20131009: Horror Review--Severance

Severance

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. British live action feature length film, rated R, 2006, 95 minutes, horror, comedy, drama.
2. IMDB: 6.5/10.0 from 27,148 users;  estimated budget 5 million British pounds.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 64% on the meter; 61% liked it from 135,619 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.0/5.0 from 228,444 users.
5. Directed by: Christopher Smith.
6. Starring: Toby Stevens as Harris, Claudie Blakley as Jill, Andy Nyman as Gordon, Danny Dyer as Steve, Babou Ceesey as Billy, Laura Harris as Maggie, Tim Mcinnerny as Richard.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Opening sequence: two young women and a middle-aged man are running for their lives. The women fall into a pit; the man gets snared in a trap.  Does not turn out well for the man.


2. Shift to the main narrative. Seven British employees of a company called Palisade Defence are on a company bus en route to a lodge for a team-building retreat.  Their route is blocked; the local driver refuses to take a detour through some scary woods.  So they walk a mile to the lodge.


3. Palisade makes armaments.  The group in the film does PR for Palisade.  During their first meal together at the retreat, they recount imaginative stories of what the lodge served as in previous years.  The candidates were: a pre-World War I mental hospital where the inmates imprisoned the physicians; military prison for Cold War assassins who liked killing too much; sex retreat for old men; a lodge for who knows what.


4. Everyone in the group is touchy about something.


5. The first night is stormy, and Jill sees a man in a mask out her window when she's dropping a spider outside. Everyone else thinks she's excitable.  The next morning, Jill and Harris go to find better phone reception.  The rest of the group goes in for paint ball as team building.  Jill and Harris return with the company bus; they leave the dead driver behind.  After the paintball, the idiot Gordon gets caught in a bear trap.  When Billy opens the trap, Gordon just won't pull his leg out.  Billy has to let go because the trap is so strong.  This is repeated five times until Gordon's leg is severed.  Clever.


6. That was my definitive first jump the shark moment.


7. They take the bus, but someone lays down a good two dozen caltrops.  The bus gets more than one flat; how it flipped over is hard to see.  That was the second jump the shark moment.  Harris is caught under the weight of something; the man who has been observing them beheads him.  Jill walks around, but the stranger shows up behind her.


8. Maggie, Billy, Richard, Gordon, and Steve are left.  The stranger had tied Jill up to a tree; he burns her alive.  The survivors return to the lodge and lock themselves in.


9. While Maggie and Steve are sharing a cigarette, the stranger comes in and takes away Gordon.  The four look around the bowels of the lodge, following Gordon's screams as the stranger vivisects him.  Lovely.  They find the stranger, who puts a shotgun blast into Billy's chest.  Billy's still able to fine-control his movements, even with the gaping hole in his chest, before he passes away.  That was the third jump the shark moment.


10. Maggie, Richard, and Steve are left.  Steve stays in the lodge; Maggie runs for the hills, as does Richard.  Of course, they are not together.  Maggie returns to the lodge, hm.  Steve puts a long knife through the stranger, and Maggie gives him a shotgun blast through the head.


11. Maggie and Steve go outside the lodge, only to find that more strangers await them.  Maggie drops one, but she's out of ammunition.  They find Richard, who knows that he is standing on a mine.  Richard distracts the strangers for a bit.


12. Maggie and Steve find George, the corporate CEO, who is partying with two young women at the actual lodge where the team-building was supposed to be held.  This brings us back to the opening sequence, where George meets his end.  Maggie gets snared.  She gets the better of the one who releases her.  Steve takes out two of the attackers, but is badly wounded in the process.  He helps the two women out of the hole.


13. While looking for a way to get help, Maggie sees a lot of Palisade ordinance.  She telephones for assistance, but the stranger with the flame thrower who killed Jill catches up with her.  The women with Steve find her before she gets hacked to death.  The foursome makes it to the lake and presumably to freedom.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary:  Lots of gore and action, but motivations are still largely unrevealed.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 Bright, well-focused and framed.  Looks fine during the daylight intervals.  Some of the night footage is truly bad, though.


2. Sound: 6/10 Fine for conversation, but the incidental music is anti-appropriate and too loud.


3. Acting: 7/10 OK for the most part. I even recognized some of the actors.


4. Screenplay: 1/10 Liked the section where George fires a rocket at their attackers, but ends up taking down a commercial jet instead.  Other than that, there were too many jump the shark moments.

20131009: Horror Review--The Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action film 2005, NR, 48 minutes, horror, mystery, thriller.
2. IMDB: 7.1/10.0 from 4,863 users; estimated budget, 50,000 USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 100% on the meter; 79% liked it from 4,352 audience ratings.
4. Netflix:  3.1/5.0 from 114,994 users.
5. Directed by: Andrew Leman.
6. Starring: Matt Foyer as The Man, Ralph Lucas as Professor Angell, Ramon Allen Jr as Louis, Leslie Baldwin as Mrs. Johansen, Daryl Ball as Officer Cassidy, John Bolen as The Listener.


2. Setup and Plot
1. A Boston archaeologist sorts through his dead great-uncle's papers.  He finds information about the Cthulhu Cult.  


2. The great-uncle was a psychiatrist.  One of his patients was a young man named Henry Wilcox.  Wilcox reported dreams; the shrink asked that he record the dreams for discussion.  When Wilcox failed to appear one day, the great-uncle tracks him down to a mental ward.  Wilcox had lost his memory of his obsession.


3. The present day nephew skips to other parts of the great-uncle's stored papers, which included newspaper clippings, and visits to conferences.  At one conference, a policeman presents an artifact to some scholars.  One man had seen the same sort of piece in Greenland in Esquimaux (sic) territory.  Another described odd goings-on in a swamp near New Orleans where children were disappearing.  In both cases, there was a chant that named Cthulhu.  A similar artifact was at the site of a cult fire dance where cannibalism was being practiced.  The investigator came with police; the dance was dispersed; arrests were made.


4. The nephew keeps reading.  This seems to be a common mistake made by actors in Cthulhu films.


5. He follows the notebooks, and goes to places described in the notebooks.  He locates a Cthulhu statue, and gains more information than what was in the notebooks.


6. The effort eventually drives the nephew mad.


3. Conclusions
1. In graduate school at Indiana University, I saw a dozen or so silent black and white films at the Auditorium, which had a large screen and a huge pipe organ of fine sound quality.  The organ player was not only a skilled musician, but also a BW film buff of broad experience.  The films were A list when they were released, and were often in 1.85 or wider format.  They looked like movie films, not television.  The film actors and directors were experienced and skilled at making the best silent films.  These experiences were rather rich; I felt like I was catching a glimpse of the silent era during its height.
2. Why go to so much effort to make something that looks so bad?   The black and white silent era is over.
3. One sentence summary:  Instead of the production values of The Artist, we get garage-style visuals.
4. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Presented in black and white in the 4:3 aspect ratio. Full of simulated scratches and floating dust.  Ugly, unnecessary, counterproductive.


2. Sound: 6/10 This is a silent film with musical accompaniment and inter-titles.  The music was fairly good for the onscreen action.


3. Acting: 4/10 Without voice, these actors seemed to be lost.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Too many dream sequences and flashbacks.  A lot of this looks like Freudian themes with visuals in the style of Dali.

20131008: Action Review--Special Forces

Special Forces

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. French live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 108 minutes, action-adventure, thriller.  Spoken language is French; English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 6.1/10.0 from 10, 144 users; estimated budget, 10 million euros.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 15% on the meter; 52% liked it from 1,852 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.9/5.0 from 405,184 ratings.
5. Directed by: Stephane Rybojad.
6. Starring: Diane Kruger as Elsa Cassanova, Djimon Hounsou as Kovax, Tcheky Karyo as Admiral Guezennec, Benoit Magimel as Tic Tac, Denis Menochet as Lucas, Raphael Personnaz as Elias, Alain Figlarz as Victor, Alain Alivon as Marius, Mehdi Nebbou as Amen, Raz Degan as Ahmed Zaief, Morjana Alaoui as Maina


2. Setup and Plot
1. Maina gives Elsa an interview.  She reveals her face, and the fact that her family sold her as a child to Zaief.  This sets the stage for all the difficulties that follow.


2. Emily is kidnapped, French special forces gather to rescue her with the backing of the highest reaches of the French government.


3. Zaief has an interview with a high-ranking religious figure; he does not quite get the blessing he had hoped for.  Maina and some of her supporters are murdered, firing squad style.  The Special Forces group does not intervene, since their orders are for reconnaissance only.


4. They find Elsa and Amen early on, and start the long and winding escort to freedom.


5. Forty minutes in, their expected evacuation by helicopter fails due to lack of radio contact.  This seemed a bit implausible, but allowed the rest of the screenplay to proceed.


6. They continue with the odds against them.  Sacrifices are made, and the mission is eventually successful in a technical sense.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: French against-all-odds rescue mission in Pakistan; far better than recent Stallone efforts.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Top notch; magnificent visuals.


2. Sound: 10/10 Great sound.


3. Acting: 8/10 I thought the actors performed well versus the script.


4. Screenplay: 7/10 Dragged a bit in the middle.  A small number of the fighting tactics looked amateurishly stupid.  Compared to a number of recent American action films, this is intelligent, well plotted, and engaging.

20131008: Thriller Review--Side Effects

Side Effects

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, rated R, 2013, 105 minutes, thriller, crime, drama.
2. IMDB: 7.1/10.0 from 75,646 users; estimated budget,  30 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 84% on the meter; 72% from 59,916 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.6/5.0 from 386,769 users.
5. Directed by: Steven Soderbergh; written by Scott Z. Burns.
6. Starring: Rooney Mara as Emily Taylor, Jude Law as Dr. Jonathon Banks, Channing Tatum as Martin Taylor, Carmen Pelaez as Prison Desk Guard, Marin Ireland as Upset Visitor, Polly Draper as Emily's mother, Vinessa Shaw as Dierdre Banks, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Dr. Victoria Siebert.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Emily's husband Martin gets out of jail after five years.  Shortly thereafter she attempts suicide.  She starts seeing Dr. Banks professionally; soon after, Banks talks to Dr Siebert about Emily's past therapy.  Emily is sensitive to the drugs; some of them make her vomit.  She gets non-professional recommendations for alternate drugs as well.  Dr Siebert recommends a new drug called Ablixa.


2. At this stage, we're already deeply caught up in a web of lies.


3. Emily's depression continues.  Zoloft stops her sleep and kills her sex drive.  So he prescribes Ablixa.


4. A drug rep convinces Banks to participate in a study involving Ablixa.  Since Banks, his wife, and their son have just moved, they would welcome the money.


5. Emily regains her sex drive, and has lots of energy.  That is, too much energy, like making breakfast before dawn.  Her situation degenerates, she kills Martin, and lands in jail.  Banks tries to intervene with the cops, but he has no real footing for that, since she did the deed.


6. A defense lawyer representing Ablixa users who have committed crimes approaches Banks.  He's sympathetic, but does not really know what to do to help.


7. Emily's mother goes on television to express her concerns about the drugs used.  Banks gets hounded by the press.  He also gets an official inquiry.


8. Emily gets a hearing; Banks is one of the main witnesses.  Emily gets a non-voluntary stay at the psychiatric hospital instead of a murder trial.  Banks' career comes under attack from a variety of angles.


9. Banks talks to Siebert to get more information and a handle on the whole growing mess.  Siebert puts the blame back on Banks; Emily had told him about her sleepwalking, yet Banks kept her on the Ablixa.


10. Banks tries to reconstruct some of Emily's actions to figure out her state of mind vis  a vis Ablixa.  He interviews some other patients who did somewhat well with Ablixa.


11. Banks fails to remember some of his family responsibilities; he starts letting himself go.  Emily seems better at the psychiatric hospital.


12. Ablixa's bad media reputation means that its competitors are up considerably in the stock market, and its manufacturing company Sadler-Benelux has its stock going down.  Banks' personal bad press gets him fired from lucrative contracts with other drug companies.  Banks' wife gets more and more discouraged with him; this accelerates when she gets a job after being unemployed for months.


13. Banks' digging continues.  Many leads point to Siebert; he has many one on one conversations with her.  His career continues to slide.


14. By the time he gets to the real motivational real drivers of the piece, it's almost too late.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Lies and more lies in the high-flying worlds of securities and pharmaceuticals.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Except for the segments with the yellow plus rose filters, the camera work is excellent.  Soderbergh's team used this hellish filter combination in the 2011 film Haywire, to bad effect.  It makes the film look like a faded VHS tape, or old set of stills that have lost their blue pigment, instead of a crisp, digital, 2013 film.


2. Sound: 7/10 No particular problems, but not really used to good effect.


3. Acting: 5/10 Channing Tatum was clearly miscast.  Rooney Mara gave an opaque performance.  Of course, she played a character who was supposedly either in shock or  taking mind-dulling drugs much of the time.  Zeta-Jones was my favorite in this one.  Jude Law was rather good.  His performance was what kept me watching the film; later Zeta-Jones' performance made watching even more enjoyable.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Holds together well.  Better actors would have helped the execution; that is, just about anyone other than Tatum and Mara.  Law and Zeta-Jones made the film tolerable.

20131007: Thriller Review--Bad Kids Go to Hell

Bad Kids Go to Hell

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, rated R, 2012, 92 minutes, comedy, mystery, thriller.  Spoken word is in English.
2. IMDB: 4.2/10.0 from 1,974 users. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 44% on the meter; 39% from 4,463 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.1/5.0 from 128,736 users.
5. Written and directed by: Matthew Spradlin.
6. Starring: Judd Nelson as Headmaster Nash, Ben Browder as Max, Marc Donato as Tarek Ahmed, Ali Faulkner as Tricia Wilkes, Dr. Day, Amanda Alch as Megan McDurst, Mark Donato as Tarek Ahmed, Roger Edwards as Craig Cook, Augie Duke as Veronica Harmon, Jeffrey Schmidt as Dr. Day, Cameron Dean Stewart as Matt Clark. 


2. Setup and Plot
1. Crestview Academy is a private school for upper crust brats.  The film starts with the beginning of an eight-hour detention for six very entitled scumbag teenagers.  Dr. Day locks them in, but not before Veronica poisons him (ongoing vomiting, perhaps not death).  Within twenty minutes I was ready for all these useless bastards to be slaughtered.  That's what I call successful writing.


