Infernal Affairs ( 2002 )
I have been meaning to buy Infernal Affairs for the longest time. It already had a great reputation among Hong Kong movie enthusiasts who watched it at film festivals when it's American remake, The Departed ( 2006 ), won the Academy Award for Best Picture. But whenever I looked it up on Amazon, I would find the Dragon Dynasty releases for Infernal Affairs 2 and Infernal Affairs 3, but could not find the Dragon Dynasty release for the first film. I could not figure out why I couldn't find it anywhere, and didn't want to buy the bare bones English dub only release on Miramax. The Dragon Dynasty releases of part 2 and 4 had extras including deleted scenes. But I would not be buying them unless I could get the Dragon Dynasty release of part one. Perhaps I should have done a little research. Even though the copyrights to all three Infernal Affairs films had been acquired by Harvey Weinstein, and he supposedly kept the distribution rights to the Asian films when he left Miramax to be released on Dragon Dynasty, he ceded the rights back to Miramax in trade of something else when The Departed won best picture and Infernal Affairs began to get a lot of publicity. So basically, Dragon Dynasty never released the first Infernal Affairs film, and no longer had the rights. Fortunately Miramax, who initially released the edited dubbed version on DVD, released the unedited original language version on Blu-Ray.
The kingpin of a drug gang sends his youngest gang members who don't yet have arrest records to join the police, hoping one will make it up the ranks to detective as his mole. Meanwhile, the police ask one of the recruits from the academy to drop out and join a gang and work his way up to a top lieutenant in the same drug gang. After ten years he succeeds. Meanwhile one of the gang's moles advances up as a detective on the task force trying to take down the drug gang. The mole successfully warns the gang of an impending bust, and they are able to dump the drugs in the bay before the police arrest them. The kingpen realizes he has a mole as he only told his top lieutenants the location of the shipment that day, while the task force leader also realizes that he too has a mole among his men. Both moles realize that they have to be the first to uncover the identity of the other to protect their own identity. Infernal Affairs is a bit overrated, and is not much of an action film. But it is still a very decent drama, and I can see why Martin Scorsese saw it as good material for one of his films. ( Damn, now I am going to need to buy The Departed )
The Amazing Bulk ( 2012 )
You are probably wondering why I am wasting my money by buying these horrible low budget direct-to-video superhero mocumentaries. A few years ago I made up my mind that I was going to start a superhero/comic book film collection. Definitely including the big stuff like the MCU, but also including all the minor superhero films. Excluded from this collection would be foreign films and direct-to-video animated films, but there would be a few exceptions. I knew going into this that there would be a lot of stinkers. Even sticking to the major films it was unavoidable, as I would still be getting Superman III, Howard the Duck, Batman & Robin, etc. The good news was I ended up enjoying many of the films that were suppose to be bad. Over the years I not only bought the blockbusters, but obscure superhero films you may never have heard of. Ever seen Paper Man ( 2009 )? Actually, the hero in this movie is called Captain Excellent, played by Ryan Reynolds. Actually, Captain Excellent is a figment of Jeff Daniel's imagination, just as Birdman was a figment of Michael Keaton's imagination in Birdman or ( The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance ) ( 2014 ). Both films were about men having a psychotic break which had them imagining they were talking to superheroes. Other than that, they had nothing else in common. Well, except that both costarred Emma Stone. Here is another film you may have never heard of. The murder mystery Hollywoodland ( 2006 ) with Ben Affleck playing Superman. Well, actually, Ben Affleck playing George Reeves playing Superman. The mystery, did George Reeves commit suicide or was that a cover-up for his murder?
Okay, so those films just barely count as superhero films. But my collection was going to be as complete as possible. Take, for instance, the sub-genre of normal people deciding to buy a costume and become superheroes. The most popular being the Kick-Ass movies, but also including Griff the Invisible ( 2010 ), Blank-Man ( 1994 ), Defendor ( 2009 ), Super ( 2010 ), and the film that began it all, Hero at Large ( 1980 ). And slightly attached to this sub-genre, Special ( 2006 ), where Michael Rapaport is taking an experimental drug for depression thats side effects gives him super powers. Well, actually the drug's side effects are that he begins to go crazy and imagine he has super powers, eventually believing he is a superhero and going after criminals ( or those he imagines are criminals ) with powers he didn't really have. So basically, over the years I have collected everything that could possibly be called a superhero film. ( And by the way, most of the obscure films I just mentioned are very good and well worth seeking out. Especially Super for those of you who liked the Kick-Ass films. ) So, yeah, the direct-to-video superhero mockbusters definitely count as something to add to my collection. Here's the thing. I only became aware they existed a month or two ago. I also found out that they are all either out of print, or about to go out of print. You see, there is not really any incentive for these films to remain in print beyond their initial release. So, if I don't buy what is left right now, then I can forget about buying any of them in the future. And that is bad for me, because now instead of pacing them out, which I would have done had I known they existed a couple of years ago, now I have to watch them nearly every week.
Take this week's movie. The front of the box says the following: "The Is 'The Room' Of Superhero Movies". So basically, this is being compaired to one of the worst movies ever made by the company releasing it on DVD. Lucky me.
I'll say one thing in favor of this film. At least director Lewis Schoenbrun tried to do something unusual and a little bit revolutionary. He had been asked to direct a low budget parody of Spider-man, but the project never got off the ground. However, during the pre-production of that film he got the idea of shooting the entire film with the cast standing in front of a green screen, and instead of sets or locations, using stock photos. Still wanting to do a movie using that process, he decided to do a Hulk parody. The idea was to do it as cheaply as possible by utilizing the free computer graphics sent as samples by various programing companies. One of them being a purple giant that did little more than run and then swat at something. There were also a lot of mostly cartoonish CGI backgrounds and characters, along with on line libraries that provided stock photos, stock footage and stock music. Basically the movie cost him about $14,000 to produce, with only about $600 going to the actors and the rest post-producing the CGI backgrounds, CGI characters and adding the stock music.
So what went wrong? Well, for one thing the cheap and sometimes free CGI animation and graphics he used was of low quality. Think something you would expect on a 64 bit video game. Or slightly below the quality of Veggie Tales. Second, the animated CGI characters had limited movement. But the worst problem was that the movie was suppose to be a comedy, and the script was not funny.
Lets not even call this one a movie as it is entirely shot on video. It's plot is pretty simple. Doctor Henry Howard works in his lab to develop a drug for the Army that will give men super human powers. He is in love with Hannah Darwin, the daughter of his boss General Darwin. But thegeneral refuses to allow her to marry him unless he succeeds in developing the drug. One night he thinks he has discovered the solution, but with no test rats available, he tests it on himself. Unfortunately the drug has a nasty side effect. Whenever Henry gets angry, he transforms into a purple giant. During one of his rampages as The Bulk, police detective is killed. Henry is arrested, but is soon transferred to the custody of the Army. After being experimented on, they tell him that they have a cure for his condition. But first they would like him to go to Europe so as The Bulk he can invade the heavily fortified castle of Dr. Werner von Kantlove and stop him from blowing up the moon.
In the very beginning of this "film" it showed some potential with the live actors walking around in a virtual reality world. But that is quickly pissed away as it progresses. About the best thing about The Amazing Bulk is the a on the box it comes in, which shows The Bulk destroying a city street. It is a misleading image, as the CGI Bulk has very little mobility other than running. It's "rampage" is limited to the CGI cars in it's path unconvincingly popping up into the air. While the actors are not completely terrible, they are all still short of being good. Jordan Lawson, who plays the lead Henry Howard ( or Henry "Hank" Howard in the credits, as a way to cover up that mid film the other characters begin calling him Hank for no reason, ) is suppose to portray the character as constantly in rage, but instead appears to be constantly near crying. The worst performance in the film comes from Juliette Angeli, who plays Dr. Kantlove wife Lolitta, a shrill annoying character that adds nothing to the plot. By the third act the film runs completely off the rails, with various CGI characters of all sorts showing up on screen for no apparent reason. The final confrontation between Henry and General Darwin is one of the worst endings in film history, burning off whatever good will I had for the experimental nature of the film. The problem is that director Schoenbrun is one of those persons who thinks he knows comedy, but doesn't. For instance, in the scene where Dr. Kantlove launches his moon destroying rocket, Schoenbrun utilizes free stock footage from NASA. But then he shows footage of a space craft docking with another, then reverses it, then forward again, then backwards and forwards again and again to simulate the space crafts having sex. Thinking he has hit comedy gold, we see a lot of other stock footage of space crafts docking with space stations shown forwards and backwards again and again. This all goes on for about four or five minutes. This is the level of humor in this film. The only good thing about it is that it is a bizarre enough film to be slightly interesting for most of it's running time. But the novelty wears thin, and soon you will be so pissed off at how bad this is that you will feel like turning into a hulk yourself.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1786618 times)
