THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Yet another classic/cult TV series gets the big screen treatment and I'm assuming there is some hope that it may have legs enough to offer competition to the 007, Bourne, and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE franchises. There's a lot of love and nostalgia for THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., 1960's TV's most direct answer to the era's massively popular James Bond boom, but I honestly wonder how much of that love is bolstered by memories dating back by as much as five decades. I sat through the show's entire run about a year and a half ago and I can honestly say that the first two seasons offered fun and intentionally tongue-in-cheek spy shenanigans before the series ill-advisedly dove headfirst into over-the-top brain-dead camp in the wake of the ratings juggernaut that was Adam West's iconic BATMAN program. The show became truly dreadful and downright embarrassing to watch, and a shift to a back-to-basics tone for its truncated final season proved to be not enough to stave off cancellation. Depending on where you lived, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. may or may not have played in syndicated reruns, though some of the foreign-released theatrical "films" cobbled together from episodes did occasionally turn up on local TV as filler in assorted movie showcase slots. In other words, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.  was a show  whose rep was bolstered mostly by nostalgia and not by rerun ubiquity, so it was in many ways more big screen reboot-ready than many of the more familiar television mainstays that made the leap from the small screen over the past three decades of Hollywood mining the glass teat for ideas.

To be fair, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. movie was a lot better than I expected and the fact that it was set in 1963 added to its charm. As this is a spy movie with the usual twists, turns, and surprises in its plot, I won't give away any of the details, other than to say that womanizing CIA spook Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) remained pretty much the same character we've known since 1964 (though with a skill set cribbed from IT TAKES A THIEF's Alexander Mundy), while quiet intellectual KGB operative Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is needlessly reinvented with borderline-psycho anger management issues. Nontheless, the strength of the film relies on the interplay between Solo and Kuryakin in what would otherwise be a slightly-better-realized-than-average yet generic Cold War-era spy adventure. The biggest drawback is that the filmmakers unnecessarily decided to give the men from U.N.C.L.E. an origin story that shows how they met and overcame their immediate dislike of one another. The TV series simply dropped us headfirst into their world with them already established as top international operatives, and we were trusted to be smart enough to keep up. Lastly, the show's main hook, the dropping of an innocent civilian into the shadow world of international espionage that exists hidden within our mundane world and seeing how they fare when involved with Solo and Kuryakin, is totally absent here. 

BOTTOM LINE: A fun way to fill two hours but you can wait for cable. And for those who care, the classic U.N.C.L.E. theme tune — the Hugo Montengro soundtrack album version — is only heard in a three-second snippet as Solo searches for something to listen to on a truck's radio.

GODZILLA (2014)

I'll just cut right to the chase: I wanted to wanted to love the just-unleashed American Godzilla movie. I really did. But while it is not a bad movie, per se, I found it to be profoundly underwhelming. I'm not even going to bother with describing the plot in detail because it simply just wasn't all that, so here's what you need to know: 

• While certainly a giant monster movie, this film is not so much a Godzilla movie as it is a giant monster movie in which Godzilla's role/purpose has been reduced to a cameo. The central threat is a pair of male and female behemoths who feed on radiation and are about to reproduce, so Big G — who the U.S. military attempted to destroy in 1954 but obviously failed in the attempt and subsequently covered it up — of course has to handle them, but they are the real focus of the movie.
• With the exception of Bryan Cranston as an engineer whose wife perishes in a kaiju-caused nuclear reactor meltdown, I did not give a squirt of rat's piss about any of the human characters. Cranston is marketed as being the human character draw but the film in actuality focuses on his completely uninteresting soldier son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whose performance is perfunctory at best), and that was a massive narrative error.
• And speaking of narrative errors, one does not evoke the memory of the 1954 GODZILLA's dour-with-very-good-reason Dr. Serizawa if the character named for him in the new iteration is as much of bland manikin as the majority of the cast. All Ken Watanabe has to do in the role is stand around looking serious and miserable, with a tinge of Spielbergian expectant wonder on his face. The role could just as easily have been filled by a cutout of his face mounted on the end of a broomstick.
• Though not tedious, the film's just over two-hour running time works against it as it goes for the slow build, or maybe an attempt at crafting an epic feel to the proceedings, but what the filmmakers seem to have forgotten is that Godzilla himself is always the epic element in his films. All the rest, including any other monsters whose asses he inserts him mighty foot into, is simply window dressing.
• In this iteration, Godzilla returns to his periodic role as humanity's protector, and as such he is in no way cutesy. In fact, he's pretty fucking awesome. That said, I freely admit that I'm an old school Godzilla kid and I will go to my grave preferring the "suitmation" style of realizing Godzilla-style critters. Though CGI can bring special effects miracles to life, to me there is a certain organic charm found in suitmation (and stop-motion in some very good cases) that is largely absent in today's effects spectacles.
• The MUTOs ("Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms") that serve as our titanic hero's opponents are of interest solely because they're something for Godzilla to destroy. Though they are impressive when in action against Big G, they made me think of other monsters that I found way more interesting, such as the pair of uber-destructive carnivorous birds from RODAN (1956, and one of the best giant monster movies ever made) and Gaos from GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE (1995, also an outstanding giant monster flick). If the film gets a sequel, I hope the filmmakers give Godzilla worthier antagonists.
• Ifukube-style music was definitely missed but that was to be expected.
• Though the film's tableaus of destruction were certainly impressive in IMAX, it's not necessary to shell out the exorbitant ticket price for that perk. Likewise for the 3D.
• Though your kids' individual mileage may vary, the film is probably too talky and bereft of action to prevent them from becoming restless.

But the thing that most irked me about the film is that Godzilla himself is almost beside the point. He has relatively little screen time and while what we get is spectacular, it's mostly a case of too little too late and a lack of badassed giant monster action that really rouses the audience. (Which is not to say there weren't cheers when Godzilla was finally revealed in full and when he roared in triumph after exterminating the MUTOs with extreme prejudice.) And when we do get Godzilla in action, his first set-to against a MUTO begins as one would expect but immediately shifts to being covered silently and briefly as seen in a TV news broadcast. Following that, the big two-against-one battle in Honolulu kicks off but is swiftly brought to an abrupt halt when we get a POV shot from the perspective of people fleeing into a fortified shelter as the doors close and cut off the action. The scene then shifts to the efforts of the uninteresting soldier's efforts and sporadically returns to Godzilla's too-brief battle with the MUTOs, which actually has the nerve to crib one of Godzilla's finishing moves from the grand-daddy of all giant monster movies, the original KING KONG (1933). When all was said and done and Godzilla made his way back into the sea, I was left with the feeling of having been on the receiving end of half of an unfinished handjob. The film's too-few monster moments are impressive while they last and almost get the audience to where it wants to go, but at the most crucial moment the action is derailed and the recipient is denied the giant monster movie's equivalent of a truly satisfying, spunk-a-flyin' orgasm. 

GODZILLA is worth seeing if you're a giant monster hardcore and there are certainly other fans of Big G who will give the film a more enthusiastic pass than I did, but I say caveat emptor. My love of Godzilla has been borderline-religious since I was five years old but I am not one of those fans who willingly turns a blind eye to even the most redolent cinematic turd because it happens to feature their favorite monster. I have absolutely seen worse Godzilla movies but, thanks to it mostly being the kaiju movie analog to a high school cock-tease, I assure you that I won't be returning to this film for repeat viewings. All it did was make me want to sit through a few of the old school Godzilla films yet again — or, for that matter, the vastly superior PACIFIC RIM — and I'm saddened to say that that desire ignited while watching the new movie. When you're sitting through a brand-new big-budgeted installment in a six-decade franchise and all you can think about is how much more fun it would be to see some of the previous entries containing the likes of Mothra, Akira Takarade, Kumi Mizuno, and King Ghidorah, that does not say much for what's currently unspooling onscreen.

