I’m honestly not sure why I’ve taken so long to sit down and watch “Watchmen” subsequent its lackluster theatrical release. I enjoyed the comic books for what they were as well as their fantastic literary class epilogues, I loved the characters (including Nite Owl and Rorschach), I enjoy Alan Moore as the eccentric mad genius that he is, and yet… I still never quite saw “Watchmen,” even with the “Director’s Cut” sitting on my pile. The Alan Moore groundbreaking graphic novel has been deemed completely unfilmable for decades after its release. But that didn’t stop Warner bros. from trying their damndest by bringing aboard acclaimed visualist director Zack Snyder to unfold the world of Rorschach and Night shade for the fan boys in full color and motion.
Tag Archives: Action
Inception (2010)
Dreamscapes and the sub-conscious can be an often marvelous subject matter for the discerning creative mind primarily because it’s a realm that is vast and wondrous but incredibly mysterious. After so many decades and centuries of research and exploration’s in to our brains, many scholars and professionals still have no real clue as to where dreams come from, why they exist, where we go when we dream, and whether or not they’re supposed to actually reveal anything. Christopher Nolan has created a Lynchian fantasy set in the mind that is devastating in its originality and innovation taking the dream world and turning it in to one giant landscape upon which to draw a story that is simultaneously a heist film and an existential drama about a man confronting his demons that he has locked away in his dreams for as long as he can remember.
We are Cinema Crazed and We're Here to Talk about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Stuff! One! Two! Three! Four!
NOT SO LONG AGO IN THE MYSTERIOUS LAND OF NEW YORK, FELIX VASQUEZ JR. WROTE A SCOTT PILGRIM ARTICLE…
At this time I’m still trying to decide if I love or hate “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” for what it is. I am convinced years from now young kids will be declaring that Edgar Wright’s film is something of a cheer for their culture, a love letter to the nostalgia obsessed Canadian hipster society, but many will fail to realize or even admit that in reality this movie is a practical joke. Deep down while it looks like a celebration of our nostalgia obsessed technology based generation, Edgar Wright actually makes fun of people he purportedly appeals to with his 2010 action romance movie. While many have described it as a bright and colorful movie, it is actually the most cynical statement about our culture in years. Many won’t accept that or be willing to even admit it’s a possibility since Edgar Wright is a pop culture fanatic and has always hung around pop culture fanatics in his early years.
Aiming at Nikita
So far this is the third variation of the Luc Besson spy thriller masterpiece “La Femme Nikita,” and the more variations we see of it, the more the actual point of the premise is loss. We had “Point of No Return” a remake with Bridget Fonda I think I’d rather forget if only for being a piss poor adaptation of Besson’s film and for becoming a relatively obscure nineties fixture that put some nails in to Fonda’s career coffin. Then there was the basic cable spy thriller starring Peta Wilson that I really never bothered to watch mainly because it felt like a version of “Mission: Impossible,” and now there’s “Nikita.”
Salt (2010)
I’m still trying to decide what about “Salt” annoyed me more, the goofy turn of events in the second half that had me gawking in sheer disbelief, or the insistence by the writers to include an ending that fades to black right in the middle of a big turn of events as if to leave a “To Be Continued” assuring audiences that there will be a sequel. Not only is this trend absolutely obnoxious (I pay to see whole movies, not parts of movies), but if there really is no sequel to “Salt” (god willing), then the entire closing scene is just a pointless wide open door left for us to presume what occurred after the writers decided we’d had enough story for now.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
For the past four films, director Paul WS Anderson has taken what was once a very entertaining horror franchise and turned it in to a series of movies fetishizing his wife and doing nothing more than further his muse-like view on her. We nearly saw her naked in the first movie, she was a bad ass in the second, a goddess in the third movie, and in the fourth we’re given an army of Milla’s, presumably a concept Anderson got his jollies off of. That said “Afterlife” is a movie that continues to drag on this wasted concept and posit the question: Why is Umbrella continuing their research if about ninety-nine percent of the world consumed by hellfire and the walking dead? What do they further have to gain beyond being evil for the sake of being evil?
Machete (2010)
Robert Rodriguez proves with “Machete” that his and Tarantino’s little experiment entitled “Grindhouse” was much more of a failure than fans originally suspected. While both of their original films were basic flops at the box-office, Rodriguez is given another shot with “Machete” a film that began life in popularity as a mock grindhouse trailer before “Planet Terror” and eventually became a feature length film. And much like most of Rodriguez’ films, he takes what could have been an amazing premise and turns it in to a scattered, confusing, and muddled piece of action cinema that throws a host of characters at the screen, all of whom he can barely keep up with at one time.