zanity Reviews

Star Trek: The Omega Glory (1968) Season 2, Episode 23

Maybe the worst episode

[1/10 · 19 June 2016]

This stinker- which was the worst episode to date by a very long chalk when first broadcast- illustrates a common phenomenon in TV script writing when different writers are responsible for each episode.

The writer of this one had clearly been shown the scripts of the episodes that shot immediately before, and blatantly ripped off a lot of their core concepts. Two obvious ones are having the plague crew reduced to powder, matching the alien trick of reducing Kirk's crew to geometric chunks of crystalline material an episode or so earlier. Then, of course, we have the nutty protagonist completely inspired by the rogue federation individual who introduced 'nazi' ideology to an alien planet one or two episodes back.

The tribal backlot nonsense of the main story was just taking the mickey out of earlier episodes only written because of available costumes and backlot sets. And the horrifyingly awful end, when the aliens are revealed to be racist depictions of Americans and Chinese communists, with the same symbols and national documents of the actual USA, is the author expressing his opinion about the size of the cheque he got for writing this dribble.

However, given other shows of the period (and decades later) frequently had maybe 30% of their episodes this badly written, the fact that TOS had so few truly poor episodes speaks very well of the show and those responsible for its creation.

Mutant Chronicles (2008)

Films like this are too rare to pass on

[8/10 · 3 January 2009]

Does the market really care for either R-rated action flicks, or films that at least attempt to satisfy the scifi fan? Sadly the answer, at least in the English speaking world, seems to be a resounding "NO!".

Let me cut to the chase. 'Mutant Chronicles' is far better than we deserve. Why would anybody waste time and money making a little gem like this when the supposed fans like nothing better than to scream about every little irrelevant flaw, the majority of which arise purely from budget restrictions. And when the budget gets very much larger, as with 'Chronicles of Riddick', are the fanboys any more generous- yeah, right.

Look, I loved the sci-fi channels adaption of two of the 'Dune' novels. I loved the third season of 'LEXX'. I have no problem with supposedly cheap CGI used to create worlds that let the film-makers express their glorious imagination. In fact, I'd take this form of SFX over the dreadful sterile efforts of ILM seen in junk like POTC3.

Mutant Chronicles plays like a mix of Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings, and Resident Evil, but not in the bad way that this might suggest. As scifi, it is lightweight but very satisfying (oh, to live in a world, where filmed scifi was so commonplace, that I could be free to be dismissive of a film like this). In truth, the story plays a little too commercial with respect to its clichés and especially the neat conclusion (as if those that funded it truly expected to get proper distribution if they followed these rules).

The world shown is clearly 'steam-punk', despite the far future setting, and this may confuse/dismay those that have never gotten their science fiction/fantasy from a book or graphic novel. The characters are a cross between the armed forces of the various 'houses' of Dune, and WW1 troops. The visual approach can most fairly be compared with that used in Sin City, but with far more varied sets and action.

Acting is solid enough for the budget, but the American lead is a little bland. The cast shown is suitably diverse from an ethnic viewpoint, illustrating the non-American aspect of the production. The action is well shot, and pretty good for what is mostly a 'zombie' type adventure.

Mutant Chronicles has a lot of action content, and bests the likes of Die hard 4, and the Will Smith remake of The Omega Man by a very long way. It is also a fairly hard-R, and how often do they come along? The story is not mean-spirited, the heroes are self-sacrificing, and I recall no sexism, so the film is probably female friendly for those ladies that enjoy visceral horror action.

Please consider giving this film a viewing if you like the subject matter, and consider the effort that goes into a film's design/special effects more important than the money spent.

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Exactly the kind of propaganda Starship Troopers mocked

[7/10 · 14 February 2007]

Let me say from the off that Mr. Eastwood has made a movie that any intelligent person can enjoy. Well directed, pleasing performances, decent if unremarkable music, and stunning special effects. The film is rather lightweight, both in drama and history, but goes down very easily.

Of course, this massively expensive movie was not funded to entertain us. Spielberg is the main Hollywood propagandist for what the US government has termed "The long War" (no doubt in honour of the never-ending 'war' from the novel 1984), and his efforts are focused on the glorification of the US and Israeli military machines, and their present and future campaigns of aggressive warfare.

Flags of our Fathers portrays (on the US side) idiot and cynical leaders, although the president is shown as a great guy, gaining the automatic respect of the otherwise somewhat disillusioned 'flag' men. On the other hand, the 'fighting men' are all saints that don't care if they are ultimately led by donkeys because, by god, they are really fighting for one another. Yes, ironically, it's the favourite soviet message, safe to use now the USSR is long gone. The powers that be in Hollywood never understood why the methods of psychological control perfected at great cost in Red Russia were frowned upon in US propaganda.

However, there is a more interesting point. The theme of Flags is that the best propaganda pops up out of nowhere. Flags is about the serendipity of the famous flag raising photo having such an amazing emotional effect on the citizens of the US just when the US government was seeking one more great war bond push. One photo, without intent, out did the combined propaganda efforts of Hollywood at that time in history.

Flags of our Fathers, like the vast majority of over planned and overly expensive propaganda, fails to come close (with respect to public recognition) to the accidental success of that photo. In this respect, this is no different from the vast majority of people failing to understand the point of Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. To the greater audience, Troopers was a very stupid action flick, and Flags a dull slice of history spiced with expensive FX that failed to portray any conventionally exciting action sequences.

I would like to think Mr Eastwood smart enough to understand that while the motive for giving him an insane budget to make this movie (and its partner) was a wicked one, that in the end it would not matter since the audience that would enjoy his films would do so in a way that the director desired, and not in the way Spielberg and his money men craved.

I would recommend this film to anyone who hated Windtalkers or We Were Soldiers. I do, however, hope that Letters from Iwo Jima is 'meatier'.

Dreamgirls (2006)

The 'whitest' movie ever to have a 'black' cast.

[2/10 · 12 January 2007]

Dreamgirls is a painful, spiteful, hateful parody of 'black' performers and music from the US in the 60's/70's. Do not be fooled into thinking that this film contains any real music from the period- it does not! The successful US musical theatre exists to please a middle-class white audience that takes pride in how strongly it despises the musical outlets that helped the commercial success of the various modern 'black' musical forms. Only when one of these forms has become so established that it can be seen as 'quaint' and 'harmless' will it be blandly repackaged for the amusement of this audience.

Dreamgirls (the movie) is designed to be a commercial clunker, stuffed with household names to have maximum mainstream appeal. Danny Glover is, as one might expect, awful beyond belief. Foxx has a bland, and entirely unremarkable role. Murphy represents one of the worst acts of miscasting I have ever seen, and insults the memory of ever great 'black' male singer from the period, with his watered down 'Saturday Night Live' antics.

The female actors get to play nothing but tedious third rate clichés. Three are simply required to look tall, slim and pretty, while the fourth, Hudson, gets to play the 'fat' lady who screeches loudly at various times during the movie, enabling the whitebread-targetted audience to imagine they are back at the opera. While all four are supposed to be playing 'sexy' singers, Condon couldn't get female sexuality on film save his life.

There is no real story of substance. Sickeningly, the theme of 'black' musicians being locked out of the mainstream music biz is raised, when this film, Dreamworks produced, actually locks out any and all genuine 'black' music, while mocking it at the same time.

The film clearly had obscene amounts of money available to create 'no expense spared' production values that substituted for any creative thinking. Indeed, Condon is never happier then when illustrating how much he was able to spend. The end result gives some fleeting shots of technical excellence, and a lot of useless, overly familiar, flashy editing clichés. The film has no heart, and never could have given the source material, so Condon attempts to distract from this with every visual gimmick he can think of.

