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Oh yes, it is bleak

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 29 October 2009 02:47 (A review of The International)

The International is one bleak film. Tom Tykwer is an exceptional director, and this film proves it. The movie's greatest benefactor is it's script and Tykwer himself. First off, the script provides us with two interesting things; the main character is not a regular secret agent who kicks all sorts of arse in any given situation. Instead Clive Owen's agent is essentially a man who's been through too many ups and downs during his life and was never that good at anything. He isn't particularily excelsior at his job as an Interpol agent; in the very first scene, he accidentally smashes his face against the passenger mirror of an incoming car. There's plenty more of scenes with failures comparable to this, even though they're sometimes a far cry from being physical abuse. The script and Tykwer understand that failures like these, if played with even slight humour or if they're portrayed too much, will make the character a bumbling buffoon instead of someone to take seriously. So they don't overdo it. Owen's character is enough of a failure for us to believe him as a human being, and it's a very refreshing thing in a modern agent film where "humanisation" of the main characters usually mean that when he gets shot he limps for the rest of the film.

The other big advantage that comes from the script is the bleakness of it all. Obviously, the world we live in, from a global perspective, is very depressing and there's not much an individual can do about it. That's that The International is all about. It's about the individual's inability to affect the globe. Tykwer, and the script, make this a very hard fact throughout the film and it affects the viewer in a positively depressing way. The story of this movie differentiates itself from the bulk of political thrillers, because this one feels by all means like a realistic film from it's beginning to the end. Maybe that's why I liked it so much. I've always appreciated realistic portrayals of humans and this world, and The International excels at it.

Also worth noting is that Tom Tykwer is a superb cinematographer and every shot in this film is beautiful. The man is a modern poet, making beauty from the pen which's ink is the climate of our world; beat-up cars, white motionless plaster and shiny skyscrapers turn into absolutely splendid visuals in The International because of his expertise. He never overmines the events with his visuals either, a sign of a very good director. Be on the lookout for whatever he makes in the future, I promise you, you won't be dissapointed. I sure wasn't with this one.


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Spaniards do try too hard sometimes

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 29 October 2009 02:46 (A review of The Backwoods)

Sometimes films just go too far in trying to be different. Occasionally this can be seen by horrible, "experimental" or "artistic" camerawork, improvised scripts or at worst, black and white scenes with übercontrast. Just something that attempts to differentiate the film in question from the others of it's kind. Backwoods (known as Bosque des Sombras for everyone who loves original titles) tries too hard in a different way. It's a film about two couples who go to Spain to a cabin to hunt some rabbits and stuff, they find a little girl locked in an abandoned house, then the people who locked her up come after her. That's what the film is about, but it tries really, really hard to deny that. Apparently director/co-writer Koldo Serra found that he didn't want to make a film that was essentially a slasher. The first half of the movie is essentially spent going through the very cliched marital issues the two couples have, and then they discuss some retardedly pseudopshychological stuff about hunting.

The second half is where this film goes over the top with just trying too hard. The men that come to the house after the main characters save the little girl, are in fact as follows: One young kid who constantly looks reluctant to the very idea of being there, one old man with very little hair and who looks sort of like Abe Vigoda, a fat rapist, and his brother or something who's just fat and doesn't attempt to tap any asses during the film. It's ridicilous. These people are never portrayed as threathening, whereas that's exactly what should be done in a movie like this. Instead Serra attempts to create sympathy towards those men. It's very obvious by the way they're portrayed that we're supposed to feel sorry for them. I just don't see why. The film never shows us why we should feel sorry for them, it just says "Have some sympathy, guy!" and even as the film finishes it never tells why on earth we should feel sorry for a group of men who probably spent a good 7-8 years having good old fashioned babysex with some infanft in a dark basement in the middle of the woods.

There's also another issue along with the villains. Backwoods attempts to look at the psychological effects of killing another person. I stress the word attempts, because quite frankly it fails miserably. What this psychological perspective means in practice is that after every kill, the camera pans over to the face of the murderer for a long period of time and then the guy who shot someone puts on their best acting job and tries to look real sad. And that's it. It's infuriating. You can not look at the psychological effects of murder just by showing us the face of the killer for a minute! When you want to do that, you need dialogue, you need actions, you need anything other than silent minutes spent looking at a camera. All that being said, Backwoods actually sort of works. When it tries, it can be intense. But it wants to be so much more, and it fails whenever it reaches for the stars. It's sad.

However, it does have Gary Oldman in it, and Gary Oldman WILL eat your fucking face.


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Quite the masterpiece

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 27 October 2009 05:49 (A review of The Seldom Seen Kid)

A slight warning to all readers: this is moreso an analysis of the album rather than a review that aids you in deciding wether or not to purchase this. It's more about what I think the songs are about etc. If you want a review with a list of the good and bad things, run off to Metacritic or something.

