Don't know what he's looking at...it's not the beach.

Last night, I watched one of the more depressing movies I’ve ever seen.  It was about this old guy who tells a story to a female resident of this nursing home.  He tells the story of a couple who had fallen in love, and there were some plot twists and things, and at the end…YOU REALIZE THAT THE MAN AND THE WOMAN WERE THE PEOPLE IN THE STORY BUT THEY JUST HAD ALZHEIMER’S.  Then they die, and there are swans flying as the credits roll.  The tears were just flying out of my eyes, it was terrible.

So anyways, I didn’t actually watch The Notebook, but my writing skills are just so good, that I totally had you going, didn’t I?  Hah!  The movie I actually watched last night was On the Beach, a 1959 film about the end of the civilized world.  It was directed by Stanley Kramer and starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, and Fred Astaire.  Being born in good ol’ 1985, I have no idea who any of those people are, but apparently they’re some big movie stars?

I’ve begun a trend of choosing movies that I have to defend as science fiction.  Mad Max, Night of the Creeps, and like half of the other films I’ve reviewed – none of them give outward signs of being anything close to science fiction.  I’m hard pressed to justify myself.  This week’s movie is no different.  It’s in black and white.  There are no dinosaurs.  There are no robots.  They don’t even go to space.  But it does have something I’m (apparently) quite fond of:  the apocalypse.  Yes, looking back, almost a full third of the films I’ve reviewed are about the end of the world somehow.  These kinds of movies don’t make interesting science fiction because of how humanity and the world die.  If anything, these are facts that are usually glossed over in the first few minutes of a film.  Unless it’s a disaster epic, where the end of everything we’ve ever known is mostly just spectacle.  No, most post-apocalyptic and apocalyptic films are interesting because of their portrayal of how people cope with the fact that life has gotten so hard, or changed to a point where it’s virtually unrecognizable to the audience.

How characters interact with each other and their own philosophical musings are at the heart of On the Beach.   The film takes place in Melbourne, Australia, with the nuclear fallout from the apocalyptic war creeping ever closer to wiping out the last few people on the face of the Earth.  We follow the lives of a few of the survivors: a couple with a newborn child, a submarine captain, and two drunks – a socialite and a scientist.  Presumably, these are the perfect characters for this sort of thing, because all people in the world can be put into one of those main groups.  I’m the submarine captain, if you’re wondering.  Which one would you be?

My Zeppelin is just out of frame

A lot of the themes the characters are dealing with are pretty heavy.  I mean, at the beginning of the film, it’s stated pretty explicitly that no one is going to survive the coming fallout.  The few glimmers of hope in the film are an automated radio signal coming from the coast of San Diego, and a farfetched idea that the colder weather at Point Barrow, Alaska might slow down the radiation enough to build a habitable life.  Naturally, anyone who knows anything about radiation knows that that’s highly unlikely.

And the radio signal turns out to be a bust too.

To be honest, this is a pretty depressing film.  Anthony Perkins has to deal with his wife’s denial of the coming events, eventually getting to the point where she is delusional about their chances of survival.  He also has to wrestle with the idea of feeding a suicide pill to his child to prevent the long, slow, painful radiation death that would take her otherwise.

Yeah.  Depressing.

Most of the film is dedicated to the relationship between the sub captain and a woman who, until now, has been a drunk, unable to cope with her coming doom.  Of course, drinking yourself into a stupor is a perfectly reasonable course of action given the circumstances.  If I wasn’t busy commanding a submarine zeppelin, I would probably do the same thing.  Gregory Peck is still tortured over the fact that his family was killed because they were living on the East Coast when the bombs hit, and this makes it hard for him to strike up a romance with another woman.  Of course, knowing that they only have five short months until the end of the world, is it really worth it to start something?  Does anything even matter?

Lets synchronize watches....now!

As a side note, and a way to keep myself from being depressed, I’ve just realized that Australia seems to be the place where most people assume the world is going to end last.  It’s where Max goes mad, the Earth goes Quiet (2 reviews from now), and people play on the beach, waiting for silent, deathly radiation to kill them.  Can someone tell me why Australia is so preoccupied with the end of the world?  Are you guys planning something?  It must be a thematic thing.  Australia must represent mankind’s eventual resting place.  DOOM, if you will.

The film is shot beautifully.  There are sweeping vistas of empty cities and ice flows, not to mention the incredible landscapes of beautiful Australia.  At times, the angles skew slightly to unnerve the viewers, usually when the characters are talking about a desired future, or making plans for the future.  It shows the futility of everything.  Some haunting dialogue accompanies these images…saying that the cities are deserted because “dogs go somewhere to be alone when they die, maybe people do the same?”

I mean, what else is there to say?  The film is fantastic.  It generates these terrible feelings of hopelessness and despair.  The only thing I wasn’t too sure about is the score.  There are points where the visuals are accompanied by a tense, almost grandiose score that seems to want to emphasize the fact that the world is dead.  This is just about the only misstep in the film.  Scenes like these need a mournful, or haunting score to accompany the depressing images.  It’s almost trying to scare you into thinking about the end of the world.  We really should be depressed by it, saddened by the passing of the human race, and the futility of life.

Other than that, the movie hits every emotional beat it aims for, and really depicts how depressing and sad the end of the world is eventually going to be.  I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to feel the cold, icy grasp of nihilism creeping into your heart.

Proving this movie is sad: do you want this to be the last thing you see?

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to my men on my Zeppelin, the Spirit of the Paleozoic.

Away!

In an unfortunate summer that has yet to make a real impression on anyone, the lavish, designer label-laden Sex in the City 2 has garnered a bit of attention for being a critical and commercial failure.  Not only is it a terrible, but the content of the film has ruffled many a feather due to its obsession with fashion, wealth and its unabashed adherence to stereotypes long thought negative towards feminism.

Of course, many critics, myself included, are men, and all men are clearly threatened by powerful women.  At least, this is the response many Sex in the City fans give to those that find the film loathsome.  The puzzling thing is, all the criticisms I’ve read say little, if anything regarding Sex’s ideals of feminism.  Mostly, I assume, because there are very few examples of feminine independence or empowerment to be seen.

The Sex in the City series is, oddly enough, entirely different from its cinematic extensions: witty, insightful, and modern.  Yes, the battle of the sexes was a frequent source of humorous conflict, but the show never took the man/woman divide too seriously.  Instead, the series focused on finding that balance between romance, sex, work, family, independence, and finding one’s purpose, something we all can relate to.

Yes, the series was told from a woman’s point of view, but the show could hardly be called gender biased.  Sometimes things were the man’s fault, other times women were to blame.  At the end of the day, the men and women were just people, all with strengths and weaknesses, good days and bad, and were all capable making just as many mistakes as their counterparts.

It was this quality that made the show a symbol of feminism in the modern era.  Instead of calling attention to or insisting on a glass ceiling, men and women were all thrown onto a level playing field to duke it out.  If someone committed a foul, it was their fault as an individual, not as a man or woman.

With great source material such as this, its something of a conundrum that the Sex movies could turn such a corner, thus becoming what the series sought to avoid.  Men and women reverted back into simple stereotypes, relationship problems were easily avoided bits of conflict brought on by a character’s own self-absorbed sensibilities, and while the wit retained it’s bark, its bite had been reduced to a unenthusiastic nibble.

