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Dracula III: Legacy (2005)

Oct 092005

Uffizi (Jason Scott Lee), a half vampire and newly ex-priest, and Luke (Jason London) travel to Romania to hunt down Dracula and find Luke’s girlfriend (Diane Neal). They meet Julia Hughes (Alexandra Westcourt), a television reporter, and the three of them battle past hordes of vampires and sidestep rebel forces to reach the count.

Dracula 2000 was a self-contained film that didn’t need a sequel, particularly a direct-to-video sequel (does any film need a direct to video sequel?). If financial matters necessitated a follow-up, then it should have chronicled the adventures of Mary Heller, but Mary Heller: That Girl from the Dracula 2000 Movie isn’t a title that puts butts in seats, so Dracula returned in two films shot back-to-back. Except for the low budget, the two films are oddly dissimilar. Dracula II: Ascension was a lab-bound, watch-the-college-students-die, horror pic. Dracula III: Legacy is a buddy cop film, shot mainly outside, on location in Romania. It has the typical buddy chatter, a lot of action, and exterior shots of beautiful ancient castles. It can’t match the more professional production of Dracula 2000, but it is a significant improvement over its predecessor.

The intended audience, fans of low budget horror films, will find the story old hat. There are no great mysteries or plot twists. It’s just standard travel, fight, travel. The characters are nothing new as well. Luke almost has a personality and is occasionally funny. He’s also stuck repeatedly doing the opposite of what he’s told for no reason than to force the plot along. Julia Hughes is there as a romantic interest. She has no other purpose nor identifiable motivation. The romance doesn’t come naturally from the characters, but exists only because the words “Julia likes Uffizi” could be written in the margins of the script. Uffizi is a generic badass. Jason Scott Lee gives no indication that the ex-priest has any traits outside of his role as vampire killer. But he fights well, and Lee can flex his pecks with the best of them. The vampire carnage isn’t bad, although we seldom get a clear view of what’s going on. Instead, the camera turns to the wall so that we get shots of splatter. Well, tossing red paint on some bricks is cheap to film.

The scenery is where Dracula III: Legacy is better than the typical numbered sequel. Romania is the place to film a vampire movie. The forests and mountains have a slightly sinister look, and the ruins aren’t something you’ll find in the new world. Adding a subplot of civil unrest due to vamps controlling the government was a nice bit of background, but went nowhere.

Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) takes over the role of Dracula for no conceivable reason. So, each movie gets a new king of the vamps. However, Hauer is hardly in the film, popping in only in the last few minutes to ham it up. If his part reqired more than a day of shooting, they weren’t trying. Too many low budget films are using what little money they have to hire name actors whose career is sliding away. I suppose it makes sense for marketing, but it doesn’t make a better picture. If Hauer’s appearance is brief, Roy Scheider’s, as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cardinal is ridiculous. He walks in with Lee early in the picture, recites a few quick lines, and then is off to cash his paycheck.

Dracula III: Legacy is strictly for people with at least twenty vampire movies on their shelves (and ones starring Nicolas Cage don’t count). It’s bloody without a great deal of gore, contains nudity but not enough to excite anyone, and has plenty of combat of the moderately exciting variety. Those with low expectations will be satisfied.

Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Two Reels

Bram Stoker’s Way Of The Vampire (2005)

Oct 092005

One hundred years ago, the youthful vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing (Rhett Giles) killed Dracula, but failed to protect his wife from a lesser vampire prince, Sebastien (Andreas Beckett). This caused Van Helsing to make a deal with the Church, making him immortal as long as a vampire prince survives. Since that time, he has destroyed the nosferatu, and the few that remain exist as homeless beggars, abstaining from human blood so they won’t get caught. But Arianna (Denise Boutte), one of the most powerful of the undead, brings Sebastien blood, which reinvigorates him, and he leads the vampires back into action. It is up to Van Helsing to recruit a band of religious warriors and stop the monsters.

After Van Helsing, it was inevitable that smaller production companies would start pumping out Abraham Van Helsing action hero films. It beats the old version of the character, an elderly moral authority, but since he was always dull in that form, that’s not saying a lot. How many films of this old-made-young, stuffy doctor, running around with an arsenal, is too many? However many that might be, this is one over it.

But, ignoring the unnecessary and repetitive nature of this project, how does Bram Stoker’s Way Of The Vampire stand up? It’s a mixed bag. The low budget is obvious, but some innovative, if overdone camerawork and lighting effects distract from the low production values. The b&w prolog, the sepia toned vampire perspective, and the slow-motion/fast-motion movements of the vamps give the film a sense of style often lacking in monster films that come from the shallow end of the funding pool.

