DVD Review #12: Aeon Flux

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Aeon Flux (Special Collector’s Edition)

Movie:
Future movies are rare. Future action movies are even more rare. And modern future action movies, more still. So I take what I can get. And this is a modern future action movie.

Based on the MTV animated series, Aeon Flux is definately one of the better looking low budget sci-fi flicks of recent years. The foundation for the story is basically the same as Children of Men. Everybody is infertile… and then they’re not. The end. The difference is that where Children of Men is very simple and not distractingly futuristic, Aeon Flux goes overboard with the alienness, and then hits you over the head with that board.

The difficulty in good science fiction is not having a world so different and complex that the audience can’t identify with any of it. And that’s exactly the problem in Flux. The backstory needlessly creates some unspecified virus (the “industrial virus,” which I guess sounds something like Nine Inch Nails), just to isolate all of mankind into one goofy city. The nature of the society is never explained. What jobs do people have, how do they produce materials, etc. There’s no obvious television or entertainment, which I feel is essential for believability. The utopia is an alien concept, even when it’s a fake utopia. This is why films like Blade Runner are more effective. It’s not “different,” it’s just “later.” Aeon Flux never even makes the form of government clear, beyond the stereotypical Big Brother ripoff. Trevor Goodchild has his face plastered in select parts of the city, yet it is never made too obvious whether he is president or what. He doesn’t really act like it. He is seen practing some sort of speech, but it’s unclear how that would have been delivered when there are no TV cameras, and “security” exists as images in drops of water, monitored by no one.

This problem is furthered by the fact that the film is more mystery than action. The entire plot depends on Aeon finding out the truth about their society. When the society is so poorly defined, however, it makes the mystery less effective. This is a world with alternate-reality tentacle harnesses, magically obedient explosive metal spheres that pop up out of flat discs that are dispensed from jewelry. Plants that are machine guns. Killer grass. Rebel terrorists who meet up inside their own minds by rubbing buttons implanted in their backs. Assassins with hands for feet. The whole film world is a mystery, so the main character’s quest for truth has very little sway on an audience.

Too many adaptations are of a concept too weird to understand in two hours, and Aeon Flux is right there at the top. It’s not a bad adaptation per se. Right from the start, they reference the opening title, the tongue-transfer, the hand-feet chick, and the alternate reality harness. None of the weird creatures or weird sex is here. But it’s still weird enough that few audiences would “get it.” The “getting” of the animated series is just that it’s something you’ve never seen in a cartoon before. Here, it’s not merely different, but confusing, and without that far-out, over-the-top appeal.

A testament to this confusion lies in a scene where Aeon is briefed on her mission to kill Trevor. The Handler tells her that the underground tunnels were “designed to be confusing.” It’s an unintentional laugh-out-loud moment. This was written due to the fact that the entire underground tunnel system was exactly one wind tunnel. It wouldn’t even be possible to show Aeon turning right or left through the maze, because there is no maze. So the map she is given is rendered useless as a filmic device, and instead she puts on a guard’s headset that tells her to turn left.

As far as the filmmaking goes, the directing is as good as could be expected. The cinematography is decidedly above average. The acting is a bit sterile, but that’s because nobody could identify with the setting. Customary revenge and romance scenes are all that pass for emotion. The female director is reminiscent of Tank Girl’s Rachel Talalay, in that the large cultish franchises they were given are aberrations in their filmographies. This is certainly the better made of the two, but it defies its source material’s merits. Charlize Theron as Aeon does not have the sexual charm of the original character. Trevor Goodchild, here played by a Kevin Spacey clone, is not the love-to-hate-him controlling deviant of the source material. Frances McDormand is horrifyingly miscast, explained only by the fact that the scenes she was in were probably all shot together in one day.

Despite the anti-Blade Runner production design, the mystery plot still echoes the same agenda, but the idea is hampered by the fact that there are no rules in the world of Bregna, and thus any revelations are incapable of surprising anyone. Surprise is rendered impossible once you settle into the fact that the film is built on lack of sense in favor of trying to replicate the weirdness of the cartoon, but in a trivial way. And surprise is the key element of comedy, horror, and mystery. Surprise can be substituted by sheer difference in genres like action and sci-fi, but it still has to be unpredictable. The unpredictability in Aeon Flux is only in the strangeness of the world’s gadgets, which works somewhat for the action scenes and awe factor, but ultimately not for the mystery structure.

