The Karate Kid (2010)
VERDICT:
4/10 Leg Sweeps
Good lord, just stick with the original.
The Karate Kid is about a 12-year-old from Detroit who moves to Beijing with his mom, he does his best to blend in without knowing a single word of Chinese, he develops a crush on a girl in his class, he winds up getting his ass kicked a lot by a group of kids who all take karate lessons from a sadistic maniac, and then he starts learning kung-fu from his building’s super so that he can kick their asses double time in a big ol’ martial arts tournament.
Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched the ’84 version that inspired this thing, but from what I remember in my youth, the story here isn’t all that different. Replace Cali with China, switch out Danny Larusso for a kid who’s just barely old enough to have gotten the “birds and the bees” talk, make Mr. Miyagi younger and give him a shady past, turn “wax on” to “jacket on”, and that should about do it. Whatever, it’s expected and the similarities aren’t exactly a drawback, but the big problem goes back to the guy who thought this thing needed to clock in at 132 minutes.
Really? What could writer Robert Mark Kamen possibly have to add to the subjects of karate and kids that would warrant such a lengthy experience and wasn’t already covered over the course of four movies? In a nutshell, nothing, and while it’s not quite on the same level as having to wade through all eight hours of Sex and the City 2, trust me, it’s noticeable.
So the plot is formulaic, some of the dialogue gets eye-rollingly corny towards the end and it takes a good hour or so before the actual training begins, but then again, the script isn’t the only thing to blame.
From the moment I saw the first trailer where Jaden Smith was throwing punches in a wife beater with his noodle arms, I wasn’t exactly won over by the sight. It’s just weird to watch a sweaty sixth-grader doing shirtless high kicks while showing off his semi-six pack in any setting and the kid doesn’t do much to convince me that I should find it cool either. I can see how folks might find him “cute”, but the kid just comes off as smug, like he’s hot shit and he knows it, and that’s not a good quality to have when you’re twelve, or ever. Seriously, enough with the popping and locking, drop the “too cool for school” shtick and forget that you’re The Fresh Prince’s son for a second. Jaden’s probably got some potential in there, but I couldn’t handle him as Dre Parker.
Taraji P. Henson is also pretty irritating as his overprotective and uber-smothering mom, but that’s more the script’s fault than hers.
Then again, the fight scenes are pretty good for the most part, mainly because Jackie Chan knows a thing or two about choreographing an unfair fight. The weird thing about it is the insanely rapid pace at which Dre goes from novice to perfect weapon without even really trying, and then there’s the whole final karate tournament where we find out that all the kids have been learning their techniques from the Tekken dojo.
Honestly, Bruce Lee couldn’t pull off the wacko moves these kids unleash on each other like it’s no big thing and as much as I want to say that it’s mostly entertaining, I couldn’t stop laughing to myself at how bonkers it got, the words “FINISH HIM!” even show up on-screen like it’s Mortal Kombat, Jr. Man, I’m still shaking my head thinking about Jaden’s update on the crane kick. Wait ’til you see it, beyond ridiculous.
But there are some saving graces, the first of which is the setting.
I’ve never been to China, and up until now that was fine by me, but this thing sure isn’t hurting their tourism industry any. Absolutely beautiful country all around, I’m shocked that this fact has eluded me all these years, and thanks to this, it’s been bumped up on the bucket list of places I need to go.
And Jackie Chan’s actually pretty solid as the 21st Century Mr. Miyagi, Mr. Han. Easily the most interesting character of the bunch, the dude actually can kick some ass and watching him trounce a pack of teenage thugs without even throwing a punch just makes me feel like an idiot for ignoring Rumble in the Bronx all these years. He’s no Pat Morita, but he’s the best thing this movie’s got going for it.
I don’t know, the thing I keep wondering is why this movie was even made. Was there really a movement or a general desire amongst anyone out there who thought that it was high time someone remade The Karate Kidof all things? It’s not like the original feels dated or anything, so it just ends up feeling like what it is – another cash cow Hollywood remake. The Karate Kid isn’t terrible and I suppose it does have its moments, it just feels unnecessary is all. But there was a guy in the theater who literally clapped right through the entire last half hour, so who knows, this might just be the remake you’ve been waiting your whole damn life for.
The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
VERDICT:
6/10 Dream Chasers
Horrendous title, decent effort.
