“Perhaps there is truth in this illusion.”

The Scoop: 2006 PG-13, directed by Neil Burger and starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Bie

Tagline: Nothing is what it seems

Summary Capsule: Ed Norton grows a neato beard and uses it to seduce the finacee of the Crown Prince of Austria. Oh, and there’s something about making ghosts appear in there, too.

PoolMan’s Rating: Do Paul Giamatti’s teeth move completely independently of his mouth, or what?

PoolMan’s Review: In this modern, crazy, hectic world we live in, we don’t want anything that’s not battery powered, self diagnosing, invertable, reusable, and made of 100% entirely recycled Justin beard hair. We like our products feature packed, cool, and above all else, tricky.

It was probably in this spirit that M Night PlayStation began the new wave of movies with twist or trick endings. Not content to simply let a movie come to a logical and (at least possibly) predictable end, our dear Sixth Sense auteur began a trend of movies where the climax would leap out from behind a bush and yell BOO at us rather than make any kind of sense. In essence, movies have taken a turn towards becoming guessing games, where we try desperately to guess how it’s all going to end based on the info we’ve got, only to have some non sequitur piece of action withheld from us until the very final frame. Mysteries are only fun to unravel if you have all the means to do so.

The Illusionist takes a shot at having some fun with this trend while not completely leaving the audience in the dark or without legitimate clues. Set in Austria in the late 19th century, a man named Eisenheim the Illusionist discovers his childhood sweetheart (now a noblewoman) is engaged to marry the brutal and unloving crown prince, heir to the throne, as a political maneuver. Eisenheim uses his amazing stage presence and flair for magic to embarrass the prince, steal his love out from under his nose, and finally show him for the tyrant he is. The prince sets Chief Inspector Uhl to the task of undoing Eisenheim, a job the policeman doesn’t relish, seeing as he is unabashedly admiring of the magician and ashamed of his patron, yet loyal to his country.

What I really like about The Illusionist is that if you’re paying attention, it leaves all its clues in the open. All of them. It is actually possible to guess how things will end with the info we’re presented. There’s no “surprise, it’s actually the 21st century!” at the end of this one, only a possible (if implausible) ending that’s as much an illusion as any of the stage shows we witness throughout the movie.

I was also really surprised by how much I enjoyed the performances. Jessica Biel manages to survive without ever appearing in a pair of tight jeans and does a fine job as Sophie, and Rufus Sewell spits and eye-bulges his way through being a complete jackass as the prince. Ed Norton is well suited to his quiet role as Eisenheim, and manages to convey a lot about the character through his presentation and less through his dialogue. What really nailed it for me was Paul Giamatti as Uhl. Giamatti did a terrific job with what could have been a thankless role and comes extremely close to making the movie about his character instead of the titular magician. It could even be argued that Uhl IS the main character, and that speaks volumes about Giamatti’s performance. The look on his face at the end as he realizes what’s happened is utterly real, and sells the illusions of the previous two hours beautifully.

It may not be a movie to watch every week with friends, but it’s a solid film to see at least once. The recap at the end handholds the audience to the point of possibly negating a second viewing, but it’s still a very fun flick. Put on your thinking cap and see if you can figure it out.

“Now, you just put this little red riding hood on, and I’ll come in dressed as the big bad wolf. Nah, baby, this won’t get weird!”

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

• Edward Norton did many of his own magic tricks, with the coaching of James Freedman. He worked with Edward Norton preparing him for his stage performances and acted as a hand double in numerous situations.
• In the scene where Uhl reports to the prince in the woods, the word “fornicating” doesn’t quite match with the prince’s lips…
• Crib notes from Shakespeare much?
• Nice brooch!
• The Chinese stage hands seem utterly convincing that they don’t know how any of the tricks are done. So… why are they there?
• Spoilers!
  At the end of the movie, we are finally presented with the information that Eisenheim’s illusions really are just cleverly executed practical special effects. He is not a real magician, his tricks are based in science.
  However, although we can guess, it’s never actually stated outright how Eisenheim’s “Sword in the Stone” trick is achieved. There is an audio hint suggesting an electromagnet is used. Electromagnets were first used in the 1820′s, so this is feasible. It becomes a question of whether Eisenheim guessed Leopold would be so rude to him during a show, and how he activates/deactivates the magnet. (or installs it, for that matter… this was back at Leopold’s castle, remember…)
  Also, it’s never made clear how the “ghosts” are summoned. Is the method the police come up with just a cruder version of how it was actually done? It’s not really stated.

  [end spoilers]

Groovy Quotes

Eisenheim: Everything you have seen here has been an illusion.

Chief Inspector Uhl: Promise me you won’t do it again.
Eisenheim: I promise you you’ll enjoy this next show.

Young Sophie: Make us disappear!

Chief Inspector Uhl: You don’t know that.
Eisenheim: No. But you do.

Crown Prince Leopold: He has tricked you, it is all an illusion!
Chief Inspector Uhl: Perhaps there is truth in this illusion.

Crown Prince Leopold: [dressed as a commoner] How do I look?
Chief Inspector Uhl: Ordinary, sir. Very ordinary.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• The Prestige
• The Sixth Sense
• The Usual Suspects
• Fight Club

“You’re a detective? Great help me find my pants.”

The Scoop: 1994 PG-13, directed by Jonathan Lynn and starring Michael J. Fox, Kirk Douglas, Olivia d’Abo, Nancy Travis, Phil Hartman, and Jere Burns

Tagline: Where there’s a will…there’s a relative.

Summary Capsule: An average guy ends up in the middle of his family’s insane obsession with inheriting his uncle’s millions.

Eunice’s Rating: “For the love of money is the root of all evil…”

Eunice’s Review: Uncle Joe (Kirk Douglas) is rich, like really really rich. Having no children of his own, his nieces and nephews spend their lives kowtowing to Uncle Joe and stabbing eachother in the back like it’s an Olympic sport. In turn Uncle Joe treats them with unmasked contempt, and revels in the fact that they’ll take whatever crap he dishes out because they’re just waiting to swoop in as soon as he croaks like a flock of buzzards. It’s what all their parents did and they force their children to follow in their footsteps. Except for Daniel Sr. Daniel Sr. never grovelled for Uncle Joe, and Joe loved him and his son Danny for it. So when they had a falling out and parted ways it broke a piece of Uncle Joe’s heart.

And so the family live in repetitive hate for years until the boat is rocked. See, Uncle Joe has hired a “nurse” named Molly (Olivia d’Abo), a young beautiful British woman who showed up as the pizza delivery girl and Joe invited to live at his house. Now afraid that Joe’ll give her everything in his will, the cousins decide to band together and come up with a plan. They hire a private investigator to track down Danny Jr. as a birthday present. Well now all grown up, Daniel (Michael J. Fox) is a professional bowler with a sports announcer girlfriend. He’s got talent, but never actually finaled on the national level, and now progressive arthritis is about to end his career. He does have an opportunity to buy a partnership in a super bowling alley (it was the ’90s), but needs cash to do it. When the detective shows up he initially turns down coming because he doesn’t want to get caught up in the family games and ugliness, but decides he’d like to see Joe again because he remembers him fondly and wants to check on him.

Greedy is a hard movie for me to talk about because the best part to me, my absolute favorite scenes are at the end and to discuss them is completely spoilery and not cool. So, I’ll try my best otherwise.

In the history of my long line of actor crushes, I can recall none who come before… Michael J. Fox (he just beats out Patrick Swayze by about a year). I think it was Back to the Future that started it. No matter how it started, when I was a kid I watched pretty much everything he was in. Most of Fox’s comedies from this time have a romantic angle and is about his character choosing love instead of money [See the If you liked this movie, try these section]. In Greedy he’s already in a committed relationship and has to learn how to balance out his integrity with the lure of money.

And of course he does get caught up in the mind games, or we wouldn’t have a movie. He doesn’t want to leave his uncle to the grasping hands of his cousins, who would be willing to stand around while the old man chokes to death. And he’s not sure if Molly is just the gold digger the cousins make her out to be. And he really wants to love his uncle, but never knows when he’s telling him the truth or just messing with his head. In short, he’s an honest amateur in a pit of vipers.

Also, this is a little more mean spirited than most of the comedies I like. The ruthlessness of the cousins and their spouses is mostly played for laughs. Fighting like children, naming all their kids some form of Jo, behaving like no sane adult ever would. You get the sense that they were once normal, maybe even good, human beings, but have been twisted by Joe and his money. Except for Frank. Phil Hartman especially shines as the loudest and most horrible of the bunch, his delivery, if nothing else, is worth watching this movie for. He’s such a nasty piece of work it’s great. But while it never goes into full dark comedy mode, it does get a little dark. They threaten to kill Molly, are willing to let Uncle Jo die and are unashamedly happy when they think he’s dead, and want to chuck Uncle Joe into a home as soon as they can.

Kirk Douglas is amazing as Joe. Joe is a mean hard as nails doesn’t give a crap cantankerous old man in a wheelchair. He truly hates and despises his family. As the movie goes on you get a glimpse why he is the way he is, lending some dramedy into the mix. The scenes between him and Daniel are the best, when you don’t know if Joe is being sincere or not. At the beginning of the movie when Daniel comes back, Joe tells Daniel that if he picks him over his father he’ll give him the money for the bowling alley. It becomes the crux of their dynamic, how far can Joe push Danny? How far will Danny bend until he’s willing to break his morals? And the part where Joe wrestles Danny and Danny swims away in fear is so funny.

Also want to applaud Jonathan Lynn’s performance as Joe’s abused yet hilariously snarky butler Douglas. He only get’s a little screen time, but he makes his mark.

Something I appreciate about Greedy is it never gets too preachy. Money is never the evil, it gets you downtown to where all the action is. It’s really about balance and honesty. With the cousins being on the extremely greedy end of the scale and Daniel’s father on the other overly self righteous end and people like Daniel and Molly trying to do the right thing in the middle. And what it all comes down to between Joe and Danny isn’t the money, but Joe’s dishonesty.

So I can’t tell you about the ending, but I can tell you the first time I watched it that last part, the last two seconds, totally didn’t see it coming. And the way everything in the family comes to a head is great (again, especially Phil Hartman). And the part in between those two parts makes me a little misty eyed. Stupid mean spirited comedy gonna make me cry!

So really good acting all around, and a great twenty-five minutes at the end.

“Just ‘dose in wheelchairs!”

Intermission!

• The clip with Jimmy Durante singing ‘Inka Dinka Doo’ that plays over the opening credits is from Two Girls and a Sailor
• The song Danny sings for Joe is Durante’s ‘You Gotta Start Off Each Day with a Song’ from On an Island with You
• Michael J. Fox was coached by professional bowler Johnny Petraglia to help his bowling style look convincing.
• The last movie before Kirk Douglas had his stroke.
• Charade is the title on the movie marquis at the end
• Sometimes I forget Jere Burns ever didn’t look like the Joker.
• Michael J. Fox was really fit.
• The tattoo.
• That is exactly the kind of logic/arguments drunk men have.

Groovy Quotes

Carl: What kind of cough? Was it dry, liquidy…
Douglas: It was just a cough, sir. Next time I’ll save you a sample.

Carl: Yolanda, go clean something!

Angry Husband: You made my life a living hell!
Angry Wife: Kiss my ***!
Angry Husband: That could take all night!

