Aaaaaaaaaaah-hahahahaha! Aaaarrrrrrggggggh-hahahahahahahahaha!!
Aaaaaaaaawwwwwwww-hahahahahehehehehe. Ooh! Oooh! Wooooooh! Hahahahahahahaha! Hahaha! Haha! Hah! ... Phew... Wooh!... ... ... Aaaaaaaaaaah hahahahahahahahaha!
Hahaha Haha Ha!
HA!!
Allow me to be more specific.
What is it about Megan Fox movies? I seem to come out of every one I see wanting to give it negative stars. Is it because she's a terrible actress? Is it because she always plays the hot girl I could never get when I was a nerdy kid in school (yes ladies, I can hear y'all wanting to believe that one, but I already murdered that bitch in cold blood!)? Is it because she just doesn't know how to pick a decent script?
Or is it because I genuinely believe she is -- or at least has been at some point in her life -- a man?
It's fairly obvious that Jennifer's Body was supposed to be funny. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that they were going for the feel of a film like, say, "Heathers", or something like that. But let me tell you right off the bat, that this film does not achieve whatever derivative tone it was looking for!
Megan Fox's Body
Let me make this clear right now, so there is no confusion or false hope: you are not going to see Megan Fox's tits in this movie. You are not going to see her naked. Yes, I know it's called Jennifer's Body. And yes I know Megan Fox plays Jennifer. Yes, listen you love-starved, nerdling little mama's boys!
YOU WILL NOT SEE THE BODY.
And she's a goddamned MAN anyway! If you don't believe me, here's some dialogue from the movie for ya:
Needy Lesnicky: [after Colin asks Jennifer out] Colin's really nice.
Jennifer Check: He listens to maggot rock. He wears nail polish. My dick is bigger than his.
OK OK, I hear what you're saying: "Even if she WAS a man, I wouldn't kick her out of bed!"
Fine, I disagree, but just to save you the pain of watching this movie for that purpose, here is the most revealing single frame of Megan fox from Jennifer's Body:
And here's the single most hottest frame:
OK? Spank bank satisfied? Cool, let's move on...
The Story
Jennifer is friends with the aptly named "Needy". Actually, scratch that, because she would be more aptly named "Nerdy" or "The most irritating bitch on the planet".
Anyhoo, Jennifer is hot (even if she does need 16 strips of duct tape to tuck her "gender" into her tight jeans) and Needy, sadly, is not. But they get along fine. Well that is until Jenifer gets into a van with a bunch of evil rockstars, tells them she's a virgin in the hope they won't rape her, and ends up being involved in a satanic sacrifice which is only intended to work with virgins! Oh the irony!
For those of you who haven't made the same mistake in your own rituals, attempting a virgin sacrifice using a girl who is not actually a virgin (or, in the case of Jennifer, has already been established as "not even a back-door virgin, thanks to Roman!") results in said non-virgin becoming possessed by a demon. She will live through the ordeal, but will have to consume human flesh in order to sustain the demon inside her.
Terror, carnage and mayhem ensue. The end.
The Writer
Just a quick note on this, because it suprised me a little. This movie is written by Diablo Cody, who sounded instantly familiar to me as soon as I read the name. Research enlightened that her pen was responsible for scribing "Juno", which I saw and had no idea what all the fuss was about, and the TV show "The United States of Tara", which I have been told by my cousin is a great show.
Now, I'm not one for research, but let me put my unfounded opinion out there anyway. It seems to me that Jennifer's Body was designed to rope in a male audience with the promise of a naked hottie and then whack them over the head with a feminist message. The rub is that I don't think Diablo Cody is quite bright enough to subtly codify her man-hating agenda, so all we end up getting is Megan Fox's cleavage, a story that doesn't make sense and a bunch of gags that are inapproriate misfires.
I base this on a few factors:
1) She has short hair that changes colour a lot, so she has to be femo, lesbo, or both, right!?
2) This line "PMS isn't real Needy, it was invented by the boy-run media to make us seem like we're crazy."
3) The line from the trailer, which I either missed or was deleted from the final film:
Needy Lesnicky: You're killing people?
Jennifer Check: No. I'm killing boys.
Ironically, she seems to be getting criticism for not being feminist enough. Haha! Next they'll be accusing Megan Fox of not being man enough!
The Verdict
There's not much point in spending a lot of time on this one... it seems people have sense enough to avoid this one in droves already. I mean, whatever the temptation Megan Fox's cleavage may provide, even the dumbest fanboy is not going to sit through this retarded, nonsensical charade.
While it's nice to have a new actress on the scene that I can hate as much as Gwyneth Paltrow, it's a hollow hatred, and one which brings me little pleasure. It was fun to watch "Shakespear in Love" and yell at the screen "don't shag that haemophilliac, hunch-backed waif" in the scene where Gwyneth gets her tits out.
And it was fun to cheer at the head-in-the-box scene at the end of the brilliant Se7en...
But to be honest, calling Megan Fox a man is just too damned obvious. I mean, even during the during the erotic lesbian scene, about which my penis and brain conferred and decided to give a nice big thumbs-up, there was something in my subconscious murmuring "then why does she have so much hair on her face?"
Sammy and I decided early on in the design of this site not to go with the over-used and utterly cheesy technique of flipping a movie's title on its ass to make a caning review title. And that's why this review isn't called "Johnathan's Body" or "Jennifer's Lobotomy" and I'll never mention the fact that either of them crossed my mind!
And sorry Rodders, but I won't be watching "The United States of Tara" anytime soon!
-2 stars, -1 for each of Megan Fox's tits which we did not see.
