tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47511929323537913052024-03-13T12:08:26.637-05:00Fraught Experiments<i><a href="http://youtu.be/7cXcA9i4vI0">Quality, freshness, and flavor</a></i>Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-42639412753013529592014-03-03T08:55:00.000-06:002014-03-03T08:55:41.904-06:00Review: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind<p>I've wanted to see the 2002 Sam Rockwell vehicle <i>Confessions of a Dangerous Mind</i> since about the time it came out, but never got around to it until now. If I were going to do a tweet-review of this, it would be "Way darker than I expected; don't watch it if you're in a misanthropic mood."
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-blZtHXuhOLI/Ut0RNgTe4RI/AAAAAAAAAc0/cJBxOvVu3HI/s1600/confessionsdangerousmind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img align=right width=320 title=""Well SURE I think about killin' people every day. I work in TV ferchrissakes"" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-blZtHXuhOLI/Ut0RNgTe4RI/AAAAAAAAAc0/cJBxOvVu3HI/s400/confessionsdangerousmind.jpg" /></a></div>Maybe part of the reason I put off this movie was because I knew basically nothing about protagonist Chuck Barris, and very little about <i>The Gong Show</i>, which he created and hosted. Fortunately, the script is careful enough to remain accessible to those of us with limited background knowledge of the world of '60s-'70s game shows.
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<p>There's another preconceived notion I had that turned out to be inaccurate, though in this case it's not such good news: I had a hunch that this would be one of those movies of which I could say, "You've never seen a movie quite like this," but in fact—despite its many quirks and its undoubtedly bizarre subject matter—I feel like I have.
<p>It's basically a biopic of Barris, as told by Barris—or more accurately, a film translation of his autobiography. That's its structure and feel, and maybe part of why that disappointed me a little is because I was hoping for more of a meditation on the conflict between show business and reality.
<p>See, Barris claims to have been a CIA assassin during the heyday of his TV career. Plot-wise, the movie takes this at face value, though always with a tonal tongue in its figurative cheek. Once or twice—including, notably, in a very early scene—we get a grim look at Barris during what appears to be his rock-bottom phase, holed up in a filthy room, with moist eyes and a hobo beard.
<p>These scenes are about the only extent to which <i>Confessions</i> engages directly with the aforementioned conflict between show business and reality. All of the film's other "aha moments" of the kind we expect from biopics—like the scene with the swimming beauty at the Playboy mansion—concern themselves with Barris the person, not so much Barris the personification.
<p>That wouldn't be a problem if not for the occasionally overwrought visual style, which seems to be telling me "Yes, we <i>are</i> making a profound statement about the reality/showbiz divide," even when they're really not. Maybe what the movie really needed was to focus more on <i>The Gong Show</i> (which seems like a topic that could easily fuel a whole movie). Maybe, by connecting his uniquely ironic show to his assassin fantasy more closely, the movie might have said something about show business in general, rather than feeling like a gonzo portrait of a mentally disturbed individual.
<p>But enough of the could-have-beens. <i>Confessions of a Dangerous Mind</i> never ceases to be watchable and engaging, and the cast has a lot to do with that. Rockwell strikes just the right balance of showmanship and pathos; George Clooney is amusingly deadpan as his CIA contact; even Drew Barrymore's somewhat irritating character serves a key purpose in painting the full picture of this man. Fans of well-acted, character-driven dramedies will find much to like here, and fans of Sam Rockwell would be remiss if they skipped it.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 3.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-87692895530770228252014-02-24T11:11:00.002-06:002014-02-24T11:11:42.736-06:00Review: Woyzeck<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vIvPQWHAxGc/UwdTtLSBE9I/AAAAAAAAAes/hjd3qYyObIs/s1600/woyzeck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" width=320 align=right title="Klaus Kinski poses for his Twitter profile pic" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vIvPQWHAxGc/UwdTtLSBE9I/AAAAAAAAAes/hjd3qYyObIs/s400/woyzeck.jpg" /></a></div>Meet Franz Woyzeck.
<p>You think YOU've got it bad? Try being Woyzeck for a day. He's a grunt in an indeterminate mid-1800s European army—I assume German, but he could be German-French in the same sense that most movie Romans are British-Roman. He's being cuckolded by his young wife (who looks like Jewel Staite with a crushed spirit) and the high-school-quarterback-like drum major. He's also a human guinea pig for an ambitious scientist who's been feeding him nothing but peas, and who rewards him with much-needed cash every time he behaves crazily.
<p>Naturally, therefore, Woyzeck's descending into insanity, and just as naturally, there's no going back…since this is a Werner Herzog film.
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<p><i>Woyzeck</i>'s story is spare; the characterization, hazy. Much of the running-time is taken up by characters making Herzoggily bleak speeches with faraway looks in their eyes—mainly Kinski, whose inherent watchability helps reduce the tedium.
<p>My favorite part? Definitely the opening credits. It's Kinski staring desperately while undergoing tortuous training, accompanied by this kick-ass music:
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<p>In terms of the protagonist's obvious thoughts and feelings, as well as the jarring yet strangely exciting sound, I was reminded of my brief stint in a meat-packing factory. This very memorable credits sequence earns <i>Woyzeck</i> half a star in my score. It makes the rest of the movie seem sedate, even lethargic.
<p>Turns out the reason for that is that <i>Woyzeck</i> is originally a German stage play—and an unfinished one at that, which might explain the thin narrative. It's not that there's nothing here. The captain character obviously has a key role, conveying the theme of class discrimination; likewise, the Marie character carries a fair amount of dramatic weight, and her scenes are vague enough to remain intriguing. And the tone of the whole experience will be at least a little striking to any viewer who's ever asked themselves why the world is shitting so thoroughly upon them. It's just that what's here doesn't seem to engage as much as it could have.
<p>Maybe Kinski just isn't likable enough for the role. Wikipedia tells me that Herzog originally intended for Bruno S. (of <i>Stroszek</i>, which I enjoyed much more) to play Woyzeck. Could Bruno have pulled off the crazy as convincingly as Kinski does? Probably not, but on the other hand, I may have empathized with him more.
<p>Occasional draggy moments do not render <i>Woyzeck</i> unwatchable, unless you're somehow Herzog-allergic. That said, though, I wouldn't put it on a list of Top Must-See-Right-Now Herzog, like say <i>Aguirre</i>. Oh, that reminds me: <i>Woyzeck</i> does have a pooping animal. In case anybody wanted to know that.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 3 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-88000800752834195462014-02-17T09:15:00.000-06:002014-02-17T09:15:35.247-06:00Review: Gator King<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vRMRecYukFg/Uu4v49FIXJI/AAAAAAAAAeM/j6pvV_4vIf4/s1600/gatorking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right title="You know the movie's a winner when this is the most representative image you can find for it" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vRMRecYukFg/Uu4v49FIXJI/AAAAAAAAAeM/j6pvV_4vIf4/s400/gatorking.jpg" /></a></div><i>Gator King</i> is a Rhino direct-to-video release that, of the nearly 90 movies I've reviewed for this blog (which includes scores of titles I knew would be terrible going in), is without a doubt the dullest.
<p>Imagine <i>Time Chasers</i> if its plot entailed not time travel but alligator smuggling, if its cast had far less investment in what they were doing, if the chase scenes were <b>even more</b> cheap and stupid, and if it induced Z-grade celebrity actors to somehow embarrass themselves—in this case, Michael Berryman (Captain Rixx from the TNG episode "Conspiracy"), Antonio Fargas (TV's Huggy Bear), and Joe Estevez, who of course is reason I watched this.
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<P>After <i>Gator King</i>—and a few others, come to think of it—I hope I've learned my lesson about seeing movies solely on the basis of Joe Estevez being in them. Neither he nor Berryman have very much screen time, because, I assume, money. Our actual leads are spunky—reporter or something?—Shannon K. Foley, whose performance has the earnest yet stilted quality of Pantsless Attic Woman from <i>Werewolf</i> (I guess Joe has a type); her love interest Jay Richardson, who looks like the washed-up loser version of Brian Williams; and Fargas as the sinister Gator King. The movie spends much of its time with his character and his unconvincing thugs, which was probably a good choice: they are the least boring of the many boring elements herein.
<p>Perhaps no single fact about this movie encapsulates it more thoroughly than the hero characters' tendency to have entire conversations with themselves solely for the benefit of the audience. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the amateurishness at work here. In my imagination, this movie originated as an <i>A-Team</i> spec script, and was naturally rejected, so they added a thin environmental message to convince a regional swamp-fauna-oriented museum to fund its production…but when they saw the rough cut, they refused to run it on a continuous loop in their cafeteria or whatever, so the producers added titties and tried to get it aired on a late-night cable channel—but when THEY turned it down, the only doors left open were Rhino's.
<p>I cannot think of a single, even highly conditional, reason to recommend <i>Gator King</i> to anyone. It can only be called a "thriller" inasmuch as it pretends at intrigue; it certainly can't be categorized as "action" even though it has a few scenes where guns are fired and/or alligators get loose and cause a rush of frenetic editing. Its one or two moments of unintentional hilarity (such as the thug who sets himself on fire) do not justify the hour-twenty-five running time—to put it another way, it seems at first exactly like the sort of thing they would've done during Sci-Fi-era MST3K, until you start to realize it rivals <i>Neptune Men</i> for sheer boredom. It's unlikely, even, that you'd find bits of <i>Gator King</i> interesting if you happen to be an alligatorologist—or whatever you people call yourselves. Sorry, this movie has embittered me to all things crocodilian.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 0 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-83900693101301170942014-02-09T18:54:00.001-06:002014-02-13T07:06:19.202-06:00Review: The Lego Movie<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WhlkNIUDZ34/UvgV038LqoI/AAAAAAAAAec/5Q8vlPec3yc/s1600/thelegomovie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title="President Business promotes a weird but weirdly fitting running gag in "The Lego Movie"" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WhlkNIUDZ34/UvgV038LqoI/AAAAAAAAAec/5Q8vlPec3yc/s400/thelegomovie.jpg" /></a></div>One cannot fully evaluate the merits of <i>The Lego Movie</i>—a movie as fun for both kids and adults as the titular brick toys themselves—without taking into consideration the film to which it owes its existence, <i>Toy Story</i>. No studio on the planet would have greenlit this wacky, hyperactive, often-subversive, and really pretty weird movie had <i>Toy Story</i> not demonstrated to the hyperconservative Hollywood system that movies with all-toy casts can be successful. (Now we need a similar revelation for female-character-heavy casts, which <i>The Lego Movie</i> itself proves the absence of).
<P>The success of <i>The Lego Movie</i>—following as it does the <i>Toy Story</i> franchise and the similar <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2012/11/review-wreck-it-ralph.html"><i>Wreck-It Ralph</i></a>—introduces the distressing possibility that all the best kid's movies from now on will revolve only around toys. Whether that grim harbinger of things to come proves accurate or not, at the very least we'll have a curious little "golden age" of quirky kid fare.
<p>I suppose it would not be the best use of my time in this review to tell you that "Everything Is Awesome!!!" about this movie; you likely already know that most of it is. Therefore, I will focus on expectation-management: what are the places where <i>The Lego Movie</i> falls a little short, so that those of you who haven't seen it don't get your hopes up?
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<p><B>Issue #1: Insufficient Attention to Secondary Characters</b>
<p><i>Toy Story</i> managed its larger ensemble cast a bit better than <i>The Lego Movie</i> manages its smaller one. Apart from Batman (Will Arnett, nailing it, of course), whose love triangle with Emmet nearly earns him top billing, the secondary characters are Metal Beard (Nick Offerman, sounding like a generic pirate), Unikitty (Alison Brie in higher-pitched mode), and Benny the '80s Space mini (Charlie Day, basically being Always Sunny Charlie, for which your mileage may vary). Of these, Unikitty and Benny get one or two solid character moments, but are largely forgotten otherwise; Metal Beard has a good-sized introductory scene but little else to do later that couldn't have been done by any random support character.
<p>This is especially a shame because these characters are brilliantly conceived and loaded with potential. I can't begin to express how warmed my tiny charcoal heart was upon seeing a character voiced by Charlie Day building an '80s LEGO spaceship very close in design to one whose instruction manual I might still have someplace.
<p>My hunch is running time was the major determining factor here. <i>The Lego Movie</i>'s world-building (so to speak) is strange and elaborate enough to require some significant setup. Contrast this with <i>Toy Story</i>, where, after just a few minutes, most every viewer will get it—allowing the story and characters to develop at a more natural and thorough rate.
<p>I take some comfort in knowing a sequel is already in the works. The announced screenwriter is new, though; hopefully <i>Lego II: Hard Plastic Boogaloo</i> won't suck.
<p><b>Issue #2: Just a Bit Too Much Sentimentality at the End</b>
<p>I don't want to spoil anything, but it gets a little maudlin right around the climax. I understand the reason for it—the subtext would've been too opaque for young audiences otherwise—but I noticed it anyway. I also couldn't help but find it a little distasteful in light of the movie's basis in merchandise.
<p><b>Issue #3: Liam Neeson Was Miscast</b>
<p>I mean, I get it, they wanted the stunt casting of getting Nolan Batman's mentor/nemesis in there. And it's not that his performance is bad. But Liam Neeson's delivery has always been understated, even in <i>Star Wars</i>, and it doesn't suit such a vibrant and knowingly ridiculous movie. Morgan Freeman has a major role in this too, but he's got more experience with silly, and it shows here.
<p>These are arguably nitpicks, though. I found <i>The Lego Movie</i> more fun than <i>Wreck-It Ralph</i> (probably because my LEGO collection was a foundational part of my childhood) and at least as charming as the <i>Toy Story</i> movies. The cast is star-<b>stud</b>ded (SEE I CAN DO LEGO PUNS TOO) and amazing, the animation is flawless and funny, the Batman stuff just never got old, and I can't think of the last movie I saw that was this imaginative. Nobody with any knowledge of LEGO should miss this, and no full-on LEGO nerds should wait another moment.
<p>Afterthought: I saw this in 2D and I can imagine it being a bit overwhelming in 3D. The stop-motion-style animation made a few of the action sequences hard to follow, and while muddled action sequences are hardly new to cinema (animated or otherwise), the fact that whooshing bricks comprise most of what we see might make it hard to track what's going on in 3D. I'm speculating here, granted, but the bottom line is I'm glad I didn't shell out the extra bucks for 3D.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 4 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-33050442397974532832014-02-03T09:07:00.001-06:002014-02-03T11:06:53.500-06:00Review: Road House<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yfadOoImYOs/UuunZRHK3WI/AAAAAAAAAd8/8S535_G6akU/s1600/roadhouse.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title=""To throat-rip or not to throat-rip…Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of Ben Gazzara, or to take up arms against a sea of thugs"" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yfadOoImYOs/UuunZRHK3WI/AAAAAAAAAd8/8S535_G6akU/s400/roadhouse.JPG" /></a></div>Ah, <i>Road House</i>. I'd avoided experiencing this bleak bit of cinema history until recently, more or less on purpose. As is so often the case, the factor that made me finally get around to it was its impending departure from Netflix Instant. (It's gone now, so don't bother looking for it. There's a reason I waited to post this review.) The only reason I didn't just let it expire was because people talk about this movie a lot, and the strange things I'd heard…well, I just sort of wanted to <i>understand</i>.
