Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2012.6
- Crank (2006) — 6/10
- Grand Theft Auto started out by copying action movies and now the circle is complete as movies like Crank are copying the cinematic style of GTA. It does a great job of raising adrenalin levels. About halfway through the movie, he’s even dressed as Nico from GTAIV (when he visits his girlfriend). As a concept, it’s quite a bit of fun, although it drags a bit toward the end. In that way, it emulates the feeling of having stale adrenalin in your veins, so that’s good I guess? Can’t really recommend it, but I like Jason Statham and he was decent—although he was more of a pistol-thug than a hand-to-hand-combat thug in this one.
- Crank: High Voltage (2009) — 5/10
- This one starts off where the first one ended, and gets even crazier. It doesn’t even pretend to be realistic and is much the better for it. Statham does a lot more fighting in this one (he hardly did any in the first—it was all gunplay). As with the first movie, the two directors are clearly fans of the Guy-Ritchie school of directing. This sequel is way off the rails—the Thai hooker whose life he saves is hilarious; her imperviousness to getting hit by a car fits in with the style of the film seamlessly. And, aiming to please, the directors responded to the fan outcry that there weren’t enough crazy strippers in the first one—problem solved in the second one. They also solved the problem of not enough porn stars. The public sex scene from the first film is repeated but is even more over-the-top—and Amy Smart was back for more, despite my absolute conviction that she would have bailed after the first movie. Statham’s Chinese nemesis is annoying enough—especially his braying laugh—to ruin every scene he’s in. Predictably and, as with the first one, this film runs out of legs long before it’s over, so it’s hard to recommend, despite my enthusiastic-sounding review.
- Hudson Hawk (1991) — 6/10
- I saw this as a kid and remembered much more singing, but there was only Swinging on a Star (at the beginning) and Side by Side (near the end). Andie McDowell was charming as ever and Bruce Willis was his usual self. It was pretty absurd, but passed the time while doing something else. Saw it in German.
- Franklyn (2008) — 6/10
- A relatively low-key and pseudo sci-fi film about the overlap of modern-day London with Meanwhile City, a more dystopic city from what appears to be another worldline. Ryan Phillipe was better than expected and Eva Green was riveting. Whether the overlap exists or whether it is all in the minds of several of the characters was not clear to me. It was a well-shot film and the story was well-told, but it wasn’t the best of stories, in my humble opinion.
- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) — 7/10
- A Quentin Tarantino flick with all of the usual suspects: Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis (who looks about 15) and Danny Trejo. It stars George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino as brothers on the run from the law. Clooney—playing Seth Gecko—is a criminal but not a monster; Tarantino—playing Richie Gecko—is a monster. A typically violent, dialogue-heavy, convoluted story of many different characters that evolves in utterly unpredictable ways. I can’t recall another Clooney movie in which he plays a really bad guy, but he does it well. The Gecko brothers rope Keitel and his kids into smuggling them into Mexico, where they end up at a caricature of a Mexican strip-club/bordello, fronted by Cheech Marin and starring Selma Hayek dancing mostly nude with an albino boa python. Despite Hayek’s admittedly amazing efforts to distract them, the Gecko brothers quickly continue their trail of violence on the other side of the border. And then? The film takes a 90-degree turn into a completely different genre: horror. The second act is taken up with an epic battle with a lot of old-school special effects. Want a hint? Listent to Seth Gecko’s sage advice: “Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them. I don’t care how crazy they are.”
- Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) — 5/10
- The oafish Seth Rogen and the charming Elizabeth Banks team up as destitute roommates to whom nothing remarkable happens. They are not in any way special—other than Banks’s beauty[1] and Rogen’s above-average cutting remarks—and work in a coffee shop. They live paycheck-to-paycheck and struggle to pay their utility bills. They are their target demographic. They hit upon the idea of making a porno to finance a return to a status quo that they so recently left—that is, to pay some bills to turn the water, heat and electricity back on. Their dreams are no bigger than this, which is a nice comment on the times, no? At any rate—with the help of a friend, who’s moderately better-off—they scratch together enough money to finance the film, collect a cast and crew and start shooting the film. Hijinks and hilarity ensue and everything works out in the end. It’s a Kevin Smith film, so it’s not shy about language—I saw it in German, but there were some seriously juicy insults and creative cursing. It’s hard to recommend because the story arc was old-friends-become-lovers (ho-hum) but at least it was made for grown-ups.
- Casa de mi Padre (2012) — 5/10
- It’s a Will Ferrell vehicle, with a twist: the entire movie is in Spanish (or some facsimile thereof). It’s a send-up of Mexican/Spanish-language cowboy movies. But it’s still Will Ferrell playing a mostly stupid guy who occasionally leverages his ignorance of common tact to say something insightful. At one point, he and his lady friend are riding horses and he compliments her on her riding; they are both, however, riding fake horses. It’s kind of like that throughout. The pacing and dialogue reminded me of Top Secret. It’s nothing remarkable and it’s definitely not even in the top ten of his films. So…not recommended.
