Dorkgasm - Film Review

Sherlock Holmes | Film Review

kenneth.holm — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:07:44 +0000

The Game Is Afoot, And It's The Best Game In Town
A review of Sherlock Holmes
by Kenneth Holm
Dorkgasm Senior Staff Writer

When I originally heard that they were making a new movie based upon my favorite literary detective of all time, I initially had a mild spot of trepidation. I had seen most, if not all, of the previous incarnations and felt they all lacked something crucial. Then, I heard two crucial bits of news; Guy Ritchie was directing the movie and Robert Downey Jr. was playing Sherlock Holmes. My initial fears began to solidify at this point. Here was a director known for his London crime exploits and a Yankee playing a Brit! However as trailers and on-set pictures began to leak out, my mind began to convince me that this could be a joyous experience. Fortunately, I was not let down.

Sherlock Holmes drops the audience right in the middle of the action. Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man) and his beleaguered colleague Dr. John Watson (Jude Law, the upcoming Repo Men) are hot on the trail of a nefarious killer. Armed with their wits and a band of policemen led by long-suffering Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan, Hancock), Holmes and Watson catch their quarry, but are led to believe that while the battle may be over, the war will continue to rage on. Having successfully cornered, captured, and incarcerated their foe, Holmes and Watson return to 211b Baker Street. The film then picks up three months after their capture of Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, RocknRolla). The ritual killer is about to be hanged and Watson, leaving Holmes' company to be with his beloved Mary (Kelly Reilly), intends to see their last case to the end. However, when the hanged and presumed dead Blackwood turns up and begins to murder again, Watson is thrust back into one more case alongside Holmes. Along the way, they stumble across an old acquaintance. Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams, The Notebook) has outsmarted Holmes in the past and pops into his life again to receive help in finding a missing man. Once Holmes and Watson find the man in Blackwood's coffin, the two seemingly separate cases converge into one whose plot will have ramifications for the whole known world. Ah, but who is really helping who? Is someone pulling the strings?

Click image to visit the official site. Imace Copyright Warner Bros.

The movie sprints to a wonderfully fun conclusion with a chunk of action and a bit of thinking required. The set pieces are very evocative of the Victorian London period, albeit the seedy, dirty side of it. The score by Hans Zimmer ranks as one of my favorite motion picture scores of all time. There is something whimsical, sinister, and eve modern about the arrangement. The costumes are also superb. I am sure you Steampunk kids out there will find some new and fun ideas here. However, the best thing about the movie is the actual characters. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law display such a perfect chemistry that I would be as easily at home talking about if they were the leads in a romantic comedy. This is what the literary Holmes and Watson were really like. Not the Odd Couple-esque groupings that we have had in the past. Holmes and Watson were similar in many ways, and each had their downsides to bring to the friendship. However, they took it in stride and became the best of chums. There has also been a lot made about the action and thuggish qualities of the main characters. Having been a reader of Arthur Conan Doyle for many years, I can say that I think this kept with the spirit of the stories just fine. The Sherlock Holmes stories always had a pulp feel to them, as if they were only one or two steps removed from the famous gumshoes of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. I applaud the movie for embracing this structure and look forward to the inevitable sequel.

In closing, I would heartily recommend this movie to anyone who is either a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories or has never read one in their lives. The movie's blend of action, story, suspense, and critical thinking had me wanting to see it again as soon as possible. The actors were pitch-perfect in their roles, the script is tighter than a straight jacket, and the direction heralds a new chapter in the life of the world's most famous detective. Oh, and that sequel that simply has to come out? It's all due to a shadowy man whose face is never revealed, but is clearly behind the scenes setting up something monstrous.

His name is Professor James Moriarty.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day | Film Review

kenneth.holm — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:58:05 +0000

Everything Else Is Coffeehouse Bullshit
A review of The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
by Kenneth Holm
Dorkgasm Senior Staff Writer

Whup-ass fajitas. The OK Corral. Sack-o-matic. Ding, dong! “The plan”. Mike Tyson. These are only a few things that I will be laughing about for some time after seeing The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. As any Saints fan will tell you, there are certain catch phrases from the first movie that, when said, will let you know that you are part of something special. The nod and wink you get from someone when you ask if they are “oh-be-kay-be”, or when you speculate about being “serial crushed by a huge, friggin' guy”. It is not just a movie, it is more like an extended family. All Saints Day is a love letter to every fan who has supported the first film and rocked a prayer on a t-shirt.

