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Reviews
Watchmen (2009)
Faithful Adaptation that lacks any soul of the original
Watchmen is, in many ways, a faithful, even loving adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel. Zack Snyder reproduces many of the scenes, especially early in the film, almost "shot for shot" from the book. Most of the major plot points from the book, at least those involving the main characters, make it into the movie. The things which were edited from the book: longer sequences of Rorschach, Veidt, and Silk Specter's pasts, the plot lines with supporting characters, the black freighter sequences, largely make a certain kind of sense as the things you'd cut. Snyder also does an excellent job of establishing the mood of the alternate history and the backstory of the superheroes through a great opening credits montage.
But... the film lacks any real soul. None of the performances stand out. Matthew Goode manages to make Ozymandias more human than he is in the book, at least until the end. Jackie Earle Haley has a moment of snarling greatness near the end, but that's about it. Patrick Wilson brings nothing to the role of Night Owl, and Billy Crudup's tepid delivery harms the portrayal of Dr Manhattan. Snyder's editing out of the secondary characters, while making sense in regards to running time, ultimately blunts the impact of the films climax. Furthermore, Snyder is obviously of rather juvenile sensibilities when it comes to storytelling. While he's cut out many moments of character development he actually INCREASES the time allotted to violence. The book is not actually that violent and most of the more gruesome acts happen off camera. In Snyder's Watchmen we're treated to extremely gory disintegrations and extended slow-mo fight scenes which serve to show off his cool camera technology but do nothing to advance the film. There's also two instances where Snyder takes lines from the book and rather than having them delivered by the actual character, has them delivered as heresay by another one. In the final case this dramatically blunts one of the central messages of the film, ultimately making the line just an offhanded quip. Oddly, given the apocalyptic ending, the film really has no emotional payoff.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
The Last Crusade Should Have Been last
The Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls is a disappointment of a movie and a lackluster capstone to the Indiana Jones franchise. Arguably Spielberg and Lucas, who are both past their prime, waited too long to do the film.
First, the items I liked.
-I liked the sense of the passage of time. Spielberg and co don't try and pretend that this is still the 30s and Indy is the same age as in Last Crusade. They acknowledge the passage of time. I like setting it in the 50s and I especially like the sense of history that they give Indy in this. There's a whole decade of Indy's life that we only get tantalizing hints of here. He was active in WWII with the OSS. He's even got a good and old friend George Mac McHale who we've never met before.
- I like the CONCEPT of the Soviets as the villains. Although since much of the movie takes place in South America they could easily have used Nazi hold outs as the villains. Indeed, recovering the crystal skulls in order to ressurrect the Nazi empire would have made a good motivation. But the Soviets are a nice change and the inclusion of Cate Blanchett as a psychic Soviet is a nice concept.
Now for what I didn't like: -While the Soviets are good in theory the execution is poor. We hardly get to know anything about Blanchetts character. Also, while the bad guys are now Soviets they are indistinguishable in appearance, dress, and character from the Nazis of the previous films. Why change the characters if you're not going to change them? -The plot feels very abreviated from the previous films. There don't seem to be all the twists and turns and complications that we expect from an Indiana Jones film.
-Shia Laboeuf isn't very good as Mutt. He was fine as a kid in comedy fare but he doesn't have the dramatic presence to fit in here, particularly since he's supposed to be a tough "greaser" character.
-The action often doesn't work. They don't seem to undeerstand the balance which kept the action in the previous films light and enjoyable. Here much of it comes off as farcical such as the extended jeep surfing scenes and one where Shia Laboeuf swings on vines like Tarzan.
-Indy is showing his age. Harrison Ford is almost 70 years old and he's showing it. When the last film was made he was 47 and still in pretty good shape. Now he looks a bit ridiculous performing some of the stunts and many of them were likely scaled back because of his age.
Brick (2005)
Brillaintly Loving Noir Send Up
Brick is a brilliantly loving send up of the conventions of noir film.
