TRON

TRON (1982)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Steven Lisberger

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan

From: Walt Disney

Here’s an appropriate review, given that the sequel for this movie came out this weekend. I only saw this one time, way back in my college days in Illinois, so I wanted to watch it again. However, it’s out of print on DVD (good job, Disney, getting it out for people to see again) and my local Blockbuster doesn’t have it, so I had to resort to YouTube to see it. I know, I know. But, if you’re in the same boat, look for Tron Part 1 on Google Video and you’ll spot it.

I don’t have too much to say about the movie, as it doesn’t exactly possess a plot from a Kurosawa or a David Fincher film. Kevin Flynn (Bridges, in a performance that’s the best of the movie, for sure) used to work for a computer corporation called ENCOM. But, a dastardly rival in the company, Dillinger (Warner) stole some of his projects so while he rose to success in the company, Flynn ended up getting terminated and now runs a small arcade. With help from some pals still in the company (Boxleitner, Morgan), Flynn goes in for the purpose of getting proof of Dillinger’s wrongdoings. However, he runs into trouble with the Master Control Program, the main computer of the company that now has become sentient and even controls Dillinger. Via an experimental laser, Flynn literally gets zapped into the Master Control Program and enters a one of a kind totalitarian world where gladiatorial contests take place, Dillinger in virtual form appearing there too, but even in that form the MCP controls things. With virtual representations of his pals, Flynn tries to beat the games and escape the MCP.

Like I said, it’s not the plot that’s the selling point. It’s rather simple. Not that it means that it’s a bad movie by any means. Bridges in the lead is a nice asset, but it’s the look of the movie in the digital world that is so great. In ’82, it’s mind-blowing stuff; whether you look before the movie or after it came out up to today, I haven’t seen another film that looks quite like it. I really dig it. Them pulling it off almost 30 years ago is a great achievement and in hindsight, the movie deserved much more love-at least for its usage of computers in motion pictures-than it got at the time. If you’re a computer dork then you should especially enjoy some aspects of it, the technical terms and whatnot. I was amused that the people in the virtual world represented various programs of the MCP; it sought out inappropriate programs/people to do combat with, just for the easy win. What a hater the Master Control Program is!

What also has to be mentioned is the sound of the movie. The blips and bloops of the digital world are wholly appropriate and make you believe in what sounds like a wacky premise. Also, the soundtrack. You hear two songs from Journey, and in 2010 the band is usually lol-worthy according to the majority of people, but if you dig their songs (like me) then you’ll enjoy hearing their two contributions. What provides most of the music, though, is the score from Wendy Carlos, a synthesizer whiz who provided a great soundtrack that fit perfectly with the film. In a note that’s more trivia than anything else, Wendy Carlos used to be known as… Walter Carlos. Yep, a transsexual. Not that it means anything in terms of the movie that she came up with.

If you haven’t seen the movie, you should see it once, just to see if you’re as captivated with the film’s digital world as I was. I plan on being back Monday night with a review of TRON: Legacy. I’ve heard some scathing reviews of it, but I still hope the flick is not a waste of my time or money.

Santa Claus

Santa Claus (1959)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Rene Cardona

Starring: Jose Elias Moreno, Cesareo Quezadas, Jose Luis Aguirre, Nora Veryan

From: Cinematografica Calderon S.A.

Here is the movie I referenced in the last post. It’s a movie best known for appearing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (during the 5th season) but just this past Friday on TCM Underground on Turner Classic Movies-it appeals to wacky people, like well, me!-it made its debut in its original English dub format. You see, K. Gordon Murray, an American producer, took some Mexican films in the late 50’s and early 60’s and dubbed them into English. The thing is, the films he picked were extremely strange children’s Mexican films! They got released anyhow in the U.S. and probably traumatized young kids who are now in their 40’s. This one isn’t even the strangest, by any means. I plan on talking about one of those at the very end of this year, as a matter of fact.

I understand that the concept of Santa isn’t that popular in Mexico, especially back then. That may be why this interpretation of jolly ole Saint Nick is so bizarre. Santa lives in space, first off! Then, you notice that often his skin appears to be blue. You know, like the guy who drank so much colloidal silver his skin turned blue permanently.

