20161026: Comedy Review--Deadpool

Name: Deadpool (2016)
IMDb: link to Suspicion page

Genres: Comedy   Country of origin: USA.

Cast:
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa Carlysle/Copycat, Ed Skrein as Ajax, T. J. Miller as Weasel, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Karan Soni as Dopinder, Brianna Hildebrand as Ellie Phimister/Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Style Dane as Jeremy (Pizza Guy), Gina Carano as Angel Dust.

Directed by: Tim Miller.  Written by: Rhett Reese (screenplay).

Deadpool

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Deadpool tries to take out Ajax on a crowded bridge setting: gunfire, blades, cars crashing, motorcycles being destroyed.

Then we have a massive flashback.  Wade is a former Special Forces member who had 41 confirmed kills to his credit while on active duty.  He's a bit down on his luck, and scrounges money by terrifying local scumbags of minor repute.  He meets Vanessa, the woman of his dreams, and they fall in love.  Unfortunately, he contracts cancer, and does not have long to live.

Vanessa looks for cures.  Wade tries out an offer that seems too good to be true, but he goes for it anyway.  The shady group offering the service forces his body to mutate.  Good news: Wade recuperates extremely rapidly from almost any injury, including the cancer.  Bad news: his new normal state is just as ugly as hell.

Ajax, the fellow in charge of the mutating, was not doing it out of the goodness of his heart.  He intended to sell Wade as a high value soldier of fortune.  With a superhuman effort, Wade escapes Ajax.  He finds Vanessa, but cannot bring himself to show his face for fear of losing her.

Wade cannot be with Vanessa, so he decides to take revenge on Ajax.  This brings us back to the beginning of the movie.

Delineation of conflicts:
Ajax wants to control and sell Wade, even with his new name, Deadpool.  Deadpool wants to retain his freedom (might work), get revenge on fellow mutant Ajax (maybe; seems difficult), and get his old good looks back (nope).

Complicating this are Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, two strong warrior mutants who work with Professor Xavier.  They wish Deadpool to settle into the community that Xavier fosters. Deadpool regards this as just another form of slavery.

Resolution: We have a typical no holds barred massive cliche fight at the end.

One line summary: Cure is worse than the disease.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Too much CGI, too much slow motion nonsense, too much absolutely fake looking X-Men bullshit.

Sound: 7/10 I can hear the dialog, which is good.  Music seems to be poorly chosen or mixed; I got zero enjoyment from it, especially the music I like when heard on its own.

Acting: 5/10 This was a real mixed bag.  I liked TJ Miller, Morena Baccarin, Leslie Uggams, and Ed Skrein (though to a lesser extent).  Ryan Reynolds was hiding behind a mask for most of the film, and he might as well have been a cardboard cutout with an attached speaker.  His whiny voice was a grating irritation.  Gina Carano was better than I expected, but that is not saying much, since I expected nothing good from her, based on past performances.

Screenplay: 4/10 I liked the opening credits.  I got more laughs from them than I got from the rest of this film.  In general I dislike flashbacks.  Finishing the giant, oversized flashback took us into the second half of the film.  Breaking the fourth wall is another of my strong non-favourites. This film is full of that.  The relentless PC horseshit (any women can beat up any man, children can beat up adults, and so on) was as boring as it was predictable.

Final Rating: 5/10 Perhaps if the jokes had been funny, or if Ryan Reynolds had not used that falsetto voice, I might have liked the film better.  The property did well at the box office, so perhaps the sequels will be better than the first one.  As a popcorn movie, it was fine: people get killed by unthinking bastards, things blow up, valuable things get ruined, lives are shot to hell.

20161013: SciFi review--Ascension

Name: Ascension (2015)
IMDb: link to the Ascension page

Genres: SciFi, Fantasy   Country of origin: USA, Canada.

Cast: Tricia Helfer as Viondra Denninger, Gil Bellows as Harris Enzmann, Brian van Holt as Captain William Denninger, Andrea Roth as Dr. Juliet Bryce, Brandon P Bell as Aaron Gault, Al Sapienza as Councilman Rose, Jacqueline Byers as Nora Bryce, Ellie O'Brien as Christa Valis, Laura Lee Smith as Samantha Krueger.

Directed by: Mairzee Alma, et alia; see IMDb link.  Written by: Adrian Cruz, Philip Leven.

Ascension cast

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
In 1963, a 100 year mission to a near star is launched with a select crew of 600 people.  The main action takes place around 2013, or 50 years into the mission.

Over time all sorts of challenges arise, but have been handled, for the most part.  However, certain internal pressures have started to break things.

