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It isn't perfect, though. The main actor, Jesse Eisenberg, looks and behaves so much like Michael Cera that it is distracting.
The film also is a bit slow to really get started. There's a flashback to how Eisenberg's character first encountered a zombie that is just slow and not all that interesting. There's also this kind of series of cute meets between Eisenberg's character and Stone's that are sort of entertaining but pointless since the commercials have shown all of them together which means that viewers know that they are going to team up rather than be at odds.
The film also uses one of my pet peeves: letters floating in mid-air for no reason. I hate when Fringe does it (I keep waiting for someone on Fringe to point at the floating letters and freak out "aaaaaahhhhh") and I didn't like it here either.
Once it does get started though the film is pretty sweet. Bill Murray's appearance is pure gold. The climax in an amusement park is pretty cool and not one that I recall seeing before. It is disappointing that the film falls back on the damsel in distress motif and that a kid is the cause of the problem once again but I can kind of overlook it because the zombie killing is so much fun.
four thumbs up
Couldn't get Cera
But zombies make up for it
Kid to blame again....
The film reminded me of a cross between the I Robot film and Wall-E. It is set in a world where something like 98% of all people stay at home and use lifelike robots that they mentally control to go out into the world for them. The main problem is that the world of the film doesn't go far enough into the issues of what a world like that would be like.
First, that 98% of all adults could afford a fairly realistic-looking robot seems highly improbable. There could have been more done with class issues but there really isn't. There is a group of anti-surrogate people but they mostly seem to be ideologically separated rather than economically.
Second, in a world where a robot is your representation of yourself to the world, the robots are surprisingly tame. There's that one scene which is in one of the commercials where someone has a robot body that is jet black with white hair but that's it. One would think that people would go a lot further with experimentation and have bodies that were more inhuman in appearance or with multiple limbs.
Third, in a world where it is proven that people can take over other people's robots, security is still biometric in nature with people getting face scans. Ummm... really? That doesn't seem like a big security risk to anyone?
I could go on but that really isn't the films downfall. What is the downfall is that the film tries to be raising questions about humanity but unlike Blade Runner, it doesn't really raise questions, it just gives answers. Like Wall-E it just takes for granted that a mediated, largely sedentary existence is bad -- even though they tell us that crime is practically non-existent and there hasn't been a murder in years. There's no evidence that sitting around all day hooked into these machines is making people fat (in fact one of the only people who doesn't use a surrogate is one of the few overweight people in the film. I'll let you guess what role the pudgy, unkempt guy plays. If you guessed computer guy you guessed correction...) So what is the problem?
They tried to make Bruce Willis look younger and the effect at times looks kind of plasticy but I couldn't really tell if that was on purpose in order to emphasize the artificiality of the robot or it was just bad. What was undeniably bad were the scenes where the surrogates go all Terminator and start doing super-human moves. It looks obviously like the stunt people are being pulled into the air rather than jumping.
one thumb up
Although Surrogates
Wants to be like Blade Runner
It's like I Robot
And the oddness of the film extends beyond the way the film rewrites history. It is pervasive throughout the film starting in the opening credits. In the opening credits Tarantino uses a number of fonts for the names of actors and they aren't all in a similar font family and there doesn't really seem to be a reason for it. Now noticing that the fonts on the opening titles change might be a small thing but it isn't an accident. Things like that don't just happen. So someone, probably Tarantino himself, decided, "let's use a different font here" and I don't really know why. Then later on when the Nazis are gathering there are a couple times where names of historically well known Nazis are put on the screen looking like the names were written in chalk or something. Why? Who knows. There is also no real reason for why we even need to know the names of these people. Like I said, it is just odd.
The acting is fine. The actors who had multiple languages to speak did a good job. I have to hand it to Tarantino: I like the women he casts. I'm less sure of their roles in the films or even why their characters exist, but they sure are purdy...I didn't have any issues with the job any of the women or the men did in the film eexcept for the appearance of Mike Meyers in one scene. That he's in makeup doesn't help. It is clear that it is him beneath the makeup and so I just kept waiting for him to start using a funny voice from Austin Powers or something. Samuel L. Jackson also does a voiceover in the film and it is equally distracting. His voice is so distinctive and he's strongly associated with Tarantino so I kept waiting for him to start cursing and using racial epithets. Of course perhaps both of these say more about me than Tarantino. Perhaps I'm just on some level wanting him to do the same things he did in the past.
