Since I keep falling further behind on my review writing, and all of my non-quick-blog-entry writing of late has been on the novel, I finally got in the mood Wednesday night, and banged out several quick reviews. I'll elaborate on these when I give them each their own page in the
Reviews Section, which will happen sometime between tomorrow and never.
Reviewed here:
Serenity,
Fight Club,
Wallace and Gromit in the Case of the Were-Rabbit,
Saw, and
Team America. And away we go.
Serenity, 2005
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 8
Combat Realism: 6
Humor: 6
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 7
Overall: 7.5
Seems to be a lot of 7s there, eh? I didn't plan it that way, but quite a few elements of the movie were very good. Not quite great, but certainly better than average. I was pleasantly-surprised by the clever script, interesting characters, plot twists, and especially by the action scenes. The trailer shots of the pixy-sized girl kicking ass weren't especially convincing, and she was far from perfect in the film, but she moved well (past training as a dancer comes in very handy for fight scenes in film) and the scenes were choreographed and shot nicely. Especially compared to the chop chop chop style most directors use to ruin fight scenes/disguise their actors' complete inability to fight.
The other action elements were fun too, and much larger scale than I expected. The huge space battle near the end too me completely by surprise, and damn was it a lot of fun. You can't help but compare the scene of "one small ship darting through a massive space battle" to the opening of Star Wars III, and the fact that this one is far better, and that it cost perhaps 1/20th what Lucas' did, is actually sort of depressing.
Fight Club, 1999
Script/Story: 8
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Combat Realism: 7
Humor: 5
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 4
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 7
Overall: 7
Malaya and me were quite surprised by this film, which we recently saw on DVD. Yes, it's been out for 6 years, and it's a cult favorite, and
it's very well-regarded, but we'd just never gotten around to watching it until we borrowed the DVD from a friend. I'd never seen it since I thought it was just some stupid thing about men who felt emasculated by the modern world rediscovering their inner strength by beating each other up. Sort of an R-rated version of those
Promise Keeper "no wimmen 'lowed" wankfests.
It is in some ways, but it's a much larger and more interesting story than that. What really surprised us though was that not only did we not know there was a huge plot twist, along the lines of
The Sixth Sense or
The Crying Game, but that we had never even heard that there was such a plot twist. As a result, it took us completely by surprise when it happened near the end of the film, and sent us crawling avidly over the IMDB movie trivia page to see tidbits about how it was foreshadowed and developed.
The big "yank the carpet out from beneath you" twist is believable, more or less. What I found less believable was the whole plot of the film, and the way all of these men, from every walk of life, willingly join up to do anything, legal and otherwise, for their charismatic leader. And seemingly every single guy was 100% committed, even the ones who just showed up at the various fight club meetings to beat each other up. They sat quietly while Brad Pitt lectured them on the evils of materialism and how superficial our lives have become, and then they beat each other, and then they went home, happy and revitalized.
It's basically a fairy tale, and if you buy into it and suspend your disbelief it's a great story and a meaningful film. If you don't it's just 2 hours of bloody brutality that you'll roll your eyes at. The fun factor score is the key measure; I was entertained and appreciated the artistry of the film, but I didn't really buy it and I didn't really enjoy it. Seldom does a movie come along with a real message and this much verve and attitude, so it's certainly worth seeing to make up your own mind about.
Wallace and Gromit in the Case of the Were-Rabbbit
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 8
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 6
Overall: 7
I'm admittedly a huge fan of Wallace and Gromit, and my score is definitely higher than it would be if this was the first W&G film I'd ever seen. With that caveat given, I can recommend this one, but not all that highly. It's cute, it's not painfully stretched out to fill the 90 minute run time, and all of the characters are well done. The sets are great, the claymation is believable and enjoyable, the voices are good, it's got a plot, lots of laughs, tremendously-groanable puns, and some good action set pieces.
All that said, it's not as good as their previous shorts, since those are just jam-packed with action and wild fun. This film works better as an actual film, but that means there are long stretches of dialogue and exposition and character interaction. All of it very well done, to the point you forget you're watching clay figures move, and the characters have 10x more life in them than
The Corpse Brides' boring stereotypes, but I wanted more excitement and action. The climactic chases in
The Wrong Trousers and
A Close Shave blow away the action in Were-Rabbit, and this film would definitely have been improved by turning it into a short. It's not a short story, it's more like a novella, and at 50 or 60 minutes it would have been a masterpiece. At 90 minutes though, it needed just a bit more action and fun, with less repetitive vegetable worship and rabbit chasing.
I recommend it to everyone, but not until you've seen the first three W&G shorts. If you've seen them, then buy a ticket to this one. If you haven't, get them on DVD and watch them a few times and wait for this one on DVD.
