2013 Recap: Working Our Way Up to the Top (Part One)

 Now that we're done wallowing in the worst of 2013, it's time to move on and work our way up to the very best. When we last met I promised that starting with this batch, the Cap'n might not be covering the best that last year had to offer, but from here on out I'd recommend almost everything. There are any number of diverse options for varying tastes, and I suspect you'll find at least something to like in what I saw.

 Unlike the normal "list" format that you see so often on the Blogorium, I'm going to try grouping movies together under loosely unifying themes. It keeps things from getting too long in the tooth and will give you a rough idea of where I'm coming from while evaluating each entry. Some are more logically connected than others, but while I was putting this together, individual films gravitated together, so hopefully this works. Let's start with a fairly logical grouping:


 Three Disney Films That were Pretty Good, but I'm in No Hurry to Revisit.

 I didn't see Frozen last year, which I suppose is in keeping with an unofficial trend of missing newer Walt Disney animated films in theaters (I think the last one I saw during its first run was... The Lion King?), but I did see two live action features and the second sequel from the re-branded Disney / Pixar. Of the three, I probably enjoyed Monsters University the most; it's slight, and problematic in that it's a prequel to Monsters, Inc., so we already know that Mike and Sully will end up friends.

Putting aside the fact that they claimed to have met much earlier in life according to the first filmMonsters University is an amusing and sometimes clever Pixar version of the "college" genre. There are prerequisite references to Animal House and lots of foreshadowing of things to come in the movie we've already seen, but it's nice to have everybody back and Billy Crystal and John Goodman are clearly giving 110%. Steve Buscemi is in and out of the story as a younger, nicer, Randall Boggs, and the new additions (including Nathan Fillion, Charlie Day, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, and Alfred Molina and Helen Mirren as faculty members) are all welcome. If there's one thing that pushes it slightly over the "prequel" trap, it's that while most of the most goes exactly how you'd expect it to, the denoument is quite a surprise. I'm impressed that Dan Scanlon, Robert L. Baird, and Daniel Gerson opted to take the road less travelled by in closing the story out, and there's a sense of earning the connection to Monsters, Inc. that I appreciated.

 While we're on the subject of prequels, Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful got its share of grief for being simultaneously too much and not enough like The Wizard of Oz earlier this year. I will admit that the movie is perhaps not what it could be (although, what were we expecting?), the nearly unanimous consensus I've heard from friends - particularly ones with children - was that they were entertained. Unlike most people, I liked James Franco as the Wizard-to-be, and found some interest in the fact that Raimi keeps him as a basically weasely trickster for most of the movie. Whereas Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland sequel-ish thing for Disney headed down the Narnia-route with an unnecessary battle scene, Raimi keeps the great showdown between Oscar Diggs and the Witch of the East (yes, I'll still keep it a secret which witch is which) limited to an unorthodox clash between magic and illusion. The Wonderful Wizard triumphs specifically because he's so good at misdirection.

Is the rest of the cast great? Eh... maybe not. I liked Michelle Williams as Glinda, and Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz are okay as Theodora and Evanora, but neither of them really get the chance to develop as characters. Bruce Campbell puts up with a beating from Tony Cox to secure his name in the opening credits (and he's in the movie for maybe five minutes, tops). Joey King's China Girl is something of a marvel as a character but Zach Braff's Finley the talking monkey is mostly there for Oscar to have someone to be mean to. The special effects range from very impressive to okay, but I did enjoy the vintage "Raimi inflicting pain on his lead actor" during the tornado after an otherwise okay opening. I will say the change in aspect ratio and color was a nice touch, but there are too many forced connections crammed in very quickly before Franco shuttles off to Oz.

 The parts may not all work or, at times, even fit together, but the sum is fitfully amusing for one of two viewings. I have no idea if I'm going to watch Oz: The Great and Powerful again any time soon, or if it will have any lasting replay value, but for one go-round the trip down the Yellow Brick Road was worth it.

 I don't mention it here a lot, but the Cap'n is a lifelong fan of Mary Poppins. It's not the kind of thing you'd probably expect, which is why it doesn't come up much, but it's true. Even Dick Van Dyke's terrible cockney accent doesn't bother me; I can settle down and watch it almost any old time and feel like a kid again. Accordingly, I was cautiously optimistic about Saving Mr. Banks, the Disney-approved story of Walt Disney's efforts to secure P.L. Travers' approval of the Mary Poppins we all know and love today (okay, I'm assuming you have the same affinity for it as I do).

 It's a double edged sword, because yes, some of the contentious opinions that Travers had during and after the film's released are, shall we say, smoothed over in favor of a more conventional "dealing with daddy issues" storyline. On the other side, I don't imagine any other studio could have shot on the Disney lot in the original locations (or approximations thereof) and had the level of access and imagery you'd need. Think about Fox Searchlight's Hitchcock, which somehow manages to avoid Universal Studios almost entirely, despite the fact that Universal released Psycho and the iconic house is on their tour.


 Saving Mr. Banks is structured alternating between "present day" 1961 and turn of the century Australia, where Pamela Travers (Emma Thompson) remembers her childhood and her whimsical father (Colin Farrell - I'm leaving out the character name on the off chance you don't know anything about Travers). Throughout the film, we learn more and more about her father, why they have to move around the continent, and the foundations of where the character of Mary Poppins comes from, all while Travers struggles with Disney (Tom Hanks)'s insistence the movie be made his way, with animated penguins and songs, much to her dismay. Travers has an inherent disgust for Walt Disney's films, and early in the movie watches Walt on TV with Tinkerbell, only to sigh "Poor (J.M.) Barrie."

 She's staunchly against giving over the rights to Mary Poppins and is reticent to deal with screenwriter Don DeGradi (Bradley Whitford) and songwriting duo the Sherman brothers: Richard (Jason Schwartzman) and Robert (B.J. Novak), who don't quite understand why. As an audience, we already know how this turns out, and as we see the kernels of what become iconic moments in Mary Poppins, we're obviously rooting for Travers to "come around." At the same time, Saving Mr. Banks is told primarily through Travers' perspective, and while she's often rude and dismissive, we like her. The film takes a few steps in the "easy" direction of softening Thompson as Travers, in particular through a totally sympathetic limo driver played by Paul Giamatti who just happens to have the perfect bonding moment at the perfect time with the writer. Wisely, Walt Disney is shuttled off to the background, so that the naturally likeable Tom Hanks is able to always be a voice of reason and never grouchy (they do show him smoking, though. Kudos to that).

 While it's a touch predictable and perhaps not the most forthright (I would recommend reading Vern's review for a more thorough examination of the negative reaction towards Disney and Travers from other critics) about the actual facts, Saving Mr. Banks is nevertheless a worthwhile "true story," and one people might not be familiar enough with. If you like Mary Poppins or Walt Disney or just Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks, it's an easy recommendation. Just don't expect anything too in depth about the man behind the Mouse or anything hyper-critical, and you'll have a nice time. I liked it, but will probably stick with Mary Poppins from here on out.

 Oh, and while we're on the subject of "true story with some liberties taken..."

 Speaking of "Inspired By a True Story"

 If you're going to watch Oprah Winfrey presents Lee Daniels' The Butler "Inspired By an Article We Read and Pretty Much Went from There," I would strongly recommend not doing so anywhere in the vicinity of 12 Years a Slave or Forrest Gump. It will bring up unsatifsying comparisons to the former and oddly specific connections to the latter, and in all honesty I have the feeling that most audiences will find plenty to enjoy about the story of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), a White House butler that served Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, (I guess) Carter, and Reagan. For me, it didn't do much, but that's largely because the screenplay by Danny Strong (Game Change, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is so predictable.

 The film is "inspired by a true story" in the way that Strong took Will Haygood's Article "A Butler Well Served by this Election" and used it as a springboard to cover race relations in the United States from 1926 to 2008. Eugene Allen became Cecil Gaines, and what Gaines doesn't see firsthand in the White House is covered by his son Louis Gaines (David Oyelowo), giving the film a sort of Gump-like tour through major moments in Civil Rights history. I'm trying hard not to diminish the efforts of Daniels, Strong, or the excellent cast, but the problem I had with The Butler is that you can predict almost like clockwork what's going to happen next based on perfunctory set-up scenes.

