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Reviews
Escape from L.A. (1996)
John Carpenter's Embarrassment
This is one of the dumbest movies I have seen in a long time. And I mean that; the stupid is just OVERFLOWING out of this film. I watched it immediately after watching Escape from New York, and be sure, this monstrosity of a sequel does no justice whatsoever to the first film.
Let me do a recap of just SOME of the stupid for you: - The terrorist in this film is the PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER and she joins forces with a bad Che Guevara knockoff.
- In one of the opening scenes of the film Plisskin inexplicably tries to blow away two of the people sending him on his mission, despite the fact that he NEEDS THEM in order to carry out his mission. His gun makes a lot of noise but doesn't harm them, at which point the two people tell him, "We thought you'd do that. That's why we filled your first magazine with blanks." GENIUS! They totally KNEW that Plisskin would randomly try to kill them for no reason whatsoever.
-Shortly after this scene, Plisskin embarks upon his journey to Los Angeles by way of a jet-powered submarine that can SOMEHOW GENERATE THRUST UNDERWATER (as if it were a a fighter jet) DESPITE THAT THIS VIOLATES BASIC LAWS OF PHYSICS. While underwater, he puts the thruster into 100% overdrive, ignoring his commanding officers (the ones he randomly tried to kill earlier) who advise him that he shouldn't do so. What follow are shots of Kurt Russell in his submarine careening through one of the most laughably bad CGI sequences ever put to film. The highlight of this sequence is that, as Kurt Russell is underwater, he passes the wreckage of Universal Studios sign, and a giant shark comes out of nowhere and tries to eat the submarine, but misses it completely. The shark is completely unconvincing and wreaks of not only a poor special effects budget, but also a poor effort on the part of the effects team all around.
-A scene in which Kurt Russell surfs a giant tidal wave in a sewer while AT THE SAME TIME Steve Buscemi is cruising alongside him in a hot ride. (I can't make this stuff up) -And finally, in order to save his life, Plisskin must earn 10 points in a basketball court. Plisskin DOES accomplish this heroic feat (we are literally shown Russell running up to the goal to make lay-ups) and yet the bad guy (the Che Guevara knockoff) STILL decides to shoot him, but remarkably, Plisskin just hops over the fence and escapes unscathed. (Also of note in this scene. We first see a guy who doesn't get 10 points, and so he is shot. The way this is done is so brainless... basically there are tons of set up right outside the fence, lining the basketball court. So picture the basketball court as a rectangle, and there are guys EVERYWHERE, on all sides of the rectangle, tons of them. Well, when they are ordered to kill the guy, EVERY ONE OF THEM fires blindly at the guy in the center of the court. If this movie had an ounce of intelligence, most of the bad guys would be dead from shooting each other!) -Toward the end of the film, Plisskin hangglides (along with Buscemi and the president's daughter) into a warzone, mowing guys down with a submachine gun, all the while remaining completely unscathed.
Now rest assured -- if you consider yourself a connoisseur of the stupid, there is PLENTY more of it in this film. What I offered are simply SOME of the highlights. And no, none of this is intended as camp. I have SEEN camp, and this is not it. This is ATROCIOUS and indecisive writing that tries to do a lot of things and FAILS at everything. As if the barrage of stupid weren't enough, the plot is also incoherent and unclear.
What really kills this movie for me is the wasted opportunity it is. Escape From New York was at its core an enjoyable movie that took liberties with reality but ultimately followed it more than it deviated. In EFNY, Plisskin was just a badass war veteran taking people out with his silenced TMP submachine gun. In EFLA, Plisskin is some kind of borderline comic book super hero with a trench-coat and placticized toy-looking guns that have no place in reality. Really, NONE of this movie has any place in reality, which made my suspension of disbelief IMPOSSIBLE. The events of EFNY were a little "out there", sure, but not to the extent that I couldn't suspend belief and enjoy things.
EFLA is dumb trash, plain and simple. I don't even recommend this movie to hardcore EFNY fans as you have already seen this movie -- the GOOD version.
