Archive for the 'Four Star Rating' Category
November 20, 2008 - 1:49 pm - Posted by Administrator
Since the first Batman movie starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, Hollywood has been attempting to recapture the magic of superhero movies. On occasion they’ve come close [Spiderman], and in other instances they’ve failed miserably [Fantastic Four].
Iron Man does not replace Batman at the top spot on my personal favorite superhero movie list, but it comes in a damn close second. It is the best adaptation of a comic book for the screen in many years. Director Jon Favreau, better known for his acting in roles like that of Vince Vaughn’s sidekick Mike Peters in the movie Swingers (Baby you are so money and you don’t even know it), does a fantastic job avoiding all of the pitfalls that have made other comic adaptations weak.
Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark–weapons designer and atomic playboy. To Favreau’s credit, he avoids the temptation to incorporate another protagonist into the story… there is no Robin or Batgirl. He does however allude to a possible future sidekick for Iron Man at one point in the movie where Terence Howard’s character Rhodey looks at the extra Iron Man suit in Stark’s workshop and says, “Maybe next time.” Jeff Bridges plays villain Obadiah Stane, and again the writers made the right choice in not incorporating more villains into the film, leaving plenty of time for character development.
After spending months in captivity in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, Downey’s Stark must find a way to escape. Forced to work on a missile in an insurgent’s cave, he instead builds a prototype of the Iron Man suit and uses it to escape. Upon returning to America, Stark has seen the error of his ways and announces to the world that he will retire from designing weapons, much to the chagrin of Obadiah Stane and the shareholders of Stark Industries. The decision to cease production of weapons systems forms the crux of the conflict, ultimately leading to the climactic battle between Iron Man and Obadiah Stane.
The special effects are fantastic in Iron Man but do not overpower the story. And perhaps it’s just my personal taste, but somehow a guy who builds a suit that allows him to fly is more believable to me than say, a guy who’s dosed with cosmic rays and suddenly finds himself with the ability to spontaneously combust, or stretch his own body to fantastic proportions. Technology is real, however distant. Super powers from genetic mutations are not. Or at least that’s the way I see it.
Robert Downey Jr. portrays Stark with the sarcastic wit that can only be Downey, Jeff Bridges’ bald Obadiah Stane screams “villain” from the opening scenes, and Gwyneth Paltrow plays Stark’s assistant Polly Potts with a skillful and yet subtle presence which doesn’t supercede the superhero storyline like Kirsten Dunst’ Mary Jane character did in the Spiderman movies.
Iron Man is fantastic and worthy of a sequel, something we get a hint of with a cameo by Samuel L. Jackson following the credits. Grab your popcorn and get ready for a wild ride, Iron Man is solid.
****Four Stars
Posted in 2008, Four Star Rating, superhero | No Comments »
October 17, 2008 - 2:24 am - Posted by Administrator
Rollerball is another bleak 1970’s depiction of a totalitarian future society. This time around it’s a corporate controlled world where war has been outlawed. Rollerball even leaves the existence of the United States as we know it in doubt. Corporations and the Executives make all decisions… every decision. Whether you can remain married to your wife for instance. Even books are tightly controlled.
James Caan plays Jonathan… the superstar in a futuristic sport called Rollerball. He has learned the lessons of corporate rule in a very personal way. Despite being handsomely paid and living a life of luxury, he yearns for a simple life with the wife his corporate rulers have barred him from seeing. His arranged relationship with an exotic beauty who doubles as his corporate minder leaves him empty. And yet Jonathan finds himself conflicted. He finds his only joy in life when he’s on the Rollerball floor, the sport which keeps him prisoner to a life he doesn’t want to lead.
It is 2018 and Rollerball is the violent spectacle which fascinates millions and costs players their lives. Players on skates are paired with riders on motorcycles. Their arena is a circular track where they compete against foreign corporate teams in a race to put a metal ball the size of a shotput into a two foot goal. The record for deaths in a single game is nine. Fans around the world watch the games on multiple-monitor flatscreens which hang on the wall, applauding every violent act. John Houseman plays Bartholomew, the villainous CEO in control of Jonathan’s team and his life. When Jonathan’s worldwide popularity peaks, Bartholomew demands his retirement from the game.
No player is greater than the game itself.
Jonathan has become a threat.