He has a Toyland that is populated by child workers who represent various stereotypes from across the world; for example, “Africa” is represented by African-American children wearing leopard-skin loincloths, bones in the air, dancing around wearing bongos; hey, don’t get mad. I didn’t come up with the scene! That’s one of a few scenes which goes on for far too long in order to pad out the running time. He can look into the dreams of children (gee, that’s not creepy at all) and his telescope for looking at children is a tube with an eyeball at the other end! He battles Satan and in this particular case, a fey-acting demon named Pitch-literally dressed like a stereotypical devil, with the red clothing, red face, and the horns-which arrives at Earth and his plan to ruin Christmas is… messing around with a few kids in Mexico City. How did they come up with this stuff?

After it’s established that Santa spied… er, I mean watched over the kids being targeted by Pitch, he got ready to go on his Christmas Eve flight, which includes a visit to Merlin the Wizard… please don’t ask for an explanation, because the movie doesn’t give one. You then see Santa on Earth dealing with that dastardly Pitch, in ways that are insulting even to the target audience of this movie.

The movie is really, really bad. It’s totally amateur hour in terms of everything related to movie-making. It’s also quite creepy watching this f’ed up movie unfold in front of your eyes. I mean, near the end Santa has to try and escape being seen by some cops and firemen! What a motion picture.

There’s a surprisingly detailed page for the movie at Wikipedia. And, if you look around Google Video, you can find the movie in full on there (or divided in parts) so that you can enjoy the madness yourself.

I'll be back Friday night with not a Christmas review, but rather a review related to a movie coming out the same day.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: Jeremiah S. Chechik

Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Juliette Lewis, Johnny Galecki, Randy Quaid

From: Warner Brothers

Yeah, I’ve decided that I’ll review a Christmas movie or two before that big holiday comes around on the 25th. I picked this one for good reason. Last Christmas I spent it at a relative’s in Kansas (man was it cold there, by the way) and one of the movies that was watched on that day was this one. I saw a lot of it but not all; the last time I had seen all of it was a long time ago. So, a few days ago I decided to rent it from Blockbuster and I saw it Friday night. Seeing it last year reminded me that the movie is pretty great, with the funny being brought at a near-constant pace. So, I am glad I finally watched it.

I’m sure that everyone knows the general plot about how Clark W. Griswold (Chase, back when he was actually funny) tries to have a normal Christmas at home with his family and all the in-laws coming over, while waiting for a bonus check to come in so that he can install a swimming pool in his backyard. Things are chaotic the entire time, from the time that they try to find a Christmas tree (and deal with the type of dick drivers that I sometimes come across; by the way, there are no mountains like that in Illinois, where the movie is supposed to be set in. Trust me on that. It was obviously filmed in Colorado just by looking at that one scene) to dealing with the loony in-laws and getting all the decorations on the house to work properly.

As I said, it’s funny just about the whole way through and through several different varieties of humor, too. There’s also some seriousness and some poignant moments, but it’s done with a tinge of humor too. I don’t want to recap the entire film in order to pick out the best moments, as it’s hard to pick one. If you haven’t seen this, then shame on you. It’s clear to me why this movie has become a Christmas classic, with millions of people watching it at around this time every year. It can be watched at any time, but the holiday season is the most appropriate spot for it.

I do have to mention that what seems like the most popular character in the film is Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie, the uncouth and wacky family member from Kansas who has a plastic (not metal) plate in the head and acts like someone with a plate in their head. He’s great in that role. It’s just a shame now that Quaid and his wife have all those mental problems and are literally on the run in Canada to avoid being sent to jail in the United States, with (no kidding) Dog The Bounty Hunter on the lookout for him! If you don’t know the sad tale about Randy the past few years, Vanity Fair has a great but sad article on the whole situation that can be read here.

Personally, I’d rather remember Randy for his memorable film roles-whether they be comedy or dramatic-rather than this unfortunate turn of events for him. As for the Cousin Eddie character, I’m sure that it’s better in small does rather than have the whole movie based around him. I say that as there was a made for TV movie based off of that character called Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure, where his entire family spends the holidays on a South Pacific island and Dana Barron returns from the first Vacation movie to reprise her role as Audrey Griswold. I understand that the movie is terrible, especially compared to the original Christmas Vacation. The script is apparently terrible and Cousin Eddie becomes a sad caricature. So, I don’t plan on ever seeing that motion picture.