The Place Promised in Our Early Days takes place in an alternate post-WWII Japan that finds itself on the verge of civil war between the American North and the “Union” South territories dividing the country. The story follows two High School friends that start repairing an old plane in their free time with the intention of flying it to a giant, mysterious tower that’s centered over the border and out of their reach. Soon after, their duo turns into a trio when they let a girl from their class in on the plan, they make a pact to all fly over to the tower, but then she disappears and the two friends part ways, leaving the plane to collect rust and one of the kids to figure out what ever happened to that girl they used to hang out with.
I’m sure the number of people who know about this movie are slim to none, and up until a couple weeks ago when I saw that it was one of the few selections in the anime section of Netflix Instant Streaming that I either hadn’t seen or wasn’t a Ghost in the Shell spin-off, I was in the same boat. But the main reason I even watched this in the first place is because it’s been a while since I’ve taken a chance on a movie that I know little to nothing about. There are only five reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for it, four of which are freakin’ glowing, so I eventually found myself hankering for an anime fix, bypassed the hundreds of other movies that are clogging up my queue and went for it.
Sometimes this kind of move pays off, like with Survive Style 5+ for instance, and even though it’s not too bad, this is no Survive Style 5+.
It’s all written, directed and illustrated by one Makoto Shinkai, an individual who put himself on the map by singlehandedly making a 25-minute anime short on his laptop called Voices of a Distant Star, but I didn’t know about that until after the fact either, so, again, don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of it. In terms of just being ouright impressed at how one can make a movie like this by themselves, the dude gets a lot of points, but in terms of how everything works in the long run, it’s a bit of shaky road.
The thing he does best that’ll be immediately apparent to anyone watching is that the scenery and background artwork is effing gorgeous. The characters themselves aren’t all that outstanding in comparison to something you might find on Adult Swim, but so much of the eye candy plays into the surroundings rather than our three protagonists that it becomes pretty easy to ignore the familiar and focus on the sprawling world around them.
Then there’s the story, and I’m still not really sure what to make of the story. Japanese film makers love their post-apocalypses and alternate realities, and since I do too, I dug that aspect of it and I was interested right away. But when it comes to the actual telling of the story, it feels like something was lost in translation. Maybe I was tired and just wasn’t listening hard enough, but it was hard as hell to figure out what on Earth was going on with the plot when it wasn’t just spelled out for me. It eventually gets involved with dreams and alternate realities and all that nonsense, none of which is explained very clearly, and it’s around this time that my brain started swelling as it worked to make heads and tails out of what the hell was happening.
Takes away from the emotional weight of the story, because I think some of those scenes are pretty emotional, but that stuff went right over my head.
And the dialogue is pretty weak, too. One of the biggest reasons I had a lot of trouble caring about the characters and what they were doing or thinking was because everything they said sounded totally canned instead of human. It’s hard to explain without hearing it for yourself, but if I had my eyes closed, I could have been listening to one of many anime TV shows that all sound exactly the same and are sadly stereotypical of the genre. Makes the whole thing feel unoriginal and I really kind of hate it when anime characters start talking like Speed Racer.
The Place Promised in Our Early Days is wonderfully simple in some ways and horribly muddled in others, and part of that might be ’cause it’s been a while since I’ve seen a talking heads anime movie, but then again, Grave of the Fireflies was a talking heads anime movie and that just might be the best anime movie ever made. When I sat down to watch this, I was really hoping I’d be able to churn out a super-positive review about how I discovered this movie you’ve never heard of and you need to see it because you don’t know what you’re missing, but, alas, my expectations got the best of me. Single tear.
From the few other reviews I’ve read, some folks out there really like this movie, so I could just be missing something, but check it out if you’ve made it this far. At the very least, it is quite pretty.
The Messenger (2009)
VERDICT:
7/10 Calls of Duty
Too bad that this movie got so completely overlooked last year.
The Messenger is about an Iraq War vet who comes home after being injured in combat and gets paired up with a hard-nosed Desert Storm vet to serve out his last three months of service informing next of kin that their relatives died on the battlefield. Along the way, he strikes up a relationship of sorts with one of the widows he makes a home visit to, butts heads with his colleague about the moral consequences of doing so and tries to figure out how to live in a world that now seems completely foreign.
I’m actually kinda surprised it took so long for someone to write this script and make this movie. Anyone who’s watched Private Ryan’s mother faint on the porch when the military issue Model-T drove up to her house or, God forbid, have personally answered the door to two US soldiers and heard the news firsthand knows that this premise has a lot of emotional weight going for it. Lord knows I’d never want to be on the giving or receiving end of such a situation, but that’s the appeal, because someone has to do it, someone has to hear it and I for one can only imagine what it must be like for both parties.
So, yeah, things get pretty heavy pretty quick, but a big reason it works so well without becoming overdramatic is its stellar cast.
