chapter 6

released June 15th, 2001

Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie)’s trade is a “tomb raider,” which is like an asskicking archaelogical adventurist. It’s just like whatsisdick, the guy with the hat from that other movie that also used the word “raider” in the title – but don’t worry, that’s a coincidence. Lara’s introduced in what looks like some sort of an ancient crypt. She’s wearing short shorts, a The Phantom belt, spinning two pistols. Her crotch and her large, pointy boobs are somewhat emphasized, in my opinion. Might just be me.

Wouldn’t you fuckin know it, her search for treasure is interrupted by a large robot. Cue the electronical music and the wire-assisted acrobatics (remember we’re just two years after THE MATRIX). The fight is too forced to be very exciting in my opinion, but it ends on a nice touch: after killing the robot Lara takes a breath, then laughs to herself.

Unfortunately that little human moment becomes lame punchline when you realize this isn’t a real tomb being raided, it’s a training facility she has in her mansion. I guess in this business you gotta be ready for robots to interrupt your archaeological discoveries, and Lara Croft can afford to prepare. Turns out she’s not just Indiana Jones, she’s also Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark. She inherited the mansion and tomb raiding profession from her pops (Jolie’s real life estranged father Jon Voight). She has an Alfred and a Q (the nerd who built the robot). She’s a real brat, though. I guess it’s supposed to mean she has Attitude, but she seems a little on the obnoxious side, always putting her feet up to show off her boots whether she’s in her office or at an auction. It’s so rude. I guess at least she doesn’t have mummy shit on ‘em.

Lara drives a motorcycle, which always makes a movie character look cool. Have you noticed that? Maybe it’s because sunglasses and leather are appropriate motorcycle wear, and those are also signifiers of cool independent of the form of transportation itself. Anyway she zips through traffic and everybody’s honking at her. Again, it means she has Attitude, but also that she’s a terrible driver.

But she’s talented in other areas. At one point we learn she’s ex-special ops, with favors to call in. So I guess she’s earned some of these fighting skills through experience and elite training. It’s not all daddy buying her robots to practice on. She has a vast knowledge of ancient relics, she’s good at solving puzzles and climbing things, and she speaks Russian.

At some point it should be said that she lives in England. So yes, Jolie’s doing an accent, and the supporting characters always gotta say things like “Oh, bugger!” so we Americans will know it’s legit. I didn’t think it was real bad, but I thought I should mention it. You have the right to know.

If this next part is sexist then I apologize and condemn my actions, but I feel I also gotta talk about Lara’s boobs. This is based on a video game and the character was most famous for her… let’s say idealized proportions. I remember seeing articles at the time, it seemed like breast-size was a major issue with the filmatistic adaptation. Fortunately whatever they did to augment Jolie’s equipment does the job. I’d like to think it’s mainly the movie’s presentation that brings my eye right to the chest, and not just my own weakness. They got one of those badass shots where she’s with a group of guys walking slow motion toward the camera, she’s wearing a long coat with a hood on it, there’s two helicopters behind them, still my eyes go immediately to the boobs poking out of the coat. Now that’s a good composition.

Okay so I mentioned the accent, the breasts, now let’s discuss the plot. The Illuminati (old guys with ties sitting at one of those Evil Tables) are trying to pull some shit that involves some ancient relics and a planetary alignment that only happens once every 5,000 years. It just so happens that Lara has one of the relics needed to find the other relics, so she gets mixed up in this. Also one of her colleagues in the tomb raiding industry, played by Daniel Craig, is trying to get the same pieces. They have a flirtatious rivalry, they seem to be ex-partners and lovers or something like that. They kind of hate each other and kind of love each other, I think. She hates that he’s into tomb raiding only for the money, but that’s easy for her to say, she doesn’t need money. To her “doing it for the money” might as well be “doing it in trade for Kleenex” or “will work for hugs.” Making more money is meaningless to her.

This was before Craig was known in the U.S., but it’s a major part. They were smart enough to showcase him. Director Simon West even tries give Jolie and Craig equal ogling. They each have their own sensual shower scenes, and Craig is shown naked from just above the equipment.

She does some climbing around on shit. At the climax there’s a big metal solar system puzzle thing that spins around in different directions and they crawl up it, jumping from level to level, ducking to not get hit and stuff, and you remember oh yeah, this is based on a video game.

It makes you wonder, why do these ancient contraptions always work? You know, you put the medallion in place, you reflect sunlight onto the thing, you stand on the right tile, whatever, it makes some big stone gear turn and a thing rises up and reflects a beam onto a wall and it opens up and whatever the ancient people planned. It seems like at least every once in a while, and more likely almost every god damn time, something would go wrong. There’s too much sand and cobwebs and rat skeletons and shit inside there, something gets stuck and none of it works. Prophecy not fulfilled. Or maybe they just planned it wrong in the first place, put something at the wrong angle or measured it wrong, or didn’t account for wind. Just one of these times I’d like to see everybody fighting over the relic and then they try to do the ritual and nothing happens, or it rumbles a little and then peters out. Oh well.

My favorite scene is when Lara is in her pajamas and turns on some classical music while she does her evening indoor bungee ballet. It’s good to have high ceilings for this type of activity. This would not work in any house or apartment I ever lived in, that’s why I never had enough training to tomb raid. It would probly be my favorite scene even if it was just a depiction of what she does to relax, but then she gets attacked and I like that it’s an excuse to do a big wire-fu scene without having to hide the wires. Next thing you know she’s doing a motorcycle jump in PJs and slippers, firing a machine gun in mid-air. I think if I was Daniel Craig I’d try to get back together with her.

It could use a better bad guy I think, but there’s one part I gotta give them credit for. The guy is camped out in Africa somewhere, he sets up a fancy couch outside to lay on. That’s a guy you’re gonna root against.

Watching the 2001 summer movies all in a row like this I couldn’t help but compare TOMB RAIDER to THE MUMMY RETURNS, since both are clearly inspired by RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. They got their archaeologist heroes sneaking around in ancient tombs, dealing with fancy puzzles and curses and shit. If IMDb is to be believed, LARA CROFT cost about $80 million to make, and MUMMY RETURNS $98 million, so it’s a stretch to call this the b-movie version, but that’s what it feels like. It seems cheaper than MUMMY RETURNS, not as slick and without the period detail, but I liked it alot better. The story at least has a structure to it and the character is kind of cool at times. And has big pointy boobs, not sure if I made that clear or not.

It’s not as much of a show-offy effects movie as MUMMY RETURNS, but that’s a good thing because the effects they do they’re able to pull off. The robot and the living monkey god statues in this look much more real than the mummies or scorpion kings in the other one.

I remember at the time they made a really big deal about The Rock being in MUMMY RETURNS and how he was gonna be a big movie star. They were right about that, but he was in less than 5 minutes at the beginning, with one line and not in English. Meanwhile nobody knew that Lara Croft’s rival/love interest – an actual major role in the movie – was gonna be the next James Bond. And he’s playing American to balance out Jolie playing British.

The script is credited to a bunch of people including Mike Werb & Michael Colleary of FACE/OFF fame. The director is Simon CON AIR West, who I’ve always thought was the worst of the worst, but my opinion on him has softened, especially after this. He’s gone on to last year’s fairly decent post-action remake of THE MECHANIC and has recently been hired for EXPENDABLES 2: HOPEFULLY THE TALKING SCENES WILL BE OKAY.

I cannot claim that this is a good example of a summer movie, but it’s not as bad as its reputation. Actually it’s the one I’ve enjoyed most of this 2001 summer movie marathon so far. It would be embarrassing if this was the best movie of the summer, but I like a couple of these too. I mean, TERMINATOR 2 came out summer of ‘91, that doesn’t mean I can’t also enjoy KICKBOXER 2, that came out the same summer. And also POINT BREAK and STONE COLD. And DOUBLE IMPACT. Oh shit, why didn’t I do 1991?

In conclusion, I just learned that today is the 20th anniversary of the release of SUBURBAN COMMANDO. But LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER is still semi-watchable.

* * *

Legacy: 1 sequel. Jolie continued to play larger-than-life action heroines in SKY CAPTAIN, MR. AND MRS. SMITH, WANTED and SALT. Not sure if the video game series is still relevant, I have not noticed any commercials in recent years.

Datedness: the dance music, the wirework, the fact that it’s based on a video game

Would they make a movie like this now? No, not at all. Maybe a TV pilot.

Summer ‘01-’11 connections: Daniel Craig will be starring in COWBOYS & ALIENS with the guy who played the real Indiana Jones.

Michael Cera (Skander Halim’s I Was a Sixth Grade Alien) plays Scott Pilgrim, a 23 year old unemployed (?) individual who plays bass in a living room band and dates a 17 year old high schooler (not sure what the Canadian laws are about that) named Knives, but then he has a dream about a blue-haired girl with goggles and rollerblades and then he meets her in real life so he becomes obsessed with her and gets her to reluctantly hang out with him and it seems like she doesn’t like him at all and one could hardly blame her but then I guess they’re in love or whatever so he finds out he has to fight (and kill) all of her ex-boyfriends, who have super powers, and also there is some sort of a battle of the bands.

The movie has a funny Clinton-era magic realism where everybody can do sped up cartoon kung fu fighting with Nintendo sound effects and powers and in one part suddenly their lives are scored with the Seinfeld music, but none of this surprises anybody, they’re used to it. The blue-haired girl is American, and when she tries to explain that she was in his dream because she has the ability to travel through his mind as a short cut, she says “I forgot you guys didn’t have that here.” And I like that the movie just lets that go as if Canadians need to accept that there really is such a thing in the U.S. Too bad it’s just kind of a random throwaway thing that doesn’t come back again as far as I could tell.

To give you an example of how much this is like a video game, when Scott defeats (i.e. brutally murders) the ex-boyfriends their heads explode into a bunch of loose change, which he collects. I assume it’s Canadian change, but I couldn’t really see it clearly. I don’t think they ever specify what he spent it on. If I were him I’d problay spend it on Smarties, which are a good candy they have in Canada that’s completely different from the American candy that’s also called Smarties. Theirs is a chocolate M&M type of candy. I mean really, if you think about it that’s proof that Canadians and Americans are totally different. Judged only on that basis – the Smarties basis – Canadians are superior to Americans. Fortunately we have other strengths to even it out (see diagram).

The appeal of the movie is in the style and the high level of absurdity. The director is Edgar Wright, who gave no hint in SHAUN OF THE DEAD or HOT FUZZ that he could make a movie this visual. It’s extremely well put together, obviously storyboarded left and right because there’s so much thought put into the cuts and scene transitions, and the way dialogue continues from location to location. Also there are many visual effects to cartoonify things – floating text boxes, sound wave lines, stars and lightning bolts floating out of musical instruments. Kinda reminds me of those cartoon rock videos by The Gorillas.

Every once in a while some of it goes by too fast for my old top floor to process, but for the most part it’s good visual communicationing, not just frantic hyperactive bullshit like most people would do. Tony Scott won’t be able to make heads or tails of this one, it’s too clear and sensible.

I’m sure there’s specific video game references that are too recent for me to pick up on (I haven’t got past Ms. Pac-Man yet), but there’s all kinds of Nintendo-y sound effects, even a video game version of the Universal logo and theme. And it gets laughs and smiles from casually revealing new ridiculous video game realities, like if he matures ever so slightly he gets more powerful and a magic sword comes out of his chest. Man, it’s a good thing I watched all those Mortal Kombats and Street Fighters and what not so I had some idea what was going on. Shoulda brushed up on my Mario brothers too.

It’s a pretty funny movie. Not hilarious, but there’s some goofy characters and some good lines, and a very positive vibe. My favorite character would have to be Knives, the high school girlfriend who he dumps. She has a naive enthusiasm where she worships this dude and his stupid band because to a high school kid that kind of bullshit seems impressive. She’s hard not to like, like a little puppy who doesn’t shit all over the floor or anything and you don’t have to remember to feed her. Just all the positive aspects of the puppy.

SCOTT PILGRIM is a very unique and well-crafted piece of filmatism. I would say I liked it overall, but I don’t think it has enough under the hood. Maybe on another day all the style and silliness would be enough, and that would be legit. But it is about this kid and his love life, and he sort of announces sitcom-style that he learned a lesson at the end, so it seems like you’re supposed to relate and connect to it emotionally a hell of alot more than I did. It didn’t really seem like she liked him much, and I don’t see why she should. He’s kind of a self-absorbed dick, so I didn’t really feel sorry for him either. I’m sure there are plenty of nerds like him who pined after a blue-haired girl but didn’t get to sleep with her like he did. So cry me a river, kid.

I’m not exactly sure how to describe the fighting, but it’s perfectly executed for what it is. The actors zip through from exaggerated pose to exaggerated pose, and have super-powered punches and jumps and stuff. I’m not even sure how they shot it, it’s all very artificial looking but fits in well and didn’t seem like it was hidden by quick cuts or anything. It creates a good video game feel. But for some reason to me it doesn’t have the action movie thing of watching to see what’ll happen or for the beauty of the movements and momentum, or even getting excited at the prospect of a fight coming up. I definitely never though “oh boy, I’m so glad there are still five more ex-boyfriends to fight!”

I guess I didn’t care about his love life or if he got beat up and it’s not supposed to seem real, so there’s no tension. To me it comes across more like an amusing joke than a traditional choreographed fight. You smile to see that kid moving like that, then it’s time to move on to the next joke. So I gotta admit I was getting a little bored by the last couple fights.

Trying to put my finger on my reaction to this I thought about the C’s A’s movies (dir.: McG) and TORQUE (dir.: J. Kahn). They’re just as purposely silly and style-over-substance, and probly much stupider, but in those I didn’t care that I didn’t care about the characters. I think the difference is that they’re intentionally empty, and I don’t think they’d be as amusing if the characters had more humanity. With SCOTT PILGRIM I think they’re supposed to have human emotions in a cartoon world, that you’re supposed to care about the relationship. I mean that’s all there is, that’s what the whole thing is structured around, to the extent that there’s any structure. I think I’d enjoy the movie way more if I cared about these kids, and that’s the difference.

I got a theory about the internetical coverage. My theory is that Edgar Wright is a real cool guy, and everybody who meets him wants to be his buddy. These guys all meet him at the Comics Con and the set visits and the press junkets and promotional screenings and they want to please him. He’s one of those directors who got issued a watermarked Geek Pass signifying “he’s one of us” approval from the boys and unwavering support for any movie they do. Harry, Drew, Devin, Beaks and all those guys have been hyping this for a year or more based on set visits, interviews, rough footage, even covering celebrity twittering about rough footage. I’m not trying to call them out, those are just the websights I read so I noticed them all doing it with this movie and KICK-ASS. They would’ve liked the movie anyway, but from the outside here it looks like their closeness to the production and inside knowledge of what the filmatists were trying to accomplish whipped them into a frenzy and magnified it from unusual little movie to mind-blowing, pants-wetting masterpiece (or as Drew put it, “a genuine, no-joke, out-of-the-ballpark masterwork, a pure expression of voice in service of a potent metaphor, an amazing ensemble comedy that works on the emotional level of the most joyous and romantic of the great Hollywood musicals… a jaw-dropping visual experience, and a sonic assault of pure pleasure…” and that’s just the first paragraph of his review).

At least two of my internetting colleagues are convinced this will be a beloved classic in 20 years. I don’t know, I guess it could happen. But my guess is they’ll lower their grade to about a B- in 2 or 3.

I noticed that a couple of the reviews talking about the deep themes and powerful love story of SCOTT PILGRIM are by reviewers who also did set visit reports, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. There’s not a quid pro quo there, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that you and I will need to travel through time and to Toronto and watch them film some of the scenes and conduct interviews with the director and cast in order to get the full understanding of the movie required to love it that much. If you aren’t willing to do that kind of legwork of course you’re not gonna ‘get’ this movie. Come on, lazy bones. Get off your ass and do the set visit and interviews.

But that’s just my theory, I might be wrong. I should keep in mind that I never seem to dig on these Edgar Wright pictures as much as the rest of the world, anyway. I’m happy with “Hey, that was pretty funny,” and the rest of the world says ‘THAT IS THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, I ORGASMED FROM BEGINNING TO END, I’M GONNA WATCH IT EVERY DAY UNTIL I DIE!!!!!’ (–Ain’t It Cool News). So maybe it’s got nothing to do with interviewing the director and cast members about their intent in making the movie. For some reason SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ just don’t hit me right on the button like they do for some of you fellas. Maybe it’s just genetics? I don’t know.

Hey, I did notice that the guy who played Superman, the guy who’s gonna play Captain America and one of the three Punishers have small parts in this movie. So that’s kind of like a comic book reference. That was a pretty good observation, right? I wonder if I could get one of them Geek Passes, just in case I need it for something, you know? Probly not, they probly do a background check. Oh well.

Anyway, on this one I could just be projecting my own hangups on those other guys. I’ve emailed a director or two in my time (hello Albert Pyun – good to see you here). But I feel weird about all that because as soon as I realize the director of a movie might actually read my review I think “oh shit, I hope I didn’t say anything mean.” You get self conscious, you want to be cool, you want to be the guy that really gets it. I’m not a comic strip collector but I think Edgar Wright seems cool too. I know when he came through Seattle to screen HOT FUZZ he also brought a print of BULLIT, and I think he’s presented more than one screening of our beloved DEATH WISH 3. He also has read some decent books now and then judging from this twitter Ellie from Titan Books forwarded me a while back.

And as soon as I read that I thought “oh shit, I hope I didn’t review one of his movies in there.” I don’t know, maybe I should watch SHAUN OF THE DEAD again. I mean I did like it, but people always… I mean I just didn’t–

ah shit, there I go, see? You get self conscious, man.

So here’s the only thing I can do. I’m not gonna ever do set visits and all that shit, but I would like to be his internet buddy in order to prove that you can do it without blowing a bunch of smoke up his ass about how he created a “milestone in cinematic language.” To prove that you can just tell him his movies are funny and not the funniest. I want to be the one guy that twitters him to say

“@EdgarWright Hey dude saw your new movie, it was pretty good, pretty funny in parts. overall somewhat recommend to some people. thumbs up”

I bet he could handle it. So Edgar Wright, if you ever read this (and believe me, there’s no shame in having a Google Alert for your name. Albert Pyun has one for example), I have a hyperbole free message for you: you got some talent there, buddy. Hey, way to show effort! Way to show improvement. It was very… unique. So keep practicing, Edgar. Don’t give up, champ. It wasn’t that bad. I enjoyed it! No, really, it was, you know, pretty good! Remember that part in DEATH WISH 3 where he had that girl in the car and then it just rolls backwards down the hill and then blows up? Well, gotta go dude catch ya later

Seriously though bud, you’re getting good with the filmatism. But don’t let those goofballs give you a big head. They just get excited, you know.

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DISCLAIMER 1: alot of the reviews and comments I’ve read seem to have strong opinions about “hipsters” or “hipsterism” in this movie. I’ve seen this come up before, I know it has something to do with the arch nemesis of nerds, some new super power who I guess have replaced their primary enemy of the 1980s, jocks and Ogre. But I still have no clue what this “hipster” is that they fear so much, so I might not understand that aspect of the movie.

DISCLAIMER 2: If there was anywhere in this review where I wrote “Edgar Winter” instead of “Edgar Wright” then I apologize. I genuinely wasn’t trying to be funny, but every time I go to type his name that’s the first thing that comes into my head.

He’s a pretty good actor and I usually like him, but there is a major problem here: he doesn’t look good bald. I really believe that when they had him all signed on and were excited and then started fitting him for his costume and shaved his head and looked at him they must’ve thought oh shit. What have we done? There are plenty of people who can pull off bald: Samuel Jackson, Jason Statham, Telly Savalas, Patrick Stewart, Louis Gossett Jr., Montell Williams, Isaac Hayes, Gordon from Sesame Street, etc. And then there’s everybody else. I’m not saying Olyphant looks like a freak or anything, but he doesn’t look cool, it doesn’t look natural. This is a guy who should not be bald until God or cancer tells him to. And every time he’s sneaking away from an assassination, trying not to be captured or killed by Interpol, the Russian Secret Service and everybody else in the world you keep wondering how it is that nobody can spot this weirdo with the bald head and the tattoo on the back wearing a spotless black suit with a blinding red tie. I know it’s based on a video game and that’s where they get the look from, but come on. Super Mario would have an easier time not getting spotted.

And anyway if this UPC code has to be there then why doesn’t anybody ever scan it? They need to look at his file so they scan his head. Or he is being hired for an assassination and he meets the client at Target and they use one of those price checkers to scan his head and it shows how much it will cost so he doesn’t have to say the figure out loud. I don’t know man, but if you’re gonna put something stupid like that on the main character it should be used for something at least once. For example Charles Bronson carries a harmonica in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and he plays it. He doesn’t just carry it around. I heard that in THE NUMBER 23 Jim Carrey wears a saxophone around his neck all the time and never plays it. So there is a precedent for this. The Schumacher Precedent. Is that really the standard you want to live up to, whoever-made-HITMAN?

Anyway, there is one scene where he does realize that he sticks out like a sore thumb and should wear a disguise, so he steals some kind of uniform (looks like a shriner’s outfit) but then, in the grand tradition of Lando Calrissian in disguise at Jabba the Hutt’s Palace, he takes off the hat to reveal himself to the camera. And to expose his identifying tattoo and head. You know, for a guy trained his entire life to do nothing but this, he should probaly be more competent.

And I don’t know about this character. Other than having some cool moves he’s not cool. He doesn’t fight for anything that’s right, he doesn’t seem aware that his life is a tragedy, he only makes one joke and it’s not funny, he seems to be afraid of sex, he’s weird and socially awkward but not in a funny or scary way. And Olyphant is dedicated to this portrayal but he doesn’t find a way to make you like the dude anyway.

So I’m glad the guy can pay rent but I gotta blame the casting, because maybe if it had been some Charles Bronson type charisma in there it could’ve transcended the crappiness of the movie. But you also gotta blame the filmatists. This is a movie that feels DTV from the very beginning. It does have more cool things that happen than most DTVs, but stylistically and storywise it’s a dead ringer for the Seagal spy intrigue pictures like THE FOREIGNER, SHADOW MAN and a little MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, or some of the recent Wesley Snipes pictures. It’s got the white flashes, the dreary European locations, the awkward rhythm to the editing, the busy BOURNE-ripoff score, and according to IMDb it even uses stock footage (not sure if it was fixed for the uncut DVD I saw but apparently some of the opening montage was recycled from the TV show DARK ANGEL).

The narration that explains Forty Seven’s background is pretty funny. He tells us he works for a group “so secret nobody knows it exists,” but also that it’s “known only as ‘The Organization’.” Which is it, baldy? Is it known or unknown? How bout you say “it would be known only as ‘The Organization,’ except nobody knows it exists, so it’s really not known as anything at all, and even if it was, nobody would know the right name, so even if you talked to somebody who was in The Organization they wouldn’t know what you were talking about, because it’s really not called The Organization, and even they don’t know it exists anyway, because nobody does”? Hmmm, maybe not. I’ll need to streamline that a little.

But early on there is a scene where the movie transcends mere stupid to the type of absurd that I love. Forty Seven gets surrounded by a bunch of other bald UPC heads. This would be a good time to line them all up and do inventory but instead they all point two guns at each other. When Forty Seven asks if they would like to die with dignity they agree and ritualistically pull back their guns, empty the cartridges, drop the guns, and reach to the back of their suits to pull out two full sized swords! Must’ve been uncomfortable running around with those things in there. And then there’s a big sword fight on a subway. Now we’re talking! The scene honestly did turn me around and convince me that I was watching my type of movie, but the rest of the movie did not really live up to that promise.

When it’s only interested in over-the-top action like this that’s where it manages to be better than DTV. There’s a long sequence full of homages to Olyphant’s nemesis John McClane – bare feet, swinging through a window, shooting a bunch of guys from the top of the elevator, etc. There are occasional clever ways to kill people like a guy with a bomb in his neck or some guns hidden in an ice bucket in a hotel hallway. In this cut the violence is pretty graphic, lots of blood that splatters unneccessarily far, heads that explode when shot, a digital arm-hacking, a severed ear. Also you get a few boobs. Remember those? They used to show them in movies. You’ll recognize ‘em.

There’s enough to make the movie watchable but not enough to make it very memorable. There are blown opportunities. In one scene he has to flee the hotel stripped of all his trademark gear, down to his underwear, not even wearing shoes or socks. I thought aha, this is gonna be good, this is like Mel Gibson at the beginning of PAYBACK having to build himself up from nothing, pickpocketing and petty thieving to get himself an ID, a credit card, a meal, a suit, a gun. I love this type of shit.

But nope, Forty Seven just walks into a building, off camera, walks back out fully-clothed again. Never mind.

I’m not sure really what they were going for with this movie. There’s nothing wrong with a generic assassin movie, but it has to be better executed to transcend the lack of originality. And there’s nothing wrong with adding some weird touches like this whole secret backstory, but personally I thought the backstory was pretty stupid and never was explained very well or applied much to the story. It just seemed like they had to mention it because it was in the game and nerds would get mad if they didn’t.

I would say that somebody still trying to rip off John Woo movies was a nice gesture, but the doves I thought I saw in the trailer were not in the movie. So maybe I imagined that. I guess it’s nice that somebody is still trying to make a movie like this at all. At least the camera wasn’t shaking around too much. Nice try, I guess. Keep practicing.

[ratings]

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And in some ways they got a point. The dialogue in this movie is terrible. (Apparently that wasn’t Roger Avary’s job on PULP FICTION). It’s best when it’s just about running around facing creepy obstacles. The more it gets into plot and conversations, the more it loses its momentum. It’s pretty muddled and confusing and has an awkward explanatory narration near the end and like most of the movies by this director, the frenchman Christophe Gans, it’s probaly too long. (By the way, I looked it up and Christophe Gans is NOT Chris Gaines, that famous singer who looked exactly like Garth Brooks but with a soul patch. I know, I thought so too but let’s clear up that misconception right here.)

Also there’s a cop lady in here that has a pretty ridiculous movie star look that is not believable as a real cop. I don’t care if this is based on a video game, that was hard to take.

So you will have a point about that stuff but as far as the rest of the movie, you’ll be wrong. You motherfuckers are too literal. This is not a movie for people who think literally.

The movie starts abruptly and weirdly with two parents chasing after their sleepwalking daughter in the middle of the night. She’s mumbling weird shit and has somehow walked to the other side of a cliff with a roaring waterfall. It reminds me of when the kid sleepwalks out onto the freeway in WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE (by Wes Craven) and even if it didn’t, I would assume it’s going to turn out to be a dream. But it doesn’t. And you stay off balance for the whole movie.

Turns out the girl is adopted, and she keeps mumbling things in her sleep about a ghost town called Silent Hill, but when she wakes up she doesn’t remember saying it. So her mom decides to take her to this place to see if it jogs her memory.

Even before they get to this weird town (which, contrary to normal horror movie convention, doesn’t take long at all) the mom is doing weird illogical things like leading a motorcycle cop on a high speed chase and crashing right through the front gate of the closed off town. By this point it has probaly already lost most of the audience but for me it’s where I got hooked. As soon as they get to the town the sky is snowing ashes and the little girl runs away, and for most of the movie the mom will be chasing her like Alice chasing Bugs Bunny or the Easter bunny or whoever it was.

Alice in Wonderland is a good comparison because this is not a movie about ordinary human logic. Only dream logic applies. The surreal vibe of SILENT HILL reminded me of a movie I like called INFERNO, by that freaky Italian sicko Dario Argento. Stylistically they’re nothing the same, but that’s another movie where nobody does what real people would do but they do what you would do if you were in a dream. So for example a gal drops a key into a little puddle and she reaches in and it turns out to be a really deep puddle, so without much hesitation she dives into the puddle and finds herself swimming around in a room completely submerged in water, where she finds a dead body. (Later there is one of the craziest fucking scenes I’ve ever seen, involving an old man on crutches, a bag of cats, some hungry rats and the sudden appearance of an unhelpful meat vendor.) If you for one second question why the gal would dive in after the key, or why the mom in this movie would pull a note out of the mouth of a mutilated corpse she finds wrapped in barbed wire sitting on a toilet, you should not watch INFERNO and you should not watch SILENT HILL. That’s the test.

The first part of the movie is especially great because there’s not very much talking and there’s a whole lot of atmosphere. With some exceptions, most of the score is very subdued and eerie, and there’s some points where it seems to blend into the creepy ambient sounds so you’re not even sure if you’re hearing music or some weird machine chugging away in the distance. There’s a really brilliant sequence where the mom chases the daughter through the town as it turns into Hell and crazy nightmare shit starts to happen. Let’s just say that she is mobbed by crying, freaky babies burning from the inside. And that’s just for breakfast. There are much weirder things that are gonna happen later.

Even after you hate this movie please at least acknowledge that it is full of amazing visuals and crazy imagination. There are bizarre, fucked up images in this movie like I haven’t seen since HELLRAISER, and at times beyond that. I’m pretty sure this is one of the first movies this year to include a scene where two women hide in a room while a guy with a huge metal pyramid on his head stabs through the wall with a six-foot machete and a swarm of giant roaches with almost human faces swarm in through the holes. If not it is still one of the best scenes of that type.

I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t seem as insane if I was familiar with the source material. They say this is based on a video game, and that makes sense. Alot of the movie is like running through a big maze (like Pac-Man) and there are also ghosts (like Pac-Man). But there are no barrels that they have to jump over so alot of video gamers might have a problem with that. But I disagree I think barrel jumping would not really fit in to the tone of the movie in my opinion.

I admit, this is sort of one of those movies that as it gets to the last third and tries to both get crazier and tie things together so you might possibly understand what the hell’s going on, it starts to lose me. I had that problem with PRINCE OF DARKNESS and LIFEFORCE and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and not quite as much with this one. At the end they start talking more, and there are some lines that are some real groaners but when the movie is good it’s real fuckin good so I am willing to forgive that. At least it’s not dubbed like the Argento movies I was talking about earlier.

Maybe the biggest sin is whenever they cut to the subplot about the husband and a cop trying to find the missing ladies. It’s not terrible but there’s really no reason to cut away from the crazy shit and bore us with the real world. It takes you out of the story and like I said the movie feels a little long, and probaly wouldn’t if you dumped all that useless shit. (I wasn’t surprised when somebody told me it was not originally in the movie but was added at the insistence of some studio fool who thought there should be more men in the movie. What, the pyramid head guy isn’t a good enough representation of our gender?)

Okay, so this movie is flawed and it will most likely be widely hated, and for a Christophe Gans movie it is surprisingly lacking in Mark Dacascos, the poor man’s Brandon Lee. But I for one applaud these weirdos for making a non-jokey, completely bizarre and fucked up nightmare of a movie. You gotta at least admit it’s the best video game based movie so far and will probaly continue to be at least until PAC-MAN: RESURRECTION and BURGER TIME: APOCALYPSE come out.

Dear Christophe and Roger, don’t give up, there’s one or two of us out here on your wavelength. I heard some guy walking out of the theater saying it was “awesome” and I think he may have been talking about the movie and not something else. So that would make at least two people liked this one. Please get a sequel going before some asshole says something. Me and that guy want to see more crazy shit.

thanks boys

your friend,

Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23086

[ratings]

Yeah yeah, I know my movie history, so you don’t have to flood me with emails pointing out that the great visionary McG already connected the first shot of C’S As 1 to whichever studio logo it was. But this is a different thing because the movie has already started, and then we get the logo within the movie. If we are to follow our understanding of standard cinematical language, there may really be giant letters orbiting around Mars within the reality of DOOM. It all takes place indoors, so there’s no way to know if there are giant UNIVERSAL shaped shadows dripping across the landscape.

The number two clever sequence is the one you maybe already heard about, the climax of the movie. It’s a five and a half minute sequence that is a continuous shot from the point of view of the hero (Karl Urban), running through space colony corridors shooting monsters that pop out like it’s a Halloween haunted house. Alot of his opponents are just dumb zombie dudes but there’s also a variety of monsters from rubber costumes to computer animation, and weapons including guns, grenades and a chainsaw. (Apparently the video game the movie is based on is famous for being first person like this, so that’s where the idea comes from. they sure have come a long way since Pac-Man in my opinion, although the stupid thing about the POV concept is that you can never do a MS. DOOM, because how are you gonna know if you’re wearing a bow and lipstick?)

Number three, the end credits, the type that seem like they were designed for the opening but tagged onto the end instead so the movie can get down to business faster. These are computer animated and are also a continuous POV shot going through corridors shooting things. Only instead of shooting monsters, you’re shooting the credits, blowing the letters to bits. This was maybe a little redundant after the other POV shot but I still thought it was the funniest credits since FREDDY VS. JASON was carved into flesh and then exploded. And it raises the same questions the Universal logo did. If the characters had stuck around longer, would they have eventually been attacked by flying letters? Maybe that’s why they travel to Mars using a portal called “The Ark” instead of space ships. All the manned missions to Mars kept colliding with giant flying letters. Those things are big enough to wrap around Mars, you don’t want to bump into those.

Unfortunately all three of these sequences I’ve talked about were probaly directed by somebody other than DOOM’s director Andrzej Bartkowiak, and his chunk of the movie doesn’t seem to be making the same effort to be inventive. Bartkowiak is the cinematographer who previously directed the Joel Silver Players Trilogy of ROMEO MUST DIE, EXIT WOUNDS and CRADLE TO THE GRAVE, which were all done in a similar ridiculous style. Here, since he doesn’t have Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson in the cast (they were the R2D2 and C3PO, or the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or the Salt and Pepa of that other trilogy) he creates an entirely different visual universe. One that is probaly trying to seem legitimate and tasteful. But what it really is is just subpar ALIENS ripoff number three hundred and sixty seven. No wonder James Cameron thinks he’s king of the world when a damn sequel he made has squirted out an entire genre.

I wasn’t surprised that this wasn’t a real solid sci-fi action spectacular, but I guess I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t completely ridiculous. Remember, this director’s last movie had a sequence involving a search for a ring, gladiatorial combat in a cage, a midget, Jet Li, parking garages, and an entire team of uniformed professional motorcross drivers trying to get a 4-wheeler back from DMX. So I thought he might bring that same insanity to the sci-fi genre. Unfortunately, it turns out, he knows how to make a normal movie.

The Rock plays Sarge, the commanding officer of a group of marines sent to the quarantined section of a scientific outpost on Mars to figure out what happened to some dead scientists. I guess alot of weenies (which is what serious video game players call themselves, I’m told) were upset that the marines fight scientists mutated into monsters instead of DEMONS FROM HELL. I’m pretty sure demons from hell would not have saved this movie, but I guess it would’ve been a little more different from ALIENS. They coulda had some more horns and fire and shit. Maybe a goat head.

If you’re one of these people upset because the movie isn’t exactly the same as the video game, keep in mind that this is by far the most faithful adaptation Bartkowiak has ever done. You want a good laugh, read the gritty police corruption novel Exit Wounds by John Westermann and then watch the Steven Seagal movie Bartkowiak made out of it. CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE was originally supposed to be a remake of Fritz Lang’s M. And I am not shitting you, look it up.

Anyway, the marines go in there and all the things you expect to happen happen. Some monsters appear behind them in the dark, some of them get tossed around, some of them get infected and turn into zombies and/or monsters. Some of the supporting characters are really annoying, especially the cynical asshole character, sort of a poor man’s Gary Busey standing in for Bill Paxton. You gotta wonder, if they’re going on an important mission like this shouldn’t they take a team of fully trained, non-asshole marines? There must be some other ones to choose from than just these fuckups. In ALIENS Bill Paxton is an asshole but you like watching him because he’s a funny character. This guy you wish could die before the movie starts. At one point he announces “I have to take a dump” and it seems like in the grand tradition of Elvis and the lawyer in JURASSIC PARK he’s gonna die on the john. But then he doesn’t and they drag the scene on, keeping you in suspense about when we’re finally gonna be spared of this fucker.

You know what, this is a movie that could’ve used LL Cool J.

The Rock is good though, as always. Poor The Rock. He could set the world of cinema on fire but instead he does DOOM. I’m sure he had fun though, he finally got to do a rated-R movie. He fights monsters. A couple times he uses a gun almost as big as his torso. He turns into a bad guy who talks mean and does things that are morally indefensible. And at the end he has a fight scene while slowly transforming into a monster. That seems like it’s supposed to be a surprise twist, but since The Rock talked about it in every interview I saw of him promoting it, I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s like I always say, “If The Rock don’t give a shit, I don’t give a shit.”

Unfortunately, there’s not really much reason to give a shit about this movie. It’s not good enough and worse, it’s not bad enough. Even the makers of the movie realized this because there’s an option on the menu to just watch the “first person shooter” scene, kind of like how the Friday the 13th dvds have a “jump to a kill” option. I woulda included the Universal logo and end credits in there too but maybe we’ll have to wait for the Unrated Second Unit Director’s Cut.

[ratings]

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I know you guys follow Dr. Uwe Boll around all the time so you’re interested in all his movies and their mysterious sequels. I know alot of people like to talk shit, but I will say this for Dr. Boll. The medical profession is a noble one. If he healed somebody some time in the past that is to be commended. If he is one of those pervy doctors that drugs ladies and feels them up or something like that, I’m against that. And if he makes bad movies like everybody says, I’m not gonna defend that either. George Miller M.D. heals people, that didn’t stop him from making MAD fucking MAX. So it’s been established that you can be a doctor and still direct great movies. Anyway that’s not important because this is not by Dr. Boll, but it’s a sequel to his movie HOUSE OF THE DEAD, I guess. I never saw any of his movies or played video games so I am uniquely unqualified for this review.

Maybe it’s better than the first one but who gives a shit. Basically what this is is another shitty movie that you will flip past on the Sci-Fi Channel. For something like that it’s surprisingly watchable if you’re being charitable. But if you remember it two days later you must’ve had a boring two days. Of course I said the same thing about WEDDING CRASHERS and people still love that movie so far so maybe this will be a runaway hit.

The movie starts out like a moronic 1980s fraternity comedy, with a bunch of annoying non-actors running around with squirt guns stealing panties. This is a way to get some tits into the movie before the plot begins. Now in case there’s anybody out there who is too young to know, the 1980s were a dark time for American culture. I don’t care if you’re nostalgic for the days of Webster and Rubik’s cube and Deaf Leopard or whatever stupid shit you remember liking when you were a kid. That’s no excuse. There is no reason to bring back the 1980s. I don’t care if have fond memories of jerking off to fraternity movies when you were a kid. We as a society should move on and progress and learn from our mistakes. There are all kinds of better things for you to jerk off to in 2006. Like that movie PIRATES, I heard that was pretty good.

In a science lab on the same college campus, Sid Haig is a mad scientist who runs over one of the girls we just saw topless and injects her, thinking it’s going to bring her back to life. As you can see they put alot of thought and innovation into the method of zombie-making. An injection! Poor Sid Haig has to deliver some horrible dialogue that he can’t pull off, where he works in the phrase “Alone in the dark” which I think is a secret code word for Uwe Boll fans but I’m not sure what it means.

The girl of course turns into a naked zombie and kills Mr. Haig so that he can do one short zombie scene and be done with the movie. Good for him but it sucks for me since I only watched the movie because his name was on the box. You see, for all the movies Sid Haig has been in, there’s just not enough of him, and I always want more. I liked him as the demented pinhead in SPIDER BABY and what was he, a russian thug in COFFY? But aside from his great performances in THE HOUSE OF ONE THOUSAND CORPSES and THE DEVIL’S REJECTS he mostly has dinky little roles. You know how I know he’s the man? He’s in POINT BLANK. Seriously, check the scene where Lee Marvin first tries to sneak into the hotel. Sid Haig is one of the security guys in the lobby. And his role is only slightly bigger in HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2.

Then they introduce the two straight-to-video stars, some dude and some lady. Check IMDb for details. They don’t have alot of presence and don’t seem as tough or as smart as they are obviously supposed to be. They are agents for a zombie fighting government agency called AMS, maybe it is the American Medical Society, I don’t know. The movie immediately turns into amateur hour ALIENS, they go pick up the platoon of hyper-macho soldiers they’re gonna work with and there’s tension between the two groups. The male AMS complains that the soldiers will get them killed (in fact, only these two will survive and the entire platoon of soldiers will be killed. Spoiler.)

So then the rest of the movie is them going into the campus, shooting a bunch of zombies and trying to get a blood sample of a “first generation” zombie. But sometimes they call them “hypersapiens” instead of zombies, which shows that this is all scientifically plausible I guess. Also making up a dumb new name for zombies is about the only new thing they try to do with them. Everything else is old hat.

I shouldn’t be too hard on the movie because on the DTV scale this is actually not that low. There were a handful of mildly amusing jokes and gimmicks, which you can’t say for alot of shit involving giant octopi and snakes and crap. There’s a pretty good gross-out scene, copied from MIMIC I think, where the male lead pulls intestines out of a zombie’s stomach and rubs them all over himself so that the zombies will think he’s one of them. And the overly-macho-soldier-who-you-can’t-trust starts taking pictures of himself posing in wacky poses with the dead zombies, which is a surprisingly true to life touch in an otherwise phoney movie.

But I gotta say, I’m so sick of this kind of shit. Yes, we know zombies are cool. Yes, we know ALIENS was cool. But just having zombies and going through the motions isn’t enough, just like putting on a cape doesn’t make you Dracula. Dressing up your friends in camouflage and splattering blood on shit is something you should keep private. I don’t mind if you do it in the privacy of your own home, just don’t rub my face in it. This is yet another zombie movie without the substance, human drama or clever zombie gags of a Romero movie or the humor of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (though I think they’re trying for that with little references to 28 DAYS LATER and POLTERGEIST).The gore isn’t as well executed as a Fulci zombie movie. The action isn’t as slick as the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. So what’s the point in going over this shit for the ten thousandth time if you can only do it okay? Ever heard of STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE?

Forget about the zombie issue. I got a commandment for all future DTV filmatists. Don’t make a movie about military tough guys if you don’t know how to make your rookie cast seem like authentic military tough guys. This is a common mistake but this one takes bad macho dialogue to a new level. Let me give you two actual examples from the movie.

1. “Are you an asshole all the time, Bart? Or do you take Sundays off for good behavior?”

WHAT WAS THAT? This is not a charade. If you had left it at “do you take Sundays off?” you would’ve been fine. Not good, but passable. I wouldn’t have noticed. But then you start mixing two separate ideas there. Do you want to go with a “taking Sundays off” thing or do you want to go with “time off for good behavior”? You can’t combine the two, it doesn’t make any god damn sense. Come on man.

In the underrated S. Seagal picture FIRE DOWN BELOW there’s a scene where Seagal’s character is caught trespassing and he explains himself by saying, “Just out for a Sunday stroll. Guess it’s not Sunday.” See, that doesn’t make any sense, but it’s consistent. He sticks with the Sunday stroll idea and then he tweaks it. But he couldn’t say, “Just out for a Sunday stroll, but I guess there’s no church.” He stays on one thought.

Here’s a worse one:

2: “Fuck em. If it turns into a shit hit the fan situation they’ll be hiding behind our pantyhose just like all the rest of those fuckin science types.”

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? You’re trying to talk tough and you throw in this non sequitur where we have to picture you wearing pantyhose? How exactly are they gonna be hiding behind your pantyhose? I don’t even get this one man. I mean how hard would it be to communicate this same idea WITHOUT mentioning that you wear pantyhose?

Maybe horrible dialogue works in a Troma movie or a SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-A-RAMA type deal. But they abandon that goofball tone after the panty raid scene and they try to take it seriously. It even ends with an ominous mayhem-has-spread-across-the-city ending just like Fulci’s ZOMBIE.

Come to think of it, unconvincing tough talk is probaly the very worst thing to put in any movie. How many times do we have to watch some model turned actress try to sell a line about firing in “short, controlled bursts”? It’s just embarrassing for everybody involved, including us poor bastards that end up watching it. If unconvincing tough talk was removed from all DTV movies I think there would be a 400% higher chance of getting all the way through them.

The only guy in the movie that’s at all convincing about being tough is a gentleman by the name of Stick E. Fingaz. If you know me and you know Mr. Fingaz is in the movie you can probaly figure out why I didn’t turn it off as soon as Sid Haig died. Fingaz is the guy who’s gonna play Blade in the upcoming TV series, so I gotta do a little scouting. I can’t imagine anybody replacing Wesley Snipes and getting away with it (no, talkbackers, not even Michael Jai White, who by the way is replacing him in UNDISPUTED 2). But I’m gonna give Fingaz a shot on this TV show just because I never thought you could do a TV show spinoff of OUT OF SIGHT but I ended up really liking Carla Gugino in the KAREN SISCO show. So who knows.

Fingaz seems okay, but there’s one thing about him in this movie that really got me worried. The dude looks short. I don’t care how good a Blade you are, how much you don’t have to ice skate uphill, if all the vampires are towering over you you’re not gonna look tough. I did a little research though and if you can believe IMDb, Snipes is only a quarter inch taller than Fingaz. So I’ll try to have faith and give the guy a chance. But don’t blow it, shrimp.

By the way, I should mention that there is not a single house in this movie. I felt pretty ripped off.

Here’s the verdict. HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2: not total shit, but you have better things to do anyway. I’ll give you a list if you need one.

thanks fellas,
Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22329

[ratings]

The plot isn’t that bad. Milla Jovovich, who is still gorgeous even after leaving Luc Besson and becoming integrated into society, plays some kind of security agent or something in a dress. (Not sure.) She wakes up naked in the shower of a mansion with no memory. Some army goons rush in and bring her along with them into a secret underground chamber to investigate, even though she doesn’t remember how to help them.

Okay so I am not really backing my claim that the plot isn’t that bad. Well it turns out that before she lost her memory (I never understood how) she was undercover, living in the mansion to guard the secret entrance to this underground facility “the hive” where a realistically sinister corporation performs illegal genetic experiments. But somebody let loose a deadly virus, the computer put the place in lockdown, and all the scientists and dogs inside were turned into zombies. Also some monster comes out at the end.

Where the not that bad part comes in is that while the team of toughs (including 2000 Outlaw Award Winner Michelle Rodriguez) try to contain the virus, the computer senses that they will be infected and spread the virus to the city, so it contains them. And then Milla starts to get back bits of her memory which make her slowly piece together who released the virus and why.

I mean I’m not claiming its great but it’s a structure that could’ve been interesting with skilled filmatism. Instead they hired the dude that did “Mortal Kombat” and “Event Horizons” and apparently asked him if there was anyway he could make something alot worse. There is no tension because you don’t care about the characters and things are not staged to give you a sense of geography, of how fucked these people are when the doors close on them.

It just doesn’t feel like a real movie. I like looking at Milla and Michelle Rodriguez is pretty cool, even when she has nothing at all to do. But otherwise none of the actors have any presence. They even got that idiot from The Crow Part 3 in one of the lead roles. The sets are mostly storage closets with pipes. If this was shot in hollywood it’s an amazing facsimile of Canada. If it was shot with a hollywood budget, it sure looks like Steve Norrington’s “Death Machine” on less imagination.

At first I thought the computer was going to be the only interesting character. It manifests itself as a hologram of a little british girl. But the idea of a computer that makes snide comments doesn’t hold up. I guess it kinda worked in Knight Rider, but that was a long time ago.

All the attempted scares are cheats. There is a part where Milla is being chased by mutant dobermans. The lab goes totally silent – until the camera changes angles to reveal the dogs behind her. Suddenly they are panting and growling up a storm. This pattern is repeated several times within that sequence, that something is dead silent until it is revealed and suddenly it can’t contain itself.

There is exactly one shot that is worth watching in this movie and it was already in the trailer. Milla sees one of the mutant dobermans jumping through a window. So she turns around, runs up the wall, spins back around and kung fu kicks the dog in the head, mid-air. I must admit I had to rewind that part. If only the rest of the movie had been that stupid it would’ve been easier to sit through.

When my friend loaned me the screener of this picture, he mentioned the dogkicking shot, and one where you see the side of one of Milla’s boobs. I was surprised to find that those really were the only two memorable things about the movie.

The best thing I can say about this one is that it didn’t seem as long as Final Fantasy.

[ratings]