Del reviews ‘I Am Number Four’
Image courtesy of Touchstone Studios.
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“I Am Number Four” Starring Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant and Dianna Agron. Directed by D.J. Caruso. 109 minutes. Rated PG-13.
(Note: Mladen Rudman could not make the screening of “I Am Number Four.”)
Sadly, “I Am Number Four” is not much more than a steaming pile of number two.
Why?
The film suffers from an extreme case of schizophrenia coupled with an identity crisis. Is it a love story? Is it an action movie? Is it “Twilight”? Is it a summer movie?
It is all of these things and consequently none, which leaves “I Am Number Four” hanging in sequel limbo, possibly lost forever to producers Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg who, along with novelist James Frey (writing as Pittacus Lore, upon whose books the movie is based ) clearly aimed to produce the next superhero teen-angst franchise.
The plot is simple … or maybe not. A small group of alien refugees has come to Earth after evil Mogadorians ransacked their world and slaughtered their people. They’re hiding among us, hoping to blend in, as a Mogadorian hit squad roams the world, killing them in order ( hence the title “I Am Number Four” ). Numbers one through three have been eliminated. John ( Pettyfer ) is next. He and his protector, Henri ( Olyphant ) arrive at a small town in Ohio where John enrolls in the local high school. He meets and develops feelings for the retro-chic Sarah ( Agron ); clashes with Sarah’s ex, Mark ( Jake Abel ), who happens to be the high school football team’s quarterback AND the son of the local sheriff; and hooks up with the school nerd, Sam ( Callan McAuliffe ), whose dad mysteriously disappeared while tracking down evidence of extraterrestrials. As the pecking order is sorted out the Mog hit squad arrives, looking very Matrixesque. All hell breaks loose. As hell is resolved and the potential for a sequel clarified, Number Six ( Teresa Palmer ) shows up and lends a gun to the climatic battle.
Is “Number Four” a love story? Well, sort of. Lots of quality time and kissing between John and Sarah, and not a wisp of romance between John and Number Six ( though Sam seems smitten by the blonde bombshell ). Clearly the two have a thing for one another, and Sarah has renounced her relationship with Mark. But – and this is a big “but” ( warning, spoilers follow ) – at the end of the movie John leaves Sarah ( or at least appears to do so … something that could easily be fixed in the next film) and we’re left wondering just how dedicated these two are to each other.
Is “Number Four” an action movie? It is if you stick around for the second half. In the first 30 minutes it’s nothing more than a massive info-dump and scene-setting vehicle. We see Number Three die and John and Henri leave their Florida hideout for the anonymity of Small Town Ohio. We see John go to high school and endure the alleged rituals peculiar to that stage of a person’s life. We get voice-over background about the Mog’s destruction of John’s home planet. Pretty boring stuff. Along about mile marker 34 things get interesting as the Mogs show up and John discovers the true extent of his alien powers ( lightning speed, super strength and flashlight hands! ). Meanwhile we also learn Sam’s dad’s disappearance might have had something to do with the Mogs, which makes him a permanent member of John’s growing retinue, and Number Six is closing in to make sure John doesn’t die ( What the heck is Number Five doing? Playing Farmville? ).
Is “Number Four” “Twilight”? You better believe it. Same target audience, same plot. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam turns out to be a werewolf.
Lastly, is it a summer movie? Let’s put it this way: When the weather is cold I like to open a bottle of Redhook ESB, a hearty ale with a hefty bite that seems to keep the chills at bay. We’re talking “Winter’s Bone” or “The King’s Speech.” Come warmer weather, with its high heat and humidity, I switch to lighter, frothier fare, say a Corona Light. “Number Four” is definitely a Corona Light. It requires no thinking. So why was it released in February?
“I Am Number Four” is shot through with plot holes and logic flaws. No explanation is ever given for the Mogs inimical behavior, or why they must kill the refugees in order. John’s protector, Henri, is easily overcome and kidnapped by a couple of Ohio rednecks. Sarah’s picture-taking hobby seems peculiarly out of touch with the times as she uses ordinary film and develops her own prints. And only fleeting reference is made to why the Mogs must kill the alien refugees – apparently they’re capable of some great power, which begs the question: Why didn’t they use that power when their world was under attack?
Worse, “Number Four” is a cliché machine. Why must every new kid in high school fall in love with the ex-girlfriend of the football team quarterback who is the sheriff’s son? Why is the picked-on, shunned nerd really the smartest kid in school who has hidden strengths but doesn’t show them until a sexy protector arrives? Why must the viewpoint character discover his extraordinary powers while resisting school bullies? And why must every adult in the film be so clueless?
Acting was serviceable. Pettyfer is not a bad-looking fellow and Agron did as much with her role as she could. Better was McAuliffe, and my favorite character in the movie, the Mog commander, played by Kevin Durand, reveled in his evilness.
As of this writing “I Am Number Four” has made about $38 million at the box office. If it clears $100 million a sequel will probably be made.
Don’t hold your breath. The movie dropped 43 percent at the box office in its second week, which is a bad, bad sign. I expect it to top out in the $50 million to $60 million range.
“I Am Number Four” is, in my opinion, a Netflix movie. Save your ticket dollars for “Battle: Los Angeles.”
Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Monsters-movie-image
Image courtesy of Magnet.
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“Monsters” Starring Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able. Directed by Gareth Edwards. 94 minutes. Rated R.
