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X-Men: First Class

June 9, 2011 by

I am officially declaring it now – the summer movie season is upon us. Yes, some may say it kicked off during May with such big-name flicks as Thor or the ever floptacular Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, but honestly, X-men: First Class truly starts off what one hopes will be a continuing trend of renewal and redemption for several major series.

I was a fan of the original X-men trilogy, although X3 seemed to wilt a little without the Singer touch. But Singer returns with a writing credit and a little production input, to bring us a revitalization to the X-men franchise. Singer gave appropriate nods to his original X-men series (including two cameos, one of which is worth the ticket purchase alone – no spoilers though) to keep them valid and intertwined with the new film, but left room to explore brand new territory. By setting the film against the Cuban missile crisis, it gives the film a unique real-world connection while adding that science fiction, super-powered flair we all love in a good superhero movie. In addition to the real-world environment, we get a much deeper understanding of who these characters are beyond their powers. We see what drives them, what their flaws are, why they made the choices of which we saw the results in the previous three films. It is a well-rounded story with a lot of heart and a heck of a lot of action.

Little known X-men History: Charles and Erik loved playing hide and seek. Given that Charles was a mind-reader, Erik always lost.

(For those familiar with the series, you may skip this paragraph.) For those who may not be familiar with the concept, First Class focuses on the initial formation of the X-men, a group of people with genetic mutations which manifest themselves in the form of super-human abilities. The film is a prequel of sorts to the X-men trilogy which was released in the 2000s. It focuses on the two key players in the battle for human/mutant coexistence – Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Professor X and Magneto. Charles has the ability to read and control minds, Erik the ability to control magnetism.  Focusing on their backgrounds we see glimpses of Erik’s childhood as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, contrasted with Charles’ wealthy upbringing in America. Charles focuses his energies on studying genetics and mutations, Erik is hellbent on revenge. Eventually their paths come together, and under the supervision of the government, they locate and recruit a group of young mutants with diverse powers in order to form a team to defeat Sebastian Shaw, a man who is manipulating the U.S. and Russian governments in an effort to start WWIII for his own diabolical purposes.

Now that everyone is caught up to speed on the premise, how does the film stack up?

Sylar developed the super-human ability to jump over sharks on water skis after telekinetically lobotimizing the Fonz.

In a way, I feel like this is exactly what I needed after enduring Heroes for four uneventful seasons. I will sidestep briefly to explain my disappointment with Heroes. This show started with an interesting premise – regular people who develop super-human abilities. The problem is, barring a few brief episodes in chapter 1 and a sort of side plot in season 3, these people spent most of their time avoiding using their powers. While everyone at home is on the edge of their seats waiting to catch a few minutes worth of super-powered effects buried amongst tangled and unnecessarily elaborate plot arcs in each 45-minute episode, you could practically hear the producers saying “Oh no, effects like that will be too expensive to produce. Avoid them at all cost!” They also got tangled up in attempting to rework their concept to address what they viewed as “fan feedback”, and ultimately ended up ruining all the things which gave the show substance. Heroes effectively “jumped the shark” shortly into season 2 and never really recovered.

Now, back to X-men.

Although we see a somewhat reluctance in some of the mutants to use their abilities, ultimately we see an embracing of their purpose. In addition, we get a chance to see not only practical applications of their abilities, but also what happens when these powers are unleashed. There are several awe-inspiring scenes with Erik as a child, one of which is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of the concentration camp scene from the original film. This film did for X-men what Star Wars: The Force Unleashed did for the Force of the Star Wars universe – showed what real people would do if they had these abilities in these situations, and they definitely wouldn’t hold back.

"Hi, I'm Magneto. I'm a fictional character. Move on with your life and enjoy the movie."

The biggest critiques coming toward this film have to do with the consistency of the storyline with that of the comic history.  There are a few necessary deviations in age of characters or background stories in order to make a more concise story arc. The fan boys will be up in arms that every minute detail isn’t as it was in the original material. But the fact of the matter is this, just as with any lengthy series derived from a written text – Harry Potter (7 books), The Chronicles of Narnia (7 books), Lord of the Rings (technically 6 books) – some details must be skimmed, omitted, or adjusted in order to fit them into a 2-3 hour timeslot. Let’s face it the X-men story spans hundreds of comics over decades of writing, there’s no way you’re going to get every detail into a film. So if you’re going looking for 100% accuracy, prepare to nitpick your way out of enjoying the film.

My Six-Degrees of Kevin Bacon: I was an extra in Election with Matthew Broderick --> who was in The Producers with Nathan Lane --> who was in The Birdcage with Robin Williams --> who was in Bicentennial Man with Oliver Platt --> who was in X-men: First Class with Kevin Bacon. Booya.