The plot is a fairly standard one, Brendan, a loner and semi-criminal, gets a frantic and mysterious call from his ex-girlfriend Emily. A day later she turns up dead. So begins Brendan's quest to find out who killed Emily and why. A quest which will take him deep into the seedy underground of suburban California.
Yes, that's right, suburban California. Because Brendan and Emily are 21st century high school students. Part of the brilliance of this movie is transposing the conventions of the noir genre onto a modern high school. The characters are often very stock, but still interesting: Brendan the violent loner, Emily the damsel in distress, The Brain, Brendan's side kick, Laura and Kara, the femme fatales, and The Pin, the crime lord. Most, especially Brendan, speak as if they just stepped out of a Dashiel Hammet novel, and their concerns are similar: crime, class conflict, love, duty, honor.
No End in Sight (2007)
Required Viewing for All Americans or Anyone who Cares About the World
This film should be viewed by everyone who has any concern at all for what is happening in Iraq. It is a level headed and searing indictment of the American bungling of Iraq. No End In Sight demonstrates how the debacle which is current Iraq was not inevitable. It was the result of specific planning failures, and poor decisions.
The film showcases a series of people, most of whom were involved with ORHA, the first American administration of post-Saddam Iraq. These were dedicated professionals, with the best of intentions, but they were critically short on time, resources, and manpower. The bungling of planning on display here is inexcusable.
As the film goes on they lay out several reasons for why Iraq fell apart. These can be boiled down to essentially three major mistakes, all of which were compounded by poor planning and lack of resources: 1. Allowing order to break down. After the war the US allowed looters to tear apart the country. According to Donald Rumsfeld this was because "free people are free to commit crimes." The outcome of this, however, was to send a message to the Iraqi people that the US didn't care about maintaining order and protecting Iraqis and that they were unable to do so. Moreover many of the weapons which would later be used against American troops were looted from supply depots during this period.
2. The De-Bathification of Iraq. Lack of American knowledge of Iraq, and an obsession with outdated paradigms, led to the De-Baathification movement. Paul Bremer fired everyone who was a member of Saddam's Baath party and forbid them from being hired again by the government. The problem with this policy was that the Baathists were not all evil monsters. In fact the over whelming majority were simply civil servants who joined the Baath party because they needed to do so for their jobs. By firing the Baathists they removed just about anyone who knew how to run the country. They also angered tens of thousands of influential people who were now unemployed and unemployable.
3. The big mistake was refusing to recall the Iraqi Military. The film makes the point that, in many ways, the Iraqi Military was not defeated. They collapsed and melted back into society as the Americans advanced. The Iraqi Army was made up of ordinary Iraqis, not monsters. They fully expected to be recalled to make up the military of post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, various American officials were in negotiations with officers to come back to work. These soldiers would have helped the Americans maintain order and would have removed the need for the US to train an army from scratch. Instead the Americans fired them all. Suddenly you had tens of thousands of men who were out of work, who had been trained to fight, and who, in many cases, still had their weapons. Almost immediately after the disbanding of the Army the attacks began on American soldiers. This was the fundamental mistake which gave birth to the insurgency.
This film should be viewed by every American, and if you come to it with an open mind you will go away enraged at the incompetence behind the Iraq War.
Lions for Lambs (2007)
Not insightful enough
Yes, this is Robert Redford, but the film ultimately doesn't do it for me.
I agree with Redford's politics, but his threefold story here just falls flat.
As seen in the trailers, the film follows three story lines unfolding at once: a college professor trying to get a student more engaged, a reporter being fed a story by a Senator, and two American servicemen trapped on a mountaintop in Afghanistan. There are strong performances from Redford and Cruise, particularly the latter. Cruise needs to look to play more villains since he plays the somewhat disingenuous Senator to perfection here.
