Foster on Film – Page 71 – The Film Criticism of Matthew M. Foster

Child of Darkness, Child of Light (1991)

Oct 051991

Father Justin O’Carroll (Anthony John Denison) takes over the duties of a recently injured priest, Father Rosetti (Paxton Whitehead), in an investigation into two virgin pregnancies. Joined by Sister Anne (Sela Ward), Father O’Carroll must determine if the two fifteen-year-olds (Sydney Penny, Kristin Dattilo) are truly virgins, and if so, which is carrying the child of God, and which is carrying the child of Satan.

Child of Darkness, Child of Light offers up the apocalypse, but isn’t much interested in it. Instead, it focuses on how claiming to be a pregnant virgin can be tough on a teenage girl at school. I suppose this could be interesting (though I tend to doubt it) if examined from the point of view of the girls. But except for a few scenes of cruelty, we see the girls’ plight via the priest. Emotional pain filtered through an uninvolved third party doesn’t have a lot of kick, particularly when that party is played as stiffly as Father O’Carroll.

Of the whole fire and brimstone and ultimate powers bit, we get crows. They must be very scary crows since people keep screaming when they show up. I might be a bit freaked if I found one in my room, but watching a few black birds on film doesn’t raise any goose bumps on me (unless Hitchcock is directing). Something, anything, of a supernatural nature would have raised the stakes. Sure, a low budget means nothing is going to be too spectacular, but crows just don’t do the trick.

The film presents a mystery: which baby will be Satan’s and which will be God’s, but doesn’t give us any way within the story to solve it. Still, I knew who was pregnant with the antichrist long before the end (since the filmmakers obviously wanted me to believe it was a specific girl, I knew it was the other). The problem with this mystery is it doesn’t matter which is which, dramatically. It changes nothing in the story.

In order to keep the great “secret,” both girls are treated the same for the first two thirds of the film. They have the same kind of home (with supportive parents), are equally mistreated at school, and have a teen claiming to be the father. And both are given the same amount of screen time. So first we have to follow the priest investigating one girl, and then watch as he does it all over again with the other, finding precisely the same things. It isn’t exciting once.

Sela Ward plays the understanding Sister Anne. She’s one of those really hot nuns we all see…well, only in the movies. She even ends up naked (no, you don’t get to see anything, only other characters do), because that’s what happens to hot nuns in movies.

Things pick up at the end with twists that clear up some points while making quite a few characters’ actions absurd. But I was up for anything that put some energy into the film.

Feeling like a bargain basement version of The Omen, Child of Darkness, Child of Light is too low on emotion, suspense, and frights to be of much interest. The last twenty minutes make the film just tolerable.

Christian Mythos, Reviews

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Oct 041991

You know the story of Robin Hood. He robs from the rich and gives to the poor, etc., etc. Well, maybe you don’t know it this time. Robin (Kevin Costner) now has a Moorish sidekick, Azeem (Morgan Freeman), his father has been accused of Satanism and murdered, and Will Scarlett (Christian Slater) hates him. There’s no Prince John and no archery tournament. However, there’s still Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who’s as cute as ever, and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman), who’s more than normally evil. So maybe the story isn’t that different after all.

With deep forests, a labyrinthine castle, treetop combat, vicious knights, sensational archery, explosions, chases across English hills that make you want to rush there just to see the sights, and heroic music, Robin hasn’t had it this good since Errol Flynn walked out on a tree branch in 1938. Everything needed for a new classic was lavished on this production, and it looks great. It’s fun. It’s exciting. But all is not well in Sherwood Forest. Yes, Robin’s been given everything, except good dialog, and an actor who can play the hero without looking foolish, while giving us someone to believe in.

