Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Spike, Spelunkers and Serpentine
I have, in the past, been a decent human being. I have tried not to be a charlatan, a scalawag, or an outright crumb-bum. That ends today, because I am about to commit an act of straight-up thievery.
Stewart Smith is the entertainment editor for a Texas paper (you can find his columns and reviews and such at www.tylerpaper.com), and recently he's begun a project that intrigues me. He's writing a very informative and entertaining blog called The Shelf (http://subspace.tumblr.com) in which he's writing about every single movie in his 500+ DVD collection, and he's doing so in alphabetical order. I don't have the patience for alphabetical order (I like the element of surprise), so while thieving his idea (told you!) I've numbered every title in my so-far 1766-movie collection, and plugged those numbers into a random number generator app on my phone. Like Stewart's "Shelf", these will be written pretty much however I feel like it. Some movies will inspire essays, others possibly only a single word. That being said, I'm
a talkative fellow so let's get started! Over the past week I've watched the first three movies that came up. They were:
#7. 25th Hour
Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing is one of my all-time favorite movies, a blistering portrait of New York that in over 25 years hasn't lost any of its power. It's a true masterpiece, and for quite some time, it also felt like a promise left unfulfilled. I like Spike Lee a great deal, and I've seen everything he's done. While there's much that's good and even great in his filmography, there was nothing as bold, original, and purely effective as Do The Right Thing. After missteps like Girl 6 and She Hate Me, I was afraid that maybe his heart just wasn't in it anymore. I needn't have worried, because 25th Hour finds a masterful filmmaker back at the top of his game.
The movie, released in 2002, is haunted by the specter of 9/11. It opens on footage of Ground Zero, accompanied by Terence Blanchard's mournful score. While the film isn't about 9/11 directly, it doesn't shy away from showing NYC as it was in the aftermath, nor does it shy away from the fear and rage that many New Yorkers were feeling at the time.
Edward Norton is Monty Brogan, a low-level drug dealer who is one day away from beginning a seven-year prison sentence. He spends his final night of freedom with his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson), his friends (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper) and his father (Brian Cox). Every performance is outstanding, and Norton is unforgettable in the lead.
The movie is melancholy through and through, but it never feels oppressive. The most famous scene (and rightly so) features Norton ranting into a bathroom mirror, his profane tirade leaving no ethnic stone unturned. It's reminiscent of a similar scene in Do The Right Thing, but it is entirely its own thing and works beautifully on several levels.
#396. The Descent Part 2
I hadn't seen this one before, and was pleasantly surprised. At first I was torn. One of the greatest strengths of the first movie was its all-female cast, and this movie doesn't have that. In exchange, it does offer Gavan O'Herlihy, a favorite character actor of mine since his days as a threequel superstar (he was the reverse-mohawked gang leader in Death Wish 3 and a drunken bully in Superman III...he's also the son of Dan O'Herlihy, the man who gave us Halloween III's Conal Cochran, proving superior threequelicity is in the genes).
The Descent was a smart, scary monster mash and while the sequel takes a bit of time to get going, once it does it proves itself a worthy follow up. Again, there are caves, there are creatures, and there's a borderline cartoonish amount of gore, but there are also solid scares and some real tension. There are moments that feel like a retread of the first, but not as many as you'd expect in a direct-to-video sequel (though there's an annoyingly cash-grabby setup for a third movie that leaves a bit of a bad taste after an otherwise decent flick). All things considered, it's a surprisingly fresh & scary creature feature.
#754. The In-Laws
I love this movie. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin play off of each other effortlessly, and no matter how many times I see it, it's always laugh-out-loud funny.
If you've seen the ill-advised, painfully unfunny remake with Michael Douglas & Albert Brooks (seriously, what the hell drew Brooks to such a boring and bland movie?) please don't let it dissuade you from giving the original a try. It's manic without being unbearable, and unabashedly, gleefully silly. It's also exactly what I needed after the downbeat double-bill that preceded it.
I'm looking forward to whatever this movie roulette system brings next...only 1763 to go!
Monday, April 9, 2012
Ch-ch-ch-changes and Nightmares
So I've decided to do things a little differently. Rather than keep with formal reviews, I'm gonna try to make things a little chattier around here, though the focus is still completely on movies.
