Okay,
I am a lazy writer, so some bullet points first...
-I really love when a city has an actual main street and most major businesses are on this street. There is also a major east-west street (Nob Hill Blvd) in Yakima so between the north-south Main and this other street, its almost impossible to get lost.
-There's a bonafied Arctic Circle still operating in Yakima. The one in Olympia closed 15+ years ago and I haven't seen any outside of California since then. If you are unaware, Arctic Circle has crinkle cut fries as their default fries.. The only chain style fast food place that has them that I know of.
-It's really dirty here, but thats to be expected with the warmer drier climate. Its really odd to look around and see blue sky and very few trees. There's also a bare group of rolling hills surrounding the town (the Yakima valley) which is a stark contrast to the normal group of buildings, trees, and Mt. Rainier that makes up the Tacoma skyline.
I'd also like to mention actual work for a bit. I find it kind of interesting how people react to our booth. I've been using the same line "Hi folks, do you need any windows or doors for your home?" on almost everyone. I feel this gets right to the point, we do have our Skittles window to talk about, but the more hardcore window enthusiasts don't really care as much about that.
People either need vinyl replacement windows or they don't. A lot of people will say "no thanks" or " I rent" which are both perfectly acceptable reasons as to why one wouldn't need new vinyl windows. A lot of people, and I mean a lot have said "I just had them replaced". This one to me can be a little more dubious... I doubt that the number of people who say this matches the actual number of window replacements. Some of these people may have replaced a window or 2 with something from Home Depot, but its iffy that so many people have replaced all of their windows.
The two responses that I like are people that do need windows, so they say "Yes" and then sign up in some way, or people who say "No, but we already have your windows and we like them" which means that our base of existing clients is happy with our company.
People that ignore me, put up a hand, or walk away faster... hopefully will be more polite in the future. We are in the commercial area full of vendors, if you dont want to be pitched by vendors, then don't come into the Sundome and instead stay near the rides, animals, and overpriced food and beverage. I won't ask you about windows if I am walking around outside, so just avoid our area.
Finally, stupid responses to the Skittles window. It isn't really that funny or novel, so don't fake laugh at it. People have been doing "guess the amount of these small things in this larger container" for quite a while, its not even funny enough to be the basis for a Rob Schneider movie, so don't fake laugh. Also, don't ask if you can have any... I've never heard a "guess the jelly beans in the jar and if you guess, you get one" contest. This is because that would be a completely moronic idea... Obviously if we gave out Skittles, the contest would be completely invalid.
One last note, Skittles are not like M&Ms... because there are purple Skittles and blue/brown M&Ms. Skittles are also not shaped in any way like jelly beans. So people, unless you are legally blind, please identify the candy before you make an intelligent remark like "that's a lot of M&Ms." Its really not that hard. The one candy I'd think would be mistaken would be Reeses Pieces, but no one has ever thought we had Reeses in there (probably because I think its a misdemeanor to waste the volume of Reeses we have in the window. That, and Reese might come by and want his pieces back).
Anyhow, enough ranting for now... Tomorrow, dissertation about foodstuffs and more random thoughts.
That's all I have to say about that.
Patrick
Friday, October 1, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Yakima, Day 1
Hello friends and comrades,
I've been assigned to work 4 nights, 5 days in our neighboring state of Eastern Washington. Its a strange land, where they helpfully have the same currency as us in Western Washington, the dollar.
First off, the weather... Its amazingly sunny out here. In Tacoma, the highs for the next 4 days should be 71, 71, 68, 66 with partially cloudy/patchy fog type weather. Here in Yakima, its 81, 81, 80, and 76 and completely clear, literally, not a cloud in the sky. So for all the people who grump and grouch about "where's summer?", you should take the 2 hour, 40 minute drive over the scary mountains and visit the Palm Springs of Washington.
Second, the grocery store. Top Foods is Top Foods.. which is true, but i was startled by the size of the hispanic foods aisle. At the Top Foods on Union Street back in Tacoma, the Hispanic Foods sections occupies about 3-4 bays, where as at the Top Foods at Union Gap, Yakima, the same section occupies one whole long side of an aisle. There's one bay devoted entirely to bagged masa (the corn flour used to make primarily tamales) and another that's nothing but canned chiles of different varieties. Also, in the bulk foods area, theres an immense bin of dried pinto beans.
This may be because according to the best (and quickest) source I found, the population mix is 69% white and 34% hispanic/latino. Now beyond the obvious that this adds up to more than 100% and that african american/pacific islander/native americans are somehow in the negative percent, there's a substantial hispanic population here, compared to Tacoma's 60% white and 7% latino.
Finally, the Yakima Mall area... It looks normal enough, with 2 stories and what not. The bottom story was the normal mix of clothing stores, a hallmark, an orange julius, nothing to speak of. The top floor had a 3 restaurant food court - a pizzeria, a chinese place, and the very tasty Bruchis cheesesteaks. To the left of the pizzeria was a framed picture store, and to the right of the other 2 were a Christian bookstore and a huge military recruiting area (that has banners visible from downstairs). It was a really weird and quiet floor with the eerie feeling you get when devout photographers, glasses wearing Jesus biography readers, and the military. And tasty cheesesteaks and a bored looking chinese lady and the most stereotypical Italian guy working at the pizzeria (his name might have been Tony and the special was spaghetti with meatballs).
The rest of the mall area looks like someone saw the Lakewood Town Centre and decided to place the same bunch of stores, except not in a neat grouping where they all face inwards and you park inbetween them. Instead, the Union Gap mall area has the same 10-12 stores (Borders, Petco, Shopco, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) all in one huge interconnected parking lot facing pell mell in every direction so you have to drive around to each one separately in the least convienient way possible. This would be a problem in Lakewood, except at this town center, there was literally no one there (I know its Thursday afternoon, but still) so getting around would only waste your gas and not your time.
Got to go earn my keep and go to work and have some folks guess at some Skittles.
That's all I have to say about that... For now
Patrick
I've been assigned to work 4 nights, 5 days in our neighboring state of Eastern Washington. Its a strange land, where they helpfully have the same currency as us in Western Washington, the dollar.
First off, the weather... Its amazingly sunny out here. In Tacoma, the highs for the next 4 days should be 71, 71, 68, 66 with partially cloudy/patchy fog type weather. Here in Yakima, its 81, 81, 80, and 76 and completely clear, literally, not a cloud in the sky. So for all the people who grump and grouch about "where's summer?", you should take the 2 hour, 40 minute drive over the scary mountains and visit the Palm Springs of Washington.
Second, the grocery store. Top Foods is Top Foods.. which is true, but i was startled by the size of the hispanic foods aisle. At the Top Foods on Union Street back in Tacoma, the Hispanic Foods sections occupies about 3-4 bays, where as at the Top Foods at Union Gap, Yakima, the same section occupies one whole long side of an aisle. There's one bay devoted entirely to bagged masa (the corn flour used to make primarily tamales) and another that's nothing but canned chiles of different varieties. Also, in the bulk foods area, theres an immense bin of dried pinto beans.
This may be because according to the best (and quickest) source I found, the population mix is 69% white and 34% hispanic/latino. Now beyond the obvious that this adds up to more than 100% and that african american/pacific islander/native americans are somehow in the negative percent, there's a substantial hispanic population here, compared to Tacoma's 60% white and 7% latino.
Finally, the Yakima Mall area... It looks normal enough, with 2 stories and what not. The bottom story was the normal mix of clothing stores, a hallmark, an orange julius, nothing to speak of. The top floor had a 3 restaurant food court - a pizzeria, a chinese place, and the very tasty Bruchis cheesesteaks. To the left of the pizzeria was a framed picture store, and to the right of the other 2 were a Christian bookstore and a huge military recruiting area (that has banners visible from downstairs). It was a really weird and quiet floor with the eerie feeling you get when devout photographers, glasses wearing Jesus biography readers, and the military. And tasty cheesesteaks and a bored looking chinese lady and the most stereotypical Italian guy working at the pizzeria (his name might have been Tony and the special was spaghetti with meatballs).
The rest of the mall area looks like someone saw the Lakewood Town Centre and decided to place the same bunch of stores, except not in a neat grouping where they all face inwards and you park inbetween them. Instead, the Union Gap mall area has the same 10-12 stores (Borders, Petco, Shopco, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) all in one huge interconnected parking lot facing pell mell in every direction so you have to drive around to each one separately in the least convienient way possible. This would be a problem in Lakewood, except at this town center, there was literally no one there (I know its Thursday afternoon, but still) so getting around would only waste your gas and not your time.
Got to go earn my keep and go to work and have some folks guess at some Skittles.
That's all I have to say about that... For now
Patrick
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Machete!
Robert Rodriguez really needs the credit for being one of the premier action directors of modern film. Seriously, think about it... Desperado, Sin City, Dusk Till Dawn, Grindhouse, and now Machete... Even his more flawed films like Faculty and Once Upon a Time in Mexico definitely have great kinetic energy to them.
A lot of people like to point at the Spy Kids Trilogy, Sharkboy/Lavagirl, and Shorts as his weak points. He has a family and wants to make movies for his kids too... I've got no problem with that. The fact that his kids inspired him to make the Spy Kids and helped him write Sharkboy and Shorts is really cool in my book. I can't picture many other directors making big studio movies inspired by their kids stories... That said...
MACHETE!
Saw it at a 1:50 matinee, which to me is the perfect time to see a movie like this and wow, was this awesome... Tonewise, somewhere between Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Planet Terror... Exactly what I thought it'd be, so just some bullet points...
Danny Trejo finally gets his starring role and channels his inner Charles Bronson... Yep, he doesn't have a lot of range at all, but no one plays the quiet badass better...
Steven Seagal's hispanic accent was worth the $8.00 matinee price.
Pretty much every Rodriguez supporting favorite showing up... even the doctor and twin babysitters from Planet Terror... and Daryl Sabara, the boy from the Spy Kids movies... and James Parks as Sheriff McGraw (who was also in Kill Bill and Grindhouse as the same character)
Although Jessica Alba can't act at all... it seemed more appropriate here.
Why has it taken this long for Michelle Rodriguez to show up in a Robert Rodriguez film?
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I loved Shea Whigham in Splinter... and he's in a smaller supporting role here too, and does pretty well...
The Hungarian bodyguard is played by Rodriguez's buddy, Nimrod Antal, who directed Predators.
Geez this was bloody, but not as bloody as Piranha 3-D
There's a lot of plot here, but the final fight sequence is worth the price of admission..
Eli Roth, get on that Thanksgiving movie next!!
Downside... there's a little too much plot and a few too many characters... but I have to give an overall rating - 7.5/10... the extra .5 for the last 10 seconds, which made me laugh out loud.
A lot of people like to point at the Spy Kids Trilogy, Sharkboy/Lavagirl, and Shorts as his weak points. He has a family and wants to make movies for his kids too... I've got no problem with that. The fact that his kids inspired him to make the Spy Kids and helped him write Sharkboy and Shorts is really cool in my book. I can't picture many other directors making big studio movies inspired by their kids stories... That said...
MACHETE!
Saw it at a 1:50 matinee, which to me is the perfect time to see a movie like this and wow, was this awesome... Tonewise, somewhere between Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Planet Terror... Exactly what I thought it'd be, so just some bullet points...
Danny Trejo finally gets his starring role and channels his inner Charles Bronson... Yep, he doesn't have a lot of range at all, but no one plays the quiet badass better...
Steven Seagal's hispanic accent was worth the $8.00 matinee price.
Pretty much every Rodriguez supporting favorite showing up... even the doctor and twin babysitters from Planet Terror... and Daryl Sabara, the boy from the Spy Kids movies... and James Parks as Sheriff McGraw (who was also in Kill Bill and Grindhouse as the same character)
Although Jessica Alba can't act at all... it seemed more appropriate here.
Why has it taken this long for Michelle Rodriguez to show up in a Robert Rodriguez film?
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I loved Shea Whigham in Splinter... and he's in a smaller supporting role here too, and does pretty well...
The Hungarian bodyguard is played by Rodriguez's buddy, Nimrod Antal, who directed Predators.
Geez this was bloody, but not as bloody as Piranha 3-D
There's a lot of plot here, but the final fight sequence is worth the price of admission..
Eli Roth, get on that Thanksgiving movie next!!
Downside... there's a little too much plot and a few too many characters... but I have to give an overall rating - 7.5/10... the extra .5 for the last 10 seconds, which made me laugh out loud.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Gratuitious Fun
So this summer, most of the movies that I wanted to see all showed up in mid to late August. So some quick thoughts about some of those movies...
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - 8/10
Ridiculous energy, really fun fight sequences, and three great villains (cocky Chris Evans being utilized properly, schmarmy Jason Schwartzmann, and an amazingly great job by Brandon Routh). Michael Cera wasn't as irritating as usual and I actually liked him as a badass hero. The soundtrack fits the movie really well, with most of the music by Cera's band, Sex Bob-Omb written by Beck and the songs of another band written by Metric. The crazily kinetic and frenetic visual style really fits the story, and Edgar Wright does for retro video games here what he did with zombies in Shaun of the Dead and action movies in Hot Fuzz. Its a shame that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a little too old to be involved with the teenage-20something action. The reason why this movie doesn't get a perfect 10/10... Mary Elizabeth Wimstead as Ramona Flowers was fairly weak to me as the "dream girl." She seemed actually a little realistic and mopey and not as desirable as the movie tried to make her. Also, the first half hour of this movie seems like "Not Another Michael Cera Movie" as it takes a while for the first evil ex to show up and the inbetween time is fairly bland and not that interesting.
Expendables - 6/10
I really wanted to like this one and I liked the energy, but the movie was more a Stallone-Statham piece with most of the other big name action stars relegated to supporting roles or almost cameos. In particular, the iconic Jet Li only gets a lame series of "short" jokes and actually has to be saved by Stallone on multiple occasions. The Stallone-Willis-Governator scene is definitely the high point, but its far too short. I understand that Arnold has other commitments, but I've had liked to seen Bruce Willis be in the movie more (maybe showing up at the end as a surprise mastermind villain). Many of the fight scenes are annoyingly shot in close up shaky cam and a lot of the martial arts and fighting prowess of the different actors is lost by the poor editing. The entire last sequence is a total throwback to the glorious excess of 80s action movies especially Commando and I really loved Terry Crews' weapon as well as the Statham/Li double team move (anything else would be too serious of spoilers). The Expendables is worth seeing, its fun and mindless, but there's a lot of wasted potential that I hope a future sequel could fix.
Piranha 3-D - 9/10
As to the movie filled to the brim with glorious excess, I bring you Piranha 3-D. Featuring a super eclectic cast, the most nudity in a non-pornographic movie that I possibly have ever seen, and a ridiculously gory 3rd act, this movie delivered in every way I hoped it could. It was really fun to see director Alexandre Aja's humorous side, as his previous films (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes, and Mirrors) were all somber and serious. The actors were all having a blast, with special props going to a Doc Brown channeling Christopher Lloyd, Wild Wild Girls director Jerry O'Connell (finally someone letting him ham things up), and Ving Rhames once again playing the badass (I hate that his best scene was ruined by the previews).
I've heard this movie had a tough time achieving the R rating, I'm frankly flabbergasted as to how some of the different scenes made it past the MPAA, and I can't believe what the eventual unrated director's cut will look like. On the bad side, all the characterization is straight out of film stereotypes 101, some of the jokes do fall a bit flat, and the first hour or so of the movie doesn't have much carnage at all. Also, wayy too many of the good scenes are ruined by the trailer, including the last shot of the movie! For the love of God, Hollywood, please stop showing the end of movies in the preview... But if you want some pure adult escapism, check out Piranha 3-D complete with not awful yet fun 3-D effects.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - 8/10
Ridiculous energy, really fun fight sequences, and three great villains (cocky Chris Evans being utilized properly, schmarmy Jason Schwartzmann, and an amazingly great job by Brandon Routh). Michael Cera wasn't as irritating as usual and I actually liked him as a badass hero. The soundtrack fits the movie really well, with most of the music by Cera's band, Sex Bob-Omb written by Beck and the songs of another band written by Metric. The crazily kinetic and frenetic visual style really fits the story, and Edgar Wright does for retro video games here what he did with zombies in Shaun of the Dead and action movies in Hot Fuzz. Its a shame that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a little too old to be involved with the teenage-20something action. The reason why this movie doesn't get a perfect 10/10... Mary Elizabeth Wimstead as Ramona Flowers was fairly weak to me as the "dream girl." She seemed actually a little realistic and mopey and not as desirable as the movie tried to make her. Also, the first half hour of this movie seems like "Not Another Michael Cera Movie" as it takes a while for the first evil ex to show up and the inbetween time is fairly bland and not that interesting.
Expendables - 6/10
I really wanted to like this one and I liked the energy, but the movie was more a Stallone-Statham piece with most of the other big name action stars relegated to supporting roles or almost cameos. In particular, the iconic Jet Li only gets a lame series of "short" jokes and actually has to be saved by Stallone on multiple occasions. The Stallone-Willis-Governator scene is definitely the high point, but its far too short. I understand that Arnold has other commitments, but I've had liked to seen Bruce Willis be in the movie more (maybe showing up at the end as a surprise mastermind villain). Many of the fight scenes are annoyingly shot in close up shaky cam and a lot of the martial arts and fighting prowess of the different actors is lost by the poor editing. The entire last sequence is a total throwback to the glorious excess of 80s action movies especially Commando and I really loved Terry Crews' weapon as well as the Statham/Li double team move (anything else would be too serious of spoilers). The Expendables is worth seeing, its fun and mindless, but there's a lot of wasted potential that I hope a future sequel could fix.