Del’s take
Late in the movie “Monsters” there comes a moment a literary book reviewer might call “luminous.” Ever notice how literary book reviewers always bring the word “luminous” into play, as if to excuse the lack of plot, the unfolding of dreary characterization and the trendy massacre of clearly wrought prose? You will never hear a Larry Bond novel called “luminous.”
This illuminating moment takes place when our two protagonists, Andrew (Scoot McNairy) and Samantha (Whitney Able), witness two 300-foot tall walking squids engage in making out, foreplay, maybe actual intercourse – with all the flailing tentacles, bioluminescent pulsing and noble whale song-like groaning it’s hard to tell what’s going on. Andrew and Samantha watch in awe as these two leviathans perform the vertical bop and you expect them to whisper, “Beautiful” as they gaze adoringly at each other.
I was whispering “Will somebody please BLOW THESE THINGS UP?”
To paraphrase my friend Kari: “Monsters” is what happens when an indie filmmaker, the cinema equivalent of a literary writer, tells himself, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself … and monsters.”
“Monsters” isn’t about monsters, that’s for sure. The monsters are metaphors for Andrew and Samantha, or illegal immigration, or existential angst. But it is more about the message getting lost in a stew of competing thematic imperatives.
The story goes like this: NASA discovers evidence of life elsewhere in our solar system and dispatches a probe to recover a sample. The probe crashes somewhere in Mexico and shortly thereafter weird creatures begin disrupting the flow of cocaine to America. Andrew, a jaded photojournalist, goes into the “infected zone” to document the mayhem. But he somehow becomes responsible for escorting his publisher’s daughter, who has been in the area, back to the States. They try by land, sea and air but due to a series of setbacks, mostly caused by their own stupidity, they fail and must travel directly through the infected zone to reach the gigantic wall America has constructed along its border with Mexico. Along the way Andrew, who has a kid but not a wife, and Samantha, who is to marry a fellow she doesn’t love, discover a growing affinity for each other. Can you guess how this is going to end?
I will give Edwards credit: “Monsters” is ambitious. It is not another “Godzilla,” “The Mist” or “Cloverfield.” What I didn’t like about it, however, was the plodding pace, the incompetence of the characters and their forced transformations, which did not encourage me to suspend my disbelief.
Characterization is shaky. We are expected to dislike Andrew at first because of his cynicism, then bond to him as he realizes there’s more to life than shooting a prize-winning photo. In reality Andrew is a scummy opportunist who shacks up with prostitutes when Samantha won’t sleep with him, something he pursues with such diligence that Samantha could have had him arrested for sexual harassment. And Samantha, as the poor little rich girl, is a cipher with no real purpose for existence other than serving as an object of desire for Andrew.
At every critical juncture in their journey they pause, undecided, then embark on some irrelevant and unrealistic conflict that jeopardizes their success. For instance, at one point they must get off a boat and travel overland under the watchful eye of armed guards – except Andrew doesn’t want to because the guards are carrying guns. Um, excuse me, but what part of “armed” did he not understand? And in a land occupied by 300 foot-tall squids who like to squash human beings, would you rather your guards be armed with Nerf Frisbees?
And once they reach the wall, well. It’s every Tea Partier’s dream, a cement monolith designed to keep out “illegal aliens.” Except the aliens, as we see in the scene I referenced above, are nothing more than noble, benighted creatures who want nothing more out of life than a brief interlude of happiness amidst an uncaring world. Except they are 300 feet tall and like to squash humans. I say, “Will somebody please BLOW THESE THINGS UP?”
“Monsters” is an interesting movie but it has problems. On a scale of A to F I would rate it a C+.
Mladen’s take
Let’s start with a list.
They’re 300-foot-tall walking octopi, or is it octopuses? Get your mollusks straight, Del.
They do get blown up, you savage, it’s just not witnessed, and,
“Monsters” the movie has one of loveliest, mournfully serene soundtracks ever pasted to celluloid.
For me, the best way to characterize “Monsters” is this: The movie is deeply satisfying, but superficially disappointing.
It took me about 20 minutes to realize that the film was unlike a Godzilla smashfest, “Cloverfield,” or “The Mist.”
After that, I shed the expectation of carnage and allowed the movie to chart its own course. The story is about man’s inhumanity to man and our reckless belief that we can corral nature.
Samantha and Andrew are likable tools used to teach us a lesson. They do a good job leading us through the Infected Zone, where the alien creatures have established a sanctuary after being brought to Earth by a NASA probe that crashed.
Once in the zone, the duo exists to draw attention to the look of civilization as it’s consumed by its own folly.
Vines overtake hotels built for tourists.
An F-15 emerges from the depths of a river, playfully pulled through the black water by one of the tentacled beasts. It never bothers Samantha, Andrew, or the crew of the longboat hired at an exploitative price to help get the Americans back to America.
When the couple finally reaches the U.S.-Mexico border, it discovers that the zigzagging walled fortress separating one country from the other has been abandoned. The aliens had breached its ramparts. The fight has come to the Homeland.
Agreed, there’s some hokey symbolism in “Monsters.” Del already gave examples, but you have to give the director of the film credit for trying to create something original.
“Monsters” is an artsy film with a liberal message, which ain’t gonna play too good in these parts.
Sit back and enjoy the film, paying attention to events and scenes framing the relationship between Samantha and Andrew because that’s the movie’s strength.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
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“2012” Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover. Directed by Roland Emmerich. 158 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Mladen’s take
The film “2012,” now on DVD and Blu-ray disc, is a man-made disaster about a natural catastrophe.
“My gosh,” I said to myself about halfway through the longer than 2 1/2 hour movie, “can’t the world come to an end quicker?”
In “2012,” landmasses shift cataclysmically because mutant neutrinos from a solar flare superheat the Earth’s core. The Himalayas become the ocean’s flood plain. California becomes a part of the seafloor.
The upheaval results in hundreds of millions of deaths, unless you’re an Arab royal or Russian mobster who can afford to drop $1 billion euros per person for luxurious passage on secretly built “arks,” or happen to be a member of the Curtis family et al.
Ineptly, yet decisively, led by Jackson Curtis, as portrayed by John Cusack, the family ceaselessly eludes death by blunt trauma or scorching again and again and again and again.
The earth uplifts beneath their car, they escape.
Bridges collapse, they dodge.
The ground tears open at their feet, they scurry.
California explodes, they find an airplane to maneuver around toppling skyscrapers like a mosquito flying between raindrops.
A pyroclastic flow – ash spewing, acid sizzling, boulders flaming – comes gushing their way, but they outrun it.
Finally, don’t ask how, the Curtises reach the Himalayas, trudging through snow in search of the arks.
Just as they’re about to give up hope for the tenth time of surviving, along comes a Buddhist monk driving a pickup truck along a winding trail. He gives the Curtises a lift to a back entrance of the cavernous mountaintop shipyard where the monk’s brother, who helped build the arks, smuggles the whole lot aboard Ark 4, which belongs to America. What luck, eh?
The Curtises live and “2012” ends with three arks steaming for Africa, which apparently survived the churning core. Get it? Humans got their evolutionary start in Africa and now they’re returning to Africa for another beginning. “2012” teems with such philosophic wonderment and profound irony.
That the ships were called Arks, by the way, was the final straw for me.
I’m tired of sectarian references, in this case, ark as in Noah’s Ark, constantly appearing in catastrophe movies.
Why did “2012” director Roland Emmerich have to label the vessels that saved a small portion of corrupt, self-serving mankind, arks, as though the endeavor was noble?
It would have been more accurate to label the arks “survival ships for the filthy rich and slimy politicians.”
Or, the arks could have been called, “keep-the-privileged-alive semi-submersibles,” mimicking the DEA description of vessels drug traffickers use to move product along the coastlines of Central and South America.
Rent, do not buy, “2012” only if you have a potent surround sound system. The movie’s sound effects are its only merit.
Del’s take
Director Roland Emmerich blew up the White House in “Independence Day.” He knocked over the Statue of Liberty in “The Day After Tomorrow.” In “2012” he inundates, melts down and otherwise reduces to soggy molecules the entire world in an orgy of destruction that will leave you wondering what you did for entertainment before CGI made it possible to watch a tidal wave overwash the Himalayas.
If there is such a thing as “disaster porn,” “2012” is triple-X.
The storyline is simple: A freak burst of neutrinos from the sun is causing the earth’s core to heat up, resulting in an extinction-level event (to borrow a term from “Deep Impact”). Volcanoes the size of Wyoming will destroy vast swaths of countryside while earthquakes and tsunamis finish off what the volcanoes fail to vaporize.
The lead viewpoint character is John Cusack, a could-have-been writer who operates a limo service to pay the rent. He lives in a dump, oversleeps appointments and consistently lets down his ex-wife, Amanda Peet, and his two children. Peet has moved on to a new husband, a man with a solid job who provides her and the kids with a great house and lots of fun gadgets – not to mention contempt for Cusack’s fumbling inadequacies as a father and a man.
See where this is going?
Meanwhile strange events are unfolding around the world. Earthquakes open cracks along fault lines in California. Lakes boil away in Yellowstone Park. The church channel lady with the pink cotton candy hair shaves her head and gets a nose bob … OK, maybe that’s a little too weird but you get the picture.
What follows is a hair-raising series of improbable cliffhangers resulting in … well, let’s just say if you’re familiar with the Roland Emmerich formula you’ll not be disappointed.
“2012” is silly and stupid, but it’s also a lot of fun.
The science is non-existent. Take those pesky neutrinos. Neutrinos have no mass, which means they pass right through you and me, the buildings we inhabit, and the earth itself. How can something that has no mass heat the earth’s core?
In the movie we see a huge Russian transport airplane, an Antonov 225, perform a 60-degree power climb. Ain’t happening folks, not even with a crazy Russian hotdog of a pilot.
And “2012” seems to forget all about the nuclear winter hypothesis, which predicts that if you inject enough soot and dust into the atmosphere, the sun isn’t going to shine for months if not years.
I’m curious. Why do these disaster movies never take into account the hundreds of wrecked nuclear reactors around the world? All that plutonium has got to go somewhere.
And why does every disaster movie center around a divorced dad trying to win back the love of his children, if not his ex-wife? John Cusack’s role seems lifted directly from Steven Spielberg’s “The War of the Worlds” Tom Cruise character. Or “Independence Day.” Or even “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
I guess we’re supposed to ignore those logic flaws as we watch an aircraft carrier of a surfboard take out the White House, or the San Andreas fault submerge the entire West Coast into the Pacific.
I can do that for two hours.
When “2012” debuted on DVD it blew away the competition. I had to ask the folks at the local Blockbuster if they had a copy behind the counter because the shelves were empty. As I waited, two more customers asked for it. (Speaking of which, don’t you hate the demise of the local DVD rental store? Netflix, Red Box and streaming are lousy substitutes for wandering the aisles as you check out the dust jackets on a DVD case.)
