“Say goodbye to your two best friends, and I don’t mean your pals in the Winnebago.”

In some ways looking at the Mel Brooks movies on my shelf has filled me with dread. Not because I don’t love the movies, but precisely because I do and I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a long, hard look at some of the earliest cinematic memories I’ve ever had. Okay, I'm done angsting about that, here’s 1987’s Spaceballs.



Plot
So a princess (and her robot) run away from her wedding ceremony only to be pursued by the henchmen of a villainous “empire.” Help comes from a shady freelancer and his nonhuman sidekick who rescue the princess (and her robot), find a mysterious mentor figure, and try to save the (well, a) world. In Space. Sure its mostly a 96 minute ripoff of Star Wars, but that is the point, after all.

Characters
Lone Starr: Bill Pullman is our hard travelin’ hero. Lone Starr is an orphan with a mysterious past, a smart mouth, mercenary attitude and a winged Winnebago named Eagle 5 that can fly in space. He gets involved in the rescue of the princess because he needs a lot of money to pay of a gangster named Pizza the Hutt (voiced by Dom DeLouise). Along the way he gets trained in the mystical power of The Schwartz and discovers the true nature of his parentage (which I won’t say since it’s technically a spoiler, but its also exactly what you think it is). Gets major bonus points for effectively combining Han and Luke into one character with a story arc that combines the best of both original characters (no unfortunate implications of Luke & Leia kissing, for example)

Princess Vespa: Daphne Zuniga. The rich, rather bratty princess of Druidia (insert Druish Princess joke). She gets the whole plot rolling, and the bulk of her arc is about falling in love with Lone Starr. She gets a badass moment with a machine gun, though.

Dark Helmet: Can you imagine anyone less menacing than Rick Moranis to fill the Darth Vader role? And that’s the point. Dark Helmet plays up the short guy jokes, wears a ridiculously oversized helmet (and a necktie) and has two modes: Faceplate down for “serious” Dark Helmet, faceplate up to show you just how much of a weenie the guy really is (and so Moranis can make funny faces). Dark Helmet gets a lot of screen time, and in lesser hands, could’ve become annoying. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

President Skroob: Mel Brooks himself as the crooked leader of Planet Spaceball. He’s squandered all of his planet’s air and has a plan to steal Planet Druidia’s to replace it. He’s the ineffectual boss that Dark Helmet has to suck up to, and gives Brooks plenty of moments to play a smarmy asshole.

Colonel Sandurz: The captain of Spaceball 1 and Dark Helmet’s slightly more competent lackey/sidekick. Plays the straight man to Dark Helmet’s funnyman, and does it well.

Dot Matrix: Voiced by Joan Rivers, imagine a Jewish female Threepio with roller skates on her feet and equipped with a virgin alarm (for the princess's protection, of course).

Yogurt: Take Yoda, now give him a Yiddish accent and have him played by Mel Brooks walking around on his knees saying things like “Spaceballs dah flamethrower!” Glorious. He’s the mentor figure that teaches Lone Starr the ways of the Schwartz. A small role (ba-dump-tsh) but a scene stealing one. He also has an army of little not-Jawas (the Dinks).

Barf: John Candy plays the half-man, half-dog mawg (he’s his own best friend). The loyal copilot of the Eagle 5, he’s the funnyman to Lone Starr’s straight man role. My pick for badass of the film, since not only does he get shit done, he also gets some of the best retorts and puns. Also, he’s Chewbacca but capable of speech, and has a tail that has all kinds of adventures.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
When you think of Mel Brooks directing, you don’t really think of the compositions, but watching Spaceballs again, I never fully realized how competent he is as a director before. Brooks has a great eye for visual narration, and a lot of the scenes here are really damn effective. For example, on the desert planet, Lone Starr & Barf ditch an oversized hair dryer to save weight. The shot of them walking away from it, extracted from the comedy of the scene, is just great: a close up of the dryer and looking at the characters walking away into the desert. When you take into account the context, it becomes hilarious. And that’s the thing, Brooks’ eye for directing is good, but his eye for visual comedy is outstanding, so much so that the visuals get absorbed into the absurdity of what’s going on, forming a slurry of funny that’s easy on the eyes, which is a pretentious way of saying “yeah, he’s good.”

A special note has to be made of the visual effects. Being a sci-fi movie, it requires spaceships, aliens and lasers. It helps the comedy that the effects are played straight. The spaceships don’t have obvious strings attached, the aliens, while few, are fairly well realized with makeup, and the lasers look like how movie lasers should. Sure, they’re standing on the shoulders of giants (the Star Wars trilogy), but the effects crew delivers a solidly plausible feel to the visuals. The one really great effect is the transformation of Spaceball 1 into Mega Maid, which starts off with you not quite sure what the ship is doing, to the awesomeness of realizing that its transforming, to the joke of realizing what its transformed into, and its played completely straight.

Writing
Written by Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham, the script packs a lot of jokes into the running time. Some of the jokes kind of fall flat, or zoom overhead (as a kid I never got the Kafka bit), but the majority of them do stick. Jewish references abound, but it’s a Mel Brooks film, so that’s to be expected. The dialog is snappy, the pacing is really fast, and you know what, for a PG rated movie, they sure say “shit” a lot. Also, the fourth wall is not simply broken, but dynamited, bulldozed and left completely fallow. Eminently quotable.

Sound
The sound effects work well, but the score by Jack Hayes adds a brilliant level of mock-epic gravitas to the action on screen, especially in the overly long view of Spaceball 1 after the opening credits. The fanfare also works quite nicely as a light, heroic, slightly goofy theme.

Conclusion
Simply calling Spaceballs a Star Wars parody sells it short. It’s a sci-fi parody with an emphasis on Star Wars for the plot and main characters, but throws Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Alien and more that I can’t remember into the mix. The movie’s light, quotable and above all, enjoyable, all the earmarks of an affectionate parody. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’m surprised. Go and fix that. I’ll wait.

“I mean, I’ve waited my whole life to feel this miserable.”

On the surface, 2005’s Hitch, directed by Andy Tennant, sounds like a standard run-of-the mill Romantic Comedy. Guy & Girl meet, verbally spar, then get together. I know I looked at it way back when, but in the ensuing years, and my current quest to get a better look at the nuts & bolts of cinematic storytelling, back we go.



Plot
It’s a Romantic Comedy with two plots. The main plot centers around a man who has become very successful with women in general and now hires himself out as a consultant to men who are hopeless cases so that they don’t make the same mistakes that he’s made. He ends up falling for a woman who is so bitter and disillusioned about relationships. The second plot is about his latest client, a hopeless schlub of an accountant who is in love with one of the wealthiest, most glamorous women in New York. Our hero takes up this fellow’s request because he likes the challenge of the idea.

Characters
Alex “Hitch” Hitchens: Our hero is the perpetually charismatic Will Smith. No, seriously. Always charismatic in this film, which is good, since he’s got the most screen time. Hitch is cocky, funny, well dressed, successful and basically an idealized male. Sure, he’s kind of a marty-stu since he’s pretty much always right, but its kind of handled all right. He’s not all powerful, he just knows a lot about how men & women interact with each other, knowledge that he paid a painful price for in the past. Now operating as an underground consultant for men who have hopeless cases, he drifts amiably through New York as an urban legend. Which is a fantastic premise for a character. He’s the suave kind of badass in this film. Of course, things start to unravel when he finally starts falling in love with a woman himself…

Sara Melas: Eva Mendes plays a very attractive, but very standoffish gossip columnist. Her major defining trait is her complete dislike of relationships and distrust of men. The movie puts her and Hitch onto a collision course, and their first meeting is great; he plays it cool and leaves after introducing himself and analyzing her character. He persists eventually, and the two end up hitting it off, but a minor character arc interrupts their relationship, and she does something that pretty much destroys Hitch’s career. Normally, this would be a deal breaker, but its not, which kind of took me out of the movie near the end.

Albert Brennaman: Kevin James is our hopeless case. A chubby, asthmatic, shy accountant who is in love with the wealthy socialite Allegra Cole. His whole initial purpose is to be a “challenge client” to Hitch, a guy so out of his normal league that he would stand no chance without help. As Hitch works his magic on Albert, a relationship with Allegra does seem to become possible, but the third act twist threatens everything that Albert’s come so far to achieve. The bulk of the movie’s comedy comes from Hitch coaching Albert, and James pulls in a pretty good performance as the nervous nelly of an accountant while still making him likable.

Allegra Cole: The object of Albert’s affections, Allegra is a fabulously wealthy, and, as Albert discovers, a really nice gal who rather likes his goofy charms. Their relationship gets off the ground rather well, until the third act twist, but then gets back on track.

Casey: Sara’s best friend and the subject of a minor plotline that leads to the third act twist. She’s the kind of girl that the guys Hitch coaches seek out, except she always seems to run into assholes that take advantage of her. Which is a shame, since she is fiiiiine.

