The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Review #2583: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Cast:

Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell), Maria Bello (Evelyn Carnahan-O'Connell), John Hannah (Jonathan Carnahan), Russell Wong (General Ming Guo), Liam Cunningham (Mad Dog Maguire), Luke Ford (Alex O'Connell), Isabella Leong (Lin), Michelle Yeoh (Zi Yuan), Jet Li (Qin Shi Huang), Anthony Wong (General Yang), Jessey Meng (Colonel Choi), David Calder (Professor Roger Wilson), Albert Kwan (Chu Wah), with James Bradford (Jameson), and Freda Foh Shen (the Narrator) Directed by Rob Cohen (#043 - The Fast and the Furious, #924 - The Boy Next Door, #1089 - Stealth)

Review: 

"I think it's the charisma of the idea of the undead and how they are cursed because they can't be successful denying mortality. I think we ascribe powers to the undead--if something has transcended death, it can't be normal. And whenever something unsettling has power, it makes a great villain. Movies are made by great villains, not by the heroes. A movie like this depends on how bad the bad guy is, so the good guys can rise to the occasion."

You know, with The Mummy [1999] (as devised by Stephen Sommers, Lloyd Fonvielle, Kevin Jarre, which in turn was a loose remake of the 1932 movies of the same name), you could see the appeal of having a good ol' adventure within a loose deal of romance within tinges of horror, and, well, some humor. The Mummy Returns [2001]...was almost as decent. Maybe it was rushed, maybe it was a bit too hollow to really make for a quality sequel, but it was still a crowd-pleaser. Seven long years later, there was a third The Mummy movie for folks of the new millennium to enjoy. I suppose it seems timely to cover a film that won't even be considered a "direct sequel" to Returns (2001) by 2027 because somehow, someway, there is an impending Mummy movie (okay, there was that one Mummy movie released in 2026, but let's not get into that now*). By 2004, Stephen Sommers, director of the previous Mummy movies, was not keen on coming back for a third movie, feeling that it would just be too hard to make it really come together like the first two, although he did co-produce it; directing duties went to Rob Cohen*. Screenwriting duties went to the duo of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (you might recognize them from such scripts as Lethal Weapon 4 [1998], the Shanghai movies [2000, 2003]). Made on a larger budget than the last two films (estimated at over $145 million), the movie was a mild success with audiences.

It's not exactly a mummy movie, if you want to be technical, since the Emperor and his army is actually just encased in clay as part of a curse that draws upon actual history, mainly the Terracotta Army (the real Army is a collection of ceramic sculptures of the armies of Emperor Qin Shi Huang that was buried with him in his mausoleum). Now, are we talking about archeology (because sometimes I have links for that) or we talking about a middling sequel? Honestly, I didn't have many expectations for this movie, mainly because the recasting of Rachel Weisz for Maria Bello could not possibly be a good omen for a film that will also feature further moments within the parent-son dynamic of adventure that surely isn't a discount version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (incidentally, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out two months before Dragon Emperor). And, well, it is a pretty mediocre movie, filled with possibly even less energy between the people you want to see (our human goofballs stumbling around in the history books). But it is sometimes funny within all of the stops thrown in to try and elevate this shambling spectacle that honestly is almost more interesting than the previous movie. You get CG catlike yeti, Shangri-La (who else but crib from Lost Horizon?), attempts to look like 1946 that doesn't really look that timely, further CG amusements involving dragons, the Great Wall having a litany of dead folks coming out of it, and more within a 112-minute runtime that somehow seems rushed to oblivion. Fraser* just doesn't have that much to genuinely do besides be stuck in cartoonish dynamics with a present-only-in-spirit Bello and present-in-theory Ford, who each can't deliver anything other than tired remarks and only hints of an actual connection. How hard is it to have gone with a plan to move on from Arnold Vosloo in the whole "evil mummy with a reign of terror"? Evidently, not too easy of a plan. It isn't even worth trying to see Li or Yeoh try to pull the local flavor of "go-go mystic bullshit" because honestly, there is barely anything worth mentioning that you haven't seen in some way before in constrained drama (they are the ones who start the movie, mind you, hence the narrator credit) that goes for little charm and little everything, honestly. Hannah might as well be sleepwalking through the experience, which isn't something worth saying for the only other regular besides Fraser to be in all three movies. After a while, you really do just go through the motions of watching this movie do the bare minimum. The magic of the first movie was those folks (Fraser, Hannah, Weisz) intermixing with mayhem for actual warmth and fun. The second just ran with the spectacle at the expense of really challenging anything and the third just feels tired when undead folks are going around mowing each other down or in its evitable finish of folks getting the girl and so on. You can do better than checking out this middle-of-the-road movie.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars,

Song of the day!

*Honestly, I didn't have time to see it. Who the hell releases a mummy movie in April? Also, who the hell thought it would make sense to call it "Lee Cronin's The Mummy"? Are you kidding me? Really? Oh but it was to alleviate the confusion from other "The Mummy" movies - shit, just put the year in the title to really set yourself apart. Quibble over.

*In 2019, Cohen was accused of sexually assaulting his trans daughter as a child. Incidentally, he has not directed a movie since 2018.

*There are some movies that have future Academy Award winning actors, why not two with Brendan Fraser and Michelle Yeoh here?

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

Review #2580: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

Cast: 

Michael Sheen (Lucian; Alexander Carroll as Young Lucian), Bill Nighy (Viktor), Rhona Mitra (Sonja; Olivia Taylforth as Young Sonja), Steven Mackintosh (Andreas Tanis), Kevin Grevioux (Raze), David Aston (Coloman), Elizabeth Hawthorne (Orsova), Craig Parker (Sabas), Larry Rew (Kosta), Jared Turner (Xristo), Timothy Raby (Janosh), and Tania Nolan (Luka) Directed by Patrick Tatopoulos.

Review: 

Sure, why not make the third Underworld movie serve as a prequel? You might remember that in Underworld (2003), there was this whole thing about everyday life having a group of folks around that don't like each other with vampires and "Lycans" (who among us shortens a word to make up a name), with one particular hunter getting into the funny business of finding out that vampire elders are, well, not much different from Lycans in what you might call a twist on Romeo & Juliet (okay, one person called it that at the time, but hey*). So, with the realization that Lycans were basically slaves to the vampires until they made their fight for freedom, who better to direct than a first-timer? In fairness to Patrick Tatopoulos, the Greek-Frenchman had directed a few music videos and a short before making this film as his directorial debut, having done, well, plenty of work in effects, such as the previous two Underworld films; as it stands, this is his only feature directorial effort. Here's five credited writers: Danny McBride, Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain for the screenplay and Len Wiseman, Robert Orr & McBride for the story. Things returned to normal with Awakening in 2012 (which had Wiseman return to serve as a co-writer).

