Foster on Film – Page 56 – The Film Criticism of Matthew M. Foster

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Apr 062001

In 2176 on a partially terraformed Mars, Police lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) is discovered by the Martian authorities to be the only occupant of an arriving train. She recounts the events leading to the situation: Ballard, her commander (Pam Grier), Sgt Jericho (Jason Statham) and two new officers (Cleas DuVall, Liam Waite), arrived at an outpost town to pick up the dangerous criminal Desolation Williams (Ice Cube) and found all of the civilians slaughtered. Only prisoners in locked cells survived, including tight-lipped scientist Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy). It appeared the miners had gone insane and would be coming for the officers and prisoners soon.

Ghost of Mars gets a bad rap. It failed at the box office and as a sci-fi horror flick from the master, John Carpenter, it was a disappointment. But it shouldn’t have been. It had been more than a decade since Carpenter’s glory years and while Ghost of Mars is going to sink in comparison to The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China, it stands pretty tall next to his 90’s output like Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Village of the Damned. The problem is people were expecting something groundbreaking. Instead you get a nice, little, b-movie, action pic. The complaint I hear is that it looks cheap, but really it looks inexpensive, and there is a difference. There’s no big set pieces. No extensive special effects. But what is there looks fine. The makeup is good. The fights are exciting. The crappy, little outpost town looks like what a crappy little outpost town might look like on Mars. This is a little picture, not an extravaganza, and with proper expectations, it is a lot of fun.

The story is simple, but with just the proper dose of mythic sci-fi mumbo-jumbo to work. It works so well that Doctor Who stole it for one of its most popular episodes, The Waters of Mars. (Did they pay for it? Really, because we are talking plagiarism here.) This is an action/thriller, so not a lot of time is spent on the science fiction side. That’s all stage dressing while our heroes and anti-heroes fret, argue, and shoot a lot of bad guys. However, Carpenter does suggest a complex world that gives the picture the feeling that it is something more. Mars is a matriarchal society, where “breeders” are rare, sex is just for fun, and power is in the hands of a few. It’s just a line dropped here and there, but I appreciate the lip service to this being a different world. And the film gets a boost from an unreliable narrator. We aren’t seeing what happened, only what a police officer with a bit of a drug habit says happened. You can make a game out of spotting the bits where she might be making herself look better than she was.

Henstridge is spot-on as a tough as nails action hero. Statham is at home in this kind of picture and the only problem with Grier is we don’t get a lot more of her. The film’s one true failing, however, is with that cast: Ice Cube. He never for a moment seems like someone on Mars, or even a character in this film. He’s just doing the same Ice Cube thing he always does (Statham is in a similar boat, but Statham has charm). Desolation Williams isn’t the nihilistic anarchist he is supposed to be, but just Ice Cube in a grumpy mood. Early in the film’s production, when the proposed title was Escape from Mars, the character was going to be a variation on Escape from New York’s Snake Plisskin. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out and we get Ice Cube dragging down the movie.

If you are looking for a grand epic, Ghosts of Mars will disappoint. But for a throwback, small-scale, action flick for a Saturday afternoon, it’s a qualified success.

Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: Three Reels

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Mar 102001

During the Spanish Civil War, Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is left at an isolated orphanage with an unexploded bomb buried in its courtyard. There he must deal with aggressive students, a violent handyman named Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), and the ghost of a boy who disappeared the day the bomb hit. The orphanage is a place of intrigue, as Jacinto searches for hidden gold, and sleeps with both the local beauty and the older, one legged, headmistress, Carmen (Marisa Paredes). Dr. Casares desires Carmen, but settles for helping her run the institution.

Director Guillermo del Toro is one of the best working directors, and may be the most exciting talent to appear in the last fifteen years. He is a master of his craft, making intelligent, thoughtful, and atmospheric films, even when he’s working with action horror comics (Blade II, Helboy). His lighting, sound, camera angles, and production design are always artistic while making the movie accessible. Plus he can get a great performance from anyone.

