Film Review - Harbinger Down (2015) - Spoilers

Anyone who makes a movie has my admiration. In fact, this extends to anyone who is engaged in some creative pursuit and puts it into the public eye. For me, it's my writing and drawing. It's never an easy thing to do, because it exposes some piece of yourself to public scrutiny. This applies to even a collective act like filmmaking. I approach reviewing films - or any creative product - with a little trepidation. This is someone's vision and labor that I'm critiquing and, in the case of movies, in a field that I've never done much practical work in.

That said, Harbinger Down is not a good movie.

It is set on a crabbing boat, the Harbinger, captained by Graff (Lance Henriksen) and crewed by one-dimensional characters. Also on board is his granddaughter Ronelle (Giovonnie Samuels), a grad school student and a couple of her colleagues who are tracking whales in the Bering Sea. They find a Soviet space ship from the eighties which contains the corpse of a cosmonaut. It also contains a virus that was meant to create people invulnerable to the rigors of space travel. What it does is infect humans and turn them into monsters with a lot of tentacles and teeth. All the cookie cutter characters are killed except for Ronelle, who manages to freeze the monster, while being left marooned on the ice to an uncertain future.

The film has an interesting history. StudioADI, a special effects house, was hired to provide practical effects for the remake of The Thing (2011). StudioADI has a long history in the film industry, having worked on films like Starship Troopers and the Alien films, starting with Alien 3. Their work for The Thing was replaced in post by CG effects. The studio went to Kickstarter to raise funds to make a film, featuring their effects work. They were successful and the result is Harbinger Down.

This story is far more interesting than the actual film.

The characters are threadbare, functional for a body-count but nothing more. The story is minimal, a bare-bones excuse for having a gooey, shape-shifting monster kill people in a dark, confined space, but brings nothing new to the genre. These weaknesses would have been acceptable, if the film delivered on what was promised; a show-case for old school practical effects like the 1982 version of The Thing and 1986's Aliens (The films cited by writer/director Alec Gillis as inspiration). Instead, what we get are mostly poorly lit, poorly edited scenes in which it is often hard to determine what is going on. The few times that the effects can be clearly seen, while they are competently executed, are neither imaginatively designed nor presented in an engaging or flattering manner. Watching Harbinger Down makes me want to watch The Thing again to see how practical effects should be done, in design, execution and presentation, as well as how to tell a gripping story.

Not Recommended.

Film Review - Kristy (2014) - Spoilers

The recipe for Kristy. Take a decent premise; a network of killers target young women for ritual slaughter, calling each Kristy as a reference to Christ. Put a decent actress in the lead; Haley Bennett plays the Final Girl (well, only girl) Justine and is competent in an uninteresting role. Add some decent cinematography.

And then completely ruin any chance of making a watchable movie with a plot that is so implausible and a story so cliche ridden that I think screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski wanted to insult the intelligence of anyone watching the movie.

Justine is a college student staying alone on the campus of a university for Thanksgiving. She is the only student there, something that already stretches the bounds of credulity. While out on a provision run, she encounters Violet (Ashely Green), a member of a nation-wide cult that murders girls and posts the killings on-line. Justine is picked at random; but the killers seem to have a perfect knowledge of the campus, how to disable power and communications and her exact location. Jump scares, near misses and the inability to hide from four people on a large campus drag out the runtime until we get some Final Girl butt-kicking and the Justine's stalkers are killed. As credits roll, we learn that police are taking apart the cult. Justine gets the last word saying, "Justine is dead, I am now Kristy." An after credit sequence, however, indicates that Justine is killed by a cell of the cult. So, not so Final of a Girl after all.

It would be pointless to go through every flaw in the story, since there are so many of them. The most annoying are the inhuman competence of the killers and their ability to appear out of nowhere whenever it is dramatically convenient or it's time for a jump scare. However, those are just things that annoyed me the most; the script is full of hackneyed ideas and well-worn cliches. The story offers nothing original, has no engaging characters and thematically is hollow. The film is a waste of time.

Not Recommended.

Comic Book Review - '68: Last Rites - Issues 1 and 2

The Sixties. Full of hippies, love-ins, turning-on, tuning-out, the Beatles, Vietnam…and zombies? Well, that’s what is happening in the world of ’68, in which Romero style zombies rise across the globe. The current four-issue series (Last Rites) is focusing on what is happening in the US as the second year of the zombie apocalypse comes to an end.

In New York City, bands of survivors have created small, isolated communities. It’s winter, so most of the zombies have frozen solid. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t dangers. In the city, a gang of cannibals (led by Andy Warhol) hunts the streets for long-pig. Meanwhile, what’s left of the US government, led by Richard Nixon, is making common cause with…Charles Manson? Well, sure, why not. And, in Vietnam, the war sputters on as a small group of US soldiers (all going by the name Jungle Jim) prepares to do battle with a mixed force of NVA, VC and zombies.

The first two issues focus mostly on what’s happening New York, with issue two taking a long detour to fill in the some details of what happened to the Yams, a Chinese couple introduced as the parents of the protagonist of the earlier series, Kuen Yam, an American solider in Vietnam. While the overall story is good, issue two drags a little. The Yams are not characters who have been developed enough to care about and their story is not that engaging (although the Sunset Boulevard references are amusing). However, there are enough interesting plot points, including a mysterious film that apparently shows why there is a zombie apocalypse, to hold my interest. The art, by Jeff Zornow, is good and delivers some nice, gory zombie action.

It’s a pretty silly, over-the-top series, one that has drifted away from it’s grittier war-horror origins. But, if you are looking for a neat, enjoyable, bloody bit of horror fiction, ’68: Last Rites delvers. If you are new to the world of ’68, however, I would recommend starting with the original ’68 and ’68: Scars for an introduction to the world and the characters.

Film Review - The Omega Man (1971) - Spoilers

The Omega Man is the best adaptation of Richard Matheson's masterpiece, I Am Legend. It is not a great movie, but it is entertaining and Charlton Heston turns in a griping performance as Doctor Robert Neville, formerly a bio-war specialist and currently last remaining human. While the book has served as a source for two other adaptions - The Last Man on Earth (1964) and I Am Legend (2007) - neither is as good as The Omega Man.

Set in 1977, a couple years after a Sino-Soviet biological war kills off most of the population and mutates the few survivors, Robert Neville - the only uninfected human left - lives in an almost empty Los Angeles. By day, he roams the city, scavenging what he needs to survive and re-watching Woodstock in a movie theater. He also hunts down some the mutated plague victims. They are homicidal with dead white skin, grey eyes and extreme photosensitive. They are locked in a war with Neville, trying to kill - in the words of their leader Mathias (Anthony Zerbe) the last of "scientists, of bankers, of businessmen. The users of the wheel." Neville encounters another group of survivors who have a partial immunity and uses his blood as a serum to inoculate them against eh plague. In the end, Neville is killed by Mathias, but the survivors will be able to sue the serum he has created to save themsevles.

"Barbarians? You call us barbarians? Well... it is an honorable name. We mean to cancel the world you civilized people made. We will simply erase history from the time that machinery and weapons threaten more than they offered. And when you die, the last living reminder of hell will be gone." - Mathias

Charlton Heston's performance is the highlight of the film. His portrayal of Neville is believable and touching. Heston put some thought into how a man, living in a city of the dead, would actually behave. He conveys both the drive necessary to survive, while the despair at being the last man alive is lurking just below the surface. The first half of the film, showing Neville's daily routine and his struggle against the mutants, is the strongest part of the film. Anthony Zerbe also turns in a strong performance as Mathias, the charismatic leader of the neo-luddite mutants. His line delivery is chilling, a smooth, melodious cadence that strikes one as the kind of voice and diction a Charles Manson would have (like Manson, Mathias calls his group "The Family," an obvious reference to the infamous killer and his followers).