If you love music, genuine sexy performances, and directing that required the use of real imagination, and not merely a very fat wallet, go rent Idlewild, a musical film that doesn't just have a 'black' cast fronting for an all 'white' production, but actually has 'black' talent behind the camera, including director and authors of the musical numbers. Idlewild made my heart soar. Dreamgirls made me sick to the pit of my stomach.

Of course, disgracefully Dreamgirls will be competing for 'oscars' whereas Idlewild won't even get a mention. All of you that claim to like Dreamgirls should think long and hard on this fact, for it speaks of a very unpleasant truth.

Idiocracy (2006)

An all too rare example of a sci-fi themed movie

[8/10 · 30 December 2006]

Part Sleeper, part Logan's Run and part Futurama, Idiocracy is an example of the rarest big screen (yeah, I know Fox never allowed that in the end) genre.

Usually Hollywood gives us mock sci-fi, like The Island, Deja Vu, and Children of Men, where a very different kind of film steals the clothes of science fiction to disguise its own inner worthlessness. Comic book hero films I consider their own genre.

Idiocracy is also a very unsubtle satire that seeks to attack those that currently rule the USA without ever mentioning them by name. Indeed, Mike Judge bends over backwards to ensure that a simple-minded analysis of his film reveals it to be harmless to any present day entity, but Judge's enemies within Murdoch's empire are anything but stupid, and took offensive at the real message Judge embedded within his writing.

Recognising the paradox of needing the approval of the very audience his film so ruthlessly lampoons, Judge makes the ultimate message of Idiocracy big-hearted and affectionate, an act of commercial cowardice that he probably regrets, in the light of Fox's actions.

Anyway, Idiocracy is a harmless and surprisingly entertaining science fiction romp, albeit one that steals every single one of its ideas and jokes from far more skilled creative talents, especially the people behind The Simpsons and Futurama. It is obvious that a lot of love went into this film, but equally obvious (as the constant dodgy, but 'flavour-giving' narration proves- always an indication of problems in the story-telling) that the director never found a structure that met with common approval during the production process.

Compensating for failures in originality and purpose are many, many wonderful vistas showing the ruination of urban US life 500 years into the future. The special effects may not have a 'Star Wars' budget, but they are used with a grand imagination that easily surpasses the written script, and reminded me of drawings from the golden age of Mad Magazine.

The performers of Idiocracy are hardly a reason to watch the movie, but don't spoil it either. The astonishingly bland and untalented Luke Wilson (how does this guy get work- at least his even less talented brother has the looks) is cast in a role that attempts to make a virtue of his 'limitations'. Most of the rest of the cast are merely required to look stupid, and most of them do, albeit rarely in an entertaining way.

Idiocracy is just one of those films that works as a whole, being, as a sum of its parts, significantly better than any of those parts taken individually. This, of course, is the very description of Mike Judge's successes. Dissected and analysed, his body of work rapidly falls to bits, but art is about the effectiveness of the whole, not the parts.

If you like science fiction, if you like Futurama, if you can forgive a writer that has to steal almost everything from his 'betters', and if you are more interested in the creativity of special effects rather than their CGI 'perfection', you may well enjoy this movie.

There is also the strong possibility that you will like Idiocracy if you are one of those people Judge is mocking, without realising that you fall into that category, but then again, one presumes that without this type of appeal, Fox would never have greenlit Idiocracy in the first place.

Oh, and the film as a comedy? Well, again, really in the vein of classic 'Mad Magazine', and that means that many won't really find it funny at all, but those that do will most likely find it extremely funny.

Idlewild (2006)

IDLEWILD - a film for people that love the cinema

[9/10 · 8 December 2006]

There is a very good reason that films in general are getting significantly worse in every quality. Why? Because in our time, when a film is made that is intelligent or creative in some significant way, it is usually ripped to pieces by critics and the general audience, teaching 'Hollywood' a lesson that they take to heart all too well.

