The Core Dump

Resident Evil: Extinction: The world is overrun with flesh-eating zombies and the Evil Corporation is lurking in underground bunkers working on a way to exploit the zombies. And on the surface Milla Jovovich runs around helping human survivors by chopping zombies to bits.

It’s well made and has some interesting scenes, but in general there’s not much of a “there” there. Still, not too painful to watch.

Gaaaarrrr!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Spielberg does to Indiana Jones what Lucas did to Star Wars.

The movie has some nice chase sequences, but the plot is infernally dumb and the cast is phoning it in.

Sad, really.

I am Legend: Will Smith puts in a solid performance, and the CGI is well done, but apart from that it’s one of those frustrating movies that could have been great if they had taken the concept all the way instead of punking out.

Am I the only one who thinks the Darkseekers moved exactly like the robots in I, Robot?

Battlestar Galactica: Razor: It’s a bit mystifying why this was created as a film instead of being two episodes in the regular run of the show. That being said, it’s solid and provides an interesting look at the Cylons as they used to be. Getting more of the back story of the Battlestar Pegasus makes the movie a given for fans of the series.

The Kingdom: Intense thriller about a terrorist hunt in Saudi Arabia. Even dares touch on some of the, ahem, “issues” regarding the Saudis and global terrorism. Well worth watching.

Revolver: Extremely frustrating film that likes to think of itself as very, very clever indeed while it has its finger up its nose to the knuckle.

Take MTV-style editing, some very interesting camera work, add in the kind of metaphysical musings that go on in freshman dorm rooms late at night, and a plot that’s … well … infantile, and what you end up with is the kind of movie that gives you a headache.

Flags of Our Fathers: It’s really two movies: A pretty intense war movie about the events on Iwo Jima, which are rendered in suitably horrific detail, and a movie about regret centering around the war bonds tour on which some of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima are sent. The war piece is okay, the regret piece is well made but too long, and the two don’t mesh very well.

Letters from Iwo Jima: Takes the Japanese view about the invasion of Iwo Jima. Well made and of course it’s interesting to see things from the Japanese perspective. Has some interesting mirror points to Flags of Our Fathers.

The Bourne Ultimatum: For my money the best movie in the trilogy. Incredibly well-made with some of the most intense chase sequences ever filmed. The Waterloo Station scene is a marvel.

Unfortunately it leaves a lot of gaps and the backstory is never really explained, which is a bit frustrating.

If you watch the deleted scenes on the DVD, you get much more of the backstory and the plot actually makes sense. It would be nice if they could release an extended version of the movie with more of the plot baked in.

The Smashing Machine: Documentary about Mixed Martial Arts fighter Mark Kerr and his struggles with addiction to painkillers and the general life of a professional fighter. The movie also brings in other fighters and while some scenes are extremely brutal (this is full-contact fighting, after all), The Smashing Machine paints a nuanced and fairly sensitive portrait of interesting, if not always sympathetic, people. Well worth watching whether you’re into MMA or not.

Slim Susie: Small-town Sweden. A story that is a mix of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Northern Exposure with a bit of Pulp Fiction thrown in for good measure. The movie spends a bit too much time bowing to its predecessors, and suffers from an overabundance of clichés. That being said, it’s highly entertaining.

It really is something to see a small-budget movie get close to the impact of big-money productions like the aforementioned movies, and still have a distinctly small-town Swedish feeling.

Slim Susie is entertaining stuff, and if you have Netflix it’s only a few clicks away.

Grindhouse: Planet Terror: A gory and psychotic homage to the B-movies of the ’70s, Planet Terror manages to be an effective movie in its own right. It’s a technical tour de force with a gleam in its eye. On the negative side, there’s absolutely zero restraint whatsoever, so everything is completely over the top, which gets a bit tiring.

Grindhouse: Death Proof: Huh? I didn’t go to “feelm” school, and I don’t wear a black beret, so it’s possible Death Proof is doing something masterful that I’m just too dense to get.

I turned it off after an excruciating half an hour of watching a perfect replica of a horribly crappy ’70s movie. Supposedly some really cool car chase stuff happens after that, but after the torture that was the first half an hour, I really don’t care.

Stranger Than Fiction: An odd and quirky dramedy with Will Ferrell showing that he is a much more versatile actor than previously shown.