Troy Duffy's newest directorial effort, The Boondock Saints II starts out with brothers Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery, Powder) and Murphy (Norman Reedus, Blade II) hiding out in rural Ireland with their father Noah “Il Duce” MacManus (Billy Connelly, Fido). They lived a life of sheep herding and Irish stew, having left their blood-soaked Boston pasts behind. Unfortunately, their past catches up with them as a popular Boston priest is brutally murdered in their signature style of two shots to the back of the head and pennies on the eyes. Sure enough, before you can say fuck-ass, Connor and Murphy shed their Tom Hanks-like long hair and beards and head back to America. Along the way, they meet a new sidekick in Romeo (Clifton Collins, Jr., Capote), a Connor-proclaimed “greasy spic” who wants in on the clean up crew. They also learn of the criminal empire that is being rebuilt by Concezio Yakavetta (Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club), the son of “Poppa Joe” Yakavetta from the first movie. Yakavetta is responsible for the murder that brought the boys back home, so the MacManus brothers arrive in Boston with a taste for vengeance.

The murder does not go unnoticed by Boston, either. Soon rabid crowds turn up begin to turn up at the murder site, both damning the Saints and proclaiming their innocence. Boston's finest show up, represented by BDS vets detectives Greenly (Bob Marley), Duffy (Brian Mahoney), and Dolly (Brian Ferry). The trio are instantly reminded about their role in the brothers' bloody retribution, and begin to sweat when the Feds show up in the form of Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz, Rambo), a former protege of Paul Smecker (a sadly missing face from this movie). While Connor, Murphy, and Romeo begin meting out street justice, Bloom and the detectives slowly begin putting the pieces together to either help the Saints or put them away for life. Finally, the boys catch up to their target only to find out that Yakavetta may not be the only player in the game and they may have stumbled into something bigger than they thought.

Overall, this movie surpasses the original in many ways. Most of our favorite players return for Round Two, even some of the smaller parts. Doc (Gerald Parkes),who you may know better as “Fuck-Ass”, provides one of the funniest scenes in the movie when he meets up with the brothers again, and even the nameless Irish arms dealer (Tom Barnett) returns for another meetup, prompting one of the best music cues ever. Even though this movie is about reuniting an amazing cast, the new characters pull their weight admirably. Special Agent Bloom is a fine foil to our heroes, a strong and devious woman who is not above using her looks to hide a brilliant deductive mind. The standout, however, is the new character Romeo. With Rocco having been snuffed in the first film, the film needed a comic relief character to balance out all of the gratuitous violence, and Clifton Collins, Jr. delivers it in spades. His wide-eyed and emotional Mexican character provides cultural differences and some of the best lines in the movie.

Now, lest you think that I loved this movie unconditionally, there were some things I thought could have better. While the first film took its time establishing the world these characters lived in with slow, dream-like shots at times, this film takes the music video approach of jerky movement and frenetic action. In some cases, bigger is most definitely not better. Also, in some instances, the editing of the storyline became muddled and confusing. The movie is much like the first one, with back tracks and flashbacks a plenty, and this sometimes gets mired down in the attempt to make this pretty and visually exciting. The sound and music were a joy to listen to, and there was plenty of blood to go around, but some of the bigger set pieces made this movie lose some of the intimate appeal of the first one. Quite possibly, the biggest drawback is that non-fans cannot get as much enjoyment out of this movie as the fans will. This movie calls back to the first film so much that it should consider getting free long distance. The in-jokes, the characters, and the world all need a previous knowledge to get the full enjoyment out of it.

With that said, I can honestly say that this is the most fun I have at a movie in a very long time. The humor was such that I left the theater with hurting ribs from laughing so much, and believe me when I say that this is the action film to beat this year. I was fortunate enough to see this movie with a crowd of fans, and every joke and call back was appreciated. When the film was over, there was applause and everyone left with the speculation on if we would have to wait another ten years for the inevitable follow-up that is now most definitely needed. Cheers to Duffy and company for bringing back a beloved world and having the presence of mind to not mess with the established formula too much. One last note: I have kept this spoiler-free for the most part, but there are moments that were not spoiled for me that I cannot spoil for you. Moments that will leave your jaw on the floor. Hurry up and see this because I want people I can gush about this to.

