Colette Arrand

Category: Film

  • Movie Review: Wrath of the Titans (2012)

    Movie Review: Wrath of the Titans (2012)

    Much like its predecessor, Wrath of the Titans has, as it’s title, a misnomer: The only Titan here is Cronus, who, I’ll grant, is the Titan and is rather quite wrathful. In the Titans franchise’s continuing effort to streamline the whole of Greek mythology for the sake of added explosions, Cronus is much lesser a god than previous, here being a giant demonesque thing made of molten rock. As he spits words like “Zeus” and “Hades” at his children—who, as Zeus helpfully points out, he tried to kill many years ago—it’s hard to imagine the guy fashioning the universe, let alone concocting a successful, treacherous plan to spring him from the eternal prison of Tartarus. But, with the Olympian gods weakened from a lack of prayer and sacrifice, even the likely false promise that his accomplices will be allowed to keep their immortality is enough for the ruler of the underworld to take a flier on the guy who, tens of thousands of years ago, ate him fresh from his mother’s womb.

    But, Wrath of the Titans would surely insist were it able, this is decidedly not a movie about the gods, whose time is ending. It’s about men, heroic men, men like Perseus (Sam Worthington), who will outlast the gods and forge new destinies without them. Perseus, last seen slaying the Kraken, is now a simple fisherman, a father hoping his son will never know war or pick up a sword. That dream ends as soon as Zeus (Liam Neeson) pays Perseus a visit, telling his son that the walls of Tartarus are falling, asking his assistance in rebuilding them. It’s a good thing Perseus doesn’t go, as Hades (Ralph Finnes) and Ares (Edgar Ramirez) double cross Zeus as soon as they arrive in the underworld, imprisoning him and killing Poseidon (Danny Huston). They hook Zeus up to Cronus somehow, intending to jumpstart the Titan as one would a car battery.

    Meanwhile, the walls between this world and the underworld begin to crack, allowing demons to spill out from Tartarus and cause all manner of havoc. One of them visits the town Perseus lives on, a three-headed, fire-breathing monster whose anatomy is impressive if impractical, and, after killing it and finding a dying Poseidon, he knows he must set things to right. Pegasus spirits him away to the frontline of a hopeless war, where the warrior queen Andromeda (Rosemund Pike) grants him an audience with Agenor (Toby Kendall), who is not only the son of Poseidon, but who knows how to reach the island where Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) lives, Hephaestus being the god who forged the weapon that allowed the Olympians to defeat Cronus those many years ago. The three set off to seek his aid, the fate of the universe upon their shoulders.

    Clash of the Titans, the remake of Ray Harryhausen’s homespun cult epic, is a movie that grew on me over time and repeated viewings on HBO one bored summer. I doubt Wrath of the Titans will do the same, as director Jonathan Liebsman just smooshes together various elements of Greek myth with no thought given to plot or pace. His band of warriors move from demons to a tribe of cyclops to the minotaur to a rather poorly-planned battle against Cronus and his sparsely-populated army, and while that looks like a lot of cool, eye-poping, dumb fun, the movie plods along, cutting short battle sequences and focusing instead on trite dialog between Perseus, Andromeda, and Agenor, who are all of a type, even when what they have to say is somewhat witty.

    I wouldn’t mind any of that were the plot not so lazily conceived. True, Greek epics tend to begin in media res, but the human characters of Wrath of the Titans, Perseus and Andromeda in particular, seem to have a sprawling relationship built upon events the movie never hints at. Yeah, it’s obvious where the movie is going the moment Perseus buries his wife, but it’d be nice if the movie treated its characters like characters, didn’t excuse a prior history with a curt “It’s so good to see you again,” actually showed a budding romance. That Liebsman has the audience fill in the blanks contributes to Wrath of the Titans feeling brief, incomplete, but still somehow padded at 99 minutes.

    All of this is too bad, because Wrath of the Titans does have a good cast slumming as Greek gods, with Bill Nighy adding some much-needed levity to the old routine of long beards and deep, bellowing voices. In a different movie, the aging and de-aging and aging of the gods would have been an effective bit of camp. Impressive, too, are the special effects, though it’s still hard for me to be charmed by an army of artists strapped to their computers, having been raised on a steady diet of clay and men in rubber masks. The labyrinth, which is the movie’s most stirring set-piece, is appropriately exciting, if easily solved.

