Flipping
There
are some movies that I have simply been unable to watch for very long,
since they were so bad. The first one was that one Star Trek: Next
Generation movie in which they went to a planet and jumped into a
shuttle with a buggy, I forgot which one this was and don't really even
care. However, the number one movie in this respect is most certainly "D.E.B.S.",
which we once noticed was playing on the Rogers-On-Demand channel.
Seriously, this movie couldn't have been running much longer than two
or three minutes until I said "You know, I don't think I really want to
watch this", and my wife wholeheartedly agreed. She put the movie into
fast forward mode and we watched it through that way without sound in
ten minutes, constructing the dialog and other effects ourselves.
In the more mainstream fare, we have the movie "The Whole Ten Yards". Apparently the premise of this movie is that the main characters are some kind of Nietzschean supermen beyond good and evil. I guess that this is good, since it's always good to see high philosophical aspirations in mainstream movies. However, Chandler manages to be even more annoying than in Friends with his continuous attempts of confused physical comedy. I think I will let the review of Ruthless Reviews to explain the rest. Avoid if you can.
It is hard for me to understand why "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" earned so well at the box office. When I saw it, my main impression of this film was a constant disappointment how easily everything in this movie could have been great, but the excellent core idea that was full of potential was basically just tossed away. During the movie, I kept entertaining the idea what some professional script doctor could have done with this material. Heck, in this case I can safely claim that even I could have done much better.
And about the end of the movie, a more general point: when exactly did Hollywood get the idea that heroes running around and shooting dozens and dozens of identically costumed enemies would be in some way exciting or interesting to watch? I have actually wondered about this for a really long time now, since of course this is anything but exciting or interesting. Yawn. Am I really that much out the mainstream taste? A great action movie would have at most a handful of villains, so that thrill and excitement would persist throughout the movie. For example, such an economy of villains made "Broken Arrow" a much better movie than it perhaps would have otherwise been.
On the other hand, some movies you would expect to be bad and then they'll turn out to be absolutely great. One example of this the Korean movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring", which we once started watching to avoid other uninteresting work. This movie can be heartily recommended to friends of intelligent action movies, and it would be especially great for a DVD night of young males with a few beers and pizza. The high-flying kungfu of the buddhist monks combined to Jackie Chan -style comedy guarantee that there is not one boring moment in this movie. Highly recommended!
The movie "Code 46" was another great surprise, a good cyberpunk movie set in China of the near future. (Perhaps that's where my dream of living in the Bladerunner city could be realized!) It would be sad if wingnuts avoided this movie because Tim Robbins is in it, since it is quite excellent. In the movie we also learn that the women of the future do not shave their armpits but they still shave... uh, forget I said that. The movie has perhaps the best overall feel of realistic near future that I have ever seen in any movie, although the filmmakers then slightly ruined it a little with talk of all kinds of magic viruses which weren't even necessary for the plot as far as I could tell.
However, the best cyberpunk movie that I have ever seen is still "Nirvana", an Italian production starring Christopher Lambert. The premise of this movie is almost astonishingly stupid: a video game designer of the future realizes that because of a "virus", an AI character in his new virtual reality game has become self-aware, so he has to rescue him from the Matrix-style gameworld in which the other characters are constantly trying to kill him. And many painful video game deaths occur until the character gets his freedom. However, the movie itself was one of the most positive surprises of B-movies that I can think of. And it wasn't until after the movie that I realized that the said AI character was himself a parody of Super Mario.
Speaking of Oriental fare (mmm, I sure feel like dim sum tonight), I noticed that The Movie Network is playing "Ring 2" tonight. Now there's another theme that can never be scary now that even the TV show "Supernatural" ripped it off so blatantly. (Is there even one episode of this show that is not a, uh, "homage" of some horror movie?) In horror movies, I have often wondered why the characters just stand and scream when the rubber bogeyman attacks and they don't even make any reflexive defensive movements. Especially in "The Grudge", which was pretty much the same movie as the ringu series, a swift kick in the face of the catboy would have often been appropriate, with perhaps the repartee "Go back to the grave where you belong!"
Now that I mentioned Buffy in an earlier post, I have to add that "The Grudge" finally convinced me of that fact that Gellar simply can't act. She is actually quite a lot like Arnold in this respect: as Buffy (Terminator), she landed a once-in-a-lifetime role in which her wooden lack of acting skills is actually an asset. But whenever she tries to play any other character than Buffy, so that the limited faces and behaviour that she makes as Buffy don't really work for that character, the end result is somewhat of a flop.
