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The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
Chris Carter Digs Up the X-Files Only to Hit it in the Head with a Sharp Shovel
There are times when I wait for a movie to come out on DVD and think to myself, Gee, I really should have seen that in the theaters. In the case of "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" if I had waited for the DVD I think I would have held this film in a little higher regard, because ultimately Direct to DVD is sort of where it belongs.
You'd think in the wake of eight years of George Bush and real life conspiracies by our own government (GITMO, torture, the nexus of politics and terrorism, warrant-less wiretaps, fudging intelligence to get the U.S. into foreign wars) there would be fertile ground for a movie based on a show like "The X-Files", which was already centered around an innate distrust of authority, to take root in. Well, yeah it would be, but that is not this movie. Outside of a cheap shot at Same Sex Marriage and an attempt to minimize institutional pedophilia by the Catholic Church there are no politics in "The X-Files" and precious little conspiracy either.
"X-Files: I Want to Believe" in fact is an effort to get back to the "core" of the original show and go back to those simple Monster of the Week episodes that the original T.V. show did so well. In fact, the entire premise of this film seems to be an lift and extension of a Season One episode of "The X-Files" entitled "Beyond the Sea".
Both are essentially the story of hideous criminals, imprisoned by society, only to be cursed with a psychic connection to a a new killer and his victims that gives them visions that no one believes because, afterall, they are reprobate villains to begin with. But where the original Glen Morgan and James Wong T.V. script for "Beyond the Sea" was a tight, arresting forty five minute thriller with a monstrous Brad Douriff (as serial killer Luther Boggs) in the center of a psychic freak-out, Chris Carter's re-interpretation is a lazy and disjointed two hour snore-fest with a lifeless Billy Connelly drifting towards the bottom like a marshmellow dropped into a not quite set jello salad.
Connelly plays Father Joe, a de-frocked Priest, who, as Scully is quick to remind us, "buggered" thirty seven alter boys, who know lives at some sort of rest home for pedophiles in West Virginia. Of course, a female FBI Agent disappears and Connelly's Father Joe begins having psychic visions of the kidnapped woman. Amanda Peete's Dakota Whitney and Xzbit are confused, so an approach is made to Dana Scully to bring Fox Mulder out of "retirement" because, you know ... he's Fox Mulder.
And about five minutes in ... the plot of "X-Files: I Want to Believe" just kind of stops and idles. This is a thriller where nothing much thrilling happens, this is a horror film where nothing much horrifying happens, this is a movie where people just ... Talk a lot and nothing much happens. When you are lucky enough to stumble into a mildly interesting bit of plot progression that progression only serves as an excuse for more talking.
The script for "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" is just plain bad, okay? From the structure to the non-existent progression of the story. I could easily imagine Rober McKee showing X- Files: I Want to Believe at one of his screen writing seminars as a perfect example of how not to write a script. Ever.
At some point Chris Carter seems to realize that Billy Connelly's Father Joe isn't holding our attention, and the return of Mulder and Scully only goes so far, so he then literally grafts the plot of Frankenstein onto the body of a story that has run out of gas by the hour mark. Only that story goes nowhere either and really doesn't end or climax by the Third Act; more like it thrusts a couple times, rolls over, says goodnight, and then turns out the lights without any real sense of conclusion.
I was literally left sitting in the theater saying out loud, That's It?
The problems with "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" extends beyond the constructed on the fly story. The direction is strictly lackluster and would fit more on a T.V. show in the 1990s, then a feature film in 2008. The editing is lax and bloated. And all the supporting characters could've been carved from blocks of wood and had just as much impact on screen as real life actors.
The only redeeming part of "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" is the reason most die-hard fans are going to see it regardless. Mulder and Scully. For all his inability to write a coherent story or give life to supporting characters, Chris Carter still does know how to write Mulder and Scully. And David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson still know how to play Mulder and Scully.
The sexual tension and one-up-man-ship of their T.V. show relationship is largely gone, replaced by this ease of couple-hood. Mulder and Scully are now like the cool couple upstairs that come over every Friday night to drink wine and watch Netflix with you and your girlfriend. The chemistry is still there. The characters are still there.
