National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Action/Delusion/Complete lack of grounding in reality/Adventure starring among others Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren and others.

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Benjamin Gates is back. This time he’s knee-deep in a convoluted plot to clear the name of his ancestor Thomas Gates, and apparently this is done by finding a lost city of gold.

—

I kinda liked the first National Treasure. It was somewhat fresh and somewhat exciting. There was no big surprise that there’d be a sequel since it was –as far as I know– a huge financial hit. That’s the way Hollywood works, go where the money is.

So, this is the sequel. Apparently it’s going to be turned into a franchise as well, as is very obviously hinted at through the film.

How to summarize this? Nicolas Cage drones through a confusing and special effects-heavy plot dealing with everything from the Queen of Englands desk to Abraham Lincoln and the statue of Liberty. There isn’t a single stone unturned, for a moment I was expecting Thor, the god of thunder, to make an appearance and help Nic Cage out in his quest for justice and money.

If you liked the first one, you’ll probably get a kick out of this one too. I however think it’s vastly inferior to the spunky tempo of the first one. The plot is littered with really surreal Deus Ex Machinas, subplots run into the sand, the plucky blonde that accompanied them in the first film has in this one been reduced to pretty window-dressing since her only function is to look surprised or hand Cage a keypass every now and then. Riley the computer-geek and general nice guy does the same, basically just performing magic on command. He also got saddled with providing the comic relief for the entire film, and this makes him barely less annoying than anyone else.

To watch this movie you need to heavily suspend your knowledge of how anything works. The laws of physics gets thrown out the window immediately –apparently you CAN crash a car so badly it looks like junk afterwards without wearing seatbelts and yet not getting smashed into a million tiny bits of meat and broken bones. Also, even though the movie is littered with Apple-products none of them actually seem to function like an Apple-product. Every laptop is running the magic Hollywood-OS that chirps and beeps when scrolling text, and hacks into the british department of motor-vehicles at the push of a button. And OF COURSE all the traffic cameras in the UK are tied into the internet, so you immediately can download a photo of your grinning self running a red light. French cops will apparently happily help in translating clues taken from a statue. And a golden city buried underground hasn’t been discovered for hundreds of years, despite the fact that a national monument is built on top of it and every year hundreds of thousands of people stomp the area. And the president of the USA keeps a tiny book in the library of congress, and this book contains every secret and conspiracy theory ever produced. Aaaaand, primitive machinery built hundreds of years ago will work perfectly despite being soaked in water, oil and various other liquids without any maintenance.

This movie tries hard to be a mix between Indiana Jones and Jason Bourne. The first one was fun, this one is a lot more flat and tries too hard to mix too many things into the what-have-you. Top it all off with Nicolas Cages droning voice and expensive hairpiece and you’ve got National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

The only really fun and dynamic scene in the film is when Nicolas Cage slides down a banister and then starts howling absurdities at a security guard.

Other than that, don’t watch this movie if you’re going to pay for it. It’s just not worth it.

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

Action/scifi from 2007.

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The Aliens and one lone Predator descend on a small village somewhere in the USA, squeezing the local humans between them.

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Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty good summary of the story. The Predator (or Yautja, as they’re known in the expanded universe) takes on the task of cleaning up after the botched mission in the previous movie. Why? Because that ship crashed, and this lone creature was sent to erase the traces.

The story is a bit weird actually. The Predator first does an excellent job of removing any traces of aliens or Predators using some weird blue liquid that dissolves everything it touches, all the while staying out of most of the action. It gets a little weird after a while when he decides that he’s no longer there on a covert mission and instead goes off and starts collecting trophies instead.

So, the story is a bit iffy. It works, I suppose, but it’s not very logical.

It’s easy to think that this movie is crap. And I would assume that to someone not very into the whole AvP mythos it would just seem like another stupid actionfest. But I liked it. I went in with very low expectations since I thought the first AvP movie did a really half-assed job. So, expectations were low and interestingly enough, I think that if you’re a fan of Aliens, Predators or the concept of them kicking the crap out of each other then this movie might be for you.

