Pitch Black

It all starts here.  And by "all," I mean the current generation of action heroes.  Pitch Black (sometimes retroactively titled The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black) was the first starring role for Vin Diesel after a string of ensemble films, and the first one that showed him doing much of anything that tough guys normally do in movies.  At this point, though, Diesel was an unproven box office draw and action star, so it was a little strange to see him again in Pitch Black, which is much more science fiction-y than I remembered.  But going against expectations can be a good thing, right?  Right...?

In the far-flung future, a passenger spaceship is damaged by the debris from a comet that they passed too close to and is forced to crash land on the closest planet.  The good news is that, among the survivors, the one crew member that survived was the pilot, Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell), so they can feasibly fly off the planet if the ship is repaired or a replacement is found.  The bad news is that the planet is a vast desert with no signs of life; the only indications that humans have ever been on this planet are some decades-old machinery and buildings that appear to have been left in a hurry.  This planet also has the distinction of having three suns, so it is never night.  Among the survivors are an Islamic Imam (Keith David), his followers, a snooty rich guy, a kid named Jack (Rhiana Griffith), a random chick, and William Johns (Cole Hauser), who is escorting the dangerous killer Riddick (Vin Diesel) to a prison planet.  Riddick has spent so much time in dank, dark prisons that he paid to have his normal eyes surgically enhanced to give him permanent night vision, which means that he has to wear welding goggles during the day --- or all the time on this three-sunned planet.

An even more distinguishing feature: Diesel hair!

Riddick is the strong, silent type, as well as the type that is intelligent and ruthless.  Of course, not everything is as it seems.  For starters, Johns might not be telling the truth, Jack may be more than he seems, and this daylight planet may have night, after all.  You see, every twenty-two years there is a complete triple eclipse.  It's not a good time to catch up on your sleep, though, because when the night comes, so do these things:

Hammerhead raptor bats?

What are they?  They don't get a proper name in the film, but they eat people completely, they fly, and they operate using something like sonar.  The good news is that they are extremely sensitive to light.  The bad news is that the triple eclipse will last a month and there are enough of those creatures to flood the planet.  I guess everybody better work together and escape this planet, eh?

Grimmest.  Science fair.  Ever.

Before I go any further, there is something I would like to touch on.  How the hell does a planet with near-constant exposure to the sun manage to develop a life form that is deadly sensitive to light?  What kind of ass-backwards evolution is that?  And what do those creatures live on during the twenty-two years they are forced to live underground?  Wouldn't the twenty-two years to one month ratio also tone down things (evolutionary-wise) like enormous heads and wings?   If the only life on this planet for the creatures to feast on are the crash survivors and each other, shouldn't this species be nearly extinct soon?  This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but I like it when science fiction explains things with science.

The acting in Pitch Black isn't great, but is good enough.  Vin Diesel is intimidating and pretty cool as Riddick, and his character is intriguing.  Yes, it's awfully convenient that the guy with night vision eyes lands on a planet on the verge of a month of night, but...well, yeah, it is amusingly convenient to the plot.  Radha Mitchell was adequate as the resident rational thinker in the group.  I liked that her character wasn't entirely altruistic, but I dislike the noise she makes when she's frightened.

Pictured: ugly sounds

Cole Hauser is predictably mean and his acting is not going to impress anyone here.  The "complexity" of his character is laughable and Hauser is still a low-rent version of Josh Lucas. 

...but he has a shotgun.  A space shotgun.

I think my favorite moments in the movie are when Riddick and Hauser's character lock eyes and stare each other down.  Yes, those moments are cheesy and sometimes funny, but I really enjoy the idea of Cole Hauser standing up to Vin Diesel in a physical confrontation.  The rest of the cast was fine; most of the roles were poorly developed because the characters were essentially cannon fodder.