2. Megan dies first from the inability to find her ventilator while under the stress of a seance.


3. They try to escape; they try to explain the recurrence of large roaches.  They end up in round upon round of recriminations against one another, anti-enforced by flashbacks.


4. The adults are clueless; why don't they pull the plug on the bad behavior?  Why not have the perpetrators arrested?  Turn off the electricity to the sound system at events?  There are ways to assert control non-violently.  Even good old expulsion comes to mind.


5. After firing bullets at the bookcases to soothe his conscience, Craig Cook gets a piece of steel through his thorax.


6. Tricia assaults Matt Clark with a nail gun, but does not kill him.


7. Someone kills Veronica with a shard of glass, only it was a fake out.  She was in alliance with Dr. Day, or so she thought.


8. In a last reversal of expectations, only Matt is left standing, and the cops pick that instant to enter the detention room.  The cops immediately taser him, then muzzle him.  Max explains what really happened, knowing Matt will never be able to credibly repeat it.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: I still like Ben Browder, but hope never to see the other actors again.
2. One star of five; two blackholes for acting and sound.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 OK, but little was done to disguise the bad casting.


2. Sound: 2/10 Unforgivable.  Whoever mixed the sound did a bad job.  The rotten music was set down much louder than the conversational tracks.  To hear the conversations, I have to crank up to 50; to avoid blowing out my ears while the useless, irritating 'music' is on, I need to drop it down to 10.  Ridiculously bad.  The incompetence extends into the credits.


3. Acting: 0/10 Bad, except for Ben Browder.  Judd Nelson might as well have phoned in his performance.  You'd think actors in their twenties could do better jobs at playing teenagers.  Amanda Alch (23), Mark Donato (24), Roger Edwards (32), and Ali Faulkner (over 22, probably by a lot) were the actors for whom I could find ages.  Those may be their stated ages, but they look even older.  Augie Duke looked about 40 in a closeup; searching on the net suggested she's 27.  I think real teenagers could do a better job than this crew of non-actors.  The extras were uniformly terrible.


4. Screenplay: 4/10  The rotten non-teenagers do get good and dead.  On the other hand, the sequencing of current time versus endless flashbacks was poor.  On the whole, this was a muddled piece of nonsense.

20131007: Action Review--Assassin's Bullet

Assassin's Bullet

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, rated R, 89 minutes, action, drama, thriller, 2012.
2. IMDB: 3.7/10.0 from 2014 users; estimated budget, 5 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 0% on the meter (impressive); 13% liked it of 346 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 from 266,294 users.
5. Directed by: Isaac Florentine.
6. Starring: Christian Slater as Robert Diggs, Donald Sutherland as Ambassador Ashdown, Elika Portnoy as Vicky, Timothy Spall as Dr. Aaron Kahn, Mariana Stanisheva as Zoey, Ivaylo Geraskov as Alex (Sofia police).


2. Setup and Plot
1. Bulgaria: Christian and Muslim, modern but also with horse-drawn carts, belly dancing and computers.


2. Slater's character Robert works at the US embassy in Sofia on educational programs.  He's a big tipper, and gives money and food to the unfortunate.  He drinks a lot.  His friend Kahn recommends therapy, but Robert would rather just avoid.


3. He's former FBI; his wife was eastern European, but she was killed in New York.  So he's staying away from New York, and being altruistic.


4. Threads: Ashdown wants Robert to come out of retirement and hunt down some local thug.  Kahn wants Robert to get on with his life.  Elika wants to kill all the people who wronged her as a child.  Robert works with Elika on a literacy project.  Dr. Kahn treats Elika for her blackouts or syncope (wikipedia...'a transient loss of consciousness and postural tone, characterized by rapid onset, short duration, and spontaneous recovery...'). Robert starts working with Bulgarian police in Sofia, as arranged through Ashdown. Robert and one of the belly dancers become friendly.


5. Robert and the police start with the killing of a Muslim Jihadist.  Robert shows some police work.  The film shows some crooked cops.


6. Dr. Kahn gets Elika to let certain memories surface, such as her time in an insane asylum, and her recruitment and training into a group of assassins.  She later visits the doctor dressed as her assassin persona.  We get to see the sepia footage (again, again, again...I lost count) of her parents just before they were murdered.


7. Kahn advises Robert to be careful, in case the belly dancer is just in love with his passport. The belly dancer dramatically drives a dagger into the seat cushion next to Robert's head, then runs off into the night.  Robert follows, then catches up with her.  She asks for a meeting later.


8. Robert starts to put the pieces together.  Does he ever make a difference?  Sadly, no.


3. Conclusions
1. Lots and lots of very expensive looking black trench coats.
2. One sentence summary: This was a terribly expensive and terrible vanity film.
3. One star of five.  Christian Slater picks another bad film to be in.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 Tends to be dark and blurred out.


2. Sound: 8/10 No particular problems; just a bit boring.


3. Acting: 4/10 Veterans Slater, Sutherland, and Spall were OK, given the weak screenplay.  Portnoy was amateurish.  Many of the supporting players were just terrible.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Fails as a thriller, since suspense was not sustained.  Fails as a mystery, since the main character's problems were telegraphed from the beginning.  Fails as an action-adventure film, since most of the combat is sniper action, or just unbelievable.  As a psychological drama, it is poorly done.  The endless repeats of the childhood trauma were not good exposition; they were just irritating.  The interactions with Dr. Kahn might have been much better if the actor playing the psycho were better.

20131006: Action Review--OSS 117: Cairo

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

1. Fundamentals and reception:
1. French live action feature length film, 99 minutes, NR, 2006, action-adventure, comedy.  Spoken language is French; subtitles in English.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 9,739 users; estimated budget, 14 million euros.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 76% on the meter, 73% liked it from 6,955 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 110,171 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius; screenplay, Jean-Francoise Halin.
6. Starring: Jean Dujardin as OSS-117, Berenice Bejo as Larmina El Akmar Betouche, Aure Atika as La princesse Al Tarouk, Francios Damiens as Raymond Pelletier.


2. Setup and Plot
1. We meet OSS-117 and his friend Jack (OSS-283) in an opening sequence from World War II.  We meet the Princess also.


2. Years later, Jack is dead, supposedly, and OSS-117 gets drawn into Cairo to see how Jack met his end.


3. Larmina is assigned as his local guide and contact.  The Princess is involved this time around as well.


4. The gag about code sentences goes on and on and on.  The dual conducted with thrown chickens was worth a chuckle.


5. When he finds the object of his investigations, it's...the Nazis the film started with, plus some locals, of course.


6. How will the hero resolve this?  Surprises await.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Instead of the French James Bond, one gets a rude, effete Maxwell Smart.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Quite good for the most part.


2. Sound: 8/10 I liked the incidental music very much.


3. Acting: 8/10 Played as straight drama, not very good.  Played as parody, reasonably funny.  Definitely a lot of tongue in cheek acting in this film.  Jean Dujardin is quite convincing as the culturally ignorant blowhard OSS-117.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 Dragged.  Much as I liked the three principal actors, it dragged.


5. Editing, continuity: 5/10 Driving in an open convertible, the lead actors don't have their hair mussed, and cigarette smoke rises slowly and vertically?  The late 1950s to 1960's look was fairly good.  In the opening sequence, the propeller plane came across as hokey, rather than authentic.  

20131005: Action Review--Erased

Erased

1. Fundamentals, reception
1. Belgian live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 100 minutes, thriller.
2. IMDB:  6.0/10.0 from 12,449 users.  Estimated budget: 12 million euros.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 27% on the meter; 36% liked it from 8,256 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.7/10.0 from 569,743 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Philippe Stoelzl.  Screenplay by: Arash Amel.
6. Starring: Aaron Eckhart as Ben Logan, Liana Liberato as Amy Logan, Olga Kurylenko as Anna Brandt, Garrick Hagon as James Halgate, Eric Godon as Maitland.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Ben Logan has a steady job doing security analysis for the Halgate Security Systems in Belgium.  After narrowly missing his daughter Amy's awards ceremony, he gives her a dessert gift which unfortunately contains peanuts.  Ben and Amy spend the night at a local hospital to deal with her allergic reaction.


2. The next day, Ben takes Amy to work, but all the employees are gone, the work machines are gone, all the business paperwork is gone.  The place is scrubbed.  Ben's bank account is gutted.  Ben's phone goes blank.  He and Amy go to the Halgate headquarters, and everyone claims not to know him.  He finds his co-workers at a local morgue.  Assassins are soon following them.


3. Amy finds some local help from her friends, which allows them time and safety to regroup.  The CIA starts putting the pieces together, and send Ben's old handler Anna to Belgium to close up the case.


4. The Halgate company was a fake, and used pieces of the CIA that it had bought to try to cover up the fact.  This included wiping out Ben's former security company.


5. Anna catches up with Ben, who has found incriminating evidence in the affair.  He had been in a kill squad, and had questioned his orders.  Anna had stood up for him, to find a way for the company not to sanction him, including the gig at the security company.


6. Amy demands a lot more truth from Ben, and gets it.  She takes off, which does not help things at all.  She's captured by an assassin.  Ben does some research, and finds out why so many people are angry at Halgate.


7. The tension rises as Ben arranges to meet the head of Halgate, Anna agrees to neutralize the situation, and Amy tries to escape.  Does Ben get his name cleared?  Do the people that Halgate did wrong get any justice?  Does Halgate get its evidence back?


8. The film was worth watching to the end.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Intrigue and assassins follow a disgraced former CIA and his daughter.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 A bit dark, sometimes grainy.


2. Sound: 8/10 Sometimes dips too low.


3. Acting: 9/10 Good performances.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Moves right along, one of the requirements of a thriller; most questions are eventually answered.

20131005: Action Review--The Touch

The Touch

1. Fundamentals and reception
1. Chinese live action feature length film, 2002, rated PG-13, 103 minutes, action-adventure, romance.  Spoken language is English.
2. IMDB: 4.6/10.0 from 1,302 users; estimated budget, 20 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet,' on the meter; 33% liked it from 1,370 audience ratings.
4. Netflix:  3.5/5.0 from 60,171 users.
5. Directed by: Peter Pau.
6. Starring: Michelle Yeoh as Pak Yin Fay, Ben Chaplin as Eric, Richard Roxburgh as Karl, Brandon Chang as Pak Yeuk Tong, Margaret Wang as Lily.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Collector Karl employs thief Eric to steal the box containing the Heart of Dun Huang, an artifact of some power, carved by Tibetan monks in 1242.  The Heart, supposedly, will lead Karl's people to the sharira, the crystallized essence of the holy monk Shen Zhong from the 13th century.  This plays out while Yin Fay is performing her circus act in public with her troupe.


2. Tong takes the Heart to the place Dun Huang; Yin and Eric follow.  Karl catches up and gets filled in by his forward spy, who had been tailing Tong.  Tong and his girl friend Lily find a possible source of knowledge, just as Karl catches them.  Eric and Yin make their way to Dun Huang about the same time.


3. Yin and Eric find the next piece of the puzzle: an urn filled with fluid.  Karl steals it from them and heads for the final hiding place.  He uses the Heart and the contents of the urn to open the place up. 


4. So many traps, so little time.  The circus/acrobat training turns out to be essential, of course.  After securing the sharira, Eric, Yin, and Tong travel to Lhasa to give the sharira and the surrounding gold monkeys to some Buddhist officials.


5. The ending is a bit mysterious and a possible sequel is setup.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Pleasant, engaging action-romance film set in China involving the search for Buddhist artifacts.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Some of the acrobatics footage was bad enough that I wish they had dropped it.  Other than that, the production values were rather high, and the film looked quite good.


2. Sound: 8/10 Quite good, except for the over the top foley thrown in for the hits during fighting.  Some of the incidental music was really good.


3. Acting: 8/10 Liked the principal actors.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 The script balanced fighting and questing well enough.

20131005: Action Review--Wing Chun

Wing Chun

1. Fundamentals
1. Hong Kong live action feature length film, 1994, NR, 95 minutes, action-adventure. Spoken language is Cantonese; subtitles in English.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 2,100 users;
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet,' and 72% from 2,623 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.7/5.0 from 113,958 users.
5. Directed by: Yuen Wo Ping; screenplay by Elsa Tang and Anthony Wong.
6. Starring: Michelle Yeoh as Yim Wing Chun, Donnie Yen as Leung Pok To, King-tan Yuen as Abacus (Aunty) Fong, Catherine Hung as Charmy Mang, Chui Siu Keung as Flying Chimpanzee, Lee Chi Hung as Wong Hok Chow.


2. Setup and Plot
1. I saw Michelle Yeoh first in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), next in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), then in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) before I saw her in the film under review, Wing Chun (1994).


2. In the first three films, hers was a strong, polished presence, showing an accomplished actor capable of nuance as well as swift direct action.  The 1997 and 2000 films showed her physical prowess as well, but by the 2005 film, her acting alone was impressive.


3. Wing Chun was a bit of a pleasant surprise.  The screenplay, the direction, and the production values clearly did not make full use Yeoh's abilities.  On the other hand, it was funny, sweet, and moved along to a pleasant conclusion.  The screenplay and the other actors were just good enough to carry the film to the next part where Yeoh was present.


4. Wing Chun the character was a woman who had moved away from her early home to study kung fu in seclusion.  Later in life, she was fine with helping protect from bandits the town where Aunty Fong did business.  She expected to live out her life with her dignity, but not have a husband.


5. Life changed for her when her childhood sweetheart Pok To rolled into town; she recognized him, but he did not recognize her, which started a sequence of misadventures.


6. The leader of the bandits (Flying Chimpanzee) gets discouraged with being thwarted by Wing Chun, and decided to make a cause of her.  This involved lots of choreographed kung fu fighting, fighting with weapons, fighting on horseback, and so on.


7. The fighting and the romantic entanglements resolve in ways that were happy for almost everyone.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Action-adventure film also works well as romantic comedy.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 9/10 Very good in most of the film.


2. Sound: 8/10 Fine, except for the over the top foley for the fighting sequences.


3. Acting: 8/10 The main players were fine, but many of the supporting cast not as much.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 This is the best comedy I've seen in many years.

20131004: Action Review--The Way Back

The Way Back

1. Fundamentals
1. American/UAE/Polish live action feature film, released 2010, NR, 133 minutes, action-adventure.  Spoken word is in English, Russian, Polish; subtitles in English.


2. IMDB: 7.3/10.0 from 77,292 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 75% on the meter; 72% from 32,700 audience ratings.
4. Netflix:  3.9/5.0 from 1,260,322 users.


5. Directed by: Peter Weir.  Screenplay: Kenneth R. Clark.
6. Starring: Colin Farrell as Valka, Ed Harris as Mr. Smith,  Mark Strong as Khabarov, Jim Sturgess as Janusz, Saoirse Ronan as Irena, Gustav Skarsgard as Voss, Dragos Bacur as Zoran, Alexandru Potocean as Tomacz.


7. From Box Office Mojo: production budget, 30 million USD.
8. Domestic revenue, 2.7 million USD (13.3%); overseas revenue, 17.6 million (86.7%); total, 20.3 million USD.
9. For awards activity, see IMDb summary


2. Setup and Plot
1. In September 1939, Nazi Germany and Communist USSR partitioned Poland.  Many who were in Soviet Poland were imprisoned in Siberia for being politically incorrect.  That includes being foreign, being an actor, having advocated freedoms in the past, and other things.


2. A group escapes from a gulag during World War II, and journey on foot 4000 miles from Siberia across Tibet to freedom in India.  The Soviets have offered bounties to any of the locals who capture prisoners.


3. A party of seven starts the journey and gets away.  They face a lot of problems: blinding snow, the ever-present cold, lack of food, hallucinations, each other.  They head for Lake Baikal.  They soon lose a member who has night blindness, which was sad since he was 50 feet from the rest and their fire when he froze to death.  Later, it becomes clear that they got lost on the way.  Their best scout sets out to find the lake, and comes back in terrible shape.  Fortunately, he did find it.


4. Irena joins them near the lake.  When they encounter the first lake-side town, Valka goes looking for food, and finds some, and steals some vodka.  As they move south, there are more people and more mosquitoes.  A lucky encounter with locals tells them how to make mosquito repellent necklaces.  Irena increased communications among the group.


5. Further south, near the Mongolian border, they start seeing Soviet military again.  Valka decides to stay in Siberia.  At the Mongolian border, they discover (how would they have known?) that Mongolia had fallen to the Communist imperialist expansion.  So their hopes for freedom are dashed.  The shots of the burned out Buddhist temple were heart-breaking.  They decide to walk to Tibet, to the Himalayas, to India and British influence.


6. The desert areas are hard on them.  Irena's health fails, and they leave her corpse behind; the party is now down to five. Kazik dies a few days later.  The four survivors admire his sketches which he had kept from the gulag on.  When they catch sight of the mountains, Smith decides not to go on, and they leave him behind.  Later he revives and catches up with them.


7. They find plenty of water at the base of the Himalayas.  Then they have to face the climb, the ice, the snow.  They find the Tibetan border.  A local points them to Lhasa.  They recover for a while in a local village.  Zoran, Janusz, and Voss continue to India.  Smith continues to Lhasa, where he is sure he can find a way back to the States.


8. Janusz meets his wife again, years later in 1989, after the Communists are gone.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: The film depicts a long, heroic trek to freedom across Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet, the Himalayas to India.
2. Five stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10  Beautiful.


2. Sound: 10/10 Well done.


3. Acting: 10/10 Ed Harris was great, Colin Farrell did a good job, Jim Sturgess is fine as Janusz.  Saoirse Ronan as Irena was better than I expected.


4. Screenplay: 9/10 The story moves forward well, and kept my attention.  The last stage, getting to India from Tibet, might have been more detailed.

20131003: Action Review--The Expendables 2

The Expendables 2

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, released 2012, 102 minutes, rated R, action-adventure.
2. IMDB: 6.7/10.0 from 157,313 users; estimated budget, 92 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 65% on the meter; 61% from 309,375 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.9/5.0 from 1,482,945 ratings.
5. Directed by: Simon West.  Screenplay: Richard Wenk, Sylvester Stallone.
6. Starring: Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross, Jason Statham as Lee Christmas, Jet Li as Yin Yang, Dolph Lundgren as Gunnar Jensen, Chuck Norris as Booker, Bruce Willis as Church, Jean-Claude Van Damme as 'Vilain', Liam Hemsworth as Billy the Kid, Nan Yu as Maggie.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The opening job is an extravaganza of bullets and explosions.  It's successful.


2. After they come back, Church (CIA contact) gives Barney an ultimatum: do a job or clear up that 5 million USD misunderstanding or go to jail.  Maggie comes along as per Church's orders, and they retrieve an object from a safe, only to be hijacked by Vilain.  Vilain kills Billy to get respect.  Right.  The team decides to track down Vilain, who runs a mercenary for hire crew that tends to be on the opposite side of what Barney does.


3. The lost object contains the location of a mine where the Russians store plutonium.  The Bulgarian locations looked like a picture from 50 years ago. They meet up with Booker, who helps them in a fire fight.


4. They encounter a group called the Sangs, who kidnap the men and teen boys to work in the mines.  They set about to do in the Sangs, and recover the plutonium.  When things look bad, Booker, Church, and Trench drop by with extra resources.  There was a huge amount of shooting and dying.


5. The movie more or less ends with the climactic fight between Van Damme and Stallone.


6. In the end, Barney is all even with the CIA, the bad guys are defeated, and the plutonium is in safer hands.  Even more, the sequel is setup.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Needed a better screenplay, better lighting, more involved acting.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 I expected better from a 92 million dollar budget.


2. Sound: 7/10 Conversations often dip a bit low for my taste.


3. Acting: 6/10  Big plus to Jet Li, for skill.  Otherwise, some of the performances could have been phoned in.


4. Screenplay: 6/10 There were too many incidences of "we're in trouble, now someone will drop by to bail us out" for my taste.

20131003: Action Review--The Core

The Core

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2003, rated PG-13, 132 minutes, action-adventure.
2. IMDB: 5.3/10.0 from 60,668 users. Estimated budget 60 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter; 40% from 99,703 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.3/5.0 from 1,812,332 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Jon Amiel.  Screenplay by: Looper Layne, Jon Rogers.
6. Starring: Aaron Eckhart as Dr. Josh Keyes, Hilary Swank as Major Rebecca Childs, Stanley Tucci as Dr. Conrad Zimsky, Richard Jenkins as General Thomas Purcell, Delroy Lindo as Dr. Ed 'Braz' Brazzleton, DJ Qualls as Theodore Donald 'Rat' Finch, Tcheky Karyo as Serge, Bruce Greenwood as Commander Robert Iverson.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The hot, flowing liquid core of the Earth is slowing down more than a bit.  It needs to be fixed or we will lose the EM field that protects us from Solar radiation.  Dr. Brazzleton came up with two huge inventions allowing a ship to penetrate the crust and survive to go down to fix the liquid flowing part.  Those would be a laser boring tool, and a hull material that becomes stronger with greater pressure.  The US recruits Rat to help with information control: they ask him to hack the Internet, which he gleefully attempts with next to unlimited concentration.