Robin of Locksley is a hard role to play, but because he isn’t part of a modern street drama or is mentally or physically handicapped (the roles that critics and the Academy take seriously), no one notices how tricky it is. The man who portrays Robin needs to be able to appear sincere without being melodramatic, funny without being silly, romantic without being effeminate, a leader without being high-and-mighty, friendly without being sappy, and energetic without being frantic. It’s not easy. Errol Flynn could do it. Kevin Costner can not. Costner can manage a gee-shucks Western U.S. charm when he’s impudent, and just looks bored the rest of the time. While Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves should give him plenty of opportunity to display that out-of-place charisma, it doesn’t. Instead, he is stuck with far to many earnest moments, during which it seems likely he will keel over and start snoring. Outside of appropriate physicality, Costner has none of the requirements of the part.

Much has been made of Costner’s horrible British accent. And it is horrible, but alone, that isn’t a huge problem. If everyone sounded wrong, that would be OK. But he can’t keep it up, and slips back to his natural tongue, sometimes during a sentence. When he is standing next to an actual Brit, it does become grating. When he is joined by Christian Slater, perhaps the only person on the face of the Earth to sound less English than Costner, the movie turns into a parody.

The flick is still surprisingly enjoyable, considering those huge flaws. Mainly, because the other parts were cast better. In the writer’s sharpest move, they introduced a new character, Azeem the Moor. This allows for religious and cultural clashes that are more interesting than the main conflicts. It also presents us with something we haven’t seen before. I’ve seen the 1938 version of Robin Hood fifty or more times, on the big screen and at home. I don’t need a film to regurgitate it, particularly when there is no way it could match it. So, something different spices things up, while supplying a part for Morgan Freeman, who brings dignity to the proceedings while being funny and one hell of a fighter.

But what makes this a worthwhile film, and counters the languid portrayal of Robin, is Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham. The best action films are the ones with the best villains, and this is the stuff of villain legends. He’s powerful, smart, and completely insane (all things you want in your black hat). He’s also extremely funny, getting most of the best lines. There’s a reason for that. Rickman only took the role with the understanding that he could run with it, and create something memorable. So, he did, ad-libbing both dialog and action. He proves himself to be an accomplished writer.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves will not be remembered years from now, nor is it significant for the Swashbuckler genre. But due to an outstanding villain, it is a lot of fun.

Other Robin Hood Swashbucklers reviewed on this site: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946), Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), Robin and Marian (1976), and Robin Hood (1991).

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Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Three Reels

Robin Hood (1991)

Oct 041991

Sir Robert Hode (Patrick Bergin) insults the petty Norman lord, Sir Miles Folcanet (Jürgen Prochnow), creating a rift between Robert and Baron Daguerre (Jeroen Krabbé). Robert, renamed Robin Hood, and Will Scarlett (Owen Teale) join with a band of thieves lead by Little John (David Morrissey) and they begin robbing from the rich. Meanwhile, Maid Marian (Uma Thurman), Daguerre’s niece who is engaged to Folcanet against her will, escapes the castle disguised as a boy and joins the men of Sherwood forest.

1991 was the year of the mediocre Robin Hood film. While Kevin Costner’s Prince of Theives got all the notice, this gritty, British entry was generally ignored, and in the U.S., didn’t get a theatrical release. But sometimes a film gets all the attention it deserves, and this one’s rightful place is cable TV.

Director John Irvin (who also had a hand in the pitiful Ghost Story) slows this Swashbuckler to a crawl, if it is a Swashbuckler at all. The fights are plodding and few, and the entire picture is shot in a gray haze, a not-to-subtle metaphor for Britain’s political woes (a concept stolen from Excalibur where such magic makes sense). The production design and direction are for a serious medieval drama, but the characters of Robin and Will are pure frothy Swashbuckler. Light and fluffy, they are impetuous, charming braggarts who belong in a Technicolor fantasy. Tilting the film further away from any connection to reality is Jürgen Prochnow, who has invented a new accent that is supposed to be some kind of Continental French, but isn’t. Prochnow decided (undoubtedly with the aid of Irvin) that Folcanet should be indiscernible from a pit-bull (well, an overacting pit-bull). He growls. He snarls. He even drools a bit. What he doesn’t do is appear as a villain worth more than a snicker.

