Tuesday. 10-16
Jose gave me a bunch of movies to watch but he also recommended this one. I'm not much of a fan of Manga but he said it was worth the watch. It's not animated, it's a live adaptation of a Korean animation.
It is a simple revenge story but the cause/effect is outlandish.
The story starts with an obnoxious drunk guy. He is arrested and is belligerent to everyone in the police station. His friend comes to get him from the police station. They make a phone call to the drunk guy's wife and young daughter. As the friend tells the wife they will be home soon he looks around to find that the drunk guy has disappeared.
Drunk guy (Dae-su) is locked into a one room apartment. He is held captive for fifteen years. Watching the television Dae-su learns that he is a missing person but that he is also blamed for the death of his wife who was murdered the night Dae-su disappeared, his daughter is being raised in a foster home. He trains and he contemplates his life as he spends his time watching television and trying to escape. The escape is liberating but it is also obvious that they let him go. He is given a nice set of clothes and set out on his own. He wanders into a sushi bar and while eating he passes out. The waitress (Mi-do) takes a liking to him and takes him home to nurse him back to health.
Dae-su is hunting down his captor and is also falling in love with the waitress that took him in. Fifteen years without a woman allows for some graphic love scenes between the two of them. Together they track down clues that are laid out for them. He finally discovers that his tormentor hired a third party gang to hold him captive. The mastermind behind it all is an old school mate of his.
The schoolmate fell in love with his sister and they were secretly lovers. Dae-su discovered them having sex but didn't know they were siblings. He told another friend about seeing them together but transferred to another school just as the rumor started to spread about it being his sister. The sister committed suicide over the disgrace and Woo-jin has blamed Dae-su for his sister/lover's death. He reveals to Dae-su that his new love, Mi-do, is actually his own daughter. Dae-su begs Woo-jin to keep the secret hidden from Mi-do and he agrees only after taunting Dae-su with recordings of the incestuous passion then, killing himself. Dae-su sees the hypnotist to get the secret out of his own mind. They meet in a snowy garden and the hypnotist tells Dae-su that he will split into two people. The real Dae-su will sit in the chair and the monster walk 70 paces away. The monster will be the only one who knows the secret and after the 70 paces he will fall down and die, leaving Dae-su to wake up and be free of the burden of the secret.
The final scene is Mi-do finding Dae-su in the snow. They embrace and everything is going to be alright. The camera turns to show Dae-su's face over Mi-do's shoulder. He is crying and he has his grimace smile on, something is wrong. The camera pans back and show his 70 footprints in the snow back to the empty chair.
Now this would have been great except for the lazy writing. The interrogation by Dae-su by pulling teeth with a claw hammer is great. Unfortunately, a lot of the "Bond Villian" reveal at the end is just too far-fetched to believe. "We hypnotized both of you so that you would do this, she would react like this, you would counter-react like this and she would then do this..." It was too long of a string of events to believe that it would work, even after suspending disbelief. It was lazy. It was like reading a Stephen King novel and loving it until the last ten pages where he tries to wrap up the entire story by saying, "Oh yeah, everything was haunted". Lazy.
Now some of it was good. The villain kept leaving purple packages for the protagonists. That's how we knew something bad was going to happen. In one of the last packages he leaves a photo album. The first few pages are pictures of Dae-su and his wife and daughter. Then we see the daughter in school. Next she has grown up and become a woman. She is recognizable as Mi-do. The last few pages are her and Dae-su together. Rather than just blurt out, "You have been fucking your own daughter! Haha, got you!", the villain drags it out and elicits an incredible emotional response. Not only that but the photo series proves who she is rather than Dae-su being allowed to have that spark of hope that Woo-jin is lying.
I thought the villain was a bit extreme and hard to believe. Giving up your entire live to devote it to punishing a guy for stumbling across something scandalous and then telling his school mates about it? Sounds a bit excessive. Rather than kick the guy's ass or even kill him, you; let him grow up, start a family, kidnap him, secretly raise his daughter under a new identity, feed him in captivity for fifteen years, go through extensive lengths to hypnotize everyone into a line of dominos, let him escape, let him fall in love, reveal to him that his lover is actually his daughter and then make him live with that fact, kill yourself. Wow, I've come up with some great revenge plots but this one is insane. It would never work except maybe in a movie.
6 of 11 Skulls
Monday, 10-8
Yeah, I know the movie doesn't come out on DVD for a few more weeks but I have a "special antenna" that I picked up in Puerto Rico. I've got a few early releases that I'll be watching over the next few days. But, whatever your feelings are on piracy, this movie is the reason I love getting to preview things before investing any resources into it. I am the type to buy DVD. If I like a movie, it will eventually end up on my wall. If I'm not sure if it's any good, I'll Netflix it and watch it. Transformers looked so bad that I wasn't even going to waste a Netflix pick on it. I heard a few people I know telling me that it was incredible and that I had to see it. I think these people were intentionally fucking with me. Transformers sucked so bad that I will never watch it again, even with a free copy in my hands.
The cartoon/toys were a little past my time. I had a couple of the toys and I have seen the cartoon but I was just a little too old for them when they came out. Actually we weren't rich so I don't think I ever got actual "Transformers", I ended up with their cheap K-Mart cousins the "Go-Bots". Go-Bots were what the poor kids got for Christmas while the rich kids got Optimus Prime.