Remember when the first movie had Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy? Remember when they ended up dead at the end of the movie because, well, they just had to go? It's kind of funny watching a movie with two semi-interesting people in it that can't die here but are trying to make a go of lines such as "You're a credit to your race"* and the ever-developing locale of blue, grey, blue, grey, and maybe a third distinguishable color. So, basically, it's a side-step of quality from Evolution that at least looks like they tried to make you care for the fight of independence (with just a smidge of sex on a cliff*). The cringing of knowing it stinks at least has a smile for what they tried to do in their blue-grey medieval aim. There is a certain type of charm that Sheen brings for a pedestrian type of character that I'm sure had to have been thought of as akin to Moses by at least one filmmaker (you just know someone wanted to say, "let my PEOPLE go!", be honest) that basically keeps the movie afloat with his energy that sells most of what you like to see in acts of defiance that gives some credibility to wanting to see where things are going to go. Sure, you wish there was more time with the dazzling Mitra*, because you want more magnetism to really clear a path for inevitable tragedy, but they are fairly likable to watch in the calamity of forced roles. Nighy makes for a quality adversary in the type of elder arrogance that has both cunning and one-sided vision for what is right within the land of vampires, people, and the ones beneath each (which namely involves money because what else is there to do with castles and horses). I honestly forgot that Mackintosh and Grevioux each appeared in one of the earlier movies and I feel like that indicates the quality of these goofy movies not really rising up to par with the bare minimum presented with the first movie in resembling something cool (vampires, wolves, dark outfits), but I digress. It gives you people getting hit with weapons that aren't just guns and even sees folks hurt by the sun or swords (some of them even live, go figure). You get some decent-looking effects within a fairly efficient runtime of 89 minutes that is sometimes entertaining and may likely give you what you expect in "fill-in things", which I guess is better than nothing. So it goes.

 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day: September 21 edition

*Generally I don't care about gossip and personal lives, but it's kinda funny that Beckinsale met her future husband Len Wiseman when they were doing Underworld (2003)...while in a partnership with Michael Sheen. 

*Not to make a thing about it, but I can't remember if there's even a single black vampire in this film, but the Lycans sure have their guys that decided being one of them is better than being a slave.

*What, too cute of a phrase? Movie Night endorses sex and violence in horror and action movies, naturally.

*Double note: making a reference to The Ten Commandments may or may not sound a bit less cheesy than playing Tony Blair three times. And as for Mitra, hey, I still remember her time on Boston Legal because good golly.

Resident Evil: Extinction.

Review #2579: Resident Evil: Extinction.

Cast:  

Milla Jovovich (Alice), Ali Larter (Claire Redfield), Oded Fehr (Carlos Oliveira), Iain Glen (Dr. Isaacs), Ashanti (Nurse Betty), Mike Epps (L.J.), Spencer Locke (K-Mart), Jason O'Mara (Albert Wesker), Christopher Egan (Mikey), Madeline Carroll (White Queen), Matthew Marsden (Slater), Linden Ashby (Chase), and Joe Hursley (Otto) Directed by Russell Mulcahy (#2575 - The Shadow)

Review: 

“Horror films have always been a great passion of mine, so it’s great to get my hands on such a fantastic script. Visually, Resident Evil: Extinction is different from the previous two films.  The first one was quite claustrophobic; the next one was outside on wet night streets, and now, we take them out into the desert.  It has a very western feel but is futuristic, crazy and creepy.”

You might remember that Resident Evil (2002) was basically a piece of crap from Paul W. S. Anderson where the studio (as originally started by Constantin Film, who had the rights to the series since 1997) decided that rejecting George A. Romero and others was just peachy. And then came Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), which continued the road of going basically nowhere while namedropping a few video game character names that I'm sure fans of the series (as created by Shinji Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara for Capcom) at least had a ball with for a second. I called it "hack spectacle" and don't really regret my assessment of a movie that spends most of its time at night. The third film of the series saw a veteran director with yet another Anderson script with Russell Mulcahy, who Anderson said had a "very distinct visual style" and apparently had storyboarded the film when he had their first meeting with the producers. For fun, enjoy this one quote from Anderson at the time of promoting the movie: "It's all part of trying to deliver a movie-going experience that satisfies the fans of the game but also provides a fun cinematic experience for a broader audience that has never played a Resident Evil game." With primary filming in Mexico (with various sets designed by Eugenio Caballero with special effects covered by Patrick Tatopoulos and his studio), the movie was enough of a hit, to, well, where Anderson ended up directing the next three movies starting with Afterlife in 2010.

If the producers really thought that these films felt like epics that were meant to keep things going for a saga of entertainment (read: money money)...they didn't really get as far as they believed with three straight stinkers in a row. Technically, this movie is the more interesting of the three because it at least simplifies things into the most obvious ways possible: crib from Mad Max (with more sand than brain cells) with the setting of the world going to hell and just hope people just go with killer crows and further "Alice is just doing this thing now because screw it" moments and at least meet it half-way. There is nothing new to really say about Jovovich besides the digital airbrushing done on close-ups because, well, it's the same wooden stuff that can't sell anything besides a few kicks even with the new development of, wait for it, multiple clones (ones seen with and without clothes) and further use of telekinesis because, screw it. There isn't much to connect one with the other besides being an action hero that can't lose and also can't make you think of them as anything other than being a pastiche of a pastiche. Larter plays it basically as the catch-all leader/buddy that makes you yearn for Final Destination (hey, you probably liked it more than me*) in actual conviction of the words spoken. The disposal of returning folks in Fehr and Epps, one in a pointless death and the other in a middling sacrifice, is regrettable because nobody really makes an impression in the film when not focused on, well, Alice (having a character named after Kmart and "I guess he does computers" is about all you get). Glen and his plan of what is basically "well, if you can't domesticate them, make a new type of zombie" is not particularly that interesting, mainly because most of the time in a locale less exciting than a board room (to say nothing of whatever is supposed to be the thing with O'Mara playing someone named Wesker that does even less).  So, yeah, it's a 5/10 in the face of such ridiculous aspects but at least you can see a movie try to break out...and not stick at anything. As a whole, the same lazy spectacle of a few decent zombie effects mixed in with middling action and an even sillier story makes for pretty much more of the same stuff you saw in the other two movies. But so it goes.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Who among us doesn't get mad at a movie being a stinky bag of nothing? 

3000 Miles to Graceland.

Review #2578: 3000 Miles to Graceland.

Cast: 

Kurt Russell (Michael Zane), Kevin Costner (Thomas Jonathan "Murphy" Liebling), Courteney Cox (Cybil Waingrow), Christian Slater (Hanson), Kevin Pollak (U.S. Marshal Damitry), David Arquette (Gus), Jon Lovitz (Jay Peterson), Howie Long (Jack), Thomas Haden Church (U.S. Marshal Quigley), Bokeem Woodbine (Franklin), Ice-T (Hamilton), David A. Kaye (Jesse Waingrow), Louis Lombardi (Otto Sinclair), and Paul Anka (Pit Boss #1) Directed by Demian Lichenstein.

Review:

Believe it or not, I really was thinking of this as a potential "Acknowledged in August" candidate for some time. How could I resist? A Kurt Russell movie where he goes around dressed up like Elvis in an action flick that was a flop? How could it go wrong? Believe it or not, the original script for the film was done by a first-timer: Richard Recco, a New York electrician (as noted in this L.A. Times article of the time, which noted that he liked to paint in addition to being in an electricians union). Inspired by his love of the mystique of Elvis and thinking "hey, I could do that" when seeing an action movie, he studied the scripts of movies such as Dog Day Afternoon and True Romance for what became, well, a Hollywood movie. Demian Lichenstein (known mostly for his work in music videos and obscure movies), interested in a previous Recco script (which had been submitted into a Sundance Film Festival competition), got interested enough in the Elvis thing to where he brought it up to Kevin Costner in a meeting that got him to be interested as well. Lichenstein made enough contributions to the script by this point to where he shares the credit with Recco for the credits. The Franchise Pictures production apparently had enough creative differences to where Russell and Costner each made their own "cut" of the film to screen, with Russell focusing more on the romcom aspects and Costner doing, well, the version you see now. Made on a budget of over $47 million, the film was a substantial flop (yes, people chose Down to Earth and Hannibal on opening week), making less than half of the budget as a whole.

