Film is Pwn

Starring: Klinton Spilsbury, Michael Horse, Christopher Lloyd, Jason Robards
Directed By: William A. Fraker

I think that whoever proposed re-launching the Lone Ranger franchise with 1981’s The Legend of the Lone Rangerhad a good idea. Of course, the path to bankruptcy is paved with good ideas.  New Coke was a good idea . . . if people liked the product.   Parents and grandparents grew up with the iconic Old West hero the Lone Ranger on TV or on radio.  Presumably those parental units would be excited to take their little consumers to the theater to enjoy a family friendly, PG adventure featuring the Lone Ranger.  On the drawing board it was so great: We’ll have old fashioned stunt work, horses, clearly defined heroes and villains, a moral and upright protagonist with a clear sense of right and wrong, and it’ll be awesome!  Oh, it all looked so promising.

Here is where the idea goes flying horribly off the track: Every single element after the green light ranging from casting to script to filming to catering.  The Legend of the Lone Ranger does not meander toward the wretched film abyss, it gallops blindfolded straight into the hall of awful at a brisk gallop shouting “Hi yo, Silver!” all the way to the bottom of that gorge of film infamy. (more…)

I caught a showing of the Spring, big-budget spectacle Clash of the Titans this afternoon.  My thoughts in a word: Meh. (That’s indifferentese for “it’s all right, I guess.”) (more…)

Imagine a future where you will be able to send an android double to go watch terrible movies like Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Cop Out.  That is – sorta – the idea behind Surrogates.

In this near future sci-fi-thriller, humans live life from the comfort of their homes as their robotic stand-ins work, play, and party on their behest.  Still trying to get your head around Surrogates?  Think Avatar except no blue aliens and minus about a billion dollars in box office receipts.

The Surrogates themselves are in some cases idealized representations of humans.  Give me a robot that looks just like me except 50 pounds lighter, perfect hair, toned calves, and literal abs of steel, please!  In other instances, the Surrogate embodies nauseous role-playing.  One attractive blonde Surrogate turns out to be a fat dude living out his own fantasy and my nightmare.  Who hasn’t dreaded finally meeting Ms. Right and discovering that she’s secretly Horatio Sanz?  Just me?  *Sigh* (more…)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Sanaa Lathan, Dean Cain
Directed By: Carl Franklin

Most movies take place in three acts which blend seamlessly to create the narrative story arc.  Out of Time is no different, except that the difference between the first act and the second act is staggering. (more…)

It is snowing in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.  An alien invasion does not debilitate New York City to the degree that an inch of snow shuts down Charlotte.  Charlotte’s citizenry forget how to behave when beset by fears of the white powder descending from the heavens like millions of malicious storm troopers.   (more…)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson
Directed By: The Hughes Brothers

Just saw The Book of Eli, and I liked it.  It’s a post-apocalyptic film that feels like a classic Clint Eastwood Western.  (more…)

Oh, Asylum, you’ve done it again!

Princess of Mars is based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which is allegedly the inspiration for James Cameron’s Avatar.  In fact, right on the front cover of the DVD it says, “THE CLASSIC STORY THAT INSPIRED JAMES CAMERON’S AVATAR.”  The back cover of Princess of Mars boasts in a quote without a source: “HEART-POUNDING CREATURE ACTION OF STARSHIP TROOPERS AND THE EPIC ADVENTURE OF LORD OF THE RINGS!”  I hate to call anyone or any DVD cover a liar, but how can you trust someone who tells you that Starship Troopers contained “heart-pounding creature action”? Liar!

Avatar and Princess of Mars do both feature protagonists who are strangers in a strange land that fall in love with a scantily clad alien, but that is the plot to 94.2% of movies these days.  Of course, James Cameron spends more money on a single sneeze than the entire budget of the Asylum’s Princess of Mars. (more…)

2009’s big budget/big screen Sherlock Holmes movie was preceded by a subpar trailer and a thorough lack of buzz as far as I could detect, and I am an expert buzz detector.  Maybe the lowered expectations helped elevate the experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed director Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of Holmes.  (more…)

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yancy Butler, Lance Henriksen, Arnold Vosloo
Directed by: John Woo

As an added bonus, this isn’t just a blog on a Jean-Claude Van Damme film, this, my friends, is the legendary team-up of Van Damme and Hong Kong’s logic defying director John Woo, Hard Target! Before you get your expectations too high, Hard Target, like most John Woo or JCVD films, has one idea (seldom original or clever), a lot of action, and no brains.

The idea is that there are a group of bad guys, led by Lance Henriksen (looking much like an evil Conan O’Brien) and Arnold Vosloo (a.k.a. the Mummy from the Mummy), who run an operation that allows wealthy men to hunt and kill homeless combat veterans for sport. The film opens as we see the latest victim, Bluto from the Popeye cartoons, who falls to an arrow in the curiously vacant streets of New Orleans. One interesting fact learned from the movie involving New Orleans is that the city contains zero residents not required by the plot either at night or during the day. (I assume they saved money by not hiring any extras and used the additional funds to blow more stuff up.) (more…)

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
Directed By: James Cameron

I have just witnessed what is allegedly the most expensive movie ever made, James Cameron’s gaudy, luminous follow-up to 1997’s Titanic, Avatar.  Yes, Cameron took a dozen years between releases, in part because he wanted to make Avatar and needed to wait for the technology to keep up with his vision.  What the dozen year lapse tells me is that the shiny spectacle in Avatar is way more important than other little elements like story and characters, and it shows.

The key characters are the alien race called the Na’vi who are sadly impossible for me to take seriously.  They’re giant, blue-skinned humanoid creatures with tails and long necks.  Think if Smurfette mated with Randy Johnson. If that image doesn’t conjure up what the Na’vi look like, imagine a race of blue Jar Jar Binks’. Get the picture? (more…)

Heartbreak Ridge is one of the often overlooked and neglected Clint Eastwood movies, and not for no reason.  It’s not great enough to pop up on any “best movie” lists — or even top ten Clint flicks – but it’s good enough to be watched and play in endless rotation on a movie channel like AMC. If you’ll forgive a digression, AMC ought to be forced to change their moniker from something other than American Movie Classics after recently being caught red-handed airing Halle Berry’s Catwoman.  When you let “Catwoman” in the door as a “classic,” what movie can’t be considered a classic? Can Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus be far behind?

There’s a lot working for Heartbreak Ridge, one being director and star Clint Eastwood.  Eastwood rarely makes movies that aren’t either “darn good” or  “a lot of fun,” although I should note that I have yet to see any movies where he co-starred with a monkey.  Just a note on that note: I have no intention of EVER seeing any of those Eastwood monkey movies, as I have maintained my respect for him even after seeing him singing with Lee Marvin. (more…)

Finally got around to seeing Terminator: Salvation Friday night.  This is one of the big, Summer 2009 movies that ended up on my “Maybe” list with mixed reviews and an uninspiring trailer, and I never got around to it.

All in all, I kinda liked it.  Lowered expectations might be a good thing, this is nowhere near as good as James Cameron’s original Terminator or the terrific sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but fortunately far from the disaster of Terminator 3 sans Cameron. (more…)