I give “2012” 3½ out of five stars, subtracting points for bad science and hackneyed storytelling, but awarding points for special effects and entertainment value.
Your $5 rental fee won’t have been wasted.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Warner Brothers.
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“Terminator Salvation” Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood. Directed by McG. 114 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Mladen’s take
Take a little “Total Recall,” mix it with “Transformers,” sprinkle a tablespoon of “Mad Max,” bake at 350 degrees computer-generated special effects, and, voila, the result is “Terminator Salvation.”
“Salvation” is unable to compete with any of its three predecessors but it ain’t a bad film. One weakness is its PG-13 rating. There are plenty of explosions, but no close ups of bullets or shrapnel shredding bodies, or robo-hands tearing off heads.
The principal difference between “Salvation” and the other Terminator movies is that John Connor, humanity’s salvation, is now an adult and Kyle Reese, Connor’s father, is a child. Nevermind, it’s not worth explaining.
In the first three movies, the objective is to keep Connor alive. In the fourth, it’s making sure Reese avoids ingesting 40 7.67-mm rounds per second from a minigun.
Christian Bale, as Connor, plays what has now become a potentially career-ending typecast for him, a brooding, mopey hero.
The most interesting character in “Salvation” is the machine army’s first T-800 cybrid assassinator, which is unaware of its origin or allegiance. Sam Worthington portrays the cybrid, known as Marcus Wright.
Once you overlook the murkily explained way Wright becomes the next-generation terminator, his portrayal of a sentient machine enduring an identity crisis is fairly convincing.
Add to Worthington’s character the lovely and very human sidekick, A-10 pilot Blair Williams, and “Salvation” becomes more than palatable. Williams is played by Moon Bloodgood, a beautiful woman with the sexiest voice on the planet.
Typical of Armageddon-like movies, the post-apocalypse Earth in “Salvation” is drab browns, dark blues and assorted grays. Only flashing red lights and the orange of explosions adds color to the film.
It takes some suspension of contextual logic to consider mankind’s resistance against the encroaching world of a computer constellation with artificial intelligence plausible.
For example, if Skynet, the Vladimir Putin of the machinekind in “Salvation,” is so smart, lethal, and efficient, why did it fail to nuke all of America’s military bases and repair depots? I ask because the humans in the film have access to a broad range of weapons. From MV-22s to a nuclear-powered attack submarine, Connor and his troops avoid the uncomfortable position of fighting robots with clubs and rocks.
“Salvation” gets three stars out of five, if for no other reason than its respectful bow toward the end to the greatest terminator of all, the now politically besieged governor of California.
Del’s take
Let’s see if I can nail down the premise of “Terminator Salvage Operation”: John Connor must jack into the Matrix where his mentor Obi Wan has been captured by an alien face-hugger. There he meets Gandolf, who wields a mean club when the Road Warrior attacks, but they escape with the aid of Mr. Spock who is undergoing the colon-cleansing ritual of pon-fart.
I swear. There were times during “Terminator Salvation” when I thought I was watching “The Road Warrior,” “Transformers” and maybe just a wee bit of “Star Trek,” “Alien” and “Lord of the Rings.”
These science fiction franchises have become about as interesting and fun as a civil service employment application. They’re way too complicated and take themselves way too seriously, and their creators seem to have forgotten that story will always trump effects.
Worse, they’re all borrowing stuff from each other, sort of like a taco pizza cheeseburger.
Here’s the rundown on “Salvation”: It occurs after “Judgment Day,” the day a vast computer system called Skynet becomes self-aware and decides to pan-roast humanity with the nuclear bombs it has been put in charge of (and this date conveniently shifts from movie to movie. In the original “Terminator” it was Aug. 29, 1997. In “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” it’s July 25, 2004, presumably because of meddling in the timeline. In the TV show “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” it’s moved to April 2011 … can’t they just settle on a date and be done with it?).
After pushing the button Skynet decides to rid the world of pesky human survivors by building a global network of machines that work 24/7 to hunt down human beings and kill them. Humanity, deprived of its Netflix popups and angry because of it, retaliates by organizing resistance fighters who live underground, eat rats, and have access to phase plasma rifles in the 40-watt range (an homage … get it?).
John Connor, the anointed savior of mankind, must make sure his dad, the teenaged Kyle Reese, lives long enough to go back in time and impregnate his mother, Sarah Connor. Meanwhile the first human-like Terminator awakens and thinks he is human, never believing he might have been programmed to do what he spends most of the movie doing. Amazingly he bumps into Reese, one of two survivors living in Los Angeles, and then the movie becomes one big fist punching, guns blazing, jets screaming, atomic-bomb exploding craptravaganza.
I was wrong. This isn’t a civil service employment application; it’s Donald Trump’s tax return.
Christian Bale becomes tiresome as the eternally brooding, always angry John Connor. I keep remembering that insane tirade (warning: extremely foul language) by Bale posted on the Internet where he threatened to beat the &@$% out of the director of lighting for interrupting his shot. Moon Bloodgood irritates me because her name is so obviously contrived. And how did Anton Yelchin (“Star Trek”) score two of the biggest movies of the summer season?
One bright note is Sam Worthington as the Terminator who doesn’t know he’s a Terminator. Oops! Spoiler? No problema, baby. It’s telegraphed in the first five minutes.
I have two regrets about “Terminator Salvation.”
No. 1: There was no “Battlestar Galactica” tie-in.
No. 2: I spent $7 seeing this in the theater when I could have waited for it to show up in the $5 bin at Walmart.
From what I hear there’s a T5 in the making.
