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Retrospective: Final Destination (2000)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Hello readers, I’m about to embark on something that I’ve been wanting to do since I started this blog in December. As I’m sure most of you are aware, I’ve done movie reviews quite frequently on this blog. In fact, 4 of my Top 5 most-viewed posts have all been movie reviews (for those curious, my top 5 posts are: Hulk, Judge Dredd, 5 Reasons to Prepare for the Ape Apocalypse, Transformers 3 and Dredd). However, since starting this blog I have really wanted to start writing franchise retrospectives – and I’m not talking about mega-franchises like Harry Potter or Terminator. Rather, I want these sorts of articles focus on franchises which, for whatever reason, don’t get nearly as much written about them and yet have a very interesting history (well… maybe I’ll do a Star Wars every once in a while, but it’ll be the exception rather than the rule). If you were ever looking for a place to read about The Howling series or Resident Evil movies, then I’d suggest you start following me! If not… well then follow me anyway, make me feel like I’m accomplishing something here.

Anyway, the first franchise which is getting the retrospective treatment from me is the Final Destination series. As a little background, I was only really dimly aware of these movies until about a year ago – I had always thought they were bog standard slasher films. My only real interactions with the series had been in the form of a Final Destination 3 poster which I swear was outside the local movie store for years, and the laughter which accompanied the (thankfully redacted) announcement that the 5th entry in the series would be called 5nal Destination (who didn’t read that as “Anal Destination”? Seriously?). However, this changed when a friend and I happened to be hanging out when Final Destination 3 came on the TV. Despite having little interest at the time, we watched the first 30 minutes or so before we had to leave. However, what I had seen had been very intriguing, so I decided to track down the movie and see how it ended. I’ll save my thoughts on that particular movie for later, but suffice to say I tracked down the other films and watched them all out of order (I watched them in the following order: 3, 5, 1, 4, 2).

First off, I’m going to mention the characters. Unlike some other movies in the series, Final Destination actually goes to some effort to flesh out its characters and make you give a damn about them. Devon Sawa’s Alex Browning is an interesting lead, a bit of an outsider who you can’t ever be entirely sure isn’t totally crazy. I also quite liked Ali Larter’s Clear Rivers, a character which actually manages to subvert the stereotypical “female love interest” role and become a figure of her own. In fact, of the main cast there’s only really 2 throw-away characters there to provide some quick and easy death fodder… which is actually not too bad by the standards of this series. The lead actors put in acting which ranges from “pretty good” to “serviceable”. Of the leads, I felt that the only one which was really weak (both in acting and characterization) was Kerr Smith’s Carter Horton, the typical bully character. However, he does develop a bit by the end which redeems him somewhat. Oh, and no discussion of Final Destination characters is complete without a mention of Tony Todd’s Bludworth – he only gets about 5 minutes of screen-time, but he just steals every scene he’s in. The man has a creepy voice and just knows how to chill you to the bone with little more than a look and a smile.

Of course, in addition to all of these characters is the main attraction of the whole movie – Death itself. Despite never actually appearing on-screen (aside from some very mysterious liquid and in a reflection), Death is a very real presence and character in the film. The film really establishes Death as a morbidly creative force which interacts with the world to kill his victims, dropping them clues about their impending demise for little more reason than we likes the thrill of the hunt. The methods which Death uses to slay his victims are very imaginative, although they don’t devolve into full-on gore porn like some of the later films in the series. The fact that Death never actually appears just makes him all the more frightening – he’s an omnipresent, inescapable, inexhaustible force which is going to inevitably hunt down and kill the characters that we are becoming invested in and he could strike at any time. Furthermore, compared to other slasher villains like Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees or Leatherface, he doesn’t devolve into self-parody – Death is established pretty early on as having a very dark sense of humour and irony and this is one of the aspects of the series which has remained true throughout (although each movie will play with the details somewhat). Director James Wong should be commended for pulling off this sense of malice for a villain who isn’t physically present, because I can just imagine how easily it could have backfired on him. The fact that it was his first film makes the achievement even more impressive.

What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the first Final Destination is that it is quite different from its successors. Whereas subsequent movies in the franchise would skew closer to slasher-horror and eschew character development in favour of a body count, the original Final Destination is obstinately a supernatural thriller film with some very light slasher elements. The emphasis is really clearly on mystery and suspense rather than on killing off people in the bloodiest ways the writers can imagine. It’s unfortunate that the other movies in the series don’t do this more often, but in Final Destination characters actually survive Death’s attempts to kill them more often than not. As a result of this, and of the fact that we actually give a damn about the characters, the potential death scenes have a lot of suspense – you can’t really be sure whether or not a character really is going to die, or even the manner in which Death will attempt to off them. Of course, Death has a really morbidly creative streak and his plans tend to have redundancies in order to ensure that he collects his kills…

Any discussion of a Final Destination film is incomplete without mentioning the central disaster. In this movie it’s a plane crash, which really does prey on many peoples’ fears. The filmmakers could never have predicted that this would become even more powerful only a year later after 9/11 – seriously, I thought that they were just banking on post-9/11 paranoia when I first saw this movie, until I found out that it was released a full year prior to it… quite prescient indeed! In any case, the disaster itself is very frighteningly well-done, weakened only in that it doesn’t look entirely convincing now. However, it was done with nearly entirely practical effects, so it’s quite impressive what they managed achieve.

Of course, following the opening disaster, the surviving characters are one-by-one picked off by Death, and it is here that the film slowly starts to come apart. Being the first in the series, Final Destination isn’t plagued by franchise fatigue yet, and so it manages to keep this section interesting with some creativity and philosophy rather than defaulting to slasher tropes. The characters struggle with a variety of conflicting emotions – why (and how) were they spared from the wreckage of Flight 180? And when Death starts coming after them, they all are forced to wrestle and come to grips with the idea of their own mortality. It’s some really interesting stuff, and far beyond what I would expect of a teenage thriller/horror film of this sort. Unfortunately, the last 20 minutes of the film largely drop this philosophizing and it is at this point that things start to get really weak. I felt that these last 20 minutes really didn’t engage with me nearly as well as the rest of the movie have and end up putting a bit of a damper on the whole experience… and that’s just unfortunate, because I really do like this movie. It has some great ideas – they might not all be executed perfectly, but it’s generally a well-done film with an intriguing premise that puts it head-and-shoulders above a run of the mill thriller/horror movie. When I first saw it I would have given it an 8/10, although I think that was a bit generous now. That said, I definitely enjoyed it, and certainly recommend seeing it even if you are turned off by the ideas of the sequels.

7/10

Be sure to come back soon for Part 2 of this retrospective: Final Destination 2!

Video Game Review: Dead Space 3

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

I was struck with a bit of good fortune this week: a couple months ago it occurred to me that my school’s reading week coincided with the release date of Dead Space 3. I loved Dead Space, its sequel (which is easily one of my favourite games of this console generation), Extraction and most of the extended universe as well (the Ben Templesmith comic was amazing, the other comics and Martyr were decent, but the animated films kind of sucked) and so clearly I was eagerly anticipating the latest entry in the series. However, as I followed the pre-release info I was getting understandably nervous.