This not-quite drama/not-quite Swashbuckling adventure also ends up being a not-quite romance. Bergin, with his ’70s porno mustache, and Thurman have no chemistry. They match only in that both are portraying characters that are obviously from the latter half of the 20th century. Thurman’s Marian is a liberated brat, and Bergin…I mentioned the porno thing, right?

There is quite a bit worth saving in Robin Hood. Owen Teale makes an excellent Will Scarlett, and, unlike Thurman, does have chemistry with Bergin, and David Morrissey is an amiable Little John. There’s several mildly amusing gags, an occasionally inspired shot, and some interesting, if minor, twists to the legend. But the filmmakers never decided what kind of a movie they were making, so the enjoyable sections don’t fit together into any kind of a whole.

No matter what kind of flick it should have been, the central struggle needed to be more important. This isn’t a story of a contest between good and evil (as a Swashbuckler would frame it), nor is it a diatribe on class oppression (as would be fitting for a drama). The conflict is nothing but a trivial slap fight between two arrogant friends with hurt feelings. The Norman-Saxon discord is tacked on to give legitimacy to Robin, but is of little importance to the story. It all starts and ends on pride. This is the Legend of Robin Hood, stripped of its stature.

Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Two Reels

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Aug 201991

The destruction of the Klingon moon, Praxis, leads to peace negotiations between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. But the assassination of the Klingon Chancellor, blamed on Captain Kirk, threatens that peace, and Spock and crew must determine the truth while Kirk and McCoy must escape their prison.

The Undiscovered Country is a fine final outing for the Original Series crew. Not a great final, but a fine one. All the regular players do what we’ve learned to expect from them—no more and no less. It had been clear for several films that Paramount was finished doing anything interesting with Star Trek, nor were they likely to change anything. Here, even in a finale, everything is as expected. It’s a bigger budget episode of the old show. A good episode, to be sure, but an episode. Everything we expect will happen. Kirk learns a lesson about humility and Spock learns one about humanity. Bones is grumpy and Uhura says wise things while not being allowed to do much. There’s a fist fight, a space battle, the bad guys die. Kirk even kisses an alien girl. It’s a greatest hits movie.

Luckily, the greatest hits of Star Trek are fun. Spock’s sleuthing is engaging. The emotional moments almost have weight…almost. The jokes are humorous for the most part and the action is exciting if not meaningful.

If Star Trek VI stands out in any way, beyond being a massive improvement over its predecessor, it is in its supporting cast. Kim Cattrall’s Vulcan navigator has excellent interactions with the rest of the cast and Rosanna DeSoto makes a powerful and emotional Klingon Chancellor/Chancellor’s daughter. Even better is David Warner as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon who steals every scene except when Christopher Plummer is stealing the scenes from him. Plummer is the joy of this picture. He’s acting large here, but Plummer is an expert at that.

Which leaves us with a good episode with fine crew performances and an above average villain.

My ranking of all Star Trek movies is here.

Reviews, Science Fiction, Space Opera Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

Wings of Fame (1990)

Dec 061990

Brian Smith (Colin Firth), an angry writer, murders Cesar Valentine (Peter O’Toole), an egotistical actor, and then is killed by a falling light. Both end up in a hotel on a small island, filled with dead celebrities. As people become less famous on Earth, they are moved to smaller and smaller rooms, until they are pushed from the hotel into the vast sea where regular folk slowly fade into oblivion. Both Smith and Valentine become interested in Bianca (Marie Trintignant), a strange but beautiful amnesiac, but this isn’t a place where one should get attached to anything.