The script is uneven. Too much time is spent with Van Helsing training people we don’t care about and wish weren’t in the film, and normal people, such as police and hospital administrators (who might have problems with Van Helsing cutting bodies apart in an operating room), are missing. But the reemergence of the vampires after years of hiding is an idea that has legs. Painting them as street people gives the picture a nice, revolution-of-the-poor feeling

The playboy vampire prince, who would rather feast on naked young girls than plan the defeat of his enemy, isn’t an original personality, but one that’s still fun onscreen. And Arianna, the warrior vamp who has a more realistic notion of how to survive, supplies a feeling of needed satisfaction when no one else is doing anything sensible. Unfortunately, Van Helsing is dry as bone (is this guy ever, in any film, interesting?). His semi-girlfriend has no discernible personality, as is the case with all the other humans and just about all of the vampires.

So, we’ve got a direct-to-video vampire movie with some skill behind the camera, and a little blood and skin in front of it. It is almost fun. Where it falls down is with the acting. The best job is done by Denise Boutte, and she’s not up to the level of an extra in any mainstream film. The rest make her look like an Oscar nominee. Rhett Giles and Andreas Beckett are impossible to believe in their roles, but at least I can tell that they are actors. The majority of the figures on screen appear to be whoever was hanging out at the local bar when the director realized he didn’t have a cast. Their tones rarely have anything to do with how they should be feeling, but as they tend to shuffle and look uncomfortably at the floor, I’m guessing what they are feeling is an intense desire to leave and get another shot of bourbon.

There isn’t nearly enough gore and nudity to put this into the amusing, exploitation category. That means the talent of the performers is important. To bad they had none. Maybe if they’d been given some help with clever dialog or complex motivations…but they weren’t.

Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Two Reels

Man with the Screaming Brain (2005)

Oct 082005

Obnoxious American CEO, William Cole (Bruce Campbell), travels to Bulgaria to invest in a subway. When he is murdered, along with his ex-KGB cab driver, Yegor, a mad scientist (Stacy Keach) and his assistant (Ted Raimi) resurrect him, using parts of the cab driver’s brain to repair Cole’s. When Cole’s wife is also murdered, the scientist puts her brain into a handy robot. Both Cole/Yegor and his robot wife escape from the scientist in order to search for their killer.

I like Bruce Campbell (as an actor, we’ve never had martinis at the club so I can’t say anything more than that). I’ve been waiting a long time, since Army of Darkness, for a film to use his talents, his charisma, and gift with comedy…and I’m going to go right on waiting. Someone needs to design a film for this man, and that someone should not be Bruce Campbell.

Campbell has been trying to make Man with the Screaming Brain for 19 years. Why? For the love of God, why? With credits as writer, director, producer and star, Campbell is responsible for what’s on the screen. Sure, the obviously too-low budget is beyond his control, so the Sci-Fi channel, which supplied both funding and the ill-considered requirement that they shoot in Bulgaria, gets a bit of the blame, but this was Campbell’s mutant baby. It didn’t need better care; it needed to be stillborn.

For a zany send-up of ’50s B-movies, it’s not very zany. In the first half hour, nothing funny or absurd happens at all. Instead, we get cab rides. We get Cole deriding socialism (which ends up going nowhere; odd considering how much time is spent in these political diatribes). We get Cole unsuccessfully hitting on a gypsy girl. We get the ignored wife hitting on the cab driving. This isn’t a sci-fi comedy; it’s a soap opera.

Finally, Cole dies and the comedy goes into…well…maybe first gear. Campbell does a few nice slapstick routines as Cole fights with Yegor for control of their brain, but nothing he didn’t do better in Evil Dead II. We also get Ted Raimi rapping in a faux-Bulgarian accent, which is even less humorous than it sounds (assuming you think it sounds painful).

In the end, Man with the Screaming Brain becomes a blandly directed rip-off of several Steve Martin movies (and why would anyone, ever, want to rip off Steve Martin movies?). Primarily, it’s a poorly done version of All of Me. I’d always considered All of Me to be the poorly done version of All of Me, but live and learn.

Like so many others, I was hoping for a twisted, edgy, cult comedy. Instead, I watched a conventional, predictable film that manages silly, but never funny. Back to waiting.

Back to Mad Scientists

Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Frankenstein Reborn (2005)

Oct 082005

Arrested for multiple murders, scientist Victor Franks (Rhett Giles) tells the story of his experiments to a psychologist. He had developed nonobots for repairing and revitalizing tissue, but an error caused his subject to go insane. Frank killed him, and then brought him back, but what he got was a murderous monster.

Did there need to be another rendition of Frankenstein? The book is filled with possibilities, but every angle has been cinematically developed, expanded, twisted, and generally mangled ten or fifteen times. But, if you are going to make an unnecessary movie, the folks at Asylum had the right idea. This splatter updating of the classic has sex, drugs, and background-droning rock-n-roll. It is much more entertaining than it has any right to be, but not quite what is should have been.

