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M Brucia
Reviews
Meet the Feebles (1989)
Not very interesting if you've seen a lot of anime
Made after the entertaining "Bad Taste", and before the excellent "Dead Alive/Braindead" (and years before the horrible Hollywood dreck "Lord of the Rings"), Meet The Feebles is, in a sense, a one joke pony. Take muppets and make them do the unthinkable. This would be a great shock if you were in the "medium = content" frame of mind, where cartoons and puppets are always for children. However, if you've seen a range of anime, you've probably overcome that mental barrier, so seeing puppets have sex and do drugs is probably no more shocking than seeing cartoons have sex and do drugs. If that's the case, the shock value won't carry you, and what's left is the content of the movie itself. Meet the Feebles is actually hampered by its use of puppets, as none of the violence, sex, or other disgustingness can be done very well. Peter Jackson and crew did amazing work with the limited resources that they had, but it isn't quite enough. The only scenes that really get a "Braindead"-like "eww..." are the fly eating feces scene and Harry's super-vomit scene. The story itself is just an excuse for a collage of shock scenes, which is why the movie ultimately fails. If a movie is made to showcase shock scenes which aren't shocking, there isn't much left. Though not a bad movie, per se, it ends up being somewhat bland.
eXistenZ (1999)
An indictment of modern video games
SPOILERS
First, let me state that I liked the atmosphere of the first hour or so of the movie, as well as the whole biotech approach.
However, the movie plot itself was an extremely simple "circles within circles" affair. Even the end, which tried to be "puzzling", wasn't, as other players could easily be seen locked in player loops. So, basically: Some people are playing a game. Within that game, they are playing a game called transCendenZ. Within that, they have to play a game called eXistenZ. That's it. Convoluted, but certainly not deep. As some one pointed out earlier, this hackneyed plot device has been done a million times, and even Total Recall did it better.
HOWEVER,
Where this movie shines is in its condemnation of modern games. Prescripted events. Inability to progress without picking the one allowable choice (fake choices). The inevitability of violence, shooting, cool guns. Shooting characters who you know nothing about because that's part of the script. Bad acting. Unnatural timing.
Watching this reminded me of every Final Fantasy game that has ever come out.
This movie doesn't bring up any perplexing issues about reality and illusion, free will and predestination. What it DOES do is hold up a mirror to modern video games and show how, for all the great effects and high poly-counts, the core of the games is simple and uninspired.
Mimic (1997)
Guess the movie
Strong female character reasons that there must be an egg layer among all the soldier creatures, culminating in a terrifying scene with hundreds of eggs and creatures laying in wait, the protagonist telling the big breeder creature to "stay away" from the silent, lonely, orphaned child that she has come to protect as her own, and drawing the creature towards her to protect the kid, only to destroy the creature by blasting it through the airlock.
Airlock? I meant train, sorry.
Anyway, yeah, Aliens was a great movie. I'm just impressed that the scriptwriter for this movie got paid for plagiarizing such famous material.
Dude, Where's My Car? (2000)
Pretty damn funny
First, for those of you commentators with a plot fetish: yes, the plot is thin. Then again, Monty Python films are even more thin. Plot does not drive comedy, it provides a framework on which to hang jokes and serves as a backup when the jokes aren't funny enough or are too widely spread out.
That said, this was a damn funny movie. Basically, if you liked Bill & Ted and your frame of mind has not changed considerably in the intervening time, you'll like this movie. I'm sure some of will you will argue that Bill & Ted was a far superior movie, but, realistically speaking, that's just because the spectacles of memory are all-forgiving. If you hated Bill & Ted, though, you will definitely despise this movie. It's dumb, surreal, and really funny.
The Ninth Gate (1999)
Poor and cliched
The comments here seem to come from two camps, one of which supports Polanski and the other of which uses movies like the Matrix as a barometer of quality. The truth is, this movie is poor, not because a lack of action scenes or explosions, but because it has nothing new to offer. Action movies are entertaining in their own right, as intellectual and explorative movies are in theirs. However, this movie manages to avoid both. The initial concept of a book authenticator being protagonist was promising, but what follows is the staid "Assemble the pieces of the puzzle that allow one to summon Satan" formula. There is nothing to engage either the mind or the adrenaline glands in this movie. The "floating" effect of the nameless female character destroys any possibility of reading the story as being one of true supernatural elements versus collective delusion. Instead we are left with the most cookie cutter version of the Summoning genre, devoid of both visceral and intellectual value. If Polanski's name were not on this film, it would be universally panned, and it is only his presence that makes it viable for pseudo-intellectuals to willingly embrace.
Pikunikku (1996)
Iwai Shunji's best short film
This work by Iwai Shunji shows the strengths of the short film genre. Valuing atmosphere and cinematics as much as plot, it avoids the trap many primarily visual movies fall into by being just the right length to catch and hold the viewer's attention. Iwai is at his best here, showing his Christopher Doyle influences (and, thankfully, not his earlier TV-directing influences). He has also managed once again to pull exemplary performances from the cast.
The story itself follows three psychologically disturbed people who leave their institution on a misdirected quest. Beyond that it is difficult to avoid saying too much, as, after all, this is a short film and hence has an appropriately short script.
While Iwai Shunji's earlier works lie among the dregs of Japanese cinematography, Picnic (as well as Swallowtail) should elevate him to the status of one of Japan's best modern directors. One can only hope that he can continue making works of this superb quality.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
An extremely poor documentary
It was with great anticipation that I put this tape into my VCR, only to find that it was probably the worst documentary I had ever watched. Wrought with anachronisms, the writers had not bothered to perform the most perfunctory research. This film sheds no new light on life in the medieval period, and it comes as no surprise that the whole project was ended by the authorities, presumably for failing to gain the proper film permits.