Robin: You hit a car. You coulda killed somebody.
Daniel: The way I bowl?

Daniel: You’re a detective? Great help me find my pants.

Younger Uncle Joe: Where’s my special boy? Where’s Uncle Joe’s special boy?.
Young Carl: Here I am Uncle Joe.
Younger Uncle Joe: Carl, get in touch with reality.

Frank: Look. I didn’t like the Beatles, and I don’t like you.

Frank: Okay, Joe. Bare knuckles, toe to toe. We’ve spent 20 years eating your **** and saying, “Mmm, delicious! What a cook!” – no more!

Molly: Let me tell you something, handsome. If I were having sex with your Uncle Joe, he’d be dead by now.

Daniel: I had no idea just how sick you guys were.
Frank: Come spend a day with us.

Molly: You tell your cousins I’m not afraid of them. And you leave Joe alone.
Daniel: You keep your breasts off his eyebrows.

Daniel: These pills only work if I give them to him myself. It’s a very rare condition.
Hotel Clerk: Excuse me sir, does this say moron?

Daniel: What the hell’s the matter with you. Do you not care about this hotel’s reputation? You know there is an old man shacked up here with a very young girl.
Hotel Clerk: Sir, most of these rooms have old men with young girls. This is Washington.

Douglas: May I ask you for a reference before you go upstairs sir?

Bartlett: I’m sure this may come as a shock.
Frank: No, *****ing a sailboat is a shock, this is a ****ing catastrophe!

Daniel: You say one more word and I’ll kick your *** so high up you’ll have to take off your shirt to ****!

If you liked this movie, try these:

• For Love or Money
• Doc Hollywood
• Daddy’s Dyin’… Who’s Got the Will?

“I live my life a quarter mile at a time”

The Scoop: 2001 PG-13, directed by Rob Cohen and starring Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster

Tagline: Live life 1/4 mile at a time

Summary Capsule: Fast cars, good-looking people and a floss thin plot: It’s a HIT!

Clare’s Rating: vroom vroom indeed.

Clare’s Review: Basically The Fast and the Furious is a porno movie that replaces sex scenes with fast cars doing stunts. I’m not sure I can come up with a definite reason why that might be either good or bad. It just is what it is.

The acting is terrible, the plot barely exists and the dialogue borders on hilarious it’s so crappy. But there is a seriously bad ass soundtrack pumping pretty much non-stop throughout the entire thing, there are some respectably phenomenal stunts to behold and there’s a non-stop barrage of half-way-decent looking guys and gals running around in tight shirts. So really, what it lacks in say, value or artistic credibility it more than makes up for in volume and non-stop action.

And while I’d like to grace you with a well spoken diatribe about why it sucks that movies as bad as this one are able to gross over 100 million dollars and garner themselves automatic sequels while much more deserving films that are actually going to be remembered in 20 years still struggle for distribution, the reality of the situation is that this is exactly the kind of dumb, loud, sexy, fast ride that movie goers drool over when looking for something to distract them from the boredom of their everyday lives. So whatever. It didn’t offend me but I don’t know that I’d ever want to watch it again. How’s that for a stellar endorsement?

Mr. Clean Won’t Drive 55

Intermission!

• This movie is loosely based upon an article in Vibe magazine by Ken Li about gangs that adapt Japanese cars like the Honda Civic into muscle cars for racing. There have been a few other films with the same title, including a 1954 Roger Corman “car chase” movie.
• Director Ron Cohen is the old pizza delivery man who is blocked by the first race.
• The movie that Dom’s gang is watching after the BBQ is Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, also directed by Rob Cohen.
• Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits? Possibly – on some prints, after the credits, there is a brief epilog showing Dominic’s fate. He is shown, driving alone in a red Chevelle with black racing stripes, on a desolate road by the coast in Baja, Mexico. He narrates about his life (“I live my life a quarter mile at a time …”).

Groovy Quotes

Dom: I live my life a quarter mile at a time, nothing else matters, for those ten seconds or less, I’m free.

Dom: You break her heart and I’ll break your neck.
Brian: It’ll never happen.

Dom: I said a 10 second car, not a 10 minute car.

Hector: The name’s Hector. Got a last name too, but I can’t pronounce it.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• The sequels
• Top Gun
• Days Of Thunder
• Rollerball

“Foreign contaminant!”

The Scoop: 2008 G, directed by Andrew Stanton and starring Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, and Jeff Garlin

Tagline: After 700 years of doing what he was built for – he’ll discover what he’s meant for.

Summary Capsule: Robots in love. Awww. Plus, humans suck.

Courtney’s Rating: Eagerly awaiting the inevitable Wall-E attraction at Disney World.

Courtney’s Review: I am not a huge Disney fan. Anyone who knows me can attest to that. I’m that chick whose always talking about how much better the world would be if children’s films didn’t promote stereotypes or provide shallow storylines. A big part of that is the fact that my family is very much Disney-obsessed, and being around all that magical goodness for two decades can really spoil the inner-child until it turns into a rotted, ironic version of itself. I have been desensitized, and therefore could have been perfectly happy living my whole life without ever having watched Pixar’s Wall-E. Perfectly happy, indeed.

But I would not have been a complete human being.

Okay, that sounds super corny. But it’s cool, ‘cause isn’t that what the Disney magic is all about?

Before I actually watched this movie, I thought I’d already figured it out. It was just a cheap attempt to make big bucks by introducing children to a saccharine love story involving an “adorable” character whose vocabulary is restricted to one word. Toss in a few fat-people gags for good measure. In a way, I guess I was correct, but when I actually did watch it, I was taken aback by its depth.

Knowing that most of the movie contained little to no dialogue, my expectation was that I’d be bored to death. Which is kind of why I watched it in the first place; I was flying home after my semester abroad, and I always have trouble sleeping on planes, so I thought a boring kids’ movie would lure me into a ten-hour coma. Fortunately (or unfortunately, however you wish to see it,) Wall-E proved to be far more interesting than I thought – so much so that I watched it a second time during the same flight.

What I thought was most awesome about it – and I absolutely love it when any movie is like this – was that it was incredibly entertaining and an intelligent piece of cinematic art. Because it works on these different levels, I can watch it while babysitting my neighbors’ kids or I can write a good 10-page analysis on it. And lord knows how much I love both of those! (The sad thing there is that I’m not being sarcastic. I actually do love babysitting and writing analytical papers…I usually don’t have a lot going on.)

The thing that’s frustrating right now is that I can’t quite figure out what was good and what was bad about the movie. I’m a little flummoxed – I think Pixar actually managed to balance everything so perfectly that it’s hard to say. I will let you know that anytime the humans were talking (like, using actual verbal language instead of delightful beeps and whirs,) I got bored. From a narrative perspective, it was a necessary sacrifice to take us out of the “silent film” thing. But I did want to fast-forward through all that and just watch Wall-E get himself into more hilarious predicaments with the evil robot.

Oh, and I really liked the OCD robot. He’s my favorite ever.

And because this is an animated movie, I’m going very easy on it for committing a crime I’d normally butcher a “legit” movie for. Like Lissa said, it’s not subtle. Like, at all. But then again, its target audience is about 7 years of age, and when I was that young, I didn’t know a darn thing about subtlety. Mickey, I grant you my forgiveness.

All I’m really trying to say here is that, despite my best efforts to hate on all things Disney-related, this was a genuinely beautiful movie. I even may have shed a tear or two, but it’s not like I’m gonna actually admit to that on the Internet. You have no proof!

And Peter Gabriel is at least 4 shades of awesome.

Lissa’s Rating: That meat mallet is really getting a workout.

Lissa’s Review: So yeah, there’s this little offshoot of Disney called Pixar, and they make movies. And they have a new one out about a little robot named WALL-E. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Yeah, it’s not cult, but it’s Pixar, and that’s close enough.

In many ways, WALL-E is your typical Pixar fare. Gorgeous animation, tons of pop culture references, some more adult (but not necessarily sexual) humor, and characters that aren’t human but have a ton of humanity. (And a really hysterical short in front of it that is deserving of its own cult – I was doubled over laughing.) And saying it’s a typical Pixar film should tell you a lot about the quality. While I definitely have favorites and non-favorites in the Pixar family, I’ve uniformly liked every movie they’ve put out, and WALL-E is no exception. I almost didn’t bother to review it, because I wasn’t sure I’d have much to say.

But I found some things to ruminate on.

Anyway. WALL-E is a little garbage robot working on Earth, cleaning up an insane amount of garbage. The population of Earth has left on a five year space cruise, leaving the robots to clean up the mess. However, it looks like only WALL-E and a cockroach have managed to survive. WALL-E lives in a box trailer sort of apartment, where he collects odds and ends from humanity and watches Hello, Dolly over and over. Then a little white robot name EVE appears, and WALL-E finds love. In an attempt to prove his devotion, he gives her a plant that he found. EVE instantly shuts down.

All that is sweet and nice and well done and very boring to comment on, because I can’t find much to pick apart. In fact, the scenes where WALL-E cares for EVE after she shuts down are poignant and lovely and will bring a tear to the eye of anyone who’s ever watched a loved one shut down for whatever reason. It’s once the spaceship comes back for EVE that things get interesting.

See, EVE is an External Vegetation Evaluator – a probe droid from the space cruiser Axiom. This is where at least part of humanity has sequestered themselves. And this is when things really get dystopian, because the future that Pixar has envisioned here is cynical, bleak, and… well, really frakking cynical. Sorry to reuse the word, but it just really surprised me. (And oh yeah – spoilers.)

The survivors of humanity have been living in what is supposed to be luxury. As a result, they’re all fat, lazy, and constantly plugged into their little screen things that obviously represent the internet/cell phone phenomenon. They eat constantly, although “eating” has really been replaced by drinking, since ingesting food in liquid form is easier. And reading has pretty much become a lost art form.

I found myself very uncomfortable with this particular representation of humanity. On the one hand, I get it. I get it completely. On the other hand, I’m sitting here on a computer talking about a movie to a bunch of people, most of whom I’ve never met in real life and heck – I don’t even know who all is reading this. And yet, I do it anyway. And I should be downstairs working out sometime today, but I’m not. (However, I probably will take my kids to the park sometime today, and part of the reason I’m not working out is because there is a sort of deadline on this review.) I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want to see that version of humanity, but I can kind of see where Pixar came to it, and it can hit a little close to home.

But at the same time, I fought against that vision that Pixar was seeing. What, you mean to tell me no one ever thinks or gets off their cruising Barca loungers? How did those babies come about then? Don’t they learn to walk? What did people do when they needed to go to the bathroom? No one ever breaks out of the mold? I don’t know. I was uncomfortable enough with how they saw humanity to question it, and my questions poked too many holes in the story.

The funny thing is that it was binkies that sent me over the edge. Seriously – binkies. There were several shots of the infants aboard the Axiom, and every single one of them was sucking on a binky (or pacifier or dummy or whatever you call them around you). I think that made me very uncomfortable because of the Mommy Wars. See, I’ve mentioned this before, but no matter what issue you’re talking about with child rearing, there are some people who are unconditionally on one side. Binky use isn’t as hot a topic as stay at home moms or breastfeeding, but there are people out there who hate binkies. And, I have to admit, I’ve been one of them. I don’t really like them, and with Ducklet, it was no big deal because he didn’t like them. Then we had Ducklino, and he loves his binky. It’s amazing how you’ll sell out your convictions for a good night’s sleep, let me tell you. But it’s one of those experiences that gave me a kick and reminded me that different things work for different kids, and the binky is not Pure Evil. And it just touched a nerve that it was sort of being treated as such – that binkies exist not to give a child sucking satisfaction, but to shut them the heck up.