2. The Destiny project led by Dr Zimsky may have been the cause of this.  This gets a passing mention early on.


3. There's a great pressure to finish the probe in three months.  The overt signs around the world get worse.  The Marianas trench is chosen as the insertion point.  The probe, which Braz named Virgil, makes a successful entry.


4. It travels in 700 miles, then gets jammed in an unexpected open space in the mantle material.  This is a giant geode full of huge crystals.  They start the repair, only to find that the geode's shell has been breached.  They get the jam cleared, but Bob dies from a red hot shard penetrating his helmet.  They rev up and proceed.


5. On day 2, they approach the mantle to core boundary.  They encounter huge (multi-ton) diamonds, and one of them breaches the hull.  They lose Serge, who sacrifices himself to save the mission (getting the nukes out of the afflicted compartment).


6. As they get further in, they start going much faster (140 mph instead of 60 mph).  This means that the nuclear charges they brought are insufficient to fix the problem.  At this time the Destiny project (Deep Earth Seismic Trigger Initiative; DEST-INI, Destiny) is revealed a bit.  Supposedly the 'other side' made one of these, so we made a better one.  The entire problem was caused by our testing of Destiny.


7. The rest of the film is about the team re-designing the original plan with the nukes and getting it done before Destiny is used again to try to fix things.  The heroic efforts step up.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Modern heroism is portrayed against a flawed script; good acting and visuals.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 10/10 No problems.


3. Acting: 10/10 The principal actors were quite good, the supporting actors more than adequate.


4. Screenplay: 6/10 We just don't have this technology, or anything like it: the lasers, the hull, the communications system with the surface, or the ability to circumvent the whole Internet.  This film should have been set in 2070 or 2110 or other year when such technology might be possible.  So the film becomes a fantasy; that is, certainly contrary to fact.  Also, the driver for the plot was Mutually Assured Destruction, which does not quite have the currency one might have seen in 1975.  The US government being the culprit has more resonance today, perhaps, after the Snowden disclosures.


5. SFX: 8/10 Still looks good in 2013, which is not bad for a 2003 effort.

20131003: Action Review--Ghost Protocol

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

1. Fundamentals and reception
1. American live action feature length film, released 2011, rated PG-13, 132 minutes, action-adventure, thriller.
2. IMDB: 7.3/10.0 from 238,513 users.  Estimated budget: 145 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  93% on the meter; 76% liked it from 462,345 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 4.0/5.0 from 2,512,860 users.
5. Directed by: Brad Bird.  Screenplay by: Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec.
6. Starring: Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Jeremy Renner as William Brandt, Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, Paula Patton as Jane Carter, Michael Nyquist as Kurt Hendricks, Vladimir Mashkov as Anatoly Sidirov, Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, Josh Holloway as Trevor Hanaway, Lea Seydoux as Sabine Moreau, Samuli Edelman as Wistrom, Ivan Shvedoff as Leonid Lisenker, Anil Kapoor as Brij Nath.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Budapest.  IMF agent Hanaway is betrayed and killed by Moreau, who takes the intelligence he had intercepted.


2. Moscow.  Jane and Benji break Ethan out of a jail to re-take the lost information.  Ethan changes plans to take along a new ally from the prison. This rather complicates things for a bit.  The Secretary re-tasks Ethan, Benji, and Jane to get vital information (nuclear codes) from inside the Kremlin.  That starts out fairly well, but Cobalt (Hendricks) gets the codes first, and blames them for it.  Ethan is captured, and narrowly escapes.  He learns from the Secretary that the IMF has been disavowed.  The Secretary himself gets killed, but not before telling Ethan what he wants done off the record.  The team is cut off from direct support from American channels.  Cobalt is out to kill him.  The Russian police (Sidirov) are after them on criminal charges.  Brandt joins the team.


3. Dubai.  Cobalt sends Wistrom to buy the launch codes from Moreau.  The team sets up a double meet, so that Leonid and Wistrom meet Jane, and Moreau meets Ethan and William, but they both think they are meeting each other.  What could possibly go wrong?  There were some great stunts in this segment, including the chase in the sandstorm.


4. Mumbai.  Cobalt has the launch codes and the satellite uplink.  So he needs a 'tactical satellite' as the last piece.  That is, a satellite that has Russian military protocols still in it.  One is available in Mumbai.  Jane goes after Brij Nath, the man who has access to the satellite.  Benji and William go after the man's computer security system.  Cobalt again interrupts them.  After Cobalt takes control of the satellite, Ethan and Jane rush to make a last minute stop.  Cobalt gets a Russian missile launched.  Jane, William, and Benji race to re-enable the uplink, while Ethan rushes to acquire the case with the command codes.


5. Seattle.  Nice conclusion.


3. Conclusions
1. This is a big update of my mini-review of 20130525.
2. One sentence summary: A fast, smart, exciting ride, start to finish.
3. Five stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 10/10 No problems


3. Acting: 9/10  The leads were all fine, as were Michael Nyquest and Vladimir Mashkov.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Fast paced action coupled with cerebral interludes for planning.  Throw in a dash of humor or twenty, and you've got a very nice script.

20131002: Action Review--The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 136 minutes, PG13, 2012, action-adventure.
2. IMDB: 7.2/10.0 from 391,567 users;  estimated budget, 78 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  84% on the meter; 80% liked it from 840,362 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 4.2/5.0 from 5,793,742 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Gary Ross.  Screenplay, Gary Ross and Suzanne Collins.
6. Starring: Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, Wes Bentley as Seneca Crane, Donald Sutherland as President Snow.


2. Setup and Plot
1. In a sad dystopian future in the nation of Panem, the autocratic rulers celebrate the putting down of a past rebellion by an annual bloodletting.  Two volunteers are chosen from each of 12 formerly rebellious districts.  The twenty-four lucky contestants get to kill each other until only one survives.


2. The training segment before the games was hugely improbable.  The contestants are depicted as having terrible low-protein diets.  How do they grow to any height, or have upright posture, or have impressive muscle tone?  Absurd.


3. Thirteen go down in the first eight hours.  An alliance of five forms, and Peeta seems to be in it, rendering help in finding Katniss.  She takes the strategy of going as far away as possible from the others.  The game runners burn down the forest selectively to move her toward the other contestants.  Her pursuers tree her, but decide to wait her out rather than take her down.  Her sponsors send her a useful care package for her wounded leg via guided balloon.


4. After the wasp incident, Katniss is in real trouble with hallucinations and indecision.  On the other hand, she does get rid of some opponents.


5. Katniss avoids, then defuses, a major trap back at the games entry point.


6. She loses an ally (Rue) from district 11 and eliminates an enemy.  Afterward, she flashes a sign to the district 11 observers.  They go into rebellion mode.  The motivation for this linkage was absent.  Katniss' district 12 mentor Haymitch suggests to the powers that be an alternative involving two survivors.


7. She takes a huge chance to get medical supplies for Peeta, and gets into a nasty knife fight for it.  Saving Rue ended up saving Katniss, and one more competitor is eliminated.


8. After Peeta's and Katniss' last human competitor is dead (or so they thought), they have to contend with an engineered, quite nasty pack of dogs, plus one wounded competitor re-surfaces.  Peeta and Katniss prevail.  Then the game runners revoke the two-survivor exception.  Nice.