I've found that I've watched a whole lotta movies lately that I just didn't have a tremendous amount to say about. I mean, why put more work into a review of Hellraiser: Revalations than anybody put into the execrable script? That being said, I'm still watching plenty of movies, and I'd like this to be a place to talk about them.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street another go. I saw it theatrically at the midnight show the night before it opened, and again on bluray at a Halloween party later that year. This time I watched it with "Maniacal Movie Mode" engaged, a bluray feature that allows access to deleted scenes, alternate takes, and behind the scenes footage while you watch the movie.
Didn't help.
Full disclosure, I think Wes Craven's original A Nightmare On Elm Street is fantastic. It's a terrifying concept (your dreams can, and probably will, kill you...don't fall asleep!) and while the movie is not without its flaws, it's a scary, smart, engaging story.
The remake, on the other hand (claw?), is a boring, ugly, lifeless exercise in loud jump-scares that create neither fear nor interest. Jackie Earle Haley is serviceable as crispy-skinned murder enthusiast Freddy Krueger, but he brings very little of the playful deviltry that Robert Englund originally brought to the role. I'm certainly not against the recasting of Freddy (Englund himself has gone on record several times saying that he's been Freddy long enough), but Haley is given virtually no character to play. It also doesn't help that the CGI-assisted make-up makes him look like nothing so much as a microwaved hamster in a hat.
There is one genuinely chilling moment in which Freddy is cackling over a victim and informing him that it takes the brain a few minutes to die after the body does, so "we got six more minutes to play". It's a great bit, but unfortunately it's surrounded by the rest of this godawful misfire.
They cover the beats of the original film, but they do so without anything organic to the story driving those beats. It's a remake that knows the words but not the music (and frankly it's somewhat fuzzy on the words).
Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara is bland, forgettable, and blandly forgettable as Nancy, a character who shares a first name and absolutely nothing else with the feisty heroine of the original film. Here, Nancy is our protagonist because....uh...well, we need a Nancy I guess. So here's a Nancy.
The other characters, such as they are, are a band of interchangeable mopey kids who may or may not have a connection to a deceased creepy dude who graduated first in his class in dream-murdering. It's very briefly introduced that the kids may have caused all this with a big fat lie, but what might have at least been an interesting wrinkle is dropped as fast as this movie will drop out of your memory banks.
One last thing...where the fuck are all the parents? There are a few great character actors completely wasted in thankless authority figure roles (Clancy Brown & Connie Britton most egregiously), but there isn't a single character in this movie with more than one parent at most. Is this a comment on the prevalence of single parent households in modern suburbia, or is it a lazy script that decided characters only need to exist to spout expository dialog and nothing else? The answer is simple: I don't care because this movie is the WORST.
I've found that I've watched a whole lotta movies lately that I just didn't have a tremendous amount to say about. I mean, why put more work into a review of Hellraiser: Revalations than anybody put into the execrable script? That being said, I'm still watching plenty of movies, and I'd like this to be a place to talk about them.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street another go. I saw it theatrically at the midnight show the night before it opened, and again on bluray at a Halloween party later that year. This time I watched it with "Maniacal Movie Mode" engaged, a bluray feature that allows access to deleted scenes, alternate takes, and behind the scenes footage while you watch the movie.
Didn't help.
Full disclosure, I think Wes Craven's original A Nightmare On Elm Street is fantastic. It's a terrifying concept (your dreams can, and probably will, kill you...don't fall asleep!) and while the movie is not without its flaws, it's a scary, smart, engaging story.
The remake, on the other hand (claw?), is a boring, ugly, lifeless exercise in loud jump-scares that create neither fear nor interest. Jackie Earle Haley is serviceable as crispy-skinned murder enthusiast Freddy Krueger, but he brings very little of the playful deviltry that Robert Englund originally brought to the role. I'm certainly not against the recasting of Freddy (Englund himself has gone on record several times saying that he's been Freddy long enough), but Haley is given virtually no character to play. It also doesn't help that the CGI-assisted make-up makes him look like nothing so much as a microwaved hamster in a hat.
