Came across this tidbit on Filmspotting’s Facebook group. At RowThree.com (a site I wasn’t familiar with until now), Jandy Stone has a feature where - every Sunday - she highlights some great films you can catch on TV for that upcoming week. It’s a short yet well-written piece. Check out this current week to see what you can catch. I’d strongly recommend The Station Agent, American Splendor, Two for the Road, and Millions. I’m looking forward to seeing The Grapes of Wrath and My Darling Clementine which I’ve somehow missed all these years. So check in with RowThree weekly for Jandy’s column to catch some classics you’ve missed through the years.
Archive for September, 2009
Directed by Christian Alvart
Written by Travis Milloy
Starring Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue, Cung Le, Eddie Rouse, Andre Hennicke, Norman Reedus
Rated R for profanity and graphic violence
Rating - 3 bullet holes
I enjoy science fiction, horror, and Dennis Quaid. I still had trepidations. I went anyway. I regretted it.
I love those dark, moody films in which characters you actually care about have to contend with those things that go hiss in the night and can eviscerate you. They’re even creepier in the coldness of space. The trouble with Pandorum is that it offers up absolutely nothing new for this genre. Oh and it’s exceedingly dull.
It’s 2174. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) and Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) awaken from hypersleep on the spaceship Elysium. Struggling with the disorientation and memory loss that comes from extended hypersleep, they begin to slowly remember their mission. They’re on a mission to explore a new planet that can sustain life since Earth is coming to an end. But they’re stuck in a room with doors they can’t unlock (do they ever?), the ship is creaking and moaning like it’s about to give birth, and they have no idea where the rest of the crew or the ship’s many passengers are.
Bower finds a way out through a narrow hatch and begins to explore the ship while maintaining radio contact with Payton. Quickly, he discovers they’re not alone. He comes across two survivors and “them”. The ship is overrun with hordes of bald, white skinned creatures that are oddly adorned with spiky costumes (bones?). The beasts are straight out of The Descent with a quick detour through The Road Warrior. They also seem to suffer from syphilis as they are deformed, are leaking some kind of fluid from their mouth (and other areas), and constantly growl and shriek. They move very fast possibly because they need a bathroom since, when they walk, it’s with this herky jerky motion which makes it look like they need to take a massive dump.
The sound editing is really off in this film. The sounds the creatures make when snarling are annoying and loud. REALLY LOUD. It is jarring. It didn’t terrify me. It just pissed me off.
I was probably the only one laughing in the theater when Bower and company come across a small monster child…I can only imagine what it must look like when these spastic abominations mate.
The film is full of cliches. The highly advanced computer that can’t help the protagonists in any way except to provide a blueprint of the ship and a countdown clock (no Wikipedia, AOL Messenger, or Orbitz - Bower and Payton probably would have gotten more accomplished with an iPhone). The ship’s survivors who provide cryptic clues as to what’s happened to everyone (In situations like this, why doesn’t the protagonist grab the person by the collar and shout “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IN THE LIVING HELL YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!”). The requisite heroine/supermodel (Antje Traue) who kicks serious monster ass while her silicone implants heave against her tattered and oil-stained toddler’s T-shirt. The crazy old man who finally explains what’s going on to the other survivors and then turns on them for personal gain. The struggle to reach the ship’s engine room or reactor. The longing for the wives.
At one point, Payton finds a survivor (Niels-Bruno Schmidt) in his part of the ship…a grown man naked and covered in some sort of afterbirth-like goo who is rambling and frightened. He explains to Payton what has happened to the crew…that they were victims of pandorum, a rare neurological side effect of hypersleep that causes the victim to shake, hallucinate, and eventually go apeshit. Basically the “bends” in space. Also a way to describe what apparently happened to screenwriter Travis Malloy.
I shouldn’t be surprised that this movie blows. One of the producers is Paul W.S. Anderson, the genius behind Mortal Kombat, Soldier, Resident Evil, Alien v Predator, and Death Race.
This is yet another one of those movies with a surprise twist that occurs at the end of the film. By that time, I was so damn bored, and my ears were ringing so bad that I didn’t care. Not to mention that the execution of the twist is unoriginal and embarrassing.
Good science fiction has deeper psychological or political themes at its core. Is Pandorum trying to make a statement about over-population and an impending ecological destruction of the planet? If so, it achieves this with the subtlety of slamming a chipmunk’s head in a car door.
I like Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster, but they are completely wasted here. This is obviously just a paycheck for them. And we all suffer as a result. Thank you!