<p>My goal in this review is, as much as possible, to make <i>you</i> understand so you don't have to see it. Because whatever else can be said of this movie, it has a certain uniqueness, and unfortunately that can be attractive sometimes.
<p>Be assured that <i>Road House</i> is in fact repellent from start to finish.
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<p>The plot is that a supernaturally talented and vaguely Zen-ish bar bouncer (Patrick Swayze, in his first major role after his breakout hit <i>Dirty Dancing</i>) goes to work at a suspiciously well-lit dive bar in the middle of nowhere—the sort of place where there's "blood on the floor every night," as musical guest Jeff Healey explains. The protagonist—named Dalton, and oh dear god, is that why so many twentysomethings these days are named Dalton? did their parents name them <b>after the <i>Road House</i> guy?!</b>—draws immediate attention to himself, because I guess dive-bar people all hang out in the same chat room or something, so no matter what time zone they live in they've all heard that he once ripped a guy's throat out. Anyway, in attempting to clean up the joint, our heroic stoic gets involved with a series of locals—some friendly, some not—and, in keeping with the principle of Chekhov's throat-ripping, well, there's a throat-ripping.
<p>I should go no further without emphasizing that this movie seems to have been made largely as a delivery mechanism for fight scenes. And if bar brawls are your thing—like <b>really</b> your thing, like you've always wanted to actually be in one—then this is a movie for you. But those of us who don't suffer from bizarre testosterone-related medical conditions will find this movie profoundly silly or offensive—maybe both.
<P>I think the thing that offends me most is its very specific tone. There are plenty of movies that concern themselves with grungy bars full of hairy, sweaty, violent, homosexual-urge-repressing guys. But this one has two notable distinctions among its brethren:
<p>1. We are supposed to not just like, not just respect, but damn nearly <i>revere</i> the protagonist. More on this later.
<p>2. It's got a budget so high as to be embarrassing.
<p>Thank Joel Silver for that second one. Those who have not seen <i>Road House</i> can approach true understanding by imagining a relentlessly misogynistic bar-brawl movie with the slickness and polish of a <i>Back to the Future</i> movie. I mean, this is the kind of movie that has characters unironically driving a monster truck. And they use it <b>when they're shadowing people</b>. This is a movie where the hero wears his karate uniform <b>with jeans over it</b> when he's just out running errands. Remember, this was a major motion picture when it came out. These are just glimpses at the multiple layers of offensiveness. I haven't even mentioned the inexplicable stripping scene, or the character whose sole narrative purpose is to follow Dalton home and see his butt.
<p>I remember developing a distaste for Patrick Swayze long before seeing him act in anything, mainly due to the maddening ubiquity of <i>Dirty Dancing</i> in the late '80s. His role here seems carefully yet wrongheadedly constructed to reinforce his sex symbol persona—I can't imagine being an '80s woman and getting through the hospital scene with anything but repulsion—and his performance does little to counteract that distaste. In every bar scene, he wears a constant look of "I am so much better than all these people."
<p>Perhaps, therefore, he was doomed to run afoul of the other guy in town who obviously thinks that: the mean ol' land developer, Wesley (Ben Gazzara, who may have landed the similar role of Jackie Treehorn in <i>The Big Lebowski</i> due to <i>Road House</i>). Dalton and Wesley cross (metaphorical (penis stand-in)) swords frequently throughout the movie, in what was probably supposed to feel like a slow build to the idiotic trophy-room climax.
<p>When <i>Road House</i> came out, its level of violence was still a little bit shocking. But mostly there's nothing too intense here, especially by modern standards—knees get attacked a lot, mainly. There is a bit of gore, though, most notably in the famous throat-ripping scene—which is included for the exact same reason that <A href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/08/review-miami-connection.html"><i>Miami Connection</i></a> had the katana-butchery scene: because overgrown man-children would insist on putting something like that in their action movie. (The <i>Rambos</i> start to look subtle by comparison.)
<p>Yet, while <i>Miami Connection</i> is endearing and invites multiple viewings, I have no interest in ever seeing <i>Road House</i> again. Both films are utterly sincere, but the latter is…just ickier in every way. If it were a single still photo, rather than a movie, it would only be found on the interior walls of garages.
<p>I give <i>Road House</i> some credit for reasonably well-choreographed fight scenes and for having the good sense to give Sam Elliott a role (which nevertheless dooms his character to obvious death as soon as you figure out that he's Dalton's mentor). Otherwise: ugh. It might be a fun one to watch in a room full of snark-minded gay men, but definitely don't just sit down and dutifully watch it out of some sense of cinephile completionism, as I did.
<p>One last thing. Tonally, this movie's very '80s, but it's a special, hateful kind of '80s. It should be required viewing for anyone of Generation Y or younger who's ever caught saying, "I wish I'd experienced the '80s." <i>Road House</i> reminds us that it wasn't all Capri Suns and <i>Duck Tales</i> and Flocks of Seagulls; the '80s had their own Cro-Magnon quality too, embodied by this movie perhaps more densely than any other (save for, arguably, <i>Top Gun</i>). I have to believe that, in at least one of the parallel universes where Reagan was never elected, there was also never a <i>Road House</i>.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1 out of 5
<p>And now, the palate-cleanser. You knew it was coming.
<P><center><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2ZyJCV_dyug" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-57181049106884769142014-01-30T10:20:00.003-06:002014-01-30T10:20:53.915-06:00Review: Arctic Blast<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SJ6sfj-1ImQ/Uup1ckeNirI/AAAAAAAAAds/9kT-p1VugNs/s1600/arcticblast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img align=right width=320 title=""We did it…We saved the world. Now let's see what we can do about my aspect ratio"" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SJ6sfj-1ImQ/Uup1ckeNirI/AAAAAAAAAds/9kT-p1VugNs/s400/arcticblast.jpg" /></a></div>As <a href="http://www.macon.com/2014/01/29/2904731/officials-working-to-treat-ga.html">this week's incident in Atlanta demonstrates</a>, a region unaccustomed to severe winter conditions is much more likely to experience disaster-scale problems than more northerly regions, where everybody's used to it. Thus, it's at least partly forgivable when mistakes are made under unexpectedly wintry conditions in the former case.
<p>What's not so forgivable is when you make a movie about a flash-freezing weather phenomenon and you obviously lack understanding of what being in harsh winter conditions is actually like. I hypothesize the director and/or screenwriter must've been natives of Tasmania—the setting of the cheap disaster movie <i>Arctic Blast</i>, which I only assume was on SyFy—where it doesn't go below zero (Fahrenheit). There's a special kind of sadness in a movie with such scientific pretensions and yet such obvious scientific failures.
<p>Most of the "action" in <i>Arctic Blast</i> takes place in rooms full of computers—which is at least the right feel for a movie like this—but when it's not staring at screens, it gets a lot of mileage out of its main flash-freezing visual effect, which is obviously cheap but not terrible. Yet the antagonist—the titular "arctic blast"—never seems to fall below -120° F for the whole movie. Dangerously cold, yes; infrastructure-challengingly cold, yes; but end-of-the-world cold? <i>Flash-freezing</i> cold? So cold that you <b>can't even see your breath?</b>
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<p>I kid their production values, but their chosen disaster MacGuffin is sort of a fatal flaw. And from the genuineness of its presentation, one gets the sense that the screenwriter wanted to be a weatherman, but didn't make it past Chroma Wall Gesturing 101—or maybe it was the dreaded Intro to Birthday Announcing—and opted instead to make a meteorologically suspect movie. I'd love to watch <i>Arctic Blast</i> with a bunch of Siberians some time.
<p>Even if one is willing to suspend disbelief—and they do go to great lengths to make everything SEEM scientific, via lots of not-overly-stupid computer charts and radar imaging—the clunky story still seems intent on losing viewers.
<p>Consider the scenes immediately preceding the climax. The fate of the world rests on protagonist Jack (Michael Shanks) completing a calculation and sending its results to his obstinate boss Winslaw (Bruce Davison), before it's too late. Multiple characters urgently insist that "we need that data NOW." Just then, Jack's colleague and possible post-divorce-rebound Zoe goes into a well-telegraphed but narratively-pointless diabetic coma.
<p>Rather than stick around and save the world, Jack elects to drive into town, mid-Snowpocalypse, to get her some insulin—despite the very real risk that fifty-below temperatures might prevent his car from getting him there and back. (It does; it's a Toyota, and the movie seems suspiciously fond of them.) Meanwhile, Jack's daughter (who he rescued from an absurd surfing scene) is called upon to send the data to Winslaw, which seems like a good setup for a tense moment, since she's a high-school kid with no idea what to do—and then the generator fails, immediately spoiling said moment.
<p>This pattern—going to great lengths to set up a possibly dramatic moment which is then completely whizzed down the leg—recurs a few times in <i>Arctic Blast</i>, from the waitress's death scene (which seems to cry out for a handgun) to the cruise ship thing (why'd they even bother?) to the wife's parents' house (yes movie, grind to more of a halt, please). The effect of all this—and of all those melodramatic early character-establishing scenes—is the impossibility of viewer engagement. I doubt even weather nerds would be into it.
<p>That's especially problematic because, as you may have inferred, this is one of those SyFy cheapies that takes itself seriously. Its environmental message is only a little more subtle than that of <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/12/review-star-trek-iv-voyage-home.html">the fourth <i>Star Trek</i> movie</a>. I feel like I need to watch <i>Sharknado</i> just to purge my psyche. (And yes, I will watch that, one of these days.)
<p>What little <i>Arctic Blast</i> has going for it is its two name actors. I never watched <i>Stargate</i> and therefore was unfamiliar with Shanks; he's pretty good in this, bringing a level of gravity and verisimilitude (and stubble) that wouldn't have looked out of place on BSG. As for Davison, I've never seen him in anything quite this low-budget before, and while he has his moments of obvious idon'tgiveashittitude, he's kind of engaging even then.
<p>Though it's got some good riffing opportunities—I especially loved the terrible driving scene rear-projections and the ingenious way they got around having to continue using them—<i>Arctic Blast</i> isn't recommended. While it's not quite head-smackingly stupid, there are plenty of similar movies that are more fun to watch. The most exciting thing about it is its title.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-39913857441779566672014-01-27T11:20:00.001-06:002014-01-27T11:20:04.780-06:00Review: Never Say Never Again<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QFPKkpwR4vY/UuOyUAznedI/AAAAAAAAAdM/CO087dtVl6U/s1600/neversayneveragain2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title="A rare still from Sean Connery's audition for the role in "The Wizard" that would go to Fred Savage" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QFPKkpwR4vY/UuOyUAznedI/AAAAAAAAAdM/CO087dtVl6U/s400/neversayneveragain2.JPG" /></a></div>The essence of the famous non-Eon Bond film <i>Never Say Never Again</i> is that, in attempting to justify its existence, it tries to out-Bond the real Bond movies in several respects, and fails resoundingly at each of them. It tries to be sexier, but ends up more juvenile, prurient, and icky. It tries to be funnier, but ends up stupid. It tries to be more action-packed, but ends up jumbled, implausible, and often confusing. It tries to use cooler gadgets, but ends up sad and laughable. (Bond <i>plays a video game</i> in this movie. And I thought it was undignified when he dressed as a clown.) It tries to be more epic in scope, but ends up plodding.
<p>That last one's the real stake through the heart. I'm pretty sure I've never been as bored by any Bond movie, and I saw <i>Quantum of Solace</i>—<b>and</b> the '60s <i>Casino Royale</i>. And that boredom's not just due to this movie being a remake of <i><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/04/review-thunderball.html">Thunderball</a></i>. Yes, much of the story is the same, but most scenes have no direct analog in the original, and some entire plot developments are new. It's all just…so dull. The main reason I didn't give up on this movie at the hour-thirty mark was just in case I'd miss another scene as batshit as the video game. (Also, it was directed by Irvin Kershner—director of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>, the best <i>Star Wars</i> film. Didn't help.)
<p>I will answer your franchise-apostasy questions below, so that idle curiosity does not compel you to waste two-plus hours on this.
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<p><b>Q: Are any regular franchise actors in this besides Sean Connery?</b>
<p>A: Not one.
<p><b>Q: Why did Connery even agree to do this?</b>
<p>A: Oh, he's clearly paycheckin' it. Remember, this is during his <i>Outland</i> phase.
<p><b>Q: How's his performance?</b>
<p>A: I wouldn't call it lazy—Kershner seems to have learned some tricks when it comes to wringing passable performances out of star actors reluctantly returning to franchises. But Connery's Bond is definitely at his most weak and embarrassing here. He manages not one moment of characteristic Connery charm, and the things this script forces him to do… Let's just say he <b>winks at the camera</b> at the end.
<p><b>Q: Is there a Moneypenny?</b>
<p>A: Yes, and she sucks.
<p><b>Q: How about an M?</b>
<p>A: Yes, and he's a shrill, effeminate bureaucrat. Like I said, this movie just doesn't know when to stop getting stuff wrong.
<p><b>Q: Q?</b>
<p>A: Nope. There's a scene in "Q branch," but the guy Bond interacts with is "Algernon."
<p><b>Q: So I'm guessing it doesn't have the traditional Maurice Binder opening credits sequence?</b>
<p>A: Indeed it does not; instead, <i>Never Say Never Again</i> opens directly on Bond storming some Central American druglord compound or something, shooting lots of guys with a machine gun, while the movie's soft-adult-contemporary theme song plays with the credits. The tonal effect is like if you were to put "All Time High" to scenes from <i>Commando</i>: so jarring as to seem a parody.
<p>Sadly, neither screenwriter and chief blame-earner Kevin McClory nor director Kerschner had the courage to go all-out with the parody. Late in the film, when Bond finally gets around to visiting Q branch, he's asked "Will there be lots of gratuitous sex and violence?" Movie, you're not allowed to make winking references to sad aspects of contemporary cinema when you wallow in them for the rest of your running-time. (Oh, and what does Bond say in reply? "I sure hope so!" WHAT THE HELL.)
<p><b>Q: Okay, so explain the video game scene, because otherwise I might watch it.</b>
<p>A: In brief, villain Largo has a casino or something where he's got a whole back room filled wall-to-wall with arcade games, mainly Centipede, and when he and Bond have their obligatory gambling scene, it involves neither cards nor roulette, but this table-sized holographic Risk clone that Largo calls "Domination"—oh, and when you're losing, it gives you a slowly-building electric shock, just to slather on another layer of stupid.
<p>And they play this game LIKE FIVE TIMES. I'm sure they thought the visual effect was exciting and marketable—it was 1983 and all—but you ever try watching other people play video games? Yeah. Well, maybe they didn't know that yet in 1983.