What do we REALLY want to see in a film? And let’s be honest here, we’re all friends, aren’t we?
Why beat around the bush? It’s not a Disney happy ending, or a Speiberg syruppy blockbuster fix, is it? It’s not a good scare, or a curious mystery. C'mon, film-makers, we’ve seen it all before!
Think! What is it that our primordial minds really crave?
If I was really keen to investigate the truth, top of my wish-list of interviewees would be the famous Lars Von Trier, maker of the recent movie Antichrist -- and other gems such as Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville.
Harv: Lars, what is it that you think people want to see in a film?
LVT: Apart from underagg annhil rape? Which I’m not allowed to show, by ze vee, because apparently it’s conzidered pornographique! Except in Europe; we can show anything in Europe.
Harv: Uhm… OK, apart from underage anal rape…
LVT: I think it’s clear, no? Watch my moofies. I give the owdience what it wants!
Harv: I haven’t seen them all. Is it complex engaging characters in a challenging story who have to change and grow to overcome the obstacles life puts in their way?
LVT: Huh? No! What are you talking abutt?
Harv: Is it cutting edge special effects realizing a world we could never experience first-hand?
LVT: What? No, son, I mean a couple losing their only son and then completely flipping out ya? Then the vife bashes the husband’s balls and he ejaculates blood, hehe, something for everyone! And so she naturally attaches a wheel to his leg with a couple of rusty bolts becoz she thinks he will liv her one day, then she cuts of her own dangleberries for shitz and gigglez, like the Muzlimz, no? and then he strangles her an burnz her before a bunch of people turn up to worship him.
Geddit? Haha! It’s delightful and I’m not crazy!
Becoz that’s what grief does and it’s all a big religious metaphore anyway, seez?
Harv: No, Lars, I really don’t.
LVT: So then you are ztupid, no? You don’t understand my art! Begone with you!
[Lars refuses to respond to any further questions, instead reverting to making fart sounds with his mouth for every response]
In the absence of any explanation from Lars, I’ve got this to say about Antichrist: for the 99% of you, who live in the real world and like normal things, such as puppies or licking ice-cream, just don’t be tempted by this arthouse bullshit when you see it in the video store.
For the rest of you (ie you psuedo-intellectual wanker types who like to be able to say they liked a film just for the buzz of feeling superior to the rest of us poor plebs who never took a literature class in our lives… [breath]…) hey, wank away, we’re all fucking delighted that you hate us!
The verdict
0 stars, for wasting my time pretending it was a down-to-earth story about grief when it was really a ridiculous surreal fuck-fest with inexplicable religious overtones.
A friend and I RAN to see this movie. We were bored, a couple of beers in, so checked the local cinema guide and found the Surrogates screening across town in a little under 4 minutes. We made it heaving for breath having missed the first 3 minutes.
Oh how I wish a bus had hit me on the way.
Surrogates finds Bruce Willis playing a detective in the not-too-distant future where mankind has adopted the use of Surrogates (‘Surries’) – high-tech androids that allows the user to feel, smell, taste, touch, interact and live out their lives from the safety and comfort of their own home. Sounds kinda interesting right? If not a little familiar? Hello, Avatar?
When we first see Bruce he looks like a slightly retarded human size Ken-doll until we realize that, no, it’s not plastic surgery, Bruce’s character uses a Surrie too. He and his wife live out their lives from their separate bedrooms. You see, their son died in a car accident (of course) and his wife is too ashamed to be seen in public without her Surrie because of some radical facial scar. We see the real Bruce when he unplugs, and he’s not looking too bad for a guy pushing 55, no scars… but all he wants is to be with his wife, his real wife.
The movie sets up some interesting ideas. The addiction of anonymity. Being able to do what you want without fear of injury or death. Finally fulfilling that childhood desire to have a pair of breasts, or ride your boss without worrying about cellulite or that bulging belly. Is it only our mind that makes us who we are, or the total package? Some interesting ideas that would make a good movie, right? The kind of stuff that makes great SciFi so compelling. That had to be what director Jonathon Mostow (T3, U-571) and screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Brancato where thinking, right?
Wrong.
Consider writing partners Ferris and Brancato brought us the previously-reviewed Terminator Salvation, Terminator 3, The Net and the genius that was…. Catwoman. Catwoman? Fuck off.
The story is crap. I honestly wasn’t 100% sure what was happening most of the time, so didn’t care. Some guy has a secret weapon that fries Surrogates, and unfortunately whoever’s plugged in at the other end. Brucey must find out who it is, yada, yada, yada – turns out it’s the old crank who invented the Surrogate technology in the first place because he regrets what it’s done to mankind. Toss in a few lame chase scenes, special effects and story devices. The End.
The acting is ok. I like Bruce Willis. He’s, well, likeable. Radha Mitchell is hot. Ving Rhames passes as The Prophet – leader of the human resistance. James Cromwell – always dependable.
I’m a strong believer that anybody can make a movie. Christ, if Ewe Boll can do it so can you. There are so many talented people in the industry – great lighting people, sound, camera, effects, music – you name it. Movies are made with such efficiency that even the back of a cereal box could be made into a slick, glossy looking production if push came to shove (whatever that means). And that’s the problem – these movies get made, and for some god-known reason people (like me) go and see them, they make money… so they make more of them. Making movies is rarely an art-form anymore. It’s just business. And so long as suits can make money out of the system – we’ll keep getting turds like this.
1.5 stars
It ALMOST distracted me from the fact that The Amityville Horror has already been done and was good enough to not need another re-work. It ALMOST convinced me that it's based on a true story and not a bunch of lies by a few skittish morons who all completely wet their beds when their house made a creak or two. And it ALMOST convinced me that I should care about this poor family and their dying boy, with all its violin music and obvious plays on emotion.