But as a writer, he loses touch with pacing. His work is too leisurely. The Devil’s Backbone displays both his skills and his failings. This is the sort of film that leaves you discussing its quality, but then hoping it will hurry up and end while watching.

A great deal of the time is spent with children I neither liked nor empathized with. Carlos is a generic film child. This is a very personal film for del Toro, and Carlos undoubtedly stands in for the director in his youth. But while the director may be invested in the character, he gave me no reason to be. There is also a school bully, who is easy to hate early on, but whom we are supposed to learn to like and respect by the end. The film depends on us changing our feelings about him. But I didn’t. A writer can get too close to his characters, and that is the case here.

The ghost story feels tacked on. It would take me ten minutes to remove the ghost from the script, and it would change nothing. If I need to suspend my disbelief enough to accept a ghost, it would be nice if the ghost did something. As long as Carlos attributes what he hears to a ghost, the spirit itself is unnecessary.

Perhaps The Devil’s Backbone’s greatest flaw is that it requires acts of stupidity to move the plot along. When Casares and company find they must toss a particularly vicious man from the grounds, he forces the man at gunpoint about ten feet into the desert, and then turns around and goes back inside. No one could be that stupid. The orphanage has many entrances, and the maniac has nowhere to go. Of course he’s going to come back. There’s no other option, yet Casares and the others go about their business as if the issue is finished. I’m willing to believe in ghosts, but not in that level of foolishness. It pulled me out of the film. And such plot-oriented behavior continues when a large quantity of gasoline, much of it in cans, is set ablaze. No one is so ignorant as to attempt to beat out the flames, but here a character does just that. Watching this act, what motivation am I supposed to grant this person? That she wanted to commit suicide is the only one that is possible.

The film is stuffed to overflowing with symbols. It’s a fun game to try and spot them all and put meaning to them. Some, like the bomb in the yard, are easy. Others are a bit too vague and can only be deciphered with aid from the director.

This is a well made film I really wanted to like, but with little tension, unlikable and unbelievable characters, and a plodding pace, I was left only with del Toro’s style and the professionalism of the crew, and that isn’t enough.

Back to Ghost Stories

Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Ju-On 1 & 2 (2000)

Oct 122000

A series of interrelated vignettes of horrible deaths, Ju-On slowly reveals why ghosts are killing the living, and why it will never end.

Quick Review: Ju-On is part of the Japanese new wave of horror started by Ringu. The films in the movement tend to be more frightening than almost any other movies, and also tend to be low on coherence. Ju-On is a prime example on both counts. God, this thing is creepy.

I need to explain what film(s) I am recommending as names are not a big help. In 2000, Ju-On, and its sequel Ju-On 2, were made for television and video. Sometimes they are known as Ju-On: The Curse 1 & 2, but generally not. Ju-On 2 repeats close to 30 minutes of the first film (taken from the beginning and the end) and is not a sequel but a seamless continuation making one film. The films were such a success that theatrical versions were made—not exactly remakes, but not exactly sequels either. These films were called Ju-On and Ju-On 2 as well. Sometimes, they are called Ju-On: The Grudge and other times a suffix is added that’s a Japanese word meaning “theatrical.” The new Sarah Michelle Gellar film, The Grudge, is a remake of the first Japanese theatrical release.

Ju-On 1 & 2 cover, in a non-linear fashion, the events that happen after a brutal crime. But unlike Pulp Fiction, you can’t put things together when it’s over. It’s impossible to figure where one of the segments fits into the timeline. But it still works. Yes, the rules change, but that’s only a problem if there is a way out, a way to win, and in Ju-On there are no answers.

Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Oct 112000

Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) is happily married to Dr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford). She lives in an ideal old house on a lake. But things may not be perfect. Emotionally unstable, she can’t deal with her daughter leaving for college. She also was injured in an automobile accident a year ago, still mourns her first husband, and misses her music career. So, when she starts seeing a ghost, she suspects her neighbor of killing his wife, but her husband is afraid she is losing her mind.