Speaking of female actors, I wonder if Steve Sailer has seen the Ashley Judd movie "Twisted". This movie is an Ashley Judd thriller just like every other Ashley Judd thriller, except for one thing. (No, not the fact that the black mentor is player by Samuel L. Jackson instead of Morgan Freeman.) Once you have seen this movie, the reason for my question should be self-evident, if you are at all familiar with Sailer's observations of how movie villains tend to be cast. But I guess that's how it is with thrillers: whenever certain conventions emerge to work as a shorthand to establish to the audience something about the characters, a clever filmmaker can for a short while use them to trick and misdirect the audience. But eventually, these conventions pile up so much that the whole genre becomes unaccessible to outsiders.
Conventions are broken in the excellent small-budget movie "P.S.", which was very similar in spirit of "Roger Dodger" by the same filmmaker. The latter movie is about a New York adman who has an incredible skill of reading and manipulating people and situations. When his nephew comes for a visit to apply to university, Roger is given a task of finding him a woman, leading to an adventure in which both characters learn various important lessons of life in general.
"P.S." is about a female art professor who chooses the applicants based on their sample work. A young male applicant who reminds her of her long-dead boyfriend comes to show his work, although I didn't understand why anybody who is able to produce such work would even bother wasting time in an art school. The interview, during which both participants blatantly disobey the rules of proper business conduct, of course ends up in bed in a scene that my wife and her girlfriend that we saw this movie with immediately commented was very untypical for a movie sex scene.
Our two main characters start a relationship. However, it soon turns out that the professor's ex-husband, himself a physics professor in the same university, is a sex addict who had sex with hundreds of students even during their marriage. Now, even though this character was played by Gabriel Byrne, I seriously doubt that such a feat would be possible, since even one female student rejecting his advances would end his career. (Would a physics professor in Columbia even have hundreds of female students in his courses?)
Movies are at their very best when they educate the viewer while entertaining him (edutain?), like the movie "King Arthur". But seriously, in the competition of the worst historical inaccuracies and anachronisms in seemingly serious movies it would be truly hard to top the movie "First Knight". I think that I will describe this 1995 movie about King Arthur (who was apparently some kind of a Founding Father -style democrat, whereas the evil Dark Lord of the neighbouring kingdom was some kind of a totalitarian jackbooted nazi) simply by noting that I half-expected the Round Table to rise from the castle floor in style of James Bond villains. Had this happened, it wouldn't have been out of place with the rest of the movie. For Christ's sake, the King Arthur's castle contained rococo furniture and architecture.
In the more mainstream fare, we have the movie "The Whole Ten Yards". Apparently the premise of this movie is that the main characters are some kind of Nietzschean supermen beyond good and evil. I guess that this is good, since it's always good to see high philosophical aspirations in mainstream movies. However, Chandler manages to be even more annoying than in Friends with his continuous attempts of confused physical comedy. I think I will let the review of Ruthless Reviews to explain the rest. Avoid if you can.
It is hard for me to understand why "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" earned so well at the box office. When I saw it, my main impression of this film was a constant disappointment how easily everything in this movie could have been great, but the excellent core idea that was full of potential was basically just tossed away. During the movie, I kept entertaining the idea what some professional script doctor could have done with this material. Heck, in this case I can safely claim that even I could have done much better.
And about the end of the movie, a more general point: when exactly did Hollywood get the idea that heroes running around and shooting dozens and dozens of identically costumed enemies would be in some way exciting or interesting to watch? I have actually wondered about this for a really long time now, since of course this is anything but exciting or interesting. Yawn. Am I really that much out the mainstream taste? A great action movie would have at most a handful of villains, so that thrill and excitement would persist throughout the movie. For example, such an economy of villains made "Broken Arrow" a much better movie than it perhaps would have otherwise been.
On the other hand, some movies you would expect to be bad and then they'll turn out to be absolutely great. One example of this the Korean movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring", which we once started watching to avoid other uninteresting work. This movie can be heartily recommended to friends of intelligent action movies, and it would be especially great for a DVD night of young males with a few beers and pizza. The high-flying kungfu of the buddhist monks combined to Jackie Chan -style comedy guarantee that there is not one boring moment in this movie. Highly recommended!
