Category: Film

Movie Review: Iron Sky (2012)

Iron Sky, like many modern exploitation films, sets itself up for failure by promising something much, much greater than it is capable of delivering. The idea that buoys it should have been enough, but director Timo Vuorensola has ambitions beyond mere entertainment. Ambition, too, will kill a modern b-movie faster than bad acting, poor scripting, or lame special effects, all of which are acceptable, even welcome, given the circumstances. Classic exploitation movies, despite what the genre’s name suggests, didn’t go looking for context. Is there anything more vague than a hero’s struggle against “The Man?” Hardly. Whatever focus grindhouse movies had on social issues, more often than not context and purpose were things applied to the genre well after the its disappearance. The best modern tributes understand that politics and current headlines are elements serving to further sensationalize the bullets, broads, and booze, to further exploit a potential audience. The worst seek to lecture its audience through the use of broad comedy. It has ambitions. Ambitions get in the way.

The ambition of Iron Sky is to scandalize American politics, notably the Republican Party, most notably Sarah Palin. In the future, the United States is cash-strapped and wholly-reliant upon foreign energy. To distract from this (and potentially bring home some odd space-fuel, ala Avatar), our presidential Palin surrogate (Stephanie Paul), whose Oval Office features an elliptical machine and the spoils of her kills, launches a manned moon-mission. All goes swimmingly. The lander has landed, the gigantic banner of the President unfurled, the astronauts roving the lunar surface. Then, one of them is shot. The other one is captured. The culprit? Nazis. Moon Nazis. Moon Nazis living in a swastika-shaped moon base, the descendants of a group of terrestrial Nazis who launched their own moon mission when it became clear that the Third Reich was to fall. For decades, they’ve lived on the moon, developing space-based attack strategies and educating their children on the glories of Hitler with a state-approved, 10-minute cut of The Great Dictator. Clearly, a Fourth Reich is imminent.

For all that promise, Iron Sky falls apart quickly, wandering from the path leading to its eventual lunar blitzkrieg in order to chart the rise of ambitious Moon Nazi Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), who lands in the United States and sets about conquering it by becoming a campaign aide of the President, whose advertising takes on a certain red-white-and-black hue. Adler’s girl, “Earth expert” Renate (Julia Dietze) sneaks abord the ship, which also carries the moon mission’s black astronaut (Christopher Kirby), who has been bleached white by a Nazi scientist (Udo Kier). Why any of this happens is unclear. There’s supposed to be something funny about the Nazi’s dying a black man white, I suspect, but its one of many jokes about the first black man on the moon that falls treacherously flat.

The centerpiece here is the multi-national space battle launched to repel the Nazi invaders (from outer space), but even Iron Sky‘s impressive special effects can’t distract from the inane plot and cast of caricatures working to undermine. The battle gives rise to one of Iron Sky‘s biggest curiosities, which diminishes whatever pleasures sub-par space opera holds, when the president’s campaign manager (Peta Sergeant), the woman responsible for Adler’s terrestrial success, is installed as the captain of the United States of America’s massive starship. If the point was to criticize Palin or Washington croneyism or, well, anything, having the campaign manager do quite well for someone who, a day earlier, was almost murdered by a gaggle of Moon Nazis probably wasn’t the best way to get Iron Sky‘s point across.

But really, what greater purpose should Iron Sky have been promoting? Here’s a goofily premised movie trying unsuccessfully to lampoon a political target whose last day in the sun came years ago. Zombie Strippers did the same thing in 2008, taking a buzzworthy exploitation set-up and miring it in needless political commentary, politics (and existentialism) not being a thing within the grasp of a movie about strippers who become zombies. Maybe it seems pedantic to complain about a movie not being the sort of movie I would have made, but it seems like every year there’s a new movie promising a return to the grindhouse, promising a premise, a cast, or an idea that could and should live up to expectation, but does not. In 2008, it was Zombie Strippers. 2010 had Bitch Slap. Last year had Hobo with a Shotgun. This year, it’s Bad Ass and Iron Sky. And I thought digital filmmaking was supposed to liberating. Maybe it wasn’t the struggle against The Man that dignified a genre, but the struggle to produce.

