8/10
Friday, August 11, 2017
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
"I'm a warrior, an assassin. I don't dance.", 11 August 2017
I'm coming late to The Guardians of the Galaxy party, but boy am I glad I finally made it. What an absolutely blast of a movie. I had so much fun with this one. Everything works. The special effects are amazing. There was a time when CGI characters looked dark and not terribly convincing. How far has technology come? The action is non- stop with explosions, fight scenes, and other general craziness. It's a well-paced thrill ride that rarely slows for a breath. That's not to say there's not a story here, because there is. Guardians of the Galaxy does as much to advance the larger MCU plot line as any film Marvel has put out. As with the other Marvel movies, Guardians of the Galaxy features a lot of funny bits. The comedy never felt forced (thankfully). Instead, it has that organic feel to it that all good comedy has. The acting is another high spot. Chris Pratt is tremendous in the lead. I can't say enough about how good he is. Underneath all that green make-up, Zoe Saldana gives a fantastic, multi-layered performance (Did I really just wrote that?). But my favorite has to be Dave Bautista as Drax. When I first read he was being cast in a large role, I was worried. His acting really surprised me. He plays Drax like an actor with years of experience. His deadpan delivery was perfect. Very nice job all the way around. I'm going to give this one a very, very strong 8/10 – and I predict I'll raise that after I watch it again.
8/10
8/10
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Dimension 5 (1966)
A strange, little, genre confused film, 10 August 2017
Dimension 5 is a strange little movie that combines several different genres. At best, I'd call it harmless enough as it does provide some small degree of entertainment. At worst, I'd call it a mess of movie that attempts to mix sci-fi and romance elements into what is basically a spy movie. The results are underwhelming. The sci-fi is missing from 3/4 of the movie, the romance isn't very believable, and the spy parts are too easily solved or handled.
Dimension 5's plot is a difficult one to summarize. A group called Dragon plans to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles if the US doesn't draw down its forces in South East Asia. Agent Justin Power (Jeffrey Hunter) is put on the case. He has at his disposal a time travel belt. He uses knowledge from the future to effect events in the present. He is assigned a partner, Ki Ti Tsu (France Nuyen), from Hong Kong. She is familiar with Dragon. Together, they'll have to discover the mastermind behind Dragon, how Dragon intends on bringing the device into the US, and put a stop to the plan.
Here's a laundry list of issues and observations I took from Dimension 5:
- I recently wrote about the lack of on-screen chemistry in Thor: The Dark World. If it's possible, Hunter and Nuyen have even less spark. On a scale of 1 – 10, I'd rate their on-screen chemistry at about a zero.
- The build-up to the big reveal that Power's new partner is a woman was painful to watch. I'm not sure how many times Power's boss said something like "your associate" or "your partner" without once using a pronoun. Maybe a female agent was surprising in 1966, but I found the whole exercise tedious.
- The time shift belt is featured in the first 10 minutes of the film and is all but forgotten until the final 10 minutes. There are plenty of other instances where the belt would have helped our heroes. And, at one point, we are treated to some rather lengthy scientific mumbo- jumbo about the dangers of getting stuck in a time shift. But I'm not sure why all this time is wasted on foreshadowing that goes nowhere. That movie, where the characters are caught in a different time arc, might have been more interesting.
- Why is Harold Sakata in this movie? You hire a big bruiser like Sakata and then put him in a wheelchair. What were they thinking? Also, what was the deal with Sakata's dubbing? The dubbing was horribly obvious. The sound quality was completely different from anything else in the film. However, I will give Dimension 5 some credit for hiring actual Asians like Sakata, Nuyen, and a host of others to play Asian parts. A lot of studios and producers would have hired non-Asians and (as I call it) "yellow-faced" the parts. I appreciate the effort.
4/10
Dimension 5's plot is a difficult one to summarize. A group called Dragon plans to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles if the US doesn't draw down its forces in South East Asia. Agent Justin Power (Jeffrey Hunter) is put on the case. He has at his disposal a time travel belt. He uses knowledge from the future to effect events in the present. He is assigned a partner, Ki Ti Tsu (France Nuyen), from Hong Kong. She is familiar with Dragon. Together, they'll have to discover the mastermind behind Dragon, how Dragon intends on bringing the device into the US, and put a stop to the plan.
Here's a laundry list of issues and observations I took from Dimension 5:
- I recently wrote about the lack of on-screen chemistry in Thor: The Dark World. If it's possible, Hunter and Nuyen have even less spark. On a scale of 1 – 10, I'd rate their on-screen chemistry at about a zero.
- The build-up to the big reveal that Power's new partner is a woman was painful to watch. I'm not sure how many times Power's boss said something like "your associate" or "your partner" without once using a pronoun. Maybe a female agent was surprising in 1966, but I found the whole exercise tedious.