Thanks for comin' out.

District 9 | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:24:25 +0000

Size Matter's Not
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

Shot on a Red One digital camera on a modest budget in the country of South Africa, District 9 is not the first film that comes to mind when you start thinking summer blockbuster or high-brow cinema, but it is both of these things. Directed by Johannesburg native Neill Blomkamp (in his major film debut behind the camera), District 9 manages to be thought provoking and exciting all at the same time. Michael Bay supporters take note: This is what the rest of us are talking about when we say that you can blow stuff up and still have a plot!

The story is shot in a pseudo-documentary style suited to the Red One, and follows Wikus Van De Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copley) on his first day in charge of a large-scale eviction of aliens from the slum they have been living in since landing on Earth twenty years prior. Called “Prawns” because of the physical similarities they share with the crustaceans, the aliens seem to stand as an allegory to black South Africans. They are taken advantage of by gangs, maligned by those in power, and generally treated less than humanely. Of course, they aren’t human, and they have technology that no one seems to be able to harness. Their mother ship sits idly over Johannesburg, and humans cannot use their weapons because we lack the proper DNA. All the company Wikus works for wants to do is move the Prawns out of sight, 200 miles away, and they take their own armed security force in as backup.

Click image to visit the site
Image Copyright Columbia Tri Star

Enter Christopher Johnson and his son: Prawns that have a plan. Having spent the last two decades collecting fuel, drop by drop from scraps of Prawn technology, Christopher finally has enough to power a ship back to his home-world. Unfortunately, it is the same morning Wikus comes knocking on his door, and the bumbling human accidently spritzes himself with the black goo. This in turn changes his DNA and he starts to metamorphose into a Prawn. If this wasn’t aliens we were talking about, I’d be screaming that this was a cheap reinvention of Black Like Me, but it isn’t. In fact, District 9 is a whole lot more.

The best science fiction stories accomplish two goals. First, they make you forget that what you’re watching isn’t real. The effects and story of this film do that very well. You’re sucked into this world, and before you know it, you are ready to accept cat-food eating aliens for all they are worth. Truly great sci-fi also presents uncomfortable social situations in a way we can process without a massive freakout. The first interracial kiss on television, for example, could only have been presented in America in sci-fi in the 1960s. Blomkamp does that with apartheid in his homeland. We’re not thinking about Nelson Mandella the entire time we’re watching cows and security guards get vaporized by chain guns and plasma rifles, but in the back of our heads it’s there. The level of skill this takes may not be evident to some, but with a glut of sci-fi films that go no deeper than “CG stuff blows up nice”, it is really refreshing to feel like you’re part of something meaningful again watching a film like this.

The end of the film leaves a lot of leeway for a sequel, but it is satisfying nonetheless. If you’ve seen the director’s short film Alive in Joberg, you won’t be disappointed by the way Blomkamp put Peter Jackson’s reported $30 million to use. What you get is a film that is worth every penny, and actually lives up to the hype for once this summer. Not only does it suck you in with an intense story and blow your mind with fantastic pyro and effects, it also convinces you that we really have a lot to learn when it comes to who we trust and how we treat each other. District 9 is, by far, the best film of the summer, and one of the most interesting films of 2009.

Final Verdict (out of 5):

Thicker than Water: The Vampire Diaries Part 1 | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:18:20 +0000

Family Ties
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

Phil Messerer is a jack of all trades when it comes to film. He wrote, directed, shot and edited Thicker than Water: The Vampire Diaries Part 1 all on his own, and on a shoestring budget. Such is the life of the modern indie filmmaker, and he does most of those jobs admirably. The story is basically a rehash of the cult-classic werewolf film Ginger Snaps, looking at family relationships through the lens of vampires this time instead of big fuzzy beasties. When the goth-girl’s perfect twin sister dies, she comes back as a vampire and her family tries to be supportive. We should all be so lucky to have families like that.

The film dwells for a little too long on some aspects of the Baxters’ family life, however. The opening sequences show us a dysfunctional family ready to blow its top as mom and dad announce their separation over Thanksgiving Dinner. Then there’s a birthday party, and a quick tour of the small town they all live in before we see any bloodshed. The story is also hampered by a hackneyed vampire mythology, told by a narrator over some great engraving artwork by Rostislav Spitkovsky. Essentially, ancient Mayan sacrifice is used as a cover for feeding an ancient vampire, and the book that tells us this story mysteriously has landed in this small town in a curio shop frequented by the goth sister, Lara. It’s a retread of White Wolf’s Mexico City by Night with an attempt to base it in history rather than straight horror.

