Category Archives: Movies

Movies

The Numbers Station (2013) a (mildly) belated review

I like actor John Cusack.  He’s been in a number of very good films but even when the film isn’t all that good -given the amount of movies he’s been involved in during his very long career, there were bound to be clunkers here and there- he always seems to rise above and rarely fails to give an engaging performance.

So when I spotted The Numbers Station, a 2013 film starring Mr. Cusack on instant view on Netflix, I decided to give it a whirl.  I knew little about the film other than it never reached theaters and, because of this, I didn’t expect all that much.  Was I in for some major disappointment?

Not really.

To begin with, The Numbers Station is a very low budget thriller.  There are maybe fifteen people in total during the film’s runtime that appear on screen.  Other than a single exploding car, there are no other “big” special effects.

The movie’s premise is that in this age of easy access to computer data, top secret black ops units employ short radio bursts composed of nothing more than a series of numbers (the codes) to get their next assignments.

These assignments are, it is implied, “dirty” works that usually involve assassination.

At the start of the film we meet Emerson Kent (John Cusack) and Grey (Liam Cunningham).  They sit in a car talking to each other when a coded message arrives.  After deciphering it, Kent temporarily leaves his partner (and getaway driver) and walks into a sparsely populated bar.  He chats with the bartender, who we find once worked for the agency but ran away from it several months before.  Kent allows the man to have one last drink before killing him.  Kent then takes out the two bouncers/bodyguards but cannot kill the fourth man in the bar.  This man manages to get away, but Kent has the license plate numbers of his car.

Thanks to this information, Kent and Grey locate the man’s home.  Kent goes into the house and kills the man.  He is then surprised when his teenage daughter appears.  Kent cannot get himself to kill her and his partner Grey winds up doing this.  Thanks to this “botched” job, Kent is no longer viewed as having the “right stuff” for his special ops unit.

Fast forward a few months and we find Grey has moved up in the agency while Kent is on the outside trying to get back in.  Thanks to Grey, he is given a second chance, only Instead of being offered his old assassination job, he’s assigned to watch over the other end of the numbers operation.  He is to be the security guard to Katherine (Malin Akerman), one of the agency’s code readers.  Katherine makes and sends out the numbers from a secure bunker while Kent guards her.  When their shift is over, another duo (also woman and man) replacements them.  It is clear this duo is a couple and equally clear Katherine is trying to socialize with Kent, though he wants nothing to do with this.

The second day of their shift all appears normal, but they soon find that the bunker has been breached and there are signs that the duo that preceded them may have met a grisly end.  Trapped inside the bunker, they have to find a way out while determining if a phony assassination order was sent by their predecessors.

Ok, so there you have the setup and, yes, once again we’re dealing with a “siege” type film.  There are other interesting elements thrown in but before you get your hopes up too high, let me say this:  The Numbers Station is hardly a “must see” film.  What it is is a modest thriller that painlessly killed a couple of hours without making you feel like you completely wasted your time.

There are two things that work against the film and, of those, the low budget is the biggest and worst element.  Without giving too much away, we have our two leads being held in the bunker by a decidedly small –very small- force on the outside.  It’s hard to get worried about their prospects of survival when facing such an ultimately insignificant force.  The second thing working against the film is that Katherine is a really underwritten character.  While Malin Ackerman does a decent job playing the character, there is very little to her other than a damsel in distress.

Still, if you’re like me and have a bit of time to kill, you could do worse than catch The Numbers Station.

 

Movies

Trance (2013) a (mildly) belated review

I’m always curious to see works by director Danny Boyle.

When at his best, Mr. Boyle creates films that are solid entertainment and well worth watching, such as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later.  His latest works, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, were received well received by critics and did well at the box office.  Mr. Boyle would follow those two films with the head-scratching Hitchcock wannabe Trance.

