Spring Breakers - A Party Worth Skipping

Driven by desperation at not having the financial means to get themselves to spring break, three girls (Vanessa Hudgeons, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine) rob a cafe. Their idoneously named religious friend, Faith (Selena Gomez), rounds out the quartet post-larceny, and the girls board a bus for some beach-based bacchanalia. A hotel bust (completely unrelated to the inciting burglary) lands them in jail and, subsequently, in the company of amateur rapper and all-around bad news dude, Alien (James Franco). 

From the get-go, Spring Breakers seems unsure whether it wants to glorify spring break rowdiness, or condemn it. The only foil for the trio of ne'er-do-wells is Faith with her overt religiousness. As her compatriots are drawing pictures of dongs and robbing people at gunpoint (in that order, with about that much time between them), she is singing hymns with other Christian coeds. The contrast couldn't be more on-the-nose, and in fact, is representative of a larger weakness of the film. Subtext, one of the defining traits of engaging cinema, seems as much a priority to writer/director, Harmony Korine (Rachel's real life husband), as modesty does to the spring breakers.

The two-dimensional characters are frustratingly ambivalent about their malevolent deeds. Perhaps if we had a better sense of who the trio of robbers are as individuals - as opposed to sex and booze hungry coeds with little more depth than that - we could better buy their rash decision to hold up a restaurant for bus fare. As it stands, we don't get to know them and, as such, don't have enough of a foundation to be able to decide whether we're supposed to feel for them and the mess they get themselves into, or if we're supposed to look down on them with disdain. 

If Korine's reluctance to offer some sense of viewer relationship to his quartet of coeds was its only shortcoming, Spring Breakers might be a fun ride. However, a nagging voiceover, inconsistent tone, and repetitive editing all conspire to weigh the film down further. Frequent repetition of dialogue, shots, and scenes from different angles makes one wonder by the 20 minute mark how much actual story there is to the movie. Ninety minutes later, the answer is, very little. When not much is happening anyway, the decision to show scenes time and again works against the finished product. 

More grating, though, are Faith's frequent voiceovers. Perhaps Korine's attempt at infusing the film with depth and his characters with dimensionality, he has Faith question aloud their actions, overlays phone calls between her and her grandmother with the immoral behavior of the other three girls, and try to reconcile her religious beliefs with the crimes she and her friends are rapidly becoming involved in. The existential voice overs are at odds with the near incessant shots of bare-chested coeds, beer bongs, and coke lines. They belong in a deeper film, one that knows whether it wants to condemn or tout such behavior.  In a film where not until 50 minutes in do the girls even have more in their wardrobe than bikinis, it is hard to take any of the characters or their dilemmas seriously. Korine seems to believe (as one would hope he would) that such actions are shameful, but his unwillingness to take a firm stance fails to mesh with Faith's verbal musings. The greater failure, though, is the inability to make the viewer care about any of it. 

Sure, I like a scantily clad woman just as the next guy, but the film blurs the line between trash, porn, and an actual story for 90 minutes straight, and nearly the entire first hour is proof of where the director's priorities lie. If you want to see topless college girls and don't care much for plot or depth, then Spring Breakers will be right up your alley. Of course, you could also just go down to Florida in March and experience it for yourself; it would certainly be more fun.

Should you Bother with Brothers?

Even before it was released, Jim Sheridan's BROTHERS was getting buzz as a potential Oscar contender. A remake of a 2004 Danish film by the same name (only... in Danish), Brothers tells the tale of two, you guessed it, brothers, played here by Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire.

Tommy Cahill (Gyllenhaal) is newly out of jail right around the same time that his brother Sam (Maguire) is shipping off to Afghanistan for the second time. Aimless and at odds with his father (played by Sam Shepard), Tommy seems to drag baggage and hostility wherever he goes. He's clearly in need of a second chance, and he gets that when Sam's helicopter is shot down and the marine goes missing, presumed dead.

Brothers isn't a war movie, or even very political despite the nature of the characters' lifestyles. Rather, it's a family drama about what happens when Grace, a mother and wife (played by the ever more attractive Natalie Portman) loses her husband, yet gains his brother. Tommy becomes surrogate dad to his nieces in Sam's absence, and we're left to see whether or not he'll also become a surrogate lover for Grace. While these relationships are developing, we see Sam doing everything he can to be strong while suffering torture and torment at the hands of his Afghan captors.

It's hard to deny that the cast and crew put everything they could into this film, which is why it's unfortunate to have to admit that I just was not that into it. Portman, Gyllenhaal, and Maguire all do incredibly strong work, but it's in a film that seemed to lack the necessary sparks that make an alright movie great. The big beats - news about Sam's death, for example - went the more subtle, quietly dramatic route. Presumably, Sheridan directed his cast this way to avoid cliche and over-the-top melodrama, but I found myself wanting more out of these moments than I got. While watching, I was fully aware that Sam was alive and would be returning to his family soon, and the characters seemed aware of it, as well. Grace refuses to believe that her husband is dead due to her wife's intuition, but as a viewer I felt that I was just killing time with her until Sam showed up again.

There are so many character evolutions that have to take place over the course of the film, that a few of them were rushed to me. Tommy and Grace go from disliking one another, yet standing one another as far as family goes, to appearing the perfect (albeit platonic) couple in really very little time - both on screen and within the world of the film. Sam is not gone for too long a time, yet Grace and Tommy seem to grapple with, accept, and move on from his death in that short window. (Of course, to say they overcame his death completely is to simplify things, but the acceptance and moving on phases seemed to come particularly quickly.) I'm aware that the timeline of the film was an important part, yet Portman's Grace is played with a subtlety that left me wanting a bit more, which is how I felt about the film overall.

Would I bother with Brothers knowing what I do if I hadn't seen it yet? Maybe as a DVD rental, but I'd rather spend the $12.50 on dinner or a different movie.

Surrogates - Forget the Alternate Body, Get an Alternate Script

I guess it's about time to admit that I saw SURROGATES on opening night. (Onyx and I had passes to a free screening, and we were in the mood for some brainless Friday night on-screen action.) The fact that I feel as though I have to defend my decision to go see it should be indicator enough of what I thought about it.

Based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, the screen adaptation is written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, the writing duo that most recently disappointed Onyx with Terminator Salvation. The premise behind SURROGATES, which stars Bruce Willis, is that a detective in a world where 98% of humans live their lives remotely through surrogate robots of themselves must solve a string of homicides that has left both robots and their human operators dead. Theoretically, having a surrogate safeguards people against physical threat, since if their robot gets shot or hit by a car, all people have to do is disconnect from their surrogate command module long enough to activate a new robot. People can design their surrogate to look like anyone - kind of like second-life online - so in this near-future, city streets are clogged with supermodel robots controlled by balding, overweight slobs who haven't left their apartments in nearly 15 years. Romantic notion of the future, no?



One of the largest problems I had with SURROGATES is that no one seems to have bothered to ask some very basic, yet very essential developmental questions. For one, other than not being able to get hurt and being able to design your surrogate's appearance, we're given no indication why 98% of the human population has adopted this lifestyle. Yes, not getting hurt has its perks. And the movie does do a half-hearted attempt of explaining that surrogates have the sense of touch (though breezes right over the fact that watching your surrogate is more like watching TV than anything else). But there is never any real reason given for why almost everyone in the world has opted to stop going outside, stop directly communicating with loved ones and friends, stop having any sort of actual human interaction in favor of growing old in a chair, watching their younger-looking robot self live life for them. When I explain the premise to friends, their first question is always, "why would people want that?" I can't for the life of me explain it, and perhaps Ferris and Brancato couldn't, either.

The notion of a 98% utilization rate brings me to my next biggest gripe. As writers, we're hounded (or should be) to explain everything in the script, down to the smallest details. SURROGATES avoids major issues like it's its job, issues like how people can afford this complex mechanized versions of themselves. Just about everyone has one (if not more). Are we to assume that these are just given out on the street like fliers for Subway sandwiches? How can they have become so universal? In the intro to the movie, we learn that this all happened in a matter of 14 years. Fourteen years for near total acceptance of life through surrogates. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. Again, maybe the filmmakers couldn't answer this one, so they opted to sweep it under the rug.

There's a lot that's been deftly ignored in SURROGATES. In what must by now be in his contract, Bruce Willis once again plays a troubled cop with a broken family life who must win back his wife. Yet, the family stuff hardly plays a role in the movie at all. Sure, it affects his decision in the end, but the 88 minute run-time allows for much more character detail than we're given (not that I would have wanted to sit through much more of SURROGATES, mind you). There's a fairly major reveal with anti-surrogate movement leader Ving Rhames, but that's another thing that the final cut just dances right past. If you find yourself wondering why people who refuse to use surrogates are forced to live in slums worse than the aliens in DISTRICT 9 have, don't worry - you're not alone. You will, however, have to stop worrying about the answer, because you won't get that one, either.

The plot is convoluted and disappointing enough, but to me, it's these major omissions that are at the heart of the problems with SURROGATES. In the most recent issue of Creative Screenwriting, there's an article about the film, in which Ferris and Brancato mention that they were racing to complete the script before the 2007-2008 WGA strike. As a result, they did very few drafts of this. Unfortunately for all involved and for audiences, it shows. Watch SURROGATES, but only as an example of why you have to answer (at the very least) the big questions in your alternate-reality flick.

Screen Alert: Inglourious Basterds - Basterdizing History (In A Good Way)

*SPOILER WARNING*

Major spoilers discussed throughout the entire post.

Last Sunday, after a rave review from Zombie and mounting curiosity/excitement throughout the summer, I treated myself to an early morning screening of Quentin Tarantino's latest film, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. I was glad I went early, because even though it was before noon, there was not one seat to spare in the theater. It's no surprise BASTERDS opened at nearly 38 million.

For those who (somehow) don't know, BASTERDS is treated to Tarantino's signature over-the-top yet slightly humorous (at times) violence. Set in World War II, BASTERDS might just be the most acceptable setting for the gore that Tarantino rewards audiences with. The increasingly visible Brad Pitt (or am I the only one who feels like he's been popping up in movies a lot more in recent years) plays Aldo Raine, a U.S. Army lieutenant who assembles a squad for one reason and one reason only, "killin' Nazis." The hook? The squad is comprised entirely of Jewish soldiers, and to them, the war is personal; they're out for blood.

BASTERDS is one of Tarantino's most linear films, if not the most linear. Sure, he still jumps around a little here and there. While certain characters don't meet up until almost the last hour of the nearly three hour picture, everything seems to be happening chronologically, for the most part. However, my interest now isn't so much to review the film - you can find a ton of reviews online, many of which praise BASTERDS - but to analyze a key part of the ending.

To set the final scene, the orphaned Shosanna Dreyfus owns and operates a movie theater in France. The sole remaining member of her Jewish family, she has a deep rooted hatred for SS Colonel Hans Landa, the man responsible for her family's death. When she finds out that her theater has been chosen to host a premier of a new Nazi propaganda film, she concocts a plan. Burn the theater down with over 350 Nazis - including the top man himself, Hitler - trapped inside.

As the action built, I found myself starting to squirm in the seat. She had such a good plan. Top it off, the Basterds got involved. Overkill (literally). But how, I wondered, was Hitler going to escape sure death? I've been so programmed by historical fact that it never once crossed my mind that Hitler might... dare I say it... die onscreen from anything other than the suicide we know he actually went from. Then, it happened. Eli Roth - "The Bear Jew" stormed Hitler's balcony while the fuhrer was watching the movie and shot him. Dead. To pieces. Not only had Hitler been killed, but it was an unceremonious death. He stood up, got shot, and went down. It was only when The Bear Jew shoots his corpse that we even get a close up on Hitler.

Wow. Hitler killed on screen. I hadn't seen it coming. Then I got to thinking, has that happened before? I've seen some films based on his actual last days - like the amazing DOWNFALL - but I can't recall any movies where he's been blown away like that. I thought it was great. Yes, we got to see Hitler get his, but more than that, my expectations were completely shattered. I honestly wonder now if we can expect to see more movies do this - blatantly buck historical fact for a more gratifying ending. Part of me definitely hopes so. I was apparently way off on my expectations with BASTERDS' loyalty to certain historical facts (not that I thought the film was rooted in accuracy in any way). For the ending I didn't see coming, Tarantino gets my kudos (if he ever wants it, that is).

The Hurt Locker

The more I read about The Hurt Locker the more I feel like I’m the only person who left the theatre disappointed. My disappointment turns into confusion when I read about people praising Kathryn Bigelow’s film as “a near perfect movie.” I just don't get it. God knows that when I first saw the trailer, I wanted this film to be near perfect. I wanted it to be the summer gem that you remember for all the right reasons. I’ll remember The Hurt Locker for a long time, but not for its cinematography or fresh angle on the modern war experience. I’m going to remember a frustratingly one dimensional protagonist, an out of focus narrative, and too many key moments lacking realism in a film that's strongest when grounded in reality.

The Hurt Locker follows a three man bomb squad operating during the Iraq War. Jeremy Renner plays William James, the “new guy” on the team and the one who gets to put his hands on the dreaded IEDs that litter the streets of Iraq. I really enjoyed seeing the war through the eyes of a bomb technician. It wasn’t that this fresh perspective shed new insight on the war (the Iraq War still sucks here) but more that it provided a new vehicle to show us how the war is terrible and how it puts an awful mental and physical strain on the men and women who participate in it. Every soldier has a role in the field, some more exciting than others, and some more suspenseful than others. You might think that bomb squad technician gives you a healthy combination of the two, but I found that it was heavy on suspense, leaving the film searching for excitement in other ways.

In the beginning of the movie somebody other than Jeremy Renner is wearing the protective bomb suit, and seeing that Renner is nowhere to be found everyone knows that the film is going to start with a bang. You know exactly what’s coming, yet Bigelow and company manage to create one of the most suspenseful scenes I’ve seen in recent memory. The very nature of a bomb is suspenseful. They’re relatively small inanimate objects, but in the blink of an eye they can literally change the face of the world around them. You know what will happen, but you ask yourself when and how will it come to be. It’s equally impressive in later scenes when the suspense is maintained in moments where you know the bomb won’t detonate. If the bomb that can take out a city block goes off in front of William James, movie over, but we never lose that fear. I personally think it would have been excellent to have a dream sequence where the entire team gets annihilated. It’s a curveball nobody would have seen coming.