Sure, you have to ignore that logical jump mentioned in the storyline, but the ingredients are all there and they seem in my opinion to have been mixed into the right kind of dish. I was annoyed at how stupid the Predators in Paul W.S. Andersons take were, but I can assure you - this time around the Predator takes no crap from anyone. He’s just as kick-ass as Predators should be, and whatever mistakes he does (because he does a few) is simply him being faced with an even more kick-ass enemy - in this case the Predator-Alien hybrid briefly glanced in the first film.

I’d say it’s obvious that Colin and Greg Strause who directed this did some research beforehand. A lot of the concepts in this movie are almost directly lifted out of previous films. In fact, they even pay homage by lifting a few lines from previous Alien/Predator films, most notably the classic “Get to the chopper” but without Arnold saying it. Normally I would wrinkle my nose at such a pathetic attempt to score fanboy-points, but in this case it actually works. Hell, a lot of the musical cues are taken from earlier films (the weird drums whenever the Predator does something, the dark horns when the Aliens do something) and again I would normally scoff at this. But not here, here it helps convey the gravitas behind the mythos.

Now, I understand that making a film out of something like this is tricky. You have to give it enough personal touch to make it “yours” as a director, while not changing too much and thus upsetting the fans of what you’re making a movie out of. This one manages to walk the line, if you ask me. PWSA changed a little too much, while the Straus brothers manage to keep it. Sure, they don’t add much new to the mix, but when the mix as it was is excellent then why bother?

This movie has action, and as far as being an AvP-movie I’d say it’s more faithful to the concept than the first one. The ending is a bit anticlimactic, but it has a very neat minor twist to it. I’m not going to spoil that for you though.

I liked it. If you’re a fan of the AvP-mythos then I think you’ll like it as well. It’s plenty gory, and the Predator is kick-ass. Recommended.

Cloverfield (2008)

Action/Scifi/Drama featuring a bunch of virtual nonames.

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A monster attacks New York City and a small group of survivors equipped with a camcorder try to make it out of the city alive.

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This. Movie. Is. Awesome.

I’ll say it again for emphasis. This movie is awesome. This movie will blow your socks off, rip your shirt to pieces and not introduce itself to your parents.

The story is pretty non-descript, but this is not a story-driven movie. The story rather acts as a frame to the characters. This is a disturbingly realistic and amazingly intense film. It is not your average hollywood-movie, filled with a bunch of overpaid actors hamming it up in front of a bluescreen.

The film is presented as a piece of government evidence, retrieved from a camcorder found in what was previous to the events in the film Central Park. The whole film actually looks like something that was shot by someone holding a camcorder, while being a part of the events.

And in case you didn’t already hear me say it, it is awesome. This is not your average monster-movie. The only thing it raises is questions. The really wonderful thing about it is that the way it’s filmed makes you forget that it’s fiction. You feel as if the boundary between reality and what you’re watching disappears. You have to remind yourself that this, despite appearances, never happened.

This movie is as awesome as Godzilla should’ve been back in 1998.

See it. Even if you’re not into monster-flicks, or action, or scifi. See it because it’s awesome, see it because it’s not cheesy, it’s not cliché. Strongly recommended.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Action/Horror/Scifi from 2007 starring Milla Jovovich.

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In the third installment of the Resident Evil-franchise we again get to familiarize ourselves with the heroine Alice (Jovovich). This time it’s really bad. The events of the previous film didn’t stop the T-virus from spreading, and it not only infected most of the human population of the world (turning them into dangerous zombies) it also killed the forests, nature, infected animals and generally wreaked havoc on our planet. The world as we know it is gone, replaced with a merciless desert eating away at what little natural resources are left. Alice maintains a day-to-day life until she gets reunited with other survivors of the Raccoon City-massacre in the previous film, and they decide to head for Alaska where supposedly there are more survivors. The remnants of the Umbrella Corporation have other plans in mind however…

—

I’m not really the target-audience for movies of this kind. I have a difficult time relating to the whole zombie-thing, and even though I enjoy most horrorfilms I have a somewhat strained relationship to this kind of movie. In general I feel that the zombie-genre is ridden with heavy clichés and that every attempt to modernize it simply confirms this theory.