I gotta say, it was pretty freakin’ cool of the Academy to give Woody Harrelson a nod here for his turn as Desert Storm vet Cpt. Tony Stone. It’s very against-type for the guy, because I’m thinking more folks associate him with plugging hemp and smokin’ doobies on the beach with Matthew McConaughey than with his underappreciated and often forgotten performance as Larry Flynt, but he’s great, he’s convincing and it’s even further proof that the dude’s got range. Christoph Waltz still totally deserved it, but along with Zombieland, 2009 was a damn good year for Woody and it seems like people are finally starting to realize that he’s kinda the man. It’s about time.
And opposite Woody is Ben Foster as Iraq War vet Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery. Ever since he stole the show in 3:10 to Yuma, I’ve been on the Ben Foster bandwagon in a big ol’ way. The kid’s one of the best up-and-comers out there and, as expected, he’s mighty good here as well. Might get a little too emotional at times, but all in all, he fits the role quite nicely, does his thing quite well and doesn’t get overshadowed by Woody even if he didn’t get as much recognition for it.
Samantha Morton is also pretty awesome too as the second half of Ben’s suspect relationship. The gal’s a solid actress to begin with and she’s makes for a very genuine and subtle addition to the cast, just wish her character had a bigger part. Good stuff all the same.
Also features a racy little appearance by eternal child actress Jena Malone and a great bit role by Steve Buscemi as a grieving father, and he blows it out of the water.
And as far as the Oscar-nominated script by Alessandro Camon and director Oren Moverman is concerned, it’s pretty damn good. They do well to make sure the home visits and characters feel very believable and grounded without making turning it into “How can we keep one-upping ourselves with worst-case scenarios so that the audience is crying their brains out from first visit to the last?” And thank God for that, because things could have easily gone in that direction, like in Crash. It’s good ’cause they keep it about the characters instead of the drama – which comes naturally anyway – and as a result, it plays out gorgeously and it feels real.
For a good while there, this was a solid 8 that delivered in full on its potential and kept me glued to the screen with each new house they showed up to, but then the last half hour rolls around and, unfortunately, things start to get a bit muddled. The plot just gets unfocused after a certain point as Woody and Ben start hanging out more often and spend their weekends drinking their asses off in an unexpected display of male bonding, and that just goes on for too long, it seems out of place, it takes away from the whole and I was hoping that the story would be more about Ben and Samantha than Ben and Woody. Ben and Samantha was a great story line, I wanted more of that story line.
But that’s it. If it weren’t for that weekend getaway with Woody and Ben, this would have been an easy 8, but The Messenger is nonetheless a very easy movie to recommend. Great performances, a choice script and a powerhouse concept to work off of make for one of the more affecting war dramas I’ve seen in recent memory.
Blade Runner (1982)
VERDICT:
8/10 Paranoid Androids
Took me a while, but I finally get it.
Blade Runner is about a future cop who’s tasked with hunting down a group of renegade “replicants” who think, look and act just like humans after they hijacked an off-world military transport and made their way to Earth to find the guy who created them in the hopes that he might be able to increase their four-year life spans.
So, up until recently, I was never really on board with this movie and the pedestal it’s been placed upon by so many folks over the past 28 years. First time I saw it, I was in High School, watched it over the course of a week for a Film Studies class, didn’t get the hype, but then again, my teacher sucked. Second time was in college, started it up at 1 in the morning, fell asleep by the time Sean Young showed up. Third time was a couple years ago, tried to watch it while exercising on my stepdad’s treadmill, got bored, wasn’t exactly pumping me up, turned it off by the time Sean Young showed up.
But I don’t give up that easy, I knew this was a movie that was right up my alley, a movie that I definitely should have liked and deserved a fourth try despite my past experiences. So I woke up bright and early yesterday morning, found I had some time to kill before work, gave it one last shot, and for some reason everything clicked.
The trick with Blade Runner is that you need to know two things going in: a whole lot of people think it’s the bomb and that the pacing is effing horrendous if you’re not in the right frame of mind. That right there was the foolproof formula that kept me coming back and helped me to finally appreciate it for what it is rather than what I kept expecting it to be. And to everyone who’s in the same boat I was, cross your fingers and follow suit.
Because Blade Runner is the bomb in many ways, even if some them aren’t immediately apparent.
One of the biggest things it has going for it is its story. It’s based off the short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (the dude who also inspired Minority Report, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and a couple other adaptations that kinda sucked even though his stuff was where it’s at) and, in a nutshell, it’s freakin’ brilliant. Not only does it serve as a fascinating insight into the qualities that define us “human”, but the premise is a stroke of genius and it’s totally original in the way it blends science fiction with film noir. Point is, Phil was the man and this was a huge selling point. That guy was a trendsetter alright.