Rhett Giles, who made a bland, lifeless Van Helsing in Way of the Vampire, has no problems with the brilliant, arrogant, party-hardy sociopath, Victor Franks. Sure he’s technically the bad guy, but there’s charm mixed with his mayhem. Partly, that’s due to a marvelous relationship with Elizabeth, a “simple girl from the Midwest” who enjoys bondage, S&M, and three-ways. The two of them take such joy in their actions, both in and out of the lab, that its impossible not to wish them well.

The homages to both the book and earlier films come fast and furious (I say “homage” because “rip-off” is rude, and it’s too far away from the source material to be considered a direct rendition). The best has the monster befriending a child, but instead of tossing her in the water, he takes out the babysitter. (And quite properly. When the kid says she doesn’t want to call 911, the soon-to-be corpse yells “Do it you little bitch or we’re going to die!” Well, the lesson here is, don’t call a cute little girl a “bitch.”)

The story is told in flashback, but to a psychologist at an insane asylum instead of to a captain on a ship in icy waters. It works as well as the original as a framing device. The events are told slightly out of order, with segments overlapping, sometimes giving a different perspective on what happened. It is artfully done.

The creature design, looking too much like Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations for it to be entirely coincidental, is one of the best you’ll find in the low-budget world. No one has come close to Karloff”s 1930s version and most attempts are sad, pathetic makeup disasters. This monster is skeletal and lanky, and gurgles with menace. There is no innocence it in. It’s the doctor’s ID on the warpath.

Gore-hounds will be more than satisfied with limbs torn off, hearts ripped out, and a neck sawed through. There’s blood everywhere. Flesh fans won’t find as much to occupy their time, but there are multiple breast-shots, a lesbian kiss, and some implied bondage.

Just when it looks like this is going to be a first-rate shocker, the fun starts sliding away. Someone forgot that a wrapper for a story, should wrap it, and that’s all. The psychologist is only useful as a straight man, and then only for a very limited conversation. But we are taken away from Franks and his blood and nudity-filled epic far too often. There’s nothing worth seeing with the psychologist, or with the two ludicrous policemen. Everything in the “present” seems to be written by someone else than the past segments, someone with no sense of fun and no idea how characters should act. Time is wasted as the police comment how they didn’t bother to interview the lone witness in a multiple murder case because she’s a child (Ummmm. Yeah. Right.), and with the psychologist almost randomly ignoring his job.

The rushed conclusion is disappointing and conventional, turning the psychologist that no one will care about, into the hero. There were so many options, but none were taken, and a movie that was pushing the envelope mildly folds up into the same kind of thing you’ve seen a hundred times before.

One technical problem also spoils the experience. Either the sound mix was done by an amateur who couldn’t see the dials, or there just weren’t enough properly placed mics. At times characters can’t be heard. This is most common when someone is speaking from off screen. This is a movie you’ll need to watch with your remote in hand to constantly raise and lower the volume.

Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Oct 062005

Cheese enthusiast and inventor Wallace (Peter Sallis – voice), and his much put upon dog, Gromit, run a humane pest control service, saving the local’s “veg” from rabbits. Things are looking up when they are hired by Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), though her less humane suitor, Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), is less than thrilled. As the village’s vegetable-growing contest approaches, a new pest appears, one which the vicar proclaims to be a were-rabbit.

The Bunny-Vac 6000™ sucks happy-go-hopping critters out of their holes and into its whirling chamber. And that says it all. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has a Bunny-Vac 6000™ and it is as delightful as every other aspect of the film.

The first three half hour Wallace & Gromit shorts (A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave) won two Academy awards and three BAFTAs, and are arguably the best short films since Elmer sang “Kill the Rabbit,” certainly since Linus missed the Great Pumpkin. Still I was concerned when I heard a feature was coming. Theatrical disappointments have been plentiful in recent years, and the Wallace & Gromit short-shorts Cracking Contraptions, while enjoyable, didn’t have the magic of the originals. Director/Animator Nick Park’s earlier feature, Chicken Run, was amusing, but it was no A Close Shave.

I needn’t have worried. The idiosyncratic Wallace and Gromit, the dog who only communicates through his eyes, and then it’s usually worry, are back with all the magic in place. The word “charming” was invented for this film. The jokes, many of them puns, don’t miss and the action is exciting (very rare in G-rated animation). It is easy to be sucked into this 3-D claymation world (a bit like the bunnies were), and care if this cheese-loving Brit will save the day, or more likely, if his trusty dog will.

You can find plenty written on the technique used in making this film and how amazing it is. But I don’t care about the work that went on behind the scenes (or I’d be praising Waterworld). I only care about what ended up on screen, and I have no complaints. I’m in the rather annoying position as a critic of finding nothing wrong with this picture. It’s been a while since I could say that.

