20130909: Documentary Review--Thirty Thousand

Thirty Thousand: A Surfing Odyssey

1. Australian live action feature film, 2011, 50 minutes, NR, documentary, surfing.
2. IMDB: no search results
3. Rotten Tomatoes: no search results.
4. Watched this on Hulu+
5. Written, directed, and produced by Richard and Andrew James.
6. Cinematography and editing by Richard James.
7. ----------------------Setup and activities.
8. Two Australian men surf off the coast of Morocco, then proceed southward, surfing the local coasts, until reaching South Africa.
9. Lots of surfing music, Australian style.
10. Western Morocco: still under military dispute; this is kept in check somewhat by UN peacekeepers.
11. Next step, Senegal.  Big changes: many people, lush vegetation.  Very few surfers.
12. The two stars of the show are more adept at staying on their boards than many I've seen in surf films.
13. Third step, Liberia: extended civil war was in the recent past.  Their foreign currency was well received.  Bigger waves here.
14. Fourth step, Angola.  This was the most difficult to travel through: check points, bad roads, language barriers, grouchy military.
15. Fifth step, Namibia, crossing the Kalahari Desert to the ocean.
16. Sixth, continue south to the ocean off South Africa.
17. Eh, home.
18. ----------------------Conclusions
19. One line summary: Two Australians surf African coasts from Morocco to South Africa.
20. Three stars of five.
21. ----------------------Scores.
22. Camera work: not as good as the top surfing documentaries. Graininess and soft focus is much more common in their work.  Lose one star.  There was more inland footage than I expected.
23. Sound: The volume of the spoken word is way too many decibels below the injected music. Lose another star.  Jockeying the volume for each segment is a pain.
24. Screenplay: organization is fine for a surfing film.
25. Pluses: these are two of the most skilled surfers I've seen on film.  Some of their techniques were new to me, as well as clever and low-tech.  They could stay up on their boards in quite turbulent waves.  Many of the locales were new, so that was good, but the darkness of their images took some of that virtue away.

20130909: Documentary Review--Terra Antarctica

Terra Antarctica, Re-Discovering the Seventh Continent

1. American live action tv episode length film, 2009, NR, 49 minutes, spoken word is English.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 9 users
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and no audience ratings.
4. Written and directed by Jon Bowermaster. 
5. Stars Jon Bowermaster.
6. ---------------
7. Ice.  Penguins.  Seals.  Broken ships from a century ago.  Ice.  Snow.
8. The claim was that each winter, the size of Antarctica grows by 7 million square miles.
9. Warming: average temperatures up 5 to 9 degrees over the last 50 years.  Rather imprecise.
10. Warming means more snow, mostly wet snow, plus flatter light, which is bad for climbing.
11. The stench of penguin guano.  Nice.
12. The Chilean base is military personnel only, which is against the agreements made in the 1950s.
13. Kayaking in waters with broken ice.  Accelerating total ice loss.  A ten day stretch of continual rain, which helps erode the glaciers more quickly.
14. The UK, Chile, and Argentina have made new and conflicting claims on big portions of the continent.
15. ---------------
16. Camera work: good; sound: good.  Screenplay: OK.  It's just that there is nothing new except the pictures.  Way too many pictures of old men in kayaks is not all that interesting.
17. One sentence summary:  The pictures are worth seeing, but don't expect great content or any new outlook.
18. Three stars of five.
19. For a much better documentary, see 'Chasing Ice'

20130909: Comedy Review--Shades of Ray

Name: Shades of Ray (2008)
IMDb: link to Shades of Ray page

Genres: Drama  Country of origin: USA

Cast: Zachary Levi as Ray, Sarah Shahi as Sana Khaliq, Bonnie Somerville as Noel Wilson, Fran Kranz as Sal Garfinkle, Kathy Baker as Janet Rehman, Brian George as Javaid Rehman.

Written and directed by: Jaffar Mahmood.

The Three Acts

The initial tableaux:
Ray grew up in New Jersey, but moves away to Los Angeles.

Ray is engaged to Noel, and asks her to marry her.  She delays giving him an answer until after she comes back from a vacation with her parents.

Delineation of conflicts:
Ray's father moves in with him, and soon talks him into having dinner with Sana and her parents.

Noel calls him and says yes.  Ray continues seeing Sana.  Oi.  Ray's mother comes out.  Noel comes by when Ray is working at the bar, and the parents are both at Ray's house.  Sana stops by the bar and tries to seduce Ray in the men's room. What could possibly go wrong, and could it be fixed?

Resolution:
Ray has to make a decision.  Can he make one and stay with it?

One sentence summary: The protagonist's trajectory resembles that of a pinball.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually competent, but often just barely.

Sound: 7/10 Occasionally badly miked.

Acting: 6/10 Good except for Fran Kranz.  The other actors counterbalance his badness, but he's still obnoxious.

Screenplay: 6/10 Moves along logically, except for the intervals that contain Fran Kranz.

Final Rating: 6/10

20130909: Comedy Review--Will You Marry Me

Name: Will You Marry Me? (2012)
IMDb: link to Will You Marry Me page

Genres: Comedy, Romance. Country of origin: India.

Cast: Shreyas Taipade as Aarav (Jai); Rajeev Khandelwal as Rajveer (Veeru); Muzamil Ibrahim as Nikhil; Tripta Parashar as Anjali, Mugdha Godse as Sneha, Manoj Joshi as Anjali's father.

Directed by: Aditya Datt.  Written by: Jay Master.

Image courtesy of IMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film starts at 2002, during the graduation ceremony at Saint Andrews Academy.  Nikhil asks Anjali to marry him.  Sort of.