Click image to visit the site
Image Copyright Sugar Factory Films

Right about now, some fans who may have seen the film may be bitching. Yes, it’s an indie horror film made on a small budget, but those aspects didn’t bother me in the slightest. In fact, the acting was above average for a film this small, and the overall story is at least a little bit original. Even though I’m sick and tired of the overuse of sympathetic vampires these days, Messerer makes it work. There just isn’t a believable family chemistry with the characters to pull off the family angle. The movie Otis did a great job of creating a dysfunctional, fucked-up family to hysterical results on a small budget. No, this isn’t a money issue, it’s just the actors. Individually, they are all fun characters, especially Lara and her brother Raymond, but they don’t come across as a family. Effects wise, the film does a good job of keeping gore to appropriate levels, but little additions like digital snow and fangs were a distraction. There’s also the small problem of the brother revealing that the vampire blood has a violent reaction to UV light, even though the image on the screen is him flashing a UV light on the blood with no noticeable result.

Speaking of distractions, the music in the film often feels like an unwelcomed guest. Piano interludes by Messerer’s father linger too long in otherwise great scenes, and some sequences are little more than music videos for a bad Creed knock-off. The music is admittedly better than what you find in some indie flicks, but it is outdated and doesn’t add to either the horror or the humor Messerer is trying for. Finally, while a lot of the cinematography is excellent, the editing was disjointed and jumped without any real purpose other than to call attention to itself. This comes across as a directorial conceit, and had Messerer left the cutting up to someone else, the film might have had a better flow.

All in all, Thicker than Water isn’t a bad film. Having judged b-horror film and other festivals in the past, I can certainly say that this is one of the better low-budget horror films out there. Messerer manages to squeak out a coherent, well-crafted story about a family dealing with a vampire with only a handful of distractions that most b-film fans will ignore anyway. Even though the characters don’t all mesh, and the story lingers in places, there are still some great moments I think many will enjoy. In particular, the scene with the Mormon missionaries is one you shouldn’t miss, and I’m curious enough that I’ll likely check out Part 2 when it is completed.

Final verdict (out of 5):

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:42:35 +0000

The Doppelganger Chronicles
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

When Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out as a book, thousands of people lined up for hours to get a copy. Many fans dropped off the internet for a few days to avoid spoilers while reading it, and it turned out to be one of the most successful publications of our age, both critically and financially. Yet, here we are a few years later, and the film fails to bring in more than $200 million on it’s opening weekend, leaving the mindless fodder that is Transformers 2 as reigning king of the summer box-office. Why is this happening to a film that, based on the book sales, should be a “sure thing”?

The film is certainly good enough. It is well shot, well directed, and the actors have grown into their roles solidly. Still, the people that made the book such a success are not turning out in droves, and certainly not as repeat customers. They have realized that strict adherence to cannon is something they cannot expect from a Harry Potter film. In fact, we should look at the films as separate entities, entirely removed from the book franchise.

Many of the best scenes from the book likely weren’t even filmed. This isn’t like Lord of the Rings where scenes were simply cut out to meet time constraints, these were never filmed at all. Dumbeldore’s funeral, Fudge’s meeting with the Prime Minister, and the Death Eater attack on Hogwarts were all nixed from the film version in favor of scenes seemingly deemed more “visually appealing”. At one point, the filmmakers added a Death Eaters attack the Weasley home, destroying it in a massive fire. Clearly, the final installments of the film franchise will not open with a wedding at that location. That the films are not anything like the books is something we have had to grow accustomed to, but we shouldn’t be surprised by it anymore.

Click image to visit the site
Image Copyright Warner Bros.

The studio is clearly making these films for a different audience than the one that lined up for the book. Sure, they like the money the readers bring in, and they can count on it to some degree, but they are really trying to make their own way here. The books, to them, are an interesting guidebook, and nothing more. On their own, however, the films are only slightly better than some of the other mindless family films that have been hitting theaters. The darker, more adult themes of the books are utterly poisonous to the studio if they want to cash in on “family money” with a PG rating.

