Batmanime aka Gotham Knight

Starring: Kevin Conroy

Directors: Yasuhiro Aoki; Futshi Higashide, Futoshi Higashide, Toshiyki Kubooka, Hiroshi, Morioka, Jon-Sik Nam, and Shoujirou Nishimi

Writers: Josh Olsen, Brian Azzarello, Jordan Goldberg, Greg Rucka, Alan Burnett, David S. Goyer

Studio: Warner Brothers

There are a great many things to thank the Wachowski siblings (don't forget that one of them is a girl now) for. One of them is the plethora of animated tie-in movies released direct to DVD. I'm not gonna lie; I haven't seen The Animatrix in years. Memories of the sequels have kept me far from anything Matrix for a while now, but I do have fond memories of The Animatrix. I remember it being uneven, but some of those short films stood out as being better than the sequels. A few interesting little stories set in the then untapped and rich world of The Matrix.

Sadly, Batman has had his rich world thoroughly tapped harder than a keg at a phrat party. Movies, TV shows, comic books, radio shows, novels, picture books, and even trading cards have told stories about Batman, his friends, his enemies, and people who just know of him. This leaves the Batmanime team with the problem of going over things other people have done before. Even in the confines of the Nolan Batman films, there aren't a terrible amount of questions that beg to be answered. The recent movies give us a good picture of what Gotham City is like, how the public and police relate to Batman, where he gets his wonderful toys, and how he trained to become Batman. A few of these short stories just answer these question again but with anime. A few just have him fight a villain that won't be in the movies anytime soon. One does a new version of a classic Batman story that started as a comic, was an episode of the nineties cartoon show, and now has an anime version.

The bottom line is that none of this is ground breaking. It's a concept borrowed from another film franchise and applied to Batman. It honestly feels disposable and forgettable; they had one of my favorite obscure Batman villains, Deadshot, and even with that little touch of fanboy pandering, I was still pretty unimpressed with the affair. I fell asleep during the third or fourth short, and I can't even remember which one now.

Writing:The biggest problem is making the story line interconnect; it kills the pacing for the entire project. It's also glaring because the different writers and animators handle some of these characters very differently. Instead of being a few short films or a full animated movie; it becomes an awkward hybrid of the two. The interconnected story lines give the feeling like the shorts are building to something, but they aren't. It makes the ending to the entire thing feel arbitrary. It also makes some of the shorts feel slow and uninteresting because they aren't a part of this bigger narrative that's more of an illusion than anything else.

On top of that, the dialog isn't as sharp as it could be; it's often too obvious and expository. It gets a little George Lucas in terms of characters describing their feelings and the themes of a scene. There are some good ideas here and there, but it just never quite comes together.

Directing: The Matrix and The Animatrix had a shared background in their visual style and even the writing. The Wachowskis took from anime, Hong Kong action films, and Grant Morrison comics (don't get me started) to create the iconic first part of their trilogy. It was an easy transition to make.

Batman Begins is not connected to anime in any major way. Parts of the Narrows neighborhood in the film were modeled on Tokyo neighborhoods, but otherwise, these are not styles that work together to well. It's a bit jarring to see the more realistic mobsters of the new Batman movies suddenly look completely different and then have an all out John Woo style gun battle. It simply does not jive with the parent product. Also, certain directors use designs for the characters that are simply hideous looks for Batman and his supporting cast in any style.

Acting: Keving Conroy is still awesome. The rest of the voice work is not.

Editing: For the most part it looks fine.

Sound: Acceptable.

Soundtrack/Score: It sounds like a diet version of the recent film scores.

Self-Awareness: Not at all.

Overall Rating: Wake me when it's over.

-Pete

The Tattooist (2007)

Starring: Jason Behr, Mia Blake
Directed by: Peter Burger
Written by: Matthew Grainger, Jonathan King
Studio: Eyeworks Touchdown

THE TATTOOIST faithfully follows in the tradition of rigorous anthropological case studies found in cheap-thrill horror movies over the past quarter-century or so. For example, we can see traces of the ambitious thinking behind the lauded 90's movie about magic gypies THINNER and the perennial classic exposing Southern brutality disguised as theme house hospitality HOUSE OF A 1,000 CORPSES in the stream of urine that is Burger's newest creation. Here, though, it's the long-abused peoples of Samoa that get the heavy handed treatment. Yay white people.

Jason Behr's character is a tattooist that claims his work can HEAL THE SICK. Naturally, people get pissed off at him when his inkings don't do shit but hell, it's not like he set up shop in a place where bloggers get convicted of sedition. Oh wait, he does live in Singapore, maybe he shouldn't be writing checks (i.e. doing "magic" with his tattoo machine) that his ass can't afford (the resulting caning). But before he figures out that he'd be smart to hightail out of there, he runs into some Samoan chick and, given his appreciation of her and the islandic culture, steals some of her cousin's traditional tat equipment. He's a lovable scrapper, really.

After he accidentally cuts himself good with the stolen goods (I really would want this guy sticking pointy drills in me, yeppers) and moving to New Zealand, the dbag then gets all caught up in some kind of fucked up Samoan ghost story that I quickly lost interest in. Turns out there's a ghost of some young dead Samoan boy that, rather than take revenge on his murderers (who turn out to be his family members, as expected for such a uncivilized and barbaric race), is killing people that the dumbfuck protag inks up. yeah, I don't get it either - there might have been an explanation given beyond Jason Behr cutting himself with the stick and therefore opening up a "channel" for the spirit, but fuck if I cared by the end of this crapfest. I'm pretty sure the damn stick has cut into other people before, e.g. customers.

Honestly folks, I read the back of this, saw that there was nudity and decided, "Fuck it, Blockbuster owes me a free rental anyway". Sure there were tits, sure there was blood, sure there was blood on said tits, but nothing other than your standard VOODOO COLORED PEOPLE BAD, LET'S SOLVE THE MYSTERY AND THEN FLY BACK FOR SOME COSMOS. I'm so done with this movie.

Writing: Boring plot, all the deaths occur over the course of only three or four hammy scenes, I guess there's a twist?

Direction: Boy this guy really likes tattoos. And women coughing up really viscous ink. And overwrought flashback sequences.

Acting: Behr conveys the emotional state of befuddlement quite well but I guess that's all the character ever felt. That and the occasional constipation.

Editing: The first act drags on and on, then we get a bunch of quick ghost-murderer scenes and then a CLIMATIC CONFRONTATION SCENE that I couldn't be bothered to even watch with both eyes (one was focused on porn).

Sound: They try to make the sound of hitting a stick with another stick the new Jason Voorhes murder cue.

Soundtrack/Score: When the protagonist first arrives in New Zealand, some annoying grunge band sounding fifteen years too late out of Seattle busts our movie-watchin' world WIDE OPEN. Who ever put the soundtrack together should go with a more relevant, maybe even talented band next time - perhaps one from New Zealand (don't ask me to name any).

Self-Awareness: This film recognizes the wholesome and unexplored culture of Samoans - and decides to depict them as either a bunch of conspiring child-killers or wannabe gangstas blasting trashy hip-hop from their tricked out whips. Remarkable.

Overall rating: *

~Ian

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, James Dodd, Seth McFarlane, Jeffrey Tambore, John Hurt, Luke Goss

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Mike Mignola

Studio: Universal

I really like Hellboy. I own the graphic novels, the toys, and saw both movies. I thought the first film was uneven, but it was a valiant effort to adapt a tricky property. The comic book's a very mannered affair that doesn't translate visually or storywise to film. This forces the movies to be somewhere between Ghostbusters and Men in Black with a fantasy backbone. Hellboy and his friends crack wise and do battle with a hoard of beautiful looking monsters in our world and the underworld.

It's a difficult balance to maintain when a film has so much going on. It's a film that deals with growing up, being different, golden robots, relationships, drunken monster men, cheap Mexican beer, anti-German sentiment, and the bureaucracy of the man. It succeeds most of the time, but when the film fails, it falls with a pronounced thud. Abe Sapien is a wonderful foil for Hellboy, but he's a complete dud as the star of his own subplot. His romance with an exiled princess just doesn't carry the weight the film wants it to have. It feels forced, and it drags the film down. It's a little too operatic for the blue collar protagonists.

However, Hellboy's relationship with his girlfriend Liz is a strong source of comedy and bickering; it works because they play it mostly funny but keep a core a real emotion in there. That nugget of real emotion drives most of the film's gags, fights, and set pieces; when the film looses that nugget, it weakens.