The actors, did an excellent job embodying their respective parts. McAvoy and Fassbender, lend their interpretation on the characters artfully personified by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, and provide a fantastic bridge between the two portrayals. Jennifer Lawrence, recently nominated for an Oscar for her role in Winter’s Bone, gives a notable performance as Mystique, adding some much welcome character development behind the eye-candy that was Rebecca Romaine in the original films. And of course, this film adds a link in everyone’s “6-Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, who gave a delightful performance as the villain.

Overall, this film was an absolutely enjoyable experience at the movies, and I sincerely look forward to the inevitable sequel that will most likely ensue. I’ve heard it described as X-men meets one of the old-school James Bond films, and I can agree with that assessment. The key is – this film is a good movie that just happens to be about super heroes, which isn’t always the case with Marvel and DCs cinematic outings. It’s definitely worth the time and money to soak in the scale on the big screen.

[Rating:4.5/5]

Filed Under: Action, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , ,

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

June 5, 2011 by

Close Encounters of the Third KindAs we head into another summer movie season full of action, dudes built like mack trucks, and explosions galore, I thought it would be fitting to take a step back to an earlier time before films were all about spectacle and marketing tie-ins.  Close Encounters of the Third Kind is, in many ways, the best kind of science fiction even though there are virtually no explosions and we only get glimpses of aliens or spaceships until the very end.  Directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the masters of the genre, it follows the story of average dude Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss, fresh on the heels of another little movie he did with Spielberg) who gets a tad too close to an alien spaceship one strange night while out in his pickup truck investigating a widespread power outage.  Over the next few days he starts having visions of an object that he feels compelled to re-create in paintings, clay, and mashed potatoes at the dinner table.  Meanwhile, other people around the country are having similar visions and experiencing otherworldly phenomena, most notably Barry Guiler, a kid with a curious bent who wanders a bit too far from his mom one night only to get picked up by the invaders. Throughout all this we never actually see the aliens–only the effect they are having on the people who claim to have experienced these encounters.

While North America is being sent into a tizzy trying to deal with the strange phenomenae, entire squadrons of missing World War II aircraft are discovered in the desert in mint condition.  It’s these strange events that cause French scientist Claude Lancombe to investigate the matter further, leading to the eventual discovery of a probably location for an alien landing site along with five distinct musical tones that might possibly lead to a method of communicating with the extra terrestrials.  Keep in mind there’s no gunfights, and no national monuments are singled out for destruction.  In many ways, Close Encounters of the Third Kind more accurately resembles a cerebral thriller or mystery like Inception or Vertigo rather than a traditional science fiction movie, but it’s these qualities that make it anything but traditional.  And yet, Spielberg keeps things engaging and interesting throughout, while building up to a climax that is as massive in scope as anything we might see in a multiplex today.

Close Encounters: Roy Neary

Roy Neary, searching for meaning in a pile of clay.

Just as E.T. was first and foremost a story about divorce that also happened to involve aliens from another planet, Close Encounters is a story about family that is struggling to stay together despite the father’s descent into madness.  Roy Neary is a good guy who is overcome with strange visions, and pushes his family away while they struggle to deal with changes they cannot hope to understand.  The focus is kept squarely on Neary’s quest for understanding, Jillian Guiler’s search for her son, and their refusal to accept anything other than concrete answers.  Strangely, there is little to be found in the way of redemption, as Neary makes some very unexpected choices near the end–choices that Spielberg himself has since admitted he would change if he were to make the movie today.  But these unconventional choices made by Neary lend an authentic quality to the movie that is fairly unique in modern cinema, and coupled with the stunningly realistic special effects that can easily hold their own against anything Hollywood has to offer today, catapult Close Encounters to the upper echelon of cinematic science fiction. This one is not to be missed by anyone who is a fan of the genre, or anyone who just likes good movies.

Rating:[Rating:4.5/5]

Filed Under: Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , ,

Battle: Los Angeles

March 12, 2011 by

When will Hollywood filmmakers learn how to design an engaging extra-terrestrial?  I sat through the entirety of Battle: Los Angeles wondering why the movie was even made if the creatures the film is to be about seemed as though they were cobbled together on the last day of post-production.  Even good science-fiction films feature hokey creatures, such as Signs and War of the Worlds, but with practically limitless technology these days, why resort to such lacking creativity?  And why start out a film critique bashing alien designs?  Because the sheer laziness and lack of imagination brought to the table when considering the science-fiction elements on display here ruined Battle: Los Angeles.

