Review: A Talking Cat!?!

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That w…

Why d…

I don't know where to begin.

A Talking Cat!?! (presumably available on Netflix Instant only because Netflix has a demonstrated sense of humor) is a kid's movie about a cat whose unexplained ability to talk "brings two families together" and somehow solves the problems of its entire six-person cast, headed by the over-the-hill neighbor duo of Phil and Susan. Its budget is only exceeded in thinness by its screenwriting, directing, "99 Discount Movie Background Music Tracks" score, and entire concept. It's not hyperbole to say this may be the worst film I've ever seen. And, as you should know by now, I've seen some doozies.

Days of Future Past

I just watched the Deep Space Nine two-parter "Past Tense" again recently. Though it's not DS9 at its very best, and it's preachy even for Star Trek, it's always affecting—and it seems like every time I watch it, it becomes more plausible.

I'm not referring, of course, to the "chroniton envelope isolating the Defiant from the changes to the timeline" business, or even the idea of "changes to the timeline" making sense. If time travel is possible, nobody but the time travelers would ever perceive "changes to the timeline," because the act of traveling into the past would spawn divergent timelines that cannot be re-merged, but instead only be made to seem identical…but that's a discussion for another time. (Maybe when I finally get around to watching Primer, that can be part of my review.)

No, the plausible part is all the 2024 Sanctuary District stuff. The last time I watched "Past Tense" was probably four or five years ago, and what felt plausible then is no less so now:

"It's not that they don't give a damn, Doctor. It's that they've given up. The social problems facing them seem too enormous to deal with." - Sisko

"We had to cancel our trip to the Alps this year because of the student protests in France." - the female party guest

"Jobs. You guys want jobs? When are you going to figure it out? There are no jobs! Not for us, anyway." - B.C.

Review: Oz: The Great and Powerful

It seems, based on passing mentions of him here and there, that the James Franco backlash is well underway. I thought he was likable and pleasant in the few things I've seen him in (obviously I haven't seen Spring Breakers), and I'd include Oz: The Great and Powerful on that list too; he's essentially the one consistently above-average factor in this mostly mediocre Huge Disney Event. So whatever the backlash is due to, I'd be mildly surprised if it was his acting.

That's not to say Franco is perfect for the role of the Wizard. He's charming and invested, and though the CG sidekicks' voice acting was solid, none of the other human cast did nearly as well as Franco at reacting plausibly to the fantastical goings-on. That said, Franco's "carnival showman" persona feels forced—which may have been intentional, but an actor with a little more genuine power and menace would have suited the character better, especially near the end. Franco also speaks and behaves in too modern a fashion, which I wouldn't mind if it wasn't so obvious that Oz is trying to directly act as both prequel and homage to The Wizard of Oz. Surely some young actors somewhere are capable of '30s-style speech and acting—but perhaps not the most marketable young actors.

Review: Miami Connection

I have a standard operating procedure when confronted with a film so astoundingly, unforgettably inept that it is destined for a special place in my heart. I refer to the likes of Birdemic, The Room, Teen-Age Strangler, or The Beast of Yucca Flats—a film I adore so much I've created a second Twitter account in its honor. That procedure is to ask myself, not in sarcastic bafflement (though there's that, too), "How/why did this get made?" I often feel that I can't fully evaluate a cinematic turd until I've been able to come up with at least a plausible answer to this question.

In the case of the preceding examples, the answers are (in order) "somebody thought he was both Hitchcock and Al Gore"; "somebody wanted to get aspiring naked actress flesh all over him"; "a small town thought they could come together and make a swell picture just as well as Hollywood"; and, well, "I'm Coleman Francis; I don't need a reason."

Which brings us to the glory and the power that is 1987's musical-action spectacular, Miami Connection.

Imagine a Miami where rival synth-pop bands, vying for the choice gig at a particular club, enlist cocaine-funded motorcycle ninjas and gangs full of Mad Max extras to assault one another seemingly at random.

(Did I have you at "motorcycle ninjas"? Maybe skip to the end, then. Otherwise, stay with me.)

Review: The Whistleblower

The roughest of the many rough scenes in The Whistleblower takes place in the dungeon-like back room of a Bosnian sex traffickers' bar, where trafficked women are forced to watch as one of their number, who took the chance of talking to UN authorities and wound up recaptured, is viciously assaulted as an example to the others.

I mention this off the top because The Whistleblower is based on a true story, and that, combined with how rough it gets, may challenge some viewers' capacity to handle the movie. Those who can, and who are patient with a slow build, will find it a gripping and harsh look at a terrifying world, not unlike a particularly uncompromising episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Like other fictionalized versions of true stories, I have to guess that The Whistleblower would seem less striking to viewers who know the ins and outs of the true story. I'd never even heard of Kathryn Bolkovac, though, which meant I was soon absorbed—wondering exactly how the titular whistle would be blown (and by the way, um, spoiler alert, movie?) and at what cost. Throughout, the plot points remain realistic enough that you come away from this movie feeling like Taken just never should have even been made. (Though Taken is, admittedly, more fun.)

Review: Mulan

Other "Disney Renaissance" films have aged better than Mulan, which I found oppressively formulaic but otherwise watchable upon my first-ever viewing of it last week. A lot of my lukewarm reaction is probably owed to Mulan just not quite getting off on the right foot. The first half-hour felt so much like a note-perfect parody of Disney movie formula that I actually made a comment to that effect to Mrs. Fraught BEFORE the butt-injury gag.

The early part of the film also establishes the songs' weakness and the too-numerous animal sidekicks, most of whom don't speak and therefore are weakly defined as characters (beyond the standard attributes of "wacky" and "fun"). Of course, since they thought it would be a good idea to give the one speaking animal role to Eddie Murphy, perhaps we should be thankful that the other animals didn't talk.