Ok, let's get one thing straight; I appreciate the action-paced, fast and good-sounding rock music as much as the next guy. I love it when there's a song that I can mosh to (or would mosh to if I had half the hair to do it). But sometimes I just really get tired of it. There's only so many bursts of energy I can bother listening to before it gets old. That's why I love bands like Elbow. It provides me something to listen to during the pauses in faster music I suffer of every once in a while. Let's get on with the album right away; It starts off with a track that ranks in my books as one of the best first songs in any album in a decade or so; it's called Starlings, and I suspect that it's a story about love, like many other songs. Why it works as an opener for the album is because of two reasons. 1) It has this bizarre prelude-like sound to it throughout. There's about two minutes of instrumental sounds before any singing is heard, and when it does the song doesn't really reach a peak until the four minute mark, but even when it gets louder, Starlings remains relatively calm-paced, as if preparing use for what might come later. 2) It's a bloody great song. As you might know, I'm a lyrics guy. I enjoy good lyrics more than anything else in music. This is a different type of love song, and the lyrics certainly assert to that. It's a love song written to people who are at their thirties, are broken, scarred and burnt by love. People who view love from a cynical perspective. In the song, a man like this falls in love with a young woman. The woman understands his point of view in the matter, but still loves him. It's fun, and it's different. The second song, named Bones Of You, is about lost love instead of active love. It's about how hard it is to us to forget about true love. Abandoning it is a hard task, and this song is about trying to do so, but ultimately failing. It contains some fantastic lyrical parts, such as
But image on image like beads on a rosary
pulled through my head as the music takes hold
and the sickener hits
Which is about the man trying to forget but yet again failing to do so as the memories come back (the memories=the sickener in this case). Musically it's far more fast-paced than Starlings, and contains an overall rockier tune anyhow. There is one thing to note though; it never feels like singer Guy Garvey really speeds up his singing even though the song otherwise is what it is. He does go rather high-pitch occasionally, which isn't always a positive feat, but never really becomes annoying despite mostly keeping the same tone throughout the entire song.

I personally think the third song, Mirrorball, is the worst in the entire album. The problem is not the song itself, but rather it's placing. It's very similar to Starlings, even though it contains more lyrics. Starlings is a song that works just and just on it's own, and because it's followed by a faster song, it feels as if the song is good. But then right after the faster Bones of You, we go back to this slow, murky tone, and it doesn't work too well. It's just too fast. So yeah, the song is a lot like Starlings in music, maybe just a bit faster, but it's still one of the more or less slow songs of the album. The lyrics are very good yet again, this time not being so much about love in a physical, true love-type manner, but instead being about the love a parent feels towards a newborn baby. It's a very touching song if interpreted as a tune about how most newfound moms and dads feel after the birth of their child. Good thing that The Seldom Seen Kid pumps up the speed after this one, because otherwise one might fall asleep while listening to it. Next up we have a song named Grounds For Divorce. It's really obvious that the song is about alcoholism, but it's unique with the subject with the approach it takes lyrically. It speaks of alcoholisation in an almost Lynchian-manner, creating surreal landscapes into the minds of listeners with the lyrics. It's also been suggested that this song is also about losing a loved one in a bad way, but I don't know if that interpretation necessarily fits in with the lyrics all that well. As far as the music goes, you can decide for yourself as to wether or not this is a good track. Since it was the first single from the album, here's a youtube link to it: Listen to Grounds For Divorce. I think it works succesfully in amping up the album's tone after the slow Mirrorball, and it's fun to listen to even as a loose entity, separate from the album itself. Speaking of fun to listen to, just want until you get a load of the next song; An Audience With The Pope sounds very interesting. It's got a catchy chorus with a cool piano tune in the background and good, solid lyrics throughout. Music-wise, this is perhaps the most complicated and one of the best songs in The Seldom Seen Kid. The elaborate combination of various instruments to create nice and danceable music sounds great, as does Garvey's singing here. The lyrics are about love (ain't that shocking), moreso about being madly in love with someone who simply abuses you constantly, making you miss something more important just because you want to be together with her... It's sad in that sense.