But in the end, the only thing it did convince me of with any real assurance was that I bloody hated it.
The Story
There ain't much to this one, folks. Family with cancer-ridden son undergoing experimental treatment move into a house near the hospital, surprised by what a good rental deal they got on the massive mansion.
Turns out the house used to be a funeral home run by some insane mediums and, as a result, there are shitloads of evil spirits trapped in the walls.
Weird events follow and tomfoolery ensues. Twist twist twist: the end!
The problem is that the movie opens with the mother of the family (played with her usual condescending play-on-your-sympathy maternity by Virginia Madsen) talking to camera and EXPLAINING that we should feel sorry for them, because they are such nice people and didn't deserve to have this happen!
Yeah, because when you move into a clichéd scary house with ridiculously low rent, you never expect that it's gonna have issues, do you? Seriously, unless a zombie ate their brains in a previous genre flick, there's just no excuse for the stupidity this family displays.
And, to be honest, that play for sympathy doesn't even make sense. Because somehow cancer-boy is magically cured at the end of the movie and everyone is ok, so what exactly were they victims of? A few shit-stains on their underwear?
And that's really the problem, because that's all this movie is. There is no point, no investment, and it thinks it can sweep all that under the mat by pretending it's a true story!
The Acting
Virginia Madsen, whose shtick I enjoyed in Sideways, needs to learn a new carnival trick. She really grated on my nerves in this movie, playing up the sympathetic victim to the point that I wanted to see her eyelids torn off, her tits set on fire and the house's evil spirits repeatedly raping her for the rest of the film. Instead she just meanders through the movie, looking pathetic, and not really experiencing much danger because she can't see the ghosts anyway. I think the worst that happened to her was a few flashing lights, slamming doors and a bit of a fire at the end.
The actor that plays cancer-boy, Kyle Gallner, puts in a lazy effort that would be more appropriate for a guy who has already achieved Hollywood poster-boy status by starring in 17 Twilight movies. But this dude is a relative newcomer, with a few TV credits and a couple of small parts in films, so you'd think he'd put in a bit of an effort to be interesting. Admittedly, his character is so badly written that you don't know if you're supposed to be sorry he's dying of cancer, or scared of him because he's possessed by an evil spirit, but it doesn't matter what random state he tries to take on, you end up just wishing they'd spent a bit more money and cast Shia LaBeouf in the role.
The father, played by Martin Donovan, is pissy as hell, and as boring as all the others. Sure, he ends up with an alcoholism subplot that leads to a mildly interesting scene where he goes around the house smashing all the light bulbs because he can't afford to pay the electricity bill, but at the end of the day he's forgettable. And in a movie with only a handful of main characters, that's quite a feat.
The sister: boring. The little boy: almost non-existent. And, is it just me, or is the priest who comes to save them all (and ends up making things worse, ha-ha!) just doing a distractingly obvious Robert DeNiro impression the whole movie?
The Special Effects
There are some ok effects and creepy images as we trudge our way through the banal and pointless story. If flashes of ghosts with their eyelids cut off and writing cut into the skin of their entire bodies are your thing, then you'll probably forgive Haunting its other faults.
The prosthetic makeup design and effects are very nice and quite creepy in parts. But at the end of the day, the editing trumps that by adding too many flashy MTV effects.
Some of the spirit photography was pretty cool and creepy, but it was ruined a bit when one of the characters asks what's flowing out of the medium's mouth and the priest answers that it's Ectoplasm and nods seriously. I mean, I guess ectoplasm is probably a real word, but any term used in Ghostbusters is hard to take seriously, so it turned into a laugh out loud moment for me.
Anyway, I don't want to be too harsh. The movie was well shot and well produced. It's just amazing they can spend fifty million dollars on a movie's production but only fifty dollars flat on its script.
The Verdict
It must have been a crushing day in the Gold Circle Films office when they came up with the idea to re-make Amityville Horror, got halfway through pre-production and then one of the photocopy boys checked IMDB and realised there had already been an unsuccessful remake in 2005!
1 star, for a few creepy effects.
Is there anything WRONG with a McDonalds hamburger?
1. It tastes ok.
2. Comes in a pretty package
3. Is pleasing to the senses
If you asked a fourteen year old kid he’d probably answer through a mouth of nuggets that there was nothing wrong with it – McDonald’s burgers fucking rock!
But do they? If you peeled back the sugary bun, took away the shavings of lettuce and fatty sauce – and let’s not forget the pickle – you’re left with the meat of the product. And when all the fluff is gone… it’s a pretty sad looking piece of meat.
Yeah, but it's got the sugary bun, and the tasty sauce… and the pickle! What about that stuff?
I admit it, when you first bite into a Big Mac or a Chicken burger or even the humble Cheeseburger – things aren’t that bad.
But half an hour later… you’re left wanting more.
And that’s exactly how I felt with District 9.
I really, really, really wanted this movie to rock. If you’ve seen Neill Blomkamp’s short movie Alive in Jo-Berg you’ll sympathise with me when I say I had high expectations. It’s a great premise – instead of First Contact with shiny, celestial beings with oversize heads and penchants for organ music, we get 20 years after this. The aliens are more like giant cockroaches and are stranded on earth, forced to live in ghettos by our goverment, while we figure out what to do with them. They resort to crime to survive - selling their own weapons and tech for food - particularly catfood (mm-mm!) and are generally not being treated very nicely. The parallels with Apartheid are obvious and it was this angle of something different, something challenging - as well as the film being shot in a semi-documentary style manner - that had me really me salivating.