  • “They’re adding co-op? Didn’t that screw over Resident Evil 5? Isn’t it hard to make a horror game with co-op?”
  • “That trailer really didn’t scare me at all. It looked like a big shoot-’em-up like Lost Planet.”
  • “WTF, there are going to be human enemies this time!?”

Despite my concerns, there was still no way I was going to pass up another excursion to the Dead Space universe. So, were my fears unfounded, or was Dead Space 3 a massive disappointment? Well I suggest you read on to find out… (Note that for my first [and so far only] play through, I played on Hard Mode and did not do any co-op or get any DLC aside from what’s bundled with the Limited Edition. Also, there are some spoilers in this review, so be careful.)

Dead Space 3 opens very… dishearteningly. Basically all my worst fears seemed to be confirmed within the first 30 minutes. The prologue is pretty interesting, but it definitely emphasizes action and scripted set-piece moments over the slow-building tension and horror that the series is known for. Things get even worse when it shifts back to poor ol’ Isaac Clarke. While I’m a bit dissatisfied with the story at this point (which I’ll get to later), what really disappointed me here was the shootouts with Unitologist gunmen. This feature was incredibly ill-advised for a number of reasons. For one thing, the cover system is terrible. Isaac can crouch behind cover, but it doesn’t really provide him with much protection at all. There’s also very little hit feedback, so you can be taking damage and not know it unless you quickly glance at your RIG’s health bar. The enemy AI isn’t that smart either – they just sort of make their way to you while firing until you choose to blow their heads off or shotgun them. They don’t provide any challenge at all until late in the game when they’re attacking you from 2 directions at once or at one particular instance where 2 guys on a balcony are firing rockets at you while you’re simultaneously being attacked by Twitchers, which took me almost a dozen tries to overcome. It should also be noted that I was playing the game on Hard Mode on my first play through, so the general lack of challenge is pretty unfortunate and surprising. Finally, the gunplay is simply just not that fun. Dead Space isn’t built to accommodate a third-person cover-based shooter, and so throwing one in anyway wasn’t a very good idea.

This opening doesn’t have the same sort of “oomph” that Dead Space 2 did: in that game, the opening cinematic laid the groundwork for that game very well, and then when the game started in earnest I literally shouted “HOLY SHIT!!!!” All that without having to resort to over-the-top theatrics to try to get your blood pumping. In short, Dead Space 3 has lost most of the sense of subtlety and tension that the previous games fostered, something that the opening hour demonstrates very well to all the people who feared such a thing.

Anyway, once you get beyond the first couple chapters, Dead Space 3 starts to pick up a bit. The chapters spent in space feel largely like classic Dead Space gameplay… with some refinements and new issues of course. One notable difference is the new crafting mechanic, which allows you to customize your weapon, its attachments and upgrades, then add further upgrades in the form of circuits. The crafting benches also allow you to make health and ammo packs, as well as other items. Put simply, the crafting mechanic is very handy and it’s fun to put together a super-weapon: I took the DLC Evangelizer Carbine + Shotgun attachment and it lasted me the whole game as my mainstay weapon, just tweaking it with new modifiers as the game went on. The only downsides to this system are that enemy encounters can be a bit of a joke as you blow them away with your super-gun, and that I miss having 4 weapons to switch between for different situations instead of 2… yeah you’re technically still running 4 different guns now, but that also means you’re down the alternate-fire from the previous guns as well. It also sucks when you’re in the middle of an encounter and then suddenly find yourself needing to reload, losing the use of one of those guns. The other issue with crafting is that you’re never going to be short on health or ammo packs… not that the game doesn’t provide you with tons of them anyway. Health and ammo are ridiculously plentiful in Dead Space 3, even in Hard Mode. I literally never ran out of ammo in this game. In contrast, the last 1/3 of Dead Space 2 was an intense exercise in ammo conservation. I had to get really good at dismemberment, stasis and kinesis if I wanted to survive… in Normal mode, no less. In comparison, Dead Space 3 is a breeze.

Another new feature in Dead Space 3 which I really liked was the addition of optional side-quests. While they’re all just a half-dozen Necromorph encounters to get a key to unlock a door, then a couple more encounters to find some epic loot, the developers did a good job ensuring that they stayed interesting… even if they begin to grow stale towards the latter point of the game. Some of these are co-op only, but that didn’t bug me too much in all honesty. I hope they were a little more diverse than the single-player ones in any case.

Those disappointed that Dead Space 3 would be on a planet shouldn’t be too put-off, since they’re actually going to spend quite a few hours in space. However, the action soon switches to Tau Volanis, which is where the game actually manages to wring out a few scares and intensity. In the first 30 minutes or so that you’re on the planet, you have to keep your body temperature regulated or you’re freeze to death. This makes it pretty dangerous to be outdoors for very long – especially in a fight where you’re given another way to die on top of being eviscerated by Necromorphs. The Feeders also will scare the piss out of you the first few times you run into them. They can be dealt with without confrontation, something this game desperately needed. Trying to sneak past and distract them is intense, they’re creepy little bastards and if you alert them then it can be hell trying to deal with them coming from all directions. Enemies also occasionally burst out of the snow which can be startling (although not nearly as much as I would have expected it to be).

The stretch on Tau Volanis largely continues the same problems of the rest of the game, however. Enemy encounters are unfortunately still very straight-forward: Stalkers, my favourite enemies from Dead Space 2 for their clever AI, are reduced to simple and predictable foes since they’re far more aggressive now. Encounters can also get infuriating as enemies have a tendency to drop in behind you unannounced while you’re fighting waves of foes. It’s not scary, it’s just annoying. The planet setting has some great potential to be just as terrifying (if not more) than space, but the game does not live up to this promise. Just imagine how scary it would be to be in a blizzard with limited visibility, but hear Necromorphs creeping up on you just outside your field of vision. Or how about backtracking through a non-combat area only to discover a fresh set of footprints followed you through that area – OH SHIT, WHAT/WHERE IS IT?!?!

For the purposes of this review, I feel the need to mention the latter chapters since some new issues arise there as well. On the positive side, super-charged kinesis is EPIC. Tearing the limbs off of living Necromorphs never gets old, and throwing whole Markers into the eyes of a giant monster is probably the coolest thing in the entire game. However, the last chapter was a massive piss-off. Ignoring the physics of running and fighting on a giant rock which is flying through the air towards a living moon, the game doesn’t tell you that there’s a blizzard behind you which is tearing said rock to bits if you don’t move fast enough. I literally died here about a dozen times with absolutely no explanation and was understandably frustrated until I just ran through the level. The lack of explanation here just ticked me off, and could have been easily fixed with some dialogue along the lines of “oh shit Isaac, the ground behind us is disappearing! Run!” The final boss fight is also exceptionally easy (although this seems to be a Dead Space hallmark at this point), although it was also very cool at the same time.

