Guyver: Dark Hero

It's always dicey adapting a cartoon for live action. Finding real people who look like cartoon characters is hard, as is replicating the unrealistic feats that animated characters are capable of in a  believable way. This problem is doubled when you try to adapt animation from Japan, where the prominence of animated cinema arose specifically in order to depict wild stunts and crazy monsters that Japanese film companies of the early-mid 20th century had neither the money nor the real estate to film.

The Guyver is kind of a media dynasty. There's comic books, movies, TV shows, and, one would assume, cuddly Guyver plushes. For those not in the know, the Guyver is a suit of armor aliens built in order to shove humans inside and make cheap frontline soldiers for their horrific space wars. The prototypes rebelled and the aliens left Earth, leaving behind some dormant Guyver suits and an army of angry, lonesome mutant soldiers. Everyone wants a Guyver suit of their own, but predictably plucky young people get most of them. Rather like Power Rangers, said hero wanders about encountering danger, transforming with their armor, and kicking lots of faces. Because the Guyver is dark and edgy, there's lots of blood and screaming and the suit comes out of you eww gross yuck! It's kind of an adult cartoon, as envisioned by ten year olds.

Dark Hero follows the original properties as well as it can with no budget. Sean (Solid Snake) has what he believes to be the only Guyver suit. It makes him run around fighting crime, even though he'd rather just sit around his filthy apartment doodling in his dream journal. When he sees some symbols on television that he believes are related to the Guyver suit, he sets off for Utah to visit an archaelogical dig. Wouldn't you know it, an entire corporation of bad guys in rubber monster suits is after the dig as well, and it's up to Sean to pretty much kill every last one of them as savagely as rubber suit science permits.

Coming up since small times on the 60s-70s Godzilla films, I really got into this film. The suits are surprisingly good, and the Guyver armor is pretty on-model with the anime. The fights are pretty decent too, although there's a surprising amount of non-fighting and it isn't particularly interesting. Sean whines and moans about having awesome alien space armor that lets him shoot lasers out of his head, he romances an average-looking archaeologist, and some stuff happens with the FBI. But none of that matters because this is a guys in rubber suits hitting each other movie, and it totally delivers.

Actually, it may deliver too well. The violence in Dark Hero can be surprisingly graphic, and contrasted with the rather silly-looking suitework the effect is sort of confusing. It's like if you were watching Sesame Street, and Big Bird pecked out Grover's eyes. But if you can get past that, Guyver: Dark Hero offers something interesting: a live action anime adaptation that is both entertaining and faithful to its source materials.

6/10 (bump it up to 7/10 if you're like me and giggle with glee when dudes in rubber suits body slam each other)

Terminator Salvation

I went into this one with low expectations. The director of Charlie's Angels shooting a movie written by the writers of Catwoman? No thanks! Fortunately I was wrong. Dead wrong. Terminated wrong, even.

'K, maybe not.

Terminator does not disappoint. The machines are gritty and convincing, the landscape one of deserts and blasted cities, and in true 80s sci-fi tradition, Skynet has built a glowing blue monolith big enough to see from space for its lair. Although the film does not quite mirror James Cameron's hazy blue hellscapes from Terminator 1 and 2, it belongs to the same world, a world where awful machines try constantly to kill you for no reason. An excellent job is done making the terminators look flashy and new without betraying the industrial asthetic of the original films.

The cinematography is good too. The camera bobs around a lot, but not too much, and action scenes are immersive and well-framed. The effects shots are pretty well composited, thanks in part to a generous use of real models and props. The film does have an unhealthy dependency on closeups of people's faces during conversations, to the point that whenever talking happens the screen is totally filled with the speakers' faces. That's okay- this ain't a talkin' movie, it's a terminatin' movie.