<p>If they wanted to heap even more shame on the Bond character, yet still capture that early-'80s zeitgeist, maybe it should have been a deadly game of Dungeons & Dragons. At least that would've given the actors an opportunity to interact. ("You seem to be capable of nothing but critical fumbles tonight, Mister Bond.")
<p><b>Q: Did you like <i>any</i>thing about this movie?</b>
<p>A: Its only saving grace is some pretty good—at times merely amusing—casting and performances. Felix Leiter is played by Bernie Casey, who played the history teacher in the first Bill & Ted movie, and whom DS9 fans will remember as Cal Hudson; he isn't given a lot to do, but seems invested. Kim Basinger (as Domino) is definitely among the top tier of Bond-girl actresses. Likewise, the "bad Bond girl," <s>Fiona Volpe</s> Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) is nutty but interesting, right up until the frankly distressing way Bond defeats her. Max Von Sydow is Blofeld—his few scenes are obligatory and almost completely disposable, and he looks a little wasted. Also, there's a scene with the government old guy from <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>.
<p>But the two most notable cast members are the dude who plays Largo this time—Klaus Maria Brandauer, a far better actor than Adolfo Celi and in a much more complex, well-developed version of the character—and <b>Rowan Atkinson</b> as the Foreign Office contact in Jamaica, who has the puerile name Nigel Small-Fawcett. The film's only funny scene is Atkinson's, and it's not funny because of the dialogue, but because <i>it's Rowan Atkinson</i> doing a scene as a dopey dweeb with <i>the original James Bond, in-character</i>.
<p>In fact, the script is one of the film's most glaringly weak points. There's not a clever bit of dialogue to be found here—my eyes didn't even roll, like they often do during weaker real-Bond outings. Entire segments of conversations seem to be missing, and not because of anything the editor did. And the story just kind of lurches along from one development to the next—when the villain attempts to escape with a nuke after Bond chases him out of his desert fortress, he takes the nuke to an underwater cavern that I guess is his secondary lair, only to leave right away, with no explanation of why he came here in the first place. It's the sort of dumb plotting that those '60s Italian spy-movie knockoffs were guilty of; we don't have to know WHY characters are going to these places, because in these types of movies, there are simply supposed to be scenes like this.
<p>I really can't decide whether this movie was better than <i>A View to a Kill</i> (my go-to example of The Bond That Should Not Be). If I gained no other benefit from watching <i>Never Say Never Again</i>, it's an appreciation for the artistry involved in even the mediocre Eon Bonds. It's as if this movie is one of those Disney mockbusters, like <i>The Jungle King</i>, except they paid Tinker Bell just enough to get her to do a flyover at the beginning.
<p>In short: don't waste your time.
<p><b>Q: Hey, what about that <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/03/review-skyfall.html">Bond movie evaluation system</a> of yours?</b>
<p>A: Oh, right. Um:
<p><h3>Above and Beyond</h3>
<p>Most of Largo's characterization and portrayal. It's nice when they attempt the "smiling, friendly villain" thing and it really works, as it did with the Grubers in the first and third <i>Die Hard</i>s.
<p><h3>Stupid Shit</h3>
<p>Everything else. Also, Largo's creepy "I'm watching you Jazzercise" thing. Oh yeah, did I fail to mention there's Jazzercise?
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-48268963668538718962014-01-13T06:16:00.000-06:002014-08-08T12:40:38.387-05:00Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey<p>Rewatching <i>2001</i> recently, I was struck by just <i>how</i> slow it is. I mean, you can't not notice it, but this time through it almost felt like it was daring people to finish it (as was, inarguably, <i>Barry Lyndon</i>). I don't think this is, as Nicholas Carr would allege, a symptom of my personal overexposure to the Internet and its having conditioned me to expect lightning-quick gratification. Indeed, I felt <b>less</b> impatient with <i>2001</i> than I have during any previous viewing. But the slowness is one of the things that intensely stands out, and newcomers to this legendary film should account for it before idly sitting down to it.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2Qyr75IDGnQ/UpYkIYZ7XsI/AAAAAAAAAbw/-G9smnVlWM8/s1600/2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=left width=320 title="We both could use a friend to run to" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2Qyr75IDGnQ/UpYkIYZ7XsI/AAAAAAAAAbw/-G9smnVlWM8/s400/2001.jpg" /></a></div>The shot from this rewatch that's haunting me is the immediate start of "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite." Preceded by a creepy but not overly dramatic mission recording from Dr. Floyd, this segment of the film opens on a monolith flying around Jupiter space, accompanied by an amped-up reprise of the "Love Theme from the Monolith" (you know, the one that goes "eeeeeeeeee eeeeeee eeEEE EEEeeee eeeeee eeeEEee"). The shot tilts downward and we see the <i>Discovery</i>, dwarfed by the Jovian worlds, and (because it's Kubrick) the shot lingers so long that the viewer's imagination begins to fill in context—an opportunity so few movies afford anymore—and we realize what Bowman must be feeling: isolation to a degree never before experienced by a human. He cannot go home, as far as he is aware; he can't even contact home. Not to mention abject terror at what he sees—remember, he only just learned about the monolith. I mean, Christ, how many movies achieve such a primal, visceral effect? And all this without seeing Bowman's face (because it's Kubrick).
<p>This may be what I enjoy most about Kubrick movies: the space to imagine. That what we imagine should terrify the ever-loving fuck out of us is merely an added bonus.
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<p>Indeed, <i>2001</i> is, in its way, scarier than <i>The Shining</i> and more unsettling than <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>. I think this has a lot to do with Kubrick's cold, clinical style; Bowman's journey and ascension could have ended up with the same exuberant feel as the latter part of <i>Contact</i>, but it's far more plausible that actually meeting aliens should be baffling and isolating and disturbing, in a truly cosmic sense. (Oh man: just imagine if Kubrick had done a Lovecraft adaptation.)
<p>The other big thing that struck me (again) on this rewatch is what an impressive feat of filmmaking it is on a technical level. Argue all you like about the merits of the story, the actors' blandness, whether the glacial pacing is hypnotic or merely somnolent—but no one can deny that much of what Kubrick pulls off here is just mind-blowing for the late '60s. Even knowing a fair amount of the production backstory, I still found myself unable to fully explain how a couple of shots could have been achieved without CGI…or going into space as part of some NASA cover-up <A href="#1">;)</a> or whatever. Like the one where Frank is sleeping in a pod and Dave starts walking up the hamster-wheel while Frank recedes—I guess it must have been a dummy in the pod or something. And the shot where they walk into the spinning room from the non-spinning tunnel, so they're not spinning first, <i>and then they're spinning!</i> I can only guess that Kubrick rigged an elaborate double-spinning set, put the camera in the nearer segment, and timed it so the nearer segment starts spinning at the exact same pace that the further segment stops spinning. And after that sentence, my <i>head</i> is spinning.
<p>Effects wizardry aside, <i>2001</i> may be the most Kubrickian Kubrick film. I hate this sentence, but it really is all about what it means to be human. It's often dark—and how could it not be, if it's about humanity's past, present, and future?—and yet, so completely open to interpretation is its ending that you can't really call it dark. The best you can do is call it creepy as fuck. And there's no way Kubrick didn't intend <i>that</i>.
<p>Many viewers find the film's Jupiter mission segment to be the only one they like. It certainly has the most accessible narrative—yet it almost feels like a different movie. Doubtlessly this has to do with the jumbled process of creating <i>2001</i> from bits of Clarke stories and what had to have been a fascinating collaborative process between Clarke and Kubrick…yet the HAL story does fit in spite of its seeming orthogonality. To me, the significance of the HAL story to the rest of what's happening is suggested by the opening "Dawn of Man" sequence.
<p>From the monolith, the monkeys learn tool use, and immediately employ it for violence and dominance. Then there's that famous cut to the nuclear satellite, a wonderfully simple thematic connection. Then the moon monolith is discovered and activated, and next we get HAL—another murder tool. The inference being this: each stage of human evolution is accompanied by killing.
<p>That just makes the ending even scarier; now that a third suggested-monolith-uplift has taken place, what horrors await Earth at the hands of the Horrifying Space Fetus? What if he gets his hands on the <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/12/review-star-trek-iv-voyage-home.html">Whale Probe</a> and starts smashing up the inner planets? (And, befitting so bold a crossover, this hypothetical sequel would need one hell of a hit tie-in song; perhaps "EeEEeeEEEEee RRNPH-rrnph" - <i>The Monolith Singers feat. Whale Probe</i>) It's probably just as well that the above isn't the plot of <i>2010: The Year We Make Contact</i>.
<p>Some doubtlessly find <i>2001</i> tough to get through, and it's certainly not the kind of film I can just watch at the drop of a hat. It's nevertheless one of my very favorite films—every time I see it again, I get something more profound out of it than the preceding twenty or thirty movies I've seen. It seems to me that anybody who really loves film is highly likely to get <b>some</b>thing out of <i>2001</i>, and is basically required to see it.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 5 out of 5
<p><font size=-1><i><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/10/review-room-237.html">The wink is Fraught's clue that it REALLY WAS a cover-up!</a></i></font>Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-73657056167520798512013-12-31T12:06:00.001-06:002014-03-13T07:14:35.467-05:00Review: Man of Steel<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NzSEZpQ35S0/UsGMwXqNBMI/AAAAAAAAAcg/D7naBpha3qU/s1600/manofsteel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" width=320 align=right title="'Bout time somebody blew up Naboo" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NzSEZpQ35S0/UsGMwXqNBMI/AAAAAAAAAcg/D7naBpha3qU/s400/manofsteel.jpg" /></a></div>Though I've never read a single frame of Superman in his comic-book form, I know enough about the franchise to perceive significant departures from it when I see them. <i>Man of Steel</i> features several, and while some work and some don't, it departs even more dramatically from what I would consider sensible narrative practice when your studio is endeavoring to start its own Marvel-like compound franchise.
<p><i>The Avengers</i> assembled (YEP I WENT THERE) its constituent hero team from a scattered group of uneven but generally successful superhero movies connected by rather thin and easily-ignored tendons of in-universality. This strategy obviously worked in terms of getting butts in the seats, but more than that, it worked for each hero-specific film: it freed up each filmmaker to pursue styles and stories independently for each feature, with really very little need to worry about stepping on the compound franchise's toes. This not only gives each feature a freshness that one doesn't get in more limited and repetitive franchises (such as Harry Potter) but also opens up the potential for pretty impressive feats of long-form storytelling. I personally don't feel that the Marvel films have <b>achieved</b> any such feats (though <i>Iron Man 3</i> was a step in the right direction), but the potential is there, thanks to the Marvel formula.
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<p><i>Man of Steel</i> follows a different playbook—initiates it, I suppose—and suffers as a film because that playbook seems to have been poorly thought out.
<p>This really should have been at least two or three movies (paging Mr. Jackson) instead of one. <i>Man of Steel</i>'s plot moves way too quickly and contains way too much earth-shattering <i>stuff</i>. As briefly as I can sum it up: Krypton's dying, Jor-El (Russell Crowe, making minimal effort) sends his newborn son to Earth, the Kryptonians banish the rebellious General Zod (Michael Shannon, often scary) rather than kill him I guess so that he can survive their world's end, Superman gradually controls and embraces his powers as everybody around him makes it clear that Earthlings will reject him for them, plot convenience allows Superman to discover the film's equivalent of the Fortress of Solitude (and in the process allows Lois Lane to see him in action immediately), General Zod shows up demanding the Earthlings turn over Superman, the Earthlings (which is to say the U.S. military, because action movie) comply without hesitation, Zod interrogates Superman and Lois, Lois helps Superman escape, and fighting fighting fighting destruction explosions fighting skyscraper-collapses fighting smashing fighting more fighting.
<p>To its credit, <i>Man of Steel</i> never feels confused or jumbled amid all these rapid plot developments. But it does feel terribly rushed. I for one would have liked to have seen the following:
<p><li><b><i>Man of Steel I</i></b> - all the Krypton stuff, all the young Clark in Kansas stuff, and instead of going all oil-rig hermity, Clark gets his Daily Planet job specifically because he wants to maintain a low profile—but in getting to know Lois, who's obviously the crusading sort of journalist, his lingering adolescent-alien angst is dissolved and his affection for humanity is fully awakened. Most of the film is therefore about Clark concealing himself, and rather than wacky workplace comedy, its feel is akin to a political or espionage thriller. And somewhere in there is a plot thread enabling Clark to discover the Fortress. Maybe use the "Superman's genes" thing in some fashion—misguided supergenius scientist character with a genetic-engineering scheme? Gotta be a Superman villain in the comics like that. Anyway, end the film on a nice big reveal scene, Superman hovering over a grateful crowd or whatever—with his alter ego narrowly maintained.
<p><li><b><i>Man of Steel II</i></b> - the Luthor one. Opening scenes demonstrate that Superman has fully come into his own, and Earthlings know how lucky they are to have him around despite a lingering and not-insignificant undercurrent of suspicion. Luthor exploits this in some scheme that's <b>actually brilliant and plausible for a superintelligent zillionaire industrialist</b>, unlike anything else we have seen from film Luthors. Superman's identity as Clark is strained the most here, as Lois's investigations of Luthor's shady dealings put her in constant danger. This movie could end on the exploding oil rig from the beginning of the actual movie, which would afford all kinds of great opportunities for spectacle and super-heroics.
<p><li><b><i>Man of Steel III</i></b> - the Zod one, where the Kryptonian chickens come home to roost, where Lois finally figures it all out, and—and this is key—colossal city-scale destruction happens <b>for the first time</b> in this Superman franchise.
<p>I can't help but speculate that the suits figured audiences (or Zack Snyder) wouldn't have the patience for more than one Superman movie, so we'd better cram in as much spectacle and attendant merchandising opportunities as we can right now. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, it leaves a viewer unsatisfied, because so much professionalism and competence is on display here—especially in the fights—that we wish the story had taken its time. In my review of <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/07/review-superman-returns.html"><i>Superman Returns</i></a>, I criticized it for being too long and slow. But <i>Man of Steel</i> makes the opposite mistake.
<p>I was pleasantly surprised, though, that the grimdark wasn't as oppressive as I feared it would be. Not much of the angst here feels especially fresh or deep, perhaps because the Nolan Batman franchise put us through a whole lot of it, but at least it all makes some in-universe sense. The Christ imagery remains overly thick, and we are reminded far too often of the risks humanity poses to Superman, but at least this is a superhero movie with a theme. I never saw <i>Smallville</i> (and from what I've heard, I haven't missed much), but it's safe to say it went to the alienated-boy-Clark well a lot. So does <i>Man of Steel</i>, but not quite to the point of engendering impatience.
