Change Your Image
crazymanmichael
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Tár (2022)
Built on shifting sands
This was a tricky film to rate. It's obvious Oscar-bait: Cate Blanchett going a long way down the rabbit hole of "actor-subsumed-by-character" and yes, she does a remarkable job; a bravura piece of theatre to be sure. And yes, there's a lot in the film that indicates a steady hand on the tiller. Still, to me much of the film simply did not ring true. More about that in a moment.
In many ways, this film was an exercise in maddening frustration, and it does seem that director Todd Field made a number of choices purely with the intention of being... well, different (read: "difficult"). The film's credits precede the film proper, taking nearly five minutes to do so, rendered in a white-on-black font so small that even in a theater if you weren't in the front few rows you'd probably be out of luck reading them. Why? What the hell is with this obsession with tiny print??? Even the film's title card was so small that it took me a moment to realize what it was. The word "pretentious" springs to mind. Speaking of which, the acute accent over the a in the title/name is meaningless. It's not intended to alter the pronunciation (if it did, the name would be pronounced "tare") but simply to give it some sort of exotic cachet.
The film opens with an on-stage interview before a live audience, conducted by Adam Gopnik (here playing himself). It's clear that Lydia Tar-sorry, Tár-is at the pinnacle of her success, enjoying rave reviews and admiration, a slew of awards, including the rare EGOT quartet (Emmy, Genie, Oscar and Tony (it's interesting that if she'd blown the Tony hers would have been "EGO")). In the interview she goes on at length about the role of time in music, in performance, in listening, and in conducting. Yet when she is on the podium, she never once performs the accepted conductor time-keeping figures with the baton. Even Bruno Walter, notorious for making miniscule time-signature gestures, did in fact make them, small as they were. Instead she flails her arms, gesticulating wildly in an outrageously overdone facsimile of a conductor's efforts to coax the desired emotive performance from her musicians. It was so overblown that I was tempted to laugh out loud. The orchestra is clearly a real one, with actual musicians (although thanks to the microscopic credit font I have no idea which one) but it's equally clear that she's not really doing the conducting; someone off-camera is. Her life-partner Sharon occupies the first violin seat, but it's obvious that she (Nina Hoss in the role) has no idea how to play the instrument. Tár gives instructions to the orchestra in a mixture of English and German, however whereas most of the German in the rest of the film is subtitled, the rehearsal scenes aren't. If we could have known what she was saying it might have given the viewer a bit of insight into her vision as to how she intended to realize this extremely difficult orchestral piece, but in yet another of Todd Field's maddening pretensions, he in effect is saying, "Hey, you may want to to know... but I'm not telling!"
Many of the reviews of this film--both positive and negative--make much of its scathing commentary on "cancel culture". Sure, I get that. Tár the film is a tale of hubris; Tár the character is supremely arrogant, often viciously duplicitous, steeped in entitlement, a master manipulator and gratuitously vindictive whenever she feels violated, which seems to be often. On the rare occasions when someone stands up to her she devolves to over-the-top, maliciously spiteful verbal abuse. All of this ultimately brings her down and, while it is kept deliberately vague, it's quite possible--as has been speculated endlessly in other reviews--that the entire ending may be a hallucination brought about by her descent into psychosis. Unfortunately, that same ending to me comes across as pretty weak-kneed, as compared to the high drama of the first three acts. It struck me as one of those "Oh crap, I've written myself into a corner. How the hell do I get out?" kind of endings; not the first film to strike me that way.
Toward the end of the film we find her at her parents' house watching an old black and white video of her idol and mentor, Leonard Bernstein's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" in which he says that the most important thing about music is 'how it makes you feel." But it's never clear how music makes Lydia Tár feel, if indeed it makes her feel anything at all. Despite her seeming love of music it is, perhaps, ultimately just a vehicle to prop up her massive ego. While at the house, she encounters her brother who addresses her as "Linda" then corrects himself. It seems that she has eschewed her birth name as being too common, too pedestrian, and adopting instead "Lydia", perhaps because it had more cachet (yup: just like the accent over the a...)
Spoiler:
After she undergoes condemnation when it became clear she had a role in triggering the suicide of a young cellist whom she destroyed professionally and then attempted to cover up her involvement, she is shunned (canceled) by the music community. She ends up in some unnamed Southeast Asian city and in the final scene is shown conducting an orchestra performing a video game soundtrack for an audience of cosplayers. Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
End of Spoiler.
It's a film that, quite deliberately, invites speculation, endless reviews and analyses on what "really" happened to Lydia Tár, what happened to the rest of the lives she inhabits, her partner, her child, her peers and what it says about our modern artistic culture. There are no clear answers, and it's apparent that-for better or worse-there aren't intended to be. However with many other such films, there is still an underlying truth, even if it exists only in the minds of the writer and/or director, and that hidden truth still informs and enriches the subtext of the film. Here, however, I am thinking that there may well be no underlying truth, and as such the film is a structure built on shifting sands: seemingly solid but liable to sudden collapse.
I cast about awhile for a suitable rating to assign here. Several extra stars for a characteristically committed performance by Blanchett, but two or three stars at best for the film itself, plot, scripting and direction.
Shine a Light (2008)
Shine a (dimming) light
I have to say at the outset that this concert video, directed by veteran filmmaker Martin Scorsese (also a music documentary filmmaker of note: "The Last Waltz", "George Harrison: Living in the Material World", "Once Were Brothers", "No Direction Home" and others), evokes some real mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, I hope when I'm the age that these guys are I can still rock. But I suppose one question that the film poses is, can they? Frankly I was a bit shocked at Keith's guitar solos, which, to be charitable, were... well, let's just say, not exactly spot-on. He still has the feel, still has the snarl and the crunch, what he apparently lacked was timing. I wonder if, like me, Keith is experiencing some arthritis in his hands; which would account for it, I suppose. Even if it's not actually hurting at the moment, the arthritis-induced stiffness does have an impact, and it's a tricky thing to allow for in your playing. Once you're in the groove, your life-long instincts kick in: they're used to sending signals to your fingers that are supposed to be obeyed instantly. Sadly, that is sometimes no longer the case. Watching this video I came to suspect Keith may be confronting this exact issue.
