connorbbalboa Reviews

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Completely over-hyped and undeserving of the praise

[3/10 · 7 October 2017]

I never was one of those people asking for a Blade Runner sequel. Now that Blade Runner 2049 is out, my position still stands. This film is simply a massive letdown and nothing more.

The year is 2049 and the world has grown in technology, but not humanity. Ryan Gosling plays K, a Blade Runner (a futuristic cop) tasked with tracking down the last of the Replicants-androids that look like humans. Knowing that he himself is a replicant, he goes on a journey of his own when he finds a box containing the bones of a Replicant who gave birth to a child and is tasked with finding the child. Little does he know that the new head of the Tyrell Corporation that makes the Replicants, Mr. Wallace (Jared Leto), plans to use the missing child for his own purposes and kill K if he has to.

My main problem with the film is that it was unforgivably boring. The film is two hours and forty-five minutes long, which is already enough to test one's patience (and bladder), but it feels so deliberately paced; the characters almost always move so slow, that it feels like the filmmakers thought that it was the best way to pad out the running time, despite having not enough material to justify it.

The performances range from great to laughable. Harrison Ford is hardly in the movie, and his inclusion is clearly a marketing ploy, but he gives the best performance in his brief running time and he feels like a continuation of his character from the original, Deckard, in a world where things have just gotten worse. Gosling isn't bad as K, and his stone-face actually is pretty effective in a couple of scenes, but Rutger Hauer in the original gave his Replicant character more of a personality. Leto is trying and failing to bring a degree of menace as the villain, and his female Replicant sidekick competes with him in the field of phoning it in.

What else shocked me was how unsubtle the film was. The original was not only a futuristic crime noir that had Harrison Ford's Deckard chasing down androids, but also a personal journey involving himself and Rutger Hauer as the villain that involved trying to find a degree of humanity in such a futuristic world, and that maybe, Deckard is a replicant himself. Here, the story is mainly of Gosling trying to come to terms with the fact that he is a Replicant and what it means in terms of his humanity. Whereas in the original, there were subtle signs, images, and bits of dialogue that hinted at Deckard's purpose in the original, everything is spelled out for the audience to the point that old bits of dialogue are repeated thrice at important moments. It doesn't respect the audience's intelligence at all. The first and final thirds of the film are mainly filled with dialogue that is basically speeches that preach ideas about conflict and the ethics of machines, but hardly any of it is explored in an interesting fashion. What's worse, the film feels so empty and devoid that for a time, I forgot what K's objective was.

What I will say is that the cinematography is beautiful. There are a lot of colorful images with ancient ruins and futuristic tech in the background and foreground that could easily pass as being part of an art gallery. The only downside is that there is too much gray in some shots and it feels too clean compared to the original.

Why Warner Brothers and Sony wasted their time making this film, I have no clue. Maybe it was Ridley Scott's fault. After being unimpressed with his Alien: Covenant earlier this year (and was also quite the snooze-fest), watching this only proved to me further that Scott just doesn't care about good filmmaking anymore. Denis Villeneuve is clearly an ambitious director, but his style didn't feel completely right for this film. Clearly, in a film that tries so desperately to say much more humanity than its predecessor, it comes out feeling empty and feels less human than the original did.

P.S. A lot of people have accused me of being too shallow and wanting this film to be more action packed. I do not have that mindset. I enjoy films that take their time as much as the next film enthusiast, but this one just didn't do enough to justify what it was aiming for. I'm not ashamed in expressing my opinion. Just let me be clear on something: going at a slow, deliberate pace and speaking lines of preachy dialogue does not, I repeat, does not equal intelligence. The positive reviews baffle me, especially on Rotten Tomatoes. Sony owns the company, which leads me to think that maybe it bribed more than a few critics in the hopes that more people would see it. Clearly, that is backfiring and I'm happy that people are rejecting it.

Trog (1970)

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen" has never rung more true

[1/10 · 3 October 2017]

Whenever I watch a big star on his or her last legs, degrading oneself to such a dreadful film, I always feel a bit dead inside. Roger Moore finally exhausted himself as James Bond in A View To a Kill, for one thing. Here, Joan Crawford, one of the most renowned actress of Classic Hollywood, finds herself being degraded to playing an anthropologist playing "Mommy" to a caveman in a cheap-looking ape costume.

The film begins with three freelance geology students exploring a new cave in the English countryside. One of them is killed by an unknown creature and another is in shock and heavily wounded. Joan Crawford's Dr. Brockton and the third student go down to the cave and find the troglodyte that is hiding there. They eventually lure him out with the press watching, and Brockton captures him with the hope to civilize him like a normal human being.

Let me start off by saying that Crawford is quite bad here. Most of the time she's on screen, she almost looks like she is going to explode in a fit of hilarious anger, even when she has a pleasant expression on her face. One can just tell from looking at her on the screen that as an actress, she's washed up at this point. Even though she would make another appearance as a TV actress later, this was her last movie. What a depressing way to go out. Michael Gough also costars as a vague businessman who hates Trog for no other reason than he thinks that his presence would interfere with his business dealings, whatever they are. To set off the film's final rampage, he angers Trog and sets him free, stupidly not expecting Trog to go after him once he's set free. Gough is just half-hearted here, struggling especially to make his disgusted speech towards Trog believable.

Aside from the hilariously bad performances, the film is really boring. Most of it is devoted to Crawford playing with Trog like a pet and treating him like a kid with disabilities, which is sort of what she compares him to. The film wants me to care about all of this, but I don't, mainly because her plans should have already been rendered moot with the fact that he has killed four people by the time he ends up in her lab. Does she not care about human life, despite her position? The Trog costume is so poor, that only actor Joe Cornelius's eyes allow for any kind of expression from the creature. This is especially unacceptable considering that John Chambers' Academy Award-winning make up for Planet of the Apes (1968) allowed more expression from the actors and were quite revolutionary.

There are even little inaccuracies related to science and religion. When Brockton defends not killing Trog, she refers to what she thinks is the Second Amendment, "Thou shalt not kill." First off, it's a Commandment, and second, it's the sixth one. Also, when she talks about her profession, she lists gorillas and apes as related to humans. Doctor, gorillas are apes too. There is a big operation that involves putting a control grid inside of Trog's chest that will allow him to talk for some reason. It's not explained how. Part of the experiment also leads to Trog remembering dinosaur fights, which is actually footage from Irwin Allen's The Animal World (1956), and with the fights done via stop-motion by Ray Harryhausen. Sadly, it's one of his weaker efforts. After the experiment, Trog talks. I don't get it. It's incredibly obvious that the science was outdated even when the film was released. Trog is supposed to be a "missing link" according to Dr. Brockton, but Australopithecines had already been discovered at this point, and they are considered more of a missing link. Also, a troglodyte is defined as nothing more than a person living in a cave. It does not refer to a half-ape, half-human creature.

Trog is probably the worst low grade monster movie from the 1970s that I've seen. Yes, even worse than Night of the Lepus, Frogs, The Swarm, or Dracula A.D. 1972. It's an embarrassing film that should never have been made, and, given how the Hollywood atmosphere was changing, can't even qualify as 70s entertainment.

Flashdance (1983)

Style over substance, galore!

[2/10 · 26 September 2017]

Style-over-substance films usually annoy me. When those movie are as bad as Flashdance, I just want to ask the people who made them what they were thinking. Actually, this was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who are well known for making films of cinematic gloss, but nothing with real humanity. The story is so simple, the whole thing is probably 50 minutes too long. This is basically Rocky if the story has dance scenes for filler, the numerous subplots went nowhere, and the characters weren't appealing.

For a story, Jennifer Beals plays a young girl named Alex who wants to be a professional dancer, and not just to dance at a small nightclub. By day, she works as a welder at a steel mill; shocking since she is only 18. The steel mill boss's son falls in love with her and later tries to help her get into the professional dance group that she yearns to be a part of, if only she had more confidence.

Everything that I highlighted in just three sentences is everything there is to know about the main story. Everything else is just music video-inspired dancing scenes (which, unfortunately, are mostly performed by Beals's body double instead of Beals herself) set to popular 80s songs, and subplots that go nowhere or are resolved in five minutes. For one thing, Alex sees the boss's son with his previous wife, she gets mad and throws a rock at his window, but the next day, he explains why his ex-wife was with him in the first place. Later, her friend joins a sleazy strip club, and Alex forces her to leave after three minutes. There is even an old woman who is Alex's friend, and conveniently, was also a famous dancer. Not enough time is spent on the relationship they have and the film never establishes how they met.

The acting is average at best, with Beals giving the warmest performance of the whole cast, and most of the characters act like old stereotypes, such as the pathetic friend who makes useless jokes (which leads to another sub-plot that goes nowhere) and the aggressive jocks who have eyes for the main heroine. Alex herself is also the victim of the horrible screenplay. Close to the beginning of the film, she actually does come close to signing up for an audition for the dance group, but she backs out because she is afraid. Not a good enough reason? Well, the film still has an hour and fifteen minutes left, and if she did get her confidence at that moment, it would be nothing more than a short film.

I have very little to say about Flashdance because the film offers so little. I guess the dance scenes are well shot, and Beals performance makes things a little more tolerable, but everything else is quite awful. Even some of the 80s songs are poor. This is easily one of the most uninteresting pieces of nothing ever made.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)

The start of the Nightmare franchise's downfall.

[4/10 · 28 August 2017]

At the beginning of 1989, the Nightmare on Elm Street series was in its prime. The latest movie, The Dream Master, had grossed almost $50 million the previous year, and merchandise and a TV show, Freddy's Nightmares, had crowded the horror movie market. However, with the release of the fifth movie, The Dream Child, it looked like the series' best days had ended. Watching this, it's not hard to comprehend why that was.

