Joel Schumacher Sucks

Avatar (2009)

2009-12-26T07:42:00.001-08:00

I am a sucker for James Cameron. He has made a couple of my all-time favorite movies, and created my favorite franchise of all time (Terminator).

That said, James Cameron has been making the same movie for 15 years. The spirit of nature overcoming the oppressive technology created by man. That's it. That is his formula, for 15 freakin years.

Terminator. Sarah Connor defeats the oppressive artificially intelligent terminator.
Aliens. The aliens take over the oppressive technology of the Weyland-Yutani corporation trying to terriform a planet.
Abyss. Unexplained undersea aliens save humans from their own oppressive undersea mining/nuclear technology.
T2. Terminator acquires more human traits in order to defeat oppressive T-1000.
True Lies. Ok, doesn't really fit the mold.
Titanic. Needs no further explanation. This could be the original "world's largest metaphor" story.
Avatar. Backwoods natives of planet defeat oppressive technology of men trying to rape their planet.

Oh, did I give the plotline of ~~Pocahantas~~ Avatar away? Let's pretend as if this wasn't the most predictable movie of all time for the rest of this review.

James Cameron is the only person who could have pulled this movie off. Technically, and in terms of production value, it's unbelievable. The digital effects are astonishingly good. This is the first movie I've seen since leaving the VFX industry that I've really wanted to know more about the techniques employed. The virtual acting is, hands down, the best ever. Their facial expressions are so subtle and meaningful. Perfectly acted. Hats off to the stereo done for the movie as well.

And yet it's the most empty, soulless $300 MM picture you'll ever see.

First of all, it makes no sense. The political message of the movie -- IMO, never done before by Cameron and strangely out of place -- is sort of an anti-George-Bush-Save-The-Planet message. And they nicely lay in some talk about how Earth is a brown, ruined planet. The humans have amazing technology for interstellar travel and yet, the audience is expected to suspend disbelief when it comes to the foundation of how Avatars work. So wait, they're genetically grown but have some kind of wireless control mechanism with no interference problems, etc?

This falls into the same trap as Wall-E -- suspend disbelief except when it comes to the filmmaker's politics, and poke holes in your plot doing it. They want to make a movie that displays how technology has ruined our planet and we have to move off of it. But if our technology is that advanced, and we have these unlimited power sources for spaceships or Wall-Es, why wouldn't we just save the planet with that same tech? It's just dumb. Entertainment movies are for entertainment. Don't put your politics into them. It's annoying. We don't care. Half the audience groaned when one of the characters was quoting George Bush about "terror"... in San Francisco!

BTW, there's a very 9/11esque scene in the movie that made me think that Cameron might have held off on making it. I had heard of Avatar in the 1990s, after Titanic had wrapped.

That's about all I have to say. The movie has a couple cool ideas, the story is absolutely predictably worthless and the movie looks fantastic. It's waaaayyy too long for what it is. See it once, in the theater in 3D, and never again.

JSS Rating: A Bad Good movie. It wants to be Gone with the Wind, but it's more like Transformers. A fantastic looking shell of a movie.

The House Bunny (2008)

2009-09-28T22:08:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for Anna Faris. She's pretty and will seemingly do anything to get a laugh. So I am predisposed to check out a movie that she's in, just to see what's up there.

That said, I expected to turn this movie off in the first 5 minutes and ended up watching the whole thing. I found it to be a lighthearted, entertaining, traditionally cliche movie of the geeks overcoming the snobs. And it's not too long.

JSS Rating: Good/Bad movie. We expect to to be bad, but it's enjoyable.

The Fog of War (2003)

2009-09-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating documentary that is essentially a conversation with Robert McNamara, the man who was Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War. Other than his interview, there is stock footage of war scenes and some recordings of him talking to Kennedy and Johnson.

Given that, it's one of the most fascinating documentaries I've ever seen. It's an 85 year old man reflecting on his life and the lessons he's learned. Truly excellent.

JSS Rating: Good/Good

The Searchers (1956)

2009-09-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

I find it hard to believe this movie gets so many five star reviews in this day and age. I believe many people love this movie because critics and filmmakers have told you to love it, not because of its merits. For what it's worth, I don't even mind the racial stereotypes in the movie that bother many. I can imagine that's how it was in the old west. Fine, whatever. They can depict that if they want.

The problem is that the story and character development--pretty much the two keys to, oh, I don't know, FILMMAKING--are both extremely thin. The Comanche enemies are one dimensional and so is Ethan (John Wayne's character). Ethan fought in the civil war, now he's got a chip on his shoulder about indians. How boring. I want one dimensional characters in over the top action movies like Die Hard, not a long (LONG!!!!) slow-moving western that's supposed to take place over the course of five years.

Overall the acting is just terrible in the whole movie. There's the whiny bitch Martin that follows Ethan around during the search. Then there are the people they keep flashing back to on the home front during the search, reading Martin's letters. All of these characters were so horrendous I was wishing they'd all die in a fire. John Wayne is the only acceptable actor in the film other than Natalie Wood and Scar (the Comanche leader), who basically have no lines at all.

Furthermore, does anyone laugh at the comic relief in this movie? I was just wishing for it to be over. I have seen funny movies from the 1950s and this is not one of them.

Giving credit where credit is due: it has some impressive landscapes and better than usual (for the era) day for night work. Except... wait for it... most of the movie was supposed to take place in Texas, but they shot it all quite obviously in New Mexico and Arizona at Monument Valey. Next time try to be less obvious when you shoot somewhere else, IMO.

It may be the case that this movie was amazing when it came out, but it certainly does not play as such in the 21st Century. Skip it.

JSS RATING: This is Bad/Good movie. It might have been good at the time, but it just isn't good now.

Valkyrie (2008)

2009-06-18T10:58:00.001-07:00

One sure sign of fantastic filmmaking is the ability to create tension or suspense when the outcome is already known. This movie achieves this – assuming you’re aware how WWII ended and Hitler’s death really occurred. The suspense in the movie reaffirms that Bryan Singer is a top-tier filmmaker, no matter what his misgivings in the genre of comic book adaptations.

Valkyrie is also the reuniting of Singer with Chris McQuarrie. They had collaborated before on The Usual Suspects, one of my all time favorite movies. Singer has been lost in comic book movies for 10 years, McQuarrie… who knows where. These guys should just keep making movies together. It’s obviously a stellar paring when they collaborate.

Although Valkyrie features great storytelling, a good cast (yes, even Tom Cruise), and a lot of polish,it drags at parts. The last 30-45 minutes are where the movie shines. Some of the first half are overlong, and, as usual, the movie could easily have had 30 minutes cut out of it. If I was in charge of film studios, I’d take every script, rip out 20-30 pages at random and tell the writer to make the plot fit. Movies should have a major reason to be longer than 100 minutes. This is one reason I can’t bring myself to watch Benjamin Button. Seriously, 3 hours? Didn’t they already tell this story of a guy aging backwards with Jonathan Winter on Mork & Mindy?

Anyway, Valkyrie does have one serious downfall and that’s that it is in the category of the Docu-Drama. I’ve railed against Docu-Dramas before on this blog. Fortunately, this one isn’t politically charged like W or The Reagans. It’s hard to argue against hating Hitler, right?

The problem with Docu-Dramas is that the devil is in the details. It’s mentioned a few times in this movie that the conspirators want to overthrow Hitler because of his evildoings in concentration camps and such. Frankly, I think this is fiction and their motivations are probably not that noble. The men involved with this plot were already very established in Hitler’s government. They put their various plots into motion back in 1938, well before the concentration camps had been created (in fact, Poland, site of Auschwitz, had not even been invaded). No, the best guess should be that they were power hungry themselves. When the Allies successfully defeated Nazi Germany, would top men in Hitler’s government be installed into the new regime? Hell no. But if they had gotten their coup and declared a truce with the Allies, they would have been able to hold onto that power.

This is a far more likely explanation of motivation. But, for the purposes of the Docu-Drama, it’s better to have them want to kill Hitler because of concentration camps. It helps us root for the protagonist, whereas I’m not so sure we’d root for a power-hungry Nazi underling who just wants to take over and doesn’t give a damn about death camps.

JSS Rating: Good/Good. It was supposed to be a good movie, and it was a good movie.

Terminator: Salvation (2009)

2009-05-24T21:47:00.001-07:00

Obviously, the draw of this movie is to see whether Christian Bale will lose it. He does, in fact, seem on the verge of losing it the entire time. Sadly, I have to report that this Family Guy clip that uses Bale’s freakout as source material is better than the movie.

In fact, the trailers might have been the highlight of this movie.

I was drawn to see Terminator: Salvation – the first movie I’ve seen in a theater since Dark Knight – because it’s my favorite science fiction series of all time. The original blew my mind, the second one was just awesome and blew my mind with visual effects, and the third one had a significantly redeeming ending that I won’t give away here. I prefer it to the Aliens franchise because I only really like Aliens of that franchise, and I prefer it to Star Wars because George Lucas ruined that franchise.

Before seeing the movie, my fear was that McG was going to ruin this Terminator franchise forever. You would think, for sure, that he’s the weakest link in making this picutre, right?

Not so. In fact, given the script he had to work with, McG did a fantastic job of making a mindless, vfx-laden summer blockbuster. The script is so disjointed that it’s painful to watch. You wonder if the editor lingered on a scene in an awkwardly long way because it would have been more awkward to cut at the point the material would have normally called for.

And you might as well call the Terminator storyline completely trashed now. They’ve tried to save it in Terminator 3 and The Sarah Connor Chronicles by saying that the time travel paradox isn’t true (that timelines are separate, and that destinies are inevitable). But this movie makes no sense if that’s the case! Why would John Connor care so much about the main plot in this movie if any of that was true. Consistency is long gone in this franchise and so is the magic.

This script is so bad and so franchise-ruining it should have been on the same funeral pyre as Darth Vader when they comped stupid young Anakin into Return of the Jedi (another franchise-ruining act by G. Lucas).

All I have to say about the acting is that when Bryce Dallas Howard seems Oscar-worthy in a movie, the other actors must reeeealy suck.

The VFX and action scenes are the real stars of this movie, although I have to ask “Transformers much?” about some of the content.

Regarding the VFX, some shots are off the charts good and some are just, plain, embarrassingly bad. I was surprised to see that ILM did the effects, though I’m sure it was offloaded to a host of shops along the way. Can no one pull a decent matte anymore or does no one take the time to shoot a good bluescreen? Either way, you would think that McG would have been very accommodating to the VFX crew since there was no other reason to make the film. Period. It just puts another nail in the coffin of film’s greatest science fiction franchise.

And finally, I’d like to say that I saw this movie on DLP and I’m never seeing another movie on film again. I’ll detail that on my main blog later.

Cloverfield (2008)

2008-06-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

I loved this movie. Cloverfield has more character development in the first 10 minutes than No Country for Old Men (2007) did throughout the entire movie.

Yes, I just compared a silly monster movie to last year's "best" picture and said it was better (at least one aspect).

The motivations of the characters throughout the film are easily traced back to the initial development and make a lot of sense given what happened. Furthermore, since the entire movie is supposed to be shot on a home movie camera by the characters (like Blair Witch Project), they very cleverly cut in scenes from the tape that appear to be something taped over. These scenes even further enhance the moviegoers' bond with the characters and really help to conclude the movie, which seems like it could be otherwise not easily concluded.

I never read any reviews of Cloverfield before watching it, other to hear from people at work that the amount of camera movement makes this film hard to watch in a theater. That's why I decided to wait until it was on Xbox Live in HD. I mentioned Blair Witch, and I'm sure there are lot of comparisons of Cloverfield to that movie out there which I'll read after I'm done with my own review. The difference is, Cloverfield had a $25m budget, most of which went towards effects I'm sure (none of the actors are notable). The effects are awesome in this movie.

Since the camera is in constant motion, every effects shot needed considerable match moving. Match moving is matching a 3D camera in the computer to the movement of a real camera in real life. So when the T-Rex is running at the car in Jurassic Park, someone had to sit down and match the exact camera movement of the real shot so the T-Rex looks like he's in there. One nice thing about extreme match moves like this movie is that sometimes, the more the camera moves, the easier it can be to make that shot work as an effects shot. When the camera's moving a lot, it's harder to notice little details like a sliding effect (a 3D camera that doesn't perfectly match the camera of the shot). However when the camera is moving more slowly, it gives the viewer time to evaluate whether something is off in the shot. In Cloverfield, every shot is moving so much that it really seals the deal on the effects. You don't get time to critique it as much, and the match movers, TDs and compositors did a really nice job of getting the cameras, motion blur, lighting and levels correct for the shots. I think if this was a more traditionally shot movie, with locked off cameras I wouldn't have been as impressed.

Oh, and the pyro, smoke and destruction effects were killer. Hats off to the FX TDs on the movie. I love the debris effects off of the 9 West 57th street building, for those who were paying attention to that shot.

The other refreshing difference with the effects is that they feel much more natural because of the home movie nature of the film. Effects have been ruined in recent years by over-art- direction. Every shot in Transformers, every shot in Indiana Jones 4, name any huge effects movie here, is perfectly storyboarded and art directed ahead of time. Someone pastes up a bunch of reference from other stuff, like Dinotopia, that should be referenced for the look of this shot. The shot is then given a painterly amount of lighting. It's so unnatural. A turning point for effects, in my opinion, was Star Wars Episode I. Every shot in that movie was so over-art-directed it was sickening. Since then, I feel like every summer effects blockbuster is headed along those lines.

My general complaint about movies is that they're always too long. This movie isn't at all -- it's arguably too short and doesn't explain enough. I found the length to be just perfect, and I like the mystery that's left when it ends. Since the hand-held presentation can grow pretty old, keeping the movie to around 80 minutes w/o the credits was a good plan.

Some of the acting is sub-par, but given the low budget nature and unknown actors I don't think that should be any surprise here.

In any case, this is the most entertaining movie I've seen in a while. JJ Abrams finally made something I liked a lot (and I haven't been shy about critiquing his work). I went back to watch Cloverfield from the beginning after I finished it the first time. Surprisingly, there are small details to be noticed when watching it a second time through that make it even more interesting and mysterious when it ends. I didn't expect that.

Grandma's Boy (2006)

2007-12-09T22:59:00.001-08:00

Grandma's Boy is funny and enjoyable. It's a dumb comedy that sticks to the core premise of dumb comedies: they can't be cynical.

Contrast this movie to Knocked Up and you'll see what I mean. Both movies have raunchy humor and a lot of f-bombs (though I'd say Knocked Up wins in both categories). They both rely on a random humor element, rather than the core plot being funny. However, Knocked Up has an undertone of bitterness and cynicism that makes it really unfunny and unenjoyable. Plus, Knocked Up is way too long, extending the pain if you cared to keep watching.

As a few of you know, my favorite comedy of the last few years is Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Other than that, I really haven't enjoyed many of the recent spat of comedies. 40 Year Old Virgin had a few moments of gold, but was otherwise overlong and forced. Wedding Crashers was another one of those movies with an undertone of bitterness. I did mostly like Old School and even liked some of You, Me and Depree.

Most comedies miss the mark when it comes to creating a classic like Caddyshack, Better Off Dead, or Animal House. Those comedies are what they are because they create funny characters and put them in environments that make them shine. Grandma's Boy is like that. I'm not saying it's a classic like those three I just mentioned, but it does have the same formula. It revolves around a 36 year old video game tester who moves in with his Grandma and her roommates. Like Caddyshack, a few funny characters are focused on and the rest end up being role players in the hilarity.