I guess the Terminator will be back.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Klaatus (Keanu Reeves) arrival on Earth via a giant sphere, triggers a global upheaval.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
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“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, and John Cleese. Directed by Scott Derrickson, 103 minutes, rated PG-13.
Mladen’s take
Add the recently released re-make of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” to the ever-growing list of hokey films about redemption.
In fact, if you’re tired of watching Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and his dwarf friend discover that they’re wonderful beings no matter what anyone else believes, consider “The Day the Earth Stood Still” as alternative holiday viewing fare. Here, the whole of humanity is redeemed.
There are no subtleties in this sci-fi movie.
Klaatu, the alien portrayed by Keanu Reeves, arrives aboard a cloudy, sparkling sphere. He’s an interstellar diplomat without portfolio sent by a god-like cabal of deep-space civilizations.
Klaatu’s mission is to evaluate Earth’s health. The prognosis ain’t good.
It isn’t too long before he tells astrobiologist and unwitting ally Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, that extra-galactic help would be needed to save the planet.
Benson assumes that means helping humanity but eventually figures out she’s mistaken. Klaatu had concluded that the only way to save Earth is by eradicating mankind.
The universal diplomat, protected by GORT, a very impressive gigantic automaton comprised of nano-sized wasps behaving as a single being, initiates Operation Roach Motel after explaining to Benson that, in essence, humanity is a cosmic error.
Meanwhile, what does the U.S. Defense Department do when it encounters hyper-intelligent, unbelievably technologically sophisticated entities from distant worlds? It tries to kill them, of course.
Throughout the movie, Klaatu or GORT turn military target acquisition devices, laser illuminators and high-performance aircraft against the troops using them. The aliens – masters of the electro-magnetic spectrum, severe traumatic injury repair, pure reason, and unemotive faces – gain control of the weapons systems by wireless hacking.
It takes Benson’s unceasing effort to protect her belligerent young stepson and a brief exchange of mathematical equations and a little conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist for Klaatu to start recognizing that humanity ain’t all bad.
It seems – and this has never, ever, been expressed in other movies, books, poems, pamphlets, hieroglyphics or pre-Sumarian script – that humanity can become its best only after demonstrating its worst. The Nobel laureate argues that mankind has some kind of intrinsic sense that will let it know when there has been enough bloodletting and destruction of the environment, as well as the moral fortitude to correct those mistakes when the time comes.
Klaatu starts seeing the microscopic good among the overwhelming evil around him and reverses his decision to obliterate all traces of humanity. The mechanism for scraping clean the Earth’s surface is the neatest visual part of the movie. GORT dissolves into a swarm of flying nano-bots that consumes everything in its path, organic or inorganic.
The swarm is one of a few transparently biblical references in “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Hell, at one point Klaatu even walks on water. Hallelujah.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” is an OK movie, probably worth the price of a matinee ticket. But, I’m worried about Reeves. Come on, man, next time give me something as spectacular and revolutionary as “The Matrix.”
Del’s take
It isn’t the Earth that’s standing still – it’s Hollywood.
Talk about a movie that didn’t need remaking. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” circa 1951 is a Robert Wise classic that to this day presents a quietly dignified message about the follies of war.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” circa 2008 is a diabetic coma-inducing fried Snickers bar of a mess, covered with sugar-dot cliches and gluey nuggets of contrived melodrama – all of it wrapped in a cloying caramel blanket of unconvincing CGI.
I’m still trying to figure out which cliché most nauseates me – the save-the-environment cliché, the racial-harmony cliché, the empowered woman cliché, the all-government-employees-are-evil cliché, the stupid-military cliché … see what I mean? One more cliche and you’d have a C-bomb big enough to do the aliens’ work for them.
Most of the characters in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” are cardboard cut-outs with Keanu Reeves winning the Oscar for Best Performance by a Stoned-Out Quualude Refugee. The lone exception is Will Smith’s kid, Jaden, who plays the rebellious and disrespectful stepson of Jennifer Connelly’s Helen Benson character (has there ever been a stepchild who liked his new mom or dad?).
Let’s not talk about logic flaws … well heck, let’s do.
Here’s the deal: The aliens have come to Earth because there are few habitable planets in the galaxy and humanity is ruining this one. To fix everything the aliens plan to unleash a biblical horde of tiny robots that will dismantle mankind molecule by molecule, restoring the earth to pristine form … presumably to serve as home base for a future alien megalopolis.
Stop and think about it – if E.T. has that kind of technology, why not unleash it on an uninhabitable world, making it habitable? Science calls the process “terraforming,” a piece of cake for Klaatu and pals.
But then there’d be no movie – albeit a stupid movie, and be $8 to the richer. And I could use that $8 to make the world a better place so we’d never again be afflicted with Keanu Reeves.
Or I could just buy beer to wash away the taste of this nasty movie.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
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“Cloverfield” Starring Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T. J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David. Directed by Matt Reeves; created by J.J. Abrams. 85 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Mladen’s take
An amphibious monster, stories tall or a couple of blocks long, depending on the way you want to measure the beast, attacks Manhattan and it’s plausible.
That’s what makes “Cloverfield” work — the director takes the movie’s premise seriously.
Though “Cloverfield” sucks as a title, the movie becomes riveting after it finally cuts to explosions, toppled buildings, gunfire and missile and bomb attacks.
“Cloverfield” is realistic because it’s shot from the street-level point of view of a handful of people while the scaleless monster rampages through New York. The frenetic, jittery perspective you see on the big screen is captured by one of the survivors, who’s wielding a camcorder with the longest-lasting battery ever manufactured.