The film begins with the final girl from the last movie, Alice (Lisa Wilcox), making love with her boyfriend, Dan, and having a nightmare about being raped by the inmates of Westin Hills Hospital (where Freddy's mother was raped hundreds of times). Later, she gets into a dream without even sleeping, and Freddy is somehow reborn as a grotesque baby and grows back to his real age after reaching his clothes(?)(he was torn apart in the last film). This unusual new phenomenon causes Dan to be killed in a nightmare, with Alice learning later that she is pregnant (why Dan never chose to wore a condom when making love is beyond my understanding; blame the screenwriters). She realizes that Freddy reaches her friends through her unborn child's dreams and that he wants to take over the child so that he will be reborn into the real world.

Like with The Dream Master, Freddy's quips and puns are taken overboard and distract from the kills. In fact, here it's even worse because it is clear at times that the filmmakers are trying to make this scarier than the previous film. However, in scenes where Dan is being shredded to pieces and fused with his own motorcycle, and Alice's friend, Greta, is fed her own flesh by Freddy, the added quips make it incredibly difficult to know whether to be scared or to laugh.

The darker tone works better in many atmospheric shots like when Freddy is stalking another one of Alice's friends, Yvonne, at the rec center. The higher budget and more ambitious production design, with large, dark churches and grandiose dream sets certainly help.

Another major problem the film has is something that Greta's crush, Mark, asks Alice in the middle of the movie: if Freddy is using Alice's unborn child to kill her friends, why doesn't she just abort it? Her answer: it is her best memory of Dan. So, protecting the life of somebody who isn't fully conceived is more important than protecting the lives of people you've known for years? I don't get it. Why is it so urgent for her to have this baby? She's only 18 and has just graduated high school. There are so many things that she can do with her life, such as college, travelling the world (Dan had gotten tickets to Europe before his death). Teen parenting almost never goes well. There is even a scene where Dan's parents try to take ownership of the child and Alice refuses. The scene is poorly acted by the ones playing Dan's parents and it feels a bit too serious for what is really just another slasher sequel.

Freddy's powers feel so undefined and confusing here, starting with the way he is resurrected. Even the way he gets killed makes me scratch my head. Yvonne goes to Westin Hills, touches Freddy's mother's skeleton while Alice is dreaming, and in the dream, the manifestation of Alice's unborn son, Jacob (who is played by the kid that Alan Grant scared in Jurassic Park; also isn't it weird that a name has already been established for this kid before his birth?) attacks Freddy, causing him to be turned back into a demonic baby, and he gets absorbed back into his mother's stomach(?). This way of killing Freddy was so baffling that explaining Freddy's resurrection isn't even attempted in the next film, Freddy's Dead.

Bottom line: A goofy Freddy does not an entertaining movie make, nor the issue of teen parenting a more emotional one.

Baywatch (2017)

Just another stupid comedy

[2/10 · 27 August 2017]

Having never seen the Baywatch TV show, I went into this judging it as a stand-alone film. Not that this is a film I really wanted to see. From the posters and TV spots, it already looked stupid, and now that I've watched it from start to finish, I will simply say that this is clichéd, desperate, and awful drivel of the lowest order that is little more than another buddy-cop (or buddy-lifeguard in this case) movie with nothing that stands out. Sure, people will say that this was never meant to be anything more than a fun movie with The Rock and Zac Efron goofing off and spouting quips. Sorry, but that's no excuse, since buddy-cop movies can be funny, have great characters, and most importantly, be well-written. Baywatch did not have any of that.

There's hardly any plot to describe. The Rock is the chief lifeguard of the Baywatch community, Zac Efron is the cocky rookie who learns to be responsible, they argue at first but learn to get along as an evil woman is trading drugs with corrupted officials, The Rock gets fired and has to solve the case himself, blah blah blah. Most of the familiar tropes from any buddy-cop movie. There's just nothing original here. There is a constant argument about police doing investigative work, but it doesn't have any meaning. Along with Efron and The Rock, all the characters are clichéd: there's the fat and awkward guy who wants to date the pretty girl, the pretty girl who wants to sleep with the awkward guy for some reason, the rookie's love interest, the henchmen, and so on.

The comedy is also just. not. funny. Nothing more than sex jokes and Zac Efron acting like a huge jerk. The film treats it as if lifeguards are cool supermodels who save people. A scene with Efron, The Rock, and a dead body in the morgue is especially deprived of any humor to speak of. With references to pretty girls in the movie going in slow-motion, it's almost like the film is half-heartedly attempting to be smart. If that's what it was trying to be, I must have missed something.

I'll admit, I haven't seen The Rock in much else, besides The Mummy Returns (2001), where he was given a horrible digital render as the Scorpion King near the end. Watching the movie, I think I can understand why people like him. In a lot of his movies (from what I know about them), he's such a muscular powerhouse, and yet his characters seem pretty approachable and he acts like he's really in the moment when it comes to the action. In that sense, he's like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was in his prime as an actor. The Rock may have been the best actor in the film, not Oscar-worthy, but he did make the film slightly appealing. Much more appealing than the tired slow-mo with all the girls.

This was awful. I'm not going to be elaborate here. I just couldn't stand this movie and I feel disheartened when I hear people legitimately thinking this is funny. I say, when it comes to buddy-cop movies, 48 Hours (1982), Lethal Weapon (1987), and Hot Fuzz (2007) are all you need.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

O.K.; an awkward mix of laughs and scares (that mostly fails)

[6/10 · 27 August 2017]

Wes Craven, creator of the original Nightmare on Elm Street, wanted Dream Warriors (Part 3, to which he was executive producer and came up with the story) to end the series for good. Given how Freddy is killed in that film, it would have made sense. But, given the film's almost $45 million box-office gross, New Line Cinema and producer Robert Shaye would have none of that. Only a year later came Part 4: The Dream Master.

Here, Kristen Parker (Tuesday Knight; yes, that's a real name), one of the survivors from the previous film, is afraid that Freddy will come back and kill her and her friends. After an opening dream sequence, we are introduced to the other survivors of the previous film, Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey (Rodney Eastman), as well as a new group of characters, with the standout being Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox). After Kincaid somehow dreams of being in the same junkyard that Freddy was buried in, his dog urinates fire all over Freddy's skeleton (an incredibly outrageous moment), flesh and skin reform and Freddy comes back, good as new. He kills Kincaid, and Joey soon follows. Kristen eventually gets offed herself (after a scene with her mother that is embarrassingly acted by Knight), but not before she somehow gives her dream powers to Alice, which I'll explain in a bit. Alice now has to protect herself and her new boyfriend, Dan (Danny Hassle) from Freddy and put him down once again.

In Dream Warriors, Chuck Russell (director, co-writer) and Frank Darabont (co-writer) added a sense of humor to Freddy, which was handled well and only slightly presented because of how scary the situations for some of Freddy's puns were for the characters. In Dream Master, that sense of humor is taken a bit overboard. Instead of proper dialogue, the puns and quips just start to feel like puns and quips. The situations that the characters find themselves in during the dream sequences aren't that scary either. One scene has Alice's brother, Rick, facing off against an invisible Freddy in a dojo (he practices martial arts). It's all part of how a character's personality traits or fears are exploited by Freddy (used lightly in the first two films and expanded upon in Dream Warriors). A fight scene in the dojo, however, isn't something that would give people nightmares, especially with the different quips. There is one scene with great special effects where one girl who is afraid of cockroaches has her skin peeled off and is turned into one herself, but again, the quips don't help and the effects make the scene more icky than frightening.

On the subject of Alice's powers, when her friends die, she somehow gains their personality traits and dream powers; for instance, after Kristen's death, she starts smoking, having never done so before. In Dream Warriors, it was established that each of the kids had the ability to gain some power over their dreams with the help of special abilities that represent who they are or aspire to be. While in Dream Warriors, it felt inspiring and creative, in this movie, it feels more like a gimmick, especially in the final battle between Freddy and Alice, which is actually well-done and entertaining.

Alice is set up to be a resourceful female lead like Nancy Thompson from Nightmare 1 and 3, and Lisa Wilcox does do a mostly good job. Most of the other young actors, however, are quite unremarkable. At this point, it just feels like director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger) and New Line Cinema are trying to come up with weak ideas to keep the series going, such as Freddy's resurrection, all of the puns, and the fact that all of the Elm Street kids are dead halfway through the end of the film (Freddy's original mission was to get revenge on all of the Elm Street parents who burned him alive), and yet he still wants more victims.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

What a disappointing sequel.

[7/10 · 27 August 2017]

After the late Wes Craven's 1984 horror masterpiece, A Nightmare on Elm Street, was a box-office success, the studio New Line Cinema wanted a make a sequel quickly. Craven was asked back, but refused, a good part of it being due to financial differences with the studio. So the directing job went went to Jack Sholder, who had previously worked on Alone in the Dark (1982). Sholder admitted that he disliked the original film, despite respecting it. A lot of that disdain is clear throughout the movie, which is probably the biggest disappointment of the series. The Dream Child and Freddy's Dead are worse, but they did not have that much riding on them as this film did.

The story opens with the only scary scene in the movie, where a bus dropping off high school children suddenly goes crazy and drives out into the desert. The ground falls around it until it is in a see-saw-like position. The driver reveals himself as Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), who proceeds to go after the kids. Just before he strikes with his razor-blade glove, it cuts to a normal family having breakfast and we hear the main protagonist, Jesse (Mark Patton) waking up from a nightmare and screaming like a little girl. The rest of what follows is some typical high school jazz, except when Freddy Krueger appears, which is hardly at all, and everything in Jesse's house (owned by Nancy Thompson's (Heather Langenkamp) family from the original) heats up like crazy. And yet, Jesse's father says that everything is fine, even when a parakeet goes crazy. The opening is only a warm-up for the viewer to get to know one of the weakest protagonists I've seen not just in a horror film, but a film in general.