Did he go three for three?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.  However, that doesn’t meant there aren’t some things in Trance worth seeing.  The acting by most of the principals is good.  The direction is interesting and there are scenes that really grip you.  The movie’s biggest problem is the story, which unfortunately veers between being unbelievable, silly, confusing, and just plain odd.

Simon (James McAvoy) works at an auction house that sells very high end expensive paintings.  During one of the auctions, there is a violent robbery and Simon follows his trained routine to pull the most prized painting to a “safe” area for storage.  Once he reaches the safe are drop off, the chief of the thieves Franck (Vincent Cassel) appears and, after knocking Simon out with the butt of his shotgun, runs away with the container he thinks houses the painting.

The thieves get away and meet in their hideout.  Upon opening the contain with the stolen painting they find all they have is an empty frame.  Naturally they are furious, and it is then revealed Simon was in on the theft all along and the trio of thieves naturally believe he has double crossed them.

The robbery, however, has left Simon with a brain injury.  After leaving the hospital, the trio of thieves get Simon and ask him where the painting is.  He tells them he can’t remember and they brutally torture him.  They soon realize he is telling the truth: He cannot remember what, if anything, he did with the painting.  The desperate thieves realize they have to use other means to get him to remember what he did.

To that end, they allow Simon to randomly -or so it appears- choose a hypnotherapist to get to the lost memory.  Enter Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), hypnotherapist and, we quickly realize, mystery woman who appears to know far more about what is going on than she lets on..

What follows are a lot of mind games between Elizabeth and the thieves and the quest for the missing painting.

Trance features many moving parts, but the central premise, that these street-toughs would willingly allow this hypnotherapist in their midst so willingly is awfully –awfully– far fetched.

I can’t help but suspect that Mr. Boyle was hoping to create a mind-bender of a movie along the lines of Vertigo.  But, again, the premise proves too hard to believe to begin with and many of the subsequent revelations -some of which are hallucinations- create difficulties for the viewers to follow.

Is Simon ultimately a pawn (note the character’s name…Simon says?).  What is the real relationship between Elizabeth and he?  And what is the relationship between Elizabeth and Franck?  I understand the use of cues and suggestion but given that some of the sequences we see are nothing more than hallucinations we are sometimes left putting too many pieces together on our own.  Note that I haven’t even broached the subject of Elizabeth’s…uh…shaving preferences.

In the end, I have to give Trance a pass.  There’s plenty of energy and skill both before and behind the cameras, but the story needed much more work.

Movies

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) a (mildly) belated review

One day history will look back at the past couple of years and note a curious little trend:  Using historical figures and/or classic literature and injecting horror tropes upon them.

The first (and largest) wave of these works would appear in such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Jayne Slayre or Alice in Zombieland.  But one of the biggest successes would be the novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

So successful was this novel that it was made into a film in 2012.  The film, however, didn’t exactly set the box office on fire and while the book was considered a well thought out lark, critics scorned and audiences ultimately ignored it.

Did they make the right choice?

In a word: Yes.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is, if nothing else, a handsome looking film with some pretty good CGI effects mixed in with some not-so-very-good CGI effects in the telling of the “real” story of Abraham Lincoln”s (Benjamin Walker) life and how it secretly tied in with his near life-long struggle against vampires.

Having not read the book and going into the film cold, I figured the movie’s makers must be playing this for laughs.  I mean, come on…Abraham Lincoln and vampires?  There has to be a chuckle or three here, right?  Right?

Nope.

The film plays out like a Cliff’s Notes (for the younger among you, Sparkle Notes) version of Abraham Lincoln’s life.  We see his early childhood (and first exposure to vampires), we see him as a young man (who happens to be on the prowl for these vampires and is ultimately recruited to be just that), we see him a little later working and studying to become a lawyer while courting Mary Todd (while secretly ridding the town he’s in of vampires), we see his rise in politics (while continuing his fight against vampires), and, finally, we see him as President and discover the “real” reasons behind the Emancipation Proclamation and the “real” reason the United States became embroiled in the Civil War.