There is one genuinely chilling moment in which Freddy is cackling over a victim and informing him that it takes the brain a few minutes to die after the body does, so "we got six more minutes to play". It's a great bit, but unfortunately it's surrounded by the rest of this godawful misfire.
They cover the beats of the original film, but they do so without anything organic to the story driving those beats. It's a remake that knows the words but not the music (and frankly it's somewhat fuzzy on the words).
Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara is bland, forgettable, and blandly forgettable as Nancy, a character who shares a first name and absolutely nothing else with the feisty heroine of the original film. Here, Nancy is our protagonist because....uh...well, we need a Nancy I guess. So here's a Nancy.
The other characters, such as they are, are a band of interchangeable mopey kids who may or may not have a connection to a deceased creepy dude who graduated first in his class in dream-murdering. It's very briefly introduced that the kids may have caused all this with a big fat lie, but what might have at least been an interesting wrinkle is dropped as fast as this movie will drop out of your memory banks.
One last thing...where the fuck are all the parents? There are a few great character actors completely wasted in thankless authority figure roles (Clancy Brown & Connie Britton most egregiously), but there isn't a single character in this movie with more than one parent at most. Is this a comment on the prevalence of single parent households in modern suburbia, or is it a lazy script that decided characters only need to exist to spout expository dialog and nothing else? The answer is simple: I don't care because this movie is the WORST.
Monday, January 23, 2012
"I know the law. The law doesn't know the streets."
Prince Of The City (1981)
****
Dir: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Lindsay Crouse, James Tolkan
MPAA: R
Sidney Lumet has made some of my all-time favorite movies (12 Angry Men and Deathtrap being particular standouts), and I was still stunned by how gripping and powerful this sprawling tale of police corruption was.
Treat Williams is Danny Ciello, a cop who, despite not being entirely on the side of the angels himself, is lured into a sting operation to curtail police corruption. He's in virtually every scene of a 167-minute movie featuring over 125 speaking roles, and he OWNS it. From his brash cockiness as the story unfolds to his rage and disillusionment as the operation drags on, he is mesmerizing, aided by a who's-who of versatile New York character actors.
This is a procedural in the truest sense. There aren't any shootouts or explosions, no over-the-top movie moments that remind you that oh yeah, you're watching a movie. Despite all the recognizable faces in the cast (mostly unknowns at the time, including Williams) the movie feels real, like if you touched the screen your hand would come back covered in authentic NYC grime.
Speaking of NYC, Lumet and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak (which I just spelled from memory, go me!) create a world that feels lived-in and foreboding, while also managing some truly beautiful shots of the city and its surrounding boroughs. The movie is hardly a travelogue, but it presents a New York now lost to gentrification, a place that is at times dangerous, alluring, and not just a little bit seedy.
If you haven't seen it, I couldn't give you a higher recommendation. It's a frank, sometimes brutal meditation on the nature of honesty that is thoroughly engaging all the way through to the bitter final line. It's also a master class in wringing tension out of scenes that show nothing but people talking. Don't be daunted by the epic length...epics don't get more intimate than this.
****
Dir: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Lindsay Crouse, James Tolkan
MPAA: R
Sidney Lumet has made some of my all-time favorite movies (12 Angry Men and Deathtrap being particular standouts), and I was still stunned by how gripping and powerful this sprawling tale of police corruption was.
Treat Williams is Danny Ciello, a cop who, despite not being entirely on the side of the angels himself, is lured into a sting operation to curtail police corruption. He's in virtually every scene of a 167-minute movie featuring over 125 speaking roles, and he OWNS it. From his brash cockiness as the story unfolds to his rage and disillusionment as the operation drags on, he is mesmerizing, aided by a who's-who of versatile New York character actors.
This is a procedural in the truest sense. There aren't any shootouts or explosions, no over-the-top movie moments that remind you that oh yeah, you're watching a movie. Despite all the recognizable faces in the cast (mostly unknowns at the time, including Williams) the movie feels real, like if you touched the screen your hand would come back covered in authentic NYC grime.
Speaking of NYC, Lumet and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak (which I just spelled from memory, go me!) create a world that feels lived-in and foreboding, while also managing some truly beautiful shots of the city and its surrounding boroughs. The movie is hardly a travelogue, but it presents a New York now lost to gentrification, a place that is at times dangerous, alluring, and not just a little bit seedy.
