astacvi-1 Reviews

The Anderson Tapes (1971)

I'm still confused.

[5/10 · 1 July 2013]

There's a reasonably interesting heist movie in here, and some understated commentary on our surveillance society (particularly relevant as I write this in the summer of 2013.) Unfortunately, they are mismatched parts that never quite come together into one film.

Sean Connery was clearly trying to escape the penumbra of James Bond here, playing a much coarser character and working without toupee. He's actually pretty good, with the exception of the dreadful accent he attempts. It's a bizarre Brooklyn/Scottish hybrid, and come to think of it, sort of fitting for this movie: two things that don't really mesh but are jammed together anyway.

Martin Balsam and an extremely young Christopher Walken are the standouts among the supporting cast. Balsam seems to have somehow channeled Harvey Fierstein from the future, almost but never quite going over the top. Walken is mesmerizing in a very small role, showing even at his young age the physical grace and edgy unpredictability that would come to define him.

I must make special mention of the dreadful score. It's distracting and awful, almost certainly the lowlight of Quincy Jones's career.

Ultimately, and unfortunately, this film just doesn't quite work. It can't seem to decide what it wants to be. It's kind of funny, kind of suspenseful, kind of socially critical, kind of dramatic, but in the end not really anything very specific. I can usually decipher what a movie has attempted, even if it fails, but in this case I just don't know. It's a confusing, strange melange of recognizable parts that never form a consistent whole.

Skyline (2010)

Not entirely bad, but...

[3/10 · 21 January 2013]

There are things to like about this movie, so I'll get them out of the way before I start tearing it apart. The effects are really quite good. The mismatch between human technology and that of aliens capable of interstellar travel is believable. We'd get our clocks cleaned in such a conflict, and our minor victories would be short-lived and heavily retaliated against, just as seen here. And the humans who didn't die instantly would panic and try stupid plans that don't work, just as seen here.

That's fine, and actually kind of refreshing. I'm pretty tired of the "human underdogs somehow defeat the invincible aliens" genre. Sure, I'm rooting for the home team, but it's just not a realistic outcome.

The problem here is that the aliens just don't make sense. I get that aliens are supposed to be, well, alien, and that their methods and goals might not make sense to us. But here we're eventually shown that they are pursuing one single goal to the exclusion of all else: the harvesting of human brains. They ignore literally everything else, and are shown to discard the corpses once they've removed the central nervous system. And what are they using the brains for? To reprogram and install them in cyborg drones so that they can more efficiently -- wait for it -- harvest human brains, not that they were having much difficulty with that to start with.

The dumb circularity of all this makes me wish my brain had been harvested before I wasted its power trying to watch this tripe. It's a 50's B-movie plot with great special effects grafted on top. It makes "Independence Day" look like Shakespeare. Hell, it makes "Lost in Space" or "Transformers" look like Shakespeare. It's just amazingly, infuriatingly stupid and pointless.

The only mildly interesting thing in this movie occurs just as it ends, when Balfour's brain (I can't be bothered to look up the character's name) is shown to somehow rebel so he turns into a rogue alien/cyborg/drone. It's as illogical and inexplicable as the rest of this mess, but if the movie had gotten to that point an hour earlier and moved forward, there might have been a chance at something resembling a plot.

As it is, though, this is just a complete waste. One star gets bumped up to three for the special effects, but they're not enough to make this worth sitting through.

Our Idiot Brother (2011)

A pleasant diversion

[7/10 · 16 January 2013]

As long as you keep your expectations reasonable, this is a pleasant enough way to while away an hour-and-a-half. Paul Rudd turns in an enjoyable performance as Ned, the eponymous idiot brother. Cluelessly oblivious, yet affable and oddly charming, Ned wanders through the film naively screwing up his sisters' lives as well as his own. It's not a knee-slappingly hilarious movie, but it is funny and droll.

This film is very similar to another recent one, "Jeff, Who Lives at Home," starring Jason Segel. The main characters are nearly identical. Segel and Rudd, of course, starred in "I Love You, Man," one of the best comedies in recent years.

There's not a lot to say about a movie like this without getting into spoiler territory. It's a light comedy, but with some situations and dialogue that mean you should watch it after the kids are in bed. I'll give it a 7.

The Hunger Games (2012)

Repugnant and unrelentingly stupid

[3/10 · 16 January 2013]

One of the hallmarks of bad writing, and in particular bad science fiction, is the "As you know, Bob" speech, where characters explain to each other what they both already know. Here it's presented as though the main characters are completely ignorant of the central fact of their existence, an annual event that everyone watches. It's clumsy and annoying exposition, and it's the *best* written part of the film. From there it just gets worse, with contrived situations and deus ex machinas falling from the trees.