I’m not offended by the message, or even that that was how Pixar envisioned humanity in this situation. I’m just extremely surprised by the cynicism, that’s all. I would also say that WALL-E is NOT for small children.

I also was left with some questions that probably come from watching way too much Battlestar Galactica these days. Were there other ships? Like, other ships working in space, other ships taking off from other nations, or the like? Or did everyone not on the Axiom perish? Where were they getting their food from? Where were they getting their water? (Waste disposal was pretty well addressed.) What about fuel? Were the robots really doing that much work? How were those babies being produced – or was it artificial at that point? And after 700 years in such a closed environment, how inbred was the gene pool? Didn’t people get bed sores? Didn’t they wash and whatnot?

However, I don’t think this detracted from the movie. On the contrary, I think it’s a good thing. This is one of the first Pixar movies that I didn’t just enjoy (and I did enjoy it – very much) but made me truly think. That’s pretty special. It’s definitely worth seeing, owning, and parking on your shelf next to An Inconvenient Truth. Just don’t expect anything approaching subtle.

Drew’s Rating: 101000001111011000111110111010000101

Drew’s Review: …………………………………..

*Rumble*

!!!!!!??? !!!!!!!!!!!…..

???

Wall-E.

Wal… Wall-E? EVE.

EVE? EVE! !!!!!!! …??? EVE?

Directive. *Voop!*

EVE?!

*Rumble*

EVE! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee-!

.
.
.

Directive. Dir… directive? Wall-E?

EVE!

AUTO!

Directive, Wall-E, directive, Wall-E….. Wall-E!

*CRUNCH!*

Wa-… Wall-E? Wall-Eeeeee?!

*vvvt, tssst, rrrrm, bzzzt*

…

Wall-E? Wall-E?!?

…

Wa… Wall-E…..

…………………..…….E….…Eeeee….. EVE?

Wall-E!!!!! Wall-E Wall-E Wall-E!

Wall-E.

Justin’s Rating: Fine, I admit it. I’m the cause of everything wrong in this world. Including New Coke and Britney Spears.

Justin’s Review: A close examination of Pixar’s film legacy will reveal one overwhelming motif: Humans Are Bad. I’m not sure what kind of troubled childhood the Pixar team had, or if they’re longing for the day where they can resequence their DNA to become a dolphin/tractor hybrid in order to escape the pesky remnants of humanity, but we just get whacked over the head, time and time again, about how stupid and gross and mean people are. You know, like the people who made these films.

Don’t believe me? Toy Story — the little boy was a hateful, toy-destroying monster. Finding Nemo — people imprison sentient fish and torture them to death. Monsters Inc. — people are perceived as poisonous and deadly. And now, now we have Wall-E. Because when I have kids and they grow up watching these Pixar masterpieces™, it’ll be great to ingrain in their heads how truly awful and useless the human race is.

Really, we should just all become robots. Isn’t that what Wall-E is saying? That the robots are the new humanity, the hard workers, the ones capable of love and sacrifice? That we as a human race are doomed to become such a mindless consumerist culture that nobody works, nobody thinks for themselves, and nobody sees past their own needs? I don’t care if you go “Zing! Pixar scores one on our culture!”, that’s actually pretty insulting to me – and to you too, if you spent a minute to think about it. I don’t take any artificial guilt trips from pretend cartoon robots, thank you very much.

Of course, the movie itself is almost pure gold, if you get past this heavy-handed commentary. It’s probably the closest thing most kids – or adults, really – will have experienced to the silent films of yesteryear. Most of Wall-E exists without dialogue, and much is said in the actions, expressions and roles of the robots. How expressive can a robot be? Wall-E, who looks like the mechanical representative of a fussy old man, has teardrop-shaped eyes and nebbish hands that he uses to explore and shape his world. EVE, his iPod love companion, gets a whole computer screen worth of monochrome facial gestures. It might be silly until you watch it, but you genuinely care about the relationship between these two robots and their adventure to the stars and back, and if a filmmaker can make you care, on a deep emotional level, about the characters of a film, that spells success to me.

It’s not quite as funny or wacky as you might expect a Pixar flick to be, but it’s definitely one of my favorites from their studio. Even though I happen to be one of those slothful, mindless drones they tend to hate.

“Remember, Elliot, I’ll be right here.”

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

• The teaser trailer contains part of Michael Kamen’s score for Brazil. Michael Kamen was going to score another Pixar film, The Incredibles, but died before he could.
• First instance of a Pixar feature-length film using live-action.
• The film contains numerous references to Apple computers: when WALL-E is fully charged by the sun, he makes the same “boot up” sound that Apple computers have made since the earliest Macintosh system, WALL-E watches his favorite movie every night on the screen of an iPod, the villainous Autopilot’s voice is provided by Apple’s text-to-speech system, MacinTalk, EVE’s sleek design as an evolution of WALL-E’s parallels the sleek iMac design having evolved from the boxy, beige Apple IIe. Steve Jobs, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, was CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney in 2005, and as a shareholder and member of the Disney Board of Directors is still actively involved with the company.
• WALL-E’s boot up sound?
• A113!
• Peter Gabriel is awesome.
• So is MOP.
• John Ratzenberger is back again! (He’s been Hamm in the Toy Story movies, P.T. Flea in A Bug’s Life, The Abominable Snowman in Monsters, Inc., the fish that give directions in Finding Nemo, the Underminer in The Incredibles, Mack in Cars, Mustafa in Ratatouille, and John in WALL-E. Hasn’t missed a one.
• Very little real dialogue, but boy, can beeps be expressive.
• Don’t cut off robots – they will swear at you.
• Buy n Large. No, it’s not Wal-Mart.
• I kept thinking BNL stood for Barenaked Ladies.
• VHS tape really stands up well to 800 years of neglect.
• HOW many layers were on that burger?
• Atari!
• Okay, I’ll swear in a court of law that everyone in the movie called the girl robot “EVA,” but apparently it’s actually “EVE.” Weird.
• Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits? During the beginning of the credits, the animation shows the colonists reclaiming Earth. It’s pretty cool, as they go through the various major art styles of the ages. Once that’s done though, there’s nothing. At the very, very end the BNL logo is shown, but that’s not worth sitting all the way through.

Groovy Quotes

MOP: Foreign Contaminant.

Captain: I don’t want to survive. I want to live.

Ship’s Computer: Voice confirmation required.
Captain: Uhhh…
Ship’s Computer: Voice confirmation accepted.

Teacher Robot: A is for Axiom, your home sweet home. B is for Buy N Large, your very best friend.

Voice in commercial: Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space out in space! BnL StarLiners leaving each day. We’ll clean up the mess while you’re away.

Captain: AUTO! Earth is amazing! These are called “farms”. Humans who put seeds in the ground pour water on them, and they grow food – like, pizza!

If you liked this movie, try these:

• City Lights
• Finding Nemo
• Monsters Inc.

“Judgement time.”

The Scoop: 2012 R, directed by Pete Travis and starring Karl Urban, Rachel Wood, and Olivia Thirlby

Tagline: Judgment is coming

Summary Capsule: Judge Dredd gets locked inside a high-rise apartment complex populated by drug dealers. That was not smart of the drug dealers.

Justin’s Rating: I don’t need a rating.  I am the law!

Justin’s Review: I’m not going to flaunt my geek credentials in regards to Judge Dredd, mostly because I have none.  I am vaguely aware that it’s a satirical cop comic book series set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future and that it probably influenced the creation of RoboCop.  Aside from having seen the awful Sylvester Stallone movie a couple of times, I have rested quite comfortably with a lack of Judge Dredd in my life.

Still, I’m always up for a dystopian supercop slugfest, especially when my curiosity is aroused as to how they could recover the franchise from Rob Schnieder’s presence.  From the look of it, Dredd promised to be a more faithful R-rated action piece without all of the goofy jokes, helmet coming off, and lackluster green screen effects.  I have no idea of how faithful it ended up being to the comic book series, but taking it for what it was, it actually was a decent and surprisingly gory flick that kept the plot small and tight so that the action sequences could star.

Karl Urban, aka Doctor McCoy, takes on the titular role, and I have to give a hearty thumbs up to the fact that we never see Dredd without his iconic helmet.  That’s tough for actors and directors to do, because even if the character is known for always wearing a disguise or something hiding part of their face, it makes emotive acting more difficult and lessens audience recognition.  That’s why all of these dumb superheroes keep taking off their masks/helmets these days, especially in act 3.  But not Dredd; he suits up in the first couple of minutes and that’s that from there.  He doesn’t need to emote, as he’s a nearly emotionless beast who dispenses judgment without mercy to the scum who populate a massive city that rests in the remains of earth’s landscape.  It’s an ugly situation with an ugly civilization that demands an equally ugly response by law and order.

So if you don’t know already, the Judges are the combination of the police, juries, judges, and executioners, able to handle all aspects of law enforcement in this quasi-fascist state.  Dredd is the most notorious of them all, and when the film opens, he’s being saddled with a rookie whose grades are subpar but she’s got incredible psychic abilities to compensate.  The two of them investigate a triple homicide near a high rise project, leading them to accidentally stumble upon the domain of a nasty gang leader named Ma-Ma.  Ma-Ma has no intention of letting the Judges leave alive, and so she engineers a lockdown of the building so that she and her gang can kill the cops and keep things under wraps.

It’s a bare-bones plot, to be sure.  A bulk of the running time is the gradual progression of Dredd and his partner up the high rise, through fire-fights, and the gradual uncovering of a not-so-secret mystery.  The action isn’t graceful wire-fu, but brutal firefights where people explode, gush squibs, get caught on fire, and encounter all sorts of other nastiness.  In short, Dredd would be quite at home among the R-rated scifi action flicks of the 80s.

As a character, there isn’t much to Dredd; he’s just a lug who’s good at staying alive and killing bad guys.  The other characters try to give him some depth in the form of brief dialogue exchanges, but you really have to meet the film more than halfway to see any sort of personality on his part.  Maybe that’s best, to keep things simple and focused.  At least the action was easy to follow (no shakey-cam crap here) and seeing all of the neat things Dredd’s gun can do kept me interested.  If you’re looking for action tinged with scifi accessories, it’s a decent enough snack as long as you don’t ruin your dinner with it.

Even Judges need to stretch before jogging

Intermission!

• The Peach Tree block is named after a restaurant in Shrewsbury, the place where screenwriter Alex Garland and Judge Dredd creator John Wagner first met to discuss the film.
• The graffiti throughout Peach Trees contains the names of characters that appear in the Judge Dredd strip, such as Chopper and Kenny Who?
• The character Ma-Ma was originally written as an elderly woman but Lena Headey convinced ‘Alex Garland’ to make her a middle-age person with a male-hater personality.
• In Ma-Ma’s penthouse there is a Judge’s helmet hanging on her wall with a length of gold chain attached to it, a nod to the comic design of Judge Dredd where the gold chain would link the badge to the uniform collar

Groovy Quotes

Judge Dredd: In case you people have forgotten, this block operates under the same rules as the rest of the city. Ma-Ma is not the law… I am the law. Ma-Ma is a common criminal; guilty of murder, guilty of the manufacture and distribution of the narcotic known as Slo-Mo, and as of now under sentence of death. Any who obstruct me in carrying out my duty will be treated as an accessory to her crimes… you have been warned. And as for you Ma-Ma… judgement time.

Judge Dredd: Rookie, you’re ready?
Anderson: Yeah.
Judge Dredd: You don’t look ready.

Anderson: He’s thinking about going for your gun.
Judge Dredd: Yeah.
Anderson: He changed his mind.
Judge Dredd: Yeah.

Anderson: Sir, helmets interfere with my psychic abilities.
Judge Dredd: Think a bullet in the head might interfere with them more.

Chief Judge: Sink or swim. Chuck her in the deep end.
Judge Dredd: It’s all a deep end.

If you liked this movie try these:

• Judge Dredd
• RoboCop
• Hardware

The Scoop: 1971 PG, directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, Susan Brodrick, Ivor Dean and Tony Calvin.

Tagline: This film is filled with… SHOCK! AFTER SHOCK!

Summary Capsule: Dr. Jekyll comes up with a potion, as you’d expect him to do. There are… certain subtle differences this time around.

Deneb’s Rating: Four suddenly-seductive dressing gowns out of five.

Deneb’s Review: If there’s one time-worn cliché that still has a bit of punch to it, it’s that one should never take things for granted. Just when you think you’ve got something safely categorized, BOING! Up pops a surprise like a jack-in-the-box and whomps you upside the nose.

Even when things do turn out more or less as you expected, they’re never exactly so, and it’s one of our failings as a species that we tend to expect them to be. Surprise is the cream pie out of nowhere that jolts us out of such complacency, and forces us to look at things from a new viewpoint – for instance, one somewhat smeared by pie filling.

Such a pie – hmm… you know, between this and Bugsy Malone, my reviews have been taking rather a pie-themed turn lately, haven’t they? Oh well; pastries are our secret rulers – such a pie is (or turned out to be for me) Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

How so? Well, I’ll get to that. But first, let’s delve into the plot a bit, shall we?

The film is set, as you will doubtless be unsurprised to learn, in Victorian London, where a well-to-do young medical researcher, one Dr. Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates), is busily at work. An ambitious project has he – he means to create the anti-virus to end all anti-viruses, one that’ll handle every major infectious disease that plagues mankind. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The trouble is, as he comes to realize, this is an immensely complicated and long-term process he’s initiated. Coming up with a miracle cure for just one of the many ills that humanity is subject to will take, optimistically, a year or two of hard research and experimentation, but all of them, the lot? We’re talking decades and decades of work here, all with only a remote possibility of success at the end of it, a success that, at the projected rate of progress, he might not live to witness.

Now, at this point your average scientist would probably shrug his shoulders and go ‘oh well; at least I can do a really bang-up job of tackling the Yellow Fever’. Dr. Jekyll, however, is not your average scientist, and instead decides to solve one seemingly insurmountable problem through the working out of another seemingly insurmountable problem. His grand project will take more time than he likely has allotted to him? No worries; he’ll just whip up a quick potion to extend human life indefinitely. That’ll give him lots of time! What could be simpler?

Well, quite a few things, actually. Still, the doctor has SCIENCE! on his side, so he devotes himself obsessively to the project. And credit where credit is due, he comes up with a pretty promising avenue of research fairly quickly. Females, he realizes, tend on the whole to remain healthy and vital for much longer than males do, so there must be something in feminine hormones that promotes a longer lifespan. If he can just manage to isolate and amplify this factor, then he may have his elixir of life after all.

You can probably tell where this is going. After a period of exhaustive research, Jekyll manages to come up with a formula that just might do the trick. Except, of course, that it doesn’t – what it does do is transform him into a beautiful female version of himself (Martine Beswick). He changes back fairly quickly, but hey, he sure must have amplified something, right? A qualified success! Soldier on!

Unfortunately, it’s at this point that he runs into a bit of a sticking point. You see, in order to mess around with lady hormones he’s got to have some on hand, and that mean access to more young female cadavers than can easily be procured. Even a working agreement with the infamous grave robbers Burke and Hare (Ivor Dean and Tony Calvin) does little good, as they’re soon taken out of the picture and he’s back to square one. What to do?

After a lot of rationalizing, he decides that there’s only one thing he can do. His work is too important to stop now; if he can’t get what he needs in the usual way, then he’ll have to resort to less savory methods – in other words, he’s going to have to kill for them.

This leads to two more serious complications in Henry Jekyll’s ever-more-complicated life. First, of course, is the fact that he is now a serial killer, something that the local constabulary tends to frown upon. Second, and arguably more serious, is this business with the potion. You see, he’s kept on taking it while he tinkers around with the formula, and his new female persona has decided that she’s rather fond of her new state of being, and doesn’t much care for being locked away inside a nebbishy scientist all the time. She’d rather take hold of the reins herself – permanently. Unless Jekyll can figure out a way to salvage the situation, this “Mrs. Hyde” may just be here to stay…

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when I became aware of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde’s existence, but it was, at the very least, several years ago, maybe even as much as a decade. I don’t know – how could I? (‘Dear Diary – today, at precisely 8:25 AM and five seconds, I learned of an obscure horror movie from the early 1970s. Must jot this down for future reference.’) What I do know is that from the first, it produced in me a chortling anticipation.

Don’t give me that puzzled look. You know what I mean, even if I just made up the term (and I probably did). A chortling anticipation is the sort engendered when something crosses your radar and you go ‘oh, I gotta see/read/watch/experience/whatever this’ – only you chortle at the same time. You know; you go ‘p’heh!’ or ‘hoo hoo!’ or ‘m’hihihih!’, or however your involuntary chortle/chuckle/snort sound goes. In other words, you do genuinely look forward to experiencing this thing, but it’s not because of an ‘oh, this is going to be awesome!’ expectation, it’s because when you heard about it, it made you laugh.

This is due to the fact that, whether we deny it or not, we’re a great big conglomeration of hipsters these days, and the last several generations have been poisoned by irony. I’m not saying that we can’t unironically enjoy anything these days; of course we can; it’s just that an extra factor has been added, a beret-and-sunglasses-wearing factor that nudges you right in the common sense and goes ‘you have got to experience this thing, whether or not it is any good. Your sense of jaded intellectualism demands it’.

In short, while I was legitimately interested in seeing this film, there was still that chortling anticipation that went ‘M’hihihih – Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Of course. Inevitable, really.’ So on some level, even after I’d heard a little more about the film and its merits, I was expecting something vaguely comedic. I think, to be exact, I was expecting something a bit cheesy and maybe rooted in 1970s sexual politics in a somewhat dated way. I was still expecting to enjoy myself; it’s just that my inner beret-and-sunglasses was expecting to scoff heartily at some point and feel superior.

Yeah, well, too bad, Mr. Inner-Beret-Guy. Maybe next time. Because here’s the deal, folks; I was dead wrong about this movie. I was expecting something vaguely farcical, whereas what I got was a genuine, completely unironic Good Movie.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a great little piece of classic Hammer Horror. It’s taut, suspenseful, psychological, and yes, even a little bit funny in parts. It held my attention the whole way through, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again. It’s good.

Before I get into the larger reasons for this, though – the plot, the themes, etc. – I’m going to have to switch things up a little and discuss characters first. Because this is nothing if not a character-driven movie, and my discussion of all the rest won’t make a lick of sense if I haven’t established the interpersonal relationships first.

The main lead, of course, is Dr. Jekyll, who is both very like and very unlike most screen Jekylls we’ve seen thus far. So far as the similarities go, he is deeply idealistic and devoted – probably too devoted – to his work, to the point where he finds experimenting on himself with a bizarre potion to be a perfectly logical thing to do. He is unlike most in that this Jekyll has already crossed the boundaries of goodliness long before his Hyde starts becoming a problem.

This Jekyll kills. He kills repeatedly. He corners women in foggy alleyways and slices them up. True, he does so reluctantly, and for what he sees as the best possible reasons – and in the very long run, he’s probably right; we are, after all, talking about things that would, if perfected, be of immeasurable benefit to mankind – but still, he is a murderer, a cold-blooded killer of innocents. The fact that he still comes across as a sympathetic protagonist is a testament to Ralph Bates’ performance – he gives the doctor a combination of unworldly, if sophisticated, innocence, devotion to his work and an iron determination that starts to crack under the strain as his situation rapidly becomes untenable – but even as he struggles against the evils that he has unleashed, you are very aware that this is far from the simple black-and-white morality tale that Jekyll and Hyde movies usually specialize in.

This is further complicated by the fact that his Hyde is far from the usual Hyde. The fact that they’re different genders is the least of what I’m talking about here; this Hyde actually has quite good reasons, as she sees it, for what she does, just as good as her counterpart’s, and with equally distressing results.

It’s never firmly established as to when Mrs. Hyde stops being merely a gender-switched Jekyll and starts to achieve a personality of her own, but whenever it is, the personality in question is not evil, per se, but amoral, and therefore a funhouse mirror image of the good doctor’s obsessive factoring and rationalizing of his actions – he does the bad things he does, after all, because he thinks the good outweighs them; he is effectively sacrificing his personal morality on the altar of the greater good. Hyde, on the other hand, doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss for such lofty aims; she merely wishes to retain her existence, because she, unlike her ‘brother’, actually enjoys life. She is a sensuous creature who doesn’t hesitate to use her sexuality to get what she wants; one could mutter about how this reflects on the screenwriters’ conceptions of femininity and such – clearly the female bad guy must be a slinky vixen because that’s all dem girls is good for, amirite?, that sort of thing – but it actually does make a fair amount of sense when you consider what this is adapted from.

Hyde is, in a sense more literal than most, a side of Jekyll that has never been released before. Where he is intensely introverted, she is the opposite, but not in a rah-rah-let’s-have-a-party way, simply in the sense that she puts her needs, the ones that Jekyll has clearly ignored up ‘til now, first and foremost, and as she’s just as intelligent as he is, knows just how to achieve them. Where he is socially clumsy, she is directly and effectively seductive, because hey, if you were the flipside of a guy like him, you’d probably be interested in a little somethin’ somethin’ too. Where his primary concern is the good of humanity as a whole, hers is for that of herself specifically, and it’s just as unrestrained and damaging as his ultimately turns out to be. The two may uncomfortably co-exist for a little while – after all, she desires a continued supply of more and better potions as much as he does – but as with any J&H story, it can’t possibly last; the two are too intrinsically different for that, and she is too intrinsically self-centered. She must have it all, and that can end well for nobody.

Still, just as one can’t really dislike Jekyll despite his actions, it’s difficult to really hate Hyde here. After all, her basic desire is simple self-preservation, and who can’t sympathize with that? She just wants to live; it’s unfortunate that her living necessitates others dying. Combine all this with Martine Beswick’s intense performance, and you’ve got a really interesting, complex villain/co-protagonist.

