Splice

The mad scientist character is one that is often underused in modern cinema.  Aside from Dr. Evil, I don't know if I have seen any movies released in the past decade that feature a scientist making clearly bad decisions to advance science.  Thankfully, Splice fills that gap nicely.  So, if you've been yearning to yell at your TV screen because the otherwise intelligent characters are doing some obviously stupid things, this might be the movie for you.

Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are brilliant scientists and boyfriend/girlfriend.  Their research experiments in gene splicing have led to a fully lab-created being with all sorts of chemical perks, like the increased production of special enzymes.  That might not sound exciting, but consider this: these creatures (dubbed Fred and Ginger by the team) look like 35-pound maggots.  Are you hungry yet?  Well, hold onto that feeling; Clive and Elsa have been instructed by their financier that they need to turn this advancement into a product, pronto, so they need to find how to extract particular proteins from their super-maggots.  That means their job for the next few years is to shift through maggot poop until they find what they're looking for.  Or, Clive and Elsa could do what any research scientist would do and ignore their hard-to-come-by financing and go ahead into splicing human genes with their multi-species super maggots.  That's an idea that surely won't come back and bite them in the ass.  The idea was initially just to see if they could fertilize an egg with this new DNA splice, but then they decide to watch it gestate, with the agreement to terminate the fetus before birth.  Thankfully, this does not become an abortion-themed film.  The funny thing about growing a part-human super maggot is that you don't know how long it takes the fetus to come to term, so the creature is born, and presto!  This is what it looks like (well, in plush form, anyway):

Tastes like chicken?

With a little love and encouragement, this little chicken tender eventually morphs into something that resembles a bald French model, although with literal chicken legs and a tail, complete with retractable stinger.  The rest of the film asks how much this creature, whom they name Dren (Delphine Chaneac), is human and how much it is...other. Here's a hint: more "other" than "human."

Splice is a rare breed, a film that blends science fiction and horror, although it spends a great deal more time on the sci-fi than the scares.  It also has the benefit of good acting.  I'm not one to gush over Adrien Brody (I'm sorry, Daniel Day Lewis deserved his Oscar) and while I like Sarah Polley, she's not an amazing performer.  However, director/co-writer Vincenzo Natali does such a good job with this script that both actors have characters with varied (and logical) emotions and character arcs.  The movie starts as a peek inside an experiment that will obviously go horribly wrong, but it soon delves into the characters' ideas of love, parenting, and responsibility.  It's hard to say just how good Delphine Chaneac is as the experiment, partially because Dren chirps instead of speaking, and partially because Dren is played by others for about half of the movie --- remember, she grows and evolves from super maggot size.  Still, I thought she was very expressive, even if those expressions were pretty basic.  Oftentimes, movies like this rely too heavily on the CGI to lend the monster characters depth, but I was very impressed with the use of CGI here; it always looked good, and it did a great job blending the computer effects with the live actors playing the part.

The movie is not perfect, though.  The ending borrows too heavily from B-list horror movies, like Jeepers Creepers 2, after spending most of the movie making a pretty compelling on an emotional and psychological level.  Sarah Polley's character makes so many crazy choices in the first half of the film that I wanted to fast forward to the credits to see if her character's full name was "Bat-Shit Crazy Elsa;" in the film's defense, her actions are explained later, but in the moment I was flabbergasted by her stupidity.  I'm not used to seeing female characters as the incredibly short-sighted mad scientist in movies, but she captured that in an exasperatingly believable fashion.  You might also think that Adrien Brody dresses like a jackass in this film.  You would be right.

I'm okay with all that.  The parts of the movie that made me uncomfortable were definitely the sex scenes that involve Dren.  That's right, the part human-part monster has sex scenes, and they are plural.  Yeah.  Eww.  One is even a disturbing, but thankfully not graphic, rape scene.  These scenes are not long, and they are not too vulgar, but they are definitely awkward.  It's too bad that they are included in the film, because they are pretty shocking and definitely the most memorable scenes.

As weird and uncomfortable as the sex is, I have to admit that this movie did a great job surprising me.  And that's not even including the cross-species sex.  I loved that the issue of whether or not they should be messing with human genes is never really a factor in this movie.  I also really enjoyed the basic psychology used in the film, with Brody starting out as the gruff disciplinarian and moving toward more sympathy and Polley being the affectionate mother early on.  But guess what?  Many girls spend their puberty years hating their mother figures, but only Dren has a stinger.  Sucks to be you, Sarah Polley.  This film also has one of my favorite mother-daughter moments in movie history; after telling Dren that her mother thought that makeup debased women, Elsa then says, "But who doesn't want to be debased every once in a while?"  I wanted to high five someone after that, but was sadly watching it solo.  So, I clapped.  Because that's how you high five yourself.  Well, that's an awkward admission.  But not as awkward as sex scenes with Dren.

Go

What is she doing?  Tossing a business card?

What is the 1990s worst contribution to popular culture?  Hammer pants?  R and B hooks in rap songs?  Nu-metal?  My vote goes to rave kids.  Don't be confused: I'm perfectly okay with raves, because I can choose to stay away from them and their drug- and sex-fueled semi-mobile dance parties; raves are kind of like the gypsies of the party scene, squatting wherever they can for the weekend and then skipping to a new home next week.  No, I hate rave kids.  Ugh.  Hands swirling, glo-stick wearing, pacifier-sucking, pill-popping, candy necklaces --- I hate everything superficial about them.  Oh, and dude, I don't care if cotton feels AMAZING when you're rolling on ecstasy, stop licking my shirt.  Surprisingly, the first movie I ever saw about the rave scene was the totally awesome Human Traffic (watch the UK version, if you can find it).  So, when a reader requested that I review Go, another rave-themed film, I watched with cautious optimism.

At it's core, Go is a film about a drug deal gone bad.  And, um, a fairly unconnected trip to Vegas, probably because director Doug Liman was coming off of Swingers.  The story is split into three parts (Ronna's Story, Simon's Story, and Adam & Zack's Story) with an integrated ending. It all revolves around Ronna's (Sarah Polley) misadventures filling in as a drug dealer when her local dealer, Simon (Desmond Askew), leaves for Las Vegas on short notice.  Ronna is in desperate need of cash to avoid eviction, and her joe job at the supermarket isn't going to cut it by tomorrow.  Thankfully, fate intervenes when two dudes, Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), ask her for some ecstasy.  How does she get it?  She goes to her dealer's supplier, Todd (Timothy Olyphant).  Oh, wait...remember how she doesn't have much money?  It turns out that drugs cost money.  Who knew?  Ronna gives Todd what she has and leaves her friend, Claire (Katie Holmes) behind as collateral.  That's okay, though, because Ronna will make some quick cash off of Adam and Zack, and be right back!  Unless they're part of a police drug bust operation, that is.  Ronna is faced with a tough decision.  Does she make the sale and risk going to jail, or should she dump the drugs?  One way is risky, but could make money.  The other is safer, but would leave her without any cash for rent, cash to free Claire, or drugs to sell back to Todd/sell to other people.  Meanwhile, Simon is in Vegas with his buddies and manages to get involved with (in this order):

• explosive diarrhea
• gambling
• three-way tantric sex
• a stolen car
• a stolen gun
• private strip club dance
• a 1970s-style car chase

It sounds like a pretty sweet first trip to Vegas, right?  That's why I couldn't elope to Vegas for my wedding.  Even more meanwhile, Adam and Zack's story tells how these two nice guys could end up being sneaky undercover drug agents, trying to arrest innocent Ronna's all over town.  The short answer is because they love drugs, too.  In the end, all three plots come together with a nice, neat bow on top, and everything is right with the world.  The end.

Man, this movie has a lot of noteworthy actors.  Having Sarah Polley (who is decent enough) as the lead doesn't usually indicate that, but there were a lot of young up-and-kind-of-maybe-comers in this film.  Katie Holmes and her crooked smile make a small appearance.  It's not great work, but I'm not going to pick on someone who presumably has a heart condition.  Seriously, did she have a stroke, or did someone just melt the side of her face?  That broken smile bugs me.  Timothy Olyphant was actually pretty decent, even though it looked like he was doing his best Billy Idol impression throughout.  Desmond Askew is the most likable character in the whole movie, perhaps because his story is the most fun.  Regardless, he overcomes some eye-roll-worthy dialogue early in the film to be the best bit.  Taye Diggs does a pretty solid job as Simon's not-moronic friend; James Duval and Brekin Meyer spent most of their screen time suffering from diarrhea, which is good because Duval is always awful and Meyer's character was a skinny white boy who pretended to be ghetto.  The movie would have been better if those two had died violent deaths, but this isn't a perfect film.  Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf are about as good as you might expect, with both having definite television-actor-level talent and Mohr's amazing ability to seem smug, even when his character tries to be earnest.  I liked to see William Fichtner and Jane Krakowski pop up in this movie; sadly, their parts were poorly written and used mostly for shock value.  Their characters were built up to be one thing, but the joke is that they are something else, completely unrelated to the first thing!  Get it?  It's called wasted script pages, kids.  They're bad.  All in all, the acting is serviceable, with Askew and Olyphant being the stand outs and Meyer and Duval being the fungus in this film's proverbial toilet bowl.

Director Doug Liman does a good job keeping this movie moving, and the pace is probably the best part of this film.  You can argue that the fractured storytelling, quick dialogue, and crime story show that Go stole its style from Pulp Fiction, but left all the drama and compelling characters behind.  And you would be correct.  Still, this movie tries to be clever and the frenetic pace makes most of the plot holes --- if Ronna is seventeen, why does she have her own apartment? --- unnoticeable.  Unfortunately, some of the cuts and edits in this film seem to serve no purpose.  Why do we start the film with Claire talking to Todd the next morning?  Why those two characters?  They are neither the primary plot, nor a linchpin that tied everything together, so it feels like it's just thrown in to make the movie seem mysterious, like they wanted audiences to whisper, "Oh, boy, did you catch all that?  Something must have happened last night for these characters!"  Some of the dialogue is good, some of it is sophomoric, but I will give screenwriter (and frequent Tim Burton collaborator) John August credit for writing a movie meant to be hep with the young folks and have it not feel completely outdated ten years later.  It's nowhere near as great of a script as this movie thinks it is, but it tries.

This really is a busy movie.  It has the attention span of a kid on a sugar rush (or a teen rolling on ecstasy), and a lot happens.  Some of it is dumb.  Why would anyone trust random grocery store customers that want to buy large quantities of drugs for any reason?  Who rips people off with fake drugs and then stays at that party?  If Todd "gives head before [he] gives favors --- and [he] doesn't give head," then why does Simon have his credit card?  If Simon stole the credit card, then why doesn't that ever come up in the story?  And why don't any of the four guys going to Vegas have their own credit card to hold their hotel room?  On the bright side, there is a psychic cat, which was pretty funny.  Unlike most crime and/or drug movies, this film is relatively consequence-free, which cuts the flakier aspects of the film some slack.  It's kind of like a Snackwell's devil's food cake cookie; you know Go isn't going to blow your mind, but it's fun and not that bad for you, so why not enjoy?

Go was a reader request.  Want me to review something?  Maybe I will.