There are also some nice themes. Redford takes a patriots stance, arguing for greater engagement on the part of ordinary people. Yet that message is delivered in a subplot which alternates between inspiring and painfully hackneyed, sometimes in the same line. Furthermore, the script often lacks detail, and feels like it was rushed. The flashbacks to the two soldiers as supposedly inspiring students of Redford's college professor come off as just silly. There's also no good critique of Conservative politics in this. We have a major part of the movie devoted to a conversation between Cruise as a Republican Senator outlining a new plan, and Streep as a skeptical journalist. Yet the film never offers any good reason for why we should doubt the efficacy of Cruise's plan, as it clearly wants us to do. The best it can come up with is the idea that the media had been too lenient on the Republicans before the Iraq War and therefore should never trust them again. As a liberal, I'm willing to argue that we shouldn't trust Republicans, but that bias needs to be backed up with facts and logic, something which is missing in this film.
Ultimately the film feels incomplete, like a half thought out venting of Redford's frustrations.
Alpha Dog (2006)
Every Parents Worst Nightmare
Sonny Truelove, the father of one of the main characters, starts off the film by saying that this is about parenting. But it's really about the myths that we tell ourselves.
Alpha Dog is based on the real life case of Jesse James Hollywood. In the film he's changed in Johnny Truelove, a middle class suburban drug dealer with his own little posse of acolytes. Johnny, who makes decent money and exists on the outskirts of the Southern California criminal underworld, thinks he's a badass. And therein lies the problem. When Johnny gets into an argument with a fellow drug dealer, a rage fueled neo-Nazi Jewish meth addict, played to perfection by Ben Foster, he kidnaps the mans brother for ransom and things spin out of control. It doesn't spoil the movie to reveal that they end up murdering the teenage boy.
This is a film which is powerful in it's mundanity. One complaint that people had is that "these guys aren't tough guys." But that's the whole point. The film has a lot to say about the myths that we tell ourselves, about a culture which values bad boy status and celebrates criminality. The fact is that Truelove and his gang are NOT real tough guys. They are suburban kids who are playing at being tough, and that's where the trouble comes from. They don't understand the boundaries of violence and they get into trouble for it. There's two great performances in this film: one from Ben Foster, who is alternately loving and apocalyptic as a suburban meth addict, and from, yes, Justin Timberlake as Johnny Truelove's likable easy going right hand man.
The Color of Money (1986)
Scorcese's Finest
I know that calling Color of Money the finest film by American legend Martin Scorcese is controversial. A lot of people think it's one of his lesser works. But from the opening scene of this beautiful film we're treated to a masterpiece of American cinema which surpasses the Hustler in every way.
Twenty years after he had "the breaks put on" his pool career, Fast Eddie Felson is a successful liquor salesman wholesaling alcohol to bars in an unnamed Northern city. He's wealthy enough and happy enough with a his steady girlfriend. Then one day he meets an up and coming pool player Vincent, and his con-woman girlfriend Carmen.
Eddies life is transformed. He remembers that "money won is twice as sweet as money earned." He takes Vincent and Carmen under his wing, volunteering to fund and train them as they hit the road and play every pool hall between them and the pool championships in Atlantic City.
Paul Newman is masterful in this film. He gives us an Eddie who has transformed into the Bert/George C Scott character from The Hustler. He's a man who sees all the angles and who tries to train Vincent in how to earn money through pool hustling. Tom Cruise is brilliant as naive, cocky, headstrong Vincent, a phenomenal pool talent who can't seem to see the big money payout which Eddie wants him to go for. Vincent just wants to play great pool. Along the way they both go through transformations, especially Eddie who realizes that the life he thought he wanted wasn't what he actually wanted.
This is a brilliant film by an American master and it has a lot to say about ambition, desire, competition, and the lies we tell ourselves. Here we have three film giants: Scorcese, Newman, and Cruise each performing at the top of their game. Do yourself a favor and rent The Color of Money.