So far as the supporting cast goes, it would probably be best to start with Susan Spencer (Susan Brodrick) and her brother Howard (Lewis Fiander), Jekyll’s neighbors who live upstairs. They are significant not so much in and of themselves as for the relationship they have with the doctor – or should I say, relationships. You see, Susan has quite the crush on Dr. J, one that’s more or less reciprocated when he looks up from his test tubes. Howard, on the other hand, is none too wowed by the Doc, but he is head over heels in lust with that sexy “sister” of his, Mrs. Hyde – and there is no ‘more or less’ about her reciprocation, let me assure you. Jekyll basically spends the entire movie playing emotional tag with poor Susan (it’s a little difficult to stop and explain things nicely when you’re about to turn into a murderous female version of yourself), or, when transformed, come-hither with Howard. Needless to say, neither sibling is exactly well=equipped to deal with the truth of the situation, so they keep leaping to conclusions and being generally puzzled the whole way through.

To both the screenwriter’s and the actors’ credit, though, neither devolve into stock caricatures, which they easily could have. Susan may be an innocent, pure-hearted love interest of the sort that mustache-twirling villains would be sorely tempted to tie to train tracks, but she’s got a bit more to her than that – she can err on the stubborn side, she squabbles with her brother, and she overall comes across as a believable young lady of the period. As for Howard, he’s a snide, middle-class fop, but he’s not unlikable – if nothing else, he does clearly care for his sister and is considerate of her feelings. The two are not particularly deep, perhaps, but they carry off their roles well, and are at least convincing as a pair of siblings.

The final three consist of one goody and two baddies. The goody is Jekyll’s friend and mentor, Professor Robertson (Gerald Sim). He’s an interesting character for several reasons, but mainly because he belongs to a type common to such tales, the ladies’ man that tempts the hero to sin. The interesting part is that this doesn’t count as a strike against him, as in many films it would – there’s no moralizing about the way he lives his life, and no particular indication that he’s at all misguided in doing so. Indeed, he’s quite a nice fellow who seems to have a perfectly balanced attitude to things, at least in comparison to Jekyll. He’s not a brainless hedonist, either; he’s one of the smartest characters in the film, and the one who comes closest to… ah, but that would be telling. The baddies are Burke and Hare, who honestly don’t have all that big of an impact on the story, but they’re well-portrayed – Ivor Dean’s Burke is particularly creepy – and deserve mention simply due to their status as actual historical figures.

The film’s chief strength, as I said, is in its characters, but also in the fact that it uses said characters in clever ways. The bizarre love quadrangle between the Spencers and Jekyll/Hyde, for instance, could have been excised without affecting the plot much, but the movie would have been much the poorer for it, as it is the source of some of the film’s best moments (including a rather hilariously awkward one where Hyde’s personality briefly bleeds through into Jekyll’s at a most inconvenient juncture). The central character arc is very stripped-down – it’s Jekyll struggling against Hyde; that’s pretty much it – but it’s to DJaSH’s credit that it paces itself and allows us to gaze at all the people on the sidelines as we pass them by. Everyone in this movie is fleshed out and three-dimensional; even most of Jekyll/Hyde’s victims get a few brief humanizing moments, and they’re literally only there to be killed. There’s not a flat character from start to finish, and that’s not something many films can boast.

Even divorced from the characters, DJaSH stands well on its own. The plot itself is really just a variation on the usual J&H formula, but it goes into areas that most such films don’t touch. There is, of course, the gender-bending, the Jack the Ripper-esque murder spree (it’s never explicitly stated whether Jekyll is actually supposed to be the Ripper here or merely shares similarities with him; either way, this is clearly taking place at the same time as the actual Ripper murders), the implicit gay subtext – lots of stuff. The film is far from deep and ponderous, but it is not brainless; there are things to talk about here.

Moreover, nobody does stupid things. This sounds like an obvious prerequisite, but there are an incredible number of films out there that are driven entirely by people doing exactly that. (‘A monster is after us! Let’s split up!’) On the contrary, this film is driven by the fact that its characters are smart. Jekyll knows that the police are after him and covers his tracks accordingly; the police, in turn, are intelligent and persistent and never turn into the ‘‘Ere now, what’s all this then?’-type Bobbies that they so easily could have. Sure, there are a few blunders made by otherwise-intelligent people, but they’re all well within said people’s established characters; you never go ‘oh, he/she wouldn’t do that!’ It’s quite refreshing.

So far as the look and feel of the movie goes, Hammer was known for putting out good-looking films on a tight budget, and it shows. The overall atmosphere is a pitch-perfect evocation of period London, complete with dark, foggy alleyways, street merchants bawling out their slogans, men in top hats and women in flouncy dresses. Then, of course, there’s Jekyll’s laboratory full of Mysterious Equipment, Mrs. Hyde’s signature blood-red outfits, bawdy beer halls, stained-glass windows casting splashes of color – lots and lots of nice sets and costumes and cool stuff. Not to be ignored, either, is the amazing similarity between Martine Beswick’s and Ralph Bates’ facial features, apparently a complete coincidence discovered only after the film had been cast. She really does look quite a lot like a beautiful female version of him, which adds a good deal of authenticity to the transformation sequences, accomplished solely through skillful trick photography. Top hole.

Now, I never have reviewed a perfect movie so far, and this one is no exception. Given the time it was made, the film skates over a lot of themes that I’m sure some modern audiences would prefer to see a bit more of – the obvious sexual issues, for instance, or the fact that we are basically dealing with a recipe for instant do-it-yourself transgenderism. Also, there are a few minor flubs in the set-up, not the least of which being Burke and Hare having been moved several decades forward in time and from Edinburgh to London. Also, while I thought the ending was fine, apparently some have complained of it being a tad on the uninspired side. If you seek to find fault with the movie, it is there to be found.

Really, though, why would you? Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a minor gem of early ‘70’s Hammer. It’s intense without being brutal, the acting is good, the characters are interesting, and it’s overall an intriguing variation on a classic tale. There’s even just a touch of that camp I was expecting going in. It may not be for everyone; it’s not The Greatest Movie Ever, but if you are at all a fan of any of the stuff just mentioned, or think you might be, then you could certainly do a lot worse.

As for me, my metaphorical nose is still a little swollen. I think perhaps I’d better get some ice.

Aww, man – don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Intermission!

• The film apparently had its genesis in a lunchtime conversation where the Hammer top brass were trying to come up with something new. Producer Brian Clemens volunteered the title as a joke. Two days later, he was ushered into an office where they showed him a poster concept and asked him if he’d like to co-produce it.
• Several other actresses were offered the role of Hyde before Martine Beswick, but turned it down because of the brief nudity involved. Beswick had no problem with this, as she saw it as integral to the character.
• How exactly does one repeatedly gain an extra foot of hair and then lose it again?
• Ralph Bates met his future wife, Virginia Wetherell, during filming. She was cast as Dr. Jekyll’s first victim.
• The initial transformation sequence was done all in one take.
• Given the fact that Jekyll is clearly heterosexual, shouldn’t Mrs. Hyde be, well… not? (It could have happened, too, since this was round about the time Hammer was putting out its well-known lesbian vampire trilogy. A lesbian Hyde would have fit in nicely.)

Groovy Quotes:

Robertson: Well, keep away from me, my dear boy. I’m having far too much fun the way I am.

Howard: How is your brother?
Mrs. Hyde: ‘Brother’?
Howard: Dr. Jekyll.
Mrs. Hyde: Oh; he… he hasn’t been himself of late.

Hare: What d’you think he does with ‘em?
Burke: I dunno – but I was you, I wouldn’t eat any meat pies in this neighbor’ood.

Robertson: If two’s company, three… positive deviation.

Mrs. Hyde: A fascinating situation, don’t you think? It’ll be interesting to see who wins.

Byker: A Burke by name, and a berk by nature.

Robertson: I was on the job, too – research, you know. A delicious blonde fragment from the chorus at the Alhambra.
Dr. Jekyll: Come now, Professor, ‘research’?
Robertson: Oh, it’s certainly of great benefit to mankind – well, a small section of it, at any rate.

Mrs. Hyde: It is I who exists, Dr. Jekyll, not you. It is I who will be rid of you!

Howard: Jekyll having a sister like that…! Never thought he had it in him.

Mrs. Hyde: We’ll see who wins.
Dr. Jekyll: We’ll see.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Any Jekyll and Hyde film – particularly the 1931 Fredrick March version
• The Body Snatcher

“For those of you lucky enough to leave with your lives, go! But leave your limbs! They belong to me!”

The Scoop: 2003 R, directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, and Darryl Hannah

Tagline: In the year 2003, Uma Thurman will kill Bill

Summary Capsule: Murdered bride miraculously recuperates just in time to open up a can of seriously vengeful, worldwide whoop ass.

Clare’s Rating: Brings the term “shotgun wedding” to a whole new level.

Clare’s Review: Summing up the plot to Kill Bill Volume 1 is simple. There’s this pregnant woman, whose name we never learn – she’s simply referred to as “The Bride” – who runs off to a little church in El Paso, Texas to get married. This guy named Bill and a bunch of his hired guns (ex-associates, it turns out, of The Bride) go to the church and kill everyone in it. The Bride is beaten and then shot point blank in the head, but although they leave her for dead, she does not die. Instead, after being comatosed for a number of years, she wakes up one day to find a metal plate in her head and an unending supply of vengeance in her heart.

I’ve tried multiple times now to sum up my feelings about Kill Bill in a nice, easy to understand opening paragraph that both describes the movie and also gives a good idea of its strengths and weaknesses. I generally tend to try to write reviews that allow the reader to decide based on the information at hand whether or not a movie would be up their ally. My problem with Kill Bill Volume 1 is twofold.

1) Kill Bill has become impossible for me to describe comprehensively because honestly, it’s unlike any movie I’ve ever seen. Which is interesting because its originality comes from the fact that it is, at its core, a big, bright, violent, homage to every movie director/writer Quentin Tarantino’s fevered brain has ever obsessed endlessly over. It’s what would happen if Tarantino somehow took all those Kung Fu movies, all those Samurai films, all those Blaxploitation flicks and all those Spaghetti Westerns he memorized scene for scene as a kid, smashed them all together in one big block and ran them through what I’ll call the Tarantino Play Dough Fun Factory of moviemaking. The end result is utterly and completely a Quentin Tarantino movie, but it is also a heart on his sleeve declaration of love to everything he ravenously adores about films and filmmaking.

2) I can’t be objective about this and I can’t really be reasonable about it either. I loved Kill Bill. I saw it twice in two days. The second time only made me want to see it again a third. So there’s no way for me to off-handedly give you a list of things you might like or might not like about Kill Bill and let you decide for yourself if it’s something you could get into. I’ve found instead that while trying to write this review I’ve gotten pulled into thinking up a seemingly endless list of things about the movie that I thought were perfect, or extraordinary, or clever or well-executed (no pun intended) or brilliantly conceived or just plain cool. So I don’t know if you’ll like this movie. All I know is that I love it enough for the two of us put together.

Kill Bill is violent. It’s graphic in its violence. And it stays graphic in its violence from the very start of the film to the very end. Sure, there are pauses here and there for sushi and motorcycle rides, but most often, the movie is littered with ravaged, bloody, beaten to a pulp dead bodies. In the sections of the film that are too violent to show in an R rated movie were they done some other way, Tarantino gets around them by using animation, black and white film (lessening the impact by making red blood black) or by back-lighting certain scenes to obscure the details of the action. I imagine that some people will find this violence to be highly offensive, distasteful and wrong. I am not one of those people.