Jesse is what one would think of when it comes to awkward high school boys, but what makes him so weak is how he reacts to what happens to him in the film. Freddy wants to take control of Jesse so that he can eventually kill people in the real world, where he will have unlimited power. Even after Freddy starts coming to him, he does nothing to figure out what's happening. Even after his gym coach, Schneider (Marshall Bell), gets killed by a possessed Jesse, Jesse does not drink coffee or take pills to keep himself awake right away, or let his girlfriend, Lisa (Kim Myers) help him out. It's almost like he's eager to let Freddy take control of his body without even realizing it.

The reason Jesse looks so awkward in this movie is that Mark Patton cannot act for peanuts here. Apparently, the director's or somebody's idea for Jesse acting scared or intimidated was to have his body shake a lot, always look like he wants to be somewhere else, and do it badly. Myers does a better job, but at the end of the film when she has to face off against Freddy, who finally does take full control of Jesse, she gets all unnecessarily weepy to the point of extreme annoyance and takes away from how horrific Freddy looks when he melts. It's all part of a confusing finale where Freddy is somehow defeated with the power of love when Lisa kisses him. It does not have the same logic to it as how Freddy is defeated in the first film. Listen to me, talking about logic in movies about dreams. It's also part of the film's attempt to be even more serious and scary than the original, like Lisa and Jesse's relationship was a love story that couldn't be topped. Appreciate the effort, Jack Sholder, but no thanks.

The film has very few scares other than the opening scene. The one that comes closest is when Jesse stays at his friend Ron Grady's (Robert Rusler, who also struggles to act) place for the night and Freddy bursts out of his body (a great effect) to kill him. What ruins it is Ron screaming for his dad to open the door to his room (he's grounded), and his dad screaming the same thing. Which side has the lock? A couple of failed jump scares include a boa constrictor wrapping around Jesse as he sleeps and a mouse jumping out of an old locker in a factory that Jesse and Lisa visit (where Freddy used to take his child victims in his past life).

In most film series, the first sequel is the best and the third is either a disappointment or just not as good. This time, it's the opposite. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is a perfect example of how a new series can lose track of itself so quickly. Having a weak protagonist especially hurts the film, partly because it's jarring to go from such an intelligent and sturdy character like Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) from the original to a weakling who can't solve a serious problem like this himself. It does not make him more relatable.

Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)

Good, but with a couple of fatal flaws that prevent it from reaching Raging Bull levels of greatness

[7/10 · 9 July 2017]

Outside of the Rocky films and Raging Bull, I will admit that I have not seen many boxing films; they end up being the most popular examples to the extent that I almost completely forget about all the others. Requiem for A Heavyweight was one that was recommended to me and one that I finally got myself to watch. I did like it, but not enough to reach the same levels of greatness of those other films.

The film starts with a blurred and slightly disorienting POV shot of 37-year-old boxer "Mountain" Rivera (Anthony Quinn) as he is beaten badly in his latest match by the real Muhammad Ali (back when he was still called Cassius Clay). After the match, he is told that he will go blind if he fights again and should retire. Meanwhile, his manager (Jackie Gleason from Smokey and the Bandit) is in trouble with the mob for making a faulty bet against Rivera and tries to get him to take up phony wrestling to make money. However, Rivera becomes attracted to an employment agency worker named Grace Miller (Julie Harris) who sees the kindness and desperation in him and tries to get him a summer camp job.

Anthony Quinn gives the best performance in the film and convinces you that he is a punch-drunk has-been who wants to stay relevant. Gleason is also convincing, taking the opportunity to be as despicable as possible. The black-and-white cinematography helps to make the street settings suitably unpleasant, letting you that this is not a hopeful film. Also, it's a common, but enduring story of a has-been trying to rescue himself from the oblivion of nothingness.

There are, however, two major problems I find with this film that tie into each other. The first is that the film is too short. Things like Grace stepping away from Rivera's life after failing to help him and the relationship between Rivera and his manager feel rushed and it feels like this film needed more material to completely get its points through. It would have also helped establish the relationship between Rivera and his manager better. Rivera says that his manager treated him well and was there for him whenever he was badly beaten in his fights, but we don't even see flashbacks to any of those moments, only scenes where his manager tries to sign him up for the phony wrestling, claiming that he's trying to do what's best for Rivera when his real goal is getting the money for the mob. Seeing more of the relationship would have also helped with the climax.

In the end, Rivera signs up for the phony wrestling, tries to quit at the last minute, finds out that his manager bet against him in the fight with Ali/Clay, and decides to do the wrestling and make a disgrace of himself anyway after the mob shows up. My first problem with the ending is that Rivera would still wrestle to save his manager even after he had just found out how much his manager had betrayed him. Secondly, it runs the risk of sending the wrong message, that punch-drunk has-been boxers like Rivera who try to make something of their lives afterwards will always end up in dishonor and emotional pain. It is incredibly harsh, even for the type of film this is. It reminds me of what Sylvester Stallone said about changing the ending of the First Blood movie and how the original ending where (spoiler) Rambo kills himself would negatively affect Vietnam veterans. The teleplay that the film is based on had Rivera quit the wrestling and return to his hometown. There, it gives Rivera a second chance and plenty of opportunity to do something with the last years of his life. Why the ending was changed for the film, I don't know.

In conclusion, I don't dislike this film; it just seems to go in the wrong direction by the time it ends (for me, at least). There are plenty of good things to say about it, like Rivera's and Gleason's performances. I just think that a longer runtime would have made it better.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Moore's second best as Bond

[6/10 · 4 June 2017]

It is saddening to hear about Roger Moore's passing in recent weeks. Looking back at his work, regardless of how good or bad his James Bond films were, he really did put as much effort into the role as he could and developed his own personality for the role, filling it with a sense of humor. He was also one of the more British-looking actors to play Bond, which helped him physically seem the part.

For Your Eyes Only, his fifth Bond film, has him investigating the disappearance of the ATAC system, which can control British submarines. Tagging alongside him is Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), whose parents-both hired by the British government to find ATAC-are killed by hit-man Hector Gonzales. With the help of assassin Columbo (Topol), they find out that Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover) is planning to give the ATAC system to the Soviet Union to accomplish his own ends.

Moore gives one of his best performances as Bond in the film, albeit with a more serious personality than usual. This was part of director John Glen's intention to go back to basics and make this film simpler after the ridiculousness of Moonraker. Bond's one-liners are kept to a minimum and he seems very emotionally aware of the conflicts surrounding the side characters, such as Melina, who wants revenge on Kristatos for hiring Gonzales to kill her parents. His aggressiveness is especially shown when he knocks a car with one of Kristatos' henchmen off a cliff.

Bouquet is one of the most beautiful Bond girls in the franchise, but her character is nothing special, being one of the many Bond girls who wants revenge on somebody for a past sin. Glover, while pulling off a good performance, is uninteresting as a villain, as he only wants to get money from the ATAC, although this could have been an intentional choice to keep things grounded. Some of the action is exciting, like when Bond climbs the mountain to Kristatos' base, but some set pieces are reused from other Bond films, like the skiing, already used in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me.

Perhaps, however, the biggest flaw of this film, is how the book-ending scenes contradict the whole intention to be more serious. In the opening scene, Bond visits his wife's grave (see On Her Majesty's Secret Service), and is later trapped in a helicopter by Blofeld (not identified as such because of a legal battle with Kevin McClory over the rights to the Thunderball story), whom Bond later drops down a chimney. Blofeld speaks in a ridiculously-accented voice none of the previous incarnations had and when Bond scoops him up, he pleads for his life, stupidly offering to buy Bond a delicatessen. What could have been an emotional payback scene is reduced to bad comedy (Blofeld killed his wife). Also, at the end of the film, Bond and Melina are getting ready to skinny-dip, but they are interrupted by the Secret Service, and Bond somehow directs the line of communication to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who starts talking with Melina's parrot while Bond and Melina finally go on their swim. This is not as contradictory to the film's goal as On Her Majesty's Secret Service was to its goal to present a more emotional Bond story, but it can take a more serious-minded Bond fan out of the movie.

For Your Eyes Only is most likely Roger Moore's second best Bond film after The Spy Who Loved Me. It has a one-dimensional villain, repeated set-pieces, and unneeded book-ending scenes, but in the end, there is more good than bad, mainly because of Moore's more serious performance. The newer action scenes help too. One last thing to mention: Lynn-Holly Johnson plays a skater girl who falls in love with Bond, despite the fact that she's still a teen and he's in his fifties (Moore hadn't exactly aged that much at this point). Creepy? Sure, but Bond does the right thing and doesn't sleep with her.

The Swarm (1978)

Irwin Allen at his worst

[4/10 · 28 May 2017]

I have not seen many films by Irwin Allen, but I somehow get the idea that he was quite a primitive filmmaker. This, I think, is best shown when one reads that he was confused by the success of the original Star Wars, in that it had no love story or major stars and yet became the highest-grossing film of its time. The Swarm, one of the disaster movies that killed his career, could not possibly be more primitive. One of the problems it has is one that it shares with killer bunny movie Night of the Lepus: it has way too serious of a tone and yet seems to be filled with silliness, intentional or not.

