3000 MILES TO GRACELAND: REVIEW

F L A S H B A C K R E V I E W

Sometimes, we are forced to do unpleasant things in life. Unclogging a toilet, for example. Holding someone's head when they've had too much to drink. Recovering the "black box" from a crashed 747 while the wreckage is still on fire.

Seeing a Kevin Costner movie.

Although he may have been a huge star once, his recent string of movies (13 Days aside) have become progressively more painful to watch: Waterworld. The Postman. Message in a Bottle. For Love of the Game.

But there is nothing than can possibly prepare you for 3000 Miles to Graceland. No warning, no remark, no description can do this movie justice. It's hard to think of a recent movie that was so unbalanced in tone, so ineptly made, so tasteless, or so horribly acted.

This is not an exaggeration. We're talking below Get Carter.

Consider this: if one were to make a movie about Elvis impersonators robbing a casino in Las Vegas, what would be a good opening sequence? Shots of Elvis dancing and singing? Shots of Las Vegas with appropriate music? Fast cars driving in the desert? The gang getting their gear ready? Nope. If you're making 3000 Miles to Graceland, you show a badly animated clip of two computerized scorpions fighting to death while techno music blares in the background.

Consider again: if the plot of this movie consists of the criminals robbing a casino, wouldn't it make sense to include a scene explaining the scheme and how everyone got there? No such luck, as all of the Las Vegas heist takes place - with a minimum amount of dialogue - during the first 20 minutes. Then the real "fun" begins. Costner's character kills everyone except Kurt Russell and the film goes from absurd Las Vegas action movie to absurd Idaho chase movie. Add in a cute kid, Courtney Cox as a love interest, and the revelation that - brace yourself here - Kevin Costner is actually Elvis's love child, and you've got a movie!

We're talking worse than Battlefield Earth.

Possibly the worst part of this movie is its completely inconsistent tone. Never mind that the plot simply doesn't makes sense; this movie can't even decide what it's trying to be. When the heist at the casino goes wrong, the movie suddenly becomes The Matrix, with techno, guns blazing in slow motion, and bodies piling up everywhere. Then, when one of the gang is killed, the music suddenly turns into something out of Miami Vice and the cast members scream and moan as if a great wrong has been done. Seconds later, the body is thrown out of a helicopter, Con Air style.

This rapid change in tone makes the violent scenes more disturbing and the "emotional" scenes even sillier. Characters very close and unified in one scene shoot each other in the next. Cox's character is a sex object in one scene, a "hooker with a heart of gold" in the next, then a backstabber, then a hostage, all only to become a protective mother at the end.

Costner's character is the worst of all. Sometimes in control, sometimes demented, sometimes a ruthless killer, sometimes having a sense of honor - but always awful - he never finds a consistent tone or accent. He may have had some good roles once, but 3000 Miles to Graceland only goes to show that those days are over.

RATING: Zero Stars (out of 5)

P.S. This is the first Tufts Daily review that got me known as "that guy who wrote that 3000 Miles to Graceland review!" Also, in case you thought I was making up the scorpions

Scorpion MADNESS

DISTRICT 9: REVIEW

Some movies come too soon or too late for their time. Others capture the moment. DISTRICT 9 is the latter.

Oh, it ain't perfect. It's two movies joined together- the first being a super intense mockumentary about the potential for awfulness in human beings; the second being a rock'em-sock'em alien blast-zone. Some will find the first too serious or dark; others will find the second half a let down compared to the issues raised in the first half. Some came for the social commentary; others for the blood spurt. And some will be mad that the movie isn't one or the other.

But this is the Summer of 2009. This is playing field where G.I. JOE, as over the top and houndingly bad as it is, plays as relief up against the bloated axis of celluloid evil known as WOLVERINE, TERMINATOR and TRANSFORMERS. Even for summer pulp, we want a hot burger, and instead we're getting cold leftovers spiced up with pop rocks (STAR TREK aside). Even Jaws had some interesting facts about sharks before they ate your face off. Where are the Iron Men of yesteryear?

This is all a long way of saying that DISTRICT 9 would be good in any year, but this year it's not only good, it's necessary. It's based on no one's TV show, comic book, toy or James Cameron. Not that any of that is fatal, it's just we haven't seen any big budget spectacle free of these qualities. And by big budget, I mean it cost 30 million dollars (!), which is roughly 1/5 the cost of WOLVERINE. To say it is better than WOLVERINE is an insult to the word 'better.'

Set in more or less the modern day, only with a 20 year rewrite of history, DISTRICT 9 has aliens land in South Africa in the 80's. Their ship is out of gas, and they're not welcome but there's no place for them to go, so they set up a refugee camp that's never got quite past the temporary stage. The Aliens are not cute or cuddly. They eat catfood like we eat McDonalds. They have hugely destructive weapons, which only they can use, but they don't have access to. They're called Prawns in the same tone and measure that people used to say "mick." Things go from awkward to dismal. The movie begins with the latest bright idea from the humans, which is to move them from District 9- the slum they currently inhabit- to District 10- a slum far away from the city. Out of sight, out of rage.

Wikus Van De Merwe (played by the unknown, fantastic Shartlo Copley) is the poor bastard they pick to lead the operation, who is narrating to an unknown camera crew, The Office style, about his job. He is a kind of chipper, low level manager type, capable of the most awful racism (well, alien-racism) (xenophobia?) (whatever) that is all the more shocking because it is so casual. I mean, he seems nice. Right up until he lights an alien nursary on fire, and cheerfully tells us that the popping sound we're hearing is eggs exploding.

Now hold on- these aliens are here to take our jobs/lives/plant eggs in our stomachs! Nope; this movie is smarter than that. The nursery looks gross, but it's only using electricity and a dead cow to propogate their young. No humans need die. They can eat us, but they'd rather not. They're basically peaceful. And when you're watching this little civil servant report the frying of an intelligent species with a smile, that's when that little voice in the back of your head starts chirping This Is WRONG...

This goes on for about an hour, as Wikus has something not-very-nice happen to him and is force to adapt. He makes a friend, an alien named "Christopher", for all the aliens have been given Christian names (in a deft move that uncomfortably reminded me of what America did to its natives). Slowly, both the audience and Wikus get to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that we have met the enemy, and it is us. As a poor budding law student, the over-reliance on getting people (aliens) to sign forms they do not understand to provide cover for unspeakable things really hit home.

All nice and legal, see?

The movie could have played it easy, by making the aliens cute or the 'bad guys' over the top general jerks. But man, are those aliens creepy. They're cousins of the Ridely Scott mold, right up until you meet an alien toddler who is chirping about going home. And most of the human antagonists are played straight, as cold but focused professionals. Not the boogeyman of Dick Cheney, but the cool focus of a Kissenger or Rumsfeld, up against superior alien technology. Only two characters ever cackle evilly, and they play as people, not types.

And then, after taking a long hard look at humanity, Wikus and Christopher get some guns and blow the hell out of everything.

I have seen many movies where someone blows the hell out of everything this summer. But not like this. The action is clear, real, viseral, fantastic and horrible. It's BLACK HAWK DOWN re-channeled through James Cameron's ALIENS. That it takes place in the heat of midday only adds to how much it hurts. Wikus makes for an oddly human protganist, a man who had nothing of a hero but plenty of a bastard in him, forced to do what it takes to survive, in ways he could not imagine. It's easy to give us a Gerald Butler and say, look, he was bad but now he is good, because he has muscles and a noble look. It is much harder to give us a wormy white collar casual racist and watch him, foothold by bloody foothold, become a better being.

Lost in much of this bloodsport are the ideas that the first half generates. There is a divide in thinking here: did the movie lose its nerve, or is the badda-boom the release we needed after so much general nastiness and hard questions? Or is this a lot of words to waste on a movie about giant lobsters who landed in South Africa?

Whether or not the decision to switch from docu-thriller to action-jackson was the correct one, there are other flaws. The movie drops and picks up the mockumentary when convenient to itself. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions and possible plot holes. It raises issues about genocide and apartheid that are more or less answered with human beings exploding. It will piss off alot of people, or make them lose their lunch. Personally, I found the use of Christopher's son to be overly manipulative. This will not be everyone's cup of tea. If you can't stand sci-fi gore, I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.

But for 30 million dollars, first time (!) full length director Neil Blomkamp has done better than any of the other big guns this summer. Star Trek was the prettiest and shiniest re-boot, and has breathed new life into a defunct series. G.I. JOE amused me. HANGOVER amused me much more. UP moved me. But only DISTRICT 9 made me think while kicking my ass.

It's not what this movie is; its what will be possible because of it's success. If studios can get this kind of return on a rather small investment ($51 million domestic, pre-DVD and international, and counting) who knows what other bright filmmakers will be given the keys and the freedom to make something this good.

Should it have done more? Maybe. Should have been smarter or less gory? Arguable. Is it "better" than CHILDREN OF MEN? Probably not, but who cares? District 9 proves you don't need stars, a lot of money, or a popular toy line from the 80's to make excellent SciFi AND enthralling summer movie bubblegum. That is enough.

RATING: * * * * * (out of 5)

P.S. I am a film and sci fi nerd, and I plead guilty to possibly being a little overexcited. But I am a smart enough movie and sci-fi nerd to know whem I'm being pandered to. And believe me when I say I walked in with high expectations, and they were more than met.

P.P.S.: There is a phrase called a "boo" movie, where things jump out of the dark and go "Boo" and lots of people in the audience, including me, go "eek." Some people will not see a boo movie, even if they might like the subject matter otherwise. Wimps rejoice, DISTRICT 9 is not a "boo" movie. It's gross, and there is some real horror, but it's not from things grabbing you in the dark.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE: REVIEW

This is one of those movies where people either see it (reviews be damned) or you have no plans to see it (because damn those fans!). A review seems pointless. But I finally got around to seeing it, in IMAX no less. Keeping in mind I've only read book 1, but have seen all 6 movies, here is my report:

1. The Plot, or the lack of. Generally, when a movie is over two hours long and costs hundreds of million of dollars and features some of the finest actors of our time in character roles, it should have a plot. This hasn't stopped lots of big budget movies from going plotless (See Fallen, Transformers: Revenge of the ) But with the Harry Potter movies, plot usually hasn't been a problem. E.g.:

Harry Potter 1: We've got to find the Sorcerer's Stone!

Harry Potter 2: We've got to find the Chamber of Secrets!

Harry Potter 3: We've got to stop Gary Oldman from creeping me out!

And so on. There were other complications, but generally the theme was clear in each film. Even the fourth one, with its incoherent plotting, had a general structure of a tournament to keep it in line.

This time, the plot is roughly:

"We've got to get Jim Broadbent to confess to what happened in his modified memory dream while trying to make out with anybody except the people we actually like as much as possible!"

Huh? Wha? Exactly. When you're confused during a Michael Bay movie, that's perfectly normal. When you have no idea what's going on in a Harry Potter movie, you are in trouble. And often during this 153 minute slog, I was very, very confused. Often times, the movie seemed to be spinning its wheels; and when a major riddle was finally answered, it was anti-climactic at best. Speaking of...

2. The Climax, or lack of. For the love of God, if you know full well that a huge stretch of the book later turns out to be a pointless exercise (for the characters), DON'T SPEND A HUGE STRETCH OF MOVIE TIME ON IT. Harry and Dumbledore end up in a cave for reasons that are murky at best, and after what seems like forever, they finally get to an island of glass (or something) that results in Harry force-feeding Dumbledore cursed water (or something.) This goes on quite a bit, ending in a firestorm against little Gollum-type creatures. Then they get back, and after a poorly staged confrontation, it's revealed that everything that just happened was... not important at all. Even Harry Potter 4 had the decency to end with a wizard's duel; all we get here is some pithy comment about the scenery. Grr.

3. Ron Weasley. I'm sorry, I just no longer get the appeal of Ron Weasley. He's a crappy wizard, he's petulant and whiny, he's incredibly dense and his primary purpose seems to be either to get smacked around, say something dumb or to be an insensitive dick. He is always the first to do something stupid and the last to do something brave. Harry and Hermione have outgrown him; and it's no wonder that when Hermione gets all worked up over Ron kissing some other girl, I didn't believe it. Not because Emma Roberts is a bad actress, it's because the boy she's supposedly longing for is such a loser. The book version of Ron may play differently; but by movie six, it's pretty clear that the future holds many, many boring nights ahead for unhappily married Movie Ron and Hermione.

What a dip.

4. Hogwarts 90210. Much too much of this movie is dedicated to wizards sleeping, or rather, making faint comments about possibly sleeping with each other, or who's dating who or who's putting a spell on who. This wouldn't bug me if it was a) funny b) honest or c) important to the plot. Any of the three would do. But these kids seem drained of their rebellious natures that they picked up in 5, and seem only concerned with romances out of Degrassi Jr. High. Romances that consist of no conversations, just googly eyes and slamming doors. Romances that feel fueled by artifice, not real pain or longing. Romances that go out the window for the last 30 minutes, and add very little to the story. Even poor Harry and Ginny are robbed of anything meaningful to say to one another, save for when they get a chance to destroy a cursed book together. Even then, all Harry gets is a kiss; and somehow that equates to a relationship. Not in my high school, it didn't.

5. The X3 Flashback. There is a key flashback where we see a trusted teacher talking to a troubled youth. If you replace "magic" with "mutant," it's pretty much, verbatim, the same conversation that Professor X had with Jean Grey in X3. It also carries the same small amount of weight. Maybe there's just a general problem with scenes showing pure evil at a young age, it is always disappointing. I respect enough people's judgment about J.K. Rowling's books to guess that she does not view magic in the same light as special genetic powers that make cool things happen. The writer Steve Knowles, although he penned the other scripts, seems to have forgotten that. Pity.

I run a special school for mut- wizards....

6. Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman can do anything. He can read from a phone book and make it interesting. He can be so good that you can watch him in Bottle Shock and almost forget that it's a bad movie. But he cannot defeat a screenplay that causes him to reverse everything we know about his character 10 minutes in, and offer no explanation. I am told the book also offers no explanation (at least not until Book 7), but it plays awkwardly. Not as awkwardly as when he exclaims "I am the half blood prince!", but it's still pretty awkward. Don't worry, I didn't spoil anything for you, it doesn't matter who the damn prince is. Grrrrrrr.

7. Luna Lovegood. She's wonderful. She's weird. She's lovely. She's the only kid who seems to operate on a frequency not attuned to the plot, but instead to her own peculiar beat. More of her, please.

She SEEEES YOOOOUUUUUU

8. Villainy, or lack of. This movie is missing some serious heavy lifting in the baddie department. We get no direct shots of Voldermort; and he is missed. We see Helena Bonam Carter being weird, but it's not interesting; we've seen it before. We've seen ominous shots of some younger actor playing Tom Riddle, it's old hat. And while we do get a new villain of sorts- Fenrir Grayback- he doesn't have any lines, and seems more like an afterthought than something to chew on. Only Draco Malfoy, of all people, gets something to do. This is one of the few improvements, although, again, it goes nowhere when he wusses out.

9. The Outside World. Early on, a big deal is made of Voldermort's minions destroying a London city bridge and causing havoc. This, as far as I can tell, has no impact on the story and serves only to supply the editors with some footage of stuff blowing up for the trailer. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

10. The General sense of Wonder. It's gone. Save for a too-brief scene in a magic shop (which occurred just after (!) the damn IMAX 3D stopped working) there is no longer any sense of the impossible, the wonderful, the new or the unreal. Same ol' train, same ol' hogwarts, same ol' general sense of Dumbledore not telling Harry the whole story because otherwise the movie would be over. Gone are the moving staircases, the wonderful talking pictures, lots of little magic happening on the sides. Replacing it is more cryptic brooding and bad sex jokes.

There's no excuse for this. Don't give me that they changed the book. So did 3 and 5. Don't give me that they left stuff out. So did all of the movies. Even 4 had the decent self-respect to pull the action together for some kind of crisis.

The major death in the movie lands with all the impact of a spitball. I've teared up or been devastated for the death (or apparent death) of many a fictional character: Spock, Gandulf, Optimus Prime (in the animated movie), Commissioner Gordon and that dog from I Am Legend. Even if you know it's coming, it's still sad. In Harry Potter 6, I should have wept at the movie's end. Instead, I was relieved, because it meant the movie would be over.

Here is a movie better acted, directed and written than Transformers, Wolverine, Terminator AND the recently-defended-by-me G.I. Joe. Yet it is perhaps the most disappointing. Harry Potter 5 was great, and the same exact people put this together. The book the movie was based on is loved (unlike Harry Potter 5). They had all the resources and some of the best actors out there. They had extra time to edit, because it got pushed back from November to July. They had an audience ready and waiting to be taken on a long journey. And what did they get?

2+ hours of nothing but Jim Broadbent's Crappy Secret and Young Wizards Snogging. Even IMAX can't save that. This is not only the least of the series, it's the final nail in the cinematic coffin that is Summer 2009.

RATING: * * (out of Five)

P.S. If I had to rank the top five mainstream (i.e. not counting 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, etc. ) movies this summer, the list would be 1. UP 2. STAR TREK 3. HANGOVER. There is no four and five, because while I liked G.I. JOE and admired parts of PUBLIC ENEMIES, I refuse to put them on a this list simply because of a default.

P.P.S. There used to be only one movie I had seen that IMAX couldn't improve, namely, the awful POSEIDON. Now there are two. It doesn't help that it only lasts for 20 damn minutes. HULK. SMASH.

G.I. JOE: RISE OF COBRA

G.I. JOE, THE RISE OF COBRA is absolutely perfect--without being actually any good.

Let me explain. You remember G.I. JOE. That was the show where the villains, Cobra, were always trying to take over the world in some spectacularly dumb-ass way, and G.I. JOE was there to stop them, eventually. It was a great formula. No matter how inexplicable Cobra's plot was (one involved a series of fast food restaurants- seriously: http://www.allmovie.com/work/gi-joe-red-rockets-glare-239483 ) it would reliably take the Joes about 15 minutes to figure it out, and 7 minutes to blow it up. GO JOE!

The show has never- and will never- be parodied better than in Homestarunner.com's the CHEAT COMMANDOS, featuring the immortal line, "It looks like Blue Laser's going to take advantage of Price Style's already low, low prices on paper towels and grout cleaner and use all the savings to make a button that will make it snow at the beach!" But I digress.

The point is, the original show was pretty stupid, yet fun. Pretty cool-looking and very thick heroes and villains battling it out with weapons that don't exist (...yet!) And the movie delivers just that- man, that ninja is cool, but whoops! G.I. Joe was completely unable to stop Cobra from blowing up the Eiffel tower! At least they managed to blow up half of Paris in their failed attempt. If you're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to blow up a fake version of a city, it might as well be Paris. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen blew up Venice, see where it got them.

The Joe's are led by Generic Action Hero Duke (Channing Tatum) and Hawk (Dennis Quaid.) You remember Dennis Quaid. He's pretty much right where you left him. Ray Park is Snake Eyes, who doesn't say much, and when you're a ninja clad in black, you don't have to. The President (Jonathan Pryce) hangs around and notes that it's perfectly understandable that the French are "upset" that the Eiffel Tower is, c'est catastrophe, no more. That green-skinned girl from Star Trek is back (Rachel Nichols), with the same red hair but less green skin as Scarlett. We don't know much about her, other than she's attractive and speaks Celtic. That's enough in this movie to out-pace Marlon Wayans, who is on hand to be the token black guy. Can we retire this stereotype already? I know it's played by one of the CREATORS of White Chicks, but that doesn't make it okay.

The villains are much better. The two main baddies, Destro (Christopher Eccleston) and Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are locked in an over-acting contest that can only end in gales and gales of laughter. Cobra Commander wins, if only because he gets to breathe into a death mask for most of the movie. ("You.... will call me... COMMANDER... ") Storm Shadow is the white ninja, and the raging yang to Snake Eyes's sober yin. To say they fight to the death is no spoiler, for ninjas were put on this earth to do battle for man's amusement.

There can be only NONE.

And let's not forget the Baroness (Sienna Miller), whose primary purpose is to show cleavage and smirk. If she looks fake here, well, she looked and sounded pretty fake in the show. So if nothing else, her performance is authentic and she blows a lot of stuff... er, up.

This is all pretty silly stuff, but oddly, it rarely stops being entertaining. Only when various actors try to act (Tatum, Miller, Wayans; natch) do we get into trouble. No one cares that Scarlett's father taught her to never lose. No one cares that Destro's family was a scottish clan of weapon traders. We DO care about a giant underwater base that must be infiltrated by ninjas, surrounded by robotic fish and armed with a self-destruct mechanism that somehow causes ice to sink. Ice doesn't sink, but of course, that kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun isn't a super villain, so you takes your chances with reality when you enter a Stephen Sommers movie. This is the man who gave us The Mummy; he also, unfortunately gave us the The Mummy Returns. I'd say he's returned to form, but I'm not sure it's a compliment.

Great art this obviously isn't. Great trash it ain't either. But after Wolverine, Terminator and Transformers, it was nice to walk out laughing instead of shaking with rage or indifference. I thoroughly enjoyed how over-the-top and dumb this movie was, if only because the joke wasn't on me.

Is it idiotic? Yes. Worst script of the summer? Possibly. Laughably bad acting? Oh my. But key word here- LAUGHABLY bad. Laughing. As in, having a good time.

You want a good dumb movie? You've got your ticket. You want to see a sci-fi movie that matters? DISTRICT 9 just opened and I see it on Wed. Talk at you then.

RATING: * * * (out of 5)

P.S. 3 stars? Really? File this review under the Kombat, Mortal category: it does what it proposes to do, nothing more or less, and it is absolutely as advertised. If, under no circumstances, you could ever see yourself enjoying a movie called or about G.I. JOE, go ahead and downgrade the rating to one star.

P.P.S. Seriously. Cheat Commandos. Awesome.

I JUST HATE YOU SO MUCH!