 For example (SPOILER, I guess), let's say that Cecil's other son Charlie (Elijah Kelly) has a conversation with Louis about how he's going to Vietnam and Louis warns him he's going to get killed. Charlie tells Louis (who is at this point a member of the Black Panther Party and on the outs with his father) not to come to his funeral if he dies. So when we get the scene that Charlie has been killed, does it happen during the same sequence when Cecil and his wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) are watching Soul Train and wearing Disco outfits? Look, I can understand the use of emotional juxtaposition, but you can spot it a mile away over and over again during The Butler and that really took me out of the movie.

 There's also a strange sense of moralization going on during The Butler that's reminiscent of Forrest Gump: Freedom Riders are good, Black Panthers are bad. Martin Luther King Jr. is peaceful, but the only scene involving Malcolm X (as Louis and his girlfriend are walking away from one of his speeches) ends with gunshots. Gloria has a brief dalliance with her neighbor, Howard (Terrence Howard), who ends up being shot by someone else's jealous husband. The Black Panther section, in particular, is almost cartoonish - Louis abandons the Freedom Riders after King is assassinated and brings his girlfriend to dinner, only for Cecil to throw them both out. But Louis also abandons the Black Panthers after one meeting that suggest retaliatory violence against the police, which is followed in the next shot by news of the Panthers being raided by the FBI. I'm sorry, there's no subtlety there whatsoever. Louis and Cecil finally reconcile during a rally to free Nelson Mandela, and then it jumps forward to the 2008 election. If you're wondering if someone dies of before she can vote for Obama, I suggest you look for Oprah Winfrey during the Supporting Actress nominations.

 I found that the end result was that while I watched The Butler, I began to wonder about the more trivial moments, like the often bizarre casting of the Presidents. Questions like "are they really not going to use anything other than a fake nose to make John Cusack look like Nixon?" to "I wonder what was going through Jane Fonda's mind while she was playing Nancy Reagan?" floated around with "why didn't they bother finding someone to play Jimmy Carter?" or "isn't Liev Schreiber too young to be Lyndon Johnson?" If you ever wondered what would happen if Alan Rickman was asked to impersonate Ronald Reagan, you'll get your answer in The Butler. Robin Williams is Eisenhower, James Marsden is Kennedy, and Minka Kelly is Jackie Kennedy (of whom Gloria is inexplicably jealous). The individual moments with the presidents are sometimes so odd that you forget the otherwise fine performances from Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Lenny Kravitz as Whitaker's fellow White House butlers.

 Make no mistake about it: I can be a hard audience for movies, in part because I'm always trying to put together where a film is going next, so The Butler was unfortunately too "easy" for me. Most audiences will find more to like about it than I did, and I'm not trying to say it wasn't good. But for the Cap'n, it wasn't anything more than "good," and I saw movies this year that were a LOT better than good.

  And to close this out, I'd like to take a look at another movie "inspired" on a true story (is this just the new thing to avoid people thinking that a condensed version of someone's life isn't 100% factually accurate?), Dallas Buyers Club. I will openly admit I know almost nothing about Ron Woodruff, the Dallas electrician / rodeo rider who contracted HIV and found a way to make money off of medicine not approved by the FDA by bringing it in from other countries. I listened to a segment about him on NPR shortly before the film's release and from interviews with people that knew him, the real Woodruff was perhaps even more gregarious than Matthew McConaughey portrays him in the film, and he cursed more, which is impressive considering the level of profanity in Dallas Buyer's Club.

 That said, I was rather impressed by the film from director Jean-Marc Vallée (Young Victoria) and screenwriters Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack. Woodruff, in the film, is a man out for number one, a gambler and ladies man who ultimately does a good deed mostly out of self interest, but who is often sympathetic even as we marvel at what a selfish, homophobic asshole he can be. Casting McConaughey goes a long way in helping to not be totally repulsed by Woodruff's actions and attitudes (at least early on); the actor has always been likeable, and string of recent performances went a long way to bringing him back from just a "naked bongo" punchline. Dallas Buyers Club is one of two movies I saw with McConaughey this year where I was very impressed with the actor, and his physical transformation as Woodruff is akin to Christian Bale's in The Machinist.

 But it's not just McConaughey, or some clever choices of misdirection early in the film (I'm thinking particularly of one scene where candles lead you to believe Woodruff is in one place when he's in nearly the polar opposite); Jared Leto is also something of a revelation as Rayon, a fellow AIDS patient who becomes Woodruff's business partner and slowly (though never unbelievably) something of a friend. Rayon never gives Woodruff an inch in his behavior, and the interplay between Leto and McConaughey is the film's strongest selling point. Jennifer Garner, Steve Zahn, and Griffin Dunne are also good in supporting roles, and Dallas Buyers Club mostly keeps things from wandering into maudlin or tear-jerker territory. Woodruff's battles with the medical industry and particularly with the FDA could easily fall into a "David vs. Goliath" narrative, but credit where it is due for keeping the story in less rigidly defined territory. It's a reasonably sober look at someone who did something good for maybe the wrong reasons, but did good nonetheless, and if I'm going to damn the other films in this section of the recap with faint praise, it only seemed fair to close out with something I think you'd all want to see.

Shocktober Revisited: So You Won't Have To - The Thing (2011)

 It's almost too easy to beat up on The Thing - it's a movie with no purpose. From the big dumb cgi alien to the big dumb climax in the big dumb space ship to the between-credits sequence that's there to remind people that the END of this film is the BEGINNING of John Carpenter's The Thing, there's no reason for this movie to exist. If you thought to yourself "who gives a shit what happened to the Norwegian station?" when you realized this was a prequel and not another remake, director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and writer Eric Heisserer didn't do anything that's going to make it worth your while. Their answer, apparently, was "pretty much the same thing that happened in the first remake."

 Let's get that out of the way right up front, by the way: I'm tired of reading reviews that call this a "remake" of John Carpenter's The Thing and then conveniently neglect to mention that Carpenter was remaking The Thing from Another World. Have any doubts about that? Watch the title screens of both films. Technically all three films present themselves as adaptations of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" but the 2011 iteration is explicitly set right before the 1982 version. The newer Thing is designed to be linked to the first remake, which adapts the premise if not the structure of The Thing from Another World. John Carpenter's The Thing is a superb remake, and one of the arguments everyone uses when defending "good" remakes, because it is, in its own right, a fantastic horror film. It's prequel, on the other hand, is awfully familiar. Oh, and awful.

 To be honest, if the film didn't keep shitting its pants trying to be grosser or creepier than The Thing everybody loves, it might be okay. Then again, the reason everybody calls it a "remake" is because the story is so close to what happens in John Carpenter's film. After a promising opening where the Norwegian crew discovers the frozen spaceship and "thing," we meet Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a bio-paleontologist invited to attend a "discovery" on short notice by Dr. Sandor Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) and his research assistant Adam (Eric Christan Olsen). We already know what the "discovery" is, because if we've seen The Thing from Another World and / or The Thing, we've seen the outline of the ship and the frozen specimen. This time we get to see the ship, which at first seems novel but then becomes ridiculous at the end of the film.

 Well, you can guess that they bring the specimen back to the base camp, it thaws out, starts killing / absorbing people, and before we know it no one can trust each other. First they pull a "bait and switch" about who the Thing has "copied" in a helicopter attack scene that defies narrative logic. Okay, I'm willing to accept that the Thing is (SPOILER) just trying to get back to its ship and not headed for society like Kate worries it will. That's fine. But why, when in the helicopter, does the Thing freak out and attack the guy we thought was "infected" and cause the copter to crash, presumably killing it and the two American pilots (Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). But wait! They aren't dead, so Kate doesn't trust them. Could one of them be the Thing that survived and (for no good reason) returned to the camp?

 The paranoia that works so well in Carpenter's film is nonexistent. Why? None of the characters are remotely memorable. It's hard to care about who is or isn't the Thing when your protagonists are two pilots who should be dead, three scientists who behave suspiciously, a bland research assistant and a gaggle of interchangeable Norwegian victims-to-be. I give Mary Elizabeth Winstead credit for trying to keep everything together, and I will also concede that the film wisely doesn't try to make her into a Jack MacReady surrogate. That said, she's constantly pushed into the background of scenes by characters I could care less about and I didn't buy the "sad" ending before the film remembered it needed to bridge to a much better film.

 Because they couldn't use the "blood" test again, there's a half novel but half baked attempt to develop the absorbing powers of the creature. It can't mimic non-organic material, so Kate decides the best way to see who is and isn't human is to - it's so much stupider typing it - check everyone's mouths for fillings. Seriously. They set up the Thing's evolution but couldn't figure out how to parlay that into an interesting way of generating suspense. Why? Because FOUR people don't have fillings and only one of them is the Thing, but we don't find out which one until a silly fight scene between the pilots and the scientists.

 A word on the effects - I was under the impression that 2011's The Thing was to have more "practical" special effects and less CGI. What I didn't realize was that was limited to corpses. The work by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. is appropriately disgusting, but it isn't freakish or disturbing like Rob Bottin's effects. They also don't move - the practical effects are for corpses, of fused Thing/human hybrids or half absorbed corpses or charred remains. Anything that moves is bad looking CGI that seems like it was borrowed from Dead Space. Things look even stupider in the ship, where the Thing looks like a rejected monster from Men in Black II.

Who was this movie made for? I can't imagine people who have seen The Thing from Another World or The Thing sitting through the entire film. Only people with a passing knowledge of Carpenter's film would even stay engaged, but most of the connections at the end would be lost on them. I actually give a pass to selling it as "from the producers of Dawn of the Dead" because in theory, it could have been different enough of a take on the premise that using Zack Snyder's remake as a basis for comparison. Had the film lived up to that concept, maybe I could understand why it exists.

 For a brief moment in the first thirty minutes, I thought there might be something watchable in The Thing. It turned out that there was, and it was John Carpenter's The Thing. Why I watched the watered down, CGI "enhanced" version is anyone's guess. Well, the truth is that I said "what the hell" and rolled the dice. Never has the term "craps" been more appropriate. Let's just say I watched it So You Won't Have To and leave it at that.

A Few Thoughts on Alien and Prometheus

 As I mentioned earlier this week, I watched Alien twice last weekend. Having seen Alien recently, I thought it might be a good time to listen to the commentary tracks on each version (the 1979 theatrical cut and the 2003 re-edited "alternate" version created for the Alien Quadrilogy boxed set) as I'd never actually gotten around to that*. And, seeing that the Ridley Scott directed / Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts scripted Prometheus is coming out next week, it seemed like a good time to glean some information about the well guarded story.

 Since the announcement that Scott was returning to science fiction for the first time in thirty years, there has been a degree of speculation as to how Prometheus was connected to Alien. Scott indicated that the original plan was for the film to be a prequel to Alien, but that in the course of developing the script he, Lindelof, and Spaihts moved away from that and that the film was a stand alone story. Then Scott indicated that Prometheus shared "DNA" with the Alien world but that there would be no Xenomorphs (the titular creatures of the series, as they don't have a species identified in any of the films). And then the trailers made their way to the internet.

 Without breaking too much down (believe me, type "Prometheus" into the Google search engine and follow any links from online magazines detailing the history of production, questions about the trailer, and articles that deal with questions from the viral campaign), the first teaser had what looked like the derelict from Alien (and Aliens) with the same cockpit Dallas, Lambert, and Kane explore, something that looks a lot like the Space Jockey's head (or helmet) and images that went beyond sharing "DNA". The subsequent trailers (international and domestic) introduced shapes and structures that looked a LOT like Xenomorphs, something that looks like a proto-facehugger, and more than one Space Jockey (with and without helmet, which explains what connects to the cockpit).

 The viral ads online have introduced Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland (one can debate whether this removes Lance Henriksen's Charles Bishop Weyland as the originator of the "Company" - based on the chronology, it's possible Pearce plays his son and therefore not all of the terrible Alien vs Predator films is being thrown out) and introduced David (Michael Fassbinder) as Weyland's android aboard the Prometheus (no Ash-like misdirection this time out), as well as a video from Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) contacting Weyland that also introduces the Yutani into Weyland Yutani (from Aliens).

 I don't even want to talk about some of the spots airing on television because I'm trying to avoid them. At least two I've seen give away far more than any of the trailers have about what the not-facehugger thing is capable of doing and more specific details about Shaw's theory of who the "Architects" are. They have produced one two interesting images (particularly this spot), including the one that conclusively answers the question "is this the same planet where the crew of the Nostromo find the derelict ship?"

 The answer is no: that planet was LV-426**, and this image:

 Makes it clear they're headed to LV-223, so we're not being misled and the fact that a Space Jockey's ship that crashes in every trailer isn't the same ship from Alien. But wait... if we go into rampant speculation mode, what else is there to learn here.

 Well, here's the shot that immediately precedes the image above:

 It shows the planet, the moon (LV-223), and another planetoid orbiting. I point this out because one of the things I noticed while watching Alien again is that LV-426 is orbiting this planet:

 It was actually much more difficult to find good pictures from Alien, but in the film you can see what appears to be a gas giant with a ring around it and two planetoids in orbit (I say planetoid instead of moon because that's how Scott describes it in the 1999 commentary, when he says "they told me the planetoid wouldn't have an atmosphere and I said mine would because otherwise it looked like rubbish.") This shot it from the end of the Alien teaser (hence the tagline in the lower portion of the picture) but you can kind of make out both smaller orbiting planetoids, one of which is LV-426.

 So is the other one LV-223? I don't know, but it was something I hadn't even given though about before putting Alien back on. Yes, the crash isn't on the same moon/planetoid but does that mean the Prometheus doesn't land somewhere very near to where the Nostromo answers a distress call? I guess we'll find out next week.

 Other interesting tidbits from Ridley Scott's commentary (the 1999 one and his sections of the 2003 group track, recorded with and without Sigourney Weaver):

 - He describes Ash as "basically a Replicant" tying together in his mind the worlds of Alien and Blade Runner, made all the more curious as Scott has announced he will be making a sequel to the latter with screenwriter Hampton Fancher (and possibly Harrison Ford in a small capacity) in the next few years.

 - Scott mentions both in 1999 and in 2003 of his fascination with the Space Jockey and his theory that the derelict was a "bioweapon carrier" designed to unleash the Xenomorphs on some unidentified species. He and Weaver agree that the origin of the Space Jockey and the Xenomorphs is the only way to continue making films in the Alien universe and that if either of them were involved, they would want to explore just that.

 - His conception of the Xenomorph was that it could essentially reproduce asexually, and the deleted "cocoon" sequence hinted that it could change its victims into other Xenomorphs. All of this was removed from the theatrical cut and the creation of the Queen in Aliens completely removes this from the lifecycle, but if you put on the 2003 recut of the film and listen to Scott's explanation of what Ripley is seeing, he explains an alternate theory as to how a single Xenomorph could perpetuate the species. Scott frequently refers to the facehugger concept of implanting eggs in living hosts by mentioning insects that have similar tactics.

 So here we are, one week away from Prometheus, and this could all be irrelevant by then. It's hard to say, but I have fun geeking out and speculating every now and then. Watching Alien again (and again) certainly gave me some things to consider until seeing Scott's return to the world of Space Jockeys and alien life forms. I guess I'll revisit this soon...



 * I had listened to the track for Aliens, which is an interesting collection of various participants, sometimes in groups or, in the case of James Cameron, alone, and contains all kinds of information about the making of the film and its relationship with Alien.
** That is, by the way, not speculation. In addition to being able to find that information on virtually any site about Alien or Aliens, it's part of the menu that opens the Alien Blu-Ray, which also provides the name "Acheron" which is what the colonists call the planet in Aliens.

A Quick Note from Blogorium Headquarters

 Greetings to all readers in... internet land? (It doesn't have the same ring to it as TV Land, now does it?) Well, the Cap'n is hopping in between non-Blogorium related jazz, including my non-Blogorium job. Yes, it's true, the Cap'n cannot live off of the Blogorium alone - or at all. I don't make any money writing this, which is either a point of pride or something I'm too foolish to have capitalized on at this point. Take your pick.

 At any rate, I have to run off here shortly and will need to be up bright and early tomorrow morning to keep things running here at Blogorium central, so today's entry gets the short straw today. But don't worry, I'll make it up to you later this week.

 It's probably for the best, because after watching Alien twice this weekend (the 1979 theatrical cut and the 2003 "alternate" version Ridley Scott put together for the Quadrilogy) with both commentaries available, I have some thoughts about Prometheus, including the TV spots that continue to give away more information than I think I want to know. There's a lot of speculation out there, and the Cap'n will be adding his, with the benefit of some specific images from Alien and Ridley Scott's own words about the Space Jockey, the Derelict, Ash, and his desire to explore certain aspects of the Alien universe. All of them seem to feed into Prometheus, what we know about the film (which isn't much) and what we think we know isn't the case. Anyway, it's not going to hurt things for me to have to wait until Thursday to get to that.

