>> 9 (6.5/10)

Shane Acker’s CG-animated 9 would have been a must-see when I was in my late teen’s/early 20’s.  The dark visuals (nothing says “I am sooo dark” like the discarded head of a baby doll), Tim Burton’s co-producing credit, and the Playstation-ready action sequences would have guaranteed my butt in a set on opening day.  Frankly, I’ve been surprised by my fully adult self’s disinterest in the film.  I can recognize that this is something that might’ve grabbed my attention during a different time in my life, and I wonder what it is that I’m missing now that causes me to be so indifferent.

9 is a shaky blend–an artistic triumph and a mediocre movie.  Acker’s screenplay (co-written by Pamela Pettler) lets down his amazing post-apocalyptic vision with a script that is too repetitive (when it’s not being nebulous).  The hero, 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood), wakes up in a world without organic life, where eight other burlap homunculi like himself hide away from killer patchwork robots fashioned from knives, old bones, and scraps of cloth.  9 is the only one of his kind with the curiosity to figure out just what their purpose is on this desolated Earth, inspiring some of the others (Jennifer Connelly as 7, John C. Reilly as 5) to follow his charge.  From there, the film follows a basic pattern for the bulk of its running time, wherein 9 discovers a kernal of information about his origin, then the heroes fight an evil machine, then repeat.

The ending just sort of happens, providing a dissastisfying touchy-feely metaphysical conclusion to an interesting science-fiction tale.  I thought the wrap-up was so abrupt and so ponderous that I felt like I’d missed a portion of the film.  9 gets more narratively wobbly as it rolls along, and it’s a shame that a film this unusual can’t cross the finish line without losing its wheels completely.

Granted, there’s never been a movie quite like 9, and I can applaud it for that.  It lacks the fairytale quality of something like Coraline, so it’s not exactly a kids’ flick, but it also doesn’t have the storytelling oomph that adults might be looking for in a thoughtful science-fiction piece.  What it does have going for it are appealing character designs, graceful animation, and enough artsy quirk to make it worth your time.  It’s a solid, unusual feature debut for Shane Acker, and I’m definitely interested to see what else he has to offer.  I just can’t muster up anymore enthusiasm than that.

Have I been desensitized, in the wake of Terminator and The Matrix, to portraits of a bleak future in which mankind is dominated, then exterminated by their own machines?  Probably so.  Acker obviously put a lot of work into 9, but not where it needed it the most–sacrificing the emotional depth he’s trying to acheive for just one more video-gamey action scene.  The younger me probably would’ve forgiven that.  The 33-year old me can’t.

6.5 on a 1 to 10 scale

>> All About Steve (4/10)

The makers of All About Steve want to present  Mary Magdalene Horowitz (played with tics and smiles by Sandra Bullock) as a desirable, attractive, brain-damaged idiot woman-child–the sexiest, smartest weirdo you’ve ever met–and in doing so, create one of the most insufferable characters Sandra Bullock has ever played.  The issue here is that she’s the heart and soul of All About Steve.  If she doesn’t win you over as a character, the movie fails completely.

Mary is an oversexed crossword puzzle writer who attempts to jump the bones of news cameraman Steve before they can leave the driveway on their first blind date together (Steve is played with the same bland second-fiddle charisma Bradley Cooper was known for, pre-Hangover).  This aggressiveness, and Mary’s remarkable inability to shut up, freak Steve out to the point that he fakes a phone call from work to get away from her.  Mary is oblivious to this and cooks up an “All About Steve” Steve-themed crossword puzzle for her Sacramento paper the next day, causing her to get fired from her job, but allowing her the opportunity to follow Steve’s news crew (played by Thomas Haden Church and Ken Jeong) all around the country.

Church, as boorish reporter Hartman Hughes, convinces Mary that Steve is in  love with her, and, in the kind of set-up that only happens on Planet Movie World, Mary needs to constantly ignore Steve’s fear and pleas for her to leave him alone.  Hartman’s never given a good reason to tell Mary to do this (professional ribbing seems to be the movie’s lousy excuse), but she does it with gusto.  To follow Steve, Mary tags along in a vintage 1970’s Gremlin with an apple sculptor played by DJ Qualls and a political activist played by bimbo brickhouse Katy Mixon.  You can imagine all the wacky antics that ensue as Mary travels from state-to-state, tragedy-to-tragedy (they are a news crew after all), stalking Steve and befriending everyone she comes into contact with through the sheer power of her irresistible quirkiness.  Yes, you can imagine wacky antics, but you won’t get any.