Vance Munson: The asshole type of guy that Hitch does not want getting the girls. Has a chance encounter with Hitch that leads to the third act twist. Also happens to be played by the guy from Burn Notice.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
The framing, use of steadi cam, and lighting are all very well done. The way New York is presented, particularly at night, makes it nice and inviting. Its obvious a professional is behind the camera and in the editing room. The only problem I had was that some of the scenes seemed like gratuitous advertising. For example, the whole jet ski scene felt a little too long.

Writing
Kevin Bisch, the writer, does a very good job of blending physical comedy with dialog comedy. There are genuinely amusing moments, the occasional serious moments, and the strongest characterization comes together for Hitch himself. I did however, feel that the movie felt a little too long at 118 minutes. The inevitable split between Hitch and Sara felt like just that: too inevitable. It’s a Romantic Comedy, so you know its coming, because its always coming. This then leads to the third act twist which, when a happy ending is required by the nature of the movie, can feel a little forced (as it does here). It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it does hurt it.

Sound
The soundtrack is very, very good. Mixing very familiar soul songs with hip-hop, club music, etc leads to an urbane, dare I say “hip” feel to the proceedings.

Conclusion
Hitch is certainly not a waste of your viewing time. Polished and well made, it delivers some fun scenes and watching Will Smith as a “date doctor” doesn’t get old. Still, by the end of the film, it will feel a tad too long. Overall though, yeah, I’d recommend it.

“The farmers say they come with the mist.”

As if there was any other movie that I could use for my thirteenth movie? John McTiernen’s 1999 Viking action flick starring Antonio Banderas, The 13th Warrior.



Plot
It’s The Seven Samurai meets Beowulf, basically. A poet is essentially banished from Bagdad for falling in love with a powerful man’s wife, becomes an ambassador to the Northmen, and is recruited (because of an oracle) to join twelve Viking warriors to stop…something that has besieged a lord’s realm and started killing the people. ADVENTURE! follows.

Characters
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Antonio Banderas plays the Arab poet sent away from Bagdad for making googly-eyes at the wrong wife. He spends the rest of the movie as our point-of-view character and the team’s official fish out of water, as the movie inserts various culture clash jokes. Learns how to man-up and become a warrior, gets drunk on mead and gets laid. He also ends up teaching the leader, Buliwyf, how to read/write a little and provides frequent insights/answers/noticing of things that the others sometimes miss. The only problem I have with him is that Banderas basically whispers all of his lines loudly (you’d have to see the movie itself to understand)

Buliwyf: A Viking prince and the leader of the crew of badasses sent to solve some guy named Hrothgar’s problem with the Wendol. Despite being the leader, he doesn’t get very chummy with Ahmed and the two don’t have many scenes together. He is clearly a badass though, because he wears anachronistic plate armor and doesn’t have to say much to get the audience’s attention. He merely stares at something and by Odin, you look.

The Wendol: So instead of a large troll-like creature, we get a large, cannibalistic primitive cave-dwelling society that likes face-paint and dressing up like bears. Its such an insane take on Grendel that I love it. There are two leaders of the Wendol, Mother Wendol, a crazy-eyed witch-like character covered in mud that lives deep underground, and the, for lack of a better word, captain, who is the war chief who “wears the horns of power.” They’re savage, cunning, and like taking heads, so they’re a perfect army of human monsters for our heroes to chop their way through.

Edgtho the Silent: He’s the Viking who dresses in all black and has superhuman senses. He can smell the perfume of an approaching rider, can tell when a mist is coming in, those sorts of things. He also makes use of a zipline at one point, which makes him like a ninja Viking. This is suitably awesome.

Herger the Joyous: The words “heroic sociopath” spring forward when thinking about Herger. He’s the first Viking to take Ahmed under his wing, showing him the ropes, encouraging him to acts of bravery. Not only that, but by modern standards, the character would be clinically insane. Literally laughing in the face of danger, Herger is fully committed to being a warrior, and easily gets the best lines of the movie in his banter with Ahmed. He is not only funny, but competent, quick, can speak several languages. Herger is my example of a hilarious badass thriving in an action movie, and my pick for Badass of the Movie.

Others: Omar Sharif has a small role in the beginning as Ahmed’s mentor/friend who helps introduce him to the Vikings. The rest of the 13 Warriors don’t really get a whole lot of characterization and/or development time, but more on that later.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
I like what McKiernan (and Chrichton himself) shot for this movie. The locations feel suitably Scandinavian territory, but it was shot in British Columbia apparently. The mood is urgent when necessary, foreboding when required, and things are done quite well. The effects are rooted in the makeup and practical effects, and there’s quite a bit of gore when they warriors investigate a cabin in the woods attacked by the Wendol. Indeed, one of the bodies hanging from the ceiling seems like a Predator reference, which makes sense since McTiernan directed that movie as well.

Now, being an action movie, how’s the action? The first fight, when the warriors encounter the Wendol for the first time, is mostly dark and kind of hard to figure out everything that’s going on. The first major assault on the town is amazingly well done, the duel between Herger and some guy named Angus is fantastic, the assault on the Wendol cave is pretty good, and I have mixed feelings about the last battle. Its shot in the rain and mostly in slow motion. Now, I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere down the line, I started to get fed up with slow-motion final battle scenes. I don’t fault the movie for doing it, since I like the last fight for being suitably epic, but the slow-mo does nothing for me anymore.

Sadly, from what I’ve read on IMDB, the movie was both savagely edited down by the studio and then shelved for two years before being released. That makes me sad, because the movie that we have now is not the one that Chrichton and McTiernan wanted to show us. The editing chop job shows through in most of the character arcs for the lesser Vikings. Most of them only get a few lines, despite each having a different look and attitude. The one with the facial tattoos, Skeld the Superstitious, looks like had an arc where he went from being hostile to Ahmed to getting along fine that is missing from the final cut. Even Buliwyf seems shortchanged for character growth. I would be highly interested in a director’s cut if it were ever made available.

WritingBased on a Michael Crichton novel that I’ve been meaning to find and read, but haven’t yet. Again, I think the take on Beowulf is rather novel (no pun intended). I understand the “edited to pieces” thing, but in all, it does move very briskly. What the writing does most effectively, is capture a genuinely “Viking” spirit. It doesn’t try to deconstruct a proud warrior people, it simply presents a proud warrior people. It doesn’t try to explain “why the Vikings kill everything” or “why the Wendol attack the village” or give any of those other anachronistically “modern” angst. The 13 Warriors have a job to do, and there is no question that it can’t be solved by Viking violence. This isn’t to say that they’re completely uncivilized brutes like the Wendol. The historical Vikings had a complex society and way of doing things, but life was difficult and violence was a part of it. You’ll understand what I mean when we get to other movies set in this time period. Its refreshingly anti-modern, and I tip my hat to William Wisher and Warren Lewis for delivering something unapologetically “Viking”

Sound
Jerry Goldsmith delivers an orchestral score that is bombastic and epic, but also throws in Arabic touches, since Ahmed’s the main character. That’s a nice addition, but really, the combination of martial drumbeats and French horns makes for some great asskicking ADVENTURE! music.

Conclusion
The 13th Warrior is enormously entertaining 90 minutes of Viking goodness and I will shout loudly at anyone who disagrees until they submit to my opinion (which is obviously the right one). The historian in me sighs and dies a little bit each time I see it, but the immature inner child pumps his fist during every fight. Hell yes do I recommend this distilled sampling of awesomesauce while simultaneously hoping for a director’s cut somewhere down the road.

“We have such sights to show you!”

What could possibly be a better way to follow up an imaginative and charming children’s movie like The NeverEnding Story than with Clive Barker’s 1987 flick Hellraiser?



Plot
There is a box, rumored to be a gateway to both pleasure and pain, that a man purchases and eventually finds a way to open. Things end badly for him. Some time later, his brother and his wife (the brother's wife, not the kinky guy's) move into our delinquent’s house and trigger his rather painful gradual resurrection. Determined to get away from the things that did this to him, our reanimated fellow enlists the aid of his brother’s wife, who has a history with him, to finish up the “fleshing out process”

Characters
Frank: Frank spends most of the movie without skin. At the beginning, he buys the mysterious Lament Configuration Puzzle Box, solves it, and is treated to a world of hurt by creatures called the Cenobites. A chance accident by his brother Larry causes some blood to drop onto the floor of the attic, triggering Frank’s incredibly graphic reassembly. Frank really, really doesn’t want to be reunited with the Cenobites, so he hides out in the attic for a while, eventually reconnecting with Julia, Larry’s 2nd wife. Frank & Julia had a thing going on when Frank was still desirable, and Frankie boy plays on that to get Julia to help him out.

Julia: As stated, Larry’s wife, Frank’s lover. She’s not a particularly nice lady, and is usually very reserved through the film (except where Frank is concerned) A lot of the movie is about her descent into depravity as she murders random businessmen that she lures to the house so Frank can “nom nom nom” on them to reconstitute his innards.

