Fantastic Flop

  • Title: Fantastic Four
  • IMDB: link

Sometimes you go to movies with low expectations and are pleasantly surprised because the movie is better than you expected.  This is not that film.  I walked out of Fantastic Four with a strange sense of bewilderment that no one tried to stop this train wreck from being shown.  Didn’t anyone on set see how bad this was?  Did no one at the studio level watch dailies, or by watching them did they see their careers end and decided they’d rather jump off the top of Fox headquarters than bring this up with the brass? 

I would have thought someone at Marvel or 20th Century Fox would have had the good sense to burn every last reel of this turkey.  Even if you had to burn the entire building to the ground, it would still be a better solution than unleashing this thing on an unsuspecting public.  It is almost impossible to describe how bad this film is, but I have a mission to make sure as few people’s lives are ruined as possible by witnessing this atrocity firsthand, so I will do my best.

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Water A’int Scary

Great horror movies keep an audience on the edge of their seat, engaged, wondering what could possibly happen next.  Good horror movies keep you interested through bizarre plot twists, gruesome death scenes, and lots of blood.  This movie made me want to pee.

Dark Water
1 & 1/2 Stars

Great horror movies keep an audience on the edge of their seat, engaged, wondering what could possibly happen next.  Good horror movies keep you interested through bizarre plot twists, gruesome death scenes, and lots of blood.  This movie made me want to pee.  Dark Water is the latest Japanese horror movie to be remade by Hollywood.  I have never seen the original Honogurai mizu no soko kara, but I will assume it was better than this.  It’s really quite a shame considering how much this movie had going for it that the end result is a tangled ball of missed opportunities.

In the midst of a messy divorce and custody battle, Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) moves with her daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade) to a rather strange apartment building owned by Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly).  The building appears relatively old and rundown, and the caretaker of the place Veek (Pete Postlethwaite) tries to keep everything working while blaming any accidents on a pair of kids who live on the tenth floor.  There’s also a strange stain in the corner of the bedroom ceiling that seems to fascinate Ceci.  Immediately after moving in odd occurences start to happen.  The numbered buttons for the elevator are burnt off and the elevator that often has a small wet spot in the corner likes to move to the top floor all on its own.  Dahlia’s ceiling begins to leak, Ceci begins to be talking to an imaginary friend with the same name as the girl who once lived in the upstairs apartment and makes her do bad things.  Dahlia ‘s life quickly begins to fray as she can’t get anyone to take care of the leak in the apartment, which is caused by all the faucets in the room above hers being turned on, her husband is suing her and citing examples of her unfitness as a parent, and Ceci starting to have episodes at school.

Sounds kinda’ interesting,right?  Well, it’s sad because it really could have been.  All the elements are here for a very tight intriguing psychological drama, but the movie decides early on that it would prefer to be your standard run of the mill Hollywood ghost story.  Very early we see Ceci talking to our ghost and we hear the ghost talking back.  This really takes the wind out of the sails as they keep playing the “is she crazy” storyline even though they have already told us there is a ghost.  The problem is the psychological parts work far better than the ghost scenes.  If you are going to do a ghost movie in the horror realm, which this movie claims to do, then you have to have a scary ghost.  A little girl who starts water leaks around the building isn’t too scary to me.  Nothing that happens justifies the effect it has on Dahlia so they had to write in a back story halfway through the film about her being abused and abandoned by her parents.  I guess this is supposed to explain why all these inconveniences scare her when they wouldn’t scare a four year-old child, but I’m sorry I couldn’t buy it.  Water just isn’t scary.  The big special effects sequences are far from impressive.  We get water running down floors, water dripping, water shooting through pipes, water shooting out of sinks and toilets, and water running down walls.  I’ve seen effects on Sesame Street that are scarier, and more impressive.  An odd note, most of the water is a very dark color almost like blood which is a nice touch, but is wasted because no one in the movie, even though it is everywhere, seems to notice or comment.

