Feb 19 2012
I personally don’t care how many millions of dollars ‘This Means War’ brings in at the box office; it’s hands down the worst movie of the year so far. Supposedly a romantic comedy about two spies who end up fighting over the same woman, there’s nothing romantic or funny about it. I guess it’s also supposed to be an action movie, but good luck there. More
Feb 18 2012
Jacky is a quiet and solitary guy, but he’s not exactly a likable one; working as a low-level thug for the Belgian hormone mafia, he spends his days intimidating cattle farmers into using steroid injections on their livestock. In his down time, he’s injecting testosterone cocktails of his own into his burly body, training and shadowboxing and trying to outpace the shadows of his past. No, he isn’t a good man, but he’s presented as a fascinating one, a cog in a larger system that’s choking him in the same way it’s steamrolling the put-upon farmers. It helps that he’s the moody center of Michael K. Roskam’s Bullhead, a dark, grim character study masquerading as a crime thriller. More
Feb 17 2012
The curse of Nicolas Cage continues in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a movie so uninspired and disjointed that it makes its crummy predecessor look like The Dark Knight in comparison.
Although the original film scared up a strong box office over Valentine’s Day weekend in 2007, Sony seems to have been hesitant in bankrolling a sequel. That reluctance has resulted in a thinner budget, shoddier production values and a jettison of the cast and crew from the first go-round. More
Feb 13 2012
Valentine’s Day. It can be a nightmare. Maybe you have that someone special and the holiday ratrace is driving you mad. Maybe your flying solo and the endless parade of candy hearts and goopy sentimental slop have you howling at the moon and wanting to disembowel Cupid. More
Feb 10 2012
One of my most cherished childhood birthday presents was a collector’s edition of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, complete with handsome ink illustrations. It was given to me by intrepid relatives who gambled on an 19th century adventure novel being of interest to a kid of the video game era, and in retrospect it was a relatively safe bet. More
Feb 9 2012
Studio 4C have released their animated film Berserk Golden Age Arc I: Egg of the Supreme Ruler (Berserk Ougon Jidaihen I: Hao no Tamago) in Japanese theaters this weekend and are promoting it by way of putting the opening ten minutes online. More
Sep 9 2011
The most foreboding image in Steven Soderbergh’s new outbreak thriller Contagion is an uncovered bowl of bar peanuts.
I mean that as a compliment. At the heart of this star infested, globally minded, medical thriller, there’s a maniacal—even healthy if you will—sense of paranoia and anxiety surrounding our habits and social structures. Soderbergh takes a break from his personal art projects to deliver a monster movie for the masses where the unyielding beast in question is a nasty microbe that plans to eat its way through Hong Kong, London, San Francisco…the world.
Sep 4 2011
Written by: Chris Kavan of FilmCrave
Most people would agree that mothers should be there to comfort and support you. She’s there as a voice of reason, a master chef, a nurse, a chauffer and a confidant. The movies can bring out the best in a mother, but they can also bring out the worst. From baby-dropping abusers to overbearing from beyond the grave: here are the five moms you’ll be glad aren’t part of your family. By the way, there are spoilers ahead – this is the one and only warning you’re going to get.
Sep 1 2011
Seeing a movie like Cargo at the start of a 30 day sci-fi binge is very fortunate. The unassuming Swiss thriller by Ivan Engler is a sweet sort of surprise and a reminder of how real science fiction can be concocted on a small budget. If it were sandwiched in between bigger or more successful films it might look more slight, but positioned at the start of a potentially rocky road, it gives hope for the rest of my journey.
The specific sub-genre Cargo targets is the ‘old dark spaceship’ scenario, with a small crew of workers on an interstellar freighter discovering that they aren’t alone and that something is alive in the cargo hold of their ship. For awhile the film threatens to become a version of Ridley Scott’s Alien, but then does a thematic flip halfway through and starts channeling Solaris or The Matrix. I was entertained throughout, due in no small part to the methodical and detailed pace that Engler creates for the film. The only real weakness is that once Cargo reveals itself in the second half, it never achieves theappropriate dramatic heft it aims for. The acting is solid, but Engler isn’t as good at differentiating the different characters and his desire to let the thrills manifest organically crash against the potboiler expectations of the premise.
But let me back up from criticism and express my gratitude that Cargo doesn’t end up being a half-hearted creature feature or a low budget laser-blaster extravaganza. There is a part of me, probably blossomed in childhood, that reacts strongly to this particular breed of film. I sit up in my seat with interest at the sight of mammoth, cathedral-esque ships chugging forebodingly through space while (technically silent) thrusters blare menacingly on the soundtrack. There’s something enticing when the dark, labyrinthine corridors of the ship are revealed and actors make arcane references to engines and devices, their functions often a mystery even to the characters. And when people start going missing, and the mission is slightly off course and there are questionable sounds emanating out of locked parts of the ship, you have officially got me hooked. In the first hour of Cargo’s running time, it does all of these things with unquestionable skill.
Also written by Engler, the plot is a hybrid of influences that does an efficient job of setting everything up and getting the mystery rolling in between the extremely impressive special effects. According to the world of Cargo, the Earth will become desolate and uninhabitable sometime around the 23rd century. In an attempt to continue their existence, the Earthlings occupy small, dingy space-stations while a new planet is prepared for them by the Kuiper Enterprise. This planet is Rhea, and its image, along with bright cheerful infomercials, is plastered all over the diseased, over-crowded stations that carry the forlorn and disenfranchised.