Saw, 2004
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 7
Humor: 3
Horror: 8
Eye Candy: 3
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
Saw is a brilliant film and a horror masterpiece, when you consider they made it in 18 days, for 1.2 million dollars. It's far better than numerous action/horror films that cost more than $40 or $50 million, and it has one of the best concepts of any horror movie ever made.
In a relative scoring chart, like the one I use on my
Chop Socky reviews page, this one would have 8s and 9s across the board. Compared to other films though, quality films with quality actors and scripts, it falls a bit short. But for the target audience of horror fans, it's absolutely brilliant.
The concept is what it's really all about, and while the Jigsaw Killer is never believable except as an elaborate plot device, and the conclusion is completely ridiculous when you consider the leaps of faith it required by the person who set it all into motion, it's still a damn nifty idea. In a sick, twisted, devious, and gruesome sort of way. This is definitely not a film for children, though teens will likely adore it. I would probably have watched it every day, to the point of memorizing the dialogue, if it had come out when I was 16ish.
The biggest drawback, besides the plot holes that gape in retrospect, is the acting. It's uniformly horrendous, especially by the actual actors in the film. One of the leads is the co-script writer, and he's fine, for a horror movie. Danny Glover is featured as a crazy ex-cop, and he's awful. Totally out of his depth trying to play a nutty guy; he's like
Sergeant Murtaugh on LSD. Worse is
Carey Elwes, whose bloated, blotchy-face will make you think
The Princess Bride was released
far longer than 18 years ago.
Given the acting, an unfortunate amount of the film is spent in one small set, with two men chained to opposite walls of a bathroom, and a bloody corpse lying between them. It's a great set up, and the cool stuff we see in flashbacks and elsewhere keeps our interest, but when there are two guys in a room and neither of them can act, it gets painful, after a while.
Imagine Silence of the Lambs, but with Denise Richards and Freddie Prinze Jr. playing the leads.
Okay, that was mean.
Saw isn't that bad, but 90% of the coolness is the plot and the scenarios it shows us, with acting that steadily drags it down, and a plot that grows more and more absurd as the surprises are revealed. It's far better than it has any right to be though, considering the resources the filmmakers had at their disposal.
Team America, 2004
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 5
Action: 8
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 4
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
This one is hard to score, since it's a puppet movie that lampoons every Bruckheimer-esque action film ever made, as well as the fact that it's actually a movie starring puppets. Marionettes, to be more specific. Made by Matt and Trey of
South Park fame,
Team America is awesomely-obscene, completely ridiculous, and frequently hilarious. It's also rather challenging to get into, since you have to just buy into the fact that they're puppets, on visible strings, on sets that are obviously about two feet high. It took me a while, and I was bored early on with all of the exposition and such, but I began to enjoy the movie halfway through, and I laughed a lot during the last half hour.
This is one that's either going to work for you, or not, without a lot of middle ground. I can see watching this one a few times and liking it more each time, as it gets easier and easier to suspend my disbelief and astonishment. And I can also imagine a person making it through ten minutes before storming away and cursing about it being the stupidest movie he/she has ever seen.
It is stupid, awesomely so, but that's all intentional. Every character is a broadly-drawn stereotype taken straight from other cheesy action movies, and almost every event is much the same. The titular Team America chases comically-cliche terrorists and blows up most of the world's major landmarks in their efforts to stop the WMD-packing, bearded, turban-wearing bad guys. In every case, as they stand in the smoking ruins of Paris, or beside the rubble heaps they reduced the Sphinx and Pyramids to, they give each other high fives and celebrate, with no remorse, regret, or even any comprehension of what they're doing.
The whole film is satire, often going way past the level you expect it to reach, and it's brilliant, in a way. Really, it gets funnier the more I think about it, as stuff that was just "WTF?" inducing at the time seems clever and subversive in retrospect. It's really hard to suspend your disbelief and get into the film though, and the frequent jokes about the puppets are either hilarious, or off-putting. Several scenes show them in the real world, where they are obviously about one foot high, riding around in toy cars and such. I was surprised that no shot ever featured a puppet getting stuck on something, or hit by a car, and yanking one of the puppeteers down from above and right into the model of an Egyptian town, or Team America's secret base inside Mount Rushmore. That's about the only thing they could have done to further lampoon the technology of their own film, but I guess even they thought it would be going too far.
If I ever get around to watching this one again I'll post an update to say if it was hilarious and perfect the second time, or even harder to enjoy. I'm actually sort of curious how I'll react, since this one definitely grew on me over time, and it seems funnier every time I think back on it.