Naturally, the movie is set in Last Vegas during "International Elvis Week" where a bunch of robbers dress up in jumpsuits and glasses to get millions of dollars to get in and get out, and good lord, I swear this is somehow lower on the totem pole for Vegas heists than the 1960 version of Ocean's 11. How could the Costner version have passed? What fresh hell was present in the Russell "version" that things would've been better with a movie that starts with a fight between CG-rendered scorpions? I can't really say it would've been a better movie if it just focused on the heist and these robbers (mainly because it feels designed to short-change Slater, Woodbine, and Arquette*, with the latter not even being depicted getting shot to death), but good lord, this is just a listless movie to slog through, especially for 125 minutes. You could be listening to an entire Elvis album (okay I don't do albums, but even playing six of his songs would give you more of his stuff than what you get here, since they barely do any Elvis songs). Older folks might know that Russell played Elvis in a John Carpenter-directed TV movie in 1979 and also briefly acted in that Presley vehicle It Happened at the World's Fair (as released in 1963, where he kicked him in the shins). This is basically the litmus test for how much you like Russell as a presence in movies because even in crappy fare, he at least gives the idea of a neat conman more than, well, trying to stay on the level of Cox and survive the rest of the mayhem, which naturally rests on the lead surviving not one, but two gunshots because, wait for it, he was ready with a bullet-proof vest (what, never see a zombie movie?).  The most interesting about Costner's character is that he plays someone resentful of not being able to prove that they are the bastard son of Elvis. 

As I tried to shrug my shoulders at the sheer lunacy of taking that into account, I also had to try and play fair with an actor that I don't really find myself that fond of besides, what, Field of Dreams or Bull Durham* (Dances with Wolves lends credence to the theory that you can see a movie as an 8/10 but not actually love it that much)? This performance, resembling the ramblings of a homeless man (well...*), may actually make you appreciate The Postman (1997), because at least he seemed like he wanted to actually have fun with his weird ass fable as opposed to whatever the hell his deal is meant to be here. Aside from basically killing or blowing up anything that walks into his path, it reeks of a parody and yet he plays it so seriously and so joylessly that it doesn't even matter by the time the character finally kicks the bucket. There is very little energy for me to talk about Cox and the varied attempts at comedy (in a confused movie that has moms abandoning their kids to go to Idaho, because screw it), so why even try? Who cares what she tries to give in this movie? (hell, let's throw real questions: did anyone actually like Friends?) Having to spend any time with her or the on-screen son in Kaye (a precocious pickpocket kid - what a twist) probably makes a good tribute to the Elvis movies, specifically the corny parts you skip before hearing a song. So, in the unceremonious cleaning out of Slater, Woodbine, and Arquette in the first 40 minutes, you get a supporting cast (not counting Cox/Kaye because, well, no) of even more people who are given little to really do with Lovitz, Long, Ice-T, Church & Pollak, because good lord, how do you waste that much potential? There's just little zip to the lines given for basically filler (i.e. who cares about the authorities being one step behind in a movie where a robber getting away with crime basically seems certain), as if the array of editing choices (2001 era, woah buddy!) was supposed to be the showstopper. You don't care for the heist (what's to worry?), you don't care for the "romance", and you don't care for the villain, and at a certain point in the array of deaths (such as say, a "draw your weapon" one), you just want to get to the climax because at least it'll just be Russell and Costner trying to one-up each other. Simply put, what you get here is the ultimate take-it-or-leave-it stinker: not terrible but not nearly average enough to slip by for anything other than days of having absolutely nothing better to spend time with for lazy action days.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Still not the best baseball movie. 

*What, who else doesn't drive to Taco Bell?

*Wrestling fans might remember this was the time when Arquette "won" the World Heavyweight Championship by this vignette, as done during the making of 3000 Miles to Graceland - WCW Monday Nitro - 1,000 Miles to Slamboree (Kurt Russell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox)

Speed Racer.

Review #2574: Speed Racer.

Cast: 

Emile Hirsch (Speed Racer; Nicholas Elia as Young Speed Racer), Christina Ricci (Trixie; Ariel Winter as Young Trixie), John Goodman (Pops Racer), Susan Sarandon (Mom Racer), Matthew Fox (Racer X / Rex Racer; Scott Porter as Young Rex Racer), Roger Allam (E.P. Arnold Royalton), Paulie Litt (Spritle Racer), Benno Fürmann (Inspector Detector), Hiroyuki Sanada (Mr. Musha), Rain (Taejo Togokahn), Richard Roundtree (Ben Burns), Kick Gurry (Sparky), John Benfield (Cruncher Block), Christian Oliver (Snake Oiler), Ralph Herforth (Jack "Cannonball" Taylor), Yu Nan (Horuko Togokahn), Nayo K. Wallace (Minx), and Melvil Poupaud (Johnny "Goodboy" Jones) Directed by The Wachowskis (#1272 - The Matrix)

Review: 

"We had that exact conversation so many times.  The whole impetus for 'Speed Racer' came out of the fact that we are visually-thinking people.  We go to art galleries and art museums all the time.  We go into the Art Institute and every room there, there are paintings that look completely and utterly different from the other rooms.  But in cinema, everything looks the same.  And it's a really aggressive straight-jacket, aesthetically.  We started talking about cubism, for instance, and we started talking about could you make a cubist film?  And we realized that if you try to make a cubist film for adults, you will end up like Picasso, running from the angry mob when he first showed Guernica.  They wanted to kill him.  Literally.  It's because adults… they reject change, and an aesthetic change is too aggressive a death for them.  Every generation experiences aesthetic death, and when you really assault an aesthetic, people freak out.  But we said that kids are okay with aesthetic change." - The Wachowskis

Not all adaptations are created equal. It was originally known as Mach GoGoGo in its native Japan that was created by Tatsuo Yoshida, who previously did an automobile racing comic with Pilot Ace. It started out as a manga in 1966 and became its own anime in 1967 that took inspiration from Viva Las Vegas (specifically the image shown with Elvis) and Goldfinger. The American localization changed it to Speed Racer (which saw the character "Go Mifune" morph into "Speed Racer") with plenty of editing and dubbing from Peter Fernandez. Sure, there were various TV adaptations of the franchise in the years that followed with The New Adventures of Speed Racer (1993), Mach GoGoGo/Speed Racer X (1997), and Speed Racer: The Next Generation (2008; made to promote the film), but, well, I think you see which one stuck around in people's heads (for me, I've seen clips of the 60s show, namely ones that make light of the English dub that selectively use clips that make it sound like Speed is a sociopath). As early as 1992, Warner Bros. wanted to make a movie adaptation, and over the years the project saw various turnover (Johnny Depp was once cast as the title character, for example). Eventually, by 2006, the folks who recently finished the Matrix trilogy (at the time) in the Wachowskis were hired to write and direct in what became quite the spectacle. Speed Racer came out on May 9, 2008, premiering the same week as What Happens in Vegas...and one week after Iron Man, and I think you know which movie ended up being the big hit of its time (yep, Vegas-nah, just kidding, it actually was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which premiered two weeks after Racer with its own type of curiosity*). The next movie of the Wachowskis came with Cloud Atlas (2012), which coincidentally has its own small following.