And, I got the sense that the rest of the band was experiencing the same kind of slow-down. It was sad not to see Bill Wyman on bass, for sure, and Mick, Charlie and Ronnie were all moving just a little more slowly, just a little more deliberately, than in what was arguably the band's heyday. That's to be expected, I suppose, given that they were all in their early 70s when this one-off concert at the legendary Beacon Theater was recorded (2008).
Some have questioned the Stones' relevance today. This "what have you done for me lately?" attitude strikes me as a bit churlish. There is no question that for better or worse (mostly better, I would think) music today owes a lot to the Stones, as it does to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix and many others of the era. To write them off as no longer relevant is very much part of what, in our present society, seems to have evolved into an almost fascistic veneration of youth at the expense of experience, wisdom, real chops and good ole hard-won authenticity. It's a bit like comparing Yngwie Malmsteen to B. B. King. Arguably, Malmsteen can crank out about thirty notes in the time it took B. B. King to play one. On the other hand, B. B. King can say as much with one note as Malmsteen can say with thirty. And no, I'm not slagging Malmsteen, I am simply pointing out that dazzling virtuosity isn't everything. For those of us who still believe it's what you say with your instrument, as opposed to plain showmanship and technical skill, that's still going to count for something. And from that perspective the Stones, in my humble opinion, still deserve to be cut some slack.
The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration (2016)
A Celebration Indeed
Frankly I'm a little shocked that after all this time there's only one review in here for this DVD. The Hip was, by any reasonable definition, probably the most iconic Canadian band ever, eclipsing Rush's claim to that title, in part due to their insistence on retaining Canada as their base of operations, while Rush pretty much moved to L. A. for the most of the band's active existence. The Hip also ensured that every song they recorded was credited to the entire band as songwriters so that every band member had an equal share of the royalties, embracing another typically Canadian democratic principle of fairness and loyalty. And perhaps even more so, because through the 37 years of the band's existence, they remained good friends.
This concert is a hard one to review dispassionately, because, as we all know, this was the band's last kick at the can, and Gord passed away less than year later. Nevertheless, I think it's not an exaggeration to say that it shows the band at their best, and the audience (filling the Kingston arena and outside in the parking lot, and by live video across the country as well) responds in kind.
Here they plow through virtually every major and minor hit they had in their three and a half decades, and they mean every note and every syllable. In other words, they kick ass... Still, it's sad to see that Gord, who wrote so many of the song lyrics, needed teleprompters scattered around the stage in order to remember the words, an indication of the toll his disease was already taking on his cognitive abilities.
Bur you'd never know just by listening. He sang every song with enormous conviction, the band rocked, the staging was impeccable, and they crowd (which included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) loved every second. Thanks, guys, for all the music, and RIP Gord Downie.
Black Mirror: Striking Vipers (2019)
NOT a plot hole
Yeah, I've read at least a half-dozen articles and reviews that say the whole idea of "anatomically correct", fully sexually-functional avatars in Striking Vipers an egregious plot hole. I disagree.
Consider this: How is CGI done now? Creating realistic movement in computer-generated characters is generally done through motion capture. An actor wears a suit that has tracking dots on it, the actor's movements are captured on video, and a computer digitizes his/her movement based on the movements of the tracking dots. Thus, to me it only makes sense, should we ever get to the point of creating a completely immersive VR experience, (i.e. That of being inside someone else's skin and experiencing everything they would experience) that they would use a real person as a template and somehow digitize their physiology and neurology, rather than attempting to create something that complex from scratch. The avatars would be based on real people, in other words, rather in the same way that Gollum in Lord of the Rings was based on Andy Serkis. Therefore, if the creators DIDN'T want the avatar to have sex organs and a sexual response, they would probably have to specifically edit that out. And it's entirely possible that they might: a) not bother, or b) leave it in deliberately as a sexy "easter egg".
Murdoch Mysteries: F.L.A.S.H.! (2018)
Oh my goodness...
Shall we dip into just a FEW of the reasons this episode makes no sense whatsoever?
1. Sorry, but you can't remove the air from a room using fans. It just doesn't work. Once the pressure begins to drop the blades will cavitate, and that'll be that, no vacuum, not even close.
2. To generate a wind strong enough to bodily pick up a man and throw him against a wall (that's roughly EF3 tornado intensity) requires a HUGE volume of air. Yet the room in which this happens is about the size of a large living room, AND it's supposedly airtight. So where's all that air coming from???
3. Bonnie Clement, the switchboard operator, is apparently (using early-1900s telephone technology, at that) able to distinguish between sound "draining away" and someone getting farther from the microphone. Sorry, but they would sound exactly the same, and in any case, the guy DID get farther from the microphone. That was just a lame plot device that didn't work. Like most of the other items on this list.
4. Random aside: why do William and Julia need a code word to have sex? Why don't they just pick up the phone and say, "Let's have sex"?
5. Pendrick's scheme is nothing short of insane. Even if the technology existed to sink an evacuated tube thousands of miles long to the bottom of the ocean (it probably doesn't even exist today, not affordably, anyway) the fact is that even the tiniest leak anywhere along its length would be catastrophic. The oceanic pressure, combined with the vacuum inside, would fill the entire tube with seawater in a short time, dooming anyone in it at the time. It would also be impossible to repair the tube once that happened.
6. An amplified film soundtrack, not to mention suit-to-suit intercoms, require technology that wasn't available at the time.
7. EGREGIOUS ERRORS: The timings throughout the episode are completely wrong. The guy who dies at the beginning supposedly made the journey from Toronto Island to the mainland in "15 seconds". Pendrick does the same journey in less than "20 seconds", yet when he and Murdoch do the same, their trip takes close to a minute. Heck, once inside they "sled" they don't even start MOVING for at least 10 seconds, let alone make the whole trip! When Pendrick (on his film soundtrack) says that he'll be there in "30 seconds", he then invites people to look for him. They move to the telescopes, look out across Toronto Harbour, they see him, he waves, then disappears inside and hops aboard his "sled", all in under 10 seconds. Yeah, right.
I realize that most of the Pendrick episodes are science-fiction, emphasis on the "fiction", and not terribly credible at the best of times (Pendrick builds a rocket, Pendrick builds a microwave weapon, Pendrick invents the internet...) but this one - IMHO - really takes the cake.