It’s far from a perfect movie, but it’s refreshing to see a director try something out of the mainstream, and it has some touching moments.

Worth seeing.

The Black Dahlia: An adaptation of James Ellroy’s incredible novel that, while not as bad as it could have been, misses the mark completely.

It’s time for Hollywood to accept the fact that Ellroy’s novels are much too densely plotted to make sense as movies.

The movie doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be—is it noir, is it a period piece, is it a thriller, is it a whodunit? Apparently Brian De Palma doesn’t know, and neither will you.

Buy the novel instead.

Blades of Glory: When it comes to Will Ferrell vehicles, you expect a thin premise stretched as far as it will go and lots of over-the-top antics, and that’s exactly what you get with Blades of Glory. The problem is that the premise is so thin it can’t be measured without lasers and the antics are stale and as hung-over as Ferrell’s character.

Plus, it’s not like figure skating needs to be spoofed.

Watch Anchorman again instead.

Hot Fuzz: I stopped watching about 45 minutes in when nothing had happened. Perhaps it got better after that. Who knows.

Zero Kelvin: Norwegian movie about trappers in Greenland. It’s billed as a thriller, which it is not. Zero Kelvin is a psychological drama about the relationship between three damaged men isolated in a drafty hut in Greenland for a year. Stellan Skarsgård turns in a fantastic performance as a deranged trapper, and the cinematography is stunning, but it’s an incredibly bleak movie, even by Scandinavian standards.

Worth watching if you’re feeling a bit too cheerful.

March of the Penguins: Whew, talk about a rough ecological niche. Watching the struggle the emperor penguins go through in order to breed is heart wrenching. Gorgeously filmed and with a narration that drips pathos, you get caught up in rooting for these stupid birds to overcome their obstacles.

Bonus for the way the filmmakers turned the leopard seal into an avatar of Evil.

This movie must really be something to see in HD.

Pathfinder: Evil vikings wreak havoc on native Americans. Lots of hack-and-slash to very little purpose.

Pathfinder is one of those frustrating movies that could have been good, but is marred by a complete lack of humor. If it hadn’t taken itself so seriously it could have been a lot of fun.

Plus, why all the hating on vikings? Historically speaking, they weren’t that bad.

Stalker: Overrated Russian Sci-Fi movie from 1979. Essentially, this is a way overlong and molasses-slow Christian allegory.

The concept is that an alien spacecraft or a meteor has landed, and whatever it is has special powers, so the area around the mysterious item has been cordoned off and declared the Zone.

A Stalker is a person who knows how to traverse the Zone and lead people to a room which grants anybody who visits whatever they wish.

(Why a Stalker wouldn’t wish for a better job once he’s there isn’t really touched on in the movie, but was certainly on my mind.)

So the Stalker leads two men into the Zone: a writer who has lost the ability to write and a depressed physics professor.

Can you guess that the Stalker is an angel (messenger), and the physics professor is the man who depends on science and feels a void in his life, and the writer is the man who depends on his feelings and has been let down?

Can you? Cause I sure can. And it makes the whole movie really boring. And then there’s interminable Deep Discussions that feel incredibly late-night-in-the-dorm-room.

On the plus side, the cinematography is stunningly gorgeous. It’s almost worth seeing just for that.

Pusher: Danish movie about a mid-level drug dealer in Copenhagen. Filmed with all natural light and no soundtrack, so it feels like a documentary. Great, convincing acting (including Mads Mikkelsen of Casino Royale fame in a truly creepy role), and a strong plot.

Even though the closest I’ve ever come to a drug deal was watching Cops, and certainly don’t possess any expertise in the area, the movie feels real.

These Danish dope dealers make the crew in The Sopranos look slick and erudite.

Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny: Extremely silly but with great energy. If you like Metal there are some scenes that will make you laugh out loud.

Ultimately, though, it’s way too stretched out and needs more material. Kind of like a lot of Heavy Metal concerts, when you think about it.

Super hero movies are troublesome for me. I used to love super hero comics when I was a little boy, and devoured stuff like Batman and Spiderman. But then I grew pubic hairs and realized that my reading skills were good enough that I didn’t need drawings anymore. So that was the end of the super hero comic for me.