J.K. Rowling’s characters are utterly flawed and human. The sixth book sees Harry dealing with some dark stuff, including zombies and twisted politicians. The film, however, is totally Hollywood. The zombies are now almost cute, and the audience has been deemed too young to deal with political intrigue, so it that aspect has been removed entirely. This is sad, because I really think that these more grown-up elements of the books are what kept people coming back. Here, however, we are left with a dumbed-down version of Potter, and it doesn’t quite stand on its own. Sure, there are exciting moments, and it is certainly better than most of its predecessors, but even for those who have only seen the films, this installment is only ho-hum.

More skillful presentation couldn’t save this film from mediocrity, unfortunately. By the time Dumbeldore dies, the audience will have more questions than answers, and none of the secondary characters has enough screen time to please fans looking for more of someone like Snape or Neville. In fact, the final scene is hugely anti-climactic, with the removal of the funeral and thus one of the most poignant lines from the novels. Alas, as I pointed out, the books are barely a guide here, but the end still feels like they ran out of money, having blown it on bad CGI zombies. The film ends without a sense of closure, and it is obvious that Yates and company didn’t even try, knowing that they have another two films coming down the pipeline.

Final Verdict (out of five):

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:40:06 +0000

Big Balls
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

Let’s face it, no one expected Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to be the next Citizen Kane. Nope, most of the people who went in to see it wanted big, bad ass robots blowing shit up, and that’s what they got. So, going in expecting the same lazy-assed trype Michael Bay usually puts out, why was I still disappointed in this movie?

For starters, it makes less sense than most of Bay’s bullshit. I liked Bad Boys II in all of it’s dumb, spin-the-camera glory. For the record, Bay doesn’t always sell to audiences. I mean, no one expects a sequel to The Island any time soon, and if you took the words “Autobot” and “Decepticon” out of this movie, it would be receiving about as much love as Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox right about now. Why do the baddies go after the kid instead of his girlfriend, for one? I mean, the T-X played by super-slutty Isabel Lucas is after him before anyone knows he has the knowledge everyone is after, and the Decepticons KNOW that Megan Fox has the shard, so what gives? It’s major breakdowns in logic like that one that really bugged me. I could let go of the clichéd government bureaucrat plot because that at least made sense, but the rest of this mess just doesn’t compare to a little film from 23 years ago.

Click image to visit the site
Image Copyright Paramount Pictures

Nelson Shin’s Transformers: The Movie had bigger balls than Bay’s piece of crap, by far. Sure, Devastator had a pair in Bay’s film, as did John Turturro and Ramon Rodriguez, but Shin knew how to kill a character and leave him dead. There’s something irritating about a film that doesn’t have the freedom to kill anyone off except the villain. In fact, the real plot of Revenge of the Fallen is that they need to resurrect Prime because all the other Autobots are utterly ineffectual without him. It is frustrating, because as a kid, most of us learned a lot from Prime’s death. We learned about honor, and sacrifice, but in Bay’s film, the only thing anyone learns is that you can make millions by slapping a well-loved title on a piece of shit.

Sure, Shin had Weird Al and the Junkions, but he killed Prime, Ironhide, and Prowl without flinching, and he told an epic story that holds up pretty well. Bay focused on what he knew: blowing shit up on camera. He does that rather well, but never really bothers to tell us a story in the mean time. Bay’s balls, it seems, are all just for show. He played for laughs that are more lowbrow than anything Kevin Smith has ever pulled, and his idea of sexy is more bland than that of any porn director. I might be able to blame the writing staff, who all have some great work under their belts, for turning Soundwave into a satellite instead of a boom box, and the weird old-man Jetfire, but the final decisions were all Bay’s.

This movie will have made over $200 million by the time you read this, and that’s a shame. All it really shows is that audiences are starving for something more than the crap Hollywood has tried to shove down our throats this summer. We want a good, fun movie so badly, we’ll turn out in droves for something that wouldn’t cut it any other summer. What, with Wolverine and Terminator 4 already proving that we won’t stand for garbage, we really had a chance to send a message to filmmakers like Bay. Alas, it’s a message they wouldn’t hear anyway, I’m sure. The all mighty dollar wins again it looks like, and Transformers 3 is already in the works. It’s times like these that I wish Transforminators wasn’t just a joke, because it certainly has more to offer than this film.