What’s too bad though is that the dialogue here isn’t nearly up to snuff with the story driving it. There are some great characters, but it’s unfortunate that the coolest line of the whole movie is, “Wake up, time to die!” and the rest of it feels like it’s just there to move the plot along. Thank god there’s so much stuff to look at because there ain’t a whole lot to hear most of the time.
And the other bummer is that Harrison Ford was totally miscast as the blade runner himself, Rick Deckard (good name though). Hopefully I’m not treading on sacred ground here, ’cause I’m not gonna be the guy to start taking on Han and Indy fandboys, but he really doesn’t bring that trademark…slickness to the table like he usually does. It’s also a bit strange that he’s a great detective but seemed to skip every combat class at The Blade Runner Academy because if he didn’t have his future gun on hand, this movie would have been over in a fuckin’ flash. Oh he looks the part, he just didn’t make Deckard seem very cool or interesting and it also looks like he’s a horrible kisser who has no idea what the hell to say or do to get a girl in the sack. No idea what Sean Young saw in the guy.
But luckily there’s Rutger Hauer – a man who desperately needs to make a comeback – as the chief “skin job” on Deckard’s hit list, Roy Batty. It’s a shame that his best stuff came out in the ’80s, ’cause Hauer was a certified lunatic and that comes across in spades here. Still have no idea how he managed to tame a wild pigeon at the end of the movie, but whatever, he’s the most memorable character of the bunch and for good reason.
Oh, and Sean Young‘s in it, and she’s fine. Pretty sure it was a law in the ’80s that Sean Young be casted for every role in every movie. Definitely sure actually.
But the real star of this movie is director Ridley Scott and the outrageously convincing futuristic world he creates. The city itself is as much a part of the movie as the cast and the script, it’s insanely intricate and detailed and it is really something else to take in. It’s like someone commissioned the architects who put together the Nostromo, threw some neon lights and a crap ton of metal tubes their way and told them to build a city with exploding smokestacks, and they deliver, and it is awesome. And if you make sure to keeping on soaking up the setting, it makes the pacing feel a whole lot smoother in turn. Another good Blade Runner survival tip.
For some, Blade Runner might be a home run on the first viewing, but if you wind up counting those electric sheep, trust me, don’t write it off. It’s amazing how fresh the visuals still are and how outstanding the story still is, and for all its minor faults, I am very much on the bandwagon now even if it’s not quite on a pedestal just yet. Love that ambiguous ending though.
And the best Dennis Hopper movie is…
APOCALYPSE NOW!
Despite being a late entry in the game, folks, we have ourselves a winner. Still awfully confused as to how Frank Booth didn’t run away with it, but since Dennis was the man and I doubt that we’ll ever have another lunatic like him to entertain us the way he did, I am very cool with that.
We miss ya’ already, brother.
RESULTS
– Blue Velvet: 13 votes (Pabst Blue Ribbon should have written him a check for this one)
– Speed: 7 votes
– Easy Rider: 4 votes
– True Romance: 7 votes
– Apocalypse Now: 15 votes
– Super Mario Bros.: 2 votes (Oh, Bowser, someone out there likes you)
– Other: 2 votes for Hoosiers, 2 votes for Waterworld, 1 vote for River’s Edge and 1 vote for The Last Ride.
Everyone, give it up for Dennis.
Out of Sight (1998)
VERDICT:
9/10 Smooth Criminals
Wildly under-appreciated and continues to stand as the best thing Jennifer Lopez has ever done for this world. Yup, even better than On the 6. Crazy, I know.
Out of Sight is about an habitual bank robber who gets locked up after a botched job, breaks out soon after and manages to fall for the US Marshall he temporarily kidnaps along the way. And wouldn’t ya know it, she falls for him too, and so begins this romantic game of cops and robbers as he tries to pull off the biggest heist of his life and get the one girl he can’t have without getting sent upstate in the process.
I don’t really know what general vibe towards this movie is nowadays, but since it was a box office flop back in ’98 and I feel like I’m always the guy recommending this to everyone instead of the guy getting in conversations about how awesome it is, I’m thinking that not enough people are on the bandwagon. The truth is, everything about that last sentence is a damn shame and I’m at a loss as to why that is.