But what I do remember from the lame cartoon was much better than what I just saw in this movie. If it were just a "high-tech alien invasion" story it might have worked but it drew heavily upon the nostalgia circuit and failed miserably for me. The bad references and the obvious hammer to the face jokes were horrible.
The movie opens on a military base. After ten minutes and numerous references to where they were, the subtitle reads, "Qatar - The Middle East" As opposed to "Qatar - Nebraska"? How many Qatar's are there? If we see a desert military base labeled as Qatar, wouldn't everyone know where it is? We're not that dumb. Well, judging from the glowing reviews some people gave this POS, maybe some people NEED to be spoon fed their information.
The base is under attack by a helicopter that crashed last month. Now it transforms into a giant robot and destroys the base. A few good men escape and are on the run to find a telephone to notify the Pentagon. They are being chased by the robot that has transformed into a scorpion. The scorpion robot just happened to end up in the desert? Luck? What would have happened if it was only capable of transforming into a duck? Or a polar bear?
The Pentagon is aware of the alien invaders trying to hack into the top-secret network. To stop the highly advanced and never-before-seen alien technology, the Pentagon brings in a team of teenage hackers. One of the teen-hackers puts the alien signal on a SD card and walks right out of the Pentagon. She walks to a friend's house who is the video-gaming-unlikely-genius-type and he cracks the code just as the military busts down the door
Meanwhile, a young geeky kid is giving a show and tell to his class about his great-grandfather's arctic expedition and he's trying to sell his grandfather's gear on eBay so he can buy a car. His father takes him to buy a car and like he's shopping for Christine, he ends up buying a yellow 70's model Camaro. The geeky kid is trying to impress the girls but has no luck because he wants the main cheerleader. Go figure... But wait, in a page taken straight from real life, something that happens to every kid growing up in Shermer, Illinois, the lead cheerleader agrees to let the geeky kid drive her home after her jock boyfriend acts like an ass. Man if I had a nickel for every time that happened... Well I'd still be broke...
On board Air Force One some of the aliens are hacking into the network. Not by plugging into the data or interfacing directly with the CPU, this anthropomorphic Star Wars reject actually cracks his robot knuckles before typing on the keyboard. This is the same little bugger that will later on, as he is about to die, will utter, "Oh shit". Funny? No.
By now the geeky kid has got the cheerleader girl on his side and they are coming to realize that his Camaro is alive. Now the hour long car commercial begins. She calls the car ugly or something and it pulls over and kicks them out. It spins around and pulls up transformed into a brand new 2008 Camaro. It is Yellow with the black stripe and as it pulls up the "Kill Bill" theme (Battle Without Honor Or Humanity) is playing. That was the only point in the entire movie that I actually smiled. We get a full 360 spin of how pretty the car is and I can hear the non-existent voice whisper, "buy a Camaro".
The car [buy a Camaro] pulls out the bat-signal and the rest of the good guys show up and we get to see the tractor trailer hero, Optimus Prime. He is huge and powerful but he has no trailer. I remember that the trailer was the reason he was so much bigger than the other toys, he had more moving parts. No trailer in the movie. So we get the introductions. All of the robots speak in slang and jive while doing a break-dance move [buy a Camaro] and we soon see how the movie got funded. The toys were mostly fire trucks, taxi cabs, ambulances and vans. The robots in the movie were all GM cars. [buy a Camaro] The Hummer, the Camaro the Escalade. What happened to the nondescript vehicles? They were bought out and sold to the highest bidder. [buy a Camaro]
We are treated to a giant robot muscling a kid and screaming the improbable line, "Are you screen name 'LadiesMan217' on eBay?!" If that wasn't funny enough, having the four or five giant robots prancing around the back yard trying to stay hidden while the geeky kid's dad is looking out the windows... Man, that was just soooo funny. Made me think of those classic Scooby Doo episodes where the gang was escaping from the bad guys by jumping in and out of random doors. Oh, it was just so wacky! I was embarrassed to find that I was still watching at this point.
So they find the big bad guy "Megatron" and SURPRISE, he's been in double top secret government custody ever since the geeky kid's great-grandfather found him. The whole reason Hoover Dam was built was to shield him from the rest of the world and the key to the robot's awakening and invasion is the geeky kid's eBay auction of his great-grandfather's glasses on eBay. They hold the secret because the key inscription was magically etched onto the glasses when he saw the robot. Yeah, it's getting weird in here.
Big explosions, robots fighting, [buy a Camaro] people being put into danger, no one dying. Megatron no longer transforms into a gun, now he's a jet plane. The epic battle creates so much collateral damage that even a superhero move would be put to shame. The ultimate baddie is killed (for now) and the second baddie escapes and is never heard from again, until the sequel.
I think the movie could have worked if we just took all of the humans out of the film. Digitally erase all of the actors and just have a huge orgy of special effects and giant robots fighting and destroying the infrastructure of a large city. That would have worked. Michael Bay should look into making "Godzilla meets the Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots." As long as we stay away from those damn meddling kids...
2 of 11 Skulls
Saturday. 10-6-7
The guy from the original "Amityville Horror", Jack McCoy from "Law & Order" and the guy who killed Nichol Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are going to Mars. (Isn't it a bit of a shame that for all of OJ's achievements, he'll forever be known as the guy that got away with it? No, not really much of a shame I guess...)