In 2013, outside the project, not everyone is happy with the Ascension project, mostly because it is far from transparent.

Delineation of conflicts:
Those who work on the lower decks (the 'lowers') resent those who lived above (the 'uppers') and have more privileges and resources to use.  Not everyone gets permission to reproduce; this does not engender confidence and satisfaction.

The ship's crew seems to be hated by just about everyone.  The Stewardesses (led by Viondra) help buffer disputes among groups and gather intelligence.  They have more privilege than many, which is cause for resentment.

Councilman Rose spars with the Captain, both for fun and to get a more pliable Captain in place. Viondra, the Captain's wife, tries to blunt Rose's attempts and keep the Captain in place.

In the real world outside the ship, things are busy as well.  Harris Enzmann fights to keep control of Ascension, and to handle problems as they arise.  Samantha Krueger is hired to find out just what is going on in Ascension.  Enzmann and Krueger naturally butt heads.  Can Ascension actually continue without Enzmann's guiding hand?

Resolution: Given the faults of the setup, the resolution is pretty clear.  This is one more cliche implementation of 'the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.'

One line summary: Fake multi-generational space flight.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 9/10 No problems.

Sound: 8/10 I can hear the dialog.  The music occasionally adds tension.

Acting: 5/10 I liked Tricia Helfer and Gil Bellows.  I disliked the performances of Laura Lee Smith, Al Sapienza, and Brian van Holt.  The rest were indifferent.

Screenplay: 4/10 Meh.  There were too many cliches.  The hugely expensive experiment is riddled with obvious flaws.  The whole project is set up without sufficient oversight and transparency.  The goals of Ascension were known to a much too small set of individuals.  Worse yet, these were stupid goals.

Most of the show is about the nuts and bolts of real world science and engineering.  Then there is a jump shift.  Producing individuals gifted with massively strong occult powers is absurd in this context.

The entire final hour was a complete waste of time since the property bounds out of SciFi into the realm of bullshit fantasy.  (There is plenty of good fantasy in film; this just was not it.  This property was 5 hours of SciFi that is straight-laced to the point of being ho-hum.  This is followed by 1 hour of fantasy.  Forget this!)

Final rating: 5/10 The butt of this joke is the viewer.

20160226: Horror Review--The Veil

Name: The Veil (2016)
IMDb: link to The Veil page

Genres: Drama   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Thomas Jane as Jim Jacobs (obvious reference to Jim Jones), Jessica Alba as Maggie Price, Lily Rabe as Sarah Hope, Jack de Sena as Christian (Maggie's brother), Shannon Woodward as Jill.

Directed by: Phil Joanou.  Written by: Robert Ben Garant.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Jim Jacobs runs a cult camp at Heaven's Veil Ranch, circa 1982.  He's a self-appointed mage who does miraculous healing and the like.  He does meditation, astral projections, telekinesis, and whatever else will inspire loyalty.  His big draw, though, is promising techniques to gain eternal life.

Yeah, right.

The trick is, one has to die first before getting the big dividend.  Indeed, every one at Heaven's Veil does die back in 1982, save for Sarah Hope.

Spin forward to the present, roughly.  Sarah Hope is recruited by Maggie Price and her brother Christian to do a documentary on the Ranch.  Maggie's father was the FBI agent in charge of investigating the Veil, and he ended up hanging himself when Maggie was three years old.

Delineation of conflicts:
As one might expect, things start to go badly soon after the film starts.

The caretaker of Heaven's Veil was not all that welcoming.  Film crew member Ed takes the group's van and kills himself by running into a tree at high speed.  The group is more than a bit isolated by distance, since they are now all on foot.

Sarah finds the more secret parts of the place, which include multiple films of the inner workings of Jim Jacobs' group.  The filmmakers hope to find out what the driving forces were behind the mass death at Heaven's Veil.  Does something or someone at the Veil want those secrets kept secret?

Resolution: The film jumped the shark around 53:00 in.  The transition from somewhat reasonable thriller to wholesale supernatural bullshit was sudden.  The turnabout at the end was well-written, but I had long since quit caring.

One line summary: Fools go where they should not.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 9/10 Early on, the visuals are odd (the palette seems to be composed of mixtures of white, green, brown, and black), but beautifully focused and framed.  As the film progresses, black comes to dominate increasingly.

Sound: 8/10 The voices of the actors are clear enough.  The music is on the subdued side, which I counted as a plus.

Acting: 5/10 Yikes.  The one and only star in the film, Thomas Jane, was in creepy mode which is one of his strengths.  Jessica Alba I could have done without; this was one more film ruined by her presence.  Lily Rabe was a bit better.  The actors who played the film crew did reasonable jobs right up to the places where the screenplay deserted them.

Screenplay: 5/10 The take on everlasting life was entertaining, but the methods of getting there were just ludicrous.  Also, in the end, it seemed like merely one more fake possession film.

Final rating: 6/10  Most of the +6 is for Thomas Jane's performance and the cinematography.

20160206: Horror Review--Dark Floors

Name: Dark Floors (2008)
IMDb: link to Dark Floors page

Genres: Horror   Country of origin: Finland.

Cast: Noah Huntley as Ben, Skye Bennett as Sarah, Leon Herbert as Rick, Ronald Pickup as Tobias, William Hope as Jon, Dominique McElligart as Emily.

Directed by: Pete Riski, Alan Smithee.  Written by: Pekka Lehtosaari.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Father Ben and daughter Sarah are at a hospital getting sensitive tests run on her brain.  The power fails, the machine adjusts, and Sarah freaks out.  Ben decides to take Sarah somewhere else.

Ben, Sarah, Nurse Emily, Security Guard Rick, salesman Jon, and mental patient Tobias take an elevator together.  The power goes out again.  They manage to get out on the fifth floor, which at first seems deserted.

Delineation of conflicts:
Sarah wants her red crayon.  Ben wants her to be safe. Rick and Emily want to know what's going on.  Jon wants to take his sample teddy bears and leave the building.  Tobias seems to know they are in some sort of trouble, but does not communicate that well.

There is some poltergeist activity (television, radio, telephones, fans), and their freedom of movement seems hampered.  While in a stairwell, someone takes a shot at them, and grazes Rick's neck.

Soon enough, it seems that something does not want them to leave.  Tobias hints that the other four adults might know why this is.  Again, his communication is oblique.  Sarah draws things that no one else sees; ghostly images tantalize them; soon enough, tangible actions are observed.

Resolution:
This film follows several horror movie cliches.  The ghosts/demons seem to be suffering or obsessed with an issue or two.  The adult humans need to surface parts of their memories that pertain to that suffering.  Will they be able to work out issues with the supernaturals?

One line summary: Ghosts trap normals in hospital.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 The footage looks well done and sharp at the start.  As the supernatural elements phase in, there is more darkness, more dinge and decay, and more restricted colour palettes.

Sound: 5/10 The actors were miked OK; I could understand the dialog without the sound blasting.  The background sound and music did not contribute much to the overall creepiness for most of the film.

Acting: 5/10 The child actress Skye Bennett was not all that skilled.  The other five were reasonably good.  The men in rubber suits were just horrible.

Screenplay: 5/10 The film follows the mushroom method of telling the story.  At halfway through the film, I still had next to no idea of the motivations of the ghosts/demons or of the humans.  Still, this is one of horror's stock in trade approaches.

One of the drivers of the film is the preteen's mental problems and general lack of ability to execute her own life. The adults carry her or wheel her around.  At least three of them are needed to take care of her, such as carrying her wheelchair up and down stairs, calming her down, and the like.  When she's left alone, bad things seem to happen.  This is another stock in trade cliche.  Every so often she becomes all powerful.  Hm, what is the knot in her personality?

Final rating: 5/10 

20151204: Horror Review--Wolves

Name: Wolves (2014)
IMDb: link to IMDb

Genres: Horror.    Country of Origin: Canada.

Cast: Lucas Till (X-Men 2011, 2014; Stoker) as Cayden Richards, Stephen McHattie (Haunter, 300) as John Tollerman, John Pyper-Ferguson (Drive, Unforgiven) as Wild Joe, Jason Momoa as Connory Slaughter, Merritt Patterson as Angelina Timmins, Janet Laine-Green as Clara Tollerman.

Written and directed by:  David Hayter.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: Cayden starts out as a high school quarterback with a fine girlfriend.  Things devolve quickly for him.  His behaviour on the field brings up questions.  When the girlfriend suggests having sex in her car, his arousal triggers something else, and she runs screaming.  He returns to his home only to awake with his parents dead and blood on his hands.

While the cops attempt to get enough evidence on him to put him away, Cayden hits the road.  He eventually meets Wild Joe at a bar, and Wild Joe points him to Lupine Ridge.

Delineation of conflicts: Cayden wants to know more about who he is, and why he goes through these changes.  The people in Lupine Ridge know some of the answers, but do not give them up all that easily.  A gang in town is rather monopolistic about who holds what power in and around the town, and Cayden does not fit in that scheme.  The people in the town and the gang outside of town have only an uneasy peace, and law enforcement seldom spends any time in the area.

Resolution: Cayden needs to uncover and resolve the tension between the town folk and the gang.

One line summary: So-so werewolf film; bad acting.

Statistics:
  a. Cinematography: 6/10 Professional looking, but not all that exciting.  Some of the wolf costumes were nice to look at, but did not help in the matter of building menace.

  b. Sound: 5/10 Dialogue capture and playback was fine.  The background music was too weak for building tension. The music over the credits was so damned horrible that 7 became a 5.

  c. Acting: 4/10 Stephen McHattie and John Pyper-Ferguson were fine as usual.  On the other hand, Jason Momoa was in the film, and he is one of the worst actors ever.  The rest of the cast was uninteresting at best.

  d. Screenplay: 4/10  Did I identify or empathise with any of the characters?  No.  Was there a story to follow?  Yes, but the dialogue was poor on the whole.

Final rating: 5/10

20151104: Horror Review--Lazarus Effect

Name: The Lazarus Effect (2015)
IMDb: link to IMDb

Genres: Horror, Mystery  Country of Origin: USA

Cast: Olivia Wilde as Dr Zoe McConnell, Mark Duplass as Frank, Sarah Bolger as Eva, Evan Peters as Clay, Donald Glover as Niko.

Directed by:  David Gelb.  Written by: Luke Dawson, Jeremy Slater.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableau: Engaged couple Frank and Zoe get a grant to do a study.  They hire Clay and Niko to help with computers and recording telemetry.  Together they develop a method for preserving recently dead tissue so that it can be revivified without loss of memory, or damage to motor or sensory nerve responses.  This would allow surgeons and specialists to bring back patients once whatever needed fixing on the patient was complete. They hire Eva to document the project on film.  During the three years spent on the project so far, Frank and Zoe have put off their wedding plans and worked hard to justify the grant.

Delineation of conflicts:  The team records their work on university computers.  Unbeknownst to them, the content gets reviewed regularly by the company that underwrote Frank's grant contract.  When the team successfully reanimates a dog put down for having cataracts, Frank finds that his contract is nullified, and everything is seized by the relevant pharmaceutical company.  The team sees an opportunity: get whatever they can from backups, and piece together their research so that they can continue in another lab before their chance of getting credit is lost.

Resolution: What could possibly go wrong?  There's jail, perhaps. Plus, the dog they reanimated was not quite normal.  What would happen if they tried to reanimate a human?

One line summary: Another weak entry in the 'not safe to play God' sub-genre.

Statistics:
  a. Cinematography: 6/10 This is definitely a mixed bag.  Regular shooting is fine.  Results shot through the documents camera is less good.  There is a third mode having to do with filming experiments on the fly; this is even poorer in quality.

  b. Sound: 8/10 Good but not great.  The number of jump scares was thankfully small.

  c. Acting: 5/10 I liked Mark Duplass, Ray Wise (small role), Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger, and Donald Glover.  Olivia Wilde, however, was just terrible.

  d. Screenplay: 4/10 Before the funding break, the story was going well.  After the question of religion came up, and all the mistakes began, the flaws and cliches were many and clear.

Final rating: five of ten

20151026: SciFi Review--Jupiter Ascending

Name: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
IMDb: link to IMDb page

Genres: Horror, Mystery

Cast: Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones, Channing Tatum as Caine Wise, Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax, Sean Bean as Stinger Apini, Douglas Booth as Titus Abrasax, Tuppence Middleton as Kalique Abrasax, Charlotte Beaumont as Kiza, Doona Bae as Razo, Nikki Amuka-Bird as Diomika Tsing.

Written and directed by:  The Wachowskis

The Three Acts:

The initial tableau:  Before Jupiter is born to a British astronomer father and a Russian mathematician mother, her father is killed and her mother's life destroyed by PC thugs in Russia.  The film jump shifts to the 'present' (our future) in Chicago.  In some impossibly rich other world, brothers Balem and Titus spar over opaque issues.  Within this context, Earth is an extremely valuable bauble to be 'harvested'; this involves genocidal removal of all inhabitants.  Jupiter is at the heart of this, since her DNA somehow blocks all transactions that the brothers quarrel over.  In Jupiter's own life, there is little but hard work, poverty, and lack of mobility.

Delineation of conflicts: Balem owns Earth, Titus wants it, and Kalique conspires behind them both.  Balem is drawn to Jupiter from past associations, but he intends to kill her to free up his harvesting of Earth.  Titus hired Caine to find Jupiter and protect her from Balem.  Someone has hired Apini; this takes a while to become clear.  Jupiter has a lot of lost memories that filter back at odd moments.  Worlds collide when Jupiter tries to sell some of her eggs for cash: her DNA is up for analysis.

Resolution: The conflicts go on and on, and do eventually resolve.  It just takes a long time to get there.

One line summary: Poor script and acting undermine the lavish production.

Statistics:
  a. Cinematography: 8/10 Most of the film is lovely to watch.  The CGI, though ridiculous, is pretty to the eye.

  b. Sound: 8/10 Mostly professionally recorded and assembled into the film.

  c. Acting: 4/10 Mixed bag.  Sean Bean and Nikki Amuka-Bird were fine.  Channing Tatum was terrible.  Doona Bae was even worse than usual.  Eddie Redmayne was onscreen entirely too much.

  d. Screenplay: 4/10 Based on the script, I answered the following questions.  Whom do I identify with?  No one.  Whom do I empathise with?  Again, no one.  Is there a single character that I care about?  No.  Do I care about the fate of the future Earth?  No, this is all clearly fantastical nonsense.  Do I care about the society of ultra rich pampered aliens who treat Earth as a coal mine?  No.  These factors make 130 minutes of film seem terribly long.

Final rating: 5/10

20150731: Drama Review--American Psycho

American Psycho

image courtesy of The Movie Database

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: American Psycho
2. IMDb: Users rated this 7.6/10 (312,703 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   67% of critics liked it of 142 critical reviews posted
   85% of viewers liked it from 300,623 ratings
   Critics Consensus: If it falls short of the deadly satire of Bret Easton Ellis's novel, American Psycho still finds its own blend of horror and humor, thanks in part to a fittingly creepy performance by Christian Bale.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2000-04-14
6. Production Companies: Lions Gate
7. Tagline: I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.


8. Budget:  7 million USD
9. Revenue: 34 million USD
10. Runtime: 102 minutes.
11. Genres: Crime, Drama


12. Directed by: Mary Harron.  Written by: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner


13. Starring: Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, Reese Witherspoon as Evelyn Williams, Justin Theroux as Timothy Bryce, Josh Lucas as Craig McDermott, Bill Sage as David Van Patten, Chloë Sevigny as Jean, Samantha Mathis as Courtney Rawlinson, Matt Ross as Luis Carruthers, Jared Leto as Paul Allen, Willem Dafoe as Det. Donald Kimball


14. TMDb overview: A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Patrick is the protagonist, Evelyn his fiancee, and Jean his secretary.  His drinking buddies are Timothy, Craig, and David.  Luis ('the dufus') and Courtney are seen together in public, but Patrick is having an affair with her, unknown to Luis.


2. Patrick is in the banking sector in New York City. He obtained his position in Mergers and Acquisitions via nepotism.


3. So, Patrick has a job, male friends/competitors, and female bedmates. The only flaw in this picture of overabundance, privilege, and recreational drug use is that Patrick is insane. Patrick keeps his homicidal urges fairly well under control toward the beginning of the film, but less and less and the film progresses.


4. The exposition style is what I call archipelago. The movie consists of islands of film taped together. There is no mainland; there are no bridges. There are only discrete pieces separated by whim and held in place by time order. Sort of.


5. Vignettes (islands), humourous: The touchstones where Patrick notices (to the audience) how much he and Paul Allen are alike.  The passages about one upmanship, be it business cards or restaurant reservations.  Patrick trying and failing to give a homeless man some help.


6. Vignettes, horrifying:  The Paul Allen goodbye sequence strained credulity too much. The Ed Gein story was a bit of a shock, even in contrast to the unyielding misogyny just preceding it.  There are many more.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Great visuals undone by script and direction as well as inconsistent sound capture and editing.


2. Shorter summary: Exercise in self-delusion.


3. Five of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Each scene is well thought out, and the shooting is wonderfully executed.


2. Sound: 7/10 The scenes with musical accompaniment are lush and rich; they have a feeling of depth.  Some of the quiet scenes involving only conversation are tinny, weak, thin, and disappointing.


3. Acting: 2/10 There were some fine actors in this motion picture.  All of them seemed to be doing what the director wanted. Bravo for their professionalism.  However, the director's vision was so worthless that the performances were of little note.  This is strongly parallel to some of the weaker Wes Anderson films, where the efforts of good actors were thrown away by the poor direction.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 The protagonist talks directly to the viewer.  This is bovine scatology. The entire film is about a delusional protagonist, so nothing is to be trusted in the plotlines, such as they are.  Just because some action is depicted on the screen does not mean that it happened outside the sour operations of this afflicted mind.  One might as well be suffering through Walter Mitty, except that the lead has bloody fantasies instead of Mitty's pleasant ones.
   