Eleven of the young men who were at the graduation sign a pact.  Each has to put in a block of 'Reliance' shares into a pot.  Second, as each man gets married, they forfeit their right to the pot.

After some time, only Jai, Raj, and Nikhil remain single.

Delineation of conflicts:
Nikhil and Anjali are still together, but not for long, unless he commits to marry her.  He asks her, and gives her a ring.  They break up because of the antics of Jai and Veeru.  Sigh.

Nikhil goes through some travails to get Anjali back, such as meeting a wedding dress designer at a gay bar, then having to perform in a dance number there.  The marriage is back on then, so Nikhil loses his claim on the pot.

About this time, Anjali's cousin Sneha shows up on the scene, and both Jai and Veeru are interested in her.  A stock deal gone bad complicates matters.  This reasserts interest in the pot of Reliance shares, especially on Rajveer's part.  Rajveer, with Nikhil's help, tries to nudge Sneha into Aarav's waiting arms.  What could possibly go wrong?

Resolution:
There is substantial money at risk.  There are important human relationships at risk.

One line summary: Romancing the money, or romancing the woman?

Statistics:

Cinematography:  10/10 Quite good.

Sound: 8/10 Adequate to good.  Subtitles were usually well done.

Dance Numbers: 8/10 Lots of fun, nice music.  The voices are richer in sound quality than I expected.
 
Acting: 7/10 The warring idiots, Aarav and Rajeev, are a bit hard to put up with, but otherwise fine.

Screenplay: 8/10 The plot moves right along from beginning to middle to end.

I am reminded of Tomcats (2001), in terms of setup: Jerry O'Connell's character needed to get a friend married off so he could cover his gambling debts.  This remake film is more fun.

Final Rating: 8/10

20130909: Adventure Review--Sedona

Name: Sedona (2011)
IMDb: link to Sedona page

Genres: Adventure, Comedy   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Frances Fisher as Tammy (uptight ad executive), Seth Peterson as Scott (uptight businessman), Beth Grant as Deb (fortune teller), Barry Corbin as Les (auto repair).

Written and directed by: Tommy Stovall.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Through a series of incidences of Murphy's Law, travelers get stuck together near Sedona, Arizona.

Tammy cannot get to her meeting: a plane lands on her car; the mechanic cannot get required parts; she locked herself out of her rental car.  While waiting for her car to be fixed, she gets a pedicure from Beth, who asks her how her son is doing.

Scott's younger son gets lost.  They are lucky enough to encounter a local search and rescue professional, who helps them look. Scott gets to find his younger son.  So?

Delineation of conflicts:
Tammy gets to revisit past wounds, and to get the opposite of prepared for her meeting.  Scott gets to stew about what is truly important in his life.

Resolution:
Tammy and Scott re-prioritize.

One line summary: Don't ever go to Arizona.

Statistics

Cinematography: 8/10 Amazingly good, except for outdoor closeups.  Some of the exteriors seemed to be color-enhanced.

Sound: 6/10 Well done, except for the severely overblown musical nonsense toward the end of the film.

Acting: 7/10 Reasonable for the script, even including the child actors.

Screenplay: 6/10 Well-intended I suppose, but just not interesting and too heavy-handed.

Final Rating: 6/10

20130908: Comedy Review--Miley Naa Miley Hum

Name: Miley Naa Miley Hum (2011)
IMDb: link to Miley Naa Miley Hum page

Genres: Comedy, Romance. Country of origin: India.

Cast: Chirag Paswan as Chirag S. Mehra, Kangana Ranault as Anishka, Neeru Bajwa as Manjit Ahluwalia, Kabir Bedi as Siddharth Mehra, Poonam Dhillon as Shahlini S. Mehra.

Written and directed by: Tanveer Khan.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Chirag is the child of a well-to-do family, and had to choose a parent when they split up.  He would rather they get back together, which seems unlikely.

The grown Chirag is involved in both his father's and his mother's successful business efforts.  In addition, he's a tennis player.  He alternates months spent with each parent.  Each parent wishes Chirag would stay with them exclusively.

He helps his young woman cousin start her own fashion line.

His father and Manjit's father decide that Manjit and Chirag should marry.  Manjit moves in with Chirag's father and takes over cooking.  Chirag decides to act like he is interested in Anishka.

Delineation of conflicts:
The parents put pressure on Anishka to relinquish any claims on Chirag. Neither Anishka nor Chirag are happy with this. The parents and Manjit would prefer that Chirag marry Manjit, but that seems unlikely.

Chirag's friend and Anishka's business manager cook up a deal for her to be Chirag's very public girlfriend for 20 days.  Since Chirag is a pretty much a rock star, he gets a lot of attention from women other than Anishka, and after a while she begins to not like it.

Resolution:
Manjit decides to leave Chirag's father's house; Chirag's cousin decides to go home; both Chirag and Anishka are unhappy about the charade coming to conclusion. Will there be a Hollywood ending?

One sentence summary: Fun and touching musical comedy.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 10/10 Bright, sharp, colorful, well-framed.

Sound: 8/10 Blaring during the musical numbers; otherwise fine.  Some of the English subtitles show a rudimentary knowledge of English spelling.  'Shore' for 'sure', 'sine' instead of 'sign',  'bye' for 'buy', and the like.  Some of the singing in the musical numbers was gorgeous, with rich, well-trained voices and good instrumentation.

The musical number where Chirag keeps insisting that he and Manjit are not together, but she insists that they are, is just hilarious.

Acting: 8/10 Good, but not great.

Screenplay: 9/10 Moves along and is delightful. I have not liked a musical in perhaps 13 years.  I was surprised at how much I liked this one.

Final Rating: 8/10

20130908: Comedy Review--Boys and Girls

Name: Boys and Girls (2000)
IMDb: link to Boys and Girls page

Genres: Romantic Comedy.   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Freddie Prinze as Ryan Walker, Claire Forlani as Jennifer Burrows, Jason Biggs as Hunter/Steve, Amanda Detmer as Amy.

Directed by: Robert Iscove. Written by: Andrew Lowery and Andrew Miller

The Three Acts

The initial tableau:
Ryan and Claire meet on a plane around age 12, then in high school, then again and again in college, at first by happenstance, then by design as they slowly become friends.

Delineation of conflicts:
The Biggs character is always at war with himself, setting up his own failures and confusing his friends.

Ryan and Jennifer are attracted to each other, but cannot admit it. After they sleep together, they break up.

Resolution:
The rest of the film is about Ryan and Jennifer getting back together, or not.

One line summary: Should friendship stage to romance?

Statistics:

Cinematography: 8/10 Good, but not exceptional.

Sound: 8/10 Good, but not exceptional.

Acting: 5/10 Freddie Prinze and Claire Forlani are not nearly as good as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. The supporting cast is not as strong.  Jason Biggs is particularly weak.

Screenplay: 4/10 This is about 15 minutes of plot spread over 94 minutes.  All the Jason Biggs scenes could be omitted without loss. Not as good as When Harry Met Sally, moved up from 1989 to 2000, with the screenplay dumbed down.

Final Rating: 6/10

20130908: Horror Review--Mutant Girls Squad

Name: Mutant Girls Squad (2010)
IMDb: link to Mutant Girls Squad page

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Comedy.   Country of origin: Japan.

Cast: Yumi Sugimoto as Rin,Yuko Takayama as Rei, Naoto Takenaka as Defense Minister Koshimi, Suzuka Morita as Yoshie, Tak Sakaguchi as Kisagari.

Directed by: Noboru Iguchi. Written by: Jun Tsugita.

Rin, Yoshi, Rei

The Three Acts

The initial tableaux:
Rin is picked upon at school. Her possessions are vandalized, objects are thrown at her, and her teacher does not defend her.  Of course, some of the upper class girls can buy and sell the teacher.

Rin's life changes when she is 16; she is beaten by upper class classmates, and diagnosed as a mutant at school.  Her abilities assert themselves and she escapes.  At home her parents have a birthday party planned, but the authorities follow her home, and her parents get killed.  She flees after dispatching most of those sent to kill her.

She's confronted with small crowds and her skills shine on.  After more than decimating a small town, she finds some mutant allies, and joins their camp.

Delineation of conflicts:
The mutant leadership puts Rin through rites of passage, which are rather unpleasant, then send her out to assassinate an anti-mutant military leader. The command to slaughter all at this engagement brings out Rin's compassionate side, which does not please her superior, Kisaragi, nor Rei her instructor. Rin and Yoshie go into rebellion.  Rei comes to join them.

Resolution:
Many of the human purebreds want Rin dead.  The mutant leadership is too extreme for Rin's taste.  She would like to steer clear of both groups, but can this work for her?

One line summary: Hybrid Rin finds her own way in the human versus mutant war.

Statistics

Cinematography: 9/10 Sufficient light, clear focus, reasonable framing.  Occasional jumpy camera work, and some fits of 90% of the screen being overexposed badly.

Sound: 8/10 Good enough.  I can hear the actors, and the incidental music is not too irritating.  The foley for combat seems only a little exaggerated. 

Acting: 5/10 Has its ups and downs.

Screenplay: 7/10 The plot progresses in a fairly connected fashion: shock to revenge to realization to rebellion to resolution.

This film is far better than the hideous Tokyo Gore Police (2008) with its terribly poor production values.  Besides the camera work, the sound, and the screenplay being so much better, there is even a bit of acting in Mutant Girls Squad.  There were some borrowed pieces from the earlier film: breasts spewing acid, samurai style police garb, dismembered forearms used as intelligent projectiles.

SFX: 7/10 Lots of bright red blood splatter. Curious choices in CGI for dismembering bodies and slicing heads into layers.  Bizarre tentacle rape, female mutant violating male soldier.  Of course, the long sword up the reverse direction of the GI tract is just as shocking.  The nose guns on the anti-mutant soldiers were somewhat amusing, but not convincing.

Final Rating: 6/10

20130908: Action Review--Tokyo Gore Police

Name: Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
IMDb: link to Tokyo Gore Police page

Genres: Action, Horror SFF.    Country of origin: Japan

Cast: Eihi Shiina as Ruka, Itsuji Itao as Keyman, Yukihide Benny as Tokyo Police Chief, Jiji Bû as Barabara-Man, Ikuko Sawada as Independent Bar Owner, Cay Izumi as Dog Girl, Keisuke Horibe as Ruka's Father, Shun Sugata as Tokyo Police Commissioner, Tak Sakaguchi as Koji Tanaka.

Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura. Written by: Yoshihiro Nishimura, Maki Mizui, Kengo Kaji

Ruka

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
An 'engineer' is a mutant/sick person who can convert wounds to weapons. The police in near future Japan are privatized, and wear armor that has some superficial resemblance to samurai armor of the past.

Ruka is an 'engineer hunter' in the police; that is, a skilled killer who can find an engineer's weak spot faster than the engineer can kill her. Ruka's self-cutting is revealed in flashbacks and just before her first fight with an engineer.  Her birthday party (plus congratulations for 50 engineer kills) was pure camp.

Those are the 'good old days' at the beginning of the film.

Delineation of conflicts:
The engineers and the police are clearly at war. The engineers raid police headquarters and kill several cops. The battle frenzy heightens.

