Why Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is Awesome

Rating: Triple A++
First of all, I’d like to apologize for not having posted anything in quite a while. There have been a lot of changes going on lately for me personally and I have been in kind of a funk lately in terms of not being able to write anything really, other than a few papers for school. However, I think I have found a film to get me back in the groove of things. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is the only film written and directed by Kerry Conran as of yet. Now let’s get some things straight right off the bat, this film is A) phenomenal, and B) not very good. I’ll get to why this is in a minute but first you should know that the story revolves around a female journalist named Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) who always gets her story and when giant flying robots drop into New York City she has to be in on the action and get as close as possible even if she endangers herself and Sky Captain (Jude Law) has to step in and save her. And let the amazement ensue. Now I will explain why this film could have been greater than Citizen Kane but isn’t. In simplest terms, the actors chosen were not the best and general audiences can only take so much science fiction awesomeness. Don’t get me wrong, I love the acting talents of Giovanni Ribisi who plays Dex and I have a fondness for Angelina Jolie, don’t ask. However, these actors only play minor characters and are not involved in enough of the film. I believe that if the lead roles and supporting roles had been switched then the film could very easily have been more appealing to general audiences.

Now for those of you who may have trouble understanding why this movie is so awesome I will give you the top five reasons.

5. Giant Flying Robots – If those three words haven’t already convinced you, I should add that there are three different types of robots one that fires lasers from its face, one that has tentacles for arms, and the other only flies but also has lasers. Enough said, right? No? Okay on to reason number four.

4. Airplanes that become Submarines – Need I say more? No, seriously there are freaking air-sub-plane-marines in this movie!

3. Jude Law Punches Gwyneth Paltrow in the Face – You and I both know she had it coming ever since she showed us just how annoying Young Wendy was in Hook.

2. The Look of the Film – The art style of the film has been called Art Deco, now I’m not sure what that means exactly but it truly is shot in beautiful colors and divine textures. Many of the shots remind me of comic books with a series of silhouetted guns or hands pointing to the sky. It also helps that old comics of Buck Rogers are shown at appropriate times during the film. If you don’t watch this movie for any other reason, then you most definitely should watch it for this.

1. Laurence Olivier – That’s right, Laurence Olivier is in the movie. Now you may be asking yourself, “Wait, isn’t he dead?” Why yes he is, but he has come back to help create the greatest story ever applied to celluloid. The classic actor appears in an unusual but very important role as an Oz-like character.

There you have it, I could have listed other reasons like miniature elephants but even that is giving too much away about the plot of the story which I don't like to do. So, if this hasn’t changed your mind about how amazing this movie truly is then you are either dumb or a Communist… or both, which is the worst kind of Communist.

Man, That's a Good Burger

Rating: B+
Recently, I thought of a movie that I hadn’t seen in a long time. This was a movie that I watched over and over again when it came out. Now, you have to know that when it came out, I was only six years old and was in love with Nickelodeon. Having said that, I was looking into the recesses of the internet and happened upon one of the great childhood movies of all time, Good Burger.

This movie starred one of the greatest comedy duos for childhood entertainment, Kenan Thompson, who is now a star on Saturday Night Live, and Kel Mitchell, who is seemingly nowhere to be found these days. This pair got their start in entertainment with the Nickelodeon television show, All That, which was in essence a children’s version of Saturday Night Live. For what this movie was supposed to be for the kids, it did very well in the acting department, however looking back at it sometime later with adult eyes, I realize that acting does mean a whole lot to kids. However, it doesn’t need to. In its own way, the director, Brian Robbins, gets to teach children a little about the world of competitive business, mirroring actual restaurants like McDonald’s and Burger King. As well as the moral lessons that always come with children’s films, which are basically always “don’t do bad things”, and this film is no exception. The bad guys go to jail for using illegal substances in the food that they are selling to their customers, and the good guys win for sticking to the inventiveness of a dope.

The basic plot of the film follows the path of a very young burger-flipper named Ed (Kel Mitchell) who is as remedial as humanly possible causing a car accident for the unlicensed high school student Dexter Reed (Kenan Thompson) who has just started his summer vacation. After slamming into his teacher Mr. Wheat (Sinbad), Dexter’s friend, Jake (Marques Houston) who was riding in the car runs off never to be seen again, it is presumed that Sinbad caught up to him and threatened to kill him if he did not star in a crappy dance movie with the other members of B2K, but not before putting Dexter in the uncomfortable situation of having to get a summer job to pay for the damage done to his car. After being fired from Mondo Burger, he is offered a job at Good Burger (God, these restaurant names are amazing!) with the help of soon-to-be best friend Ed, at which point the antics ensue. The plot is great and takes unexpected twists with the two meeting celebrities like George Clinton in an insane asylum and everyone’s favorite basketball player, Shaq.