But the story that intelligently uses those characters, that chemistry, and still makes you want to believe is gone. And probably forgotten. "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" sets out to re-capture the series hey-day by trying to emulate great standalone X-Files episodes like "Beyond the Sea", and, instead, only serves as a reminder of the series nadir.
Space: Above and Beyond (1995)
Good but Doesn't Hold Up Well
I used to love Space: Above and Beyond when it premiered in 1995. I tracked it across the FOX schedule and followed it into obscurity after only one season. Not that long ago I managed to grab a copy of the DVD on sale at Amazon. And, while its still pretty decent as far as Space Marine Sci-Fi goes, it doesn't hold up well after thirteen years.
The writing and direction still holds up for the most part. Most episodes ring with cheesy notes plucked from T.V.'s COMBAT! and John Wayne Era World War II movies that still work today as long as you don't go in expecting Battlestar Galatica's ripped from reality examination of humanity.
Where Space: Above Beyond fails is twofold.
The Special effects don't hold up at all. Your average Nintendo Wii game can produce better space combat action, and for a T.V. show that hangs so heavily on effects the "Wing Commander 3" graphics are distracting.
The acting also completely fails the show. Outside of James Morrison, and to lesser extents Rodney Rowland and Kristen Cloke, the acting from the rest of the cast is just plain BAD. Particularly Morgan Weisser as Lt. Nathan West ... who plays a battle hardened Marine pilot ... who ... pines constantly for his girlfriend and simply whines far too much to be believed as anything more than the guy who would get shoved in a locker by the real Marines. Not the shoulders to really place a major Network T.V. on. The Writers seemed to realize this about halfway through the first season as "Space Above and Beyond" shifting the lead role onto James Morrison's T.C. McQueen.
"Space Above and Beyond" is still pretty good Sci-Fi, but not great, and the years and the emergence of the new "Battlestar Galactica" hasn't helped it much.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)
Solid and Unremarkable T.V. Version of "Terminator"
As a bit of tangential and apocryphal side story "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" works.
Think of "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" instead as "Highlander" the TV series; a world populated by the same familiar characters and a similar story that doesn't quite line up to its big, cinematic brother.
The show starts off and when we meet the "new" Sarah Connor played by Lena Headley. This is a very different Sarah Connor than the Sarah Connor of Terminator 2.
Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor by Terminator 2 was hard as nails and crazy, driven insane by her foreknowledge of a future Holocaust and her role as a real life Mother Mary of the Future. She was breaking out of mental hospitals, consorting with Mexican Gun Runners, and pump racking shotguns with one hand.
Everyone thought Terminator 2's Sarah Connor was crazy because she saw the future for what it was and because she saw the future for what it was it drove her a little crazy.
Lena Headley retains the hard as nails Sarah Connor while keeping the insane Sarah Connor locked up in the padded room. Gone, I'm afraid, are the Sarah Connor that threatened to shoot up her shrink with a syringe loaded with cleaning fluid. Lena Headley's Sarah Connor isn't as tormented by the future as much as she is really concerned, in loving Mommy way, for her son, John Connor.
Linda Hamilton was a warrior queen that wasn't much of a Mother. Lena Headley's Sarah Connor is a tough MILF who knows her way around the barrel of a gun, but would fit in nicely on Wisteria Lane.
Within ten minutes the show goes through the stock Sarah Connor nuclear holocaust nightmare and then Sarah Connor bounces out on some finance guy we don't care about in suburban America. Why is this Sarah Connor hanging out with a lawyer-type in Suburban America when in Terminator 2 she was consorting with random mercenaries, allow me the use of video game parlance, to level up John Connor's subversive abilities?
Like I keep saying "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" has nothing to do with the "Terminator" movies. Even though they are... sort of.
Sarah and John Connor are soon on the run from a guy from the FBI who provides the necessary backstory for the 10 people that never saw a Terminator movie. And like all good people on the run from the law Sarah and John Connor soon find themselves in New Mexico.
So much for the whole idea fostered by Terminator 2 of living off the grid. In Josh Friedman's world, living off the grid seems to be synonymous with being working class. Hey, in Hollywood that is like living off the grid!
Pretty soon though we are made aware of two facts: There is a Terminator looking for John Connor and that is there is a Terminator in the guise of a hot, teen girl classmate that is sent to protect the Connors. Back to the Terminator on Terminator story again.