It's easy to see where the line between "oh hey, the movie is doing this!" and "oh, the movie is really doing this" gets blurred with this movie many, many, many times over. There were parts where one can either roll along with in its "sensibility" or just roll their eyes, such as say, its fluid transitions, its top-heavy fiddling of exposition, or the wavering interest in these characters (if Spritle and Chim Chim fell into a pit, would you miss them? Or Sparky the mechanic?). I pondered over what I experienced with seeing the movie and honestly, I'll give it credit for its passion even I really wanted a bit more. It wants to be bold, it wants to be colorful, it wants to stick out, it wants to just be its thing, and yet somehow, in all of its car-fu and "modern sensibility", it is more of a "good" movie on the track (reminding me of, say, Grand Prix [1966]) than off it. For whatever reason, for me, at least, it just is a much more interesting movie when it tries to be creative about a car race would look if designed by an insane person with green screen as opposed to when it tries to be cute in its dialogue (honestly, when playing with little toy cars as a kid, I was more of a line-'em-up guy more than "here's the story involving guys telling their evil plan" guy). Hirsch is given the job of trying to make a mountain out of a molehill with a role that doesn't really have for him to really do when not in the Mach 5, but at least his earnest innocence does come out for some enjoyment (incidentally, he remains proud of the film). Sure, one wishes they had a little more time to spend with Ricci or the delightful ham in Allam (who among us haven't seen a corporate overlord being a twerp right in front of people and trying to skate along anyway?); Goodman seems to be having a bit more fun than, say, Sarandon, for example.

It just goes and goes for 135 minutes, and you either admire its tenacity (i.e. the equivalent of running around and making stuff up) or you just wait for it to shut up and flush. As silly as it sounds, either give me a racing movie that really does me care about Speed and the dynamic of, take your pick (Speed and his offbeat parents, Speed and his totally-dead brother Racer X*,, or, and this is just taking this too seriously, a dynamic that doesn't stall as long as humanly possible on Speed and Trixie doing the art of kissing*). Sitting around gawking at what is shown from the cars beyond the usual four-wheel action probably would make an interesting experience. You either find its conclusion one of triumph and go (speed racer) for it or go (speed racer) for the remote, and I would say, hey, I could go (speed racer go) enough to say it was worth one viewing. It goes all out for those to see and hear to the point of near-insanity and you probably will at least get where some might call it a "cult classic". I'm not sure if I would see it again, but I at least can say it was worth one trip. It overwhelms and rewards the curious (perhaps now more than ever), for better or worse.

  

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day #1

Song of the day #2, for obvious reasons

Next up: Looking back at a movie I wasn't too big on the first time...

*Remember when trying to survive a nuclear explosion in a lead-lined fridge was a thing to whine about? Looking back, yea, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was pretty neat, and I'll stand on that hill with pride.

*Wonder if the English adaptation was inspired by Son of Dracula with R...a...c...E...r...X.

*Hell, why stop there? Let's just go full crass and have Speed and Trixie do it right on the race track. Sure, you lose the kid market, but you would have a key experiment: can you make a racing movie where the O doesn't automatically stand for octane? On second thought, maybe I should just watch Crash (1996) at some point in time, I keep hearing that movie is sick as hell. I hope you understand that, yes, I love throwing stuff out for notes. 

Snakes on a Plane.

Review #2571: Snakes on a Plane.

Cast: 

Samuel L. Jackson (Agent Neville Flynn), Julianna Margulies (Claire Miller), Nathan Phillips (Sean Jones), Rachel Blanchard (Mercedes Harbont), Flex Alexander (Clarence "Three G's" Dewey), Kenan Thompson (Troy), Keith Dallas (Big Leroy), Sunny Mabrey (Tiffany Engelhard), Bruce James (Ken), Lin Shaye (Grace), Terry Chen (Chen Leong), Elsa Pataky (Maria), Mark Houghton (Agent John Sanders), David Koechner (Rick Archibald), Bobby Cannavale (Special Agent Hank Harris), and Todd Louiso (Dr. Steven Price) Directed by David R. Ellis (#437 - Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, #2137 - Final Festination 2)

Review: 

Hey, this is a month dedicated to the flops from audiences in its time, and this technically counts. 20 years ago, New Line Cinema believed they were on the cusp of a pretty good hit on their hands with an "internet phenomenon"...and then it wasn't. I'm not kidding, there were magazines that put it on the cover and asked if the "Hokey Horror Flick" could "Change The Movie Business". The project was first discussed in 1999 after a Dreamworks executive in Craig Berenson read a script called "Venom" by David Dalessandro, an administrator at the University of Pittsburgh and first-time scriptwriter that had been inspired by reading an article about Indonesian brown tree snakes climbing on cargo planes in World War II and eventually was inspired to have a script, with, well, lots of snakes. Berenson found that script and on a "happy hour" type of party, he pitched it as "Snakes on a Plane" and thought, hey, maybe there is something to it, which is where he got the services of John Heffernan to work on the story. Years of pitching and re-writes (which added one more credited writer with Sebastian Gutierrez) eventually got it to New Line Cinema and Ronny Yu to direct and Jackson to star in it, mainly because of the title. Sure, they quickly lost Yu due to disagreements (which led to the hiring of stuntman-turned filmmaker Ellis, behind films such as Final Destination 2), and sure, New Line tried to rename the project "Pacific Flight 121" (others report it as "Pacific Air 121"), and sure, they initially aimed for a PG-13 rating even during shooting, but eventually there was a movie ready to go for people to speculate on (such as screenwriters) online. New Line aimed to engage with fan-generated speculation and take the movie seriously. Debuting for audiences (with no screenings for critics) on August 18, 2006 (other choices that month included films such as Barnyard, The Descent, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, World Trade Center, Step Up, The Illusionist) and released on a budget of $33 million, the movie made almost double its budget that was labeled as just an "Internet-only phenomenon" and a "dud". Ellis directed three further films (one direct-to-video), with the last being Shark Night in 2011 prior to his sudden death in 2013 at the age of 60.

