Category: Films

Pauly Shore Is Dead [2003]

Director: Pauly Shore
Actor: Pauly Shore

This film stars Pauly Shore, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Sean Penn, Fred Durst, Chris Rock, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Sizemore, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Johnny Sanchez, and the list goes on and on and on…

This film was a hilarious, self-deprecating film, made by Pauly Shore. I used to love Pauly Shore, and I almost forgot about him until I ran across this film in which he kills himself in order to revive his career. He’s got a lot of celebraties to talk smack about him. Really forgotten motherfuckers, too…like Rico Suave! I laughed my ass off, but I think that might have been the mood I was in.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) [2004]

Director: Jonathan Demme
Actor: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Jeffrey Wright, Jon Voight

First off, I’d like to tell you the story of the original Manchurian Candidate from 1962, starring Frank Sinatra, directed by John Frankenheimer; The film, because of it’s rather sensitive subject matter was not going to be produced because the president of United Artists, Arthur Krim, was also Finance Chairman of the Democratic party and very politically inclined. As a personal favour to his friend Sinatra, President Kennedy convinced Krim that it was alright to make the film. The film was supposed to be a satire, but got a grim overtone when after the release of the film Kennedy was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald, whom many conspiracy theorist claim was a Manchurian Candidate. The film stayed in circulation until the late seventies, when the rights to the film reverted to Sinatra, who halted distribution, giving rise to all kinds of speculation. After his death, the rights fell into the hands of Tina Sinatra, Frank’s daughter, who was one of the producers of the 2004 remake.

The film is about Major Ben Marco [Denzel Washington], who, together with his squadron, was ambushed in Kuwait in 1991 while on a reconnaisance mission. He was knocked unconscious and only through the brave efforts of Sgt. Shaw [Liev Schreiber] – a son of a US senator who, in a fit of rebellion against his dominant mother ran away from home and enlisted in the army, refusing an officer’s position – did the squadron survive with only two casualties and made it through the desert on a three day trek to safety. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest award a soldier can hope to achieve.

When Ben is confronted, years later, by one of the soldiers from his squadron, the confused Pvt. Al Melvin, who seems confused, paranoid and claims to have lucid dreams of brainwashing, he, too, starts to have dreams that seem more real than the events surrounding the ambush he remembers experiencing.

Meanwhile Sgt. Shaw is now Congressman Shaw, having been shoehorned into politics by his influential mother Senator Pretiss Shaw [Sterile Creep] and will be on the presidential election ticket as running mate.

Unable to get back in contact with Pvt. Melvin, Ben tries to get in contact with Shaw, since it seems he is the only other surviving member of the squadron besides Melvin and himself. At first Shaw gives him the cold shoulder, but later, out of respect for his former commanding officer, decides to talk about the dreams Ben’s having over take-away food. Having found an implanted chip in his shoulder earlier that day, Ben comes across as paranoid and confused, and while Shaw is campaigning he can’t have any distractions, nor can he afford to induldge in Ben’s delusions. Ben claims Shaw, too, has an implant in his shoulder and when Shaw refuses to let Ben check, he attacks him.

Slowly Ben is losing his mind, and he’s trying to part fact from fiction as his drive for the truth becomes more and more obsessed. Slowly he starts finding out the truth about the ambush in the Kuwaiti desert, and he tries with all his might to convince people that his discoveries could prove to be a danger to the sovereignty of the country.

Training Day, John Q, Man on Fire, Manchurian Candidate. Denzel Washington is proving by and large that he is a fine actor, and I have no doubt that, if he keeps this up, in the years ahead he’ll earn many more oscars that he can put with the two he already has.

Liev Schreiber, whom I had only before seen in the Scream series, proves to be a hell of a good actor, and Sterile Creep isn’t as jarring as she normally is in films, and actually preformed really well.

Man on Fire [2004]

Director: Tony Scott
Actor: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke

Wow, this film, a remake of a 1987 film of the same name, starring nobody, oh and Joe Pesci, is pretty damned violent for an American blockbuster. Not Michael Bay or Sylvester Stallone violent, but nasty, gritty violent.

Denzel Washington plays Creasy, an ex-military man whose record is as impressive as it is scary. Intelligence, counter-terrorism, covert ops; the works.