If you haven't seen it, I couldn't give you a higher recommendation. It's a frank, sometimes brutal meditation on the nature of honesty that is thoroughly engaging all the way through to the bitter final line. It's also a master class in wringing tension out of scenes that show nothing but people talking. Don't be daunted by the epic length...epics don't get more intimate than this.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
"The house always wins."
Hostel: Part III (2011)
**1/2
Dir: Scott Spiegel
Starring: Kip Pardue, Brian Hallisay, John Hensley
MPAA: Unrated
Great opening scene. I don't want to spoil anything, but the beginning of this latest chapter in the gruesome horror series does a pretty fantastic job of subverting your expectations while still staying true to the other movies. The whole movie actually has a few tricks up its sleeve that ultimately make it more satisfying than part 2, but it's still not a particularly great movie.
The action has moved from the Eastern Bloc to American soil, specifically Las Vegas, as a group of somewhat douchey young men get together for a bachelor party and run into the Elite Hunting Club, now using their Vegas environs to place bets on the victims (what they may say to beg for their lives, how long they may survive, etc.). It's novel, but by bringing the movie to the US it loses the "stranger in a strange land" sense of alienation that drove the other two movies.
Also, being the first in the series to go direct to DVD, the flick looks cheap. Of course that's to be expected, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a pilot for Hostel: The Series, which, for the record, is a show I would watch the ever lovin' shit out of.
This is Spiegel's second movie as director, and his first in over 10 years. The other was From Dusk Til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, another above-average DTV sequel. He still has a habit of employing distractingly showy POV shots, but he's much less reliant on them than he was in Dusk.
Budget limitations and odd directorial choices aside, this is a solid little movie. It's much tamer than the other two despite the meaningless "unrated" tag (since it was never theatrically released there was never a rated cut) but the kills are varied enough that it doesn't feel like a retread of things we've seen before. There are some truly clever twists that also keep things fresh, and all things considered it's definitely worth a watch, especially if you liked the others in the series.
**1/2
Dir: Scott Spiegel
Starring: Kip Pardue, Brian Hallisay, John Hensley
MPAA: Unrated
Great opening scene. I don't want to spoil anything, but the beginning of this latest chapter in the gruesome horror series does a pretty fantastic job of subverting your expectations while still staying true to the other movies. The whole movie actually has a few tricks up its sleeve that ultimately make it more satisfying than part 2, but it's still not a particularly great movie.
The action has moved from the Eastern Bloc to American soil, specifically Las Vegas, as a group of somewhat douchey young men get together for a bachelor party and run into the Elite Hunting Club, now using their Vegas environs to place bets on the victims (what they may say to beg for their lives, how long they may survive, etc.). It's novel, but by bringing the movie to the US it loses the "stranger in a strange land" sense of alienation that drove the other two movies.
Also, being the first in the series to go direct to DVD, the flick looks cheap. Of course that's to be expected, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a pilot for Hostel: The Series, which, for the record, is a show I would watch the ever lovin' shit out of.
This is Spiegel's second movie as director, and his first in over 10 years. The other was From Dusk Til Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, another above-average DTV sequel. He still has a habit of employing distractingly showy POV shots, but he's much less reliant on them than he was in Dusk.
Budget limitations and odd directorial choices aside, this is a solid little movie. It's much tamer than the other two despite the meaningless "unrated" tag (since it was never theatrically released there was never a rated cut) but the kills are varied enough that it doesn't feel like a retread of things we've seen before. There are some truly clever twists that also keep things fresh, and all things considered it's definitely worth a watch, especially if you liked the others in the series.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
"Would you like a Smint?"
Hostel: Part II (2007)
**
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
MPAA: R
After several promises by writer/director Roth that this would be that rare sequel that doesn't just retread the original, Hostel: Part II goes on to do exactly that. There are some interesting new wrinkles, and some nasty new setpieces (the Countess Bathory sequence in particular is a nauseating standout), but for the most part you're in for more of the same.
This time our leads are three art-school girls traveling through eastern Europe who are enticed into traveling to a familiar hostel due to promises of an exotic spa getaway. Since we've seen Hostel we know where this is headed, and soon they are captive and bloody.
