the historical inaccuracies in the film and really I could care less about that, if it at least would’ve tried to have been maybe more pulp fiction in its nature.
The Egal talk in the film and speak a broken English, but the way it’s spoken is more right out of a 50s or 60s Italian period epic. There’s nothing wrong with that if you’re watching a 50s or 60s Italian period epic, but this film seems like it’s trying for a higher ideal and as such you expect a little more. Mel Gibson did this quite well with Apocalypto keeping the tribe’s language their own and relying on the audience to read it as subtitles, what Gibson does well with that is at least let his characters have some natural qualities in their delivery. Zach Snyder does the opposite in 300 with all of the characters speaking English, but the language and performances are all so over-the-top that at the very least, they’re a lot of fun to listen to. Here, you halfway expect the language to be peppered with a few “hows” or “ughhs” and while I certainly wouldn’t want them speaking in a contemporary way, there’s still better ways to do it than as stiff as it comes off here.
But the characters themselves are just extremely boring, there’s nothing that seems “lived in” at all about the performances. One actress, Camilla Belle who plays Evolet, just looks entirely out of place even, and while some of that is by design with the nature of the character, it still shouldn’t come off as a Hollywood actress type who’s just scruffed herself up a bit, to me she comes off as a Lohan sister who’s just out of place in the film.
Another thing that both Apocalypto and 300 do right is embrace the pulp nature of their stories and both go way over-the-top with their violence and their attitudes towards their characters. They’re both R-rated films as well, and so certainly have the license to do so. 10,000 B.C. is PG-13 and as such, it seems like Roland Emmerich is trying his best to just not offend anyone, that’s all fine and dandy but it doesn’t really make for an exciting film. This, even being rated PG-13, could’ve done a few things with it’s action to make it a little more savage but just doesn’t even bother.
Omar Shariff does the narration for the film, and what it does is it keeps the viewer detached from the action. Sure, 300 does the same thing, but at least the narration is by one of the film’s actual characters and it does other things that keeps you drawn in. The narration here mainly just sets you up for enduring the events as they take place and does little to actually draw you in.
I think Emmerich’s heart is in the right place for making this, but he really needed others working with him that would at least make this a little more fun to watch, former partner Dean Devlin might’ve done that. As it is, 10,000 B.C. is right on the verge of being that sort of movie that it’s more fun to make fun of as you’re watching it than it is being any sort of adventure that has any sort of emotional resonance, and the final result is a film that’s more boring than anything else.
In Spain, the President of the united States is attending a summit on the global war on terror, and as he’s ready to give a speech to the citizens of a Spanish city, a shot fires from above and the President is struck down, as all hell breaks loose around, within moments everything escalates further as a bomb goes off within the plaza the president was speaking from.
As the movie starts, we see this entire action taking place from the eyes of the control room of a cable news network, and what they’re seeing, is pretty much virtually what we’d see if we were home watching these events transpire from our TV screens. What follows next is a series of vignettes, played out from five different viewpoints leading up to the time of the tragedy with all converging together in the end. Effectively taking the Rashoman concept from Akira Kurosawa and placing it within an action/suspense narrative…
… and in my eyes, doing it pretty well.
The above describes the new movie, Vantage Point from director Pete Travis, who’s pretty new to the scene near as I can tell and who’s looking like he’s borrowing a page or two from Paul Greengrass’ book on how to make this sort of thriller and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that when it’s done well, and here it is done quite well, with each separate vignette all adding a little more to this puzzle of how these events were put together. We see this from the point of view of a top Secret Service agent, a Spanish police officer, an American tourist, the President himself and the terrorists who execute the plan and I think it’s all done quite well. I’ve read that elsewhere how some view this as being a bit absurd, but considering how the event is framed (we see it at the start as how it would be presented on TV and it closes the same way) and knowing how other real events have come to pass, I’m very much willing to acept how the events roll off here.
Travis plays with the handheld camera quite a bit, especially in the up-close-and-personal situations, but he also manages to know when to pull back and show the big picture and as such, I know I certainly never felt lost as the events were unraveling.
