Movie Reviews

The Tree of Life (2011)

the-tree-of-life_510 — This collage poster is such a true representation of this film.

Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan

Directed by Terrence Malick

Expectations: Low. I don’t consider myself a Malick fan. I hated The Thin Red Line so much that it took fourteen years to even consider watching another of his films.

Within the first few minutes of The Tree of Life, I knew exactly how I’d feel about it when I arrived at the ending. I’ve only seen one Malick film prior to this, The Thin Red Line, and I thought it was an unintelligible mess. I was a teenager on a full diet of Hong Kong action films though, so lately I’ve thought that a re-watch as a thoughtful adult would reveal a better film. Cue the release of Malick’s latest film The Tree of Life, allowing me to give him another shot without the pain of re-watching something I previously despised. I knew I was in for a bad ride though, when only a few minutes into the film I got the same, confused feeling I had all those years ago in a cinema watching The Thin Red Line, wondering how the images on-screen were supposed to coalesce into meaning.

The Tree of Life‘s plot isn’t really one to bang out into a single paragraph at first glance, but on reflection there isn’t much of a plot. There’s also no real scenes in the classic sense. Or dialogue. The Tree of Life is probably the most high-profile experimental film of all time. It all opens with the death of Brad Pitt & Jessica Chastain’s kid, one of their three boys. Which one we don’t know, or if we do, I missed it. We then connect with Sean Penn, another of their children, now all grown up. Penn thinks back to his childhood and before you know it, we’re watching a nearly fifteen minute sequence depicting the creation of the universe before we jump into the real film at Penn’s character’s birth.

The Killer Eye (1999)

Starring Jacqueline Lovell, Jonathan Norman, Nanette Bianchi, Costas Koromilas, Blake Adams, Ryan Van Steenis, Dave Oren Ward, Roland Martinez

Directed by David DeCoteau (as Richard Chasen)

Expectations: Low, I’ve heard this one is one of the poorest Full Moon films.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

The Killer Eye is the epitome of a trashy movie. It plays like a textbook example of film filler, with maybe a half hour of actual story and the rest of the film ballooned out into an 80-minute feature with consecutive, extended tentacle-fondling scenes. The only explanation is that every time there was an issue with the story or the film’s production, producer Charles Band must have answered with “Throw in another tentacle scene.” It kind of works for this movie though, because despite all of its shortcomings it remains entertaining overall. I suppose your mileage will vary depending on how much you like gigantic killer eyes peering out of vents and zapping people in the eyes though.

The film opens with a deliberate Re-Animator vibe, complete with an opening title sequence with medical diagrams and whimsical music like the far superior Stuart Gordon film of 1985. In The Killer Eye, a scientist hoping to prove the existence of the 8th dimension, tries out some chemicals in the eye of a street punk that should theoretically allow him to look through the doc’s microscope and into the 8th dimension. I didn’t see it coming, but get this– shit goes wrong and instead of only being able to see the 8th dimension, something is able to break thru into our world! Seriously, never woulda guessed that would happen! Anyway, the street punk’s eye grows to gigantic size (complete with long, dangling eye-stalk tentacles) and scuttles away into the air vents, which instantly makes me think of the eye rolling through the vents on the wheeled contraption that Klaus Kinski used to navigate the vents in Crawlspace. So far so good…

Mini-Review: Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (2011)

Starring Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter, Sona Movsesian, Jimmy Vivino, Scott Healy, Mike Merritt, James Wormworth, Jerry Vivino, Mark Pender, Richie Rosenberg, Rachael L. Hollingsworth, Fredericka Meek

Directed by Rodman Flender

Expectations: High, I love Conan.

I’ve been a Conan fan for years. I remember staying up much too late nearly every night when I was in high school to watch his show. He represented a brand of comedy not found in any other late night show and I absolutely loved it. Older people thought he was dumb and it made him that much cooler. Conan was willing to go the extra mile, pushing himself and the Late Night team to create some of the funniest bits I’ve ever seen on TV. Conan achieved mythic status long ago as a favorite of mine, so when there’s a documentary capturing a bit of his post-Tonight Show tour, you can bet I’m finsta watch it.