Larry: Larry is a poor schlub that has no idea what is going on during the movie. He’s devoted to (read: whipped by) his wife and is a wuss around his own blood.

Kirsty: Our heroine, Larry’s daughter. She kind of senses something amiss in her father’s house, but eventually stumbles upon Frank and the puzzle box at the end of the second act. She doesn’t take her uncle’s Slim Goodbody impression well and runs away, opens the puzzle box and meets the Cenobites herself. She doesn’t take that well either.

Lead Cenobite/Pinhead: A bald fellow with pins stuck into his head and a wearing a long leather jacket-like thing with open spaces for body mutilation, because that’s how he rolls. Pinhead is clearly a sinister figure in the movie, a villain that the normal villain (Frank) fears, but he’s rather vague about his own nature, saying that the cenobites are angels to some, demons to others. Obviously, he doesn’t have to explain himself to the mortals, but it just kind of gets tossed out there. He is quite the badass because he’s got the highest profile of the Cenobites (which is an actual word meaning “members of a religious convent or community” according to dictionary.com).
Cenobite Roll call: Butterball Cenobite, a tubby, silent dude who wears his sunglasses at night so he can, so he can. The imaginatively named Female Cenobite, who is exactly what her name is; a female with various metal things stuck into her, and an opened up neck. She’s pretty much Pinhead’s lieutenant and is the only other Cenobite to have a speaking part. Last, is the Chatterer Cenobite, who’s my Badass of the movie. He’s freaky looking, having no eyes to speak of and a madly distorted mouth that keeps moving like those chattering teeth. I know it may be blasphemy to give him the nod over Pinhead, but look at it this way: Pinhead mostly stands around, looks mean and talks. Chatterer is his go-to guy, like throwing chains at escaping people and shoving his fingers into Kirstey’s mouth to get her to shut up. Chatterer gets shit done.

There’s also a Derelict/Hobo in the film with crazy eyes. He stops into the pet shop that Kirsty works in to, uh, sample some of the merchandise.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)Taking into consideration the 1987 nature of the film, the effects are overall extraordinary. The Cenobite costumes are freaky and disturbing, but I have to admit, Frank as the Visible Man is pretty kickass. His entire transformation from gooey ribcage to ligament-connected bones to musculature over a skeleton is really outstanding, both for the time it was made and even for the modern world. Sadly, some of the effects, like the Hallway monster and the dracolich are less well realized (okay, fine they’re cheesy)

An interesting thing that Barker does for the film is that he doesn’t really go for the jump scares. He mostly implies or straightforwardly shows the bad stuff going down, basking in the goriness of his mad creations. There is one jump scare near the end of the movie that does work quite nicely, and also happens to be hilariously awesome in its dénouement, and that’s about it. He gives you enough visuals to stimulate the mind to fill in the blanks about what kind of nastiness is implied.

As far as specific shots, the shots focusing on the puzzle box sitting sinisterly on a table spring to mind and Frank’s early stages of rebirth, and overall the directing was suitably atmospheric for a movie about bad things who cause bad things to happen to people. However, there was one minor plot thread that got completely overlooked at the end (involving the last cenobite)

WritingI am noticing a trend in the two Clive Barker related movies I’ve seen so far. 1) The man loves him some meat hooks. 2) Dialog in the movies (don’t know about his published stories) is serviceable but often nothing that sticks in the mind: there’s no real groaners or outright bad lines, but not a lot that’s truly memorable. 3) He really seems to go for higher concept creepiness. At its base level, this movie is about an evil Rubik’s Cube that summons monsters that tear you up. It’s a little bit silly when you think of it that way, and I think it’s a testament to Barker’s follow through that it becomes about more than just that. The movie’s about sensuality, about how the unbridled desire for sensual experience can get a lot of people hurt. Frank and Julia are two people who honestly can’t restrain their desires. Frank got his hands on the box because he wanted to experience the pleasures it promised. He wants his body back because he wants to continue experiencing the pleasures of life. The movie aspires to be a bit more than just a cheap thrill spattered in viscera, and I can respect Clive Barker for that.

Sound
The score was atmospheric, but it remained subservient to everything else on screen. The sound effects were also suitable, but the only thing I can truly remember is the squeaking of the rats throughout the film. This is neither bad nor good.

Conclusion
I’m rather glad I finally saw this movie. Pinhead’s a common enough image in popular culture, and there are apparently eight of these Hellraiser movies made (along with the inevitable franchise decay). Hellraiser gave my imagination a little bit of a tickle, as well as impressing me with the ambition of its effects. I doubt I’d run out and buy it for my shelf, but it was not a waste of my time.

“To the winch, wench.”

There were a lot of ambitious children’s movies made in the 1980s. I suppose the confluence of special effects advancements, the home video market and a large number of directors/producers (Spielberg, Lucas, Henson, etc) willing to push the visual storytelling medium forward for a family audience. The market was there and there was no shortage of people to try and fill demand. Based on German author Michael Ende’s book of the same name, 1984’s The NeverEnding Story is just such an attempt to tell a visually impressive kids’ film.



Plot
The movie has two plots that intertwine. The framing narrative is about Bastian, a cowardly nerdy kid who’s mom died some time in the recent past who hides out in a bookstore to escape some bullies. He ends up stealing a book and holing up inside the school attic to read it.

The plot of the book within the story is pretty high concept. In the land of Fantasia, a strange thing is happening. Everything is being consumed/replaced/nullified by Nothing. It’s hard to explain without examples. Say for instance there’s a lush forest. Instead of being leveled or replaced with a hole, it is replaced with absolute nothingness, formless void. Yeah, high concept stuff. Anyway, the Child-Like Empress who is, for lack of a better word, the goddess of Fantasia, is sick and dying and if a cure isn’t found, then the Nothing will consume everything and that would be a very bad thing, so a young hero must go on an ADVENTURE! to save the day.

And then the two plots converge.

Characters
Bastian: Bastian starts off as a little weenie. He’s a damaged goods character, clearly bothered by the death of his mother (understandably) and doesn’t have a good relationship with his dad. Bastian’s arc is all about finding self-worth and confidence. This is triggered by stealing a book from an old man and running away from classes and home to read it, this securing his place as a juvenile delinquent. Wait a minute…

Atreyu: A young member of a tribe of hunters, he is the designated Chosen One to go on the ADVENTURE! Basically, he’s a Ranger in the D&D sense of the word, except the caveat for his quest is that he can’t bring any weapons, so he has to go around asking people “what can cure the Empress?” Atreyu gains badass points for calling out Bastian on his bullshit (like I said, the plot goes high concept)

Falkor: A Luck Dragon, which looks like a Chinese serpentine dragon with a dog-like head and fur mixed in with scales. Falkor is both a sidekick and a trusty steed to Atreyu. He comes off a little more laid back than he should, but I think that’s because of the limitations of the puppet. Has no arc.

The Child-Like Empress: She doesn’t show up until the end of the movie, but everything is about her. She’ a weird figure, omnipotently-powerful but vulnerable, and is a haunting presence in the film.

G’Mork: A giant wolf that serves the Nothing, well, rather the thing behind the Nothing (it doesn’t really get well explained). Anyway, G’mork is eeeeeeeeviiiiillllll and is after Atreyu, but doesn’t get a whole lot to do in the film.

Engywook and Urgl: Two gnomes, Engywook, the husband, is a scientist, and Urgl is a witch/medicine woman. They are the comic-relief bickering couple that help break some of the tension mid-movie, and crazy fun to watch.

The Rock Biter: “They look like good, strong hands, don’t they?” Well, don’t they?? A very minor character in the book, he gets expanded upon to deliver a late-movie scene of pathos that’s pretty well done. Also, he rides a giant, edible (to him) stone bicycle, which is hilarious and awesome when you think about it.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Wolfgang Peterson is a high profile director. This movie definitely helps show why. Filmed in Germany, it has to achieve two different looks. One is the normal world of Bastian’s and the other is the wildly fantastical Fantasia (Fantastica in the book) The normal world scenes are fewer in number, but generally well done, including the attic set that Bastian holes up in. The Fantasia stuff just lets the movie go nuts, with it trying to display all manner of weird creatures and environments. The best shots in the movie are in Fantasia scenes, and really convey the whole “this is not earth” aspect (such as the long-shot outside the Empress’ chambers near the beginning). Lighting and the use of color are key to achieving this.

As a side note, the one scene I remember from my first viewing long, long ago was the part at the sphinx gate where they vaporized the guy in armor. That scared the shit out of me as a kid and stuck in my mind for years. Bravo, Mr. Peterson.

What’s most impressive is the sheer amount of physical effects used in the film. This is the pre-digital age we’re talking about here, so things have to be accomplished with camera tricks, makeup and a big honkin’ luck dragon puppet. Two of the three elements have aged well over time. The camera tricks, like putting Atreyu next to the gnomes, are still solid, and the makeup effects, like the night-hob, are bloody amazing. Sadly, for animatronic stuff like Falkor, G’mork, and even the Rock Biter, the range of expression for the characters is rather limited and the mouths don’t synch up with the voice acting. A slight disappointment in today’s world, but it is very hard to fault the past for being the past. Instead, I applaud their ambition.

Writing
Having read the book, I can tell you that it is very, very good. That said, the movie concerns itself with about half of the book’s events (not even, since a lot has to be cut to make a 92 minute film. However, the adaptation is solidly done, and what remains is pretty good. So Bastian’s not a chubby kid in the film, but that’s not an issue in the movie anyway. The pacing of the movie is very rapid, and things move along quite nicely. The only problem is that the villain, G’mork, doesn’t get a lot of development or screen time, so he doesn’t really feel that dangerous.

The film also plays around with the fourth wall (as the book does) and is rather surprising in that it succeeds in playing it mostly straight. Its not a joke when the fourth wall gets broken, its integral to the plot of the story itself. That alone is brilliantly handled writing.

Sound
The sound effects are very, very good. When the rock-biter eats rocks, the foley work on it sounds appropriate.

The music is a hybrid of orchestration and synthesizers that hasn’t exactly aged well. The Falkor Flying Montage Music is pretty good though. The score was composed by Klaus Doldinger and Giorgio Moroder, but the theme song is performed by 80’s pop singer Limahl (from Kajagoogoo!). It is cheesy, 80’s pop, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about that.

Conclusion
There were two more NeverEnding Story movies made, and from what I gather, were cases of diminishing returns and I have yet to see them. The first one though, stands up to general scrutiny quite nicely. It doesn’t insult the intelligence of the audience, so that a 26 year old male can appreciate it without irony. Considering the limitations of the time, it is very well done, and in our modern age, the occasional misses of the effects just add to its charm, because the writing is solid and the story is brilliantly unique. I hear the sequel (very loosely) follows the 2nd half of the book, and the third, while awful, has Jack Black in it.

But that’s a take for another time…

“I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.”

Every once in a while, I like to expose myself to the Oscar-level drama films. Stuff that is generally accepted as having a message, and is about something important. It helps me justify that impulse monocle purchase of a few years ago, because I’m classy. Don’t know why I started that off as a lead in to saying that I saw 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption for the first time recently. Going in, I knew two things: it was based on a Stephen King story, and it was about prison.



Plot
Well, its definitely about prison. Shawshank Reformatory, to be exact. A young New England banker is sentenced to life in Shawshank for the murder of his wife. He spends the next twenty years adjusting to life on the inside, interacting with the other inmates and changing peoples’ lives. Oh yeah, and it’s a period film that takes place over several decades (it is 142 minutes long)

CharactersAndy Dufresne: Our hero, played by Tim Robbins. A whiz with money, he endures his prison term with stoicism, confident in his innocence. He starts up little hobbies, like carving a chess set, or setting up a library for the inmates, or helping the guards with their income tax forms, or trying to avoid prison sodomy. Andy’s whole arc is about how a guy like him can not only survive in prison, but also take advantage of things so as to more or less thrive. He’s a persistent, doggedly patient man, and seems determined to bring a little culture into the big house. Of course, there’s more to his serene patience than he lets on, and by the end of the film, you realize just how much of a magnificent bastard of an intellectual badass he is.

“Red” Redding: Morgan Freeman is the narrator, a long-time resident of Shawshank who’s got quite a successful smuggling racket going on, providing goods at negotiable rates. He’s sly and knows how life is on the inside, and eventually becomes Andy’s best friend. He actually gets a very real character arc as Andy keeps prodding him to feel hope.

Warden Norton: The (generally) soft spoken warden of Shawshank who says “Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me.” He’s a quietly threatening presence, but favorable to those on his good side. He and Andy get an interesting dynamic going when he discovers Dufresne is quite the number cruncher, but near the end of the movie, the warden gets into a weird twist where he suddenly becomes truly eeeeeeviiiiilll for no clear reason. He was a hardass before, but he becomes a real asshole, and I never picked up on “why” exactly.

Captain Hadley: Warden Norton’s dragon (look it up on tvtropes), he’s the muscle of the guards, a balled up fist in a metal gauntlet holding a granite fist broken off of a very large statue. He’s a mean bastard who’s not above beating the shit out of the inmates when they get out of line, but he can be reasoned with, as Andy finds out. This leads to a hilariously badass moment when he confronts an inmate named Boggs in his cell. Interestingly enough, he’s played by Clancy Brown, a veteran voice actor and the man behind the Superman: The Animated Series’ Lex Luthor.

Tommy: A young delinquent with a small role, he has an arc where he gets taken in under Andy’s wing so he can study for the GED exam. He’s a likable guy but not in the movie for long.

Brooks: An “institutionalized” man and the guy who ran the prison library when Andy got there. His major arc was the sad tale of his life after being released from prison and unable to adjust to life on the outside.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Filmed on location at the Mansfield Reformatory and other places in Ohio, director Frank Darabont did an excellent job capturing not only the grim mood of prison, but also the period feel. Hell, watching it, I thought the movie was made back in the 80s and not the early 90s. In terms of fantastic shots, the one iconic shot of Andy in the rain that gets used for every clip about the movie stands out. The context of that is, of course, spoilerific, but it’s a great moment.

The pacing of the film is slow, which is understandable, considering the length of time Andy spends there. The payoff near the end is completely worth the wait, though I have to admit I was getting a little antsy in places wishing the plot would stop shuffling its feet.

Writing
Based on a Stephen King short story and adapted by veteran scriptwriter (and director) Frank Darabont. Both of those men can write very, very well. In a drama, characterization is the crux of the story, and it abounds in spades. Just about anybody with an important supporting role gets some kind of arc, and the overall story gently nudges the audience into thinking that hope isn’t really such a bad thing. It could have been shoved down the audience’s throat, but the film doesn’t really get hamfisted about it very often. I appreciate its respect for my intelligence. Oh yes, and the dialog is much sharper and wittier than I expected.

Then there is the payoff, which is so brilliantly set up and perfectly well-earned by Andy that you can’t help but laugh all the way through it. However, and this is entirely my own opinion, the story seems to lose a lot of steam after the payoff scene. I don’t know, maybe I just feel that way because the payoff was so brilliantly and intellectually delicious that I felt like it should’ve been time to drop the curtain and roll the credits.

Sound
Its been a few weeks now, but the movie has a score and a number of period songs that work well. Aside from that, nothing else to report.

Conclusion
The Shawshank Redemption is a very good movie that deserves its accolades. Oddly enough, it was nominated for several Oscars, but never won. It’s a great movie with fantastic characterization and dialog. A slow burn of a plot, but it rewards the audience’s patience. Yeah. I can recommend it with confidence.

“What do you mean “Look in the dog?”

On the advice of several friends, I sat down and watch Guy Ritchie’s 2000 film Snatch. I was told it was both insane and hilarious, and, curious to watch a Guy Ritchie movie, I figured this was as good a time as any to set my sights on it.


Plot
There’s two plots here, actually. The first involves a jewel thief with a big honkin’ diamond stopping in London and several people’s attempts to get the rock. The second involves an underground boxing ring that stumbles upon an unintelligible Irish traveler (“gypsy” or “pikey” if you want to get offensive) who can knock people out in one shot. The plots eventually intersect and unsavory people proceed to do bad things to each other.

Characters
Turkish: Jason Statham in a non-action role. Turkish is an underground boxing promoter who somehow ends up arranging a fixed fight with an unhinged gangster/promoter for…some reason or other. He’s the narrator and kind of likable. Kind of. Has a sidekick named Tommy who’s pretty dumb. Doesn’t undergo an arc.

Franky Four Fingers: Benicio Del Toro. A jewel thief who’s disappearance triggers the confluence of bad things happening to bad people in the film. Apparently has a gambling problem, but we never actually see him gamble since he’s written out of the film fairly early.

Avi: Dennis Farina as a Jewish American…crime lord? Businessman? I honestly don’t know. Anyway, the diamond is intended for him, so when Franky goes missing, he becomes very interested in finding out what happened to his valuable item. Doesn’t have a character arc.

Boris the Blade: Rade Sherbedgia is a Russian gangster who is trying to get the diamond for his own interested parties. A violent man with a Rasputin-like durability. Doesn’t have a character arc.

Tyrone/Vinny/Sol: Sol & Vinny run a pawn shop and get hired by Boris to steal the diamond. They bring in the rather large Tyrone as their driver. Vinny gets a gypsy dog that becomes important to the plot, but also eats a squeaky toy, which is one of the funnier gags. The three are overwhelmingly incompetent at being criminals, which is both kind of funny and kind of… awkward, since all three are black and are the only black characters in the movie. They don’t really learn anything, so they don’t get an arc.

Mickey: Brad Pitt as an unintelligible pikey/Irish traveler who lives in a caravan (British for camper) and can knock people out in one punch. He gets involved in the boxing matches, but, well, causes complications when he doesn’t throw the fights. He has an extreme devotion to his mother, always wanting to finagle a new caravan for her. When his mother’s caravan is burned down (with her in it) he gets involved in the fighting again and throws a bloody wrench in the works. I understand that its supposed to be a turning point, but I didn’t really feel anything for three reasons. 1) It doesn’t count as a character arc because he doesn’t learn anything or grow, he just reacts. 2) Its more or less his fault that she dies. 3) I watch Top Gear with some degree of regularity and have seen more than a few episodes of junk-science show Braniac, both of which have caused me to react to the destruction of caravans with uproarious laughter and no small amount of glee.

Brick Top: A gangster who runs a crooked fighting league. Psychopathic, violent, and has the odd quirk of owning a pig farm, where he feeds the bodies of his victims to the piggies so as to dispose of the bodies, which is awfully Green of him. If he had a moustache, he’d be twirling it constantly. Shockingly, he has no character arc either, because he’s always eeeeeeeeeviiiiiilllllll.

Doug the Head: I almost forgot about him. He’s a jewelry dealer who pretends to be Jewish. He’s not very competent either, but doesn’t do a whole lot either.

Bullet-Tooth Tony: Hey look, it’s The Midnight Meat Train’s Vinnie Jones! Tony is an enforcer famous for being shot six times in one fight and not giving a damn until the job was done. He’s also the only character in the film that I remotely liked, which, combined with his general deadpan deadliness makes him this film’s baddest badass. He’s got a Desert Eagle .50, gets quite a few amusing speeches, and enjoys Madonna’s pop music. Sure he doesn’t get an arc because he’s a supporting character called in to help Avi find the diamond, but he’s got two bullets in place of two missing teeth (hence the nom de guerre). He’s really damn likable, and the closest thing to a professional anything in this film.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Guy Ritchie does have some directing chops, I will give him that. He keeps the two plots moving and jumps back and forth, which reminds you that they will converge. There are a couple moments that made me go “wait, what?” Where someone in the above list gets hit by a car, the same exact scene is done a few seconds earlier from a different perspective (the people hitting him) to the cause of them hitting him (namely some other people on the list inadvertently causing it). For some reason the scene didn’t work for me. There’s one scene, where Tyrone is being chased by some goons edited together with dogs chasing a rabbit that was pretty cool.

However, the coolest bit comes in the beginning, during the credits sequence. A group of Orthodox Jews enter a building, as seen on the security cameras, which proceed to track their progress through the building as they talk about this and that. As they leave one area, the camera pans to another screen with the feed from the new area. I realize its kind of awkward describing it, but its an absolutely brilliant moment.

Writing
There’s a metric assload of characters, each one with some kind of quirk and zero development. Guy Ritchie wrote the script and I honestly think that there are quite simply too many juggled characters for the movie to handle. As a result, none of them get any kind of attention to their development, and I end up sitting there going “meh” at all of them. This being a crime movie, none of them are really meant to be admirable, but some of them should at least be likable. I mean, Johnny Dangerously had a bunch of shady lowlifes, but they were all well defined and a few of the supporting characters (like Jocko) got some kind of arc. I realize I just compared Snatch. to Johnny Dangerously negatively. I’m just as surprised as you are.

Sound
The sound is fantastic in this film. The soundtrack is stylish, quirky and as unhinged as the film. I do have to applaud the novelty of a dog barking and having the sound of a squeaky toy come out at the same time.

Conclusion
I’m going to get hell for this, but in the end, I didn’t like Snatch. because it's a bad movie. Sure, there were entertaining moments, but poor character development leads to not caring about characters, which leads to ambivalence about what happens to them, which leads to detachment from the action and plot. I honestly didn’t care how it was going to end. Sure there was the turn of events with the gypsies, but even then, I didn’t care enough to be pleasantly surprised by the comeuppance it brought. I was entertained enough to smile, but not enough to laugh with frequency. I find myself in an odd position. I can’t recommend it because it under whelmed me, but I can’t pan it because its not a badly made film. That in turn pisses me off at the film, and for that petty reason alone, I can come down on the “not recommend” side of the fence, bringing closure to this text. Let’s move on, shall we?

“Please, step away from the meat.”

The last horror film for a little while is 2009’s The Midnight Meat Train. Produced by and based on a short story by horror veteran Clive Barker, I did not know that when I viewed the film, taking it as-is. Considering the title, you might be surprised to hear that its not actually a porno.



Plot
A young photographer in what I’m certain is L.A. (but IMDB calls the setting New York even though it was filmed in California) is trying to make a name for himself. Told to basically find the moments where the dirty meet the clean, he starts scouring the night looking for interesting scenes when he stumbles upon a large, well-dressed mountain of a man with a medical bag walking around. After a unsettling confrontation with him, the photographer becomes obsessed with the stranger, who he learns is murdering and butchering people on a subway train after 2AM. What follows is more or less a game of cat and mouse.

Characters
Leon: Bradley Cooper’s Leon is our protagonist shutterbug. He starts off as a normal artsy type, obsessed with making it as a photographer and possessed of that certain artsy pretentiousness that has him bring tofu to the local greasy spoon for the cook to fry up. As Leon starts to suspect something very wrong is going on with the titular subway train, he starts getting obsessed with learning about the silent killer. Leon goes from reasonably well-adjusted photographer with a good Samaritan streak to a creepy stalker obsessed with figuring out what Mahogany’s deal is. His entire arc is a descent into this darker world that he stumbles upon.

Maya: Leon’s hot, supportive girlfriend that works at the above-mentioned greasy spoon. When he starts going off the deep end about the subway killer, she takes it hard. There’s one scene where, trying to cheer him up, she starts to strip off her top for an impromptu photo shoot (nudge, nudge) but he’s so fixated on the killer that he starts crying as he’s snapping photos, and she runs into her room crying. I guess the centerfold shoot’s always better when the photographer’s crying.

Mahogany: Vinnie Jones is a big, scary man. Mute for the duration except for one line, he delivers a brutal, authoritative, professional killer tempered with a subtle resignation that hints that he is not his own master. Body language and the eyes tell more than words ever could, and I have to admit, Jones steals the show as both the most interesting character and the film’s badass. He butchers people on a subway train, then works in a normal slaughterhouse in the daytime, which makes sense. His two major tools of the trade are a large meat tenderizing mallet and a meat hook (well, and he’s got a big, Crocodile Dundee-sized carving knife too). He also provides us with a Ted Raimi Death Scene. Ted Raimi Death Scenes are ALWAYS good. And for the record, no, I have no idea why he’s called Mahogany.

There’s also a guy named Jockis, but he’s a disposable sidekick and Brooke Shields shows up in a minor role.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Things get interesting on this front. There’s lots of gore (yeah, who knew with a title like that?), a lot of it really nasty on the subway train with bodies hanging upside down like meat. Some of the effects are clearly CGI, but nothing to take you out of the story. There’s lots of the requisite gore for those of you looking for it.

However, there is something there beyond the gore and beyond the effects. Ryuhei Kitamura, the man behind the camera, knows how to make beautiful, atmospheric shots. I’m not talking about the gore scenes on the train, which have a washed out, florescent-lit quality. I was drawn in by his use of color and framing to tell a visual story in between dialog. He makes stuff like Mahogany riding an escalator up from the subway both beautiful, relevant to character building, and ominous at the same time. There are other scenes too, like a simple shot of the stairway leading down to the subway, that I want to make my desktop background. This is one of the most artistically shot horror films I’ve seen in regards to scenes that have nothing to do with blood.

Oh, and I have to mention the pre-title sequence. It’s really good, as it has a random schlub riding a train trying to get away from something before slipping on blood and catching a glimpse of the gore to come. Then the title hits the screen and in the span of those few minutes, you are treated to Midnight, Meat and Trains.

Writing
The plot is very interesting and as I was watching it, I caught a vibe of “a Ray Bradbury short story, only with buckets of blood.” Jeff Buhler adapted Clive Barker’s short story, and the plot remains interesting all the way to the ending. I have to note with some smug arrogance that I was able to call the ending about halfway through. This was the good kind of calling the ending, since the clues are laid out before the audience (particularly in some of the lighting as the story starts heading for its conclusion. Keep an eye on how brows are lit) for them to find. I was really pleased to have called the crux of the ending, since that’s what I would’ve done, albeit with a few modifications.

Dialog-wise, there really wasn’t much that caught my attention. Its not very quotable and I can’t really remember anything that anybody said. I even had to look up the title quote on IMDB. It’s a flaw, and I will subtract arbitrary points away from it, but its nothing to ruin the experience.

Sound The sound was good. Mallets striking skulls, the rumble of the subway train. Can’t remember anything from the soundtrack a few days after watching it.

