Riddick (2013)

I used to attempt a Vin Diesel impression, but it sounded like a mix of Sylvester Stallone with a little bit of Elmer Fudd.  "You'wr nawt afwaid of duh dahk, are you?  Huh huh huh.  Huh huh huh."

Even though it's been almost ten years since The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel fought pretty hard to make another.  First, he worked out a deal with Universal to get the rights to Riddick for himself.  He owns the character now.  Then, he was so determined to get a film made that he leveraged his house in order to get it done.  I have to credit Diesel for taking the risk.  I hope it works out for him.

The good news is that Riddick is a significant improvement over Chronicles, and it brings back the style and formula for what made Pitch Black a popular film.  It's broken up into three distinct acts that feel like several mini-stories.  The first act is pretty kick ass and was my favorite part of the film.  It takes the time to catch us up with what happened to Riddick after the events of Chronicles.  There's even a cameo from Karl Urban.  After an attempt to find his home planet, he's betrayed by the Necromongers and left for dead on a hostile planet.  Horribly injured, Riddick nurses himself back to health while fighting off the planet's various creatures.  Outside of some narration from Riddick, there's a minimum of dialog.  It's like a sci-fi Rambo survival story.  Also, a lot of work went into the look of the planet and creatures.  If the whole movie had been like this, I think I would have been happy.

Eventually, Riddick knows he's going to have to get off planet.  He finds an old outpost and activates a beacon.  Two groups of bounty hunters arrive to bring him in.  The first group, led by a man named Santana (Jordi Mollà), is there to collect the bounty.  Satana is kind of a douche, so you know things probably wont work out well for him.  The second group, led by Boss Johns (Matt Nable), is after Riddick for a different reason, and has a tie to Riddick's past and the events of Pitch Black.  Riddick isn't going to make it easy for them, staying in hiding and picking off the mercs, while giving them the option of leaving him a ship or he'll kill them all.  The dialog during this part varies from cheesy, eye-rollingly-awful, to funny, to rapey when directed towards Dahl, played by Katee Sackhoff, who's basically doing Starbuck again, which is fine by me.

Finally, the third act is basically Pitch Black 2 where monsters start attacking, and Riddick seems to be the most effective guy at killing them.  He's been through all this before.

Another thing Vin Diesel did was fight for an R rating and that's another area where the film worked.  Sure there's gratuitous nudity, thank you again Katie Sackhoff, but the rating allowed them to not pull any punches.  There are some great and inventive kills as Riddick picks off some of the bounty hunters that rival any horror film.  I mentioned the dialog earlier, but it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a room full of egos and testosterone, meaning lots of f-bombs.  I also liked that they didn't go out of their way to make Riddick a good guy.  He's a killer and the very definition of an anti-hero.  I think that got lost in the last film and a weaker rating wouldn't have helped convey that here.

The effects were very good in parts, and very bad in others.  They seemed a few years behind, but considering Riddick had a modest budget for a sci-fi movie, they did a decent job.  Overall, I have to credit writer/director David Twohy for getting the most out of the budget and giving us some entertaining action.  I enjoyed the pace of the film and the overall style.  However, I have to point out that once again one of the climatic scenes featured the same poorly edited fighting that's been plaguing recent films.  This one was even a little more disappointing considering it featured Diesel and Dave Bautista, who are two guys you want to see duke it out and you know can handle the physicality.  It's a missed opportunity to give us something memorable, and instead it's just another run-of-the-mill fight scene.

Riddick is a return to the style and roots of what made people like the character in the first place.  If you were a fan of Pitch Black, but disappointed by Chronicles, then you should be pleased with Riddick.  The dialog and special effects can be a little rough in parts, but overall it's an entertaining film and a late-Summer bright spot in what's been a somewhat disappointing movie season.  I definitely recommend it as a matinee.

3 out of 5 (Death Stars)

The Host (2013) - Movie Review

One day, when The Host reaches TV audiences, I think the Tivo synopsis might read something like this:  An alien struggles with schizophrenia while humans say, "I love you", a lot.

It's no secret to anyone that I was not a fan of any of the Twilight series.  When I saw that Stephanie Meyer had another movie coming out based around aliens, I was really, really not interested in seeing it.  But then I saw that Andrew Niccol (Gattica) was writing and directing, and I thought maybe The Host had a chance after all.  Boy, was I wrong!

I don't know how much of the terribleness of The Host was due to Stephanie Meyer's source material, or Andrew Niccol's decisions as a writer/director.  What happened to this guy?  Ten years ago, I thought he was on his way to being one of the better Sci-Fi directors of our time, but he's been in steady decline since then.  His last film, In Time, at least had a decent idea and an interesting enough universe, but was undermined by uneven characters and performances.  Contrast that with The Host, which is dead on arrival.

The Host doesn't spend a lot of time explaining its universe, which basically comes down to that the world was invaded by these glowing, parasitic aliens called Souls.  A Soul takes a human host and possesses their mind, erasing all traces or their consciousness.  Once you are possessed, your eyes glow a bluish-silver, making your easily identifiable.  The stated goal of these aliens is to go from planet to planet to improve it.  They also claim to be peaceful and against taking life, but I guess this doesn't extend to destroying the minds of the hosts they inhabit, eh?  Anyway, you see that a Soul has to be surgically implanted in the back of a hosts neck.  If that's the case, then how did the first person get taken oven then?  How did any of this happen without anyone not noticing or fighting back?  Aren't these pretty giant plot holes?

