Tag Archives: Movies

Hollywood Homicide

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Hollywood Homicide tries to be a spoof of cop-and-gangsters suspense/action movies. In short, two homicide detectives are sent to investigate the murder of a hip hop group. Everything is set up for some great comedy: One of them (Harrison Ford) is a part-time real estate broker, and a veteran detective. His younger side-kick teaches yoga / tantra on the side and wants to be an actor. The actors certainly could have pulled it off. But the script starts off lame, then slows down and becomes boring. You can get a few chuckles out of some scenes, maybe a stifled laugh here or there if you are tired or wasted – but overall the movie is definitely sub par. A sad waste of many talents.

Borrow the DVD and watch it for free, if you must see this movie. Otherwise, I would recommend that you watch Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero instead.

Pitch Black

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Pitch Black is a science-fiction thriller featuring Vin Diesel as the psychopath/criminal Riddick who would later feature in a sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick.

The movie follows in the grand tradition of the many creature-feature movies that transplanted the slasher genre into space. Of course the science fiction stuff is just fluff, used for background and story rationale. As always, there many “coincidences” that make the story possible.

The basic story is simple: A lone spaceship crashes on a remote planet, in a star system with three suns. Due to the particular configuration of the solar system, the planet is always bathed in sunlight. Except once every 22 years, when the planet our motley crew crashed on is in between two gas giants – and total darkness descends upon the world.

The surviving crew members soon discover that they face a species of aliens that has a particular taste for human blood. It’s vicious and extremely shy of light. And as mentioned one of the coincidences is that the crew crashes just a day before the pitch black night, and just within range of a camp of (devoured) scientists which features not only clues but also a handy escape shuttle.

Of course the movie is completely predictable from beginning to end. Most of the castaways get eaten, a small band of them escape, and Riddick turns out to be a rough hero and not a psychopath killer. There, I spoiled it for you – but did you really expect anything else from the movie? And yet, it’s an enjoyable film – It doesn’t require you to think, it doesn’t really manage to scare you, but it does have an original backdrop and some nice atmosphere. Don’t buy the DVD; borrow or rent it instead and do not expect too much or you should get ready to be underwhelmed.

So-So.

The Terminal

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The Terminal is a Spielberg movie featuring Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, a traveler from Eastern Europe who barely speaks English and gets stranded in JFK’s international transfer terminal when his country falls into civil war, making his visa and passport invalid over night.

Throughout the movie, Viktor tries to survive in the strange world of the airport, tries to get his visa, makes friends, meets women, and hooks up two airport employees as a messenger of love.

The movie is wonderfully made, never boring, with a lot of interesting characters, great twists and turns, beautiful ideas and more than a few “laugh-out-loud” moments. Tom Hanks is brilliant as ever, flight attendants – as represented by Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character Amelia – are portrayed cynically-realistically, and if you still haven’t found a reason to go watch this movie, you may be interested that it also has Zoe Saldana. So what are you waiting for?

I can fully recommend this movie, you will not regret it. Two thumbs up.

Lost in Translation

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Finally watched the 2003 hit movie Lost in Translation with Bill Murray last weekend. I always get a kick out of watching movies set in locations I have been to, and I fondly remember Tokyo as this giant, crazy metropolis full of strange people. The Japanese, bless them, are probably one of the weirdest people I have gotten to know them. Which I do not say to insult them or anything – after all I like strangeness because I fit right in.

Lost in Translation takes us through a two week visit of Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an aging American movie star who is in Tokyo for an advertisement contract – and grows from feeling trapped in a culture he understands nothing about to enjoying the ride. There isn’t any real story as you would expect from a Hollywood movie. There’s a bit of a romance between Murray’s character and the female lead, Charlotte, charmingly played by Scarlett Johansen, but it never works out as both have previous commitments – she is freshly married, he has been so for 25 years and has several children. A romantic tragedy, maybe?

The true “star” of the movie, in my biased eyes, is Tokyo itself, a constant, crazy whirlpool of sounds and sights; you could take the movie and transport it anyplace else – there are enough “weird cultures” after all – but it wouldn’t work nearly as well without the Japanese and their capital city.

However, I must say that Lost in Translation does not deserve the hit status it enjoyed for some months. It’s a quiet and enjoyable movie, sure enough. But in a few short years, nobody will remember it. It’s no grand artistic achievement, it’s not a really memorable ride, it’s simply an enjoyable movie you watch when you are bored on a Saturday night.

I, Robot

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Saw the movie last weekend – the German dubbing, unfortunately. I haven’t read the book yet (shame on me), so I will have to judge the movie standalone.

I, Robot tells the story of a police detective, Spooner, played by Will Smith, who is technophobic and hates robots in a world where robots are omnipresent. Spooner gets called to the scene of the apparant suicide of one of the founders of US Robotics (hahaha nice one, really). He quickly comes to suspect that an unusual robot of the company’s new series is responsible for the death of the old man.

