Review: Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Like many horror sequels, Hellbound: Hellraiser II attempts to up the stakes and the scope of its predecessor. In the attempt, it manages to walk the fine line between "expanding the setting" and "explaining too much." All the same, now that we understand a bit more of what to expect from Cenobites and skinless undead, the scariness is diminished—its vacancy filled with extra gore and weirdness.

Hellbound picks up soon after the events of, and includes several flashbacks to, the first Hellraiser (my review is here). I assume the intent was to make the film comprehensible to those who missed the first one, and indeed, so thorough is the recap that this is one case where I doubt you'd miss much if you went straight to the sequel. It might feel more WTF than it already does, though, and plus you'd miss Andrew Robinson (the dad in the first movie), who doesn't reprise his role here. The only other principal who doesn't return is the boyfriend, but maybe he died in the last movie…I didn't care enough to commit that detail to memory.

Map My Brain

I basically never pay more than the very slightest attention to the State of the Union address, but this time, something jumped out at me:

Obama to Back Brain Mapping (NYT)

The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.

The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.

Review: The Thirteenth Floor

If you've ever played The Sims, you should probably see The Thirteenth Floor, if only to make Sims jokes throughout. Whether you actually enjoy the film at all is highly dependent on your aesthetic preferences and your patience. It's competent enough, but The Thirteenth Floor suffers from a few major flaws and some of the minor flaws that can nevertheless prove to be persistent irritants in a high-concept sci-fi film.

We start off meeting an old guy named Fuller who's a user in a fully-immersive VR world with a 1937 L.A. setting. He delivers a letter to a Sim bartender (the always-welcome Vincent D'Onofrio, with terrible hair) and returns to the real world, only to get killed. Douglas, his friend and employee, is our protagonist (played by Craig Bierko, who's a vat-grown fusion of George Clooney and Brendan Fraser, but drained of charisma); he immediately begins investigating the mysterious murder, which unsurprisingly involves delving into the unsurprisingly dangerous and experimental VR machine. (They call this process "jacking in," a phrase already dated by 1999.) Douglas soon runs afoul of an unsurprisingly no-nonsense LAPD detective (Dennis Haysbert of Allstate ad fame, and get this, his character's name is McBain). A beautiful woman with a secret (Gretchen Mol) unsurprisingly appears, the plot unsurprisingly thickens, and our hero unsurprisingly discovers that all this time he's been living In a World Where Nothing Is What It Seems. Unsurprisingly.

Review: The White Diamond

The White Diamond is a continually intriguing and occasionally breathtaking documentary from Werner Herzog. This time Herzog turns his incisive eye on Graham Dorrington, a British aeronautical engineer trying to develop a small, highly maneuverable airship for studying the top of the jungle canopy (here's his website). But it turns out he's done this before, and with tragic consequences.

You can't help but wonder how Herzog finds these people and these situations. In this case I almost suspect his agent has standing orders to report to Herzog any and all eccentric-seeming types who're planning an ambitious project deep in the jungle. That, or Dorrington himself figured, "I'm an eccentric-seeming type who's planning an ambitious project deep in the jungle; maybe I ought to give Werner Herzog a call."

Mere Cyberocracy Is Loosed Upon the World

Let's take it as a given that we are currently living in, or very fast approaching, a "cyberpunk present"—a state of social and technological affairs predicted more or less accurately by the cyberpunk genre. (If you need evidence, consider such facts of our lives as the might of multinational tech companies in comparison to the traditional nation-state; reduced relevance of the electorate in historically democratic societies; surveillance that's effectively invisible and potentially ubiquitous; the world's leaders being basically unopposed in, and having no qualms about, using that surveillance in ways they alone determine to be appropriate; and the ragtag alliance of secretive, tech-expert rebels who hide on the 'Net and occasionally score massive coups against "the Machine" that give hope to the like-minded but fail to gain much attention from the general public.)

As far as I can tell, the only criterion for a "cyberpunk present" that we haven't yet met is widespread (or even niche) fusion of tech and the human body. It's coming, though—whether in the form of Google Goggles or elective surgical brain/body enhancement. And that's assuming pharmaceuticals and performance-enhancing substances don't already qualify.

So let's call the present the Early to Middle Cyber Age. To some degree, its cyberpunkish traits are owed to the cyberpunk authors themselves—they developed concepts and terms that inspired development of groups and technology that are parts of our lives now, even if the affectations, like black leather and mirrorshades, are dated. (To say nothing of the tech specifics. If you want a good laugh, watch the movie Hackers sometime.)

