1st Part of Summer-Fall 2011 Movie Preview

Due to the fact that these days I have more important stuff to do than watching movies, I decided for the summer-fall movie preview entries for this and the next week. I'm doing this every six months but I actually was thinking to drop the habit because it happened that many of the titles mentioned in this entries proved to be unworthy even for reading their tag line after they were released. So, one more time, what's mentioned here is not a recommendation, is just a enumeration of some upcoming movies. Especially considering that the "junk factor" potential for this summer blockbusters seems for me to be higher than usual. But I'll try to filter these at least a bit in what follows, and focus more on less marketed productions. But the thing is that neither the coming indies aren't very promising. Anyway ... to cut it short, I'll start today with the summer moths: June-August (based on the official cinema release date, usually the one from US, which however is not 100% certain all the time).

I thought it would be better to start the June entries with something more indie, than going directly to the titles about everybody knows already, and also due to the fact that it's been a while since I had a horror entry on my blog. So, "YellowBrickRoad" seems to be something between "Blair Witch" and "Paranormal Activity" but without the mockumentary style shooting perspective. Up to this moment, the only movie in this horror niche that I found worthy of the time spent watching was "The Objective". And something tells me that it will remain the only one, but .. we'll see about that, the one below has reasonable reviews although as story the trailer is not really impressive ...

Going to more mainstream titles, we have "Super 8" as a first potential summer blockbuster. And from this category, I think it's pretty much the only one deserving some real interest. I don't know much about the subject, and the trailer doesn't say either. However, the same J.J. Abrams (probably much more known as TV producer = "Lost", "Fringe", etc) directed also the last "Star Trek", and the only thing I hope is that "Super 8" will be at the same level.

Also in June we have the next super hero movie - "Green Lantern". I'm completely fed up with this genre, and I'll stick to the opinion that it's like a template applied in different ways - we have the same story with a good guy who due to some more or less accidental event becomes either green, ironed, spider or wealthy with a garage rivaling the country's armed forces and with a bad guy having pretty much the same background but a bit more psychically traumatized by the changes and also a bit more eager for money, power, etc. Add to this an existential crisis for the positive character and/or a sentimental one, his girlfriend dumping him, or being kidnapped, or something else. And finally somehow he gets back on his feet and just saves the world. Well .. the only thing that makes "Green Lantern" maybe a bit more interesting is the director - Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale", "Zorro", "Edge of Darkness") who I think might have the potential to move a bit more from the classic recipe above .. however the trailer doesn't show anything like this.

For July, I'll start again with a horror - "The Ward" in which I trust a bit more than the first one to worth seeing, mainly because it's the comeback of John Carpenter ("Halloween", "The Thing", "They Live", etc) on screen after 10 years from probably one of the worst movie he ever directed - "Ghosts of Mars". In this case, however it seems that the result is much more ok, at least considering some short reviews stating that it comes close to the classic '70s-'80s horror.

"Ironclad" is, probably contrary to the appearance, a pretty low budget movie as far as I know, having as subject the siege of a castle sometime in the middle ages by the well known Prince John. Unlike Robin Hood, the story here is a bit better historically documented. Now, I don't know about the movie potential it might have ...

I've chosen "Cowboys and Aliens" as last title for July. At least it sounds a bit more interesting considering the context originality (as a difference from "Transformers 3", "Captain America" or even the last "Harry Potter" which I decided to skip). Besides this I don't know what to say .. I'll just leave it for the trailer.

For the beginning of August we have a prequel: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". The trailer looks good. With one problem ... I really don't know what's more left to see as story in the movie ...

After a prequel we have a remake - "Conan the Barbarian". The original for me at least was one of the worst fantasy movies I've ever seen, so considering this there is room for a remake. But, depends on how much do they change the script, because if it stays pretty much on the same line ...

I'll end the summer months as I started. "Apollo 18" is a horror that looks pretty indie, and keeps the same recipe as many used since "Blair Witch". And this time it's pure mockumentary style. On the Moon !

Next week, the Fall season ;)

Fatherland (1994)

I didn't have many options for today because I'm a bit "out of service" due to some eye problem (which I hope it will solve by itself next week ...). Getting to the point, not very long ago I was writing about "Enigma". "Fatherland" is an adaptation based on the same author, Robert Harris, pretty much keeping the same feeling of a mix between drama and thriller based on 2nd WW history facts (well, not directly WW2 related this time and in a fictive setting, but nevertheless the movie has pretty much the same "air").

