Nicol_Bolas Reviews

Primer (2004)

Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness in Film Form

[2/10 · 10 January 2010]

This movie is the definition of Shown their work. This movie loves holding forth on how much its filmmakers know about things. If you were to grade a movie based on its rigid adherence to reality (ignoring the premise, of course), this movie would get an A+.

Unfortunately for this film, movies are graded on their entertainment value. And in that department, this film falls apart.

The dialog is atrocious. The characters seem completely incapable of actually saying anything; they have to dance around the point. Its like that scene in Spielberg's War of the Worlds where the characters are desperately trying not to use the word "Alien". Except it makes even less sense here, and that kind of dialog is *everywhere* in this film.

This style of dialog feels very unnatural and forced. You wonder how people who talk this way interact with other human beings at all. This film absolutely loves using many words to say as little as possible. How a film can use so many words and still fail to communicate basic ideas, I don't know. But they seem to have achieved that, so kudos.

That dialog sabotages the films plot and every attempt to create tension. Despite the wordiness of the dialog, they never actually say what's happening. Combine this with the fact that the film doesn't like to show things either, and you are left with a film that simply doesn't work. I appreciate a movie that doesn't just give you everything, that requires audience participation to get everything from the story. But there are limits.

We know that *something* happened towards the end. But the film is very circumspect about what it is. And since we're talking about the climax of the story, what you have is a film without a climax. Things happen, but to no apparent purpose. Or at least, to a purpose that is not made clear.

If your headspace isn't the same as that of the filmmakers, if you're not thinking *exactly* as they do at every moment in the movie, you're not going to get whats going on. However, it is the filmmakers job to see to it that the audience is in their headspace. So its really their fault that the film doesn't work.

And here's the worst part. Even if you do eventually get whats going... its not that clever. You don't get some kind of transcendent revelation of the nature of Man. If you are able to figure out what happened, then all you get a fairly decent movie plot. What you get for understanding the film simply isn't worth the effort.

What is this film? It's like using the words "Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness" instead of "wordy"; even if you understand what the big words mean, it's not like you have communicated a profound concept. This film is dense and impenetrable for the sake of being dense and impenetrable, not because it communicates meaning better or more precisely.

Next (2007)

Deeply unfulfilling

[3/10 · 17 August 2009]

This is not a well built action film. The action is lifeless at best. Indeed, the very premise of the movie seems to work against any hope of tension. The gimmick of the movie is that the main character can see 2 minutes into the future. So he can correct any mistake he might have made. Basically, he's unkillable: he's perfect in a fight and can't be shot with a gun.

Be warned: the romantic subplot is so unconvincing that it may remove your belief in love altogether.

The villains barely exist. Nothing about these guys work. They don't feel like effective threats (admittedly, not their fault), and they don't feel like they're smart enough to actually steal a nuke, let along smuggle it to shore. They leave a trail of bodies lying around; they make no effort to conceal *any* of the murders they commit.

And the main plot is just stupid. Terrorists have a nuke somewhere in Los Angeles. And the *best* the FBI can do is hunt down try to find some guy that can see 2 minutes into the future? This is all they have? I guess if supernatural powers don't exist, we're screwed.

The ending... Oh God. I don't think I've ever felt quite so betrayed by a movie's ending than this.

Ridiculous things are not new to movies. There are many good movies that are based on nonsense. All we ask is *consistency*. When you make up rules for your nonsense, that your nonsense follows those rules.

They can't even manage that here. They pull a twist ending for the purpose of pulling a twist ending. It's the cinematic equivalent of the movie punching you in the crotch.

Speed Racer (2008)

Purity and Shamelessness

[6/10 · 3 August 2009]

There are so many movie adaptations of other media that are ashamed of their source material. They want to run away as fast as possible from what the source material was. In some cases, this means dropping minor aspects of the original. In other cases, this means changing the entire tone of a work.

Take The Dark Knight. For all of its greatness, it isn't a Batman film. Indeed, it would probably have had more verisimilitude if they'd called the character "The Vigilante" or some such. Every time the word "Batman" is uttered, the film seems to lose its tone. Batman is reduced to an artifact in his own movie, an echo of an unwanted element in this serious character study/action film.

Speed Racer is completely without shame for its source material. This is Speed Racer in live-action. The world is clean and pure, the racing scenes are absolutely over-the-top (even moreso than in the cartoon, if you can believe that), and even the characters are broad and dramatic. It is, in a word, pure.

