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Matador07
Reviews
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Poor Creature Mugged By Violent Criminal Gang
***Spoilers***
One of the most famous of the old school man in a rubber suit 1950s classics, but you know what? It's always been mismarketed.
CFTBL wasn't the story of some horrible amphibious jungle creature terrorizing a group of scientists out on a boat leching over a token very busy and completely worthless pretty girl.
Instead, this was the story of a group of violent bullies invading some shy creature's living space, harassing it, attacking it, shooting it with a spear gun by way of greeting, drugging it repeatedly, kidnapping it, and then getting all huffy when it tries to retaliate. I mean sure, it killed a couple of native guides early in the movie, but as any student of history or movies will tell you that's just what you did back then with indigenous extras.
But after that? A pretty one sided bit of Earth bound Captain Kirking. I think the poor thing finally decided to just take the girl and leave because she was the only one who hadn't physically assaulted it by the end of the film. And so our roving gang of science thugs then conduct a home invasion and mug the creature in it's own living room. The poor thing should seriously lawyer up and seek reparations.
The Mist (2017)
Good Lord
The writer of this series should get together with the writers of Fear the Walking Dead. Maybe together they might be able to pool their talents and write the script for a single episode of a Mexican soap opera.
Because that's really all this is, and all the imagination that these brainiacs could muster with a supernatural situation with which you could literally do ANYTHING.
But no. What we'll do instead is pump a little dry ice outside the occasional window, hire some really bad actors (the mother/daughter team takes the cake, but were actually well cast in a like mom can't act, neither can daughter way), to play largely unlikable characters, and then have them sit around with virtually no tension whatsoever other than our tepid and badly written attempts at soap opera drama. Oh, and every once an episode or so we'll try to be very clever and modern topical and randomly throw in a reference to gender issues or some other hot topic, because then we'll be hip and have something to say.
A sad effort to say the least. How does one become a member of the Writer's Guild? They apparently need some professional help, so I might as well join. At least I know how NOT to destroy a good premise for a TV series.
The Grey (2011)
Take another look
To a certain degree I think that many of the people who didn't like this film missed its point a little, as did even some of those who did like it. Do wolves behave like this? Or even look like this? Absolutely not. But people, that's because they are metaphors here. This isn't truly a tale of man vs. wolf, or even man vs. nature. Its a tale of man vs. life. That's the main character's arc -- he has suffered tragedy, is all ready to give up, and finds the will to get up and keep on fighting through tragedy. That too is why people who didn't like the ending didn't understand the beauty of it. The monsters come for him, he sees his friends killed, he is faced with plane crashes and blizzards and gorges and hypothermia, but he won't quit. In the end the words of his dad's old poem call out to him and he summons the courage to go down swinging. Its grim and poetic, and its the soul that carries this movie through the holes in its realism.
Prometheus (2012)
Disappointed
While not a disaster, it was hard to view this ambitious attempt to expand the Alien universe as anything but a disappointment.
And maybe it was the ambition itself that this movie tripped over. Trying to juggle too many themes, too many characters (doing amaterishly stupid things in order to move the plot along), even too many monsters without clear and focused connections, it just ended up feeling muddled and disjointed. Characters that you would have liked to get to know, only get a handful of lines. Situations that should have been built up and slowly dragged out to pump up the tension, are instead rushed over. Then other scenes are flashed to that look silly and cheap. Along the way most of the menace and wonder that should have been dripping from a movie like this was just lost, and that was just brutally disappointing. Every 15 minutes or so there would be a shot, an idea, an action that by itself was cool, but more often than not it was brushed over and forgotten about, or simply misplayed if not. Even the creatures created from the ubiquitous black goo felt like they were lacking in menace and imagination. Its very disappointing that we have seen similar creature work before in far less ambitious movies over the years.
As for the big mysteries that people complain this movie raised but did not answer, that did not bother me nearly so much as the mysteries which WERE revealed. The entire Alien universe, which started out so dark and frightening, felt like it was lessened by this movie. The awe of the engineers has been stripped. The curtain was pulled back from what lurks out there in the dark of space, and what lurks behind it just isn't terribly scary after all. They say what scares you in a good horror film is the stuff you DON'T see. Well I think the same thing applied to this movie -- it was the unknown terrors of a hostile universe that tickled the imagination in Alien. Frightening questions that would make you never want to leave home or set foot on an alien planet again. Here our very stupid scientists pop their helmets off to smell the air like they're on vacation, and get to reveal far far too many of the Engineers' secrets, and with the mystery goes the fear.