Piranha 3-D - 9/10
As to the movie filled to the brim with glorious excess, I bring you Piranha 3-D. Featuring a super eclectic cast, the most nudity in a non-pornographic movie that I possibly have ever seen, and a ridiculously gory 3rd act, this movie delivered in every way I hoped it could. It was really fun to see director Alexandre Aja's humorous side, as his previous films (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes, and Mirrors) were all somber and serious. The actors were all having a blast, with special props going to a Doc Brown channeling Christopher Lloyd, Wild Wild Girls director Jerry O'Connell (finally someone letting him ham things up), and Ving Rhames once again playing the badass (I hate that his best scene was ruined by the previews).
I've heard this movie had a tough time achieving the R rating, I'm frankly flabbergasted as to how some of the different scenes made it past the MPAA, and I can't believe what the eventual unrated director's cut will look like. On the bad side, all the characterization is straight out of film stereotypes 101, some of the jokes do fall a bit flat, and the first hour or so of the movie doesn't have much carnage at all. Also, wayy too many of the good scenes are ruined by the trailer, including the last shot of the movie! For the love of God, Hollywood, please stop showing the end of movies in the preview... But if you want some pure adult escapism, check out Piranha 3-D complete with not awful yet fun 3-D effects.
Updates on this blog
Okay,
If you look down through the archives, 2 long time posts that I've been working on and off on are finally up.
My top 7 movies from 2009 (finally!) and my top 7 directors/alternate cuts of movies (in April 2010).
I'm not sure why Blogspot does this, but my posts get posted in the order they got started, not the order I finish them in. I have a bad habit of starting lots of posts and not finishing any... so I apologize if it looks like I don't have any new content when I actually do.
Thanks.
Patrick
If you look down through the archives, 2 long time posts that I've been working on and off on are finally up.
My top 7 movies from 2009 (finally!) and my top 7 directors/alternate cuts of movies (in April 2010).
I'm not sure why Blogspot does this, but my posts get posted in the order they got started, not the order I finish them in. I have a bad habit of starting lots of posts and not finishing any... so I apologize if it looks like I don't have any new content when I actually do.
Thanks.
Patrick
Monday, August 2, 2010
Inception vs. Predators
This will be about my feelings about Inception and Predators. Its tough to avoid spoilers when talking about Inception, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read this. For Predators, I'll only address things seen in the trailers, so it won't be as spoilery. Jadia, you get my first blog post based on a facebook comment...
So first, Inception. Everyone and I mean everyone who had seen it told me it was amazing, best movie ever, I'd love it, etc. So I had massive expectations going in... that were mostly met. I thought the last forty five minutes or so of Inception were absolutely flawless. Great acting, innovative action, clever writing... Visually, it was crisp, clean, and didn't have any glaring CGI goofyness (I want to know how they shot some of the "hotel scene"... had to be some crazy green screen sets). The cast was all around excellent, from the comic relief provided by Tom Hardy to the stoic Ken Watanabe to a surprisingly layered Cillian Murphy (his character's emotional payoff was surprisingly moving) and a welcome return to the big screen by Tom Berenger (his first movie in 9 years!).
So why wasn't it a 10 out of 10. For one thing, the inconsistent logic with the "dream worlds." There's a scene towards the beginning of the climax where Joe GL's character is shooting at some far away henchmen with an automatic rifle and then Tom Hardy's character says "dream a little bigger" and blows away the henchmen with a rocket launcher. Its a cute moment, but there are a lot of times throughout the climax when said rocket launcher would come in handy, but conveniently no one else "dreams of it." Also, its established that Ellen Page's character can create the dream levels, but it seems like the end "levels" are a lot tougher than they need to be (that snow fortress could have been a little easier to infiltrate). She also moves stuff around a ton early in the movie, but conveniently forgets to do that later on (I know they say that it would make it obvious to Fischer that they were dreaming and make his projections more aggressive, but literally wrapping the city on itself seems like a huge advantage).
More so than the above plot holes, how easily Ellen Page's character figures out DiCaprio's character's inner psyche and problems. It makes Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character seem really stupid and dense that he never figured it out in years of working with DiCaprio. Its also really dumb for DiCaprio to involve himself as much as he does (why not just have JGL, Yusef, Hardy, and Page's characters go deep into the dream and take Yusef's role in the first dream) considering how mentally damaged he is. A lot of the plot events seem to happen to create tension because the script says so and not for any real logical reason.
By comparison, Predators overachieved my expectations. The original Predator was one of my favorite movies and was followed by a goofy yet flawed sequel and then two terrible spinoffs. Even with Robert Rodriguez's involvement I was skeptical on the quality of another sequel, especially when the announced cast featured action luminaries Adrien Brody and Topher Grace.
Predators felt like the 80s sequel that the original deserved. Like the original, all of the characters are fairly simple, the plot is easy to understand, there are a lot of big guns, and a lot of stuff gets blown up real good. With the exception of the Predadogs sequence early on, there is no CGI... the Predators are once again dudes in suits and there's a lot of practical stuntwork.
The difference between Predator and s is that the original had a cohesive team of special ops badasses while the new one has a squabbling team of different types of killers. It's a little stereotypical as far as the characters go. We get the intense black guy (but not as intense as Bill Dukes/Mac from the first), the angry latino (an underused Danny Trejo), the stoic honorable asian, the hick (who I recognized as Billy "Downtown" Anderson from Major League 3), the Topher Grace (playing Topher Grace), and more. Brody pulls out a Christian Bale/Batman gravelly voice, I'm impressed how he got himself into amazing physical shape, and seems really believable as the extremely quick and cool under fire protagonist.
So why wasn't this a perfect 10? Lawrence Fishburne's character was really goofy and only there for exposition. A lot of the scenes straddled the line between homages (there's a moment similar to the full on badassery when the Indian dude takes off his shirt from the first) and ripping off the original (did we really need another impossibly far drop off a huge waterfall?). The scene from the previews where a ton of Predator laser sights zero in on Brody, well, that isn't even in the movie ( I hate when movies shoot scenes only for the trailer). For my liking, we see too much of the Predators. Part of what made the original so awesome was that we don't see the Predator full on until the end, and although the prosthestics/suits look amazing, its still a dude in a suit. Plus, the 'civil war' aspect is underdeveloped and fairly weak (if they wanted to go that route, I'd have liked the movie to focus more on that).
So both movies I liked, both have strength and weaknesses, I'd recommend both and I thought Inception was better overall... But only just a little.
That's all I have to say about that.
So first, Inception. Everyone and I mean everyone who had seen it told me it was amazing, best movie ever, I'd love it, etc. So I had massive expectations going in... that were mostly met. I thought the last forty five minutes or so of Inception were absolutely flawless. Great acting, innovative action, clever writing... Visually, it was crisp, clean, and didn't have any glaring CGI goofyness (I want to know how they shot some of the "hotel scene"... had to be some crazy green screen sets). The cast was all around excellent, from the comic relief provided by Tom Hardy to the stoic Ken Watanabe to a surprisingly layered Cillian Murphy (his character's emotional payoff was surprisingly moving) and a welcome return to the big screen by Tom Berenger (his first movie in 9 years!).
So why wasn't it a 10 out of 10. For one thing, the inconsistent logic with the "dream worlds." There's a scene towards the beginning of the climax where Joe GL's character is shooting at some far away henchmen with an automatic rifle and then Tom Hardy's character says "dream a little bigger" and blows away the henchmen with a rocket launcher. Its a cute moment, but there are a lot of times throughout the climax when said rocket launcher would come in handy, but conveniently no one else "dreams of it." Also, its established that Ellen Page's character can create the dream levels, but it seems like the end "levels" are a lot tougher than they need to be (that snow fortress could have been a little easier to infiltrate). She also moves stuff around a ton early in the movie, but conveniently forgets to do that later on (I know they say that it would make it obvious to Fischer that they were dreaming and make his projections more aggressive, but literally wrapping the city on itself seems like a huge advantage).
More so than the above plot holes, how easily Ellen Page's character figures out DiCaprio's character's inner psyche and problems. It makes Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character seem really stupid and dense that he never figured it out in years of working with DiCaprio. Its also really dumb for DiCaprio to involve himself as much as he does (why not just have JGL, Yusef, Hardy, and Page's characters go deep into the dream and take Yusef's role in the first dream) considering how mentally damaged he is. A lot of the plot events seem to happen to create tension because the script says so and not for any real logical reason.
By comparison, Predators overachieved my expectations. The original Predator was one of my favorite movies and was followed by a goofy yet flawed sequel and then two terrible spinoffs. Even with Robert Rodriguez's involvement I was skeptical on the quality of another sequel, especially when the announced cast featured action luminaries Adrien Brody and Topher Grace.
Predators felt like the 80s sequel that the original deserved. Like the original, all of the characters are fairly simple, the plot is easy to understand, there are a lot of big guns, and a lot of stuff gets blown up real good. With the exception of the Predadogs sequence early on, there is no CGI... the Predators are once again dudes in suits and there's a lot of practical stuntwork.
The difference between Predator and s is that the original had a cohesive team of special ops badasses while the new one has a squabbling team of different types of killers. It's a little stereotypical as far as the characters go. We get the intense black guy (but not as intense as Bill Dukes/Mac from the first), the angry latino (an underused Danny Trejo), the stoic honorable asian, the hick (who I recognized as Billy "Downtown" Anderson from Major League 3), the Topher Grace (playing Topher Grace), and more. Brody pulls out a Christian Bale/Batman gravelly voice, I'm impressed how he got himself into amazing physical shape, and seems really believable as the extremely quick and cool under fire protagonist.
So why wasn't this a perfect 10? Lawrence Fishburne's character was really goofy and only there for exposition. A lot of the scenes straddled the line between homages (there's a moment similar to the full on badassery when the Indian dude takes off his shirt from the first) and ripping off the original (did we really need another impossibly far drop off a huge waterfall?). The scene from the previews where a ton of Predator laser sights zero in on Brody, well, that isn't even in the movie ( I hate when movies shoot scenes only for the trailer). For my liking, we see too much of the Predators. Part of what made the original so awesome was that we don't see the Predator full on until the end, and although the prosthestics/suits look amazing, its still a dude in a suit. Plus, the 'civil war' aspect is underdeveloped and fairly weak (if they wanted to go that route, I'd have liked the movie to focus more on that).
So both movies I liked, both have strength and weaknesses, I'd recommend both and I thought Inception was better overall... But only just a little.
That's all I have to say about that.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
top 7 movies of 2009
I know its well into 2010, but I just recently got done watching all the 2009 best picture Oscar nominees (well, except Precious, but I just couldn't do it). I felt like until I had seen more of the critically acclaimed movies, that this sort of column would be less valid. So without further ado, here's my top 7 movies from 2009. Why seven? because I'm lazy and there weren't that many great movies...
Honorable Mention from 2008 that didn't get a US release until 2009 so it's ineligible for the list but dang is it good movie -Let the Right One In
It's actually more of a dramatic character piece than a horror movie, the two lead child actors emote together for some of the best performances I've ever seen considering age, the script isn't super obvious but no stupid "twists" either, the camerawork pulls back to show the beautiful Swedish winter (I loved the many long shots, no goofy fast edited close up montages here). Finally, when the horror bits happened, they were intense and visceral especially when the rest of the movie was so somber. I have to say that I am less than excited about the US remake coming out this fall of 2010, I mean really, 2 years and we already get a remake?? (the trailer looks competent enough, but there's virtually no room to improve on the original thus making any remake unnecessary)
Last 3 movies out - The Road (really well made but amazingly depressing and hard to watch), Crazy Heart (very well acted but a little too familiar considering the high profile music biopics in recent years), and A Perfect Getaway (I'm still not sure if my love for this movie is that it blew away the low expectations I had or if its that good)
So without further ado...
7. Fanboys
In a year that saw such garbage as The Proposal and Paul Blart Mall Cop top 150 million domestic, this comedic gem was completely dumped by the Weinstein company. After being delayed for 2 years (it was originally set to be released in late summer of 2007), Fanboys had an extremely limited release (45 whole theaters) in early February.
So that's why you probably haven't heard of or seen this movie... but man is it funny. The best way to describe it is kids from Road Trip have a Star Wars themed Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back adventure. Or in easier to understand terms, in the year 1997, a group of friends drive cross country to Skywalker Ranch to steal a rough cut of Episode I. The main five characters have good camaraderie (especially Jay Baruchel and Dan Fogler) and there are a lot of great cameos (including Seth Rogen in three different parts). Its just a fun, silly comedy with clever references and a surprising amount of heart.
6. Zombieland
The previews didn't get me that excited (an American Shaun of the Dead knockoff) but the movie proved to be a fun, exciting ride with an appealing yet unlikely pair of the rough, vulgar Woody Harrelson and the Ceraish, germaphobic Jesse Eisenberg. Add in a long run of creatively gruesome zombie mayhem, witty dialogue, hilarious sight gags (featuring possibly the best celebrity cameo from... I can't spoil it), and Emma Stone's coming out as a hot babe with some acting chops, and you get a super enjoyable movie.
5. Inglorious Basterds
This movie wast the most frustrating on the list to evaluate for me. The good parts of this movie (the Basterds themselves, Christoph Waltz's fanatical officer, the final scene at the theater) outweigh the overly slow and unnecessary parts (the opening scene, Mike Myers' cameo, most of the bar sequence). To me, every QT movie is about ten minutes too long and has one long extraneous dialogue scene, and by my count, Basterds has at least four of these parts. On the good side, Tarantino always gets the most out of the cast at hand, which definitely holds true this time. BJ Novak, Eli Roth, and Brad Pitt stand out as the primary Basterds and their attempt to infiltrate the German ranks result in some of the funniest moments in any movie of 2009.
4. Up in the Air
I'm not generally a fan of one note snarky smooth George Clooney roles, but in the right movie (like in Out of Sight or Dusk Till Dawn) it can fit in really well. I also really enjoyed Jason Reitman's previous 2 movies (Juno and Thank you for Smoking) so I had high hopes going in. The basic premise of the movie (Clooney flies around the country helping companies to fire their employees) doesn't seem that interesting, but the amazingly clever dialogue and strong characters made this movie extremely memorable. Beyond Clooney, we also get gems in small roles from longtime favorite J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliott, Danny McBride, and Zack Galifinakis. However, for me, the movie was stolen by Anna Kendrick as Clooney's younger co worker who took a pretty stock idea (overachieving up and comer) and created a nuanced, realistic character. A lot of charm, but wasn't as exciting as the top three.
3. Taken
Liam Neeson beats up Europe, nuff said. This felt like the kid of the Bourne movies and Die Hard. Really simple plot, tight pacing, the action seemed realistic and didn't get too ridiculous. In my opinion, Liam Neeson might be the most underrated great modern actor. It seems like besides Schindler's List, most of his really good performances aren't remembered. I still really dig Rob Roy, Les Miserables, and even his part of Love, Actually wasn't that bad (the other part of that I can tolerate is the Alan Rickman store). Anyhow, back to Taken, amazing smart and gripping action movie, but wasn't super original, so it can't be #1.
2. District 9
Expectations greatly influence how much I enjoy or don't certain movies and going into District 9, I knew 2 things.
1. The movie involved aliens in South Africa
2. Every person who saw this movie thought it was at least pretty good.
Featuring the completely unknown Sharlto Copley, this movie had a combination of ridiculous action, political statements, and human pathos/drama. Early on, the quasi documentary style introduced the world and setup without a clumsy expositional scroll. After the first half hour or so, things pick up, and its pretty much an extended chase to the finish.
This movie also totally kept my attention and was amazingly suspenseful the whole way to the end. I don't want to give away too many details, but the showdown with the gangsters/army leading up to the "suit" part would probably place in my favorite action scenes ever. Plus, its the rare movie that doesn't tie everything up completely tidily and leaves room for future movies from director Neil Blomkamp (After seeing this, I'd have loved to have seen his proposed Halo movie).
1. Watchmen
Watchmen might be my favorite comic story that could possibly become a good movie. From the marketing campaign to the casting to the amazingly faithful direction, this is the best comic to movie adaptation to date. I could write for a while about everything I love but I'll focus on debunking the criticisms I've heard the most.
It's too long... Its a fricking epic, I love how much character development was kept in. If you want a short, to the point comic action movie, watch 300.
It's too gratuitous... This one is tougher, because the comic was written in the mid 80s, so Zack Snyder definitely intensified the violence (bones breaking, Manhattan making people explode) and sex aspects. Did this bother me? Nah, with the sheer volume of action/events, I think making some a little more memorable didn't hurt the movie that much.
But they changed (item X) from the comic... The density of the Watchmen universe made it amazingly hard to translate to a movie. Even with the 3 hour directors cut, there were cuts. To me, I can distill it down to focusing on the current team of Watchmen and really trimming a lot of the side characters. Its really funny to me that Ive heard complaints that it was too long yet things were left out. Its also funny how amazing V for Vendetta the movie was, yet Alan Moore and a lot of the hardcore fans really hated it.