Yes, what was once a show with character and content had been turned into a scrapbook of fashion with storylines and dialogue that appeared to be written by those who had been more concerned with what Carrie was wearing, and less on what she or the others were saying.  The NYC, high society pop aesthetic that complimented the television program’s message had now become the message, and few fans seemed to notice.

Sex in the City 2 has drawn more negative attention to itself than it’s predecessor.  Critics and fans alike have left their local multiplexes with a bitter taste in their mouths, wondering what has become of their Fabulous Foursome.  To be frank, Sex 2 is just as bad as the first film; the characters are flat, the conflict is forced, and the insight on relationships and the human condition pales in comparison to the television series.

The only difference between the two is the time period.  In 2008, the recession was only just beginning, and few were privy to just how bad things were going to get.  Now, only two years later, the aftermath has left much of the country feeling bitter towards frivolous wealth and easy privilege, which would explain the acidic hatred towards Sex 2.  Much, if not all of the film revolves around the preening of a wealth that is as easy to enjoy as it is utterly unattainable.

When pennies become more and more difficult to pinch, its difficult to applaud the concept of money for nothing, from nothing.  Unfortunately, its this quality that defines the world of the Sex in the City films.

The film’s central premise begins when Samantha pitches an idea to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Abu Dabi, which includes a twenty thousand dollar-a night suite and four personal, round-the-clock servants.  “I’m tired of this bullshit economy,” she says, “we need to go somewhere rich.”  There is so much wrong with this line of dialogue that I don’t know where to even begin.

Film is, amongst other things, an escape from reality, and with the dark cloud of the recession over everyone’s heads, it’s not unreasonable to want to hide away from it for a few hours at a time.  And yet, the movie doesn’t so much escape from the economy as it does place itself into the center of the boundless greed and frivolous spending that contributed to the economic crisis in the first place.

And why bring it up in the first place?  None of the characters appear to have been affected by it.  Sure, in the beginning of the film, Carrie mentions the recession, but does so as she opens her fully stocked walk-in closet.  There is something very disingenuous about a film trying to appeal to the woes of the masses while simultaneously rubbing their faces in the things they don’t have.

Of course, it’s not fair to blame someone for having money, nor is it fair to hate someone for using it.  Yet it’s not about the money, or the clothes, or the shoes per se; it’s the mindset, the lifestyle, the approach to said wealth.  With pockets near-empty and money tight, the last thing anyone wants to see is a group of people throwing fistfuls of cash into the air like it’s a big party.

As if watching a quartet of Daisy Buchanans gorging themselves on luxury for the sake of itself wasn’t bad enough, Sex in the City 2 gives us the worst example of motherhood in a long time.  Charlotte (Kirstin Davis), the saccharine traditionalist of the group, finally has the family she has wanted since episode one of the series.  Unfortunately, being a mother proves to be difficult (who knew?), and the benefits of a picturesque family fail to outweigh the hardships of raising children.  Then again, Charlotte doesn’t exactly raise her children.

Yes, Charlotte has outsourced an Irish nanny for her children who does so much work with the kids that she is more of a behind-the-scene mommy for the kids.  In fact, the only time we see Charlotte with her children results in her locking herself in the pantry crying while the nanny takes the kids into the next room.

In a particularly infuriating scene, Charlotte and Miranda, who actually struggles to raise her kid, have a one-on-one heart-to-heart about the hardships of being a mom.  The talk ends with a toast to all mothers who seem to cope without help, which is one of the most disingenuous things I have ever seen.  Don’t, I repeat, DON’T try to disguise pity with admiration, and don’t attempt to align yourselves with mothers who are on their own.  They are out of your league.

I wish I could say that the moral of this sub-plot is to make sure you have the emotional wherewithal to handle raising children, but that would require responsibility and a devotion to something that isn’t money or clothes; wrong film for that, I’m afraid.  Spoiler alert: Charlotte’s revelation by the end of the film is to hide away in Carrie’s old brownstone when she needs to recover from a long day of watching someone else raise her kids.  Bigger than a pantry I suppose.

There is a scene in which the girls read a very negative review on Carrie’s most recent book, which is about marriage, and instantly dismiss it because the critic is a man, and all men hate empowered women.  Several online responses to the film’s criticisms say the same thing.  My response: What empowerment?

There is no example of empowerment in this film, female or otherwise.  Carrie is a nagging wife who cheats on her husband while abroad, Charlotte needs her children taken from her, Samantha does what she does best while making hopelessly mediocre puns (“Lawrence of my labia!”), and Miranda, thank goodness, is the sole voice of reason, so at least the film has a quarter of its characters holding the torch for female independence.  Unfortunately, Miranda is no one’s favorite character, so it’s a moot point.

The freedom, the wealth, the privilege, the empowerment…. these things all resemble a drunken nightmare from F. Scott Fitzgerald more than anything else, where sophistication means buying nuggets of experience, sights and spectacle that can be gossiped about at a red carpet event.      

In a moment of great irony, unbeknownst to anyone involved in the film, the girls sing “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar”.  Make no mistake, no one is roaring at this film.  Instead, there is whining, pouting, credit cards, and designer labels.  I truly hope that, in the real world, the ideals of empowerment have not become so glitteringly superficial.

I don't get it.

Dear Diary:

Today, I finally decided to write the next column that I have been putting off for a few weeks.  Why?  Well, diary, it’s because when you write the same format for every movie all the time, sometimes you get bored.  Formulaic, if you will.  So, you have to spend a few weeks fighting crime in Thailand or meditating in Australia to get your creativity back.  Then, you sometimes have to get your passport and identification stolen, get accused of being an international crime lord, and finally have one or two of the cocaine balloons you’re currently smuggling inside your body burst and have to go through a crazy intense detox.

Whew, diary, that was refreshing.  Somewhat cathartic, too.

So the movie I watched for the letter N (which is this week’s sponsor, by the way) was Night of the Creeps, made in 1986 by a dude named Fred Dekker.  Let me start by justifying this as a science fiction movie: it begins on an alien space station with ALIENS.  And it pays homage to the time honored sci-fi movie by legendary filmmaker Ed Wood: Plan 9 From Outer Space.  (My title does too, for those who are a little slow on the uptake)

The basic plot of the film somewhat resembles the plot of Plan 9, widely regarded as the worst movie that was ever made.  Essentially, aliens accidentally let one of their experiments escape their ship to Earth, where it turns out that this experiment is able to bring the dead back to life.  What the original purpose of this was, we can only guess.  Necrophilia, probably.  So, the small town, mostly the frat row, actually, has to deal with zombie-like creatures.  There’s also some kind of subplot in there about a guy being kept on ice cryogenically frozen for a while, and an axe murderer, but these are just the finer points of the greater plot.  Which is zombies.  Lots of zombies.

The characters in the film are fantastic.  They are basically the B-Movie archetypes that we’ve all come to know and love over the years.  We have the old sheriff who is haunted by his past (his girlfriend was murdered by the axe murderer his first day on the job), the two college students who started it all because they want to get into a frat to get with a girl, the douchey frat leader who is waaay too into himself, and the unattainable girl who somehow ends up with the protagonist at the end.  Each character plays their part perfectly, but I was particularly impressed with the sheriff.  He is maybe a rung or two below Bruce Campbell and Rowdy Roddy Piper in terms of badassery and smart remarks.  Awesome stuff.  There were times where his grizzled attitude and affinity for guns just blew me away.

