Obligatory Ghostbusters 2016 Review

Going to the the 2016 Ghostbusters on opening weekend was something of a point of pride for me after reading all of the "trollicious" comments about how terrible the new movie would be. After having written my thoughts about the bizarre anti-women sentiments of too many fanboys (disguised as "this remake will ruin my childhood" whining), I felt obligated to review the film one way or the other -- positive or negative -- as long as I could review it honestly.

In 2011, director Paul Feig struck gold with the comedy hit Bridesmaids. Since then, he's made three additional film starring Melissa McCarthy (Heat, Spy, and Ghostbusters). These films, penned by Katie Dippold, Paul Feig, or a combination of both, all seem to draw from the same well. There's a pattern to the jokes in these films which mixes ribald comments with a seemingly faddish turn wherein characters riff a series of allegedly funny lines and, rather than using the best one, several of them are strung together in the final product.

That kind of "on the fly" humor can be effective but it has to be honed and used judiciously. At times, these jokes pile on to one another, making scenes increasingly funny. When not done well, however, scenes can feel clunky and each additional comment makes the scene clunkier.

Unfortunately, Ghostbusters 2016 is a very clunky movie.

The film re-teams Bridesmaids stars Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy while introducing "Saturday Night Live" alumn Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones to the mix. Wiig as Professor Erin Gilbert is our protagonist though she quickly becomes eclipsed by McCartney as Abby Yates and McKinnon as Jillian Holtzmann. Gilbert and Yates bicker like the former friends they are while Holtzmann embodies some kind of living cartoon character -- appropriate since she seems styled after the Egon Spengler on the animated "The Real Ghostbusters". This presents a conundrum as Holtzmann becomes the most interesting person to look at on screen but she never gives us anything but an out-of-step lipsynching scene (where she's seemingly seducing Gilbert?) and several nonsequiters. She may be brilliant when it comes to making ghost-catching gadgets but she doesn't know DeBarge from Devo.

After the three women begin a business to investigate the paranormal, they hire Kevin (Chris Hemsworth). Dumb as a box of rocks, Kevin is a one-note character whose first note rings flat and only gets worse from there. The scene of him showing his graphic design skills might be one of the most excruciating bits of the film.

We eventually meet Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a mass transit employee who manages to make it past Kevin's incompetence and summons the Ghostbusters to the subway for their second supernatural encounter. Apparently, Patty is impressed by the team's incompetence and inexplicably joins them. This is one of many "this thing needs to happen so it's just going to happen" moments of the film.

There is an antagonist in Ghostbusters... of a sort. Rowan North, played by Neil Casey, has less depth and backstory than a "Criminal Minds" freak of the week. He's such a thumbnail sketch that I kept expecting that he was just a lowly henchman for some bigger baddie (like Andy Garcia's Mayor character or, even better, Cecily Strong as Jennifer Lynch, the Mayor's assistant). Alas, no. The film's villain remains unmotivated and as poorly drawn as the rest of the characters in the film.

It seems that the real bad guy of the film is Paul Feig who's given his team very little to work with. Additionally, the film suffers from being simply poorly made. The most glaring example of this comes in the scene after the team gets called into the Mayor's office and told that they have to stop their ghost-busting antics. This cuts to the team in an alley where Yates says that the Mayor is allowing them to continue to hunt ghosts!? The scene proceeds to exist with the sole purpose to demonstrate a few weapons that will be used in the final confrontation with the Oogie Boogie version of Rowan North. There's really no need for this scene as the audience has seen Holtzmann making quantum leaps in technology throughout the film. The film then cuts to what was the next natural scene after the Mayor's office scene where our heroes are downtrodden, not the elated characters we saw during the brief weapons try-out.

This same kind of editing and pacing issues mar much of the film. Of course, the film takes an extra beat whenever introducing a ham-handed cameo from the original Ghost Busters cast (the Sigourney Weaver bit just feels tacked on, because it is) but then one of the film's other cameos, Ozzy Osbourne, cuts away too quickly (after a terrible laugh line).

Other pacing problems present in the Ghostbusters only catching one ghost before the final confrontation, the inexplicable absence of Gilbert from the team after their strange-but-brief "victory" over Rowan North, and the gaping absence of the dance number Kevin-as-Rowan is setting up the police for (which we see somewhat in the credits).

I won't even go into how troubling Leslie Jones's role was handled in her "white people be crazy" stereotype into which her character was cast. Again, better writing and judicious editing could have helped her character just as it could have helped all of the other paper-thin characters in this overblown film wherein, at the end of the day, it didn't matter what gender the actors are but how good the script and direction need to be.

Ghostbusters 2016 is not the worst movie I've seen. It's not necessarily a terrible movie. It feels like there's a competent film hidden beneath the incompetence of the product that came to theaters. I don't think that a fan edit will help the movie once it comes out on home video as that can pare back some of the clumsiness of the current film but it can't do anything to help build the characters into something more than the synopsis descriptions they're limited to on screen.