After a break-in at a military base, Dr. Brad Crane (Michael Crane) takes charge of an operation meant to get rid of a giant swarm of killer bees headed for the United States. That is as simple a story as you could get. Most of it is just repeated attempts to find a way to destroy the bees. However, there are a couple of sub-plots that have nothing to do with anything, such as the wooing of Olivia De Havilland's school headmaster by Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray; all classic movie actors who have seen better days. Another sub-plot includes Patty Duke being widowed due to killer bee attacks and giving birth to a child, after which she falls in love with her doctor. Neither of these go anywhere as Johnson, MacMurray, and De Havilland are all killed in a train crash caused by the bees before the latter makes a decision about who to marry, and Duke disappears after the birth of her child; none of these people even interact with Dr. Crane or his love interest, Dr. Anderson played by Katharine Ross from The Graduate.

Other problems include the acting; it's downright awful. Even Caine, who is usually fantastic, seems dull and uninterested. He did get to buy his mother a house with the money he earned, so he got something out of it. Everyone seems half-hearted, and Ross competes with Caine in terms of dullness. With the characters constantly referring to the killer bees as "Africans," one can be excused for thinking the film is racist, or even anti-immigrant.

The script even calls for the characters to do things that border on the hilarious. After losing his parents to the bees, a kid sneaks out of the hospital to throw Molotov cocktails on the beehive, which causes the bees to rampage in his town and kill over 200 people. The kid rightly acknowledges that he is to blame, but Crane tells him "I would have done the same thing." All I can say is, "No you wouldn't." This is an example of Allen's weak attempts to get emotions out of the viewer, along with the unneeded sub-plots and ill-defined relationships. Crane and Anderson are supposed to have a romance, but that hardly seems to come through in the movie. That kid who firebombed the hive is important to Anderson, but how? The film is also too long, as there is very little story to go on, even with an attempted conflict between Crane and Richard Widmark's General Slater, who only seems to dislike Crane because he is a typical tough-guy American general.

One detail mentioned in the film is that the fight against the bees has been going on for 15 years. What I don't understand is, if the bees have been killing people for that long, why have they only just started to invade America? I'd say a flashback was in order.

To conclude, The Swarm is a film I do not recommend watching, as it is not an enjoyable creature feature. Even Frogs, which was arguably a worse movie, was more entertaining. Irwin Allen has done good work in the 70s, such as with The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, but The Swarm shows what happens if you try to be as pretentious and simple as possible and make money from an audience in a decade when people wanted their movies to be smarter and fresher.

Red Sonja (1985)

Sword-and-sorcery at its most laughable

[2/10 · 3 May 2017]

In 1985, discussions were being made regarding the making of a third Conan the Barbarian film, Conan the Conqueror. What we got instead was a spin-off movie with Conan's female counterpart, Red Sonja, and Arnold Schwarzenegger came back to play another character, Lord Kalidor, as the producers were unable to get the rights to Conan. What was meant to be a cameo turned out to be a major part, and what could have been at least a moderately exciting diversion became the worst film to be set in the Hyborian world.

The films begins with Red Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen), whose family has been murdered and who has been raped by the soldiers of an evil queen (Sandahl Bergman), is given powers by a fairy who is never referred to again. Later, Lord Kalidor (Schwarzenegger) is on his way to a ceremony to destroy a device called the Talisman, when he discovers Sonja's sister mortally wounded. He takes her to Sonja, who decides to undergo a quest to destroy the Talisman herself, and eventually get revenge on the evil queen who wronged her.

Let me start by saying that you could not get a worse actress to play Sonja than Brigitte Nielsen. This was her first film, and she was a mere 21 years old. When she speaks most of the time, she looks like she is trying to show off, and not play a character. In fact, pretty much all the actors pull of sub-par performances, even Schwarzenegger, who at times looks unexcited to be in the film. However, when his performance is at his best, he is the only actor who is watchable.

Character is another problem. Sonja basically has the same backstory as Conan in his initial outing (except Conan was never raped by Thulsa Doom or his men), so it comes off as a repeat of what came before (I've never read the original stories with Sonja). Her whole arc is practically learning to accept having a man to be her lover because she needs one to be happy. Dear Lord. Bergman's evil queen wants to rule the world with the Talisman, but it's also established from the beginning that she has a special interest in Sonja that is never explained. Kalidor may as well be Conan and he develops a love for Sonja that is established improperly. To slightly diverge, Nielsen and Schwarzenegger actually flirted on-set and she fell in love with him. Schwarzenegger rejected her, but directed her to Sylvester Stallone, who became her husband for a couple of years, and her co-star in films like Rocky 4 and Cobra. There is also a little kid prince and his fat, adult servant, who serve no purpose other than comic relief. The kid is incredibly annoying and makes you wish that somebody would just kill him already, since he seems to have many enemies.

Another problem is the lack of threat and tension. The queen is aware of Sonja's quest, but seems to only rely on the Talisman to create bad weather; she doesn't even send any men out to try to stop Sonja midway. There is also a serpent made of metal, but it is easy to defeat, and the most it does is take Kalidor for a ride. At times when Sonja is killing a couple of the minor villains in the film, it looks like they are giving up and lowering their defenses on purpose, because if they kept trying, the film would go on longer and it is required in the script that they die (one of the villains also has awful Fu-Manchu claws). Additionally, the special effects and matte paintings look pretty obvious, the fighting choreography is average, and the score by Ennio Morricone, while not bad, sounds more suited to one of the Spaghetti Westerns he worked on.

Red Sonja is a waste of film and not something that anyone should be forced to watch. When comparing the two Conan films, the first is a fantasy masterpiece with a great director at the helm (John Milius), an awesome score, great action, a menacing villain in James Earl Jones's Thulsa Doom, and an endearing theme about the human spirit. The sequel, Conan the Destroyer, plays off like an average, kid- friendly B- movie version of the first with a less interesting quest, awkward monster fights, and one or two unnecessary side characters, but it still entertains to an extent and some actually enjoy it more than the original for having more fantasy elements. This film has no reason to exist and is even considered a waste of time by Schwarzenegger himself. He makes the film a little watchable, but that's it. Fun fact: Schwarzenegger has joked that when his kids misbehaved, he would make them watch Red Sonja ten times. Now that's effective punishment right there. Who needs grounding?

New York, New York (1977)

One of Scorsese's few misfires

[5/10 · 23 April 2017]

In the declining years of New Hollywood (1967-1980), a lot of the big directors who were successful during this time period made at least one film that was a major blow for their careers, financially and critically. For William Freidkin, it was Sorcerer (1977). For Peter Bogdanovich, it was At Long Last Love (1975). With a filmography like Martin Scorsese's, one wouldn't expect him to be in that boat. Unfortunately, New York, New York, his next film after Taxi Driver, put him in a career slump that led to his near-death from cocaine overdose. Scorsese made the film as a tribute to musicals from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Having not seen many of those, I can't say if this was successful as a tribute or not, but on its own terms, it's quite frustrating.

The plot is that Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro) tries to hook up with Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli) during a V-J Day party (the film starts in 1945). He's initially unsuccessful, but at a later audition, the two discover each other's musical talents (she sings, he plays the saxophone), and they go through the next several years exploring their careers while trying to handle a rocky relationship that only deteriorates when Francine reveals her pregnancy.

For me, at least, the most obvious problem is how the dialogue is handled. Scorsese films usually excel in it, but here, there is so much dialogue that drags scenes out and feel like each character is trying to explain everything he or she means. Other times, the dialogue can feel pretty sparse and useless. The opening scene is a prime example; when Jimmy keeps asking Francine for her phone number and tries to hit on her, all Francine keeps saying is "No," which keeps De Niro from coming with things for his character to say. Apparently, most of the dialogue was improvised and Scorsese had no control over it.

Characterization is another major problem. Jimmy Doyle is supposed to be a guy who has a passion for music, but other than his scenes playing the saxophone, there doesn't seem to be much of an indication. He mentions it in one or two dialogue scenes, and one creative shot in the film where he plays under a light post shows off that passion, but besides that, you could easily miss that part of his character. He is also very annoying. Because of all the improvisation, De Niro just seems to be phoning in his performance and plays the character as extremely socially awkward with a temper, and as a guy who will not shut up. Nearly every time he started talking, I groaned in exasperation. The only real time when Jimmy seems to have any depth is during a large part of the second half where it is clear that he is jealous of Francine's constant career boosts while he struggles to get anywhere. Nobody calls him out on his flaws, either.

Minnelli's Francine doesn't fare much better. Very little is revealed about her, except for her passion for singing, similar to Jimmy. She doesn't seem to be making that much effort to make her own decisions as a character, and while putting up with Jimmy for so long is admirable, it was so nonsensical, that in some of the later scenes, I kept thinking, "Just divorce this guy already." Thankfully, when Jimmy is not present, Minnelli makes the character shine with her singing skills and the last forty minutes are a treat due to that reason alone.

For the most part, the production design looks well-done, although a few sets are obviously fake, although, Scorsese also made this a directorial choice. The design mostly stands out in some of the later scenes when Francine is making a career of her own away from Jimmy, such as when it revels in its "Happy Endings" musical number. Of course, Francine does sing "New York, New York," and while Frank Sinatra is usually identified with the song, Minnelli's voice arguably goes even better with it, as it is smoother and has much more energy.

To conclude, New York, New York had plenty of ambition, but it's let down by the frustrating-to-sit-through dialogue scenes and the characterizations of both De Niro's Jimmy and Minnelli's Francine. I've complained about musicals that include songs which stop the story and go on for too long, but here, the story is what goes wrong. This film was a box office flop for United Artists, and while the film did hurt Scorsese as a person and as a director for a time, he did eventually bounce back with some hits throughout the 80s and 90s.

Logan (2017)

"Logan, you still have time..."

[10/10 · 3 March 2017]

I had a hard time just coming up with a title for this review. Because, honestly, how important is that when talking about a film like Logan? It's probably one of the few superhero movies I've seen that deserves to be called perfect. I just went to see this with a friend, and we agree that this film excited us, shocked the hell out of us, and presented us with characters that we love and are now all broken down, and a genuinely great story that follows how they spend their final days.