No attempt is made to cover up the fact that a family with the last name "Racer" had a child that they decided to give the first name "Speed". This is introduced, and the audience is to either accept it or move on to something else. Speed's brother has a pet chimpanzee; this is introduced and the audience is expected to accept it or leave. The whole movie is like this.

There is nothing quite like a film that knows what it's trying to achieve and lets nothing stand in the way of achieving that. This film sets out to make live-action Speed Racer, and it succeeds. If that interests you, check it out.

Cube (1997)

Great premise, damaged by the ending

[6/10 · 24 February 2008]

Basically, this movie is exactly what the DVD box cover says: 6 people are trapped inside a maze/death-trap. They try to get out.

It isn't really about the prison, though. It's about how people react to stress. And it's about the design of the prison.

The basic premise reads like a Twilight-Zone episode. 6 people wake up in a series of interconnected rooms. Some of these rooms kill their occupants in various ways.

Each person was placed there with a specific function in mind. One person is a cop, who has leadership qualities. One is a doctor, able to treat the wounded. One is a high-school student, who's math knowledge is still fresh in her mind. One is one of the people who built a component of the place, who brings unique knowledge of the prison. One is apparently autistic, able to perform complex math computations easily. One is an escape artist loner-type who gets himself killed early on to remind the audience that anyone can die.

The prison acts as a personality-conflict engine, as it forces people to interact to save each other's lives and their own.

It's a great premise, the interlocking prison that they have to figure out the secrets to. And, as with any human endeavor, dealing with each other becomes increasingly hard as dehydration and stress wear down their patience.

The problem comes when one of them, quite suddenly, snaps and starts killing them. For no apparent reason.

I understand that tensions were running high. But when the most likable and reasonable character in the entire movie starts going nuts and killing people for no apparent reason, it kinda sullies the character interactions.

Granted, this was a problem with the dialog as a whole. People thrust into the situation seemed entirely too unwilling to tell each other things. I can understand panic. But after an hour in the death maze, when someone asks what skills you could contribute, I would expect people to give a full resume/CV including personal histories, not, "I'm a doctor, like 10 million others." There was a lot of confrontation in the movie, even at the beginning when dehydration and exhaustion hadn't set in yet. They just seemed to want to argue rather than attempt to reason a way out.

Despite the ending and a degree of contravity with the dialog, the movie works reasonably well.

Ultraviolet (2006)

Possibly broken, but still bad

[4/10 · 16 April 2007]

It's open knowledge that the studio cut 30 minutes out of the film. Supposedly, this cut actual character development and so forth out.

Unfortunately, that doesn't matter. See, this is an action movie. And despite the obvious lack of character development, an action movie can still work reasonably well with just its action. That didn't happen here.

It didn't happen because the director has no idea how to shoot or pace action. In just about every action scene, the camera is never in the right place. It's never in a place that is even just good. Sometimes it frames the action OK, but it is never where it ought to be to really capture the moment.

Combine the poor cinematography with simply bad pacing. Whoever storyboarded these fight scenes have no idea how to pace action in a movie like this. Violet is shown to be a God from beginning to end. At no time is there any form of tension about whether she is going to be able to kill this room full of guys. At the beginning, she's able to take on groups of 3-5 with ease. At the end, when she's taking on 20-30, there is no less ease.

This movie so desperately wants to be Kill Bill or the Matrix, but it has no idea what makes those action sequences work. The Bride may have slaughtered a room full of guys, but it took her 10 minutes, and it was not easy. She was breathing heavily through the fight, was retreating to keep them from grouping around her too much, and various other things. These all combine to make the sequence work.

When Violet kills people, she basically stands there and either dodges bullets and shoots them, or dodges bullets and cuts them down with her sword. At no time does she make any reasonable effort to avoid bad positioning in fights, etc. All of this combines to destroy any sense of tension in any of the fight sequences.

The most that the audience has to look forward to is answering the question, "How is she going to get out of this?" Unfortunately, the cinematography ruins even that. And sometimes a battle resolution happens off-screen, so you don't even see how she took out those 30 guys.

And so, like any imitation of greatness, it lumbers along from beginning to end, trying to do what the director thinks those movies were doing, rather than understanding why the movies did what they did.

No matter what scenes are added back to the theatrical version, these fundamental problems will not be fixed. Maybe it would move it up to a rating of 5 stars, which would be merely average, but that's not exactly the kind of rating that a director should be looking for.