But for some reason a lot of grown men seem to think that transferring those comics to the silver screen is a great idea. A fantastic, coke-fueled, brilliant, genius! idea.

The problem with super hero movies for me, I think, is that comics (sorry, graphic novels, snigger) and movies are such different media that what works in one simply doesn’t translate to the other. The biggest problem is the universe that you have to buy into. In a comic book, it makes total sense that a part-time crime fighter has a cave under his house where he stores his wicked-cool car and his rubber suit with nipples. Comic books have their own rules and the suspension of reality is huge. In a movie, the same setup makes at least my tiny brain go, “Really? A rubber suit with nipples? In a cave under your house? Really? That’s how you roll, huh?”

So it can be really hard to get the suspension of disbelief factor working.

At the same time it’s funny just how silly the things can be that pull you out of the universe the movie is creating. I was reminded of this the other night watching X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

The concept itself is pretty special ed: Some people are mutants and they have weird and wonderful powers. Okay. And some of them choose to hang out in a mutant haven that’s cunningly disguised as a K-12 school. All right. Why not? And some other mutants are all angry at not being allowed to get their mutant freak on and have a secret hideaway somewhere and mostly hatch cunning and involved plots that always somehow involve the other mutants. Again, okay, I guess.

And the mutants in the K-12 school call themselves the X-Men and have groovy costumes with the letter X worked in wherever possible. I’m getting a migraine now, but sure, let’s roll with that.

And the powers these mutants have! There’s the guy who can control and create magnetic fields. Okay. The guy who can turn anything into ice. Right. The woman who can look and sound like anybody. Sure. Handy, that. The guy whose eyes shoot raw energy unless he wears sunglasses. Ehm. Okey-dokey. The guy who can control anybody’s mind. Right on. The woman who can control the weather. Still not sure why her irises turn white when she does that, but whatever. Right on with the weather. I could sure use some rain here.

And it goes on and on. Including the poor slob whose mutant power is to have hedgehog spines coming out of his head. Man, wouldn’t that just piss you off at the mutant meetings? Everybody else is like, “I shoot fire,” “I am unstoppable,” “I levitate thing with my mind.” And you have to go, “I can make these spines come out. Pretty fierce, huh? Guys? Come on, you promised not to laugh.”

But back to the movie. All these different kinds of mutants have been introduced, and I’m still in the suspension of disbelief zone and grooving on the story, and then they introduce this mutant whose power is to have little pieces of wood come out of his arms that he can throw. And the little voice in my head goes, What about conservation of mass? He’s extruding those things and he’s not getting smaller. Shouldn’t he have to eat a ton to replace all the body mass generating those things cost?

And that movie ends right there for me.

Like for my brain that just tilted the lever and the movie has now become absurd.

Silly brain.

Soundtrack: “Alien Sex Fiend” by Garbage

A brief dump of movies I’ve seen recently:

Day Watch: The sequel to Night Watch, the excellent Russian movie about Others who live among us and do nefarious things. Day Watch is really more of the second part of Night Watch than a sequel.

As a bonus, after Day Watch you can go back and watch Night Watch again, and it will actually make sense. Trust me on this.

Day Watch takes the best parts of Night Watch, streamlines the plot and adds even more impressive visual effects.

This is easily the most visually creative movie in years. Very highly recommended.

Note though, that unless you’ve seen Night Watch nothing will make sense.

It’s showing on very few screens in the States, so unless you live in a metropolitan area you’re probably going to have to wait for the DVD release. The only reason I can see for the limited release is—cover your eyes, children!—the dreaded use of subtitles. Heaven forfend people in the States are forced to read at the same time as they munch popcorn.

It’s a really impressive movie. Don’t miss it, whether you can see it on the big screen or will be forced to wait for the DVD release.

Smokin’ Aces: This movie is what you get when you take Snatch and run it through the Hollywood stupidifier. Well made and with interesting visuals, but the plot is dumber than a movie star’s genitalia and the quote-unquote denouement makes the rest of the movie seem like it was written by Dostoevsky.

Smokin’ Aces does work as a popcorn movie and has good energy, but is one of those frustrating experiences where obviously somebody had some good—if derivative—ideas and was neutered in the process.

Children of Men: Didn’t make it all the way through. Well made and with an interesting concept, but boy howdy is it depressing. Yes, to my surprise, somebody finally made a movie too dreary even for me.

Dooooooooooooom.

Kudos.

Paycheck: Continues the proud Hollywood tradition of raping Philip K. Dick’s corpse. Casting Ben Affleck in a starring role is of course a warning that a movie will be dreck, but low as my expectations were, Paycheck managed to be so bad I couldn’t get through it.

John Woo completely phoned in the direction, and the plot isn’t so much full of holes as it’s something a stoned 15-year-old comes up with before drifting off to sleep to the soothing sounds of Pink Floyd.

For instance, and the moment when I had to stop the movie because what it was doing to my blood pressure can’t be healthy: Our hero has had his memory wiped by villainous greedy people after he finds out something horrible that will happen in the future and has mailed clues to his future self. Cunning clues. But—and this is important—only clues the Evil Security Forces of the company he works for will let him send out. Innocuous things. Such as—here we go—an access card for the most secure area on the company campus.

Yeah. Click.

And BTW, the whole memory-wipe thing is all that remains of Philip K. Dick in the whole story. As I recall, Dick wasn’t that big on writing motorcycle chase scenes with product placements. But then, memory isn’t to be trusted, is it?

Beerfest: For those times when Will Ferrell is just too highbrow. Beerfest is rude and crude, with lots of drinking and gratuitous boobies. It’s also really funny in parts. If you liked Eurotrip, you’ll like Beerfest. If you’re offended by binge drinking and potty humor, eh, not so much.

It’s actually worth watching just for the submarine scene with Jürgen Prochnow.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

The sound and the fury
Signifying nothing

Dead Man’s Chest is well made, with spectacular special effects and Johnny Depp obviously having oodles of fun as Captain Jack, but it goes nowhere with a plot that makes not a lick of sense. I found myself incredibly bored about halfway through.

It could have been good, but it has that annoying schizophrenic feel of most high-budget movies that desperately want to go dark and edgy but are afraid to lose their McDonald’s tie-ins.

Casino Royale

A desperately-needed reboot of the Bond franchise. Daniel Craig does an excellent job as a darker, grimmer Bond, and the movie is loaded with eye-wink references to the glory days of Sean Connery.

Does get a bit talky and slow toward the end, but all in all a rousing good ride. One of a very select few movies in recent years I watched twice.

Craig definitely gives Connery a run for his money as the ultimate Bond. Hopefully we’ll see more movies of this caliber in the series.

Battle Royale

The Netflix recommendation engine thought I’d enjoy this. It was horribly wrong.

Basically, Battle Royale is a non-stop parade of pointless sadistic mayhem. It may very well be that if you are intimate with Japanese culture all sorts of wonderful nuances and references appear. I wouldn’t know. And after losing an hour and a half to this dreck, I really don’t want to find out.

Apparently they made a sequel, so somebody must have liked it. I hope I never meet those people.

Yesterday I went to see 300. Paid my money down and went in to see the show. After that, I’m done with movie theaters. Not movies. Movie theaters.

What broke the camel’s back?

Was it spending good money and then being forced to sit through 15 minutes of trailers for movies I have no intention whatsoever of ever seeing? No.

Was it the overpriced popcorn and soda? No.

Was it having ushers walk around during the movie to make sure I wasn’t bootlegging? No.

It was you, my fellow breeders.

The couple who decided that bringing an infant to a movie would be a great idea. Who could possibly be disturbed by your infant’s crying? Turns out, everybody, actually.

The crying infant some self-absorbed ass decided to bring to the movie was a bit of a distraction from the whole, you know, actually watching-the-movie-I-paid-good-money-for bit, but it’s not the worst.

See, I know there are a lot of idiots out there breeding. People who can’t hang on to a driver’s license are popping out kids and being allowed to keep them. These people apparently have not managed to comprehend this whole movie rating system thing we have going on in the States. The one where a movie being rated R means that kids should absolutely not be allowed to see it. There will be content in that movie that a child simply is not ready for.

As a bonus, if you go see an R-rated movie at a movie theater, guess what kind of movies you get trailers for? Ah, yes, you there in the back of the class? That’s right! Other R-rated movies! And what kind of movies usually end up with R-ratings? Oh, don’t all answer at once… Horror movies! That’s right. So apart from the content of a movie like 300 where, for the love of all that is holy, the title is spelled out in blood spatters, if you were to take your underage child to see it, he or she would also have to sit through about 15 minutes of crank-bump-stab-Satan previews.

Awesome idea.

As a parent myself, I’m just flabbergasted at the idiots that bring their three-year-olds to fare like Saving Private Ryan or Starship Troopers or 300. What, if anything, are you thinking?

Perhaps you should suck it up about being a parent and realize that you won’t be able to watch a lot of movies until they come out on DVD and you can rent them when Junior is asleep? And that yes, sometimes it’s hard to have an infant, and it would be great to get out of the house, but that unless you throw down for a baby sitter or go one at a time to the movies, perhaps your one-month-old should not be allowed to turn $7 into shit for a whole theater full of people?

So if you’re one of those people, I truly hope the CPA comes for you sooner rather than later.

Oh, and enjoy your child’s adolescence. Payback’s going to be a bitch. And you deserve every moment.

Until then, I’m done with having you ruin my movie watching experience. I’ll rather watch the thing six months later on a laptop wearing head phones if it’ll allow me to forget about your miserable existence.

Soundtrack: “Honey White” by Morphine

300 is based on a graphic novel, which is both its strength and weakness. Strength, in that the movie is stuffed full of gorgeous visuals, and weakness in that the plot is, ahem, cartoonish. The characters never become anything but stereotypes, which is a real shame as there is a lot of psychological gold to quarry from Spartan society and its more outré ideas.

The movie must also break some sort of record when it comes to slow-motion ultra-violence. Not even Tarantino has been able to concoct so much stylized blood splatter.

All in all, 300 is popcorn. Visually arresting and sometimes gripping, but with the depth of the face of Xerxes on a traitor’s coin.

It’s also kind of oddly gay feeling†. Oddly, since none of the Spartans does anything remotely non-heterosexual. After a while it struck me that the lingering gayness comes from not their fabulously sculpted abs of fury, but their hairlessness. None of the Spartans have chest hair. Which is a bit odd since the Greek in general are not known for lacking body hair. The cast obviously worked very hard on their physiques, so perhaps it natural for them to want show off their abs and pecs without distracting hair. Who knows?

Either way, if you’re in the mood for something very large and loud, 300 certainly delivers.

†Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Related Core Dump Reviews:

Gates of Fire

A brief round-up of movies that have recently flickered into my brain:

The Departed: Well made, well scripted, and well acted. Also well depressing.

Note to self: Don’t go to Boston.

The Great Raid: Based on the powerful book Ghost Soldiers. Does a pretty good job of capturing the brutality of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March, although the characterizations and motivations of the people involved could have been much more fleshed out.

The flatness of the characters make it a forgettable movie, which is too bad as the story—and the real people it depicts—deserve much more.

Bastards of the Party: In this HBO Special a gang member explores the roots and causes of black gang violence in Los Angeles. The answers he finds may (or may not) surprise you. Hint: Racism, drugs, the FBI, and globalization.

It’s a touching movie, although the pace is a bit languid, and let’s face it: it’s difficult to work up much empathy for rabid thugs with Uzis. That whole “throw-a-gang-sign-as-soon-as-you-see-a-camera” thing gets real old real fast.

A Scanner Darkly: Psychotic druggies living in a paranoid surveillance state.

Made my skin crawl.

A Scanner Darkly is arguably the Philip K. Dick movie adaptation most true to the feel of his work. This means it’s creepy, paranoid, and hopeless.

Enjoy your popcorn.

Sexy Beast: Ben Kingsley once played Gandhi. In Sexy Beast he plays the most scary-psychotic thug you ever saw in your life.

Well worth watching just to be happy that’s not your life, and for the tour de force performance Ben Kingsley puts in. I will fear him forever.

Miami Vice: Grittier than the TV series (but then what isn’t?). Gorgeous photo work and a plot that keeps your interest.

Colin Farell mostly looks hung over.

Layer Cake: Creepy British gangsters wreak havoc and misery on everything they touch.

Well conceived and executed, a lot like Snatch, but with less frenetic energy and almost completely devoid of humor, instead possessing extra helpings of that uniquely British sense of futility.

Note to self: Avoid upsetting Serbian gangsters.