All this is set in a world that seems like a fifth-grader's concept of a centrally planned economy, a poorly conceived dystopia which makes no sense physically or economically. Nothing is ever fundamentally explained, except for an occasional "Oh, by the way, we forgot to tell you this exists and there's conveniently one nearby, or we'll whip something up through apparently magic." It's all frustrating and never coheres into anything resembling a believable world or society.

Worse yet, there's no story here. It's pure melodrama with a predetermined outcome. The cardboard characters have no arc, no growth, no anything but having survived. It's just an empty, morally repugnant spectacle, with no real point to any of it.

I imagine there are probably apologists who claim, much like the later Harry Potter films, that "Well, you have to have read the book to fully understand everything." If that's the case, then the film is still a failure. I shouldn't have to bring along supplementary material to fill in the gaps, inconsistencies, and just plain stupidity of a movie like this.

I gave three stars because the film was mostly professionally shot and produced. I just wish they'd spent some of that money on a professionally written script. This movie is a complete disaster and an utter waste of time.

The Pleasure Drivers (2006)

At least they were trying, but ... fail.

[3/10 · 16 August 2012]

I was going to review this movie, but after reading Masticator76's masterpiece I really have nothing to add. I'm giving it one more star than he did, just because the movie is so gosh-darned edgy.

It's still a frustrating experience, even with the edginess. There are a great many scenes that nearly work, but nothing ever coheres into an actual movie with a believable plot. There are only a couple of characters written to have more than one dimension, and they immediately make you wish they would just shut up and let the cardboard characters take over.

Go read Masticator76. His review contains SPOILERS but trust me, you really don't care that much.

Horatio Hornblower: The Duel (1998 TV Movie)

I was impressed by how good this was

[8/10 · 17 July 2012]

I was frankly not expecting much because my exposure to Ioan Gruffudd has been exclusively the dismal Fantastic Four movies. I was stunned to learn that he can actually act -- or could once, anyway -- and his performance completely carries this film. The rest of the cast, for the most part unfamiliar to me as an American viewer, do a fine job as well. I would make something of an exception for Dorian Healy, but I fault him less for his performance than the script for giving him so little to work with other than moustache-twirling villainy. That's a minor nitpick, though. The acting is solid across the board, with a great supporting performance by Robert Lindsay.

In general, the action moves along briskly, the characters are well-defined, and the overall production values are surprisingly high. There are a few weak special effects where the budget shows a bit, but for the most part this is a really well-mounted production. The sets and costumes are top-notch, and a lot of attention seems to have been paid to period detail. It would be easy to believe this was a big-screen theatrical production if not for the periodic commercial fade-outs (which, by the way, were uniformly ignored on the telecast I watched -- is it really that difficult, Ovation?) Oh, and for other American viewers, the reason Kennedy looks so familiar but you can't quite place him is because he buried his natural accent so successfully on Battlestar Galactica.

At any rate, I highly recommend this film and now look forward to seeing the others in the series. I can only marvel at whatever happened to Horatio Hornblower to turn him into such a lackluster Reed Richards. Perhaps a lifetime of attempting to spell "Ioan Gruffudd" has just worn him down.

Forever Mine (1999)

Amazingly inept and unsatisfying

[3/10 · 13 July 2012]

I won't attempt to summarize the plot, such as it is. Suffice it to say that every single character in this film manages to behave in the least straightforward and believable manner in every situation. The heavy hand of a poor screenwriter is evident throughout, as all the characters seem more manipulated than motivated. The writer/director, Paul Schrader, was an unfamiliar directorial name to me until I watched this mess, and his resume makes it clear why. He's had a few successes as a writer, but pretty much all of them were directed by Martin Scorsese, who is very definitely not on hand to salvage this disaster.

Fiennes and Mol are game for the most part, and do what they can with the laughable dialogue. Ray Liotta, however, is at his over-the-top worst. He can be effective with the right part and some directorial restraint (see *Blow*, for instance) but neither is present here.

Avoid this and find something better to do.

And Soon the Darkness (2010)

Better than "Turistas", "Hostel" level crap, but not much

[3/10 · 10 July 2012]

Never heard of anyone but Karl Urban in the cast, but I figured by 2010 he was famous enough to pick and choose his projects. Wrong. I have no idea why he did this but his talents are utterly wasted. Predictable, pointless crap. The main characters are annoying, stereotypical, and just plain dumb. By the end you're rooting for them all to die just for being so stupid.

The only good thing I can say about this movie is it doesn't descend to the level of slash and gore so common in the genre. If that seems like faint praise, well, it is. Rising above the lowest possible level still doesn't make for a watchable or interesting movie.