Moving on to other notable aspects, the story is a bit of a convoluted let-down in Dead Space 3. The scene is set for Isaac’s personal journey, but the game fails to set up the events transpiring in the universe at large. Apparently an army of Unitologists have overthrown EarthGov and are causing Necromorph outbreaks across the galaxy through terrorist actions! Holy shit, that sounds insane! Unfortunately, the game doesn’t set-up, elaborate on or provide closure to these events at all, which is a damn shame. Hopefully we get some extended universe pieces which cover these developments, because whoever wrote the script for Dead Space 3 didn’t seem to care. The secondary characters are also really throw-away, I couldn’t really remember who they were or even really care when they died. Simply, the plot is nowhere near as engaging or coherent as the previous games were, but I’m glad they did not default to the “Necromorph outbreak occurs and character X has to survive it” template which nearly every other Dead Space media falls into.

Other things worth noting are that this game is far less violent than the previous 2 games were. This is surprising and odd, and really just seems like another side-effect of a shift to a mass-market focus. Honestly, there’s only 1 really violent on-screen death and the camera jumps away from it after a split-second. On a more positive note though, the co-op mode is very unintrusive and should set the bar for co-op modes in the future in my opinion.

Considering how much bitching you just read through, it probably sounds like I absolutely hated Dead Space 3. However, honestly I did enjoy it: the basic mechanics of the series are very enjoyable and the game adds some fun new elements to the mix. That said, the game does not live up to the expectations that the rest of the series established. Put simply, EA and Visceral sold out with Dead Space 3, toning down the series’ horror elements in favour of the lowest common denominator shooter/action market. I can live with that if that’s the future of the franchise, but if so then they should build the next game to be action from the ground up, rather than tack it onto a horror framework.

Bottom-line: Dead Space 3 is a lot of fun, but it’ll be a disappointment if you’re a fan of the series.

7/10

Movie Review: Noobz

~ Barloq ~ 2 Comments

So recently I stumbled across this review of a video-game movie called Noobz. Normally this wouldn’t excite me all that much, except this particular review ravaged the film. As a bit of a purveyor of bad cinema and crappy-movie lover, I instantly knew that I had to track down this film and review it for myself. Was it really as bad as Dan Ryckert said? Well, read on and find out…

So what exactly is Noobz? Well it’s supposed to be a comedic road-trip movie about a clan of gamers trying to get to the biggest gaming tournament in the country, celebrating gaming culture along the way. Honestly, that’s a bit of a rote scenario for an independent film (see Fanboys for Star Wars, One Week for supposedly “Canadian” culture, etc), and Noobz really doesn’t distinguish itself from the other similar movies in the genre… well, not in a positive way anyway. Why not? Well for one thing, it does a really, really poor job capturing gamer culture. While I didn’t like Fanboys, its one redeeming feature was that it captured the Star Wars geek culture pretty well. Noobz is closer to One Week in that it shows a really stereotypical view of its subject matter… except, in the case of Noobz, this is a really BAD representation. The director and star, Blake Freeman, was actually a professional gamer… a decade ago. Based on the content of the movie, it seems like this is where all of Freeman’s “research” came from, because it’s a woefully outdated and portrays gaming as the domain of anti-social nerds. This MIGHT have flown back then, but this is 2013: basically everyone games now, and nerds are actually coming in vogue as well. You’d swear this movie was made by CNN or something based on the way it portrays gamers, not someone who is apparently one himself. Furthermore, he just completely fails to capture gaming culture in general. One of the most glaring examples of this is that there’s a Frogger tournament at the same tournament that the main characters are at. However, only 2 people enter it because coin-op gaming isn’t “cool” anymore. Now it doesn’t take a lot of research to know that retro gaming is a huge subculture right now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if such a tournament actually had more competition than a modern shooter. Another issue is covered here:

“There’s a passing mention of Frogger, but the only gameplay footage from the fictional Cyberbowl video gaming championship is based exclusively on Gears of War 3. While it’s clearly a form of product placement, it’s a bizarre choice at that: Gears of War 3 isn’t a championship level game by any means (especially with the atrocious host-advantage issues in multiplayer).”

Watching the movie, I actually speculated that this was the case, but it’s nice to see it confirmed. That said, I’m not really all that knowledgeable about tournament-level gaming (I’d imagine that PC gaming, particularly Counter-Strike, would be probably the #1 choice for competitive play…?), but it’s notable that this stuck out as clearly as it did.

In addition, Freeman shows only the worst aspects of gamer culture. You know that douche bag 12-year-old screaming racist and homophobic slurs on your headset every time you boot up a first-person shooter? Basically every character in this movie is that kid, except that they’re like that 24/7 and not when they’ve got the anonymity that a headset provides. Sure, some of them probably are douche bags like that in real life, but Noobz disproportionately presents every gamer as someone with some sort of major personality flaw. The “heroes” are stereotypical dicks living the Jersey Shore lifestyle (with the “dudes” and “bros” thrown around CONSTANTLY throughout to cement this), and every single female character is either a grotesque hag or a sex object. And, of course, everyone is shocked to discover that the girl gamers are actually good at video games… this, unfortunately, is probably a stereotype which actually persists in this culture, but Freeman isn’t exactly putting this part in here to make any sort of statement. I think the worst part about all this though is that Blake Freeman really seems to think that he’s portraying gamers in a positive manner, because you get this sense all the time when the character Andy spouts off his ramblings about how major league gaming should be considered a real sport. While I’m not entirely sure I’d call them “athletes”, pro gaming clearly takes a lot of skill and deserves some respect, but Noobz isn’t doing this culture any favours.

I think it’s also worthwhile to go deeper into each of the characters… because boy do they ever deserve to be torn apart. Each and every one of them is a one-dimensional stereotype: there’s Cody, the slacker with major anger management issues. Next is Andy the optimistic dude-bro who’s in love (read: wants to screw) with Rickie, a girl gamer on the other team (who isn’t really given much characterization beyond “is hot”). After that is Oliver, the massive screw-up who is also an extremely flamboyantly closeted gay (the movie tries to make his sexuality ambiguous, but the scenes where he runs around in lipstick, screams like a girl, constantly tries to suck his friends’ dicks, etc pretty much destroy any possible sense of ambiguity that they could have tried to foster, instead turning him into a hugely offensive stereotype). Finally, there’s Hollywood, a disabled kid who I believe has a severe form of asthma… of course, everything about him revolves around his juvenile sexual fantasies and his breathing apparatus (apparently it’s supposed to be funny when his air supply gets cut off and the kid is freaking dying in front of us). Seriously, even in the end credits he apparently writes a hit hip-hop single called “Let Me Breathe”, because everything in his life apparently revolves around his disability.

As you can probably glean from the descriptions of the main characters, Noobz is offensive as a bus full of dead babies, but you don’t know the half of it. The portrayals of Oliver and Hollywood are really the worst of the bunch (apparently gays aren’t considered “men” in this), but there’s also plenty of casual racism and sexism. Did you see the picture above of the black kid with the comb in his hair? I’m pretty sure you can guess exactly how they portrayed him in this. There’s also a scene where an Indian gas station attendant acts like a ridiculously racist caricature, and tells the cops he’s white so they won’t discriminate against him. It seems like Freeman thinks that he’s being clever and satirical, but it really doesn’t come across that way: I mean, is are we really supposed to believe that he is making fun of racists by being racist and then simultaneously calling out racial profiling at the same time in some sort of inverse-satire cluster-f–k? Short answer: no. Instead, I really get the feeling that Blake Freeman is just a hardcore opponent of political correctness, suggested by the scene where the douchey little black kid gets a free ride on “DeezNuts Airlines” (“thank you for riding DeezNuts!” …I did not make that up) because he claims that he’s being racially profiled by a white attendant. While I hate political correctness as much as the next guy, Freeman isn’t using offensive material to make a statement or to be satirical… he seems to just find offensive things funny for no other reason than it’s offensive. Even in this department, they fail because they recycle the same old offensive jokes over and over and over again.