Final Verdict (out of 5):

Terminator: Salvation | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:09:52 +0000

Square Peg Meets Round Hole
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

Christian Bale really shouldn’t have yelled at the cinematographer on Terminator Salvation. Instead, he should have been screaming at his agent for getting him involved in such a convoluted mess in the first place. He would have been well within his rights to blow up at the screenwriters (the team that brought us Terminator 3 and Catwoman) for turning in something so bad the Sci-Fi channel wouldn’t run it. Hell, I would have paid to see him take out the editing staff. Still, maybe the lesson here is the same as the first two films in the franchise. In the end, it is all our own fault.

The opening of this film, the fourth Terminator incarnation, introduces us to the first of many problems. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but do the credits really need to tell us the title and director twice? From here, we meet the first unnecessary addition to what should be a basic “man vs. machine” plot. Sam Worthington plays Marcus Wright, a death row inmate from California who occasionally has an Australian accent for no good reason other than an incompetent dialect coach. He signs his body away to science in 2003, and from here the audience is expected to forget that they saw any previews that revealed that he gets turned into a killer robot. Flash forward to 2018 where we meet John Connor, leader of nothing. I know, he is supposed to in charge of saving humanity, but here he is, little more than a well-worn soldier taking orders from Michael Ironside.

Click image to visit the site
Image copyright Warner Bros.

See, it’s when he walked on the screen, audiences should have fled in terror. Ironside plays cranky General Ashdown, a man with a plan to destroy Skynet at the source in San Francisco, thus ending the war. But it’s Michael Ironside, who last played a General, General Katana, in Highlander 2. Yes, folks, we saw Fonzy get on the bike and speed off toward the shark tank, but we didn’t turn away, did we? There’s a brief explanation that the resistance has discovered an command in the radio transmissions that Skynet uses to link up all the robots, and it can be used to as an off switch. Connor gets to lead a team into Skynet central and blow everyone up, but no one wants him saving all the human hostages the robots have. John does the only thing he knows how to in response, he ham-radio-blogs about it. Never mind that Skynet wants him dead and should have the tech to triangulate a simple radio broadcast, he whines to the people, and the people listen. Speaking of the people, now enters Kyle Reese and the inexplicable stupid pilot, Blair Williams.

Reese is supposed to be Connor’s dad, but here he is a hapless teenager who should be dead inside of ten minutes. Marcus Wright shows up and saves the kid from a giant robot that, by all rights, should have just stepped on him. That would only be logical, however, and everyone knows that computers are never… Oh. Wait. Without his capture, the fighter pilot, Blair Williams, might never have met up with Marcus and fallen in love! That makes perfect sense, if you’re an imbecile like McG I suppose. Here’s also where the editing gets bad. One second it’s raining cats and dogs, the next, the rain is gone and there’s a trio of would-be rapists. Marcus saves Blair, she loves his beating heart, and anyone still buying into this sad excuse for a plot should jump off a cliff like the Six-Million Dollar Man. You’ll make it across, trust me.

The long and short of it is that you’re better off spending ten bucks to see Star Trek again. Ignore the “film of the summer” crap you’ll see on the commercials. Those lies were written by Fandango, and they have movie tickets to sell. About the only things in Terminator Salvation worth seeing are Christian Bale and the eye candy. Sure, the effects are great, but that’s why you have a Netflix account and a Blu-Ray player, isn’t it? I am sure there will be those among you who ignore this, and venture out to see for yourselves, but you can resist and… Oh, forget it. I was going to try to be clever, but I’m too damned disappointed to go there. Stay home and grill this weekend folks. Ten bucks buys a pretty nice steak.

Final Verdict (out of five):

Fast & Furious | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:45:14 +0000

Tying Up Loose Ends

Michael C. Riedlinger

Editor-In-Chief

When Justin Lin picked up the Fast & Furious franchise a few years back, I was hopeful. The series is mindlessly dumb, no doubt about that, but what could a smart and savvy director do with it? It was somewhat disappointing that he cast the very white Lucas Black in a movie about street racers in Tokyo, but Tokyo Drift was a smarter film than its predecessors were. The latest installment, simply titled Fast & Furious, gains only a few more IQ points, but they’re enough to make a noticeable improvement.

See, no one involved with this franchise has ever pretended that it was high drama or even low art. Rob Cohen even admitted to stealing the plot from Point Break on the first film in order to showcase a cool concept he had read about. The films in this series have always stood on their own, with audiences flocking to see Vin Diesel play a bad ass who drives fast cars and hangs out with fast women. The second film faltered because it tried too hard to be a bad CSI: Miami episode, and the third regained some of the glory of the first because it went after a new concept in drifting. Justin Lin found another new concept for this film, not in the modded cars, but in the characters. This time, the feature is a revenge plot.

Click image to visit the site
Image copyright Universal Pictures

The boys and girls in this film are still the vacant stereotypes we know from before, but in playing with revenge and redemption themes, Lin makes us actually give a crap about what happens to them. When a drug lord kills someone close to the now-infamous Dominic Toretto (Diesel), the fugitive comes home to Los Angeles. Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) is now an FBI agent, and so is working the case from the other side of the legal line. Inevitably, the two must team up and put aside their differences to bring down the bad guy, and this of course involves lots of fast driving.

The cars in the film are a mix of rice burners and traditional muscle cars, and the emphasis is placed on the driver instead of the technology. That’s about where the gearhead-speak ends with this film, and the effect is to make it more universally accessible to viewers. It’s the lesson that H.B. Halicki taught filmmakers back in the 70s: Make your chase scenes fun to watch, and the rest of the “car stuff” will come together. Of course, it helps that the characters are also fun to watch, even if they don’t always make much sense.

Beyond the main cast, everyone in the cast is a cardboard cutout. From the sleazy drug lord to the angry FBI captain, personalities all seem to have been manufactured via the cookie cutter method. The main cast fairs only slightly better, with Dom coming out on top as the least predicable of them all. This suits Vin Diesel just fine, and I personally enjoyed not being sure who Dom would kill and who he would just beat up. His sister (again played by Jordana Brewster), is a bit more shallow this go-around, consenting to an out-of-nowhere quickie on the kitchen counter after she realizes that the two men in her life are going toe to toe with an army of killers. Brian O’Conner keeps trying to be a good cop, even though every fan knows he sucks at it. I complain only because it has taken three movies for him to realize that he always ends up on the side of the law-breakers, not the law.

Overall, Fast & Furious has a kind of dumb plot, but its fun as hell. Justin Lin embraces the fact that he’s making a popcorn movie, and takes us on a ride worth the price of admission. Vin Diesel knows how to lay the big, mean badass very well, and if it was good enough when Eastwood and McQueen did it for our folks, it’s good enough for me now. More so than its predecessors, this is a movie meant to be seen on the big-screen. In an age where Hollywood is turning more and more to gimmicks like 3-D, it really is refreshing to see something that grabs your attention and holds it with the kind of movie magic classics like Two-Lane Blacktop, Bullet, and Vanishing Point were made from.

Final Verdict (out of 5):

Monsters Vs. Aliens | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:41:30 +0000

Blast From the Past
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

The state of science fiction, as I complained about in my review of Knowing, is abysmal. Hollywood keeps churning out crap they hope seems smart or cool, while failing miserably because they keep forgetting that the best science fiction happens when it actually is smart and cool. The subtext is usually built in, and the more overt you get, either through hyperbole or through techno-babble, the less effective science fiction really is. Monsters vs. Aliens is a science fiction film first, and a children’s film second.

It’s weird, because even the theaters are treating it that way, and theaters are usually clueless. Running the trailer for Star Trek ahead of this film is pure marketing genius! There’s also the fact that the movie updates almost every 50’s genre-film cliché in the book, if that isn’t enough for you. The characters are all sci-fi standards, including the Blob, the Mad Scientist, the Creature Frozen in Ice and Time, and of course, the 50-foot woman. Even a kaiju-like creature has a part to play in this, and it’s about alien invasion! Sure, it’s animated, but that only seems to have helped.

The story itself is about a young woman named Susan (Reese Witherspoon) who is nailed by a radioactive asteroid from outer space that causes her to grow by leaps and bounds. She is locked up in a government facility where she meets the other monsters. When a giant alien robot attacks, the monsters are the best hope we have against it. Pretty simple, and no one spends too much time explaining to the President (Stephen Colbert) what galaxy anyone has come from, how all the flying saucers work, or where in the heck The Missing Link fits in on the evolutionary timeline. Remember, this is supposed to be a kid’s movie, so the filmmakers don’t dwell on anything that might put the kiddies to sleep. Then again, those things are also the same culprits that drive normal folks away from science fiction in the first place, so it really is a win-win for the audience.