See? Guns...also a Flamethrower.

There are even a couple of little touching moments in the film.  J.C., who is the crippled best friend of the main character, is eventually infected with the brain slugs that turn people into zombies.  Through the whole film, he’s had to walk around on crutches, but is always the light jokester.  He’s the lovable comic support.  When Chris finds his body with his brain and head burned in the boiler room (don’t ask), he plays a personal log-tape-type-thing with J.C.’s last words – “I can walk, Chris, I can walk.”  It’s really pretty touching for that B-Movie atmosphere, and there is a surprising amount of characterization.  It’s just a shame that he’s a zombie.  And had to light his own head on fire.

Another thing that’s really cool, and intentional, from what I gather, is that the parts of the film that take place in the 50’s are shot in black and white.  Besides the obvious reminder that the world didn’t grow color until the late 60’s, this was kind of a neat atmospheric trick.  Although, for some reason, the time aboard the alien ship that drops the experiment off on Earth is still in color.  Whatever, it was a cool creative choice.

For those of you who like that sort of thing: there are a lot of awesome practical gore effects.  Dead dogs, zombies, and exploding heads are just part of it.  There are a couple of scenes with a flamethrower that the local sheriff station for some reason has in their arsenal.

One thing that horror fans might notice is that this film is just chalk full of homages and nods to earlier films of the genre.  The university in the town is Corman University (named after legendary director Roger Corman).  There are no less than four different references to Plan 9, an obvious nod to the greatest and most terrible film of the genre, and the basis of the plot of the film.  And the best nod is that all the main characters are named after horror/sci-fi directors.  We have Chris Romero, James Carpenter Hooper (double bonus there), Cynthia Cronenberg, Detective Ray Cameron, Detective Landis, Sergeant Raimi, and Mr. Miner, the Janitor.  I’m too lazy to post the references, so I’m going to have my assistant do it.

Apparently, as the internet tells me, there were two different versions of this film released with a lot of changes in the ending.  The original theatrical and VHS ending had the two main characters watching the sorority house burn down, then a zombie dog wanders into frame and spits a zombie-brain slug at the camera.  CHILLS, EXCITEMENT, and SHOCK!!  Not exactly.  This ending would have been terrible, and if I saw that in the theatre, I would have been a little upset.  Or maybe I wouldn’t, seeing as it would be 1986, and I wouldn’t have any idea how to end a movie because I am one year old.  The good ending is more along the lines of what the director (who also did Monster Squad) wanted.  Det. Cameron, who is charred and zombified, and dead, walks away from the burning sorority house (I forgot to mention that there are scenes with BEWBS in them – a must for a B-Movie horror set in a sorority) and he falls to the ground where the brain worms crawl out of his head and towards…A CEMETERY!

Then we see the spaceship from the beginning hovering over the cemetery, returning to collect their experiment.  So we end on an awesome shot of a spaceship over a cemetery, where hundreds of zombies are now going to arise.

Awesome.

I can't find a picture of the graveyard...have this instead

As a general feeling, I enjoyed the film.  It was perfectly campy, it didn’t bog itself down with anything that was unnecessary, and it stuck to the classic feel of the terrible B-Movies it’s paying homage to.  The acting is decent, and the story is….um, ridiculous.  But that’s exactly what I wanted out of a movie called Night of the Creeps.  Is it perfect?  No, but I wouldn’t really want it to be.

Well, that’s all for now, diary.  Who knows when I’ll get to write in you next?

P.S. I think that hunky Brad is finally beginning to notice me!  Hopefully, he doesn’t think I’m too slutty.

"I guess I see myself as a kind of professional appreciator."

I love movies.  I love all types of art: literature, comics, music, photography, and painting.  I’m an appreciator of most creative endeavors, and my primary goal with this website, at least in the case of the films, is to share that love with other people.  You can think of this as the mission statement I never wrote when we started this website almost a year ago, but my real intention is to question the act and processes of criticism of the arts, and the way in which I’m contributing to it at the moment.

If you’ve been thoroughly reading my work for this website, which I’m sure most of you have not, you will have noticed a pattern.  I like or love way more movies than I dislike or hate them, at least amongst the films reviewed on the website.  There are multiple reasons for this, but the primary one is this: as someone who’s doing this work without any pay, I’m damn well going to watch the movies I want to watch.  I have a pretty good idea of what my taste in movies is, and what gaps in filmic history need to be fulfilled sooner rather than later.  For my own viewing I try and keep a balance of educational and just plain fun, but the point is that, in general, I intentionally choose films that I know I will enjoy.  The other is that I usually can find something to appreciate in most films that are out there, even if they are mediocre or bad.  If there’s truly very little to appreciate it, I still can learn and gain something from the experience.  Even if it’s just to laugh at it.

Watch this movie, please.

Let’s be clear here, I’m not condoning giving bad movies a pass.  As you’ve seen with reviews such as Dance of the Dead, I’m not afraid to rip into a movie when it deserves it.  Although even that film did have some good points to offer, and it’s budget nature should allow it some credit.  I could even see that film growing a cult following around it’s over-the-top and independent nature.  So you see, I have a bit of trouble committing even to the movies I really didn’t like, because someone else might like them.  I go to Kevin Smith for a paraphrased quote, “Make ‘em all, I say.”  Any given film that I don’t like might be loved by someone else, and if it means more work for some filmmaker, then great.  No, Twilight isn’t for me, and I disagree with some of the values it instills with young women, but the money from it helped pay for the purchase and distribution of The Hurt Locker, which I very much enjoyed.  This brings me to another intelligent point that I read on Twitter recently.  This one’s from one of my favorite comic artists, Skottie Young, “I don’t understand the desire tear down the things you don’t like when it’s so much more fruitful to spread the word on the things you do.”  I’m not speaking to any specific negative criticisms here, but I do feel like an unnecessary amount of time is spent ripping things apart, when we could just be spending that time sharing something we really love with the world.  Hell, you’re probably giving that bad piece of “art” more publicity than it deserves by publishing or talking about it.

Older films are fun, too.

That said, I do grate against the general culture when it comes to taste in entertainment.  I will admit to holding the view that people are not discerning enough when it comes to what they view.  Also, if I can save someone else wasted hours that I have already spent in vain, why not save them the trouble by explaining to them in as clear and constructive a way as possible why a certain piece of culture is not worth their time.  I prefer to direct audience attention to a better film, if possible, and to slowly adjust their tastes to something with a little more quality, but sometimes you have to throw up a hazard sign if truly dangerous things are ahead.  I think we’re trying to do a number of things with this site.  First and foremost is share the movies with love with our (small) audience.  Secondly, we’d like to help readers understand what it is that makes these films fantastic, so that they can better appreciate these pieces of art.  I hope this will also help them seek out and appreciate other great films, as well.  In the long run, though, hopefully this will help them have a critical eye of their own for movies and be able to have intelligent insights and discussion of their own.  It certainly wouldn’t hurt if we shifted a few people’s tastes away from some of the more schlocky contributions of Hollywood, either.

