AEon Flux (2005)

I found a blu-ray copy for $5 on Amazon so I picked it up.  I'm growing to like Charlize Theron more and more as an actress.  I think this is one of those movies that I grow fonder of each time I watch it.  Concepts of immortality are also more meaningful to me as I age and look around me at all the cool things that I'll never get to see because there just aren't enough hours in the day.  Originally posted 01 Dec 2012.    I think this movie got a bad rap for no good reason.  This is the second, maybe third, time I've seen it so I'm pretty secure in this opinon.  It's not a terrible movie.

I didn't get cable until the mid-90's and I was never much of a TV watcher as a kid so I missed all the shows MTV made popular back in the day like Daria, which I think I would have liked based on the few episodes I did see, and Beavis and Butthead, which I'm sure I would have hated.  I never saw the original cartoon which Wikipedia tells me is based on the Gnostic notion of an Æon – emanations of God – specifically the Valentinian notion of a syzygy, a sexually complementary pair of emanations, here the two main characters.

Whoa.

Since I don't know what the hell any of that has to do with a leather-clad assassin chick, I'm just going to focus on the movie. 

Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) is an assassin for a covert group called The Monicans.  She is assigned to kill the head of the last city on Earth, the scientist Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) but finds herself overcome with strange pseudo-memories.  She decides to investigate the issue for herself and uncovers a much larger secret.

The CGI is a little heavy, especially with some of the plant-based defenses (like the bladed grass) but I've seen much worse.  It's a little overacted by Theron and a little underacted by Csokas but again, I've seen so much worse. 

It's at least an interesting take on an animated world and, while I'm not in a rush to own it, is totally worth a look.

Star Trek X: Nemesis (2002)

  So this is the last film of the Next Generation crew.  It's a little barebones but it's not horrible.

Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is happy to announce the wedding of his first mate, Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) but as usual, Starfleet business intervenes.  The Romulan government has had a coup and a member of their underclass of Remans has taken power.  The new leader, Shinzon (Tom Hardy), wishes to open dialogue with Starfleet and the Enterprise is dispatched.  Picard is shocked and dismayed to learn, however, that Shinzon is not only human, he is a clone of Picard; a legacy of an abandoned experiment to replace the real captain.  Shinzon seems genuinely interested in meeting his biological donor but Picard fears there are multiple agendas at play.

The idea that Tom Hardy and Patrick Stewart could be clones is kind of ridiculous but any movie with Tom Hardy and Patrick Stewart is better than one without.  It's nice to see some of the storylines getting wrapped up but I wish the movie could have had more oomph to it.

Inside Deep Throat (2005)

  Ok, before anybody freaks out, this is a documentary about the porn film Deep Throat, not the actual film.  I'm not opposed to porn but reviewing it gets a little weird.  It's also even more subjective than non-porn films.

I added this to my queue after seeing a clip of it in another documentary called This Film is Not Yet Rated.  This tells you about the making of the film Deep Throat, sure, with interviews from the director, the male lead, and some of the crew.  The location manager in particular was hilarious.  More importantly, it tells you about the cultural attitudes of the time and what this movie had to overcome on its way to being the highest grossing film ever made.  Because of its popularity and prominence - being shown right in the middle of Times Square - Deep Throat became a nexus of discussion about censorship, morality, and what constitutes art.  It was supposed to be the rallying cry of a new, sexually liberated society.  It managed to squeak by the Nixon-led religious right condemnation only to run headlong into the teeth of second-wave feminism.  It never stood a chance with that one-two punch.  What's more sad is the human cost.  No one walked away from this film a happier person.  Linda Lovelace became one of its most critical protesters.  Harry Reems faced jail time as a scapegoat and saw any chance of a career in "legitimate" film down the tubes.  Gerard Damiano (the director) never saw a dime from his magnum opus.  The only people who profited were the mob and the conservatives.

