Blogorium Review: Pacific Rim

 So by now you've heard of this "Pacific Rim" movie; you probably didn't see it, but you've heard of it - I think I can count on one hand the number of people I know who saw it, including me. That's okay, because I totally get why you didn't go see it, and I kind of sympathize. You see, the Cap'n was torn about seeing Pacific Rim myself (tense switch!). Since you've heard everybody else's opinion, I guess you can hear my rationale and then maybe I'll talk about the movie. But it was pretty good if you aren't feeling patient (but be patient. C'mon.)

 On the one hand, I've seen every one of Guillermo del Toro's movies, and really liked to loved most of them. By most, I mean that some of the more "mainstream" joints aren't my favorites. I like Hellboy a lot, but I don't love it. I really don't like Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I enjoy Blade II and it's definitely better than Blade and Blade Trinity, but it's not my "go to" movie in his collection. If I'm being honest, I'm much more inclined to sit down with one of the more intimate, "smaller" films like The Devil's Backbone and Cronos. Pan's Labyrinth too, but I can't honestly call that a "small" movie. Maybe less epic in scope than Hellboy, right?

 Even though I don't enjoy Hellboy II, it didn't stop me from seeing it in theaters, just like I did with Hellboy. I support Guillermo del Toro whenever I can because he brings a distinctive vision to his films and is fond of fully fleshed out worlds, well beyond what happens in the direct narrative. When possible, I try to support the films he produces, like The Orphanage (pretty, pretty good) or Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (pretty, pretty okay) - I haven't seen Mama yet, but I'll get around to sooner or later.

 The problem is that I don't really care about "Giant Robot" movies. I didn't see the Transformers movies, and while I often cite my polite disagreement with Mr. Michael Bay about what constitutes a "movie," I also never really gave a shit about the source material. I had a few Transformers, including the one that was a boombox, but... eh. My tolerance level for robots beating each other up is pretty much however much of Robot Jox is left on the Sci-Fi Channel late at night*.

 As much as I'd like to pretend this wasn't the case, kaiju movies are also not really my bag. I like the first Gojira movie, but not so much the sequels and definitely not Godzilla 2000 or Final Wars or the Matthew Broderick one. I guess I kinda liked Mothra and Gamera  and maybe Destroy All Monsters! but I'm not a devotee to this stuff. That's more of my brother's wheelhouse. In fact, he should probably review Pacific Rim for you guys, but since he's not here, I'll do it.

 So you know my handicaps going in: will watch any Guillermo del Toro joint, but don't care about giant robots and am politely ambivalent towards kaiju. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm so ambivalent that on this very blog I mistakenly used the term "gaijin" ("non-Japanese" / "alien") interchangeably with "kaiju" ("giant monste"r?) because I didn't realize the difference. Sorry, astute readers. That must have been very confusing. Anyway, my desire to support the director (and co-writer) did win out over the non-appeal of giant robots fighting kaiju. And you know what? It's a pretty good movie.


  While I never saw the Transformers movies, I do remember hearing how fucking stupid they were from people I did know who still saw all three of them. This (and Robot Jox, and let's be honest, Real Steel) confirmed my theory that Germans Love David Hasselhoff... wait, no... that movies with giant robots fighting each other or monsters is just going to be inherently moronic. And if I'm going to watch inherently moronic, I can do it with more entertaining films.

 Luckily, Guillermo del Toro didn't get that memo, so he approaches Pacific Rim from a non-sarcastic direction, leaving irony behind and just focusing on building a world where giant monsters come up through the pacific ocean via a "breach" and start destroying things. How would we adapt? Would be build giant robots to fight these monsters? Sure, why not? Would it work? Pretty well, at first. Would we get complacent because said monsters are losing? Probably.

 That's the prologue to the film, which I appreciate - 99% of the time in this modern world of "franchise building" in movies, the first ten minutes would be the entire movie. They would intentionally withhold information or set things up with no intention of paying them off in the two hours of THIS movie, but instead save it for the inevitable sequel. Not when del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham are making the movie - they give you some well designed exposition dump and then drop us into the height of humanity's hubris.