To its credit, the film has some genuinely creepy moments as we explore dark passageways with Foster. And there are some cool kill scenes with the creatures. But really…who cares? We’ve seen all of this before in at least 100 other movies. By the time it mercifully ends, I was just wondering what was for lunch.
Rotten Tomatoes has released their 100 worst movies of this decade in this piece called Worst of the Worst 2000-20009. You’re probably familiar with the site but if not, Rotten Tomatoes combines reviews from critics across television, print, and the web to produce a favorability rating for every film. Generally, these will reflect the opinion of other sane moviegoers. This is a fun article. Look’s like Uwe Boll’s entire anthology is here.
Yeah I know this decade isn’t over but we’re about to enter Oscar season, so it’s pretty unlikely that a truly god awful bomb will be released before the end of the year.
If most of these are among your favorite films, you need professional help. So keep coming back to our site. We will help you.
What do you think is missing from the list?
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Scott Z. Burns
Starring Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey
Rated R for profanity
Rating - 1 bullet hole
In 2000, screenwriter Scott Burns listened to the This American Life podcast entitled “The Fix Is In”. The story, about the highest ranking executive (Mark Whitacre) to blow the whistle in a corporate fraud case, so impacted him that he turned it into a screenplay using more research from Kurt Eichenwald’s book.
Many people are reviewing this film and giving away many crucial plot points since this is a true story I’d heard the incredible podcast before I saw the movie. It’s completely up to you if you want to. Regardless, I’ll just hit the highlights.
Whitacre (Damon) was a vice president for ADM, a fortune 500 agriculture company that creates food additives and products that are in most things we eat. In 1992, he complained of an extortion attempt from a competitor, and the FBI was brought in. The investigation uncovered a global price fixing scheme involving ADM and its competitors. With Whitacre’s cooperation, the FBI recorded hours of undercover audio and video footage.
But Whitacre had some pretty big skeletons in the closet which caused serious problems for the investigation. He also was a very goofy informant…unnecessarily narrating audio tapes and trying to fix his recorder in the middle of a business meeting. He loves movies and Michael Crichton novels. He believes he has all the answers.
This is a damn funny movie. And Matt Damon is perfect for it. Whitacre narrates most of the film. But, it’s a neurotic, unfocused rambling as he discusses topics not related to what he is doing. He offers up useless trivia and makes idiotic observations about everyday life. When a co-worker is speaking to him about the FBI’s involvement in a matter, we hear Whitacre’s inner voice pondering a sale on ties. The earnestness of his cadence kills me.
There are some fun supporting performances as well. Scott Bakula and Joel McHale play the FBI agents coaching Whitacre. They take their job very seriously and the exasperation on their faces when trying to work with Whitacre are priceless. But the real star here is Melanie Lynskey. God, is she perfect as the doey-eyed wife of Whitacre who loves him unconditionally.
The film is a lot of fun but seems to kind of peter out towards the end. Whitacre’s personality begins to get a little tiresome as we’re run into the ground with his wackiness.
I also wonder if I’m alone in feeling a little bad for laughing at Whitacre when certain things about the man are revealed. I think it may have worked better had the film gotten a little more somber towards the end. According to the podcast, Whitacre has seen the film and laughed at it. But after spending 108 minutes with him…that may not be much of an endorsement.
Has the next Blair Witch Project arrived? The trailer for Paranormal Activity is causing quite a stir in the film world. The film is a $10,000 horror flick. Yes, you read that right. $10,000. That’s far lower than Blair which was initially reported as costing $20,000 but after some post-production work, the budget went to between $500,000 and $750,000. First timer Oren Peli has written and directed this “true” (which means it isn’t) story depicting a couple trying to capture paranormal activity in their home. Think Poltergeist on a very very low budget.
I have to say…the trailer is damn damn creepy. Steven Spielberg reportedly saw a screener of the entire film and “had the crap scared out of him”. Watch the trailer alone with the lights off, and you’ll probably need to change your pants. But here’s the rub…the trailer splices footage from the film together with night-vision footage of an audience reacting (lots of screaming). This is not a new marketing technique but is apparently making a comeback. I’ve read a few blogs by people that support this style. I’m not sure I agree with them. I admit it’s funny to see these reactions, but I’m kind of a purist…just give me the trailer. The film opens September 25th but unfortunately only in 13 cities. If it’s in your city and you’re a horror fan, go see it! This is a perfect example of what we’re touting here…support independent film!
Check it out for yourself. What do you think? Marketing genius or gimmick?