<p>It certainly could've used a more defined sense of humor, though. There's a fun scene involving Pete, a rotund red-headed kid who torments Clark and (by the iron law of cinematic payback) grows up to become an IHOP host. In the scene, his IHOP is being torn apart by Superman battling one of the Kryptonians, and Supes pauses for a moment to give Pete a look. In a Reeve movie, he would've said, "Pete! Hi," or something.
<p>And speaking of breaching the Clark/Superman divide: <i>wow</i> does this movie waste no time in doing so. It practically inverts the whole Superman alter ego tradition. I have nothing against this as an idea, but the execution here is too implausible. In the final scenes, Superman (who apparently lacks the world-monitoring power demonstrated by Super-Seth in <i>Returns</i>) decides he needs a job, like say oh I don't know at a newspaper, where he can keep an eye on global events; enter the nerd glasses. Yet Lois knows who he is, and more weirdly, nobody else at the <i>Daily Planet</i> does. It's hard to swallow the notion that no camera anywhere across the Earth during the literally world-shattering recent events got one single glimpse of him—he was <b>in Grand Central Station ferchrissakes</b>—and that no one at the major newspaper where Superman's girlfriend works would have seen such a photo. And if we're meant to chalk it up to the old winking notion that the glasses make him completely incognito, well, you pretty much couldn't make a movie less tonally adaptable to such a notion. Call it a nitpick if you like, but it is how the movie ends, which makes it especially awkward.
<p>Nevertheless, <i>Man of Steel</i> succeeds at delivering impressive action, lush sci-fi imagery, and convincing super-effects. The film's fight scenes are continually kinetic and fun; the Marvel films have only intermittently had fights like these. If DC wanted to really distinguish themselves from Marvel in this arena, <i>Man of Steel</i> shows they may succeed. (Which might help keep them in the game, in light of all the other stupid, stupid decisions DC is making.)
<p>Casting-wise, everyone is at least adequate. Henry Cavill manages several moments of genuineness (and most of the Young Clarks are quite good, considering their ages), but is otherwise remote—perhaps appropriately. Kevin Costner as Pa Kent is, well, subdued and undemonstrative, just like a Kansas farmer facing baffling otherworldly forces should be. Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, and Chris Meloni do what is asked of them, but their talents are constrained by a script that has no time to let them develop. Shannon's Zod, on the other hand, gets plenty of character-establishing opportunities, and they help make his scenes absorbing…especially once <b>he</b> starts absorbing some of that Terran yellow-sun goodness.
<p>And I really am impressed that this story they sped through so rapidly managed to not be confusing and alienating like that of <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/06/review-dark-knight-rises.html"><i>The Dark Knight Rises</i></a>. I just regret that so many rich opportunities for what could be a really outstanding film superhero character arc have been missed…assuming no third reboot, which, well, you <b>know</b> it could happen.
<p>I also regret the template of Troubled Superhero now being so very dominant. If I'd been in a sour mood going into <i>Man of Steel</i>, I would've groused about its done-to-death tone, despite the lighter touch used herein. So while <i>Man of Steel</i> is objectively a superior film to <i>Superman Returns</i>—though barely, I'd argue—I enjoyed the latter more.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 2.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-50089392107263045572013-12-16T08:59:00.002-06:002014-05-09T12:46:40.080-05:00Review: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home<p>Now that Western popular cinema has entered the post-Marvel, post-LOTR age—where serialization is not just accepted, but expected, in our blockbusters—it's interesting to look back on an era when such things were still pretty new. The original <i>Star Wars</i> trilogy began the modern version of the trend, and, alongside the Indy trilogy, the <i>Star Trek</i> film franchise reinforced the trend, proving it to be a viable strategy and not a series-specific aberration.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aHylq0nAZGw/UqhMN_UaXsI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/-NnsQXED5gQ/s1600/startrek4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img align=right width=320 title=""Just give us the whales and we won't have to meld your brain"" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aHylq0nAZGw/UqhMN_UaXsI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/-NnsQXED5gQ/s400/startrek4.jpg" /></a></div>No film in any of those three franchises is quite as "serial" as <i>Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home</i>, a.k.a. "the whale one." Each <i>Star Wars</i> installment began with a crawl, reminding us of Where We Last Left Our Heroes; the Indy movies had almost as little connection with one another as the Bond movies; and even <i>Star Trek III</i> took the time to show us a clip from the pivotal ending of <i>Star Trek II</i>, and worked in lots of in-narrative review of that film's events.
<p>Contrast this with the comparatively abrupt opening of <i>Star Trek IV</i>. The opening council scene with John Shuck's Klingon ambassador provides some indirect summary of the previous two movies, then Kirk's first captain's log says "We're in the third month of our Vulcan exile," never fully explaining why they're exiled, let alone why the planet Vulcan would be harboring them. Ironic that the most financially successful Trek film (up until 2009) opens in a fashion so impenetrable, almost hostile, to the uninitiated viewer. It's not as though they could have assumed that every audience member saw <i>The Search for Spock</i>. (Indeed, it seems they even <a href="http://www.trekweb.com/stories.php?aid=sU/n82DdXTxD6">tacked on a weird prologue for the foreign markets</a> under the assumption that too few people overseas had seen <i>III</i>.)
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<p>And the movie ends with a trial concerning the events of <i>II</i> and <i>III</i>—this being, by the way, the only scene in <i>IV</i> where the leads wear their normal uniforms—and none of it would make any goddamn sense at all, in relation to the preceding time-travelling whale-catchers storyline, if you had just come into this franchise.
<p>Nevertheless, the fact that Spock died in <i>II</i> was well-known to the moviegoing public at the time, as was the title of <i>III</i>, and for all I know the promotion campaign for <i>IV</i> was loaded with recap. (I remember seeing <i>The Voyage Home</i> in the theater, but I was young enough that I remember nothing about its buzz.) And when you put aside all the serial stuff, this is just a fun popcorn treat at its core, so maybe the resolution of the Genesis story didn't really matter in terms of accessibility. Or even in terms of the franchise—Genesis was never mentioned again, as far as I can recall, and protomatter (its Treknobabble basis) got only a subtle mention in an early DS9 episode.
<p>One thing that has always struck me about <i>IV</i>, from my first viewing through my countless subsequent viewings, is how it's all over the map tonally. Its score is the most ebullient in all of Trek, yet its opening "whale probe" scenes are scary and creepy in an almost Kubrickian way. There's a tinge of melancholy coming from Kirk's difficulty relating to Spock, who was once his closest friend—but most of the running time is littered with wacky fish-out-of-water hijinks. Even if all the fun 20th-century stuff was absent, and this movie was about something far more conventional than time-travel, it'd still have arguably the most idiosyncratic feel of any Trek movie.
<p>Yet it <i>still feels</i> like a Trek movie, despite all that <b>and</b> the near-total absence of the <i>Enterprise</i>. I suspect that has something to do with how the script manages to make time for real characterization. Today, most movies would cut the dinner scene's length in about half, and lose a lot in the process, especially in terms of Kirk's behavior. That scene had a lot to do with Young Me being able to develop an appreciation for the Kirk character. Similarly, though Spock is even more of a cipher here than usual, it not only makes narrative sense but results in affecting character moments during the penultimate Federation council scene.
<p>The direction and editing is noticeably bolder here than in <i>III</i>, and feels slightly less old-fashioned than that of <i>II</i>. I doubt its comic approach would've worked any other way, so that was lucky. (Even more lucky: Eddie Murphy backed out of the project. I've never been super fond of the Gillian character, but from what Memory Alpha tells me about the original premise? Thank the Prophets for the Gillian-based premise.)
<p>At times, though, the comedy went a little too far. The whole Chekov business, for example, took a never-significantly-defined tertiary character and turned him into not merely a flagrant violator of the Temporal Prime Directive, but kind of a doofus. The resulting hospital scenes don't really advance the narrative in any way, but they're fun and not overlong, so I guess it's forgivable.
<p>I knock points off this movie really only for one reason, and that's the absurdity of its premise. "Weird probe wants to talk to whales, but can't, so: time travel" is the sort of thing they might well have laughed out of the writers' room of even 1st season TNG. I accept it as plausible in-universe, but in 1986 it had to have been (and likely remains) at least a slightly tough sell to any viewer who's not already a member of Greenpeace. To say nothing of Kirk's line about how when "man was killing these creatures, he was destroying his own future"…because naturally, audience, you should've expected a Whalish-speaking space probe to appear in a few hundred years to punish our species for whaling, so write your congressman today. I suspect <i>The Voyage Home</i> could have handled that whole thematic angle with a little more finesse. (<i><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/11/review-star-trek-2009.html">But at least it was about SOMEthing.</a></i>)
<p>Still, brisk pacing, solid acting, and lots of fun, quotable dialogue make <i>IV</i> live up to its sequential status as one of the even-numbered ones. They should've let Nimoy direct more of them, seeing as he directed both this one and its predecessor, which was probably the best odd-numbered one.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 3.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-18972835636486586232013-12-13T10:54:00.001-06:002013-12-13T10:57:03.965-06:00Bat-Dream<p><i>(The following actually transpired in my dream last night. Observations and analysis provided in footnote form.)</i>
<p>It's the pilot episode of <i>Wayne Enterprises</i>, a TV semi-reboot of Nolan's Batman franchise featuring a younger and more marketable actor as Bruce Wayne<A href="#1"><sup>1</sup></a> and an emphasis on smaller-scale threats to Gotham—some villains, some mere troublemakers, but no <b>super</b>villains. The gist is, this is what Batman does in between blockbuster-scale threats.
<p>Open on a boardroom, discussing a thorn in the company's side: a take-no-prisoners alternative-media journalist (MADtv's Debra Wilson) who seems bent on portraying Wayne Enterprises in the worst possible light, using flimsy and out-of-context evidence. They call her…"Bane."<a href="#2"><sup>2</sup></a>
<p>Bruce tells the board (via a flashback) that he's met her, at some clothing store in what he's now convinced was no chance encounter. But he assures the board that she's probably willing to listen to reason, and therefore not a serious threat to the company, and that either way, he'll handle it—ignoring their perplexed reaction.
<p>Cut to Bruce driving his own limo, as incognito as Bruce can be—but the limo's sort of a Batmobile Jr., outfitted with all kinds of high-tech controls in both the driver's compartment and the (currently unoccupied) passenger compartment. Bruce has used his considerable means to identify Bane's car, and is following it at a discreet distance on a freeway. He initiates an infrared scan of her car using a Bond-like outfolding center console…and detects an anomalous heat signature on a rear edge, close to the gas tank. The limo's computer calculates a high probability that it's a bomb.
<p>Bruce is genuinely surprised, and considers two possibilities. One: Miss Bane here is a terrorist and/or industrial saboteur, about to bomb some facility that's part of Wayne Enterprises' interests. Two: Bane's about to be the victim—has some other target of her nosy reporting decided to dispose of her? Either way, Bruce has to intervene.
<p>Then I woke up.
<p><font size=-1><i><a name="1"></a>1 - Throughout the dream, I perceived things from Wayne's perspective, initially as the character, then as myself observing this TV show, but in neither case was the actor identified.
<p><a name="2"></a>2 - On account of some old dude on the board saying "She is the BANE of our existence!", I'd guess. And maybe they don't want to try to pronounce her real name or something.</i>
</font>Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-44155127184634180952013-12-10T09:52:00.000-06:002013-12-10T09:52:16.700-06:00Review: American Warships<p>Those of us who are cursed to occasionally find ourselves in the mood for an Asylum mockbuster could do worse than <i>American Warships</i>, which came out the same time as <i>Battleship</i> and likewise concerns naval warfare with aliens—in this case, centered on the aging USS <i>Iowa</i>. Cheap and dumb by any measure, <i>American Warships</i> nonetheless displays minimal competence in story, pacing, some of the dialogue, and the leads' acting.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yNeLSpy-81Y/UqXCvfW5q-I/AAAAAAAAAcA/bfII0RrOlqU/s1600/americanwarships.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title=""Baby, you got a old-Matt-Lauer thing goin'."" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yNeLSpy-81Y/UqXCvfW5q-I/AAAAAAAAAcA/bfII0RrOlqU/s400/americanwarships.jpg" /></a></div>The leads in question are Mario Van Peebles in the Adama role (oh yeah, this movie also completely rips off the BSG pilot) and Carl Weathers in the "Trapped Forever in the Situation Room" role. Both actors maintain total seriousness throughout, which feels more forced coming from Van Peebles—but maybe that's just because he spent the whole shoot dreading the line "You're not gonna sink <i>my</i> battleship." Whatever the case, they're both perpetually watchable and they mostly retain their dignity, no matter how hard the rest of the film tries to strip them of it. Though I am still perplexed by Weathers' grizzled-prospector-style profanity.
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<p>If you've seen other Asylum mockbusters, you know to expect laughable and tiresomely-repeated special effects. On that score <i>American Warships</i> doesn't fail to disappoint. Yet it seems they may have actually shot this on the USS <i>Iowa</i> (since they had to come up with a whole big justification for the historical plaques they evidently weren't allowed to remove—and if you've seen BSG then you know what that justification is already). So for those with even a little interest in military history and hardware, there's some eye candy at least.
<p>Even <i>American Warships</i>' approach to its story is less ludicrous than we've come to expect. The aliens, you see, have cloaking technology, and are using it to impersonate North Koreans (which, well, whatever) in an attempt to get the U.S. to nuke the planet. Now, that's definitely ludicrous, but to the writers' credit, they spend time extrapolating all these elements in a more or less plausible way. I actually found myself nodding and saying, "Wow, yeah movie, that sounds about right" once in a while. The scenes taking place aboard the alien ships are likewise interesting, at least for a few moments, from a creature-design perspective. So somebody in the production actually invested some effort in research and creative invention—which is kind of impressive not only because it's an Asylum mockbuster, but because it's a mockbuster of a movie based on a friggin' board game. You give me that screenwriting gig, and I promise, I will never find a way to give even one-tenth of a fuck.
<p>Occasional signs of effort aside, though, there's not much worthwhile here—it's only intermittently terrible enough to provide good riffing fodder (the line reads from Van Peebles' XO are reliably amusing, though). Even the secondary cast members fail to completely embarrass themselves—they certainly do no worse than the supporting casts of any number of high-budgeted summer not-so-mock-busters. Secondary cast standouts include the head historian girl, the Secretary of Defense, and Van Peebles' love interest (and we might recognize the latter actress as the reporter from <i>Star Trek: Enterprise</i>). The Navy SEAL actors, though, are much more typically Asylum in their overzealous intensity.
<p>I'd therefore have to call this a textbook case of a movie not quite being bad <b>enough</b>. By any objective measure, <i>American Warships</i> is a superior film to, say, <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/03/review-mega-piranha.html"><i>Mega Piranha</i></a>—but the latter is far more fun to watch.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-55985923706950387912013-12-03T09:36:00.000-06:002014-01-22T07:17:49.384-06:00Review: Dungeons and Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fNnkq8ZgAwo/Uo4BcXvWO7I/AAAAAAAAAbY/JPeoSh8MC8c/s1600/dndbookofviledarkness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title="You must be a gas at parties" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fNnkq8ZgAwo/Uo4BcXvWO7I/AAAAAAAAAbY/JPeoSh8MC8c/s400/dndbookofviledarkness.jpg" /></a></div>As cinema, the <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> films are a bit of an oddity, existing as they do for the primary purpose of driving viewers into the waiting arms of Wizards of the Coast's flagship product. Yet each sequel assumes a higher level of familiarity with D&D tropes and concepts than its predecessor.