Malin Ackerman/Matthew Goode can't act... Well, I kind of agree with the first and really would have liked a stronger actress there (Christina Hendricks from Mad Men would have been a cool choice). Goode as Ozymandias had a really tough part to play - the pacifist intellectual. It just is not as dynamic a character as Manhattan or Night Owl not to mention Rorschach. I think he did a really good, no great, no iconic job (and no best supporting actor nod, not even in Golden Globes).
On to what I liked specifically... SPOILERS!!!
A yellow screen with black company logos, a Pat Buchanan parody, MTV, door breaking, slow motion mug throwing, major league ass kicking, wall breaking, coffee table breaking, kitchen knife throwing, the shot of Jeffrey Dean Morgan thrown out a window, the freefalling yellow smiley face button,
pseudo slow motion opening montage with Bob Dylan song playing over the credits, a hot lesbian kiss, prostitutes, we find out who really shot JFK, the moon landing, gratuitous Richard Nixon winning another term as President, exploding store
awesome Jackie Earle Haley voice overs, a grappling hook gun, old superhero bullshit session, bean eating, World Trade Center in the background, cool teleportation effects, multiple flashbacks, superhero funeral set to the Simon and Garfunkel opus "The Sound of Silence," barfing, gratuitous Carla Guigno attempted flashback rape
The Comedian kicking ass: setting a guy on fire in the Nam and killing a pregnant woman, map burning, Matt Frewer!, the super cool old Night Owl, conscience growing, a blue skinned guy on Mars, gratuitous extended flashback concerning Dr. Manhattan's origin, tank destruction, exploding bad guys
Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon ecstatic about nuclear war killing people on the U.S. eastern seaboard, a deliveryman hitman, cool slow mo bullet to the head, metal thing to the body, a foamy cyanide death
The police fight with the bug spray flame thrower, Jackie Earle Haley without a mask!, ball punching, cheek tearing, gratuitous dogs fighting over a human leg bone followed by dead dogs, meat cleaver to the top of the head (ouch), attempted prison beating, hot grease to the face followed by amazingly badass line, gratuitous night vision goggles, impotence fighting, a midget prison gang boss, superhero sex, kid rescuing, outrunning an explosion, a prison riot, arm slicing, toilet breaking, electrocution, funny midget killing
Antarctica?, a big character revelation, funky tiger critter, a floating glass machine, Jimi Hendrix!, pacifist ass kicking killing millions to save billions, bullet catching, dead tiger critter, touching final moments, gratuitous ink blot, world peace, gratuitous "The Outer Limits," and an attack on Ronald Reagan, crappy My Chemical Romance cover of a Dylan song
Whew...
Who's gonna make the 2010 list? Who knows?
That's all I gotta say about that
Patrick
Honorable Mention from 2008 that didn't get a US release until 2009 so it's ineligible for the list but dang is it good movie -Let the Right One In
It's actually more of a dramatic character piece than a horror movie, the two lead child actors emote together for some of the best performances I've ever seen considering age, the script isn't super obvious but no stupid "twists" either, the camerawork pulls back to show the beautiful Swedish winter (I loved the many long shots, no goofy fast edited close up montages here). Finally, when the horror bits happened, they were intense and visceral especially when the rest of the movie was so somber. I have to say that I am less than excited about the US remake coming out this fall of 2010, I mean really, 2 years and we already get a remake?? (the trailer looks competent enough, but there's virtually no room to improve on the original thus making any remake unnecessary)
Last 3 movies out - The Road (really well made but amazingly depressing and hard to watch), Crazy Heart (very well acted but a little too familiar considering the high profile music biopics in recent years), and A Perfect Getaway (I'm still not sure if my love for this movie is that it blew away the low expectations I had or if its that good)
So without further ado...
7. Fanboys
In a year that saw such garbage as The Proposal and Paul Blart Mall Cop top 150 million domestic, this comedic gem was completely dumped by the Weinstein company. After being delayed for 2 years (it was originally set to be released in late summer of 2007), Fanboys had an extremely limited release (45 whole theaters) in early February.So that's why you probably haven't heard of or seen this movie... but man is it funny. The best way to describe it is kids from Road Trip have a Star Wars themed Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back adventure. Or in easier to understand terms, in the year 1997, a group of friends drive cross country to Skywalker Ranch to steal a rough cut of Episode I. The main five characters have good camaraderie (especially Jay Baruchel and Dan Fogler) and there are a lot of great cameos (including Seth Rogen in three different parts). Its just a fun, silly comedy with clever references and a surprising amount of heart.
6. Zombieland
The previews didn't get me that excited (an American Shaun of the Dead knockoff) but the movie proved to be a fun, exciting ride with an appealing yet unlikely pair of the rough, vulgar Woody Harrelson and the Ceraish, germaphobic Jesse Eisenberg. Add in a long run of creatively gruesome zombie mayhem, witty dialogue, hilarious sight gags (featuring possibly the best celebrity cameo from... I can't spoil it), and Emma Stone's coming out as a hot babe with some acting chops, and you get a super enjoyable movie.5. Inglorious Basterds
This movie wast the most frustrating on the list to evaluate for me. The good parts of this movie (the Basterds themselves, Christoph Waltz's fanatical officer, the final scene at the theater) outweigh the overly slow and unnecessary parts (the opening scene, Mike Myers' cameo, most of the bar sequence). To me, every QT movie is about ten minutes too long and has one long extraneous dialogue scene, and by my count, Basterds has at least four of these parts. On the good side, Tarantino always gets the most out of the cast at hand, which definitely holds true this time. BJ Novak, Eli Roth, and Brad Pitt stand out as the primary Basterds and their attempt to infiltrate the German ranks result in some of the funniest moments in any movie of 2009.4. Up in the Air
I'm not generally a fan of one note snarky smooth George Clooney roles, but in the right movie (like in Out of Sight or Dusk Till Dawn) it can fit in really well. I also really enjoyed Jason Reitman's previous 2 movies (Juno and Thank you for Smoking) so I had high hopes going in. The basic premise of the movie (Clooney flies around the country helping companies to fire their employees) doesn't seem that interesting, but the amazingly clever dialogue and strong characters made this movie extremely memorable. Beyond Clooney, we also get gems in small roles from longtime favorite J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliott, Danny McBride, and Zack Galifinakis. However, for me, the movie was stolen by Anna Kendrick as Clooney's younger co worker who took a pretty stock idea (overachieving up and comer) and created a nuanced, realistic character. A lot of charm, but wasn't as exciting as the top three.3. Taken
Liam Neeson beats up Europe, nuff said. This felt like the kid of the Bourne movies and Die Hard. Really simple plot, tight pacing, the action seemed realistic and didn't get too ridiculous. In my opinion, Liam Neeson might be the most underrated great modern actor. It seems like besides Schindler's List, most of his really good performances aren't remembered. I still really dig Rob Roy, Les Miserables, and even his part of Love, Actually wasn't that bad (the other part of that I can tolerate is the Alan Rickman store). Anyhow, back to Taken, amazing smart and gripping action movie, but wasn't super original, so it can't be #1.2. District 9
Expectations greatly influence how much I enjoy or don't certain movies and going into District 9, I knew 2 things.1. The movie involved aliens in South Africa
2. Every person who saw this movie thought it was at least pretty good.
Featuring the completely unknown Sharlto Copley, this movie had a combination of ridiculous action, political statements, and human pathos/drama. Early on, the quasi documentary style introduced the world and setup without a clumsy expositional scroll. After the first half hour or so, things pick up, and its pretty much an extended chase to the finish.
This movie also totally kept my attention and was amazingly suspenseful the whole way to the end. I don't want to give away too many details, but the showdown with the gangsters/army leading up to the "suit" part would probably place in my favorite action scenes ever. Plus, its the rare movie that doesn't tie everything up completely tidily and leaves room for future movies from director Neil Blomkamp (After seeing this, I'd have loved to have seen his proposed Halo movie).
1. Watchmen
Watchmen might be my favorite comic story that could possibly become a good movie. From the marketing campaign to the casting to the amazingly faithful direction, this is the best comic to movie adaptation to date. I could write for a while about everything I love but I'll focus on debunking the criticisms I've heard the most.It's too long... Its a fricking epic, I love how much character development was kept in. If you want a short, to the point comic action movie, watch 300.
It's too gratuitous... This one is tougher, because the comic was written in the mid 80s, so Zack Snyder definitely intensified the violence (bones breaking, Manhattan making people explode) and sex aspects. Did this bother me? Nah, with the sheer volume of action/events, I think making some a little more memorable didn't hurt the movie that much.
But they changed (item X) from the comic... The density of the Watchmen universe made it amazingly hard to translate to a movie. Even with the 3 hour directors cut, there were cuts. To me, I can distill it down to focusing on the current team of Watchmen and really trimming a lot of the side characters. Its really funny to me that Ive heard complaints that it was too long yet things were left out. Its also funny how amazing V for Vendetta the movie was, yet Alan Moore and a lot of the hardcore fans really hated it.
Malin Ackerman/Matthew Goode can't act... Well, I kind of agree with the first and really would have liked a stronger actress there (Christina Hendricks from Mad Men would have been a cool choice). Goode as Ozymandias had a really tough part to play - the pacifist intellectual. It just is not as dynamic a character as Manhattan or Night Owl not to mention Rorschach. I think he did a really good, no great, no iconic job (and no best supporting actor nod, not even in Golden Globes).
On to what I liked specifically... SPOILERS!!!
A yellow screen with black company logos, a Pat Buchanan parody, MTV, door breaking, slow motion mug throwing, major league ass kicking, wall breaking, coffee table breaking, kitchen knife throwing, the shot of Jeffrey Dean Morgan thrown out a window, the freefalling yellow smiley face button,
pseudo slow motion opening montage with Bob Dylan song playing over the credits, a hot lesbian kiss, prostitutes, we find out who really shot JFK, the moon landing, gratuitous Richard Nixon winning another term as President, exploding store
awesome Jackie Earle Haley voice overs, a grappling hook gun, old superhero bullshit session, bean eating, World Trade Center in the background, cool teleportation effects, multiple flashbacks, superhero funeral set to the Simon and Garfunkel opus "The Sound of Silence," barfing, gratuitous Carla Guigno attempted flashback rape
The Comedian kicking ass: setting a guy on fire in the Nam and killing a pregnant woman, map burning, Matt Frewer!, the super cool old Night Owl, conscience growing, a blue skinned guy on Mars, gratuitous extended flashback concerning Dr. Manhattan's origin, tank destruction, exploding bad guys
Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon ecstatic about nuclear war killing people on the U.S. eastern seaboard, a deliveryman hitman, cool slow mo bullet to the head, metal thing to the body, a foamy cyanide death
The police fight with the bug spray flame thrower, Jackie Earle Haley without a mask!, ball punching, cheek tearing, gratuitous dogs fighting over a human leg bone followed by dead dogs, meat cleaver to the top of the head (ouch), attempted prison beating, hot grease to the face followed by amazingly badass line, gratuitous night vision goggles, impotence fighting, a midget prison gang boss, superhero sex, kid rescuing, outrunning an explosion, a prison riot, arm slicing, toilet breaking, electrocution, funny midget killing
Antarctica?, a big character revelation, funky tiger critter, a floating glass machine, Jimi Hendrix!, pacifist ass kicking killing millions to save billions, bullet catching, dead tiger critter, touching final moments, gratuitous ink blot, world peace, gratuitous "The Outer Limits," and an attack on Ronald Reagan, crappy My Chemical Romance cover of a Dylan song
Whew...
Who's gonna make the 2010 list? Who knows?
That's all I gotta say about that
Patrick
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Survival PTrick Style
So I've had a ton of free time and I've been watching through Netflix streaming quite a bit. I've recently watched season 1 of Man vs. Wild and season 1 of Survivorman. Once I watch through all of both shows, I'm going to do a big review/comparison article (this may take a while as I am not someone who can watch a whole season of a TV show in a day, just not the patience here).
I've done a fair amount of outdoor adventuring, specifically backpacking, back in the day... I've done some rafting rafting rafting last summer and earlier this year, great times, but I do miss the backcountry. I'll preface this next section by saying 95% of my experience has been in Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Parks and the surrounding areas, so although I feel like the next section is fairly general, if you live somewhere far away from the Pacific NW, it may not pertain as well...
So on to Patrick's Survival Tips Part 1 (these are in no particular order by the way)
Footwear!
The number one thing I'd like to say on the subject is to make sure you have quality and appropriate footwear for outdoor situations. I personally have a pair of mostly waterproof, fitted boots that I've had since I was 17 and taken all the way around the Wonderland Trail. Many of the tough times co-backpackers have had were with poor fitting shoes or the wrong type of shoe. The majority of the trails I've hiked on have consisted of combinations of muddy, rocky, wet, and slippery surfaces. A really solid, broken in boot is completely vital.
Another part of footwear is the sock. I'm a huge proponent of wearing two pairs of socks on any trip longer than 2 miles in total.
Here's the logic. Blisters on feet = bad
Blisters are generally caused by socks rubbing on skin and are exacerbated by wetness (from sweat, rain, whatever)
So sock in shoe rubbing on skin = bad
So instead, wear 2 pairs of socks... a pretty tight inner pair (I actually prefer dress socks, but shorter athletic socks would work) and a studier outer pair (smartwool REI type socks)
Sock rubbing on sock = good for your feet
Also, assuming you are in a wet climate, the outer wool sock can function much better in rain or just walking through dewy moist plant life and keep your feet drier, especially when working with a waterproof boot.
Using this method, I've only gotten blisters on my feet once in over five hundred miles of backpacking*. (that was when I had injured my leg thus altering my normal gait and how my feet moved in my boots.) So while otherwise healthy, I have never once gotten blisters (including two Wonderland trail runs).
So there's my survival/outdoor advice for the night. More to come...
I've done a fair amount of outdoor adventuring, specifically backpacking, back in the day... I've done some rafting rafting rafting last summer and earlier this year, great times, but I do miss the backcountry. I'll preface this next section by saying 95% of my experience has been in Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Parks and the surrounding areas, so although I feel like the next section is fairly general, if you live somewhere far away from the Pacific NW, it may not pertain as well...
So on to Patrick's Survival Tips Part 1 (these are in no particular order by the way)
Footwear!
The number one thing I'd like to say on the subject is to make sure you have quality and appropriate footwear for outdoor situations. I personally have a pair of mostly waterproof, fitted boots that I've had since I was 17 and taken all the way around the Wonderland Trail. Many of the tough times co-backpackers have had were with poor fitting shoes or the wrong type of shoe. The majority of the trails I've hiked on have consisted of combinations of muddy, rocky, wet, and slippery surfaces. A really solid, broken in boot is completely vital.
Another part of footwear is the sock. I'm a huge proponent of wearing two pairs of socks on any trip longer than 2 miles in total.
Here's the logic. Blisters on feet = bad
Blisters are generally caused by socks rubbing on skin and are exacerbated by wetness (from sweat, rain, whatever)
So sock in shoe rubbing on skin = bad
So instead, wear 2 pairs of socks... a pretty tight inner pair (I actually prefer dress socks, but shorter athletic socks would work) and a studier outer pair (smartwool REI type socks)
Sock rubbing on sock = good for your feet
Also, assuming you are in a wet climate, the outer wool sock can function much better in rain or just walking through dewy moist plant life and keep your feet drier, especially when working with a waterproof boot.
Using this method, I've only gotten blisters on my feet once in over five hundred miles of backpacking*. (that was when I had injured my leg thus altering my normal gait and how my feet moved in my boots.) So while otherwise healthy, I have never once gotten blisters (including two Wonderland trail runs).
So there's my survival/outdoor advice for the night. More to come...
Getting Tangental with it
So I haven't seen any crazy ground breaking movies lately... Legion was decent, helped out by a capable supporting cast (love me some grumpy Dennis Quaid and Charles Dutton), but had some big logic plot holes and was poorly edited at times (also the 2 best moments were totally spoiled by the preview and Patrick favorite Doug Jones had about 1 minute of screen time). So like a solid 6/10
Daybreakers looked really cool if I hadn't seen the Matrix first (same sort of color filters), it was good to see Ethan Hawke and Sam Neill in lead roles, and also to have a vampire movie that actually used real vampire rules (these vamps weren't sparkly and twinkly in the sunlight). On the other hand, the pacing was slow at times and once again I had serious logic problems with some of the basic concepts... Super quickly, why aren't the sunlight proof car shields made of something sturdier than glass (not just for bullets, but like a rock hitting the windshield) and how is it that the super advanced vampires are so awful at planning out how their "farming" humans would work. Also a solid 6/10 for me...
My next Netflix movie is Descent 2... Now I really love the first Descent (its a easy 9/10) but I am sort of dreading a sequel. Most horror sequels are different levels of awful, especially recently (the Hills Have Eyes remake and the Tex Chainsaw Remake, I enjoyed both, but both sequels were just horrifically terrible).
Also the high up movies on my Netflix queue for those who care: The Road, Crazy Heart, Hurt Locker, Blind Side, Pirate Radio... So there are some entries for future movie reviews. However my next article is going to stray a long ways from movie reviews... Read on... if you dare
Daybreakers looked really cool if I hadn't seen the Matrix first (same sort of color filters), it was good to see Ethan Hawke and Sam Neill in lead roles, and also to have a vampire movie that actually used real vampire rules (these vamps weren't sparkly and twinkly in the sunlight). On the other hand, the pacing was slow at times and once again I had serious logic problems with some of the basic concepts... Super quickly, why aren't the sunlight proof car shields made of something sturdier than glass (not just for bullets, but like a rock hitting the windshield) and how is it that the super advanced vampires are so awful at planning out how their "farming" humans would work. Also a solid 6/10 for me...