See, boys and girls, this is the kind of movie that doesn’t get made anymore because, alas, movies haven’t really been this cool since ’70s. On the one hand, it’s a perfect storm of casting, directing and writing, but the real beauty of it all is that it doesn’t have to try to be cool, it just is, and a lot of that is ’cause Elmore Leonard is a guy who knows a thing or two about the subject and screenwriter Scott Frank did a bang-up job of making that quality apparent.
If the name’s not ringing a bell, Leonard’s the guy who wrote the source material for 3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty and Jackie Brown (a.k.a. Rum Punch for all you bookworms in the room) among a crap load of other badass crime novels and Westerns from back in the day, many of which seem to have gotten some shitty screen adaptations. He’s all about slick characters with suspect professions who use a whole lot of brains and just a smidge of muscle to back up their sharp tongues that they’ve obviously been honing for years. Leonard’s a smart writer and he’s a goddamn genius when it comes to picking those choice few words for his characters to get their points across.
All his stories seem to be on the same page in this regard, but then there’s Out of Sight, and Out of Sight is in a league of its own. It also has one of the best accidental deaths in movie history, and while I know that’s not much of a selling point for those who haven’t seen it, it’s an easy scene to remember.
It’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, it was his first major step outside of the indie world and I’m sure that directors go to sleep praying each night that their first mainstream effort could be as good as thisl. Even though I haven’t reviewed a whole lot of Steve’s movies so far, hopefully we’re all in agreement that the dude is no joke, so keep going with that. The thing he does best here – and there’s a lot of things to choose from – is that he makes it retro. It looks he grabbed a couple thirty-year-old cameras from his mother’s attic, booked Miles Davis and Isaac Hayes to lay down some tracks, started from there and began shooting. The script is so effing cool to begin with, but big props to Steve for matching it in spades.
And the all-star cast is nothing short of lightning in a bottle.
For all of ya’s who don’t get the hype about George Clooney, check him out as Jack Foley, trust me, you’ll get it. The guy makes it look easy, he’s hard to take your eyes off of (and I’m not talking about the obvious reasons) and he seems to have a blast doing it. The man gets it done. And strangely enough, Jennifer Lopez of all people is just as good as Karen Sisco, the federale with a weak spot for bad boys. Some of the scenes they share together, whether it’s wedged in the trunk of a getaway car talking about how Peter Finch wasn’t gonna “take any more of your shit!” or as they reconnect for a night in a hotel lobby to see how things would have worked out if they’d met under different circumstances, are outright phenomenal. Simple as that, hard to ignore.
And then you’ve got Don Cheadle as the meanest asshole thug on the block trying to beat Foley to the punch, the mighty Ving Rhames as Foley’s right-hand con man, Steve Zahn as Foley’s idiot getaway driver (Why doesn’t that guy get more roles? Steve Zahn is so damn good), Dennis Farina as J.Lo’s dad (just got with it), a Michael Keaton cameo, a Sam Jackson cameo and a great turn by Luis Guzman as a gay convict who’s obsessed with magic tricks. Just another example of why this movie shouldn’t have flopped.
Seriously, what the hell else came out that weekend? Is there any way to find that out? Geez.
But look, Out of Sight is just that. It’s why Steven Soderbergh’s the man, it’s why Elmore Leonard’s the man, it’s why George Clooney’s the man, and it’s why there’s still a glimmer of hope for Jennifer Lopez and the depressing state of her sellout career. This is one of those rare movies that I’m gonna go ahead and recommend to anyone and everyone reading this because twelve-plus years is far too long a wait for this to recognized as the modern classic that it most definitely is.
It’s one of Steve’s best, gang, right up there with Traffic.
Super Size Me (2004)
VERDICT:
7/10 Fat Bastards
A lot more effective when it first came out, still ain’t bad though.
Super Size Me is a documentary about one man’s mission to go from a vision of immaculate health to a vile excuse for a human being by ordering off the McDonald’s menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month straight, supersizing his meal every time he’s given the option and eating every item on the menu at least once.
In short, it’s an hour and forty minute rundown of why no one on Earth should be eating fast food. Being that I’m not the biggest fan of McDonald’s to begin with, I gotta say I’m with the guy on this one, but lord knows does my mouth start to water when I walk past a Wendy’s. What can I say, it’s the Cadillac of fast food restaurants. How can I possibly resist The Baconator.
Something tells me I’m gonna come back and read this again somewhere down the line after my superhuman metabolism has completely broken down and seriously hate my twenty-something self.
But back in ’04, this movie was a pretty big deal. In a move that completely one-upped that old lady who sued the sonsabitches at Mickey D’s because their coffee was too hot, the whole idea for the movie started when the golden arches got taken to court by two wildly obese teenage girls because they claimed it was the Double Quarter Pounders that got them break the scale by the time they reached High School. Long story short, the case got thrown out because there wasn’t exactly physical proof that a McDonald’s diet was the sole cause of their physical degradation, so Morgan Spurlock – our world’s biggest French fry enthusiast up there – decided to hop to it and do the test himself.
A crazy and intriguing idea if there ever was one, but keep in mind that this was also before Whole Foods got huge, before everyone started buying organic as though the stuff our parents have been buying all these years was laced with Agent Orange, before vegans weren’t chased out of town like Frankenstein when they walked into a Roy Rogers, before everyone started facing up to their suspicions that fast food really wasn’t doing our bodies any favors. I remember walking out of the theater when I first saw this (and after Spurlock actually showed up to do a Q & A with the audience, which was a cool little bonus) and shunning that damn ginger clown and all his evil products with my head held high, and so did everyone else I knew who saw this.
Maybe I’m mistaken, but Super Size Me was the first time this kind of conversation was brought into the spotlight and I for one was pretty floored by all the new information I’d just taken in. But here we are six years later, well aware that you probably shouldn’t eat processed burgers that weigh as much as a small child – even if they are named after killer robots from the future – and a lot of the stuff that at one time seemed shocking now comes across as second-hand news.
It was kind of weird watching this movie a second time because I’m thinking that a big reason I’m not as taken aback by it any more is because it actually did work in the first place. People seem to be a lot more aware of what they’re eating nowadays and I definitely think we have Morgan Spurlock to thank for that in some way.
He does end up paying a little too much attention to all the health statistics, I can’t help but feel like he’s totally belaboring the point more often than not, and the inclusion of Don Gorske – the man who’s eaten more Big Macs than anyone alive yet somehow looks fit as a whistle – seems to completely counteract Spurlock’s argument in some ways. But for all the movie’s missteps, the message is very much driven home in the long run, it’ll make you think twice about giving your kid lunch money instead of brown bagging it for ’em, and it’s a pretty funny ride to boot.
Super Size Me might not be as groundbreaking today as it once was, but by the some token, there are still a whole lot of folks out there who count two servings of deep-fried butter as a healthy dinner option for Junior. I’m already on board with eating healthy and I’m sure a good deal of you out there are too, but the fact that this movie unfortunately remains as an example of required viewing for the fattest nation in the world is awfully damn depressing.
I’m tellin’ ya, guys, outside of the occasional Big Mac, McDonald’s really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Have you tried their honey mustard? I know honey mustard, and that is not honey mustard. I WANT ANSWERS!
Splice (2010)
VERDICT:
4/10 Test Tube Babies
It’s Parenthood meets The Fly. Sure, why not?
Splice is about two genetic scientists who create an entirely new species out of various animal DNA – one that happens to look a lot like an enormous cock slug (hooray for science!) – and then start to get real curious in terms of what they could do if human DNA got thrown into the mix. Not far down the road, they pull it off and create Dren, a part-human, part-whatever organism that they end up sort of raising in private because of all the potential new possibilities that come with creating a mutant and also because they were thinking about having a kid anyway.
It’s directed by one Vincenzo Natali, a guy whose work I’m completely unfamiliar with since Cube continues to get pushed further and further down on my Netflix queue, but after watching this, something tells me that it’s not gonna get bumped up anytime soon either. Then again, Splice has a good deal of potential going for it thanks to things like Dolly the sheep, stem cell research and that weird fascination we’ve all had in High School science class that made you wonder what a half-human, half-animal baby would look like. Unfortunately for Vincenzo, potential only goes so far when you have a script that doesn’t really know where the hell it’s going.
See, the script works when it sticks to the clean genetic slate it’s created by focusing on the notions of right and wrong that come with playing God or the amazing/horrific possibilities of science. That kinda stuff’s got endless potential and I can’t think of a whole lot of movies that delve into this territory either. The problem is that while it starts out down this road, Vinny ends up paying way too much attention to a story line that feels wildly out of place in a movie like this.
But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s get to Dren.
My issue with movie monsters has always been that, more often than not, they just look like knockoffs of stuff we’ve already seen, like Spielberg’s bite-size version of the Independence Day aliens in War of the Worlds. So when Dren is first “born”, she looks new, like someone got busy with a chicken, and that was good, I hadn’t really seen that before. But then she grows up overnight and all of a sudden she looks like Sinead O’Connor with a huge gap between her eyes, a tail and the legs of those aliens from The Arrival. Yeah, I know she’s part-human, but it’s still a bit disappointing that that was the best they could come up with when working from scratch.