 We meet our protagonist, Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) and his brother what's his face (Diego Klattenhoff) as they take their Jaeger (giant robot), Gypsy Danger, out for a stroll around the coast of Alaska. SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES: They then get their asses handed to them by a kaiju who also kills what's his face and leaves Raleigh in a bad way.

 (Note: I had to look up the name of the character that Hunnam was playing because I couldn't remember it. Honestly I don't remember hearing it much because, let's be honest, it's a pretty stupid name)

 We jump forward five or six years when the governments have given up on Jaegers to defend us from kaiju (who get designations not unlike hurricanes: category 4, etc). Instead they're going to just build huge walls and hope that does the trick, until one of the kaiju cuts right through one in Sydney ("like butter") and luckily the Ausrtailan Jaeger manages to beat it to death. This gives Stacker Penetcost (Idris Elba - seriously, that was his character's name?) his one chance to throw a last ditch effort to use Jaegers and bombs to close the breach once and for all, so you know he's going to have to recruit Raleigh out of retirement.

 And just describing that sounds stupid. But somehow when you watch Pacific Rim, the inherent silliness of the plot just makes sense. They explain "drifting" - the process two Jaeger pilots use to control the machine in tandem - well enough that you buy it would kill someone to do it alone. Basically it amounts to a mind meld but if the connection is strong enough they can work in unison, so lines like "I'm in you brain, remember?" don't feel so dumb as they do out of context, like in this review.

 Look, I'm doing a bad job of not making Pacific Rim sound as dumb as you thought it did when you decided not to see it, but it's really a lot of fun to watch and not just because "Robot punch Monster! Yay!" I'm sure that on some level, Pacific Rim does appeal to our "Lizard Brain" sensibilities, but del Toro also includes all of his favorite fetishes in the film, like Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), who deals in kaiju body parts on the black market. Or the dueling scientists (played by Torchwood's Burn Gorman and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie Day) who should just be comic relief but do actually impact the storyline in important ways. Day's subplot, in fact, is probably more interesting that just watching Jaegers filled with Chinese, Russian, and Australian stereotypes punch kaijus.

 The main event is still seeing how Gypsy Danger gets back in action and how Raleigh gets his groove back with the help of his new co-pilot, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who has a similarly traumatic experience in her life, one that may or may not include a crab kaiju and a mentor character who plays a prominent role in the film with a name that rhymes with Packer Spentaflossed. I will say that the fights deliver, are mostly coherent, and more importantly don't feel like CGI for 20 minutes at a time, which they almost have to be. I will fully admit to being totally invested in the fight between Gypsy Danger and 2 kaiju in Hong Kong, right up to and including the "no way they put that weapon in there!" moment.

 The characters are, by and large, not developed or at best wafer thin, but they serve the story well. At least one of two of them get moments that give you some perspective on why they do what they do, and some of them even change a little bit during the story. Honestly, I think I liked Day's Dr. Newton Geiszler the most, followed closely by Hannibal Chau (who explains why he chose that name), which works out because they're on-screen together for a healthy chunk in the middle of the film. I even cared about Mako's back story and liked that she's as much - if not more - of a liability than Raleigh is inside of Gypsy Danger. The ending was satisfying, and despite it being reasonably well wrapped up, could be okay with more adventures in this world.

 Which is a shame, because there's no way that's going to happen. Why? Because people thought "wow, that looks like a stupid movie" and went to see Grown Ups 2 instead. Sometimes I sarcastically point out that Box Office Numbers are the C.R.E.A.M. of Studio Executives lives, but in this case it's probably true. To them, this movie failed only slightly less than The Lone Ranger, and it gives them a rationale to argue that Guillermo del Toro is better suited to make "smaller, " "art house" fare that critics love and nobody loses millions of dollars on, rightly or wrongly.

 And that's fine, because as we've established, I REALLY like those movies. But I wouldn't have minded seeing what del Toro's version of The Hobbit looked like, and I desperately wanted somebody to give him the chance to make a big budgeted, hard R version of At the Mountains of Madness. He couldn't convince Universal to give him the money to do it even with Tom Cruise starring and James Cameron producing, so the implied "failure" of Pacific Rim isn't going to bolster his case. That kinda sucks, if you ask me. And you don't have a choice because I'm the one writing this.

