nosp-4 Reviews

Due Date (2010)

Low brow version of what was done better by Steve Martin and John Candy.

[3/10 · 7 November 2010]

This is a movie I was prepared to like because Robert Downey is an excellent actor and Zack G has proved to be a weird character who can be very funny in the right film.

But, it just doesn't work very well. This story has been done before, and with much better effect, in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The two movies have a very similar story arc, but in the one case you have two very funny men playing actual mature adults who have differing personalities, and in the other you have two men who are immature imbeciles with differing personalities. The former are likable, while the latter are just annoying.

Zack G's character is just too bizarre to be credible, but at least you know where they are going with him. Downey, on the other hand, is an excellent actor badly miscast here. His demeanor is just too "dark" and his personality too brooding and cranky to play the part of a good family man trying at all costs to get home in time for his child's birth. To be honest, his character simply isn't very likable, and is sometimes just downright mean, even spitting in an innocent dog's face. This is in stark contrast to the frustrated everyman played by Steve Martin in P,T,&A - a person every traveler (stuck next to an obnoxious slob) understands implicitly. Another example of such a role being done to perfection is Jack Lemmon in The Out of Towners.

I suppose it didn't help that the theater was packed with very young children who had no business going to this movie. The very crude language, extensive drug imagery, and graphic masturbation scenes, while funny for adults, were grossly inappropriate for 5-12 year olds in the crowd. Some people clearly are not cut out to be parents.

Perhaps the most memorable line in the movie was Downey proclaiming that he had never done drugs in his life. Given Downey's well documented real-life problems, his statement in the movie couldn't help but make the audience compare the character to reality, thus serving to knock down the "4th wall" in the process. No doubt the contrast was created by intent, but I'm not sure it was a great idea.

As Steve Martin, John Candy, and Jack Lemmon proved, superior comedy and deeper laughs come from brilliant acting and comic timing. If you have to resort to endless gutter language, potty humor, and masturbating canines, you have already lost the game before it starts.

The American (2010)

Bad news when the highlight is taking a restroom break!

[2/10 · 6 September 2010]

Don't be fooled by the positive reviews. This film was poorly executed and painfully dull.

The basic problem with this movie is that the lead character, George Clooney, is completely unlikable. We have no sympathy for him as he plods through his tedious life - killing for big money yet living like a dog and rutting like a pig. He is not just an assassin who kills targets without a personal connection - he is a cold blooded murderer who kills innocent people. At the start of the movie, in one of the few action sequences, he shoots his lover in the back of the head, for no apparent reason, and without the least show of remorse.

Perhaps the intent is to present a literary tragedy where the "hero" dies due to his own inherent flaws, but if the character is not even likable it just doesn't work.

Other main characters are equally despicable, including Clooney's boss and the other hired assassin for whom Clooney was building a custom weapon. You know you are in some trouble when the only likable characters are a prostitute and a priest with an out of wedlock child. Sadly, those characters, particularly the priest, are left flapping in the wind without good character development.

I give the film two stars because the acting was competent and I enjoyed the twist (lacking exposition, but nevertheless inferred) that Clooney saved his bacon by altering the site on the rifle that would be used in an assassination attempt. I'll leave the rest unstated.

However, the movie fails due to poor direction, flaccid pacing, transparent attempts at an art house feel (please spare me the butterfly metaphor), and ridiculous plot holes - many already discussed by others. One perhaps not discussed is that Clooney's would-be assassin has every opportunity to kill the target point blank while testing the assault rifle in an isolated glade - and having done so would have been a mercy to the audience.

Also, is it credible to believe drop dead beautiful hookers are working in some backwater Italian town? I'm guessing the hookers in such places are about 50 years old, fat, and full of lice and crabs.

In the end, one goes to see Clooney to enjoy his everyman charm. When he plays a one dimensional character with no charm, no personality, who never cracks a smile, has the dialog of a Stallone movie, and who has a moral compass for butterflies but not for people... well only a die-hard Euro-movie snob could find anything appealing here at all.

The Twilight Zone: Probe 7, Over and Out (1963) Season 5, Episode 9

Much better than reviews suggest.

[8/10 · 31 August 2010]

Reading some of the reviews here, I have to wonder if the reviewers actually watched the episode, or if they have basic literary understanding. One reviewer says that we are supposed to believe that these people are the foundation of the Christian religion. What? The Adam and Eve story predates Christianity by thousands of years. It's a story of prehistoric origins borrowed by the authors of the Jewish scriptures.

There is no religious message in this episode at all. That a religion borrows a legend does not mean that the religion owns the legend, nor does it say anything about the origins of that legend. This story was not about religion, but rather a reflective piece on enigmatic tendencies of humanity, which on the one hand seeks to destroy itself with fear and hate, while on the other hand rebuilding itself from kindness and love. The episode presents this concept as an ongoing cycle.

Of course, the episode is scientifically ridiculous on every level. A ship 4.3 light years away cannot communicate instantaneously with its base, nor could a ship be sent for rescue in any useful timeframe short of a space warp, and based on the technology in the ship, that seems a bit out of reach for these people. And of course the human race did not spring forth instantaneously from an Adam and Eve, but rather evolved over millions and millions of years, so genetically speaking, Adam is related to the apple he was eating - he could not have been introduced into that Apple-rich environment from another planet. But, hey, this is entertainment, not a science show.

An interesting point nobody has mentioned is that Eve's language was English in reverse. For example, she says "Di ekil ot omec thiw ouy". When she introduces the apples to Adam, she mispronounces it "seppla" rather than "selppa".

No matter - her English pronunciation was much better when she reappeared in Star Trek's Catspaw episode as the much less attractive female alien Sylvia.

Star Trek: Bread and Circuses (1968) Season 2, Episode 25

They threw me a few curves...

[3/10 · 3 August 2010]

Though tempted to rate this episode with one star for reasons to be discussed, I give it three stars. I add one star because, well, it's Trek, so even bad episodes are fun and this one had some nice moments. I give it another star just because of Kirk's punchline, "They threw me a few curves...", a reference to the gift provided him by the Proconsul. That was a rare moment of "inside" humor during an otherwise self-important episode.

The concept of a parallel planet was already well worn before this episode, and if you were still watching Trek at this point, then by definition you were forgiving of the absurdity of it all. One might suspend disbelief long enough to accept a single near-Earth parallel (Miri), but by the fourth or fifth time that such a parallel is found, not only within the same galaxy, but by the same crew and captain, surely it pushes the notion fully into cheesehood. Similarly, we can suspend disbelief on the fact that the inhabitants speak perfect colloquial 1960's English, regardless of their location and period of development - it would be difficult to sustain a weekly one our drama without this concession. However, the painful exposition where the normally logical Spock makes a point of the native use of English, not once, but twice, completely breaks down the fourth wall. Further painful exposition occurs when the entire landing party recounts the points of the Prime Directive, which of course they already know. Yes, it's done to aid the viewing audience, but a better way could have been devised to give out that information. In any event, even after making a big deal about it, Kirk almost immediately violates the Prime Directive (I'm amused by reviewers who seem to claim that the opposite - that this episode grandly upholds the Prime Directive), demonstrating his communicator to the locals, and asking them if they've heard stories about men from other worlds coming from those lights in the sky. This is almost immediately after McCoy carefully explains that they are forbidden to even hint at the existence of other worlds. Then later, Kirk is squeamish about contaminating the Proconsul (catching himself from talk of beaming down), although the Proconsul has already been thoroughly contaminated by Merrick, and already knows all about Vulcans, the Federation, communicators, and phasers. Kirk even mentions to the Proconsul that he could bring down 100 men with phasers, bare moments after being shy about using the word "beam". What? How stupid can this dialog be? But all of that is forgivable because it is Trek, and Trek is good even when it's bad.

Where this episode really jumps the shark is in the obnoxious attempt to promote Christianity. It was a nice idea that the Roman empire could be brought down by a modern notion of freedom, rights, and equality. Whatever that has to do with Christianity is beyond my comprehension. Kirk says, "Wouldn't it be something to be able to watch it happen all over again?" What? The Crusades? The Inquisition? The Dark Ages? Christianity was a tool for killing, oppression of people, and suppression of ideas for centuries. The suggestion that the main concept was anti-violence is historical balderdash. It's appealing and appeasing to True Believers, sure enough, but it's an insult to the intelligence of anyone who is not so brainwashed as to have no understanding of actual historical fact.

Further, the Romans were not brought down by Christians. Long before the Roman Empire finally fell apart, Christianity had become its mandated state religion. The collapse was brought about by a combination of internal corruption, along with relentless external attack from pagan barbarian hordes.