The passage of time is good for this film, as those who haven’t seen it can do so without the interference of the worst advertising campaign in history. What Lies Beneath is a suspense film, with mysteries and misdirects, but the trailer happily revealed everything except the last “twist,” and that final is easy to surmise. Watch the trailer, and you might as well pick up the film at the hour and thirty minute mark. I’d also suggest you skip a majority of reviews written in 2000, as they follow the lead of the distributor and say too much.

If you haven’t been spoiled, what you have here is Robert Zemeckis (Contact, Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her) pretending he’s Hitchcock. Brian De Palma, who was the previous winner of the “I Stole From a Dead Director” award, must hand the trophy to Zemeckis, who puts more Hitchcock in than Hitchcock ever did. We get camera moves, music, specific scenes, and plot elements all pulled from the rotund master’s works. Zemeckis doesn’t deny it (it would be silly to try), stating that he was trying to make the film Hitchcock would have if he’d had digital effects. Well, on a directing side, he succeeds, and so does the movie. If you’re going to steal, do it from the best. All the tricks that made a viewer jump or become tense are used with great effect here. Zemeckis knows what he’s doing, and I’ve rarely seen such exuberant direction.

The script is another matter. First (and only) time writer, Clark Gregg, isn’t sure how to write a suspense film, even when he’s swiping from Hitchcock. I’m afraid he should have pillaged more. He can’t move the story along or explain what is happening. So he introduces Jody (Diana Scarwid) who pops into the movie whenever Claire has a feeling to express or some background exposition to discuss. I need friends like this. Plus there is the ghost, a very non-Hitchcockian item, that barely has anything to do with the film. What Lies Beneath is not a ghost story; it is a suspense story with a ghost tossed in. Whenever the plot stalls, the ghost pops up to move it along. Clair is trying to figure what happened in the past but is stalled, so the ghost pops in to possess her for a moment and feed her the info. The ghost could be removed from the film and replaced with some detective work. When that’s the case, pull the ghost. If I have to suspend my disbelief in active dead girls, I want there to be a payoff. There is also the issue of the red herring that takes up half the film. Yes, red herrings are good in a suspense film, but I felt I’d wasted thirty minutes when a plot thread frays and then vanishes.

What Lies Beneath should have been a topnotch suspense story. Even with the script errors, and the stiff acting of Ford, it isn’t a bad way to spend a stormy evening.

Ghost Stories, Reviews

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)

Oct 112000

The vicious, corporately-governed Pychlos rule Earth and are stripping it of its resources. The few remaining humans are either slaves or live in primitive tribal groups. Security Chief Terl (John Travolta) concocts a plan to use the “man-animals” for secret mining to enrich himself, but he is not prepared for Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), who will not break and dreams of leading the humans in a revolution.

Do I need to rip apart Battlefield Earth? Is there someone out there saying to himself, “Hey, I bet that Battlefield Earth could be interesting”? Has any critic, ever, remarked that this was a good use of celluloid? However, Battlefield Earth is occasionally called the worst film ever made, and that is a massive overstatement. Anyone who says that has simply missed a huge number of low budget, direct-to-video releases. There are hundreds of films that have a more ridiculous plot, poorer acting, worse special effects, and lower production values. But most of those are made for under $100,000 and worked on by free labor and untried directors. What puts Battlefield Earth in a special category is that it’s a big budget studio picture with all the advantages of having paid professionals. I’d have thought that those skilled workman would have caught some of the problems since Battlefield Earth fails in almost every way.

When I watch it, it isn’t the mind bogglingly stupid plot and factual errors that make me want to turn it off. Yes, it suggests humans can learn to fly thousand-year-old, perfectly preserved fighter planes in a week, and that there’s still fuel for them, but then Star Wars had huge audible explosions in space. Nor does the pathetic acting pull it so far down. Yes, Travolta is terrible (but no worse than he was in Saturday Night Fever—really, don’t take it from your rose-colored memory, re-watch it) and Pepper is so generic I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup five minutes after the film ends. However, if I compare them to Hayden Christensen in Attack of the Clones, Travolta comes out on top and Pepper’s forgettable nature becomes an asset.

