FIRST BLOOD: Going back to cheesy 80s movies I never caught at the time with low expectations attached can be fun, because sometimes I find myself pleasantly surprised, as with First Blood. I never tuned in to the whole Rambo thing -- in fact I think, prior to this, the only Stallone movies I'd ever seen were Rocky IV, Cop Land, and -- wait for it -- Over the Top. I always assumed the Rambo movies were just Hollywood's utterly dim-witted action-adventure version of Vietnam. Well, my mistake: I'd never have guessed the first Rambo movie was a self-contained US-based story of one vet's psychotic breakdown under police harassment, boasting a surreal sort of playing-in-the-backyard version of the guerilla warfare he'd engaged overseas, and culminating in a one-man assault on a small hick town and its sheriff. It's a silly movie, and not terribly subtle, but I liked First Blood. Stallone's marble-mouthed, rambling monologue/breakdown at the end before he folds over into his former commander's arms crying like a baby is a thing to be witnessed: the whole "action" movie before it is like an implosion towards that point, the emotionally broken core from which it all stems. My only regret is that -- as surprisingly decent a movie as it was -- the 'making of' feature clued me in to exactly how watered down it was compared to the book it was based on. In the book, Rambo goes completely batshit, sniping pedestrians in the town at random, and committing suicide at the end. I understand that wouldn't have played as well with audiences at the time, but that'd have been an even better movie, in my book.


RAMBO: Fresh off my First Blood high and curious to see Stallone's new version, which got not-as-bad-as-you'd-think reviews, I went into Rambo with higher expectations -- and consequently found myself disappointed. The best thing was the opening, a scene of sheer and all-too-real-seeming brutality, and the promise of vengeance and death in the cut from the Burmese commander's flame-reflecting sunglasses to the scuffily-fonted movie-title, "RAMBO." If Rambo has a strength, it is Stallone's willingess to dive head first into unflinching violence, even going so far as to depict the up close and personal murder of children (or at least, close enough that you'll think you witnessed it.) Forget the limb-shredding and CGI supergore on display in the final gunfight; that's awfully strong stuff, for a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet somehow, to the best of my knowledge, Rambo avoided controversy. Maybe it's because it's only Burmese children getting slaughtered, empathy reining itself in at the shore of the Pacific; rest assured, the attractive white female Christian missionary avoids even the very obvious raping that all evidence would indicate awaits her, and that numerous Burmese villagers in the movie endure, along with death or even significant injury.

Still, to its credit, Rambo doesn't get sidetracked into the goofy romantic subplot it flirts with, focusing itself instead on the job at hand: jungles, gore, and stealthy rescue missions. Sadly, most of the action and violence is highly compromised by Stallone's ill-advised choice of that -- it has to have a name -- choppy/"quick"-editing technique, wherein all action looks, well -- choppy and sped-up. It's such an utterly goofy effect, I don't understand its present popularity as a directorial choice at all. It completely ruined the climactic gunfight for me. I.e. "this would be sort of cool, if I could see what was going on and it wasn't in Charlie-Chaplin-Cam." I also felt that -- given the film's purposes -- the final confrontation between Rambo and the Burmese commander should've been more dramatic.

And of course, the action and gore aside, there is -- unlike with First Blood -- little else there. The dialogue is ridiculous (though thankfully minimal) and the characters -- while not entirely uninteresting -- are barely developed at all. The movie has nothing particularly coherent to say. It's just a stupid, clumsy action movie, but a stupid, clumsy action movie with the brutality and gore knob jacked to the highest setting Hollywood's likely to tolerate. In the 80s, this movie would've easily been rated X.

K

Near Dark: Speaking of going into Eighties movies with low expectations...

This low budget vampire movie set in Texas is surprisingly cool. It stars Adrian Pasdar from Heroes and three people from Aliens--Lance Henriksen, the gal who played Vasquez and Bill "Game over!" Paxton.

I had read and heard good things about it, and now I understand why.

Adrian Pasdar, who I hated on both Judging Amy and Heroes, is pretty good as a young guy from Oklahoma who gets turned into a vampire sort of by accident. A blond girl he picks up and puts some moves on feeds on him, but she can't bring herself to kill him.

He ends up being accepted on a trial basis by her "family"--a gang of redneck vampires who use guns and drive around in a mobile home. They're more like Old West outlaws than your typical goths with real fangs.

Henriksen is quite effective as the head vampire. He's scary, but somehow likable at the same time.

Bill Paxton--who continued his tradition of getting better roles in lower budget movies and playing unlikable weenies in bigger flicks like Tombstone to pay the bills--is actually really good as the Sundance to Henriksen's Butch Cassiday. Paxton is the wisecracking comedy relief guy, but he's also surprisingly bad ass. And it's actually sort of believable that redneck chicks dig him.

Another one of the vampires is a creepy little kid named Homer who, much like the girl from Interview with the Vampire, is pretty bitter about the fact that he stopped physically aging. The kid who plays him is really effective.

The story is more plausible than you might expect, and all the vampire stuff is handled more intelligently than other recent movies such as Dracula 2000 or The Forsaken. It also helps that they don't try to explain everything and they give you just enough stuff for the plot to work.

