Well, let me make this short and sweet: I’ve got one main problem with this movie. The title. Godzilla is a real fine monster movie. It’s fun. It’s got great special effects and some really clever ideas. But it has no business calling itself Godzilla, except as a marketing ploy. The monsters owe much more to the T. Rex and Raptors of Jurassic Park than to anything produced by Toho Studios. Continue reading
Coming Soon to a Crater Near You
The dramatic story of a brave dentist’s struggle with a life-threatening wisdom tooth extraction….
No, no, no. This is the shocking story of an event that may happen in the very near future – an event that will profoundly change the lives of every human being on the planet. Yes, this is the film that dares to ask the question: What would happen if Morgan Freeman is elected President of the United States?
I couldn’t guess what all the implications are, but some things we know for sure: if Morgan Freeman becomes President, a huge asteroid will hit the Earth and all life will be in danger of extinction. Tea Leoni will stumble her way behind the anchor desk at MSNBC. And most tragic of all, Bob Balaban will have a terrible accident involving a cell phone
Deep Impact is the first asteroid-hits-the-planet movie so far this year, and it’s sure to be the most serious. No need to argue over who is ripping off whom – this story has been filmed many times. Most notable in this category would include entries from France (The End of the World, 1934), Japan (Gorath, 1962), and the USA (When Worlds Collide, 1951 and Meteor, 1979). The highlight of all these films, and the main reason to watch them, is their special effects sequences showing mass destruction and death. Everybody wants to see their home town smashed flat – if only in a movie.
This picture won’t disappoint you in this area. It strives to score high as drama, showing us how a catastrophic event would really affect the lives of lots of little people. As a drama, it’s not so bad – I actually got a bit choked up at Tea’s difficulties with her parents and the teen astronomer’s battle to keep his girlfriend alive. But what we really want to see here is grand scale spectacle and we don’t want to wait through 90 minutes of drama to get on with it. Deep Impact feeds this need by presenting a crew of astronauts led by fleshy old Robert Duvall on a mission to blow up the asteroid before it reaches Earth. The scenes of these heroes risking their necks while bouncing around the big space rock are mighty amusing and provide ample suspense.
The dilemma for the filmmakers is deciding whether or not to destroy the Earth or not – which is the better ending? We want the heroes – or a decent proportion of them – to make out okay in the end, but not at the expense of the necessary death and destruction. I won’t ruin it for you other than to say Deep Impact has a clever plot twist that let’s us have it both ways.
If you see only one asteroid movie before the next one comes out, let it be this one.
From the Movie Morgue
Here’s an alleged thriller that Miramax and Dimension Films previously announced for release last winter. They also announced it last fall, summer and spring. Most often, when a studio feels it has a sure-fire hit, they try to get it a solid holiday release date and warn every other movie to stay out of the way and watch the stampede. This one they’ve been terribly shy about, so I went in recognizing a red flag over it. Continue reading
Pigs is Pigs
Director Neil Jordan has delivered his best film so far, a wildly entertaining tale of a boy gone bad.
Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) is a remarkably untroubled youngster growing up in a troubled Irish home in the early 1960s. Well, maybe not completely untroubled, but he puts a good face on things. His father (Stephen Rea) is a failed musician and a drunken sot that terrorizes his wife (Aisling O’Sullivan) to the point that she loses her mind. Mrs. Brady’s suicide attempt may have landed her in “the garage” mental hospital, but Francie knows that she’ll be right as rain after a tune-up and head tightening. And that gossipy Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw) may look down her nose and make trouble for Francie and his family, but it doesn’t take much for a clever boy like Francie to teach her a lesson.
The real lesson is one the townspeople take way too long to learn: that clever Francie puts on the face of a jolly but mischievous rascal, just another dear small town eccentric – but underneath he’s going steadily and decidedly insane.
There are plenty of movies recounting descents into homicidal madness, but most are sour affairs. Jordan takes the Trainspotting route, putting a fun spin on a serious subject and embarking on frequent flights of fancy, such as casting Sinead O’Connor for a series of visitations by the Holy Virgin Mary. Most impressive is the great performance given by young Owens in his film debut. He’s in nearly every frame and he attacks the role gamely throughout.Veteran Milo O’Shea’s pops up as a pervert priest.