Film Blanc boomed in the ‘40s, feel-good films where the afterlife was seen as a benign bureaucracy, films like: Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Horn Blows at Midnight, and A Matter of Life and Death. Wings of Fame is a Film Blanc, but instead of a benign bureaucracy, the afterlife is a fascist celebrity-oligarchy and nothing feels good. There is no hope nor fairness. Continued existence has nothing to do with good deeds nor nobility, and in the end, as fame is fleeting, so is the reprieve from annihilation. The resident dead psychologist asserts that the island residents can feel jealousy and boredom, but not love, so even the brief reprieve has little to recommend it. It’s grim, but fascinating. This world is compelling and I want a twenty-part TV series digging into its depths.

Well, this isn’t a series. It’s a small film, shot simply. We get a taste of the world and I wanted more. As this is a movie, it needed a plot, and it has one, more or less. But the plot really doesn’t live up to the world, nor can it since the whole point it nothing really happens and you fade away. The love triangle is interesting while it is going on, but leaves you with nothing. And the “ending” for Brian and Cesar is annoying and doesn’t fit with the rest of the film. They shouldn’t have any kind of ending, but again, this is a movie so it had to go somewhere. But except for that ending, it doesn’t matter that the plot is weak. The plot isn’t the point. The individuals are interesting enough, and while this doesn’t rank with the top work of either Firth or O’Toole, their B-game is plenty good enough. They give us something to focus on while we are enjoying the painter being moved to smaller and smaller rooms, the anarchists trying (and failing) to make a statement of any kind, and the poet who objects to being moved to larger quarters due to a resurgence of interest in his work.

Wings of Fame flirts with greatness, but comes up short, though for a film that’s “just” very good, it will stay with you.

Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Troll 2 (1990)

Nov 011990

The Waits family—father Michael, mother Diana, teen daughter Holly, and son Joshua (George Hardy, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Michael Stephenson)—are off on a rustic holiday near the backwoods town of Nilbog. What they don’t know is that vegetarian goblins are waiting to turn them into plants. Luckily, Joshua’s dead Grandfather (Robert Ormsby) pops in randomly to help, which mainly means whispering words of wisdom about goblin food in his grandson’s ear. Holly’s mentally deficient boyfriend and his friends have followed the Waits, and it doesn’t take long for the goblins to start converting them into green goo.

I’m not picky. Really, I’m not. I allow movies a good deal of latitude. If a film has Nazis speaking to each other in ’60s colloquial English, I’m OK with it. If 4th century knights are bundled up in 14th century armor, I just smile and nod. But, if a movie is titled Troll 2, I’m not willing to let it off the hook for not having a troll. It doesn’t need to be a folktale troll, or a Tolkienesque troll. But something, somewhere in the picture, should at least be referred to as a troll, even if it is just a brightly painted rock. No such luck.

Considering the failings in every other area of Troll 2‘s production, why am I dwelling on the title? Because it is illustrative of the filmmaker’s lack of thought. Their lack of talent and artistry needs no illustration.

Troll was a clever, fun, low-budget fantasy. Troll 2 shares with it the word “Troll” in its title. It is also low-budget, though either it had a far lower budget than its predecessor-in-name, or a majority of the cash was spent on doughnuts.

Troll 2 is one of those horrible, horrible movies that can be fun due to the depth and breadth of its stupidity. It’s a film where the monsters are midgets wearing masks that aren’t up to the standards of your neighborhood Halloween shop. None of the actors can…well…act. Michael Stephenson sounds as if he is reading his lines from a cue card, and I’m pretty sure that Connie Young is. The plot includes Joshua urinating on the kitchen table in the middle of lunch, and his parents not finding this to be odd behavior. Ghostly Grandpa normally does nothing but give questionable advice, but sometimes he can materialize and beat on goblins. No reason is given for the variation in his powers. No reason is given for why the sound was recorded with a mono cassette deck found at the local dump either. The basic story is something you might come up with to entertain a three year old, but if this is a kid’s movie, I’d have thought they’d want to reduce the number of times someone says “shit.”