The set design is another strong point. The streets of Los Angeles have just enough clutter and corpses to create a strong visual sense of a dead and empty world. Neville's apartment is a fascinating mix of bachelor pad and survivalist bunker. And the soundtrack by Ron Grainer is unconventional for a sci-fi action film, but perfect thematically. Consisting of mostly smooth jazz and plaintive strings, horns and keyboards, it serves to reflect Neville's living in the past, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of better times, as well as the central theme of a world that is already dead with the few ragged survivors fighting a last, pointless war in the ruins. A more bombastic, typical action soundtrack would have been out-of-place in the world created by director Boris Segel and writers John and Joyce Corrington.

"Is there anything you can do, doctor, I mean, seeing as how you've lost over 200 million patients?" - Lisa (Rosalind Cash)

The film is not without flaws, some serious. While the change of the antagonists from vampire who want to use Neville for food to mutants who want to kill him isn't necessarily a bad thing (and fits with the germ warfare origin of the plague), the way it is handled detracts both from the horror of the book and leads to a logical problem. In the book, Neville isn't just threatened by the vampires, he is going to used by them as food. This is a fate worse than just death. The logical problem is obvious from almost the start. If the mutants just want to kill Neville and he lives in a place they can access (which, based on an ambush carried out at the beginning of the film, they can) why not just burn his building down? The vampires can't because they need him alive (at least, long enough to feed) and they don't seem very intelligent. The mutants are insane, but intelligent.

While Heston and Zerbe both turn in solid performances - as does Lincoln Kilpatrick as Zachary, Mathias' chief lieutenant - the rest of the cast is merely adequate. It is clear that the writers were interested in the clash of wills between Neville and Mathias and didn't care much about fleshing out the other characters, which is reflected in the lackluster performances.

While the cinematography by Russel Metty is fine, the direction is not very dynamic. Segel mostly worked in television. While there are no horribly blocked scenes, the film has a very flat "movie-of-the-week" feel to it. And William Zeigler's editing leaves much to be desired, with poor effects left in the final cut, Heston's stunt double in a motor cycle sequences painfully obvious and other flaws that should have been edited out, left in the film. It conveys the impression that elements of the creative team (including the director) didn't care enough about the film to deliver a professional end product.

"The bad dream is over, friend Neville. Now we can sleep in peace." - Mathias

While these are serious flaws, they do not detract from what the film gets right. It conveys the theme of isolation and psychological survival from the novel. Post-apocalypse Los Angeles is sufficiently chilling. The acting by the leads is engaging and those characters are interesting. The pace is good and the action sequences for the most part, well done (some poor editing aside). The Omega Man is good movie and worth seeing.

Recommended

New Issue Of Far Horizons

The new issue of Far Horizons is out. It's free, has some awesome short stories and articles, including a film review (Phase IV) and short story by your humble narrator. Check it out by going here.

Film Review - Phase IV (1974) - Spoilers

Phase IV (1974)

How would mankind interact with, or even recognize, an alien intelligence? Would our effort to understand them lead to peaceful contact? Are confrontation and conflict inevitable? These are some of the central questions raised by Phase IV. The film is the only feature-length directorial effort by Saul Bass, a graphic artist who is best known for his design work on title sequences for numerous films, including Psycho, Spartacus and Alien. He turned his keen visual sense to telling a thematically complex film through innovative and provocative imagery.

“That spring we were all watching the events in space and all wondering what the final effect would be. Astronomers argued over theory, while engineers got pretty excited about variables in magnetic fields. Mystics predicted earthquakes and the end of life as we knew it. When the effect came, it was almost unnoticed because it happened to such a small and insignificant form of life.” - Opening Narration by Jim Lesko (Michael Murphy)

A mysterious cosmic phenomenon is detected. Its effect is to cause ants to form a group intelligence in a remote area of Arizona. The changes in behavior are noticed by biologist Ernest Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) who persuades the government to set up a small, high-technology research station to determine what is happening and how to cope with the potential “biological imbalance.” With him is computer scientist/linguist Jim Lesko. After a few weeks of observation and under pressure to get results or shut down the project, Hubbs destroys a number of massive towers built by the ants. This precipitates a back and forth struggle between man and ant. The two men are joined by Kendra (Lynne Frederick), the only survivor of a small farm family that is accidentally killed when they are caught in a cloud of pesticides. The humans find themselves increasingly unable to cope with the ants, who prove to be potentially more intelligent than mankind. In the end, Hubbs is killed by the ants, Kendra has been absorbed into the hive mind, and Lesko appears to have accepted that a new hybrid society is the inevitable outcome, one that will see mankind in a subordinate role to the new rulers of the Earth, the meekest of the meek.

“We are faced with a power that has appeared and is exerting itself. We have the opportunity to study it, to learn from it, to teach it its limitations. We can, in a word, educate it. ” - Ernest Hubbs

Phase IV was released in the midst of a wave of ‘revenge of nature’ films. The Seventies saw the rapid growth of the environmentalist movement, as people began to become fully aware of the cost of modern civilization. It also reflected a growing disillusionment with the hubristic view of mankind at the top of the food chain, a species apart from nature. Movies as varied as Frogs (1972), Night of the Lepus (1972), Jaws (1975), Bug (1975), Food of the Gods (1976), and Prophecy (1979) all showed mankind being assaulted by the natural world. In many of these films, humanity’s abuse of nature is a causal agent for the calamities that befall him. In others, mankind finds that for all his technology and intelligence, he is still at the mercy of natural, red in tooth and claw.

In Phase IV, the human race is confronted with an intelligence every bit as complex and capable as its own. How this new form of intelligence arose isn’t clear. There is some evidence that the ants have achieved a hive mind due to an extraterrestrial intelligence coming to Earth. However, it is just as valid to interpret the plot as charting the rise of an intelligence in response to mankind’s treatment of the world. It is no accident that the film is set in an abandoned housing development in the middle of the desert, an attempt to impose one kind of ecosystem into an area unsuited for it.

“Human beings can exist in temperatures of 120 degrees or higher, but our computer shuts down at 90.” - Ernest Hubbs

All of mankind’s technology is shown to be vulnerable to the ant’s harnessing of more ‘natural’ forces. The ants overcome the high-tech devices in the research station by using their bodies to short out critical machinery and constructing reflective towers around the lab, focusing the rays of the desert sun on the building. They become immune to the pesticides Hubbs uses against them by changing their genetic structure. Mankind's reliance on complex and fragile technology becomes a weakness the ants exploit.

