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!

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN: REVIEW

"How dare you come into this office and bark at me some kind of junk yard dog?! I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!" - Clear and Present Danger

That's pretty much what most critics (or at least 79% of them) have screamed at TRANSFORMERS 2: STUFF BLOWS UP. Really, they're screaming at Michael Bay. Why? Because no matter what they say, no matter what they do, they cannot destroy this man.

Fact: Every Michael Bay movie except the first BAD BOYS and THE ISLAND has made over 130 million dollars, domestically. And BAD BOYS made 75 million overseas. So really, the man has had one flop, THE ISLAND.

Fact: Pretty much every movie he has made except THE ROCK has been critically roasted.

Fact: When it comes to Michael Bay movies, no one gives a shit about the reviews.

Fact: Critics hate feeling powerless.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Critics have power over a lot of movies. Well reviewed broad mainstream movies rarely flop. And when broad mainstream movies with well known older actors get tepid notices, (see: TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3) they don't do as well. The good reviews for DARK KNIGHT brought in a huge audience that wouldn't have showed up otherwise. The reviews for CATWOMAN helped bury it.

But Michael Bay blows stuff up, teenagers pay attention. They get what they are promised (explosions), they leave happy. And except for THE ROCK (which I love), critics kept stabbing with their knives. And his movies made millions. So it went for years, until he decided to combine his explosion prowess with robots that turn into cars. You know, for kids!

Now, he is literally unstoppable. Kids and explosion addicts don't care about reviews, they care about the big badda boom. And the critics hate him, hate him, hate him (HATE HIM) for it. And they hate him more because he obviously does not give a rat's ass. He doesn't whine about being a misunderstood artist, he smiles and counts his millions. Any studio would want to work with him. Why not? They always get rich, as long as the movie can be explained in a tag line.

Lost in all this back and forth Bay-bashing is the movie itself, which is not very good. But given how much rancor was being directed towards it, you would think it was the second coming of BATTLEFIELD EARTH. Don't be fooled: it isn't. It is plot-less, it is overlong, it is repetitive and it is a bad Transformers story. But, if I had my druthers between watching WOLVERINE or TERMINATOR 4 or TRANSFORMERS 2 again, I'd choose the third, if I had to choose.

Why?

It's more fun. WOLVERINE and TERMINATOR were hampered by a sense that Very Important Things were going on the entire movie. Nothing very important goes on in Transformers, even though the fate of the world depends on Shia LeBouf's brain. It has never heard the words "over the top." First Michael Bay throws in the Kitchen Sink. Then he blows it up. So much stuff blows up in this movie, and some of it looks really cool. And the movie can still get mileage out of the Transformers Brand. Cars turning into robots turning into cars is cool, Optimus Prime is still cool, damn it all. And the performers mostly keep their shit together for most of the movie, which cannot be said for anyone in WOLVERINE or TERMINATOR.

But is it a good movie? Oh, lord no.

About the plot... there isn't one. TRANSFORMERS 1 had a (in retrospect) beautifully simple plot. Find the cube to save the world. Once they found the cube, keep it away from Megatron. It may not have been brilliant, but it was clear. TRANSFORMERS 2 has the equivalent of three or four different "things to find", in addition to plot threads about loyalty, faith, growing up, and Barack Obama is a Weenie. (There are many snide comments about the President negotiating with Decepticon terrorists) These threads are picked up and abandoned at random. The "things to find" are found often, then lost, with little to no effect. More than four times during the 2.5 hours, I had no idea what was going on.

And the additions to the cast of robots are NEVER PROPERLY INTRODUCED. The best sequence of the first movie was the introduction of the Autobots, where they first land, take their shape and say their names. It was almost magical. Here, we get a whole list of new characters without names or personality traits, who exist to be destroyed. We get no sense of any personality for most of the new good guys, except for the "twins", who are the best slice of racist pie since Jar Jar Binks. Seriously: one of them has a golden tooth, they make many jokes about popping caps in people's asses, and they don't do much readin'. As for the new bad guys, they barely say anything at all, except for poor Soundwave, who gets to sit in space and be the equivlanet of the Decepticon 'can you hear me now' guy. When a poorly animated cartoon designed to sell more toys has more personality than a 200 million dollar, 2.5 hour monstrosity, you are in serious ca-ca. Also, when a robot named "Wheelie" is only the third most annoying character in your movie, you are also in... well, you know. A stinky 2.5 hours.