Some inhabitants are already on Rhea, and that’s where young doctor Laura Portmann (Anna-Katharina Schwabrohis) is headed at the start of the film. She’s signed onto the crew of a small cargo freighter as their medic for an eight year journey to and from Rhea. At the end of the mission, she will have earned her passage to the new planet, where her family is waiting for her. Of course, it’s the last leg of the eight-year mission, Laura’s last shift, when she suddenly realizes that whatever it is they are carrying in the cargo hold is registering signs of life. Then, members of the crew start dying in unexplained ways and the mystery deepens. Laura doesn’t know who she can trust, and the rest of the crew don’t know what to make of her wild claims. As the film continues, things seem to be more sinister than anyone could have guessed, the truth extending all the way to Rhea and it’s promise of a new future. The remainder on the ship must band together to face the threat or perish, and the truth with them.
Cargo is a very atmospheric and tense film, its aesthetic elements easily its most strong. There’s an eerie, claustrophobic sense of isolation in the vast, shadowy chambers of the ship’s hull and the icy, frost-covered ledges of the cargo hold. The production designers have done their job and then some. These ships and space-stations look futuristic and advanced, but also lived-in, impersonal and pushed to their limits. The future humans are grungy, sick vagrants who sit coughing in clumps around pillars of cold, grey steel under sputtering green lights. Like an old, derelict house, the cargo hold looks like it contains a whole plethora of fearsome ghosts even if there’s none to actually be found.
The cinematographer allows his camera to climb and peer into every suspect nook and cranny. The exterior shots of the ships and the unforgiving space that surrounds them are first-rate and add distinction and conviction to the narrative. When we reach the big finale, that takes places largely with characters in space-suits floating outside a breathtaking structure, it’s nearly impossible to believe that this picture was made for only 2 million dollars. An economic combination of models and computer generated imagery, Cargo gives its sea-faring vessels a weight and reality that complements the grounded realism of the story.
The acting is strong and understated, which feels a bit subdued for a tale of intergalactic beasties trying to eat colonists but makes more appropriate sense the film shifts gears to something more psychological and speculative. Schwabrohis in particular is convincing and engaging as the lead, a woman who juggles compassion and cynicism equally, both sparked when she finds out about what’s being transported on the ship. The other members of the crew fall on typical sides of the hero/villain quotient, although I will go as far as to say that even the bad guys are more opportunists than simple, sinister black hats. At every turn, there’s great care to make this seem like a scenario that could happen.
In the end, it’s that very quality that prevents Cargo from being a great movie. The dramatic needs of the story require a bit more fanciful artistry, even if the details stay grounded in reality. Those who stumble ontoCargo will remember its twists and turns and strong sense of dread, but they won’t be talking about this conclusion with the same urgency or awe that we use when recounting the reveal of Dark City or the final passages of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In some ways, the bait switch also hobbles the urgency and immediacy of the film. The acting, score and filmmaking—as well as the use of close-quarters sets and lighting—prepare us for a good, solid monster movie. When the scope changes to something decidedly more epic, the feel and tone of the pic don’t change with it and the audience gets cramped. The twist itself is well-handled but not unique in the annals of science fiction. Real diehards of the genre will salute it, but they won’t be impressed.
This won’t, and shouldn’t, prevent you from seeking out Cargo. It’s an impressive debut and a great example of what can be done in the realm of hard sci-fi with a smallish budget. You don’t have to sacrifice eye-popping visuals or gobs of atmosphere. On the page, a financer could automatically assume Cargo would work better as a short story, but Engler imbues it with such a sense of the neo-gothic that we can be glad it made its way to the screen.
Next up, I’ll go back into the far reaches of my childhood and the 80’s for The Eliminators, a film featuring ninjas, caveman, cyborgs and Denise Crosby. This will be the first time I’ve laid eyes on it since the fourth grade. Can’t wait…
Aug 9 2011
PCN RATING: 
Although it’s being marketed and pitched as a prequel to the 1968 Charlton Heston classic, Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes is actually a remake of sorts. Mirroring some of the events and characters of the fourth sequel in the franchise, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Rise uses that earlier movie, a hokey, dated tale of social unrest, as a jumping off point to tell a story that sets the stage for the world Chuck’s astronaut finds in the original.
Fortunately, Rise isn’t just one more slap-dash light show aimed at siphoning a few bucks off any remaining Apes fans. It has all of the color and energy of a proper summer event picture, but it surprises us in the way it sells a silly premise and makes us care deeply about the motivations, emotions and ambitions of its central character. No, not James Franco. I’m talking about Caesar, brought to life by the combined efforts of WETA studios and actor Andy Serkis, employing the same techniques and performance that he used for Gollum and King Kong. Caesar is the emotional focus of the new film, and most of Apes triumph and poignancy come as a result of our investment in his character. And as unlikely as it seems, we do come to care for and connect with him as an individual.
The film begins in a conceivable near future—looking just like our own world –where man has made breakthroughs in gene therapy and threatens to achieve a cure for the incurable; Alzheimer’s. When Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco) tests his miracle drug on chimpanzees, it sets off a chain reaction of events that culminates in a young chimp named Caesar gaining sentience and an unwanted understanding of his place in the world. There’s a clear three-act structure that benefits the film’s simplicity and impact.
In 90 minutes we watch the young simian go from a loving suburban home with the Rodman’s to a brutal ape preserve in the heart of San Francisco where he must grow into a leader of diverse and divisive primates, and then enter the fray of that last act much touted in the trailers. This sequence is a poignant bid for freedom culminating on the mist-shrouded battleground of the Golden Gate bridge. Built into the cracks of this central struggle are teases and glimmers as to what really contributed to the downfall of the humans. Hint: It’s not as directly related to Caesar and company as you might expect. Stay a few minutes into the credits for the lowdown.