There's a great scene when they are checking into the hostel and their passports are scanned and we follow the information as it's sent to the Elite Hunting Club members for bidding. It's positively chilling watching as people place their bids from cell phones and laptops while golfing, working, spending time with the grandkids, etc. This is easily the best thing about the movie, the increased focus on the club members. It's an unexpected change, and one that does a lot to help the sequel feel fresh.
MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD:
While I think this may be a bit less violent than the first movie, the murder scenes are still remarkably gruesome. The aforementioned Countess Bathory sequence is a Grand Guignol moment that is not only shocking for the content but also for Matarazzo's fearlessness...she is clearly truly suspended upside-down and naked for the scene (no stuntwoman here, as plenty of close-ups and multiple cast & crew interviews and commentaries prove), and she gives her all to the performance.
The other big shock moment in the movie involves a male character's genitalia cut off with bolt cutters (in full close-up, no less) and fed to a dog. The dude deserved it, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch without spending the rest of your life with your legs crossed.
I know I already gave a spoiler warning, but I gotta talk about the ending so here come EVEN MORE SPOILERY SPOILERS: our final girl escapes via the worst possible method for a movie like this: she buys her way out. That's it. She doesn't use her wits, or her inner strength, or her outer strength...she uses money. "Hey guy, I'd like to buy my way out of this slaughterhouse. I have more money than all your rich clients combined, here have some!"
Really?
Really. So...what's the message here, Eli? Horror movies get a lot of undeserved flack for being amoral, but one thing most of the best ones have is a final girl (and it's almost always a girl) who claws her way out of the movie alive through a combination of brains and brawn, proving the monster outmatched by her cunning and/or wiles. Not here, though. Our heroine saves her own ass through the power of her mighty checkbook. I just watched a man get his schwanz fed to a pack of dogs and that was the SECOND most nauseating thing about the climax of this movie.
END SPOILERS
While there was a lot to like about Hostel, I really don't think part II brought enough new to the table. There are shocks, and the leads are for the most part more likable than the leads from the first movie, but in the end it just felt too much like a trip I had already taken.
**
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips
MPAA: R
After several promises by writer/director Roth that this would be that rare sequel that doesn't just retread the original, Hostel: Part II goes on to do exactly that. There are some interesting new wrinkles, and some nasty new setpieces (the Countess Bathory sequence in particular is a nauseating standout), but for the most part you're in for more of the same.
This time our leads are three art-school girls traveling through eastern Europe who are enticed into traveling to a familiar hostel due to promises of an exotic spa getaway. Since we've seen Hostel we know where this is headed, and soon they are captive and bloody.
There's a great scene when they are checking into the hostel and their passports are scanned and we follow the information as it's sent to the Elite Hunting Club members for bidding. It's positively chilling watching as people place their bids from cell phones and laptops while golfing, working, spending time with the grandkids, etc. This is easily the best thing about the movie, the increased focus on the club members. It's an unexpected change, and one that does a lot to help the sequel feel fresh.
MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD:
While I think this may be a bit less violent than the first movie, the murder scenes are still remarkably gruesome. The aforementioned Countess Bathory sequence is a Grand Guignol moment that is not only shocking for the content but also for Matarazzo's fearlessness...she is clearly truly suspended upside-down and naked for the scene (no stuntwoman here, as plenty of close-ups and multiple cast & crew interviews and commentaries prove), and she gives her all to the performance.
The other big shock moment in the movie involves a male character's genitalia cut off with bolt cutters (in full close-up, no less) and fed to a dog. The dude deserved it, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch without spending the rest of your life with your legs crossed.
I know I already gave a spoiler warning, but I gotta talk about the ending so here come EVEN MORE SPOILERY SPOILERS: our final girl escapes via the worst possible method for a movie like this: she buys her way out. That's it. She doesn't use her wits, or her inner strength, or her outer strength...she uses money. "Hey guy, I'd like to buy my way out of this slaughterhouse. I have more money than all your rich clients combined, here have some!"
Really?