The budget for the space program is being called into question and this mission has to be spectacular. Just a few minutes before launch the astronauts are pulled from their rocket and taken into a conference room. They are told that the launch went off without a problem and the world thinks that they are on board. There was a screw up with the life support system and they wouldn't have made it to Mars. They are given a choice to come out and blow the cover or to go along with the agency and fake the Mars landing for the good of the people. When the main pilot chooses to blow the cover it is revealed that it was never a choice. Their families are being used as bargaining chips.
They move to a remote, abandoned military base where a hangar has been turned into a replica of the Mars surface. The lander is already on the surface and the camera are ready to roll. The astronauts' voices were recorded from the simulator and are being broadcast as the real thing. All they need to do is to descend the ladder, prance around the surface and make a few transmissions to Earth. The director promises that this will never happen again but if their cover is blown the space agency budget goes away and they will never get another shot at Mars or anywhere for that matter.
Meanwhile back at Mission Control, a particular technician is noticing that there are errors with his console. The voice data is being received long before the ship data. It is coming in way to fast to be coming from the depths of space. It's almost like the voice transmissions are being made from here on Earth. He is patted on the head and told to get back to work. He mentions this to a friend of his who happens to be the local conspiracy theorist for the local newspaper. When boy scout technician mentions the error again, he is never heard from again. His reporter friend is baffled by his sudden and complete disappearance. The reporter investigates.
He interviews the pilot's wife and compares notes against the pilot's televised transmissions to Earth. The pilot, ready to crack gives his wife a cryptic message which she dismisses as a stress induced error. "We never went to Yellowstone Park" she says but the eager reported takes it as, "We never went to Mars".
The crew is ready to crack but holds it together. Finally, the day comes for re-entry. The coordinates will be off by 200 miles and it will take the recovery team a couple of hours to reach the ship, just long enough for the agency to slip the crew back inside the module. The world watches in horror as the heat shield fails to deploy and the capsule disintegrates. The crew (conveniently left alone for a few minutes) realizes that the agency can't afford to have them alive. They escape the building and commandeer the leer jet. They are out of fuel and crash land in the desert. They split up in three directions and try to make it to civilization.
Sam Waterston and OJ are captured but James Brolin endures a helicopter chase, a raw snake dinner and Elliot Gould and Telly Savalas in a crop duster like a flimsy Martin and Lewis buddy road film... The film ends with a horrible freeze-frame of the reporter and the pilot showing up to the funeral service for the astronauts. No story arc other than, "we faked it, we got caught". No fall out, no resolution but to be honest I was just happy the damn thing was over I didn't care. I decided to just let it sit as an artsy ending that I can choose what happens next in my own head. I won't, but I could.
Ok, it's no secret that this was a stab at the idea that the Moon landings were faked. It's one of the really good conspiracy stories that just won't die. It can only be explained by the degradation of the truth in what our government was telling us at the time. Watergate, Vietnam, the Cold War, Kennedy's deadline, all of this can lead to people making up stories about why NASA would fake a Moon landing.
So with all that hype, they make a movie about it and change the Moon to Mars. It was a simple 70's film. Dragged out in a lot of places, had a lot of over-acting. The hiking through the desert scene made me think of "Planet of the Apes". It just looks like the late 60's, early 70's. So, I have one technical question that I just can't grok. The Mars lander looked identical to the Lunar lander. Doesn't Mars have an atmosphere? Wouldn't anything landing on Mars have to contend with re-entry, aerodynamics and gravity, even at lowered levels, could the lunar lander successfully land on Mars?
4 of 11 Skulls
Friday. 10-5-7
I got it for free, how could I pass this one up? I heard that Samuel L. Jackson said he'd walk away from the film if they tried to change the title. The cheesy title told you it was going to be a stupid action flick.
Guy on vacation in Hawaii witnesses a bad guy doing crime. FBI sends Samuel L. Jackson to bring the good guy in to testify against bad guy. Bad guy can't get to good guy so he puts a giant box of venomous snakes from around the world with a timer on it, into the cargo hold of the plane. He has the leis sprayed down with pheromone to make the snakes crazy. The plane takes off, usual airplane banter ensues. Snakes escape and we have fun laughing at how crappy this movie really is. The pilot dies, the co-pilot dies and the only person who can land the plane reveals (on approach) that his only experience comes from a Playstation 2 flight simulator.
We have the expected scenes. Come on now, index them out loud along with me...
The couple who sneaks into the bathroom to have sex? Killed by snakes.
The guy who pees without looking down into the urinal? Bitten on the penis.
The small child left behind after they make a barricade? Rescued by stewardess.
The stewardess who rescued the child? Bitten by snakes.
The obnoxious fat guy upset about being kicked out of first class? Eaten by a snake.
The yappy little lapdog held by the Paris Hilton clone? Fed to the snakes.
The happy couple returning from their honeymoon? Killed by snakes... Haha! Got that one wrong didn't you?
The pilot? Killed by snakes.
The co-pilot? Bitten by snakes, hangs on long enough to give us hope, dies.
Main hero #1 (Samuel L. Jackson) Not bitten, gets the lead stewardess to go out with him.
Main hero #2 (witness) Not bitten, gets the junior stewardess to go out with him.
It was lame but it was meant to be. Ignore the explosive decompression and the agro-snake pit. It was a bad, bad movie and as long as they portrayed it like they did, a cheesy "B" film, I will like it. The second someone tries to make it anything more than a guilty pleasure it drops in points. It sucked and it was fun.