I’ve never played a Resident Evil-game either, so I have no idea what all that is about, other than that most RE-fans seem as rabidly obsessed as the zombies in the games themselves.

(relax, I’m just joking)

So, while I had a somewhat fun time watching the first film, the second one soured me pretty bad on the whole concept. The first one had a good feel to it, and even though it was somewhat laughable at times it still provided decent entertainment. But the sequel was a far cry from being entertaining. It was almost painfully bad, and took itself way too seriously. Add to that, it was astoundingly silly in most every department, and as always riddled with clichés of the genre.

The groundwork didn’t look good for the third one. In fact, I considered not watching it at all. But it turned out I was in the mood for something braindead and filled with action, so I relented and gave it a go.

Surprise, surprise. It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Sure, it won’t win any awards for… well… pretty much anything, but it was pretty solid entertainment, and I didn’t yawn or check my watch a single time. Admittedly this also suffers from a lot of tired clichés, and Russell Mulcahy (yes, THE Russell Mulcahy, of Highlander-fame) falls pretty heavy for the temptation of using old by-the-book techniques to scare the viewer. The costumes are bordering on silly, and I always find it a bit amusing in movies of this kind how the hot chicks always have perfect makeup despite having spent years wandering the desert.

But for all it’s drawbacks this movie somehow works. A lot of people complained about a perceived lack of action, but I thought it was fine. I don’t really like movies who try to cover a thin plot or crappy acting by shoveling lots of action-sequences over the viewer, and I felt that this movie was somewhat balanced. Plus, the whole Zombies Meets Mad Max In The Desert-concept was interesting. I’ve always liked post-apocalyptic movies, and this fit the bill fine.

All in all, I’d say this is the best of the three movies so far. Which means it’s pretty mediocre, but hey - it wasn’t meant to be another Citizen Kane or something. Think of it as entertainment for teenage guys. And Milla has nice legs.

+ Desert
+ Milla Jovovich
+ Not too silly zombies
+ Guns, Guns, Guns
+ Lots of sand
+ Las Vegas buried in sand
+ Action
+ Weird ending
+ Slightly more character development than previous movies

- What’s with the ridiculous boss in the end of every movie?
- Tired dialogue
- Wooden acting
- Predictable plot
- Lots of genre-clichés, i.e. groups splitting up then getting killed off one at a time, monsters jumping out of closets, etc.

I Am Legend

Action/Horror/Drama from 2007 featuring Will Smith.

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Robert Neville (Smith) is the last survivor of a man-made plague causing horrible mutations. The plague started off as a well-intended genetic cure for cancer, but for unknown reasons instead started causing mutations and killing 90% of the human race. The survivors of the plague was rewarded with extreme mutations, and turned into violent creatures needing to feed on the minority of humans who were immune to the plague. Robert Neville is the last survivor of these naturally immune humans, and he’s desperately working on finding a cure for the infected before it’s too late…

—

Man, I was so badly looking forward to this movie.

I’ve read the original novel by Richard Matheson a few times, and it quickly developed into one of my many favourite books. Essentially it was about how Robert Neville was the last survivor of a plague which turned everyone else into creatures essentially resembling vampires - they needed blood for sustenance and were vulnerable to sunlight. The two major things that fascinated me with the novel was partly the main protagonist (Neville) and his struggle to survive and remain sane in a world gone mad, but also the concept of scientifically explaining the symptoms of vampirism as a disease instead of something supernatural.

I’ve seen both the previous attempts at turning this book into a movie, and neither of them really caught me. I’ve never been much of a Charlton Heston-fan even though I accepted him in Planet of the Apes and thus felt a large ambivalence to The Omega Man, but the older adaptation (The Last Man On Earth) is, in my opinion, pure crap.

