Movies, Movies, Movies

So I saw three new movies this weekend -- two at the theatre, and one on the SciFi Channel. At the theatre, I saw Vin Diesel's The Pacifier, and the new thriller The Jacket, starring Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley. Despite all the negative comments from the movie critics (but what the hell do they know), I thought The Pacifier was a pretty cute movie. Obviously it wasn't Oscar material, but then again, it wasn't supposed to be, either. Personally I think the critics are just showing their snobbery again, and are being overly critical of Vin's performance just because he's an "action star" instead of a comic actor. While not as good as some action stars switching to comedy (The Rock, for example -- I'm curious to go see Be Cool just to see his performance as a gay bodyguard), I think he does a passable job in a fun, harmless family comedy. The movie has a couple of surprises (and, as is to be expected, a couple of "twists" that you can see coming a mile away), and all in all does a pretty good job of keeping you entertained for an hour and a half, which is really about all that should be required from this sort of film. And, unlike too many kid/family movies that have come out in recent years, this was actually one you could take the whole family to (unlike films like The Cat in the Hat and its ilk, which in my opinion have a lot of humor in them that have no business being in a kids' movie -- but maybe I'm just old-fashioned).

Then there was The Jacket. Marketed basically as a horror movie, trying to exploit the populariy of such recent films as The Grudge, White Noise, and Boogeyman, it is in reality much more of a sci-fi suspense thriller. There really isn't much horror movie element to it (interestingly enough, imdb's entertainment news for today has an article stating that the director of the film, John Maybury, is furious with the marketing of his movie because it's so off-base with what the movie's actually about -- and considering that it debuted this weekend in 10th place with only $2.7 million, I think he's got reason to be upset). I won't go into too many of the specific plot points (I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't seen the film), but in essence this is a time travel movie about a man who's trying to learn the details of his own death. And of course, as with any time travel movie, you have to suspend A LOT of disbelief, because of the fact that there's almost no way to do a time travel movie without running into problems of paradox and simple lack of logic and realism. I have to agree with my buddy Cliff, though, in that this movie does a worse job with this than a lot of other movies do, and that a few minor changes to the story could have eliminated quite a few of these incongruities/logic faults.

When it's all said and done, though, if you can accept these incongruities and just kind of go with what the director/screenwriter are trying to do with the movie, I think it's a pretty enjoyable suspense thriller (if you're one of those sci-fi geeks who's really picky about the science and the logic of your movies, and has a problem with movies that are blatantly not logical at points or obviously scientifically invalid, then some of the things that happen in this movie are really, really going to bug you). There are certainly better suspense movies out there, but tihs one's not bad. The solid cast (who are all great in their roles) really helps. And, of course, as a heterosexual male, the brief Keira Knightley nude scenes go a long way to adding to the movie's overall enjoyment factor. :-)

And so from the theatre we head to one of my favorite TV stations, the SciFi Channel. Of course, when you're dealing with a "SciFi Original" movie, you know going in you've got a 50/50 chance of getting a fairly good movie, or getting complete dreck. When the title of the movie is Skeleton Man, those odds drop to about 70/30 that you're going to get dreck (but generally even the bad SciFi movies can be fun to watch, for their B-movie campiness if nothing else, so even with a title this bad, it's usually worth checking out). But in this case we get a movie so horribly, horribly bad, so completely without redeeming values as to be downright painful to watch. As I'm watching Michael Rooker deliver his painfully bad lines (and he's a good enough actor you know they've got to be as painful for him to say as they are for us to watch), I can't help but think back to one of Chris Rock's jokes from the Oscars, and the big thought going through my mind is, "Damn, I need to send Michael Rooker a check for $80!" (if you saw the intro to the Oscars, you'll know what I'm talking about).

So here's the basic plotline for this horrible trainwreck of a film: an Indian warrior killed his entire tribe years and years ago, and his spirit is cursed to forever haunt the area where their bodies are. Enter a group of special forces operatives on a mission to kill/destroy him (I was only about halfway watching the movie as I did other things, so I can't tell you exactly WHY they're sent to destroy him). So let's start with the first and most glaring thing wrong with this movie -- when we first see our "Indian spirit" do we get anything even remotely resembling a Native Americna? No, of course we don't! What we get instead is a Grim Reaper wannabe -- a skeleton wrapped in a black cape and big black hood (a reviewer on imdb very accurately compared it to Skeletor from Masters of the Universe). And what kind of weapons is our Indian spirit carrying -- why, a sword and an axe, of course; exactly what you'd expect him to be carrying (NOT!). And to make matters worse, it's not a tomahawk he's carrying, it's not even a European battle axe to match the sword; no, he's wielding a damned wood axe that the props guy picked up at some hardware store! I understand having a small budget, but that's just sad. Eventually he does end up with a spear and a bow and arrows that actually look Native American, but at this point I've so lost it with the horrid props and costume for this character that I just can't bring myself to care.