We sincerely apologize for the delay. We’ve had a lot of technical issues with the site to iron out as well as ongoing content discussions. We have a gameplan now and look forward to your readership. This site will continue to evolve in front of you. We will be posting much more frequent content. For those of you that are not familiar with this site, take the time to read through the various sections but especially the F.A.Q. and the Let the Hate Begin article which launched this site. And also, join our Facebook fan page!
Directed by Shane Acker
Written by Pamela Pettler
Starring the voices of Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connely, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly and Crispin Glover.
Rated PG-13 for violence
Rating - 2 bullet holes
Post apocalyptic movies are on the rise in Hollywood, which I am looking forward to. Nothing like spending my lazy Sunday watching a film that reminds us how big of screw-ups we are and, in the end, we are royally screwed.
The movie starts with the hands of the sack doll’s creator making our hero and describing how we blew it this time. We made machines, the machines turned on us and of course, we are about to die. Shortly, we are taken possibly years later after the conflict has ended and all organic life is wiped out. Our hero springs to life and the story continues.
What is the story? From what I could gather, these dolls were “brought to life” to be the last vestige and hope for life. Why in the blue hell it was sack dolls to ward off a giant mechanical monster I still do not understand but whatever. You would think that since these beings were created to start over with at least some sort of plan. Nope. In fact, it is a tired process having 9 to convince the other surviving dolls they have to do something. In fact, you literally have to wait until the last 15 minutes of the movie for the other dolls to realize it.
AND THEY ARE DOLLS!!!!! What the hell are they supposed to do once they stop the big evil matrix machine looking monster? THEY. ARE. SACK. DOLLS. I will not even start on how it ends. It’s ends all hopeful but it is just forced upon you and you just have to accept it. I will give you a hint: water is life!
*sigh*
Visually, graphically…this movie is wonderful. The animation is top notch. My problem sometimes though with these movies is that the bad guy as a robot has to have a million arms or all these multi part appendages making it more complex than it should. But of course if it has one red eye, it must be soulless evil.
This is the brain child of Shane Acker. He made an 11 minute short as a USC film student based on these sack dolls in a post apocalyptic world. I have never seen it and do not plan to. If a 90 minute or so flick couldn’t tell me a story in an engaging manner and just make me care how can I trust it was done in 11?
The voice acting was done very well by seasoned actors with good reps. The characters, numbered 1 through 9 by the way, had their roles given to a sole characteristic. One is a big brawler, another is the leader, another the only girl (bad ass girl that is ninja-like, of course) and so on. But in the end, I only really cared about 9, our hero, because he was the only one that had real purpose and, by FAR, the smartest in a movie that really is not all that smart.
Written and directed by Guillermo Arriaga.
Starring Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger, Tessa Ia, Jennifer Lawrence, JD Pardo, Jose Maria Yazpik, Robin Tunney
Rated R for sexual scenes, nudity, and profanity
Rating - 3 bullet holes
The opening image of The Burning Plain is an arresting one. We see a lonely burning trailer in the middle of a New Mexico desert. No humans are in sight. We quickly learn who is in the trailer. Like Amores Perros, Arriaga’s first and far superior effort, this film explores the lives of people that revolve around a tragedy.
We meet Sylvia (Charlize Theron), a restaurant manager in Oregon who is a deeply troubled woman living in a whirlwind of cigarettes, self mutilation, and meaningless sex with multiple partners. One day, she meets Carlos. Carlos has been following her. She thinks he wants sex. He doesn’t. At first, he appears to be a stalker, but he has important news for her.
We then meet Gina (Kim Basinger), a married woman who is having an affair with Nick (Joaquim de Almeida). Gina’s husband (Brett Cullen) is unaware of the affair. But her oldest daughter Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence) finds out about the affair, and it shatters her world leading her also to engage in damaging behavior.
This is Arriaga’s first directorial gig. All of his screenplays deal with damaged people, some of them physical wounds, all of them emotional. Gina has had a mastectomy and suffers from self-esteem issues. Other characters perform self-mutilation in the form of cutting and burning themselves. I was reminded of Valeria (Goya Toledo), the beautiful model in Amores Perros who suffers a serious leg injury in a car wreck.
In all of his films, Arriaga explores these damaged people and how it affects their relationships with those around them and with themselves. These characters usually experience some kind of revelation or catharsis. The big problem with The Burning Plain is that we don’t care for these people. These are people who are so mired in tragedy and self-loathing that empathy kind of goes out the window. The film is just a magnifying glass into misery with no escape.