Director and co-writer David Twohy does a surprisingly good job with the suspense in Pitch Black.  He sets up Riddick as a kind of bogeyman, but the character turns out to be cool enough to live up to the bombast.  The set pieces were pretty cool for such a low-budget picture and I don't think the film suffered much for having an obviously low budget.  That said, Twohy sucks as an editor.  The action scenes are not impressive and often confusing, and the rest of the movie has a lot of scenes that do little except stretch the running time.  A lot of story elements are introduced with little to no impact on the characters or central story; Johns' morphine addiction felt tacked on and the fact that a survivor (Zeke) murdered another survivor mistakenly is completely glossed over with a roll of the eyes.  Meanwhile, other things that could have used explanation are completely ignored, such as the evolution of the creatures or exactly how Jack was able to find all the stuff to mimic Riddick.  And the story felt clunky and rushed at times, like the when and how behind the snooty guy dying.  I like the overall feel of this movie, but it is not the product of good direction.

I'm not knocking Pitch Black, though.  It is entertaining, mildly suspenseful and Diesel makes a pretty good tough guy lead.  The idea behind the plot is fairly unconventional and the sci-fi elements didn't distract from making this a decent survival flick.  It is lacking that extra something to make it definitely cool, though.  I liked Riddick as a mysterious bad-ass, and I liked how he had presence in the film even when he was not on-screen, but I think Pitch Black could have used a couple more scenes of him doing something awesome.

The Thing (1982)

My first experience with John Carpenter was Ghosts of Mars, which is pretty terrible.  When I left the theater after the movie, I remember wondering aloud why someone would want to put their name above the title of something so obviously bad.  In the intervening years, I have seen many other Carpenter movies, and now know that the man is capable of directing some truly great films and some truly unfortunate ones.  With that understanding and wisdom, I approached John Carpenter's The Thing for the first time.

It is winter in Antarctica, 1982.  Because you need to know what season it is to justify snow in Antarctica.  The American research station down there is taken by surprise when they hear gunfire and a helicopter approaching; it is a chopper from the Swedish research station, and they appear to be trying to shoot a dog.  The dog, being fairly smart, decides to run to the American camp for cover; the Swedes, who managed to miss the dog several times over several miles, despite having a sniper rifle, accidentally crash their helicopter.  Before the Americans can react, a surviving Swede leaves the wreckage of the chopper, tries to shoot the dog, and instead shoots an American in the leg.  That's enough for the Americans to put the Swede down.

Not only are the Swedes crap shots, but their winter clothing choices are very suspect.  Is it ever warm enough for bikinis in Sweden?

So...why were the Swedes trying to murder a dog?  Helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and another researcher, Copper (Richard Dysart) fly to the Swedish research center to find out.  What do they find?  Dead people and signs of attack.  They also find some evidence that the Swedes had found something buried within some very old ice, as well as a mostly burned and at least partially human corpse.  So...what does any of this have to do with a Thing?

Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew wants answers or royalty checks, Carpenter!

Well, it seems that the Swedes dug up a frozen alien that can assimilate any animal and then assume its form.  For instance, it can (more or less) eat/absorb a person and then walk around looking like that person.  So, if you know there's a Thing in your group, you don't know who to trust.  It's not limited to just people, though.  In fact, there will soon be proof that it can disguise itself as a dog...

The Thing is an adaptation of the famous science fiction story Who Goes There? by legendary sci-fi editor John W. Campbell.  It is also sometimes credited as a remake of sci-fi movie classic The Thing From Another World, but the two are pretty significantly different; let's just say they take their inspiration from the same source and adapt it to their needs. 

All right, let's get the obvious stupidness out the way early.  In a movie where you don't know who to trust, the smart thing to do is to stay together as much as possible.  This is a sci-fi movie with more than a little bit of horror thrown into the mix, so it's safe to say that the characters are not that smart.  To be fair, the alien enters their group before they have any knowledge of its abilities, and they do make some efforts to stay in groups, but there are several occasions when the characters go off on their own anyway.  That is, by far, the weakest part of this story, so you might as well know that now.  If you can't get past that, I understand.  However, if you are willing to look past that obvious bit of horror movie idiocy, I think you'll really like this movie.