The human element is less successful than the machine element, but not in the way you might expect. Anton Yelchin's performance as they young Kyle Reese is heartfelt and compelling, a big step up from his rather phoned-in part in Star Trek. Sam Worthington, a terminator who doesn't know he's a terminator and so uses his terminating skills for justice, is an exciting hero with lots of (wasted) potential. Michael Ironside is in there, and I'll watch anything with Michael Ironside in it. Moon Bloodgood plays a pilot who... well, who is better than she was in Pathfinder. But she's only been at this for three years, and I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

No, the weak link in this production is, amazingly enough, Christian Bale. I feel funny saying that because, you know, Batman, but there it is. Bale pressed director McG to expand his part, butted into the editing room daily, and judging from the press basically enfant terrible'd his way around the set start to finish- and it shows. What was meant to be the story of Marcus, the killer cyborg with a heart of gold, becomes all about Bale's John Connor. Bale deadpans his way through meaningless bookend radio broadcasts that hurt the flow of the film, chews scenery like Shatner in any scene he's allowed to join, and generally wrecks the pace of the film. A strong director (Nolan) who can keep Bale in line can extract a good film from him, but he obviously isn't someone who can be trusted to go all auteur. His over-the-top performance brings the film down, and makes him seem like less of an actor than he really is.

My verdict: Terminator Salvation is a fun summer action film, well worth your seven bucks. It has action, adventure, a tiny modicum of drama, and a charming 80s feel that matches the original movies- but weak direction of a pushy star kind of drags it down.

Oh, and Arnold's CG head looks way better than Patrick Stewart's CG head in  Wolverine. Just putting that out there.

8/10

...But how did Skynet know who Kyle Reese was before he went back in time?

Gunhed

What is it with movies about giant robots always sucking?

Robot Jox sucked. Robot Wars (The sequel to Robot Jox!) sucked. Robot Holocaust sucked.

"But wait!" you say. "Gunhed is Japanese. The Japanese invented giant robots! And it's a Toho movie! Toho are the undisputed master of movies about giant stuff!" You'd be mostly correct: Toho has all the pedigree to make a totally awesome giant robot movie. Here's how they screwed up:

• There aren't any giant robots until the end


• The giant Robots don't do anything


• The rest of the movie is really dull

The whole film is a vast sea of decisions meant to reduce entertainment. Every scene is accompanied by grating Casio music, except senes featuring a little girl named 11- who is mute. That's right, every scene featuring this little girl is totally silent. The rest of the cast is whittled down, which you expect in a horror-action thriller, but which happens so fast here that we barely get to know them. Since the hero doesn't meet Gunhed the big robot until near the end of the movie, and other giant robots don't show up for Gunhed to fight until Gunhed is around to fight them, the main threat is a dude in a bug costume. Yeah, that's right. Homeboy looks like Insector-Z with circuit boards glued to his eyes.

So, much like Robot Holocaust, what is billed as a robot action film is really a "dude runs around a factory being chased by guys in bad costumes" movie. There's no character development or chemistry at all.

Gunhed itself is kind of a letdown. Designed well, the Gunhed puppet just doesn't move convincingly. It turns into a tank (of course) at which point it becomes slightly more believable since it's just driving around. The gunhed scenes are basically just it rolling around shooting sparks and cartoon lasers at a big robot scorpion. The big robot scorpion is also limited to rolling. It's pretty dull, and considering the mechanical articulation the Robocop films achieved with the same technology as this film, pretty inexcusable.

So, Gunhed is a dull, lifeless hunk of plastic. I mean that both in terms of the DVD of the film, and the robot itself. The characters are similarly unlikable, and you won't miss them when they die, which most of them do.

2/10

Galaxis

It's a tried and true formula for science fiction success: create an exciting sci-fi universe, show us some teasey glimpses of it, then send the characters to Earth before you run out of money. If the alien warrior heroes befriend some scrappy Earthlings when they arrive, so be it. Time Guardian did this, Spaced Invaders did it, and even the Masters of the Universe movie featured Dolph Lundgren's He-Man befriending a not-yet-scary-thin (and consequentially much prettier) Courtney Cox at prom somewhere in the Midwest. And let's not forget Jesse Ventura's Abraxis, the movie Lifetime would have made if it were staffed by Jack Kirby and Jim Starlin.

Galaxis (not to be confused with Galaxina, a z-budget space western about a sexy robot who fails at stealing Barbarella's thunder) tells a similar tale. Brigitte Nielson plays Ladera, a space gladiator who subscribes to the wear-bikinis-to-battle school of movie logic. Ladera is looking for a magic crystal, which she must find before Richard Moll does. And guess where she looks?

Squirted out in the woeful middle of the hateful 90s, Galaxis is a cheap pastiche of better movies that came before. There's a scene where bad guys rampage through a police station Terminator style, there's a steel-girder showdown that looks stolen from Darkman, and the whole "evil wizard jacks up the innocent for magic crystals" angle has been done to death, most notably in the underappreciated Dark Crystal. It goes without saying that Galaxis achieves its ripoffery with a budget that would disappoint Sam Raimi (who happens to be in the film). The result is rather like watching cosplayers act out a better film, and not succeeding very well.

I will be the first to admit that I like bad movies. I have personally watched Jean-Claude Van Damme's stunt double kick a terminally ill Raul Julia into a wall in Street Fighter over 7 times. I watched Category 7 and liked it so much that I nearly cried when my fiance wouldn't let me buy Category 6. Heck, I actually bought Magic Sword under the mistaken belief that it was The Sword and the Sorcerer. But believe this battle-hardened fan of cinema crap, there is nothing worthwhile about Galaxis. It's dull, ineffectual, and lacks the infectious charm that has saved so many awful movies.

It's just bad.

2/10

Star Trek

There are 2 short reviews possible for Star Trek: "Star Trek is a great movie if," and "Star Trek is a great movie but."

Star Trek is a great movie if you like the franchise but aren't unduly attached to it. All your favorite characters are there, and they are all played quite aptly- every member of this film's cast truly conveys the feel of a younger version of their character on the classic series. They do hip, youthful, rebellious stuff, but at the core, these are the same people. The ships, setting, and trappings are all familiar too- but taken in some decidedly new directions. This film tries and succeeds to breathe new life (and new civilizations) into a fiction world left untouched for over a decade- the original series Star Trek universe, where it's okay to go phasering around space and you don't need to spend 20 minutes talking about stuff. This movie gets to the action and plenty of it, but does not lose sight of the characters and emotions that separate Star Trek films and shows from generic space opera.

Star Trek is a great movie, but it has some failings. The camera can't sit still for two seconds, continuity is noticibly shabby, and the plot has some holes if you look really hard. It is not perfect cinema, and some hardcore fans will lament the veneer of new and hip wrapped aggressively around their film. It is a rewarding movie, with conflicts and resolutions and character building, and it is both technically and artistically leagues beyond J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield. It is a movie that is awesome enough to get noticed, but with room for improvement in the sequels. It is an exciting film, due in part to how it establishes early on that its canon is not a perfect mirror of classic Star Trek: you genuinely won't know where the movie will go.

Star Trek is a great movie. It has some level of appeal on almost every front. It suffers because almost everyone has some preconception of how Star Trek should look and sound, who it is for, what it means. This is a hard movie to review objectively, and could be tricky to follow without a knowledge of the franchise. Even without an existing love for Star Trek, however, you might find something in this film lacking from modern Hollywood: a robust and well-developed science fiction world with giant ships, governments, planets, and a sense of adventuresome fun. The Star Trek universe feels more real and well thought out than most, and the payoff is a film that invites the viewer to imagine "What's next?"

And yes, there's an Orion Animal Woman in it. And a Tribble.

8/10 (take a point off if Uhura having a thing for Spock instead of Scotty bothers you, you sad nerds)

Babylon AD

Babylon AD is a movie about stuff almost happening. Pretty much the whole movie is about psyching up the audience into thinking stuff is going to happen, then revealing that no, nothing's going to happen. Let me give away the whole film to explain what I mean.

Vin Diesel heads to a Serbian arms market where he was sold a broken gun. He almost roughs up the vendor and starts a fight, but he quietly accepts a refund and leaves. At home, he is attacked by mercenary kidnappers. He almost shoots his way out, but goes along with them instead. The kidnappers work for a gangster who sends Vin Diesel to take a pair of nuns from Serbia to America. Along the way he almost has to fight the employees of one nun's father, almost brawls with Russian human traffickers, and almost has trouble sneaking into America (fortunately they just skip that part). In America, Vin Diesel almost gets blown up, almost confronts the film's true villain, and almost falls in love with one of the nuns, except the film ends before any of it comes to fruition.

