BloodRayne.

Review #2317: BloodRayne.

Cast: 

Kristanna Loken (Rayne), Michael Madsen (Vladimir), Ben Kingsley (Kagan), Michelle Rodriguez (Katarin), Matthew Davis (Sebastian), Will Sanderson (Domastir), Geraldine Chaplin (Fortune Teller), Udo Kier (Regal Monk), Meat Loaf (Leonid), Michael Paré (Iancu), and Billy Zane (Elrich) Directed by Uwe Boll (#1765 - In the Name of the King, #1924 - Alone in the Dark, #2144 - House of the Dead)

Review: 

I forgot that Boll wanted to be a filmmaker because he saw Mutiny on the Bounty as a kid...the Marlon Brando version. This was the third film in what you might as well call the Boll Gaming Cycle that came in the wake of House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark (2005). The movie is based on the action-adventure game series of the same name, which began in 2002 involving various locations being visited by a member of the "brimstone Society" to deal with supernatural creatures and Nazis. An "unrated" director's cut came out on DVD, incidentally, which apparently came out with a copy of BloodRayne 2 on it (incidentally, the series has had just one game released since the film came out). The next video game movie Boll did for theaters was In the Name of the King (2007). You might recognize that the screenplay was written by Guinevere Turner, who apparently delivered a first draft a few weeks late that Boll went right in to pick and choose what to use immediately (which was apparently 20%) for the actors to apparently take a crack at it. While the movie was a financial failure, Boll would direct two sequels for the direct-to-video market: BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007) and BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), in which only Michael Paré appears in each film of the "trilogy". 

It probably goes without saying that Boll has not managed to achieve anything in the manner of effective entertainment even when having a video game right there for adaptation. In the aim of blood, dirt, and sex, the success rate is about on the same level as an apple becoming a tomato (one interview had him stating it would possibly be two hours but it ended up being 95 minutes long). It certainly never seems sexy even with its attempts at doing so with leather outfits and I kid you not, hiring actual prostitutes to be in a scene (as one does when filming in Europe). The thing about Boll is that he seems to direct things as if it was a blunt instrument to plow through regardless of who is cast or the scenario. He has a lead actress in Loken that might as well be playing T-X from Terminator 3 all over again. He has a movie where one actor called it an "abomination" that still would say yes to being in another Boll movie. The best parts in the whole movie is either Meat Loaf lounging around with prostitutes or the bits and pieces where Madsen seems interested enough to actually make effort (probably the result of liquid courage, but I can think of worse ways to get through a film). It probably is most amusing to see Zane in the film when you have the whole context: Zane liked being with such a "decisive" director even in a small role and he apparently gave Boll the idea to use Romar Entertainment (which Zane was involved with) as a way to handle distribution of the film to a target of 2,000 theaters...only 950 theaters ended up getting the film on opening day and Boll later sued Zane (incidentally, Zane co-starred alongside Loken in Boll's Darfur film, released in 2009). Christian Slater might not be a particularly great actor, but at least him being in the aforementioned Dark film seemed to make sense. But Kingsley? An Academy Award-winning actor wanting to play a vampire deciding to join here? I suppose it must be a British tradition in the Michael Caine sense, but even Caine was better at this, because Kingsley barely delivers actual substance to what is meant to be a villainous role. One sees more effort in the makeup job than from Kingsley, who can't even play to the cheap seats for something funny. The movie is listless and barely seems competent to actually approach what you might call filmmaking. It just feels like a movie patched together, where even a sequence of someone trying to dodge traps (and water, because ooooh, water) has little weight to actually level attention to. The sex scene might actually inspire confusion over how it is staged more than anything, and yet somehow this is a movie that is more tolerable than Bolero (1984), even with all of the godforsaken wigs. As a whole, this is merely just a boring bad flick, not even measuring up to the lesser vampire movies you've probably seen before. It isn't completely incompetent as with some of Boll's previous line of work because it just is blah B-movie stuff that really should not have tried to be anything more. It is dull and goofy in ways that would probably be amusing with a couple of beers for the turkey night, I suppose.

Overall, I give it 2 out of 10 stars.

Legally Blonde.

Review #1698: Legally Blonde.

Cast: 

Reese Witherspoon (Elle Woods), Luke Wilson (Emmett Richmond), Selma Blair (Vivian Kensington), Matthew Davis (Warner Huntington III), Victor Garber (Professor Callahan), Jennifer Coolidge (Paulette Bonafonté), Holland Taylor (Professor Elspeth Stromwell), Ali Larter (Brooke Taylor-Windham), Jessica Cauffiel (Margot), Alanna Ubach (Serena McGuire), Francesca P. Roberts (Judge Marina R. Bickford), Oz Perkins (David Kidney), Linda Cardellini (Chutney Windham), Bruce Thomas (UPS Guy), Meredith Scott Lynn (Enid Wexler), and Raquel Welch (Mrs. Windham-Vandermark) Directed by Robert Luketic.

Review: 

Well, sometimes you need a movie about the law to go with a tale of forging a path forward for oneself with confidence, I suppose. Legally Blonde is adapted from the novel of the same name, which was self-published by Amanda Brown in 2001 (although it should be noted that the 1994 copyright filing lists both Brown and Brigdet Kerrigan, who coincidentally had attended Harvard) based on the writer's experiences in Stanford Law School, which namely involved making fun of her classmates with letters sent back home to Arizona while reading Elle magazine; one key experience involved her going to a group for women attending the school that Brown found amusement over their serious tone (such as trying to change "semester" to "ovester"). She dropped out after two years, but she eventually cobbled a manuscript together; while it didn't attract much attention as a book, it did find interest with film studios, and one pitch that was used for it was "Clueless meets The Paper Chase". At any rate, the film was written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, who saw numerous script changes that turned a first draft with raunchy material into one with adversity to overcome and a murder trial (including an ending that came from test audiences caring about the success of its character rather than a kiss on the courthouse). In other words, a script that would probably have come off the heels of stuff like American Pie (1999) ended up being more of a feel-good movie that surely plays its own note in the blonde circuit (which has quite a few stereotypes that I'm sure would make for an interesting discussion somewhere else). This was also the feature film debut of Robert Luketic, a native of Australia who had been making short films since he was a teenager before his short Titsiana Booberini (1997) attracted Hollywood.

Honestly, it's just an okay movie. It's an obvious movie, one that plays exactly to the bone of "being yourself with confidence" that makes for a few chuckles for a 96 minute movie that sure takes its time to really get going, even when it has something to say about workplace dynamics in conduct (or perhaps not judging stuff like sorority life or law school by the cover...?) and something something feminist classic something something. Or something like that, because really it is the trial parts that are more up to speed in actually doing something beyond "aw shucks". You know how folks will randomly approach stars and have them do "classic stuff" at a convention? The appeal for this movie is kind of like that, albeit without as many nerd lingo (as any convention attendee would say). That, or it is basically a sports movie for sorority folks. Strangely enough, with a pitch evoking the name of Clueless (1995), it really doesn't seem to have that much "zing" to it, if you know what I mean. Sure, there are quite a few quirky moments, such as the "bend and snap" sequence, which sounds believable when you note that the writers came up with it while at a bar. It comes and goes, really, when you think about it. There is nothing here that is exactly harmful or ridiculous, and I imagine that it certainly proved an inspiration to at least one person when it came to law or perhaps something else - so yeah, average isn't the worst possible experience one could have with this feature. If it wasn't for Witherspoon, this probably would have been a lesser experience. Her sunny charm and wit certainly play off against the others well enough with flourishing interest that you would see from a "fish out of water" type without being played out, and its easy to see how two decades have only cemented the enduring entertainment that Witherspoon brings here. The others keep up fine for the most part. Wilson is casual enough to keep his portion of the film going well enough without asking for too much more (the aforementioned ending involved the two leads kissing at the end, but I think you can see why they just went with a different one). Blair brings up the snobby parts to where it needs to go (complete with the predictable stuff), which is followed by the snooty snake charm from Davis to go with the slithering calmness generated by Garber. Coolidge gets a chuckle in shyness while others get a line or two to show up (such as Larter doing some well-blown hysterics over gluteal efforts), which means that one will do just fine in keeping their attention airtight. As I stated already, it is the law parts that generate interest more, probably because its predictability is a little less obvious than the school segments, but that is probably just me. In the two decades that have followed the release of this film, a sequel was released alongside a musical and a spinoff, and it is perhaps representative of the legacy of the film that another sequel is in development. Is it predictable? Indubitably, but it has plenty of charm in the right places to make a worthy time for those in the mood for what it yearns to say about having fun as oneself without letting folks or other things get in their way. 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.