A Separate Peace (2004)
Wow, way to suck all the life out of a good story
A Separate Peace is a novel many of us read (i.e. "were required to read") in high school, and I suppose our appreciation of any cinematic rendering may be colored by that recollection. If the book spoke to you, then you'd probably have some fond memories of it. If not, well, you probably wouldn't be watching this video. Or reading this review.
Yeah, I get it. Rendering a story that's told primarily through internal monologue is a tricky thing to transfer to the screen, nevertheless it is possible. All it takes is a little creativity and thought, foreign concepts to the filmmakers here, apparently. I have not seen the previous cinematic treatment of this novel, which here in IMDB also gets a pretty low rating.
Thus, whether it succeeds better than this one or not, I couldn't say.
I can say that a story that carried some serious emotional weight in print was presented here as something that I frankly couldn't give a crap about. The characters come as close to disappearing into the background as any I've ever witnessed, and someone really should tell these actors (and I use the term loosely) that acting involves more than simply reciting some words. Even the climactic scene, where the depth of Gene's betrayal is finally presented to Phineas in a way that he could no longer deny became a "so what?" moment, so denatured it was. Honestly, I couldn't have cared less. Oh dear. Leper went crazy in combat. Oh dear. Finny died during the resetting of his second fracture. Had I seen something similar in a theater - without any foreknowledge of the plot - I probably would have forgotten those pivotal moments before I got as far as the sidewalk.
These characters were presented with vividness and depth in the novel. On screen, they're tiresomely one-dimensional and you learn almost nothing about them, certainly nothing that wasn't laboriously and clumsily spelled out in the stunningly lame dialog.
Ah well. One good thing about this film was that it made me want to re-read the story.
Jimi Plays Berkeley (1971)
Eep!! You DARE to edit a Hendrix solo?
A quick explanation of the rating: 9.5 out of 10 for Hendrix, 2 out of 10 for the crap camera work, editing, nonsensical irrelevant footage, filler and other junk. And deduct a million more stars for gratuitously editing Jimi's guitar solos in Machine Gun, Voodoo Child and others. Seriously, what the f...? So anyway, average em out and (since you can't actually deduct a million stars) you come to six stars. It pains me to rate a Hendrix video so low, but honestly, this film looks like it was done by a bunch of kids with dad's super 8 camera.
Hendrix himself is, of course, incendiary and his backup, the Band of Gypsys era duo featuring Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, are also pretty on-form. Jimi's performances, as I've often said, tend to be kind of like sex: when they're good they're awesome, and when they're bad... they're still pretty darn good! I've heard that there's an expanded re-release of this video coming out or is already available. Might be worth looking for, if only to restore what should never have been removed in the first place. Editing a Hendrix solo is a bit like abridging the Bible: the six commandments, the one and a half gospels, the sermon on the little knoll, the penultimate supper, Paul's telegrams to the Corinthians, Jesus's pretrial hearing before Pontius Pilate's younger brother, and so on. In other words: sacrilege!
Murdoch Mysteries: The Devil Inside (2017)
Definitely dark, but flawed
Okay yes, the writers certainly achieved what they clearly set out to do, which was create likely the darkest Gillies episode to date, and Mark Rendall turns in an excellent performance as the beaten-down victim, Jacob Foley.
Nevertheless, there are a number of issues for me. First, much of what Gillies did to set up this "game" of his is implausible, if not outright impossible. I won't go into too much detail as that would obviously give away some important plot points; suffice to say that... well, it's unlikely, is all.
However the most important thing that troubles me about this episode is that clearly Foley is very much the victim here, and undergoes tremendous suffering which Murdoch, and to a lesser extent Julia as well, unwittingly participate in. Yet throughout the entire second half of the episode (where they unravel the plot and discover what was really going on) they never once express any compassion or empathy for Foley, or feel any regret for their part in increasing his suffering.
** MILD SPOILER ** Heck, Murdoch even punches the guy a couple of times and roughs him up. Yet Foley was clearly, as Murdoch himself says at one point, "Just a broken down man". About as close as anyone comes to expressing any compassion is when Julia, upon discovering what had been done to Foley, says, "Little wonder it drove him mad."
** SIGNIFICANT SPOILER ** Gillies tortures this poor guy to suicide, yet that doesn't seem to have any impact at all on any of the principals, here. Sorry, but that really bugs me.
What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (2004)
Pop mysticism presented as science
I'm reassured that most of the reviews here savage this film unmercifully, something that it richly deserves, in my humble opinion. I was for a time acquainted with a person who would rhapsodize to anyone who would listen about all of the wonderful things in this film, and at times I would find it difficult to even conjure up a civil response. Her particular obsession was the "research" done by Dr. Masaru Emoto (who isn't a real doctor, by the way. The diploma mill that provided his "degree" was shut down by the Indian authorities in 2019 and its owner charged with fraud.) on how meditation and positive intention could allegedly alter the molecular structure of water.
I find it deeply troubling that many people buy into the kind of pseudoscientific drivel peddled by films such as this without applying any critical thinking whatsoever, just apparently lap it up without question. Apparently, several of the scientists interviewed for this film objected strenuously to how their contributions were taken out of context and otherwise used in ways of which they didn't approve (hence the written disclaimer at the end.)
Other IMDB reviewers have already covered many of the film's more obvious absurdities, such as the claim that natives watching Columbus's arrival were unable to see his ships (something that flies in the face of everything we know about cognition and perception). Without going into a lot of (boring) detail, I can say, as someone who studied particle physics in university for two years (before dropping out) pretty much every claim this film makes about quantum mechanics is just so much nonsensical blather.
I suppose, in the interests of free speech, films such as this will continue to be made, and perhaps that's a good thing (as opposed to invoking some kind of censorship, that is). Nevertheless I do strongly believe it is incumbent upon all of us, particularly in this "post truth" era, to rigorously apply critical thinking, to do our own independent research, carefully scrutinize sources for credibility, and draw our own conclusions, not just blindly accept things at face value, regardless of where it comes from, or how much we may "want" to believe it. If this film, however unintentionally, encourages that, then I suppose that somewhat justifies its existence.
Songbird (2018)
Hoped for the best... but no...