The plot here is that Wolverine, or James Howlett, or Logan (Hugh Jackman) is spending his days driving people around the city for cash to buy medicine for the now emotionally-broken and physically declining Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) with the help of fellow surviving mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant) who can't go out into the sun without burning severely. Logan himself is declining too, with scars forming on his body and his healing factor working much slower than before. Everything changes when Laura (Dafne Keen) walks into their lives and asks to be taken to a place called Eden in North Dakota. All the while, they are pursued by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and Dr. Zandar Rice (Richard E. Grant), who want Laura back.

What I will say right now is that this movie will break the hearts of anyone who loves X-Men and the character of Wolverine. I can't give anything away, but I will tell you that there are moments that show you how much people like Logan and Xavier can screw up and how they have to live with their mistakes. Logan himself is at his lowest point and he convincingly acts in a way where you wonder who the man was underneath that Adamantium skeleton and those berserker rages. Xavier himself plays off Jackman very well. He talks like a bitter old grandfather at times who is unhappy with his "son" and yet acts like a grandfather who has the opposite personality: loving, understanding, and sharing his wisdom of the world with Laura. A scene where they watch Shane (1953) is especially touching.

Despite what other critics have said, the villains are great here. Holbrook is properly cruel and twisted and Grant plays the kind of villain you want to hate. The fact is, neither of them play super-powered bad guys who want to take over the world. This is one superhero film where I wouldn't have cared if the villains didn't get much backstory or dimension, because it is not their story; they are just forces that Logan and co. keep running into and are part of a less tolerant and more unfriendly government.

The violence is done well and Logan slicing his enemies up in a gory fashion is something we finally get to see. Here, Wolvie stabs people in places we haven't seen him stab before and whenever those claws do strike somebody, there's always blood. Logan shows that even though he's old, he's still a pro, and even then, we see that every new wound he receives in his state just slows him down even more and makes him worse.

Dafne Keen is definitely something of a complete surprise in terms of child acting. Even though she doesn't say much for most of the film, she nails the aggressive stares and animalistic and child-like tendencies very well. When she cries and is frightened, it feels very real, and not annoying like with many child actors. In fact, some may consider this a stretch, but she might be the best child actor I have ever seen in a movie.

The film seems to take a lot of cues from something like Mad Max, with similar desert landscapes, and the story of an aging iconic character who needs to get past his emotional pain and redeem himself is still exciting here. It worked with Rocky Balboa and James Bond in Skyfall, and it works here. It's clear that Logan feels pain and through his conversations with Xavier, it's obvious that he needs redemption. Its great script (filled with numerous earned curse words) drives one in to see if Logan actually achieves it.

To end, Logan is a fantastic movie. Period. Not "superhero" movie. This film will most likely make you question how good other superhero movies that you've seen really are, as it's doing to me now. I'm not kidding; this film will provide you with emotional satisfaction and leave you feeling like you had seen not a superhero movie, but something else entirely. Just be sure to bring plenty of tissues, because it will screw you up inside.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Better than the previous one, but still not great.

[4/10 · 3 March 2017]

*Sigh* I know. You all must think I hate Roger Moore as Bond. I don't. He is capable as James Bond and when he and the script get it completely right, like with The Spy Who Loved Me, he can pull off his sense of humor very well. It's just that most of the movies he has been in really are quite bad. Actually, this one isn't as crappy as many of the others; I would rank it third behind The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. It still is quite mediocre.

In this one, Bond is investigating a plot by the villain Francisco Scaramanga (the awesome Christopher Lee), who personally wants to kill him. Along the way, he tries to avoid sleeping with the pretty hot, but pretty useless Mary Goodnight (Why did the Moore films have most of the dumbest Bond girl names in the franchise?), gets into a car chase with the annoying Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) from the previous film, Live and Let Die, in the passenger seat and the famous "slide whistle" car spin, gets put into a martial arts school (don't ask), and makes out with Scaramanga's girlfriend (Maude Adams), who wants Bond to put him down.

Christopher Lee is the actor I love watching most in the movie. He does not have a bad line or moment. He's just the absolute king here. The sad thing is, besides killing Bond, his plot isn't that much to care about. He merely wants to use a certain device to control solar power, its prices, and who gets it. It's not really a threatening plot. Like with the heroin in Live and Let Die, not everyone uses solar power. Plus, what is he going to do with the money? He seems to have a content life just challenging people to death matches with his one-bullet golden gun. Look, I'm fine with Bond villain schemes that aren't about taking over the world. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have liked films like Casino Royale and Skyfall so much. For them to work, though, a personal scheme has to hurt a lot of people for it to be a major concern, and really, the only people who will be affected by this scheme are the really rich guys that actually have solar power and the people who are targets for personal assassinations that Scaramanga gets payed for.

Moore is better as Bond here, and doesn't calculate his performance so much. When he tries to be cold, however, like when he interrogates Scaramanga's girlfriend, he isn't very organic. Connery would have brought more brute strength and cold-hearted lust to it, considering that his version of Bond seems to be quite at home with moments like this. Britt Ekland as Goodnight does not do a very good job and is probably the worst actor in the film. She's pretty hot, like many of the Moore Bond girls, but useless and when Bond is trying to recover that solar power device, she almost gets him killed or seriously injured. One other character here is a smaller person named Nick Nack who serves Scaramanga. I don't understand what he wants, and besides that, he's also quite annoying. The most confounding moment is when he tells Bond that he'll inherit everything from Scaramanga if he kills him. Wasn't Nick Nack supposed to be Scaramanga's friend? But it turns out that he was still loyal to Scaramanga as he tries to kill Bond after he has sex with Goodnight. It's just confusing.

Besides that, some of the action is fun, although the whole situation with the martial arts school has no purpose, and Moore's improved performance certainly helps, but the uninteresting secondary scheme of the villain and the goofy bits that seem to be a trademark of most of the Moore films don't. Bottom line, The Man With the Golden Gun has its moments, but it is very average.

Octopussy (1983)

Forgettable Bond film

[4/10 · 3 March 2017]

Watching all 24 Bond films, some stand out more than others, and some just blend into the background. Octopussy, the 6th Roger Moore Bond film, just blends into the background. Just to get it out of the way, I'll just highlight the stupid moments Bond fans know: 56-year-old Moore as Bond dressed up as a clown, Bond fighting a bunch of bad guys through (offensive) stereotypical Indian displays like the sword in the mouth, and Bond yelling like Tarzan while swinging through the trees. Yeah, the goofiness of Moore's previous films just couldn't go away after For Your Eyes Only, which was supposed to be a more serious film, despite having a stupid beginning and ending. Besides that, there is nothing really horrendously bad about this film other than the stupid highlights I mentioned earlier; it's just not remarkable.

The plot is that a Russian general who just wants power (Steven Berkoff, who was also a Russian bad guy in Rambo: First Blood Part II) hatches a secret plan that involves working with Kamal Khan and the vengeful Octopussy, who later switches sides to help Bond. The MacGuffin in this story is a piece of jewelry shaped like an egg that is recovered by another double-0 agent who is killed...and wears a clown suit. Oh boy. Bond goes to India to track down Kamal Khan, who buys a replica of the egg, unknowingly, and gets caught up in the Russian general's plot to blow up part of India. That is all I could remember from the plot because the film is not memorable in any way.

Maude Adams' Octopussy (Really?) isn't as memorable a Bond girl as I thought she'd be; her character in The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) who gets killed stood out more and that was a smaller part. The main villain has one of the most basic archetypes ever in a movie and turns out to be so insignificant, he gets killed quite some time before Bond stops his scheme and the movie ends. Kamal Khan isn't an interesting bad guy either. Moore is alright here as Bond, but one trait of his that I always find annoying is that he knows EVERYTHING about the MacGuffins in his movies, whether it be the ATAC system in For Your Eyes Only or the egg jewelry in this film.

I do like the concept of a whole battalion of sensual women fighters who serve Octopussy, but it ends up feeling like the numerous other battle scenes with large forces that have been in previous films.

I guess my point here is that this film does nothing new or exciting for the Bond series at that point and is just another basic plot. I actually had trouble remembering some of the details right after I had finished it. If you're looking for high-quality Bond, you won't find it here.

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Made my stomach cramp just 20 minutes in.

[1/10 · 3 March 2017]

Weird and annoying big-kneed servant to the evil Master. Poor acting from everyone. Vague plot. Makes you wonder why the traveling family doesn't just get out of the house despite the weird stuff and the dead dog. Looks like it was made for $50. Despicable screenplay. Useless police. Dreadful pace. Made on a bet. That should tell you everything. It sucks. Next.

Spectre (I) (2015)

The weakest of the Daniel Craig Bond films

[2/10 · 1 March 2017]

The ending of Skyfall was very promising, as it showed James Bond finally manning up and becoming the brilliant secret agent that everyone knows once again. He was ready to take on new missions and possibly provide more stories that could expand on his character. Well, we got a partially traditional Bond, and it sucked. If not for other disasters like Moonraker and Die Another Day, I would call this the worst of the Bond films. Why, might you ask? Well, for one thing, the film is too long and too slow. Two-and-a-half hours is pretty extreme for a Bond film. Yes, Skyfall was slightly shorter, but it truly felt like "the" epic Bond story that gave people something special. Here, we have a typical Bond adventure that has additional pieces of filler that we didn't need like the talk about drones and surveillance that Skyfall weaved into its story much better. Other old Bond tropes come about that I'm really tired of at this point; it's been a while, though, since I've seen an action scene on a train in one of these movies.

