The career of Stanley Kubrick seems to be him taking on a popular genre and blowing the competition out of the water. 2001 was his answer to the sci-fi films of the 1950's and '60's. A Clockwork Orange defined the ultra violent films that would follow it during the 1970's. The Shining was his attempt to make a good, psychological horror film. Full Metal Jacket follows the line by tackling a genre that exploded during the mid 1980's: the Vietnam war film. From Platoon to Rambo the topic had been tackled, starting with glorious fare like Apocalypse Now and the Deer Hunter. Now it was Kubrick's turn.
The film is unlike other war films. Instead of taking you straight to the "shit" it opens with a group of recruits in the Marine Corp going through basic training. Each character is given a new name by the drill sergeant (played by the incredible R. Lee Ermey) that they go by throughout the rest of the film. The narrator is Private Joker, a name given for being a smart ass on the first day. Joker is almost like a modern day John Boy Walton thrust into the Vietnam era equipped with all the cynicism that writers had during the era. The other character that Kubrick pays particular attention to is nicknamed Private Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio) for being what Sgt. Hartman (Ermey) calls a "disgusting fat body!". Pyle is a screw up, only being good with his gun. otherwise he is a failure at discipline who incurs the wrath of Hartman and the other members of the platoon.
The main reasoning for basic training is explained by the sergeant early on. He's there to train killers. His job is essentially to put them through hell and weed out the failures and push on the killers into the jungles of Vietnam. Consider his job as quality control. As an example when Hartman announces the assignments for the recruits he announces that Joker is going into military journalism, leading Hartman to explain that he's not Mickey Spillane. He's a killer. Of course quality control fails sometimes...
The film shifts gears during its second half, almost becoming another movie. We still follow Joker into the jungles of Vietnam, but it's vastly different from Paris Island. Buzzed hair and pristine uniforms have given way to shaggy hair, untucked shirts, and insubordination to his superiors at times- something that Hartman would have kicked the shit out of him for. Set during the Tet Offensive Joker is sent out with a new photographer to follow the carnage during Tet. He stumbles onto a buddy from boot camp Cowboy (Arliss Howard) and ends up following his platoon into some heavy "shit" in small urban eras throughout Vietnam.
The film is a question: Did Hartman create killers? Through all the screaming and war faces was he able to turn average boys into hardened killers to be dropped into the jungle and kill everything they see. You get your answers throughout the film, realizing that every one of these men had a Hartman pushing them to kill, kill, kill. We find out the answer to that question numerous times. Some men had it in them and some men didn't. What's striking is that in the end the boys haven't really gone considering the song they all sing together to close the film.
Kubrick creates a great atmosphere considering he never left England to make it. Casting the film with relative unknowns, including Ermey who was only an advisor before being picked by Kubrick to take the Hartman role, Kubrick created a film filled with what could be called the boys next door. They could be our sons, brothers, nephews, paperboys, or the kid that mows our lawn. Boys thrown into hell. Kubrick shoots the film in a style that feels guerrilla compared to Kubrick's other work, which is high end compared to most directors. He directs the film with basic military precision except for two shots that will remain in your head, each one coming from one of the halves of the film. The first is a view of Hartman shouting at you while your on your knees from a nice gut shot. A grisly shot that shows an animal hovering over you. The second is the view from a Vietnamese snipers nest. Kubrick crafts the shot so well you feel like you're in the head of the sniper.
Full Metal Jacket is another masterpiece from Stanley Kubrick. It's a well produced war piece that was a breath of fresh air compared to Rambo and Missing in Action. In many ways it's superior to Platoon in that it gives us more explanation in the demeanor changes of men in war time situations. It's also well paced and doesn't drag in any parts as compared to a few parts of Platoon.
I've often said that directors fall into two categories: Hitchcock and Kubrick. Hitchcock directors can take the same basic premise and make a masterpiece over and over again. Kubrick directors can make a different film every time and still create a masterpiece. That fits Kubrick to a tee.
Star Trek III:L The Search For Spock had the same duty as Return of the Jedi, Temple of Doom, and the upcoming third part of Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise- it had to follow up a great film that it would obviously be compared to. These are always no win situations because people will find flaws with it no matter what and film makers will almost try too hard to capture some of the magic from the previous installment.
Now to give Star Trek III its due, I will say that it's a good sci-fi film and serves as the bridge in what I have been told is the Genesis trilogy. The film opens right where Star Trek II left off with the crew of the Enterprise led by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) bringing their wounded ship home from the Genesis planet. What no one realizes is that Spock (Leonard Nimoy) (and I'm going to say this in lingo so that non-Trekkies like myself can understand) uploaded his files to Dr. McCoys (Deforrrest Kelly) hard drive. Yes, Spock is dancing around Bones' head. Kirk, after learning that it may be possible to bring Spock back ends up stealing the Enterprise and going to Genesis to save his friend, but there's a catch: Klingons (led by Christopher Lloyd) have already landed on the planet looking for the secrets of Genesis.
So does it hold up to the previous installment? Yes, it does stand on its own, although it tends to play like an old audio cassette with the tape being warped. One moment it drags down and feels slow, the next it's going way to fast, mainly in the last twenty minutes. You can't say much about the acting other than the core characters are there playing the roles that they were typecast in years ago. Lloyd actually isn't bad as a Klingon, even though while he was on screen I kept imagining him screaming "Run for it Marty!" in Klingon.
Leonard Nimoy directed this installment, ushering in the era of Star Trek actors getting to direct with a good eyes even though the film does have its up and downs. He doesn't waste huge amounts of time on the space shots like the original film, which I thank him profusely for. Bless you, Mr. Spock.
Star Trek III stands as a middle of the road sci-fi film that gets its glory from having the words Star Trek in its title. It's an enjoyable film. Nothing to spectacular, but it will entertain.
Do you remember watching wrestling 20 years ago on the weekends. The flashy names that graced our screens as outlandish characters appearing to us like mythic gods, chiseled and bearing incredible strengths in fierce competition. All of those guys are missing from TV now (minus a handful that still whole on). The Wrestler is a look at one wrestler's life 20 years after the cameras decided not to care anymore.
Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) was one of the greats, fighting for the title at the Garden and various venues throughout the country. But that was decades ago. Today Randy is way behind the hill as he wrestles in school gymnasiums and Legions for small amounts of money against guys that were in diapers when he was on top. He works during the week unloading trucks at supermarket all the while living back in the glory days of 1988, coming to the ring to Guns N' Roses and wearing colorful spandex tights. He still has his fans. But they're only there when he's The Ram. Outside of the squared circle his life is empty. His only interaction is with the neighborhood kids and a local stripper calling herself Chastity (Marrisa Tomei) whose own personal doe prevents her from getting closer to the Ram than she wants to. She does help him establish a relationship with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) who has sworn of her failure of a father.
The thing about The Wrestler is watching how Randy's life has been wrapped into his work. As a wrestler he is in total control of the match as he fills his persona to the glee of the fans around the ring. He is a hero, but when he goes out into the real world he just can't get anything right. He tries to mesh the two worlds together, but that fails him. No one loves him for him in the real world. The only affection he gets is as The Ram, not as Robin ( his real name). This isn't Rocky. This is just one guy who is struggling to keep the one thing that still gives a shit about him: his fans. I'm not one to quote lines in reviews, but one really struck me as the whole thesis of the film. When the Ram is about to go out for a match he turns to Chastity and referring to the real world he says:
"The only place I get hurt is out there. The world don't give a shit about me." It is a damn shame that Mickey Rourke did not win the Oscar for his portrayal of Randy. I won't speculate on why he didn't win but I found his work far superior to Sean Penn in Milk (which is saying a lot because Penn was magnificent). Rourke's real life allows for us to see Randy's (and Rourke's) hard rode journey on his face. He's hypnotic as Randy, leaving the viewer unable to look away from this beaten down man who sees the world as an interference between matches. It's the role for the ages, to be remembered as Rourke's best role and up there with some of the greats of cinema. Marissa Tomei is also great as Chastity, who in the beginning seems to be a young and sexy stripper but as the film progresses also feels the end of that hill that Randy's experiencing. She seems to age on cameras, not by the way she looks but by her maturity and the growing feeling she has for Randy. Finally, Evan Rachel Wood has the daunting task of riding a roller coaster of emotions that her father puts her on every time he shows up and lets her down, which is a triumph in the small amount of screen time she receives.Darrne Aronofsky starts the film out with a documentary feel, but we soon realize that it's mainly for the wrestling sequences where low budget camera work goes hand in hand with the low budget situation that Randy's in. You feel like you're with the real deal and that shaky eye that follows him goes away when Randy enters the real world. Why? Because no one gives a shit about Randy at a strip club or shoveling egg salad. We want The Ram. Aronofsky delivers a poignant piece that when you get right down to it is a middle aged mortality tale. This is how when man deals with that age where he feels worthless to the world.
When I heard about this film I just assumed that it was going to be a tale ala Rocky about a washed up athlete's rise from nothing. What you really get is Raging Bull for a wrestler without the rise to the top. Most of that is covered in the credits. What The Wrestler does is goes to the end of the fall and asks the question "Now what?". Randy "The Ram" Robinson could be anyone who's too old to do what they love but they don't know how to do anything else. They feel almost crippled by the concept of losing the one thing in their life that has any meaning and this film exhibits that to a tee.
This is where the Halloween franchise began to spin out of control into oblivion. Michael Meyers is back, even though we saw him practically reduced to ash in Halloween 2. This time he's back to kill his niece Jamie (Danielle Harris) because he's just weird like that. Look out Haddonfield.
Halloween 4 is just a cheap attempt at keeping the franchise alive amongst the Jason and Freddy movies that were making tons of $$$ in this era. Yeah, those weren't very good either. Michael goes around slashing teens and whoever gets in his way. What's hard to understand is how a guy who was burned to death (almost) and lying in a bed for most of the Reagan administration can be strong enough to thrust his thumb into another mans forehead. But hey, if that Voorhees kid can do it.
And while we're at it, why in the hell does everyone feel the need to transport him so close to Halloween. Hey, let's take him out of maximum security on the night he gets a woody to slash some family. I know that something like this is like picking lint out of a belly button, but it just furthers the case that Halloween 4 was thrown together schlock.
The only redeeming thing about the film is Donald Pleasence, who returns as Dr. Sam Loomis. Even in this low budget slasher he is still a great actor who gives an uncredible film credibility. He's riveting, but it's still not enough to save this film.
So as an entry into the unkillable killer genre of the 1980's Halloween 4 is low rent, which like I said isn't saying much considering what we were getting into (think Manhattan). Completists can't even really hop on this film since future films ignore this one. Sadly, this film is a notch above another- the remake.
A small Colorado town is hit by a REALLY bad cold in Day of the Dead, the terrible re-make of George Romero's third chapter of the original Dead saga. This waste of 90 minutes is about a virus that causes people to have a nose bleed and turn into obsessed killing machines, eating and chomping and running around like a National Geographic special in hell. Dear lord, this movie is horrible. After the very good remake of Dawn of the Dead this film feels like a nice warm piss on your head. What's even more confusing is the fact that Ving Rhames is also in this film, the only reason being to screw people into believing that this is a sequel to Zack Snyder's remake. Even more amazing is that Mena Suvari is in this which goes to show that she must have the same agent as Cuba Gooding, Jr. The rest of the cast is your basic B-movie faces and new faces trying to make get their big break.
The story is basic Romero only that zombies can shoot guns and they stop to allow our heroes to cut off or bust apart zombie heads. The Bub character from the first film is represented by a vegetarian private- that's why he doesn't eat people. Yes, I'm fucking serious. The effects are high school level, the story is run, stop, zombies, repeat. Oh, here's something to gross you out. The only gross thing is that I paid a quarter to see this shit. Directed by Steve Miner, who is too good to interview about his early work on Friday the 13th Parts 2 and 3, yet directs this cess pool that makes those two films look like the first two Godfather films.
This film is shit. Pure shit. It's so shitty that kids will be putting this DVD in a paper bag and setting it on fire at peoples front doors this Halloween. Trick or treat.
After a decade in space dock the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise return in their first movie about an alien cloud that vaporizes everything heading straight for earth. What is it and why is it coming is a mystery for the crew to solve.
I don't remember seeing this in its theatrical form. The directors cut suffers from one thing: self important effects shots. Obviously the producers wanted to squeeze every penny out of its effects footage, so we get a ten minute shuttle run to the Enterprise. That damn ride lasted longer than an episode of the TV series. The effects are good, but to just show them off for the sake of showing them off is ridiculous. I know this was the post Star Wars world, but let's be serious. Give us some action. Cutting some of these scenes could have made the film forty minutes shorter and a tighter film instead of this trodding trek through space. The cast is typical with Shatner hamming it up as Shatner and the rest settling into the roles that they'll be stuck with until their dead and gone. The central premise is interesting once we get past the standard Star trek plot of something unknown destroying the universe. Once again, the pacing kills it. The film takes its time getting to the final resolution and wraps that up in a fraction of time. Disappointing.
But it is an enjoyable, too long film that opened the flood gates for the superior sequel that was scaled down and played tighter causing it to benefit. This film gets the shaft and deservedly so. It plays out more like a competition for the Hollywood space race after Star Wars. Every studio wanted to cash in and this was a great opportunity to dust off Star Trek. Thankfully the race died quick and producers went back to focusing a little bit on stories and not plastic models and lights.