What you will get is Mary behaving, at times, genuinely disturbed and frightening.  There’s an unusual lack of jokes in All About Steve, replacing snappy banter and gags with the kind of stillborn casting that assumes that just because you cast funny people means they’re automatically going to be funny (Ken Jeong, in particular, is floundering here with nothing to do).  There’s a schmaltzy crossword-puzzle-as-life-lesson voice-over from Bullock that sounds like a last minute addition to counteract Mary’s unattractive lunacy, but it just makes things worse.  When it chimes in, it only reminds us that we’re watching this movie drown, struggling to find a comedic tone.

All About Steve never even comes close to finding that tone, no matter how many times they use Cake’s “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” as Mary’s entrance cue.  That right there is crime enough for me to tell you to avoid it, but if you’d like some more reasons, I’d point you to director Phil Traill’s general lack of energy and this movie’s cheap-looking, direct-to-video visual style.  All About Steve does a huge disservice to Bullock’s appeal, casting her as a character too pretty to be that unattractive, too old to play so young, and too smart to be this stupid.

4 on a 1 to 10 scale

>> Gamer (3/10)

“Is this bad?” asks Michael C. Hall as Gamer’s Ken Castle, the villain of the new film from Crank auteurs Mark Neveldine and Bryan Taylor.  The answer is a loud and clear “YES!”  Gamer could be viewed as either an ADD-addled exercise in deplorable, violent garbage or an astoundingly  juvenille z-grade popcorn movie, but there can be no denying that it is very, very bad.  Neveldine and Taylor are back, ladies and gentlemen, blasting good taste (and filmmaking  fundamentals) in the face with an assault rifle of a movie.

Gamer is astonishingly bad.  Gerard Butler, wearing one facial expression for ninety minutes, plays Kable, a death row prisoner fighting for his freedom as part of the televised video game Slayers.  His every movement during the game is controlled by an arrogant teen (Logan Lerman as Simon), using nanotechnology Ken Castle originally developed  for a real-life version of Second Life called Society.  Kable knows that he was framed for a crime he didn’t exactly commit, and his plight (and totally awesome high-score) gets the attention of talk show host Gina Parker Smith (Kyra Sedgwick) and an underground group of “Humanz” (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Alison Lohman, and Aaron Yoo) dedicated to stopping Castle’s use of remote-controlled people as popular entertainment.  It’s as if Neveldine and Taylor watched Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race and WWE’s The Condemned and decided that those movies were way too brainy.

Frankly, as bad as it is, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen.  Michael C. Hall seems to be playing the love child of Foghorn Leghorn and Rob Liefeld, and, in the film’s climax, leads a group of Slayers‘ contestants in a Sammy Davis Junior lip-synched dance sequence.  The Society subplot is both hilarious and irritating, filled with extras apparently cosplaying as incidental Fifth Element characters, constantly humping each other under the control of a sweaty, grey-skinned, naked fat guy eating waffles with his bare hands and making Amber Valleta crawl around a shag carpet on all fours (with the camera tastefully pointed directly at the parts of her where the sun don’t shine).

The action in Gamer is so spastically edited, so full of forced techno-glitches,  it makes Tony Scott look downright Kubrickian.  These aren’t action sequences so much as they are poorly-shot scenes of Butler running around objects that are exploding.  No rules to the game are ever established (a pretty big detail when your movie is about a game) and all of the gunfire serves to only break up the quick-edit views of the only things Neveldine and Taylor are actually interested in, namely sports and women’s breasts.

As a matter of fact, they get so distracted by basketball and girls flashing boobs, that they forget to fill in major logic gaps in their story.  Characters are introduced as important, then promptly dismissed when it comes time to explain their actual purpose to the plot (Terry Crews and John Leguizamo, specifically).  In this movie, no one ever has any motivation for any of the actions they take.