My next Netflix movie is Descent 2... Now I really love the first Descent (its a easy 9/10) but I am sort of dreading a sequel. Most horror sequels are different levels of awful, especially recently (the Hills Have Eyes remake and the Tex Chainsaw Remake, I enjoyed both, but both sequels were just horrifically terrible).
Also the high up movies on my Netflix queue for those who care: The Road, Crazy Heart, Hurt Locker, Blind Side, Pirate Radio... So there are some entries for future movie reviews. However my next article is going to stray a long ways from movie reviews... Read on... if you dare
Monday, May 24, 2010
Iron Man 2
Sorry about the lack of updates, but to be straight up, I haven't really seen any new movies lately. This has put my "best of 2009" on hold (until I can see Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart, and Blind Side).
However, this last Sunday, I did catch Iron Man 2. So some quick thoughts...
Good, light hearted fun, most of the cast having a good time, Downey Jr., Paltrow, and Favreau had some cute, fun chemistry. Overall the mood was a lighter one than the last Iron Man (no grungy terrorist camp or torture here). The subplot of Tony being an alcoholic was touched on several times, but sort of glossed over, and the resolution of the subplot about Tony's illness was wrapped up a bit neatly. The action scenes while explosive and vivid don't really have the oomph of the earlier Marvel movies, lacking the kinetic energy of the Doc Octopus subway fight from Spiderman 2, the intensity of the X-Mansion invasion from X-Men 2, or the pure ferocity/power of the last fight from the Incredible Hulk.
Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer stole the movie for me. Taking an established comics character who was the elderly mob weapons designer for the Kingpin, the Maggia, and HYDRA in the Marvel comics continuity and turning him into a less successful Tony Stark was brilliant. Director Jon Favreau brilliantly utilizing Rockwell's natural comedic talents without getting too campy (Jim Carrey's Riddler comes to mind, come to think of it, I'd like to see Rockwell play the Riddler himself in the next Batman movie).
Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko/Whiplash... Well.. I do love Rourke most of the time, especially recently in The Wrestler and Killshot. The crazy Russian Vanko just doesn't completely work for me, with his goofy tattoos and metal teeth, weird obsession with a cockatoo, and silly accent... He lacks the menace of Obadiah Stane from Iron Man 1. This is odd because Stane was played by Jeff "The Dude" Bridges while Rourke has made a recent career of playing bad asses like Marv from Sin City. I think it has to do with the writing and that for the most part, Vanko doesn't directly interact with Iron Man that much.
Also, in the comics, Vanko was the Crimson Dynamo, not Whiplash! I know Iron Man's rogue's gallery isn't that well known by the general public, but this would be the equivalent of having Norman Osborn from the first Spiderman turn into the Scorpion instead of the Green Goblin... I guess the creators didn't want to have Iron Man fight another "big dude in a suit of armor" after Iron Monger from the first movie, but then don't use the character of the Dynamo. Its also strange because Whiplash isn't really much of a match for Iron Man straight up, not to mention War Machine... whereas Crimson Dynamo at least in the comics was a bit more formidable.
Don Cheadle did a fine job as James Rhodes/War Machine. In both movies, Rhodes doesn't have a ton to do, but apparently for 1/4th the cost of Terrance Howard, it doesn't change the movie much. I do enjoy how they acknowledged the actor switch with the first appearance of Rhodes in the movie. War Machine (for the uninitiated, a slower more weapons heavy suit of Iron Man armor) isn't in the movie very much, but I like the action sequence he's involved in (especially his smart gun shoulder cannon).
Finally, whoever had the idea to put Scarlett Johannsen in a skintight black leather suit, I applaud you. Her character has some narrative purpose as well, to go with Sam Jackson effortlessly playing a cool, in control Nick Fury (I kind of wanted a line that said "a shark took my eye" but no dice).
So overall, Iron Man 2, a really fun, enjoyable, light hearted summer romp. Id give it a solid 6.5/10... worth watching, but nothing really outstanding.
Patrick
However, this last Sunday, I did catch Iron Man 2. So some quick thoughts...
Good, light hearted fun, most of the cast having a good time, Downey Jr., Paltrow, and Favreau had some cute, fun chemistry. Overall the mood was a lighter one than the last Iron Man (no grungy terrorist camp or torture here). The subplot of Tony being an alcoholic was touched on several times, but sort of glossed over, and the resolution of the subplot about Tony's illness was wrapped up a bit neatly. The action scenes while explosive and vivid don't really have the oomph of the earlier Marvel movies, lacking the kinetic energy of the Doc Octopus subway fight from Spiderman 2, the intensity of the X-Mansion invasion from X-Men 2, or the pure ferocity/power of the last fight from the Incredible Hulk.
Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer stole the movie for me. Taking an established comics character who was the elderly mob weapons designer for the Kingpin, the Maggia, and HYDRA in the Marvel comics continuity and turning him into a less successful Tony Stark was brilliant. Director Jon Favreau brilliantly utilizing Rockwell's natural comedic talents without getting too campy (Jim Carrey's Riddler comes to mind, come to think of it, I'd like to see Rockwell play the Riddler himself in the next Batman movie).
Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko/Whiplash... Well.. I do love Rourke most of the time, especially recently in The Wrestler and Killshot. The crazy Russian Vanko just doesn't completely work for me, with his goofy tattoos and metal teeth, weird obsession with a cockatoo, and silly accent... He lacks the menace of Obadiah Stane from Iron Man 1. This is odd because Stane was played by Jeff "The Dude" Bridges while Rourke has made a recent career of playing bad asses like Marv from Sin City. I think it has to do with the writing and that for the most part, Vanko doesn't directly interact with Iron Man that much.
Also, in the comics, Vanko was the Crimson Dynamo, not Whiplash! I know Iron Man's rogue's gallery isn't that well known by the general public, but this would be the equivalent of having Norman Osborn from the first Spiderman turn into the Scorpion instead of the Green Goblin... I guess the creators didn't want to have Iron Man fight another "big dude in a suit of armor" after Iron Monger from the first movie, but then don't use the character of the Dynamo. Its also strange because Whiplash isn't really much of a match for Iron Man straight up, not to mention War Machine... whereas Crimson Dynamo at least in the comics was a bit more formidable.
Don Cheadle did a fine job as James Rhodes/War Machine. In both movies, Rhodes doesn't have a ton to do, but apparently for 1/4th the cost of Terrance Howard, it doesn't change the movie much. I do enjoy how they acknowledged the actor switch with the first appearance of Rhodes in the movie. War Machine (for the uninitiated, a slower more weapons heavy suit of Iron Man armor) isn't in the movie very much, but I like the action sequence he's involved in (especially his smart gun shoulder cannon).
Finally, whoever had the idea to put Scarlett Johannsen in a skintight black leather suit, I applaud you. Her character has some narrative purpose as well, to go with Sam Jackson effortlessly playing a cool, in control Nick Fury (I kind of wanted a line that said "a shark took my eye" but no dice).
So overall, Iron Man 2, a really fun, enjoyable, light hearted summer romp. Id give it a solid 6.5/10... worth watching, but nothing really outstanding.
Patrick
Thursday, April 22, 2010
My Favorite Directors Cuts/Deleted Scenes
Compared to VHS, DVDs aren't absolutely perfect. They lack durability, you can't fast forward through the ads before the movie, and movies are often released and re released with minor documentaries and special features just to fill the studio's pockets.
It seems like every other movie gets released in many different "editions" promising juicy unrated footage, alternate scenes, and director cuts. A lot of these have only minor additions (sometimes mere seconds) that push the movie from a PG-13 to a R rating or from a R to the mythical "unrated" territory. Other movies add in a ton of unnecessary scenes that were cut for a reason: the director's cut really lacks pace.
However, there are some movies that substantially improve with the addition or substitution of key scenes. So I'm going to list some of my favorite director's cuts... These are not my favorite movies, but just the ones that I think were most improved in some way or another.
7. Blade Runner, 1982, directed by Ridley Scott
I don't even know where to begin here... After negative test screenings, the ending was completely reshot (with footage from the Shining of all movies inserted in as the film ran overbudget), a tacked-on studio happy ending and ridiculously obvious (and rushed) voice over narration from Harrison Ford added because several audience members were confused by key plot points. The director's cut movie was released in 1992 after the original rough cut garnered strong reactions. There's also an "ultimate directors cut" that Ridley Scott had complete control over that was released in 2007, however, I have yet to see this cut.
6. Legend, 1985, directed by Ridley Scott
Another example of the the list of Scott movies that the studio interfered with. The initial cut of Legend was a two hour epic but after numerous test screenings, the film was reduced to 89 minutes. Jerry Goldsmith, legendary composer of such films as Patton, First Blood, and the original Omen, spent six months working on the score and dance sequence. When the film was re-edited, the 80s group Tangerine Dream created a new score. The lush, idyllic fantasy world that would have greatly benefited from an orchestral score instead had a goofy techno pop sound. Imagine Lord of the Rings with the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and you get an idea of what I mean...
5. The Abyss, 1989, directed by James Cameron
James Cameron if nothing else is a wonderful director of tightly paced action movies. Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic, True Lies, and now Avatar have all contained some amazing special effects sequence. The forgotten movie amongst Cameron's masterpieces is the underrated gem, the Abyss. The director's cut runs at two hours, fifty minutes, which may seem a bit excessive, but the problem in this case isn't in the length, but in the material cut. One of the main plot threads (the reason why there are aliens in the Marianas Trench) is completely removed. With this gone, the theatrical ending seems like a watery ET knockoff
4. High Tension, 2005, directed by Alexandre Aja and The Descent, 2006, directed by Neil Marshall
I'm lumping these two together because they were both cut to a "R" rating in their American release and beyond losing some gore, both also lost major story issues. The ending of the Descent is completely ruined and the story of High Tension makes no sense whatsoever with the cut scenes. I understand the need to reduce the gore to get the rating for a theatrical release, but cutting story makes no sense at all ratingswise.
3, Daredevil, 2003, directed by Mark Steve Johnson
The theatrical cut of this superhero movie is decent although pretty corny, but the director's cut reintroduces subplots dealing with Matt Murdock working as a lawyer, dealing with religion, and also reduces the importance of Elektra (Jennifer Garner is pretty terrible, but doesn't have much to work with). Also, some of the violence and gritty feel is a lot more pronounced (especially during the various Bullseye fights towards the end). The R rated Daredevil to me is on par with Blade right at the top of the middle tier of Marvel movies. Here's my Marvel movie rating system by the way...
Top Tier - X-Men 2, Spiderman 2, First half of Spiderman 1, Iron Man, Blade 2
Tier 2 (some minor flaws, but otherwise really good)- X-Men, Iron Man 2, Blade, Ed Norton's Hulk, Daredevil Directors Cut, X-Men Origins Wolverine
Tier 3 (big flaws or miscasting, but have some promise)- The 2nd half of Spiderman, Eric Bana's Hulk, X-Men the Last Stand, Spiderman 3, Daredevil Theatrical, Fantastic Four
Tier 4 (pretty terrible but at least one bright spot)- Elektra, Blade Trinity, Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer, Punisher War Zone
Tier 5 (Ghost Rider bad)- Ghost Rider , Ghost Rider Director's Cut, Dolph Lundgren's Punisher, 1994 Fantastic Four, Thomas Jane's Punisher
2. Donnie Darko, directed by Richard Kelly
This dense, hallucinatory tale about growing up alienated in 1988 suburbia tanked in its original theatrical release but found a passionate following on video and DVD. It was re released in 2004, with twenty minutes of restored footage, most of it involving the surprisingly good performance from English teacher Drew Barrymore. Kelly also took full advantage of the chance to touch up his ode to misanthropic angst, beefing up the special effects and adding songs to the eighties soundtrack. Overall, the director's cut dramatically improves on the original: it's both more vivid and more comprehensible, and, at just under 2 hours, 15 minutes, doesn't seem too long, just deeper and more richly textured.
1. Alien directed by James Cameron and Alien 3 directed by David Fincher
James Cameron always seems to make his movies too long. Almost every film of his has a director's cut. Some don't feature enough new things (Terminator 2 didn't really need to be any longer) and some feature arguably way too much (the length of The Abyss) but the one that works best for me is the Aliens director's cut, found in the Alien Quadrilogy. Cameron describes it best in his intro as "the ride he intended you to take". Every detail that's added back in works great, adding depth and nuance to certain things taken for granted, like the Ripley/Newt relationship. It also includes the awesome remote sentry guns sequence (I have no idea why they cut this part, as its amazingly cool and tense). Definitely the best of the Cameron bunch. My problem is that it isn't even the most improved directors cut on the Alien Quadrilogy (yes, its a dumb title for a box set).
Alien3 has gotten a lot of hate from hardcore Alien fans, mostly because of a troubled production (the script was written as the movie was filmed) and controversial changes (a complete re-edit) made after the movie was done filming. Today David Fincher is one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood, having directed many of my favorite movies including Se7en, The Game, and Fight Club. As his first movie, Alien3 attained semi cult status resulting from various rumors about the degree of studio intervention, lost scenes and a completely different workprint version which actually should have rebuilt Fincher's original vision.
I really didn't want to put this as my top movie, because there is no mysterious and lost Director's Cut of Alien³. An actual DC would have required Fincher to edit the movie with full artistic control. When the Quadrilogy set was put together, Fincher was still so angry at the producers that he completely refused to take part in any sort of re-edit.
The Quadrilogy set does have a completely restored and revised version of the original workprint which was created in 1991 (before the extensive studio re-editing happened). This version has a runtime of an additional 30 minutes, new sequences, and some previously unreleased optical/digital effects which were essential to integrate the new material into the movie.For me, the Alien3 workprint improves the movie to the point where its definitely a solid 8/10 (Alien and Aliens are both 10/10s for me) where as the theatrical version is only about a 5/10. I would love to see David Fincher get a chance with full creative control to make his own Alien movie in the future, but for now, the workprint is all we have.
That's all I have to say about that...
Patrick
It seems like every other movie gets released in many different "editions" promising juicy unrated footage, alternate scenes, and director cuts. A lot of these have only minor additions (sometimes mere seconds) that push the movie from a PG-13 to a R rating or from a R to the mythical "unrated" territory. Other movies add in a ton of unnecessary scenes that were cut for a reason: the director's cut really lacks pace.
However, there are some movies that substantially improve with the addition or substitution of key scenes. So I'm going to list some of my favorite director's cuts... These are not my favorite movies, but just the ones that I think were most improved in some way or another.
7. Blade Runner, 1982, directed by Ridley Scott
I don't even know where to begin here... After negative test screenings, the ending was completely reshot (with footage from the Shining of all movies inserted in as the film ran overbudget), a tacked-on studio happy ending and ridiculously obvious (and rushed) voice over narration from Harrison Ford added because several audience members were confused by key plot points. The director's cut movie was released in 1992 after the original rough cut garnered strong reactions. There's also an "ultimate directors cut" that Ridley Scott had complete control over that was released in 2007, however, I have yet to see this cut.
6. Legend, 1985, directed by Ridley Scott
Another example of the the list of Scott movies that the studio interfered with. The initial cut of Legend was a two hour epic but after numerous test screenings, the film was reduced to 89 minutes. Jerry Goldsmith, legendary composer of such films as Patton, First Blood, and the original Omen, spent six months working on the score and dance sequence. When the film was re-edited, the 80s group Tangerine Dream created a new score. The lush, idyllic fantasy world that would have greatly benefited from an orchestral score instead had a goofy techno pop sound. Imagine Lord of the Rings with the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and you get an idea of what I mean...
5. The Abyss, 1989, directed by James Cameron
James Cameron if nothing else is a wonderful director of tightly paced action movies. Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic, True Lies, and now Avatar have all contained some amazing special effects sequence. The forgotten movie amongst Cameron's masterpieces is the underrated gem, the Abyss. The director's cut runs at two hours, fifty minutes, which may seem a bit excessive, but the problem in this case isn't in the length, but in the material cut. One of the main plot threads (the reason why there are aliens in the Marianas Trench) is completely removed. With this gone, the theatrical ending seems like a watery ET knockoff
4. High Tension, 2005, directed by Alexandre Aja and The Descent, 2006, directed by Neil Marshall
I'm lumping these two together because they were both cut to a "R" rating in their American release and beyond losing some gore, both also lost major story issues. The ending of the Descent is completely ruined and the story of High Tension makes no sense whatsoever with the cut scenes. I understand the need to reduce the gore to get the rating for a theatrical release, but cutting story makes no sense at all ratingswise.
3, Daredevil, 2003, directed by Mark Steve Johnson
The theatrical cut of this superhero movie is decent although pretty corny, but the director's cut reintroduces subplots dealing with Matt Murdock working as a lawyer, dealing with religion, and also reduces the importance of Elektra (Jennifer Garner is pretty terrible, but doesn't have much to work with). Also, some of the violence and gritty feel is a lot more pronounced (especially during the various Bullseye fights towards the end). The R rated Daredevil to me is on par with Blade right at the top of the middle tier of Marvel movies. Here's my Marvel movie rating system by the way...
Top Tier - X-Men 2, Spiderman 2, First half of Spiderman 1, Iron Man, Blade 2
Tier 2 (some minor flaws, but otherwise really good)- X-Men, Iron Man 2, Blade, Ed Norton's Hulk, Daredevil Directors Cut, X-Men Origins Wolverine
Tier 3 (big flaws or miscasting, but have some promise)- The 2nd half of Spiderman, Eric Bana's Hulk, X-Men the Last Stand, Spiderman 3, Daredevil Theatrical, Fantastic Four
Tier 4 (pretty terrible but at least one bright spot)- Elektra, Blade Trinity, Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer, Punisher War Zone
Tier 5 (Ghost Rider bad)- Ghost Rider , Ghost Rider Director's Cut, Dolph Lundgren's Punisher, 1994 Fantastic Four, Thomas Jane's Punisher
2. Donnie Darko, directed by Richard Kelly
This dense, hallucinatory tale about growing up alienated in 1988 suburbia tanked in its original theatrical release but found a passionate following on video and DVD. It was re released in 2004, with twenty minutes of restored footage, most of it involving the surprisingly good performance from English teacher Drew Barrymore. Kelly also took full advantage of the chance to touch up his ode to misanthropic angst, beefing up the special effects and adding songs to the eighties soundtrack. Overall, the director's cut dramatically improves on the original: it's both more vivid and more comprehensible, and, at just under 2 hours, 15 minutes, doesn't seem too long, just deeper and more richly textured.
1. Alien directed by James Cameron and Alien 3 directed by David Fincher
James Cameron always seems to make his movies too long. Almost every film of his has a director's cut. Some don't feature enough new things (Terminator 2 didn't really need to be any longer) and some feature arguably way too much (the length of The Abyss) but the one that works best for me is the Aliens director's cut, found in the Alien Quadrilogy. Cameron describes it best in his intro as "the ride he intended you to take". Every detail that's added back in works great, adding depth and nuance to certain things taken for granted, like the Ripley/Newt relationship. It also includes the awesome remote sentry guns sequence (I have no idea why they cut this part, as its amazingly cool and tense). Definitely the best of the Cameron bunch. My problem is that it isn't even the most improved directors cut on the Alien Quadrilogy (yes, its a dumb title for a box set).
Alien3 has gotten a lot of hate from hardcore Alien fans, mostly because of a troubled production (the script was written as the movie was filmed) and controversial changes (a complete re-edit) made after the movie was done filming. Today David Fincher is one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood, having directed many of my favorite movies including Se7en, The Game, and Fight Club. As his first movie, Alien3 attained semi cult status resulting from various rumors about the degree of studio intervention, lost scenes and a completely different workprint version which actually should have rebuilt Fincher's original vision.
I really didn't want to put this as my top movie, because there is no mysterious and lost Director's Cut of Alien³. An actual DC would have required Fincher to edit the movie with full artistic control. When the Quadrilogy set was put together, Fincher was still so angry at the producers that he completely refused to take part in any sort of re-edit.
The Quadrilogy set does have a completely restored and revised version of the original workprint which was created in 1991 (before the extensive studio re-editing happened). This version has a runtime of an additional 30 minutes, new sequences, and some previously unreleased optical/digital effects which were essential to integrate the new material into the movie.For me, the Alien3 workprint improves the movie to the point where its definitely a solid 8/10 (Alien and Aliens are both 10/10s for me) where as the theatrical version is only about a 5/10. I would love to see David Fincher get a chance with full creative control to make his own Alien movie in the future, but for now, the workprint is all we have.
That's all I have to say about that...
Patrick
Monday, April 12, 2010
some random type musings...
Alrightey,
The Collector... a horror movie that not many people saw in theaters (it had a fairly limited release and came out smack in the middle of summer 2009, right inbetween Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe). I watched it last night... it might be the most singular improbable, unbelievable movie plotwise I've seen.
Now I'm not counting fantasy/science fiction, but movies set in the "real world"... And yes, to think 55 year old Bruce Willis could have survived all the stunts of Live Free or Die Hard with nary a broken bone would be fairly improbable, but the actual plot of Live Free or Die Hard about cyber terrorism seemed somewhat plausible. I'm getting off topic though...
Basically the Collector involves a fairly clever thief named Arkin who masquerades as a handyman so he can get intel on the houses he steals from. (To me, this would be an easy pattern for police to pick up on... but not the police in this universe.) Arkin breaks into a house to steal a giant ruby from a jewelry broker only the very same house also has been taken over by the titular Collector. The hour and twenty five minute run time consists of Arkin trying to escape the Collector and get away with the jewel in order to fulfill a midnight deadline imposed by some loan sharks that Arkin's wife is indebted to.
(Those plot points by the way are all in the preview, so if anyone wants to watch the movie unspoiled, I'll only discuss the setup and things that are in the preview.)
The improbability of the movie comes from the timeline... Arkin gets off work, goes to meet his wife, then meets his job contact, then goes back to the house. His wife even complains that he's really late meeting her (so at the earliest, he's there at roughly 8-9 PM). The family he's burglarizing is supposed to be vacationing, but their very mature teenage daughter (this actress has to be at the very least 21) throws a vague fit... Anyhow, if you assume where he meets his wife is around an hour or so away from the family's house (remember, from 9 PM, he has to get to the house, steal the ruby, get back, and pay off the loansharks before midnight), that means he leaves the family's house between 6-7 PM.
So between 6-7 and 8-9 PM, the Collector comes to the house, incapacitates the husband and wife, boards up the windows, and proceeds to set up a simply massive array of booby traps all around the house. Some of these traps involve fairly complex 'mousetrap' style tripwires and pulleys, basically, its completely ludicrous to think that one guy can do what he does in the span of AT MOST three hours. There is no possible way for the Collector to know Arkin is coming back THAT NIGHT for the jewel. Assuming Arkin isn't there, the Collector wastes a ton of time for no good reason (Now, I realize that the daughter isn't home, so maybe the traps might be for her, but the killer is fairly adept with sharp objects... I don't think she'd be much of a problem).
A lot of reviewers compared this concept to the Saw franchise, and with a lot of color correction, a masked killer and booby trapped rooms, I can see some parallels. The difference is that Jigsaw from the Saw movies sets up all his traps well in advance of ever using them. Jigsaw also doesn't wear a Mexican style luchadore mask
like the one at left painted black and actually chase people around like Jason Vorhees (the Collector's signature weapon is throwing knives, which is sort of cool but less practical then a machete). So for being such an expert criminal, the Collector has the most impractical logic bending method of committing his crimes as anyone I've ever seen in a movie (he's also a total idiot, as is Arkin).
The one thing about this movie I like is the actor playing Arkin, Josh Stewart (who resembles Sean Penn and Edward Norton a little), puts on a pretty good performance as the criminal hero Arkin. The guy behind the Collector mask is suitably creepy and is pretty intimidating despite being a fairly average to small sized guy (even more reason to wonder how he can set up his death traps). The directing overall accomplishes what it needs to, without the goofy rapid fire sped up Saw cutting (I like a lot of the overhead shots in the house). But for the amazingly silly, absolutely ridiculous script and concept... I can't say I recommend this as any sort of a good movie...
Collector gets... 3/10...
and that's all I have to say about that
The Collector... a horror movie that not many people saw in theaters (it had a fairly limited release and came out smack in the middle of summer 2009, right inbetween Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe). I watched it last night... it might be the most singular improbable, unbelievable movie plotwise I've seen.
Now I'm not counting fantasy/science fiction, but movies set in the "real world"... And yes, to think 55 year old Bruce Willis could have survived all the stunts of Live Free or Die Hard with nary a broken bone would be fairly improbable, but the actual plot of Live Free or Die Hard about cyber terrorism seemed somewhat plausible. I'm getting off topic though...
Basically the Collector involves a fairly clever thief named Arkin who masquerades as a handyman so he can get intel on the houses he steals from. (To me, this would be an easy pattern for police to pick up on... but not the police in this universe.) Arkin breaks into a house to steal a giant ruby from a jewelry broker only the very same house also has been taken over by the titular Collector. The hour and twenty five minute run time consists of Arkin trying to escape the Collector and get away with the jewel in order to fulfill a midnight deadline imposed by some loan sharks that Arkin's wife is indebted to.
(Those plot points by the way are all in the preview, so if anyone wants to watch the movie unspoiled, I'll only discuss the setup and things that are in the preview.)
The improbability of the movie comes from the timeline... Arkin gets off work, goes to meet his wife, then meets his job contact, then goes back to the house. His wife even complains that he's really late meeting her (so at the earliest, he's there at roughly 8-9 PM). The family he's burglarizing is supposed to be vacationing, but their very mature teenage daughter (this actress has to be at the very least 21) throws a vague fit... Anyhow, if you assume where he meets his wife is around an hour or so away from the family's house (remember, from 9 PM, he has to get to the house, steal the ruby, get back, and pay off the loansharks before midnight), that means he leaves the family's house between 6-7 PM.
So between 6-7 and 8-9 PM, the Collector comes to the house, incapacitates the husband and wife, boards up the windows, and proceeds to set up a simply massive array of booby traps all around the house. Some of these traps involve fairly complex 'mousetrap' style tripwires and pulleys, basically, its completely ludicrous to think that one guy can do what he does in the span of AT MOST three hours. There is no possible way for the Collector to know Arkin is coming back THAT NIGHT for the jewel. Assuming Arkin isn't there, the Collector wastes a ton of time for no good reason (Now, I realize that the daughter isn't home, so maybe the traps might be for her, but the killer is fairly adept with sharp objects... I don't think she'd be much of a problem).
A lot of reviewers compared this concept to the Saw franchise, and with a lot of color correction, a masked killer and booby trapped rooms, I can see some parallels. The difference is that Jigsaw from the Saw movies sets up all his traps well in advance of ever using them. Jigsaw also doesn't wear a Mexican style luchadore mask
like the one at left painted black and actually chase people around like Jason Vorhees (the Collector's signature weapon is throwing knives, which is sort of cool but less practical then a machete). So for being such an expert criminal, the Collector has the most impractical logic bending method of committing his crimes as anyone I've ever seen in a movie (he's also a total idiot, as is Arkin).The one thing about this movie I like is the actor playing Arkin, Josh Stewart (who resembles Sean Penn and Edward Norton a little), puts on a pretty good performance as the criminal hero Arkin. The guy behind the Collector mask is suitably creepy and is pretty intimidating despite being a fairly average to small sized guy (even more reason to wonder how he can set up his death traps). The directing overall accomplishes what it needs to, without the goofy rapid fire sped up Saw cutting (I like a lot of the overhead shots in the house). But for the amazingly silly, absolutely ridiculous script and concept... I can't say I recommend this as any sort of a good movie...
Collector gets... 3/10...
and that's all I have to say about that
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Odds 'N Ends
Good morning all,
I realized I've given out a lot of positive reviews so far on this blog, but I've seen three recent movies that managed to generate some negative thoughts... so let's dive in...
First and probably the best of the 3 is Ang Lee's latest period piece, Taking Woodstock. I respect Ang Lee as a director, his constant theme of tradition versus progress permeates most of his movies, and his films are very well shot. I don't really enjoy most Ang Lee movies though, a lot of them suffer from pacing issues and I really think they could use a little more time in the editing room. Taking Woodstock follows along with this... the main plot is about a boy trying to reconcile with his parents and to help his struggling community. Some of the direction, especially the long tracking shot as Martin's character, Elliot Tiber, gets a motorcyle ride down the road of hippies to the festival, seems inspired. Other parts of the direction, like the constant close ups of Tiber's head or some weird split screens, don't work as well.
My major gripe with Taking Woodstock was the complete lack of focus on the music of the festival. It's pretty much a 2 hour tease of protests, people setting up, and hippie antics, leading to a pretty bad sequence where Elliot goes for a psychadelic trip. I know the music of the Woodstock festival has been well documented, but I think having no performances at all makes the movie kind of a cheat. Another thing the movie cheats on a bit is the sexual preferences of the main character... Considering this is the same director who created Brokeback Mountain, the fact that no one seems to care, especially in 1969, seems completely untrue to the conservative nature of the town.
The acting was top notch, although the supporting characters were fairly underdeveloped. Demetri Martin, in his starring debut, made an awkward, well meaning, and straight faced protagonist (going from stand up comedy to a dramatic lead doesn't always go so smoothly). Eugene Levy gave a surprisingly low key and smug performance as Max Yagur, the dairy farmer that owned the festival grounds (good to see Levy in something besides a straight to DVD American Pie sequel). Dan Fogler gives a fairly one note comic relief performance, while Emile Hirsch plays a troubled Vietnam veteran adequately. Imelda Staunton (the bitchy administrator from Harry Potter part 5) plays Tiber's mother as a complete terror. In fact, her character seems much too serious and tough for the goofy supporting characters around her.
The final piece of acting and my personal favorite is Liev Schreiber as the transvestite head of security. I feel like many actors would have taken this character wayyy over the top, but Schreiber plays it completely straight and serious. If Schreiber's character had been more focal and developed, I think he'd be worthy of supporting actor awards consideration, but its a fairly minor part.
So overall, I give Taking Woodstock a minor recommendation... If you like Ang Lee or Demetri Martin, its worth watching once... A perfectly average 5 out of 10
That's all I have to say about that.
I realized I've given out a lot of positive reviews so far on this blog, but I've seen three recent movies that managed to generate some negative thoughts... so let's dive in...
First and probably the best of the 3 is Ang Lee's latest period piece, Taking Woodstock. I respect Ang Lee as a director, his constant theme of tradition versus progress permeates most of his movies, and his films are very well shot. I don't really enjoy most Ang Lee movies though, a lot of them suffer from pacing issues and I really think they could use a little more time in the editing room. Taking Woodstock follows along with this... the main plot is about a boy trying to reconcile with his parents and to help his struggling community. Some of the direction, especially the long tracking shot as Martin's character, Elliot Tiber, gets a motorcyle ride down the road of hippies to the festival, seems inspired. Other parts of the direction, like the constant close ups of Tiber's head or some weird split screens, don't work as well.
My major gripe with Taking Woodstock was the complete lack of focus on the music of the festival. It's pretty much a 2 hour tease of protests, people setting up, and hippie antics, leading to a pretty bad sequence where Elliot goes for a psychadelic trip. I know the music of the Woodstock festival has been well documented, but I think having no performances at all makes the movie kind of a cheat. Another thing the movie cheats on a bit is the sexual preferences of the main character... Considering this is the same director who created Brokeback Mountain, the fact that no one seems to care, especially in 1969, seems completely untrue to the conservative nature of the town.
The acting was top notch, although the supporting characters were fairly underdeveloped. Demetri Martin, in his starring debut, made an awkward, well meaning, and straight faced protagonist (going from stand up comedy to a dramatic lead doesn't always go so smoothly). Eugene Levy gave a surprisingly low key and smug performance as Max Yagur, the dairy farmer that owned the festival grounds (good to see Levy in something besides a straight to DVD American Pie sequel). Dan Fogler gives a fairly one note comic relief performance, while Emile Hirsch plays a troubled Vietnam veteran adequately. Imelda Staunton (the bitchy administrator from Harry Potter part 5) plays Tiber's mother as a complete terror. In fact, her character seems much too serious and tough for the goofy supporting characters around her.
The final piece of acting and my personal favorite is Liev Schreiber as the transvestite head of security. I feel like many actors would have taken this character wayyy over the top, but Schreiber plays it completely straight and serious. If Schreiber's character had been more focal and developed, I think he'd be worthy of supporting actor awards consideration, but its a fairly minor part.
So overall, I give Taking Woodstock a minor recommendation... If you like Ang Lee or Demetri Martin, its worth watching once... A perfectly average 5 out of 10
That's all I have to say about that.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Top Ten Underrated Villains
Hello associates,
I've wanted to do a villains list from the minute I started this blog, but my main problem was "its been done before." Every Halloween, Spike or SciFi or Bravo have a top villains countdown and I always have seen the same usual suspects on top... Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, the Wicked Witch, Norman Bates, Hans Gruber, Freddy Kruger, the shark from Jaws, etc. I could write up that same list, because honestly, those are the iconic villains that a lot of people know and love. So I decided instead to come up with ten villains that have slipped through the cracks for whatever reason in the popular mind. It's a group of performances that are in fairly major movies, but whenever I see "best of" lists, they never show up. So without further ado...
Honorable Mention - Vincent Cassel in Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Nothing in Neverending Story, Stephen Dorff in Blade, Ben Stiller in Heavyweights, and the 2 main antagonists from Battle Royale
10. Ed Harris as General Francis Hummel, The Rock
Ed Harris' portrayal of Hummel shows what a talented actor can do with a stock villain role. I think he's underrated because a lot of people remember the Rock for the explosions, the Sean Connery one liners, and another mopey Nick Cage embarassment. Besides Harris, you also get Tony Todd (Candyman!), David Morse, and John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox!) as the members of his Marine squad.
Hummel holds the city of San Francisco hostage with a stockpile of biological weapons, yet when push comes to shove, Hummel does not try to take lives. Almost any stock villain would fail because the heroes defuse the bomb or stop him, but Hummel fails because of his moral values and beliefs. His actions don't seem weak or pathetic, but more like what a realistic career military man would do.
As an audience, you run the full range of emotions with him... you sense he's just trying to do his job and I love his reaction when the mariners led my personal favorite Michael Biehn try to invade Alcatraz. During the fierce gunfight that ensues, there's a fairly quite shot of Harris' face. His facial expression relays so much emotino compared to the typically hammy acting military villains from action movies. For being so three dimensional and realistic, Harris as General Hummel takes the place to start the list.
9. Tim Roth as Archibald Cunningham, Rob Roy
I had a hard time putting this performance on the list, as Roth did receive an Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nomination (losing to Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects who in my opinion should have been up for Best Actor...). However, in the years since 1996, it seems like Rob Roy has been somewhat forgotten. Also, Cunningham disappears for decent chunks of the movie and is the henchman to John Hurt's aristocratic character.
Top Dollar is interesting because he's first and foremost a businessman and only hates the Crow because he's losing money. Dollar's fallen on hard times and is trying to get his organization back its former glory. He's smart, organized, and vile, sleeping with his sister and encouraging drug deals. For most of the movie, he uses his various henchmen (including Candyman himself, Tony Todd) yet fares quite well himself in the climatic battle against the superhuman vigilante (wounding the titular bird does tip the scales in his favor). For combining scuzz with smooth, Wincott makes the list as this nasty capitalist.
7. Colin Farrell as Bullseye, Daredevil
After a meteoric rise to stardom, Colin Farrell's career tumbled after a series of mediocre starring performances (Alexander anyone?). Bullseye is a completely psychopathic hitman with the mutant power of superhuman reflexes giving him perfect accuracy with handheld weaponry. Given that over a dozen Marvel movies have been released in the last 10 years or so, to me, Daredevil tends to get lost in the mix (the non-chemistry/acting of the Affleck-Garner love story helped that out, as well as a last second studio decision to change the rating from R to PG-13).
Farrell as Bullseye just seems to have a lot of fun and genuinely enjoys what he does, while still being menacing and a threat. This balance of humor and intensity is what makes Bullseye memorable and elevates him over some of his more serious contemporaries (Yes, Ian McKellan's portrayal of Magento has more depth and substance, but that character isn't exactly underrated). Bonus points can be given to the producers/director for having Bullseye use Farrell's natural Irish accent.
6. John Hurt (voice) as the Horned King, The Black Cauldron
Somehow, someway he's a Disney villain... yikes! During my animated characters countdown, I revealed my love for the Black Cauldron, part of which stems from this amazingly evil villain, the Horned King. Many of the iconic Disney villains that tend to make these lists are at least a bit comedic (Captain Hook, Cruella DeVil, Ursula) in one way or another. The Horned King has no funny side... He's a red robed, red eyed, skeletal, antler wearing despot with plans of world conquest. That's right, his scheme involves taking over the world, which runs contrary to the normal Disney motivation of messing with a princess or cute animal, maybe even taking over the African savannah or a European castle.
His method for doing so is even creepier... find a magical cauldron with arcane power, fill it with the bodies of warriors his armies have killed, and then ressurect them as an unstoppable army of the undead. The Horned King also commands a living army of thuggish warrior as well as vicious pteradactyl type creatures called Gwythaints, all of whom are dominated by fear and intimidation. The Horned King scores so low for two reasons, 1.) he doesn't really do a lot himself besides be a creepy menace and 2.) he makes the classic James Bond villain mistake of imprisoning instead of killing the heroes which makes him a not quite as effective in my opinion.
(I appreciate theatrically trained British character actor types quite a bit - this may be an ongoing theme for this list). The Horned King's voice is provided by the distinguished and distinctive Brit John Hurt. Hurt tends to play more emotionally anguished and complex protagonists or is often used as a narrator. However, he shows his range by playing an ugly, menacing villain (actually a more subtle performance than his villainous dictator in V for Vendetta). Horned King deserves his spot for being a big part of why the Black Cauldron was the first PG rated animated Disney movie.
5. Christopher Plummer as General Chang, Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country
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My level of enjoyment of Star Trek is a fairly mixed bag. I have fond memories of the original series and the Next Generation as a kid, and I do enjoy several of the movies, but I did not follow any of the later series (so I think that makes me a casual Trekkie). Whenever I bring up Star Trek villains, three tend to come up... the most overused - the Klingons, the most visually striking/menacing - the Borg, and the hammiest - Ricardo Montalban as Khan. Since rarely are specific Klingons mentioned, Christopher Plummer's portrayal of Chang deserves recognition as not only the best Klingon villain, but a great villain in his own right (I just think personally a lot of people dismiss Star Trek VI as the one where the cast looks really, really old (the actors were in their late 50s to early 70s at the time of filming) or the one with the clumsy Cold War analogies (fairly true). I think the filmmakers realized this and had the story be sort of a Star Trek meets Tom Clancy/CSI which was more cereberal and less physical for the most part.).
The Klingons on Star Trek are a brutish warrior race that live by honor, but unlike the stereotypical brash and stupid villains (Christopher Lloyd's Klingon character from Star Trek 3) Chang is a scheming, intelligent planner. Instead of trying to blow up the Earth with a superweapon, Chang uses political trickery to assassinate political leaders, mentally toying around with the primary cast leading to the imprisonment of Kirk and McCoy. This realistic motivation combined with the class and elegance the classically trained Plummer (Unfortunate that despite Plummer's acting skills, he's never been even nominated for an Oscar, he has won 2 Emmy and 2 Tony awards) brings to the part makes him a great villain. I also like the visual look of the character, at Plummer's request, they didn't coat him with prosthetics, letting the character have more complex emotions (props go to the intimidating eyepath held on by three screws... now that's tough). I think the Shakespeare quoting, cool, yet devious Chang deserves his spot on the list.
4. Thomas Ian Griffith as Terry Silver, Karate Kid part III
The first Karate Kid movie has two memorable villains in the evil Cobra Kai disciple Billy Zabka as Johnny Lawrence and his mentor, John Kreese, played by Martin Kove, but to me, they don't hold up after watching the master of evil, Terry Silver, in part 3.
After the original villains are humiliated by Danielsan and Mr. Miyagi (and after a sequel that doesn't expand on this particular story much at all), Kreese contacts his Vietnam war vet friend, Terry Silver, to help him get revenge. The character of Terry Silver is incredibly rich, dresses extremely well, happens to also be a black belt karate sensei, and he makes his living by illegally dumping toxic waste...
Thomas Ian Griffith plays the smarmy asshole of a character perfectly (He might have the best evil smirk in movie history through the early parts of the movie). I personally love that he schemes and negotiates both in a sauna and while taking a bubblebath. He sets up a bunch of run ins with Daniel to gain his trust, telling him Kreese has died, and training him in his own form of karate. Silver makes it a point to train Daniel the wrong way, telling him to use his anger and turning him against Mr. Miyagi. I definitely acknowledge that the idea that a billionaire would devote his personal time and resources to defeat and humiliate a local teenage karate champion is extremely ridiculous (Karate Kid 3 does not = realism). Griffith has so much fun with the part, not taking things too seriously, as his character in real life probably wouldn't. Overcoming such impossible odds is why Karate Kid 3 works as a movie at all, as by the end you really want Daniel-san to take this maniac down once and for all.
3. Elijah Wood as Kevin, Sin City
Now we get to the serious evil... This is probably the second best example of "casting against type" on this list. Kevin in the comics is more of a middle aged typical 'molester' and seemed menacing, but not quite as interesting at first. Then, you learn that Kevin is a cannibal who feeds the leftovers to his mostly feral pet wolf and keeps the heads on his wall... over the top and ridiculous, yes, but so is the rest of the Sin City universe. I love the movie adaptation, and I think this performance tends to get lost in the mix (if I had written this right after Sin City came out, I don't Wood would be as underrated).
Robert Rodriguez's decision to cast the innocent hobbit (only Rings joke in this section, I promise!) as the vicious killer made things all the creepier. At first, I thought it was gross miscasting, but changing the character's age and tweaking the look was a huge improvement. In the role, Elijah Wood has no lines of dialogue, yet manages to convey emotion extremely well through body language and his expressive eyes.
Part of what made Kevin so menacing is how much trouble he gives Marv (Mickey Rourke). Marv's combination of size and strength coupled with his fighting abilities makes him seemingly superhuman, yet the much smaller Kevin gives him more physical trouble than anyone else in the movie. The reasons he shows up this low o my countdown are his lack of screen time and relative unimportance to the overall plot (I think of him like Boba Fett from the first Star Wars trilogy). Yet he more then earns his spot with his distinctive look (love the glasses and preppy sweater), his spectacular comeuppance, and that the character made Elijah Wood frightening.
2. Frank Langella as Skeletor, Masters of the Universe
Masters of the Universe is a fatally flawed movie, yet this performance gets lost in the general sillyness of seeing He-Man fight evil in the suburbs of New Jersey. Frank Langella is a criminally underused and underrated actor, often appearing as stock villains in awful movies such as Cutthroat Island, Junior, and the Whoopi Goldberg opus, Eddie. When given a script that has the chance to flex his sizable acting chops, he can put together a performance like his portrayal of Richard Nixon in Frost vs. Nixon or his take of Dracula in the late 70s.
Skeletor in the cartoon He-Man was a fairly goofy yet visually dynamic villain with typical plans for world conquest and incompetent henchmen. The movie Skeletor comes across as an intelligent, persuasive schemer who retains the craze for power his predecessor had. The makeup on Langella is pretty good for the time period and budget and the costume/ram's head staff look genuine.
For such a crummy movie, Langella puts forth a ton of effort to make Skeletor a somewhat layered, menacing, and all around bad guy. I really love the monologue he delivers at the end when Skeletor gets the power of the universe. It's an amazingly moving and intense and I actually am rooting for Skeletor a bit as he finally is able to match He-Man physically. So for taking a buffoonish villain out of a badly animated show and making him a believable foe, Skeletor takes his spot on the list.
1. Ted Levine as Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Silence of the Lambs
This performance is why I came up with this list, because lost behind the iconic, Academy Award winning Anthony Hopkins was this amazing characterization of a serial killer. Ted Levine is a talented character actor who usually plays cops, military types, or similar authority figures (Heat, Hills Have Eyes remake, and the boss on Monk are the three other roles that popped to mind). It wasn't until well after I saw the movie that I connected Gumb with any other part that Levine has played (trying to illustrate how unrecognizable he is).
For starters, the character is written as a somewhat feminine transvestite. On paper, there's definitely potential for Gumb to be silly or funny and not as scary. Ted Levine reportedly spent some time with transvestites in bars in order to not make the character a complete caricature. He also purposefully avoided villain roles in the years after the Silence of the Lambs was released to avoid being typecast. His dedication and hard work pays off as Gumb comes across as psychotic and disturbing in a somewhat realistic sort of way. In my opinion, the entire "lotion-dog-pit" sequence would be one of the best 'serial killer' scenes in any movie.
Finally, a good chunk of why Silence of the Lambs works so well is that the character of Jame Gumb is so threatening and out there. The search to catch him becomes so intense that the advice of Hannibal Lector becomes crucial. Strangely, while reading about this character, I found out the author Thomas Harris based the main plot of Silence of the Lambs on a true story, but not the story of noted serial killer Ed Gein (who definitely influenced the character of Hannibal Lector). I found it personally incredible, but a Seattle detective actually sought out the advice of Ted Bundy to try and catch the Green River Killer.
So there's my list... Check the movies if you haven't seen any yet...
I've wanted to do a villains list from the minute I started this blog, but my main problem was "its been done before." Every Halloween, Spike or SciFi or Bravo have a top villains countdown and I always have seen the same usual suspects on top... Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, the Wicked Witch, Norman Bates, Hans Gruber, Freddy Kruger, the shark from Jaws, etc. I could write up that same list, because honestly, those are the iconic villains that a lot of people know and love. So I decided instead to come up with ten villains that have slipped through the cracks for whatever reason in the popular mind. It's a group of performances that are in fairly major movies, but whenever I see "best of" lists, they never show up. So without further ado...
Honorable Mention - Vincent Cassel in Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Nothing in Neverending Story, Stephen Dorff in Blade, Ben Stiller in Heavyweights, and the 2 main antagonists from Battle Royale
10. Ed Harris as General Francis Hummel, The Rock
Ed Harris' portrayal of Hummel shows what a talented actor can do with a stock villain role. I think he's underrated because a lot of people remember the Rock for the explosions, the Sean Connery one liners, and another mopey Nick Cage embarassment. Besides Harris, you also get Tony Todd (Candyman!), David Morse, and John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox!) as the members of his Marine squad.Hummel holds the city of San Francisco hostage with a stockpile of biological weapons, yet when push comes to shove, Hummel does not try to take lives. Almost any stock villain would fail because the heroes defuse the bomb or stop him, but Hummel fails because of his moral values and beliefs. His actions don't seem weak or pathetic, but more like what a realistic career military man would do.
As an audience, you run the full range of emotions with him... you sense he's just trying to do his job and I love his reaction when the mariners led my personal favorite Michael Biehn try to invade Alcatraz. During the fierce gunfight that ensues, there's a fairly quite shot of Harris' face. His facial expression relays so much emotino compared to the typically hammy acting military villains from action movies. For being so three dimensional and realistic, Harris as General Hummel takes the place to start the list.
9. Tim Roth as Archibald Cunningham, Rob Roy
I had a hard time putting this performance on the list, as Roth did receive an Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nomination (losing to Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects who in my opinion should have been up for Best Actor...). However, in the years since 1996, it seems like Rob Roy has been somewhat forgotten. Also, Cunningham disappears for decent chunks of the movie and is the henchman to John Hurt's aristocratic character.If you haven't seen it, the skilled yet effeminate Cunningham has the job of tracking down the rebel highlander Rob Roy. Despite his 'fancy' and 'dandy' exterior, he proves himself to be a ruthless and formidable foe. By the time this raping, stealing, murdering, wig-wearing aristocratic psychopath finally crosses swords with Liam Neeson's Roy, you've never wanted to see a movie villain die more. Fortunately, the amazing ending doesn't disappoint. After simply annihilating Liam Neeson for what seems like ten minutes... well, check it out... (sorry about the Polish subtitles, but there isn't much dialogue and this is the tightest edit of the fight I could find) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27M5KWI_q50&feature=PlayList&p=8BD409B68B76405D&index=0&playnext=1. So for a cool, nasty, and girly display of evil, Roth makes it on the list.
8. Michael Wincott as Top Dollar, The Crow
Top Dollar is interesting because he's first and foremost a businessman and only hates the Crow because he's losing money. Dollar's fallen on hard times and is trying to get his organization back its former glory. He's smart, organized, and vile, sleeping with his sister and encouraging drug deals. For most of the movie, he uses his various henchmen (including Candyman himself, Tony Todd) yet fares quite well himself in the climatic battle against the superhuman vigilante (wounding the titular bird does tip the scales in his favor). For combining scuzz with smooth, Wincott makes the list as this nasty capitalist.
7. Colin Farrell as Bullseye, Daredevil
After a meteoric rise to stardom, Colin Farrell's career tumbled after a series of mediocre starring performances (Alexander anyone?). Bullseye is a completely psychopathic hitman with the mutant power of superhuman reflexes giving him perfect accuracy with handheld weaponry. Given that over a dozen Marvel movies have been released in the last 10 years or so, to me, Daredevil tends to get lost in the mix (the non-chemistry/acting of the Affleck-Garner love story helped that out, as well as a last second studio decision to change the rating from R to PG-13).Farrell as Bullseye just seems to have a lot of fun and genuinely enjoys what he does, while still being menacing and a threat. This balance of humor and intensity is what makes Bullseye memorable and elevates him over some of his more serious contemporaries (Yes, Ian McKellan's portrayal of Magento has more depth and substance, but that character isn't exactly underrated). Bonus points can be given to the producers/director for having Bullseye use Farrell's natural Irish accent.
6. John Hurt (voice) as the Horned King, The Black Cauldron
Somehow, someway he's a Disney villain... yikes! During my animated characters countdown, I revealed my love for the Black Cauldron, part of which stems from this amazingly evil villain, the Horned King. Many of the iconic Disney villains that tend to make these lists are at least a bit comedic (Captain Hook, Cruella DeVil, Ursula) in one way or another. The Horned King has no funny side... He's a red robed, red eyed, skeletal, antler wearing despot with plans of world conquest. That's right, his scheme involves taking over the world, which runs contrary to the normal Disney motivation of messing with a princess or cute animal, maybe even taking over the African savannah or a European castle.His method for doing so is even creepier... find a magical cauldron with arcane power, fill it with the bodies of warriors his armies have killed, and then ressurect them as an unstoppable army of the undead. The Horned King also commands a living army of thuggish warrior as well as vicious pteradactyl type creatures called Gwythaints, all of whom are dominated by fear and intimidation. The Horned King scores so low for two reasons, 1.) he doesn't really do a lot himself besides be a creepy menace and 2.) he makes the classic James Bond villain mistake of imprisoning instead of killing the heroes which makes him a not quite as effective in my opinion.
(I appreciate theatrically trained British character actor types quite a bit - this may be an ongoing theme for this list). The Horned King's voice is provided by the distinguished and distinctive Brit John Hurt. Hurt tends to play more emotionally anguished and complex protagonists or is often used as a narrator. However, he shows his range by playing an ugly, menacing villain (actually a more subtle performance than his villainous dictator in V for Vendetta). Horned King deserves his spot for being a big part of why the Black Cauldron was the first PG rated animated Disney movie.
5. Christopher Plummer as General Chang, Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country
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My level of enjoyment of Star Trek is a fairly mixed bag. I have fond memories of the original series and the Next Generation as a kid, and I do enjoy several of the movies, but I did not follow any of the later series (so I think that makes me a casual Trekkie). Whenever I bring up Star Trek villains, three tend to come up... the most overused - the Klingons, the most visually striking/menacing - the Borg, and the hammiest - Ricardo Montalban as Khan. Since rarely are specific Klingons mentioned, Christopher Plummer's portrayal of Chang deserves recognition as not only the best Klingon villain, but a great villain in his own right (I just think personally a lot of people dismiss Star Trek VI as the one where the cast looks really, really old (the actors were in their late 50s to early 70s at the time of filming) or the one with the clumsy Cold War analogies (fairly true). I think the filmmakers realized this and had the story be sort of a Star Trek meets Tom Clancy/CSI which was more cereberal and less physical for the most part.).The Klingons on Star Trek are a brutish warrior race that live by honor, but unlike the stereotypical brash and stupid villains (Christopher Lloyd's Klingon character from Star Trek 3) Chang is a scheming, intelligent planner. Instead of trying to blow up the Earth with a superweapon, Chang uses political trickery to assassinate political leaders, mentally toying around with the primary cast leading to the imprisonment of Kirk and McCoy. This realistic motivation combined with the class and elegance the classically trained Plummer (Unfortunate that despite Plummer's acting skills, he's never been even nominated for an Oscar, he has won 2 Emmy and 2 Tony awards) brings to the part makes him a great villain. I also like the visual look of the character, at Plummer's request, they didn't coat him with prosthetics, letting the character have more complex emotions (props go to the intimidating eyepath held on by three screws... now that's tough). I think the Shakespeare quoting, cool, yet devious Chang deserves his spot on the list.
4. Thomas Ian Griffith as Terry Silver, Karate Kid part III
The first Karate Kid movie has two memorable villains in the evil Cobra Kai disciple Billy Zabka as Johnny Lawrence and his mentor, John Kreese, played by Martin Kove, but to me, they don't hold up after watching the master of evil, Terry Silver, in part 3.After the original villains are humiliated by Danielsan and Mr. Miyagi (and after a sequel that doesn't expand on this particular story much at all), Kreese contacts his Vietnam war vet friend, Terry Silver, to help him get revenge. The character of Terry Silver is incredibly rich, dresses extremely well, happens to also be a black belt karate sensei, and he makes his living by illegally dumping toxic waste...
Thomas Ian Griffith plays the smarmy asshole of a character perfectly (He might have the best evil smirk in movie history through the early parts of the movie). I personally love that he schemes and negotiates both in a sauna and while taking a bubblebath. He sets up a bunch of run ins with Daniel to gain his trust, telling him Kreese has died, and training him in his own form of karate. Silver makes it a point to train Daniel the wrong way, telling him to use his anger and turning him against Mr. Miyagi. I definitely acknowledge that the idea that a billionaire would devote his personal time and resources to defeat and humiliate a local teenage karate champion is extremely ridiculous (Karate Kid 3 does not = realism). Griffith has so much fun with the part, not taking things too seriously, as his character in real life probably wouldn't. Overcoming such impossible odds is why Karate Kid 3 works as a movie at all, as by the end you really want Daniel-san to take this maniac down once and for all.
3. Elijah Wood as Kevin, Sin City
Now we get to the serious evil... This is probably the second best example of "casting against type" on this list. Kevin in the comics is more of a middle aged typical 'molester' and seemed menacing, but not quite as interesting at first. Then, you learn that Kevin is a cannibal who feeds the leftovers to his mostly feral pet wolf and keeps the heads on his wall... over the top and ridiculous, yes, but so is the rest of the Sin City universe. I love the movie adaptation, and I think this performance tends to get lost in the mix (if I had written this right after Sin City came out, I don't Wood would be as underrated).Robert Rodriguez's decision to cast the innocent hobbit (only Rings joke in this section, I promise!) as the vicious killer made things all the creepier. At first, I thought it was gross miscasting, but changing the character's age and tweaking the look was a huge improvement. In the role, Elijah Wood has no lines of dialogue, yet manages to convey emotion extremely well through body language and his expressive eyes.
Part of what made Kevin so menacing is how much trouble he gives Marv (Mickey Rourke). Marv's combination of size and strength coupled with his fighting abilities makes him seemingly superhuman, yet the much smaller Kevin gives him more physical trouble than anyone else in the movie. The reasons he shows up this low o my countdown are his lack of screen time and relative unimportance to the overall plot (I think of him like Boba Fett from the first Star Wars trilogy). Yet he more then earns his spot with his distinctive look (love the glasses and preppy sweater), his spectacular comeuppance, and that the character made Elijah Wood frightening.
2. Frank Langella as Skeletor, Masters of the Universe
Masters of the Universe is a fatally flawed movie, yet this performance gets lost in the general sillyness of seeing He-Man fight evil in the suburbs of New Jersey. Frank Langella is a criminally underused and underrated actor, often appearing as stock villains in awful movies such as Cutthroat Island, Junior, and the Whoopi Goldberg opus, Eddie. When given a script that has the chance to flex his sizable acting chops, he can put together a performance like his portrayal of Richard Nixon in Frost vs. Nixon or his take of Dracula in the late 70s.Skeletor in the cartoon He-Man was a fairly goofy yet visually dynamic villain with typical plans for world conquest and incompetent henchmen. The movie Skeletor comes across as an intelligent, persuasive schemer who retains the craze for power his predecessor had. The makeup on Langella is pretty good for the time period and budget and the costume/ram's head staff look genuine.
For such a crummy movie, Langella puts forth a ton of effort to make Skeletor a somewhat layered, menacing, and all around bad guy. I really love the monologue he delivers at the end when Skeletor gets the power of the universe. It's an amazingly moving and intense and I actually am rooting for Skeletor a bit as he finally is able to match He-Man physically. So for taking a buffoonish villain out of a badly animated show and making him a believable foe, Skeletor takes his spot on the list.
1. Ted Levine as Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Silence of the Lambs
This performance is why I came up with this list, because lost behind the iconic, Academy Award winning Anthony Hopkins was this amazing characterization of a serial killer. Ted Levine is a talented character actor who usually plays cops, military types, or similar authority figures (Heat, Hills Have Eyes remake, and the boss on Monk are the three other roles that popped to mind). It wasn't until well after I saw the movie that I connected Gumb with any other part that Levine has played (trying to illustrate how unrecognizable he is).For starters, the character is written as a somewhat feminine transvestite. On paper, there's definitely potential for Gumb to be silly or funny and not as scary. Ted Levine reportedly spent some time with transvestites in bars in order to not make the character a complete caricature. He also purposefully avoided villain roles in the years after the Silence of the Lambs was released to avoid being typecast. His dedication and hard work pays off as Gumb comes across as psychotic and disturbing in a somewhat realistic sort of way. In my opinion, the entire "lotion-dog-pit" sequence would be one of the best 'serial killer' scenes in any movie.
Finally, a good chunk of why Silence of the Lambs works so well is that the character of Jame Gumb is so threatening and out there. The search to catch him becomes so intense that the advice of Hannibal Lector becomes crucial. Strangely, while reading about this character, I found out the author Thomas Harris based the main plot of Silence of the Lambs on a true story, but not the story of noted serial killer Ed Gein (who definitely influenced the character of Hannibal Lector). I found it personally incredible, but a Seattle detective actually sought out the advice of Ted Bundy to try and catch the Green River Killer.
So there's my list... Check the movies if you haven't seen any yet...
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Pandorum and Surrogates
September... The month where the kids go back to school, Bumbershoot happens, baseball rosters get really big, and Jason Statham releases another crappy action movie. In general, September and January are the two 'dump months' of the calendar year... when studios release movies that they have little faith in ( or that will only appeal to a limited audience (Stomp the Yard or Tyler Perry's latest endeavor).
Surrogates and Pandorum were both released the last weekend of September 2009. Surrogates was the higher budgeted movie at 80 M, grossing a combined 60.5 M worldwide and domestic. It also featured a bigger 'name' cast, headlined by Bruce Willis and a trailer featured Mr. Willis fighting robots. Pandorum cost 40 M, but failed to crack 15 M worldwide. Pandorum's previews gave it a Resident Evilish vibe, it was produced by Paul W.S. Anderson (the man behind the Mortal Kombat movie, the Death Race remake, and all 3 live action Res Evil films), and starred the poor man's Harrison Ford, Dennis Quaid.
Based on those descriptions... Surrogates obviously comes out on top, having at least a chance to make back some money on bluray/dvd sales and rentals, but both were financial failures. I'm not to going into a lot of detail reviewing these, because both were fairly derivative... but some quick bullet pointish thoughts.
Surrogates... The central concept is that in the near future, 98% of people live their lives through robotic 'surrogates' that can get into dangerous situations while keeping their owners harmfree and far away. In and itself, its not bad idea for a movie, and personally, I hope that some day war could fought in that sort of way... just robots fighting and keeping humans safer.
The acting for the most part is decent enough. Willis goes through the motions, using his combination of cynicism, inventiveness, and vulnerablility to play the same character he's played many times before. Supporting cast... Rastafarian Ving Rhames was entertaning (its a different sort of character than his usual 'tough guy'), James Cromwell (the farmer from Babe) played another grumpy authority figure, and Radha Mitchell, while fairly attractive, really needs more fleshed out parts in movies. I'd like to figure out if its the writing or her talent why she's so bland and forgettable, but not really bad.
Plotwise, Surrogates was decent (how the Matrix started meets I, Robot describes it well) and the ending actually makes a lot of sense, its just the setup that makes the whole film crumble. Offhand, there are enough problems with the concepts of surrogate robots that it just killed the movie for me. I watched this yesterday... and I've come up with 5 reasons to prove how stupid it is (no real spoilers here, if you watch the first few minutes of the movie, these issues should be obvious).
1. Why isn't everyone obese? I mean, you'd still have to eat and drink, but controlling a surrogate means you pretty much are immobile in a chair the whole day.
2. Wouldn't this kill off the massive restaurant industry? I mean, the surrogates themselves don't have to eat anything and that's 98% of the population moving around in this movie. I mean, they could bring back carryout, but I can't see a bunch of people sending their robots to get Jack in the Box tacos...
3. How cheap are these super advanced surrogates? Everyone seems to have them, and they are super advanced (I think there's a 10 year timeline or so in the intro from when they get invented to mass produced). Think about personal computers, I mean it took at least 10 years just to have something like the Apple 2GS, Amiga, or Commodore 64 from the room sized computers of the 70s... I can't believe that they would be that affordable for 'everyone' to have them...
4. The surrogates seem to be as strong and agile as the script calls for. At some points, they are really strong, can jump almost like Spiderman, take a fair amount of damage... This isn't a spoiler, its in every preview! Yet, in some scenes, they get taken out in just stupid ways. I realize that average people are 'behind the wheel' but if I had one of these things, I'd be jumping and climbing around everywhere. I mean, it would be expensive and maybe a little silly to have everyone bounding around like kangaroos, but even from an efficiency standpoint, it doesn't make sense. Its not like the robots get tired! (they could lose battery power maybe, but there seems to be recharging stations everywhere!)
5. This last one REALLY ground my gears. The surrogate robots use cell phones to communicate and talk to each other like humans! Think about this, these superadvanced robots controlled by wireless signal from great distances still use cell phones? Think about the Matrix, the Agents just sort of thought to each other through their earpieces. When Trinity needed piloting skill in the first Matrix, they just uploaded it into her brain, and she was a human! I mean, I realize the movie needs dialogue or else it would be really boring if robots just gave each other all knowing looks back and forth. For a non robot equivalent, instead of bluetooths, people starting using those old rotary phones..
Enough ranting about the stupidity of Surrogates and onto Pandorum...
I can't really say much about the plot without completely ruining it.
So instead, I'll discuss the setup a bit though, its about two crewman on a spaceship played by Ben Foster (Angel from Xmen3 or the crazy sharpshooter from 3:10 to Yuma) and Dennis Quaid trying to fix their damaged ship. See, they are trying to get from Earth to some distant planet without a Star Trek/Wars warp drive. This would take a really, really long time, so there are many different 'shifts' of crewmen who work for a few years, then go back to a deep cryogenic sleep. This seems like the way you'd handle a manned interstellar mission...
Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system... is 4.5 light years away. Meaning if we sent a spaceship at 1/10th light speed (which is currently technologically possible, but would be ridiculously expensive), it would get there in 45 or so years. It would then take another 45 years to get back to earth. Given the limitations of human life expectancy and the difficulties of raising children in space to man a return mission, this would seem insurmountable. However, what if you had 6 shifts of people operating the same ship? Each would only be awake for roughly 15 years, and if you could cryogenically freeze them so that they couldn't age in the meantime (well, that in and itself is sort of silly), it would help with the aging problem.
Problem is, making a movie about a long trip like that would be tedious at best, so, we get some bland monsters that are a blend of the Ghosts of Mars and Gollum. These chase our heroes around dimly lit corridors, feast on a diet of extras and supporting characters, and disappear when the script needs to get in some exposition. Yep, the middle section is a lot like the crappier parts of the first 3 Alien movies, especially the 'running through the tunnels' part from Alien3. However, the ending pulls everything back together and had a twist I didn't really anticipate at all.
So if you want a September sci movie with an interesting concept, bland action, and a cool ending, skip Surrogates and check out Pandorum.
That's all I have to say about that.
Surrogates and Pandorum were both released the last weekend of September 2009. Surrogates was the higher budgeted movie at 80 M, grossing a combined 60.5 M worldwide and domestic. It also featured a bigger 'name' cast, headlined by Bruce Willis and a trailer featured Mr. Willis fighting robots. Pandorum cost 40 M, but failed to crack 15 M worldwide. Pandorum's previews gave it a Resident Evilish vibe, it was produced by Paul W.S. Anderson (the man behind the Mortal Kombat movie, the Death Race remake, and all 3 live action Res Evil films), and starred the poor man's Harrison Ford, Dennis Quaid.
Based on those descriptions... Surrogates obviously comes out on top, having at least a chance to make back some money on bluray/dvd sales and rentals, but both were financial failures. I'm not to going into a lot of detail reviewing these, because both were fairly derivative... but some quick bullet pointish thoughts.
Surrogates... The central concept is that in the near future, 98% of people live their lives through robotic 'surrogates' that can get into dangerous situations while keeping their owners harmfree and far away. In and itself, its not bad idea for a movie, and personally, I hope that some day war could fought in that sort of way... just robots fighting and keeping humans safer.
The acting for the most part is decent enough. Willis goes through the motions, using his combination of cynicism, inventiveness, and vulnerablility to play the same character he's played many times before. Supporting cast... Rastafarian Ving Rhames was entertaning (its a different sort of character than his usual 'tough guy'), James Cromwell (the farmer from Babe) played another grumpy authority figure, and Radha Mitchell, while fairly attractive, really needs more fleshed out parts in movies. I'd like to figure out if its the writing or her talent why she's so bland and forgettable, but not really bad.
Plotwise, Surrogates was decent (how the Matrix started meets I, Robot describes it well) and the ending actually makes a lot of sense, its just the setup that makes the whole film crumble. Offhand, there are enough problems with the concepts of surrogate robots that it just killed the movie for me. I watched this yesterday... and I've come up with 5 reasons to prove how stupid it is (no real spoilers here, if you watch the first few minutes of the movie, these issues should be obvious).
1. Why isn't everyone obese? I mean, you'd still have to eat and drink, but controlling a surrogate means you pretty much are immobile in a chair the whole day.
2. Wouldn't this kill off the massive restaurant industry? I mean, the surrogates themselves don't have to eat anything and that's 98% of the population moving around in this movie. I mean, they could bring back carryout, but I can't see a bunch of people sending their robots to get Jack in the Box tacos...
3. How cheap are these super advanced surrogates? Everyone seems to have them, and they are super advanced (I think there's a 10 year timeline or so in the intro from when they get invented to mass produced). Think about personal computers, I mean it took at least 10 years just to have something like the Apple 2GS, Amiga, or Commodore 64 from the room sized computers of the 70s... I can't believe that they would be that affordable for 'everyone' to have them...
4. The surrogates seem to be as strong and agile as the script calls for. At some points, they are really strong, can jump almost like Spiderman, take a fair amount of damage... This isn't a spoiler, its in every preview! Yet, in some scenes, they get taken out in just stupid ways. I realize that average people are 'behind the wheel' but if I had one of these things, I'd be jumping and climbing around everywhere. I mean, it would be expensive and maybe a little silly to have everyone bounding around like kangaroos, but even from an efficiency standpoint, it doesn't make sense. Its not like the robots get tired! (they could lose battery power maybe, but there seems to be recharging stations everywhere!)
5. This last one REALLY ground my gears. The surrogate robots use cell phones to communicate and talk to each other like humans! Think about this, these superadvanced robots controlled by wireless signal from great distances still use cell phones? Think about the Matrix, the Agents just sort of thought to each other through their earpieces. When Trinity needed piloting skill in the first Matrix, they just uploaded it into her brain, and she was a human! I mean, I realize the movie needs dialogue or else it would be really boring if robots just gave each other all knowing looks back and forth. For a non robot equivalent, instead of bluetooths, people starting using those old rotary phones..
Enough ranting about the stupidity of Surrogates and onto Pandorum...
I can't really say much about the plot without completely ruining it.
So instead, I'll discuss the setup a bit though, its about two crewman on a spaceship played by Ben Foster (Angel from Xmen3 or the crazy sharpshooter from 3:10 to Yuma) and Dennis Quaid trying to fix their damaged ship. See, they are trying to get from Earth to some distant planet without a Star Trek/Wars warp drive. This would take a really, really long time, so there are many different 'shifts' of crewmen who work for a few years, then go back to a deep cryogenic sleep. This seems like the way you'd handle a manned interstellar mission...
Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system... is 4.5 light years away. Meaning if we sent a spaceship at 1/10th light speed (which is currently technologically possible, but would be ridiculously expensive), it would get there in 45 or so years. It would then take another 45 years to get back to earth. Given the limitations of human life expectancy and the difficulties of raising children in space to man a return mission, this would seem insurmountable. However, what if you had 6 shifts of people operating the same ship? Each would only be awake for roughly 15 years, and if you could cryogenically freeze them so that they couldn't age in the meantime (well, that in and itself is sort of silly), it would help with the aging problem.
Problem is, making a movie about a long trip like that would be tedious at best, so, we get some bland monsters that are a blend of the Ghosts of Mars and Gollum. These chase our heroes around dimly lit corridors, feast on a diet of extras and supporting characters, and disappear when the script needs to get in some exposition. Yep, the middle section is a lot like the crappier parts of the first 3 Alien movies, especially the 'running through the tunnels' part from Alien3. However, the ending pulls everything back together and had a twist I didn't really anticipate at all.
So if you want a September sci movie with an interesting concept, bland action, and a cool ending, skip Surrogates and check out Pandorum.
That's all I have to say about that.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Bottom 7 movies of 2009
I watch a lot of movies. That statement shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone. I feel like I should do a 'year in review' so I'll give my top and bottom 7.
I'm only considering cinematic releases, so all straight to DVD movies aren't up for consideration (number 1 would be utterly dreadful S. Darko) So I'll start at the bottom 7, the worst of 2009 (I haven't seen Old Dogs or Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, so they are omitted)...
Dishonorable mentions (the next 7 in no particular order); Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen, The Uninvited, Haunting of Molly Hartley, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Paul Blart Mall Cop, Fighting, and Babylon A.D.
7. Year One
Jack Black = funny, Michael Cera = funny, Harold Ramis = funny, Black+Cera+Ramis = amazingly unfunny. For starters, the idea of cavemen wandering through biblical times does have some comic potential (I was hoping for something like Mel Brook's History of the World). Ramis assembled a who's who of comedians for the supporting cast, including Hank Azaria, David Cross, Paul Rudd, Christopher 'McLovin' Mintz-Plasse, Kyle "Tenacious D" Gass, and Bill Hader. The problem is, Black and Cera lazily play their normal 'types' (Black constantly mugs, wiggles his eyebrows and dances around, Cera talks really quietly and is awkward around women, etc.) while most of the supporting cast get very little screen time and have little impact on the story. The worst offender of the supporting cast is the terrifically unfunny and overly hairy Oliver Platt as a high priest (and I even sort of liked Platt in Lake Placid, so that should give an example of how awful he is here).
Its like Ramis assembled his cast and forgot to give them anything remotely funny to do. The humor involves too many pratfalls, tired homophobic routines (yep, some things about the Romans would seem fairly gay by today's standards), and dumb scatological jokes (a poop joke that was better in the 3rd American Pie). A lot of money got put into the costumes and sets (the movie had a budget of 60 M, fairly high for a straight comedy) but none was put into the story or script. This movie makes the list over the other contenders because the three or four good jokes are all in the preview (only Bill Hader's sadly brief appearance would be the sole exception), making the following hour and forty minutes an extremely boring, unfunny affair.
6. Dragonball Evolution
This movie was poorly edited and written, had a delayed theatrical release, and then dumped to theaters in April 2009. Given the difficult to adapt source material and that the budget was slashed from 100 M in preproduction down to 30 M for production, I feel a little bad for this movie from the start. It seems like 20th Century Fox has been steadily accumulating the rights to a number of properties with a strong built in 'core' audience (The Seeker, Eragon, Hitman, Garfield, Fantastic Four, etc.). Then, the resulting movie adaptations get as little effort into budget and script as possible. The ensuing cheap cinematic abortions then are dumped to theaters hoping to lure in the enthusiastic fan base and thus cash in on the 'name' value (and so far have mostly tanked).
For casting, despite being set in Japan, Canadian Justin Chatwin is miscast as the lead Son Goku as is Emmy Rossum as the blue haired inventor Bulma. Amidst a sea of awfulness in the supporting cast, Chow Yun-Fat hammily enjoys himself as Master Roshi while an underwritten James Marsters evils it up as Lord Piccolo. Vegita, the most interesting and popular character from the anime, doesn't even appear at all. I think a good 30 M Dragonball movie starring a Canadian was doomed from the very start, so this is low on my "bad" list.
5. Knowing
Most of Knowing wasn't 'that' bad, having an interesting concept and being helmed by Alex Proyas, (who joins David Goyer in the "creative people I love that made a horrible 2009 movie" list) the director of Dark City and the first Crow. Nick Cage is only moderately irritating, there are a couple cool action sequences, and the cinematography is decent. However, with about a half hour to go, the movie goes from alright to a big bag of sloppy goose shit. Where do I begin?
If there was a giant solar flare, the levels of UV radiation would greatly increase thereby increasing the frequency and rate of cancer. The characters talk about UV radiation a couple different times... Yet, the climax (given away in the previews) features a giant ID4 style fireball engulfing most of the world. Apparently, people dying of radiation < stuff exploding! To paraphrase what happens in the end of the movie... what if at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after Indy found the Grail and reconciled with his father, got crushed by the falling debris in the temple? Wouldn't that suck? Yep, it would, and so did this movie, featuring one the worst endings of any major movie that I've seen.
4. Street Fighter, Legend of Chun Li
There have been a lot of terrible video game movies, so I tend to give most of them a little more latitude given their weak subject matter. What's wrong with this sequel? For a game with literally dozens of characters, we only get 7 in this movie - Chun Li, M. Bison, Charlie, Vega, Balrog, Gen, and Rose. What's wrong with this list? For starters, the first Street Fighter movie focused on Guile, so his omission is fine, but to me, the sequel had to be about the HaDouken twins, Ken and Ryu (the 2 most popular characters). Not only are they not part of the plot, they aren't even in the movie at all (except for a name drop towards the end). This would be the equivalent of having X-Men 2 be all about Storm and leaving Wolverine completely out.
Next, some awful casting decisions... Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog is about the only thing that works... In the opening montage, Chun Li grows up from being obviously of Asian descent to the Canadian Kristen Kreuk (who does a decent job with the martial arts and puts forth a decent acting effort). Neal McDonough seems more like a standard mob boss than the evil dictator M. Bison (He's no Raul Julia and he's the completely wrong physical type). The guy playing the martial arts legend Gen is far too young (the same actor played Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat!). For the fearsome clawed killer Vega, we get the hispanic guy from the Black Eyed Peas... ugh. The real reason this movie features on the list is the absolutely all time awful performance from Chris Klein as Charlie Nash. Klein's characterization features the worst acting (being hammy yet bland all at once) from a 'name' actor that I've ever seen in a major motion picture. Since he's only a supporting character, that saves this flick from the worst of the year.
3. All About Steve
Oscar award winning Sandra Bullock has been irritating and annoying before, but her performance of a shrill, stalkerish, obsessive crossword puzzle writer takes the cake for her worst career performance (I was wishing for her burping FBI agent from Miss Congeniality about twenty minutes in). Also starring the amazingly bland Bradley Cooper, this movie has three terminal flaws.
strike 1 bad acting
strike 2 bad plot
strike 3 bad writing.
The only thing that saves movie from being the worst of the year is the costarring tandem of Thomas Haden Church and Ken Jeong as an arrogant news anchor and a suffering camera tech. These two are trying to bring the funny into a painfully unfunny script, they have all the best lines (some of which have to be improvised) and make their part of the movie tolerable. Unfortunately, the movie is focused on a creepy Bullock-Cooper "romance" which makes the final project abysmal. I'll put it this way, when Bullock falls down a gaping hole (the only good physical joke and ruined in the preview) I was hoping for her death or at least serious bone breaking injury. Instead, I got another half hour of movie... ughhhh.
2. The Unborn
Out of the 2 Un movies released in early 2009 along with the Uninivited, this movie is everything that's wrong with most American horror. Using a combination of really cheap boo scares along with cheap rip offs of prominent horror movies like the Exorcist, the Grudge, and others does not scary make. The really sad thing about this one isn't the cool looking trailer, the waste of talent of David Goyer (who wrote Dark Knight, Blade, and Dark City), or a slumming Gary Oldman. The sad thing is that the movie is only PG-13, depriving it of the gore or nudity it would need to be at least entertaining (like the My Bloody Valentine remake).
1. Bride Wars
This might be one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen. It makes chick flicks look bad by being an offensive farce involving two lifelong friends who sabotage and destroy each others lives (using methods that might have been funny in Saved by the Bell) because their weddings get accidentally booked on the same day. Given the current 'bridezilla,' over competitive weddings of today, I truly believe that a script with good comic potential exists. Furthermore, you get a completely cheap "happy ending" because one of the male characters makes a script based decision to question the stupidity of the movie's plot. Anne Hathaway should have known better, Kate Hudson's agent needs a career change (Fool's Gold looked like an Oscar contender compared to this). Just amazingly unfunny, cliched, and completely devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever.
I'm only considering cinematic releases, so all straight to DVD movies aren't up for consideration (number 1 would be utterly dreadful S. Darko) So I'll start at the bottom 7, the worst of 2009 (I haven't seen Old Dogs or Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, so they are omitted)...
Dishonorable mentions (the next 7 in no particular order); Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen, The Uninvited, Haunting of Molly Hartley, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Paul Blart Mall Cop, Fighting, and Babylon A.D.
7. Year One
Jack Black = funny, Michael Cera = funny, Harold Ramis = funny, Black+Cera+Ramis = amazingly unfunny. For starters, the idea of cavemen wandering through biblical times does have some comic potential (I was hoping for something like Mel Brook's History of the World). Ramis assembled a who's who of comedians for the supporting cast, including Hank Azaria, David Cross, Paul Rudd, Christopher 'McLovin' Mintz-Plasse, Kyle "Tenacious D" Gass, and Bill Hader. The problem is, Black and Cera lazily play their normal 'types' (Black constantly mugs, wiggles his eyebrows and dances around, Cera talks really quietly and is awkward around women, etc.) while most of the supporting cast get very little screen time and have little impact on the story. The worst offender of the supporting cast is the terrifically unfunny and overly hairy Oliver Platt as a high priest (and I even sort of liked Platt in Lake Placid, so that should give an example of how awful he is here).
Its like Ramis assembled his cast and forgot to give them anything remotely funny to do. The humor involves too many pratfalls, tired homophobic routines (yep, some things about the Romans would seem fairly gay by today's standards), and dumb scatological jokes (a poop joke that was better in the 3rd American Pie). A lot of money got put into the costumes and sets (the movie had a budget of 60 M, fairly high for a straight comedy) but none was put into the story or script. This movie makes the list over the other contenders because the three or four good jokes are all in the preview (only Bill Hader's sadly brief appearance would be the sole exception), making the following hour and forty minutes an extremely boring, unfunny affair.
6. Dragonball Evolution
This movie was poorly edited and written, had a delayed theatrical release, and then dumped to theaters in April 2009. Given the difficult to adapt source material and that the budget was slashed from 100 M in preproduction down to 30 M for production, I feel a little bad for this movie from the start. It seems like 20th Century Fox has been steadily accumulating the rights to a number of properties with a strong built in 'core' audience (The Seeker, Eragon, Hitman, Garfield, Fantastic Four, etc.). Then, the resulting movie adaptations get as little effort into budget and script as possible. The ensuing cheap cinematic abortions then are dumped to theaters hoping to lure in the enthusiastic fan base and thus cash in on the 'name' value (and so far have mostly tanked).
For casting, despite being set in Japan, Canadian Justin Chatwin is miscast as the lead Son Goku as is Emmy Rossum as the blue haired inventor Bulma. Amidst a sea of awfulness in the supporting cast, Chow Yun-Fat hammily enjoys himself as Master Roshi while an underwritten James Marsters evils it up as Lord Piccolo. Vegita, the most interesting and popular character from the anime, doesn't even appear at all. I think a good 30 M Dragonball movie starring a Canadian was doomed from the very start, so this is low on my "bad" list.
5. Knowing
Most of Knowing wasn't 'that' bad, having an interesting concept and being helmed by Alex Proyas, (who joins David Goyer in the "creative people I love that made a horrible 2009 movie" list) the director of Dark City and the first Crow. Nick Cage is only moderately irritating, there are a couple cool action sequences, and the cinematography is decent. However, with about a half hour to go, the movie goes from alright to a big bag of sloppy goose shit. Where do I begin?
If there was a giant solar flare, the levels of UV radiation would greatly increase thereby increasing the frequency and rate of cancer. The characters talk about UV radiation a couple different times... Yet, the climax (given away in the previews) features a giant ID4 style fireball engulfing most of the world. Apparently, people dying of radiation < stuff exploding! To paraphrase what happens in the end of the movie... what if at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after Indy found the Grail and reconciled with his father, got crushed by the falling debris in the temple? Wouldn't that suck? Yep, it would, and so did this movie, featuring one the worst endings of any major movie that I've seen.
4. Street Fighter, Legend of Chun Li
There have been a lot of terrible video game movies, so I tend to give most of them a little more latitude given their weak subject matter. What's wrong with this sequel? For a game with literally dozens of characters, we only get 7 in this movie - Chun Li, M. Bison, Charlie, Vega, Balrog, Gen, and Rose. What's wrong with this list? For starters, the first Street Fighter movie focused on Guile, so his omission is fine, but to me, the sequel had to be about the HaDouken twins, Ken and Ryu (the 2 most popular characters). Not only are they not part of the plot, they aren't even in the movie at all (except for a name drop towards the end). This would be the equivalent of having X-Men 2 be all about Storm and leaving Wolverine completely out.
Next, some awful casting decisions... Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog is about the only thing that works... In the opening montage, Chun Li grows up from being obviously of Asian descent to the Canadian Kristen Kreuk (who does a decent job with the martial arts and puts forth a decent acting effort). Neal McDonough seems more like a standard mob boss than the evil dictator M. Bison (He's no Raul Julia and he's the completely wrong physical type). The guy playing the martial arts legend Gen is far too young (the same actor played Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat!). For the fearsome clawed killer Vega, we get the hispanic guy from the Black Eyed Peas... ugh. The real reason this movie features on the list is the absolutely all time awful performance from Chris Klein as Charlie Nash. Klein's characterization features the worst acting (being hammy yet bland all at once) from a 'name' actor that I've ever seen in a major motion picture. Since he's only a supporting character, that saves this flick from the worst of the year.
3. All About Steve
Oscar award winning Sandra Bullock has been irritating and annoying before, but her performance of a shrill, stalkerish, obsessive crossword puzzle writer takes the cake for her worst career performance (I was wishing for her burping FBI agent from Miss Congeniality about twenty minutes in). Also starring the amazingly bland Bradley Cooper, this movie has three terminal flaws.
strike 1 bad acting
strike 2 bad plot
strike 3 bad writing.
The only thing that saves movie from being the worst of the year is the costarring tandem of Thomas Haden Church and Ken Jeong as an arrogant news anchor and a suffering camera tech. These two are trying to bring the funny into a painfully unfunny script, they have all the best lines (some of which have to be improvised) and make their part of the movie tolerable. Unfortunately, the movie is focused on a creepy Bullock-Cooper "romance" which makes the final project abysmal. I'll put it this way, when Bullock falls down a gaping hole (the only good physical joke and ruined in the preview) I was hoping for her death or at least serious bone breaking injury. Instead, I got another half hour of movie... ughhhh.
2. The Unborn
Out of the 2 Un movies released in early 2009 along with the Uninivited, this movie is everything that's wrong with most American horror. Using a combination of really cheap boo scares along with cheap rip offs of prominent horror movies like the Exorcist, the Grudge, and others does not scary make. The really sad thing about this one isn't the cool looking trailer, the waste of talent of David Goyer (who wrote Dark Knight, Blade, and Dark City), or a slumming Gary Oldman. The sad thing is that the movie is only PG-13, depriving it of the gore or nudity it would need to be at least entertaining (like the My Bloody Valentine remake).
1. Bride Wars
This might be one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen. It makes chick flicks look bad by being an offensive farce involving two lifelong friends who sabotage and destroy each others lives (using methods that might have been funny in Saved by the Bell) because their weddings get accidentally booked on the same day. Given the current 'bridezilla,' over competitive weddings of today, I truly believe that a script with good comic potential exists. Furthermore, you get a completely cheap "happy ending" because one of the male characters makes a script based decision to question the stupidity of the movie's plot. Anne Hathaway should have known better, Kate Hudson's agent needs a career change (Fool's Gold looked like an Oscar contender compared to this). Just amazingly unfunny, cliched, and completely devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever.
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