1408 (2007)
Sigh
I will never understand why people continue to buy into tripe like this, as we get our 1347th haunted house/hotel/room whatever story, all with the same flaws. I gave this 3 stars because I thought the buildup was pretty effective. In fact until Cusack actually enters the room I was settling in and hoping for the best. But instead of the best, we get almost a one man Cusack stage show that plays out more like an overwrought descent into insanity than it does a ghost story. And then, like all of this breed of story, the wheels come completely off, there are no rules, the main character reacts stupidly to everything, and you spend 45 minutes lost as Cusack runs around his one room breaking things and yelling, and occasionally big special effects that may or may not be in his head come crashing through. It gets tedious quickly. When a character does not know what is real or not, that is fine. When the audience doesn't it just encourages you to detach and sit back chomping popcorn waiting to see if any of the nonsensical special effects you are watching are real, or if its all just a dream. And really, by the end of this one you don't care.
The Thing (2011)
Useful Teaching Tool
First of all let me get out of the way that I consider the 1982 Carpenter The Thing to be possibly the best horror film ever made, or at least the scariest. I get that out of the way to start so that this next statement has meaning: this one was not awful. But neither was it good.
I titled this review "useful teaching tool" because when I got done watching this one it occurred to me that you had two movies with the same creature idea, same setting, similar character types etc. etc., as obviously this movie was following the plot and aping the 1982 at every turn. And yet two movies with so many close similarities, and still such wildly different emotional impacts. The 1982 movie was terrifying on a first watch. The paranoia and isolation combining with the brilliant creature idea was just an unbeatable combination. And now this movie comes along...wants to be worthy of the 1982 version, and yet leaves almost no impact at all. They should study all the little differences between the two that add up to such a wildly different result.
The actors never distinguish their characters enough for you to care, the unseen and unknown, which are truly what power great horror films, are trampled here by a director who apparently did not understand their power. There is very little slow build of tension, or lingering shots designed to create unease. Even the score is mediocre and lacks the unsettling simplicity of the 1982's simple baseline. Somehow this is a movie that legitimately wants to be a worthy successor to the 1982 version, and yet gets all the details wrong an ends up as just another mildly entertaining monster movie.
Its entertaining enough and you can spend the second half of the movie watching the mostly unsatisfactory attempts by this one to tie itself into the original -- again so often the answers they find to the great mysteries of the original are just pedantic. I didn't want my time back or anything. But it simply does not ever get into your head or your soul. It was OK, I watched it, I can already say I will feel no real desire to watch it again. And that's too bad really. It wanted to be better, should have been better, had everything the 1982 version had working for it, and just got in a rush and ended up mediocre.
Your Highness (2011)
Just never ignited
This was a movie with an odd approach that was seemingly destined to either be a stroke of genius or absolute drivel. Well, it somehow ended up falling somewhere in between, but unfortunately probably more on the drivel side.
I have absolutely no problem with cussing, with nudity, with disgusting jokes, with any of it. Many of my favorite comedies feature those factors. But they also feature jokes that work, consistent quirky performances, and most of all superior writing and comedic timing. This movie had none of the above. It was a little frustrating to watch really, as every 10 minutes or so they would get it right, hit a chord, and have an often disgustingly funny moment. But in between those moments the attempts at comedy were positively hamhanded. The timing was off, people were really trying too hard, when they did get something funny in there they could never just let it be funny, they had to trample all over it, and there were long stretches where apparently we were supposed to keep on laughing because a knight used the f-word for the 200th time. There were just enough funny moments spaced in there to keep on watching it through to the end. But there were a lot of painfully unfunny moments too, and really, it should have been better.
Predators (2010)
Solid if uninspired
There a are a number of silly reviews in here about how this is the worst movie of all time and what an embarrassment to the Predator franchise and all kinds of other ridiculous rants that have very little to do with the mostly solid little scifi actioner that was Predators. That does not mean the movie was a classic or anything close, but it was clearly a solid genre piece, and frankly the first Alien or Predator movie in 20 years to not flat out embarrass itself and the underlying franchises.
So what held it back from being more than just solid? Lack of ambition really. The creators made a smart move in transporting the action off Earth where they could bring some innovation to the table...but then you could see the lack of ambition and desire to play it close to the vest when they only added in one or two moments taking advantage of the setting. Then throughout the movie they manipulate scenes and dialogue to purposefully bring to mind classic scenes from the original, including the means of several characters deaths. And finally they just seemed reluctant to bring any true originality to the battles, the use of the Predaors' gadgets, to the death scenes, anything. It all played out in fairly standard fashion. Entertaining enough, but almost no "that was neat" moments. You didn't regret watching it, but I sincerely doubt there are going to be any moments or lines remembered from this one in 20+ years the way there was for the original.
Nowhere to Run (1993)
Actually a good movie
The ridiculously low rating on IMDb at the time of this posting (5.0) aside, this has long been in my opinion the highest quality of all of Van Damme's flicks. By highest quality I don't mean best fight scene, most over the top cheesy premise, best gore, or anything else. I mean best quality as in an actual quality movie that just happened to star Jean Claude Van Damme.
The cinematography in the movie is excellent, so is the score, and in a real rarity in a Van Damme movie, so for the most part is the acting. Rosanna Arquette plays damsel in distress without ever being weak or pathetic and injects a nice touch of forlorn longing into it, the younger Culkin turns in one of the better child performances you are likely to see from an 8-9 year old, and they get two nice performances from the main baddies, who play evil as steely eyed rather than screaming slobbering over the top. And of course the biggest surprise is Van Damme himself, who probably gave the best performance of his career, although that is both faint praise and I think at least in part because he found a role where his character not emoting fit perfectly.
This is not a 10, although I must admit to being tempted to give it one as part of the stupid IMDb pump the ratings of a film you liked game. The plot is largely derivative of a number of old westerns (Shane comes to mind), the action sequences are fine but not thrilling (I think a large part of the low rating comes from disappointed action junkies), and in general this is a movie aiming lower than a 10 as I would define it. Its trying to be good, not great, but don't let the naysayers confuse you -- it largely succeeds, and is perhaps the only Van Damme movie you can watch (even the entertaining ones) that does not leave cheese dripping down the screen. Solid entertainment.
Laid to Rest (2009)
Idiotic
The special effects guys in this movie should be taken out and bought a few drinks for their work.
The writers should be taken out and shot. My lord, is it really that hard to write a slasher flick where the people act even remotely rationally and yet the killer still is a step ahead? How dumb do you have to be as a writer that the only way you can keep your victims in danger is by having them act like a pack of complete morons at all times. This takes the "I'll wander off alone into the dark by myself to investigate that strange noise" and trumps it badly.
Made it extremely hard to take even remotely seriously, and had me wishing I had rented it rather than caught it on cable so I could have just fast forwarded through the stupidity. Kevin Gage has presence BTW. Now please get the man a real script. This one was embarrassing.
Bachelor Party (1984)
Holds Up All These Years Later
I first saw this movie as a kid, and being a juvenile at the time, I of course loved the juvenile humor (not to mention the nudity). But humor is one of those things that rarely ages well, and I fully expected all these years later to find that the movie was rather, well, juvenile. Very pleasantly surprised to find that it really was still funny, even if Hanks himself is so over the top that it makes the central storyline (Tawny Kitaen wants to marry him) unbelievable. Its silly, low brow, and yet exuberant and consistently funny throughout. One of those movies where everybody is having such a good time that its hard not to yourself, and the jokes are fearlessly tasteless. Not a classic, but still fun nearly 30 years later (has it been nearly 30 years? wow!).
Not Another Teen Movie (2001)
Surprisingly hilarious
I avoided this movie like the plague back when it came out -- I just assumed it was going to be awful, as by the early 2000s spoof movies were in serious decline. But I finally gave it a go here 7-8 years later or whatnot, and I have to say that I missed out. There HAVE been a ton of really terrible spoof movies in recent years -- the whole Epic Movie/Date Movie crew, what's left of the Wayans brothers etc. -- but this one was really quite funny. It steals its plot from the ridiculous She's All That, but manages to take shots at the silly clichés from almost every teen movie of the last 20 years (or at least the 20 years before this one came out). Its often clever in its parodies, but its also raunchy as hell, which is either a plus or a minus depending on how delicate you are. As I am pretty much impossible to offend, it was a big plus, and let the movie just go for things that a little kiddie PG-13 film would never have dreamed of touching.
No time for being snooty or prissy with this one -- just sit back, leave your pretentiousness at home, and have a good laugh at the mayhem. Not as good as the classic ZAZ team spoofs, but maybe the best since they went their separate ways.
Fever Pitch (2005)
Rather Sad
I am generally more willing to be open minded about rom coms than many, but this was simply not a very good attempt. Its got nothing to do with comparisons with the British original -- have not seen, and doubt I will. It has a whole lot to do with a meandering plot, lack of chemistry between the leads and a godawful performance/character from its supposed male lead (Jimmy Fallon).
Fallon walks onto the screen wearing the clothes and hairdo of a 15 year old and acting a decade younger than that. He's supposed to be a teacher you see, and of course its well known that school districts the world over love to hire individuals less mature than the children they purport to teach. The character is so extremely disturbed and irrational that I have my doubts whether any actor could have made him likable, but old reliables like John Cusack or Adam Sandler might have been able to give it a shot. Not Fallon, who is neither funny, nor an actor, but appears to think he is both. Not once in the entire course of the movie do you either believe Fallon in his role, or believe that there is any way these two people should, or would be together. Near the end of the movie there is a scene where Barrymore (who was cute as usual but could not carry this one alone -- its hard to have a one person romance) tells Fallon that its over, too much has happened, and she's moving on. And rather than feeling bad about the scene, or sorry for Fallon, you are actively cheering her on -- finally she does what she should have done months ago. But of course the plot mechanics won't allow that to be the end of it (an end which actually might have made a statement out of this mess), and instead we get to see the rational career girl throwing it all away to chase after this childish idiot and encourage his delusions. Its of course meant to be gooey and satisfying, but it actually made me more disgusted than anything else.
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
Surprisingly Funny
I have a shaky relationship with Adam Sandler movies, and after seeing a couple of unfunny trailers for this one I was not expecting much. But it got me.
The premise is as thin and ridiculous as you get -- Israeli super-commando moves to New York to become a hair stylist. There is nothing there. But through sheer power of over the top zaniness and an utter willingness to offend anyone and everyone they milk some big laughs out of it. It went over the top at times and would lose me for a bit, but they kept on finding ways to tweak one more laugh out of the one note plot. There were a couple of parts where they made you laugh long enough it hurt. Its biggest flaw, given what it was, was just that it lasted a bit too long given how weak the premise was. Its a two hour movie and the concept would have had trouble holding up for an hour and a half, and so it loses steam there for a while about 2/3 of the way through before picking back up. This is especially true if you watch the unrated version, which I recommend you do -- this sort of raunchy material is at its best when its no holds barred and I suspect the unrated additions are some of the funniest bits.
This is one of those movies that is always going to send the ninnies screaming out of the theater shocked and offended...and that is generally a good thing. I don't even particularly like the man's movies as a rule, but this one was often hilarious, and if you're hard to offend don't let a critic tell you otherwise.
Made of Honor (2008)
Hey, I'm a guy, and I actually liked it...
...well, most of it anyway.
Utterly formulaic in every way, and so I could not go any higher than a 7 for a rating, but then again almost every single romantic comedy made for the last decade has stuck to the same formula. So it becomes all about the chemistry and any laughs they can insert around the edges.
The chemistry between the leads was there (so much so that there is no way that these two people could have walked around ten years with this simmering between them without having a talk at some point, but oh well). Michelle Monaghan was winning in her role, and I was actually impressed by Patrick Dempsey's relative subtlety in what could have been very broadly played. He accomplishes a lot with a twitch or a grimace that many romcom actors would overplay. And the thing that made me warm to it were a number of good laughs, often of a raunchier nature you don't always find in these things, that helped distract from the standard storyline. Even the big plot contrivance -- that the male friend would serve as "made of honor" to the wedding -- is more just fanciful premise than clumsy plot device. The situation itself -- guy with platonic female friend suddenly realizes he is going to lose her to another guy and tries to sabotage things -- is something that resonates with real life much more so than the ridiculous "judge sentences you to be married" sorts of rubbish plots. Until the very end of the movie when they clumsily inserted a jarring clichéd romcom convention (the stupid misunderstanding when somebody walks in right at the wrong time), I was willing to buy into the story enough to enjoy the lighter moments.
So...a movie that I know will have its critics. Not sophisticated enough for a film critic, many men will feel compelled to dislike it just on grounds of it being a romantic comedy, and soft and fuzzy delicate types will be jarred rather than amused by the rough edged humor at times. But I think its tastier than most of the movies in this genre for viewers coming into fairly neutral and open minded. No classic, but made me laugh and I don't regret the two hours.
The Cutting Edge 3: Chasing the Dream (2008)
Better
OK, not sure why I felt compelled to comment on this movie, but having now sat through both the original (pretty good), the 2nd one (awful), and this one (much better), I have a good basis of comparison.
This was not high art, but it was a FAR better movie than the 2nd one. the key here being a pair of relatively unknown actors in the leads who did a nice job and had real chemistry (especially the female lead who was full of bounce and sass without being obnoxious). The leads in the second one were so horribly awkward it was like pulling teeth, but here you have likable and sympathetic characters. And the script lets them be likable too -- another thing that the 2nd movie got horribly wrong.
Unfortunately parts of the script are also the biggest weaknesses with this movie. There a handful of awkward scenes, and down the back half of the movie it was as if they hired some hack to try to artificially find some way to plagiarize as much of the original movie as possible and force it into this one, even when the pacing and fit was off.
But any romance is basically about the romantic leads. If they succeed and work well together, then the romance works. If they don't, it doesn't. Well, in this one they did. And so, not a classic, but eminently watchable for this sort of thing.
Nochnoy dozor (2004)
Ugh
Well, knowing this movie's popularity in Russia, I went into it holding out some hope. On the other hand knowing how often very modest non-Hollywood films have been overrated in their home countries due to a home soil advantage I was concerned it might be considerably overrated, but I still held out hope for a decent entertainment if nothing else. And all I have to say is ugh.
