Pooua Reviews

Event Horizon (1997)

Wretched Dreck!

[1/10 · 9 December 2011]

Never has so much been spent on such a horrid story! This movie is 14 years old as I write this (2011, in case you don't pay attention the date stamp). I fished it out of the $5 movie bin at Walmart this evening, choosing it for viewing because it has some big-name actors in a big-budget sci-fi movie, thus beating out Schwarzenegger's "Commando" and "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star." It came with two DVD disks, the second disk for special features.

I'll begin by pointing out the positive. The movie has aged well. The cinematography is top-notch, all the lighting, sound, props and special effects look great (to me, a completely untrained couch potato). This positive is one factor that helped me get through the movie, despite my growing irritation with it. The other was the hint that maybe I would be able to see attractive female nudity.

Unfortunately, the plot is asinine. Almost all horror movies have asinine plots, so had I known ahead of time this is supposed to be a horror movie, I might have not expected so much from it. Now I've read a few of the other negative reviews of this movie, and I can see I'm not the only person who recognizes the obvious. Virtually nothing that happens in this movie has any business being in this movie. I get angry every time I think about it. So much of the plot is perfunctory climax, bad things happening on cue, and so obvious, because EVERY SINGLE HORROR MOVIE HAS THE SAME STORY ARC! Some people like cheesiness, but this goes so much deeper than even cheesiness could describe.

It has nice props. I liked the props. I need to think about that for a little bit, until I feel better. Nice props, even though it seems silly that the living quarters look like the heart of a tokamak.

Oh, there is some female nudity in it. In the first half of the movie, we get to see a woman's bare nipple for about 0.25 seconds. I spent the next half-hour wondering why the producers even bothered putting a naked woman in the movie if that was all they were going to show. We spend more time looking into her eyeless eye sockets as she speaks to us in a calm voice. Eventually, Sam Neill's character forces the camera to lock onto those same bare breasts for a minute or so. Visually, nothing else is happening. Then, we go back to the eyeless eye sockets.

The movie attempts to introduce tension by the perfunctory personality clashes between crew members, particularly against the new person aboard. The new crew member designed a ship (the "Event Horizon") that has been lost for several years, but now has reappeared. This crew was sent to find out what happened to the "Horizon." To build this tension, in one scene, the designer shows complete disregard for another person's personal property as he attempts to explain how the ship he designed operates; so in another scene, a crew member damages the ship he built. Let's compromise the integrity of the ship we are trying to rescue, so we can even our petty score!

Anyway, nice props. Big name stars. Some glimpses of a woman's bare breasts. The Planet Neptune swirling below. Oh, wait... somehow, the "Event Horizon" is orbiting Neptune *inside* her upper atmospheric cloud bank, in clouds so dense that she can't even be seen until the rescue ship almost runs into her. So, actually, the Planet Neptune, swirling all around.

If you have any regard for scientific accuracy, you may resent this movie intensely much. If you care about logical motivations, the movie may annoy you. If you value intellectual, thoughtful stories, this movie may drive you mad.

Of course, there is eventually blood everywhere. Blood and gore and horrific things. People getting bumped in the head. Eyes being dug out of sockets. Sharp, spiky things. Dead people. Age-inappropriate children in a Rated R movie, causing havoc. That's just me, reacting to this movie.

Il giovane Mussolini (1993– )

A Very, Very Long Movie

[6/10 · 21 September 2006]

At the most obvious level, the average person might ask of this movie, "Why, oh why, would someone make a 5-hour movie about Benito Mussolini?" It does not even cover his entire life! In fact, it only covers about 12 years of his life, and all of it prior to the period for which he is historically significant to Americans. The movie covers Mussolini from age 19 to about age 31, ending about 1914, just before Italy's entry into WW I. The events of Mussolini's life depicted in the movie could be summarized as serial seduction of women, rabble-rousing and trouble-making, nothing in itself historically significant. Political wonks, history buffs and devout Socialists would find the movie interesting, but it is much too long and irrelevant for just about anyone else.

However, within the specialized audience for which this movie would hold appeal, it excels as a professionally-produced made-for-TV movie. For the American historian, it introduces some of the people who were significant in the era, and shows how they related to Mussolini. The movie also shows many bright, gifted, thoughtful people--even within his own party--who were routed by Mussolini's brute appeal to the public's emotions.

Antonio Banderas is believable to Americans in the role of seducer because of his sensuality, but the real Mussolini was plain-looking enough that if he was as promiscuous as portrayed in this movie, it could only be as a result of his society's (and his own) self-motivation for base desires. The real Mussolini looked like a thug and acted like a thug. He was a brutal man. How could such a man attract rational people to himself? The movie shows that he did it by his unwavering arrogance; people follow confident, assertive people, for better or worse.

The movie includes partial female nudity and Antonio Banderas' backside.

Forever Young (1992)

A Children's Story

[4/10 · 14 September 2006]

A Children's Story... That is the best explanation that I can produce for this movie. It does not make sense. The plot is inconsistent. The actions of the protagonists and antagonists do not make sense. The story is mildly charming, but not particularly dramatic. And, children acting childish are major characters. OK, so it is a children's story.

I remember when children's stories had a logical progression of the story line. Maybe that is the fault of my Western linear thinking, brought up short by Mel Gibson's Australian background.

I cannot explain what bothers me with the movie without describing the plot. Capt Dan is in love with a woman. Before he can work up the nerve to ask her to marry him, she gets knocked into a coma. Doctors give her no chance of ever waking up. Capt. Dan can't face the prospect of going through life without her, so he asks his friend--who happens to be running a suspended animation experimental project so secret that not even his own bosses know what he is doing--to put him under for a year (or whenever his love awakes). While he is out, things happen, his capsule gets misplaced, and, before we know it, 53 years have gone by.