In fact, for a supposed “comedy”, Noobz is deathly short on laughs. I can honestly say that I did not laugh at any of the jokes in this film, which is pretty pathetic. The only times I did laugh were in sheer disbelief as I literally yelled out “WTF, did they seriously put something that stupid in the movie?!?” This is pretty brutal in the scenes with Greg Lipstein (a play on Billy Mitchell) which might have been funny for the crew but translate really awkwardly to the rest of the audience who are sitting here thinking “what the hell is wrong with this guy?” Furthermore, the comedic set-pieces are really tenuously constructed. Take, for example, the scene I mentioned earlier with the Indian gas station attendant. Cody goes into the gas station to pay for their gas and get some snacks, but comes across this little shit of a girl. Of course, the two begin going at it, insulting each other with dialogue that doesn’t reflect human speech in the slightest (that might be an odd criticism, but the dialogue in this scene is just totally out of tone with the rest of the film). Then the girl’s mother believes that, because Cody is hugging her daughter, that he must be a pedophile and proceeds to taser him without explanation. Then the Indian gas station attendant launches into his ridiculous shtick. This is honestly some of the most contrived comedy I’ve seen in a movie, and it’s just not handled very well (uhh, no pedo).

Anyway, in the end the “heroes” lose to the girl gamers (who were far more deserving of the prize money anyway), but get signed to Mountain Dew… except they don’t, because 2 seconds later in the credits they reveal that the guy was arrested for impersonating a Mountain Dew executive (WTF!? Is that even a crime?!!), but I’m not really sure that I care, because the main characters were such huge douche bags and they didn’t learn or earn anything from the events of the movie… so it makes things completely pointless. Congratulations, you just wasted an hour and forty minutes of your life!

Bottom-line: the only positive thing I can say is that Freeman is a competent enough director, but he severely needs some better material if he ever wants to amount to anything. Noobz is not that material. It has a bland story, non-existent comedy, garishly offensive and doesn’t even portray its own subject matter with any sort of reverence. Unless you’re looking for a really bad movie like I was, stay away!

0.5/10

Movie Review: The Postman (1997)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

My good friend over at The M recently called me up and said that we had to see a movie he had just bought called The Postman. He just told me that it was a post-apocalyptic film, it starred Kevin Costner and that it would probably suck. With little else to go on, I decided to take him up on the offer and see how it went… little did I know I was heading into a multiple-Razzie winner. Read on for my thoughts…

Something that becomes very apparent about The Postman quite quickly is that its editing is a bit of a jumble. Early on there’s a scene of the Postman in a ransacked store, and then suddenly he’s in a town performing Shakespeare for kids. I thought “oh, this must be a pre-apocalypse flashback” since he’d had a couple quick flashbacks already… but no, a couple minutes later the party gets interrupted by a bunch of raiders and it becomes clear that this is in the present. Well then, that raises more questions… like where did his gun go? How did he find the town? Honestly, moments like this happen throughout the entire movie.

Even worse, the entire opening 50 minutes of the film are completely unnecessary. The film seems to be setting up something important, but it literally all gets thrown away all of a sudden… even all the secondary characters and one of the villains get killed too. To make matters worse, this ruins any sort of mystery that they could have derived from the premise. How much more interesting would it be if we were wondering if The Postman was telling the truth or not? If they played with our own sense of optimism for the reestablished US Government then it would be far more interesting than a completely unnecessary opening act that spells out everything for us.

My main issue with the opening however, is that it adds 50 minutes to an already overlong film. People bitch that The Hobbit is overlong. While they are right about that it doesn’t feel unnecessarily so (well, most of the time anyway). However, The Postman has no excuse to be a 3 hour “epic” whatsoever, and could do with some serious trimming of the fat. As it is, the film is excessive, bloated and boring half the time – cutting out the opening would have made it a hell of a lot more bearable.

In terms of acting, none of the leads are particularly awful. Most of the characters are serviceable, it’s only the younger actors which dip into sub-par level. The only one I found that really stood out was Will Patton’s Bethlehem, the charmingly psychotic villain. It’s always fun when he’s around and he really chews up the screen, sort of like an evil Chuck Norris.

The plot is… strenuous. Here’s the premise of the film: society has collapsed because of some sort of apocalyptic event and most of the towns in Oregon have become subdued under the heel of the Khan-esque General Bethlehem. In the middle of this, a deserter from the clan cons people into giving him food and shelter by claiming to be a member of the reconstituted US postal service, acting on behalf of the new President. As a result, he (and the new postal service) inspires people to rise up against the clan and TAKE. BACK. THEIR. FREEDOMMMMMMM!!! If that sounds a little far-fetched, then you don’t know the half of it. The film has, quite simply, a pretty ridiculous plot which is way too strung out. It also has an air of pretension that it frankly does not earn. Say what you will about The Tree of Life, but it is deservingly pretentious. This movie is more like Rubber, in that it’s trying to look smart, but is probably stupider than most of the people in the room.

On a related note, I expected the film to basically be a distillation of this song from Team America, but luckily it avoided that… except when it didn’t. Confused? Well what I mean is that the film largely avoids being American propaganda, but occasionally it will suddenly pull out an “America: F–K YEAH!” moment out of nowhere. This generally happens when the Postman arrives in a town and causes the citizens to feel hope that the clan won’t be ruling much longer. This inevitably causes them to stand up to the clan soldiers and basically flip them off… FOR AMERICA. I’m pretty sure that this is supposed to make us feel proud to be American, but it just made me think “You people are idiots“. Seriously, if these people understood the notion of subtlety, then an entire town wouldn’t have been killed. America, you can be proud of your country, but be smart about it. Maybe consider assassinating the leaders of the clan when they come into town next time, rather than tell them they’re not gonna boss you around anymore when you have literally nothing to back up that statement. Honestly, the “patriotism” in this movie results in a lot of civilians getting killed due to sheer idiocy (doubly-so on the part of Ford Lincoln Mercury, who’s basically a budding terrorist cell leader). Don’t be kind of like one of these dumbasses.

Is there anything good I can say about The Postman? Well to be honest, yes I can. The best thing I can say is that there’s some great production values – there’s basically no CGI that I could see, and the sheer number of extras that appear in some shots are unbelievable. Some of the sets are absolutely massive as well, I have a tough time believing that these were just miniatures – I think they were the real deal. Also, despite all the harping I’ve done on the story, I eventually found myself genuinely interested to see where things were going to go. I honestly believe there is a good movie hidden inside of The Postman somewhere, but it’s buried beneath shoddy editing, a weak story and excessive self-indulgence which basically make it a slog to sit through.