Ruka's allegiance to the police cause is converted to zeal for revenge after the police kill her one true friend in the world, and she learns from a strong engineer (Key Man) the true fate of her father.

Resolution:
Ruka beheads the four cops who killed her friend, and the fight is on.

The ultimate fight is between Ruka and her second father, the head of the police, the man who ordered her father killed.  Unfortunately, this was also one of the most ridiculous and badly filmed stage fights I've ever seen.

One line summary: Ruka is out to avenge her father's death at the hands of crooked cops; so is her adversary, Key Man.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 Often dark with insufficient contrast and soft focus.  Framing mistakes, jumpy camera work.  Panning with blur.  Blood on the lens, too many times.  The blood here is Texas Longhorn orange; that is, not very red.  Yellow and orange filters applied for no apparent reason.

Sound: 2/10 Weak. The incidental music is often amateurish in composition, poor in quality, and hollow sounding.  At times it seems the actors are not miked properly.  There was a significant number of lines spoken in Japanese that had no related English subtitles.  This did not help following the plot.

Acting: 1/10 There are too many actors with total lack of affect: stone faced and silent without much body English.  The protagonist is the prime example.  Also, her fight movements are often out of synch by one to five seconds, as if reacting to off-camera cues after failing to execute.

Screenplay: 1/10 Gallons of blood sprayed, followed by zero landing on actors' clothes.  This repeated a dozen times or so. Acquaintance with the laws of physics and logic is out the window.  Given that, we're down to special effects and character motivation.  The SFX were really bad, so motivation would have to drive the plot. Motivation is fairly well lost as well. One segment goes to another with little or no explanation.  The plot is more of an archipelago than a road from here to there.

Special Effects: 1/10 Cheesy blood spatter. Enough blood to float small boats.  Badly done fake chopped off body parts.  Blood pipes made obvious when a limb or neck or finger is sliced off.

This is supposed to be Tokyo Shock, or live action blood-spatter anime.

As a gore-fest and gross-out fest, this was high on quantity, but low on quality.  Bloodletting, blood spray, body violations, public groping, eating insects, multiple commercials for self-cutting tools; the game 'remote control exterminate', breasts sliced in half, then stitched together with thick cords; using a freshly cut off head as a soccer ball; a golden shower, a penis cannon, pointless murder after pointless murder while the cops are on the rampage, acid spraying breasts, a flying-fist gun.  Too much, and too much of it hokey.

Final Rating: 1/10 Three black holes for cinematography, special effects, and acting.

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

20130905: Comedy Review--Falling for Grace

Name: Falling for Grace (2006)
IMDb: link to Falling for Grace page

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Vanity.  Country of origin: USA

Cast: Fay Ann Lee as Grace Tang, Christine Baranski (The Good Wife) as Bree Barrington, Gale Harold as Andrew Barrington Jr, Roger Rees as Andrew Barrington Sr, Lewis Black as Rob York, Margaret Cho as Janie, Laura Benanti as Alexandra, BD Wong (Law and Order SVU) as Stephen, Stephanie March (Law and Order SVU) as Kay Douglas, Sarah Rafferty (Suits) as Sydney, Ato Essandoh as Jamal, Cindy Cheung as Kari Mills, Ken Leung as Ming Tang (Grace's brother).

Directed by: Fay Ann Lee.  Written by: Fay Ann Lee and Karen Rousso.

The Three Acts

The initial tableaux:
Grace rises from lowly beginnings in NYC Chinatown to become a mergers and acquisitions mid-level executive at a bank.  She keeps in touch with her family, but clearly wants to reach for still higher social status.

At a cocktail party, Grace is mistaken for an heiress from Hong Kong who is also named Grace Tang. Despite several attempts, Grace does not disabuse this notion.  This failed identification is the center of the comedy.  Grace manages to finesse several meetings where the identification should have been corrected.

Delineation of conflicts:
A counter thread involves her work at negotiating the sale of Kari Mills' company, which uses sweatshop labor to lower prices. Andrew Jr works at the New York State Attorney General's office.  During one of their meetings, Grace gets insider knowledge about Andrew's case against Kari Mills.  Grace aims to use this knowledge to drive down the sale price of Kari Mills' company.  This does not go over well with Andrew Sr, who negotiates for Kari.

Kay Douglas and Andrew Jr are 'fated' in the corporate sense to be married, so Andrew's time with Grace seems futile.  Grace's unmasking is delayed, but not forever.

The dialectic about Kari Mills and her company continues.  Grace helps Andrew Jr counter Andrew Sr's actions.

Resolution:
Grace's mistaken identity is exposed, and she decides to leave New York. Despite everything, Andrew Jr is still interested in her.  Do they work something out?

One line summary: Comedy of film making errors; laughs in short supply.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 6/10 Way too much soft focus.

Sound: 7/10 Fine for the English speakers.  The incidental music is cloying.

Acting: 4/10 This is a mixed bag, to say the least.  BD Wong, Lewis Black, Christine Baranski, Ato Essandoh, Roger Rees, and Margaret Cho were fine. Christine Baranski was the best; her discussion with Andrew Jr about how he had to marry Kay was one of the most genuine moments in the film. On the other hand, Fay Ann Lee, Gale Harold, Stephanie March, and Ken Leung were much less satisfying, with Gale Harold being the absolute worst.

Screenplay: 4/10 There were too many cliches from the romantic comedy field.  I have nothing against cliches; even the oldest can be funny if done right.  There were only a few recognizable attempts at humor.  I found myself thinking that I should be laughing at this, but I did not laugh once.

Final Rating: 4/10

20130904: Action Review--DNA 1997

Name: DNA (1997)
IMDb: link to DNA page

Genres: Action, SciFi  Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Mark Dacascos as Dr. Ash Mattley; Jurgen Prochnow as Dr. Carl Wessinger; Robin McKee as CIA operative Clair Summers;  as Roger Aaron Brown as Loren Azenfel.

Directed by: William R. Mesa.   Written by: Nick Davis.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Carl excavates bones in northern Borneo, and discovers how to extract DNA from the bones.  He's short an enzyme or two to complete the process of regenerating an animal from the DNA.  He turns to Ash, who runs an underfunded clinic in Sarawak, Malaysia.  Ash had been in mainstream medical researcher, but was run out when he could not complete his discoveries about immune-boosting enzymes.  Carl supplies the missing link in Ash's work, and suggests an expedition into the jungles to get enough rare beetles to make enough enzymes to prove the discovery, and make a lot of money from the medical/pharmaceutical industry.

Delineation of conflicts:
The expedition goes well for Carl, but not so much for Ash.

Two years later, Clair comes to Ash to help identify the cause of death of several mutilated bodies.  The answer is the presence of the Balakai, the creature Carl had wanted to revive. The second expedition with Clair is much less well-prepared, and looks doomed from the start. They find the monster soon enough, and what is left of Carl's party.

Not much after that, the film goes through a shift.  Carl describes the monster as an alien.  When met in the outdoors, the monster is a skilled alien hunter (style of Predator) capable of invisibility on command.  Its appearance is a bit like the alien in Alien.  Ash does some rituals with locals, then goes after the alien.

Resolution: The ending is rather flat, given all the 'borrowings' from other films.
 
One line summary: Fools resurrect alien monster in a derivative film.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually OK, but suffers from darkness and graininess.

Sound: 8/10 The incidental music is a bit florid, but the recording is well done.

Acting: 3/10 Mark Dacascos and Robin McKee were just plain bad.  Both are miscast, which makes matters worse. Veteran actors Jurgen Prochnow and Roger Aaron Brown were better, but had to deal with the mediocre script.

Screenplay: 5/10  Supposedly set in Malaysia, but some of the 'natives' use language one might find in the Philippines, where the filming was done.  The expedition early on in the film had a Raiders of the Lost Ark feel to it, with a dash of King Solomon's Mines during the meetings with the locals.  Perhaps the worst motivational piece was Carl asserting that many countries would pay large amounts of money for this bio-weapon.  Please!  They could not control it in the least, just as nothing could control the alien killers in Alien or its sequels.  There is no military application here, so no source of money. If they had kept with the idea of immunity-enhancing enzymes, the film would have been more coherent.

Special Effects: 5/10 The monster, at least outside, was clearly a not-so-good man in a rubber suit.  The helicopter crashes and explosions were between so-so and poor.

Final Rating: Three of ten.  Too many holes in the plot, even for a creature feature.

20130903: Horror Review--Cronos

Name: Cronos (1993)
IMDb: link to Cronos page

Genres: Horror, Mystery.    Country of origin: Mexico

Cast: Federico Lupi as Jesus Gris, Ron Perlman as Angel de la Guardia, Claudio Brook as de la Guardia (Angel's uncle), Tamara Shanath as Aurora (Jesus' grandchild), Margarita Isabel as Mercedes (Jesus' wife).

Written and directed by: Guillermo del Toro.

Aurora, the cronos device, and Jesus himself.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
In 1535, an alchemist builds the cronos device, which allows for extended lifetimes.  Four hundred years later, the alchemist is killed.  His belongings go on public auction, and the cronos device attains anonymity.  That's what the all-knowing narrator tells us, anyway. Alchemy means 'huge pack of lies' in my book, so alchemy can substitute for supernatural here.

At Christmas time in Mexico, the antiques dealer Jesus Gris buys a statue of an angel.  After some time, roaches emerge, which prompts Jesus to investigate the base of the statue, which contains the cronos device, which he extracts.

Elsewhere, Angel receives orders from his uncle to purchase an angel statue that was recently sold in the antiques markets.  He finds Jesus' shop, and buys the statue with his uncle's money.

Delineation of conflicts:
Angel is a blunt instrument.  His uncle pays him good money, and he is in the uncle's will.  So if his uncle wants something, Angel goes after it with little regard for law or morality.  His sick uncle wants to have objects that might lead to eternal life.

At first, Jesus is merely curious about the cronos device.  After a few interactions, Jesus is obsessed with mastering the power that lies within the cronos device.

Angel's uncle immediately discovers that the device is missing from the statue.  Angel pursues Jesus, who proves more difficult to deal with than Angel expected.

One line summary:  Foreshadows qualities seen in the director's later works.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 9/10 Good.  My eyes were delighted most of the time.

Sound: 9/10 Better than adequate, but with occasional overwrought incidental music.

Acting: 10/10 Fine acting by the five leads.

Screenplay: 10/10 Exceptional. The director's touch is evident even in this first effort.  Motivation, exposition of consequences, and logical flow of events were right on the money.  The ends that the characters meet fit their personalities, which was a nice touch, and one frequently omitted in more current films.

Hulu+ pushes the Criterion Collection relentlessly.  That push has the opposite reaction in me, and I almost did not watch this film.  The fact that audience ratings were significantly lower than the critics' average rating gives me another layer of pause.  Since I liked Mimic and Pan's Labyrinth, I gave it a try anyway, and was glad that I did.  In this case I ended up siding with the critics.

Final Rating: 9/10 This is a fine first film that foreshadows qualities seen in the director's later works.