In order to keep its excitement on par with its suspense, The Hurt Locker abandons what it does best and floats off into the realm of unrealistic and illogical action scenes. One sequence has James sneaking away from the safety of his base to track down answers in the middle of Iraq, completely alone and armed only with a pistol. On another occasion the three man bomb squad decides to turn into an assault force and go hunt down terrorists in the middle of the night and without back up. All of this happens on a hunch, and why even bother with the other 100,000 soldiers that are there to help you get the job done? Moments like this find the film stretching for the sort of Hollywood action that betrays the nature of the film.

I’d be curious to see what real soldiers think of William James. He’s a rebel, a man who needs the adrenaline from having a bomb in his face much more than he needs authority. William James doesn’t care about his life and he continuously demonstrates that he doesn’t care about the lives of those surrounding him. In one scene his teammates toil with the idea of killing him and having it look like an accident. It’s the most realistic scene in my mind, because all I could think about is how terrible a soldier James is. But that’s his character and some would say that the film nailed that. Sure, but how are we supposed to care about this guy? I found that I cared about his teammates much more, and any tension I was feeling was out of concern for their safety and not James’. It’s possible that I might accept someone like James for a protagonist, but he has to be well developed and we have to understand him. The film’s lack of an antagonist makes it episodic and we often lose the sense of building action. This all makes deep characters that much more important, but the film gives you no depth and no way to understand James. In one of the scenes James’ teammate openly asks him why he was wired the way he was. Why does he take so many risks? Why is he not afraid? My ears perked up at the prospect of understanding this guy, but all he does is shrug and say something along the lines of “I don’t know, I just don’t think about it.” Great, thanks Mark Boal.

I’d say the film is a good presentation of the Iraq War. It's consistent with the theory that it sucks big time over there. Soldiers plod along, mission after mission, often not knowing who the enemy is, never truly knowing how to win. That’s exactly how The Hurt Locker felt, chapter after chapter of men struggling to survive and stay sane, but never really working towards anything. If a clear, traditional narrative isn’t that important to you, The Hurt Locker will be far more tolerable. Last I checked though, everyone needs well developed, likeable characters. I’m still trying to understand how the film managed to satisfy so many viewers (or movie critics at least) in that regard.

MSPaint Movie Review: Public Enemies

JOHN DILLINGER WAS SO SMOOTH

BELIEVE IT!





MICHAEL MANN IS THE MAN!

UP: A Surprisingly Realistic Fantasy

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Let’s throw this out first: I really enjoyed Up. I went in the theater not really knowing what the film is going to be about, trusting that Pixar will not disappoint. It didn’t. But I was a bit weirded out.

Traditionally, cartoons and anime are geared toward kids. With the rise of adult-friendly Pixar films, the plot has become better, the writing smarter. However, the themes are still the all-age relatable ones: find true love, be accepted for yourself, struggle and triumph against odds. Both kids and adults can connect with them. Which is why Up was so surprising. Its theme is “how to move on after a spouse has past away”, or simply “how to let go of the past.”

The opening to Up was beautiful: quickly setting up young Carl and Ellie’s meeting and their shared dream of going to the mysterious Paradise Fall, followed by a touching montage of the decades they spent together, ending with the death of Ellie. This was especially effective since if the film simply started with the 78 years old Carl, the audience will laugh and enjoy watching a grumpy old man who talks to his house, but not relate to him. By starting from a point we can understand-- youthful fantasy for adventure, finding your true love— and taking the audience by the hand, leading us through the big chapters of Carl’s life, making sure we relate to his decisions every step of the way, we reach the end of the montage still connected to Carl at his old age. While feeling tearful for Carl’s lost, there was something eerie about the intro. In the back of my head, I could not help but feel the film was pointing out something no one wants to think about: This will eventually happen to you.

Carl didn’t do anything wrong: he got the girl, he didn’t really have any character flaw in his adult life, he loved and cherished his wife while she was alive, there was no foul-play in Ellie’s death. But in the end, enviably, Ellie died. This seemed wrong. Villains should have murdered her, turning Carl into a vigilante. Young Ellie should have snubbed the shy Young Carl or simply never knew he was alive. Their parents should have been against the marriage. Ellie should have been a mermaid (or Carl could be).

The second thing that’s all wrong is in a typical “let go of the past and move on to better/newer things” movie, the audience want the protagonist to move on throughout the film. We see before the protagonist does that the new girl/mom/school/etc is better. The new girl/mom/school/etc also welcomes and wants the protagonist to move on. Not so in Up. We love Ellie and the house they built together as much as Carl does. It’s painful to see the mail box he and Ellie painted together be bashed. When Ellie’s photo falls off the wall, we really really want Carl to catch it. Even when the house literally becomes a burden, we’re still behind Carl. We’re not that far ahead of Carl, but instead journeys with him in seeing how the past is stopping him from making the right decisions.

In a certain way, Pixar really did pick a theme that’ll apply to more of us than the usual anime subjects would. After all, most of us don’t need to battle against enormous odds, have friends that accept us, and probably go through life never actually talking to that attractive guy/girl (or do, and it was kind of anticlimactic). Being left behind during old age on the other hand, it something that has a good chance of happening. But because of this, Up doesn't just have a happy ending: it’s uplifting. Despite the flying house and talking dogs, Carl’s inner struggles have always been very realistic, and because of this, there is a feeling that, when this happens to the audience, they also have the ability to triumph.

The only bone I have to pick is I feel Carl could have kept something from the house. When people move on, they don’t forget about what had happened. They keep the memory without letting it hold them down. The house and all its content is Carl’s love and memories of Ellie materialized. In order for Carl to save Russell and Dug, he needed to throw all the heavy furniture out of the house. But I was extremely saddened seeing the matching chairs that symbolized all the years Carl and Ellie sat side by side together left behind. In the end, as we watch with Carl at the house drifting away and disappearing into the clouds, we come to the same sober sad conclusion as Carl: it had to go. But he could have kept a small token: the wood bird on the mantle or the framed photo of the little gap-tooth Ellie. The credits vaguely try to remedied this showing photos of Carl’s new life in the My Adventure Book the belonged to Ellie, but in the plot that would have actually gone away with the house.

That point aside, I really did enjoy the film. It has the expected goofiness and crazy villain, and the unexpected tear-jerker and uplifer. I walked away not too sure how I feel about my future, but all that said and done, Up earned my15 bucks fair and square.

Terminator Salvation - False Prophet

Salvation seems appropriate given that some fans of the Terminator franchise have been anticipating this particular kind of Terminator movie as if it were the second coming. Terminator Salvation, the action packed fourth installment to the franchise, is a bit of a false prophet in that regard. The film recovers some of the ground that many feel the franchise surrendered with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but even with a perfectly awesome John Connor and lots of big summer action, fans will find it hard to escape the feeling that the film fell well short of its potential.

