tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42872713253212799042024-02-18T22:22:45.399-08:00Isoprene Dreams film reviews by <a href="http://testscan.blogspot.com">Shaun Lawton</a><br><br>
<i>decanted from hydrocarbons which are derived from 5-carbon isoprene units assembled into terpenoids forming camphor, which when mixed with nitrocellulose begat the 1st thermoplastic: celluloid. Its use in film has become the standard in displaying a persistence of vision for audiences held in thrall worldwide, an experience of such spiritual approximation it is surpassing in popularity most known religions.</i>shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-30414381703420860422020-08-03T09:32:00.004-07:002020-08-05T08:42:19.546-07:00ONCE UPON A TIME IN a Movie Theater<br />
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I just spent some time poring over a lot of the critical reviews of QT's "ninth," <u>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</u>, and one of the things I walk away with is that very few, if any of the critics' interpretations and observations--what they themselves walked away from the movie with--happen to coincide or match my own. <br />
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In my effort not just to write a so-called "review" of Tarantino's latest movie, but to try and capture what I feel is most relevant about it, I am going to approach my task in a different way. I want to start with random impressions that I "walked away" with--not to justify them, but merely to admit honestly these are things I felt after the movie experience was over.<br />
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In other words, I'd like to tackle the most popular observations and criticisms of the movie instead of writing a proper review of the film itself. Number one: forget about Tarantino's so-called "obsession" with feet (nevermind "female's" feet); nevermind his obsession with "actors" (nevermind male vs. female). Bare feet ain't nuthin' but a thang. I barely even noticed the "foot fetish," and my opinion veers towards noting that it's all these viewers' obsession with the foot thing that I find to be the "fetish," here. Jesus, people, they're feet, and I don't see why anyone would even bother mentioning it. I myself wouldn't even bother mentioning this aspect of the film if it didn't serve as the perfect "symbol" for an even deeper, underlying "fetish" of this director: the fetish of violence.<br />
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As far as I'm concerned, every single negative criticism leveled at Tarantino's use of "violence" in film is completely "off-base" as to warrant the need for my writing this review. Let me start at the beginning core value that I believe Tarantino has been "defending" all along--and subsequently (because I just happen to agree with him) generated the need for me to defend him. All along, since the release of his first film Reservoir Dogs--there has been actually no violence in any Tarantino movie; zero, zilch, nada. I hate to break it to those with their heads in the sand--but it's all fake--every last bloody-looking bit of it is fake Hollywood special effects and has absolutely nothing to do with real violence, comprende, senores y senoras? That's the ticket, right there. Like literature, movies can be artistic vehicles (and like much literature, often fail to reach the mark). Our freedom of expression is limited to how much our core audience is willing or able to take. Clearly, there are no apparent limits to how far movies have been able to portray violence onscreen--look no further than the Saw franchise and the fetishistic "torture porn" movement in film they helped usher in. The one thing all the most sickening, perverted and violent scenes in all these types of movies happen to share is <i>fantasy</i>, period. The violence is a fantasy even when it's intent is to portray realistic, historical accounts of it (take Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan as a good example: the horrifying violence of war was not only showcased, but <i>excused</i> as such, because it was attempting to portray violence "as it really happened," and furthermore, in the context of war, which is almost always universally waged even as worldwide protest movements rail against its justification). And this movie is nothing if not a fantastic, spun out rumination on violence in both film and real life.<br />
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I feel that an excessive amount of interest in movies--and by extension, Tarantino's movies--coupled with a bit of "too much time on our hands" (not to mention being compromised by the inundation of the masses' opinions online) has resulted in an inordinate attention being paid to what otherwise would be ordinarily forgotten minutiae (the aforementioned lady's toes, for example). I'm not just defending Tarantino's right to use his creative license in any way he sees fit in order to make an entertaining movie, here; I am defending the inherent right of <i>all moviemakers</i> to utilize their creative license in any way they see fit to create engaging, thoughtful, and entertaining movies. And that's what I feel lies at the center of not only Tarantino's latest foray into the self-examination of celluloid fantasies (and our obsession with it) but I feel it's what lies at the heart of all his movies.<br />
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If movies don't offer escapism--what is it, exactly, that they do offer? Allow me to articulate my own hypothesis. Escapism is <i>exactly</i> what they offer (even if it comes in the guise of <i>confronting</i> that escapism--it's still "escapism," at the end of the day). It's <i>real life</i> which confronts us. Movie theaters are buildings in which people may pay to gather together for a couple of hours in which they may vicariously enjoy (or pass the time being "terrified," "confronted," and any other combination of human emotion the movie seeks to emulate for them) a skewed slice of reality--without having to deal with the true-to-life consequences of said experience and its raft of emotional baggage. We go see movies (and enjoy them) <i>because</i> they are fake--and what's more, we <i>know</i> they are fake--we even know <i>that we know</i> they are fake, for cryin' out loud.<br />
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Take the scene that some people have objected to, the confrontation between Cliff and Bruce Lee. Some have complained that it's borderline racist, because it dares to portray the stunt man calling Bruce a "little man," whereas others appear to be miffed that Lee's legendary "prowess" as a martial arts fighter could in any way be "bested;"--when we <i>could</i> observe this scene without any of that baggage attached whatsoever. First of all, as in any movie that attempts to tell a fictional story, for all we know the <i>character</i> portrayed by Brad Pitt may have a racist streak in him, or he may have something against Asians, or he may not; it's not made completely clear in this movie, but irregardless, the criticism leveled at this scene in that regard is baseless because it's the <i>viewers</i> task--their responsibility, in fact--to <i>suspend their disbelief</i> utterly in favor of the fictive element inherent to the character they are witnessing onscreen portrayed by an actor playing a part. As for the existence or lack thereof to the scene's <i>realism, </i>insofar as wondering whether <i>any</i> one short of Chuck Norris could "defeat" the legendary Bruce Lee in face-to-face combat, well what I thought was refreshing about the scene was how deftly the director took Bruce Lee's legacy down a notch, revealing and reminding viewers that Lee was, himself, an actor and that his movies, like all movies, are nothing but spun-out fantasies for our viewing entertainment. Tarantino has done nothing wrong in this scene, if anything he's remaining true to the <i>characters</i> in portraying them as the flawed individuals they were, and besides--it's just a movie, people. Despite the small percentage of disgruntled viewers who become offended by a <i>fictional scene in a movie </i>(regardless of the context) having now, by 2019, grown in numbers to a disproportional infantry of self-righteous "quality-inspectors" hell-bent on "cleansing" what they feel to be gratuitous "political incorrectness," that's no reason for anyone in their <i>right minds</i> to <i>join them</i> and their kneejerk crusade of misplaced intolerance.<br />
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Try tellin' that to the so-called critic or casual moviegoer complaining about some director's "foot fetish," "misogyny," or "penchant for violence," etc. etc. In the end, whatever anyone has to say about it, feet are feet, women are women, men are men, violence is violence, and movies are movies. There's no "getting around" any of these conclusions. And all of them--feet, women, men, violence, and movies--exist in and of themselves. <i>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, </i>just like 99.9% of its contemporary counterparts in cinema, remains a thing unto itself as well, and I found it to be entertaining and just thought-provoking enough (after the credits had rolled and we'd escaped into the bright of day once again) to make it into what I personally consider to be a good movie. That makes Tarantino's record (with me, personally) "nine for nine," that is--I've liked every single one of his movies thus far. Hmmmm...I wonder why that is? *<i>Hint</i>: it has everything to do with the fact I think they are good, entertaining movies--again, if you like that sort of thing--and absolute zero to do with <i>me </i>having any penchant for sadism, violence, misogyny, men, racism, or whatnot--<i>it's just a movie, people. It's not my fault I correctly watch and enjoy movies while the rest of you self-appointed "Thought Police" psychoanalyze every last frame as if it's a psychological profile test to determine your imaginary enemy's guilt in a murder trial.</i> I'm sorry, but noting that "the director may have a foot fetish" does not--by any stretch of the imagination--accurately reflect the quality of the film itself in any way, shape, or form. It appears to me that such "criticisms" amount to a thinly-veiled admitting that in fact, the viewer has not only failed at honoring their half of the moviegoing contract (leaving their baggage at the door, for example) and instead have succeeded in revealing their own personal biases.<br />
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I mean, what's not to like about this or any other Tarantino film--or <i>any</i> movie by any other director, for that matter--if that's your thing? (<i>Especially</i> when it comes to this particular director, which is part of the reason I'm "doubling down" on not only supporting his movies, but defending them.) I think I take so much glee in Quentin's films partly because, in a sense, they are "movie's movies"--films made by a lover of movies which happen to reflect its maker's particular sensibilities and, for lack of a better word, but I can roll with it, fetishes, if you will. His love of old-style, exploitative moviemaking, where car chase scenes are filmed in real cars during actual chases, for example. Where he manages to capture a scene of a character gripping on for dear life to the roof or hood of a speeding car <i>by filming a stunt person doing just that in real life </i>(albeit filmed at slower speeds than the final screen-reel intends to depict)--all in the service of having captured that nuance of quality in the final scene which lends it just the necessary degree of <i>realism</i> needed to convey that fleeting sense of "magic" which movies inherently presented us with <i>back in the day of real-life stunt film making</i>. It's this very "movie magic" which lies at the heart of what I'm writing about here. An overall magical effect that cannot be quantitatively assessed, because the end-results are a <i>gestalt</i> arrived at only through a mind-bogglingly complex array of <i>the sum of its parts</i>.<br />
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Not only does Once Upon a Time in Hollywood celebrate this escapist notion of what Hollywood movies are all about--were <i>originally</i> all about--it glouriously <i>doesn't give a good god whit of a damn</i> what you or I or anyone else who may not "get it" thinks--and that's to this director's credit--and has been part of his <i>raison d'etre</i> since the very beginning, if you ask me.<br />
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But you didn't ask me. That's why I've taken it upon myself to write this review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. None of my reviews are "proper" reviews, because I write what I want and how I want. I don't like to include too many spoilers, so I have to talk "around" certain aspects of the movie, and secondly I prefer writing positive reviews, so lucky for me and you there's a ton of great movies being made out there. You either enjoy my excuse for movie rants or you can do what all those people who complain about foot-fetishes and violence and misogyny in movies seem to be incapable of doing, and that's <i>to refrain from indulging</i> in those types of movies or my questionable so-called "movie reviews," thank ya very much.<br />
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I enjoyed this latest Tarantino film a lot, and I give it an enthusiastic thumb's up. On a five-star ratings system, hell I'll give it at least four, why not? The movie has a lot to give, there's a lot to dig into, and its pulled off just about as effortlessly as any of the eight flicks that came before it in this director's oeuvre. That said, there were a few moments throughout its two-hour-and-forty-one minute running time where I felt just a tad underwhelmed by it--compared against his last two movies, which were more over-the-top (in a very good way)--but in retrospect, I feel it was because of the movie's much more light-hearted tone and execution, in addition to maybe a few meandering scenes, which, in the final analysis, end up having worked <i>for</i> the film rather than <i>against</i> it. It just took some time for me to fully <i>process</i> it after having just sat through it.<br />
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I think it's safe to say, that at this late stage of the controversial director's career, the amount of "fucks" he has left to give concerning his detractor's not overly salient points, is at a cold absolute <i>zero</i>, and rightly so. Yes it's the year 2019, yes we are immersed near-to-drowning in the turbulent waters of a gradual movement of political correctness engendered by the peculiarities of our growing online community, so of course there's more mass and weight to square off against when you're daring to step into the very shoes you helped create: the good ol' movie director's shoes. What's a fun-loving, affable middle aged man who's managed to amass eight blockbuster movies under his belt over the past 27 years to do?<br />
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Roll with it. And roll with it he does in this, his ninth sojourn into penning celluloid love letters to the cinema. The entire world is invited into the theater to "leave their baggage in the front lobby," kick their feet (bare or otherwise) up and enjoy a nearly three hour trip down memory lane to peer into the lives of just a few of Hollywood's so-called "elite," circa the summer of love, the final year of the tumultuous sixties and all which that decade came to represent.<br />
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I found it to be an engaging, brisk yet methodical, blending of not just fantasy with reality but <i>fantasies within fantasies</i> and their impact on the lives of a couple of die hard Hollywood workers, an aging western television actor with the more or less failed grandiose dream of becoming an A-star movie legend, and his sidekick stunt double. This dual personality works as the centerpiece for our mostly fun excursion down Hollywood's faux-tinged boulevards. I say "mostly fun" for a lot of reasons, among them which I think lies at the core of Tarantino's methodology: the momentary suspension of disbelief required to not merely enjoy <i>any</i> work of fictive art (be it a novel or a movie) but more to the point--that suspension-of-disbelief which allows us, as unbiased viewers, to <i>let go</i> and enjoy <i>everything about</i> these forays into make-believe, including (but not limited to) our right to poke fun at as many "sacred cows" as we are able to, without repercussion.<br />
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Of course, when it comes to the "court of public opinion," artists (both novelists and movie directors) make the very beds they must lie in, and there's no escaping that form of ultimate judgment--one that goes beyond mere "criticism" and lies more in the realm of "reaction," plain and simple. And there's no denying that the reaction to Tarantino's movies has been positive enough to sustain his career over the past 27 years.<br />
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Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was an enjoyable time spent in the movie theater. Without spoiling the ending for you, I must say that as far as I'm concerned, it arrived in a satisfactory manner, and while the credits rolled, it actually engendered a feeling that I don't recall having ever really experienced in that many movies before. It was that fresh sense of wonder at the possibilities movies are capable of delivering. For an old dog like Quentin to provide this feeling once again at this late stage of his career leaves me questioning if his self-imposed "ten movie limit" might be a tad premature, after all. I think he's still got a few great movies left in him. I sure hope he gets to helm a Star Trek movie, next. Maybe he can exclude it from his canon of "bonafide Tarantino originals," thus paving the way to wrap up his oeuvre with "Kill Bill III." And then again maybe we should merely disregard his claim of making only ten movies entirely. Or at the very least subtract two of the Kill Bill installments in order to justify at least one more movie for us. Lord knows he could settle for a dirty dozen.<br />
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<br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-58469284637985398712019-03-03T18:19:00.001-08:002019-03-05T13:09:37.486-08:00ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>image courtesy of 20th Century Fox</i><br />