<p>The astoundingly bad first film (<i>Dungeons and Dragons</i>, most notable for Jeremy Irons' absurd performance) assumes basically no familiarity at all, and indeed was likely perceived by the hardcore D&D nerds to be nothing so much as a soulless cash-in, borrowing franchise elements but not their context. See also <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/11/review-star-trek-2009.html">either</a> <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/11/review-star-trek-into-darkness.html">one</a> of the J.J. Treks.
<p>The far lower-budgeted, but surprisingly decent, second film (<i>Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God</i>) actually resembles many D&D campaigns in tone, rather than resembling all the worst things about <i>The Phantom Menace</i> as its predecessor did. Yet it doesn't assume <i>much</i> D&D knowledge of its audience. There's even a scene where a character explains the difference between arcane and divine magic, which would've seemed insulting to the hardcore fans if they hadn't already seen the first movie and thereby known true insult.
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<p><i>Dungeons and Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness</i>, on the other hand, makes casual and completely non-explanatory references to such things as goliaths, vermin lords, the shadar-kai, and the Shadowfell. As someone who had at least a vague idea of what all those elements mean, even I felt a little lost at times. What helped me follow the proceedings was that I have a sense for the rhythm of a D&D campaign arc, which <i>Vile Darkness</i> resembles at least as much as the second film.
<p>And though the hardcore D&Ders might prefer <i>Vile Darkness</i> due to its deeper immersion in the setting, <i>Wrath of the Dragon God</i> is a better film, with a more solid cast and a story that's less unevenly paced. Yet despite its flaws, I am happy to say—because this dread always comes upon me when watching a fantasy movie—that <i>The Book of Vile Darkness</i> is still leagues better than <I>Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Jeremy Irons' Scenery-Chewing</i>.
<p>The uninitiated should know that the titular Book of Vile Darkness is both a MacGuffin within the game world and the name of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Vile_Darkness">game expansion volume</a> which has gone through two editions now: the one for the 3rd edition game and the 4th. I've never examined the 4th edition version, but the first one was full of Grand Guignol ludicrousness. I was happy to see that the film version toned it down to more of a <i>Heroes of Horror</i> level of subtlety.
<p>That said, fans of gross horror will likely find something to like here, which makes it unique among the D&D films thus far. The scene with the little undead girl-thing was particularly, well, vile and dark. When you factor in the eyeball thing, the sex, the Pinheadesque villain, and the torture, it might not seem like this movie toned ANYthing down from the book version. Well, that's just how far the book version goes. (It was sealed and marked "for mature audiences only" when it came out.)
<p>But does all this grisly pageantry add up to anything? Well, sort of. <i>Vile Darkness</i> is a tale of faith; our hero (played by a young James Marsden clone) is a member of the "Knights of the New Sun," a fading paladin-esque order. When hero boy's father and sponsor is kidnapped by bad guys, he is persuaded by a random NPC villager to infiltrate the bad guys' order; thus, hero boy ingratiates himself into the Sinister Adventuring Party.
<p>They are:
<ul><li>the especially villainous bald guy…a blackguard?
<li>the shadar-kai girl and party leader…a shadowcaster? Do they even have those in 4th edition?
<li>the vengeful goliath…probably a barbarian
<li>and the vermin lord, the best acted of any character in <i>Vile Darkness</i>. He looks like Bill Corbett's Observer meets Bill Sadler's Death, and he steals every scene he's in.</ul>
<p>Naturally, this group of vile dorkness is suspicious of Bucky McWholesome, but he manages to bed the shadar-kai nonetheless. This creates some mild interpersonal conflict, but mainly plays into the hero's internal moral struggle—how much must one become an evil murderhobo in order to be accepted by a party of evil murderhobos?
<p>The film's overall feel is pretty SyFy. (It aired on SyFy but has not been released on home media in the U.S.; I saw it on YouTube.) So you can't expect much real character depth, or complex examination of the <i>Donnie Brasco</i>-like character beats. Part of me hoped the movie would live up to its title and end with the hero becoming the evillest of them all, but alas, it's a redemption ending.
<p>As to the Anti-Hero's Journey, he ends up killing a couple party members as their quest progresses—from the grim opening city, to a dragon's cave, to a small town that they totally go apeshit in, and eventually to the 4th edition equivalent of the Plane of Shadow. I liked the big reveal for the latter setting well enough that I think I'll steal it for a D&D campaign sometime—indeed, I'm kind of surprised I've never pulled that particular stunt before.
<p>All the same, a clunky climax and an underused, underexplained villain make <i>Book of Vile Darkness</i> a somewhat disjointed viewing experience. If you go in expecting about the same level of competence as most low-budget fantasy, you'll be mildly impressed. And it'll certainly put RPG-playing viewers in the mood, and make those of you without gaming groups a little wistful. But so far, they have yet to make a D&D movie that's half as fun as even a kinda lame D&D campaign.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 2.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-71408754928283636942013-11-25T09:07:00.003-06:002013-11-25T09:25:24.481-06:00Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness<p>Readers: if you happen to possess an affection for American cinema as an art form…what are you doing even reading this review in the first place?
<p>You know it's gonna be dire. You remember <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/11/review-star-trek-2009.html">the first J.J. Abrams <i>Star Trek</i> vehidebacle</a> (term © Fraught Experiments LLC), and you learned to expect more of the same from the sequel's ubiquitous promotional material. You know it's just another schlockbuster (term © somebody else, probably), one which at best—at BEST—possesses a tiny glimmer of ambition and heart.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--dhCmiOnbCM/UoeqJWTvr8I/AAAAAAAAAbI/UDbBXDLuemU/s1600/startrekintodarkness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img align=right width=320 title=""Why doesn't MY close-up merit a bunch of lens flares?…Oh, right, the darkness."" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--dhCmiOnbCM/UoeqJWTvr8I/AAAAAAAAAbI/UDbBXDLuemU/s400/startrekintodarkness.jpg" /></a></div>Let me just nip that optimism in the bud right now. If Hollywood is doomed, as some say, it will be because of movies like <i>J.J. Trek In2 Darkness</i>. The warmest words I have for it is that it <i>seems like</i> J.J. & Co. wanted to <i>appear</i> to evolve their franchise.
<p>I say this because, <i>Into Darkness</i> is arguably <i>about</i> something—intentionally or not. This is notable when we remember that the Trek franchise pre-J.J. had always tried to be about something. Specifically, <i>Into Darkness</i> is about the morality of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing">targeted killings</a>.
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<p>In this case, the terrorist attacks are carried out by "John Harrison" (Benedict Cumberbatch)—who's actually Khan but it really doesn't matter—and Kirk-Pine is ordered to use the Super Fancy Torpedoes to drone-strike Khanberbatch while he's hiding out on Kronos (used here as a stand-in for foreign soil, e.g. Pakistan). Promisingly, the script initially gives Spock and Kirk good opportunities to argue the appropriateness of this mission, and Kirk ends up defying orders and capturing Khanberbatch. In the clusterfuck finale, however, he escapes, leading to Kirk's death—which induces his enraged Vulcan XO to go all Spock and Awe on Khan during their climactic hovertruck fight.
<p>It is this scene that exposes the emptiness of the drone-war parable <i>Into Darkness</i> attempts, because the only thing that prevents Spock from murdering Khanberbatch with his bare hands is the convenient fact that Khan's blood will bring Kirk back to life. It might've helped to have a little scene following this one in which Spock laments his moral failure, but instead Kirk gives a vague movie-ending speech and we're done. Heaven forfend that we might have to actually face consequences for things. That might entail thinking for an instant about the moral conundrum we are supposedly addressing.
<p>Speaking of amorality, <i>Into Darkness</i> not only fails to consider the ramifications of presenting fictional mass carnage, but presents it for no narrative reason whatsoever. I literally laughed aloud at the artlessness of the <i>Vengeance</i> crash scene: one moment Spock is all emotey over Kirk's death, the next Khan is bellowing and his ship is plowing through skyscrapers. (Remarkably, this isn't the only instance of whiplash-inducingly jarring editing, but it's definitely the most ludicrous.) Khan and Spock's climactic fight could have transpired in any number of other ways, but no: this is the sort of movie where entire city blocks are levelled, so let's make damn sure we level them. Who needs reasons?
<p>But none of those failings are especially unique to the J.J. Treks. What really twists the knife is J.J.'s continued insistence upon exploiting past Trek under the pretense of homage. Witness <i>Into Darkness</i>'s complete misunderstanding of what Section 31 is—it's supposed to be CIA black ops, not the Lockheed Skunkworks—or its mention of <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/K%27normian">K'normians</a> (<i>K'normians!</i>) for the sole purpose of trying to convince Trekkies that it cares about them.
<p>Yet Roddenberry would've had profound contempt for these movies, especially <i>Into Darkness</i>. Some Trekkies might disagree, so let me elaborate. The primary evidence provided by those who argue that <i>Deep Space Nine</i> is inferior to, say, <i>Voyager</i> is the fact that DS9 repeatedly (though by no means continually) challenged some of Trek's utopian underpinnings. An attempted Starfleet coup d'etat, a highly-placed security officer defecting to an enemy terrorist organization, a rogue intelligence agency…plots like these made up less than 10% of the total running time of DS9, yet are seen by the most rabid Trekkies as a betrayal of the sacrosanct principles of Gene Roddenberry. As you can infer from my tone, I disagree.
<p>Which is why it's ironic that I level the very same accusation at <i>Into Darkness</i> and its conspiracy narrative. The difference is one of intent and timing. DS9's purpose in peeking under the rock of the Federation was to make it more real—to counter the feeling of beige stasis that TNG imbued Trek with in the public consciousness. In doing so, DS9 demonstrated (through contrast with its often dark storylines) the real value and power of Roddenberry's ideals; it showed us the costs and conflicts that are inevitable for any society, even a generally utopian one, and thus underscored the magnitude and value of that ambitious goal. Moreover, DS9 followed not just TNG but TOS and its movies, so Trek (as it was before J.J.) had already been well established enough that it wasn't going to hurt anything to tweak the formula a little.
<p><i>Into Darkness</i> uses DS9-like tropes for ostensibly similar reasons but cannot make anything from them because there was never much of anything there to peek under. <i>J.J. Trek 1: The Rebootening</i> didn't bother to worldbuild much at all (quite the opposite, if you're a Vulcan); in one scene, Pike even referred to the Federation as an "armada," which I don't know how to begin to respond to. But fine, worldbuilding is secondary to the first film's objective, which is to function as a space-action delivery vehicle and justify sequels through ticket sales alone.
<p>However, you need to have actually done some worldbuilding before you can hope to subvert it. And <i>2 Trek 2 Darkness</i>, as is to be expected, invests almost no time establishing how Starfleet works before loosing Khanberbatch on 'em.
<p>Speaking of which, the story was probably the most laughable aspect of <i>Into Darkness</i>. Admiral Marcus's scheme is so inept on its face, so replete with opportunities for catastrophic failure, that it's a wonder there's still a Starfleet at all if they've got men of this caliber in charge. The whole torpedo MacGuffin smacks of a story "patch," connective tissue enabling the writers to first establish what really matters—the action setpieces—and then move our heroes through each setpiece in order. The result feels like the twisting track of the Candyland game board, where all that matters is Gumdrop Mountains or Molasses Swamp. All other squares, and the game tokens themselves, are meaningless and interchangeable.
<p><i>Into Darkness</i> improves upon its predecessor only inasmuch as its narrative is less jumbled and its two main characters are given ample time to develop whatever trace of on-screen chemistry they are capable of. But as before, occasional slick visuals and moments of amusing dialogue are undercut by ugly design choices (whose idea was it to make the <i>Vengeance</i> look like a More-Super-Than-Yours Star Destroyer from the Star Wars EU?) and shallow characterization.
<P>Tellingly, the last movie I saw that pissed me off this much was Michael Bay's <i>Transformers</i>. It's not that I care one whit about that franchise—nerd rage apoplexy played no role in it. (By the way, Uhura: care to explain that navigational bearing of over 400 degrees? Are we going in circles? Is that the plan? Gah, never mind.) <i>Transformers</i>, like both <i>J.J. Treks</i> and especially <i>Into Darkness</i>, is symptomatic of a Hollywood machine programmed to forever vomit bland grey sludge from its hopper. These are not films, and they're barely entertainment—it would be more accurate to call them "storylike audiovisual product." And that wouldn't bother me so much if these movies didn't embody Western culture internationally and hadn't cost countless kajillions of dollars to make.
<p>They say the blockbuster model is dying. I say a dying empire won't permit the failure of its <i>panem et circenses</i>. I think it's more likely that, as with airlines, big stupid Hollywood productions will eventually be propped up by the federal government to compensate for a populace whose discretionary income—and desire to spend it on extortionate movie tickets—continues to decline, and who barely notices such bailouts anyway. So in a way, maybe these sorts of movies—full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—are perfect for their times.
<p>If that's so, then I really worry about how <i>J.J. Trek 3</i> will turn out in 2016. Maybe we'll all get lucky and humanity will have transcended its corporeal essence by then, and we'll all wander the universe as pure energy, unfettered by material needs or desires, and most importantly, mercifully free of the J.J. Trek franchise.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-64293387031187645512013-11-18T11:42:00.002-06:002013-11-19T11:49:41.660-06:00Review: Star Trek (2009)<p>I wasn't really a nerd in school. I had to gain acceptance into their social stratum—I had to work up to nerddom (indeed, I never even played a tabletop RPG until college). This is largely because I moved from city to city and state to state so often that, statistically speaking, at any given point in my academic history I was probably the New Kid.
<p><b>Table 1.1: School Social Strata ca. Reagan-Bush-Clinton Era</b>
<br><table border=1 cellpadding=2><tr align=center><td width=190><b><i>Stratum Name<br>(Descending Order)</i></b></td><td><b><i>Access to Sex, Liquor, or Non-Homemade Drugs</i></b></td><td width=195><b><i>Trek Franchise Investment</i></b></td></tr>
<tr><td>JOCKS</td><td>Complete</td><td>None</td></tr>
<tr><Td>JOCK AFFILIATES</td><td>Moderate to Extreme</td><td>None</td></tr>
<tr><Td>JOCK WOULD-BES<br>(& Vo-Tech Hicks, Where Applicable)</td><td>Low to High</td><td>None</td></tr>
<tr><Td>ARTY COOL TYPES</td><td>Moderate to High</td><td>None to Low</td></tr>
<tr><Td>NERDS</td><td>None to Low</td><td>Low to Extreme</td></tr>
<tr><Td>NEW KIDS & UGLIER FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENTS</td><td>None</td><td>None to Extreme</td></tr>
<tr><Td>UNTOUCHABLES</td><td>That's Pretty Funny</td><td>Let's Just Say, Probably Writes Letters to Counselor Troi</td></tr></table>
<p>(Don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this.) You will notice that the second and third columns above represent two major forms of escapism, for members of all strata, from the meat-grinder hellscape of their shared environment. You'll also notice that each of them is roughly inversely proportional to the other. That <i>Star Trek</i> was almost completely rejected by all but the lower strata is, I'm certain, a large part of Paramount's decision to not just reboot, not just reimagine, but thoroughly <i>reinterpret</i> the franchise with 2009's embarrassing film.