Once again, I’m not going to point fingers at any particular “schlocky contributions” in this case.  But, I will say this, why settle for a mediocre film on the New Release wall, when you can view a much better classic film and enjoy it even more.  Just because it’s new, doesn’t mean it’s fresh.  Yes filmmaking techniques have changed over time, and you may be used to the current modern mode of filmmaking, but even without some of the more recent tools, there still was likely a specific reason that every decision was made on a film.  If a film has slower pacing, it may have been intended to make your journey as rough as the character being depicted.  People often miss the stark beauty and tones of black and white in favor of viewing it as a “lack of color.”  There’s a whole world of fantastic films in languages other than English that are much better than some of the standard fare as well.  Maybe a lot of this stuff isn’t your thing, but maybe you just haven’t found the right genre, or the right director to show you its true potential.

All I’m trying to say is that I’m here to share with you some films that I think are great.  I’ve been considering beginning a column, briefer than our standard reviews, of just unabashed “recommends.”  If this is something that interests you, let me know in the comments below.  Otherwise, I’ll continue to work primarily with the films that I love all around this website.  If you end up deciding to watch anything I’ve recommended and end up enjoying it, I’ll consider my job well done.

Bad. Ass.

Thanks to all your love and support, my stalker has been put behind bars.  In an elaborate sting operation that involved me dressing as Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and prancing around with a stuffed dog singing “Bad Romance” by Lady GaGa (yeah I didn’t understand that part either), the perpetrator was captured when he mistakenly fell into a hole covered in leaves.  Score one for the good guys.  Although, I guess they should change the title of the website to “One Film Geek.”

This week(end?) the movie on the chopping block is 1979’s Mad Max.  A staple of dystopian and post apocalyptic cinema, this movie hails from Australia and clocks in at ninety-five (95) minutes.  Although, really, since time and space are connected, we could measure this film in meters, light-minutes, or even parsecs.

The movie begins with a homicidal rampage.  The Nightrider (real name: Ambrose St. George Ulysses III*) cuts a swathe of destruction across the barren Australian landscape, running into buildings, cars, speeding, and yelling at the top of his lungs.  Naturally, the damn cops have to rain on his fun and chase after him, trying their damndest to suppress his god-given rights to maraud.  Max, who is not yet mad, is instrumental in driving him into an explosive tanker where he meets his fiery doom.

Of course, the ramifications of messing with mauraders were not yet fully known in the 1970s, and Max brings a whole gang of crazies down on him and his police precinct.  Included are such illustrious individuals as Toecutter (real name: Solomon Carter-Smythe, esq.*), Bubba Zanetti (real name: Sir Cornelius Kingsly*), and Johnny the Boy (real name: John Smith*).  After slaughtering Max’s family after he has quit the force, they move on to destroy more and more of the Australian countryside.  Max, who is now sufficiently mad, goes after the gang, and, one by one, kills or hideously maims them.

It’s definitely not my place to say whether Max was right or wrong in his termination of these helpless individuals.  So I’m just going to go ahead and leave moral judgment out of my analysis.

One of the obvious points I’ll need to address if I’m to retain any credit as a science fiction reviewer is that you could watch this movie and not have any clue that it takes place in the distant future.  Well, I suppose there is the obvious opening crawl that says IN THE NEAR FUTURE, but beyond that, if you didn’t know anything about Australia – and I know most of you don’t - you might just assume this is how the world works over there.  Well, this is not how the world works over there.  But what makes this a science fiction if it’s basically indistinguishable from a regular cop revenge film?

Gooday, Mate...hahahhahahahahaha

Let me tell you right now.  What qualifies this as science fiction is that it’s a dystopian society where almost all government and law has broken down.  There are no clues in this film as to when or why that might have happened, and there is almost no evidence of post apocalyptica anywhere in sight.  No giant craters, no mutants, no sand creatures.  The key is the word “dystopia” which is a vision of a futuristic society that is the opposite of a utopia.

Because of this I say that this film is science fiction.  It takes place in the future, in a society that we would not want to happen.  Well, most of us would not want to happen, anyway. I’m sure there are a few of you out there who would like to let your inner marauder out for a little while.

Now that I’ve spent hours and hours defending myself against imaginary accusations of choosing the wrong movie – let’s actually talk about the movie.  Or, I’ll talk, and you listen.

This was Mel Gibson’s breakout role.  He doesn’t do much acting in the film, aside from starting the trend in all of the movies he would go on to act in of being very, very angry.  In this, and in all of his movies, I think we can all agree that Mel Gibson is really good at acting mad.  Maybe because he really is mad?  Who knows?

This is some kinky sexplay

The story is pretty simple, but is kind of reminiscent of a Hollywood Western in which a sheriff’s family is murdered by someone who had previously been arrested, and the sheriff goes on a vengeance filled crusade stopping at nothing in his quest.  In this, the “Mad” in the title may also refer to a blood filled madness induced by seeing his family killed because of something he had done to better society.  In this, mad may mean crazy.  Clever little play on words there.

Where this film really shines is in the crazy ass action in the beginning and near the end.  This movie is filled to the brim with car chases and explosions.  The entire first ten minutes or so is consumed by an amazing car chase with three cop cars and the Nightrider’s black Pursuit Special.  There are crashes, flips, jumps, and explosions.  And that is only 80% of the chase scenes – the production ran out of money before they could do the last 20%.  So they got in as much as they could.

I mean, what more could you want?  Don’t be greedy.

It’s not really surprising that a lot of the film came about conceptually when the director who had worked as a medical doctor for a time in an emergency room.  He basically threw a lot of the deaths and injuries he had seen in real life into the movie.  A couple of the spills are shot in slow motion, which really make it kind of cringe-worthy.  There are some good prosthetic effects, although they are kind of glazed over quickly to avoid you staring at them for too long.

The Star of the picture, and his driver - William Wallace

I suppose if I’m going to do an analysis of this movie, I have to talk about the cars too.  They’re cool.  I don’t really know anything about cars at all, so this is kind of new territory for me.  They used…a Ford Falcon for Max’s starting police vehicle, and a “modified GT351 version of a 1973 Ford Falcon Hardtop.”  My god, I’m even boring myself with this part of the review.  But there it is. I expect a couple of you to make your own replicas and send them to me so I can parade about the Australian Outback in my own dystopian car.  For the record, they destroyed 14 vehicles for this film.

One of the most spectacular things about the movie is that it was shot on a budget of $350,000 and it pulled in $100 million worldwide.  For the longest time, this was a record investment-to-profit ratio, and was one of the most amazing success stories in cinema.  When watching it, there are literally hundreds of little cost-saving items that kept this movie’s production budget down, from vinyl costumes for everyone but Mel, to reusing the same vehicles painted differently in different scenes to guerilla shooting in certain scenes – this movie is proof that you can make a decent action film on a miniscule (relatively speaking) budget.

I liked it.  It wasn’t the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen, nor is it in my favorites list, but every time I watch it, I find myself liking it more and more.  It’s obviously a staple of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic storytelling, popularizing the notion of raiders and marauders in a society that has no rules or organization.  Everything from Escape from New York to Book of Eli makes use of the concepts introduced here.

It also ends as all movies should: with Mel Gibson walking away from an exploding car.  See you in the world of tomorrow.