In order to expand the duo’s adventure to feature length, Park, and writers Bob Baker, Steve Box, and Mark Burton filled in the world, creating a richer environment. Always very British, this outing has even more of the feeling of an old Ealing comedy, with eccentric, dim, but basically good characters living in an idyllic, never-never land of an England we all wish existed. In this world, nothing is more important that winning a vegetable contest at the faire.

But don’t think it’s all just cuteness. There’s a touch of the old Looney Tunes mania running wild. Plus, the film is seeped in the atmosphere of the old Universal horror movies. No film made since 1943 has been better at summoning up the tropes of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man. Plus, this one has carrots. Park has called this “the first vegetarian horror movie ever,” and so it is.

Reviews, Werewolves Tagged with: Five Reels

Constantine (2005)

Oct 052005

Policewoman Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) seeks the aid of demon hunter John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) in finding the secret behind her twin sister’s alleged suicide. The trail will lead them to demons, angels, Hell, and the Spear of Destiny, the weapon that kill Christ and may be the key to the destruction of the world.

I don’t own a lighter. That’s really my problem. You see, cool guys have lighters, and I don’t mean any modern plastic thing; I’m talking about old-school, metal lighters that ‘tink’ when you close them. They need to do that as that’s the sound of coolness. And John Constantine is so very cool. That lighter never stops ‘tinking.’ I suppose he could have done more cool things, or better yet, turned down the angst several notches, but no, it’s all about the lighter.

Constantine, on the other hand, is all about the look, and it’s got one. Darkened streets, post-apocalyptic Hell, winged angels, scuttling demons, and they all look cooler than a man with two lighters. If you can ignore the excessive number of high, overhead shots and some absurd camera angles (you really need a reason to tilt a scene forty-five degrees), the movie looks great. Score one for the art director and several more for the special effects team.

There should be more supernatural noirs. Horror lends itself to the noir style and structure, yet I can only think of a half dozen. Like its older cousins, this is a film about a flawed man, in a very flawed world, solving a mystery. For a story about the destruction of our happy existence, as well as suicide and lung cancer, it is emotionally distant, but then noirs often are, except for an overriding feeling of hopelessness. There’s a bit more hope here. Just a bit. I can’t say I cared about the plight of humanity or Constantine’s fate, but that’s alright as after each look into the dark soul of man and the cruelty of higher powers, we are zapped to another action scene or trek into perdition’s flame.

I will bow to the story’s complexity and twisted Catholic mythos (varying from what I recall from my long ago catechism class), as it was stolen from the best. I can let the similarities to The Exorcist go as an homage, but the pillaging of The Prophecy crossed the line. Explaining the looting would give away the ending of both films, so suffice it to say that if you’ve seen The Prophecy, you’ve seen Constantine.

I enjoyed Constantine in the same way I’ve enjoyed the strand of action horror pictures that have arisen in recent years, like Blade and Van Helsing. They don’t leave me thinking, but they are pretty.

A criticism coming from comics fans is that the film changes the appearance of John Constantine (brunet instead of blond) and his nationality (he’s a Brit in the comics). This is a very superficial complaint; similar thinking has propagated long established racism in comics. But I dismiss it even before worrying about it triviality and connotations because this is a movie, its own movie. It isn’t a comic book. The comics still exist. There are many attributes I use when evaluating a film: faithfulness is not one of them.

Christian Mythos, Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

The Descent (2005)

Oct 052005

A year after the tragic death of her husband and child, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) joins her extreme sports colleagues Juno (as Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid), and three other girls for a weekend of spelunking. Juno says she’s taking them to a well-known spot, but actually brings them to an unexplored cavern. A cave-in leaves them trapped and without hope of rescue, and things get worse when Sarah sees a humanoid shape in the shadows.

The Descent is the most frightening film of the year, and may be in the top ten of all time. My view was reinforced by the actions of the theater-goers around me at the late night, Sundance screening. People screamed, jumped, and in several cases, fell from their chairs. One girl bit the arm of her date. Mixed in was unsteady laughter and a few heartily-felt cheers. I have never seen (or heard) such an extreme reaction to a film. A seldom realized goal of most horror films is to scare, and in that respect, The Descent is stunningly successful.

Writer-director Neil Marshall, who made a name for himself with his relatively light, indie werewolf thriller, Dog Soldiers, sets the tension level high and never allows for a moment of release. There’s no humor here, and while that normally is a failing, jokes would be out of place in The Descent. The setting—darkened caves and claustrophobic tunnels—pushes the sanity of the characters and is likely to do a job on your brain as well. Even when the situation is relatively safe for Sarah and her friends, I felt slightly uncomfortable. Jaws kept people out of the water. This will do a better job of dissuading anyone from entering a cavern, den, or even large hole.