Another problem is the performances. Ralph Fiennes is fine as M and shows himself to be very capable. Ben Whishaw is also good as Q, and he's almost as fun to watch as Desmond Llewelyn was in his Bond films. However, Craig is inconsistent this time as Bond. Sometimes he looks invested, but other times he looks tired. Lea Seydoux was also very dull as the newest Bond girl, Madeline Swan, and Christoph Waltz as Blofeld (let's not kid ourselves here) sucks. He's more like an annoying cartoon villain I would have expected from some of the earlier films than a worthy threat. He's no Le Chiffre or Raoul Silva. And the fact that Bond didn't just shoot him dead at the end like a truly tough Bond would left me feeling very unsatisfied.

The story is that after a mission in Mexico that he undertook himself, Bond is suspended from field duty and undertakes a secret mission when he finds a video that has M telling him to seek out a specific target if something happened to her (Was there any reason she couldn't have told him about this during the end of Skyfall?). In Rome, Bond finds out about a secret villainous organization named Spectre (not an acronym), and is tasked by Mr. White from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to protect his daughter, Madeline. Together, they find Bond's believed-to-be-dead half-brother, Franz Oberhauser, who claims to be responsible for the events of the previous three films(????). This is basically the main plot condensed into a single paragraph, unlike the movie. Hmm.....

The big "twist" about Oberhauser being responsible for the previous films and being Blofeld is what ruins the rest of the film for me. It clearly demonstrates that the film can't decide whether it wants to be a traditional Bond adventure, or a more serious adventure like Casino Royale. The whole backstory is that after Bond's parents died, Oberhauser's father took Bond in and Franz got extremely jealous and offed his dad...instead of killing Bond and making it look accidental for some reason. Then...for some reason he decides to call himself Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Blofeld was his mother's maiden name, conveniently). Then...for some reason he decides to form Spectre and have control of the world. Next thing, he'd be saying that he lost Le Chiffre's money so the events of Casino Royale would happen or that he got Silva out of his jam with the Chinese so he could take revenge on Bond when it was clear that Silva was acting out of more personal motivations. What bull. What in the name of God were you thinking, Sam Mendes? You ought to be ashamed of yourself for allowing such poor writing to be part of your movie. And I'm not invested in Bond trying to rescue Madeline because the performances don't move me.

Bottom line, if the 25th Bond film features Craig again, I hope that that film can correct the mistakes of this film. However, as it stands, this is the final Bond film with Craig as of yet, and it's a truly sucky way to end things. This franchise has seen better days, regardless of how few and far between they were.

Moonraker (1979)

The nadir of the Roger Moore Bond films.

[1/10 · 15 February 2017]

This is easily the worst of the Moore James Bond films.

The plot this time is that Bond is investigating the disappearance of "Moonraker" ships constructed by Drax Industries with the help of Dr. Holly Goodhead (*shudder*), and uncovers a plan by Hugo Drax to destroy all human life on Earth except those individuals he sees as most fit, and create a new space civilization. Sound familiar? Well, that's because the plot is so similar to the previous film, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which was about the main villain, Karl Stromberg, wanting to destroy all human life on ground level and create a civilization beneath the sea. Different element, but both civilizations are in places supposedly uninhabitable by humans. I get that a lot of the Bond films copy plot elements from each other, but copying almost the exact plot from its immediate predecessor is just desperate. Even The Spy Who Loved Me is said to have taken numerous plot elements from a Sean Connery Bond film, You Only Live Twice (1967), but the former turned out to be a better film.

Moore, as usual, is trying his darndest, and he can't really be blamed for the crappy material he has to work with. Lois Chiles as Goodhead (*shudder*) has one of the stupidest names for a Bond girl, and although she can fight o.k., she's just terribly dull. Richard Kiel returns from the previous film as Jaws, but here he is more of an annoyance, like many other henchmen from inferior Bond films, showing up all the time and not going away. Not only that, but he is turned into a complete joke, being a good guy, falling in love with a dorky girl, and speaking...Why is he speaking now when he showed no previous indication that he was capable of it? Michael Lonsdale's Drax is completely uninteresting as a villain because of how ripped-off he is from Stromberg and he doesn't seem to be making much of an effort to kill Bond properly (sure, that's a thing with many Bond villains, but he doesn't even try here; also, who's he trying to be, Hitler, with his talk of a master race?) A lot of things seem to happen conveniently for both Bond and his enemies. They all have gadgets (some quite stupid) for any situation. Bond himself seems to piece together clues much too easily, and that's partly due to Drax's poor efforts to kill him. There are also so many terrible jokes and puns not just by Bond this time, but other characters as well. When everyone watches Bond and Goodhead (*shudder*) have sex at the end, Q (Desmond Llewelyn) says that Bond is "attempting re-entry." Hmm.... A lot of the in-jokes are unwelcome and completely random. For instance, Before Bond goes to meet Q in an old Western-looking town, he is wearing Clint Eastwood's outfit from his Spaghetti westerns.

True, there is a lot of spectacle, especially with the final battle in space, and others do commend the film for that, but to be honest, I really don't care. No amount of spectacle or incredible effects work will grab me if a film has no integrity to it, and this film has none. Even film series like Bond and Friday the 13th have standards, guys. By trying to take advantage of the Star Wars madness that originated two years earlier, what we get here is a stupid, ridiculous, lazy, and calculated film with nothing to show except spectacle, and to be honest, even the spectacle's overblown.

I'm not going to knock Bond fans for liking this film, because with six actors and 24 films with the character, so many different versions of him and his adventures have been shown to the world, and it's a constantly-changing franchise, so what's the point?

Live and Let Die (1973)

Man, this Bond film was annoying!

[3/10 · 13 February 2017]

This is the first Roger Moore Bond film of the seven, and guess what: it's pretty terrible.

The plot is that Bond, after the killing of a few British Secret Service agents, is investigating the organization of a Dr. Kananga , who is planning to take over the market of heroin and become rich after giving away a whole boatload of it for free. No really, it's that simple. It's not even that big a threat. Goldfinger's scheme was way more threatening because it would have affected so many people. Here, only people who actually buy drugs will get affected, and not everyone buys drugs. On a side note, Bond causes the fortune-teller girl, Solitaire (the genuinely sweet Jane Seymour), to lose her virginity thanks to a ploy of his where he has a card deck where every one of those cards says that they'll be lovers. Later, when Bond asks for information about Kananga, Solitaire can't use her powers because she'll lose them if she has sex (Not a wise decision, Bond!) Now Bond also has to defend her from Kananga.

Being the second actor to play Bond after Connery, there are some noticeable differences, not just in appearance, but HOW he plays the character. First off, he looks more British than George Lazenby, which is already an improvement, and plus, he doesn't try to mimic Connery. His Bond is more light-hearted and slightly warmer (only slightly). However, this approach also means that Moore's Bond gives off SO many puns and one-liners, they get tiresome very quickly. Moore's performance also seems too calculated, like he's trying to figure out what to say and when and how to say it. He doesn't look like the most confident guy in the room. All in all, in this film Moore is a competent, if not outstanding James Bond.

But there's more to come in terms of the film's flaws. Let me start by saying: blaxploitation elements and racial stereotyping. All of the villains are African-American, and they seem to enjoy getting back at "the white man." Many times throughout the film, Bond is called a "honky" by the villains and a lot of the African-American culture portrayal in this film is terribly offensive. Bond becoming a Japanese man in You Only Live Twice is mild compared to this. There are "voodoo" rituals that look stereotypical and plus, there is a scene where Solitaire is set to be sacrificed by the people who perform these rituals, and this scene is probably the most offensive of all. It's right up there with the scene in The Birth of a Nation (1915) where a sex-crazed African-American man (portrayed with "blackface" by a Caucasian man), is chasing a teenage Caucasian girl in the woods and trying to force her into marriage. This stereotyping and offensive imagery makes the villains really annoying as well, especially the villain with the hook for a hand called Tee Hee (even more offensive name), who's always smiling and laughing like an a**hole. Plus, not only is this stereotyping offensive, but it makes most of the African-American characters (except maybe the ones who are working with Bond) seem fake, and it doesn't allow the film to have its own identity, and makes it seemed much more dated than other Bond films.

In addition to the blaxploitation and offensive stereotypes, there is also a lot of unwanted comedy, thanks to Clifton James' Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who would also appear in the next Bond film. James would also play a similar character in Superman II, although not nearly as annoying. He comes off as a racist and seems to fit a poor Southerner stereotype; he's also too much of a goofy character and causes a very good action scene to go on too long. As previously mentioned, Moore's constant puns and one-liners don't help either.

I will admit that this does have a good trap where Bond is stranded in the middle of a small island with crocodiles and alligators and even his watch gadget isn't able to help him. However, like with other traps and prisons, there happens to be a convenient way for Bond to escape, by stepping on top of crocodiles as stepping stones and somehow not falling in.

All in all, this is easily one of the worst Bond films I've seen (and I'm only halfway through with the franchise; I sort of started watching these out of order). Goofy comedy, annoying villains, a plan that isn't dangerous enough to care about, and some of the most offensive portrayals of African-Americans and possibly people in the Southern states I have ever seen. Not recommended in any category. Besides the boat chase (before the introduction of Sheriff Pepper), the only other good thing to say is that Jane Seymour is so sweet as Solitaire, and she brings such a warm personality to the character, especially after she and Bond sleep together. It makes me wish she was in another, better Bond film, or even a better film, period.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Underrated? Nah.

[8/10 · 10 February 2017]

Most modern critic reviews say that this Bond film was under-appreciated when first released and that it has held up better over the years. While I certainly don't dislike On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I must say that I don't think it's as good as those critics and Bond fans make it out to be. Everyone says it was an attempt to make Bond more emotionally-sensitive and serious than previous films, but it comes off to me as more of a half-hearted attempt. It's more like a prototype for later Bond films that would try this like Casino Royale.