3. Conclusions
1. Strongly derivative of the Japanese book and film, Battle Royale, 2000.
2. One sentence summary: The film is mostly well-crafted, but highly overrated and derivative.
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Fine except for the sections of hellishly amateurish jerky camera movements and the ever so poor framing.


2. Sound: 8/10  Mostly fine.


3. Acting: 7/10 Sutherland, Tucci, Lawrence, Harrelson, and Hutcherson were fine, given the screenplay.  Many of the supporting actors were not that good.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Yikes.  The logical failures here are endless. The two-tiered society consists of many entitled high-tech parasitic consumers and few no tech impoverished producers.  There is no way for the advanced materials used by the parasites to be produced, replaced, or upgraded. Where does the food and drink come from?  Either there is a huge non-depicted segment of Panem society (doubtful) or the whole setup is just what it looks like: impossible, unmitigated nonsense.  The opening remarks by President Snow were odious beyond belief, and would be sufficient to engender new rebellions, except for the abject poverty and lack of means of the downtrodden.

20131002: Action Review--Battle Royal

Battle Royale 3D

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 113 minutes, NR, 2000, action, thriller.  Spoken language is Japanese, with imperfect English subtitles.
2. IMDB: 7.7/10.0 from 102,374 users; estimated budget, 4.5 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  86% on the meter; 89% liked it from 82,213 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.9/5.0 from 837,924 user ratings.
5. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku; screenplay by Kenta Fukasaku.
6. Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara as Shuya Nanahara (male), Aki Maeda as Noriko Nakagawa (female), Taro Yamamoto as Shogo Kawada.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Massive civil unrest leads to the passage of legislation that calls for the random drawing of a single class of 15 year olds.  The class is taken to a deserted island where each student is fitted with a remote controlled collar that can explode fatally.  The class members are encouraged to kill one another until one survivor is left.  If more survive than one, the collars are set off and everybody dies.  Additionally, certain grid areas must be vacated before certain deadlines or the collars of those left in the areas go off.  Each student is given a bag of weapons and survival items; each bag contains different items. There is a three day limit as well; if more than one lives at three days in, everyone dies.


2. The main part of the film is about the young people killing each other off in order to survive.  Friendships end, loyalties are lost, affections are terminated.


3. Two 'transfer' students are added to the mix, both hoodlums who have weapon skills and experience in using them on humans.  The transfers do a lot of the early killing.  The first such case killed off 4 boys and 1 girl.  The transfers got guns, grenades, and ammunition out of it.


4. The film follows Fujiwara, Nanahara and Kawada as they try to stay alive, and futile attempts by a few subgroups to get off the island alive.


5. Old petty wrongs get converted to reasons for homicide.


6. The island has an amazing amount of material left on it after it was forcibly made deserted.  Several of the early survivors try to make the best of this.


7. In the end, though, it's pointless.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Japanese 15-year-olds are forced to fight until only one survives.
2. Five stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Beautifully shot.


2. Sound: 9/10 Usually fine.


3. Acting: 9/10 So much better than cheap American films.


4. Screenplay: 9/10 Well done.


5. Special Effects: 7/10 The blood effects were iffy.

20131002: Drama Review--Macho

Macho

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, released in 2009, NR, 74 minutes, drama.
2. IMDB: 6.3/10.0 from 62 users;.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: no information whatsoever.
4. Netflix: 2.9/5.0 from 18,249 audience.
5. Written and directed by: Rafael Palacio Illingworth.
6. Starring: Rafael Palacio Illingworth as Paul Aladro, Jolene Andersen as Sofi Anderson, Michael Teh as 'Handsome Man'.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Paul is from Mexico; Sofi is from Vancouver.  They meet and fall in like (as opposed to love) in Los Angeles.  After their initial getting to know you period, they try to keep it together.


2. Love punch?  Jumped the shark, 11 minutes in.


3. It's sad when they are apart.  It's also sad when they are together and he's drunk (and insulting, loud, and not attentive).  He's afraid and needy, while she's willing to let it go.


4. This relationship cannot possibly work.  Thirty seven minutes in (half way): will this film never end?  Of course it does, just not soon enough.  The relationship devolves slowly but surely.


3. Conclusions
1. Boring.  Too many jump cuts, too little exposition, too much whining.  Eight minutes of content told over 74 minutes.
2. One line summary: Romance doomed from the start; worse yet, it's a vanity film.
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Adequate, but with a low budget look.


2. Sound: 7/10 OK, but not great.


3. Acting: 5/10 If only Illingworth were not in it.  Andersen was OK.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Vanity work, and not very good.

20131001: Drama Review--The Vicious Kind

The Vicious Kind

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. American live action feature length film, 2009, rated R, 92 minutes, drama, comedy.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 4,523 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 70% on the meter; 68% liked it from 1,922 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: average for 3.5 of 5.0 from 348,037 viewers.
5. Written and directed by Lee Toland Krieger.
6. Starring: Adam Scott as Caleb Sinclair, Brittany Snow as Emma Gainsborough, Alex Frost as Peter Sinclair, JK Simmons as Donald Sinclair, Jordan Berkov as Hannah.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Caleb and Peter are Donald's sons.  Emma is Peter's girlfriend.  Caleb reluctantly agrees to pick the two of them up to come to Thanksgiving dinner at Donald's house.


2. The drive to the father's house is long and uneasy.  Donald is more than a bit earthy and gruff.  Emma is a psych major and has some skills with putting up with difficult people.


3. Caleb broke up with Hannah in the recent past, and is still quite angry about it.  Unfortunately, Emma reminds Caleb of Hannah.


4. Emma and the three men get to know each other.  Emma cheated on her past boyfriend to be with Peter, and Caleb hopes Emma won't hurt Peter in the same way.


5. 'Trespass on my property again and I will shoot you,' Donald said to Caleb.  Great stuff.


6. Caleb starts falling for Emma.  Sure feels like rebound stupidity to me.  Caleb more or less starts stalking Emma.  Peter spends time and money on a prostitute, but this does not seem to help.  He gets into a bar fight because he thought a man touched a woman inappropriately.


7. This is clearly not a comedy, even though it is billed as one. It is a psychological drama about Caleb's inability to deal with his parents breaking up.  Donald tells Emma (since Peter would not) about Diane, his wife.  He claimed that Diane cheated on him, and that she went into the hospital and died shortly thereafter, when Peter was about ten.  Caleb visited Diane in the hospital, and avoided talking to Donald after that.  One hopes this gets resolved before the end of the film.


8. Peter lost his virginity to Emma during the visit, but she seems not to be satisfied with him.  Caleb and Emma do it at Donald's house, which seems awfully stupid, what with both Donald and Peter in the house.  Miraculously, they get away with that (or so they thought), and Caleb tells Emma about what really happened.  As he leaves Emma, he immediately goes into a long overdue heart-to-heart discussion with Donald. 


9. Peter misses all this, and goes back to Emma, and they try again.  Donald drives them back to the train station to school for the ride back to school.  Donald has a not very clear talk with Peter before they depart, but they have warmer feelings as a result.