 Thanks for sticking it out to the end, by the way. I'm sure some people left during the preamble, but you didn't. So thanks for that. You should go see Pacific Rim, because I bet you'd enjoy it. I mean, before long it'll be at the $2 theater which will no doubt make your decision easier, but I implore you to check it out. It's much better than you assumed it would be, and probably better than I thought it might be. I'm not even going to use the "it's not perfect" qualifier because perfect movies are pretty hard to come by as it is, and that shouldn't diminish the really damn good ones by comparison.

 So go see Pacific Rim - if you already saw the Transformers movie, you owe your brain that much. If you haven't seen a Transformers move - kudos to you! Go see Pacific Rim to celebrate it! 



 * Wait... they changed the Sci-Fi Channel? To what? You mean where all those shitty "Crocappotamus vs Ninja Squirrel" movies play? Bummer.

Retro Review: Star Trek - Nemesis

 Lost amidst all of the 30th anniversary hoopla of now cult classics like Blade Runner and The Thing and Conan the Barbarian (as well as established classics like E.T., which beat up on those movies all summer, and maybe The Road Warrior too. I'd have to check, but that's not germane to this review) is the more important anniversaries, like, uh, Chasing Amy hitting the fifteen year mark. Or Good Will Hunting, and let's be honest here, if you'd asked the Cap'n which of those movies he's be watching again fifteen years later, younger me would be wrong in a big bad way. But we grow older and wiser, so we revisit things every now and then.

 Speaking of movies that aren't any good, Star Trek: Nemesis, unlike Chasing Amy, was maligned when it came out ten years ago (this December) for "ruining" the Star Trek: The Next Generation film series (and with competition like Generations and Insurrection, that's saying something). It broke the "even numbered film = good / odd numbered film = bad" rule of thumb for Trek films, and pretty much guaranteed we'd never see Captain Picard on the big screen again. In fact, Paramount handed the keys to the franchise over to JJ Abrams, who rebooted the whole franchise and (with the screenwriters) relegated Picard, Data, Worf, and Geordi to a comic book prequel that assured us they wouldn't be showing up with Chris Pine and company.

 For people who still want to argue that Nemesis "isn't that bad," I'll see you on the other side of the Mr. Plinkett review of the film. In fact, I'd almost considered just posting that as my "Retro Review" and writing "nuff said" because it covers almost all of the basis of why Nemesis is not, in fact, all right. It's yet another watered down retread of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which producer Rick Berman helpfully points out in the extras by explaining that Nemesis needed "a strong villain" because that's what made First Contact and Wrath of Khan successful. The jury is apparently out on what made The Voyage Home a bigger success, as its "strong villain" is a probe looking for humpback whales (SPOILER).

 Anyway, so the reason I thought Nemesis might be worth coming back to had nothing to do with B-4, the stupid "dune buggy" away mission, the pointless transposition of the Kirk / Khan storyline into a TNG movie, using characters not designed for action movies in a totally inappropriate context (the Plinkett review of First Contact, by the way, covers in some detail why the TNG movies failed even in success). It's not about the "mind rape" sequence of Ron Perlman as a creepy vampire bat Reman, the heretofore unknown "sister" species of the Romulans* who happen to look like a planet of Nosferatus, or even the Admiral Janeway cameo that confused me because I always understood that Voyager didn't end with the crew in the best esteem of the Federation. Mind you, I never watched Voyager, even the episode with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, so this is purely from a point of willful ignorance, although Trekkers I know have told me watching the series isn't worth my time.

 Where was I? Oh, right, Nemesis. It's hard to stay focused on such an unmemorable film. So I thought I'd check it out again because it was the only movie I associated Tom Hardy with until people started raving about Bronson**. In fact, it came as a surprise that Tom Hardy had a career resurgence (that continues to thrive) because he's so uninteresting as Shinzon, the Picard clone-turned-slave-turned-leader-of-the-Reman-Resistance that screenwriter John Logan opted to pair him with Ron Perlman as a vampire bat in order to make our villain vaguely menacing.