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<p>That fact alone would have been ample reason to hate <i>J.J. Trek</i> if you were one of the nerds who had always considered Trek to be a defining personal affiliation. But an even more profound reaction is justified when you consider how artlessly that transition was made—and how blatantly it was aimed at the summer blockbuster ticket-buying zombies who seem to be the only market that matters. When I first saw <i>J.J. Trek</i> (in the theater…sigh), I thought I was prepared. I knew it'd be action-focused, and I knew the undeniable reason for it was that the pre-J.J. <i>Trek</i> sequel series and features had underperformed.
<p>Yet despite all that, I was so awestruck by <i>J.J. Trek</i>'s vapidity that my normally-robust capacity to analyze constituent filmic components was compressed into a featureless, white-hot ball of resentment. (Not a red ball.) Now that I knew what to expect, I figured I should see it again to get a firmer grip on my feelings.
<p>To put it succinctly, there's no reason this particular film needed to be called <i>Star Trek</i>. If the film industry wasn't struggling so much, it might have had any name—since at its core, it's <i>Generic Explosion-Filled Mythic Space Hero Story</i>. That would be its "truename" in the D&D sense. (YES I AM A NERD NOW, HOW'D IT TAKE YOU SO LONG TO NOTICE.)
<p>Allow me to defend my stance.
<p>Even the worst pre-J.J. Trek nearly always had something to say. The concepts that underlay the franchise back then can be debated for their intellectual merits, but they were there. Ten years ago, if you asked random people what <i>Star Trek</i> was about, only those most ignorant of the franchise would say "Adventures in space, pew-pew" and nothing more. But that's exactly what <i>J.J. Trek</i> is. And while it has pretensions of taking place in the same general setting as its predecessors, the film provides a version of the Federation that might as well not even exist, and it can't make Starfleet seem any more distinctive than whoever the Starship Troopers worked for.
<p>Chris Pine's James T. Kirk demonstrates not an instant of the trained-military-officer character traits exhibited by every previous captain in the franchise. Instead, what the narrative expects us to accept as the reason for his viability as the <i>Enterprise</i>'s commander is (so far as I can guess) his audacity and his Destiny.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MeHvDWbdlss/UjnqNnQ6dtI/AAAAAAAAAWQ/AX3t9gDcDMM/s1600/jjtrek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title=""In this timeline, the Temporal Prime Directive was never developed. So…wanna fuck?"" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MeHvDWbdlss/UjnqNnQ6dtI/AAAAAAAAAWQ/AX3t9gDcDMM/s400/jjtrek.jpg" /></a></div>The destiny part, to the degree that it is explained at all, seems to have something to do with Spock-Prime's transit into this new timeline. (I will defer the discussion about that time-travel plot's inanity, since it is hardly a problem with only this one installment of the franchise, and plus I have a hunch this might get way too long otherwise.) Since "destiny" is a characterization short-cut in nearly all stories that employ it, not much more needs to be said there.
<p>As for the audacity…that would really seem to be a <i>dis</i>qualifying trait for command of a brand-new, enormous, top-of-the-line spaceship with a crew of hundreds. Ah, but that would be thinking too much, which <i>J.J. Trek</i> very evidently doesn't wish of its audience.
<p>So okay. Let's analyze the film from the perspective it would prefer. Do we <b>like</b> Kirk-Pine because he's a no-rules jagoff? Well, the actor has some natural charisma, even if he looks like a snot-nosed punk. But the script does him no favors. Indeed, the only moment where he is really called upon to <i>do</i> something, rather than have things happen to him, is the "Be a jerk to Spock so he'll step down" scene. (I'm not including the drill jump scene because that's much more CG than acting, and the latter is the concern here.) At the film's close, when Kirk-Pine takes the captain's chair in his gold uniform amid triumphal music and cherubim and seraphim, all I could think was "I'd be putting in for a transfer right about now if I was a crewman on that ship."
<p>Zachary Quinto's Spock deserves some analysis too, since the film presents him very much as a lead character. And, since the film goes ahead and gives us Nimoy himself, I feel justified in comparing Quinto's version of the character with Nimoy's. Quinto's performance shows clear acting chops, and he certainly has the right look for Sexier Younger Spock—but he falls over the emotion side of the acting-emotionless-without-being-boring tightrope. At times it seems like he based his performance more on Kirstie Alley's Saavik than Nimoy's Spock, and that's not just because they put one of her lines in his mouth. That said, on the continuum (and you just knew THAT word would be in here somewhere) of transgressions committed by <i>J.J. Trek</i>, slightly overemotive Vulcans isn't too grievous. You could even attribute it to cultural changes somehow brought about by Nero's incursion. If, y'know, you felt forgiving.
<p>The rest of the ensemble is largely disposable. Simon Pegg's Scotty represents one moment of genuine creativity in the script; knowing the character as I do, I can totally see him starting his career at a shit posting, and his outsider manner lightens the mood once or twice late in the film. But Karl Urban as McCoy has some interesting lines early on, then all but vanishes. Similarly, Uhura and Sulu each get about one good moment, after which they're just along for the ride. But I don't hold this against <i>J.J. Trek</i>, since every previous Trek movie gave one or two cast members short shrift too. <i>J.J. Trek</i> can bear it less, since this is supposed to be our introduction, but that's the fault of whoever decided to reboot Trek in movie rather than TV form.
<p>Of course, the visual style and special effects are one of the main reasons <i>J.J. Trek</i> exists at all, and for its adequacy in this domain, I give it one star. I say "adequacy" because even though many aspects of its design struck me as downright well-done—the action scenes, the glory shots of ships in space, the interior of Nero's ship—others rankled. I mean: warp nacelles larger than the secondary hull. A bridge that looks like a surgical ward. And <i>my god the lens flares</i>. They're not just drinking-game frequent; they're distancing. What kind of sci-fi cinematographer deliberately coats every other frame with visual reminders that <i>we are watching a movie</i>?
<p>If you're detecting a certain degree of residual adolescent emotion roiling beneath the surface of this review, well, let's face it: we lower-social-strata types had Trek, which provided escape and provoked analysis. Now it's gone—replaced with a hollow mockery intended for our natural enemies, the upper-social-strata types—and we are left with relics, their gloss and novelty fading with time like a decades-old ad poster in a remote convenience-store window. The fate of all things, to be sure, but the old could have given way to the new in a more consistent manner.
<p>Then again, perhaps it couldn't have. Trek is one of those franchises with enough baggage that trying to become a super-fan from scratch can be a colossal, even unmanageable, task—though not as much so as if you were to move beyond the <i>Star Wars</i> films and into the Expanded Universe, god help you. One way or another, making Trek sustainable again was going to involve some measure of gutting and sexifying. I can accept that. What I don't accept is the notion that Trek no longer has, or should have, anything to say.
<p>I would acknowledge an argument that Roddenberry-style <i>Trek</i> is obsolete, and has been since as early as 1966. I might even be persuaded by such an argument—after all, Roddenberry surely was influenced by (some) Americans' brief and aberrant post-WWII feelings of unity, appreciation for peace, and acceptance of progressive notions like treating all people the same and ensuring that the less fortunate are not punished for being less fortunate. That blip of genuine human consciousness was already on its way out by 1966, and while Roddenberry at least deserves credit for basing his show on it, the argument could definitely be made that the notion quickly stopped reflecting contemporary mores.
<p>However, I get no sense that Abrams & Co. are making that argument, or indeed any argument. Maybe it would've sucked that much more if they'd tried, but there's no way for us to know the outcome of that timeline.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-28224018971346472792013-11-12T11:02:00.002-06:002013-11-12T11:02:04.240-06:00Review: Europa Report<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ge43N-RCicM/UoDeV3fA3eI/AAAAAAAAAa4/mGWWM_pNbrI/s1600/europareport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title="My god…it's full of Cthulhus" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ge43N-RCicM/UoDeV3fA3eI/AAAAAAAAAa4/mGWWM_pNbrI/s400/europareport.jpg" /></a></div>My biggest fear about <i>Europa Report</i> (in which a monster is eventually discovered under the ice of the Jovian moon Europa, and don't think that's much of a spoiler, 'cuz it's not) was that it would prove to be fanciful and absurd a la <i>Event Horizon</i>. It's not that I don't enjoy <i>Event Horizon</i>, or sci-fi horror/thrillers of its ilk, but the market's a little saturated.
<p>Moreover, I found <i><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/10/review-gravity.html">Gravity</a></i> compelling and realistic enough that other sci-fi thrillers will hereafter have a high standard of realism to live up to. This is why I'm reluctant to see <i>Ghosts of Mars</i> even though I know I should for several reasons.
<p>But back to <i>Europa Report</i>. I'm pleased to…um…report that it's not ridiculous. It's got some structural problems, and many of its characters are ill-defined, but I found it engrossing and tense.
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<p>A found-footage deep-space adventure, <i>Europa Report</i> concerns a privately-funded manned mission to investigate signs of life on Europa. The movie appears to take place in some near-future timeframe (never spelled out precisely, despite all the onscreen data).
<p>Unlike other "let's go to Jupiter" movies, <i>Europa Report</i> is never slow or plodding. Unfortunately, its structure is garbled for no clear reason besides stylistic flashiness. See, the framing device is that Mission Control loses contact with the crew long before the mission's inevitable crises, but back on Earth everybody continues hoping that the mission is still proceeding. Then, the audiovisual record of that mission's completion and aftermath (which is most of what we see) finally reaches Earth, and what we are watching is supposed to be the company's "now it can be told" presentation.
<p>It's therefore bizarre that the narrative is jumbled a la <i>Pulp Fiction</i>—that, for example, Andrei's tenuous recovery from his trauma is presented long before the trauma is shown or explained. Maybe the idea was to amplify tension by hinting at Disasters in Space, then showing them much later in flashbacks. If so, I'd argue that it's too annoying a device to be worthwhile, and unnecessary at that—a manned deep-space mission carries plenty of tension on its own, even if you ignore the high probability that creepy monsters await under Europa's ice.
<p>The messy timeline may be part of the reason none of the characters feel especially distinct. They're easily distinguished visually (which is already an achievement over, say, <i>12 to the Moon</i>), but minimal time is spent getting to know them as individuals. In a way, that's good, since we know this movie's gonna have a high casualty rate; I am happy to dispense with most of the pleasantries in such cases. Yet <i>Europa Report</i> goes a little too far in the other direction: the only crew member whose background or personality really comes through is (surprise) the one with the Big Death Scene. Everybody else is just Pilot Girl, Biologist Girl, Steely Captain, Craggy Engineer, and Guy Who Looks Like Ioan Gruffudd.
<p>Astronomy nerds will be able, to some extent, to overlook the awkward structure and vague characters, because the plot and science are pretty slick. Much of it is nakedly inaccurate—such as the suspiciously Earth-standard gravity on Europa's surface—but otherwise it <i>feels</i> real enough. And kudos to the script for not burdening these characters with movie-cannon-fodder traits that render them dangerously unqualified for their jobs—I kept trying to identify the movie's Hudson and it turns out there wasn't one.
<p>Another way in which <i>Europa Report</i> feels realistic is in its performances. All the actors, right down to the neckbeard company man, seem in most cases to be reacting naturally rather than acting naturalistically. I doubt any found-footage movie could be ruled a success otherwise.
<p>And yet…somehow the finale is unsatisfying. Maybe it's because we astronomy nerds are prone to continually asking questions, and ending with "MONSTER, g'night folks" is just asking us to Kickstart a sequel. (<i>Europa Report: Appendix A</i>) But the story really plays up the discovery angle, and makes a coherent argument in defense of manned space missions, so as far as I'm concerned, the monstrous but open-ended climax fits.
<p>So, to put it another way, this is one of those things where you'll like it a lot if it's the sort of thing you like. But all you non-astronomy-nerds should probably adjust my score down by half a star—there's not much here that we haven't seen before, even though it's largely effective.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 3.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-45686338097930699722013-11-06T09:01:00.000-06:002013-11-06T09:05:22.006-06:00Review: Innerspace<p>Eighties movies run the gamut between "charmingly '80s" and "painfully '80s." <i>Innerspace</i> is kind of all over that gamut, which makes it a densely representative example of '80s cinema.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uDHg8eN2nj4/UgK9ox8knXI/AAAAAAAAAS0/_6UzNUWj2d8/s1600/innerspace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" width=320 align=right title="The perils of inadequate oversight of independent research" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uDHg8eN2nj4/UgK9ox8knXI/AAAAAAAAAS0/_6UzNUWj2d8/s400/innerspace.jpg" /></a></div>A thoroughly dopey sci-fi comedy, <i>Innerspace</i> stars Dennis Quaid (who I never realized was so leery) as a hotshot test pilot, shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the ass of a nerdy grocery-store clerk (Martin Short) via a series of improbable circumstances. Quaid establishes communication with Short, and their interactions (during their quest to figure out how to get Quaid out and un-shrunk) provide much of the film's amusement.
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<p>I'd seen this years ago, probably only once, and remembered so little that I began to wonder if I'd seen it at all. Then the half-size Kevin McCarthy scenes came along and I said to myself, Beavis-like, "Ooooohhh yeah, heh heh hm heh." These scenes would have been the highlight of this weird and uneven film were it not for the presence, in a non-trivial role, of ROBERT FRIGGIN' PICARDO (TV's "Infrequently-Named 'Doctor'" on <i>Star Trek: Voyager</i> and one of only two reasons to stick with that show, the other being Tim Russ as Tuvok).
<p>And what a role it is. "The Cowboy," as a character, is undeniably racist, but Picardo makes it funny. If you like the Doctor, don't miss the Cowboy. Fair warning, though: you see him nearly naked.
<p>And he's not the only familiar face for Trek fans: look for Dick Miller (the older of the two cops from DS9's "Past Tense" two-parter), well-cast as a cab driver, and the old guy from DS9's "Storyteller" (the one about the hologram village) as the guy in the bathroom during Short's talking-to-himself-with-predictable-consequences scene.
<p>The main cast, though, deserve the most credit for keeping <i>Innerspace</i> from collapsing under the weight of its wacky concept, surprisingly meandering story, and evident effort at staying family-friendly. Quaid's character is likable despite being the embodiment of every 4th-grade boy's idea of what a "man" should be. Martin Short is great, overdoing his schtick only once or twice. The love interest character is also well-handled by a young, not-yet-overexposed Meg Ryan.