All-in-all, The Postman is an extremely flawed film. It’s bad, but not in a “so bad it’s good” manner. It’s just not the sort of movie I could recommend that someone sit down and watch for any good reason.

4.5/10

Movie Review: Hulk (2003)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Apologies, I have been busy lately and so haven’t had much time to update the blog. It’s not a matter of lack of content/inspiration… on the contrary, I have a notepad file with more than a half dozen ideas I could use in a pinch. In any case, I’m not shirking my commitment to make a post at least once per week – unlike my past blogs, I want this one to last long enough to get some sort of readership!

So this week I’m tackling a bit of a personal review. I recently saw Ang Lee’s Life of Pi in theatres, and quite enjoyed it, it was an almost perfect adaptation of the book (although I wish that M. Night Shyamalan had gotten the director’s duties, but I’m not about to complain about the movie we did get). However, there was only one other Ang Lee movie I had seen up to this point, and that was his 2003 blockbuster Hulk… which for at least half a decade I had proclaimed “the worst movie I’d ever seen”. Now, the last time I saw it I was 14 or 15. Both the superhero genre and myself have changed mentally and physically. I decided that it was time to give Hulk a second chance. Was I just harsh on it as a stupid teenager, or did it really deserve my righteous indignation? Well hang on, we’re gonna take a trip back to the past…

Let’s travel back to the year 2003. Superheroes were just starting to get really cool again. Spider-man had blown our minds, and its sequel would soon top it. Batman Begins would revolutionize the whole genre in a couple years, but at the time comic book properties were treated as… well, comical properties. I had watched some of the Hulk cartoons on TV as a kid, so when I heard they were making a movie adaptation I thought that it had the potential to become the new Spider-man. Of course, when I saw the movie itself, I was extremely disappointed with the direction Ang Lee went in. It was more of an art-house film than a superhero blockbuster, and so I was very bored with it. However, I also noticed some rather… questionable elements of the film that further added to my distaste for it. I hadn’t been more disappointed in a movie before, and so I proclaimed Hulk the worst movie I had ever seen (it wasn’t until my mother made me watch The Santa Clause 2 years later that it was finally knocked off its “lofty” position).

Honestly, the action element of Hulk hasn’t really changed at all. It really is a quiet, thoughtful production. If it wasn’t about a man who turns into a big, green, pissed, muscle-bound monster when he gets angry, then this might be more forgivable. However, the whole point of the Hulk is that he smashes things. It’s his thing. Ang Lee might have been brave tackling this property in such an intellectual way, but he also displays that he just doesn’t understand why people like the Hulk in the process. He compensates by trying to deconstruct the character, specifically asking “why is the Hulk so angry?” and then exploring the potential origins of that. The answer Lee comes up with? Daddy issues, and lots of them to go around. Lee also treats the film as more of a monster movie than superhero origin, in the vein of Frankenstein or (especially) The Wolf Man. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s just another source of disappointment for fans, it was marketed incorrectly and towards the wrong audience.

The Contemplative Hulk (this image seriously summarizes about half of his screentime).

If Ang Lee had pulled off his super-hero deconstruction project successfully, then I could have totally forgiven the lack of action… however, Hulk is caught in the uncomfortable crossroads between being very smart and very, very stupid. I mean, the film is attempting to work psychology into the superhero mythos and figure out what makes Hulk angry. That’s pretty interesting. However, that effort is sharing screen time with jaw-droppingly idiotic moments like this:

Nice acting dude…

…or this:

Ugh, those dogs would look out of place in a Star Wars prequel…

When the Hulk finally goes on his rampage, the smashing is frequently broken up by the big guy staring at things thoughtfully. This is where I can legitimately call out Lee for being overindulgent – the Hulk is impulsive, not contemplative. Bruce Banner can be thoughtful all he wants to, but Hulk should be the embodiment of aggression and impulse. Quite simply, Hulk can’t stick to a consistent tone. Whenever it tries to get you to take it seriously, a really intrusive and cheesy transition will pull you out of the drama, a CGI monstrosity will invade the screen or someone will do something maddeningly illogical that shatters all its efforts. Central to this issue is the plot itself. Lee wants to make a psychological drama, and while he gets the psychological aspect down well enough, the plot that it is hung on is, put simply, an atrocious mess. Here’s just a few of the biggest issues I noticed while watching it again:

  • How/why did Bruce become the Hulk?
  • How did David know that Bruce would become the Hulk?
  • Why does General Ross hate Bruce so much? He didn’t do jack shit to anybody.
  • Why does David NOT become the Hulk when he goes through the same process? It seems to be some sort of trauma-based process… but how does that make sense?
  • Why does David suddenly decide to join with Betty after trying to kill her earlier?
  • WTF is up with the ending…???
And who thought covering Hulk in fecal matter would be a good idea?

Ultimately, the writers would have been better off not changing the Hulk’s origin at all, because the version they came up with just plain didn’t work, nor did it make any sense, undermining the movie’s braver efforts in regards to its psychological focus.

This might be a controversial statement, but I wasn’t particularly impressed on the acting-front either. I have looked up some contemporary reviews such as this one in preparation for this review, and they seemed to like Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly and Nick Nolte’s performances. For my own part, I thought that Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly were unconvincing to say the least. As for Nick Nolte, he made David Banner batshit insane, although I’m not so sure that this was acting on his part or just him being himself. In all, I don’t think any of the leads were particularly awful (Josh Lucas doesn’t count as a lead), but they didn’t deserve the praise that some people heap on them either.

Finally, the special effects are one glaring noteworthy mention. At the time they weren’t exactly top-notch, and they look downright cartoonish now. You already saw the video with the dogs earlier, and they just look like cartoon characters. Check out the picture of Hulk covered in shit above, and focus on the pants. They don’t even look real, they look like someone photoshopped them on. And check out Hulk’s proportions here:

His proportions are all wrong. He doesn’t even look like a real being. And I can blame this one on Ang Lee himself, because he is directly responsible. The “overlay” effects were awful as well (as you can see most egregiously in the video of Talbot’s death).

Geez, I’ve really been ravaging this one. You might ask if there’s anything I enjoyed about Hulk, and to that I say that there were a few things. Honestly, when Hulk actually does start smashing things it’s pretty enjoyable. I also thought that the split-screen shots were pretty cool as well, and the film is shot with the eye of a true artist – I can give Ang Lee that (although he puts that eye to much better use in Life of Pi). I also quite enjoyed the Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno cameo, it made me chuckle and wasn’t too blatant. Finally, I appreciate Hulk for what it is – a risky experiment with the superhero genre which was honestly trying to elevate it. However, unlike some reviewers I do not consider this grounds for absolution, for if I could then Birdemic would fall under the same criteria. I think my younger self was a tad harsh on the film when it came out due to not appreciating its efforts, but I wasn’t totally wrong in my assessment. Hulk is a colossal failure, as both a disappointment for the people who went in expecting a smash ’em up, and just for people who love good movies in general.