    I get the feeling, however, that these movies, like a great many in its genre, are only as good as its villain. Clash of the Titans had a CGI monstrosity so well-marketed its heralding became a catchphrase. Wrath of the Titans could have used something like “Release the Kraken!” Cronus—who, again, created the whole universe—could have been an effective, compelling villain, a being of unimaginable power and intellect. Instead, he’s a lava-monster, prone to blowing up the same mountain. The film hopes that we, like so many helpless virgin sacrifices, will find ourselves chained to that mountain. Unfortunately, Wrath of the Titans gives one little to believe in.

    Rating:

    Wrath of the Titans. Directed by Jonathan Liebsman. With Sam Worthington (Perseus), Liam Neeson (Zeus), Ralph Finnes (Hades), Bill Nighy (Hephaestus), Rosamund Pike (Andromeda) Toby Kendall (Agenor), Edgar Ramirez (Ares), and Danny Huston (Poseidon). Released March 30, 2012, by Warner Bros.

  • Movie Review: Chronicle (2012)

    Movie Review: Chronicle (2012)

    The problem I have with Chronicle is essentially the problem I have with every found-footage movie: At some point in time, it becomes prudent to put the camera down. I’m sure there’s some basis for it in reality, but the footage-obsessed amateur cameraman seems like a convention created entirely for this sort of movie, and Chronicle takes it even further by inviting along a character who films every aspect of her rather typical high school life for a video blog—something that seems illegal, if not particularly worth watching. Chronicle has a better selling point than most found-footage films, however. Instead of documenting a haunted house or demonic possession, the teenagers at the center of the movie discover something that’s not of this world and are, as a result, imbued with telekinetic abilities.

    Three boys—outcast filmographer Andrew (Dane DeHaan), prom king candidate Steve (Michael B. Jordan), and Andrew’s popular cousin Matt (Alex Russel)—find a hole in the ground that leads to a bunch of glowing rocks They touch it, then their noses start to bleed. The next day, they discover that they have an apparently minor superpower—the ability to move small objects with their mind. Quickly, they push this ability, discovering that it is not unlike a muscle—the more they use it, the stronger it becomes. Unlike most superhero movies, which allow their heroes only a moment of joy at the onset of their powers, Chronicle allows the boys most of the movie to have fun discovering what they can do, and they go about telekinesis as you’d expect teenage boys to do: trying to stop hurled baseballs, building LEGO towers without their hands, messing around with people in a toy store, using a leaf-blower on a passing girl’s skirt. Eventually, they find that they can fly.

    If Chronicle were just this–three dudes getting powers and pushing the limits of those powers, perhaps struggling with the implications of them—it would easily have been much better than most movies using the found-footage gimmick. But Chronicle has a dark underbelly that drives the plot, that gives the whole thing a fairly standard beginning and an ultimately disappointing end. To fill in these gaps, director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis give Andrew an origin out of a John Hughes movie. He’s poor and shy, his mother is dying, his father is a raging alcoholic. He buys a camera and begins filming his life as a self-defense mechanism, a way of documenting the means by which life tortures him. He has certain odd tics—taking the camera to a party, filming cheerleaders as they practice—but beyond the bullies who kick his camera around and the occasional request that Andrew turn off the camera—a request that goes unfulfilled—most of the people he knows don’t figure his behavior as weird. The fact that he continues filming everything even after he telekinetically pushes a truck into the lake, however, complicates things. Is he filming to document his life, or to sate his ego? Given his urge to spill intensely personal things to Steven, who he’s only known for a few weeks, and to accuse Matt of not really being his friend, it’s probably a little bit of both.

    It’s entirely possible to enjoy Chronicle on the basis of pure spectacle. Andrew’s mastery of telekinesis is such that he’s able to move the camera around without being behind it, often while doing other things. When he can’t, there’s other footage to be found—from police helicopters, live news reports, the camera belonging to Casey (Ashley Hinshaw), the life-blogger. For the most part, though, it’s Andrew shooting Andrew, and if it seems like it’d be smart of him to not take the camera along on certain parts of his journey, the film asks that we consider him a sort of Ozymandias. Look upon his works and tremble. It’s well and good to go beyond the conventions of a found footage movie, and the camera, rather than lend itself to the implausibility of the movie (“oh man, I’ve got to film this giant monster!”), is a nice, subtle touch: Andrew’s good at what he does, knows it, and is showing off to be a prick.

