Just a Quickie

So just a quick entry for this weekend. Went to see the Japanese horror movie remake Pulse, which features a screenplay by Wes Craven and TV stars Kristen Bell (from Veronica Mars) and Ian Somerhalder (formally of Lost). While not as creepy/scary as the best films of the Japanese horror remake genre (such as The Ring or The Grudge), it was still a pretty enjoyable movie. It was lit such that even during the daytime scenes everything was grey and subdued and almost washed out, which gave it a look and feel that perfectly set the tone of the movie. The undead beings (or whatever they were; the movie doesn’t really say for sure) are very creepy and there are a few scenes that make you jump a bit.

This is so my type of horror movie. I’ll take creepy and suspenseful and atmospheric over violent and gory and over-the-top any day of the week. And while Pulse isn’t the best example of this genre, it does a good enough job to be worth the $5 I spent to see it. Now I suppose I’ll have to track down the original and see how it compares (of course, there are numerous other Japanese horror movies I need to see first, so it’s going to be down the list a ways).

And since my Pulse review was so short, let me fill this entry out a bit with a quick write-up on another movie I watched this weekend (this one recorded off of one of my satellite movie channels). This one was also a mystery/suspense movie, but was more of a thriller than a horror film. The name of the film is The Machinist (listed on imdb as El Maquinista), and it stars Christian Bale weighing in at a frightening 120 pounds (he looks like a concentration camp survivor, he’s so skinny – check out some of the pics on the imdb page for the movie). He plays a lathe operator who hasn’t been able to sleep in a year, which is a big part of the reason for his continuing weight loss. It is also beginning to cause him to hallucinate, and he quickly becomes lost as reality and hallucination blur, until it becomes obvious that much of what he’s experiencing isn’t actually real.

The movie starts out with Christian Bale pulling a body wrapped in a rug out of the trunk of his car. He appears to be at a pier or something like that, and he throws the body over a guard rail onto a cement slab that angles down to the water. Of course the body hits with a thud and doesn’t roll down into the water. And at the same time someone with a flashlight is walking towards him. But before he has a chance to roll the body into the water, and before the mystery person reaches him, we jump back in time (as tends to happen in these sorts of movies). The rest of the movie unfolds in such a way that we almost forget we’re trying to find out about the body he’s going to dump in the water; we’re instead trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, and just what the hell is going on with this guy.

As the movie plays out and the audience starts to get a grasp on what’s reality and what is hallucination, it’s fairly easy to figure out who we’re going to find wrapped in the rug, as well as some of the movie’s other mysteries, but there are still a couple of surprises at the end, and the movie has a very satisfying and well thought out conclusion (at least, in my not so humble opinion). All in all, this was a very enjoyable and engaging suspense/mystery, and I highly recommend it.

Miami Vice

Okay, so I meant to have this done days ago, but things have been crazy this week. We had our annual meeting at work so there was a lot of prep for that, and of course my boss was out of state for training all week so I was on my own (as a side note, since the meeting ran all day Friday and all day Saturday (including all evening for a formal dinner), I’m probably not going to get to a movie this weekend, so no review next week). But, I promised a Miami Vice review (and I did get to the theater to see it last weekend), so here we go.

Sadly, I was fairly disappointed when I walked out of the theater on this one, and after thinking it over and discussing it with one of my co-workers the following Monday (who caught the show right after the one I did), I was actually even more disappointed (which is partly why I had a hard time getting motivated to make time to write this review). This one really did not live up to the hype (of course, I'm sure that there are numerous fans of the film out there that will tell me I'm full of it, but hey, I never claimed this was anyone's opinion other than my own). Of course, considering that I heard rumors that they re-edited it at the last minute because test audiences didn’t respond favorably to it, I shouldn’t have been too surprised. I mean, let’s be honest, if you’re trying to make changes/corrections in the last hour because it didn’t come together right, it’s probably already too late.

So what didn’t I like about this movie? Well, I think the biggest problem with it was the story, and to a lesser extent, the direction (which is really too bad, as I’m a big fan of most of Michael Mann’s previous films). The movie just felt way too disjointed, and just never really came together for me. I tried to get into the story, and just couldn’t. For one thing, they just jump right into things, which is fine up to a point, since I think you can assume most of the audience are at least familiar with (if not fans of) the original show, so it’s not like you need to introduce the characters or establish backgrounds or anything. But it would still have been nice to be eased into the storyline a little bit as opposed to being dropped right into it. It would also have been nice if the movie had actually taken place in Miami (since it’s in the title, after all). Instead, large parts of it take place in Central America and Cuba.

One of the reasons I heard for why they re-edited the movie was that test audiences didn’t feel it captured the spirit of the original show, and I have to say that the final product didn’t, either. For one thing, the music just wasn’t there, which I think is a big deal considering just how much an integral part of the TV show the music always was. Also, the movie is much darker and grittier and just lacked a lot of what made the original show so much fun to watch. On the plus side, they did include the majority of the secondary characters from the show – Trudy, Gina, Switek, Zito, and Castillo are all there, which I thought was cool. Of course, as my co-worker pointed out, there was one important character missing, and that was Sonny’s alligator Elvis. How can you have a Miami Vice movie without Elvis in it???

As far as the acting goes, nobody did a great job. Jamie Foxx just never came across as Tubbs in my mind, and his performance was fairly flat throughout. And while I do have to say that Colin Farrell really reminded me of a young Don Johnson and I think he was perfect for the role, he still didn’t really give a standout performance. I don’t know if the script just didn’t give them much to work with, or if they just weren’t into their characters or what the deal was, but nobody really shined.

So all in all I have to say that this movie was a disappointment. If you’re a fan of Miami Vice the TV show, my suggestion to you would be to pick up the box sets on DVD, and save this movie for a cheap rental night.