So they abandon the suspense angle early on, the horror angle never pans out, is there anything that works in this movie?  Well yes, it does have some nice performances.  Reilly is very good as the apartment owner/slum lord who resembles more of a used car salesman.  There are good performances by the Ariel Gade as the child and Tim Roth, who has a very interesting turn as Dahlia’s lawyer who works out of his SUV.  Connelly is very good in the opening quarter of the movie, but her performance becomes strictly one note as the odd occurences begin, which isn’t helped by the script calling for her to self medicate herself continuously through the end of the movie.  Postlethwaite’s character never really is defined.  He’s either the mean and creepy old guy who lives in the basement, or he’s a nice guy who fixes problems for the tenants, depending on the scene.  Dougray Scott is fine as the ex-husband, though he’s a little too nice and concerned for us to understand Dahlia’s anger at him.  Camyrn Manheim has a nice role as Ceci’s teacher, but there’s really not much for her to do in the movie other then tell Dahlia something might be wrong with her daughter.  The apartment building is very strange, but never really scary.  The director never takes advantage of play on the oddness of the surroundings.  In addition, it does seem rather empty.  We only see three other tenants from the building throughout the entire movie, Veek’s two michievious teenagers who could have been much creepier, and a man Dahlia meets on the elevator.  Considering the huge building and Murray’s need to sell apartments fast, fast, fast this doesn’t seem to make much sense.  The director might have been going for a ghost town feel, but we are told and shown that this is a thriving town with one of the best schools in the nation.  Maybe the studio ran out of money and couldn’t hire any more extras.

This movie just doesn’t work.  I could see what the director and the writer were going for in different scenes, but the choices they make never pan out.  To give you an example, without explaining too much, the last scenes in the movie are supposed to be moving.  I laughed out loud.  The ending doesn’t seem to translate well, while it might work well in the Japanese version, here it just looks contrived.  The opening sequence with Dahlia as a little girl, which we see again and again in flashbacks, does nothing to add weight to the character or the storyline.  The movie is beset with countless boneheaded decisions are made simply because of the need to advance another ghost scene in the plot.  The movie wastes a great cast and a very intriguing set up for a psychological drama for what amounts to a pretty lame ghost movie.  If you want to see a good suspenseful movie about a kid that talks to dead people I’d recommend you go out and rent M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, unless water scares you.

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Brothers

This Danish film about a POW is good for the icing, but not the cake.

The story of Brothers is unoriginal nearly to the point of cliché, but the masterful performances and beautiful cinematography make the movie interesting. Indeed, the familiarity of the story squarely plants the focus of the film on the art of those making it and on the underlying theme of betrayal and forgiveness.

Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) is a major in the Danish army who is being deployed to Afghanistan; his brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) was just released from prison where he served time for robbing a bank. When Michael is taken prisoner by Afghani fighters and is presumed dead, Jannik must summon the maturity to hold his family together while caring for Michael’s wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen) and her two daughters. As Jannik and Sarah grow closer, Michael endures unspeakable horror to survive.

The tension between Jannik and Sarah is palpable as they each long for the other to dull their grief. As the two fall into an uneasy friendship, the audience is left wondering what really happened between them, an issue further complicated by exposition by unreliable characters later in the film. It’s unfortunate that the character of Jannik makes little sense as he seems to pluck responsibility out of the blue when his brother goes missing, then loses it just as quickly when Michael returns. In fact, once Michael is rescued Jannik takes a back seat, nearly disappearing from the film altogether, making it clear that Brothers is really about Michael and Sarah.

When Michael returns home, he finds it impossible to accept what he did to survive and chooses instead to hide it. Odd behavior and unprovoked outbursts spiral into a drunken rage in which he tears his house apart, meanwhile Sarah must hide the growing fear of her husband from her daughters. I would have liked to see more of Michael before he is deployed to Afghanistan so that the effects of his imprisonment stand in greater relief.

Director Susanne Bier’s minimalist style is unobtrusive and serves to showcase the talent of the actors. The use of no additional lighting draws us in as we get a sense of the locations without the need for long scenery shots, and the use of handheld digital cameras lends the film urgent intensity. Color subtly evokes the mood of the characters, with pale blues after Michael’s supposed death warming as Jannik and Sarah draw closer, as well as providing a visual clash between Denmark and Afghanistan. On the other hand, the unnecessary images of waving grass that signify the next scene will be in Afghanistan seemed amateurish. All in all, the film takes the best elements of Dogme 95 while retaining familiar elements that make an audience comfortable, like a soundtrack.

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More Zombie Slaughter From Down-Under