If alarmbells aren’t ringing with you yet, it means you weren’t conscious throughout the 80s and early-90s, when films about these types were wide spread and saturated the screen. Usually tough as nails, strong and silent types, who kill for revenge without feeling or remorse, those films were about body-count. Commando, is a good example, where Schwartzenegger murders an entire island of people to get his daughter back.

Denzel, in stark contrast to Schwartzenegger, can really act, which makes this relatively straight forward film worth while. Oh, and Tony Scott, too, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Creasy is indeed an ex-military man with incredible skill. He’s also a complete fucking drunk, unable to get through the night without a bottle of Johnny Walker at his side. He’s a burn out, washed up and not worth much. He goes to visit his friend Rayburn, who moved to Mexico years back. The reason, he claims, was a whim, but the impression is built that he’s fighting some terrible, terrible deamons. He searches out the one man with whom he can talk about the things he’s done and seen. In contrast to Creasy, Rayburn is a jovial fellow, dealing with the same deamons, but in a far less destructive manner.

Rayburn arranges for Creasy to work as a bodyguard for the daughter of an Mexican industrialist, Ramos, who’s facing financial trouble. Creasy’s cheap, compared to others, because he drinks. Ramos can’t afford the expensive bodyguards but he still wants to make his wife, a demanding Americana, happy, and keep his daughter in the best safety he can afford. In Mexico City, there’s one kidnapping per 60 minutes, the intro of the film tells us, not politically motivated, like in Colombia, but strictly for money.

Pita, Ramos’ daughter, slowly becomes good friends with Creasy, and teaches him that it’s okay to live again, to love again and to take a little joy in life. Of course the girl gets kidnapped ten minutes after he feels confident enough to live a little and he spends the rest of the film getting revenge on the ones who kidnapped her out from under his care, leaving him to die, and killing her when the money-drop goes sour.

Denzel Washington is amazing. He’s a brilliant actor, but the other half of what makes this film is Tony Scott’s brilliant cinematography. The film is quickly cut, panic-ee and…well, it’s like Traffic, but it uses a lot of sub-titling. Americans – and most English speaking people – don’t like subtitling, so he’s done it in a very clever way, reminding me of the title sequence to Seven.

If you like action films, and you don’t mind a little depth, then I highly recommend this film.

AvP: Alien vs Predator [2004]

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Actor: Sanaa Lathan

It’s been a while since I’ve offered a movie review – in fact, it’s been a while since I posted here, period – and that’s partly because I’ve been busy, but also because I just haven’t seen that many noteworthy movies. If a movie doesn’t appeal to me, I usually won’t write a derecommendation, unless it’s really really bad. With AvP I’m not entirely sure what it’ll be yet. Having sat next to two archaeologists, I had a really good time with this film, but mostly because it’s so incredibly riddled with ridiculous shit that it becomes funny. In fact, the movie is a pretty terrible, run-of-the-mill, get-a-bunch-of-pretty-people-in-a-difficult-situation-and-watch-them-squirm, film, much like Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is guaranteed to be terrible for the same reason.

However,…

…it is Aliens vs Predators; two of the coolest alien adversaries created on the silver screen since…forever. As everyone knows by now, the AvP is a film based on computer game. When that computer game came out around the turn of the century I was incredibly sceptical. These two, seemingly disconnected alien entities in the same game/film? Like Sigourney Weaver said; that sounds awful. But then I spoke to Veed, and he told me about the comic book. Comic book? Yeah, comic book. There’s a comic book. And the background of this comic book isn’t even half that bad. Predators use aliens for the hunt, and them as prey for their rights of passage. Kill one of these things and you’re no longer a youth; you’re an adult. Okay, interesting.

The film tells a story of a polar expedition going to excavate and research a pyramid found on the antarctic, one that’s shown up on sattelites as having a strange, unnatural heatsource. In go the researches who stumble upon what is essentially an Egyptian pyramid on steroids. Complete with sliding walls, pit-traps and rolling boulders the likes of which will make Indiana Jones salivate in glee. Essentially, the pyramid is made for the hunt; a complex labyrinth that changes every ten minutes. All meant for an exciting and challenging hunt. In the bowels of the place there’s a hostage; an Alien queen, whose soul purpose is to squeeze out pods from which facehuggers come. Facehuggers create chestbursters in almost anything they can find, and hey presto the boys can become men provided they kick the shit out of these aliens.

