Sci-Fi Archives - Page 22 of 34 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

The Happening (2008)

June 12, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, Horror, India, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Walter Chaw The number one, indisputable, biggest surprise of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is that it doesn’t entirely suck–followed fast by the stunner that the director-writer-producer-demiurge doesn’t appear anywhere in the film as Christ on a chariot. After his self-aggrandizing cameos in Signs (as catalyst to the story’s existence and outcome), The Village (as star of the “twist” in the film’s most complicated lighting/camera set-up), and Lady in the Water (as author of the Bible), it seemed that was the next logical step. Instead, The Happening is a Larry Cohen-esque thriller along the lines of God Told Me To, delivered with a heavy hand, to be sure, but full of some of the most delicious misanthropy to hit screens since Julia Roberts was making romantic comedies. Shyamalan, if we follow the auteur theory as closely as he claims to, hates his fellow man enough so that a coda revealing a blessed pregnancy is framed in such a way as to suggest that mankind is spelling its own doom with this urge to procreate. By extension, it’s tempting to see it as a criticism of pictures that end in Spielberg town, with marriages and babies and a cabin in the woods for the precogs. If Shyamalan is to the point where he’s actively flipping the bird to audiences and expectations, eschewing his life-support systems for twists and protracted takes in favour of ugly, flat, uninspired action sequences and blighted implications, then I might actually at this point be looking forward to his next one. Meaning, at the end of the day, that’s the biggest surprise of The Happening.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

June 12, 20082000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt
screenplay by Zak Penn and Edward Harrison
directed by Louis Leterrier

by Walter Chaw Pretty much the unmitigated disaster its trailers predicted it to be, Louis Leterrier’s noisome The Incredible Hulk is a cacophony of bad CGI, bad acting, and gravid serio-melodramatics that leaves only the disturbing image of Liv Tyler’s acres of bangs standing in the aftermath of its absurd wreckage. It’s a vanity piece for Edward Norton (as if Norton is ever in anything else these days) that washes out as one of the more puzzling examples of such, in that the only thing anyone’s there to see is Hulk smash. Maybe not so puzzling upon further reflection; I heard someone describe Jim Carrey at a certain point in his career as the six-hundred-pound gorilla–find Norton at the apogee of his own ego bloat in The Incredible Hulk. Rumoured to have rewritten wide patches of Zak Penn’s script (and credited here as, tee hee, Edward Harrison), Norton strikes me as a player/coach in the mold of Sylvester Stallone but unburdened with Stallone’s sense of temporal place and popular self-awareness. Norton’s acts of persona-construction are involved with painting himself as more romantic and smarter (The Illusionist), more romantic and moral (The Painted Veil), or more romantic and mysterious (Down in the Valley) than the average bear (tragic Monsieur Curie Bruce Banner the amalgam of all three, of course), with little room in his Nietzschian self-regard for human frailty or much complexity. He’s an actor capable of astonishing nuance, making it doubly frustrating that he seems to resent that in the Fight Club food chain, he’s Edward Norton and not Brad Pitt. The Incredible Hulk is the hundred-pound weakling flexing in the mirror and answering the ad on the back of the comic book.

Youth Without Youth (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

June 9, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Romania, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella by Mircea Eliade
directed by Francis Ford Coppola

by Walter Chaw Set in just-antebellum Europe, Francis Ford Coppola’s Golden Age superhero fantasy Youth Without Youth finds mild-mannered ancients professor Dominic (Tim Roth) transmogrified by a bolt of lightning into a being who appears to not only have regained his youthful appearance, but also developed the ability to alter physical objects with his mind. Dominic is in 1938 Romania when 1.21 gigawatts of electricity send him back to the future, able to absorb entire volumes with a single touch, learn dead languages in his sleep, and have contentious conversations with himself reflected in mirrors literal and figurative. It’s a superhero movie in the same sense as Kasi Lemmons’s sorely underestimated The Caveman’s Valentine: based on a literary source, it’s itself intensely literate, sprinkling Mandarin and Sanskrit in with, late in the game, a language of our hero’s own devising to which he devotes reels of obsessive notes. All that’s missing is a purpose for our hero–something remedied as the picture moves forward past WWII and Dominic encounters Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara) en route to her own collision with cosmic destiny.