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The metanarrative I'm carried away with after seeing <u>Alita: Battle Angel</u> belongs to the one I walked into the theater with. I think the film does a very good job of establishing the four corners that are the foundation of storytelling interlocked with the four intermediary points that mark both the map of chaos and its counter-position, the imposture of order by an ever power-hungry humanity. In this mecha-mirror humankind looks into its soul only to be reflected in the face of the cyborg. Although the premise of this film may be interpreted as deeply or shallowly as its various degrees of viewers might care to plumb, nevertheless its root sources go back way farther than the most likely criticisms are equipped to acknowledge. For instance the similarity with part of its premise to Neill Blomkamp's 2013 movie Elysium (not to mention District 9, in some ways) remains an inevitability when contrasting both directors' futuristic visions against a common backdrop of cinema under which they each grew up at different periods in time. Their dates of birth being separated by eleven years speaks at least a decade's worth of volume, and to the elder director's credit, it shows in this film, sparkling with zest and executed with finesse. At least ten years in the making, the James Cameron produced 2019 film, smartly helmed by the very talented Robert Rodriguez, was inspired by Gunnm, a Japanese manga by Yukito Kishiro, which was made into an anime of two episodes released in June and August of 1993 (as Battle Angel) serving as a preview for the forthcoming manga.<br />
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In a complicated sense that I'm trying my best to capture in this review, the motifs inherent to this 2019 movie have been long established by an enmeshed variety of sources not even close to being limited to the Gunnm manga itself, but arrow back through cinematic history through box office classics like Robocop ('87) and Terminator 2 ('91) and to cut to the chase (even as it slices through such established visions of the future as Ridley Scott's 1982 core movie Bladerunner as well as the aesthetic of the 80s cyberpunk scene at the time) this movie has a helluva lot of fun with taking the aforementioned genre classics and spinning them along their axis into a singular PG-13 epic sure to please the majority of the range of target demographics it's dead bull's-eye aimed at. I know because I am one and I loved virtually every minute of it, right down to its occasional silly moments and very few misfires; these brief instances offered a sort of comfort, oddly enough. Any misgivings I had going in disappeared relatively quickly. The deeper the viewer is immersed into Alita's post-symbolic ravaged future world, the better and more startling its surprises, considering how spot-on they are toward building its series of escalating reveals.<br />
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No matter how you slice it, this movie delivers the goods for me. Incorporating a richer wisdom of film references that only a seasoned pro like Rodriguez would even dare attempt, he manages to effortlessly send a nod of appreciation to the Wachowskies who gifted the world with the Matrix in '99 (coinciding with the numeral Alita scrawls on her shoulder) and incorporates more than a passing gesture to 1975's Rollerball. Pardon the mild spoiler to follow here, but this director manages to expand upon the basic concept of that future sport into an amalgamation of arena excitement purposefully constructed to appeal to a mass common denominator in our society's expectations of bang-up gladiatorial wish-fulfillment. Known as Motorball in this hewn-down future, exactly how this #1 sport plays into the superstructure of the unfolding plot is something best left for the movie-going audience to discover for themselves. The action sequences are filmed with a sure and steady hand which allows the audience to perfectly capture every moment of the high-tension, ballistic acrobatics with crystal clear clarity. The way these scenes are filmed borders on and occasionally surpasses the exhilarating.<br />
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However, none of the aforementioned nuances detract from the straightforward storyline that <u>Alita: Battle Angel</u> manages to deliver. Rather, they work in service to the movie, enhancing it and adding a strange depth of dimension that you'd have to be cybernetically wired into my brain to understand. (That is what I'm trying to approximate in the ancient form we call writing here, which has now transformed itself into a sort of digital scripture.) This film is for anyone willing to surrender to its charms and underlying sense of vengeful bravado, and it offers wonderful moments to all viewers regardless of their years of experience or lack of them in this sort of thing. Newcomers to these age-old motifs and weary, hardened veterans as well should all walk away satisfied.<br />
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That the romance occurs between a female cyborg and male human whose dealings in secretly being a bounty hunter scavenger (harvesting body parts from cyborgs) are sure to catch up with him serves the movie well in regard to establishing an emotional core between its two main characters. Rosa Salazar brings perfection to her performance as the battle-hardened protagonist, while Keean Johnson brings an endearing portrayal as the boy who shows her the streets and how the dispossessed youth of Iron City aspire to either become Motorball superstars, or fall to the darker dealings of the underground bounty hunter scene. Christoph Waltz is a welcome addition as the dear Dr. Ido who brings her to life from a salvaged scrap heap, and Jennifer Connelly fits in just fine with the film's underlying sense of nostalgia. Mahershala Ali brings relevance to his portrayal of Vector, and Jackie Earle Hailey lifts his renegade cyborg Grewishka to a higher level than would otherwise have been possible. All of which is to say Cameron and Rodriguez did a great job casting this film, with at least one more very cool surprise in store for sharp-eyed audiences. I'm relatively certain it will come as a delight to many.<br />
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<u>Alita: Battle Angel</u> delivers the goods on all levels, as far as I'm concerned. There's a lot more going on than meets the quick-witted eye as the movie begins, and while its chapters unfold, more of Alita's past is revealed leading to her mysterious true identity. So you're still wondering if <u>Alita: Battle Angel</u> is worth checking out in the movie theaters before it hits every streaming platform and DVD vending machine in your city? You best believe it's every fanboy and girl's wet dream. Ten years in the making, this cinematic event has proven to be well worth the wait. Loaded with more surprises than this review has room for, I'd go check it out on the big screen as soon as possible, if I were you. It lays down the foundation for what promises to be an even more terrific followup. Just trust me on this and go check it out for yourself. If you're disappointed, I'd really like to know why. I suppose some will wish it had dared to venture into a harder, more violent R-rated territory. Well too bad for them. It earns its PG-13 status with a smattering of the old ultraviolence, but because it's highly stylized and really downplays the gore, I consider its themes to be universal enough for virtually all ages to enjoy. Maybe I'm only okay with this aspect of the film since I'm a dad now. But I think it more than makes up for that with superlative action sequences and plenty of heart. In fact, I'm thinking about seeing it again. I saw it alone, but I recommend seeing it with someone you love. It's a throwback to a more fun, action-packed time at the movies we don't really get to see that much of these days. Besides, what you are witnessing just happens to be a really cool and already legendary director coming into his stride with his first A-movie, and I, for one, couldn't be prouder of him. There's a lot of history, there. And there's a universe of history behind this manga brought stunningly to life for movie theaters. With the advent of this film, Robert Rodriguez can now be said to have officially added a new silver lining to the screen. You'll just have to watch the movie yourself to see what I mean.<br />
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<br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-72712326900675167902017-05-26T19:08:00.001-07:002017-05-26T19:38:49.515-07:00A L I E N : COVENANT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So which ALIEN: COVENANT </div>
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movie did you want to see? </div>
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This one?</div>
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Or this one.</div>
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My point being, we each see the ALIEN movie we want to see. Only to put a finer point on it, often exactly the movie we <i>don't</i> end up seeing--depending on who we are. May we attribute this to sudden offsetting factors in the moviegoing experience, occasionally? (Yes, I am talking about a night out in a movie theater.) Such as, perhaps, unwisely choosing a very late show after a long day at work, or maybe, having just eaten a bit too much of that spaghetti dinner just before showtime. See, some movies arrive with their big studio produced mini featurettes, dark and shiny candy-memes scrolling past consumer's eyes strewed along the moving pathway of our endlessly streaming news feeds while we're wasting our time online, and some movies <i>are</i> the virus. Its like the whole thing's beginning to feed on <i>itself</i>, you follow? </div>
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This is the poster I saw in the theater lobby.</div>
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So yeah I finally went and did it. I saw Ridley Scott's second followunder to his classic 1979 paradigm shifter ALIEN. Today I'm ruminating that maybe Ridley never stopped to realize that even more ironically than the box office champion hit followup ALIENS by James Cameron being considered a deviancy from the premiere; so, too, may his own original film have been green lit by an industry back then ready for the next big thing. I've always considered that John Hurt scene to be a sort of rupturing of movie audience's hymen of innocence, not to mention the psycho-sexual subtext inherent to the original H.R. Giger artwork upon which it was based. </div>
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Thirty-eight years ago, mewling in gore spattered horror, a legend was borne in celluloid. Damn straight the entire thing's been feeding on itself ever since. By now I think it's pretty safe to say this seventh installment in the series is the inevitable manifestation of the <i>virus itself</i> unleashed on our mass consciousness in the shadowy infectious darkness of a movie theater. I mean, who really wants to see yet another Ripley heroine-clone calling the monster out as another "son of a bitch" or engaged in a high profile post-industrial celebrity hardware death match? The answer to that question is in the crowd who've come to join us, generations of which haven't experienced the original scenes which incepted those memes. Whether you hated ALIEN: COVENANT or squeed with glee over it, the point remains, I'm just going to tell you what <i>I thought </i>and continue to think about it: It's a notch down from PROMETHEUS, to begin with. Spoilers to follow. </div>
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<i>Don't Let This Be The One You See!</i></div>
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ALIEN: COVENANT was a real mixed bag, for me. In that sense alone--it failed me, last night. I wasn't so disappointed with it that I wouldn't want to see it again; I'm just afraid a second viewing won't cut it. A significant Director's Cut might provoke enough interest in me to give that a shot. You should know I actually liked Prometheus enough to watch it a second time in the theater, and enjoyed it even more upon a second viewing. But even if something roughly equivalent to that occurs in a re-viewing of Covenant--it will bring it from a 6.5 or so to maybe a 7--still more than a couple of points below Prometheus itself (which earned a 9 from where I sit). </div>
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What I liked about the first of these prequels was that it stuck to its own setting and characters. But in this sequel, we're given generous portions of rehashed scenes re-heaped on us, determined to either generate an appreciative chuckle from us older fans in the audience, or try to impress a new generation with the same old trick, it's hard to tell and why would we bother, when both options are less than desirable?</div>
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Yet interstrewn throughout these recurring tropes you couldn't beat anymore with a dead xenomorph, and after hearing from the director in recent interviews that he was trying to get away from the xenomorph in these prequels, we still end up getting a fully matured alien with a startling resemblance to the old xenomorph, in this film. As if we didn't already know from the incessant trailer campaign which revealed the majority of the movie's scope. So you see, that's why points must be subtracted from this film. This isn't a singular "movie" we're discussing here, this is the intractable adornment and highlight of an advertising campaign the likes of which whose scope itself would stagger our ability to fully digest, I'm afraid, even as it's already more than midway through the process of digesting us. It's a grossly distorted magnified product filtered through the lens of mass perception and focused by the brutal feedback of our base desires reflected back at us after a vicious cycle, and not just the solitary tailored result of a small team of devoted writers overseen by just one manager, anymore. Much like part of its premise, this is something that has come to have been granted a life of its own. </div>
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I found it to be inferior to its predecessor, and that's saying something considering Prometheus had its share of hard-to-accept moments, involving a crew of humans who make stupid decisions, of course. The problem isn't that a viewer may choose which side of the argument to align himself with--to justify these scenes or condemn them--but simply that the viewer isn't being given enough credit to have wanted to <i>dare</i> watching something completely distinct and different than that which came before. That's the problem with commercialization, it just keeps feeding us "the hits." And it gets old.</div>
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But we're talking here about the very subject of mass marketability itself--aren't we? Isn't that what the society of post-industrialization ultimately leads to? These movies? Yes, you're looking in the scanner darkly, and what you're seeing is a distantly echoed reflection of <i>ourselves</i>. </div>
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That's what these movies--like all movies, be they zombie films or not--really are. Insanely distorted reflections of our own wild selves. Whereas I enjoyed certain aspects of ALIEN: COVENANT, others I found annoying and on more than a few occasions, drawn out scenes that bored me. At least throughout Prometheus I remained engaged until the end. But with the telescoped action-we've-seen-before scenes not even trying to hide their predictability now, I think you can at least see how this is a big "no-no" with me. I just wanted to get the negatives out of the way up front, now on to the good stuff. </div>
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<i>(This one's serious but which way will you take it)</i></div>
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There were a good amount of killer scenes in ALIEN: COVENANT. It's the sort of movie to be filed under "mandatory viewing," not based on its own merit of course, but for those of the franchise itself. While I'm using that worn out term, because it's not one I like to implement with one of my favorite series of movies ever, I have to face the reality now that this movie, promulgated by Ridley Scott himself into the same world he merely <i>directed</i> the 1979 movie ALIEN in, should by all means boast the very soul, that is the apotheosis of 'franchises', incarnated as a living viral meme machine which feeding on itself as we watch mesmerized in the dark only to have our attentions gripped into the meshing gears of its film reel teeth--oh it's eating us alright, even as we sit back in our deep cushion seats and relax with warm popcorn in our laps--consuming every drop and bite along the way. The picture perfect definition of 'movie franchise' would be the ALIEN series, and for damn good reason as you're easily beginning to see. </div>
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Personally, I can see myself how some of my friends are calling this a masterpiece of escapist movie action while other friends are saying it's a piece of shit--I get it. It's certainly a disappointment for me, as I've said, down a couple of notches and a half from its predecessor, but all in all with enough cinematic pleasures to at least having provided me with some good, interesting scenes. Michael Fassbender steals the show, of course. His subsuming of the villainous role is quite wonderful. I think Danny McBride added the right sort of character to the movie as his analogs before him. And the monster scenes were mostly pulled off with wicked style. The reiteration of creationism getting caught up in its own echoing feedback is an interesting premise, which I'm sure will be milked aplenty in the two films to follow, assuming Scott doesn't drop the bar altogether in the next installment and derail the entire streamlined train. <br />
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Let's not forget how monumentally influential the first two ALIEN movies really are. James Cameron went on to continue influencing this recurring motif in cinema, from having echoed the Nostromo's crew with The Abyss, and thus setting off the same riff repeatedly seen in endless variations, from The Matrix through Pitch Black and beyond. Of course the classic space ship crew can probably be traced back to Star Trek. But we're dealing with a more nihilistic display of science fantasy, here. </div>
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Coming back to Covenant, this movie poses a viewscreen riddled with holes. What happened to James Franco's role? One gets the feeling that between the variant options by which to seed the advertising for this film--what with the featurettes like "The Last Supper" scene streaming online--and all the various competing shades of greed interfering with the mind of our host, it forces me to wonder if maybe Franco pissed Scott off in post production or some such minor debacle ensued which led to certain scenes getting scrapped completely--or maybe they'll pop up in the Director's Cut! As I've already admitted, I'm most willing to subject myself to it--perhaps that's where the movie can reach its stride and expand into something a little more epic. </div>