And while most of the film was muddled without building much (if any) momentum, it was this concluding segment and climax of the film that really lost me.  For in linking such sober -and very tragic- issues as slavery, the massive loss of lives during the Civil War, and even Abraham Lincoln’s loss of his son (to vampires, natch), I developed an acute distaste for what I was seeing.

Perhaps the issues of slavery and the massive losses of life during the Civil War are simply too sensitive a subject to me to be played for such cheesy cinematic camp.  Yes, I’ve seen plenty of movies that dealt with tragedies both large and small.  However, to link these tragedies with something, frankly, as goofy as vampires felt more than a little distasteful.

Add this to the fact that the film suffers from a lack of any sort of momentum and you have nearly two hours of, frankly, not all that much at all.

A pass.

Movies

Maximum Overdrive (1986) a (very) belated review

Found this under the IMDB entry for the film:

When asked why he hasn’t directed a movie since Maximum Overdrive, horror writer Stephen King responded “Just watch Maximum Overdrive.”

I first saw the film when it reached the home video market some time after a weak theatrical outing.  I recall when the film was first released the critics were really savage toward it, one even stating something along the lines of “Stephen King is a master of horror.  So how did he do in his directorial debut?  Horribly.”

Nonetheless, being a fan of the “machines gone homicidal” sub-genre of horror (My favorite of which is Steven Spielberg’s first big splash, the film Duel), I had to give it a look.

At the time I did…and I found it to be a pretty weak film.  Since sometime in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s I haven’t seen it again.  Until yesterday.

So…what do I think of it now?

Well, let’s face it, Maximum Overdrive isn’t a very good film.  But I have to admit it isn’t the complete wreck that I felt it was when I first viewed it.  In fact, when viewed in its proper (cheesy) light, there is some fun to be had…

Based on the very downbeat King short story “Trucks”, Maximum Overdrive involves Earth coming into the tail of a comet whose radioactivity causes all manner of machines to come to homicidal life.  Almost immediately there is a big glitch here, as a pair of characters, the newly married couple (which includes the voice of Lisa Simpson, actress Yeardley Smith), manage to drive their car for quite a while after all the machines have supposedly come to life.

After a (somewhat) gory opening where we witness the end of the world, we settle upon the patrons of the Dixie Boy truck stop (Included among this group is our protagonist, Bill Robinson, played by Emilio Estevez).  The patrons and staff of the truck stop quickly find that they’ve been surrounded by the homicidal trucks and are forced to deal with them and, eventually, escape.

And that’s pretty much all there is to the story.  It should become pretty clear pretty quickly that Maximum Overdrive lies in the genre of “siege” films.  The trucks outside could easily be George Romero’s zombies or Indians surrounding a fort or any other number of scenarios.  Alas, when one makes a siege film, one goes up against some truly great works, from Gunga Din to the original Assault on Precinct 13.

The worst aspects of the film wind up being the script and some shoddy directorial work, both of which were Mr. King’s responsibility.  This is a film that in more experienced hands could easily have been far –far– more suspenseful.  However, Mr. King’s story is at times very campy while his (for the most part) hillbilly characters are difficult to root for. As for the direction, it does try to go for gore (and succeeds, though we’ve seen worse by now) but never quite delivers the scares promised by Mr. King himself in the film’s admittedly memorable trailer.

Still, I can’t entirely hate the film.  It is what it is: an attempt to create a cheesy horror film without any pretensions to a more lofty or classic film standard.  Maximum Overdrive is dispensable entertainment, and some might even argue it is little more than a good guilty pleasure.

So yes, while there are far better siege films out there and I recommend them highly over Maximum Overdrive,  I’ll also turn around and say that if you’re in the mood for cheesy no-brain entertainment, you could do worse.