Rating: Iron Sky. Directed by Timo Vuorensola. With Götz Otto (Klaus Adler), Julia Dietze (Renate Richter), Christopher Kirby (James Washington), Peta Sergeant (Vivian Wagner), Stephanie Paul (The President of the United States of America), and Udo Kier (Wolfgang Kortzfleisch). Released July 25, 2012, by Entertainment One.

October 14, 2012
Movie Review: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Like a video game character bestowed the gift of an infinite lives cheat code, Milla Jovovich‘s Alice, the hero of the incredibly long-running Resident Evil franchise, cannot die. Yes, the Umbrella Corporation, her faceless nemesis, has killed her several times, but Alice, she keeps coming back. Why? It’s impossible to say. At this point, she’s saving a world that was effectively ended several films ago. The Umbrella Corporation are the ones to blame, of course, but their motives are also unclear. If their aim was profit, at least one sane individual in the boardroom would’ve pointed out that killing the entire human race was bad for business. If they want merely to kill Alice, then perhaps that same sane person should point out the benefits of not cloning, reviving, and granting superpowers to their otherwise dead and powerless enemy. It’s a fruitless, twisted war the two fight. Sometimes, extra lives are a curse.

Resident Evil: Retribution offers no relief for either party. Instead, it shuffles the deck chairs before a presumable final encounter between humanity and the rogue biomedical corporation hellbent on its (and its own) destruction. It wisely figures that not everybody has seen the four previous Resident Evil movies and recaps them to the point where the last one left off: on a boat, with our intrepid heroes under attack. Like this year’s Underworld: Awakening (a franchise helmed by another wife/husband actress/director combination), Alice wakes up from that attack in a mysterious medical facility. She is interrogated by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a friend turned brainwashed-foe, until the facility’s computer systems are compromised. This frees Alice, who is bound and determined to escape.

The compound is, of course, impregnable. Buried in a polar ice cap and comprising several impossibly large reconstructions of major cities, this is the Umbrella Corporation’s home base, a place where clones are churned out and monsters run amok, all so the company can test how a given populace would react to an outbreak of its zombie plague. Why Umbrella deems the facility necessary after successfully launching humanity’s biological Armageddon is unknown, but the different settings (Tokyo, Times Square, Moscow, and “Suburbia”) offer Alice and those trapped in the facility with her a rich tableau of creatures to pump full of lead, from a fetishized Japanese zombie to giant, hangman-looking mutants wielding massive hammers to a humanoid of rippling musculature whose brain is unfortunately exposed. It also offers Alice a cute kid (Aryana Engineer) to protect, because it’s not enough that she escape Umbrella’s arctic hellpit on her own.

Paul W.S. Anderson—the unchallenged master of video game adaptations—uses Resident Evil: Retribution as an excuse to gather the franchise’s most popular characters in the same building. There’s Ada Wong (Bingbing Li), a secret agent dressed for a better occasion than a zombie plague; Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), the former head of Umbrella and current smarmy leader of the human remnant; and the crack mercenary team of Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb), Barry Burton (Kevin Durand), and Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), who all function pretty much in the same way, but give fans of the video game different characters whose survival they can pull for or root against. The Umbrella Corporation’s taste for cloning provides for the return of Michelle Rodriguez in various forms—from anti-gun suburbanite to bad-ass, gun-toting company woman—joined from the first Resident Evil by the Red Queen, a computer program bent on snaring Alice in one of any number of elaborate death traps.