The plot seems to be designed to show off the comedic skills of the pair and does it well. I found myself laughing almost the entire time, except when Dexter talks to Ed about the relationship with his father, at which I ruffled my eyebrows because it did not seem to fit in with the comedic style of the film but did come around in the end to work because of the heart-felt moment when Ed gives Dexter a yo-yo. The only question that is really left for the audience to ponder is; where the hell are the parents? Dexter mentions briefly that his mom is away and at the start of the film we see Ed in his room but that is all of the home life we see for him. Kel kind of gets screwed over in this movie because if you pay attention, he has to be a complete idiot without so much as a last name or parents, possibly even a high school dropout, and only gets the glory of having some special sauce, plus his career pretty much tanks after this film. So who do you think came out better? …I thought so.

From a technical standpoint, this film isn’t anything special. We get to see some trippy flying hamburgers at the beginning of the movie and a cargo truck jumping from a dirt mound onto a mailbox, but that’s pretty much it. However, this film doesn’t need the technicality of a super artistic director to be great. The film is still amazing because it is so character driven which makes the actors responsible for making the film a huge success which it was. The budget for this film was a “whopping” $9,000,000 and came back with a little over twice that, which ain’t too shabby. The actors did their jobs and were rewarded for it.

In all, I love this film. Not because it is a work of art, but what it meant for me as a child. We all have those movies that remind us of days gone by, and even though other generations will look at them and wonder what the hell is wrong with us; we know that “I’m a dude. He’s a dude. She’s a dude. Hey! We’re all dudes.” And all dudes have their day.

I Totally Get Carter

Rating: C
Never in the most deranged parts of my mind would I ever have imagined that Sylvester Stallone would be involved in the same film as Michael Caine, but in the 2000 film Get Carter that is just what we get. This film, directed by Stephen Kay, is based on a book by Ted Lewis called Jack’s Return Home and a remake of the 1971 film of the same name. Not having read the novel or seen the original, I went into watching the film with a total open mind, not expecting the film to meet any preset requirements that I had arranged in my mind. From the very beginning of the film I got overwhelming feeling that I was going to be highly under impressed because of the other recent film choices that Stallone has been making, but I was wrong.

The story of the film revolves around Jack Carter (Sylvester Stallone) returning home from being the major muscle for some sort of mob or casino in Las Vegas to find out about the exact nature of his brother’s death. The details of his job are never truly revealed. The only hint that we get about his job is at the very beginning of the film when he is beating up someone alongside his co-worker, Con McCarty, played by John C. McGinley, who throughout the entire film came off as the exact same character as Dr. Cox from Scrubs. Also, this secondary plot seems to serve no purpose but to hype up the action throughout the film. We never really care when we find out that Carter’s lover, Audrey (Gretchen Mol) will no longer have anything to do with him but will rather stay with her boyfriend named Fletcher (Garwin Sanford) who is Jack’s boss. Because there is little to no focus on Jack dealing with his job and the life he lives in Las Vegas, we don’t really break down and cry over the fact that he is losing his job, his friendship with Con, and his lover. All we really want to see dealt with is how he is going to find out who killed his brother and what he will do when he does.

The only form of sympathy that we see from Jack Carter is when he is around his niece, Doreen who is played by Rachael Leigh Cook. He feels that he must serve as the father figure now that his brother is dead. I’m not going to go into the twists and turns of the film and reveal the entire plot for you but in shear terms of story, the film is great. The problem comes in when we start talking about the technical aspects of the actors as storytellers. This film is very strange because we get two extreme opposites when speaking of acting ability. There are great actors like Michael Caine, who plays a very important character even though he does not get very much screen time, as well as Mickey Rourke, who becomes an eerily great bad guy who disgusts you at the same time. Then we have Stallone who should have retired years ago from the movie business and Rachael Leigh Cook who should stick to movies that don’t have the adult feel that this one does. Cook simply feels miscast in this film, although I understand where she is coming from in terms of her acting. Another positive note to the acting in this film comes from Alan Cumming who plays an extremely wealthy yet very young business mogul. Personally, I have always enjoyed the talents that Cumming has and this film is another instance that I can tack up on my mental cork board.