Now then, I have three songs on this album that in my opinion are the best things this album has to offer, and perhaps the best that Elbow has to offer to it's listeners. The first of these songs is the sixth on the album, named Weather To Fly. It's a weird song, different from most I've ever heard. Weather To Fly starts by asking a series of questions:
Are we having the time of our life?
Are we having the time of our lives?
Are we coming across clear?
Are we coming across fine?
Are we part of the plan here?
Are we having the time of our lives?
Are we coming across clear?
Are we coming across fine?
Are we having the time of our lives?
Are we part of the plan here?
These questions can be taken in two ways; either they're questions that we should ask ourselves about our lives, which is the theory I prefer, or then it could be considered that Garvey is infact asking us, the listeners, what we think of the band as a whole. The rest of the song is a story; it's a story about how Elbow became Elbow. About how the members met. How they decided to start making music. I personally consider this a bold choice to make an entire song about, and the most bizarre things is, it works. This song sounds damn near perfect. It has an optimistic, but realistically so, sound to it with the singing and music being in a positive harmony with each other. Weather To Fly sounds great, it asks us questions we should think about, and tells a story most bands get to tell in interviews and biographies; Elbow made a song about it. I love it.

Now, after a great song, a good song follows. Not as good as the previous one, it still works as a predecessor for Weather To Fly. It's name is bizarre, and is very fun to pronounce for some reason. It's called The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver. TLTCD is about loosing touch with normal life, reality, and becoming lonely through success. Story goes that the lead singer used to be a tower crane driver, and his company had others like him as well. One of them was somehow more successfull than the others; he had a TV, a microwave etc. in his tower crane, making him successfull, but the other drivers loathed him because of his success. TLTCD is the story of that man. It sounds very melancholic and silent. That's really all that I can say about this song as a whole, because that's all there is to it musically. Next up we have a fast song for a change; The Fix is almost a pop song in it's rhythm, occasionally falling to the level of bizarre blues songs with the pacing. The sound is reminiscent of some scrapped Pink Floyd-song, which isn't bad at all. The story with the song could be one of many. I have no idea what it's about. The name and some lines indicate that it's about drug abuse, but then some lines make it seem like it was about gambling. To be honest I don't care so much as to what it's about, I just love listening to it. It's very calm, but not so calm that you would fall asleep or anything, as it is pretty fast. But it keeps a pace up. It isn't uneven. It's calm, yet fast. I hope you understand my point there.

Remember what I said about Weather To Fly? That there are three truly great songs in this album? Well, the ninth track, named Some Riot, is the second of the three amigos. This is by far the most depressing song on the entire album, and it sounds delicious. Maybe it's my melancholic finnish mindset, but this song really breaks into my heart and grabs it. Some Riot is captivating and wonderfully depressing. The lyrics are about a topic already tackled earlier on in the album. Guess what they're about? No, not love. I knew you'd guess that! It's about alcoholism. To be specific, it's about seeing someone very close to you drink themselves into a pit of no return. Ruining themselves willingly. Not stopping. Never stopping. And it's beautiful. Sure, it's sad as hell, but it's hard not to be moved by the way it's sung of here. Now, prepare yourself for one of the best song placings I can quickly recall. After listening to several minutes of very depressing material with Some Riot, comes the third in my list of the best songs Elbow has made. It's named One Day Like This, and boy does it kick ass. Imagine that you're depressed. What do you do? You try to get cheered up. That's what One Day Like This does. It cheers you up after a melancholic blabber of words. Unsurprisingly it's a love song. I like to think it's about that moment when you suddenly go "Holy shite, I do love you" in the middle of watching CSI on TV (I mean you say that to your girlfriend, not Gil Grissom). The sound is what makes it so good to listen to, full of life, vibrance and optimism like an apple pie baked by that Kool-Aid jug in the middle of fucking Rainbowland. I can't speak much of it, but do listen to it if you wish to: Listen to One Day Like This. We still have one song left on the album; Friends of Ours. It lasts for 4 and a half minutes and has about 11 sentences sung during that time. It's a song dedicated to the memory of Bryan Glancy; a musician who was friends with the band, and died during the making of the album. The lyrics are heartfelt and sad, and I feel they do justice to Glancy himself. However I can not review this song; it wouldn't feel correct to me to review something this personal. It's good. I'll just say that. It's touching as well. Very touching.

In the end what you have left from The Seldom Seen Kid is the experience of listening to possibly one of the best albums of 2008, and some of the best written songs I have heard in years. I love this album, and I truly hope you check it out even if this review didn't light an "Elbowspark" in you. VT out.


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Michael Bay throws a decent movie our way

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:37 (A review of The Rock)

Making a good action scene isn't really all that hard. You just need some action to it, and voila. You have a good action scene. Then you just slap some cliched score ontop and edit it nicely. But let's take a look at what action scenes are about; They're about people being involved in action. Be it a car chase, a shootout or even a fistfight, it always involves primary or secondary characters duking it out with eachother. Usually it's the bad guys vs the good guys. Now what is the very definition of a good action scene? Its excitement. If an action scene fails to excite you, it has failed. Contrary to what you may or may not believe, action scenes do not make your palms sweaty just because they're good action scenes. If a movie was nothing but a collage of various back-to-back action sequences, you would not be excited. Why? Because of the people involved in those action scenes. No matter how well an action scene may be directed, you will not give a damn about what happens to the people involved unless you actually care about them. And what makes you care about them? Every other scene in the film. If all goes well with the rest of the movie and the good and bad guys are well written, during those shootouts you will be rooting for the good guys to overcome evil. The Rock is a movie that tries very, very hard to make you care for it's characters, but ultimately fails in it.