The CGI and the real blend flawlessly in this movie.
At any moment I expected cameraman Hud to focus on a still-functioning TV at an electronics story being looted as mayhem sweeps the island. President Bush comes on, the TV screen flickering.
“My fellow Americans, we are in a long war with monsters,” he would have said. “I don’t know when it will end, maybe never, but we will achieve victory. To protect you, I’m suspending all civil liberties and disbanding Congress. I can do that. It’s in the Constitution. Ask Dick Cheney. There’s no time for silliness like democracy while radical Islamic fundamentalist jihadist terrorists unleash such furry — ah, fury — on the good, holy people of America. God bless me, your savior.”
Like GM and Ford are finally starting to build cars that can compete with Japanese brands, Hollywood has finally released a movie that can compete with Japanese giant monsters such as Godzilla and Gamera.
See “Cloverfield” while it’s in theaters. Go to the bathroom and buy popcorn sometime during the movie’s first 20 minutes, which are spittle, and then prepare for a jolt.
Del’s take
“Scaleless monster”? Mladen. I never thought of you as a dermaphobe.
Still, “Cloverfield” is a romp ’em stomp ’em bad ass monster of a movie, and anybody who disagrees needs to have his aura adjusted by a Marine drill sergeant.
OK, so the first 20 minutes are more “Quarterlife” than “Die Hard.” So what? That’s the part where we learn the viewpoint characters are as insipid and selfish as we. How else could we know that Rob is a metrosexual wussie who believes “commitment” is a dish best served cold?
But once the infrastructure starts rolling down the streets it’s a cinema verite grudge match featuring the icons of order vs. the forces beyond our control in a mighty metaphor for what’s happening in the world around us. If the U.S. could have dropped the “Cloverfield” monster on Fallujah, Barack Obama would be running a distant third.
Yes, we can niggle. How could that monster jump at a helicopter? What happened to Marlena behind the curtain? And in the movie’s final scene, did you really see something fall into the water? Oooh.
I just wish people would stop Blair Bitching about the jiggly camera motion – take a dramamine and call me in the morning. Ever read “The Sound and the Fury”? William Faulkner thought of the idea decades ago. If you can live with it on YouTube you can live with it in “Cloverfield.”
I think J.J. Abrams has kicked some serious Godzilla booty. This is not narrative storytelling. It’s slice-of-death moviemaking for a generation of voyeurs and narcissists who measure their worth in terms of the body count on their Facebook friends list.
In the movie’s penultimate scene we hear two very loud noises. Those were the sounds of a genre cracking under the weight of its own inertia and crashing into a new and limitless ocean of creative expression.
Let’s hope “Cloverfield” sinks a few ships.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Scene from SUNSHINE
“Sunshine” Starring Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh. Directed by Danny Boyle. 107 minutes. Rated R.
Del’s take
I read the hype for “Sunshine” and was prepared to have my socks blown off. When Kari offered to let me borrow her Netflix rental I jumped at the chance, even splurging on a pizza for what was pitched as the reinvention of the science fiction movie.
I can sum up my opinion of “Sunshine” in five words: Stupid people doing stupid things.
“Sunshine” is like that gorgeous blond you admire from afar until you work up the courage to introduce yourself … only to realize minutes later this is perhaps the dumbest person you’ve ever met in your life.
What a disappointment.
In “Sunshine,” the sun is dying. But humanity has scrounged every bit of its fissionable material to build a bomb that will create a “sun within a sun.” (What a stupid premise – even if a bomb the size of Earth itself were hurled into the sun the effects wouldn’t be significant. But don’t get me started.)
Our crew must fly the spacebomb (like this movie) into low solar orbit, launch the bomb and skedaddle before their butts are fried. They represent the second such attempt; the first ship mysteriously disappeared.
As they approach the planet Mercury they detect strange radio signals – it’s the first spaceship, adrift in that charbroiled region of space. Should they change course and attempt a rescue? (No!, you’re screaming at the screen. The fate of humanity rests on the success of your mission! Don’t sacrifice an entire planet for the eight-member crew of another spaceship who are probably dead anyway!)
But OF COURSE they change course (stupid). Then, one of the engineers forgets to reorient the shields and the spacecraft is threatened with incineration (really stupid). In order to fix it they must go outside and manually lower the shield plates. In the process the captain gets incinerated (beyond stupid) and the greenhouse, which generates their oxygen, is burned up (conveniently stupid). So they’re forced to rendezvous with the other ship … which just happens to be haunted by the insane spirit of its microwaved captain … he manages to find his way to the second ship and wreak havoc. …
I won’t tell you how “Sunshine” ends because (a) you shouldn’t care, (b) you should have switched off the DVD player and tuned in “Extreme Home Makeover,” and (c) it’s stupid.
My advice is stay away from this train wreck of plot holes, logic flaws and non sequitors, and use your time for a more meaningful pursuit … like watching ice melt.
“Sunshine” gets five yawns.
Mladen’s take
The pizza Del ate watching “Sunshine” must have gone down wrong. But, instead of getting heartburn, Del fell victim to brain-burn.
“Sunshine” is a fine movie with very good special effects that don’t overwhelm the plot.
The movie has a purpose.
It’s about sacrifice and conceit. It’s about hope and despair. And it has a couple of cute and brainy ladies as co-stars.
Slowly unfolding mishaps, each more consequential than its predecessor, transform the 90 million mile journey to save Earth from amiable boredom in the beginning to a tense, other-worldly sci-fi thriller toward the end.