- Green Lantern (2011) — 5/10
- Ryan Reynolds’s wit is only occasionally on display in this movie, which is a shame. He’s naturally funnier than Robert Downey Jr. and thus could have been another Tony Stark/Iron Man and launched a franchise. This was not to be. The first half of the film deals with back-story and character introduction, which is fine if a little slow. Once the special effects kick in, the pace picks up but the whole star-spanning enemy who cannot be stopped by the universe’s best defenders but can be stopped by a hero new to his powers but who possesses the unique quality of being human … yech, such dreck. The movie wasn’t as bad as I’d heard but it was certainly nothing to write home about—it exceeded my expectations but that was a pretty low bar. There is quite clearly a setup for a sequel, but hopefully it will never come and Reynolds can concentrate on playing Deadpool in many, many films because at least that guy’s supposed to be funny. Not recommended.
- I Am Comic (2010) — 6/10
- A documentary about stand-up comedy and comedians. Includes many interviews and bits from some of the industry’s best as well as behind-the-scenes looks at the unglamorous life of a road-comic. Despite the unrewarding nature of the profession—at least until big specials (Louis C.K.) or TV shows (Tim Allen) change things—many performers do it for the love of the game: for the opportunity to stand up in front of people and make them laugh, to be able to relate their insights and cleverness to others. They do it for different reasons and in different ways, although the most successful ones have a method to their madness. They almost all emphasize that almost nothing they do is off-the-cuff, despite appearances. They prepare hard and practice hard to get as funny as they are. Recommended if you like stand-up comedy.
- Aliens (1986) — 8/10
The classic sequel by James Cameron includes a troop of Space Marines that get picked off one by one by two by two. The most famous lines are by a grunt named Hudson, who whines out his lines as fear takes over:
- “Hey, maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!”
- “That’s it man, game over man, game over!”
- “Oh dear Lord Jesus, this ain’t happening man. This can’t be happening man! This isn’t happening!”
- “Seventeen days? Hey man, I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but we’re not gonna last seventeen hours!”
- “We’re all gonna die man.”, “We’re fucked!”, “We’re doomed here!”…and so on.
It was interesting to contrast this one to Prometheus (reviewed below). At least in this movie, the scope and reach are smaller and the characters behave as expected for marines and for the situation. They have a clear mission and move toward it rather than being just as surprised as the audience by what’s happening. A fun action flick.
- 2081 (2009) — 7/10
- A short film (available, for now, on YouTube) based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegutt called Harrison Bergeron. The story is set in the dystopia of the U.S. in 2081 where everyone has been made equal through application of the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) principle: smart people are kept constantly distracted, athletic people are hampered by weights and shackles, beautiful people wear masks, etc. Echoes of 1984 although more hopeful.
- Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States E01 (2012) — 10/10
- The first in a ten-part series on ShowTime written, produced, directed and narrated by Oliver Stone (available, for now, on YouTube). The show obviously emphasizes American History but the viewpoint is not as fiercely pro-American as the more mainstream and jingoistic history commonly taught in American civics courses. There is much more background on decisions made by the United States, with more context as to the machinations undertaken by leaders of that time. It’s a truer history, which affords more explanation than the hagiographies to which Americans are accustomed. The role of the Soviets in WWII is emphasized and put in perspective vis à vis the oft-lauded roles of the British and Americans. Stone defends his show against the inevitable onslaught of the purported American intellectual elite—which sees its job as defending the official history in which America is the shining city on the hill—by pointing to the academic literature. What his show depicts is quite mainstream among those that choose to study history rather than invent it. It was very interesting and informative and I’m looking forward to the rest of the season.
- Prometheus (2012) — 7/10
I’d been wanting to see this film for a while—the trailer was stunning and enticing and promised an honest-to-goodness science-fiction film by one of the classic directors in the genre. The sets, sounds and special effects are wonderful, fitting for a Ridley Scott film. Everything was believable and there was nothing that jumped out as obviously made with special effects. The technology, the ship, the worlds, the alien artifacts: all melded together seamlessly, all was lived-in and believable. Most of the cast was good and the basic story arc was interesting and relatively solid. There were, however, plot holes large enough to pull me out of the immersive experience into which the environment had lulled me.
After watching the movie, I watched the Review: Prometheus (Red Letter Media) (video—24:07)—those guys generally offer interesting reviews of action/sci-fi genre films—and read the list of plot holes found in Prometheus (Movie Plot Holes). These cover a few of the specific plot holes, but those didn’t bother me so much—it was more the overall treatment of science and scientists in the film that wasn’t believable at all. Spoiler alerts from here on out.