It goes without saying that none of those death traps work, and that, while some characters die, none of them are particularly essential to the resolution of the series. Resident Evil has long been the action genre’s most needlessly complicated franchise, and that tradition continues here. Several characters change allegiance on a whim, and Anderson’s sequel-bating reveal at the end of the movie creates large gaps in logic that otherwise would have passed as setpieces. If the Red Queen is truly on the verge of eliminating the human race, as is her stated goal, why go to the trouble of endlessly cloning a wide-variety of them? If you have the last remaining human beings on Earth pinned to the White House lawn, why bother with the undersea arctic medical facility, its staff, or its prisoners at all?

I admit, even those questions qualify as “over-thinking it” when it comes to a movie like Resident Evil: Retribution. Everybody who has stepped to the plate to review this film has pointed out that, five installments in, you either like or don’t like the series, and that everything else is either fan quibbling or noise. Fair point. Resident Evil: Retribution sets out to be a Resident Evil movie, and in that regard, it succeeds. The characters are paper-thin, the actors inhabiting them aren’t trying particularly hard, and the script they’re given isn’t good by any means, but if Resident Evil dealt in anything more challenging than archetypes, all that ambition would get in the way of Paul W.S. Anderson’s snazzy action sequences.

Thinking about Resident Evil: Retribution and Underworld: Awakening again, that’s the main thing that distinguishes the two. For all their similarities (heroines in tight leather bondage gear, CGI monsters, impossible physics, convoluted backstories, expendable side characters), Anderson’s franchise has Len Wiseman’s beat out in sheer terms of clear, decipherable gunfights and martial arts expositions. The colors pop brighter, the bones crunch louder, and the heroine sasses her way through wave after wave of the undead, has no time to sulk or ponder the deeper significance of her existence as a superpowered killing machine. My only issue with Resident Evil: Retribution as a time-waster is that it’s the fifth of its kind. If you’ve seen Milla Jovovich kick one zombie in the head in slow-motion, you’ve seen her kick dozens of zombies in the head in slow-motion. And there’s a dozen more shambling down the hallway.

Rating: Resident Evil: Retribution. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. With Milla Jovovich (Alice), Michelle Rodriguez (Rain), Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine), Aryana Engineer (Becky), and Bingbing Li (Ada Wong). Released September 14, 2012, by Screen Gems.

October 5, 2012
Movie Review: Looper (2012)

Looper contains elements of time-traveling science fiction, neo-noir, and pained romance, but, as a chase film, nothing is as complicated as it seems. Yes, there is time travel. There’s also a mob conspiracy, copious drug usage, and the perception and memories of the people involved in these rackets are framed with fuzzy edges, but the elements that play into Looper and the characters involve are there to ground the viewer in an unbelievably plausible, fully-realized United States of America, which, in 2044, is almost irreparably broken—a patchwork quilt of vagrant gangs, men and women with retrograde telekinetic powers, and mafia-run cities ruled by weathered men from the future. If certain aspects of Rian Johnson‘s film seem familiar, it’s because Looper wants to ease the viewer into a film that’s altogether different than anything that’s come before.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, a man hired to take care of mafia hits that come from the future. Though time travel hasn’t been invented in 2044, in 2072 it’s illegal and used as a means to bury bodies. The target is captured and tied, has a bag placed on his head, and is zapped back in time. Once he appears in the past, the looper shoots him, receives his payment, and disposes of the body. When the mafia runs out of uses for a looper, they send the aged version back for the young man to kill. Most loopers are surprisingly fine with this: having been paid a bounty of silver and gold for their work, they’re free to go about lives of reckless hedonism. Sometimes, a future self isn’t quite ready to die. This, of course, presents problems.

Joe (Bruce Willis) is an eventuality, a man from the future who is the result of a lifetime of bad choices and the grace of a woman he meets after hitting rock bottom. Where most of these eventualities seem resigned to the termination of their contract, Old Joe is different because his wife is a casualty. Unseen in this future is a mysterious mafioso known only as “The Rainmaker,” who, as legend has it, took control of the mob by himself. Why he’s taken to closing extant looper contracts is unknown, but Joe has some crucial information about The Rainmaker’s past: as a boy, he lived around the area where he worked as a young man.