Simply put, this is an intellectually barren piece of flotsam, lacking any entertainment value, except the joy that you might find in making fun of it. But in that one area, it is a fertile paradise.

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Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

Predator 2 (1990)

Oct 101990

Near-future L.A. is in the midst of a drug war, and a predator has chosen this urban jungle as the site for his hunt. Police Lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) and his team (Rubén Blades, Maria Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton) are stuck in the middle. As Mike Harrigan tries to stop this invisible killer, he is stifled by a mysterious federal agent (Gary Busey).

An unfairly maligned sequel to the bang-smash-pow Predator, Predator 2 delivers much of the same. Minutely less original than its not very original predecessor, this is structurally the same film. Normally, that would be a huge detriment, but new concepts weren’t the high point of the first, nor does it play a part here. As for the incessant whining of critics, every complaint leveled against Predator 2 equally fits its acclaimed predecessor.

The cliché-ridden soldiers have been replaced by cliché-ridden cops. Tough, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is out; tough, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Mike (Danny Glover) is in. Both characters have been done to death, but I’m a bit more tired of the cop who does things his own way. The arguments with his superiors are almost unwatchable.

The flawed, sometimes comical but skilled sidekicks are new characters, but fulfill the same purpose as the old sidekicks. Of these, Paxton is the one to rise above his part, and while he doesn’t steal the show as he did in Aliens, he is memorable.

Like its predecessor, the opening is the weakest part. Instead of Arnold fighting South American communists for no reason, there’s Danny fighting South American and Jamaican drug dealers for no reason. But once the sides are clearly drawn, Predator 2 is an action-packed, blood-soaked, glowing-weapons-rich slug-fest. The slaughter on the train is as tense as anything in its prequel. The gore is more intense and the nudity…well, it exists in this one. The ending is more satisfying than the first’s, not only for the final confrontation, but also for the now famous joke of the Alien skull along with some Predator lore. Predator 2 might have exceeded its progenitor if there had been less “maverick cop” moments and the real battle had started earlier, but the first half drags and the federal agents sub-plot goes nowhere, so it ends up being a sequel, with all that implies.

Aliens, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990)

Oct 101990

In an underground laboratory, two scientists (Paul Koslo and Tara Buckman) send three subjects to another dimension. Only one returns, and she is infected by an alien lifeform that bursts out of her body and terrorizes the lab. With the facility locked down and set to self destruct, Dr. Ron Shepherd (Jan-Michael Vincent), who was the only survivor of a previous test, along with the two scientists, one aid, and four soldiers, must defeat the monster and find a way out of the lab.

The sci-fi monster film, Xtro II: The Second Encounter, is directed by the same person, Harry Bromley Davenport, as the sci-fi monster film, Xtro. So, two genre films with the same director, and the second one bears the title of the first with the Roman numeral “II” after it. I made the jump that Xtro II was a sequel to Xtro. I’m not one for rash decisions or wild speculation, but I think that’s a pretty reasonable conclusion. But it’s wrong. Yup, this film has nothing to do with Xtro. Instead, this is a sequel to a film that was never made. In that nonexistent film, Dr. Shepherd, operating a dimensional portal machine somewhere in Texas, brings a monster to Earth, and destroys the facility to kill the creature. He then tells no one what happened. And that brings us to Xtro II: The Second Encounter, which would be the second time humans met a monster from this other dimension.

Don’t you just love marketing? Although if I was going to play this game, I’d have picked a more popular film than Xtro to pretend to be a sequel to. How about Independence Day II, The Second Encounter With a Monster That Wasn’t in Independence Day?

Forgetting about the name, what you have here is a rip-off of Alien and Aliens. Perhaps you’d get the feel of the film better of I called it a rip-off of a movie that ripped-off Alien and Aliens. That better expresses the freshness of the material. Some day I’ll have to make a list of films that copied those two. It would be a long list.