If the environment isn’t enough to set you on edge, the rapidly disintegrating relationships should do the trick. The ambiguity of the characters, particularly with Juno who may have had an affair with Sarah’s husband, or perhaps just wanted to, leaves nothing stable. Who is a hero and who is a villain? That’s a question Marshall prefers not to answer. There’s plenty here to make you feel uneasy long before Sarah sees something that shouldn’t be there, moving just out of eyesight.

With superb camera work, better-than-average acting, interesting-if-underdeveloped characters, a fast pace, and a score that enhances the dread, The Descent needs nothing more to be a great horror film. However, it could use something less. This is a case of the filmmakers not knowing what they had. Somehow, Marshall and company missed that this is a relentless, anxiety-producing, fright fest, so they added cheap jump scares. There are birds that suddenly fly at the screen (convinced that this is a 3-D film) accompanied by a fifty decibel increase in the soundtrack. Then bats do the same thing. Then people pop up immediately behind our hero. These moments make it hard to take the film seriously and toss it into the realm of teen slasher when it should be much more. Additionally, Marshall has his characters act stupidly to get into trouble. Considering the situation they are in, this is unnecessary. There’s plenty of ways for them to get themselves injured or killed without having a character foolishly run off from the group.

Then there is the ending. The original British ending has been altered for U.S. distribution and already there are numerous arguments across the Internet on which is the “good” one. That’s easy. Neither. Nor are they different enough to be worthy of debate. Both imply that some, or most, of the events in the film didn’t take place. Such it-was-all-a-dream-type twists were clever in the mid ’30s, but wore out their welcome in cinema by the ’50s (and in literature several hundred years earlier). Inexperienced filmmakers will fall back on this overused structure thinking it gives their films psychological depth. It doesn’t.

The Descent proves Marshall knows how to scare an audience, but it also shows that he can’t yet distinguish the clever from the clichéd. I can always hope for another re-edit when it hits DVD shelves.

Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Alien Apocalypse (2005)

Oct 052005

Astronauts, including Ivan Hood (Bruce Campbell) and Kelly (Renee O’Connor), return from a forty-year mission and find alien insectoids have taken over. Humans are used as slave labor and it is up Ivan to lead a revolt.

Written, directed, produced, and acted by ex-Xena people, Alien Apocalypse has the feel of those New Zealand TV shows. Like Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Jack of All Trades, it tries to be a mix of adventure and comedy with emotional moments, all using low budget effects. But the “deep” scenes fall flat and the adventure is action-low and has too many ridiculous moments, such as the deadly accuracy of the archers who haven’t used bows before, and the inability of the aliens to aim their own weapons. The humorous portions are where the film pulls together, but there aren’t nearly enough of those.

I couldn’t tell if some things were supposed to be jokes or just demonstrated incompetence, but I didn’t laugh, so that’s a bad sign either way. An example is the blatantly fake beards of the traitorous humans.

In several cases, the wrong decision was made for the light tone. Now it is hard to say why rape is a harsher crime than murder or torture, but in modern entertainment, that’s just the way it is. I won’t claim that an extremely talented writer couldn’t, theoretically, write a rape scene into a comedy-adventure, but Josh Becker and Robert Tapert don’t have that kind of skill, instead making the film uncomfortable when it should be fun. Like an ill-conceived, overly-serious killing early in the story, Becker and Tapert were using the rape to raise the stakes. I think a few hours studying the difference between deep drama and upbeat entertainment would do them a world of good.

Bruce Campbell is his normal, amiable self, but isn’t given enough wild, campy things to do. I kept expecting him to break loose and go nuts, but he never did.

For a low budget, low concept, Sci-Fi Campbell vehicle, there isn’t much seriously wrong with Alien Apocalypse, nor is there much right with it, and that is what sinks it.

Aliens, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

The Poseidon Adventure (2005)

Oct 042005

On New Year’s Eve, a giant wave capsizes the luxury liner…wait. It seems to be terrorists with a bomb. Well, that’s a horrible idea. Let me check on that. Yup, it’s terrorists. OK, scratch the wave. Stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorists blast a hole in the side of the Poseidon, causing it to tip over in defiance of physics. Luckily, manly, noirish, homeland security tough guy, Mike Rogo (Adam Baldwin) is there to exploit 9/11. To survive, a random group, including the already mentioned he-man, a bishop (Rutger Hauer), a weak-willed family man (Steve Guttenberg), his successful wife and their two kids, his new mistress, the ship’s doctor (C. Thomas Howell), a TV executive (Bryan Brown) and his hot, singer wife (Tinarie Van Wyk-Loots), and an older Jewish woman, must travel up to the bottom of the boat. Meanwhile, a lot of military people say lots and lots of official sounding rescue terms while moving very little.