I was one of those kids who missed the first half of each week’s Batman episode because it was on up against CBS’s sci-fi/camp hit Lost In Space. As science fiction, the series wasn’t far above Captain Video – the spaceship ran on a rare fuel known as “petroleum”, for cryin’ out loud. But the series had a great deal of charm and good characters – good enough that I didn’t mind that the weekly adventures never seemed to live up to the series premise. Good enough that I formed an attachment to it. The best Christmas present I got from Santa in 1968 was a big Lost In Space adventure set, complete with a motorized “chariot” vehicle that shot rockets. Continue reading
She’s a blonde beach bunny TV star. He’s a tattooed rock star. Together they’re… not that different from any other young, dim couple in love. There are no drug-crazed orgies – just the same old scene with a little money thrown into the deal. Continue reading
Jackie Chan is back as a TV chef in Melbourne who gets deeper and deeper into troubler as a result of a good deed. When he sees gangsters attacking a TV journalist Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick), he intervenes, but then becomes a target for the gangs himself when he ends up with her incriminating videotape.
It’s an old pulp writers’ formula: an innocent is mistakenly left with a McGuffin that two rival gangs are competing for. The same plot worked in Rumble in the Bronx, so they resurrect it here. In fact, there are enough recycled elements in the patchwork plot to make this sort of a Best of Jackie feature. Besides the street gang vs. mafiosa riff from Rumble, the finale again involves a large, unusual vehicle. There’s also an inter-racial trio of beauties in peril (ala Operation Condor), a fight in a construction site (ala Police Story 2), as well as the casting of Richard Norton as the quirky villain (Norton filled a similar role in City Hunter). Not to complain, though – the plot of the average Jackie Chan film is just a loose device on which to hang terrific fights, gags, and stunts. Continue reading
Vague
This is based on a relatively well-known William Gibson story that appeared in an early issue of Omni magazine. I don’t think I read it when it was published, but I’m going to have to track it down and read it. Maybe then I’ll be able to figure out this movie. Continue reading
Back in Black
Well, you can’t accuse them of using an inaccurate title. Director Alex Proyas’ follow-up to his tremendously successful The Crow is set in a city where there’s never daylight, yet nobody ever notices the lack of sunlight.
Proyas and company have crafted one of the darkest visions ever put on film – a grand guignol science fiction gothic film noir mystery thriller. It borrows chunks from early German expressionist favorites (M, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis), and 1940s crime movies (The Big Sleep, Detour, Spellbound), as well as the more recent sci-fi films that homage the same sources (1984, Bladerunner, Brazil).
John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell from Cold Comfort Farm) wakes up in a hotel room with a murdered prostitute, a case of amnesia, and telekinetic mental powers. Is he the ripper stalking the dark city streets? Police Inspector Bumstead (William Hurt) thinks so, and is hot on the trail – despite the fact that his predecessor on the case went mad chasing esoteric details brought out by his investigation. Will Murdoch’s wife (Jennifer Connelly, who nailed my heart previously with Phenomenon and The Rocketeer) help him or betray him? Why can’t anyone find the way to Shell Beach? How is the sinister Dr. Schreber (Keifer Sutherland) connected to the case?
The answers lie with a race of aliens in barely human guise. Proyas creates a dense atmosphere of nervous paranoia that builds in the first third of the film, reels around drunkenly in the second, then leaps way over the top in the finale. This film might have been a masterpiece, except for a few deadly flaws in the intricate plot. I can’t explain how Proyas, Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer wrote themselves into a corner without a little SPOILER WARNING. For one thing, once I found out who all the characters really are, I immediately lost interest in them. Secondly, I find it difficult to understand why the aliens can take human bodies and alter inanimate matter, yet they all look like Count Orlock from Nosferatu. And third, since the aliens’ plot involves switching the memories of everyone in the city around, why isn’t it obvious to everyone? I mean, it’s one thing to give a guy a new set of memories so he thinks he’s a cop instead of a barber, but why don’t the other cops know the difference? What about the barber’s friends, family and customers – don’t they wonder where he’s gone?
Dark City has a fascinating premise, wonderful art direction and f/x, and plenty of creepy atmosphere going for it. The performances are good, despite the fact that they are purposely archetypal. It’s unfortunate that Proyas’ reach is so far beyond his grasp. Here’s hoping he can put all the pieces together next time, because I definitely like his style.