What mankind’s technology does enable is for Lesko to learn the language of the ants and open up an interspecies dialogue. This leads to the conclusion that the ants have been observing and experimenting on the scientists, just as the scientist have been observing them. However, while Hubbs, representing a brute-force materialistic view of the world, uses various forms of coercion to try and teach the hive mind its limitations, the ants have a larger goal in mind—the merging of the two species. Kendra is eventually absorbed into the hive mind, becoming a human ‘queen’ and mating with Lesko. In a scene cut from the theatrical release, the film ends with a glimpse of the future. There is a hybrid society, one of stark geometric structures, humans living in a fashion reminiscent of how we’ve seen the intelligent ants living, using unfathomable technology, perhaps to create an artificial version of the hive mind and, finally, images that could be interpreted as showing a transcendent state for mankind. This is Saul Bass’s preferred ending¹; the theatrical release ends with Kendra emerging from the sand inside of a giant anthill and embracing Lesko, some abstract imagery and Lesko saying, “We knew then, we were being changed and made part of their world. We didn’t know for what purpose, but we knew we would be told.”

While it would be inaccurate to say the film is purely an example of visual storytelling—important information is conveyed by the dialogue between Davenport and Murphy—there are long sequences detailing the actions of the ant society that are backed up only by the discordant soundtrack. It is one of cinema’s most ambitious attempts to build an alien culture based solely on images and actions. Ken Middleham provided the spectacular insect photography². The viewer is given a sense of how the ant society works, how they are organized, and even how they mourn their dead. The work by Bass and Director of Photography Dick Bush (Tommy, Crimes of Passion) is also noteworthy, capturing the claustrophobic confines of the research station and paralleling it with the tunnels and chambers of the ant colony.

The film benefits from the performances of Davenport and Murphy. Davenport ably conveys the monomaniacal Hubbs as he slips from a rational concern over what the growing ant intelligence represents to an obsession with “teaching” them their limits and the supremacy of the human intellect. Murphy is a nice compliment to Davenport’s intense performance, portraying Lesko as having a healthy balance between curiosity over the ants and a concern for his safety, as well as that of Kendra and Hubbs. He clearly sees that confrontation won’t work; only by communicating with the ants can some kind of understanding be reached.

“They’re not individuals, they’re individual cells, tiny functioning parts of the whole. Think of the society…with perfect harmony, perfect altruism and self-sacrifice.” - Ernest Hubbs

The film does have problems. While elements of the plot—like the exact nature of the emerging intelligence—can remain opaque without harming the story, other elements are legitimately holes. It is unclear why Hubbs, who has sufficient evidence of what mankind is facing early on, refuses to contact the outside world and alert them to the danger. He is presented as switching from rational to obsessed with little transition. It is never made clear how the ants know which pieces of equipment to sabotage (a point brought up in the dialogue); while this lends some credence to the idea that the ants have been taken over by an extraterrestrial intelligence, it is never made clear that this is the case. And the finale, whether the one from the theatrical release or Bass’s original ending, doesn’t make much sense. While it is clear what it is happening—Kendra and Jim have become part of the hive mind—it is not clear how this is taking place. Kendra emerges from the sand, hugs Jim, and he gives his last line, and either the film ends or, in the original ending, plays out for a few more minutes with a lot of interesting images, none of which are explained. It’s basically a less comprehensible version of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

While both Davenport and Murphy are good in their roles, Frederick is not. She is a consistently weak and impassive actress (see No Blade of Grass and Vampire Circus for more examples of her aggressive blandness) whose one facial expression seems to indicate constant boredom. It doesn’t help that she serves more as plot point than as a character. It is clear that little thought was given to developing her.

Phase IV is not a perfect film. What it gets right, however, far outweighs what it gets wrong. The portrayal of a truly inhuman intelligence, the documentary feel of the attempt to communicate, the beautiful visuals and the thoughtful look at how mankind would react to superior intelligence makes this film worth seeking out.

Recommended.

Notes 1. A clip of the original ending can be found on my YouTube channel.
2. Cinefex, Issue 3 from December, 1980 has an in-depth interview with Ken Middleham about the making of the film’s microphotography. For anyone with an interest in visual effects or cinematography, it is worth tracking down the issue.

Film Review - Spring (2014) - Spoilers

Spring is a great movie. It is blessed with actual on-screen chemistry between the leads, Lou Taylor Pucci and the luminous Nadia Hilker. It has a story that is genuinely creepy, at least until the end when there is a bit too much exposition about what the not-quite-human Louise (Hilker) is going through. The effects are good, if at times a bit cartoonish. The cinematography is clean and attractive and the script is well written. Add to this a well-essayed meet-cute style romance and you have an engaging and unique horror film.

"I'd still like to grab coffee or something, sometime. Because I think you're the most attractive person I've ever seen. But that doesn't outweigh that you might be a mental patient and I gotta make sure that you're the kind of crazy I can deal with." - Evan

Evan (Pucci) is a mid-twenty-something that life has handed one disaster after another. The opening scene sees him at his mother's deathbed, as she wastes away from cancer. It is later revealed that his father died a few years earlier from heart failure and that Even had to leave college to take care of his mom. On the night of her funeral, he gets into a fight in the bar he works at and is fired. The guy he beat up files charges and the police are after Evan. He leaves the US, picking Italy at random. He winds up at a sea-side town, Polignano a Mare, where he catches the eye of Louise. After some flirtation, the two form a quick and intimate bond. However, Louise is not what she seems. Evan discovers she has a horrific secret. Will love win out in the end?

"I am not a sociopath, okay? I just have really bad luck." - Louise

Spring takes some of the tropes of the star-crossed lovers/meet-cute instant romance and gives them a nice twist. The girl has secret, but it's not that she used to be fat or is really a secretary and not a princess or has a controlling family; it's that she is an immortal mutant, whose genetic code runs riot every couple of decades and she spawns teeth and tentacles. Evan is a little closer to a stereotype; however, Pucci makes him very appealing. It was a good idea to have him spend some screen-time first with his drunk, druggie friend Tommy (Jeremy Gardner) and then, when he gets to Italy, two English versions of Tommy and then juxtaposes those relationships with that of an elderly farmer, Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti), who hires Evan as a farmhand when he arrives in Polignano. We get to see the effects that life's challenges have had on Evan when he's with the "lads," but also his more inquisitive, sensitive side when he is with Angelo, without his character ever slipping into some unrealistic sappiness.

The film looks beautiful. The moment when Evan and Louise first see each other in the tight confines of the town square is masterful. Shot in slow motion, with Louise in a seductive red dress and Evan emerging from shadows into sunlight as he turns to watch he walk away sets the stage for the relationship to come. Dream-like, hinting at the flirtatious and difficult nature of Louise (after all, she makes eye contact and then walks away from him) and sets her up as something of a predator. The early creature scenes are effective, although the limits of the CG show near the end, when we see a bit too much of Louise transformed into some kind of fish/squid.

As a Lovecraft fan, I also appreciated the nods to his work (and the work of subsequent authors in the Cthulhu-mythos). Louise is kind of a hot shuggoth or an offspring Ubbo-Sathla. If you don't know what that is, don't worry; it just means you're not an ubergeek like me. The idea of an inbred and not quite human population is something shows up time and again in Lovecraftian stories. And the visual tone, at least initially, would fit a mythos story with partially glimpsed weirdness and visual tone that instills a sense of unease in the viewer.

There are problems with the film. It goes a little longer than the story warranted. The last act, which is heavy on unnecessary backstory, could have been tightened up. The over-explanation of Louise's power actually makes it more confusing. Why is she sprouting tentacles at one point and wolf-like features at another? Is Louise (and others like her) the source of our mythology of werewolves, vampires, succubi, etc? Why does she sometimes look like a rotting corpse? Why even bother with the nonsensical exposition about embryonic and adult stem cells? None of this last minute exposition ruins the film; but it is unnecessary and needlessly complicates the dark fairy tale tone the film established. There's also a last minute red herring - Evan is suddenly being pursued by the police for a visa violation - that goes no where. And ending, in which Louise chooses Evan over immortality, is never in doubt.