The other thing is that she doesn’t even talk, she just has this god-awful squawk that she uses to communicate along with her handy dandy bag of Scrabble letters. The reason this sucks, outside of how totally annoying it is to listen to, is that Dren is the one character I really wanted to hear from being that she’s easily the most interesting character of the bunch. A simple voice would have added an Elephant Manquality to it that definitely would have been a welcome addition.
But the real downfall of Splice is the other story line I alluded to earlier, the story line that’s all about how being a parent is tough, especially if your kid is a creepy-ass biological mistake. The thing is, who gives a shit? I’m interested in Dren and all the ethical debates that come along with her and I think everyone else is too. Really, why bother taking the script in this direction? That story’s already been told a million times and they’re not fooling anyone by slapping a tail on the kid.
Lame.
Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley – who I usually think is great – are also fine as Dren’s “parents”, but they’re just kinda there and don’t really contribute a whole lot to the movie in the long run aside from, you know, delivering their lines.
But for all my bitching and moaning, Splice is actually pretty decent for a while, it’s only towards the last half-hour or so that the plot crashes and burns in a truly bizarre fireball and there’s really no coming back after that no matter how hard it tries. And even though it’s not exactly scary or thrilling and never fully delivers on all the cool stuff it’s premise has to go off of, it’s not terrible by any means. It’s just not the movie it had the potential to be is all.
Black Dynamite (2009)
VERDICT:
8/10 Jive Turkeys
Arguably the funniest movie of ’09.
Black Dynamite is about the ultimate crime-fighting ex-CIA operative who makes Bruce Lee look like a hyperactive toddler who found his way into a stash of Pixy Sticks, a ladies man of the highest caliber who makes Ron Jeremy look like a chronic masturbator, a brother so effortlessly badass that he makes James Bond look like George McFly as he hits the streets to take down all the drug pushers that are getting all our kids hooked on smack and find the sonofabitch who killed his brother.
If you took any of what I just wrote seriously, this might not be the comedy for you, but if you’ve ever seen Shaft, Dolemite or anything even close to a Blaxploitation movie, open up your eyes and clean out your ears because this is right up your alley.
Black Dynamite works really damn well for a lot of reasons, but the most obvious strength is that it’s just smart as all hell. It’s a tribute to everything people love about John Shaft and a send-up of everything that seemed a lot cooler back in the ’70s but makes us 21st Century folk shake our head in disbelief at everyone and their damn bell-bottoms.
The most obvious display of this is that it’s poorly made on purpose as outtakes are left in the frame, characters are replaced with stunt-doubles mid-scene, actors look away into nothingness from the people they’re talking to for no apparent reason and it’s touches like these that end up being the star of the show more than anything else. Writer/director Scott Sanders has obviously seen his fair share of “undercover brother” movies and knows exactly what he’s trying to do both behind the camera and on paper.
And the great thing about this script is that it’s all over the place. It’s not just a satire, it’s not just trying to be a witty tongue-in-cheek jab at some fad that went down over three decades ago, it’s actually ends up being that and a lot more. The biggest strength of the script is that it’s always making fun of itself, that it doesn’t take itself seriously whatsoever and just kind rolls with the kung-fu punches. It has a crap load of material to work with and it doesn’t go a minute without lampooning a decade while throwing in something of its own along the way. It’s sharp and it’s stupid, and that can be one mean combo when done right.
And Michael Jai White is out of freakin’ sight as our man Black Dynamite. He totally hams it up as the coolest Black man alive, he makes the fight scenes actually work thanks to his having an actual black belt in real life and I’m just glad to see the guy is finally recovering from his turn as Spawn. That was a hard one to come back from, he gets a gold sticker.
The cameos from Tommy Davidson and Cedric Yarbrough as two guys named Cream Corn and Chocolate Giddy-Up are great, too.
Man, I really wish this review were longer, but for some reason this was a damn hard review to write up. It’s just one of those movies where all I want to do is ruin it for everyone by writing about every last scene that had me laughing like an idiot, but that ain’t gonna happen, so you’re gonna have to trust me. It’s totally ridiculous and it’s a prime example of great comedic writing backed up by spot-on direction and acting on every front. Might not be everyone’s thing, but even if you had to Wikipedia what Blaxploitation is and/or haven’t even heard of this movie before, I say go for it anyway.
The only thing holding this back from beating out Zombieland as the best comedy of yesteryear is a Bill Murray cameo, but other than that, Black Dynamite is a total riot through and through. Worth seeing if only for its beyond-epic one-on-one final showdown and bonus cameo by Abe Lincoln’s ghost saving the day.