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop is an absorbing documentary in that, like Conan, it’s more about entertaining the audience than providing a deconstruction of the man. Viewers do gain insight into some of what makes Conan Conan, but it never goes too deep. It’s a road movie, a document of the tour, so it feels closer to a music documentary than anything else. Thankfully I enjoy both road movies and the performing arts, so Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop is right up my alley. It never stops being thoroughly entertaining, much in the same way that Conan can’t ever seem to say no to anyone or anything.

Where the film falls a bit short is in its shallowness. While the film can’t stop entertaining its viewers, there isn’t a lot of meaty documenting going on. As this isn’t an Obama campaign trail doc, this lack of depth makes sense, but it does hold back the film from being as powerful as it might have been. That really wasn’t the plan here though, so it’s somewhat unfair to hold these ideals over the filmmaker’s heads. It just feels a little too cotton-candy for me to completely sign off on it, and I say this from a position of supreme enjoyment of the film. You definitely get shades of depth here and there which reveal the type of character Conan possesses, such as when Conan plays with his kids, or when he interacts with barbed insult jokes aimed directly at his tireless staff, but it’s just not enough to call this intellectually compelling.

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop isn’t going to light the world on fire, and I can’t see anyone who isn’t already a fan enjoying it, but it is one hell of a good time. It moves quickly and is edited together rather well, as Conan and the rest of the gang put on a clever show based around a tumultuous, bitter situation. The movie serves as a great document of the times as any good documentary should, showing glimpses of Conan that a TV or live audience will never see, and for that, it is absolutely required viewing for any big Conan fan.

Shaolin (2011)

Shaolin [新少林寺] (2011)

Starring Andy Lau, Nicholas Tse, Fan Bing-Bing, Wu Jing, Shi Yanneng, Yu Shaoqun, Xiong Xin-Xin, Yu Hai, Bai Bing, Jackie Chan

Directed by Benny Chan

Expectations: High. A big-budget Shaolin Temple remake? OK!

Benny Chan’s Shaolin is an interesting film. It’s got the look and the feel of a big Hollywood feature, but its subject matter is firmly rooted in the cultural history of China. It also features action and martial arts scenes that harken back to the 90s heyday of Hong Kong action cinema. Unfortunately as a whole Shaolin isn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Shaolin is a loose remake of the 1982 film Shaolin Temple, the film that introduced Jet Li to the Chinese moviegoing public. I haven’t seen Shaolin Temple in a good fifteen years so I can’t comment on whether this follows the same story or if it does a good job of adapting the tale to fit its needs. A quick glance at the Wikipedia synopsis shows that while there are certain elements that carry over, Shaolin is basically a new story.

Andy Lau plays a ruthless general who values little over wealth and power. He’s our main character (and the hero) but this doesn’t become apparent until about forty-five minutes in or so. This makes for a strange, somewhat off-putting opening section of the film that I think would have better served the story if it had been tightened up. I understand the reasoning behind structuring the film as they do and it does lay great groundwork for scenes later in the film, but for the movie to not have a distinct identity until forty-five minutes in is a bit odd.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983)

Starring Jeffrey Byron, Michael Preston, Tim Thomerson, Kelly Preston, Richard Moll, R. David Smith, Larry Pennell, Marty Zagon, Mickey Fox, William Jones, Winston Jones

Directed by Charles Band

Expectations: High. With a name like “Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn”, it has to be good.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

Pitch your tent and start your fires, it’s about to get campy! Coming off the high-brow 3D horror flick Parasite, Charles Band, never one to rest on his laurels, set out to create another 3D epic for the ages. This time he set his sights on the science fiction genre, specifically Mad Max and Star Wars (Technically, I don’t classify Star Wars as science fiction, but that doesn’t matter for this review). The result is the ultra-camp, ultra-fun Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, and it’s one hell of a film.