About the 2.5 hours... Seriously? Michael Bay looked at the running time on the first movie and said, "what this needs is more"? I guess it would make sense if that running time was used to tell an epic tale, but this movie basically has two modes: uneven 'comic relief', and explosions. There is no reason to have there be more, except that Michael Bay demands it. The last 45 minutes involves an action scene in the desert. Some of it is utterly incomprehensible. What Tony Winner Julie White is doing in the desert running from explosions, I do not know.

But the bad stuff you knew. You knew it when you opened the first reviews. The question is (or was for me), but is it any fun? Kind of. Is it bad? Not as bad as you'd think. Is there any reason to see it? Not really. Even if you're a huge fan of the show? Not really. If you want to see a good TRANSFORMERS movie, rent the first one- it's better in almost every way. Or the actual TRANSFORMERS movie, the animated one, which WAS better in EVERY single way.

I saw this movie for 5 dollars at a 1pm matinee at a crappy rundown theater. That's about right.

RATING: 2 stars (out of 5).

P.S.: A moment of silence, please, for Jerry Bruckhemier, Michael Bay's old partner in crime. Based on the first few days, TRANSFORMERS 2 will be the biggest movie of the summer. Jerry Bruckhemier's big summer movie this year is a movie about secret agent guinea pigs. Michael Bay wins.

P.P.S.: The Fallen is a lame, aztek-looking evil robot who is much less impressive than Megatron. Unicron, you are missed.

I WISH I HAD MORE TO DO IN THIS MOVIE, MEGATRON.

New Final Thoughts: I stand by the original review, but this movie has gotten worse in my mind. That G.I. JOE is more fun is kind of the best egg you could throw at Michael Bay.

VGMRP: MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNHILIATION

Some of the dialogue near the beginning of ANNHILATION:

Kitana: Mother? You're alive?!

Kitana's Mother: Too bad YOU.... will DIE!

You have to see this movie to believe it. On the other hand, that is too high a price. I realize that part of my praise for the first movie was "lots of kung fu, set to techno." I now must eat my words. This movie doesn't even pretend to make sense.

Characters appear without introduction, are quickly killed and never mentioned again. Performances are all over the map, but are uniformly bad. Major parts from the first movie are recast with the cheaper, non-union versions. Johnny Cage is killed off in the first 5 minutes, X3 Cyclops style. Villains who were killed in the last movie (Sub Zero, Reptile, Scorpion) appear again without explanation. Actually, full disclosure: They did explain one re-appearence.

Liu Kang: I killed you in the tournament.

Sub Zero: You killed my elder brother.

So forget coherency. Put it out of your heads. They weren't bothering, so why should I? But even once you've abandoned plot, character development, logic, emotional investment, coherent production design and all other meager pleasures of competent filmmaking, you're still left with one of the worst films ever made. Just look at this:

Nothing in the world can prepare you for the ineptness of the special effects. They are epically bad. They don't even meet the Wing Commander "Good Enough For a Video Game" standard. This is all the more astounding because the effects in Mortal Kombat were, overall, quite good. You were more or less convinced that what was happening on screen was actually happening. With Annhilation, all you're convinced of is that someone should have been fired.

Random bad guys fall from the sky like poorly-animated fireballs from a disaster movie. (Jaxx observes, "They don't even wear parachutes!") Lu Kang morphs into a dragon that even the makers of GODZILLA would be ashamed to put on screen. There is much talk of two worlds "merging", yet all we see are shoddily rendered landmarks with cartoony skeletons laying about. A killer robot shows up, and we can clearly see the stunt double's face behind the mask. And then there's this guy:

Just because you CAN use computers to make things appear onscreen, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Special effects should either be hidden in plain sight, or transport you to a world of fantasy where you want to believe in the impossible. Or they should kick your ass and blow your mind. Or make you laugh at the sheer audacity of them. I'm not picky. But for all of the effort in ANNHILATION, they come up with less than even the makers of SUPER MARIO BROTHERS. Every effect takes you out of the movie, because you're not focusing on what just happened, you're wondering how they did it. And not in a good way. More in the, "how did they think this would work? Or that it was ready? Or that it was good?"