Idlewild is a first rate musical, and feast for the eyes. Like 'Running Scared (2006)', the director believes that there is no reason a movie made in the 21st century should not benefit from all the options modern film technology offers (and no, I don't mean the visual rubbish that assaults the eyes in recent Tony Scott efforts). However, the state-of-the-art methods are used strictly in the service of 'old fashioned' film entertainment values, and this seemingly 'insults' the 'too cool for school' types, for whom enjoyment seems to be the last reason to pay to see a movie.

The actors are great, the acting is fine, and the production values are top notch. The story is a little clichéd, and as a result, the writer does seem to have cut-n-pasted from various familiar sources. However, this is a very minor criticism in a film that uses music as much as the spoken word to tell a story.

While the music is (mostly) contemporary, it was written with the aim of slotting into a (fantasy) period drama, and does so beautifully. While many of the performers may seem to have a 'rap' background, if this puts you off seeing Idlewild you are seriously misjudging the creativity and range of their talent.

Some may claim the film is a little 'tame', but a much better description is 'inclusive'. In other words, Idlewild really wants to reach and impress a wide audience, and it is a great pity that this doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Idlewild is a sexy sophisticated 'feelgood' musical- a vanity project for OutKast no doubt, but also a wonderful treat for those that value todays's rarest treasure, a new movie worth making the effort to see.

By the way Idlewild is NOT 'one long music video' (and I'm hard placed to see such comments as 'innocent' given the power of this lie to put people off seeing the movie). So forget any fear of 'opera' (like Evita where everything is sung) or MTV masquerading as a film. This is a HBO production, like Deadwood or the Sopranos, and that means quality first, especially the quality of the dramatic presentation. However, although Idlewild is an 'adult' film (thank heaven- the PG13 sludge is killing me), it lacks the extreme and explicit content of many of HBO's TV productions, so may be safely viewed by more 'sensitive' types.

If you watch a lot of films, and have no greater pleasure than finding an unexpected gem, give Idlewild a go. It really is 'the one that got away'.

The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006)

One of the worst sequels ever made

[1/10 · 24 September 2006]

Many people thought the original film was brilliant, myself included. It did well at the box-office. Why, oh why did the studio decide to throw its IP straight down the drain? The franchise is the life-blood of Hollywood. The wilful trashing of a franchise is the worst possible sin.

Anyway, this new movie is a nightmare. A hack writer and a hack director simply attempt to remake the first movie, without a clue as to what made the movie tick in the first place.

So, in BE2, a young dude will do anything for the love of his girl. And has the power to change his own history, suffering the usual "monkey's paw" curse. We even have a copy of the undesired male-male sex scene.

The young dude even has the same concerned Mom, and the same 'troubled' Dad as in the first one.

Where the plot deviates, it does so by stripping out 90% of the original film's intricate plotting, leaving us with a crudely constructed parody.

BE2 adds NOTHING to the mythology, and is devoid of any good action sequences. Even as straight-to-DVD, it stinks. Please, if you like the original, forget this trash. If you need another dose of the story, watch the original with the alternate ending.

To the producers, let me say "why?". A decent script, a hungry young director, and a budget little different from this film would have given you 50 million dollars plus at the US box-office alone. Do you really have so much money that you are happy to throw it down the drain like this. It is a pity that YOUR investors were not as ruthless as the ones portrayed in your film. This might have given you the incentive to put some effort into your job.

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

One for the 'short bus'

[3/10 · 11 July 2006]

Here we have a so-called thriller that tells us exactly what the conclusion will be in the first few minutes of the movie, and then painfully and tediously crawls to that conclusion as if some how we are supposed to be surprised.

Worse, near the end, the director forces us to sit through the longest and most unnecessary explanation scene any movie of this genre has ever had. In words of one syllable, spoken loudly and slowly, the director provides a denouement longer than the combined length of all such scenes found in the complete collection of Scooby Doo cartoons. However, unlike the kids cartoon, 'Slevin' offers no intrigue or unexpected twists.