And I’ll tell you why. It’s not because I think evisceration and decapitation are wicked cool. It’s because I gathered early on in my first viewing of Kill Bill that I was watching a masterfully-crafted live action graphic novel (again, no pun intended). When an entire section of the film is presented in anime, it seems a natural and obvious choice for telling that section of the story. (And let me go on record as saying that the animated sequence is, for sure, one of my absolute favorite parts of the film.) The characters in Kill Bill aren’t real people. They’re representations of real people. The movie isn’t about gritty realism like Reservoir Dogs was and it’s not about a bunch of intertwined stories about the same subject like Pulp Fiction was. It’s about evoking an emotional response, about making something that’s breathtaking to look at and about paying proper respect to the movies before it that Quentin Tarantino wouldn’t exist without. I’ve heard people complain that this film is all style and no substance. I would counter that by saying they’re missing the point. The style IS the substance of Kill Bill. It is within all the myriad forms of story-telling, embbeded in all the endless little set, prop and costume details and among the countless deliberate shifts in cinematography and score that Kill Bill is built.

So with that in mind, I have included a small handful of things to look for in Kill Bill under the extras section. However, this handful should in no way be considered a comprehensive list. Kill Bill is a treasure trove of detail. Every inch of it is specific and chosen and crafted to look and sound exactly the way it does. There is nothing sloppy about any of it. Cataloguing all of that in precise detail would only take away from the fun of actually digging through Kill Bill and finding them out for yourself.

Kyle’s Rating: Just like Romeo and Juliet!

Kyle’s Review: Recently, for the first time in many years I bought a milkshake at McDonald’s. I was about to see a play in Costa Mesa, and we were wandering through South Coast Plaza before the curtain went up. I was both thirsty and hungry, and figured a chocolate milkshake would hit the spot. Looking back, my mistake was asking for the largest size they had. Initially, it was wonderful, but then I realized there was no way I was ever going to finish the damn thing. The girl I was with did her part, but by the time we walked over the bridge to the theater I threw away a cup that was nearly 50% full. I could care less about the money; the troubling thing was that I was so excited about this thing that was ultimately too much to handle, but not in a cool way. It was just sickeningly indigestible by the end, and I’m pretty sure it will be many more years before I buy a milkshake from those guys again. Sonic’s Peanut Butter Fudge malt rules!

Obviously, I’m going to tie in Kill Bill Vol. 1 to this incident, right? Wrong! Well, okay, I am. Kill Bill is the chocolate milkshake in this story. Quentin Tarantino is the bridge we walked over, Uma Thurman is the cement that made up the ground and buildings (pretty in a certain light, but upon honest scrutiny is revealed to be rather bland and unexciting), and the shirt I almost bought at the mall is The Punisher, which I went to see instead of Kill Bill Vol. 2. All in all, it’s certainly a worthwhile experience (watching Kill Bill, that is), but for me it wasn’t all that and other than illegally downloading the super-cool theme song, I’m not interested in seeing Kill Bill Vol. 1 again.

Except… for Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama). Gogo is the chocolate in the milkshake, the spring in my step, the joy of a theatrical experience, the source of light in the night sky. Gogo is the true hero of Kill Bill Vol. 1, if you fast forward creatively and hit the stop button at a certain point and fill in the blanks with your own imagination. There is an action figure of Gogo that is available. By the time you read this, I will probably own at least three of them.

There is something magical about the schoolgirl uniform, and when it is utilized by a psychotic 17-year-old girl as an impeccable fashion statement, it is elevated into the realm of aesthetics. The character of Gogo is true art, perhaps the only worthwhile thing Tarantino will create in his otherwise creativity-barren life (feel free to disagree with me). Some dude who was talking about Kill Bill to me (in a conversation I didn’t start and wasn’t even aware I was a part of until five minutes into it) explained that he didn’t like Gogo at all, because “that ****in’ chick [Kuriyama] looks like Adrien Brody!” He was referring to the dominance of Kuriyama’s nose over the rest of her facial features. Ironically, this guy was in a comic book store wearing clothes that distinctly communicated “Hey, I still live with my mom and she does my laundry” and he had no chin of his own, as well as eyes that were too close together. Granted, I was also in the comic book store buying comic books, but at least I’m attractive. Do you see the distinction?

Regardless of real-world concerns, Gogo is the finest feature of Kill Bill, at least as far as I can tell. There’s other stuff going on with swords and blood and limbs, but nothing except for Gogo had much of an impact on me. When Tarantino releases Vols. 1 and 2 together in those Japanese cuts where they’re like uncut and totally in color (at least when blood is involved), I’ll watch the whole thing and see what I think of the complete saga. But chances are when the final credits start to roll I’ll be thinking “maybe I should go bid on that UK movie poster where it’s just Gogo swinging her ball on a chain!” I’ve never actually seen Signs, but I think I read or heard somewhere that there are glasses of water all over the house or something (sounds like a great movie, eh?). That’ll be just like my house, only instead of glasses of water it will be Gogo action figures. Ah, pop culture. And Chiaki Kuriyama is in Battle Royale, which I have on DVD waiting for me to watch in my room. What a wonderful world! I love you, Gogo!

Justin’s Rating: Gogo Gadget Plot!

Justin’s Review: It’s no secret that Mr. Tarantino and I have had our many differences, along with our many sissy slap-fights. It seems that when the moon is bloated and red, we rush out to the middle of an empty field to throw down and work our mutual aggression out. Oh, I’m sure that if you got ahold of Quentin, he’d be like, “Justin who? No, I don’t know the lamer.” But you just wait until the darkest hour of night, and you’ll find QT huddled in a corner somewhere, carving yet another Justin voodoo doll out of cheap pine. I make mine out of Legos.

It’s not that I can’t see why he, his few paltry films, and whatever other movie roles he’s cameoed in are revered by so many. While he loves the sound of his own voice and unnatural dialogue, and hates any sort of normal continuity in his movies, there’s a certain unorthodox streak that’s endeared himself to people sick of the routine, predictable Hollywood menu. Still, Reservoir Dogs was nothing more than an oddly edited, long-winded cops ‘n robbers piece, Pulp Fiction suffered from an endless running time while trying to look cool for cool’s sake, and the less said about the drab Jackie Brown, oh, the better.

This whole introduction, which is about three times longer than many of my first-year reviews on MRFH, serves to highlight the importance of what I’m going to say next. When Kill Bill vol. 1 came out, QT and I called a temporary truce. My prejudice against him is not so blind as to deny myself the love of a really awesome, strangely alluring film. Even my earlier sulkings about how Miramax and QT were giving moviegoers the royal screwjob by making us pay twice to see the same movie because QT wouldn’t budge on the editing and Miramax didn’t want to release a film longer than Return of the King — which is still a valid point — melted away until I finally gave in and saw Kill Bill.

Like Clare said, it’s a tough movie to put into simple words. On the surface, it’s nothing more than a semi-cheesy revenge flick; but once you dig down, it’s a semi-cheesy revenge flick with high production values and a deep love of 70′s cinema. Like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill is presented out of order, time-wise. So when we’re thrown right into the story of The Bride, a girl who is shot and left for dead on her wedding day, we’ve got a lot of unanswered questions going on.
I’m fine with that. I figure most everything will be cleared up by the end of Kill Bill vol. 2, and once Quentin is done building an enormous gold statue dedicated to his ego as a filmmaker. In the meantime, all we have to content ourselves with is that this girl is cheesed off, and some other people are going to pay for their crimes. Kill Bill is told in several chapters, each which change in tone and story focus. For instance, one chapter is dedicated solely to giving us the backstory on one of the villains, who ironically gets more characterization than The Bride herself. As the chapters flash back and forth in time, it’s just best to let go and enjoy it for what it is.

And enjoyable is the word I’d like to associate with Kill Bill. I saw it with a few friends, and as we left, my pal, the late Bob, complained that he was bored by Kill Bill. That it wasn’t entertaining. I could only gape. I mean, be turned off by the excessive (and cartoonish) violence, if you must. Be biased from the strange storytelling technique. But be bored? In my mind, it’s not even possible with this movie. It’s simply not boring — it’s anti-boring! If you can claim to be bored after a single lady has plowed through dozens and dozens of Japanese Mafioso types with a katana, then you’re not getting enough vitamins in your diet or something.

In closing, I’d like to share with you a poem I wrote inspired by Gogo, who just made this film for me. Please, limit your laughter to quiet haws:

Scary eyes, bobby socks

Coming my way

My brain spits a command to run

Yet I am paralyzed with awe

Oh, Gogo

I do not wish to be penetrated by you

I’d much rather watch you skip

And giggle as you usher in

Cute death to the room

What are you thinking

You haughty, sumptuous chickadee

And where did you go

I wonder

To buy a spiked metal killing ball on a chain that can also

Kiss with razor blades?

Rest in innocent peace

My Gogo, my princess

I weep blood for you

But also, I have a medical condition

Merry Christmas from QT

Intermission!

• Uma Thurman’s yellow track-suit is a direct homage to the one worn by ‘Bruce Lee’ in Game of Death.
• In order to achieve the specific look of Chinese “wuxia” (martial arts) film of the 1970s, Tarantino gave director of photography, Robert Richardson, an extensive list of genre films as a crash-course in the visual style they used. The list included films by genre-pioneers Cheh Chang and the Shaw Brothers. Tarantino also forbade the use of digital effects and “professional” gags and squibs. As such, he insisted that bloody spurts be done in the fashion made popular by Chang Cheh: Chinese condoms full of fake blood that would splatter on impact.
• Over 450 gallons of fake blood was used on Kill Bill.
• All the main characters are defined at some point by their feet or shoes.
• The Bride’s reference to Pulp Fiction in the kitchen
• Legendary martial artist/actor/cultural icon Sonny Chiba, star of more than 100 action films, gets to take a break in Kill Bill.
• All the Star Trek references
• Vernita Green’s literally named breakfast cereal
• They have Red Apple cigarettes in Japan
• How the “nurse’s” eye patch has a red medical cross on it
• The slight ringing when the sword is drawn
• Guess airlines don’t have a big problem with carrying swords on board! James G. writes in, “If the airliner was JAL, Japan’s national airliner, they would not have a problem with carrying swords on board, as long as they were antiques.”
• Many people have noted the similarities between Lady Snowblood and Kill Bill, well, here’s another connection. The song that is played after the fight between O-Ren Ishii and The Bride is sung by Meiko Kaji, the original Lady Snowblood herself; it’s called “The Flower of Carnage”. [thanks James G.]
• Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits? There are a few interesting crew titles listed and it’s worth it to find out about all the songs used in the soundtrack. Director Robert Rodriguez is given special thanks along with a bunch of other people. The idea of “The Bride” is credited to Q+U in the credits referring to the fact that Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman came up with the basic idea for the story while shooting Pulp Fiction together.
• A Cautionary Tale About Going To The Movies By Mutant Clare
  Sit back and absorb the following tale of movie viewing woe. At one of the many screenings of Kill Bill that I have thus far attended, I was unfortunate enough to be seated one row behind a group of three fellows out on an afternoon heterosexual man date. They were clearly there together but kept the requisite one seat spacer between them so as not to leave any of the other patrons in the theater with any remote impression that they were there “together” if you know what I mean. All of this was fine and good (and strangely entertaining).
  However, as the movie began, random very heterosexual man (RVHM) # 1 decided he needed to make a comment about the film to RVHM #2 and #3. But because they were not actually seated next to one another he opted for the patented movie theater jackass move of yelling over the movie so that everyone in the theater could be privy to whatever genius commentary he had come up with. (An example of said genius commentary included the insightful cry of “AWWWW SH**********T!!!” followed immediately by “NO F***ING WAY DAWWWWG!!!!”). Eventually I grew weary of his annoying jibber jabber and unleashed an all mighty shush of unparalleled proportion. To my great surprise he turned around and said “Oh, okay. Sorry” and stopped talking to his friends. Unfortunately, when that option was taken away from him, he decided that when something struck him as funny he would instead stand half way up out of his seat, grab his guts and lunge forward in fits of hysterical giggles.
  Keep in mind that while there are a few funny moments in the film, it’s not what I’d call a comedy necessarily. Knowing that, now realize that most often, RVHM #1 was laughing this way at things like people getting their arms chopped off and writhing around on the floor in fits of helpless, agonized screaming or things like people being stabbed and watching their intestines splatter to the floor. Clearly these things are over the top and excessively graphic. But I’m not sure I’d describe them as “funny” per se. Maybe somewhat amusing in their outlandishness. Perhaps it would appropriately induce nervous laughter or a subdued chortle. Certainly it made no sense that we would be so overtaken with hilarity as to be physically incapable of keeping himself seated.
  In short, this random heterosexual man gave me the very specific heebie-jeebies. Today’s lesson (it’s the same as any other day’s lesson really). When you go to a public place to take in entertainment of any variety, just because the lights are off doesn’t mean you should act like whatever kind of unhinged freak of nature you are at home. If you are incapable of navigating normal function in a social setting, STAY AT HOME AND LEAVE THOSE OF US WITH SOME SMALL SENSE OF NORMAL SOCIAL DECORUM TO ENJOY THE SHOW YOU NITWIT!

