A History of Violence

Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt

Dir David Cronenberg

Overall, leaves the viewer with mixed emotions – a difficult anti-hero, because he is a cold-blooded killer who just wants to sit down and have a normal life, but then, how can he, with such a past? The real tragedy is marked out by the children, who have been born with this curse, and what’s good about the story is that it subtly brings these questions to the fore – for example, Viggo’s son who starts the movie as a scrawny weakling getting bullied, but when he finally stands up for himself he beats the tar out of the bullies in ways he never dreamed of. Then, when he’s forced to kill the mobster who’s going to off his dad, we can tell that here is the link – the fact that a son is a product of the father, regardless of how the father had tried to submerge those instincts.

But then, the movie doesn’t fully explore or answer those questions. After that scene, Viggo’s character gasses up the car to head back to Philly to face his demons, in this case, his brother (William Hurt), and the movie gives us this gruesome action standoff which is as graphic as all the other killings in this film.

And then at the end, which was supposed to be poignant – Viggo comes back to the family and for five minutes of silence, the toddler daughter brings his plate to the table and the son silently slides him his meatloaf, and we are meant to understand that now, with the demons of the past truly in the ground, he finally can have the family life of which he’s always dreamed.

That’s the uncomfortable part: he can have it, after murdering in a vicious manner some 10 human beings, but we know he’ll never be brought to justice, because it was self-defense, and these we’re bad guys anyway, right? So, basically, the moral is that you kill your way out of your problems, and when you’ve left nothing behind you but a blood trail and smashed skulls, you can throw your gun into the pond and live happily ever after.

Sadly, this is just one more of too many movies telling us the same thing. And while it gets closer to the psychological implications than other movies, it still proposes no other solution.

Maybe I’m being too hard - I don’t know. Perhaps the story would be better as a novel, in which the implications for the family could be further fleshed out. Because I like the characters, especially the son, and I think how they actually heal themselves would be far more interesting than the actual blood n guts.

That would be a good idea for whoever wrote the screenplay. Make it into a novel. Show us how they survive this without going completely insane.

VG

Soccer Dog

James Marshall, Olivia D'Abo

1998, Callisto Entertainment

What makes this more than an "underdog" movie (i.e. - a losing soccer team that magically makes the championship to win) and "sports-animal" movie (a la Airbud et. al.) is the fact that there are minor characters who are simply too weird - and that's a good thing, because that gives this movie a "tongue-in-cheek" feel that elevates it above the other standard fare that I have mentioned previously in this ridiculously elongated sentence.

Actually, the style of the weirdness and oddity of the characters reminded me slightly of Better Off Dead, and by "slightly" is because BOD was on a trip worthy of Salvidor Dali - Soccer Dog probably would have been even better if it had just thrown off the self-imposed reins and just gone for it. But what do I know?

All in all - it's a really cute movie, and good for the whole family, and it's a very nice afternoon well spent.

VG

Universal Soldier: The Return

Jean-Claude Van Damme

TriStar, 1999

The quality of this film is so bad that for awhile I couldn't believe that it was actually a TriStar picture. Maybe their role was limited to distribution only, I don't know about this business: these things are too esoteric for me.

All I know is when I see a good movie or not. This was not.

Which is sad, because was a time when I liked pretty much every movie I saw, regardless how bad they were - maybe the more I watch and the more I blog the snootier I become. Maybe I'm just becoming more aware of "watching" the movie rather than just enjoying it. I don't know.

But then again, maybe I've just hit a bad batch.

Listen: if you like action flicks with macho meatboys, then this one would be good. Honestly, this movie shows like a run-down of the WWF to me. Lots of bodybuilder bodies, which I have known for a very long time do NOT equate into the actual athletics that are required in this flick.

As far as plot goes: Van Damme's a Universal Soldier who somehow has gotten back his humanity (didn't see the first movie, so can't comment how that happened), and Seth the computer is facing shutdown (termination of the UniSol project) so it goes on a rampage - ramps up all the UniSols to become killing machines and puts his own brain into a top notch rockhard bod, in order to whup up on Van Damme. However, at the beginning of the movie, when Seth was nothing more than a cube floating in electroplasmic goo, Van Damme's daughter was sitting in front of him learning science like any good student with the ultimate electronic babysitter.

Now, later on in the flick, Seth uses the daughter to get back at our buddy JCVD and I was waiting for some inclination that Seth was never really going to hurt the girl, in fact, to show some affection for the kid, as a way to "humanize" the computer and make us slightly empathetic to Seth's plight. However, that never materialized and so Seth remained a one-dimensional character and JCVD whupped him with some cryogenic freezing and one well-placed roundhouse kick.