Conclusion
I honestly did not think I would like a movie titled The Midnight Meat Train as much as I did. Its well shot, features a truly fascinating villain (that you never figure out the full story of) and features a turn of events that dips into crazy town by the end. I like that. I really like that. I like it enough that I can overcome my perpetual apathy at gorefest movies and say I really had a lot of fun with this flick. Your mileage will vary, but if you can get past the gore factor, there’s some really interesting stuff in a movie that isn’t a remake or franchise element. Its not so much scary as disturbing, but its interesting and kind of high concept, so I recommend it for that.

“We ARE an inbred mining community, Ben”

Once upon a time audiences were given little paper glasses to put over their eyes so that they could watch black & white cinema in GLORIOUS blue & red, I mean, GLORIOUS THREE DIMENSIONS (in blue & red). 3-D popped up again in the 80s and didn’t really catch on then either. Its 2009 and once again, the ghost of three dimensions has risen from the grave, only this time the glasses are a lot nicer and not two-toned. My Bloody Valentine 3-D! (exclamation point mine) (2009) has the distinction of being one of the first of this new crop of 3-D movies out of the gate. directed by Patrick Lussier, it’s a remake of an early (and 2-D) 80s slasher flick. I first saw it on the big screen, IN 3-D! and then on the DVD in 2-D.


Plot
In a small Pennsylvania mining town an accident happened one night in the mine that caused one of the workers to go apeshit crazy and murder a bunch of people before going into a coma for a year. He comes out of it on Valentine’s Day and murders a lot more people, including a bunch of idiot teenagers throwing a party in the very same mine where the accident happened. Driven off and presumed dead, the town moves on with its life, until ten years later, when one of the survivors of the teen slaughter comes home to sell his family’s mine. Its actually a fairly complicated plot for a movie intended to stab people in the head with pickaxes.

Characters
Tom Hanniger: His dad owned the mine and he worked in it as a teen, actually causing the disaster that made the killer flip out in the first place. After the ten year jump, he comes back home to sell the mine, reconnects with his ex-girlfriend (now married and with an incredibly silent kid in his tiny role) and interestingly enough, people start dying again. Pretty suspicious, if the cops do say so themselves. He gets some decent characterization/backstory and plays up a shell-shocked survivor with a few things bubbling under the surface pretty well. His arc is about whether or not he should sell the mine, but its never brought to the forefront of the movie.

Axel Palmer: A survivor of the teen slaughter, ten years later he’s the sheriff of town, married to Tom’s ex-girlfriend, has a kid, is having an affair and is kind of a douche. As soon as Tom comes back into town, he doesn’t like him. Since Axel’s got a few things to hide, its pretty suspicious that the murders start happening when Tom comes back to town.

Sarah Palmer: The Girl that the two men fight over. She was Tom’s girl in high school, but after he left for ten years, she settled down with Axel. This of course leads to tension in the love triangle, as she realizes that seeing Tom again after all those years is quite a shock. As the movie progresses, her arc is about who to trust, her old flame or her husband.

Harry Warden: Harry presents an odd case. He is very clearly the killer in the initial sequence, and dispatches his victims with ruthless efficiency (and a pickaxe). After the ten year jump, its not as clear if he’s back from the supposed grave or has been replaced by a copycat killer. Rather than spoil it, let’s look at how they pull off the villain. Dresses in a dark miner’s suit, with a gas mask and a lamp equipped hardhat. The mask takes away his humanity, leaving him expressionless and with a rasping re-breather as the only sound he makes. The headlamp actually makes some sense, as he operates at night and needs to see where he’s going, and has the added bonus of more or less blinding people that stare into it. It’s a fairly unsettling image that looks practical (unlike, and I hate to compare unrelated movies, ChromeSkull’s shiny face/sport coat combo from Laid To Rest). The pickaxe is also quite nasty looking, and if you’ve ever used one for manual labor, you know that they are quite heavy things that you would not want to be hit with. The blue-collar tool turned to murderin’ is both practical, and unsettling when you think about it.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Oddly enough, I liked it better in 2-D on the small screen. Odd, I know. In 3-D, there were a lot of very, very, very obvious “Ho-ho, look its in 3-D!!” moments, like a gun barrel being slowly panned over the audience. I was expecting those gags to fail on the small screen, but without 3-D, they were just part of the movie, and weren’t all that cheesy.

Which isn’t to say the 3-D effects were bad. They were quite good on the big screen, and provided the movie with the requisite jump cuts and squirms. Eyes get poked out, pistols get thrown at the audience, that sort of thing. One particularly disturbing kill comes when Harry uses a shovel to bisect a head at the mouth, causing the body and lower jaw to fall down and the top of the head to linger around a little. I didn’t exactly enjoy typing that, but it stands out a few days after watching it, nauseating or not. Gory fun for those that love gore. In 2-D, the jumps aren’t scary (disturbing/gruesome yes, scary no), which helped me look at the rest of the film.

Take away the 3-D gimmick and its really more of a suspense/thriller with a serial killer than a slasher flick. The mood is somber, the setting remote enough to feel isolated and the film feels more interested in asking the audience who it thinks is the killer than “what’ll that rascally Harry Warden do next.” The action scenes were also not the overly edited, badly-lit mess that you see in a lot of lesser movies. You see what’s going on and can follow the action. I liked that. I didn’t have any complaints with the visuals either way, but I think, odd as it sounds, that it was better in 2-D.

Writing
First the good news. The characters are much more fleshed out than your average slasher flick victim list. Victims get introduced but are played with some subtlety. Nothing like “this is Bob, the douche bag lawyer that you want to see disemboweled.” Nobody’s really “too dumb to live” which adds a little more weight to the deaths. Its nothing particularly gripping or elaborate, but they at least tried to keep the characters from being cardboard cutouts. I can respect that.

The bad news is that I felt they fumbled the reveal at the end. I didn’t have any problems with the actual reveal and acting therein, but there is a scene in the movie that features a character who’s one of the main suspects being clearly shown as not the killer. Since the movie did that, you take him off the list of candidates, but then the movie reveals him as “it was him all along!” That’s cheating. I don’t have any problems with who the killer turns out to be, but they could’ve handled that previous scene better to leave it ambiguous instead. I didn’t like how they did that, and it really pulled me out of the movie.

Sound
The sound was fine. The killer’s Darth Vader breathing worked out pretty well. The sound effects were rather good, and I think it actually had a score, as opposed to something you’d expect in a common slasher flick. The reason I say “I think” is that I can’t really remember any of the music, since there were no attention-grabbing themes.

Conclusion
My Bloody Valentine 3-D is an all right slasher flick that had the potential to be actually rather good as a hybrid slasher/mystery. Sadly, that one fumble on the way to the reveal completely took me out of the movie. I’m serious. It’s a competent film completely soured for me by that bungled setup for the twist. I won’t blame you if your mileage may vary, but for me it ended up as a movie that was kind of fun, had some potential, but was ultimately forgettable.

“I should’ve stayed in the dead box!”

I’m not big on the horror genre in general. It, along with the sports movie genre, is not an area I feel compelled to frequent with any, er, frequency. However, I am always willing to give things a shot, and genre movie nights are always fun evenings. Laid to Rest (2009) is a new movie, a straight-to-video 90 minute indie slasher flick.

Plot
An attractive young woman wakes up in a coffin in a funeral home. After getting herself free, she escapes from a mute murderer who wears a silver skull mask before being helped out by a guy and his wife. Blood and guts ensue.

Characters
The Girl/Princess: Our heroine, she’s had a nasty bump on the head and can’t remember her identity or the names of things/places too well. Sadly, this makes her sound like a student of the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good. Like many heroines in slasher flicks, she goes from being a terrified victim to the last one standing and having to face the killer alone. Really though, she swings from terrified victim to determined to face him, back to helplessly terrified to grim determination. Its jarring, and her survival through most of the film feels really, really, really, really forced because she, like the rest of the characters, is too dumb to live.