So when the teasers started to appear last year I felt that, yeah, this seemed like a much more worthy adaptation. With a proper budget, proper special effects and that nice post-apocalyptic feel that was sorely missed in the previous incarnations. Sure, I felt a little iffy at Will Smith as Robert Neville, but the fresh prince has actually developed into a fairly capable actor.

The teasers and trailers also gave the impression that they were sticking to the story and world established in the novel. Most obviously I felt that this was indicated by not altering the title from “I Am Legend” into something other like the previous adaptations.

But, unfortunately, I was wrong.

Before I continue, let me make clear that I don’t think this is a bad movie. Quite the opposite, it’s probably an enjoyable zombie-style flick to anyone who isn’t a fan of the book. I do think however that fans of the novel will be disappointed - just like I was.

The movie starts off quite promising. Visually it’s very impressive, and the mood is effectively set for the viewer. Smith is quite capable as Neville, trying to maintain his sanity and survive all the while trying to figure out the virus. He isn’t the usual Smith-character, he’s not fast-talking or cool, and there’s definitely a few cogs missing in the brain department. I was impressed by it.

Leave it to Hollywood to mess this up though, and they sure did. See, I really, really liked the novel. What really rubs my rhubarb with this movie is that after a while it descends into the usual Hollywood-happy ending. Also, most annoyingly, it cuts out large parts of the story of the novel, and messes up the reason why Neville is a legend, and to whom he is a legend.

In the novel, the infected were for all intents and purposes, vampires. They slept at day and awoke at night needing blood. During the day, Neville would go from house to house and kill the sleeping infected. However, what Neville doesn’t know until later is that there exist infected who have managed to keep most of the disease at bay. They still have the symptoms (vulnerability to sunlight, garlic, etc) but haven’t quite become the horribly disfigured and violent creatures that other have become. They have in fact established communities, and try to live normal lives. Neville doesn’t know this, and indiscriminately kills every sleeping person who’s been infected. This is what makes him a legend to these half-infected people, since he can walk in daylight and kill them while they sleep.

This is completely absent in the movie, and it seems that Neville instead spends his days working on finding a cure for the virus, as well as searching for other survivors and food. Any encounter with the infected is purely accident, apart from one which he captures to try his proposed cure on. The infected are instead violent zombie-style creatures who stay out of sunlight and only come out at night trying to find something to feed off of. Neville boards his house shut during the night, and stays out of trouble by not showing any activity then.

The movie descends even further into Hollywood-happy endings. After a while a girl and a young boy show up, claiming to be survivors of the disease, and that there is a community of survivors in Vermont. They want to go there, and bring Neville with them. Long story short, he dies and they take the cure (which all of a sudden miraculously worked) with them, tying up the movie in a nice Hollywood happy ending rather than the bleak and dark ending of the novel.

This really disturbed me. The ending was just too positive for me, and the girl and young boy serve as nothing except fodder to that stereotyped ending.

So, if you haven’t read the book then this will probably be a pretty decent action/horror-movie, with liberal doses of drama and good acting from Will Smith. But for me, I felt slightly cheated.

Gone In 60 Seconds

Cult-classic from 1974.

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Maindrian Pace leads a double life. By day he is an insurance claims investigator, and by night he runs an illegal chop-shop and makes big money stealing cars. One day he takes it upon himself to deliver 48 different luxury vehicles to a South American druglord. Almost all of the cars are delivered without a hitch except one - a yellow 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 which proves difficult to acquire…

—

This is one of those cult-movies from the 70’s that everyone who’s into car-movies talks a lot about. It’s usually mentioned together with two other legendary movies; Vanishing Point from 1971 and Bullitt from 1968. I’ve seen both of those, and personally I think Bullitt is a long boring winding road towards a chase-scene that ends way too quickly, while Vanishing Point is a white-line masterpiece virtually defining this now dead era of movie-making.

Gone in 60 Seconds is the ultimate low-budget car-chase movie. It’s got a story wrapped around it somewhere, but it’s paper-thin. The acting is awful and the editing up to the final chase is lackluster and mostly serves to confuse the viewer. You can find some shred of story, but it’s mostly just foreplay to the grande finale - the spectacular car-chase the movie is known for.