I don't really want to give away more than that, it really is a must see. The co-worker who loaned it to me told me that it was really offensive. Compared to Knocked Up, this movie seemed tame, funnier, and more enjoyable. And... it's not overly long! Finally, someone made a movie in the 2000s that isn't too long!

JSS RATING: It's a Good-Bad Movie. Meaning it's in the traditional film critic category of "bad movie" but is really good.

Done with 'Heroes'

2007-12-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

This post has spoilers, but do you care? It's a TV show.

Last year, Heroes started off relatively slow. About 6 episodes in, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep watching. The show has always has a problem with characters that really aren't compelling. Like, for example, Nikki (Ali Larter). Nikki/Jessica, the dual personality chick whose power is to throw people up against walls really hard. Her character was, and is, really lame, and they dedicated way too much time to her all season long.

However, Season One was driven by the story of all the characters meeting up in New York to save the city from a huge explosion. This story made the show awesome. Each week had more suspense than the week before. And then.... they did save the city in the finale of the season. And it was boring.

Then comes the second season. It has essentially no correlation to the first season. It doesn't build on any of the suspense. The cliffhanger basically went away until 5 episodes in, where they decided to go back and explain it. The story has been extremely weak: the future tragedy that they were trying to prevent was a side story, rather than the main story. The directors have decided to try to make the show artsier by adding a shift tilt lens effect -- YEAH, LIKE THAT DIDN'T GO OUT OF STYLE 20 YEARS AGO.

Worst of all, they introduced more characters that no one cares about. These characters they added had the most boring side stories and were the whiniest characters on all of television.

So last night, one of those characters finally got shot. I was like, "YESSS! The writers get it!!!" 5 minutes later, they bring this character back to life.

At the end of the show, their cliffhanger for next season (i.e. half season, since of this stupid writers' strike), was to have Sylar get his powers back by injecting himself with this magical back-to-life serum. I said what line he would utter about 30 seconds before he did: "I'm BAAACK." How stupid is this show?

Anyway, deleted it from my season pass. Done. No more wasting time on that.

I just have to ask, did the writers go on strike because they were writing complete shit for this season? Basically nothing on TV is any good. House. That's another show I'm done with. Same with CSI. They're all just plain bad. They almost make movies look like a good alternative.

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

2007-07-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

Brilliant.

I saw this movie in HD. I'm not sure I completely recognized the brilliance of this in the VHS, post-widescreen world because of it having been pan-and-scanned down to 4:3. (Although I believe 4:3 is the ratio of the gods, it doesn't mean I think pan & scan is good for movies composed for 1.85 or 2.35).

Silence of the Lambs is not great because of Anthony Hopkins. It's not great because of Jodie Foster or because of its script. They give great performances, but the movie is great because of the composition during dialogue. This entire movie is told from point of view, that is what makes it awesome.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie before or since that had so many characters speaking directly into the camera. Usually, it doesn't work because the audience feels they are being spoken to like a bad anti-drug commercial. Jonathan Demme made it work perfectly here because he carefully crafts the way he leads into a POV (point of view) shot.

When Clarisse and Lecter are down in the jail, notice that Jodie Foster doesn't look into the camera until way, way later in the conversation. She looks just to the left of the camera to lead into the POV shot of Lecter. Lecter then speaks directly into the camera throughout. But did you for one second think he was speaking to you, the audience? No. You were in Clarisse's shoes. Demme sets you up that way.

There are many, many examples of the POV shot in this movie. Essentially you are in the shoes of the people speaking to Lecter. Clarisse, the doctor, and the senator speaking to Lecter -- you are also placed in her shoes for the scene in the airplane hangar. But Clarisse talking to her boss, looking around the room of cops in West Virginia. The entire movie is from behind Clarisse's eyes.

However, there is a twist: Buffalo Bill. We get placed in his shoes in this movie. It starts when he puts on his night vision goggles at the very beginning and doesn't stop until he gets shot (hope I didn't give anything away). We constantly look down on the victim in the well from his point of view, or looking in the mirror, etc.

The dialogue in this movie would have been really, really cheesy if Demme hadn't put it together so well.

BTW, the artist who sang that song "Goodbye, Horses" when Buffalo Bill is dancing naked in the mirror... she has her own Myspace Page. Speaking of long tail.... a one hit wonder from 17 years ago has her own myspace page.

JSS Rating: Good/Good. This movie easily deserved Best Picture.

A.I. (2001)

2007-07-20T21:19:00.001-07:00

I gave this movie a chance -- 6 years of chances. I've seen it many, many times. Here's what I've decided:

This movie is terrible, ridiculous, and, most of all, it insults the legacy of Kubrick. I think it might be the new gold standard of a Bad/Good film, replacing Forrest Gump. Yes, A.I. might be the worst Bad/Good movie of all time.

You know you're in for a treat when A.I. starts off with a voice over telling us that the ice caps have melted due to all of those greenhouse gases. At the time the movie came out it was shades of Waterworld, and today that plot is even more ludicrous simply because it seems so human-race-hating and politically motivated.

It's unfair to say that this movie hates the human race because at the end, robots from the future repeatedly tell the recently unfrozen Haley Joel Osment how humans were the most perfect creation in the history of the universe. No, I am not exaggerating and I don't care if I just spoiled the movie for you. You deserve better than any of this, so spoiling it is no problem.

The only credit I can give this movie is that the first 10 minutes are very Kubrick. Spielberg was channeling Kubrick in a lot of ways. As soon as Osment enters the picture, that all goes to hell. The pacing is way off from anything Kubrick would have made and the dialogue is absolutely atrocious. Let me give you an example. When it came to "imprinting" Osment (the robot boy) with Monica to be his programmed love-mother forever and ever, this great bit of irreversible dialogue took place between Monica and her husband:

"Monica, don't imprint David until you are absolutely sure."
"Silly man. Of course I'm not sure."

Holy shit, can you believe Steven Spielberg, who wrote A.I. actually sat down to write the words "silly man," then actually told an actress to utter those words, then let the camera roll on those words, and then, in editorial, left those words in, and finally, actually let the studio print thousands of reels with those words and ship those words to theaters worldwide? That's like two or three years of knowing the words "silly man" would be in this movie.

Steven Spielberg did that. This is supposedly one of the greatest directors of our time and the director of my favorite movie (Raiders of the Lost Ark).... Are you frickin' kidding me?

More gems of screenwriting:

Monica: "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the world!"

and

David: "I'm DAVID! I'm unique!! I'm special!!" <*smashes with lamp*>

When this movie was being made, it was with insane levels of secrecy. Few people got to read the script. Now we know why.

The movie takes a slight uptick when it becomes a buddy/journey picture with Jude Law, but just when you think it might get better, it again becomes a futuristic movie of whateverness where everything is over-art directed. I really can't stand movies about the future that add details that make zero sense for the sake of cool art direction. When that random art direction tries to look like Tron, like the "hounds" on motorcycles, ya gotta wonder exactly why someone bothers to make the movie.

Spielberg tries to force this movie to be good throughout. He throws in lots of long, symbolic, meaningful, desperate shots of Osment to try to make some point about humanity and love. Many of the hero shots play like they came directly from the art director's gouache tube. The specter of Kubrick was looming over Steve's shoulder and he felt the need to make something deep. Contrast this to Minority Report with its very limited amount of sappy material. That movie obviously came easily to Spielberg, and resulted one of his best movies in ten or fifteen years.

When this movie came out, most people found the third act to be the most offensive. I didn't agree with them at the time, and I think I know why. The two hours of setup for the ludicrous third act make that part of the movie actually seem pretty imaginative. Spielberg defended the end of this movie by claiming that it was Kubrick's idea. Yup, blame the horrendous parts of your movie on the dead. Nice job Steve. CLASSY!

Rating: Bad/Good. Possibly the worst movie ever that was actually supposed to be good.

Die Hard 4: Live Free and Die Hard (2007)

2007-06-30T22:55:00.001-07:00

The Die Hard series is probably my second favorite series of movies. My favorite series is Terminator -- yes, including the third one.

That's a different discussion for another time, but these revelations may confuse people out there who know my favorite film of all time is Raiders of the Lost Ark. They'll wonder, "Why isn't the Indiana Jones series his favorite?" Very simple: Temple of Doom is shit. Absolute unwatchable shit. That was the movie where Spielberg first really started making crap movies. He didn't get back to reasonable form until 8 years later, when he made Jurassic Park.

In any case, Die Hard is awesome for two reasons. First reason is because it is the quintessential action movie: the bad guys get shot once and drop off screen, the good guys never die. There are lots of explosions and the bad guys are after money, not political gain. Die Hard 2, the weakest in the series so far, was weak because it strayed a bit from these two basic premises. In that film, they killed a bunch of innocent people in a jetliner, and I think the guys in it were trying to free some political prisoner dude. Die Hard works when the guys don't care anything about that, they just care about the money.

The second reason Die Hard movies kick ass is very simple: Willis. Has he ever been in a bad movie? The John McClane character is perfect for him -- a wise-ass cop who thinks everyone's an asshole and gets stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time -- and the only action character that can make these kinds of sequels work.

Die Hard 4, also known as the much weaker title of Live Free and Die Hard, again manages to trip on the mistake of being politically motivated. It tries to have a post-9/11 message of some sort, and it's just kinda weak as a result.

The movie is too long, of course. Some of the overlong scenes that are simply agonizing because they're obvious setups for later. It's like a screenwriter decided they needed to insert another page back at the beginning or else the end wouldn't make sense. The very first time we see Willis in the movie, it's because he is stalking his college aged daughter while she's on a date. This whole scene was cliche and forced, just to introduce us to this daughter... and I'm sure you see where that goes in an action movie with bad guys.

This is again another mistake they made that's similar to the second movie: McClane doesn't need his family involved to care. Why force the issue?

Second problem of Die Hard 4 is that it's a buddy film where the buddy is annoying naive guy. Die Hard 1 and 3 both had buddies that worked: the LA cop in 1 and Samuel Jackson in 3. Die Hard 2 didn't really have a single buddy, but there were some decent supporting buddy like characters. This movie has the Mac guy as McClane's buddy. He runs around with a laptop and hacks stuff into shape, but otherwise is just a tool while McClane saves the day.

Which brings me to my third point... the hacking around with a laptop. Yes, this is another mainstream movie that tries to use tech in its plot. This makes it very, very hard to watch for anyone who knows the first thing about technology:

Cell phones do not use satellites. It's 2007 and people still get that wrong? Unreal.
I like when they are "downloading" 500 TB of data remotely to their semi truck full of computers and the first 20% of that is done within minutes. That amount of data, downloaded over the fastest wireless link available today (2.1 mbs EV-DO), would take 80 years to transfer.

And many more.

The action scenes in the movie are ridiculous, much more so than the other Die Hard movies except for 2. McTiernan, who directed Die Hards 1 and 3, always kept some semblance of
reality in the action for the most part, then had one over the top action sequence at the end of the movie. Die Hard 4 has about ten over the top action sequences. Not that they aren't entertaining, but at one point, one of the audience members mock-clapped after a big explosion and everyone laughed. That pretty much sums up the movie overall. It has some good laughs, good action, and you leave feeling pretty good rather than depressed... but I think the spirit of the Die Hard series is probably lost again. Bring back McTiernan to direct the 5th one!

JSS Rating: Good/Good. It's supposed to be a good movie and it is. Clearly, being an action film, seeing on the big screen with an audience is fun. The audience I saw it with wasn't that into it. HD HBO will probably suffice if you're on the fence.

Flight of the Conchords (TV)

2007-06-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

In a word, "horrendous."

This show barely gets the needle to the level of "amusing" at times, but then settles back down to "unwatchable" at the 20 minute mark. I think one or two scenes I almost -- not quite -- cracked a smile. Their band's "one fan" in the show ran the two main guys off of the screen in level of humor. Maybe HBO should spin-off a show about the stalker fan.

On IMDB, there was some obvious comparison to Tenacious D. The difference is that Tenacious D taps into the rock-angst-hipster-humor of 1970s/80s American adolesence. They connect to us because we all remember loving Ozzy or AC/DC or whatever in 1979. The Conchords don't have that, and the schtick not funny as a result.

I bet most people like this only because of the network this is on. HBO, or HBO fans, have convinced people that anything on their network is good. If this was on NBC or Fox, it would be off the air before the first commercial break. It's about on the level of "Good Morning Miami", though somehow that show made it two seasons.

Speaking of comedy and NZ, I can't wait to see Black Sheep. The trailer for that cracks me up an order of magnitude more than the 20 minutes of Conchords I was able to bear.

Here's the Black Sheep trailer for your true comedy enjoyment:

Munich (2005)

2007-06-10T18:17:00.001-07:00

Before this movie was released, Kathleen Kennedy (I think) said that it was Spielberg's best movie ever, a great film of the ages, yada yada yada.

One thing could have tipped you off that all of this was empty hype: Eric Roth co-wrote it.

I can't speak much to the facts in this particular Docu-Drama™, but given the what Spielberg put together, it wouldn't surprise me if very little of this is based in fact.... other than the Munich events themselves, and that many of those responsible were later assassinated. Slate goes into this a little bit.

One of the tipoffs that this is another work of fiction "based on fact" by Roth is that these characters are the lamest assassins ever. On their first shooting, they hemmed and hawed about pulling the trigger. You're telling me that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency traditionally known as bad asses, recruited hitmen who would get cold feet right when they had a gun drawn on one of the Black September terrorists who killed their countrymen? Not only that, their crack bombmaker is a toymaker who was trained to defuse bombs and their bookkeeper was some guy who ran an antique store. That's exactly who I would recruit for this if I was the Prime Minister of Israel (who they connect to this plot at the beginning).

This movie is a mess. Spielberg tells us about the Munich massacre through a bunch of scenes as told on television. Later, he fills in the missing details through flashbacks that Eric Bana has at dramatic times: flying to his first assassination mission, as he hides in the closet on night from assassin paranoia, and while he has sex with his wife. None of this is at all meaningful, or symbolic. It's just that Roth, Michael Kahn, or Spielberg, or whoever, realized that this movie would duller if they had just laid out the Munich story as it should have been: at the beginning.

Spielberg at his worst puts in cool filmmaking tricks for no reason, and this movie has a few of those, like the TV clips at the beginning. The second one is the reveal of the prime minister, Golda Meir. She's hidden behind a file folder they pass down a row of people and then gets revealed when the folder is flipped down. It looks cool on film until you realize how awkward it was.. and for no reason. This is what happens when a good director makes a film with very little story substance.

The only decent parts of the film are the actual plots for assassination, which attempt to be spy-movie-like. However some of these were so poorly executed, in film terms, that the FX crew should be embarrassed. One scene had guns pointed the wrong way out of a car, yet those bullets hit their target (blood packs went off). In the same scene, there was at least one blood pack that went off prematurely to a gunshot as well. I have no eye for practical effects, but even I was able to catch these.

One criticism I had heard of the movie was it was sympathetic to the Munich terrorists. I didn't really feel that way, except for one scene where some Palestinian guys end up at the same "safe house" as the Israeli hit squad. That scene was so forced that it could have been there to alleviate the concern that the movie is too pro-Israel. Well, I'm sure that scene alone has people are lining up to see the film in Damascus. Right.