BloodRayne (2005)

Umm, well...

[2/10 · 13 March 2007]

This movie was bad. I reserve a 1-star rating for movies that are totally incoherent and atrocious. That is not Bloodrayne; from what I've heard, that would describe director Uwe Boll's earlier movie, House of the Dead. A 3-star rating is for bad movies with a coherent story, and everything else being the minimum possible level of competence.

What does 2 stars mean? Well, it means that the movie tells a functioning, coherent story. That's all the movie accomplishes.

The cinematography ranged from minimally competent to painful. I have never seen action scenes so utterly devoid of tension as I have in this film. There could be a big fight sequence going on, and you could find yourself falling asleep. The quick-cutting style of the action doesn't help either.

Bad though the cinematography may be, it pales in comparison to the acting. Marsden is able to inform you of something about his character through his acting; that he is playing a grizzled veteran of Vampire fighting. He also tells you that he, Marsden, is hopelessly bored by everything that is happening. At no time does he give the character any form of life or depth, nor does he react reasonably to others. He's there to collect a paycheck.

Sir Ben Kingsley is even worse. Want to know a secret? I have uncovered the reason why actors who are in a movie just to get paid are terrible at it. It's because they have no leverage with the director. If Boll wanted Kingsley to sit in the throne for 90% of the movie, which he does and it is as stupid as it sounds, what could Kingsley do to refuse it? Walk off the set and not collect his paycheck? It's not just that the actor doesn't care; it's that the actor has no leverage to hold over the director to use to get some of his ideas in.

This may be why Boll is notorious for hiring his actors at the last possible minute. Not only do you get them on the cheap, but they do what you say or they don't get paid.

I have to hand it to Kristanna Loken though. She tried. She tried as hard as she could. I got the feeling that Michelle Rodriguez did too. But two things were against Kristanna. One, she's just not a good enough actress to pull off the subtleties that I'm sure the role was trying to achieve. But something more important failed, pretty much, everyone in the movie (besides the director): the script.

A grand atrocity of scriptwriting has been committed here. If this same script was reshot with the finest set of actors and actresses under the direction of whomever you feel is the worlds greatest director, it'd still be a mess. Turner's script, combined with whatever script changes Boll threw (up) in, is a horror.

As an example, Rayne is given a speech to say towards the end to perk up the courage of her stalwart companions. It is literally 3 lines and it's the saddest lines you could possibly come up with. Loken says them about as well as they can be said, but when the material fails you, no acting skill can make it better.

There's a cross in the movie that is given all kinds of setup as being important. It's given to various people with the suggestion that it will help protect them. Thus, it's quite a surprise when one of the main characters dies with it on at the end. No protection granted, so what was the point of the setup? The story is functional in the sense that progresses from beginning to end in a way that makes a degree of sense. However, elements of the story fail altogether.

There are these three items that the badguy wants. Rayne accidentally absorbs one of them (coincidentally, just in time to give her an immunity to water right before she was doused in it). Later, when the other two items are show, they're in these boxes. A bit later on, we see one of the boxes opened, but the item isn't there. Did Rayne absorb that too (she was present at the time), sometime offscreen? I don't know, and the movie isn't helping to clear that up.

The direction fails, of course. Scenes have gross continuity errors. People will be somewhere, and then conveniently gone in the next cut. Boll doesn't know what he's doing. Supposedly according to others, he's gotten better. This only makes me very grateful to have not seen his prior movies.

Oh, and no review would be complete without pointing out the gratuitous sex scene. It literally just happens, apropos of nothing. Strangely enough, right after Rayne was remembering murdering a bunch of people including a close friend of hers. I won't lie; it was nice to see Loken's assets, but it's so not worth the price of admission. Like, seeing the movie. Not the cost of the movie, mind you. Even watching it for free costs too much just for a boob shot; you can see equally fine breasts on late-night cable, and without the horrific movies attached.

Basically, the film tells a marginally coherent story; that's the best thing that can be said about it. Every other aspect of this movie is pretty much terrible and/or inept.

As for the fact that it's from a video game, that is irrelevant. It's a bad movie regardless of its inspiration.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Logan and Storm: The New Adventures of the X-Men

[5/10 · 27 October 2006]

I'm really trying not to be "That Guy". You know, the guy who always mouths off about adaptations of his beloved book/comic/video game/etc. Who rails against any movie that breaks even slightly with the preexisting work. Regardless of how reasonable or interesting the change might be. That guy dislikes the movie for things that aren't its fault, for not living up to his personal expectations of remaining true to the original.