To get it off my chest, I will say that George Lazenby, while he does put in a very good effort, is no Sean Connery or Daniel Craig. My first problem is that (not to sound racist) he looks too American for a British Secret Service agent. Also, a lot of his performance seems to be mimicking Connery's, trying to replicate a suave personality, but lacking the ruthlessness that Connery was able to pull off. Although to be fair, in the scene where Lazenby's Bond reacts to his wife Tracy's (Diana Riggs) death, he pulls it off very well; he also can fight good, it seems.

Here, the plot is that Bond is offered a considerable sum of money from a European crime lord if he marries his daughter, Tracy. While Tracy is reluctant at first, she and Bond get to know each other, and, after preventing an evil scheme by famous Bond baddie Blofeld (Telly Savalas), get married after it seems that Bond is ready to give up being a ladies man secret agent with a license to kill, until Tracy is murdered that is. The idea that Bond would want to get married and give up being a secret agent who beds any woman he pleases is a very good idea, but unfortunately, for a considerable amount of time after getting to know one another, the Bond/Tracy relationship is tossed to the side in favor of Bond tracking down Blofeld, and it seems that Bond declares his love for Tracy too early. Others have pointed this out as a criticism and I agree with those people. Really, after the scene with Bond and Tracy at the bull-fighting ring, all we get is a montage of them being happy together before Bond has to find Blofeld.

Blofeld is not a very good villain here. While he does try to kill Bond himself at points, unlike previous entries in the series, he makes some very stupid decisions, such as leaving Bond in a room where he can find a way to escape after revealing his secret plan and falling for the ploy where Tracy's father and Bond, via radio communication from a helicopter, say that they are carrying blood for the Red Cross. I don't expect a smart Bond villain to fall for such a thing. Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, while having an underwhelming and rushed first meeting with Bond, was able to see through the scheme involving his fake death.

The action scenes are shot very well most of the time, although a couple of them are shot more in the manner of the "shaky cam" of some of today's action films, and it can get very confusing. Another gripe I have is that while the director, Peter Hunt, said repeatedly that he wanted his Bond film to be different, he must not have been confident in this objective because in the first several scenes, mainly, there are quite a few references to the previous films with Connery that don't fit at all. The opening credits sequence features footage from the previous films, Lazenby's Bond, after seeing Tracy drive away from him during their first meeting, says "This never happened to the other fellow (referencing Connery's Bond)," and there is even a pointless scene where Bond tries to resign so we can get a look at objects from three of the previous films, which I doubt he would have been able to keep as souvenirs. It's like the filmmakers were too afraid of people wondering what happened to Connery and decided to make references that acknowledged that his Bond and Lazenby's Bond are the same character.

Despite the negative criticism I've given, I do acknowledge what this film has tried to do with Bond. However, it cannot be completely excused of its flaws that keep it from working completely. A storyline about an emotionally-sensitive Bond stripped down to his core was done much better in Casino Royale nearly forty years later. In my mind, if you're going to try to make Bond more of a serious character in his films, go all the way, or don't go for it at all.

Judge Dredd (1995)

I hate this movie so much, it depresses me.

[1/10 · 5 February 2017]

I normally take time to explain in detail why a film is good or bad, but given how depressing, appalling, stupid, and annoying this mountain of garbage is, I'm just going to simply nail it down to the core.

This movie is absolutely horrible. There isn't a single actor in this film that does a good performance, Sylvester Stallone in particular is cold and emotionless, albeit unconvincingly. Rob Schneider is one of the most annoying and undeserving little punks I've seen in any film; so much so that why anybody would want to be have their movie ruined by him is beyond my understanding. Money, perhaps? He ain't worth much these days. Stop hiring him, Hollywood! Filmgoers don't like him anymore. The villain is laughably unconvincing and has a confusing plan. The action is not fun and full of terrible clichés, the story is trying to be smart, but I have no idea what the point is. The comedy is cheap and most of it shows Rob Schneider obnoxiously screaming and him or Judge Dredd making stupid jokes. The story is full of clichés.

I haven't read the source material, so I am strictly judging this as a movie, although from what I hear, the film isn't very faithful to it.

Bottom line, do not see this film if you value great movies. This is anything but. I pity the poor souls who made this, although Stallone has made enough Rocky movies to warrant my forgiveness (f.y.i. I haven't seen all of Stallone's failures). I also feel sad to see Max Von Sydow here; he tries, bless his soul, but is just overwhelmed by all the ridiculousness. I can't say the same for anyone else, though. Court's adjourned.

Gandhi (1982)

A simple collage of events and a big lie

[3/10 · 22 January 2017]

As a film lover, I have recently gotten suspicious of biopics and historical films. These kinds of movies tend to sugarcoat the truth to present almost typical Hollywood stories, for instance, making some people who weren't all that bad, the main villains, simply so the audiences can identify an antagonist (The Aviator is a big offender in this category). Gandhi (1982) falls into many of the these traps that other biopics fall into and as a result, becomes an over- glorification, a complete lie, and something that almost doesn't resemble a story, but merely a collage of events.

The film basically presents us with the major events of Gandhi's career: his time working against British oppression of Indians as a lawyer in South Africa, the Amritsar massacre, the March of Salt, Gandhi's assassination, etc. The events are simply presented, very accurately from what I read about them, but the film leaves out many things about him that weren't very noble. Reading about events in Gandhi's life from all different sources, like books and online articles, I can safely say that I am appalled by some of the things that this man has done.

When fighting British oppression of Indians in South Africa, he basically ignored native South Africans that have lived in the country much longer than any Indian or British person. Second, he was cruel to his family, so much so that his son spoke out against him and later died as a drunk; he even negatively compared his own wife to a cow. Additionally, when his wife was sick, he refused to give her British medicine and yet was willing to take it himself when he had malaria. After Hitler came to power and WWII started, he wrote to Hitler, addressing him as a friend, and after the war was over, he himself said that many of the Jews from the Holocaust should have let themselves die and submit to the oppression of the Nazis. Any sensible man or woman would know that this is could be nothing more than an insane and horrible suggestion and that it would be simply impossible to deal with the Nazis using Gandhi's ideas. This was the Gandhi that so many people idolized? I even read an article from The Guardian saying that a biography about Gandhi was forbidden for publication because it revealed too many things about his life.

Other than the fact that the film is lying to everyone who sees it, the film is just too preachy. It doesn't barrage you with moral lessons every second of screen time, but half of the dialogue is moral lessons and guidelines on life and doesn't feel very natural. Even in the beginning, when it shows Gandhi's funeral, an announcer covering the funeral outright tells the audience (indirectly) what to think of Gandhi and how others, like Albert Einstein viewed him, and that we should view him that way too. Richard Attenborough, the director and producer, was actually advised against glorifying Gandhi. I don't get why he didn't take that advice to heart, considering that this was a passion project to him. Even some of the British officials in the film act like two-dimensional bad guys. One of the only positive things I can say about this film is that Ben Kingsley nails it as this film's version of Gandhi. He makes me wish that the Gandhi that has been glorified by the world was a real person, instead of the flawed and sometimes frightening human being that actually existed on this Earth. The film also has a genuinely good message, but like I said, it's just turned into a preachy sermon throughout most of the movie.

What else can I say? I was so disappointed to realize that so much of this man's life was left out and simplified simply to be more Hollywood-friendly and attract more crowds. That is complete BS. What a movie biopic should do, I think, is have the courage to present the uglier details of a person's life and as a result, feel more challenging. Plus, don't preach a moral lesson to us if a person lived by one, because that's being unsubtle. Let us figure it out for ourselves. Some of those things I said were applied in the excellent film, Raging Bull, by Martin Scorsese. Not only is the film mostly true to life, according to Jake LaMotta, whom the film was based on, but it wasn't afraid to portray LaMotta as a brute of a man like he was in his boxing heyday and it didn't outright tell you what to think of LaMotta or how he was thinking; instead, it kept you guessing with Robert De Niro's performance and the cinematography. Gandhi is just too afraid to turn a man who undeniably made major contributions to humanity into anything less than what people wish to see him as. As a result, this film is disgraceful and is too much of a piece of Oscar bait to be genuinely good. I'm sorry, members of the Academy, but you made a terrible choice for the Best Picture of 1982.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

One of the few films I have a grudge against.

[1/10 · 18 January 2017]

Out of all the X-Men films that have come out over the past decade and a half, this is the worst one ever. I hate this movie with all my passion and I think it is undeserving to be in the X-Men canon. What angers me even more about it is that this film is based off a great origin story from the comics and it has been horribly tainted by just about everyone involved, except Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber.

The plot is basically retelling most of the important details about Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) origin, being discovering his bone claws as a child, fighting in different wars, his relationship with a Native American woman named Silverfox, his time on Team X and in Weapon X, getting the adamantium claws and his grudge against Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber). Also, there are numerous things added that were never part of the origin that just come off as the movie trying to show off other characters for the sake of it. For instance, Blob was never part of Team X and yet he's on the team as a normal-looking guy, and later, he becomes the Blob and used as the butt of a lot of jokes, particularly in a boxing match he has with Wolverine so Wolvie can get info. from him. Wolvie really would have just threatened to cut him open if he was truly like his comic book counterpart or anything like he was in the previous films, not to mention that Wolvie's adamantium skeleton and healing factor would both be strong advantages. Also, Gambit, one of everyone's favorite X-Men (I never liked him) also appears, but it's only for a couple of short scenes and his role is incredibly inconsequential. That is the least of the problems here.