As always, the movie is too long. Spielberg seems big on scripts that have the old wise person show up halfway through to guide the protagonist. Munich is no exception, however the relationship between those characters is fleeting (except in screen time) and has no bearing on the real story. Even Minority Report, which had a ghastly instance of the Old Wise Person appearance (the lady with the plants), had more relevant story in that meeting. Removing the Old Wise One from Munich could have easily stripped an hour from this movie and not lost a thing.

JSS Rating: Yet another Bad Good™ rating for an Eric Roth movie. However, unlike The Good Shepherd, this film is watchable. HBO HD is where I saw it, and that's where I'd recommend seeing it if you ever have 3 absolutely free hours of time.

Children of Men (2006)

2007-05-27T12:43:00.001-07:00

Alfonso Cuarón is a very talented director whose mad skillz I had recognized as far back as 1997, when I saw A Little Princess (yes, DVD rental choices were scarce at that time). That film had spectacular cinematography and storytelling.

This film shows off mad skillz as well. Great filmmaking, good acting, great cinematography, good story... and .... somehow the whole package just doesn't work.

The problem might be that it's an annoying movie. They're trying to make some kind of point about politics today. I think. Right? Were they? Anyone? Because whatever current political message they were trying to connect to the story in this film -- that women can no longer have children in the future -- it just didn't come together. Michael Caine plays a political cartoonist that's friends with Clive Owen's character. In his house he grows pot, has a lot of "Don't invade Iraq" stickers, etc.. I guess he's kind of like a hippie in the 90s who still protests the Vietnam war. I don't know about you, but I ignore those people because they're insane. But this movie is in the future, so his hippieness is about something in our present, therefore it's meaningful. And then we have some people who are supposed to be good, but are labeled as terrorists, or are they good, or are they bad. Whatever point is being made here, it's jumbled and confused.

It's sad that the movie is so annoying because it should be recognized for the technical achievement of filmmaking. Repeatedly, Cuarón is able to pull off very long action sequences in a single shot -- with the help of deft visual effects of course. The first one, an action sequence in a car, is just awesome. I'm surprised people hadn't tapped Cuarón for an action film before, because what he does here is very effective. He also used an effect that I had prototyped in 2000 for a film, which was to have digital blood stick to the lens assembly in an action scene. Sadly, the director (not Cuarón, another guy) never got to see that because my visual effects supervisor wouldn't show it to him. However, it's used much more effectively in this movie. Cuarón leaves the effect on the screen for a single shot that's at least a minute. That's bold. He's a director that's not afraid to take chances visually, and most of those risks work out.

[Aside: I guess it's a lot like JFK in that regard. JFK is a technically brilliant movie, takes a lot of visual risks, but is annoying as hell. Oliver Stone is an expert at making those. Check out The JFK 100: One Hunded Errors of Fact and Judgement in Oliver Stone's JFK. ]

People either like or hate this movie. I like some aspects and hate others, but I don't agree that the movie is overrated because, on technical level, the filmmaking is very good. I agree that other than to appreciate the technicals of this film, there is no redeeming reason to watch it. If you don't appreciate that sort of thing and are just looking for a movie to entertain you, this is definitely not it.

JSS Rating: Borderline...Good/Good.

The Good Shepherd (2006)

2007-05-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

Apparently, you can say a movie is "based on a true story" when it's pure fiction set within broad truths. Here are the things in this movie that we know are true:

World Wars were fought between 1914-1918 and again 1939-1945.

The CIA is a US Government agency.

Hitler, Castro, Kennedy and Arbenz were all real people mentioned in the movie.

The CIA tried to launch an invasion against Castro called the Bay of Pigs.

Robert De Niro should not be directing movies.

Eric Roth is a hack.

Those are the truths, because everything else in the movie is pure fiction. If you think this is based on the history of the CIA, understand that none of the names used in the movie are real except the four that I mentioned above. Why? Because there's so much fiction in The Good Shepherd that they would have gotten their asses sued by using real names.

How do I know? Becauase I'm reading The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA by Evan Thomas, where the author uses the real names. I had come into The Good Shepherd thinking that it would be about Richard Bissell. Instead, we get a fictional character that's not really historically interesting.

All of this is why I generally hate docudramas. I can't stop focusing on the inaccuracies in the movie. I tried very hard to judge this movie on its own though, as just a product of entertainment, so how's this for critque:

De Niro should not be allowed to direct movies, fiction or pseudo-fiction.

He took great subject matter -- the CIA between WWII and the Bay of Pigs -- and made it sensational, overlong, and confusing. For the content that's in this movie, it's easily 1 hour too long. The sensationalism was over the top... pretty much all button-pushing current political topics attempt to be touched on (waterboarding, LSD, assassinations). But the main issue is the editing. There are flashbacks, flash forwards, flash sideways, flash unders and the actors are not visibly different enough to distinguish what's going on. When you see title cards explaining where you are in the timeline, that's indicative of poor filmmaking. The story couldn't hold itself together without these cards.

It's also not a good sign when the supporting characters in the film blow away the main character. De Niro, Turturro, Hurt, and even Tim Hutton's 2 minutes in the movie give you more compelling character development than do Matt Damon or Angelina Jolie. Damon is neither evil nor good, he's just kind of a bump on a log. There's no reason to root for or against him. That might have been the point, but if it was, doesn't it seem like a waste of film? Why make a movie about someone who just sits there?

I did find the first half of the movie entertaining. Maybe it's because that was before it had gone way off in terms of history. I won't give anything away, but the first real plot twist in the movie seems way too contrived, and it goes downhill from there.

JSS RATING: BAD GOOD™. Congratulations De Niro! You've hit the jackpot with a trademarked Bad Good™ rating from Joel Schumacher Sucks. Bad Good™ of course means it was supposed to be an A-list movie by design, but it actually is bad. Oscar is a sucker for Bad Good™ movies. Previous recipients include Forrest Gump, which Eric Roth actually won an Oscar for.

The Departed (2006)

2007-05-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

Scorsese, supposedly a great director who makes great movies, hasn't made an great movie since Goodfellas. There, someone finally said it.

You may have previously read my review of The Aviator, which was a terrible movie that got nominated for an Oscar (never forget the Oscar rules: making a movie about Hollywood itself automatically gets you nominated). Casino was forgettable. I didn't see "Bringing out the Dead" or "Gangs of New York." Those had 6.6 and 7.2 ratings respectively on IMDB, where every Scorsese, De Niro, Pachino, etc., movie is overrated.

Scorsese's problem is that he tries to force a movie, rather than show us, via the film medium, a story. The camera is there to do one thing: record the story. Sure, there are symbolic things you can do with the camera, but the goal is not to overmake a movie for art's sake. That's what film school projects are for. In regular movies, camera tricks should only be used when they help tell us something, not to force them for your "signature".

Prime example of forcing shots is Brian DePalma. ONCE in his career, the top-down shot worked really well. It was in The Untouchables, after Capone had beat the guy with the baseball bat.

Let me give you an example of a Scorsese forced scene -- actually in Goodfellas. Remember the sweeping cameras over dead people put to Clapton music? Well, thanks to Youtube, here it is for you to remember. That's an example of forcing a shot. The scene is memorable, sure, but it plays like something out of a NYU film student's mob movie. Sweeping camera moves, just like top down cameras, are almost never necessary to tell the story. They're put in there to exaggerate the drama. But if the scene is that really that dramatic, you don't need it. In DePalma's favor, at least top down cameras have the symbolism of someone rising to heaven. Sweeping moves don't mean much beyond "I'm a pretentious jackass".

Getting to The Departed. Fortunately, this is one movie that Scorsese decided not to overmake too much. He mostly let the story tell itself, and actually, it is a great story. The movie keeps you pulled in thoughout. I honestly didn't think the acting was that great. I'm shocked Marky Mark was able to get an Oscar nomaination for his performance. All he did was swear up a storm. His dialogue and delivery was entertaining, but unnecessary for the story and certainly not Oscar-caliber.

Of course, Scorsese uses every chance possible to work 60s music into his movies, and The Departed is no exception. It starts off with a 60s scene of a younger Jack Nicholson and a kid version of Matt Damon, then leads into "Gimme Shelter". Scorsese has used this song in his films now three times. I didn't know that until I read it on Wikipedia, so are they shitting me? Can this guy become a cliche of himself any more than he has?

The Departed is, no surprise, too long. Maybe half an hour. Overall, for a long movie this one will keep your interest. I found the ending very unsatisfying -- and this is where Scorsese tries to work in his needless camera tricks -- but it is a decent film. Not Oscar-winner worthy. I'm not sure why they insist on giving those out every year. Instead, they should give it out every 5 years. That's about how often Hollywood makes a truly worthy film.

Rating: Good/Good. Worth a rental. HD-optional.

Turistas (2006)

2007-04-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

Josh Duhamel must the easiest man in Hollywood to cast. Need a guy in a movie that is kinda dumb, kinda goofy but takes his shirt off a lot? Call Josh Duhamel! The script finds at least 4 or 5 ways to get this guy's shirt off in the movie. When I've seen that show he's in, "Las Vegas," he always seems to find a way to take his shirt off in that as well. The guy is ripped, good for him. I'm glad he has 8 hours a day to work on his body, unlike the rest of us who sit in front of a computer.

I'm not sure which came first, Josh Duhamel being cast or a movie producer honestly wanting to make this movie. I think it was a script floating around, then Duhamel got cast and someone said "OH GREAT, now we have to make this piece of shit. Ok everybody, book some tickets for Brazil, at least we'll get some R&R in." Everyone involved in this mailed in the effort. The script is a one-week hackjob that someone thought of while they were on vacation. The movie relies on gross-out scenes to have a plot. I'd rather have gross-out scenes with no plot, which are commonly called "slasher movies", than agonize through gross-out stuff just to explain why things are going on. Oh, and the only way they got this to be feature length (i.e. 75+ minutes), was an extraordinarily long chase scene at the end.

Although, in saying this I'm ripping on one of my favorite actors ever: John Stockwell. You might remember him as Mike Harlan in My Science Project (1985) or Cougar in Top Gun (1986). Here's a pic of John, as Mike Harlan (note trucker hat, those are back in style now)

Well, he directed this movie. I feel kind of sorry for him, because he had previously directed Blue Crush (2002), an actually enjoyable movie that had no gore. Like Blue Crush, this movie has extensive underwater photography, which could be the reason he hooked up with it. Sadly, Stockwell has nothing in development according to IMDB, probably because of this horrific movie.

In any case, JSS rates this movie as BAD/BAD. Avoid at all costs.

Full Metal Jacket (1987) vs. Platoon (1986)

2007-04-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

The two greatest Vietnam movies by two of the greatest war filmmakers. Head to head, in one review. I had the good luck of seeing both in High Def this week: Full Metal Jacket on HBOHD and Platoon on Comcast HD On Demand. Let's break each movie down.

Platoon (1986).

I should remind everyone that this film won on Oscar for Best Picture, therefore, it almost automatically gets the label of "overrated." But, watching it again 11 years later, it is a unquestionably a very good movie. Despite being hung up in the 60s and being a conspiracist, Oliver Stone is one of the last 20 years' top 5 filmmakers and this movie reflects his abilities.

Platoon spends all of its time out in the warzone, and although Charlie Sheen is the protagonist, the real story is between the two sergeants played by Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger. After Berenger's character massacres Vietnamese in a village, Dafoe and Berenger go toe to toe. Those two are the interesting aspect of the film. Charlie Sheen's transition from wide-eyed cornfed boy to heartless killer in the field is just a bit too cliche.

Platoon has a great cast. A lot of these guys went on to become bigger actors after this, not the least of which is Forrest Whitaker, who, before this film, mostly played high school football players in films. And of course Johnny Depp, who I barely recognized. His notable contribution to the world since this film is becoming an anti-American expatriate who lives in France. Nice.

There's really not much to complain about with the filmmaking. Stone is a brilliant filmmaker. It has its wartime cliches thrown in a bit much, but the story is effective and flows well.

I guess my main problem is that there isn't much redemption for the characters in this movie. As Keith David gets on a helicopter, he says something like "I'm going to be living the high life back in the real world, see you suckers!" Sadly, we know a lot of Vietnam vets suffer from PTSD and were disowned by an anti-war society upon arriving home. And I feel like Stone, having come out of it pretty well, was somehow trying to rub the soldiers' faces in it with this little allusion to how it turned out for them when they came home. Even though he fought in this war, I just don't think Stone is very respectful to sacrifice in this movie, even though he later went on to make Born on the Fourth of July.

Platoon is an original script by Stone; therefore, it's solely a creation of Stone's mind. Stone, as we know, is a fanatic 60s peace-movement filmmaker. Again, great film, but this being Stone's "semi-autobiographical" record of Vietnam, so I don't think it should be taken as historical record.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

If you've ever read this blog before, you know I'm a Kubrick fan boy. In my opinion, he's the greatest filmmaker ever, and I'm shocked that this is only a "three star movie" according to my cable guide. FMJ, like Platoon, is easily a four star movie.

That said, this film has problems that are unique to Kubrick.

It's often said that this film is two films. That is not what Kubrick intended. Not at all.

His intention was to break you down, break the film goer down, just like basic training breaks down recruits. Why do you think he shows all of those scenes of them marching, singing? The repetition is to make you feel the monotony of basic training. Like Gomer Pyle, we all start off laughing at the drill sergeant (R. Lee Ermey). I don't know about you, but I find his initial "you are the scum of the earth" rant to be absolutely hilarious. I bet I'd be laughing my ass off just like Pyle if placed in that room. (Where did Ermey come up with this stuff? I heard a lot of it was improvised.). At the end of that basic training, Kubrick has broken us down. We feel as tired and frustrated as Pyle. If he had just not had the jelly donut we wouldn't have had to watch them do pushups over and over. And that's essentially what our soldiers go though in basic training, except they're the ones doing pushups of course.

So it's a natural transition to go from basic training to Vietnam, but Kubrick failed to make this separation in the movie natural. The characters in the first half (Ermey, Pyle) -- and the scene in the head at the end of basic training -- are just too powerful to make this seem like a natural transition in the film. Granted, Kubrick was working from The Short Timers, so it's not really his fault that this was in the story, but the transition confused the audience.

The other "only Kubrick" complaint is that it was shot entirely in England. Wasn't most Vietnam fighting supposed to be in the jungle? I understand that the last scene is supposed to be the city fighting in Hue, but it's not really representative of the war, right?

Watching this in HD prevented me from seeing some of Kubrick's awesome composition, and I think the film is more powerful when watched in 1.33 format, as Kubrick intended.

Also, given that Kubrick was completely anal about filmmaking and took years to put a film together, I'm a little disappointed in some of the principal photography! There are a few scenes with fire that have a lot of reflection in the lens assembly. Very annoying, and very un-Kubrick in that I can't see how he intended this.

The end of the first half and the second half are a couple of the most intense scenes ever on film. If Joker's "hardcore, man... fucking hard core" moment doesn't stay with you after seeing the movie, you have no heart. I had never noticed this before I read it somewhere else: that Joker only shoots at the end when his peace sign is completely obscured by his lapel. Kubrick, again, is the master.

Sadly, I feel like I can skip a lot of this movie just to see those two scenes. Kubrick has portrayed the monotony of basic training and of "being in the shit" a bit too well, it seems.

Head to Head.

Like all Kubrick (and Hitchcock) movies, the camera is God. The deliberacy of each shot makes the film feel 180 degrees from Stone's film, where the camera tries to follow mayhem in war. It is cold, removed view of war, whereas Stone's down in the mud, bullets flying overhead, chaos everywhere. To its detriment, Platoon ends up having a bit more of a cheesy factor: Sheen ends up with that red scarf around his head, Berenger saying Sheen doesn't have the guts to shoot, stuff like that.