It's refreshing to see female vampires who are attractive, but sort of "average" by Hollywood standards. That seems more realistic somehow than the topless harem girls in Coppola's Dracula remake or casting Seven of Nine just because she has huge boobs. And they never get naked, which really surprised me.

Anyway... Paxton and the kid (Joshua Miller) end up having different reasons for being in conflict with Pasdar's character, so things get complicated for Pasdar who really just wants to go back to his father and sister in Oklahoma.

Pasdar's crush on the girl who "turned" him (Jenny Wright) helps explain why he keeps making feeble attempts in fit in with the gang instead of being more serious about his attempts to run away. But his heart just isn't in feeding on people, and after Homer sets his eyes on his sister things get ugly fast.

There are a lot of twists and turns in the plot, but they all make sense because they're in character for the various vampires. The attention to story structure and character development is a nice change of pace.

Highly recommended.

GONE BABY GONE: Not too bad of an effort, I suppose, for being a first-time flick from Ben Affleck. There's a sort of unintended goofiness to the plotting, due to tremendous implausability to certain aspects of what is -- atmospherically -- intended to be a very gritty and realistic-seeming narrative. Affleck is reaching for hard-boiled authenticity, but the problem is that none of his (main) characters are particularly believable overall: character motivations are highly questionable, and plot-holes abound upon close scrutiny. There's not enough of an umbrella over the story, not enough contextualization: the entire film is oddly confined to a few key players, with no outside interference, and the passage of time seemed clumsily handled. All of this serves to damage the believability of the narrative and gives the movie a somewhat amateurish feel. It's also, on a purely aesthetic level, not that interestingly shot. However, all that said, I'm sympathetic to Affleck's intentions. He has the right idea, sort of, making some interesting choices, and not going too easy on the viewer while successfully illustrating some complex and difficult moral questions. I also found it relatively difficult to predict as I watched it, in a general sense, so it certainly held my interest. Recommended? Kinda. If it sounds at all interesting to you, it's probably worth a rental, anyway.

K

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

This movie features Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and some other cool Hong Kong action stars in key roles. So, I let myself forget that I didn't like either of the previous movies and I wasted seven bucks on a matinee showing of this bit of fluff.

Rachel Weisz allegedly didn't like the script for Mummy 3, so she isn't in this one. I can't really blame her if that's true. But instead of doing the right thing and writing her out of the story, they hired Maria Bello to take over her role. So... Not only was I deprived of getting to drool over Rachel Weisz and her oddly sexy voice, I was disappointed by Maria Bello (who I usually like) trying to do a Rachel Weisz impression--right down to mimicking her accent in a way that's kind of creepy.

In this one, Alex the precocious son of Rick O'Connell (Brendan Frasier) and his wife Evelyn (Weisz, now Bello) from the second movie is all grown up and he's a tomb raiding explorer in his own right. Which sort of makes the story a rip-off of the latest Indiana Jones movie.

Which left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the guy who plays the son in this movie is way cooler than Shia LeBeouf. But on the other hand, he's even more of an Indiana Jones rip-off than Frasier's character already is. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

At least Luke Ford, the guy who plays Alex, can do some movie kung fu so he's more fun to watch than the folks playing his parents. But... The only reason to even have him in this movie is that they're apparently planning to do a Mummy 4 without Frasier. So, this one helps fans of the series warm up to him before the next one.

Ford's dialogue is less blatantly anachronistic than Frasier's, but all that does is make Frasier's use of slang terms and concepts that probably weren't invented yet more annoying.

Jet Li makes a good bad guy. He's supposed to be the emperor who built the great wall of China. In this version, he's also an evil sorcerer with an army of terra cotta warriors. You get to see him do just enough stuff with swords and Wu Shu to wish there were more of those scenes and less stuff with the boring CGI zombies.

Michelle Yeoh is her usual awesome self as a sorceress who is trying to stop Jet Li from becoming immortal. It made me all nostalgic about The Tai Chi Master (where she and Li were on the same side). But she doesn't get to do as much cool stuff as I hoped.

The movie starts out with a prologue in 50 B.C. before moving forward to 1946. The 50 B.C. part is pretty cool even if it is just enough like Hero to feel derivative--making me wish they would have just made a period movie about Jet Li's character and forgotten all about the main story. Things go downhill fairly quickly with the shift to the twentieth century.

There are funny moments here and there and some good action sequences, but most people are probably going to focus more on the parts that "homage" other movies (such as a chariot stunt and other bits that are obviously swiped from Raiders of the Lost Ark).

Isabella Leong is the best thing about this movie. Her character would be even cooler if she didn't end up being the son's love interest, but I'll take what I can get.

I like MAD MEN !

I'm not reading that.

Too many pressing matters at the DC boards?

I get pissed off at you whenever I read one of your blog entries. And it's partly because even when you make a point that I can agree with, you do it in the most asinine way possible.

Your arguments against Christian rock, for example... I sort of agree with you, but reading that stuff still made me wish I could leave a flaming bag of poo on your front porch.

I don't need more reasons to think you're an asshole. Life's too short to waste it being irritated by you.

Well, thanks for reading what you've read.

Personally, I like to read opinions that agitate me, but I enjoy being agitated.

Like FB, it was bout killing machine that couldn't go home. Not the most earth-shattering idea, but coherent.