03.18.07
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 4:10 pm by lee1990
Set testosterone on maximum!!!!
The directors have brought a truly unique look and feel to this historically accurate battle epic about 300 Spartan warriors who face the 1,000,000 strong army of king Xerxes of the Persian Empire. The entire movie was filmed on a sound stage. All background elements, landscapes, animals, and most of the foreground elements were all created digitally. This gives the movie a similar feel to the 30’s serial-based Sky Captain from a few years back, and the ultra-violent Sin City, which was done by the same director. The colors are often muted except for the red of blood and the Spartan cloaks.
As the massive army of Persia advances, a herald arrives at the city gates of Sparta with a fistful of skulls with crowns on them (all the kings that Xerxes has already killed on the campaign. His demands are rather flatly and amusingly rejected in the Spartan style. However, as the invasion is taking place during a religious holiday, King Leonitus cannot take the army to war. So he takes 300 volunteers as his ‘personal bodyguard’ to go for ‘a little walk’, as he explains to the politicians.
Many people of Persian decent have complained about this movie. While it is accurate that the Persian empire was very cruel and barbaric, some of the ways that both the warriors and Xerxes are portrayed do seem a little over the top; elite guards who under their masks are literally as monstrous in appearance as they are in behavior, an executioner who is a bloated monster with blades instead of arms, and a King Xerxes who is portrayed and a gold painted, 7 foot tall, body-pierced freak whose inverted sexuality is strongly hinted at through repeated innuendo.
The portrayal does however reflect the unbelievable arrogance of Persian kings, who quite literally demanded that people cover their mouths when speaking to them, lest they taint the air he breathed.
However, the movie is also accurate about the brutal nature of Spartan culture as well. Newborn boys were indeed inspected, just as portrayed, and if found weak or otherwise inadequate, were tossed away to die. The boys lucky enough to pass the test faced years of brutal military training designed to harden them into merciless killers, a fact that the movie makes no attempt to soften or hide.
The movie has a refreshingly conservative feel to it that reflects on modern times. While the brave Spartan soldiers are fighting the barbarity of Persians, preening and corrupt politicians plot and debate about sending Sparta’s full army to assist the obviously doomed 300. There is also a rather passionate love scene between and married straight couple for once.
A warning however; this movie is not for the squeamish. The tag line is “Prepare for Glory”. It should be “Prepare for Gory”. The depictions of battle with spears and swords is graphically realistic, with blood and gore and limbs and heads flying every which way.
All in all, well worth the time, if just for the spectacular appearance of the movie.
9 of 10.
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Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 3:48 pm by lee1990
Selling your soul can really screw up your night life.
This is an adaptation of an older comic book dating from the 1960’s. As such, it does not require a lot of brain function, but can still be fun, just like the comic.
The story revolves around stunt bike rider (Nicolas Cage) named Johnny Blaze (why are so many comic book names bad puns?), who in his teenage years sells his soul to the Satan (Peter Fonda (coincidence?) in order to save his father from terminal cancer. Satan keeps his bargain, but kills Johnny’s father in an “accident” at their stunt bike show the very next afternoon. (Talk about the devil being in the details in a contact. Next time, read the fine print Johnny.)
Jump ahead 20 years, Johnny Blaze is now a successful stunt rider of his own. What his crew doesn’t know is that he has been trying to kill himself with his own insane stunts (including jumping the length of a football field). However, it seems that something will just not allow him to be killed.
Re-enter two characters: his girlfriend Roxanne (who cannot seem to wear a shirt she can completely button and is not at least 2 sizes too small), and Satan. It is time for Johnny to pay up, but it’s not his soul that Satan wants; it is his services and the Ghost Rider, a flaming-skulled mercenary rider who collects on Satan’s contracts and hunts down any who escape from hell.
What has escaped from Hell is Satan’s own son Blackheart, a truly rotten chip off of a really rotten block. He can and gleefully does kill anyone he touches by turning them into dessicated corpses. He has recruited three fallen angels who have been transformed into elemental demons represent Earth, Air, and Water.