Tucker: The kindly redneck who picks up The Girl in his truck, which is without any fuel whatsoever. Walks with a serious limp, is devoted to his wife (300’s Lena Heady who only sticks around for a little bit) and didn’t really annoy me that much. Has a pickup truck in the deep south, but shockingly doesn’t have a gun rack.
Steven: A nerd who’s mother died very recently. Dragged into things against his will, has a couple bright ideas but mostly whines a lot.
ChromeSkull: The mysterious, masked killer. Has a number of odd quirks. Let’s explore! 1) Bald. 2) A serial killer of attractive young women with a weird OCD complex about filming them with an 8mm camera. 3) Has an 8mm camera that needs frequent tape changes, but also has a sophisticated cell phone and GPS system. Why doesn’t he have a digital camera?? 4) His name is also his license plate. Yes really. He has a nasty/odd looking bowie knife that has a serrated side and a normal side. He saws peoples’ heads off using the normal side. Let that sink in. 5) Has a weird obsession with gluing his mask back on at various points in the film, which comes in handy by the end. 6) That mask looks like a vac-metallized piece of plastic, but it happens to be able to deflect bullets. 7) He wears a sport coat. The lighting was mostly dim, but that’s what it looked like. 8) Likes putting his camera on his shoulder so he can look like the Predator aliens, but it also leads to choppy/bouncy picture quality. Of course, Chromey is the silent type, so we get no explanation of who he is or why he does it. He just kills women and anybody who gets in his way just because. I suppose you could infer that he’s “an artist” type, obsessed with setting up the shots, but that damn shoulder cam is not an effective way of handling things. He’s just there, kills people with a silly gimmick and is a pretty boring villain.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
The director of this film is Robert Hall, a man who has previously cut his teeth on special effects. The good news is that he’s very, very good at special effects. Blood, gore, making fatal injuries look realistic, that sort of thing. For the slasher genre, that’s pretty much the primary draw of this film. People are killed in graphic, graphic ways. What this says about the target audience’s sanity is neither here nor there, but the movie certainly kills lots of characters. If you do happen to read this and get your cinematic jollies on gory death scenes that bend/outright break the laws of physics/anatomy/bone density, I won’t spoil your fun. This movie has them, and for what it is, it does them well.
The bad news is that the lighting, editing and so on are frequently confusing. There were points where I missed something or didn’t know what was going on exactly. The pacing was also rather…off. After The Girl escapes from the funeral home she’s running through the woods/side of the road/wherever at night, understandably panicked, but clearly having bought herself some safety and then the title pops up out of nowhere. While I may not be well versed in the horror genre, I thought the title popped up at a generally tense/suspenseful/payoff moment. This one just felt…random. I didn’t feel much suspense and/or tension for most of the film.
Writing
Robert Hall wears many hats for this film, serving as writer as well. As I said above, he’s very good at special effects. Characterization and pacing, not so much. ChromeSkull is a non-entity with no personality whatsoever, and the three “heroes” that most of the movie focuses on don’t really have anything to really make you like them. They might get a little bit more meat than your average Jason victim, but they’re too bland to make you want to follow them the whole movie. Its not so much that you're sitting there wanting to see them butchered for your entertainment, but that you'd rather leave them alone and find more interesting characters to follow for 90 minutes. Sadly, this does not happen.
Sound
The sound was all right. Some industrial/techno music would blare during the intense scenes to hammer home the “this is action-packed!!” idea. There was a point where Chromey used his cell phone to “speak” by having it speak text in the sounds of his various previous female victims. It had potential, but wasn’t followed up on.

Conclusion
It was a very long 90 minutes. A bad movie will do that. I had no expectations going in and they were not met. My horror-movie loving friends were sorely disappointed with it as well, so it wasn’t just me in the room unable to recommend it.

“Did you know your last name’s an adverb?”

1984’s Johnny Dangerously has been something I’ve been meaning to watch for some time now. When I found out it was on Hulu.com, I figured what better way to celebrate that serendipitous discovery than going to FYE and buying the DVD… Wait a minute….



Plot
A young boy growing up in early 20th century New York wants to be an honest kid, but needing cash to pay for his mother’s surgery leads him to helping out a local crime boss. Taking on a double life as Johnny Dangerously, he eventually becomes one of the most wanted gangsters in the city, but considers going legit when a new District Attorney arrives determined to bring him in. Also, Johnny falls in love with a beautiful nightclub singer.

It’s a straightforward plot that pretty much runs on its rails all the way to the end of its 90 minutes, but this is a farcical take on gangster movies, so really, why bother nitpicking it to death? Johnny’s courtship doesn’t hit many bumps after the initial ice and you never really feel like he’s in danger or not in control of the situation. But it’s a farce, like Airplane! and The Naked Gun movies.

Characters
Johnny Kelly/Dangerously: Michael Keaton plays a character that everybody in town except his family knows is a notorious nightclub owner/gangster/etc. Hell, he even hands the “friggin’ Pope” (Dom DeLouise) a wad of cash in one scene. Johnny’s kind of a marty-stu in that just about everybody loves him, he’s almost always right, and everything is about him. But Keaton plays it with charm and a knowing grin. He’s not taking things seriously as he hams it up across the film. You like Johnny, and you end up rooting for him, despite knowing he’s a crook, and despite/because of one of the funniest gang assassinations involving Danny DeVito and a bull I’ve ever seen. Keaton has to carry the movie for it to even hope to work, and he does. I have to admit, he is quite the badass in this film.

Lil: Johnny’s love interest (Marilu Henner). She’s a sultry singer with not a lot of character development, but she “gives good banter” when she meets Johnny, which is enough to get their relationship on the road.

Danny Vermin: Joe Piscopo is this film’s villain. A thoroughly unrepentant, self-aware psychopath with a really big gun (“it shoots through schools”) who likes crime for its own sake. Its fun watching him and Dangerously trying to out-ham each other on screen. He’s two dimensional, sure, but he’s funny as hell too.

Ma Kelly: Johnny’s mom, mostly played for laughs as the dirty old woman with an endless stream of medical ailments. Frighteningly competent when push comes to shove near the end of the movie.

Tommy Kelly: Johnny’s younger brother who goes to law school (not knowing he’s being funded by his brother’s criminal career) and becomes a D.A. determined to bring in Dangerously. He’s so full of “aw gee shucks” law-abiding honesty and idealism that it makes you want to puke. Fortunately, it makes almost all of the other characters want to puke too, and Tommy gets the crap beaten out of him (physically and verbally) throughout the movie. He also gets a character arc where he has to come to grips with the revelation of his brother’s criminal career.

Jocko Dundee: Peter Boyle plays Johnny’s crime lord mentor. A very fatherly father figure who eventually retires, leaving his empire to Johnny. Has a rivalry with…

Roman Moronie: Ok, he’s a fairly minor character who’s good for about one joke, but it’s a great joke. He mangles the English language so badly when he curses people out it comes out to something like “Its fargin’ war to cork-soaking icehole bastiches!” He gets written out of the movie by the second act, but damn was he fun to watch.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
It’s a “period film” so that means old-timey cars, guns, clothing, etc. Like I said, it’s a farce also, so a lot of anachronisms creep as well, some intentional, some not.

The directing by Amy Heckerling gives it a very “movie” feel. You know the kind, when you know that a lot of it is filmed on sound stages and the lighting is fairly uniform. It has that visual look and feel of a movie from the golden age of cinema when realistic sets were needed only so far as they looked enough like what they were supposed to look like without going into obsessive-compulsive detail. I believe that was an intentional choice for this movie.

Writing
Four writers for the film: Harry Colomby, Jeff Harris, Bernie Kukoff, Norman Steinberg. That’s quite a few writers for a 90 minute flick. Then again, there’s a rapid fire endless stream of jokes, visual gags and one-liners. Since the plot is pretty linear, the sheer number of jokes muscle the story onward. The thing is, when you rapid fire the humor, not every punch line is going to hit. Some of the jokes fall flat, or are so dated to 1984 that I didn’t get them, but overall there are more hits than misses. Being a PG-13 movie (one of the first, apparently) I was rather surprised by just how much innuendo and other stuff they managed to sneak in under the radar. I like getting those kinds of surprises in a movie.

There’s one scene where Johnny breaks the fourth wall to tell the kids watching that smoking isn’t cool, even though all the gangsters in the movie are doing it. I think on repeat viewings that might bother me, but the first time through it was just kind of a surreal moment that made me laugh in a puzzled way. The characters are a little bit two dimensional, but nothing that stopped me from laughing.

One thing that really did nothing for me was the framing narrative of Johnny working in a pet store. I get what they were trying to do, and some of the jokes, like using a price gun on puppies, were great, but the pet shop scenes just kind of dragged.

Sound
You know, I can’t remember any of the music aside from Lil’s song in the night club and the “Weird Al” Yankovic song “This Is The Life” at the beginning. Those songs were amusing.

Conclusion
I will concede that there are flaws with this film. Most characters are more like caricatures who don’t really develop, and the plot is extraordinarily vanilla. But you know what, I laughed. For the duration of the film. For a comedy, that’s mission accomplished, right there. Great one-liners, good gags and a lot of talented actors hamming it up in a genre that doesn’t have a lot of straight-up comedies. I can see why people might not like it, but I can’t see why it isn’t more popular than it actually is.

“I’m gonna make Gretzky’s head bleed for superfan 99 over here.”

RMWC trundles onward into the DVD shelf, grabbing Doug Liman’s Swingers (1996) for two reasons. I really love that movie and its only 96 minutes long. Funnily enough, checking IMDB, Liman also directed The Bourne Identity, as well as Jumper. That has no bearing on my intended viewing whatsoever.

PlotA group of young actors with shitty jobs in Hollywood hang out after hours and try to score chicks. Hilarity ensues.


All right, there’s a little more too it than that. You’ve got Mike, a stand up comedian who’s been reeling for six months after breaking up with his ex and moving to L.A. from New York. The movie follows him as he tries to get over his ex. It’s a simple plot, but often in comedy, simple is perfectly suitable.