Jekyll (2007)
Great
Great show. James Nesbitt is mesmerizing as BOTH Tom Jackman, a modern day Dr Jekyll, and Mr Hyde his vicious alter ego. This show is part sci-fi, part psychological drama, part conspiracy actioner. It's not perfect. The American accents are atrocious and some of the explanations and conspiracy elements are a bit weak, but it's riveting TV.
James Nesbitt plays Tom Jackman, a British doctor who discovers that he changes into someone else. That someone else is Mr Hyde, a superhuman driven to indulge his impulses. As one character says "Hyde is a child with all the urges and needs of a grown man." Jackman seems to be the descendant of Henry Jekyll, who was the real life inspiration for the Robert Louis Stevenson story. This is despite the fact that Jekyll had no known descendants, and apparently died a virgin. Jackman himself had no known parents, being found abandoned at a train station and raised in foster care. That's the basis for a somewhat intiguing mystery and a sometimes disappointing conspiracy plot as Jackman is targeted by a powerful multinational corporation.
But the real attraction here is Nesbitt and the interaction between the Jackman and Hyde personalities. Nesbitt, who will be familiar to British, and some American viewers, from the show Murphy's law, and the film Bloody Sunday, shines here and gets to show off the full range of his acting chops. When he's Jackman he's a somewhat nebishy man who loves his family so much that he leaves them in order to isolate them from Hyde. It's a very real and dramatic performance. As Hyde he is all flamboyance a swaggering bon vivant who could have stepped out of a Broadway show, except for the fact that his shirt is covered in blood and he could turn violent at any moment. Nesbitt doesn't play Hyde as a macho bully, but rather as someone even more dangerous, a creature with no boundaries, driven only by passion, whether that's for food, sex, or violence. The interplay between these two aspects of Nesbitts performance is a joy to behold.
Flash Gordon (2007)
Worst Show Ever (Okay maybe just worst in a long time)
Just an awful awful show. It's rare to find a show with absolutely nothing redeeming about it but the Flash Gordon pilot was completely awful. I'm not a fan of the 40s serial or the 80s film so I'm not some disgruntled old fan who can't accept change, and I'm a HUGE fan of the BSG remake and generally find most of SciFi's original programming at least mildly entertaining. There can be good remakes but this isn't one of them. As I said there's literally nothing good about it. The casting is awful. Most of the leads are good looking enough but they look very generic and two of the female leads look virtually identical (a fact not helped when they run around about half the show wearing the same outfit). Ming looks like someone who should be starring in a 70s porno instead of a merciless dictator. No fear there at all. Worse yet the acting is horrific. Most of the lines are delivered with no emotion. The directing and cinematography are horrible too with some really awkward decisions about how to stage scenes. This show was apparently made on zero budget because the sets and effects are virtually nil. And the story is so boring and generic with such thin motivations that no one will care. This show is only worth watching for the car wreck value. It's rare to see such an unmitigated artistic failure.
Sunshine (2007)
Simply Fantastic See This Film NOW
In Sunshine, Danny Boyle has created one of the greatest science fiction films of the last few decades.
This is a grand science fiction epic and an intimate character study rolled into one. In a genre where CGI has too often become a substitute for characters, Boyle makes fantastic use of his special effects masterfully. There's a sense of grandeur and epic scope to this film that's been missing in pictures which make more liberal use of computer effects.
This is a film about madness, hope, desperation, mistakes, and the links between people. We get to know these characters and care about them as they're put in an impossible situation.
This is a beautiful film that anyone who likes science fiction should see.
Sicko (2007)
Great First Half, Falls Apart a Bit in Cuba
Michael Moore's produced a good film about an important subject. The first half of the film is a searing indictment of our current private payer model of health insurance. Moore talks to numerous people who were denied care for necessary, even lifesaving operations. He also talks to current and former health insurance officials who relate how they are rewarded by their employers for denying coverage to people. This first half of the film will break your heart and will make you question why we do things the way we do. Moore then goes on a tour of several countries with socialized medicine: Canada, England, France. These countries have world class health care and pay nothing, or only nominal fees. He dispels some of the myths that opponents of universal health care put forward, such as that the quality of care is lower, or that there are huge waiting lines. But the film falls apart a bit when Moore goes to Cuba. Moore, as the commercials show, takes 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba to attempt to get free health care at Gitmo. He fails of course and then takes them to a Cuban hospital. At this point Moore seems to lose the point of his film. The point is to show why universal health care is good in the US, not to show that Cuba isn't the satanic tyranny which generations of politicians have claimed. Moore clearly has a high opinion of Cuba, but the fact remains that this is a dictatorship which has always been fond of publicity stunts and the idea that they received the care which an average Cuban did is unlikely. Furthermore, all communist countries in history have been notoriously corrupt and with real class differences based on political standing. I suppose it's possible that Cuba didn't develop the Nomenklatura which every other communist state developed, but it seems unlikely. But beyond this the Cuba excursion will just turn off people who aren't as open minded about Cuba as Moore is. There are some other digressions, such as an early love letter to Hillary Clinton and a bizarre criticism of the US eduction system, which mar an otherwise fine film. However, this should still be viewed by anyone who cares about America's health.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Big Disappointment- Don't waste your money
I was wary of this film going in because when they change directors its usually not a good thing. But the film got good reviews so I went and saw it. Big mistake. This movie is a major disappointment. 28 Days Later was a brilliant film with a neat little take on the zombie genre and some actual questions to ask. 28 Weeks is just dumb. This could be any of a dozen horror flicks where the focus is one the splatter rather than the characters. The characters, unlike in the first one, suffer from terminal stupidity. The way which the virus gets out again is dumb even by horror movie standards. Oddly enough, since it seems like such a lesser movie, there's not enough time to get to know any of these characters and care about them. In 28 Days Later e knew that it was Jim's story. In this film whose story is it? Is it the father? Is it the kids? Is it the military? The whole thing is a mess. The military plan makes no sense, even as these things go in films. Unlike in the first film you'll actively want some of these people to die they're so dumb. Please people, save your money. Don't reward crappy film making like this with your hard earned dollars.
Casino Royale (2006)
Bloody Good
This ain't your father's Bond. There are no wristwatch dart guns or ski-ing cars. The closest we get to a gadget is a dashboard defibrilator and an injectable RFID tag. There are no campy world domination villains. What we have are terrorists and their financiers. Gone if the foppish James Bond of Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan. Daniel Craig plays Bond as a brutal, brooding agent just starting out.
Craig is brilliant as Bond. He plays him as a brutal killer, the first death we see in the movie involves Bond drowning someone. Bond is a womanizer, but with a hard edge. He's not suave and smooth but runs on an animal sexuality that can be as much of a turn off as a turn on. This is Bond starting out, reckless, rough, and raw. He's not the seasoned professional of previous Bonds but rather a young and talented hot head who can cause as much trouble for his superiors as for his enemies. Craig plays Bond as sledghammer rather than a scalpel. When a man he is chasing jumps over a wall Bond simply runs through it. In the tradition of Mel Gibson actioners Craig plays a hero who isn't afraid to take a beating, and the film includes a truly painful torture scene.
The plot owes more to Alias than to the over the top schemes of Dr No or Moonraker. Bond isn't trying to save the world. Instead he's trying to track down and flip a terrorist financier known as Le Chiffre. When Bond foils one of his money making schemes Le Chiffre organizes a high stakes poker game to make back his clients money and Bond bids in. The film contains some great actions scenes and Craig brings a physicality to Bond which has been missing. Hopefully we can look forward to many new movies in this vein of Bond.
Frailty (2001)
Great Movie, Needs Better Ending
Frailty is a GREAT movie. There should be more horror films like this, based on psychology rather than monsters. In the movie, the FBI are looking for a serial killer in East Texas who calls himself God's Hand. One night Matthew McCaunaghey shows up in a stolen ambulance with a dead body inside and insists on speaking to the agent in charge. He explains that the body is his brother who is the God's Hand Killer and proceeds to tell his life story. McCaunaghey's character grew up with a loving and gentle single father (Paxton). Then, one night, his father wakes up his sons and says that he had a vision from God. God told him that there are "demons" in the world and it is his job to "destroy" them. Taking a supposedly mystical ax and pair of gloves which he finds by the road, Paxton sets out with his sons to kill "demons", in reality people who have sinned in some way. This story forms the bulk of the movie. It's a great psychological thriller about a boy wrestling with the fact that his beloved father is a serial killer, and that his brother may be becoming one too. This part of the movie is great but they felt the need to add a twist ending which, while one of the most genuinely disturbing endings in recent cinema, is also kind of silly and undermines some of the tension of the rest of the film.
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Disappointing
I liked the first two movies and had hopes for this one but in the end it was just disappointing. The first two films weren't as good as the Spiderman movies but they were decent comic book actioners. This one just falls flat. Comics fans who have seen the trailer will probably know that there is a Phoenix storyline and a Magneto storyline. They do a better job of unifying them than I would have expected but the lack of ability to decide between the two signifies the muddled nature and poor writing of the film.
First the things I liked: -Some advancement in mutant affairs: Unlike the comics they've actually made some advances. Hank McCoy is a cabinet officer and the President seems to be dedicated to achieving harmony between humans and mutants.
-Juggernaut and Phoenix as mutants: In the comics both had other explanations for their powers. Making them mutants streamlines the background a bit and actually worked pretty well.
-Wolverine: Jackman turns in another good performance.
-FX: The special effects are still pretty darn good and there's two impressive scenes involving Magneto and Phoenix.
-Kitty Pryde: As a long time Kitty fan it was good to see her character given more screen time, and even a place on the team, in this film.
-Jamie Madrox: He had a small role but Eric Dane was good as Multiple Man.
-The Cure: They handled the logic of the cure well. Yes, the obvious step is to wepaonize it. Yes, some mutants will want to take it, and the film doesn't take the easy route out of condemning it. An important character from the first two films takes it and it's portrayed as a good thing.
-"I'm the Juggernaut Bitch!": fans of the internet cartoon will laugh as hard as I did at the line.
What I didn't like: -Bad writing: The script writer was AWFUL. There were a lot of cheesy lines and some plot problems (The time frame of the film is all messed up, how did Angel get across the country, how did the Golden Gate Bridge stay up).
-Pointless characters. They introduce Angel but there's really no reason for him. Cyclops is in two scenes and seems to have no purpose either.
-Bad fight scenes: The fight scenes aren't great. There's a scene where Wolverine is taking out some mutant sentries but only one of them seems to have any powers. Similarly in the big final combat only a handful of mutants seem to have powers. There's another scene where Storm, who can fly and throw lightning bolts, decides that the best way to fight some guys is to spin like a top and punch them. Dumb.
-Bad use of effects: Even though the effects were impressive sometimes they were stupid. Several people get torn apart in the film. But rather than being the bits of gore that should result from that, they instead turn into neat little grains of sand. There's also a scene where Kitty Pryde is fighting the Juggernaut. She leaves him half embedded in a floor. Such a maneuver should have killed him but instead he merely breaks free.
-Little dumb things: There's just tons of little dumb moments in the film, like Wolverine not recognizing Beast, or all the mutants being dressed like Goths. With all the time it took to make this film they should have spent time putting together a good script.
