Oblivion review

     

     Okay, so I didn't have much feeling for this movie before I saw it.  Why?  One, I'm not a huge Tom Cruise fan.  Two, it seemed rather bland and recycled.  Also, the title must be said in the same way Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show says it...  Okay, maybe that's just something me and my sister think whenever we see or hear the title.  So how was one of this year's first tries at a blockbuster?

     So here's the plot, without giving away any spoilers.  It's 2077 and Tech 49 Jack Harper is having dreams.  Dreams of a woman that repeat in the same way over and over again.  This is odd, because it's not the same woman he's living with, who is called Victoria.  To make things even more odd, they are the only two people on what's left of the earth.  See, sixty years ago, an alien race apparently destroyed Earth's moon, which caused the planet to suffer earthquakes and other natural disasters.  (How the Earth's tectonic plates are controlled by the moon, I do not know.)  Mankind fled Earth and settled on Titan, which is one of Saturn's moons.  They left on a big ship called the Tet, which sixty years later in 2077 is hovering above earth as Jack and Victoria fix the drones that kill the aliens that are left.  Of course, this being science fiction, not everything is as it seems.  That's as far as I'm going.

     Now, I will say that I love science fiction films.  Sadly, these days good ones are in short supply.  This one is pretty good, if a bit mediocre in it's story elements.  The best thing about the movie is that it is stunning to look at.  There's desolate wasteland, areas that look like they're right out of Yosemite National Park, and of course, a futuristic home or two.  I would suppose that the IMAX version of the film looks even more breathtaking, but I saw it in lowly standard theater quality. If you are looking for a good action-based science fiction film, you may also want to look elsewhere.  There are action sequences, and the ones the film does have are excellent, with air chases and shootouts, but there are long stretches of character moments which action fans may find tedious.  And when the characters are as bland as they are here, that's not a good thing.  Now I'm not saying that these are the most bland characters on the planet...  In fact, of the few characters in the movie, only Tom Cruise is bland, and that's just because we've seen his same shtick in many movies over the past two and a half decades.   Before I forget, to add to the plus side, the movie has a very good music theme that pops up a few times during the film.  I believe the theme is done by some music duo called M83.  Never heard of it before this film.

    The one minus to the film is it's story, which I won't really go into.  I'm really starting to wonder if the science fiction genre has run out of ideas.  Or if Hollywood won't allow any new ones.  I'll go with the latter, I think.  Hollywood plays things so damned safe these days.  The story here does not break any new ground, whatsoever.  It just takes elements from better films and hopes we won't notice.  Normally I would take off a lot of points for this, but since no new ideas have come up in science fiction film in such a long time, I'm not going to deduct much.  Heck, there's a movie that came out just 4 years ago that was similar to this movie in many ways.  (Not the basic plot, though.)  

     To conclude, the film isn't a bad start to the blockbuster season.  It's not mindless action.  It wants you to think, but what it wants you to think about isn't all that vexing.  It's a theme that runs through today's movies time and time again.  In other words, the movie isn't nearly as smart as it thinks it is.  If you want to go see a movie before Friday, this is the best one out there right now.  It's probably the best thing that's come out this year so far, but that doesn't take much, as it's just now almost May.  It's beautiful to look at, and the action sequences are worth it.  See it before it's gone.  It will be almost forgotten by time Iron Man 3 starts this Friday. 

5 stars out of 7.  Recommended.

Evil Dead (2013) review

Well, yesterday was one of the days I've been dreading for over a year now.  The Evil Dead was re-imagined, whatever that means. (They say it's not a remake, but more on that later.)  How could they do such a thing?!  I mean, it's a classic!  Part of the fun of the 1981 version is that it's low budget, not that well acted, and yet it's very effective.  Now you want to make the movie so people can have their cake and eat it too?  How dare you!  Well, they did.  But does it do what it sets out to do?  Were the early reviews right in their glowing praise?

First a bit of backstory.  The original Evil Dead was made in 1979 by some amateur film-makers for just a few hundred thousand dollars.  (Probably amounts to about a million in today's money.)  It was shot near Morristown, Tennessee in and around an old cabin, which has since burned down.  Using Karo syrup, coffee creamer and food coloring for blood and other dime-store tricks, these intrepid film-makers set out to make what was advertised as "the ultimate experience in grueling terror."  The film was shown at the 1982 Cannes film festival (it took two years to make and find distribution) and horror writer Stephen King, who was then at the height of his popularity, named it one of his five favorite horror films.  The movie has grown it's fandom over time, especially from the success of Evil Dead II, which came out in 1987, and the eventual success of Army of Darkness from 1993.