For a movie that shows at least a dozen people joining the body count movie, it sure doesn't feel like a horror movie (that "hokey" label seems more like a joke). The opening seems more of a reworking of the crap you saw in those Airport movies (27 minutes, mainly) but it eventually becomes obvious where they tried to shoehorn it being an R-rated movie (with the occasional shot of blood). It may interest you to know that most of the snakes in the film are either CG or animatronic, especially the ones that don't attack people or encounter Jackson. I suppose it could make a doubleheader with Cocaine Bear (2023) in the "hey, it's a movie with a title like that, why not?" department*, although most people probably are more spooked by bears than wondering about what type of snake is venomous. To be honest, as a person who actually has had a snake around their shoulders (as I vaguely remember from a trip to a nature center), I'll take the snake over flying right about now, trusting a tin can flying in the air where you could theoretically get blown up or deal with aircraft decompression or deal with, well, a crappy-made plane. I guess I'm stalling at trying to understand what all the fuss about this movie was, which, really, is it known for anything other than that one line said about 80 minutes into its 106-minute runtime about having had enough of these [you know the swear] planes on this ... plane? Anybody? It's an overgrown B-movie made for way too much money to be considered one that has exactly one joke (tongue in cheek because ha ha, get it, it's a movie that can be used in a punchline of a sitcom) and the bare minimum to actually have fun with. You've got three folks better known for TV (Margulies, Alexander, and Thompson*) paired with basically nothing from Phillips for a movie that thinks throwing snakes around the compartments and having the bare minimum of carnage is enough. Nope. I like Jackson, and he seems to be having some fun here, but this is a movie that begs to just be an Air Force One (thought be some as a Die Hard pastiche) ripoff rather than pairing him with basically nothing to really engage with (imagine if it was say...Gans Hruber threatening to release snakes from a time-controlled crate unless he gets money while also motioning to kill the witness anyway - it would be the most delusional movie ever). Creature features can't really reach the levels of Jaws (1975), so folks basically try to get on the level of trying to rise above say, Anaconda [1997] (honestly, that movie might be a bit more interesting, at least it has an actual adversary in the mayhem).

Oh, but you don't need to know much about their personal lives besides the intro, well, I want to at least feel like people are going to go through peril, and it's not saying much when Shaye's character going down under is the highlight of seeing sacrifices and "into the jaws of death" moments (you could count a yapping dog being thrown into the path of a snake, but, well, really?). You'd think going around using a taser on snakes and having a kickboxer character would be enough, but it just feels like a movie going through the motions with an assured feeling of doing enough without actually proving anything. The snakes just aren't that spooky enough to make me unsettled beyond the "will they take down any of the comedy relief?" (get it, the musician with guards is actually a germophobe? get it? get it, one of them gets bit in the ass? get it? get it, the movie rests on the power of PlayStation* flight simulating? get it). There are certain movies that feel like "fast food movies" that basically go through you with one viewing and satisfy the bare minimum, and some of them accomplish the job of satisfying the general expectation laid out by its viewer (action movie with explosions, horror movie with scares*, whatever). Snakes on a Plane just feels like microwaved leftovers: you've done this before and you just don't feel like it matters to actually do it again (to say nothing of those mockblusters that come out from folks such as The Asylum - a waste of time if there ever was one!*). Some movies can get on by with an decent lead among its cast and middling tension, but this is one that has no actual fangs in it that results in an overhyped, overblown mediocrity.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Next up: who knows? 

*Also the department of "includes kids in the peril but in the mildest possible way that totally isn't cowardly". 

*The three in particular for 2006 was ER*, One on One and Saturday Night Live. Anyway, The only modern TV show I really got into when it was *new* was Lucifer (before Fox was too stupid to cancel it) and The Blacklist. as for Margulies, what the hell is a The Good Wife?

*Lmao, Nintendo forever.

*I don't care what they say, you do have to be a bit scary in your horror movie. 

*Sharknado was made for television but at least that went into a few theaters for midnight showings. But most of their crap goes direct-to-video, which is something I explicitly do not aim for. 

Team America: World Police.

Review #2557: Team America: World Police.

Cast: 

Trey Parker (Gary Johnston/Joe Smith/Carson/Kim Jong Il/Hans Blix/Matt Damon/Tim Robbins/Sean Penn/Michael Moore/Helen Hunt/Peter Jennings/Susan Sarandon/Drunk in Bar/Liv Tyler/Janeane Garofalo/Additional voices), Matt Stone (Chris Roth/George Clooney/Danny Glover/Ethan Hawke/Martin Sheen/Additional voices), Kristen Miller (Lisa Jones), Masasa Moyo (Sarah Wong), Daran Norris (Spottswoode), Phil Hendrie (I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E./Chechen terrorist), Maurice LaMarche (Alec Baldwin), Chelsea Marguerite (French mother), Jeremy Shada (Jean Francois), Fred Tatasciore (Samuel L. Jackson), and Greg Ballora, Scott Land, Seb Hartman & Tony Urbano (Lead puppeteers) Directed by Trey Parker (#2226 - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut)

Review: 

"It's funny when someone responds with, “Oh, well they think this is funny?” No, we just think that everything's funny. We think that “funny” is a great thing and “funny” is a great way to think about things and deal with things. People who don't have great senses of humor think that comedy is that you just think something's trite and stupid and you don't care about it. [They think] if you're laughing, it's because what you think you're laughing at is stupid — because that's about as far as their sense of humor goes. People don't realize that it can be something a lot deeper than that." - Trey Parker

Sure, let's talk about the movie with puppets and American spirit for the 4th of July. The production of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) was a pain in the ass for Trey Parker and Matt Stone (particularly with the ratings board), but it was a successful pain in the ass, and eventually the two of them came up with something they thought would be funny to do for a film. They landed upon the Thunderbirds (as originally created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson from 1964-1966), which they vaguely remembered watching as reruns when they were bored and found it "so expository and slow" for a show that took itself really seriously involving the Tracy family and a few vehicles (when production was rounding the corner to finish, Parker and Stone jokingly called Anderson "absolutely insane"*). Of course, it also helps to be a "send-up" of the Jerry Bruckheimer productions of the time (most notably Pearl Harbor [2001], although non-Bruckheimer films like Megaforce [1982] also proved an inspiration). Parker and Stone wrote the film with longtime writing partner Pam Brady. The Chiodo Brothers helped create the hundreds of puppet characters, with Parker and Stone soon realizing during filming that the comic tone to them came from the marionettes trying to drama rather than just having "puppets doing jokes". Trying to capture every stunt live on film and making the deadline of late September 2004 took a toll on the filmmakers, who also had to battle with the MPAA for the rating because, and I'm not kidding, a puppet sex scene (but the violence, well...), but they got the job in time for release in theaters in October, which happened to be less than four months after the live-action adaptation of Thunderbirds. 

Team America: World Police was a fair hit with audiences at the time; various filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright have called it among their favorite films of this particular generation. The biggest compliment is that the movie is clearly more entertaining than the two Thunderbirds movies. With a film that was about American optimism that basically has kept Americans looking forward regardless of how naive it all sounds. Stone and Parker clearly enjoy dealing in humor when it comes to the world that gets construed for nihilism because they favor the middle ground and what sounds funny in common sense. It just so happens that there are a few folks worth making fun of (visually/audibly) to go with a rhythm of four-letter colorful words (including a climax involving the nature of what can be construed as "collateral damage, am I right?"). It freewheels for 98 minutes on a loose plot involving looming terror, a horde of film actors guild (get it?) members and the Bruckheimer spirit of entertainment at all costs in chaos that is pretty funny for what actually gets on screen beyond (obviously) the wires. Beneath the tension (in the "I think America will win, but unless....") is a few silly moments on the side that ranges from the hang-ups of "actors" and whatever goofy stuff you spot in the staging of puppets trying to maneuver around the environment. Parker and Stone are perfectly comfortable with the voices they want to put on (Norris probably hones it in the best for the not-Jeff Tracy from) and the movie rolls along with its tongue-in-cheek ra-ra spirit that, naturally, has a rip-roaring "America" song (the one that goes "fuck yeah", yeah, yeah, yeah). You see a few neat-looking vehicles to house the puppets and staging that works with the scenarios. It ribs at wannabee global dictators and wannabee do-gooders with enough conviction in actually having fun (well, unless you're Sean Penn*). As a whole, Team America is packed with enough goofy moments in the audacity of going nuts with puppets going on an adventure ends up being a bit more than just being swears and strings. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Apparently, Gerry Anderson was quoted as stating "there are good, fun parts [in the film] but the language wasn't to [his] liking".