But even with good effects, the movie is wimpy fight scene after crappy fight scene, partnered with some of the crappiest after school special dialogue about teamwork ever written.
("We have to support each other... like a family!" says Raiden. "faith in yourself is all you need!") There is an idea where a movie can become much of muchness- like Transformers, and probably Transformers 2- but that requires a much to have much of. ANNHILATION can't even get that right. Liu Kang just beat up a robot named Smoke? If I haven't played the game, who the hell cares? Sure, the first movie didn't bother with backstory on Scorpion, but at least there was some build-up and tension before the fight. Here, we just get an announcement of who was just killed, sometimes not at all.

I saw this movie 2 years after the first one, I hated it then, and I hate it more now. They messed it up, big time. Sure, you can laugh at it. But at some point the movie crosses the line of camp and transforms into 96 minutes of LARP-Gone-Wild. (If you don't know what LARP is, you're probably happier for it.) After awhile the mockery becomes cruelty, and then self-inflicted pain.

Probably the best way to end is with this:

Rain: Two of earth's best warriors have already been taken. Kabal and Stryker.

Shao Kahn: Tell me, did you make them beg for the lives before you destroyed them?

Rain: But, Master, I thought if I let them live...

Shao Kahn: (slams down a giant hammer) I have no use for excuses! Rain, this will never happen again.

Rain: It will never happen agaARRGGHHHHH

(Rain gets thrown into pit of fire by Kahn)

We never found out who Rain was. And now, we never will. Just as well.

STAR RATING: Zero Stars (out of 5)


P.S.: Just watch this title screen for 90 minutes. It's better than watching the movie.

VGMRP: ALONE IN THE DARK

Some say Uwe Boll is the new Ed Wood, Jr. I say... Yes!

Top Ten Moments from Alone In The Dark:

10) The Cabbie Assassin
Minutes into the movie, the lead bad guy picks up his phone and barks "Kill him!" We find out shortly that he is speaking to a bald assassin, who awaits Carnby (Christian Slater)'s arrival at the airport... in a yellow cab. Yes. The deadly killer awaits in a yellow cab, so he can be easily spotted while trying to kill Christian Slater with his death-cab. A crappy car chase ensues, and the incredulity increases when the evil taxi rams Carnby's taxi and the fender is dented, but seconds later when they turn a corner, the taxi is undamaged. After the inept car chase, Christan Slater throws the Cabbie Assassin through a window. Not to be outdone, Cabbie Assasin bursts through a door, Hulk-style, and punches an old man on general principle. Logic: 0, Ridiculously awful awesome fight scene: 1

9) Christian Slater is... Edward Carnby!
Ah, sweet, career destroyed Christian Slater. First, he tells a small child on a plane to basically go to hell, and then says in a narration "I bet you think I was an asshole to that kid back there!" Then he gets to say "I was tracking poachers across their lines in the Amazon when I hooked up with some ex-Chilean military trafficking artifacts on the black market. " He also wears the same costume throughout the entire movie, a trenchcoat and a black tank top. I'd say he needs a shave, but what he really needs is some whiskey. Or maybe I do.

8) Continuity Be Damned
You have to be paying a little bit of attention to catch the cab smash up continuity error. That would be when Cabbie Assassin's cab smashes into Christian Slater's Cab, only to be repaired second later. But it's hard to miss the giant hole of credibility at the end. Picture this: we see fields of slaughtered good guys in the dead of night, a walkie-talkie blaring messages to nobody. We see Christian Slater and Tara Reid climbing up to safety while Stephen Doriff is sacrificing himself to kill the monsters. Cut back to the empty field at night. Cut to the bomb going off. Cut to Slater and Reid coming out of a hole just in time- in BROAD FREAKING DAYLIGHT. We go from midnight to noon in seconds, and all it took was Stephen Dorrif's corpse.