During Spooners investigation, he becomes the target of numerous assassination attempts, until finally the plot unfolds itself – the robots stage a revolution.

The movie was neither really good, nor really bad (ignoring the lousy German dubbing). The animations of the NS-5 (the new robot series) is pretty nice, but in this day and age the CGI is not exceptional in any way. Sometimes – especially the chase scene in the tunnel – the CGI of these robots looks downright fake. The most beautiful scenes, in my eyes, are those of Chicago of 2035, especially the USR tower. Really nice.

Otherwise, the movie is really standard fare. There are no plot twists, there’s nothing too exciting. At the same time it isn’t too boring either. If you will see one movie this month, don’t see “I, Robot”. But if you happen to end up in a screening, you won’t have to fear death by boredom either.

MIB II – Men in Black 2

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Watched Men In Black Part 2 last night. What can I say, it’s really more of the same. If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one too. Interestingly, it carries even less of a plot than the first one, but at the same time it isn’t *worse*. Not much, anyway. This is a peculiar combination in my eyes and says as much about the original as it does about the sequel.

The DVD is outfitted with a lot of extra material – in fact, the package includes two of them, and I haven’t gone through all of it. However, it’s nice to see that some people realize that bonus material is a huge incentive to buying a DVD.

Of particular note is the “hidden” MIB “Training Video”. Most of this has been replaced by a clip in German. Since style and language totally do not fit into the rest of the DVD, I assume that this was put in by the German distributor. And it’s horrible. Absolutely bad. It’s obvious, it’s primitive, it’s badly presented, and it’s plainly just not one bit funny. To make it short the clip is the perfect example why Germany is not present one bit in the international entertainment market. Showing anybody this clip could be considered a violation of basic human rights of the viewers.

Halloween 1

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What movie would be more appropriate to my series of Halloween reviews than, well, the movie “Halloween”. This classic with young “scream queen” Jamie Lee Curtis is probably the best known example of the slasher sub-genre of horror movies.

For those who don’t know the story: 15 years after he killed his older sister, Michael Myers returns to his little Ohio hometown to follow his murderous instincts.

Hey, I pretty much just summed up the entire movie in one sentence. I had never seen this one before, except maybe possibly on TV. When Olav suggested it for my Halloween reviews I was actually quite eager to finally watch it. Olav is going to disagree with me on this, but to be quite honest, I think this movie sucks.

For about the first sixty percent we get to see what seems like a typical Halloween day. Kids being kids (that is, tormenting each other); teenagers being teenagers (getting stoned behind the wheel, being horny, and so on), all that sort of stuff. In between we have the good Doctor Loomis who’s trying to convince everybody that Michael Myers is “evil” because, well, he doesn’t really have any evidence but he just **knows** the kid is evil.

So after a while the plot thickens, and eventually, some of the girls buy the farm. Some naked breasts in between, and one of them, like all great movie sluts, dies after having sex (which by the way must have been the minute waltz. I guess the 70s were really quite naive and harmless when it comes to movies). The showdown is quick, harmless, and to the point. The end is predictable as it can be – especially when you know that Halloween spawned an entire series of movies.

I realize this movie’s supposed to be a classic, and maybe it even managed to scare someone once upon a time. But unfortunately for Mr. Carpenter, Halloween does not stand up to the test of time. I’m genuinely trying to think of one moment during the entire movie that scared me, and frankly, find none. I will be gentle with Mr Carpenters work; I am sure a great deal of this is that (a) the plot of the movie was pretty much known ahead of time and (b) the slasher format has been copied again and again until one is nowadays seriously tempted to suggest that anybody proposing to finance another slasher movie should have his own throat cut in a graphic manner. This would probably do the world more good than another clone of Halloween.

There are many old horror movies that are still scary today, but Halloween unfortunately isn’t one of them. It’s probably a must-see simply because it started the slasher craze, and because Jamie Lee Curtis is proof that a woman gets either more good looking with age, or with money.

Let me add a few words to the very simple DVD edition I watched. It was the German version and was bare of any extras. A few text pages about actors and the director are rendered in a yellow-blue combination that is so painful on the eyes that they could actually be the most frightening part of tonight’s cineastic experience. Browsing Amazon it seems that at least three editions of the Halloween DVD were produced. Hopefully some sort of collector’s edition has nicer extras. Halloween is one of the movies I’d really have loved to hear an Audio commentary of. There wasn’t even an English audio track. At least, they restored scenes that were obviously cut from the original release – they were not dubbed, but merely subtitled. I can barely manage to imagine just how horrible the movie must have been without these – quite essential – scenes.