The movie starts off well – it's gritty and edgy and has an energy and inevitability to it that was engaging. The government is trying to move the million odd aliens out of the District 9 ghetto into a large concentration type facility 100 miles out of the city. A team of social workers from ‘Alien Affairs’ is sent in to evict them led by Wikus Van De Merwe - a dick of the highest order. Tensions are high, the aliens are unpredictable, desperate and you just know all shit is going to (or at least should) break loose. And it kind of does… but not in the way I was expecting.
Anyway, not too long into the story the plight of the Alien population takes a back step to the story of Wikus, who after inadvertently spraying himself with some toxic alien goop starts to change into an Alien.
Yeah, I’ll just let that one sink in.
…
He changes into an alien. Or at least his arm does.
Anyway, this is great news to the government because for years they’ve been trying to get the alien weapons to work. The weapons recognize Alien DNA so are inoperable by humans. But now that poor old Wikus is half alien, once he gets his half alien paws/claws/pincers on them, they fire up and do all sorts of damage. They test him and beat him and I think even spit on him… anyway, he’s not too happy suddenly on the receiving end of the stick he was brandishing only days before.
From here Wikus flees back into District 9 where he teams up with Chistopher Johnson, an alien, who turns out to be the captain or ship engineer or someone important. Christopher needs the goo that Wikus sprayed himself with to power the mothership that hovers above the city and so he and Wikus work together to steal back the goo, powerup the mothership and beam back to Christopher’s home planet.
That’s obviously the short version, but...
But what!? Come on man, what about the fucking kick ass alien weaponry splatterfest?
It admit it IS cool stuff and maybe if you're a fourteen year old boy... but don't we want something more? Don't we want the sugary bun, the tasty sauce AND a fucking juicy meat pattie as well?
------------------------------------------------------------
I have read reviews and talked to people that ooh and ahh and nod wisely about the parallels the movie draws with apartheid – apart from the movie being set in South Africa, and that the aliens live in ghettos and are subjected to cruelty and violence on a regular basis – the parallels stop there. Without an emotional investment its hard to really care more than one would care about seeing a mangy, flea-ridden dog being beaten by it’s owner – sure it’s sad, but what is it saying?
A good premise ruined by poor character choices, questionable logic (even if it is alien come ON – how the fuck does black goo function as both a DNA Human-to-Alien modulator AND Intergalactic Fuel Cell!?) and a sub-standard plot.
2.5 stars.
I watched The Last House on the Left with an unsuspecting female companion, and, by the end of it, I'm pretty sure I'd convinced her I was a complete nutter. Honestly, I would have been more comfortable watching a porno with my grandmother.
Several times, my lady-friend glanced at me with an unmistakeable why-did-you-want-to-show-me-this? expression on her face, and I must admit I wholeheartedly agree with her suspicions.
Because Last House on the Left made me want to shit into my own eyeballs.
The Remake
The original Last House on the Left was released in 1972, and was budding director Wes Craven's first big hit, forming the beginning of his rise to the horror auteur we know him as today. I have not seen it, which is rare for since it's considered such a horror classic.
From what I understand, it was a shlock horror that redefined, or at least reinvigorated an entire genre. But hey, it was made before I was born, so I assume it is shit.
However, no matter how shit it may be, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the 2009 re-make was a gigantic kick in the sack for poor Wes. Here is a film that offers up glossy shock violence and nothing much more, and that, my friends, does not a good horror film make.
Just so you don't think I'm criticising without being constructive: how about a bit of atmosphere, tension, or just some plain old cheap scares?
The Story
Well, who gives a flying hoot, but essentially the story involves a group of pranksters who go around killing and raping without much rhyme or reason. There is a father and son, a girl who can't seem to keep her shirt on, and some other guy who looks creepy all the time and is a riduculous over-actor.
They come across a couple of girls, and because they are in trouble with the police, they decide they can't leave them alive, so, naturally, take them out to the forrest to torture and rape them. I must presume at this point that their rather round about methodology is solely for the audience's erotic primal pleasure - I mean, sure a bullet in the back of the head makes more sense, but what fun would that be?
Once they get the two girls into submissive positions, the father tries to get his boy to lose his raping cherry, but the boy refuses, so Dad steps in to show him how a real man acts. After the incredibly long, offensively sexuallised raping, one girl is stabbed multiple times and bleeds out, while the other is shot in the back while trying to swim away.
As an aside, I actually found this bit quite funny. The girl is established early as a champion swimmer, so her escape into water is accompanied by triumphant music because, you know, she is going to MAKE IT!!
Until her shoulder blade explodes in a chunky red spray and she rolls over limply, ensuring we get one last glimpse of her underage nipples under her wet tshirt (because obviously we find her sexually attractive at this point, after watching her get raped seductively for the previous 15 minutes) before she evidently succumbs to her wounds.
Meanwhile, Mum and Dad return to the house, unaware of what just happened to their daughter. The gang of nonsensial bad guys turn up at the house (I'm assuming at this point, that they live in the Last House on the Left, but it's never really established, and I'm sure I saw a shot which made it appear to be on the right side of the street, but whatever), also unaware of the hilarious family connections yet to be revealed.
The boy, let's call him by his Indian name, Pacowan Kiwandie Tuntungitt, which translates to "Refuses to Rape", eventually sees a photo of the girl - apparently the only photo they have of her anywhere in the house - and works out that they are mom and pop's house. He leaves a clue for them, they find it, and the hijinx ensues.
Just in case you were worried they were running out of people to injure and torture, the original girl who was shot in the back turns up at the house, after having swum for about 2 hours only to collapse on the porch clutching at the doorhandle.
