Mortal Kombat

That's pretty badass looking.

Based on Shopping Anderson got his next gig, Mortal Kombat.  And I guess I can see why it was offered to him.  Shopping does have a good look to it with its moody and gritty underbelly feel.  I think the Hollywood suits figured that if this kid worked with a good script then he could make some magic happen.  Perhaps they thought of Mortal Kombat as a testing ground or perhaps these executives really expected a top notch picture.  Either way I think they got what they were looking for.

Video game movies are notoriously bad.  I haven’t seen a lot of them but this has to be in the top tier, right?  It’s an Enter the Dragon knock off so it has a sturdy foundation underneath it and I don’t think very many other video game movies can make that claim.

Mortal Kombat is a really fun movie.  Even if you haven’t played the game it would be difficult not to embrace the incredibly enjoyable characters with their unique idiosyncrasies.  The actors cast totally bring them to life too and give faithful performances.  Actually the whole look and feel is pretty faithful to the game.  Sure I would’ve preferred an R rated version but it certainly works regardless.

Oddly enough the fight sequences aren’t spectacular.  I mean they’re fine but nothing outstanding.  It’s good that this was made during a time when you could actually understand what was going on during fight scenes (although I think it’s gotten better in the past couple of years).  It’s also good that there’s a lot of fighting in this.  A Mortal Kombat movie should have a bunch of brawls and they definitely deliver on that.

What’s better than the fights though are the scenes with the characters interacting with each other.  The way they play off one another and the way the good guys eventually align against the bad guys are more interesting.  We get to know the rank and file of the members like that Rayden is the leader, Liu Kang is his number two (and number one when Rayden’s not around), Sonya and Johnny are the support.  Their personalities balance each other out and it’s satisfying to see this motley crew pull together to save Earth.  It’s all good stuff.

In contrast to Shopping which seems to have been shot either completely or almost completely on location, Mortal Kombat was filmed almost entirely on soundstages and it shows.  The film looks pretty cheap.  The budget was $18 mil but most of that must’ve went to the actors and travel expenses for those couple of scenes they shot in Thailand.  I think the cheap look actually works though.  I guess because it’s a video game movie and I expect less from it the over the top plastic, Styrofoam and plywood set pieces look kinda cool and original.  Somehow it fits with the mood of the film.  The CGI shit on the other hand is some of the worst I’ve ever seen.  I can’t imagine the filmmakers thought it looked good.

Mortal Kombat is a solid tournament movie.  It’s no Lionheart but goddamn is it entertaining.  Anderson treated the material very well by taking it seriously for the most part.  He knew the type of picture he was making so he made sure it was fun and not bogged down in so much gloom that it would become boring or depressing.  If you haven’t seen this one by now then I think it’s about time.

Now since Mortal Kombat grossed huge fuckin’ bucks Anderson could do just about anything he wanted next.  He wisely passed on directing the Mortal Kombat sequel and decided to try his hand at something much more interesting and much darker.

Shopping

It’s not that Paul W.S. Anderson is terribly interesting as a director or as a person.  But he does seem sorta like Roland Emmerich (2012, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC) in that he makes these dreadful movies that somehow still get theatrical releases.  They’re not just mediocre films but below average even for today’s low standards in action and adventure.  But I guess it doesn’t help that I support these pictures by watching them in theaters.  What was I complaining about again?

Right, so what started out as an innocent review of Event Horizon turned into…something.  “Quest” is a bit too strong and “revisit” seems too casual.  This is more of a reexamining of Anderson’s career through Soldier.  I ain’t never seen no Resident Evils so I’m drawing the line there.  This won’t be pretty.

Anderson’s debut was Shopping and from the plot summery it sounds like it should be awesome.  Here it is verbatim from Netdicks:

“In a bleak, futuristic British society, ex-con Billy (Jude Law) and audacious Jo (Sadie Frost) lead a gang of ‘ram-raiders’ who steal cars, drive them through shop windows and steal whatever booty they can get their hands on before the cops arrive. When a local drug lord (Sean Pertwee) decides the intrepid couple is infringing on his business, he challenges the pair to a bizarre and deadly race.”

