A Bug's Life

I love when competing movie companies make films that have nearly identical premises and are released around the same time.  Some of my favorite examples include Deep Impact and Armageddon, Dante's Peak and Volcano, Finding Nemo and Shark Tale, The Illusionist and The Prestige, Indiana Jones and Oregon Harrison...the list goes on and on.  In this case, A Bug's Life, the second Pixar animated film, competed directly against Antz, the first DreamWorks animated film.  What does that have to do with the actual movie?  Nothing.  I just like pointing out when movies have twins.  And just like in real life, there's always a good twin and a bad twin.  Which is which?  Well, I don't see anyone in A Bug's Life with a goatee, do you?

A Bug's Life is the story of Flik (Dave Foley) and his attempts to save his colony from some vicious grasshopper bullies, led by the cruel Hopper (Kevin Spacey).  You see, Hopper's grasshopper gang forces the ant colony, led by The Queen (Phyllis Diller) and her heir apparent Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), to pay tribute every year in the form of food.  After offering their tribute, the ants then have to hurry to gather enough food to support themselves over the coming rainy season.  Flik is an amateur inventor who accidentally ruins the tribute and angers the grasshoppers.  As the colony rushes to gather enough food to satisfy Hopper, Flik is sent out on a fool's errand to keep him from accidentally ruining this tribute, too.  His task is to find some fighting bugs that will protect the colony.  He finds some bugs, but, under a mutual misunderstanding, he ends up with a group of circus performers who thought that they were going to perform for the colony, not protect them.  Whoops.

The story clearly borrows heavily from The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven (which makes sense, since it's a remake of Samurai), with the colony being protected by a motley crew facing impossible odds.  Unlike those films, though, this is a kid's movie, so there is a lot less death.  There are a lot more sappy "The More You Know" moments, though.  The film's themes include the contributions of the individual, how size does not equal strength, and the power of numbers.  You might wonder at the wisdom of having a movie point out how important an individual is and then turn around and point out how important it is for a group (that includes that individual) to work together, but that conceptual problem is ignored in the film.  I mean, the points were made more than ten minutes apart --- that's practically a separate movie!

Once again, Pixar does a great job with their voice casting.  Dave Foley as the nervous Flik and a young Hayden Panettiere as little Princess Dot were both particularly good.  Kevin Spacey was imposing as the evil Hopper and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was obnoxiously whiny as the Princess.  The supporting cast was as colorful as ever, with Denis Leary being the standout as the male ladybug, but John Ratzenberger, Roddy McDowall, Brad Garrett, Bonnie Hunt, Madeline Kahn, Phyllis Diller, and David Hyde-Pierce all do good work here.

Being a Pixar movie, the animation is, of course, amazing.  While they weren't ready to pull off any human animation just yet, I liked the way primary writer Andrew Stanton played with his small scale; it's fun for kids to see ordinary things becoming huge dangers for tiny creatures, a la Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and this is one of the film's strengths.  I don't like how obviously indebted the film is to The Seven Samurai, but that's a film buff's gripe when compared to the much more serious issue of the film's lack of emotion.  In the best children's movies, one of the characters has a major epiphany and goes to great lengths to keep what they now realize is the most important thing to them.  A Bug's Life still tries to do that, but it spreads the emotional payoff across several characters (Flik, Atta, Dot, and Denis Leary's ladybug), diluting its effect.

I'm sure that this movie will please most kids.  It's not bad, by any means, but it's lacking the depth that makes movies like this more endurable for adults.  Instead, it takes the easy route for cute jokes (the "outtakes" during the credits are a good example of this), and I was left a little bored.

Brainscan

Awesome!  I needed a new release for my Laserdisc player!

With violent video games being the subject of a Supreme Court hearing right now, I felt that this was a timely choice of viewing.  I mean, it's timely with its subject matter, not with its technology or special effects.  Still, as the Talking Heads said, it's "the same as it ever was."  1994 also saw a lot of controversy with violent video games, as Mortal Kombat II was released to home consoles and actually showed blood on the Super Nintendo!  Oh my sweet lord, Prince in Minneapolis, was that awesome in '94!