*Bro really sent them a letter being mad that Parker and Stone said there was "no shame in not voting" and closed it with "All best, and a sincere fuck you".

Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Review #2540: Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Cast: 

Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi / 4A-7 / Medical Droid), Dee Bradley Baker (Captain Rex / Commander Cody), Tom Kane (Yoda / The Narrator / Admiral Yularen), Nika Futterman (Asajj Ventress / TC-70), Ian Abercrombie (Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious), Corey Burton (Ziro the Hutt / General Loathsom / KRONOS-327), Catherine Taber (Padmé Amidala), Matthew Wood (Battle Droids), Kevin Michael Richardson (Jabba the Hutt), David Acord (Rotta the Huttlet), with Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), and Christopher Lee (Count Dooku) Directed by Dave Filoni.

Review: 

Imagine, it is the year 2008, for a moment. All you've got with Star Wars is six theatrical movies (and a bunch of television that, what, twelve people cared about?)...and a new film coming out, one that's animated. Then you ask what the hell is The Clone Wars? Well, your immersion has expired, but I might as well run it down anyway. Well, there are two shows under that title, with the first coming around in 2003 via animated shorts that was developed by Genndy Tartakovsky with digital 2D animation (and select cel-shaded 3D). Then you've got the 2008 animated series (now with "The" in there because, well, why not?) that came around because of George Lucas. Lucas had thought about doing this as early as 2002, once stating that Star Wars was "a sandbox I love to play in"; Lucasfilm Animation was created in 2005*. Dave Filoni was among the team of people (described by The New York Times as "young Star Wars-obsessed artists") hired by Lucas. The Mt. Lebanon native had studied animation at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania prior to serving as a storyboard artist/assistant director on a variety of television such as King of the Hill and also directed/wrote a number of the first season episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The first season was pitched around to TV networks in 2007, but nobody initially went with it. Regardless of this, encouraged by the animation results he saw, Lucas decided to produce a theatrical Clone Wars movie, which only then got Warner Bros. interested in the show. Essentially, a couple of episodes were stitched into what you see for a 98-minute movie, with Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching, and Scott Murphy being credited as writers for this film. Released in August 2008 (the first and so far, only, Star Wars movie released in that month) with a reported budget of $8.5 million, the movie was a light success with audiences. Two months later, Star Wars: The Clone Wars aired on Cartoon Network and ran for five years (before returning for stints on Netflix and Disney+ because, well, why not?). 

It may actually be the most vacant Star Wars film of its ilk, managing to do the bare minimum in "space battles" and plot that probably does make one appreciate the live-action filmmaking of Attack of the Clones [2002] (especially when one realizes that the war is basically window dressing for one guy acquiring further power anyway). Things happen in a vacuum that probably are explored in televised form, but it all feels like the paint has rusted off a familiar format with little to really back it up. The animation was deliberately meant to be "a little bit of anime, a little bit of feature animation", one that basically was inspired by the Gerry Anderson Thunderbirds as opposed to say, Beowulf. With that understanding in mind, I can't stand the animation in the same way that I just couldn't stand Thunderbirds in all of its off-putting ways (but with no strings). There are moments when it looks like something you could create with a bunch of foam cups, honestly. The voice cast is in that odd spot where going from folks such as Hayden Christensen/Natalie Portman/Ewan McGregor can only go so far in a movie that doesn't really give them much to actually show off anything beyond the most perfunctory of things (this is a fetch quest movie to save a gassy aged soccer ball looking kid, after all, and I totally will never hear the phrase "Rotta the Hutt" ever again)...to contrast with the bit moments of Jackson and Lee (paycheck time). The banter between Lanter and Eckstein is, well, not exactly endearing, mainly because it feels like a workshopped encounter between siblings more than anything. I remember having basically one question about this film as a person who didn't see the show as either a teenager or an adult: what exactly is the point of Ahsoka Tano? Okay, sure, there were other questions (namely if the animation ever looked better), but really, what is the big fascination about this character that they have their own show nearly 20 years after this film? (going as someone who just watches the films, anyway, since this character never showed up physically in any of the movies, which suggests they were somehow important for the show, but not the main saga*). All I got from this film was a bunch of chuckles at the banter and that was about it. With such sluggish amusement all the way around, it only seems appropriate to call it a middle-of-road misfire, one that did not exceed my expectations in mediocrity.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Incidentally, the only other feature film Lucasfilm Animation has been involved with came with Strange Magic seven years later.

*What the hell is The Mandalorian? Also, I fudged a bit, there is one Clone Wars "bit" I did see: "I am coming back from my ten minute ban.."

Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Review #2528: Resident Evil: Apocalypse. 

Cast:

Milla Jovovich (Alice), Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine), Oded Fehr (Carlos Olivera), Thomas Kretschmann (Major Timothy Cain), Sophie Vavasseur (Angela "Angie" Ashford), Razaaq Adoti (Sgt. Peyton Wells), Jared Harris (Dr. Charles Ashford), Mike Epps (Lloyd Jefferson "L.J." Wade), Sandrine Holt (Terri Morales), Matthew G. Taylor (Nemesis), Zack Ward (Nicholai Ginovaef), and Iain Glen (Dr. Alexander Isaacs) Directed by Alexander Witt.

Review: 

Hey, remember Resident Evil (2002)? I...uh, sort of remember it? Well, okay, I'm just going to perform straight plagiarism by reminding myself that I saw the movie was the kind of movie you could probably watch while doing your taxes. No, it did not spur me to try out the games.* But people bought tickets to see it, so I imagine there were plenty of tax forms all brought up for fun amidst a "treasure trove" of violence and effects. Paul W. S. Anderson* enjoyed doing the first movie but had commitments to Alien vs. Predator (2004) that meant he could not direct the sequel, although he served as a screenwriter and co-producer. Various inspirations ranged from the third game to Escape from New York (1981) and The Omega Man (1971). This was the directorial debut for Alexander Witt, who had been working in film since the 1970s in a variety of roles such as camera assistant, commercial director and second unit work on films such as who had done second unit work on films such as Speed (1994); Witt has mostly stayed around in second unit work in the two decades since the release of the film. The series returned with Resident Evil: Extinction (2007).

It is a movie where someone makes an entrance by crashing through a stained-glass window on a motorcycle. Honestly, the enjoyment level is a smidge above the first film, mainly because at least it tries to aim for action that isn't confined to a lab. It finds new and exciting ways of being a hack spectacle that doesn't do anything new with its zombie creatures or its new ensemble for Jovovich to blankly encounter. Some movies can coast on characters basically being described as "job description" or "the chick with the neat shorts" or "the funny guy" even with a shelf life above, say, 93 minutes. This is not one of those movies, because even horror movies in small locales such as, say, Chopping Mall (1986) had enthusiasm in its mayhem. Here, it just feels like the equivalent of going to the supermarket without a list in mind only to suffer a stubbed foot in the store has no A/C before realizing that the jug of milk expires today*. Jovovich has done little to nothing to really further a character that is doing the exact same thing as before in teaming up with a ragtag bunch to survive but not really showing leadership besides "don't die". It isn't even worth trying to talk about Kretschmann as a "villain" because the general maneuvering of the film just feels so cookie-cutter and so bland that it doesn't even feel worthy to make fun of the reveal of "Nemesis" (I know it is related to the game, because otherwise I'm surprised they didn't call it something sillier like Vengeance Knight or Deadman). It just feels like a movie you put on to, wait for it, to do your taxes while it is on in the background. Two movies in and I barely feel like I really care much about the "T-virus" or "Raccoon City", but hey, gotta move forward to see slow-moving creatures by mowed down. For whatever reason, I guess the setup of the next film will be that in addition to going around doing action sequences of shooting, our hero now has psionic abilities. Oh, and I guess Umbrella is fine with her escaping as part of their plan (some plan, the next one is called "Extinction"). As a whole, if you were a fan of the first movie, maybe you'll be right at home with this one in terms of spectacle, but it just came off as hollow middle-of-the-road noise.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*It's funny, the only horror game I played from start to finish was The House of the Dead: Overkill.

*You might remember that Anderson eventually married Jovovich. Cool, did they ever make a movie together that was actually good?

*I was going to use a bad experience in say, accidentally bumping into someone who likes to gab endlessly in small-talk, but I realize some of you may have friends that actually take the time to do so. Self awareness, pal!

Underworld: Evolution.

Review #2527: Underworld: Evolution.

Cast:

Kate Beckinsale (Selene; Lily Mo Sheen as young Selene), Scott Speedman (Michael Corvin), Tony Curran (Markus Corvinus), Derek Jacobi (Alexander Corvinus / Lorenz Macaro), Steven Mackintosh (Andreas Tanis), Shane Brolly (Kraven), Bill Nighy (Viktor), Zita Görög (Amelia), and Brian Steele (William Corvinus) Directed by Len Wiseman (#320 - Live Free or Die Hard, #1916 - Underworld, #2388 - Ballerina)

Review: 

Admittedly, I was a bit hesitant to actually get back to the sequel to Underworld (2003), mainly because I had a funny feeling it was going to sink below the level of the first movie, which surprised me in being average goofy entertainment that was at least endearing for one watch. You've got leather-clad folks, guns, and some war that tries to make werewolves sound cool by calling them "Lycans", how could one go wrong? You might remember there was a vampire assassin and a vampire/lycan hybrid that had to run off because of the death of an elder vampire and the accidental spilling of blood onto a sleeping vampire elder. For whatever reason, now there is a talisman in the proceedings to go along with tombs and family reunions. Len Wiseman and Danny McBride returned to write the story together while McBride wrote the screenplay. The relative success of the film with audiences obviously led to further films. Wiseman and McBride ended up contributing to the next Underworld film, a prequel directed by Patrick Tatpoulos with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009). The next sequel came with Underworld: Awakening in 2012.

It really does sting sometimes to say that a movie is just not that good. Sure, it isn't in the bottom of the barrel and it definitely has some appeal for those who got really into the idea of leather-clad slugfests with ideas of "lore"...but it just rings hollow in the final result in trying to pursue the series as a "franchise". Beyond the blue filter that basically pervades one's eyes over and over, the movie crashes and burns at the feet of being so scattershot that it actually almost becomes funny in spite of its overblown seriousness. You get a prologue set in 1202 to look at three vampire elders (with only one of them actually mattering for the movie at large, since one of them died in the first movie), with one being the son of an immortal and, oh, the brother of the first big bad werewolf. This wolf is put in what is supposed to be a forever jail to hide away from the immortal vampire. You get further explanations (read: ramblings by a vampire historian that we first see with Lycan women) that make you realize that this is going to be one of those fetch quest type of movies but with less Gothic wannabee fun, where only Mackintosh or Jacobi seem interested. As it turned out, this was the last of the movies with both Beckinsale and Speedman, as the latter did not reprise his role for any further films. Even with the sex scene they share together (or whatever you want to call a scene with the most select type of skin shown), they have about as much chemistry as lettuce on a sandwich (nuke the plant from orbit). You would think having a ship in the film (immortals have to go around on their boat miles) would be really big, but nay. You don't even get to have the air of a respectable actor such as Jacobi* for so long because hey, gotta focus on the hybrid stuff, because Curran sure isn't going to provide menace in hybrid-infused world domination. Hybrid hybrid hybrid, hmm? The movie may be a bit gorier and maybe may work better for those who like to see a few computer creatures that look decent if you actually watch it at night, but calling it a junk movie might almost be a compliment for those who know what they are getting into. Being a notch below a movie that was average as the day that it was created is a negative thing, but at least you can say they tried.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Derek Jacobi, otherwise known as the only interesting incarnation of the Master in the 21st century, and yes, I'm still mad his incarnation got killed off that quickly. Sorry, I meant Sir Derek Jacobi, famous Tony Award-winning actor. Hey, I don't do the theater.

Oldboy.

Review #2504: Oldboy.

Cast: 

Choi Min-sik (Oh Dae-su; Oh Tae-kyung as young Dae-su), Yoo Ji-tae (Lee Woo-jin; Yoo Yeon-seok as young Woo-jin), Kang Hye-jung (Mi-do), Ji Dae-han (No Joo-hwan; Woo Il-han as young Joo-hwan), Kim Byeong-ok (Mr. Han), Yoon Jin-seo (Lee Soo-ah), Oh Dal-su (Mr. Park Cheol-woong), and Oh Kwang-rok (Suicidal man) Directed by Park Chan-wook.

Review: 

"Many people tend to differentiate starkly between commercially successful or nonsuccessful movies, but the simple truth is merely that people have differing tastes about what kind of movies they like or don't. The audience seems hazy to me, shrouded in a veil through which I can't see. They are not real, not concrete. So I chose one person to be my sole audience, representing all the audiences out there. That person is my wife. From the scriptwriting and the editing process all the way to deciding on the music, I discuss everything with her thoroughly in detail. She is a normal housewife with an incredible eye who constantly offers me much advice and help."

One of the reasons for New Directors Month is to make up for lost time and go with people that clearly will get further featuring over time. Born to an architect and a poet in Seoul, Park Chan-wook actually planned to be an art critic. His major was philosophy at Sogang University but couldn't quite settle in to his major (the university did not have many arts classes) and found interest in a photography club. He then saw a screening of Vertigo (1958) and apparently was compelled to "at least try to become a movie director"*. Park worked as a film critic (when he had to make money in college, he did stories based on movies prior to being shown in Korea with subtitles) while earning film experience as an assistant director on Kkamdong (1988). He made his attempt to be a filmmaker with The Moon Is... the Sun's Dream (1992) and Trio (1997) ...and neither found an audience, to the point where Park essentially disowned them. At any rate, he kept going, directing the short film Judgement (1999) that basically made him realized that actors "were not puppets". He got his breakthrough with the mystery thriller Joint Security Area (2000), which for a brief time was the highest ever grossing movie in South Korea. Unintentionally, Park's next film became the first of what has been labeled as "The Vengeance Trilogy" with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), with Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005) soon following. According to Park, the theme of vengeance recurred in certain movies of his because of how people have had to deal with the rage and grudges within themselves (with smaller and smaller outlets to get it out) that basically leads to "stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves", where morality and guilty consciences are what matters as the subject (he also has stated once that his "through-line of violence" comes with the turbulence he had witnessed as a college youth in the 1980s). In addition to the occasional work for television (such as The Sympathizer in 2024*), Park has continued to make a wide variety of films such as I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006), Thirst (2009), The Handmaiden (2016) and his most recent work, No Other Choice (2025).

The source material for the film was the Japanese manga Old Boy, which was written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi that was serialized from 1996 to 1998. Hwang Jo-yun, Lim Jun-hyung, and Park Chan-wook adapted the script for the film you see here. An unauthorized Indian adaptation called Zinda came out in 2006 before Oldboy was subsequently remade for American audiences with Spike Lee in 2013. What you get here is a movie all about making you feel every nook and cranny of the complexities that arise in what it really means to try and seek revenge and the all-encompassing perils that come with guilt. It is an action thriller of course, with a particularly standout single-shot corridor fight scene, but there is something much more involving in what the movie wants to make you feel in the cycles of violence that come every now and then that isn't so much exploitative as is evocative. The performances are particularly worthwhile to experience this disturbing journey of all-consuming violence, with Choi (who did most of his own stunts) managing to take it all in a stride that fits the film perfectly with where it has to go for a movie that really just involves two people confronting a mirror of each other rather than just good vs. evil. Yoo makes that other side of all-consuming revenge just as unnerving with a chilling performance that really does get under one's skin for what you see of him (I think back to the scene where he is just standing in the room with a mask, honestly). Caught in the middle of it is Kang, who handles it all with such hurried grace in this wavering story of someone trying to understand what they cannot possibly understand. You understand the feeling of being in captivity like a chained beast and wonder if they ever actually got out of the cage. Rage and vengeance can be all-consuming if one allows it to permeate through their wellbeing, and it helps that the film basically spreads its violence out in ways that make the punishments all the more unnerving (whether that involves pulling teeth, eating a live octopus, or, well, with its climax). It is a fairly brisk film that manages to be pretty unnerving with its slow burn about what really matters in the pursuit of "the truth" that you really have to not spoil for yourself. There are no triumphs or easy answers at the end of the film, which actually is a pretty big relief when you get down to it. It's a pretty damn good movie, particularly if you go into it with as little to know as possible to really let it wash over you.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

*Among influences Park listed in 2004 were: "Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Austin, Philip K. Dick, Zelazny and Vonnegut." Fun fact: one influence on Viet Thanh Nguyen when writing The Sympathizer was in fact Park's Oldboy (2003).

Another end to the New Directors Month tradition. Among the finalists for this year include the following: Pigs and Battleships [Shōhei Imamura] · The Man Who Fell To Earth [Nicolas Roeg]  · Wakefield [Robin Swicord] · Bad Company [Robert Benton] · Jacob the Liar [Frank Beyer] · Hundreds of Beavers [Mike Cheslik]

As always, see you next time.

Sexy Beast.

Review #2501: Sexy Beast.

Cast: 

Ray Winstone (Gary 'Gal' Dove), Ben Kingsley (Don Logan), Ian McShane (Teddy Bass), Amanda Redman (DeeDee Dove), James Fox (Harry), Cavan Kendall (Aitch), Julianne White (Jackie), and Álvaro Monje (Enrique) Directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Review: 

"I’m not the kind of director who has 10 projects on the go to see which one works out. It feels more like music to me — I have this idea for an album and I want to make it. If I do something, I have to do it well and sometimes that takes a little time."

I suppose I should've done this one sooner. Sexy Beast was the debut feature film of Jonathan Glazer, who grew up in London to a Reform Jewish family (he noted that that in his childhood, he encountered various "East End Jews who had moved to the suburbs for a better quality of life" that imprinted on him with their culture) saw him attend Jewish Free School. He then went to art school because he believed that drawing was the only thing he was good at. However, he got into the habit of directing because there were friends of his in bands that wanted him to shoot music videos for them. Eventually, after graduating with a degree in theatre design from Nottingham Trent University, Glazer got into making film trailers and eventually got into doing commercials; eventually, he did videos for bands such as Radiohead. Apparently, Glazer was slated to direct for the first time with the movie Gangster No. 1 which was written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto based on their play before disagreements with the casting led to all three people leaving (Paul McGuigan eventually made the film in 2000). According to Scinto, Sexy Beast "was born, out of a reaction to all that chaos and soap opera", going from a stage play draft with the working title "Gangster No. 2" to, well, Sexy Beast; the two had one further collaboration turned into a film with 44 Inch Chest (released in 2009 which also featured McShane and Winstone). Made for a budget of roughly $4 million that premiered in the festival circuit in 2000 before going into theaters in 2001, the movie was a light decent hit with audiences, apparently more so in America than expected. Glazer has since directed select commercial advertisements and three further films (which unlike Beast had Glazer serve as co-writer) with Birth (2004), Under the Skin (2013) and The Zone of Interest (2023), which won an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film*.

Glazer apparently called the making of the film "perfect baptism for me" because of the writing that he could trust completely for a film that is particularly intense in its dialogue for what Glazer once called "neo noir" that is basically trying to have a heist while avoiding being a "heist movie". Shaggy dog heist film or not, there is plenty of mischief to experience within the obvious qualities that come with Winstone being paired with Kingsley. It's because you get a passively bulked sunburned lead presence paired with someone who basically is fighting with him on a primal level with such a level of containment that is actually pretty frightening. At least, for a movie that basically shows the upcoming storm by having a boulder crash down the hill onto a pool in the opening minutes. So yes, you can't really hide from your past, but you can sure try to confront the present to maintain a worthwhile future. Within its aspects of the thriller is black comedy that actually is quite entertaining in the machinations of how you can make 88 minutes roll along where you aren't thinking about the heist as much as you are experiencing pros at work. Kingsley just has that magic to startle you with his presence and where he packs his expressions and dialogue in a way that just sounds tailor-made to him while Winstone lumbers as one could only do as someone who aspires to stay in their particular corner of the burning sun (as opposed to the burn of the heist). McShane is intimidating enough in the brief moments one sees of him around the scene of the growing crime (consider how the last scene sees him and Winstone talk about the various truths that lie under the surface). The heist in London isn't the point, it's a film all about what you see and hear in Spain more than anything, I imagine. As a whole, Sexy Beast is basically an acquired taste that either sticks with you or just leaves out the back door. I thought it was curious enough within its maneuvering of the crime film with humor and solid enough performances to make the journey worth watching.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

*It was set in 1943 in the life of German Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss filmed in German, Polish, and Yiddish. I hear it's a good movie. I just want to mention that film mostly because the Oscar speech he did talked about the ongoing Gaza war that managed to make a whole bunch of people look like petulant children.