- The time shift belt is featured in the first 10 minutes of the film and is all but forgotten until the final 10 minutes. There are plenty of other instances where the belt would have helped our heroes. And, at one point, we are treated to some rather lengthy scientific mumbo- jumbo about the dangers of getting stuck in a time shift. But I'm not sure why all this time is wasted on foreshadowing that goes nowhere. That movie, where the characters are caught in a different time arc, might have been more interesting.
- Why is Harold Sakata in this movie? You hire a big bruiser like Sakata and then put him in a wheelchair. What were they thinking? Also, what was the deal with Sakata's dubbing? The dubbing was horribly obvious. The sound quality was completely different from anything else in the film. However, I will give Dimension 5 some credit for hiring actual Asians like Sakata, Nuyen, and a host of others to play Asian parts. A lot of studios and producers would have hired non-Asians and (as I call it) "yellow-faced" the parts. I appreciate the effort.
4/10
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
"Well done, you just decapitated your grandfather!", 10 August 2017
A powerful, ancient force known as the Aether is uncovered on Earth and finds its way into an unsuspecting host, Dr. Jane Foster. Thor takes Jane to Asgard for answers and help. Unbeknownst to anyone in Asgard (or in the rest of the Universe for that matter), the reemergence of the Aether has woken Malekith, a Dark Elf intent on gaining the Aether's power. He'll destroy all of Asgard if need be to get what he wants. As expected, it's up to Thor to save Jane, Asgard, and all of creation.
Overall, Thor: The Dark World (or Thor 2 as I'll call it for the rest of this) is an entertaining film. It has a few problems that keep me from calling it one of Marvel's best, but it's not a bad movie. Despite most of what I'm about to write sounding negative, I'm rating Thor 2 a 7/10. I honestly like the movie.
There are at least three things in Thor 2 that could have been better. First, the relationship between Jane and Thor has about as much life as a dead fish. There's no spark or chemistry that I could feel. It reminded me of another ill-fated on-screen romance featuring Natalie Portman – Padme and Anakin. The on-screen chemistry isn't helped by Portman's acting. It seemed obvious to me that Portman would have rather have been just about anywhere other than making another Thor movie. She looked disinterested in the whole thing. Second, the plot is thin and never really drew me in the way I'd hoped. Maybe others felt different, but it just didn't work on me. Maybe it was the villain that I didn't find engaging or Portman's off-putting performance or events I the movie that required huge amounts of exposition – whatever, the plot was a weak point for me. Third, Thor 2 could have been better with more Loki. For me, the highlight of both Thor movies has been Tom Hiddleston as Loki. He's so good. I'm not sure what kind of plot the MCU folks could come up with, but I would love to see a stand-alone Loki movie. How awesome would that be!
7/10
Overall, Thor: The Dark World (or Thor 2 as I'll call it for the rest of this) is an entertaining film. It has a few problems that keep me from calling it one of Marvel's best, but it's not a bad movie. Despite most of what I'm about to write sounding negative, I'm rating Thor 2 a 7/10. I honestly like the movie.
There are at least three things in Thor 2 that could have been better. First, the relationship between Jane and Thor has about as much life as a dead fish. There's no spark or chemistry that I could feel. It reminded me of another ill-fated on-screen romance featuring Natalie Portman – Padme and Anakin. The on-screen chemistry isn't helped by Portman's acting. It seemed obvious to me that Portman would have rather have been just about anywhere other than making another Thor movie. She looked disinterested in the whole thing. Second, the plot is thin and never really drew me in the way I'd hoped. Maybe others felt different, but it just didn't work on me. Maybe it was the villain that I didn't find engaging or Portman's off-putting performance or events I the movie that required huge amounts of exposition – whatever, the plot was a weak point for me. Third, Thor 2 could have been better with more Loki. For me, the highlight of both Thor movies has been Tom Hiddleston as Loki. He's so good. I'm not sure what kind of plot the MCU folks could come up with, but I would love to see a stand-alone Loki movie. How awesome would that be!
7/10
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
The Last Slumber Party (1988)
Monumentally and epically horrible, 8 August 2017
I'm going to skip trying to write my own pithy little plot summary for the drivel known as The Last Slumber Party. It's so bad, a plot summary isn't worth my time. Instead, here's what's written on IMDb: "Linda, Tracy, and Chris are a trio of teenage girls who decide to celebrate the last day of high school by having a slumber party at Linda's house. A few guys also show up to further enhance the merry festivities. However, things take a turn for the worse when a homicidal maniac who has just escaped from a mental hospital crashes the bash."