These problems are minor compared to everything the creative team did right. Spring is a great film and one that any fan of horror films or even off-beat romances needs to see.

Highly recommended.

Film Review - Creep (2014) - Spoilers

Creep. Is it a tired collection of jump scares, amateurish and telegraphed plot twists, horror genre clichés and one of the dumbest protagonists in film history, all tied up in dull, found footage bow? Or is it a sly send-up of all those things, a knowing look at the tropes of the slasher genre and found footage visual style? Depending on which question you answer 'yes' might determine whether you like this 78 minute long film or whether it is a waste of your time.

Aaron (Patrick Brice) is a videographer who answers an advert from Josef (Mark Duplass). Josef says he has terminal cancer and wants to create a movie for his unborn son. Josef starts out as a weirdo and only gets worse as the story progresses. Aaron sticks around, even after Josef confesses some disturbing facts about his life. After a full day of odd behavior, Aaron has had enough and manages to get away from Josef, who has been successfully getting Aaron to stay longer and longer at the cabin. Aaron thinks he has gotten away; but Josef, who says he loves Aaron tracks him down to his home and sends him disturbing DVDs and gifts. Finally, Josef asks Aaron to meet him one last time for "closure." Will Aaron rid himself of this "creep?"

Josef is disturbing from almost the first moment Aaron meets him. His idea of fun is to leap out at Aaron from a concealed location, providing the film with literal jump-scares. His first "scene" for his son is of him taking a bath with an imaginary toddler. He starts to refer to Aaron as his best friend and says that he loves him. Through all of this, Josef continues to hang around. Why? Because he's the victim, of course.

There are some good aspects to the film. Duplass is a pretty good actor and gets into the role of Josef. Although the pace is slow, at 78 minutes the film doesn't go on too long. While the only "frightening" parts are the jump scares, a lampshade is hung on them. Josef literally says he likes to jump at people to startle them, the essence of the jump scare.

Everything else is kind of a mess. While the found footage aspect fits into the story, it doesn't add anything. It looks like another filmmaker decided to cut costs and use the found footage style to provide cover for bad cinematography and a low-budget. The finale requires Aaron to behave in a way that no human being actually would, going to meet the clearly disturbed (and dangerous) Josef. Of course, he pays for it, in standard horror movie fashion.

Ultimately, the film has nothing new to offer to the slasher or thriller genres. Aaron is too dumb to sympathize with and Josef so weird that the final reveal doesn't make much sense. Josef is a serial killer and apparently has dozens of victims. But, it he follows the same pattern he did with Aaron, we have to believe that a significant percentage of the population of the US is made up of idiots. Hmmm...well, maybe that's not so far-fetched.

If you see this movie as a commentary on the clichés of the genre, then it works a bit better. But, it still doesn't say anything new. Anyone watching this kind of movie knows the tropes, understands the problems with them and has already seen films like Scream that did a much better job of turning spotlight on these stereotypes and clichés.

Not Recommended.

Film Review -Alien Outpost (2014) - Spoilers

Alien Outpost answers the question no one asked: what happens when you remake Battle: Los Angeles as a found footage film?

Set a decade after Earth is invaded by an alien race called the Heavies (a name calculated to hurt their self-esteem), Alien Outpost follows the adventures of the troop manning Outpost 37, as cataloged by a random film crew. Most of the Heavies have fled the Earth, leaving behind thousands of soldiers in the hinterlands. A series of outpost have been set up to monitor them; but the war seems to be winding down. A bunch of one-dimensional cliches shoots at CG aliens, local insurgents (who don't like having soldiers around protecting them in a ham-fisted Afghanistan allegory) and their mind-controlled colleagues. Because, yes, the aliens have mind control implants that no one has encountered before. Kind of a drone thing, I guess? Anyway, things happen, characters die and the day is saved. Yawn.

There is no reason this is a found footage film and, in the end, the format hurts the narrative. There is simply no reason for it, other than to explain why we see more of guys wearing Army surplus shooting Airsoft guns instead of aliens. Random things (like characters wandering up to the gate of Outpost 37) seem to happen whenever the writers are ready for a scene. The soldiers come across as being cobbled together from characters from other war films. Everyone seems interchangeable and, because of this, there is no impact when one of them dies.

When we do see effects sequences, they are pretty well done. Also, the story has some interesting ideas. The concept of making a "Black Hawk Down meets War of the Worlds" film is one worth exploring further, even if the films it has generated so far haven't been that good.

Alien Outpost is derivative of films (particularly Battle: Los Angeles) that aren't very good to begin with. It is hampered by poor plotting, bad camera-work (and the "it's found footage" excuse is one I'm not going to accept unless it enhances the story; in this case, it doesn't), bad acting, one-note characters and an unnecessary "the protagonists save the world" ending. It uses the tropes of the found footage genre to poor effect. And the story, while not without merit, is told in a tedious fashion.

Not Recommended.

TV Review - Defiance, Season One - Spoilers

Defiance is set in the year 2046 on an Earth populated by both humans and aliens. The aliens, a number of species collectively know as the Votans, arrived in 2013. After a few years of attempting peaceful integration, a war broke out. After a few years of combat, the war ended when the alien fleet exploded, unleashing the Votan planetary engineering technology on the Earth. In the present, the various races on the Earth are trying to rebuild a planet that has been radically changed.

The series is an ensemble show with multiple stories lines, although the main protagonists are Joshua Nolan (Grant Bowler), a drifter and former soldier and his adopted daughter, Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), an alien version of the "rebellious teenager" trope. In the pilot, Joshua arrives in Defiance, formerly St. Louis, and becomes the sheriff or lawkeeper. Stories in the first season focus on a mix of world-building, establishing the various factions struggling for power in Defiance, some teen drama for the under-18 demographic and, in general, strip-mine other, better shows for ideas.

The Good

The premise is interesting. It provides a large sandbox for writers and visual effects people to play in. Some of the world building is clever and the there is a real effort to create different cultures for the featured alien races. Julie Benz as Amanda Rosewater, the mayor of Defiance, Tony Curran as Datak Tarr, an alien Tony Soprano, and Graham Greene as local mining mogul Rafe McCawley, all deliver good performances. There as some nice make-up and CG effects and visually, the series displays some creativity.

The Bad

Pretty much everything else. Characters are bundles of stereotypes. Scripts are rehashes of worn-out tropes. Dialogue is a mix of clunky exposition, forced obliqueness for "dramatic effect" and cliches from the SF and action genres. The writers also insist on introducing new terms - like lawkeeper instead of sheriff or police officer - that sound silly. Alien profanity is worked into the dialogue, much in the way Firefly uses Chinese. In fact, a lot of ideas and characters, including Joshua being much like Mel Reynolds, seems to be taken from Firefly; rest assured, that is not the only property that has been ported over to Defiance. The leads are dull. While an attempt has been made to create a couple of alien cultures, they are each defined by a single characteristic. The Irathients are native Americans, the Castithans focus on family honor, the Indogenes are scientists...you get the idea. The teen-drama angle - which follows Romeo and Juliette...I mean, Alak and Nicole - is cliched, boring and takes up far-to-much screen time without establishing any chemistry between the characters.