7) The Random Ice Factory
Because Uwe Boll saw THE MATRIX that one time, he decided to use bullet time to show when he gets shot. It's probably the most expensive shot in the movie. Carnby fires two bullets, and we track them in slow motion. Why two bullets? So the first bullet can smash a block of ice, and the second bullet can travel through the ice particles. Why the Ice? Because it looks cool, damn it. Don't mess with Uwe Boll.

7.5) The Bullets Dont Actually Kill The Cabbie Assassin
That's right! We use bullet time to see the bullets hit the guy and then it doesn't do anything! The evil cabbie assassin and ends up skewered on spikes.

6) Tara Reid Sucks
No one's very good in this movie- Stephen Doriff looks disgusted with the material, and Slater's barely sober throughout-but Tara Reid wins the prize for trying hard and achieving so little. She has many bad moments, but the worst is when she mispronounces "Newfoundland" as "New Found Land." Not since Denise Richards was Dr. Christmas Jones, nuclear physicist, has science been so mistreated.
She also gets to hug Christian Slater, only to slap him seconds later and scream "I thought you were dead, asshole!" I miss Taradise.

5) The Support Characters from the Ed Wood Playbook

One of the hallmarks of Ed Wood, Jr.'s crapsterpieces are the johnny-on-the-spot supporting characters, awkwardly framed and spouting out backstory to our heroes. Mr. Wood usually had cops saying, "Whats this crazy talk about ghouls coming back from the dead these past few weeks, Sergeant Davis, and congrats on that promotion!" Here, we get four different unimportant characters rushing up and giving us awkward exposition, often in one unbroken shot, while every one else stands around waiting for someone to yell cut. So we have Character C telling Character B in front of Character A, "Why, Character A? She's the best archeologists in these parts!" Keep in mind that Character A is Tara Reid, playing an archelologist. It's a small consolation that soon after Character C talks, he/she/Stephen Doriff is killed.

4) The Dune-Esque Text Crawl.

The movie begins with the following narration, that we also see on screen:

"In 1967, mine workers discovered the first remnants of a long lost Native American civilization - The Abkani. The Abkani believed that there are two worlds on this planet, a world of light and a world of darkness. 10,000 years ago the Abkani opened a gate between these worlds. Before they could close it, something evil slipped through. The Abkani mysteriously vanished from the Earth. Only a few artifacts remained, hidden in the world's most remote places. These artifacts speak of terrifying creatures that thrive in the darkness, waiting for the day when the gate can be opened again. Bureau 713, the government's paranormal research agency, was established to uncover the dark secrets of this lost civilization. Under the direction of archaeologist Lionel Hudgens, Bureau 713 began collecting Abkani artifacts. When the government shut down his controversial research, Hudgens built a laboratory hidden within an abandonded gold mine. There, he conducted savage experiments on orphaned children in an attempt to merge man with creature. Hudgens victims survived as "sleepers" - lost souls awaiting the moment of their calling. "

Yeah.

3) The 'Ambigious' Ending

So, after Steven Doriff's corpse blows up with so much dynamite that it turns night into day (see number 8 above), Uwe Boll decided to get all artsy and end on a downer note- the aliens/ghosts/monsters/whatever have overrun the earth! Or at least the canadian city they got permission to film in! But the awesomely awful thing is, Uwe Boll forgot that his monsters don't kill to eat, they just kill to kill. So there are no bodies. Anywhere. Now that might be explained by the subtitle that says, "8:48 am, city evacuated!" But it doesn't explain all the cars in the middle of the street, left empty, with no bodies around. I think what happened was this- they got permission to shoot the streets early in the morning, with no one around. When someone pointed out that it just looked like a quiet sunday, and not the apocalypse, someone said, "What the hell, let's put an empty truck in the middle of the shot." And Uwe Boll said "I love making movies!"