    That being said, Chronicle falls short of being a compelling origin story for Andrew, Matt, or Steve. Its comic book plot is so shopworn, so connect-the-dots obvious that it’s hard to take Andrew seriously as sympathetic lead or potential danger to mankind. Maybe it’s because I’m a cynical ex-comic book store employee, but the mixture of broken home and superpowers strikes me as a bit stale. With more time, maybe Andrew’s home life would have felt more genuine, perhaps the eventual conflict with his father (Michael Kelly) would have felt like a triumph, something that would then give way to horror as Andrew continued to sour, become more confident in his abilities. But then again, the big battle scene would need to wait until the sequel, and in a society where we’re so bored that we’ll film ourselves being bored, I suppose there’s no time for pathos. Bring on the explosions and flying buses, then. They’ll do, in a pinch.

    Rating:

    Chronicle. Directed by Josh Trank. With Dane DeHaan (Andrew), Alex Russel (Matt), Michael B. Jordan (Steve), Michael Kelly (Richard Detmer), and Ashley Hinshaw (Casey). Released Febuary 3, 2012, by 20th Century Fox.

  • Movie Review: The Hunger Games (2012)

    Movie Review: The Hunger Games (2012)

    The Hunger Games is most startlingly successful in its opening thirty minutes, when surveying District 12 of Panem, a coal-mining center where dirty people do dirty labor to keep the lights on in the Capitol, a post-apocalyptic paradise built upon a crater lake. The denizens of District 12 are slightly cleaner than the men and women of Winter’s Bone, and compared to the Capitol’s visiting Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), their situations are quite dire. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), for example, has taken control of her household in the aftermath of a mining accident that killed her father, leaving her caring for both her mother and her younger sister. Jobs are scarce, so she’s been forced to take up hunting. She’s quite good at it, but big game, like deer, have become increasingly scarce in an environment that’s been scorched by war.

    War is very much in the fabric of The Hunger Games. Not only did it give rise to Panem, the massive, quizzically structured supercountry that arises sometime after the end of the United States, but a civil war between the districts and the Capitol were responsible for the creation of the games, which pit twenty-four young men and women, one of each gender from all twelve districts, in bloody, to-the-death conflict with each other. These twenty-four children, “Tributes,” as they’re called, serve two purposes. First and foremost, they’re a reminder to the twelve districts that supreme power lies with the Capitol, who participate in the Hunger Games by dressing-up and placing wagers. Secondly, the winner of the Hunger Games will bring fame and fortune to their district.

    It’s a broken system, but one can appreciate the “I Am the 99%” ishness of the film’s opening moments, wherein Effie stands before a crowd of slackjawed, horrified, poorly-fed children and, with the aplomb of Mitt Romney saying he has plenty of friends who own NASCAR teams, tells the group she looks forward to seeing them die; all in the spirit of competition, of course. When Katniss’ sister Primrose (Willow Shields) is chosen from the hat, Katniss volunteers for her and is thrown on a bullet train (funny how we get one of those in the post-apocalyptic future) with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a baker’s son who, according to his own mother, is as good as dead.

    Once Katniss and Peeta are on the train, The Hunger Games becomes significantly less interesting. The two are scrubbed down, becoming two more pretty people in a parade of pretty people, most of whom give little to go on in terms of character. We learn a little about some of the other districts—one and two have been churning out Hunger Games champions for most of their duration—and are introduced to a cast of characters who, depending on their allegiance to Katniss, are flamboyant and one-note, or somewhat nuanced. The people running the games include hosts Caesar (Stanley Tucci) and Claudius (Toby Jones), producer Seneca Cane (Wes Bentley), and President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland), who is exactly the sort of generic evil capable of manipulating things from the shadows across a franchise. Joining Effie in aiding Katness are Cinna (Lenny Kravitz)–a one man support group/fashion label—and Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), a former Hunger Games winner who acts as District 12’s mentor. Of the characters here who aren’t Katness, Harrelson’s is the most well-drawn, a jaded man who finds no pleasure in the Hunger Games, but who nevertheless comes to like his charge.

