The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

Here's a weird movie for you. Buckaroo Banzai is a half American half Japanese average guy. He spends his days performing complex brain surgery, followed up with driving experimental rocket cars through the eighth dimension. He unwinds by playing a half dozen instuments for his band (all the members of which are equally well endowed in teh talent department) and saving the world from space invaders. There's a very odd racial undertone to this movie. There are two factions from Planet 10 (that's what the aliens call their homeworld) one are the ultraviolent white guys, the other are the peace loving rastas. The aliens emit some kind of pherimones that trick people into believing that they're seeing a normal person instead of an alien. Buckaroo gets zapped by some beam while he's talking to the president on a payphone that gives him the ability to see through the illusion and also carries with it all the komic opportunities to zap every normal person he touches (or kisses.) There doesn't really seem to be much of a point to the movie, but it was funny to watch.

total: 57

Hellboy

Tim and I went to go see this for a matinee at the cheap theatre. Actually, as a note, most of the movies we see are either rented from the "old release" section of the video store for one of those "seven movies for seven days" deals or are in the cheap theatre on the cheap days. this was definetly worth our three dollars. It actually would be worth more than that too. the script draggs a little at times, but the characters are so enjoyable, and they seem to be having such a good tme making the movie, that you're more than willing to forgive them.
Best line: I'm not a very good shot, but this thing fires really big bullets.

Total: 56

Cube 2: Hypercube

Entertaining. Not quite mind warping for the story, but more for trying to grasp the mathematics that they throw at you. All the characters are stuck in a tesseract as some sort of imprisonment and are trying to find a way out. You have your balding fat guy who is nice to everyone, your senile old woman who people suspect might be hiding the truth, your knife weilding psycho, your geeky teenage computer programmer, your hot young lawyer in a slinky red dress, a blind girl with a real secret (the "plot twist"), and your main character. They meet up, some people yell at others, psycho tries to knife a few people, they try to solve the puzzel, realize that there's a bunch of dead scientists who are a billion times smarter than them who could't solve it lying around, and kinda go crazy. Psycho goes really psycho when he figures out the whole prallel universe aspect of things. Fat Guy is killed by a flying special effect, but Psycho runs into another Fat Guy later, kills him and takes his watch. At the end of the movie you see a version of Psycho wandering around with a half dozen watches, a bunch of name badges, and other jewelry and trophies from the other characters. Programmer and Lawyer have sex in a variable time speed room and that's the last we see of them as charcters. Blind girl is actually the world's most brilliant hacker who happens to be the one who derived the formula for the hypercube. There, I gave away the endeing. Oh yah, everyone dies. Now you hate me.

Total: 55

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Two things really impressd me about this movie: the print quality for a twenty year old film, and how faithful it was to the book. This is not a movie to start watching at 11:00 at night because it uses a very understated way of doing things. Nothing is big, everything is just there. This means, unless you've read the book, you need to really pay attention and think to grasp what's going on. I have read the book and, hence, was impressed by the faithfullness of the adaptation. I fell asleep for about 20 minutes in the second half and when I woke up I knew exactly what had happened and what would happen next. Since the book consists mostly of internal dialogue, flashback, and expose, the film version moves rather quickly through the physical happeneings with alot of voice over and a few lengthy monologues. Visually this is a counterpart to Brazil with predominant dark, drab colours and industrial setting. As a matter of story comparison where Brazil gave us the indominable human spirit amidst opression and decay, Nineteen Eighty-Four gives us the disintegrated remains of that human spirit. Really it's only a difference between the end of the characters' days. Where Sam Lowry successfully escaped into his fantasy by locking himself in his mind, Winston Smith fails to escape and is ruined.
In the end, watch this movie while you're quite awake, have a note pad, and be ready to discuss it afterwards. If you just kick back and relax, wating to be entertained, it's just not going to happen. In any case, read the book aswell. If you do the movie will make alot more sense.

total: 54

The Insider

This is a rather long film. Not super ultra long in the way that meakes you wonder when it's over, just it clocks in at two and a half hours and progresses when it dang well feels like it, and not a moment sooner. actually, the thing that makes it bearable is that it doesn't really stop moving. There's always something going on that moves the story foreward or gives you insight into what the characters are going through, so you just wonder "how long is this movie?" rather than "Where is this going?"
The best line: "Mike. Mike? Try Mister Wallace." as Mike Wallace prepares to tell off the corporate lawyers.

Total: 53

The Punisher

I'm going to take a moment to talk about the philosophy of comic books, to give a better depiction of my feelings about this movie and what I was expecting. The Punisher is an exploration of the darkest aspects of human nature. The title character is essentially every faceless raw passion rolled into one person. He's not a super-hero in that he doesn't have any special powers, and he's not even really a hero. He's just the protagonist. Where Superman is everything that humanity should be, Spiderman is our struggle with our strengths, and the Hulk is our struggle with our weaknesses, the Punisher is everything we should not be. He represents not the struggle with power and weakness, but the succumbing to both. The only struggle epitomized here is coping with a false view of who we are. The character of the Punisher has allowed his rage and dark ideas to control him and kill him spiritually. He feels no remorse or satisfaction in his actions, and is driven to continue out of a sense of identity that is held up by the facade of justice. This is not justice, but justification. Not of criminal elements, but of self. He has re-fashioned himself in the identity of a natural force of justice acting where the law cannot and god will not, giving him absolution for his actions. If he were to stop killing people he would lose his reason for existing as what he is. Morality creeps back in. He avoids confronting the fact that he is not a force but a human, and as such subject to the same ultimate justice as everything else, by chasing it all away with alcohol.
On a human level the idea here is that we put up false images of who we are and even go so far as to convince ourseves that we are that way. We use it to justify our grossest of failings. It's not the weaknesses we are struggling to divest ourselves of that we seek to justify, because we are trying to get rid of them, and our benevolent actions need no justification. So it is rather the darkest parts of our souls, the hidden hatreds and resentments, that we absolve of responsibility. Typically we do this by projecting our faults onto others who are worse. The Punisher only kills criminals and drowns out the rest with Wild Turkey.
As a movie The Punisher devolves very rapidly to his miserable state of 'monster' and spends its time reveling in its darkness. Because his goal is to kill people we don't get any "put down your gun" stand offs, just one-liners and brutal denouncements followed bu bullets or knives. There are some remarkably bloodless mass murders and several people die in scenarios where you wonder who decided to put that on film. Most of the enjoyment here comes from the atmosphere and pacing which are generally held intact through the movie. Everything is brutal, thourough, and darkly passionless. If you're looking for happy, you won't find it here.

Total: 52

Godzilla 2000

It's got a giant radioactive lizard battling another giant radioactive lizard. Really it's all a giant metaphore for the struggle between independant cultures and the parasitic, invasive, thief-like culture of America. The Godzilla we see here is a man in a rubber suit, as it ought to be. The opposing radioactive lizard is really an alien that steals some of Godzilla's genes and is styled to look somewhat similar to the Hollywood version of Godzilla. The characters even say "it's trying to make itself a clone of Godzilla." As a theory, the film is quick to remind us that Godzilla is a cultural representation, not just a monster, and his movies are a genre unto themselves with a specific formula that must be followed or else chaos ensues, like a haiku. As a movie, it's a fun night with friends.

Total: 51

Walking Tall

This movie stars a four foot long cedar 4x4. It also co-stars The Rock as a vigilante who weilds said 4x4. The Rock hits people with his fists, then he gets cut up really bad. After he heals he goes out and hits stuff with the board because people were selling drugs to his nephew. They arrest him and he gives a big speech to the jury, so they aquit him and elect him sheriff. Then he hits more stuff with the board.

Toat: 50

Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf)

This was quite better fare for the night than Dragon Fighter in that it delivered entertainment without us having to invent it. The big thing that struck me was the sheer ammount of style that went into this piece. It was beautiful to watch. The one warning I must make is that we rented this as a werewolf movie, and in some sense I still think of it as that. It's not. It's a great movie, and it is a monster movie, but it's not a werewolf movie. I don't think I'm ruining anything when I tell you that the monster isn't a werewolf. The word "werewolf" only appeared once in the subtitles. The Beast is, though, still wolf related. It may just be our narrow western viewpoint that autimatically equates wolf movies with werewolves. You actually get two movies when you watch this. You get the intensely stylish drama about human relationships in a time of crisis and how we cope with the strain of our environments, and you get a ten minute action movie inserted towards the end as a little interlude before returning to the meloncholy drama for the finale. It's one of those parts that tears you as a movie lover because it falls in line with the story, there is no deus ex machina or sudden course changes, but doens't fit in with the style. It's really only one fight scene, and the bone sword is cool, but I found it went from being fascinating to being entertaining. As far as movie crimes go, that's pretty low on the list of severity, but it does take this out of the "must own" category and stick it in the "good deal" category. Certainly worth watching.

Total: 49

Dragon Fighter

Dean Cain, how far you've fallen. This direct-to-video, uh, thing did manage to provide us with a little under an hour and a half of entertainment, but mostly at it's expense. This si one of those movies where you can glance at the screen and infer exactly what's going on. Dean Cain starts the movie with a subtle southern drawl whish disappears as soon as they land the helecopter. A bunch of scientists (who apparently don't actually work for anyone who cares) clone a dragon that grows to full size in the time it takes them to microwave a burrito after inserting the neucleus of one cell into another cell. Two character who I'm not sure even had names die instantly when they go into the lab to investigate the abnormal growth. Dean Cain's character has pyrophobia which isn't actually acted as a phobia so much as it's a "holy crap that dragon is breathing fire at me, I'd better get out of the way!" So the pyrophobia we're told about during "character development" disappears before they even tell us about it. The dragon actually doesn't look that bad as they saved budget by playing the same cycling animation of the dragon walking through a circular hallway. at least they had the budget to light some people on fire. When the fusion reactor blows it looks more like a couple dozen strings of firecrackers laid out on the front lawn. At the very end neither Dean Cain nor his "love interest" (they don't even kiss) seem to care about the fact that six of their co-workers were just killed within the last day. The dragon is capable of maintaining pace with fighter jets, which can't lock onto it because it's heat signature isn't hot enough, so Dean Cain opens the fuel door and spills helecopter fuel all over the dragon then shoots it with a flare gun, igniting the beast, negating the actual need to blow it up with rockets. They blow it up anyway. The best part of the movie was the deaf chef "Cookie." He isn't actually deaf, he's just faking. "They were only hiring disabled people. I needed the job." He gets roasted twenty minutes later.

Total: 48

Ginger Snaps

This is probably the best Canadian movie I've seen that wasn't a documentary, or unbelievably depressing. It's a werewolf movie with a much lauded twist of comparing lycanthropy with ovulation and menstruation. It actually works is the surprising thing, and not just in a male-whore/Bevis-and-Butthead-huh-huh-he-said-ovulation kind of way. It's actually witty. the film does start to lag at the end when it turns from it's dark humor to more conventional werewolf happenings, but all in all it wasn't unfulfilling.

total: 47

Resident Evil

A quick question on zombie motives: the generally accepted action any given zombie will take is to cluster with other zombies and then seek out human flesh to devour. In yesterday's offering there was no real explination even attempted aside from "it's a virus." Today's offering, also a zombie movie, uses a virus as well to turn living people into zombies. The explination the supercomputer gives about the zombie motives is that the virus stimulates the latent electrical energy in the human body reanimating the corpse. The subject retains some slight memories, but mostly just feels the urge to "fulfil the basest apetites." When the computer is prodded to explain, she replies (I was surprised at least) "To feed!" So, here's my question of their motives: why human flesh? Why wouldn't they all get a massive hankering for chicken wings, a double bacon cheeseburger, or pepperoni pizza? Why not each other? Sam Raimi's zombies were animated by evil, giving us a morality play: good dead help the living, evil dead kill the living. Romero's still have a little bit of that morality, but it's not expounded, and he frankly doesn't care, but you can catch that morality in the tag line "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." Resident evil just doesn't have that.
I enjoyed this movie more for the tie in to the video game rather than the horrer aspect of it. After the five minute prologue followed by 95 minutes of neck biting/head shooting/blood flowing/Sarah Polley and Lindy Booth looking hot that was witnessed last night, Resident Evil was not quite boring, but headed in that drection. Lurching zombies just don't have the same scare factor anymore. Plus the only monster that moves with any speed is built of a poorly animated one. If I'd had a bunch of other people around, that's copeable. Alone it's distracting. Milla Jovovich's character is recovering from amnesia for most of the film, so we don't get to see her doing a whole tone of zombie killing, so I am still looking forward to RE: Apocalypse this summer which should be a bit more of an action movie rather than a half-way action, half-way horror.

Total: 46

Dawn of the Dead

Holy Crap! That's where this starts. So, I checked my watch when the first major amount of blood was spilt. It was at 10:15. The movie started at 10:05 and three trailers played beforehand. So the carnage starts within the first ten minutes (as a nice round number) and stops about three seconds before the credit reel ends. Even the credits are made to look like blood spatered on black porceline. My favorite shot would have to be the sky-high camera following Sarah Polley shortly after said early carnage as she drives down the highway. We see a truck come into the intersection ahead of her, careen off the road, and plow into a gas station which promptly explodes in an impressive fireball. The ickiest scene is by far the zombie baby. Were this a less intense movie I'd be tempted to describe it as a "zombling" or find some other name for it. Instead it must stay zombie baby. The most superfluous character is Jayne Easwood's character (apparently, according to IMDB, her character's name was Norma) who shows up in a truck full of people, walks across the screen once, disappears for ten minutes as the fat lady zombifies, then shows up again as we watch her change into lingere and have sex with Steve (this encounter is actually how we learnt Steve's name) then drift around until dying a chainsaw death.
Something neat is that there are actually two endings to this movie. If you like happy endings where you get to make up what happens next, leave as soon as the credits start. Don't get distracted by what happens on screen, just leave or turn the machine off. If you want the other ending, stick around until the end of the credits.

As a side note to all this, I'd like to talk about how things affect our perspective of the world. When I studied physics, I suddenly started seeing the world in terms of friction, resistance, elasticity, force, and energy. When I took calculus these values became complex equations describing the change between things. When I started making my own levels for Unreal Tournament and System Shock 2 I began seeing things in terms of polygon counts. System Shock 2 also made me excessivly aware of security cameras. There are, I think, many of us out there who have watched enough zombie movies, or really any type of survival movie, and as a result we walk around evaluating the world around us in terms of "where can I get weapons, where's the safest place to hide, where would I get food and water" and so on. Hopefully, when the time comes, this nation of geeks will be able to rise from the ashes of a decimated world and save humanity. Or they'll be the first to go because they never went out and got some exercise.

Total: 45

Black Mask

Today's offering: Jet Li's Black Mask.
The version of the film I have is the one that you buy at future shop for seven bucks that only comes with thte english overdub, and I have to say I'm thankful for that. Here's why: this movie is silly. There are plot holes, logic holes, bullet holes, and several other kinds of holes in this movie. Several people have their limbs severed with CDs thrown at high velocity, and the big bad boss looks like Ozzy Osbourn circa the "Momma I'm Coming Home" video. Had the orriginal Chinese track been availible I would have definitly watched it listening to the Chinese and reading the English. The reason this would be a bad thing is that I probably would have tried to take the movie seriously, and that act could easily cut the enjoyment factor of this movie in half. Or thirds. You'd still have Ozzy. He's fun in any language.
Next movie I watch I'm gonna take notes.

Total: 44

Insanity, in all it's glory.

To date, here's the list of movies seen this year.
A -T means I watched it in theatres.

Signs (didn't pay enough attention. Too busy flirting with Adrianna)
Gothika -T (odd)
Spy Game (enjoyable, but probably won't see it again)
Punch Drunk Love (great, but takes some getting used to)
School of Rock -T (fun. That's all)
Lilo and Stitch (Good wholesome goofy fun)
Sleeping Beauty (hadn't seen it in years)
American Beauty (you'll love it for what it is or hate it for what it isn't)
Underworld (it's got vampires and werewolves)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki's best to date)
Memento (never watch it without someone who hasn't seen it before)
Titanic (fell asleep and burnt the cookies we were making. Seen it a dozen times before)
Run Lola Run (Seen it a dozen times and I still love it)
Lost in Translation -T (one of the best nights oif my life)
Amelie (Really enjoyable, but it was way too late at night)
Flatliners (put the VCR on double speed half way through with subtitles on. It has Kevin Bacon)
The Empire Strikes Back (The holy trilogy)
Peter Pan (new one) -T (valentines day)
Tripletts of Bellville -T (weird weird move. Loved it, but weird)
Brazil (long and tiring, but the last ten minutes made it worth it)
Magnolia (really good. Not quite great though)
Lost in Translation (This was my Valentines day present, the DVD)
Fight Club (seen it a billion times, love it, always try and have a new person there every time)
The Spanish Prisoner (worht watching twice, will molest your attention span every time)
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (not as good as Snatch)
Snatch (it's got Brad Pitt as a gypsy bare nuckel boxer, do you need anything else?)
The Fog of War -T (Very insightful)
Ice Age (uuuuh, it's a 90 minute gay joke)
The Shawshank Redemption (very fulfilling movie to watch if you're looking for something to feel good about)
The Corporation -T (fear your job)
Queen of the Damned (uuuuuuuuuuuum, it's got vampires?)
Matrix: Revolutions (no comment)
Big Fish -T (I cried)
The Iron Giant (I cry every time)
Kill Bill vol. 1 (finally got Dri to watch it)
Bowling for Columbine (Fear your neighbor)
Unbreakable (gets better every time)
Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World -T (It's a drama, not an action, but a very good drama)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -T (A breath of fresh air)
Fight Club (Christine's first time, which means she has to fight)
Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within (the ending didn't piss me off as much this time)
Remember the Titans (motivating. Plus Denzel Washington is hot)
Sunset Blvd. (classic black and white. Be forgiving, she's just crazy)