Directed by McG, Terminator Salvation takes place in the post apocalyptic world that we’ve seen in flashbacks throughout the previous films over the course of the last quarter century. John Connor (Christian Bale) is the prophesied leader of the human resistance against Skynet. On the brink of a major breakthrough in the war against the machines, Connor must decide whether or not to trust his instincts when he encounters one of Skynet’s latest creations, a part machine, part living human entity. The hybrid character remembers a human life and goes by his human name, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington).

Salvation takes a duel protagonist approach with Connor and Wright, surprisingly giving both characters fairly equal screen time throughout the movie. Christian Bale has a serious approach to his role, and he truly makes you believe that most of John Connor’s life has been dedicated to the fight against the machines. His routine consists of sending radio addresses to the fragments of humankind around the world and obsessing over his mother’s recordings, searching for any bit of intelligence that will give him an edge in his fight. John Connor has spent the majority of his time in the franchise running for his life, but Bale presents us with a Connor that’s ready to stand and fight, and more than qualified to do so.



Skynet’s design of Marcus Wright is very complex, but you don’t leave the movie thinking he’s a complex character. There’s a simplicity to him that I enjoyed. Similar to Connor, he’s a bleak individual, a man of few smiles. He’s in search of redemption for actions undertaken in the life he remembers, but for him redemption doesn’t seem attainable for much of the film. He carries his emotional pain while distributing physical pain to any man or machine that gets in his way. It’s easy to watch Marcus Wright in action. He’s bad ass to the point where you kind of want to see more of his story in the pre-apocalyptic world.

What I appreciated most about John Connor and Marcus Wright was that their attitudes fit what I envisioned to be the world of Terminator Salvation. Unfortunately, the nuclear devastated world as presented by McG, was hardly what I was hoping for in this installment. There just isn’t really a sense of dread surrounding Skynet and their operations. The conflict between man and machine appears be a fair fight, a far cry from the hopeless world we saw in flashbacks where dozens of terminator infantry were annihilating humans with the support of heavy armor and aircraft. In post-apocalyptic Los Angeles Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) fights a single bungling terminator with the use of silly pulley system traps. For over twenty years our imaginations ran wild about what an impossible obstacle Skynet must be. In Salvation we get to see one of the Skynet bases and it’s defended lightly enough that a helicopter can swoop in and land right in the middle. Most of the characters look clean, trimmed, and in some cases salon styled. If you’re a fan of the previous films and love the gritty world they painted of the future, the world of Salvation was a flat out disappointment. All in all, if you don’t dread the terminators and fear the outcome of them catching up to the main characters, a Terminator movie can’t succeed. The film made the worst possible mistake they could have by having terminators that absolutely suck at terminating.

It would be hard not to blame this failure largely on the PG-13 rating, something that made all fans cringe when first discovered. The violence the terminators inflict is hardly intimate, because the rating prohibits it to be. Most of the time we see a huge explosion and surmise that several humans must have just met their end. Terminators in the previous films were a force to be reckoned with, primarily because they could get up close and personal and do things like gun down a police station, punch out somebody’s heart, or spear somebody through the mouth. That is not mindless violence. It reinforces the idea of a purely lethal force that only exists to find our protagonist and extinguish his/her life. Considering that John Connor and Kyle Reese are such high priority targets for Skynet and given the lethality of the terminators in previous films, it’s just frustrating to see terminators get their hands on the characters over and over again and fail to kill them.

After seeing Salvation I couldn’t help but think back the original Terminator and admire everything they accomplished. Michael Biehn was simply amazing as Kyle Reese. From the moment he comes scurrying into pre-apocalypse LA, we see someone who has been entirely consumed by an almost hopeless fight for survival. What fuel he has left in the tank is solely dedicated to finding and protecting Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor was equally excellent as she presented a completely overwhelmed and utterly terrified woman who is suddenly confronted with her grim destiny. Let’s not forget about Arnold, whose terminator is still the standard for what every killing machine should be. “Are you Sarah Connor?” The moment that unfortunate lady said yes, there was absolutely no escape. But had that been Salvation she would have been able to run out the backdoor with the terminator firing inaccurate shots into the ceiling.

Thematically, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris focus on what separates a human from a machine. Marcus Wright provides the perfect vehicle for exploration of this, but the film doesn’t seek to dive in too deeply to the questions it poses. Instead John Connor and Kyle Reese have thematic blurbs that do little more than reinforce the thematic conclusions the audience already had in their heads. Zombie seemed concerned because this is the screenwriting team that gave us Catwoman. Rest assured, Salvation is far from Catwoman, but you won’t be studying the script much. Most of the story’s disappointments will most likely be overlooked because something else will disappoint viewers or audiences will be distracted by a fairly quick pace and blockbuster action.

Salvation does leave things open for future John Connor adventures. There’s no doubt that they’ll stick with the PG-13 rating and cash in on Christian Bale’s fantastic box office run, but fans will cling to hopes that the fifth film will tap into the full potential of the world the first three movies established. Salvation was the skirmish in man’s fight against machines. What we want to see is the all out war.

Star Trek: Warp Speed to $300 Million and Beyond

Apparently Star Trek is a big deal. The original series of 1966 paved the way for four additional live action series, an animated series, several movies, video games, comics, books, a new language, and I’m sure there’s more. Trekkies will have to forgive me. My exposure to the Star Trek universe is limited to fragments of the various series, and one prolonged exposure to Star Trek Voyager during a nine month stint where I was stranded on my brother’s couch with nothing but Spike TV to watch. I’m a fan of science-fiction, but I never was completely sold on Star Trek, so I approached J. J. Abrams' latest film with skepticism. Could it really be as great as all these reviews claim? After seeing the movie I think most critics are being a little too rewarding, but nonetheless, Star Trek is definitely a fun addition to the summer movie season. The film moves at brisk pace with lots of exciting sci-fi action, a beautiful presentation, and the gags you’d associate with a summer blockbuster.

Star Trek presents the origin story of the original crew of the starship Enterprise. There are seven crewmembers we follow, but the film stays closest to James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto). The film moves at warp speed pretty much from the first scene, where we witness the dramatic conditions surrounding Kirk’s birth in space. The next few scenes parallelize the lives of Kirk and Spock as we see the development of a spontaneous and brash Kirk compared to the more subdued and logical entity that is Spock. It’s impossible for me to gauge how well Pine and Quinto’s characters stack up to the originals, but most of the Star Trek fans I know feel they did a good job. But from a story standpoint, Abrams’ ultimate goal is not to appease trekkies, but establish the polarity, rivalry, and eventual friendship between the two main characters. In that regard you have to acknowledge that they did a fine job, but the film ultimately serves the relationship of these two characters more than it does its story and conflict.