    The Hunger Games themselves are effectively a long, drawn-out battle sequence, where most of the people involved end up slaughtered off-screen. Katniss has been advised to survive on her wits rather than join the mad rush for a weapon at the start of the games, and that’s exactly what she does, taking off for the woods with a backpack and a rope. She’s been cautioned that exposure and the lack of water and food are just as likely to kill her as the other children, but the weather’s temperate, water is plentiful, and nobody participating looks to be starving. The threats she faces in there are two-fold: The large hunting party that’s formed specifically in an effort to kill her (she’s the strongest one in the group), and the CGI machinations of Seneca Cane, who artificially generates a fire and sics mutated beasts on Katniss to keep the show rolling.

    Despite this, the Hunger Games portion of The Hunger Games feels momentum-less, hampered at turns by Katniss’ alliance with Rue (Amandia Stenberg), a little girl (seven or so) whose death sparks a riot in District 11, and a love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), who is forced to watch the events play out on TV. Rue’s death, obviously, is meant to be a huge moment in the film, but beyond her looking practically angelic pre- and post-martyrdom, she simply isn’t developed well enough within the parameters of the movie. It’s sad to see her die like it’d be sad to see any child get a spear stuck through them. The love triangle seems, at best, a concession to those who find Edward/Bella/Jacob the enduring romance of our time. It is built upon quick pecks on the cheek by Katniss and Peeta—who may be playing the folks in TV land for donations of soup and salve—and distressed looks from Gale, who is stuck in District 12 watching Katniss’ family.

    What I like most about these scenes is the way director Gary Ross has decided to shoot them, in a style that straddles the line between old-school action cinematography and the currently in-vogue shaky-cam. The resulting scenes of violence are appropriately chaotic while remaining easy to follow. His pacing is off—at two hours and twenty minutes, parts of the film feel decidedly overstuffed while leaving other areas critically, frustratingly underdeveloped—but one gets the idea that many of The Hunger Games‘ decisions were made in an effort to appease the book’s massive fanbase. That’s not to say that the film is accessible only to fans of the novel. Unlike the Twilight series, which requires a person who hasn’t read the books to have either an almanac or a very knowledgeable friend, The Hunger Games is quite inclusive. It’s easy to see how some characters, particularly Rue, may benefit from the written word, but the film very consciously reaches out to new fans and does so successfully.

    Frustratingly, The Hunger Games isn’t tremendously ambitious in scope, despite playing in the same sandbox as movies like Blade Runner and Metropolis. While the comparison may not be fair, most dystopian films use their future regimes and the inherent divide between squalor and excess to examine a problem eating away at our society. Those concerns are at the fringes of The Hunger Games, its kill-or-be-killed ethos hardly a breath of fresh air. The film squanders every chance it has of being challenging material, not even stopping to ask what Katniss would do if her and Rue were the last two left standing, and the dynamics of Panem society—one infers a kind of loose caste system, based on district—are left wholly untouched. Even if future sequels delve into that subject and give Katniss some tough decisions, I suspect the franchise will still leave me with two questions: 1) Nuclear holocaust be damned, at what point in the future do we begin naming people after American Gladiators? 2) Where have all the ugly people gone? Starvation, after all, isn’t pretty.

    Rating:

    The Hunger Games. Directed by Gary Ross. With Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss Everdeen), Josh Hutcherson (Peeta Mellark), Woody Harrelson (Haymitch Abernathy), Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket), Stanley Tucci (Caesar), Toby Jones (Claudius), and Donald Sutherland (President Coriolanus Snow). Released March 23, 2012, by Lionsgate.

  • Movie Review: The Grey (2012)

    Movie Review: The Grey (2012)

    Perhaps it’s just the pattern Liam Neeson‘s established with his last few action thrillers—films like Unknown and Taken, where he’s a middle-aged man driven by revenge and/or the urge to save his family in killing as many gun-toting men as possible in ninety minutes—but if there’s something I didn’t expect from The Grey, which promised Neeson going through a Predator-like plot where he and his compatriots are assailed and picked off by creatures beyond their comprehension, it was a theological discussion about the absence of God, or at least a God who cares.

    Neeson plays John Ottway, a troubled man whose job is to protect the men hired to do work on arctic pipelines from the wolves who stalk the land. It’s obvious looking at him among these rough men, who drink and brawl and whore, that Ottway carries a massive guilt, an incredible grief. It’s clear that, when he leaves the bar, rifle slung across his back, he’s doing so to end his life. Ottway kneels down in the snow, buts the rifle’s barrel into his mouth, but can’t bring himself to shoot. The next day he’s on the plane with the unsavory crew hired to work in the arctic. The plane goes down, and Ottway is one of a small band of survivors left in the middle of an empty, threatening snowscape.

    Immediately, Ottway becomes a survivalist. This is good for the group, because left to their own devices, men like Diaz (Frank Grillo) and Talget (Dermot Mulroney) wouldn’t stand a chance, divided by background and personality. Not that they think Ottway is the best man for the job, but at least he knows about wolves, and at least he’s interested in surviving. So they trudge across the snow hoping to find shelter, to at least get far away enough from the wolf den that they’re no longer an issue. Infighting and exposure are also a source of problems for the group, who dwindle in number not knowing if they’re closer to their goal, not knowing how many things lurk beyond their vision, poised to attack.

    Thankfully, the wolves don’t act as a kind of convenient metaphor, they’re no signpost, no means to the film’s message. They’re a force of nature, doing what they do because, hey, that’s how they are. Because The Grey has no villain, the film avoids the pratfall where the group rises above evil, instead becoming a show of how desperate or crazed or lonely human beings can find themselves. Diaz, for example, sees the moment where he cuts off a slain wolf’s head to chuck it back into the forest as revenge for the men who’ve died. The other men, who see the killing as a fact of their continued survival, look on as though Diaz were deranged. Maybe he is. Or maybe he’s just working out his frustrations. All of the men stranded out there have issues to deal with. The wolves just put things in perspective real quick.

    The lack of a specific villain also allows director and co-writer Joe Carnahan to get creative. Instead of relying on the wolves as a jump scare or singular cause of death, the men are faced with decisions that may help or hinder their progress: Do they create a rope bridge to cross a chasm? Do they follow a river? Do they know where they’re going? Do they drink all the alcohol, or do they save some for later? Do any of their decisions matter, or are they merely prolonging the agony? These questions, and the way they’re answered, have a profound impact on Ottway and his crew’s ability to survive.

    And then there’s the question about God. Not all of the men on the airplane are as harsh or bitter as it would seem. Some of them, in fact, are pretty spiritual. Talget, for example, wishes to say a prayer for the men who had the good fortune to die in the crash. He believes that the group survived for a reason, that their trek across the wilderness was ordained and purposeful, even if that purpose isn’t clear. Talget has a daughter at home, who he promised to see again. Maybe that’s what this trek is about, making those left alive more appreciative of what they have, despite the three men the film comes to focus on having very little to live for, not like the oil executives who’ll be minorly inconvenienced by the crash. Talget has family. Diaz has freedom.

    Ottway, though, appears to have less than even these men. His wife (Anne Openshaw) is dead and he is days removed from trying to end his own life. He does not believe in God, grounds himself in reality. His reality is quite dire, indeed. There’s him, the group, the weather, and the wolves. Benevolent or not, few gods would hurl their creation into such a horrible fray. Few men would survive as long as Ottway, who doesn’t believe in fate but will meet one anyway.  The debate is left to be resolved by the viewer, but one has to wonder why he persists when the situation is admittedly so hopeless. Perhaps Ottway carries on hoping for an honorable way to die. Maybe giving up would dishonor his wife. Could be, but the movie draws a pretty distinct line between the wolves and Ottway. They kill because they need to, because that’s their purpose. Ottway survives because he, too, feels need. In the wolves, he finds purpose.

    Rating:

    The Grey. Directed by Joe Carnahan. With Liam Neeson (Ottway), Frank Grillo (Diaz), Dermot Mulroney (Talget), Dallas Roberts (Hendrick), Joe Anderson (Flannery), and Anne Openshaw (Ottway’s Wife). Released January 27, 2012, by Open Road Films.

  • Movie Review: Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012)

    Movie Review: Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012)

    Before Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, I would have considered myself a fan of “cult film,” that cloudy-at-best genre distinction that typifies nothing in particular and is inclusive of everything from The Big Lebowski to Troll 2. But, having now seen the aforementioned film, I’ve come to realize that there is no such genre as “cult film,” merely that there are multiple definitions of the term:

    • The first, the one that I suppose describes most “cult” movies I’m a fan of, relates to films that went under the radar upon first release for one reason or another and then “made it” as a consequence of midnight showings or home release. Cult films of this nature don’t necessarily have to be bad or good—the gap between The Big Lebowski and Troll 2 is oceanic, after all—but have built a devout following, the likes of which demand merchandise, anniversary DVD releases, documentaries, and so on.
    • The second definition, which is what I’m claiming Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie falls under, is that a movie is made for a pre-existing cult; a rabid—if small—fanbase who are already devoted to the movie before it comes out, a group of people perfectly happy with receiving more of the same, but in a longer format.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with movies that fall under the second definition. I was once a big fan of Tom Green (and would still happily argue that his particular brand of comedy was ahead of its time), and am not ashamed to say that I own a copy of Freddy Got Fingered on DVD. The thing about that movie is that if you’re not a member of its cult, you’re left in the cold. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, if you’re not familiar with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim‘s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job, behaves in much the same way. Despite providing “helpful” interludes wherein the film’s ridiculous plot is shown to relate to themes like conflict resolution, if you’re not a fan, it’ll probably be difficult to see how a scene where a group of robed children defecate on a man in a bathtub could be funny to anybody, let alone the guys who wrote it.

    Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie sees the titular characters—who not only play themselves, but direct—on the run from the evil Schlaaang Corporation—headed by Tommy Schlaaang (Robert Loggia) and Earle Swinton (William Atherton)—after taking a billion dollars and making a three-minute movie starring a Johnny Depp impersonator. Tim and Eric don’t have much time to pay the impatient, cruel Schlaaang off, but luckily there’s a commercial on TV claiming that the two could make a billion dollars by taking command of the S’wallow Valley Mall, a desolate wasteland overrun by wolves and hobos. As soon as they agree to the job, Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell), the mall’s owner, abandons the place, leaving behind stacks of floppy discs and a worn VHS of Top Gun.

    This doesn’t faze the duo, who’ve formed a P.R. firm named “Dobis,” an amalgam of the phrase “doing business.” In this capacity, they meet the denizens of the mall, including Taquito (John C. Reilly), a sickly manchild raised by the mall’s wolf, Allen Bishopman (Will Forte), the perpetually pissed-off owner of the mall’s sword store, used toilet paper store owner Reggie (Matt O’Toole), whose son is taken from him by Tim, and Katie (Twink Caplan), a balloon store proprietor who captures Eric’s heart. Tim and Eric slowly set the mall to rights, Schlaaang slowly tortures Tim and Eric’s parents for information, and Tim plots to derail Eric’s budding romance with Katie.

    All of this, in being deliberately bad and/or deliberately disturbing, is supposed to be funny somehow, but I missed it. The movie’s jokes and gags that had something going for them—a video advertising an alternative medicine called Schrim, for example—are taken well beyond the point where they were funny and never quite return. But then, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is very much a film made in the post-modern, everybody is a star ethos, where YouTube (and public access before it) has given everybody a means by which to take their fifteen minutes of fame. Tim and Eric may have more famous friends than the dude doing a seven minute clip show in the hopes that 1,000 people will see it, but here they are in film form, ever the awkward everymen. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, from its title to its lo-fi aesthetic to its impersonators of Depp and Steven Spielberg, is the duo’s giddy “Fuck you” to the movies. Sadly, I like movies a lot more than I like Tim and Eric.

    Rating:

    Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. Directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. With Tim Heidecker (himself), Eric Wareheim (himself), Will Ferrell (Damien Weebs), John C. Reilly (Tacquito), Will Forte (Allen Bishopman), Twink Caplan (Katie), Robert Loggia (Tommy Schlaaang), William Atherton (Earle Swinton), and Zach Galifianakis (Jim Joe Kelly). Released March 2, 2012, by Magnet Releasing.

  • Movie Review: Underworld: Awakening (2012)

    Movie Review: Underworld: Awakening (2012)

    In all honesty, Underworld: Awakening is the first movie in the franchise I’ve seen that makes complete, perfect sense. Previous films in the Underworld series relied on an intricate, muddied backstory as a kind of smokescreen, lending significance to three rather insignificant movies where a woman in a leather catsuit blasted away at waves of CGI creatures who resemble the original Wolfman in name only. They were digestible enough, but boy did they have an unwarranted sense of self-importance, going on and on about vampire elders and ancient vamp/werewolf relations as if Kate Beckinsale needed an excuse for the outfit and the guns.

    The only past Underworld: Awakening is concerned with is the recent past, where Selene (Beckinsale) and her lover Michael (Scott Speedman, in previous films) attempt to escape underground in the aftermath of the human discovery of vampires and lycans, the human population having turned to mass genocide to rid themselves of both species. They’re both captured, but 12 years later Selene is released from her cryogenic freezing chamber, deep in the bowels of a medical research facility.

    In this brave new world, vampires and lycans have been driven deep underground, and, more importantly, Selene has a daughter, Eve (India Eisley), with whom she can telepathically communicate. As a vampire/lycan hybrid, Eve is of particular importance to the werewolves, who wish to use her genetic make-up to do some scientific hooey that’ll make their race unstoppable. The lab guys, led by Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea), also want Eve back, but if that’s due to her being “lab property” or because Lane has other, seedier plans is unknown. Pretty much, this sets up a bunch of shoot outs, chase scenes, and fight sequences where Selena and any number of allies take on the lycan horde and the occasional human interloper.

    That, in a nutshell, is Underworld: Awakening. Yes, there are subplots. The vampire underground is as snaky and worthy of mistrust as they were in previous installments, led by an elder vampire who holds Selene and her offspring in disregard. While this was the motivating factor behind other films in the franchise, here, one can’t help but sympathize with them. When the leader points out that most vampires fortunate enough to share a room with Selene end up dead, he is proven correct in short order, as the clan comes under attack from the lycan horde hunting her. Then there is the matter of the werewolf twice the size of any yet seen. The idea of lycan steroids is kind of interesting and barely touched upon, but in the end it plays out as you’d expect: The double werewolf gets the upper-hand for awhile, but he dies just like a normal one would. I presume the movie wants me to imagine a world where there are a ton of giant lycans running around, but the problem there isn’t the ridiculous conceit. Bigger might mean more dangerous, but considering that the wolves are all CGI, an army of giant werewolves standing shoulder to shoulder would probably make them look like normal werewolves.

    But complaining about the unnecessary in a movie like Underworld: Awakening is pretty pointless. We’re four movies in on this franchise, and it now appears to have found a comfort zone, like the Resident Evil series, where nothing really makes sense, but things keep happening if only because they must. Heck, the only real difference between the two franchises is a question of superpowers, and considering that Selene and the rest of the vampires in the Underworld quadrology don’t suck much blood and use guns to get their killing done, even that difference is negligible. Resident Evil holds an advantage over Underworld in that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but Underworld has its backstory from which to rip new, blandly efficient vehicles from. It will always have vampires. It will always have werewolves. It, for better or worse, will always be safe.

    Unfortunately, “safe” in 2012 means “projected in 3D,” which means muted color schemes of gunmetal and cobalt in every conceivable location. There is little variance from one gunfight to the next and, apart from one or two cringeworthy bits during the fighting, nothing really exciting happens. There’s a pile of dead bodies in this film that reaches to the vanishing point, but they’re all nameless, faceless, without impact, either carrying guns or brandishing claws. This, certainly, is to be expected from most brainless entertainments, but Underworld has long pretended to be something more than that. And yet, beneath the skintight catsuits and the endless gunplay, Underworld: Awakening is heartless, antiseptic. I can’t say I’m surprised by my lack of interest in Selene’s ongoing plight, given all that. One doesn’t stay 15 forever. Eventually, women become real.

    Rating:

    Underworld: Awakening. Directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein. With Kate Beckinsale (Selene), Stephen Rea (Dr. Jacob Lane), Michael Early (Det. Sebastian), Theo James (David), and India Eisley (Eve). Released January 20, 2012, by Screen Gems.