P.S.:  Intriguingly, the very end of this film was essentially lifted whole in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.  I can’t help but wonder if this was done on purpose.

Movies

Erased (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I spotted the trailer for the film Erased on, I believe, the video release of Solomon Kane.  It had me intrigued…

Not bad, right?

So I looked up the film and it was (and still is as of this writing) available on Netflix for instant viewing so I loaded her up and…

Wow.

Let’s face it, one shouldn’t expect much from films that are, as far as I know, not formally released to U.S. theaters and arrive via direct to home video formats.  While you may find overlooked gems here and there, the majority of such films are usually features movie studios have looked at and don’t have all that much faith in.  Rather than invest (and lose) more money on the work via advertisements for a theatrical run, studios are content with collecting what they can through the home market and moving on to their next project(s).

At best, Erased is a decent -if completely unexceptional- low budget thriller in the Bourne mold.  The reliable Aaron Eckhart plays Ben Logan, an ex-pat living in Belgium and working for a high tech security firm.  He lives there with his daughter Amy (Liana Liberato, who turns in a good performance as well) who, we find, has only recently moved in with him.  Ben left his wife for mysterious reasons which are never entirely explained, though it might have been due in part to his original work and/or a relationship with fellow CIA agent Anna Brandt (Olga Kurylenko).  All this is hinted more than outright stated, not that it matters all that much.  After Amy’s mother gets sick and dies (more story material that happens off-screen), Ben takes her in but there is friction between them as Amy isn’t all that happy about living in this foreign land and clearly holds her father responsible for the dissolution of the marriage.

Anyway, one day Ben finishes one of his main projects in the company and goes to Amy’s school to pick her up.  He’s a little late (something she also doesn’t appreciate) and finds his daughter is hungry.  Ben offers her some cookies he’s carrying with him but it turns out there are peanuts in them and Amy is allergic.  Off to the hospital they go.

Amy spends the night there along with Ben and, in the morning, they head out.  Ben stops at his work for a moment to pick up a package he expected to arrive, but when he gets there the movie’s singular best sequence occurs (you can see it on the trailer):  The entire floor is completely empty of everything.  All the desks, computers, folders, etc. etc. are gone.  Ben can’t understand and goes to the parent company.  They have no record of him having ever worked for them.  What happened to his company?  What happened to his friends and co-workers?  What is going on?!

Sadly, what follows from this point is pretty standard stuff.  Ben’s company and its staff have been eliminated, and the only reason Ben and Amy are still alive is because they were at the hospital rather than their home the night all the skullduggery went down.  Ben is forced to sort through the clues to find what exactly is going on, all while being pursued by his possible ex-lover Brandt.  Her allegiances are, until the movie’s last act, never entirely clear.

As I describe the film, it sounds far better than what is ultimately presented.  While the “agency-decides-to-eliminate-its-operatives-but-one-gets-away” has been done many times before, it can work well.  With Erased, unfortunately, the end result are simply too damned bland.  If you find the above plot description intriguing, however, and would like to see a film along these lines, my recommendation is to forget Erased and instead look up the Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway vehicle Three Days of the Condor.  Far better film featuring many of the same elements.

Movies

10 movies that completely changed in one scene…

Interesting -though far from complete- list by Darren Ruecker, focusing on ten films he feels changed considerably and for the better, via tone or story, in one scene:

http://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/movies-completely-changed-one-scene/

The comments section lists films that Mr. Ruecker missed, one of the bigger being Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  If there’s a film that deserves the designation of changing completely with one scene (and a very famous one it was!), then Psycho sure fits that designation.  Then again, Mr. Ruecker’s focus appears to be on more recent movies, so anything released more than fifteen years before receives little -actually no- attention.

But the idea of the list reminded me of one of my favorite films featuring a twist that totally changed the direction and my view of the film…for the better.

I’m referring to the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny.  If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t let the fact that its an older film keep you away.  It is a great drama with an incredible payoff, and a twist that I didn’t see coming at all.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!!