But it doesn't stop there! Oh no, it wouldn't be enough to completely screw up the lame waste of a villain. Because in comes the "special forces" team sent in to destroy him. Firstly (as seems to happen all too often in these low-budget military type movies), our team is half women. Now I appreciate political correctness and all that, but the bottom line truth of the matter is, you don't find women in elite combat units! You just don't!! But let's not forget that having women on the team isn't really about being politically correct and equal opportunity and all that; no, it's really all about the sex-appeal factor.What's a B-movie without sexy women, right? Which means that the women in question look a lot more like Sports Illustrated swimsuit models than they do combat soldiers. I mean, with characters like Vasquez in Aliens, or Michelle Rodriguez's characters in Resident Evil and S.W.A.T., you can at least say that these are women that can absolutely kick ass, and you have no problems believing they can hold their own against the guys in a combat situation. But with these pretty girl model types, about the only combat you'd ever imagine them being in would be fighting each other over a skirt at The Gap. And being a made-for-TV movie, you don't even get to see them naked, so what's the point of putting them in the damned movie?

It's not bad enough, though, to just have women on the team who obviously don't belong there. No, we've managed to put together the most incompentent group of "special forces" soldiers that have ever been committed to film! Let's start with the guy armed with the sniper rifle who, instead of shooting the spirit from a distance like any halfway competent marksman would do, feels the need to run right up to him -- close enough so that the spirit can stab him in the forehead with his spear! I still can't figure out how that would have been a fatal wound, seeing as how the guy obviously had no brains in his head of any sort whatsoever! I admit, being former military myself, and having a love of realistically done military/combat movies, I am really, really picky about how soldiers are presented in film. So little things that most people wouldn't notice (like the fact that these clueless losers are wearing TENNIS SHOES instead of combat boots) really bug the hell out of me. But even someone who's not a purist about these sorts of things has to just be stunned when the final two soldiers (Michael Rooker and one of the women) lose their bearings, and you actually hear the woman make the statement, "Moss grows on the north side of trees. We can use that to re-orient ourselves." It's called a compass, for Christ's sake! What the hell sort of soldier goes on a field mission without a damned compass!!

The list of things wrong with this movie just goes on and on (wow, looking back I can't believe how long my rant on this mess has gotten already). Repeatedly, I found myself thinking, "Who the hell thought THAT was a good idea?!" and "Someone actually agreed to spend money to film THAT?" Truly, truly a trainwreck of a movie. And like a trainwreck, you can't help but watch. I actually put a DVD on about a third of the way through this movie, but I kept putting off starting it to watch "just a few more minutes" of this, just out of morbid curiosity I guess to see what they'd do next. And once there was only 20 minutes or so left, I felt I had to see it through to the end just to see how the hell they were going to actually destroy this seemingly indestructable demon (who, of course, by this point has killed off all but two of the main characters, along with a couple of dozen bystanders). The creature ends up attacking a science lab/power plant type place of some sort (since I was on my computer at the same time and was only kind of watching the movie, I missed what exactly the place was, and how they lured the spirit into the place). They manage to get him locked in the "power core" room or whatever the hell it was, and zap him with huge amounts of electricity and blow him up (yeah, THERE'S an original concept!). And we all know that no lame B-movie like this would be complete without a brief shot during the end credits of the black-cloaked spirit riding off into the woods on his horse, completely whole again.

Generally I consider myself to be about as forgiving and easy-going a movie reviewer as you're likely to find, but I have to give this movie an absolute F, zero stars. If it wasn't for the fact that I was actually doing other things while I watched it, that would have been two hours of my life that I would have wanted back!! Whew! I feel better now! :-)

So that's it for today. In the coming weeks we've got Hostage, Robots, and The Ring Two (all of which look pretty good), so expect more reviews soon. And I may yet get down to the theatre to see Be Cool; we'll see what happens.