Moviesucktastic: Star Trek

Showing posts with label Star Trek. Show all posts

Saturday, July 16, 2011

More Like "The Waiting Room." - Visiting Hours movie review

Cover of Visiting HoursMore Like "The Waiting Room." - Visiting Hours movie review

Visiting Hours is a rather uninspiring Canadian-filmed slasher flick, rushed out to capitalize on the success of movies like Halloween, that would have been completely forgotten if not for two coincidental achievements: Being the first "Video Nasty" to be shown on British television, and featuring now-pop-culture-icon William Shatner in a minor supporting role.

Disaster Film star Lee Grant plays outspoken news anchor Deborah Ballin, whose unabashed defense of abused women motivates psychopathic loner and chapter He-Men Woman Hater's Club member Michael Ironside to deliver a little home-invasion rebuttal to her argument. After killing the maid (before she could tidy up, no less) and attacking Ballin while wearing her jewelry before fleeing the scene, the distraught news anchor spends the rest of the film waiting in the hospital while Ironside returns for multiple visits (get the title now?), during which he manages to kill everyone except the focus of his feminine hatred.

The film's one-note plotline doesn't have much to play with except this exceedingly drawn out game of Cat & Mouse, even with the mildly distracting subplot of a dedicated single mother and nurse whose dedication pulls her into this deadly feud. Most of the time waiting is filled with what seems like hundreds of cliche false scares (although no cat scares, thankfully), uninteresting conversations, and a rather delightful display of closet designs across the Canadian class spectrum. The tedious pace is delayed even further by Ironside's habit of killing every person he bumps into on his way to the news anchor's hospital bed. A serial killer with at least a passable amount of self-control would have been cleaning her blood off of his shoes before the one-hour mark.

Those settling down to view this slasher in the hopes of some campy Shatner fun will be quickly disappointed: Shatner's role as Grant's husband is brief and un-comically straight forward. But if you came for William Shatner, be sure to stick around for Michael Ironside. Ironside was the typical go-to guy for low budget bad guy roles in the day, and Visiting Hours acts as a perfect showcase for his villainous acting. With a glare that would wilt petunias at fifty paces, Ironside stalks through the film shooting hateful glares that you could feel across a crowded room. His trademark creepy performance may not exactly save the film, but it does make it somewhat more tolerable.

The film does have a few inspired moments, mostly surrounding Ironside's lady killer Colt Hawker. There's one scene in particular, in which he slices the wrong air tube, but decides to stick around and savor the moment anyway, sitting quietly on the edge of the bed and taking pictures of an elderly woman in her final death throes. The film tries to explain his passionate hatred of women with some domestic violence flashbacks, but they end up feeling like simple explanations that take away from the mysteriousness of a man who can drive a Zambonee-sized floor sweeper with soul-cringing malice. And if you ever wanted to watch Michael Ironside in a latex muscle shirt sexually abusing an eighties hair-band refugee, here's your chance.

Visiting Hours isn't exactly a bad film, but rather just a passable, wholly uninspiring film that has little to offer beyond drawn out suspense and the occasional switchblade to the abdomen, neither of which entertain nearly as much as they should.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Movie Review: The A-Team

Image by Daniel Semper via Flickr

TV Show Adaptations have been the theatrical kiss of death for a long time now. Not because the idea of taking an old beloved television series and modernizing it in a feature film isn't a plausible idea, but because the studios almost always drop the ball. Most of the time, they play the revival for comic effect instead of nostalgic revival, like The Dukes of Hazard, Starsky and Hutch and Charlie's Angels. When they occasionally do take the update seriously, like Miami Vice, The Mod Squad and Swat, it turns out that no one really wanted one in the first place. Then you have just flat out cinematic abortions like The Avengers, Bewitched, Mission Impossible and Wild Wild West. Classic-cartoons-turned-live-action-films like Fat Albert, Scooby Doo, Inspector Gadget, Josie and the Pussycats and The Flintstones populate their own private level of Hell.

So when do the studios get it right? Not very often, I'm afraid. But in the case of The A-Team, a generation's favorite soldiers of fortune have escaped the land of fond childhood memories unscathed. Of course, if anybody could do it, it would have to be these guys. Hell, they escaped a federal prison using garbage bags and hair dryers. Take that, MacGyver.