Both films really have the same point: the duality of man that Pvt. Joker tells the general about in Full Metal Jacket. Joker's peace sign/"Born to Kill" combination is the short version of Charlie Sheen's transition from wide-eyed kid to red bandana hard ass killer.

Overall, I think Full Metal Jacket gives a slightly better view of the entire picture of war, but Platoon is a more entertaining, watchable movie.

Both have their place in showing the Vietnam War, and are great films.

This post brought to you by...

2007-03-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

William Zabka.

He's in a movie I'm watching in the background right now called "Python", and he's playing the hell out of the character called Deputy Greg. This movie also stars Wil Wheaton. This movie's a b-actor dumping ground, thus must be seen to be believed.

"SWEEP THE LEG", Buddy! Cobra-Kan!

King Kong (2005)

2007-03-04T12:56:00.001-08:00

Someone I discussed this movie with replied, "Well, that's what happens when someone has too many 'Yes' Men around."

I wish I could remember who said that to give them credit here, because no movie I've seen recently demonstrates that concept better than this one. From concept all the way to release, too many people must have been telling Peter Jackson "yes", instead of "you're a moron."

Let's address the concept first: a remake of King Kong.... correction, a remake of a remake of King Kong. This movie has been made three times in Hollywood, and the story isn't even that great! For 7 decades, King Kong captured the imaginations of .... who exactly? It's a monkey movie. The plot of the movie is no more meaningful than Bedtime for Bonzo -- monkeys put in human situations; nature vs. nurture; cross-chromosomal love story. If you're a conspiracist, remaking King Kong again is all part of Hollywood's monkey conspiracy. And, at worst, remaking King Kong again puts a blind eye towards the cries that the story has always been racist.

I'm not going to debate whether King Kong is racist because that's not what this blog is about. I'll leave it to you to Google around for articles that expore the controversy of King Kong's racist themes. I prefer to focus my attention on the self-indulgence and delusions of grandeur of the filmmaker instead of the characters in the story, because I love to write about movies that suck.

Which brings us to point #2 of Jackson having too many Yes Men: Hey Pete, ever heard of a film editor? You know, they do that now, edit a film before releasing it. They even have computers called Avids that can do it easily, then a negative cutter will put that together at the end.

The film is over 3 hours long, which is just too long for any movie. Give me 1.5 hours of passably decent action like Wolfgang Petersen was able to do in Poseidon, not 3 hours of grueling, meaningless action just to fund your personal visual effects company. I can almost understand why LotR was too long, since there was a lot of material to cover. That's not the case for King Kong. This story is very, very simple. We don't need 15 minutes of CG Kong looking at Naomi Watts longingly on the top of the Empire State Building. OMGWTFBBQ, WE GET IT ALREADY. We've all gotten it since 1933. Thankfully for HBO HD and a Comcast DVR, I was able to fast forward through most of the film. I firmly believe that all movies are too long, so now you know why I don't watch them until they're on DVD or HBO. I reserve the right to skip a filmmaker's self-indulgent bullshit.

Finally, let's get to point #3: the visual effects. This movie proves that all movies will be remade for no other reason than to remake the effects. They can do that because effects have gotten too easy to do! You read that right: too easy! Armies of relatively cheap digital compositing, roto and paint artists have made these kinds of things so easy that filmmakers can become, again, self-indulgent. Based on the growth of the VFX industry since Jurassic Park, today Jackson can just fly artists down from the United States as temporary full time to get it done. Compare this to the vision and tenacity the original King Kong filmmakers must have had, to take on visual effects like that in 1933.

Before this movie premiered, some had the gall to predict this movie could be bigger than Titanic. Titanic had at least some decent story qualities (I'm not saying I liked it, just that many did like that story), whereas this movie, a remake of a remake of an originally lame story, has none. Don't waste your time on this movie in any way. Even the visuals aren't as cool as the 1933 version when you consider how difficult it was to pull those gags off 70 years ago compared to today.

Rating: Bad/Good movie (as it, it was supposed to be good, but it was terrible, kind of like Forrest Gump). In HD, it's a tremendous waste of space on your DVR. If you find it for $0.50 on Blu-Ray underneath a pair of used boxer shorts at a garage sale in 10 years, maybe worth picking up and watching then.

Poseidon (2006)

2007-03-04T11:27:00.001-08:00

This movie's about as safe as you can get. A very safe script, safe director choice, safe and inexpensive B-list cast, safe VFX company choice, etc..

The script here is so safe it's abysmally cliché. Given the number of standby subplots thrown at us, I'm surprised they didn't have a murderous psycho roaming the ship. There's the "I'm a loner but I suddenly start to care and save someone" guy. We've got drunk annoying guy who you know will get killed soon. We've got the people who stay put during the disaster and are fools of course, because they'll all get killed. We've got the kid who wanders off and gets lost at exactly the wrong moment. Seriously, I know kids wander, but would kids wander off in disaster situations at exactly the wrong time like they always do in the movies? Petersen actually gives these such minimal screen time, he probably should garner a Best Director award for sparing the audience.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like Petersen's body of work a lot, but he's definitely a safe choice for any big budget underwater film. He's not going to screw it up, and he'll make it exciting no matter what crap script he has to work with. He mercifully keeps this film to 90 minutes, and I mean exactly 90 minutes when the credits rolled (according to my Comcast DVR). I'm sure he looked at this movie as a paycheck as much as everyone in the theater looked at it as just another $10 down the drain.

It should be no surprise that I prefer the original film, even with the effects that look like they were shot in your bathtub rather than with a $50m VFX budget. It has been a long time since I've seen it, but who can forget that cast of the 1972 version. I'm a huge Kurt Russell fan, and he was the only standout actor in the cast of the most recent film, but his character sucked here (see section on "abysmal script"). Irwin Allen produced two of the greatest disaster films of all time, both with spectacular casts: The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. I was perusing the cast of the original Poseidon and just noticed that Red Buttons and Shelley Winters both died last year. How sad. By the way, don't forget that the original Poseidon Adventure was nominated for a bunch of awards -- even Shelly Winters for best supporting actress!

The most recent Poseidon was nominated for best VFX, which, even given my lack of filmgoing in the last year, it should have been. The opening shot was really, really nice and there were a bunch of other great shots. But when a film is made the safe way -- the way that guarantees audiences will neither love it nor hate it, just spend $10 and forget it -- no amount of eye candy can keep it from being utterly forgettable.

Rating: Bad/Bad... don't spend any money on it, just see it on HBO HD, like I did.

The Fourth Protocol (1987)

2007-02-11T19:45:00.001-08:00

Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan in an actual spy movie. Before Brosnan took on Bond and became yet another silly spy with a bunch of gadgetry, he played a KGB spy in this movie... just a bad, evil KGB agent planning to nuke a US air base. The most exciting chase in the movie is when Caine is following Brosnan in a mini-van. Not speeding. Not crashing through Paris or shooting laser guided missiles from the car ... just following him.

Granted, this movie is outdated in today's world: an old Cold War plot. I'm not sure if it takes memory of the Cold War to enjoy those type of movies, but since I have those memories, I do enjoy them. The Hunt For Red October is one of my all time favorite movies.

Ned Beatty has a throwaway role in the movie. I half expected him to turn up being the bad guy. I wish he had a larger part in the movie. His role in Network (1976) is one of the most classic of all time. Instead, he has about a 10 minute role where he doesn't do very much.

"Fourth Protocol" is just long enough -- a little shy of two hours -- and keeps you interested throughout. That is, if you're actually an intelligent filmgoer that can pay attention for 5 minutes to a movie that has no explosions or dinosaur chases (see next review of King Kong).

RATING: Good/Good. Worth a view.

Superman Returns (2006)

2007-01-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

Something I know from experience is that Warner Brothers is the worst studio to work for. It's a studio run by hateful people with the collective business sense of a twelve year old lemonade stand owner on the wealthiest street in town.

So I imagine they must have thrown a dumptruck full of cash onto Bryan Singer's lap to agree to come direct this movie for them. Warners, after all, was considering having McG direct this movie just before they scored Singer. That should tell you something about the business sense of the Warner Brothers executive staff. Jack Warner would be turning in his grave if he knew the people running his company with his stage name (Jack Warner nee John Eichelbaum) would consider hiring McG to direct Superman's great return.

However, all turned out because they got the glorious director of all things comic book to come and direct this movie. Obviously Singer hit two home runs with X-Men.

The end result is potentially Singer's fourth best movie. His best is The Usual Suspects, #17 on IMDB's top films and a movie that garnered Spacey his first Academy Award. I would say that X-Men 2 is better than X-Men 1. X-Men 1 required a lot of character setup, and the ending was generally a pretty lame battle at the Statue of Liberty. Actually, having read the original draft script for X-Men to bid on its effects -- that's another sob story for another time -- I can tell you that a bunch of cool character development was cut from the final movie. They were going to show Storm and Cyclops', but didn't (IIRC).

Back to this movie. It's a lot less cheesy than Superman:The Movie. Spacey, of course, nails Lex. I'm kind of glad the Miss Teschmacherand Otis characters were not in this movie, though Parker Posey's character "Kitty" plays as close to Teschmacher as you can get without being her. I really like Lex and his underlings in this movie. Kal Penn does not speak, which is probably a good thing when he's not playing Kumar.

Which brings us to Lois and Clark. Routh does a good job as Superman/Clark. It's a pretty simple character though, right? He acts all klutzy as Clark, he acts all Eagle-Scouty as Superman ("You know, smoking will kill you..."). When he gets near kryptonite he acts all weak. It doesn't take a great actor to play Superman beyond having a strong chin and profile, which Routh does fine.

Kate Bosworth raises the bar on the Lois character. She proves exactly how silly they were to cast Margot Kidder the first time around. As an adult, I realize how stupid and crazy Lois was made out to be in the first couple Superman movies. This version of Lois seems like a reasonable adult journalistic type. Bosworth does a stellar job and is one of the best superhero girlfriends lately (compared to Katie Holmes in Batman -- a worthless character -- or Kirsten Dunst, who looks like she could be a meth addict if she wasn't an actress).

The movie is pretty good, though we have one random "Hey, Superman saves these people and does something cool" moment (the eye-bullet scene which was in the trailer). The rest of his super actions in the movie are actually tied into the story, which is remarkable for most superhero comic book films. Overall this movie is pretty watchable, I would see it again.

I did want to mention here that while Superman : The Movie came across as more cheesy--especially after we're introduced to Lois (spinning the world backwards to save her, anyone?)--the first 30 minutes of that first film could be some of the best frames ever printed in the history of film. The story of Jor-El, Krypton, Superman's time in Smallville is awesome. No comic book movie has come close to matching the character and story development of that part of Superman : The Movie.

Finally, no viewing of this film would be complete without a critique of the effects work, since my former division of AOL was supposed to work on it (another sob story for another time). I'll go gently though since so many friends worked on the movie. All-in-all, the effects are okay. My favorite effects in the movie look like models, so if they weren't, then bravo to the CG people who did them. I did like the bullet-in-the-eye effect. I also really, really liked the x-ray vision effect. Nice way he can go through layers of walls progressively with his vision. The explosion and space-shuttle effects look CG. I could see a bad matte or bad spill supression on some shots, and on an HD transfer compressed down to 7.0GB, that's pretty questionable. Furthermore, I was surprised the skin and cloth shaders on the CG Superman were as unconvincing as they were. I've seen better cloth and skin shaders in real time, rendered on the GPU. I think it might be time to revisit some of the shader techniques utilized by these films. It could be the treatment in the composite... I wasn't there when they were putting together the shot of course.

Speaking of the HD transfer, I watched this movie via Xbox Live. The compression was pretty horrendous. Granted, at 2 and 1/4 hours, this movie required about a 1:35 compression ratio to get it down to 7 gigabytes. I think the digital color timing done on the film also did a number on the compression though. It seems like these video codecs don't play well with visual gradients that have been messed with digitally (like clouds). A lot of parts where Superman is flying through the clouds looked pretty blocky as a result. I'd be curious to see how this looks on HD-DVD.

Rating: Good/Good. If you can stand supporting the people of Warner Brothers, it's worth grabbing on Xbox Live or an HD-DVD.

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

2006-12-31T13:24:00.000-08:00

Once in a while a film comes along where the one-line description just makes you want to declare it a work of genius. Snakes on a Plane pretty much wrapped that up in the title. Bubba Ho-Tep is in the same realm. Here's the one liner for Bubba Ho-Tep:

"Elvis and JFK battle an undead Egyptian mummy in a Texas rest home."

That's all you need to know. Either that movie sounds like genius to you or it doesn't. I happen to be one of the people who thinks that sounds like genius.

The end result is a mostly great movie. It's definitely a cult classic, and of course casting Bruce Campbell as Elvis didn't hurt its chances for that. I think the middle drags a little bit. I might have enjoyed the JFK aspect more if the actor playing JFK had had a Kennedyesque accent (think Mayor Quimby). All around though, the movie is a good entry into the Horror-Comedy genre (Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, Lost Boys, etc). The first 20 minutes are especially funny.

Rating: Great/Bad movie. I saw it on Comcast's fear.net channel, but I'll be buying the DVD shortly.

I've never taken Julian Sands seriously after "Warlock"

2006-12-22T21:55:00.000-08:00

Even when he was in the TV show 24, it was hard to take him seriously because I kept thinking of the 1989 classic "Warlock".

Redeye (2005)

2006-10-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

This is an 85 minute movie, which should tell you a lot in a day and age where every filmaker thinks that every movie they make is an epic and should be 3 hours long. And at 85 minutes, it's still too long.

I'm just going to give some of this movie away because it's basically given away in the trailer anyway. A guy kidnaps a girl on a flight with the threat that there's a man outside her father's house that will kill him if she doesn't cooperate.

About 30 seconds after this plot is revealed, it occurs to everyone in the theater that she should just tell the stewardess anyway. The bad guy is incommunicato and detained (since he's 35,000 feet up). And since we're in an age where "every threat is taken seriously", you'd think that they could just call the local police in Miami and have them go pick up the guy outside of her father's house. End of story.

Instead, the screenwriter tries to put in some lame excuse that the bad guy uses to make it sound like no one will listen to the girl -- because she's had a few drinks. Like I said, aren't we supposed to live in a paranoid age where every threat is supposed to be taken seriously?

In actuality, this movie is just an excuse to ogle Rachel McAdams. She's very attractive, so seeing this movie in high def on HBO was perfect for the purpose of eye candy. Nearby is a picture of her courtesy of IMDB and I think you'll agree she's attractive. Just another pretty Canadian girl in crappy movies who needs a new agent badly (see my prior posts about Elisa Cuthbert)

So if you're in the mood to see a pretty face for 85 minutes with no viable plot, I suggest you check out Wes Craven's lastest crapfest on HBO HD.

Ghost in the Machine Twofer: The Ring Two (2005) and The Mangler (1995)

2006-08-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

Moviemakers have an obsession with evil machines. According to them, a see-saw is dangerous. Let's look at some examples. You've got Skynet, which nukes the world in the Terminator series. There's the Matrix. Or robots, which are in about a million movies. And who can forget HAL?

But let's take these two movies: The Ring Two and The Mangler. One is that your VCR can kill you. The other is a bedsheet speed folding machine at a laundry plant.