What Wyatt brings to the table is a satisfying sense of drama. I enjoyed Rise as much as any movie I’ve seen this year, and what endears it to an audience isn’t the sci-fi as much as it is the wonder of seeing things from a different, alien point of view. We’ve witnessed the talking apes before, watched test chimps gain emancipation in Project X, and marveled at Kong cut down in his grandeur in the midst of human civilization.Rise takes all of those elements and folds them into something new. This film doesn’t belong to the humans, it belongs to Caesar and his kin, and it is they—much like Heston’s Col Taylor in the first film—who are the crusading outsiders, trying to find a place in a world that looks set against them. This is accomplished through remarkably strong writing and plotting and exceptional, ground-breaking special effects. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a great reminder of the way imagination and technology can work together in the service of a good story.
The apes are nearly photorealistic and with the exception of a few hastily rendered shots that deny Caesar appropriate gravity when he leaps, it’s often hard to know if what we are looking at is physically there or just a series of ones and zeroes. The performance capture, particularly by Serkis, is worthy of high praise. The last time the mannerisms and behavior of primates was this well choreographed and integrated into human pantomime was 1984’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Sure, Jackson’s Kong was in between but that film had one gorilla, while Rise captures the spectrum of the species, from jabbering chimps and stoic silverback gorillas to wooly, world-weary orangutans. The kicker is that every last one of them is a singular character with motivation and substance.
Serkis commits so completely to his creation that we never see Caesar as a simple chimp or as a furry human. From the moment he’s led from the San Francisco suburbs to the towering Red Wood forest and looks up with awe and wonder, I was sold on the soul behind those creepy expressive eyes. The intelligent gleam, the extraordinary compassion, and that wary suspicion of those around him make this ape as fascinating and dramatic as his Shakespearean namesake. The way he navigates the social enclave of the sanctuary in the later scenes reminds of Andy Dufresne changing the dynamics of Shawshank prison. Such a heavy comparison would not be likely if there wasn’t a character to relate to there.
The humans all do well enough, but none of them are truly front and center. Franco’s Rodman is a surprisingly nuanced father figure for Caesar and not your average mad scientist or naïve crusader. Lithgow as a man losing himself to the fog of Alzheimer’s is legitimately heartbreaking and tender and his interaction with Caesar is some of the movie’s most potent emotional stuff. Frieda Pinto is an afterthought as the love interest, while Brian Cox and Tom Felton as the father and son jailors running the sanctuary are appropriately menacing. Rightfully so, they all pale and fade in comparison to Caesar and his fellow revolutionaries.
That stand-off that closes the film would be silly in other circumstances, but it’s so painstakingly thought-out and tied into what’s come before that it ends up being uplifting and thrilling. The most absurd moment of the trailers—that great gorilla leaping at a helicopter hovering next to the bridge—is transformed into a moment of emotional power because when the brute makes that jump, there are stakes for his survival. The entire film is like that really. It’s stuffed with some needlessly cute references (do we really need the damn dirty apes line again?) and a few easy contrivances, but the context and depth running under the characters lifts it up and away from an easy cash grab and sets about a curious evolution that would see it be it’s own brand of satisfying pop art.
Jul 10 2011
PCN Rating: 
Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face is a true original, built from the familiar. With its French art-house sensibilities and Universal horror movie tropes all jammed together into a crusty old shell of pulp contrivance, the movie is a monster mash gone wild. Rejected by the snobby French critics of the time and dumped over here in the U.S. to double-bill with The Manster, this psychological thriller was far ahead of its time. I was legitimately shocked by how graphic the surgery sequences are and how stately and poetic the rest of the film is. The movie hides its madness underneath a high-class painterly veneer but make no mistake–it delivers a wicked jolt. 
The opening scene of Eyes is a strange moonlight car ride that ends with the driver–an older woman with a pearl necklace–dumping the body of a younger woman into the river. Made all the more disorienting by a feverish theme reminsicent of off-kilter carnival music, this sequence opens the film on a particularly dream-like note. The movie never leaves that state, and everything that occurs afterwards is akin to an Expressionist nightmare. The darkened French countryside looms up out of the shadows and we are introduced to an imposing chateau not far from Paris where the renowned plastic surgeon Prof Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) resides with his resurrected lover (Allida Valli–the same woman who dumped the body), kennel of snarling dogs and his presumed dead daughter. When the body surfaces and the police investigate, they find it missing all of its face except for the eyes. Génessier identifies the body as that of his daughter Christiane, but we learn the truth is far more sinister.
Génessier has a hidden laboratory underneath his sprawling estate–as all good movie mad scientists do–and he’s been taking the kidnapped girls here and removing their faces. He isn’t just your average deviant nutbag, disfiguring women in the name of science or for his own immoral thrill, but instead he’s a concerned father who caused an accident that claimed the visage of his own daughter, Christaine and he will do anything to restore her beauty. Wearing one of the creepiest flippin’ masks I have ever seen in a film, Christaine floats ethereally through the mansion, crying at her own warped appearance and communing with the birds and beasts of the estate.
The good doc has tried to give her a new face several times, but his process of grafting living tissue onto dead has a very short shelf life. Within a few days Christaine’s new ‘look’ has begun to rot and Génessier must remove it. Each time he does, the process begins again, with a new girl in danger of becoming the next victim. As the film documents these events, it also follows a pair of detectives who are closing in on Génessier and his experiments.