The Rock revolves around Stanley Goodspeed, portrayed by Nicholas Cage. He's a very good bomb defusing-guy(all technical terminology can be removed, because that is what he essentially is), and so he is needed to defuse missiles who the evil General Hummel (Harris) has stolen. Hummel has set a base in Alcatraz, so naturally the only way to get to him is to get Sean Connery (named John Mason in the movie, but his role is Sean Connery with grungier hair), the only person ever to escape Alcatraz, to come with Goodspeed and a SEAL-team to the prison and lead them around it. The plot is pretty much an excuse for some well-made action, but as I said, it really, REALLY wants to be something else. Goodspeed is prettymuch a pretty boy, who works with a scout-like set of ethics, and his teaming with the loose cannon Mason is almost as hilarious as the combination of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in the Rush Hour-movies. Meaning that it really isn't a very good one. Goodspeed is probably the only character who gets some even remotely senseful (or working, for that matter) charecterisation throughout the entire film. For Mason, there's a 20-minute useless segment where he escapes FBI-containment to meet his daughter. Naturally, to get to her, he has to drive 100mph through San Fransisco with Goodspeed hot in his trail. After this scene, his daughter is barely ever mentioned, let alone this entire incident. So we had to watch a 20-minute, rather dull chase, for nothing? Thanks, Michael Bay! Naturally, the bad guy also gets some character development, because he's a former military guy, so he has a dark and political purpose to his actions. Does it change him? No. In fact, nothing that happens in this movie changes any of the characters, aside from causing a permanent case of death to most of them. Stanley Goodspeed is still Stanley Goodspeed in the end of the movie, even though he does learn how to shoot people and be an action-guy in general, and Sean Connery is still Sean Connery in the end. It leaves you feeling somewhat empty when the character development is this nonsenical.

Now, from a technical standpoint, The Rock is a pretty solid movie. Despite the questionable material they're given, the actors do make the most out of it, and as a huge Michael Biehn-fan, it's fun to see him do an action role for the first time in a while. As I said previously, Sean Connery plays Sean Connery, and does it as well as he's done it for 20 years before this movie. Ed Harris is a bad guy for the millionth time, Nicholas Cage is a good one for the gazillionth time, and they do the same things they always do in their good guy/bad guy-roles. Which is nothing I would complain about, since it works. The score is something that elevates all the action scenes in The Rock. While not singularily making them good, it does come close to doing so. Bay does an alright job directing, making good action scenes but dull dialogue scenes. And with dialogue as ridicilous as some of the material in this movie, I honestly can't blame him. His way of making action scenes can be somewhat tiresome with the quick cuts and all, and especially for a movie that runs well over two hours, it makes for very good material to give epileptics some seizures.

The Rock does leave you wondering about several plot holes, which I won't bother listing here, but you need to ask yourself, do you really care at all about the plot or do you just want to watch people get shot and shout really loud? If you do, put an extra 3 points to my rating to get what you're likely to think.


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Not very true to the source, but not horrible

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:36 (A review of Max Payne)

Whenever someone decides to set out and make a film out of a videogame, there will be two things; 1) An absurd fan outrage if the movie isn't directed by Martin Scorsese or something, and 2) Positive expectations from most fans after seeing the first poster/trailer/whatever. I personally always try to remain unbiased when it comes to some of these adaptations, but in the case of Max Payne, it's sort of impossible in one aspect of the movie: The story. The games, especially part 2, have excellent storylines for the writer of this flick to draw from. The storyline in part 2 for example is adult, perfected, and respects the player as an intellectual individual, not so much as a gamer as most other games with good stories do (Fahrenheit, here's looking at you and your lack of a second act). This is why it's incomprehensible why the writing team of Max Payne took the route they did; this movie has the basic outline of an 80s cop action piece. From the so-called mysterious villain that's predictable from the second he appears (and it isn't Sucre from Prison Break I mean here) to the absurd conspiracy and the reasoning behind it. Every second of this film is predictable and the only things that can be considered as original are those most videogamefans were crapping their pants over are the so-called Valkyries, hallucinations suffered by V-addicts. They're cool and work well within the context of the story. There are some things that could've saved large portions of the story, primarily using Max's inner monologue more; it appears twice in the movie, once in the beginning and once in the end, and it sounds so kickass that it really could've been in it more often. Now it just seems wasted and useless.