 In the meantime you'll find a Retro Review tomorrow, a Video Daily Double on Wednesday, and then thoughts on Alien and Prometheus Thursday as we head into the film's release next week.

 Additionally, I'm mulling over when to bring back What the Hell Week, as I've decided to check out four or five films that under normal circumstances I'd avoid like the plague (one of them is This Means War) and maybe that's where a full examination of the Saw series will land. Or I might hold that off until closer to Summer Fest, which is still up in the air with respect to date and location. I was going to hold it after the 4th of July, and Friday the 13th makes sense, but nearly everyone I know is going to see Neko Case on the 14th, which takes away a prime day of Fest activity. Also, I'm torn between schlock-heavy or focusing on some really creepy horror films that have gone largely unseen since the Nevermore Film Festival.

 Well, I'm being summoned, so all this and more will be addressed soon. Until then, send in your suggestions of what you'd like to see for Summer Fest. I'm still not ruling out this year being the "Remake" Fest...

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Three)

 Welcome back to another edition of the Blogorium's Retro Review. Today we're going to continue looking back at a series of reviews written for defunct online magazine You're All Doomed. Previously we took a look at reviews from 2005 and at the output of guest blogger Professor Murder. Turning the wayback machine a little further, let's take a look at a few movies from 2004.

 Once again, a bit of a disclaimer: these reviews represent a proto-Cap'n Howdy and accordingly they don't look like what I write today. They're shorter, tend to make logical leaps and assume the audience will simply follow, and sometimes contain erroneous information because I was more interested in getting reactions out unspoiled rather than fact checking and researching before and during the writing process. I am, however, leaving them untouched in order to represent the original material.

---

The Ladykillers

no immediate star review.

I'm sort of torn about Joel and Ethan Coen's The Ladykillers. Part of me genuinely likes the movie; the twisted sense of humor, the (somewhat absurd) denouement, Tom Hanks. Another part of me recognizes that it's slight, virtually nonexistent plot is padded out with wild caricatures instead of characters, and that almost as much of the movie doesn't work as does. Let's take it bit by bit:

The Good -

Tom Hanks: Ever the curious exception to the rule, Hanks will do a run of family friendly pap, and with little provocation will jump into cahoots with strange little projects that are poorly received (The Burbs, Joe vs The Volcano) When I heard he was working with the Coens, there was little concern on my part. They are, after all, largely responsible (along with Steven Sodebergh and Robert Rodriguez) for bringing George Clooney back from the abyss of crap like The Peacemaker. Hanks invests every bizarre peccadillo into Professor G.H. Dorr, and watching him dig into this character is in itself a riot.

Cameo work by Bruce Campbell, Stephen Root, and George Wallace: Little things that make the Coen movies so fun. Sure, there's no Buscemi this time out, not even John Tuturro, but Coen-like flourishes are what make their movies almost a genre unto itself.

Irma P. Hall: WIthout Hall, Hanks would have nothing to work with. As the straight woman of the piece (who's anything but) she anchors the film and gives everyone something to react to. And the disdain for "hippity hop", or, more specifically, "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" by a Tribe Called Quest.

The Bad -

The rest of the cast: Normally, I'm as big a J.K. Simmons fan as you'll find. He's a pitch perfect J. Jonah Jameson, and had a small but memorable role in O Brother. But here he's working with nothing better than fart jokes. And bad fart jokes at that. Marlon Wayans has a little more to do, and to be fair, he isn't as grating as usual, but being the character known for nonstop profanity is a little one note. Of course, the rest of the crooks (Ryan Hurst, Tzi Ma) have even less to do, and their moments to shine are accordingly lackluster.

The Pacing: This movie seems like it's over in no time, and while some might look at that as a good thing, I felt cheated. Yes, the plot is slight, the tension is basically nonexistent, but there was nothing to really lock on to while watching it. The Ladykillers is so schizophrenic that when it does end you wonder what the hell you just did.

The Fact that You Can Rent the REAL Ladykillers: In the scope of remakes, this isn't the worst, but it can't hold a candle to the original. Something about the british sensiblity is lost in americanizing it (i realize how obvious the previous statement is, but nevertheless) and while I loved Hanks in the movie, he's no Alec Guinness. Or even Peter Sellers, who was on screen for the first time in the original Ladykillers.

So, where are we? ratings, right. let's do this three ways.

As a Coen Brothers Movie: It ranks above Intolerable Cruelty, but just barely. This is lower end Coens. 2 stars

As a remake: It's better than Psycho or Shaft. Even better than The Planet of the Apes. But it's no Scarface, or even Willard. 2.5 stars

As a Hanks/Hall showcase: Here, as the only movie in its category, does it truly shine. 3.5 stars.

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May

3.5 stars

May isn't a horror movie. Well, it is, but it's just as much black comedy and character portrait as an edge of your seat kill fest. Gorehounds might be disappointed by the lack of truly violent moments, but even when things spiral in the third act, May is more about character than kill.

May Dove Canady, when we meet her, is being fitted with a patch for her lazy eye. As a little girl who doesn't relate well to others, she mistakenly scares off friends by telling them she is not, in fact, a pirate. Her mother, an odd bird herself, decides to remedy the situation by making a doll for May. But her owned skewed sense of reality prevents May from even enjoying this when the doll can't ever leave its glass case.

When we catch up with May later on in life (played by Angela Bettis), she's a painfully lonely and withdrawn young woman with a crush on Adam (Jeremy Sisto), and a job working at the local vet. When a chance encounter brings the possiblity of something more, then things get complicated.

Now it sounds like I've told you a lot, but that's the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Along the way we meet the coworker hot for May (Anna Faris of Scary Movie and Lost in Translation), a punk with a tattoo she admires (James Duvall of Donnie Darko) and a class full of blind children. If I'm being vague, well I sort of need to be. Telling you too much, or even just regurgitating the back of the DVD would give away where the movie goes (although an astute viewer can pick it up pretty early on). What works in May is Angela Bettis. At no point during her character arc does a decision seem out of place or unbelievable, and she's a magnetic lead. Sisto doesn't fare as well; he's sort of a bore and doesn't have much to do in the movie except react. Faris is in the same boat. She spends most of the movie acting "come hither" to May, and by the end we're a little surprised she's so relaxed by what's going on. Duvall doesn't actually have anything to do, but it was nice to see Frank the Bunny in another movie.

Lucky McKee uses a lot of first time director tricks to keep the story going: jump cuts, music montages, but in the context of playing things out through May's point of view, it works. While it doesn't succeed on all fronts (for one, the film takes itself far too seriously), he's managed to craft a fine little fable and shows a lot of promise down the line.

That he's managed to wrangle horror icon Bruce Campbell into his second movie, The Woods, is a pretty good indication that Lucky McKee has a solid future in the world of low budget fright flicks. Don't get me wrong, this isn't an indictment of an indication of his skills. Rather, I'm glad to see the new crop of horror directors slowly build their reputations. While May, like Cabin Fever, isn't a home run on the first try, it's better than a lot of the remakes and sequels that pass for horror these days.
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Hellraiser: Hellseeker

NEGATIVE STARS

Let's face it, folks. There are no more Hellraiser movies. They stopped making 'em after 3, and the sooner you get used to it, the better off all of us are. Bondage freaks and Pinheadites may scream "But NO! NO! You just haven't seen the original cut of BLOODLINE! Heathen scum!" Bollocks to that. Just like Halloween, there's a cut off point and begging to include a crap sequel doesn't sit well with me. But since there's a suggestion I ought to finish this "review", let us discuss the relative merits (or lack thereof) of Hellseeker:

At first glance, this is THE Hellraiser sequel people have been looking for. Bringing Ashley Laurence back into the mix as Kirsty for the first time since "Hell on Earth" would in theory be the jolt this series needs to get back on track, but wait.... she's on screen about as much as Pinhead was in Hellraiser: Inferno (which is only barely a Hellraiser movie, but gory as hell). For the rest of Hellseeker, we follow the helplessly emotionless Dean Winters (of Oz fame) who seems incapable of playing his scenes any way other than snarky. And when you're the bereaved husband of the supposedly drowned Kirsty, snarky doesn't cut it. But wait, did she drown? Scenes bleed together from painfully unerotic encounters to baffling and pointless work and police interrogations (and that's no typo. every point he enters his cubicle, the obnoxious "co-worker" asks the same stupid questions the same stupid ways over and over) I suppose we're meant to question his reality, but this reviewer stopped caring about twenty minutes in. Vanilla Sky this isn't, although Vanilla Hell does aptly describe watching Hellseeker. To spare you the curiousity of what the "twist" is:

Idiot buys the Lament Configuration for Kirsty on their anniversary, she opens it and talks to Pinhead. They make a deal that she can deliver five souls more rotten than this movie, and his is the last. So, viola! The ENTIRE movie is Dean Winters coming to grips with being in hell. *Yawn*

Is it gory, you say? No. If you want gory Hellraiser movies, this isn't your flick. In fact, Hellseeker really has nothing going for it, and I'd be pleased as punch to report to you this DTV ditty was the last, but oh no, we have two more to look forward to: Hellraiser - Deader (I shit you not. Starring Kari Wuhrer), and Hellraiser - Hellworld (with Lance Henrikson). Actually, the premise of Hellworld is classic, so I'll close this review with the plot outline from IMDB.com:

Pinhead returns to terrorize computer hackers that have opened a virtual Lament Configuration on the website Hellworld.com.


