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Movies

The Fog (1980) a (incredibly) belated review

Before you ask: No, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the original 1980 John Carpenter directed film (The Fog would be remade, to much derision, in 2005…I haven’t seen that version as of yet).  However, in watching the new Shout Factory Blu Ray release, it might as well be the first time I’ve ever seen the film.

The sound and images are that good.

The first (and I believe only) time I ever saw The Fog was in the early 1980’s and probably via VHS tape.  Back then the idea of “letterboxing” images was years away and, therefore, I saw a cut down view of the film.  I also recall the image quality was pretty dreadful.  In fact, if you check out the extras on the Shout Factory release and click on the old promo made for the film (Tales From the Mist), in the opening minute you’ll basically see the type of image I saw way back when.  Needless to say, count me among those who was delighted with the new, most excellent presentation.

As far as the movie itself, I recall liking -but not loving– The Fog.  Now, with this pristine presentation and the proper widescreen view, would I enjoy the film more?  Or has time dulled whatever horror edge the film once had?

Happily, the answer is a resounding “no”.

I’m a fan of many of John Carpenter’s films.  I absolutely love Assault on Precinct 13.  I also love Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble In Little China.  While slasher films aren’t generally my cup of tea, I also enjoyed Halloween.

It was after the incredible success of the original Halloween that Mr. Carpenter was asked to follow it up with another horror film.  He wound up making The Fog but, unlike Halloween, theatrical success was mild, if not outright disappointing.  Nonetheless, there are those who feel The Fog is a far better overall accomplishment than Halloween.

Is it?  I suppose it depends on what you look for in horror.  While Halloween falls in the “slasher” category of horror, The Fog belongs in the more cerebral wing.  It is a slow burn film with almost no “gory” elements.  In some ways, it reminded me in tone to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining or The Haunting.

In The Fog you have an old fashioned (even for its original release date!) ghost story set in a sleepy Californian fishing town of San Antonio Bay.  The town is on the verge of celebrating its one hundredth anniversary.  On the day before the event, strange things start to occur, and Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) discovers a hidden journal in his church walls, one written by his distant relative and one of six founders of San Antonio Bay.

The journal reveals the town’s six founding members made an agreement with a band of unfortunates suffering from leprosy to allow them a share of their land to live in.  The agreement, however, was a trick.  The six founders didn’t want the lepers…they wanted to steal their leader’s money.

During a heavy fog, the lepers approached the town in their ship.  The six townspeople lured them into rocks with a phony guiding light and the ship sank with all aboard.  Afterwards, the six conspirators picked up the gold and that was that…

…Until one hundred years later when the fog returns and, with it, the spirits of the dead.

Including the role of Father Malone, The Fog features five main characters.  Adrienne Barbeau is Stevie Wayne, owner and disc jockey of the town’s local radio station.  Jamie Lee Curtis is Elizabeth Solley, a free spirited hitchhiker who happens to come into town at the wrong time.  Her real life mother, Janet Leigh, is Kathy Williams, the town’s mayor.  Finally, you have Tom Atkins as Nick Castle, a local who picks Elizabeth up (in all senses of the word).

If the film stumbles in any way, it is the sudden -and a little hard to swallow- attraction between the very young Jamie Lee Curtis and the far older Tom Atkins’ character.  Even in the wild world of movie fantasy, that couple never really looked right, at least IMHO.

Still, this is only one small element and in no way torpedoes the rest of the film.  What makes The Fog work is the sustained eerie atmosphere (no pun intended) John Carpenter and company build around the coming, and eventual arrival, of the evil fog and its ghostly -and revenge seeking!- inhabitants.

In conclusion, The Fog is a great film and certainly one worth revisiting.

Movies

The Philadelphia Experiment (2012) a (mildly) belated review

As you get older, you’re sometimes surprised to see remakes of films you enjoyed in your youth.  Especially films that might be, for the most part, forgotten by many.

Back in 1984, Michael Pare and Nancy Allen starred in The Philadelphia Experiment, a sci-fi romance involving a top secret experiment conducted on a battleship during World War II.  The experiment attempted to create an invisibility cloak around the battleship but instead sent it into the “present” of 1984, where Pare’s time-traveling sailor goes on the run avoiding shadowy government types while romancing Nancy Allen’s character.

It has been many, many years since I’ve seen this 1984 film but I recall having positive feelings about it.  Then, much to my surprise, I found The Philadelphia Experiment was remade and shown on the SyFy network last year!

So, is it worth your while?

If you’re a fan of the original film like I am, you’ll be curious enough to give it a try.  If you do, you may find some good here…though there is plenty of bad as well.

On the plus side, this film does more than simply re-shoot the original film’s script.  There are new ideas presented and while some don’t work very well there are interesting bits here and there.  I especially liked the idea of the WWII battleship appearing in different locations and causing some big problems.

There’s also some fun in seeing Michael Pare appear in this remake, though his character is far from the “hero” of the piece.

BUT…

This is a SyFy original movie and if you’re familiar at all with SyFy original movies, then you know they share one thing in common:  Their budgets are one very small step above being non-existent.  This should be pretty evident in the “special” effects found in the trailer above.  In a movie like this one, which features some pretty crazy things the audience has to accept as happening, you need effects that at the very least look plausible.  There isn’t any “big” effect in the film that doesn’t look like what it is: A cheap computer graphic.

Secondly, and concurrently, the movie’s script is very ambitious and attempts to create a sense of world-wide threat.  Yet in total we have only about eight or so major characters (including a small cameo by Malcolm McDowell…perhaps that’s where the bulk of the budget went!), which again makes one realize this is a film made on a micro-mini-budget.

In the end, I can’t recommend 2012’s The Philadelphia Experiment except to those, like me, who have some nostalgia toward the original and are curious to see this new iteration.  This is a no-budget film with some genuinely clumsy effects and at times amateurish direction (check out the way our heroes get past a military roadblock…its a real howler).

Too bad.  With a more decent budget, this could have been a far better film.

Movies

The Mark of Zorro (1940) a (incredibly) belated review

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Saw this film a very long time ago, when I was a child.  Didn’t remember all that much about it, other than perhaps the famous climactic sword fight between Tyrone Power’s Don Diego Vega (aka The Zorro) and Basil Rathbone’s Captain Pasquale, still considered by many the best sword fight ever put to film.

But considering the 1940 version of The Mark of Zorro (itself a “modernization” or remake/reworking of the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks film of the same name, which was a big inspiration for the creation of Batman) is among the earlier examples of “super hero” movies, I was interested in giving it another try…

So, how did this 70 plus year old film fare?

Pretty well indeed.

Most people, I suspect, are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Zorro, even if it may be through parallels with the character of Batman, which we’ll get to momentarily.  The setting is early, Spanish controlled California.  Young Don Diego Vega is in a Spanish school and returns to California to find that his father has been dumped from his Mayoral job and replaced with a man of considerably less virtue.  The Mayor and his right hand man, Captain Pasquale, are heavily taxing the poor citizens and generally running roughshod over the entire county.

Don Diego Vega quickly realizes he needs to do something to rid the territory of these evil characters.  To that end, he sets a plan in motion.  Because few remember him from before he left to Spain, he acts to all those around like a -let’s be blunt here- fey/homosexual pretty boy (though no one comes right out and says he’s “gay”, it is heavily implied!).  But by night, of course, Diego dons his Zorro disguise and mounts his trusty black Stallion and is off fighting the corrupt forces behind power, his ultimate goal to restore the town to its previous ways.

The above paragraph gives you the parallels between Zorro and Batman.  Bruce Wayne is presented not unlike Don Diego Vega, though the heavily implied homosexuality present in the movie isn’t quite as present in the comic book (though you can find it hinted at in some of the very early stories).  Nonetheless, both display the “spoiled party boy” elements.  Moving on, the mask and flowing capes are very similar and the black steed could easily be a proto-Batmobile.  Both characters share a desire to fight corruption as well, although the Zorro’s focus is government corruption versus Batman’s more “street” level crime fighting.

Getting back to the movie, it moves along at a breakneck pace, setting up each situation quickly while presenting the audience with new information.  Don Diego Vega’s decision to a) act fey and b) become the Zorro is never really dealt with in anything approaching a deeper psychological way…he does what he does because that’s what he does.  This is not a “heavy” film in any way, it is quick moving popcorn entertainment.  This extends, it would appear, to the Zorro’s costume as well.  There are a few sequences where Zorro wears his standard mask, one that covers the upper half of his head…while there are also a couple of sequences where he wears a mask that covers the lower half of his head!

 versus 

Why?  Who knows.  The mask inconsistency, like the decision to act fey, is never really addressed in the movie itself.

Regardless, the different masks do not in any way mean the film is a sloppy work.  You get plenty of well created action, adventure, and, the cherry on top of the pie, romance.  Don Diego’s attraction to the lovely Lolita Quintero (Linda Darnell) provides that extra spice to an already great film, as does his relationship with the character’s more wicked aunt (and wife of the corrupt Mayor), Inez Quintero (Gale Sondergaard).

If the film has one fault, it is that the excellent duel between Don Diego Vega and Pasquale, a duel audiences were waiting for from the moment the two characters first laid eyes on each other, happens a little too early into the film.  In fact, it occurs just before the movie’s actual climax, which is a curious and somewhat disappointing choice.  Perhaps Pasquale and Vega should have had two duels, the first before the climax (with Vega in disguise as Zorro) and the second when his identity is exposed.

Ah well, its a small complaint.  Despite its age, The Mark of Zorro is a fun action/adventure film that is well worthy of your time.  Recommended.

Movies

Oblivion (2013) a (mildly) belated review

The ever energetic (39 actor credits since 1981, many if not most of them starring roles…does the guy ever rest!?) Tom Cruise is Jack Harper in the sci-fi action adventure/mindbender Oblivion.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski of Tron: Legacy fame, a film that despite some beautiful visuals, I didn’t like.  Oblivion, in my opinion, features both better visuals and a far, far better story than Tron: Legacy.  But are both elements enough to recommend the film itself?

…yeah…with some reservations.

For much of the first half, Oblivion is a two person drama.  Jack and his companion Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are the last two humans on Earth.  Sixty years before, we are told by Jack in the opening narration, the Earth faced alien invaders that, in the ensuing war, destroyed the Moon before being defeated.  Because of this destruction and subsequent radical change in gravity, Earth’s environment was wrecked and the planet rendered uninhabitable.  The human survivors moved on to a Moon in Saturn and it is Jack and Victoria’s job to watch over massive machines left behind sucking all the water from the planet to make energy to take to those off-world survivors.

With me so far?

Ok, so Jack and Victoria live on this isolated and very elegant “home” and Jack goes out now and again in a cool aircraft to check up on the machines and fix whatever is broken while avoiding the “scabs” left over planet side, apparently alien machines still fighting the war that ended so many years before.

During this section of the film we are also informed that Jack and Victoria have received “memory wipes”, though it is never made clear why this was deemed necessary (one of the film’s many small writing glitches, IMHO).  Nonetheless, Jack starts having vague memories of being with a woman (Olga Kurylenko) in pre-apocalypse New York and on top of the Empire State Building.

How are these memories possible if Earth was destroyed over sixty years before?

As far as the story description, and for the sake of not getting into any spoilers, I’ll stop there.  Suffice it to say, the mystery of Jack’s memory as well as that of the scabs serve to propel the film’s plot along.  The trailer, presented below, does spoil more than a little of these mysteries so if you know nothing at all about the film and want to be surprised, you may want to avoid it.

Having said that, Oblivion starts off and moves along quite well for this first half and a little beyond…well into many of its subsequent revelations.  However, there does come a point where all this plot and information -and mild to large improbabilities- threaten to derail the film.

Without giving too much away these are some of the things that bothered me:  Why is it so difficult for Jack to talk -to actually have a conversation- with Victoria?  Why is she so different from him, memory-wise (Wouldn’t it have been intriguing if she, like him, had some odd memories popping up in her head)?  Why were Jack and Victoria -two people!- even necessary on the planet, given the ultimate revelations?  Toward the film’s climax and conclusion, why was it necessary, other than to create some suspense for the viewers, for Jack to place person X into a cryogenic chamber before flying off?

These are just off the top of my head.  And while there is some damage to the overall film, it isn’t bad enough to invalidate and destroy it.  I do wish the movie could have been simplified rather than made progressively more and more complicated.  At one point, it felt like I was watching a season’s worth of a sci-fi series rather than a movie.

Despite this, I recommend Oblivion.  Just be aware that sometimes less is more.

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

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!

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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.