Now, I first saw the original film when I was 15 years old.  It had a profound effect on me.  Never had I seen a movie like it, none that was so effective.  It had so many jump scares, inventive camerawork galore, and was demented as all hell!  I loved every minute of it.  I had a new favorite movie!  It's the movie that made me want to study film in college, along with Halloween and Dario Argento films.  Over the years I sort of grew out of my horror phase.  There are just so few that are any good, and I learned that I disliked the film production students that were horror buffs.  They had little imagination, content to just repeat what others had done or create films ripping off scenes from better movies.  Sadly, I learned that this is the way all film production is... Not just horror films.  So I don't make films.  But enough of that.  What about this new one?

Well, the plot isn't all that different.  Five young adults head to a cabin in the woods.  Two couples and the main character's sister.  The difference this time is that the sister is a junkie, and they are all there to force her to go cold turkey.  The rest is pretty much the same.  They find the Book of the Dead, some idiot reads from it despite warnings not to, the sister gets possessed, they get trapped there, people get possessed by evil spirits and try to kill the others.  So not too different plot-wise.  However, some of the rules in this version are different.  I won't go into them, because I don't like to really give spoilers out.  The characters are still pretty undeveloped.  We've got the junkie, the nurse, the girlfriend, the grumpy friend, and our pretty unlikeable hero.  (Remember that Ash was pretty boring in the first film, having minimal personality.)

So what was good about the movie?  For one thing, the new music score was fantastic, using pieces from the score for the original version, but making it less hokey.  A very fitting tribute, if you ask me.  Secondly, and you have to listen for some of these, were direct passages from the original.  Sometimes these would be in different contexts from the 1981 version.  For example, just the phrase "truly amazing" was used and I knew it was a reference.  Most wouldn't.  In the original it's said by Ash when he's listening to the professor's recording and is interrupted by his girlfriend's amazement to guessing the cards right in a card ESP game.  (Even though she was being put on.) In this version it's said by the grumpy friend, not the main character, and it's in response to a completely different situation.  Still, there are quite a few of these spread through the movie.  It was fun hearing them.  Thirdly, but not least... the pain.  My God, this is one of the most painful looking movies I've sit through, and I say that in a good way.  Broken bones, repeatedly having nails driven through you with a nail gun, gunshots, eye-gouging, splitting tongues...  It's definitely intense.  Especially the last 30 minutes or so.  I could almost recommend the movie just for the sadomasochistic experience!

What was bad?  Also not that much.  I didn't like that you didn't really have Deadites in this version.  You had possessed people.  Seriously!  The main possessed girl looks like possessed Linda Blair from The Exorcist!  It was very disappointing.  She even talks like her, with lots of profanity and sexual taunts.  It was pretty darn close to laughable.  Still, the makeup was good.  Also, I didn't like the new ways to kill the Deadites In Name Only.  It made the movie less gruesome, less intense, and gave the characters easier ways out.  The direction was nowhere near as innovative or fun as Sam Raimi's.  I think all of us were expecting that, however.  We still have the entity-cam running through the forest looking for fresh souls, but that's about it for inventiveness, and even that was stolen. 

In a way, the movie was a disappointment in that it just seemed so... average.  I had heard such good things about it, and I did leave somewhat impressed, but it didn't blow my socks off.  I've seen gorier, I've seen more startling, and I've seen better remakes.  However, I have seen many worse remakes as well.  This one is nearer to the top than the bottom in that regard.  It's neither The Thing or The Fly remake, but it's also not The Fog or the Nightmare on Elm Street remake either.  The only unforgivable mistake it makes is turning the Deadites into mere monsters.  They can now be killed in a variety of ways, and they aren't that frightening.  The original deadites were near unstoppable.  You'd think you'd killed them, and five minutes later they'd be back trying to kill you.  I hear the film is better with a large audience, and that's probably true.  Sadly, if a movie is in need of a large audience to be thoroughly enjoyable, it's not a great film.  It can only be, at most, good.  This is a good movie.  It's not great.

I'd give this movie, on my patented 7 star system, a nice 4 1/2 out out of 7.  

Let the games begin!

Hello all. This new blog, which is my second attempt of one just for myself, will see it's first posts this week. I am hoping to post to it every few days if not every single day. It will focus on a lot of topics, as I have many interests. I hope that you'll find at least something interesting. I'll post about the film industry, politics, music, theme/amusement parks, books I've read, my life, and many other things. Of course, if you'd like to just read about certain things, that's what the tags are for. I also hope to make some youtube videos later on. I'm not that great at speaking my mind, but I'm hoping that practice will make me better at it. However, I will have to wait until I have an HD webcam to do this experiment, so bear with me for a while. I also hope to make this blog look better as time goes on. It's something I don't have much expertise in, nor frankly any desire to experiment with. I just don't like the cluttered look that comes along with most blogs. Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this as much as I'm sure that I will. I have a few small posts on my former blog, if you'd like to check it out. I have a top 50 Favorite Albums collection on there, which I will redo on this blog at some point, as the list has of course changed in the 2 1/2 years since I did it last. Until later, then!