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
It's PG-13, but it's still Die Hard
(may contain possible spoiler in plot outline, but nothing major)
I just got back from Live Free or Die Hard, the new Die Hard flick with the utterly convoluted title. What's with that? Why not Die Hard 4? Why wasn't it Rocky 6? Are they ashamed they made so many sequels? They probably should be.
As I shuffled into the jam-packed theater, I was beset by a certain apprehension that the Internet made clear was shared by legions of Die Hard fans: that this movie wasn't going to be Die Hard -- but instead that the uncharacteristic PG-13 rating would denigrate this movie into Die Feeble or Die Frail.
Fortunately, the demotion to PG-13 did NOT affect the level of violence or testosterone too much. The only thing notably missing from the flick is the F-bomb, which gets substituted with "shit", a suitable replacement that ranks only slightly below than the F-bomb on "The Big List O' Words Your Mom Slapped You For." The plot line revolves around a greasy hacker kid who unwittingly writes a line of code that's hi-jacked by a group of rogue terrorists who intend to wage technological warfare on the United States by shutting down power grids, causing the stock market to collapse, and creating anarchy. The main baddie's motivation stems from the fact that he tried to convince Homeland Security to pay more attention to easily exploitable holes in their computer networking. They didn't listen to him, so, to prove a point, he hacked into their system and gave them a preview of the havoc that could be caused. The government's response was to vilify him, so this time, it's personal, and he's out to do as much damage as possible.
John McClane's mission this time around is to protect the hacker kid, whom the baddies are attempting to kill. Why are they trying to kill him? Because he is the only person with the knowledge of how to stop the technological chaos.
What follows is a series of cliff-hanger moments and heart-pounding action scenes rendered with believable and breathtaking special effects that are amazing to behold.
Bruce Willis is on top of his game. His McClane is older, wiser, and balder. Willis does a marvelous job of generating empathy for his character; the audience in the theater I attended was putty in his hands, clapping and cheering when he spouted his soon-to-be-classic one-liners.
Live Free or Die Hard can almost be called a buddy flick. Much of the humor stems from the contrasts between McClane and hacker kid, Matt Farrell. It's cool that the punchlines are generated from the differences in age and temperament, rather than tired racial quirks explored by so many other forgettable buddy flicks.
The movie is suspenseful, packed with action, and despite its PG-13 rating, lots of dudes (and some dudettes!) get wasted in brutal fashion. They perhaps spent a little less time actually showing the baddies suffering from their wounds, but I didn't really notice it.
The story is a bit crazy, and one gets the sense that the incredible feats that McClane pulls off are unlikely to happen in "real life", but hey, it's Die Hard. It's not meant to be micro-analyzed for realism. It's meant to be enjoyed for what it is. A kick-ass, balls to the wall action flick. I definitely felt I got my money's worth, and I can, with relief, assure you that the PG-13 rating didn't really tarnish the movie in any major way. The majority of the acting is passably good, but Willis's charisma shines brightly. He was born to play this role. The CG effects are really fantastic, and none of them looked obviously "computerized", which is something I feel really detracts from the immersion of a lot of movies.
If you're up for some laughs, some thrills, and some "holy !@$%, that looks amazing!" moments, go see it.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Over-hyped
I went into the theater with great expectations and left disappointed and angry.
Yes, angry.
The CGI effects in this film are wonderful, and the webslinging scenes are simply amazing, but the script is roadkill.
There are so many cheesy moments in this movie that you'll be hard-pressed to take it seriously. Most of them stem from the Peter Parker-Mary Jane love affair, which is composed of a lovey-dovey infatuation that had me gagging throughout the entire two hours.
Minor spoilers ahead:
Doc Octopus is a good villain in the beginning, but he has an identity crisis and can't seem to decide whether he wants to be evil or not. What is this? He is the VILLAIN! He's supposed to be sick and twisted, yet the viewer is made to sympathize with him too much; the result is that the viewer isn't emotionally invested in Spiderman's cause whenever he battles Doc Ock.
The ending is very anti-climactic. Don't expect anything special.
Spoiler's over.
The original Spiderman is better than Spidey2. As it stands, Spiderman2 is a rehash of Spiderman1, except it's love story is cheesier, it's villain is worse, and it focuses too much on psycho-analyzing Peter Parker instead of on who everyone is paying to see- SPIDERMAN.