Babylon AD is a frustrating tease of a film that dangles adventure in front of the viewer's nose like a carrot made of guns and car chases. Mostly lame, unproductive exposition and unimpressive scenery effects shots, the film contains only small pockets of eventfullness, all plagued by awful choreography and editing. The filmmakers seemed mainly concerned with showing us their creative, original science fiction world, where Eastern Europe and the Balkans are battle-scarred ganglands and America is a soulless neon wasteland lorded over by giant heartless corporations. This may all sound not at all fictitious, but in Babylon AD, there are a lot more motorcycles and TVs everywhere than there are today. That's how you know it's the future.

To recap: Babylon AD is a science fiction action film with no action or science fiction. If you're smart, it will also be bereft of your viewership.

1/10

Mechwarrior (SNES)

It's the 1990s. The Internet has yet to ruin tabletop gaming, and the game on everyone's lips is... Magic the Gathering. But if you wanted to play something more sophisticated, there was the Battletech/Mechwarrior franchise. These games combined DnD sensibilities with giant robot action and the overall flavor of the Dune books to create an exciting role-playing universe for gamers.

The only problem was expressing the game world to those playing. It's all well and good to say "you are looking out of the cockpit of a big robot and walking on people" over a cluttered table while swilling Mountain Dew, but it lacks oomph. The obvious thing to do was to make a video game that simulated the Mechwarrior experience.

Early DOS attempts produced interesting games that were less about combat and more about hiring and managing groups of mech mercenaries. Strategy was all well and good, but gamers wanted to jump into big robots and murder other big robots containing their friends. Of course the was the arcade game, but that was a virtual-reality simulator cabinet monstrosity that couldn't come home very easily.

The SNES Mechwarrior initially seems very impressive. The engine renders pretty large Mode-7 landscapes, with features like water you sink down in, and jumpjets you can take off with. You can use your war money to kit out your giant robot with an assortment of neat weapons, and choose between different sorts of missions as you pursue your parents' killers.

The problem is that the gameplay is totally lacking. The water lowers your camera, but you don't slow down or encur any defense bonus. Jumpjets lift you up, but your enemies can aim up too and there are no environmental encumberments that jets let you skip- the map is totally flat. Every mission basically boils down to "kill everything before it kills you" except for base attack missions, which are more "kill the base and ignore everything else."

Weapons could lead to good technical variety, but they don't. The only weapon you need is short range homing missiles, and the more the better. Just waddle your robot up to the enemy and hold the trigger until you win. This strategy works for basically the whole game, and grows more effective as you buy robots with more armor and more room for ammo.

The variability of missions is also a weak point. Aside from the fact that there are only about 10 maps in the game (and again, none of them functionally different) you are penalized for taking too many missions on- neglect the "leads" you get from NPCs too long and you get a game over as your targets escape you. Not that money matters, once you strap on the highest number of missile tubes and buy the biggest mech, you're done.

The SNES is the first console that could approach true 3D in a meaningful way, and a number of games for it had great real and simulated 3D- Mario Kart, Star Fox 1 and 2, and a pretty competant Doom port all demonstrated that the SNES could do 3D action. Mechwarrior tries valiently, but its neat universe and promising play are undercut by a lack of variety and dull, repetitive action.

If you liked Mechwarrior but want more variety, check out Crimson Skies. No, not the steampunk air pirate game (although that is fun), the WW1 SNES shooter where you have to take down the Red Baron. It plays a lot like Mechwarrior, but with a lot more depth and complexity.

5/10

- The Call of Cthulhu -

This isn't a new film, but it's one that not nearly enough people have talked about. So now I'm gonna. If, like me, you were a HP Lovecraft fan before hearing about this movie, don't bother with this review. Just go buy it. Do it now.

Ahem.