As a science-fiction film—it wasn’t horror, it wasn’t action—it was insulting. The crew was full of fevered egos and slapdash scientists who weren’t worthy of the name. There was a biologist that’s scared of investigating alien lifeforms—until he meets one that’s obviously dangerous and then he finds his courage/stupidity—to other investigators who couldn’t care less about evidence because they believe. There’s a geologist who wants to flee back to the ship instead of investigating the totally new planet on which he’s landed. The crew isn’t briefed on the mission until they get to the planet—none of them have any idea why they’re there—they have no plans, no equipment, no experimental equipment—except for little ATVs and military hardware—almost nothing.
The only thing they had was mapping probes, which were very cool—but only the geologist even knew about them! No one else had a clue—they just lurched headlong into an utterly unknown situation with no consideration or patience or planning. And then, with all of these doodads and constant communication, two of them get lost! For the whole night! The same ship crew that was looking at an awesome 3D map of the whole complex are, minutes later, laughing at the two fools who will have to spend the night in a hostile alien landscape. I don’t sweat the small stuff but these guys just flew to another star and not one of them is smart enough to use the god-damned 3D map that’s on the table right behind them to help out their crew-members. Maybe there’s an indictment-of-human-stupidity that I’m missing here. Maybe, ironically, I’m too dull to see it.
This film could have treated the science better, letting the story evolve over days or weeks or months—it would have added suspense—but instead, the entire landing/discovery/resolution occurs literally within 24 hours. After two years in cryo-sleep, everything has to be resolved in a day (which, by the way, is the exact same length on the other planet as on Earth—lucky coincidence that). And two years? Even at the speed of light, there is nothing habitable within reach—the second-closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is just over 4 light years away. Why even mention numbers when they’re so blatantly wrong?[2] Why not just say that the ship’s crew were in cryo-sleep for 200 years? How awesome would that have been? It would have had much more of a 2001 vibe to it, letting the weight of the years and the ineffable size of space add gravitas to the story.
Instead, everything is hyper-fast and the two main “scientists” are utter jackasses. The guy is an impatient little whiner with no plan and no idea what he’s doing. The female Dr. Snow is no better. They don’t even pretend to any actual knowledge—it’s unknown what their field even is or why they’re so qualified to lead this expedition—because they found a cave painting? The entire crew’s casual disregard for contamination is astounding. Their desire to have everything and have it now is, frankly, unbelievable. These are not scientists in any sense of the word. They’re not even real people: their only motivation seems to be to die as unpleasantly as possible. The story and dialogue let this otherwise beautifully rendered sci-fi film down quite badly.
Noomi Rapace as Dr. Snow has the hardest uphill battle—she’s fighting the worst dialogue and plot points with her character. What’s up with the “I can’t create life” line that comes—again, literally—out of left field? Seriously? And, even after horrible things have happened, they still don’t work clean, they still take off their helmets, they still just fly headlong into the unknown with absolutely no information. This film could have easily been so much smarter and still hit the major plot points.
Why does the android seem to know so much? Because he studied for two years? What did he study? What extra information could he have had that the others didn’t have access to? Is this film an indictment of scientific expeditions funded by private enterprise?
Charlize Theron as Vickers was quite good and had the most level-headed and pragmatic approach appropriate to the situation. When she tried to keep the ship quarantined, it was the right thing to do, not an evil thing to do. Michael Fassbender is also very good as the android—although he looks more like Jeremy Irons in Die Hard with a Vengeance than Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Poor Noomi Rapace, saddled with playing Dr. Snow, the faith-laden, groundlessly superior and utterly annoying doctor—the best thing about her character was her legs and overall fitness level in the feted surgery scene. Thank goodness that she was one of the only two characters to survive.
The human cast of characters was the same military crew that landed with Aliens but they were written as scientists instead, which was jarring. The overall look of the film would have been much better served by a brainier, more stately script. There were cool parts of the script, such as the utterly militaristic and hateful attitude of our creators; that was a neat idea, relatively well-executed. Why do they fight hand-to-hand, like Klingons? I have no idea, but I didn’t care; the creator going toe-to-toe with the giant octopus—and losing and getting his face raped—was a great scene. The big ideas were good and the visuals were more than good enough to paper over the plot holes that would occur to you after the movie, but there were far too many nonsensical characterizations and distracting decisions to ignore.[3] I’d heard that it was deep and could be confusing and reward those who paid attention. That was not the case, there was little to no mystery in the end.[4] Still, I recommend it for fans of the genre—see what you can get out of it. I strongly recommend 1080p—the movie is flat-out gorgeous.
- Tower Heist (2011) — 7/10
- A classic heist movie with a strong cast: Téa Leoni, Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Michael Peña and Matthew Broderick, Gabourey Sidibe (you might know her from Precious), Judd Hirsch and Alan Alda. Alda is a rich scumbag Wall-Street swindler (think Bernie Madoff); most of the others work at the apartment building where he lives. Except for Leoni, who is good as an FBI officer investigating Alda and Murphy, who returns to his comfort zone playing an actually criminal verison of Axel F (“Slide”) and Matthew Broderick as a slightly befuddled broker who lost everything in the crash. The employees lost their pension when Alda’s investments went tits-up and they want revenge—or at least their money back. So they decide to rob him and it turns out to be a fun and relatively clever heist film. The movie clearly comes as a reaction to the rage resulting from the crash of 2008 and acts as a revenge fantasy in which the good guys win and the gargantuan white-collar criminals lose. So: totally unrealistic, but nonetheless fun.
- Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) — 6/10
- A German silent film of the classic Dracula that’s quite frankly showing its age (available on YouTube). Jonathan Harker is an overacting, goofy little fool. I know that it’s the silent era and overacting was needed to sell the film without dialogue, but the actor playing Harker really has a simpleton’s look on his face for much of the film. His wife, too, looks constantly surprised or extremely high. And Max Schreck also mugs at the camera (he’s surprised!) but his languid motions and his long claws—those creepy claws!—are more believable and eerie than those of many of the others. That he can walk around in broad daylight with those huge, pointy ears and a coffin? Less so. On the other hand, Renfield’s insanity is portrayed quite well, making his oncoming vampirism appear more like a disease. The countryside scenes and the castle of Dracula are very convincingly creepy and the old doors and rickety stairways lend a realism that is somehow very vivid despite the quality of the print. Even the lack of dialogue lends portent to figures that can only point and glare in their stage makeup rather than talk and spoil the mood. Music plays a huge role as with any film, although some of it was unnecessarily jarring to my ears. There are inconsistencies as when Harker is reprimanded for showing up at almost midnight when it’s clear as day outside. What comes across nicely, as with any depiction of the good old days, is how much time people took to do things: there’s this feeling of time moving more slowly, of people taking whole days to do things for which we allot only an hour or two (e.g. Harker’s business trip). Hard to recommend to anyone but an old film buff.
[1] FYI: no Eilzabeth Banks skin is shown in the movie, despite the provocative nature of the title. Perhaps if Cronenberg or Von Trier had directed…↩
[2] The ignorance of science seemed almost deliberate. Perhaps they just assume that 99% of the world doesn’t know and doesn’t care. But then this isn’t a hard sci-fi film—and there are plenty of films that work hard to get the minutiae right, films that hold up to scrutiny and yield treasures over years of scrubbing back and forth over the videos. It’s hard to believe that this film didn’t have anyone fact-checking on this film, but Charlize Theron’s character says at one point that they’re “two billion miles from Earth”. We’re still using miles in the future? Really? And two billion of those archaic units is just past Uranus, still well within the solar system. Why even bother spouting numbers if you can’t get them right? Is this a jab at how women aren’t good with numbers? Or a way of proving that she wasn’t an android? And why would they use miles anyway? Would we say that it’s 150 million inches from New York to L.A.? No, we would say 1.5 × 108 inches. Or we would use more appropriate units, like ~2500 miles (yuck) or ~4000km. Instead of billions of miles, space travelers would more likely use light years or astronomical units (AUs).↩
[3] In the words of a commenter at Prometheus Shoulda been a Titanic Feat by Eileen Jones (The Exiled): “Can anyone in Hollywood right (sic) a fucking script anymore? Every fucking thing that’s been on the goddamned screen in the last two years looks like it was put together by a focus group of retarded fucking 20 year-olds who were raised on ritalin.”↩
[4] And, yes, I understand that there were minutiae and references throughout—the Alien at the end! The barren mother who’s impregnated by an angelic David and whose child is “no ordinary child”! The references to military races and might and biological weapons! The nod to 2001 in David, a robot whose mission conflicts with that of the human crew-members!—but it all amounted to nothing and the ideas turned in onto themselves, provoking a bit of onanistic contemplation on the part of the writer and winking out of existence. And, no, I didn’t care about the bauble of faith that was so inexpertly dangled by the scriptwriters: it was so obviously pandering and manipulative, I quickly ignored it as the standard propagandistic schlock that tells people it’s OK to continue to have faith no matter how much contrary evidence there is. It is true that people act in this way and that is likely an irredeemable part of the human condition, but it’s not very interesting. I get all that, but I was hoping to see a film that helped me escape from the day-to-day dreck of humanity, from the near-constant re-affirmation that my sense of ennui is unjustified and that I should place my faith in a higher power, be it God or the government or the rich elite. Prometheus gets the lash because the trailer and cast and director—and the yummy sets—set the bar too high for the inept scriptwriter, so I was disappointed.↩