I do try my best to approach films with an open mind, even if I happen to see bad reviews, low ratings, etc. here on IMDB or on, say, Rotten Tomatoes. That said, the many scathingly bad reviews posted for this film did make it hard to watch with an unbiased mind, and I suppose I was on the lookout for the usual "bad movie" red flags. Sadly, there were many. That said, given the subject matter (and given that I am a musician with a lot of experiences over the years, both good and bad, in bands), I really do think I went into it wanting to like this movie. Unfortunately, those bad reviews were well justified. This movie was embarrassingly bad. I am not familiar with the actors playing the leads, but I would not be surprised if this film alone torpedoed their careers. The acting is so stupefyingly bad that I was forced to look away at some points, as if averting my eyes from someone picking their nose or scratching their back. The editing appeared to have been done in-camera, and the random, utterly nonsensical jump cuts reminded me of a home movie videographer trying to keep their clips short because they were worried they may run out of tape. As to the plot... what plot? If there was one, if there was anything, anything at all, that resembled some sort of coherent narrative, well, I missed it, sorry.
I can only say I am glad I borrowed this from the local library, so no money changed hands.
My totally unsolicited advice to the actors, writer, director, editor, producer, cinematographer, exec producer, composer(s), vfx team... don't quit your day jobs.
The Shape of Water (2017)
The Shape of Garbage
I was prepared to like this film. Hell, I WANTED to like it, seriously. Based on his previous work, I thought Del Toro a filmmaker with some chops (although now I'm not so sure...) and really, I had some expectations for this newest piece of his.
It started well: the sets had this kind of baroque, Gilliam-esque density and muted palette that gave the film a certain visual appeal and tone. Twenty minutes in I was thinking, "Okay... it's not as good as I hoped, but maybe it'll pull itself together..." By the end of the first hour I was wondering if I could make it to the finish without hurling something at the screen. But the thing is, I always hold out this forlorn hope that somehow, against all odds, at the finale the movie will redeem itself, explain away the vacuous plot holes, hackneyed acting and ridiculous, cliché ridden dialog, and make SOME kind of sense. Sadly, this was not to be the case. This film was awful right through to the credits.
I really would like to have a conversation with someone who adored this film. I would like to ask them how they managed to get past all of the elements in this film that annoyed and, quite frankly, insulted me as a viewer: the stock, cliched characters, the utterly egregious plot holes, the cringe-worthy dialog ("You ARE a god!" Eek.), and the fact that our central character, a guy in a rubber fish suit, looked to me exactly like... a guy in a rubber fish suit. For pity's sake, it wasn't even consistent from scene to scene! Did they LOSE some pieces of the suit during filming?? Hell, you could even SEE the seams in some shots!
Okay, just for fun (sarcasm alert) let's look at a couple the more obvious plot holes:
So, apparently we can't release fish-guy back into the ocean because the flood gate at the end of the canal is closed. Explain to me: what's the problem with driving an extra 400 yards to the other side of the gate? Do you seriously expect me to believe that this canal is the ONLY access to the ocean within driving distance? Come ON...
After the great escape (though machinations so absurdly improbable I'm not even going to dignify them with a comment), our well-intentioned heroine decides to keep fish-guy happy (oh, and have sex, too, apparently. Right...) by flooding her entire bathroom with water Does anyone seriously believe that the upper floor of an old building like that could even come CLOSE to handling that kind of mass without a catastrophic structural failure? I'm sorry, but that is simply impossible. Period. Assuming the room is about 10 by 10 (likely bigger), that comes to nearly 50 thousand pounds of water, or 25 tons. In reality, it wouldn't just leak down into the audience below; the entire room, water, floor, walls, bathroom fixtures and everything else, would come crashing down onto the moviegoers, killing or injuring at least a dozen. But that wouldn't make for a charming, romantic movie, would it?
I expect some people are reading the above and thinking, "Oh come on! It's a fantasy; stop being so literal." Nope. Sorry, I disagree. If you place a fantasy in a fantasy world then fine, you can write your own rules, create your own reality, the sky's the limit. But if you place your fantasy in the REAL WORLD, then you have to abide by real-world rules. You can't pick and choose what parts of reality to accept and what to cast aside because it's inconvenient. To do so just lazy writing, and this film is rife with it.
I could go on, but really, what's the point? And frankly, I would very much like to put this horrible experience behind me, thank you very much. I have to admit that Sally Hawkins (as Elisa, the mute cleaning lady lead) did a decent job with a shallowly written character. Also, the ubiquitous permeation of cold war paranoia in the 60's was decently captured. But I fail to see how Richard Jenkins, a character actor I admire, could allow himself to be drawn into this mess, especially given his cliched, stock character of the lonely, closeted gay man (if you're going to insert an LGBTQ character into a film, could you not at least make him/her interesting?)
Suffice to say, I have not had any respect for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since the execrable "Oliver!" won best picture way back in 1968. This film and its woefully misplaced accolades does nothing to change that opinion.
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)
Gloriously inept
Here it is: Edward D. Wood, Jr's magnum opus, the legendary "worst movie ever made," a film that has become a cult classic. So appallingly amateurish and nonsensical that it falls well into the "so bad it's great" category.
You have to admire Ed Wood's earnestness. He loved cinema; he loved everything about it, the way it could create vast new worlds, new stories, new characters; he loved the willing suspension of disbelief; he loved the magic; and he loved making films... He just had absolutely no talent for it whatsoever. Seen through his rapturous directorial gaze, toys on strings became menacing UFOs from beyond the galaxy, tombstones cut out of corrugated cardboard became a sinister graveyard, and a curtained room containing a desk and some scavenged ham radio equipment became the interior of an orbiting space station. Ed made friends with aging, forgotten horror film star Bela (Dracula) Legosi, and got him to return to the screen for one last kick at the can for this film, but Legosi died during filming, so Ed hired his wife's chiropractor - who played all of his scenes with his cape over his face - to fill in.