3/10

Movie Review: Dredd

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

When I reviewed Judge Dredd, I promised that a comparison-review would be coming in regards to its successor, 2012’s Dredd. Naturally, with the DVD/Blu-Ray now out, I am delivering on that promise. First off, a bit of background information. I personally had very little interest in the 2000AD universe before seeing the film, and based on the trailer I figured it was going to be a generic action movie. However, about a week before its release, I noticed that Dredd had a staggeringly high rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. This score would dwindle down to about ~75% around the release date, but by then I was sold – I had to see Dredd to get my fill of adrenaline-pumping action.

First off, we’ll focus on just the most important element of an action film, and that is the action itself. In this sense, Dredd delivers from the opening scenes with a blistering car chase which sets the bar for the action and extreme level of violence that is to come. The meat of the film basically revolves around a single set-piece, Die Hard style, as the characters fight their way to the top level of the Peach Tree block. Lamentably, while Dredd came up with this idea first, The Raid: Redemption was released earlier and stole a great deal of thunder for the concept. That said, it certainly is a fantastic set-up for an action film, and works to great effect here.

Dredd punctuates its action sequences with some impressive uses of super slo-mo footage. Normally I dislike slo-mo in action movies because it is either a) gratuitous, b) cliche or c) all of the above (eg, 300 or House of the Dead). Some movies manage to overcome this hurdle because they work the slo-motion sequences into the story (such as Sherlock Holmes), and Dredd is definitely an example of this. In the film, some of the characters take a drug which causes the brain see the world at about 5% its normal speed, and the results are quite striking… especially when the bloodletting begins. Bullets fly and explosions go off in super slo-mo, causing quite the visceral spectacle for the viewer. These sequences also made the 3D used by far the best in any movie I have seen to date.

The integration of spectacle and story are some of the most impressive elements of Dredd actually. The film doesn’t waste time using exposition to set up “Chekhov’s Gun“. Rather, it integrates elements in naturally. For example, foundational world-building is done very quickly at the beginning of the film, but is expanded throughout the run-time: an unobtrusive shot of the sheer, overwhelming scale of the crimes occurring across Megacity 1, Dredd informing his superiors that the bodies in a shootout need pickup to be “recycled”, little snippets about mutation, etc. The script does a great job of pulling us into an incredibly grimdark universe without doing so bluntly (unlike, say, Inception). Anderson’s psychic abilities are another example of this, which we discover ourselves rather than have listed out to us so we know what exactly it is she is capable of. Perhaps my favourite example in the entire film is how we discover that the guns used by the Judges have “special” features… I will say no more, because to ruin the surprise(s) would be an injustice to the script and destroy some truly badass moments.

In terms of characters, Dredd is much stronger than its predecessor. Judge Dredd himself, played by the always-badass Karl Urban, is very true to his character – constantly scowling, morally inflexible and devoted to the law (and no, he doesn’t take his bloody helmet off). Dredd is a force to be reckoned with, an unstoppable embodiment of the law. He is difficult to relate to, but this is part of his character – he is intentionally impenetrable, basically a sci-fi Harry Calahan. While you may not relate to him, you’ll certainly find yourself grinning with glee at the acts of mayhem he produces. I also appreciated that the costume department did not do a literal translation of the comics like they did in the previous film, because the result was pure camp. Instead, they opted for a more practical (and far cooler) costume design which suits his character and the darkness of the universe.

The counter-point to Judge Dredd is the rookie, Judge Anderson. I’ll admit it here and now: I fell in love with Olivia Thirbly’s portrayal of Anderson. Dredd’s the unstoppable badass, but Anderson is the human connection, and Thirbly did a great job of this. Unlike some sidekicks that we could name, Anderson isn’t a burden either – she can keep up with Dredd most of the time, and actually exceeds his abilities in others. Most impressively, this all happens without falling into the usual Hollywood cliches – Anderson is not a love interest (see any boy + girl pairing in an action movie), she is not a man written as a woman (eg, Sarah Connor in Terminator 2) and she is not an aggressive attempt at shoehorning in feminism (eg, The Enforcer). Instead, she is a very natural addition and feels like a real, identifiable character.

Finally, rounding out the important characters is Lena Headey’s sadistic villain, Ma-Ma. The way in which Headey chooses to play her is as a very subdued, but sinister manner. She rarely outwardly displays any signs of aggression, but there is a palpable sense that she would willingly carve up any of the thugs she surrounds herself with should it please her. It might have been interesting to see how a hammier villain would have been in this film, Ma-Ma is certainly a distinct threat to the heroes throughout their ascent to the 200th floor of Peach Trees. One of Ma-Ma’s underlings, Kay, is also given a bit more of a background than you would expect for a common thug, but Dredd, Anderson and Ma-Ma round out the important characters in the story.

While I have given nothing but overwhelming praise for Dredd thus far, I must admit it is far from the best film ever (or even of 2012). However, in a year where many of the biggest films had some major flaws (eg, Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, etc), Dredd stands as one of the few in which its inner-workings are damn-near flawless. While it’s not exactly lofty or revolutionary, its individual components are greased to perfection, making Dredd a great example of why a well-polished work can be better than a intriguing failed experiment. If nothing else, Dredd harkens you back to 80s-style action films with its sheer amount of violence, badass-ery and one-liners, while marrying itself to modern conventions in the process. It’s truly a tragedy that it under-performed at the box office and will likely not see a sequel, but one can always hope.

8/10

Movie Review: Transformers – Dark of the Moon

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

This shouldn’t really a big surprise, but I’m not a big fan of the Transformers film franchise. I was moderately familiar with the series before I saw the Michael Bay movies (mostly thanks to Beast Wars), so it’s not like I went into them with any ill will. I’m not looking back on the series in the post-RotF era – I honestly didn’t care much for the film series from the start. I mean, Transformers was a decent film, but nothing special (even if audiences and critics dubbed it the #1 blockbuster of 2007). Then Revenge of the Fallen came out and cemented the series as a cinematic travesty. Now with this in mind, it shouldn’t be a massive revelation I hadn’t bothered to go see Dark of the Moon until now. I had heard it was an improvement over the previous film, but I decided it was finally time to find out for myself. As usual, spoilers abound.

So, right off the bat, we’re shown the film’s major positives – it features some jaw-dropping special effects and action on a massive scale (clearly that was the intention, to start the film on a high-note). Even though the battle on Cybertron is very short, the effects and action here are incredible. The opening also highlights something that I didn’t think I’d say – the film’s conspiracy-theorizing story is actually a very interesting opening to the film. The film would probably have been better if they had dispensed with the Cybertron opening and instead made the moon expedition more of a mystery to the viewer, but suffice to say that the film opens on a positive note.

The effects and action are not limited to the opening either. You’d think this would be obvious, but I actually found the effects in Transformers and Revenge of the Fallen to be rather weak, mostly due to the fugly robot designs which made it nearly impossible to discern what was happening on-screen. Consequently, the action scenes were a mess – a problem compounded by the long stretches of half-baked plot between these parts. In Dark of the Moon however, I actually didn’t have any trouble with the designs making the clashes murky. While I still hate how the ugly Transformers have been designed, it’s less of an issue this time around.