2) The Villain's Shitty Plan

So you've got this mad professor. And he infects these kids with some kind of evil spirit alien thing. So that he can control them and some undetermined time in the future. And Christian Slater wants to stop that. I'm with you. The problem is, they get 'activated' halfway through the movie, and become weird zombie-esque guys... who get mowed down with machine gun bullets. And killed. And that's the last we see of them. The last 35 minutes doesn't even mention them. Mad professor can appearently control the alien things. If this was the case... what was he doing wasting 25 years with the kids? So that they could get mowed down my semi-automatic rifles? Was his actual plan to just open the door to the evil world? So he could get mauled? If you hold your breath long enough, it starts to make sense.

1) The "Protect the Perimeter!" Guy.

His name is Agent Miles. Right before our three "stars" go to face the evil, in the dark but not so alone, he is told, nay, demanded to PROTECT THE PERIMETER. His jaw tightens. Yes, he will, he says to himself. After getting in a petty lover's quarrel with the guy working on the generator, he bravely tells the other extras wearing paintball armor (seriously: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369226/trivia) to PROTECT THE PERIMETER. This involves having lots of automatic rifles trained in the direction of the computer generated creatures. He has computer generated helicopters at his disposal, but they are no match for the computer generated creatures who have learned to jump into them. He also has a wall of tires at his disposal, and tells his men to wait until they've cleared it. This is so they can set off explosions behind the tires, out of our sight, and we hear the monsters squealing without having to actually animate them. What makes this whole sequence so special is that instead of following our characters who are, you know, Alone In The Dark, Boll keeps cutting back to Protect the Perimeter guy losing lots of troops to vicious pixels, until he is the last one left. The Perimeter is not Protected, but it doesn't impact our heroes in any way. The whole sequence is completely, wonderfully pointless. I guess the strategy was, "we paid for the CG, we're going to USE the CG!"

Listen to me: ALONE IN THE DARK is a real piece of shit. But with a bottle of Jack Daniels, in the right light, she's a star. One star, to be exact. But a star nonetheless.

STAR RATING: * (out of Five)

P.S. ALONE IN THE DARK is based on a creepy but dated video game about a detective locked in a mansion, trying to solve his way out before monsters get him. The gameplay was clunky but the experience got a lot of mileage out of the eery silences, the complex puzzles and the inherent mystery. This movie has no silences, complexity or mystery. But it does have a Perimeter.


PROTECT THE PERIMETER!

VGMRP: WING COMMANDER REVIEW

Jesus.

I recently wrote about Star Trek and Space Movies being fun again. When is space not fun? When you're watching Wing Commander, that's when. We're not just talking a bad Video Game Movie, we're talking about one of the worst space movies ever made. There's lots of crash, bang boom; but there's an equal amount of "ugh", "you're kidding me," and "who gives a shit?"

Directed with love and incompetence by game creator Chris Roberts, Wing Commander attempts to bring the C-level saga of the Wing Commander games to the big screen, with dispiriting results. Wing Commander, the game, was a rip-off of Star Trek plotting (the Klingons-as-Russians Cold War) with Star Wars combat (lots of little starfighters shooting at each other, lots of anonymous pilots screaming, "I can't shake themmmmm AAAARRGGHHH-!!!"). The play mechanics weren't bad but the story was derivative, and with each game more convoluted and pointless. That was okay, because hey, you got to blow things up and fly around like a fighter pilot. The only thing from a story perspective that was worth a damn was the performance of Mark Hamill, simply because when given a script of fine cheese, he knows how to be a ham.

I regret to inform you Mark Hamill is not the star of Wing Commander: The Movie. I further regret to report that there is no reason to watch this movie, not even to laugh at how bad it is. The effects are good for a video game but bad for a movie, which mean they look fake without being hilariously so (you feel like it's a late 90's CD-ROM game on the screen). The script is mediocre and thoughtless through and through, with lots of poor writing, but nothing that's memorably bad. Nothing reaches the insanity of Super Mario Brothers, the vamping of Raul Julia in Street Fighter, or the shocks-the-conscience bad taste of Postal. Maybe Mark Hamill would have made something hilarious out of it, but instead we of ham we get the black hole of screen presence of cinema known as Freddie Prinze, Jr. Behold:

Commander Babe: Disobey my director and I'll have you court marshalled.

