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Compound
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« Reply #6361 on: November 02, 2009, 08:47:16 PM » |
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Hey, it's movie mega dump time!
The Objective
A film from the Blair Witch guy. A CIA operative takes a squad of soldiers deep into Afghanistan to look for a weapon of unimaginable power.
This is a film that I should have liked, but I didn't. All the parts are fine. The plot's not bad. The cinematography is most definitely not Blair Witchish. The acting isn't bad. Kinda. But where the film falls apart for me is with the soldiers. The CIA man is leading them on a big mysterious mission where he isn't letting them in on the whole story. So far, fine. But how do the soldiers react? Like the professionals that they are? Nope. They start whining like they just wandered in off the set of The Hills. Ugh. That just killed most of my enjoyment of the film. If one of them whines, fine. I can accept that. But all of them doing it, well, that's just silly. Plus the special forces guys manage to keep making exactly the wrong decisions in the last half of the movie. I'm not fond of "People act unprofessional as the script requires them to do so" either. Anyway, good concept. Bad execution.
Knights of Bloodsteel
An evil sorcerer threatens the world and an ancient prophecy says that only a ragtag group of heroes can stop him. Oh, and there's a magic rock involved too. And Christopher Lloyd collects a paycheck.
A miniseries from... somewhere. This isn't bad. The writing's well done. The acting isn't bad. The setting is actually fairly imaginative, even tossing a sympathetic orc (or whatever they're called in this one.) It's fairly watchable and I kinda enjoyed it.
Redline
A soldier returns from Iraq! His uncle's a compulsive high stakes gambler! She's the daughter of one of them there NASCAR racers who died in a horrible car crash! He's a comedic actor playing a rap mogul who accidentally wrecks a $100,000 car! All this and more in Redline!
Anyway, the plot centers around a bunch of bored billionaires who bet on car races with high powered cars. Personally, it'd probably be more of a challenge to have the people racing in VW Beetles from the 60s. Or maybe go-carts. Anyway, Eddie Griffith arranges things so that racer girl races for him. Insane uncle arranges for war vet's brother to race for him and billionaire film mogul hires Susan Boyle, who races as well as she sings. I think. Brother dies, war vet vows revenge, insane uncle kidnaps racer girl and has a subplot about using racing winning to cover up losses from a counterfeiting ring. Stuff happens. It all ends in a car race. It's watchable, but not particularly memorable. And it never really rises above the "Eh. It's okay" level of film making.
Chopping Mall
A mall introduces a robotic security force to protect the mall. Within a day of release, they go nuts and start killing the 8 youths who are in the mall after hours.
Ugh. Completely nonsensical. The robots, who bizarrely have high powered laser beams that the Martians in War of the Worlds would have liked, immediately go bezerk and start killing after a lightning strike. You would have thought that beta testing would have caught that. Anyway, the victims are forgettable, except for the last female (who was the younger sister in Night of the Comet) and her nerdy romantic interest. (The preppy guy from Head of the Class.) Anyway, it's lame. Skip it.
Not Quite Hollywood
A documentary about the Australian film industry of the 1960s-80s, specifically the sexploitaion, horror, martial arts and action film. Oh, and stuff with cars.
This is a fairly interesting look at the Aussie genre films of the pre-VHS era, featuring the directors and stars of the films, plus a handful of Americans who were either in the films (Stacey Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis) or, well, you know. (Quentin Tarantino, who shows off that his video store days are good for something.) It's a pretty good look at those films, but the film spends a bit too much time on the early sex comedy films from the era. (Sorry but when your film makes Porky's seem deep and nuanced, and you then spend another 5 minutes on the sequels... ugh. Plus I have no problem with "Hey, we're showing nudity to sell tickets" but "this nudity is artistic." Yeah. In some cases maybe. In your case, not a chance.) But after that it picks up and we get movies about killer razorbacks and bands of outlaws who ride across the Outback in supercharged muscle cars. Much better.
Anyway, it's a pretty good watch especially if you have questionable taste in movies. As I do.
And because of this film, I had the urge to watch:
Mad Max
In a world teetering on the utter collapse of society, highway cop Max Rockatansky's (Played by 12 year old Mel Gibson) world shatters after a road gang targets his family for destruction, causing Max to wage a war of his own against the gang.
Like him or not, Tarentino knows his cult movies. And when he purrs about the Aussies knowing how to do something special with car chases, this film is example #1. By all accounts, this film shouldn't work. It has a formula plot (cop angers crooks, they hurt his family, he gets revenge), acting where the phrase "over the top" is a strong understatement, and music that ranges from okay to "John Carpenter tooling around on his synthesizer sounds better." And the music isn't subtle at all, often being way too loud for the scene. But nonetheless, the film works and it works damn well. Frankly, if it got released today, people would see and love this film. (And one of the great thing about practical effects is that the car chases are still stunning, even 30 years after the film was made.) Anyway, it's highly watchable.
Them!
A-bombs trigger an outbreak of giant ants. Giant ants!
A 50s monster film, performed rather straight. Fairly nicely written, even with the whole "Radiation makes things giant. Giant!" For comparison's sake, I found it to be better written than The Beginning of the End, which is fairly watchable even without riffing.
