Back Seat Producers

Deep in outer space, war has ravaged a planet inhabited by mechanical creatures called the Autobots and the Decepticons, and now the object of their origin has been ripped from their planet and heads on a direct course to Earth- leading both packs of mechanical beings on a search of the planet- the Autobots attempting to save the Earth and the Decpticons ready to unleash what happened to their world on our world. And a handful of humans are ready to stand in the way and ally with the Autobots.

That’s the nutshell description of Transformers the latest movie from director Michael Bay that owes it’s origins to a toy line created by Hasbro back in the day. I’ve got to admit I don’t have the connection to this that others do. When the Transformers were big, that was also around the same time of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and G.I. Joe and I sided with the critics of those that the cartoons were just overblown commercials for toys more than anything else, they just didn’t grab me. Well, that was snobbish then, and now I’ve got a little more respect for the properties, but I still wouldn’t call me a convert. The trailers for this movie looked incredibly impressive, and so that got me really interested. Plus, I’m not exactly Michael Bay’s biggest fan, but at the same time, I don’t exactly look at his movies with the same disdain that others do either… he makes big-ass spectacle popcorn films, and things like The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and The Island all work for me on some level or another (Personally, I think The Island is his best film). So really, I was looking forward to seeing this.

When he’s dealing with the big-ass action and the various robots themselves, I think this movie really excels… it’s just that when he deals with the people, this movie falls apart (with one exception- I’ll get to that in a moment). The people in this film are cartoony sit-com, almost like what you’d expect to see on ABC’s comedy shows and really they garner no sympathy from me whatsoever. There’s a point in the end where Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, talks about this thing in humanity that he sees that makes them worth saving, and I only saw that with the military special forces that first come into contact with a Decepticon in the film- all of the rest of the people are spending all of their time doing snarky comedy bits in the midst of the action.

Michael Bay has said in a recent interview in Wizard magazine that he was going for total realism in this movie- he succeeds with the Transformers themselves, I’ll certainly give him that, but with the exception of the military force that I mentioned above, fails on any of the other human reaction, like I said devolving it to TV sit-com situations. As I’m watching people like Shia LeBouef, Megan Fox, Anthony Anderson and John Tuturro in this, it almost becomes cringeworthy in seeing their reactions to situations, not so much with LeBouef and Fox, but incredibly so with guys like Anderson and Tuturro. Anderson in particular is almost painful to watch especially considering that he’s made some real dramatic strides on shows like The Shield here he just resorts back to type, or in his case, stereotype. And Tuturro plays this total cartoon character in charge of a super-secret organization that keeps their knowledge of these beings from everyone else, and he just falls into a basic Hollywood cliche of yet again being this authority figure that’s just made to look silly against the man on the street. The first tip-off that everything is going to go into a cliche comes during a meeting of top minds called by the Secretary of Defense (played by Jon Voight) and we focus on a group of geeks recruited fresh from school who are bound to be the ones that find out more than anyone else does at the start (oddly enough, these geeks have within them, their hot chick, who’s more wish-fulfillment fantasy on-screen than anything that might approach reality– but Megan Fox is also that same way).

There’s a scene in the film where Shia LeBouef, playing a character named Sam Witwicky who has ties to the robots, first gains their confidence and decides to throw in. He then begins to sneak around his house trying to find the object that they need, only to arouse his parents suspicions, and this whole scene just plays out as a big joke- an excuse to have a person who’d be the most uptight in the scene say the word masturbation and get a cheap laugh from the audience… it’s just embarrassing to watch.

The saving grace in the acting department goes to Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson and the other actors playing the Special Forces unit that first comes into contact with the Decepticons. These guys I totally buy here, they don’t treat the situation like a big joke and they’re good at what they do. I could’ve just watched a movie based around these guys and come away much more pleased.

This gets a very mixed review here, but more going to the thumbs down side of things. On the positive side, you could just look at this as this huge fireworks type of Fourth of July spectacle and probably have a pretty good time with it (and again, I certainly give it points for it’s last half hour which is just pure action and a lot of fun to watch), the robots are the star of the show, that’s for sure. But the people are who they’re fighting for, and Bay just doesn’t even for a moment want to give the common guy a moment of sincerity in the film and as such ultimately fails in delivering to me a movie that I could give a damn about.

A plot has been hatched to take down the United States from it’s very infrastructure, by disabling communications and utilities, the United States has become gripped in a very real terror of just not being able to go about their everyday lives… all of this at the will of a former NSA security specialist who seeks revenge on the USA for shutting him down. NYPD Detective John McClane has been dispatched to retrieve a hacker that unwillingly participated in this scheme and from there, finds himself in a situation where again, he must stop terrorists from completing their acts, and saving family along the way.

And that’s the premise to Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth film in the Die Hard series featuring Bruce Willis as John McClane. This time around, director Len Wiseman (Underworld) is at the helm of the film and what they deliver here is for the most part a very entertaining thrill ride, with Bruce Willis in fine form, still quipping as McClane, but also certainly a little more weathered by time.

Wiseman moves this one at a rapid pace, and even it’s “quiet” moments feel kinetic. There’s some real nice set piece stuff at play in this movie (including one scene near the start of this film which is liable to send some fanboys in tears in regards to the what is being destroyed on screen), some of which is quite intense. To me anyway, this is better paced than either of Wiseman’s Underworld films and feels right at home with the prior Die Hard’s directed by John McTiernan and Renny Harlin. The one little misgiving I have with it, and I don’t hold this against the movie, is that some of the action might be a little more over-the-top than some of the other films (in particular a scene near the end involving a jet plane).

Wiseman’s well aided in this movie from composer Marco Beltrami who’s music score is certainly evocative of the first two Die Hard films.

Bruce Willis is terrific, always fun to watch and even still there with his patented horse-eye look when firing his guns at the bad guys. Justin Long (who you know as Mac in the Apple computer commercials) is really good here as the young hacker that’s forced to team up with McClane and he really holds his own with Willis. Timothy Olyphant is Gabriel, the mastermind behind this plot, and he’s also magnetic to watch and just as much a threat as Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons was in the other movies. And look out, even Kevin Smith is in the film, maybe giving the most animated performance that he’s ever given as a cohort of Long’s.

This is the very definition of a popcorn movie, and yet I tend to think that its scheme is maybe one of the scariest that I’ve seen in a movie in awhile. Having gone through almost two full weeks in the last year without power in my home, I know just how helpless that makes a person feels. There’s just a couple of niggling points in the film as far as consistency of action goes, but easily forgivable as far as I’m concerned. It’s a fun movie as it is, though, and I’d certainly recommend it, as long as you’re a little willing to just give it a few points.

Remy is a rat, but a rat that’s quite a bit different than his family- Remy likes the finer things, he doesn’t eat garbage and he has a palette and a sense of smell for gourmet cuisine. Remy idolizes a human French chef named Gusteau, who has one of the finest five-star restaurants in all of Paris, but that restaurant has been brought down to a three-star restaurant thanks to a food critic named Anton Ego. Now, through a series of events, Remy has found himself allied with a young man named Linguini, as they both seek to find themselves in worlds totally unfamiliar to both: Linguini in trying to belong in a restaurant and Remy, in the world of humans.

And that’s the basic premise in a nutshell to Ratatouille the newest film from Pixar studios and the follow-up to the previous collaboration between Pixar and writer/director Brad Bird’s, The Incredibles and it is quite simply one of the best movies of the year, easily something that will make it near the top of my Top 10 list for 2007. There is of course, way more to this story than I’m telling you above, but really to say any more would be to deny you the pleasure of watching this unfold for yourself.

The credit for just how fantastic this film is is primarily Brad Bird’s who has certainly demonstrated in both The Iron Giant and The Incredibles a need to advance the animation artform in this country. Both of those movies are high watermarks for both 2D and 3D animation, and Ratatouille raises that bar even higher… not just with it’s beautifully stunning 3D animation, but also with it’s story, a story that is certainly universal for all audiences, but really having a way more pleasant appeal, at least in my eyes, for a more mature crowd. Bird, in his previous films, has had a bit of a retro feel to those movies as well, and he does it here too. Ratatouille at times feels like the sort of movie that Blake Edwards would’ve made back in his heyday.

Pixar’s animation makes something like Shrek The Third look like it was done by amateurs, that’s just how advanced this looks. Camera angles, lighting, attention to detail and above all, characterization is just a step beyond what we’ve been seeing in computer animation, and you just want to bask in this over and over again. The thing is, Pixar does this well enough on their own, but when working with Bird, their game is stepped up, and Bird’s mind takes their tools and works them in directions that’s just not typical for these films. The combination of these talents, and their willingness to work with some more uncoventional story elements is what makes movies like The Incredibles and Ratatouille not just great animated films, but great movies beyond the form.

There’s some really fine voice acting at work here too… Patton Oswalt is the voice of Remy and he’s just terrific here, bringing a real earnestness to the part that sort of reminds me of a Michael J. Fox back in his better days. Ian Holm is the voice of Skinner, the chef who’s taken over Gusteau’s and his just might be the best voice work in the film, very emotive, but also totally filled with character. Peter O’Toole is the voice of Anton Ego and as with anything Peter O’Toole ever says on screen, you’re just totally enthralled when he speaks. The whole film has been voice-casted with careful attention, and these aren’t just computer animation models on screen, but totally feel like living, breathing characters.

This was another film that I got to see in digital projection and that was just icing on the cake on a truly fantastic film experience. For a film that has food as one of it’s centerpieces, it actually makes that computer generated food look luscious and succulent and leaves you wanting to eat at the end of the film… and I’ve never seen an animated movie that has done that before. Do not miss this movie, like I said above, easily one of the very best movies of the year…

Mike Enslin is a writer who’s sort’ve at a crossroads in his life. He currently writes books based around haunted locations across the country and his current book is about haunted hotels. He gets a mysterious tip in the mail about a hotel in New York City called The Dolphin and not to stay in room 1408. Obviously this piques his interest and he does what he can to get a reservation in the room, even with all sorts of warnings not to do so, with some of the most convincing coming from the hotel manager himself, basically telling Mike that nobody usually lasts for the first hour, telling him that it is an evil room. Mike of course is insistent on staying there, and he checks in, and within minutes, the terror does indeed begin.

And that’s trying to be as vague as I can be about the new horror/suspense movie 1408 from director Mikael Hafstrom. This is adapted from a story by Stephen King and while I’ve never read the story, it sure feels like it has all the hallmarks of his work- the slant on writing, the creepiness of hotels and the dark personal secrets that we all have that sometimes lead to the greatest horrors of all. This is an extremely well-made film, very well paced and certainly well-performed. It has a great look to it, with one of the stars of the movie just being the room itself, which at times seems to me to carry some sort of similarities to how David Lynch lights rooms that he films in. Most of the visual effects in this film don’t have that CGI “flash” to them and instead almost feel more theatrical or somewhat “cheap” but that hardly meaning that it looks bad, on the contrary, I think the effects work quite well here.

1408 stars John Cusack as Enslin and this is really a tour-de-force for Cusack, especially for the period that he’s in the room because for the most part, he’s the only one there and he has to sell this well in order for you to buy into it, and he does. He’s perfectly cast for this, with both his cynical wit and an everyman quality, he brings this home very well. Samuel L. Jackson is the manager of the Dolphin, and he’s great too, though don’t go expecting this to be one of his showier roles. The interplay between Cusack and Jackson before Cusack enters the room is really entertaining to watch, these guys play off of each other quite well. Mary McCormack is also in the film playing Enslin’s estranged wife, and she does a fine job too, with a great scene especially at the end of the film.

What you have here is really, really good stuff, and just when you think the film might fall into a trap that you don’t want it to fall into, it rebounds back and gets itself back on the track that it needs to be on. Now with that said though, one has to wonder about certain things: It’s a PG-13 film, and really for what you have here, that’s fine, there’s nothing in the world that says that you can’t make a good effective horror film with a PG-13 rating (last year’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose worked the same way)- but how would it have fared had a less known actor been cast in the lead? Again, don’t get me wrong, John Cusack is absolutely terrific here, but at the core, we know it’s John Cusack performing a role- wouldn’t it’s horror seem a little more extreme if the actor in front of the camera was someone you didn’t readily know? Probably… and as far as I know that could also affect the rating (although there’s multiple factors that go into that as well, more than likely this was contracted to come in at PG-13) Also, Like I said above, I haven’t read the original story, and as is the case with most movies, one wonders if multiple endings weren’t filmed for this. The ending that this film has is, again terrific and horrifying in it’s own way, but one wonders if it could’ve been darker and even more extreme than what it was. I know for a movie like this, I tend to want to want it to go as dark as it can, but that’s just me, and again, don’t get me wrong, this is good stuff… this is just stuff that I think about with a movie like this.

In the end though, 1408 is a great ride with a terrific tour guide in the form of Cusack. Our audience seemed to react to this the way it should, with over to one side of us being a guy who brought in five little kids with him, with most of them being quite scared by the film (and of course causing a disturbance, but nowhere near as bad as it could’ve been). This is good stuff and of course, highly, highly recommended.

Just a little preface before get into the review proper, Day Watch is the second in a trilogy of Russian movies that started with the film Night Watch. Night Watch, which is steeped in Russian legend, tells us the story of the eternal battle between Light and Dark forces and the pact struck between the two when it appeared that the only way the battle was ever going to end was going to be the destruction of both. Vampires, shape shifters and more supernatural beings are real in the world, but ruled over by the light and dark forces, each of which has their own sort’ve police force to keep the other in check, the Light’s force is called The Night Watch and the Dark’s is called Day Watch. Night Watch told the story of Anton, a young man who forever alters his life by employing Dark forces to do a deed for him, and thus awakening his own supernatural powers. Anton becomes a member of the Night Watch and becomes involved in a series of events that awakens two beings, one called the Great Light Other and the other, the Great Dark Other and legend foretells that if the two should ever meet, it will be the end of everything that we know.

Day Watch continues the story, with the Great Light Other, Sveta, now in the employ of the Night Watch, and the Great Dark Other, Yegor now training with the Day Watch. This story throws into the mix another legend about an object called The Chalk of Fate, which when used, can literally reverse whole events. Both forces want the Chalk, with the leader of the Dark forces, Zavulon wanting to break the pact…

… and as always, there’s way more to tell, but I’d just as soon you discover the rest for yourself. Night Watch is an incredibly cool movie, yes it’s story and history is complex, but as long as you stick with it, it’s all pretty easy to follow and very easy to get involved in. Day Watch is just a little more complicated and quite a bit more all over the map, seeming at times to try to also go into some high comedy before winding up with a very intense ending. Because of the nature of The Chalk of Fate, this ending could almost be seen as a cheat, but yet it’s not as much as say something like a movie like the Nicolas Cage film, Next is.

It’s an amazing looking movie, as is Night Watch with special effects that rival anything made here, and to me anyway, Night Watch was always more the type of movie that I wanted something like Underworld to be like, but instead that fell into a series of cliches that you’d seen many times before.

Day Watch re-unites the entire cast of the first film under the same director, and please forgive me, these Russian names are hard for me to remember, so I’m just going to forego even trying to name names. But the cast is quite good, and I’m quite impressed with a number of the characters, in particular, Anton, Sveta (truly a stunning woman), Zavulon and Olga (who is a shape shifter and Anton’s partner in the Night Watch).

It’s an interesting film, but like I said above, it’s ending might be seen as something as a cheat, especially when you think that this is supposed to be part of a trilogy, yet things are wrapped up pretty nicely by the end of this film.

Really though, the only way that I can recommend Day Watch though is only if you’ve seen Night Watch. Day Watch does open with a prologue that explains everything from the first film, but still seeing the first film itself carries a lot more gravity with it and arms you much better for the second movie than just the prologue itself. Well worth seeing though, if you’ve seen Night Watch, but still the ending might leave something to be desired… we’ll just have to wait and see if this continues further beyond this.

Something from outer space is making it’s way through the galaxy and devouring planets in it’s wake, it’s on a course for Earth and it’s being preceded by a strange silver-glazed being riding what appears to be a surfboard. On Earth, The Fantastic Four have become huge public eye stars for their fantastic exploits, and now we’re just days away from the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm. The Surfer makes his appearance on Earth, causing calamity in his wake, leaving the US military to get in touch with the Fantastic Four to help devise a way to at least figure out what this is… And inadvertently, through his own power after effects, the Surfer revives Victor Von Doom, who wants nothing more than to gain the power of the Surfer for himself.

And that’s the basic premise of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer which so far for me is the best of the Marvel Comics movies to come out this year. Now I really liked the first film too (even more so now that there’s an Extended Edition out there) and one of the big reasons that I liked this, is that by the nature of the Fantastic Four comic itself, these films don’t come in and get as heavy as say Spider-Man movies do, or Batman, or even something like Daredevil. The Fantastic Four should be more fanciful, more whimsical than the other comic movies out there, and I think they’ve certainly succeeded with both of them thus far.

There’s lots of nods to the comic here, although there’s lots of stuff that’s also going to really piss off the internet-vocal fanboy crowd as well- in particular the portrayal of Galactus in the film, which still to me is more vague than “just a big cloud.” There’s a space in there where there could’ve been a little something more shown, but I ain’t gonna hold that against the movie… and I certainly can understand the decision to not show Galactus in his traditional sense, simply because they’re wanting more than just the fanboy element to like the film and I’d tend to think that the mainstream audience seeing a building-sized humanoid wearing a Jack Kirby designed purple helmet might not take it the way it should be taken (although again, there is a moment where there could’ve certainly had been a compromise between the two- which I could see being opened up a bit in what will probably be the inevitable Extended Edition of this film).

Director Tim Story and his crew have certainly made some changes along the way, compared to the first film… this one is way more effects-heavy and I tend to think for the most part they’re all pretty cool effects, especially when you’re dealing with these characters in particular who’s entire bodies are pure effects. The make-up for the Thing has really been improved on, particularly around Ben Grimm’s upper body and his brow… to me, it really allows Michael Chiklis to actually perform better. And finally, a character that’s been talked about for film ever since 1980 (when someone connected to Olivia Newton-John- this was around the time of Xanadu– had the option on the Surfer) has finally made it to film and fulfilled some promise that effects movies like Terminator 2 promised you could see. The Surfer is really nicely done here- acted out by actor Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne, he’s a true commanding presence in the movie.

But I don’t at all want to slight the four leads- Ioan Gruffod, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis all reprise their roles and they’re all real comfortable with each other on-screen. There’s some moments near the end of the film where that chemistry is really evident and you do buy that they’re a family. I’ve got to give some huge marks to Chris Evans here, who gets to give Johnny Storm a lot more depth than he’s had before and still have fun with the part. Also returning is Julian McMahon as Doctor Doom, and again, he’s obviously having a real ball with the part. New to this cast, and continuing the trend of hiring FX TV series actors for this movie is solid-as-a-rock Andre Braugher as the general who gets in touch with the Four (I figure Denis Leary must be the next in line to get a part in the film- no doubt looking both tortured and sardonic at the same time)

Out of all the big Marvel Comics movies this year, this was the one that I was looking forward to the most, and for me anyway it delivered the goods. On top of that, again I got to see this in digital projection and as such that made the viewing experience even more special. I’d say that if you liked the first movie, I’d definitely recommend this film. But if you got your nose all out of joint over the first one, you should probably just stay home, there’s probably not much that this one is going to do for you. And if you’re the type that’s gonna get real steamed off that Galactus ain’t a big guy in a big purple helmet, don’t go at all and don’t forget your helmet when you leave the house…