5 of 11 Skulls
Saturday, 9-8-7
Herman Melville's famous short story about a dark and lonely soul turned into a movie starring Crispin Glover. Oh I HAD to see this one! For those of you not familiar with "Bartleby the Scrivener", the movie was nothing short of an exact duplicate of the story save for the adaptation for modern times. The original story took place in a 19th century Wall Street lawyer's office, the movie is a modern day LA Public Records office. Other than the secretary being a woman and not a 12-year old boy, the script is almost exact.
The boss of a rather boring office hires a new guy, Bartleby. The new guy does an amazing amount of work and the rest of the office is shown in contrast. The work is boring and often redundant. Checking facts, filing papers, repeat. Soon Bartleby is starting to show quirks. He is staring off and refusing to complete some tasks, always with the line, "I would prefer not to." It starts small with things like running to the deli for lunch, then making the mail run, then it turns to tasks that are directly his job. He simply refuses and the only explanation he gives is, "I prefer not to." The boss has taken a liking to Bartleby but after an extended run of trying to motivate Bartleby and having him refuse to work, the boss has no choice but to fire him. Bartleby does not leave, he would prefer not to. The boss gets so upset but can't bring himself to directly harm Bartleby, he chooses to relocate the office to another business park.
"Business and park, two words that should never be used together. They have a word for people like that, oxymorons."
Just as things are getting back to normal, the new tenants come to the boss to complain about Bartleby. The boss claims that it is not his problem. When the entire building comes to complain about him, the boss goes down to try to talk sense to Bartleby. After more refusals, there is no choice but to have the police remove Bartleby. He is arrested and dropped off at the local soup kitchen. The boss goes down to find Bartleby and to help him but he is standing under an underpass refusing to move, refusing even to eat. He would prefer not to. The boss goes through a lot to get some food for Bartleby and when he returns, he finds him dead.
Melville signs off her with a final chapter about how Bartleby previously worked in the Post Office dead letter office and how working in there must have been what drove him to he particular quirkyness.
The movie gives one final scene to the boss who has written up Bartleby's story and has presented it to publisher. When the publisher rejects the manuscript the boss gets irate pointing out that they publish thousands of books about inane subjects but along comes a heartfelt story about humanity and she has the gall to reject it?! He becomes overbearing and when the publisher asks him to leave the boss replies, "I would prefer not to!"
The story is good fodder for the intellectuals around you. If you want to see a nerd fight, throw out this title and they will be arguing about what Melville meant by the story for hours. Oh the fun! I read this back in school and I loved the darkness in it. Bartleby's doomed futility and I thought it was a nice short piece about existentialism. Other people see Kafka in the story and still others are finding room for Marx. I thought it was a good story, you can interpret it as you see fit.
I thought the movie was great considering what they had to work with. They either had to change the story drastically or deal with the fact that there are only two scene changes and 90% of the movie takes place in an office. They did an amazing job of taking this drab short story and making it last an entire feature without becoming boring.
Crispin Glover did the usual creepy acting. The boss was well played and got me to feel the same way I felt for the narrator in the story. The other two clerks were nominal but the acting was sufficient. The secretary was also nominal but that role was turned into a woman who churned out sexuality in a story where it was unnecessary.
The ending was strange, I had to go back and read the original again just to see if I forgot the ending or what else was changed. The boss meeting the publisher scene was tacked on and was not part of the original story but I thought it was a nice ending. The book leaves off rather abruptly and the manufactured ending kind of wraps it up nicely. It takes away a little of the open ended interpretation of the story but nice nonetheless. If you think it is a story about the plight of the working class, if you think it is a commentary about how we all shape our own fate or if you think it is simply a sad story about a deranged man, Bartleby the Scrivener is a great read and a pretty decent movie.
Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!
6 of 11 Skulls
Saturday, 9-8-7
A very simple idea, written by a guy that I really like. Neil Gaiman, the guy that did Stardust (which I loved) and the "Sandman" comics (which I loved) wrote this movie along with another comics artist Dave McKean.
A girl is turning into a young woman and feels trapped in her world, juggling in a family run circus. She escapes into her drawings and argues with her mother that she wants "a real life". Her mother falls ill and the girl is scared that she will lose her mother all while her father is struggling to keep the circus together.
She wakes up in a dream to find that she is trapped in her drawings. The Queen of Light has lost control of her half of the universe and the Queen of Shadows is taking over. She wanders around in the strange new world where everyone wears a mask. She meets a new friend and he explains that people here in this world are disturbed by her face that changes with her emotions. There is a mask that will restore the Light Queen to health and Helena goes in search for it. But she is captured and brought before the Shadow Queen as the missing Shadow Princess. The real Shadow Princess has hidden the mirrormask and escaped into the "real world" and is now living Helena's real life all gothed out. As Helena comes closer to discovering where the mask is hidden, goth Helena out in the real world starts tearing down the art on the walls, destroying the world where real Helena is held captive. She finds the mirrormask hidden in another mirror and saves the universe by restoring the Light Queen's health and swapping places again with the Shadow Princess. Once back in her real life she learns that her mother pulled through the surgery and will be alright. The circus will continue and the friend she met over in her dream world comes to audition for a role in the circus.