For practical reasons, we must accept the illogic of yet another parallel development and the appearance of English in an alien world, but we should not have to accept such an egregious and unnecessary misrepresentation of cultural and religious history and the saccharin delivery of religious dogma. The fourth wall is not just breached, but blasted away by photon torpedoes. Further, such hackery was not essential to the story and actually detracted from it. One gets the feeling that the writer spent all that time hacking out a story merely to lead up to Uhura's revelation of "son vs sun", which is lazy and disappointing. It's quite obvious on repeated viewing that the dialog and even the scene imagery were carefully selected to try to set up Uhura's revelation as a surprise ending. What could have been a strong story on modern concepts of freedom and democracy battling against a modern version of the decadent and oppressive Roman Empire, instead was delivered as a ridiculous pandering to the religious bigotry of its day. Hence, the episode ends up being quite dated and silly in a modern viewing, and will age badly in decades to come.

Marnie (1964)

Sorry, not great. Waaaayyyy overrated by Hitch fans.

[4/10 · 2 February 2010]

I can appreciate movies that focus more on character development and dialog than action, however even that appreciation is not enough to save this film from mediocrity.

It's important for a movie to capture the viewer within the film. This movie really doesn't engage the viewer, for a few reasons discussed below.

The characters are just not likable. None of them elicit much sympathy. Marnie is a nut, her mother is creepy, Lil is even creepier, and Rutland is just not believable. We are well invested into the movie before we come to the conclusion that we just don't care about these people.

There are too many plot points that don't make much sense, and that knocks the viewer out of the film. For example, can we really believe that Rutland has fallen in love with this woman who is a disturbed and cold liar and thief? The first time he kissed her, he would have known: her mouth was rigid and never moved; there was no passion. How do you fall in love with that? He might as well have fallen in love with an inflatable doll. Following this, he knows she is a liar and thief, and in fact entraps her and catches her in the act. He then pays tens of thousands of dollars (equivalent of hundreds of thousands today) to cover her tracks, and forces her to marry him so he can fix her mental problems, even though she absolutely can't stand him or his touch. I mean... really? This is believable? He even puts a 6.5 karat perfect diamond on her finger. Sure, rich guys seek out eccentric, frigid, and insane women all the time as their soul mates.

As another example of non-credible storytelling, they spend their honeymoon on a cruise ship bound for Fiji. Now, here we have this guy who can spend about a half million in today's dollars on a wedding ring for a woman who can't stand him, but they end up on a cruise ship with nothing but a porthole? If not the premium stateroom, at least such a person would have a prime veranda room with balcony. But here's where it really gets strange. After several days of being locked up together in their stateroom, Marnie runs off to kill herself. Rutland is then seen running all over the ship from deck to deck trying to find her. But you know what? There is not another living soul on that ship! The deck lounges are all covered, nobody is walking around, nothing. Even if Rutland was rich enough to rent the entire ship, there still should be a couple hundred crew and staff members. Then, Marnie ends up face-down in a pool filled with what looks like algae water - disgusting. Is this really a credible story? I also found the story line extremely predictable (unlike the vastly superior Psycho, for example). The first time we saw Marnie's fear of the color red, it was immediately obvious that this related to blood. When she had the odd visit with her mother, it was clear that there was something nasty in their past. Did her father molest her? That would explain her disgust of men. But her mother drew back and would not touch her - so the implication was that Marnie killed some man in the past. Later, we see the hand knocking at the window in Marnie's dream, and references not to a man, but to MEN, and at that point I realized that the mother had been a prostitute and through some dramatic situation Marnie had killed one of the men, perhaps for abusing her mother, or perhaps for herself being abused. I even knew that the crisis had happened during a thunderstorm. I think the movie was not much more than half over before I figured out the entire plot line, and if that doesn't kick you out of a movie, nothing will.

The ending was particularly weak, and I would probably think so even if I hadn't already figured it out well in advance - the loose ends wrapped up too quickly and neatly. The mother suddenly abandoned her lifelong weirdness and became warm and loving, while Marnie was cured thanks to this brief catharsis, and all this thanks to Rutland having browsed a few books on psychological quirks. Is that the way it works in the real world? I think both of these messed up chicks would require years of therapy from actual professionals.

And what is the deal with Lil? I kept waiting for her weirdness to have some point, some explanation, or at least bear some fruit. Instead, she just stares people down and then disappears from the film.