Visually, the movie works as popcorn fare, but it’s not comprehensible enough for any real success. The pacing problems are typical, less so here than in real flops, but pervasive enough that it affects viewing. While the basic pace of the non-action scenes is slow, the flood of weirdness and information is too fast to really get a grip on it. And in the end, it’s hard to care enough about the characters to pay the attention that understanding the plot would require.

Ideally, the only person even capable of making an Aeon Flux movie is David Cronenberg. You’ve got deviant sexuality and weird creatures in both the series and his movies. But nobody here really wanted to make an Aeon Flux movie. They say they did. They have to. But it all comes down to money. And an Aeon Flux movie wouldn’t sell. What sells is a summer hot chick action movie with Charlize Theron in spandex running and shooting guns. And that’s what we got, but in a movie which takes itself too seriously instead of having fun with the ideas they’re allowed.

It’s relevant because there aren’t a lot of hot chick sci-fi/superhero/videogame/cartoon action movies. Tomb Raider, Underworld, Ultraviolet, Tank Girl (?), Elektra, Catwoman, Resident Evil, Fifth Element, Wanted, and this are all I can think of. This is the only one with Charlize Theron, aside from her co-starring role in Hancock. And she’s fairly well cast. She even sounds like Aeon. It’s not the worst of the bunch, but it’s not the best either.

Commentary:
The writers on their commentary are humorous, and talk about the many changes made to the film, obviously aware that it wasn’t all it could have been. They give a little more clarity to the plot and the original intentions of the story, even if their particular approach wasn’t the perfect one. Strangely though, this is virtually a commentary for the director’s cut of the movie, which sadly does not exist. A large chunk of the discussion revolves around either the first cut of the movie, or ideas from the screenplay or early drafts that were never filmed. It makes the track come across as fairly apologetic. However, it’s one I would consider listening to again, as the writers have plenty to say, and plenty of jokes to make.

Charlize Theron and the producer have typical blabbering to offer about how cold it was shooting the movie, and talk about the plot too seriously, as if it’s really very deep and nuanced.

Extras:
A decent, even slightly generous, amount of material is presented here that goes into the production of the film, the locations (shot in Berlin), the costumes, and stunts. There’s quite an unusual feature about the still photographer, whose photographs are nothing short of beautiful. Yet bizarrely, the disc contains no gallery beyond the stills shown in the documentary.

Perhaps not surprisingly, none of the many deleted scenes described are actually included on the disc. But that’s probably for the best, since deleted scenes are often only of value in context, and not as separate entities.

DVD Review #11: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Movie:
Gee, I’m going to have to admit some bias on this one. I’m a fan of all things Hitchhiker’s. I saw the miniseries when I was a kid. And then actually read the books. Yes, read with my eyes. (That’s “read” in the past tense, which in a perfect world would be “readed” or at least “redd.”) However, I was convinced I WOULDN’T like this. Because it’s a Hollywood adaptation. But is it really? It’s a fairly British production. And Douglas himself wrote most of it. And in fact, it’s pretty good.

I will say, I’m NOT a fan of the film opening with a tacky musical number sung by dolphins. Yes, it’s a nice reference, but it’s completely irrelevant, and doesn’t prepare you for the movie. So I can understand why people would think this movie was stupid. It certainly looks completely stupid and utterly nonsensical if you’ve never heard of the other versions. And it is. It’s absurd. It makes no sense. It’s a very difficult story to get into, even if you’re ready for something weird.

The movie moves along at a pretty brisk pace. This is probably the biggest drawback of a film adaptation. It’s not even two hours long, and every other version has been well over two hours, with the possible exception of the record albums, which I haven’t heard. This is an epic story, and it doesn’t exactly work as a popcorn movie. It was conceived as a serial that you didn’t have to spend too much time with each week. With the books, you stay for the clever writing. But a movie? It just comes across as bizarre and pointless. Which it is.

All that aside, I came to love Martin Freeman as Arthur. It’s a no-brainer. He plays “everyman” on The Office. That’s what Arthur is. And I fell in love with Zooey in Elf, bleach and all, so she can do no wrong. (Sorry – no trousers, but quite a bit of pants.) She’s the best live action Trillian by far, and she’s damn hot in glasses and no pants. Sam Rockwell reinvented Zaphod in a brilliant way. Bill Nighy makes a fine Slartibartfast even without the facial hair. Even Tom Lennon as Eddie the Shipboard Computer is a perfect fit. I didn’t feel like there was an over-Americanization either.