What follows is a supernatural free-for-all as Johnny must attempt to both free himself from his curse, as well as stop Blackheart from collecting a contract that will allow him to collect 1000 condemned souls from a old west ghost town whose inhabitants long ago sold all their souls to Satan and then destroyed themselves utterly in an orgy of greed and bloodlust. If Blackheart gains this power, he will be able to create Hell on Earth. The contract was hidden by another Ghost Rider, the only one to ever break Satan’s grip and defy him. To make matters worse, Blackheart of course manages to kidnap Roxanne.
The movie is visually spectacular, as to be expected, if a bit predictable. A good way to spend an evening if looking for simple comic book action entertainment, but check your brain at the door.
7 out of 10.
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12.27.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 6:59 pm by lee1990
Ben Stiller seems to have been typecast playing down and out losers who triumph in the end. In this movie, he plays a divorcee who has drifted his way through life with one scheme after another. Desperate to avoid having visitations with his son being canceled, he takes a job as a night watchman at a natural history museum.
The job starts out routinely enough. Ben is introduced to the 3 elderly guards he is replacing. Two are played by well known venerable actors Mickey Rooney and Dick Van Dyke. They show him the ropes, but there is a hint of things to come when VanDyke warns him not to let anything in or out.
The meaning of this warning becomes evident on the first night as Ben turns around and finds the massive Tyranosaurus skeleton that dominates the museum lobby missing. He then discovers it drinking from the water fountain down the hall. The little problem that the night guards at the museum have to deal with is that all the exhibits come to life between sundown and sunrise.
What follows are encounters with:
A wisecracking Moi (Easter Island Statue) with a taste for chewing gum.
A t-rex skeleton that likes to play fetch with one of his own ribs.
A wax figure of Teddy Roosevelt (brilliantly played by Robin Williams) that has a crush on the wax figure of Pocahontas who is stuck behind the glass of her display.
An Africa exhibit filled with man-eating lions and an extremely mischievous monkey.
Rampaging huns.
Stampeding woolly mammoths.
A war between Maya, Wild West, and Roman diorama miniatures.
Out of control cavemen.
Ben must attempt to keep order, and also keep all inside the museum. Anything outside the museum at dawn will vanish in a cloud of dust.
There is another sub-plot that provides Ben a chance to be a hero, but I don’t want to give away too much of the plot.
As a side note, those familiar with the British version of the TV show “The Office” will recognize the museum director as being the smarmy boss on “The Office”. His character has essentially been transplanted, smarmy attitude and all.
The movie provides a good share of laughs and lighthearted action. Worth the admission price.
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12.23.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 4:03 pm by lee1990
Mel Gibson continues on this track of making non-foreign foreign language films with his subtitled Mayan adventure Apocalypto.
This run in the forest is no walk in the park for our hero, a hapless Mayan villager named Jaguar Paw who is taken captive following a murderous raid on his village by Maya warriors. In the midst of the raid, he hides his pregnant wife and small son down a well to save them, but is subsequently captured in the battle.
His chief antagonist is a sadistic so-and-so who gives Jaguar Paw the contemptuous nickname “almost” after he kills his father before his eyes.
Following a long journey, Jaguar Paw comes to a unnamed Maya city. Here you see a combination of all theories regarding the end of the Mayan civilization: deforestation to create lime plaster for their elaborate temples, rampaging drought, famine, disease. It is truly portrayed as a time of apocalypse. And there is death everywhere. The scenes at the top of the temple as Jaguar Paws fellow captives are sacrificed by a priest quite literally soaked in blood to the bloodthirsty sun god are not for the squeamish, and at one point you encounter the largest heap of corpses put on screen since “The Killing Fields”
Our hero is saved from sacrifice by the first of many deus ex machina moments that enter into the plot, all of which are foretold by a sickly girl who prophesies all the signs of the end of the Maya after the warriors chase her off for being ill. He manages a daring escape, and the hunt begins as the Maya track him through the jungle. He must also race back as fast a he can, for the torrential rains of Central America are coming to drown his trapped family.
The movie is very long (about 2 1/2 hours), but moves fast enough to maintain your interest. It presents an image of a once great but self-destructing civilization. There is one very historically inaccurate element at the end that I will not give away, but appears to have been placed there just to finish off the sense of approaching doom that pervades the movie, and to offer a nod to political correctness.