 But I did think it was cool to see a young Tom Hardy screen test with Patrick Stewart and more than hold his own, which doesn't really translate to Nemesis. In the movie, it's not clear what the hell Shinzon really wants to do, or what he cares about, or really anything. Instead we get stupid Brent Spiner slapstick (doubled!) and pointless chase scenes and an ultimately inconsequential story about an upset in the Romulan Empire after Shinzon wipes the Senate out. Why inconsequential? Well, for one thing, that supernova completely wiped out Romulus, causing Nero to go crazy and travel back in time in order to destroy Vulcan and then fail to wipe out Earth. So not only do the alternate universe Romulans still distrust the Federation, but now one of their own was responsible for killing almost all of the Vulcans and disrupting history, etc.

 Anyway, so needless to say that I was very impressed to see that Tom Hardy could be charismatic and menacing and have, well, screen presence after Nemesis. It's not his fault that the movie still sucks, and it's a testament to his work ethic in the studio system and beyond that it wasn't a career killer. Also, I don't hang it on director Stuart Baird (who also made Executive Decision and U.S. Marshals but also edited some much more impressive films), even though he gets a lot of grief for coming as a Trek "newbie" and making a movie like Nemesis. It's not totally his fault that Nemesis is a lousy Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, and the final action scenes between the Enterprise and the Scimitar look good. It's just the rest of the movie, including the awful wedding of Riker and Troi that kicks things off, that make the film so hard to sit through.

 So ten years ago this was what we had to point to and say, "well, maybe Insurrection wasn't the worst TNG movie they could possibly make after all." Now we have a odd-numbered Star Trek movie that almost everybody seems to like (Star Trek) and people are looking forward to the sequel to that. Patrick Stewart is crossing his fingers that Charles Xavier doesn't have a cameo in the Wolverine sequel and that maybe they'll just ask him to come back for X-Men First Class: Days of Future Past, and Jonathan Frakes is directing television after the one-two punch of Clockstoppers and Thunderbirds. Meanwhile, Tom Hardy was in Bronson, Inception, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Dark Knight Rises, and Lawless***. I did not see that coming, but at least something good came from such a limp closing to "classic era" Star Trek.



 * What this means for the implied connection over the series between Romulans and Vulcans has probably been explored in more depth on a Trek site I don't have time to look for, but are Remans also distantly related to Vulcans? Does it even matter?
** I haven't seen Black Hawk Down, along with several other Ridley Scott movies not featuring Tom Hardy, like G.I. Jane, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and anything after American Gangster and before Prometheus.
*** And coughThisMeansWarcough...

Retro Review: Hellboy II - The Golden Army

 (editor's note: After last week's Retro Review for The Dark Knight Rises, the Cap'n realized there was a series of Blogorium posts from 2008 that never made the transition from our old stomping grounds to the new one. As a result, it seemed like a good idea to share some other reviews that had been otherwise "lost" over the past four years).

I wish I knew what to tell you guys about Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I really do. But I don't even know how I feel about it right now, so it's hard to start hyping it up or tearing it down. That's the problem, really: it's not really bad or really good. It just is, and I'm not sure that's what I or any of you were looking for.

Hellboy II is a labor of love for Guillermo Del Toro, and believe me, it shows in every frame. There's some amazing creature work in this film, and not just during the Troll Market. Johann Krauss is, despite the lack of discernable face, body, and the voice of Seth McFarlane, a wonderfully realized addition to the cast. Everything you like about the first movie is totally intact and probably even better, but I feel like there's something missing.

For one thing, I never bought Hellboy's moral dilemma about whether he defended the right side. It's true that the movie plays grey with the "humans vs fantasy creatures" storyline, but not really as far as our main characters are concerned. The "hard" decisions they have to make don't really have any impact during this film whatsoever, so the gravity of their choices (particularly Liz's) don't register unless there's another Hellboy film in the future.