However, while I like Alan Rickman’s Marvin… he’s just not terribly funny here. He’s maybe a little too convincingly depressive, and too empathetic. The movie doesn’t really “get” the essence of the character, or why he’s funny. And sadly, while Mos Def adds a little bit to the comedy, he’s just not terribly well cast as Ford. There is nothing at all particularly alien about him, aside from the way he reacts to a few things. He’s not really that weird. And most importantly, he doesn’t seem like he’d want to be a researcher for the Guide. He doesn’t feel like a hitchhiker to me. Doesn’t seem interested in much that’s going on. Def himself doesn’t do a hell of a lot with his voice. It’s a bit gravelly and bored. And I like him… I respect him… just not very much.

Materialwise, as a fan I wasn’t that amused with re-readings of old lines. They were hardly improved, and so could have been rewritten a bit more for the sake of interest. But there’s so much new Douglas Adams material presented that it really is a treat for a fan to see new brilliant ideas from the man.

Sadly, rather than this film being the start of a new branch of the Hitchhiker’s franchise, it seems it will be the end of the original franchise instead. There’s no way this did well enough to warrant a sequel, and there’s no way to retell it and relaunch it. This will historically be remembered as the LAST Hitchhiker’s material we got from Douglas, and an ending instead of a beginning. If you’re excited about a new series by a new author… the Babel fish you took out of your ear must have had a death-grip on your brain.

Commentary:
One of the commentaries by one of the producers and one of Douglas Adams’ colleagues, serves as basic Hitchhiker’s trivia, which while containing various new tidbits and behind the scenes info, will tend to be common knowledge for many fans.

The other commentary is just fun. Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy join the director and some other guy who I can’t identify, because it was rather dark, and also he was only a disembodied voice. They spend plenty of time talking about the other actors, who couldn’t be bothered to be there, and how they were insane and narcoleptic. This is a great catchall track with jokes, stories, trivia, and a nice general atmosphere of banter missing on too many staid commentaries.

Extras:
Very disappointed on this front. With a DVD designed like the guide, and including an improbability feature, you’d think this would be a collector’s dream. But you’d be dreaming. All you get is another short press-junkety EPK type “making of,” and a selection of predominantly unfinished deleted scenes. There’s also an annoyingly slow hangman game with very little variety. (A surprising amount of variety at three, maybe six words, but it’s slow to play audio clips between each guess, and with only four-letter words and no hints, can prove impossible, or at least improbable, to win.)

The cast and director commentary talks about quite a lot of alternate takes and deleted scenes, and one would have thought with all the improvisation, they could have included a hell of a lot more content on this disc. Or preferably, on another disc.

DVD Review #10: X2: X-Men United

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X2: X-Men United

Movie:
Despite the effort made, I don’t think this sequel tops the original in any way. It doesn’t even manage to match it. There’s a real jumble of ideas here, and a confusion about what to do with the characters.

Basically, the story tries to set up a human as the villain, and regardless of him having a backstory, he’s not very engaging or very threatening. Magneto here is reduced to teaming up with the X-Men, and he doesn’t do very much. The setpieces of the first film, such as a train being ripped in half and the Statue of Liberty used to house a weapon, are absent here. Instead, we get a couple of cop cars flipped over and exploding, which is repetitive of the cop car gag from the first movie, and a boring secret base under a Canadian dam. Where the movie tries to set up a war against the mutants, it never really happens, and thus a grander scale is not achieved.

Mystique is the only character really used to decent effect. Everybody else just scrambles around like headless chickens. Logan goes to the secret base only to leave again because it was secret. Rogue runs around in her nightie for a minute, and then learns to fly a jet for one scene. Xavier is in a fog for most of the film. Cyclops gets kidnapped and doesn’t do much. Storm makes a couple storms. Jean’s character progresses sort of vaguely until the end, where she dies. Magneto is manipulated, breaks out of prison, tries to turn on everybody, then flies away.

The big action scenes in this movie consist of a teleporting semi-attack on the White House, Wolverine murdering a bunch of soldiers-for-hire, the aforementioned cop cars exploding, a fighter jet attack, a very stabby Wolverine fight scene, and a dam breaking. Aside from the ridiculously violent Logan fight, which is ultimately pointless, only the Nightcrawler attack is particularly original. The jet fight is done well, but there are lots of dogfight movies, even without tornadoes, and this has ultimately been made redundant by the much more exciting and much funnier scene in Iron Man.

The “plot,” involving somehow making a brand new, yet inexplicably rustier copy of Cerebro in order to kill all mutants, tends to be too offscreen and convoluted to have much effect. An unwelcome formula crops up when you watch all three films, which is that they all revolve around the powers of mutants everywhere, which is a broad scope that’s never really supported onscreen. We only see the homelives of, by my count, three mutants, and those lives are vague at best. In the first movie, Magneto wants to make all humans into mutants, even though the machine doesn’t work and will just kill them (he adapts to this news quite calmly). X2 has a human trying to kill all mutants, and then Magneto tries to kill all humans. X3 presents the notion of humans trying to cure all mutants, by force. More personal stories, or more black-and-white good vs. evil battles should have been the first step before attempting to portray mutation as a global phenomenon, when the only mutants we ever see all end up at Xavier’s school. The same trick in three variations doesn’t work. And when it works best is in the first film, where it’s quite easy to identify with being a human, and not wanting to turn into a mutant briefly before melting.

Logistics is a huge problem with X2, which doesn’t know how to coordinate all of its characters. It can be twenty minutes between scenes of any given character, and it’s never clear what the others are doing when they’re not onscreen. Xavier gets kidnapped, and then the movie cuts to a bunch of idiots flying around in a jet while they do errands. When you cut back to Xavier, the idiots are still flying around in a jet doing nothing for a good ten minutes. Magneto escapes and apparently just goes to hang out in the woods. All the kids supposedly leave the mansion, but many are never seen again. It’s pretty much a big mess, with a story that tries to seem important, but comes across as boring. The movie tries to be darker in the Empire Strikes Back style, but really just lacks any color or any great amount of humor or excitement. It all feels flat, and it falls flat. The only draw of the movie is to see Wolverine stab a lot of people.

Ironically, the movie has little to do with any uniting of X-Men. In fact, it is only Magneto and Mystique that unite with a small group of the X-Men. The X-Men themselves are quite separated in this film, far more than in the first movie. I guess X2: X-Men Wandering Around Doing Different Things In Various Groupings didn’t test well as a title.

Commentary:
Brian Singer does the commentary for this one with his cinematographer. But actually, the producers and writers have the more interesting track. The writers are genuinely funny, whereas Singer spends a lot of the movie talking about the circles and X’s he put in every shot, like some demented tic-tac-toe fanatic.

Extras:
X2’s bonus disc presents the comic book history feature that strangely didn’t appear on the first movie’s DVDs, but has since become a standard inclusion of Marvel films (albeit sometimes taken to ridiculous extremes).

There’s also a separate, but brief, feature about the character of Nightcrawler.

For the movie proper, there are features about the general design of the movie, an hour-long making-of, behind-the-scenes of Nightcrawler, 25 minutes of visual effects, scoring the movie, some webcast footage, a couple of fight scene rehearsals, trailers and galleries. Not nearly as much here as with X-Men 1.5, but still substational for a regular, non-special edition release.

DVD Review #9: X-Men 1.5

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X-Men 1.5

Movie:
X-Men is generally considered the movie that launched the comic book movie craze. Previously, only Batman and Superman had franchises prior to this, a few years apart. Some smaller properties popped up now and then, frequently not in the superhero genre. Once X-Men was a hit, it got Spider-Man the greenlight, and Daredevil followed, Batman began again, and DC decided it was time their long-attempted Superman project got off the ground.

Of the films of this period, I would say X-Men is still among the best. I think it still holds up. A movie like Iron Man is exciting the first time, but then on further viewings, you realize you have to watch the pointless flashback, and then Robert Downey stuck in a cave for more than half an hour. That can get a bit tedious, especially with so few characters. X-Men is done with style and respect, and was only really topped by its sequels with the amount of effects in X-Men 3.

As far as the “1.5″ version of the DVD, the branching version of the movie is nothing to write home about, except to explain why you’re away from home watching DVDs. The deleted scenes certainly don’t branch seamlessly. In fact some duplicate footage already seen. It barely constitutes an extended version of the movie, and doesn’t add anything of particular value. Having to watch the scenes through the enhanced viewing mode is tedious, as are much of the scenes themselves.

Commentary:
The commentary here is from Bryan Singer and some “friend” who isn’t really properly identified except by his cameo in the movie. It’s standard for a director’s commentary, made a little less boring due to the guest.

Extras:
The extra on the main disc seems almost like an afterthought. Several featurettes are accessible through the enhanced viewing mode by selecting a pop-up icon. For some reason, unlike the bonus disc, you can’t access the features separately. So you’ll probably never bother watching them again. Likewise, I’m not going to bother reviewing them!