I don't like that guy. However, I find it difficult to approach X-Men 3 without becoming "That Guy". I hate this movie for things that are outside the realm of the movie. I see it, and I have to compare it to the original: the Marvel Comic series known as the Dark Phoenix Saga.

However, I'm clear-minded enough to be able to provide a more objective opinion: on its own merits, this movie is weak.

Characters are introduced with expectations of development; you expect a character from the prologue to have some point in the story. The previous 2 X-Men movies do this with Rogue and Nightcrawler. So you expect Angel to be integral to the movie. He is in precisely 4 scenes, and you could cut all of them without sacrificing anything of value.

There are two plots in this movie. One of them is about a company that has discovered a way to "cure" mutations and strip mutants of their powers, permanently. Magneto, quite wisely, understands that this is merely the first step towards the humans attacking mutants and forcing the cure on them. So he gathers a mutant army to deal with the cure.

The other is about Jean Gray, fresh from her death in X-Men 2, and Godly powerful. Jean essentially goes insane from her powers and becomes a threat to everyone, friend and foe alike.

These plot lines should cross-connect, but they don't really. Basically, they're two separate movies, one that's 1:15 long and the other that's maybe 30 minutes long. The only cross connection is that Magneto includes her in his army and sets her off as the mutant equivalent of a nuclear bomb when his attack fails.

This movie could more adequately be called, "Logan and Storm: The New Adventures of the X-Men," because it's really about them. Storm and Logan monopolize about 80% of all character development. It's a real shame too, since Halle Berry gives a pretty poor performance despite the material she's given. Though I don't see how anyone could come off as anything less than a jerk with the scripted line to Rogue, "There's nothing wrong with you." I so wanted Rogue to jump on her and drain her life, screaming, "Oh Really?! Then why are you dying?!"

As for Logan, he's dominated the previous two pictures as well, so I couldn't really expect anything different. It's just unfortunate that he has to take center stage to the degree that he does.

So, plots that don't matter to one another, un/underused characters, and making it all about Logan and Storm. That, and the movie's incredibly fast pacing (due to the two plots forced together in only enough time to explore one) are the film's primary objective problems. Outside of that, it's a pretty decent action flick.

Now, allow me to become "That Guy" for a minute, because I need to rant. This isn't the Dark Phoenix Saga. Not by a long shot.

The DPS needs to hit certain marks: Jean gains infinite power. Jean is driven insane by it (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely), thus becoming Dark Phoenix. Jean is eventually brought under control, but only temporarily. This allows Jean to examine what she has done while under the influence of those powers. Then, the containment of Jean's powers fail.

And this is the key part. Jean Gray realizes that these powers will never be contained. She can't control them, and because she's human, they will corrupt her. She realizes that she is a threat to humanity, and therefore makes the only rational choice left to her: she kills herself.

Jean Gray sacrifices herself willfully out of love for her friends and all of humanity. She willingly turns aside infinite power and embraces death. At the end of the DPS, it is said of Jean that, "She could have lived to be a God. But it was more important to her to die a human."

To me, this is an incredibly powerful and HUMAN tale. That's not what X-Men 3 was. For several reasons.

One, Jean as Phoenix had no character development in X3. And you need that, because the story is all about her. X3 gave Jean maybe 10-15 lines, and she says those in the first 30 minutes, before she is fully lost to Phoenix.

And most importantly two, Jean does not choose to kill herself. Logan (the star of the movie) does it. She fights Logan, trying to kill him, but his healing factor lets him strike the blow. This makes it an act of murder (justified though it may be) for Logan, not an act of sacrifice for Jean. It enhances Logan's character, with Jean merely being the object of affection.

At best, it could be said that Phoenix could have tossed Logan away, but Jean was restraining Phoenix from doing so. Thus, Jean may have had some choice, allowing Logan the opportunity to kill her. But that's not as powerful as Jean doing the deed herself, accepting responsibility for her own powers. Either way, it's more about Logan's feelings of regret in doing the deed than Jean.

And if the story isn't about Jean, what's the point?

Objectively, X-Men 3 is a 5. Subjectively, it's a 1: the brutalizing of a story that could have been done far better.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

Not a Perfect Adaptation, but Good Enough

[8/10 · 25 September 2006]

Chalk up another one for quality book-to-movie adaptations (if only video game-to-movie ones had similar success).