In one of the stupider moments in a film with more stupid moments than any other movie this year, Kable asks Simon to disconnect him and let him roam free in the game.  Simon obliges, but Kable doesn’t anticipate it, and downs an entire bottle of vodka before a firefght, nearly getting himself killed.  There’s no explanation as to why Simon would disconnect, or why Kable would get drunk before a game–it just happens.  (This idiotic sequence continues with Kable discovering the first truck he finds runs on ethanol, so he pukes and pisses in the gas tank to get the truck to run.)  When Kable finally makes it to the end of his journey, we never get an answer as to why he was framed in the first place.  He finds out the bad guy did it and he gets his revenge on the bad guy.  All of this is simple, sure, but it’s also completely retarded.

Everyone involved with Gamer should be embarrassed to have this on their resume.  To its credit, it’s never boring, but any fun I had (I laughed way too much) was at the expense of a movie that thinks that it’s being stylish and clever when it’s only being childish and abrasive.  I can imagine a small minority of folks defending the film as “dumb fun”, but, even then, the reality is that  Gamer is a scummy bottom feeder of an action movie, designed specifically to titillate emotionally stunted young males with unhealthy doses of blood splatter and leering sexuality.

3 on a 1 to 10 scale

>> The Final Destination

Does the “The” added before the title, in lieu of a number four, mean that this series is dead now?  Final Destination had the efficient idea of cutting out the middle man from slasher films, just offing its teenybopper cast members through awful, gory accidents, and skipping the whole killer thing, but the films have gotten progressively lazy.

Click here to read my full review at Horror’s Not Dead…

>> The Nature of the Wannabeast

One of my biggest fears, possibly my biggest fear of them all, is being perceived as a wannabe.  This fear has its own set of pluses and minuses specific to the way I function–specifically when it comes to things I have a natural talent in.  A plus is that my fear of being a wannabe means I appear humble.  I don’t ever want to be perceived as “that guy”–the one whose ability to talk about his own ouput exceeds the actual talent on display.  When I draw something, and the drawing is good, I’ll talk about it only because I’m often surprised it came out of my pen, not because I think I’m the greatest artist ever.  The crippling downside is that I am often highly dismissive of things I’m good at, and it keeps personal ambition at arm’s length (which is a terrible place for ambition to be).

(The dark side of all this is even tougher for me to reflect upon, which is that my fear of being a wannabe is rooted in a feeling of superiority over those I deem as less talented than me.  If I perceive that someone is not-so-great at what they claim to be able to do, yet they’ve been able to somehow leverage that into a form of success, I’m envious and that envy hums with low-level contempt.  It doesn’t color the way I interact with that person, but it does make me fearful that others will perceive the things I’m good at with the same contemptuous eye I’ve used to judge, causing me to hold back on things related to my own artistic talents.  It’s weird and difficult to admit, and it’s probably my most repulsive psychological trait.)

I can’t pinpoint when this started, but it has affected me for years.  I constantly seek validation, something I can point to that marks me as a pro, and not just as someone dabbling in something.  When CNN linked my Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review, that was validating.  When I’ve acted in films that have played at Cannes and SXSW, that’s also validating.  The problem is that immediately after those moments are over, I’m back to seeking some kind of nod that I’m not a wannabe.  I struggle to claim that I am a writer and an actor, and not that I want to be a writer and an actor.  I’ve written professionally and I’ve acted professionally, so why is it so hard for me to step up and claim those things for myself as my reality, and not some faraway daydream?

Starting around Fall of last year, I made friends with a handful of working film critics.  These are people who are being paid to write about movies as their full-time job.  I’m not, so I simply stopped writing about movies.  I didn’t want them to think of me as an internet fanboy hanger-on who befriended them with an agenda to get my foot in the door somehow.  My foot has been in the door already–I’ve been doing this off-and-on since 1994, when Filmcans was a cable access TV show.  I’ve seen my film reviews printed in newspapers (which is so wonderfully satisfying).  Why am I still worried about people looking at me as a wannabe?

My break-through happened recently, as I’ve seen a couple of my friends with somewhat limited writing experience, get welcomed with open arms as writers by some of my recent film blogger friends, on some fairly well-known blogs.  It pretty much shattered the way I was thinking people would think of me if I kept pushing through with my own film writing.  These new guys are entering the fray with way more confidence than I currently have, and I’m still sitting here, despite some significant personal accomplishments, doing nothing–too afraid of what people will think of me to update my own website.  I’m envious of them, and the envy is devoid of contempt, because the blame falls solely on myself.

I’m not cured.  This wannabe fear is too big a part of my psyche, but I can conquer it in small doses by willfully taking part in things I’m interested in, maybe even talented in, while ignoring the voice that tells me that I’m not so good at it.  Basically, yes, I’ll be updating this site.  I’ll be adding some content over at Horror’s Not Dead soon.  I’ll be doing the occasional piece at CyberMonkeyDeathSquad.  I’m covering Fantastic Fest this year with Hollywood-Elsewhere.  I’m actively seeking validation, so that I can stop calling myself a wannabe for good.

>> Lansdale readies “The Bottoms”

It’s just a quick line, but it means a lot to fans of author Joe R. Lansdale:  “Currently finishing up THE BOTTOMS screenplay, which Bill Paxton plans to direct,” Lansdale writes on his myspace blog.  The Bottoms is Joe R. Lansdale’s most heralded novel, having been awarded the 2000 Edgar Award for Best Novel by the Mystery Writers of America, as well as being a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”.  It was nominated for a Dashiell Hamett award for “Best Novel” and “Best Mystery Novel” by the Macavity Awards.

The book mixes a Depression-era coming-of-age story with nail-biting suspense, as a young East Texas boy comes across the murdered body of a “Negro” prostitute in the woods.  As his hometown largely ignores the murder, the boy and his sister become convinced that the murderer is the Goat Man, an urban legend who may prove to be more real than anyone suspects.

This would be Bill Paxton’s third time in the director’s chair, and a welcome return to the Southern Gothic thriller subject matter of his debut film, Frailty.  Lansdale is perhaps best known by movie fans as the man, along with writer-director Don Coscarelli, behind the horror-comedy Bubba Ho-Tep.  This would mark the second time one of his stories has made it to the big screen, and the first film written solely by him.

>> Missing Nightbreed Footage Found!

Click to view trailer

Horror fans have waited for years to see Clive Barker’s original version of his 1990 film Nightbreed, and now the discovery of long-lost footage from that film might make a Director’s Cut a reality.  Referred to by Barker as “the Star Wars of monster movies” before studio execs got involved in the final cut, the film chronicles Craig Sheffer as Aaron Boone, a troubled young man whose black-outs and detailed dreams about a creature-filled cemetary called Midian allow his psychiatrist (David Cronenberg) to manipulate him into believing that he is a serial killer.

The movie is memorably strange, but severely disjointed, and I’ve always wondered if a re-cut with the intended footage would actually turn it into a better film, or would it just be a longer version of the same odd, clumsy film that already exists?  Now, I might actually find out.

From Clive Barker’s Twitter (tweets edited together for readability):

Unbelievable news.When Mark Miller (apologies.I am shaking with excitement) volunteered to try and find my cut of Nightbreed, I thought there was 25 minutes missing.  I was wrong. Phil and Sarah Stokes called.  They possess a video copy of my Work Print, 44 minutes longer than the theatrical release.  Now all we need is somebody to fund the reconstruction of what was always intended to be Celebration of the Shamanic Outsider.  When Nightbreed was released the only support came from the gay press.  But the movie seems to have found a broader audience.  Nightbreed’s about outsiders.  And if the Inside is grey fat hamburgers and eye candy I’ll stay outside with the monsters.  It’s wonderful that people find something of value in Nightbreed, though it reveals my failings both as an artist and as a man.  The failure as an artist is tied to the inability to fuction as a normal member of the species; to pack every sliver of time with signifigace, like capsules of humanity on craft sent to the stars.

You can read more about some of the lost footage here.

