Today's Movie Checklist

• A plot that serves the main action (loosely if necessary)- check
• Airplane (must malfunction on cue)- check
• Stalwart Hero- check
• Stalwart Heroine- check
• Sidekick- check
• Bad Guy- check
• Passenger that's afraid of flying- check
• Passenger Asshole (preferably British)- check
• Actual Mom (with baby for peril and angst)- check and check
• Kids (without parental supervision, see above)- check and check again
  
• Actually, have Central Casting send up one of every stock character for the passenger manifest. (Hmmmm, but no Italian mobsters, Asian's in this year.)
  
• Lap Dog for the Spoiled Heiress (must have appropriate name)- check

• And for God's sake, don't forget the Motherfucking Snakes for the Motherfucking Plane or we have no movie!!!
  

I can honestly say that I haven't had this much campy fun at a movie in ages. (Well, not since Slither anyway.)
I can also honestly say I didn't know death by snakebite could occur in such, um, interesting forms.

It doesn't waste time setting up a silly plot, it's pretty much 1-2-3 and we're on the plane. We're not talking Shakespeare here. But what it does set up isn't stupid. Cliche, oh, goodness, yes. We hit just about every disaster/creature/action cliche there is: no pilot, plane breaks, rampaging, angrier-than-normal animals to hunt and kill, snarly (and snarky) passengers, harried stewardesses, brash FBI agents, all of it and more; but it's not dumb. And it works! The hype didn't lie!

It's funny. And creepy. You don't have to think, so just sit back and enjoy the flight. (Example- all you need to know about the flight attendants you learn during the emergency instructions, and none of them speak a word.) There are scenes that make you squirm in anticipation, and scenes that just jump out and grab you. You name it, we got it, about the only thing missing was the pregnant lady going into labor.

Maybe we're saving that for the sequel.

Go see it, unless you're seriously ophidiophobic in which case I feel genuinely sorry for you, you're missing out on a fun thing here.

And if you're in the Austin area, see it at the Drafthouse and get one of these. (If the snakes left any of 'em, that is.)

Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of... Huh?

I liked the movie, let it be known that all of the forthcoming nit-picking comes from a place of love. It was a good way to spend an evening.

But talk about your wasted efforts. This movie was not thought out, and seemed to be slapped together just to get a sequel into the theatres to hold us over to the main event in the finale. And that annoys me to no end. (This coming from me, a fan of the make-it-up-as-we-go-along show, 24!)

So, yeah, be ye warned, there are spoilers abroad in these high seas... Yarrr!

Of all the myriad plots that get set up along the way, not one is resolved. Yes, this is the second chapter of a trilogy, but something should have ended in the two and a half hours I sat there in the theatre, amused, but waiting. After all, in Star Wars, Luke started and finished his training, the unresolved sexual tension between Han and Leia was resolved, and the Millennium Falcon stopped trying to outrun people and began chasing after them. These were all endings, and yet they still served the larger story and allowed a segue into the finale.

The center plot here is the search for the infamous "Dead Man's Chest." And yes, it is found, (about 2/3 the way through) and everyone gets to chase after it, playing "hot potato" until it comes to rest. And then it isn't used, by anyone. At all. We just get to look at it and it's freaky contents- just sitting there. Waiting for something to happen, which won't until the next movie.

So on to the subplots, which include a romantic troika consisting, unsuprisingly, of Jack, Elizabeth and Will. It's set up with innuendo, that blinky compass of Jack's, and a "stolen" kiss. But while all parties are aware of the situation to varying degrees, no accusations have been made, and no relationships have been tested. But I'm sure the ensuing conflict will be wonderful.

It just won't happen until the next movie.

Family angst is aptly represented with Will and his father (played nicely by Stellan Skarsgaard), and it manages to go in a complete circle, with both Will and Bootstrap Bill ending in the exact same places they started. (Will free, Bill, not-so-much.) The only thing that changes is that by the end, Bootstrap has "hope" that his son will rescue him.

Which won't happen until the next movie.

The blackmailing greed of the East India Trading Company in the guise of Lord Cutler Beckett is on call, and they make for nicevillainss to replace the British Navy (in the guise of Commodore Norrington) from the last movie. And while I admit the upper hand they gain at the end was nicely arranged, but we're basically left with Beckett sitting at his desk, pondering his next move.

Which won't happen until the next movie.

And, of course, we have the evil Davy Jones. Whose scenes were nicely chewed by Bill Nighy, if almost spit out again by the freakish CGI-laden prosthetics/make-up that completely obliterated almost all of the actor's fine facial expressions. (More on this later.) Davy rants, Davy kills,Davy plays his organ with his tentacles (not a euphemism!), but he doesn't have the contents of chest, he doesn't have Jack, or Will, (or a clue for that matter) and that's pretty much how he started the movie. But he is going to have a lot of fun dealing with the person who did end up with the contents of his "locker."

But not until until the next movie.

The only resolved plotline is Jack's. And it's resolved violently. More or less. But not finally. He's not exactly encased in carbonite, but he still needs a' rescuin'.

Which won't happen (say it with me folks,) until the next movie!

See where a birdy can get her little feathers ruffled?

Now, back to that character CGI issue I mentioned earlier. This is what happens when a good concept is completely run off the rails by it's own nifty-ness. As I understand it, the concept was thus: The longer you served on The Flying Dutchman, the more you began to resemble the sea creatures and creepy-crawlies of the deep. Cool! They were so pretty, and so creepy, and so overdone that they lost all facial expression, and were used for shock value, not character laughs. And they weren't even done as well as they could have been, they all looked shiny and fake. I think something went wonky in integrating the prosthetics and the CGI.

The original pirates from the franchise, the cursed crew of the Black Pearl, had their moonlit CGI freakishness, but the rest of the time you could pass them on the street and not notice. (Well, you get what I mean.) The moonlight reveal was a way to deal with budget constraints, but it served the overall plot very well. And it allowed you to connect with some of the fine character actors that were being used. Frankly, Capt'n Barbossa would not have been half as scary, had he been a skeleton all the time. All things in moderation, my dears, especially in movie tech.

(And about that nifty concept- so far as I could tell after one viewing, it is never mentioned in the movie. The skeletal curse was a cornerstone of the last installment, here it's a gimmick, and one not even worth explaining. Sigh.)

All of this, plus the usual sequell pitfalls: resurrected gags, the same stunts (only Bigger! and Better!), and the in-jokes. Which, in all honesty, I actually I didn't mind so much, loving the first as much as I do.

But I have to say, the scene stealer for this flick- her. I have no idea who she is (character, not actress), or where she came from, but she's really cool, and she was the only character who had any clue what was going on. At. All. And she chewed her scenery the same way Mr. Depp did in the first movie which was great. Bravo! (Also- she gets the coolest set. This was one of those movies I look at and wish I was working props in Hollywood.)

And the ending twist? Wow. But if they don't explain it in a way the audience can buy, it will kill the next movie. You DO NOT just drop something like that in an audience's lap with out a really good reason. It becomes nothing more than a REALLY cheap stunt, and there will be hell to pay.

Final verdict- we're not keel-haulin' her yet. But if the final installment fails, she's walking the plank.

And then I'll go to Disney World.

Look Ma! No wires!

I can tell it's a good action flick, if I hit the 10 minute mark and I don't care if it has a plot or not. I can tell it's a great one if a plot actually appears.

B13- all action junkies should go see this movie. It's what VanDamme and Segal desperately wanted to be back in the day. It's Jet Li without wires and art house rainshowers and bamboo forests, and Jackie Chan without the comedy pratfalls. The action is based on Parkour, which is a French-originated discipline of getting from A to B under your own power, any way you can. You go over, under, or around obstacles using only your hands, feet, agility and speed. Sound easy? Go to YouTube, search, and wince at the people who do it badly. And then go see this movie and see people doing it right.

It's not too long and it's absolutely breathtaking. (And that's just the stars, Cyril Raffaelli (warning: link has sound!) and David Belle. Couldn't resist.)

The pacing is frantically excellent, and the aforementioned plot is actually rooted pretty strongly in the present-day turbulance of the French "ghettos." Just maybe not the stuff about the neutron bomb....

And yes, I said French- there are subtitles, get over it. If I could manage not to giggle everytime they mentioned the bomb had a 24 hour timer on it- you can read a few subtitles.

Go!

Drive-by snarkings and crouching ovations...

Oi! Been awhile. Here's some quickies.

Casting issues- If can spot the mole as soon as the actor appears, your casting needs work! The Sentinel- I'm talkin' to you! It's one thing to cast an actor with a history of playing skeevy bastards, if they can convincingly play the good guy until their big reveal. If you get the guy who oozes from the word "action," then his reveal will mean nothing. I know Martin Donovan is a fine actor, but this was just miscast.

I can forgive a lot in a movie, especially one in which the leads play off each other as well as Kiefer Sutherland and Michael Douglas did, but my celebrity obsessions only suspend my disbelief so far.

Kudos to Eva Longiria, she actually managed to keep up her end. She did her best with a one-note character, and held her own with a gun in the shooting scenes.

Overall: Pleasantly suprised, it's still 24-lite, but I'm pretty OK with that.

Sound check, please- If your movie is called Silent Hill, you might want to, oh, I don't know, try a little silence here and there. Some of what would have been the creepiest scenes were ruined by an anvil-ridden soundtrack. Someone please get these people some good Asian horror flicks to peruse. Silence may be golden, but it can also be oppressive, claustrophobic, atmospheric, and laden with the terror of what you should be hearing, but aren't.

But don't mistake soundtracks with sound fx. Some of the creepiest things in this movie were the sounds the creatures were making. I don't care who you are, you meet something on the street making those sounds and you know sh*%'s going downhill fast.

As for the casting, the cackle of Alice Krige's voice, whose silky accent dripped with honey-laced strychnine was the perfect foil for our little girl lost. If Jodell Ferland can keep that ability to balance sweet and innocent with it's darker sister, cruel and vicious, she will be a power to be reckoned with (assuming she doesn't fall by the Hollywood wayside).

Overall: Slightly disappointed. It was a solid entry to the video-game to movie pantheon, there have been worse, but it wasn't nearly as creepy as it should have been.

Go see Thank You For Smoking. You will thank me- if you can get over Katie Holmes' sex scenes, that is. Dawson would be shocked. Tom probably fainted. I thought it was hysterical.

Love it/Hate it...

Two movies, two dystopian futures.
One I liked, but not for the plot/writing, and the other I hated, because there was no plot/writing of which to speak.
OK,The Love goes first:
V for Vendetta- If you've read my House of Wax reviews, you know how a voice can get to me, and boy does Hugo Weaving have it in spades. And it wasn't just the voice. (That hypnotic, icy, creepy and still vulnerable voice.) Weaving's one of those classically-trained actors who has learned to use his entire body to make a point. And when you spend an ENTIRE movie in a mask, those subtle body movements, a tilt of the head, a hand gesture, a strut in the walk... they make all the difference. So much so, I actually tuned out of the movie a bit, and just focused on the attitude expressed through movement. His Matrix experience was a definite plus, but not just for the kung-fu aspects of V. There's a certain "disconnect" with reality that Weaving expresses very well. All the major characters Weaving's been associated with in the last few years (I'm thinking LOTR's Elrond, Matrix's Agent Smith, and now V) have been "outside" the main reality, yet an intricate part of it's goings-on. The "integral outsider" as it were. A puppet-master of sorts.

A similar kudos go to Natalie Portman, whose tear-laden eyes can be pissed and heartbroken at the same time. Screw the hair (or lack thereof)- look at her eyes, folks! While her character would have had farther to travel if she had been more of a gov't tool in the beginning, I was able to buy the initial external "guilt by association" and internal "my parents were right" versions that we saw, first through the inspector and later through Evey herself. Portman's line at the end to the Inspector about who V was (father, mother, brother, self) was believable only because you could see the echoes and transference in her eyes. I never saw V and Evey as a romantic pairing, but more symbiotic. She- his lost humanity, and He- her lost beliefs. Neither existed fully without the other, but each was able to subsist on its own, weakened, but independent.

And, yea! for making us actually believe an entire year had gone by, instead of feeling like it was rushed or forced.

As for the actual plot- meh. Been there, Fahrenheit 9-11'd that. The W'boys ditch Thatcherism for Bushism and there ya have it. An instant dystopian, paranoid future dictatorship plot. Read Orwell, you'll be happier, or at least more aware.

But I still loved it.

And now for The Hate:
Ahhh, Ultraviolet, you could have been so, so much more.

I don't care what you think, Mila Jovovich is a decent actress, good at action and not bad to look at. And I love playing H!ITG with William Fichtner, but this plot and this writing is crap. Oh, the humanity!

Set up a decimating virus story, set up a gov't human weapon story, set up a medical-freak-of-nature story, set up a vampire story, but for crying out loud if you're going to use all of them, use all of them at once- don't pick and choose depending on what works for the scene at hand! We had an intro voice-over that introduced the freak/virus story, and retconned the weapon/vampire bit about halfway through.

Here's my fix for almost the entire movie, and I can do it in 6 sentences to be uttered in V-O Scene One, while Mila's walking up to the gov't building for the courier-infiltration scene:
"They thought they were creating a perfect, human weapon.
Instead they got a highly virulent catastrophe.
The virus made the vampire-like weapons the government wanted, but they couldn't control it's spread.
Blood, tears, sweat, it was too contagious.
So they tried to destroy it- all of it and those who carried it.
And I got caught in the middle."

(Wait a minute! Isn't this the plot to Resident Evil?)

Bam! Innocent, infected heroine with tragic circumstances to be relayed in flashbacks where appropriate, not at the beginning where they sit there and are wasted for half the movie.

(Yeah, R.E. did this one better.)

Love the kid, hate the way he was ultimately useless and good only for looking forlorn and tugging at our heart-sleeves.

And haven't digital backgrounds and tracking shots gotten better than this, yet? Or did you embezzle part of the budget somewhere and we got stuck with this?

(I still want one of those negative space, belt buckle-thingies with the anti-grav drive, though. That looked cool! TechieToys!!!)

(Sigh!) It could've been sooooo gooood! But it wasn't!!!!