c_rys Reviews

The Batmobile (2012 TV Movie)

Bizarrely comprehensive

[7/10 · 21 November 2014]

NOTE: This review is of the full, one-hour version of the film available on the disc for The Dark Knight Rises, not the half-hour version shown on television.

If you've ever wanted to know anything about Batman's Batmobile, then this probably isn't the documentary for you. However, if you've ever wanted to know EVERYTHING about Batman's Batmobile, then this is most certainly the place to go. Despite being billed on the disc menu as a short feature, The Batmobile is a full hour long and goes into great depth on every version of the Batmobile, drawing from the comics, various cartoons, the 1940s film serial, 1960s television series, the four films released from 1989-1997, & of course, the three films in The Dark Knight Trilogy. To this end, all sorts of figures make appearances, including film directors Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher & Christopher Nolan; various actors, including Batmen Adam West & Christian Bale along with former Robin Chris O'Donnel; special effects experts; stunt drivers; & comics creators. The finale involves five physical Batmobile vehicles, all from different Batman reimaginings, side-by-side for the first time in history, & it is surprisingly emotional.

I will say that I was caught off-guard several times by the length of this feature, having clicked it on expecting, well, the short feature advertised, & one drawback of how comprehensive it is, is that there are parts that might be made redundant if you've seen other Batmobile-related features, such as The Batmobile Revealed (from the Batman: The Movie disc), Beyond Batman: Building the Batmobile (from the Batman disc), Beyond Batman: Maximum Overdrive - The Vehicles of Batman & Robin (from the Batman & Robin disc), & Batman: The Tumbler (from the Batman Begins disc). Still, that minor drawback doesn't mean that this film deserves any less praise for being the only totally comprehensive look at the complete history of the Batmobile, & only makes those other featurettes obsolete.

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

Disney would have done it better

[7/10 · 22 April 2011]

Exodus here gets the Disneyesque treatment, in a star-studded & doubtless expensive effort from Spielberg's DreamWorks studio. The picture works well enough to show a Sunday school or religious studies class learning about Exodus, but considered entirely on its own merits as a film, it doesn't quite work.

Structurally, what works for a religious chronicle isn't the same as what works for a film, leaving some sequences stretched out until they become dull, & some (the Ten Plagues most obviously) feeling bizarrely rushed. The writers also seem to assume the viewers know the story already; not knowing it (as my little sister didn't), it is a tad difficult to follow.

The songs are dull & unmemorable; the film's musical sequences are its dullest moments, conversely to Disney films, in which they are typically the highlights.

It still receives an OK-to-good score of 6/10, though, primarily because the animation is stunning, particularly during the parting of the Red Sea: a whale swims right past the "wall" of the sea. I never really thought about what happened to the sea-life in the story, & it's one of many excellent little details of the film. Also, the characters are well-developed, both visually & in terms of their characterisation. Pharoah, in particular, is much more fleshed-out, conflicted, & believable than his almost characterless Biblical counterpart.

Finally, a criticism of the source material: my 6-year-old sister was baffled & disturbed when I explained, towards the film's climax, that God was killing the first-born of everyone in Egypt. It may be that this story, featuring as it does slavery, mass infanticide, a river of blood, the drowning of a huge army, & even an implied rape early on, is simply too dark to adequately adapt to a children's animated musical, as was the case with Don Bluth's Disneyesque Anastasia (revolution, regicide, the apparently-unmentionable communism) or Disney's own The Hunchback of Notre Dame (rape as villain motivation).

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

Preposterously boring

[2/10 · 28 July 2010]

Imagine the dullest monster movie you've ever seen. Even whatever derivative, lowbudget, imagination-deficient trash you're currently thinking of featured a monster, right? The Mothman Prophecies takes the approach of Roland Emmerich's horrible Godzilla remake: surely audiences are more interested in the boringass life of some journalist than the monster of the title, right? However, where Godzilla at least managed to remember to include some scenes of its titular monster fussing up shizz, this movie does not feature the Mothman, at all, ever. Just take a moment to reread that sentence, please. In a movie called The Mothman Prophecies, based on the Mothman phenomenon (a series of sightings of a creepy, manlike winged being in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, 1966-67), the Mothman does not appear. There is not a single frame of this movie that features even the smallest body part of the Mothman. What we get instead is Richard Gere's character, driving around aimlessly at night, sitting in his hotel room at night, or talking to the boring locals at night. You know, the sort of scenes that should build tension, making the monster's appearance that much more effective. But since there is no such appearance, we get instead two hours of sustained tedium. Honestly, what's next? A Batman movie about some Gotham City cop who just patrols the streets for two hours, not even encountering any crimes, occasionally thinking about Batman, whom he has never seen, & never will, because he's not in the film? A James Bond movie that focuses on the grieving widow of some evil henchman, wondering what the man who killed him looked like, but not knowing, because she's never met him & he's not in the film? Actually, both of those sound far more interesting than this movie. If you'll excuse me, I've got to fly to Hollywood to make some pitches.