>> In Defense of Nicolas Cage

I have a couple of friends that despise Nicolas Cage. One of these friends will actively avoid anything Cage is in, and I believe I’ve heard him utter the sentiment that Cage is one of the worst actors he’s ever seen. I get weirdly indignant when I hear this, because, for one, I think Nic Cage is totally awesome, and for another, I know that with every Bangkok Dangerous, with every The Wicker Man, Cage’s reputation increases as the crappiest of the A-list actors. 

Click here to read my full article on Cage at CyberMonkeyDeathSquad.com!

>> The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon

(NOTE:  This video was removed by Richard Gale, as the film is still making the festival circuit.  I support Gale’s decision to remove his film from any sites that share his work without his blessing or permission.)

This short from director Richard Gale was a highlight of last year’s Fantastic Fest and it’s finally made its way online.  (Now if we can only get Jason Eisener to upload Treevenge somewhere…)  This short contains a little R-rated language and violence, so be warned.  Hope you enjoy it!

>> Some Thoughts on Knowing

Concerning the new Nicolas Cage thriller Knowing, Roger Ebert said, “Knowing is among the best science-fiction films I’ve seen — frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome.”  He gave the film a four-star review.

But what are the majority of other critics saying?

“Knowing starts off mildly ridiculous, ascends to the full-blown ludicrous, and finally sails boldly off the edge of the absolutely preposterous.”–Ty Burr, The Boston Globe.

“The draggy, lurching two hours of Knowing will make you long for the end of the world, even as you worry that there will not be time for all your questions to be answered.”–A.O. Scott, The New York Times.

“Knowing is a hilarious movie.”–Russ Fischer, CHUD.

One national critic (and one friend of mine) called the film an early contender for worst film of the year.  I’m guessing these two people didn’t sit through Miss March, and I envy them for that.  It’s disconcerting when so many people hate a film that you really like.  It not only calls your personal judgment into question, but your sanity as well.  “Am I crazy for liking Knowing?”

The truth is that when the lights came up in the theatre, and the credits started to roll, I still wasn’t sure what I saw was a good movie.  What I admired most, immediately as the film came to a close, were the guts the film had–the willingness to take a chance and play out an ending that I couldn’t have expected, in any way whatsoever.  As a few days have passed, I’ve decided that I need to see it again (I rarely see a movie twice in the theatre), and I do think it’s a worthwhile movie.  Overall, I was entertained and surprised, and, honestly, Knowing contains some of the most unforgettable special effect images ever committed to film.  Sometimes it does feel like a bad movie with a lot of fantastic moments, but, to me, these things sort of level out and make the movie defineable as good.  I certainly didn’t feel like I had wasted my time.

I can agree that Nic Cage’s performance  is little beyond serviceable.  Cage, esepcially in his recent work, comes in only two settings–eccentric or mopey.  He’s in mopey mode here.  I think part of people’s dissatisfaction with Knowing is a knee-jerk reaction to the casting of Cage.  I almost feel like you could take the exact same film and replace him with Will Smith or John Cusack or somebody that people usually like and you would not see people responding as negatively as they are to this movie.  (And if this is true, then it’s beyond time that Nicolas Cage do some damage control to his own career.)

The film isn’t particularly well-written, despite its big ideas.  Characters speak in expository dialogue in almost every scene, the movie has a tenuous grasp on logic that is only salvaged by the movie’s Calvinist themes of predestination, and then there’s the stuff that feels like cliche, like Cage’s sign language lovey-dovey phrase he shares with his son.  Also, the script doesn’t make enough of a big deal out of Cage’s (lack of) personal faith, which directly affects the emotional impact of the film’s ending.

Despite these criticisms, I thought the movie was almost great.  It was like watching a crappy high school basketball team win a stunning victory over the state champs.  I never expected it to excite me, so when it did, I found myself way more excited than I normally would be.  I can understand every bit of criticism against Knowing, but, for me, it worked.  It has a third act that seems to divide people into love-it or hate-it camps, but I went along with it, once the film moved beyond a doomsday thriller into something more science-fiction and philosophical.

I don’t think I’m crazy.  Some films just work better for some than they do for others.  You may have found Knowing to be a dopey, dour mish-mash of spirituality and sci-fi, but I found it to be ominous, thought-provoking, and, in many ways, unforgettable.  Po-tay-to, po-tot-o.