Freddie Prinze Jr.: Like I care.

The end result is a grab-bag of leftover story concepts from better sci-fi projects and a production design that was purchsed from the Space Salvation Army, coupled with men in curious uniforms shouting "hard to port!" as their ships try to avoid space torpedoes. The torpedoes make lots of WHOOSHING sounds despite the fact that space is a vacuum where sound cannot travel. The suspense of disbelief re: sound in space is stretched to the breaking point during awful sequence when everyone is told to be quiet, because "a space destroyer is hunting us!" They all stare and listen to the pinging above, like they're in a submarine. Never mind that they could be having the party of the century and NO ONE WOULD HEAR THEM, because in space, no one can hear Matthew Lillard scream. And he screams a lot in this movie.

In other words, WING COMMANDER doesn't have the wit to be epically bad, only epically boring.

For extra credit, the movie also rips off its plot from U-571/Enigma by having the main point of the plot being a stolen 'navcom machine.' See, if the Kilarathi/Klingons/Empire get their hands on it, why, they could control space travel and therefore win the war? What war, you ask? Oh, they want to destroy us. Why? Because they hate our freedom. Or something, I don't know. When they finally find the 'navcom' on a Kilrathi ship, they're so excited that they found that they leave it on the ship, leading one to wonder why the hell it was so important. Maybe it's because they're in such a hurry to get off the alien ship due to the quality of the aliens themselves: when we finally see them, they look shitter than the vampires in I Am Legend. Should they win the war, the universe will be populated with nothing but ugly, ugly children.

Anyway.There are two hard-won truths here:

1) unless your explorers/adventurers/rebe

ls/Wing Commanders/space plumbers touch down somewhere, on some planet, space movies become little more than actors on cheap sets looking at green-screens with varying levels of concern. Even Shatner had to land the ship every once in awhile.

2) Some video games shouldn't be adapted because they're plotless shoot'emups (Postal, Doom); others shouldn't be adapted because the material is both too ambitious and too thin at the same time. Wing Commander falls into the second category, where a credit prologue sequence tries to tell some 300 years of interstellar history, and at least a third of the dialogue is spent discussing the history and racist attitudes towards Pilgrims. But wait, aren't we hunting the Kilrathi? What is a Pilgrim anyway? What do they worship, exactly? Why am I watching this movie?

In short, Chris Robert's science fiction fantasies may have been enough to get you to the next level, but they're not enough for a major motion picture. It's the same lesson we learned yet again in Terminator Salvation: if you don't care about the characters, you don't care about if they get blown up by shitty antagonists.

There is not a single thing I can say for it in its favor; nothing that is good, fun, done well or even memorably bad. No clips to YouTube. No overacting to savor.

I saw this movie 10 years ago, and was pissed. Some 10 years later, I'm happy I only watched this crap via 10 youtube clips instead of renting it, but I would have been happier if I hadn't watched it at all. Hell, I would have been happier watching POSTAL again. At least that movie has monkeys. They were monkeys that were sexually assaulting Verne Troyer, but they were still monkeys, damn it.

STAR RATING: Zero Stars (out of 5)

P.S. Fox had such a low opinion of their own movie that they attached the first Star Wars: Phantom Menace trailer on it to get people to show up. They showed up, paid to watch the trailer and left. I remember a printed sign at the Box Office that said, "no refunds will be given for Wing Commander after the Star Wars trailer is shown." Happier days, before we knew what legacy Phantom Menace would bring.

P.P.S. Like Top Gun, all the pilots are hotshots who spend a lot of time taking off their breathing masks so that they can dramatically, slowly put them back on again. Why they need an extra breathing hose when they're in deep space, I do not know. Why the camera for all the cockpit scenes is zoomed in so close on the actors so you can't see what's outside their window I can guess: so they they wouldn't have to film the extra greenscreen.

Like I care!