Eric Bana plays Nero, an alien obsessed with destroying The United Federation of Planets (this includes Earth) and seeking revenge against Spock for his failure to save his home planet. The circumstances surrounding this failure are unfortunate, but in my opinion don’t add up to match Nero’s hatred and motivation. Even if I were entirely comfortable with Nero’s desire for revenge against Spock, his desire to go on a planet destroying rampage is somewhat forceful. But hey, it’s a sci-fi movie, villains are allowed to be unreasonable. Sci-fi movie or not, a great antagonist will always feel locked to the protagonist emotionally and physically. There’s something about Nero that feels separate from James Kirk, even though Kirk was born in the wake of Nero’s destruction. The two characters weren’t even both aware of one another until the climax. For much of the movie Nero is fixated on Spock, and Kirk seems to inherit Nero as his greatest obstacle.

Star Trek is fortunate that its quick pace takes us from one action scene to the next before audiences can really get hung up on some logic problems and big coincidences in the story. Going into some of the coincidences could venture into spoiler territory, but from a screenwriting standpoint it’s the kind of stuff that every league member would have gotten called out for if we tried it in class. It’s hard to determine if screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were lazy. I have a hunch that the film has a ton of extras that didn’t make the final cut, some of which might have ironed out a few kinks. If I’m wrong then I would say that the screenwriters are guilty of writing what they needed to get from A to B, and not what the story needed.

The supporting characters aboard the Enterprise are introduced and come to their posts aboard the starship quickly. Treating it any differently would have involved slowing down the movie and cluttering it with more dialogue. To Abrams’ credit, Star Trek stuck with its desired pace over the course of a comfortable running time of just over two hours. Of the supporting characters I need to mention Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana), the character that gets the fourth most development of the seven. She’s probably the only thing more pleasing to the eye other than the great visual effects the movie has to offer. Women are underrepresented in the film, and if Uhura is an indication of what women will be like in the future, unfortunately the best description would be intelligent harlots. Uhura shows promise in the early going. She’s smart, motivated, and one of the more qualified members aboard the Enterprise. All of my respect for her as a character went out the window with the way she throws herself at Spock. It made no sense to me. It was as if suddenly Abrams had to throw a bone to the thirteen year old boys in the audience who wanted to see her rub up on somebody. Where’s a Captain Janeway when you need one?

One could look at Star Trek as a two hour introduction that sets up the adventures to come. Abrams puts his pieces in place well and manages to mask most shortcomings by whisking us quickly from joke, to great visual, to action scene. We can expect the sequels to be equally entertaining, but viewers should demand a more rewarding story that has the capacity to engage the characters more thoroughly. A menacing and ever-present antagonist would be a great step in this direction. I wish I could comment more on how the film stacks up in the minds of true Star Trek finds, but I know you guys are out there. Chime in and let me know what you thought about the movie.

True Love: Now Available with Guarantee

I went to see TiMer on Sunday night. I'm not typically a romantic comedy enthusiast, but the premise caught my eye immediately. Tribeca Film Festival's website said the line for rush tickets form an hour before the movie, so I strolled over after a nice taco dinner, 50 minutes before showtime, and was met with a daunting line. There were a good 75 people before me. Many of us went to the front to ask how many rush tickets were there (A: she didn't know, but thought there was a good chances everyone will be able to get in.) Rumor down the line was that there were about 400 seats so people were nervously optimistic. It was a pleasant spring-summer night, and most people were sharing their previous Tribeca experience cheerfully. When I got in the theater, most of the seats were taken. While I stood there staring at the full house, my boyfriend valiantly charged off to the distance (leaving me behind) and secured 2 seats on the fourth row to the side. For being so far in the front, my neck was suprisingly not soar by the end of the movie.


The film was very worth the wait. Set in an alternative LA, "TiMER" is a wrist implant that counts down to when the wearer will meet the eyes of their soul mate. While this breakthrough technology has taken the doubt and worry away from many, it has not helped Oona (Emma Caulfield), who is reaching 30 and her TiMER hasn't even started counting down (which means her soul mate is probably a bumpkin or a rebel who has not gotten a TiMER himself). While employing Leave No Rock Unturned tactic dragging every "virgin wrist" boyfriend to get a TiMER, Oona sees no point in dating someone who's already counting down, since the relationship is doomed from the start. That is, until she meets Mickey (John Patrick Amedori), a young attractive drummer who only has four months until he meets his "one". I think what makes the movie so enjoyable is that, while it brings up many interesting questions such as "would you know to know?" "what is worse, a blank timer or one that tells you you won't meet the one until you're old and withered", it never loses sight that it's a romantic comedy. The writing was funny, smooth and crisp. The side characters aren't just hanging out being talking heads either, but has their own interesting problems (my favorite is the 13-years-old brother, who reluctantly gets the implant only to see that he has merely 3 days before he meets the girl he's supposed to spend the rest of his life with.) It was easy to relate to all the characters problems and dilemmas. Tribeca described the film as "smart and delightful", and it was exactly that. My boyfriend enjoyed the movie as much as I did.

There're still 3 showings left in Tribeca!

Mon, Apr 27th 4:00pm
Thr, Apr 30th 7:45pm
Sun, May 3rd 3:30pm

Find where they're playing and watch the trailer here: http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/TiMER.html

Sugar: Another American Dream

Going to see Sugar was kind of a last minute decision. I didn't have time to read any reviews, no trailers, only the first 2 lines of the synopsis. So when the lights dimmed, I only knew it's a movie about a Dominican kid who comes to the states to play baseball and fight for the American dream. Even though I knew it was an indie film, I kind of hoping for a Hollywood ending. Anything else would just be terribly depressing. I was pleasantly surprised.

Rather than a sports movie, Sugar is more of a come-of-age movie. Miguel "Sugar" Santos left the Dominican Republic with no English, the best curve ball in his academy, and a head full of dreams. He stands at the brink of manhood-- 19 years old not old enough to drink, on one hand promising his girlfriend a Cadillac and Christmas at Yankee Stadium, on the other hand making tables and chairs by hand for his family and diligently sending money home. He never considered failing or an alternative future until he arrived at the rolling corn fields of Iowa to play in the minor leagues. There, not understanding the language or culture, he is isolated from his host family, coach, teammates, and even fans, with only 2, 3 other Latin American players who understands what he's saying. Miguel also witnesses the cut-throat baseball business, where people are removed often overnight when they don't look if they'll make it. When loneliness weigh down on him and his performance falter, Miguel begins to examine his life and goals. I found the ending much more realistic than the direction a Hollywood movie would have taken. It was kind of a downer-uplifting end, and after a day of thinking about it, it was very satisfying.

What I find most impressive is the portrayal of isolation in a foreign land. Often funny but heart felt, the struggle Miguel goes though is painfully realistic. Despite friendly welcomes from most Americans Miguel meets, it is still distressing when one can't answer a simple greeting or question. Writers/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (also responsible for Half Nelson) show that struggle on the most universal social level: ordering food, trying to talk to a girl, understanding one's coach, responding to a friendly greeting from a teammate. It doesn't matter if you're smart or funny when you can't find the vocabulary to express it. I feel the most poignant moment was after months of suffocating silence from Miguel with only a few words of response, the host family's granddaughter asks him how he received a cut on his head. Miguel tries his best to answer, but after 2 lines of broken English, gives up and says he doesn't know how to say it. She tells him it's ok, he can tell her in Spanish, and he does. There is no subtitle, and no sign that she understands him, but he is finally able speak normally, tell a simple story, and it feels like such a relief.