I was quite impressed with Eyes Without a Face and can easily understand why it’s regarded these days as a masterpiece; in its own way, it is. It shames the current crop of ‘edgy’ gore films that studios have been puking out. Recent genre pictures have insisted on giving us a level of detail and cruelty so great, that it becomes questionable if the experience is really any different than what one would get from watching a snuff film. Still, those films wear down their viewers, forcing them to dull their senses and blunt their conscience, and they become boring as a result. Franju’s film develops a disturbing hyper-reality that never allows the viewer to become comfortable or acclimated to its tone. The result is far more abrasive than simple shock tactics.
Eyes has a terrifying and harrowing–though visually outdated–surgery scene in the middle of the film where the doctor removes the face of one of his sleeping victims. But the scene is played for what it is; a surgery scene, not a grand guignol gore bath where a sadistic loon cackles merrily. The discomfort and cruelty in the scene are not derived from how explicit it is (it really isn’t) but by the callous and unfeeling way in which Génessier takes what he thinks his daughter needs. In fact, the poor girls who lose their identities–and usually their lives–aren’t the only ones trapped and victimized by the mad prof. Christaine herself longs to be free of this cage in which she is trapped, but the price of innocents to procure her freedom is too much.
By the time the film ends, she has achieved a certain sense of cosmic release from her plight, and all of the remaining characters recieve more or less what they have coming to them. That inexcorable sense of ‘justice’ is what adds a few layers to Eyes Without a Face. The film develops each pplayer as a fully rounded character with needs, wants and fears and each one behaves according to these qualities. The doctor is plagued with a guilt that only compounds his own self-absorbed madness, Christaine battles personal demons that peer out at her through her physical face, and even the ‘secretary’ has remorse over her part in these events.
From a visual standpoint, this is one of the most unique horror movies I have ever seen. It is never less than riveting and often excessively creepy and often there is nothing going on except characters conversing or Christaine wandering about her father’s house. The dark, catacomb-like kennel and the austere laboratory are amazing set pieces and the evocative mask that Christaine wears is singularly iconic. I’ve not seen another image quite like it anywhere else. This movie is a feast, not just for the eyes, but the senses too. Franju compiles every element of the production in such a way that when we look back at it, the seams are gone; it has transformed into an organic whole that feels like a living-breathing entity that was not created but has always just been, lurking there in the dark waiting to take a bite.
Jun 30 2011
Remake and sequel hysteria has hit an all-time high these past few years and it isn’t showing any signs of stopping. With Raja Gosnell’s The Smurfs set to destroy more of our collective childhood in a few weeks, and the third installment of Transformers smashing its way into theaters, exploiting children’s television shows from yesteryear is in vogue.
So, given the fact that Hollywood has designs on completely renovating our childhood memories, I’m going to take the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ approach. You want some stuff to remake, how about a list of titles from the past that could actually be the jumping off point for something interest? Counting down from the least likely to the most, I give you the top ten retro children’s televsion shows ripe for remake. Studio execs, get out your pens and takes some notes…
10. Denver the Last Dinosaur (1988-1990)/ Dinosaucers(1987)
Denver the Last Dinosaur plumbed the latch-key kid culture of 1980s Los Angeles in a daring and imaginative way; it paired a group of diverse school kids with a dinosaur….wearing a mohawk and sunglasses. It’s a big, green prehistoric critter that warbles when it speaks and yet it’s the only real friend these kids have until it teaches them they have each other. Brilliant. Truly brilliant. How to remake it? Only one way really. Keep the time period. Keep every single one of those costumes and get ILM to do Denver; afterall, they know dinosaurs. And, please, you can use CGI for Denver but don’t even try an animated mo-hawk. It would be a disaster. We know how these things are supposed to look, and practical fx are the only way you are going to get an even half-way realistic hairpiece on a dinosaur.
Dinosaucers on the other hand, is far easier. It didn’t air for very long in the 80s, and although there are a few out there, like my wife, who somehow have the theme song still running in their databanks, most people would be new to this. They are aliens from space who look like humanoid sentient dinosaurs and they are embroiled in a war. It worked for Transformers so why can’t it work here? Not enough to go on? Pish! If you throw in some amazing fx work for the dino-people and the space ships you might have one of the craziest and entertaining popcorn B-movies in some time. Just don’t go looking for a plot. It’s dinos from space, people! It’s a gold mine!
9. Zoobilee Zoo (1986-1988)
One of the weirdest bits of PBS programming, Zoobilee Zoo imagined a world full of anthropomorphic animals living in an entire civilization of their own..and they sing all the time. The theme song promised ‘magic and wonder are waiting for you!’ More like flamboyance and creepiness. And yet, despite the fact it resembled a more educational and gaudy version of Cats , Zoo was perfectly suited for a young child’s mindset. Whereas Sesame Street focused on practical educational knowledge, Zoo was more interested in how people interact and with finding your inner diva. I’m running images of Baz Luhrman’s Zoobilee Zoo through my mind and it looks like a rave crossed with community theater–it just might work. Or how bout Terry Gilliam’s Zoobilee Zoo? Yes, I think it has a nice ring to it. Just stay away from realism. I don’t want to see a flick with a young kid wandering into the mutant quarantine zone and encountering the disfigured Zoobles, who just want to find a life beyond Thunderdome.