The best aspect of the film is the cinematography, the entire movie is given a dark tint that makes you feel like it just got finished raining. This is appropriate considering the film is set in Seattle and revolves around some very dark subject matter, so it does not feel unnecessary. Also, there are some shots that stuck into my mind once the credits began to roll. By far the very best part of the entire process of watching this mediocre film was the car chase in which Carter is running from Con who is there to bring Jack back whether he wants to or not. It is nowhere near the same level of great car chases like in The French Connection or Ronin, but what makes it the best part of the film is the audacity to use the camera in a different manner than other chase sequences. The most memorable shot is near the end of the chase when the camera follows Carter’s vehicle by remaining in one place and basically doing a back flip to follow it. Now I am aware that this has been done before and will be done again but what it makes this so great is that it is a physical representation of how Carter’s world is now completely upside down from how it was before this chase. This is the shot that makes the viewer realize how screwed up this character is now and how sucky this situation really is.

One of the aspects that keep this movie from becoming great apart from the acting is the music. The film was filled with what seemed like truly horrible rave music that was purely arranged to give the audience a headache. I’m not sure what was going through the director’s head when he heard those sounds that made him decide to go with it, but it was a terrible mistake.

Stephen Kay’s directing seems to be amateurish but also has instances that are original and interesting and keeps the viewers in their seats. I particularly enjoyed a segment in which Carter throws someone off of a building but we never actually see him push the person off the edge. All we get to see is Carter pushing him around and scaring the hell out of him then there is a cut to Carter walking out of the building onto the street and we see the top of a car caved in with the person laying dead in the middle of the carnage. Kay doesn’t give us the violence directly but instead lets us have only what we need to allow the story to progress.

In all, the film has whispers of greatness but ultimately fails to live up to its potential echoing the ability of the director. This only proves that great directors can only make great movies. Kay has talent but doesn’t seem sure of how to use it with confidence and doesn’t know where his niche is in the film industry. I would suggest watching this film if you are interested in seeing how to use a camera but not for examples of great acting.

In Awe of the Scar Tissue

Rating: B+
How many drugs can a rock star do? How many relapses can a person go through before getting it through their head that this is not the way to go? These are the kinds of questions I found myself asking while reading Anthony Keidis’ autobiography, Scar Tissue. The 400+ page book was an excitingly binding ride filled with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The star of the Red Hot Chili Peppers discusses his personal history and how he and his friends rose to fame as the in-your-face funk punks that they are known as.

It should not be forgotten that this book is solely about this individual’s journey through his own life and not just one of the band members talking about the struggles they had on their way to stardom. In fact, Keidis makes it clear throughout the book that he didn’t really care whether or not the band made it as a force to be reckoned with in the music industry, he just wanted to jam out with his good buddies and share the love with the world hoping to be embraced.

Almost the entire first half of the star’s account discusses his life before his career and how he gets involved with drugs at the tender age of eleven. He talks about being born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and moving to L.A. to be closer to his father who just so happens to be extremely involved in trafficking drugs to celebrities. This is an absolute recipe for disaster for most kids but not for Anthony. He takes what he has grown up around and with the help of his friends creates some of the most cutting edge music of the eighties and ends up dominating the charts throughout the nineties.

This book was recommended to me by a friend and I had my reservations about reading it because I didn’t think that it would be all that interesting. It seemed like a rock star that just wanted to tell the general public about the hundreds of girls that he has conquered. He made me sit down and just read the opening hook and without a second thought; I bought my ticket and took the ride. The writing is very well done and constantly keeps you moving the entire time you are reading. Whether the book was ghost written by the co-writer, Larry Sloman, is another matter that I am not all that sure about. However, just from the poetic skills that Keidis has in his songs, he could have just used Sloman as a consultant. Whatever the case may be, the writing is very solid with the exception that the use of the word “and” after each word in a list can get to be very old very quick. Unfortunately, that happens a lot. Another unfortunate occurrence is that there were a good number of typos and very obvious mistakes that should have been caught before sending the book out into the world.

One of the major themes that the book tries very hard to get across is Keidis’ cautioning of the use of drugs. He even gives tips on how to deal with those problems should the reader be experiencing them. Keidis is very clear about his caring for other people and easily admits his own faults in some of the situations that have been integral in his life. The book also spares no details on certain sexual exploits that happen very often throughout the book.

There is a great amount of detail that the book is written with that makes you feel like you are right there in the audience, sitting on the bed with him in rehab, or in the studio listening to the raw cuts of the songs. What I like especially about the book is that there are a few sections of pictures that act as a sort of photo album for the times that have already happened and the times that are about to occur soon into the reading. Also, the lyrics from some of the songs are planted in occurrence with the time that they were written letting us see what inspired him to write certain things in his songs. This makes you feel like you are actually inside of the music and every time you hear the song afterward you know what was going through Anthony’s mind when he wrote it thus bringing you closer.

Most biographies are written well into the person’s life but not Anthony’s. He writes more than 400 pages worth of his life when he is only in his mid to late 30s. I would love to see a sequel to this book written just to get the other half of his life that is so mesmerizing. If you have not read this fantastic book, I highly recommend that you go out and buy it. Don’t borrow it from a friend or go to the library. Buy it; it is very much worth it even though there are a few errors in terms of editing.

Two Badass Saints

Rating: B+
The 1999 film, The Boondock Saints, directed by Troy Duffy is an action-packed tale of orphaned twin Irish brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) who take it upon themselves to rid the world of sin. However, the brothers get the attention of the FBI, specifically agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe), when they start killing off the Russian mob in their hometown of Boston. The film takes a journey from the twins’ revelation of becoming the proverbial hand of God to finding out who their father actually is and what he is good at doing.

The brothers are joined by a friend named Rocco, played by David Della Rocco, who serves as the source of comedic relief among the massive amounts of bullets that are constantly whizzing around. The characters seem to be on the edge of insanity throughout the entire film, one of which probably breaks that barrier. Agent Smecker goes beyond his duties as an agent to see the good in what the brothers are doing but in the midst of his epiphany he goes into a fit of hysteria. Dafoe plays the part so well, it’s scary. Dafoe is well known for bringing bad guys to life and shoving the character in your face to scare the hell out of you. By far, Dafoe does the best job in terms of acting within this film but he’s not the only good actor that we see.

Norman Reedus also does a great job playing his role as a vigilante justice seeker. Every time he gets mad, you feel it. Every time he says his prayer, you feel like he’s executing you. I love the way the story plays out. I’ve seen the movie many times now but it is still hard to believe some of the things that happen. Duffy does a great job in telling his story although he could leave out some of the Bostonian cussing which runs ramped throughout the entire film. I like the idea that these two are taking it upon themselves to get rid of everything that’s wrong with the world.

The cinematography is interesting in that there are many scenes in which Smecker visualizes himself being in the same room as the brothers while trying to figure out what is going on. There are a lot of interesting shots that are tried and succeed in making the action more intense or the emotions more potent. These scenes are accented by the music which seems to be chosen in order to make everything about the film more awesome. The wardrobe department did a good job in gauging what was appropriate for a person engaging in activity that lies outside of the law. Sunglasses and trench coats always add to glamorizing handguns even if the ones holding the guns can speak multiple languages and have tattoos on their hands that say “truth” and “justice” in Latin.

As incredibly awesome as this film is, there are a few drawbacks. First of all, not all of the actors were as good as Reedus and Dafoe. The majority of the actors playing various roles in the Russian mob seem to be trying too hard to be bad. None of them seem to draw in kind of emotional response from me, except for maybe annoyed. Also, the film does seem to go a little overboard in making out what the brothers are doing seem great. They are killing people left and right and at the same time making jokes about television shows from days gone by, but we have to realize that when you are surrounded by dead bodies telling jokes may not be an appropriate response. But then again, when the mob has problems with others and their response is extremely gratuitous violence, that isn’t appropriate either.

Duffy’s film is great for making people think about how the violence of the world should be dealt with. It floats along the same lines of revenge as say The Punisher and Kill Bill, but does so with a light-hearted air that makes you wonder if there are some psychiatric issues brewing in the mind of Troy Duffy. These factors, combined with the fact that the film did not make much of a splash when it made its debut, come together to make The Boondock Saints a film that will be remembered as a cult classic.

The Twilight of Vampire Movies

Rating: D
If you are unaware of the recent tween phenomenon known as Twilight then you either live under a rock or are dead. This movie is made by girls for girls. It was written by a woman (Stephanie Meyer), directed by a woman (Catherine Hardwicke), and starred a young female actress named Kristen Stewart who has also been in good movies like Panic Room. Also, a supposedly attractive young male was put in to serve as a love interest. Before we go any further, I would like to make it clear that after the song “Super Massive Black Hole”, which I used to love, was ruined for me during the baseball scene, I could no longer watch this travesty go on any longer. I turned it off and went to read Dracula to heal my mental wounds.

Just in case you are one of the few who have indeed been living under a rock, this film tells a story about a young girl, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father after having trouble living in Arizona with her mother. While there she meets Edward (Robert Pattinson), a mysteriously depressed man who never goes to school when the sun is out. In other words, EMO! All of the buzz around the movie makes the character Edward into a vampire. However, that is entirely inaccurate. In fact, Edward even says that he is something similar to a vampire called a “Cold One”. But I’m not here to discuss the fact that these “Cold Ones” are not vampires.