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I'm onboard with Ridley's themes, that of creationism and artificial intelligence, and I'm prepared to take them in the darker context of a nihilistic view of the cosmiverse--because after all, I signed up for what's apparently being groomed as "science fictional horror," and that's fine with me, as it's one of my favorite genres. But, see what I did there?</div>
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Because that's really what these movies are all about now: subjecting ourselves to the mass altar of sacrificial art. All for the sake of our love for movies like ALIEN and even the sequels and imitations they spawn. I believe that in thinking he could undermine (rather than continue) the four movies which splintered off his own original, some of that is backfiring for Scott now in the form of original quality being subverted as the snake in Eden begins to eat its own tail. </div>
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Which brings me to the end of my review, where I want to say that although Covenant is riddled with problematic aspects by which to render it the worst of the seven movies thus far--sure, I still liked it enough to be glad I took the time to see it for myself. What you want to do with your own two hours and two minutes in a darkened movie theater being hypnotized by a shifting beam of light is entirely up to you. Considering everything in the production, I'll give it seven (out of ten) stars. </div>
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<i>This one says it all, don't it?</i></div>
shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-64180637190049543552017-05-26T15:25:00.002-07:002017-05-26T15:46:17.681-07:00INTERSTELLAR<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With the conception and execution of INTERSTELLAR, Christopher Nolan has a triumph on his hands, thanks in part to Kip Thorne and everyone else involved with hashing out the script. In my view, movies are a great example in art of the importance of what is left unstated. INTERSTELLAR appears to be the most definitive statement that I've seen in a long time up on the silver screen about the nature of our spacetime continuum. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If nothing else, the movie is certainly an exciting and completely thoughtful human drama about relativity, family, gravity, and our destiny in time among the stars. (I want to thank Christopher Nolan for making it unnecessary for me to take DMT now--because I think I just experienced it vicariously.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To be real--this movie kept me thinking the entire time I was leaving the theater, piecing it all together in my mind. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think the character Matt Damon played was a terrific Judas figure, and the actor pulled his role off beautifully. I love how the movie played out its contradictions. The dichotomy between Cooper struggling to champion the quest into outer space in order to help save the human race against the alternative 'Plan B' directive was really handled well throughout the movie. The main question I had when the credits rolled was what exactly the Morse code message happened to be--was it to burn down the corn field and then establish a human emigration to colonize in orbit around Saturn so the remaining human population on Earth could eventually follow through the wormhole to colonize the third planet in the new system discovered there? I suppose so. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I gathered that 'They' who placed the wormhole there as an "escape route" was in fact <i>not</i> an alien race but humanity itself <i>in the future</i>. (Reminiscent of the so-called "aliens" at the end of Spielberg's gloriously problematic AI adaptation: those were not extraterrestrials at all, but rather our own evolved AI.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With INTERSTELLAR, I was left with the impression that the female astronaut Brand got stranded on the third planet <i>initially, </i>but due to Cooper's transcendent success in communicating with his daughter in the form of a living ghost, Brand's situation was transformed into being the <i>first</i> human colonizer; an Eve figure, if you will. So when Cooper snuck into that spacecraft and escaped Saturn's orbit to join her, he was just leaping ahead and cutting to the chase to be with her, thus becoming the Adam prototype. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So how did Cooper, with the help of his mobile computer unit, manage to wiggle the second hand on his daughter's wristwatch, then? Something to do with string theory, I suppose. Well I loved how within the striation of the wicker woven singularity under the skin of the black hole's peripheral gravitational edge, Cooper could find all things in existence, arranged around him in a cage of criss-crossing perspectives, like bandwidths, that he could zoom in on and manipulate slightly as if strumming harp strings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I remember wondering, at the beginning of the movie, what the intended significance of the rows upon rows of bookshelves must be. (The first author I spotted, incidentally, was Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) I also liked how the daughter's wristwatch was placed on the bookshelf in front of Stephen King's <u>The Stand</u>, and can't help but speculate if it's a sly tip that Nolan may be involved in the forthcoming four-part movie adaptation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The surprise supporting cast (including Burstyn, Damon, and Lithgow in a brief though convincing role as Cooper's father) worked well with the ensemble. All in all, INTERSTELLAR delivered far beyond my own expectations in that it seems to also double as a readily comprehensible model of relativity for the layman's edification. Being a layman myself, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and am very pleased I saw it in the theater. There were plenty of truly glorious panoptic screen shots and stunning visuals that in my mind, all fit rather accurately into our current scientific observations. A welcome departure from both the DC comic book universe of Batman as well as the more esoteric dream realm of Inception (though I enjoyed all four of those movies, as well). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In short, I consider INTERSTELLAR to be Nolan's highest film achievement thus far. I'm looking forward to his handling of the forthcoming adaptation of the real life Dunkirk evacuation during WWII. I'm getting the sense that the depiction of realism will become this director's forte. </span>shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-74806350252582080402014-07-11T10:22:00.001-07:002014-07-11T19:58:23.834-07:00SNOWPIERCER <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With his first international English speaking major theatrical release <i>SNOWPIERCER</i>, the brilliant Korean director Bong Joon-ho dazzles his audience lucky enough to discover this paradigm-shattering experience of a movie playing right now this July in an art-house theater nearby. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's playing here at the Broadway Theater in Salt Lake City. I saw it with some family members and a friend last night, one of whom knew nothing about it whatsoever except for the title before going in. I kind of envy his experience as the movie pierced his senses from the darkness of the theater in what must have been an unexpected and shocking surprise. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One particular friend of mine on facebook stated "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If the movie Cube were made by Terry Gilliam, with a smattering of The Matrix," when trying to describe Snowpiercer. Albeit a clever concoction of allusions, I'm not sure this friend particularly enjoyed the sheer inventive genius of this movie as much as I certainly did. Because Joon-ho definitely knows the "language of film," and he utilizes these sorts of past movie references not in a derivative manner at all, but rather in a wholly new context unlike any we've seen before onscreen. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The movie is at once action-packed, ultraviolent, and romantic in the sense of a grand grim adventure challenging the odds with equal measures of personal sacrifice and reward. The less one knows about this movie before going in, the better. For that reason I don't want to venture into spoiler territory here; I don't even want to put forth a synopsis. Suffice it to say, if you are a fan of the sorts of mind bending epics that a lot of us these days feel are a real scarcity in movie theaters; if you long for the thrilling sensation you remember experiencing decades ago when a certain kind of movie just grabbed the entire audience by the collar and dragged them headlong into a world of pure tension and excitement, then do not make the mistake of missing this movie if it happens to barrel through your city. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Take my word for it, you don't even want to know which familiar faces star in this thing. Avoid all information about Snowpiercer that you possibly can, and just go pay the price of admission and sit down in the darkened theater, and find out for yourself what all the hype is about. Because if Bong Joon-ho's first major English-speaking epic movie doesn't get the recognition it deserves, then we really are living in a dystopian time for movie lovers. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">This is one of the most thought-provoking action packed movies I have ever seen. It is certainly a favorite of mine now, and propels its director into the spotlight of superstardom. Bong Joon-ho may now consider himself to be one of just a handful of directors I believe are among the top-shelf working today. Go see Snowpiercer before it blasts out of your city in the next few weeks. I promise you it's what movie making is all about. In a word, spectacular. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">(<i>In case you didn't know, Bong Joon-ho is the director of the acclaimed 2006 movie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Host_(2006_film)">THE HOST </a>as well as 2009's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_(2009_film)">MOTHER</a>. Be sure to hunt these excellent movies down online or possibly on Netflix</i>.) </span></span></div>
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shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-55635252698215527502013-01-22T19:23:00.000-08:002013-03-06T21:05:24.470-08:00THE LAST STAND<div align="center">
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<tr><td colspan="3" style="color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial;" valign="top"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">*<b>minor spoilers ahead</b>*</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I just saw an advance screening of Arnold's first return to the silver screen as leading man since 2003's TERMINATOR III. That's a full decade he's been missing despite his brief appearances in the Expendables movies.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Let me just come straight to the point. THE LAST STAND delivers on all counts, the theater was packed and you could feel the excitement. Right from the beginning the movie slips under the viewer's skin with a speeding Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 clocked at 197 mph by a (groan) donut-eating cop. I'm going to go ahead and say it but that donut was the sole cringe-worthy moment in the entire movie, pretty much. Cuz from that moment on things just begin gelling in a way I haven't enjoyed since the original DIE HARD. Forest Whitaker is excellent as FBI agent John Bannister, hell-bent on tracking down this Mexican mafia criminal who happens to be quite adept at race car driving, played very well by Eduardo Noriega.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">THE LAST STAND is directed by Kim Ji-Woon, the guy who brought us the extremely intense violent horror movie I SAW THE DEVIL. Yes he also directed the not-so-great THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE WEIRD, but this movie here is his first major Hollywood motion picture and let me guarantee you 80's action movie fans it delivers one-hundred percent.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Even Johnny Knoxville earns his presence by the end of it all and there is an early cameo from none other than Harry Dean Stanton. In my opinion one of the best things about THE LAST STAND is that it hews as close to "realism" as possible--with a few spectacular stunt scenes bordering on the preposterous of course--but actually the car chases, the fire-fights, the physical altercations--everything is really well-handled in the sense that it's not cheesy. Don't believe me? Go see this thing . . . I'm telling you, Arnold is back and it's a nice relief for me because I too grew up with him since seeing CONAN THE BARBARIAN at the tender age of 16.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">By the time I was 80% of the way through this movie the word <i>symphonic </i>came to mind: that's right, this director is on top of his game here, orchestrating multiple character threads through a solid and simple plot line to the point that all I can think to blurb about it is something along the lines of "a symphony of violence and action" -- high praise indeed coming from me. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">One of the reasons the movie works is because the writer Andrew Knauer has wisely chosen to avoid cliched one-liners...for the most part. You read that right; most of the one-liners in THE LAST STAND come off non-ironic and that's a blessed relief. A perfect example is when one of the bad guys asks Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold's memorable character) "Who <i>are</i> you-?" and Schwarzenegger deadpans "The Sheriff."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">See the whole point is Arnold was never a good actor, in fact he was quite abysmal, in particular his really early couple of films before CONAN. Yet even when he reached his peak we all know the man cannot really act his way out of a wet paper bag. But <i>here's the thing</i>. In my view, Arnold Schwarzenegger is worth 10 Oscar-worthy actors easily. The man is an icon carved out of granite. I'm sure the best directors have him keep his mouth shut most of the time and tell him to "just squint," and he carries off most scenes perfectly just by being himself. And in THE LAST STAND my observation about his presence onscreen can best be summed up with one word: Rusty. But only barely so. He manages to pull the character off with spades by the end of this monumental thriller.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">THE LAST STAND is so much fun and directed with such finesse that I foresee the decade ahead as one where Arnold Schwarzenegger slowly reclaims his place among the usual suspects of leading action men. His portrayal of Sheriff Ray Owens certainly won the hearts of last night's advance screening audience I can reassure you all of that much.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So there you have it. Just when I expected to leave the theater disappointed, and waving off Arnie as an old tired has been, it turns out nothing could be further from the case. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Arnold is back. And there is no doubt in my mind he could easily handle another Terminator movie. Let the new movie season begin! </span></td></tr>
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shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-80221290161718244342010-06-10T12:23:00.000-07:002013-01-22T19:42:20.440-08:00SPLICE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SPLICE is the reason I go to the movies. If there was ever a "monster movie franchise" destined for a greatness that could even surpass that of the ALIEN franchise--it's SPLICE. <br />
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Director Vincenzo Natali comes into his own, with this superb flick. (His first movie I saw was '97's CUBE. Whereas CUBE was "pretty good", SPLICE, on the other hand, gets an A+ and easily vaults Natali onto the same directorial stage as David Cronenberg and Ridley Scott.) <br />
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{SPECIES was merely an "OK" movie, if that, at best; at worst, SPECIES may be overlooked as a hackneyed, derivative attempt to capitalize on stereotypical horror/monster movie tropes.}<br />
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The movie SPLICE is another sort of hybrid creature altogether. I read some reviews in which the reviewer has stated that this movie is "not what you expect" and "the first kill doesn't even happen until after halfway through" and "it has a lot of envelope-pushing twists", all of this adding up to a "2-and-a-half stars" review; any discerning, intelligent adult should react to this contradictory assessment with a resounding "What?" Because those are all the very reasons I personally find this movie to be grade-A material. What is that reviewer trying to say? That he was disappointed in the fact that he didn't get a formulaic monster movie? You have to ask yourself - does that reviewer honestly feel cheated by being deprived of the comforting formula that he expected -? - -or is he concerned that the average moviegoer will be traumatically derailed from their comfort zone? <br />
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So if you need to be comforted by the familiar expectation of having your regular buttons pushed (in other words, if movies for you are like a prescription for Xanax) then go right ahead and eschew this dark, intelligent, and original movie in favor of the next typical horror movie remake. I'm sure the new Nightmare on Elm Street should pacify your dependency and leave your grey cells alone and undisturbed. <br />