DARK SHADOWS (2012)

When I was but a wee Bunche, the weekday afternoon soap opera DARK SHADOWS (1966-1971) was the first teevee series I was aware of that had a considerable and very visible cult following. The show was a real odd duck of a program, initially designed as a cathode ray analog to the then-popular gothic romance potboiler novel genre and yet quickly failing in the ratings after less than a year on the air. Legend has it that since the show was on its way out anyway, the showrunners felt they had nothing to lose and said "Fuck it, why not?" as they shifted the focus from mundane moody soap proceedings to introduce Barnabas Collins, an 18th century vampire who was an ancestor to the Collins family, the show's original focus. Barnabas' presence turned the soap concept on its ear, allowing a dashing and tortured undead suckface the spotlight, a gamble that took off and led to massive ratings, overnight stardom for the actor who breathed un-life into Barnabas — Canadian thesp Jonathan Frid — an avalanche of merch, and two spinoff theatrical films before the whole thing wound down without an actual conclusion in 1971. (There have also been a couple of attempts at revivals that both died a swift death.) What was a loony piece of innovation born from desperation looks creaky and campy some four-plus decades after the boom, as the shows betray cheap sets (admittedly atmospheric though they were), storylines that were often stretched past the breaking point thanks to the daily serialized format, and the simple fact that the series was a soap and thus heir to the myriad flaws that the genre has built into its basic storytelling DNA. But nostalgia and cult fandom are powerful forces and DARK SHADOWS retains its first-generation loyalists as more join the cult with each passing year, thanks to them discovering it via daily reruns on the SciFi Channel some twenty years back, the Internet, and availability on DVD. (The entire series was recently reissued in a coffin boxed set that retails for a few pennies shy of five-hundred bucks, which is actually a great deal when you do the math and consider that there are just over 1200 episodes to be had.)

With its cult and name-recognition firmly in place, it was only a matter of time until DARK SHADOWS got the big-budget Hollywood remake/re-imagining treatment, and that task ended up in the hands of acclaimed/overrated director Tim Burton, the man who gave us the 2001 version of PLANET OF THE APES, which is widely and justly hailed as one of the worst major motion pictures in recent memory. Remembering some of his earliest films, I was not too bothered by the choice of Burton for the DARK SHADOWS remake/re-imagining because he has proven he can bring a solid eerie flavor to such material. What resulted is a good and fun effort that's nonetheless something of a rather mixed bag, so as of this point this review gets pretty specific, so HERE THERE BE SPOILERS (including a really major one).

Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, an 18th century vampire set free in the Maine of 1972.

In 1775, wealthy Maine fishing empire scion Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) rejects the fleshly charms of lover and servant girl Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) for the beautiful Josette du Pres (Bella Heathcoate) and discovers the spurned charwoman is in actuality a skilled and vindictive practitioner of the black arts. Moved by her obsessive desire to possess Barnabas body and soul or else, Angelique embarks on a spree of supernatural murder, using her evil witchcraft to crush the Collins elders beneath a large piece of statuary and compel Josette to throw herself from a nearby and very steep oceanside cliff. For his part in all of it, Barnabas ends up cursed to suffer for eternity as a full-fledged vampire and Angelique rallies the locals to capture him, chain him up and bury him alive/undead inside a coffin, where he remains for just shy of two-hundred years. Disinterred in 1972 during a construction dig, Barnabas feasts upon the unfortunate workers who unearthed him and immediately sets off to his family's once-grand estate of Collinwood. There he finds his 2oth century relatives and moves in with them, passing himself off as an eccentric uncle, with only family matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) knowing his secret, which she agrees to keep when he reveals a long-hidden treasure trove that he intends to use to restore the family to its lost state of wealth and success. This he must do while dealing with the considerable dysfunction of his family and attempting to cope with being a fish-out-of-water anachronism, along with weathering the grave and very aggressive threat of Angelique, who has survived, un-aging, for the past two centuries, re-inventing herself every couple of generations while maintaining a fish cannery empire that has reduced the once-mighty Collins cannery to a shadow of its former self. Further complicating matters is the presence of newly-arrived Collins family nanny Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcoate again), who's a dead ringer for Barnabas' lost love, Josette, and who is also gifted with the ability to see ghosts. Will the Collins family survive Angelique's increasingly vicious efforts, and will Barnabas once again find happiness with Victoria, who may be the reincarnation of Josette? And will Victoria be able to handle the fact that he's an undead suckface?

I have long expressed my severe dislike of much of Burton's filmography while simultaneously acknowledging his gifts as a visualist, and it's his repeated falling back on his now-tired signature stylistic tropes at the expense of story that drives me nuts in regard to the majority of his films. I adore PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, BEETLEJUICE, and ED WOOD, and depending on my mood I will also champion EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, but in my estimation all of his other films run the gamut from visually beautiful yet hollow exercises in pretentiousness to the just plain awful, so it was a refreshing change of pace to sit through a Burton film that concentrated first and foremost on its characters and their narrative. DARK SHADOWS is the least Tim Burton-like Tim Burton film in terms of its overall feel, despite its dark and eerie trappings, and that's what I enjoyed most about it. At its heart the film strives to be a 1930's/1940's Universal-style horror film, attempting to replicate that classic dreamlike atmosphere-drenched style, with touches of humor thrown in for flavor. Its leisurely pacing cements the dreamy tone and effortlessly sucks the viewer into its world. However, with all of that said, the marketing casts the film as a straight-up comedy/parody, when in actuality the film's straight horror content outweighs its humor by a good 85%. Its humor is more of the subdued Edward Gorey variety than the laugh-out-loud gruesome/weird stylings of a Charles Addams or Gahan Wilson, and moviegoers expecting a flat-out comedy full of yucks are very likely to be disappointed.

The film's performances vary greatly in quality, but the ones that really matter to the story come off quite well. Serial Burton-collaborator Johnny Depp is great fun as the tragic Barnabas, and his spin on the character often feels like an elegant vampire from an old black & white film was transplanted into this era of pussified suckfaces like those found in the works of Anne Rice or the plague that is the TWILIGHT media juggernaut. And while Barnabas has a manner that's simultaneously 18th century gentlemanly and morose/emo, he's still a vampire and needs to feed, which he does after sharing a great scene full of introspection with a campfire gathering of stoned hippies whom he came to like but must nonetheless kill in order to survive. He's quite sympathetic and likable because he in no way deserved the over-the-top sadistic treatment and curse he received from Angelique and when all is said and done, we care about Barnabas because Depp succeeds in making the classic character his own.

Every guy's very worst nightmare: Eva Green as the witch Angelique.

Eva Green is terrifically unhinged and irredeemably evil as the witch Angelique. At first we can understand her ire at being the sexually-used hired help who gets kicked to the curb when a bit of higher-class tail comes along, but when we see how she's spent two centuries in a state of tightly-focused rage directed at ruining the the Collins family for generations thanks to Barnabas' admittedly shabby treatment of her, it's quite apparent that Angelique is out of her fucking mind. Obsessed, immortal, wielding powerful forces of black magic and totally insane is a bad combination indeed, and she's still bent on Barnabas loving her (which he wants no part of) at any cost, so she's twenty-seven flavors of bad news and a fun character as a result of it.

Chloe Moretz as gloomy/bitchy Alice Cooper-lovin' rock 'n' roll freak Carolyn Stoddard — Barnabas' many-generations-removed niece — is the personification of every dour, spoiled fifteen-year-old girl you've ever encountered, and as such she's a hoot. My only complaint about the character is that during the final, apocalyptic battle with Angelique, Carolyn gets this weird look on her face and retreats from the fray to her room. When Angelique ends up thrown into the girl's quarters, she's seen perched in the rafters, covered with fur and with pronounced teeth and claws as she growls "Get out of my room!!" at Angelique. When she drops into the fight between Barnabas and Angelique (things are going badly for the vampire), Carolyn attacks the witch with full-bore lycanthropic fury and at one point turns to her mother, Elizabeth, and flatly states, "Yeah, I'm a werewolf. Deal with it."

(brief pause for that to sink in)

WHAT THE FUCK?!!? Up until that point in the story there was absolutely nothing in the narrative that in any way points to Carolyn being a werewolf. During the fight, Carolyn's hitherto-unhinted-at lunar changes is given a tossed-off explanation by Angelique, who states it's the result of the infant Carolyn being bitten by an Angelique-dispatched werewolf while the baby was in her crib. Once that explanation is out, it's never questioned and is immediately forgotten. What about what must have been at least a few years of Carolyn wolfing-out every month (and I don't mean in the expected sanguinary manner common to females)? Surely someone would have noted numerous signs that there was a werewolf in the household, but that potentially interesting plot thread was simply not dealt with at all. The werewolf reveal literally comes from out of fucking nowhere and the entire audience in the theater responded with very vocal cries of "What the fuck???" and "Get the fuck outta here!!!" I laughed out loud at the sheer absurdity of it, but it was a really sloppy plot gimmick that brought nothing to the table, especially not that late in the story.

The film has a number of fun set pieces and gags, including:

• Burton regular (and wife) Helena Bonham Carter as psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman, teaching Barnabas the particulars of doctor/patient confidentiality. (She's also upstaged throughout the film by her ridiculous day-glo red wig that would have been right at home on a children's party clown.)
• An ill-advised and destructive tryst between Barnabas and Angelique that carries them all over the confines of her company's office, with gravity not being a concern.
• Barnabas as a fish out of water in 1972 could have gotten old very quickly, but that seemingly worn-out plot device works quite well here and is quite amusing and far more subtly handled than one might expect.

One of Barnabas' many head-on collisions with the weirdness of the 20th century, in this case a Troll doll.

• The floating spectre of a drowned woman whose eerie beauty is occasionally offset by crabs that crawl over her body and out of her mouth when she speaks.
• Christopher Lee turning up in an amusing cameo as a fishing boat captain whom Barnabas hypnotizes in order to further his own agenda.
• An appearance by good ol' Alice Cooper, whom Barnabas describes as the ugliest woman he's ever seen, and who was indeed already so visually heinous that he could easily portray himself as he was four decades ago and display little sign of having aged.

Alice Cooper as himself, rockin' Collinwood with "No More Mr. Nice Guy."

The movie also features a soundtrack loaded with period-appropriate pop hits that do a good job of evoking the story's bygone era. Though not all of the tunes date accurately to 1972, they work very well in concert with the film's images, particularly the Moody Blues' mournfully romantic "Nights in White Satin" (of 1967 vintage) as used over the opening credits' footage of Victoria Winters' train making its way to Maine.

So, for me the bottom line on DARK SHADOWS is this: It's an uneven, lugubriously-paced throwback to an older flavor/style of horror film that has some fun performances and is visually pretty to look at, all while Tim Burton thankfully reins in most of his usual annoying tropes. It's an okay way to pass two hours but it is not worth paying the full ticket price, so I recommend waiting for cable or DVD rental.

The film's theatrical poster.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011)

And lo, the gods of cinema did hear the hue and cry of the people, and finally they did right the grievous wrong that was the 2001 version of PLANET OF THE APES. A new APES film was bestowed upon the earth and it was good. Very, very, good. Yea, verily the curse of Tim Burton was broken, and there was much rejoicing.

-excerpt from The Chronicles of Cinematic Recompense

Like many children of the Seventies, I was a staunch supporter of the era's "Ape-mania," loving the PLANET OF THE APES movies and a good deal of their attendant fallout. The sci-fi pickings in the pre-STAR WARS days were pretty feeble, so when a series of films that were (mostly) pretty damned good came along, you cherished it. The APES movies all featured a good deal of social commentary/satire on subjects such as racism, religion vs. science/anthropology, nuclear self-destruction and the ethical vagaries of vivisection, and the pondering of those things while wrapped in allegorical sci-fi trappings was something that stirred the young minds of my generation. So when it was announced that there would be a new APES movie made in the wake of Tim Burton's decade-old abortion, I questioned whether the new film would follow Burton's brain-dead lead or be some kind of return to something a tad more intellectually stimulating. (In today's utterly mindless cinematic climate of movies by committee, I did not hold out much hope.) What I got was totally not what I expected and I could not be happier with the results.

In modern day San Francisco, scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) seeks a cure for Alzheimer's, something sorely needed by his aging father (John Lithgow) whose mind is deteriorating on a daily basis. Working within the corporate labs of the Gen-Sys pharmaceutical corporation, Rodman develops a serum that when tested on chimpanzees causes the brain to repair itself and generate new neural pathways, fixing Alzheimer's and boosting intelligence to amazing levels. Following an incident in which a particularly gifted female test subject, "Bright Eyes," goes berserk and escapes from the lab, resulting in her being gunned down by corporate security during the meeting that would have led to the greenlighting of the drug's testing on human subjects, it is revealed that that she was protecting the baby she had given birth to and hidden below her bed. Ruling the drug a failure, Rodman's money-hungry boss orders all of the test chimps destroyed, but since the baby was discovered after its mother's rampage and is thus known only to Rodman and the lab's chimp-handler, Rodman adopts the adorable little orphan and raises him at home in secret. For the next eight years, the chimpanzee, dubbed "Caesar," enjoys life in a loving home where he forms deep familial bonds with Doctor Rodman and his dad. Unbeknownst to his Gen-Sys superiors, Rodman continues the testing of the drug on his father and the results are both swift and spectacular. Meanwhile, Caesar displays intelligence far beyond the garden variety chimp, even exhibiting functioning and skills beyond humans of a relative age and development. (Though Caesar himself was not directly administered the experimental drug, his mother sure as hell was and the effects of the serum are proven to be genetically transmissible.) But things take a turn for the worse when the drug's effects upon the elder Rodman are reversed as the old man's body builds an immunity to it. Wandering into the street, the confused old man gets into a confrontation with the next door neighbor that is observed by Caesar, who launches into violent defense of his family member. Though the neighbor is not killed, poor Caesar is court ordered into the custody of a specialized home for great apes, a place where our simian protagonist experiences firsthand just how cruel man can be. It is during this incarceration that Caesar's resentment of mankind is forged, and from there he launches a revolt that — along with a couple of other factors that I won't spoil — leads to the beginning of the end for the human race's planetwide dominance.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES comes from out of nowhere (and from beneath the shadow of Tim Burton's atrocity) to not only be my favorite film of the summer blockbuster season, but also takes its well-deserved place as one of the best major studio films of the year. The script is surprisingly intelligent and does not at all cater to the moronic demographic Hollywood has spent well over a decade dishing out mindless celluloid candyfloss to by the truckload. I honestly believe the filmmakers involved looked at the Burton fiasco (and also some of the gaffes made in most of the films in the original series) and decided not to make the same mistakes as what came before. This is the origin story of Caesar I had never dared to hope for, and I have every intention of seeing it at least once more during its theatrical run.

Items of note in the film:

• The excellent motion-captured performance by the brilliant Andy Sirkis, the guy who so deftly brought Gollum to life in LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. His Caesar is simply impossible not to care about and root for, and I can honestly say that by halfway through the film, the entire audience wanted to see him and his all-ape army win. While Rodman's story is certainly interesting, the film belongs to Caesar and his point of view during its events.
• The sometimes ham-fisted social commentary of the original series has been wisely kicked to the curb in favor of a hero's journey story fused with what can be seen as an animal rights piece from the point of view of animals.
  
• The other featured apes are also pretty cool, especially Maurice the orangutan (think about that one for a minute, o my fellow geeks) and Duke, a very large and understandably pissed-off gorilla.
• Pay attention whenever any TV news reports are seen, especially those relating to a space mission to Mars.
• The effects on all of the apes are outstanding and believable. The somewhat spotty footage seen in the trailers and TV ads do not do the work seen onscreen justice, so don't judge the film on what you saw in the previews of the past few months.

And there has been much discussion in the media and in online geek forums of how obviously impossible it would be for a relatively small force of apes, even organized and super-intelligent ones, to take on armed police and the national guard and have even the slightest chance of winning, but let me assure you that that question is very directly addressed and the answer quite satisfyingly requires very little suspension of disbelief. Hell, I bought it and I am one exceedingly critical son of a bitch. Believe that!

BOTTOM LINE: I simply loved RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and very highly recommend that you see it in the theater. A franchise movie of this caliber that does not talk down to its audience is rare indeed, and it should be shown appreciation with your box office cash. But one word of warning: The story gets very emotionally intense in some areas and it greatly affected the grownups in the audience, so bear in mind how children react to animal characters that they come to care about. Kids will love Caesar, so expect them to become quite upset during a lot of what he goes through. (Plus to say nothing of the awful demise of his mother.)

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (2010)

The ongoing trend of rehashing old manga and anime properties as live-action films for the current generation has yielded little of any worth — the two GE GE GE NO KITARO films and 2004's CUTIE HONEY being the rare and genuinely charming exceptions — and I am deeply saddened to report that this adaptation of the venerable SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO joins the ranks of duds like CASSHERN and the execrable DEVILMAN. I covered the first nine episodes of the classic 1974 anime series of SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO in an earlier piece, so the real background info primer for the newcomer can be found over at my other blog.

The live-action movie version more or less gives us a remake/re-imagining of the epic journey to the distant planet Iskandar on a quest to obtain an alien device that will save the Earth from its imminent radioactive demise thanks to constant bombardment from radiation bombs dropped by hostile extra-terrestrial forces, but several factors work against this re-telling. First and foremost, one of the aspects that made the original a classic and a Japanese cultural institution in much the same way that STAR TREK is here in the States was its revolutionary emphasis on characterization and allowing the audience to get to know the show's many characters well enough to be emotionally invested in them so that when the audience witnesses the horrifying trials they undergo, we share in their struggle. A twenty-six episode narrative allows a lot of room for character development that simply is not possible in a film that's just over two hours long, so the filmmakers of the live-action feature rely on the audience already being familiar with the characters and the basics of the story's particulars, and as a result the assorted intimacies depicted between the characters are known and understood solely by those in the audience who've seen the original. All others will be left asking "Who's that guy? Why are those two so close and devoted to each other?" and a slew of other questions that the narrative does not have time to answer thanks to the script's brisk pace.

With the action rushed, the classic year-long journey is seen as a relatively straightforward affair, peppered with ambushes and showy CGI space battles, but gone is every trace of suspense, paranoia over impending attacks, the loneliness, boredom and frayed nerves that go with interstellar travel. The all-too-human experience of what was once a crew comprised mostly of rookie cadets has been re-jiggered so that the entire ship's complement are now experienced soldiers and pilots, so the heroes do not learn anything or grow and mature over the course of the journey, and they are virtually fearless in battle, making it impossible to care about any of them. Even the deep, brother-like friendship between protagonist and immediately-promoted-to-acting-captain Susumu Kodai (actor and pop star Takuya Kimura) and ship's helmsman Daisuke Shima (Naoto Ogata) is given no fleshing out and we are expected to take it as rote that the exchanges between them are meaningful.

I could go on and on but instead I'll just present a laundry list of the rest of my issues with the film, just so we can get this over with and move on to something else (I have on a DVD of old episodes of GUNSMOKE as I'm writing this and they are far more engrossing than anything that this film has to offer):

• The film is obviously and heavily influenced by the rebooted version of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, and that is in no way a good thing. The most egregious example of that influence is in the re-imagining of the Yamato's nurse, Yuki Mori, as a Japanese knockoff of Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck.

Starbuck, er, Yuki Mori (Meisa Kuroki), being a morose bitch in the mess hall. Nope, nothin' at all like a scene out of the rebooted BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Nosiree...

Actress Meisa Kuroki enacts a character so close to Starbuck that the makers of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA would seem to have every right to sue. Yuki is now a fighter ace, dour in demeanor and short-tempered enough to punch her fellow pilots in the face if they piss her off, in other words an Asian Starbuck clone. Yawn.

• The alien antagonists, the Gamilas, are revealed to be a mostly featureless crystalline species, thus allowing them to be rendered in lackluster CGI instead of them being blue-skinned humanoids who dressed not unlike the Nazi SS, as in the original. This crystalline hive mind's featureless look allows for no visible emotion to be seen, so they are threatening only in terms of sheer number and of no relatable interest. Also, it is discovered that they call themselves "Dessler," which was the name of the compellingly arrogant leader of the Gamilas in the anime, a classic villain whose presence would have livened up this feature's proceedings immeasurably.
• Since there is no getting to know the characters, we end up not caring about any of them and that's a shame because many of them were well worth paying attention to back in the days. The intense and contemplative chief science/tech officer Shiro Sanada (Toshiro Yanagiba) was once a fascinating character who was worthy of a show in his own right, and here he's reduced to a virtual walk-on. The same can be said of the once simultaneously hilarious and melancholy alcoholic Dr. Sado, who has now been needlessly re-imagined as a woman and given practically nothing to do or say. (At least she's seen with her pet cat and lugging around a huge bottle of sake.) In fact, the only familiar cast members who have any kind of halfway decent screen/plot time are Kodai, Yuki, and the dying Captain Okita (Tsutomo Yamazaki, best known in the West as the cowboy/trucker from 1985's classic TAMPOPO).
• Analyzer, the red, sexually-harassing robot that served as an inspiration for the look of R2-D2, is barely a presence in the film, reduced to a hand-held A.I. unit that is only seen in extremely small doses and worn on Kodai's hip or plugged into a fighter as a support computer. It ends up turning into a war droid when the crew reaches Iskandar and is besieged by swarms of Dessler, and it ends up sacrificing itself in the process in a sequence that's meant to be heroic and inspiring. That intended sentiment fails utterly because, just like nearly all of the other characters, Analyzer is not at all developed and we could not care less about him.
• When the crew does meet the Dessler in face-to-face combat on Iskandar, the film cribs so liberally from STARSHIP TROOPERS and ALIENS that it's embarrassingly lazy.
• There is no Stasha, the benevolent alien who sends the Earth the schematics needed to build a warp drive system that will allow the crew to build a ship so they can fulfill their mission. Instead we get a disembodied hive mind that possesses Yuki and describes itself as the opposite side of a coin shared by the Dessler. In fact, Iskandar is found to be a world that's lush and beautiful on one side and barren and scarred on the other, like a planetary Harvey Dent.
• The space battles and CGI all look like a video game — a common gripe of mine over the past decade of moviegoing — and that's a damned shame since series co-developer Lieji Matsumoto's ahead-of-their-time spaceship designs would have been awe-inspiring if rendered in a non-listless fashion. It's a sad statement when the animated version of the titular space battleship still manages to generate genuine thrills nearly forty years on from its TV debut while its mega-budgeted CGI iteration appears as merely a perfunctory prop. The Yamato was as much of a character as any of the series' main cast, while here it may as well be a tarted-up Winnebago. Even the usually-blow-your-balls-off-awesome deployment of the ship's planet-destroying "ripple cannon" (or "wave motion gun" in the STAR BLAZERS translation) barely elicits a reaction.
• And speaking of greatness rendered unremarkable, thanks to the film's condensing of the material, the famous journey to Iskandar and back now holds gravitas on the level of a late-night trip to the local bodega in search of a six-pack of Piels and some scratch-off Lotto tickets.

The bottom line is that highly anticipated though it was, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO is an utterly soulless, merely mediocre Crib Notes version that is sure to disappoint any American fans of both the original un-altered Japanese original animated series and the Americanized STAR BLAZERS. Curiosity may get the better of you, but you'll be glad for your DVD player's ability to be turned off so you can go do far more interesting things and get back to the film later, if such should be your desire. I have certainly seen far worse films, but this flick is barely a husk of what was once one of the great anime stories, and that just plain makes me sad. And while there are plenty of good reviews for this film to be found online, I think those reviews are akin to those penned by the brainwashed critics who declared Tim Burton's BATMAN to be an exciting and innovative work of genius. Maybe they're afraid to admit that in this case the emperor has no clothes, but don't be deceived.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE-UNRATED (2010)

When it was announced there would be a remake of the Mier Zarchi's infamous 1978 rape/revenge grindhouse classic — which, for better or worse, it definitely qualifies as — the first thing to come to my mind was "Why?!!?" There was little that could be done to top the original in terms of depicting the very personal horrors of a backwoods gang rape and the vengeance it spurs other than to shoot it with a decent budget, quality camerawork/cinematography, and better performances from the cast, so what was the point? I know that practically every film under the sun has been remade or is in the works for such treatment, but again I ask, why remake a film that's a veritable Chernobyl of negative energy? The only ready answer that I had before seeing it was that the filmmaker's sought to cash in on the name recognition of the original, but there's considerably more going on here than I initially assumed. I wrote on the original I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE a few years back and I ask you to go here to read it. And before we proceed any further, be advised: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Southern anti-hospitality at its very worst.