From the opening scene, you know you are in good hands with this modern revision of America's favorite wrongfully imprisoned special forces soldiers turned vigilantes on the run. The film's (and main character's) introduction is stylistic, endearing, and undeniably cool. There is no attempt to mimic or mock the original show's style, which keeps it from falling into the realm of intentional camp, but it still manages to convey that childish joy and wonder that went along with watching the A-Team improvise their way through adventure after adventure. This is just as much an achievement of the actors as it is the filmmakers; much like J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, the emphasis isn't on mimicking the original actors, but making the characters their own. This is especially an achievement for Quinton Jackson, who wound up with the task of filling Mr. T's combat boots as B.A. Baracus. The end result is that you don't feel like you are watching actors reprising old characters, but the characters themselves, and that's the hardest part of this kind of cultural adaptation. They even manage to squeeze the original theme-song in without making it feel campy. Now that's an achievement.

Size and scope are the most noticeable difference between the movie and the original TV show. Like any low-budget prime-time series, The A-Team filled most of its action sequences with air mortars, car flips, and stunt men pinwheeling through the air from fake explosions. Compare that to the film's budget of $110 Million, and suddenly you go from air mortars to exploding CGI tankers and high-speed chase sequences with helicopters and fighter drones. This kind of over-the-top spectacle threatens to overwhelm the film's modest origins at times (especially during the climactic ending), but the superb acting and sharp dialogue help anchor the film in its nostalgic roots. Combining nostalgia with modernization is hard, especially when dealing with a show as iconic as The A-Team. Let's face it, how many TV shows can you name from just hearing someone hum the first four notes of the theme song?

It also helps that the screenwriters know how to do a proper villain. A lot of action films these days (since the 90s, actually) make it a habit of presenting dark, foreboding bad guys who smirk maliciously and kill puppies every ten minutes just to remind everyone how evil they are. This is far from the case with The A-Team; Patrick Wilson and Brian Bloom are given dark characters with personalities that make them as entertaining and fun to watch as the heroes. They do just as much wisecracking as the good guys, and manage to keep plot-forwarding scenes from feeling like mere pauses between action sequences. They're so fun and colorful, you wouldn't mind seeing them team up in a spin-off show (maybe they could run a day-care center together and solve crimes at night?). The rapid-fire banter throughout the film elevates this feeling, and often the dialogue actually increases the tempo of an action sequence instead of slowing it down.

The real kick in the pants is that The A-Team hit the screens only a month or so after the abysmal MacGruber. Side-by-side, these are the perfect Goofus and Gallant of adapting 80s TV shows. On one hand, you have people unwilling to seriously tackle an iconic prime-time show, so the instead do a mock-parody-spoof and tank the whole thing. On the other hand, The A-Team is modernized, taken seriously enough to not mock itself self-consciously, and manages to make an entertaining action film that retains the charm and appeal of the original series. You see, that's how it's done.

The biggest complaint I probably have regarding the film is the lack of a Mr. T cameo. An after-credits sequence features Bradley Cooper and Shartlo Copley bumping into Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz (the original Face and Murdock), but Mr. T and George Peppard were conspicuously absent. Peppard's reluctance to appear is understandable, considering he'e been dead for fifteen years now. So what's Mr. T's excuse? Seems he doesn't approve of the show being remade into a violent, racier PG-13 action film. It is usually comforting to know that some things never change, but I don't know how comforting it is that Mr. T still conducts his personal and business life in the same cartoonish black-and-white moralistic grandstanding that predominated his act when he appointed himself Protector and Mentor of All Children in the 80s. I could understand if he simply didn't want anything to do with the movie, but then he has to throw out the rationalization that he was afraid that if made a cameo, the filmmakers would try to use his name to sell the film. The last time I checked, the only thing his image was being used to hawk was Snickers Bars and Video Games, which is a far leap from the moral Mr. T of the 80s that preached the importance of eating healthy and outdoor activities to children.

But that little bit of unpleasantness aside, The A-Team is a resounding success. Sure, some people might feel the need to nitpick some of the action sequences as unrealistic and far-fetched (This Summer, you will believe a man can fly a tank...), but those that do are missing the big picture. Remember the garbage bags and hair dryers? That's right. It isn't about the realism or probability, it's all about the plan. In this case, the plan truly came together, and (sorry, but I must) I love it when a plan comes together.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Whitty Whatch: Avatar, Patriotism and a Three-Star Negative Review

Image via Wikipedia

Yet another substandard review by Whitty (readable in its entirety here).