The film is kind of campy, but it has awoken an apetite in me to learn more about the background of this war between Aliens and Predators, so I guess it’s not all bad.

The Chronicles of Riddick [2004]

Director: David Twohy
Actor: Vin Diesel, Judi Dench, Karl Urban, Thandie Newton

Pitch Black was a surprise success, attributed to, among other things, the edginess of the good/bad guy Riddick. It didn’t take long for the results from the focus groups to come in which basically all said; We Want More Riddick! Now!

In Pitch Black, Riddick seemed capable of doing almost everything. He was superhuman, superfast, supersmart and super-badass. But it wasn’t annoying because he was surrounded by people who were obviously his inferiors. In Pitch Black Riddick was an exceptional guy.

Enter Chronicles of Riddick, set five years after Pitch Black. Riddick, Jack, and the Imam got off the planet and made their way towards Helion Prime, where New Mecca was. The Imam would take care of young Jack and Riddick left them once they were at Helion Prime because as much as Riddick cared for the young girl Jack, he would always have bountyhunters after him. Five years later, Riddick is living on a frozen planet, alone, just the way he likes it, until a group of mercs come looking for the bounty on his head.

He, familiar with the lay of the land and anticipating a day like this, easily defeats the mercs and finds out who’s put the bounty on his head. It appears to be a certain Imam from Helion Prime. Devasted Riddick heads for Helion Prime to get some answers. He finds out that the Imam, together with a mysterious Elemental*, played by Judi Dench, a mysterious race of super-intelligent, psuedo-corporeal beings, are trying to figure out a way to stop the Necromongers, a war-like race, made up from different people from different worlds they conquered and destroyed, while searching for their promised land, a dimension called Underverse**. They pillage and scorch world after world, assimilating the survivors in their army, brainwashing them and having them swear allegiance to their dark God.

The Elemental is looking for the last of the Furians, a race of natural warriors, stubborn, war-like and according to the prophecy the only one to stop the Necromongers from killing off the entire universe in search of their Underverse. It is said, a young warrior once asked a visionary about his future. The visionary told him that a Furian would be his downfall, so the young warrior created an army to rival all armies and destroyed the entire Furian system, all planets, and all Furians, those who would not be assimilated were killed. Except for one, who had a nack of escaping; Riddick. This young warrior is the Lord Marshall, the supreme commander of the Necromongers.

At first, of course, Riddick is all like “This is not my fight,” and “Stay the hell away from me,” but it seems the Lord Marshall, as soon as he finds out he missed a Furian in his genocidal spree, wants Riddick dead. Riddick meanwhile is concerned only with one thing; Jack, now known as Kyra, who, eager to immitate her childhood hero Riddick, is a known, convicted killer, living on Crematoria, a prison planet where the the day time sees temperatures of over 700 degrees Celcius, and nighttime temperatures of minus 350.

Meanwhile there’s the story of Lord Vaako and his Dame, played by Karl Urban and Thandie Newton, who are plotting to have the Lord take over the Lord Marshall’s place. Lord Vaako has also been ordered by the Lord Marshall to find the Furian. Good stuff.

This film is not good. It’s not bad, but it’s not good, neither. You get the feeling of a tremendously rich, and well-thought out universe, but it never really shows, never really making this film shine. It’s a beautiful film, with a lot of really cool concepts and elements in it. It’s sort of like a cross between Warhammer 40,000, Stargate and the Fifth Element in the way it looks and feels and it even has a bit of Dune thrown in for good measure. I think I’m going to try and find the animation Chronicles of Riddick, The Dark Fury, which is piece to cover the gap between Pitch Black and the Chronicles of Riddick, and gives more insight into Riddick’s character. If only because I want to see more of that universe.

* Apparently, Vin Diesel being a D&D buff, he, Judi Dench and David Twohy played D&D while on the set, in order for Vin Diesel to explain Elementals to them. Judi Dench’s character is basically a play on the Air Elementals from the Monster’s Manual.

** The Underverse, I think, is like the land of the dead. The name “necromongers” sort of implies that they have a tight link to the dead, which is supported by the notion that while, being assimilated, it hurts until the process of assimilation is over, and then it hurts no more. Perhaps they are killed when assimilated, their pain being taken away in death.