On the other hand, it is really silly, which is a good thing. When I say silly, I mean Mignola silly, in the same way that conversation Hellboy has with the kid in the first movie has a goofy tone. There's a scene with a drunken Hellboy and Abe that has no right to be as amusing as it is, because in any other film you'd be groaning instead of chuckling.

The action is similarly well staged, especially the fight at the end with The Golden Army, and I particularly enjoyed the way Krauss gets involved. The Troll Market is a veritable visual feast of things to look at, and many people will be pausing their Blu-Ray's of Hellboy II just to dissect this scene. The Elemental sequence, for as short as it actually is, is something to behold, and as close as the movie gets to where I think Del Toro was trying to go thematically.

I can't imagine telling anyone who enjoyed Hellboy to avoid this movie: there's simply to much to see and to savor in this film, and I haven't even talked at length about Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, or Doug Jones (who gets to be the body and voice of Abe Sapien this time). I didn't mention the "tooth fairy" sequence that takes the "Ants" sequence in Indiana Jones and turns it up to 11, but some surprises should be left to discover.

What I wonder about Hellboy II is that if I wasn't too overwhelmed by the myriad distractions visually, because the story didn't make much of an impression to me. There's an Edward Scissorhands tone throughout the film, and a sense of melancholy, but it just doesn't register where it needs to with Hellboy, Liz, and Abe. Something happens to Abe over the course of the movie that never gets a proper addressing at the end, partially because Del Toro opts to go for an upbeat, albeit bizarre coda.

So yeah. I don't know how I feel about the movie. It seemed like the people I saw it with didn't like it, which also doesn't help in sussing out the movie. Judging by the not-so-large audience for an opening night, the dreaded "box office numbers" may bury this film before its time, or worse still, it could damn the film with faint praise, as I feel I am.

Crap.

Retro Fifteen Minute Cranpire Movie Review: Season of the Witch

...And they said it couldn't be done. This will also be the "year end recap" write up for Season of the Witch, as there are literally dozens of movies I'd watch before finishing this film.

 Waaaaaay back in the spring or early summer of 2011, before we committed our time to Drive Angry and The Mechanic, the Cranpire and I tried watching Season of the Witch. You know, the Nicolas Cage / Ron Perlman / Christopher Lee joint about a few AWOL Crusaders roped into helping the Church escort a witch to a church or.. something. That movie. The one you heard nothing about after groaning at the trailer (and Cage's recycled wig from The Sorcerer's Apprentice). The one you see in the lower corner of Redbox or your Netflix "new arrivals" and think to yourself "maybe when I'm drunk enough."

 If you're me, you thought "Ooh! Cranpire movie!" because Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman and witches is exactly the combination a guy who tries to get me to watch Evil Bong is going to go for. Sure enough, he was game. I was game, because we tend to attack these films without mercy. The stupider the better, we figure; it is the same impetus that brought us to Drive Angry, after all.

 For the first ten minutes, we weren't really let down: there was a dumb prologue about killing witches and one that backfires because - of course - there's an ACTUAL witch. We then follow two Crusaders (Cage and Perlman) as they gleefully slaughter heathens, villagers, and anyone dumb enough to hover near their swords. They have "buddy" banter about who can kill more people and then drink to their murderous ways. In the span of five minutes the film jumps forward thereabouts ten years* when they somehow develop consciences because they see fellow soldiers kill women and children. Because they've never even accidentally done that during their wanton days of butchering.

 So they run. They tuck their swords away, hide in barns, and try to sneak off. They are exposed when some guy notices Cage's weapon and a creepy Cardinal with hideous sores (Lee) strongarms them into escorting a witch... somewhere.

 That's where we stopped, because the film suddenly lost all sense of momentum, lost any sense of being interesting, and we decided that anything else would be worth watching. Or just going home, which is what I did. Cranpire probably watched Netflix or went to bed. I promptly forgot about the prologue until he reminded me several months later. That doesn't speak well for Season of the Witch, which now has the distinction of being less memorable of the George Romero film that nobody knows exists, which really says something.

