I’m not sure what I think of it. I love the original, and it was fun to see someone try and do something with it. I don’t really think it was “good”, but it was interesting.

The concept behind it is that the filmmakers took the original film and digitally pulled out the sets from the original 1920 film. They then filmed the actors on a green screen and placed them into the old sets. It gives it a similar feel to “Sky Captain”, and I kind of dug that. I sort of liked the bizarre combination of old-style look and modern acting. It took a little bit to get used to, but I ultimately enjoyed it.

Sadly, the main reason I was excited for the movie ended up disappointing me. I was eager to see legendary Doug Jones play Cesare the somnambulist, but he really didn’t have much to do, and just kind of looked silly. I think all the other actors did surprisingly well, and the guy playing Caligari himself hit all the right notes for me. I also thought the actor playing Alan had some good charisma.

Overall, it was a worthwhile oddity for a “Caligari” fan to watch, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that isn’t a fan of the original.

…IT ROCKS MY SOCKS!!!

I’m really, really digging this – UNIVERSAL – This is how you should treat ALL your Iconic film monsters!

They have my $12 come February.

By now you’ve heard plenty about this flick. I mean, really, am I supposed to believe THIS is the first place you went to for impressions about this movie? Yeah, thought not. However I do appreciate the gesture and I intend to keep this short and sweet.

oh and spoilery

Normally I’d kick this off by telling you to go in not expecting much (which i kinda sorta DID;)) but if you’ve already seen Terminator 3 or are a long-time fan- well I don’t feel I need to tell you that. With that said I must admit I was pleasantly surprised at how parts of the movie pulled together. When this movie is knee deep in machines vs. humans aka the ‘CGI extravaganza’ the film is all set. Sadly that same cannot be said during the quieter moments when loud noises and broken speed limits reign supreme. Hell I’ll say it- I actually found myself bored. BORED! In a Terminator movie! These movies are, at heart, glorified chase films and to find oneself wondering when it will hurry up and get on with it….well that just isn’t peachy. No it fucking ain’t.

Didn’t help that whoever was in the editing room seems to suffer from epilepsy since I can’t for the life of me think of a film so poorly edited (offhand- I know I could think of one given a little time). The standout has to be when a scene cuts from one character BACK to that very same character- now being harassed by a group of nere’do wells who seemingly appeared out of the ether with nothing but assholery on the mind.

and can anyone tell me why they thought it necessary to have the films title appear not once but TWICE in the opening? For fucks sakes guys, we goddamn know what the movie is called (they did this for the director as well, but that I’ll chalk up to vanity).

Amidst the ‘holy shit’ worthy special effects and what I feel were some of the greatest war ravaged world landscape I’ve ever seen, we had our share of phoned in performances…really they should’ve called this movie ‘Terminator: taking a paycheck,’ oh and never forget the there and back again accents and unexplained pregnancies…. Is this a terminator movie? Yeah in title and for the monsters on display, sure it is. Sadly it doesn’t hold up with the Original two, but then I wouldn’t try to compare it to them since this film is a whole different sort of beast.

I wouldn’t recommend you drop any serious cash on this, a rental would be the best way to go in my opinion.

SPOILERS!

Finally, before I go, answer this: Barring that they can in perform a heart transplant in the middle of the open desert, are we really supposed to believe that Connor will still be capable of charging into battle, gun ablazin’, afterwards? Of all the transplants I’ve ever heard of, the only thing they’re really able to do after is…..sit and maybe a short walk in the evening.

oh and I’m fucking convinced that was Michael Biehn early in the movie as one of the resistance members eyeballing connor at the base.

face it, this was Wade's movie....Wolverine was just in it.

I’ll level with you, I went into this flick with more than just a little trepidation- you see I was never what you’d call a huge fan of the previous x-men films. I felt the first two were just too damn pretentious (something I feel Superman Returns has going against it as well), and the third? Well that was actually alright overall but had a few too many boneheaded things going on (mainly centered around Halle Berry’s ‘Storm’) so you can understand when I say I was only mildly interested in the movie at best.

Now what did I find when I saw it? Barring my aggravation to the packed theatre (it was a fucking matinee show on a Sunday- I thought it’d be empty…surrounded by godless heathens I am) the opening impressed me with a rather well done retelling of the second issue of Origin #2 (the marvel comic telling his origin from the early part of the decade-go read it) despite what I felt was a tad too much info handed to the audience (in the book Sabertooth really is only hinted at being Logan’s bro) but eh, this is a movie that plays to the cheap seats. It helps to keep that in mind as the film goes on.