Characters
Mike: Our Hero, and also Iron Man director Jon Favreau. Mike’s a nice guy, but therein lies his problem. He just can’t get over his ex girlfriend and that stunts his ability to function around his buddies. Of course, that’s the main crux of the movie. Can he get over his ex girlfriend and his own awkwardness to woo the beautiful babies? Here, Mike really is likeable, and a lot of the humor comes from the downright painfully awkward situations he gets himself into.


Trent: Mike’s best friend and a would-be actor, played by Vince Vaughan. Trent is the fast talking, action-taking flipside to Mike. Trent is the cool buddy who’s constantly trying to push Mike into self confidence (and also through leading by example). Trent is this movie’s baddass, calling anyone out on bullshit, always backing up his buddy. The only real downside to his character is that he doesn’t get a real character arc, and that difference shows by the end of the movie.


Rob: Mike’s friend from back east, recently moved to L.A. and struggling to find work as an actor. Certainly a side character, he struggles to swallow his pride after auditioning to be Goofy at Disneyland after playing Hamlet Off-Broadway. Also happens to be played by Ron Livingston, who was in Office Space.


Sue: A local who’s dad loved that Johnny Cash song, Sue is more Trent’s friend than Mike’s since they both chase the ladies with gusto. Sue’s also got an image thing going on where he projects himself as a hard-boiled badass who grew up on the streets and carries a gun around, which invariably causes trouble. Sue’s the easily pissed off one, which leads to the somewhat surprising end of the second act.


Visuals (Direction/Effects)
No special effects to speak of, considering the subject and budget. All that leaves is cinematography to deliver on the mood. Liman delivers. Sure, some of the shots are deliberate shout outs to other movies, but the composition of the movie is overall very solid. Los Angeles and Las Vegas are captured in a fairly realistic way. When they roll into Vegas in the first act, Trent & Mike, Vegas looks like the swanky, fancy, neon playground that everyone expects. Then they get inside one of the lesser casinos and it looks like how the midnight-6 AM crowd on a Wednesday night would look: slow and a little bit sad.


A similar thing gets done with L.A. Its not the over-glamorized movie factory town, but its also not the crime riddled war zone of the underbelly. It’s a lower middle-class L.A. where people who drive beat up old cars go to hole in the wall jazz/swing bars and their apartments have cracks in the walls from all the earthquakes. It’s a refreshing snapshot of a nightlife scene that doesn’t really exist anymore (after all, its been more than ten years and the swing revival didn’t last very long).


Also, I have to mention that I absolutely love some of the shots in the movie. Trent pissing by the side of the road on a bright sunny morning is awesome. Mike standing in silhouette in his doorway after coming home from a bar is one of my favorite shots of all time for some reason.


Writing

An indie film like this lives or dies on the strength of its writing. Jon Favreau’s script is a solid three act story where the main character learns something about himself and the movie doesn’t waste time getting there.


More importantly, the dialogue is outstanding. I’m struggling to sound glib and urbane here in describing it and nothing good is coming to mind, and I don’t want to just start quoting it because I’ll feel like a douche. It is funny. It is damn funny. It is infinitely quotable in a variety of situations.


Sound
The soundtrack is suited to a movie about the not-wife-swapping kind of swinging. A laid back jazz soundtrack punctuated with a country song here, a rock song there just hammers home the underground feel of the movie: playing Dean Martin over the opening credits in a movie about 20-something actors in L.A. in the early-mid 90s was not a mainstream decision. Also, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy made a live appearance in the film, one of their earliest exposures to a wider audience.


Conclusion
I love this movie. It blends thoughtfulness, style, music and banter into a compact little package that is best viewed in the company of others. Thoroughly recommend it, and if you don’t like it, then there’s no accounting for some people’s bad taste.




This... is an awful trailer. Do not let it discourage you.

"I don't know. Fly casual."

1983’s Return of the Jedi brought the Star Wars Trilogy to a close, and appropriately that’s the next movie on the slate to watch. Once more, I’m working with the 2006 Limited Edition 2 disc set which contains the theatrical cut on one disc and the 1997 Special Editions on the erroneously named “disc 1”

Once again the director’s chair changed hands, with Richard Marquand taking over.

Plot
Han Solo is rescued from his carbonite prison and the Rebellion mounts a final offensive against the Empire and its new Death Star. In the meantime, Luke Skywalker moves toward his fated confrontation with his father, Darth Vader.

Characters
R2-D2: The little droid continues to be a Swiss Army Knife of useful MacGuffins, smuggling weapons and serving drinks at the same time.

C-3PO: So he spends almost the entire movie teamed up with Artoo, providing more comic relief. This time around though, Threepio also ends up being useful to the heroes, being revered as a god by the Ewoks of Endor. That’s definitely a first for the golden droid.

General Lando Calrissian: By this movie, Lando’s made up for his betrayal in the first movie, getting a promotion and being in on Han’s rescue. Then he separates from the other heroes to lead the assault on the Death Star and ends up being the only other person in the movies to fly the Falcon. Not bad at all.

General Han Solo: Han’s back, but doesn’t seem to really have much of an arc. He’s already become a full time hero in Empire. Here he’s more of the same and gets his romance arc with Leia completed. Still, Han Solo screen time is good screen time.

Princess Leia: Leia fully becomes an action girl, infiltrating Jabba’s Palace with style and later kicking ass on Endor. She’s also the lynchpin of this movies twist. Oh yeah, and along the way she gets captured again and turned into a pop culture sex symbol that helped usher in a generation of nerdy boys into puberty. Metal bikinis

Chewbacca: Still in the sidekick/muscle role, but Chewie finally gets a little solo time to basically turn the tide for the ground battle.

Yoda: Yoda’s not on screen much, but damn he’s still impressive. Its quite surprising how moving a puppet’s death scene can be.

Darth Vader: Vader comes across as having second thoughts. Luke’s his son, determined to confront him and the Emperor. Vader seems a little…I don’t know, mellow in this film. He doesn’t choke anyone.

The Emperor: The “guy behind the guy” and this movie’s Villain. A menacing, scheming, withered old bastard in a black bathrobe. His presence naturally lowers Vader’s menace. After all, a guy who can boss around a guy like Vader has to be bad news. Still, he doesn’t really seem to upstage Vader because the Emperor has no arc. He simply smiles sinisterly and twirls his moustache (well, if he had one)

Admiral Ackbar: It’s a trap!

Luke Skywalker: You know, considering where he was in the first movie, you wouldn’t think that Luke was this film’s badass, but he is. Okay, first he’s matured since being by his suddenly revealed father in the last film. He’s capable, powerful and one of the most powerful assets in the Rebellion. He orchestrates Han’s rescue with a LOT of contingency plans (like being captured), and kills a giant monster with only a skull. Luke’s a Machiavellian genius in this film. The real arc for him is his struggle with his bloodline. Just how much of his father’s weaknesses are in him. How much does he want to kill the Emperor? How close does he dare get to becoming amorally powerful? Its rather compelling stuff without lessening Luke’s “just as planned” gambit to redeem his father.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Three years after Empire, the special effects are the tightest of the three movies, as well as being central to the action scenes. Jabba’s a fantastic visual, the stop motion for the walkers is outstanding, and the rancor is a fantastic monster in the Ray Harryhausen tradition. In terms of fighting, the Battle of Endor probably has the best dogfight of the three. The ground battle on the other hand feels a little long to me.

In terms of directing, I’d equate it below Empire but a little bit above Star Wars. The playing around with lighting and framing to create mood is great, but the pacing is slower and has a little less tension than Empire.

Writing
I have to admit, I think the writing on Jedi is maybe the weakest of the three. Its much more serious than most of Empire’s dialogue and probably the least enjoyably quotable of the trilogy. Han and Lando are still pretty snarky, but Threepio & Artoo’s lines aren’t quite as good as in the other films. The serious dialogue seems a little too hamfisted as well.

Sound
If saying the Star Wars trilogy has epic sound effects and music sounds like a broken record, then I don’t want to be fixed. John Williams’ score + Ben Burtt sound direction = Epic Win. Some of the music in Jabba’s Palace delves into synthesizers, but I can forgive that for the “Yub Yub” song at the end. Its impossible to listen to it without a grin.

Conclusion
Return of the Jedi was my favorite of the Trilogy growing up, but after the passage of time and a BA in English later, I have to give in to the prevailing wind and admit that The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the three. Doesn’t mean that I like Jedi less than I used to, but Empire is better crafted. I think that part of the problem with Jedi is that it mirrors the first Star Wars A LOT, and not just because of the Death Star. The movie starts with Vader making a strong entrance, then shifts to the two droids on a desert planet getting captured by strange and dangerous aliens before Luke shows up.

Still, the movie has worth. It is fun and a pretty good conclusion to the Star Wars ADVENTURE! Ultimately I recommend it.