The basic story is the same as the original: Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler), a writer from The Big City, rents a place in the backwoods — apparently Upstate New York in the original, Louisiana this time around — runs afoul of some incredibly vile lowlifes, gets agonizingly gang raped by said lowlifes, survives her ordeal and unleashes gruesome vengeance against her assailants. This time, however, the quality of the filmmaking is very far removed from the rather Paleolithic (though well-intentioned) results displayed in the 1978 version. The remake is quite obviously the work of real cinematic craftsmen and displays a level of polish and style totally absent in Zarchi’s dire classic, which makes the shattering events depicted in it more agreeable to sit through. (While any depiction of gang rape is going to be hard to sit through simply by default, the original’s bargain basement qualities imbued it with an unwashed and squalid look and tone that at times felt to me like some scabrous hobo was forcibly shoving his dirtiest, most callused finger straight down my throat.) The visual style is somehow lush in presenting the stark isolation of the story’s Louisiana backwoods setting, and the desolation helps to plant the viewer firmly into its lonely reality.

And speaking of reality, there were several elements in the original that would not have allowed for willing suspension of disbelief in the 2000’s, and they are addressed quite deftly. We currently live in an age of cheap and very conveniently portable mass communication technology, which simply did not exist back in 1978, so our heroine would be equipped with a cell phone that would allow her to call for help. Or rather that would be the case if she were not seen accidentally dropping her cell phone into her cottage’s toilet early in the film. Also, if a crime of the kind that Jennifer endures and survives after being pretty much presumed dead (despite the considerable efforts of her filthy assailants) occurred in this manner, today there would be any number of ways for law enforcement officers to bring Jennifer’s violators to justice (if justice could truly be provided by our justice system in the wake of the severity of the acts perpetrated), with DNA evidence matching immediately springing to mind. Thus it was necessary to add a fifth rapist to the scenario, namely the unspeakable Sheriff Storch (played with horrifically creepy gusto by Welsh actor Andrew Howard).

Andrew Howard as the vile Sheriff Storch.

Storch is the only police officer shown, and the area he allegedly polices is so remote that perhaps only one lawman is all it really requires. Too bad that despite him being seen to be a loving husband and father when not on duty, he’s worse than any criminal he’s likely to encounter because of his association with the pack of rapists, guys it’s made clear that he’s been friends with since they were kids, and his ability to inflict such grievous harm on an outsider reveals a sadistic sociopath who is allowed to wield lethal power by law. And by virtue of his training in the enforcement of said law, he knows all about how to cover up all trace of the crimes he and his pals commit, which makes him vital to them getting away with all of it.

And while we’re discussing rapist scum, it should be noted that the gang of redneck louts who plot the violation and (failed) murder of Jennifer includes a woman-hating Alpha male leader, a fairly nondescript follower, an overweight wielder of a video camera who fancies himself a budding cinematographer and voyeuristically captures the entire gang rape on tape, and a mentally handicapped repairman, whose virginal status is used by the Alpha male leader as an excuse to rape the city gal outsider. These guys are given a lot more in the way of developed personality than the louts found in the 1978 version, and that makes them that much more interesting and vile. The fiends in the original have little you can say about them as individuals other than that they are personification of the worst of male urges, in essence interchangeable ambulatory penises that utter dialogue. In the remake’s case we are afforded peeks into the quirks of the men as individuals and by allowing us to get to know what they’re like, an aspect that grants them an understandable (though totally evil and loathsome) humanity, it is that knowing of them as something other than largely undefined cardboard cutouts that makes us hate them all the more. Especially Sheriff Storch, whose vicious misogyny and behavior are fascinatingly contrasted against what we see of his home life. He’s a self-proclaimed god-fearing churchgoer with a loving wife who’s about eight months pregnant and looks for all the world like a fertility goddess transplanted to the early twenty-first century, and he’s also got a sweet daughter of maybe nine years old whom he clearly dotes upon. The man is a completely different person as a husband and father, and is presumably likewise as a citizen and lawman, but when in a position to commit a great evil in support of his friends and joining in on their animalistic “fun,” he’s revealed as a law-breaking predator who preys upon the weak and isolated. If Jennifer went missing in his podunk little town, it’s apparent that her disappearance would be noted by few, and the only locals who knew she was there are the sheriff, the gang of rapists, and the sweet old guy who rents her the cottage (the great Tracy Walter), so doing whatever the hell he and his buddies want to with Jennifer is as simple as pie to get away with, especially since disposing of her body would only require chucking her used and abused corpse into the alligator-infested river. Jennifer’s is the worst imaginable position to be in, and these filthy bastards know it and take full advantage of it, giving vent to their pent-up hatred of women and taking a joyous glee in doing so.

But, as was the case in the original, Jennifer does not take her assault like the whimpering victim the rapists anticipated, and when she throws herself off a bridge and into the aforementioned alligator-infested river rather than be outright blasted to kingdom come by the sheriff’s pump-action shotgun, she survives, holes up in a deserted shack for a month and lives on whatever she can catch (including rats) while she uses her writer’s imagination to plot appropriately poetic vengeance that would have done the writers of the classic E.C. horror comics proud. This time around the script wisely does away with the idea of a woman who was so brutally abused luring her attackers to their doom by fucking them. It's not just her body that's been raped by these scum; Jennifer's basic humanity has been utterly taken from her, and as a result she is reborn as what is for all intents and purposes a monster. It’s a tragic rebirth as a fury every bit as savage and implacable as the variety found in classical Greek mythology. Each and every one of the rapists gets his in a very big way and, according to the director and producer’s commentary, their just desserts were so nasty that some of the audiences were so outraged by the severity of the retribution that they stated they began to feel sorry for the rapists. That was not the case with me as a viewer because of my simple belief in the mantra of “If you abuse with the Johnson, you lose the Johnson,” or some other form or punishment involving some form of medieval justice, and I found what they received to be gruesomely satisfying in every way.

So the bottom line on what at first seemed an unnecessary remake of a cruel ‘70’s exploitationer teeming with ultra-sadistic and seemingly pointless misogyny is that the 2010 I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is one very nasty and visceral motherfucker that I’m extremely shocked to have enjoyed. Yes, I enjoyed it, but then again I’m a fan of what I call “the cinema of vengeance,” and there are few examples in the genre as strong as this in every aspect. It’s easily the best of the current remake/re-imagining wave, and I highly recommend it to any and all who have the stones to handle it. And whatever you do, make sure to watch it with the director’s commentary after seeing it for the first time. Very interesting stuff.

TRUE GRIT (2010)

I don't know what you thought of the 1969 TRUE GRIT, but I saw the remake yesterday and it was an odd experience because I saw the original for the first time since I was a kid a few months back and I thought it was merely so-so. The remake, though purportedly more true to the source novel, was virtually a beat-for-beat remake of the original and consequently it was also so-so. It does improve on the original in a few ways — chief among which are not having the incredibly annoying Kim Darby in the lead, and a better, less "Hollywood" ending — but for the life of me I can't understand why it's getting the universal critical acclaim it's racking up. My guess is that since westerns are pretty much a dead genre, audiences (and critics) are starved for "horse operas," so they go crazy when a competent one shows up in the current climate of lame rom-coms, cookie-cutter Judd Apatow films (almost all of which are overrated and not funny, at least not to me), superhero movies of wildly varying quality, Michael Bay cinematic abortions that display a shocking contempt for their audience, and the annual blockbuster season that turns the screen into a toxic waste dump. The new TRUE GRIT is not a "bad" movie by any means, but it simply is not "all that." Here's the breakdown:

• Like the original, it's too long by at least twenty minutes and it moves at a lugubrious pace. There is no suspense or thrills to be had in it and the film even manages to make Cogburn's famous horseback gunfight against four opponents devoid of excitement (which certainly cannot be said about the John Wayne version).
  