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SPLICE is altogether unconcerned with suckling the masses on the soporific teat of narcotic expectations, and therefore stands out amidst the rest of the pack as a truly original hybrid beast of moviegoing pleasures. Although the premise of two geneticists working together as a couple does stretch the believability index a tad, Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley nonetheless are excellent as the scientists splicing genes to mine pharmaceutical breakthroughs for their corporate bosses. What I found particularly liberating about the SPLICE moviegoing experience, is that since the premise itself is already outlandish (the modern fabrication of genetic chimeras), this grants the audience a "suspension-of-disbelief pass" which helps pave the way towards many of the plot's twists and turns. <br />
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SPLICE has a motherlode of subtext and innuendo sure to spark the imagination of any creative intellect. Rather than settling for being just another typical monster movie, it is instead more focused on being a psychological thriller concerned with the nuclear family unit and the evolution of species. You thought Ridley Scott's <i>ALIEN</i> was a psychological thriller? Compared to SPLICE, even the original ALIEN appears as just another monster movie, in some respects. Here is your bonafide, genuine psychological, anthropomorphic, and mythological monster movie, which in my humble and honest opinion, trumps the achievements of such classic fare as ALIEN, etc. <br />
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The superb special effects (rendered in part by Gregory Nicotero, now considered one of the best in the field) are only the icing on the proverbial cake. You don't disbelieve what your eyes are seeing for a minute. The mercurial, chimeric creation the scientists end up naming "Dren" leaps onto the silver screen as the most original special effect I've seen since Gollum. <br />
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SPLICE should keep the attentive and at least semi-literate audience members riveted to the edges of their seats throughout its entire running time. One of its many charms is the fact that you just don't know what Dren is going to do from one moment to the next, or how she/it will react to the array of brand-new stimuli ushered into the circle of her newborne consciousness. <br />
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SPLICE is also a very thoughtful exploration of the imbalance which exists in the scientific mindset. I read yet another reviewer make the blatant criticism that this movie is "about the two dumbest scientists ever"; for me to point out the very meat-headedness of this assessment really pains me, but I must do so, because that criticism is yet another citation which should serve as one of the movie's countless strengths, as far as I'm concerned. The whole point there, is obviously to show hows specialization creates an imbalance. Sure the scientists have really high IQ's, but their wisdom is severely lacking. In other words, they make terrific, star geneticists, but terrible parents. This is just one of the movie's many metaphors, which symbolizes humanity's faults as well as it's virtues. <br />
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Therefore, the story of the creation of Dren becomes the story of humanity itself. Clive and Elsa (played admirably by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley respectively) become symbolic of Adam and Eve, and the unexpected plot development traces a complex map that touches upon many psychological and mythological truths. This is the primary reason that, for me personally, the couple of plot points I predicted ended up becoming a decidedly rewarding experience, rather than your typical "I saw that coming a mile away" which plagues the average formulaic movie. With SPLICE, if it didn't end the way I expected it to, I would be disappointed. <br />
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Thankfully for me, this movie delivered the goods with a satisfying finality that I rarely, if ever, encounter in this type of movie. So what kind of movie is it, you ask? It's a chimerical sort of cinematic creation in and of itself: part science-fiction, part horror movie, part psychological/mythological drama/comedy, SPLICE is a movie I'd like to own on DVD, and I'm hoping that it's released in its uncut, original version showcased at Sundance, that I heard about. <br />
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In short, if you're looking to have all your familiar buttons pushed and be soothed by yet another monster movie with a body count, avoid SPLICE and go see the new Freddy movie. But if you're looking for an unpredictable movie with killer creature effects, "envelope-pushing plot twists", and a deeply thought out psychomythological subtext, then SPLICE is the movie for you.shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-1611293068388067432010-04-21T08:22:00.000-07:002013-01-22T19:45:08.785-08:00KICK-ASS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I enjoyed the movie KICK-ASS, for what should be obvious reasons, assuming it's a given that we all know what this movie is about. It's about the simple idea a lot of us have invariably had, and has caused us to ponder, when will they make a movie involving people who dress up like comic book "superheroes" and fight crime...in a manner which accounts for a bit more realism? I'm sure most comic-book, action-movie fans such as myself have long wished for a more realistic exploration of the pros and cons, the benefits and consequences, of actually going out there and, as McGruff once put it, "taking a bite out of crime". Well, the wait is over: KICK-ASS is here. <br />
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And yes--it arrives not without its controversy. A friend of mine who normally is "gung ho" about this sort of flick, has expressed zero interest in seeing it-(!!)-presumably on account of its characterization of an 11-yr old girl who swears up a storm and kills a lot of people in it. I have to admit, the movie is indeed quite disturbing, really, in that respect. (The actress, Chloe Moretz, is thirteen now, I believe, and yes, she steals the show.) <br />
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The very fact Hollywood dared to go through with this mostly (in the comic, Hit Girl is 8; in the movie, she's 11) is pretty sweet, if you ask me. (Although I'm not entirely sure what, exactly, making her 3 yrs older achieves.) 11 is still pre-teen, and it's a good thing they stuck with that premise--of a preteen girl trained to be an assassin by her Dad--otherwise, the over-arching point the premise is trying to make would've been compromised. So I have to hand it to Hollywood, or, should I say, to the moviemakers that brought us KICK-ASS, for having the guts to keep Hit Girl a preteen, and to stay true to her filthy, corrupted mouth. It's a necessary "slap in the face" which must accompany this movie's "wake up call" about the problem of how to properly tackle crime in our society. <br />
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That said, I'm afraid the movie falls short of thoroughly following through with the complex and mature question of morality vs. violence in modern society. <i>That</i> said, this flaw did not even come close to ruining what turned out to be a flat-out entertaining spin on the superhero comic movie, to me. <br />
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It has far too much going for it to bankrupt its overall charm and small achievements. Namely, you've got a really likeable protagonist in the actor who portrays KICK-ASS, Aaron Johnson. He is a natural at capturing your typical brainy, grade-A student that most gum-chewing chicks would overlook in their high school halls, despite not being a bad-looking guy, really. Him and his two chums provided an entertaining and more-realistic-than-not crew of normal, bright high schoolers. I always enjoy movies that depict high school in a certain light, and KICK-ASS is no exception. There are some rich rewards to be had, insofar as the various high school relationships depicted. And when our soon-to-be hero actually orders his dorky costume and heads out into the street for some real action, the tension is palpable and you can feel the excitement as if you were really there. This movie also features some real twists and turns which play with audience expectations, in a very satisfying manner. (To say more would be to venture into "spoiler" territory; so don't worry, I won't got there.) <br />
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But the movie really picks up when it becomes evident that there is a "superhero" duo that has actually been actively killing mobsters long before KICK-ASS decided to don the suit. And this is where the real heart of the story forms itself: Nicholas Cage portrays Big Daddy--the true crime-fighter of the city, who has committed himself to having trained his pre-adolescent daughter Mindy into becoming a stone-cold killer and martial arts/weapons expert: Hit Girl. Hit Girl is the very soul of this movie; hence, if the idea of a little girl swearing like a sailor and viciously murdering thugs by the dozen turns you off--well, you are going to have a real problem with this movie. Because, like I said, Hit Girl is the soul of KICK-ASS. <br />
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If she's the movie's soul, then the high school dude who becomes the street-hero KICK-ASS, is its heart; and, naturally, the Nic Cage character Big Daddy--is the brains. <br />
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Because what you have here, is nothing less than a pretty wry commentary on society's tolerance, and presupposed intolerance of, crime and violence. *<b>mild set-up spoilers to follow, nothing to really ruin it for you though</b>*: It quite cleverly presents Big Daddy as an ex-cop with a vendetta against a local NYC mobster (played with chilling realism by Mark Strong, the actor who played the bad guy in Sherlock Holmes recently). Big Daddy's yearning for the vengeance of his slain wife (Hit Girl's Mom) is so passionate that he has extended it, obviously, into his own young daughter, and forged of the shattered remains of their once-happy nuclear unit, a cold-blooded killing machine, a "superhero duo" whose lives are dedicated to taking out this one mobster, by starting at the fringes of his mob, and gunning down and/or stabbing to death all his men, virtually carving their way towards his door, to ultimately take him down for the murder of their matriarch. i.e, I say "cleverly" because, obviously, it takes the pretense of waging violence against such criminal scum seriously: if one's dedication to such a premise as that is strong enough to withstand the indoctrination of their own daughter, then you know they mean business. <br />
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Whether its right or wrong is partially left up to the audience to decide. It's presented as a thorny problem with no clear black or white throughout most of this movie. (To reveal what happens would be to really spoil it for you, so I won't do that.) All I can do is suggest that the movie KICK-ASS follows through with its premise, and even if it does so predictably, one cannot deny that it is a hell of an entertaining ride, from start to finish. It's at once campy and realistic, hilarious and tragic, as well as incisive and clumsy. The acting is good from most of the cast, with the possible exception of Nic Cage--I think he should try something different than his "mannered speech" which seems an attempt to pass for acting; but I personally didn't let this questionable acting tactic ruin what otherwise was a spectacular and fun time at the movies. Besides--I happen to have a soft spot for Nic Cage, based on his old days as a cool movie star (see: Wild At Heart, etc)--and furthermore, the <i>character</i> Big Daddy kinda grows on you by the time things get heated up. I couldn't help but be charmed, ultimately, by the interplay between Big Daddy and Hit Girl, and the legacy they help forge together. <br />
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As a clear and well-thought out statement about <i>vigilantism</i>, I personally recommend the movie KICK-ASS as mandatory viewing. It escalates the premises set formerly by such movies (DEATH WISH, THE DARK KNIGHT, etc) and, in combining the controversy of vigilantism with comic book superhero conventions, KICK-ASS offers a delightful escapism that collides against a reinforced, brick wall of confrontation with the <i>reality</i> of organized crime. As such, I consider this movie to be among the most important installments in exploring this territory, regardless of its (very few) flaws. <br />
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This is one of the best movies I've seen in a while, because it's humorous, shocking, actually disturbing--and wildly entertaining. The fact it is (obviously) being "down-played" even now while I type this out and it continues its (sure to be limited) run in theaters, lends me the confidence to suggest that it certainly outdoes WATCHMEN insofar as driving home its point.<br />
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Whereas WATCHMEN (the movie) failed largely due to a "by numbers" approach at grandiosity (not to mention having failed at the box-office, its major fault insofar as having unintentinally set a precedent for blacklisting R-rated superhero movies in the future), KICK-ASS hits the bull's-eye by cutting through such pretensiousness, and presenting likeable and believable characters (I admit the premise of an 11-yr old girl posing a threat to organized mobsters seems ludicrous on the surface; but I have to say the movie pulls it off beautifully, if only by a hair's breadth) in a realistic setting that provides many pleasing and shocking moments, as well as a general sense of excitement while we identify with most of the characters and situations. And quite significantly (assuming KICK-ASS breaks through the profit margin, something that seems inevitable at this point), director Matthew Vaughn will have one-upped Zack Snyder by reinstating the case for Hollywood to consider, that R-rated superhero movies just might not be such a bad idea, after all. In short, here is the bottom line:<br />
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KICK-ASS kicks ass. <br />
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<br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-57693002770449707132010-03-09T15:26:00.000-08:002013-01-22T19:49:02.568-08:00Alice In Wonderland<p align="center"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/vg2xc6.jpg"/img></p><br><br>
I'm still thinking about it. How great it was. As an adaptation of the original Lewis Carroll work<b>s</b>. A most brilliant and slithy mind, indeed, it took, to seamlessly merge Carroll's two book<b>s</b>. <br /><br />The embellishments added as an after thought, made the tickets worth what they were bought. That Mad Hatter's platters, the rats on the table, the caterpillar, the Cheshire cat, the role-reversal fable. <br /><br />Johnny Depp brought humanity and a certain dignity to his character. He did a bang up job of it, I must admit. The Haterz & Detractors, on this one, are sooo full of it. What IS it about this movie y'all don't get? <br /><br />WTF, Chuck? It must Really Suck, Growing Up. Whatever. This movie's clever. What did you say, Sir? That it's transgressive? I beg to differ; it's <i>subversive</i>. And I found it quite inventive. <br /><br />How it paralleled the metamorphosis 'tween a teen's post-adolescence & a catterpillar skin's obsolescence, was nothing short of brilliance. I must confess, this film's detractors appear to be a mess. But I digress. The script, the acting, the cinematography, the sets: I have to admit, I was impressed. <br /><br />The subtleties evoked by the Queen's split aspects. Bayard the Bloodhound stealing the show. And Crispin Glover is the Knave of Hearts--did you know? If the Bandersnatch doesn't steal your breath away, the Jabberwocky should, on this Frabjous Day. <br /><br />Tweedledum and Tweedledee are something you should really see. (Not to mention the voice of the Jabberwocky is provided by no one less than Christopher Lee.) About all I can think of to wrap all this up, is there's more to this film than will fit in a cup. <br /><br />Overflowing with wonder and originality, it's curious to me, that some cannot see, what I find to be, most sincerely, an imaginative update of this dearest old story. Most curious, indeed. <br /><br />From my stance at my unkempt table, you are politely invited to disagree. For what I find to be most sublime about us all, is our very differences, you see. I wouldn't dream of being you (heaven's no); and I would never wish the nightmare of being me, upon anyone I know. <br /><br />So if you (mistakenly) happen to think that I want you all to agree (with me), then I'm happy to say (heavens to Betsy) that's not why I'm here, today. I just wanted to point out (in case you were wondering) that some folks enjoyed Tim Burton's movie (despite or because of its blundering). I just happen to be (one of those folks) most easily entertained (by inside jokes). <br /><br />The moral to be found in this review, is that you should never let critics tell you what you should do. (I'm not really that prone to criticize, why waste too much energy on things you despise?) So take it from me, if you're tired of the same old story, yet crave a certain <i>familiarity</i>, then off to the cineplex rabbit-hole you should go, and at once (don't delay, if you don't mind my saying so)!<br /><br /><p>shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-36776195963448482842009-05-23T10:24:00.000-07:002013-06-22T13:08:14.745-07:00If It's Fast Food Movie Franchise You Want: Look No Further Than "Terminator: Salvation"<div align="center">
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<br />TERMINATOR: SALVATION is an abomination to the franchise. Allow me to suggest that you should not suspect otherwise. <br /><br />I read one thing in the paper yesterday that suggested "the critics liked it" -(?) -- it garnered an astonishing Two And A Half stars in our local rag - - (!!) -- with a caveat that "it has no heart" -- well there's a shocker for ya -- I don't need to be reminded that a piece of waste matter like that has no cardiovascular system -- its a redundancy I can do without, thanks -- here's a movie that deserves not one whit more than a ZERO STAR rating, in my opinion. <br /><br /><br />How on earth anyone--a professional critic or otherwise--could possibly give this movie more than zero stars is beyond me. This sorry excuse for a Terminator movie is firing on all chambers when it comes to missing the mark. <br /><br />There is no shred of a plot with any grounded sense of coherence whatsoever. The director McG's notion of a plot can be summed up in a name, "John Connor." Oh wait, I forgot--there is a twist. (Don't worry about spoilers--It would be quite difficult to spoil this for you, and I don't mean that in a cheeky way. I literally mean that it is impossible for something without any meat, to be spoiled. So read on. The "tweest" is "Kyle Reese." Just throw in another iconic sounding character name with which an awestruck silence is generated every time its mentioned, and there you have it: the totality of this movie's plot (and don't ask me for an explanation, the movie offers none). <br /><br />And just as bad as there being no plot to speak of, is the excruciatingly unfortunate realization that the setting, nearly a decade in the future (2018, from the date of this review), has no visionary qualities, and I have to point out here that it isn't for any potentially noble reason such as having accurately predicted that not much will change in 9 years; no. It's because they filmed this with what must have been McG and crew's own jeeps and equipment. Throw some military camo netting and things bought on sale at your local army surplus store, and wala -!- you have "Terminator: Salvation". When all the dust settles, you sit there blinking in astonishment that there really wasn't one worthy thing about this movie. No awesome future setting. No fully realized terminator army. Just a few badly strewn-together props with stale, cheesy dialog attempting to support them. <br /><br />But the movie did have some thought put into it. There is the token ragamuffin 9 year old girl with the nappy hair (check); her charming, teenaged companion with the mystery persona (check); and their god-given ability to pop out of nowhere with a convenient remote triggering device to blow up titanic renegade Terminators at a moment's notice (check). <br /><br />This movie is far less than the sum of its assembly of parts. Assembled entirely from every genre movie that came before it--you betcha. I kid you not: if you were to painstakingly eliminate each and every scene and reference to a previous movie (Mad Max, Road Warrior, Terminators, etc) you would be left with nothing. It is that unoriginal. <br /><br />So here's the deal. I've warned you not to waste your time and money and consciousness seeing this, and I meant it. Seeing as how I happen to know that this is suposed to be a special installment or continuation of a franchise that means a lot to us, I don't expect you to take my word for it. I know how it is. You want to find out for yourself; hell, you <i>need</i> to. I understand. So let's make a deal. <br /><br />Halfway through the movie, the only thought running through my head was "<i>I should lead a revolt of audience members to the box office demanding our money back</i>". Lord, do I ever wish I had at least tried. To do so, I would naturally have had to begin hurling obscenities at the screen, and I didn't because, well, I didn't want to ruin the possibility that others might be, *cough* enjoying themselves *wince*. Do I ever regret that, now. <br /><br />When the ultimate slap to the face arrives (the end credits), you too will wish YOU had been the leader of such a noble revolt. So NOW you have the opportunity handed to you on a silver platter! I beseech thee all--should you feel that you must discover for yourselves how bad this movie really is--<i>someone</i> must take the responsibility to just yell out midway through this cinematic miscarriage "THIS SUX!" with their fist in the air, and I can't imagine nobody else in the theater agreeing or muttering their sympathetic consent. TAKE the opportunity to leap to your feet and look wildly around you. FIND the people frozen in their seats with eyes glazed over---decent people like you and me who have obviously invested their hope, high expectations, valuable time, and hard-earned money--SNAP them awake to the realization that WE DON'T DESERVE THIS from Hollywood! Shout out dramatically "LET'S GO GET OUR MONEY BACK, PEOPLE" and lead their way out of that theater and to the front lobby. To quote a much better movie, "You can do it!"<br /><br />I want to read about it in the papers, how good people in several midwestern states ROSE UP and DEMANDED their money back. Because if we all just sit there like sheep stunned into submission--then we deserve yet another prefabricated, derivative installment shoved down our throats. Let this be a lesson to all who would blunder into a theater to see a movie by someone named McG. If its zero nutrition fast food movie franchise features that you want--then you know where to line up. <br /><br />TERMINATOR: SALVATION opened in theaters nationwide Thursday, May 21st, 2009. <br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-26846381192462432162009-01-14T15:08:00.000-08:002013-01-22T19:54:08.886-08:00Hell Ride<p align="center"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/20tml9k.jpg"/img></p><br><br>
<p><br /><br />This movie grabs you by the collar, slices your throat from ear to ear, pours gasoline all over your sputtering, confused face, and throws a lit match on you. You're done. You just been slapped upside the head with Larry Bishop's return to the exploitation biker flick, courtesy of Quentin Tarantino Presents. Did you bother looking up the 11% rating on Rottentomatoes? Well, so what. Consensus reviews from this day and age for this type of movie don't mean squat. But I'll tell you what does: This monster of hellbound biker mayhem stars Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones, David Carradine, and Dennis Hopper riding straight to hell on their choppers. The people dumb enough to argue this is a bad movie are really wasting their time. Go rent Pineapple Express or Baghead or something, eviscerate those to your little heart's content. There's plenty of punching bags in Hollywood that deserve it way more than this small labor of love. Not that it can't handle it. Hell, it'll spit out a broken tooth and still be standing there, grinning at you. This movie is true to a lost aesthetic. To coin a phrase that can't be overused, this here movie is Not For You, if you're not already into sleazy exploitation flicks from the 70s. Just steer clear of this lean and mean nasty biking b-movie machine, ya hear. Every chick in this thing looks like she stepped out of the pages of a glossy men's magazine, I'm not saying this is a great standard or anything, just that this is a real, down and dirty, exploitation grindhouse biker movie, from 2008. This movie will deliver the goods as long as you sit through it to the end. Yes it has its flaws, some of the acting is plain bad, and some reviewers have complained about the dialog, that its unrealistic. Well whupteedoo, how about that. I myself thought the <i>sur</i>realistic, often rhyming dialog was funny, it had me cracking up all over the place. Of course people don't talk like that, not unless they're having an unusually good time under the influence of certain spirits. So you can see, this movie is not going to fit into the mainstream. This is a good thing to me. This movie reinstates my faith that badassery still might have a place in Hollywood. We can thank Quentin Tarantino for that. How in the everloving hell this movie squeaks by with an R rating while other movies with less sex and violence have to keep cutting down scenes to stay away from the dread NC-17 is beyond me, but if I were to guess, I'd figure that maybe the ratings board is OK with *spoiler* slicing wide open pretty women's throats and pouring gasoline over them burning them alive and bleeding, so long as its in the context of an exploitation film. Any regular movie would never get away with this, but somehow Larry Bishop and/or Quentin Tarantino can push it through the censors without getting so much as a peep outta them. Maybe Quentin greased their palms, I don't know. All I know is this is one revved up mother of a revenge movie, and according to it, revenge ain't best served cold. Uh-uh. Revenge comes screaming in the form of tattooed bikers from hell out to kill you. Vinnie Jones as "Billy Wings" cuts a massive and ruthless figure with his pneumatic arrow rifle at hand. Larry Bishop himself is somewhat of a revelation as Pistolero, the prez of a biker gang called the Victors. Madsen is at his coolest portraying their Numero Uno Killer, The Gent. Wait'll you get a load of The Gent in action. Try not to blink, or you'll miss him gun down 5 guys. He is sick in this. And newcomer Eric Balfour (of the TV show 24) plays the keystone role in this revenge story. He holds his own amidst an all star cast, providing a youthful, feral vengeance that was quite satisfying for me to watch. And the bike he rides is badass: its a classic Indian with a suicide clutch, specially made old school for the movie. There's another reason to watch this flick, the bikes alone are worth admiring. Alright I've said enough about the movie itself. Go and rent this thing. Hell, buy it, support grindhouse cinema. I know I will.<br /><br />Larry Bishop kinda owes Tarantino big time. But the cool thing is this. Larry takes Quentin's goodwill (and hard money) and just lets it all out with this thing. He shows Tarantino How Its Done. (Exploitation Biker flicks, that is.) Yes the acting is sometimes atrocious (but not always), and in many scenes, the heavyweight actors kind of flounder. This is because Bishop gave them "carte blanche" on account of being legends. Hopper and Carradine both got carte blanche. That is, Bishop didn't dare presume to write them a script. (This is all covered in the special features section.) He just explained the situation to them, how their characters should be feeling, and let them improvise. So yeah, some of the lines are cheesy, some are bad, some are cheesy bad, but every once in a while, a sardonic gem slips through. What saves this movie is the story. Its a straight up revenge tale, and don't you know them is the most satisfactory. Sure you got Madsen and Carradine and half the time it feels as if this were filmed on the back lot of the Kill Bill set - but that's just one more of its sick little charms, as far as I'm concerned. It was Madsen's idea to bring back the biker movie - - he's been trying to get someone to fund this, apparently. Larry Bishop and his big googly eyes is just cool. He knows his grindhouse, that much is obvious. Of course a movie like this will flop in our air conditioned, insulated, jet set environment; most of the criticisms leveled against it are precisely the reasons the movie was made in the first place. Its almost as if every scene includes something hyper-real in it, that is, something over the top not normally allowed in movies, but which reflect our reality a bit more honestly. All wrapped up in a slick package of fetishistic defiance. Let me just say that if this is a "flash in the pan", a one-off so to speak, it will have been worth it for this single movie alone, so we can all thank Quentin for taking the trouble to track Larry down and get him up off his ass and back into the grindhouse, where he belongs. And if it helps mark (along with Death Proof/Planet Terror) the veritable return of the exploitation flick to our cineplexes - - then that is reason to rejoice. So I guess its all good no matter how you slice and dice it. <br /><br /> <p><br /><br /><p>shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-38585644099826444682008-12-02T11:43:00.002-08:002014-06-03T12:14:18.078-07:00Quantum Of Solace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Click Poster to view Trailer</span></i></div>
<br />I saw Quantum Of Solace last night, and I have to say it was a mixed bag. Nowhere near as excellent as its predecessor Casino Royale, Quantum drops the ball big time with its insistence on re-introducing <i>preposterous action sequences</i>. Seriously though--Quantum's topical storyline and well-realized villain (played with creepy cool style by newcomer Mathieu Amalric) way too often take a back seat to ridiculously staged action sequences trying to please that demographic which demanded that sort of thing (I guess) in their Bond movies. Bad move. Whereas Casino Royale was executed with cool finesse and realism (for the most part), I found Quantum Of Solace to regress too quickly back to our old expectations of what a Bond movie should be, and in so doing, it completely derailed the direction in which this re-booted franchise was heading. <br /><br />I can only hope now that the producers of the new Bond franchise scale back the preposterous-action idiocy for the 3rd entry. Yet all is not lost in Quantum Of Solace. It does have its merits. Either see it for matinee price, or save it for the dollar theater, or home viewing. Daniel Craig still maintains his role very nicely. Judy Dench as M is perfect. Their relationship is at the heart of this movie, and I consider Quantum Of Solace a "side stop" on the newly re-booted Bond franchise. It sets a certain foundation--a second layer after Casino Royale, if you will--for Bond's position in the MI6. Aside from establishing his position relative to M in the British Secret Intelligence Service, Quantum Of Solace does not offer much else in terms of originality for the series, with the notable exception of the villain Dominic Greene and his association with the criminal organisation Quantum. His ploy to secure control of Bolivia's water supply is pretty topical, and one of the elements that salvages the movie from complete mediocrity. <br /><br />To be clear on my feelings about this movie--like I said at the beginning of this review, they are mixed--I would rate Quantum Of Solace at least 6.5 out of 10 stars, leaning generously towards 7 but feeling that it did not live up to the hype established clearly by Casino Royale (which I would give a 9 out of 10 without thinking about it). <br /><br />So there you have it. Daniel Craig works overtime in Quantum Of Solace to desperately hang on to whatever credibility he garnered in Casino Royale, and he is very good at it. Given that Craig's Bond is a hard man who is learning the subtleties that perforce come with the job, I grant Quantum Of Solace a "pass" and have my fingers crossed tighter than ever that the producers of these new Bond flicks get their act together for the third outing. Keep the action realistic, please. There's plenty of time to re-introduce the classic characteristics we all came to adore in the old Bond movies: the nicer suits, the growing reputation, the ladykilling ethic, the gradual sophistication of what started out as a hired thug, etc. These are the real reasons to be excited about the new Bond movies. We get to watch how Bond acquired these characteristics, over time, as he gains more wealth and experience from working as the UK's most efficient secret agent killing machine. Here's to the third new Bond movie, and that it delivers the goods with a far more assured sense of balance than Quantum Of Solace did. <br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-59130412382599229882008-10-20T10:02:00.001-07:002014-07-12T12:15:11.700-07:00W.<br />
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<br /> <br /><b>W</b> is a tour-de-force. It is incredibly nuanced (thanks to the outstanding performances by nearly everyone onboard: in particular Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell's voice of reason, Thandie Newton nailing a caricature of Condi Rice that really has to be seen to be believed, Scott Glen captures Rummy's posed presence perfectly, Richard Dreyfuss wields his seniority and acting experience to full effect as Cheney [imo deserving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor], and Josh Brolin puts in such a well-textured Bush humanising rather than demonising our president, you can bet he will be nominated for the golden statuette as well), but all this nuance is not limited just to these actor's fine performances, equal measures of credit must be given to the writer and director, whose choices in what to leave out of the story are just as important as what they put in, and this is where I found the movie to achieve a near perfect balance in depicting just who this most "fortunate son" is, where he came from, and how he came to make a play for a presidency which arguably out-did his father's legacy while at the same time screwing it up even worse. It really is a remarkable piece of filmmaking which, I think, succeeds at a level I would have ordinarily thought impossible: it functions in a way which should polarise both Bush-haters and -supporters, because it refuses to pander to the biases of either camp. This, in my opinion, is the measure of a true and balanced work of cinematic art. I think Oliver Stone has come a long way towards a fair & balanced middle view with this film, showing his maturity as a human being and also his insight behind the real people that have really been running this country for the past eight years. It is not merely brave filmmaking, it is canny, smart, and crafty and dares to squeegee the mindset of the vastly divided American public for a clear view at "what really happened" during these dizzying, confusing times since 911. Go see W. not because you like Oliver Stone and certainly do not make the mistake of avoiding W. because its directed by him, but rather, go see W. because it is easily one of the most self-assured depictions of an American presidency ever committed to film. <br /><br />I am going to step up to the plate here and state that W. is a great film. It's great not because of any misconstrued boldness in its execution or subtext, but rather, its a great film despite the lack of such judgmentalism (which I find bold in itself). I.e, it is a subtle film that poses nothing new to the American public in its details; yet what it does provide is in the laying-out of key events in the Bush presidency so that we are provided with an unprecedented opportunity to get a glimpse of the whole picture, and it does so with as much restraint towards personal bias as is humanly possible, I think. Here is a depiction of a living president still in office which dares to pay respect to the esteem that is traditionally owed to the presidency while at the same time revealing the all-too-human errors comitted during its increasingly disastrous term. I think that for this reason among others, W. will not only win its share of Oscars, but will also serve to give Oliver Stone back some of the respect he used to enjoy in the 90s. Only now he is older, wiser, and not anywhere as far out on the fringe left as he used to appear to be. Movie audiences the world over can only benefit from his having matured in this fashion, just as they can only benefit from taking a chance on seeing this excellent expose of a film. W. is entertaining, funny, insightful, charming, and disarming. It cuts through all the bullshit and gets to the heart of the story. I find that utterly remarkable. Some have criticized it for being "too close" to the source material, that it somehow lacks clarity of hindsight, etc. Although this may be true in some respects, I found that the movie's principal concerns are well within the writers sights. In fact, I'd argue the exact opposite from those critics by countering that, actually, the movie's entire point is rewarded by the freshness of its creator's perspectives. There is no better time than NOW for a moviemaker with the life experience of Oliver Stone to focus on this presidency - while its still fresh on our minds -- in order to expose the all-too human foibles clustered at its heart. This is a movie I am eager to see again, to marvel over Richard Dreyfuss's Dick Cheney, for the scenes of Bush's cabinet discussing matters in the War Room, for the sheer audacity of this veteran troupe of actors seizing their opportunities to really capture something real here. To coin the most obvious phrase that comes to mind, Oliver Stone knocked this one right out of the park. <br />
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shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-14123477128972443562008-09-09T14:51:00.007-07:002014-07-12T12:15:46.653-07:00HANCOCK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Caught HANCOCK at the dollar theater and I just want to say - -I will never see that dollar seventy-five again. You might think "what's a dollar seventy five, c'mon" but I assure you, I could've tipped a barista, bought a 100% pure apple drink, anything instead of wasting two hours of my life in a shoddy bucket seat. <br /><br />I've never hated on Will Smith, myself, until now. I thought he was just okay in a few movies I'd seen. I, Robot was okay. Men In Black was perhaps a bit better than okay, and Will Smith fit that role in a pretty okay manner I'd say. All this glossification over the facts of the matter have come to an abrupt end. You might say my <i>laisezz-faire</i> bubble has been popped. You might even say my hatred for Will Smith has been freshly awakened at last. You'd be wrong - I don't hate the guy, but I sure loathe how he has come to be utilized in cinematic vehicles such as this. <br /><br />Where to begin. What astonishes me is that there exists the committee out there to pump out this sort of dreck to us baby bird masses. And we gurgle it down like so many blind, featherless fetuses. I'm just going to say that for me to even swallow the premise of this movie - -that Will Smith is a bum with superpowers-- required most all of my own special superpower, that of the suspension of disbelief. At a certain point in the movie, something so unbelievable occurred, it was outright laughable, and the whole thing came collapsing down for me as I was unable to withhold such preposterous tonnage aloft. From that point on (which was probably the halfway point in the movie although it seemed interminably far into it) the plot (if you can call it that) just went off on a wildly incongruous series of increasingly idiotic spinoffs to the point that my jaw dropped in disbelief, I looked over at my girlfriend, and began paying more attention to her. <br /><br />Of course, being the well-programmed Celluloid Dream Receptors that we are, our attentions would once again return to the big dumb screen ahead of us and to the unfathomable goings-on of the insipid characters hacked out by what has to be the most retarded (in terms of originality) committee of factory churned pulp parody bull crap the world has ever seen. <br /><br />Allow me this moment to take this review to the next level, whilst I look up the credits for these particular offenders so that I might proclaim here loud and clearly on this public internet forum for you to Beware! Beware! of these notorious and somewhat misguided excuses for providing patently unpalatable movie pap: <br /><br />Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan, step right up. You're on the Christ, That Ain't Right show. As the writers of this train wreck of a movie, you deserve the main booby prize, unless you can explain to us what happened, I'm of the mind that if I don't soften up a bit from our post dollar date rape affair, I am going to have no choice but go out of my way to avoid any movie with your names on it. <br /><br />Peter Berg, come on down. As the Director of this what should have been deemed an unscreenable and offensive exercise in humorless malice, I award you Worse Than Uwe Boll [WTUB] status, and that means that every movie you ever made before this will go down permanently in our archives as Insufferably Pretentious and will retroactively be deemed Inherently Unwatchable regardless of how well its brainwashed target audience was tricked into receiving it back in the day. <br /><br />Hmm, Chicago Hope... there's a show I'll never watch. "Very Bad Things", that was with Christian Slater, wasn't it? I heard it was a piece o' shit. Also the pilot and first episode of Wonderland, I'll cross that off my list right now. Oh and Friday Night Lights, I see. Didn't Explosions In The Sky do the soundtrack to that? That's pretty cool actually. <br /><br />Anyhow, there you have it. Take my advice and save your dollar and just avoid seeing HANCOCK. Did I mention Charlize Theron was in it? Forget about it kid, she was the worst part of the whole sordid affair. Like I said, take my advice and save your dollar and tip your barista instead. It'll build up a hell of a stronger charge in your karma than seeing this onscreen stillbirth of what ought to have been an aborted movie. <br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-34811598346093636572008-09-09T14:51:00.001-07:002014-07-12T12:13:14.969-07:00Speed Racer<b>Go, Go, Go Wachowskis</b><br />
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<br />I really enjoyed The Wachowski's virtually flawless adaptation of Speed Racer, and although my inner 8 year old is alive and kicking, it wasn't that alone which made the movie for me. What made the movie for me was partly its inherent concern for the clash of certain family values--that of the nuclear unit (think about that phrase for a minute, I think its a powerful metaphor) vs. the corporate family--and partly its stellar execution of a simple cartoon we loved as kids. Roger Allam was perfect as the diabolical owner of Royalton--he exuded satanic, corporate power. <br /><br />When he's trying to get Speed Racer to sign that contract, I gotta say something: I caved. I was urging Speed Racer on to sign the contract; <i>that's</i> how good Roger Allam is in this role. And yes--the film served me a lesson, how do you like that? Chalk it up to good moviemaking, my own gullibility (which may not even be rivalled by that of Speed Racer's), or a blessed combination of both, which allows this particular moviegoer the suspension-of-disbelief framework necessary to traverse these often bumpy cinematic trajectories. <br /><br />So what's with the Speed Racer hate? I've given the matter sufficient thought to decide it's a conspiracy, that's clear to see. We live in the era of Newspeak; we are up to our ears in it. The fact this movie has received a 35% approval-rating on rottentomatoes.com raises suspicions in me that The Powers That Be don't want you to like this movie. That's how subversive I believe the Wachowski Bros' latest, slick movie product to be. They can get ridiculed all the way to the bank for all I care, but I know populist subversion when I see it. And I like their movies a lot. <br /><br />Matthew Fox nailed the role of Racer X. Good thing Keanu Reeves turned down this role, because his familiarity would've tainted it, for us. (Perhaps that factored into his declining.) It has given Matthew Fox the opportunity to turn in a well calculated effort in the mysterious role of Racer X. Really, everyone in this thing put in the extra effort to lend their abject realism to a <i>kid's manga</i>--think about it. <br /><br />So, again, what's with the Speed Racer hate? You don't have to go figure--look around you, at our plasticized, fake society. A society whose values have become nearly inverted. (It makes me wonder how many people out there claiming they hated this movie, secretly liked it, but they're just too embarrased, somehow, to admit it.) I don't want to get too deeply into the inherent symbolism behind Racer X's character--it's writ quite plain in the film's subtext--but its just one small portion of a virtual smorgasbord of hyperkinetic moviemaking this film offers, for this century. This is the good stuff, as far as I'm concerned. Like the John Kricfalusi Ren & Stimpys, gonzo entertainment with a double-entendre, Speed Racer's got something for everyone. But there's clearly somebody out there that just doesn't want you to see it. And I'm afraid this someone's army of disenfranchised minions is starting to care less about it, too. If that's not mysteriously veiled enough for you, then let me say this. <br /><br />I sure hope this movie gets a higher critical rating from the underground, to offset the smeared campaign currently being waged against it. It deserves recognition for what it is--a daring and faithful adaptation of a beloved japanese children's manga. The Wachowski Bros have redeemed themselves, in my book. And I'm not convinced I should have ever doubted them in the first place. <br /> <br /><br />If you fall into the widespread network of distorted lies and falsifications inadvertent agents of "The Man" are desperately trying to spread about this film, then you really are just another programmed iBot who traded in your original brain for the media-controlled feeding frenzy of opinions out there meant to mold you into yet another compliant clone to be herded along with the rest of the sheep. The Wachowskis know exactly what they are doing, and they adorn the simple Speed Racer story with a compelling subtext which valiantly fights for the right of the uncorrupted everyman to stand up for what he believes in--so long as what he believes in is the right thing--and not the "bling thing" (if you know what I mean). <br /><br />What I'm saying is, every self-disrespecting corporate whore who sold their soul long ago to this cheap, plasticized digital empire of meaningless filth will have their circuits fried at this movie. I can picture them emerging from the neon-dazzled darkness blinking "<i>does not compute / does not compute</i>" while they blindly reach for their iPods to soothe their provoked and collective conscience. A quick push of the PLAY button will wash out their need to think and they can resume being pacified at the corporate teat of synthesized hypnomusic and dream about their next free MP3 offer when they log back on to AOL online. It appears to me that the Wachowskis have pitched their good-message movie to a nation already turned soulless. The hordes of drooling, mindless idiots out there had already lost their last shred of humanity by the time Speed Racer opened in theaters Friday, May 9, 2008. The movie is representative of a nearly extinct ethic. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons for all the hate spewed out in its wake. <br /><br />Think for yourself, and go rent the movie already. Otherwise, go ahead and sign that fat contract and just lie down so the minions of ignorance may continue to discreetly gang rape you. All I'm saying is, <i>if you don't like Speed Racer the movie without having seen it</i>, your soul was hopelessly corrupted a long time ago. It just goes to show how we can so easily be bought into the media-induced efforts at discrediting someone's brilliantly subversive upgrade of a kid's cartoon. If you are one of those people who deep inside used to <i>like</i> the Speed Racer cartoon as a kid, but have grown up to become an adult whose opinion of something can be molded by a 35% rating at Rottentomatoes, then you are a lost soul primed to be flushed down the toilet of the New Corporatism. If, on the other hand, there is still a shred of individuality left in what passes for your spiritually ravaged shell of a body, you might take a chance that the critics (and the robots who blindly follow them) are wrong about this one, and Speed Racer might actually qualify as a pretty fun time at the movies. <br /><br />Go rent Speed Racer and help spread the word. Otherwise, go back to your mindless jobs of becoming fodder for this soulless age of easily programmed corporatism. Either fight the power, or get out of the way. Get on the side of the good guys, or continue being patsies and human shields for the evil underlings of the Corporate Empire; it's your choice. The Wachowski Bros have clearly demarcated which side of that line they stand on. And I, for one, know that I stand with them, for now. Oh wait a second, this movie isn't about the Matrix--? It's just a fantasy, you say--? Well, it's good Saturday morning fare, at least. I recommend it for people who can check their baggage at the door, and enjoy some mildly subversive family fare. Whatever it is that the Wachowskis are dreaming up next, you can be sure I'll be interested in checking it out for myself, at the very least. <br />
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shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-217009659658684462008-09-09T14:50:00.004-07:002014-07-12T12:17:05.589-07:00The Darjeeling Limited<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />I saw the new Wes Anderson last night - - my girlfriend had been dying to take me (and I was pretty stoked to check it out, myself) -- and I have to say I really enjoyed it, very much. <br /><br />I liked the simplicity of its set-up, and how it really stuck with the three brothers throughout their journey on the Darjeeling express. My comment to my girlfriend as we walked out of the theater, was that it was "Tenderer" than the previous Wes Anderson flicks, and that's the principal feeling behind why I liked it so much. There was less pretension to this movie, less characters, less complexity, and that made for a more straightforward and enjoyable ride. <br /><br />Owen Wilson was great as the eldest son. Adrien Brody was well cast as one of his brothers; they both got that misshapen-nose thing going on. And Jason Schwartzman, well don't ask me why he wasn't in The Royal Tenenbaums - at least I don't recall him starring in that - and I personally feel he should at least have a minor starring role in every Wes Anderson movie, by definition. <br /><br />I realized something about Wes Anderson's movies, and its that they play across the screen like giant kid's books, only for adults. There's a simplicity of plot elements and goings-on that reminds me of turning the pages in a children's book, I can't really explain it any better than that. Darjeeling Limited is no exception; if anything, that sense of being guided through a narrative intent on enlightening its audience (the way children's books do) is even more pronounced in this movie, and to pretty good effect, I might add. <br /><br />By now its no secret that Wes Anderson's movies have a quirky sensibility to them that is not to everyone's tastes. That, of course, makes them even more special to those of us who have acquired this taste. I'd wager The Darjeeling Limited is no exception: you'll either love it or hate it. <br /><br />I loved it. It wasn't as bombastic nor epic in scope as Tenenbaums, nor was it as in-depth with characterizations as The Life Aquatic; but there was real charm in its simplicity and directness about the three brothers struggling to overcome each other's differences whilst on their spiritual journey across India. <br /><br />Another fine addition to the growing, eclectic canon of Wes Anderson's films. shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-78548619257145817802008-09-09T14:50:00.003-07:002014-07-12T12:17:41.868-07:00George A. Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />I haven't written a proper review for George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead because, well mainly because I don't want to spoil it for you. How do you spoil a zombie movie, you say (haha, nice question)? Well lemme tell ya, George puts a spin on his zombie mythos here that should plaster a rictus on the face of every fan alive. <br /><br />All you need to know is, he really does reboot his series (I hate calling it a 'franchise' even though it is) for the 21st century, and w/all the piss and vinegar of his youth. He may be pushing his late sixties, but behind the camera he is ageless. <br /><br />Diary Of The Dead showcases the evisceration of his original four-film series with a completely new start. Only this time, the zombie uprising begins all over again for a new "night" of terror in 2008; and brothers & sisters, it ain't the sixties anymore. <br /><br />Romero cleverly implements every video cam motif since Blair Witch and succeeds in trumping even Cloverfield. Yes, I am stating that Diary Of The Dead bumps Cloverfield down from its current (briefly held) 1 spot of "Best Videocam Horror Movie Ever", which is un-ironic in the extreme, when you consider that it was George Romero himself who could most arguably be given the title for "Original Blair Witch" moviemaker, with his seminal Night Of The Living Dead hitting theaters and mass consciousness everywhere in 1968. With its "home movie" grainy black and white footage, the original Night Of The Living Dead can be seen now, with the clarity of hindsight, as being truly the forerunner for such fare as The Blair Witch Project. <br /><br />In other words, George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead IS that style of moviemaking's true Godfather come home to roost at last. And boy does he deliver. The levels of "film within a film" and multi-faceted reflections his multiple camera lenses reveal about us get to explore deeper than ever before that strange relation between zombies and ourselves his previous films hinted at so well. <br /><br />In fact, Diary Of The Dead is an immense improvement over Land Of The Dead (which I enjoyed very much). It is DIARY's relentlessly independent spirit which annihilates LAND's bigger studio limitations. <br /><br />It is not without its flaws; Romero's script seems to rub in a tad overtly some of what should have remained subtext. Perhaps in his zeal to focus on our human condition he forewent some of the subtlety captured in the original trilogy. But these are bold times and I'm afraid he felt it necessary to club a certain percentage of his audiences (*koff*/zombies) with the subtext in the form of his lead lady's commentary. Yet I felt these new unknown actors did a fine job indeed of capturing the hysteria and amateurism inherent to their characters (themselves an independent film crew attempting to film a cheap horror movie about a mummy). <br /><br />And all you gore hounds out there, fear not. Like I mentioned, George is ageless behind the camera, so he will not disappoint you in that respect. There are plenty of wicked cool, creative zombie deaths here, and even a few quirky surprises to keep audiences laughing out loud as they gasp in shock. <br /><br />I don't know what else to say without getting too much into the film itself. Other than to state, thank God for keeping Romero alive & well for us all to enjoy this immensely entertaining and pleasurable reboot of his beloved franchise (sigh). I'm certain any real self-respecting Romero fan will love this movie; I know our entire audience at Sundance in Salt Lake City sure did. <br /><br />Despite having seen it @Sundance already, you can bet your ass I'll be there once again come opening night, when it hits major theaters everywhere in the next month or so. shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-30472067862708334532008-09-09T14:50:00.001-07:002014-07-12T12:18:23.792-07:00ZODIAC<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />I finally saw ZODIAC and I have to say, it is an excellent police procedural type of thriller. If you're looking for mindless entertainment, then I can see how you'd find it boring, perhaps. But I was riveted to the screen the entire time. Wonderful performances by Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gylenhall. The actor who played the main cop on the case, David, did a great job. I didn't catch the actor's name. <br /><br />The movie is a lot of things, more so than your typical, straightforward serial killer thriller. And of course, that is precisely its saving grace. Everyone who was bored with it, what did you want? Just more of the same? I, for one, was quite grateful that Fincher understood that in telling the story of the Zodiac killer, he was bound to have to focus on a much wider palette than just a killer thriller. <br /><br />ZODIAC is as much about the media as it is anything else. And the way it interacts with police investigations. It is about the maddening, labyrinthine relationship the law has with the media, and the relationships between real people and the results of these interactions. In choosing to focus on the Zodiac killings, director David Fincher has succeeded in dissecting the unfolding society of the late 60s in the San Francisco area and allowing us to watch it evolve into the slow modernization of the early 70s. We get an unprecedented opportunity to watch the real priorities organize themselves when it comes to the law attempting to apprehend a killer at large. <br /><br />There are several noteworthy sequences of Fincher's trademark brilliance in cinematography and camera work. The set pieces are so convincing, especially the opening sequence on the Fourth of July, 68 or so, wherein one long leftwards panning shot takes in a few blocks of a suburban neighborhood, with the fireworks exploding in the background, which is a beautiful example of this camera work. He really takes us back in time, and that is one of the strong points of this movie. <br /><br />ZODIAC is an ambitious film in its simple objective to tell the story of those killings from the perspective of the political cartoonist, played perfectly by Jake Gylenhall, the guy who was so obsessed with the case, that he applied his Eagle Scout sincerity in attempting to solve what the police somehow couldn't. <br /><br />An utterly absorbing film packed to the gills with real, crucial performances by a host of talented actors. Its ability to thread together the information pertinent to this case and present it all in just 2 and a half hours is truly a creative achievement that I hope gets recognized in hollywood. The movie is definitely a return to form for Fincher, whose somewhat lackluster Panic Room didn't do much for myself or critics, other than some fancy camera work effects. On the other hand, Zodiac is more concerned with developing the highly complex network of human interactions behind the scenes of a sensational piece of reporting such as befits that of a serial killer still at large in the streets. <br /><br />It opens up plenty of byways for us to question in the due process of the law, and what roles do reporters and citizens get to play in the "game" of hunting down a killer at large. In so doing, it exposes a fundamental flaw in our society which seems to somehow trump justice for media exposure or fame, and serves to provide us with a wide angle view of the legal complexities which prevent us from achieving efficiency in our judicial system. <br /><br />I found it endlessly fascinating, and a welcome addition to our cineplexes. If you enjoy a quite intricate puzzle that demands you use your brain, don't hesitate to see this entertaining, landmark film. On the other hand, if all you want is another SAW movie or something to titillate and terrify, or otherwise offer your mind an escape, avoid the subtle, rewarding complexities of Zodiac, and go see The Number 23 instead. Don't get me wrong. I kinda liked The Number 23, actually. But it ain't no ZODIAC, not by a long shot. We need more thoroughly intelligent films about serial killers like Fincher's ZODIAC. <br /><br /><br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-60532286466201440442008-09-09T13:45:00.001-07:002014-07-12T12:19:02.530-07:00Inland Empire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Saw INLAND EMPIRE last night. Jezuz crispity crackers on a bunny head. Laura Dern's psycho cracked operatic multi-faceted schizo actress trapped between mirrors in her infinite reflections of a lost alice dropped down the rabbit hole and down into the basement below hollywood's shifting impossible labyrinth is a heady, spacey, downright freakish exercise in maddening the sheepish flocks that frequent normal movie fare, and presenting the rest of us w/a recipe for nightmares & hollywood squares stacking up against the innocent dream of fame & fortune one might wish the film industry provides, well, not according to ol' squirrel obsessed master of misfortune David Lynch, who almost predictably provides an abject lesson in the inherent whoredom of hollywood's lush ever tightening trap for wide eyed innocent girls who otherwise might have thought their aspiration for success would provide a life free from duress. INLAND EMPIRE is a twisted, savage masterpiece sure to leave the majority of its hapless audience in the dark wondering why they wasted nearly 3 hours of their lives along with 8 dollars gone, but for the tenacious Lynch fan it is a plethora of warped dream pretzel logic tied up in pretty conundrums of an Escher-like nature, setting up a premise of a cursed movie in which the starring roles of the lead actor and actress have been murdered in past efforts of filming it. This basic premise sets us up for an ever -maddening yet compelling tightening of the screws of nightmare and insanity as Dern's character wanders deeper and deeper into The Black Lodge - here revealed w/its signature red velvet curtains as a possible metaphor for the line between fantasy (cinema) and reality (audience/actor participation). It is as if Lynch is stating metaphorically in cinematic terms what Renee Magritte stated w/his "This Is Not A Pipe" painting. This is not a movie, but a reflection of a portrayal of what movies are; which, when you get right down to it, are reflections of what our own fears and aspirations in life happen to be. <br /><br />There be plenty of bewitching performances in the classic Lynchian tradition here, of particular note is the startling and eerie gypsy oration given by Grace Zabriskie, who plays "Visitor #1", a bizarre neighboring lady who knocks on Dern's door and begins intoning mysterious things of a cryptic & uneasy nature. I also appreciated Jeremy Irons' quaint, easygoing portrayal of the devious director of the cursed film, and of course what true underground cult movie fan wouldn't smile from ear to ear to see Harry Dean Stanton cast once again as a charming con man on the mysterious movie set. <br /><br />The thing one must realize about this movie is, at a certain point, you just gotta GIVE UP trying to figure out wtf it's all about, and instead, let yourself go deeper into the unconscious dream realm Lynch has woven, like a spider preparing a fly for a future feasting. Therefore this is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, your typical linear narrative picture replete w/understandable characters or plot. It is instead, that rarest of hollywood endeavors, the true, blue, cinematic equivalent of surreal poetry, and if that ain't somethin' you imagine wanting to sit through, then by all means, stay the fuck away from this picture for god's sake, or at least your very own. I mean, don't even go there: this movie is strictly for "art fags" (I say that with loving defiance), David Lynch fans, and purveyor's of the darkest and strangest arts. <br /><br />It is, in short, a hallucinatory exposition filmed entirely in symbolic terms about the soullessness inherent to the hollywood process of putting would-be stars through the grinder of exploitation. It is a modern fable that uses the world of making movies as a metaphor for the danger of wandering too far beyond the fringes of ordinary reality and becoming lost in the mirroring realm of one's inner fantasy life. <br /><br />It is rich, vivid, uncanny, disturbing, wrong, perplexing, insane, and brilliant. Lynch's infamous use of sound is developed to its unnerving extreme once again, wherein he brilliantly utilizes the soundtrack to keep the gravity of the narrative anchored to a sense of "realtime", which juxtaposes beautifully with the slow crystallization of the developing nightmare, like a polaroid photograph slowly revealing images focusing up out of the darkness, some of which, once revealed, you almost wish you hadn't seen. <br /><br />Guaranteed to be reviled by those innocent souls who wander in to "see what its all about", but at the same time a worthy addition to the David Lynch canon, of which this latest installment is replete with all the familiar trappings yet somehow manages to delve further and deeper than ever before into the true, stark Lynchian landscape his devoted followers have learned to love since Eraserhead bewitched us so long ago. <br /><br />It is an odd sort of "anti-film" which quietly rages against the forum of its own production, a sort of suicidal love note fired into the darkest region of our hearts, with the secret intent of planting a seed there which will later grow to bloom open most likely as a nightmare while our conscious minds are trying to get some rest after we go to sleep at night. Sure to reveal more petals of significance upon repeated viewings, but at the same time maddeningly daring the most stalwart amongst us to sit through it all again, something I'm afraid only the most die hard would consider doing. In other words, an ultimately challenging film, which I find admirable in the face of Hollywood's normal drive to provide blissfull, mindless escape for its audiences. "Escape" is the last thing INLAND EMPIRE aspires to provide for its hapless viewers; it is, instead, rather like a self-imposed incarceration in a stark prison wherein the mind is enriched immeasurably from deprivation of the normally longed-for nutrients of entertainment. INLAND EMPIRE is solely for the devout explorer of the inner realms of the human psyche, the monks of abstraction who, like those that fast to purify their systems, wish for nothing so much as an antidote to cure them of the infectious malaise propogated by your average blockbuster. <br /><br />See INLAND EMPIRE and be purged of the mindless filth plaguing Hollywood today, and walk out of the theater unable to get the dirty taste out of your mouth. Then go home and rinse thoroughly with dreams.<br /> Do not say I didn't warn you.shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-10407556654153211922008-09-09T13:44:00.002-07:002014-07-12T12:19:40.172-07:00Eastern Promises<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Wow, what a movie! Eastern Promises, in contrast to its predecessor, manages to make A History Of Violence look like the comic book story it actually was. With his latest foray into gangster styled violence and bloodshed, Cronenberg makes painstaking efforts to have the material come across as realistically as possible.<br /><br />Whereas AHOV was an idealized fable highlighting the symbolic aspects of how violence affects the nuclear unit in America, Eastern Promises does nearly a 180 degree turnabout to showcase as realistically as possible how an underground mob's legacy is built, supported, and inevitably, as any model of corrupt civilization must do, how it falls; or rather, how it evolves and is passed on to the next generation. Compared to AHOV, there is only a fraction of stylization in this movie - that is, symbolic subtext. To let you in on what that is exactly would amount to a rotten spoiler, so I won't get into that aspect of it. Leave it said that this is a far grittier, bloodier, and more realistic account of events than AHOV, by a long shot.<br /><br />Viggo Mortensen is perfectly cast in the role of Nikolai. He brings a very tight and focused performance to the big screen that is destined to heap even more accolades upon him. Here is a leading man sure to scramble to the top of the heap in a day when there is no shortage of leading men: Russell Crowe, Clive Owen, Edward Norton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling, Robert Downey Jr, Benicio Del Toro, Christian Bale, Robert Deniro, Samuel Jackson, Joaquin Phoenix, Ralph Fiennes, Jeff Bridges, Morgan Freeman, Geoffrey Rush, Brad Pitt . . . Viggo could win a staring contest with any one of these powerhouse actors.<br /><br />Naomi Watts may sort of come across as a one trick pony to some, I mean, it seems as if she plays practically the same role in every movie she's in; but somehow she's got that down pat, and always comes across very likable and convincing, regardless of the movie she's in. Maybe I'm biased because she's incredibly attractive, but once again she turns in a solid performance as Anna, a midwife whose mundane life is injected with danger as she begins investigating a teenager who dies during childbirth in the hospital Anna works at.<br /><br />Despite its select moments of overt violence, what lends this movie its power is actually its understatements and subtleties. This makes for a nice contrast, lending the film a very finely honed tone.<br /><br />I personally thought the most amazing performance in the movie went to Armin Mueller-Stahl, who portrayed the elder father of this Russian mob family. What made this performance all the more impressive is how it never once became overstated. Just a glimmer in his eye held enough portent of impending threat to give his character as much chilling weight as any classic Godfather figure from movies in the past; i.e, Mueller-Stahl did not need a bloodied baseball bat, a Mac-10 nor even a single moment of violence to carry across the message that he was not someone to mess with. It was this sort of realism which lent Eastern Promises more weight than your typical "Goodfella's"-type scene, wherein a stylized mobster flexes his power in a sudden burst of physical violence; all Armin Mueller-Stahl had to do was look at you with his grandfatherly mask to get you thinking twice about how to handle him. Some of the movie's most effective moments can be attributed to him, while he spoke and behaved in the most grandfatherly of ways.<br /><br />All in all I'd have to say Eastern Promises is as solid an adult- themed movie as any thoughtful audience member could wish for. And as always, Cronenberg is masterful in his implementation of cinematography and guiding the actors to create a striking motion picture that truly resonates long after the curtains close.<br /><br />Be warned, however: Eastern Promises' sequences of violence get pretty gruesome and realistic. I'd even go so far as to suggest the infamous steam room scene may just be eligible for the most realistically staged and bloodiest fight in movie history; definitely not for the squeamish. However, that said, Eastern Promises ends up being surprising for its lack of typical violent-fare, i.e, no dumb car chases, no idiotic gun fights, and no predictable outbursts of typical violence: just pure and realistic mob affairs set to Howard Shore's suitable musical score, and a cast of actors in top notch form.<br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-54454187860039291972008-09-09T13:44:00.001-07:002014-06-03T13:16:08.442-07:0028 Weeks Later<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Click poster to view trailer</span></i></div>
<br />28 Weeks Later isn't messing around when it comes to providing an over-the-top horrific nightmare scenario, and although I liked it a lot, I just have to say my main problem with it, was the sound level. Hey, I know I listen to deathmetal, but that doesn't mean I appreciate my ears being blasted by insanely loud sounds/screaming/clawing in a movie theater to the point it makes you wince from it, swear to god if I'd known certain sequences were going to be <i>that</i> loud, I'd brought earplugs. Not to mention it bugs the hell outta me that some directors find it necessary to scare their audiences not from carefully modulated or built up suspense (although the film was not without those aspects, as well) and/or scenes of intense freakish (and quiet) terror, but from scaring the beejezuz out of you from the sheer sudden noise factor; its like a copout. <br /><br />That said, the movie was still effectively scary in the sense a good horror movie about a viral zombie-esque outbreak should be, there's little room for doubt on that point. 28 WEEKS LATER certainly cranks up the nightmare factor, the gore, the blood, the brains, the screaming clawing frenzied shoving mob of super crack-addicted zombies breakdancing on your face and dribbling bloody drool onto your eyes and such. And of course it stars Robert Carlysle, one of my favorite character actors (Trainspotting, Ravenous, etc), and he brings the old Carlysle intensity to his role (and then some). <br /><br />The movie's weaker points come from, I don't know, that whole shaky-cam thing that Danny Boyle kinda kickstarted with the first movie in this franchise (and make no mistake about it, we're all set for a 28 MONTHS LATER, don't act so surprised), and I have to admit this director (the spanish director of the movie INTACTO, which I've heard much about but haven't seen) took the Romero-inspired premise to new heights of horrific action (including one scene so outlandishly gory & over-the-top, that you applaud it while at the same time cringing from its inherent unbelievablity -- i.e, the plausibility factor completely implodes during it), but the movie also suffers from a certain sterility akin to the kind you get from filming in video, although I think a part of that is the point, stylistically, so it's got this mixed results thing going. During certain sequences, one gets the distinct feeling the director is flexing his muscles in the same manner a heavymetal band delivers a smokin' killer riff, there is much bravado in the directorial style, which I, as a heavymetal fan myself, totally dug, ya dig? <br /><br />All in all however, the director pulled it off with some extra characterizations, such as the one military sniper who refuses to follow orders when they're given clearance to "shoot everybody on the ground, no exceptions", he was one of the film's strong points (he kinda resembled Elliott Smith to me) and he lent the story a bit more gravitas. <br /><br />All in all, the movie 28 WEEKS LATER is a carefully constructed tone-poem of disease, despair, and disaster in a post-terrorist world that tries, and mostly succeeds, to depict a nihilistic humanity whose selfishness and weakness (as opposed to sacrifice and courage in the face of adversity) have largely brought us to the point of virtual implosion. The director paid a keen eye to the family unit, and symbolically comments on the overall human condition by representing what occurs to this one family. All I can say is, it ain't pretty, and that, I would add, is an understatement. <br /><br />28 WEEKS LATER is a revved-up, post-zombie flick for the new generation. It's loud, lean, and mean, and doesn't mess around. It goes straight for the audience's jugular, and if you aren't excited by that prospect, you might want to stay away from this one. On the other hand, if you're looking for some new heights (and depths) to frenzied, incoherent nightmares concerning biological terrorism and its fallout, by all means, fork up the feature price for this one and prepare for a harrowing time at the movies. Just don't forget your earplugs.<br /><br /> shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-16823326179765802942008-09-09T08:52:00.006-07:002014-06-03T13:10:57.013-07:00The Devil's Rejects<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>A Love Letter To Horror Fans</b><br />