That synopsis is completely inaccurate.  To be fair IMDB has a better description but this one is so egregious that I’ve drummed up a short list of problems.

1. In the movie we’re not told that this thing takes place in the future or are even given any clues that it’s the future.  It looks like modern day 1994 (well actually if it wasn’t for the 90’s soundtrack I would’ve thought they shot this at least five years earlier than that).  There aren’t flying cars, weird futuristic clothing, space weapons, crazy technology, etc.  The thing is I don’t know if the story is supposed to take place in the future or if people just made that assumption when they put their summery together.

2. Billy doesn’t lead a gang until the very end of the film and I don’t think the term “ram-raiders” is ever used in the picture.  The rest of that sentence is also misleading but I’ll get into that more after one more point.

3. The very last bit about a drug lord challenging Billy to a “bizarre and deadly race” doesn’t happen.  That’s just a blatant lie.  I was really disappointed when it didn’t happen too.  Well Anderson would correct that in Death Race.

So this movie is supposed to be about these people that crash cars into stores and steal shit.  The obvious problem is that this only happens once in the entire film.  I mean it’s pretty cool when it does happen but there kind of should’ve been more of that.  Like the first time we’re supposed to witness this craziness Billy doesn’t even drive his car into the store front.  He gets out and throws a trash can through the window.  That’s bending the rules.

To Anderson’s credit this thing is shot well and the acting is good.  The production is very dark with tons of shadows and good camera work.  The actors go through some good emotional states like brooding, yearning, euphoria, sadness, confliction, etc.  I like the characters we’re given and the world they live in.  They’re all so care free and get off on stealing cars and driving them fast.  They seem fairly happy with their lives.  I think I pretty much get who these people are.  However, also to Anderson’s credit the script seriously lacks structure (he wrote it).  The snag and irony of the whole thing is that this story of speed demons that live fast and on the edge unfolds at a snail’s pace.  I’m trying to think of what the time was wasted on but I can’t even remember.  That’s how dull it came to be.

The first ten minutes, the last five minutes and the five minutes in the middle where we do finally get a car crashing into a store are cool.  But with the other hour of material there’s nothing going on.  The relationship between Billy and Jo is good because they’re attracted to each other but they’re partners and not boyfriend girlfriend.  This is focused on but that and the rest of the story isn’t presented and isn’t unfolded in an interesting way.

It’s a real shame but what are you gonna do?  Shopping does have one of the best car crashes ever filmed though.  This car shoots into the air and then hits the pavement rolling violently a bunch of times until the whole thing is destroyed.  It’s impressive and cool because they did it for real and not with computers.  I don’t think the film is worth seeing just for that but it’s something.

Mish Mash 2 (The Mask of Zorro, Frankenhooker, Until the Light Takes Us, Eastern Condors, Sphere, Maximum Overdrive theory about Cars)

1. I don’t think The Mask of Zorro gets much respect but I’ve always found it to be a really fun movie.  The production design is great that has just the right amount of grittiness and the action is pretty fucking bad ass.  I also really dig Anthony Hopkins as the master sage passing down his skills and knowledge to the impatient, spirited and even somewhat reluctant student.  This brings me to the point I want to make about this film.  The filmmakers found out how to do a beginning story but in a totally new and interesting way.  Now of course this was before the superhero movie explosion that happened around 2000 with X-Men and Spider-Man.  But having the older Zorro pass down his legacy to a younger man is a cool way to start things over.  I feel like it shouldn’t work as well as it does but Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas play well off of each other.  The way they act on film probably reflected their relationship off screen.  I could easily see Hopkins giving some tips and Banderas perhaps brushing it off all the while knowing that Tony's right.

Also, does anyone know if Zorro was part spy in the original books?  The reason why I ask is because the director, Martin Campbell, did GoldenEye before this and it crossed my mind that he may have added some James Bond elements to the character.  Either way it works. 