Really. So...what's the message here, Eli? Horror movies get a lot of undeserved flack for being amoral, but one thing most of the best ones have is a final girl (and it's almost always a girl) who claws her way out of the movie alive through a combination of brains and brawn, proving the monster outmatched by her cunning and/or wiles. Not here, though. Our heroine saves her own ass through the power of her mighty checkbook. I just watched a man get his schwanz fed to a pack of dogs and that was the SECOND most nauseating thing about the climax of this movie.
END SPOILERS
While there was a lot to like about Hostel, I really don't think part II brought enough new to the table. There are shocks, and the leads are for the most part more likable than the leads from the first movie, but in the end it just felt too much like a trip I had already taken.
"You could spend all your money in there."
Hostel (2005)
**1/2
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson
MPAA: R
Roth's sophomore feature (following the comic-horror goopfest Cabin Fever) follows a group of fratboy douchebags on their travels through Amsterdam, where they are promised debauchery beyond their capacity to imagine. For the first half-hour or so, that's exactly what they get...a hedonistic tour filled with sex, drugs, and more sex.
Lest you forget that this is Eli Roth behind the camera, they are soon headed to Slovakia on the promise of even greater bacchanalia, which of course leads to them getting tied to chairs and being gruesomely tortured and (in most cases) murdered. It seems there is a club that has its members pay top dollar to torture and murder unsuspecting tourists. They call themselves a "hunting club", but there doesn't seem to be much hunting involved as tourists are corralled and drugged by the objects of their desire at the titular hostel, then tied down for the wealthy club members to poke, prod, slice, burn, shoot, etc. as they see fit.
The movie toys with your expectations fairly well, as the character most would pick out as the lone survivor is offed fairly quickly (well...as quickly as a movie this sadistically queasy will allow). None of the three main guys are particularly likable, but you can't help rooting for them to escape because godDAMN that looks painful!
Speaking of which, let's talk a little about "torture porn", which is a term that detractors of movies like this or the Saw movies tend to throw around, as though the movies were just 90 minutes of people being tortured. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the movie isn't Spongebob Hostelpants (though don't you kinda want to see someone tie Spongebob to a chair and yank out those buck teeth with pliers? No? Just me? Moving on.) but it doesn't deserve the reputation it has as a wallow in artless depravity. The violence is graphic but effective, and it makes you squirm because that's exactly what it's setting out to do. There's some honest-to-god suspense in this movie, and it's pretty far from a wall-to-wall gorefest. If you like horror and don't mind if it's gruesome, this is definitely worth a look.
**1/2
Dir: Eli Roth
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson
MPAA: R
Roth's sophomore feature (following the comic-horror goopfest Cabin Fever) follows a group of fratboy douchebags on their travels through Amsterdam, where they are promised debauchery beyond their capacity to imagine. For the first half-hour or so, that's exactly what they get...a hedonistic tour filled with sex, drugs, and more sex.
Lest you forget that this is Eli Roth behind the camera, they are soon headed to Slovakia on the promise of even greater bacchanalia, which of course leads to them getting tied to chairs and being gruesomely tortured and (in most cases) murdered. It seems there is a club that has its members pay top dollar to torture and murder unsuspecting tourists. They call themselves a "hunting club", but there doesn't seem to be much hunting involved as tourists are corralled and drugged by the objects of their desire at the titular hostel, then tied down for the wealthy club members to poke, prod, slice, burn, shoot, etc. as they see fit.
The movie toys with your expectations fairly well, as the character most would pick out as the lone survivor is offed fairly quickly (well...as quickly as a movie this sadistically queasy will allow). None of the three main guys are particularly likable, but you can't help rooting for them to escape because godDAMN that looks painful!
Speaking of which, let's talk a little about "torture porn", which is a term that detractors of movies like this or the Saw movies tend to throw around, as though the movies were just 90 minutes of people being tortured. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the movie isn't Spongebob Hostelpants (though don't you kinda want to see someone tie Spongebob to a chair and yank out those buck teeth with pliers? No? Just me? Moving on.) but it doesn't deserve the reputation it has as a wallow in artless depravity. The violence is graphic but effective, and it makes you squirm because that's exactly what it's setting out to do. There's some honest-to-god suspense in this movie, and it's pretty far from a wall-to-wall gorefest. If you like horror and don't mind if it's gruesome, this is definitely worth a look.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
"Some lessons can't be taught, Elektra. They must be lived to be understood."