• Remember "Leaning On the Everlasting Arms," the tune sung by psycho Robert Mitchum in THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)? Well, you sure as hell will after seeing the new TRUE GRIT, because an instrumental of it plays incessantly throughout the film.
• Jeff Bridges is excellent as Rooster Cogburn and does not in any way evoke John Wayne's version of the character. It's a totally new interpretation and much more believable than Wayne's Oscar-winning performance (which is only to be expected I guess, because Wayne brought his "god of the western" stature to every role he played, especially late in his career, even in films that were not westerns).
• Hailee Steinfeld is a perfect Mattie Ross because, unlike Kim Darby (who was Miri in the original series STAR TREK episode of the same name), she's the right age for the role (Darby was in her early twenties when playing Mattie) and is not so fucking annoying that you want to shoot her through the eyes. Like Bridges, she brings a total believability to the part and she is very good for a relative newbie.
• Matt Damon is both unrecognizable (due to makeup) and quite good as Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (pronounced "LeBeef") and makes one completely forget Glenn Campbell's utterly forgettable original version.
• The interaction between the characters is fun and at times chuckle-inducing, but the film's pacing renders the proceedings into an almost-dreamlike state. That can work in a Sergio Leone western, but this is not one of those.
• Like the original, we follow Mattie's quest to bring her father's killer to justice, but again we don't care all that much because it's a given that she will succeed and the villain (and his cronies) gets barely any screen time, so we have no character definition other than that which is automatically inferred by their narrative positioning as "black hats."
• Again we get the bit with Mattie ending up in the pit with the rattlesnakes, a sequence that was totally unnecessary to the narrative in the first place and adds nothing to the new version (other than a slightly different outcome to her up close and personal encounter with one of the poisonous reptiles).
  
• As previously mentioned, the film is an almost beat-for-beat remake, despite the Coen Brothers' claims that it's a "new version," and as a result the whole endeavor comes off (to me, anyway) as cinematically superfluous.

The one thing that I am glad of as a result of sitting through it is that it reminded me of MAD magazine's excellent 1970 parody of it (from MAD #133), drawn by the stellar Mort Drucker (one of the best cartoonists ever, whose work is often unfairly overlooked because it runs in a humor magazine). I looked for images from it online and while doing so I was surprised to find that several reviewers of both the new and old version of the film cited that they found the MAD version more memorable than the actual movie. Next to George Woodbridge, I think Drucker was the very best of MAD's artists from the moment they shifted from a comics format to a black & white magazine. Check out these panels to see what I mean:

(I love how the one gunman is riding a hog for no apparent reason.)

But I'm straying from the remake, so allow me to sum up by stating that the new TRUE GRIT is worth seeing, sort of, but I suggest waiting for cable or DVD rental. It ain't worth $13.00 (NYC ticket price).

FRIDAY THE 13th (2009)

Here we go again...

It's funny, but just by existing this reboot of the quintessential slasher movie series is automatically far superior to its predecessors, but that's not really saying much.

The never-ending FRIDAY THE 13TH series had its occasional moments, but overall the lot of them were amateurishly made, substituted mostly-tepid gore for actual scares, starred no one of note — unless you count Corey Feldman, so that alone speaks for itself — and repeated almost the exact same "story" in each of its installments, so there was no reason to expect a series relaunch to vary the tried-and-true formula in any significant way. Not surprisingly, the filmmakers did not alter the template that much, but the film does offer a greater degree of cinematic competence than any previous FRIDAY THE 13TH flick, so at least that's a start. But even with that in mind, a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie is more or less review-proof since those who dig them will see them anyway, no matter how much the critics may warn them off, but any film reviewer (or fan, for that matter) who goes to one of these expecting Kurosawa is a fucking idiot.

Since its inception in the summer of 1980, the FRIDAY THE 13TH template has gone a little something like this: a pack of horny/drunk teenagers go to the secluded woodland site of Camp Crystal Lake for a number of perfunctory reasons, always resulting in their gory deaths at the hands of unkillable, silent and murderous juggernaut in a hockey mask Jason Voorhees (or in the case of the first movie, his insane mother). Other than the possible involvement of local yokels, hick cops, cheesy 3-D effects, an outer space setting or Freddy Kreuger, that's all you need to know. It's the classic campfire story about a mad slasher and his escalating body count brought to the screen ad infinitum, so here are the pertinent facts about the new version:

• If you've seen even one FRIDAY THE 13TH movie, you've pretty much seen 'em all, and that goes for the new one too.
• Shockingly, filmmakers who are capable of more than merely aiming the lens at some actors are behind the camera, so this counts as the best-made and best-looking FRIDAY entry by a landslide.
• The cast of unknowns acquit themselves quite well for this kind of thing, especially Travis Van Winkle as Trent, a rich-kid asshole of incredible magnitude. It's not a hard role to pull off, but Van Winkle renders Trent an asshole's asshole and I salute him for it.

Travis Van Winkle, delivering a tour de assholism performance as the loathsome Trent.

• A couple of the obligatory topless girls in the film sport what are among the most incredibly fake tits I've ever seen, but luckily there's the stunning Julianna Guill as Bree on hand, who rocks a set of the most mouth-watering all-natural dairies it has ever been my considerable pleasure to behold. Needless to say, she gets horribly murdered.

Julinna Guill loses that annoying top. I know her jubblies might look slightly too gravity-defying here, but when she leans over there is no doubt in my mind as to their all-natural status.

• The screenwriters took the disparate elements of the first three FRIDAY THE 13TH films and fused the aspects of the Jason legend found in those into a coherent whole, the first time that's been done in the whole run of the series. The shit ain't James Joyce or anything, but it's nice to see Jason's origin solidly codified.
• In the film's opening flashback that kinda/sorta re-stages the ending of the 1980 original film, Jason's mother is firmly convinced that Jason had drowned thanks to counselor negligence, hence her murderous rampage in his name. That's all well and good, but once she's decapitated by the sole surviving camp counselor, we see a young and clearly living Jason living feral on the campgrounds. Whaaa???
• When we see Jason again as an adult, he's a hulking and silent grownup who resides on the long-abandoned Crystal Lake campgrounds, living off the land and wearing a bag over his head (a la FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2). The locals all know to leave well enough alone when it comes to Jason's territory, but for some reason there's a hick who lives right next door to Jason and operates some kind of wood-chipping barn where he sells and smokes weed while reading issues of HUSTLER. The weed this guy sells is apparently growing wild in great and potent abundance and not, as some earlier reviewers have noted, because Jason is now a pot-farmer.
  
• Legends of that fabulous pot windfall attract five horny teens during the film's first twenty-four minutes, thus providing an excuse for what would have been the events of an entire old school Jason movie to happen before even a half-hour in, so if you choose to give up on it after that you miss nothing (other than Julianna Guill's truly spectacular breasts).
• The main plot — Ha! — kicks in six months after the massacre of the aforementioned teens and finds the brother of one of them looking for his missing sister. The paths of that guy and another batch of horny teens intersect first at a local general store and later at the rich asshole kid's folks' luxury cabin near Camp Crystal Lake. You do the math.
• Jason himself remains the implacable killing-machine he always was, but now his abilities as a hunter make sense (there's an impressive kill made in broad daylight involving Jason's apparently Olympic-level archery skills), although he still comes off as rather superhuman at times. After being quite decisively killed, he of course returns at the end to wreak havoc on the story's survivors (like you didn't know that was coming), so I guess he's still some sort of monster. Who knows?
  
• The gore is occasionally creative, but sometimes shot in such a way as to render the action visually confusing. And when compared to the film that started it all twenty-nine years ago, the bloodletting in this one is quite tame. Fuck those pussies at the MPAA!!!
  