The bonus disc starts with an apology from Singer for having a second version of the DVD come out. Yeah.

From the same video, there’s an extra where Singer shows off some of the X2 sets. Then a typical HBO behind-the-scenes teaser reel plays.

Then there’s a whole slew of features, which all have branching OTHER features, and all of them can be played in a row. I would suggest just playing each feature and the other extras separately, so you can make sure you didn’t miss anything.

The production documentary “scrapbook” itself is an hour long. There’s a feature about the characters and actors that’s 24 minutes. A 23-minute feature shows off the makeup and costumes. 17 minutes go through the special effects of the movie. There’s seven minutes of “reflections” about the film, footage from two premieres, trailers, galleries, and all the various extra bits like multi-angle comparisons, pre-vis, behind-the-scenes, fight scene training, etc. It’s so loaded with extras, it’ll make you puke!

DVD Review #8: Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

Movie:
The THC intro to this movie is probably the weirdest possible way to test your surround system. And I approve.

Here’s the thing about comedies. Every scene should be funny. Not just one dumb joke at the end of a lame scene that establishes a romance or a friendship. But the whole scene should be funny, even if it’s exposition, plot, or character based. And The Pick of Destiny does this. Thus, it is a well made comedy. The pacing is tight. Every scene has a point and a laugh. Everything told or shown is funny. The story about the history of the Pick is actually really interesting. And this is a rarity, but the movie isn’t gross or mean. That’s saying something today.

I also happen to think it’s pretty damn funny. It’s not quite epic. It’s certainly not The Blues Brothers. And the songs are mainly just silly. But it’s fun. It has a car chase and makes it original. And it adds to the actually quite long list of rock ‘n’ roll comedies, which is a good thing in my book.

So it rocks, from start to finish. What else do you want? P.S. – stay after the credits.

Commentary:
Liam’s commentary is great. You will laugh at things he says! It’s OLLY!

The cast commentary isn’t as funny as you, or Liam, would probably imagine. They spend a lot of the time being serious, or pretending to be serious, or goofing around. But mostly commenting on the movie in a more observational way.

Extras:
Of the 30 minutes of deleted stuff, the highlight is the unused musical number from a surplus store. Ultimately, the footage was cut for good reason.

You won’t find much “making” of the movie here, just your typical TV half hour, which must have aired on the cuss-a-lot network.

They also included 20 minutes of recording studio footage and a making-of for the music video.

DVD Review #7: Shoot ‘Em Up

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Shoot ‘Em Up

Movie:
Not much needs to be said about Shoot ‘Em Up except that it’s brilliant. It’s one of the funniest, most unpredictable action movies ever made. While Die Hard invented the modern action genre, it also invented all of its clichés. The only clichés in this film are a few lines spoken by one of the government agents (possibly an intentional satire), and some of the soundtrack choices (namely Motorhead’s overused “Ace of Spades”). Everything else is pure joy.

Clive Owen is the world’s new action hero. Expect to see at least another three-hundred movies where he wears a dark trenchcoat. Paul Giamatti (who incidentally, doesn’t seem much like a “Paul Giamatti,” if you know what I mean) plays a great oddball villain. Monica Bellucci still hasn’t mastered the English language, and reads her lines much in the same way that Jackie Chan does. She’s obviously here for eye candy, and yet she is strangely covered up even in the sex scene. There’s the requisite cleavage, but most of the time she’s running around holding a baby. The director is an insane Spielberg. One of our newest geniuses, who is currently remaking Outland, and I can’t wait. The only similar movie to this in recent years (and possibly ever) is Crank. And maybe Crank 2.

The only thing left worth mentioning is that this is another one of those movies that inexplicably has end titles that act exactly as opening titles, except the credits are in reverse order and the visuals tend to give away too much of the plot. I really do not understand this practice. Especially in this case, where the credits are done Bond-style. Even though I like how the actual title was presented at the film’s beginning, I can’t fathom the desire to make the title sequence into its own feature that only ends with the standard credit roll. This seems to happen frequently with action movies who want to start the action as soon as possible and not interrupt it.

Commentary:
Certain things are required for a good commentary, and this has most of them. It’s funny, it’s full of anecdotes, plenty of influences are revealed, unused ideas are described, etc. This is a director’s commentary worth a relisten.

Extras:
The “making of” feature on Shoot ‘Em Up is an hour’s worth of featurettes, and it goes well behind the scenes rather than the standard interviews and overabundance of clips. An hour is all I ask. Less than that is insubstantial.

There’s only eight minutes of deleted/alternate scenes. A longer torture scene, done in a different visual style, and some brief little pieces of scenes. The only scene really worthy of being in the film is where Smith escapes the “babysitters” by shooting holes in a wall and climbing up it. It’s funny to think they bothered to cut eight minutes of tiny sections that slowed down the pace of the movie, as it’s difficult to imagine it making that much of a difference.

Also included is 15 minutes worth of animation of all the fight scenes, with commentary. It’s rough and sketchy, but it is neat to watch, if you can stand to watch it, even though the gist of it is in the documentary.

DVD Review #6: Daredevil (Director’s Cut)

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Daredevil (Director’s Cut)

Movie:
This is one of the few comic book movies with an actual director’s cut. And it needed it. Based on what the featurette says, this seems to fix many of the problems people had with the theatrical version. I do like some of the pacing, and the dark nature. It’s more like the Crow than Spider-Man.

The downfall of this cut, however, is that it breaks the basic rules of plot structure. The turning point of the story does not fall in the midpoint of the movie. It’s about 20 minutes late. That may not sound important, but trust me, there’s an innate sense in the audience that knows something should happen halfway through the film. Here, that should be the death of Elektra’s father. Instead, you’re left hanging around waiting for something to happen. Now, I wouldn’t sacrifice the initial action scene. But I might tighten up the first half of the movie just a little bit, and come up with a different intro so that Daredevil returning to the church goes where it should, in the third act.

Now granted, you shouldn’t be able to tell where the middle of the film is if you don’t know how long it is. But this movie is 133 minutes long, which means the midway point is beyond an hour, and by that point, people are getting restless. If you want to hold attention during a long film, you need much more interesting scenes going on ALA Lord of the Rings. Scenes of Ben Affleck being sore and forlorn, and scenes involving court cases, are really not so attention-holding. If nothing important happens until 80 minutes in, it just feels wrong. And you could have spent that time watching an entire Friday the 13th movie.

That said, it’s a decent film, with a cut that’s admirably different than the original release.

Commentary:
Commentary by the director and The Producer Who Won’t Go Away. They tell you how everything here is better, the producer says both versions are great, and the director keeps quiet. Obviously, the theatrical version sucked.

Extras:
Kids, have you practiced your Spanish? Today we’re going to learn what “nada” means. I keed. I keed. There’s one bloody featurette on this about this particular cut. Which is fine. The producers insist they released the right cut, and that’s the “real version,” etc. Well, producers are full of shit. But so are directors. None of these people ever admit failure. But the truth is that the ultimate cut of this is probably somewhere between the two.

DVD Review #5: My Name is Bruce

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My Name is Bruce

Movie:
This is a muddle of a movie. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, but it’s not scary enough to be a horror movie. I mean, it’s rated R for “language and some violence.” SOME violence? There are a handful of good jokes here and a couple of forced references, but ironically Bruce made a movie about himself about as bad as all of his other movies. There’s real pacing problems in this, and that’s not a good thing at 84 minutes. The focus on characters and story and backstory is typical. But honestly, shallow movies are generally more entertaining. In a movie with no memorable scenes, and nothing that amusing between them, the story doesn’t mean shit. Look at UHF. Way too much focus on the cookie-cutter story. Look at Snakes on a Plane. The title says it all. There’s snakes on a plane… that’s too much plot!

The best part of the movie is “hooch for the pooch.” That was over the top. That’s what made the Evil Dead movies great. More of that would have been welcome, and cheap, and preferable to padding the movie with a pointless love story. Unlike what made Evil Dead great, there is little gore here. The first time you see Guan-Di chop somebody’s head off… great. The other seven times. Completely dull. Call me mad, but I think the budget would have been better spent on fake blood and gore rather than a useless “town” that serves as nothing more than an establishing shot. Most crap b-movies stay indoors, and I don’t quite see the logic of building a whole town just for three or so scenes where people talk outside. It’s scarcely believable as a town in the first place, but to do this just because they couldn’t shoot in an actual town that looks like this is just bizarre. Despite how cheap the movie is, you probably could have made three other horror movies with what the town cost, no matter how much of the wood was free.

In the end, any Bruce Campbell fan would be mildly amused by this romp. It looks pretty decent. The jokes are all in-jokes. But I’m not entirely sure why anyone would want to make this exact script, when it could be so much better. Bruce obviously doesn’t have the passion that Raimi used to have, even though Screaming Brain mimicked some of it.

Commentary:
Pretty standard Bruce Campbell commentary. Except he’s only in one speaker. The less interesting the movie is, the less interesting the commentary is. So it might not be more entertaining than the movie itself, but I still appreciate the value of someone with something to say. Whereas your boring scene in a movie is just a boring scene in a movie. This is not a hilarious track, because Bruce the Director is ever so serious about filmmaking. Equivalent to Man With The Screaming Brain at least.

Extras:
It is often the case that cheesy movies can have special features that are better than the movie. That’s the rule here too.

The documentary “Hearts of Dorkness” is the main draw of the disc. It really is a parody of “Hearts of Darkness,” done brilliantly and thoroughly, right down to the fake Doors music and the ending with Bruce hacking away at a wooden fence.

There are other assorted features worth a view as well. All of the material is the same ilk as the documentary, all shot by the same guy.

The disc has more easter eggs than most DVDs have features. But most of them are less than a minute of goofing around, and nothing terribly interesting. As is sadly the case for easter eggs in general. Finding them is fun (there’s a secret, unhighlighted button that takes you to an entire page of easter eggs), but watching them is forgettable.

My main criticism is that they spend too much time on these features pretending that Bruce is an asshole. I know that’s part of the movie’s premise, but the joke just gets old after a while.

But for an ultra low budget movie, there’s more content here than a lot of mainstream releases. It’s on par with Man With The Screaming Brain, if not a little better.

Thankfully, there aren’t any deleted scenes. There probably weren’t ANY deleted scenes… like at all. In fact, they may have edited the whole thing in camera for all I know. It’s an 84 minute movie that needs tightening up. Any deleted material would be unbearable.

In a fake part of the documentary (or maybe it was an easter egg), the documentarian explains how the documentary will guaranteed be better than the movie, because all the humor on set was real, and everything in the movie was scripted. He was joking, but he was absolutely right.

DVD Review #4: Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (The Chosen Edition)

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Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (The Chosen Edition)

Movie: (In-cow-redible?)
This is one of those movies where you feel like you should know who the hell made it, but you don’t. Steve Oedekerk is not Bob Odenkirk. An easy mistake to make. He was not on Mr. Show. But whatever he was on, he made Thumb Wars and various other thumb parodies that most people haven’t even heard of. But now you know him as the guy from Kung Pow, so shut up.

You won’t find a perfect comedy here. You will find a kung fu spoof in the vein of the early Zucker films, and more than a little of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (I’m surprised Steve didn’t realize he remade the “running” gag.) There are, as always, jokes that go on too long, or miss their mark. But it’s a silly film, and it delivers the silly in herds.

To me, the mark of any great film is memorability. You know, maybe that’s superficial bullshit. I mean, Empire of the Sun is a GREAT film, but I wouldn’t say any particular moments are more memorable than the rest. Let’s just say “really good film” then. Great films are in another league. Well, Kung Pow must be a really good film, because the silly voices and the jokes get stuck in your head for a week. That’s all I really need. And in the end, the boring parts are discarded in your brain, and it’s what’s left that matters.

The fighting cow might not be funny after the first time. But the old man massaging his friend’s fresh wound will always be. And I insist on using the word “badong” in conversation now.

The downsides of this are when the visual effects look bad. The cow is fine. It’s passable. It’s better than most Disney films and their big-headed talking crap characters. It’s generally the head/body replacable that falls flat. It’s almost funny in itself when it does. Sometimes it’s a little irking, like the continuity errors in the waterfall sequence. But it’s just meant to be a damn silly film, and it succeeds at that endlessly. Nitpicking the effects is like nitpicking the fonts in Casablanca.

Commentary: (Choice)
The commentary is great. You get the requisite explanation of how they made the movie, goof pointers, and lots of wacky sounds, songs and voices. You will laugh and cry and listen to it over and over and forget to eat and then die.

The “What Did They Really Say?” audio track is a weird ride. Between the original Mandarin and the utter nonsense spoken by Steve and other actors, this is purely academic trivia, or for stoned people. Some of the real lines are funny. Some are actually repeated footage. Most are just weird nonsense.

The long lost book-on-tape version is not as polished as one might hope. It’s a British guy speaking all of the dialogue of the film. You can still hear the music and effects, and there’s no actual narration, so don’t expect “Wizard People, Dear Reader.” This may be a track to switch to if you fancy hearing a particular line delivered in a straight English accent.