As far as a movie is considered this is a pretty crappy one. But as car-porn it’s absolutely spectacular. Totally recommended to people who like me is into cars from the 60’s and 70’s.

So, last night me and the girlfriend finally got around to watching Death Proof, Quentin Tarantinos half of the Grindhouse-project he shared with Robert Rodriguez.

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A psychotic man calling himself Stuntman Mike stalks two different groups of women, using his heavily modified car to perform murderous deeds on them.

—

Now, I really like Pulp Fiction, and while I tolerate watching Reservoir Dogs I was left with a deep feeling of dissatisfaction with his later works. Jackie Brown was watchable but Kill Bill really didn’t do it for me. In fact, Kill Bill didn’t do it enough for me to watch the other half of.

This meant that I wasn’t frothing at the mouth when I heard about Death Proof the first time.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I disapproved of its existence - I’m a movie-geek just like mr Tarantino and I know what it’s like to want to make your dreamproject. The difference between us is that he’s got the resources to do it.

No, rather I was a little worried that this might turn out to be too nerdy and too pretentious. That’s what I felt Kill Bill was like; a neat idea that might’ve sounded great as a fanboy-fantasy but should’ve stayed that way since it in my opinion took itself way too seriously.

Last night however we were starved for movies and decided to give Death Proof a go.

It turned out to be an excellent decision, and in my opinion this is Tarantino at his best. Not only does it give tribute to a whole genre of exploitation-movies but it’s also incredibly fun. It’s quite clear that Quentin knows his shlock-movies and he manages to copy it without making it into a cliché.

Sure, this movie isn’t exactly the most intellectual out there - but it’s not meant to be either. The plot is essentially non-existent and the real gem of the movie is (like most Tarantino-flicks) the dialogue. There’s sexy babes, there’s hot cars, and there’s some truly spectacular car-chases. There’s also tons of references to various other more or less obscure movies (the least obscure being Vanishing Point) and all the variations of the F-word is sprinkled liberally throughout the conversations between the characters.

All in all this is a gorgeous, crazy and sometimes hilarious tribute to a dead genre. Definitely recommended.

(On a sidenote, me being a fan of musclecars from the late ’60s and early ’70s found it great seeing so many excellent representations of the same in this movie.)

One of my minor enjoyments is b-grade scifi-movies from the 80’s and 90’s. Not the really cheesy ones, but the ones who are at the lower-end spectrum of budget and ambition. They’re still major enough to have gone the rounds in the cinemas, but lack a lot of things in pretty much every other department.

They have a tendency to take themselves way too seriously, to have silly and overblown special effects and vehicles and to generally play loose and wild with various concepts as well as laws of physics. These movies have a very cheap cartoony style, even though that style usually is the result of inexperienced directors using the same techniques that they’ve copied from other low-budget inexperienced directors.

Also, it’s surprisingly common that these movies involve at least one or two actors who either are quite respected even at the time of release, or who will become respected and famous a few years later. In other cases, it’s actors who used to be respected or famous but who has for one reason or another has fallen from grace.

These movies are usually located in the bargain-bin at various supermarkets, electronics outlets and gas-stations. You know the kind, three movies for five bucks, that kind of deal.

Two excellent examples of this type of movie is Virus from 1999 and Tank Girl from 1995. Both have this very typical cardboard-style of filmmaking, being extremely corny and usually quite enjoyable mostly due to being very cardboardy and corny. Other excellent representations of this sub-genre is The Running Man from 1987 featuring the current gubernator of california as well as Repo Man from 1984.

Late last night I encountered another movie fitting this genre of mediocrity. It was named Freejack, a scifi/action-movie from 1992 featuring Emilio Estevez and among other people Mick Jagger (!) of Rolling Stones-fame.

The premise is a deliciously silly farce about time-travelling bounty-hunters who take people just before they die and then in the future sell their bodies as hosts for dying peoples minds.