Unlike the fairly realistic Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia have always been on the light side of fantasy. Indeed, LWW reads as much like a fairytale than anything else.

This live-action adaptation strays from its light-hearted roots, but only slightly and occasionally. If you're looking for a literal adaptation, with every cherished scene and bit of narration in place, look elsewhere. LotR fans had to give up Tom Bombadil, and what they got was nothing short of a masterwork of cinema.

LWW isn't quite that, but it is a very enjoyable film. I'm fairly accepting of changes with regards to the adaptation process, so I don't have problems with most of the changes. A couple of them, however...

One major plot point that was somehow scrubbed out was the issue surrounding the Turkish Delight. It's never said, nor really intimated, that this is enchanted food, that it creates an addiction that Jadis uses to control Edmund with. It really damages Edmund's motivation for his betrayal. And the worst part is that all they needed was about 5 seconds of dialog from Mr. Beaver explaining his suspicions about having eaten of her food. That alone would get the audience thinking that there was something up with the food that was giving Jadis some control over Edmund. Granted, I've read the book, so I could understand his motivation, but I could also understand why someone else wouldn't.

Then we come to the wolves, particularly Fenris Ulf, or as they pointlessly renamed him for the film, Maugrim. The scene where he gets killed in the book is very fast, very sudden. In the movie, it's much slower paced, and not entirely convincing that he would just throw himself at Peter, who has his sword drawn and aimed straight at him. Maugrim basically committed suicide, with Peter holding the blade.

The other small issue I have is with the Professor. In the movie, he seemed very much like he knew that the wardrobe held powers, that there was something about it. However, in the book, he seemed more like the kind of guy who, while not knowing much about the house, would nevertheless not be surprised in the least if a portal to a magical land were somewhere around. This seems like a rather needless change to me.

Not all of the changes were bad. Indeed, I would say that most of the changes were improvements, even on some things that I hadn't considered back 15 years ago when I read the book.

Susan, for example, wasn't really a character in the book. Oh, she was there. But she didn't really do anything. Indeed, I can imagine CS Lewis looking at a draft of LWW and wondering how to get rid of Susan without screwing up the poetry of "Two Sons of Adam and Two Daughters of Eve." But, of course, he couldn't, so she had to hang around.

In the film, she gets at least some character. Since they had to follow the book, they couldn't give her too much to do, but she has a character at least. She's "logical" (and says it more times than Spock, without being annoying about it) and rational. She's the one who keeps telling them to leave.

Speaking of which, all of them, save Lucy, have a general reluctance to take part in defending Narnia. Which makes lots of sense; in the book, they just seem to go along with it. In the movie, once they get Edmund back, they start deciding to simply leave.

Which gives Edmund to show off his character growth as he says that they have to stay. That he's seen what Jadis can do, that he's helped her do it. A great moment in the film, as shades of King Edmund the Just emerge.

And I am thankful that they were able to find a way to ditch Father Christmas's awful line, "Battles are ugly when women fight," while still retaining the character. A line so bad that I shuddered at it when I read it 15 years ago.

Which at last brings us to Jadis, Queen of Narnia. Everything about her, from design to acting, is perfect. The dresses she wears, her hairstyle, Tilda Swanson's brilliant acting, everything is designed to evoke a certain sense of the character, and they work brilliantly.

Two things of note in this regard. One is her wand. I always imagined something along the lines of a short stick. You know, a Harry Potter-style wand, as depicted in all kinds of old fairy tales and Disney movies. That's not Jadis's wand anymore.

No, this is a short staff, designed to evoke her powers. It's more of a think scepter, but who cares what it's called; it looks great on film. It looks like an icicle with metal wrapped around it. It is a great device, wielded magnificently by Tilda Swanson.

The other thing about Jadis is her fighting. After her wand is broken (and she stabs the remains into Edmund who broke it. Excellent idea), she starts dual-wielding swords. In the book, she's supposed to fight Peter with some knife. I agree with the filmmakers on this point. The grace and elegance of her movements is just astonishing to watch. This isn't some pseudo-wuxia-style fight, nor is it something out of Jackson's LotR. No, this is a style all its own, and it works magnificently.

If you're a fan of LWW, watch this movie if you're the least bit open-minded about adaptational changes. If you're not a fan, watch it anyway; it works well as a movie.

Elektra (2005)

It had potential, but the cast and crew screwed it up.