After a single viewing, Rollerball can be easily compared with other science fiction flicks of the sixties and seventies like Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451, and Planet of the Apes. After a couple of views it becomes apparent that Rollerball is actually superior in many respects. Portraying the mythology of an invented sport onscreen cannot be easy, but Rollerball director Norman Jewison pulls it off nicely. And if you can suspend your disbelief enough to buy the totalitarian nature of Rollerball’s society, the characters ring absolutely true in their words and actions. The hardest part to swallow is the overt nature of corporate control. It is an absolute contrast to movies of today, where corporations control our thoughts, minds, and purchasing habits from the shadows, many times without our knowledge. Every time I watch Rollerball, I wonder “Why wouldn’t everybody be revolting?” I mean, if Microsoft took over the world, we would all fight that, right? The gameplay sequences in Rollerball are excellent and are another reason I find this movie superior to others of the era… many of which seem to stretch on for hours without anything happening. Jewison takes advantage of exotic camera angles, tracking shots, and slow motion to dramatic effect.
One unfortunate misconception is a tendency by those unfamiliar with the movie to somehow confuse the game of “Rollerball” with the schlock sports-entertainment event roller derby. If you are unaware, the two are nothing alike with the exception of the skates and the shape of the track. One is a syndicated show for blondes who can’t find acting work, the other is an excellent science fiction movie.
In Rollerball, the questions abound–if you’re the biggest sports superstar in the world, do the rules really apply to you? Is a ‘Utopian’ society really Utopia? It should be noted that the 2002 re-make of Rollerball is absolutely horrendous and shares very little with the original aside from a title. Avoid it at all costs.
****Four Stars
Posted in 1975, Four Star Rating, The Future | No Comments »
August 23, 2008 - 4:51 am - Posted by Administrator
PBS’ Nova: Astrospies is a true story of space espionage that most have never heard. Despite my own ravenous consumption of anything space-oriented I confess, I hadn’t heard of it either.
At the dawn of the 1960’s, and as a direct result of the shootdown of Gary Francis Powers, the United States Air Force undertook a Cold War space project known as M.O.L. or Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Despite the scientific-sounding name, the real purpose of the MOL was to spy on the Soviet Union. A group of fourteen Air Force pilots were trained as astronauts and were only informed of their mission when they had passed their examination and selection processes.
In the era of Google Earth, it’s hard to imagine a time when live astronauts were required to take photos of Earth from orbit, but in 1960 the technology did not exist for an operator on the ground to take real-time photos with a camera orbiting on a satellite above. Either the satellite took the photos on it’s own–like Corona, the first US spy satellite, or an astronaut had to travel into orbit to take the photos. When Corona’s images were developed, the photos of strategic installations were sometimes obscured by clouds. Thus the choice was made to send astronauts into orbit to take reconnaisance photos.
In great detail, and featuring great animations taken from Air Force briefing films, Nova: Astrospies tells the story of MOL, and the Soviet Union’s competing program known as Almaz. It was in fact, a secret space race. Both programs were pursued in absolute secrecy, and included not only spying, but space warfare objectives which would be considered scandalous today. For instance a proposed objective of the US program was to test the feasibility of capturing a Soviet satellite and returning it to Earth for examination. The Soviets took it a step further and actually mounted a cannon on the Almaz.
By 1969 the MOL program was in the test-flight stage but years behind schedule. The delays had allowed another classified agency, The National Reconnaissance Office, to launch a competing program that would achieve the same goals without the need for a live astronaut. Six weeks before the Apollo 11 landing, MOL was cancelled unceremoniously without a single manned flight, ending America’s most secret space endeavour. The Soviet Almaz station continued until 1974 and actually launched spies into orbit. However the rapid development of video communications and photography eventually ended the Soviet Program as well.
Posted in Four Star Rating, TV Shows, reality scifi | No Comments »
March 9, 2008 - 9:35 pm - Posted by Administrator
Looking at the Mad Max trilogy as a whole, a few unusual things stand out. First, it’s one of the rare series flicks where episode two [The Road Warrior, aka Mad Max 2] was seen by a vastly larger audience than the original. And second, despite going through a transformative series of changes in tone, the Mad Max trilogy has single-handedly re-defined the post-apocalyptic film.
Director George Miller reportedly worked as an Emergency Room doctor in his native Australia to raise the money to film Mad Max. Through wise use of story and setting, the lack of funds barely shows–or at least not any more than your avergae low-budget movie. Max [Mel Gibson] is an Australian cop in a near-future where society is at it’s last stand. Roving gangs of bikers and hot rodders roam the highways of the Australian outback. Max and his fellow officers are the final hand of authority, attempting to maintain order from behind the wheel of their police interceptors.