*May not actually be their real names

Iron Man 2

Perhaps it was by mere coincidence that these individuals were cast as men who have, in one way or another, fallen from grace and must fight their way back to the top.  There aren’t many people like Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey Jr., who are as famous for their self-destruction as they are for their immense talent.

Though both have their own distinct styles and poisons, Rourke and Downey were both Hollywood’s shining stars, both ruined their personal and professional lives, and are currently in the midst of a comeback, returning to the level of fame and respect once promised to them many years ago.

Mickey Rourke was thought by many to be the Robert De Niro of the Eighties, known for his good looks, classic New York charm and his method approach to acting.  Gaining a considerable amount of attention in a small role as an arsonist in Body Heat, Rourke was put on the fast track to Hollywood stardom.  Rourke, on the other hand, had different plans.

Turning down high profile roles in Beverly Hills Cop and Highlander, Rourke chose smaller, character driven films, such as Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village and Angel Heart.  Although these films met with varying degrees of commercial success, Rourke received success critically as well as from within the business.  Even in his less-than-stellar films, like Francesco or Year of the Dragon, Rourke proved he could rise above a weak script and deliver a great performance.

Rourke’s aversion to success and professional expectations was no accident.  It seemed as though Rourke refused to play ball with Hollywood and deliberately did things that were deemed “not star worthy” by the powers that be.  Furthermore, Rourke proved to be difficult on set, depending on whom you asked.  Whereas he got along great with people he liked or respected, those Rourke found less than ideal bore the brunt of his irresponsibility, resistance to direction, and his general attitude problem.

Eventually Rourke’s reputation granted him a number of high-powered enemies, and the roles started to disappear.  Not only that, but Rourke’s behavior got even more unpredictable, as he started making choices seemingly made to purposefully sabotage his career.  For one, Rourke signed on to be in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, a B-movie that now enjoys some cult success, but at the time was a critical and commercial bomb.  Also, it was a film Rourke did only for the money, something he would have never done a few years earlier.

The most bizarre of his choices was, at the age of 39, to return to his childhood passion: boxing.  Aside from the obvious conflict concerning his age this move proved to be the final few nails in Rourke’s coffin.  Although he proved to be one hell of a boxer (he won six out of his eight fights), Rourke never got his title fight.  Instead, he received frequent blows to the face, destroying his good looks.

While Rourke was in the middle of his rise and fall from Hollywood stardom, Robert Downey Jr. was just getting started in show business.  Having achieved a little screen time in Weird Science and SNL (for one year), Downey scored a breakout role in 1987’s Less Than Zero with Andrew McCarthy, playing a young, drug-addicted preppy whose life is quickly circling the drain.  Needless to say, the role held more significance than anyone at the time realized.

Like Rourke, Downey favored versatility over marquee power and played a variety of characters in smaller films.  From a romantic lead opposite Marisa Tomei in Only You to an Australian exploitative journalist in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, Downey managed to be as charming as he was willing to challenge himself, and people loved it.

Downey’s biggest break came in 1992 with Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin, with Downey playing the title role.  Critics and moviegoers alike were blown away at how Downey transformed into Charlie Chaplin, mimicking every one of the silent actor’s mannerisms perfectly.  Downey’s performance earned him an Oscar nod in 1992, facing stiff competition with Clint Eastwood for Unforgiven, Denzel Washington in Malcolm X and Stephen Rea in The Crying Game.  The award ended up going to Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.

Despite his success, Downey’s severe drug problem was becoming more and more noticeable, both with studio execs and the general public.  Producers considered him to be too risky to hire, and he was always on the front page for his various arrests and exploits whilst under the influence of any and all drugs the young star could get his hands on.

Taken into custody a number of times, Downey was once arrested for the possession of heroin, cocaine and an unloaded firearm while speeding through Sunset Boulevard.  In another more bizarre, yet infinitely humorous one, Downey was arrested for breaking and entering.  It appeared that a high-out-of-his mind Downey broke into what he thought was his own home, and was discovered by the rightful homeowners to be sleeping in one of their beds.

After becoming famous less for acting and more for his wild antics, Downey appeared to redeem himself when he landed a role in Ally McBeal, which earned him an Emmy nod for “best supporting actor.”  Unfortunately, Downey’s continued drug abuse led him to be written off of the show.

“It’s like I have a loaded gun in my mouth, my finger’s on the trigger,” Downey told a judge in 1996, “and I like the taste of gunmetal.”

Rourke was dismissed as a trainwrecked has-been, barely getting by with the help of small roles from friends and constant therapy.  After years of being on Hollywood’s shit list, Rourke starred in Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City as a massive, pug-ugly street brawler.  The film was a modest success, but critics universally praised Rourke’s performance, saying he was the most heartfelt, human character in the gritty neo-noir film.  Soon after, Rourke received nominations from the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and scored a win at the BAFTAs for his role as over-the-hill wrestler Randy “The Ram” Johnson in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.

In 2003 Downey had managed to kick his drug habit, and slowly started his journey back into the good graces of the film industry.  Since most major studios were unwilling to hire him, Downey starred in a number of small films, some of which were good (A Scanner Darkly, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), and others that were terrible (The Shaggy Dog, Gothika).

In 2008, Downey charmed his way into the good graces of Hollywood and the general public with his role as Tony Stark in Iron Man.  People fell in love with the actor’s smarmy wit and likeable arrogance, and as a result,  Downey was officially back on top.  Determined to prove himself as more than a one-off comeback performer, Downey earned an Oscar nod for his performance in Tropic Thunder as Australian method actor-in-blackface Kirk Lazarus.  In 2010, he won a Golden Globe for Sherlock Holmes, in which he played the titular detective himself.

In this era of celebrity over substance, tabloid over talent, those who grace the covers of entertainment magazines and snag segments on E! are no strangers to notoriety.  However, your Lohans, your Kardashians, your Hiltons, they tend to reap sympathy (and profits) for their bad behavior, claiming to be victims of flash-bulb circumstances.  Rourke and Downey, no strangers to consequences, are amongst of the few to admit to their own faults and take responsibility for their own lives for their own benefit.  Today, both Downey and Rourke are the public’s two favorite underdogs, not to mention Hollywood’s most solid, dependable actors.  Good film or bad, small part or leading role, both of these men prove themselves to be the best at what they do, and deserve every bit of praise, fame and recognition they can get.

Too Small, No Caption

So, last week, when I was leaving the FilmGeeks Offices – I could have sworn there was someone following me through the parking lot.  He/She was like 5’6” and kept making weird dinosaur noises.  That Jurassic Park article really put me on the map, and I think I may have a stalker.  If any of you are stalking me – please leave a comment at the bottom.  And I have pepper spray in my purse.

So, now that I’ve got that nonsense off my chest, I can tell you what I slaved over for the last few weeks.  Lost City, a (let me see if I’ve got this right) “Science Fiction adventure serial told in 12 amazing parts” from 1935 is my next gargantuan project on the chopping block.  And, man, this sucker looks like it’s going to take a few swings.  I also want to get in a little disclaimer: When I first heard the synopsis, I thought “Cool!  A lost city!”  What do I get?  The “city” is just  like four hallways and a supply closet.  Go figure.