Now, in the film 'Click', we know the very ending from early in the film as well, but that forms part of the purpose of the movie, because it is the journey that matters, and the lessons learnt by the 'hero' along the way. It is impossible to offer the same explanation for 'Slevin'.

Instead, 'Slevin' offers sets that are pretty at first, but soon become tedious through absolute repetition. 'Slevin' offers dialogue that seems passable at first as a (very) poor man's attempt at 'clever', but soon becomes extremely tedious through very mechanical over use. Worse, unlike 'revenge' movies of the 70's that would often use very similar plots, the body of the movie contains no gratuitous thriller action. Watching paint dry would give you more of a thrill.

To be honest, the beginning of the film convinced me that I was watching some kind of clever joke, with the transparent nature of the plot serving to set up the real story. I was left speechless by the end.

Willis, Freeman and Kingsley are every bit as bad as one might expect in this kind of production. Hartnett and Liu are pleasing eye candy, but nothing else. The minor characters are VERY minor characters, though a couple, Missick and Williamson, come closest to some 'Tarantino'-style fun. Beyond the sets, the film is 'amateur hour' to the max.

Will you like this movie? If 'Layer Cake' was a winner for you, go for it. If, on the other hand, 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' floated your boat, stay well away. I rate this film 3 only because it was quite easy on the eye.

Tsotsi (2005)

fine film-making marred by "after-school special" script

[7/10 · 7 May 2006]

Tsotsi looks wonderful, and sounds wonderful, but falls short of greatness as a consequence of several flaws. First we have the fact that the title character gives the weakest performance. His acting isn't terrible (and the rest of the cast are very good), but consists of nothing more than looking tough, and then looking troubled. Second, we have a plot that is frankly idiotic. The one thing that any young man in the township can do, regardless of status or wealth, is make babies. Thus, the motivation of Tsotsi is entirely unbelievable. Third, the story is juvenile and simplistic in the extreme, designed to satisfy a standard white liberal art-house palate (hence its Oscar success). Comparisons with the brilliant 'City of God' are, quite frankly, ludicrous.

However, regardless of the above problems, Tsotsi is a good film, and well worth watching. It had the potential to be a South African 'Brighton Rock', if only the producers had been willing to take a more grown-up approach to the material. Here's hoping that next time the director can free himself from third rate scripts, and make the masterpiece that his talent shows he is clearly capable of.

Hostel (2005)

If you approve of real-life torture, you will love 'Hostel'

[20 March 2006]

I have just watched "Hostel", and as a result, my mind is filled with a vast amount of anger and disgust at the content of this film. I am not the world's biggest horror fan, but will certainly watch 'mainstream' movies in this genre. "The Devil's Rejects" wasn't to my taste (athough I loved its prequel), but the film had many praise worth qualities, and proved Rob Zombie to be a director worthy of much bigger and better projects. "Saw" was great, "Saw 2" hohum.

"Hostel" however, doesn't even pretend to be a horror film. It is, instead, nothing more than a plea for the re-acceptance of the use of torture in the real world.

The film is cheaply made, with useless acting, and a cheap nasty use of untouched abandoned industrial locations. However, it is in this that the film is TOTALLY honest, for the film is concerned ONLY with scenes of torture and sadism, devoid of any context or dramatic purpose. The film ONLY comes to life when a torture scene is showing. The rest of the time, "Hostel" is like a very very inferior copy of a plot-free version of "An American Werewolf in Paris".

In the opening scene of "The Evil That Men Do", a low rent Charles Bronson thriller, we witness a bunch of would-be torturers receive a practical classroom lesson in the art of inflicting pain and humiliation on a real-life male and female victim. "Hostel" was made as a pure piece of desensitisation for such an audience.