Review: Headhunters

Too many thrillers just aren't very thrilling. Usually it's because they rely on big action setpieces, cheap plot devices, or Morgan Freeman to twist our arms into caring about what's happening, and as a result we don't care enough.

In the first half-hour or so of Headhunters, a stylish Norwegian thriller, I found myself reflecting on this, poised as I was quite close to the edge of my seat. "Here is a protagonist who, while clearly competent, isn't especially likable, and yet I care about what's happening," I said to myself, "not to mention what is sure to happen when the shit hits the fan. I wonder why I'm so engrossed, when so many similar films have failed to engage me much."

Review: The Flying Deuces

I have a short list of what I consider true "comedy epics"—films with a broad scope, outlandish style of humor, longish running time, and enough momentum to entirely or mostly overcome the fatigue that inevitably sets in under the preceding conditions. My go-to exemplars of the comedy epic are It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Blues Brothers; at the moment I can't think of any others I'd put in the same category.

While less than seventy minutes long, The Flying Deuces at times feels like it's trying to be a comedy epic, but comes off more as merely a high-budget "event" vehicle for its stars, Laurel and Hardy. I don't pretend to know much about the trajectory of early comedy teams' careers, but The Flying Deuces had a lot of the tedium that I've always assumed many of the later Abbott & Costello films probably have.

Review: Hobo with a Shotgun

About halfway into Hobo with a Shotgun, I realized that what I was looking at was basically a slasher flick, but with the trappings of exploitation cinema of a generation or so ago. I expected the amount of violence, but not the goriness and near-torture-porn level of intensity—it got to be downright uncomfortable in parts, even as I laughed incredulously. But by the time the Plague showed up, I'd become comfortable with the world inhabited by Hobo with a Shotgun, and honestly wouldn't even mind a sequel—which I imagine could not help but be entitled Hooker with a Hook.

The plot is simple and direct, yet not wholly predictable. Rutger Hauer is our hobo, hopping off a train in a town run by a drug lord named the Drake—a man so depraved that he really belongs in one of those central African dictatorships so memorably described in The Onion's Our Dumb World. Hauer's character, despite an amusing and endearing brain-damaged-philosopher sort of approach to the world, is gradually pushed into fighting back against the rot all around him…resulting in a blood-soaked battle against impossible odds, the likes of which you can really only compare to any D&D campaign where you played a paladin who went to hell.

Review: Centurion

In deciding whether to watch Centurion, ask yourself the following:

• Am I an ancient history/Rome geek, but not an expert?
• Does over-the-top blood and dismemberment satisfy me as much as strong plot and character development?
• Do I have an unreasonable crush on Olga Kurylenko and/or Michael Fassbender?

If you answered "yes" to ALL of those questions, then you probably won't find Centurion to be a waste of time. For me, only the first criterion applied.

It's not that the movie's short on style, or budget, or kick-ass kills. It's that, beyond these strengths, there's basically nothing. The story is simplistic, often meandering, and thoroughly predictable; the characters are only barely better defined than in a slasher horror flick; and the overall weak dialogue is sadly less embarrassing than the pointless narration. (You always hear about pointless narration—critics love to point out when it should've been dropped entirely. This movie's practically a case study in the phenomenon.)

Review: Wheel of Time

As Herzog documentaries go, Wheel of Time is fairly sedate and un-unsettling. I guess that's to be expected, considering the subject matter is Tibetan Buddhism.

The drama comes from Herzog's examination of some intense, and intensely foreign, faithful and their practices. He shows us preparations for a massive Buddhist event (called the Kalachakra initiation) at Mahabodhi in Bodh Gaya; a later, similar event in Graz, Austria; a massive pilgrimage at the holy Mount Kailash; an interview with a Tibetan former political prisoner; and his conversation with the Dalai Lama. Each segment of the film has its own remarkable moments, but to give examples would spoil much of what makes Wheel of Time intriguing.

Review: Dawn of the Dragon Slayer

I went into this fantasy cheapie expecting it to be another Sci-Fi SyFy crapfest—fun to riff but not worth reviewing. As it turned out, there's some real competence at work here, and the only really silly moments are the first two scenes (only the second of which turns out to have the slightest relevance to the rest of the movie.) But unless you're more starved for fantasy than I imagine is possible nowadays, "competence" isn't enough for me to make a recommendation.