Writing: Pretty good. I would say it's tighter than the previous film. The dialogue is funnier and the plot is more focused. The villains sound a bit too much like generic fantasy characters, but that's mostly the point. They also provide a great contrast to the very modern style of the protagonists.

Directing: Del Toro and company have created a great look for the film.

Acting: Perlman is excellent as the lead. He was the best about the first movie, and he doesn't dissapoint. He has a certain rough charm as Hellboy that really works on screen, and he can sell it quite well through the make up. He and Doug Jones do an uproarious drunk male bonding scene together that must have been difficult to make seem laid back after a combined 7 hours of makeup between the two of them.

Speaking of which, the cast works together quite nicely, despite most of them being covered in makeup and posthetics. Also, some of them have voice actors doing the dialogue with someone else in the body suit. Somehow, Seth McFarlane and Perlman have a good chemistry despite not being on the set together.

Selma Blair does a good job, and Jeffrey Tambore brings the funny when he gets the chance.

Editing: I could have done without Abe making googy eyes for like fifteen minutes, but otherwise, a decent job.

Sound: Some great little noises for all the creatures, monsters, and magic; it sounded believable.

Soundtrack/Score: Good mood music with some great soundtrack singles. It was also quite nice to hear The Eels in a movie.

Self-Awareness: Yes, it's a weird fucking movie that revels in it's own weird. It also knows how to laugh at the sheer untamed bizarre it's filled with.

Overall Rating: When it works it's wonderful, but a few scenes are definitely better used as bathroom breaks rather than entertainment.

-Pete

Batman and Robin

Starring: George Clooney, Chris O'Donnel, Alicia Silverstone, Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Director: Joel Shumacher
Writer: Akiva Goldsman
Studio: Time Warner

Do you see Uma Thurman's face in this picture? She's broken, exhausted, and little stupid; this is what watching Batman and Robin does to people. I reviewed the funniest Batman movie every made; it stars Adam West. This film wants to be that film so badly that it hurts, but like any pathetic wannabe, it just tries and fails like a baby bird with one wing. It isn't funny; it's just sad. The near fatal shift in tone for the Batman franchise reaches its nauseating climax here. Batman Forever taught the studio that a cheesy, hideous looking Batman film could make more money and get better reviewed than a dark one. Here is the attempt to take that formula and push it as far as possible.

Nothing mature happens in this film; it's all product placement for happy meal toys, action figures, and credit card companies. Don't forget Batman pulls out a credit card that says fucking, "Batman," on it. I have nothing against a funny Batman story. I love Adam West's take on the character and all that entails, Joker's Millions is a great Batman story from comic books published fifty years ago that's fucking hilarious (yes, Batman is in other things besides movies). The real problem with this film is that it isn't funny; it tries and fails at humor repeatedly with awful puns and contrived visual gags that never deliver a real laugh from the audience.

Then there are the attempts to create drama in the film. Batman and Robin's family dynamic, Alfred's sickness, and Mr. Freezes attempts to save his wife might have worked in a movie that didn't have dancing gorillas, wacky sound effects, horrible puns, Alicia Sylverstone street racing, Batman's credit card, and that dog that gets frozen just before it mictorates on a hydrant. It's insande to think that anyone intended any portion of this film at actually come close to pathos.

Direction: Joel tries and fails to incorporate some heavy CGI into this movie. It might not have aged well, but I doubt the opening sky diving sequence with butterfly Mr. Freeze every looked good. The film really emphasized Shumacher's limitations; he's so bad at creating mood in scenes that he can't even do broad superhero slapstick. I also could have lived without the closeups of Batman and Robin's tight rubber clad crotches and butts. I hear this is a kid's movie Joel or at least a kid's toy commercial.

Most of his attempts at atmosphere are just huge uninteresting wastes of money. He actually cost the production millions of dollars by getting refrigerated sets so you could see the actors breath in Mr. Freeze scenes. Sadly, the lighting was done wrong, and it wasn't visible. He could have just saved everyone the trouble and just burned a pile of millions of dollars and filmed that. I swear that might look cool in a Batman movie.

Writing: Akiva Goldsman might be the anti-christ. The dialog alone in this script is enough to turn the moon to blood and summon the four horsemen. His attempts at comedy consist of puns so bad that Mr. Peabody would slap you in the face for uttering them. (If you don't know who Mr. Peabody is, that's minus 25 Canary points.) The sheer number of puns involving ice, winter, chilling out, staying cool, kicking ice, etc. that come out of Arnold's mouth make me wonder if he was even trying. What do I know? He has an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, but he also did Lost in Space. I don't like any of the scripts for these movies, but somebody sure does. I think that somebody needs a tire iron to the face.

Acting: Clooney is alright, but he could be a million times funnier with something better to work with. Arnold has the worst lines of his career and a costume that even he complained about limiting his acting ability; I can't be too mad at him. He admits he wasn't at the top of his game. Uma plays her role like a drag queen which comes very close to ruing the entire film by her self; it's astonishing how repulsive she as the film's tongue-in-cheek sex pot. Chris and Alicia give performances that killed their respective careers; they should have run for the hills after reading the damn script. The writing and the acting have the same problem, for the most part, none of these people are right for a comedy like this. They can't carry it to the fucking curb, let alone for two hours.

Editing: The editor made the mistake of letting any of this footage survive.

Sound: Lots of stupid cartoon sound effects.

Soundtrack/Score: They milk Danny Elfman's score and upgrade to be even gaudier than before, and the Smashing Pumpkins song is cool.

Self-Awareness: Everybody knows they are making a joking Batman film, but they have no idea that it isn't funny at all.

Overall rating: Fuck this goddamn turd and the hell spawn that birthed it.
-Pete

Lost Boys: The Tribe

Starring: Tad Hilgenbrink, Angus Sutherland, Autumn Reeser, Corey Fucking Feldman
Directed by: PJ Pesce
Written by: Hans Rodionoff
Studio: Hollywood Media Bridge, LB2 Films, blah blah

There's no shortage of painful vampire movies, Pete and I can attest to that much (Lust for Dracula, Ankle Bitters, etc. etc.). The original Lost Boys (1987), despite being a Joel Schumacher production, fairs pretty well given all the detris out there. You got Kiefer Sutherland breaking bitches' necks and puncturing jugulars, Corey Feldman at his finest, boobs, and a catchy theme song. A bunch of people since its successful theater run have realized how this movie's sort of a shiny pebble amid heaps of cat shit and so it is still popular years later. Which, hey, it deserves.

But what it doesn't deserve is the attentions of hack producers and writers, who inevitably see the potential in "re-invigorating" the material for a "new generation to enjoy". I don't think I need to spell-out what all that translates to in the vernacular (hint: it rules everything around me). What we get, then, is a direct-to-video compost pile of cliches and misconstrued cues from the original twenty-plus years later. Lost Boys: The Tribe inherits one of the positive traits from its parent product (i.e. boobs, specifically the luscious Moneca Delain's) but gets recessive, autistic DNA in all other regards.

For instance, replacing Kiefer Sutherland as the badass vampire this time around is Jack Bauer's younger, half-witted half-brother Angus who silted performance and dronish voice approximates a range of roles comprised of complete LSD burnouts. Corey Feldman, who reprises his "iconic" role as Edgar Frog, doesn't look a day older than he did back in the day but somehow over the years lost that quirky-yet-enduring quality he had in the late eighties - he's now kind of a bore. He did, though, manage to train his voice to sound as gravelly as the driveway for a dirt farm. Even the kinda-cool song from the original undergoes an abortion when some d-bags try to give it the POWER FUCK YEAGHHH ROCK makeover.

Another gripe I have with this movie is how the vampires, rather than the (un)living embodiments of youthful excess and rebellion they were in the previous incarnation, now act like frat boy cockheads more than anything else. While David (Kiefer)'s crew lived in a cave near the ocean filled with rust-encrusted emblems of consumerism, Shane (Angus)'s chill out in a multi-level underground complex fitted with HD TVs, an X-Box 360 and IKEA furniture. And while the undead from the first one are truly excited by their immortality (e.g. they hang from elevated railroad and then intentionally fall into a foggy abyss), the delta-delta-fi assholes from this one are content with just fucking around with the local police and stabbing each other in the gut while giggling like fools.

Schumacher et al are the only ones to gain from this shitpan of film, since it will most likely drive people (such as myself) to go and rent the original.

Writing: The story is a dumbed-down, ugly version of the first one with more WHACKY HIJINKS and less cooky 80s fun. The dialog is groan worthy.

Direction: Pesce really conveys the experience of turning into a vampire with slo-mo and simple lense distortions. Wowee.