I’m sad to report that Jonathan Liebsman’s stab at the alien invasion epic is an otherwise interesting (although one-note) piece of filmmaking.  Blending Black Hawk Down and War of the Worlds, Liebsman drops us into Ground Zero with a group of confused marines sent into the battleground of Los Angeles following a barely announced invasion circling the globe.  I call it Call of Duty: Worlds at War.  Aaron Eckhart, featuring a full face once again, leads his platoon of one-note soldiers into a combat zone that would have Michael Bay and Sylvester Stallone drowning in envy.  There’s a handful of characters here, but the film has precious little time for back story.  Minutes into this thing the audience is dodging shrapnel and ducking under the smoke clouds.  This is a combat film, through and through, filmed via handheld and edited to make your head spin.

So what’s the mission?  Honestly, there isn’t much of one.  The marines are choppered to the L.A. police station to rescue a group of civilians trapped inside.  From there on out, it’s moving from point A to point B avoiding deadly fire from the outer-space hostiles.  Never mind why the aliens are invading with violence.  We hear a few news clips claiming they are harvesting our planet for water.  Also never mind that their biological composition makes little to no sense.  Part machine, part creature of some sort, they look cheap and biologically improbable to function.  In a head-scratching scene, Eckhart’s character and a veterinarian dissect one of their captured enemies to figure out how to kill it.  To their surprise, the alien has a heart in its chest.  “Aim for the heart!” he cries.  It seemed to me the marines were blowing them in half from the get-go, but maybe that’s just me.  Don’t ask me about the aliens’ spacecrafts either.  From what I can tell, the filmmakers haven’t any more of a clue than I do.  The ships seem like C.G.I. whirlwinds of car parts that can disassemble into smaller aerial drone planes.  There’s no sensible design or calculations to these vehicles.  I’m guessing the artists behind them saw Transformers one too many times and decided to dumb down the concept there.

Battle: Los Angeles clearly left storytelling and imagination out of the greenlighting contract as well.  Cliches abound in the premise and reign supreme throughout.  We have a gruff leader in Eckhart, whose character battles his haunting past amidst the haunting present.  He’s retiring early on in the film after losing his entire unit of men during his last mission.  For his final day on the job, he is supposed to play second-in-command to another officer for a training simulation.  Turns out aliens invade and he’ll have to take on the greatest threat of his career.  Weird.  The plan to thwart the aliens involves taking out their system core that holds their entire power source.  Also original.  Even the minimal dialogue appears to be peeled away from other films.  At least the pyrotechnics are sound, and to be honest, that’s what the film is all about—getting in-your-face visceral.

For a quick action-fix, Battle: Los Angeles will in no way compare to a classic like Aliens (a far-superior clashing of alien creatures and marines—made 25 years ago…), but it will likely tide over young men who have no problem putting down their X-Box controllers to witness some more first-person shooter mayhem.  Complaints regarding the film playing like a kaboom-heavy videogame aren’t far from the truth.  Battle: Los Angeles isn’t striving for good sci-fi.  It’s striving for gritty target practice.  I actually dug the concept of a military action-thriller as the forefront of an alien invasion film.  Unfortunately, while all the technical aspects and extended action sequences of Battle: LA prevail, the aliens and plot do not.  I can shoot second-rate animated robot slugs at home.  For those needing a break from that sort of time-wasting, Jonathan Liebsman’s bone-crunching, ear-drum pounding, brain-thumping epic will do.  And you don’t even need a controller, unless you wait for it on DVD of course.
[Rating:2/5]

Filed Under: Action, Science Fiction, War Tagged With: , , ,

Tron Legacy

December 21, 2010 by

Greetings once again, Walking Taco readers!

I’ve been MIA for a bit, but as a newlywed, I’m sure you’ll forgive me for spending less time at my computer, and more time with my wife.

Speaking of spending time with my wife, we made it out to the theatre for the first time in a while to see the new film Tron Legacy. Now, once upon a time, I saw the original Tron, and I remember at the time thinking it was cool, and edgy, and all the effects were so ahead of their time. (which they were) But nowadays, Tron holds on to the hearts of the masses through the sheer willpower of nostalgia. It’s similar to how fans approached the Star Wars prequels. They loved the originals, so why wouldn’t it be 10 times better with new visual effects, right?

Quick summary – Sam Flynn, son of Kevin Flynn, a game designer from the 80s, is inactive CEO of Encom, a Microsoft-esque company his father started before his sudden disappearance. After 20 years of being out of his life, a friend of his father’s receives a page. Sam goes to the arcade his father used to run, discovers a hidden room and running workstation, and inadvertently inserts himself into “the Grid”, a digital world his father created. Once here he meets his father, discovers a plot by a program his father created called “CLU” and strikes out with his father to escape the Grid and stop CLU from carrying out his evil plan.

To quote Will Smith "I have got to get me one of these!"