The acting, dialog, plotting, editing, continuity, lighting and literally every other aspect of the production, all are astoundingly, mind-freezingly bad. Police cars race to the scene in broad daylight, only to arrive moments later in pitch darkness. Toy flying saucers on clearly-visible strings wobble pitiably over stock footage of downtown Hollywood, or worse yet, before painted sky backdrops against which the saucers' shadows appear. At one point, one of the saucers flies away in flames, and it looks as if someone just poured lighter-fluid over the model and lit it. The cast is a motley assemblage comprised of a washed-up late-show horror movie hostess (Vampira, who plays her role mute), a wrestler with an unintelligible accent (Tor Johnson), the earnest but numbingly stupid son of one of the film's investors (who at the last minute apparently made funding contingent upon his son playing the lead role), and various other bit players dredged from the bottom of Hollywood's endless barrel of extras. Hack TV "psychic" Criswell provides a barely-coherent narration (he begins by referring to everything we're about to see as "future events" then immediately switches tenses and tries to tell us that everything is "based on the sworn testimony of the poor souls who survived this ordeal." Are we supposed to assume that they survived the ordeal... in the future? Apparently so.)
Pre-adolescent kids borrowing dad's video camera could do as well, perhaps better.
But somehow, the absurdity of it all has captured people's hearts, and I think it has a lot to do with just how much Ed poured his love of cinema into this film, colossally inept though it is.
It's pointless (not to mention nearly impossible) to outline the plot of Plan 9, such as it is. Suffice to say that it involves some aliens whose plan (the "Plan 9" of the title; what happened to plans 1 through 8?) is to resurrect the recent dead using some sort of an "electrode gun." Why? In the words of one of the aliens: "Because... of... DEATH! Because all you Earth people are IDIOTS!"
It's great fun, and actually stands up to repeated viewings, in order to catch yet more glorious moments of ineptitude in all their splendour. For those who want to know more about Ed Wood (including his infamous transvestism and angora fetish; he apparently directed at least some of Plan 9 in drag) you probably can't do better than Tim Burton's eponymous film, starring Johnny Depp as Ed and Martin Landau as Legosi.
Independence Day (1996)
Silly, inept, but actually quite a lot of fun
Independence Day is one of those films that virtually defines "willing suspension of disbelief". The amount of "will" involved is substantial, but taken on those terms, it can actually be an enjoyable film (though fluffy enough to stuff a mattress). I wonder why I am inclined to give more latitude in this regard to some movies than others. It's a puzzle. Armageddon occupies approximately the same stature as Independence Day, and I was more than willing to be savagely dismissive of the former, whereas the latter gets a much more cushioned clubbing. Both films suffer from essentially the same maladies, cartoonish, one-dimensional characters, enough action-movie clichés to choke a hippo, and plot holes larger than the spaceships themselves (which are pretty f-king huge.)
These spaceships (which appear to be about a mile or so in diameter, with no visible means of propulsion and no apparent way of staying in the air--more on that in a moment) appear one morning over the major capitals of the world and... well, do nothing. Circling F16s, radio greetings and cute halter-clad teenage girls holding up "Welcome to Earth" signs garner no response. But David Levinson, a rogue scientist played by a suitably befuddled Jeff Goldblum, detects a synchronized radio pulse linking all the ships together and realizes that they are counting down to... something. Something pretty sinister, he assumes. Turns out to be true. The aliens, it seems, are bent on destroying humanity and taking over the planet. The aliens unleash their weaponry, destroying many of the earth's major cities and all seems lost, until Levinson and cocky air force pilot Steven Hiller, played by Will Smith, hatch a plan to pilot a captured alien saucer to the "mothership" in orbit around earth and disable the master computer system coordinating the attack.
Plot holes and other absurdities abound. IMDb lists almost two hundred "goofs" for this film (which must be near the record, I would think.) Anachronisms, plot holes, character errors, audio-video unsynchronized, continuity errors, crew/equipment visible, errors in geography, factual errors and revealing mistakes all indicate that this is something rather less than high art, as a work of cinematic craftsmanship.
MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS:
By far the biggest plot hole is nothing less than the central plot device by which we earthlings defeat the supposedly technologically far superior aliens. Goldblum and Smith commandeer a two-person alien saucer (this is the one that crash-landed in Roswell New Mexico in 1947 and has been in storage at Area 51 ever since, according to the film) and fly it to the alien mothership. There they upload a computer virus into the mothership's main computer system, thus disabling the entire alien attack.
Bear in mind that a computer virus is really just a computer program like any other, the only difference being that a virus is deliberately designed to do something nasty (to be completely technically accurate, it's unclear whether the program in question is really a "virus." A computer virus a program designed to self-replicate and spread to other connected systems, hence the name. The "virus" in the movie is certainly an example of "malware". Does it self-replicate and spread? Unclear.)
The point is, to write a virus requires not only a thorough knowledge of the system it is to run on (so you know which vulnerabilities to exploit,) but also an ability to program in a language that system understands. A program written for a PC will not run on a Mac, and a program written for Linux likely won't run on either. Okay yes, that's not entirely accurate; but I'm trying to make a broader point here, that being: what are the odds that someone could write a program that would run on a computer system designed by ALIENS? Or use the appropriate communication protocol to upload it? Do the aliens use TCP/IP? What are the odds that any malware could, within seconds, completely disable an entire multi-node command and control system for an whole fleet of spaceships? Oh, and in a blatant example of product placement, the laptop used to upload the virus is a Macbook. Good thing the aliens use Apple computers too, huh?
END OF SPOILER
So,why do I hang onto this movie (yes, I do own it) and actually give is a decent rating? Because actually, it's rather fun. Yes, it's stupid, juvenile, ineptly made, ridiculously plotted and acted, and contains more holes than Swiss cheese, but taken on its own terms (one could almost call it camp), it's really quite an amusing couple of hours. Some of the shots of the alien mothership are actually kind of cool, too. Watch for Brent Spiner (Data on Star Trek TNG) as a quirky, neurotic Area 51 scientist who's been in the lab so long he has no idea relate to actual humans.
Oh, and just how DO these spaceships stay in the air? One can assume they must weigh an awful lot, but they are able to float like soap bubbles above our biggest cities without doing any damage. Simple physics, i.e. Newton's Second Law of Motion, would demand that some sort of downward force be required to support all that weight. In physics terms, there would be no difference between supporting the ship's weight in the air, or on the ground, and that downward force would be borne by whatever is underneath. Even some sort of "levitation beam" would still need something to push against, and that something would be the ground below. In reality, the saucers wouldn't need to deploy their "primary weapon"... the weight of the spaceships alone would crush the entire city beneath them. I suppose you could argue that a sufficiently advanced alien civilization could have mastered some sort of anti-gravity technology, thereby nullifying the Earth's gravitational field in the vicinity of the ships. Maybe so. I rather think Einstein would have something to say about that.