Extras: (Pow-tastic… leave me alone)
Most of the extra features are a little disappointing. Granted, making this movie consisted mainly of shooting little pickups and some green screen footage, so the short EPK featurette is all you could really expect for behind-the-scenes.

The deleted scenes are probably the best feature. There are quite a few of them, most of them revolving around the torture scene which had to be cut for a PG-13 rating, probably for the dick jokes. The Chosen One gets his face tattooed in this scene, which means every other scene with the tattoo also had to be cut. That’s a shame, although I must admit I don’t really miss the dick jokes. And the torture scene itself is questionable, as it’s all new and not from an old movie as far as I can tell.

There’s also an animatic of the cow fight scene, which is actually quite good, and over a minute longer.

I must say with all the talk about how there were so many visual effects shots in the film and how hard it was to make, it might have been nice to show more of the guys who did it all. But the “Chosen Edition” is still worth it for what’s there.

DVD Reviews #3: Harry Potter 6 (2-Disc Special Edition)

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2-Disc Special Edition)

This is the first time I saw the movie, and the second one that I had read the book of first. So I realized what was missing and thought it shouldn’t have been missing. Just having Tonks and Lupin be together without any fuss is a bit lame. I get it. They’re not important. Not showing at least half of the memories was lame. I get it, Voldemort’s entire family history isn’t important. But if I’m not crazy, they cut out the explanation for the cave, and that’s crazy. They didn’t include whatever monster was in the cave. They didn’t explain Inferi. They glossed over Dumbledore’s torment. I don’t think there was any sense of danger in the cave, and that’s the whole fucking point of the scene/chapter. They rushed through it. Now, I don’t remember the book so clearly, but I seem to recall that it was a rather big deal that the motherfucking Deatheaters had gotten into Hogwarts. I’m pretty sure they fucked up some students, and a few of them died. And here, they just show up and basically leave. So ultimately, I didn’t get much out of this movie on first viewing. And there was no Voldemort, which is typically a minus.

As for the expensive extra disc, I’m a victim of collectivitis and completism here. It’s got a sneak peek at the Deathly Hallows. And I’m sad to see that Harry is going to have a shitty haircut for his final movies. His hair in movies 5 and 6 was perfect. Pretty much perfect in 3 as well. Terrible in 4, and Deathly Hallows looks closer to that. I know he’s supposed to have unkempt hair… but in 3, 5, and 6 he just has a bloody nice haircut and it looks good. And that’s going to trump looking like a twat any day of the week. In a movie, Harry Potter is a movie star, and needs to look like a movie star. Not a hatcheted tree from The Lorax.

Wow, rant. Anyway, there’s a condescending feature hosted by two of the minor characters which is worth the behind the scenes, but not fantastic. There’s some junk about the stupid theme park, which I just seriously doubt is going to live up to expectations. It literally can’t. There are probably lots of great ideas available, but… fuck it, it’s in Florida. And Florida is a shithole that ruins everything (case in point – I’m from Florida).

The additional scenes aren’t really memorable. But then, I’m old and don’t remember anything.

Not last but certainly least is the documentary about a year in the life of Jo Rowling. Well, so they say. They don’t tell you anything much about that year, like dates for instance. Mostly, they paint a portrait of Jo as the most miserable woman who ever lived, who had to suffer through terrible hardships like family deaths and divorces. Well boo-fucking-hoo. Welcome to the life of everyone in the world. Now, I know Jo is a Morrissey fan, but at least a Smiths soundtrack would have made this watchable. The weepy violin music, not so much. This was a documentary with an agenda. And I hate those kinds of documentaries. They’re bullshit. The A&E Biography of Jo was the Lord of the Rings to this feature’s bad YouTube Gollum impression (by a three-legged cat, who has since died). I really thought this feature would be great. Instead it’s just depressing, and irritating. I am convinced Jo is NOTHING like this in her real life. She literally couldn’t be. I mean, the documentary I saw about Courtney Love made her look more stable. Watch this if you want to see someone forced to talk about their shitty past instead of being enthusiastic about being a rich genius. It’s very “Lifetime Achievement Award.” It’s very, “Hey, your whole life is over and you have no more hope or promise. How does that make you feel? Before you answer, let me poke you with a flaming stick in the eye.”

Movie: Half-blurred print. Oh fuck it. I was just disappointed.
Extras: Still nothing particularly astounding, and still talking down to kids who can’t afford this DVD edition in the first place.