 

For the first half of the film we follow the lives of several young officers are stationed on a training vessel under the command of the increasingly irrational Lt. Cmdr. Phillip Queeg (Humphrey Bogart, in a terrific performance).  During this segment we, along with the cast, wonder whether Queeg has, to put it bluntly, “lost it” and is no longer fit for command.  Ultimately, during a mission that endangers the vessel and crew, the officers decide to mutiny and take over command of the ship from Queeg.

This, in turn, leads to the film’s second part: the court-martial.  For taking over a ship from a commanding officer in the navy is obviously not something one does lightly and it can lead to severe repercussions.  It is during this court-martial trial that the mutineers and their actions are put under the microscope and what we thought we saw so clearly in the movie’s first act is subtly -than completely- subverted.

For it turns out that one of the officers, Lt. Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray in another of the fillm’s incredible performances), is slowly revealed to be nothing short of an agent provocateur, a man who needled everyone into this mutiny and, now that the piper has to be paid, slinks away and tries his very best to not accept any responsibility for his actions.  The fact that for most of the movie Keefer is presented as a “good old boy”, a mellow friendly sort who appears, at least on the surface, is a caring, engaging person but one who is ultimately revealed to be a despicable rat is an incredible change…made all the more amazing because when the realization hits, we as movie goers can’t help but look back at the movie and realize the evidence of his being a rat was there all the time.

The Caine Mutiny is a classic film that justifiably deserves its place among them.  A terrific piece of work that surprised and delighted me with its mind bending (yet logical) shift from first half to second.

Movies

Phantom (2013) a (mildly) belated review

One of my all time favorite movie reviews was made by a now forgotten (by me) local movie reviewer on television who noted of 1989’s James Cameron directed The Abyss that it was like watching a marathon runner having the run of his life and being way, waaaay out in front and heading to the finish line in triumph…only to stumble and fall just before the end.  I love and remember that review so vividly because it perfectly encapsulated the movie to me.

Ironically enough, that film featured actor Ed Harris in (double irony) a film set for the most part underwater.  So here we have the barely-released-to-theaters film Phantom which features Mr. Harris in the title role of Demi, the Captain of an old, nearly obsolete Russian submarine during the height of the Cold War who has been sent on a mysterious mission that might well result in the end of the world as we know it.  And like The Abyss, Phantom is a film that draws you in and keeps your attention…until it blows it big time at the very end.

The mission Demi is sent on appears, on the surface (ha!) to be a normal patrol.  However, a few last minute -and mysterious- additions to his crew, including Bruni (David Duchovny), appear to have some kind of ulterior secret mission in the works.  Are these new members of the crew part of a zealot Stasi group?  Is their mission sanctioned by the government…or are they a rogue group out to start a war?  And what of Captain Demi?  We find that he suffers from epileptic seizures and may have a thin grasp of what is real and what isn’t.

All these elements mixed together form a potent, engaging brew that kept me intrigued as Phantom played out.  This is old school movie making, where the action is limited but the tension and suspense are slowly built up, scene after scene.  Ed Harris is pretty damn good in the title role.  David Duchovny is good, though perhaps not quite as flashy in a role that required him to for the most part display an emotionless poker face throughout, leaving audiences to wonder whether he is good or evil.

And for approximately 90 or so minutes of the movie’s 98 minute run time I was thoroughly engaged.

But then came the movie’s climax and denouement and boy oh boy oh boy did things fall apart.  The movie’s climax committed the lesser sin, being decent yet not-as-exciting-as-it-should-have-been all things considering.  A better director and/or editor could have made this sequence a standout, with gunfire, factions fighting against each other for control of the vessel, another submarine taking aim at our protagonist’s vessel, and quite literally the fate of the world in the balance.  Unfortunately, the sequence plays out in a rather drab way, ending without being all that terribly exciting.

And then came the denouement.

Wow.  Just…wow.  In the history of bad ideas, this one is right up there.  I know the movie’s makers were trying to give us an emotional release, but this sequence was not only stupid but, frankly, borderline insulting….at least to me.

To describe it involves considerable SPOILERS, so I’ll leave you with the film’s trailer and get to that in a moment…

You still there?

Again…SPOILERS FOLLOW!

….

….

Ok, so this is the deal:  Duchovny and his boys have crafted a scenario where Demi’s submarine is thought to have been already sold to the Chinese.  Thus, when he launches a nuclear missile at the U.S., it will be thought the submarine was under Chinese command and a war between China and the United States will result, a war that his character coldly notes will be the only nuclear war Russia can “win”.  This is really clever storytelling, in my humble opinion.

However, Demi and his faithful staff manage to send out a distress signal which brings in another Russian sub.  The Russians are by now aware of what’s going on with the rogue group and are intent on sinking Demi’s sub and stopping them from launching their missile and starting a war.  Duchovny’s rogue group is overtaken but Demi’s submarine is incapacitated and settles on the bottom of the sea (actually on top of a sea mountain).  The crew is stuck and air is running out.  Demi orders one of his crew to suit up and swim to the surface to try to get a rescue party down to the stricken sub.  In the film’s final minutes, we see the crew on top of the sub and the sub in port, seemingly rescued.

Not so fast…

Turns out the entire crew is dead.  The sub is indeed in port, having been salvaged, but now the corpses are being brought out.  The ghostly crew stands on the sub, watching as Demi’s wife and child come to pay respects to those lost.  The person they sent out of the sub wound up being the only survivor and thus was able to tell authorities what really happened on board, and that Demi and is crew did not go rogue.

Ugh.

A ghost crew, watching as their bodies are removed from the sub?!  Demi’s ghost tearfully watching his wife and child, then saluting the surviving crewmate?!

Double Ugh.

Maybe this won’t sit so bad for other viewers, but for me this ending was beyond silly.  It was manipulative and childish in concept, an ending that threw away all the good will the movie managed to offer throughout the rest of its run time.

To those who still want to watch Phantom, please please please shut it off the moment Ed Harris sees the light.

You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

General, Movies

On Joss Whedon…

So director/writer Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Avengers) offered some opinions regarding popular films and, more specifically, criticism directed at them.  His first major comment, regarding Empire Strikes Back, went like this:

“Empire committed the cardinal sin of not actually ending. Which at the time I was appalled by and I still think it was a terrible idea. Well, it’s not an ending. It’s a Come Back Next Week, or in three years. And that upsets me. I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn’t end I’ll go to a French movie. That’s a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself, it can’t just build off the first one or play variations.”

(You can read more about this here: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/26/star-wars-joss-whedons-critique-of-the-empire-strikes-back)

I couldn’t agree with Mr. Whedon more.  It is my opinion that if you intend to end a film (or a book, for that matter) with the glimmer of a possibility of a sequel, you should nonetheless make sure that whatever work you are creating is as complete as possible on its own terms.  Compare, for example, the original Star Wars to Empire Strikes Back.  In Star Wars, the film clearly gives us a hint of a sequel (the main villain, Darth Vader, gets away), yet the film accomplishes everything -storywise- it intended, from setting up the “big danger” and the heroes’ quest to their ultimate triumph in ridding their world of this threat.  Empire, on the other hand, seemed to present a series of events culminating in nothing at all being resolved…and indeed all the characters in flux…until the next film.

Now, does this necessarily diminish the film?  Empire is considered by many to be THE BEST of the Star Wars films, so clearly Lucas and company did something right.  Yet Mr. Whedon’s comments, I feel, are nonetheless on target.  Empire is a film without an ending, and as such is ultimately an incomplete experience…until you see Return of the Jedi.

(An admission:  I am not a big fan of the Star Wars films.  I don’t hate them, mind you, just never got into them as my peers did back in the day.)