Groovy Quotes

Nikia Green: Mommy, what happened to you and the TV Room?
Vernita Green (covered in blood): Oh, that good for nothin’ dog of yours got his little ass in the living room and acted a damn fool, that’s what happened.

The Bride: It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I’m sorry. But you can take my word for it. Your mother had it coming. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.

O-Ren Ishii: I’m going to say this in English so you know how serious I am. As your leader, I encourage you to — from time to time and always in a respectful manner, and with the complete knowledge that my decision is final — to question my logic. If you’re unconvinced a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so. But allow me to convince you. And I will promise you, right here and now, no subject will be taboo…except the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or my American heritage as a negative is, I collect your f***ing head.

The Bride: For those of you lucky enough to leave with your lives, go! But leave your limbs! They belong to me!

Hattori Hanzo: I tell you with no ego that this is my finest blade. If you should encounter God, God will be cut.

Copperhead: You have every right to want to get even.
The Bride: Get Even? Even-Steven? I would have to kill you, go upstairs, kill little Nikki, then wait for Doctor Bell to come home, and kill him. That’d be about square.

O-Ren Ishii: Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with Samurai swords.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Pulp Fiction
• Kill Bill vol. 2
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

]]> http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/kill-bill-vol-1/feed/ 0 Eunice Kill_Bill_Vol_1_poster clarebanner Kylebanner justinbanner1 Merry Christmas from QT http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/a-goodbye-to-ray-harryhausen/ http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/a-goodbye-to-ray-harryhausen/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 11:45:10 +0000 Al http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/?p=22054 ]]> I remember the first time I saw Clash of the Titans. It was 1991, I was ten years old, and I was in Mrs. Findlay’s fifth grade class at Parker Farms Elementary School. The other fifth graders had been buzzing all week—we were going to take two whole hours out of our school day on Friday and we were going to watch an action movie! We even had to sign a permission slip. It was like a class trip, except we got popcorn.

Friday couldn’t get here fast enough, and, when the day came, we all rushed into class and excitedly took our seats as the VCR whirred to life. Two hours later, the credits rolled and the lights came back up. We began asking the deep, pressing questions that Clash inevitably provokes: What was up with Perseus’s dorky hair? What kind of girly hero rides a flying horse? And, seriously, what was the deal with the owl?

Some found the movie silly (a part of me did, too). Some just slept through the whole thing (it’s possible I also dozed a little). Honestly, though? I couldn’t stop thinking about the monsters. There were two-headed dogs and giant killer scorpions. There was a wicked, slithery Medusa with cracked leather skin and a deadly bow and arrow. There was the deformed satyr, Calibos, who creeped me out terribly and who (I’m pretty sure) hid in my closet for several days after the movie ended. And, of course, there was the massive Kraken, who looked like a mashup of King Kong, Godzilla, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I was transfixed—where did these things come from? They obviously weren’t cartoons.  Robots couldn’t look that good (could they?).  I supposed they might have been guys in costumes but that didn’t seem right either. I’d never seen anything like it.

Eventually, our teacher explained that the creatures were made with something called Claymation and they had been created by a guy named Ray Harryhausen. It was a name I never forgot and, over the next several years, I made a point of watching a lot of his movies: Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C., The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.  They weren’t necessarily good movies, but I never stopped being fascinated with what Ray Harryhausen brought to life within them.

In an era where a guy in a gorilla suit and a diving helmet was considered an acceptable movie monster, Harryhausen’s creations had energy, personality, and texture. They moved like they had weight and mass. They could feel menacing and inhuman or pitable and pained. Even the mediocre acting of the cast and obvious blue screen couldn’t stop them from shining through as something special.

Today, I don’t think people still get a thrill from Harryhausen’s brand of swashbuckling skeletons and rampaging dinosaurs. It’s hard to hold that against them, I guess. We live in an age where the 60,000 hairs on a computer-generated character’s head can be individually rendered and animated. We’re nearing the point where the Oscar for Best Performance can be legitimately awarded to a motion-capture actor. This is an amazing time to be a film fan, even if our nonstop special effectsgasm is making it increasingly easier to be snobby about our movie magic.

So, before we move on to the next news cycle, the next big summer movie, and the next dead celebrity, I wanted to just take a few minutes today to say thank you and goodbye to Ray Harryhausen. He was one of my Cult Heroes, an undeniable piece of film history, and will be very sincerely missed.




]]> http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/a-goodbye-to-ray-harryhausen/feed/ 3 Al hhausen4 hhausen6 hhausen2 hhausen3 http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/deneb-does-tales-of-the-gold-monkey/ http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/deneb-does-tales-of-the-gold-monkey/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 11:41:31 +0000 denebthall http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/?p=22002 ]]> A familiar term nowadays amongst TV watchers is the ‘Firefly effect’ – in other words, getting really into a new show only for it to be cancelled with breathtaking rapidity. When grumbling about this, though, it’s important to remember that it is not a recent phenomenon; it’s been happening since the invention of the TV and/or radio. A show will gain a loyal fanbase who are just itching to see what happens next, and then, out of the blue – nothing happens next, because the show is gone.

This is always a pity, but the mere fact that it has a loyal fanbase will keep it alive, if not active, thereby attaining the rarified status of ‘cult’. My question, therefore, is this – does the Firefly effect still apply when the show in question has been off the air for years, and I never saw it during its initial run?

Ah, well. I’m gonna review it anyway.

Tales of the Gold Monkey is set in the year 1938, in the fictional Marivellas island chain, just adjacent to the territory of Japan. The main protagonist of the series is one Jake Cutter (Stephen Collins), an ex-Flying Tiger and soldier of fortune. Since he left the military, he’s been hanging around the South Pacific in his old Grumman’s Goose seaplane, hauling cargo and passengers and generally making a living however he can. His home base is the island of Boragora, home to a few islanders, a small population of expats and not much else except the Monkey Bar, owned by Bon Chance Louie (Roddy McDowall), who is, among other things, the local magistrate. Along with his one-eyed dog Jack, his mechanic Corky (Jeff MacKay) and his not-quite-a-love-interest-but-more-than-a-friend Sarah Stickney-White (Caitlin O’Heaney), he plies his trade amongst the islands, running across more than his fair share of adventure on the way.

The first thing – well, one of the first things – one must take into account when reckoning up TotGM is that it’s not a recent show. It ran from ’82 to ’83, and they had different ways of doing things back then. As such, if you are expecting a frenetic, action-every-minute sort of series, you will be disappointed. It has action, and it’s good, but it’s much slower-paced than a current show would be. There’s a lot of sitting around and talking. True, they’re generally sitting around while doing something interesting like flying a plane, and the talking features plenty of pithy dialogue and snappy quotes, but if you’re looking for the sort of series where the hero is constantly on his feet swinging punches, then Gold Monkey ain’t your baby. Look elsewhere.

Furthermore, this is pre-CGI, and while it had what was considered a pretty hefty budget at the time, it was still peanuts compared to what even a cheap movie would get. As such, there are a few flubs in the special effects, not to mention egregious uses of stock footage for sequences that just couldn’t be accomplished on-set. Expect some clunky bluescreen, repeated use of establishing shots, etc., etc.

Got all that? Still here? Good. Because despite a few such details, Tales of the Gold Monkey is quite an entertaining little adventure series that is well worth checking out.

If it is possible to categorize prospective TV watchers, I would say that Gold Monkey is one for ‘dabblers’ as opposed to ‘long-haulers’. By which I mean that, due to it being made in the pre-cable era of syndication and re-runs, with no DVD sets to fill you in if you missed an episode, each one is very much self-contained; there are none of the sustained storylines that keep modern audiences breathlessly glued to their screens. This is not, however, a bad thing, given its length; there are only twenty-one installments in the series, after all, and if you like it, why rush it? You can pace yourself better this way; there’s none of the ‘oh holy CRAP how are they going to resolve that’ cliffhangers that set one lunging towards the next episode and gobbling up the whole season in a few nights. (Not that I have anything against those, but still, variety.) Instead, you can watch an episode or two and feel satiated, then come back in a few days when you feel like some more. Personally, I found that this gradual approach allowed me to acclimate myself to the characters and their world on my own schedule, with the result that, by the final episode, they felt like old friends.

So far as the individual plots go, they’re basically your typical adventure movie stuff. Jake has encounters with all kinds of bad guys, more than one ‘lost civilization’ (of a sort, anyway) shows up, the Goose breaks down/nearly crashes on a semi-regular basis, there are fistfights, gunfights, snappy patter, running gags, and that awesome theme music swells stirringly whenever they can get away with it. It’s not exactly sophisticated, but since when has that mattered in this sort of show?

It does, however, have more to it than you’d think. Over the course of its short career, Gold Monkey indulges in all of the above, true, but it also samples a fair amount of other story-types that you might not expect. There’s military intrigue (this is on the cusp of WW2, you know), espionage, murder mysteries, a prison escape, a ticking-bomb plot, romance, natural disaster – all sorts of stuff. More than that, there is actually a surprising amount of character-related drama as the series draws to a close, the likes of which I will detail when I talk about the characters, and hey, looks like it’s time to do exactly that.