However, you do need to see this, even if you’ve watched it many times before. It’s great stuff and it shows that even if the holiday season goes to pot for you, it should still mean something important, no matter what it is.

I’ll be back Wednesday night with a new review. It’s another themed movie, but it’s very different from this, that is for darn sure.

The Warrior's Way

The Warrior’s Way (2010)

42% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 24 reviews)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Sngmoo Lee

Starring: Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush, Danny Huston

From: Rogue/Relativity Media

Here is a movie that I saw advertised on the sports channels last week and while I hadn’t heard too many good things about it and I knew it was made 3 years ago and sat on the shelf the entire time, I still wanted to return to Downtown Disney (and the wonderful Coca-Coca Freestyle machines they now have at the movie theatre there) and it sounded more interesting to me than anything else playing there that I hadn’t seen yet.

Also intriguing was the movie’s interesting cast, the plot of cowboys vs. samurai ninjas, and the odd cast. It being on the shelf for so long, the first-time director being a film professor at NYU (and boy does that show, once I saw the film), and that kind of movie getting a wide release made it a curio and I wanted to check it out. In hindsight I wish I would have seen some oddball releases, like that Korean movie D-Wars (the one with the dragons; you probably don’t remember it), which I saw on DVD later and what a strange and wacky film that is. One of these days I need to watch that again and do a review for it. You wouldn’t believe the story or some of the bad storytelling they do. Yet there’s some legit thrilling action.

But onto this movie. Despite it being more loony than I expected, I felt let down and I thought it should have been quite a bit better than it was. No wonder it spent time unreleased.

The plot is that a warrior assassin in a nameless Asian country in what I presume was in the late 19th century mows down the members of a rival clan. His clan is called… Sad Flutes. Honest. That’s because of the sound a slashed throat makes, or so they explain in a wacky way. He refuses to kill the last living member of the clan, as it’s a baby girl. He’s shamed so he keeps the cute little girl and they go to America to escape and visit a friend. They get to the town of Lode (Load would be more accurate) and they meet up with the townsfolk, many of whom are retired from the circus and still walk around in their costumes! I swear this is true. He gets to know Lynne (Bosworth), a troubled woman who is looking for revenge against the Colonel (Huston), a bad guy who is quite evil and for some reason before he violates a woman she must have good teeth. What a quirk. He’s also masked due to having part of his face burned. Meanwhile, Yang’s old master (Lung Ti) and his band of merry men are on the look for him and track him down to Lode. Yang and Lynne develop a relationship that revolves around knifeplay and throwing rocks at each other’s heads. Don’t ask.

I don’t know what impression you had of the movie before it came out via ads and trailers or what have you, but there isn’t a whole lot of action to see. I had heard this bit of news beforehand so I wasn’t too disappointed by it. Much of the story is Lynne looking for revenge and Yang trying to escape his past. Not all that exciting. The action stuff can be fun at times but the way it was shot usually turned me off. I mean, to expose the big secret or whatever you want to call it, but just about all of the movie is greenscreened. Meaning, things were filmed on a stage and everything was filled in via computer. That can lead to trouble when it looks phony. Heck, the most famous example to use that process, 300, didn’t blow me away the one time I saw it. Talk about an overrated film. Here, it lead to some nice visuals at times but it otherwise looks really phony and it’s distracting. The same with the CGI used. It’s just way too stylized and that seemed to be the focus rather than delivering on a good story or entertaining action.

Speaking of the action, what you saw of it was usually not that fun to watch. It wasn’t fancy swordplay that Yang uses by any means, and the other stuff usually didn’t capture my interest. That even applies to the final 20 minutes or so when the fit hits the shan and you finally get the ending action setpiece, and you see things like costumed circus freaks wielding guns! Like I said, despite its odd touches, it’s not as exciting as it may sound. The obvious (at least to me) homages to better things didn't help out matters either. I'd rather watch those better films instead.