   So, since nothing of the exposition is to be trusted, what is the point of this vile mess?
   
   As one navigates through this maze of false threads, that is the central question. The hideous ending casts everything even deeper in doubt. The film is reminiscent of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) which was heaped with praise since Terry Gilliam directed it. That does not change the fact that after watching the film, one wonders whether Depp's character did any of the actions shown on screen. In American Psycho, the disappointment was much stronger because the production values were so much higher. Whereas FLiLV looked sleazy, AP looked exquisite; interspersed with the shock segments, that is.  I expected some sort of value for having suffered through the recurring horrific images, the type one expects from a slasher film or a mild gorefest, but done by someone like Hitchcock.
   
   If American Psycho is considered as a collage, bits of the film were good for witty conversation or for commentary on the 1980s and the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. The collage as a whole, though, is just an incoherent collection of high quality materials badly assembled.
   
   The last two minutes were almost interesting, but the rest of the film did not support the message. The effect as a whole is doubled: who cares? It is all delusion and of no point at all.

20141027: Drama Review--Prozac Nation

Prozac Nation

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. German/American/Canadian live action feature length film, 2001, rated R, 95 minutes, drama.
2. IMDB: 6.3/10.0 from 12,215 audience ratings. Estimated budget, 9 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 29% on the meter; 59% liked it from 21,160 audience ratings.
4. I watched this on Cinemax.
5. Directed by: Erik Skjoldbjaerg.  Written by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Wurtzel (original book) and Galt Niederhoffer (adapted screenplay).
6. Starring: Christina Ricci as Elizabeth Wurtzel, Jessica Lange as Mrs. Wurtzel, Michell Williams as Ruby, Anne Heche as Dr. Sterling, Jonathan Rhys Myers as Noah, Jason Biggs as Rafe, Nicholas Campbell as Donald Wurtzel.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Lizzie's parents split up when she was two years old.  She misses her father, who is largely absent, both physically and financially.  Lizzie's mother's relationship to Lizzie's grandmother is dysfunctional, and that runs downhill to Lizzie's relationship with her mother.


2. In 1985, Lizzie gets a journalism scholarship to Harvard.  She gets a fine award for an article she wrote about Lou Reed for the Rolling Stone.


3. Despite the scholarship, her mother has large bills to handle.  She presses hard for Lizzie to do well.  Partly because of the early success, Lizzie cannot handle everything.  She does not have the tools to deal with the availability of sex and a variety of drugs.


4. Her inner demons surface strongly in the presence of the new freedoms.  She descends into mental illness, and cannot write for a time.  Her mother sets up a connection with Dr. Sterling.  Lizzie's progress with the mental health professional is slow, and the sessions are dearly expensive.  Lizzie's mother has to move to a smaller apartment in a bad part of town; this has bad consequences later on.


5. Lizzie's interactions with young men are not all that helpful.  Noah introduces her to drugs and heavy drinking.  Rafe has better effects on her, but she cannot form a stable connection with him.


6. Just what will get Lizzie out of this pit of madness?  She has to get well to write the book that inspired the movie, after all.




3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Writer's problems with drugs, relationships, and mental illness.
2. Five of ten.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 No particular problems.


2. Sound: 10/10 Excellent.  Lizzie wants to be a journalist covering contemporary music, and the film's score reinforces this.


3. Acting: 5/10 I liked the performances of Jessica Lange, Christina Ricci, and Michelle Williams.  The performances by the male characters were caricatures, which I rather resented.  An ugly, tough to embrace film like this one might do better not to go out of its way to alienate half their potential audience.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Where does the title come from?  Answer: a couple of sentences in the last five minutes of the film.  The film is heavily unbalanced in favour of showing the descent into madness and the damage done.  Precious little screen time was spent on the recovered state or the process of getting there.  The film ends up being more depressing than illuminating.  The use of obscenity was bit shocking at first, but became progressively more meaningless after the first twenty or thirty iterations.