The cast is all male, which shouldn't be important, but I think it is.  How many survival-type movies throw in an unnecessary romantic interest?  And, since this was made in 1982, there is no hint of a homosexual romance, either, so there's no chance for any whiskey-soaked winter nights with Kurt Russell, fellas.  That gender casting allows this film to focus on the story with no subplots, which is nice.  "But what about Adrienne Barbeau?"  Okay, fine, the old school DOS-wannabe computer in the film is voiced by her, but I don't think that should count.  This movie focuses on suspense, which is exactly what you want when the question is "Who can you trust?"

The acting isn't fantastic, but it is definitely solid for a plot-driven movie.  Kurt Russell is pretty cool as the level-headed lead, and he comes across as believable as someone willing to do whatever it takes to solve this Thing problem.  This was only his second important non-Disney movie role at the time, so seeing him be such a tough guy was, at the time, an impressive stretch for Russell.  Wilford Brimley, who I don't normally care for (unless he's being a curmudgeon), was pretty awesome as the doctor who realizes the whole you-can't-trust-anyone problem early in the film and freaks the hell out.  Plus, you get to see some one knock him the eff out, and that was awesome.

He gets laid out in this movie.  Take that, diabetes!

This was Keith David's first credited film role (he was an extra in the Francis Ford Coppola-directed spinoff Disco Godfather), and I liked him.  David is a pretty solid supporting actor, even if he is often in mediocre movies, but this was a pretty impressive debut.  There are some other recognizable actors in the movie, like Donald Moffat, David Clennon, T.K. Carter (from Good Morning, Miss Bliss fame), and Richard Drysart, but they are mostly just adequate supporting cast members.

I really liked John Carpenter's direction with this film.  I love that he keeps the story taut, I like that none of the actors are too melodramatic (a hard task, when just about every character freaks out in a movie), and I really liked that he was able to step back and let other people handle certain tasks in the film.  Carpenter is kind of a one man film force, often directing, writing, and scoring his films, so it was nice to see him make an enjoyable collaborative movie.  The score is done by Ennio Morricone, and while it's no The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, it's still pretty good.  More importantly, it's not synthesizer-heavy for a change, like so many Carpenter scores.  The script was written by Bill Lancaster, the guy who did The Bad News Bears.  While that may not sound like a good fit for this movie, I thought he did a perfectly satisfactory job.  More importantly, that division of labor allowed Carpenter to spend more time working with the special effects (most of which were handled by The Howling and Star Wars veteran Rob Bottin), which made this movie so noteworthy.

Yes, the special effects in this movie are definitely the main attraction.  Why?  For starters, the dog monster.

These special effects all happen on-camera, which makes them extra awesome to watch.  Are they gross and slimy?  Absolutely.  Are they twisted and weird?  Most definitely.  Do they look good by today's standards?  Let me put it to you this way: The Thing is as good of an argument as you're going to find for good old-fashioned special effects and make-up.  It's that impressive.

The other thing I like about the movie is that it approaches the problem with logic.  Well, aside from letting people wander off on their own, it does.  There isn't an extended period of time where the audience knows what the problem is and the characters keep walking into traps.  The Thing is identified early and treated like the threat it is.  For me, that's the most important part of this movie.  I hate watching potentially good films waste my time with stupid characters.  When things like this show up, the cast of The Thing mans up and gets to killing.

That no-nonsense approach, combined with the amazing special effects and otherwise respectable filmmaking makes The Thing better than perhaps it should be.  And if you really want to, you can look at the film as an allegory between the East and the West during the Cold War.  I don't particularly care to approach it like that, but the subtext is certainly there.  And the ending is as perfect of a guy-movie ending as you're going to find; just about any other director would have copped out a little bit at the end, but Carpenter created a pretty great conclusion that stayed true to the logic of the characters, and that deserves respect.

Clockers

Hey...doesn't that movie poster look familiar?  It should.  Depending on who you ask, it's either an homage to or blatant theft of the poster for Anatomy of a Murder.  I don't want to get into an argument over intellectual property vs. public entertainment, so I'll go with the homage idea; as an homage, I guess we can assume that this movie will, like Anatomy of a Murder, examine one crime through the lens of somewhat amoral characters.  Well, this is a Spike Lee "joint," and he doesn't usually trade in films dealing with complex emotions, so I think that's a pretty safe assumption.

