Machete is a film that runs into problems quick and often. It's main problem comes from the fact that it is indeed an adapted screenplay, and the concept was originally designed to only run about two and a half minutes, and as two and a half minutes, even maybe at a half hour long, Machete would have been genius. It would have been one of my favorites. But at an hour and forty-five, it just runs to long.
The plot is tired and boring and brought nothing new to the table. But was it suppose to? It is one of those throw-back things that seem to be so hip these days. Danny Trejo's family was murdered, he's been trained by the C.I.A., F.B.I., D.E.A. and all the rest. So, revenge.
The film boasts an impressive cast from the B and A-List Teams. Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De Niro, Steven Sagal, Cheech Marin, and others all make their way into Robert Rodriguez's interesting little grindhouse throwback, and you can tell that everyone involved just had a fun time making the picture. Its over-the-top, it's gratuitious, and (at times) its very fun. Just to sit back and watch it absorb in itself and weird universe that it makes. But the fun times are few a far between. Whereas I really enjoyed Death Proof, and Planet Terror, Machete just doesn't have the same flare to it.
It's pacing and direction feels very, very clunky. It seemed like a series of random events thrown together. Which it originally was, a trailer that wasn't intended to be a film. But once the idea of the film came together, it just seemed like more random events thrown together, to make the random events that took place in the trailer seem a little more plausible, and to actually happen onscreen. Not to mention the final battle that takes place between three different groups is just awful. Its not fun. Its not action-packed. Its exciting. It just felt very off.
Machete is a decent rental at best. The acting is fun, the story is stupid, and it has moments of real hilarity. But there are too few, and there certainly aren't enough for the movie to be an hour and forty minutes long. These grind-house throwback films can be good, they can be really good, but this isn't one of them. The cast had a good time, and its fun to see all these people together, and the few moments that work, really do work, but it's just a tiny idea, stretched far to thin.
It is interesting to go from one of Peter Jackson’s more enjoyable films, Dead Alive, to what is possibly his worst, with The Lovely Bones (Mike called it on his comment below Dead Alive) . Once again he is in the business of adapting a novel to the big screen, this time one about a murder instead of a ring, a girl instead of a hobbit, and the 70’s instead of middle earth. And while I think that The Lovely Bones is a hard project to do, simply because you have both strong dealings with fantasy and reality, and must communicate both to the audience in a sense that makes them accessible, I just can’t help but feel like Jackson dropped the ball a little on this one.
Our story follows a young girl by the name of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) who is living a typical teenage life in the seventies with her Mother (Rachel Weisz), Father (Mark Wahlberg), Brother and Sister. Susie is a typical young girl, loves taking pictures, is in film club, has a crush on the boy, and goes to school. Unfortunately while walking home from club one day she finds out that her neighbor (Stanley Tucci) is building a club house next to the school, ’Just a little something for the kids’ with only one rule: ’no adults allowed’. He invites Susie to be the first one inside the club house, but she never does make it out.
Stanley Tucci received an Oscar nomination for his work on the film, and I got to say, he deserves it. He plays a really creepy man thoroughly and mercilessly. He is simply terrifying to watch onscreen, as with Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds (not quite there, but close) The rest of the cast does a decent job, virtual new-comer Saoirse Ronan does an okay job of playing our lead girl, and Wahlberg and Weisz perform middle ground as well, but unfortunately, their characters get pushed to the wayside by Stanley Tucci, who simply steals the spotlight whenever he appears. Rachel Weisz’s character could have been left out altogether, as could so many others, who seem to be put there for just more dialogue.
Now, what The Lovely Bones does differently from other murder mystery’s, is it puts Susie in ’the in-between’ which is a world of completely fantasy, untouched by reality, as she is able to look down and see her family, and she must remain here until her killer is caught. This is where Jackson excels, he is a great fantasy director, and he can capture leaves on a tree turning into birds and flying off well enough, but where he struggles is with the real world, which is half of the film as well. Part of the film is the family falling apart after the murder of their daughter, but I didn’t care about the family falling apart because I didn’t care about the family. They are not given enough time to tell us their story, nor are we given enough reason to care about them. All we want, or really need to see is the Tucci character interacting with them and the police. I could care less about the grandmother moving in with them, and I could care less about their marital issues, and the screenplay was not written to make you care, which unfortunately is a major flaw of the movie because it is a good chuck of its running time.
