Salvation.

You wait for it, strive for it. You are one of the unlucky 1% of humanity that survived Judgment Day only to be hunted by machines. You forgive your brethren for the clumsy deification of John Connor, the man who broadcasts information to organize your resistance. But what you do not forgive, is that when a movie is made about your struggle your story isn’t told. (Perhaps you don’t mind because the movie is made in the past, way back in 2009, but believe me continuity is not something you want to bring up in your futuristic Terminator-ridden world.)

That’s the problem with Terminator Salvation, written by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris — the plight of the individual resistance fighter is not addressed. We find a few lone groups of survivors on the ground, but we also encounter a fully-formed military structure where John Connor is just a bit player, and the tale of desperate survival to get to the point of massive coordinated attacks is skipped over. I think there is something that can be said about the time between nuclear annihilation and submarine-headquarters warthog-airstrike time. Salvation jumps into the future right before a climactic battle without the drama that lead them to that precipice. The story is in the pain of the process, the survival, not the victory.

Ask any fan of the Zombie genre, it’s not the chain of events that leads to the disaster that makes the story great, it’s the survival post-apocalypse. The previous movies made haunting references to Judgment Day, with visions of terrible mushrooms clouds evaporating whole cities. This was the opportunity to dive into that world of fallout — I think it was squandered.

I had hoped this movie would be broader in scope. Perhaps what I want is something the Terminator franchise can never really deliver, as all of the previous movies have dwelt with only a few key characters. With Salvation this pattern is upheld, but with less spectacular results.

In addition to the gaps in story telling, there are numerous plot holes that sap some of the strength from the film. To dive into all of them would be a terrific spoiler so I’d rather not do so here at this time, but there are a lot of problems that really detract from the movie. One being the seemingly “safe” and “unsafe” areas of future California that don’t make sense. In some areas leaving a boombox on the ground playing will draw enemies within seconds, whereas in other areas it seems safe to wander about freely. Maybe the machines are just really good listeners but don’t see so good. Yeah! I don’t think it’s made clear why machines are okay with leaving any area unpatrolled at all. They have the technology (ala T-800) to put a nuclear reactor in a chip, so I doubt their machines would have to continually head back to base to top off the tanks.

Even more basic, why don’t the machines just carpet-bomb the planet with biological weapons, which would pretty much kill off the last of us fleshies that weren’t asploded by the nukes?

One of the major trailers (which sadly, I had seen) revealed a huge plot device, and this is absolutely unforgivable. At the time, I had believed the trailer did not make a huge reveal, but as the movie unfolded I realized that it gave away one of the major conflicts of the entire film. For shame. This is why I hate trailers. A real trailer should be a tease, not a synopsis.

Fans of the franchise will be entertained. Moviegoers who just want to see things blow up will like this film. However, those two listed categories of people actually have a 99.8% overlap, so we can likely bundle them together as one group — the only group — that should cough up full ticket price to see this movie.

It’s neither a spoon nor a fork, but instead an abbreviated list of the movies I haven’t had time to fully review in the past few months.

8.5 – The Wrestler

A story of meat. Broken down meat. Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei are both fantastic.

7.4 – Ghost Town

Funny stuff. Ricky Gervais is a genius.

7.3 – Watchmen

I haven’t read the work, but I’m guessing Zack Snyder made a great translation. Anything with an alternate history sucks me right in.

6.9 – Body of Lies

Leo DiCaprio as a CIA agent in Jordan. Very entertaining.

5.6 – City of Ember

For a movie with both Tim Robbins and Bill Murray I’m shocked to find such mediocrity. Apparently nobody cares that lighting a candle would completely remove 90% of the drama in the film.

2.6 – September Dawn

Pretty sure Jon Voight only made this movie about the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre so he could play a guy with tons of wives. A terrible movie, actually amusing it’s so awful.

There was potential. That’s the best I can say. Clint Eastwood’s performance is good, but the supporting cast is so miserable they completely suck the soul out of the film.

Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto-worker and Korean War veteran. He’s old school, racist and bitter—we know this because throughout the entire movie his disapproving growls are dubbed on top of every grimace. After the death of his wife, Kowalski is forced to deal with his racially diverse neighborhood, which apparently he never noticed in any significant way before the events of the movie despite living there his entire life. The highlights of the film are his parades of racial epithets directed at friends and neighbors. It’s sad to say, but yes, that’s the best this movie has to offer.

Besides the name-calling, the rest of the film builds a ridiculous gang and race driven conflict, with Kowalski in the center and a bunch of partially-motivated stereotypes bouncing around the periphery.

Don’t be fooled by the trailers—this is not a good movie—if you’re really interested in this wait until it’s a rental. The star performance here is probably the 1972 Gran Torino, and heck, you barely even get to see it run.

I really scored at Christmas, receiving many things I very much do not deserve. One of these was a Blu-Ray player, (Thanks K&M!) and it didn’t take me long to jump into The Godfather, Coppola Restoration, which I’d purchased on Blu-Ray even before I had a player.

By all accounts, the original negatives of the first two films were so torn up and dirty that they could no longer be run through standard film laboratory printing equipment, and so the only option became a digital, rather than a photochemical, restoration.

The final product, which the studio is calling “The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration,” combines bits and pieces of film recovered from innumerable sources, scanned at high resolution and then retouched frame by frame to remove dirt and scratches. The color was brought back to its original values by comparing it with first-generation release prints and by extensive consultation with Gordon Willis, who shot all three films, and Allen Daviau, a cinematographer (“E.T.”) who is also a leading historian of photographic technology. [New York Times]

The restoration is a thrill to watch, and I’ve never seen a better presentation, even compared to viewings in the theater. Particularly captivating was the amount of detail preserved (rescued even?) while keeping the character (grain, color) perfectly intact.

Blink

“What?” I yelled in my darkened apartment, fumbling for the rewind button immediately following Michael Corleone’s pivotal showdown with Sollozzo and the corrupt police chief McCluskey. I’d just seen something I’ve never noticed before: a body on the floor blinked as the scene ended. A blinking corpse. It jolted me out of the moment, out of the fantasy, out of the 40s. Blu-Ray did that, it gave me too much detail?

I’ve since learned that McCluskey’s blink is a known quantity—a minor bug in continuity that’s charming in today’s world of computer aided post process. Apparently that blink is visible in other formats, but I’d never seen it until I had the restoration and the resolution to appreciate it. I would never have noticed it without this version. Therein lies the rub.

For me, details matter, technology matters, and I’m just anal enough to obsess about shadow detail and grain when I think it’s important, like in the case of The Godfather. McCluskey’s blink floored me because it reminded me that I’m watching something made 37 years ago and it looks as good or better than things produced today. I never lost anything by not seeing that blink before, and maybe it was actually detrimental to the experience seeing it now.

The blink could be the only thing I’m not crazy about in the Coppola Restoration, an otherwise perfect thing, but that’s not a fair critique. If anything it goes to show how caring, faithful and complete the restoration process was. It does make me wonder however, how frequently we’ll see Blu-Ray editions of classics that aren’t cared for so well. Perhaps those unfortunate reels are best left as they are…perfect with their flaws.

Man-children everywhere finally have representation. With Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly together you know you’re going to get laughs, though considering the length of this movie there should have been a few more.

Anchorman it is not. In the supporting cast, or at least the comedic supporting roles this movie stumbles. They really aren’t given the lines or time needed to shine. Add that with the fact that the movie hardly ever gets past the central joke…39 year-olds living at home and acting like children…and what you’ve got is a solid rental. If you’ve seen all the trailers you’ve seen most of the best parts, and I hate it when that happens.

Oh the highly anticipated follow-up to the resurgent Batman catalog! As with Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is directed by Christopher Nolan, and this is definition summer blockbuster stuff folks—it’s comic book inspired, a sequel, and full of action. The film doesn’t disappoint, and in some ways improves upon Begins.

First, Maggie Gyllenhaal steps in for Katie Holmes, which completely eliminates the possibility we’d have to try and take Katie Holmes seriously for over two hours. Dear Maggie, thank you, thank you, thank you. Heath Ledger’s performance should also be greatly appreciated. Although I’m far from bestowing an immediate posthumous Oscar, call me a hold-out, Heath’s Joker was plenty sinister.

What was most intriguing to me in the film was something completely unexpected—an all-out attack on warrantless wiretaps and the PATRIOT Act.

(VERY MINOR SPOILER AHEAD.)

“No man should have such power,” claims Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox, as he’s asked by Batman to monitor an entire city by using Gotham’s cell phones as impromptu sonar receivers. Batman admirably promises that the monitoring system will be put down when the present crisis abates. How responsible of you Batman! I suppose it’s no wonder privacy is one of the rights you choose to celebrate…as opposed to say Habeas Corpus…Batman solves crime with his fists dammit, not due process. Such is the strange relationship between necessary ass-kickings and lawyerly heroics in Gotham City. That much we’ve come to expect from these movies I’d argue, but a blatant attack on the Bush administration’s heavy handed “safeguarding” techniques was a big surprise to me. Well, somebody’s got to say it right? It might as well be Batman and Lucius Fox. As far as I know, fictional characters are the only people you can’t send down to Gitmo.

There are many other strong themes to explore in the film, the vicious survival instinct embedded deep in humanity, the corruptibility and delicacy of the modern psyche, and of course the thin line between anarchy and the orderly society we presume is good. TDK isn’t a perfect movie, but for summer pulp action you can’t ask for much more.

Note: I wrote this review the day after Cloverfield was released, just after watching the movie. I delayed posting it because I felt it was too pessimistic. However, upon reflection, I realize this is pretty much on par with the rest of my movie reviews, so I’m cleaning out the “Drafts” bin.

I love a good thriller and I love a good mystery. If you promise both of those with a trailer that graciously doesn’t distill the entire plot of the movie in 15 seconds then I’m pretty much already standing in line at the Cinerama. Nice work J.J. I’d love for your example—an alternative to culture-spamming the movie synopsis across all spectrum of media—to become the norm.

Cloverfield is difficult to watch. I consider myself a hardened soul, nearly impervious to disorienting camera convulsions—not out of superior physiology mind you—but typically a potent mixture of perseverance, spite, and judicial application of Maritime’s Jolly Roger. I hate overzealous camera shake in movies but as a frequent movie-goer in this day I’ve come to feel it’s a necessary penance.

I digress. Cloverfield’s major flaw isn’t the camera shake, but the botched early character development. The lack of sincerity, the blanket of unreality at the start of the film cheats the rest of the movie out of what it deserves…genuine attachment to central characters.

So What’s Great in Cloverfield?
Hud is the guy who carriers the camera for the majority of the film, and while he’s physically in the background, providing narration, he’s reduced to being a mechanical (and frequently comic) device. The camera lens is a barrier between him and reality, and capturing becomes more important than feeling—despite the tragic circumstances. Even facing death taking pictures takes precedent. “Hud” conjures H.U.D., a “heads up display” in a fighter cockpit or increasingly popular as informational readouts projected onto consumer car windshields or motorcycle helmet visors. Hud is a transparent purveyor of information, and the camera that lets us experience his trauma cheats him out of that experience.

That’s the important place that Cloverfield goes. The beginning of the film introduces the footage as property of the Department of Defense. An evidence. An entry in a database. A visual archive and nothing more.

At what cost do we come by our digital rememberences?

Yesterday at the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival I took in Arid Lands, a documentary of the early years of Hanford, and the people and geography of the Columbia Basin. Having grown up the area, I was particularly curious to see how this landscape of diversity, or even better irony, would be portrayed in a documentary.

A film by Grant Aaker and Josh Wallaert, Arid Lands is an excellent overview of the massive contradictions that confound the Columbia Basin. From war machine to environmentalism, irrigation and farming to rampant development. The Tri-Cities is a complacent community that’s as grateful for it’s nuclear history as it is wary of it…the entire area is inextricably tied to the wake of plutonium production, and now the biggest environmental cleanup in the history of the planet.

The film did well to not delve too deeply into issues that could easily sidetrack what was the star—the land. No mention was made of downwinders, while particular emphasis was placed on the changing landscape—quickly changing from an agrarian base to a service-based economy bolstered by tourism. While the wine industry flourishes, other agriculture is consumed by ever-expanding housing developments—quickly erected with little planning or thoughts of the native landscape.

It’s a well-rounded film with a great diversity of viewpoints, excellently shot and edited. If you’re at all interested in the history of Hanford and the Columbia Basin, this is highly recommended.

Zodiac is a recounting of the people and events surrounding a series of unsolved murders throughout the Bay area in the 1960s. It was based on the non-fiction works of Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle during the killings.

But let’s get one thing straight, San Francisco is nice and all, but as far as serial killers go nobody holds a candle to the Northwest.

They might not all make the silver screen, but the likes of Robert Pickton and Gary Ridgway are so much scarier than The Zodiac killer it boggles the mind. Yes, we’ve got crazies up here that Jake Gyllenhaal wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.

Mark Ruffalo as lead detective Dave Toschi is outstanding, as is Robert Downey Jr. in the role of Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery. This movie is worth watching just for their performances, they even overshadow the complete lack of chemistry between Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his family, and the less than convincing “obsessive” that Graysmith devolves toward as he attempts to unravel the Zodiac crimes.

The movie is long, 2 hours and 40 minutes long, and its stodgy pacing forces you to ask why. Slashing 30 minutes off the picture would’ve gone a long way toward making it a more taut thriller, but it still has great performances and the kind of disturbing imagery that will make you think twice about walking around the streets of Seattle San Francisco tonight.

It might be that Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is more notable for what happened to the movie before it hit theaters than for what shows up on screen.

[Idiocracy was] expanded to only 125 theaters, not the usual wide release of 2500-3000 theaters. According to the Austin American-Statesman ^[5], 20th Century Fox, the film’s distributor, did nothing to promote the movie — while posters were released to theatres, no movie trailers, television ads, or press kits for media outlets were provided. The film was not screened for critics^[6]. Lack of concrete information from 20th Century Fox led to speculation that Fox may have actively tried to keep the film from being seen by a large audience… Wikipedia Entry

It’s not hard to imagine 20th Century Fox being less than thrilled with Judge’s look at 500 years into our future. At that time, intelligence has been completely bread out of the human population. Corporations have both hastened our fall and ensured the populations’ continued depravity. Starbucks sells handjobs, and Braundo, a sports drink manufacturer, has bought both the F.D.A. and F.C.C. in order to replace water as the preferred beverage nationwide.

The President of the United States is a porn-star and champion wrestler. The only thing that doesn’t change is FOX News.

Idiocracy is funny and entertaining, as most things from Mike Judge are, but the script is light – it gives the distinct feeling that more should be said – damn witty commentary but not every bit the biting social critique it could be.

Bond: “Martini.”

Bartender: “Shaken or stirred?”

Bond: “Does it look like I care?”

It was never more explicit – the old Bond is out, and the new Bond – Daniel Craig – gets bloody, nasty, and emotionally involved while in the service of Her Majesty.

There are a few problems with Casino – most notably the movie would be vastly improved by chopping off 30 minutes. A stunning chase scene at the beginning of the feature is too long, as are several poker scenes. (And yet the screenplay never takes the time to explain why the central villain bleeds from his eye.) Product placement is rampant.

By showing James in his formative years, Casino Royale is classic but surprisingly fresh – a good introduction to the new Bond.

Say hello to the new American nuclear family. Fractured, bitter, psychologically unstable yet completely lovable.

In Little Miss Sunshine twists of fortune send the Hoover family road-tripping across three states to enter seven year old Olive (Abigail Breslin) in a beauty pageant. The mode of transport is a canary VW Bus, that wheeled icon of freedom and opportunity. Not surprisingly the bus is showing the same signs of age as the idealism that forged it.

Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s first feature film is about the pageantry we all endure or espouse, ludicrous pretension, and in the end family. It’s well acted, wonderfully tight (perfect run-time of about 100 min!) and completely hilarious. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are perfect as the parents and Steve Carrell does well to show versatility as the “top Proust scholar in America.”

Also catch the well-placed melodies of DeVotchKa, a band I’ve been enjoying for quite a while. Go see this film; if every movie in the theaters today was this good as Sunshine I’d miss them quite a bit more than I do now.

Superman does indeed return thanks to a screenplay from Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, and direction from Bryan Singer. (Singer is of X-Men, X2 and The Usual Suspects fame.) Superman Returns is a mediocre spin on a franchise that’s been dead since the 80s, and thankfully asserts itself in the “Super” timeline five years after Superman II, apparently burying the embarrassing Superman III and IV in one large kryptonite coffin.

Superman Returns, with Baggage

Brandon Routh plays Superman dutifully. He’s got both the chiseled jaw and the labored-savior chip-on-the-shoulder act down pat. What he’s missing is the charisma and confidence you’d expect in the Man of Steel. This carefully crafted super looks more like he’s trying to please the comic book set than take his character in a new direction. (Which is a shame.)

Routh’s apathetic attitude is endemic throughout the movie. There are high points in the film—set design, production, costuming, all which take a clever look back at clean art-deco lines mashed with a hint of 70s glam—while keeping us firmly planted in a technologically modern Metropolis. However, after seeing the film I feel there was far too much time making sure the movie “looked like” Superman than creating a valuable new chapter in the series.

Superman’s language is dull, almost perplexingly so. Are we really supposed to be so bored with the dialogue as to spend more time contemplating the physics behind the CG cape he wears than the emotional state of the characters he interacts with?

(Shoot, I thought I could complete this review without sarcasm. Unlikely I suppose…here it comes…)

OMG Lex Luthor has kryptonite. Watch out Superman WATCHOUT. Superman can FLY. Even up into space. He can save people that are falling, use X-Ray vision, and blow out fires with icy wind spawned from his super-manly lungs. These are old tricks and in this film we see them over and over again like they are a novel concept. Very disappointing.

Kevin Spacey was charismatic as usual, but certainly lacked the shockingly sinister demeanor you’d expect from a man bent on killing billions in the process of making a killing at real estate. Without destroying the plot for someone who hasn’t seen the film, Lex wants to make an island. No, a big island, a really evil island. And he’s using Kryptonite so Superman can’t stop him from making a killing at real estate, again. No, really. I was more freaked out by American Beauty pot-smoking Kevin Spacey than this Lex.

Superman- Invincible But For Two Things: Kryptonite and Falling Action

I walked into the Cinerama hoping Superman Returns would be every bit as good as Spiderman I and II. Instead I found a film that was sloppily edited and overproduced. Shaving off 20-30 minutes of clichés would make this film seem a bit less wrote, a smidge less trite.

In the end what can we say about our most beloved of superheroes? Well, he’s no Spiderman. Ouch. When you’re up in the stars it’s a long fall back to Earth, even for Superman.

It’s not a spoon and not a fork, but instead an abbreviated list of the movies I haven’t had time to fully review in the past few months.

Yes, this is an unrequested mountain of content and the term SPORC sounds a bit like SPAM. This is not accidental, but these snippets are hopefully slightly more utilitarian than your unwanted email. After all a spork is indeed a utensil—just a stupendously annoying one. I’ve learned movie reviews can be somewhat similar, useful to most but annoying to nearly all for one reason or another.

But fearless, I press on. In-depth movie reviews are one of my most frequently requested features, so what could be better than ditching the “in-depth” part and substituting a one-line snarky observation? Quantity over quality? (Like SPAM, the email or the meat) Oh yes, I’ve got that now. A poor combination of multiple specializations—critique and recommendation? (Like a SPORK) Got that now too.

In a perfect world I’d have heaps of time to wax philosophic on all of these movies, but instead I leave you weeping over your bowl of processed meat, punching your keyboard with your spoon/fork hybrid in order to check your unrequested email—all the time wondering what I would have to say about these movies if I had the time to write a complete review. (Well, a guy can dream.)

You may have questions. Why could I possibly find it productive to explain movie reviews with spam and sporks? Why would I endorse a film review system kindred to a cruel spoon/fork offspring?

The mule of tableware.

What does that even mean?

Some questions may never be answered, so for today please enjoy: SPORC Episode I

8.3 – Me and You and Everyone We Know

Funny, uncomfortably honest. Highly recommended

8.1 – Crash

Surprisingly great, given high levels of Ludacris, Matt Dillon, Los Angeles

8.0 – Doctor Zhivago

An epic, and not just in duration. Has Alec Guinness (which equals radness)

7.5 – Treasure of the Sierra Madre

On Bogey and badges

7.4 – On the Waterfront

This movie could’ve been is a contender

7.1 – Hustle and Flow

Whoop. That. Trick.

6.8 – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Imagine Harry Potter, but with more sexual tension than the last season of Days of Our Lives

6.5 – Walk the Line

No men shot in Reno, but still good

6.0 – War Photographer

Includes scenes shot with a video camera mounted on still camera (which equals radness)

5.9 – The School of Rock

A level at which there is “too much Jack Black” has been identified

5.0 – The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Skip Emily and exercise my boredom. I beg of you. Exercise my boredom

4.8 – Dogtown and Z-Boys

Remember when you were rad? Yeah well these guys DO

3.8 – The Island

I’m a sucker for sci-fi. This movie proves it

2.9 – The Village

A level at which there is “too much Shyamalan” has been identified (does not equal radness)

• About the Ratings

In an ideal world I’d never feel a conflict between the quality of a film and my enjoyment of it—this would truly make the reviews a lot easier to write. In light of this not being an ideal world I am forced to divulge my bias: I never enjoyed Lewis’s books, and while Narnia is a very good film, I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I probably should have. And with that said, I move on to the inevitable C.S. Lewis J.R.R. Tolkien comparison.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were not just contemporaries fond of initials in lieu of first names, but colleagues, friends, and occasionally rivals. Lewis’ overtly biblical novels will always lie in stark contrast to Tolkien’s more obfuscated works, but this makes sense with Tolkien drawing much inspiration from Norse sagas and Anglo-Saxon poetry, while Lewis’s work was spawned more from Milton, Greco-Roman deities and fairy tales; and most importantly his rebirth of faith conjured by Tolkien himself (and additional contemporary Hugo Dyson).

The two authors’ relationship is even more pertinent today than it was then, as the Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy winds down and Andrew Adamson’s adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe starts to wind up. (No word yet on film trilogy based on teachings/critiques of Hugo Dyson.)

So why does this reviewer get less enjoyment from The Chronicles of Naria than The Lord of the Rings? With Lewis’s work it’s not the thinly veiled biblical overtones that trouble me at all, but stylistically it’s the nearly cacophonous mash-up the stories represent as a whole. That’s also part of why they are brilliant, and wonderful for children (or at least those who haven’t read much history or medieval lit). Mixing Santa Claus with greek gods? I’m sad to say it drives me crazy—but more importantly I can’t imagine any child that would oppose Santa appearing in any movie, whether contextually appropriate or not.

And finally, to the really short part, the review

Narnia, you know, for the kids. This picture succeeds on nearly all levels: the children perform very well, the special effects are entertaining, and most importantly the right decisions were made in the always difficult novel to film transition. The movie wins over much as the book does, so if you adored the series this is a must see. However, if you fall into my camp it’s just a pretty good show that can certainly wait until it costs less than $10.

That’s it. What, did you actually expect me to talk about the actual movie in such a long review? Pushaw.

Action Peter Jackson has graduated with his latest blockbuster from small furry creatures (hobbits), to large ones (25 foot apes). Will the scale of the CG madness never end? Probably not, call it the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room, it’s so impressive in King Kong that this CG ape would eat orcs like oyster crackers and floss his teeth with fighting uruk hai.

Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow is excellent as a depression-era vaudeville actress desperate for a break. Filmmaker Carl Denham is played by Jack Black, who is apt and confident but mysteriously uncompelling as a shallow, publicity-mongering self-promoter. Writing Denham’s latest movie is Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), the eventual (boring, unconvincing) love interest of Darrow, who plays second-fiddle to you-know-who. (Cocoa’s colosal cousin.)

Visually this film is sensuous. The city scenes are exciting, the jungles are terrifying, and the animals are simply amazing. The story line however is regrettably prolonged, at several junctures action scenes are strung out to monotonous length. Most notably the entire “central” portion of the film on Kong’s island is very long, action-packed, but with several twists and character kill-offs that simply weren’t necessary to further the plot. After all this, the inevitable return to civilization is unfairly limited to falling action.

Disappointing too is Jackson’s choice to portray the island natives as mud-dwelling savages, dirty, beastly, and bent only on killing and human sacrifice. I suppose cliché’s are always undaunted by time, but this is more shockingly distasteful than suspenseful.

The great ape is still greatly impressive despite the issues surrounding him, making Kong a great feature to watch—surely deserving of a trip to the big screen. However, this is still a Peter Jackson film—make sure you’ve got a full three hours free before you attempt to tame this beast.

Spielberg’s Munich is a dark retelling of events following the 1972 Olympic killings, a story of revenge for those infamous “Black September” deaths. Avner, (Eric Bana) is a former bodyguard of Golda Meir, recruited to secretly assassinate all who conspired to execute the Munich kidnappings. This film is extremely violent, suspenseful, and difficult to watch—based on the George Jonas novel Vengeance—it might have been more appropriately named as such.

The flashback scenes to the 72 Munich games are stunningly visceral, and just as effective as the scenes detailing killings orchestrated by the Israeli retaliators led by Avner. Spielberg is as even-handed as could be expected being inarguably the most famous Jewish filmmaker in the world, the movie condemns the savagery and futility of all killings stemmed from religious fervor.

Three things I would have told Steven Spielberg if I had seen War of the Worlds before he began production on it. Warning, I don’t usually do this but SPOILERS may lie ahead:

1. Don’t make them come out of the ground. It doesn’t add anything and is unfaithful to the original work. Why plant machines millennia in advance if you still have to fly motherships over top to “activate” them with funky lightning? Think about it, if you were an alien you’d probably just drop them off when you got there.
2. Kill the boy. This is where you should deviate from the original piece—at this point the miraculous penultimate reunion is painfully cliché.
3. Tom Cruise will end up being scarier than the tripods. Work with it.

Don’t get me wrong this is a great work of science fiction, it’s loaded with suspense and the special effects are excellent, but in the end it’s all a bit too Spielberg to really blow me away.

Crass and offensive—yet totally hilarious. Wedding Crashers spews line after line of misogynistic banter but somehow comes off naive and playful enough to be not quite as offensive as it should be. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are their normal selves and are in prime form. Excellent pacing and well delivered; if you liked Old School this is your next wedding reception’s prerequisite.

Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake is mostly well acted I’ll give it that, but beyond that you’ll find nothing surprising in this London drugs n’ crime cliche. The action’s been done better in Lock Stock and the story was perfectly predictable the first three times around after Carlito’s Way. (A gangster’s trying to get “out” and it’s hard to leave “the life.” Really hard. OMG.)

At times Layer Cake (or as the packaging proclaims “L4yer Cake“) is so trite I thought it was pure satire, a clever send-off in the vein of Yojimbo. If that’s the case it’s this flick’s only saving grace. Layer Cake is entertaining, but unless you really love yourself a Brit crime flick skip this one.

Christian Bale is excellent in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, the best Dark Knight implementation since Keaton and Nicholson. What works in this film is the level of ‘humanity’ that runs throughout- Batman at this point is still just a man, discovering who he is and ultimately fighting himself as much as his physical enemies. (As a bonus the villains are not completely silly, which is quite a departure from the last few movies.)

Katie Holmes is fairly bland but the rest of the cast makes up for it, and though I’m still wanting a bit of an explanation as to Ra’s Al Ghul’s motivation this is still a good movie. A must see for Batman fans and a good place to begin for anyone else.

Separate Lies, written and directed by Julian Fellowes, is the tale of a seemingly ambiguous couple’s relationship becoming increasingly disjointed after a motorist strikes a bicyclist near their Buckinghamshire cottage.

James and Anne Manning are introduced as a docile, wealthy, and mostly happy couple—exactly the type that has everything figured out—which leaves them set virtuously high and apart from their world’s plebeians. Their fate quickly proves however that morality, faithfulness, and ultimately forgiveness cut through all of society’s strata.

The film’s pace is contemplative if not stodgy, but the performances all around are quite good. The lack of violence and pitched drama pleasantly focuses attention on the sensible dialogue of the characters, my favorite of which is William Bule, played by Rupert Everett, a vacuous and self-absorbed blue blood. Entertaining, well done, but not spectacularly innovative.

Behold, the majesty of fake wood on the web. After much contemplation, trepidation, consternation, and many other -nations, I’ve just finished up the last touches of a new film ratings standard for the site. (Check out an example right over there → )

The old scale, of SKIP IT, RENT IT, MATINEE, FULL PRICE fame, was actually very fun in retrospect. Over its lifetime I received quite a few compliments on its practical nature, utility, and straight-up novelty, however in the end it caused me strife in three not-so-shocking ways:

1. Not enough variety
2. Doesn’t apply to old / rented movies
   (Ah I heard that from everyone. Extrapolate people…you must learn to extrapolate.)
3. Movie prices go up, and I foolishly included monetary figures on the graphics
   (Updating-graphics-time interferes with my quality movie-rating-time.)

 

An old Full Price Banner, in all its glory
 

Badges, We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges

In the end what I’ve got is a more “standard” 10.0 scale if you could call it that, disappointing in some (creative) respects but beautifully comprehensive in others. For instance now I’ve got a full 100 potential ratings to choose from, yet I’ve completely avoided a system based on thumbs, stars, or fiendish popcorn bag icons. A success already.

Backwards Compatible Hypertext

Amidst these 100 points of freedom I’ve interspersed 4 different colored rating icons—so for fans of the old system each color can represent one of the old ratings.

     

• The venerable SKIP IT has now turned black (oh how evil) and catches any film rated as suck-tastic as 2.9 and below
• RENT is a blue multi-pronged star of mediocrity and covers 3.0 to 5.9
• MATINEE quality flicks go green between 6.0 and 7.9
• FULL PRICE gains the lofty orange badging when 8.0 and above

The old reviews will remain rated as is so only the newbies will get the crazy woodgrain treatment. Ye old banner system had some three years of quality life so I’m not too bereaved at this time of its passing, but I’m also not assuming that this scale will last as long without some tweaks—but only time shall tell.

I came to the Guide with only a basic notion of the themes of Douglas Adams’ famous sci-fi Trilogy in Five Parts, and ultimately I was a little disappointed when I discovered a greater understanding of the books is pretty close to requisite knowledge for the movie. Nevertheless, Guide’s whimsical, sarcastic, and happily understated humor was still very enjoyable.

Visually it’s a breathe of fresh air to witness a science fiction movie that didn’t throw the entire bankroll at heavy-handed CG, but when that’s combined with a plot that reads more like a chapter overview than a page-turner and the entire experience falls just a little short.

The movie follows Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), a hapless and homely Englishman who not only finds out that his home is to be demolished to make way for an expressway bypass, but that his planet (yeah, Earth) is to be destroyed to make way for an interstellar freeway. Luckily his friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) is actually an alien spending time on earth adding to the nearly omniscient font of knowledge known as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The two ‘hitchhike’ and avoid destruction (though I think the rest of us are just S.O.L.).

I won’t soon forget the singing dolphins or the endlessly bureaucratic blobish Vogons, but temper the fun images with an overtly transparent romance and a couple of empty sequences of forced and hollow dialogue and film is just far too flat for my taste. Perhaps this can be appreciated more by a seasoned Adams aficionado, but for the layman it’s doomed to being just another acceptable book to film translation.

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller team up to direct Sin City, based on Millers comics of the same name. Granted comic spin-offs have pummeled moviegoers in the past few years but with just a glimpse of this digitally rendered monochromatic film noir you’ll immediately know this film is quite a bit different. It doesn’t just adapt a comic to the screen, it brazenly revels in everything the more expansive medium can provide.

This isn’t Dick Tracy—it’s dark, sexy, and extremely violent. It doesn’t have a specific time frame as the streets are mixed with Ferraris and vintage ragtops while the dress is trench coat and dominatrix-wear and everything in between. It is a literal translation of a comic based on timeless and placeless vision of urban crime, corruption, and passion.

The film takes three storylines that are nearly wholly self-contained and overlaps them in a few choice encounters. The all-star cast at times sparkles, but occasionally falters: Mickey Rourke nearly steals the show as a battered and beleaguered thug bent on avenging the life of the only person who had ever been kind to him, while in another storyline Rosario Dawson leads a troop of emancipated hookers in a battle to maintain control of their fragment of Sin City. While Rourke and Dawson’s characters bring life to the drab backdrop, Jessica Alba is terribly bland and unconvincing, seemingly just eye-candy along for the ride next to an average Bruce Willis. Luckily their vignette is saved by a disgustingly horrid Nick Shahl, who plays pedophile / sexual predator Yellow Bastard.