Acting: Everybody was lame - Autumn Reeser was cute (as she always is) but that wasn't enough. But I'd rather blame the writing since she so purdy. :-3

Editing: There's a whole subplot with Autumn and Tad's aunt that there to set up a single, stupid fucking joke at the end of the movie. yeah, editing.

Sound: The usual CHEST STAB and POLICE BOLTER sounds galore.

Soundtrack/Score: CRYYYYYYYYYY LITTA SISTAAAAAHHH

Self-Awareness: "Hey guys, this is the sequel, let's just make a bunch of references to the first one yay."

Overall rating: **

~Ian

John Carpenter's Vampires

Starring: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, other people.

Director: John Carpentar

Writer: Dan Jakoby

Studio: Columbia/Tristar

Vampire hunting seems too easy sometimes. Even wafer thin little numbers like Sarah Michelle Gellar can do it. But John Carpentar reminds us that's all glitz and glamor made for the Hollywood crowd. He takes us back to the hard working, blue collar, whore hopping, truck driving vampire hunters that helped build this country. God bless them all and their pointy sticks.

Ian reminded me why I hate vampire movies repeatedly throughout our cinematic sojourns together. It's one of those genres that irritates the hell out of me when it's just lazily retread over and over again, and sometimes nudity is used to distract the viewer from the lazy suck being hurled at your eyes. This movie actually tries to do something a little different. Vampire hunting is treated like an all day job here; it's like being an exterminator with very high mortality rate. There's some other stuff about Vatican vampire conspiracies, but the actual hunting is the highlight for me.

Writing: It's a serviceable script, but Carpentar's had better to work with. It's quirky in an off beat macho way which balances out the fairly obvious plot.

Direction: John Carpentar delivers the goods. The action pops, rocks, and rolls, and the effects look great.

Acting: This movie is 95% James Woods. His portrayal of vampire hunter Jack Crow makes the film. He manages to take this gruff caricature and turn into a bizarre action protagonist that asks the supporting cast about their erections. He's the kind of bad ass that wears black leather in the desert heat because that's his look. He's tough, weird, and pretty damn awesome. There are other actors in this film, but it's all James Woods.

Editing: Clean cuts; the master at work. (Yes, I really like John Carpentar.)

Soundtrack/Score: Another Carpentar classic; he turns about a minute of country music into a full film score. God bless him.

Self-Awareness: James Woods and John Carpentar are pretty self-aware. I don't think Daniel Baldwin is.

Overall Rating: This one's just fine, but it's definitely the kind of flick you enjoy with a few drinks and few friends.
-Pete

The Incredible Hulk

Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Eli Roth, William Hurt
Directed by: Louis Leterrier
Written by: Zak Penn, Edward Norton
Studio: Marvel Studios

I love Eddie Norton. Always have, always will. The stuff he brings to the table, both as an actor and as a creative contributor, never diminishes a film's quality and often elevates it to the level of thoroughly thoughtful cinema.

Often. But not always. The Incredible Hulk being a prime example.

I firmly believe that Batman Begins (although not my favorite superhero flick) and Iron Man have spoiled us now, we can't ever appreciate a generic superhero film again like the ones sprinkled throughout the nineties and early 2000's. The Incredible Hulk treads on familiar ground, features eh-caliber performances and relies on mediocre CGI to get the job (mostly) done. Which is all a goddamn shame given the level of talent involved.

To be fair, I can't comment on the amount of Edward's input made it into the theatrical cut - I know made heavy rewrites early in the game and had "issues" with the final cut that appeared in theaters. But I can knock on his performance, a tad c(l)ueless and stilted. I know Bruce Banner's a scientist and all, but shit, I didn't know he was also so terribly awkward.

The endothermic chemistry between Norton and Liv Tyler especially irritated me - all the possible heat of a scene between lovers separated by five years and a huge green mafucker was somehow zapped into outer space. I guess Norton is gay - j/k, Liv Tyler's nothing to write home about these days.

Even Eli Roth's performance evoked some disappoint: for once we actually get a comic villain with palatable character arc (from over-the-hill soldier still looking for action, to a juiced up guinea pig with a score to settle, to a power-crazed stalker, and finally to A HUGE BONEY UGLY FUCK) and yet we as the audience lose out despite the use of high caliber actor. Resounding blah.

But it was still ten-times better than Ang Lee's horseshit.

Writing: The plot definitely leaves something to be desired. Half the time the story's moved along by instant message conversations between Banner and the MYSTERIOUS Mr. Blue. The dialog is straight-up cheesy at points, e.g. something like, "it will produce...AN ABOMINATION!". The ending (proper) is kind of puzzling and the last scene really doesn't serve any purpose but to pimp out the inevitable Avengers movie. Which, granted, I'm excited about.

Direction: Eh. Action generic. The one brawl between Blonsky and the Hulk on the campus lawn was pretty well sculpted though.

Acting: Norton never gave the role enough life, Liv Tyler was just plain bad. William Hurt was the only one who balled as General Ross.

Editing: The scenes in Brazil were nice and crisp, but once Banner goes to America and starts hanging with his ex, we get a lot of fluffy bad romance. Also, why did the final battle clock under 10 minutes?

Sound: Unremarkable.

Soundtrack/Score: Sounded just like Iron Man's frankly.

Self-Awareness: There are quite a few nods to the TV show from the 70's and to some of the lesser known elements of the comic which are admittedly amusing if not fleeting.

Overall rating: ** 1/2

~Ian

Batman: The Movie

Starring: Adam West, Burt Ward, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and Lee Meriwether
Director: Leslie H. Martinson
Writer: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

I take comedy very seriously; it takes real skill to be funny on a regular basis. In this manufactured camp classic, every line of dialog, set, gesture, and costume choice are deliberate attempts to celebrate and ridicule the bizarre superhero comics of the fifties and sixties.

Every set is full of bizarre details in the background that require a pause button to take in; it's a staggering commitment to an aesthetic for a film created before vcr and dvd. The baroque nature of the humor yields new treasures with every viewing. Your second viewing points out the ridiculous pattern in the lining of the Riddler's jacket. Your third shows you that Catwoman's room is marked by a pretty pink ribbon and not a cat. It goes on and on.

Writing: The writing is tight. The plot is supposed to be ridiculous, the characters eccentric caricatures, and the dialog mannered and absurd. It's supposed to be exactly the opposite of hip, and it's as ironic as Stephen Colbert waving an American flag while the nation sinks into the sea.

Direction: Strong direction that works well around the budget constraints. It also helps that the film's aesthetic is supposed to look cheap so the director can dwell on the rubber sharks and cheap camera tricks that create the film's special effects.

Acting: Growing up watching with reruns of Adam West as Batman on basic cable has spoiled me. I grew up eating dinner in the living room with my little brother watching him and Burt Ward trying to foil Egg Head, False Face, King Tut, or some equally bizarre celebrity guest villain. It also makes me pissy when people my age only know him from Family Guy. The man has been doing brilliant comedy since my father was 5 years old. He can bring a mock seriousness to dialog that just floors me every time. Few things sound as equally serious and ridiculous as when Adam West says them, and Burt Ward provided the perfect foil for West. His voice is a comfortable old couch that my ears love to lay upon; it sturdily anchors the film as it bounces along waves of excess.

The excess comes in the form of the guest villains; we get some great lunacy coming from Romero, Meriwether, Meredith, and Gorshin. It's like watching the Harlem Globetrotters play; the ball goes from player to player so each can showboat rather than win the game. It's all about who can throw the most flair in front of the camera while looking a like a damn fool. Burgess Meredith is wearing furry gloves; he has muppet fingers, a monocle, and a cigarette holder. Gorshin is wearing a purple girdle, and Romero didn't shave his mustache. It lurks beneath his makeup crushing the suspension of disbelief with every closeup and well lit scene. It appears like they had a lot of fun filming this; I would like to think so at least. It just seems like a perfectly good waste of a rocket umbrella if you aren't enjoying the ride.

Editing: Nice abrupt cuts between wacky set pieces, and who could forget that gorgeous spinning logo. It's a tight film, and like the best comedies, it remembers that a good joke never overstays its welcome.

Soundtrack/Score:Crazy big band with blaring horns and wacky little musical ticks. A fun cartoony score that keeps things bouncy.

Self-Awareness: It plays it completely straight, but don't let that fool you. This film is self aware of every second of every frame.