Del mocks the scientist that forgot to reset Icarus II’s sunshield, which jeopardized the mission, after changing the vessel’s course to rendezvous with a derelict spaceship.
But Del, a rabid space exploration enthusiast, has conveniently forgotten a real-life incident Sept. 23, 1999.
Hyper-trained scientists working to put NASA’s $125 million probe Climate Orbiter in orbit around Mars confused each other when one team used English measure units — inches, feet — and the other, metric units — centimeters and meters.
The likely result was an expensive machine plummeting through the Red Planet’s atmosphere and burning up.
People do make mistakes — I mean look at what the Supreme Court did when it put Bush into the White House nearly eight years ago — and that’s a fact.
“Sunshine” doesn’t have the majesty or grandeur of, say, Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
But, its ending is intelligible and, ultimately, redeeming.
“Sunshine” is good enough for me to consider adding it to my DVD collection, right there next to “Godzilla vs. Megaguirus.”
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a journalist and author.
“Transformers” Starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Voight, John Turturro. Directed by Michael Bay. 144 minutes. Rated PG.
Mladen’s take
It’s becoming a habit, one I must shed, or, before I know it, it’ll end with me finding something redeeming about the Bush administration.
“Transformers” is another movie — “Bug” falls into the same category — that does one brief thing right: forcing me to temper an otherwise bitter review that’s based on the dozens of things that went wrong.
The film’s nearly saving grace happens toward the end.
Bad-bot Megatron, sprawled on a crushed roadway after falling from a skyscraper during battle with good-bot Optimus Prime, finds itself near a human.
The four-story-tall robot utters, “Disgusting” and, using its index finger, flicks the human dozens of feet into a car.
Hilarious, because that’s the way I feel about humanity.
It’s too bad my index finger isn’t large enough to flick a grown man through the air. Then again, I’d have to use the finger ceaselessly for years to flick everybody that needs flicking.
“Transformers” is visually glorious crap. The movie is a vast advertisement for toys, GM vehicles that never get dirty and the Air Force. See it for no other reason than this: It’s cheaper now that it can be rented on DVD than when it was in theaters.
Del’s take
You’ll have to forgive Mladen. A big walrus of a guy flicked him off and he’s still hanging from a branch by the waistband of his Hanes.
It’s cut off the circulation to his brain.
Of course “Transformers” is crap, Mladen. Were you expecting “Anna Karenina”?
I too was expecting to hate “Transformers,” for the following reasons:
It was directed by Michael Bay, who managed to turn Pearl Harbor into a thrill ride at Universal.
And I could never keep track of who’s who: Is Vomitor a good robot or a bad robot?
Finally, if nature called at 3 in the morning and, on your way to the bathroom, you stepped on one of the approximately 10,000 pieces of Transformer toys left on the floor by your nephews, well, you can forget making it to the toilet.
But I was pleasantly surprised by “Transformers.” It’s a fun story told in a fun way.
The pace is fast, the dialogue snappy, the special effects mind-blowing and it never, ever takes itself seriously.
Casting Shia LaBeouf in the lead role was smart – his Ritalin-deprived approach plays nicely with the movie’s other parts. And Megan Fox is sufficiently sexy to compel LaBeouf’s romantic fantasies – clumsily adolescent fantasies – without posing any serious threat to what I’m assuming is his virginity.
If you accept “Transformers” for what it is – a bit of innocent fun that requires 144 minutes of your life – you won’t be disappointed.
Now, somebody help Mladen down from that tree.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Sony Home Entertainment.
“Ice Spiders” Starring Vanessa Williams, Patrick Muldoon, Thomas Calabro. Directed by Tibor Takacs. Amazon Prime. 90 minutes. Rated R.
Del’s take
Dude, didn’t we just review this movie?
Ski bums, bimbos and crazy old coots trapped at a ski lodge by a band of marauding. …
Wait … wait … it’s coming back to me. …
Sharks! That’s what I was thinking. “Avalanche Sharks.”
Except this isn’t “Avalanche Sharks,” not by a long shot, which is not a criticism of “Avalanche Sharks” though the movie deserves every bit of scorn I can shovel on its wriggling carcass.
This is “Ice Spiders,” an equally wretched presentation that nonetheless comforts me. All those bad feelings about none of my books being picked up by Hollywood? It ain’t because they suck. Maybe they don’t suck enough.
I’m trying to figure out who plagiarized whom because “Ice Spiders” and “Avalanche Sharks” are essentially the same movie. Change a few character names and you’ve got “Avalanche Spiders” or “Ice Sharks.” I actually prefer “Ice Sharks” as a title.
The plot goes something like this: Dan “Dash” Dashiell (Patrick Muldoon) is a ski instructor at a hidden mountain resort watching newbies to the slopes crash into each other on the bunny run. Once, he was an Olympics downhill hopeful, but a dreadful injury dashed those aspirations.
Dr. April Sommers (Vanessa Williams) is a biologist at a hidden military laboratory who is trying to make spiders bigger so they’ll spin more silk, which can be used to make bulletproof vests for the troops. But her boss, Professor Marks (David Millbern), has secretly amped up the growth hormones being fed to the spiders. See what they did there? They de-eviled Dr. Sommers, so that when the spiders escape the lab and start devouring the bunny run bumblers, she can sermonize about the evils of ambition (too bad it wasn’t corporate America – THAT I could believe).