ZolarCzakl puts gets his two cents in on Undead

Since the dawn of the modern zombie film in the late 60’s there have been hundreds, if not thousands of cinematic stories told about the undead and those left living who struggle to remain alive. So it’s understandable that to make a zombie movie these days you need to try to put a new spin on the whole idea if you want your movie to get noticed. The Spierig Brothers from Australia have, for the most part, done this in their relatively recent movie Undead (made in 2003 but just now hitting our shores), although the execution of the film leaves a bit to be desired.
The story goes like this: In the small Australian town of Berkeley, meteorites start falling from the sky and immediately turning people into crazed, flesh-hungry zombies. Rene (Felicity Mason), a local beauty queen, holes up in a house owned by a strange farmer named Marion (Mungo McKay), who happens to sell weapons and really knows how to use them. Two cops, a park ranger and his pregnant wife show up as well and the rag-tag group of strangers must band together to survive the zombie onslaught. Things get much stranger from this point on as mysterious hooded figures come into the picture and to tell you any more would be a crime that I’m just not willing to commit.
There seem to be two major species of the zombie film: the serious kind and the funny kind. On the more serious side we have the George Romero movies from Night of the Living Dead all the way up to the recently released Land of the Dead. These movies have sprinklings of humor but for the most part are played in a serious dramatic manner. On the other side we have movies like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series and the movie that perhaps personifies this entire sub genre, Peter Jackson’s 1992 gore opus Dead Alive. These films take goofy characters and situations and mix them with stomach-churning gore and horrific suspense to create a unique blend of sickening violence you can laugh at. Even though the trailer for Undead makes it look like a very serious Romero-type zombie movie, it seems that the Spierig’s were trying to make one more in the Jackson camp but couldn’t quite pull it off.
The problem is that the movie can’t decide if it wants to be funny or if it wants to be serious. Scenes that are meant to be funny (but don’t quite make it) are surrounded by long action scenes (that are at times too drawn out) and even longer stretches of drama. If you look back at Peter Jackson’s first (Bad Taste) or the first Evil Dead movie, you can see that those directors had the comic/horror blend down pretty well from the beginning. It’s apparent that the Spierig Brothers don’t have it yet, but certain things in Undead do show promise for these Aussie filmmakers.
When the humor works, it works really well. In some of the action scenes, the crazy farmer Marion suddenly starts pulling some stunts straight out of Hong Kong crime movies and the Matrix series. Guns appear from out of his sleeves into his hands and he does impossible body flips in slow-motion that are very out of character. There are humorous lines found throughout and some of the violence is really funny in that Dead Alive way. There’s also a scene with zombie fish that has to be seen to be believed. If they could have found a way to keep this humor running consistently throughout the movie then it wouldn’t seem so out of place and would be much funnier overall.
As far as the zombie effects go, they are done pretty well. There is a lot of CGI stuff going on, but it didn’t bother me as much as it does in other movies. The blood and guts are effectively disgusting and the zombies were disposed of in much more entertaining and imaginative ways than they were in, say, Land of the Dead (had to get another jab at Land in there). You know a movie is going to be pretty good when you see a fountain of blood shooting very unrealistically out of someone’s neck like in a Monty Python sketch in the first few minutes of the film. Well, at least I do.
The film was a little disappointing but overall pretty entertaining. Not to compare or anything, but I got more genuine zombie thrills from Undead than I did Land of the Dead. It’s impressive for a first film and should provide enough blood and quirkiness for those who crave goofy zombie mayhem.

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The Pacifier

“It’s not a tumor” has been replaced with “they’re not boobies”.

The Pacifier(2005): 1.5 Stars

Vin Diesel can be seen in many films and usually he’s very stoic, but in The Pacifier he’s the babysitter. The Pacifier is completely brainless fun for the family. Very similar to Kindergarten Cop, The Pacifier holds bar to Arnold and the senseless humor. Vin plays the stud who can kick butt, swim like a shark, and live off the land with some army rations, but can’t change a diaper. He truly did not have to do any acting, all he had to do is stand there and let the kids react to him. The site says that The Pacifier is “James Bond Meets Mary Poppins”, more like James Bond becomes Mr. Mom. Every worse case G-rated scenario that could happen does, baby vomit, baby poo, teenage girl problems, teenage boy problems, and the little girl with all the questions. Very surprising that the creators left out any drug, alcohol and sex related issues, but that may have turned the film into PG-13.

A Navy Seal, Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) finds himself as the babysitter for a family whose father had been assassinated for some secret gadget he had created. Wolfe was prepared to take on any duty he must to set this mishap straight. Finding watching over and taking care of 5 children at one time can be a little more daunting than the most riskiest military covert operation, Wolfe steps up to the occasion and takes on the protection of these children. Keeping house and fighting bad guys can be a little difficult, but the kids finally come to grips with the situation and start to warm up to their new found tough guy Mary Poppins and help out. Each child with their own personality, teen rebel Zoe (Brittany Snow), quiet and secretive 14 year-old Seth (Max Thieriot), 8 year-old inquisitive Lulu (Morgan York) and side notes 3-year old Peter and baby Tyler and with a little assistance from their wacky Romanian Nanny (Carol Kane), sadly Carol did not stay on long enough to keep the entertainment flowing smoothly, the family pulls together and gets the happy ending accomplished. Keeping a family together between evil ninjas, changing diapers, mad crazy wrestling assistant principles and drivers ed, Shane Wolfe pulled off one great feet and Vin Diesel playing his part was quite successful, both looked like a Seal out of water.

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