For those of you under 60 years of age, a film serial was a series of 10-30 minute mini features (episodes) shown in theatres before feature films.  Imagine watching a movie, but instead of previews, you get a short segment of a 900 million hour long film that ends with a cliffhanger.  Because of said cliffhanger, you have to come back the next week to the same theatre to find out what happened to your intrepid heroes.  Of course, that episode ended the same way, and you would just FIND YOURSELF BACK IN THE THEATRE A WEEK LATER.  It was a vicious never-ending cycle of awesome ways to make money.

So now that you have a little background, I can tell you that this doesn’t bode well for someone who sits down and watches ALL 236 MINUTES OF IT for a review.  Do I want to review them episode by episode?  Do you all really care enough to read through a 12 part review of something that, quite frankly, just barely deserves more than a small blurb?  I still haven’t figured it out yet.

The story revolves around some strange atmospheric conditions affecting the world.  An engineer (and hunky man-meat) named Bruce Gordon builds a machine that pinpoints the disturbances to “The Center of Africa.”  And for those of you who are wondering, yes, this is a real place.  Bruce, a couple of skeezy investors, and his buddy, Jerry, travel to the disturbances and have to deal with everything from mad scientists to zombie natives to slave traders to giant spiders to hunchback servants to freeze guns to paralyze guns to pissy queens of the jungle who like to throw tea in people’s faces.

Worst scared face ever?

I want to tell you all right now.  This film is incredibly racist.  It’s from the mid-thirties, so you have to expect things like the blacks belonging to white people or how the captive scientist has invented a way to turn the natives white, or people saying things like “Hey, that sounds like a white woman in trouble!”

Beyond that, because of the unique nature of how the segments are set up, the story elements and character arcs are rather unorthodox.  Each episode is designed to end on a cliffhanger, and no story elements are actually introduced or taken care of.  People just seem to wander from place to place with no actual motivation other than “SHIT, someone’s been kidnapped, let’s go over there, DAMMIT, now we’ve been kidnapped, GAH, now someone else has been kidnapped.”

From what I can tell, only two characters truly have what you might call arcs, Butterfield – a dick who lives in the forest commanding a lot of the natives who have “gone native” – and Gorzo – the hunchback who starts as the sidekick to the evil dude, but inexplicably changes his ways in the second to last episode or so.  Butterfield is the only character who grows and learns from his mistakes – which all involve wanting to create a superhuman race of zombie giant black dudes to take over the world.  So, you know – he turned over a new leaf.

Bruce and his love interest, Natcha, have nothing in common, no chemistry, and they’re terrrrrrrrrrrible actors.  I mean, like, really, really bad.  At no part were they believable at all in the whole series.  In fact, all the acting was terrible.  The best actor was this guy in either the second to last, or the last episode who gets 1 – hit over the head, 2 – choked out, and 3 – hit over the head, then choked out.  SUPERB acting on his part.

Also, did I mention that Natcha is continuously screaming?  Through the whole 236 minutes.  She does nothing but scream.  Wait, that’s not true. She fights a tiger at one point.  Like, a real tiger. They put the stunt person in the same shot as a tiger, and then filmed it.  I was impressed, because there was some real danger there.  To the stuntman – at least.

SHIT IT'S A FUCKING TIGER

Speaking of the stuntmen – the fights in this film were GODAWFUL.  I mean, I know it was the 30s, but good lord, I’ve seen better stuff from earlier films.  A lot of that can be attributed to there being absolutely no musical accompaniment to any scene with any drama whatsoever.  As a result, the tension that is so carefully built up thrown together for the series is actually at a negative.

Ah, definitely one of the more enjoyable aspects of this series was finding things that George Lucas ripped off for Star Wars.  I mean, maybe not directly from this series, but in general, there is a lot of stuff that can be attributed to this type of filmmaking.  I expect to see a hell of a lot more when the Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers stuff rolls around.  There was also a little bit in there that would have inspired Indiana Jones.

I suppose, if I’m supposed to be looking for good things to comment on for this film – there is a lot some set design that’s pretty cool halfway decent not the worst thing in the world.  You kind of get the feeling that they wanted to show off that they had a bunch of cool-ish looking electrical apparatus that really worked.  Kind of like a science project.  Clearly that ate up all the budget and didn’t leave room for things like acting, sets, or writing.

But let’s take an objective look at this for a moment.  It’s 1935.  You have some big ideas, and you want to entertain people and you have a damnably small budget.  People want adventure and science and thrills.  So you whip up something that satisfies all of those needs.  Mind you, the craft was still in its early years, so you can’t judge something put together under these circumstances with the same gusto you might afford a bigger production like Bride of Frankenstein (which came out the same year).  This was the depression era of filmmaking.  As far as what the public was expecting, this might be exactly what people would have wanted.  Of course, being spoiled by today’s films and only being able to look back at the “classics” might also tinge how you view a series such as this.

Yes, Jerry (far right) has this stupid look on his face the whole series.

My overall estimation was that this is by no means a great piece of cinema.  It’s not even particularly fun to watch as a campy piece from the thirties.  It’s really bad.  But you can kind of admire it for what it was trying to do: entertain people.  That’s what it’s all about, folks.

I’ll rate it a 37 on my arbitrary scoring system I just made up.  It’ll definitely be a while ’till I do another serial.

In 2009, Swedish film Let The Right One In opened in the U.S. and achieved a considerable amount of success critically, as well as commercially (as far as foreign films are concerned).  This year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo conquered the literary world and made quite an impact on the big screen.  Needless to say, it’s been a very good few years for the Swedish film industry.

Soon after the success of Let The Right One In, it was announced that Hollywood would remake the film with Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) helming the project, an idea that fans of the film, both here and in Sweden, found to be in bad taste.  Now that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has garnered some attention, it has been announced that it too will be remade in America.  Outrage may be too strong a word to convey people’s opinion of these rushed remakes, but the general consensus regarding this news tends to be vehemently negative.

This isn’t the first time Hollywood has remade a foreign film; its been going on since other countries started making films really, and the interesting thing is the remakes aren’t always bad.  Whether they are as good as the original or live up to their predecessors is up for debate, as that opinion is hardly ever objective, but many remakes themselves have been pretty good.  Akira Kurosawa’s “Eastern”, The Seven Samurai jumpstarted the man-on-a-mission film, and was remade by John Sturges as The Magnificent Seven, which turned out to be a great Western.  Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia was remade from Swedish filmmaker Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s film of the same name, and both were incredible neo-noir films.

If remakes were an all-around terrible idea, than no remake would turn out good, but if films like The Magnificent Seven and True Lies (yes, it’s a remake) can turn out well, it’s fair to assume that the quality of remakes are circumstantial.

Several films have been based on novels or plays; there is never to much hub-hub made when The Importance of Being Earnest is remade for film for the umpteenth time, unless it turns out to be a terrible adaptation.  Akira Kurosawa has adapted several Shakespeare plays into film; King Lear turned into Ran, and Macbeth became High and Low, to name a few.  Furthermore, Kurosawa’s Yojimbo was his take on the classic “stranger comes to town” Western formula previously used in many films.  Yojimbo was then remade by Sergio Leone as, A Fistful of Dollars, which jumpstarted Clint Eastwood’s career and lead to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, one of the greatest Westerns ever made, if not even the greatest.