Jumper (2008) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

June 8, 20082000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Sci-Fi, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Diane Lane
screenplay by David S. Goyer and Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg, based on the novel by Steven Gould
directed by Doug Liman

by Walter Chaw Jumper is the first movie director Doug Liman hasn’t been able to save with his amazing way with action sequences. Blame its glaring inconsistencies, the overuse of one nifty special effect that renders the picture’s centrepiece an anticlimax, and a passel of squeezed-off performances as truncated–as brief–as the rest of the picture feels. It’s over before it begins, wasn’t much while it lasted, and is so brazen in its abuse of internal logic that the only audience that would see it will be irritated by it. Based on a Steven Gould cult novel I read years ago (but not long ago enough to love it), its high concept is that there are genetic anomalies among us who are capable of teleporting anywhere they’ve been before; the catch is that a group of witch hunters is eager to kill them because they’re abominations before God. It’s Highlander, essentially, or any vampire movie, a skylark about rock-star bandits that swaps immortality for the ability to zip around at will–with only some party-pooping senior citizen (it’s snow-on-the-roof Samuel L. Jackson this time around, playing Illuminati-cum-Homeland Security bogie Roland) around to spoil the fun. The obligatory hot chick is dead-eyed Rachel Bilson as Millie, trading not so much up from Zach Braff in The Last Kiss as sideways to Hayden Christensen’s protag “jumper” David. Millie and David have loved one another since high school, a misleadingly fun prologue tells us: what follows is about an hour of deadening, repetitive, useless nonsense that fails, completely, to provide a universe in which this stuff makes any kind of impact, even as escapism.

V for Vendetta (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

May 29, 20082000s, 2006, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Germany, Revenge, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B-
starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt
screenplay by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw As documents for the opposition go, V for Vendetta may be the ballsiest, angriest picture of the current administration, flashing without apology images of naked prisoners of the state, shackled in black hoods and held in clear acrylic boxes while a febrile talking head and his cloistered intimates (called “fingers”) form a closed fist around them. It surmises a future where the government plants stories in centrally-owned media conglomerates, controlling groupthink by providing just one point of view. Woe be unto those with a critical mind because what, after all, is more dangerous to a dictatorial theocracy than a question? But more, the picture is an impassioned plea for alternative lifestyles, exposing the melodrama of Brokeback Mountain to be embarrassed, even polite, when the struggle for equal regard is something that should be undertaken with passion and brio–it’s life and death, and V for Vendetta presents it as such. There are no half measures in a film that takes as its hero an eloquent monologist in a Guy Fawkes mask (Hugo Weaving), his erstwhile, reluctant sidekick a young woman, Evey (Natalie Portman), transformed through the government-sanctioned abduction of her parents and a period of torture and imprisonment into not an avenging angel, but a voice of reason. How fascinating that the reasonable solution in the picture is the destruction of Britain’s Parliament on the Thames.

Signs (2002) [VISTA Series] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

May 25, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Walter Chaw M. Night Shyamalan makes very specific films about very specific concerns in a very specific manner: long master shots; an unusual trust in silence; remarkably few edits for a modern picture; joy in the choice of garish topics; and a thing for failed fathers and their lost little boys. He reminds of Hitchcock in his elevation of pulp art into high art, but differs in that his concerns aren’t so much about abnormal psychology, the nervy manipulation of the audience, and the voyeuristic implication of movie-watching as they are about personal demons and Shyamalan’s increasingly obvious desire to be considered in the same breath as his idol.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007) [Four-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