20140303: Horror Review--Hellraiser 6 2002

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Canadian live action feature length film, 2002, rated R, 89 minutes, horror.
2. IMDB: 5.1/10.0 from 6,078 audience ratings. Estimated budget, 3 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 0% on the meter; 36% liked it from 16,265 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.3/5.0 from 227,240 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Rick Bota, screenplay by Tim Day and Carl V. DuPre.
6. Starring: Dean Winters as Trevor Gooden, Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton Gooden, Doug Bradley as Pinhead/Merchant, Rachel Hayward as Allison.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Husband Trevor and wife Kirsty are traveling along in a Volvo, having a lively conversation, then a lengthy kiss.  Unfortunately, neither of them was looking at the road ahead of them.  They run off the road into a small river.  Trevor gets out.  Kirsty gets free of her seatbelt, but the door that Trevor opened wide for her mysteriously closes.  Trevor wakes in hospital later, but Kirsty did not make it back with him.


2. Trevor returns to work and gets a barrage of questions rather than any sympathy at all.  His female boss expects Trevor to return to his habit of servicing her.  She and his coworkers remind him that they are always being recorded.


3. Kirsty's body is not found.  Eventually the police investigation contacts Trevor, and he has some explaining to do. Trevor continues his wayward ways, and the hallucinations start.  He seeks help from psychiatry and from acupuncture.  However, both of his caregivers turn out to be self-delusions.  Or were they?  The film takes a few turns on that point.


4. Things get much worse for Trevor, but do they ever get better?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Follows another tortured conscience doing a bad job of dealing with its past.
2. Five of ten.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Fuzzy, VHS quality over Netflix.


2. Sound: 7/10 The score is somewhat helpful in setting a creepy tone, and accentuating painful moments.


3. Acting: 5/10 Dean Winters is a more or less serviceable supporting actor on television, but has no business being the lead in a feature film.  The supporting players were not all that memorable.  It was nice to see a more mature Ashley Laurence in a short but nice performance.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 The story for this film is reminiscent of HR5, in that it seems to be about the tortured conscience of one particular wrong doer. It is on the simple side, so the quality depends on the execution, and the acting was not all that good.  Pinhead in this film is just a prop, not really an essential character. This film has clearly lost the mission, and should call itself something else.

20130906: Thriller Review--Hate Story

Name: Hate Story (2012)
IMDb: link to Hate Story page

Genres: Thriller, Crime.  Country of origin: India.

Cast: Paoli Dam as Kaavya Krishna (the protagonist), Ghishan Deviaiah as Siddharth Dhanrajgir (her tormentor), Nikhil Dwivedi as Vicky (Kaavya's ally), Joy Sengupta as Rajdev.

Directed by: Vivek Agnihotri.   Written by: Vikram Bhatt, Rohit Malhotra.

The Three Acts: 

The initial tableaux:
Journalist Kaavya exposes corruption between an industrialist and a judge regarding fixing cement prices.  The industrialist strikes back, by offering her a job she could not refuse, then romancing her, including a rather large stone on a ring, plus other expensive items. Then he rejects her: the job is gone, the 'romance' was a ploy, and he's not done screwing her over yet. First off, her job search is a bust.

Her pregnancy by Sid does not change his campaign against her.  He lures her outside her apartment, then gives her something like chloroform to knock her out. Thugs transport her to a cheap clinic to abort the fetus forcibly, to sterilize her without consent, then to leave her with no assets in the middle of nowhere.  She barely gets in touch with her family, who save her life, but then rejects her upon finding out her recent story.

Delineation of conflicts:
Kaavya wants revenge against Sid: physical retribution, emotional retribution, retribution against his reputation and wealth.  Sid, being a born bully, figures that the victim is the cause of the problem, and wishes to crush Kaavya into the deepest places of degradation and despair.

Kaavya becomes a high class prostitute to gain information and leverage against Sid.  Sid employs thugs and surveillance to counter her efforts and to damage her further.

Resolution:
The two principals deal considerable damage to each other.  Who remains standing at the end?

One line summary: Revenge, prostitution, government corruption, and industrial spying in modern India.

Statistics

Cinematography: 8/10 The camera work varies from just competent to almost glorious.

Sound: 4/10 The interjected music routines were more than a bit intrusive, unlikely, and off-putting.

Acting: 5/10 This was a mixed bag.  Some of the minor players are indifferent.   Joy Sengupta was fairly wooden, for instance.  Ghishan Deviaiah's Jekyll and Hyde performance was not convincing.  On the other hand, Nikhil Dwivedi was fine as Vicky, and Paoli Dam was wonderful as Kaavya.

Screenplay: 5/10 It is difficult to take this one seriously.  That is, did you just do that?  Seriously?  The plot's twists and turns were frequent and about 50 percent of them were too unlikely to believe. The house of cards the Sid character had constructed was just too unwieldy to hold up to any kind of scrutiny.