No wonder parents were upset.  It's so realistic!

Brainscan is the totally realistic story of Michael (Edward Furlong), a teen that likes to watch movies, play video games, and spends as much time as possible away from his father.  Michael lives in his attic, which sounds like it sucks, but is totally awesome; it's the size of a studio apartment, has its own refrigerator (with a life-sized Alice Cooper magnet), and Michael has hooked his phone into his computer so that his phone dials with voice commands.  The best part is that his only living parent spends a lot of time out of town and leaves Michael home alone (which is very illegal), so he can do whatever he wants!  As it turns out, "whatever he wants" is spending as much time as humanly possible in his room, avoiding all contact with others.  Risky Business, this ain't.  Actually, Michael would like to grow a pair and go talk to the girl across the street, Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who totally wants him even though he's obviously kind of a dork and she's inexplicably popular --- she's not that attractive, rich, or much of a personality.  My guess is that the script called for a girl and the writers decided that stating that she's "cool" is enough character development for a horror movie.  Oh, and Michael has one friend, Kyle (James Marsh) and some acquaintances in his high school Horror Club, which is a fantastic idea for an extracurricular club.

Anyway, Kyle comes over to Michael's house and practically begs him to buy this sweet new horror game, Brainscan, mainly because he wants to play it.  Cheapskate.  It's supposed to be, like, the sickest game ever!  Well, I guess the advertisers knew that their target audience was the Horror Club.  So, Michael orders the game, it arrives, and he plugs it into his computer.  And the game is AWESOME!  You get to play as a murderer, in the first-person perspective --- it's super-sweet virtual reality!  One problem, though...the murders that happened in the game?  Yeah, they happened in real life, too.  When Michael tries to quit the game, the voice from the game's hotline makes a personal appearance.  He is a magical/demonic creature known as the Trickster (T. Ryder Smith), and he looks like the Leprechaun and Freddy Kreuger had a hair metal baby.  Or maybe a blend of Frank Langella's Skeletor and the villain from Last of the Mohicans.

LepreFreddy, or Skelehican?  You decide.

The Trickster guarantees that the slightly unethical police officer (Frank Langella) investigating the murders (yes, he killed several during the "game") will bust Michael for murder, unless he continues the game.  This includes getting rid of the serial killer-esque trophies, like a severed foot, and killing witnesses, like Kyle (who knows he played the game) and Kimberly (who knows he's acting weird).  This movie boils down to whether self-preservation and a love for gaming are more important to Michael than doing the right thing and saving his friends.  Or, if you want it reduced to a tag line, does Michael win, or is it...game over?

Shockingly (to me, anyway), the acting and directing in this movie aren't bad.  Eddie Furlong didn't exactly win any Oscars for this, but he's not bad; this just reminds me how promising he was back in Terminator 2 and what a waste his career has been since, aside from American History X.  Frank Langella adds a bit of class with his moderately intelligent detective; I don't get why his character, who seems pretty talented as a cop, stoops to illegal searches at one point, but the script is not his fault.  I was less impressed with T. Ryder Smith's flamboyant Trickster.  He's a cheap knock-off of the mid-90s wisecracking horror monster, and his awful hair and dress only made his goal ("Play this game!  MWA HA HA!") seem more ridiculous.  The rest of the cast was unimpressive, but not bad enough to specifically remember.  Director John Flynn handled the film moderately well, I think.  This isn't a great horror movie, but it was assembled in a competent fashion and it follows its own logic.

The same cannot be said about the script.  Apparently assembled by someone who was never a teenage boy (guys don't ask "Buds forever?", they scowl and drink whiskey), but was apparently very stupid, this movie is riddled with script problems.  Let's take the instance of Frank Langella illegally searching Michael's house; he finds that the fireplace has recently had a fire, which is suspicious in the summertime.  Good detective work, Frank.  Unless every single person in this movie is wearing layers, that is.  Kyle sports a flannel shirt, leather jacket, and another flannel tied around his waist; Michael never has less than three shirts on, and he lurks in his attic, which is probably the hottest room in his house.  There are more examples, like a high schooler hosting a party with alcohol that fills the block with street parking and occupies the front lawn.  Because that happens.  Or someone who, while digging a hole to bury a severed foot in, leaves their backpack with the foot inside unzipped.  Dumb stuff.

Honestly, this movie isn't bad for what it is.  The acting and directing are probably better than this concept deserves, and the special effects, while dated (think Lawnmower Man), fit the general video game theme.  Of course, "what it is" happens to be a crappy horror movie.  I'm sure this blew a few thirteen year-old minds back in the day, but it just blows now.

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.

White Lightning

Now THAT is a movie poster!  It's got it all: guns, fire, a car chase, a woman, jugs of green liquid the size of a man, flying through the air.  I also love the inset picture of Burt Reynolds; it's like the producers saw the movie poster and asked, "But which one is Burt Reynolds?" and they picked out a picture from Tiger Beat.  I am confused by the tag line "White Lightning: Take a Bite and Feel All Right!"  Take a bite of what?  White lightning?  Burt Reynolds?  The green jug?  That just sounds like a rap lyric (judging from the skill of the rhyme, I would have to guess Young MC --- he has more rhymes than the whole damn zoo) more than a line that would actually fit this poster.  However, the other tag line, at the top of the poster, is awesome.  "White lightning never strikes twice --- 'cause once is enough!"  That makes it sound like Burt Reynolds plays White Lightning, a race car driver or something.  Or, it may be a subtle racist jab.  Sure, white lightning can do the job, done in one, but what about black, brown or yellow lightning?  Is this poster implying some sort of superiority based on the color of lightning?  Or maybe "White Lightning" is the title song in this, an Aryan Nation update of Grease!  Ah, the joys of accusing something of unintentional racism...good times.  Side note: kids, racism is bad and stupid. 

Actually, White Lightning refers to moonshine, the illegal homemade liquor that can be delicious and/or used to thin paint.  Our boy Gator (Burt Reynolds) is in the Arkansas (I knew this movie was racist!) pokey, doing time for running moonshine.  He gets word that his brother just died; the police say he drowned (which he did), but everybody knows that Sheriff Connors (Ned Beatty) was responsible for it (which he was).  Gator makes two decisions that day.  The first is to escape prison to take down that dirty, crooked Sheriff; he starts out okay, but the warden unhurriedly brings him back in after only a few minutes.  It was quite the jail break, and I'm very glad that it was captured on film.  The warden was fairly indifferent and the prisoner gave up immediately.  In Spanish, they call that muy divertido.  Wait...does divertido mean "boring as hell"?  I know muy means "Shoot me in the face to stop this from being."  The second decision is to work for the Feds, going undercover to bring Sheriff Connors to justice and take down any dirty backwoods moonshiners that are fueling Connors' crime empire.  What is the best way to do that?  Car chases.  Lots and lots of car chases.  Along the way, Gator comes to understand the value of moonshinin' to the semi-honest backwoods folks of Arkansas and he manages to find love by stealing away his partner's woman (Diane Ladd).

This is a movie that is definitely a product of its times.  I'm not just saying that because Burt Reynolds is in it (with no mustache, but he does chew gum throughout).  You don't often see forty minutes of car chases in movies nowadays.  That is mostly because that was the limit for special effects in the 60s and 70s, but car chase movies, when done right, can be a lot of fun.  This movie has cars jumping off dirt ramps, a car with a Confederate flag on the hood, and a car jumping onto a barge, all in the first chase.  I did appreciate that the filmmakers went out of their way to explain the need for car chases in the movie, but it isn't terribly necessary; Gator is transporting moonshine, so he has to avoid local cops.

The acting is about what you would expect from a Burt Reynolds vehicle.  Basically, Burt gets to be cool and irresistible to women, and everyone else is a chump.  And it's true; Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins, Diane Ladd all look pretty stupid in this movie.  That's not a terrible thing, unless you're trying to argue that too much money is spent on education in Arkansas, but this is a pretty one-sided affair.  It is worth noting that this is the uncredited film debut of Laura Dern; she has a bit part, but you can spot her.  The direction isn't all that bad.  Joseph Sargent knows that the car chases and Reynold's smirk are what people want to see in this movie, and he certainly delivers.  Honestly, as far as car chase/Burt Reynolds movies go, this is probably the best.

But for those of us that look for more in their movies than cars on dirt roads and Burt Reynolds chewing gum, there are a couple of head-scratching moments.  When Gator makes his first daring car escape by driving his car off a pier and onto a barge, shouldn't the police following him know where the barge is heading?  I would think that it would be a regular trip, or at least one that someone on the docks could help them figure out.  Even if the next bridge was too far away to beat the barge, I bet the police on the other side of the river would be more than happy to pick up Gator as he tries to haul his now undoubtedly damaged car off the boat.  Ned Beatty's character is kind of silly, too.  Sure, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief enough to say that, maybe, a corrupt Sheriff could be "running the entire county," both the law and the crime.  But he makes a speech during the film where he argues that police don't make enough money with their day jobs, so it's only right for them to supplement their money with moonshine; the police make their money and the people get their cheap booze.  Beatty estimates that the average, legally taxed, fifth of liquor costs $7 (well, it is the 70s), but moonshine only costs six bits a gallon!  First off, what the hell is a bit?  Oh, it's twelve and a half cents.  That seems like a fairly arbitrary amount, but whatever, Mirriam-Webster.  More importantly, though, Beatty's argument ignores the car races, public danger, exploding stills, toxic unregulated booze, and murders that are a side effect of this business.  I have no problem with the Sheriff being a corrupted jerk, but that speech was a really inept attempt to give him depth.  Perhaps the biggest middle finger this movie gives to logical thought is the ending.  SPOILER ALERT: So Gator manages to trick the Sheriff into driving his car into a lake, which apparently immediately kills him.  Suspicious, but fine.  Whatever.  Why doesn't Gator get thrown back into jail at the end?  He caused a lot of damage, led to the death of the suspect, and he burned his list of moonshiners because they're good people.  So...the FBI lets him out of prison to build a case and he fails in every way possible, and their response is "enjoy your freedom"?  Really?

Still, you don't turn on a movie like this because you enjoy thinking.  This movie definitely succeeds in its mission to be a car chase movie starring Burt Reynolds.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

Why are the headlights still on?

Aww, yeah!  It's Swedish sequel time!  Interesting side note: if you do a Google image search for "Swedish sequel," you may find this.  Hot on the heels of the hit Swedish-language film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the next part of the Millennium Series just hit DVD shelves.  This is the adaptation of Steig Larsson's book of the same name, which was a world-wide best seller.  The film was released just seven months after Dragon Tattoo and just two months before the final entry in the series, so you know these Swedes are trying to hit while the iron's hot.  The budget was slashed for the sequels --- it was assumed by the producers that the sequels would be direct-to-DVD, but the $100 million dollar success of the first film changed that --- which usually isn't a good sign.  How did it turn out?  Let's find out.