Tron Legacy was, to be frank, a visual effects feast. Similar to how thrilled I was in Superman Returns to see Superman moving in a freeform fashion instead of laying on a bluescreen table and leaning left and right, it was thrilling to see light cycles and disc battles using today’s cutting-edge CGI technology. These scenes were the first to be presented to the fans over a year ago, and really, they’re probably the coolest elements to the film. Alas, they are also the shortest scenes of the film. I would say in the over 2-hour runtime, you see maybe 5 minutes of disc battles, and 8 minutes of light cycles. Oh, there are plenty of other CGI effects, including the entire world of the Grid, but those two sequences are what fans of the original came to see, and they deliver in a way only nostalgia-fueled reminiscing can fully enjoy.

Jeff's evil twin-brother - Faux Bridges

There is, of course, one other major CGI element, and that is the young version of Jeff Bridges. The makers of Tron Legacy decided that to make a 20-year younger Jeff Bridges, they’d use the same motion capture technology used to make Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen look younger for X3. Problem is, it looked creepy then, and it looked creepy now. Long ago, people at Pixar realized that trying to make CG people look 100% real was very off-putting to audiences. There are so many imperfections to human expression that to attempt to recreate it in a computer almost always resulted in an indescribably unnatural effect. So, Pixar steered clear and went with the more cartoony humans we know and love.

I do have to say that I’m okay with this concept when the technology is used to create CLU, the avatar version of Flynn, because he exists solely in a computer world, and could therefore look artificial. However, when they try to pass it off for the few real world scenes, it’s eerie, and discomforting to watch. I appreciate that they tried, and didn’t just use a lot of back shots and cleverly concealed faces, but maybe casting a younger actor to play Flynn in those few flashback scenes would have been a better bet. They also used this technique for Bruce Boxleitner to create the younger version of Tron, who makes a few appearances via flashback, but it was far less noticeable in these scenes.

Outside of the effects, this movie is fairly lackluster. The acting is passable, but never really reaches any sort of noteworthy performance. Perhaps the closest would be Olivia Wilde as Quorra, who has to have an almost child-like, artificiality to her, and she does this well. Martin Sheen takes a break from his overly dramatic roles to do a mean David Bowie impression as Castor, Beau Garrett gets her first notable role playing some spandex-clad eye candy as Gem.

The plot of the film is clearly aimed at fans of the original, relying on a lot of “wink wink” allusions to the first film in order to garner full enjoyment. It was predictable at times, and I found I had little emotional investment in the film, primarily because the characters lacked any emotional investment. After not seeing his father for the 20 most developmental years of his life, Sam and Kevin see each other and it’s merely a “haven’t seen you in a while *tear*… so, yeah, how about we get out of here?” moment. They circle the father-son relationship concept but never really delve too deeply into it. Kevin Flynn has the personality of a burned out druggie, ending most sentences with the colloquialism “man” to make sure the audience never forgets that he last left Earth in the 80s and was clearly a product of the 60s and 70s. Most of the other characters were artificial beings, so their lack of humanity is somewhat excusable.

You'd have to be "daft" to not enjoy this soundtrack!

The last note I have to make is in regards to the soundtrack, which is expertly executed by Daft Punk. Interestingly, this is the element of the film getting some of the most buzz. I can’t say that I’d want to listen to this Soundtrack much outside of the film, but as a part of the whole, it’s perfect. Plus their outfits are pretty much made to cameo in this film – which they do – so, bonus there.

Sort of a quick side note, we saw the film in 3D due to lack of other time options, and the film opened with a disclaimer saying many of the scenes are presented in 2D because that’s how they were intended. I applaud Disney for the bold choice, however some scenes, such as the light cycles and many of the scenes in the Grid offered some very cool 3D effects, but the shift between 2D and 3D scenes was occasionally jarring, and not always justified. I could buy using 2D for the real world, and 3D for the Grid, sort of ala Wizard of Oz and its use of color, but not all of the Grid was in 3D, and sometimes it was just shots of a character standing there that got the upconvert, which made for a very disorienting moment. I leave it to you to decide if 3D is worth the extra money for you or not.

To sum up, Tron Legacy is an exciting return visit to the world of Tron, with a much needed update to the visual effects. The story is relatively flat, but serves to move us from one visual sequence to the next, and the acting is what it is for the confines of the story. For those that haven’t seen the original Tron, there’s a convenient bit of exposition at the beginning to catch you up, so you won’t be lost. (My wife hadn’t seen the original and still enjoyed the film.) I would say I enjoyed seeing the film, and would recommend seeing it in the theatres for the spectacle, just don’t expect Oscar-worthy film-making (outside of the CGI effects).

[Rating:3/5]

Filed Under: Movies, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tron

December 10, 2010 by

Visiting a movie like Tron for the first time can be described as none other than tricky business.  First of all, the movie is a vintage visual effects spectacular from 1982.  Secondly, it came about in the early days of computer technology which poses major difficulty in addressing the film’s ‘revolutionary’ use of such special effects and the problems derived from the plot.  In a time of Windows 7, and in the wake of The Matrix, it’s a little hard to digest a Disney version of a super computer bent on taking over the world, and a human computer program designer being zapped into the computer’s infrastructure.

Even though Tron is widely considered a classic among fanboys and became a landmark in its time for visuals, I could only appreciate it for its advances in its time—which look incredibly awful by today’s standards.  A movie like this could only be approached today by techy gurus obsessed with the 1980s or nostalgic adults remembering this flick of their youth.  I felt that due to a slight interest in the upcoming Tron: Legacy that I must visit the niche film that started it all.

As a fan of science-fiction I can see the impact that Tron must have had upon its release.  It combines digital effects with hand-drawn animation and utilizes live actors in the process against a computer-rendered backdrop.  Talk about ambition for its time.  Jeff Bridges plays Kevin Flynn, a top computer programmer and former video game designer for a software company.  His colleague, Ed Dillinger (David Warner), sabotages him by stealing all of his arcade game designs which promotes Ed to a Chief Executive position.  Soon enough Flynn is removed from the company.  Dillinger’s Master Control Program (or MCP), in charge of the company’s operations, continues to gain intelligence following Flynn’s departure, and eventually becomes self-aware determined to tap into access at the Pentagon (for world domination I presume).  The MCP keeps Dillinger in check by threatening to expose a file that proves Flynn is the real creator of the most popular arcade games on the market.  As MCP continues to gain more control and knowledge, the software company’s access to other human ‘users’ is cut off sending these programmers into a frenzy.  Employee Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) has designed a program called Tron that will put a stop to foreign program violators which poses a threat to the MCP.  He teams up with co-worker Lora (Cindy Morgan) to recruit the genius Flynn into helping them sneak into the company and load Tron into the system.  Flynn sees this as is opportunity to track down the data file that will prove Dillinger’s scheme and earn him his job back.   All the while, an experimental laser has been developed at the company that can break a physical object down into a digital data stream.  Of course this laser comes into play when the MCP finds Flynn’s intrusion into the computer network.  The MCP decides it logical to stop Flynn from loading the Tron program by zapping him with the laser and turning him into a digital program that brings him into the world of the super computer.  As a program, Flynn must participate in a series of arcade games within the computer while trying to implement Tron (or more appropriately, a computer anti-virus in today’s terms) into the system and thus killing the MCP.

Whew… Still with me?  Tron as a film is further ‘out there’ than most, and is truly laughable by today’s standards.  But keep the year 1982 in your mind and also the fact that it’s a family-friendly Disney film, probably best remembered as a pioneer in experimental special effects.  The story is as odd and shallow, and yet as utterly complicated and confusing as it needs to be.  If you can accept Jeff Bridges being zapped by a laser that turns him into a computer program, then you’re half way to enjoying this movie.  I haven’t even mentioned that all computer programs within the computer are human counterparts that exist as replicants of their human users.  But I don’t want to confuse you even more.  The plot really has me scratching my head, and to contemplate it more and more I don’t think was the intent of the filmmakers.  Why would the MCP send Flynn, the ultimate threat to whole system, through a series of arcade battles and races when he could just have him terminated?  If the MCP really did gain so much knowledge and control, why don’t these human computer programmers so bent on uploading the Tron program decide to simply pull the power cord?   I have other questions that would spoil further developments of the plot, but I think ultimately I need to turn off my brain and recognize Tron simply as an early example of computer effects technology—even as laughable as it looks today.  I suppose my biggest question is how this type of film will translate to a wider audience today?  Upping the special effects will certainly help, but can today’s viewers really get into this?  We’ll have to wait and see when Tron: Legacy takes over soon enough.

So did I enjoy Tron or not?  I don’t know.  I really couldn’t see myself watching it again.  It has very little lasting qualities, and because I didn’t experience the film in the 80s, I can’t generate any sort of nostalgic attachment or appreciation for it.  Is it terrible?  No.  This is an ambitious project for its time, and in many ways was much ahead of its time.  I can appreciate it on that level, but find the film to hold little weight today.

[Rating:2.5/5]

Filed Under: Action, Family, Science Fiction Tagged With: ,

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)

November 23, 2010 by

Harry Potter Deathly HallowsI’m not the world’s most aredent Harry Potter Fan.  I read the first three books partly out of a sense of generational obligation, and partly out of mild curiosity, but always found their Lord of the Rings-lite sensibilities to be more than a bit uninteresting.  They were entertaining and charming, but midway through Goblet of Fire I gave up and went back to George Orwell and Tolkien.  I just wasn’t too interested in Harry Potter’s adolescent crises amidst the magical world of Hogwarts and bludgers and muggles…oh my!  Well, not in reading about them anyway.  I did enjoy the movies, as they tended to distill the essence of each book into an easily digestable cinematic experience, and all of them have been pretty solid film offerings unlike some other book-to-movie adaptations.  I also appreciated that the themes of the books and movies tended to mature with the characters and, subsequently, their audience.  There’s only so many Quidditch games and slug-vomiting potions a guy can take before he takes the advice of his 6th grade D.A.R.E. instructor and just walks away.

But the most recent movies like Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince (not to mention the ending of Goblet of Fire, which I thought was a bit of a cheap move on Rowling’s part, but dark nonetheless) have seen the tension factor ratcheting up higher, the implications of the conflicts grow ever wider, and the characters dealing with some serious life-and-death stuff.  Add to that some examination of spirituality and romance, and the Harry Potter series really has come a long way since magical chess games and diatribes on the correct pronunciation of Wingardium Leviosa.

Deathly Hallows: Harry, Ron, Hermione Grown Up

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all growed up.

And so we have the stage set for the final chapter in the Harry Potter series.  Doing away with the concept of exposition entirely, since if you don’t know who these people are by now you have no business watching, the film gets right down to business with Potter and his friends on a mission to escape a posse of evil Death Eaters sent by Lord Voldemort, J.K. Rowling’s counterpart to Dr. Claw.  They all meet up at the Weasleys, the most ill-conceived safe house location ever (unless Hagrid and company were hoping Voldemort and his goons would overlook the most obvious place in the world for Harry Potter and his friends to hole up for a while) and take pains to evade detection by the most powerful evil wizard in the world by having a gigantic wedding party for a pair of secondary characters whom we are supposed to know or care about.  Soon Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out on the ultimate teenage wizard road trip/collect-a-thon as they try to locate seven Horcruxes–objects where Voldemort has stored up bits of his eternal soul.  Destroying these will bring an end to evil once and for all and allow Harry to finally get some much-needed closure about his parents’ murder too.

It’s actually kind of refreshing to have a Harry Potter movie focus so much on the three main characters.  Hogwarts is nowhere to be found in the entire film, and instead Potter and his friends set out to make the ultimate travel brochure by visiting every last gorgeous landscape and sweeping vista to be found in the entire United Kingdom.  As they magically transport from one locale to the next, they deal with a lot of relationship issues and even have a bit of good old-fashioned romantic jealousy come between them (even though Ron and Hermione are about as believable of a couple as Anakin and Amidala) while seeking out the Horcruxes and delving deeper into the mystery of the Deathly Hallows.  We are also given much more insight into the characters of Draco and Lucius Malfoy, and begin to ask some serious questions about Professor Snape as well.  It’s this type of three-dimensionality that this final installment offers that sets it high above so many other entries in the fantasy genre.

Deathly Hallows: Draco Malfoy

Draco Malfoy, who doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "bad hair day."

It’s an engaging tale well told, and as dark and grim as the series has ever been.  A couple beloved characters have been dispatched over the various entries in the series, but in Deathly Hallows it seems no one is safe from the Grim Reaper’s scythe.  The film even has some genuinely disturbing parts too, and is certainly not a movie for kids.  Women are tortured and sacrificed, bodies are mutilated, and we see Potter and his friends go to some very dark places in order to do what needs to be done.  It’s a world of ambiguity and grey morality, and offers some thought-provoking questions on what it means to simply do the right thing.

In the nine years since The Sorcerer’s Stone was unleashed into theatres, Harry Potter and his friends have been on some absolutely incredible journeys.  It’s almost sad to see things finally coming to an end, and as such I didn’t mind at all that this final film was split into two parts (Part 2 is scheduled to blow the doors off the box office in summer 2011).  We’re in the homestretch now, and even though Deathly Hallows is a striking departure from the rest of the series, it is a fitting beginning to the graceful swan song the series deserves.

Rating:[Rating:4/5]

Filed Under: Science Fiction Tagged With: , , ,

Mega Piranha

November 10, 2010 by

Piranhas are found in a handful of rivers  in South America. They are usually slightly bigger than a man’s hand, and are widely feared for their ability to eat a 400 pound animal down to the bone in minutes (they occasionally eat the bones as well). Now, what would happen if they started to grow to hundreds of times their normal size? That’s right. They would choke the river with their bodies and die of asphyxiation, and the worst part of it would be the cleanup. Problem is, that doesn’t make for much of a movie, which is why, when he saw a script with the title Mega Piranha, any director with half a brain would have run the other way. Apparently, Eric Forsberg wasn’t that smart.

This movie has the same basic strategy as the Megalodon films; take something people are scared of and make it even bigger. Except that, unlike sharks, piranhas are feared for their tendency to attack in groups, each one taking many little bites. You might as well make a movie about giant germs. This might be the worst movie I have ever seen, but it’s so much fun to make fun of; an excellent candidate for Deathstalkering. So prep your air tank and leave the cap off your de-skeletonizer ointment as we tear into the bloated, drifting carcass that is Mega Piranha!

It starts the way all monster movies start, with a couple picnicking next to the Orinoco river. They go for a swim and get eaten. So far so good. But then, with no break, Forsberg shows us a boat going down the same river. On board is an American ambassador and some other bigwigs. The piranhas actually attack the boat, sinking it. Mind you, we’re less than five minutes into the movie. We then meet Jason Fitch (Paul Logan), some special forces-type guy (that’s all the explanation we get) who is dispatched by the U.S. Secretary of State to investigate the ambassador’s disappearance. Logan has the body for playing a special forces guy, but we’re going to spend most of the movie wondering who taught him to act. It’s as if he watched 30 seconds of a John Wayne movie and tries to recreate it over and over. He doesn’t say his lines so much as bark them out, and every single line is awkward. He makes Gerard Butler’s performance in 300  look subtle and understated. To his credit, though, he does manage to keep a straight face when he delivers the line “It wasn’t terrorists. It was giant piranha.” Fitch has to sneak out of the Venezuelan base where he is staying in order to do his job without a corrupt colonel interfering. He walks around half-bent over in order to show us that he is sneaking, and that he is a sneaky special forces guy. To further emphasize his sneakiness, Forsberg fills this scene with totally random (and pointless) camera wipes from all directions. These wipes cause the guards to go blind right before Fitch walks by. You can actually see guards start to look at him and then quickly turn their heads away.

Following this death-defying escape, Fitch meets Sarah Monroe, a scientist (former pop princess Tiffany, trying desperately to slow the aging process. You can almost hear her thinking “Oh, and I used to sing to sold-out shows. Sob …”). She tells him that the boat was sunk by piranhas, who are getting bigger by the day because they were injected with a serum called O-Hucares, and they will keep growing exponentially until they are (I’m not kidding) the size of a whale. So Fitch teams up with Monroe and her team of nerdy scientists to fight the potentially world-destroying phenomenon of giant piranha.

The abomination that is the special effects in this movie deserves a section all its own. Also ala Meg, Forsberg relies completely on CGI for the visuals. No miniatures, no

Oh, yes they did.

animatronics, just cheesy, pixelated images, clumsily bolted over the footage. I don’t hold that a film has to have seamless special effects to be worthwhile, but that shouldn’t be an excuse not to try. And even with a limited budget, a resourceful filmmaker can make decent effects. James Cameron and his crew built only six Alien models for Aliens, but with some creative camera work, they made us believe there were hundreds of them. Similarly, our first ever glimpse of a face-hugger in Alien is simply Ridley Scott’s hands in a pair of gloves. CGI has become an excuse for a lot of wanna-be directors to be lazy. Were model piranhas so hard to come by? Would it have been so hard to use a few five-dollar air hoses to generate the thrashing in the water? Was it so prohibitive to rent one helicopter, instead of the computer-generated blob that we see, then use a split-screen to reproduce it?

Then there’s the editing. Countless times, we see the same footage used over again. At one point, when Fitch’s phone battery dies, Monroe tells him to suck on the battery. We actually watch him do this for close to two minutes.

The stupidities just keep piling up. Once the piranha problem is known, the Venezuelan government actually tries to eradicate the plague by firing lots of missiles into the river. (And you thought W was trigger-happy.) Later, Venezuelan soldiers interrogate a prisoner by smacking him with a phone book. Toward the end, the piranha seem to have not only grown to enormous size, but developed a death wish, as we see them leaping out of the water, and crashing into buildings, resulting in huge explosions! One fish actually impales itself on a light house!

The one thing you can sort-of feel good about in this movie is that nothing was wasted. No good actors poured their talents into a hopeless script. No quality special effects were wasted on a stupid concept. All the components of this movie deserve each other.

There are a couple of lessons we should take away from this. One is that, as we saw in Meg, bigger does not mean scarier. Many things, piranhas included, are scary for their speed, their efficiency, and above all, their invisibility. When they grow to such size that they have to leap out of the water to do anything, and then they explode, it’s stupid, not scary. The other is that incredibly lame monster movies were not limited to the days of the Blacklist. The only thing Mega Piranha has that, say, Invasion of the Saucer-Men didn’t is bad CGI. Hollywood has always spat out tripe, regardless of the political landscape.