2. Finally got around to seeing Frankenhooker after a friend recommended it over a year ago.  And it’s fucking great.  If you’ve seen Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter’s other claim to fame) then you know what you’re in for.  But I like Frankenhooker even better.  It’s a bit more outrageous and funnier.  I’m always suspect of title movies like Hobo with a Shotgun, Snakes on a Plane or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter because more often than not they’re letdowns.  The name of the picture and what it conjures up in your mind is almost always better than the actual film.  Frankenhooker delivers though.  Henenlotter knows what the audience wants to see, Frankenstein type theatrics with a lot of exploding hookers.  Sounds pitch perfect to me. 

3. Until the Light Takes Us is a doc about Norwegian black metal.  While Metallica was making some of the pop-iest metal music in the early 90’s this movement was going in the total opposite direction.  The band members each had their own stage names like Count Grishnackh, Death and Faust.  They would paint their faces and wear upside down crosses and shit like that.  But according to the film it wasn’t about Satanism, it was about wanting to start a revolution and a desire to change the world.  One guy says that he hoped for World War III so that everything could be destroyed and eventually rebuilt.  And because of this hostile mindset this movement managed to kill some people (some innocent and some part of the black metal scene) and burned dozens of churches to the ground including at least one that was a relic dating back to like 1150 AD.  But here’s the thing, the way these guys talk about it today they act so calm and seem like nice mild mannered folks.  The juxtaposition is quite staggering and also incredibly interesting.

Even if you’re not into metal (I’m not huge into it myself) I think you guys might find the material worthwhile.  To try and create a work of art with the mindset of “what’s the ugliest, darkest, most depressing, suicidal inducing thing I could come up with” is fascinating because even with really heavy metal those guys think that sounds beautiful.  And in a sense these guys must’ve also found beauty in what they were doing.  But this Norwegian black metal movement didn’t want anything remotely considered beautiful, they wanted trash.  The trashiest trash you could come up with.  Whether or not you agree is a different story.  But for this to be the intention and for them to be dead fuckin’ serious is astonishing and captivating.

One last thing about this picture.  There’s a part where one guy describes that part of this movement was about rebelling against good production (recording wise) and wanted to use the worst mic, the worst equipment he could find and not really adjust anything.  Just set up and record, whatever it is, it is.  This guy was speaking my language.  I like me some good production but from time to time I try to do just what this sonuvabitch was doing and attempt to craft the ugliest sound possible with the worst equipment available.  The point is “good production” is in the eye of the beholder and not necessarily indicative of having the most expensive recording equipment.

4. Eastern Condors is now my favorite Vietnam movie ever.  Well actually it takes place after the war is over in 1976 but it’s still a ‘Nam picture.  It’s got great action, engaging characters, a straight forward plot (a rag tag group of U.S. Asian prisoners is assembled to find an armament stash before the Vietnamese do), incredible martial arts and stunts and no bullshit to sidetrack this thing.  It’s all about the mission and the personalities of our group of reluctant heroes.  This one is a brilliant masterpiece.  I fucking loved it and you’ll fucking love it too, guaranteed.

5. Sphere and Event Horizon have pretty similar plots.  There’s a mission to go check out/retrieve something from space or its Earth equivalent: deep sea.  When the crew finds the spaceship they locate a spherical object in a large room, freaky shit happens (particularly visions/hallucinations) and the crew fights for their lives while trying to escape. 

I would even say that the first half of Prometheus is kinda like the first third of Sphere.  Scientists think they’ve discovered something, they find out it’s a spaceship (except you don’t find out it’s a ship until later in Prometheus but in my opinion you would’ve had to not see Alien or be kinda dumb to not figure that out way before it’s revealed) and the crew sets up camp monitoring the craft.  They go in with spacesuits, look around, find a large mesmerizing object (Sphere: the sphere, Prometheus: the giant head statue), the crew digests their findings, weird things start to occur, fight for their lives, etc.

