Posts Tagged ‘time travel’

Land of the Lost

Land of the Lost

Monday, September 7th, 2009

So, yeh, sue me but I got more out of watching this than I did watching Half-Blood Prince. I had read so many bad reviews of it shortly before watching it and they almost had me convinced, but I kept seeing Brad Silberling’s name on the director’s chair and I just couldn’t believe he could make a less than half-decent movie ‘cos he never has. I shouldn’t have doubted it for a second. Silberling has done two kinds of movies in his career so far, kind of alternating between the effects-driven kids movies like Casper, Lemony Snicket and this, and the more mature stories dealing with more mature relationships, which have steadily gone down in scale over the years from City of Angels to Moonlight Mile to his most recent 10 Items of Less. It’s interesting that the first two of the effects-driven movies, too, dealt with pretty powerful emotional stuff too, all of Silberling’s work, until 10 Items at least, always dealing heavily with loss. Needless to say, I expected none of that here, but I knew he wouldn’t just make an effects movie.

Okay, well, I’ll admit, that’s exactly what he has made here. But this guy really knows how to do that and stay interesting in my opinion. Even though surely shot on the usual Hollywood bankroll, the effects here reminded me of the fast and loose style Robert Rodriguez stumbled upon in making the first two Spy Kids movies on trademark tight budget. They’re having fun with this and it translates right onto the film, through the projector and into the audience: at least, for this audience it did. I laughed almost constantly for the duration and entirely “got” the slightly sillier aspects of the production. Anna Friel being allowed (in fact, apparently Silberling insisted) to keep her Mancunian accent is a wonderful bonus.

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S. Darko

S. Darko

Monday, May 18th, 2009

This was a lot better than I expected and reading other people’s reviews of it proved very interesting indeed. One of the first bad reviews I found said the following:

“To me this movie felt like someone watched Donnie a few times, wrote down some key elements from the movie in a notebook and then tried to incorporate it into a new movie.”

What can I say but I’m glad if this was the way they approached it. I have no time for those who think they can fathom the mystery of the original movie. Richard Kelly ruined it with his own director’s cut in my opinion. The mystery was key for me. For me, the things you need to fairly compare this straight to video sequel to are not the original theatrical cut of Donnie Darko (which it could never match) but other straight to video sequels, Richard Kelly’s demented director’s cut of the original, and Kelly’s own output since his ingenius debut. On all those counts, this for me easily comes out on top.

If you had any great love for the director’s cut of Donnie Darko over the original, clearly, this is not for you. You probably love the abundance of exposition in The Da Vinci Code and (I’m told) its sequel. I’m personally a fan of abstract cinema, believe it’s something that cinema does particularly well in fact, and to find that in a movie like this which on the surface at times looks as shallow as The OC or something is a huge relief. Like I said, it’s no Donnie, it couldn’t be. But it is beautifully produced, even the music being impressive; it has many parallels to the original story without being 100% rehash; and for a moment or two at least it even took my breath away a little. The ending kind of fizzles rather than blazes as it should and it’s an homage to the original too far that just doesn’t work, but otherwise, for what it is, I was very impressed with this movie.

(PS. Another of the reviews I just read said it was ‘worse than Grease 2 …’ which to my ears is really counter-productive, lol)

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The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

And we’re back to deferring to the Kermodester … or in this case, in a shock twist, completely disagreeing with him to my utmost surprise. He really didn’t like this, and I usually trust him, so I cringed for a good 20 minutes here given dead gags like the “Elfementary School” (haven’t we been told in the first two movies that the elves aren’t children?) etc.

But this one won me over even quicker than the second movie. Martin Short is brilliant as Jack Frost and the basic concept is much more intriguing than the first sequel. Alan Arkin’s facial expressions towards the end, over being “Father-in-law Christmas”, over the Easter bunny and co, and over that line, “They didn’t know about magical hugs,” are just fantastic.

I said I missed the kinda-sorta shameless “creepiness” of the original in part 2 and it’s mostly absent here too. But the hug that warms Jack Frost’s heart here is more than enough to make up for that. For a movie released only last year, the perfect love of that moment really can’t be underestimated. It’s one of those tiny moments that can make me love the worst kind of cheese.