Note: One interesting tidbit is that one of the horror movies the kids watch in Halloween is the movie “The Thing from Another World” from 1953, which Carpenter later re-made in the 80s.

Halloween Reviews 2003

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It’s Halloween Season, and as I had promised last year, I have begun to review more movies. Here’s what I have reviewed so far:

1. [The Quatermass Xperiment](/2002/10/16/the-quatermass-xperiment/)
2. [Event Horizon](/2003/10/20/event-horizon/)
3. [Halloween 1](/2003/10/27/halloween-1/)

Don’t forget to read last year’s reviews for more Halloween goodness.

Event Horizon

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Finally, here we have a movie that’s much more appropriate to Halloween. Sure, it’s a science-fiction movie but that doesn’t really change anything. Event Horizon is a splatter-shocker-horror-movie, plain and simple.

Event Horizon stars Laurence Fishburne (in the role of the cool, calm and collected salvage ship captain) and Sam Neill as the scientist person that built the mysterious missing ship that gave the movie its title. When it first reached the big screen – received a mixed reaction at best. People told me that the movie starts off well enough but that it went downhill from there.

I try, of course, to not let such comments influence me overly. What I had read about the story itself sounded interesting enough: A research vessel disappeared without a trace several years ago. And now, totally unexpectedly, it re-appeared in an orbit around Neptune. Captain Miller and his crew are sent to investigate.

The movie certainly doesn’t waste any time in getting us down to the action. The voyage starts in a hurry, time for explanations is only taken upon arrival at Neptune. Looks like the research vessel Event Horizon wasn’t on such a routine mission afterall. It was testing a trans-dimensional drive that would propel it to the stars at speeds faster than light. Something went wrong… and now Miller and his crew have to explore the derelict vessel. And within minutes, the terror begins…

Event Horizon certainly keeps you on the edge of the seat. This isn’t so much because of the original story – far from it. From the very first moment you can identify various elements that were liberally borrowed from other movies. Take 2001, add a good deal of Aliens (the second movie), and replace the space alien with satanic/cabbalistic images and you’ve got Event Horizon. However, the fact that you know pretty much what is going to happen is building up quite a lot of tension. There’s also several scenes that should keep the friends of the more bloody sort of horror movie satisfied. I watched an uncut version of the movie (I presume), and some of the stuff really wasn’t pretty. I won’t give it away, but what happens to the doctor guy really wasn’t nice.

As for the end of the movie, I would agree with the people who criticized it. The movie does go downhill from about the mid-point, but it’s not nearly as bad as I had feared. It could have been done better, yes, but it really is more than adequate.

Event Horizon is nicely filmed. There are some really cool scenes and nice images in the movie. It does ignore some basic science, and blatantly so, but who cares, it’s not supposed to be scientifically accurate. There are good characters (I liked the salvage crew), the acting isn’t too bad, overall, Event Horizon makes for a rather decent evening of horror entertainment.

The DVD itself (I watched the German release) is sparse as most DVDs are these days. I guess the days of DVDs being released with many extras and produced with care and enthusiasm are over. We’re in the age of cheap mass-produced releases now. Besides a few languages it carries the theatrical trailer. Bah – What good is that? I really do not understand it, especially since for a modern movie like Event Horizont a lot of extra material probably already exists – Interviews, Making-Of, whatever.

**Bottom line**: Fun movie, disappointing DVD.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind DVD

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When I went to the DVD fair with Olav, I bought only one DVD: The collector’s edition of “Close Encounters”, at an amazing price of merely 10 euros. It’s the 2 DVD version, too, and tonight I finally watched the thing.

I really don’t think I have to explain the story of the movie, it’s such a classic. Basically, UFOs come to Earth, causing all kinds of reactions from both random people and a government task force. It differs from the normal space alien flying saucer movie in that the aliens are friends – and not invaders.

I am pretty undecided about the movie. On the one hand it’s beautifully done; and if you’re younger then it can even be scary. But the aliens are cheesy and the “happy happy smiley aliens” idea makes me almost physically sick. Still, it’s such a classic that everybody really needs to see it… and when you do, you can just as well make up your own mind.

About this DVD edition: I am really sad that – like too many other DVDs – Close Encounters does not contain an audio commentary track. However, the DVD set makes more than up for it by providing a very lengthy “Making Of”, deleted scenes, a featurette, and trailers. So I am not too disappointed with the extras. The Making Of is especially interesting, because Close Encounters was done before computer animations invaded the movie industrie. Basically everything in the movie is real – visual effects, paintings, models, clever filming, it’s all combined to create a perfect illusion. I probably enjoyed the making of more than the movie itself.

If you haven’t seen this movie, go and see it. If you can get the DVD at a decent price, don’t hesitate. If you can get it at a normal price, still get it. It’s a really decent way to spend the evening.