Others have mentioned the cheesy backdrops, but that didn't bother me. What did bother me, though, were the completely unbelievable horseback scenes filmed in front of a reel. Not good. But if that was the only problem, I could forgive it. I could even, almost, forgive this wealthy American household led by a man with a British accent and his son with a Scottish accent. And a Scotsman who, by the way, is also an expert at understanding regional American dialects, allowing him to ensnare Marnie on the basis of her pronunciation of one word.

I will say there were some excellent Hitchcock touches, particularly the theft scenes beginning in the bathroom, moving to the quasi-split screen of the maid and the theft, then her near escape from the maid after dropping her shoe, and finishing with Marnie sneaking down the stairs. That entire sequence was very well done, and there were some others here and there.

But even with those good points, I feel I'm being kind in awarding 4 points out of ten. I suspect those who rate this film higher do so mainly out of love and respect for Hitchcock than any objective viewing.

Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Not awful, just irrelevant.

[5/10 · 7 February 2009]

*** Major Spoilers ***

This movie is by no means horrible. Seen outside of the context of the NOTLD series, it wouldn't be a bad popcorn muncher. Arguably, it even improves on the original in some ways, but in most ways it pales in comparison.

• On the positive side, the acting is better than the original, and the production values are improved. This is not a major shock given the tiny budget of the original (only $114,000) and the unknown cast and crew culled from the Pittsburgh area theater and local commercial circuit.

• Some might feel that the Barbara character is an upgrade. I feel neutral on that. In the original, Barbara was nearly a vegetable, but this is in line with the shock we might expect from her trauma, and in the end she does try her best to help out, and we appreciate her effort to overcome the shock. Yet I did enjoy the new Barbara's role as an interesting twist.

• Some might argue that this version is better because it is in color, though I would disagree strongly. I feel that the black & white original, along with its wooden performances and choppy editing, actually added to the creepiness of the movie.

The original was groundbreaking in many ways. The remake, however, is merely conventional. That doesn't make it bad, but it does make it irrelevant.

Here are some ways where the remake fails to deliver:

• When Barbara first enters the house, she leaves the door standing fully open. This is despite the fact that she is being chased by a couple of zombies who had killed her brother and tried to kill her. She never tries the phone, which is inexplicable. Even the vegetable Barbara from the original movie had that much sense.

• The people in the house wait waaaayyyy too long before beginning to board up the house. There is no logic or explanation for why it takes the zombies so long to cross the lawn (seemingly hours, from daylight to darkness) and start attacking a house full of juicy meat.

• Often in the midst of zombie attacks, some people in the house manage to allow themselves to focus on other matters. This seems implausible.

• The lonely, shocked aspect of Barbara wandering around the creepy house looking for wood amidst the animal heads and jewelry box is completely gone, yet those scenes set much of the critical tone in the original.

• We never see the dead really devouring the living. I guess it's just assumed that the audience understands what is going on.

• The radio and TV broadcasts were an essential component of the original, not only for expository purposes (what is happening? why is it happening? what do we do about it?) but again for setting the tone for showing the widespread nature of the attacks and defining this house and its inhabitants as being truly on their own. One could really place themselves in a similar position, and watching the world kind of falling apart through local emergency TV broadcasts was riveting.

• The fact that zombies catch fire easily is not exploited at all as in the original. The scenes with the flaming chair and the Molotov cocktails were effective in the original, but gone in the remake.

• The remake added a strong female character, but at the same time the Mrs. Cooper character became weaker and less effective.

• The scene in the original that really sent audiences into shock and really made this movie famous was the basement scene with the child killing her mommy with a garden trowel. It was extremely graphic although mostly done in shadow, and as I recall there were reports of people fainting in theaters. This is just totally gone in the remake. The subsequent scenes of the girl eating her parents are also gone. Wow, so much for shock value.

• The death of Ben was a major shock moment in the original that is completely lost. The new ending is interesting enough but somewhat predictable and trite. The original ending was truly... original. It was definitely not a conventional happy or even moderately hopeful ending, resulting in people walking out of theaters quiet with their thoughts - a real win for a director.

• The musical score in the remake is just awful. It's distracting and inappropriate. By comparison, the spartan soundtrack of the original was extremely effective and creepy in a Hitchcock sense, varying from screeches to soundlessness, to heartbeat sounds.

In summary, it's an OK movie worth watching, but if you're a fan of the series don't expect it to be a suitable replacement for the original.