And… uh… that’s all the good stuff I have to say about the movie. Really? I had more to praise in Judge Dredd than this… sheesh, well onto the first problem: plot. A lot of people (and Transformer fans in particular) will argue that plot doesn’t matter in a movie about robots fighting robots, but you’re just plain dead-wrong. Why settle for a piece of crap action movie when you could be watching something like Terminator 2 – a movie about robots fighting robots which also happens to have a great story (not to mention far superior action)? And, predictably, Dark of the Moon screws the pooch. The opening minutes of the film establish this: the half-destroyed Autobot ship somehow travels an unspecified number of light years to reach the Moon… how did this happen? Did it teleport? Did it have some sort of “hyper-drive” that somehow was set off and then transported it to the Moon? Was the Cybertron war taking place millions of years ago? Of course, no one really thinks its necessary to explain this, just leaving it up to editing to conveniently hand-wave it away: it happened, that’s all that matters. That wouldn’t be so bad if this sort of thing wasn’t a hallmark of the series – for example, the Autobots appear, disappear and get captured based on whether its convenient for the writer to keep them around, even if they weren’t in the area to begin with (eg, Optimus and Sentinel Prime are hanging out in the desert alone, and then suddenly are barreling down the freeway with the other Autobots with no explanation). In a particularly hilarious example of this, Optimus gets sidelined for much of the final battle because (and this is not a joke) he flew into a bunch of cables and had to get disentangled. Seriously. Similarly, the film doesn’t really seem to keep its fiction in mind. The whole evil plan is tenuous to begin with, but taken into account with the action of the previous 2 films, it makes no sense at all. Furthermore, Sentinel Prime states that the film’s MacGuffin, the teleporting pillar things, “Defies your [human] physics”… First off, did he mean our understanding of physics, because I’m pretty sure physics aren’t confined to Earth. Secondly, what does Sentinel know of the human understanding of physics? Did he attend an elementary school science class before heading back to NEST to meet with the CIA director? Admittedly, many of these quibbles are rather nit-picky, but they break the sense of immersion in the film’s story (or attempt at one), and they happen constantly.

The next major issue with the film is the characters. I can’t think of many other series which feature so many genuinely infuriating characters. Foremost amongst these is Shia LaBeouf’s deservingly derided Sam Witwicky. I don’t have a huge problem with Shia as an movie star, but the Transformer movies have done him no favours. To make matters worse, Dark of the Moon is by far the worst performance I have seen of his. During the first half of the movie, Sam freaks out constantly and at damn-near everybody, coming across as nothing more than a whiny, entitled bitch. Thankfully, when the shit hits the fan, he finally nuts up and shuts up, but even then he isn’t exactly an endearing character – he’s just finally bearable. Furthermore, the authority figures are totally justified in saying that Sam is just a messenger (which is what made him all whiny in the first place): he isn’t qualified to risk his life with the Autobots at all, and the fact that he isn’t dead yet comes down to little more than sheer luck.

Next on the firing-line: the much-maligned Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. You can tell how deeply a woman is going to be developed when the very first shot of them in the movie is focused squarely on their ass. She is written in as nothing more than sex appeal to horny teenagers, and doesn’t do anything but conform to this. Considering this, RHW wasn’t nearly as bad in the film as I had heard (she, like basically everyone else, was merely serviceable), but I was not convinced that she would ever fall for Sam Witwicky. (By the way, if you don’t see the mindless pandering of women to horny men as a problem [or even as a positive], then fine by me – but this is my opinions on the matter, so write your own damn review if that’s offends you.)

As for the other characters, they’re mostly just an annoyance more than anything else, or are just plain useless. Brains and Wheelie are literally useless and unfunny “comic relief” characters, Sam’s parents don’t do anything of value (and are as irritating as ever), Simmons is pointless and the new additions are either wasted or nothing of note. For example, John Malkovich’s character is utterly pointless and wasted, disappearing without having caused any sort of important impact on the plot. As for the Transformers themselves, they’re about the same as ever (although the stereotypically “Spanish” one made me cringe every time he spoke… which, thankfully, was less than you’d think), including excessive pop-culture references and terrible attempts at humour.

In all, the movie is just way too overindulgent (in more ways than one) and was in serious need of some finer editing. For starters, the movie was way too damn long, and would have fared much better if somebody had cut out the terrible attempts at humour, useless characters and pointless side-plots. Secondly, the movie itself promotes a sense of materialistic excess, reveling in ridiculously expensive cars, houses, etc. Finally, it sometimes just shifts tones in an ill-advised manner. For example, the piano ballad at the beginning of the invasion was very tonally “off”, and doesn’t really jive with the expressly mindless (and distinctly not serious) tone of the film itself. In addition, for a film marketed towards kids, the violence is pretty shocking: robots get torn apart, decapitated and evicerate (by the “good guys” no less), and that’s in addition to mass numbers of people being vapourized and killed on-screen (and having their skulls go flying out at one point) and the numerous counts of collateral damage (including some caused by the Autobots themselves). As an adult, I’m cool with this in my sorts of movies, but in a kid-oriented movie I don’t think I’d want to expose them to this sort of thing until they were closer to the PG-13 age bracket.

Bottom-line: Unless you’re already a fan, there is literally no reason to recommend Transformers: Dark of the Moon, other than the special effects and the last 40 minutes of non-stop action. Thank God Battleship crashed and burned, so we shouldn’t see as many summer blockbusters like this in the future.

4/10

Post-Script: I swear, I’m not just looking for movies to ravage on this blog, but it has just sort of been the trend. I’ll review Dredd next, then you’ll get to hear me gush.

Movie Review: Judge Dredd (1995)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

One of my favourite movies of 2012 is the criminally under-performing, modern-cult-classic, Dredd (which I will review as well when I get my Blu-Ray/DVD copy). I honestly didn’t have any interest in the 2000AD universe before I saw Dredd, but the film completely sold me on it (I’m currently eyeing some Block War minis and Dredd/Anderson omnibuses). However, after seeing it I knew I now had to see the original, oft-derided Stallone vehicle, Judge Dredd. Obviously I had heard the fan complaints (“he takes off his helmet? OMGWTF!?!”), but as an extremely casual fan of the universe I will review Judge Dredd with a bit less of a bias. Also, note that there are some spoilers in this review.

First off, despite its lack of authenticity in terms of character and tone, the Judge Dredd Megacity One strikes me as more faithful to the source material than the Dark Knight-esque, reality-grounded city that appears in Dredd. In fact, the first 5 minutes alone are dedicated to establishing the world, which was a great idea. That said, as an adaptation, the movie comes across exceptionally cheesy and tacky. I guess that’s a side-effect of the pre-Nolan era of comic book movies, but the sets and costumes all looks really plastic and are hard to take seriously in any way. The costumes are straight out of the comics, but just don’t make sense… the Judges are supposed to be fighting crime, so they choose to do so with a giant eagle on their shoulder and spandex? It may look cool in a comic, but this just doesn’t traslate well into movies at all.