Sure a lot of movies have either a scene or a whole section like this but for some reason Prometheus reminded me a lot of Sphere.  I had to go back and watch Sphere just to see if I was remembering the film correctly and I was.  You know, that movie gets a bad rap and I can kind of see why but the first half or so is pretty cool.  I like the way the mystery is handled and that it’s all business.  Then when we start to dig into the characters and find out how the sphere works it just feels lame.  And it’s hard to put my finger on just what makes the whole thing turn south.  I do know that part of it is that Dustin Hoffman’s goofy attitude gets to me after a while and he does some ridiculous shit that I just can’t swallow like swimming through below freezing water with no problem.  Also, I don’t want to spoil the film so I’ll just say that another problem is the sphere’s power seems to be rather random.  There was potential for a really great piece of cinema but it just didn’t some together really.

As for Event Horizon, well, see it.  I haven’t seen Shopping yet so as far as I know this is Paul W.S. Anderson’s best picture (as much as I like Mortal Kombat).  Great visuals, cast and storytelling.  It’s eerie as fuck and a near sci-fi classic.       

6. By now you’ve all probably heard from a friend or read somewhere about the concept of Cars being strangely and hugely flawed.  You know, like there’s no reason why there would be human things in this car world.  Why aren’t all of the buildings just warehouses?  There’s a court house with fancy trim, windows and woodwork and also buildings with nicely decorated interiors including things that look like couches and display cases with glasses in them.  Why are there human gas pumps?  Why is there a wheat harvester?  Who’s eating the wheat? Why aren’t all doors garage doors?  Why are there sidewalks, cameras, machine guns?  Who’s making these cars?  And this is just some stuff that I picked up from the Cars 1 and 2 trailers.  It would go on endlessly if I had actually seen the movies.  The point is that in order for Pixar to make Cars relatable and familiar they had to have these living cars exist in the human world.

Are those fucking telephone poles in the background?

In light of this I’ve developed a theory on why there’s this meshing of two different worlds, the Maximum Overdrive theory.  Maximum Overdrive is an 80’s horror flick about machines coming to life via a “rogue comet” traveling through space.  They run amok trying to kill every human that they come across and it’s a lot of fun.  I definitely recommend it.  It’s also the only picture that Stephen King directed so if you’re interested in seeing what a coked up King thinks makes for good cinema then this is your opportunity.  Anyway, I think this is the world that exists in Cars.  The folks over at Pixar probably thought to themselves, “what if that comet from Maximum Overdrive strayed from the Earth’s atmosphere a little but not all the way.  There’s just enough distance so that only cars would remain alive.  But we’ll set the movie a bunch of years after the apocalypse when all of the humans have been wiped out.  The cars have developed a society of their own, uhh, but it’s the same as a human society.  And they have all of this human stuff around them to remind them of that.  That’s the irony, see?”  I’m pretty positive that’s the back story to Cars.  What else could it be?

7. Sadly Rampart was not very good.  Woody Harrelson as the racist, bigoted, hard boiled cop David Brown is good but very little happens.  It’s more about reflecting on the type of person that Brown is and the life that he has led.  The film meanders and then suddenly ends without resolution.  We’re supposed to be seeing a slice of this cop’s troubled life but it’s the wrong slice in my opinion.  I would like to see the part of Brown’s life where he’s fucking dudes up and covering up his illegal activities.  Doing a whole movie where this crazy sonuvabitch is suspended and has to keep a low profile because there’s an investigation into him doesn’t pan out.  That doesn’t sound like a bad idea for a movie but it feels like this character is wasted on that premise.  It ain’t no Bad Lieutenant, either of them.  But then again those are some tough pictures to be on equal footing with or even top. 

The Rise and Fall of ECW

Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s there were two major wrestling organizations, WWF (now WWE) and WCW.  They each had their own weekly show on major cable networks.  The ratings fight of that era is legendary and if you’re interested in learning more about that check out The Monday Night War.  But there was a third organization that nipped at the heels of those giants, ECW or Extreme Championship Wrestling.

ECW was by far more violent and wild with their entertainment offering.  These guys would get bloody on just about every show and endure more pain than the average WWF or WCW match.  The wrestlers at ECW would come up with crazy shit like lighting a table on fire and then slamming someone through it.  They also broke new ground in the story department as they apparently came up with the first lesbian storyline in wrestling. 

They were very good at what they did which would often result in WWF or WCW snatching their wrestlers away.  Couple that with the fact that ECW was only on Philadelphia public access and it’s a miracle that this wrestling outfit was as big as it was.  They eventually got Pay Per Views and a show on TNN (anyone else remember that channel?) but it all eventually ground to a halt because the owner and mad scientist behind it all, Paul Heyman, was a poor business man.  It’s a real shame.

This doc is fucking fantastic and goes through in detail the history of ECW.  These guys put everything they had into this organization and it shows.  I felt for all the people that worked there because it seemed like they had a magical, albeit unsustainable, thing going.  A whole lot of wrestlers like Mick Foley and Chris Jericho got their start at ECW and in the interviews they look back on it fondly as being one of the most fun things they were ever involved with.  It seems that everyone gets to tell their side of the story including Paul Heyman, the wrestlers, Vince McMahon and even                                                                      Eric Bischoff weighs in.

The only complaint I have is that the music is too loud.  Whoever mixed this did a terrible job as the music is blaring over all the interviews and it’s hard to hear what people are saying a lot of the time.  And I should give fair warning that it’s 2 hrs and 50 mins long.  But I don’t think of that as a con.  I think of it more as totally engrossing and all encompassing.  You guys should see this one, you’ll like it.  

Exit Through the Gift Shop

This one chronicles street art and Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash (MBW).  Thierry was just some guy that followed street artists around filming them and then decided to become one himself.  But he tried to do it overnight and actually achieved instant success.  This documentary is really interesting and thought provoking.  It raises so many questions about art and how it’s perceived.

Because MBW didn’t hone his skills for years and go through a period of finding his own style the film’s director, Banksy (also a famous street artist), resents him.  And I’ll admit that I felt that way too at first.  We learn that an artist should suffer at least a little for their art.  It’s all about emotion and conveying that feeling or idea in a meaningful way.  But what about lack of emotion?  I guess that could be art too.  Everyone responds differently to the many art forms out there.  If it means something to you it’s art.  If not it’s not art.

And that’s the ultimate question that the movie poses: what is art?

If an artist seemingly puts very little effort into their work but someone is willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money for it, does that count as art?  Is it all about money?  If so what’s the dividing line?  If I pay $5 or $5,000 for someone’s painting does it make a difference?  Can an artist skip the suffering period and shoot straight to stardom?  Does having a gallery show mean you’re an artist?  Does the amount of people that attend your show make a difference?  When is it a rip off and when is it something totally new?  These are all questions that people have been debating forever.  I don’t know what the answers are.

Art is an extremely personal thing.  I’m pretty confident with that statement.  The rest is a mystery. 

At the end Banksy sums up perfectly the feeling that this film gives you, he says that MBW broke the rules but then again there aren’t any rules.  What Banksy is implying is that the popularity and success of MBW diminishes his own and others popularity and success.  The real kicker is that MBW is kind of incompetent too.  More than anything he’s imitating and doesn’t really know what he’s doing.  But the public doesn’t see that.  All they see is a great new artist.  At the same time you could argue that what Banksy is doing also diminishes other artist’s works like Warhol or Picasso.  I mean it’s sort of what Banksy is all about.  He’s a rebel that likes to make fun of society and point out absurd notions.  And you might say that MBW is doing the same thing.  If you think of Banksy’s work as anti-art then MBW’s is like anti anti-art.  MBW was able to make a million dollars on his first show out of nothing in a couple of months.  It makes what others like Banksy do look like bullshit that’s easily and thoughtlessly done.  And maybe it is.  Maybe MBW truly is creating some wonderful works of art.  It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

I highly recommend this documentary guys.  Some people might think MBW cheated at art while others might think he’s done some beautiful work.  It’s an extremely interesting debate. 

Prometheus (well, half of it anyway)

Man, people were pumped to see Prometheus.  It got a lot of hype and at the theater I frequent there were lines of moviegoers with their 3D glasses in hand eagerly waiting to get in.  I didn’t know people still give a shit about the Alien franchise.  But I don’t think that’s it actually.  There are a lot of people that wanted to see this just because it’s a summer blockbuster that looks a bit intriguing.  Those that recognized that it had something to do with Alien and saw the film only piled on to the crowd.  And with something like that there’s inevitably going to be disappointment, it’s just a matter of how much.  Well it seems the general consensus that I’m picking up is that this picture ain’t so great.  And that the more you think about it the worse it gets. 

Now some of you may know that I’m a fan of the Alien series (I even dig Resurrection) so of course I was curious about seeing what Prometheus had to offer.  Unknowingly I performed a little experiment with it over the weekend.  Instead of watching the whole thing I only saw about an hour of it which comprised mostly of the second half of the picture (I was in between movies at the theater and had an hour to kill).  I came in when Shaw and Holloway (I think that’s who it was, I didn’t have much time to learn names) were having sex and I left as Shaw was racing back into the destroyed alien ship to get David’s severed head.  It looks like I got the meat of the film which is perfect for this test.  Here are my thoughts from the one hour I saw:

I’m gonna get the good stuff out of the way first.  This picture is being universally praised for the way it looks and I’ll agree with that.  A lot of the visuals like the bad guy alien ship crashing back towards LV-whatever looked pretty goddamn cool.  So good job Ridley Scott, the one thing I liked is that you made a beautiful looking movie.  Well, and the self surgery scene was cool.  That seemed to be a real crowd pleaser and others are calling it the best part of the whole thing.

Alright now that that’s done let’s see what’s bad.  The first thing I noticed is that everyone in this film is too pretty.  A lot of times (especially the last five years or so) in movies I find good looking people to be distracting.  Unless they’re a helluva an actor or the story is totally incredible, I can’t stop thinking they’re just some beautiful woman or handsome man playing a part in a film and not the character that we’re supposed to be engaged with.  Between Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Idris Elba it looks more like a beauty contest than a team of scientists/space pilots.  I mean look at the cast of Alien.  Fuckin’ Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt and Yaphet Kotto are the perfect un-pretty people to give the movie more believability.  Even Sigourney Weaver isn’t very good looking in my opinion.  I’m not saying that everyone should fill their movies with ugly people, that’s just as stupid as only casting beautiful people.  But depending on the role, the tone, the type of picture, etc the filmmakers should cast appropriately and not just stick the prettiest actors they can find in front of the camera.

Look at this fuckin' ragtag group

Now check out these gorgeous motherfuckers

Next is something that I’m not going to get too into but the plot seemed too confusing and unnecessarily complicated.  After reading some other reviews on the movie it seems that the black goo, the vases, the huge head statue, the albino snake cock, the idea of aliens creating humans, Holloway turning into some sort of zombie and a million other things aren’t explained.  And it’s not in a cool mysterious kind of way but more in a “why was that in the movie?” kind of way.  I think the bottom line is there’s just a bunch of shit thrown in your face.  What’s the reasoning behind any of it?  Ridley Scott thought it would be cool.

That part where the two expendable scientists get attacked by the penis creature from the black sludge is a little frustrating.  I mean why would one of them try to touch it?  It’s not a shocker that the thing attacked these guys and even though we know what’s about to happen it’s not exciting to see the white wang kill these dudes.  When they both died I was happy.  I have no sympathy for dumb motherfuckers that do dumb shit.  Fuck ‘em, they deserved it.

Did anyone else think that using a flute to call up information on the giant alien conference table was fucking silly as shit?  Yes, clearly they are the advanced race.  A button is so primitive.  Oh wait, they do have buttons.  Seems like it would’ve been a little easier to just push one of those buttons to call shit up than to memorize and play back a melody.  But what the hell, it’s the future right?  I guess alien beings might do something like that.

If David’s a fucking robot then why is he in total amazement when he discovers the alien information on the conference table?  I mean I get that this is the future and that technology has advanced a great deal so robots could act more human-like but David acts like a kid in a fucking candy store.  There are no humans around for him to put on an act for.  Plus I think everyone knows that he’s a robot anyway (was that established in the first hour?).

What was Charlize Theron’s purpose in the film exactly?  From what I saw she didn’t do jack shit.  The only thing was she burned a dude alive but he came back to life to wreak havoc anyway.  Can anyone explain to me why she was in this flick besides to be just another pretty face to look at?

Ok let’s wrap this up.  My conclusion is that this movie looks great but the story is crap.  It’s comprised of these ideas that weren’t fleshed out very much or thought about beyond their initial conception.  But the real big problem here is that there’s no legitimate reason why this film should exist.  Does anyone really fucking care about what happened to that destroyed spaceship on LV-something-something, how it got there or the origin of the alien species?  I certainly don’t.  In fact it’s part of the reason why Alien is one of the best films ever made.  There’s just enough mystery there to stimulate your brain and get it engaged.  If you pull back the curtain on that mystery it better be something really goddamn good otherwise you’re just fucking with the fabric of a classic.  Scott provides bad and very murky explanations to questions that no one really wanted to be answered.

By the way I do not understand why Ridley Scott still gets the amount of respect and praise that he does.  In my opinion Alien is the only good picture that he’s made.  And since he only came through once I could even chalk that up as a fluke.  But his other work tells me that he’s not a total fucking idiot.  Genius though?  Definitely not.  He knows how to make a film look very nice.  I’ll certainly give him that.  But it’s weird for me because I feel like I’m the only one that sees that overall he’s not a very good director.

I dunno guys.  It’s hard to resist something that expands the Alien universe but at the same time we’re better off not knowing the back story to the ship that Ripley and co. encountered all those years ago.  Because whatever we come up with in our own minds is going to be (most likely) way simpler and (definitely) way more satisfying than anything that these filmmakers could come up with.    

So I think my experiment worked for the most part.  I was able to understand who these characters were and (very generally) what was going on.  I wouldn’t recommend skipping the prologue and diving right into the main event for every film but in a sense I feel pretty comfortable with what I saw.  From what I gather virtually nothing is explained anyway so maybe it’s better this way.  The way I saw this thing maybe it yielded a more satisfying experience than if I had seen the entire picture.  I guess I’ll never know.  But it was interesting and I would like to try this method again to see how the results stack up.

Oh, and don’t let anyone tell you that Prometheus isn’t a prequel to Alien.  Scott was trying to play it off like it’s this other thing but it’s totally not.  This film is in the same timeline and the events occur directly before Alien.  It’s a fucking prequel.

Men in Black III

Okay I know this is old news by now but I just saw Men in Black III (it’s always better to number your sequels in roman numerals than regular Arabic ones).  And you know what, I really enjoyed the first half where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back together doing their thang.  When Will goes back in time I started to lose interest though.  I like Josh Brolin ‘n all but the forced 60’s references were a little too much for me.  Also as the film when on it became more evident how rusty Will Smith is at comedy these days.  I mean it’s been like seven years since he’s done a straight up comedic performance (Hitch).  Overall though this movie was a fun watch and actually one I recommend.  It’s got a menacing bad guy, a couple of funny jokes, an awesome shootout scene in a Chinese restaurant, likable protagonists and a tense storyline.  It’s pretty much everything I’m looking for in a film.

And after watching this third installment in the series it made me realize that I really dig the Men in Black universe.  The movies haven’t been spectacular but the characters and the world they live in are memorable.  I like the idea of alien cops solving alien mysteries (that somehow always involve destroying Earth).  The different creatures that the filmmakers come up with and how they interact with human society is clever, interesting and humorous.  I feel like the Men in Black series should’ve been like Ghostbusters or some shit.  People were hyping up the first film to be a destined action sci-fi comedy type thing for the ages but instead it seemed to be something that everyone saw and no one liked.  The Men in Black pictures aren’t terrible but they haven’t nailed one either which is frustrating because it’s a good concept.

One last thing, part of the reason why I think I’ve come around on this franchise is because of the Men in Black: Alien Attack Shooting gallery/dark ride at Universal Studios Orlando.  It’s quite impressive and the best of its kind (here’s a tip: if the line is too long and/or you want to skip the pre show because you’ve already seen it, hop on the single rider line and you’ll get on in no time).  Having affection towards that ride in turn gave me respect and a sense of how great the idea really is for the MIB.