Like I said, totally ridiculous, but totally, totally awesome.
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
VERDICT:
3/10 Ugly Americans
The worst thing that’s happened to New York’s reputation since Joey Buttafuoco.
Sex and the City 2 is about four girlfriends living in NYC who help each other deal with issues like being a newlywed or running into old flames or worrying that your husband is gonna cheat on you with the Irish nanny and her huge bazooms, only their idea of consolation boils down to throwing back cosmos and spending an ungodly amount of money on some garish duds they’re only gonna wear once. Then they go spend a week-long vacation in Abu Dhabi, drink even more cosmos, buy ugly-ass exotic shoes and unwittingly transform into the most offensive tourists this side of the Sahara.
Good times.
So, once again, I am not the target audience for this movie. I am, once again, the good boyfriend who can justify going to see this because I have a kickass girlfriend and a blog. Nevertheless, I kept an open mind and was actually on board with this movie for a while. Dead serious, it was at a comfortable 5 for the first hour or so when all the ladies were resigned to doing their thing stateside, so I prayed – lord, how I prayed – that the 5 would stick and things wouldn’t change when they crossed the Atlantic.
I am sorry to report back that the movie gods are horribly, horribly deaf.
With that being said, I’m just gonna do the whole “I liked this/I didn’t like that” thing again rather than make an essay out of this. So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty…
The Most Excellent
1) The first hour of this movie is very glitzy, glamorous and overdone, but whatever, that’s just Sex and the City, I can roll with that. There’s lavish gay weddings featuring Liza Minnelli, dresses that most would mortgage their penthouse suite to wear and lots and lots of girl talk. It’s actually not that bad and there were a couple moments where I actually liked it more than the first movie, but unfortunately this fades by the time hour five rolls around.
2) I appreciate that Miranda ended up being my favorite of the four this time around. Yeah, she had the best storyline of the first movie, but the whole grudge-holding workaholic look didn’t suit her too well and I’m glad she shed that vibe entirely right off the bat.
You go girl. You go.
3) Big is apparently one smooth mother effer. Never found the guy very interesting up until now, but it turns out that he’s kinda the shit. Nice surprise, I dig Big.
The Most Harsh
1) The whole Abu Dhabi trip. I didn’t really care about the four personal cars they got escorted around in or all the excessive luxuries provided for them at the hotel – like I said, that’s Sex and the City for ya’. The real problem was having to watch these four grown women travel around the country, ogling and taking endless jabs at everyone and everything around them like they’re walking through a fucking zoo. I know Samantha‘s getting a lot of heat for this one, but whatever, with the exception of Miranda who’s the only one that doesn’t act like a bigoted ignoramus, they’re all bad.
One scene in particular where they’re staring at a woman eat a French fry under a berka like they just spotted the last living dodo bird sitting at the table next to them was quite the head-shaker. But even before they get to the country as they simply have drinks at the bar on their plane while chatting about the mysteries of Arabic culture, I immediately began dreaming up fantasies where I would jump into the scene, smack their martini glasses across the room like Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer and scream at the top of my lungs:
“HEY!
SHUT! THE FUCK! UP!!!“
Now there’s a movie I’d watch for three hours.
There’s also a pretty horrendous karaoke scene with the gals featuring a song no one’s ever heard of. That didn’t help.
2) Sitting through this felt like a goddamn endurance contest. It’s the same length as the first movie, but I was getting Return of the King flashbacks like you wouldn’t believe. Pretty sure this is gonna be the focus of David Blaine’s next project. Truly a superhuman feat if there ever was one.
3) Why is Aidan a dick now? I was under the impression that everyone liked Aidan all these years and that he did the name proud. Guess not. That was lame.
4) There’s no real story here. It’s like three hours of watching four women talk about a whole lot of nothing and living it up in the United Arab Emirates. The first movie at least had the Steve & Miranda story to keep it going, the closest this comes to a good story is Charlotte and her well-endowed nanny, but even that’s stretching it. To be honest, it feels more like the world’s longest episode of The View than anything else.
5) Doesn’t have the heart or charm that the series was known for. It’s a very superficial experience.
Look, I’m sure there are SatC fans out there who are gonna love this thing to pieces and, you know what, more power to ’em. All I know is that I saw this with two big fans, both of them didn’t like it and the crowd applause at the end was pretty darn pathetic to boot. Not to belabor the point, but it’s good boyfriend points well-earned and I can’t even say that this one’s going to appeal to its target audience in the first place.
“Carrie on” indeed, folks.
Cut The Crap Movie Reviews 
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