What followed was a pretty solid origin story, however I honestly felt the film could’ve easily been split into two films, such was the strength of the stories herein (I still want a Weapon X task force and WW2 wolverine movies.) There were some changes made to Wolverine’s origin, but not quite as many as you’d think. Unlike many of my fandom peers I wasn’t all that bothered by this or the changes that various other characters took here, accept that this is a different universe guys.
Please.

Another wide-spread complaint that I really don’t share is the lacking screen time for the multitude of secondary characters, or let’s just say it- Deadpool. While I’ll be the first to say I’d have loved to see more of the Merc with a mouth, and even Gambit (both were excellent with their limited screen time and leads me to hope solo films are in both futures) I’m also aware this is a Wolverine movie and being that, he’s going to receive the top slot- the others got the right amount necessary. All this complaining is due only to their popularity, if they were original characters no one would’ve cared to how little screen time they got.

Or course, it still could’ve used more Deadpool Oh and for the record I really dug Wade Wilson 2.0, it’s not the comic ‘Pool, but this IS the origin of him so who’s to know what’s next, and really it was a kickass final battle. Bring on the solo movie dammit. One final thing for ole’ Wade. I’ll say this- he needed to talk more! Why wasn’t he talking shit during his part of the attack in the early part? You’d have thought he’d be shit talking all while zinging the bullets back right? Eh, he was damn good overall, and pray you’re one of the lucky ones who get his after credits scene. Great stuff.

The only flaws I saw with the film lay with the post production, and that is mainly poor editing and some really shit CGI. Overall the film occasionally takes on a rough unfinished look. Personally I feel the film would’ve been greatly benefited by maybe a month or two more just for some spit and polish.

As it stands, I found myself genuinely enjoying the movie and do in fact plan on picking up the DVD. I will suggest to you however that you see it at a matinee or lower than standard admission showing as you may feel a little ripped off. This is first and foremost a popcorn flick and will definitely be huge when it hits DVD. So you were warned snobs.

oh, and PS: you see wolverine’s ass. Consider that my second warning.

Live Action Deadpool - post surgery

Yeah, so Kyle mentioned that the new X-Men flick has leaked, and indeed it has. No, I did not download it. Yes, I did see it, and I did not pay a bootlegger. To start off, let’s be completely fair. It is definitely a work print and many shots are unfinished. The official response from FOX is that there are also scenes missing. I don’t know if this was the version before the reshoots earlier this year, or if this one is just waiting for the SPFX to be completed, with the picture more or less locked.

But anyway-I won’t go into a whole review or plot synopsis, but I will cover some quick “hot topics” nerds have been buzzing about.

Keep in mind that I’m not the hugest fan of the X-Men movies so far. I didn’t flat-out hate them, but they never felt like the X-Men I was used to as a teenager reading the comics in the 90’s.

Quick points:

1. The story is good! I enjoyed this one more than the previous 3 X-flicks. It really felt like an X-Men film to me. Ironic, since this is “Wolverine”. Ah well.

2. The acting is solid. Great job by all involved, except the kids in the “Origin” part (as in the excellent comic) at the very beginning. I thought we were in trouble at first.

3. The characters and their “cameos” are very well done. Blob and Gambit were stand-outs to me.

4. The opening montage of Logan and Victor through wars and battles was quite awesome.

5. Logan gets to be nasty and stabby, while still the lovable scamp that he is.

Spoilers now follow the cut, so if you don’t want to read any of them, don’t continue.

Yes, Deadpool is changed. BUT, the character is not “ruined”. Wade is shown at the beginning and is very funny, while still fitting the tone of the movie. He is then shown later as “Deadpool”; a combination of the perfect mix of mutant powers. His mouth is sewn shut “to finally shut him up”. He is dispatched of at the end, but we all know Wade can heal, and I assume if they do a spin-off movie, he will have lost most of his “extra powers” as a result. Let’s face it, “true” Deadpool fans, how many times had Wade died in the comics? That’s his “thing”.

I also have heard that the re-shoots dealt with more scenes with Logan and Wade together. As in this workprint there wasn’t much interaction, I wonder if this was pre-reshoots. I had also heard rumoured that the reshoots fixed the issue of Deadpool “dying” at the end. But at this point I chalk that up to fanboy wishes (which include me, by the way).

I am actually looking forward to seeing the finished product now, this workprint really gave me hope!

This has been the X-Men flick I had been waiting for all along.

]]> http://www.10mfh.com/random-news/movies/x-men-origins-wolverine-an-early-review/feed/ 0 http://www.10mfh.com/reviews/punisher-war-zone-dvd-review/ http://www.10mfh.com/reviews/punisher-war-zone-dvd-review/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:00:04 +0000 Wugmanmax http://www.10mfh.com/?p=785

I CAN HAZ GUNZ?

I am a fan of the Punisher. I like the character, what he stands for, and his look. I wouldn’t say I was a “extreme fanboy” and I can deal with changes, let’s say, to bring the character to a different medium. I was real bummed when I missed the chance to see this in the theaters, and real excited to watch this today, the day of it’s DVD release.

That being said, this was a pretty faithful adaptation to the character of the Punisher. Unfortunately, it was an adaptation of the crappy 80’s comics, with the modern incarnation’s gore.

I won’t go into the story too much, because there really wasn’t one. Opening Titles. Punisher has mob guys to kill. Punisher kills them. End titles.

But the movie as a whole felt insulting. They knew what the fans were wanting to see, and made sure to include those elements (bloody violence, certain characters from the comics, flashbacks to the “park”). But in looking at all the details, they lost the point.

I understand that this movie was made cheaply, and I think they did a wonderful job with the “look” of the film. The action, the gore, the cinematography, the lighting, the sets, all marvelous.

But the acting? The acting was downright awful. I can’t say one good thing here. Everybody was over the top, and at first I thought I was going to enjoy it, but it quickly shifted from “quirky” to “annoying”. Honestly, I can’t tell you that one single performance in this movie was good. Oh wait, Wayne Knight as Microchip was actually pretty decent. But he was in the movie for all of 5 minutes. The worst part is that for the most part, they cast decent actors. I have heard that Ray Stevenson is good in his “Rome” TV show. I thought he was pretty lousy here. I had no problems with them “re-casting” Tom Jane, but Tom did a superior job as a believable Frank Castle, despite looking much more scrawny than Ray.  Doug Hutchinson is a good actor. He is great on LOST, and plays a subtle creepy son-of-a-bitch really well (see The Green Mile). So what does he play here? A crazy psychopath known as “Looney Bin Jim” who likes to smash his head into things and eat live kidneys in the most over-the-top manner possible.  You are better than this, Doug. Finally let’s talk about Dominic West as Billy Russo aka Jigsaw.  Dominic is good in the Cable show “The Wire” and was decent in last year’s “300″. He can do a brooding intensity pretty well. Too bad he tried to play the Joker in this movie. …and by Joker I mean the Cesar Romero version from the 60’s. He was so over the top it was embarassing. I actually felt embarassed for the guy. He could have played Jigsaw with a seething rage, hatred boiled over into pure nastiness. Instead he played a cartoon.

The writing felt as if was lifted directly from the old “Punisher War Zone” comics. Yes. LITERALLY. Every painful leap in logic, and the badly written dialogue, and lets not forget the flat, uninteresting characters. Ugh. Every moment that was meant to come off as “funny” fell right on a wrought iron fence, spraying blood all over.

If you are a Punisher fan, you will want to see this movie, and I am not going to stop you. But let me tell you… it’s not good. It LOOKS really good, and with these ingredients, I am certain that an excellent Punisher film could have been made. But this is not that movie. I lay the blame on the script first of all, and the Director next. Lexi Alexander shows she can do action sequences, and the fight choreography was pretty good. But she can’t handle actors actually acting. They needed to be “reigned in” on this movie, and I think she tried to push them further over the top, which was the absolute wrong way to go.

As for the DVD itself? I rented from Redbox, and it was pretty much a bare-bones disc. The menu was kinda pretty in a manly sort of way, I guess.

This is a definite rental, and I wouldn’t even pay more than the Redbox $1 a night. I’m talking this sucker back in the morning.

But I saw the movie, like I assume most of you did as well. So with that, I am warning you this is spoiler-filled, if you care about that sort of thing.

The changes didn’t bother me too much, but I think I would have rather seen the Squid at the end. I just loved the devious plot from the book that included a genetically-created alien to “fake” the world into peace.

Making it Dr. Manhattan made it a little “too easy”.