And the ending… one conflict has a decent resolution but the other one did not appeal to me at all. Without giving too much away, not a lot is shown. They do something else instead and what could have been a cool showdown was ruined. After that, it gets really goofy and involves the Arctic (again, don’t ask) and wow, I wish I could have enjoyed this more than I did. It’s more dull than you’d expect and I wish it would have been done a more traditional way.

I'll be back Sunday night with a new review.

A Random Aside

I’ll mention quickly a pair of videos that I watched (more than once, at that). Both are from a Norwegian nostalgia show-I swear it’s true-called Gylne Tider. From looking online, every few years some random dudes look for celebrities and interview them about life after being at the top. I don’t want to use the team “has-been”, but… anyway, the first two shows they did, it was local celebrities. The last one and the new one, though, has faces that Americans and Europeans would recognize.

The first video became a viral hit just this past Friday. It’s because it’s what turned out to be a 6 minute long promo video (!) for the latest edition of the show, and it has the strangest collection of has-been celebrities you can imagine, lip-synching to a late 80’s charity recording of the Beatles hit Let It Be! Everyone’s green-screened on a beach and it’s like you just ingested shrooms from the moment that you see Roger Moore’s spoken word introduction at the beginning to seeing the likes of Tonya Harding, Jason Alexander, Bud Bundy from Married With Children, Philip Michael Thomas, Dolph Lundgren, Judd Nelson, Glenn Close, Dee Snider, Right Said Fred, and many others lip-synching. There are also brief appearances from the likes of Pam Anderson, Mickey Rourke and the recently departed Leslie Nielsen.

It’s no wonder it became a viral hit… and sadly, it’s no wonder that the producers of the show are idiots and are going around the Internet trying to have the video taken down all of the streaming sites! Doesn’t make much sense to me, the show gets by far the most amount of world publicity it has ever gotten, and they want people NOT to see what is causing all the buzz. What narrow-minded fools.

Anyhow, I hope that they don’t find the French site I’m linking to that still has the video up. You’ll get a wacky French ad right before the video starts, so you can enjoy that too.

Here it is.

The second video I found on my own, and it’s the same show plugging their previous season, which was back in ’06. The theme then was “80’s” so that’s why they have washed up people from the era lip-synching We Are The World! It’s not quite like the newer video, but then again what is? Besides a whole gaggle of singers (quite a few of whom I presume are European peeps that never made it big here) there’s also the likes of Lorenzo Lamas, Louis Gossett Jr., Rudy from The Cosby Show, Larry Hagman, and even Richard Kiel. You also get to see that some celebrities today look worse than they did back then. Limahl (The Neverending Story dude) has different hair… or rather, different atrocious hair. And, for some reason Bonnie Tyler now looks exactly like Wynonna Judd!

Here’s that video.

What wacky and great things they are.

I’ll be back Wednesday night, and there I’ll plan on reviewing a movie now out on the big screen.

Loose Cannons

Loose Cannons (1990)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Bob Clark

Starring: Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, Dom DeLuise, Ronny Cox, Nancy Travis, Robert Prosky

From: Tristar

Here’s something a little unusual from me. A movie I disliked so much that I couldn’t watch more than a half hour of it. I’ll explain.

On a certain thread on a certain messageboard, some people have un-ironic love for this flick. I’ve known for a few years that a lot of people don’t like the film and find it to be off-putting (despite its very nice cast) so I was interested in finally seeing it. It wasn’t at my local Blockbuster and I am not a Netflixer (at least not yet) I had to wait until it showed up one night on Encore (yep, I’m still getting those channels for free for some reason) last month, and I watched it then… or rather, I watched it until I turned it off due to me disliking it so much.

In short, the movie is about a traditional down on his luck cop (Hackman, who wears a tremendous Washington Redskins Starter jacket; they’re a pro football team, if you don’t know) who teams up with a loony cop with multiple personalities (Aykroyd) to track down some criminals. I didn’t get to see much of the actual plan of the criminals (the opening had some guys dressed up in costume get gunned down in a boat in a horrible-looking and confusing scene) but the end result is that they’re looking for a long-lost sex tape of Hitler (!!!) That’s about all you need to know about the plot.

