Astro Boy (2009)

  This wasn't great, but it didn't suck as hard as I thought it would.

Toby Tenma (Freddie Highmore) is a boy genius, as to be expected when your father (Nicholas Cage) is the head of the Ministry of Science on your floating city above the Earth's surface.  Unfortunately, he is not smart enough to avoid getting locked in the same room as an experimental war robot ordered by a President (Donald Sutherland) hellbent on re-election.  Distraught, Dr. Tenma decides to create a robotic replica of his son, down to uploading the kid's memories.  He soon realizes that Toby 2.0 is never going to replace his kid.  Toby gets knocked down to the surface world and picked up by a group of kids, led by Cora (Kristen Bell).  He renames himself Astro and tries to assimilate to this new family, only to realize that wishing for something doesn't automatically mean it will happen.

I have never seen any of the old Astro Boy comics or the TV show, so as far as I was concerned, this was my introduction to the character.  I wasn't impressed.  There's nothing really wrong with it; there are just so many better movies about child robots that it seems silly to waste your time on this one.  The animation is good but not spectacular, the humor is flat, the side characters are mediocre, and the story has been done.  The voice cast is impressive but not enough to make it worth renting.  I think it was nominated for something several years ago and that's the only reason it was in my queue.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

  Since I have recently seen the fifth installment of this series, I thought it would be fun to go back and watch the first one because I honestly couldn't remember a thing about it.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is in Prague trying to recover part of a list of undercover operative names with his team when the job goes bad.  He reports the deaths of his teammates to his home office supervisor, Kittredge (Henry Czerny), only to discover that the entire point of the operation was to flush out a mole in the organization.  As the only survivor, Hunt is assumed to be the mole.  He decides to steal the real list from CIA headquarters and pose as a disgruntled agent looking to sell.  Hunt hires disavowed former agents Luther (Ving Rhames) and Krieger (Jean Reno) to assist, as well as the other surviving member of his team, Claire (Emmanuelle Beart), in the near impossible task of clearing their names.

The technology in this film dates it faster than anything else.  The computers and tech are absolutely obsolete.  Once you forgive that, though, the CIA mainframe wire-from-the-ceiling stunt is still fantastic.  The CGI gets a little spotty during the final train sequence but doesn't detract from the suspense.

I had forgotten how young Tom Cruise looked.  Not that he's aged terribly in twenty years, he has too much money for that, but his face was so thin and smooth back then!  Bad haircut but hey, we've all been there.  Speaking of flashbacks, I totally forgot Emilio Estevez was in this movie.  Granted, he's only in it for a little while, but it opens on his face and that confused the shit out of me.  I had to remember that he still existed.

I bought the blu-ray set of all four M:I films back when I thought there were only going to be four, but I went ahead and watched this on the server because God only knows how long it'll take me to get to M in my personal collection.

Fulltime Killer (2001)

  Man, this movie was such a mishmash it's hard to even form an opinion on it.  My love for East Asian action movies and hitmen is at war with my disdain for movies that reference classic movies and confusion over what fucking language I'm listening to at any given moment.

O (Takashi Sorimachi) is Asia's top assassin, a position he has achieved by being a complete recluse. Not even his housekeeper, Ms. Chin (Kelly Lin), knows anything about him, just that his previous housekeeper disappeared.  O's position is threatened by the arrival of Tok (Andy Lau), a flashy newcomer who cribs his style from every popular action film released in the last ten years.  Tok even goes so far as to woo Ms. Chin just to get at his rival.  Meanwhile, both men are being hunted by an obsessive Interpol agent (Simon Yam).

This movie was shot in Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese with a little bit of Korean in there as well, if my ear is correct.  I speak only one of those languages so it was a little hard to follow, since I'm pretty sure the multiple tongues were intended to be a plot point.  I get the concept but it makes for a bit more challenging viewing for Western audiences.  Maybe.  Or maybe I'm overthinking it.

Anyway, the action sequences are good and it was nice to see Andy Lau do something that looked so carefree.  Most things I've seen him in, he is much more serious.  The production values are not Hollywood-level, which makes the film seem older than it is, but that's again just a Western observation.

New Year, New TV Shows

I have a reliable system --some have called it neurotic-- for managing my various platforms, but occasionally I run into a minor snag in my watching habits.  Usually, it involves getting stuck in a season of TV and foreshortening my time to watch movies.  Currently, I am making my way through six seasons of Frasier (I'm nearly done with season 3) and I just finished season one of Pinky and the Brain.  Christy suggested I check out the premiere of a new show on Starz called Blunt Talk and also Fear the Walking Dead.  We're also very excited to be able to see So You Think You Can Dance's 12th season finale this weekend.  (Yes, I know it aired on Monday.  We record it and then watch it together.  And yes, I am aware that is weird.)

  I've been cherry-picking my way through the first few seasons, mostly because I've watched them so many times I practically have them memorized.  This season is memorable because it's when Niles (David Hyde-Pierce) separates from his wife and has to be a bachelor again.  Frankly, his is the only character with a discernible arc this season.  Frasier has moments from episode to episode but the real development is with his brother.

  I had no idea Pinky and the Brain had their own spin-off series from Animaniacs until Netflix recommended it.  It was a surprisingly well-rounded season.  It's certainly dated by its inclusion of jokes about the Clinton presidency, but who knows?  That might well end up being prescient instead of a relic.

  I had to add Starz back to my cable lineup just to see this show.  I didn't do it for this show, I did it because in October Ash vs. the Evil Dead is airing and I must see it.  This was just kind of a lark.  I figured I'd give it a shot because none of my regular Fall programming is back yet and the new shows don't start until the 21st, at the earliest.  This has got to be one of the funniest shows I have seen in recent memory.  Walter Blunt (Patrick Stewart) is a TV talk show pundit desperate to retain his ratings in the face of a myriad of personal problems.  I have seen three episodes now and each one features Stewart being hysterically funny while setting up the supporting characters to have their own backstories and possibilities for pathos. 

  As for Fear the Walking Dead, I watched the pilot and was distinctly unimpressed.  I know The Walking Dead has become a pop culture phenomenon but I have only seen the first season of it.  While I enjoyed the parent show and intend to continue watching it whenever it comes to the top of my queue, I cannot muster much interest in its prequel.  The zombie outbreak story has been done to death --if you'll pardon the pun-- in recent years and frankly FTWD just didn't make much of an impact.

Mission to Mars (2000)

  Happy Labor Day!  Here's a movie about space!

In the year 2020, a manned expedition to Mars is underway.  A team of astronauts, led by Luke (Don Cheadle), lands on the surface and almost immediately discovers a weird signal.  They go to investigate and are attacked by a mysterious force.  Luke survives long enough to send a cry for help to the space station above Earth.  Another team of astronauts, led by Woody (Tim Robbins) plan a frantic rescue mission, knowing that they might already be too late, just because of the distance involved.  Woody insists on having grief-stricken co-pilot Jim (Gary Sinise) join the mission and it's a good thing because stuff goes wrong immediately.

This is one of those movies that had a good idea but failed in execution.  There's something so earnest about its premise, so cloying in its delivery that I found it to be very off-putting.  It was like watching a small child carefully mangling a piano piece.  You grit your teeth and clap because otherwise you feel like a monster but you also never accept an invitation to hear them again.

I find it an interesting coincidence that I was just comparing a pair of French films to Scarface, a movie widely regarded as a masterpiece, and then watched this science fiction love letter from the same director as that seminal work.  The world moves in little circles.

I can't in good conscience recommend this movie for any reason.  Nothing is particularly wrong with the acting or the central plot; there are just too many better space films on which to bestow your precious time.

Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 (2008)

  I'm not sure what I expected from this pair of films.  People have compared them to Scarface and I think that's fair.  For me, they were interesting to watch but I would never buy them.

After a bank heist goes wrong, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is arrested and taken to trial.  He promptly escapes, is recaptured, tried and sent to prison.  There, incensed that a Chilean dictator stole his thunder in the press, he pens his autobiography.  He also acquaints himself with his neighbor, another perennial escapee named Francois Besse (Mathieu Amalric).  The two have completely different personalities but similar goals so they collaborate to escape once again from maximum security.  Mesrine meets his newest lady love, Sylvia (Ludivine Sagnier), soon thereafter and the three move to England to hide out.  Mesrine just can't abide not being in the spotlight and Besse eventually gets fed up, leaving Mesrine to look for a new partner.  He settles on Charlie (Gerard Lanvin), an ex-con with ties to left-wing terrorist organizations.  In his mind, Mesrine is a revolutionary looking to bring down a corrupt system but everyone else can see the death spiral speeding to its inevitable conclusion.

There are very few moments of levity in either film, which makes it feel like kind of a slog.  I'm glad I took breaks between them to watch other things.  Another issue was the copy I watched had terrible subtitles which sometimes made it difficult to tell what was happening, as I do not speak French.  I'm sure a legitimate version would avoid that particular pitfall but I don't think I could sit through this again just for better subtitles.  If you're a fan of gritty gangster films, you'll probably enjoy this way more than I did.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008)

  This is part one of a pair of films based on the life of French criminal Jacques Mesrine (pronounced Meh-reen), based on his autobiography.  If even half of this is true, this guy had the biggest balls you've ever seen.

After an early career in the French Army and a rough assignment in Algeria, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) returns home but finds a provincial life just will not do.  His friend, Paul (Gilles Lelouche), gets him hooked up with a local gangster, Guido (Gerard Depardieu) as an enforcer, thief, and general bad man.  He also meets his wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya), has three children and goes to prison the first time.  Afterwards, he tries to go straight but the lure of easy money and violence is just too strong.  Sofia splits and he meets the Bonnie to his Clyde, Jeanne (Cecile de France).  The two larcenous lovebirds move to Canada and kidnap a billionaire for ransom, but the scheme goes wrong and everyone goes to prison.  Jacques discovers that maximum security is way worse than anything he's ever experienced and makes plans to bust out as soon as he can.  He and his new friend Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis) escape in broad daylight, then turn around and attack the prison as soon as they gather some firepower.

This was an absolutely insane true story.  According to the end credits, after Mesrine's attack, the government actually looked into the prison conditions and shut the place down.  So, yay?  I guess?  That doesn't begin to balance the scales from all the terrible things he did but it is pretty entertaining. Like I said, I have no idea how much of this is actually true and how much is creative license by the author.

Cassel does an incredible job with the intensity of this role.  Mesrine is not a likable guy and in the wrong hands, this could have been a masochistic slog.  Instead, Cassel is able to lend some serious charisma to the part.  The only real issue I had with the film was the pacing.  It moves at a breakneck speed trying to fit years worth of criminal activity into a couple of hours.  As a result, it feels very rushed in parts and then slow in others.  Still, it's not like I've seen a lot of contemporary French films so I can't really judge.  Maybe that's a stylistic trend.  I don't know.  It's a decent crime biopic.  I'll be interested to see the second part.