And, by the way, I don't think it's going to ruin your childhood.

Orgasm Inc. (Elizabeth Canner, 2009, USA)

It’s no secret that the pharmaceutical companies are cash-laden, corrupt entities but it’s still sobering to see them in action in Elizabeth Canner’s documentary Orgasm Inc.. After the phenomenal success of Viagra, it was a cinch that what was good for the goose should be good for the gander. And, suddenly, a new disorder was discovered. Women who had unrealistic expectations about orgasming via vaginal intercourse or who maybe weren’t even always in the mood weren’t just “normal,” they were suffering from FSD – Female Sexual Dysfunction, a disease defined by the drug companies.

Canner was given a gift. She was brought in by the company Vivus to document their quest for a “Viagra for women.” Their product, Alista, was one of several being developed. Canner demonstrates the “race for the cure” via a clever visual metaphor of several anthropomorphic products running across an expansive bed, trying to reach the goal of FDA approval.

Along the way, Canner demonstrates the fallacy of FSD by looking into the way questionnaires are manipulated to provide the answers that make 43% of women seem abnormal while ignoring the hard facts that women exposed either product or placebo both responded favorably to pornography! Canner also features a brief history of female sexual stimulation (a la Passion & Power: The Technology of Orgasm) and interviews with several sex therapists including shyster Laura Berman who’s been on Pfizer’s payroll doling out Viagra to women despite the FDA’s discouragement. There’s also discussion of female sexual plastic surgery which could be a documentary unto itself.

In all, Canner brings to light a shameful scenario in which a cadre of drug companies works hard and spends untold millions of dollars, banking of a huge payday for a disorder that doesn’t exist. Imagine if this same time, effort, and funds were spent on a real disease! Alas, that just isn’t as lucrative or as sexy.

Buy the DVD.

Mimesis (Douglas Schulze, 2011, USA)

It's refreshing to see a film that knows the true meaning of the word "homage" -- something done or given in acknowledgment or consideration of the worth of another -- rather than "rip off," which is something we see far too often in films, especially horror movies.

Douglas Schulze's Mimesis is a clever homage to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead on one hand and a modern "thrill killer" movie on the other. After an opening scare starring Courtney Gaines, the audience is taken to a horror convention where Alphonze Betz (Sid Haig) rails against the media blaming horror movies for real life horrors. In the audience are Russell (Taylor Piedmonte) and his unlikely pal Duane (Allen Maldonado).

Russell is a horror fan while Duane is more keen on meeting some of the hotties at the con including Judith (Lauren Mae Shafer), a goth girl who invites the boys to a party later that night. Thinking he'll get some, Duane convinces Russell to drive out to the spooky farmhouse where they encounter some out-of-place regular people and a number of silent, spooky dudes all made up in makeup. Before the party gets too "dick in the mashed potatoes" crazy, Russell and Duane are down for the count, waking up dressed in different clothes and hanging out in some eerily familiar settings.

There's no "They're coming to get you, Barbara!" line in Mimesis but much of the rest of Night of the Living Dead is there as our protagonists find themselves cast in a living remake of the film, complete with flesh-tearing zombies.

Thus, Mimesis becomes a film with disparate characters trapped in a farmhouse with a menacing presence outside but the presence isn't supernatural, it's psychotic. Additionally, the script by Schulze and Joshua Wagner is incredibly self-aware, playing with and against the plot of NOTLD along with more current films where strangers toy with innocents (Them, Inside, High Tension, etc.).

Everyone involved brings a strong presence to the screen. If I had to pick on anything in the film it wouldn't be the performances, thank goodness. The one problem I had with the film -- and I don't think it was a projection gaffe -- was the audio mix. I don't think it was foley work but wild sound. Footsteps in the film, especially as characters would go up and down stairs at the farmhouse, were distractingly loud. They boomed through the packed theater where I was lucky enough to see the U.S. Premiere of the film. Maybe this will be fixed in the mix down the line and, fortunately, it wasn't enough to detract from my enjoyment of this clever film overall.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Tsui Hark, China, 2011)

Based on Chinese folk hero Di Renjie (popularized in the West by Robert Van Gulik’s “Judge Dee” stories), Tsui Hark’s latest is a return to form for the director. Written by Jialu Zhang, the film plays out against the politics China in the late 600s A.D. When officials start spontaneously combusting on the eve of Empress Wu’s inauguration, Detective Dee (Andy Lau) gets released from jail to solve the mystery. He’s accompanied by feisty royal guard Shangguan Jing'er (Li Bing Bing) and determined albino Pei Donglai (Chao Deng) as he unravels the story, digging deeper than he should. As Dee, Lau seems to be having a lot of fun and this translates from the screen. Along with the politics and immolation, there Hark showcases several set pieces and martial arts battles choreographed by Sammo Hung. I’m not usually a fan of wire-fu but the fights here look great.