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Exorcist: The Beginning Review

2 Stars (out of Five)

I know everyone's expecting a straight pan of this movie; to be honest i went in expecting to hate it, and to be sure, i was mostly correct. Exorcist: The Beginning, is in some ways every bit as bad as Exorcist 2: Heretic, and just as dumb as any other big budget horror movie of its ilk (by that i'm referring to such ditties as Lost Souls, Bless the Child, The Order, or any Omen movie that isn't the first one) The problem is that E:B could have been something good indeed.

To be fair, Beginning has some good things going for it. Stellan Skarsgard is excellent playing a younger Father Merrin, and since much of the movie rests on his shoulders, it is a relief they didn't cast Ryan Phillipe or Kerr Smith, who are much to young, and would've likely fallen hard with the rest of the movie. The rest of the cast either struggle to maintain some credibility, or simply fall into the abyss of over acting.

But let's get into why this movie is so bad. As many of you may know, the Exorcist prequel floated around for a while from director to director (John Frankenheimer was originally slated to direct, but left the project a month before his passing) when Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and directed Auto Focus, came on board, he set out with the intention of making a psychological thriller instead of a bloodbath that producers wanted. He made his movie, and was promptly fired. In order to guarantee they'd have the film they were paying for, producers turned to Renny Harlin. (now, before i get into Harlin bashing, let me go ahead and say that A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Die Hard 2, and The Long Kiss Goodnight remain to this day on my list of guilty pleasures) Known for such gems as Deep Blue Sea, Cutthroat Island, and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, naturally he was the obvious choice to continue the Exorcist series. Thusly, most of the film was reshot to include more graphic violence, include a love interest(?!) for Merrin, and the most ridiculous exorcism ever put on film. Rumour goes that about 20 minutes of the movie is still actually Schrader's, and to Harlin's credit, for the first hour and change I couldn't tell what belonged to who.

And therein lies the problem. The first three quarters of this movie is, with a few exceptions, pretty good. It is at least better than Heretic, and on par with The Exorcist 3 (and Legion isn't really that terrible as these types of movies go) There are a couple of suspensful moments, and while it is overly bloody, the mystery surrounding a church buried in East Africa is intriguing. However, things start to fall apart in the third act (specifically when the Sandstorm hits) and if you're not into spoilers, i'd go ahead and get out of here now, because we're veering that way. From this point out, this movie is a joke. Now, i need to take a moment out and discuss the truly horrendus CGI in this movie, because for the bulk of the film, you just try to tune it out (the Hyenas stand out in particular, because they ruin an otherwise well thought out sequence involving children in peril) but when the sandstorm rolls in, looking like b-roll footage from The Mummy Returns, you know things are in trouble. How bad does it get? Well, there's the British soldiers fighting with the Tribesmen in an unnecessarily brutal and pointless sequence, or perhaps the bait and switch bit on who is actually possessed, or perhaps the aforementioned exorcism, which takes place in the pagan temple beneath the church and culminates with the Captain Howdy (i won't spoil all of it for you) literally flying down a tunnel towards Merrin as he tries to cast out Satan. Seriously. Not only does it take all of the punch out of the actual exorcism in the first movie (were you to watch them chronologically) but it's laugh out loud stupid. But the coup de gras is actually the very ending, where they blow two key opportunities to make up for this slight. Merrin is back in Italy, renewed faith, etc, and the moment comes where he stands up from the table, puts on the hat everyone recognizes, and walks off towards the Vatica- oh wait! Remember those rotten effects i mentioned? Well, Father Merrin walks off into the Green Screen where a painfully fake looking picture of the Vatican is, and they don't even have the sense to play Tubular Bells. *sigh.

Perhaps Paul Schrader's cut (which is purported to be coming out on dvd) is the movie this franchise deserved, and we shall see. As it stands, Exorcist: Beginning is a painfully schizophrenic movie that isn't sure what it wants to be, and to me, it stinks.

Blogorium Review: Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace in 3-D

 How would I know? I didn't see it. I was too busy picking up my copy of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One to be bothered with garbage like Star Wars. Like, duh!

 Oh, you wanted more than that? You don't believe me, you say? "Of course you'd say that, it sounds just like the kind of excuse you'd make up, Cap'n" you say? Well, you're right. It does sound just like the kind of excuse I'd make up, even though you all know I'm a Twi-Hard and have been for as long as that term existed, and probably even before that just because it was cooler then before Summit made all those movies and Twilight got all commercial and crap. Back in the good old days when you could ask somebody about Twilight and they'd be all "what?" and you'd feel cool. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 "Besides," you say, "we all know you didn't go see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace LAST night, dummy! You saw it on Thursday at the midnight showing because we totally drove by The [insert name of nearby theatre showing The Phantom Menace in 3-D] and saw you in line with your fancy lightsaber you bought when you were working at that toy store but told everyone it was 'too expensive' so don't even front, homeskillet."

 As though I'd be the only thirty something waiting in line to see The Phantom Menace in theatres again and relive my early twenties as an obnoxious fanboy. As though I couldn't have just stayed home and watched Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace on Blu-Ray while wearing 3-D glasses and being all "great graphics" like Freddy Krueger said in the Nightmare on Elm Street movie where Freddy dies (in 3-D) even though in that scene he was actually referring to a video game he was playing with his "power glove" which also begat the line "NOW I'M PLAYING WITH POWER" like the real Nintendo Power Glove that Nintendo wouldn't let the makers of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare use so they made the joke anyway. I could have done that. But you know you're right: I didn't.

 Actually though, that's a really good idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that while I was watching Hostel Part III. I'm going to try that right now -

 ***TEN MINUTES LATER***

 You know what? Never mind - that was a horrible idea. Now my head hurts and I think my eyes are bleeding and I'm only halfway convinced that's because of the glasses. I guess I could review the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One Special Edition Two Disc Blu-Ray / DVD / Digital Copy that I got that came with a replica of Bella and Edward's wedding invitation and the special replica(s) of Bella's engagement and wedding rings I bought on Target dot com for $24.99 (what a steal - am I right or what Twi-Hards???) or the guy they hired at Target who looked JUST LIKE Taylor Lautner but who would only sign copies of Abduction... wait... maybe it was Taylor Lautner. Huh.

 Anyway, I could totally do that, or I could review Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D (short review: It Sucked... in 3-D!!!) which, you're right, I totally saw on Thursday and put up a review of Hostel Part III at roughly the same time to trick all of you. I mean, duh, it's STAR WARS. I was into Star Wars before I was born - that's how far back I go with that. I had totally memorized the Journal of the Whills before most of you were like "R2-D what now?" and yeah, Greedo TOTALLY shot first. What is wrong with you people? Do you really think that HAN SOLO is a COLD BLOODED KILLER? Come on, people. Why would a cold blooded killer go to all the effort to get Chewbacca back to Kashyyyk for Life Day? I mean, Life Day is just a made up Wookie Holiday anyway. It totally didn't exist before 1978.

 Sorry - where was I? Oh right, I was going to tell you about how you should not see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D and get your own awesome Pod Racer 3-D goggle glasses things. I mean what else are you going to do this weekend? See Journey 2: The Mysterious Island? One of those boring Oscar nominated movies? Yawnsville! Yeah, I bet seeing Hugo is really going to enrich your life or some crap like that. Well does Hugo have its own Jar Jar? I don't think so! Game, set, match: you lose, Scorsese. Lucas for the win. Now if you'll forgive me, there's a special interview with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart about the wedding of the century I need to be partaking in. What the hell kind of Blogorium Review could I give you on Monday if I hadn't seen that?

Five Movies: The Five Worst Movies I Saw in 2011

 Today I'm going to kick off Cap'n Howdy's Year End Recap for 2011 with the bottom of the barrel. As I'm generally convinced that I won't see anything that sucks more than the films below, I feel comfortable locking this in place and moving onward and upward.

 I actually very rarely watch a movie expecting it to be terrible. There are plenty of movies I know are going to be, how shall we say, "not good" but those films tend to have entertainment value that compensates for their lack of finesse (or if you prefer, quality). I gravitate towards movies with rewatchability, something that's going to play well with a crowd of people willing to set their need for well told stories aside and have a good time. Sometimes that burns me; the films on this list are movies that bored me, annoyed me, or couldn't justify their meager existence by the standards of "popcorn fare."

 Contrary to popular assumptions, I didn't really see that many "bad" movies in 2011, which is admittedly a bit surprising, even for me. It is telling, however, that of the five films below, all but one of them were "So You Won't Have To" reviews, and the one that wasn't happened during "What the Hell Week," that momentary lapse in judgement when I watched Saw VII. Speaking of which, the (presently) "final" Saw film wouldn't even make this year's list. That's how bad things got.

5. The Thing - A prequel with no reason for being that only reminds you how much better you've seen this exact story. Twenty years ago. I still have no idea who this movie was made for, because if you're going to see this iteration of The Thing, you HAVE to have seen the Carpenter version for the ending to mean anything. If you've seen John Carpenter's The Thing, there's nothing for you in this movie.

4. Sucker Punch - I can totally understand who this movie is for, and even by the standards of 13-15 year old friendly, geek fetish fanboy drivel, Sucker Punch fails. It's like that scene in A Dirty Shame where Johnny Knoxville introduces Tracey Ullman to the various fetishes - a little bit of schoolgirl uniforms with steampunk Nazis and samurai with Gatling guns mixed with dragons and killer robots on trains and oh yeah it all happens during sexy stripteases to Bjork... but it's all so... boring.

3. The Change-Up - We're moving into really vile territory here. I didn't like The Thing and Sucker Punch - they wasted my time. The Change-Up was repulsive, irredeemable, chauvinistic crap. I felt insulted that the people who made this thought I might laugh at anything that happens in this piece of shit. Oh yeah, did I mention that the movie opens with a baby shitting in Jason Bateman's mouth? That's comedy, folks.

2. Blubberella - Speaking of unfunny, offensive, stupid, juvenile crap, how could I leave Uwe Boll off of the list? Somewhere in the midst of making Bloodrayne III: The Third Reich, the good doctor thought it would be fun to make a parody of his own films using most of the same cast and sets, but replacing his vampire heroine with a really fat chick. And constantly making jokes about how fat she is. Get it? It's a comedy because she makes fat jokes about herself! And so does everyone else! And don't forget jokes about Jews because it's a movie with Nazis! Oh look, Uwe Boll is Hitler! And that white guy who plays the gay stereotype is in blackface playing the mother from Precious! It's so hilarious. So hilarious you won't ever have to waste your time. But if this is number two, then number one has to be something really heinous...

1. Scream 4 - Fuck Scream 4. If Wes Craven can't do better than My Soul to Take and Scream 4, he can hang up that "master of suspense" moniker and go back to teaching literature. The film is nothing but 90 minutes of sour grapes about the state of horror films disguised as another "deconstruction" of the genre. It's a film that uses the structural hook of "remakes" as the template for the kills but can't even muster the energy to be a bad remake of Scream. It's just another tired sequel that nobody asked for and nobody is talking about. I watched it with Cranpire, who is as close to a die hard "fan" of the series as I know, and he hated it. What chance did the rest of us have?


 Additional Awards:

 It May Have Been Broke, but You Sure Didn't Fix It: Red State - Kevin Smith decided to go in a different direction with Red State, and it still sucked. While it's true that I couldn't finish Cop Out, I did sit through Smith's ham handed take on the Westboro Baptist Church by way of the Waco / Branch Davidian disaster, and I wish I hadn't. Not only is the camerawork reminiscent of the worst "hand-held" style TV cinematography, but the story is so damned smug by the end that I wished all of the protagonists had been killed instead of just the three kids hoping to get laid. Oh. Spoiler.


 Not Going to End Up on Any Other List so here's as Good a Place as Any: The People vs. George Lucas -The reason I didn't review this documentary is because there's nothing in the film that its target audience doesn't already know. That defeats the purpose of the film, since only internet geeks outraged over the changes to Star Wars would even care in the first place. I didn't realize it was still necessary to beat up on Jar Jar Binks twelve years later, but sure enough he's there to be flogged. Listen, if you really want a strong deconstruction of George Lucas and Star Wars, watch the "Mr. Plinkett" reviews. They're more entertaining.

 Probably My Favorite Gimmick Review of a Movie That Deserved It: The Hangover Part II

 The Worst Movie I Saw in 2011 That Wasn't from 2011: A Night to Dismember - I still have no idea what we watched, and two people continue to remind me that I traumatized them at Horror Fest with this "film."

 (dis)honorable mention goes to: In Time, Exporting Raymond, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Killer Elite, The Mechanic, Season of the Witch, Ride Rise Roar, Cyrus, Quarantine 2: Terminal, Bong of the Dead, Blood Runs Cold, and in a surprising turn-about, John Carpenter's The Ward. Don't think that just because they didn't make the final five that they're worth you time AT ALL.


 "Sorry, I somehow missed these" list: Green Lantern, Apollo 18, Straw Dogs, Cars 2, Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil, A Serbian Film, The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence, Jack & Jill, What's Your Number?, Abducted, Battle: Los Angeles, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, Atlas Shrugged, Zookeeper, Red Riding Hood, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One, and I only saw five minutes of Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. I turned it off.

 I'll be back later this week with the middle and the best and then the very best of 2011. Believe me, kiddos, it only goes up from here!

Blogorium Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

 Despite hearing over and over again that "it was WAAAAYYYY better than I expected," I came into Rise of the Planet of the Apes with some trepidation. Like many of you, I had been relieved to hear that the reboot / prequel to the series was actually good and not just a nostalgia cash grab, but the lingering taste of Tim Burton's incomprehensible mess from ten years ago kept me cautious. I also heard - often from even the best reviews - that while the apes were amazing, the humans were one dimensional and one longed to return to Caesar's story.

  To be sure, the story of Will Rodman (James Franco)'s search for a cure to Alzheimer's isn't all that engaging. John Lithgow does the best he can as Will's father, Charles, but most of the time he just plays "confused," "surprised," or "frustrated." Freida Pinto is left with even less as primate veterinarian Caroline Aranha, who somehow dates Will for five years and never thinks to ask him why Caesar is so intelligent or even look into his research on ALZ 112. Gen Sys project manager Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) is a bottom line driven, moustache twirling baddie, and for good measure there's Will's neighbor whose only emotion seems to be "indignant."

 A series of misunderstandings lead to the death of Will's test subject, Bright Eyes, and the cancellation of his research, so he smuggles home Caesar (Andy Serkis) and some of the ALZ 112 and tests it on his father. Bright Eyes genetically passed on the 112 to Caesar, and his intellect is formidable, which becomes threatening through more misunderstandings. The good news is that most of the film is less about Will and more about Caesar, and if you've seen Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, you have some idea why that justifies Rise of the Planet of the Apes in and of itself.

 It's telling that the apes are listed first in the credits, because Rise is very much their film. Any misgivings I might have about the humans (who fall into the "sympathetic to Caesar" or "evil jerks" with no shades of gray in between), Rise of the Planet of the Apes is totally compelling and successful when it Caesar and the other apes are on screen. After Caesar is separated from Will, he ends up in a primate refuge run by disinterested keeper John Landon (Brian Cox) and his cruel, bored son Dodge (Tom Felton), although they are secondary to what happens. We're treated to an ape version of a "prison" movie, and the way that Caesar not only takes control of the other apes but wins over his "alpha" competition, Rocket, is inspired storytelling. All of it done without dialogue and based entirely on Serkis' performance as Caesar.