Though its plot bears some similarity to The Terminator, nobody in Looper is a cold-blooded killing machine. Blood-stained as it is, Johnson’s film doesn’t place an emphasis on gore, and its characters’ decisions are tinged with regret. The focus here is on destiny, if such a thing exists and if it can be changed. In an early sequence, Johnson teases that yes, the events of the future can be altered by those with knowledge of the past, but despite that scene’s grotesquery, the time travel paradox is mostly backgrounded. It’s an odd comparison, but Looper is so compelling for the same reason Safety Not Guaranteed was: faith in its narrative and refusal to bow to its central gimmick. Personal taste will dictate whether or not you’re satisfied with the way Looper plays with genre conventions, but Johnson is a director who regularly subverts expectation, trading mostly in well-drawn characters and good dialog.

That’s true here, as the world Looper inhabits is replete with characters outside of the Joe/Old Joe binary, whose fates are inextricably linked to the actions of those two men. The most important such people are Sara (Emily Blunt) and Cid (Pierce Gagnon), who live in the farmhouse that’s circled on Old Joe’s map. Sara is Cid’s mother, and Cid, Old Joe suspects, is one of three children who turn out to be The Rainmaker. Though the movie slows down considerably when the present’s Joe decides to camp out at the farmhouse and wait for his future self, it allows the movie to pause and consider its three main characters: the old man who’d do anything to save his wife, the mother who would do anything to save her child, and the young man with a murky sense of his destiny.

At the fringes, Looper‘s mob elements threaten to un-do Joe before he or his future self can do anything to prevent or protect what’s coming. They’re led by Abe (Jeff Daniels), a man who’s been sent back in time specifically to take charge of the loopers. He’s kind of a surrogate father to that lot, though he’s very clearly bored in his role (the film notes that he took over organized crime in Kansas City in his spare time), sighing his way through field reports,his lackeys assurances that they’ll catch Joe, and torture because, as he says, he’s from the future. If there’s a point of contention to be had with the logistics of Looper, Abe is it. But Daniels—as part of a supporting cast that includes Piper Perabo as a hooker with connections to Joe and Paul Dano as a looper who can’t pull the trigger on himself—is so slick, so convincing in the role that you take Abe at “I’m from the future” and stop asking questions.

“Slick” and “convincing” are two words that best sum Looper, and few science fiction movies emerge as tightly conceptualized as this. There’s The Matrix and there’s Blade Runner, and, watching Looper, I felt pangs of admiration for Rian Johnson’s film much the same way I did when I first saw those two fore-bearers. This is sci-fi at its most entertaining and most assured. In the coming weeks, there will be a plethora of posts picking apart how its time travel works or doesn’t, how its inconsistencies boggle the mind or don’t, how a repeat viewing or two will clear away confusion or won’t. Right now, none of that matters. Genre filmmaking, for all the talk of its resurgence, has grown unbelievably stagnant. Looper represents a vital breath of fresh air, something beyond caped crusaders and extraterrestrial invasions. In its otherness, Looper is worthy of merit. It opens a door to something new. Thrillingly, when the film ends, that door is still open.

Rating: Looper. Directed by Rian Johnson. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Joe), Bruce Willis (Old Joe), Emily Blunt (Sara), Paul Dano (Seth), Piper Perabo (Suzie), Pierce Gagnon (Cid), and Jeff Daniels (Abe). Released September 28, 2012 by FilmDistrict.