[4/10 · 25 September 2006]

There are movies that you watch, where, after the experience of viewing them, you have to ask: how did this get made? Because you can't imagine a universe where any of the ideas presented in the movie worked. Where the plot was at all legitimate. Where this movie could have been good and was ruined by something.

That's not this movie. (note: that would be Catwoman) There were actually some good ideas in this film. Sure, the brutal assassin who is redeemed by a child and finds her conscience has been done time and again. And this version would probably not be better than The Professional/Leon. But, at least, it was following in the footsteps of good films. It could have worked.

Elektra fails, ultimately, because it is so very paint-by-numbers. You can actually read what every shot exists to try to tell you. The person she murders for a contract at the beginning? It exists entirely to establish her as a brutal assassin. The scene with her arguing with her agent over a new contract? That's to she that she's a hardass. Etc.

All movies, technically, can be devolved to that level. Few, however, actually make it so obvious so as to have the person actually do that while watching the movie. Everything that happens in this movie is obvious.

So, why do I say it had potential? Because, if you stripped out all facets of this movie, and gave the basic plot to another director&crew, you could have had something. The problem in this movie is that it fails on every level to execute those ideas with anything resembling grace or elegance. The movie starts at the beginning of a story and just lumbers along until the end. On the way, you get a couple of fight scenes and Jennifer Garner looking attractive in a few outfits.

Speaking of Garner, at no time does she convince me that she's a cold-blooded killer. One reason for that may be because that introduction scene I was talking about spent more time discussing her character than actually showing her doing stuff. Indeed, at no time does she convince me of anything, except maybe that she looks nice in that red dress. She doesn't convince me that she cares about the girl she's saving, that she turns aside from killing, or that she's a credible martial artist. She simply looks like she doing all those things, but it's a thin veneer, and easily seen through.

Everything that's wrong with this film must lie with the director. He's the one in charge of all aspects of production, and since all aspects of production failed equally, he therefore takes the blame.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

A Really Long Star Trek Episode

[4/10 · 30 August 2006]

In the final analysis, ST:TMP is a lot like ST:Generations: it's just a really long Star Trek episode. The only difference was which series they were emulating.

TMP plays out exactly like a original series episode. Except it's over 2 hours long, so they threw in a bunch of half-baked filler material. Decker and Ilia's relationship. Kirk's obsession with command (thankfully retconned out of existence in the Wrath of Khan) and his relationship with Decker. The whole nonsense of them having to fix their Warp Drive. And so forth.

The other part of this is that, it's still an original series episode. And, quite frankly, most of those haven't exactly aged well (and that's putting it charitably). Neither has TMP.

The plot is this: an unknown, and apparently unstoppable, object surrounded by an impenetrable cloud is heading for Earth. For reasons I can't possibly fathom, the only ship available to confront it is the Enterprise, because it happens to be in space dock undergoing refits and repairs.

Now, I'm not enough of a Trekkie to know how fast the various warp speeds are, so I am willing to buy (on the surface of it) that the object is coming in so fast that no ships can catch it. However, if that's the case, then how can the Enterprise actually intercept it, which would require meeting it and keeping pace with it as it approaches Earth? And I'm not willing to buy that the only ship of note around EARTH (the capital of the Federation) is the Enterprise. Even if you ignore evidence from later Trek, what kind of strange universe does this movie live in where Earth is "protected" by a single ship that's only there because it's being refitted. Even if the Federation weren't in a full-scale war, there'd be a couple of ships hanging around Earth.

So the premise fails upon inspection. However, other movies have failed upon inspection, but been interesting nonetheless. This isn't one of them.

Accepting the flaws in its premise, it's just a bad movie. The pacing is terrible (thanks to being an extended ST episode); there's too much movie for the plot. The writing is bland. Way too much time is spent looking at stuff (layers of clouds and ships) rather than on the plot.

The other problem is the ending; TMP's ending is pretty crappy. It's totally Duex Ex Machina (the phrase "God in a Box" is actually quite literal in this case). Decker uses some heretofore unmentioned mechanism to merge with V'Ger. What is this mechanism? Oh, that's never explained. Nor is it explained how he plugs himself into it.

But after Decker merges with V'Ger, it disappears entirely, thus eliminating the threat.

I prefer outsmarting enemies by playing on their weaknesses. Like Wrath of Khan. Or First Contact. Or The Undiscovered Country. My 3 favorite Trek movies, incidentally.