Terrorists on the S.S. Poseidon. Huh. That’s an idea, a “let’s put our hands in the buzz saw to see what will happen” kind of idea, with all the pain that would involve. But hey, at least it’s an idea. And this is miniseries TV, where ideas are rare. The other idea, also a horrendous one, was remaking the 1971 hit The Poseidon Adventure one year before it was scheduled for a big screen make-over. That’s three takes on this material: two big budget, effects-laden extravaganzas, and one movie-of-the-week. Guess which one is going to suffer by comparison.

The cast is your usual collection of has-beens, never-haves, and not-yets. Most play to their expected level. Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) is an exception, surpassing the material, but that’s something he’s done many times in his career since he hasn’t had a string of good parts in twenty years. Baldwin (Serenity) doesn’t embarrass himself in the embarrassing role of the anti-terrorist cliché. Steve Guttenberg also stands out, but not in a good way. Now I’m going to have to go watch his earlier films to see if he could ever act. There’s no sign of it here. I recall he could at least manage a mild level of charm, but that’s missing too. He has no idea what to do with his melodramatic lines, but then it would be hard to find anyone who could make his constant, overlong speeches on how he’s made mistakes in his life either believable or entertaining. I’d settle for slightly less painful.

I’ll make it simple. The problem is that this is a miniseries. Cut it down to movie length, and it would be an amusing, mid-level disaster flick. To pad the running time, we’re given the aforementioned apologies (if you’re on a sinking ship, escape now, discuss your interpersonal relationships later), the hackneyed terrorist subplot, and scenes of the military and a British spy standing around in an operations room figuring out how to send in a rescue team. Do you know what breaks up the tension in a thriller? Cutting away to scenes of the military and a British spy standing around in an operations room figuring out how to send in a rescue team. That’s screenwriting 101.

While the basic story and occasional scenes were lifted from the previous film, little effort has been made to placate purists. A few characters haven’t changed, while others retain only their names. Married blue-color cop Ernest Borgnine, traveling with his ex-prostitute wife, transforming into super-spy Baldwin might be the biggest alteration (for those with any connection at all). It doesn’t harm the picture to have a mainly different group worming their way through flooded corridors, but it does that some of them (the dysfunctional family) are so drab.

This flick is more entertaining than its description makes out (it pretty much has to be), but I’m left without a reason to recommend it. There are two superior versions of this story, and it wasn’t all that deep to begin with. Watch the original 1971 version. If you still have an appetite for upside-down cruise ships, try the 2006 theatrical remake. After that, read the book. That’s enough Poseidon for anyone.

Disaster, Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

xXx: State of the Union (2005)

Oct 042005

Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) and half of his old military unit have been targeted by unknown assailants. To discover who is responsible, Gibbon’s breaks Darius Stone (Ice Cube) out of prison, making him the new xXx. Working outside of the system, xXx must uncover a secret plot that is somehow connected to their old general, George Deckert (Willem Dafoe), who is now secretary of state.

The original xXx was advertised as a replacement for James Bond films. Bond is a 1950s-style film spy who has crawled along behind the times. xXx is the new kind of film spy. He’s now! He’s wow! He has a blaring modern soundtrack!

When Vin Diesel decided to skip the sequel, the powers-that-be decided some black stereotypes would sucker in an urban audience, and so we have xXx: State of the Union, an embarrassing, but sometimes exciting shoot’em-up.

The sequel is far more of a standard adventure film than its predecessor. Gone are the extreme sports, social anarchy, and counterculture attitude. Darius has a “bad attitude,” but that just means he’s grouchy all the time (demonstrated by a near omnipresent scowl). All his spy skills come from training by “The Man.” How is that more edgy than Bond? He’s your average ex-special-ops spy. Apparently, making the lead black was as counterculture as Revolution Studios was willing to go.

The plot is easy enough to understand and just as difficult to believe. The problems start in the first scene, where ninja-clad bad guys break into a secret, high security government installation to kidnap Gibbons. If I was an evil megalomaniac whose scheme requires I nab a guy who lives in a nice house in the suburbs, I’d plan from the start to go after him when he’s home having dinner, where breaking and entering wouldn’t require science-fiction floating cameras and special explosives. The story doesn’t make any more sense as it progresses and requires everyone to pause before doing anything to make little speeches or to utter glib one-liners. The villain only loses (I don’t consider it a spoiler to tell you that in a pop-spy-action picture, the villain loses) because he insists on chatting when he should just pull the trigger. To win the day, xXx enlists the aid of “the brothers,” who are all criminals. If black, then criminal. Even wealthy African American still steal on the side. I’m searching for the social statement this is making, but it is hurting by brain, so I’ll move on.