8. Read All About It! (1981)
Please tell me someone remembers this. Its pretty much the reason I included it at all. That and it would be great to have a movie in theaters that reminds kids that once upon a time we had things called newspapers and print media. It aired on TVOntario and right here on MPT as well. I used to watch it as a kid, and remember seeing the entire initial series in school. The storyline was rather interesting as science-fiction; it followed a couple of intrepid kid journalists who learn that history is being changed by an cosmic, time-traveling entity called Duneedon(he’s the thing in the pic above; admit it,you thought it was the genie from Pee-Wee’sPlayhouse). Incorporating lots of library know-how with sleuthing and actual reporting skill, Read All About It! was sort of the perfect thematic mix for a PBS program. Of course the production values, the acting and the direction sucked. So what about a remake that stays true to the source story and the details of the old-fashioned journalism? That alone would give the pic a unique bent. These kids don’t just hit the net? They have to go to the library?
7. Small Wonder (1985-89)
Ok, its uncomfortable confession time. One of the first acknowledged little boy crushes I had was on Small Wonder’s V.I.C.K.I, the robot Ted Lawson creates as a sibling for his biological son Jamie. If that sounds wierd or creepy now, Tiffany Brissette was older than I was at the time and at 6 it never dawned on me that it was wrong to have the hots for a dead-eyed girl that you could conveniently program any whim into. Yea, it was creepy. Even then, when it was just intended to be a cute little sitcom about a kid and his robotic sister, it was creepy. These days, the robotic family member bit has been beaten to death. Look at A.I. or Bicentennial Man. Possibly the best approach to Small Wonder is marrying that sense of family drama to a real sci-fi story that explores the unanswered questions a kid might not ask: if Vicki never grows, what happens to her once everyone else is gone? Does she head out to meet the blue fairy or would a more realistic movie handle that differently? When Jamie is 65 is his 8year old sister still watching his back? Someone call Tim Burton. I bet he could give us a ‘Small’ to really wonder at.
6. Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1991-1996)
Ok, this is the first show on the list that doesn’t belong as much to my childhood as my siblings. The stories were just a bit tame for my taste and because it was Nickelodeon it was also pretty cheesy on the production end. I remember some specific eps like Bobcat Goldthwait as the Sandman and Aron Tager as the kooky bum-like wizard Dr. Vink–later stories also featured Firefly’s Jewel Staite and Roc’s Charles S. Dutton. What I appreciated about it then was the close-quarters, home-fried campfire story bookends the tales all had. Friends formed a group called The Midnight Society and met in the woods to tell ghost stories. Many of the stories borrowed tropes from tried and true stories like The Monkey’s Paw or the legend of the Golden Arm. One episode even featured an old theater showing Nosferatu and had the vampire escaping from the film. Unlike the grime and grimace of today’s teen horror, this pre-teen approach was mindful of what came before. Perhaps bridging the age gap and bringing AYAOTD to a wider audience as a family chiller is a good place to begin in jump-starting the dying film form of the horror anthology.
5. David the Gnome (The Secret World of the Gnomes) (1985/1987)
This one gets to be here at the behest of my wife. The ultimate cultural cross-over, the show that found its ways to Nickelodeon in the late 80s was a Spanish cartoon dubbed into english with the help of Christopher Plummer(Sound of Music, Dracula 2000) as narrator and Tom Bosley (Happy Days, Father Dowling Mysteries) as David. The original spanish version was based off a Dutch children’s book series that included The Gnomes and The Secret World of Gnomes. The animation had a real illustrated quality to it, and David and his wife were caretakers of the forest, helping and healing the animals that lived in their domain with a combination of medicinal herbs and good old fashioned gnome know-how. Looking like a lawn ornament come to life, David was a tantalizing combo of Marty Stauffer, Martha Stewart and Jerry Garcia all rolled up into a endearing ball of blue and red. So, why re-do it? Well, it would have great potential as a computer animated or even hand-drawn feature if it were to land a good writer/writers. And you could bring Tom and Christopher back for voice parts I’m sure. Plummer has been doing voice-work for Up and 9 recently and I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to hear himself talk, and let’s face it, his voice is perfect for it.
4. Tranzor Z (Mazinger Z in Japan), 1972
In 1984, when my fellow kindergarteners were reeling over He-Man, Transformers and Voltron I was the dopey kid who was head-over-heels for Tranzor Z. Only problem was while toy store shelves were chocked to the brim with the others there was no Tranzor Z to be found at all. Hey! How was I to know that the real issue was that I wasn’t Japanese and living ten years earlier? See, the show that ended up airing on weekday afternoons was a U.S. import of Mazinger Z, a Japanese anime released in 1972. had giant robots with detachable fists fighting the legions of Dr. Hell (Dr. Demon in the U.S. release) and his henchman, who included Lord Ashura (Devileen in the U.S.) who happened to be a hermaphrodite right down the middle; each side of his/her personalities would bicker and fight endlessly with the other. Several elements were cut from the U.S. release including the fact the female robot, Aphrodite A, had breast missles she would fire at enemies.A live-action film could involve hot-shot pilots going off to battle in the robots–big shiny special fx set pieces– without worrying about a convoluted or needlessly complex mythology that might be shredded in the adaptation, ala Evangelion. Just think, it could be like Robot Jox, but actually good and with a budget of more than 3,000 U.S. dollars.