As setting we have an alternate history, in which the Nazi Germani won WW2 becoming an empire, and in the 60's Hitler is celebrating his 75 birthday while on the eastern front there still are ongoing guerrilla battles and on the west side the US president is expected to arrive in Berlin for a historical peace treaty meant to end up any frictions between the two powers. The movie starts with an SS officer (SS becoming a police force after the war) who is called to investigate a body of one of the former major Nazi party leaders found in a lake a few days prior to the US-German meeting. Simultaneously, a female journalist just arrived from the US for the coming event is approached by a mysterious old guy who gives her an envelope with a group photo, a name and an address that might have something important to tell. This is pretty much the beginning of the movie plot, that might seem sufficiently interesting at a first sight but it has a major problem. The action development becomes quite obvious quite fast, the two mentioned before getting entangled together in a sort of investigation that finally reveals something well hidden by the Nazi regime in the history context of the movie - the Holocaust. No spoilers here, because it's almost 100% obvious from the beginning which states the official version of the alternate history context about relocating the Jews into the east .. but considering that in the same alternate history context we don't have anything to give a reason for this difference from the real one it's quite clear that the statement is a fake.

I didn't say everything about the action of the movie, but it's probably not very difficult to see in what direction it goes. Thing that's the main problem of the movie. You pretty much can figure at every moment how all this is going to end, well ... maybe without the fate of the main characters, but give the context this is secondary to the main plot. Considering the rest, for a TV movie (it is for TV - made by HBO) I think it's quite good as production value, beginning with the cast - Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson (awarded with a Golden Globe) up to the production design, quite detailed, giving a feeling probably quite close to how you would imagine a 60's Nazi Berlin. Instead of the trailer (which I don't know if it even exists) I'll end with a clip from the first part of the movie that gives a pretty good example about this. And I think that actually the production design is probably the main reason to watch the movie. Personally, I'm waiting for an adaptation of P.K.Dick's "Man in the High Castle" or Len Deighton's "SS-GB", those following a pretty similar alternate history, and even if I didn't read any of them yet, from what I've heard they have a bit more potential in the story.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Code 46 (2003)

Did u ever watch the sunrise on the New Year's Eve ? When pretty much everybody sleeps, you can see almost no one outside, a light cold wind blows, it's quite quiet around and usually doesn't even snow just to keep the silence. No, it hasn't anything to do with the movie. Well, not directly related ... and probably not for everybody. However, for me it was pretty much the same as feeling.

I wanted to see a SF, and I decided to risk with this despite the rating on IMDb and the description that was more towards romance than SciFi. With the first part it was ok I might say, with the second not so much = it is indeed 90% romance drama and what's SF related is some elements of the context. We are somewhere in a future where the planet is governed by .. something .. called The Sphinx, that among others also dictates the rules of transit on the globe = something like the current visas, only much more hard to obtain, and valid for a much shorter period. And this only for the people in some locations on Earth that still benefit of a living close to what you have today, the rest of the population being outcast on no administration territories where they have to earn their living however they can. There is also a code of laws governing all this organization, which at position 46 specifies that in case of genetic match of at least 25% between a man and a woman they are forbidden to have a child and more generally to have a relationship (well .. the way it is presented in the beginning of a movie is a bit inconsistent for a real law .. but, let's get over it). And, of course, as you probably already figured out, what you'll get in the movie is a definite break of this law.

He and she are both employees of the same global administration that among its activities also does the actual issuing of the transit documents - coverage on the planet - the visas mentioned above. She's a simple worker that has as daily task printing the papers in a .. printing hall let's say .. from Shanghai and also has as secondary income activity the forging of the same papers. He is an investigator from Seattle that has some specific abilities and also benefits from a pretty special technology (I won't spoil what's the most part of the movie charm by disclosing more on that), being sent for 24 hours to Shanghai to discover who's getting out forged visas on the black market. What's going on from here is easily predictable .. like I said the movie is 90% romance. Anyway ...