Not much of a movie. If you like this sort of thing, then you've got yourself a decent hour and a half entertainment.

VG

Star Force

Michael Bergin Amy Weber

Stardom Pictures 2005

This is a neat little B-movie Sci-Fi flick, with interesting if not totally original plot, and I have to say the one thing that I really like about good B-movies is that, even when the actors are terrible, at least they're honest. You can tell that here's someone who likes making movies - even if the delivery of the lines are stilted.

This movie's like that: it's a simple story about a soldier who believes in the order of things (the government which turns out to be corrupt, including some of his senior officers) - who gets sent on a fake mission to a penal colony, where one criminal mastermind is in cahoots with the corrupt government regarding mining rights to a mineral which will bring them a fortune. No great shakes, but some interesting throwing themselves against the rocks scene and some feisty repartee between our hero and heroine, which is always good for the soul.

VG

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Kate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen

2007

This movie definitely will be filed under the category of "What the Hell-OH was that?"

I swear I found it difficult to sit through this lugubrious piece of mush. I wanted to be anywhere but there, and the only reason why I didn't turn it off is because I had been promised from the previews a majestic battle scene wherein the British fleet tears apart the snooty Spanish Armada.

But even that was a let-down, probably because you blink and it's gone. Over. Phoot.!

Forgive me for not being an expert in Elizabethan biography, but in what little I've studied I've never come across any hint that she might have had an illicit attraction to Sir Walter Raleigh, so I can't weigh in upon that. Also, her half-sister, Mary Queen of Scots, I seem to remember some intrigue there, and I'm not certain if she had her put to death, but it's possible, but regardless - that was a minor subplot to the movie, but if the movie had dealt with it more it would have been more interesting, but instead what we have is a

maudlin mopey movie about her deeezires! She spends most of the time wondering if she could allow herself to feel love or not, and please don't think I'm insensitive, I mean, I want everybody to be happy, even my fictionally historical characters, but

Queen Elizabeth, for the sake of God and Country - IS - STRONG!

She's not some prancing nancy all simpery and worried about her "feelings" - she ruled one of the greatest eras in one of the greatest countries/nations in the entire world, and this movie has her crying over everything, worried about everything, uncertain about everything. Seriously, I understand when movies try to humanize our icons, and that would have been OK if the movie had been entitled Elizabeth: Her Tragic Internal Turmoil. But no, this is the GOLDEN AGE and it should have been about the Golden Age,

and oh yes, it should be noted that the Spanish were cartoonish figures and what was the deal with that little girl with the little voodoo doll of our beloved queen? And Philip of Spain, and the rest of his lispy dandies had FAKE Spanish accents, by the way . . . (thanks to my wife for spotting that one!)

Oh I've already gone on too long. Give this one a miss. Seriously.


VG

Deadbirds

Interesting little horror movie at the end of the Civil War - a small band of soldiers heists a bank and heads off to an abandoned house to spend the night - get trapped in a storm - and of course the unhappy ghosts of the house drive them all insane (killing them off) all the while giving progressive clues to the horrific events that had transpired there.

Something about the man of the house sacrificing his slaves to try to bring his dead wife back to life, and along the way his children were taken over by demons and he killed them all - something like that. It was pretty sketchy in parts.

But basically you've got all the elements here. I particularly enjoyed the historical setting, because it was effective: at that time, a storm truly DID separate you from any chance of outside help. So that contributed to the sense of helplessness.

Vg

The Last Legion

Colin Firth, Ben Kingsley, Aishwayrana Rai

(sorry about misspelling her name there, need to verify and correct)

2007 ??

another quasi-historical epic, but leaning more toward the fantastic . . . basically you're left feeling somewhat sorry for this movie - in that it has been done many times before and really offers little in the way of anything new, different, or at least interesting.

Rai was good as the female warrior who kicks butt - that was OK. And Colin Firth's small but loyal band of Roman soldiers were good for a few comic relief moments, and Ben Kingsley's Merlin was sufficient. I won't even discuss the boy caesar's role because it was relatively insignificant.

Overall, the good aspect of the movie is that the actors are such professionals that even though they are not in their best form or giving their best work, they are still professional enough to pull off solid performances. The problem was with the script, which was too sweeping and disjointed.

Plot starts off all right - with the caesar without an empire (being ca 500 AD and the Goths have taken Rome) and the boy is whisked off to Brittanica in hopes of finding the last Roman legion - and there we suddenly have some guy in a gold mask trying to kill the boy and Merlin and raging against the prophesy and the Legion has already "gone native" (i.e integrated into the Celtic society - taken wives and had kids - which I thought was a neat little twist)

But then you have the obligatory war with the small band against gold mask's army and the last minute rescue by these soldiers-turned-farmers-taking up arms one last time.