I know: nitpicky.
Prometheus (2012)
High Hopes Dashed
Okay, I'm gonna cut Ridley Scott a lot of slack with this film. I like his work generally: Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and of course Alien. With Prometheus he's obviously trying to create a prequel to the Alien franchise, and that's fine; it could use one. And frankly, I loved Alien, despite its many flaws and improbabilities; loved it for the whole "film noir in outer space" genre that it spawned. Loved that its brooding darkness and menace enabled it to transcend the whole guy-in-a-rubber-suit alien thing. (And, I loved that Scott deliberately didn't give his actors the heads-up about the infamous chest-burster scene, so that he could capture some authentic shock reactions on film. Now that takes cojones!)
Let's face it, the whole squeaky-clean Star Trek/2001: A Space Odyssey style of science fiction was begging for a flipside, and Alien was it. With it, space became gloomy, dirty, depressing and full of hidden danger. And, in a complete break with tradition, the first sequel, Aliens, from the hand of James "Titanic" Cameron, was as good as—some say better than—the original! (Alien 3 faltered somewhat, despite having David Fincher (Se7en/Fight Club) at the helm, and Alien Resurrection was pure crap on a cracker.)
But, there's only so much slack one can cut, before the whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing falls to pieces.
In order to move the plot forward, Scott has his characters do unforgivably stupid things, time and time again. And not incidentally or fleetingly stupid. We're talking relentless, towering stupidity that even stupid people would find insulting. Once I could deal with; twice, maybe. But stupidity as their go-to behavior? Please. One would have to assume, if you're going to send a bunch of guys out into space on a potentially dangerous mission, one with so many unknowns, that you'd get some pretty highly trained specialists to go along, wouldn't you? Yet one of these guys, when confronted by a completely unknown alien life form and knowing absolutely nothing about it, sticks his face inches away from it and teases the damn thing! And he KEEPS doing it, even after it makes an obvious threat display. Does the word "moron" spring to mind? The guy got nothing less than what he deserved.
Speaking of moronic
the crew lands on a completely unknown planet, right? One they know absolutely nothing about. They're there for a few hours, nowhere near long enough to learn anything significant; they're exploring an unknown alien structure, one that's possibly brimming with life-threatening hazards; and, just because the atmosphere turns out to have an earthlike mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, this guy immediately removes his helmet and takes a deep breath! Is he TRYING to die? (Question: where the hell did the oxygen come from, anyway? There's obviously no plant life
) And by the way, what the hell was Charlize Theron's character there for, other than to look hot in a skin-tight jumpsuit? And maybe to give the film some big-name draw. What was her role in this mission, other than to get in the way of people doing their jobs, annoy them, and generally behave like a tight-assed, obstinate bitch? I really couldn't figure that one out.
Well, I could go on. This COULD have been a brilliant movie. And to be fair to it, it does have a one or two pretty good nail-biting moments; and, what with the Terragen 2-generated alien landscapes and H.R. Giger-inspired interiors (a la the original Alien) it does have a great look.
The Alien franchise had (and still has) a lot of unexplored territory that could be mined to create some really innovative, strange and exciting story lines. I hope someone still will. Sadly, it would seem that Scott is no longer the guy to do it.
Twisted (2004)
I tried to like it...
... really I did. Ashley Judd was actually not too bad in Heat, in Kiss the Girls, and even in Double Jeopardy (monstrous plot holes in the latter notwithstanding).
But here... well, to be charitable, let's just say she's not given much to work with. But, having said that, I also have to add that she certainly doesn't maximize what she IS given. Sorry, but the bottom line is: this movie is just plain lousy, from the derivative storyline, to the embarrassingly lame dialog, to the cliché-a-minute plot devices, to Garcia's scene-chewing overacting, to Judd's near-complete unbelievability as a supposedly hard-nosed police detective (heroically fighting bad-guys on the street as well as rampant sexism on the force, naturally. Could we ram a few MORE clichés in here if we tried?)
I actually purchased this movie on DVD (well, admittedly it WAS in the bargain bin) and I did in fact look forward to watching it, but it was pretty much an ordeal to sit through it to the end. I kept hoping that somehow, some way, something would happen to redeem the film before the climax. Sadly, this hope was cruelly dashed. Oh well. Maybe I can get a couple of bucks for it on trade...
Creation of the Universe (1985)
Response to a previous review by blackhole921
I have this documentary on DVD, and having watched it perhaps five or six times, I can only conclude that previous reviewer "Blackhole" must have been watching a different video. At NO point in the video does Timothy Ferris (or anyone else) say "This only proves the existence of 'Alah!'" or anything even remotely like it. He mentions Allah (sic) only during a short parenthetical segment in which he discusses the historical antagonism between church and religion regarding creation stories. But at no point does he even imply that because the universe arose from zero volume there must have been a "creator", nor does he refer in any detail to the Koran, or the Bible, beyond a passing reference to various creation mythologies from different cultural traditions. In fact, if memory serves, there is no reference to a "creator" at all.
Much of the information presented in this film comes from direct on-screen interviews with some of the most reputable cosmologists and astrophysicists in the business, Stephen Hawking, Alan Sandage, Murray Gell-Mann, John Archibald Wheeler (who, ironically, first coined the term "blackhole" in reference to collapsed massive stars) et al.
Finally, the first ten minutes of THIS film is NOT taken up with a discussion of the big bang at all, rather it covers the history of scientific thought and the scientific method, and then gets into atomic theory as a starting point for an examination of the origins of matter.
I don't know what film blackhole921 is reviewing in his comments, but it certainly wasn't this one.
Peter Gabriel: Growing Up Live (2003)
Sweet
I have every Gabriel video I could lay my hands on, so "Up" certainly has some stiff competition when it comes to vying for my title of "best Gabriel concert"... but it's certainly in the running. The DTS sound is goose-bump-inducing, the stage presentation is wonderful, and Gabriel is, as always, in superb voice (as is his daughter Melanie).