Overall Rating: 5 stars because it's a perfectly executed comedy.
-Pete

Judge Dredd

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, Rob Schneider, and Diane Lane
Director: Danny Cannon
Writer: William Wisher and Steven E. De Souza
Studio: Hollywood Pictures

Judge Dredd is a British comic that I have enjoyed quite a bit, but it's sad to see such a middling movie produced from what I consider strong source material. I don't want to turn this into a comic book blog (I swear I will review a non-comic movie one day), but I do feel that one thing about this film as a comic adaptation needs to be addressed. The plot of the film is pretty much cherry picked from some of Judge Dredd's best comics, and these different characters, plots, and tones are all held together by the mold of a generic action film. Once Judge Dredd takes off his costume, he's indistinguishable from any number of characters Stallone plays in a shoot em up. It's all so by the numbers that it gets a little boring.

The film also thinks that one opening wall of text is enough to explain everything to the viewer. Ideas like a, "Block War", how this crazy future government works, why the hell they retire via, "Long Walk," or why they let the evil German into their American dystopia are only half explained, and on the flip side of the coin, how Judge Dredd's gun works is hammered at the viewer repeatedly. They demonstrate it in the opening of the film with an action scene, then Dredd explains it in a school setting to some rookies, and finally it's detailed further in a painfully slow, expository dialog ridden trial scene with a 3 D model. It's essential to the film's final battle to understand how it works, but it's sad to see so much screen time lost to a fucking prop.The gun is more important than most of the film's supporting cast, but I still wish it had more screen time than Rob Schneider.

Speaking of Mr. Schneider, he has too much screen time; he is the funny sidekick that is just fucking annoying. I am sure somebody thought the two of them could recapture their chemistry from Demolition Man, but they must have forgotten that Schneider only had about six lines in that movie. If only he had as little to say in Judge Dredd, we could be spared the scene where he humorously asks Dredd to not rape an unconscious male guard (rape double standard = comedy gold).

Direction: Despite the cookie cutter storyline, I love the look of the film. The outfits for the Judges are actually designed by Versace which gives them this great runway fascism look, and they create interesting new outfits as you strip away the body armor. Mega City One is very much crafted in the image of a less Japan-centric version of Bladerunner's LA; it's crowded, dirty, full of garish ads, butler robots, and flying cars. The other excellent work is to make the Judge's headquarters as clean and polished as possible which gives them the overtones of being a ruling class looking down on an impoverished citizenship. Also, the cyborg Mean Machine and ABC warrior robot look really fucking cool.

There are some scenes that really work. The flying bike chase looks good, and the effects hold up after all this time. There is also a great scene transition from the villain killing a guard to Dredd shooting a training target. Otherwise, there's what I would call "attempted directing" such as the lighting and music used as Dredd gazes at a statue of Lady Justice and recommits himself to the law. It almost works, unlike the writing.

Writing: This is the tragedy of the film; it's a series of great special effects and design work ruined by weak dialog connected by cliche after cliche after cliche. I'll just do a quick cliche rundown: wall of text to explain scifi premise; bible thumping hillbillies; comedy sidekick; emotionless loner cop; council of elders fighting over how to lead; snotty yuppie with a sports car; and the wrongfully accused officer of the law.

On top of that, the film tries way to hard to spoon feed the audience catchphrases and puns. Dredd's catchphrase of, "I knew you'd say that," is uttered six times in 96 minutes, and it's said 3 times in the first 15. I was sick of it before the first act finished. The comedy also hurts; with lines like "court's adjourned," burning their way into my ears.
The best line belongs to the villain, and it goes like this, "Guilt and innocence is a matter of timing." I will give them credit for that little bit.

Acting: Stallone tries here, but he's never that good. He also has a good couple scenes where he has to act through a helmet, and this involves him putting all of his emotions into the only visible part of his face, his chin. When he is accused of murder, he literally chins the hell out of that scene with all the protruding, clenched glory that entails.

Armand Assanted does the best acting in the film by playing Dredd's evil twin as a twisted impersonation of Stallone. It's pretty funny here and there, and it's clear that he's enjoying himself.

Everybody else is forgettable (I am not thinking about Schneider more than I have to), but Jürgen Prochnow is hilariously awful as the traitorous Judge Griffen. I could barely contain my laughter at how hammy he was; he just shouts the hell out of his evil little German plans when he explains them. It's funny, but I don't think that he intended that.

Editing: Effects are integrated well, and the scenes transition very well. I just wish the cut Rob out completetly.

Soundtrack/Score: Generic

Self-Awareness: It's about as aware as most one-liner action movies, but not up to the lofty heights of it's spiritual predecessor Demolition Man.

Overall Rating: 2 stars, and I would call that charitable. Unless you are a huge Dredd fan, I would just rent the above mentioned Demolition Man. Seriously, rent it now; if you don't see it before we review it, that's minus 15 canary points.

-Pete

You, too, can be the Law BUY NOW BEFORE THE THIRD WORLD WAR

One Missed Call (Blu ray edition)

Starring: Shannyn Sossamon, Edward Burns, Azura Skye, Ray Wise
Directed by: Eric Valette
Written by: Andrew Klavan (Novel by Yasushi Akimoto)
Studio: Alcon Entertainment

The Japanese have been known to scare a mafucker or two with their movies. As embarrassing as it is, I admit to almost wet myself once during Ringu. Yep, for whatever reason (it's post-WWII fixation with THE BOMB has something to do with it), Japan is full of people that know how to make us flip-a-shit.

It didn't take long for Hollywood to recognize the potential for introducing J-Horror (as the subgenre is known as now) to Western market. Of course, something needed to be done about the "packaging" of the product. For, you see, we Towering Americans cannot stand to deal with subtitles and completely Asian casts, so the studios just had to remake these movies in our own image. And of course, something is !LoSt iN tRaNsLaTiOn! - something big. But while the American version of the Ring was so-so, the bastardization of an already shitty film called One Missed Call - like the American counterpart, the Japanese film industry isn't afraid to clone successes - just makes me wonder if Westernization is all it's cut out to be.

Shannyn Sossamon (she so purdy) plays a college student whose friends keep dying and then booty calling random friends from the grave and letting them know when they too will meet their demise. It's like the game Telephone mixed with a Ouija board, but even more retarded somehow. With the help of a bulky, blockheaded detective whose sister he believes was killed by the same force going around fucking up (mostly) co-eds, the two play detective for a while and then I got bored and hit the Bacardi.

There really is no substance to this film, that is to say there's no message, theme or intense character study - fuck, even Pulse had some social commentary. Here, unfortunately, we're subjected to protagonists we couldn't care less about, an antagonist (who wasn't the person you expected it to be! oh wait, I never felt the need to form an expectation in the first place) that perpetrates because she's just evil, and victims we hardly get enough time to learn about before they're dispatched.

Which leads me to my next complaint: One Missed Call wasn't scary in the slightest. The ways people were offed by the demon child, rather than gruesome or chilling, were downright boring and contrived. Hit by a train, dragged into the water, impaled by pipe - all done a dozen times before. I suspect developing this film with a PG-13 rating in mind was the primary culprit for the snoozer gore, but even then, I Know What You Did Last Summer pulled off some brutal hookings without entering R-land. In addition, the demon child's minions (I guess that's what they were), based off ugly dolls the demon child had when she was alive, kind of hang around the entire time and try to look menacing. Instead, they look like puffy-faced Cabbage Patch dolls.

As a side note, I can't imagine why Boost mobile decided to have their product integrated into almost every scene of One Missed Call. First of all, I guess no one at HQ bothered to read the fucking thing when it slid across their desks like a turd on bowl water - where your brains at? Second of all, even if you didn't read the script, you know it's about some demon or whatever kiling bitches while using a cell phone the entire time. "Oh man, it's the phone from that movie with the crazy 6 yeard old bitch murdering college students from someone's stored contact list!" - is that the kind of recognition you're looking for? And finally, there is a short scene where the lead consults a Boost Mobile representative about how to cancel a plan and rep informs them, smugly of course, that they can't and instead have to use up the phone's minutes to get it to suspend the account. Good to know that BM's all about customer service.

The fact that I just wrote a paragraph about Boost Mobile's poor marketing decision behind this flick that is longer than any of the other paragraphs in this review is a testament to the shittiness that is One Missed Called.

Boo! Rundown:

Writing: The dialog captures what I imagine the conversations of lobotomy patients sound like. No rhyme or reason is given as to why the antagonist randomly kills people from stored contact lists on cell phones beyond she was a SADISTIC CHILD (boy oh boy screenwriters don't seem to mind milking that trope till its tits fall off). Characters pop up and talk as if we should know who they are in terms of the muddled and circuitous story but frankly I couldn't give less of a fuck to know.