A History of Violence (2005)
A great film
I'm not a particular fan of David Cronenberg, and can take or leave most of his films but I think that "A History of Violence" is probably one of the better films I've seen this fall. Viggo Mortensen plays a quiet unassuming family man in small town Ohio. When two killers come to his diner attempting to rob and terrorize the patrons Mortensen kills them and becomes a media hero. This brings another set of men to town, gangsters led by Ed Harris who claim that Mortensen is a man who they knew as "Joey". This is the driving tension of the film and Cronenberg handles it very well. A film like this could easily degenerate into melodramatic cheese but Cronenberg finds the right balance of psychological tension and action. The action IS somewhat over the top and fairly graphic, but this is intentional. The action-hero nature of how Mortensen kills the men leaves us, and his friends and family, wondering if he really is this dangerous gangster "Joey". In the end this film is about the consequences of lies and violence on a family, and the possibility of personal redemption. There are a lot of nice touches in here. Mortensen and Bello are portrayed as a loving couple with, unusually in film, a healthy sex life. We have complex emotions from a wife who may not really know who her husband is. Cronenberg also hints at the story behind "Joey" but never fully fills us in, artfully letting our imaginations fill in the story. Even the last action scene, which skirts the edge of being too campy, manages to work within the film. Some people will not like the ending, but I think that it is appropriate for the nature of the film.
North Country (2005)
A good film with a somewhat cheesy ending
North Country is a good film about a working class woman trying to support her family in the face of sexual harassment from the miners at her job. There's a number of good performances in here and several really emotional scenes. I found the scene where Charlize Theron's father finally stands up for his daughter at the union meeting to be particularly moving. While Niki Caro does a good job for most of the film I do have two criticism. First the film spends so much time getting under the skin and into the lives of the characters that the sexual harassment feels a bit underdeveloped. I think more could have been done to show the pervasive, and apparently escalating, level of harassment that these women had to endure. In the film what is most shocking is not the crude sexual humor or minor sexual assault that the characters undergo but rather the complete indifference of everyone in a position to change it. My other concern is how Caro gives in to melodrama in the films climactic court scene. While some of the melodrama makes sense, such as the father attacking the man who raped his daughter, the ending of the court scene is a bit too cheesy and melodramatic for the rest of the film.
Battlestar Galactica (2004)
A modern classic.
Battlestar Gallactica is like a sharp punch in the gut, but in a good way, a very good way. Ron Moore has created one of the most emotionally devastating and engaging shows on TV. I never much cared for Deep Space 9 which always seemed to me to be a mass market version of Babylon 5, but I think with Battlestar Gallactica Moore has created a great legacy for himself. This is sci-fi for people who prefer characters and plot above gimmicks. This has to be one of the darkest and most human sci-fi shows on TV ever. I understand that for some folks the darkness can be overwhelming but I think that the show manages to walk that line between showing us a situation which is truly devastating (people facing the literal end of the world) and yet not becoming overbearingly depressing. Ever since the Babylon 5 movie "In the Beginning" where we saw the remnants of the human space fleet preparing for the end of their world (which never came), I've thought it would be an incredible Sci-fi concept for someone to explore how a people would go on after their world ended. Gallactica does this perfectly. The tension and drama in the miniseries is unbelievable. When they have to leave behind half of the survivors it's heartbreaking. The relentless pursuit of the Cylons and the constant knowledge that death is imminent if they make a single mistake is a fantastic dramatic force in this series. This is some of the most emotionally rich material we've had in sci-fi TV in a long time.
To those who haven't seen the show yet I would seriously discount the negative reviews. While I am gushing a bit above I've taken a look at a lot of the reviews and the common theme seems to be a lot of folks who were fans of the original series and can't reconcile themselves to the new version, and a lot of people who are complaining about lasers or computers, or how "dumb" it is to have human looking robots. I think this misses the point of Battlestar Gallactica. This isn't a show about cool dogfights between spotless starfighters, or nifty sci-fi scenarios. This is very much the antithesis of its SciFi Channel brethren such as Stargate. I think the people who have reacted negatively to this show came to it with the wrong expectations. It seems that they expected it to be a nifty space-opera adventure ala Star Trek where the focus is mostly on the cool sci-fi concepts and technology and less on the characters. Battlestar Galactica is a sci-fi show about characters and not splashy sci-fi concepts (although it does have some pretty good sci-fi concepts in it). Comparing Battlestar Gallactica to a show like Stargate is absurd. It's like comparing Unforgiven to City Slickers. Sure both are westerns but they've got completely different takes on the genre and completely different goals. Same with Gallactica. Gallactica is "serious" character centered scifi. It's absurd to compare it to a show like Stargate, which can be an enjoyable show but which has a completely different approach to, and expectation of, the sci-fi genre.