The story itself serves as a great example of how overblown these movies usually are. They almost always have outrageously campy visions of future dystopias and Freejack is no exception to this rule. Most of the movie is set in 2009, two years from now, but features hovercraft limos with bubbletop canopys for the drivers as well as various other really silly “predictions” about the future such as a mega-corporation named McCandless Corporation who owns and operates pretty much everything in the world. But, 2009 is two years away so who knows what might happen?

This is a beautiful hangover-movie. Mick Jagger is wonderfully ridiculous in his various “badass” outfits sprouting cartoony lines, and Emilio Estevez is as gloriously one-dimensional as always.

If you manage to catch this on late night cable and have a penchant for silly scifi-movies then you won’t be disappointed. It’s also excellent stocking-stuffing for people who love this stuff, a useful tip since christmas is rolling around in less than two months time.

Hot Fuzz

Action/komedi från 2007 med bl.a. Simon Pegg och Timothy Dalton.

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Nicholas Angel (Pegg) är den tveklöst mest effektiva polisen i London. Han är så effektiv att han får alla andra poliser att se ut som lata slöfockar och därför omplacerar de honom till en sömnig by på landet för att slippa få dåligt rykte. I början har han svårt att anpassa sig och ser brott överallt, men efter ett tag ger han upp och accepterar sitt öde. Precis när han gjort det sker ett mord och Nicholas försöker trots motstånd att lösa mordet…

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Hot Fuzz gör för polisfilmer vad Shaun of The Dead gjorde för zombiesplatters. Det här är en genialisk film. Det ska ni veta med en gång, att det här är tveklöst en genialisk film. Det är filmen från grabbarna som sett varenda actionfilm, och det syns.

Jag är väldigt förtjust i gag-skämt. Lustiga ordvitsar, brittisk humor, visuella vitsar. I love it. Men ett problem med den typen av humor är att det ofta är svårt att bygga en hel långfilm på den. I princip den enda som lyckats göra långfilmer med enbart gag-humor är Mel Brooks.

Och det är det som gör den här filmen så genialisk. Den har gag-skämt, och när de har spelat ut sin roll byter den ton och blir en ganska lättsam (om än något våldsam) och extremt överdriven parodi på sig själv och hela buddy-copkonceptet. Jag har inte kollat hur lång spoof-listan är men den är säkerligen flera kilometer lång. Hela filmen osar av filmskaparglädje. Det verkar inte som om någon inblandad hade tråkigt eller gick på tomgång under skapandet av detta mästerverk. Allting är precis “rätt” och allting funkar. Varenda skämt är gjutet, varenda klipp är exakt rätt.

Vill man ha en suverän komedi med så mycket röj att grannarna tror det är atomkrig pga en överbelastad subwoofer är Hot Fuzz definitivt nånting man vill se. Förutsatt att man är mottaglig för humorn kommer man att älska den.

Rekommenderas!

Technorati Tags: hot fuzz, film, recension, action, komedi, simon pegg

Två filmer som jag verkligen ser fram emot:

The Day The Earth Stood Still: remake på filmen från 1951 med samma namn. Väldigt lite är känt om handling och rollbesättning, det enda som tydligen är verifierat är att Keanu “Träplankan” Reeves är inblandad. Filmen har nätt och jämnt gått in i preproduction, så det dröjer nog tills resultatet levereras.

Avatar: James Cameron återvänder till spelfilm och slutar göra Titanic-dokumentärer. Handlingen verkar helt klart lovande, jag menar A band of humans are pitted in a battle against a distant planet’s indigenous population kan ju inte gå fel, eller hur? Det är ju dessutom Cam The Man som regisserar, mannen som skapade Terminator 2, den absolut mest actionfyllda filmen genom tiderna. Dessutom har han ju ett sånt skönt stuk på sina filmer, mycket blått och kameraglidningar. Dock dyker den här inte upp förrän 2009. Ouch.

Technorati Tags: film, scifi, keanu reeves, hollywood, terminator, james cameron