I don't know about you, but the latter is certainly a more likely killer than the former. That's the kind of thing that can suck your hand in and smash it to bits. If the thing is fast enough and big enough, I guess it could suck your head in and crush your skull, which -- i don't think I'm giving much away here -- is exactly what happens in the movie The Mangler.

The Mangler is based on a short story by Stephen King. The story was really stupid, but the movie at least appoaches the material with a sense of humor. In the deft hands of Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist), The Mangler was actually pretty entertaining. I think everyone in the movie was drunk when the made it. The lead guy in the movie is supposed to be a drunk cop, acting not unlike Joe Don Baker's excellent drunk cop portrayal in Mitchell (1975), where Baker always had a pack of Schlitz on him. In The Mangler, the drunk cop guy (Johnny) actually is never witnessed drinking alcohol, but he slurs his lines so much you have to wonder if they were trying to keep alcohol away from the actor. Yes, this guy might have been an actual fall-down drunk. If not, the guy's just a hell of an actor.

Of course, both VHS tapes and speed folding machines are possessed by demons in these two movies. The Mangler was entertaining in that the machine weighs about 5 tons. So how is it that someone can be so stupid to stand close enough to the machine to get their hand/clothing/shoelace stuck in the machine. It's like when Tanya Roberts gets kidnapped by that blimp in A View To a Kill. Seriously, people can't just stay away from the fucking possessed machine? Are they that stupid? That's one of the more entertaining things about the movie -- guessing how will they get caught in the machine next?

Now, onto The Ring Two. This movie sucks compared to The Mangler. It's directed by the Japanese guy who originally directed Ringu, the Japanese flick which The Ring was based on. Just on that fact alone you can probably guess he takes himself too seriously for the good of the movie.

What's really scary is that it took me 15 minutes into The Ring Two to realize that I had actually seen it before. It was so boring that I turned it off again.

Let's face it: The Ring is really stupid. People watch a videotape and then they die in 7 days -- unless they make a copy and make someone else watch it. You'd think by the timeframe of the sequel (a year or so after the original), advertisers would have totally gotten into this videotape. Can you imagine how marketers around the country would clambor to get their product advertised on this tape, since it has to be copied and shown to someone else or else you die? It's like the ultimate chain letter advertising gimmick. The Ring Tape -- Drink Pepsi... NOW!

The problem with machine movies is that they're easy to beat. Here's how you defeat these machines: The Ring Tape... either someone decides to be a martyr so no one else has to watch it, or just everyone keeps copying it forever and ever so no one dies. It becomes a government program of tape copying and required viewing. The Mangler... just stay the hell away from it. It weighs like 5 tons.

This works for like every machines take over movie. Skynet... don't arm it with nuclear missles. The Matrix... clue machines into nuclear power as a source of energy, rather than the spectacularly inefficent human Duracell concept. HAL... well we saw how Dave defeated HAL.

Basically the bottom line is just don't give the machines too much responsibility and we'll all be ok. The machines don't run much right now, right?! Riiiight?!!!

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

2006-07-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure which I should be more scared of ...

a) I've now lived through a bad movie remake (the original Hills Have Eyes movie was 1977)
b) Hollywood is so devoid of original material that they remade this movie
c) I actually paid to see this movie on PPV.

What I was definitely not scared of was the movie itself. Horrible piece of crap.

I tuned in because they promised atomic mutants. They delivered on at least that. Boring, repetitive atomic mutants. It did have some surprises, like who gets killed first, etc.. Not everything was your boilerplate zombie movie predictability.

I came away from the movie with one main question: why are atomic mutants and zombies always superhuman? 99% of the time, mutants you see in the movies are super strong. Like C.H.U.D.s. They were super strong and cannabalistic (hence the C in C.H.U.D.). Godzilla... he was an atomic mutant. Super strong, almost indestructable except to opponents like Mothra. Spiderman... atomic spider mutant. The Hulk. That's a good one.

In the real world, mutants are weak. I've come across a few, at bars in San Francisco, and I've kicked all their asses. The reality of the atomic mutant situation would be much more dire than the movies make out. A world of atomic mutants would be one that required a lot of meals on wheels and such.

The bottom line is, I'm tired of the atomic mutant in film. The ol' "nukes are bad, here's the nuclear badness represented in terms of atomic mutants" meme just doesn't carry the same weight that it might have in 1962 or 1947.

As a moviegoer, I say, screw atomic mutants. Attention Hollywood: you won't get me to watch a movie again just by claiming you have them in there. They always end up having the same stupid bad makeup with a bubble face or bad teeth, a large head, whatever. Atomic mutants suck! I'd rather watch the Atomic Bomb Movie if I wanted to see something atomic.

Rating: Bad/Bad. I'd be surprised if it ever made it to HBO.

The Shaggy Dog (2006)

2006-07-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help but watch this on a plane to Chicago this weekend. I was that bored.

I mostly watched this movie without sound, but here's what I've always wondered: why is it that when a person gets turned into a dog, they can only bark? You'd think that if a person's brain was represented in a dog's body, they'd be able to figure out how to use the dog's vocal chords to enunciate something other than "Woof!"

Even dogs with dog brains can be taught to enunciate. Here's a dog saying "I love you" on Letterman http://www.devilducky.com/media/35588/

Here're more examples of talking dogs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbBmOuSt8rM

So why, WHY does every movie where someone turns into an animal have that person just able to make animal sounds?

Maybe I'm reading too much into stupid Tim Allen movies. Besides Galaxy Quest, does this guy have any good movies? He might be the biggest sell-out actor in all of Hollywood. After doing Toy Story he'll do anything Disney throws a bag of money at him to do. Most of them involve him changing into something like a dog or santa claus.

And yet people still pay for these movies. When will you people learn??

Rating: Bad/Bad

The Fog (2005)

2006-03-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

To new readers: you can always count on this blog to see every John Carpenter remake and comment on it. The Fog is no exception.

I'm a longtime fan of the original, 1980 version of "The Fog". I'd go as far to say it's probably my third or fourth favorite Carpenter movie. Like Hooper, it was another o ne of those movies that played on the ABC Movie of the Week on Sunday nights. Unlike Hooper, it scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

Maybe it's the nostalgia, but of course I ended up liking the original more than the remake.

The original started with John Houseman telling a campfire story about the ship that crashed 100 years ago, the Elizabeth Dane. The remake instantly turns to using the lame-ass teeniebopper horror movie cliche that I know what you did last summer and Scream made all the rage. As soon as the opening credits are done, a horrible Fall Out Boy song kicks in full volume and the show Selma Blair taking over the role of DJ Stevie Wayne, which Adrianne Barbeau once played so well. Again, this is Hollywood thinking that the horror movies that get people into the theater all have to be like "The O.C."

That said, there was one significant improvement on the movie: they get a lot deeper in terms of telling the story of the ship (the Elizabeth Dane). In the original, that story was almost an afterthought. In this one, it's the centerpiece. Although, they tried to add a twist to the end. That's fine, I didn't mind that... except it made absolutely no sense. I won't give it away, but I'm sure you'll watch the last two minutes of this movie and say "What the hell?"

The effects are a huge improvement over the original. They've used digital techniques to make a much more ominous looking fog than the glowing DXed (double exposured) fog from the original. However, there's something a lot less scary about the whole thing. I think it was scarier in the original to see the silouhetted ghosts. In this one, they've made them into digital creations that look scary, but just aren't scary.

My recommendation is to see the original, then see this movie. Actually, see these Carpenter classics before you see The Fog:

The Thing (1982)
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Escape from New York (1981)

Note I did not include Halloween in that list. Undoubtedly you've seen it.

Rating: Good/Bad, Worth renting if you like the genre, othewise wait for it on HBO.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

2006-02-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, now this is a horror-genre movie I've been looking for.

First of all, it has to do with religious mysticism. I'm not sure why, but I love the movies that have anything to do with that. Raiders of the Lost Ark is of course my favorite movie of all time, which could have something to do with it. I equally like possession movies in the genre, like Rosemary's Baby, The Omen and the original Exorcist. Of course, I'm not religious in any way, but still I think the power of these movies is that so many people are religious. Makes it a bit more believable than a horror movie like The Blob.

This movie is supposed to be a true story. The Exorcism of Emily Rose starts with the investigation and pending trial around her death. The rest of the story is told by way of flashback. I found the format to be very effective and interesting, it kept me riveted until the end. I have no idea of the original story, and I'm sure a lot of creative license was taken to make the possession seem scary. Yet, this was still an effective movie.

Bonus: it has Laura Linney in it. Laura Linney is at the top of my list of Hollywood hotties. Plus, she's also a great actress. If you haven't seen You Can Count On Me (2000), you should. It's an excellent and truly underrecognized movie and completely not a horror movie. It's about a couple of adults who, as kids, lost their parents in a car crash. The movie is a character piece, there's very little plot except that the brother comes home to visit the sister. Mark Ruffalo was also great in that one as the brother.

Anyway, back to my favorite subject of this post: Laura Linney. One thing I wonder about her is if she is a firm believer in the supernatural, or if she just keeps getting typecast for these movies. What was up with her being in The Mothman Prophecies? That movie was complete shit. Why would someone with such a good acting resume be in that? Did she want to get with Richard Gere (if so, she's off my hottie list). Anyway, she does a good job here, given the nutty supernatural material, except for one scene with her lawyer boss that falls really flat. It must be hard to deliver lines that are pretty ridiculous.

The style of the movie is done well. I really like the first five minutes. There's very little dialogue, but it's a pretty powerful scene. I kind of wish they had stuck with that tone instead of going crazy with the special effects and makeup. But, I'm sure the dummies at the studio thought that the only way to market the movie was as a typical teenage horror flick, so they inserted all of the FX.

BTW, have I ever mentioned how Hollywood marketing works? Basically, the marketing people at the studio don't know anything about the movie. They barely care what it's about. Their motto is "You make it, we'll sell it in the genre where we think it will be most successful." That's what happened to this movie. They probably equated it with I know what you did last summer, rather than trying to formulate a remarkable horror movie like Rosemary's Baby.

That's probably the only major thing I can criticize about the movie. Overall, very well done.

RATING: Good/Bad. Go ahead and rent it or PPV it.

Hooper (1978)

2006-01-13T20:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I was perusing upcoming movies on HBO and saw, at 4am, Hooper!

This is one of those movies from my childhood that I really loved. When ABC used to show Sunday night movies, Hooper was probably on once or twice a year. Created by same the Smokey and the Bandit crew, it was another PG-rated Burt Reynolds vehicle.

Usually when I watch movies that I loved as a child, I find them to be a let down. Surprisingly, Hooper is still extremely enjoyable 25 years later (or whenever it was that I last saw it).

This is a movie about stuntmen. It really has pretty simple storylines in it: crazy stunts, a young stunt kid challenging the old guard, stuntmen partying and going crazy, stuntmen not being able to keep relationships going, hollywood directors act like jerks, etc..

Fortunately, the jokes are pretty funny and the movie is just the perfect length. I'm the king of thinking that all movies are too long, but this movie leaves you slightly wanting more! What a rarity!

In any case, check it out if you see it on cable. It's on DVD as well, I think I saw it for $5 at Fry's... should have bought it then!

Rating: Good/Bad movie. The best entry in the great tradition of flicks like Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit.

Cinderella Man (2005)

2005-12-30T10:48:00.000-08:00

I saw this on the airplane last night, so it might have been missing a few things due to editing. However...

Awesome. This is probably the best movie I've seen all year.

I think the reason I didn't care to see this movie when it came out is because of the title. Something about it just doesn't appeal to me. It makes the movie sound like a romantic comedy or some kind of love story. It is a love story at times, but that element is not the most important element. The main focus is boxing and the Great Depression.

The Depression has become an era we probably don't think possible in these days of irrational exuberance. Probably about 45 minutes of the movie shows Braddock, a down and out fighter who lost his boxing license, trying to get a day's work at the docks. The men would gather outside the gate and hope to get picked by the manager. After a couple of fights that Braddock won on his comeback, the manager pulls him aside and asks him if he was the guy mentioned in the paper. Braddock says he was. Then the manager says, "Well, good job, now go get back to work [moving bags of goods for pennies on the dollar]."

The Depression seems unimaginable, but this movie does an amazing job of showing us what it was like. Braddock had made pretty good money as a boxer before 1929, and then lost it all in stocks to the point where he couldn't pay the electricity bill.

However, as with all docudramas, we again are wondering how much of the story told is really true. The first thing I wondered was whether Russell Crowe is considerably wimpier than the real James J. Braddock. The answer is no. Actually Russell Crowe is probably more buff than this guy was.

I think this movie's main issue with the truth is around Max Baer. First of all, his physique: the actor who played him was huge compared to Crowe. In actuality, Baer does not look that much bigger than Braddock did. He was about 10lbs heavier. Nearby is a picture of their fight.

Note another thing about this picture that isn't obvious in the movie: the Star of David on Baer's shorts. Let's not forget that Baer had defeated Hitler's boy Max Schmeling in Yankee Stadium -- and wore the Star of David when he did it. He swore to wear it in every fight thereafter. However, it's bizarrely missing from this movie (apparently it is there, but so imperceptible as to not be there).

Baer is made out to be a happy killer because he killed Frankie Campbell in the ring--but actually he was very upset about it.

Baer is clearly the most misrepresented thing about the film, I'd say to the point where the filmmakers should be ashamed for demonizing him.

More on the true story of Baer and this movie:

http://www.slate.com/id/2120151
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=3825&more=1

Finally, it should be noted that this movie demonstrates something we've completely lost in the United States: boxing as a real sport. Boxing is pretty amazing to watch and to listen to, and in the days of yore, it represented a cultural and ethnic phenomenon. Can you imagine witnessing Baer, with a Star of David on his shorts, defeating Hitler's boxer Max Schmeling? Or Joe Louis doing the same thing? Boxing was a sport that went far beyond the ring in those days. It represented a battle, with a group of people identifying with and rooting for one of their own. Boxing has gone far, far away from that. Today it is just an illusion that makes Pay Per View money from poor slobs that are hoping for a meaningful boxing match, of which the 1930s seemed to have an endless number.

Rating: Good/Good... but the historical accuracy could use some work. Probably worth seeing on film if you still can.

Hollywood, meet your new overlord

2005-12-25T21:06:00.000-08:00

Today on Slashdot: Blockbuster gives up against Netflix. I posted a comment on this article but I wanted to expand upon the thoughts here.

Blockbuster was never competing against Netflix. They were competing against Hollywood's new overlord (to be revealed shortly). Blockbuster has tried desperately to keep themselves from sailing down the abyss in the face of technology. They changed their late fees, tried mail-in rentals like Netflix, and have tried rental subscriptions at their brick-and-mortar locations. None of these has helped in a rental market that's headed into negative territory. Right now, the only product Blockbuster has that people can't really rent somewhere else are video games, and hopefully that will change someday.

On the other side of this coin, Netflix will eventually turn out to be a blip in history. They may be around for a long time, and they'll continue to serve the needs of people who are looking for obscure DVDs, or just watch a lot of movies and want to do so on a budget. They may be even able to be profitable long into the future with that model. I would not be surprised if we eventually see movie studios desperately claw to make their own version of Netflix to fend of the monster.

That monster is Comcast.

And you thought Google was the juggarnaut of the future? Comcast will soon have put Blockbuster under and have TV networks, studios, distributors... everyone in entertainment under their thumb. And why is that? Many reasons.