This desire or expectation of Tarantino to do the things he has done over and over again also comes up early on in the film when the main bad guy is talking to a French peasant. I kept waiting for one of them to echo the Bruce WIllis and Ving Rhames scene in Pulp Fiction and "go medieval" on someone's ass. There is a character introduced in this scene and then we jump forward in time a few years and are immediately told that this actress is supposed to be the same person. But then later in the film we are shown a flashback to when that character was introduced. Ummm.... why did we need that? You told us from the start that this was the same person so that flashback didn't clarify anything. We saw the acress' reaction so we know what she was supposed to be feeling.
This isn't to say that the film is bad. It is just odd.
three thumbs up
Motherfuckin' odd
What is he trying to do?
I got no idea
The film is, as the title suggests, told from several different vantage points. The problem is, however, that there's not a whole lot of point in it. The plot isn't all that complicated and it isn't as if each retelling of the first 15 minutes of the film is all that different. To top it off, at the end of each retelling they do an irritating rewinding of the film. As if we were too dumb to realize what was going on -- especially when they then put up a black screen and tell us what time it is. Which brings up another problem: the first time they rewind things they say "X minutes ago" but the rest of the time they show the time. You would think that someone would have said, "Maybe we should have some consistency in the way we do this?"
Despite this, the film is pretty entertaining. The President is shot and the plot surrounds the attempt to figure out what is going on. If the commercials hadn't given away a big twist the film would have been much more interesting but still it is interesting to try to figure out how they are going to save the President. This is also another one of the problems of the film: the film is a lot better once the flashbacks are done with. Especially since the flashbacks all pretty much take place in the same location so we are forced to hear a mayor give the same speech over and over.
Forest Whitaker plays the everyman and adds a bit of working man street-level view to the film. He does a pretty good job but the part is hurt by him happening to intersect with all the characters at the most climactic moment. It is just a bit too coincidental. They could have played this a bit more for laughs or something and made his part more useful. Similarly, Sigourney Weaver is all over the commercials but her part is pretty small. I would have liked to have seen more with her and I would bet that there's a few scenes of her on the cutting room floor. Of course that would have added even more flashbacks to the film.
If there was more variety to the flashbacks, or even a reason for them to really be there it would have been much better. If they would have been more subjective it would have been more interesting as well. Perhaps it could have been told by the people after-the-fact or something but that would have changed the ending.
five thumbs up
Needs more Sigourney
A kid ruins everything
I hate kids so much...
Probably not though.
I did love it though.
Why?
Because it is horrible and preachy and thinks everyone who disagrees with its message is just ignorant.
OK, so this is another Christian movie. The premise of this one is that in the 1890s a guy writes a book that at one point includes a line that implies that although Jesus is great, it is still good for people to do good things even if they don't do them because Jesus told them to do it. One of the author's college strongly disagrees and says that even if you are the best person on the planet you will still go to Hell if you don't worship Jesus. So right off the bat you know this is going to be good. Nothing like saying that people like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and the billions of people who never even heard of Jesus are in Hell or going to Hell for the foundation of a good family film...
So the guy who opposes the book claims that implying that you can be a good person without worshiping Jesus just happens to have built a time machine that he uses to send the author into the modern era. Once the author gets to the modern era the real fun begins. We are told that secular film and television are tools of the devil, that if science contradicts the Bible it is the Bible that must be wrong, that manikins wearing revealing clothing will make men horny, that television showing people kissing is corrupting society, and that modern society is just as evil as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course, like all good Christian films such as the Left Behind films and the films just like the Left Behind films that were made by the same people who made the Left Behind films, this film also treats everyone who isn't a devout Christian as just ignorant and in one case not even knowing who this Jesus guy was.
Now to be fair, the film is also hyper-critical of Christians who aren't devout enough. It has a scene where the Church group goes to a movie and the guy freaks out when someone takes the Lord's name in vain. He is dismayed that not everyone in the church is beating down the doors trying to convert everyone else, and looks down its nose at churches that have things like golf leagues and take kids to theme parks.
At some point I was wondering, "OK, these are the opinions of this guy from the 1890s. So maybe the filmmaker doesn't want us to take everything the character says as being what the filmmaker things we should do. Maybe I'm supposed to find the character's opinions as over-the-top as I do." But I don't really see any evidence of that.
five thumbs up
So over the top
its the best thing ever seen
if you're blasphemous
The film is really low budget but it has a great simple plot that doesn't need a big budget and is really well shot. The plot is basically that the friends, co-workers, and ex-lover of a woman are being killed. Less basically, the people are being killed by themselves. I don't mean that they are committing suicide. No, they are being killed by people who look just like themselves.