I did not like it. I don't know if it was too simple, so chaotic or too bland. The story was simple, a child's tale that has been told a thousand times. The new world was chaotic because strange new worlds often are. The blandness was appropriate because she was in a world created by black ink on white paper. All of these elements were correct but somehow it was all wrong. I just didn't feel the movie. Gaiman has some great ideas and some that are maybe a little too strange for film. Although I never read "Mirrormask" I expect that this movie is a prime example that "what engages you in print may not capture you on film". Now, let's see if they allow him to make a film adaptation of "American Gods"...
5 of 11 Skulls
Thursday, 9-6-7
I am a "Firefly" virgin, I had no idea what to expect from this movie other than the guy who did "Buffy" and "Angel" did a sci-fi western. As much as I say I'll try not to hold bias, Buffy and Angel are the reasons I never saw this show. I've still never seen Firefly but a copy of "Serenity" fell into my hands the other day. Enough people I know have told me that it was good and a lot of other people I associate with are huge fans. So I figured I'd be true to form after years of coming late to the party and give it a watch.
What if Han Solo was in the Matrix?
That is the entire idea behind the movie. Okay, if you want more I'll give it to you but that's all it was.
Mankind has overpopulated the Earth. We have moved out into space and colonized an entire star system. The Earth governments have collapsed/melded into one galactic empire. There are planets and people who resisted the empire's control in favor of their own frontiersman spirit. These planets have been over run by the empire. Our hero is one of the soldiers who fought on the losing side of the war. He has a ship and a crew who take on any job (legale y no-legale...) to get by. Also, the government has been doing mind experiments on anyone showing psychic promise.
A young girl is being
experimented on and her brother comes in to rescue her. He has purchased the
use of our hero's ship/crew to help. Of course, when the government realizes
she is psychic and has possibly seen the secrets within several government VIPs,
the order is given to quietly track and kill this girl and anyone with her.
Meanwhile, hero (Mal) is
using the girl and her psychic abilities to complete several other jobs that
appear much like bank robbery. When her brother complains, they decide to get
off at the next port. When they hit port, psychic girl has a seizure and goes
ape-shit, taking on the entire bar and kicking the shit/killing every one no
matter how big. As she collapses, Mal takes her back on board because he had a
recent feeling of guilt about not leaving anyone behind.
Some unnecessary romance squeezes in between the engineer and the psychic's brother, the pilot and first mate are married and the captain meets up with his old love by rescuing her from the guy tracking them. That has everyone romantically involved except psychic sister and the gruff, unsophisticated ex-marine type.
They discover that the word that triggered the seizure is also the name of a hidden planet. Their decision to fight or hide is made for them by the tracker killing everyone in every known port they have. Including the kindly old father-figure played by Detective Ron Harris from Barney Miller. So with his Yoda dead, Mal decides to go to the forbidden planet even though it is surrounded by a ring (he's in space, couldn't he go over them or under them?) of the really bad guys, the Reavers. They are the crazy, cannibalistic rapists and murderer boogie-men of this world. The crew successfully sneaks by them on the way to the mystery planet.
Once there, they discover a
recording of a government scientist confessing that everyone on the planet is
dead because of them. They introduced a nerve agent into the breathing air
generators. It was supposed to make the population more serene, less prone to
stress or violence. It worked too well. On 90% of the population, it caused
them to stop caring about anything. Work, family, drinking, eating. These
people died from neglect like infants. As the woman in the flickering hologram
(WHY oh WHY do the people of sci-fi future always take the shitty hologram
approach rather than a nice hi-def video image!?!?!?!) hears sounds off stage,
she quickly explains that the other 10% of the population had an opposite
reaction and the drug aggravated them and turned them into what we now know as
the Reavers. Then she is attacked and eaten by them.
Mal decides that he is
tired of running and covering his own ass. The world needs to see this and he
is willing to die trying. His crew is with him and off we go to the Jewish
teenager hacker that has access to every feed ever.
On the way back out of the
Reaver ring, they shoot at them causing them to give chase. They approach the
empire's fleet and duck out of the way as the empire and Reaver armies clash.
They drop down to the planet to meet up with their hacker friend and are chased
by the tracker and by the Reavers. The pilot dies while landing the ship, the
first mate (pilot's wife) offers to make a stand while he runs in to broadcast
the recording. The entire crew holds off the Reavers while Mal has a one on one
fight with the tracker. Mal wins and the tape is broadcast but he refuses to
kill the tracker. He returns to the crew to find out that psychic sister
sacrificed herself to save the crew and her brother. The blast doors open to
reveal that she didn't die, she killed all of the bad guys. Just then, the
imperial troops find them but they are ordered to stand down by the tracker.
We close on a clean and
well rested crew and a repaired ship thanks to the change of heart in the
tracker. The captain's lost love interest has decided to stay on board, the
engineer is banging the doctor and we get our happy Hollywood ending.
Not bad, pre-plotted and cookie-cutter BUT, those were some nicely made cookies. It was as predictable as a Hollywood plotline, but it was well done and I liked it. The comedic lines were recognizable from the "Buffy" episodes I have suffered through but the timing and delivery was so much better. It was fluffy sci-fi/western/comedy and for some odd reason I liked it.
The show was only on for ten episodes (13 on DVD) so I don't think it really had the time to establish itself. How attached to a character can you get when you only saw him a few times. I think this is why it worked for me. It was just a movie and I had never seen the television show. I could tell that they wanted big dramatics when they killed off the two characters but it's not like killing off Spock for fuck's sake, they were only on for ten episodes!
I looked up the show on line to see if I wanted to see it or just leave it at the movie for me. The most common critique of the show is that they threw together two genres (sci-fi and westerns) just to be different. Hell, if that's the case then I'd hate to see what this critic thought of Star Wars or any other space opera. And for what it's worth, I love a sci-fi writer that still sees the significance of actual powder/projectile guns while surrounded by lasers, blasters and phasers. I especially love a writer that uses them both in the same story.
I read all about the show and the ground swell of a fan base is scary. Given its short run, it is obvious that most of these fans are pimply teenager "Buffy" fans and will back anything this guy does. That said, I intend to watch the show now and I could easily see myself becoming a fan.
So while it wasn't exactly life-changing, it was a very good movie and moved me closer to becoming a fan. The very next thing I did was put the "Firefly" series next in my Netflix queue.
8 of 11 Skulls
The Bourne Identity - The Bourne Supremacy - The Bourne Ultimatum
Friday, 8-31-7
I'll call this the Bourne Trilogy. Yeah I know there are two more books out already but for now there are three movies and that will count as a trilogy. Hell, I still count Star Wars as a trilogy. After a little peek into the books I'm not sure we can count the books as source material for the movies anyway. Very different novels from the films I saw...
We'll keep this about the Matt Damon flicks, The Bourne Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum. I saw about twenty minutes of the first one in a hotel last year. With the new one coming out, Teresa and I Netflixed the first two and went out to see the new one today.
A man wakes up on a fishing boat after being found floating in the Mediterranean Sea. He has been shot in the back and he also has a Swiss bank account embedded under his skin. He is suffering from amnesia and can't remember anything about his life before being hauled aboard the fishing boat. He visits the bank and finds a cache of money, passports (with his picture) and a gun. He takes everything but the gun and leaves. By showing up and logging in he has triggered the system and now the CIA knows he is alive and coming for him. He is acutely aware of his surroundings and knows he is being followed, he ducks into the US Embassy. The MPs attempt to arrest him, he is disables them quickly and efficiently. He escapes by hiring a stranger to drive him to Paris; his home address based on the earliest passport. When he arrives, an assassin tries to kill him. Bourne once again displays uncanny skills in defeating the armed man. The girl that drove Bourne to Paris chooses to stay with and now the movie has a love interest. Much too quickly and without any real reason, she has fallen in love with him. While not exactly a captive I suspected a little "Stockholm Syndrome" subplot but no, she is truly in love with him...
They hide at her brother's house and the assassins find him there too. He uses the new assassin's phone to find out who is calling the shots and to arrange a meeting. He takes most of the money and gives it to the girl and tells her to leave or she will get killed. While traveling to the meeting he learns that an important dignitary was almost assassinated two weeks ago but that he shot the assailant as he jumped overboard. Bourne now knows that he is an assassin himself. He is starting to remember snippets of his past, he remembers that he aborted his mission to kill this guy because as he pulled his gun up, the dignitary had his children playing on his lap. He turned to abort the assassination and was shot as he was jumping overboard.
Bourne meets his "boss" and tells him that he wants out, off the grid. He escapes and the boss is killed as the secret government project is shut down from higher authority. Bourne finds his girl on a Greek island and they live happily ever after.
UNTIL...
Bourne and his girl have retreated to a beach in India. He is remembering bits and pieces, mostly about a job in Berlin. Half way around the world, the CIA is making a file/money deal. The agents are killed, the files are stolen and Bourne's fingerprint is planted on the evidence. The assassin who did the killing now arrives in India to kill Bourne. He is spotted and they go on the run. The assassin shoots for Bourne, hits the girl and the car drives off the bridge into the river leaving Bourne for dead. But of course, he's not.
Now Bourne is back on the grid and trying to find out why he is being targeted again. He knows that the CIA will track him when he shows up and uses that to tap a phone and get the agent in charge's information. He also finds out from another assassin about the secret agency they are a part of and that he and Bourne are the last two alive. Shortly after, Bourne is the only one alive. Tracking the agent in charge (Landy), he is able to find out watch her and talk to her. When he spots Parsons, the field point of contact from the first movie, he says he'll talk to her. He meets her but takes her away from all the surveillance to interrogate her. He finds out that he was the first and the best agent of the secret agency. He was the one who killed Alexander Neski, the man who all of the files from the beginning were about and that is the Berlin job he has been having the flashbacks about. When he asks why they are hunting him, she responds that he killed the two agents for the files. He tells her that he was in India when that happened. The transmitter in her coat picks this all up and Landy is starting to have doubts about why the agency wants Bourne dead.
Bourne figures it out, his "boss" in the first movie had a boss who wants to tie up any loose ends. He records a conversation by the higher boss and an agent where the higher boss admits to just about everything but the Kennedy assassination. He sends the tape to Landy and the boss commits suicide when confronted with the evidence.
Bourne then goes to Moscow to meet Neski's daughter. He apologizes to her and explains that he killed her father and her mother was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was not a murder suicide as reported. He leaves and the last assassin-agent tries to kill Bourne in another spectacular action sequence. The agent dies in a crash and Bourne walks away. He calls Landy and she thanks him for the tape by telling him his real name, date and place of birth. Bourne hangs up and walks into the crowd to live happily ever after.
UNTIL...
A British reporter is writing a story on the enigmatic "Jason Bourne" and meets a high-up source. In a phone conversation with his editor he mentions the project's codeword and that alerts the CIA. Bourne has traveled back to Europe to tell his girlfriend's brother what happened to her. As he arrives in London he sees the Newspaper article and contacts the reporter. He sets up a meeting and the CIA follows him to a crowded train station thinking that he must be going to meet his source. They follow him and have a sniper on standby. When the CIA sees that the source is Bourne, they green light the kill. The dumbest sniper in the world shoots the scared civilian reporter first and alerts the trained government spy-assassin to his presence. Of course, Bourne escapes and takes the reporters files with him. The real source is an agent in Madrid. Bourne goes to Madrid, bypasses the most illogical and backward alarm system ever and enters the agent's offices. The CIA team run by a guy named Vosen has been ordered to bring in Landy, the agent from the second movie. She is treated like she is in the way until she proves that she is the only one able to track Bourne. When he arrives in Madrid, Bourne is attacked by the CIA operatives following him and just as he thinks he is done, in walks Parsons, the lovely field point of contact from the first two movies. She doesn't take the opportunity to alert the CIA to Bourne's presence and she goes on the run with him. I guess when one love interest dies we have to develop another... She hints around and gives us all reason to believe that they were involved before Bourne had his agency training. He can't remember it of course but he is beginning to remember some of the early training tactics.
Parsons tells him that the source has gone on the run to Tangier. They find that an assassin has been sent to kill the source. Parsons uses her clearance to contact the assassin, giving Bourne a chance to track him and save the source. He ends up failing to save the guy and now he and Parsons have become next on the hit list. After another action scene, the assassin is dead, Parsons is going on the run and Bourne is heading to the CIA in New York.
Landy, who is getting suspicious of the agency's willingness to kill everyone and anyone, (including their own agents) contacts Bourne after he puts himself back on the grid. She repeats her earlier conversation telling him who he is and his date of birth. The CIA is monitoring her calls so when Bourne sends her a text telling her to meet him at an address, the entire CIA rolls to get there before her. It was all a diversion and Bourne breaks into Vosen's office to get the files on the secret agency. He proceeds to the coded address Landy gave him in their conversation. Vosen realizes what is going on and races to the same address. Landy meets Bourne and she says something is wrong with the agency. Bourne gives the files to her and tells her to "do something about it". Then he goes up to the training facility where he once became Jason Bourne.
Vosen finds Landy but she has already used the fax machine to get the documents exposed. Upstairs, Bourne meets the doctor that conditioned his mind when he entered the program. He starts to remember that he volunteered for the mission and the training. Just as he is starting to remember more, agents bust in the door to kill him. He escapes to the roof where he is chased and is shot by Vosen. He falls into the river and is presumed dead.
Parsons is shown watching a news report about the exposure of the secret agency and that all the bad guys are going to jail and that Jason Bourne was shot and fell into the river where he died. Parsons smiles knowing that he is too tough for that and sure enough, we flip back to his body floating in the river jerking to life and swimming away, presumably to live happily ever after.
UNTIL... the next movie, "The Bourne Prequel" or whatever they have cooked up for this.
These three movies were based (very loosely) on the Robert Ludlum books. There are two others, "The Bourne Legacy" and "The Bourne Betrayal" but they are by another author and with the success these three movies have found I think it would be hard for them to let this franchise die out just because they changed authors.
I liked the movies. There were little moments throughout them that made me cringe and want to holler BS! But for the most part they were good. There were plenty of "over the top" action sequences but they never went so far over the top where it was completely unbelievable. The closest they came to that is Bourne walking away from so many high speed car wrecks. He braces/prepares for them and all but still the trauma his body must be going through should kill him. If his body isn't showing any wear, the cars are always crashed up and damaged. That's a good sign. We don't have enough "quality" car chases in modern movies anymore. Now that I've said this, someone will go out and do a remake of "Bullitt". Ugh, I hope not!
So the only other thing I thought sucked was that there were too many close-up "shaky-cam" shots. It was like they had Michael J. Fox running the camera. (For those of you that get that little joke, yes, I am all packed for my journey into Hell...) It gave the movies a touch of reality but maybe a bit too much. I was annoyed by it to the point that it took me out of the film rather than drawing me into it.
So we have a Barney Rubble look-a-like playing an amalgam of a reality-James Bond and MacGyver on the run from the government and staying one step ahead because he has superb skills at damn-near everything. Somehow it works. I liked all three of them and I'll go see a fourth if they make one.
And I got through this entire commentary without making some kind of "Bourne again" joke...
8 of 11 Skulls
Wednesday, 8-22-7
I am a complete fool for Shakespeare renditions and as much as I have resisted it, I am such a little girl for Kenneth Branagh. I waited years and years for his 1996 "Hamlet" to be released and when it came out last week I couldn't wait to see it again. "Hamlet" was never my favorite simply because of its popularity. Any fool can spout lines from that play and the nail in the coffin was Mel Gibson. If I lived to be five thousand years old, I never needed to see Riggs/MadMax butchering Shakespeare. But, this is not about "Hamlet", this is about last year's "As You Like It".
I was familiar with this play only in passing. I've read it a few times but never really cared for it. It seemed too similar to a few of the other plays and all the subplots are more than a little convoluted. I won't even try to explain all of the crossover marriages because they really aren't that important and most of you are probably more familiar with this particular play than I am.
The play (as written by The Bard) takes place in a dukedom in France, mostly in the woods outside of the duke's lands. This version transports the story to early 19th century Japan and I think it was a very pretty move but unimportant because most of the action takes place in the forest and aside from minor points, this story could be told in any forest.
A happy and respected Duke is enjoying an evening's entertainment when his evil brother breaks in (ninja style this time), overthrows and exiles his brother. Both brothers are played by Brian Blessed, white haired for the good duke, black hair for the evil duke. Good duke's daughter (Rosalind) is to remain in the castle and keep evil duke's daughter (Celia) company. Living in the court, Rosalind falls in love with Orlando. Orlando is exiled because he is at odds with his eldest brother. When bad duke becomes paranoid about his good duke brother, he tries to kill Rosalind but Celia intervenes and the two girls take on new names, Rosalind dresses as a boy and they leave the castle with the court fool and go into exile in the woods. Minor contrivances aside, they meet up with the good duke who is attracting all kinds of people that choose to give up court life and live in the woods with him. Orlando confides in Ganymede (Rosalind in drag) that he is in love with Rosalind. You get the usual Shakespearian circle of lovers where twenty people stand in a circle and each of them is in love with the person on their left. "Bob loves Joan who loves Alex who loves Carol who loves John who loves Sandy who loves Bob" type of thing. In the end, the confusion is cleared up and everyone is in love with the right people, Rosalind comes out of drag, Orlando and his brother embrace there is a mass wedding and we are all happy in the woods. Until, another of Orlando's brothers comes to report that bad duke heard about good duke's good fortune under the circumstances of exile and has let out from the castle to kill his brother outright. Along the way he comes across a priest and becomes a religious convert to the point of abdicating his lands to his brother and living in exile himself. We have a song, a dance and the end.
It was entertaining. I liked the production of the movie and I always like Brian Blessed. This time around Branagh kept himself out of the shot and stayed behind the camera. The red-haired chick from "The Village" did a great job as Rosalind and I didn't expect that either. I haven't seen much range out of her in most of the other movies I've seen her in, I expected her to fall flat in such a dynamic role but she actually pulls it off convincingly.
The melancholy character of Jaques was played by Kevin Klein and he did a great job of it but the character wasn't integral to this version of the story. Like I said earlier, this play just seems too much like other plays that I am more familiar with. The manipulation of relationships was "Much Ado About Nothing", the cross-dressing woman falling in love with her companion was "Twelfth Night" and Jaques was Falstaff without the mirth.
The Epiloge was given by Rosalind as she breaks the fourth wall but stays in character. She recites the epilogue while walking the backlot to her trailer. We see camera/sound techs, we see modern cars all while she's spouting Shakespearian text. I thought it was kind of cool.
The movie was good, the play was never one of my favorites but this did give me some exposure to some actors that I never thought much of and it also gave me a new dose of some old favorites.
6 of 11 Skulls
Thursday, 8-16-7
I can't tell you why I watched this movie. I still don't know why myself. I will tell you how I got hooked into it. I got back to the hotel and checked my e-mail while watching the end of "Walk the Line". When it ended I was on the phone and when I looked up again another movie had started. An alcoholic, over-the-hill cop was coming into work and it looked like Bruce Willis. I watched for a few minutes to see if it was and before I knew it, I had watched the whole thing.
Hung over cop is ready to go home and is given a last minute assignment to escort a prisoner to his court date. Along the way there is an assassination attempt on the prisoner. Cop calls in for assistance and his old partner shows up and tells him to look the other way while they "take care of" the prisoner. The court appearance was for him to testify against dirty cops. Our hero has obviously turned his head before but he decides to do the right thing this time. He has two hours (before the jury is let go) to travel the sixteen blocks to the courthouse. Along the way he forms a bond with the prisoner who is always talking about how people can change. He fights the corrupt cops and as they are ready to enter the courthouse, he lets the prisoner go to start his new life and prove that people can change. He explains that he had his hands in the corruption and that he will testify to the jury. He Walks in and has the necessary standoff with his ex-partner and eventually gets to the DA who rushes him into the jury. The closing scene is the cop cleaned up (after two years in prison) and a package from Seattle showing that the prisoner did change his life and so did our cop hero.
I wasn't sure if I was watching "Die Hard 3.5" or "Lethal Weapon 2.5" It had all been done before. All the action/twists/lines were telegraphed a year in advance. The corrupt cops were the same corrupt cops from "The Negotiator". They play up the black/white aspect of Bruce Willis and his civilian charge. I hope the actor's voice was a fake because it was annoying as hell. It was like listening to HuggyBear with a lisp for two hours. Didn't Bruce Willis already play the drunk detective that had to work with/protect a civilian? "Last Boy Scout", "Fifth Element", "Die Hard 3"? Ok, what movie DIDN'T he play this same role?
It was alright if you like those movies. If you watch any of the "burned-out cop gets his shit together" type movies, this one will be right up your alley. I thought it was alright but I felt that I could have spent those two hours doing just about anything else and would have considered it a better expenditure of my time.
5 of 11 Skulls
Last Updated: 10/30/07 01:37 AM