• There is not one single actual scare or an iota of suspense to be found in the entire film, and since this is supposedly a horror film that's a big problem. While a great deal of attention was paid to actually making a well-crafted and briskly-paced FRIDAY THE 13TH MOVIE, they somehow forgot to bring the fright, and no amount of shameless cribbing from THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE can make one overlook that alarming aspect.
• The version of the film that I saw was the extended "killer cut" on DVD and it's nine minutes longer than its theatrical incarnation, so at a running time of 106 minutes it's almost twenty minutes over-long by my estimation. It's paced well, but there's just not enough going on here to warrant nearly two hours of any viewer's time, not even that of a die-hard Jason groupie.

The DVD's extras are nothing to write home about but the "making of" documentary proves the entire cast and crew were game and totally aware of exactly what movie they were making, treating it as a lark and not taking themselves too seriously. The deleted scenes are best given a miss since they were deleted for a reason, and as a whole I'd say the DVD was merely passable if not for the novelty of actually seeing one of these movies made by people who genuinely set out to make something good and not just another cash-in/"re-imagining." Not that it turned out all that much different from what came before and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and all that, but they certainly get points for not turning out a piece of outright shit.

The last point I'd like to make about this and damned near every other FRIDAY THE 13TH flick is that they are best enjoyed with an audience. Even if the film itself is kinda lame, it can still be enjoyed when seen with people who are easily scared or with moviegoers who are into "audience participation" (aka most inner-city audiences), so in the case of this particular entry I suggest watching it with a roomful of friends and a handy abundance of liquor or illegal pharmaceuticals.

THE KARATE KID (2010)

The 1984 KARATE KID has become one of the indelible favorites of those who were there when it came out and of those who discovered it later via cable or VHS, which only makes sense due it being a "rah rah" feelgood tale of an underdog who becomes a winner thanks to his relationship with an aged martial artist mentor. Feeling very much like ROCKY — which also made sense because both films shared a director — , THE KARATE KID was a good flick for its time and deserves its fondly-remembered status, largely for the touching and inspirational chemistry between stars Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita, but, to me, it has dated badly and now feels like just another of the legion of classic '80's movies that I really don't need to see again. Since the original there have been two straight-up sequels and one failed attempt at a series reboot starring Hilary Swank (the less said of those, the better), but by then it was clear that the tit had run dry.

As has been clearly illustrated over the past decade or so, the American moviegoing audience loooooves the familiar, hence the deluge of sequels, "re-imaginings," reboots and remakes, so perhaps it was inevitable that THE KARATE KID would be up for such re-consideration. The kids of the '80's have had their beloved G.I. JOE, TRANSFORMERS, A TEAM and, soon, THUNDERCATS kickstarted for the big screen to varying degrees of success, so why not THE KARATE KID?

Re-tooled as a starring vehicle for young Jaden Smith (the spawn of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett), this new version keeps the basics of the original but ups the ante considerably in various aspects. Twelve-year-old Dre (Smith) moves to China when his mother gets a new job (exactly what her job is remains unexplained) and finds himself dropped head first into an alien culture where he does not speak the language and sticks out like a sore thumb (his race is not explicitly presented as an issue in the script, but the implication is there). On top of being miserable over being ripped from his familiar turf and friends in Detroit, Dre is soon targeted by a gaggle of young kung fu students, the baddest of whom, a kid named Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), does not like that Dre has an innocent crush on local girl Mei Ying (Wen Wen Han). After being on the receiving end of a savage beatdown from Cheng, Dre is spectacularly rescued by his building's maintenance man, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan, whose character is perhaps unintentionally named after the villain from ENTER THE DRAGON) and begins a regimen of martial training that will allow him to compete in an upcoming open kung fu tournament and theoretically win his enemies' respect. There are of course other minor complications, but you get the idea: this is the KARATE KID story transplanted to a different place and culture, and if you ask me it's all the better for it (despite the idiotic titling; there is no trace of Japanese arts in this film and I find the titling choice both insulting and culturally offensive, but what can ya do?).

Jaden Smith: a surprise and a revelation as the remake's protagonist, leaving Ralph Macchio's Daniel LaRusso in the dust.

The original film's narrative was fun for what it was, but the remake ups the ante in several interesting ways. Dropping Dre into a totally different culture from his own is enough of an obstacle for the character, but, unlike Ralph Macchio's Daniel LaRusso, Dre does not speak the language and is also obviously visually different from the natives of China, which, while not explicitly stated, is certainly implicit in his struggle against Cheng, his douchey buddies, and, by association, their complete balls-out fucking asshole of a sifu (who offends my own martial sensibilities waaaaaaaay worse than Martin Cove's admittedly assholish Cobra-Kai sensei in the original). Dre's awakening to his path of martial enlightenment is also superior to Daniel LaRusso's by virtue of him being in the land that is the very heart and soul of kung fu, with Han's taking him on a journey to a sacred mountain that blows the nuts off of any Jedi training we've seen in the STAR WARS films. As Dre makes his way up the mountain, he witnesses firsthand several individuals who have given themselves utterly to becoming one with the martial/spiritual way and it moves him to his young core. Of particular interest is an unbilled moment when Michelle Yeoh — she of YES, MADAM and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON fame — is glimpsed by Dre as she portrays an adept who, precariously perched upon one of the mountain monastery's outcroppings, executes some serious non-violent crane-style technique with a king cobra as a participant. If I saw that shit it would have totally re-arranged my thinking, and that's exactly what happens to Dre.

Jackie Chan as Han is a breath of fresh air after over three decades of many good but self-repeating performances, as this film allows him to play serious and dramatic. I won't spoil it, but next to his work in the two classic DRUNKEN MASTER films, this is my favorite of his roles.

But the most interesting of the remake's tweakings is the level of brutal violence committed upon Dre by his tormentors, a level of savagery made all the worse by how young its perpetrators are. It's the skilled yet animalistic evil to Dre's beatdowns by another prepubescent that is frankly disturbing, a sense of innocence corrupted, all because of a teacher who has the moral/spritual grounding of a thinly-disguised sadist/sociopath.

I could go on and outline all of what I find fun and worthwhile about this remake, but I would prefer it if you got to experience it for yourself. Bad choice of title notwithstanding, this is my vote for the best film of the rather lackluster 2010 summer blockbuster season. TRUST YER BUNCHE and see it if it's still playing near you, or check it out on DVD and cable in the months to come.

THE WOLF MAN (2010)

So I saw the eagerly-awaited remake of THE WOLF MAN and I have to agree with Mindless Kirby's assessment, although I certainly didn't hate it like he did. I consider it to be little more than a particularly stodgy, sumptuously-shot MASTERPIECE THEATER installment that happens to have werewolves and gory graphic violence (which was easily the best thing about the film). That's all you really need to know, especially if you're familiar with the basic plot of the 1941 original. I'm not going to bother with a recap of the story, except to say that it's the standard tragic werewolf yarn, tarted up with CGI, so here are the pertinent points, both good and bad:

• IT'S DULL. The film has a look and feel that simply screams "period piece" and makes you wonder when the PBS pledge break is going to interrupt the proceedings. The pacing for the first half is turgid and the movie does not come to life until the protagonist visits a gypsy camp in search of answers. The only times the film really kicks into any kind of gear is when the werewolf does his thing, which amounts to a total of less than fifteen minutes.
• IT ISN'T SCARY. When a horror film doesn't provide either suspense or scares, there's a problem.
  
• ANTHONY HOPKINS PHONES IT IN. The former Hannibal Lecter practically sleepwalks through his performance and even shifts to a completely different accent at one point, eliciting giggles from the matinee crowd. He quite obviously was only there for the paycheck.
• BENICIO DEL TORO IS SYMPATHETIC, BUT KINDA OUT OF IT. As Lawrence Talbot, Del Toro affects the same hangdog demeanor as Lon Chaney Jr. did in the original and we do care about him to an extent, but what is meant to convey tragic intensity instead comes off as being whacked-out on Quaaludes.
• IT'S ALL ABOUT "DADDY ISSUES." The whole film is more about Talbot's deep and well-founded issues with his father than anything else, and once we've twigged to that the story enters allegorical "After-School Special" territory.
• WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO RICK BAKER? Makeup groundbreaker Rick Baker heads the makeup team and comes up with werewolf suits that, while well-crafted, bear a striking resemblance to high-end Halloween costumes. Considering his past dabblings into the lupine, I expected a whole lot better in terms of realism, but I do like the designs.
• AN ANNOYING OVER-RELIANCE ON CGI. As I feared, the CGI effects tend to overwhelm the practical effects, and they are painfully obvious to spot. The worst offenders are a digitally-rendered bear and stag that look wholly unnatural to anyone who's ever seen a nature special.
• DANNY ELFMAN MUST BE STOPPED. The former genius of Oingo Boingo returns with yet anther of his many sound-alike scores. Enough with this guy, already!
• IT'S RATED "R" FOR A REASON. In this pussified movie climate, it's good to receive a horror film that gives us monster scenes replete with shit that would never fly in a PG-13 flick. Now if only there'd been some nudity or a scene of the werewolf getting his hump on...
  