Occasionally, the host's consciousness fights back, which is what happens when Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) is implanted with a Soul that goes by "Wanderer".  This eventually gets shorted to "Wanda" (ugh, I know).  We also learn there are pockets of human resistance, but are later told the aliens outnumber the humans by one million-to-one.  Lets just take a step back and say there were only a few human casualties during this invasion.  Wouldn't that mean there are only about six or seven thousand humans left on Earth?  Why are the Souls worried about any kind of resistance at this point?.  One Soul even says to just let them die out.

Anyway, one of the head Souls, known only as The Seeker (Diane Kruger), wants Wanda to access the memories of Melanie and find where her group of human resistance is.  Melanie fights her, and this begins the hilariously bad dialog, where you have Melanie as a voice in her head, arguing with Wanda as she speaks aloud.  Even this isn't consistent, as there are times where Wanda just whispers when people are around, and other times when both Melanie and Wanda have a argument in their head.  It gets extremely confusing to follow at times, and you don't know who's voice you're hearing.  Even when she speaks aloud, there are times where you aren't sure if Melanie has managed to 'break through', or if it's just Wanda. I really simple fix to this would have been to play up on the fact that Melanie was from Lousiana. Melanie's accent would drop in and out throughout the film (something that should have been fixed anyway, considering she only spoke in voiceover), but if maybe they had focused on giving Melanie a stronger southern accent, and Wanda a standard, American accent, then you'd more easily be able to identify who was speaking.

Melanie is able to convince Wanda to find her group without alerting the rest of the Souls.  Melanie is desperate to get back to her younger brother Jamie (Chandler Canterbury), and her boyfriend Jared (Max Irons).  However, when Jared sees Wanda/Melanie, his immediate response is to punch her.  Yep, he walks right up an hits her.  I know he recognizes she's been taken over, but you'd think if he was in love with Melanie, his first instinct when seeing her, infected or not, wouldn't be to attack her.  Then, there are several attempts at her life by others in their group.  Melanie tells Wanda that she shouldn't tell anyone that Melanie is still 'alive' inside Wanda's head, because they'll think she's trying to deceive them to stay alive.  Then Melanie says, "They're going to kill us."  Huh?  Doesn't that completely contradict what you just said?  If they're going to kill you anyway, why would you hide the one detail that might be the reason they keep you alive?  Does this make any sense at all?

Wanda starts to fall in love with Ian (Jake Abel), but Melanie is still in love with Jared.  I wouldn't think an alien would necessarily have a concept of human love, but whatever.  This leads to more unintentionally hilarious dialog where Melanie and Wanda argue over who should they should be kissing.  At one point Wanda asks Jared to kiss her in a way that she'll want to slap him (just go with it, okay), and he just kisses her a little differently.  I thought, why don't you just grab her boobs?  I usually get slapped when I do that.

The universe Stephanie Meyer has created isn't consistent at all.  The Souls say all they want to do is improve the planets they visit, which basically means make everything chrome or mirrored.  You see fancy sports cars, that based on engine noise, are still clearly combustion engines.  Was anyone involved in the movie aware of the fact that electric cars make very little noise?  Plus, why aren't all of the vehicles chrome?  You see plenty of people still driving around in older cars, and referring to having a full tank, so I guess these aliens haven't mastered alternative fuel sources or transportation.  Then you see a large superstore where the Souls get all of their supplies, and the store has a giant sign that simply says "STORE" on it.  Are the Souls giant morons or something?

There are plot threads that are introduced, but later dropped that would have been so much more interesting if they had been explored.  Melanie begins the movie throwing herself out of a window and landing several stories below, leaving a dent in the concrete.  They say she didn't break any bones or hurt any vital organs.  The Seeker explains it off by saying, "This one wants to live."  I wish the laws of physics worked like that.  You hope that maybe she's some kind of superhuman, but this is never mentioned again.  You also see that The Seeker may have some internal conflict of her own, but it's also dropped as quickly as it's introduced.  It's a waste to cast someone like Diane Kruger as The Seeker and then make her act like a robot.

This is what bugs me about Stephanie Meyer.  It's just lazy world building where she borrows heavily from other sci-fi or fantasy sources, but then shows she doesn't understand what makes those things interesting. She's already shown that she doesn't know how to write interesting characters or dialog, so what else is there?  It's not all Meyer's fault though.  Andrew Niccol could have tried to explain some of these things better, or improve the dialog, but there didn't seem to be any attempt to liven this up.  The inclusion of all of these various elements just serves to distract you since they are so poorly implemented in the story.

Now despite everything I've said about the inconsistent, plot hole-riddled story, laughable dialog, and missed opportunities to do something interesting, I'd be able to give the film a pass if it wasn't so freakin' boring!  The Host is inexplicably over 2 hours long, and nothing of significance happens the entire time.  It's just talking, staring off into space, and forced melodrama.  I seriously struggled to stay awake for the last hour of The Host.

