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philosoraptor422 movie reviews, a rant and some random movie news. Check it out:
Crank 2: High Voltage
Oh dear. Ok, perhaps I should begin by pointing out what was good about the first Crank movie. The main character is as good as dead. We expect him to drop dead at any moment. We know that the whole movie is a ticking clock before he's finished off by a special poison ("the Chinese shit"). Essentially it's like Speed, except instead a bus, we have Jason Statham. If his heart rate goes below a certain level.... endgame.
Fast forward to the sequel, he's Frankenstein's monster. We know he can't die because if he was going to die he'd be dead already. Where's the urgency when you are dealing with a main character who is indestructible? We were excited in the first movie because Jason Statham was as good as dead. In Crank 2 he's become Superman without any other superhumans to challenge him.
But it's worst than that. The first movie's adrenaline rush wasn't just a matter of Jason Statham running around being a maniac and not dying. We felt closer to the character because effects were used to show us the condition of his heart. (For example, when he's in the back of the taxi stomping to "achey-breaky heart" in a desperate attempt to keep his heartrate up.) But in this sequel, little is done to make us identify with Jason Statham's need to re-charge his heart battery.
Now I don't want to sound puritanical, but there were a lot of scenes where I thought the violence and sexual references went overboard. Let me just note that my issue is not only that they were nasty, but that they were irrelevant and boring. There's one scene where a man cuts off his own nipples. As well as being absolutely horrible, this scene is an unecessary break in the action and rather than building up the tension, it serves to suck the energy from the film.
When Jason Statham has just re-charged with a car battery the idea of him trying to charge up using skin-on-skin static electricity method is all too obvious as an attempt to re-hash the public sex scene (the most embarassingly misogynistic scene in the first movie). Also there are points where characters are beyond unrealistic to the point where it ceases to be funny and rather makes you worry about the mentality of the script-writer. An old woman saying "he wanted to make me his sweet little whore", a therapist suggesting that her patient have sex with a prostitute and the choice to give a character 'full body tourettes' seemingly 'for the lulz'.
There are also constant tacky displays of women in bikinis with scenes in the movie going from a whorehouse to a strip club to pornstar wages protest to a gangster's mansion all seemingly for the purpose of showing more nude ladies. I'm a hot-blooded male and everything, but eventually this got very very boring.
There's one scene in the movie which I'm not sure whether I love or hate. Jason Statham (along with the guy he's fighting) become super-big. They then knock over electric pylons as they fight one another. Sure the effects were ludicrously poor and the fight is one of the dullest in the movie, but it made me look up at a point where I was on the verge of giving up on the movie entirely. It was weird and creative. It also seems to be one of the very few echoes of the attempt in the first movie to get us to see things through the main characters eyes. Unfortunately, asides from a few scenes like this, the movie seemed distinctly uninspired.
2/5
FAQ About Time Travel
Well, the comparisons with Shaun Of The Dead were inevitable I guess and there's a lot of people quick to point out that it isn't as good as the acclaimed ZomRomCom with Simon Pegg. That taken for granted, this was a highly entertaining movie which never failed to surprise or amuse. Our main protagonist loses his job in the local science fiction theme park experience. At the pub he meets a girl called Cassie who claims that she is from the future, but he's convinced that he's being set up by someone who knows his obsession with all things science fiction, especially time travel. His two drinking mates deny all knowledge and are highly sceptical of the whole story until one by one they discover a time leak in the pub toilets and then things get a little complicated and a lot crazy. The two more geeky friends explain to the less geeky friend that the three most important things to remember when time travelling is not to kill anyone, not to have sex with anyone, but most awkward for them at the time is not to have any contact with your past or future selves. My advice is not to see any promotional material whatsoever and check this out. Anything else I say about the movie will just ruin the surprises. The only thing keeping this movie from a full score is that none of the characters, as entertaining as they are, is quite up to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's level of energy and charisma.
4/5
"Guilty Pleasures" - Highlander Rant
After the recent discussion on moviebuffs about "guilty pleasures" (i.e. movies which you know are bad or know most other people dislike, but nevertheless enjoy) I remembered enjoying the third Highlander movie. I've been meaning to re-watch it for a while and I decided to check out its Rotten Tomatoes score. Shockingly it turns out to be 5%. I worried for a moment that it might have scored less than the horrendous Highlander 2, but it turns out that is one of the few movies with the honour of a 0% score on RT. I shouldn't be surprised really. Highlander 2 is one of the few movies I enjoyed less than Edward Scissorhands.
Here's a quick summary of the the first three movies of the Highlander series. (Don't worry, there are only really spoilers for Highlander 2 and if you ever decide to watch it you are best off being prepared anyway):
- The basic premise of the Highlander movie (and y'know, the entire plot) is that immortals exist who can only be killed by one another and even then only by beheading. Each time one kills another they gain the power of the one they've killed - and this is known as "the quickening". It is believed that the last remaining immortal will receive a legendary 'prize'. Eventually Connor McLeod kills the last remaining immortal (asides from himself) and the movie has the immortal tagline "there can only be one".
- Highlander 2 explains that the immortals are actually aliens.
- It turns out that Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery's characters are on Earth because they are exiled aliens (presumably along with all their rival alien immortals).
- The film is set in the future where the depletion of the ozone layer becomes so awful that they design a protective dome over the planet which everyone hates. Christopher Lambert's character works on this dome.
- For some reason the aliens decide they need to come to Earth and kill Christopher Lambert's character because he's won the competition of the immortals.
- At the point where they decide to kill him he's grown very old because it seems that a big benefit of winning the competition is not being immortal anymore (wtf?)
- When other aliens appear on the planet he instantly becomes immortal and youthful again and kicks fellow-alien butt.
- Michael Ironside turns up in order to be the only decent thing in the whole movie as the newly arriving badass immortal guy. Unsurprisingly he gets killed in the end.
- Sean Connery's character randomly comes back from the dead because who cares about logic, ok?
- Also in the background there's a conspiracy to keep people relying on the horrible dome thing even though the ozone layer has actually rebuilt itself over the years. Christopher Lambert destroys the dome thingy by standing in the bit where it is beamed out.
- While the first movie featured cool music by Queen such as "Who Wants To Live Forever" and "Headlong", the band had become decidedly less cool when Highlander 2 came out and so instead it contains "It's A Kind Of Magic" (and I think "Radio Ga Ga" as well...).
- Highlander 3 makes the very clever decision to pretend that Highlander 2 never happened. In Highlander 3 we flashback to Christopher Lambert learning from an immortal in China who also happens to be a sorceror. Another immortal turns up and kills the sorceror. However, the sorceror manages to cause an earthquake before he dies. Christopher Lambert manages to get away while the other immortal is buried under the rocks. In the present day Christopher Lambert has won the prize (see end of Highlander the first movie) and it turns out that since immortals are unable to have children of their own, the prize is a special important child (I feel he was ripped off, to be honest). Meanwhile, the other immortal is unearthed by archeologists and feels that it is payback time.
- Highlander 3 also features swordfights on motorcycles.
No surprise then that Roger Ebert had this to say:
"Highlander II: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I've seen in many a long day—a movie almost awesome in its badness. Wherever science fiction fans gather, in decades and generations to come, this film will be remembered in hushed tones as one of the immortal low points of the genre."
Highlights from the FilmDrunk blog
Yes, I am obsessed with this blog. What can I say? The guy's hilarious:
News about Highlander reboot
Cronenberg decides to remake his own remake: “Duh, he’s a fly. Obviously he’s gonna get drunk and arm wrestle and pick up sluts.”
Disney ask for Anne Frank script, then complain that it is 'too dark'.
Ghost Rider 2: "If you’re going to make a terrible Nic Cage movie, just go the whole nine and make a terrible Nic Cage movie, don’t hire the guy who wrote Batman Begins. Do it like you did it the first time, hire the guy who wrote a movie about Michael Keaton turning into a snowman."
News on the He-Man and Barbie movies: “Barbie may be the most popular girl in the world, and has always been a wonderfully aspirational figure, so we must do her proud" - What???
Movie being made of Stephanie Meyer's 'other' book. Oh dear.
Harrison Ford says he'll consider Indiana Jones 5 "if the script is good". We wish he'd been so picky about Indiana Jones 4.
On a more serious note: Hunter S. Thompson (of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fame) wrote an awesome angry letter to the company holding the movie rights for his book "The Rum Diary".
Also, Matthew Mcconaughey is bad at standing:
Crank 2: High Voltage
Oh dear. Ok, perhaps I should begin by pointing out what was good about the first Crank movie. The main character is as good as dead. We expect him to drop dead at any moment. We know that the whole movie is a ticking clock before he's finished off by a special poison ("the Chinese shit"). Essentially it's like Speed, except instead a bus, we have Jason Statham. If his heart rate goes below a certain level.... endgame.
Fast forward to the sequel, he's Frankenstein's monster. We know he can't die because if he was going to die he'd be dead already. Where's the urgency when you are dealing with a main character who is indestructible? We were excited in the first movie because Jason Statham was as good as dead. In Crank 2 he's become Superman without any other superhumans to challenge him.
But it's worst than that. The first movie's adrenaline rush wasn't just a matter of Jason Statham running around being a maniac and not dying. We felt closer to the character because effects were used to show us the condition of his heart. (For example, when he's in the back of the taxi stomping to "achey-breaky heart" in a desperate attempt to keep his heartrate up.) But in this sequel, little is done to make us identify with Jason Statham's need to re-charge his heart battery.
Now I don't want to sound puritanical, but there were a lot of scenes where I thought the violence and sexual references went overboard. Let me just note that my issue is not only that they were nasty, but that they were irrelevant and boring. There's one scene where a man cuts off his own nipples. As well as being absolutely horrible, this scene is an unecessary break in the action and rather than building up the tension, it serves to suck the energy from the film.
When Jason Statham has just re-charged with a car battery the idea of him trying to charge up using skin-on-skin static electricity method is all too obvious as an attempt to re-hash the public sex scene (the most embarassingly misogynistic scene in the first movie). Also there are points where characters are beyond unrealistic to the point where it ceases to be funny and rather makes you worry about the mentality of the script-writer. An old woman saying "he wanted to make me his sweet little whore", a therapist suggesting that her patient have sex with a prostitute and the choice to give a character 'full body tourettes' seemingly 'for the lulz'.
There are also constant tacky displays of women in bikinis with scenes in the movie going from a whorehouse to a strip club to pornstar wages protest to a gangster's mansion all seemingly for the purpose of showing more nude ladies. I'm a hot-blooded male and everything, but eventually this got very very boring.
There's one scene in the movie which I'm not sure whether I love or hate. Jason Statham (along with the guy he's fighting) become super-big. They then knock over electric pylons as they fight one another. Sure the effects were ludicrously poor and the fight is one of the dullest in the movie, but it made me look up at a point where I was on the verge of giving up on the movie entirely. It was weird and creative. It also seems to be one of the very few echoes of the attempt in the first movie to get us to see things through the main characters eyes. Unfortunately, asides from a few scenes like this, the movie seemed distinctly uninspired.
2/5
FAQ About Time Travel
Well, the comparisons with Shaun Of The Dead were inevitable I guess and there's a lot of people quick to point out that it isn't as good as the acclaimed ZomRomCom with Simon Pegg. That taken for granted, this was a highly entertaining movie which never failed to surprise or amuse. Our main protagonist loses his job in the local science fiction theme park experience. At the pub he meets a girl called Cassie who claims that she is from the future, but he's convinced that he's being set up by someone who knows his obsession with all things science fiction, especially time travel. His two drinking mates deny all knowledge and are highly sceptical of the whole story until one by one they discover a time leak in the pub toilets and then things get a little complicated and a lot crazy. The two more geeky friends explain to the less geeky friend that the three most important things to remember when time travelling is not to kill anyone, not to have sex with anyone, but most awkward for them at the time is not to have any contact with your past or future selves. My advice is not to see any promotional material whatsoever and check this out. Anything else I say about the movie will just ruin the surprises. The only thing keeping this movie from a full score is that none of the characters, as entertaining as they are, is quite up to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's level of energy and charisma.
4/5
"Guilty Pleasures" - Highlander Rant
After the recent discussion on moviebuffs about "guilty pleasures" (i.e. movies which you know are bad or know most other people dislike, but nevertheless enjoy) I remembered enjoying the third Highlander movie. I've been meaning to re-watch it for a while and I decided to check out its Rotten Tomatoes score. Shockingly it turns out to be 5%. I worried for a moment that it might have scored less than the horrendous Highlander 2, but it turns out that is one of the few movies with the honour of a 0% score on RT. I shouldn't be surprised really. Highlander 2 is one of the few movies I enjoyed less than Edward Scissorhands.
Here's a quick summary of the the first three movies of the Highlander series. (Don't worry, there are only really spoilers for Highlander 2 and if you ever decide to watch it you are best off being prepared anyway):
- The basic premise of the Highlander movie (and y'know, the entire plot) is that immortals exist who can only be killed by one another and even then only by beheading. Each time one kills another they gain the power of the one they've killed - and this is known as "the quickening". It is believed that the last remaining immortal will receive a legendary 'prize'. Eventually Connor McLeod kills the last remaining immortal (asides from himself) and the movie has the immortal tagline "there can only be one".
- Highlander 2 explains that the immortals are actually aliens.
- It turns out that Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery's characters are on Earth because they are exiled aliens (presumably along with all their rival alien immortals).
- The film is set in the future where the depletion of the ozone layer becomes so awful that they design a protective dome over the planet which everyone hates. Christopher Lambert's character works on this dome.
- For some reason the aliens decide they need to come to Earth and kill Christopher Lambert's character because he's won the competition of the immortals.
- At the point where they decide to kill him he's grown very old because it seems that a big benefit of winning the competition is not being immortal anymore (wtf?)
- When other aliens appear on the planet he instantly becomes immortal and youthful again and kicks fellow-alien butt.
- Michael Ironside turns up in order to be the only decent thing in the whole movie as the newly arriving badass immortal guy. Unsurprisingly he gets killed in the end.
- Sean Connery's character randomly comes back from the dead because who cares about logic, ok?
- Also in the background there's a conspiracy to keep people relying on the horrible dome thing even though the ozone layer has actually rebuilt itself over the years. Christopher Lambert destroys the dome thingy by standing in the bit where it is beamed out.
- While the first movie featured cool music by Queen such as "Who Wants To Live Forever" and "Headlong", the band had become decidedly less cool when Highlander 2 came out and so instead it contains "It's A Kind Of Magic" (and I think "Radio Ga Ga" as well...).
- Highlander 3 makes the very clever decision to pretend that Highlander 2 never happened. In Highlander 3 we flashback to Christopher Lambert learning from an immortal in China who also happens to be a sorceror. Another immortal turns up and kills the sorceror. However, the sorceror manages to cause an earthquake before he dies. Christopher Lambert manages to get away while the other immortal is buried under the rocks. In the present day Christopher Lambert has won the prize (see end of Highlander the first movie) and it turns out that since immortals are unable to have children of their own, the prize is a special important child (I feel he was ripped off, to be honest). Meanwhile, the other immortal is unearthed by archeologists and feels that it is payback time.
- Highlander 3 also features swordfights on motorcycles.
No surprise then that Roger Ebert had this to say:
"Highlander II: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I've seen in many a long day—a movie almost awesome in its badness. Wherever science fiction fans gather, in decades and generations to come, this film will be remembered in hushed tones as one of the immortal low points of the genre."
Highlights from the FilmDrunk blog
Yes, I am obsessed with this blog. What can I say? The guy's hilarious:
News about Highlander reboot
Cronenberg decides to remake his own remake: “Duh, he’s a fly. Obviously he’s gonna get drunk and arm wrestle and pick up sluts.”
Disney ask for Anne Frank script, then complain that it is 'too dark'.
Ghost Rider 2: "If you’re going to make a terrible Nic Cage movie, just go the whole nine and make a terrible Nic Cage movie, don’t hire the guy who wrote Batman Begins. Do it like you did it the first time, hire the guy who wrote a movie about Michael Keaton turning into a snowman."
News on the He-Man and Barbie movies: “Barbie may be the most popular girl in the world, and has always been a wonderfully aspirational figure, so we must do her proud" - What???
Movie being made of Stephanie Meyer's 'other' book. Oh dear.
Harrison Ford says he'll consider Indiana Jones 5 "if the script is good". We wish he'd been so picky about Indiana Jones 4.
On a more serious note: Hunter S. Thompson (of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fame) wrote an awesome angry letter to the company holding the movie rights for his book "The Rum Diary".
Also, Matthew Mcconaughey is bad at standing:
