Once again I am behind in my review posting, so please forgive me if my memory of the movie is cloudy.
Over the last couple of months I've slowly been making my way through the "Iraq war" movie glut of last year having seen In The Valley of Elah, The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs and now finally Redacted.
I was curious to know why Redacted lives on the "Restricted" shelf of the local video store, beside the soft core porn films and was disappointed that the rating was earned for a particularly gruesome rape sequence rather than for violent or profane content. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The movie, which stars no one, is directed by Brian DePalma and pretends to be assembled from video footage collected by several groups - an army grunt, a french news channel, and some security video footage.
If this sounds a lot like the recently reviewed here Vantage Point, it's because it is, though this time we are at least spared having to see the same sequence over and over again.
The story revolves around a group of army grunts whose tour has just been extended as they deal with the high stress environment of operating an army checkpoint. Looking to burn off some steam after an incident involving the shooting of a pregnant woman during a "routine" checkpoint stop, a couple of the boys decide to go and have some "fun" - raping a young Iraqi woman and killing her family while two of their comrades look on in horror - unable to do anything to stop them.
Unfortunately the movie is far more interested in scoring points against war in general and the "war on terror" in particular to delve into the true motivations and emotions of the characters involved. The villains are cookie-cutter and the speech given by the "hero" who presented evidence against his former friends at the end of the movie is forced and contrived.
Pain scale: 6 out of 10.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Pointless
Raph insisted on seeing the Dennis Quaid/Forrest Whittaker epic Vantage Point this time out and I have to admit that I was somewhat curious. Was this going to be a movie that would rise above it's gimic (viewing the same story from the "vantage point" of several different characters (get it?)) or was the gimic all the movie had going for it?
The answer was clear within the first five minutes. Vantage Point is a thriller decidely lacking in thrills. Instead of using the fact that the audience knows what is going to happen (from both the trailer of the film and the opening sequence) to build suspense, the filmmakers thought it would be more interesting to use each character's vantage point to hammer us over the head with the details any reasonable person would have noticed previously.
The conceit completely falls apart in the last third or so of the movie when the film begins cutting between multiple vantage points to tell the meat of the story. The climax, which brings everyone together was laughably implausible, like an M. Night Shyamalan movie without a twist ending.
Pain score: 6 out of 10.
We had "cheese" to eat, but we made the mistake of buying Roasted Red Pepper and Lime flavored tortilla chips which were awful. We had Ice Blue Kool-Aid instead of our usual carbonated beverage selection which was a refreshing change and surprisingly delicious. It was surprised that it wasn't sweeter tasting than it was given the cup of sugar required to make it.
The answer was clear within the first five minutes. Vantage Point is a thriller decidely lacking in thrills. Instead of using the fact that the audience knows what is going to happen (from both the trailer of the film and the opening sequence) to build suspense, the filmmakers thought it would be more interesting to use each character's vantage point to hammer us over the head with the details any reasonable person would have noticed previously.
The conceit completely falls apart in the last third or so of the movie when the film begins cutting between multiple vantage points to tell the meat of the story. The climax, which brings everyone together was laughably implausible, like an M. Night Shyamalan movie without a twist ending.
Pain score: 6 out of 10.
We had "cheese" to eat, but we made the mistake of buying Roasted Red Pepper and Lime flavored tortilla chips which were awful. We had Ice Blue Kool-Aid instead of our usual carbonated beverage selection which was a refreshing change and surprisingly delicious. It was surprised that it wasn't sweeter tasting than it was given the cup of sugar required to make it.
Vantage Point
J has already said pretty much what there is to say. This movie is a stinker. Still, here's my 2 cents.
Dennis Quaid, Sigourney Weaver, Forrest Whitaker, and a bunch of terrorist looking actors come to cash their checks. This movie is really bad and has so many things wrong with it it's hard to figure out where to begin. Let's do a quick recap; The US president (Jimmie's borther from History of Violence but giving a much more boring and sedate performance) is in Spain to give a speech, a terrorist threat is intercepted, so instead of the real president giving the speech it's his double. Guarding the double is Dennis Quaid, an experienced secret service agent who last year got shot protecting the pres but is now back on the job and is understandably nervous. The double gets shot, the real pres gets kidnapped and the whole thing is foiled by an annoying little girl that likes to play in traffic. Now the kicker is we get to see these events unfold from seven different points of view, seven 'vantage points' if you will. We see it from the POV of the terrorists, innocent bystander I look like I'm going to cry all the time Forrest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, the president guy, Sigourney Weaver in a Television control room, some random Spanish cop, and so on. Which kind of sounds cool, but it's not cool, not cool at all, it's just lame. To begin with if you remove the different points of view concept and just lay out the plot of the thing it's totally ridiculous and unbeleviable. Double agents, super duper prescient terrorists, super duper secret ops trained terrorists, Dennis Quaid is always at the exact right place at the right time, it's dumb and cliche at every turn. But it gets worse, you have to watch the dumb cliches over and over. Each point of view reveals a bit more of the story but after it's played out the movie rewinds and you have to sit through stuff you already saw again. Because Dennis Quaid is the focus (star? is Dennis Quaid a star?) of the film each 'vantage point' has to feature him, so unfortunately we get to see him make the same phone call more than once. Why? That's boring. Stupidly he's one of the first vantage points presented, so we basically know the whole story from the central characters POV right from the beginning. I could care less what the periphery characters saw, just get on with it. It's like watching Star Wars up to the moment in the cantina scene where pig face gets his arm chopped off, then the movie rewinds and we watch pigfaced man's day until he gets to the cantina and we watch him again interact with the leads and gets his arm chopped off again. Who cares; get on with Star Wars.
What Worked:
There's people getting shot and explosions and that's always neat. There's a car chase and cars get smashed up pretty good.
Gipes :
This thing is such a fiasco it's hard to list them all. The boring sequence right from the top in the televesion control room (one of the 'vantage points') which features a tired and confused Sigourney Weaver.
How about the fact that there's a huge bomb explosion in a public place but no one seems to really get hurt. It's so sanitary it's offensive to every person that has lost a limb or had their face blown off by a bomb.
Forest Whittaker, all of Forest Whittaker, every single frame of Forest Whittaker.
Was it better than Dungeons and Dragons?
Yes. There is no part in DD worth watching, in this at least the car chase scene is something and I must admit I wanted to see how the thing was going to end and play out (I was sorely disappointed with how it did mind you) I couldn't care less how DD was going to end.
Mediocroty Scale:
A less than mediocre effort all around
Food.
We had some kind of blue Kool-Aid and thankfully it didn't kill us and tasted great and refreshing. Some kind of lime tortilla chips; look that lime powder shit doesn't belong on anything so stop putting it on stuff it makes it taste gross. And of course melted Nacho Cheese is an old favorite and it was good minus the lime flavour.
Dennis Quaid, Sigourney Weaver, Forrest Whitaker, and a bunch of terrorist looking actors come to cash their checks. This movie is really bad and has so many things wrong with it it's hard to figure out where to begin. Let's do a quick recap; The US president (Jimmie's borther from History of Violence but giving a much more boring and sedate performance) is in Spain to give a speech, a terrorist threat is intercepted, so instead of the real president giving the speech it's his double. Guarding the double is Dennis Quaid, an experienced secret service agent who last year got shot protecting the pres but is now back on the job and is understandably nervous. The double gets shot, the real pres gets kidnapped and the whole thing is foiled by an annoying little girl that likes to play in traffic. Now the kicker is we get to see these events unfold from seven different points of view, seven 'vantage points' if you will. We see it from the POV of the terrorists, innocent bystander I look like I'm going to cry all the time Forrest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, the president guy, Sigourney Weaver in a Television control room, some random Spanish cop, and so on. Which kind of sounds cool, but it's not cool, not cool at all, it's just lame. To begin with if you remove the different points of view concept and just lay out the plot of the thing it's totally ridiculous and unbeleviable. Double agents, super duper prescient terrorists, super duper secret ops trained terrorists, Dennis Quaid is always at the exact right place at the right time, it's dumb and cliche at every turn. But it gets worse, you have to watch the dumb cliches over and over. Each point of view reveals a bit more of the story but after it's played out the movie rewinds and you have to sit through stuff you already saw again. Because Dennis Quaid is the focus (star? is Dennis Quaid a star?) of the film each 'vantage point' has to feature him, so unfortunately we get to see him make the same phone call more than once. Why? That's boring. Stupidly he's one of the first vantage points presented, so we basically know the whole story from the central characters POV right from the beginning. I could care less what the periphery characters saw, just get on with it. It's like watching Star Wars up to the moment in the cantina scene where pig face gets his arm chopped off, then the movie rewinds and we watch pigfaced man's day until he gets to the cantina and we watch him again interact with the leads and gets his arm chopped off again. Who cares; get on with Star Wars.
What Worked:
There's people getting shot and explosions and that's always neat. There's a car chase and cars get smashed up pretty good.
Gipes :
This thing is such a fiasco it's hard to list them all. The boring sequence right from the top in the televesion control room (one of the 'vantage points') which features a tired and confused Sigourney Weaver.
How about the fact that there's a huge bomb explosion in a public place but no one seems to really get hurt. It's so sanitary it's offensive to every person that has lost a limb or had their face blown off by a bomb.
Forest Whittaker, all of Forest Whittaker, every single frame of Forest Whittaker.
Was it better than Dungeons and Dragons?
Yes. There is no part in DD worth watching, in this at least the car chase scene is something and I must admit I wanted to see how the thing was going to end and play out (I was sorely disappointed with how it did mind you) I couldn't care less how DD was going to end.
Mediocroty Scale:
A less than mediocre effort all around
Food.
We had some kind of blue Kool-Aid and thankfully it didn't kill us and tasted great and refreshing. Some kind of lime tortilla chips; look that lime powder shit doesn't belong on anything so stop putting it on stuff it makes it taste gross. And of course melted Nacho Cheese is an old favorite and it was good minus the lime flavour.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Resident Evil: Extinction
As we started watching the latest entry in the Resident Evil franchise, I realized that despite having seen the previous films, I had virtually no memory of them.
It is appropriate then, that a little over a week after watching, I have little memory of the latest entry. Milla Jovovich is once again pitted against the remnants of the evil corporation that genetically engineered her (or did they only clone her?) and in the process she runs into the kids from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, who, now grown up are travelling across America in a convoy, searching out gas and food from each broken town.
In the meantime there are a few battles with zombie crows and zombie humans, and Ashanti dies (the film isn't all bad) until the final confrontation with the corporations lead scientist who decides to try his latest experiment out on himself, turning himself into a super zombie.
Neither Milla nor we the audience ever make it to Tomorrow-morrow land, but things are set up nicely for another sequel that I'm sure I'll see but not remember.
Overall pain score: 5 out of 10.
It is appropriate then, that a little over a week after watching, I have little memory of the latest entry. Milla Jovovich is once again pitted against the remnants of the evil corporation that genetically engineered her (or did they only clone her?) and in the process she runs into the kids from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, who, now grown up are travelling across America in a convoy, searching out gas and food from each broken town.
In the meantime there are a few battles with zombie crows and zombie humans, and Ashanti dies (the film isn't all bad) until the final confrontation with the corporations lead scientist who decides to try his latest experiment out on himself, turning himself into a super zombie.
Neither Milla nor we the audience ever make it to Tomorrow-morrow land, but things are set up nicely for another sequel that I'm sure I'll see but not remember.
Overall pain score: 5 out of 10.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Resident Evil: Extinction
It's Mila Jojovich and a bunch of pretty kids running around the desert fighting zombies. Thankfully a lot of the pretty kids get eaten by the zombies.
After some virus has turned most of the population of the world into mindless zombies bent on killing people and turned the earth into a barren wasteland a few pockets of humanity survive. One of these pockets is a convoy of people that drive around in big SUV's (H2's no less) collecting gas and survivors. The poeple are mostly made up of young Lindsay Lohan wanna be girls. Actually seeing them driving around in an H2 is quite appropriate since it's probably what they do on a daily basis in their regular lives, but they simply were not an ounce beleivable as rough and tough survivors of an apokalypse. I think Alyiah was one of them but what do I know. Anyway they hook up with Mila and kick zombie ass, except that a lot of those starlets get eaten on the way. Which is fun. Actually having these girls in the film made Mila Jojovich seem that much more credible. She had a real sense of having done it all before sadness about her I really liked.
There was lots of convoluded plot about super domesticated zombies, Mila having special powers, unafected areas in Canada, on and on as is usually the case in these video game movies. Since I haven't played the game and didn't care I didn't really pay attention to the plot. I just sat back and enjoyed Mila killing zombies with knives and machetes, zombies getting machine gunned, and young startlets getting eaten.
What worked:
It's rated R and the violence was there. I like zombies that eat people so that was fun. The action set pieces were on the low budget side, but this is a low budget zombie thing so.
Gripes:
The acting was really bad. I could see the acting coaches lurking in the shadows. These kids just don't have talent and shouldn't act. The killer birds sequence was stupid too but it did thankfully kill Alyiah.
Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:
Oh yeah. R rating alone makes it better, throw in zombies and some bloody kills and you're in a different league from D&D.
Mediocrity Scale:
Pretty Mediocre.
Food:
I think we had albino Oreo Cakesters. They're discounted at the supermarket and rightfully so. It's kind of like a twinky burger type thing. I could feel the sugar grains in the filling; not high quality stuff. We also had another flavour of Fanta, I think it was grape, I just remember it was gross.
After some virus has turned most of the population of the world into mindless zombies bent on killing people and turned the earth into a barren wasteland a few pockets of humanity survive. One of these pockets is a convoy of people that drive around in big SUV's (H2's no less) collecting gas and survivors. The poeple are mostly made up of young Lindsay Lohan wanna be girls. Actually seeing them driving around in an H2 is quite appropriate since it's probably what they do on a daily basis in their regular lives, but they simply were not an ounce beleivable as rough and tough survivors of an apokalypse. I think Alyiah was one of them but what do I know. Anyway they hook up with Mila and kick zombie ass, except that a lot of those starlets get eaten on the way. Which is fun. Actually having these girls in the film made Mila Jojovich seem that much more credible. She had a real sense of having done it all before sadness about her I really liked.
There was lots of convoluded plot about super domesticated zombies, Mila having special powers, unafected areas in Canada, on and on as is usually the case in these video game movies. Since I haven't played the game and didn't care I didn't really pay attention to the plot. I just sat back and enjoyed Mila killing zombies with knives and machetes, zombies getting machine gunned, and young startlets getting eaten.
What worked:
It's rated R and the violence was there. I like zombies that eat people so that was fun. The action set pieces were on the low budget side, but this is a low budget zombie thing so.
Gripes:
The acting was really bad. I could see the acting coaches lurking in the shadows. These kids just don't have talent and shouldn't act. The killer birds sequence was stupid too but it did thankfully kill Alyiah.
Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:
Oh yeah. R rating alone makes it better, throw in zombies and some bloody kills and you're in a different league from D&D.
Mediocrity Scale:
Pretty Mediocre.
Food:
I think we had albino Oreo Cakesters. They're discounted at the supermarket and rightfully so. It's kind of like a twinky burger type thing. I could feel the sugar grains in the filling; not high quality stuff. We also had another flavour of Fanta, I think it was grape, I just remember it was gross.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Fantastic!
The key thing to understand about our decision to watch Fantastic Four 2 - The Rise of the Silver Surfer is that it was entirely motivated by my desire to try out the iTunes movie rental service. For those of you not familiar with the service, it works by allowing you to download a movie through the iTunes store and watch it at your leisure (as long as your leisure starts within 30 days of your downloading the film and you have the time to watch the film within 48 hours of starting it).
There aren't a whole lot of rental choices on the iTunes store, or rather not many that fall within our typical movie watching parameters, so we ended up with Fantastic Four 2 despite having seen the original and having full knowledge of what we were likely getting ourselves into.
As expected there is not a lot to like about this pointless sequel. I find it difficult to understand how so many (probably) smart people can feel happy or even satisfied by uninspired, cartoonish effects. When I think about the sheer number of meetings, discussions, whiteboard brainstorming and man hours that go into creating elaborate effects sequences that can't stand up to work being done 30 years ago I have to shake my head and wonder who is asleep at the wheel.
Without good effects work to fall back on, Fantastic Four 2 doesn't even have the one thing going for it that one might have hoped for - exciting action sequences. Jessica Alba is terrible in the movie and the rest of the cast isn't much better. Maybe it's not really the actors that are so bad - maybe it's the writing, or maybe it's the directing or maybe it's all three. It's hard to say for sure, so maybe best to consider each aspect of the film as a complete failure on it's own.
The story starts with a lame setup about Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl getting married (she wants a normal life and for the two of them to focus on their personal life while he is distracted by work and fighting evil). When an alien force which threatens the entire planet (as well as the "Fantastic Wedding" and any further attempt at character development) arrives in the form of the Silver Surfer the team is forced to save the world once again.
In addition to saving the planet from the silver menace, the team is faced with some teamwork issues, an uncooperative military commander and Dr. Doom who only seems to be in the film so that they can fight him for about 5 minutes after he predictably betrays them.
Pain score: 6 of 10. I really disliked this movie.
We had Michelina Buffalo-style chicken snacks and EXTREME Screamin' Dill Pringles chips to eat and both were somewhat enjoyable. The chicken snacks in particular were far better than I expected.
There aren't a whole lot of rental choices on the iTunes store, or rather not many that fall within our typical movie watching parameters, so we ended up with Fantastic Four 2 despite having seen the original and having full knowledge of what we were likely getting ourselves into.
As expected there is not a lot to like about this pointless sequel. I find it difficult to understand how so many (probably) smart people can feel happy or even satisfied by uninspired, cartoonish effects. When I think about the sheer number of meetings, discussions, whiteboard brainstorming and man hours that go into creating elaborate effects sequences that can't stand up to work being done 30 years ago I have to shake my head and wonder who is asleep at the wheel.
Without good effects work to fall back on, Fantastic Four 2 doesn't even have the one thing going for it that one might have hoped for - exciting action sequences. Jessica Alba is terrible in the movie and the rest of the cast isn't much better. Maybe it's not really the actors that are so bad - maybe it's the writing, or maybe it's the directing or maybe it's all three. It's hard to say for sure, so maybe best to consider each aspect of the film as a complete failure on it's own.
The story starts with a lame setup about Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl getting married (she wants a normal life and for the two of them to focus on their personal life while he is distracted by work and fighting evil). When an alien force which threatens the entire planet (as well as the "Fantastic Wedding" and any further attempt at character development) arrives in the form of the Silver Surfer the team is forced to save the world once again.
In addition to saving the planet from the silver menace, the team is faced with some teamwork issues, an uncooperative military commander and Dr. Doom who only seems to be in the film so that they can fight him for about 5 minutes after he predictably betrays them.
Pain score: 6 of 10. I really disliked this movie.
We had Michelina Buffalo-style chicken snacks and EXTREME Screamin' Dill Pringles chips to eat and both were somewhat enjoyable. The chicken snacks in particular were far better than I expected.
Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
I think it's actually been two weeks since I saw this film and I've been avoiding writing about it. Maybe I've been too busy, maybe I haven't felt like writing or maybe I'm a little embarrassed because I actually liked this movie. Maybe all of the above.
This is a dead simple movie that seeks only to entertain. There's really not too much to say. The acting is wooden the effects are pretty good the story is decent and a good time is had by all. You just have to know going in this is by the numbers entertainment, not much more. It's what I would call a good mediocre movie.
Gripes:
I'm really struggling to find something to gripe about. There's a lot that's half assed, and badly executed but the movie definitely is greater than the sum of it's parts, so therefore everything kinda works. It's also been two weeks since I saw this and it's fading away...
What works:
I'm not a comic book fan so I don't know the story of the silver surfer. I didn't know anything about the planet eating or his surfboard or any of it so it was fun to figure out the mystery.
The movie has a good pace. The time between set pieces is brief and seems to serve the overall story so I wasn't really ever bored.
Most importantly the movie seems totally unpretentious about itself. It knows we're watching a pulp movie and it's having fun and so am I.
Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:
Yes it was. Better pace, doesn't take itself too seriously, no shitty dragons, doesn't take away the will to live.
Mediocrity Scale:
It's mediocre, but good mediocre.
Food Review:
We ate some kind of chicken balls or something coated in pastry. It tasted exactly like what I would imagine chicken tastes like after going through the teleportation device in David Cronenbergs the Fly before all the bugs are worked out. (pun not intended)
We also ate Pringles EXTREME FLAVOUR DILL PICKLE CHIPS!!. If by extreme they mean really really salty, then they were extreme indeed. Also the picture of the pickles on the box looks like green turds. Not good.
This is a dead simple movie that seeks only to entertain. There's really not too much to say. The acting is wooden the effects are pretty good the story is decent and a good time is had by all. You just have to know going in this is by the numbers entertainment, not much more. It's what I would call a good mediocre movie.
Gripes:
I'm really struggling to find something to gripe about. There's a lot that's half assed, and badly executed but the movie definitely is greater than the sum of it's parts, so therefore everything kinda works. It's also been two weeks since I saw this and it's fading away...
What works:
I'm not a comic book fan so I don't know the story of the silver surfer. I didn't know anything about the planet eating or his surfboard or any of it so it was fun to figure out the mystery.
The movie has a good pace. The time between set pieces is brief and seems to serve the overall story so I wasn't really ever bored.
Most importantly the movie seems totally unpretentious about itself. It knows we're watching a pulp movie and it's having fun and so am I.
Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:
Yes it was. Better pace, doesn't take itself too seriously, no shitty dragons, doesn't take away the will to live.
Mediocrity Scale:
It's mediocre, but good mediocre.
Food Review:
We ate some kind of chicken balls or something coated in pastry. It tasted exactly like what I would imagine chicken tastes like after going through the teleportation device in David Cronenbergs the Fly before all the bugs are worked out. (pun not intended)
We also ate Pringles EXTREME FLAVOUR DILL PICKLE CHIPS!!. If by extreme they mean really really salty, then they were extreme indeed. Also the picture of the pickles on the box looks like green turds. Not good.
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