One major problem is the terrible special effects. Many are obviously computer-generated, and the contenders for the worst looking ones include the Patrick Stewart recreation and Wolverine's claws, which were a combination of practical and digital claws in the original trilogy. Usually, films with imperfect special effects can be forgiven if everything else in the film works. For instance, the effects in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial are not ground-breaking, but because I loved the story, soundtrack, and the title character, I didn't care. However, the story and characters here are terrible, so there is no excuse.

The characters are also all expendable, from Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston) to Silverfox. Most of the guys in Weapon X are just there to show off their "cool" powers like Agent Zero's agility, Wraith's (WILL.I.AM) teleportation, and Blob's resistance to gunfire. The scene with Team X raiding an African compound is a special offender in this category. So much time is made for showing off each of these guy's powers, Wolvie and Sabretooth don't get a chance to shine. In X2, it was implied that Wolvie was a much worse person than he eventually became when on Stryker's team, and the film fails to explore that completely. Because these guys on Team X are given no character beyond their bad-a$$ery and their powers, I don't care what happens to them. People say that Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson was the standout among them, but I don't think he was able to prove himself as that character until 2016's Deadpool. Lynn Collins as Silverfox in particular has some of the worst dialogue and acting in the film, and the fact that her (fake) death in the film is Wolverine's reason for getting his adamantium makes the whole thing much more cliché.

A lot of the events in the film don't make sense either. Why does Stryker order his men to blow Wolvie up when Wolvie has a healing factor and the adamantium in his skeleton makes him nigh-indestructible? How does Gambit run back down the alleyway and run back the same way on a rooftop when Wolvie knocked him out before fighting Sabretooth? Why does Wraith try to kill Sabretooth with his bare hands when he knows that Sabretooth has a healing factor? Why is Wolvie reacting to his claws in amazement instead of agony like the X2 flashbacks clearly show? How do adamantium bullets erase Wolvie's memory? That is unacceptable. What does Stryker hope to accomplish by combining the powers of several mutants into Wade, especially when more powerful mutants like Magneto and Professor Xavier could defeat him? How does Wolvie and Sabretooth being brothers add anything to their grudge? Why can't Sabretooth survive the adamantium procedure but Wolvie can, even though they have the same powers? Why do Silverfox's powers work on Wolvie but not Sabretooth? Why? What? How?

The only good thing I can say about this movie is that despite being manipulated by the very poor script, Jackman and Schreiber do what they can with the characters of Wolvie and Sabretooth. Otherwise, this is a pile of junk that is so bad that even before the Days of Future Past retcon, the makers of this series started to forget its existence. It should have been more true to Wolverine's character and been a proper prequel to the original X-Men trilogy and NOT an advertisement for other characters and a poorly-written, clichéd superhero movie. I give this movie the least amount of praise possible and condemn it for the rest of its existence.

Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)

One of the worst-directed films you will ever see.

[1/10 · 17 January 2017]

Bo Derek was no doubt one of the most popular young women in the late 70s and early 80s, but that was more for her sex appeal and not her acting talent, as this sorrowful pile of s**t shows.

This is basically another adaptation of the classic Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This time, however, the story is overly-sexualized with Derek doing almost nothing except posing so the camera will get a proper shot of her body, regardless of how many clothes she has on, doing some really terrible acting and speaking most of the film's worst dialogue, and eventually just ends up staying with Tarzan at the end where she will remain half-naked and getting laid by him for the rest of her life (I assure you, that's NOT every young woman's dream, especially when it comes to Tarzan).

Derek is Jane Parker, who is joining her father, played by Richard Harris, in a way where I can't tell whether he really tried but failed, was drunk, or just phoned it in, on an expedition to find an inland sea and an elephant graveyard. Along the way, she meets the king of the jungle himself and she becomes attracted to him, not because he is a man who doesn't speak and lives in the jungle peacefully with wild animals, but because she thinks he looks good. Tarzan ultimately has to prove his love to her by fighting off a bunch of native tribesmen and their chieftain, who is getting ready to make babies with Jane after she and her father are forcefully captured by his men.

I know I gave away the ending, but trust me: you'll be glad I told you before deciding to watch it. Where do I possibly begin? Well, I'll start by saying that even though the movie takes place in Africa, you constantly see Asian elephants and orangutans all over the place; that's because this movie was shot mostly in Sri Lanka, a small island off the subcontinent of India. Also, if Derek and her director husband, John, were trying to be subtle about Jane wanting to be sexually aroused by someone like Tarzan, they failed so miserably. In one scene where she's talking with Tarzan about being a virgin, she's peeling a banana. Really, Jane? You had to be that obvious? Additionally, I'd like to say that it's obvious why people criticize excessive nudity in films; it can distract people from the story (especially if the story is bad).

The direction is just some of the worst I've seen yet in a movie. In one scene where Tarzan is saving Jane from a python, the film suddenly goes slow-motion and the film goes all over the place, so much so that I can't tell what's happening with Tarzan, Jane, or the python. In fact, a good deal of the action is in slow-motion and it gets tedious and extremely boring. Did John Derek think that it would be a good way to keep tension up? It takes more effort than that. Additionally, Tarzan, played blandly by Miles O' Keefe, makes no sound throughout the movie except for the famous Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan calls, which are used over and over and over again to the point where you get sick of it. The music ranges from o.k. to mediocre, to bad, to just plain cheesy.

The dialogue is trashy too, and the acting makes it even more cringe- worthy. It can be contradictory too; at one point, Harris's James Parker remarks how strong a girl Jane is when he and his group are looking for her. Sorry, James, but your daughter is quite the weakling: she's been kidnapped by the king of the jungle, can't even pet a dog without falling into the water, and later she gets stripped naked and gets scrubbed down, and later painted white in a ceremony (I guess) where the chieftain will make babies with her. The situations surrounding the dialogue don't make sense either. When Jane asks him to tell her a story as she's being painted, he starts reciting Humpty Dumpty. No comment on that.

I could go on and on about everything wrong with this movie, but that would take more than a thousand words, so I'll end with this: Tarzan the Ape Man with Bo Derek is trash; trash that even fans of Bo Derek's sex appeal should skip. Let me reach out to those fans: seeing ten minutes of Bo Derek nude and wearing revealing outfits every other time does not mean you are watching a good movie.

The Dead Pool (1988)

This film forgot its fortune cookie, and it's sh*t outta luck

[4/10 · 27 December 2016]

To start off this review, I'd just like to say that I'm getting weary of watching so many film series that start off good, but continue pointlessly and decline over time. The Rocky and Rambo series are two examples of this in my eyes. I really don't think that Rocky needed any sequels, but somehow most of them turned out to be good. But if it wasn't for Rocky Balboa and Creed that came out in recent years, I'd say that the franchise overstayed its welcome and ended poorly with both Rocky IV and V. In terms of the Rambo series, the only one that is genuinely good is the original film called First Blood. The rest of the series is so different in tone and what the message is (although Part 2 tried to follow up on the original's Vietnam War themes). Even though Rambo (2008) is better than Rambo III at least, it mixed a serious tone with ridiculous moments like Rambo surviving a nuke with a pretentious moral argument with some missionaries saying that violence isn't the answer that didn't always work. Now we come to the Dirty Harry series, where besides the original, most of the films that came after were at least watchable and tried to expand on the character of Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan. Not this film, though.

The plot for the this entry is probably the stupidest of all of them. Having gained more fame than ever before, Harry becomes involved in this game called the Dead Pool, where numerous people in the entertainment business try to guess which celebrities will die next. Harry sees that he is on the list, and hence a whodunit search is made with film director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) as a primary suspect. Along the way, he pursues a glossed-over romance with reporter Samantha Walker (Patricia Clarkson).

The first thing to note about this film is that it is terribly unsubtle about addressing the controversies of film violence and how it may affect people in real life. A lot of the characters, including Swan, talk about it the way film critics and filmmakers would talk about it in documentaries, and all of these references don't have any real agenda, other than to try to be smart, which it isn't; even one of the celebrities who is murdered is supposed to represent famed critic Pauline Kael, who said the first Dirty Harry was "fascist". Even Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives did a better job of blending its referential humor about horror films into the story. Also, as I already mentioned, the romance between Harry and Sam is very quickly glossed over and doesn't get a lot of focus; the romance is also terribly shallow. Sam looks like she just wants to get into Harry's pants and Harry just seems to think that Sam is good-looking.

Even the villain is terribly realized, with a twist that comes at the last minute as to who is really killing these celebrities. The motivation of the villain isn't even enough to forgive it. It seems that besides the first Dirty Harry, the only film in the series that actually had great villains was Magnum Force, because the villains in that movie were basically Harry and his philosophies about upholding the law taken to the extreme. The villains in each of the films afterwards just seemed to be a poor man's Scorpio (the killer from the first film) and just act really crazy. To make a great villain, you need much more.

Also, while Sudden Impact, the previous film in the series directed by Eastwood, managed to blend together the grittiness of the 70s and the action and mood of the 80s, the 80s side takes over completely, with its references to drug use and over-the-top violence. As a result, this does not feel like a Dirty Harry film, but more like an 80s action film that stars Eastwood, who just happens to be playing Harry Callahan.

One thing I will say I like is that Harry is finally recognized as a guy who actually gets the job done, despite using brute force. After four films of Harry having to listen to the complaints of his superiors about being too excessive on the job, it seemed that people were finally making sense about what Harry has done. At the same time, it takes away from the tension between Harry, the cop who will go the extra mile to get things done, and the public, that thinks his philosophies are outdated and undemocratic. In fact, there is no theme about the rights of the accused like in the other films. Harry just gets into trouble with the bad guys and his superiors complain, like it's any other cop movie. There's also an anti-press message, but like the romance, it's glossed over.

To conclude, The Dead Pool is the worst of the Dirty Harry films and results in making another film series go one film too long. There was no point in making the film and it doesn't advance Harry's character or the series in any way.