Let's move over to the more or less boring acting/directing-department since we got that story out of the way; There's only one REALLY bad thing about the acting here; Sucre from Prison Break as Jack Lupino. He fits the story in the sense that he also seems like something taken out of a horrible 80s movie, and reminded me of that over-the-top villain from Highlander. His character is written absurdly and he plays it so as well, and it makes him seem... well, retarded. It just isn't good at all. Otherwise most of the film has solid acting, with most of the actors making the most out of their characters. I don't think anyone cares much about any other actor in this movie except for how well Mark Wahlberg does as Max Payne. He's good at it, and that's it. Possibly the best part of the entire movie could be Payne himself, but due to the lack of inner monologue we really miss out on a lot of character development. But yeah, Marky Mark does a good job portraying the finnish national hero on film, and there's really no big downfall at his work. The director of this movie, John Moore, does a very good job directing the whole shamble. Visually, this is as good as it gets without the overt use of CGI alá 300. Snow has never looked as good as it does here, and Moore uses very tight editing tricks to make the action scenes intense and fun to look at. For example, during a fistfight around the first thirty minutes in, he uses Sin City-ish effects to change the screen red whenever someone gets hit. There's no blood in the scene, but this makes it look brutal regardless. Now, Moore's directing is the best thing to be seen, and Payne himself is third, so what would I say goes in second? The score of course. It's made by Marco Beltrami, whose scores of 3:10 To Yuma and The Crow: Salvation I absolutely love, and he does a splendid job with Payne as well. The score is in no way reminiscent of the videogame music, which is a good thing in this case since the melancholic sounds wouldn't fit a cop flick like this.

Overall, Max Payne had potential to be the best videogame movie ever made, but the writing team fucked up severely, and hence it didn't turn out all that great. It's quite alright, and worth spending a few bucks on to see, but just don't go into it expecting something as good as the videogames.


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NO.

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:35 (A review of Who's Your Caddy?)

Comedy is sooo hard. And I don't mean it in the type of "This stone sure is hard, I smashed it to Gary Busey's crotch and it didn't break"-type of hard, I mean it's just plain hard to write comedy. Why? People have different tastes. That sentiment is true in essentially all things about life, but in the movie industry, that sentence most of all fits comedy. Someone might've laughed at my stupid Gary Busey's crotch-line, and some didn't (to the latter group, I congratulate you). Hence, someone thinks that movies like Blast From The Past are funny and a movie like South Park isn't. But as long as I live, I will know one thing. Not a single person on earth who doesn't suffer from some sort of brain disorder, can actually look at Who's Your Caddy and laugh. I'm a very tolerant person when it comes to humor. I understand if someone laughed at Meet The Spartans, I really do. But no soul on earth could laugh at the jokes in this movie. If you wish to call them jokes. Who's Your Caddy is essentially a movie that makes you question the mental health of all the people involved in it's making.

What is it about then? It's about a black rapper and his posse (that has a fat black man, of course). But just having the main characters isn't enough to make a movie. So what did the writers do? Did they make fun of, for example, the music industry of our time, a topic that has been begging to be sucked dry by comedies, but no one has even dared to try? No. Guess what they did instead. Just guess. They made this black rapper and his posse (including the fat man) drive into a country club, for no reason, and apply for membership. The club is ran by an evil racist man (a real life childlover I may add) who doesn't want them to join the club. So the rest of the movie is the rapper posse trying to join the country club. There are several problems in this premise. First of all, WHY THE HELL ARE BLACK RAPPERS JOINING A COUNTRY CLUB!!? I am not saying that black rappers don't enjoy golf or anything, but why do they have to join a country club? It's never explained in the entire movie. The posse just sort of comes in and wants to join, and doesn't leave until it has it's way. Moviewriting 101: ALWAYS GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS MOTIVES. When the viewer doesn't know why something is happening and the reason is never revealed, why should the viewer care? That's right, s/he shouldn't. Now, to the second problem of the premise. It's about golf. Caddyshack drained almost all the humour out of the sport, and Adam Sandler's horrible Happy Gilmore certainly did the rest of the work back in the 90s, so you can't really take any original humour out of it. The third thing is that... well, this is poorly written. Throughout. As previously noted, no motives, no character development, bad jokes as well. Honestly, it's just a hack job. Horrible.

Now, I honestly hate this movie. It was made as a cash-in (what it was meant to cash-in on, I have no idea), and contains no soul. This movie could be referred to the anti-christ of modern comedy. It's a lowpoint all around really. Unmotivated, ungood and most of all, unfunny. It made me cringe.