3. Eerie Indiana (1991)
Perfectly weird and terrifically witty, with a plot hook that felt like Stephen King meets The Wonder Years, Eerie Indiana was one of my all-time fave series as a kid. And as is usually true of the televison I end up loving(*cough* Pushing Daises, American Gothic, Brisco County Jr.*cough*), it was canceled after a too-short run. Marshall Teller (Omri Katz) is a young boy who moves with his family to Eerie, Indiana and learns that the town lives up to its name. There were ATM machines with a mind of their own, a set of braces that could pick up the hidden thoughts of dogs and in one of the best storylines, a Tupperware sales lady was actually keeping her two sons in a state of suspended animation by sealing them away in bed-sized tupperware. Katz and Just Shankarow, who played Marshall’s sidekick, Simon were a nice fit as the adolescent leads. It was even remade a few years later with more comedy but even less success. A fresh new cast and crew would do well for the show, but let me suggest one of the series’ original headliners for director; Joe Dante, of Gremlins and Matinee. This is definitely his bread and butter.
2. Gargoyles (1994-1997)
It’s frustrating to watch all of these current cartoon movies parade across the big screen when one of the best is still out there gathering dust. By the time Gargoyleslanded, I was well into high school, and not paying much attention to the weekday afternoon toon line-up, but my siblings adored it and I found myself catching bits and pieces when I would come home, and slowly, I was hooked. What began as a riff on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with a band of varied gargoyles hanging out in New York City with their human female friend became a complex fantasy incorporating Scottish history and mythology, Arthurian legend, and amazingly, entire aspects of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was a comic book come to life and had the same sort of attention to detail and superb voicework(over half the primary cast for Star Trek: The Next Generation was on board for this one) that defined Batman: The Animated Series. Creating a live-action version of this would be a no-brainer, though it might take a little bit of refreshing the audience what Gargoyles is exactly. Either way, it has plenty of opportunity for great creatures and special effects and it has the one thing that Transformers, G.I. Joe and their ilk failed to possess; characters and a story we could care about.
1. H.R. Pufnstuff (1969)
Wow, where to begin with H.R. Pufnstuf? Created by Sid and Marty Kroft, who were also responsible for the equally odd Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and previous remake victim, Land of the Lost, Pufnstuf is clearly a product of its’ time period, the late 60s. There’s a plot there right? Sure, somewhere, and if you are a child with a thing for mescaline or LSD, it all may make perfect sense. There’s a magic talking flute named Freddy, a six foot dragon that is the titular character and a witch named Witchie-Poo. All of this is so surreally designed that it feels just like a fever dream brought on by a bad roast-beef sandwich eaten too close to bedtime. If there’s to be a remake, we need someone who can just cut loose and make all of that weirdness come alive up on screen. Forget the usual suspects, go scour the world of tv commercials, music videos and homeless street art and get us a Pufnstuf director. All of this trippiness will no doubt look super-wicked in 3D.
Jun 23 2011
Ah, Emma Stone. She fought the undead in Zombieland and skewered classic literature in Easy A. Now, it seems, she might be set to do both at the same time.
Stone, who has this summer’s The Help coming up, as well as her role as Mary Jane Watson in the next Spiderman, has been offered the role of Elizabeth Bennett in the irreverent Jane Austen adaptation, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Helmed by Craig Gillespie, whose horror comedy Fright Night also opens this August, P&P&Z has been trying on a few different female leads over the past months. Previous potential Elizabeths have included Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, and one of the film’s producers, Natalie Portman. So far, no one has signed on.
Personally, I quite enjoyed the book and found it to be surprisingly respectful of Austen’s spirit and intent while gleefully adding in things like the undead eating their way through Regency England and secret cults of ninja assassins. Emma Stone, who has a terrific gift for comedy and playfulness, would no doubt bring the necessary charm and goofy energy to the role.
What do you think? Is it too soon for Emma Stone to return to zombie land?
Jun 17 2011
“In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight Let those who worship evil’s might, Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!”
If you are comic geek you no doubt recognize that little ditty as the oath of the Green Lantern Corps, the intergalactic peacekeepers of the classic DC comics series. If you don’t have the foggiest what a Green Lantern is (and I suspect there are more of you out there than the geek contingent wants to admit) you are probably thinking ‘Wait, superheroes still have oaths?’ And the answer is ‘well, the Green Lantern does.’
This is a movie I would have adored at around the age of 9 or 10. Some 22 years out from that date, I still found a good deal to admire in Green Lantern. Unfortunately, that troublesome adult part of me that needs things like story cohesion and dramatic weight kept getting in the way. On the production front, this is a handsomely mounted and mostly engaging affair, bold enough to discard the recent mundane palettes of most superhero sagas for something more ambitious. Employing the art designs of Jack Fisk, this Lantern doesn’t just remind of a comic-book, it could literally be the moving panels of a 60’s era pulp saga involving space cops and intergalactic monsters. The goofy opening scene of alien astronauts discovering an ancient evil prepared me for an adventure of Flash Gordon proportions. What follows, though, is dismally earth-bound, punctuated by moments of cosmic uplift.
A quick word about the complex back story. The Lanterns are essentially a police force, bestowed their powers by the Guardians of the universe, live on the planet Oa and can harness their will through magical rings that allow them to manifest whatever their minds can imagine. The dark side of the will is fear, and its culminated in Parallax, who looks like a giant space booger with the head of one of those aliens from Mars Attacks. Parallax has a history with the Guardians and the Lanterns, and his mission is as much one of revenge as destruction. When the alien warrior Abin Sur is wounded by Parallax, he goes to Earth looking for a replacement before he dies. He finds reckless, emotionally uncertain Hal Jordan when the ring chooses the witless human and deposits him at Sur’s crashed ship.