Does everyone forget about the original "Terminator" and forget that the guy sent through time to protect was in fact a guy? Not a robot? Why not rip off the plot to the first movie for a change? The Terminator Vs. Terminator plot was fun only because you wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger play the good guy and beat the career out of Robert Patrick and Kristina Loken.
But there is no Arnold in "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". So, why oh why, did we need a Teenager Terminator? Why not a Teenage Human Soldier sent back in time? Of course, you can't do that cool scene where the two robots toss each other through break-away walls for ten minutes.
When the two Terminators turn up the "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" starts to show the creak in the metal endoskeleton. Sure, there are all the great action sequences we know and love from the Terminator Franchise (toned down for Network TV of course). But the plot begins to get rusty and curiously distanced from its cinema backstory.
When Summer Glau's Terminatrix and David Kilde's Terminator shows up Sarah Connor are like, "Oh, hey! Knew you would show up!"
Neither John or Sarah Connor question how this happened, or why, or why they are making hot Teenage Girl Terminators. Nope. Only a brief mention of "Stopping judgment day" in T2 and soon the intrepid trio are off to stop judgment day again.
Totally ignoring the events and timeline of Terminator 3, of course. But then again The Sarah Connor Chronicles has nothing to do with the movies.
This is where "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" tends to fall down. Only the barest lip service is paid to the events of the films even though the TV show is directly tied into both films.
The writing feels really lazy when it comes to knowledge of the original material and the lack of fan service. Or like writing that was sculpted and shaped to reference as little as possible to avoid paying out any un-due residuals. In the end its just not as good. There is nothing original here.
On its own merits "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is pretty decent Network T.V. Not brilliant or great by any means. Watchable definitely. But is that the best a TV series can offer when it comes with a pedigree?
Paranormal State (2007)
Paranormal State is all Turn and no Prestige
I am a pretty much a sucker for those Ghost Hunter shows. From the Cheesy mockumentaries like Discovery Channel's "The Haunting" to Scooby Doo Reality shows like "Ghost Hunters". When I saw promos for A&E's "Paranormal State" I knew I was going to watch. Especially when "Paranormal State" was juxtaposed against a weak Monday Night Football game.
By the end of the pilot of "Paranormal State" when the main "character" in this reality dance macabre gives a Creepy Kid a bottle of Max Von Sydow Holy Water and reassures him by telling this boy that he, too, had a unspecified bad experience as a child with things that "came out of the closet" and the (Catholic) Church gave him a Holy Water to fend off the Things Coming Out of the Closet I knew I should have given Monday Night Football another shot.
The shtick behind "Paranormal State" is a group of Penn State students all got together and started their own Ghost Hunting club. Or Society. Or Super Adventure Club. And they run around Pennsylvania researching the most terrible hauntings and the lost plot to an M. Night Shymalan Movie.
The "They" is kind of a misnomer. Really Paranormal State revolves around a Nittany Lion named Ryan Buell who would probably be running Penn State's yearly Anime Convention if it wasn't for this show. He is often accompanied on "investigations" by hot co-eds and some other people seen in the credits but rarely caught on camera. Hey, are they ghosts too?
This is Ryan Buell's show. Paranormal State is his "vehicle" as we like to say in the Biz. And, oh, what a dull ride in a vehicle he can be.
Did I mention Ryan narrates the entire episode of Paranormal State in a star date-less "director's log" voice over? Almost immediately that gets annoying because the obvious intention is to give Ryan's ghost hunting some gravitas, but his filtered monotone does nothing but provoke grunts and laughs. Seriously, every serious intonation sounds like the radio chatter from a Call of Duty video game.
The "investigations" -- the plot that each episode revolves around -- are interesting on the surface. No haunted Inns or Restaurants to be found in "Paranormal State". This is a show about fearing the unknown like a good Catholic Boy and by god they give you stuff to fear.
Small children are harassed, things loom in the dark, voices encourage the living to kill, and the Aleister Crowely in me rubs my hands. Of the two episodes I watched each revolved around violent, nasty hauntings tied to violent, nasty deaths.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Everything in "Paranormal State" is short-handed into half hour, "Dog the Bounty -- er, Ghost Hunter" blocks. Every time there is an interesting, verifiable shred of evidence -- the murder of a family in a farmhouse in the 1800s -- the proof is waved in front of the viewer like a con artist trying to convince you a stack of papers currently under your nose is proof of that ten million coming from Nigeria and then yanked away before you can get a good gander.