Direction: Surprisingly, Valette treats us to some decent shots that show a modicum of creativity - for example, there's a scene of a heated argument between the female lead and the head of the Psychology department that is shown from outside of office and thus has no (heard) dialog. That being said, Valette couldn't cook up a scare that my mother would jump over - and she gets scared by abrupt changes in conversation topics.

Acting: Mz. Sossaman can act, this I know for a fact - just check out the movie Wristcutters. But here she managed to show us just how well she can sleepwalk through a scene despite being, you know, the lead. Also, Ray Wise's talent was horribly misused for the few scenes that features him. SHAME. But all was not lost - we did get to see an aging Margaret Cho ham it up, which is always amusing.

Editing: I cannot fathom why so much of the second act is left to the lead playing Nancy Drew with Officer Witless despite the scenes' collective level of tension hovering around Absolute Zero; why not just show us more gruesome deaths and scary doll people with mouths for eyes? No one watching this was looking for a gumshoe story, guys; the market is clearly thirteen year olds looking to get into their first SCAAAAAAARY movie, not Veronica Mars fans.

Sound: If one more horror film takes an nursery rhyme or a sweet chord or a song from the Thirties and tries to turn it into the next Jason Voorhee's murder theme, I'm going to cry razors and use them to murder the innocent.

Soundtrack/Score: Generic.

Self-Awareness: Everyone behind this must have known the movie was intended as nothing other than another shitty knock-off - but I guess it didn't bother any of them enough to do something, at the very least, fun or self-reflexive.

Overall rating: 1/2

~Ian

So what if Ian hated it? YOU MIGHT LOVE IT, YOU DOLT. BUY IT.

Mysterious Skin

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Michelle Trachtenberg, Elisabeth Shue
Directed by: Gregg Araki
Written by: Gregg Araki (Novel by Scott Heim)
Studio: Desperate Pictures

Perhaps Gregg Araki's most coherent and traditional story (in a narrative sense), Mysterious Skin is a story about paedophilia and how it scars its victims. This isn't a feel-gooder, folks. But it is fantastic and engaging and you should see it.


The principal characters are Brian and Neil - both were on the same little league baseball team in the very early 1980's and both were taken advantage of (sexually) by their coach. Before the abuse, both children couldn't have been more dissimilar.
Neil realized and embraced his homosexuality at a surprisingly young age, while Brian could barely talk to his baseball peers let alone a girl; Neil, ever the extrovert, never thought to conceal his emotions, while Brian knew of no other approach to those strange feelings percolating inside him. Both, though, did have neglectful fathers.

And it is this shared vulnerability that Coach undoubtedly preyed on. As a result of his lustful actions, these two children’s life trajectory was forever skewed. Rather than (and this is really just conjecture about a possible future for a fictional life, so take it with a pound of salt) Neil learning that he needs to contain some of his eruptions and let others emote and Brian to open up a little, the two instead take their tendencies to extremes. Neil becomes a gay gigolo, Brian totally cut off from the world outside his mother’s house and asexual.

Much of the film is just exploring how miserable they are, as well as the odd people they come across. For instance, Brian in trying to understand his strange recurring dreams (of being abducted by aliens, ultimately revealed as a cognitive allegory for the abuse episode), comes across a girl suffering from MS (I think, don’t quote me here). She, yearning for companionship and love, initiates sex with Brian, who of course stops the attempt and demands that she leave his room. And Neil, poor Neil, just catches everyone’s eye (boys and girls) but only concerns himself with satisfying those wounded older men deprived of a sexual revolution that want to use him in such a way that he (falsely) feels empowered.

One can look at the film and want, given the depressing subject matter of the film, to see it as a remediative arch – that is, the inciting incident is the (psychological) injury and the restorative event comprises the ending. It’s true, the audience is left seeing Brian crying, shaking, and bleeding from the nose in Neil’s arms - and Neil showing some empathy for once, all in the Coach’s old living room where the rapes occurred. But, in true Araki fashion, we’re not left with just visuals: a group of invasive Christmas Eve carolers sing Silent Night at the doorstep of the Coach’s old home and Neil leaves us with a somber and sobering monologue:

“And as we sat there listening to the carolers, I wanted to tell Brian it was over now and everything would be okay. But that was a lie. Plus, I couldn't speak anyway. I wish there was some way for us to go back and undo the past. But there wasn't. There was nothing we could do. So I just stayed silent and trying to, telepathically communicate how sorry I was about what had happened. And I thought of all the grief and sadness...and fucked up suffering in the world...and it made me want to escape. I wished with all my heart that we could just, leave this world behind. Rise like two angels in the night and magically...disappear.”

They’re fucked, like everyone else they’ve known, and coming to terms won’t change anything. Sure, they have each other now, but when there’s so much suffering and viciousness (often directed at the Self) all around, even with professional help, both these bastards will have to contend with ordinary, everyday mementos of their corruption indefinitely.


Writing: Writing has never been Araki's strongest point (not that he's a hack or anything), but here his penmanship really shines. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this is an adaptation, but nevertheless Araki makes the dialog his own (i.e. full of strange, colorful expressions) and paints a picture showing just how sexual abuse has come to affect every aspect of these two lives.

Direction: In his tried-and-true style, Araki gets so much information across (especially during the paedophilia scenes) without having to show the nitty-gritty. Araki is not concerned with displaying abjection, but making damn sure we just feel it. It's also those little touches, like having Neil's eyes pure blue as a youngster but slightly corrupted by specks of hazel in his young adult years, that remind us that directorial vision (born and guided by the script of course) and execution are indispensable in good filmmaking.

Acting: Despite not sharing a scene together until the very end, JGL and Brady Corbett fit their performances with such disparate nuance that we just know shits going to go down hard when they meet again. We get how Neil's self-medication/destruction encompasses every aspect of his existence and how Brian's total reclusiveness has deprived him of life.

Michelle Trachtenberg can't act for a gram though.


Editing: Interestingly enough, it's the scenes with MZ T that feel a little too long. hmmmmm.....

Sound: Araki is always very minimalistic and tight with sounds - no Schumacher-esque inserts anywhere. Very organic.

Soundtrack/Score: What can I say, Araki's movies (even the shittier ones at the beginning of his career) have excellent soundtracks. This one is no different.

Self-Awareness: I was half-expecting Araki to throw in something that references his other, more chaotic movies - but he decided not to. Which is apropos, given the gravid nature of the film's content.

Overall rating: **** 1/2

~Ian

Buy Mysterious Skin Here, Who Wouldn't Want to After Such a Glowing Review?!!?!?!

Batman Forever

Starring: Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Val Kilmer, Chris O'Donnell, Nicole Kidman
Director: Joel Schumacher
Writers: Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, Akiva Goldsman
Studio: Time Warner

This film supposedly saved the franchise after Batman Returns didn't sell enough Happy Meals to kiddies developing childhood diabetes due to Big Mac sauce and diet coke. Thank god this movie showed up to make the Batman franchise family friendly again because nothing says family fun like Jim Carrey's honking crotch, close ups of rubber clad man ass, and Nicole Kidman's desperate attempts to get Batman into her panties.
The franchise enters a pupa stage with this film. The Burton films are the caterpillar, and this movie is the between point between them and the magnificent shit moth that is Batman and Robin. Their are elements of the Burton films that remain. The original costume, big old time radio microphones, the flashback to the Wayne double murder, and even some of the architecture of Gotham are little details that linger like vestigial organs. The film changes as we watch it, and these elements are lost in favor of brighter colors, Vegas-like sets, and outlandish kid's movie hijinks. There is also a street gang covered in glow in the dark body paint. I have seen them in my nightmares since I was a lad.

There is one moment that sums up the film for me. Batman bursts through a skylight to stop Two-Face from robbing a gala. As he descends through broken glass, the film cuts to a man in glasses that Batman saved earlier in the film. He points at Batman and shouts in the voice of a man suffering from brain damage, "It's Batman! EEEHHH!" This film is that man, using what limited brain power it has to point us to the caped crusader.

Writing: The visual transformation is a accompanied by a script that rarely succeeds. It's never as funny as it thinks it is, and it jumps wildly in quality from scene to scene. The last scene with the Riddler in Arkham is actually quite good; it's got tension, tight dialog, and it builds well on expectations. The opening is painful; I had to take a break after the first three minutes. The first lines of the film are Alfred saying, "Can I persuade you to take a sandwich with you, sir? " It's accompanied with Kilmer's zombie like reply of, "I'll get drive-thru." The depths of unfunny are mined quite thoroughly almost immediately, and much of the dialog is just as bad. This opening is followed by Tommy Lee Jones yammering about," Blind, stupid, simple, doo-dah, clueless luck!" I am no fan of that doo-dah, but it's just one of many verbal fumbles we get berated with.