Another big problem is the fractured storyline, another staple of his films (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) that has worked to varying degrees of success. It is hard to discuss the nature of these fractured storylines without giving part of the plot away, but it simply doesn’t work here. You get the sense that Arriaga is being clever simply for the sake of being clever. But even had the film been told in a linear fashion, I don’t think it would have been enough to rescue us from this deluge of despair.
Do yourself a huge favor. Skip this one and rent Amores Perros instead.
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
Written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris
Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Boris Kodjoe, James Francis Ginty, Michael Cudlitz, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames
Release Date - Sept 25, 2009
Based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, this film depicts a future in which people live their lives remotely via robotic surrogates - physically perfected mechanical representations of themselves. In this utopia they live in, crime, death, fear (and I’m guessing going to the bathroom) and such don’t exist. At least they think so, until one of these avatars is murdered and a detective (Willis) has to leave his home for the first time in years to investigate the murder.
This looks terrible…some sort of idiotic mashup of The Matrix, Virtuosity, and about 50 other sci fi features. Jonathan Mostow directed 1997’s Breakdown, which I thought was a perfectly executed Hitchcockian thriller. He knows how to create tension as evidenced with U-571 and certain parts of Terminator 3. But this one looks like a movie that really lacks direction. From the trailer and clips I’ve seen, Willis seems to be sleep-walking through this one.
Roger Ebert has a great feature on his website that I read religiously called Answer Man. A few months ago, a reader posed this humorous observation:
Q. In the review that you and Siskel did of “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” you said the movie drained years, even centuries, out of the human “time pool.” I did some calculations and learned that it’s worse than you feared.
Let’s say a bad movie makes $50 million. I’ll round the ticket price out to $10. I suppose that’s 5 million people who saw it. If the movie is 90 minutes, then 7,500,000 hours are wasted. A year is only 8,760 hours. So, the bad movie has wasted 856 years. The average lifespan in the U.S. is a mere 75 years. Therefore, the equivalent of 11 entire lives are completely wasted away because of this movie. This is a low example. Many movies make far more than $50 million, are longer than 90 minutes, and are watched repeatedly on DVD. Ticket prices are usually under $10. So in conclusion, not only does making a bad movie vaporize years of potential community service, it is mathematically equivalent to committing mass murder.
Will Lugar, Tulsa, Okla.
I’ve been thinking a lot about it since then. He makes a very valid point…we waste an enormous amount of time and money on bad movies. Some would argue that every movie wastes your time. If you’re in that camp, then you probably aren’t - or shouldn’t be - reading this site. I strongly believe that a good film has some real value in it. That is a topic for another blog.
It got me thinking on a similar tangent about time management with film in general. Life really is short. While film can play a good role in that, we have to be careful. Let’s say the average film is 2 hours to make things easy. And you watch one a week whether it’s in the theater, on video, on the internet, or on cable. That is actually a conservative estimate even for a real movie nut like myself. But it breaks down, obviously, to 104 hours per year. In an average lifespan of say 70 years (once you’re old enough as a kid to comprehend and absorb movies), that is 7,280 hours or 303 days. So, you could spend roughly an entire year of your life watching movies.
I also hear people talking about how they’ve seen a particular movie several times. I’ve done it myself. But I hear people boast that “I’ve seen Star Wars 100 times”. Really? First of all, I have trouble believing that but if it’s true, you’ve spent 8 days watching one movie and probably don’t get out much. I love Star Wars, but there are literally hundreds if not thousands of other great science fiction films out there. Ever seen the sci-fi film Sunshine by Danny Boyle from 2007? Yeah most people haven’t. I have some minor problems with it, but it’s actually a damn solid film that was marketed horribly (if at all).
There are people seriously struggling out there trying to make a career in film. We need to support then. Instead of watching the same movie 15, 20, 100 times, why not expand your horizons? In all honesty, that is what we are trying to accomplish at this site. While there are some Hollywood products we admire, we tend to stay more in the fringe of the film world trying to uncover the gems (see my review of Goodbye Solo) that the average megaplex denizen is not aware of.
We understand that movies are not important in the grand scheme of things. First and foremost, we should spend time with our loved ones, with our god, with whatever is most important to us. But when you do take some time out for a movie, think about the time you’re spending. More and more lately, I find myself getting halfway (if that) through a movie and then ejecting it (or deleting it from the DVR) because I can tell it’s a waste of time. Just last night, I was 45 minutes into1999’s Snow Falling on Cedars and finally stopped it because it wasn’t going anywhere, and I was seriously pondering huffing glue. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and realize that time - whether it’s with a film or not - is definitely fleeting. So stop murdering your time!
And may the Force be with you.