So, instead of an alien world, the creature is found in an alternate dimension, that is seen through b&w monitors and appears creepy and filled with fog. The monster pops out of the chest of an explorer, though mainly off camera, and crawls around in the duct system of a very claustrophobic location. Then most of the cast run around as the computer counts down to self-destruct. Are you seeing Alien? One of the scientists is a traitor, and the four soldiers, with a lot of attitude, fight the monster using a cool gun that needs a harness. Are you seeing Aliens?

For a low-budget copy that can’t afford a decent monster nor enough fast action combat, Xtro II: The Second Encounter isn’t horrible. It actually has some engaging acting from some of the secondary characters, though both Paul Koslo and Jan-Michael Vincent are inept in poorly written parts. Whatever small virtues it may have, there is no reason to pick it up with so many Alien/Aliens clones to choose from. Better yet, just re-watch the originals.

Aliens, Reviews

Child’s Play 2 (1990)

Oct 091990

The possessed doll Chucky is remade and sets out to find Andy, the child he must killed to become human. Andy, whose mother is being held in a mental institution because she insists the events in the first film happened, is placed in a foster home and must fight off Chucky with the help of his foster-sister, Kyle.

Suspension of disbelief. Let’s say it all together. Now I’m pretty game with horror films. I’m willing to accept that a mass murderer can use voodoo to put himself into a doll. But after that, the filmmaker needs to give me something I can believe without effort. Nothing in Child’s Play 2 fits the bill. The Good Guy’s toy factory decides to repair Chucky (which, considering his condition at the end of the first film, is quite a feat) because of possible bad press from the events of the first film. Yes, because a now-institutionalized woman, a young child, and a wounded cop say a doll did it, they fix the doll. Ummm. OK. Then this kid who claims a doll kills, who is considered to be living in a horrific fantasy world, and is part of a murder investigation, is given to foster parents with no clue of…anything. Nah, no psychological or police investigations needed. Hmmmm. The little plastic doll shows up everywhere and kills a teacher with a ruler (this school district must reinforce its rulers with iron). Of course the doll can beat up not only children, but adults. And, it must have a Uranium core to explain its momentum as that’s the only way a doll could smash out a car windshield when the car stops suddenly (note to self, avoid cars with candy-sugar windows). It is one unbelievable thing after another. Much like the first, if they’d made this a comedy, that wouldn’t be a problem, but they tried for frightening, and just got silly. It all ends up at the Good Guys factory. Chucky and our heroes, Andy and a girl who is the Hollywood version of troubled, just happen to drive by the Good Guy’s factory—coincidence? This factory runs all night, but only has one employee. They also lock random doors marked exit and stack thousands of dolls on the factory floor. And that nonsensical scene is the best in the film.

Reviews, Slashers Tagged with: One Reel

Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

Oct 081990

In 2031, scientist Joe Buchanan (John Hurt) makes a weapon that has the side effect of ripping holes in reality which may lead to other times or other universes. Buchanan is pulled through one of these tears to what appears to be the 1830s, where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia) and his monster (Nick Brimble). Buchanan attempts to stop the tragedies in the novel Frankenstein from playing out, turning to Mary Godwin (Bridget Fonda), later named Mary Shelly, who wrote the novel, in hopes that her knowledge of events will help him change things.

A good rule for filmmaking: if you can’t do it right, with excellent acting, witty dialog, top shelf production values, and exquisite camera work, then do it different. If something is strange enough, it’s hard to notice if parts aren’t working. More than not notice, it sometimes becomes meaningless to say that those parts aren’t working. Should that character be speaking the wrong language and reacting to world-shaking situations as if they are drinking a mint julep? Who can tell?