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Too lacking in action for an action film

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:35 (A review of Escape from New York)

Snake Plissken probably made more kids come in the 80s than Pamela Anderson did in the 90s. Regardless, I never saw this film depicting his mission to retrieve the president of the US out of a barren prison, AKA New York. Finally someone requested me to review this film and I had to watch it. I didn't mind much, seeing as how I liked Carpenter's work overall (Cigarette Burns and Halloween especially). But... Carpenter is not an action movie-director. His best work is in horror and thriller. He is not a man who makes good and intense action scenes. He's the master of build-up, but the format of action movie doesn't pride itself on build-up, but big payoffs instead, and Carpenter lacks the necessary skill to pull them off excitingly. He has many chances, but almost every action scene here feels rather lackluster as Snake blasts through foes with his ridicilous-looking SMG or his fists. The only action scene that gripped me to the edge of my seat was the climax, and that's pretty much because a climax with that good a setting is somewhat hard to mess up. Carpenter's slow, realistic style of filming and editing doesn't suit balls-to-the-walls-action flicks like Escape From New York very well, it makes the action look depressing and slow. I'm not a fan of quick cuts, but I do think they should be applied in films like these if you can't make intense scenes otherwise. In a prior action movie of Carpenter's, Assault On Precinct 13, he managed to make the action interesting. He did so because the film was one half build-up, one half pay-off. Escape is more scattered than that; it has an action scene there, a dialogue scene here, two action scenes there, a fistfight here... It doesn't have a structure based around action, but it has a structure that's based around what the story requires, and the story does unfortunately require action throughout the film due to the predicaments Snake finds himself in. This is why I believe Carpenter was the wrong person to direct such a movie.

If the directing goes wrong, I think the writing goes right. It's full of surprises and believable dilemmas for Snake to face. The basic setting also got me thinking; say that Manhattan would really be turned into a giant prison. How the hell would this be explained to the people in it? Sure, it's a setting many years in the future (the futuristic world of 1997!), but how could any goverment ever pursue all the people in a friggin' densely populated island just leave with no problems? "Sorry folks, we're going to turn this place into a prison, so ya'll best leave". I just had some problems buying that, but honestly I won't hold it against the script at all, just a little weird nitpicking I had. As stated previously, I think the script was rather surprising. There's a delightful scene early on when Snake arrives on the island; he goes into a cafe to hide from crazy people running around outside, and meets a blonde woman. They start talking. Turns out she wants him to take her with him to the outside. At this point I was thinking "This chick'll be a tag-on guide or something for Snake, what a cliched plot decision". Then, all the sudden, CRAZY PEOPLE BURST OUT OF THE FLOOR AND RIP HER DOWN AND KILL HER! How awesome! Snake hardly even tries helping her out, instead just running the fuck out of there. The movie is filled with these little surprises that sometimes succesfully manage to break action-movie cliches into pieces and replace them with original writing decisions. Also, the ending surprised me by being a rather multilayered and ambiguous-ending. It's something that you might think about after seeing it, and it completely came out of the blue to me as I never expected it coming. However, I should say that all these little things would be of no use if Snake Plissken wouldn't be in this movie. He makes it all worthwhile. First of all, Kurt Russell's performance is very good. He knows what the character is like at heart and manages to act out like he has a true, deep understanding of the character; he feels like he has been Snake his entire life instead of just the section of it that we witness within the film. But what makes him an even better character is his personality. The writing of Plissken is ingenious. He's built to be a true hardass, who, based on the ending, does have a heart too despite the tough exterior. His personality, from Kurt's performance to every line of dialogue he says, works in favour of the film tremendously.

And that's why it's sad that all the other characters are just side characters. They're all there to support Snake's character on his quest. They have cardboard-personalities that never change, and the bad guy is really pretty darn unmenacing. With a cast like this I was really expecting all the secondary characters to be atleast interesting, instead I almost yawned every time a new one was introduced since I knew they'd just pop in, say their lines, then go away. It feels like a waste when you have an actor like Lee Van Cleef and all he does is be mean throughout the movie without ever being really all that interesting. From one thing to another, there's still a few things I need to call good. The special effects (models, CGI) and the set design is all very good for the low budget Escape had. Sure, you can tell the CGI is CGI, but atleast it isn't used to simulate actual real-life things, but instead only in computer monitors for example. The small-scale models and blue-screening is very well done, and at a few points it actually had me fooled to the extent that I thought they really shot footage of a small plane landing on the WTC. Then I remembered the budget and laughed it off. The prisoner-torn New York also looks great throughout; taking lots of things from older apocalypse-movies, the set designers created a realistically grim New York; you can still feel that it's NY, but you also go "something really bad has happened here". I think that's good. One thing that wasn't so good though on the production-stage is the props. This movie has some really ridicilous props throughout, seriously. From Snake's enormous silenced SMG to a huge red presidential ball safety capsule (or something) to a car with chandeliers as decorations(!) this film really made me laugh a lot with the prop design, and with the serious tone of the movie, it isn't a good thing.

In the end, this movie would've been a nice treat, had it been handed to a different director. Carpenter is not a master of action, and it shows. Also, even though I didn't mention it much, like in Carpenter's movies usually, the score is fantastic... to listen to on it's own. Unfortunately it doesn't really create that much excitement or intensity during the action scenes. And as an action movie, the lack of intensity or sense thereof, is a minus.


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Majestic, humorous and fun to watch

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:34 (A review of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog)

Joss, Joss, Joss... Why must you make us nerds so happy? For years now, Joss Whedon has brought us joy with a stream of wonderful projects, starting with Buffy, and thereafter, Firefly. Now his latest masterpiece is a well-conceived, fun, satirical take on the superhero-genre. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a three-part "tv series" that was aired online for free to the residents of US. The first episode is Act I of the story, the second Act II and the third Act III obviously. As you might have guessed from the title, the series shows us the blog of Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), along with a lot of actual footage from his life. Dr. Horrible aspires to be supervillain, part of The Evil League Of Evil, but his nemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), a selfish asshole, tends to foil his plans every time he tries to do something evil. In his normal life, Horrible is Billy, a mild-mannered geeky guy who's hopelessly in love with Penny (Felicia Day). Finally Dr. Horrible sees his chance to become a member of EoE as he prepares his time freezing-ray, but then... Well, I won't spoil anything (what I described here is learned in the first 5 minutes of Act I).

Whedon has developed himself in many aspects since the first episode of Buffy, but the biggest thing I personally noticed in Sing-Along was that his writing has travelled lightyears in the last 10 years. Whereas with Buffy I didn't care that much for the characters until like 1½ seasons had passed, in this series I was cheering/booing certain characters by the middle of the second act. I'm a hard person to charm with characters, let alone in mere 20 minutes. The story also probably will have plenty of twists that you won't expect... Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I was one of the few surprised by how it ended, or perhaps at that point I was simply too involved with the events of the show itself to actually even briefly think of what might happen in the next scene. This Blog has a thing called immersion going for it, big time. Dr. Horrible should pull you in within the first act. If not, it might not be for you. You should also slap yourself if this is the case.

Now, I don't think I mentioned the second-best thing yet. See the part in the title that says Sing-Along? It's a goddamn musical. Not all of the dialogue is music, obviously, but the majority of events take place in elaborate musical numbers. Even though the show has a very low budget, Whedon directs with a certain amount of chaos and confidence combined into his shots so that most things look pretty damn action-filled even if in reality only one person is moving in the entire frame. Also, the music is very packed. The lyrics have a lot of content in 2-3 minute songs, and the biggest surprise is their delivery. I would've never imagined I would fully enjoy listening to Neil Patrick Harris singing, but by gawd, this miniseries totally makes me listen with joy as he sings about the sickness of mankind. Speaking of good old NPH, the man oozes charisma here. Every shot he's in, he feels mesmerizing. He becomes Dr. Horrible, and it's a joy to behold. All the other singers in the whole show are fantastic with their vocal delivery, and in the case of the comedic lines, the comedic timing. The musical side is primarily electric guitar, piano or synthesizer (I could be very wrong though since my tone ear isn't the best ever), and it sounds wonderful.

If I was to look for a bad thing in this entire charade, it would be Captain Hammer. Not so much the character, but a single scene in the third act, in which he has his very own song. Even though the lyrics are very suitable, it just feels boring, especially since Act II ends with a perfect song from Dr. Horrible. Hammer also has one problem; he isn't a bad guy per say. He isn't a villain, his aims are always good, but he just happens to be a complete dick. We symphatise more with Horrible, as we are supposed to, but fact and matter is that I never came to hate Captain Hammer simply because he just wants to do good. He's just a twat about how he does it. I guess I personally just have issues with the fact that we're supposed to root against a character who does nothing but good throughout the film. Also, as far as the bad sides of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog go, the ending is something that you might consider one. This story ends with a twist of sorts, and it literally is the last shot of the entire thing. It has left many to speculate what it means, and this might push some people off the whole story abit since I do understand if to certain individuals said ending might feel too "sophisticated" or out of place for a story as comedic and entertaining as this. I personally liked it, as it seemed a proper end to the spiral toward tragedy the story took in the third act.

Overall, this thing is definately worth a purchase (it's on sale via amazon.com or viewable via stream for free at Hulu.com for US residents or proxy users).


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A b-holiday classic

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:33 (A review of Gremlins)

Gremlins. Throw water on them, they give birth to new ones. Throw them into the sunlight, they die. Feed them after midnight, they turn into homicidal maniacs. Who the hell would want this as a pet? Apparently everyone, since this film was a box-office hit back in the day. There are hundreds of monster movies out there, and especially in the 80s these were pretty darn popular. Gremlins however stands separate from the rest with one clever trick; it takes apart cliches. Primarily those revolving around american suburbia and best of all, christmas. American movies especially seem to have problems when it comes to making christmas into a violent or offensive event, and Gremlins achieves just that through various methods. The best out of them is that it takes these wonderful cliched christmas setpieces and puts monsters into them, tearing them to pieces. It's fun to watch when the monsters destroy decorated trees and idyllic suburbian housing. All the characters are caricatyres from other comedies, and seeing them pitted against serious situations like a monster attack is also fun. There is one scene though where this whole thing goes too over-the-top if you ask me. I mean even though it's occasionally mean-spirited, Gremlins still mostly maintains this pretty fun and sweet athmosphere, but in one scene one of the characters talks of her traumas regarding a previous christmas, and it goes to the extent where it isn't funny to be heard, atleast not in a movie like this. Otherwise the humour in Gremlins rarely fails, delivering pretty steady laughs throughout. The writing is solid most of the time, but I've always wondered about one thing; One of the rules is "Never feed them after midnight." That's an odd rule. How is this determined? Is it midnight eastern standard time? When does the midnight end? At 6am? What if you're on a plane, and cross into a different timezone and then feed them when it'd be midnight in the timezone you just came from? What decides when you can't feed them? This is nitpicking though, I won't hold it against the movie, that rule just always made me wonder about it. Now, even though I'm meant to be reviewing the first part, I will say this about the sequel; the writing is where it went wrong. It was a collection of loose jokes revolving around the monsters, instead of circling a certain theme, like christmas or whatnot. It was just a monster movie in a skyscraper, nothing more and nothing less. The New Batch is still entertaining in it's own right, but I think that this is where it went completely wrong.

If the first thing that Gremlins excells at is the writing, then the second thing is definately the puppetry. All the animatronics, costumes and rubber dolls in here as the monsters is technically wonderful. Especially for someone like myself who adores old-fashioned puppetry this movie is a treat to the sore eyes. The facial expressions, the detailed textures; these monsters have it all. Sure, they all look alike except for the leader who has a mohawk (this movie was made in the 80s after all), but they're so well made I won't hold the monotone individual puppets against Gremlins. Otherwise, the set pieces, as I previously noted, are well replicated from idyllic suburban christmas comedies, and the prop department have also done a good job making wacky inventions we see on-screen every once in a while. Joe Dante does a very good job of maintaining a great pace for a popcorn flick and the cinematography looks quite alright for something that could be categorised as a B-movie according to some. The biggest downfall, even though it isn't such a big one after all, is the acting. The actors are mostly somewhat unknown film veterans or relative newcomers, and some do better and some do worse; Zach Galligan does a pretty good job as the main character, whereas his love interest, Phoebe Cates, does a pretty good job... in overacting her part every time she can. The rest of the cast is really mostly average, but I did get some kicks out of seeing a young Corey Feldman in a christmas tree-costume.

Gremlins is a very good movie to watch every once in a while and have some laughs. It even provides some "sophisticated laughs" which is something most wouldn't expect from a film like this, and the animatronics are a real godsend to look at. The real downfall is the acting, and the writing is flawed to an extent due to one, single horribly misplaced joke that should've been put into a movie like Very Bad Things or something. Still, I do recommend this one.


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Pixar makes a steady film that looses some steam

Posted : 14 years, 5 months ago on 26 October 2009 02:28 (A review of Up)

Ehh, well, it's better than Wall-E as a whole. The transition from our world to a realm of fiction is far smoother than in the aforementioned film, as it comes naturally and fluidly. The viewer hardly notices a transition at all when our main character goes up into the air. If anything this movie works as solid proof of why Pixar should only make short films, as the initial twenty minutes outdo the entire last hour of this movie. They're charming, original and most certainly very touching. Then after that it becomes your average fun to watch romp in the jungle with funny sidekicks and bizarre events. It isn't a bad film at this point but the charm is simply gone, only to return in brief dialogue or individual shots here and there. It's a shame that after all these years the company still struggles to keep the strings in their hands after the adorable set-up for the story. Still, as I've said, it is enjoyable even at it's worst. The voice acting is terrific and the annoying little kid is actually never that annoying. Up looses some of it's charm after an eventful and beautiful opening, but you know I don't think most people will be that shocked by it or even think of it as an incident too bad.


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