The Call of Cthulhu is a short film (about 45 minutes) based on the short story of the same name by famous racist lunatic HP Lovecraft. Considered one of Lovecraft's most enduring horror masterpieces, Call traces a series of seemingly unrelated events that are in fact all tied to an ancient and malevolent god, Cthulhu (a sort of a bat-winged octopus bodybuilder the size of a skyscraper). Where Cthulhu's sinister touch is felt, madness and death follow. The movie is the work of the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, a pretty well known fanclub of the late author.

What makes this movie stand out over other films made by English professors and internet dorks with a copy of Final Cut Pro and a big stack of depression-era men's magazines? In a word, effort. Not content with making an obviously fake low-budget horror film, the HPLHS instead created their own silent film, replete with chiaroscuro lighting and stop-motion creature effects. This is also authentic to the time period in which Lovecraft wrote. The effect is convincing for the most part. The antique drawing rooms and theater bayous that make up the film look wonderful, and Cthulhu's cursed city of R'lyeh is a masterwork of modeling. The high frame rate of videotape gives the film away at times, however, and some of the compositing is a little obvious.

The acting in Call is hard to critique. The performers are emulating silent-film horror parts, and do the job well, but the result isn't scary, any more than it is in genuine silent films. None of the performers breaks the feel of the film, and they all look spot on for the times and places depicted.

The soundtrack is excellent period music that fits to the film much better than a true silent film soundtrack could- there's no dialogue or effects here, but instrumental stings sync up to the action nicely. The creepy moodiness of the soundtrack generates the bulk of the spine-tingles here, and the film would suffer without it.

Obviously you can only get this movie on DVD through web-order, and at $20 it's a steal. There's an hour or so of making-of features that are pretty awesome, and my copy came with a replica of one of the newspaper clippings used in the film. Support neato indy filmmaking, and your own entertainment, and pick this one up.

Buy it from these folks: http://www.cthulhulives.org/toc.htm

Who watches the Watchmen? I did and I'll never get my seven bucks back!

It's the first major release of the 2009 summer movie season, it has tons of hype, and a blue guy who is too smart and awesome to wear pants.  So, how did I feel about Watchmen after leaving the theater after digesting a 3 hour movie, too much popcorn, and a large Coke?  I was hungry for a much better paced movie, and I really had to pee.

Watchmen starts off with a bang, and from there it's all downhill.  The first action sequence is very well done.  The opening credits for the film are also great.  Sadly, everything after that is pretty pedestrian. The basic plot is as follows: The world is in dire straits.  Those crazy Commies are getting ready to launch nukes (we assume, as this fact is never actually SHOWN in the movie) and Richard Nixon (who is in dire need of a nose job) is freaking out about how to handle it.  Elected to a third term in this alternate time line due to a rousing victory in Vietnam, Nixon comes and goes from the movie when some political back-story is needed to give the film what mild sense of urgency it has.  The Doomsday Clock (which you can now get from Timex in a smaller, more fashionable wrist version) is ticking down to destruction and the Unites States rests its hopes on a super nerd turned moody blue badass, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup).  The good doctor has his hands full, as he is trying to help create an unlimited energy source while gearing up to double penetrate his girlfriend with clones of himself.  I do that too, but I'm usually making hot dogs at the time.

Amidst all this fun we have the rag tag group of former "heroes" the Watchmen attempting to solve the murder mystery of one of their comrades in arms. You see, The Comedian (Edward Blake) was murdered by an unknown assailant, and it's up to Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley - yeah I have no idea who the hell he is either) to get to the bottom if it by running around town and breaking into places. He tries to enlist the help of his nerd friend Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) in an attempt to find the killer.  The final members of the crew are Silk Spectre II (played by a woman who's more wooden than the chairs in my living room), a daring slut who will jump on any guy who pays attention to her, and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), a blond pretty boy billionaire.  He's basically a fruity non-threatening version of Bruce Wayne.