Another good thing I can say is that Stallone certainly looks the part of the gruff and grizzled Dredd… sure, as soon as he opens his mouth he isn’t exactly convincing, but in terms of physicality, he’s a good fit for the role. Of course, Stallone completely overwhelms the role, supplanting Dredd as a character and replacing him with your typical Stallone action-vehicle, but we’ll get into that soon. As for the other cast members, Armand Assante as Rico was very enjoyable as the hammy villain-type and seemed to be having a blast. Diane Lane was also serviceable as Judge Hershey. Rob Shneider’s Fergee is the one that is derided most though, and rightly so. He is one of the most absolutely useless characters I have ever seen in a movie, and it boggles my mind why they ever chose to include him in the film at all. He literally does nothing, and just serves as an irritating tag-along and mouth-piece… I guess he disables a robot near the end, but it’s not like Dredd couldn’t do that himself (and in much more spectacular fashion too). Shneider alone screws his movie A LOT.

The entire plot just becomes a way to service yet another Stallone actioner, and one of the cheesy 90s ones at that. It feels a lot like Demolition Man, and while a lot of people like that movie (I’m not among them), it’s not even as fun as that movie was. The plot’s pretty typical: Dredd, the upstanding lawbringer, is arrested for murder… and then proceeds to fight this charge with a hell of a lot more murder, resisting arrest, etc. Obviously, this is completely against character and unintentionally turns him into a massive hypocrite. If there were some sort of irony to this it would make more sense, but the film doesn’t suggest that at all. In fact, it serves to glorify the justice system, rather than satirize it like the comics do. The ending, where Dredd drives down the street with his motorcycle to the cheers of the assembled crowd was just too ridiculously/senselessly patriotic to fathom… also why does the base start to blow up at the end? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but it seems to me that it literally just self-destructed for no reason.

In all honesty, I’m making it sound like I hated Judge Dredd, but I didn’t really. I’ve seen way worse movies than this within the same week. In fact, it wasn’t bad for the first half of the film (in part because Rob Schneider was sidelined), but it was the second half where I really started to dislike it, and where the negative points I have mentioned creeped in. There were some good lines too, such as:
Fergee: 5 years? No! No! I had no choice! They were killing each other in there!
Judge Dredd: You could have gone out the window.
Fergee: 40 floors? It would have been suicide!
Judge Dredd: Maybe, but it’s legal.
However, these funny bits are juxtaposed with some absolutely abyssmal lines, which are further brought down by horrible delivery, such as:
Judge Dredd: There is a way in. 10 years ago, 2 refugees figured it out, through the city’s incinerator, there’s a flame burst twice a minute, that means they have only 30 seconds to run through before it flames again.
Seriously, who wrote that? Don’t tell me that was actually in the script? Was Stallone even awake when he said that? In any case, guess which half of the movie those 2 bits of script were from. Shouldn’t be too hard.

I AM DER LARRR!!!

Bottom-line: Judge Dredd was just a bad movie, even for a casual movie-goer. For a full-blown Judge Dredd fan, it must have been torture. As far as cheesy actioners go, you could probably do worse, but if you’re that easy to please then you probably don’t even read reviews anyway.

4.5/10

Movie Review – Paintball (2009)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Hey readers, part of my intention of starting this blog is that I want to get a career by writing. Obviously, something like this is a great way to exercise that desire… and who knows, if this thing gets a decent following it can be a good thing to put on a resume. With that in mind, I’ve come up with a great way to make me post often on this blog: movie reviews!

This first review combines 2 of my interests – horror/action cinema and paintball in the 2009 film, Paintball. I first heard about this movie from a friend of mine who had seen it. He was telling me stuff about acid-filled paintballs, psychotic mercenaries and people battling it out to the death… he said it wasn’t that great, but honestly, it sounded pretty awesome to me! However, while the movie has some decent ideas, they’re wasted for the most part. It’s like Predator, minus everything that makes that movie good. Be warned, spoilers below… not that there’s really that much to spoil.

First off, for a movie called Paintball, there is very little actual paintballing going on. The whole idea is dropped pretty quickly once the bodies start piling up. However, I really question how much anyone involved knew about the sport. In some ways it seems like they’re enthusiasts (one of the plot points makes me think that the production process went something along the lines of “hey guys, I just got a RAP4 Grenade Launcher, let’s make a movie about it!”), but in some very key ways the movie represents paintball horrendously. Case-in-point: the film is supposedly starring professional scenario paintballers, but literally less than a minute into the game they’re all taking off their masks. The #1 rule of paintball is always keep your freaking mask on!!! I think the intention is that it’s supposed to help you know which character is which instead of them being covered by a mask, but the fact that the movie gives us no real attachment doesn’t help this notion at all. Furthermore, some of the characters are wearing goggles instead of full-on masks, so why not just give them all goggles if you’re trying not to cover their faces? Or how about different mask designs per character to differentiate them? Not that hard people, and honestly that’s one of the main ways I differentiate people when I’m playing the damn game itself…

Anyway, paintballing gripes aside, the characters are just plain badly presented. We’re given a very brief intro to them, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything defining about any of them. One was called “Fred” I think, but I only remember that because his brains get bashed out and they start screaming his name when it happens. It doesn’t help that the sound editing was horrendous, I seriously could not understand what the characters were saying half the time, especially outside the heat of combat. As a result, the movie devolves into a bunch of screaming people running around and getting killed off one-by-one.

Honestly, I could have forgiven some bad characters if the film had had some other redeeming elements. However, Paintball can’t do much right. When it’s on-screen, the violence is pretty brutal, but not really all that satisfying. Most of the deaths are filmed with a thermal vision camera, which is rather cool at times, but it is used too often. The plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either. For example… at the start, there’s clearly about a dozen people opening fire on the characters (judging by the amount of paint flying at them). However, the movie later reveals that there’s only 1 mercenary out there killing people. So… who was doing the shooting? The movie does seem to imply that there’s another team running around out there, but we never really see this for certain (and it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for them to be doing the shooting since they were being hunted before the others).

Another major complaint about the movie – it’s just boring. Seriously, even with the frequent brutal deaths, I wanted to turn it off after about 30 minutes. We’re given no investment in the characters and no pay-off when they finally get offed. As much of a piece of crap The Final Destination was (a movie series I will likely go into at some point in the future), at least that movie got the payoff right. Paintball can’t even do this right. Throughout the movie they’re getting the parts to build “something”. At the end we realize it’s a paintball grenade launcher loaded with acid-filled paintballs. Epic, I’ve sat through 70 minutes of this crap, at least I’ll get to see someone killed with that thing… haha. You wish. When she goes to fire it, the gun literally does not fire. Seriously, what the hell?! What kind of screenwriter hypes a weapon like that and then does not use it once? Hell, the characters don’t even use the acid-filled paintballs… which, y’know, might be handy when you’re being stalked by a psychopath who has killed everyone else in your group.

On the positive side, I’ve gotta hand it to the director, Daniel Benmayor – the movie looks fairly slick. He has an obvious love for faux long-takes and an interesting style. With some reining in (long-takes are good, but they’re excessive in this), a good script and a bit of a budget, he could actually make something pretty good. Unfortunately, while Benmayor can view it as a learning experience, to us it’s nothing but a piece of crap. Bottom-line – this movie sucked.

Final Score: 3/10