The question that is going throughout the film is "what the hell is going on?" and it is that sense of mystery that makes the film work so well. I really wish that they hadn't explained anything. It would have been a much more powerful film if it has just ended with everyone saying, "What the hell just happened?" Instead they do try to explain it.
Now they don't explain it entirely. There is a sense of mystery about it but they do explain it a little bit. The explanation they give, to get a bit spoilery here, is like The Forgotten but without any children which makes it better. Like The Forgotten the explanation is less than satisfying to me at least.
Four thumbs up
The killer in me...
Is disarming, so to speak
Just don't explain it
It is pretty entertaining if a bit slow. The mushroom people are actually pretty underplayed. I wish there would have been more of them in the film. As it is, the film is more about the people and how they deal with being shipwrecked and facing starvation. The problem is that none of the people are particularly likable. It is more soap operatic than it needs to be. There are people turning against one another, and people stealing food, but all the while you are just waiting for the mushroom people to show up.
One thing about it that is interesting is the framing device that is used to tell the story. It is really quite noir in tone. It reminded me of Sunset Boulevard in tone. I've seen a number of black and white Japanese monster films and this is teh first one I can recall drawing on the noir tradition in such a direct fashion.
two thumbs up
He's quite a fungi
Oh what a punster I am
I'm such a fun guy...
This is one of those movies that I always saw in the video store but never got around to seeing. From the cover I was expecting something something like Basket Case or The Unborn but this is really much more sedate and thoughtful. Yes, it is about a killer baby but it isn't a gore film and it focuses on the parents and their reactions and guilt over giving birth to this mutant killer baby.
Coming out in 1974, the film is also kind of an interesting insight into what it was like to deliver a baby then. It features the fathers in the waiting room while the mother is doped up and the doctor pulls the baby out with forceps. According to the commentary track the guy playing the part of the doctor delivering the baby was an actual obstetrician so the scene is probably fairly accurate -- except of course for the killer baby. Also really interesting is the fact that not only is the father smoking but he walks around the hospital smoking the whole time (except for in the delivery room) and no one cares. To top it off, while in the waiting room, the father is smoking and chewing gum at the same time! Wow, that's a real man.
Also interesting is the way the parents deal with the moment when the baby is due. Now, I don't have any kids and I was an only child so I don't even have a memory of my mom pregnant with a sibling. However, the parent's casual attitude towards going into labor is really amazing. Once the mother says the baby is coming they casually pack, change clothes, wake up the older son, drop the son off at the neighbor's house and then go to the hospital. I've never seen the depiction of going to the hospital depicted as so casual.
Like I said, the film isn't really a gore or shocker film. You don't really see the killer baby or much of the bodies. Most of the film is, as I said, really about the parents feeling guilt over the baby and conflicted feelings: should they disown and allow the baby to be killed or should they try to love it and protect it because it doesn't know any better. It is refreshing to see a film about a killer monster whose parents are crazy but act at least a little bit like real people. Touched upon in the film is also the cause of the baby's mutation. There's some talk about pollution, fertility drugs and other toxic things. And there's also some discussion by the parents about whether or not they wanted to abort the baby before it was born. So not only is it about a killer baby but it is also a meditation on modern life in the 1970s!
three thumbs up
the killer baby
might need to get some braces
for that overbite
One thing you can say about Terminator 4 is that it is better than Terminator 3. Barely.
Some people have complained about the scene where an enormous loud and rather slow machine sneaks up on a group of people but in my opinion that is like complaining that someone didn't make their bed when a tornado has torn down the entire house. There's a million ways that the giant machine could have snuck up on them. -- Christian Bale yelled all the time when attacking the machines but does that mean that he isn't able to sneak up on them?
Most of the main problems in the film all revolve around the fact that the people in the movie are dumb and inconsistently dumb at that. For example, we have a character Marcus who shows up knowing nothing about the Terminators and starts asking lots of questions. The guy he asks notes that although he is wearing the arm band of a rebel that Marcus isn't one and so should take it off. However, the guy never stops to ask Marcus, "Why don't you know what is going on?" or any questions about why Marcus is so behind on current events like the destruction of all the cities in the world.
OK, so the guy Marcus runs into just isn't very inquisitive. Next Marcus runs into someone who is a rebel. Still wearing the rebel arm band Marcus ask some more questions and the woman is just like, "come with me I'll take you to John Connor, the savior of humanity" and not wondering -- like the previous guy who doesn't have nearly as much experience as this woman presumably does -- why this guy in rebel clothes doesn't know anything about the war.