Let’s start with the hero. Jake Cutter is not exactly what one would call deep, but he’s not shallow, either. He has all the typical adventure-hero attributes – he’s handsome, he’s a manly-man, he’s a good shot and knows how to throw a punch – but there’s more to him than that. He’s devoted to his friends, he’s got a fierce sense of right and wrong and a good sense of humor, and we find out a few of the things that led him to the place he is now – in brief, the man has been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things. The guy may be a bit rough around the edges, but he’s a nice fella who you feel you could depend upon were you to meet him in real life.

The same could be said about Corky, his trusty mechanic, who is the sort of character who would never be created today. Why? Well, he’s a recovering drunk, you see, as well as the comedy relief. This particular combination used to be pretty common, but it’s way too un-PC today; if a modern-day version of the character were to show up, he’d probably be all gritty and realistic and the writers would bend themselves over backwards to make sure just how clear they were making it that they were trying to be socially relevant and that this was not at all a diminution of the horrors of alcoholism and please please please nobody sue us – and amongst all that well-intentioned panic, the character himself would be lost.

It would all be for nothing, too, because to the show’s credit, it actually does a pretty fair job of showing the tenuousness of Corky’s position. Sure, there are a few jokes about his fondness for beer and such, but it’s made pretty clear that A: he’s aware of his dependence on booze, and struggles against it, and B: the only thing stopping him from plunging back into full-on alcoholism again is his friendship with Jake and the others. There’s one episode where it appears that he’s had a relapse and screwed things up, and the guilt and shame he projects are intense and palpable. Jeff MacKay really did a top-notch job in the role – he manages to balance out all the above by giving the character an endearingly childlike nature, along with a genuine competence at his job and a touching concern for his friends, especially Jake, who, it’s made pretty clear, basically saved his life by getting him off the hard stuff. Sure, Corky’s funny, but he’s poignant, too, and that makes for an interesting combination.

Moving along, we have Sarah. Sarah is a pretty good character, and Caitlin O’Heaney does a good job portraying her, but the show doesn’t really do as much with her as it might. Here’s her deal (uh – slight spoilers for the first episode): officially, she’s a singer who’s been ‘stranded’ on Boragora and is making a living in the Monkey Bar singing torch songs. In reality, she’s an agent of Uncle Sam keeping an eye on the local situation, something that only Jake knows about. This is a good set-up for future episodes, and to be fair we do get a few good stories out of it – Sarah has a secret mission of some sort, she’s been warned to look out for such-and-such, etc. – but far too often, she just plays the role of the off-again-on-again girlfriend who will never permanently hook up with the hero because that would ruin the romantic tension. She’s a strong and likable character, but her primary function in one-too-many episodes is to get a ‘well, really!’ look on her face and storm off. It’s a shame, but at least it’s a case of a strong character being used somewhat weakly rather than a weak one being pushed in our faces as strong.

Neither one of these is the case with Bon Chance Louie, played with great charisma by the inimitable Roddy McDowall (replacing Ron Moody, who plays him in the pilot). The man was a scene-stealer par excellence, and he does a great job here. Louie is a terrific supporting character, the sort who is far more interesting when he is in a supporting role, and you only get hints about who he is – if he were in the lead, we’d know all about him, and that wouldn’t be as intriguing. Dripping with Gallic charm and sophistication, comfortable in every situation from breaking up a bar fight to recommending exactly what wine should go with a meal, always impeccably dressed – the guy is awesomely smooth, and on the rare occasion when he does step a bit more into the spotlight, it’s pretty clear that he’s lived an amazing life. I dig Louie. He’s cool.

There is one more hero, but I’ll get to him later. Let’s move on to the villains. Unlike some series, Gold Monkey does not have signature bad guys who are always behind everything – there’s no ‘Next time, Gadget!’-style evil masterminds here – but it does have a couple of recurring ones, and unsurprisingly, they’re both related to the upcoming rise of the Axis.

That being said, it actually treats them with a degree of delicacy not always seen in this sort of show. The primary villain is Princess Koji (Marta Dubois), a Dragon Lady type who lives on the nearby island of Matuka, so naturally there are lots of encounters with the Japanese. However, there is no indication that the Japanese are somehow automatically the enemy; it’s more that they are the enemy because they’re touchy about their borders and, you know, it’ll be WW2 soon, so we know something the good guys don’t. When they’re not being over-zealous about blowing the Goose out of the sky, they’re depicted with a good deal of respect – if nothing else, Jake clearly admires their devotion to honor. Sure, Koji herself has a distinct hint of the Yellow Peril about her, and would probably not have passed muster if created more recently, but she too is an honorable (if somewhat sadistic) foe, playing by the rules and displaying common courtesy in her dealings with Jake (although this is at least partially due to the fact that she’s got the hots for him). Mind you, it is made very clear that if they cross the boundaries of respect or inconvenience, they’re toast – she doesn’t keep all those piranhas and cobras and things around for nothing, after all – but meanwhile, she will be polite about any minor infractions that might occur.

Then you have the second recurring villain, who can really only be termed a ‘villain’ due to his allegiances – the Reverend Willie Tenboom (John Calvin). You see, he’s a spy for the Nazis, but not, it is important to note, a Nazi spy.

Why is this such an important distinction? Simple – Tenboom is not a Nazi himself. Indeed, it’s made quite clear that he thinks very little of what was then merely ‘the current administration’, but he’s loyal to his country and will do its bidding. In the meantime, he’s perfectly happy pretending to be a Dutch missionary and spending most of his spare time “blessing” (quote marks very much implied) the local island girls. He’s not only not a sinister character, he’s practically lovable, and considers the heroes to be good friends of his, but there is still that hint of moral ambiguity to him that makes one wonder ‘ooh – is he going to be the bad guy this time around?’ Nonetheless, the fact that he has that ambiguity, and that he serves an evil cause while not being evil himself, makes him a very enjoyably complex character, and one of my favorites.

Finally, we have that last heroic character I mentioned earlier, and the only reason he does come last is because he is not, in point of fact, human. I speak, of course, of Jack, otherwise known as ‘the real star of the show’. You’d think the inclusion of a Jack Russell terrier in an eye-patch would be a one-note joke used for background humor, but noooo – Jack is every bit as much of a fleshed-out character as the human cast. He’s not your usual ‘loyal dog’ type, either; he’s a grouchy little grump who holds a grudge like nobody’s business (I won’t go into the details of why here, because it’s too good of a running gag to spoil; suffice it to say that it’s funny). He doesn’t hesitate to express his opinion, either, although, of course, he has to do so in barks – one for no, two for yes (or was that the other way ‘round?). He may be ‘only’ a dog, but he’s treated as a person by virtually everybody, and you can fully understand why. Jack is awesome, end of story.

To wrap up, if you have any affection for old-style TV and thrilling heroics, then I definitely recommend Tales of the Gold Monkey. It’s available on DVD, and if you’re at all curious, you could do worse than to give it a watch.

Now, all together – theme song time! Dahn-da-dahn da dahn-da-da; dahn-da-dahn da dahn-da-daa…


]]> http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/deneb-does-tales-of-the-gold-monkey/feed/ 8 denebthall Gold_Monkey 1276777168_8 Tales-of-the-Gold-Monkey 1276777168_10 1276777166_3 1276777008_2 1276777168_9 4634383_l3 1276777009_6 1276777008_1 http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/john-carpenters-ghosts-of-mars/ http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/john-carpenters-ghosts-of-mars/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 14:21:22 +0000 Eunice http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/?p=21538 ]]> “Eutopia, the ass end of the universe.”

The Scoop: 2001 R, directed by John Carpenter and starring Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, and Jason Statham

Tagline: You Don’t Stand A Ghost Of A Chance

Summary Capsule: Cops team up with crooks to battle nasty evil on Mars



Justin’s Rating: That’s it! No more trips to the red planet for you, son!

Justin’s Review: Between Red Planet, Mission To Mars and this movie, our neighboring planet in the solar system has more life hopping around on it than a lice convention at a gradeschool classroom. Ghosts of Mars is one of those “you built a house on ancient Indian burial grounds” movies, where you just have to substitute the word “house” for “colony”, and the word “Indian burial grounds” for “Martian burial grounds”. Nothing ever good comes from these types of movies, because dead people are pretty pissed off. They figure, hey, they’re dead, they might as well make other people dead too.

The Bad Acting Baton is relayed between the two main characters in this film, one a cop played by Natasha “My tongue can go through the back of your skull” Henstridge, and the other a but-I’m-innocent murderer played by Ice “I was in Leprechaun 5, really” Cube. The cop and her easily disposable buddies (one of which is played by seventies blaxsploitation star Pam Grier) take a train to an outlying martian colony, where everyone’s kinda dead and there’s ghosts afoot. As with most women movie cops, our lead actress goes over the top trying to portray what a hard puppy she is. She stares unflinchingly at the bad guys and dares them to shoot her. She hits people for giving her lip. She never wavers from a growling monotonous tone in her voice, and sometimes does drugs. In short, she’s the most boring stereotypical good guy ever.

For a movie set on another planet, Ghosts of Mars is decidedly low-tech. They justify this by claiming that the planet is being terriformed, so we get a train, a bunch of metal shelters, and people waving around assault rifles taken from 1976. And they have a land rover. That’s about it.

A lot of the movie is spent with the remaining unpossessed characters radioing the train, trying to get it back to the colony. Of course, once the train comes and the good guys get on, cop girl decides they can’t run to safety. The evil presence (whatever that is) must be stopped here and now. By them. By the people who have been running for their lives. It’s this kind of horror movie stupidity that begs the question, what would we do in this situation? Well let me tell you my thoughts. I survive a slaughterhouse and an evil demonic force, my motto then becomes “Someone else can handle it”, and I book a one-way fare to Earth. It’s kinda pointless them all going back and fighting, because from the opening scene of the film you know that only the cop girl survives (yes, this entire movie is a FLASHBACK STORY). Do characters even watch the movies they’re in?

The evil force, represented by a dust cloud and a lot of hazy first-person POV shots, really doesn’t know how to work up the scares. I’m shocked, since this comes from John Carpenter, the guy who’s done The Thing and In The Mouth Of Madness. On the other hand, I shouldn’t be shocked, since this comes from John Carpenter, the guy who’s done Vampires and Escape from L.A.. Pretty much all that goes on is a bunch of decapitations, and the whole movie has a low-rent Event Horizon horror-in-space feel to it, just without the fear.

About the best scene and the best thing I can say about this movie is that at one point one of the good guys gets hopped up on some drug, then decides to open a can of food with his machete. He accomplishes this in style, only he loses his thumb in the process. It’s crass, it’s bloody, and it’s just a weensy bit humorous. Consider that the highlight, folks, and keep on moving.



Awwwww!

Intermission!

• The special effects supervisor is credited as Monkey Overlord

Groovy Quotes

James Williams: That’s the second time I’ve saved your life.
Melanie Ballard: Yeah, run a tab.

Melanie Ballard: Let’s put it this way… maybe I’ll sleep with you if you’re the last man on earth. But we’re not on earth.

Jericho Butler: Eutopia, the ass end of the universe.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Event Horizon
• Red Planet
• Blade Runner

]]> http://mutantreviewers.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/john-carpenters-ghosts-of-mars/feed/ 1 Eunice John_Carpenter's_Ghosts_of_Mars_poster justinbanner Awwwww!