It's not Star Trek V; that was a true atrocity of film making. But it was the second worse Trek movie.

Constantine (2005)

How a main character can ruin a movie

[6/10 · 23 August 2006]

A movie, like most other artistic media built as a union of other media, is about balance. A well-crafted movie provides a good balance between acting, writing, cinematography, effects, music, sound effects, etc. A poor movie often has a lacking of one of these elements, or overemphasizes one element improperly over another.

Constantine is an example of what happens to a movie when you only get most of it in balance. The cinematography is good, the acting out of most everyone is good to excellent, the writing works almost all of the time, etc. The main thing that is out of balance in this movie is John Constantine. The main character.

Just about every other character you meet, even the angle Gabriel who is in 2-3 scenes of the movie, is ten times more interesting than Constantine. Angela, the second lead on the movie, is a far deeper, more interesting character than Constantine will ever be. It's not just that Constantine is a jerk (and at no time is he ever not a jerk) to anyone; he's just not an interesting character.

His motivation is weak. He's constantly being told that what he's doing has no effect on him going to Heaven or not, but he does it anyway. And it's not like we're talking about helping old ladies across the street; he's fighting demons and stuff, having to special-order holy water and have appropriate weapons and such built for him. This is dangerous work, work that has already earned the ire of much of Hell's population. And since that's where he's destined to go, why honk off the locals who are already going to torture you for eternity anyway? We're expect to believe that he is developing certain feelings towards Angela through the movie (though she doesn't seem to return them. Probably due to the aforementioned jerkery). We know this because he kisses her once. And he considered asking her to get naked. That's it; that's the totality of the character development in this direction.

Which leads to the question of why the character fails. All the other characters are played by skilled actors and are well written. Constantine fails as a character either because the actor (Keanu Reeves) can't pull the character off, or because the writer didn't do a good enough job to make the character work.

It's easy to blame Reeves; he simply can't act (his performance in The Devil's Advocate not withstanding). There were times where I'm sure the writer expected Constantine's actor to give Angela furtive looks, or speak certain lines in such a way as to suggest a growing attachment. Reeves failed miserably at this task; when the aforementioned kiss comes up, it feels totally out of character for him. At that point, you imagine that Constantine sees Angela as just another one of the people he's helped before.

On the other hand, there are lines of dialog that I can't imagine working from true masters of the thespian arts, let alone a hack like Reeves. Yet this is the same writer that gives Rachel Weisz (Angela), Djimon Hounsou (Papa Midnite), Tilda Swinton (Gabriel), Peter Stormare (Satan), and even Shia LaBeouf (Constantine's sidekick Chaz) license to deliver performances that range from strong to excellent.

Now, I believe it's entirely possible that the various writers could make the other characters interesting and fail with the main one. So, unlike most of the other reviews, I'm not going to pin Constantine's problems solely on Reeves; I'll accept a 70:25:5% split. It's mostly Reeves's fault, but the writing fails him sometimes. And the director gets 5% of the blame because... he's the director. Problems in the movie are always his fault. If Reeves was a problem, the director shouldn't have cast him.

Though John Constantine is a constant weight around this movie's neck, the other characters do make up for it for the most part. The plot is interesting, and the world is well-crafted. There's CG, but it only enhances.

The only other issue with the film not previously discussed is the ending. While, at the time, I didn't have problems with it, I do understand and acknowledge that the plot twist at the end may not agree with everyone. Having Gabriel turn evil at the end was strange and out of left field; she only had one scene before this, so having her be the main villain could be jarring. However, I found it to work well enough, despite not playing fair with the audience.

Overall, I found the movie to be good, despite its faults.

She Hate Me (2004)

Good, but everywhere

[7/10 · 29 April 2006]

I guess the first thing you should know is that this is a Spike Lee film. The very name wards off a number of people; I'm not one of them. I don't get warded off of a film just because of the director (unless it's Uwe Boll).

The second thing you should know is that this is a good movie. You should know this up front because everything else I'm going to say is going to make it sound bad. But that's because of what the movie is.

Most movies have a single point. An underlying purpose that the writer/director/etc is trying to get across to the audience. Large films may have 2 points.

There's enough raw material in this film to be 3 separate 2-hour movies. The primary premise, a man being paid to impregnate a number of lesbians, is just the tip of the iceberg. You're going to see everything from racism to shadows of Enron; to Mafiosos; to prostitution (seen from a very strange angle); to a truly unexpected, extended homage to the security guard who caught the guys in the Watergate hotel. Subplots disappear for extended lengths in the film, only to be resurrected and dramatically change where the film is going.