I suppose I would have to say that Secret World is still my all-time fave, but that's probably only because it's a concert I actually attended, so it's pretty cool to watch the vid and reminisce about actually being there (and it's also great to see Paula Cole on backing vox).
I suppose my only tiny moan about "Up" is that Manu Katche is not on the kit. I love watching that guy play!
The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue (1998)
Please God... make it stop!!!
Oh, what an idiot I am. I read the reviews, and I rented this disc-shaped fragment of decaying bovine excrement anyway.... and believe me, I want those 79 minutes of my life back, desperately. I won't rehash the obvious and pervasive reasons why this just might be the worst animated flick ever committed to film (of course I haven't actually SEEN every animated film in existence, so it's possible that there's a worse one out there somewhere, but I doubt it). Those reasons are adequately rehearsed in the other reviews to be seen herein.
I merely want to issue a warning to other potential viewers who loved the first film as I did, and thus might be thinking, as I did, "It CAN'T be that bad..."
Trust me. It can.
AC/DC: Live at Donington (1992)
Ya gotta love em
Although nearly half a million fans turned out at Downsview in Toronto in 2003 to see the headlining act -- The Rolling Stones -- all anyone talked about after the show was AC/DC, and how they pretty much blew all the other acts off the stage. That's got to tell you SOMETHING, and this DVD goes a long way toward explaining why that was so: it certainly shows the Thunder From Down Under at their hard-rocking best. Angus Young is (as always) a treat to watch. Not only is his guitar technique almost supernaturally skillful, his whole "slightly whacko" schick (e.g. his "seizure" during that extended guitar solo) is just so entertaining! And the sound... ohmygoodness. You crank up the Dolby 5.1 on a good sound system and you'll FEEL it in your gut, that's a personal guarantee. Oh yes, this is the way concerts SHOULD be recorded. (And isn't it great they performed Jailbreak? That's a kick-ass AC/DC classic that doesn't get anywhere NEAR enough air-play, in my opinion.) I think my only complaint about this concert is that a lot of Brian Johnson's between-song banter seems to me to be awfully forced and insincere. But hey, a guy that can sing like that doesn't NEED to do a lot of talking...
Starship Troopers (1997)
A movie that seems to provoke discussion
For a flick that's essentially straight out of the usual "war against the alien hordes" genre, this one seems to have generated some of the most interesting and insightful reviews I've seen on IMDb in a while. jamesjlr2's commentary on its simultaneous pro- and anti-war stance really hit the mark, in my opinion. One wonders if we'd pursue the slaughter of the alien hordes with the same gusto if they looked like Ewoks. Somehow I can't picture propaganda videos of children and mothers stomping on guinea pigs...
Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers was essentially a glorification of combat, and made much of the whole idea of the "just" war, while Joe Haldeman's excellent "The Forever War", published around the same time, painted war as ugly, dehumanizing and ultimately pointless. Veerhoven's film, it would seem, attempts to be a little of both.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2001 in 2007
Back when I first saw 2001 on the big screen more years ago than I'd care to think -- I thought it was the greatest movie ever made. It had it all, mystical theme, dazzling (for its day) special effects, cool technology, and Kubrick's trademark meticulous direction. I've probably seen it more times than any other film, and I usually managed to suck back a few tokes in time for the stargate sequence at the end. I've seen the sequel 2010, read Clarke's novel (and all of his sequels) as well as other books and essays that attempted to explain and/or expand on the movie's rather abstruse plot. But, it has been several years since I last saw it, so when I saw the re-release DVD on sale I picked it up and re-watched it again for the first time since the actual year 2001.
Although after my numerous viewings the film couldn't contain any surprises it was still cool to watch it with fresh eyes. A few things struck me. For starters, I think the film has aged rather well. The special effects, stunning in their day, are rather commonplace now, but that's largely due to the influence of 2001 itself. Still, with one or two exceptions, they're still as good as many of the computer-generated effects of today, and in some cases, better.
Second, I noticed for the first time that, perhaps because of the front-projection backdrops and rather stagy lighting in the "dawn of man" chapter, it had an eerie, almost CGI-like ambiance. It was almost as if the whole sequence was computer-generated, à la Final Fantasy. Interesting. And still, after all these years, the ape makeup is still pretty incredible, way better than Planet of the Apes, which snagged the Oscar for best makeup that year (some folks say it's because the Academy didn't realize the apes in 2001 were actually actors).
Third, horribly stilted dialog. I'm surprised I never really noticed this before, but then, I probably wasn't watching it for the character development (see the toke comment above). Seen with 2007 eyes, the dialog had a distinctly "60's" feel to it, rather like the 50's dialog that was so well recreated in Good Night and Good Luck. People just talked differently then, although it's a difficult distinction to quantify. Still, given the fact that there's hardly any of it (the first actual words come some 20 minutes in), this didn't really detract from my enjoyment per se.
Fourth, a few anachronisms. For example, Pan Am no longer exists; therefore the shuttle looks rather dated. Also, I'm willing to bet that, should Kubrick still be alive and working on 2001 today, he would likely be a lot more creative in depicting zero-gee. 2001 was the first sci-fi film to actually address the fact of weightlessness in space rather than simply ignoring it, but by the same token Kubrick in many scenes took the easy way out (vis, the "grip shoes" worn by the shuttle flight attendant), which, seen through 2007 eyes, looks a little cheesy. For example, why bother to climb or descend a ladder in zero-gee, when a little hop will get you there with a fraction of the effort? It was pretty obvious in some scenes (on the bridge and the pod deck, both of which were supposedly weightless areas of the ship) that Bowman and Poole were actually carrying weight. I also noticed, in most cases for the first time, many of the "goofs" listed here on IMDb. Perhaps with an additional 30 years of movie appreciation behind me, I am a little more observant.
The stargate sequence: still not bad, although it probably could be dashed off today in a few hours using CGI, instead of the months it took Doug Trumbull to do it at the time using slit scan. I still really like the "Jupiter space" sequences. It has a wonderfully remote, alien vibe to it, especially the shots of this teeny-tiny spacecraft hovering in a void, dwarfed by the moons of Jupiter looming over it.