The dialog makes the plot look brilliant. No real people speak like these characters, which would be all right if they said something even slightly interesting or entertaining. They don’t. The worst lines are in the only character development scene in the film, where xXx tells his underwritten, but busty, love interest that he remembers how they used to do a lot of damage in the backseat of a car. xXx: State of the Union is not a place to look for wit. Luckily, most of the dialog is quickly deadened by explosions.

Ice Cube isn’t horrible as xXx, but his one-tone, one-expression style makes him better suited for a supporting role. Cleverly, he’s kept away from Samuel L. Jackson for a majority of the picture as the comparison isn’t kind to him. Jackson, who even at his worst (that would be…here) is better than a majority of actors, shows up for his paycheck, reads his lines, and is gone. Willem Dafoe plays his standard villain. Was this the height of clever casting? Dafoe is the villain. No kidding. Why not make him the helpful, but sinister-looking NSA agent and Scott Speedman the evil, but freshly handsome, mastermind? Just for a change of pace?

But this is an action flick, so the focus isn’t on the poor casting, painful dialog, non-existent character development, clichés, ludicrous plot, or the strange political landscape where a stand-in for President George W. Bush has shifted from far right to the middle. What is important is the adrenaline pumping action, and here, xXx: State of the Union does pretty well. It isn’t spectacular, but the pace is good, the stunts are wild, and plenty of things blow up. Those ninjas dropping in at the beginning didn’t make any sense, but they get a reasonable “cool” rating. And I give the film points for finding a new, violent, and amusing use for the launch catapult on an aircraft carrier. The camera is too close in many of the hand-to-hand combat scenes, but no worse than in the average Hollywood fight of recent years. If all you require are explosions to a pounding beat, xXx: State of the Union will fulfill your needs. If you want more, go elsewhere.

James Bond is safe for another year.

Action, Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)

Oct 042005

Dick and Jane Harper (Jim Carrey, Téa Leoni) are living the upper-middle class American dream. When Dick gets promoted to VP, the future looks secure and Jane quits her job. But Dick’s boss (Alec Baldwin) is a Ken Lay-style crook and the company folds like Enron. As their lives crumble, Dick and Jane must find a new way to make money. What they find is armed robbery.

Some of you may be unfamiliar with Atlanta traffic. If so, your life is better than those around you who are not in such blissful ignorance. Bask in it. Me? I know it well. And with such knowledge, I set out at 6 pm for a nearby theater to catch the prescreening of Fun With Dick and Jane, the remake of the Jane Fonda/George Segal never-too-pointed satire of ’70s life. An hour later, I was still closer to home than to the theater. Luckily, I had planed to get there early. Instead, after spending an hour and a half on a trip that should take twenty minutes, I arrived just as the lights dimmed, and grabbed my close-enough-to-see-their-nostril-hairs seat. I was not a happy man.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I was in exactly the wrong mood to enjoy and objectively judge a movie, and I came out feeling pretty good. Fun With Dick and Jane isn’t brilliant, deep, or memorable, but it isn’t bad entertainment. If it can overcome the effects of driving on Atlanta’s roads, it’s got something.

The film is in three acts. The first is a satire of corporate America and attempting to live the American dream, and this is where the movie works the best. Dick and Jane are mindless consumers. Dick is enthusiastic about a job where he rattles off meaningless slogans and questionable tech answers. The company is essentially Enron and as it falls, you see the kind of desperation that so many workers have felt in recent years as their savings and security were ripped away. Of course, there’s no other job to go to, and Dick and Jane fall apart as their pretty, but artificial world vanishes.

The situation is so familiar to those of us who lived the corporate life and then saw it all fall apart after Bush was elected. Company after company went bankrupt or downsized (with very few CEOs feeling the pinch). The film is uncomfortably close to reality. I saw the long lines of out-of-work, middle-aged men in their nice suits, trying to find any job. And, like in the movie, there’s no other job out there. It sounds sad, and it is. It also doesn’t sound funny, but it can be. The truth of the situation is ripe with comic potential, particularly as there have been relatively few cinematic comments on the economic collapse of the last five years (standup comics don’t count as cinematic).

When Dick reaches his breaking point, the film takes a sharp turn and becomes a slapstick, holdup picture. The script has problems with what should have been the easiest scenes as the robberies are comedy low. You get Carrey doing some of his same old shtick, getting his gun caught in his coat (and jerking wildly to get it out for far too long), and flailing about with fake kung fu moves (which isn’t funny when your kid brother or nephew does it, and it isn’t funny here). However, there are a few good moments as they gain back their old lifestyle, now enhanced with the excitement of being criminals.