Clockers is based on Richard Price's novel of the same name, and he co-wrote the screenplay with Lee.  The title refers to a slang term for drug dealers; if you're clocking, that means you're dealing.  Strike (Mekhi Pfifer, in his film debut) is a low-level dealer in the Brooklyn projects.  He's not a total scrub, but he's not big time enough to have more than a few subordinates.  One day, the big boss, Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo), takes Strike aside and tells him that another drug dealer, Darryl Adams (frequent Lee bit player Steve White), is stealing from him.  And that is not tolerable; after making sure Strike has access to a gun, Rodney tells him that Darryl has "got to be got," and Strike needs to make sure he gets got.  Or gotten.  I'm not sure how to conjugate slang.  So, the clear implication is that Rodney wants Strike to kill Darryl.  Why?  Well, Rodney learned a long time ago that, if you are going to trust someone completely, you have to have the ability to blackmail them, just in case; if Strike is going to move up the not-so-corporate ladder, Rodney needs some serious dirt on him.  Realizing that Darryl works in a fast food joint next to a bar, Strike heads to the bar to drink a little liquid courage.  Inside, he meets his hard-working and honest brother, Victor (Isaiah Washington), and tells him that Darryl is a woman beater.  That riles Victor up some, but not nearly enough to get Strike off the job, so he leaves.

Later that night, Detective Klein (Harvey Keitel) is investigating the murder of Darryl Adams.  This is not a police procedural, though.  The police have a confession to the crime from Victor; Detective Klein doesn't buy the story, though, since Victor has a family, two jobs, and a story full of holes.  Klein concludes that Victor is covering for his scummy brother, Strike.  He doesn't have any proof, though.  Meanwhile, Strike is getting respect and admiration from Rodney and is even mentoring a young kid in the thug life.  Nothing screws up the upward mobility of a clocker like attention from the police, though.

I haven't seen many of Spike Lee's movies, but I can say with some knowledge that he is not a fantastic cinematographer or a symbolic filmmaker.  He comes up with a story and tells it, and in that he is competent.  Despite not having billing above the title, Mekhi Pfifer does pretty well in his first movie role, and it's the lead.  He's not great, but he does convey the proper complexity of emotion needed for someone who wants to improve his life, but is surrounded by trouble.  Harvey Keitel shares some of the spotlight with Pfifer as a detective that is more stubborn than caring, and his approach to the crime is unusually passive-agressive, which was interesting to watch. I wish John Turturro got a little more attention as his partner, not because I liked his character, but because he is usually fun to watch as an actor.  Actually, most of the police suffer from underimaginative dialogue; throw a racist term here and an inappropriate joke there, and you have 90% of the cop lines in the movie.  Delroy Lindo was pretty good as the manipulative drug kingpin and Keith David rounded out the main cast well as the angry parent figure in the projects.  Michael Imperioli, Sticky Fingaz, and Isaiah Washington are all solid in their small supporting roles.

The problem with this film is that the character of Strike is completely unsympathetic.  Why should I care about the struggles of a drug dealer that is willing to let his brother take a murder rap for him?  The movie spends a lot of time trying to come up with reasons (because he drinks Yoo-Hoo all the time, because he likes toy trains, because he appears to have stomach ulcers), but it's a waste of time because those answers just aren't good enough. You can argue that Harvey Keitel is the protagonist of the film, but that's not much better.  He's not pursuing this case because he needs to solve a crime (Victor confessed), or because he thinks it will make a difference (he doesn't), or because he needs to know the truth.  He's doing it because he thinks he's right, which  isn't as altruistic of a reason as it may sound.  Since Strike isn't supposed to be likable, it is important for Detective Klein to be.  Klein isn't a bad guy, but he's not very likable, either.

I get that this movie is about the self-perpetuating cycle of crime in the inner city.  I get that this movie isn't going to provide answers to that problem.  What I don't understand is why I should care about this story.  While Delroy Lindo and Mekhi Pfifer have pretty well-rounded characters, you can't root for them because they do bad things and don't care.  In fact, you can argue that they got to get got.  The police aren't much better as largely indifferent guys, just punching a time clock for their pay.  The most sympathetic and likable character in the whole film is Keith David's and he is barely in the movie.  There are so many examples of police procedural stories where you care about the police involved (Law and Order: Jersey Shore Unit), and there are many movies where you care about drug dealers either because they're sympathetic or charismatic (Boyz n the Hood, Scarface).  Sometimes, you get a blend of these two types of storytelling (the excellent The Wire), and sometimes the crime itself becomes the interesting part of the movie.  I see none of that here.  There are a number of good performances and no bad ones (except for Spike Lee's cameo, of course) and the story is told decently well.  When it was all said and done, though, I just didn't care.

Gamer

"Why did you watch another video game movie, Brian?"  Well, voice in my head, it could be because hope springs eternal.  True, movies based on video games are, as a rule, pretty terrible.  Not that that stops people from making them, but even the more recent releases that should know better are still awful; Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark...you get the picture.  Basing a movie's plot on a video game isn't such a great idea, either.  Aside from the occasional gem like Scott Pilgrim, you get utter crap like The Wizard and Brainscan.  But Scott Pilgrim (and, hopefully, Tron: Legacy) proves that you can make a video game-based movie and make it as fun as the games that it is based on.  But the thing that convinced me to watch this via my Netflix Instant Queue was this fantastic plot summary they provided:

It's 2034, and humans can control and kill each other in a large-scale online gaming world. But Kable (Gerard Butler), a wrongfully convicted soldier forced to join the violent competition, tries to free himself by taking out its evil architect, Ken 

Whoa!  The bad guy is Ken?  That sounds pretty awesome!  I always knew that Barbie-loving man-slut had more backbone than pundits gave him credit for.  And 2034?  That's only two years after Demolition Man takes place!  I didn't know this was a sequel!

Actually, that plot description isn't too accurate.  The year is, and I quote, "Some years from this exact moment," which is an annoying cop-out for any sci-fi movie.  Take a stand, people; even if your claim of gang wars ripping Los Angeles apart by 1997 is wrong, Predator 2, at least you had the balls to make an idiotically bold prediction.

In the future, there is a wildly popular game, called Society.  Basically, it's like The Sims, but you pay to control real people; at home, you play on your high-tech computer, and your words and desires are carried out by people who have had nanites implanted in their brain, which assigns control of their bodies to a designated user.  The people being controlled in the game get paid, but nowhere near as well as the game's creator, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall).  After a few years of being the world's richest man, based solely on this game, Castle introduces a new game, called Slayers.  In this game, players pay to control death row inmates in a massively multiplayer online (MMO) third-person shooter game.  So, if you controlled me, my life would depend on how well you can aim my guns and how quickly you react to the hectic warzone surrounding me.  Lucky me.  The game's biggest star is John Tillman (Gerard Butler), AKA Kable in the game, because he has outperformed every other player by a country mile; if Kable survives thirty games, he is a free man.  So far, he has completed twenty-seven, which is about twenty more than the next best player.  If he makes it out of the game, Tillman will find his wife, Angie (Amber Valletta), and child.  But he's not going to make it out of the game.  According to Humanz Brother (Ludacris), leader of the anti-Slayers/Society group, Humanz, Tillman knows an important secret about Ken Castle that Ken will stop at nothing to keep secret.  But what can Tillman do, when he's stuck being controlled by a whiny seventeen year-old (Logan Lerman)?  He's doomed!  Or is he?  No, he's probably not.

First off, I would like to congratulate this movie on its cast.  Not only was it able to snag one of today's more distinguished dumb action movie heroes, with Gerard Butler (what, was Jason Statham busy?), but the supporting cast is full of noteworthy actors.  Aaron Yoo, Alison Lohman, Zoe Bell, James Roday, Maggie Lawson, Milo Ventimiglia, and Keith David all have teeny tiny bit parts.  The parts were too small to be good or bad, but they all made an appearance.  Kyra Sedgwick underperformed in her role as a TV "journalist," but she was able to convey some of the duplicitous nature that profession requires.  John Leguizamo apparently needed some quick cash; he shows up for maybe three minutes of screen time, acts awkward (and a little funny) and is gone again.  None of these characters is important in any way to the larger story, but I was definitely impressed with how many actors I recognized in this.