20130903: Horror Review--The Brotherhood II

Name: The Brotherhood II: Young Warlocks (2001)
IMDb: link to The Brotherhood II page

Genres: Horror.    Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Forest Cochran as Luc, Sean Faris as John Van Owen, Stacey Scowly as Mary Stewart, Julie Briggs as Headmistress Grimes, Jennifer Capo as Ms. Stevens.

Directed by: David DeCoteau.  Written by: Matthew Jason Walsh and David DeCoteau.

The Three Acts:

Initial tableaux:
Set at a private high school, the film quickly details cliques, jealousies, violent reprisals, under age drinking, homicides, date rape, gratuitous skin, bullying, and other teen issues.

The new kid in school, John, has been taken in by the omega males (the other end of the social spectrum from alpha males).  When John is getting hazed, Luc gets him out of it.

Delineation of conflicts:
Later Luc promises the loser group that he can help them get what they want in life in exchange for loyalty, honesty, and breaking commandments.  They rush in without finding out what the consequences are. Luc's plan does not even survive the first round of breaking commandments.

Resolution:
The climax is not worth the wait.

One line summary: YA film with many context free crimes committed.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 8/10 It's a bit soft-focus, but mostly OK.  Has the 4:3 aspect ratio, so the image on my HD streaming service is smaller than most.

Sound: 5/10 Actors are well-miked, but the incidental music is obnoxious.

Acting: 0/10 What acting?  By and large, people show up, hit their marks, read their lines.  In this case, anyway, that was not enough. Interchangeable young actors: very dark eyes, all-day morning hair liberally treated with bear grease, appear perhaps 25-30 years old, look both bemused and bored. The actors being too old for their roles is noticeable.

Screenplay: 2/10 Warlock promises to help a loser group of males at a private school.  This would have been a reasonable 20 minute short, but 80 minutes?  No thanks.  What is this 'felony misdemeanor' the history teacher mentioned?  Felony and misdemeanor are mutually exclusive. 

Young men walk around while bad music plays; no language, no interactions.  Schlock! Worse yet, these interludes that do not advance the story are repeated perhaps half a dozen times.

Grand theft auto (not the video game) committed in broad daylight, and no one notices.  Seems unlikely.  Drugging then using a female classmate with whom there had been no previous sexual relationship.  I don't think so--not without consequences.

Final Rating: 1/10, with two black holes for acting and screenplay.

20130902: SFF review--2 Headed Shark Attack

Name: 2 headed Shark Attack (2012)
IMDb: link to 2 Headed Shark Attack page

Genres: Creature Feature, Horror   Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Charlie O'Connell as Professor Babish, Carmen Electra as Anne Babish, Brooke Hogan as Kate, David Gallegos as Paul.

Directed by: Christopher Ray. Written by: Edward DeRuiter (story), H. Perry Horton (screenplay).

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
A university sponsored excursion at sea runs into trouble when the undersized boat hits a shark head-on and kills it.  The captain, Professor Babish, dislodges the shark.  It flows back to the propellers and breaks them.  As a side benefit, the radio tower snaps off, and they act like this is a permanent problem.  That was a jump the shark moment; one knows the rest of the film will be nonsense at best.

There is a nearby atoll.  The students are ferried there while the boat gets put back together.  The first shark's death attracts the two-headed shark.

Delineation of conflicts:
The 2 headed shark is hungry, and apparently irritable.  The humans would like to stay alive, and return to their normal lives, but their lack of survival skills hampers this.

The atoll is unstable, and falls apart toward the end of the video. The death toll rises as the humans attempt to fix things in a very non-coordinated fashion.

Resolution:
This is a creature feature elimination derby, where the shark does the eliminating. Resolution here is about how many humans survive, and who they are.

One line summary: Jumps the shark times two.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually well done: sufficient light, good colour palettes, reasonable framing.

Sound: 7/10 With few exceptions, well done.

Acting: 2/10 The actors, other than the four named above, serve only as eye candy.

Screenplay: 0/10 The video was another elimination derby, rather like a reality show.  Just about everyone gets killed by the real star of the show, the two-headed shark.  Most of the lines in the film are irrelevant.  The character development was next to none, and very few of the lines are about interactions or development of motivations.

I saw this on the SyFy channel, which is noted for substituting commercials for footage in the film.  On SyFy, the film is PG.

Special Effects: 5/10  The two-headed shark was sort of interesting from a technical standpoint.  The two heads would switch off who was holding the person, and who was chewing.  Alternately, the shark would eat two people at once.

Final Rating: 1/10 Two black holes for screenplay and acting.

20130902: Documentary Review--Electronic Awakening

Electronic Awakening

1. American live action feature length film, 2011, documentary, music, mystery, dance, spirituality, 90 minutes, NR.
2. IMDB: 8.9/10.0 from 28 users.  'Explores the transcendent experience and the evolving spirituality of electronic dance music culture.'
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 0% of 2 audience ratings liked it.
4. Written and directed by Andrew Johner.  Filmed in a variety of countries at music festivals, but mostly on the US Pacific coast.