10. So, the film ends with a convenient web of lies in place.  The best part, perhaps, was that Donald and Caleb reconcile.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Family dysfunction leads to partial reconciliation.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Well-lit, usually well-framed and focused.


2. Sound: 8/10 Incidental music that comes as a harsh, loud surprise.  Voice sound levels often drop quite low.


3. Acting: 10/10 Good.  I enjoyed the performances of J. K. Simmons, Adam Scott, and Brittany Snow the most.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Moves along nicely early on.  It drags a bit in the middle, but comes to a reasonable, if not good, conclusion.

20131001: Horror Review--Dark Town

Dark Town

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. American live action feature length film, 2004, rated R, 88 minutes, horror
2. IMDB: 3.4/10.0 from 328 users; filmed in Los Angeles, CA, USA; estimated budget, one million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 11% liked it from 97 audience ratings.
4. Netflix claimed 17,575 ratings with an average of 2.5 stars of five.
5. Directed by Desi Scarpone; screenplay by David Birke.
6. Starring: Janet Martin as Jen Armstrong, Delpaneaux Wills as Rakeem, Joel King as Curtis Armstrong Sr, Meghan Stansfield as Lisa, Claire Mills as Ellen, Curtis Nysmith as Curtis Armstrong Jr, Ariana Fronti as Monique, Sarah Horvath as Heather.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Slumlord Curtis Armstrong Sr goes to collect from his properties.  He gets more than he bargained for from his tenants.  He returns to his calm, safe, suburban home for his birthday.  Then he starts the blood bath after being very creepy.  He bites Heather, which turns her.


2. Heather has a Latino gangster boyfriend, Cinque, who is a drug dealer.  Some black youth decide to liberate Cinque's money stash, which he keeps in Heather's room.  Rakeem gets two men and Kisha to go with him to do the theft.


3. The neighborhood watch stops the black group, but Rakeem pulls a pistol on them when they were distracted.  One of their party gets shot by the watch; they hide at the Armstrong house.  Cinque shows up too, to get his cash.  Heather kills him.


4. The vampire monster status transfers in perhaps 20 minutes, which accelerates all the proceedings.


5. The gang violence just serves as feeding sources for the new vampires, or whatever they are.  There's a small amount of drama in whether a person can fight off the change or not.


6. Jen and Rakeem fight if off somewhat, and try to kill all the other vampires.  When that does not work too well, they take another exit.  That they survived at all is just ridiculous.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary:  Suburban dysfunction plus vampirism meets inner city gang violence.
2. One star of five. One blackhole for acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Soft focus.  Too much darkness.  Too many home movies that are total garbage in terms of visuals. 


2. Sound: 6/10 OK, but not great. The loud parts are way too loud, and the soft parts too soft.


3. Acting: 1/10 Would someone please stay in the same accent?  How did Rakeem go from being low on courage to being able to fight off being a vampire?


4. Screenplay: 2/10  The first 25 minutes were almost opaque in terms of motivation.  The rules for dealing with the supernatural seemed to change every so many minutes.  Some consistency might have been nice.  The ending was unlikely at best.


5. Special Effects: 3/10 Horribly bad.  Cheap, poor, stupid.

20131001: Documentary Review: China's Mega Dam

China's Mega Dam

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action made for television special, 2006, Discovery Channel, documentary, 87 minutes.
2. IMDB: no entries
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and no audience ratings.
4. Narrator: Michael Carroll.
5. Director: Justin Albert.


2. Setup
1. The third longest river in the world is the Yangtze, in China.  It floods regularly, causing a great deal of damage.  The Chinese built a huge dam in the Three Gorges region to allow containment and control.


2. Backing up a bit, the film described diverting the river by digging an alternate route for most of the water, then forming a huge dry area across the original river bed where the dam's foundation will be laid.  This undertaking took considerable time.  Once the dry area was in place, the river was flowing through the new channel, and construction of the dam itself could start.  Construction started around 1994.


3. Progress depended on there not being any flash flooding occurring during the pouring and drying of the dam's cement.  It seems the Chinese got lucky on that score.


4. The created reservoir will be up to 500 feet above the original level, and will extend back from Three Gorges some 400 miles.  The number of people to be moved was expected to be 1.3 million.  Later estimates were around 2 million.  Two major cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages, 100,000 acres of farmland are to be lost to this project, which will start in 2003, and be fully loaded around 2009.  In 2004, the reservoir was already longer than the Grand Canyon.


5. The social fallout of this bludgeoning policy was thorough.  Independent villages become segments in government constructed slums.  Villages, towns, connecting bridges, and farmland were swallowed up.


6. April 2002: engineers discover cracks in the main wall of the dam.  They are diagnosed as surficial and not a safety hazard.


7. The stories of Fengdu and Dachang were rather sad, especially for the family that had stayed in the same house in Dachang for 400 years.  This thread of the documentary showed the highest level of government censorship.


8. After the dam was solid the diversion channel was closed.  Ships now had to travel through huge locks that allow passage through the dam.


9. The river became navigable, due to its much greater depth, for hundreds of miles further upstream.


10. Temples: a few were saved; many were lost.


11. The weight of the dam is enormous, and there are concerns about earthquakes in the areas near the dam.


12. Bedload flow: the dam slowed the overall speed of the river, and the river started depositing upstream for that reason. Fortunately, the engineers built low-level sluice gates in the dam, so that the silt problem could be addressed.  Unfortunately, this was only near the dam.  Upstream there are still problems.  The river is more of a lake now.


13. Some villages are moved to the other side of the river.  Others are moved hundreds of miles away.


14. The electric generators in the dam are supposed to supply 10% of all China's needs.


15. There are almost too many superlatives in this film.  The largest turbines in the world.  The largest dam in the world.  The biggest reservoir in the world.  The largest construction cranes in the world (several types).  China is the biggest producer of coal in the world.  China is the largest consumer of coal in the world.  China is the biggest polluter in the world.  The dam's locks are the biggest in the world.  Part of the dam complex is a ship elevator, of course the largest in the world.


16. The dam is hoped to eliminate a good deal of coal burning, at least in the heavily populated areas near it, like Shanghai and Chongqing.  Chongqing has about 30 million people, a huge and growing auto/motorcycle construction industry, and competes with Shanghai as the center of capitalism.


17. Jungbu island was excavated starting in 1993, and remnants of the Ba people were discovered as well as many layers of habitation over centuries.  In all, the film claimed some 1,200 archaeological sites were covered by water in 2004.  Another 8,000 were identified as potential dig sites, but not started.


18. Looting: no surprise there.  Antiquities were dug up in many places and bought up by savvy gangs with good intelligence and cash on hand.  Burglaries from museums also rose considerably.


19. The lake behind the dam was estimated to grow to 36,000 square miles a bit larger than the Great Lakes in USA/Canada.  Hundreds of thousands of grave sites were submerged in this lake.  Buddhists are very upset with this huge loss.


20. Fuling: demolished a third of the city; built huge seawalls. Kept most of the city, but lost the eighth century carvings of fish below.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: The completion of the dam is a huge achievement with huge implications.
2. Four stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 There are too many minutes of soft focus.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK, no real problems.


3. Screenplay: 8/10 Repetitive; too much geared around the commercial breaks.  On Netflix I did not have to endure those, but still, they affected the pacing in a bad way.