Did I say something about spiders eating people? Oh yes, it’s a bloody arachnabuffet as killer spiders the size of Saint Bernards gallop across the ski runs, munching on those who aren’t aspiring Olympics downhill racers. You can see where this is going.
“Ice Spiders” has another quality in common with “Avalanche Sharks”: It too is a lo-fi cash grab by producers with modest aspirations. The script is dreadful, as is the acting (with the exception of Williams, who struggles gamely through the train wreck of dialogue as if she were trying not to laugh). The special effects are crappy even for CGI. And the plot is thoroughly, reprehensibly predictable.
I spent 90 minutes constantly checking the status bar to see how much time remained of this stupid flick. It was that bad.
Don’t blame me. Mladen chose this clinker. I give it a D-, which if memory serves is what I graded “Avalanche Sharks.”
I get to choose the next movie and if Mladen doesn’t step up his movie review selection game, I will punish him with another “Jane Austen Book Club.”
Mladen’s take
Del, you’re so off the mark with your review of “Ice Spiders” that I’m forced to conclude the following: You must think Trump is intelligent and human.
The difference between “Ice Spiders” (IS) and “Avalanche Sharks” (AS) is akin to the difference between Star Wars Episode 4 and Star Wars Episode 1. AS is a poor script wrapped by horrible acting and zapped in a microwave oven until everything explodes into a big, fat mess. IS is, well, not.
And, the star of IS isn’t Vanessa Williams. Hell, Vanessa Williams isn’t even Vanessa Williams. When the acting credits rolled at the beginning of the movie and Vanessa Williams’s name popped up, I thought, “Woohoo, it’s that Vanessa Williams. Miss USA. Singer. Model.” A 1980s bombshell, she was. Instead, I got a Vanessa Williams, the crappy actor and millennial, or whatever her generation moniker is, with, I must concede, decent cleavage.
IS avoids becoming AS because of the acting by Patrick Muldoon, who portrays Dash the ski instructor. He had, oh, panache. Muldoon converts dialogue that could’ve been utterly banal into something that seems close to plausible. His facial expressions and ever so slightly effete gestures as he delivers his lines adds a lighter mood to the film without turning it into a joke. Well done, Muldoon. You carried the day.
Muldoon’s performance is strong enough to overcome the movie’s weaknesses. But, Del, in one instance, is correct. The CGI spiders in this film are terrible. All six of them. They look like shitty animation added to a live-action film. Plus, the cockroaches in my kitchen are bigger than the spiders in the movie. I was far from terrified by the suspense of people placing themselves unknowingly in position to get attacked and dismembered. I take that risk every time I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. My cockroaches are as big as helicopters and fly just as well. The practical effects in IS aren’t much better either, but they sure as hell are better than those in AS. At least the fake blood in IS was the color of blood. In AS, the blood was, I don’t know, a subdued fluorescent pink.
Also, you can’t overlook the political message in IS. The mad scientist uses the fascistic argument of national security to justify the spider mutation program, rationalize the deaths of fellow Americans, and openly threaten the lives of the survivors, if they said anything about the dangers they faced. Huh. Sounds like Trump and his justifications for his miserable COVID pandemic response.
“Ice Spiders” gets a B from me because of Muldoon’s acting, the production company’s insight to steal the plot from the very good movie “Deep Blue Sea” – enlarge an animal to get it to produce more of the substance you need to make a lot of money … I mean help humanity – and its R rating. Del gets an F for being Del in his review.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
“The Host” Starring Kang-ho Song, Hie-bong Byeon and Hae-il Park. Directed by Joon-ho Bong. 119 minutes. Rated R.
Del’s take
I was told to expect a monster movie, a “Godzilla” sans cheesy rubber suit and toy airplanes. I was not told to expect humor, a dysfunctional family and biting political commentary.
Yet that’s what director Bong has delivered with “The Host,” a modern fable that calls upon classic storytelling and genre tropes to deliver its subtextual punch. “The Host” gives us a monster, yes, and it is a monster that gallops through its CGI-energized paces with the crazed recklessness of a 20-ton tweeker.
But worse monstrosities await victims of “The Host,” from the disaffections of life in the 21st century to conspiratorial governments that treat the helpless as cannon fodder for shrouded strategic aims.
In “The Host,” a family broken apart by selfishness is united in a quest to free a young girl who has been taken away by a monster that sprang from the Han River, which flows through Seoul, South Korea.
The family members must confront not only the monster but also resolve their personal differences and deal with a bureaucratic apparatus that has been set up to conceal the truth about the creature.
“The Host” is sure to befuddle the ADD-addled brains of many Americans but it is a fine piece of moviemaking that does what all good stories should do – entertain and provoke.
Mladen’s take
Sure, the people in “The Host” are important.
There’s the fractured family with its only functional constituent a middle-school girl. There’s the meek, bureaucracy-poisoned government of South Korea and there’s the omnipotent U.S. Army illegally polluting the Han River.
But it’s the creature spawned by the toxic Han that steals the show.
A cross between the quad-jaw worms in “Tremors” and the tadpole phase of the smog monster in a classic pro-environment Godzilla epic, the Han beast is ferocity and guile in all its computer-animated glory.
Smart monsters are appealing because they’re alarming. It’s not that they kill you because you’re unluckily at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s that they’re going to figure out where you live, case the joint, organize an attack plan and then follow it to kill you.
“The Host” is appealing because it makes the absurd premise of a mutated beast rising from shallow river depths near a metropolis believable.
And, it’s believable because of the way Bong portrays humanity’s reaction to the creature.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
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