May 19, 2008****/****, 1980s, 2008, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw The prototype for the modern science-fiction film, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, through its seemingly endless iterations, through its growing cult of personality and a production history that’s become as familiar as a Herzog shooting mythology, retains its ability to astonish as–along with John Carpenter’s contemporaneous The Thing–the last hurrah for the non-CGI, in-camera effects piece. Tron, The Last Starfighter, and Firefox were destined to be the rule of the day at the expense of matte painters and model-makers, here working out puzzles like how to make a futuristic, mechanized advertising blimp appear to be shooting strobes through the glassed ceiling of the Bradbury. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to watch Blade Runner now without taking its technical brilliance for granted. It looks like it was made in 2007 (particularly in its newest, digitized incarnation); with its lack of the bluescreen artifacts that plague many of its contemporaries, it’s easy to think of a mainframe as the movie’s author.

Speed Racer (2008)

May 8, 20082000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Family, Germany, Japan, Sci-Fi, Sports, Theatrical

*/****
starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Matthew Fox
written and directed by The Wachowski Brothers

by Walter Chaw This generation’s Tron lands with unsurprisingly little fanfare early in the 2008 blockbuster sweepstakes, the victim of niche nostalgia and bottomless kitsch as well as the theory that total indulgence from all involved will prevent The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer from turning out to be their Spruce Goose. I’ve seen just enough “Speed Racer” cartoons to recognize when people like John Goodman are impersonating badly-drawn ’60s television anime (as opposed to Goodman impersonating badly-drawn ’60s Hanna-Barbera)–and just enough, too, to futilely hope against hope that there wouldn’t be a chimp and a chubby tyke who stow away in a racecar’s trunk now and again. But I haven’t seen nearly enough of the TV series to want to see more of it, and after enduring the Cool World live-action version of “Speed Racer”, I confess I’ve sort of lost the will to live. In other words, I was never a fan of the cartoon and was mainly interested in this trainwreck on the strength of Bound and The Matrix. Still, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t take a moment to laud the brothers on their audacity–the very quality I appreciated in the two Matrix sequels, which were, by most analysis, disasters. It seems like sour grapes to knock the picture besides–or at least it seems futile, because the Wachowskis don’t appear to care what people think of them along their road to wearing Kleenex boxes on their feet and saving their pee in mason jars. Speed Racer is exhibit one in the case that the Wachowskis aren’t in it for praise (they’re not going to get any credible praise here) or money (they’re already loaded), but rather to luxuriate in the contents of their den’s shelves: first Alan Moore comics with V for Vendetta, now this excruciatingly faithful reproduction of an inexplicable camp artifact. Perhaps we should count our blessings that they weren’t huge fans of “Voltron.”

Iron Man (2008)

May 7, 20082000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

**/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow
screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
directed by Jon Favreau

by Walter Chaw Iron Man is garden-variety pop heroism/wish-fulfillment that, marinated in Robert Downey Jr.’s effortless insouciant sauce, speaks volumes about the psychology of our nation at this disgusted, exhausted moment in our history. The plot’s only casualties save its grand fiend are nameless Afghans: terrorists on the one side, collateral damage on the other–few of them receiving the nobility of an individual death. Even the chief Al-Qaeda baddie is blown up discreetly in the wings after a white guy first dazzles him with technology, then paralyzes him with the same. (Call it awe and shock.) The film’s politics are easy and its racism similarly cavalier: Better dead than red (er, brown); when historians look back at this era in popular culture, it won’t be terribly difficult to pick out that which forms the backbone of contemporary “Why We Fight” propaganda. What recommends the picture are sterling performances by Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow as Iron Man’s Girl Friday, Jeff Bridges as the mentor-cum-baddie, and wonderful, reserved, dignified Shaun Toub in a too-brief cameo as the sole voice of moral “otherness.” What’s unfortunate about the flick is that it takes an awful long time to get to the good stuff, and that good stuff–almost entirely CGI-rendered–falls curiously flat. Not quite boring, Iron Man just seems sprung. There’s no forward momentum, no impetus, no real gravity. With all that firepower at its fingertips, it has no idea where to point itself.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

April 23, 2008****/****, 1960s, 2008, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, UK

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke & Stanley Kubrick, based on Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Alex Jackson Seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey as a film about evolution is natural but ultimately inaccurate, I think. The Darwinist views evolution as an external response to the world–a survival mechanism–while the Nietzschian views it as an internal, ethical one. Both are touched on in 2001, and both are misleading in that they fail to acknowledge that Man’s evolution in this film is born out of destiny. Out of fate. More appropriate to view evolution here in terms of the lifespan of the butterfly or moth. Guided by a supreme alien intelligence, the species of 2001 evolves from the larva (ape) to the pupa (human) to the butterfly (star child).

Bionic Woman: Volume One (2007) – DVD

April 15, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, DVD, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller

Image A- Sound A Extras C
“Pilot,” “Paradise Lost,” “Sisterhood,” “Faceoff,” “The Education of Jaime Sommers,” “The List,” “Trust Issues,” “Do Not Disturb”

by Ian Pugh David Eick’s remake of the old Lindsay Wagner series “The Bionic Woman” is a near-literal relic straight out of 1976 so thoroughly convinced of its premise’s timelessness that it merely tosses the same old shit together with popular concerns of the 21^st century–terrorism, the Iraq War, North Korea, the omnipresence of computer technology–in the vague hope that it will all alchemize into something that can stand on its own two feet. Call it the oblivious antithesis to an astonishing meta property like Live Free or Die Hard: it carries the expectation for tension within a battle of seemingly-incalculable odds when the outcome was long ago decided in the little guy’s favour–I mean, like, decades ago. Interestingly enough, amid its largely indifferent applications of wire-fu, the new “Bionic Woman” offers the best auto-critical metaphor with its mustiest holdover from its precursor: the super-futuristic “action” sound effect that originated in “The Six Million Dollar Man” has been replaced by something that sounds like a computerized approximation of a stalled car.

The 6th Day (2000) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

April 7, 20082000s, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Mystery, Schwarzenegger, Sci-Fi, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras C
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Rapaport, Tony Goldwyn, Robert Duvall
screenplay by Cormac Wibberley & Marianne Wibberley
directed by Roger Spottiswoode

by Bill Chambers The 6th Day has one idea that made me sit up and take notice. In a future that’s “sooner than you think,” some henchmen from the shallow end of the gene pool have been sent to dispatch Arnold Schwarzenegger’s illegally cloned charter pilot. Said goons aren’t nervous when confronting the Austrian Oak because they’ve always got a contingency plan: should Ah-nuld snap necks like he’s been doing since Commando, the casualties will be shipped off to a lab for regeneration. In other words, the PG-13 film antiquates Schwarzenegger once and for all.

Gattaca (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

March 26, 20081990s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin, Jude Law
written and directed by Andrew Niccol

by Walter Chaw No great surprise that the end of our last millennium coincided with a glut of reality-testing, existentially thorny speculative fictions–films that reflected a sudden Ludditism spawned by the looming Y2K disaster, a spate of scary school shootings, and a decade in cinema intent on paving the way for the CG phantasmagorias of the ’00s. In ten years, go from the truth-telling, auburn celluloid lasso of sex, lies, and videotape (1989) to the truth-telling digital one of American Beauty (1999), with touchpoints in the appalling, historical-integrity-raping Forrest Gump and Titanic along the way. Of course we’re asking ourselves if we’ve taken the virtuous path through the wood when all looks to be falling down around our ears. The prescience of Blade Runner and The Terminator become clearer, too, as the Eisenhower-era nostalgia fostered by Reagan’s time in the White House reaps its harvest in the barely subsumed sex of Pleasantville (1995) and the god in the machine of The Truman Show (1998). Meanwhile, our viability as a species is questioned in solipsistic wonderlands like The Matrix (1999), Dark City (1998), and Michael Almereyda’s wonderful Hamlet (2000), wherein noir anti-heroes are transformed into deities of their technology-sick societies. It even explains the black, awesomely unpleasant ending of Spielberg’s A.I. and, fascinatingly, why A.I. is now enjoying a critical revision. How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise indeed in the key picture of this cycle, The Blair Witch Project; and how brilliantly Kiwi hyphenate Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997) manages to craft as timely a picture as there could be about our regret and loathing of our wet-nurse technology, in addition to our dawning recognition, too late, that the birds have come home to roost.

Unbreakable (2000) – [VISTA Series] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

March 24, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: M. Night Shyamalan, Disability, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Thriller

**½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image B+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn, Spencer Treat Clark
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I came late to the Sixth Sense party. After sneering at the trailer–which, with its moppet-in-peril and supernatural themes, made the film look like just another one of those less commercial pop jobs that get shoehorned into late-summer release–I put it immediately out of my mind. But three weeks later, I discovered that it had become a huge hit, with a sizable amount of critical acclaim, and it led me to wonder how I had managed to miss the parade. What was it about this film about a boy who sees dead people that had touched such a sensitive nerve?

Zapped! (1982) – DVD

March 21, 20081980s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi

*½/**** Image B- Sound C+
starring Scott Baio, Willie Aames, Felice Schachter, Scatman Crothers
screenplay by Bruce Rubin and Robert J. Rosenthal
directed by Robert J. Rosenthal

by Alex Jackson I’m willing to pretend that Zapped! is of some historical significance in the annals of exploitation cinema as either the last or the first of its type. Somehow, it reminded me a lot of 1976’s minor cult classic Revenge of the Cheerleaders. It belongs in the same general universe, with a vibe that feels a lot more late-Seventies than early-Eighties. I think Zapped!, like Revenge of the Cheerleaders, was made specifically to be exhibited at drive-ins. The telltale sign is how brightly-lit everything is. Lighting conditions were poor at drive-in theatres, and so studio executives tended to frown when they got back tenebrous product that wouldn’t play well in this market. (I vaguely remember hearing that Gordon Willis’s work on The Godfather was viewed as particularly risky for that reason.) In this respect, Zapped! looks markedly different from its near contemporaries Porky’s and Friday the 13^th, both of which feature plenty of night scenes boasting the grungy, unrefined aesthetic of a pile of rotting leaves.

I Am Legend (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

March 17, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Will Smith

*/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B
starring Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Willow Smith
screenplay by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Richard Matheson
directed by Francis Lawrence

by Walter Chaw I, Robot with CGI versions of the rage zombies from the 28 movies, Will Smith’s latest action joint (he alternates them with his family™ films) pummels another revered genre masterpiece, Richard Matheson’s novella I Am Legend, into your typical mainstream action chum. At least the fourth post-apocalyptic action picture this year (following Resident Evil: Extinction, 28 Weeks Later, and The Mist), this I Am Legend opens nonsensically, if awesomely, in an empty, overgrown Manhattan, as lone survivor Robert Neville (Smith) hunts gazelle with a tricked-out GT, a trained German Shepherd, and a high-powered rifle. Devotees of the source material will note immediate, stark differences from Matheson’s amazingly affecting yarn–not the least of which the dog’s change in role from tragic mendicant to action hero. (Rest assured that the canine’s populist transformation mirrors Neville’s own.) This Neville is a brilliant research scientist and stud alpha male at “Ground Zero” of a deadly plague brought on by a virus introduced by well-meaning scientists trying to cure cancer. Why said virus would result in legions of hairless, angry, incoherent acrobats is anyone’s guess, but Neville dedicates himself post-Fall to endless conversations with his dog, working out, and discovering The Cure. Political allegory flies thick and furious, from calling NYC “Ground Zero” to the central suggestion that biological weapons could cause a lot of damage in a population centre; but I Am Legend is really just a dimwit’s idea of science-fiction (see again I, Robot, another Akiva Goldsman-adapted piece of shit) that takes its high concept and uses it as an excuse for a lot of cool, expensive special effects.

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) [Two Disc Special Edition] + The Adventures of Aquaman: The Complete Collection (1967-1970) – DVDs|Justice League: The New Frontier – Blu-ray Disc

February 28, 20081960s, 1970s, 2000s, 2008, Action, Adventure, Animation, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Television

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER
*½/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
BD – Image A+ Sound A- Extras B-
written by Stan Berkowitz with additional material by Darwyn Cooke, based on the graphic novel DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
directed by David Bullock

THE ADVENTURES OF AQUAMAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
Image C- Sound C Extras D+
“Menace of the Black Manta/The Rampaging Reptile Men,” “The Return of Nepto/The Fiery Invaders,” “Sea Raiders/War of the Water Worlds,” “The Volcanic Monster/The Crimson Monster from the Pink Pool,” “The Ice Dragon/The Deadly Drillers,” “Vassa, Queen of the Mermen/The Microscopic Monsters,” “The Onslaugh of the Octomen/Treacherous is the Torpedoman,” “The Satanic Saturnians/The Brain, the Brave and the Bold,” “Where Lurks the Fisherman!/Mephisto’s Marine Marauders,” “Trio of Terror/The Torp, the Magneto and the Claw,” “Goliaths of the Deep-Sea Gorge/The Sinister Sea Scamp,” “The Devil Fish/The Sea Scavengers,” “In Captain Cuda’s Clutches/The Mirror-Man from Planet Imago,” “The Sea Sorcerer/The Sea-Snares of Captain Sly,” “The Undersea Trojan Horse/The Vicious Villainy of Vassa,” “Programmed for Destruction/The War of the Quatix and the Bimphars,” “The Stickmen of Stygia/Three Wishes to Trouble,” “The Silver Sphere/To Catch a Fisherman”

by Ian Pugh Utterly incomprehensible thanks to a deadly combination of rigid adherence to its source material and a discernible lack of vision, the DC Animated Universe’s latest stab at the direct-to-video market can only be described as a complete embarrassment for everyone involved. Adapting a graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke that isn’t that great to begin with (it’s basically a portable art gallery of Fifties-era superheroes, too long by half and tied together by a belaboured treatise on why the decade wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be), Justice League: The New Frontier doesn’t attempt to build on the kernel of an idea therein. Instead, apparently weighing time constraints against the most exploitable elements, it pays lip service to the plot and reduces everything else to a series of biff!pow! pin-ups. I’ve been a steadfast defender of comic books for years now, but sometimes I wonder if artists and fans really know what has to be done to make them viable as an adult medium. Their long-suffering quest for legitimacy has seen a pronounced downturn since the introspective melancholy of Superman Returns suffered wholesale rejection for not featuring enough people punching each other in the face–and it appears that Bruce Timm and his crew won’t be the ones to try to change minds. There’s an awful moment in their last animated opus, Superman: Doomsday, in which the Man of Steel laments that he has saved the world a hundred times over but still hasn’t cured cancer–shortly before the film pounds its audience with nearly a full hour of mind-numbing violence. The New Frontier contains a similar moment, except that it replaces social issues with political analogies so simplistic and heavy-handed they would make Emilio Estevez cringe. When Lois Lane (Kyra Sedgwick) says, circa 1954, that “whatever party, whatever administration, there’ll always be bogeymen like [Joe McCarthy]” in summarizing that “we need a leader”–and then stares directly at the viewer–it’s difficult not to see this entire enterprise as just a bunch of kids playing dress-up.

The Invasion (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

February 5, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Thriller

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright
screenplay by David Kajganich
directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers has proven itself to be of durable stock. Over the course of its first three official adaptations, it’s managed to tap the cultural vein–to distill the zeitgeist–in its tale of soulless pod-people replacing loved ones and figures of authority. Something about this specific fear has been an Aeolian harp, essaying the Red Menace of the Fifties (Don Siegel’s original Invasion of the Body Snatchers), the new-age cultism and air of paranoia of the Seventies (Philip Kaufman’s 1978 masterpiece), the modern military-industrial complex (Abel Ferrara’s underestimated 1993 revamp), and now the over-medicated upper-middle classes in German director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion. If it weren’t for the inherent elasticity of the source material, in truth, there wouldn’t be anything to recommend the new picture, what with its ridiculous screenplay (by first-timer David Kajganich), deadening proselytizing, and mawkish performances from an assembled cast of luminaries. The Invasion is hopelessly fucked-up in the only way you can fuck this story up: by having a bunch of halfwits impose themselves on it in the vain belief they can reinvent the wheel. It isn’t the worst film of the year so far, just by far the most disappointing, and while I really admire Nicole Kidman in some of her independent film choices, her track record of picking real, bona fide stinkers in the mainstream continues with this, her widely-publicized entrée into the $17M/picture club. The irony being–and letting Kidman off the hook a little–that a well-publicized 17-day reshoot with none other than The Wachowski Brothers and their protégé James McTeigue at the rudder transformed what was reputedly a poor-testing, “documentary-like,” low-key political thriller into this bullshit.

Swamp Thing: The Series (1990-1991) – DVD

January 8, 20081990s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Superhero, Television

Image B- Sound B Extras C
“The Emerald Heart,” “Falco,” “Treasure,” “From Beyond the Grave,” “Blood Wind,” “Grotesquery,” “New Acqaintance,” “Natural Enemy,” “Spirit of the Swamp,” “Legend of the Swamp Maiden,” “The Death of Dr. Arcane,” “The Living Image,” “The Shipment,” “Birthmarks,” “The Dark Side of the Mirror,” “Silent Screams,” “Walk a Mile in My Shoots,” “The Watchers,” “The Hunt,” “Touch of Death,” “Tremors of the Heart,” “The Prometheus Parabola”

by Ian Pugh In many ways the anti-Darkman, Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing also saw a comic-book scientist irrevocably transformed into a monster at the hands of hoodlum saboteurs. Alas, unlike Sam Raimi with his masterpiece, Craven is unable to strike a balance between seriousness and silliness, falling too far in the latter direction before the picture finally collapses under its own snarky weight. It is, however, the film that enlightened me as to why B-movie anti-appreciation is such a worthless endeavour, since Swamp Thing never bothers to pretend that it’s anything more than a couple of dudes in rubber suits wailing on each other. When you’re making a movie in the “MST3K” mindset, as Craven appears to be, you don’t really have a movie in mind, per se–you’re just positioning actors as they recite lines from a script.

Underdog (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

January 3, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Family, Sci-Fi, Superhero, ZERO STARS

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starring Jim Belushi, Peter Dinklage, John Slattery, Patrick Warburton
screenplay by Adam Rifkin and Joe Piscatella & Craig A. Williams
directed by Frederik Du Chau

by Bill Chambers Whereas the gigantic Underdog balloon that hovers over New York City during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is at least conceptually interesting (American commerce’s idea of a Stalin statue), Underdog, Disney’s charmless live-action resurrection of the beloved super-mutt, has no subtext, just a bunch of mercenary actors and technicians who can barely disguise their contempt for the film’s screenplay, which lazily embellishes the extraordinary-pet genre with scatology while weaving a maddeningly derelict patchwork of recycled tropes like the grieving widower/orphan, the unattainable hottie, and the disgraced cop. It’s fair to say I hate Underdog, but I hate it because it doesn’t even have the will to finish what it starts. Only two things about it are kind of fascinating, and only then from a largely extratextual standpoint. The first is that in taking the title character out of the cartoon realm, the digitally-manipulated slapstick pratfalls and clumsy landings look grotesquely painful for the beagle(s) playing Underdog. They should’ve gone the Scooby-Doo route and fashioned a 3-D likeness of the 2-D prototype, since the sight of man’s best friend hurtling through panes of glass really has no intrinsic comic value.