Critical: The Reaping

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Well, you got me, movie.


I underestimated you. Based on the previews I saw, I assumed you would be a very straight forward, run of the mill anti-Christ movie. You looked pretty enough, what with your fancy budget and all, but still I thought you were a one-trick pony. You've got a skeptical scientist who makes it her business to investigate miracles and prove they have scientific explanations, because the death of her husband and children at the hand of insane cultists has warped her sensibilities and made her turn her back on the church, and then she comes upon a case of the Biblical plagues and, shock of shocks, this time it's for real!

And yes, all that does happen. So, no surprises there, movie. You did take a bit of a turn when you made the anti-Christ a girl, as usually movies stick to Damien-types for that, but changing the sex of the Child of Satan isn't exactly radical. I still figured that I had you pegged, movie.

But there you go and hit me with an actual, honest to goodness plot twist that I did not see coming. Had I not been so narrow-minded, I could have guessed the twist, because you did foreshadow pretty nicely and everything, but I did not give you nearly enough credit and I lulled myself into believing you were much baser than you were. So, kudos there. You were smarter and better than I gave you credit for. It's a mistake I won't make again soon, and it's all because of you.

What The Reaping is, to put it simply, is a good movie. I have some issues with it, mainly the renumbering of the plagues for dramatic effect, and you rely on wacky dream sequences a bit too much, and that final scene in the car felt tacked on and just out of place, but you can't let those three things detract from the overall impression, and The Reaping is good. It's beautifully shot, and although I complained about excessive use of dreams, some of them played with light and dark so masterfully that I can forgive some of them. There's even a few bits that are incredibly creepy, so you've got that going for you, too.

Not worth owning, but I wouldn't be adverse to watching you again some time, movie. Next time, I'll treat you better, I promise.


Read more...

Panic

William H. Macy is not a hit man.

I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it.

That makes Panic troublesome, as to fully accept this movie, you need to accept that William H. Macy is a hit man. And I can’t do it. That’s not to say he doesn’t give it his best shot, and it’s not to say he doesn’t put on a pretty decent performance, but I don’t find him intimidating enough or cold-blooded enough to be a hit man. Maybe this is because the movie goes out of its way not to show him actually being a hit man. You see, Macy no longer wants to be a hit man. He is having a midlife crisis and wants out of the family business. But the movie is so concerned showing that Macy wants to stop being a hit man, that they only show him being a hit man in two quick scenes. So, I’m sorry, but I don’t accept the central premise.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn’t much better. Pretty much everything with Neve Campbell is boring and could be excised very easily, and in fact I almost wish her role had been excised to answer some of the movie’s other, more interesting questions. How did the matriarch of the family get them involved in the business? Was Macy’s wife really a hooker or did she just dress like one for the purposes of that one scene? Why did John Ritter not have a meatier part? Why is David Dorfman such a creepy little kid?

Unanswered questions all the way…


Read more...

Critical: Pathology

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Of this movie’s 93 minute running time, I think there was about 10 minutes of decent stuff. This, of course, is a not a good ratio.

The problem is not that the concept is a bad idea. Med students kill people for fun and then try to guess how it happened. It’s sick and twisted and could make for a decent picture. Unfortunately, there’s no one to root for. The main character is Ted (Milo Ventimiglia) and I suppose you are meant to side with him, but there are two big problems with this. One, he’s as much a murderer as the villains are, and two, he cheats on Alyssa Milano multiple times, so screw him. Making matters worse is that Ted has no real reason for going on a killing spree. He starts because killing people is part of human nature (sure, that’s a good motivation for the protagonist to have) and he stops because of his classmates takes it too far (by killing 3 people at once…but how is that any different from what Ted has been doing?).

The rest of the cast are woefully two-dimensional. Three of the five members of the murder club have a total of 15 minutes of screen time, and they never display any real characters at all. The black-haired girl, whose name I never discerned, likes to get high and is bisexual. The smug jerk with the glasses is a smug jerk with glasses. The other guy is just a random guy who has no defining traits at all. Only Juliette and Jake get any real development, and even that basically amounts to: Juliette is a loose woman and Jake is crazy as a loon.

A couple sequences do save Pathology from being a complete waste. There’s a montage in the middle of the movie that features murder, autopsies, and sex set to a Renholder tune, and that 5 minutes seems like it belongs in a much more competent movie. Additionally, the last few minutes of the movie feature a final kill that is very well done and sufficiently creepy, even if it does come out of nowhere. 10 minutes is not enough to save a movie, but it does a good job of making it tolerable.


Read more...

The Ninth Gate

Not quite a Critical review, but I'm out of practice. Also, this really doesn't warrant something so in-depth.


Put simply, it's not very good.

The main problem is that there is not much going on in this movie. The concept is that Johnny Depp plays an unscrupulous book dealer researching Satanic books, and people keep dying mysteriously as he gets further into his search. While this has the potential to be really interesting, it is really not. It's a guy looking at books for 2 hours. Plot twists are telegraphed far in advance, and those that are not telegraphed and introduced but never explained in any kind of reasonable fashion. And this is yet another Gainax Ending.