Clambake
Elvis Presley is the heir to an oil fortune! This other guy is a water skiing instructor. They fight crime! Sorry, wrong film. In this one they switch places. Shelly Fabares plays a gold digg..., er, a girl looking for a rich husband who rejects the "poor" Elvis. And Bill Bixby plays a royal douche. And at some point, a bunch of go-go girls help to build a speedboat.
It's an Elvis film. they follow a fairly predictable formula, and this one hits them all, with a dash of The Prince and the Pauper. It's fluff, but its harmless and watchable fluff. It's like a bugle. It's light and airy and in the end, you kinda lose track of whatever metaphor that you were originally aiming for. Anyway, not memorable, but a bit enjoyable.
The Girlfriend Experience
A high priced call girl meets with a number of clients. And talks. And talks. And talks. in a film from Stephen Soderbergh.
Absolutely horrible. 90 minutes of random conversations between people whom you don't know and don't care about in any way shape or form. And it's mostly unscripted, so it's not even entertaining random conversations. I very rarely do this, but I started fast forwarding through the damn conversations to see if anything ever happens. It didn't. Skip it.
Crank 2: High Voltage
After falling several thousand feet from a helicopter, Chev Chelios is kept alive by an organ running ring who steal his heart and implant it in an Asian crime lord. He then spends the rest of the film trying to reclaim his stolen heart, recharging his artificial heart through various forms of electrical shocks and avoiding a psycho Asian chick. (The last bit describes about 2 semesters of college for me.)
Anyway, it's the same basic plot as the first Crank film, but with electricity replacing adrenaline. I'll give it points for bringing back almost everyone from the first film, including bit characters, but it's simply a retread of the first film, running at about 80% of the quality of the first film. Not bad, but not great.
Zero Hour!
After a haunting experience in the war, Lt. Ted Stryker's wife and kid desert him. In desperation, he boards a plane to convince his wife to stay, only to have the crew struck down by food poisoning, leaving Ted the only person onboard to have a chance of landing the plane...
Hmm. that plot sounds familiar, doesn't it? Well, it should. They used the plot as the basis for that little 1980 film. In fact, many of the lines are almost identical in both films. It's pretty unnerving to hear Captain Oveur ask little Timmy (who in this film is Stryker's kid) some of his more famous lines. (Not the Gladiator movie line though.) And it takes place entirely in Canada too, which makes it ever creepier. Still, well worth watching, if a bit surreal to see stuff played straight that you've always seen parodied. A bit like watching a serious version of Blazing Saddles.
Out Cold
A rich Texas oil baron buys up a sleepy Alaskan ski town and modernizes it, aggravating the town's wacky inhabitants. And the manager of the local bar rediscovers an old flame. And snowboarding gets involved.
I'm not quite sure why I watch snowboarding movies. I don't participate in the sport. I don't really like being up on a mountain. But still, I watch these things all of the time. I think it might be something in the rich and pure mountain spring water here in Colorado. Anyway, every once in a while, these things are better than expected, all you'll see why in a second. The cast is pretty good. (Jason "Mallrats" London, Zack Gallifreyinoplis, Victoria "I was in Playboy, Baseketball and The Amazing race" Silvestdt and Lee Majors as the slimeball developer.) The writing's pretty good as are the jokes. And the plot, aside from the standard "sports film" plot in rather unique. Mostly because they borrowed a bit of the plot from another film. Here, let's see if you can guess which one. Jason London plays Rick Rambis who runs the local bar and a while back he met a girl while in Europe who he never forgot. A rival bar owner keeps offering to take over the bar, but suddenly the love of his life reappears. But she has a secret that she kept from Rick in their first meeting... Yes, it's Casablanca. Minus the snowboarding Nazis. (Who, come to think of it, would have been kinda neat.) But improbably it works and is rather entertaining. Mildly recommended.
Frostbite
An up and coming snowboarder attends an elite snowboarding academy in an attempt to become a leet snowboarder. But he ends up involved with the townies and together they must stop a diabolical plan of some sort. Oh, and Jackie Chambers and Traci Lords also appear.
And then there's these... this is a completely by the book sports movie. Talented rookie, pompous talented folks, rookie gets caught up with underdogs, they compete, rookie wins. Hooray. There's not a lot to recommend about this film. It's a comedy, but the jokes are pretty lame. Traci Lords is in it. And fully clothed, letting her act. (Yes, I saw the Tommyknockers. This isn't a Stephen King piece.) In short, there's nothing t recommend this, except for maybe the scenes of snowboarders wiping out at the end of the film.
Stealth
Three hotshot Navy pilots get teamed up with an experimental war plane run by an artificial intelligence. And something goes horribly wrong.
Yeah, yeah. It's the Frankenstein story. With a plane. And a bit of Short Circuit. I will note that the latter third of the movie goes in an unexpected direction, which was nice. But it's still a pretty ho-hum movie. It's watchable but your movie going experience won't be significantly diminished if you never see it.
Ghost in a Teeny Bikini
Fred Olsen ray directs this film about an heiress who need to spend a night in a haunted castle to win her dead uncle's fortune.
Yeah, remember earlier when I talked about "Nudity as artistc"? This is from the other camp, the "This is an excuse to see women in a state of undress. Guys too, but that doesn't bring in the big money." Anyway, the plot's paper thin, existing mostly as an excuse for the sex scenes. The main actress is cute. The other actresses are attractive. the guys look better than most male adult film actors. But none of them can act, and the places in the film where a plot tries to enter the picture are just painful. Avoid it.
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