"My name is Salmon, like the fish."
Another problem that comes with the movie is the way the Tucci character is created. He is set up as the nicest guy in the world before we meet him, so we have a little tiny spec of sympathy for him, even though we know he is going to be the killer. He then proceeds to what killers do, and progressively get more and more creepy by the end of the film. What is wrong with this, is we never actually see the murder. We see a little bit of struggle and that’s it, the camera cuts away before she is actually killed, and in fact, because of the whole ‘in-between’ business, we think that she’s escaped for some time, which is a fatal mistake. Though we already dislike the Tucci character, and hate him as it is, had we actually seen the murder, had the tones been darker, had the camera been rougher, we could have really, really hated this man. I think, by the way a few of the scenes go, this movie was originally intended to be an R rated film. To be a hard-hitting make you cry kinda movie, and was later changed into a PG-13 teeny-bopper thing, which was not a good move for the film itself.
Another gigantic problem I had with it was the ending. When it happen I just stared open-mouthed at the screen and went “Really?”. I mean I won’t spoil it here, but we knew that the real world could effect the ‘in-between’, but that just took it way to far. Not only that but the way the scene was shot, it happen all to quickly, without much context, and couldn’t really effect our opinion. It was one of those rousing scenes where everyone screams in joy because of it, it was just this tacked-on little ‘oh, by the way, this happens’ which nearly killed the movie for me. Because this part was happening in the real world. In reality this never would have happened. The film needed to separate the reality and in-between to make it effective, but they just don’t pull them far enough apart, and this scene is the perfect example of this.
One thing however that I did enjoy about the film, was it had some cool camera-work at times. Such as extreme rough close-ups of his hands, and a few nice Snorri-cam shots that made the whole thing feel a lot darker for a few moments, which you know I would have appreciated. But these hardly last long enough, or are enough in general to bring the film up from the slump it had already created for itself, and it pretty much just sits for a long time, doing nothing for the audience, just sitting.
Overall, The Lovely Bones just doesn’t work. I think that the project could have been done well as an adult Fairy Tale, a sort of Pan’s Labyrinth kind of thing, but it just doesn’t. The film is too easy on the eyes in the real world, has too many characters we just don’t care about, and just sits about trying to be something that its not. Peter Jackson can be good, but his great fantasy sequences can’t overpower what should be happening in reality, which is nothing. Stanley Tucci is the saving grace here, with an excellently dark performance as the killer that we don’t see enough of, and a few shots that seemed to be from the original cut of the film also make it a tad better. I almost want to give it in the 1-ish out of five zone, but damn if Tucci didn’t give me the creeps every time.
Monty Pyton animator turned director Terry Gilliam makes his way onto the blog again! It’s his second time, and it hopefully it won’t be the last. He was previously on for Brazil, a film that I absoloutly loved. Tideland, one of his most recent attempts is one of his worst. I don’t think he has made a specifically bad film yet, but Tideland gets pretty close.
The story follows a young girl named Juliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who is the child of two very neglectful parents. Both into hard drugs, her father (Jeff Bridges) and her mother (Jennifer Tilly) are very bad for, and to her health. Having no friends being on the move constantly because of her father being a musician, she has no friends, except for her dolls. After her mother dies, and her father overdoeses, she continually escapes into a fantasy world, filled with many creepy characters and strange elements.
The film was universally panned by fans and critics alike upon intial realese. And I have to say, I don’t really disagree with them. The film is very weak for most of it’s course, having no real centerfold story, except for the life of this young girl, which we learn realativly nothing about. Her escapades into a fantasyland becomes boring after a few visits, as the movie plods along at a pretty slow rate.