Elektra (2005)
*1/2
Dir: Rob Bowman
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Terence Stamp
MPAA: PG-13
First of all, let's talk about Daredevil for a minute. While I recognize that it's not a particularly good movie, I liked Daredevil. It's greatest flaw (and it had a whooooole lotta flaws) was that it tried to stuff many years worth of comic book stories into one 90-minute movie. It may not have been great, but it was ambitious and I gotta hand it to a movie that has ambition. There are worse things than your reach exceeding your grasp, and I can appreciate the enthusiasm that Daredevil was approached with by the filmmakers.
That being said, the spinoff Elektra has exactly the opposite problem. There's maybe enough material here to merit an hourlong (45 minutes without commercials) TV pilot, but nowhere near enough to support a 90+ minute movie.
Despite being dead at the end of Daredevil (uh...spoilers, I guess), Elektra Natchios is now alive and well (if it's established how much time has passed since DD, I missed it) and working as a shadowy government assassin (is there any other kind?). The opening scene shows promise, establishing her prowess as she offs a few generic mob dudes, but after that scene is finished the movie doesn't slow down so much as it screeches to a grinding halt.
It is established that Elektra has OCD because she lines up some fruit and she counts stuff. Why is this established? I have no idea, because absolutely nothing is done with it. It may have been a clever touch, it's gotta be difficult to be a mystical ninja assassin who has to make time to line up her fruit, and I'd probably enjoy a movie about an OCD ninja, but this movie has no follow-through.
I haven't said anything about the plot, because neither did any of the five credited writers (3 screenwriters, 2 "characters by"). There's a young girl and her dad, and they're in danger, and there are a metric shitload of evil ninjas, and there's a dude with tattoos that come to life, and there's a blind ninja master, and there's all sorts of comic booky mysticism, and it's all crushingly boring.
Garner is talented and beautiful, and she's a more than capable action movie lead, but she deserves a much better movie than this. There is no reason whatsoever that a movie with this many ninjas should be this plodding and lifeless.
Elektra Natchios came back from the dead. If only her movie could do the same.
*1/2
Dir: Rob Bowman
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Terence Stamp
MPAA: PG-13
First of all, let's talk about Daredevil for a minute. While I recognize that it's not a particularly good movie, I liked Daredevil. It's greatest flaw (and it had a whooooole lotta flaws) was that it tried to stuff many years worth of comic book stories into one 90-minute movie. It may not have been great, but it was ambitious and I gotta hand it to a movie that has ambition. There are worse things than your reach exceeding your grasp, and I can appreciate the enthusiasm that Daredevil was approached with by the filmmakers.
That being said, the spinoff Elektra has exactly the opposite problem. There's maybe enough material here to merit an hourlong (45 minutes without commercials) TV pilot, but nowhere near enough to support a 90+ minute movie.
Despite being dead at the end of Daredevil (uh...spoilers, I guess), Elektra Natchios is now alive and well (if it's established how much time has passed since DD, I missed it) and working as a shadowy government assassin (is there any other kind?). The opening scene shows promise, establishing her prowess as she offs a few generic mob dudes, but after that scene is finished the movie doesn't slow down so much as it screeches to a grinding halt.
It is established that Elektra has OCD because she lines up some fruit and she counts stuff. Why is this established? I have no idea, because absolutely nothing is done with it. It may have been a clever touch, it's gotta be difficult to be a mystical ninja assassin who has to make time to line up her fruit, and I'd probably enjoy a movie about an OCD ninja, but this movie has no follow-through.
I haven't said anything about the plot, because neither did any of the five credited writers (3 screenwriters, 2 "characters by"). There's a young girl and her dad, and they're in danger, and there are a metric shitload of evil ninjas, and there's a dude with tattoos that come to life, and there's a blind ninja master, and there's all sorts of comic booky mysticism, and it's all crushingly boring.
Garner is talented and beautiful, and she's a more than capable action movie lead, but she deserves a much better movie than this. There is no reason whatsoever that a movie with this many ninjas should be this plodding and lifeless.
Elektra Natchios came back from the dead. If only her movie could do the same.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)