5. Many experts were interviewed. EDM is Electronic Dance Music.
6. Early on, there was an archival Jim Morrison interview from 1970.  Morrison foresees musical groups being smaller, and using computers and lots of electronics.  By the mid-1980s, the electronic synthesizer was present, and changes accelerated on the electronic music front. By 1993, the rave mixed EDM with the drug ecstasy, which the film often associates with the mental state, ecstasy.
7. However, the cultural backlash hit when problems with drugs (rave participants dying of drug overdoses, for instance) became more prevalent.  Also, death due to fires caused by illegal overcrowding caused a lot of consternation.
8. Underground warehouse raves became commercialized huge meetings; this led to smaller meetings in the desert or on isolated beaches.  Moontribe became a long-running community that met during full moons for a number of years.  Other 'tribes' spun off.
9. Through the drugs, music, and dancing, one sees some old processes re-emerge: hand-holding circles, dervish twirling, constructing altars from whatever is nearby, conch playing, 'ecstatic religious experience,' ganga-water sprinkling.
10. Dancing, singing, and drumming are all older than thinking, rationality, and conscious religion.  This is well-known.  It's interesting to see modern manufactured components (electronic music and high-tech drugs) shoe-horn these ancient anti-thinking modes back into modern life.  Clearly, current humans enjoy turning their minds off just as much as our forebears did.
11. The discussion of drums or electronic music helping promote theta wave activity was passing interesting.  Some EEG readouts were even recorded on film.  'Electronic music tends to have no lyrics.' This is no surprise; language involves thinking, and the effort here is to obliterate thinking, to dissolve oneself into the sound, to get those theta waves going strong.  Theta waves are associated with the feeling of awe, and the experience of religious ecstasy.
12. This whole thing is the active promotion of addictive behaviors that allow one to get closer to stop thinking and break off with associations with the real world.
13. One argument in favor of electronic music was so telling.  An acoustic guitar, for instance, links one to the physical world via the wood, the strings, and your fingers interacting with physical matter to produce sound.  The electronic music allows for less touch, and more abstraction; one can push the world away further.
14. During one video clip of a tribe at a meeting, most of the people were holding up both arms with hands open.  It's the sign one makes when trying to encourage a home invasion robber not to rape and kill you.  It's also the sign one makes to surrender to a cop, to encourage the cop not to beat you up or kill you.  At that same meeting, upon a raised dais was a small group of shaman-like characters, who were receiving what they clearly thought to be adulation.
15. EarthDance is a group that uses modern communications to coordinate these events around the world.  These multi-events might have 100,000 people total, with each location having their own DJ, but the DJs are playing a synchronized list.
16. Radical self-expression sounds like Burning Man, but what does this film have to do with Burning Man?  Ah, there was often a rave camp near Burning Man, and the pounding bass and never-ending drumbeat colonized BM.
17. Going into the 2000s, the number of people attending these mass dance events has tripled, or so the film claims.
18. 'The art is becoming the new religion.'  Sure.  It's just as restrictive, just as cult-like, just as deeply opposed to freedom.
19. The 2012 Mayan miasma was embraced by many of these groups.  Since 2012 has come and gone, I'd like to see a 2013 (or later) mini-update.
20. The repetitions of the sentiments '...a completely integrated humanity...' and 'no boundaries between individuals' is the most hideous, hellish obscenity that I have ever heard of or read since Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End, a seminal work for any movement that advocates the mass suicide of human culture.
21. The film cycles back to Jim Morrison for a few seconds toward the end.  Since Morrison committed suicide about a year after the interview, this is a nice touch.


22. One line summary: More propaganda than documentary.
23. One star of five.

Cinematography: 3/10 So-so at best.  Focus problems, graininess, over exposures, under exposures, flair, framing issues, camera jump, camera slide, awkward zooming, stupid misuse of fish-eye lenses, and so on.

Sound: 8/10 Better than the visuals, but some of the incidental music was overbearing.

Screenplay: 0/10 There is some coherence to the piece: advocacy of finding unity while dancing in a drug addled state out in the sticks with severely reduced sanitation and personal hygiene.  Permanent Woodstock.

20130901: Comedy Review--You Did What?

Name: You Did What? (2006)
IMDb: link to You Did What? page

Genres: Comedy, Romance.  Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Edward Kerr as Charlie Porter, Kathy Wagner as Ashley McConnell,  Susan Ruttan as Mom, A. J. Buckley as Greg Porter, Kelly Overton as Day, Jason George as Ben (Charlie's friend), Brian Palermo as Andy Pztarski, Ashley's ex.

Written and directed by: Jeff Morris. 

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: 
Charlie and Ashley have been bf/gf for over two years.  Charlie's brother Greg meets Day, then proposes less than 24 hours later.  Ashley gets very interested in marriage; Charlie throws up at the thought.  Day gets to call Charlie's mother 'Mom' and Ashley is jealous.

Delineation of conflicts:
Ashley ambushes Charlie with an unannounced visit (Charlie is taken there in a blindfold) to an interview show about couples who have been together too long not to get married.  For a number of men, that would be more than sufficient reason to break up.  Permanently.  Movie over; the shark has been jumped.  I watched the rest pro forma, to know what happened, to be done with it.  So, the challenge has been issued.

Resolution:
The rest of the film is about the dialectic between Ashley and Charlie over just what to do with what is left of their relationship, and the consequences of the possible choices.

One line summary: Feel bad rom com at its worst.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 8/10 Sufficient light, good framing, and focus.

Sound: 7/10 Always OK, but the incidental music could have been better.

Acting: 4/10 Wretched.  If I never see A. J. Buckley, Kelly Overton, Brian Palermo, or Edward Kerr again, it will be way too soon.  Edward Kerr seems about 10 years too old for Kathy Wagner.  Susan Ruttan and Jason George were believable, at least.  The actors who played Ashley's parents were fine.

Screenplay: 2/10  This might have made a nice 20 minute short.  There are not many ideas here, and the few that are presented are just stretched past breaking.

Final Rating: 4/10; I could not wait for this thing to be completely over, so that I would never have the slightest inclination to watch another moment of it.

20130901: Horror Review--Breathing Room

Name: Breathing Room (2008)
IMDb: link to Breathing Room page

Genres: Horror, mystery, thriller.   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Aisla Marshall (True Blood) as Fourteen, Kim Estes as Ten, Stevens Gaston as Thirteen.

Written and directed by: John Suits and Gabriel Cowen.

The Three Acts: 

The initial tableaux:  Fourteen people get dumped naked into a locked room that has no windows to the out of doors.  The room has a WC and not much else besides a package of clothes with their assigned number on the package.  All of them are suffering from short-term memory loss.

Delineation of conflicts:
Their captors leave messages for them, addressed to their respective numbers.  After a short time, an unsettled person talks to them through a video screen.  They are in a game, and the game has lethal consequences for rules infractions.  The winner of the game gets to live.

I think I've seen this before.  Right, it's called reality TV, which blights the video landscape.  Most reality TV series are elimination derbies, just without people dying.

In terms of film, predecessors include Ten Little Indians (1965) and Cube (1997).

The prisoners try to figure out why each of them is there.  They talk to each other about what they do remember of their lives.  The lights go out now and then, and usually someone dies in those intervals.  This comprises about 70 of the 89 minutes.

Resolution: Watch to the end to get your greatest disappointment.

One line description: Elimination derby plus shaky cam plus reality TV.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 Indifferent.  Doubling the budget, and buying some reasonable video and lighting equipment would have been a good investment.  Some of the problems were: soft focus, camera jump, long dark and fuzzy intervals, stupid framing errors, and overexposures.

Sound: 2/10  Often hollow.  The incidental music was irritating, but not evocative of fear or dread.

Acting: 2/10 Between bad and who cares.

Screenplay:  0/10 This is the worst part. Who needs motivation?  Who needs explanations for physical events in a non-supernatural film?  Apparently not these folks.  Even if the actors had more skill and training, they would not have been able to overcome this obstacle.

Final Rating: 1/10; two black holes for screenplay and acting.

20130901: Horror Review--Cyrus Mind of a Serial Killer

Name: Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer (2010)
IMDb: link to Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer page

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Crime  Country of origin: USA

Cast: Danielle Harris as Maria (TV reporter/journalist), Corey Gibbons as Gary (Maria's cameraman), Brian Krause as Cyrus, Lance Henriksen as Emmett, Kim Rhodes as Dr Ann Albert, Doug Jones as Dr Dan Dallas.

Written and directed by: Mark Vadik.

The Three Acts: 

The initial tableaux:
Reporter Maria and cameraman Gary travel to Niles, MI to investigate recent disappearances associated with the Cyrus, the County Line Cannibal.  Due to a tip, she interviews Emmett, who seems to have layers upon layers of detailed knowledge of Cyrus.

Through the interviews, Cyrus' bad luck is outlined: POW during wartime, berated by his wife for buying a farm, cheated on by his wife on the day he opens a new shop, rotten childhood with prostitute mother.  Other interviews detail conventional expert opinions of the mental processes of serial killers.

Delineation of conflicts:
Most local people would like to continue living in peace.  Cyrus needs additional human flesh.

Maria would like to nail down the story, then perhaps disclose her findings to the police.  Cyrus has other plans for her.

Resolution:
Maria's process during the film informs the viewer.  Does she get to publish and become famous?

One line summary: One of the more powerful endings in recent American horror.


Statistics: 

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually fine, but sometimes too dark, or out of focus, or nearly mono color.  Perhaps this was for artistic effect, but I find that irritating without any sort of recompense.

Sound: 8/10 Usually well done.

Acting: 7/10 Harris, Krause, and Henriksen were credible.  The other actors were a full level less skilled.  Krause still seems to be trying to break out of typecasting from his long stint on the television series Charmed.  I liked his performance here, though, better than in some of his earlier bad guy horror film roles.

Screenplay: 8/10 Mosaic films can be awfully bad, but this one was well written, even if the content is disgusting.  The flashbacks (the mother) and four interview streams (with Emmett, with the two medical experts, with the prison interviewees) are well meshed.  The harsh ending makes sense once one gets there. 

I liked the separate threads of the interviews with Dr. Dan Dallas and Dr. Ann Albert, two experts on serial killers versus mass murderers.

Final Rating: 8/10

Spoilers

At the end of the film, Maria is still pretty and untouched. However, she is restrained and alone, without allies.  She knows that she is going to be dismembered over a period of days while still alive, so that her flesh can be made into ground meat for sale, just as was done to the missing young women in her research. 

20130901: Horror Review--Atrocious

Name: Atrocious (2010)
IMDb: link to Atrocious page

Genres: Horror, Shaky Cam   Country of Origin: Spain

Cast: Cristian Valencia as Cristian, Clara Moraleda as July, Chus Pereiro as Debora, Sergi Martin as Jose, Jose Masegosa as Carlos, Xavi Doz as Santiago.

Written and directed by: Fernando Barreda Luna.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableau: 
Two late teens video tape their investigations into the 'lost girl' Melinda of local legend.  It's just a lark.  Then the dog dies. The teens don't tell the younger brother about this, so the younger brother goes looking for the dog alone at night. The older teens go looking for him.

Delineation of conflicts: The children in the dark with insufficient light versus the bogeyman who took Melinda.  How might that turn out?  There was little effective parental supervision.

Resolution: The police take charge the next day.  They look at the recordings, and try to come to conclusions using the visuals and the forensic evidence. 

One line description: Bad found film set in Spain.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 4/10 The early parts of the film were fine, but then it went into Blair Witch mode.

Sound: 4/10 Good toward the beginning, then degenerated terribly.

Acting: 4/10 Hard to tell; the script was that bad.

Screenplay: 2/10 It is found film, but not quite as bad as Blair Witch.

Final Rating: 3/10