Johnny Depp is pretty good, and Frank Langella proves to be decent enough as well, but the rest are nothing to write home about. The female lead is, at best, passable, but most of the time she is just not good.

So, yeah. Fantastic. Not the worst movie I've even seen, but it was 2 hours I wouldn't mind having back.
Read more...

Critical: Prey

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Prey is, quite honestly, a goofy concept. I joked the other day that the concept of a cloud of sentient nanobots is just too bizarre to believe in, while cloning dinosaurs and earthquake machines was perfectly acceptable, but that's honestly the truth. My brain can logically accept that dinosaur dna could theoretically be obtained from mosquitoes in amber, and the idea that natural disasters can be caused by man-made machines is a bit Super-villainy for my tastes, but it's not outside the realm of believability. But a swarm of nanobots just crosses the point where my brain can no longer pretend this is possible.

Mind you, I am not entirely opposed to the concept of the nanobots presented early in the book. If I accept the Smoke Monster on Lost (which probably isn't really a cloud of nanobots [at least, I don't think it is, but who the hell really knows?] but the idea of a floating smoke that can produce images on its surface is the same general idea) then I can accept Prey's swarms, and I do. Had the book ended with the descent into the Nest and the destruction of the swarm, I'd probably think more highly of this. But instead, it veers off into Body Snatcher territory, with a "benign swarm" taking root inside of people and controlling their actions. Sorry, do not pass Go, do not collect your credibility.

On the other hand, I finished the 500 page book in two days, so I can't claim that it isn't a fast read, and while it's not believable like Jurassic Park (relatively speaking, of course), as a thriller it's got merit. The idea of man being hunted by his own creation is an oldie but a goodie and although some characters are basically Red Shirts that is kind of the point of a B-level monster tale, so that is easily forgiven.

If you have a day or two to kill, you could certainly pick worse.


Read more...

Critical: Gantz

Having finished Gantz, I can only call it a flawed effort. Back in September, I referred to it as all sorts of f'd up, and that was only after having watched the first volume. Having seen them all, I can proclaim the entire series is monumentally f'd up (if the thought of a character threatening to desecrate a corpse, only in more graphic terms, is intrinsically offensive to you, this probably is not something you would enjoy watching). But being f'd up is not necessarily a bad thing, as there are plenty of series that pull off that sort of thing by compensating with likable characters and an intelligble plot.

At its heart, Gantz is about the redemption of Kurono (or, if not an actual redemption, it's about his growth from an immature, insensitive pervert to someone people actually look up to) and on that level, it works quite well. Comparing Kurono from the first episode to the Kurono seen in the last 3 episodes is like comparing night and day, and I went from despising him at the beginning of the series to actively cheering him on by the end; quite an accomplishment. It's a believable arc and it would almost be enough for me to recommend the series on the basis of that. However...

The series is flawed in numerous ways. For one thing, at the start of the series, Kurono IS despicable. He cares for no one but himself, and his mind is pretty a stereotypical teenage male's, and it takes a long time to even reach the point where you don't actively want him to get shot in the face. In addition, the majority of the characters are either just as despicable as Kurono (the mafia guys, the biker in the verbally abusive relationship with his wife, the wily veteran who happily lets people get slaughtered if it furthers his own goals), borderline retarded (the old lady and her spoiled son, the majority of people in the 3rd game), or simply pacifists beyond all reason (I understand an aversion to killing, and wanting to resolve a conflict peacefully, and that is to be commended, but only up to the point where self-defense is necessary; once an alien has murdered three people right in front of you, talking MIGHT NOT BE AN OPTION). And all of those characters spend what seems like hours and hours arguing and debating; the series could easily have between a third and half its runtime excised and all the main plot points would still hit their marks. There are a few decent characters, mainly in the second half of the series, but you have to sit through most of the show to reach that point, and even then there is still too much talking. Finally, the ending is a Gainax Ending, and those always suck. I don't mind endings that leave open questions, but there is a major difference between leaving a two-hour movie open-ended and leaving a 9.5 hour tv-series without ANY resolution. Once you hit a certain threshhold, you need at least some type of closure, and with Gantz, you get none.

One final point caveat; there is definitely for kids only. It's full of violence, gore, cursing, and sex. None of it bothered me, but it's definitely over the top in every aspect, and could easily offend.

At its core, it's a good idea, but the presentation just wasn't what I was needing. If some of the elements had been skewed just a little bit differently, and the "arguing the room" episodes shortened dramatically, this would have been good. As it is, however, it's just not. Not really recommended.

Read more...

The Red Balloon, now 25% off!

Who likes sales?

I knew you did. And from now until December 31st, you can purchase a copy of The Red Balloon for only $9.75 per copy! That's 25% off, and a great deal if I do say so myself.

I don't know how quickly the Amazon page will update, so for now the best way to purchase it at that price is here.


Read more...