There may have been a decent idea lurking somewhere down in there beneath the murk (have not read the books, so do not know how badly they were butchered here), but this movie is a mess trying to survive on sporadic and contrived style points. Its erratic, features indifferent actors behaving in bizarre and often completely stupid ways, hops around with its plot introducing 1000 characters of no importance whatsoever and just dropping them, and then tries to cover the whole jumble up with juvenile camera tricks. Hey, look, if we quick cut here, fast zoom here, shake the camera this way, then that, apply a filter, flash around from reality to pseudo-reality and then back again, maybe nobody will notice that this is all really quite stupid.
I usually get around to investigating most big international hits from outside Hollywood, looking, as many people perhaps do, for a break from the myriad of dumbed down PG-13 garbage that streams out of L.A.. But the more of these I see, the more I am becoming convinced that maybe its harder to make a quality movie than we all think it is. Hollywood may only make 1 out of every 10 that are any good, but then you see a movie like Night Watch as the highest grossing thing ever to hit the cinema in Russia, or The Host as this huge hit in Korea, and you realize that maybe Hollywood isn't so bad afterall. Certainly if you said Night Watch was by 20th Century Fox and it had been released as a Hollywood movie, it would have been widely panned as just lousy, and deservedly so.
If this movie is an indication that maybe in the future the Russian film industry will start turning out good films, well great. But this ain't it. And just not being a Hollywood film doesn't earn it any pity points in my book. You're either a good film, or you're not, and this wasn't, no matter where it was from.
Outpost (2008)
Hey hey!
Hey, what do you know? Just about at the time that you get totally beaten down by godawful Z grade horror movie after godawful Z grade horror movie, along comes a super low budget little flick like this to show how it is done. Not much happens, the entire film is shot in greys and in a very limited and very visually unexciting locale. But there was a lot to like about this attempt.
I think much of the credit has to go to the script writer and director in this one, who make the most out of the little they have on hand. They stress atmosphere, sharply drawn characters, and then, in an almost unprecedented development in low grade horror, people who actually act in smart and logical fashion. The squad of soldiers in this one really moves and acts like a squad of soldiers. There is a reason for them to be where they are. There is a reason they are trapped. They take cover, lay claymores, worry about high ground and suppressing fire, pair off in twos to search, and in general never give you any reason to question whether they are actors rather than military men. That is INDCREDIBLY refreshing, and adds a remarkable degree of believability to the whole exercise, in much the way that the marines in Aliens (obviously a vastly superior movie) acted like actual soldiers and made you believe it. And in the same vein, all of the characters here have solid, believable dialogue and react in believable fashion when put under stress. The acting is solid, nobody is flat, there are no stupid joke characters, few cheap scares. The whole thing is just very intelligently done.
Now of course in the end, its still Grade Z horror. They have almost no budget, not much goes on, the premise is both clichéd and shaky, and most problematically the intelligence shown toward the characters is not duplicated in the highly erratic depiction of their opponents (the rules change every time they meet for no apparent reason). But it is the sophistication of the overall attempt here that lets me give this one a solid ranking. They had little to work with, but they actually made a real effort to turn out a quality product here. That deserves something, and in the future it would be nice to see these same people involved in a project with more ambition and money behind it.
AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007)
And so the fanboy franchise marches on...
A movie not as bad as those who were actually disappointed in it might claim -- I think having a dripping disdain for the entire fanboy its-so-kewl origin of the AvP series may actually have helped when watching this one.
At this point all of the rules and atmosphere carefully constructed by far FAR more talented writers and directors decades ago have been almost completely lost to time. Its been 20 years since the last truly good Alien or Predator movie, and once you accept that and look at this as nothing more or less than a simple B movie ripoff, its not terrible. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but the best something like this can get. It certainly beat the brain dead PG-13 stupidity of the first AvP which tripped over its own comic book kewl to the point of being nonsensical.
AvP Requiem...well, its not a smart movie by any remote stretch. It is in every way conceivable a B movie. It has the clichés, the plot holes, the occasional non-sensical decision making (hello, you are driving a tank -- how about you just turn it around and head up the road OUT of town?). But looked at as nothing more than a B movie entertainment, its better than many, perhaps even most. The story is simple, straight forward, and generally the sort of thing that any hack can execute reasonably. Alien monsters crash to Earth near small town, everyone dies. And after half an hour of non-character development (the only actor to make any impact was a smokingly hot blond, and that only because she strips down to her underwear), the movie gets right to the carnage. This is no classic and you will forget about it within a week, but as B movies go it delivers fast paced scifi/horror fun without even pretending to explore larger themes. If they could have hired even one actor with any real presence, written one role with any real edge, it might even have been memorable. I think even amusingly bad acting might have been preferable to the vanilla bland nothingness on display here.