The story has enough originality (and I didn't disclose all of it above), although you could probably sum it up in a few lines. Generally (with few exceptions) I'm not really fond of scripts centered specifically on romance (and here it's pretty much the case) - I usually classify them either as "depressing" or "boring". For the first the reasons are mainly subjective, but for the second are as objective as they might be = if the romance part is coupled with another genre, or it's done or implied by the story background without being pulled constantly out and served to the viewer on a plate, the effect or the emotion implied can be much more powerful (well .. at least for somebody who can read a bit between the lines here and there). In the current case however we have an exception being neither boring nor depressive (well .. the last part depends of course more of the viewer), despite the fact that the love story eats almost all of the movie time. But .. I think that the way the movie gets out of those two areas depends less on the story you see and more to the way the move it's made. It's the first picture I watched directed by Michael Winterbottom, quite appreciated in the UK as far as I know (and now I know also why). The director of photography is Alvin Kuchler - who I haven't the vague idea who he is but after the movie I've done a quick check and he's the same guy who worked on Danny Boyle's "Sunshine". You can observe some similarities of the image style between the two movies, especially on the beautiful panoramic shots and on the warm color filters. Thing that actually it's on the same line with the sound and gives as result a feeling that's pretty much as a track on a trance chillout album or as sunrise I was mentioning in the beginning.

It's a movie that depends quite a lot also on the mood you are in (and maybe also on the moment you see it, somehow due to a flu based lack of sleep I "managed" to see it exactly between 3:30 and 5:00 AM = ended with a real sunrise). Despite of the general "blue" feel it might suggest and of the story I have to say that I didn't find it depressing but neither on the opposite side. It's sort of a combination between "Lost in Translation" (which was boring) and "Once" (which wasn't boring) with a drop of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" ( which was interesting ;) )

Rating: 4 out of 5

13 Assassins (2010)

Generally, I try to write about movies that are from lightly to strongly deserving to be recommended. There are exceptions when I don't have the time to see something to fit into this. Today however, I'm gonna make an exception from the exceptions and although I could find a much better (talking about movie value) title to focus on, I've chosen the current one deliberately for an anti-recommendation blog entry. The reason is simply that I was surprised (well, retroactively .. after I've seen the movie) by the ratings it has on pretty much all of the sites: IMDb, Metacritic, RT, etc. And to that to, just fill it up, I could add also some mini-reviews I quickly read to be sure I'm talking about the right movie. It's not because I was expecting more (although I was expecting more ...). It's not because it's an asian production (Japanese to be more precise) that has its specific elements related with the country's culture, reflected in the script, general feeling, etc, and those might seem a bit stupid or exaggerated at some points in time for somebody who's from the western or central part of the Globe. This is not a problem, and as I actually recently wrote I really do have a positive opinion about the eastern cinema (even better than about the European one I might say). The thing is just that "13 Assassins" is a weak weak movie.

Let's say two words about the subject. We have an action set sometime around the early 19th century, the final part of the shogun era in Japan. A pretty quiet period, considering the internal armed conflicts, according to the movie at least. Thing that seems to bore a lot one of the lords placed in charge of a province by the shogun, especially considering that the guy seems to be well qualified for a position in a dark and isolated room of a mental sanatorium for his demented lust of blood. By the way, the first part of the movie has some scenes R rated considering the roughness of the visuals you get to see (and those may make sense if what is following would have been any good or at least more complex .. but in this case are just a piece of trashy gratuitous violence). Going on with the story .. because the appointment of the tyrannical lord was official his subject can't do much .. also officially .. Unofficially however, we have a bunch of samurais - 12 in number in the end + one more .. cheerful .. character added to the group, deciding that things must be set in order by assassinating the evil lord. I don't know if I should give other details because I've already said pretty much everything. There isn't any more in the main subject besides this, half of the movie is the plotting and the other half is a final battle = the execution of the plan.

I think it's a low budget movie, or at least it looks like (or maybe just looks and it's not .. which already tells a lot). The cinematography, the editing and the sound are quite ordinary. I won't say bad, but they don't have anything remarkable. Which is a minus, considering that's a movie with potential at least here if for the story we can't say much. The action takes place more than 90% of the time outdoors and there is a lot of action in the raw sense of the word. As a script, besides the fact you don't have any complexity in the story, and leaving out the cliche parts for which we can consider that those are specific to the culture, time, etc ... there is the final battle, which is very very bad written I think. First of all, is way too long, that's why I'm actually giving thought to that (and also because it's praised as action part on some sites ...). The thing is that besides it's long, it's also plain stupid as script and direction in some points. We have some battle decisions that are amazingly dumb even considering the way of the samurai - to die in battle (but completely forgetting that the battle is supposed to be won as main purpose) - something like "well, it seems it's too boring killing with arrows from an elevated position without much risk, let's drop into battle and see how it's feeling to be surrounded face to face by ten armed bad guys" (at least if the arrow stock was depleted ...). And after this we get some scenes that look like taken from a B series Hong Kong movie where the ten bad surrounding guys try to be as fair as possible and to attack one at a time - and it's actually visible ! (you have at least two scenes where the enemy has the spear almost in the back of a samurai and seems that he's just watching for birds ...). And to add more the ten bad guys are actually more like 20 and maybe it won't be a problem if at some point it wouldn't be stated that there are only 130 enemies left (like it was reported by some electronic scoreboard ...) and they are still flowing in numbers surpassing for sure that value.