Directing: I am not a fan of Mr. Schumacher's style. Joel (I use his first name out of a lack of respect, not familiarity) does some of the most amateurish lighting in film. If he wants a mood, he just drowns the scene in one color from a spot light. He's been doing it that way since The Lost Boys, and it always kills a scene for me. It pulls me right out of the film, and I just see Joel holding a big red (sometimes he switches it up with blue) spotlight in his hands with an idiot grin on his face. Adding to the rookie feel are incredibly unconvincing matte paintings used to create establishing shots of the city.

The action scenes also suffer under Schumacher's direction (I almost put that in quotes, but I remembered that I'm not a complete asshole). The film uses close ups during the fight scenes that break up the visual flow of the battle and disorient the viewer. It makes them feel choppy and awkward which is par for the course for most of the film.
Also, some of the visual effects work looks terrible. Any time Batman leaps from one of these mattes to the foreground, it looks painfully phony. It might just be age showing, but the effects for Batman Returns hold up much better.

Acting: Val Kilmer decided that he needed to out-wooden Michael Keaton's Batman, so he plays Batman and Bruce Wayne as a robot that wears the flesh of a man. He doesn't have much to work with, and I guess that probably inspired the sleep walk performance.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Two-Face way over the top, and it doesn't work. It feels like a bad imitation of Nicholson's Joker; he's impulsive, vulgar, but awkward. It's like Jones can't quite grasp how to do the character, so he just throws more volume and over acting to get it right. I was discussing this with a friend, and we both agreed that he should have done it like the best Batman actors and played the character as an exaggeration of himself. I might have enjoyed an authoritative southern Two-Face more.

Nicole Kidman vamps it up pretty hard here in a role created solely for sexual innuendo and some fairly bullshit romance. I honestly miss Vicki Vale compared to Dr. Meridian Chase; at least Vicki felt like a significant part of the story. It also doesn't help that Ms. Kidman overplays the sexual tension between her and Batman to the point that I half expected her to just jump him and start humping furiously like a cat in heat. The uber-vamp and the robot in the latex gimp suit are a fun mismatch, but it's more like an SNL bit than material strong to enough last for a good portion of the film.

Chris O'Donnell plays the angry young man well enough, but he's forgettable.

Jim Carrey on the other hand is guilty of grand theft movie. The Riddler is definitely an exaggeration of himself, and it's just the right amount of excess in an already excessive movie. He would have a ruined a Burton Batman movie, but he's a perfect fit for the insane glow in the dark romp that is Batman Forever. His Riddler starts as a sympathetic cartoon looser and then builds into a full blown Saturday morning villain. It's like watching Droopy Dog turn into Cobra Commander with the aid of mad science. He's bounding around the sets with a mad energy that overcomes some questionable costuming and terrible dialog. He actually has to shout, "Joygasm!" and sticking his spandex clad crouch out after blowing something up; he's working his ass off to make this shit watchable. He brings enough quality that he bumps this film up from disappointing to uneven; good for him.

Editing: There a two scenes worth of fat that desperately needed trimming. The first is a rather unremarkable car chase between Two-Face and Batman that lasts about three minutes and barely stands out amidst all the huge set pieces and Jim Carrey. It's pointless action excess that provides no plot advancement or strong images. The second necessary cut is when Dick Grayson dries his clothes using kung fu; it's like stomp except with wet rags and a butler. It feels so forced and out of place, and it fails completely to make Robin cool and competent. It's also completely unnecessary since the circus fight actually introduces Robin in a way that makes him heroic. He saves lives and beats up bad guys with little regard for his own safety; I want to meet the person who thinks that is of equal intrigue to doing laundry.

Sound: When Jim does his victory hump, there is a honking noise. This is not what God intended sound in movies for. Other ridiculous noises also abound whether they kill the mood or not.

Soundtrack/score: The Danny Elfman music from the previous two films is combined with elements from the 60s Batman music. Big horn blasts pepper the score along with cartoony sound effects and other such noise. It's an interesting evolution for the film's music that signals the franchises oncoming dive into total self-indulgent rehashed camp.

Self-awareness: The film knows that it's ridiculous, but it's never aware when it's being ridiculously awful.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5. One for Carrey, and one for the Arkham scene.

-Pete

Own your piece of Val FOREVER

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Starring: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Davivd Koepp
Studio: Lucas Films

Lucas and co have done it again - that is, manage to tarnish their past ultra-successes with an CGI-filled wankfest that is supposedly an "upgrade" for a new generation to enjoy. Unlike before, Indiana Jones is now old and wrinkly - an all around geezer. And his sidekick this time, rather than John Rhys-Davies, is a fucking one-dimensional punk/greaser that only crap talent like Shia LaBeouf can manage to ham up even more.

Don't even get me started about the plot. A unit of Cold-war Russians (who, by the way, have nothing on fucking ruthless Nazis), lead by a scientist that happens to be a lieutenant AND a psychic (a catchall character that I would only expect from the likes of Battlestar Galactica), is after the skulls of a long forgotten race of aliens that ruled over some Peruvian natives back in the day. And only the arthritis-stricken adventure can stop them from achieving total power or total knowledge or whatever the fuck the script calls for at a particular moment.

What really killed me about this film was how it sucked up so much time with self-referential bits (that is, throwbacks to original series). Just for a sense of how bad it was, I would say the masturbatory exercise was on par with that of a recent Family Guy episode. Yeah, that bad. For instance, two of the five major settings for the film were places we got glimpses of in Indy 1 and 3: Cambridge and the mysterious government warehouse full of artifacts. The school scenes weren't that fun or interesting in the first trilogy, why return then? And as for the mysterious hanger (which we learn in film is Hangar 51 hurrr), going inside, without exploring any of it besides an LOL moment, subsequently dissolved the allure it once had.

As for the later in the Peruvian jungle, when Indy and co are looking for some hidden temple so as to return an alien skull (made of quartz mind you, because that's a material really conducive to skeletal development in evolutionary terms), I couldn't help but think I was watching the Mummy movies (newer ones mind you) what with the rooms filled with gold and priceless artifacts (that Indiana pretty much ignores), the greedy sidekick, and elaborate safes filled with moving parts.

It's worth talking about what problems plagued the design of the film's main antagonist (i.e. Dr. Spalko and the Soviets) because, fuck, you can't have a DECENT movie without a gripping force of antagonism, let alone a great one. Indy 1 and 3 were great films in part due to the Nazis and their antithetical approach to the Christian artifacts. They were cruel, sinister and conveyed the sense of invulnerability; the Russians in Indy 4 come across as a rag-tag team with limited resources and with only the vaguest notion of a goal. True, Spalko at first comes off as domineering and force to be reckoned with; this mostly because of Blanchett's cold appearance and militant posture. Also, her weapon of choice, the rapier, added some dimension to the character, albeit in a strange and almost sexist way; through Spielberg's direction, the sword almost masculinizes her, e.g. a shot where the sword is held a few inches from her face but between her nose and mouth (like a mustache), and a shot where the sword pops up from her hip like, well, a cock. But this aside, once Spalko speaks, we lose our respect for her since her ultimate goal (which, of course in true laughable villain style, she just has to disclose to the protagonist) changes from one minute to the next.

I guess I don't belong to Lucasfilm's target demographic - where's my cane?

Direction: Spielberg did some intriguing shots when Cate Blanchett was on screen (e.g. her "use" of the rapier), but otherwise the action felt generic. Hell, he rips off of Tarzan at one point for Christ's sake. And the CGI, oh lord was none of that necessary. No need to see the end (and I don't count the wedding scene as the ending of the fill because as of now, I'm happy to think it never existed) if you saw the one at the end of the first X-Files movie.

Acting: Allow me to convey my evaluations as newspaper headlines: Harrison Phones Home. Nothing to Work With For Karen. Shia Go Back to Wher'st You Came.

Editing: The movie didn't not lag, despite its many flaws - 30 points for the editors. That being said, why was the atom bomb testing scene allowed to leave the post-production room?

Sound: THX never fails to deliver.

Soundtrack/Score: Besides a couple of musical throwbacks to Raiders and E.T., I wasn't pumped by the music at all.

Self-Awareness: At one point, Indy is sinking in some non-quick sand, so Mutt throws him the end of a long snake to use a rope. Indy freaks, and order to overcome his phobia of snakes and survive, he makes Mutt call it a "rope" rather than a snake. Maybe the movie is trying to tell us that if we call it "good" then we'll be convinced that it isn't, despite our sense, shit?