And as for the ending, well, what can I say? Cool, but still completely incomprehensible (despite having read the book). All in all, although I would no longer call it my favorite film (I don't think I have a favorite any more, really) it still ranks up there with some of the greats, and it deserves a place in the IMDb top 250 if for no other reason than that it set the bar for all of the space movies that followed it, the Star Wars franchise, Close Encounters, the Alien trilogy, Star Trek, etc. etc. etc. It still, even after all these years, has one of the most "technically accurate" depictions of space travel of any of them. ...And it's kind of sad that even today, 6 years after the year 2001, we still don't really have bases on the moon, commercial space stations in orbit, or artificial intelligence.
Twister (1996)
Technical Inconsistencies
POSSIBLE SPOILERS WITHIN!
Prolog:
· It is implied, later in the film (during the dinner scene at auntie's) that this night-time tornado is F5 intensity. This is extremely unlikely. There's just not enough heat/lapse-rate (and consequent thermal instability) without sunshine. · The fluid dynamics of a guy getting sucked out of a storm cellar just don't work. It would require too much pressure differential in an enclosed space. Stick a small piece of paper in a pop bottle, then try to get the paper out of the pop bottle by blowing. Blow across the opening, into the opening, try anything. Trust me, it just won't work.
First tornado encountered
· Mammatus clouds, which they admire outside the gas station, generally indicate that a storm is waning, not at peak intensity as suggested here. · The tornado shown does not emerge from a wall cloud, and thus is probably a land-spout. Therefore it's unlikely to be F2 intensity as implied. · Storm chasers do not drive like idiots. They're very responsible and safety conscious. Even when deploying damage-path instruments like TOTO they do not deliberately get closer than ½ mile or so. · An F2 tornado cannot pick up a truck, just push it around some. · If it ropes out as shown, it's very unlikely (but not impossible, admittedly) that it could reconstitute, as it apparently did. · The tornado debris cloud varied way too much in size. In the final seconds it looked to be only a few meters in diameter. Not realistic. · Hiding under a bridge is a really stupid idea. Storm chasers would only do something like that if no other option was available.
Second tornado
· The second tornado appears to be coming out of a wall cloud (good for them!), but there's no such storm-chaser terminology as 'sidewinder'. · There's no way they could assess the Fujita ('F') number just by looking at the tornado. Dumb! No storm chaser would ever say something like that. · The tornado does not move realistically. Spawning of the second funnel is unrealistic. There's no way a second tornado could 'split' from the first as shown. The fluid dynamics of rotation would prevent it.
· Hunt says they're 'in the flanking line.' They could not be anywhere near the flanking line if they're 'under the core' (mesocyclone, I suppose that means). · The whole 'cow' scene, while amusing, is completely unrealistic. · They survive a direct hit from an 'F3' tornado and nothing happens? Don't make me laugh.
Dinner at Auntie's
· I don't even know where to start with the absurd banter in this scene. The whole 'Jack Daniels' anecdote is absolutely impossible. Not even close to possible.
Third tornado
· You can't guarantee touchdown just from Doppler radar. You can determine the existence of a vortex, but there's no way to say whether it's on the ground or in the air. · There's a good picture of wall cloud here! One good moment. · Where the hell is the debris in this scene coming from? They're too far from the tornado and not anywhere near the RFD. · The tornado moves too fast. Not realistic. · When it hits the power lines, what the hell explodes in a ball of fire??? · Cloud motion is not particularly realistic when the tornado lifts.
Fourth tornado
· Once again we have an unlikely level of intensity after dark. · What are these people, living mobile home parks? Every damn tornado in the state heads straight for them! · There is a bad misconception that the visible part of the tornado, i.e. the condensation funnel, is where the wind is. The actual area of strong rotation may be many times larger and strong inflow can extend even farther than that. The visible funnel is only where the air pressure is low enough that the air is at or below dew point. In dry air, tornadoes may not necessarily have a visible funnel at all, at least until it is filled with debris and dust. · 'Downdrafts and microbursts'??? What the hell is he talking about? They took a f***ing direct hit from a funnel. There were no 'downdrafts and microbursts'
The propeller idea
· I'm not sure about this. It might actually be a good one. Mind you, I can't picture a scientist designing objects intended to be carried aloft by the wind that are spherical, which is the most aerodynamically efficient symmetrical shape. The logical design would be something with a high drag coefficient, not a low one (which a sphere would be), so that they would be carried more easily by the updraft. It wouldn't be necessary to make little propellers, though. Just anything that would increase drag.
Fifth tornado
· Sure is good of that tornado to hang around for hours until the storm chasers are ready! The longest-lived tornado on record lasted less than 75 minutes. Oh, and they casually drive by the thing on the way to their deployment point. They go from bright sunlight to within a mile of a huge wedge tornado, then back into sunlight, apparently far enough away from the tornado to prepare their instruments, then easily drive to within a few hundred feet of the thing. Yeah right.
· By the way, just because the sensors spill out onto the road, how come they're no good any more? Why do they have to be inside that barrel thing? They'd still get sucked up into the funnel even if they're scattered on the road
· How can they drive through the flaming wreckage of a tanker truck and not hit anything? · Quibble: Explosion of Jonas's truck looked really fake. · Continuity error: Part of combine harvester hits their truck on the passenger-side windshield. In the very next shot the windshield is intact. · There is no way the truck could drive through even a flimsy frame house and come out the other side undamaged. · Too many problems here to list. In almost all scenes, they're way too close to the tornado. They would be right in the inflow, and getting their asses kicked by it. · Getting caught in an F5 tornado unprotected: Probability of survival: very low. Probability of surviving uninjured: just about zero. Wind speeds inside an F5 tornado are between 250 and 317 m.p.h. Getting hit by even a small piece of debris would be like getting shot with a gun. Even in the core of the tornado they look like they're getting buffeted by winds perhaps 40-50 m.p.h. Yeah, right. If either of them got hit by even a small rock traveling at 250+ miles per hour, they'd be dead as fried chicken. · Following the encounter, the tornado doesn't rope out, but dissipates in a matter of seconds. Pretty, unlikely. · In the final scene, it is apparent that the tornado passed within a few meters of the farmhouse, yet the house is undamaged. Possible, but very pretty unlikely.