I watch a whole lot of bad movies, so trust me when I say The Last Slumber Party is monumentally and epically horrible. Racking my brain, I can think of only a tiny handful of movies that I consider this bad. It reeks worse than a can of tuna left open in a dorm room over Christmas break (I actually did that many moons ago). It's another of those movies that's Gawd awful in every aspect. It's so bad I couldn't even find things to laugh at. Acting, casting, cinematography, special effects, music, every technical aspect you can think of, direction, editing, plotting – you name it, it's all pitiful. And though I could blame the lack of a real budget, instead, I think it's the poor writing that really does this movie in. It's just so stupid. None of it, especially character motivation, makes the first bit of sense. I've most likely already spent more time writing this little "review" than was spent writing the script for The Last Slumber Party. I normally avoid using this word when describing a movie, but it applies here – The Last Slumber Party SUCKS!
1/10
I watch a whole lot of bad movies, so trust me when I say The Last Slumber Party is monumentally and epically horrible. Racking my brain, I can think of only a tiny handful of movies that I consider this bad. It reeks worse than a can of tuna left open in a dorm room over Christmas break (I actually did that many moons ago). It's another of those movies that's Gawd awful in every aspect. It's so bad I couldn't even find things to laugh at. Acting, casting, cinematography, special effects, music, every technical aspect you can think of, direction, editing, plotting – you name it, it's all pitiful. And though I could blame the lack of a real budget, instead, I think it's the poor writing that really does this movie in. It's just so stupid. None of it, especially character motivation, makes the first bit of sense. I've most likely already spent more time writing this little "review" than was spent writing the script for The Last Slumber Party. I normally avoid using this word when describing a movie, but it applies here – The Last Slumber Party SUCKS!
1/10
The Galaxy Invader (1985)
"I've told you - there's no such thing as a green man!", 8 August 2017
The Galaxy Invader tells the story of a couple of clueless rednecks who come upon an alien with a powerful weapon. The pair believe that if they can capture the alien, they'll hit the jackpot. The alien, however, isn't going to be easy to take. The industrious rednecks recruit some friends from a local bar to help them out. Soon, the woods are full of drunken yokels with guns and an alien with an even more deadly gun. It's not a good combination.
The Galaxy Invader is another of those films that I find difficult to write about. Director Don Doher has either crafted one of the most inept pieces of garbage I've ever watched or he's intentionally created a master-class in "so bad it's good" filmmaking. While I suspect the former, there are so many aspects of the film that scrape the proverbial bottom-of-the-barrel that any breathing adult involved in making the film should have been able to see how horrid the whole thing was. There are so many examples of what I'm talking about that I could quite literally write pages about the direction, special effects, costuming, plot, and on and on. Instead, I'll focus on the acting and casting to try to make my point. I've written about poor acting in any number of movies. The Galaxy Invader, however, is on another level altogether. The acting here is so bad you really have ask yourself if it was done on purpose. Rarely do you hear the dialogue of an entire film delivered in such a stilted, unnatural fashion. I've seen elementary school plays with more believable acting. The casting only accentuates the poor acting. The family of hillbillys speaks with at least four different accents. Father has an over-the-top country sound. Mother sounds like she's from New England. Daughter sounds like she's straight out of Brooklyn. And the son speaks with very little noticeable accent – I don't believe that dopey isn't a regional dialect. Surely someone involved with the film noticed all this. Was it bad filmmaking or was it intentional and was Doher having a laugh?
In the end, The Galaxy Invader is bad – there's really no other way to look at it. The movie is horrible in every way a movie can be. However, it is not without some limited entertainment value – intentional or not. I'm rating it a 4/10.
4/10
The Galaxy Invader is another of those films that I find difficult to write about. Director Don Doher has either crafted one of the most inept pieces of garbage I've ever watched or he's intentionally created a master-class in "so bad it's good" filmmaking. While I suspect the former, there are so many aspects of the film that scrape the proverbial bottom-of-the-barrel that any breathing adult involved in making the film should have been able to see how horrid the whole thing was. There are so many examples of what I'm talking about that I could quite literally write pages about the direction, special effects, costuming, plot, and on and on. Instead, I'll focus on the acting and casting to try to make my point. I've written about poor acting in any number of movies. The Galaxy Invader, however, is on another level altogether. The acting here is so bad you really have ask yourself if it was done on purpose. Rarely do you hear the dialogue of an entire film delivered in such a stilted, unnatural fashion. I've seen elementary school plays with more believable acting. The casting only accentuates the poor acting. The family of hillbillys speaks with at least four different accents. Father has an over-the-top country sound. Mother sounds like she's from New England. Daughter sounds like she's straight out of Brooklyn. And the son speaks with very little noticeable accent – I don't believe that dopey isn't a regional dialect. Surely someone involved with the film noticed all this. Was it bad filmmaking or was it intentional and was Doher having a laugh?
In the end, The Galaxy Invader is bad – there's really no other way to look at it. The movie is horrible in every way a movie can be. However, it is not without some limited entertainment value – intentional or not. I'm rating it a 4/10.
4/10
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