Like that, Hal is thrust into the scope of a grand struggle. Once he figures out how to activate the Lantern, he’s beamed up to Oa where he’s met by the Lantern force, including a strange, fish-like Tomar-Re, who sounds like Geoffrey Rush, the extraterrestrial bulldog Kilowog (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Sinestro (Mark Strong), the current leader of the Corps who is gruff and unconvinced of Jordan’s worthiness. Meanwhile, on the little blue planet Parallax has infected a scientist, the lonely, stunted Hector Hammond and transformed him into something that looks like John Merrick and Peter Sarsgaard collided.
The sequences of the film that involve Hal’s trip to Oa and the final battle with Parallax on Earth are easily the strongest. They have the nimbleness and sincerity of Campbell’s previous hero film, Mask of Zorro, and they walk a slippery slope between sublime silliness and earnest drama. When Hal and Parallax take their battle to the edge of the sun, Campbell references the Donner and Lester Superman movies and then trumps them. He does the same thing earlier when Hal sails down to the balcony of his lady-love, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). The tapestry of Oa isn’t visually convincing as a real place but it’s been designed with the same verve and imagination as those matte paintings in Golden Age science fiction. When we see the emissaries of a thousand galaxies standing on the craggy ledges of Oa, there’s something striking about it without bringing reality into the equation.
The movie’s anchor and downside is the reliance upon the supposedly important human concerns of the plot; the origin story that needs to get Hal from being a self-absorbed schmuck who’s still reeling over his daddy’s demise, to the green-suited, masked warrior who can stand-up to the expansive fear of Parallax. These passages are the ones Campbell has the most difficulty with, trying to implant a humorous, jokey vibe that would be more at home in a 90’s superhero flick like The Mask than in a pulpy fantasy epic .
Reynolds is totally miscast as Jordan, and his character is severely underwritten. The good news is that he rises to the occasion by playing a convincing version of Ryan Reynolds, and settling the audience down into an amiable rhythm that carries us through the clunky, cliché-infested waters of the script. Blake Lively is beautiful and classy as Ferris, but again her character feels very much like an add-on that exists because it’s been determined that all superheroes need significant others. Sarsgaard and Strong as the villain and the villain-to-be are the only ones who register as characters, and maybe this is down to the fact their make-up is the most convincing and they get to internalize struggles between what they should be and who they are willing to be. Strong’s Sinestro is cheated by the franchise demands in a credits sequence, and his turn-of-character is less plausible than Magneto’s about-face at the close of First Class.
As a director I’ve always liked Martin Campbell, but here he’s a bit out of his league. There are often several competing tones going on in Green Lantern and when Campbell forces the film into a matinee kid’s movie format (which is, honestly, where it belongs) he keeps getting sidetracked and introducing more and more sideways threads until the emotional effect of the pic is diminished. This really feels like a movie that’s missing a good thirty minutes and side-characters like Tim Robbins’ Senator Hammond and Angela Bassett’s researcher are clearly supposed to have more to do. There’s also a lack of Oa and the other Lanterns in the story, and this is a shame because they are clearly the most interesting part.
Campbell doesn’t have time for that because he’s too busy making the Lanterns’ ability of creating objects out of green energy a plausible and valid power. I’m surprised he makes the scene where Jordan throws a set of cartoon wheels on a haywire helicopter and sends it through a Hot Wheels ramp work at all. When Jordan is slapping together an arsenal of make-shift war-toys to battle the tentacled, twirling Parallax, he’s totally jiving with the film’s comic namesake. The problem is this constant war between the two neutralizes the overall effectiveness.
What we are left with is a movie that doesn’t really know what it wants to be and like Jordan is afraid to commit until the stakes are fully raised. This is a fun summer distraction but it isn’t likely to resonate or build the kind of audience that will justify a sequel. Which is a pity, because I’d gladly watch a second installment if it would leave Earth in the rearview and set its sights for infinity, and beyond. Now, it’s best summed up by Robbins’ Hudsucker Proxy character, Norville Barnes, pitching his idea for the hula hoop. ‘Y’know, for kids!’
Jun 12 2011
PCN RATING: 
Tree of Life opens with a quote from the Bible, specifically Job 38: 4, 7 – “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
From this, darkness, and then the first illuminating flames of the universe’s birth, underscored by the voices of the O’Briens, that family in Waco, speaking to God in hushed tones that sometimes frame themselves as confessions and other times as pointed questions. Evoking the language of prayer, the spirit of art, and the patience of meditation, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life erupts forth from the screen with an impact likely to toss audiences on either side of a vast divide. Malick has crafted his magnum opus; a work of significant beauty, that while sometimes maddening and never easy, expands the notion of what movies can be, what they may reveal, and how they can inspire us to feel.
The film itself sits outside of one single narrative flow, and Malick has juxtaposed the finite cares of fragile human life against a backdrop of grand and cosmic proportions. In some ways, the entire first hour functions as a dramatic distillation of the book of Job. When Jessica Chastain’s Mrs. Obrien receives a telegram informing her of her nineteen year-old son’s death, she internally petitions God for a reason. Those much touted and spine-tingling images of Earth’s primordial growing pains are presented as her answer. In scripture, God details the fearsome handiwork of his creation to Job by presenting a great sea beast, and then asking ‘Can you draw out Leviathan with an hook through his nose?’ Malick’s version imagines a majestic plesiosaur stranded on a beach at sunrise; to drive home the mortality of miracles, it lies bleeding, ragged bites from a school of hammerheads scouring it’s flank.