The final segment switches gears again, becoming a big-caper movie. Dick and Jane just need to pull off one last heist. It connects with the corporate immorality from the beginning of the film, but outside of pointing out what the rich do to avoid taxes, it doesn’t bring back the satire. There are good moments, but on a sitcom level.

Carrey is reasonable as a yuppie with a heart but not enough brain, showing he has the looks and ability to play a leading man. He keeps his overacting and extreme antics to a minimum, though his occasional over-the-top expression and unnecessary thrashing does mar the middle of the film. A bit of editing would have done wonders. Téa Leoni is pleasant, funny, and sexy. She and Carrey make a likable team.

Fun With Dick and Jane would have been better if it had shown some teeth. It takes aim, and then lets its victim get away. A TV screen shows President Bush talking about how prosperity is here, but this obviously false statement is never followed-up. The CEO telling the news crew to watch him as he turns from their questions to go hunting is reminiscent of Bush ignoring reporters’ questions and instead telling them to watch his golf swing, but again, nothing more is made of this. The best punch the picture gets in is in the credits, were it thanks some truly special people and institutions (sorry, but you’ll have to read it yourself). But the heart to attack the American corporate facade isn’t there in a film that paints the boss as a villain, with his four houses, but seems to accept that Dick and Jane really need a swimming pool and a huge house with a servant.

Comedy, Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

Stealth (2005)

Oct 042005

In the near future, when American super-aircraft fly into any country in the world and blow things up on a regular basis, three TOPGUNs, Lt. Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas), Lt. Kara Wade (Jessica Biel), and Lt. Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx) are joined by a cutting-edge, computerized, drone plane. On the way back from blowing up some terrorists in the middle of Burma, lightening strikes the A.I. craft, causing it to think, and therefore, go rogue. This makes it a death match between machine and humans (in machines). That is until the script goes as nuts as the plane, causing conspiracies to appear, the officer in charge of the A.I. (Sam Shepard) to behave as if he’s in a spy thriller, a strange scientist (Richard Roxburgh) to enter and exit the movie with little explanation, and Wade to fight North Koreans on the ground.

Losing close to a hundred million dollars, Stealth was one of the biggest flops of all time. It didn’t deserve to be. It didn’t deserve to be a big hit either. It’s an odd movie and I’m not sure what to think of it. The PR people at Columbia Pictures had the same problem. They sold it as a gung-ho, Rambo-style, pro-military, sci-fi pic where star Jamie Fox takes on an evil computer and makes the world safe for democracy. But it isn’t any of those things. Fox isn’t the star (fifth banana, after Lucas, the special effects, Biel, and Shepard), the computer isn’t exactly a bad guy, there’s no science, and the flick shows distinct signs of psychosis with its views on the military.

On the plus side, the air combat is as exciting as Columbia claimed it would be. If you like cool planes, missiles, and big explosions, you’ll be very happy. The ignition of a huge ring of fuel at high altitude and a crazed parachute drop with flaming wreckage all around should bring a smile to even the most jaded action fan. And there’s some charming actors, with their charm dialed to eleven, accompanying all those pretty effects. I’m not calling what they do here great acting; perhaps great “movie starmanship” is a better term (hey, I think I’ll copyright that phrase). Lucas carries the film effortlessly, and everyone else is fun to watch.

Additionally, this isn’t a retread of Colossus: The Forbin Project or Top Gun. There are lots of surprises. But that’s not clearly a good thing. You won’t know what’s coming next because the filmmakers didn’t know what kind of film they were making. It starts as a pro-individualism, testosterone-laced shoot’em up, but that doesn’t last. The early plot (humans fighting computer) is wrapped up halfway through the movie, spawning multiple threads, only some of which go anywhere. Important characters (a politician, a scientist, a technician, and a Korean soldier) are underwritten, and in several cases, forgotten. It all ties together in a general way, but there are enormous plot holes, insane coincidences, and a random feeling about the last half.

Call Stealth the first Red-State/Blue State movie intended to appeal to everyone. Now that would normally mean that the film acknowledges the different views held by people in the U.S., and attempts to find common ground. Not here. It completely ignores the middle and goes for both ends. It’s an anti-war film, where it’s a good thing that America polices the world (I couldn’t get Team America: World Police out of my mind.) It objects strongly to the killing of innocent townspeople, but than revels in the deaths of Russian pilots who are in the right. It suggests that anyone outside of the America can’t be trusted and there are terrorists everywhere, but also that our government and military are filled with evil men and paramilitary companies (read: Haliburton) are destroying our liberties. It’s as if four scripts were independently written, two by liberals and two by conservatives, and the shooting script was made by randomly choosing pages from the others.

For all its flaws, Stealth is an enjoyable romp. Silly, inconsistent, and politically confused, but enjoyable.

Reviews, Robots Tagged with: Two Reels

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