Early in the movie Max chases down a gangleader named “The Night Rider”. With a methodical patience he hounds the Night Rider on the highway, bumping him from the rear, eventually causing him to lose control and crash in a fiery explosion. When Max’s family is killed by the gang in retaliation, he dusts of his ultimate pursuit vehicle, the co-star of the movie, the Ford Falcon Coupe XB GT, a car which has been manufactured by Ford in Australia since 1960. Not be confused with the US or Argentinian vehicles of the same name.
What ensues is a violent chase movie, set against the backdrop of rural Australia. Which brings me to an aside… In The Road Warrior [aka Mad Max 2] and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome [Mad Max 3], George Miller’s story, co-written by Byron Kennedy, does explain the post-apocalyptic nature of the setting to some degree, however Mad Max appears to happen in a world that is not-quite-post-apocalyptic–the grass is still green, crops are still growing, and most social order still exists. And then at the open of The Road Warrior, the world has been destroyed by a nuclear war. Unless I’m figuring wrong (which I could be), a nuclear war happened some time between Mad Max, and The Road Warrior. They should make a movie out of that story!
The real thrill of Mad Max is the amazing chase scenes and dozens of crashes, explosions, and violent death scenes. Max pursues the members of the gang relentlessly, never giving mercy, and never feeling a thing. Mad Max wasn’t a sensation at the box office, but it should be noted Mad Max arrived at about the same time as HBO and exposed a whole generation of young fans to a movie they probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And an interesting side note, the movie was originally shown to American audiences with Mel Gibson’s voice dubbed because producers were afraid Americans wouldn’t understand his Australian accent. The voice track has since been restored to Gibson’s original.
In essence Mad Max is a car movie. The soundtrack is little more than pistons and percussion, plus the cop sirens sound badass and futuristic somehow. Add in the right-drive Australian pursuit vehicles, and it’s a car-lovers paradise. As a childhood fan of movies like Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, and Vanishing Point, this one sat well with me growing up.
The tone and story are considerably different in each of the sequels, and if you’re like me, you may find yourself liking one and disliking the others. Originally, the sequel was released in the United States as “The Road Warrior” and only recently was it re-titled Mad Max 2, presumably to maximize DVD sales of Mad Max to an audience which has never given it more than cult status.
**** Four Stars ****
Posted in 1979, Environmental Disaster, Four Star Rating, Post-Apocalypse, The Future | No Comments »
February 24, 2008 - 8:31 pm - Posted by Administrator
1984 to 1985 was a very good time for Ron Howard as a Director. On the heels of mainstream success with 1984’s ‘Splash‘ starring Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks, 1985’s Cocoon became Ron Howard’s first massive smash, catapulting him to new levels as a Director who could write his own ticket in Hollywood.
Cocoon is a science-fiction film of the family-oriented variety, straight out of the Spielberg/Lucas school of movie-making. It boasts an all-star cast including Wilford Brimley, Jessica Tandy, Don Ameche, Brian Dennehy, and that staple of 1980’s movies–Steve Guttenberg. Even MTV Movie Award Lifetime Achievement winner Clint Howard has a role in Cocoon.
A group of St. Petersburg retirees has been trespassing, swimming in the pool at the vacant estate next to their assisted-living center. When a group of out-of-towners rent the estate, they think their swimming days are over. But soon they begin sneaking into the swimming pool and sharing the waters with strange egg-like artifacts collected from the ocean via Jack Bonner’s [Guttenberg] boat. In short fashion, they begin to notice youthful, energizing side effects from their swimming parties. And thus they are drawn into an amazing adventure about aliens and the fountain of youth.
Much as the bleak science fiction movies of the seventies reflected apprehension about the times, Cocoon seems to mirror the optimism of the early eighties with it’s uplifting attitude and fun-for-all-generations angle. Hardcore science fiction fans will probably find it all too vanilla but I enjoy this movie in much the same way I enjoyed Back to the Future or E.T. the Extraterrestrial. If you can handle your movies about Aliens, Immortality, and Atlantis all wrapped up in a shuffleboard and geriatrics storyline, then Cocoon is highly recommended.
**** Four Stars ****
Posted in 1985, Alien Contact, Atlantis, Four Star Rating, Suspended Animation | No Comments »
January 7, 2008 - 12:36 am - Posted by Administrator
After the world witnessed the horrors of the second World War, the science fiction genre became a psychological sounding board, reflecting nuclear nightmares and a fear of technology. Moviemakers populated their films with mushroom clouds and UFOs, harbingers of our inevitable technological doom. These are the movies I grew up with.