Battlefield Earth’s most destructive flaws all come from Roger Christian, the worst director to get a regular paycheck. He gives the film its ugly, indistinct look. He chose to shoot long shots when any competent director would know to go close. He keeps the camera still when it should move, and moves it when it should be still. Christian must have watched other films and noticed that the camera sometimes tilts, but he didn’t know why. I guess he never asked, as he too tilts his camera, but in a random manner that suggests a loose screw on the tripod or a drunken cinematographer. Then there are the slow motion shots. Talented directors have made huge mistakes with slow motion, so it’s no surprise that Christian is confused on how to use it. Maybe they were accidental shots; he might have bumped the camera from time to time and changed the speed. It makes as much sense as suggesting the end result was done on purpose. Nothing could have made this a good film, but mild competence with the equipment and a few 100 level film school classes would have made it tolerable.

I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention the boots. The brilliant costuming trick used to make the Pychlos taller than humans is 1970s pimp boots. That alone makes this a better film than The Village as nothing in that film made me laugh.

I even laughed at one scripted joke. When Terl refuses to write “shot by man-animal” on a report without seeing it actually happen, he has a gun handed to the human, who shoots another Pychlo. With a shrug, Terl says “I’ll be damned.” It’s not much of a joke, but were you expecting better?

Battlefield Earth is a poor excuse for a film, but it is not even the worst film in budgeted Sci-Fi. Christians can always point to Contact, Enemy Mine, and Lawnmower Man 2 as proof that others have sinned against the gods of film more than he.

Aliens, Reviews, Science Fiction, Space Opera Tagged with: One Reel

Dracula 2000 (2000)

Oct 092000

A gang of thieves, led by Solina (Jennifer Esposito) and Marcus (Omar Epps), break into Matthew Van Helsing’s (Christopher Plummer) secret vault expecting to find treasure. Instead, they release Dracula (Gerard Butler) who heads for New Orleans and Van Helsing’s daughter, Mary (Justine Waddell). While Dracula adds to his stable of beauties (Jeri Ryan, Colleen Fitzpatrick), Van Helsing and his assistant, Simon (Jonny Lee Miller), hunt him.

Sometimes called Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000, though Craven had little to do with its making, it is a well paced, slick, update of Dracula, that suffers from being unnecessary. The story had been told two or three times too many before this attempt. Still, if you are looking for nothing new, this isn’t a bad way to spend a few hours. Butler is a sensual, angry, and feral count and is stylish striding down the streets at Marti Gras. Plummer is as good a Van Helsing as any (which isn’t saying a lot), but Miller never gets a hold of his underdeveloped Simon. I should care about him, but I don’t. Luckily, all of the females come off better, particularly Waddell who makes Mary strong, sexy, and a little lost.

This is a surprisingly tame horror film. It was given an R rating, but it’s as light an R as I recall seeing. The gore is low (some vampires lose their heads, but in a neat, non-splattering way) and female, succubus-vamps turn out to be rather pure, doing their heaving within their gowns. A bit more blood and flesh would have improved the film as their lack drew my attention.

The one new item inserted into the predictable story has to do with the origins of Dracula and why he can’t die. It’s a clever twist and almost gives Dracula 2000 a reason to exist. Almost.

It was followed by two direct-to-video sequels: Dracula II: Ascension and Dracula III: Legacy.

Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Three Reels

Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (2000)

Oct 092000

Vlad the Impaler (Rudolf Martin) tells the story of his life to a church inquisition. He recounts his battles against the Turks, his deals with the king of Hungary (Roger Daltrey), his marriage to Lidia (Jane March), and his brutal reign where he butchered many in the name of justice and to protect peasantry.

“True” is a nebulous term in film, and in the case of the The True Story of Dracula, it doesn’t mean that the events in the film happened. Here, it means that this isn’t a story about a guy with fangs drinking blood, but rather a vague rendition of the popular myth of Vlad Tepes, ruler of Wallachia in the fifteenth century. Known in the West as a barbaric dictator who tortured and killed thousands, he is considered a hero in Romania, saving the country from the Turks.

Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula doesn’t ignore his crueler acts. While the low budget eliminates the field of impaled Turks, it gleefully includes his having the ambassadors’ hats nailed to their heads when they wouldn’t remove them. But told from Vlad’s point of view, his murderous acts are presented as just acts that saved his people. Only the fact that the atrocities drove his wife insane suggests that maybe he was a tad bit overzealous. I don’t get many cinematic chances to sympathize with a vicious, dark character, so I found it to be a pleasant change of pace.

Shot in Romania, the countryside is beautiful. Add in Rudolf Martin’s sensual, light, and sadistic performance, and the twisting plot, and the film has a solid foundation. However, this is too small a picture for the story. Where there should be huge armies slaughtering each other across fields and rolling hills, there’s about a busload of guys in a misty forest. It never feels like these events are changing a nation, but rather a small hamlet. Peter Weller’ Father Stefan doesn’t help either. Weller plays him as a man with the flu, for years. I’m not sure that gastric upset counts as character development.

And while this is supposed to be a story missing the supernatural elements, the filmmakers couldn’t help themselves and put in just enough to upset anyone who thought this was a documentary. I liked the addition, but I already knew the story was a fantasy.

Fans of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer have an additional reason to catch this film. Martin repeated his role as Vlad in the first episode of the fifth season, but as the undead version. Think of the film as a prequel.

Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Two Reels

Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)

Oct 092000

Saya, a vampire hunter in Japan just as the Vietnam is about to heat up, is sent by a secret organization to a girl’s school on an American military base. There she seeks out vampiric demons that hide as students.

Quick Review: I’d like to say you should rush out and see this anime film immediately. Mixing cell animation and CG, no anime looks better. It suggests an intricate world, with analogies galore. The pre-Vietnam setting is an underused one, particularly for vampires, and ripe for inspection. Blood: The Last Vampire, is set up to be brilliant. But it isn’t, and I can only recommend it when all other options are missing.

The problem is that this isn’t a movie at all. Running just 48 minutes, it feels like the middle of a film. None of the mysteries are explained. None of the possibilities are explored. Outside of revealing Saya as a vampire (a surprise ruined by the title), her background isn’t touched upon. Who is she and why does she hunt? What are the demons she kills? What is the organization she works for? What is the connection to the American war? Nothing is answered. All the film gives us is Saya running in, finding demons, and fighting them. The end. Perhaps a sequel (and a prequel) will make this interesting. Until then, it nicely animated, but vacuous.

Foreign Language, Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Two Reels

Final Destination (2000)

Oct 092000

A teenager’s vision of the explosion of the plane he’s just boarded keeps him (Devon Sawa), several classmates, and a teacher from dying when the plane does explode. However, Death is not going to let anyone escape their fate.

Quick Review: An update of a Twilight Zone episode, Final Destination strips the fat out of the Slasher by eliminating the killer. There is just the killings and the victims. In-between murder scenes, the soon-to-be corpses discuss the meaning of fate (and if you are religious, it brings up some very uneasy questions about weather God is on your side). The entertainment comes from the mousetrap-like deaths that become wilder and wilder as the film goes on. Like most Slashers, there isn’t much plot and almost no surprises, but it’s a great game of dominoes.

Reviews, Slashers Tagged with: Three Reels

South Park: A Very Crappy Christmas (2000)

Oct 092000

With the whole of South Park lacking in Christmas spirit, Stan Marsh (voice: Trey Parker), Kyle Broflovski (voice: Matt Stone), Kenny McCormick (voice: Matt Stone), and Eric Cartman (voice: Trey Parker) go down in the sewers to find Mr. Hankey. He has gotten married to a drunk and had three children, so hasn’t had time to bring the spirit of Christmas to the people. The boys decide they need to help out and set out to make an animated film that will get people in the proper mood. 22 min.

Sometimes you just get lazy. It’s tricky coming up with something new each week, particularly if you’ve got the money from a successful series to spend. Some sometimes, you just toss a few old ideas together and hope no one notices. A Very Crappy Christmas is the work of people who just want a nap. It has funny moments, but most of it looks pretty old to any fan of South Park.