One note about this franchise, and the aliens in particular. In Alien the creature was possibly the scariest thing ever put on celluloid. Seemingly indestructible, experiencing neither emotion nor pain, able to live in any environment, a black dripping slimy combination of insect and reptile, it was the stuff of nightmares. But in sequel after sequel now we have seen far too much. And the indestructible aliens have been sacrificed on the altar of this fanboy series to become just another opponent. Tough to be sure, but we've seen hundreds of them killed at this point, and the Predator in this installment of the series singlehandedly wipes out dozens of them, sometimes three, four, five at a time in hand to hand combat. And so the Alien's fearsomeness seems almost at an end -- it began in Alien 3 when the last third of the movie had its prisoners playing tag with their Alien in order to lure it to its doom. And maybe now its almost complete as we finally discover that 20th century light arms are all that's required to put them down. Get a bunch of hicks with hunting rifles crammed into the back of a pickup and let's go Alien hunting. Fortunate that the crew of the Nostromo had not packed a single vintage M-16 in their cargo or the whole franchise might never have gotten off the ground.
Persuasion (2007)
Right idea, poor execution
This was an interesting attempt to film a difficult story (featuring as it does the internalized suffering of a depressed heroine), but in the end I think it may have undercut itself with some curious choices. Which is too bad too -- I never did like the old 1995 version with its unattractive heroine (Anne was supposed to have pretty at one point) and its quaint mannerisms, and had hopes that this one would be more entertaining.
The good: the decision to use voice overs was a good one -- its a very useful device when adopting a literary work, and let us get much closer to the feelings and circumstances Anne found herself in without clumsy exposition scenes. Anthony Head also made a fun Sir Walter, and Alice Krige I think could have been a very good Lady Russel if they had given her any screen time (and thankfully was not a comical fashion victim the way the '95 Lady Russel was).
The rest: I had a lot of hopes for Sally Hawkins as Anne in the early going of this one. Unlike Amanda Root's so flat and depressed I'd be better off dead performance in the 1995 version, I thought I saw a chance here for this Anne to actually grow, and to have moments when she could show some life in between the pain. But it never really seemed to go anywhere, and while I thought Hawkins' reaction shots and painful moments were far more distinct than in the 1995 version, she never really seemed to grow in this one, which I thought was an important theme from the book. Even the one little tacked on post-marriage shot still seems to find her the same, neither acting nor looking any better than when we first met her.
This version was also unnecessarily short. I liked the casting of Anthony Head, I liked the more lively Musgrove sisters (although the senior Musgroves could have been better done), I liked Alice Krige as Lady Russel, the two other captains (other than Wentworth) had potential, but the movie seemed to have little time for them. And critical scenes seemed to have been cut short for no apparent reason -- when you only run 1:30 surely you can afford 5 more minutes to get a pivotal scene such as the concert correct.
Meanwhile I did not get much out of the performances of Anne's sisters, or Mrs. Clay. They left no impression. And the two men vying for Anne's hand, whether it be because of lack of screen time, or lack of chemistry, just never ignited. There were a few moments of endearing awkwardness by Wentworth, a few moments when I thought her cousin was revealing just a touch of the slimy insincerity that would have made his character perfect. But they never went anywhere, and the characterizations remained incomplete. Perhaps time was an issue again.
And finally of course, the running scene at the end of the movie was just completely ridiculous. Who thought of that? Why? It felt like they suddenly realized they were running out of time and had to desperately wrap up everything in one long ludicrous scene. It made no sense, and was a terrible way to wrap up your film.
In any case, an almost here. There was enough good, enough potential that it disappointed in not getting the rest of it right. I actually still think this one might be more entertaining than the obscure and stiff 1995 version, but it felt incomplete, only half thought out, and missed almost without a good excuse for doing so. Should have been better.
Emma (1996)
Grew on me...
Well, having read the book and seen the Paltrow theatrical version, I finally decided to seek out this lesser known version, largely just because it stars one of my favorite actresses in Kate Beckinsale.
My feelings were mixed. I in fact nearly turned the movie off in the early going as it got off to a rushed and muddled start, handled the entire Elton/Harriet thing very poorly, Kate seemed to be feeling her way through, and Knightley was nearly unrecognizable.
However I changed my mind and returned to it, and am now modestly glad I did so. Kate seemed to get a better handle on her role, and grew stronger throughout the movie, the support characters likewise settled in, and in the Jane/Frank relationship in particular there was so much more justice done to it and those characters than in the theatrical Emma as to almost justify watching this version on those grounds alone.