Watching Detective Dee, I was often reminded of another film about a criminalist investigating apparently supernatural forces, Pitof’s Vidoq (a.k.a. Dark Portals). Both characters have been brought to the screen in the past, enjoying new life with digital effects and slick camerawork. That several people burst into flames in both films helped reinforce this idea.

The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi (Andrew Thomas & Toby Gleason, 2009)

At the heart of The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi beats a very great documentary. Much of the first half of the 2009 work from Andrew Thomas has been culled from a 1963 film by Ralph J. Gleason (co-director Toby Gleason's father), Anatomy of a Hit. This gorgeous, informative, interesting, black and white work provides a backbone for The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi but, sadly, once the time period covered by Anatomy of a Hit is over, the newer documentary dies a sad, spineless death.

Simply put, The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi is a freaking mess. Little pockets of information pop up occasionally (in chronologically questionable order) in the post-1963 section of the film. The rest of the film's second half takes the viewer far afield from Guaraldi (or, at best, with some tenuous connections). The documentary suddenly veers into a discussion of race relations, "What's My Line?", JFK, Lenny Bruce, Irwin Corey, Dick Gregory, and a whole lot more that just doesn't add up to anything.

The few salvageable bits from the film's second half include Guaraldi's involvement with the Peanuts cartoon franchise, his playing the opening of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and his later albums (which are glossed over all too quickly). These brief bits perhaps add up to ten minutes in total. The rest is excruciating, especially the film's finale where we get not one but two completely unnecessary renditions of Guaraldi's song Cast Your Fate to the Wind with tin-eared lyrics thrown on top.

There's no clear narrative voice to the second half of The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi. It's not apparent why a lot of the people in interviews are even on screen. Meanwhile, people with obvious connections to Guaraldi, such as his son, David, aren't present. This leaves a huge, infuriating gap in the film. Other than one shot of David as a toddler, he isn't on screen. There's also nary a mention of Guaraldi's wife in the second half of the film. And, other than one mention of Guaraldi's passing and an image of an obituary (with headline text that suddenly starts moving around to no end), there's no discussion of Guaraldi's death.

It's sad that a five minute glance at Wikipedia will allow people to glean more information on Guaraldi than the 116 minute film! The interviews with Guaraldi's bandmates, a few other musicians, and Peanuts partner Lee Mendelson are interesting and add to the information presented by The Anatomy of a Hit but the rest of the material shouldn't even qualify as DVD extras.

According to this article in Variety, The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi has won best-doc honors at fests in Colorado and Utah. I'm not sure how this is possible. The more I think back about the film, the angrier I get at just how muddled it is. There are large chunks of the film that could be (should be) removed that would only strengthen what little narrative there is in the film's second half. It's shocking for me to read that "writer-director Andrew Thomas, [has] worked on A&E's "Biography" and History Channel's "Modern Marvels" documentary series." He should have known better.

In short, Ralph J. Gleason's original material (Anatomy of a Hit, Jazz Casual) should be released in whole and the rest of The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi needs to be junked or saved as supplemental materials to Gleason's work.

It looks like there may be another documentary about Guaraldi in the works, something called Cast Your Fate. I'm hoping that this is the antidote to Andrew Thomas's unsatisfying documentary. We can hope.

Fit to Print

I've been keeping track of all the places where review, interviews, blog posts and all in another blog post but I had to call out some the pieces that have all come out today. Two interview/articles in the Baltimore and Richmond alt-weeklies.

First up is an interview with Lee Gardner from the Baltimore City Paper. I was also pleased as punch to talk to Don Harrison over at Richmond's Style Weekly. Oddly, I get into discussions about Monte Hellman.

Over at the James River Film Journal, I've got a little write-up about five films I consider guilty pleasures. No Hellman on that list, but Morris Day makes an appearance.

Finally, Best Worst Movie comes out today on DVD. It's one of the best things that I've seen this year and I can't recommend it enough. I did a little write up of it over at the ultra-cool Mondo-Video.com. Enjoy!

Andy Kaufman: World Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion

When I first heard of the new DVD, Andy Kaufman: World Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion, my first question was, "How is this different from I'm from Hollywood?" -- the documentary about Kaufman's wrestling career.

Where I'm from Hollywood is a documentary, Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion is a collection of home video tapes of Andy Kaufman's wrestling bouts, usually unedited, poorly lit, and accompanied by some really annoying songs from S.S. Bumblebee and some repetitive crowd sound effects.

Directed by Lynne Margulies -- a co-director of I'm from Hollywood, Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion feels like a garage sale of a film. It's like Ms. Margulies had a lot of tapes she transferred willy-nilly to a DVD and called the end product Andy Kaufman: World Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion. This and the accompanying book, Andy Kaufman: I Hate Your Guts feel like Ms. Margulies trying to make some quick cash off the name of her dead friend. Pretty fucking tacky.

Do yourself a favor and stick to I'm from Hollywood instead.

Tales from the Script

We all know that being a screenwriter is a lonely, thankless job. There have been myriad narrative movies that tell us so (The Player, Sunset Boulevard, Barton Fink, etc).

It's a rarity when we get the straight poop right from the writers' mouths but Peter Hanson and Paul Robert Herman's Tales from the Script provides a soap box for dozens of writers to share their war stories. Some folks, like William Goldman, take to the task with relish, unloading with both barrels and sparing no one from his wrath. Meanwhile, less-established writers shy away from dishing too much dirt, their next paycheck depending on still "playing the game" in Hollywood. Between the two extremes, subdivided by level of jadedness, there's a central theme to the entire talking-head documentary--writers aren't appreciated. This isn't news to just about anyone but perhaps this film will be viewed and taken to heart by young scribes with stars in their eyes.

If you get off on hearing the dirt about someone's profession (as I do) then Tales from the Script will bring a smile to your face. I highly recommend checking out this DVD, especially the extra "The Gospel According to Bill", a solid twelve minutes of golden curmudgeon William Goldman.

An Evening with Timothy Carey

Wow.

About thirty five minutes into Tweet's Ladies of Pasadena I felt as if I'd had a psychotic break. The story of a bizarre man-child, Tweet Twig (Timothy Carey)--the only male member of the "Don't Drop a Stitch Knitting Club"--the film apparently combines a score of episodes for a television show that never happened. With most shots running less than a second, characters speaking in tandem, and things occurring on screen that come close to being a plot without actually adhering to anything close to a coherent narrative, Tweet's confounded the audience.

You could say that Tweet's was akin to a car crash but where that analogy works for compelling disasters, Tweet's drove several folks out of the theater. I was tempted to leave as my head was pounding but couldn't imagine that the breakneck pace could continue unabated and that the film would never return to some of the items that passed by winkquick as it unfolded. What about the people covered in roses? How about the dog that came back to life? Would Tweet ever find a job? Why did his wife not appear for the first third of the film and then appear to be different woman for the final third? Would those South American ants play a part in anything?

I've had drug trips that are more lucid than Tweet's Ladies of Pasadena.

Overall, I'm glad I saw it but it may take me a while to recover from it.

After the screening Timothy Carey's son, Romeo, gave a brief Q&A where he said Tweet's was shot over a period of roughly seven years, as if it had been a show that the elder Carey worked on despite it never being picked up by a network. And, despite the wild programming that populated the TV landscape in the '70s, I could never see such a show playing. It's still not clear if the 70+ minutes of Tweet's shown was one show or several cut together. The print screened appeared to be some kind of work print that had been edited to within an inch of its life.

I was hoping for some more information about Tweet's in the documentary about Timothy Carey, Making Sinner. However, this seemed to focus on Carey's early career up to and including The World's Greatest Sinner (1962).

Directed by Romeo Carey, I fear that Carey's son may be too close to the project when it comes to presenting a complete portrait of his father. Instead of being behind the camera, the eloquent Romeo would be better in front of the lens, relating the untold tales of his father's passion and wild life. As it stands, the rough cut of Making Sinner was a rather disjointed assembly of a handful of interviews and abrupt clips punctuated with stock photos. I'm not sure if these pictures were meant to be funny but I couldn't help but laugh when something mentioned by an interviewee always came accompanied by a loosely-related image. Someone would say "Jesus" and we'd see "Jesus". Or, a rather happy Latino fellow wearing a sombrero appeared whenever Mexico was mentioned.

There's not enough about The World's Greatest Sinner in Making Sinner to truly qualify it as a documentary of the film. Yes, there's some interesting behind-the-scenes footage including takes of scenes that go on for far longer than in the final film (at one point cameraman Ray Dennis Steckler discusses a scene that was taken twice -- once at ten minutes and another at eight -- while the scene runs only thirty seconds in the final cut. Seeing these outtakes makes me wonder what World's Greatest Sinner would look like without the disjointed editing; or is that what gives the film so much of its charm?

Making Sinner demonstrates the need for the definitive documentary of Timothy Carey. This needs to happen soon, while people that worked with him are still alive. In Making Sinner the interviews with Carey's youngest brother and Ray Dennis Steckler are great, yes, but a Carey doc needs interviews with people like Peter Falk, Bob Rafelson, Robert Blake, and Ben Gazarra (to name a few). As it stands, Making Sinner is an ambitious idea that isn't quite ambitious enough in its scope (and not cohesive in its presentation).

Between Making Sinner and Tweet's Ladies of Pasadena the audience was treated to Cinema Justice, a single scene in which an unhinged Carey steamrolls fellow actor Michael C. Gwynne, and The World's Greatest Sinner -- always a treat.

Was the evening worth a 10 hour drive, $20 parking and a $109 speeding ticket?. Yes. I don't know if or when Tweet's will ever play again and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have my mind blown so thoroughly. Toodeloo!

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead (Jordan Galland, 2009)

The chorus of moans is unwarranted. Despite that approximately two hundred and twenty-five zombie movies get released every month in the U.S., Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead isn’t one of them. Instead, this is yet another retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with vampires. As Hamlet became the play within the play of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, a crazed “reboot” of Hamlet threads through Jordan Galland’s horror comedy.

Jake Hoffman stars as Julian Marsh, an unlikely Lothario who lives in his father’s office, bedding down girls while unable to get back with his true love, Anna (Devon Aoki). Things start looking up for him when he gets a gig directing an off Broadway production written by the eccentric Theo Horace (John Ventimiglia) and Anna breaks up with her new beau, Bobby Bianchi (Ralph Macchio)—a tough talking thug trying to branch out into a new hand-cleaning venture. While his cast falls prey to Theo’s fangs, Jake finally notices that things may be rotten in Denmark when his blood-thirsty lead thespian sets his sights on Anna as the play’s new Ophelia.

Teetering on the edge of being insufferably silly, writer/director Galland manages to keep Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead on the right path, keeping the mix of laughs and groans to a happy medium.

Black Dynamite

It's the rare occasion that I've watched a movie and thought, "This was made for me." The last time I felt like that was Cory McAbee's The American Astronaut. I got that same feeling from Scott Sanders's Black Dynamite, an inspired homage to the classic Black action films of the 1970s.

Co-written and starring Michael Jai White as the titular explosive hero, White plays his part pitch perfect. He's the swaggering bad-ass former CIA agent with a dead mama and brother. He's out to make things right and becomes embroiled in a fiendish plot that goes from the streets of the ghetto to Kung Fu Island all the way up to the White House, baby. With his killer physique and masterful comedic timing, White deadpans his way through his deliciously ridiculous script with aplomb.

Black Dynamite could have been a cheesefest like earlier attempts to recapture the magic of "blaxploitation" such as Original Gangstas. Rather than trotting out the stars of old, Black Dynamite does well to pay homage to the classics of the canon subtly while telling its own tale. Masterfully weaving in lines from Disco Godfather, The Mack, etc., and scenes inspired by Willie Dynamite, Three The Hard Way, Black Belt Jones, Rudy Ray Moore's The Sensuous Black Man album art, etc.; these things don't call attention to themselves but serve as little gifts to fans of these films.

It goes without saying that I was jumping out of my skin when characters are framed like the classic poster art from Black Shampoo:

Scott Sanders has succeeded in creating a homage that can stand on its own two feet as a deadpan parody and action comedy. Black Dynamite is the best movie I've seen in years. It's out of sight!

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Below is an early Black Dynamite preview that utilizes clips from some classic flicks as well as new bits.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton, you are dead to me.

Yes, I enjoyed Big Fish and was slightly amused by Sweeney Todd (though I liked the stage version with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn far more) but I haven't cared for much else of what you've done since Ed Wood back in 1994. Your adaptations (Sleepy Hollow) and remakes (Planet of the Apes) display a tired repetitiveness in themes and casting. This is most evident to anyone unfortunate enough to sit through Alice in Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland attempts to be a sequel to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Having forgotten her trips to Wonderland as a seven (and seven and a half) year old, the twenty year old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) takes yet another plunges down the rabbit hole to escape an droll life. Suddenly we jump from Jane Austen to Lewis Carroll as Alice falls into Wonderland.

This Wonderland isn't so wondrous. It's a burned out, confused wasteland that looks like Pandora after the Na'vi got their tree knocked down. It's populated with some familiar characters acting very uncharacteristically. Most prominent among these are the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), and Stayne, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover). Wait, what? The Knave of Hearts? Yeah, he was accused of stealing some tarts in the Queen of Hearts's kangaroo court but he's elevated in Linda Woolverton's screenplay to the role of the Queen of Hearts's lover and scourge of Wonderland.

Wait... you mean that this Tim Burton film has Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Crispin Glover in it? And Danny Elfman did the music? Wow, we're really going off script for a Tim Burton film!

If the elevation of the Knave of Hearts is strange, it's no worse than the Mad Hatter's expanded role as some kind of schizophrenic freedom fighter. Like Johnny Depp's turn as Willy Wonka in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory where he vacillated between mischief-maker and potential child molester, Mad Hatter bounces between loon and patriot. When channeling the latter persona, Depp adopts a Scottish brogue at top volume. Watching him go off on nutty Scottish rants is only slightly less better than watching him breakdance.

Meanwhile, the Queen of Hearts has a big head and there are a lot of jokes made about this. That seems to be the extent of her character. Oh, and shouting "Off with his head." This gets tiresome after about the first time.

The Queen of Hearts's sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), comes off as distant and manipulative, using everyone around her to regain the throne--a position which she doesn't seem to deserve. She should be the moral center of the film but, instead, she's a phony who seems to be living quite well when the film would lead us to believe she's in exile.

And then there's Alice... Through the beginning of her trip to Wonderland there's doubt about her being "the right Alice." Alice doubts that she's actually in Wonderland and constantly discusses waking up. Combined, these two things keep Alice at a distance from the film. She's not so much the audience's foil as she is an interloper. The plot has a tired prophecy that needs to be fulfilled and that no one can see that Alice is the person to do it leaves the film feeling as disjointed as mixing the chess and card metaphors of Carroll's two Alice books.

As much as the film fails from a story perspective, it also doesn't work on a technical level. The film is dark. I don't mean thematically, I mean that it's actually difficult to see. It's as if no one thought to adjust the brightness despite audiences wearing 3D glasses which cut down on the amount of light that can get to a viewer's eye. Even the scenes in daylight in the "real world" are dark; forget about the murky, confusing Wonderland scenes. Also, the dialogue is difficult to hear. I thought I was the only one having issues with discerning when characters were speaking English and when they were speaking nonsense until the people behind me bemoaned the need for subtitles throughout most of the film.

I might be able to chalk up the murky visuals and inaudible dialogue to a poor viewing experience but this doesn't change how thrown-together the story feels or how unsympathetic any of the characters, especially our protagonist, come across in yet another failed Tim Burton experiment.

In the end, the film comes down to the slaying of the Jabberwocky, replaying the end of several other Disney films such as Sleeping Beauty and Dragonslayer. So much of the movie feels so "Disney-fied" that I expected Depp to show up during the film's final scene as Captain Jack Sparrow. It would have made as much (non)sense as the rest of this muddled mess of a movie.

Do yourself a favor and buy/rent Jan Svankmajer's Alice instead.

Gentlemen Broncos

I wanted to like Gentlemen Broncos. The story of a sad sack sci-fi writer, Benjamin (Michael Angarano), getting his book idea ripped off by pompous author Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement) sounded promising enough, especially when presented with the two authors' versions of the same tale as acted out by Sam Rockwell (and, to an extent, Mike White). Yet, despite having all of the ingredients for something delicious, the dish doesn't come together.

It's difficult to determine just what makes Gentlemen Broncos falter as we have several likely suspects. Our protagonist, Benjamin, doesn't garner a lot of sympathy. We may feel bad that he's got a kooky mom (Jennifer Coolidge) and a crappy job selling her homemade fashions but he's more or less a sad sack who gets taken advantage of by others, especially the obnoxious Tabatha (Halley Feiffer) and her friend Lonnie (Hector Jimenez). Meanwhile, Chevalier may be a dick for ripping off Benjamin's story, Yeast Lords, but he's not quite despicable enough to be a proper villain. If anything, Jemaine Clement's performance as Chevalier is enough to make him far more interesting that much else in the movie, especially his love of laser-shooting nipples.

Directed and co-written by Jared Hess, Gentlemen Broncos feels like a pale imitation of his earlier work, Napoleon Dynamite, minus the good-natured charm. Too many elements of Gentlemen Broncos bring to mind Napoleon Dynamite and the comparisons aren't favorable. We have the put-upon protagonist, the goofy Mexican, the awkward romance, cheesy rock tunes, etc. All of these fall short of their original implementations as they feel hollow and without charm. They feel like recycled bits from someone trying to recapture the magic of Napoleon Dynamite and failing.

The uneven film tries to be a carnival ride of fun but ends up lurching around so much that it may viewers a little nauseous.

A Nagging Itch

With the recent re-release of Star Trek VI on DVD, I finally sat down to write out some of the things that had been bothering me about that flick for the last two decades. The fine folks at The Plot Hole have been kind enough to host my rant on their site. Read all about it.

Surveillance: Movie Review

Surveillance (Jennifer Chambers Lynch, 2008)

Returning to the director’s chair after a fifteen year hiatus, Jennifer Chambers Lynch delivers a taut, albeit predictable, thriller. Surveillance would have felt more at home in the early ‘90s as a fast follow-up to her initial outing, Boxing Helena, as many of the characters feel as if they’ve been taken from her dad’s playbook. Corrupt cops and odd FBI agents populate Surveillance, as if they were refugees from the first act of David Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me. Viewers expecting the quirky charm of an Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) or grim humor of Sheriff Cable (Gary Bullock) will be sorely disappointed. Odd moments of humor crop up during Surveillance but they feel awkward and sloppily integrated with the film as a whole.

Surveillance opens with a murder followed by an investigation by a pair of FBI agents—Agents Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Hallaway (Bill Pullman). The narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks as Anderson and Hallaway interview survivors of an attack by a pair of serial killers who recently slaughtered a family and Deputy Conrad (French Stewart). Apart from Captain Billings (Michael Ironside), local law enforcers prove troublesome: they’re a bunch of trigger-happy yahoos who enjoy terrorizing innocent travelers as they cut across the barren Western landscape. Conrad and his partner, Bennet (Kent Harper), love shooting out the tires of passing motorists and then playing upon their fears of authority with a sadistic game of good cop/bad cop.

Pullman and Ormond provide a few entertaining moments. Hopefully Surveillance will serve to get Lynch reacquainted with filmmaking and provide better fare in the future.

Alien Trespass: Movie Review

Alien Trespass (R.W. Goodwin, 2009)

Eric McCormack stars as physicist Ted Lewis, a big brained scientist—you can tell because he smokes a pipe. After a UFO crashes in the Mojave, Ted becomes host to Urp, a space ranger with Klaatu’s fashion sense. He’s out to recapture the Ghota, a hungry space slug that may have been spawned from the same brood that gave us the evil vegetable overlord of It Conquered the World. Along with Ted/Urp, all of the familiar character tropes are on hand and the film plays out exactly as to be expected, hitting every beat.

Opening up with a newsreel that sets up Alien Trespass as a “lost film” from the ‘50s, viewers will find that R.W. Goodwin’s film is a faithful recreation of sci-fi films from the era. Unfortunately, the film is a little too faithful. Unlike other films over the last few decades that have spoofed Atomic Era creature features such as Invasion! (1999) and Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001), there’s no sense of subversiveness in this button-downed pastiche. It plays out as a faithful homage rather than any kind of parody, leaving viewers to question the necessity of this film. Why not stick to the classics instead?

Absurdistan: Movie Review

Aburdistan (Veit Helmer, 2008)

Rub a dub dub, there’s no water in the tub for the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker in Veit Helmer’s Absurdistan after the pipeline to the village stops working. Taking a cue from the Lysistrata playbook, the women of the village put the brakes on the lusty behavior of the men folk until the water flows again. Laziness, however, proves a greater force than lustiness, demonstrated by the myriad attempts the men make to get laid when there’s a nookie drought. At the heart of Absurdistan are Aya (Kristyna Malérová) and Temelko (Maximilian Mauff) two literally star-crossed lovers who are destined to conjugate for the first time during a cosmic conjunction.

Absurdistan shares the same light-hearted spirit and pure storytelling as director Veit Helmer’s 1999 film Tuvalu. The narrative plays out without need for dialogue with scenes often comprised of a simple setup and payoff. There are only a handful of spoken lines. The faces of the villagers do well enough to communicate their emotions. Maximilian Mauff frequently resembles Buster Keaton with his stoic, put- upon expression.

A simple story, yes, but Helmer and the cast make Absurdistan a sublime, silly love story.

The Mutant Chronicles: Movie Review

Mutant Chronicles (Simon Hunter, 2008)

Based on a Swedish role playing game, Mutant Chronicles feels like an epic tale whittled down to a “made for TV” length, sacrificing story and sense in an attempt to make a rip-roaring action film.

In its ponderous opening, the audience learns a whole lot of crap about how the world works in 2707. Suffice it to say, there’s a machine from outer space which makes men into “mutants” that look and act like zombies with spikes for arms. It’s up to cleric Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman) to put together a rag tag group of culturally diverse fighters to destroy the menace. He manages to gather his forces in a quick voice-over montage. The Dirty Dozen, it’s not. There are fewer folks and, other than Perlman, only two of them stand out.

Looking more like Christopher Lambert than ever, Thomas Jane turns in a passable performance as Mitch Hunter. He’s good with a gun, fair with a sword, and destined to save the world. Chipmunk-cheeked Devon Aoki tries her best as Valerie Duval to bring some backstory and motivation to the narrative. Alas, no matter how hard she tries there’s not much substance to be found in Mutant Chronicles.

Substance is in short supply but digital effects are plentiful. The film bears the over-processed look of films like Ultra Violet and Sin City; films created more in a computer than in nature. This doesn’t necessarily play well with the film’s retro-futuristic themes. Meanwhile, the script feels as if screenwriter Philip Eisner had to roll his twenty-sided die to figure out what would happen from one scene to the next. This flick will do double damage to your brain and may make your intelligence go down quite a few points. Roll again and hope for a better film.

The Chaos Experiment: Movie Review

The Chaos Experiment (Philippe Martinez, 2009)

Six actors are locked a steam room. This sounds like a good set-up for a joke or a new R. Kelly song but it doesn’t make for too good of a movie.

Val Kilmer continues slumming in the “direct to video” world along with staples Armand Assante and Eric Roberts. Kilmer plays Jimmy Paris, a nut who shows up at a newspaper office with a wild story of global warming and testing peoples’ limits. He spends the rest of the film feasting on scenery with Detective Mancini (Assante). Kilmer narrates a tale of how he locked up a group of people in a steam room under the guise of a dating service. He's like Jig Saw from the Saw movies if Jig was down with Club Med.

Eric Roberts leads the steam room group in killing one another and themselves. The poor group has literally two sentences of motivation with which to work. They play things out like every other “we’re trapped in a confined space” thriller (Headless Body in a Topless Bar, Cube, etc). The only thing missing is that their antics are being broadcast on the internet--something screenwriter Robert Malkani already did with the 2005 film Dot Kill (produced by The Chaos Experiment’s director, Philippe Martinez).

The steam room scenes are cross-cut with the police interrogation, helping to make The Chaos Experiment all the more disjointed. Though beautifully filmed and with plenty of mentions of Detroit (it was shot in Grand Rapids), there’s little else going for the film. This experiment has failed.

Inglourious Basterds: Movie Review

A new Quentin Tarantino movie brings along a flood of questions in my inbox. Typically, "What'd you think of it?" "Where's your review?" "What'd it rip off?" I wrote a review of the script for Inglourious Basterds (sic) back in July, 2008. Like most Tarantino screenplays, little changes between final draft and finished film. Additionally, Tarantino always does a good job of painting a clear picture in the mind of the reader, leaving one feeling as if they've seen the film with their mind's eye. Thus, much of my review of the screenplay goes for my review of the film.

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

A group of Jewish soldiers goes after Nazis with a vengeance during WWII. Lead by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), his “Basterds” strike fear in the hearts of German soldiers due to their merciless tactics and their love of scalping victims. Sadly, there’s no “getting the team together” sequence (which makes movies like The Dirty Dozen so great) or even a montage of why these guys are “Basterds.” We only see them in action briefly, joining the team already in progress as they tear ass through enemy territory and terrorize soldiers. Like Mickey and Mallory Knox, they always leave someone alive to tell the tale, though they’re scarred with a swastika on their forehead.

The “Basterds” aren’t at the crux of the story (a mistake), rather, they’re unwitting foils of Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), the “one who got away” from Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), The “Jew Hunter”, in the film’s opening scene. Shoshanna runs a Parisian cinema where a Nazi propaganda film makes its premiere. She utilizes the former cinema owner’s extensive nitrate film collection to take out the Third Reich’s high command including Adolf Hitler! Operation Valkyrie? Not quite. It’s Operation Kino!

Tarantino does well to not stuff Inglourious Basterds with his usual group of stars (including some has-been looking for a career transfusion). Sure, Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel make cameo voice appearances but, apart from Brad Pitt (and, to an extent, Eli Roth), lesser-known actors comprise the cast. This feels reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch Resistance film, Black Book, in which story trumps stars. Rumor has Tarantino attempting to attach many other big name actors to his work. This would have proved distracting, if not disastrous. As it was, the stunt casting of Mike Myers as a British General provides the film’s weakest point. Despite (or perhaps due to) the layers of make-up, Myers stands out like a sore thumb. Chomping on a British accent, I kept expecting him to break out an “Oh, behave” or “Shall we shag now, or shag later?” Unfortunately, Myers scene mires the film.

For as bad Myers may be, Christoph Waltz shines as Colonel Landa. The opening scene (which brings to mind the introduction of Lee Van Cleef’s character in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) sets up how suave and ruthless his character can be, going from one to another in moments. It’s important to have this duality set up as he seems to make a rather out-of-character change late in the film.

Overall, the film neither thrilled nor appalled me. My ambivalence stems from what others may find endearing; the use of quirky moments that take the viewer out of the film’s overall narrative arc. These include oddities such as a title card over the introduction of one character, some on-screen titling that point out key Nazi players, and subtitles that leave in foreign words and phrases (rather than translating everything to English). Tarantino continues to use title cards, myriad fonts, and fake titles (the end credits run twice – once as if we were seeing an older film and once in the current contractually-obligated manner). This is perhaps Tarantino’s strongest narrative and he nearly succeeds in balancing three main characters. He falters on pacing (two longer scenes could be tightened up without loss of dramatic tension) and the “Basterds” arc. The audience doesn’t get to know most of the “Basterds” and several of them disappear from one scene to another.

It should be noted that this is the first time that Tarantino’s gotten close to creating a “remake” rather than just ripping off another film (or films) and calling it his own. Oddly, the similarities between this work and Enzo Castellari’s original Inglorious Bastards stop at the (English) title and WWII setting. The film seems more indebted to other Italians like Sergio Leone and Sergio Sollima. Like Kill Bill, the soundtrack brims with themes culled from other films, especially those scored by Ennio Morricone. The use of music from The Big Gundown ("La Condanna") in the opening scene may be clever but soon it feels like someone forgot to re-score Inglourious Basterds and left in a temp track by mistake.