What remains is basically Home Alone on acid, where the home owners fight viciously against the bad guys and essentially pick them off one by one.
The Shock
Was I shocked? Well, yes, a little, but not as shocked as I was at the end to realise I'd managed to sit through the entire thing. To be honest, most of the movie was pretty boring, and the only parts I liked were unintentionally funny.
For instance, take the scene where the mother first realises that the overacting bad guy is, in fact, her daughter's killer. She first flirts with him for 10 minutes and offers him some wine, as you would, because in no way would you be upset or outraged enough to lose control at that point.
Of course the crazy bad guy is totally taken in by her charms, despite her long awkward pauses, darting eyes, and panicky effort to stop him from going to the fridge, where the one little photograph of her daughter resides.
After wasting a bunch of everyone's time, she finally pounces. While there are clearly plenty of sharp, effective weapons in the kitchen, she manages to grab blunt object after blunt object to beat him with. She even tries to drown him in dishwater, but the crafty little kitten pulls the plug out of the sink. This gives her the opportunity to shove his hand down the garbage disposal and turn it on, which would have definitely killed him if only he'd have quit attacking her for 3 or 4 hours and focus on bleeding.
After a while, the father joins him, pelts him with a few more blunt objects before finally working out two important things: that the back of a hammer is sharper than the front, and that the head is one of the more vulnerable parts of the human body. He combines facts for an inevitable, but long overdue conclusion to the bad guy's suffering. You almost feel sorry for him by the end.
But yes, as I mentioned, there is a very offensive rape scene that just seems to go on and on. I haven't been on the internet message boards to reseach it, but I'm willing to lay down cash that there are people complaining about it all over the place.
In an extremely out-of-place scene at the end, you get to see the main bad guy wake up with his head in a microwave oven. The father turns it on and we all get to watch the bad guy's face burn off before his head completely explodes.
Yeah, because that's what a roast chicken does in a microwave, too, dumbass.
The Verdict
If there is a bigger waste of time, I have yet to find it. After The Last House on the Left was over, I found myself wishing I'd instead spent 2 hours spitting off the roofs of tall buildings and then measuring the size of the splatter below. Actually, that does appeal to me a bit, so I'll let you come up with a better example of a complete waste of time.
-1 stars, for the overt sexuallisation of the rape of a minor, which offended even this hardened old-school horror fan. And I've seen "I Spit On Your Grave"!
Well let me just say we're lucky Sammy didn't review this one. He would have completely caned it, and if there was a negative 5 stars (which there can be, because this is our site and we can do whatever we want), he would have certainly awarded it.
Luckily for The Final Destination, I can appreciate a film that's supposed to be "so bad it's good", and have been an avid horror fan from childhood. As such, I have an almost unlimited tolerance for the uniqueness and ingenuity of the Final Destination premise.
This one is 3-D, which is lucky, because it really doesn't bring much else new to the table.
The Director
Coming off the back of his experimental Snakes on a Plane -- during which he played with studio money by producing a "so bad it's good" action thriller and marketing it as such -- David R. Ellis must have been a little nervous.
That particular film was a bit of a mess, and, ironically, dissappointed because it wasn't quite bad enough! This one is along similar lines, and perhaps is a little more successful in its tongue-in-cheek tone, but it still walks that fine line between glossy blockbuster and trashy b-grade.
Ellis's background is in stunt choreography, which explains why he's so good at setting up physical gags. He understands movie physics well enough to know what will convince an audience and what will come across as fake-ass.
However, he's certainly no auteur yet, and I can't help wondering what a Final Destination movie might be like with someone with a bit more style and the courage to take the subject matter seriously at the helm.
The Deaths
For the uninitiated, the Final Destination movies centre on the premise that Death has a grand plan, and that once he has selected you for death, he will achieve his goal without exception. However, what happens when someone cheats Death, by, say, receiving a premonition about how it is about to happen? Well, Death refuses to give up, and finds increasingly vicious and creative means to get you dead.
So the fun of the series is really in the creative combination of coincidences that results in the deaths of the major characters. There is always some theorizing about how one may cheat death again, but it is invariably in vain.
This movie certainly delivers on the creative deaths. They are more elaborate, and there are more of them than in the first three films. Characters are routinely decapitated, cut in half, de-limbed and crushed in very elaborate ways, which is really the most important aspect of the film.
The movie was designed for 3-D, so there are more sharp spikes, flying debris and splashing liquids than ever before. I only saw the 2-D version, so most of the gimmicky gags were lost on me.
What were not lost on me were the innovative Rube Goldberg machines that lead to the inevitable deaths of the characters. The broom falls on the jar of lacquer, which pours onto the floor, which makes the boy slip, which makes him fall onto the see-saw, which has a bit of metal on the other end, which flies through the air and stabs the character in the eye. You know, that sort of thing, but multiply my example by 10. They really are very clever, and a pleasure to watch.
Unfortunately the 3-D requirement seems to have degraded the quality of some of the effects, and the compositing was easily detectable in several scenes. This ruins some of the surprises, because the effects shots look so different, you know something is about to happen.
The Story
This one again starts with a premonition, but, this time around, it's a Nascar race accident that's about to pick off pretty much everyone in the entire crowd. A group of people hear the guy freak out about his premonition and leave the race track in the nick of time to get to safety before the whole track blows to shit.
Just in case seeing the entire grizzly vision of the carnage wasn't enough for the viewers, a wheel flies over the fence and decapitates one of the survivors as a natural segue into the main titles.
The rest of the movie involves the characters being targeted and picked off one by one. The deaths are way more drawn out and elaborate than before, and this time the main character continues to get vague premonitions during the course of the film. There is even a premonition within a premonition toward the end.