The film also just happens to rely on tons of coincidences. For example Marcus just happens to run into the one guy John Connor is looking for. They try to explain it by saying that it is part of some plan but the plan was for the very first person Marcus runs into to be the most important person in the world? That's a pretty impressive plan. Then the next person Marcus runs into takes him directly to Connor so that Connor can save the day. Then there's also the fact that this plan with Marcus also involves a way to kill the Terminators that just happens to happen at the same time when Marcus is running around.
Let's not even mention that Marcus takes the time to not only change clothes but also to find some different cloths to wear when there don't really seem to be any around before he goes to try to help Connor out. Or the fact that they felt like they needed to have a character explain exactly what was happening even though it was pretty clear what was happening anyway. I guess they realized that the Terminators and Skynet doesn't really talk in the movie so they added in a talking head.
Another problem is that some parts seem to have been edited and assembled by a blind person. It feels like the movie was 15 minutes too long so they just cut scenes out randomly. There are a couple spots when it just seems like maybe I ran to the bathroom and missed a short inconsequential scene that would, none-the-less explain why some people got to the someone place else and look very different as when Marcus is all beat up in one scene and then next thing he is in what basically looks like hospital scrubs, is lying on a table, and is entirely healed.
The final problem is that not only is everyone in the movie dumb but apparently so are the people that made it. In one scene a bunch of things about the size of hand grenades which we are told are nuclear-powered, explodes while a helicopter is flying overhead and the helicopter isn't hurt at all. Then there's the end. Without spoiling it, let's just say that apparently in the future you can not only perform major surgery single handed in a tent in the middle of nowhere but you don't need to worry about things like blood type or other things like that.
The original ending was leaked online and so allegedly they changed it. Hopefully they filmed it and it will be on the dvd because the way it sounds the original ending was so much better. The rumor was that John Connor was going to die and be replaced by a reprogrammed good Terminator because Connor was too important to the future of humanity to allow to die. The ending that is currently in the film is not only worse but it means that someone has to directly and methodically kill another heroic character without any discussion of the moral consequences.
Finally, the world that this film takes place in is hard to figure out. So Skynet went rogue and nuked humanity but humanity is still able to resist enough to have an organized military which includes A-10s -- which are sent to attack air targets for some reason even though they are primarily used to attack ground units like tanks and such. -- and lots of helicopters (but apparently not tanks or ground units...) which are complicated machines and require lots of maintenance to be usable. There's also some talk about how the Terminators haven't gone "this deep" before which indicates that perhaps Skynet doesn't have control over the entire USA? (Of course later on we find out that there are Terminator water snakes right outside of the military base so who knows...)
There are some good things. There are some nods to the earlier films including some lines and a gas station that looks a lot like one in T2. The Terminators look pretty cool even though the human-sized ones are often obviously guys in suits.
two thumbs up
Whyare they so dumb?
Fuck's sake, man, you're amatuer
Fucking distracting...
I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to realize this but Catwoman is a terrible movie. It isn't really even so bad it is funny. It is just a terrible example of incompetent filmmaking.
Why is it so horrible? Well first off the storyline is insulting. Just because Catwoman is a woman does it mean that the story has to involve her working for some particularly woman-oriented business? Apparently. Berry's character works for a cosmetics company. Why? Because she's a girl and girls like cosmetics apparently... Of course the company isn't just any company but it is an evil cosmetics company! And the villain isn't just some evil person who does bad thing. No she is an aging model who is terrified as losing her looks.
There is also the matter that there's no real reason for Catwoman to be involved. The evil cosmetics company is alleged to be making some horrible body-altering cosmetics but we don't get an army of zombies or anything like that. We just get the hint of it. We do get Catwoman framed for murder and that's really why Catwoman is involved.
There is also the story of Catwoman's reason for existance. Rather than just having Berry's character decide to put on a costume, she gets possessed by some cat spirit or something. Heaven forbid that the character do something on her own...
There is also the fact that in the comics Catwoman is a morally grey character. She is a thief but she has a code and is involved with Batman. Because of this they feel some desire to make her a thief but it turns out she's just possessed by the cat sprit or something and then her thievery isn't ever really important to the film and is forgotten about once she gets framed for murder.
Yes Berry is hot but once she gets possessed she cuts off her hair and call me crazy but her new haircut is ugly.
three thumbs down
Crazy Catwoman
Why do you exist at all?
No one really knows...