 This is somewhat secondary to the review itself, but I'm not sure that Rise of the Planet of the Apes needed so many references to the original series. Now it isn't just Tom Felton saying (verbatim) Charlton Heston's "damn dirty ape" line, or naming many of the apes after memorable moments from the original series (Bright Eyes, Cornelia, Maurice, and Rocket*). It gets silly when you realize that Will's experimental drug is named after the running time of Planet of the Apes (no, really; the screenwriter nearly named it RT-112), and I don't know that we needed the subplot about the space mission to Mars and the Icarus disappearing, or necessarily how it was that apes began riding horses. On the other hand, I liked the way writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver incorporated the line "it's a mad house! A MAD HOUSE!" into the film (also through Felton) and a hint of why humanity declined as apes ascended the evolutionary ladder.

 I really can't heap enough praise on Andy Serkis for bringing Caesar to life. I know that there are other performers behind Rocket, Buck, Koba, and Maurice, not to mention a host of WETA programmers and animators hard at work to make everything look real. The cgi is, initially, noticeable, especially when Caesar is very young, but before long I found myself engrossed in the story and how emotive Caesar was. Watching the raw footage in the extras, it's clear that Serkis is not only the physical template for Caesar, but his acting, his facial expressions, and his presence carry over perfectly. It would, I feel, be a shame if Serkis isn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the film, but I suspect instead the Academy will create a new award for Motion Capture. That said, what Serkis does goes beyond motion capture - without Serkis as Caesar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes doesn't go anywhere.

 So here's the deal: Rise of the Planet of the Apes may lack some of the pulpy touches that fans of the series are accustomed to, but the polished nature doesn't diminish anything going for the film. It erases the memory of 2001's Planet of the Apes remake and exists as a sort of alternate retelling of Escape and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. You'll be pleasantly surprised how much better Rise is than anyone would hope from the studio who botched Alien vs Predator and Live Free or Die Hard (not to mention the Star Wars prequels). I'm actually looking forward to the next film, which has been hinted at as being a "Full Metal Jacket" of the Apes. With what Rupert Wyatt and 20th Century Fox have done with Rise, count me in.



* There's an extra on the disc that helpfully explains that Maurice is named after Maurice Evans, who played Doctor Zaius in Planet of the Apes, and that Rocket is named after one of the crew members in the film.

So You Won't Have To: The Thing (2011)

 It's almost too easy to beat up on The Thing - it's a movie with no purpose. From the big dumb cgi alien to the big dumb climax in the big dumb space ship to the between-credits sequence that's there to remind people that the END of this film is the BEGINNING of John Carpenter's The Thing, there's no reason for this movie to exist. If you thought to yourself "who gives a shit what happened to the Norwegian station?" when you realized this was a prequel and not another remake, director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and writer Eric Heisserer didn't do anything that's going to make it worth your while. Their answer, apparently, was "pretty much the same thing that happened in the first remake."

 Let's get that out of the way right up front, by the way: I'm tired of reading reviews that call this a "remake" of John Carpenter's The Thing and then conveniently neglect to mention that Carpenter was remaking The Thing from Another World. Have any doubts about that? Watch the title screens of both films. Technically all three films present themselves as adaptations of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" but the 2011 iteration is explicitly set right before the 1982 version. The newer Thing is designed to be linked to the first remake, which adapts the premise if not the structure of The Thing from Another World. John Carpenter's The Thing is a superb remake, and one of the arguments everyone uses when defending "good" remakes, because it is, in its own right, a fantastic horror film. It's prequel, on the other hand, is awfully familiar. Oh, and awful.

 To be honest, if the film didn't keep shitting its pants trying to be grosser or creepier than The Thing everybody loves, it might be okay. Then again, the reason everybody calls it a "remake" is because the story is so close to what happens in John Carpenter's film. After a promising opening where the Norwegian crew discovers the frozen spaceship and "thing," we meet Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a bio-paleontologist invited to attend a "discovery" on short notice by Dr. Sandor Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) and his research assistant Adam (Eric Christan Olsen). We already know what the "discovery" is, because if we've seen The Thing from Another World and / or The Thing, we've seen the outline of the ship and the frozen specimen. This time we get to see the ship, which at first seems novel but then becomes ridiculous at the end of the film.

 Well, you can guess that they bring the specimen back to the base camp, it thaws out, starts killing / absorbing people, and before we know it no one can trust each other. First they pull a "bait and switch" about who the Thing has "copied" in a helicopter attack scene that defies narrative logic. Okay, I'm willing to accept that the Thing is (SPOILER) just trying to get back to its ship and not headed for society like Kate worries it will. That's fine. But why, when in the helicopter, does the Thing freak out and attack the guy we thought was "infected" and cause the copter to crash, presumably killing it and the two American pilots (Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). But wait! They aren't dead, so Kate doesn't trust them. Could one of them be the Thing that survived and (for no good reason) returned to the camp?

 The paranoia that works so well in Carpenter's film is nonexistent. Why? None of the characters are remotely memorable. It's hard to care about who is or isn't the Thing when your protagonists are two pilots who should be dead, three scientists who behave suspiciously, a bland research assistant and a gaggle of interchangeable Norwegian victims-to-be. I give Mary Elizabeth Winstead credit for trying to keep everything together, and I will also concede that the film wisely doesn't try to make her into a Jack MacReady surrogate. That said, she's constantly pushed into the background of scenes by characters I could care less about and I didn't buy the "sad" ending before the film remembered it needed to bridge to a much better film.

 Because they couldn't use the "blood" test again, there's a half novel but half baked attempt to develop the absorbing powers of the creature. It can't mimic non-organic material, so Kate decides the best way to see who is and isn't human is to - it's so much stupider typing it - check everyone's mouths for fillings. Seriously. They set up the Thing's evolution but couldn't figure out how to parlay that into an interesting way of generating suspense. Why? Because FOUR people don't have fillings and only one of them is the Thing, but we don't find out which one until a silly fight scene between the pilots and the scientists.

 A word on the effects - I was under the impression that 2011's The Thing was to have more "practical" special effects and less CGI. What I didn't realize was that was limited to corpses. The work by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. is appropriately disgusting, but it isn't freakish or disturbing like Rob Bottin's effects. They also don't move - the practical effects are for corpses, of fused Thing/human hybrids or half absorbed corpses or charred remains. Anything that moves is bad looking CGI that seems like it was borrowed from Dead Space. Things look even stupider in the ship, where the Thing looks like a rejected monster from Men in Black II.

Who was this movie made for? I can't imagine people who have seen The Thing from Another World or The Thing sitting through the entire film. Only people with a passing knowledge of Carpenter's film would even stay engaged, but most of the connections at the end would be lost on them. I actually give a pass to selling it as "from the producers of Dawn of the Dead" because in theory, it could have been different enough of a take on the premise that using Zack Snyder's remake as a basis for comparison. Had the film lived up to that concept, maybe I could understand why it exists.

 For a brief moment in the first thirty minutes, I thought there might be something watchable in The Thing. It turned out that there was, and it was John Carpenter's The Thing. Why I watched the watered down, CGI "enhanced" version is anyone's guess. Well, the truth is that I said "what the hell" and rolled the dice. Never has the term "craps" been more appropriate. Let's just say I watched it So You Won't Have To and leave it at that.

The Beginning of the (Year) End.

 Well gang, it's December, which means I'm one month away from embarking on my annual "Year End" lists. The problem, as I see it, is that I have a LOT of movies I want to see and only one month to watch them. Out of a list of potential titles (and of varying degrees of interest), I've narrowed it down to what I really see before January rolls around. They are (in no particular order):

 Drive

A Dangerous Method

Hugo

Melancholia

The Tree of Life

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The Muppets

Martha Macy May Marlene

The Future

50/50

The Guard

Our Idiot Brother

Midnight in Paris

The Trip

Troll Hunter

The Devil's Double

Road to Nowhere

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Rango

The Ides of March

Another Earth

The Descendants

Tabloid

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

and just for the hell of it: The Thing.