Like I said - all done before, and with more coherent storylines.

VG

Supernova

Tia Carrere, Peter Fonda

At first I was wondering why this didn't look like other movies and why it kept having these abrupt fades every 20 minutes, until I finally realized - DUH! it's a made-for-TV movie. OK - that clued me in to the repetition of the shots of the sun burning and the various subplots that seemed to have no point.

Once clued in to that, I settled in for a slightly interesting time. But this bears further discussion on the media: the relative advantages and disadvantages to these "brothers of film" - that of the theatrical movie and the television movie. The theatrical has basically an hour&1/2 to 2 hours to tell the tale, leave you emotionally WOWED (so you won't demand your 10 bucks back!) and get you out in time for the next showing; the made for TV movie has to keep you from channel surfing while also convincing the advertisers that you will watch over the course of three nights. Leads to different styles of storytelling.

Do I think Supernova was effective at this? I don't know - I watched it as a DVD movie, which as I said, when you're primed for one and get the other, it's a bit of a shake up. Overall, the story went pretty well, once you suspend your disbelief so much that you can accept that the sun can go supernova in a week.

Which is impossible, by the way.

But other than that, there are some good characters - it has an interesting take on what people will do at the end of the world (they will party like it's well . . . beyond 1999 - which I prefer to complete riots and fires and destruction). There, of course, is the military, which has built an underground city to ride out Armageddon (I swear I expected to see Dr Strangelove around every corner in that complex . . . and if you don't understand the reference, then shame on you! - go rent DR STRANGELOVE RIGHT NOW!!! - That movie should be in the Top 10 of every person's list of Movies You Must See Before You Die)

Anyway, gotta go - sorry that's all I had to say for it, except that it was sweet to watch Henry Fonda as a tired scientist fall in love with a woman on a tropical island at the end of the world and have them sweetly holding hands watching the sun over the ocean and then be killed by a fireball that vaporizes them right on the steps of their hut.

Sweet.

VG

Dark Water

Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth

2005

Interesting how our movie genres also take on the aspect of their times. The horror genre, at least for this part of the first decade of the 20th century, is actually splitting into two parts: what I call the GoreFest, and the other I call the ShadowFear. (cheesily cool, I think) - the GoreFest is of course the Saw series, Hostel, etc, and the ShadowFear is like a scary Japanese Manga come to life - because it all stems from Japanese horror, such as The Grudge. Dark Water is definitely in that vein, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a direct adaptation from a Japanese horror film, because it has that same mood - slow moving, tension building (throughout the film, not just the 30 seconds leading up to the bloodbath) and the horror is more in what is just beyond the realm of sight rather than the person who is digging out your spleen with a rusty pickaxe.

Strangely enough, though, something about this movie didn't really hold it together for me - even though it had all the elements: a creepy building (singular location), odd characters (who is that maintenance guy, anyway?), a child ghost (those always scare the tar outta me!), and lots of is-this-real-or-a-dream. In fact, the only scary part was when the ghost was trying to "pretend" to be the real girl. That was a shocker.

But, all in all, the divorcing dad was not well-drawn, i.e. a terrible man in the beginning who suddenly becomes a great guy - not well done. John C Reilly's character was great but he was just your basic slumlord, not necessarily evil but more completely uncaring ("pay the rent and leave me alone" was how that character lived - like most landlords, eh?)

All in all, a movie honestly you can skip unless you are a fan of ShadowFear movies, then you can watch and compare with other like-minded souls the relative pros and cons to this one and Uzumaki or The Eye.

By the way . . . Uzumaki is best left in the cutout bin and the The Eye (the original Chinese 2002 film) is a must-see!!!

VG

American Vampire

a favourite of the dollar bin at Wal-Mart, I finally bought it because it just looked so cheesy. And it is. But don't be fooled! The "Carmen Electra" that it has splayed across the top is a misdirection; she's actually a minor character. They just put her name at top because she's the only famous one from the film.

Basic Information from the Vampire Compendium:
Class: B-movie
Style: horror/humour/"tongue-in-cheek"
Vampire Weaknesses: sunlight, garlic, crosses, stake

Coolest bit: The vampire hunter is a blissed out, mid-fifties surfer, called The Big Kahuna, played by Adam West, and the best scene in the movie is the dialogue between him and the main character, the teenage kid, who calls him a "third-rate Spiccoli," among other lines. West also refers to putting a "stake through the eggbeater." Again, this scene is really the apex of the movie, and if you can watch just the clip of that scene, well, that's all you need.

Digiview Productions. Supposedly 1997, but seriously I think it was filmed a few years earlier, judging from the clothing style and the quality of cinematography.

VG