I also like some of the lighter touches in the film.  I thought the occasional pixelation of the screen was a nice touch for a video game movie.  I liked that the villain was truly a monstrous bad guy, bent on world domination --- you don't see that too much any more, and it is also appropriate for a video game movie.  I was astonished that Disney let the filmmakers take a song from Pinocchio, although I'm sure it didn't come cheap.  Actually, I liked many bits that stayed true to playing video games.  Of course an obese man plays Society as a slutty woman.  Of course the Society characters wear clothes that no normal person wears, like rap video-style hot pants and latex suits.  And of course, in a shooter game played by teenagers, the dead characters get "teabagged" by those that have shot them.  Those little details did a good job of emphasizing that there is a game being played in this movie.

Of course, the plot is pretty terrible.  I don't care how much this movie wants to convince me that Slayers is a worldwide gaming/pay-per-view phenomenon, the amount of advertising shown in the "real world" for the show is just plain silly; every advertisement you see is for the game, be it dozens of full-building painted ads, or even one of the great pyramids in Egypt sporting a promo.  I don't care how popular something is, even in the undetermined future, over-saturation of a product leads to an inevitable public backlash.  The story is overly melodramatic and stupid, particularly in the moments after the climax.  SPOILER: After killing Ken Castle, Tillman politely asks Castle's cronies to deactivate the nanites in all the brains of Society and Slayer players.  They say, okay, it's done.  End of film, roll the damn credits.  Wha-?!?  The acting is about what you would expect in a Gerard Butler movie, with lots of grunting and facial stubble.  Amber Valletta, Ludacris and Logan Lerman would seem like important characters in this movie, but they ultimately serve as plot devices to get Tillman from point A to point B.  I enjoyed Terry Crews' appearance, even if it was absolutely over-the-top.  And I liked Michael C. Hall in the villain role, even though his southern accent drove me nuts; he played a despicable, unrealistic character and obviously had fun doing it.  I take that back...I liked Michael C. Hall toward the end of the movie when he was having fun overacting, but he seriously irritated me for the first half of the movie.  Characters like this are par for the course from writer/directors Neveldine/Taylor (that is their chosen professional name, so I will choose not to mock it just because it's as stupid as FaceSlashOff), who made the Crank movies before this.  They make ridiculously stupid action movies and went for more of the same here.  They weren't trying to do anything more or less than that, so I can't criticize them for succeeding in their goal.

Should this film even be judged by regular movie standards?  I think the filmmakers were intending to make a movie that mirrors the in-game experience of many of today's top video games.  The answer to my question is yes (if you don't want it judged like a movie, choose a different genre), but even if I looked at this film as an homage to violent shoot-em-up games like Call of Duty, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, and sims like, uh, The Sims, this movie is still lacking. 

I don't care that the movie is dumb.  So are video games.  I care that it's often boring and pretentious.  Social commentary in films doesn't carry much weight when the films are idiotic, but that doesn't stop this movie from preaching that you shouldn't control the actions of others through video games.  Wow.  Way to take a bold stance on an important issue, guys.  I wonder if they are for or against turning babies into an affordable meat paste for poor people to eat?  I expected this movie to have more and better action.  Yes, there's plenty of action in the Slayer sequences, but it's just a few minutes of blurred images and bodies exploding; I wanted more action in the parts of the movie that advanced the plot.  And the plot...well, it could have been less complicated.  This could have been a story about how the user and the usee worked together to overcome the odds and survive the game.  It could have been about an underground group toppling the biggest entertainment empire in the world for corrupting humanity.  It could have been about the determination of a man to find his family again.  Heck, it could have been all about one man trying to kill the bad guy.  All of that, mixed together in a ninety minute movie, was just too much.

I suspect that this movie could definitely fall into Lefty Gold territory if I watched it with friends, but that is an experiment for another time.