There’s a good cast at work here, Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Forest Whitaker and Edgar Ramirez are the better known members of this cast, and everyone plays their part quite well, with kudos from me going to Quaid and Whitaker in particular. But the real star of the film is it’s gimmick, and personally I love a movie that plays with a good gimmick, whether it’s something like having all of the film play out in one room, or in real-time, or like Vantage Point does with it’s Rashoman style, when the gimmick is well-committed to, it scores high with me.
Vantage Point ends up being a lot of fun and while it dips slightly in some of the Hollywood political cynicism, it’s just real slight and nothing that really does anything to over-politicize the film, thus making it a pretty huge turn-off. Good stuff here, and one that I look forward to seeing again when it makes it’s way home…
David Rice is a young man with a unique gift- at the age of 15, David discovered that he could teleport himself to anywhere he can see, and with that talent, David has ran from home (due to troubles with his father) and has spent the last 8 years, giving into his whims financing himself by robbing banks and leaving IOU notes promising to one day pay it all back. But soon, we discover that David isn’t the only person with this ability, and people with this ability (called Jumpers) are being pursued by special government agents (NSA is their cover) called Paladins, and the lead Paladin, an imposing figure named Roland, is soon on David’s trail. David, being back on the run decides to re-establish himself with a girl he was sweet on from high school named Millie, and soon David, along with another Jumper named Griffin, find all Hell breaking loose as the Paladins are on them full force…
… and I dearly wanted the Paladins to win…
… not a good thing for this movie. Jumper is the fifth movie from director Doug Liman, who in the past has given us three great ones (Swingers, Go and The Bourne Identity) and one pretty awful film (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) and Jumper follows suit with his last film, being pretty awful. It’s initial premise (adapted from a novel) isn’t really a bad one at all, but the writing, direction and editing used to execute it doesn’t do it any favors at all.
One of my bigger problems with the film comes at a point where David and Griffin are together and David brings up the Marvel comic book Marvel Team-up and how the two of them are “super-heroes” who should be teaming up to take out the bad guys, namely the Paladins, when the fact of the matter is that throughout the film, these two “heroes” don’t do anything that’s heroic at all, both taking what they want in life and not really caring about any repercussions left behind. And at one point, Griffin decides he’s going to use a bomb to destroy the Paladins in pursuit of them, not at all giving a damn about any of the collateral damage around them. No, what you have here are a couple of nihilistic twenty-somethings who think they know the world, but in reality have no real concept of what’s right or wrong, and to me anyway, these aren’t exactly characters that you can get behind and root for in a movie that obviously wants you to root for them simply because “love” is David’s backbone and of course the Paladins are “the man” trying to put these “free spirits” down. It’s a pretty simplistic and off-kilter moral compass that the film has, and it doesn’t do much to make you give a damn either way.
Another problem that I have with the film is that it’s established through dialog, that Jumpers and Paladins have been around for a few hundred years, though there’s nothing else that really gives you any roots to the history that they’re trying to establish, there’s something here that could be pretty rich for the film had there been a scene or two to establish that further. As far as I know, there very well could’ve been that scene, but the film is edited in such a way to keep the action brisk and just hope that it’s intended audience just won’t even want to ask those questions.
I can’t really blame the actors for any of this- Hayden Christiansen is David, Rachel Bilson plays Millie, a skeevy Jamie Bell is Griffin and the great Samuel L. Jackson plays Roland and I expect they’re all pretty much doing what’s asked of them from the script, though it’s a bit of a waste on a talent like Jackson, who’s not really given much of a chance to be the Sam Jackson that you want him to be here, unless of course those scenes are on the editing room floor.
No the fault for this mess is with director Liman and his scriptwriters (David Goyer being one of them) and his editor. To Liman’s credit though, it is a good-looking film and the visual effects and action is pretty impressive. But that matters not at all here if you don’t have any reason to get behind any of the characters. And maybe some of that is my fault, being in my mid-40s, having had ups and downs in life and knowing the difference between right and wrong, I see these Jumpers as a sort of pseudo-terrorist/criminal and can’t really get behind their free-spirited ideas, so there you go. Maybe if I was a nihilistic twentysomething who knows it all, I’d probably love this one to death…
Yeah, right…
Jumper has the dubious honor of being the first film that I’ve seen in 2008 to be a firm contender for the Worst Movie of the Year… hardly a recommendation at all…