Sugar is not your typical feel-good movie, but when I left the theater, I was glad that it wasn't. It was more realistic, and because of that, it makes the peace Miguel finds in the end feel that much more genuine and hopeful.

Friday the 13th - Not Dull, Not Sharp

American horror’s favorite son is back yet again. In Friday the 13th, fans of the franchise will quickly recognize the grisly craft of Jason Voorhees as he uses many a sharp object to dispatch the meddling youths who wander onto the abandoned property of Camp Crystal Lake. Pretty faces meet the wrong end of an arrow, an axe, deer antlers, a screwdriver, and the signature machete. It’s a decent arsenal, and horror fans young and old will be filling the seats to see how Jason uses it, and more importantly, they’ll want to get a good scare. Unfortunately Friday the 13th is everything you would expect and doesn’t deliver enough on both counts. You can see the lazily thought out scares coming a mile away, and there won’t be any memorable kills to write home about, assuming you write home about memorable kills.

Director Marcus Nispel opens his film with what you might as well call a fun twenty minute horror short. A group of attractive young adults enter an abandoned camp ground in search of the bounty of marijuana that is rumored to grow there. I know, it took me a minute to adjust to weed featuring so heavily in a Friday the 13th movie. Stoners beware, because if you read into it the wrong way it might seem like the Office of National Drug Control Policy is pushing Jason as a consequence of marijuana use, which would be terrifying. But that’s not the case. By the end of the twenty minute intro you’ll have a fine sense of Jason’s work and understand that he’s really motivated by the commands of his crazy slain mother. Flash forward six weeks to another batch of Abercrombie & Fitch models who arrive at Crystal Lake. Jared Padalecki plays Clay Miller, a young rogue in search of his sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti), who went missing with the previous group of Crystal Lake wanderers. Clay eventually unites with a group of weekend partygoers and the rest is murderous mayhem.


If you’re a big slasher horror fan, the scares won’t do much for you. The movie has all of the standard thrills. You’ll see characters pull back curtains to find nothing there, but wait, the killer suddenly appears behind them. You’ll see someone kneel down to pick something up and rise to find the fright waiting for them. There’s nothing new here, and once I accepted that, I was hoping the characters would shine in some way, maybe even just twinkle for a moment, but this movie is not an appropriate study of character. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. If I had a nickel for every Friday th 13th movie I’d have sixty scents, but if I had a nickel for every poor decision a character has made in this franchise, I’d be rich.

It’s hard to feel bad when movie characters die because of a stupid decision they made. During the brisk 95 minute run time you’ll see characters try to escape by knowingly running to Jason’s home. You’ll see a character abandon the relative safety of the middle of the lake for the shallow water beneath a pier, after she’s seen a machete wielding Jason waiting for her on the shore. Safety in numbers seems to be common knowledge, except in horror movies. The characters run off on their own when they know there’s a killer on the move. One of the characters finds a gun, a perfect find when you have a killer after you, except he spends all of his ammunition shooting at creaks in the wall. Stupid, stupid, stupid, but it got me wondering. Could writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift truly believe their characters would act this way, or are they consciously providing us with the sort of character choices that make audiences cringe in their seats as they wait for the sure kill?

Friday the 13th is not a good movie, but there’s something effective about it. Every time I saw one of those stupid decisions being made, the audience collectively cringed and lowered in their seats, but with a smile on their faces. They were being primed for the kill situation, which I’ve determined involves 1 - The poor decision. 2 - The moment of false peril. 3 - The moment of true peril. And 4 - The kill. The whole experience felt amazingly similar to a roller coaster. On the ride, you see the big drop coming, you brace yourself as best as you can, and then the thrill hits you. Immediately after the a big drop, there’s a period of relative relaxation as you prepare for the next drop. The rhythm of Friday the 13th, and perhaps most horror movies, is similar. I think that’s why the movie will make bank and doesn’t need to be great. People are addicted to that rhythm and the formula for these movies. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t leave with a smile on my face, as did everyone else. And like a roller coaster, we passed the smiling faces of everyone waiting in line to get on the ride. You know what you’re getting into with this one. If you want the cheap thrills, a few laughs, and a good helping of nudity, Friday the 13th is for you. If you want the next great horror movie, proceed at your own risk.

Screen Alert - Donkey Punch (written by Oliver Blackburn & David Bloom)

Donkey Punch is a smart movie with an even smarter title. The moniker is outlandish enough that it sticks with you; I don't remember where I first read about the movie, but its name and premise stuck with me long enough that I was excited to see it opening here in NYC.

The title, of course, refers to a raunchy, ridiculous and ultimately fake sexual maneuver. (If you don't know what it is, ask a seventh grader to describe it to you.) The title is perfectly naughty and straight forward - you're not going to forget it.

The plot itself is simple. Three girls are on holiday when they meet three guys that are looking to party. Long story short: the guys get the girls onto the yacht they crew, get 'em out to sea, load up on drugs, and then one receives a fatal donkey punch. THIS is where the plot thickens.

The sexy-kids-end-up-with-a-dead-body is becoming a common subgenre in the horror section, but Donkey Punch manages to handle it differently. The kids react BELIEVABLY to the accidental death ("What do we do??" "Our whole lives are ahead of us!") and the tension perfectly builds through their interactions when their methods of resolving the situation are at-odds. None of the characters know each other that well, and everyone must look out for their own best interests. This was where the film excelled - in its relatively slow build to further bloodshed. When the film inevitably takes its horror turn in the later half, it's at least handled creatively. Filmseekers looking for a good thriller/suspense flick have a lot to be happy about here. Horror fans should stick around for the end - you won't be disappointed.

Blackburn's past as a music video director absolutely shines through in Donkey Punch; one of the most outstanding aspects of the film is its use of sound and music. The soundtrack is great, properly setting the tone of the scene with each piece of music. Particular standouts are the drug scenes at the beginning of the film - they're properly otherworldly and disorienting. The music pulses coldly and electronically. The soundtrack reminds me of Trainspotting's, but Donkey Punch is able to convey that messed-up feeling without resorting to New Order and ceiling-crawling babies.

I've seen a lot of critics draw comparisons between this film and Polanski's Knife In the Water - which I think is apt, and not just because they both take place on boats. They're both claustrophobic little thrillers well worth the price of admission.

**** out of *****.

Screen Alert - Just Another Love Story (written/directed by Ole Bornedal)

Jonas is out on a drive with his wife and family when his car breaks down in the middle of the road, sending the swerving car behind him into an oncoming traffic and its driver, Julia, into a coma. This is where the love story ('bizarre' doesn't even begin to describe it) begins in Just Another Love Story by Danish writer/director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch).

Just Another Love Story is anything but.

Feeling partly responsible for her accident, Jonas goes to visit her in the hospital. Forced to fib in order to see the girl, Julia's family mistakes him for the boyfriend she met abroad. Unable to find an easy out of this white lie, Jonas plays along and pretends to be the absent lover. The role-playing stops, however, when the now-blind Julia wakes up with amnesia and the two fall in love.