Summarizing the plot in any depth would require a re-watch as its intricacies aren’t something I was able to keep up with on the first go-round, but the gist is this: Dogen (Jeffrey Byron) is a space ranger hunting the evil Jared-Syn. Along the way he runs into a girl whose father was just murdered by Jared-Syn. They team up and set out on the adventure of a lifetime amid the arid wastes of some post-apocalyptic planet. That’s the overall, but to look at it in such a way belittles the power of the movie. Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn isn’t about “Plot Point A” leading into “Plot Point B.” It’s about an alien with a retractable claw-hand that shoots out green hallucinogenic acid. It’s about Dogen hooking up with the Han Solo-esque Rhodes (Tim Thomerson) in a seedy alien bar in the desert (nothing familiar about that one). It’s about fucking awesome car chases with vehicles crudely fashioned from scrap metal and old VW parts. The awesome literally never stops in this film, so I frankly could not care less if it all makes sense. It’s a popcorn movie that succeeds handily, and if that’s what Band set out to make, then it should be applauded. Do purely fun goals make a film any less worthy of praise than one with more artistic goals? Not on your sai-wielding cyclops’s life. (Yes, there are a bunch of cyclopes in this too, see what I mean? Nothing but awesome.)

The Invisible Man (1933)

Starring Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry Travers, Una O’Connor, Forrester Harvey, Holmes Herbert, E.E. Clive, Duddley Digges, Harry Stubbs, Donald Stuart, Merle Tottenham

Directed by James Whale

Expectations: High. I remember enjoying quite a bit as a kid.

After watching all those Hammer films over the course of Horrific October, I couldn’t help but watch at least one of the old Universal films that I loved so much as a kid. The Invisible Man wasn’t one I watched over and over like The Mummy, instead I only saw this one once roughly twenty years ago. I remembered it being very fun and engaging, but y’know, I was ten and my standards aren’t what they used to be, so it was due time for a re-watch.

The Invisible Man tells the tale of a scientist gone mad and an experiment gone awry. It is a simple story, but one that requires an incredible amount of trickery on the part of the filmmakers to effectively pull it off. In this film director James Whale and the special effects team achieved amazing feats heretofore unseen in cinema that continue to impress nearly eighty years after release. There’s an element of “How’d they do that?” to a lot of the FX work, and in such an old film, that’s pretty damn impressive! It’s so interesting to watch this film as the FX nerd that I am, as I come in with the knowledge that chroma key compositing (blue screen) simply wasn’t invented yet. The effects on display are the result of genuine ingenuity and remain incredibly influential and impressive.

The Thing (1982)

Starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Donald Moffat, Richard Masur, David Clennon, Charles Hallahan, Joel Polis, T.K. Carter, Richard Dysart, Thomas G. Waites, Peter Maloney

Directed by John Carpenter

Expectations: High. Seen this a few times, but it’s been about eight years or so since the last time.

As I mentioned in my review of Cigarette Burns, John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors. Before I had really ventured into the depths of horror filmmaking, Carpenter was there to introduce me to the genre proper. Sure, I had seen Universal monster movies and a few honest horror flicks as a kid, but it was this film and Prince of Darkness that really opened my eyes to the possibilities of horror. I was first exposed to his brand of cinema a few years earlier still, when trolling around the local video store during my elementary school years and my eyes fell upon the VHS box for Big Trouble in Little China. I instantly loved the movie just based on that art. I begged and pleaded to take it home and eventually wore my parents down. I was not let down by that film and I watched it a few times over the next couple of years. I never forgot the name that came up prior to the title, announcing that the film you were watching was the vision of a singular character, this mysterious figure named John Carpenter. Flash forward a few years to when I noticed that same name on The Thing and Prince of Darkness and I’ve never looked back. Carpenter is the first director I remember obsessing over, and he’s still got a very special place in my heart.

The Thing follows a research group stationed in Antarctica, opening with grand landscape shots and a helicopter tracking a dog across the vast snow fields. When a man leans out of the chopper and fires at the dog, we know some foul shit is afoot. The Thing is brilliant in its plotting, cutting out any extraneous bullshit and getting right down to the interesting stuff. As this opening scene unfolds we are introduced to our main group of characters, including Kurt Russell, Keith David and the Quaker Oats man himself, Wilford Brimley. The Thing is easily one of Carpenter’s best films, coming at a creative high after four fantastic films (Assault on Precinct 13 thru Escape From New York). The Thing succeeds because it is a very classically made picture, evoking the slow, careful pacing of an older generation, and thus requiring a different type of investment than your standard horror/sci-fi fare. The Thing is a slow-burn but incredibly rewarding, dishing out intense scenes and killer special FX.