Once again we get Mr. Hankey, in his most unnecessary appearance. It’s the same old talking poo jokes, that weren’t that great the first time. To go with them, we’re given a flat, repetitive, bit about Mrs. Henkey being a drunk. It is never funny. Things are better with the boys, as they make their cartoon, The Spirit of Christmas (yes, in the episode, they are making the original short that Trey Parker and Matt Stone made in ’95 and that eventually got them their job). But a majority of the jokes were told previously, and better, in that short film. If you watched the five minute short on the internet, and thought, “I like that, but I’d like it better if it was longer, slower, and had less swearing,” then A Very Crappy Christmas should excite you. And if you did indeed think those things, what’s wrong with you?

The one successful new segment is a parody of the Lion King’s Circle of Life song, The Cycle of Poo. It is every bit as deep and meaningful as the original. You’ll have to decide if that means they are both insightful or vacuous.

Christmas Shorts, Christmas Shorts, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (2000)

Oct 092000

Short Film: Grandma (voice: Susan Blu), gets run over by Santa’s sleigh and then disappears. With her out of the way, Cousin Mel (voice: Michele Lee) attempts to sell the family store and destroy Christmas. It is up to grandson Jake (voice: Alex Doduk) to find Grandma.

The song Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer was recorded by Elmo and Patsy (husband-and-wife Elmo Shropshire and Patsy Trigg) in 1979, and elicited a few laughs, or at least smiles. It’s a novelty song, and like most everything done by Weird Al or Spike Jones, it’s mildly entertaining once or twice. After that it gets old very quickly. For many, this joke country song was never funny. Even for those who think it’s a “hoot,” the humor just barely stretches to three minutes. It’s hard to think of a piece of material that less needed expanding to fifty minutes. Oh well.

To fill out the extra forty-seven minutes, we’re introduced to bland, clichéd, humorless characters, crudely animated, that do exactly what I knew they would after the first few minutes. There are no new jokes. It only has what the song had to offer (and remember, that’s three minutes of so-so humor). There is a court scene, a lot of standing around in Grandma’s store, and quite a bit of Cousin Mel gloating. None of it is entertaining. Much of it is embarrassing. I find it embarrassing to be part of a society where this dreck is thought worthy of network broadcast time. It’s embarrassing to live in a country where something so inferior can be produced. And it’s embarrassing to be part of a species that has not hunted down and destroyed everyone connected to this atrocity.

Is that a bit too strong? Watch it and you won’t think so. Better yet, don’t watch it.

Christmas Shorts, Christmas Shorts, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Oct 082000

A green creature (Jim Carrey), abused as a child and publicly humiliated recently, takes his revenge upon the shallow residents of Whoville by stealing all of their Christmas presents and decorations.

If, while watching the 1966 animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you thought, “this isn’t bad, but what it really needs is someone, for no particular reason, kissing a dog’s ass” then the 2000 remake is the film for you. It removes all the charm and dilutes the clever sing-song poetry of Dr. Seuss with an hour and a half of frenetic movement, broad faces that might have been fitting in Ace Ventura, drab dialog, and pointless additional characters. Half the film appears ad-libbed, which could have been acceptable had the ad-libs been in character, funny, and even a fraction as witty as the book’s dialog, but they are none of those things. Did director Ron Howard edit anything out of the footage that was shot each day or did he just pull it out of the camera and stick it into the final film?

It would be hard to enlarge the story, told perfectly in twenty-six minutes, to feature length, but Howard and company fail in incomprehensible ways. Why give us a sad childhood for The Grinch to explain why he hates Christmas (when Dr. Seuss states no one knew the reason) or the nasty, anti-Christmas exploits of the Whos (don’t they need to already understand the meaning of the season for the story to work)? And from what pool in Hell did Howard pluck the idea of giving The Grinch an erotic love interest? Christine Baranski does her best in that hopeless role, reaching near orgasm whenever The Grinch in nearby; if only she could have been breathing heavily in another film. How the Grinch Stole Christmas isn’t just a horrid Christmas film, but is one of the ten worst films ever made.

Christmas, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

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