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The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)
One of the worst films ever made.
(contains spoilers, but you won't care once you have read this) I just finished watching this movie on television, and I'm very happy that television was the only place that I saw it at.
Folks, This movie is so fundamentaly bad that it actually does not deserve a revue. However, after having viewed the other comments expressed and finding that 85% of them were very positive (a clear indication of brain damage), I think that it's my duty as a public service to give a revue. If for no other reason, than to help make clear to those poor misguided comment writters what a grave error they have made.
The craft of film work can be very ironic and moronic, and it seems that we never learn, only to repeat the same pattern. Why? Well, money is usually the main and most cliche motive, but other reasons include a large production staff (too many cooks) and current social factors (what's considered 'in'in a movie).
Now, having said that, let's take a look at what went wrong. First and foremost there was never a good reason for a sequel. Carrie was a masterwork. Even if you did not like the movie, the acting, music, cinematography, and direction all stand well on their own. Brian DePalma has been criticized for copying Hitchcock. I do not believe that to be the case, DePalma took Hitchcock's influence and created on top of that. Pino Donaggio's score is wonderful in composition and it's unique ability to deliver emotional impact. Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, et all, delivered excellent performances that gave dimension to their characters. That was 1976, and the movie cost 1 million dollars to make. 24 years and 20 million dollors later we get 'The Rage: Carrie2'. The character of Carrie White is not even a part of the movie, yet we get the obligatory 'Carrie2' because studios figure that audiences are morons that will not recognize a sequel unless it has a name tie-in. The intro to the movie is bland with no build up to the title as in the first movie, an indication of a bad product right from the start.
This takes us to the characters and main plot. We have the lead character, who has Marilyn Manson posters on her walls and dresses accordingly (like you would imagine an average high schooler of the time to look like) and has a small group of friends, yet the jocks and the cheerleaders don't like her. Sounds great to me! But for some reason this is considered a loss. Then we have the cheerleaders and jocks. I don't know how they did it, but they managed to make these people so unlikeable that it crosses the boundries of entertainment and makes you want smack them around for real yourself. The jock characters ooze testosterone infused male cliches, and the cheerleaders just come off as complainers. In Carrie, the title's namesake was a complete outcast with an obviously long history of peer mistreatment. In this flick we get a girl who has freinds and who's only torment is a set of stereotype grouchy adoptive parents. It is hard to picture a tragedy around a person who seems strong enough to handle it, and the movie suffers heavily from this. We then have the jock turned good guy, the religous fanatic mother (hmmmm, sounds familiar) who's only lines of dialog include poorly placed Bible quotations, and finally the Sue Snell character from the original movie. Why Amy Irving, a great actress, agreed to do this is beyond me. And her character is treated with great disinterest, using her only as a link to the original film.
And the plot... Possibly the worst part, is almost a complete retread of 'Carrie'. It's almost as if someone in an office said, 'it's been 20 some years since the original, which has gained a cult following, it's time to make a follow up!' And so, the writters went working, for about 30 minutes. This is the story: The jocks have a sinister plot! They (GASP) have sex with other girls in school. Now I don't approve of that, but it's hardly anything new or all that sinister. Wrong, but not a master plan. The good guy jock is egged on to do a few things with the lead character. But since he's the good guy, he falls in love with her. The cheerleaders hate this (it's only one guy!) spraypaint his car, videotape him, then proceed to do something to the girl. The girl, of course has telekinisis, which is actually explained away as a genetic trait given to her by her father... Carrie's father! ok, so that would have made him around 55 when he conceved another kid with a woman that would have to have been in her late twenties. But if that's the case, who is the voice that keeps talking to the girl, moving windows around? And then we have a tatoo that gets bigger when one gets angrier, and a new improved telekinetic 'flex' sound. I think we all know where this is going, and you probably already guessed the ending. To proove that this film has no heart, they quickly kill Sue Snell toward the end without any reason. They even go as far as to re-do a 'shock' finale like the original film.
It's that bad folks. THIS is what Hollywood thinks about your favorite films and also how they feel about entertaining you once they have secured you money. You have been warned.