B-movie mogul Roger Corman (The Raven, The Terror, X, The Masque of the Red Death) demonstrates his understanding of the rule by tossing a schlock sci-fi story into a gothic horror tale, casting the leads against type, and presenting it all as a philosophical treatise. The effect is quite jarring. Returning to the director’s chair after a twelve year absence, Corman abandons his past exploitation methodology in favor of intellectual chic. There’s a bit of the old Corman with limbs and hearts ripped out in showers of gore, but gone are the well endowed maids with substantial cleavage. Instead, there is a liberated Mary Godwin, and the poets Byron (Jason Patric three years after The Lost Boys) and Shelley (Michael Hutchence from the band INXS), who appear as drug-addled Californian club-hoppers. Don’t take that as a complaint. In this film, nineteenth century drug-addled Californian club-hopping poets work just fine.

John Hurt (Alien, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Hellboy) is an unlikely action hero, but then, this is an unlikely movie. He’s an even more unlikely “every man,” but he pulls off the combination role.

Between makeup and acting, Nick Brimble makes one of the better Frankenstein’s Monsters. There’s the proper amount of violence and pathos in him. Plus, the stitches in his eyes are particularly gruesome.

I enjoyed Raul Julia and Bridget Fonda, but I can’t say if their performances are good as their characters have little connection to actual humans. Neither Godwin nor Frankenstein bat an eye at Buchanan’s talking car and the latter doesn’t question his near supernatural knowledge. But this fits the movie perfectly. Sure, real people would go into hysterics if they lived through the events in the film, but I’ve seen that a hundred times, and it is generally pretty dull. Every once in a while, it’s enjoyable to see some unreal people take the changing universe in stride. Since I can’t guess what universe they are in (or if the universe makes any sense now that Buchanan’s experiments have made it “unbound”), these bizarrely calm renditions of semi-humans might be right on the money.

Frankenstein Unbound is a fast-paced, quirky entry into the overstuffed fraternity of movies based loosely on Mary Shelley’s book. It whips along quickly enough to be over before you spend too much time questioning why everyone is acting so strangely, and leaves you with just enough to think about to make you feel that maybe it had some of the depth it pretends to have. It may not be great, but it isn’t boring.

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Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Total Recall (1990)

Oct 051990

Bored Construction worker Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wants something more in life, but his wife (Sharon Stone) is happy as things are. So he has the artificial memories company, ReKall, implant a virtual vacation to Mars, complete with the memory of him being a secret agent. But things go wrong as it appears all of his memories may already be fake and he is hunted by the Martian governor, Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox) and his lieutenant, Richter (Michael Ironside).

It’s hard to find a better Cyberpunk pedigree than this combination of writer Philip K. Dick (who inspired Blade Runner, Minority Report, Impostor) and Director Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop). Dick’s stories question the meaning of being human as well as our acceptance of reality. Verhoeven’s films use satire and excess to expose the worst in human nature and society. Together, they produced this smart, non-stop spectacle.

If you are looking for food for thought, it’s here. Are we the sum of our memories? Does it matter if the world is “real”? Based on Dick’s short story, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” which had a quiet accountant getting false memories of a vacation, Verhoeven has kept the meaning, added jabs at society, and put it all in a wrapper of punches, bullets, and explosions. So often, critics require their thoughtful pictures to be slow, direct, and commonplace, so it’s not surprising that many missed the blood drenched meaning here. Silly critics.

While Total Recall is a violent movie (the MPAA gave it an X before cuts were made), it’s violent like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. There’s no carnage that will stun you or make you wish you hadn’t eaten before viewing. It is exciting, loud, and great looking. The hails of bullets are all it good fun, as they should be, considering the story.

As for that story, we’re left with three ways to interpret what happened after Quaid goes to ReKall:

Everything is part of the ReKall false memory vacation, giving Quaid exactly what he asked for down to the sales pitch’s “blue skies.”
It’s all in Quaid’s head, but things have gone wrong, and instead of the implanted trip, he’s supplying his own paranoid delusions. He will never wake up, and he’s lobotomized.
It’s all real.