Collaborating with the great production designer Jack Fisk, special effects veteran Douglas Trumball (2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running), and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Malick delivers the films’ visual pièce de résistance—a virtually silent (save for a few voice-overs) half-hour sequence that tracks from the moment the universe was conceived right down to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Boasting special effects more impressive than anything seen in this summer’s bevy of blockbusters, Malick and his crew make those fantastical images stand apart in their naturalism. Spoken by Chastain’s Mrs. O’Brien early on is the theme of the entire endeavor: there are two paths through life, one of nature and one of grace. Nature insists upon itself, grace takes no care for its own welfare.
It isn’t seamless, but the sight of a saurian raptor placing it’s taloned foot on a downed hadrosaur has all of the curious, bemused poetry seen in The Thin Red Line or The New World. The billowing, hundred-story clouds of a global volcanic venting are far more staggering and provoking than some CGI trinket. Against this shaping violence are the enrapturing dioramas of new life; oceans of thriving jellyfish, dewy Cretaceous fens, and the microscopic soup of life being knit together by a precise and unseen initiator. Later, towards the film’s final passages we see a similar event further down the line—the death of the universe, captured in the icy tones of a cold, alien twilight.
Delivered as pure cinema, that sustainednatural history is reminiscent of the mind-bending trip of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike Kubrick’s decidedly impersonal science fiction, there’s actual warmth and human feeling in Tree of Life. Surprisingly, the most effective and transporting passages of the picture focus on Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien and their three young boys. The oldest son, Jack, is also seen as an adult (Sean Penn) during the film’s bookends, wandering in between the lonely, concrete jungle of Dallas skyscrapers while ruminating on his childhood in Waco. In scenes of a stranger nature we see him making his way across an unnamed desert wilderness that opens onto a vast ocean, upon whose shores walk those who have since passed on. The nostalgic visions of children growing up in a small town vibrate with the same wisdom and generous feeling as Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Dandelion Wine.
Although it isn’t parsing a particular narrative, the Texas segment feels nearly autobiographical, and what resonates is the way all of this seems both universal and very personal. I did not grow up in the time period portrayed—it belonged to my father and his brothers—but there is much I do recognize, including warm summer nights spent running through cool glades, down neighborhood blocks with sparklers in hand, and how siblings of a certain age can vacillate between affection and rambunctious squabbling. The conflicting feelings of adolescence sit at the frame of a world encompassed by mother and father, whose values, beliefs and expressions of care determine the boundaries of it. Dazzling vignettes lovingly etched by Lubezki’s lens chronicle young Jack’s coming-of-age and how he nestles himself in his mother’s nurturing love and resists and strains against his father’s discipline and standards.
Brad Pitt is astoundingly strong as Mr. O’Brien, giving a turn so nuanced and multi-faceted that it causes us to reconsider his talent. He’s always been good, but here he’s playing O’Brien on more than one channel; making slight variations according to the way each family member sees him. There’s the good, struggling provider who does what he thinks is right by his family—the man as he sees himself –and the distant, occasionally gentle, but stern overseer—the one Jack and his brothers see–the frustrated, loving husband , and then, just the man—perhaps as God sees him– living according to nature but wishing in his heart he better understood grace. The scene where he sits at the piano playing notes in accompaniment to his young son’s guitar strumming is both subtle and overwhelming in how it burrows to the core of the character.
Jessica Chastain is lovely, vulnerable and fiercely maternal without coming off as a glossy, bland symbol. Sometimes glimpsed dancing in the air like a dervish or encased in glass Sleeping Beauty style—all of these fantasies idealized by Jack—Chastain must find truth within a role that, by nature, often feels like it’s too good to be true. The breakout performance here is Hunter McCracken as young Jack. McCracken is every bit plausible as a kid of the 1950’s, but beyond that he makes us believe in the transforming experience he’s going through; adolescence. When he sneaks into a neighbor’s house and steals a slip—feeling an almost crippling guilt over it—the confusion and resentment in his eyes when he returns home are completely convincing. In this case, it’s likely that the young actor is manifesting emotions that he doesn’t personally understand, working beyond his grasp and doing it nearly effortlessly. His internal monologues are some of the most captivating to ever grace a Malick film.
The trick here is that all of the performances and visuals are filtered through the idea that these are adult Jack’s recollections of –and reconciliation with– the memories of his younger self. In this way Jack is a surrogate for Malick, and this knowledge makes Tree of Life seem less arbitrary and random than its structure suggests. The fairy tale interludes, the grand orchestrations of the cosmos, those dinosaurs and the Judeo-Christian eschatology could be the concoction of an Eisenhower era kid who fell asleep with one hand on the Bible and one on a fifth grade Earth Science textbook. The obviously imaginary image of a boy swimming out of his submerged childhood room only drives home the concept of the entire experience as a reverie viewed from different positions of a man’s life. It isn’t a specific reading of the film as much as it is the vehicle that Malick uses to take us on his magical mystery tour.
On a personal level, I was swept up in the film and touched by it, reminded of my own childhood and the way in which life slides along, losing pieces of what we know and understand as it goes. I have watched many relatives and a few friends leave this world—more are on their way out as time passes—and am now at a point where I can remember my father at the age I am right now. The examples of care and charity demonstrated to me by my parents, as they are to Jack by his mother, have come to inform the person I am. What Jack’s father has given him is there too, finally appreciated by both on that farther shore. Tree of Life isn’t interested in giving a definitive answer to anything but wants to make known that questions can be felt as deeply as answers. This is why it strikes a chord. All that can be understood by Jack in the end is this. People die. I have been loved. In the face of death, I can choose to love back. The rest is there to be contemplated, asked, lifted up in prayer or tested by time. Here at last is a film bold enough to consider all of it.
