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BWells
Reviews
Le pacte des loups (2001)
I think "Merchant Ivory meets Crouching Tiger" about covers it
I'm a big fan of the Wu Xia genre. I love watching well-choreographed martial arts sequences with a good rhythm to them. I love sci-fi movies. Well, I love *good* sci-fi movies, at least. The Matrix was an expert blend of these two that has earned a place on my personal top ten.
This one comes close. Not quite there, but close. A real description of the movie's convoluted plot and character twists would simply take too long, and someone else has done it already. It clocks in at apx. 2.5 hours, and uses every damn minute of it. The acting is better than a lot of movies have had lately, and to see this caliber of work in an eighteenth-century-French-Wu-Xia is really damn refreshing.
The shooting is way above average. I got a little tired of the variable-speed film effect about two-thirds of the way through, but otherwise the cinematography is excellent. Characters are framed well, the scenery is treated respectfully without making it the star of the film, and the period-piece touches are superb.
I would never in a million years have expected to see a Wu Xia film set in this period or place. Kung-Fu Fightin' in pre-Revolution France??? Even so, it actually works, and works real damn well. There is one notable exception where the need to have really cool weapon work just gets out of hand and almost ruins the last twenty minutes of the movie, but aside from that, there wasn't any move that I flatly discounted as implausible.
In short, just go see it at least once. On a really big screen with good sound and comfy seats. A DVD isn't going to do this film justice without at least an HD-capable LCD projector.
The Invisible Man: Pilot (2000)
Achieves more with less
Obviously on a shoestring budget, I-Man still took less than four episodes to capitalize on the all-too-rare chemistry between virtually all of its characters. All of the modern Star Trek series have taken three years apiece to get anywhere near this level. The crackling and hilarious dynamic between Ventresca and Ben-Victor as Fawkes and Hobbes is a prime example of what happens when good writing actually gets into the hands of good actors. When Fawkes and Hobbes team up and play a scene opposite The Official, The Keeper, Eberts, or Arnaud De Fehrn (AKA Da Phone), the result is ten times better than this show has any business being. This is not to knock the production team at all, but the cast and the writers definitely make this show.
The recurring character of Allianora (and her organization, Chrysalis) as both love interest AND principal opponent for Fawkes was handled better than many series of "greater" import and certainly of higher budgets have managed. All in all, the first season of I-Man was a terrific success.
The newly-introduced second season has a question mark on it, however. The introduction of uber-agent Alex Monroe left me wanting. While I am not yet willing to pronounce Brandy Ledford's efforts as pointless, a character with too much power has much bigger shoes to fill dramatically. Her serious and lonely quest to find her son separates her from the rest of The Agency even further than does her titanic skillset, and to hammer a point home again, it's the relationships that make the show.
This show's other great strength is its ability not to take itself too seriously, a precious gift in an all-too-serious world. If I-Man can keep it up, I might almost forgive the Sci-Fi Channel for dumping Good Versus Evil (just when it was getting REALLY good) after all.
Almost.
Check this show out for a couple weeks, especially if you're lucky enough to see the episodes, "Flowers for Hobbes" and "The Importance of Being Eberts". You'll be glad you did.
Shut up, Eberts!
X-Men (2000)
Surprise; It Does Not Suck.
You know, there are a great many things that could easily have wrecked this movie completely. Marvel Comics adaptations have a pretty poor track record of coming across in live-action to either TV or the movies, especially when compared against their competition from DC. Witness The Punisher, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and a good handful more. Balance these with the successes of the old 70's Spider Man series (cheesy, but not a bad effort at all for its time), the majority of The Incredible Hulk series and the recent Blade, and you can imagine how terrified I was that X-Men simply wasn't going to cut it.
I mean, bring in the biggest overall franchise Marvel has had in the last 20 years, throw in "that guy from Star Trek", "that guy from Apt Pupil" and several supermodels, and everything points to an expensive disaster that would kill the credibility of what used to be a really good comic book. Granted, I'm talking 15-20 years ago, but I am, after all, at least that old, and it was, after all, really that good for a while.
I was worried, to say the least.
But then, I noticed who was directing. Bryan Singer most assuredly did not screw up with The Usual Suspects. Not a bad pedigree, that. Also, one of the aforementioned supermodels, Famke Janssen, proved she can actually act a while back when she bloody well held her own against that very same guy from Star Trek -- IN Star Trek, no less. She also added a great deal to GoldenEye, and I'm not just talking about visuals, either.
"Onotopp?"
"Onotopp."
Sorry -- where was I? Oh, yes. Then there's this whole Hugh Jackman guy. Never heard of him, and he gets to play what is potentially the pivotal role in the (contracted) trilogy? Granted, I was pulling for Robin Williams or Gary Sinise, but that just goes to show what an idiot I can be when I put my mind to it. So Wolverine was a big question mark.
I went to see it the Friday night it opened. You know what? It Does Not Suck. Not only does it Not Suck, but it's actually Pretty Good.
Remember, I'm from Minnesota. Up here, winning the lottery is considered "Pretty Good", too.
You know what? It was such a solid Pretty Good that I went back on Saturday and paid to see it again, this time with my friends. They came out saying the same thing -- "You know what? That Did Not Suck. In fact, It was Pretty Good".
This, of course, led to the many details underlying the concept of Pretty Goodness, including Hugh Jackman's absolute nailing of his part, the rest of the cast doing their jobs and then some without trying to take over, and, most of all, Bryan Singer showing that rarest of qualities in a Hollywood director, restraint. Not one shot stood out as being bigger/badder/bloodier than it needed to be, and that is saying something these days.
Bottom line -- go see it. Comic book movies are very rarely this good, and one like this deserves to make enough money so that we might actually SEE the other two for which the cast has been contracted.
If we're lucky, we'll get Bryan Singer back, too.
IMDB rating = 9
RoboCop 2 (1990)
Wasted Potential
I was barely 20 years old when I first saw this movie, and I had high hopes. I had heard that the near-legendary Frank Miller had his hands in the script. I knew Peter Weller was coming back as Alex Murphy. I knew Irvin Kirshner had done a great job on The Empire Strikes Back. How could I lose? Sadly, I received my answer in no uncertain terms.
This film broke Straczynski's Law of Tolerable Dramatic Sci-Fi ("No kids or cute robots" -- references include Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, STNG, and more) long before it had even been defined. This film took a gold mine of a subplot (Murphy stalks his own wife) and took it at top speed into nowhere. This film took potentially great satire material (the "War On Drugs", the myriad of additional "directives" installed by Doctor Faxx, the additional candidates for cybernetic conversion) and didn't do much that was funny with it. I remember feeling sorry for both Peter Weller and Nancy Allen, both of whom gave heroic efforts trying to wring decent performances out of the final script, but you know what they say about blood from a stone...
IMDB Vote = 4
Brian Wells
Mission to Mars (2000)
Houston, we have letdown
Casting Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise could not have come cheaply. The special effects (which are indeed first-rate) couldn't have been too thrifty, either. What a tragic shame some of all that money couldn't have been spent on a script re-write or four. Bottom line -- what could have been a great movie gets buried under useless and painful expository dialogue before the plot even gets going, and takes another haymaker to the jaw when one of the major characters gets killed in a ridiculously preventable and obviously contrived manner. ...Sure is pretty, though.
RoboCop (1987)
This is what Natural Born Killers should have been
For all its almost cartoonish violence and grim theme, RoboCop is an extraordinarily prescient satire of the levels to which society can, and in some cases already has, degenerated. From runaway corporate greed to preposterous three-shift-class cocaine processing plants, RoboCop only missed becoming a seminal warning piece because far too many people were satisfied with it as merely an action film. Nonetheless, repeat viewings only strengthen this film, and make its sequels that much more tragically bad.
"I'd buy that for a dollar!"
The Muppet Movie (1979)
It's not perfect, there's just absolutely nothing wrong with it.
If you haven't seen it, go forth and correct this oversight. Then come back and read this. The best word I can think of for how I still feel about TMM is "fond". Between vast improvements in special effects and changing ideas about how to make movies ostensibly for children, TMM may look a little weatherbeaten. Nevertheless, it still fits like a favorite hat and keeps getting better with age. Cameos and innuendo for the adults, wacky and, (dare I use the word), zany adventures for the kids (of all ages), and what is to me still the greatest ensemble cast ever assembled. No, I don't mean the people. Heartbreak, wonder, panic, music, and Electric Mayhem all come together in a film -- no, a movie -- that may not be perfect, it's just that there's really nothing wrong with it at all.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Big Fun in Your Living Room
Very few times in the course of cinema history has a film been crafted so flawlessly to achieve one simple purpose -- to have a great time. This is no "Saving Private Ryan" or "Casablanca". Instead, it sets out to be one long laugh-riot, slam-bang, don't-delve, don't-blink, don't breathe, good-vs.-evil boom fest, and blows imitators away.
Come to think of it, there really aren't even that many imitators. Even Carpenter hasn't put something this much fun together before or since (although I *am* looking forward to "Vampires"). Looking for something similar? Try the Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell combo of "Evil Dead 2"/"Army of Darkness", which is close but slightly more forced on the humor side. Or perhaps "Star Wars", which is slightly more serious. Maybe "Buckaroo Banzai", which is a bit sloppier (When IS he going to tackle the World Crime League, anyway?).
In any case, the best way to watch this movie (not "film", not "motion picture" -- "movie"!) is to gather as many friends as you can, whatever snacks and beverages you crave, kick back, and remember as many quotes as possible. PS -- try to find a really big screen, too; this one is shot bee-yoo-tifully.