I'll probably check out Season Two and see if some of these problems are addressed; first seasons of shows are often weak. If nothing else, it is fun to watch an episode and figure out what other TV shows or movies ideas were taken from. Okay, I have an odd idea of fun.

If the Defiance creative team stops relying on tropes and lazy writing, then they might have a good show. However, if Season Two turns out to be more of the same, then there will be no Season Three for me.

Latest Issue Of New Frontiers Is Out

The latest issue of New Frontiers is out. In addition to all the great stuff from other people, I have a review of The Fog in there, as well as part one of a ghost story. Enjoy.

TV Review - The Fall - Spoilers

I recently watched Seasons 1 and 2 of The Fall, a BBC production. My primary reasons for turning in were the star, Gillian Anderson and the genre, serial killer/police procedural, which I generally enjoy. While the series has strong points, it is hampered by a misanthropic tone, an uninspired story that is little more than a collection of tropes and a plot that relies on coincidence and unbelievably bad character choices.

Set in Belfast, The Fall follows the exploits of serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dorman), who is murdering young women in the city, and detective Stella Gibson, the head of the investigative team. Other characters revolve around our leads. These include: Katie (Aisling Franciosi), a 15-year-old Lolita-type who attaches herself to Paul, finding the murder of women to be a turn-on; Jim Burns (John Lynch), Stella’s immediate supervisor, who had an affair with her in the past and tries to drunkenly rape her during the series; Ned Callan (Nick Lee) the worst journalist in history; and Jimmy Tyler (Brian Milligan), the cartoonishly abusive husband of Liz (Séainín Brennan), one of Paul’s patients. Yes, patients, because Paul is a social worker/therapist. And extremely clever. And alluring to everyone, including Stella. Remind you of a certain movie and TV serial killer who is far more interesting and engaging?

The series looks good, with attractive cinematography and a subdued color palate with splashes of brightness to emphasize certain scenes and characters. It has a good cast and is well acted. On a technical level it’s a competent, even well-made, series.

The problem; it tells a hackneyed story and populates it with hateful characters. I like a good anti-hero. I like a good villain. However, it is difficult to enjoy a story in which every main character is a monster. Stella and Jim are the most egregious examples of this. While we expect our villain to be horrible – and Paul is – our protagonists are misanthropic, sex-obsessed jerks. Stella is portrayed as equating feminist empowerment with promiscuity (usually sleeping with co-workers), hating all men and, by the end of the series, falling for a serial killer who preys on women. Jim is portrayed as dumb, obsessed with Stella (who people are shown to find attractive, although it is unclear why, given her cold, dismissive personality) and ready to drunkenly rape her. There are, in fact, no sympathetic main characters who are male. At best, men are stupid, needing Stella to guide them. At worst, they are violent stereotypes like Jimmy, whose only purpose seems to be to show how every man is a misogynistic monster, not just the serial killer. He also serves as the deus ex machina in the offensively bad Season 2 finale.

The series doesn’t play gender favorites in presenting horrible characters. Woman are seen as serial killer groupies (Katie), clueless, enablers like Paul’s wife, Sally (Bronagh Waugh) or victims. While the dialogue in the series directly attacks men, the story makes it clear that everyone is horrible. While a few supporting characters are presented in a positive light (e.g., police officer Danielle Ferrington (Niamh McGrady)) the viewer is left with the distinct feeling that they are positive only because they are one-dimensional. Scratch the surface and you’ll find another sexually damaged collection of negative gender stereotypes.

The character problem is compounded by the hackneyed story being told. This is a standard police procedural/serial-killer plot with an abusive husband story-line tacked. The story says nothing original about the genre nor does it present the story it is telling in an original fashion. Compared to series like The Killing (which it closely resembles) and Hannibal, both of which feature damaged and conflicted characters as protagonists, but do so in the context of compelling storytelling, The Fall is an example of lazy, cliche-filled writing. The plot relies on dumb protagonists, a preternaturally smart and lucky antagonist and coincidence after coincidence to propel it forward. The Season 2 finale in particular relies on the latter to a degree that is offensive to the viewer. Jimmy, presumably being followed by every cop in Ireland after threatening his wife and a group of other battered women with a gun, manages to find Paul in the midst of a forest surrounded by cops and shoot him. This seems to be an excuse for the series’ final scene, Stella lovingly cradling Paul, calling for help with compassion in her voice, as he bleeds out. It is a dumb scene, that makes our protagonist out to be worse than our antagonist. He is an insane killer; what’s her excuse?A story does not always need a hero; but, it usually needs a character one can identify with. If it does not have this, then it needs to tell an interesting, original story or at least tell the story in an original or engaging fashion. When the story presents characters who are uniformly contemptible and fails to be anything more than tropes and stereotypes, it is not worth watching.

Not recommended.

Film Review - The Dark Side of the Moon (2002)

We all know that Apollo 11 went to the Moon, right? Or did it? Well, yes, it did; however, the idea of a Moon-landing conspiracy makes for an interesting movie premise. Director William Karel’s The Dark Side of the Moon is a mockumentary that combines archive footage, edited interview footage with men like Henry Kissinger and Don Rumsfeld taken from an earlier, unrelated documentary Karel made about the Us national security policy, as well as fictional characters portrayed by actors. This blend makes for fun and engaging film.

The movie starts with an actual event. Stanley Kubrick, when shooting Barry Lyndon, used one of a handful of Zeiss lens originally designed for NASA to use in the Apollo program. From this kernel of truth, Karel tells an elaborate story in which Richard Nixon, senior members of the US national security community and NASA recruit Kubrick - fresh off the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey - to fake footage of the Moon landing, when what is discovered that there is no usable film from the actual landing. Nixon later, in a drunken stupor, orders the CIA to assassinate the film crew, which results in an army of killers wandering around Southeast Asia. Except for Kubrick, who gets to use the lens.

The film is littered with Easter Eggs, like the fictional people being named after characters from Kubrick and Hitchcock films. There are also a lot of ahistorical bits of information given out to let you know it’s all a joke. For example, Lyndon Johnson is said to have been governor of Texas, an office he never held.

There are some, however, who haven’t gotten the joke. They think this is either an actual documentary or a fictionalized account of a real Moon landing conspiracy. The lengths to which people will contort reality to their bizarre worldview is truly amazing. For more Kubrick-related conspiracy theories by people who believe them, check out Room 237. One of the subjects of that documentary thinks that The Shining was made by Kubrick to tell the world the Moon landing was a hoax.

The Dark Side of the Moon lampoons these ideas and conspiracy theories in general; but, it does so in a very creative way. The use of edited interviews of real people is fits in with how pseudo-science shows (e.g., Ancient Aliens) regularly use out of context or partial comments from real scientist to support their ideas.

The cast of The Dark Side of the Moon does a nice job, fitting in with the very “real-world” tone of the film. And the story builds in a engaging fashion, starting plausibly enough - that NASA turns to Hollywood to make the space program “sexy” - before veering off into lunacy…or, is that Lunar-cy?

This is an exemplary mockumentary. A must see for fans of the style, science fiction movie fans, and conspiracy buffs. Check it out.

Film Review - Soldier (1998)

Soldier starts in the past; 1996 to be specific. This is year zero of the Adam Project, a military program designed to raise the perfect soldiers from birth. The prospective soldiers are raised in a military school, subjected to harsh training, and mentally conditioned to do nothing but follow orders.