• THE SCENES OF WEREWOLF VIOLENCE ARE EXCELLENT. Any time there's a werewolf onscreen engaging in anti-social activity, the film is worth sitting through. The sequences in the gypsy camp and the London asylum will go down as classics, and there is plenty of gore on hand. I'd read that this was a troubled production and that Rick Baker was called in to add more "goodies" to the mix, so I can't imagine what this film would have been like without its high level of blood, guts and savage decapitations.
• THE FEMALE LEAD SERVES VIRTUALLY NO PURPOSE TO THE NARRATIVE. Emily Blunt's role is one of the most thankless in recent memory and her character would have been totally unnecessary if the plot did not require her to fall in love with the cursed protagonist.
• IT'S LEFT WIDE-OPEN FOR A SEQUEL. This was totally expected, but after the rest of the film I could not care less if a sequel comes to pass.

So what we have here is a pretty-to-look-at lycanthropic costume drama with some decent gore/violence and zero scares. The audience I saw it with was quite obviously not satisfied with what they got, and for the first time since I cannot remember when, over half of the audience had gotten up and walked out before the final reel. Seriously, people just got the fuck up and walked out in droves. With that in mind, I strongly advise you to wait for cable or give it a miss entirely, unless you are a die-hard werewolf groupie like me. And even as a sworn, lifelong werewolf supporter, I doubt I'll be sitting through this one again. TRUST YER BUNCHE and stick with the 1941 original, and you won't go wrong.

LAND OF THE LOST (2009)

I don't know what you think, but I say the vast majority of feature films culled from old TV shows majorly bite the big one, so with that fact in mind, coupled with a general apathy toward the overrated comedic talents of Will Farrell, I gave the bigscreen adaptation of LAND OF THE LOST a miss during its bid for summer blockbuster supremacy. Considering how the movie was obviously replete with dinosaurs, sci-fi elements and lowbrow humor, all things that I usually enjoy, me skipping it confused the hell out of several of my friends, but even with my love of stories in which dinosaurs eat each other's heads and also chomp on hapless humans, I was never a fan of the 1970's Sid & Marty Kroft kiddie show that served as the movie's source material. The previous works of the Krofts did little to draw me in — with the hippieish Brit charms of Joy from THE BUGALOOS being a rare exception to that rule — and the dime store dinosaurs found on LAND OF THE LOST looked rather wan to the eyes of a nine-year-old already indoctrinated to the films of Ray Harryhausen (although I did give them props for giving stop-motion a shot on Saturday morning). Come to think of it, one of my grade school contemporaries at the time described the show's baby Brontosaurus character, "Dopey," as looking like it had been cobbled together from freshly chewed bubble gum. I thought that assessment to be more than a little unkind, but the show did bear an undeniably cheesy look and feel that helped to nearly bulldoze over such fascinating elements as Enik (a super-genius lizard-man in a dress) and the mystery of the Pylons, a series of semi-organic formations that served as controllable gateways through time and space (controllable provided you had a clue as to how to operate the damned things). But whatever my own feelings on the series, LAND OF THE LOST lives on in the hearts and minds of those who were there to experience it as it happened, and even its budgetary constraints could not quash its considerable imagination (something that can also be said of DOCTOR WHO back in the days).

So then came the inevitable movie version of LAND OF THE LOST, a film that was met with indifference at best from many critics and outright panning from others, to say nothing of a largely apathetic response from the moviegoing public, thus leading the film's box office receipts to fall short of its production costs. In other words, it bombed. I was surprised by that, especially when taking into account how brain-dead audiences have turned pieces of shit like EPIC MOVIE and PAUL BLART: MALL COP into box office champs. Then AIN'T IT COOL NEWS — a journalistic organ whose critical opinions I give virtually no credence — intrigued me by postulating that the movie's failure lay in the fact that it was improperly marketed, with the studio pushing it on a kiddie audience when the film's content was clearly aimed at a fifteen-and-up audience. Now that I've seen the movie on DVD I have to agree with AIN'T IT COOL NEWS. The bigscreen LAND OF THE LOST was in no way what either the general audience or the original TV show's fans were expecting, taking the show's main concepts and jettisoning nearly everything else to come up with a parody of the concept, what I would consider something like a comedic DOCTOR WHO story as done by Americans, only minus the Doctor and packing a huge special effects budget.

The Land of the Lost: an extra-dimensional dumping ground for all of time and space.

Disgraced scientist Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Farrell), his cute British field assistant and science groupie Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel), and white trash roadside attraction owner Will Stanton (Danny McBride) find themselves hurled through a warp in time and space that traps them in a bizarre inter-dimensional nexus where they encounter hairy and horny proto-human Chaka (Jorma Taccone) and a number of threats in the hostile environment that make nearly every waking moment a fight for their lives. The exact whys and wherefores of how they got there and their motivations once stuck in the Land of the Lost are utterly beside the point and merely serve as a springboard for wall-to-wall live-action (and CGI) cartoon gags, so if you're expecting anything other than that you're shit outta luck. Many of the old school LAND OF THE LOST purists that I know wanted a big-budget rehash of their beloved kiddie show and as a result did not care for the feature film, but when I mentioned all of the stuff that I enjoyed in the movie as a non-fan and an appreciator of a fun parody, they agreed with each item cited. Go figure.

Holly and Dr. Marshall with the "tachyon amplifier," a device that opens a doorway to the Land of the Lost while blaring "I Hope I Get It" from A CHORUS LINE.

As stated, there really isn't much of a story but it's got it's moments, such as:

• Dr. Marshall arrogantly going on and on about a pursuing Tyrannosaurus Rex's allegedly walnut-sized brain when in actuality the T-Rex — a great parodic version of "Grumpy" from the TV series, and after whom this version is named — is not only smart but downright intelligent and it does not take kindly to Marshall talking that condescending shit, thus setting up the film's best running gag.

Grumpy, not at all amused by Dr. Marshall's ignorant trash talk.

• The film's version of Chaka is quite amusing, as is Dr. Marshall's first instinct upon meeting him being to attempt to "benevolently" enslave the ape-man and have himself accepted as his god. When Chaka completely ignores that crap, Marshall's frustrated reactions are priceless.

• There's a male bonding sequence involving Marshall, Will, Chaka and heavy-duty natural hallucinogens that joins the ranks of the classics of the genre.
• If you ever wondered what would happen if a Good Humor-style ice cream truck, complete with uniformed ice cream man, suddenly landed in one of the more hostile areas of Jurassic Park, wonder no more.
• The sequences featuring Marshall on the TODAY show tormenting interviewer Matt Lauer (playing himself) that serve as the movie's bookends are hilarious, especially the one at the end that proves the whole movie was merely one big setup for a punchline at Lauer's expense.

So the bottom line is that LAND OF THE LOST is a fun time-waster of a live-action cartoon that succeeds well enough for what it tries to be and it's definitely more entertaining than the majority of feature films with their roots in old television properties. It's a perfect mellow stoner film with a decent amount of genuine laughs (I laughed out loud several times and was not stoned, BTW), wall-to-wall visuals of interest, a shitload of Sleestak (including Enik) and a terrific take on Grumpy, so I say give it a look when it's on cable or snag it on Netflix.

Will encounters the "ugly" females of Chaka's tribe.