Unknown to me were the movies of the previous generation, the post-World War I movies which portrayed the horrors of the day. Poison gas attacks. Things to Come is one of those movies.
Filmed in 1935, and released in 1936, as Europe was on the brink of another World War, Things to Come is the story of one hundred years in Everytown, a city which is popularly believed to be a thinly-veiled London.
Things to Come is based on The Shape of Things to Come novel by H.G. Wells, and the movie was written by Wells himself. Director William Cameron Menzies [Around the World in 80 Days, Gone with the Wind] was said to have entertained Wells suggestions during the production process as well.
The story covers a timeline that stretches from 1936 to 2036, and that timeline is the main shortcoming of the script. The movie becomes an unceasing parade of new characters and they can become laborious to keep track of. In the beginning, Everytown is an idyllic community of peaceful citizens. They spend Christmas in fear of a war which eventually decimates the city. The war goes on for thirty years and is followed by a plague called the “Wandering Sickness” which runs rampant for years more. They slowly become isolated from the world, communication is cut off, and the survivors shun technology. Things to Come is, to my knowledge, the first post-apocalyptic science fiction film. Although many would argue Metropolis deserves that honor, this is the earliest one I ever saw which looked… dirty. Like Mad Max. A crucial component for any post-apocalypse picture.
Eventually the local techno-phobe warlord who rules Everytown is surprised by the appearance of a stranger in possession of high-technology–most notably, futuristic airplanes. The stranger is able to convince the citizens of Everytown that social order is making a comeback in other parts of the world, and technology plays a big part of it. He brings a message of hope for a future tech-savvy civilization–”Wings Over the World”.
After Everytown’s World War I-era air force is easily defeated by the highly-advanced Wings Over the World Air Force, the citizens embrace technology whole-heartedly and begin rebuilding Everytown Utopian-style, underground and highly futuristic. The movie comes to a conclusion in 2036 as humans prepare to send our first astronauts to the moon via a giant “Space Gun”, as yet another group of techno-phobe citizens threatens to revolt.
Many have called Things to Come cheesy, the story preachy, and the dialogue corny. All of those things are true at times. Honestly the choice of costumes for the futuristic characters is a little too Flash Gordon for my taste. I don’t get into the whole Toga-and-Shoulder-Pads look. And the dialogue is generally too wooden and, well, 1930s-ish. However, the real legacy of Things to Come is the look. If you were mesmerized by the visuals in the otherwise-terrible “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” then you will enjoy Things to Come. The first time I watched it, every ten minutes I had a light-bulb moment… “Oh, so that’s where they got the idea for that…”
Director Menzies would go on to contribute to the motion picture industry primarily as a producer, and especially in the field of Art Direction and Design. His flair for the artistic shows. The sets, models, and locations used in this movie are nearly unparalleled, and I had to keep reminding myself that this was a movie filmed in 1935. In Things to Come, you’ll see portrayals of Auto-Gyros (an early type of helicopter), super-highways, flying wings, elevated monorails, moving sidewalks, flat screen video monitors (transparent no less), and more. Watch for the 2036 scene where the guy turns on his video monitor to show his granddaughter what Everytown used to look like, and you can see through the screen from the back. Prophetic. Keep in mind, this is during a time when nobody had a television.
Anyway, this is not your movie if you need today’s special effects and dialogue. The sound is especially bad in this movie. But if you can appreciate it for its occasional moments, definitely check it out. It’s a science fiction classic. If I could split it up, I’d give it three stars for story, but four stars for the look.
Posted in 1930's, Four Star Rating, Post-Apocalypse, The Future | No Comments »
December 18, 2007 - 2:07 am - Posted by Administrator
A Sound of Thunder is a classic Ray Bradbury story, a tale of time travel and the dangers of corporate greed. Although the film came out in 2005, many movie fans are unaware of it. It made few waves at the box office, and when I asked my sci-fi friend Rat if he’d seen it, he said he hadn’t. I mean, that’s almost scientific. This movie is underground.
Actually, A Sound of Thunder is a Peter Hyams movie, and although I’m a big fan of some of his films [Outland - 1981, The Relic - 1997], this one is not his best.