It's really interesting to me to see how far we've come as a society and yet how short we've fallen in the idea of portraying sexuality.  Damiano intended Deep Throat to be kind of a gateway to mainstream films.  Like, regular films could have hardcore sex scenes that furthered the movie instead of being the point of them.  That still hasn't happened.  You can show someone's head exploding like an overripe melon but you can't show an erect penis.  There was a scientific study in the 70s that showed there were no deleterious effects to watching porn and recommended loosening the obscenity laws to reflect that but the study was repressed by the government because it didn't suit their narrative.  Political agendas once more triumphed over logic and reason by inflaming public opinion.  Everyone talks about how Hollywood is so liberal and maybe the actors are but most studios are extremely risk averse.  Look at any movie up to the 70s and you will see married couples sleeping in separate beds or even separate rooms.  Heterosexual, legally married couples are the gold standard of conservatives and nobody even dared inferring they had sex.  That's more fantastical than believing a pizza delivery guy is going to get boned by a hot housewife for no reason.

This post has already gone on way too long but I have one last thing to say.  Maybe if we didn't treat porn like it was disgusting and shameful (in public, while contributing billions of dollars annually in private) it would achieve a level of legitimacy and stop being horribly amateur and exploitative.  Stop. Being. Fucking. Hypocrites. About. Fucking.  The end.

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl (2005)

  Robert Rodriguez is the only director I know who can be thoroughly entertaining using only nepotism and terrible CGI.  This movie is just about awful in every respect and yet still watchable.

Max (Cayden Boyd) is a highly imaginative boy who uses his dreams to escape from reality, writing them all down in his dream journal.  His two major creations are Sharkboy (Taylor Lautner) and Lavagirl (Taylor Dooley) who live on Planet Drool.  His teacher (George Lopez) is concerned Max is losing touch with reality and the school bully (Jacob Davich) takes the opportunity to ruin Max's dream journal.  Then Sharkboy and Lavagirl show up at the school because Planet Drool is in danger from a new evil and only Max can save it.

This is basically a shittier version of The Neverending Story.  It's based on Rodriguez's son's actual dream journal and characters and all three of his sons have small parts.  I didn't see the Avellan twins or Danny Trejo so maybe they were busy that day.  It was intended for 3D viewing with a lot of the stock things being thrown at the camera.  As an adult, I would never watch this again but I can see how it would be popular with kids.  I'm giving the copy I have to my godchildren.  In a couple of years, I think they'll really enjoy it.

Star Trek IX: Insurrection (1998)

  Do you want to know how deep down the tunnel of schoolwork I have been?  I didn't know the teaser for Guardians of the Galaxy 2 had dropped and I didn't even know Logan was a thing that is going to exist.  I'm so mad at myself right now.

Anyway, Star Trek.  This is movie number nine, which means there's only one more to go and then I can start on the Star Wars saga.  Yes, all of them and The Clone Wars TV show as well.  But for now, let's just concentrate on the further adventures of the Enterprise.

Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is in the middle of a diplomatic dinner when he receives word that Data (Brent Spiner), who had been loaned out to another ship, has gone crazy and started shooting at Starfleet personnel during an observation mission on a peaceful planet.  Picard immediately orders the ship to the site of the incident and ignores orders to destroy Data, choosing instead to shut him off until the cause can be investigated.  This incident handled, Admiral Dougherty (Anthony Zerbe) can't get rid of Picard and his crew fast enough, which also seems suspicious.  Picard does a little more digging and discovers that the planet has a unique property that reverses aging.  Admiral Dougherty wants to remove the Bak'u and use the planet as a panacea to halt death around the galaxy but his ally, Ru'afo (F. Murray Abraham), has much more personal reasons to want the Bak'u gone.

I think this is one of the best in the entire series.  All of the ones with the Next Generation crew have been well-written and well-conceived as films.  I think the difference is that they know that they are meant to be action films, not extended TV episodes or morality plays.

The Addams Family (1991)

  For whatever reason, posting on Monday has become really hard for me.  I'm doing my best and I want to thank everyone who keeps reading.

The Addams' are incredibly rich and incredibly weird.  Their accountant, Tully (Dan Hedaya), dreads the constant playful attempts on his life by Gomez (Raul Julia) and schemes to find a way to destroy them and take their money.  His opportunity comes in the form of mother-son loan sharks Abigail (Elizabeth Wilson) and Gordon Craven (Christopher Lloyd).  Gordon looks strikingly like Gomez's long-lost brother, Fester.  With a few cosmetic changes, Gordon infiltrates the Addams household in order to locate the vault of treasure but not everyone in the family believes in Fester's miraculous return.