Now, the movie starts off OK-enough (aside from the aforementioned opening) with Hackman doing a decent job and there actually being some decent jokes. But then Aykroyd’s character comes in and things get derailed. It was an extremely off-putting character, obnoxious to the extreme and unbelievable how he was able to deduce what happened at the crimescene from the most random of clues. Not even Sherlock Holmes could have done such a thing. Hackman starts hating his new partner with an irrational anger (IMO) then what made me stop watching the film a half hour in was one scene set in an S&M club. I swear I’m not making any of the plot up, by the way. Stuff happens and one of Dan’s “wacky” personas come through to save the day, and that was WAY more off-putting and obnoxious than his usual character, I could take no more. To think that long-time veteran actor Gene hasn’t starred in too many comedies (aside from the very end of his career) and THIS was one of them. Totally baffling to me. Despite his awesome jacket*, the movie is downright horrible and should never be watched.

• In that same thread I’ve heard people say that they wish Gene would have worn that jacket in his earlier and later films, from the likes of Superman, The French Connection, and even Unforgiven. Sounds like a good idea to me.

My apologies for getting this up at this late hour, but I'll make a special post Tuesday morning where I will explain, and also post some odd videos.

Faster

Faster (2010)

43% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 63 reviews)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: George Tillman Jr.

Starring: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Carla Gugino

From: CBS Films

Here is a movie I saw last Friday, but it’s just now that I’ve gotten around to writing a review of it. Like the last movie I reviewed, it revolves around getting revenge… before that, though, let me mention something new at the location I saw this at, Downtown Disney.

The AMC Theatres at Walt Disney World now have a special concession stand. The other one is the same as usual, but they have a new one and it’s cafeteria-style. I had heard online that something geeky and new (at least to Florida) would be there and I wanted to try it. They have some drink machines known as Coca Cola Freestyle. It’s a machine which offers 106 (!) different flavors of Coke products. It’s mainly flavors that you can’t get anywhere else (or are foreign) such as Coca Cola Orange, Grape Vault, and Peach Sprite. The latter two are delicious, as I can personally confirm. That machine alone is enough for me to want to go there and watch movies exclusively. What a dork I am, I know.

The movie was the only thing at that time in night that I was interested in seeing. I heard some strong reviews from some messageboards so I decided to pay money to see the tale of Driver get revenge on the people who double-crossed him and killed his brother.

Like I just said, it’s a revenge tale where Rock goes after the people who killed his brother. What happened was that he, his brother, and some others participated in a bank robbery. They got away but some people track down the gang and not only acquire their robbery dough, but the brother gets gunned down. Rock goes to jail for an amount of time. He gets released and immediately goes after those people as a means of revenge. It sounds simple, but there’s also a pair of cops (Thornton, Gugino) who goes after Rock for killing those people, and there’s also a guy known as Killer (I’m not joking with the names of Killer and Driver; that’s how they’re ID’ed in the movie!) who is a British dude that was sick as a child but got better and to a preposterous degree he is successful as an adult, with fancy exotic cars, an attractive lady (Maggie Grace), and he’s a great contract killer too.

As others online have said, the character of Killer just doesn’t work. It’s way too ridiculous to believe that Killer could ever exist in the real world, or even in the world of this movie, where Driver was able to elude capture despite gunning down a few people. No way could I believe that character was real. Not to mention, what bothered most people was that the character was just annoying and a whiny twit, which I do agree with. I was more turned off by how science fiction Killer was, but to each their own.

It’s a shame as if it wasn’t for that, I would have enjoyed the movie quite a bit more. As is, even with a bad character, it wasn’t such a turn-off (like the one REALLY bad character in Iron Man 2, for example) that it completely tanked things for me. Then again, Iron Man 2 even without that one character was a wild disappointment. Anyhow, Faster still is a gritty and downbeat 70’s style movie filled with a bunch of characters that are dark and have many problems. The action is brutal, with several bullets to the head, shown in graphic detail. Rock doesn’t say too many words. The story is rather simplistic but still entertaining, if you enjoy that sort of thing. It’s just unfortunate that Killer was such a poor character. Still, I am glad that Rock has finally returned to action movies rather than dreck like The Tooth Fairy or that Escape From Witch Mountain flick.

I’ll be back Sunday night with a new review.