For one, they've perfected DIVX. Remember the DVD format that self destructs after 24 hours and had people screaming? No one wanted to buy something that self destructs. However, Comcast has come out with a product that essentially does exactly that and WILL have customers. It's their On Demand service.

My first exposure to On Demand was pretty piss-poor. That was about a year ago, I watched "Elf" with Will Farrell. I thought the compression was horrible, the controls had an annoying delay in them, and of course the cable box UI was terrible. A lot has changed since then. Their cable box is much, much better than before. Much faster, and the UI isn't terrible. The controls are a tad more responsive, though will always have some delay compared to a local playback device since On Demand is actually streaming from the central office. But, most improved is the compression. I was watching I, Robot on On Demand earlier and it looked as good as a DVD or from HBO.

My theory is that the first company that truly gets On Demand out there and popularized will destroy everybody. Technically speaking, Comcast is already there in some markets (I'm trying it out in Illinois), now they just need to expand the content. With enough content, On Demand can make Tivo irrelevant. It can make internet broadcasting irrelevant -- who wants to download WMVs when you can watch on your TV with your typical cable box? Oh, and movie rentals? Pay Per View had already made going to Blockbuster a chore, but with On Demand you can forget it. As their library of content expands, you won't need to ever go anywhere to get your hands on that old movie -- and that's good bye to Netflix (though I believe a fringe element of movie viewers will keep them going for a while).

And finally, Hollywood. We've already figured out that no one gives a crap to see movies in the theater anymore. We've got HD sets that are better looking than most screens these days. We've got surround sound we can adjust to our own preference rather than being blown away. Now all we need is a decent way to get movies to the HD sets.

Enter Comcast. Blu-Ray or HD-DVD are at least six months out from being in people's hands and are years away from being widespread. However, today, Comcast can take any movie, get an HDCAM or D5 HD transfer of it, upload it to their server, and have it in your hands tomorrow via On Demand. They completely control the prerecorded HD market today--and will until a new format can rise to challenge them. If this continues, Comcast could easily control virtually all distribution of HD content. That would mean they'd essentially be the world's largest theater owner. That would mean they'd have more power to dictate what movies are made, play on their channels, and how they get marketed than possibly any theater owner ever.

For those not familiar with the movie business, the distributors actually market their movies to theater owners at a conference called Showest. It's as important for the studios that theater owners will show the movie as it is for people to show up at the theater. Sometimes, not as much as it probably should, theater owners vote with their feet and won't show a movie the studios want them to.

Now imagine Comcast controls a massive distribution channel for HD--larger than all theater chains in the US. Theaters sold 1.578b tickets in 2002 (most ever was that year). In 2004, Comcast had 500m On Demand views (incl. lots of free ones, I'm sure). This year, they expect to exceed 1b On Demands. In short, a service that's merely 2 years old has already reached 66% of all movie tickets sold in the US in its best year. One word: pwned.

That's bad news for theater owners, because movie studios would love to have a distribution channel like Comcast -- high definition films that aren't easily crackable by hackers like DVDJon, expire in 24 hours, and can reach 60m people (20m homes) at the touch of a button. No more having to wring their hands over digital distribution to theaters. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next 5 years, we see a high-end, full-length feature movie get released on HD via On Demand at the same time as theaters. And of course Comcast drives what movie that would be... since their distribution is more powerful than the theaters.

Oh, and one more thing... SBC should look out too. I haven't been on a cable modem yet that doesn't get at least twice the performance of my DSL. The theory is that the switching on DSL is better, but I honestly haven't seen it. Cable providers have everything invested in data, really, when you think about it. It just makes sense that they have to keep performance up.

Box office marketing

2005-12-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

Box office numbers are purely marketing -- people follow what other people do. Just like CBS has been advertising "We're the #1 comedy channel, football channel, etc.". So it really helps to have big box office numbers.

Once you understand this, it helps you interpret the bald-faced lies that Hollywood makes when commenting on box office numbers.

For example:

From BoxOfficeMojo: "I think the industry and the media did not understand how a three hour movie performs," said Marc Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal. "Take Lord of the Rings out because that comes with the Tolkien nuts, and there aren't any examples. It's not surprising that we didn't understand it. As crazy as it is, the only one you can point to is Titanic. [King Kong] is writing its own pattern."

No, actually Shmuger, the highest grossing movie of all time (in adjusted dollars) was FOUR hours long. It was called 'Gone with the Wind,' maybe you've heard of it?

Epics sell slowly. We know this. That's why Titanic did the numbers it did, it was an epic (sad, but true). Star wars (the first three) - Epic. Raiders of the Lost Ark - Epic. Obviously, from all of the hype, Universal is desperate for King Kong to be an epic. But you have to wonder if it is ultimately in the same category as Every Which Way But Loose or Bedtime for Bonzo.

King Kong's Friday: $14.2m

2005-12-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

This is $10m LESS than Narnia pulled in last week, and approxmiately $25m less than what Potter pulled in on its first Friday.

Shows two things.

a) Someone at Universal is so fired right now.
b) No amount of hype can stop Hollywood from slipping into the abyss.

House of Wax (2005)

2005-12-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

This post should be titled "Why do I keep getting suckered by Elisha Cuthbert?" and, again, "Elisha Cuthbert needs to fire her agent."

I bought this movie on PPV on a whim because of the aforementioned "actress", as well as my hope that someday, somehow, someone will make another good horror movie. I'm talking about the classics like Rosemary's Baby, The Thing, The Shining or The Exorcist. These movies (and of course all of Carpenter's work) are what made horror my favorite genre.

Little did I know that Paris Hilton is also in this movie. Ugh, they're never going to get another Rosemary's Baby with that kind of casting.

Here's a short list of what's wrong with today's horror movies.

Horror = The OC. Ever since Scream and I know what you did last summer, all of these movies have had casts straight from Fox and The WB with soundtracks that are trying to sell WEA's recently signed platinum-selling teen angst shill band. What ever happened to getting unknown bad actors for horror movies that have no plot, like, for example, all of the Friday the 13th movies? What ever happened to soundtracks that were actually spooky? We can only count on Carpenter to give us those scores anymore.
Horror = Slasher. Not one of these recent horror movies avoids any opportunity to use extreme gore. This House of Wax remake makes Friday the 13th look like cutting a into a juicy rare steak in terms of gore.
No tension. The only kind of tension they can create in these movies is stupidity. During this movie, I was yelling at Elisa "Goddamnit, don't go upstairs you fool!"
Special effects. Seriously, special effects mostly ruin horror movies. Scary is things before you see them. Don't you people get it yet?
Talented, brain dead directors. These guys have all of the visual abilities you can possibly imagine. This movie had incredible visuals in it. Too bad they were wasted on this movie. Why would an aspiring, obviously visually talented, director take on a piece of shit like this? Look where it got him, he's going to direct "Goal! 2". Nice job.

The only recent horror movie I'd say was in the realm of the classics was The Ring. If you haven't seen that, you should absolutely rent that instead of watching something like this craptacular movie.

One more time... Elisha Cuthbert, fire your agent!

Rating: Bad/Bad. If you accidentally turn it on HBO or something, get some emergency eye wash as soon as possible.

King Bomb

2005-12-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

King Kong only pulled in $9.7 on Wednesday, even though it was in 3700+ theaters. That makes it the #21 all time Wed opener... below Meet The Fockers and Pokemon.

When you figure that it costs more to see a movie now more than ever, and this movie cost $200m+ to make, this does not bode well for Hollywood. After all the hype about how this movie would be as big as Titanic, maybe I'm not the only one out there who doesn't care to pay $10 to see a remake of a remake. I hated the 1976 version anyway. It's a dumb, boring story. Sorry guys!

I'd much rather see "V for Vendetta" -- why they hell aren't they releasing it before March?

(edit) ... I thought my King Bomb headline was original, but then I read this article, where he suggests a few other snappy headlines for King Kong failure:

http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---27454,00.html

24 Hour Party People (2002)

2005-12-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of the Madchester music movement. Name off some of my favorite acts from the 80s and early 90s and they're all in this group: The Farm, Charlatans, 808 State, Happy Mondays, James, Smiths, New Order, and, of course, the Stone Roses. When I was working at a record store in 1991, I begged my boss to let me have "Electronic" (the joint venture between Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr) the night before it was supposed to be on shelves. Of course, I loved it at the time, and now I recognize that album as the marker of a end of a great era of music (Amazon calls the disc a "two-man Manchester supergroup" -- that ought to tell you something).

Based on all of this Madchester fanaticism in my history, I had been dying to see 24 Hour Party People. This movie is the story of Tony Wilson, the founder of Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub, both of which were instrumental in putting Manchester on the map.

I came in thinking I'd love this movie -- and I did, to a point. More on where that point is in a second.

The movie starts off with Tony (Steve Coogan) doing one of those quaint news stories for a local TV station -- this one about hanggliding. He jumps off a hill, glides around, then crashes a few times. At the end of the story, when he's off the air, he turns towards the "real" camera, and spouts off about how this whole scene is symbolic, relating it to that of Icarus. He then mentions that "if you don't know who Icarus is, you should read more."

Ok, hopefully this will be the only time in history the names "Tony Wilson" and "Icarus" are ever uttered in the same paragraph. Tony: you have nothing on Icarus. He's a famous myth, you're a guy who lucked out enough to record albums with Joy Division. But this is just one indication of how this movie wants to represent the era they depict.

The problem with representing genius, either on film or print, is that the moment of genius is usually only about 0.5 seconds long. The results of that spark might last for years, but the actual moment of genius is pretty brief. In this film, they tried to tell us the spark is a concert that the Sex Pistols played in Manchester. I find it hard to believe the Sex Pistols can inspire anything, but, ok, I can buy that a bunch of guys were inspired to form bands because of seeing an SP show. Being inspired and the "spark" are two different things.

The spark of genius for the Madchester movement wasn't recorded in this film: it's when Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris got together to form a band called Warsaw and started making up songs. We didn't see this, and it would have been hard to show us anyway. Instead, our first introduction to Warsaw is Ian Curtis walking up to Tony Wilson and calling him a "c---", then those guys getting up on stage and playing "Digital". So I'm left wondering if the actual spark doesn't get enough representation, instead too much being placed on the Sex Pistols.

Still, I was pretty blown away by the first half of the movie, which depicts the aforementioned SP concert and Warsaw gig, Warsaw recording some songs for Factory Records, renaming themselves to Joy Division, playing some shows, etc..

The point at which this movie falls apart, and I hope I'm not giving anything away here, is when Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis kills himself in 1980. Anyway, Joy Division's 45 minutes in this film are a representative of that spark of genius that created Madchester, and are worth watching.

It's the last hour that's not as great. After the suicide, we get the rise of the Hacienda, Happy Mondays, and the eventual fall of Factory Records. While I always can find the antics of Shaun Ryder to be humorous--and I occasionally like listening to the Mondays' music--but the last thing in the world I think of the Happy Mondays is that they represent some great movement in music. Tony, narrating often, explains to us how the Hacienda was never profitable, but was the start of the DJ movement and raves. Of course, many DJs might take a different stance on that claim (Grandmaster Flash comes to mind). Plus, I don't know about you, but I also don't think raves represent anything novel. Maybe I'm too old.

If you couldn't tell from the above, I think this movie takes itself far too seriously. The real problem with the second half of the movie is that while the first half was representing something that was truly genius, you're having one pulled over on you in this second half. Partying and baggy pants are fads, not genius. Half of those bands that I mentioned are derivative either from each other or earlier bands (Stone Roses and Led Zeppelin much?). I say that with the Stone Roses being one of my favorites ever by the way. The most interesting thing you'll take from the second half is wondering how anyone could be so stupid as to give Shaun Ryder $200K to record an album on an island halfway around the world (that cash went up in smoke of all kinds, of course).

Rating: Good/Good -- A GOOD CABLE MOVIE

(Ratings note: each movie is rated as it really was compared to how the filmmaker wanted it to be. Examples:

Good/Good movie: American Beauty
Bad/Good movie: Forrest Gump
Good/Bad movie: Evil Dead 2
Bad/Bad movie: Nothing But Trouble)

War of the Worlds (2005)

2005-11-26T21:53:00.001-08:00

Spielberg's. Worst. Movie. Ever.

Actually, I'm really surprised that so many friends told me this was a great movie. There was absolutely no plot. I was glad that they got it started so quickly -- the aliens attack in like the first 20 minutes -- but then you quickly realize there's not much to do after that. This movie wants to be Signs (2002) so badly. In that light, it's frightening that Spielberg, with 30 years experience in this genre, can't even begin to muster the talent that Shyamalan demonstrated in Signs. I just watched Close Encounters on Friday... man, that was such a better movie than this. Stevie, what happened?

First of all, Spielberg has to start by firing Janusz Kaminski. This guy did frickin' amazing work on Schindler's List. That was arguably one of the best shot movies ever. And I'd actually argue that some of his work since then was cool too -- like Saving Private Ryan. But oh my god, can this guy get over the Dior Filter or what!? It's so overused, and it has no place in War of the Worlds. It's obvious he has no original ideas for photography anymore. I seriously hope that Spielberg finds a better DP after this movie -- this movie was partially ruined by his style, I'm not kidding.

Second, the effects here mostly don't work. You know, I've held back on criticizing VFX for many years because I worked in that industry but I gotta let loose on this movie. Sure, there are a few hero shots that are really awesome. They nailed those. But most of the "awesome" effects in the movie had nothing to do with technical capability... they had to do with concept. A big scene of tripods moving around, the freeway getting destroyed, things like that. You go "wow" just because it looks cool, and are willing to ignore the blurry edge glow around the main character. Guys, drop the edge glow and that "mix the background onto the character" idea... seriously, they looks like ass. Also, there seemed to be a ton of mismatched grain on this movie, which is really scary that I can point out watching it on an 8 year old 27" Trinitron.

Maybe I'm being overly harsh. I think it's because I, for one, am very tired of spectacle effects movies. This probably has a lot to do with Hollywood's downfall. How about some kick ass movies with effects that just make the story work for a change? Check out Kung Fu Hustle, which a couple buddies made me watch the other night. Those effects aren't technically great, but you don't care. They're great for the story.

Third, I still don't understand how they ended up defeating the aliens. It's always so obvious in these kinds of movies that they have to defeat the aliens, right? But I watched this movie and still have no idea how they did it. How lame.

Fourth, I made the mistake of buying this DVD before seeing the movie. Last time I'm doing that, my friends. Fifth, I accidentally bought it full screen. So it was a complete waste of money.

Sixth, Tom Cruise. Tom CRUISE. Ugh.

Rating: Bad/Good - Seriously, take my advice, wait until it's on HBO. I'm not sure why I spent $15 on this DVD. I wish I could return it.

Batman Begins (2005)

2005-11-23T13:14:00.000-08:00

I'm usually a Tim Burton hater (see my forthcoming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory review), but in the case of the first Batman movie, I really liked it. Maybe I was under the influence of the girl I was at the theater with (Christy), but I did like it. Batman has always had a cheesy aspect because of the Adam West era. The first Batman movie was just a little cheesy and comic, but introduced the noir look to the series (at least beyond the comic itself).

Batman Begins harks back to the days of the first movie, though this time it takes the noir feeling and makes it more serious. Forgetting about the deranged days where Warner Brothers thought hiring Joel Schumacher was a good idea, they hired a far more competent director and writer than Burton in Chris Nolan. This guy seems like he can't lose when it comes to making quality movies.