Poor Saoirse Ronan.  She's one of my favorite young actors (check out Hanna if you haven't already), but this is a film that is totally beneath her and wastes her talent, as well as Diane Kruger's.  The rest of the cast is extremely forgettable.  Even William Hurt seemed to be sleepwalking through this.

I could keep going, and I already took a bunch of crap out of this already too long review, but I think you get the picture by now.

I will say that with all of the unintentional humor, this is a movie that's ripe for a drinking game.  Every time someone tries to harm Wanda/Melanie, drink!  Someone says, "I love you.", drink!  Wanda/Melanie kisses someone, drink!  Wanda and Melanie have a head argument, drink!  You'll probably get alcohol poisoning with that last one.

The Host is quite honestly one of the worst films I can remember seeing in the past decade or so.  I can't believe I've about to say this, but I'd watch any of the Twilight films before having to sit through this again.  It's that bad.  Terrible dialog, ridiculous love triangle, and plodding story where nothing happens.  There is one way I can recommend this film: as a cure for insomnia.  It'll have you out within an hour.

0.5 out of 5 Death Stars

Total Recall (2012) - Movie Review

Well, it's August already, so it's time to start dumping out the films that can't compete with the big boys of Summer.  I know that sounds a little harsh, but we're starting the month with a totally unnecessary remake of a film that many of you already own on DVD.  I guess you could say there are spoilers here, if you haven't seen the original.  Otherwise, nothing that happens in this new Total Recall is going to surprise you.  In fact they seem to reference the original movie constantly to the point where you're like, "Why don't I just watch the original instead?"

If you're totally unfamiliar with the story, Colin Farrell takes over for former Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger as Doug Quaid.  Quaid is a factory worker married to Lori (Kate Beckinsale), and has a very basic life.  However, he continues to have nightmares and can't shake the feeling that he's meant for something else.  He decides to go to Rekall, a place were you can get memories implanted to experience different things.  He chooses to have memories about being a spy, but before anything happens, a SWAT team bursts in and Quaid manages to kill them all.  He returns home to find Lori isn't actually his wife and reveals that he actually is a spy.  Then he goes on a series of chases, eventually joined by a resistance member (Jessica Biel), who tries to help him stop the evil Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston) and foil his plan.  Cohaagen's evil plan involves creating an army of the robots from I, Robot to take over.

Both this and the original were based on a Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".  Initially, we were promised a more faithful adaptation to the original story, but what we got here was just a remake of the original film with a few slight changes.  Gone in this version are the references to Mars.  Instead we're introduced to a world ravaged by war, where there are only two habitable areas left on opposite sides of the planet.  To travel between the two, they've built a giant train that travels through the core of the Earth.  You can try and wrap your head around that one, but this is Summer film, so if I can buy in to the premise of a colony and travel to Mars, I guess I have to accept a giant elevator travelling through the planet.  Although, travelling to Mars seems like the more realistic scenario these days.

Unfortunately, I just don't have all that much to say about Total Recall.  I saw the same movie 20 years ago, and I still have a fondness for it.  It didn't need a remake.  Sure, the original was silly and it doesn't hold up great, but it had one crucial thing that was missing here: fun.  This remake is just too serious and dark.  Plus, it's missing all of the mind games I felt the original had, but maybe that's due to the fact that I'm too familiar with the story.

The cast is fine, but it seemed like everyone was just going through the motions, and I just wasn't all that interested in any of the characters.  There's never any suspense or a moment where you think that Quaid is in any real danger.  I think part of the problem is that in an action film like this, you need someone with the presence of Schwarzenegger.  It's not that Colin Farrell did a bad job, he's clearly a better actor, but I just didn't get the same feeling from the character that I needed to truly be invested in the story.  It's a shame they get people like Jessica Biel and Bryan Cranston to be in this and just don't give them that much to do.  I think Kate Beckinsale was probably the highlight for me, as she has most of the best scenes, but this shouldn't really be a surprise as she's married to the director.

Director, and Fremont native, Len Wiseman (nice shout out during the movie to my home town) did a decent job.  From his previous films like Underworld and Live Free or Die Hard, he seems to do well directing action and big action sequences, which are the best parts of the film.  He just didn't do enough with the story, and instead filled it with tons of action sequences, which to be honest, started to get kind of boring and repetitive as the movie wore on.  I felt like the movie lost steam about halfway through.

The effects were pretty good though and it's a nice looking film.  You can see where they spent most of this films budget.  However, there were some times, especially when they did wider shots of the city, where I thought some of the details looked really bad.  Like it needed just a little more polish.

I guess it's kind of ironic that a movie with recall in the title reminded me of so may other films.  You'll watch this and be reminded of stuff like I, Robot, Minority Report, Blade Runner, and even The Core.  They are all just mashed up together.

As a standalone action film, Total Recall isn't terrible, but if you've seen the original, there's nothing here that you haven't already seen before.  Watching it feels like playing a familiar video game, just with different graphics and skins.  It's a rental.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars