23 posts tagged “one thumb”
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.
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Although Surrogates
Wants to be like Blade Runner
It's like I Robot
This film has a "twist" regarding the identity of the person telling Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan's characters what to do. Of course the "twist" is so obvious that to say that Eagle Eye has a twist is like saying that the twist in Children of Men is that no one can have children.
Luckily, the "twist" is revealed about half-way through so the entire film doesn't revolve around it. Instead, it revolved more around the why of what they are being forced to do. It becomes clear that there's a reason for LaBeouf's character to be involved in this but throughout the film I was wondering why Monaghan's character is involved. There is a reason but unlike LaBeouf's character where there's a reason why it had to be him, there's still no reason given for why it had to be Monaghan's character and not any number of other people.
There's really no reason to pick this film over any other film. I mean it isn't Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls bad but it isn't all that great.
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If a stranger calls
and tell you to do something
just hang up on them
The basic idea of the film is Big Brother meets a slasher film. Like big Brother a group of people are spending time confined to a house filled with cameras and are cut off from the outside world. In this film, however, they are forced to stay in the house for six months (technically they are told to be in the house by night so it isn't clear if they can leave during the day or even have any contact with outsiders during that time). If any of them leave then no one gets the money. Just a couple days before the six months are over people start to die.
Because it is supposed to be a house wired with cameras it gives the film makers lots of excuses for bad camera angles and Blair Witch style camera angles. It also give them the excuse not to have much of a story. The film starts off pretty good. It is a good set up but once the killing starts it stops making sense. Extra characters show up, people mention improbably reasons why someone might want to kill them, people have sex, and perhaps most importantly, there's never any reason given why it takes until just days before the "show" is supposed to be over for the killings to start.
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Real World of Killers?
The Most Dangerous Game Show?
Murder Survivor?
If you've seen the commercials you know the story: Sandler plays a Israeli soldier who is the best there is. However, he wants to be a hair stylist. So the film takes it humor from a couple of sources, Zohan's over the top physical abilities like being able to do push-ups without his hands and being a manly man who wants to cut hair. Of course his past catches up with him and the film tries to make some sort of statement about getting along.
The disturbing part comes from the third source of humor in the film: Zohan has lots and lots of sex with old women -- and not just like women in their 40s. He has lots and lots of sex with senior citizens. In fact, he is basically a prostitute. He cuts the hair of the old women and then takes them into the back room and has sex with them. To top it off, hardly anyone seems to think that this is odd, immoral, illegal, or just plain nasty. The only character who thinks it is wrong is a guy the Zohan befriends and doesn't like Zohan having sex with his mom or making out in front of him. There isn't even any mention of condoms or sexually transmitted diseases. Nasty. Then to make things even weirder it ends with some sort of advocacy of monogammy. It is just weird. Other than that is a very predictable film.
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The Zohan messes
With some senior citizens
That is so creepy!
Basically a man and woman are alone in a cabin when someone knocks on the door looking for someone. They tell her she has the wrong place but of course a few minutes later there is knocking at the door again and the girl is again asking for that person. Soon there is a man and another woman all in unusual masks terrorizing and killing people. While I wasn't really fond of the original Funny Games it was better than this and the original When a Stranger Calls is also better than this.
The movie fails for a number of reasons. The main one is that there is no motivation for the killers. Now in Funny Games that isn't as large of a problem because in that film it is clear that there is some message about movies and violence that is going on here. However, in The Strangers there really isn't any message anywhere to be seen -- well, at least not a message as interesting as in Funny Games.
I say that because, like all too many horror films, there are some messages here. The most obvious one and perhaps the most cliched one is that rural areas are scary and fully of killers. Now being from a rural area I pretty much hate that cliche because it simply isn't true. You don't see rural areas debating gun control laws even though lots and lots of people in rural areas have them. As a film fan I also hate that cliche because it is worn out and, well, a cliche. Try something different!
The other message is that women are the cause of all problems and need a man. When the film starts we find out that the woman has just declined the man's wedding proposal. Mistake number one, right? (in fact, in the scene where the man is about to ask the woman to marry him there are some ominous headlights that imply that the killers were following them which of course asks how they knew that these killers knew that these two people were going to a cabin in the woods. Maybe the killers are romantics and if she had said yes they wouldn't have killed anyone!)
Then the woman runs out of cigarettes and the man goes to get some which of course leaves her alone. The terrorizing begins. So don't smoke, ok ladies??? And finally, like to many female characters in horror films (final girls aside) she spends most of the film helpless and cowering. Only the man can do anything even remotely effective. Interestingly, although the first of the killers we encounter is a woman and one of the other s is also a woman it is the male killer that is in charge, gets the most screen time, and the women seem little more than hangers on.
This isn't to say that the film is worthless. Perhaps the larger tragedy is that the film had potential. It is really well directed. There's no million edits per minute and there are some real nice moments were the killers are hiding and sneaking around. There's no cheap scares and there's no overly dramatic music. And the fact that we never see the killers' faces is a nice move. It is a shame that the writer/director of this film seems to be a better director than he is a writer.
one thumb up
when a stranger calls
is mashed up with Funny Games
not a pretty scene...
So the premise is that a group of former contestants on a show that is basically Survivor but called some made up name are brought back for what they think is some kind of all star sequel and they get killed off one by one. The reason it fails is that there never really is any mystery as to who is killing them because in the first ten minutes they talk about the killer. To make matters worse, what isn't discussed is the specifics of the killer's problem. Some of it is shown but there is references to him doing something else that was much more dramatic but what that is they never explain.
Unlike most good slasher films there really isn't any sense of mystery nor is there a sense of dread. The people are all almost killed off by random traps so we don't get much of the killer chasing people or anything like that. Nor is there ever any question over whether or not one of the main characters is the killer or even in on the killings. No twists. No nothing.
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a messed up concept
that is so five years ago
what a silly film
So we start off with a couple of cops who are loose cannons. One disregards orders and the other, Collin Ferrell reluctantly backs him up. When they get reprimanded for their reckless behavior one gets fired and Ferrell gets relocated to being in charge of the weapons locker. Guess what happens? If you said that he has to redeem himself and prove his worth then you guessed right.
This is an entertaining enough if bland and fairly unremarkable and by the numbers action film. Samuel L. Jackson is Samuel L. Jackson. There are some other characters like LL Cool J and Michelle Rodriguez but they don't really have much to do.
The bad guy is a bit unusual in that the original bad guy has no connection to the SWAT team. Of course the person that helps him does so it isn't that unusual. There are also the necessary lighter bits such as when they have to deal with what they call a "Polish hostage" (which is apparently when someone barricades themselves in and says that they will kill themselves if the cops come in) by tearing a big hole in the wall. There's not much reason to see this. If it was on tv it would be worth watching if nothing else was on and you didn't want to get up to put in a dvd or something.
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a Polish hostage?
I'd like a Polish sausage.
but to each his own...
It is kind of interesting that I rented this and The Lady in the Water at the same time since The Village was originally named The Woods and had to change because of this film.
This film is your basic child sent off to a creepy boarding school where things are going bad. There isn't really a lot more to it than that. The main character is a bad girl who is sent to this school after burning down her parent's house. She makes friends with one girl but is harassed by another who calls her "fire crotch" because of her red hair. I can't remember the main character's name so I'll call her Firecrotch.
Firecrotch has some bad dreams and hears things. Then some girls disappear. Then she fights the bad people. The end.
Apparently this film sat on the shelf for a few years before being released and while there isn't anything wrong with it I can see why they weren't in a hurry to release it because there isn't much right with it either. Afterwords I found myself asking why characters did certain things only to remember that the film did explain those things. It just didn't leave much of an impact and kind of was uninteresting.
There are a couple places where we question someone's motives and those are pretty interesting but those moments are few and far between.
one thumb down
Don't go in the woods
and don't watch The Woods either
leave it on the shelf
This movie is a real mixed bag. Some of it is really cute and charming, some of it is deathly dull, and some of it is so ponderous it makes me want a smoothly.
The first half hour is horrible. I was totally hating it. There's all this set up which is boring and dull and seems to drag on forever and yet paradoxically doesn't tell us anything about the characters. We are introduced to Jack Black, Mos Def, and Danny Glover but it is all mostly character information rather than background information and at least Black and Glover are so iconic that we don't really need to know this much about their personality. What I really want to know is why the store is still renting VHS I thought it was set during the 80s but it is apparently during the contemporary era. Glover's character owns this store and while it is great to see a movie that doesn't center around the rich and upper class, Wal-Mart sells dvd players for less than $30. I also really want to know what Jack Black's character is supposed to do for a living. He seems to work at some auto repair body shop near an electric transformer station but is just seems like he sleeps in an rv there. I also want to know the relationship between Mos Def and Glover. At one point someone says something about Glover's character not being the father of Def's character but then Glover says that he used to tell bedtime stories to Def's character. So did he raise him? What happened to the character's parents then?
Once you get to the part where Def and Black are acting out movies it gets fun. Why Gondry would take so long to get to that when he must have known that was all anyone cared about is beyond me. The remakes are really quite fun in a childlike way which the whole movie is striving to have but just doesn't pull off. For example there's a scene early on when Black's character (who apparently does work at that body shop) is supposed to have put "big pipes" on a car and we see that he has put huge pipes that are like three feet wide on each side of the car. It is supposed to be cute and funny but it just stretches credibility too far and makes Black's character seem like a moron.
In addition to the misstep of the beginning there are at least two others areas that I thought were major mistakes. The first was having Sigourney Weaver appear. At the point when she appears the main characters have gotten locally famous and loved for their remakes. Then one day a black towncar pulls up and someone opens the door of the car and Sigourney Weaver gets out. With that kind of introduction I know I can't have been the only one who thought that Weaver was appearing as herself. In my mind this is especially likely since the first film that was remade was Ghostbusters -- which Weaver starred in. This is made even more likely in my mind because they make a lot of winking references to the fact that Mia Farrow's character loves Driving Miss Daisy and rents it all the time -- the start of Miss Daisy is, of course, Glover. Since the film made this kind of self-reference once I was expecting Weaver to say something like,"So I hear you are remaking my films?" or at the very least have some sort of wink or nod to the fact that Weaver has this connection to one of the films. Instead there isn't any of that. Weaver is just playing a role and there doesn't seem to be any real reason why she was cast. Call me crazy but having such a big star appear in such a small role so late in the film was a mistake.
The other mistake is the end. While I can understand that Gondry might have wanted to make it open it is entirely too open with lots of questions left unanswered -- including questions beyond the simplistic "What is going to happen to them?" but also including questions of money and fines that needed at least some clarification. They are told at one point that they might be fined millions of dollars for copyright infringement but it isn't clear if they ever actually are fined. Moreover we are told that the money that they are raising isn't going to be used for that, so what is going to happen to it? If it isn't used for the stated cause then it makes our main characters look like they are going to rip off everyone. Not quite something that the characterization of the film supports nor the message that I think the film wants to send.
one thumb up
lot's of problems here
they should have tried to edit
instead of rewind
Another movie about the apocalypse. One of my favorite genres. This isn't a particularly good example of the genre. It starts off strong. A group of people are randomly abducted from their home and taken to an underground bunker.
It really works well as we learn that a nuclear attack has happened and that these people have been "chosen" to be "survivors." The scenes of them coming to terms with the situation are pretty good. However, as the poster indicates, the plot soon turns from a drama about people dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear war to some sort of swarming creature film.
It seems that the bunker was built inside of a cave system and somehow bats are getting in. Not only that but they are, of course, vampire bats. Now were they vampire bats and someone turned into a vampire that would be awesomeness personified but sadly, that doesn't happen. Instead the bats keep getting in and killing people.
Once the film fully turns its attention to the bat problem it gets downright tedious. Had they focused on the survival aspects more and kept the bats out it might have been a truly interesting film. As it is, this is pretty forgettable.
one thumb up
survive if you can
just ignore the stupid bats
focus on the war