Film is the most common medium for entertainment in the Twentieth century, just as plays and novels were in the past.  Film, at its core, is just storytelling, and many novelists, playwrights and screenwriters have all borrowed, taken or stolen something from some story somewhere.  Just as novels are adapted to film, remakes of other films aren’t inherently bad; it’s just the reinterpretation of someone else’s story.  Ultimately, it comes down to what the filmmakers do with the source material, what creative differences those filmmakers apply to it, and, most importantly, whether or not the film is any good.

There is, however, something else going on concerning the upcoming remakes of Let The Right One In and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Two successful foreign films being remade almost immediately after their U.S. releases resembles an agenda, or worse, a trend.  Whereas remakes like The Birdcage were made long after the original debuted, remakes made for the sake of remaking them isn’t filmmaking; it’s cheap, repetitive crap being peddled for easy profit.  Look at Chris Rock’s remake of Death at a Funeral; what was once a witty, masterfully executed farce from Great Britain has now become a comedy that relies on stereotypes, bad slapstick, and Tracy Morgan.

What’s most offensive about this approach is that the sole motive is profit.  The studios don’t respect the original as a great film, nor do they give a damn about adding something unique to it.  They’re just trying to latch on to the swelling reputation of the film and ride that wave of success for all its worth.  It’s insulting to the film, the cast and crew, and the foreign film industry.

What sets these two films apart from other remake endeavors is the space of time between the projects.  Let The Right One In came out last year, and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo is out right now. Why are ideas of remakes already in the works?  The very thought shouldn’t even occur in any filmmaker’s mind.  Let the films run their course, enjoy the success that its due, then settle a bit in the ether before throwing the “remake” card on the table.  Too soon guys, too soon.

Dragon Tattoo is still being discussed, so it will be a while before people get really mad.  So far, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp’s names are being dropped for the role of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist.  Talented as they may be, Clooney and Pitt are too polished for the role, and the character isn’t a whimsical goth nymph, so Depp is out.  David Fincher, director of Se7en, Zodiac and Fight Club, is the favorite to direct the project, which could prove interesting if the project wasn’t such a disgrace to begin with.  The worst rumor is that Kristen Stewart is apparently in the running for the titular tattooed heroine, presumably so she can continue pretending to be Joan Jett for another year or so.

NOT the next Lisbeth Salander

Let Me In, the American version of Let The Right One In, is slated for this fall.  Aside from Reeves directing, the two young leads, Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass), are two fine child actors and just might give strong performances.  Set in the Midwest to achieve America’s own winter pastoral wasteland, the film takes place amidst the Reagan era, which could provide a unique, regional spin on the story.  Or it could turn out to be the big, Americana cow pie everyone expects it to be.  Only time will tell.

Let Me In producer Simon Oakes discussed the film, saying, “This is making an [already] astonishing story… more accessible to a much larger audience.”  That statement in and of itself contains the conundrum of foreign film remakes: shouldn’t people overcome their fear of reading and watch foreign films anyway?  Then again, if people are initially wary, or even unaware, of the release of foreign films, what’s wrong with introducing them to the mainstream public via an American remake?  Hopefully, they will seek out the original soon thereafter.

Naysayers will say nay, but one cannot casually dismiss all foreign remakes, foolish as they sound.  On the one hand, those who remake a film, foreign or otherwise, for the sake of a guaranteed increase in projected profits are nothing more than cinematic plagiarizers.  On the other hand, some of these filmmakers may be doing it out of earnest; maybe doing the wrong thing, but for all the right reasons.  Fortunately, you can always tell a good film from a bad one, one made to tell a story and one put together for easy money.  Those capitalizing on a trend should stay behind borders and try something else. As for those who claim to have noble, artistic intentions?  I hope you’re up for the challenge, because we’re all watching.

God, even the poster for this turns me off

Woohoo I’m kind of back on a roll with the updates.  It was touch and go there for a while, but I think I’ve overcome my aversion to entertaining you and after weeks and weeks of therapy, I can go back to being funny on command for you.  Unfortunately, the movie I have to present to you today (tonight?  Who knows anymore) is neither entertaining, nor enjoyable.  I’ll do my best with the source material, but I’m pretty sure most of you will stop reading after this paragraph.

K-PAX, a 120 minute affront against the science fiction genre released in 2001, is a film about a man (Kevin Spacey) who goes by the name of Prot who believes that he’s an alien.  You know, from SPACE.  Jeff “Starman” Bridges, who is not an alien in this film, plays a psychiatrist or psychologist or something who has to deal with Prot and his incredible influence over the other inmates mental health patients.  Naturally, because of his advanced worldview, Prot is able to cure most of the other patients with his positive attitude and his dedication to an alien way of life.

Ugh.

Okay, I guess we have to look at this film objectively.  First.  The music is TERRIBLE.  While surfing the forums on IMDB, I found a couple of comments and threads on how people loved the music in this film.  They loved it.  It makes no sense.  The film has this shitty midi-synthesized sounding score that doesn’t really fit the mood or the attitude of any of the characters in it.  I guess they were going for an uplifting kind of thing, but in general, in science fiction, synth kind of reminds you of a darker feeling movie.  Not to mention the quality of the music is terrible.  It literally feels like someone composed it for a 8 bit video game.  EXCEPT 8 BIT VIDEO GAMES HAVE BETTER MUSIC.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system – Kevin Spacey.  He’s quite possibly one of my favorite actors.  Pretty much everything he’s ever been in, I’ve at least liked him.  But this film brings him down to the level of a mediocre performer.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s definitely the best part of the movie.  He’s quirky and pretty funny, and he even has a little bit of an otherworldly quality about him.  In short, he plays this role perfectly.  Even so, there’s only so much you can do with a script like this.  I will say that there were moments in the latter bit of the film where he is under hypnosis that his acting really shines through the script.  But overall, he was just kind of average.  It pains me to say it, but it’s true.

This is Kevin Spacy in a Train Station

Jeff Bridges is the other character – he plays the psychiatrist/psychologist (just what the hell is the difference between those two anyways?*) who Prot is referred to for therapy.  Now, I have no problem with Jeff, I actually like Jeff.  In this movie, I even kind of like him.  In fact, I’m going to end this paragraph here.

Okay, where this movie fails utterly is in the plotting.  It starts out innocently enough, with Prot arriving on Earth on a beam of light.  Then a bum acts like he’s just seen Jesus or The Prophet or Luke Skywalker return to Earth after two millennia.  It’s all downhill from there.  People don’t treat Prot as a crazy person.  It’s pretty much as simple as that.  Throughout the whole movie (aside from some of the hard, solid factual evidence to the contrary) people are constantly SAYING that they believe Prot is clearly mentally disturbed or imbalanced.  But they really don’t act like it at all.  They don’t once seem to entertain the notion that he’s crazy and may need medication.  I mean, when you look at it, they all act one way, then say something completely different.  It’s odd, and really hard to explain.  I would say go see it for yourselves, but I would not want to punish you like that.

There’s also a little subplot in the film about Prot’s family being murdered or something, but it only halfway pays off, and is barely worth mentioning.