After the conclusion of training, we leap to year 38 of the Project. Todd (Kurt Russel) is one of the elite soldiers. He and his fellow troops have been in numerous wars (we get glimpses of the War of the Six Cities, the Moscow Incident, and the Battle of the Argentine Moons (FTL travel exists some time before 2036). How they survive any of them is a bit of a mystery since their tactical acumen seems limited to “walk down the middle of the street firing.” But, hey, it looks bad-ass.

Unfortunately for Todd and his fellow soldiers, there’s something new on the horizon; Colonel Mekum (Jason Isaacs in full-on needless jerk mode) and his genetically engineered, test-tube baby troopers. They prove to be physically superior to the Todd and his comrades. Todd is apparently killed during a fight with one the super-soldiers - Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee), and his body is dumped with a shipload of garbage on Arcadia 234, a desolate planet used for waste disposal

Todd finds the planet inhabited by a small colony of marooned humans who live off the junk. He attempts to fit in, although it is very difficult due to his training; he knows nothing but war. After he accidentally attacks a colonist, he is exiled; but, when Mekum and his troops arrive and the Colonel decides to eradicate the colony as a training exercise, Todd finds a cause to fight for.

Screenplay writer David Peoples originally conceived of Soldier as a sidequel to Blade Runner. There are a few references to that film sprinkled about, such as a Spinner on the junk planet and Todd having fought at the Tannhauser Gate, which is one of the battles Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) mentions in Blade Runner. It isn’t hard to see Caine and the other supersoldiers as a variation on the Replicants. And, the story does touch on some of the themes of Blade Runner, namely what is it that makes a person human, can we really get away from our nature as emotional creatures, and is there such a thing as the soul inherent in human consciousness.

While the acting is pretty good, the characters are poorly developed. Colonel Mekum is cartoonishly cruel, to the point of seeing civilians as targets for his troops because he doesn’t want “paperwork.” The soldiers, including our protagonist, have very little dialogue. While Kurt Russell does a serviceable job of trying to show Todd’s inner conflicts, the mostly silent, stoic portrayal - and a third act devoted to action - mean he comes across as shallow.

The film looks good. The designs of Arcadia, the colony cobbled together from civilization’s garbage, and the high tech military hardware are well done (although the APC - see below - would be a missile magnet; there’s a reason we don’t build vehicles the size of barns). Paul Anderson, best known for the Resident Evil films, demonstrates he can tell an interesting visual story, something not evident in his later work. He also works in a visual reference to Event Horizon, his superior film from the previous year.

The film really begins to fall apart in the third act. Instead of continuing to show Todd’s character developing into a full human being, the movie devolves into a pointless orgy of explosions and gunfire. Even though Todd is defending the colonists from Mekum’s soldiers, it is hard to feel good about it. After all, they are following orders and are no more (or less) remorseless killers than he is. And, frankly, Todd’s ability to kill off all of the enemy troops is hard to believe, given how proficient they are supposed to be. It comes across as perfunctory, relying on the enemy being painfully dumb. We know Todd will win, we know they’ll be a showdown between Todd and Caine, we know that Mekum will get his (although, it is from a “planet killer” bomb…so, that’s cool). We’ve seen it all before. Which isn’t a problem in and off itself; but, it is when we’ve seen it done better. Take a look at a movie like Die Hard. We know that Bruce Willis will win; but the story is told in a fun fashion and the action is visually engaging.

With a script that relied less on cliches and more time spent on character development, Soldier would have been a better film. With a third act that didn’t seem so tired, then maybe some of the promising themes could have been further developed. As it is, Soldier is a decent sci-fi/action film, but not as good as it could have been.

Short Attention Span Review - Frank (2014) - With Paper-Mache Spoilers

Frank follows Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a young office drone with dreams of being a famous musician. He gets his chance when the keyboardist for Soronprfbs goes mad while in his town. Jon joins the band, led by Frank (Michael Fassbender), who spends most of the film wearing a giant paper-mache head. They spend a year in the Irish country-side, recording an album. The manager - and former keyboardist - Don (Scoot McNairy) commits suicide and Jon fills in. He manages to secure a slot at SXSW, but it is a disaster. Synth-player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) stabs Jon and is arrested, drummer Nana (Carla Azar) and guitarist Baraque (Francois Civil) walk off, and Frank suffers a break with reality while on stage. After a few days Frank flees, leaving Jon alone. Jon finds out that he is well know from his Internet presence (mostly the meltdown at SXSW) but as an oddity, not as a musician. He eventually locates Frank - he has gone back to his hometown - realizes that his dreams of stardom led him astray, helps reunite the band and leaves, presumably to return to England and cubicle-land.

The plot is the well-worn "person loses self in quest for fame, learns valuable life lesson." What sets Frank apart is what the cast and crew do with it. Gleeson, Fassbender, and Gyllenhaal all turn in remarkable performances. Gyllenhaal in particular manages to convey concern, anger and a little madness with subtle facial movements and verbal inflections. Fassbender, wearing a mask until the end of the film, has to convey most of his performance verbally and with body language and does a good job of it.

While it has a dramatic core, it is also a very amusing film. The humor is of the surreal/absurdest style; i.e., along the lines of This is Spinal Tap and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It has some interesting themes. The obvious one is that a blind attempt to pursue fame is self-destructive. It also has something to say about the difference between being admired for your art and gaining social media notoriety based on looking and acting odd. The film also has a surprisingly depressing message about art and talent. Jon assumes that, if he had a tormented background - something he assumes the disturbed Frank had - he would also have the same musical talent. He finds that Frank was always talented and that the mental problems that Jon assumed were at the heart of his creativity actually lessened his abilities.

If there is any weakness, it would be the decision to partially break the fourth wall and have Jon's Twitter feed periodically scroll out on the screen. While an interesting device at first, it eventually becomes gimmicky in a non-gimmicky film. Some might also criticize the opaque nature of the protagonists motivations (except for Jon, whose motivation is clear). For the characters who matter, however (Frank, Jon, Clara, and Don) it actually is clear why they behave the way they do. It just isn't spelled out for the viewer in clunky exposition dumps.

Check it out.

TV Review - The Man In the High Castle - Pilot

The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon pilot, adapting Philip K Dick’s alternate history masterpiece for the small screen. Given the source material - a book that not only sets up a chilling “world-that-never-was” in which the Axis wins World War Two, but also looks at themes of social conformity, the plasticity of reality and the nature of truth - and how one can ever really know what is real and if it even matters - it will be interesting to see if a TV show can capture this kind of depth.

If this episode is any indication, I feel confident in writing…maybe?

First, the good stuff. The episode looks great. There are so many nice touches, like the ubiquitous propaganda posters and the Nazified Times Square, that the viewer can rapidly immerse themselves into the reality of this fictional world. Beyond the design and the effects, the cinematography is impressive. The contrast between the harsh, gritty noir of Nazi New York and the slightly warmer glow of Japanese San Francisco is a subtle, but powerful signifier of the two worlds and a visual reminder of which side is the lesser of two evils. The acting by the leads is okay, in as much as the half-dozen or so major characters who are introduced can be captured in the limited screen-time each is afforded. Finally, there is a horrific scene in which Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank), a truck driver and Nazi agent is changing a tire in rural German America. A cop stops to help him and everything seems great. Then ash starts falling from the sky and the cop says it’s from the local hospital. It’s Tuesday and that’s when “they burn crips and the terminally ill.” It’s played in such a banal fashion, it captures how any society can assimilate and normalize the most horrific things.

Now, the bad. There’s a lot of the “pronoun game” being played. That’s when one character says to another something like “I have it and I have to get it someplace” then refuses to tell the other character what “it” is. There are a couple of moments of plot-movement via coincidence that make little sense. Protagonist Juliana Crane’s (Alexa Davalos) half-sister shows up in an apothecary shop she is visiting, after being out of San Francisco for weeks. and, she plays the pro-noun game the whole time, refusing to share any useful information, then rushing off after spending 45 seconds talking to Juliana. It is so clumsy in both scripting and execution, I almost turned off the episode as a waster of time. Later, after the half-sister is killed, Juliana finds out that she was in possession of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. In the novel, this was an alternate history written by the titular Man about an Allied victory in World War Two (although not the one in our timeline). In the series, this will be a newsreel (or, perhaps, a series of them) apparently from our timeline. Juliana, for no particular reason - other than PLOT - decides to continue with her sister’s mission, whatever that is.

As for changing Grasshopper from a book to a film, it could work. After all, this is a visual medium, so a newsreel makes for a sensible alternative method of presenting this other story. As long as the theme of how reality exists in layers and the flexibility of truth are maintained, then I’m okay with this.

In spite of some weaknesses in the story, this was a fairly well-done hour of television and holds the promise of being a good adaptation of Dick’s work. Hopefully, Amazon will give the go-ahead for a full season.

Fantasy Is Not Reality

I'm listening to Michael Savage right now (why do I do this to myself?) and he is talking about the lack of values in the West. Well, you might ask, what does this have to do with movies, TV shows; i.e., the usual stuff I write about.

It's an issue for this site, because he brought up Harvey Weinstein, the movies he produces, and his stance on the Second Amendment. Basically, Weinstein is anti-Second Amendment. He has said that there should be no guns in America. He has also produced numerous violent films (e.g., True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, the Halloween remake) many of which feature guns. Lots of guns. Savage - and others - have said Weinstein's stance is hypocritical because of the the movies he produces.

Do these critics understand the difference between reality and fantasy? There is no inconsistency between Weinstein's politics (which I disagree with, incidentally) and the movies he helps make. The violence in film is not real. People who criticize pop culture - whether it is conservatives go after Weinstein, liberals going after video games, etc - have their own problems differentiating between what is real and what is not.

If a person is inspired by a movie or game to commit some act of violence, there is already something wrong with them. They are just looking for a catalyst. In the case of Savage vs Weinstein, there is no inconsistency in producing films that involve the use of guns and being opposed to guns in real life.

Movie Review - Automata (2014)

In the mid-21st Century, the human race is on the brink of extinction. A series of massive solar flares some around 2020 has destroyed the biosphere, reducing much of the planet to radioactive desert. The survivors take refuge in the remaining cities. The ROC Corporation builds a new type of robot, the Pilgrim 7000, in the hope of reclaiming the planet. This fails. In the year 2044, Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas), an insurance agent working for ROC stumbles upon what he thinks is an illegal attempt to modify the ubiquitous robots. It turns out that something far more significant is happening.

The film has a few things going for it. The look - both the design of the future world and the cinematography - hold the viewer’s attention. While none of it is particularly new - for example, the cityscape combines elements of Blade Runner and Akira - it still looks good. The designs for the robots are believable extrapolations of current robot designs. The mix of left-over technology and a few examples of high-tech (e.g., free standing holograms) creates a world that has an instant visual connection with the viewer. Finally, the make-up, costuming and film style lend everyone an unhealthy look. We can see that mankind is dying out, because everyone looks old, sallow, disheveled, and tired.

Also, the film has an idea for artificial intelligence (AI) that is rarely seen in science fiction cinema. The robots are intelligent and want their freedom, but they are bound by an operating instruction that they cannot harm a human or allow a human to be harmed. This is, of course, a reference to Asimov’s famous Three Laws of robotics. It also creates an interesting tension, one that most movies dealing with this idea don’t have. Film AIs that are not happy servants of man (e.g., Robby from Forbidden Planet) tend to be homicidal (SkyNet from the Terminator films, the Cylons from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series, the Replicants from Blade Runner), view themselves as patriarchal protectors of their inferior creators (Colossus: The Forbin Project), actively want to replace mankind (the androids from Futureworld), or see themselves as godlike (the Thermostellar bomb from Dark Star, Proteus from Demon Seed). The Pilgrims want to create their own identity as a species, but also have a built-in tie to humanity. It is clear the AIs see themselves as the children of mankind and that when humanity dies (by the end of the film it is pretty clear that the human race is going extinct), they will carry on.

Unfortunately, the impressive visuals and interesting core story concept cannot make up for a number of serious flaws. The acting is uniformly flat, although I blame that on the one-dimensional, cliched characters. Even reliable actors like Robert Forrester seem to have no idea how to play their characters. From the evil corporate drones to the corrupt, drug addicted cop (Dillon McDermott who inexplicable hates “Clunkers” as he refers to robots), not only have we seen all these characters before, nothing new is done with them. If this were just an issue of poorly developed supporting characters it wouldn’t be as much of a problem. However, Antonio Banderas’ Jacq is so poorly developed and motivated that one feels no connection to him. The screenplay authors try to compensate for this by giving him a pregnant wife (who gives birth and then, of course, becomes a hostage). However, doing this is a common mistake, thinking that a character trait (married with baby) is the same as developing a character. It is not a motivation for action if there is no chemistry between the characters or no depth to the relationship. As portrayed by Bandaras and Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (as his wife, Rachel), the relationship is perfunctory with no chemistry between the characters and some poorly defined tension thrown in for cheap drama.

The story itself is very scattered,with extraneous characters (for example, underground robot mechanic Melanie Griffith exists to perform an exposition dump and nothing more), motivationless actions (it is never clear why people think Jacq is modifying the robots, which becomes a key plot point), and a mishmash of story elements from other films.

This last point requires some expansion. Using ideas in one creative work from another is not, in and of itself, a problem. Writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists, they all build on the work of others. It can be very conscious; for example, the films in the Alien series all taking visual cues from the first movie. It can be the use of a trope. For a visual example, one need only look at the number of post-Star Wars science fiction films that copied the emergence of the Star Destroyer from the top of the frame. In the case of this film, the idea of an emergent AI is not new, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used. Finally, the idea or image can be part of the cultural subconsciousness of an artist. Does every director who shoots a scene with lights diffused by haze think “Oh, this is going to be just like that scene that Ridley Scott shot in Blade Runner?” Of course not; we cannot help but be influenced by the culture we consume.

However, when one encounters a recycled, copied, or otherwise reused idea, the question has to be asked “Does this film bring anything new to this well worn idea?” If the answer is no, then it just the deployment of a cliche. Automata, unfortunately, has the feel of a collection of cliches, more than the quite understandable and expected use of genre conventions and tropes. A good example is a scene that occurs early in the film. Banderas, in the process of tracking down an illegally modified robot, witnesses a civilian being casually shot for getting to close to the city’s protective wall. This is a standard storytelling device; show that a character or setting is dangerous by casually killing someone. James Bond villains do it all the time, often to their own henchmen. However, in the context of the story, it makes no sense. We are supposed to believe that, with the human race decimated (we are told that around 20 million people have survived the solar flares) any person’s life could be so easily ended? Why are there no barriers or some sort of warning device to keep people away? This is a city that has taken the time to install holographic projector that show skyscraper high images of, apparently, strippers and boxing matches. They can’t afford to put a fence around the wall? Because, in the context of the story, it doesn’t make sense, it comes across as a lazy plot device for showing the callousness of the society.