This page from Film Rot details what a literal translation was made from comic to film in Sin City. Almost pane-by-pane the original work functioned as the movie’s storyboard. Here’s the movie’s official site, and the site of Dark Horse Comics. Some won’t have the stomach for an extended stay in Sin City, but if you can appreciate as much style and panache as you can blood and passion in your movies then you’ll thank me for telling you to see this one on the big screen.

Mix a promising plot line with middling actors, throw in a heaping spoonful of marginally entertaining Christian-derived story telling, shake well, pinch your nose and chug- such is Constantine consumption. Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine, a theological misfit doomed to live out his life on earth trying to earn a trip to heaven (by talking like the kid from the Sixth Sense). No really. He teams up with a detective named Angela, played by Rachel Weisz, to unravel a mystery surrounding the death of her twin sister.

The plot is deep and twisting, an unpredictable thrill-ride! (Okay, I made that part up, but I was just checking to see if you were actually reading.)

Constantine isn’t horrid, but it won’t sweep you off your feet to lands of cinematic bliss yet unknown to moviegoers. The Catholic diatribes feel phony and at times the dialogue is disturbingly bad. Though visually appealing and mostly entertaining, an unexciting plot and mediocre acting doom this flick to mediocrity.

Zhang Yimou follows up his amazing film Hero with another wire-fu wonder that proves even more visually sensual. Sadly because I’m a lazy fop I never reviewed Hero but that’s not for lack of enjoyment. (That one’s a must see.) While strong acting, sumptuous scenery, and clever cinematography carry House of Flying Daggers in much the same way as Hero, over developed melo-drama limits the potential of this one.

This film is my kind of reality. Check gravity at the door and plant yourself a bamboo forest, it’s the only way to fly my friends. It’s not the kind of reality suspension you’ll find in a typical Hollywood action scene- where only one appendage at a time is shown thrusting forward somehow rippling the air as it passes- here we’ve got full bodied fight sequences that prove ever so much more satisfying.

Layers of deceit cover the actors in Flying Daggers, ultimately smothering a love triangle oddly reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Roshomon. If you enjoy the genre you’ll love the ride, but the over-burdensome climactic drama keeps this beauty from lofty praise.

Those goofy movie reviews, they come in bunches don’t they? What kidders. I caught The Incredibles quite a while ago but just now put palms to QWERTY. I felt it was worth the time despite the delay…that and I didn’t want to go to bed, so here it is:

Soon I may be resigned to the knowledge that everything PIXAR touches is gold. Superheroes indeed, big PIX is pushing animation technology as fast as it churns out kid-conscious classics. Solid character development and superb writing underscore amazing visuals and the kind of through-and-through production value that spans generations flawlessly.

However it isn’t all red spandex and super powers. If you’ve not seen the film and crawled out of your cave naive to the footage provided by the trailers, the Incredibles are a family of super heroes plagued by the challenges of conformity in American suburbia, (which of course is forced cultural and social homogeneity at its finest) and the conflicts inherent in any growing family.

I could blab on about PIXAR’s texture rendering and all the glorious technical hoo-ha, but that’s been overdone and I’d rather speak on the interesting, more human components of the film: Conformity is it?

This subtext may be lost on some, but it is definitely pervasive, as it represents the film’s only unresolved and unpredictable conflict. The Incredibles learn to embrace their skills and work together as a family on their communal path to success- though what they can never achieve is social acceptance despite their good nuclear family aesthetic and life-saving feats of incredible-ness…ocity. They must either neuter their talents for social acceptance or use them only to save the lives of the populace that will never accept their differences either way. Sad but true. They might as well be minority. Or gay. Or even worse, both… Wearing spandex.

Don’t you believe me? If PIXAR puts thought into how the breeze flutters every strand of hair on a head and how light dances on taught fabric, you’d better believe they’ve packed in some social commentary. This is a great film that will please the kids as much as any adults wide-eyed enough to appreciate the whole work, even if they watch it from the suburbs.

Liam Neeson is extremely convincing as pioneering sex study Dr. Alfred Kinsey in this open and honest film for the art houses. Kinsey is the tale of a brilliant scientist redefining sex in America at a time when masturbation was widely believed to cause blindness. How far we’ve come in our pro-abstinence society that teaches children that AIDS is spread through sweat, and that abortion causes sterility and suicide. Ironically, the science that made Kinsey taboo in 1947 is still today deemed off-color content as many boycotted Fox Searchlight for releasing this film.

Nearly indigestible irony aside the film stands alone easily with superior supporting roles played by Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, and Peter Sarsgaard. The movie bravely doesn’t hesitate to discuss Kinsey’s disputed techniques, family problems, homosexuality, and complete lack of understanding of humans as anything but animals to be tallied, all while keeping the mood melancholic with well timed humorous dialogue.

Though this film is very good, sadly I doubt our over-sexed under-churched and sin-satiated generation will have enough reasons to make Kinsey a hit. Frontal nudity and numerous sexual situations? Enough to earn a boycott, but not nearly enough to hit the mainstream.