Overall rating: * 1/2

And It Must Be A Full Moon Because...

eFilmCritic.com
"...wildly over-the-top in its supernatural silliness as we’d expect from the franchise, as “Crystal Skull” takes the fantasy elements of the first three films and updates them with the mythologies of the 1950s."

Supernatural silliness? I don't know what to say other than Temple of Doom was the only one that ever brushed on craptacular mythos and hocus pocus (not defending Christianity here, but it does have an established and celebrated lore unlike FLYING SAUCERS IN THE JUNGLES). And even then, it wasn't about fucking aliens with quartz skulls and based on one of the more hairbrained of conspiracy theories. Also, replacing Nazis with castrated Soviets hardly amounts to an "update".

"With a keen eye, brash tempter, and plenty of smarts hidden underneath a rugged exterior, Mutt comes off as something of a junior Indy, reworked for the Eisenhower years."

I guess Junior Indy was an annoying stock character as well? (fuck the Young Indian Jones series, by the by) Talk about the caterpillar becoming a butterfly...

WaffleMovies
"Spielberg brings back many of the elements that were so endearing in the first movies like the way we see the travels of Indiana Jones drawn out on a map in the background as we watch the plane or train move along its path."

He remembered to include an integral stylistic element from the original trilogy? Wowweee.

"Also, he puts that special light in Jones’s eyes and shows us Indiana’s genuine love for what he is doing as our hero uncovers every clue, and gets closer to making his amazing discoveries."

The light of a tired, old man that didn't want to do this film in the first place.

And We Mustn't Forget...

Ain't It Cool News
"The Crystal Skulls… What is it about? Well, that I’m literally just 40 minutes from having seen it at this point – I’m going to say I feel the film is about letting go of the past and choosing a happy future. It’s LIFE."

And LIFE never looked so played out. HOW ABOUT A WEDDING GUYS?!

"She says, “Yeah, what’s that?” And on his way to do shit that only Indiana Jones could do – he says, “They weren’t you baby!” – and I started clapping and tears of fucking joy ran down my face."

She's fallen for the oldest trick in the book, I'm so happy for her too.

Indiana Jones is about nostalgia, that’s what it was conceived from.

See, I thought it was about the ULTIMATE badass fighting the ULTIMATE evil (holocaust fetishism mmm), shooting bitches, drinking whiskey, doing lines off-screen (well, Harrison Ford was anyway), bumbling a little but never doing anything incredibly stupid (like give a self-admitted double agent another nine chances), and maintaining a healthy distrust of the government. I got less than that here, just some grumblings about McCarthyism and one liners so old Harrison Ford must as well have been spitting dust.

~Ian

Funny Games (1997)

Starring: Ulrich Mühe, Susanne Lothar, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Written by: Michael Haneke
Studio: Wega Film

Funny Games is an art(sy) film, no two tits about it. But it's also a horror film. Which is an awesome combination in my book. That being said, here is the usual disclaimer about such works: y'all might find dis hur movin' pick-ter two stooopafyin' for y'all ifa Larry the Cable Guy thinger's on yer Flix o' Net (unironically of course).

That aside, prima facie Funny Games is about a wealthy family (two parents, one son) who become the focus of a sadistic game orchestrated by two young adult men with nothing better to do. You can also view it as a precursor to torture porn movie (but by no means prototypical), since we get to see people suffer from psychological and bodily harm for more than half of the film. And, undeniably, you could at first walk away from this movie finding it confusingly implausible and nihilistic.

But that's not how to view the film, or not as I choose to in any case. This film, at its core, is an cinematic exploration (albeit atypical) of violent video games.

First, get out of your head that this film is about Georg, Anna and Georgie (the family) - if it is about them, then I ask, "Why don't we see any of them as they die? Just the aftermath or the act leading to, e.g. pushing a bound and gagged Anna into the pond?" No, this film isn't about the yuppies at all: it's about the character Paul, the handsome and confident psycho masterminding the deadly game.

That's not to say that Paul gets most of the screen time. Hell, I think he gets the least of any main character. Even so, Paul KNOWS what's going on when he's not around the family - he's that in control. In fact, Paul is beyond in total control of what occurs in the film (i.e. he masterminds the escapade and looks like he and his pitiful cohort Peter will finish the ENTIRE game before the authorities get word of it), he is also privy to the fact that he IS a character IN A FILM. Not only does he break the fourth wall by winking at the camera - a delicious play-on words since (from my understanding) a "wink" is a cue revealing to the audience that the characters are aware of their celluloidal nature - he at one point argues that they can't be done with this portion of the game (i.e. done with torturing Georg's family). His reasoning? Because the film has not yet reached the typical length of a feature film (the film hits the 90 minute mark exactly after he says this by the way).

All this so far points more to Funny Games as a metafictional treatment of film rather than that as well as a metaphor for gaming. What leads me to ultimately form this additional intrepretation is primarily due to two actions that Paul performs: one is his constant obsession with completing this portion of the game in time and, two, a weird sequence with a remote control.

Like in so many video games, the player must pay attention to a time deadline - think of a Starcraft mission or a bomb mission in a Tom Clancy game. The young men even give themselves an arbitrary deadline for 9 a.m. on the morning after they start fucking with the family to finish although we never find out if that particular time has any significance. Just an arbitrary restriction to create a sense of urgency - I feel like playing the 11th Hour now.

As for the action with the remote, Paul essentially uses it to REWIND the proceedings of one of the last scenes and reacts differently than he did originally, now anticipating a quick and deadly move of Anna. This whole turn back the clock and try again sequence, screams Max Payne or any other game that has goons or monsters or dildos around every corner. It's also important to note that Paul is the one to restart the scene since it is Peter that gets shot by Anna in a moment when the killers let their guard down: if Peter was the player, I imagine the film would be over then. Peter's just not in control enough to have such a responsibility, he's like the marine you need by your side in Halo when ambushing some Combat Forms because, shit, why should you do all the work?

It also goes without saying that this film has enough (implied) gory to appeal to the bloodlust we associate with video games. For instance, there's a scene where the camera focuses exclusively on the blood of the just murdered Georgie sprayed all over a television set (not to mention a racing match is being televised at the time, a gametype often found on console systems). Additionally, the killers, like in many first person shooters and adventure games, has a variety of weapons at their disposal for this portion of the game.

As a final point, I keep referring to the family's gruesome ordeal as a mere "portion" of Paul's game because at the end we learn that he intends to repeat the horror with another, well-to-do family living also on the lake. Like a level in Hexen or Quake 4 or Duke Nukem 2 (any video game really), what occurred in this film was only part of the experience, part of Paul's graphic entertainment.

Writing: Superb and scary.

Direction: Haneke's shots are often long and arduous, but purposeful in that we are forced to view each of the family members struggle with what's being done to them. The first time Paul breaks frame, we're confused; the last time, we anticipate it with a pit in our stomachs.

Acting: Everyone is great: seeing the family's plight evokes horror and empathy; seeing the killers infuses us with befuddlement and disgust.

Editing: Some of the scenes could have been a little shorter (the one with Georg struggling to get the phone to work in the kitchen comes to mind), but otherwise very finessed.

Sound: The audience is not spared any cries, screams, cracks and stabs.

Soundtrack/Score: A cacaphonous switch at the beginning between a classical symphony and a German hardcore song rightfully informs us that this ride will not be a light thriller.

Self-Awareness: Jarring at first, Haneke's use of a character ultimately aware of his existence in a movie reminds us of what kind of (global) culture prevades: one that gets entertainment out of witnessing the suffering of others.

A lot of critics panned this movie and it's americanized version. Well, I guess that means a lot of critics are fucking re-re's.

Overall rating: **** 1/2

~Ian

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Batman

Starring: Michael Keaton; Jack Nicholson; Kim Basinger

Director: Tim Burton

Writers: Sam Hamm; Warren Skaaren

Studio: Warner Bros.

This is one of those film's that gets copied often by people who forget what made the original work. Too many superhero movies that have followed Batman have just copied the dark atmosphere punctuated by black leather outfits and the opening. The extreme closeup of the Bat-symbol that results in the camera traveling around the corners of the logo like it was a maze has been rehashed endlessly. I can barely sit through the openings of most superhero films because they often begin with the extreme CGI closeup of Wolverine's nose hair or Blade's DNA. Anyway, there a number of great ideas in this film that the imitators just forget about while they copy/paste.