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My impression of The Devil's Rejects is that it's a love-letter, signed & sealed by Rob Zombie and delivered straight to all the old-school horror fans. Just as sheriff Wydell states in the movie, "I've been walking the line my whole life, until I seen there is no line", this story simply tells it like it is, and sticks to the facts of what essentially is a showdown between good & evil, only everything ain't OK at the corral, in Rob Town.<br />
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Somewhere in the presentation of this dynamic lies the film's saving grace. Because what it manages to slyly pull off is invite the discriminating viewer to put forth a judgment on the proceedings. "Slyly" because that is the one thing the filmmaker never does (make a judgment). The Devil's Rejects is not what many (who haven't seen it, ironically) will have you believe it is -- an alleged "celebration" of violence or evil; but rather, it is merely an in-depth examination of the characteristics of both evil & good, and how the line that would be drawn between them is either incredibly elastic or may not even exist at all. (If there was ever a rape scene, it was thankfully cut.) <br />
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The movie is at once a horror film based on the structure of a classic western, and if viewed as a monster movie, it can be noted that the monster wears a mask of the human face. I found the movie to redeem itself from the accusations of those who refuse to see it, for the very reason that it has baited them into committing the mistake of judgmentalism -- the very act it refrains from indulging in, itself. The movie succeeds in the simple respect of telling a straightforward story. The fact many audience members find themselves actually rooting for the outlaws (yet not necessarily sympathizing with them) rather than the clan of cops who have sunk to their level in retaliation, becomes one of the most striking aspects of Rob Zombie's achievement.<br />
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If you like horror films, monster movies, or westerns, this movie was made for you. Signed, sealed, & delivered with a deadly kiss, from Rob Zombie to all of us.<br />
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DVD notes<br />
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Picked this up for only 9.99 - had to -- & watched it (again) Sat night, and I have to reiterate, Rob Zombie has delivered as close to an american slasher/classic as we could expect from him. There are at least 3 if not 4 or 5 classic sequences in this film: There's the "Fuck Charlie Chaplin!" scene when Sheriff Wydell defends The King; there's the howling-mad-Mother-Firefly-when-she's-in-prison scene; there's William fuckin' Forsythe in several classic scenes as Sheriff Wydell (he alone practically carries this movie); there's Ken Foree as Charlie Altamount, playin a classic pimp down to a T; you got Danny Trejo in here as a hardened Mexican hired assassin; you got Geoffrey Lewis (originally seen in the first Salem's Lot TV movie); and who can forget Bill Moseley's chilling portrayal of the star killer Otis, half Charlie Manson / half Jesus's evil twin ? <br />
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This is one badass of a killer horror film, that one-ups its predecessor by eliminating the camp entirely in favor of a realistic, but not without its sense of comedic relief, serial killer movie. What makes this one so remarkable of course, is how easily Rob Zombie manages to elicit a degree of sympathy from the viewer for the Firefly family, accomplished by making the character of Sheriff John Quincy Wydell every bit as a mean motherfuckin' psycho killer as those he is intent on hunting down and personally eliminating off the face of the earth. <br />
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Then there's the inspired end-sequence that puts the classic song Freebird into sharp relief for the silver screen; just another die-hard classic sequence that brings this awesome movie to the end credits perfectly. <br />
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A must-own DVD for the hardcore horror fanatic. shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-87335872433994285762008-09-09T08:52:00.005-07:002014-06-03T13:06:16.999-07:00HERO<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />What a beautiful, stunning film HERO is. <br />The sort of movie you'll never see get made here, not in a million years, and not just because of the obvious parallels it draws from its subject matter to the inherent questions of honor and sacrifice in war and how they relate to our own post-September 11th politics; but more fundamentally, it is a morality tale that the modern Western mind is largely unconcerned with. Would that we over here gave ourselves over to such matters more often, more seriously, and with one tenth the passion with which the Chinese exemplify. <br /><br />There is much thoughtfulness and wisdom to be drawn from the story of the King of Qin, whose aim in feudal-era China was to put an end to all War by conquering all the land and uniting it underneath one banner. <br /><br />The problem of course arises in the blood of his enemies, shed necessarily as a sacrifice for the greater cause of putting an end to nation's wars once and for all. As one might imagine, many assassins driven by vengeance wish to kill this King for having slain their families during his visionary campaign. <br /><br />Jet Li plays our hero who is referred to only as the "Nameless" warrior. He has been granted audience with this King in his own court for having slain these most deadly assassins. <br /><br />HERO is the quintessential "SWORD" movie. If you are into swords and swordplay at all -- this movie is for you. I personally consider Jet Li to be the only martial-arts mega-box-office movie star to have nicely filled Bruce Lee's shoes. His martial arts style is a natural follow up to Lee's unique hybrid style, and he is unmatched in his discipline and prowess. <br /><br />I won't give away any of the movie's unfolding charms, but believe me when I say that the ideas expressed in this film would be considered far too "dangerous" for it to have ever been made here, much less released. I'm not sure if that is one of the underlying reasons for its having been delayed -- this movie has been out several years, and I can see how Homeland Security would not be wanting their faithful bleating Sheep to flock to such a powerful work of art that forces the mind to dwell upon such serious matters as honor, integrity, and sacrifice in times of war. <br /><br />As such, I feel HERO should be mandatory viewing for all American citizens to dwell on these burning questions. The movie was so beautiful and powerful it left me speechless, and humbled. <br /><br />I am not worthy to rate such a work as that. I myself could only hope to warrant a "2-and-a-half-star rating" as a mere mortal being; whereas such a work of cinematic art so wholeheartedly devoted to it's ideals as HERO is beyond my qualifications to engender with a rating. I can only urge everyone to see it with an open heart and mind. <br />shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-87498288130105381872008-09-09T08:52:00.003-07:002014-06-03T12:59:14.663-07:00The Fountain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Stunning, Beautiful, and Sobering Meditation On The Dream Of Immortality</b><br />
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Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is truly brilliant. I now believe Aronofsky to be the one director alive today that has slipped comfortably into Kubrick's shoes (and it's not just because of the trippy visuals.) Here is a director who truly perceives the medium of film as an art, and who fearlessly creates original motion pictures regardless of their box office potential.<br />
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The Fountain is a beautiful movie. The music is enthralling -- I noticed during the end credits that Kronos Quartet played some of the music, which was composed gloriously by Clint Mansell. I even saw Mogwai mentioned! In any case -- an absolute must-see film for serious moviegoers. It is the real thing. The cinematography is stunning, and there is not one sequence or bit of dialogue wasted. Hugh Jackman is simply perfect in his 3 roles.<br />
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There is no doubt in my mind that The Fountain is the best of the 3 Aronofsky films thus far. He is really maturing as a director.<br />
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By the way, ignore the critics who allege this movie is 'flawed' because the director doesn't supply any 'answers'. It is actually part of the reason the movie is perfect.<br />
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It is a stunning, beautiful, and sobering meditation on the dream of immortality. The director knows exactly what he's doing. Audiences who can't keep up w/this film have no right to place the blame on the filmmaker; rather, they should place the blame squarely on their own shoulders for being largely ignorant of the various minutae that the movie is grounded upon.<br />
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What we have here, essentially, is that glorious & quite rare achievement to come out of Hollywood: cinema analogous to poetry (particularly for the futurist -scenario wherein our protagonist is captured in a clear bubble travelling deep through our galaxy). These sequences are pure cinematic poetry because unlike the 16th-century sequences & the present-day ones, which clearly are based on known historical and current trends, the future is a big question mark and Aronofsky pulls out all stops in envisioning his own set & setting to capture the inner mental universe of the protagonist.<br />
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The results are a truly mind-expanding glimpse into the inner & outer worlds of human beings' passions and foibles. Yes, the movie is a love story at heart - - something that may throw off the cynics & bitterly jaded amongst us, but for the true romantics at heart, it is pulled off miraculously.<br />
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Here is a a truly important American film pulled off with style and intelligence by a director fated to be recognized as that true anomaly in Hollywood: a genuine artist.<br />
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If you go see movies to escape or witness formulaic chase scenes, macho posturing, and all the rest that comes with the fleet of franchises sprouting from Hollywood's cultivated fields of banality, by all means don't bother with this.<br />
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If, on the other hand, you want to appreciate a true work of art that does not bother to "provide answers" but rather, challenge the audience with real and staggering implications of what it means to be alive and in love in this lifetime--look no further than Darren Aronofsky's third triumph, The Fountain.shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4287271325321279904.post-43683377271248310732008-09-09T08:52:00.001-07:002014-06-03T12:49:54.462-07:00What Is It?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I saw "What Is It?" last night, and met the director, Mr. Crispin Glover. What a cool guy. Here's what the movie is about. Our protagonist is a fellow with Down Syndrome. He likes talking to snails. They are his friends. One day this snail whispers to him. The things it says freak our Down Syndrome main character out. He doesn't know how to take it. Eventually he reacts by smashing the snaily. Immediately he regrets his actions. In a tender, heart shattering scene, he dismally tries to piece together the dead snail's broken bits of shell, to no avail. This is when another snail shows up and hisses in a whisper "Where is our friend"?, and our protagonist won't answer, too ashamed of his murderous act, and too afraid of the other snail to admit it. He leaves the house just as the snail discovers the smashed, slain body of its friend. The piercing screams of the snail are mind numbingly sharp and harrowing, and our hero must slam the door in the face of that sound. He ends up locking himself outside. Since he can't get back into the house, he takes off on an adventure in search of his roommates, who have the key. Thus begins one of the most bizarre odysseys captured on celluloid. There is a surreal underlandscape wherein Crispin portrays a long haired cacodaemon sitting atop a stone throne, overseeing various down syndrome female attendants. He symbolizes an inner aspect of our upland Down Syndrome friend; the way he sees his inner self. There are freaky monkey masked women crawling around down there, in and out of craters, collecting watermelons which later prove to be symbolic extensions of aboveland person's heads. There is one extended scene of a monkey woman masturbating an ugly man while he rests naked in a clamshell. Yet he never gets an erection, a slight indication that this underworld might be an aspect of Hell. There is a minstrel in blackface who is there to serve the cacodaemon. This minstrel is constantly injecting snail enzymes into his cheek in an effort to wholly transform himself into an invertebrate. He muses on this dream of his of letting his human shape go, to become like the snails whom he admires so, with only 400 injections to go. In the meantime there is a doll of Shirley Temple who arrives amidst imagery of Nazi swastikas. An old war era poster shows Shirley Temple as a naked prepubescent girl holding a riding crop in her hand. A close up of the riding crop's handle reveals she has it semi inserted into her bald pubes. Meanwhile, above in the "real" world, our Down Syndrome protagonist is found in various stages of interaction with his Down Syndrome roommates. One is his girlfriend, and we are treated to a dramatic scene where they engage in a romantic kissing session in the park. The music swells terribly in a Wagnerian crescendo overdramatizing this simple exchange of tenderness. This whole time the surviving snail remains screaming horrifically over the shattered corpse of its friend. One day our hero learns to put salt on the snails. He watches as the salt's acids corrode away the snail's lives as they foam up from under their shells, dissolving in what must be an explicitly painful demise. It seems he is asserting his superiority over the helpless snailys. The film seems to manage the impossible, which is simply putting everything into perspective for the audience member. By the end of the movie, viewers will be rubbing out their eyes from what they've just witnessed. <br />
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During the Q&A session afterwards, Crispin took much time to painstakingly defend his curious and surreal film. He went to great lengths to explain that in today's corporate sponsored age, there are certain elements or things that filmmakers simply are not allowed to show. "What Is It?" is a direct retaliation against this stifling of artistic freedom. As such, it is a pure and refined film of utter defiance. Afterwards, I was the first in line to meet Crispin and I told him as much. I said "I think your film is pure & true; keep on fighting the good fight man!" And I explained to him that I'd been a fan of his for going on twenty years now, and that if he signed my copy of his album, I'd be honored seeing as how I've owned it for at least sixteen years. He was eager to do so, and I walked out not only pleasantly surprised and satisfied, but with a significant amount to think about in wake of his disturbing, revelatory film. <br />
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Absolutely not for everyone, "What Is It?" still happens to serve an important role in the development of our counter culture. It expressly sets out to exercise those creative muscles the State would have atrophy for fear of exposing taboos generally thought to be better off never talked about. From this perspective I believe "What Is It?" to be a beautiful film, unlike any ever made before. And listening to Crispin defend his art helped me to answer the question posited by the work's title: the answer being simply, REALITY. Because it is the core of reality's often disturbing truths that are most often condemned by the state, and that is explicitly what this movie is all about, facing reality before our collective corporate-sponsored rules & regulations gradually force us to evolve into purely fantasy-based creatures. <br />
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We all owe a debt to Crispin Glover for making this film, especially those of us who aspire to express ourselves artistically in a commercial medium. <br />
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Thanks, Mr. Farr. shaunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14054968054917843198noreply@blogger.com0