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What it also does is free up more time for both action and humor. The folks at Dreamworks haven’t forgotten that adults are also in the audience, but instead of thinly-veiled double entendre, the jokes for us are about Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Beverly Hills Cop. They also poke fun at relationships, and marriage, but Monsters vs. Aliens never gets preachy. There’s too much fun to be had!

The monsters are the best part of the film. Hugh Laurie drops the American accent he affects on House as the crazy Dr. Cockroach, Seth Rogan loses a few brain cells for the mindless (but hysterical) B.O.B. the Blob, and Keifer Sutherland embodies every cranky Patton rip-off necessary as General Warren Monger. They comedy bombs drop quick and often, and sometimes in the middle of action, so keep your ears open. The action portion of this film is ultimately very satisfying, refusing to slow down without leaving any of the plot holes so often seen in its “adult” counterparts.

Contemporary directors who are looking to make a sci-fi film should take notes on this movie. The number of updated throwbacks is huge, and they are all used wisely. No one leaves the theater feeling unsatisfied because we don’t know how the engines on the spacecraft worked or what precise type of radiation causes a grub to grow to the size of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not only are these elements left unexplained, but they do not matter to the story. If you’re looking for an allegory in the film, you’ll find plenty about accepting differences and bonding with friends, like most children’s films, but like a good science fiction film, Monsters vs. Aliens doesn’t beat you over the head with its message.

Final Verdict (out of 5):

Knowing | Film Review

MRiedlinger — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:03:33 +0000

It's Half the Battle
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

          Alex Proyas is one strange director. He has a propensity to make dystopian cinema that revels in the dark side of humanity. From the fires of The Crow to the technological terror of I, Robot, Proyas has given us visions of a future that differ from our own only in the degree to which we’ve screwed up our world. Typically, his films end with the hero defeating the larger menace behind our suffering through perseverance, heroically outsmarting the villain at the last minute. This time, however, Proyas has tried a different approach.

          There is no villain in Knowing, per se, unless you count the convoluted plot. Nicholas Cage plays an MIT professor who, by sheer chance, winds up in possession of a series of numbers written fifty years prior by a young girl. By total luck, he discovers that the numbers correspond to disasters around the world over the last fifty years. The last couple of sequences seem to denote future events that, coincidently, are set to occur within easy driving distance of him. Getting the picture yet? Each scene in the film unfolds like this, and the acting doesn’t help.

          Nicholas Cage may be an Oscar winner, but his acting is typically hit or miss. I think that this is one of those misses. His character is supposed to be a loving, emotional father who has only recently become a widower. In order to cover for Cage’s emotional distance, Proyas sticks a bottle in his hands in every other shot, a la Leaving Las Vegas. He never seems drunk, mind you, so we must assume that it is there simply to convey why his lines sound like they’re being delivered by a robot. The supporting cast isn’t much better, with the two adult females in the cast (real life best friends Rose Byrne and Nadia Townsend) trying desperately to cover their native Australian accents. The children in the cast, sadly, out act everyone around them, and only just barely.

As if the coincidences weren’t enough, Proyas has a problem selling us on the spookiness of the messengers that start showing up to whisper thoughts into the children’s heads. Sure, they wear long black coats and look like albino extras from a Buffy episode, but they seem to be the only characters who might have answers. Not that they actually offer any of those answers, mind you, just that they obviously know what is going on and yet no one thinks to ask. Cage buys a gun, the kids scream a lot, and in the end, Eric Von Donneken fans get a chance to rejoice.

The film tries to meet the worlds of science and faith halfway, but fails both utterly. There are moments when the scientist considers issues based on faith, and the faithful are faced with the inevitability of science. I’d like to think of this film as science fiction, but part of the problem with sci-fi today is that it has lost its way. Hell, if anything, this movie is a perfect example of why Americans take even horror more seriously than science fiction. Gone are the days of the powerful, self-assured scientists who sweep in and save the day with knowledge and truth. We are an impotent society, helpless in the cosmos and utterly reliant upon outside forces to save us from doom, this new generation of genre movies seems to say. The end of this film tries too hard to be edgy, and simultaneously hopeful, leaving nothing but a bad taste in our mouths. Of course, nothing can save Knowing from the over-use of dues ex machina, but you can save your money by not heading out to theaters to see it.

Final Verdict (out of 5):