I forgot how much I loved this movie.  I think it gets overshadowed in my mind by the sequel, which is amazing, but this was truly a fantastic movie.  I think it really deserves to be called a classic if only because it is one of the very rare TV shows adapted into a movie that doesn't suck.  Part of that success comes from casting.  I don't think anyone else could have played Morticia Addams like Anjelica Huston.  The only thing that really dates the film is the end credit song, which is a rap by MC Hammer.  Otherwise, this is just as perfect today as it was in 1991.

Star Trek VII: Generations (1994)

  And so we move from the old to the new.  Well, at least to the 90's.  This is a pretty decent film and a good transition from the original series to the Next Generation.

Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), Scottie (James Doohan), and Chekov (Walter Koenig) are invited to the launch of a new Enterprise, under the command of a new captain when they get a distress call from a ship caught in an energy ribbon.  They respond and manage to save some of the passengers, including a man named Soran (Malcolm McDowell) but Captain Kirk is lost.  Seventy years later, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) receives some terrible personal news at the same time as yet another distress signal, this time from a star observatory.  They find the same man, Soran, as the only survivor of a vicious attack by Klingons.  Engineer Geordi (LeVar Burton) thinks something is off about the attack and seeks to re-examine the site.  Soran kidnaps him and escapes to the Klingon ship.  The Enterprise crew learns from Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), who was one of the original survivors, that Soran wants to return to the ribbon because it keeps the inhabitants in a state of perpetual happiness outside of normal time and space.  In order to get inside, Soran destroys a planet with millions of living beings to distort the path of the ribbon.  Picard gets sucked up with him and must then confront his greatest desire and convince Kirk to also give up his personal fantasy.  Together, the two captains must change the past to save the future.

Holy shit, you guys.  It is really hard to concentrate when you have tiny gremlins behind you watching Veggie Tales, The Chipmunk Adventure, Pokemon:  Indigo League, and Ice Age:  Collision Course.  It's been a long weekend.

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

Okay, this is super late but I have an excuse.  I am taking care of my three godchildren and it has absorbed most of my attention for the day.  They are watching Zootopia in blissful serenity (or at least quiet) so I have time to post something.     Emma (Vivien Leigh) has clawed her way up from stripping to be the wife of the British ambassador to Naples (Alan Mowbray).  She has money, position, and everything she ever wanted until she meets the heroic Lord Nelson (Laurence Olivier).  He is also married but the two begin a passionate affair.

This is decent romantic drama.  It's different from my usual fare but well worth watching.  Leigh and Olivier were married in real life so there's an added layer to their on-screen romance.

Okay, this is a crap post.  I'm sorry.  My creativity has run a little dry.  I will do better next time, I swear.

Legend (2015)

  I'm 3/5 of the way done with my paper on British history so I thought I'd stop and revisit some more modern history with the Kray twins of 1960s London.

Ronnie (Tom Hardy) and Reggie Kray (also Tom Hardy) are twin gangsters.  Reg is the brains, suave and dapper, while Ron is a total psychopath.  Together, they run multiple nightclubs and rackets all over London and woo their respective flames, Frances (Emily Browning) and Teddy (Taron Egerton).  They are even being courted by the American mafia.  But when Reg goes to prison, Ron starts to fall apart without his brother and Frances realizes that Reg is never going to go straight with the twin pressures of easy money and familial obligation tugging on him.

This is a slick, very stylish film with a fantastic performance from Tom Hardy.  Each twin is a distinct personality, which is immediately apparent on top of the visual differences (one has glasses, one doesn't; one has lower jaw prosthetics, one doesn't).  The supporting cast is also excellent.  I don't know that it would be at the top of anyone's year-end list but it's a solid period gangster film.  I had never heard of the Krays so everything was new to me.  Maybe British people would feel differently.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

  True story:  I once referenced this movie in a paper on The Merchant of Venice in popular culture.

Another true story:  I have two 5-page essays to write this weekend.  I've started one of them.

Star Trek!