Plus, Adrian tells Dr. Manhattan that he is going to end war by eliminating the need for fighting over resources. I assume this is why the naked Doctor is helping Oz “recreate” his power. But think about it for a second, if we were all happy here on Earth with everything we could ever want or need, would we still fight? I look at my own children for the answer, and reflect on past experiences. They frequently have no “need” to argue and bicker. They have “unlimited resources” as far as they are concerned, and yet they manage to argue and fight over things 22 hours out the day. I think they even argue in their sleep. It is really human nature.

If we don’t have “stuff” to fight over, we find something else. Religious wars, anyone?

…so if I can work through that fairly quickly, I would think that someone with a “god-like” stature of Dr. Manhattan would see through Adrian’s scheme right away.

Unless he just didn’t care. Which is possible.

But, back to the movie. Overall I enjoyed it.

The performances were excellent, except Ozymandias. He was too young and skinny. He seemed like a douchebag the whole time, which wasn’t how the character was supposed to be perceived.  I almost wonder if some “stunt casting” would have worked for his role, casting someone famous and well-known for the reasons that you want everyone to know who he is immediately and understand that this is core to the character. I think I would have gone for Brad Pitt or equivalent.

Both Silk Specter’s were OK. I wasn’t impressed, but didn’t think they were terrible, either.

I really liked Night Owl and the Comedian way more in the movie that I did in the book. Patrick Wilson and Jeffrey Morgan did a great job giving character to these… uh… Characters.

And last but certainly not least, Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan were both AMAZING.

I also think Director Zach Snyder should have just gone balls-out and released the whole “director’s cut” right away. This was probably a studio decision, but I think the movie was already “too long” for the mainstream audience anyway, and us nerds are annoyed that we have to wait longer just to see the “real” version. Just my opinion.

I will end this ramble with a great link I found from Cracked; a “happy ending” storyboard.

In 1974, director Roman Polanski released Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. This film tells an excellent story of corruption and betrayal within a cities management center. Nicholson plays Jake Gittes who is a private investigator hired to investigate the alleged affair that L.A.’s chief engineer for the city’s water department, Hollis Mulwray is supposedly having. When things get turned upside down, this private investigator goes on the trail of his life. When Mulwary ends up dead a sense of suspicion arises and it’s on the hunt for how and why he really died.
In many ways this can be seen as a highly regarded political film. I would say this classifies as a revolutionary film. The film deals with corruption and how one man tries to change that by digging for the truth. The movie goes about trying to change the established order that has already been set. The issues in the film call for a societal change as well. In some cases in the film things were going on that the people either didn’t care about or were not paying attention too. When governments are corrupt it is the people’s job to do something about it and bring about change for the issue.
The political message is that when it comes to deals being made at the level of government discussed in the film, even if it’s at a local level, especially in a city, those who want or will benefit the most from a project will go to vast lengths to see it through. The message here is the central point to the film. Without this on going battle between the dealers and Gittes, then there would be nothing to uncover in the end. There would be no battle between the established order and the people of the area.
The usage of music, symbols, dialogue, and things of that nature played into the role of the film. The fact that it was set in 1930s L.A. where the corruption was high within government made the movie so much more intense. It gave the audience a sense of it being an old timer movie. The fact that it was the 1930s and the idea that L.A. hadn’t been hit too hard by the Depression was a twist to the movie I thought. Just went to show that certain parts of the country were hit differently.
The film does a great job at really presenting the message. For the most part it is not hidden under a bunch of jargon and b.s. It’s told in a manner where the audience can pick up on the point that’s being driven home without too much thought. I believe it is very safe to say that corruption in the political system at any level is prevalent. In some areas maybe more so as you climb the political ladder, but some of the nastiest corruption finds itself at the bottom. Reason being that many local people run local governments, when that happens, favors are called in, kick backs are granted and so on. The political message can defiantly be translated to fit our times now.
For instance many years ago the mayor of Providence Buddy Cianci was imprisoned for “illegal” doings while in office, calling in favors for things to be done around the city. The FBI didn’t like the way Cianci was running his city, so they probed him and even though what he was doing improved the city, it was done with bribes. So with that, this story can defiantly be put into today’s climate.
I personally really enjoyed this movie. It had a really good story and a message that I think a lot of people can relate too because they see or hear about it on the news or in the newspapers all the time. Corruption and extortion is a big part of our cultural. We will do anything to get anything done that will benefit our personal situation. This is one of the better stories in the films this class has watched. Also one of the better actors as well, that being Jack Nicholson, his character is very good in this film, very believable. I give this movie a seven out of ten stars!