Posts Tagged ‘Action’

I went into this film knowing a few things.  I knew Nicholas Cage would have emo-esque angst, I knew that at some point numerology would be mentioned, and I knew that Nicholas Cage would summon his super-emo angst powers that can make grass cut itself at ten paces and save the world.  I was only right on two of these.

The whole first half of the movie I kept on wondering how John (Nicholas Cage) was going to save the world.  He figured out the code, with a little help from a scotch ring, no coincidence that the ring happened to highlight 9/11/09, it couldn’t highlight some random date that had significance to John, like the date the hotel his wife was staying in burnt down.  But of course, that wouldn’t be transparent and easy for the audience to follow.

After he’s tried and failed to stop the second disaster I started to realise that, at last, someone had made an end-of-the-world movie in which the hero fails, and the world ends.  I started trying to figure out how the world ends.  I didn’t have to wait for long.  In a real Deus Ex Machina, which is a standard plot device for dodgy movies, but this one was excessive, John realised that the world was going to be destroyed by a super solarflare.  This really pissed me off.  There were so many opportunities for the writer to foreshadow this, or, even better, not have him realise and let the world be destroyed by a real random act of god.

But this lack of foreshadowing wasn’t the worst thing about the movie. No, that dubious honour is reserved for the biblical nature of the ending. How did the test audiences not pick up that this was a somewhat less than subtle attempt to mock Genesis, at least they could have done something interesting with it and made them pastafarians.

Knowing almost managed to rate 3 Stay Puft Marshmallow Men, but the ending screwed up its chances. The cool disasters, like the plane crash deserved 3, but the dumb silent aliens and the fucking moronic ending forced me to drop the dodginess rating down to 2.

The only reason I can think of to watch this movie again is if you get off on the emo quality of Nicholas Cage’s acting. In fact, that’s pretty much the only reason i can think of to watch this movie once, and it started with such promise.

Unless, you want to witness Cage’s secret super emo power of being able to make grass cut itself at 10 paces, know that you should avoid this.

And Remember, We watch them so you don;t have to.

Street Fighter: The legend of Chun-Li was really up against it when I started watching. After all, it had serious prejudice to overcome after the last time a movie was made based on the game. The real injustice of the last Street Fighter film wasn’t that it “starred” (I wish text could convey sarcasm better) Jean Claude van Damme, but that it was the last film Raul Julia made. But, back to the question at hand. Could Street Fighter: The Rise of Chun-Li wipe the stain?

Well, No. But it’s not really Street Fighter: The Rise of Chun-Li’s fault. The only way to wipe the stain of the original would be to go back in time and prevent Jean-Claude van Damme from becoming an actor and that would lead to the time-cops hunting you down and oh god it’s a whole bad 90’s movie flashback. And here I thought I’d repressed all those memories.

The plot, is fairly standard Kung-Fu Mobster movie fair, with a little woo-woo thrown in to explain the force balls and stuff in the fight scenes. Basically, Chun-Li’s father is captured by the mob and forced to work for them in return for his daughter staying safe. Chun-Li vows revenge and the rest is fight scenes, explosions and really bad attempts to justify calling the movie Street Fighter. In fact, if it wasn’t for the character names, there would be nothing to link the movie to the game at all.

The film doesn’t really live up to the promise of the video game, and even though fight scenes and laughable intrigure abound, I was unable to give it higher than a 3 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Scale. The dodgiest moment in the film was not a scene as is usually the case, but rather a plot point. Why did the writers have to make it some mystical thing about how Bison became all evil. He couldn’t just be a monster. Noooo. He had to remove all the good things about his soul and put them into his unborn daughter so she could conveniently be used against him later.

Deciding on what to rate this for rewatchability was tricky. I couldn’t in all fairness rate it lower than Dragonball Evolution but then I see that I rated DBE as a 3 and I have to ask “What the fuck was I thinking?” It should have been a 2 at best, then I could have rated this as a 2. And then I remembered. I don’t need to be fair. i don’t even need to be consistent, I just need to not waste anymore time thinking about a movie who’s only redeeming feature was at least it didn’t star Jean Claude van Damme.

Unless you feel the need to feel the full effects of time stretching, when 5760 seconds feels like 2 days, I wouldn’t waste any time watching it.

And Remember, we watch them, so you don’t have to.

Given that I’ve never really gotten into the Dragonball Z cartoons even though they looked like something that should appeal, I probably shouldn’t have rented Dragonball Evolution.  In retrospect, it was a good thing that I rented it as having it in my DVD collection would be kind of a black mark, and, I’m running out of spaces to put those.

It was watchable, aided by Chow Yun-Fat reprising his all knowing master role from Bulletproof Monk, with a suitable side of dodginess thrown in for good measure.  The prevalence of super- slowmo shots did make me wonder whether the director of 300 had got his claws into another movie, but then I remembered why I didn’t like the cartoon.  It was a result of the super-slowmo drawings which allowed 2 minutes of action to stretch into a 20 minute cartoon.  But, at least most of the slowmo was confined to the fight scenes which made them interesting.

The one thing that did bother me for the whole movie was how Piccolo managed to escape his imprisonment.  After all, seven mystics (hmm, 7 mystics, 7 dragonballs, coincidence or Deus Ex Machina, you decide) gave their lifes to cast the spell that imprisoned him, and yet, here he is floating around trying to get the dragonballs and rule the earth.  And seriously, Piccolo, what kind of a supervillain gets named after the smallest instrument.  Of course he’s going to become a supervillain, he’s got to compensate for something.

I was torn about how dodgy Dragonball Evolution really was.  On the one hand, it probably deserved 5 smiley of dodginess, there was energy being shot from people’s hands, cool fight scenes, and in what was almost the crowning moment, a teenage boy transforming into a giant ape and the “Shadow Crane Strike”.  But, on the other hand, it didn’t really look like much more than a live action version of the cartoon, complete with dodgy orange gi.  So, it got 3 smileys.  The dodgiest moment was a fight scene in which Goku manages to take out 7 kids (there’s that number again) without throwing a single punch or kick, which was an interesting take on defending yourself.

The rewatchability rating was a lot easier, and while it will hopefully never find it’s way into my DVD cabinet, it was worth a watch.  There were amusing fight scenes, reasonable eye candy, and a green villain that reminded me of  locust.  But, I wouldn’t rush out to watch it again, or at least, watch it again while sober.

The only memorable quote from this movie was “The first rule is… there are no rules”  The problem is, I know that this is not the first movie to use it.  Jim Carrey says it in Yes Man right before he punches out the wrong guy.  And even then I didn’t think it was the first time I’d heard it.  You’d think IMDB or Google would be able to help me out here, but no.  So if any of you know, please post it in the comments and end my suffering.

All things considered, Dragonball Evolution was a pleasant diversion, but it’s unlikely to prove to be a diversion after this.

And remember, We watch them, so you don’t have to.