This is where the film absolutely excels - as an offbeat and disturbing love story. The relationship between Jonas and the handicapped Julia is oddly endearing, and you can't help but want to see the two of them come together - while at the same time you're disgusted by the way he's betraying his loving family. The characters are deep and feel very real.

The movie starts to stumble when it strays away from the titular love story; the film takes lots of twists and turns when Julia's checkered past bubbles to the surface, throwing everything from murder, diamond smuggling, and abusive boyfriends to a masked mystery man and the South Asian mafia into the mix. A lot of this (read: most of this) works well, and when it does the movie is a very cool, edgy thriller. By the end of the film, though, it starts to feel a little too twisty - the final scene in particular (hinted at in the somewhat misleading U.S. poster) feels unnecessary and tacked-on, but it's easily forgotten because everything preceding it was so solid.

While the mystery aspect didn't click with me as much as the incredibly engrossing though off-kilter romance, Just Another Love Story is a great movie that comes highly recommended.

**** out of *****.

Just Another Love Story is currently playing in Manhattan at Cinema Village.

DVD Junkie #4: Nip/Tuck

Now I just want to say, despite what may transpire in the paragraphs to follow, this show is very close to my heart in many ways. Nip/Tuck is known for great music editing, beautiful design, and some of the best special effects makeup guys in the business. But what really sets this show apart from its peers is the writing. Honestly, i don't know what to think about the writers. either they have more fun than anyone else in the business, or they've gone completely shit-eatingly bonkers. And I mean bonkers - Tom Cruise without a publicist bonkers. Gary Busey off his meds bonkers. Amy Winehouse with a Chinese finger trap bonkers.

The first positive thing that floats to mind for me with Nip/Tuck is that the promos are great. This will be the first time (of probably hundreds) that I'll laud the skills of those talented people who think up and execute promos for FX - the slickness, the richness, and above all, the specificity that goes into thos promos is fantastic. This season they've been teasing us since August with Follies style dancers in low-cut tops dancing with over-sized medical instruments, and there's even some Kanye to back it up.

What's great is that the slick promos are actually backed up by real substance - FX is the most consistent cable network on TV for excellent original programming. With their dramas, they've had very few out and out bad shows. They're like the less-extreme cousin to HBO and Showtime - and I have a theory that the conservative limits placed on them by being "just" a cable network has forced them to spend a lot more time and effort on producing a high quality product than a good number of their premium cable rivals. This is mirrored in the kind of talent they attract - their shows have garnered long-running starring and guest starring roles by Oscar winning and high-octane actors (and don't try to feed me any Timothy Hutton crap. I'm talking Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage, Forest Whitaker, and Danny DeVito here, among others. Timothy Hutton won for Ordinary People, and I had to imdb him to even know that, and now he's in a show on TNT so i think we can all agree that shit don't count). I'll be tackling many of these FX shows one at a time, but all you need to know now is that FX usually ain't nothing to fuck wit' when it comes to original programming. Nip/Tuck on the other hand, definitely is.

Nip/Tuck tells the story of two Miami plastic surgeons who are best friends and have a joint practice - one's a poon-hound playboy type, the other's a family man. As they help people with their increasingly ridiculous plastic surgery needs, the slight semblance of reality that helped the audience make it through the first season is stripped away, to expose the viewer to the true madness that lies at the heart of any writer who goes into a project without a beat sheet or a series bible.

Firstly, Nip/Tuck is trashy - it's like if the cast members of Dynasty all got medical degrees and tans, then opened shop in General Hospital - but it's trashy with such reckless abandon, with such wanton lack of regard for everyone involved - viewer and character alike - that you can't help but be at least fascinated. And the fact is, the first season sets up the characters so succinctly and beautifully that you actually care about what happens to these awful, awful people. The writers' flair for the overblown is so predictable you can see plot twists brewing from three episodes off, but you still watch, because it's that fucking fun.

ZOMGLESBIANS!!! We cast Portia De Rossi as a LESBIAN!
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

As the show has moved from one season to the next, the plot has been stretched thinner than an aging socialite's skin. The first two seasons were the only ones with any real plot to them, and honestly if you're looking for an engaging story, that's where you should stop. Because of the way the second season ends, you may be tempted to continue to the third - but trust me, it's not worth it. That way, madness lies, as it is slowly revealed that no one had any idea where they were going with any of this. After the half-hearted attempt at plot that the third season presents, the show transforms into some dadaist exquisite corpse, disjointed and without any real glue to hold the whole thing together. Seriously, it's like they have four people on the writing staff, and one of them knows current events, and the next has a medial dictionary, and the next has a wish list from the effects department, and the last one took a screenwriting workshop at the learning annex and left halfway through because they wanted to make him watch foreign films and he "doesn't go to the movies to read".

You think I'm joking, but it's true.

I realized that the writing of Nip/Tuck had been turned over to the Harry Potter slash writers that got banned from livejournal during the episode that one of the major, longtime characters has their kidney stolen, and not one person on the show bats an eye. This was during season four, so I hung on far longer than anyone really should, but still. Season Four is unusual in several ways, most notably for the fact that this is the season when things truly start flying off the handle in earnest. One of the only grounding forces in this shit-storm of crazy is an excellent cameo by Peter Dinklage, who brings a tiny modicum of respectability to the show that is quickly countered by an even more prominent cameo by Rosie O'Donnell.

And guess what? One of these two guys fucks Rosie O'Donnell
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAIIIIIINED?

After season four, everyone finally realized the show was going to die a slow, painful death if they didn't enact a major paradigm shift, which they did by moving the show's location from Miami to Los Angeles. This gave them a chance to change things fundamentally. They could have struck off into another bold direction, marking new territory and reclaiming the emotional connection they once had with their viewers. And what do they do instead? The delve into meth, build-a-bear, and have a cameo from everyone's favorite questionably famous hoodrat New York.

Despite the writing, one of the reasons I originally became interested in Nip/Tuck, and one of the truly unimpeachable parts of the show's concept and design, is their special effects make-up. Throughout their seasons, Nip/Tuck's make-up is impeccable in a way that special effects makeup usually isn't - in most shows and movies, usually once you know what to look for in effects you can spot places where the artists have slacked off - a seam here, some overzealous stippling there - but Nip/Tuck's makeup has a craftsmanship to it that is uncanny. In my five years of watching this show I can't think of any time the effects have been obviously lacking or lazy. it's pretty gruesome, honestly - there's a lot of gore in the surgeries, and little is left to the imagination, but the ridiculousness of the plot is complemented nicely by the pseudo-realistic brutality of what is actually done to bodies and faces during even the most mundane procedures. Interestingly enough, it's that realistic feel that helps take this show over the top.

I must admit, though, for all of the bullshit and ridiculousness this show has put me through, I'm still watching. Season six started this week, and once again I'm hopeful that these writers can turn it around. I mean, they've got everything going for them. The acting is excellent at it's best and only flat at its worst. The design is fantastic, and as the show has grown more unreal and stylized, the costumes and sets have reflected that. Everyone else is working together seamlessly, it's just the writing that needs to get in line and stop letting everyone down. Seriously. What the hell, people?

DVD Junkie is a weekly review of TV Series on DVD. Kosmic takes her cable dramas seriously, and actually enjoys this show a lot, because of the horrible writing.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An In-Depth Analysis of the Film by a 16-Year-Old Version of Myself

Before I was an aspiring screenwriter/snarky blogger, I was once a legitimate film critic for a daily newspaper. Sure, I was a teenager, and sure, I reviewed movies like holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but that didn't make me any less legit or any less snarky.

Because I thought it might be fun (and because I'm also a bit lazy) I've pulled out a piece that I wrote for the paper when I was 16. It's been eight long, crazy years...



'Rudolph' movie flawed, yet still a classic favorite
Written by Zombie, Age 16
Originally Published in the Tribune Chronicle

Legend has it that somewhere in medieval Europe, two small children were chopped up with a butcher knife and ground into sausage.

(Seriously, this is a Christmas story. Keep reading.)

As the legend goes, St. Nicholas arrived and was able to bring the two little sausage patties back to life, as children.

I've got one question:

How come we don't see claymation holiday specials about THAT?

Just imagine it: The two little claymation kids could easily be put through a sausage grinder. (Or, more likely, one of those little mold things that squeezes your Play-Doh into noodles.) The opportunities for gratuitous cartoon gore are endless.

While our animated Christmas specials weren't ever as violent as any given episode of "Mr. Bill," they were still SERIOUSLY MESSED UP.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" made its debut on NBC on Dec. 6, 1964.

"Rudolph" is the pinnacle of all Holiday TV specials. I may even venture to argue that it is one of the greatest movies of all time.

Just as when anything is considered perfect, there is always room to point fingers and laugh at it, "Rudolph" leaves itself open for much ridicule, mainly because of the large, glaring errors and distinct lack of logic in his plot.

Next time you watch, try to explain these:

- Carefully listen to what everyone calls the misfit elf who wants to be a dentist. They begin calling him "Herbie." About halfway through the movie, his name changes suddenly to "Hermey." Which one is it?

- Why does Yukon constantly lick his pickaxe?

- What's wrong with the misfit girl doll? She seems OK by me.

- What kind of stupid elf would build a train with square wheels? Put jelly in a squirt gun? Name his jack-in-the-box "Charlie?"

- What makes King Moonracer think Santa will help the misfit toys? Didn't Santa just help run Rudolph out of Christmas Town for being a misfit himself?

- Santa doesn't seem very concerned for Rudolph when his parents are missing. He's only concerned with whether or not he'll be able to fly his sleigh to all the good children in the world. Is that selfish, or what?

- The abominable snowmonster is completely harmless once they remove his teeth. Wait a minute . . . isn't he still 10 times their size? I don't understand why he doesn't just step on the elves, and knock down Christmas Town.

- Why does Santa give the misfit toys out to children at the end? They've already pointed out to us that no one wants them. I mean, I'd be pretty disappointed if I unwrapped my toy elephant and saw that some dummy (probably the one who dreamed of being a dentist) had painted polka-dots on it.

- If I were one of the mean elves at the end of the movie, I'd hate to have Hermey/Herbie/Whatever working as my dentist. I can just imagine this following scene:

Dentist: Alright, now open your mouth a little bit wider... Good. I can see in back now. Hey, wait a second, didn't you used to make fun of me? Well, buddy, looks like it's time for a root canal!

Elf: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Despite all the glitches that I pointed out in the movie, it teaches us a lesson that I find valuable to this day.

Each character learns to let themselves be individuals. So, whether you're a red-nosed reindeer, an elf who wants to be a dentist, a jack-in-the-box named Charlie, or a humor columnist who wears duct-tape pants, remember that very important message.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

7 Pounds out of 10

I had seen the preview for Seven Pounds several times before going to the actual movie, and what struck me about the trailer was that it didn’t spoon feed me the amount of character and story information that I’m accustomed to these days. I had mixed feelings about it. I distinctly remember being curious, but confused at the same time. Seven Pounds seemed like a movie that was going to make the viewer work to keep up with the story. That proved to be true, but its story makes viewers work just a little too hard, and the blend of curiosity and confusion lingers throughout. In the end you’ll be keeping your fingers crossed that it all adds up, and you’ll be disappointed that the film finds ways to dance away from its strongest element in the courtship of two wounded characters, for the sake of its elaborate conclusion.

Seven Pounds is directed by Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) and stars Will Smith as Ben Thomas, an IRS agent who takes it upon himself to alter the lives of seven strangers for the better. Why he embarks on this mission is a secret that Muccino and writer Grant Nieporte guard half heartedly. They feed you pieces to that particular puzzle, but you’ll have it solved well before the full revelation. The clandestine treatment of Ben’s past seems unnecessary, and unfortunately, so did most of the strangers in the film.


Rosario Dawson plays Emily Posa, a printmaker who suffers from an ailing heart. She’s the most important of the seven strangers to Ben Thomas and the most important to us. Woody Harrelson plays Ezra, a blind pianist and second of the two most worthwhile strangers. I loved Dawson, and throughout the movie I wanted to yell at Ben Thomas for not falling in love with her as quickly as I did. In these depressing times their steady courtship is what people care about, but the movie keeps jumping away to secondary characters that are small parts of Ben’s mission. On paper they may seem big, but on the screen they come off as distractions. Ben rescues an old lady from an abusive hospital, helps a Hispanic mother flee an abusive relationship, and donates bone marrow to a young child, but these saintly moments don’t hold much weight. For us to care about all of seven strangers and draw any real reward from Ben’s deeds, we need to spend more time with those characters, and to do that the movie needed to be three hours long. I don’t think Will Smith had it in him for three hours of Ben Thomas. At times, two seemed like more than he could handle.

There’s no questioning Will Smith’s ability to deliver as an actor, but this was the first role of his that I’ve seen in which he seemed stiff and perhaps a bit uncomfortable. I think a part of the problem is that there really just isn’t much of an emotional range for Ben Thomas. He spends most of his time somewhere between depressed and very depressed. His moments with Emily present opportunities where his character can really evolve, but Ben takes small steps forward and stops in the realm of the bland. Granted the character has reason to be angry and depressed, but someone like Will Smith is so gifted with his knack for drama and comedy in the sense that the man can go anywhere as an actor, so it becomes frustrating to see him stuck with Ben Thomas in a sort of character bubble.

People will go see Seven Pounds because of Will Smith, but people should go see Seven Pounds because of Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. The film is at its best when they simultaneously occupy the screen in a story about two people that need each other. When you pull away, it’s a story about more than just two people, and it’s about a man’s mission. But there will come a point in the film when most viewers will abandon Ben’s mission in favor of his underlying love story with Emily. You will hope that in the end the pay off will be as good as Muccino probably thinks it is, but when you arrive at that pay off, it will be hard to escape a feeling of underachievement. You won’t be too upset about it, because in the end you’ve watched two characters who needed each other find one another. It doesn’t matter how good or bad times are, if done right, that element will always leave viewers happy.