Thermos should make such a dewar as the capsule that held Capt. Dan. It kept him cold without external power for half a century. Tragically, no one recorded the date that those mischievous kids opened his capsule. Oddly, he managed to thaw out on his own and live to tell about it.

OK, so he wakes up without aging, 53 years later. He meets up with a nurse. It's a good thing she is a nurse because... actually, for no particular reason. Sure, there is an escape sequence set up in the hospital, but she could just as easily have been a janitor for it. Maybe that would have improved the drama, who knows? Love could have bloomed between Capt Dan and Nurse Cooper; that would have been logical. After all, here is a young man with no one else, and those two have hit it off just fine together. But, then comes the discovery Capt. Dan's true love actually recovered from her coma and is still alive! Now, obviously, Helen has aged 53 years, while Capt. Dan hasn't. A viewer might think that with the title of this movie, that Capt. Dan doesn't age. Wrong! It turns out that Capt. Dan's aging is irreversible... a word the author apparently mistakes for inevitable. After all, no one was attempting to reverse anyone's aging; they were simply delaying it. Never mind; Capt. Dan ages all 53 years within a few days. Mother Nature will not be cheated, even if theater-goers are. On the bright side, at least Helen can act her age, instead of traipsing around with some handsome young man.

End of story.

What, you were expecting more? Like, a point, maybe?

Against a Crooked Sky (1975)

A Sentimental Tale of Family Devotion

[5/10 · 2 May 2005]

I watched this movie on TV so many years ago that I cannot now be certain of all the details, such as how many times I have seen it. I still remember the theme song (that's how I found the movie, again, on IMDb).

There is nothing profound in this movie, but it is a respectable (if slightly cheesy) story about family devotion as a boy transforms into a young man. An Indian (sorry, Native American), sees the boy's sister rising from her bath in a creek, and kidnaps her. That's about as much nudity as this movie contains (we only get obscure views), which is the reason that I mention it specifically. The boy spends most of the rest of the movie trying to rescue his sister, aided only by a crotchety, old drunk, a task that overwhelms both of them. Someone must die, and the brother is determined to rescue his sister, even at the cost of his own life.

Cube Zero (2004)

Anarchy Revealed More Clearly

[18 March 2005]

Yes, there are spoilers in this review.

Every Cube movie has ever-more-clearly revealed contempt for authority, particularly government and military. This third movie in the series builds on that hatred by adding religion--apparently, Christianity.

I believe the pivotal scene in the movie is when a man escapses from the cube, and is asked two questions: What is your name?; Do you believe in God? The man says, "What kind of God would do this? No, I don't believe in God." In response, the monitors of the experiment press the "No" button, signifying the man's answer. Flames shoot up from the floor and incinerate the man, turning him into a charred skeleton.

In another scene, we learn that the men who monitor the cube pray before they eat. "Bless us, our lord, for these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through you our lord. Amen." There are not very many movies that portray a prayer of thanksgiving prior to a meal. One might wonder why the producers took that unusual step in this movie.

Ernie Barbarash, the Director/Writer, explains why he includes religion in this movie: "The root of it, Cube Zero, could be said to be about the question of the nature of authority. To what lengths are people willing to go, as long as they are absolved of their actions.... I finally realized, there are a lot of religious references in this script, and I think that has to do with back to the authority question inside it, which is, I really think that people often use religion as a crutch to give up responsibility for what they do, you know, it's sort of 'God made me do it.'"

I suppose it comes as no surprise that two of the henchmen from upstairs look like a pair of Jehovah's Witness missionary boys (or the ever-hated fundamentalist youth workers).

Cube Zero virtually does away with the puzzle-solving aspect, from the audience's perspective. There is only a brief reference to a coordinate system, but this is quickly eliminated in the movie (portrayed in the movie trailer). There are no mathematical concepts introduced or demonstrated apart from the cursory, vague glance at the coordinates (using letters instead of numbers--ooh!). Escaping the cube in this movie is mostly a matter of sabotaging the system. That's a fair metaphor for the Cube series.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Confused Religious and Ethnic History

[11 May 2004]

In this movie, Protestant Italians face off against Roman Catholic Irish, and are sometimes visited by "Anglo-Dutch" rich Christians. My favorite line in Martin Scorsese's commentary is his statment, "It probably is unfair to say Anglo-Dutch because I think-- whatever that American stock was that came from the 17th Century..." Yes, quite the historian, eh? He crammed a bunch of Chinese into the movie with the defense that we don't know that they weren't there, but he completely ignored a very large population of Germans, who we do know were there. In fact, my Mom's family was part of a group of 30 thousand people who landed in New York in 1710 from Germany. But this movie never rises to the level of accuracy that needs concern itself with such details. As Mr. Scorsese says, this is a mix of fiction (or opera) and fact, the facts being used when useful to the story. It is science fiction in reverse. My impression, which I had many times, even when I first watch the movie, was that it was a live-action comic book. Several scenes really look like pages from a modern comic book (a good example is the scene in which Priest Valleron poses in front of his assembled gang before the battle).

Heartbeeps (1981)

A Charming Allegory

[19 April 2004]

Before "Bicentenial Man"... there was a group of robots...

I watched this movie one time, 20 years ago, but I still remember it fondly. I have always thought of it as an allegory, centered around two robots who "grow up" through their wild, teenage years, have a child and face crises together. They finally discover the meaning of love, in a way that is deeper than just being fond of each other, as they sacrifice for each other.

I was so impressed with this movie that I can still recall much of the dialog. I remember the jokes and plot twists. The movie is light-hearted, funny and insightful and is even poignant at times.