Altogether, worth the admission price, but would be just as enjoyable on DVD. This option may be best for those who have no tolerance for lengthy movies that do not rely on spectacular visuals best seen in theaters.
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12.07.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 6:55 pm by lee1990
Finally, a Bond that avoids all “cartoonishness” and even all the cliches that can make Bond movies both enjoyable and annoying to watch.
Bond in this movie is more realistic a spy than he ever has been portrayed as being. There is also very little of the covert action and sneaking around; while he is at the Casino, everyone, including the villain, knows who he is and why he is there.
Essentially, the franchise has been started over from scratch. This movie portrays James Bond’s first mission as a 00 agent, but sets it in contemporary times and with contemporary stakes, involving terrorist financing. The plot has been updated to reflect new geopolitical realities.
The villain is unique only in that he weeps blood from one eye. He is a financier and money handler for terrorists and revolutionaries all over the world and he has a BIG problem. He has squandered his clients money on bad stock market investments, and needs to win the 150 million dollar pot at a high stakes poker game. If he does not, his clients will make him bleed from many more places besides his eye. Bond has been sent to play in the tournament in order to defeat him. This will force him to cooperate with MI6 and give information on his clients.
The bond girl has the usual beauty, but is not a mindless trollop such as Bond usually prefers. They do not even give here a sexually suggestive pun name as all other Bond Girls have had. The writers in fact took a swipe at this tradition at one point, when bond suggest that her undercover last name be Broadchest. Without giving away the plot too much, I can just say this is the most essential, most complex Bond girl ever placed in a Bond film.
Other Bond traditions are done away with; when asked if he wants his martini shaken or stirred, he simply replies “Does it look like I give a damn?”.
The movie does not end in the stereotyped Bond girl love scene either. In fact the end is so open that they are obviously thinking sequel.
Overall the movie is by far the best “Bond” ever made, if you are looking for realism rather than escapism. Worth the ticket price.
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10.22.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 6:54 pm by lee1990
Clint Eastwood hits the home front as much as the beaches in this gut-wrenching look at the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima during the darkest days of WW2.
The story bounces back and forth between the present (which is the home front during the enormous fund raising propaganda campaign that centered on the photo of the flag raising on Iwo Jima), and the very harsh reality of the past (the incredible brutality of the battle itself).
For a war history buff, I must first admit to a factoid that I had never known before: Iwo Jima is a Japanese Island. I had always assumed it was way out in the middle of the Ocean.
The movie is not a rah-rah type of movie, unlike the also extremely well done The Great Raid, but it also steers clear of anti-war cliches. Mr. Eastwood sticks to all the harsh history, starting with the unfortunate and also absolute need to control the truth during war. The flag raising is shown at home as the point of victory, when the actual battle to take Iwo Jima lasted for more than a month after Mt. Sirabachi was taken.
The film avoids all forms of political correctness. It bluntly places on display the wanton brutality shown by the Japanese both in battle and towards their prisoners. The mass suicide by grenade of the Japanese is also displayed. The US soldiers are also not shown as some kind of superhuman saints either (the unfortunate fate of the Native American marine Ira Hayes is blatantly shown and dwelt upon in the movie; it is almost a story more about him than anyone else). It is quite simply the raw brutality of war both on the battlefield and on the home front, and also makes obvious the necessity of both. It also shows the scandal thirst of the media is nothing new; the movie displays on many occasions, and finally dispels the persistent myth that the flag raising was deliberately staged.
All in all, Flags of Our Fathers is a worthwhile, if difficult movie to see.
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10.19.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 8:14 pm by lee1990
Talk about having an attitude. The gargling, homicidal spirit Kayako is back for another rampage in Grudge 2.
Those not familiar with Japanese horror, here’s a heads up. Their horror directors like to jump around the timeline. The story is often times not told in chronological order. A prime example is the movie Ju-Rei (The Uncanny). This horror movie starts at the end of the story, and moves backwards through the chain of victims all the way to the start of the story, which is at the end of the movie.