 If you were curious, this is what I've already seen this year:

 Attack the Block
 Super
 Hobo with a Shotgun
 Bridesmaids
 Paul
 Fast Five
 The People vs. George Lucas
 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
 Drive Angry
 More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead
 The Mechanic
 Killer Elite
 In Time
 Cyrus
 American: The Bill Hicks Story
 Jackass 3 / 3.5
 Scream 4
 Thor
 The Hangover Part II
 Horrible Bosses
 The Change-Up
 Blubberella
 Ride, Rise, Roar
 Sucker Punch
 X-Men: First Class
 The Ward
 Quarantine 2: Terminal
 Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
 Exporting Raymond
 Fright Night
 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
 Red State
 Blood Runs Cold
 Bong of the Dead
 The Dead
 The Puppet Monster Massacre
 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

 So I have quite a few down, but many more to go. Stay tuned as the Cap'n tries to negotiate working 40 hours a week and watching everything on that first list. I can do it! Right?

In Progress (a euphemism for Slacking)

 Hey gang! How about I tell you about things I'm currently in progress as a way to divert attention from the fact that I don't have anything done yet*? Sound good**?

 The Cap'n has begun reading Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg, which is to this point very entertaining. When I finish the sort-of memoirs interspersed with passages from a fictionalized (?) version of Pegg's life away from the silver screen, I'll give you cats and kittens a review. Since I only have time to read it at night (before bed), this might take a little while, but it worked for Shock Value, so I think it'll be sooner rather than later.

 Last night I was doing some laundry and was finally able to put on More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead, which is a "warts and all" documentary about the making of Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead. I only watched forty or so minutes, but the film doesn't sugarcoat anything so far. It's both informative and funny, which doesn't always work but in this instance is exactly the tone to strike when covering Return of the Living Dead. I'm hoping to finish that up sometime this weekend for a proper review, but so far it's pretty engrossing. Stupid needing to sleep.

 Let's see, what other plates am I trying to keep spinning? Well, spine numbers are 50% off again at Barnes and Noble, so I'm really going to have to mull over those copies of The Battle of Algiers, The Complete Jean Vigo, 3 Women, Orpheus, Cul-De-Sac, High and Low, If..., Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and, um, Salo. Because I'm in such a hurry to watch Salo on Blu Ray. And you're so ready for that review, I know.

 Professor Murder will also be in town this weekend. That's almost always a call for some strange movie in theatres, so against the prevailing wisdom of reviews, I might end up seeing The Thing. Or something much worse. He did miss out on Horror Fest, and we have to rectify this, you see.

 As a small addendum to that, would people please stop referring to John Carpenter's The Thing as "the original"? You do know that John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake of The Thing from Another World, right? Oh no? You do now.



* In my defense, my work schedule makes it very difficult to do much of anything when it comes to watching movies, and it's only been getting busier because of two words: Annual Enrollment. Last weekend was by far the most movie watching I've done since the beginning of September.
** There are actually no other options, so I hope so.

Retro Review: Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace

 While talking about Star Wars last week, it occurred to me that like many movies I hold near and dear I've never given them a proper write-up. This still won't really be a proper write-up for The Phantom Menace, but I do want to continue the thread I began in the triple feature review of Rush Hour 2, The Siege, and Star Trek: Insurrection. In that I laid out the pattern of an obsessive Star Wars fan (one who'd gone batty at seeing the Special Editions but was old enough to have seen at least one film the first time around) and this is the payoff. This was what it all boiled down to: no more teasers, trailers, leaked audio from ADR sessions or pictures or crazy rumors / script reviews*; it was time for the real thing, at midnight.

  May 18th, 1999 came too soon - I didn't have tickets for the midnight showing because I'd just returned from school an hour-and-a-half away and hadn't been able to procure any. Even working for a local theatre proved futile in getting to see The Phantom Menace on opening day. I was convinced it would be sold out by the day before (and I say the 18th because most of this takes place before midnight, May 19th, 1999) and was scrambling to find anybody who had an extra ticked. A friend of my brother's had one at the appropriately named Imperial Cinemas (now it's the Galaxy), and I got there around... 9:30?

 Young, delusional, and buying into the hype, I was convinced that the massive line would already be happening in short order, so two-and-a-half hours early seemed like a good idea**. I was probably the seventh or eighth person in line, which gives you some idea of the level of fandom for The Phantom Menace and the futility of my fears. By the time 11:45 rolled around (when they opened the doors), there was a line wrapped around the front and side of the building, although it was nothing compared to the one I was in for Revenge of the Sith, where we were in a parking lot for the grocery store next to the theatre two hours before the film started.

 We all piled in, got our popcorn and drinks, had a seat (third row) and waited for new Star Wars. Holy shit, can you believe it? NEW Star Wars! The sensory overload, the crowd's adrenaline, and the glow of lightsabers sustained two hours of wooden, stilted line delivery, personality-less characters, dumb jokes, and soulless fight scenes. We were too overwhelmed by the event to care that the movie didn't live up to its tremendous hype, let alone to the minimum expectations of a competently made film. For days, I would continue to delude myself into thinking that The Phantom Menace was a film that needed to be, one that I was better for having seen.

 The fundamental flaw of Episode One isn't any of the litany of illogical plot developments or the "kiddie" tone (for that, I direct you to the notorious Mr. Plinkett reviews of the prequels, which are hilarious, brutal, and often illuminating). The problem is one inherent in any prequel: you already know where the story is going. New characters introduced are going to be killed off or shoved to the margins in order for the characters the audience already knows ARE in the original films to step forward. So unless you really want to know HOW Obi-Wan Kenobi came to train Anakin Skywalker or WHY Yoda decided to go into exile on Dagobah, there's not a lot for you in these films. But we were willfully ignorant of this, and I did ruin at least one person's experience by casually mentioning that Qui-Gon Jinn was going to die before the movie ended.

 I watched The Phantom Menace in its entirety four times that summer: the midnight screening, twice with friends, and once with my Dad, who was unimpressed. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't the disappointment that everyone said it was (and that I knew deep down was true) by sneaking off during breaks at the movie theatre I worked at to watch the Obi-Wan / Darth Maul lightsaber fight. I'd time breaks so I could walk in just in time to see it. All this time, this interest, invested for naught? It couldn't be. Twenty year old Cap'n Howdy couldn't believe that. It can't be true; it's impossible.

 But search my feelings I did, and I knew it was true. You could hear it drop like the proverbial turd when The Phantom Menace dropped on VHS. Already Lucas had made changes - extending the Pod Race and including a longer sequence where our heroes fly through Coruscant. Why? Because he felt they "improved" the experience. The really just made the film longer, and without the big screen and crowd enthusiasm, The Phantom Menace was as bad as I knew it was. I just couldn't pretend otherwise.

 I tend to think of that experience as the point at which I became more cynical about the hype surrounding films - I'd been burned, and so had many other geeks my age. Sure, we went to see Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (sometimes at midnight), but more out of a grudging sense of completion, a "let's get this over with." The excitement turned to caution, then dread, then relief. The scratch had been itched, and I was no longer outraged by Lucas' incessant tinkering with his films on DVD (and now Blu-Ray); this was the man who brought us the Prequels, his undiluted vision of the Star Wars universe, and they were not good. They were barely watchable, and I don't own them any more. It grouses me a bit knowing that if I want to see the bounty of extra material Lucasfilm has been ferreting away for decades that I'll have to own them again. I tried watching the end of Revenge of the Sith on TV yesterday and howled with laughter at how bad the writing was.

 At this point, I don't really feel like it's worth piling on to George Lucas for his rotten prequels, but they are the reason that I have to temper expectations for movies I really like. Yesterday's Attack the Block review is a great example - I really enjoyed the movie, but don't want the film to get bogged down by people who think it's going to fix their car or something. Somehow we got on this kick that any movie that's better than "pretty good" has to be elevated to transcendent levels, and a lot of that has to do with the built-in cynicism that came for geeks in a post-The Phantom Menace world. Half of the geeks automatically assume something is going to suck because "they" will "mess it up," so the other half pushes too hard to counter that attitude and movies suddenly have to be the second coming to be worth seeing. I remember going to see just about everything pre-Godzilla and The Phantom Menace with a blissful ignorance of whether it would be good or not - The Big Hit? Lost in Space? Suicide Kings? The Faculty? We were there. Hate it, love it, going was fun. I think that The Phantom Menace took some of that away, or at least changed the way I looked forward to movies.


* Like this one, for example. I can't find the one on Ain't It Cool that goes over-the-top about a SPOILER that can't be revealed - and I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what people coming into this movie could have been "spoiled" by. On the other hand, I don't think Jeffrey Wells feels too bad about his column now, or even six months after the release of The Phantom Menace.
** True story: on a whim, two friends drove by Mission Valley and Park Place 16 to look at the lines for The Phantom Menace only to find empty parking lots.