Mr. Whedon’s made another comment, this time regarding self-referential humor -and the problem with it- in movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  I find this comment even more intriguing:

A movie has to be complete within itself; it can’t just build off the first one or play variations. You know that thing in Temple of Doom where they revisit the shooting trick? … That’s what you don’t want. And I feel that’s what all of culture is becoming — it’s becoming that moment.

Germain Lussier at /Film takes up Mr. Whedon’s comment and offers a wonderful explanation/examination of what he is essentially saying.  I underlined what I believe really gets to the heart of the matter:

The bigger issue Whedon is getting at here is that Spielberg relied on what had already happened for a cheap joke. Magnify that onto a larger scale and you have Saw VII, The Amazing Spider-Man reboot, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and One Direction. Things that are simply copying creative endeavors that have proven to be successful. Whedon’s issue is very few people create something new these days. And, even scarier, no one seems to care. They simply consume the same crap over and over again. This sentiment is a valid one.

(You can read the entire article here: http://www.slashfilm.com/joss-whedon-points-at-temple-of-doom-scene-as-example-of-cultural-problem/#more-192045)

There is, of course, some irony to be found in Mr. Whedon’s comments, even while I generally agree with them.  Wasn’t Mr. Whedon responsible for a TV show which essentially featured a character versus vampires (and other evils) as threats week in and week out?  And wasn’t that vampire show given a spin off series?  Yes, they were both very entertaining shows, but still.  And wasn’t Cabin in the Woods, a film he produced and co-wrote, essentially a long riff on many horror movie tropes/cliches?  Does one not need to know many of these horror movie tropes/cliches coming into that film to truly appreciate it?

Given that, how is Mr. Whedon’s use of such tropes/cliches to create his work all that different from the same example he points out in Temple of Doom?

Setting that aside, and going back to Mr. Lussier’s wonderful comments, the underlined elements are, in my opinion, the meat of the matter.  Thanks to the internet and new technologies, we live in a society where we are stimulated more than we have ever been, be it via video games or music or movies or shows.  We consume entertainment near constantly, and are always looking for the next fix.

Thing is, the next fix requires an awful lot of work.

Making a TV show or an album or a book or a movie isn’t something you can (in the most vulgar terms) “shit out” in your free time.  It requires hours and hours of heavy work and, once it is ready, there is the very real possibility that it never catches fire and is immediately forgotten or, worse, completely ignored.

Audiences are hard -if not impossible- to judge.  You may work your tail off and come up with something you feel is worthwhile and original and are meet with little more than yawns.  You may do a riff on something currently popular (yesterday it was Vampires, lately it seems to be either Zombies or superheroes) and instantly connect with audiences and have great success.  You may even hit it big with something that wasn’t so big before and, to keep the success going, start making your own spin-offs of said material…over and over again, to keep up your success.

The copying and re-copying of material carries with it, even in these over-stimulated days, diminishing returns.  What was popular can become tiresome and audiences might suddenly decide to turn off.

I suppose pop culture has always worked this way.  There are those who create material that offers a path for others to follow (and, if you want to be blunt about it, rip-off) until that path and creative direction is worn out and the “new” material -whatever that may be- takes over.  Until it becomes old and worn out as well.  Then the new-“new” material takes over, and off we go again…

Movies

The Man With The Iron Fists (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Back when I was much younger and in High School, local TV stations would often run some wild fare over the weekends.  Among reruns of such fantastic series of yesteryear such as The WIld Wild West, the original (and at that time only) Star Trek show, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, etc., those who stuck around until the early evenings, perhaps at about 5 to 6 P.M., were often treated to some really, really crazy Karate/Kung Fu films.

These films were often as outlandish as they were senseless, featuring really bad English dubbing and questionable filmmaking/editing along with some at times memorably impressive acrobatics.  After watching several of the films, I eventually recognized certain actors, but in those early pre-internet days I had little to no idea of these films’ origins.