Maybe all the bad stuff above could be ignored ... but the problem is that there isn't anything left to appreciate. The only good part of the movie is the acting I think, but .. without much use .. because with two or three exceptions, the characters remain quite undeveloped. You have 13 assassins, but if you try to enumerate all of them after the movie ends, I don't know if you'll be able, because some have only a few lines during the final battle. I'm really wondering, where is the resemblance with the Kurosawa movies, that I've seen mentioned here and there. Well, I don't know .. Probably I'm also overrating it but ...

Rating: 2 out of 5

Source Code (2011)

"Source Code" is the movie that has probably the most idiotic title from all I've seen in the last 10 years - and that's for not exaggerating and saying since when I watched the first movie (is that bad, that I think it's the first time when I actually prefer the Romanian "translation": "Identity Transfer"). And to add a bit more to that, the trailer follows closely on the stupidity level. Probably that's why my final impression is completely opposite, because I expected something bad, and what I've seen was pretty different from that. So ...

The starting idea is quite simple. We have a train going to Chicago which blows up at a certain moment. This is a fact that happened (= considered in the past), and that was announced as the "prequel" for the real terrorist attack to come = blowing the whole town up. Therefore, all the affair is investigated under time pressure by the US Army, using the latest secret available technology ... the "source code" ... (again, bad choice of name ... really bad). What's this .. source code ? ... apparently it refers to the possibility for one individual to mentally relive the last 8 minutes from other individual's life, by accessing the short term memory from the dead guy's brain. So, this brings us to the starting point of the movie, when an US Air Force pilot wakes up enclosed in a capsule, having the mission to continuously explode in the bombed train where he relives the last minutes of a passenger, until he manages to find out who placed the bomb there.

From this starting point, the movie gets more and more complicated. What's interesting is that it doesn't attempt to explain much. I really don't want to say more, not to spoil anything, so I don't know how clear will be what follows form here, but ... Well, the ending is not that cryptic being quite easy to understand, but you don't know exactly why is like that = you're pretty much left to place the links yourself to explain it, which I think is the best choice in this case. I will only say that the main idea in what you see is not as time related as it is space related. And from this onwards you can try to fit the facts to get some coherence. As a personal interpretation (which originates in some short story ideas that are waiting to be finished someday ...) and for the sake of the conversation, let's consider as premise that "u're soul" or smth like this is not dead when you're dead. What the movie gives me built from that (actually it doesn't give because it doesn't say how .. but it's supposed to be possible) is an hypothetical solution to the problem of how do you connect "your soul" to "your body" or more exactly to "your late brain" in order for "your soul" not to start again from 0 .. neurologically speaking :). Well, as I said, is a very personal interpretation and I don't have neither the time and the mood to talk about it now ... let's go back to more "real" and concrete stuff :)

Like I said above you won't get much explicit interpretation given by the movie (or at least none that relates to the deeper parts) - it's just facts and as the movie unravels the story will give you more and more information = again plain actual facts. Probably if it would have given all from starters it would be much more fuzzy in the end than it is, so I think it's quite ok scripted as it is = (light spoiler) gradually revealing elements from what's nothing else than the starting context. The thing is that doing so and adding also the repetitive action, the result might be a bit ... cold, if not actually boring from some point on, so we have also a bit of love story added in the script, to add more warmth (besides what the explosion fire gives). My conclusion is that the script is beautifully written (especially considering that comes from a guy who doesn't have much until now besides ... "Species" 3 and 4). To this, you can also add the directing - Duncan Jones ("Moon"). I don't know what else to mention because I don't think there is anything to .. The cinematography, the sound, the effects, even the acting ... all of it is .. let's say normal, nothing impressive. And honestly, you can feel the lack of something more = it would have had top movie potential if it had more to add at least to one of these categories .. without it ...

Rating: 4 out of 5

PS: Did I tell you that the trailer sounds .. plain dumb ? ...