At least with Sci-Fi Channel's "Ghost Hunters" there is a somewhat over-exhaustive need to trot out every possible shred of evidence and present it to the viewer. EVPs that could be a rat farting, cold spots in a drafty house, and "orbs" that even the Ghost Hunters themselves discount as dust. It is a sort of Scooby Doo like approach that makes "Ghost Hunters" ... almost believable.
Whereas "Paranormal State" claims to have EVPs but gives the viewer a ten second video clip of a wave file in Garage Band with no audio. Yep, see, an EVP, right? People are claiming to see dark figures in the basement... Well, we will just go and see about that... while leaving the night vision camera on an enthralling stationary shot of the living room. Ryan, the intrepid leader of this pack of Penn State Graduates, is claiming to see "visions" of a demon's name he knows and that might be involved in a paranormal haunting... But he can't tell us, the audience, or his team of gothed out undergrads, because... He can't. You never say a demon's name out loud, Ryan informs the wide eyed Co-Ed who dare inquires.
Well, how very very convenient for you. Especially since this is a Television Show where the audience cannot read your mind.
"Paranormal State" is all Turn and no Prestige. The audience gets told what is supposedly happening but you never see an ounce of proof that the creepy kid is seeing Dead People. Not even grainy video of a chair moving, or a black blob running between prison cells. Nothing. You are just told what happened by Ryan in yet another mechanical voice over.
If you are going to try and spook me dress it up a little. If you are trying to sway me, show me a orb or a blob and have the fat chick who works days at Hot Topic tell me why that black orb is really the spirit of an ax murderer. And if you want to make me watch a ghost hunting show give me something besides trotting out Lorraine Warren by the second episode.
"Paranormal State" is weak sauce. Not really worth watching unless you are hard up for TV time, or just have that thin of a DVD collection. Or unless you want to know what really happened in that closet with the Holy Water.
The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Very Good Remake, Possibility Better than the Original
I finally got to watch Jonathan Demme's re-make of 'The Manchurian Candidate" I grabbed off Netflix, and as much as it makes me sound like heretic for saying it I think the 2004 re-make is better than the 1962 Frankenheimmer / Sinatra classic. Before you burner my Film-lover's membership card the 1962 version of "The Manchurian Candidate" is still one of the best movies from the Sixties. However, Demme just found a way to do it better in my mind.
Mainly the plot and the style are both way ahead of the original. Demme's version looks and feels like a political version of "Jacob's Ladder". Trippy, paranoid, delusional, and almost alien. I guess that is the way the original felt back in 1962 . Now, however, Frankenheimmer's "Manchurian Candidate" feels campy. The stiff over the top, Studio System style of acting, the rigid slightly formulaic plotting, Henry Silva playing a Chinese Spy. And what exactly was Janet Leigh there for? Everything is deadly serious in Demme's version. (Perhaps almost too serious.) And the plot is more convoluted and yet makes a tad more sense. Gone are the artificial Hollywood conventions that sort of lorded over the original. The good guys can be crazy the bad guys are ambiguous. After a while you begin to question your own sanity.
Not exactly flawless though. Ironically the title seems to be shoe-horned into the plot to an uncomfortable degree; would any multinational corporation really call themselves Manchuria Global? Why not Maosist Revolutionary Front, Inc.? Jon Voight's Senator Jordan has even less to do in this version, and Vera Farmiga's Jocelyn Jordan (hell at least make her dress up in a skimpy poker card outfit) has nothing to do. Liev Schrieber seems to be doing his best Laurence Harvey impersonation except in a couple of scenes were he seems to be acting across from Denzel.
And a lot of the humor and cleverness of the original just got chipped away by the harsh blowing wind of modern reality. Gone is the Communist turned Lady's Garden party, gone is the 'How About a Game of Solitaire', gone is the red queens, gone is that hilarious costume party, and gone is Jodie just flagrantly bouncing around in a bikini like Gidget.
But all in all Jonathan Demme's "The Manchurian Candidate" succeeds on nearly ever level, and brings a modern update to a classic.
One of the best of 2004.