Now.  My major gripe about this film: There is a question as to whether Prot is an alien or not, and this question persists through most of the film.  I don’t have a problem with this.  A lot of movies have this as one of their plot devices: is your main character really what he seems?  It’s kind of interesting in most movies to see where this plot goes.  Of course, as a science fiction film reviewer – this is the farthest possible from what I was feeling as I was watching the movie.  The film is billed as science fiction, and I expect science fiction, dammit.  What do I get at the end?  A lot of ridiculous sentimentalist nonsense with an unclear ending and a surrender to the greater mysteries of the universe.  I was pissed.

After the picture might be spoilers.  But can a movie like this really be spoiled?

I'm sorry I couldn't find a more interesting picture for you.

After a little research watching the movie, I’ve concluded that it was, indeed, a science fiction story because of a couple of factors.  Prot is an alien.  1. He takes an inhuman dose of thorazine (300mg) and is unresponsive.  2. When he leaves back for K-PAX, he takes someone with him.  3. He accurately describes orbital patterns of a star that haven’t been published or theorized yet.  Of course all this can be explained away with pseudoscience (he’s a savant, he…um…doesn’t react to drugs?).  No.  It can’t, which at least made me realize that I wasn’t wasting all of my time watching this film.  Now I know I don’t ever have to watch it again.

But Fil, what did you really think about this movie? I really didn’t like it.  It had some interesting ideas, and two excellent leads, but ultimately it doesn’t do anything with the story other than spout sentimentalist nonsense.  I think I’m just adverse to the story of a crazy man helping cure other crazy people through the power of love and self discovery.  It seems disingenuous and even kind of dangerous and childish.  If you want to see a movie that you don’t have to get invested in, but ultimately ends well and leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy, then I guess you should see this one.

I’ll leave you on an up note: if you watch this, you get to see Kevin Spacey eat a banana without peeling it first.  And that’s the highlight.

*Psychiatrists are medical doctors who go to medical school and can prescribe drugs, psychologists cannot.

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES

Let me set the scene for you.  It’s 1993.  I (your humble writer) am eight years old.  Up to this point in my life, there has been nothing but monster trucks and dinosaurs.  Every book I own is somehow related to dinosaurs.  Posters, toys, t-shirts – I’ve got it all.  And I think I’m set for life.  Yeah, I wanna be a paleontologist.  I’ve got a plan that takes me all the way through my life, working with these amazing creatures.

Then I see a little movie called Jurassic Park and my life changes forever.  Paleontologists…they spend all their time in the desert, searching and digging and basically doing the most boring job on the planet (disclaimer: this is not the most boring job on the planet).  They speculate as to what these creatures might have done, all from looking at the remains.  Naturally, my eight-year-old self realized that this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my life.  Jurassic Park showed me that I could write obnoxious film review columns on movies with dinosaurs in them.

I’m going to stop everyone right here and say that if you haven’t seen this movie, you will probably get nothing out of this column.  I doubt I’ll give you a summary.  Instead, you should go buy 3 copies of the movie.  Right now.

Now that you know that this film motivated my love of movies, where do I even begin?  With the dinosaurs, obviously.  This film is pretty much hailed as the start of using realistic CG in a story.  Sure, before this, there were other movies that had used the technology, and some of it was even good.  But Jurassic Park set the standard for what computer generated imagery would look like for years to come.  You’ve all heard stories about how James Cameron had to wait to see Lord of the Rings to even contemplate Avatar?  That’s what Jurassic Park was to every big budget filmmaker in the business.  Kubrick watched it and called up Spielberg with A.I. Lucas realized he could begin work on his Star Wars prequels. **cough cough** terrible idea, George **cough cough** Peter Jackson went back to his fan fantasies of Lord of the Rings and King Kong.  And unless you’re blind, which I’ve actually been told 20% of my readership is, you can see how monumental Jurassic Park is.

King of the World

Obviously, it also inspired yours truly to set out and write an Impossible set of articles for you all to enjoy at my expense.  Bleeding fingers be damned!  The typing must go on!

This movie is a typical Spielberg film.  What do I mean by that?  It’s got plenty of action and thrills, spectacular visuals, and a fairly character driven plot.  It also has a happy ending, which is something that I normally really don’t like about Spielberg.

So, the dinosaurs.  Originally, the dinosaurs were going to be a very realistic type of go motion, designed and animated by Phil Tippett.  After Spielberg found that lacking, he gave ILM a crack at it – after all, their work on Terminator 2 was pretty good – why not?  By combining stop motion technology and writing some new software for computer modeling, they were able to create the realistic creatures you see on screen.  Even by today’s standards, this movie is fantastic, visually.  By my standards, this movie is pure gold.

A funny little story: the bit in the film where Grant says he’s out of a job and Malcolm says “Don’t you mean extinct?” was from a real life conversation Spielberg had with Phil Tippett regarding go-motion.

This is not CG. The people are though.

Why does it work so well where other movies fail so utterly and completely?  The simple answer is, “I have no idea.”  I’ve got some theories, though.  Mixing the CG with realistic looking Stan Winston-produced animatronics has to be a step in the right direction.  A lot of people apparently couldn’t tell the difference between the robot dinosaurs and the fake dinosaurs.  Judicious use of CG also must have helped.  The entire movie is supplemented by the CG rather than bathed in it.  Spielberg uses just enough that you want to see more, but you are definitely happy with what you’ve been given.  Any other ideas should be emailed to me so I can add them in to this column later and pass them off as my own.

I realize it might be taboo to bring in my knowledge of the book, but bear with me for the character analysis.  In the book, each character is a walking cardboard cutout.  They have no personalities.  In the movie, each of the characters has little eccentricities and quirks, likes and dislikes that make them realistic.  Malcolm, in particular, is great.  His feelings are clearly presented, and his personality and sense of humor often add to the situation.  Alan Grant’s initial dislike of children makes him an interesting character, and putting him with Lex and Tim for the majority of the story gives him time to grow and evolve (hah!) until he is obviously okay with the kids.

What do I think of the movie, overall?  I would think it’s obvious.  This is the movie that made me want to make movies.  I saw the potential in bringing whatever you want to life to fit a story, and I was hooked.  Sure, this might not be the most perfect movie ever made.  But this film is exemplary of what Spielberg is best at: spectacle and fun.  There may be a handful of movies out there that entertain as perfectly as this one.  Others might be more meaningful, some might make you laugh more, others may even be more visually interesting.  But this film takes every element and rolls it up into one perfect package.  You get a flavor of all aspects of film: romance, adventure, science fiction, comedy, and drama all in one.  What more can I say?  It’s magnificent.

...Should...have sent...a poet

Sooo…as for what all of you vultures really want to know: is it possible to do this in real life?  Is the science in this movie sound enough that in our lifetimes (2-5 months in most cases) we will be riding around on top of tyrannosauruses?

Step by step:

1. Find an insect with dinosaur blood in its abdomen.  Yes, this is theoretically possible, but in reality, not only would you have to have an insect from the right time period, but there would be no guarantee that it was dinosaur blood.

2. To extract the blood, you’d have to separate it from the insect’s blood, and then there’s the problem of having the DNA deteriorate over time.

3. Then all you need to do is put together the entire genome.  Essentially, this would be like putting together a billion piece jigsaw puzzle in the dark with every piece the exact same size and shape.

The Answer: FUCK YES IT’S POSSIBLE.  I’ll see you in the world of tomorrow my friends!

**rides off on the back of his triceratops**