 If I saved this for my "year end recap," chances are I wouldn't remember that I saw any part of Season of the Witch. It's not bad enough to be entertaining and not good enough to overcome being slow and unengaged. It wouldn't shock me to discover that The Sorcerer's Apprentice was more watchable. The End.



* Sorry, I'm not going to go back and check the accuracy of that, but YEARS do pass by.

Blogorium Review: Outlander

Outlander is a good but not great movie about Vikings fighting Aliens. Jim Caviezel plays Kainan, a humanoid alien who crash lands on Earth in the 8th century, and finds himself hunting a "dragon" with the help of Rothgar (John Hurt)'s Viking... uh, tribe? I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you call a group of Vikings. The "dragon" is actually a Moorwen, which is an alien that uses glowing red light to capture its prey and eats pretty much anything, including a whale. Since Kainan looses his gun, he has to rely on alien smarts to kill the Moorwen, plus win over the King's daughter and broker peace between warring tribes.

Like I said; it's not a bad movie, but I don't necessarily agree with the positive internet consensus. The bar is pretty low on Vikings vs "_____" movies in the wake of Pathfinder, but just because Outlander doesn't totally drop the ball doesn't mean it's a "lost gem". The film is riddled with logical errors and forced character choices that happen only because the co-writer / director need the movie to end a certain way.

For example, the well in the middle of Rothgar's village somehow links up both to a nearby lake and to an underground volcano, which means one of two things:

1. Kainan and his Viking team either went so far underground that they split the difference between the crust and mantle under Norway, or

2. The water is so cold that it somehow cannot instantly vaporize despite its proximity to flowing lava.

There are a bunch of other logical gaffes, including a burning monster and someone who should be pulling a Harvey Dent (based on being covered with oil and being in an explosion / fighting a monster that's on FIRE), and how they could possibly forge Kainan's ship hull into weapons if it's more powerful than the steel they use to hammer it, but I digress. I want to talk about one other curious aspect of Outlander.

If you hadn't noticed from the fact there's a King Rothgar and a strange hero who kills a Monster, its mother, and comes from a distant land, there's a distinctly Beowulf-ian vibe to Outlander. It's never explicitly addressed, so I'll give some credit to Howard McCain and Dirk Blackman for letting it sneak in to the movie, but they never really go anywhere with it either.

The leads are pretty good, but supporting characters range from passable to downright terrible, and that's before we get to their awful wigs and fake looking beards. John Hurt is fine as Rothgar; he gets to be king-ly and doesn't really have a lot to do but worry about causing war between his tribe and Gunnar's. As Gunnar, Ron Perlman alternates between being Ron Perlman and a Will Ferrel impersonation of Ron Perlman with a goofy beard.

Honestly, Perlman is barely in the movie and *SPOILER* gets a cheap death from the Moorwen during the village siege. It's almost insulting to bring him in for that. Sophia Myles (Underworld, Doctor Who) holds her own as Freya, but to be honest her best scenes involve being stuck in a room full of corpses. Rob Zombie could learn a thing or two from Outlander, because there might actually be 1,000 corpses in the Moorwen cave.

As to the other guys, Jack Huston (Shrooms) is basically all right, as are the guys who play Boromir and Unferth. Honestly, I didn't notice there was a character named Unferth, but it really does continue the whole "Beowulf" riff, doesn't it? The main Viking guys (or the ones you see more than two times before they die) are all pretty good, if unmemorable.

Overall, I'd say that I enjoyed watching Outlander, although I'm in no hurry to see it again, and I guess I can understand why the brothers Weinstein had no idea what to do with the movie. I can't really see Outlander being a huge hit theatrically, and to be honest, it took me the better part of three months to decide to finally watch it.

I realize this review sounds like a pan, but there's some measure of fun to be had with Outlander. The premise is handled well enough, and the effects shots are sometimes good and sometimes cheesy, but the Moorwen design is cool and Kainan's back story helps flesh things out a bit. If you're looking for a pleasant diversion, of a Science Fiction / Fantasy hybrid movie, or if you just like Vikings, Outlander is probably worth checking out.