The side characters are interesting and fun, more so than our main girl, which also leads to another problem, similair to the one I had with Everything Is Illuminated, where we want to see more, and are more interested in the dilemmas of the supporting cast than our leaders. Also to note, the film boasts having stars such as Bridges and Tilly, but they are hardly in the film. Speaking of which, Jodelle Ferland gives quite possibly one of the best perfomances I’ve seen in awhile. And this is coming from someone who absoloutly hates children in film. She carries the film on her shoulders, completely on her own. But she has a very boring and plain character to play, which makes her performance something less. Nonethless, it is quite amazing.
I also applaud the films style and art direction. Its very unique in its use of special effects, and ideas. The dolls are particularly creepy, and the day/night transitions are very cool. Another thing the film has on it’s side was cinematography, which kept an otherwise slow and boring film interesting and fresh.
Overall, Tideland was a very mixed bag. The film had cool style, and an excellent lead actress. However, style cannot overcome substance, and a lackluster plot, slow story, poor character development, and pretty uninteresting people make the movie somewhat hard, and annoying to watch, it isn’t necissarily the bad, but that doesn’t make it good either.
Never heard of this movie? It's not foregin. It's not idependent. It was however realesed straight to DVD, despite my over-zealous excitment for it after I saw the trailer. It takes the simple, classic premise of some sort of an airborne toxin floating through the air, killing people. BUT, it has changed it up, because these people don't turn into zombies. It's an interesting premise, but I'll get into that later. This movie was a semi-big budget horror film, with some semi-known TV stars taking up the lead roles. The movie was produced by the subsideray of Paramount, Paramount Vantage, the company never made any plans to realese it in theatres, it kept on getting pushed back, and pushed back, until they finally just realesed it straight-to-DVD, where I rented, I'm actually really glad I didn't see it in theatres, because it would have cost me $4 more to see it. Yeah, it wasn't too good.
Carriers tells the story of four friends traveling around the country together, after an airborne toxin has let all hell break loose. We have two brothers, the older brothers girlfriend, and the younger brothers crush. Along the way, we learn that there are more people who have survived the infection. Some of them are just trying to survive, others are looters, going around looking for anything they can. Carriers is an infected movie. Not a zombie movie. The people do not turn into zombies after dying of the contagin, they simply die, and then the disease spreads along. While its not really that original, it was a nice twist on the classic zombie tale, well, not zombie, but you know.
This is where Carriers succeeds. In an interesting, somewhat original story. That is almost the only place where it succeeds. While the idea may be interesting, that does not mean that it was pulled off well. It was almost completely ruined by mostly annoying characters, and anti-climatic, cliche, and overused situations and scenarios. While most of the characters are annoying, and un-original, some are new, and inventive, so I also give the film points for that.
The acting here is shallow and inconsistent. Annoying characters and bad actors are a terrible combination, especially in a movie like this. Usually, I'm less inclined to complain about the acting in a horror movie, compared to a drama, where characters carry the story. But this film was just plain old bad. The group of characters we follow for most of the film consits of Lou Taylor Pucci, Chris Pine(of Star Trek, who is one of the better roles), Piper Perabo, and Emily Van Camp. The only saving grace is a small supporting role by Christopher Meloni, who in my opinion, is always pretty decent.
"Really, it's only a bruise."
Aside from the main aspect of Carriers, its a very nice film from a techincal standpoing. The movie doesn't use too many special effects, and still looks very nice. Upon first seeing the desert wasteland, it's a lot like watching 28 Days Later, and seeing the rundown London. The cinematography, lighting, and music were nice enough for a movie in general, but for a horror film really stood out.
This film was written and directed by Alex and David Pastor, while I can't say that I have full trust in their abilities, the next time they realese a movie, I will definatly RENT it, as I feel that they really have potential, that wasn't on display here. The direction was decent, and it felt very smooth, not like there was two seperate minds directing. The writing wasn't too good however, the dialouge was average, and you already know how I felt about the rest of it.
Carriers is an interesting little horror film, with a inticing, yet, sadly, not very good story, with annoying characters and bad acting. However, a few original characters and some interesting techiniques behind the camera make it stay ahead above most, but that cannot entirely save this film. For as much as I was looking forward to Carriers, I was dissapointed.