My personal favorite is how Batman is a mystery in this film; a central part of the film is the questions; "Who the fuck is this Batman, and why the fuck is he a Batman, anyway?" (Saying it like Jack Nicholson warms the heart.) It's not an origin film for Batman; it's about answering these two questions while Batman wars with the Joker. The film slowly let's the audience learn about the protagonist as we watch the rise and fall of the antagonist. It's about how they relate to each other, and how they might enjoy a parade together. Basinger's Vicki Vale doesn't work very well as the romantic interest, but she does good work as the audience's way into the weird world of the film. Her attempts to understand Batman humanize him in a way that wouldn't be possible given how cold this version of the character is.

The suit used for Batman creates the perfect image of the character; it creates the classic silhouette and blends into the night. The only problem is that it constricts the actor's movements to an insane degree. Batman can't crouch, look to his extreme left or right, or touch his toes. It forces the film to constantly work around the character's immobility while a middle-aged clown dances around him with a paunchy liveliness that molded black rubber doesn't allow. They work around quite well, but it leaves the film with a stiff, sterile Batman that's very difficult to engage on a personal level. It makes him quite spooky towards other character's, but he's very difficult to get into as an audience member. It's much easier to get lost in the Joker as he steals the whole show.

Writing: The dialog is often excellent. The Joker's lines are often quite funny, and almost every character gets something good to say. There is some great banter between the reporters, and Bruce Wayne gets some great weird dialog. The romantic dialog was not as good. Kim Basinger's got some terrible lines to make work, and she doesn't win that up hill battle. Otherwise, the plot is strong, focused, and full of great little ideas.

Direction: It's a mostly great looking film; some of the special effects integrate poorly though. The look of the film still holds up wonderfully; the massive dark monuments, retro fashions, and bizarre Joker fashion running madcap over the whole thing.

Acting: Jack Nicholson is out of control in this movie, and it's wonderful. He just takes the whole movie and puts it in his back pocket. He's doing impersonations of other cast members, re-enacting bits from the Wizard of Oz, dancing to Prince, playing with magazine cutouts, and going "boop boop" after killing other characters, but it works. His twisted glee is perfect for the character, and it keeps the movie light despite all that murder and mayhem. He received a cut of the gross for playing the Joker, which means Jack has gotten upwards of 50 million dollars from this one film. One scene of The Joker running away like a child imitating an airplane while making a farting noise earned him more money then I will ever have, and that fills me with a joy and jealousy that I may never actually deal with.

Michael Keaton does his best work out of that stifling rubber gimp suit and gives Bruce Wayne a quirky charm that makes his double life a kooky secret rather than the dark booming quest of the Nolan Batman films. His Batman is too damn stiff because he took Jack's advice and, "let the suit do the acting."

I would discuss the supporting actors, but it's really the leads' movie. The supporting actors do their best when they play off the leads or just get the fuck out of their way.

Editing: The editing is pretty damn good; that opening sequence actually gives the illusion of movement with the camera work and editing coming together perfectly timed to the music. Some of the effects do not integrate very well in certain scenes, and they have aged poorly as a result. Cutting back on some of the Batmobile, Batplane, and Joker balloons would have helped the film look much better, but that's probably just hindsight.

Sound: There are some very loud and slightly odd sound effects for things like bat-rope, Joker weapons, and batarangs, but it's all good.

Soundtrack/Score: I love the instrumental stuff, but the Prince music doesn't quite cut it. It's not bad, but it feels just a little forced. It's as if the Joker is throwing it in there just to really piss Batman off; it's also very obviously there just to sell the soundtrack. Also, the song that plays over the credits is fucking hilarious; Prince just goes nuts on this ballad about touching something that may or may not be his penis. That deserves a listen.

Self-awareness: This film is aware of what it can't be; it can't be Adam West and Burt Ward. It also is completely aware that being different from the sixties Batman does not require a humorless exercise in bleak darkness; when the film makes joke, it's funny in a dark and hip way. It also knows just how far to push the Joker and Batman's respective shticks so that they are larger than life rather than completely ridiculous on the screen.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 lines of coke for Jack

- Pete

Postal

Starring: Zach Ward, Dave Foley, Jackie Tohn
Directed by: Uwe Boll
Written by: Uwe Boll and Bryan C. Knight
Studio: BOLL KG

We all know who Uwe Boll is, no introduction is necessary. Nor does one need to preface a review of any of his movies with anything but "This comes from the guy that directed Alone in the Dark". From that alone you know you're in for some brain damage.

What you probably didn't know, though, is that Uwe Boll can be fairly entertaining on his own - especially when he's drinking a 40. I got to witness as much when I attended the free CSW screening of Postal. I also got to learn that Mr. Boll is, in fact, apeshit and thinks of himself as a maverick filmmaker fighting the good fight against those "fat executives in Alabama". That's right, Alabama.

Postal is the next, and possibly one of the last, detris-ladden installment of the Uwe Boll Video Game Super Fun Action series and, I have to get this off my chest as early as possible, the first act of the movie contains some of the better directing he's ever done. Kudos Uwe, it's still totally unimaginative and conventional, but at least we got to see the principal characters in principal shots minus any inserted video from the original game (a la House of the Dead) or see supposedly dead characters start to get up while the film's still rolling (a la Alone in the Dark). But the rest of the movie is shit: shoot out after shoot out, bad delivery after bad delivery, and what can only be thought of as the single worst homage to Casablanca at the end, which was almost immediately preceeded by a "homage" (i.e. a demonstration in Boll's arrested directed ability) to Boll's mindblowingly longwinded final us-vs.-them scene in House of the Dead.

Direction aside, the movie's story centers on the main character, Dude, not to be confused with this upstanding fellow, who is having a really really bad day. I mean, a really really really REALLY bad day. So bad that more than a third of the movie is devoted to just showing how bad of a day he is having, rather than adulterating such scenes (e.g. Dude having a shitty job interview, Dude getting harassed by a guido and even Dude escaping a massacre at the welfare office) with, you know, plot. That's not pacing, that's just Uwe. I guess you could say the movie's ultimately about Dude's transcendence of trailer-trash life and his acceptance of life as a badass, but that's getting way too analytic for something like this.

To be fair though, there is a plot to Postal: the Taliban wants to stick Bird Flu in some very sought-after dolls and eliminate the Western Hemisphere in a plague-to-end-all-plagues while Dude's cousin, a charlatan that runs his own religious compound, wants to get his hands on the very same dolls so as to sell them on eBay and pay off one million dollars in overdue taxes. Once Dude formulates and executes a heist for his cousin and, simultaneously, Osama bin Laden's forces encroach on the same German-themed amusement park (where the last order of dolls rest), the two bands of thieves collide - HILARITY ENSUES. Not really. Just a bunch of violence and boxom broads running around with guns and bad child-murder jokes.

You see, that's what's wrong with this picture, and much of what Uwe produces. Yes, we all love tits and explosions, along with some trashy jokes - that's an integral part of the escapism of postmodern cinema (I find). Sometimes, goddammit, we don't want grand, enlightening themes or characters we can easily assign simple normative values (+/-) to. I mean, fuck, we just want to see characters have fun and give into some baser but ultimately more natural inclinations. But that doesn't mean we'll swallow brazen images of jugs and gunshot wounds in just any old fashion way. (S)Exploitation films have been around since the '70s and for someone not to acknowledge those older manners of approach to such material (that is, not to rehash them over and over again) and try delivering these seedier elements to us with fresh plots or direction or characterization is kind of insulting. Perhaps Uwe doesn't know about these ancestral movies. Or if he has, maybe he thinks he's "updating" them by "integrating" content from the newer media of video games. But neither is an excuse for shoddy filmmaking; in these cases, he's either ignorant or deluded.

Writing: Uwe wrote this in conjunction with his assistant director, which helped in that his assistant director is American but not so much a writer as a hack. Dialog is rarely paced well and while there are some persistent story elements and a few true plot points, it doesn’t sustain anything close to a narrative or even a rebellion against traditional structure: in other words, it just blows.

Direction: Again, the first act shows some limited understanding of space and camera work. Nothing Guillermo del Toro wouldn’t have known when he was 7.

Acting: Feh. We know Uwe couldn't do shit with high caliber actors before Postal…

Editing: Some scenes are fucking ridiculously long and annoying and GRRRR.

Sound: Nothing of note. I guess the gunshots sounded like gunshots.

Soundtrack/Score: There was one song I liked in the first act – so I guess this was better than Speed Racer in at least one regard.

Self-Awareness: Uwe Boll actually has a short role playing himself during the doll extraction scene at the German amusement park. And he manages to poke fun at himself (e.g. he says something like “As you know, I fund my movies with Nazi gold…”), but he’s such a terrible actor that it all falls flat. Nice try.


Overall rating: *

~Ian