As much as I complain about this movie, I have to admit, we had a great time making fun of it. It’s perfect for lampooning. It’s stupid, it’s over the top, there are countless opportunities to insert lines or jokes, and these opportunities are extended by bad editing. And of course, just when you think it can’t possibly ask you to swallow anything more ridiculous than what it already has, it does. From Fitch ninja-kicking a school of piranha back into the river (I’m not kidding) to a school of piranha actually eating an entire destroyer (I’m still not kidding), this is one of those movies you have to see to believe. The one thing that is kind of impressive is how actors say things like “Florida is being attacked by giant fish!” without cracking up. I wonder how many takes they had to do.

[Rating:0/5]

I wanted to include one real mega-piranha, since it’s more interesting than the movie.

Filed Under: Action, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

November 3, 2010 by

Star Trek VIThe first episode of the venerable Star Trek sci-fi series was aired on September 22, 1966, and spawned an entertainment tour de force that, despite some rocky times in syndication and various states of cancellation, continues to chug along even today more than 30 years later.  But with the passing of time, the weathering of the starship Enterprise, and the graying of its crew, the original series that started as a gleam in Gene Roddenberry’s eye graced the silver screen for the last time 25 years after it began.  Even though Undiscovered Country is the sixth movie in the sci-fi franchise, it stands tall as one of the best and still holds its own against its spry, modern, younger successors.

In a bit of a twist from previous films, Sulu is never seen together with the rest of the Enterprise crew.  Instead, from the outset of the film, he is in command of his own ship The Excelsior (Note to William Riker: this is called career advancement).  Off exploring space as usual, his ship encounters a gigantic energy surge resulting from an energy explosion on the Klingon moon Praxis which was, as near as I can tell, basically a gigantic Klingon Power Plant.  In a brilliant twist on typical Star Trek lore, the mighty Klingon race is forced to come to the Federation for aid lest they go extinct as a species in less than five decades.  Kirk is then put in the awkward position of playing would-be ambassador to the Klingon high council, an incredibly uncomfortable diplomatic role considering that his son was murdered at the hands of Klingons.  It’s this type of juxtaposition that is the hallmark of Star Trek and all good science fiction, and further propels Undiscovered Country into the upper echelons of Star Trek movies.

Star Trek VI Cast

The gang's all here

The phrase “Action-Packed” has never been apt for Star Trek, save for the notable exception of First Contact, but it wouldn’t be far off the mark here.  After the abysmal Final Frontier, and knowing that this film would be the series’ swan song, director Nicholas Meyer (who also helmed the brilliant Wrath of Khan) ratchets up the intensity on all fronts.  From the uncomfortable dinner scene aboard the Enterprise, where the Klingons and Enterprise crewmen can barely contain their disdain for each other while General Chang (Christopher Plummer) and Kirk try to out-Shakespeare-quote each other, to the amazing courtroom scene (“Don’t wait for the translation!”) to the final showdown between the Enteprise and a Klingon bird of prey, Undiscovered Country is about as intense as they come.  There’s also a bit of mystery, treachery, backstabbing, and old-fashioned fisticuffs thrown in for good measure.  It all comes together quite well, despite a few missteps here and there such as the over-the-top climax which is far too abrupt and logic-defying to go over with much satisfaction.  Believe it or not, even the visual effects are far from terrible, though still mired in typical Star Trek cheese.  Couldn’t they find decent model builders by now?

Star Trek VI Courtroom

The Klingon judicial system: a model of legal efficiency.

Unfortunately what gets sacrificed here, as with some of the other movies, are the characters.  Most of Kirk’s intrepid crew is reduced to goggle-eyed stares at the viewscreen or groan-worthy one-liners.  The story here is about Kirk, and to a lesser degree, Bones and Spock, and unlike Voyage Home no one else is given any significant contributions to the story.  It’s an unfitting sendoff for Sulu, Uhura, and of course Scotty, but given the high quality of the movie as a whole these character missteps are somewhat forgivable.

Few movie series ever make it to their sixth iteration, and those that do are mostly content to cash in on trends, following the same regurgitated storylines all the way to the bank. But rather than churn out a halfway decent film destined for the VHS bargain bin, Meyer and his crew gave Undiscovered Country all they had and put effort into crafting a work that respects the source material while offering an incredibly pleasing finale to the journey begun by Gene Roddenberry more than three decades earlier.

Rating:[Rating:4.5/5]

Filed Under: Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , ,
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