<p>Still—the '80sness weighs heavily. Especially during the formulaic climax and denouement. But viewers with a fondness for fare like <i>Gremlins</i> or <i>The Goonies</i> will like <i>Innerspace</i>, and viewers whose tolerance for '80s cheese is limited to the likes of <i>Big Trouble in Little China</i> or <i>Back to the Future</i> should at least find it pleasant and diverting.
<p>(Though if the phrase "metal clamp on the optic nerve" squicks you out, you'll find a few scenes a bit rough.)
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 3 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-14469436794680046562013-11-03T06:15:00.001-06:002013-11-08T07:45:41.065-06:00Fraught Experiments: YOU'RE 1!<p>Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of this blog's launch! HUZZAH! And what better time to tell you that I'm not going to be posting as frequently for the foreseeable future!
<p>For one thing, October was horror month, so the high number of reviews was a bit of an aberration. Additionally, things are going to get busy IRL for me.
<p>But never fear! The growth rate of my Netflix queues may have slowed, or even plateaued, but they are nowhere near exhausted.Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-47955808844760164582013-10-31T13:23:00.000-05:002013-10-31T13:23:36.671-05:00Review: Brain Dead<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N8GinXs1t2w/UnKZaswnEwI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/_oOMtePYxac/s1600/Image2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right title=""AT LONG LAST! I HAVE EXPERIENCED TRUE NUTRAGEOUSNESS!"" width=320 src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N8GinXs1t2w/UnKZaswnEwI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/_oOMtePYxac/s400/Image2.jpg" /></a></div>What a cast in this movie. Bud Cort! George Kennedy! The guy who wanted to take Data apart in TNG: "Measure of a Man"! The fast food cashier from <i>Falling Down</i>! One of the pirate buddies from <i>Pirates of the Caribbean</i>! And according to IMDb, <b>Kyle Gass</b> played one of the anaesthetists, though I didn't spot him.
<p>And our leads? The oft-confused Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. This movie's actually a helpful mnemonic for those of you who have trouble remembering which is which: who'd make a better head-in-the-clouds neurologist vs. who'd make a better corporate shark?
<p>Pullman is the neurologist, Rex, whose livelihood is threatened by shady goings-on involving his old college buddy turned plutocrat, Jim (Paxton). Soon, Rex's very sanity is on the line; he begins to experience hallucinations after agreeing to perform experimental brain surgery on a company drone (Cort) who knows too much.
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<p>Paxton's pretty much in Chet mode here, replete with oily grins and trying to seem threatening but just coming across as adolescent. Perhaps the fault here partly lies with his ridiculous hairstyle, and really the whole '80s-on-steroids look of the company. Pullman's performance is more real, which is fortunate because has much more screen time—and because <i>some</i>thing had to help this movie seem real.
<p>Near as I can figure, <i>Brain Dead</i>'s supposed to take place in the near future—or at least the near future as imagined in the late '80s. Yet I also perceived an attempt at quirkiness of an almost <i>Buckaroo Banzai</i> flavor, what with the weird sets and weirder acting. (They threw in a reference to Miskatonic University, too, which I thought was cute.)
<p>But just because you like quirky movies doesn't mean <i>Brain Dead</i> should be on your list. About two-thirds of the way through, the narrative begins to fall apart—on purpose, in a sense, because this is one of those movies where the line between the protagonist's "objective" reality and what he perceives is obliterated, and he keeps waking up (or does he?) from dreams (or are they?). Now, if you have a tightly woven script, this can be engaging; <i>Brain Dead</i> doesn't, so it becomes tiresome. The story seems to want to substitute wacky scene upon wacky scene for actual development. Maybe they figured they'd leave things open for a sequel that could tie everything together (e.g. explain what the significance of Halsey's secret knowledge really was), but that's a charitable guess. Or maybe they thought the final shot would embody the wry horror-humor they thought they were attaining. Or maybe the filmmakers just assumed brains were inherently scary, which meant building tension and scares wasn't really necessary.
<p>So the tone of this movie is kind of all over the place, but I think the fundamental issue with it is that, too often, it tries to seem unhinged but comes off as whimsical. (Case in point: the nameless neurosurgeon's line right before the end is read with all the gravity of Larry Fine.) At times it even veers into boring, though not for long and hardly at all after the first half. In the end, it's just corny and doesn't really go anywhere despite all the spiraling illusions—and in that way, it reminded me of <i>Inception</i>, though at least <i>Brain Dead</i> doesn't take itself as seriously.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 2 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-4737267522641808552013-10-28T12:52:00.002-05:002014-01-31T09:03:14.625-06:00Review: Castle Freak<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BfA9Pc2eMWQ/Um04o-r4fmI/AAAAAAAAAZk/gE9JXbk13oA/s1600/castlefreak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right title=""You are the worst husband ever. I hope a castle-freak chews off your nipples."" width=320 src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BfA9Pc2eMWQ/Um04o-r4fmI/AAAAAAAAAZk/gE9JXbk13oA/s400/castlefreak.jpg" /></a></div>Director Stuart Gordon wants frequent collaborator Jeffrey Combs to play Edgar Allan Poe in a biopic for which they are <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/839006124/nevermore-0">currently raising funds</a>. <i>Castle Freak</i>, a film they did together in the '90s, would actually feel very Poe-esque were it not for the typical gore-flick misogyny.
<p>It's still an engaging, sorta creepy haunted-castle kind of movie. It features a solid story, overall avoidance of the most tired horror cliches, and a memorable antagonist. I just wish it had dispensed with the bad taste.
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<p>Combs is the dad, a recovering alcoholic whose drunk driving killed his son and blinded his daughter Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide). He inherits a huge Italian castle with a Dark History and naturally concludes the only thing to do is move the whole family in, evidently without consulting the wife (Barbara Crampton) who hates him and who's overprotective of Rebecca, and without realizing that none of them speak Italian.
<p>I believe this is the fourth Combs/Gordon film I've seen, and it's the best Combs performance of them. He has plenty of opportunities to convey manic desperation, and he even gets an action sequence, yet he's also effective in the early part of the film as a generic, sad dad. (Well, as generic as Combs can be. He's more believable as a real dad than Jack Nicholson, let's put it that way.)
<p>Combs is helped by a script that makes his character so unlikeable that we horror veterans are kept engaged wondering what might ultimately become of him—redemption? Grisly and/or ironic death? Conversion into some sort of next-gen castle-freak? Captivity in the neverending purgatory of the Italian criminal justice system? Narrow escape followed by an implausibly similar sequel (<i>Castle Freak 2: Castle Freakier</i>)?
<p>The other actors do well with the material, treating it seriously enough that the proceedings feel more genuinely dark than is common in horror of this budgetary stratum. Of course, none of them are as fun to watch as Combs, with the possible exception of the freak (whose full visage the film wisely conceals until the end).
<p>So all involved definitely have the chops for quality gothic horror. Sadly, a few preventable problems diminish the effect. For instance, the humor in <i>Castle Freak</i> is entirely unintentional. The pre-credits sequence practically invites riffing, being free of dialogue and quite weird. Later, one or two moments of attempted mood merely induce giggles, like when they actually use the stock owl-hooting sound. I don't even have to go "oot…oot…OOT-OOT-OOT-OOT" for you to hear it in your head. It was the Wilhelm scream of its generation. Also kind of amusing in a distracting way: the fact that the <i>Re-Animator</i> music is recycled (re-animated?) here, or at least it sounds so much like it that it may as well have been.
<p>But the one overriding thing that keeps me from recommending <i>Castle Freak</i> as a Poe-level gothic thriller is the gruesome treatment of the prostitute character. It's as if someone on the production was fully on board with classing up the joint and going for a real old-fashioned mood…except that, c'mon, we gotta brutalize a woman, and we gotta SHOW it. And even putting aside the gut-wrenching gender politics displayed thereby? You really completely ruin the tension by showing everything. You KNOW this, movie; you did it well with the freak. Just have some torn-up limbs in the lower corner of the shot, blood everywhere, that's great—but that's plenty. Instead, <i>Castle Freak</i> goes too far, and in so doing sours the overall experience, no less than if "The Tell-Tale Heart" had actually featured a talking heart. ("Tom Stewart kiiiilled meeee! Lub-dub, lub-dub!")
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 2.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-89122316007178321182013-10-25T09:26:00.000-05:002013-10-25T09:26:38.036-05:00Review: Warlock III: The End of Innocence<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FU1MOl-vvto/UmkQkrbJ5AI/AAAAAAAAAZU/wV8HlW9Aj3k/s1600/warlock3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" width=320 align=right title=""I AM A HORRIFYING REFLECTION THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REST OF THE NARRATIVE!"" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FU1MOl-vvto/UmkQkrbJ5AI/AAAAAAAAAZU/wV8HlW9Aj3k/s400/warlock3.jpg" /></a></div>The third <i>Warlock</i> film damn nearly could not be more different from the first two. <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/10/review-warlock.html"><i>Warlock</i></a> and <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/10/review-warlock-armageddon.html"><i>Warlock: The Armageddon</i></a> were both rollicking rides through a wacky world of time travel, coin-eating, visits to Amish country, purposeless murders, lamewad druids, mystic tomes, magic stones, and salt assault. The direct-to-video <i>Warlock III: The End of Innocence</i> is by contrast as conventional a horror film as you could hope for, a youths-in-a-creepy-house story we've seen countless times. Yet it's also mildly scary on several occasions, unlike its predecessors.
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<p>Bruce Payne replaces Julian Sands as the Warlock, and is not only given a lot more to do, but does it a lot better. Sure, he lacks the impressive hair, but that's nothing compared to his far greater effort in the role and far more naturally scary charisma. He gets a lot of mileage out of the Bruce Payne Smirk—seen in bluer form in the execrable first <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> film—and it suits this revised characterization of the Warlock. In the first two, he barely deigned to acknowledge the lowly humans before he'd kill them; here, probably for budgetary reasons, he spends most of the movie engaged in devilish psychological manipulation with them. And it's always more fun to watch a monster that plays with his food.
<p>As is often the case, budget constraints help <i>Warlock III</i> a bit more than they hinder it. The irritating secondary characters mostly serve an actual purpose, thanks to the script's structure and pacing. They all die or vanish, of course—I did say it was a conventional horror film—but at least they don't do so in an arbitrary fashion. That the film took the time to show the Warlock's web of deception being woven helps increase audience…well, not <i>investment</i>, but curiosity at least.
<p>Our protagonist is Kris, played by <i>Hellraiser 1</i> alum Ashley Laurence. Kris and her friends are college students, and she's majoring in art. (In one of the film's least plausible revelations, she's dating a guy who seems to aspire to be the next Donald Trump.) Here, Laurence lives up to the potential she showed in <i>Hellraiser</i>; she's convincing in both the quieter, character-establishy moments and in the obligatory scream queen scenes. Additionally, her character has some agency, which isn't exactly universal in the cheapo horror genre.
<p>So the leads' acting is above-average and the script isn't terrible. But I don't want to give the impression that this is a good movie. It suffers from too many moments of unintentional hilarity and too many common horror failings, e.g.:
<li>characters doing deeply stupid things, like putting on clothes they find in the creepy house (though at least Kris tries to flee the house once creepy stuff starts happening, so, points for effort);
<li>the most oversexed young secondary characters being subject to the most vicious ironic deaths;
<li>bad creature effects disguised (inadequately) by edits and lighting; and
<li>the disheveled roadside figure warning against proceeding further, which would make an excellent Halloween costume for those with the guts to stand in traffic.
<p>But I found it to be a refreshing change from the ludicrousness of its predecessors, and if you've exhausted your supply of the more high-quality, high-profile horror films, this one's not a terrible way to waste an hour-plus.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 2 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-70669143700979212072013-10-22T09:48:00.000-05:002013-10-22T09:48:01.564-05:00Review: Pontypool<p>(Note: this review is as spoiler-free as I could make it. Which is to say, it <i>hints</i> at spoilers.)
<p>Many indie horror films end up being more horror and less indie; they aspire, not to artistic profundity or hipster cred, but to scares, gore, and frequently, reliable genre tropes. Indie zombie movie <i>Pontypool</i> is largely the inverse of that.
<p>I have mixed feelings about indie movies; even those I've liked, I've often found slightly irritating. And initially, I wasn't even going to do a full review for <i>Pontypool</i> because its ending bugged me so much. Upon further reflection, however, much of the first hour-plus was engaging and effective enough that I changed my mind. Its indie-ness is less overwhelming than it could have been, resulting in a watchable and quite <i>different</i> movie, which is a rare enough combination to merit attention by itself. It helps that, despite its miniscule budget, <i>Pontypool</i> is occasionally scary, and in a distinctive way.
<p>Spend enough time in a nursing home or a psych ward, and there's a good chance you'll encounter some individuals exhibiting the same behavioral oddity that distinguishes <i>Pontypool</i>'s zombies from others. Thus, despite its concept being even less plausible than that of more typical zombie narratives, its brand of scare works—and is likely to feel even more unsettling than most zombie movies to those of us who've seen people do this.
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<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QZybC6fuyCE/Ul_Rukw_H9I/AAAAAAAAAZE/p7kl2__EW9w/s1600/pontypool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img align=right width=320 title=""LOOOOVE HERRRR BY RADIOOOOO…YOOOU WIIILL SEEEE IT'S RADIOOOOOO" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QZybC6fuyCE/Ul_Rukw_H9I/AAAAAAAAAZE/p7kl2__EW9w/s400/pontypool.jpg" /></a></div>I watched <i>Pontypool</i> for only two reasons: the fact that it's horror month here at Fraught Experiments and the fact that its lead is Stephen McHattie (Elaine's psychiatrist from <i>Seinfeld</i> and Senator Vreenak from DS9's best episode, "In the Pale Moonlight"). I almost suspect the film's creators may have been DS9 fans, because not only are the Vreenak joke opportunities suspiciously numerous, but even the nature of the infection reminds me of another, lesser, DS9 episode (which I won't name, but which DS9 fans who see <i>Pontypool</i> will immediately identify).
<p>The film's greatest strength is its actors, especially McHattie, who's wonderfully expressive and has the perfect voice for this role. McHattie creates a lovable rogue character in Grant Mazzy, a down-on-his-luck radio shock jock whose integration into a small-town station is proving difficult. He butts heads pretty much constantly with his producer (McHattie's real-life wife, Lisa Houle, who in profile looks eerily like Tom Hiddleston). A bizarre incident on a remote highway foreshadows the series of even more bizarre incidents that follow, largely conveyed to Mazzy and his crew via telephone.