Eventually the two plots meet, some things explode, Dr. Manhattan rocks out with his cock out while having mood swings, and Rorschach clues the audience in all the while with voiceovers so gruff you'd swear it was your uncle who knocks back 10 packs a day.  The movie has some standout action scenes with the final conflict and prison escape being my favorites.  There's tons of blood to go around, a little pointless sex here and there, and loads of trademark slow motion Zack Snyder ass kicking.  However, this is all ruined by a lack of urgency.  The movie just rolls from one scene to the next and the audience never really feels like all this is happening under the umbrella of an imminent nuclear war.  In fact, it's almost an afterthought.

Some things also feel very rushed.  For example, Dr. Manhattan goes from being a whiny bitch hiding on Mars to changing his mind in a matter of minutes, all from revealing something he already knew.  Nite Owl II gets plenty of screen time, and he's a fairly likeable chap, especially when being used by Slut Spectre II, however their relationship feels forced throughout the film.  Basically Nite Owl ends up getting sloppy seconds.  He doesn't seem to mind though.

Rorschach is the most developed character in the film and the only one who the audience can really connect with.  The Comedian is the funny man of the group, which is highly disturbing.  The guy basically shoots everyone he meets, is always drunk, admits to beating women, and tries to rape the original Slut Spectre (played wonderfully by Carla Gugino).   This guy is the FUNNY ONE?!  He should have been called The Sadist or The Rapist, not The Comedian.

Overall, the movie was a letdown.  Coming in at almost 3 hours, the pacing is more loose than Slut Spectre II after a romp in the sack with Dr. Manhattan. The acting is nothing to write home about, and the music choices seemed very out of place to me.  Also, while I realize the movie took place in an alternate 80's timeline, it sure never really felt like it.  In fact, all mention of that could be dropped from the movie without any impact whatsoever.

On the plus side, the directing was good, and some of the writing and dialogue was clever.  David Hayter (SNAAAAAAAKE) and Alex Tse no doubt tried to cater this movie to fans of the comics and people like me who have never read it. In the end though, I think they just managed to alienate both worlds.  Maybe the rumored 4 hour director's cut will change things, but if anything I feel this movie needs to get shorter instead of even longer.

Oh yeah, and Ultraman could totally take huge Dr. Manhattan.

D-War: You Didn't Miss Much

If you're anything like me, you like to spend time on the internet looking at movie trailers. These trailers are usually better than the movies they advertise. For instance, the Watchmen trailer made Watchmen look like a movie where stuff happens, and the Crash trailer made Crash look like a movie that contained acting.

One trailer that may have jumped out at you while you were trying to tune out your ex-girlfriend yelling at you was the trailer for D-War (short for Dragon War), a Korean-backed American Daikaiju movie where dead Korean ninjas reincarnate as the cast of Friends and have to help the army battle a giant snake. If you're like me, you probably thought it looked totally sweet, and years later, after the movie was released, you bought it rented it checked it out from the library had your fiancé check it out from the library.

First the good: there are fifteen solid minutes of totally sweet actual dragon war in this film. They are right in the middle. Highlights include a bunch of knights on velociraptors attacking the police and the pilot of an Apache shooting out the window at dragons with a Detective Special. Stuff explodes in a mighty, yet thoroughly PG-13 spectacle of violence and awesomeness.

Now the bad: the other 70 minutes or so consist of a bunch of nobody yuppie actors blanding their way through the same 5 scenes over and over. Magic reincarnated ninja guy saves girl from giant snake, takes her to see disposable cast member, hugs her platonically, giant snake shows up and wrecks stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat. When the good giant snake shows up (there's a good one, I guess) things become even messier because the giant snakes both basically look alike and you don't know who to root for.

What's ironic here is that the creators of this film felt the need to come to America to make a really, really Asian film. Giant monster cinema is bigger there than it is here, and the Power-Rangers bad guy villains fighting the army would have fit right into a Toho film. Even the cinematography feels more like Asian than American cinema. But the Americanization of the film, complete with a Western cast, makes this movie feel not like the Daikaiju epic it was meant to be, but like an American knockoff. It's an old tradition that Hollywood doesn't trust viewers to follow a movie with foreign heroes (see U-571) but it's sad to see foreign filmmakers come to America and make the same mistake. Combine vague Hollywood ethnocentrism with a mostly dull movie, and you'll realize it's no surprise you missed D-War actually coming out.