October 2, 2012
Movie Review: Magic Mike (2012)

Magic Mike is a movie about strippers. It is not, however, a movie about stripping. That’s an important distinction to make, as a movie about stripping, as proven by all movies about stripping, would get old fast. Gyrating to the right or to the left, dancing with a skinny girl or an old woman, dressed in trenchcoats or loincloths, the stripper still strips, his function is still to take off clothes, his biggest conflict is with a caught zipper, a button that won’t unsnap from his tearaway pants. Make no mistake, Magic Mike is quite knowledgeable in this field, but Steven Soderbergh‘s film—based on its star’s experiences on the stage—knowingly subverts its audience’s expectations, presenting a melodrama where the stripping is a glitzy side dish, something that threatens to steal both the audience’s attention and the protagonist’s autonomy. (more…)

September 21, 2012
Movie Review: Bad Ass (2012)

You ever hear of the Epic Beard Man? If not, allow me to explain. Two years ago, in Oakland, CA, two men got into an altercation on a public bus. Why they did so isn’t exactly clear, but the 67-year-old Epic Beard Man easily gets the better of the younger man, hitting him several times in an attack that causes him to wear the proverbial crimson mask. I imagine, given the popularity of YouTube, that fights like this are filmed every day, the amateur cameraperson hoping for some sort of internet fame. This one took off though, most likely because Epic Beard Man is wearing a shirt that reads “I AM A MOTHERFUCKER,” no doubt a happy coincidence. Naturally, comparisons were drawn to Charles Bronson’s character in Death Wish, and said comparison, naturally, lead the the production of Bad Ass, a feature film based on a three-minute viral video. (more…)

September 17, 2012
Best Worst Movie, or Worst Movie? — Batman & Robin (1997)

Cultish devotees of film often celebrate failure, box office, critical, or otherwise. By designating awards to the year’s worst movies, organizing midnight screenings of a film on the fringe, and writing endlessly about one flop or another, bad movies have a way of sticking around well beyond their typical cultural sell-by date. The phrase “so bad it’s good” is often ascribed to these movies when, in a pre-Internet, pre-Mystery Science Theatre 3000 world, they used to be considered so bad, they’re virtually forgotten. This week, as part of the Camp & Cult Blogathon at She Blogged By Night, Fear of a Ghost Planet is introducing a new feature that takes a good, hard look at the supposed jewels hiding in a cinematic junk heap. The first edition of Best Worst Movie, or Worst Movie? seeks to answer that question of Batman & Robin, long a movie the author considered a trashy favorite. How well does it hold up, fifteen years later?

Batman & Robin doesn’t take long to announce its intent to annoy. Before Robin proclaims that chicks dig the car, before our first shot of a Batcave decked out in unnecessary logos and drenched in dry ice fog, before even the first glimpse of a bat-nipple, there are the opening credits. There is Batman’s logo, quickly frozen by some neon-blue ice before giving way to the neon-red backdrop against which the primary offenders names are cast. Those two colors, not only are they among the worst man has created, but they come to dominate the color palate utilized by director Joel Schumacher, whose affectation for these two colors is, to the Gotham City styled by Tim Burton, a revisionist disaster on par with Ecce Homo.

There’s nothing good about Batman & Robin, that much I readily admit, but there’s rarely anything good about a Best Worst Movie. To appreciate something like this, to enjoy such a film, is to enjoy wallowing in muck. Well, I have been carrying this not-so-secret shame for some time: I have been a fan of Batman & Robin for fifteen years now. It’s beyond any reasonable basis of judgement, but for the better part of my life I have stuck up for this movie, in every conceivable way the ugly duckling of the Batman mythos. For the longest time, I’ve been planning to write something to that effect, to gather my reasons for liking this movie and stand my ground. Not to posit a secret genius to Schumacher’s work, per se, but to propose that, in the right frame of mind, Batman & Robin is actually enjoyable, indeed a candidate for the status of Best Worst Movie. But I recently caught the last thirty minutes on TV, and, well, they left me cold. Now, much to the chagrin of my inner-nine-year-old (who practically grew up at the local dollar theatre), I’m ready to repent. (more…)

September 17, 2012