<p><i>Pontypool</i>'s budget is so low that it almost never leaves the radio station. This proves to be an effective vehicle for <i>Day of the Dead</i>-style claustrophobic horror. Likewise, the phone calls are a convenient way to deliver plot information while triggering the audience's imagination about what Mazzy is hearing. Apart from one or two slow stretches, this obvious cost-saving approach manages to still be engaging thanks to the cast, some skillful cinematography, and a naturalistic script. The inherent creepiness of radio is well-exploited in a few key scenes.
<p>So it wasn't the one-location setting that bothered me (though I could certainly imagine it bothering those viewers who would, for example, be unsatisfied at seeing really only one zombie). Even the premise—which cannot help but provoke whispers of doubt—was presented just well enough that I could mostly suspend my disbelief.
<p>And to be completely fair, <i>Pontypool</i>'s indie-ness never reaches the same oppressive depths as certain indie films we can probably all name. But where <i>Pontypool</i> gets <b>too</b> indie is its ending—it's all messagey and attempted-profundity—and even more so in its post-credits scene, which is such a non sequitur that I have to assume it was some kind of inside joke. That costs <i>Pontypool</i> half a star in my book. That said, if genre deconstruction appeals to you enough that you've just gotta see every moderately-effective example thereof, you might like it more than I did.
<p>And Vreenak nerds? You absolutely want to see it.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 3 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-23152537792610883972013-10-18T09:35:00.000-05:002013-10-18T09:35:53.308-05:00Review: Leviathan (1989)<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Iy-_UaezEV0/Ul5_HORNA8I/AAAAAAAAAY0/gMvFZ_XDeCQ/s1600/leviathan1989.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title="FACE IT: I Had Ovipositors Before I Was Born!" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Iy-_UaezEV0/Ul5_HORNA8I/AAAAAAAAAY0/gMvFZ_XDeCQ/s400/leviathan1989.jpg" /></a></div>1989's <i>Leviathan</i> borrows so much from <i>Alien</i>, <i>The Thing</i>, and similar futurey-horror blockbusters of its age that if you've seen a couple of them, you can safely skip <i>Leviathan</i>, because it adds pretty much nothing to your personal catalogue of filmwatching experiences—except possibly the ability to link Daniel Stern directly with Richard Crenna for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon purposes. But then, I just told you that, so you don't have to see it after all…unless your rules variant requires you to have actually seen the movies you reference, which, wow man, let me into THAT game.
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<p>The setting this time is an undersea mining outpost, staffed with a bunch of losers led by the one likeable loser, geologist Steven "Becky" Beck (Peter Weller, giving one of his characteristic laid-back yet off-kilter performances). After a pointless tension scene involving loser miner Dejesus (whom it seems somebody fucks with after all), and an incident involving a red herring facehugger critter, the story actually begins with the discovery of a sunken Russian ship named (whatever's Russian for) <i>Leviathan</i>.
<p>Heedless of the peculiar circumstances surrounding this discovery, the losers bring a bunch of <i>Leviathan</i>'s cargo aboard, including some booze that Obviously Marked for First Death Loser "Six-Pack" (Stern) imbibes and shares with another loser. The booze, alas, is discovered to have been tainted with a mysterious mutagen by loser doctor "Doc" (Crenna). One by one, other loser miners start dying off—"Skippy," "Tiny," "Elvis," "Wreckin' Ball," "Jo-Jo," and "Stinky-Pants" being just a few of the nicknames this colorful crew could have had—as the monster adds flesh to itself and grows in size a la <i>Slither</i>.
<p>The few genuine strengths of <i>Leviathan</i> are the understated charisma of Weller and fairly convincing environments and gore—you certainly can't call it low-budget. And yet, much of the design, even the monsters', is kind of bland, lacking the undefinable <i>something</i> that provokes the imagination in the same way as, say, the xenomorph. It probably doesn't help that far too many shots are far too well-lit.
<p>Awkward, unsuspenseful pacing feels like the fundamental problem with <i>Leviathan</i>—apart from the obvious one: extreme been-there-done-that-itude. This cast has several proven actors, and this concept (while fanciful) could have been used to great effect. But so much time is spent on setting up the tired backstory and predictable characterizations that the full horror of the antagonist never has a chance to make itself clear. Then, when the freakiness reaches its full intensity, it feels less like the heroes are in a hurry to escape the monster and more like the movie is in a hurry to get to the next standard actiony scene. And these don't redeem anything either, because literally nothing in <i>Leviathan</i> that comes close to being scary wasn't done better in other movies.
<p>Like <i>Aliens</i>, there's an Evil Corporation, and the Carter Burke analog here is played by Meg Foster (the guest star in one of the worst fourth season DS9 episodes) in hair obviously borrowed from a Robert Palmer video. Her character exemplifies this pattern of <i>Leviathan</i> attempting to imitate successful elements of similar films and seemingly missing the point about why they succeeded before. For one thing, she's almost completely unnecessary to the story, and seems to live in the same Dimension of the Perpetually Desk-Bound as Robby Benson in <i>City Limits</i>; contrast with Burke, who actually furthered the plot in a hands-on fashion. Moreover, Foster's performance is so obviously, and implausibly, nefarious that the audience can't feel that sense of betrayal and unease elicited by Reiser's more relatable corporate-villain-next-door.
<p>I give <i>Leviathan</i> two rather than one and a half stars because I have a certain fondness for this genre, and it does objectively have its moments—the implosion scene was pretty neat, for example. But <i>Leviathan</i> is overall surprisingly disposable, and definitely suited to sitting on your Instant queue for awhile and gathering metaphorical dust. I guess it'd be a decent "home sick and prescribed codeine" movie.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 2 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-59784088219533855412013-10-15T09:41:00.000-05:002013-10-15T09:41:35.541-05:00Review: Warlock: The Armageddon<p>Challenge: Make a <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/10/review-warlock.html"><i>Warlock</i></a> sequel that's simultaneously more boring and more batshit than its predecessor.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0LwgcdsNuWU/UlVHILDxVII/AAAAAAAAAXw/zrkAcR6kINE/s1600/warlockthearmageddon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img align=right width=320 title="Mother do ya think this washes off" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0LwgcdsNuWU/UlVHILDxVII/AAAAAAAAAXw/zrkAcR6kINE/s400/warlockthearmageddon.jpg" /></a></div>It may seem impossible, but that's the impressive feat achieved by <i>Warlock: The Armageddon</i>. A predictable and unoriginal story accompanies ludicrous setpieces and greatly amped-up gore, but those aren't the only ways in which this sequel differs from <i>Warlock</i>. In fact, if they'd cast someone else as their warlock, you'd barely be able to tell that these two movies take place in the same universe at all—no direct reference whatsoever is made to the events of <i>Warlock</i>, and the only slight hint about those events is the fact that the Warlock seems to know a little bit about late-20th-century materialism and motor vehicle operation.
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<p>The only returning cast member is Julian Sands, who seems slightly more invested this time. Even his moments of apparent boredom often feel more like performance choices than actual boredom.
<p>Apart from Sands, the prominently featured actors are
<p><li><b>Steve Kahan</b> (who looks just like Ann's uncle from <i>Arrested Development</i>, but isn't) as the head modern-day druid, yes I said druid, and father of…
<p><li><b>Chris Young</b> as <s> Luke Skywalker </s> the destined warrior-druid hero, and weaksauce love interest of…
<p><li><b>Paula Marshall</b> (whom you might remember as Dax's friend from <a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/2013/04/review-hellraiser-iii-hell-on-earth.html"><i>Hellraiser III</i></a> and the reporter who thought Jerry and George were gay in that one <i>Seinfeld</i>) as the spunky preacher's daughter/proto-witch; and
<p><li><b>Joanna Pacula</b> as some sort of fashion industry honcho who's doomed to die. She only gets one scene, but I include her here because she's the film's only other name actor besides Sands.
<p>Probably the weirdest thing about this movie is its editing. The two parallel stories at work throughout <i>Warlock: The Armageddon</i> are (1) hero boy very gradually learning about his destiny and subjecting himself to whimsical training montages, complete with music cues stolen from <i>Star Wars</i>; and (2) the Warlock's wacky road trip, taking him on a bloody rampage involving runway models, circus freaks, a hitchhiking prostitute, and a hyper-rich executive's office. (I was really hoping for a Sally Jessy-esque talk-show scene, to fully embody the film's era.)
<p>Now, when you've got a thin premise like this one, it makes some sense to divide your hero and villain characters up like this into dual storylines that don't directly interact until the finale. But what's strange is how frequently, and artlessly, the cuts from one to the other occur. You never quite know when a scene is really over, because it might just be "paused" to show Sands meeting some new doomed characters, and this leads to a dizzying and ultimately fatiguing effect, reducing viewer engagement.
<p>My hunch is that this editing choice was a deliberate effort to conceal just how boring the hero-boy storyline really is. Luckily, the crazy is on full display elsewhere, especially in the fairly well-done circus sequence. Not only is its overall feel appropriately icky and confusing, but the precise doom that the Warlock has in store for the Scott Adsit look-alike carny is pretty much the only slightly scary moment in the film.
<p>Sadly, the rest of the Warlock's shenanigans feel heavily influenced by such tripe as <i>Nightmare on Elm Street</i>, what with the Warlock's lame one-liners and thematically-appropriate kills. This tone replaces the goofy charm of the first <i>Warlock</i>, and the vaguely-drawn small-town hero characters bring nothing to the table. Nor is the early '90s CG very helpful: it mainly involves small objects spinning in circles, then other small objects spinning in circles. The result: a strong sense of sameness, and a yearning for the genuine menace of your <i>Hellraisers</i> or the low-budget idiosyncrasy of your <i>Phantasms</i>.
<p>In the end, the Warlock is of course defeated—<i>for now</i>—and everything just kind of ends, with none of the expected implication that Druid Boy and Witch Girl are gonna go off and have adventures or children or whatever. Perhaps that's for the best.
<p>If we are to try and make a coherent franchise narrative out of this film and its predecessor, we face a conundrum: the opening scenes in the sequel seem to take place in the Middle Ages, <b>before</b> the start of <i>Warlock: The Beginnening</i>. So does that mean the chronology goes (1) Warlock's birth is barely prevented by a bunch of unconvincing-looking druids; (2) about two or three hundred years later, he's born under circumstances not shown in these movies; (3) he gets arrested and escapes to the 1980s, then gets defeated; and (4) he's reborn in the early '90s, suddenly remembering the business with the stones, yet forgetting about the Grand Grimoire? Are we to infer that warlocks have a learning disability that prevents them from being aware of more than one MacGuffin at the same time?
<p>I'd guess the lack of continuity involves different screenwriters and the desire to avoid unnecessary royalty payments. Maybe the third and final (?) film—<i>Warlock III: The End of Innocence</i>—will surprise us all and tie its predecessors together somehow. That would represent a level of creative effort unapproached by <i>Warlock: The Armaggedon</i>.
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 1.5 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4751192932353791305.post-24014117989266915362013-10-11T14:25:00.000-05:002013-10-11T14:25:15.712-05:00Review: The Cabin in the Woods<p>(Warning: major spoilers ahead. If you were interested enough to get this far, and you haven't seen it, go see it now. It's on Netflix Instant.)
<p>What do we mean when we talk about "sacrifice"? And what do I mean when I say "we"? "We" could be modern Western media-savvy types—Joss Whedon's usual audience. "We" could be modern Americans.
<p>"We" could also be all of humanity, but in rewatching <i>The Cabin in the Woods</i>, I began to think in terms of premodern versus modern peoples (to use very broad categories). For premodern peoples, sacrifice means abject terror before dark forces you can't control, and feebly offering blood in the hope of placating those forces, under the assumption that they want blood, since they're obviously dark and all—what with their plagues and floods and pyroclastic flows.
<P>For modern Americans, perhaps modern peoples generally, sacrifice means soldiers, firemen, and cops. What if both meanings of sacrifice are the same? What if the dark forces to whom we now sacrifice our young (mostly) men are war, random fiery destruction, and man's inhumanity to man, respectively? And was there an early version of this script where one of the cabin visitors was a veteran of a recent war?
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<p>If so, that would have made for a profoundly unsettling commentary on our collective value system, rather than the only sorta unsettling commentary on horror genre tropes that we got.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yZZudgR7Hls/Ujhvj7i0-lI/AAAAAAAAAWA/HmXbCANmEzk/s1600/cabininthewoods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" align=right width=320 title="Where libidinous youths go, trouble follows" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yZZudgR7Hls/Ujhvj7i0-lI/AAAAAAAAAWA/HmXbCANmEzk/s400/cabininthewoods.jpg" /></a></div>I don't mean that as a true criticism—you can't blame <i>Fantastic Four</i> for not being <i>Batman</i>. And I don't mean to suggest <i>The Cabin in the Woods</i> is bad or disappointing, or even especially shallow (though it's not significantly deeper than, say, <i>Scream</i>). Like any horror film that really excels, it takes a moment now and then to step back from the fantastical and implausible elements to acknowledge the real horror taking place. Which is kind of remarkable considering what kind of movie this is.
<p>But I do look at its impressive last few shots and wonder what more could have been achieved here. The stoner character's thoughts on modern society are almost a throwaway moment, yet the movie basically turns them into a theme. Does a movie that straight-up destroys the world have a <i>responsibility</i> to do more than have fun with a gallery of vicious monsters?
<p>I'd argue no. To draw a parallel with a similarly monster-intensive setting, many's the D&D DM who's wondered what a game world would look like in which the demons/undead/evil dragons/illithids were to <i>win</i>—if the prototypical narrative of "band of heroes trying to save the world against incredible odds" ended the way it's not supposed to.
<p>And, in wondering that, I have doubts that such a setting would be sustainable in the sense of providing enough good story opportunities. Likewise, hypothetical sequels to <i>Cabin</i> would have to get very strange indeed, and it's hard to see how they could work even <i>if</i> the first one had done more world-building and theme-circling.
<p>In a sense, that's a good thing. Part of <i>Cabin</i>'s audacity is its cataclysmic finality; in an age where every movie with even a whiff of genre is eager to set up a franchise, here's one that says, "Not gonna happen." When I saw this in the theater, I laughed aloud when the credits started.
<p>The rest of what makes <i>Cabin</i> special is its worldbuilding and the pace at which it parcels out information about its world. <i>Buffy</i> fans may have a slight edge in figuring everything out, and some viewers will have been spoiled by careless friends, but the ride is still a riot. A totally solid cast helps keep the fantastical goings-on grounded and affecting.
<p>So while I obviously feel a little conflicted about just <b>how</b> successful I consider <i>Cabin in the Woods</i> to be, the things I'm not conflicted about are
<ul>
<li>that it's very good;
<li>that it's an absolute, drop-everything-right-now must-see for horror fans, even those with an aversion to Whedon;
<li>and that it portends great potential for earth-shattering developments in the <i>Avengers</i> sequels.
</ul>
<p><b><a href="http://fraughtexperiments.blogspot.com/p/fraught-experiments-star-score-guide.html">Star Score</a>:</b> 4 out of 5Z. Aurelius Fraughthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871282231540186137noreply@blogger.com0