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)

A travesty, though not entirely unentertaining

[4/10 · 26 July 2010]

Yo, this movie's title: the main character in Doctor Who is named The Doctor. The shark in Jaws is not named Jaws; the main character of Die Hard is not named Die Hard. So, this film joins the ignoble ranks of Krakatoa, East of Java, &...no, wait, that's the only other one I can think of...as a film to make a goof right there in its title. This should be a clear warning flag to fans of the show regarding how much respect the material is afforded: Peter Cushing plays this "Dr. Who" as some sort of kindly old professor, & apparently, this film also believes he's human, not Time Lord. The entirely unmenacing Daleks have been downgraded from hate-driven killing machines to something more reminiscent of inept Bond villains, constantly trying to capture - not kill - "Dr. Who", occasionally puffing some sort of gas that does nothing & colliding with each other. In spite of all that, though, there is some sort of enjoyable Hammer alchemy going on here. Pretend that it's just some SF film with nothing to do with the Doctor Who series, & it's a mildly diverting ninety minutes. That's really the best course of action in watching this.

Predators (2010)

A perfectly reconstructed 80s actioner

[7/10 · 14 July 2010]

Predators - the title using the same logic as Aliens, which presumably means we'd be well advised to avoid Predator: Resurrection soon - was written by a then-unknown Robert Rodriguez in the early 90s as a sequel to Predator, but was rejected, hung around in a drawer for twenty years, & now has finally been made. Quite how Hollywood can have rejected this in favour of the stinking Predator 2 may well turn out to be one of those unsolved Hollywood mysteries. This film is awesome. It takes what made the original Predator so endearing - its glorious, big B-movie dumbness, its mountains of clichés - & turns them up to 11. This is a film saturated with clichés. There is not a single thing in this film you have not seen before. & you know what? It's glorious. After what I have to say must be one of the most awesome cold opens on film (our hero waking up falling through the sky, parachute deploying at the last minute with a resemblance - presumably coincidental - to the opening of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater), we're introduced to our production-line ragtag bunch of misfits early on: the gung-ho American (played by Adrien Brody!), Danny Trejo's Mexican badass from every film he's been in, the huge, burly Russian, Vasquez from Aliens, the quasi-mystical African, the notorious convict, the stoic Yakuza & the geeky doctor. We then see these men & woman stalked through unfamiliar jungles by our favourite extraterrestrial hunters. I won't spoil any of the hugely entertaining action sequences, nor quote any of the highly numerous oneliners (some are fun, some groansome, all familiar), nor will I really offer any analysis beyond: it is what is, & what it is is awesome. It really is one of the most ridiculously entertaining movies I must have ever seen, & the only reason I haven't rated it higher is because I really would feel a bit guilty giving such an unashamedly unoriginal offering a truly high score. But rest assured, popcorn thrills await you.

Hack! (2007)

average horror let down by idiocy

[4/10 · 16 December 2007]

Some things, despite being good, should never have happened: N.W.A. caused the creative hip-hop of the 80s to be buried underneath hordes of unpleasant gangsta rappers; Disney-Pixar's magical films have replaced the charm of hand-drawn animation with sterile CGI; postmodern horror classic Scream launched a thousand dull horror films that thought they were clever. Which brings me to Hack!, a film that very much follows Scream's template, with a touch of (underdeveloped) reality TV satire. Seven students and their teacher come to an island for a biology project; soon, of course, they are being hacked apart. Hack! tries to freshen up its slasher clichés by introducing a snuff twist, but it adds nothing to the film other than some annoying shots through an old-fashioned, wind-up camera, while the way the film tempers its classical horror references (The Birds, Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) with more modern phenomena (Saw, cult TV series Desperate Housewives, reality show Survivor) feels like a desperate bid to be hip.

Technically, this film is a mess. Shots slip randomly in and out of focus: some are a few seconds long, some scenes continue far after their end; continuity seems to have been deliberately disregarded, the music seems to be totally unrelated to what is happening on the film (I believe if you listen to your favourite album while you watch, a la Dark Side of the Rainbow, it will match up better); in one scene, it is so clear stock footage is being used that you feel a bit embarrassed.

The script fares no better: moronic characters spout film references with such unsubtlety that every gentle nod is a headbutt, every playful nudge an elbow in the ribs. The acting is appallingly inane (other than the always-lovely Danica McKellar's turn as Emily) and plot holes gape at you at every moment: characters act with no motivation, every boy and girl couple up despite having nothing in common. In spite of all its flaws, however, there is something likable about Hack!. I can't for the life of me place what it is, but it's there. This is a film, bless it, that really tries hard, but it ultimately fails. It fails because it wallows in its own stupidity while trying to be all clever-clever with the audience, it fails because it believes that pointing out that it is full of clichés prevents the clichés from being boring, and it fails because its constant self-referentiality soon becomes a drag. People, it's been eleven years since Scream; surely it's time for a new horror bandwagon?

In the end, while I would sincerely like to declare this film a cult classic, I cannot possibly score it in the upper half of scores - so it gets a 4, the highest score a bad film can get.