I'm sure the renamed "School of the Americas", the main facility in the US for training the leaders of death squads that operate in various Latin America nations, has already placed a giant order for DVD copies of "Hostel" to use as a teaching aid.

There is NO black humour in "Hostel". No dark subversive comment. No plot to speak of. No irony and no invention. No decent editing, and no decent cinematography. The East European landscape is cheaply and artlessly shot. The sexual nudity is tedious in the extreme. All these negatives allow the film-makers to purify the central purpose of their film, an act of pure worship at the temple dedicated to the worst of Human crimes, murder by torture.

"Hostel" has but one message, that torture is now to be accepted as a normal part of the Human experience. When the use of torture by the West became commonplace in US facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, and many ex-Soviet-controlled nations (eg., US military bases in Poland and Romania), we had a choice. To howl our outrage, and return Western Civilisation back to the values previously in place for at least the last two hundred years. Or to quietly submit, and embrace the new age of depravity. The makers of "Hostel" believe that we have voted for depravity, and wish to cheer that result as loudly as possible.

As a side observation, why was the film giving Slovakia such a kicking? Is this rivalry between the successful Czech Republic, and the other part of the former nation of Czechoslovakia. Torture and racism, what a lovely combination.

I can't score this movie for obvious reasons. However, if I could score for evil intent, "Hostel", like John Wayne Gacy, would score a perfect 10.

For those of you that would seek to misunderstand my position, I would explain that I am too squeamish to watch the whole of even the 'cut' version of Hellraiser 2, but I would NEVER dream of describing that film as evil. The often stupid and tasteless Italian exploitation horror movies of the 70's and 80's likewise always have some merit, and would never be described by myself as evil. For me, "Hostel" is a first.

Jarhead (2005)

When Mendes makes a recruitment film for the marines

[2/10 · 28 January 2006]

What would happen if someone made 'Starship Troopers' for real? Jarhead is the fascist recruiting tool that Verhoeven parodied so effective in his most commonly misunderstood work.

Like ST, but with no sense of irony whatsoever, Jarhead is a lazy slop of marine clichés acted out by a bunch of pretty boys straight out of Beverly Hills 90210. The film is a crude cut'n'paste from every war film you've seen in the last 30 years, making no effort whatsoever to hide how much it steals in method from productions like 'Biloxi Blues'. Because the story as shot has no veracity of its own, its 'Gulf war' flavour is an artificial list of iconic standouts taken from articles appearing in US magazines and papers at the time, as with the clumsy and tedious scenes involving commercial airliners moving troops.

The script and dialogue are simply awful. The performances, well they suit the recruiting purpose of the movie fine, in so far as they obviously 'speak' to young naive viewers, as so many reviews here prove.

The film has one one merit, and that is the cinematography. However, even this is one note, fine for 15 mins, tedious and annoying across the whole movie.

Taken as a whole, think MTV music video. Pretty people, pretty pictures, superficial, but with a hook crafted to 'catch' a generation.

As the US prepares for an horrific war in Iran, this is the movie designed to condition a new generation of kids for their role as cannon fodder. Simple minded people could not get the point of Starship Troopers, because it seemed to show that 'war is hell'. Simple minded people do not get the point of Jarhead because it shows that 'war is tedium'. Neither seem designed to recruit people into the armed services. However, the way in which any propaganda works is in how the embedded message REALLY connects with the viewer, regardless of what the viewer thinks at the time.

Jarhead was made for the self-same reason as Stealth. However, it is obvious that Jarhead does its propaganda job a thousand times better.

For those of you that really want to know about the nature of marine snipers, may I invite you to use the internet to learn about the events in places like Fallujah. Ambulance drivers shot in the face, women gunned down as they left their besieged homes in search for water, and whole families sniped dead one at a time as they sought to escape from the city. There are 'interesting' stories to be told about US marines, but Sam Mendes is no more likely to film them than Leni Riefenstahl would have shown the true nature of Hitler's regime.