Whitty starts off his review of Avatar by being surprisingly honest, something a lot of critics have been trying to avoid. He rather bluntly points out that while the movie isn’t a steaming pile of crap, neither is it a groundbreaking work of cinematic history (apart from the budget, that is). Of course, that is all there really is to say about the film. But Whitty needs to fill more space in order to justify a whole-page review in the Friday Entertainment Section. So, needless to say, he starts spinning that classic Whitty magic.

One of Whitty's main complaints is that Avatar's anti-war theme makes some references that relate to our own country's eight-year Iraqi war. He appears upset that Cameron would dare make comparisons between Avatar's corporation-backed-military preemptively invading Pandora for mineral profits, and America's Halibuton & Blackwater-backed-military preemptively invading Iraq for oil profits. No, Whitty's right, there's hardly a real comparison there at all.

But just coming out and saying that he disagrees with the film’s political message won’t do. So instead he claims that the film “gets confused in its politics. He whines about the film’s Na’vi being portrayed in “the image of the Native American as a peaceful eco-warrior,” totally overlooking the fact that the U.S. government did indeed use its military might to practically wipe out the Native Americans for their land and mineral rights. More specifically, he fears that mixing the imagery of Native Americans with current military jargon like “Shock and Awe” and “Daisy Cutters” somehow makes America’s eight-year debacle in Iraq seem less legitimate.

So Whitty is a supporter of the Iraqi war. Fair enough. He is entitled to his political opinion. But instead of just saying so, he argues that the film is “poisoned” by Cameron’s “clumsy attempts” to modernize the classic tale of Corporate Greed vs. Indigenous Natives (Here’s a little hint for you Whitty: nations have been doing the same thing long before the stars and stripes. It isn’t always about us, you know.). It can’t be that he and Cameron disagree; it has to be that Whitty is right and Cameron is “confused” and naïve. He even goes as far as to insinuate that the film is nothing more than a terrorist recruitment brochure that should “have a huge opening weekend in Basra.”

Ironically, Whitty spends half of the review criticizing Avatar for being morally naive, and the other half for attempting to be morally relevant, simply because he doesn't agree with the political viewpoint of the director. He accuses the film’s anti-corporate/militaristic message of being “a misread mix of Rousseau and Chomsky,” making it readily apparent that he hasn’t read much of either.

Surprisingly, Whitty doesn’t make any glaring factual errors this round. The closest he gets is implying that Avatar’s plot is reminiscent of the Star Trek episode The Menagerie, a dubious and somewhat perplexing claim. I guess he felt that all sci-fi originates from Star Trek. He wouldn’t be the first to share that delusion. But he does use the sickening copout critic phrase Popcorn Movie, although he upgrades it to “Popcorn Epic” in Cameron’s honor. And I really fail to see what Cameron's multiple marriages have to do with his political views towards feminism. Then again, if you are determined to give a Three-Star bad review, I guess it helps to take pot-shots at the director's personal life instead of his film.

That’s right, you heard correctly. Whitty spends most of his lengthy review listing the numerous errors and flaws with the film, and then feels fit to award it Three out of Four stars anyway. So, in Whitty’s own words: the film Avatar contains “half-baked ideas,” “clumsy dialogue,” “adolescent philosophy,” and “sketchy characterization.” Sure sounds like a Three Star film to me.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Weekend Box Office Estimates 6/26 - 6/28

1 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen P/DW $112,000,000
2 The Proposal BV $18,466,000
3 The Hangover WB $17,215,000
4 Up BV $13,046,000
5 My Sister's Keeper WB $12,030,000
6 Year One Sony $5,800,000
7 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 Sony $5,400,000
8 Star Trek Par. $3,606,000
9 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Fox $3,500,000
10 Away We Go Focus $1,678,000
11 Land of the Lost Uni. $1,143,000
12 Terminator Salvation WB $1,085,000

Let it also be known that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made $201 million in its 5 day tally. This is only second to The Dark Knight, which made $204 million in the same 5 day span.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Weekend Box Office Estimates 6/19 - 6/21

1 The Proposal BV $34,114,000
2 The Hangover WB $26,855,000
3 Up BV $21,336,000
4 Year One Sony $20,200,000
5 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 Sony $11,300,000
6 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Fox $7,300,000
7 Star Trek Par. $4,700,000
8 Land of the Lost Uni. $3,976,000
9 Imagine That Par. $3,100,000
10 Terminator Salvation WB $3,070,000