He never really figures them out, though, and everyone dies anyway.
But amidst all the delightful and lovingly rendered carnage, there is something missing. It seems the film-makers have focussed so much on jamming in horrific death sequences that there was little room for story, originality or pacing. There are plenty of twists and turns, but they are all tired now that we're four movies in, and they seem to come randomly. Perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to surprise the audience, but it just confused and befuddled (yes, I was befuddled, what of it?) this viewer.
The ending is especially bad. It's established tradition to have a sudden surprise death at the end of a Final Destination film, but, to be honest, I was hoping for something different. It's supposed to be the final movie in the series, so I was kinda hoping, not for death to reveal himself with a cape and scythe or anything cheesy, but for something a little more thoughtful given the premise.
Some closure of some kind would have been nice.
The Verdict
I know, I know, this is THE Final Destination. But as always, if this one does well enough at the box office, would anyone be surprised if we were treated to The REAL Final Destination in a year or two... in 4-D!
Let's hope not though, because 4-D doesn't exist, and Final Destination has pretty much explored it's concept to the full.
2 stars, for carnage and Rube-Goldberg-ness.
Well, ladies and gents, writer, and now director, Guillermo Arriaga has hit on a formula. Take a banal plot centred around a single tragic event, present it in non-chronological order, set it against a desolate landscape, chuck in some big name actors, and add some bleak guitar over the top. Critical gold!
The Director
I enjoyed Guillermo Arriaga's first film, Amores Perros, on which he served as a writer. It had a vitality and energy that was attractive, and showed me a world that I had never seen before. It presented a series of sub-plots, all examining the reprercussions of a single tragic event (in that case a car crash).
All his subsequent films have done essentially the same thing. But he's stepped behind the camera this time, after a split from his former film-making partner Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (which I would imagine came about over a disagreement about which tragic inciting incident to include in the next film - perhaps Arriaga pitched the burning caravan that features in the Burning Plain, but Inarritu insisted it had to be mongoloid infant rape).
In The Burning Plain, he's at it again, but in this one he's added a twist. Instead of showing a series of related sub-plots that centre around a tragic event, he's had the masterstroke to make the subplots SEEM unrelated for two thirds of the film! Eventually he doles out enough information to the viewer to reveal his structure is exactly the same as his previous efforts, but for a while he lets you think that he's completely gone off the rails and presented you with two completely disconnected story threads.
This, of course, gets in the intellectuals and the critics. Oh you don't like the film? Yes, yes, yes, it's really a thinking person's film, isn't it? Oh you found it confusing? Yes, you really do need to engage your brain, I see. Challenging stuff.
The Story
Fact is, that despite the chronologically jumbled plot line, the pretty landscapes and the sombre music, the story is actually devoid of any real complexity. It consists of about 5 major plot points, mind-numbingly interspersed with long, drawn out shots of people looking sad or having unenjoyable sex in order to fill the two hour running time to qualify for serious drama.
Allow me to summarize, should you wish to save yourself a couple of hours of slow push-ins. Sylvia discovers her mother is having an affair with some Mexican dude. So naturally she sabotages the gas lines and sets fire to their caravan where they are shagging. She is mortified to learn that this frivolous and harmless prank actually leads to the caravan exploding in a ball of flames, killing both lovers. Of course, this leads her to become a slut, so she shags the son of the man her mother was shagging, gets pregnant, gives up the baby, then becomes even more slutty before wanting to see her daughter again and eventually sorta kinda start working things out with her.
At least it wasn't another car crash, but still, you can see how it might not quite justify the running time.
The Acting
Theron gets her tits out right at the start, so you know it's one of her serious films and not... well... Aeon Flux or some garbage like that.
If you like people acting depressed, you'll love this film -- and the stoic, emotionally scarred portrayals themselves are actually quite convincing.
Theron handles our hero Sylvia with impressive competence. She never cracks up in the middle of looking depressed, erroneously raises an comic eyebrow or rips a fart during a serious dramatic scene.
The young version of Sylvia - who is called Mariana at that point in order to hide the conceit that she is the younger version of Sylvia until the end -- is played well by newcomer Jennifer Lawrence. I'll put aside the fact that an American kid is called Mariana, just because Arriaga likes to have his kid's names in every film he makes. She's probably too young for me to say she's hot, so I'll say she's engaging or something like that.
Kim Basinger does another standard rendition of the dysfunctional, broken mother. She also lets us see her riding a dude from behind again, but we don't get to see her tits because the character lost them to breast cancer and I assume they couldn't afford the prosthetics.
But lets be honest here, people. You could have got wax statues to stand in for most of the cast, as the script rarely requires them to move or speak.
The Verdict
Well, I got through it, which is more than I can say for the utterly shithouse Babel. I look forward to discovering the next tragic inciting incident from Arriaga. How about a young girl gets her pet goldfish flushed down the toilet by a school bully, so she kills him with a blunt pick-axe and is emotionally scarred enough to become a slut later in life?
And, come on Arriaga, how about a joke? Just one little joke? No?
1 star, for the sluttiness.
I would have thought a Street Fighter movie would be a no brainer. For instance, without knowing anything about the video game, one could surmise that one of the primary draws of the film would involve some actual street fighting.However, this outing, starring the beautiful Kristen Kreuk (of Smallville fame) as Chun Li, seems to have forgotten that part of the recipe, like forgetting the eggs in your omlet. The result is a mish-mash of failed dramatic beats, bland cultural learnings, and a nonsensical story, all tied together with condescending voice-over narration that sounds like it was pitched at 4 year olds.
But in fact it's difficult to determine what audience this movie is pitched at. If it's for youngsters, then why does it contain the scene showing a bunch of dead crime bosses sitting at a table, with their decapitated heads on plates like a ghoulish last supper? Or the scene where M Bison strings up a woman and repeatedly punches her in the face until he is specled with droplets of blood? And don't get me started on the scene where M Bison decides to use the dark arts to free himself from conscience, so takes his wife to a cave, rips the baby from her womb (with the obligatory droplets of blood coating his face), and then somehow transfers the goodness of his soul to his embryonic daughter.
If it's for adults, then why the nursery-rhyme-level narration? Why the cartoon violence? Why the pandering story-telling (I think The Legend of Chun Li is the only movie I've ever seen that includes a black and white flashback to something you saw only 90 seconds earlier)?
Story
The main story follows Chun Li on a journey of revenge against M Bison for the supposed murder of her father, all the while building her fighting skills in preparation for the final battle. On the way she learns her father is not really dead, but kept in a room on a computer to perform whatever evil hacking M Bison requires of him, transforming the story into more of a rescue mission.
In parallel, we are treated to an inside glance at two random cops investigating M Bison and his criminal activities. The girl is a sexy-talking, leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding rebel. Her male counterpart is... er... well... he is Chris Klein, Oz from the American Pie movies, desperately trying to act tough despite his whiny voice and boyish looks. He really has become the poor-man's Keaneu Reeves. The chemistry between the two is forced and awkward, making for one of the most banal and uncomfortable love stories ever to be jammed into an action film.
Various references are made to the video game, yet nothing is particularly faithful. I recall one of the vague pleasures of the first Street Fighter movie was watching each character evolve to resemble their digital equivalents. No such pleasure here, as everyone is portrayed realistically, as plain old normal everyday people. Well, normal everyday people who can jump 12 feet in the air, fly horizontally across a room, and create what appear to be giant translucent gum balls to hurl at each other.
Fight Scenes
So what about the big draw card of this movie: the fight scenes? Well, the few fight scenes that are included in the movie are unforgivably ridiculous. The mystical aspects of the fights are so random and inexplicable that they become laughable, and completely undermine some fairly noble attempts at creating realistic versions of the special moves from the video game.
For instance, during an early fight scene, Chun Li's father deliberately sets his hand on fire in order to make his punches more punishing, then somehow manages to shoot the fire along a metal chain to turn the bad guy into a screaming fireball.
Every character seems to be able to jump in the air, and then change direction and fly across a room toward their assailant. The mind-boggling physics are never explained or even excused, they are just portrayed as if this is what people can do.
Now before anyone gets upset, I understand this is based on a video game where magical moves are the main feature. I played Street Fighter 2 when I was a kid, and realise that at some point Chun Li would have to create a fireball or perform a spinning bird kick. It's just that the movie can't decide whether it's a balls-out magic-fest, or whether it wants to portray semi-realistic approximations of the outlandish video game moves. The mix of the two just doesn't sit right, making it feel a little ridiculous when master Gen and Chun Li are casually hanging out together on a roof top, each of them meditating and nursing a giant glowing gum ball in their lap
There's the obligatory training-while-blindfolded scene, where Chun Li must attempt to catch ovesized ball bearings as her master, Gen, perfectly ricoches them off a series of bells. Of course trickster Gen soon gets bored with such an un-challenging training exercise and piffs one directly into the back of Chun Li's head, throwing her forward into a buzzing circular saw. She manages to stop her face from being split in two, so, naturally, he attempts to cut her in half with a blue glowing sword. She catches it between her hands just before it enters her skull, removes her blindfold, and her training is pretty much complete.
Script
Believe it or not, the ball bearing training scene is not even the most ridiculous scene in the movie. No, friends, that award goes to the scene where Chun Li seduces a lesbian crime lord in a night club and lures her into the bathroom for sex before slamming her face into a cubicle door and then viciously breaking her arm. With the generous helping of classic bitch-fight upskirts, this scene is one of those, I-can't-believe-I'm-really-watching-this moments that makes you wonder if you've been invited to a private screening of dirty uncle Larry's latest home movie in his basement.
I think I can sum up the quality of the script by quoting some dialogue that occurs during Chun Li's first training session. Gen beats the crap out of our hero, including, if the sound effects are any indication, breaking several fingers, dislocating an elbow, and kicking her knee hard enough to put her on the waiting list for a full reconstruction.
Gen: "Why are you mad right now?"
Chun Li: "Because you're hurting me."
Gen: "No... [wise pause]... you're hurting yourself."
The writing on this movie is, quite simply, an abomination. If it had kept my attention well enough to make me actually listen to it, I'm sure it would have made my ears bleed.
There's more, but I'm sure you've got this gist of it by now.
The Verdict
1 star - for Kristen Kreuk's previous work, when she was cute enough to get away with her drab acting.
Well it's been a week since I saw "Public Enemies", and it has almost completely faded from my memory, like a bad nightmare. Unfortunately, it hasn't faded enough to make a nice venting review unnecessary, so here we go.Michael Mann, who directed the awesome opus "Heat" in 1995, and the fantastic "The Insider" as a folow up, has been going downhill for a while now. And if it hadn't been for the utterly shithouse "Miami Vice" in 2006, I would say he'd hit rock bottom with "Public Enemies".
Sure, it slightly beats having Jamie Foxx standing around in the background of every shot, wearing sunglasses and trying to act cool, but unfortunately this flick fails on almost every level.
Acting
It had potential. Johnnie Depp is usually awesome in everything he does. In fact, he's truthfully not bad at all here, either. It's just that he's playing a character that's completely uninteresting, shot by a digital-camera-addicted has-been with roughly the vision and enthusiasm of a sack of odourless turds.