Collateral (2004)
Great Movie, but needs better ending
I think Collateral is a fantastic movie. Jamie Foxx deserved the Oscar for this and Tom Cruise deserved a nomination for one of his best roles, and one of the few villains who he has played. Michael Manns beautiful style makes this a gorgeous picture to watch as we get a tour around street level LA, far from the Hollywood Hills and tourist attractions. Foxx's is likable and naive as the ordinary guy swept up into events beyond his control. Tom Cruise is fantastic as the slick likable Vincent (he played another likable Vincent twenty years ago in Color of Money) a perceptive hit-man. Cruise is like the Terminator in the actions scenes, an unstoppable killing machine who never loses his professional detachment. At one point, when Foxx questions him why he is killing people Vincent admits that he doesn't know, or care. He was just hired to do a job. Vincent is a terrific character, a great example of the banality of evil. What makes him so endearing and horrifying at the same time is that he is not some monster. He is witty and polite, and stops at one point to take in a jazz concert. At one point he tells Foxx a chilling story about his troubled childhood and how he murdered his abusive father. THen he laughs and admits he made it up. He had an ordinary childhood and his parents are still alive. He is not a hit-man because of some childhood trauma but just because life happened to open up that path for him. For most of this film Mann does a great job of frustrating our expectations about how a Hollywood film should go. The potential heroics are constantly foiled, Vincent almost never slips up. My only complaint is that the film abandons this paradigm at the end. Perhaps feeling the need to have a happy ending Mann allows Foxx in the last fifteen minutes to change from the everyman he has been throughout the film into an action hero. It would have been much more in keeping with the tone of the film to have Vincent simply finish his job, leaving our expectations of a heroic ending frustrated.
Flightplan (2005)
Bumpy landing
Missing persons thrillers like Flightplan have a built in problem. The problem is that it's hard to come up with a resolution that is as interesting as the mystery that drives the film. The mystery of how and why the person disappeared is compelling and allows for a great narrative of the character left behind trying to solve the mystery. Unfortunately the mystery often requires a pretty preposterous and contrived answer to explain it. This is a hard problem to overcome and even directors as skilled as Roman Polanski have had trouble overcoming it (see Frantic). So it shouldn't be taken as too much of a black mark that Flightplans resolution fails to live up to the tension it sets up. The film LOOKS good, they've got a gorgeous huge airplane set for folks to run around in and the opening scenes are filmed in an interesting style for a standard thriller such as this. Jodie Foster is good as the panicked, and perhaps crazy, heroine. The rest of the cast, including the great Sean Bean and Peter Sarsgaard, are largely forgettable. From the trailer I think it should be clear that Jodie Foster is looking for her missing daughter on a transcontinental flight, but that the child might not exist and it could all be in her head. This is the basis for what might have been an interesting twist that could have saved the film. The movie Breakdown saved itself with a similar twist. By having us find out what happened to Kurt Russel's missing wife about halfway through the film and then having the rest of it be about his efforts to get her back Breakdown sidestepped the issue of the resolution not living up to the premise. Flightplan seemed to be going in this direction. About halfway through the film it seems clear that Jodie Foster is crazy, that her child was never really there. Foster, still believing the child is real goes to some extreme lengths to find her. At this point I thought the film would change into an interesting look at an insane and dangerous protagonist who had to be stopped before she could do anyone harm. However, in predictable thriller fashion it turns out that the child really was abducted. To make matters worse it's part of a fairly preposterous plot (even as such things go in movies). The finale degenerates into pretty standard, and poorly directed thriller fare, where a supposedly ordinary person finds their inner action hero in order to save the day.