Just because the movie has done amazingly well, does not mean that it is actually a well done movie. Kristen Stewart is a promising talent that will most certainly go on to do better movies in her future. Unfortunately her character in this film is so depressing and typical of a brooding teenage girl that I could not care about her feelings at all. In fact, I found myself yelling at the screen about how stupid she is for playing a baseball game with a bunch of vampire imitators that want to kill her. The judgment of these characters is completely out of whack with the majority of rational human beings. This alone caused me not to care about the characters but rather made me aggravated with them.

Stewart gives a decent performance while every other actor completely sucks. Pattinson was too busy pouting his lips and squinting his eyes to worry about giving some reality to a flat character. Or maybe he did a really good job of interpreting the character that just sucks. I haven’t read the book and I have no intention of reading it because I’m not a twelve year old girl who suffers from guy problems.

The effects weren’t all that great either. During the Spiderman tree climbing scene you might as well have been seeing the wires around Pattinson’s body. He was at arm’s length from the trunk of the tall tree making for a completely ridiculous look for a vampire. Along with terrible looking effects, there was nothing special about the cinematography. It seemed like there was no innovative thought put behind the film. Everything seemed to rely on the attractiveness of the actors even though Pattinson looks like he has Down Syndrome. As previously stated, this was a film made specifically for females. It is simply a redundancy on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet except this version has a moody, sparkling, vampire wannabe.

The only good aspect of the entire film was setting. The landscape was absolutely beautiful, capturing the majesty of the forests of Northwest America. Overall, I have one word of recommendation for people thinking about watching or rewatching this film. Don’t.

Tarantino Rewrites History with Inglourious Basterds

Rating: A
Now before we get into this, I must admit that I am a freak for Tarantino movies. My favorite of his is Pulp Fiction. I love the style in which he directs and the sense of a universe that he creates within all of his movies. It is like he turns his films into an individual member of a family. So if we were to go along with that idea in mind then this film, the latest of Quentin Tarantino's works, would be the old grandfather sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch telling war stories to his children. And the children would be wide-eyed and silent.

Quentin Tarantino rewrites the events of World War II by taking the 1978 film of the same name, directed by Enzo G. Castellari, and places the action in a theater, instead of a train, in Nazi-occupied France, instead of Italy. The film focuses on a rag-tag group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Lieutenant in the army that has vowed to kill every Nazi that he comes across. At the same time that the Basterds are working their way closer and closer to France from where they were dropped in Italy, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) has just had her entire family slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who has the appropriate title of Jew Hunter, a Nazi Sherlock Holmes with pipe to boot. Shoshanna is allowed to escape to Paris where she assumes a new identity as an owner of a movie theater. She becomes the desired object of the young Nazi Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) affection. This desire leads to Fredrick convincing Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to show his new film, Nation's Pride, which is about Zoller's actions in battle that has made him a hero to his people. Shoshanna takes advantage of the opportunity to kill a bunch of high ranking officers with great pleasure.

Meanwhile the Basterds have made themselves feared among the Germans with a certain soldier that they affectionately refer to as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz (Eli Roth) who kills Nazis by bludgeoning them to death with a baseball bat. Even Hitler himself, played by Martin Wuttke, has come to fear the power that this group has gained. The unit makes its way to a village in France called Nadine where they meet up with the British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who has a connection with a double agent film actress named Bridget von Hammersmark played by Diane Kruger. Together this group is going to get into the premier of the movie at Shoshanna’s theater but not before plenty of action ensues.

The entire movie is full of the thing that Tarantino loves most, violence. He is even quoted as saying that “violence is one of the most fun things to watch.” When you see this movie that becomes very clear with scenes like The Bear Jew beating the hell out of a Nazi officer’s head or Aldo Raine carving a swastika into the forehead of Hans Landa. This movie is very violent but appropriately so, echoing the horrors of World War II. Obviously, this is not a movie for children both for the fact that it uses the word “fuck” quite often and that it discusses one of the worst events in history.

From a technical standpoint, the movie is very clean in terms of editing and cinematography, which has always been a strong point in Tarantino’s movies. Many shots that are used in this film have been used in his other movies like overheads and shots similar to the trunk shot which is a must have in Tarantino movies. Also, we get a shot of feet. Yes, a shot of feet. For those of you who don’t know, there are two things that you will find in almost every movie by Quentin Tarantino, a shot of a woman’s feet and Samuel L. Jackson, who in this film serves the role of narrator.

Quentin Tarantino is continually growing as a director with every film that he makes and so far, as the last line of the movie states, “this just might be his masterpiece.”