On the other hand, this version was hamstrung by a critical lack of chemistry between its leads, and indeed a blunt, loud, and almost rude take on the Knightley character which rendered him completely unlovable by virtually anyone, let alone Emma. There is just no spark there, or anything close. Not only no chemistry, but no charisma of any kind. When Emma says to her window "I love him", if I had not read the book I think my response would have been "WHAT???" Even worse might be his proposal the next day when the script writer decided that it would be romantic for him to inform the woman he wants to marry, in the midst of the proposal, that he remembers holding her in his arms when she was three months old. Which is just flat out creepy, and nothing that Austen ventured let me assure you. Maybe he could tell her about the time he changed her diapers too to complete the seduction.
So overall, not great, but not bad. Having seen both I am still of the opinion the Paltrow version was the stronger -- despite its excessive cuteness, it was well constructed and seemed to have a good idea of what it wanted to be and say. The characterizations in that version are in general stronger and more vividly painted, and it also had a sense of humor, which while perhaps not 100% Austen's, at least bettered the dourness often at display in this version. But this version had its charms too, although they took a while to manifest themselves. Kate started slow but settled in and was charming by the end, and several minor characters were rescued from obscurity (Jane and Frank were particularly well done).
P.S. As an aside, I think the theatrical version's decision to use voiceovers of Emma's thoughts worked better and was more clear than the dream/fantasy sequences attempted here. In such an internalized book, some such device needs to be utilized to make up for all of Emma's thoughts and opinions that the viewer no longer has access to, but the voiceovers had much more personality without breaking up the flow of the movie.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Very Nicely Done
This was a rich, passionate take on a very old story, and Keira Knightley is a revelation as one of literature's first romantic heroines. Frankly, before this performance, I was not really sure whether she could act or not. It is hard to tell when an actress is starring across from a giant CGI octopus. But her range and subtlety as Lizzy in this movie bodes very well for her post-pirate chick future. There is still a bit of an anachronistic tomboy element to her performance, but it never reaches anything approaching the silliness of her characters in the various Bruckheimer blockbusters she has appeared in, and instead adds a flavor all her own to this Lizzy. And her liveliness and the arch nature of the character are nicely set off here by her ability to project a certain sweet vulnerability that helps her claim the movie and make you very much root for this well known character all over again.
I fully understand the contingent complaining that this was not a "pure" adaptation of Jane Austin's P&P -- I in fact would agree with that. But the question would be does that fact somehow make this a bad movie, or even a bad adaptation? And the answer is emphatically no. Characters and story lines have to be abbreviated to make it into a feature film, but save perhaps one more scene that they really could have used to delve further into the Wickham character, the trimming does not hurt the core romance of the story, but rather focuses attention upon it. Nice supporting turns add humanity and humor to characters such as Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins, and upon a re-viewing, even Donald Sutherland did well with a lot of subtleties I missed in the first viewing. (I could, however, have done without the excessive squealing and bouncing around of the younger sisters). Most importantly the two leads, after a slow start, develop a palpable chemistry as the film picks up pace.
And pick up pace it does -- this is P & P infused with dark romantic imagery, great period music, and some wonderful cinematography. Rather than a series of stage appearances, we get a passionate and highly entertaining labor of love, where the writer/director wisely decide to take their time and spend their precious minutes conveying emotion and energy rather than forcing in one more line or one more character which could leave little impact. It may not have the social nuance, and only sporadically achieves the comic flair, of Austen's book, but Jane's story never looked so good or felt so powerful before.
The Legend of Zorro (2005)
Alas, Zorro Goes Hollywood
I moderately enjoyed The Mask of Zorro. It was a solid actioner with some style. So I decided that The Legend of Zorro was at least worth a look despite its meek appearance at the box office.
Well...it wasn't. This truly was the triumph of Hollywood over storytelling. A gigantic modern movie cliché just dressed up in a black mask and cape. We had in it a) a cute kid; b) spouting modern slang one liners; c) an emasculated Zorro in a modern family crisis; d) a superhero heroine who apparently could have whipped all the bad guys herself; e) that is if she did not need her 10 year old son's help, who himself, in true Home Alone fashion, was equal to any 10 supposedly intimidating bad guys. Along the way we also get a whole horde of 21st century supporting characters anachronistically wandering around in 19th century costume, and even more stupid clichéd Hollywood moments, false deaths, and general annoyances. Over the seemingly interminable length of the film I went from being vaguely amused, to vaguely bored, to considerably annoyed. Between this and the Bruckenheimer King Arthur joke one wonders if Hollywood's "best" have even a remote clue what history (or historical myth) actually is. These cookie cutter modern garbage flicks are getting old.
The Fog (2005)
Blithering Idiots
***Various Minor Spoilers*** And by blithering idiots I specifically would like to point to the "writer" (some hack named Cooper Layne), and the director, a Mr. Rupert Wainwright. Producing this sort of garbage is bad enough. Doing so when you have a vastly superior earlier version on which to draw is pathetic. Did they watch the earlier movie? Were they simply too stupid to understand why it actually succeeded? Apparently so. Or so arrogant at the amazing successes of their own sad little careers that they thought they could do "better" by dumbing the movie down to sub-moron level and throwing in a few pretty faces.
So where to begin...
Let's see, first of all of course, it would appear Mr. Layne was unable to grasp the very simple connection between the fog, and the creepy/mysterious events of the first movie. Thus we get randomly killed dead dogs with no fog around, soggy footprints with no fog around, even the pickup truck's broken windows with no fog around. The fog is in fact irrelevant, because this hack is writing yet another braindead "ghost" story without any grounding in the original premise. We even get the sad stereotypical joke of a stock black jive-talking side kick popping up to do nothing but be the stock black jive-talking side kick.
Secondly of course neither the writer nor director, nor apparently burnt out old John Carpenter himself (who apparently took a wad of cash to lend his name as "producer") have an ounce of confidence in the very thing that made the first one work -- the cold blooded ice cold revenge of a pack of undead sea zombies. Proceeded by a freezing fog, hacking people up with a variety of pirate-esquire hooks and blades. So no, our new modern masters of horror decide that the completely standard and boring CGI pseudo-ghosts would be far scarier. And rather than emerging out of the fog to brutally maul people, that instead we will accumulate the standard array of stupid "let's be neat" death scenes, with genteel ghosts apparently kung-fuing people through windows, setting them on fire, throwing knives at them, killing them with shards of glass, and magically killing people through the disposal. As I've mentioned they simply did not get it. No consistency, no pattern, no tension, creepiness, fear, nothing remotely special about these ghost/zombies at all. Just another tired excuse for hack writers to try to outcool themselves with a bunch of pointless deaths. They even manage to completely write out the entire cold blooded and semi-logical motive for the zombies from the first film -- wanting to get back what was stolen from them and kill the descendants of the thieves. But the all wise dubious duo here thinks it has a better idea -- more or less write the priest out of the story, and have the zombies want...er...actually that remains pretty unclear.
Finally of course the classic sign of somebody who just should not be writing/directing horror movies -- the moronic urge to show everything. Repeat after me uberhacks -- the unseen is scarier than the seen. Repeat it 20 times before bed every night. 20 times in the shower every morning. Whatever it takes until it gets through your thick heads. Our duo of doom here so completely misunderstands the concept they ever dip so low as to show a cheesy "ghostly" hook banging on the doors to produce the formerly creepy knocking effect. And then pull out all the stops and erase any lingering chance of a scary movie with an utterly ridiculous "climax" -- going from the incredibly creepy image of a group of fog shrouded shapes with glowing eyes waiting to embrace the priest in the first movie to an extended scene of a cheesy pseudo-ghost throwing people around with his staff.
So given all the idiocy, how exactly did this movie avoid a "1" for me? Three things actually: first of all, I always feel compelled to leave room for the "Skeleton Man"s of the world in the sub-basement. Secondly, the cinematographer here actually showed a sporadic touch. Sporadic, but occasionally a professional shot that would have been worthy of a less vomitous effort. And finally, and perhaps most significantly, the three leads, Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, and Selma Blair, actually give it the old college try here and probably do about as much as they can with this material. Which ain't much of course. And with Welling woefully miscast because he is pretty. But they try. Blair in particular appears to have actually watched the first movie as she tries to channel her inner Adrienne Barbeau. And so they take a complete disaster, and while not saving it from being a complete disaster, at least, unlike the writer/director here, prove that they deserve to get another job in the business at some point.
Alien Lockdown (2004)
I've Seen Worse
I've seen worse. Which is not exactly a compliment for this movie considering some of the utter garbage I have encountered in the last few months on the Sci Fi Channel and elsewhere. Nonetheless, while this movie was bad, it falls more under the rubric of the traditional bad Grade B movie which just rips off its entire plot, creature, setting and everything else from superior movies, but still manages to be mildly entertaining. Indeed if this movie had been the first of its kind, there would even have been a few laudable things to comment on -- the unrelentingly dark and creepy remote laboratory, a suitably vicious creature which kills in gory fashion (and looks like they spent a little money creating) etc. But as it is, its just one cliché after another. Its been done better many times before. But then again, its been done worse. If you want to see how bad a movie with "Alien" in its title can be, check out something called "Alien 51". Comparatively this is a work of art, and while I am glad I did not rent it, I am not entirely upset at having turned on the TV to catch it. For fans of the genre, not good, but not pluck your eyes out terrible either.