However, there's something missing from Batman Begins: a desire to see it again. This is the only thing that plagues Nolan's work. Once I saw Memento, I had no need or desire to see it again. For comic book movies, creating this feeling in the audience isn't just desirable, it's necessary. Comic book movies are generally aimed towards a more narrow audience than, say, Titanic, so you've gotta cash in on repeat business. Compare this to the X-Men movies that Bryan Singer put together. After seeing those, I basically wanted to stay for the next showing. WB struck gold by having him direct Superman Returns. In fact, basically every movie Singer has ever done made me want to watch it again, starting with The Usual Suspects, of course.

The casting is decent, not great. For one thing, I just can't take any movie with Michael Caine very seriously anymore. Also, for all of the press Katie Holmes created for herself last summer to publicize this movie, she is almost invisible in Batman Begins. Furthermore, she's 26 and still looks 13. She should be left to doing teenager movies and shows, her acting isn't that great anyway.

And remember how everyone complained about Michael Keaton being Batman? Everyone was like "What's up with that?" Actually, it might have been Burton's most brilliant move. Keaton is a normal looking guy in real life. To think he's Batman is really strange, and that's what's perfect about it. Anyway, considering how many people complained about Keaton, what's up with every actor since him doing exactly the same schtick when playing Batman? Christian Bale is neither better nor worse than Keaton, Clooney or Kilmer, he's just the same.

Rating: Good/Good, rent it (don't buy it) on DVD.

My Name Is Earl (NBC - Tuesdays at 9)

2005-10-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

This show is hilarious -- a quick shout out to my brother for telling me to check it out.

Premise is that a guy named Earl (Jason Lee) believes that he needs to live a more karmic life to make his life suck less. Carson Daly mentioned karma on TV while Earl was drugged up in the hospital after being hit by a car. This inspired Earl to makes a long list of all of the people he has wronged in his life and things he's done wrong, with the intention to correct all of them. After correcting one of these on the list in the pilot episode, he wins the lottery, which reinforces his belief in karma.

This show is getting funnier with every episode. The most recent was one where Earl needed to correct a lie he had his brother Randy tell to a woman he was once dating: that Earl had died. This was Earl's easy way out of a painful relationship (the woman speaks in baby-speak) without hurting her feelings.

Like other new comedies (Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle), Earl goes against the traditional three-cameras-on-a-stage format that sitcoms used for 50 years. It is instead shot with a single camera with a lot of location shooting -- making it more expensive to produce. They keep their locations to a minimum in this show, so I'm hoping the show doesn't have the fate of Arrested Development. If you've seen AD this year, they unfortunately have had to cut their budget way back. All of the characters end up being in the same room a lot, and the scenes just aren't as funny as they were for the last couple seasons. Earl doesn't suffer from this as much because Earl is the star of the show, and mostly we follow him around.

Jason Lee is awesome in this show, but the other characters are amazing as well. Randy, Earl's brother, is played brilliantly by Ethan Suplee. Jaime Pressly, who I never thought of as a major acting force in our world, does a great job in the show as Earl's ex. My favorite auxilary character is "Crabman" (played by Eddie Steeples) who's stuck in the middle between Earl and his ex.

This is a Good/Good show, highly recommended if you're looking for some hilarious entertainment.

TV: Now Better than Movies

2005-10-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen a movie lately that I've been very interested in, so I thought I'd outline some of this year's TV shows on this blog for the time being.

This is especially timely because TV is now better than movies. Think about it. Hollywood wants you to pay $10 to see some rehashed craptacular movie like Dukes of Hazzard. Or let's say you pay the bare minimum to see a movie: $4 on Pay-Per-View. That's 2 hours of entertainment for $2. Now let's say you like 6 hours a week of TV shows and pay $50 for cable or satellite per month. That's $2.08 per hour of entertainment. Considering that generally these TV shows are more interesting than most movies out there, that's a hellofa deal.

And hey, if you get HBO, you'll see all of those shitty movies eventually.

Ok, so coming up... some reviews of TV shows.

The Hole (2001)

2005-09-17T23:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what inspired me to Tivo this movie off of The Movie Channel, but it turned out to be slightly better than I expected. It's not a horror movie, it's a "suspense" movie.

Problem with suspense movies is that they usually violate the premise of suspense as stated by the master. As Hitchcock's Bomb Theory goes, you show a bomb under a table. The audience knows the bomb is going to go off at some point, but the characters sitting at the table don't. For all of that time, the audience is in suspense. Here's the kicker, the bomb can never go off. If it does, you just piss off the audience.

The way suspense works in this movie is like an episode of Law and Order, CSI or House. Part of the story is missing and you just want to find out what the heck is going on. Then some character comes along halfway through the show and fills in a detail that someone should have been able to figure out 45 minutes before they did. After watching enough of these shows I've gotten annoyed with this, so I was slightly annoyed with this movie.

However, the writer and director do turn things around on you a few times in an interesting fashion. The movie starts at the end of the story, with Thora Birch's character wandering down a street all bloodied and limping. Then they work their way back by way of her being interviewed by a psychologist (Embeth Davitz). About 45 minutes in, the story takes a big turn (note Law and Order reference), but there's still enough to keep you interested for the last hour.

The end pissed me off though. I hate endings that piss me off. Hitchcock understood his audience more than modern directors. We're there to get entertained, not to get angry.

Again, all movies are 30 minutes too long and this movie is no exception. When will editors and directors learn we don't give a shit about half the things they want to film in a fancy way?

One more thing, Thora Birch really can't act. This movie proves it. Keira Knightley out-acts her in this movie. That's probably the worst insult I could ever throw her way.

Other than those nitpicks, it actually held my attention for the most part. It's a Good Bad movie, worth watching on TMC or Showtime, etc..

Quiz Show (1994)

2005-09-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

Highly recommended. One of the few Good Good movies out there in the world.

I won't write a lengthy review about it, but two things about this movie that I noticed while watching it again this morning.

If you don't know, this movie is about a rigged quiz show in the 50's called "Twenty-One". First thing is I've realized what makes this movie great is how it makes viewers root for the "bad guy". Many movies have tried to make viewers root or feel sympathetic for the bad guy just by portraying them as a sympathetic character. Actually, two of the movies also up for best picture in 1994 were like this: Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption.

Viewers don't root for Charlie Van Doren (Ralph Finnes) because the movie is set up like those others. He's actually a pretty snotty jackass. Viewers end up rooting for Charlie in some ways because of his father. His father is an educated, honest poet who can barely handle the pressure of watching his son on the game show. Redford, who directed this movie, perfectly weaves more and more of the father into this picture as the inevitable becomes clear: Charlie's going to get busted. I think it's a brilliant way to navigate the story and make the viewer feel tension about the show being revealed as a fraud. Also, some of the dialogue involving the father is excellent. A great script all around.

The other thing I wanted to mention about this movie. What does it have in common with the following other movies:

Pulp Fiction
Shawshank Redemption
Four Weddings and a Funeral

All four were nominated for best picture that year. And all four were beat out by the Bad Good piece of crap called "Forrest Gump." The Oscars are such a scam, kinda like this movie depicts of game shows.

Fallen (1998)

2005-08-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

This movie's actually a little better than I remembered. When I saw it the first time, I think I saw it for free. But when you have a bad memory of a movie you saw for free, it must be truly terrible, and "Fallen" is still mostly that.

I can tell you exactly why I didn't like it that first time I saw it:

Too much chasing around.
Has one of those "set up for the sequel" endings. Trust me, there won't be one.

And these are still annoying to me today. Denzel movies are usually pretty good (which is why I gave this a second chance) -- and I really like a few scenes in this movie that I had forgotten about. When Denzel has to tell a kid about the death of his father, it's a very effective scene. I also like the scenes where he's researching the religious mysticism of the situation at hand.

Rating: Bad, Bad, though a few scenes are actually pretty good. See the Exorcist if you're in the mood for a possession movie.

Hide and Seek (2005)

2005-08-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

Once again, we find ourselves watching Robert DeNiro in a low budget horror movie. How many times have we seen this in the last year or two? Probably too many times to count. Is he searching to be involved in the next Sixth Sense? As part of that strategy, ya think he gets back end money on these movies? No question.

For about 75 of this movie's 100 minutes, it's actually pretty good. And then... and then... it takes a turn for the cliche. The result of this movie is one of the oldest horror movie cliches in the book. The characters end up being a parody of a horror movie parody.

Now, let me take a second here to ask "What's up with Dakota Fanning"? This girl was 10 when the made this movie, but she seems like she's about 65. Her character is pretty freaky and effective, but frankly, I don't think it's that hard to help kids seem like they can act. If you want to make them spooky, have them whisper. If you want to make them seem intelligent, have them keep quiet. Shyamalan's direction of Haley Joel Osment is perfected evidence of these concepts -- whereas A.I., which required normal non-whispering speech, revealed Osment to be just another kid actor.

One of the most redeeming things in the movie is the location. Upstate New York in the late fall/early winter is one of the most beautiful locations -- I admit I have bias here. I spent a lot of time in that area and I have a lot of nostalgia for it. Anyway, they try to use this location to make the movie more creepy, which I don't think works very well.

Other Highlights: Elisabeth Shue and Famke Janssen
Rating: It's a mediocre Good, Bad(tm) movie -- only because of the first 75% of the movie. If you like the genre, it's worth watching on cable. I watched it on PPV and would want at least some of my $4 back.

The Aviator

2005-08-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

This was the movie that people thought should have won best picture?

I haven't seen Million Dollar Baby, but I'm ready to place bets that it's better than this movie. On the other hand, the Oscars are filled with movies that are completely forgettable. Can you tell me who won best picture 3 years ago? (I had to look it up... it was Chicago, which was so bad I couldn't even watch it on an airplane).

The Aviator was nominated for exactly two reasons:

Scorsese has been repeatedly left in the cold by Oscar and once again they wanted to build him up and knock him down.
ANY, I repeat, any movie that further glamorizes Hollywood, tells Hollywood lore, or is somehow Hollywood insider junk will end up being nominated.

I think I've written this before here, but the Oscars were created by Douglas Fairbanks to try to legitimatize movies compared to the theater. That's one reason that any movie that makes Hollywood seem dignified must get nominated. To perpetrate the illusion that movies are meaningful, Oscar must be granted on widely known movies that seem to separate Hollywood from its typical cesspool fare. As we all know, movies are a hand waving magic trick compared to the saw-the-lady-in-half type of tricks that theater productions have to go through in producing hours of continuous entertainment. Not that I don't find the theater extraordinarily boring and painful to my knees since the chairs are too small.

The Aviator turns out to be almost three hours of DiCaprio acting a bit nuts. The problem with this movie, as it is with most docu-dramas, is that you don't know where reality ends and fiction begins. I find a lot of the scenes unbelievable. How could someone so detatched be so successful in life? The only scene that had any redeeming qualities to it was the Senatorial Inquisition that Hughes faced in the late 40s. Almost everything else seemed to be explaining his life to us.

Example: Pan Am's Juan Trippe (played by Alec Baldwin), comes to Hughes in an effort to acquire TWA. In the lengthy dialogue spoken through a door (effective, though boring), Trippe basically lays out all of the reasons Hughes must sell. He goes through the entire situation of the shareholders, the share prices of the two companies, loans, etc..

Now, do you really think this is what was spoken between Trippe and Hughes? Of course not. This is a fabricated replica of a private conversation, mostly structured to let the audience know what the hell is going on. Imagine 2-3 hours of that and you basically have The Aviator.

Again, like many docu-dramas, you come out thinking a History Channel documentary would have been far more interesting than something this fictional with big-name actors. Their acting was pretty good, considering they had very little to work with, and Scorsese pretty much mailed this one in.

By the way, this is a perfect example to demonstrate my rating system. There are four types of movies.

Good, good - the producers intended to make an excellent movie and it turned out good as well. Most movies are intended to be excellent so most good movies fit in here. Examples include Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Diner, Schindler's List, Unforgiven, The Shawshank Redemption.
Bad, Good - the producers intended to make an A-list movie and it turned out really sappy, cheesy and bad, yet is widely thought to be good. The king of all examples for this type is Forrest Gump.
Good, Bad - the producers intended to make a "B" movie and it turned out really awesome. Cult classics are in this category: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Evil Dead 2, John Carpenter's The Thing.
Bad, Bad - The worst of the worst usually end up here: Nothing But Trouble (possibly the worst movie of all time), White Noise, Police Academy 5, Skyscraper (starring Anna Nicole Smith).

My rating for Aviator: Bad, Good and wait until it's on cable, if at all.

Hollywood's Death Spiral

2005-07-31T19:19:00.000-07:00

Again, Edward Jay Epstein comes through. If you're interested in movies and you haven't already subscribed to Slate's RSS, I highly recommend that you do. This guy has more insight than I ever was able to get while working for three of the studios.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2123286/fr/rss/

The Forgotten

2005-07-31T18:25:00.000-07:00

As you undoubtedly have discovered, cheesy horror, action, thriller flicks are usually at the top of my list to see. The Forgotten was one that I had wanted to see in the theater but was very skeptical about (not unlike White Noise).

Guess what? That skepticism was right.

This is yet another one of those movies where a bunch of big name actors (Julianne Moore, Gary Sinise, Anthony Edwards) somehow end up in a movie that should be showing on the Sci-Fi channel starring Bruce Campbell (nothing against BCam, of course, I love that guy). I don't know much about how actors' salaries work out, but in the case of a movie like this, I've got to guess that it works something like:

Gary Sinise wants to do cheap-ass arthouse flick.
Studio says, "Hey Gary Sinise, we know you're into doing cheap-ass arthouse movies, but we all need to make a living somehow. What if we quintupled the size of that money bag if you do this chintsy horror flick as well"
Gary: "Well sure!"

And that explains how Robert DeNiro ends up in approximately 4 shitty movies to every 1 decent movie he's in.

Back to "The Forgotten." After reading the Tivo blurb ("Woman [Julianne Moore] has psychologist [Gary Sinise] tell her dead child never existed"), you basically figure there are three ways this can end up: (a) She's nuts, (b) There's some kind of trickery/government plot going on, or (c) supernatural.

Actually, I won't give too much away, but it ends up being all three. And there are a couple of awesome surprises that you won't ever see coming (the third time they try to surprise you, it's old hat by then). This movie comes in at almost exactly an hour and a half.. and in my firm believe that all movies are too long, this movie is too long. It had basically 60 minutes of material -- it probably would have been a pretty kick-ass episode of the X-files. As 90 minutes, it just ends up being dull.

So thank god I saw it on Starz! It's worth watching if you're semi-interested. On the other hand, this movie's missing something that Boogie Nights delivered on: there's not nearly enough nudity coming from Julianne Moore's corner. I wish she had played a psycho woman who's missing her child and loved to take her clothes off.

How Hollywood Works: The Hedge Funds

2005-07-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've learned a lot about how Hollywood works over the years, but this guy Edward Jay Epstein knows more than I do. I want to read his book sometime.

Today's entry of his in Slate describes the hedge fund technique Hollywood has set up to work with investors.

Ladykillers (2004)

2005-07-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

What do the 3 following movies have in common:

Man who wasn't there
Intolerable Cruelty
Ladykillers

They're consecutive movies created by the Coen brothers that didn't quite live up to their past work.

My question: what's up with the Coens? Since "O Brother," they just haven't blown me away. It's almost as if they've started to believe the thing that made their prior movies great was the quirkiness, not the story. Ladykillers is a decent movie by anyone else's standard. By the standard of the Coens, it's absolute shit.

Another consecutive movie streak to mull over:

The Hudsucker Proxy
Fargo
The Big Lebowski
O Brother, Where Art Thou

Four of the greatest movies ever made. So what the hell happened?

I think the Coens decided that quaint things like weirdos in the South were what made their movies great. Ladykillers tries desperately to be "O Brother", but fails where the first one excelled. The movie ends up being a lot of talk, not much story, and not much humor.

Oh, and a word about the original (which I haven't seen, of course). The original movie had Alec Guiness and Peter Sellers. I'm sorry, but just based on paper alone, if you're remaking a comedy with those two great actors in it, you should have your head checked.

For one thing, this movie has no idea what era it's supposed to be in. Unlike "O Brother," which clearly understood its era, this movie has some characters that think they're in the 20s, some in the 40s, and some in the 2000s. Instead of being quirky, it's just dumb. I think "Intolerable Cruelty" actually suffered from this a bit. I liked that movie better than Ladykillers, but the movie wanted so desperately to be a romantic comedy of the 40s/50s that it didn't work out.

The thing that makes Fargo great--as well as Hudsucker and Lebowski and every movie they did before Man Who Wasn't There--is that the characters are portrayed with seriousness and honesty. The characters in every movie they've done since that point have been to ridicule. About 15 minutes into this movie, E said "Is this the freak's Ocean's Eleven or what?" Exactly. The Coens classically make their characters one-dimensional and humorous. The problem with this movie is that the characters are so one dimensional that it's just annoying, not funny.

Rating: If you get past the first 20 minutes, there are a few funny things.

White Noise (2005)

2005-07-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

One could easily say that Michael Keaton's career is over because he was in this and the Herbie "Love Bug" remake. I won't say that because I have a lot of respect for him as an actor, and because if doing two bad movies indicated someone's career was over, Robert DeNiro's career wold have been over years ago. I prefer Keaton's humorous movies like Night Shift, Multiplicity and Mr. Mom. Night Shift is a must see if you haven't. It's Ron Howard's directorial debut, Michael Keaton's movie debut, and is just an all around hilarious movie.

Live Review!

Wow. Watching this makes me realize I am a true sucker for supernatural type movies. I say that in the present tense because I'm starting this review about 10 minutes into the movie. So welcome to the first Live Review on Joel Schumacher Sucks -- writing the review as the movie unfolds. Stay tuned.

Anyway, I say "true sucker" because that's how obvious it is that I spent 4 bucks I shouldn't have to watch this on PPV -- but hey, at least I saved $6 by not seeing it in the theater.

Before watching it, I knew "White Noise" was about getting messages from the dead through the static on untuned radios and shit like that. I pretty much thought Keaton's character would just be listening to the radio one day and hear a message from her. But actually, something just happened in this movie that I really liked. He hears from some dude who says he's been getting the electronic messages. Now this makes more sense in reality. No one comes up with this on their own, it takes some nutball to plant the seed in a sane person that they're receiving messages through the static on their radio.

Oooo -- he just received a mysterious call from his wife's cell phone. Why didn't he answer to dispel the mystery here? Instead he runs home to see her cell phone is turned off. Then he receives another call from her cell phone! When he answers, it's static on the line!

So, as usual, they've taken some phenomenon that regular people believe in and made it even more ridiculous than it's treated in real life. Did I mention that at the start of this movie, they had some quote from Thomas Edison about recording the dead? That's how you legitimatize something dumb, you take a quote from someone famous and smart and make it sound like it actually proves they believed in it.

Ok, I'm thinking there's got to be a plot somewhere in here. I'm going to take a guess that his dead wife is trying to tell him that someone actually murdered her. I'm going to guess it's the guy who Michael Keaton (an architect), is making a building for. Let's see what happens.

A few hours after the movie ends...

Ok, so I was too depressed for having spent $4 on this movie to continue the live review. However, I was pretty close on the plot. He discovers that his dead wife is trying to tell him about accidents that are happening to people she had contact with. There was someone perpetrating murders--I won't give away who (I was wrong, but close)--but they were doing it because the ghostly voices told them to.

This movie really reminded me of The Mothman Prophecies (remember "Chaaapstiiick?"). The original book reported on how this crazy Mothman appears near disasters. The movie takes one of those real life disasters and makes it ridiculous. Similarly, this movie takes this EVP thing that some people believe in and makes it ridiculous. When "White Noise" was being advertised, they were pushing it with this website (http://www.aaevp.com/). If I was serious about this EVP thing, I would have been embarrassed by this movie. It makes them all look like nuts (which they are, but at least they're probably not as nuts as the movie portrays).

Oh, probably lamest thing in this movie was the cheesy piano music whenever he thought of his wife. What a craptacular idea... cheery music whenever he thinks of his wife. How not-cliche.

Anyway, what I've realized is that I should write some EVP analysis software and sell it to these bozos.

Rating: USA Up All Night movie at best.

Assault on Precinct 13 (the remake)

2005-07-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

This movie confirms 3 things:

Maria Bello is hot
Hollywood will remake an obscure B movie from the mid-70s long before they create any original new content.
In spite of (2), remaking John Carpenter flicks can yield something pretty good.

I do NOT agree with the main comment on IDMB about this movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398712/). It is not a typical action film. Whoever made this movie understands what Carpenter is about, and has remade this movie true to the spirit of his films.

Granted, I actually haven't seen the original "Precinct 13," which is shocking considering I'm probably Carpenter's biggest fan ever. This movie sounds pretty different than the original. However, as I've often said, "John Carpenter is the last working man's director in Hollywood," and it appears the creators of this remake understand him. Carpenter loves to blur the lines between people and things society has demonized (mostly drugs) vs. what we should consider truly evil -- things like oppressive authorities and random psycho killers (symbolizing totalitarians, of course). The junkie with a gun becomes your best friend when Michael Myers is outside the door trying to kill you, for example. That's the genius of Carpenter.

Rest assured, I'll be waxing poetic about Carpenter on this blog a lot in the future, so let's get to this movie.

It's very well done. When Precinct 13 comes under siege, the cops inside have to join forces with their prisoners to fight them off. I was pretty surprised at the amount of violence shown in this movie. I know that sounds weird, but I was expecting mild A-Team type violence. Instead of just seeing the end of a gun barrel or a shot and a person drop out of frame, we see a lot of execution-style shootings. Though pretty much everyone who gets shot and killed gets a single shot in the middle of the forehead, which is kind of the milder way to tell you "They are dead." One thing they do to try to reduce the feeling of violence is put the guys perpetrating the siege in combat uniforms with helmets and masks. It's a bit less human to see those guys get shot.

Missing from this remake is that Carpenter Trademarked feeling of desolation. If you've ever seen "The Thing", you know what I'm talking about. But he also has achieved this feeling in the middle of cities, like in "Prince of Darkness"... a church in the middle of Los Angeles! While the snowstorm in this movie really helps give you that feeling, the filmmakers felt the need to add visual effects (a long pullback from the remote Precinct to show it alone in the snowstorm) to reinforce a feeling of desolation that just comes naturally to Carpenter.

They got a pretty good number of recognizable actors in this. Though I'm not sure how people can take Ethan Hawke very seriously as a cop that has a depression and drug problem. I do like Maria Bello (obviously) as the very OCD police shrink. Gabriel Byrne plays his typical brooding Usual Suspects-like character. Ja Rule is pretty good and John Leguizamo is at his least annoying. Larry Fishburne--sorry, LAURENCE--steals the show as the arch-criminal Marion Bishop.

My rating: if you like action movies that have a bunch of misfits ganging together to fight the oppressive authority during a snowstorm in Detroit -- which I like very much -- then it's definitely worth a look on DVD or PPV.

Underrated Director: John McTiernan

2005-06-18T23:13:00.000-07:00

John McTiernan directed, consecutively:

Predator
Die Hard
Hunt For Red October

Is that insane or what? That's a trilogy for the ages right there. I really don't need to say much about these movies; if you have any love for good action movies, you've surely seen them all several times. Only directors like Hitchcock, Kubrick, Spielberg have a similar number of consecutive classics as John McTiernan.

For me, it all started with Jesse The Body's chain gun. When I was 14 years old, I thought that M60 that Jesse The Body was hauling around in Predator was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. "I ain't got time to bleed" -- yeah, that's about where it all started for John McTiernan entering my moviegoing experience.

Plus, with the exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark--my favorite movie of all time--Hunt For Red October is the only movie I've seen more than 3 times in the theater (Hunt for Red October: 4 times). Why even bother making a submarine movie again after Hunt for Red October and Das Boot? Crimson Tide, a good movie of its own right, was nothing compared to either of these two.

McTiernan simply created three movies in a row that ended up in the collective conciousness overnight. That's hard to do.

So how did McTiernan go from great action movie director ever to guy-you've-never-heard-of? I think he got a bad rap for "Last Action Hero". I thought this movie was hilarious, but it got called "The Worst Movie Of All Time" at the time. It is, in fact, one of the few big movies that ever lost significant money in Hollywood, which is a very difficult thing to pull off. I'm sure Hollywood exiled him after that. After all, who wants the guy who can't be packaged up to be sold to a studio after "Last Action Hero"

Anyway, John McTiernan, great underrated director. You've seen his movies, now you know his name.

5 Funniest Fights

2005-06-08T23:54:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today of some hilarious fights in the movies. Here's a short list of the 5 top ones in my book/collection of DVDs. I might need to correct this because it's a first draft.

5. "Charlie's Angels"

Crispin Glover vs. Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz

Ok, to be honest, there's no way this fight would be here if it wasn't Crispin Glover. You may remember him showing off his Karate moves on Letterman once upon a time, which makes this fight even funnier. Above is a picture of him letting out a high pitched scream as he attacks.

4. "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"

Jonathan Winters vs. Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan

If you haven't seen the 3 hour epic madcap comedy "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", you should, and you should take a few minutes to watch this scene twice. Jonathan Winters's character destroys a gas station with his bare hands in this fight. Seriously, the first time I saw it, I could not breathe from laughter.

3. "Happy Gilmore"

Bob Barker vs. Adam Sandler

Duh. And this is has one of the most classic one-liners in all of comedy history ("The price is wrong, bitch!")

2. "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

Harrison Ford vs. That Sword Guy

I guess this should be called the funniest non fight. The story is that Harrison Ford was sick that day, so they decided to make it a comic moment rather than a big fight. The payoff is a surprising, hilarious moment (the first time you see it).

1. "They Live"

Roddy Piper vs. Keith David

"I'm not putting on those sunglasses"

This is clearly the most hilarious fight in film history. It's over 7 minutes long and involves the two men fighting in an alley over Keith David's character putting on some sunglasses that allows Roddy to see the aliens among us all. This film was made at the height of the WWF craze, so a lot of pro-wrestling moves work their way in there. Some say that they just kept going because Carpenter never told them to stop. Either way, they created, by far, the most classic fight in film history.

Let's see another pic:

"The Girl Next Door"

2005-06-08T17:30:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, a movie comes along where you wonder how it got made.

"The Girl Next Door" is one of those movies.

The only reason this movie got made is because Elisha Cuthbert somehow signed up to be on it. Her agent should be fired immediately. Whoever read the script for her and decided it would be a good move her in career obviously has a crack habit and should be fired.

Actually, the problem with the movie isn't the concept. The concept could be pretty funny... a dorky kid starts going out with a porn star that moves in next door. Hey, "Risky Business" was essentially the same thing and that movie was ok.

The problem with this movie is that it's one of the most mean-spirited movies I've ever seen. There's possibly one legitimate laugh in the whole thing. The rest is really... just... mean.

It's hard to describe what I'm talking about with this. I think Ebert might have said this about the movie when he reviewed it and it just stuck in my brain. The girl's porn director comes into the movie and it's really all downhill from there. He's a mean guy, but not comically mean, just mean. The situations with him in it just make your skin crawl instead of giving you a laugh. But who doesn't laugh when thinking of "Guido the Killer Pimp" from Risky Business? The filmmakers here missed out on making a characture here instead of a character.

Speaking of Risky Business, it's obvious that a lot of movies these days are inspired by John Hughes/80's type teenager movies (though Risky Business is not a Hughes movie). As A.O. Scott once credited, he's the least recognized, yet most influential, director of our time. The Girl Next Door is also inspired by John Hughes movies, except for one major difference: it's not funny.

Rating: it will piss you off even to watch for free on cable (which is how I watched it).

Top 5 Hitchcock Movies

2005-06-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

5. Rebecca

This is the only Hitchcock movie to win best picture. One of the things that makes this movie great is Lawrence Olivier's performance as Max DeWinter. Supposedly, he despised Joan Fontaine in real life and used this in his performance... seems to have worked. The best part of the film is when the camera works its way around an empty room as Olivier describes a scene. Check it out.

4. Rear Window

Not much to add to that, since I'm sure you've seen it. As far as Hitchcock movies starring Jimmy Stewart, I think this movie runs circles around Vertigo.

3. Notorious

This used to be higher on my list but has slipped a little. Hitchcock has Grant and Bergman in the same film here, which I think gives one of his best results ever. Rumor has it that Hitchcock was investigated after this movie came out because it has some discussion of an atomic bomb, before the bomb was actually completed. What to watch for: a great crane shot that comes all the way over a party, down to a key in Bergman's hand.

2. Shadow of a Doubt

As a friend of mine once said, this is Hitchcock's most subversive film. I agree with that. Joseph Cotten plays Uncle Charlie spectacularly, and the rest of the cast does well too. Hume Cronyn's bit part in this movie is one of my favorite characters in all of Hitchcock. If the first five minutes of this movie don't lock your interest, I'll give you a rebate.

1. North by Northwest

Textbook. Besides Psycho, of course this is Hitchcock's most referenced movie. This might be Hitch's longest movie, but the script is interesting enough to keep the audience going. Cary Grant delivers some extreme hilarity as well. The scenes to watch are the restaurant at the beginning, the crop duster (of course), the auction house and Mt. Rushmore (of course). My favorite part of the crop duster attack is when he's waiting around on the side of the road. You think one of those cars is going to do a drive-by with machine gun and just take him out.... but it's a crazy crop duster that comes and gets him! Genius. I wish I had seen this movie in the theater originally, without knowing the crop duster was coming.

Tanya Roberts - Worst Bond Girl Ever

2005-06-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

I'm watching "View to a Kill" right now on Encore. 90% of her lines in this movie are "James!" in different tones of distress. Oh yeah, and if that's not bad enough, at the end of this movie, she gets abducted by a menacing blimp moving at about 5 mph.

Let's review some of her lines in this movie:

"James! Don't leave me!" (In burning elevator scene)
"James! Where are you going!?" (Burning elevator scene)
"James!" (When driving fire truck)
"James!" (In loving tone, as menacing blimp comes behind her)
"James! James!" (On Golden Gate Bridge)
"James! Look Out!" (on golden gate bridge)

Ok, much of this is the writer's fault, not hers. She is hot, I will give her kudos for that. And she's funny on That 70's Show.

Generally, I guess this movie really sucks except for the Paris chase scene. Somehow the Russians are supposed to be involved, and what's up with this horse auction? The bad guys are morons. They drive around in a blimp, yeah, that won't attract any attention. The Nazi doctor has a great line at the end when he can't get a handle on a lit bundle of dynamite: "Neh! Neh! Neh! Neh!". Some evil Nazi genius doctor huh, can't even throw a bunch of TNT out the window of a blimp? Dumbass.