Fast forward several years and the works of the Shaw Brothers Studios, among others, while perhaps not as well known to the general public as it is to some film afficionados (geeks) like myself, are warmly regarded for their at times cheesy movie fare.

It appears that rapper RZA saw some of the same stuff I did when he was young.  He parlayed his success as a musician into the movies, delivering soundtrack material as well as acting in several features and TV shows.  2012’s The Man With The Iron Fists was his first directorial feature, and his love of those cheesy martial arts films of yesterday is clearly in evidence.

The film deals with Blacksmith (RZA) a…well…blacksmith in an ancient, small Chinese town where a rather large gold shipment is about to pass through.  He is hired by some shady characters to craft weapons which, in turn, are used against the man who is to watch over this shipment.  The betrayal brings several parties to this town, from the good to the bad to the just plain unbelievable.  Yes, we have an African American blacksmith in an ancient Chinese village (this is explained), but soon after he is joined by Russell Crowe as the enigmatic Jack Knife, a British (?) subject whose loyalties are revealed in the film’s later acts.

Over the course of the film alliances are forged (ouch!) and the good guys eventually confront the bad while the fate of the gold lies in the balance.

So, is the film worth your time?

For someone like myself, the answer is a yes…with reservations.  The film could have been tightened up a lot more, but I did enjoy all the various (outlandish) personalities present and the fight scenes were generally well done.

Where the film fails, sadly, is with RZA himself.  As Blacksmith, RZA is the film’s “hero”, yet while he did a good job directing the feature (he also was responsible for the story and shares screenwriting credits), I felt his acting simply wasn’t all that good.  In Blacksmith we needed an actor strong enough to take on the role and make him stand out over everyone else.  When multiple tragedies befell Blacksmith, we needed to feel sorry for him enough that when he ultimately triumphs, we should be jumping from our chairs in glee.  RZA, however, delivers for the most part a one note sleepy-eyed performance while his character is often lost to the wilder, more engaging work of the actors representing good and evil around him.  Even worse, later in the film when Blacksmith confronts one of the big bad guys, it is also evident his fighting skills aren’t quite up to par with many of the others as well.

Having said that, I have to give RZA credit for putting this Kung Fu fever dream of a film together.  Again, for someone like me who is versed in the films RZA was trying to emulate and offer in tribute, there is much to enjoy.  However, for those not versed in the old Karate/Kung Fu films of yesterday, The Man With The Iron Fists will most likely not resonate.  In the end, I can only offer only a mild recommendation.

Movies

51 Pieces of Movie Trivia…

51 pieces of trivia may sound like a lot, but in David Brake’s article for Huffington Post each bit of trivia usually involves as little as a sentence or two and the entire list can be read relatively quickly.  Click on the link if you’re curious:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-brake/movie-trivia_b_3799281.html

Of all the ones presented, this is perhaps my favorite piece:

24. The director of Cannibal Holocaust had to prove in court that the actors were still alive and didn’t get killed during the movie.

Back in 1999, when The Blair Witch Project was just being released to theaters, a friend of mine noted that this film’s plot was essentially a rip off of Cannibal Holocaust.  In The Blair Witch Project, a group of students go off into the woods to record the legend of a witch and, we’re told at the beginning of the film, never were seen again.  The video recordings of their final hours were recovered and that’s what’s presented to us.  In Cannibal Holocaust, the same essentially happens:  A group of explorers go out into the South American forests and are never seen again, but the video footage of their last trip is found and that’s what we’re seeing.

I eventually got a copy of Cannibal Holocaust and, with considerable trepidation, put it on.  To this day, it is the only film I’ve ever turned off without getting to the end and never returned to.  A little too gross (I can’t stomach seeing animals actually killed on camera) and silly.

Yet, for those with a very strong stomach, this movie may be for you!