Independence Day (1996)
an ax to grind
I've waited a long time to lamb baste this movie in a public forum. I hated this picture. Hated, hated, hated this picture. And everyone I have ever met loves this picture. Loves, loves, loves this picture. There is a very precise and scientific reason for that... Everything everyone knows is wrong! Let's look at this differently. Let's look at the facts here (and I'm going to point out some things that may spoil the movie for you if you have not seen it, but that's ok... You don't want to!):
1. The plot is absolutely paper thin. Aliens invade earth (the aliens have no intuition on human culture, but they know what tourist landmarks to hit), and Americans fight them. That's it! Roll credits, and it's over. 2. This movie follows a time worn cliche of event location. If something big happens in an American film, it has to happen in the United states exclusively. not in the Virgin islands, not in Switzerland, not even in Canada... America. And, of course, if there is a problem, the Americans will be the only ones able to solve it. 3. Then, if Americans are going to solve it, it's going to be a band of stereotypes. This includes a rural every guy, the know it all scientist, the president (who flies a jet, no less!), and Will Smith. 4. In a really bad mix of product placement and worn plot device, an Apple computer is used to destroy an entire alien supercomputer... That destroys an entire alien superstructure... That destroys a multi million dollar movie super budget. 5. The aliens are never explained! why do they attack Earth? Who knows, but if it looks groovy, who cares? Absolutely no thought is put into the aliens. The only interesting thing about the aliens, perhaps the whole movie, is that the aliens work in space suits that are aliens in themselves. But once again, it is never explained. And the aliens are the atypical asexual non-clothed bi-pedal beings we have come to expect in sci-fi flicks. 6. The design of the alien hardware follows another worn cliche, of design following that of the decade that a movie is made. In other words, being a 1990's movie, expect lots of chrome (ala Terminator2)and compound curves. The 'mother' ships suffer from 'CG-Itis', a curious aftereffect of over indulgent CGI use. The result is a ship that looks like a pizza pie made out of glitter stucco. 7. Same guy who made this movie made Godzilla (American version...which takes place in America, not japan... see a link here?), and scads of other filmed explosions disguised as movies.
And there's much much more. But given all that, people still just eat up this movie. And of course, as the response, Hollywood makes more just like it. In other words, people have turned into sheep with no identity or taste, with Hollywood eager to cater since most of the folks there are interested in film as profit and not art. Rent this movie at own peril.
Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967)
Interesting sci-fi debut for George Lucas
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This is the student film, made by George Lucas (during his days at the UCLA film school), that his first feature film 'THX 1138' was based on. I believe the complete title for the student film was 'THX 1138: 4EB (The Electronic Labyrinth)'. If you have not seen this film, you may or may not want to read this review, because I will be explaining the film in detail... and the movie is only about 15 minutes long. So read at your own risk. Also, If you have not seen the feature film version of 'THX', you may want to see the student film first.(note: I am not sure where this film would be available, it seems to be rare)
OK, on to the movie! This student film encapsulates the main ideas presented in the last half of the feature film version, in particular the final chase scene. When the film opens, we are introduced to THX's mate, who gives about the only piece of dialog in the whole film and sets up the action to come. We then watch THX run through various obstacles and places that seem to be mysteriously monitored and booby trapped by technicians that are never given a location as to where they are. they are just there, somewhere, watching THX. THX escapes, just as the technicians close in to capture him (which is not explained either), running away into the outside sunlight. I think it's safe to say that the student film and the feature film are both very different and very much alike at the same time. The feature film gives us an antiseptic landscape who's population sports clean shaven heads and seemingly doped up and programmed minds. This is not the case in the student film, where people not only have hair (that idea probably came later), but the people in the student film seem very coherent as to what is going on around them. Also, in the feature film, robotic police officers are the ones responsible for tracking down THX (though some mysterious technicians are shown working with the robots).The student film touches briefly on the theme that THX is unhappy with his mate, who claims to not be interested in a relationship that involves love. In the feature film, THX's mate is the one who encourages THX to love her, and ultimately to run away from his life. However, even though there are these differences, the one thing that remains constant and really ties the two films together is the use of environment. Disembodied sounds, unexplained animations that appear on screen like some targeting scope, and the use of stark corridors and rooms are all elements that appear as part of the environment of both films. Lucas uses very vague (or hardly any) suggestions as to what is all happening on screen. This can be seen in the feature film as well, but much more apparent in the student film. The student film is almost at an experimental level in it's vagueness. We see things that pop out of nowhere, but somehow make sense in a 'far off future' sort of way. It actually helps not to know certain things, as to suggest that what is happening is so far removed from our own experience in the present, that this has to be taking place in the future (maybe even in another dimension). This same vagueness can be seen in all of the Star Wars films, where not everything is explained in 'Star Trek technical Manual' style. Some things are better left to the imagination.
As a student film, and especially for one made in 1967, this is a fairly good film. It wont come across to most folk as entertaining, maybe not even understandable, but that is because of the level at which the film works. The film also shows a bit of rough new comer film making. There are moments of forced acting, where it looks like Lucas told the participants to do certain things and they just went through the motions. There are locations that THX runs through that are very obviously parking lots. Lucas even uses an elevator car as a sort of sonic torture chamber. But somehow all of these things come together for an interesting sci-fi debut from the guy who would later bring us Star Wars.