It shouldn't hold up, and as a regular movie it doesn't. But this isn't a movie; what it is is about a year's worth of a man's life. Now, life doesn't work like a movie. People don't deal with just one singular issue inside a year. A year is filled with numerous issues, some that disappear for months only to return and really screw you over. And, for John 'Jack' Armstrong, this was a very unique year indeed.

If you look at it as one year's worth of interesting clippings from the incredible life of Jack Armstrong, it's a different film. This man is thrust into a whole bunch of crap that he has to deal with. Issues from his past come out, and he has to deal with them. It does still have a solid, overarching story arc that does get resolved in the end.

The main problem is that cinema really can't effectively do what Spike Lee is trying to do. Not in its 138 minute running time.

However, I think this film works best as a conversation starter. As a way to bring up numerous issues and sort of lay them all out there for people to start talking about. In some ways, it's effective in the direction that Se7en is (though not in nearly as strong a way), in showing you how apathetic society has become about various inequities, corruption, and so forth. With the exception of environmentalism, this film touches just about every societal issue to some degree.

Æon Flux (2005)

The movie's trailer fails to capture the spirit of the movie itself

[7/10 · 10 March 2006]

Remember back in 1999, before the Y2K bust, when you saw the Phantom Menace trailer? Remember when you thought that was the greatest thing you had ever born witness to, and you assumed from it that the movie itself would be one of the finest works ever forged by the hand of man? That to see the movie itself would be to take part in a glorious history that would bring Star Wars to a new age? And then you saw the movie and started asking, "What the hell was that?" This happened to Aeon Flux. Only in reverse.

The trailer was put together by some suit in a Hollywood suite. It was designed to entice the kind of crowd that likes generic action movies starring hot chicks. Basically, the kind of person who would go see Resident Evil even though they had no idea it was based on a video game.

The movie was put together by some rather talented individuals. They were pulling from source material that was incredibly stylized cartoon animation, as well as some mind-screwing narrative. And I mean that in a good way ;) And they were able to pull off a live-action version of the cartoon quite well.

The people who watched the trailer and said, "Hey, I want to see that," are exactly the kind of people who should NEVER see Aeon Flux. They can't appreciate it. The movie that the trailer described wasn't the movie that Aeon Flux was. And the audience that would have appreciated Aeon Flux on its merits was either repulsed by the trailer or are Aeon Flux cartoon zealots who cannot stand visual alterations necessary for such a conversion. And the latter group wouldn't have liked any kind of translation, so they're irrelevant.

So, the trailer ruined any chance of this movie doing well at the box office. So, what was the movie like? Very well done. The greatness of the Aeon Flux cartoon series, to me, was in the characters and in the narrative. And at this, the movie's conversion works very well. If you want to see the stylized visuals of the cartoon series, buy the series on DVD; you're not getting it from this movie.

At its core, Aeon Flux the film is a futuristic action movie with a plot. Not only does it have a plot, it has one that is constantly shifting. For the first hour, if not more, you will be left wondering who the bad guy is, why the bad guy is doing what he appears to be doing, and whether the bad guy is even bad at all? Now, the movie does a great job of explaining everything so that, by the end, you do understand the truth (this, btw, is one of its failings. The cartoon almost never let you know the whole truth by the end).

As an action movie, it's pretty good. However, some of the directing choices in certain fight scenes should perhaps have been considered more; there is a 1 on 1 fight between Aeon and another woman, and it's hard to follow exactly what is going on. Granted, this is the era of the ridiculous quick-cutting of fight scenes, so that is unfortunately to be expected. But even that is a problem in only one scene. Everything else action-wise seems to work pretty well.

Visually, the movie works enough for me, but Aeon Flux purists will likely flee in terror. Charlize Theron in no way embodies the physical being of Aeon Flux, but she does an excellent job of embodying the spirit of Aeon. Likewise with most of the rest of the cast. I suppose that the movie could have been closer to the cartoon visually, but it's certainly good enough for me. And doing so might have been off putting for some who would have otherwise enjoyed the film.

If you're a fan of the narrative aspects of Aeon Flux, or if you're a fan of action movies but would like something more cerebral, give it a rental.

Oh, and any comparisons to Catwoman are flat-out wrong.