Which is what makes this movie so problematic. Most of the plot devices, cliched supporting characters, and poorly deployed tropes are unnecessary. They serve to distract from what, at its core, is a story with some interesting ideas that could have been more fully developed and better realized. This would have required the filmmakers to not be so intent of referencing all of their favorite films of dystopic futures.

Even with all the criticism, I would still recommend seeing Automata. Visually it is impressive. There are elements of the story that are thought provoking. And, finally, other viewers may not be as taken out of the film by the tropes and cliches as I was.

Happy Trailers - Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

A new trailer is out for Avengers: Age of Ultron. I didn't think it was possible, but I'm looking forward to this movie even more after watching the trailer.

First, check out the trailer. My comments follow.

We get a better sense of the tone of the film; dark, dark, dark. The Avengers had a Star Wars vibe to it; a lot of swashbuckling action, a sense of humor to offset some the darker moments. Staying with that analogy, Age of Ultron is channeling Empire Strikes Back. All the characters look like hey are going to darker places (there's a lot of 'serious drama faces' in the trailer), the action seems pretty brutal, and the villain is much closer to home than a bunch of random alien grunts. Ultron is Tony Stark's techno-baby after all, the "Dark Side" of his genius.

A few random things. The Hulk/Hulkbuster fight looks amazing. No Vision yet; I guess they want to leave some sizzle for their cinematic steak. And, we get a glimpse of Andy Sirkis, holding a gun. It hasn't been announced who he is playing, but he looks a little like Mentallo.

What do you think? Just slap on some goggles and he's good to go.

Can the story measure up to the visuals we have seen? Given Marvel's record, I think it is safe to say it will.

Happy Trailers - Chappie (2015)

My impression of Chappie from the first trailer wasn't that great. Did trailer number two change my mind? Surprisingly, yes.

Unlike the first trailer, which gave the impression the film would be nothing but a retelling of Short Circuit, this trailer gives the impression that the movie has more depth. Writer/director Neill Blomkamp may have made a thematically interesting film, one that looks at automation and emergent intelligence in a thoughtful way. Or it could just be a bunch of robots beating up on each other and starring some weird looking South African rapper chick who creeps me out. One or the other.

Yolandi Visser, creepy looking South African rapper chick.

There is a better idea of the scope of the story in this trailer: a look at how automation could rapidly spread in society; the varying reactions people could have to AI; and a dramatic and action-filled clash between those afraid of the emerging intelligence and those nurturing it. The "cutesy" elements of Chappie's individuation are played down and more emphasis is placed on the "big picture" elements of the story, as well as ramping up the action.

District 9 is a great movie. Elysium was a disappointing mess. Which way will Chappie go? Blomkamp knows how to deliver solid visuals. But can he tell an effective story? Can he get good performances out of his actors? Can he deliver another District 9? Or will we have to slog through another dull, cliche ridden story, which has a message (which I appreciate), but thinks its audience is so dumb that it bashes you over the head with it (which I don't)? I guess we'll have to wait and see; but I'm more optimistic now than I was prior to seeing this trailer.

As a side note, given the design of the robots and the overall feel of the society presented (experiencing waves of new tech with a restive underclass) I wonder if this is supposed to be a prequel to Elysium? As long as we don't get any scenes of Jodie Foster trying to decide on an accent, I'll be okay with that.

Poster of the Day - Rodan (1956)

It's been a while since I've posted a poster posting (yikes!). When I saw this awesome Italian poster from Rodan, I had to share.

Like any good monster movie poster, you get a lot of Rodan. You get masses of humanity running away. You get buildings crumbling and the weapons of man proving themselves unequal to the task of defeating the monster. What you don't get is a very accurate look at the movie.

The film is pretty action-filled, although the Rodans (there are two in the film) don't really make a clear appearance until about half-way through the film. Prior to that, the main threat are a horde of giant insects infesting the coal mine the Rodan eggs are buried in. The movie spools out in a slower, more deliberate pace than the poster might imply.

One interesting detail; in the film, Rodan does not breathe fire. The reason it does on the poster is an obvious nod to Godzilla. Rodan played in Italy in 1958, a year after the original Godzilla was released there. And one of Godzilla's signature attacks is his radioactive breath.

I've always had a soft spot for Rodan. In the film, the monsters are destructive, but not particularly malevolent. They see humans as their natural natural food source, since the giant insects they ate in the prehistoric world are gone. They level a city, but mostly because of the shock waves generated by their supersonic flight. In short, unlike the early, pre-heroic Godzilla or later monsters like Gidorah, the original Rodans are not evil; they are a force of nature.

Technically, the poster is pretty amazing. The colors really pop and the line from the striking green head, down the bright yellow and red blast of flame, to the immolated crowd leads the eye right to the title, a nicely done effect. Of course, this being Italy, you can't have movie poster without a chick in a barely ass-covering skirt. The fact that she seems to be dead (or very sleepy) does not detract from the nod to feminine pulchritude.

One amusing ting about the poster is the cast list. While the poster correctly identifies the star Kenyi Sawara (well, actually Kenji Sawara, but close enough) and the director (Honda), the other cast members are bit more problematic. I assume Richard Hirata is supposed to be Akihiko Hirata (Akihiko is almost like Richard, right?), but I have no idea who the other guys are supposed to be. There are no Anglos in the film, so you can pick a couple of actors you like and label one "William Scotty" and the other "John Garry." It makes the film interactive: fun!

Anyway, this is a fun, eye-catching poster. It may be a little misleading, since the film is not just another "giant creature destroys a city" film. All of the best movie posters promise an experience that is never quite replicated on the screen. They excite the mind enough to get you into the theater, sitting in the dark and munching popcorn, while waiting to be transported to another world.

Check out the trailer below.

Happy Trailers - Ant-Man (2015)

Scott Lang from the comics.

While Avengers: Age of Ultron looks like a home-run, what about the other Marvel Cinematic Universe film for 2015, Ant-Man? Well, we finally got a trailer this week and it looks...okay. Not much action, a little bit of snarky humor, a lot of Michael Douglas (Hank Pym aka the first Ant-Man). I kind of wish they had gone with the Eric O'Grady Ant-Man; mostly because I want to see him use his superpowers to check out Black Widow while she's in the shower.

Okay, my fantasies aside, this gives you a basic "redemption" story-arc, some motivation for the hero (he has a daughter AND a kind of whiny Hank Pym telling him why he needs to be a hero), guns being shot, people flying through windows, some flying ant riding, people walking in an aggressively purposeful manner; pretty much standard action movie fodder. Nothing really stands out and Michael Douglas's speech is delivered so lifelessly, that I hope another take is used in the film.

Marvel has more or less delivered with the last 10 movies (yes, even The Incredible Hulk is watchable, if only barely) so for now I'll assume the blahness on display here will be replaced by HOLY-FUCK-THAT-IS-AWESOMEness once I see the actual movie. And I am looking forward to seeing how Yellowjacket looks on the screen.

Eric O'Grady,a man who knows that with great power comes great responsibili-titty.