The movie "Code 46" was another great surprise, a good cyberpunk movie set in China of the near future. (Perhaps that's where my dream of living in the Bladerunner city could be realized!) It would be sad if wingnuts avoided this movie because Tim Robbins is in it, since it is quite excellent. In the movie we also learn that the women of the future do not shave their armpits but they still shave... uh, forget I said that. The movie has perhaps the best overall feel of realistic near future that I have ever seen in any movie, although the filmmakers then slightly ruined it a little with talk of all kinds of magic viruses which weren't even necessary for the plot as far as I could tell.
However, the best cyberpunk movie that I have ever seen is still "Nirvana", an Italian production starring Christopher Lambert. The premise of this movie is almost astonishingly stupid: a video game designer of the future realizes that because of a "virus", an AI character in his new virtual reality game has become self-aware, so he has to rescue him from the Matrix-style gameworld in which the other characters are constantly trying to kill him. And many painful video game deaths occur until the character gets his freedom. However, the movie itself was one of the most positive surprises of B-movies that I can think of. And it wasn't until after the movie that I realized that the said AI character was himself a parody of Super Mario.
Speaking of Oriental fare (mmm, I sure feel like dim sum tonight), I noticed that The Movie Network is playing "Ring 2" tonight. Now there's another theme that can never be scary now that even the TV show "Supernatural" ripped it off so blatantly. (Is there even one episode of this show that is not a, uh, "homage" of some horror movie?) In horror movies, I have often wondered why the characters just stand and scream when the rubber bogeyman attacks and they don't even make any reflexive defensive movements. Especially in "The Grudge", which was pretty much the same movie as the ringu series, a swift kick in the face of the catboy would have often been appropriate, with perhaps the repartee "Go back to the grave where you belong!"
Now that I mentioned Buffy in an earlier post, I have to add that "The Grudge" finally convinced me of that fact that Gellar simply can't act. She is actually quite a lot like Arnold in this respect: as Buffy (Terminator), she landed a once-in-a-lifetime role in which her wooden lack of acting skills is actually an asset. But whenever she tries to play any other character than Buffy, so that the limited faces and behaviour that she makes as Buffy don't really work for that character, the end result is somewhat of a flop.
Speaking of female actors, I wonder if Steve Sailer has seen the Ashley Judd movie "Twisted". This movie is an Ashley Judd thriller just like every other Ashley Judd thriller, except for one thing. (No, not the fact that the black mentor is player by Samuel L. Jackson instead of Morgan Freeman.) Once you have seen this movie, the reason for my question should be self-evident, if you are at all familiar with Sailer's observations of how movie villains tend to be cast. But I guess that's how it is with thrillers: whenever certain conventions emerge to work as a shorthand to establish to the audience something about the characters, a clever filmmaker can for a short while use them to trick and misdirect the audience. But eventually, these conventions pile up so much that the whole genre becomes unaccessible to outsiders.
Conventions are broken in the excellent small-budget movie "P.S.", which was very similar in spirit of "Roger Dodger" by the same filmmaker. The latter movie is about a New York adman who has an incredible skill of reading and manipulating people and situations. When his nephew comes for a visit to apply to university, Roger is given a task of finding him a woman, leading to an adventure in which both characters learn various important lessons of life in general.
"P.S." is about a female art professor who chooses the applicants based on their sample work. A young male applicant who reminds her of her long-dead boyfriend comes to show his work, although I didn't understand why anybody who is able to produce such work would even bother wasting time in an art school. The interview, during which both participants blatantly disobey the rules of proper business conduct, of course ends up in bed in a scene that my wife and her girlfriend that we saw this movie with immediately commented was very untypical for a movie sex scene.
Our two main characters start a relationship. However, it soon turns out that the professor's ex-husband, himself a physics professor in the same university, is a sex addict who had sex with hundreds of students even during their marriage. Now, even though this character was played by Gabriel Byrne, I seriously doubt that such a feat would be possible, since even one female student rejecting his advances would end his career. (Would a physics professor in Columbia even have hundreds of female students in his courses?)
Movies are at their very best when they educate the viewer while entertaining him (edutain?), like the movie "King Arthur". But seriously, in the competition of the worst historical inaccuracies and anachronisms in seemingly serious movies it would be truly hard to top the movie "First Knight". I think that I will describe this 1995 movie about King Arthur (who was apparently some kind of a Founding Father -style democrat, whereas the evil Dark Lord of the neighbouring kingdom was some kind of a totalitarian jackbooted nazi) simply by noting that I half-expected the Round Table to rise from the castle floor in style of James Bond villains. Had this happened, it wouldn't have been out of place with the rest of the movie. For Christ's sake, the King Arthur's castle contained rococo furniture and architecture.
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