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Phantasm IV: Oblivion

Phantasm IV: Oblivion

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

“My name is Reggie. I was an ice-cream vendor by trade. Now … I’m a soldier.”

Don’t worry, I believe you’re allowed to laugh ;-)

Much as I expected, I think ultimately this is my favourite of the series. The use of the old footage is almost beautiful. The moment at the end where Mikey appears to speak to himself across time and space feels like the kind of moment the whole series is working to find. How many movies can lay claim to such a moment, the same character played almost 20 years apart by the same actor, and meshing together so seamlessly as it does? I really think people underestimate the magnitude of this aspect of this movie. I only hope that a post-Bubba Ho-Tep Coscarelli can make “Phantasm V” even better. Listening to the commentaries, it seems there’s still more of the old footage to work into the story.

Incidentally, on those commentaries – I finally listened to them and they’re really nice, with A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm and Coscarelli dropping in in different combos per movie. There’s not a great deal of new information in there, but you really get a sense of why these movies have always worked, like just how long they’ve known each other etc, “like family” as Scrimm says. And that “wrath of the Tall Man” credit mentioned below – appears at the end of all the movies, I think. I certainly spotted on II and III anyway.

November 14th, 2005:

Like the third movie, this movie manages to keep the same cast together, and adds to that a selection of footage that logically must have been shot for the original but it’s of scenes that would’ve had no place there. Their presence here is almost as bizarre as the whole time-space level this movie adds to the series. This one again is a little more juiced up but there’s a lot more tongue-in-cheek and you can kind of see the Don Coscarelli emerging that eventually made the fantastic Bubba Ho-Tep (I’d previously been kind of bewildered as to how he went from the original schlocky Phantasm to that relatively dreamy, poetic musing on old age).

I don’t know if there are similar things in the credits of the other films in the series, but I happened to notice here that the copyright notice at the end reads, “Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability, criminal prosecution and the wrath of The Tall Man.” lol :) The DVD doesn’t even have a trailer but it does have a commentary which, again, I’ve not yet listened to. Bring on Phantasm V!

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Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko

Thursday, November 17th, 2005

I noticed a funny parallel between this movie and Almost Famous today, and no it’s not ‘cos I just watched a Cameron Crowe movie, I’d kinda noticed it before … it features a couple of characters, and the same characters at that, that I would love to have in my own life. Every time I see Maggie Gyllenhaal these days I’m reminded of her big sister role in this movie and she is so the ultimate big sister; and Mary McDonnell makes a fantastic mother – I love how she looks at Miss Farmer with such pity after the scene in the principal’s office … you can see so much in her performance of how people, perhaps especially parents, play an awkward role in life while their feelings are just as real as the rest of us – even when she’s cheering her daughter on in the Sparkle Motion dance troupe, you can kinda tell she’s not that behind the whole idea.

The other thing that struck me was how simple the movie really is in the end – I wrote in my journal a while ago about how I bought the Director’s Cut DVD (having already sold my original copy of the Theatrical Cut) and was already ordering another copy of the Theatrical Version only an hour in. I mean, this movie is complex, yeh … but it’s not exactly on the Ingmar Bergman end of the concentration scale. And why did Richard Kelly feel the need to explain it anyway? I think he really took a lot away from the movie with that cut. To me, at least, it seemed like he was saying, “Yeh, I thought about this … a lot …” And to me, it’s not him who should’ve been thinking about it that much, his job was to come up with the mystery. It’s the audience’s job to think it to death if they want to. It’s like Phantasm in a way, and the Director’s Cut was like one of that movie’s many explanatory sequels.

In its original form, I think this movie is a masterpiece. Every single performance, major to minor role, is absolutely perfect, and there’s love and pain all over the place. Donnie Darko is part plain whacko, part Dennis the Menace, part superhero, part Alex in A Clockwork Orange. And it ends with that unforgettable cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World”. It really does get better, and I see more, every time I see it. I’ve only touched the tip of a whole iceberg of thoughts I have in these few paragraphs.

Oh yeh I had intended to put something into this review about how I think it’s about the cycle of violence but I guess this sentence is all you’re gonna get now ‘cos I’ve forgotten anything but the gist of it lol.

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