And of course, the ever-reliable Christian Bale is usually... ever-reliable. Not here, and in fact his character is so banal that I'd forgotten he was in the movie until I really thought about it for this review.
Story
Mann seems to have been so distracted with getting the details of the period correct, he forgot he was making a movie. Although, judging by the "goofs" list on IMDB, he didn't even do that properly!
Considering he got so many historical facts wrong, I don't see why he couldn't have altered John Dillinger's life to be more eventful. All he really does in this movie is wander around, pull a few jobs, virtually kidnap a woman for his girlfriend, and then get shot. Yes he gets shot at the end, and I don't even feel bad about spoiling it, because there is only one way a movie like this can end.
Honestly, the only real entertainment value of this movie is the shooting itself. It is captured vividly, with the unexpected addition of a special effect that lovingly renders the bullet going through the back of Dillinger's head and through his cheek. After being with this annoying, unlikeable and worst of all boring character for so long, it is quite pleasurable and satisfying to see his face explode in a spray of red.
Cinematography
My biggest beef? The goddamned digital cameras. It makes everything look unprofessional and cheap. And yes, Michael Mann, we CAN notice the difference. All your reasons for using digital cameras, like them being lightweight, easy to edit, more cost effective than film - NONE of those things have anything to do with good film-making! Lose the digital until you can work out how to make it look as good as film. Your movies cost the same to watch as all the others, so stop being a lazy cheapskate and spend some money on celluloid!
And if you must, just pick one or the other. Don't keep switching from one to the other. If you pick digital, pick a style and a topic that suits the medium. Don't try to make a glossy biopic with consumer-grade digital cams.
The verdict
Boring boring boring!
2 stars - one for Depp and one for Bale... NONE for Mann until he pulls his head out of his ass.
I loved transformers when I was a kid. LOVED them. Collected them all, even saved up for two months to buy my own Optimus Prime toy. I still remember the day I picked it up from the store after having it reserved on lay-by for so many weeks. It was probably the best day of my life up till that point.
What was NOT the best day of my life, was the day I rocked up to go see Transformers II. I didn't need to save up for it or anything, not like I did for Optimus Prime all those years ago. I saw it in Indonesia, so it was cheap as hell. Almost free. But even at this bargain basement rate, I still felt cheated and betrayed. I think I actually glimpsed a particular brand of intense rage that is usually reserved for unstable individuals who feel driven towards terrorist acts.
I saw it alone the first time and then had to see it with a girlfriend almost immediately after, so I feel qualified to hate it doubly.
Where do I start? I'd start at the beginning, but the disjointed storytelling in this shithouse waste of celluloid makes it hard to determine where the start was.
The Story
Well I saw it twice and I still don't know what happened. I think Shia LaBeouf's character goes to college at some point; I got that. Megan Fox's character is a slut but she loves him. I think. At some point she wiggles into a white dress and holds some flowers for him, because, you know, that what all guys really want deep down.
They find a conveniently leftover piece of that stupid box that made no sense in the first film and all hell brakes loose. Somehow the bad robots find out about the magic shard of shit eventhough Shia himself never knew it was in his clothes.
Then somehow they end up in Egypt because Michael Bay thought it would be cool to blow up some pyramids.
Umm... there are some robots that talk like black people. There's another one that seems to create black holes somehow. Neither are common things for a robot to do, but there you go.
Then its just chase after chase after chase, each one of which was a blurry mess of bad effects, choppy editing and inane one-liners. Half the scenes are too dark to see, the other half are so banal you wish it was darker.
I can't think of any part of it I didn't hate, except maybe the bit where you could see Megan Fox's ass cheeks poking out the bottom of her shorts as she sat on a motorbike. Oh yeah, and when she ran in slow motion with a low cut top. But to be honest it could have included full on Megan Fox XXX porn and it wouldn't have saved the film.
Special Effects
The special effects, despite the director's claim that it took like 7 years to render a single frame, are abysmal. They are blurry, badly framed, and rarely look even remotely integrated into the live action. Most of the time, the robots are moving too fast and too close to camera to be anything but colorful flashes of metal. I still don't understand why the robots need to move their mouths to talk, or blink and move eyebrows they don't really have.
And as for the transformations, which had potential to be cool to the Optimus-Prime-buying child inside me, we even worse in this film than the last. I actually laughed out loud when they grandly introduce the first transformation. A truck rolls up and proceeds to transform into Ironhide the robot over a period of roughtly 45 seconds. Joints move, then move back, panels slide open then close again, things bend and twist randomly, while, all the while, the camera spins around him in a dizzying display of grandeur gone wrong. I reckon that truck had to make about a dozen major moves to transform into the robot with half a truck as his upper body, but Bay makes sure things keep moving for an excruciating length of time, all in the name of spectacle. Then the bloody thing talks with a British accent for some reason only Michael Bay's evidently-alzheimer's-ridden brain could conceive.
Oh Michael Bay, you retarded hack! It could have been so easy. A few cool transformations that actually looked slightly realistic. A few cool action scenes that weren't more akin to repeatedly beating the audience over the head with a metal mallet. A simple story that makes sense and was more than just a poor excuse to transport the characters from one random locale to another. It could have been popcorn blockbuster gold.
If I had to see it again, I would pluck my eyeballs out with fish hooks, soak them in a vat of acid, feed them to a wild pirhana, and then eat the pirhana in case it didn't fully digest my eyeball properly.
Verdict
-1 stars.
I'm deducting one star from Michael Bay's next movie as a penalty for the traversty that is Transformers II.