The Grudge 2 goes one step further. It starts near the end of the story (in America), moves backwards several weeks (to Japan), then backwards several more (still in Japan), jumps ahead to just before the start of the movie (in America again) several times, and moves in these more or less back and forth transitions the whole time. However, the way the movie is edited makes it appear that all of this is happening at the same time, which can cause some confusion to those who are not paying attention or are unfamiliar with the genre.
All in all, however, the movie shows that the Japanese, used to working with more limited budgets, can deliver more chills and creepy crawlies with just light and shadows and subtle imagery than the video game, CG schlock that ruins many American horror movies (the godawful remake of the Fog that came out last year, for instance).
All in all, this movie is good for a few Halloween scares and succeeds in creeping you out in more than one spot.
Worth the while to see.
7 of 10.
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09.27.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 7:33 pm by lee1990
Plot: Super Sappy
Acting: Ultra hammy
Humor: None.
Effects: Outstanding.
My first thought after finishing with this movie was : I feel sticky. I thought that so much sap had oozed from the screen that I would need turpentine to extract myself from my seat. Just like Pearl Harbor, Hollywood has taken a perfectly good and potentially patriotic war epic and turning it into a 100 cliche pileup chick flick.
The acting is so flat and the characters so 2 dimensional (the villian is literally a black tri-wing German fighter with a falcon on the side) that I thought their images would fall off the screen from boredom. Remove the romantic slock and you would have a movie 1/2 as long and 2 times as good. It might have also left some room for small things like character development.
The one reason to see this movie on the big screen and not wait for DVD is the spectacular dogfighting scenes. The movie realistically captures the brutality of aerial combat when your plane is made of highly flammable canvas and wood, and you have no parachute. At one point in the movie, the instructor says to his eager young volunteers that if the plane catches fire, they can:
1. Ride it to the ground in a ball of flames.
2. Jump and fall several thousand feet.
3. Take the quick and painless way out. Whereupon, he hands each of them a pistol.
All together, for a movie about the Great War, this one was a Great Disappointment.
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09.17.06
Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 7:55 pm by lee1990
This movie shares a lot in common with Schindlers List. Both are difficult to the point of physical pain to watch, but necessary reminders of the great evils that the world has faced and still faces. After all, both Islam and Nazism suffer from the cancer of anti-Semitism. In the case of Nazism, it was fatal, and it may well prove to be so for Islam.
As to United 93, the movie has no tiresome documentary cliches, such as flashbacks. It is done with the real time intensity of 24, with the added impact that the story is not a work of fiction. The pace is fast as the action moves from the air traffic control centers in New York, Boston, and Cleveland, as well as NORAD. The final 5 minutes, showing the passenger revolt, are the single most intense scenes I have ever seen in any movie. Several people in the theater I went to were openly weeping by the end credits.
Those who would label this propaganda in a derisive way are fools. They are also stating the obvious. The movie is propaganda. Propaganda need not be based on lies or even distorted truths. The purpose of propaganda is mobilization of a people under threat. That threat is not always an illusion created by the propaganda, and that is certainly not the case here. We all saw it firsthand as it unfolded. We are at war, and we must be reminded of the ruthless cruelty of the enemies we have fought (Schinder’s List) and the enemies we fight now (United 93).
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Posted in Main, Movie Reviews at 7:40 pm by lee1990
Humor: Excellent
Acting: Fair
Visual Effects: Good
Plot: Good
A good evening’s entertainment. The general jist is a three way race to find the Dead Man’s Chest. The racers are:
Davey Jones: A former sea Captain who now commands the Flying Dutchman. He is also part squid. (Calamari anyone?)
Captain Jack Sparrow: Seeks the chest because any who possess it can control Davey Jones. There’s also the small matter of Jack owing his soul to Mr. Jones. (Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Jack).
Captain Jack’s sidekick: (Played by Orlando Bloom). He needs the chest to rescue his wife from the evil Governor, who wants the chest for his own ends.
The plot can keep your interest, and the makeup effects for Jones and his crew are very convincing. The only disappointment was the final scene between the kraken and Capt. Jack. The optical composite was so primitive it looked like Jack was standing in front of a large sceen like they did in the old days. A letdown given how well done the visuals in the rest of the movie are.
All together, worth the price of admission.
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