But these are not all equally likely. In fact, one is completely ruled out. I’ve heard critics attacking Total Recall and it almost always comes down to them failing to understand what is actually happening onscreen. Silly critics.

Paul Verhoeven also directed the brilliant and undervalued Flesh & Blood (1985), the sexual Noir, Basic Instinct (1992), the wry, anti-fascist Starship Troopers (1997), and the disappointing Hollow Man (2000).

Cyberpunk, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

RoboCop 2 (1990)

Oct 051990

Since the events in the first film, the situation in Detroit has gotten even worse. The police are on strike, crime is everywhere, half the city is addicted to a new drug called nuke, Detroit is in default and will be taken over by OCP corporation, children beat up storeowners, and RoboCop is a scab. In this setting, OCP attempts to make another RoboCop, this one from a psychotic killer.

Less a story than a series of vignettes, RoboCop 2 suffers from all the normal flaws of a sequel. It repeats, in different forms, two of RoboCop’s opening scenes: the mutilation of Murphy and the malfuntioning “robot” shooting someone at OCP (but the second is a pretty good gag). The social commentary is gone, replaced by additional bullets (a sequel always has more). The violence is notched up, with two scenes of torture that are unsettling even for people like me who are generally immune. The humor still exists, but humor and savagery are tricky to blend. Paul Verhoeven, director of the first film, had the knack; Irvin Kershner does not.

The script is the most confusing element. Was it unfinished when they started filming and new pages, unrelated to the old ones, brought in every few days? Frank Miller’s initial screenplay was changed beyond recognition, but what was the plan? RoboCop 2 begins as a story about Murphy longing for his old life and his wife’s fear and confusion. Then that plot is dropped, completely. We never again see the wife. There’s a discussion of what kind of person it takes to make a successful cyborg (loyalty is the important component), but that idea is forgotten. The police are on strike for good reason, but nothing comes of that. RoboCop has his mind filled with contradictory and silly commands by OCP, which leads to an amusing scene, but then that’s over. Much of it is enjoyable, but none of it hangs together.

There are a large number of new and repeat characters, too many for character development. Murphy has half the screen time he did in the first film and his partner (Nancy Allen) is close to a cameo. The Old Man (Dan O’Herlihy) makes a welcome return and may be the only one to have a larger part. There a common misconception that The Old Man was a nice guy in the first film and turned evil in this one. I can’t see how that popped up, but all you need to do is watch the scene were one of his employees is gunned down in front of him to see he was a bastard then and is a bastard now. He brings with him both old and new staff, including a psychologist who decides that a psychotic killer would be the best choice for the new cyborg. I wonder where she got her training, as her concept breaks credibility. There are also cops, the scientist, the mayor (Willard Pugh), council men, and Murphy’s wife. Not enough characters? Well, add in the criminals. Cain (Tom Noonan) is the unhinged, religious drug lord. What a weird, twisted story he has. Well, I assume he has as we’re not told it. His main sidekicks are a nuke-whore and a malignant kid (Gabriel Damon). Much has been made of the fact that the most bloodthirsty killer in the film is a child. Add that a little league team brutally beats and robs a storeowner, and critics yell that RoboCop 2 is setting a bad example. Well, perhaps, just perhaps, it isn’t trying to set an example. The homicidal youth is the one place that the sequel approaches the first in looking at society with a sharp twist. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong when things turn bleak for the boy. Suddenly, the film becomes sentimental, implying the audience should tear up at the poor child’s plight. A film that has the guts to show children as maniacal fiends should have the guts to take it to its happily disturbed conclusion.

With too many characters, too many sub-plots (many unfinished), and too many touched on and then ignored themes, RoboCop 2 ends up being nothing more than a battle between two stop motion figurines, which can be fun, but lacks the satisfying feel of actual characters meeting.

Cyberpunk, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

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