Edward Burns stars as Travis Ryer, a scientist working for Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley), the CEO of “Time Safari”. Together, they take big-dollar clients on safaris to hunt dinosaurs, all the while being careful to “stay on the path”–a path which they must not step off lest they alter the past, and possibly the present. When something goes wrong, a client accidentally alters the past, and soon time waves are rippling through the present as the world changes in terrifying and unexpected ways. And this is where the movie starts to dissolve into a mess.
A Sound of Thunder tries too hard to be all things to all people, which comes as no surprise considering the screenplay was written by three people. It’s a science fiction time travel film. It’s a dinosaur movie. It’s a monster movie. And the hardest thing to take… it’s a CGI-heavy vision of the year 2055, and in places, the computer effects are almost too good. There are several scenes early in the movie where characters are having discussion outside on the sidewalk, and the computer-generated traffic going by in the background is so distracting that I couldn’t pay attention to the dialogue. The lighting is too good, the cars are too clean, and the traffic noise is too quiet. Plus there are little continuity errors that bugged me as I watched. For instance, to travel through time, the travelers strap themselves into some kind of sled and get shot into a time tunnel, but when they come out the other end, they are inexplicably on foot.
I frequently hear complaints from critics when movies move too slow and trudge on for three hours… this is one of the rare flicks I think they could have taken more time on. It clocks in at 105 minutes, and another twenty minutes could have produced more character definition and a smoother transition between some of the action sequences which come later in the film and seem almost forced into a pre-determined pace.
I should say, I’ve watched this movie twice now, so despite the negative things I’ve said about it, I’ll give it four stars because it was good enough to watch twice.
*** Four Stars
Posted in 2005, Four Star Rating, The Future, Time Travel | No Comments »
December 13, 2007 - 10:23 pm - Posted by Administrator
This movie had the misfortune of being “that other virtual reality movie” at a time when everybody was salivating over The Matrix. Unfortunately, that meant this movie was largely overlooked.
Craig Bierko plays Douglas Hall, a computer scientist working on an intelligent, autonomous computer simulation of 1930’s Los Angeles. Humans can experience and interact with the simulation through virtual reality immersion.
Hall’s boss, Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl), meets an untimely end, and Hall is forced to enter the computer simulation, hunting for clues about the death of his mentor. Gretchen Mol plays Fuller’s daughter, and Vincent D’Onofrio steals scenes as Hall’s long-haired assistant Whitney.
Hall’s investigation leads him to question human existence and the nature of being “alive”. There’s also a small matter regarding what happens if you die while plugged into “the simulation”, but I won’t spoil it for you. This is another science fiction movie with a surprise ending that will knock you out… if you don’t figure it out first.
Mol, Bierko, and D’Onofrio all portray multiple characters in this film, and they all pull it off swimmingly. Recommended viewing. I almost gave it five stars.
**** Four Stars
Posted in 1999, Artificial Intelligence, Four Star Rating, Surprise Ending, The Future, Virtual Reality | No Comments »
December 13, 2007 - 8:42 pm - Posted by Administrator
The Postman had two strikes against it when it hit theatres in 1997. First, Kevin Costner was the star and director at a time when his choice of roles [Waterworld], and his reportedly flimsy acting skills were the subject of tabloid chatter. Second, it opened in theatres on the same day as Titanic. I acutally went and checked it out by myself that night (my wife was out of town) and I was all alone in the theatre. They had Titanic running on eight of the other screens in the same cinema complex.
The actual script for the Postman is pretty good. Be warned, this one is also an epic and clocks in at 177 minutes.
It is 2013 and war and plagues have wiped out civilization as we once knew it on Earth. The United States of America no longer exists. Survivors have retreated from the cities to fortified rural communities and forts.
Costner plays The Postman, a drifter who stumbles onto a wrecked postal truck one night while searching for shelter in a freezing rainstorm. He dons the cold weather clothing from the corpse in the drivers’ seat and entertains himself by reading the mail. When he later tries to gain access to a gated rural community, he is forced to con his way in by making up a story about delivering the mail for the “Restored United States”. And that is where the story truly begins, the story of liberty’s triumph over the forces of tyranny–the villain General Bethlehem played excellently by Will Patton. The movie also features an early onscreen performance by a relatively unknown Giovanni Ribisi.
One small drawback of this movie would be the decidely non-science fiction setting. The vehicles of choice in The Postman are horses, and most of the action takes place outdoors. But for those who love post-apocalyptic sci-fi like Mad Max, I Am Legend, and The Omega Man this movie is an absolute must-view.
**** Four Stars
Posted in 1997, Environmental Disaster, Four Star Rating, Pandemic, Post-Apocalypse, The Future | No Comments »