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew are getting ready for retirement when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) announces that he has offered the Enterprise in a diplomatic mission with the Klingons.  Their home world is failing and they are suing for peace in an attempt to get Federation help in relocating to a habitable planet.  A lot of people have a problem with this, including Kirk who will never forgive them for killing his son.  But he meets with Ambassador Gorkon (David Warner) anyway over a polite but tense dinner.  Immediately afterwards, Gorkon's ship is fired upon, apparently by the Enterprise, and many of the crew killed.  The second-in-command, Chang (Christopher Plummer), demands the arrest of Kirk and Bones (DeForest Kelley), leaving Spock and Scotty (James Doohan) to unravel the mystery of where the torpedoes came from.

This was one of the better films in the whole series, as far as plot.  There was an actual attempt made to integrate social issues with a legitimate story, instead of just a concept stretched out to an hour and a half, like The Final Frontier.

Star Trek is at its best when it has something to say and even though the story is not new (surprise, some people don't like to see the end of a historical enemy), it's still interesting to see the effects of post-Cold War relations.  It's mostly academic for me since I was so young but I'm sure my parent's generation saw this play out in real life with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sudden realization that we had avoided Mutually Assured Destruction, as well as the accompanying death throes of paranoia, wondering if it was all a feint to get us to lower our guard.

(See, kids, movies are educational.  If you ever need to write a paper on the Cold War, Star Trek is there for you.)

The Left Handed Gun (1958)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I did homework instead.

William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid (Paul Newman), is a young man with a hot temper and no formal education.  He is picked up as a cattle hand by peace-loving Tunstall (Colin Keith-Johnston), who is subsequently murdered by his business rivals.  Billy takes it upon himself to get revenge for his employer, despite barely knowing the man.  He convinces his two friends Charlie (James Congdon) and Tom (James Best) to help him gun down the killers, sparking a trail of bloodshed leading all the way to door of former outlaw turned sheriff, Pat Garrett (John Dehner).

Paul Newman was a bit old to be playing a teenager (he was 33 when the movie came out) but he does a good job nailing down that brash vulnerability so typical of that age.  The story is necessarily tragic but the movie goes further to heighten the pathos by drawing so many parallels between Garrett and the Kid.  Bonney desperately needed a father figure and Garrett could have filled that role if circumstances hadn't intervened.

The film is in black and white so you miss out on the piercing intensity of Newman's blue eyes, which were always his best feature.  They try to shoehorn in a love story, unnecessarily in my opinion, to provide a downbeat from the waves of violence but that's not going to be the parts you remember.  Overall, I'd say this isn't one of Newman's top-drawer works but it's not a terrible Western.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

  Okay, this was definitely the most boring Star Trek film I've seen yet.  Holy shit.

Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Bones (DeForest Kelley) are out camping in Yellowstone when they receive word that shore leave is cancelled and they have to immediately proceed to some remote planet to negotiate a hostage crisis.  The crisis was a trap, however, to bring a star-going vessel close enough for a fanatic Vulcan, Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), to hijack.  He takes over the Enterprise, brainwashes most of the crew, and steers them towards the Great Barrier, some vast intergalactic storm that no ship has ever survived entering.  Sybok's aim is to locate the Vulcan equivalent of Eden and bring back God but of course Kirk wants to know why God would need a spaceship.

Barring a truly tragic vignette about Bones' past, there's nothing much for a casual viewer here.  This series is moving from fan service to actors desperate to prove they're still relevant, now almost thirty years after the end of their TV run.

Opportunity Knocks (1990)

  This movie was so awful I can't believe I wasted my precious leisure time on it.  Seriously, it is basically the exact same film as Down and Out in Beverly Hills except with a cheaper cast.

Eddie (Dana Carvey) is a con man on the run from a gangster (James Tolkan) after a prank has unintended consequences.  He holes up in a ritzy neighborhood with an empty house and is mistaken the next morning for the house sitter, who had decided not to show up, by the homeowner's parents (Robert Loggia and Doris Belack).  Believing this is their son's college friend, they invite Eddie into their upper class lives and encourage him to date their daughter (Julia Campbell).  Eddie soon decides that his original plan to con them isn't what he wants but it's too late to back out now.

Honestly, in another life Dana Carvey could have been a leading man.  But this is the 90s and it's awful.  His brand of mimicry falls completely flat in a narrative, the story is insipid and derivative, and it's not worth anyone's time to dredge this up from obscurity.  Carvey went on to have an extremely successful career and this can just be seen as a minor interruption in that journey.