Review: Body Armor (a.k.a. The Protector)

I'll wager there are better, and less offensive (on multiple levels), representatives of the "cheap action film with a stuntman actually given a lead role" genre available on Netflix Instant than Body Armor, an adolescent tale of one man's struggle against a villainous big-pharma-industrialist and his plot to unleash fearsome viruses so he can sell the vaccines. Body Armor is the Netflix/home video title, though in its original made-for-cable state it was called The Protector, and neither title suits it very well. Here, then, are some ideas for better, more medically-themed titles:

The Infector – which would put more emphasis on the one mildly interesting character, the villain.

Blood Vengeance – as in, the action scenes have blood, and he's got a virus in his blood; see what I did there?

Critical Attack – as in, how we might expect film critics to respond.

Lethal Strain – as in, sitting through it is such a strain, I wouldn't recommend trying if you have a heart condition.

Feel free to use all of those, movie. Obviously you don't care what people call you.

Review: Superman Returns

A fan of the first two Christopher Reeve Superman films will find Superman Returns to be a fun, affectionate follow-up. A fan of the other two Christopher Reeve Superman films does not, so far as I am aware, exist—so this will be the last mention of them.

Briefly, the setup is that Superman left Earth to scope out the remnants of his homeworld, which took five years. In the interim, Luthor got out of prison, Lois got a human mate and had a kid, and all the other heroes in the DC universe were apparently also on long space voyages, because bad stuff kept happening. Early in the film, Superman Returns; this naturally entails some adjustment for everyone involved.

One might think this film to have been a general failure, considering that this film came out only seven years before yet another reboot (Man of Steel, which I'll be waiting for home video to see). While it's pretty evident why Superman Returns failed to spawn a franchise, on its own merits, it's actually fairly competent. Some sequences are truly cool, the effects are weak only once or twice, and it lacked a lot of the sorts of cliches we've gotten so used to that we don't even complain about them anymore. (Well, it had one big one: a female lead too young to be believable as her character. When did Lois start working at the Daily Planet? When she was twelve?)

Review: The Mist

Based on a Stephen King novella, The Mist is a skillful and gripping monster/horror flick directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) that you should definitely see if you fall into any of the following categories:

you are familiar with, and enjoy, the "survival horror" genre

you like Stephen King's style (e.g. small town in Maine, every minor character is known by name to every other minor character, families in crisis due to monsters, etc.)

…and especially if

you like a really great fuck-you ending.

I've mentioned the fuck-you ending on this blog before. The fuck-you ending is the wonderful device whereby the filmmakers craft the story such that the audience thinks "Well, they can't POSSIBLY end the movie THAT way," and then they go ahead and do it. Drag Me to Hell had a very apt fuck-you ending in which a major character, well, justifies the movie's title.

Review: Pacific Rim

If you've ever said to yourself, "I enjoy Godzilla movies for their camp value, but why hasn't anyone ever made a more realistic one, with modern special effects?", then you obviously weren't paying attention in 1998 when the execrable Godzilla remake starring Matthew Broderick came out. However, you're in luck, hypothetical monster movie aficionado, because Guillermo del Toro made Pacific Rim just for you, and you'll be satisfied by it. The rest of us will have more mixed feelings.

Pacific Rim is undeniably effective at doing what it sets out to do: make huge robots punch huge monsters and make it look awesome and believable. My giggles of enjoyment occurred during these scenes, which demonstrate skillful design, flawless digital imagery, and imaginative storyboarding. Unfortunately—in this age when special effects are no longer special, but expected—it needed to do more than that to win over that segment of the audience who DOESN'T enjoy Godzilla movies for their camp value, represented by a couple guys we overheard leaving the theater, one of whom said "Well, that was the stupidest movie I've seen in a long time."

Review: Seven Below

Some years ago I watched the late-era Val Kilmer movie Spartan because I'd always been a fan of Kilmer but I'd seen some online scuttlebutt to the effect of "Hey, hurr hurr, how 'bout that washed-up loser Val Kilmer, huh? Look at these complete shit movies he's makin' now," so after I finished Spartan, I thought, "Well, okay, that wasn't GREAT, but it was far from complete shit, and Kilmer was pretty darn good in it; so, Internet haters? What the hell?"

Well, this. This the hell.

The infinitesimal-budget horror flick Seven Below (or 7 Below, as it's known on Netflix Instant, not that I'm advising you to look for it) involves a group of tourists heading into the wilderness of Minnesota but winding up "trapped" by "dangerous" weather in a creepy old house full of booze and ghosts and bad acting. I give it credit for having a cast of characters not comprised entirely of oversexed high-school kids, but the cast we do get nevertheless fails to be interesting. At least they fit in well with the similarly uninteresting story, music, direction, dialogue…

Review: Cosmopolis

I did like the music. Gotta say that right up front. There wasn't enough of it, but what was there, I liked. It contributed to the intermittently dreamlike mood.

But otherwise? Cosmopolis is a pretentious mess, a string of disjointed scenes whose purpose feel less like narrative advancement and more like "let's bring in this actor now." The thematic continuity, such as it is, tries to seem like it's got its "finger on the pulse" of contemporary American issues like class warfare, sexual politics, and crazed lone gunmen. But if educators in future generations decide this movie represents our time, then I feel bad for the students forced to watch it.

Maybe my vitriol is partly due to the concept's inherent appeal and potential. Cosmopolis concerns a brilliant and amoral young Wall Street bazillionaire whose financial empire begins to collapse all around him while he spends most of the movie in his borderline-sci-fi limo surrounded by riots. AND it's directed in a sterile, sleek fashion by David Friggin' Cronenberg. I can imagine a universe where I love the shit out of that movie.