Over a year has passed since the events of Dragon Tattoo, and the heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) returns home to Sweden after a year abroad.  She tries to keep a relatively low profile, partially because she does a lot of illegal computer hacking and partially because she is blackmailing her guardian officer (it's like a parole officer for formerly institutionalized Swedes) into giving her glowing development reviews.  As such, Lisbeth lets her friend and sometime girlfriend, Mia, stay at her old apartment, rent free.  Meanwhile, Lisbeth's old pal Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his co-workers at Millenium magazine are preparing an expose into human trafficking and prostitution.  When the reporter who is writing the article is found murdered with his wife, the police are able to trace the gun used back to Lisbeth's guardian officer.  That's good.  But he's dead and Lisbeth's fingerprints are all over the gun.  That's bad.  The police naturally start a womanhunt for Lisbeth, but they aren't the only ones looking for her; some scary dudes involved in the drug trade are also in the hunt.  Hey, Mia, I bet that free apartment doesn't sound so great now.  Mikael decides to use his investigative eye to help Lisbeth, but it is ultimately up to her to find out who has framed her and why.

Like the last film, Played With Fire is fairly plot heavy; unlike the last film, it is less of a mystery and more of a thriller.  Daniel Alfredson takes over the directing chair this time, but I didn't notice any difference in style from the first one.  So, either this is the best sequel ever for maintaining the look and feel of its predecessor, or maybe Swedes just don't have any style.  The acting in this movie is both better and worse than the last film.  Noomi Rapace turns in a far superior performance in this film; she spends some time acting, instead of just posing as a surly Goth chick.  There is almost no screen time shared between Rapace and Michael Nyqvist, which helps build up the strength of her character.  Nyqvist's performance definitely suffered without Rapace's Goth-crazy to fuel him; I would rate him at four out of five on the "dead behind the eyes" scale.  For those scoring at home, a dumb eight year-old in a calculus class gets a one, and these hacks pull a perfect five.  The supporting cast is, surprisingly, a little better this time around, with former boxer Paulo Roberto playing himself (but not Mike Tyson making a cameo, this guy had a substantial role) and Micke Spreitz essentially playing the Swedish version of Kevin Nash's Russian from The Punisher; that means that he is big and blonde, and when he gets hit, he just looks confused instead of hurt.

There is a lot to like in this movie.  I was impressed by how much Roomi Rapace improved from film to film, and I liked her character more this time around.  It helps that she's portrayed as less crazy than in the first film.  I always enjoy seemingly indestructible villains (like Spreitz), so that was fun for me, too.  There is a lot more action and violence in this movie, including some fairly realistic (and still pretty bad ass) moves from Rapace, several gunshot wounds, and somebody getting an axe to the head.  Along with the violence, this movie brings the sex, too, with a moderately graphic (by American standards) lesbian scene.  The film's pace is probably the best thing about it; a lot happens in this movie, including research, but the characters are always moving, which really helps even the slow parts seem active.

Unfortunately, pacing doesn't hide all of the movie's shortcomings.  I am all for films that want the viewers to figure out what is going on, but I didn't appreciate the vast difference between telling Mikael and Lisbeth's parts of the story.  Whenever Michael was going to do something, he explained it first to someone else, and then did it.  Lisbeth would stare at a computer screen and then abruptly choose to do something, sometimes even going to a spot where Mikael had been only a few scenes before.  Yes, I realize that Lisbeth had access to Mikael's computer and was taking information from him and applying it to her own, but I think that explanation could have been mentioned once in the film, at least; there were times where I had to figure out why she was going wherever she was going, and that was distracting.  I wasn't a huge fan of the story itself, although I liked the way it was told; when you boil things down to their core, this is a story that seems more at home in a comic book or a professional wrestling ring than in a thriller.  And, again, I wish the story depended less on Mikael to figure things out, because Nyqvist's emotional range varies from sleepy-eyed indifference to sleepy-eyed mild surprise.  Even with Rapace's performance, this movie sorely misses the feel of genuine acting, as there is little to no need for chemistry between characters when they're just running from place to place.

Overall, I think fans of the book will be just fine with this adaptation.  It is better than it should be, given the budget, and definitely feels like the next chapter in the story.  I don't think the story is nearly as strong this time around, but the frenetic pace almost makes that point moot.  I will admit, though, that I am a sucker for the thriller genre.