Final Rating: 5/10

20130822: Comedy Review--Cheesecake Casserole

Name: Cheesecake Casserole (2012)
IMDb: link to Cheesecake Casserole page

Genres: Feel bad comedy     Country of origin: USA

Cast: Torrey Devitto as Margo, Brit Morgan (True Blood) as Cal, Paige Howard as Jess, Rome Brooks as Avy, Ryan Merriman as Andy (Jess' boyfriend), Stephen Heath as Ronnie (hitchhiker), Louis Herthum as Howard (father of Cal), Rocco Nugent as Rudy (Avy's controlling Christian boyfriend).

Written and directed by: Renji Philip; original stage play by Meghan Gambling.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Four coeds get together for a last weekend before graduation, to party and to reminisce.  The conversations get interesting, and even more intense after some of the boyfriends join them.

Delineation of conflicts:
The men are depicted as unmitigated jerks.  Rudy is a strongly discordant character, that I wish they had bounced early on.  The real estate agent with his misspelled realty signs showed another reprehensible male activity: an older man who uses his experience to take advantage of a younger woman.  Andy was inarticulate and useless: he wanted Jess to give up a post-doc in France so she would be available to him.

The last opportunities for backbiting are taken.

Resolution:  As the film evolves, the women become more self-righteous and rejecting.

One line summary: Sad pre-graduation gathering.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Most of the camera work was fine, but there was some overexposure to the point of significant loss of contrast.

Sound: 5/10 The spoken word was out of synch with the actors' mouth movements early on.  The incidental music was beyond irritating, especially when it blares out of control.  The first two minutes were almost enough to make me stop watching the film.

Acting: 2/10 Actors of a more appropriate age would have been better.  I expected better acting from the older cast to make up for the age incongruity.  That did not happen.

Screenplay: 5/10 The barrage of anti-male sentiments was next to unrelenting. The sense of resolution was low, the sense of loss definitely higher.

The film generated zero belly laughs, zero chuckles, zero wry smiles for me, so it fails strongly as a comedy.  Some of the dramatic elements were better, such as the tough interactions between characters; for example, between Cal and her father.  Avy and Rudy interact a lot, but not in any useful way.  That seemed to be pain that bore only poisoned fruit.

Final Rating: Five of ten.

20130819: Comedy Review--Lovelife

Name: Lovelife (1997) 
IMDb: link to Lovelife

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Drama.  Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Saffron Burrows as Zoey, Bruce Davison as Bruce, Sherilyn Fenn as Molly, Carla Gugino as Amy, Peter Krause as Tim, Matt Letscher as Danny, Jon Tenney as Alan.

Written and directed by: Jon Harmon Feldman.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film is set at some university in the Los Angeles area that has a graduate program in English. The 1997 set looks suitably dated.

In terms of the players,  Danny and Zoey are together, as are Alan and Molly; Amy is interested in Danny; Danny wants Amy to be interested in Tim, but she's not.

Delineation of conflicts:
The film continues to be slow after the introductory passages.

Amy tries to be with Danny, but he's not over Zoey yet. Zoey is with Alan, who breaks up with Molly in a bad way.

Molly is considering Bruce, while taking his TV writing class.  Tim and Amy meet by chance, have dinner together, and more.  Danny drops out of the grad program and takes a job at a video store.  Molly tries to direct Danny back to Amy, but it's a bit late (or early?) for that.

Resolution: do not miss the last three minutes of the film; all the final packaging is done in that interval.

One line summary: Poor as comedy, sludge as romance.

Statistics:

Cinematography:  9/10 Good on fundamentals.

Sound: 7/10 Well done, but not inspiring.  A bit too much like 'Love Boat' moved up to 1997.

Acting:  5/10 The actors follow the script, but few of them are engaging.  Jon Tenny was particularly wooden.  Matthew Letscher was worse; his attempts at wittiness just fail.  Carla Gugino was fine as always, but Sherilyn Fenn was disappointing and Saffron Burrows insufferable.  Bruce Davison gave one of his better performances.

Screenplay: 4/10 All too soon, I was asking myself, 'What will the next round of changes be?' but not really caring.  About 60 minutes in, I hit a wall that was hard to get over---was this thing even worth finishing?

Sure enough, the next 30 minutes were like slogging through mud with a heavy pack.  There were histrionics enough to term the film a whine-fest.  During the last 3 minutes, resolutions did occur, but it seemed a bit late.  Judging from the earlier material, I wondered whether the last match-ups had any chance of permanence.

Final Rating: 5/10 Proceed at your own risk.