Netflix – Page 10 – Blue Ink Alchemy

Category: Netflix (page 10 of 27)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Judge Dredd

(apologies to Mr. Poledouris whose name I horribly mispronounce.)
[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/judge_dredd.mp3]

There’s a part of me that’s glad I didn’t get into writing for comic books. More than likely, I’d have had to cut my teeth on an established title, continuing a storyline that’s been running for months if not years. And if I wanted to spread my wings a little, get a bit creative with character beats or backstory exploration? Whoo, boy. That would invite the ire and derision of a group I know well enough to fear for I once counted myself among them: the comic book fanboy. It’s the penchant for exaggeration, lionization of established canon and somewhat skewed expectations that caused such a group to call Judge Dredd nothing less than a cinematic aberration conjured from the depths of their sweatiest nightmares. It isn’t that bad. Then again, it isn’t all that great, either.

In the wake of nuclear near-annihilation, the survivors of humanity with anything resembling wealth or influence huddled together in titanic Mega-Cities, leaving the have-nots in a barren wasteland called the Cursed Earth. Humanity stifles and chafes in close quarters, so law and order collapsed as people fought for every scrap they could get their hands on. This lead to the rise of the Judges, imposing and implacable members of an elite order who served as both police, officers of the court and executioners of the lawless. The most famous, most feared and most implacable of them is Judge Dredd. He doesn’t just serve the Law – he IS the Law.

So much for the premise, taken from the pages of the 2000 AD comics in which Dredd was the biggest star. A British mag with a dark sense of humor and a penchant for violence, 2000 AD wasn’t interested in making their characters shining beacons of heroism or even nice guys. Judge Dredd hunted the bad guys, and when he found them he tended to make the Punisher look like a reasonable, well-balanced fellow. He didn’t smile, or take off his helmet, or give the bad guys much of a chance to try and beg for mercy. As you can imagine, he was pretty popular, which is why they tried to make a movie about him.

“Admit it, you just wanted to do something like Demolition Man again.”

Of course, this was before writers and directors really started to get comic book movies right, so the film adaptation of Judge Dredd plays more like a video game than it does a gritty, post-apocalyptic exploration of a rather extreme version of law enforcement. The humor isn’t dark or ironic but mostly superficial and one-note. In fact, “superficial” is a great adjective for this flick. On the surface, the names, costumes, weaponry and locations are those from the comics, but the attempt to include as much cool stuff from the funny pages as possible results in what would charitably be considered a tangled, nearly incoherent and badly paced mess. It’s pretty clear that we’re not working with high concept art here, nor are we being terribly loyal to the source material. By now I’m sure at least one Dredd fan is wishing I hadn’t brought up the memory of this movie in the first place and is about to knock on my door in their replica Judge costume to tell me how I violated the Law.

While the writing is a hot mess and the direction’s pretty turgid, the movie isn’t without merit. Sly Stallone in the title role gives Dredd a practiced stoic distance that erodes as circumstances remove him from the daily routine of shooting block war perpetrators in the face. Max von Sydow and Jurgen Prochnow take the opportunity to have a little fun with their Chief Justice characters, which I suspect is something you have to do when you need to slog through something like this. Armand Assante, however, takes the prize as the actor who took the most bites of the scenery. His portrayal of the ‘perfect criminal’ Rico is delivered with such malicious mayhem and over-the-top physicality that you almost forget how badly this plot rolls over the premise. It pushes Judge Dredd very close to the line of “so bad its good.”

“You mean I can’t just act like a schmuck the entire time? But… that’s hard…”

A rousing score from Basil Poledouris makes this movie sound a lot more grandiose than it really is. Diane Lane gives us a relatively strong female lead who feels like a visitor from a better film, while the ‘Angel family’ in the Cursed Earth takes the flick into the realm of the weird for a moment and are quickly forgotten. I would be remiss, however, if I did not give Judge Dredd what I feel is the greatest compliment I have for it. This film, for all its flaws and blatant disregard for source material loyalty, characterization, plausibility and good taste, is the one time I have not completely loathed Rob Schneider.

And any film that can do that, I feel, is worth at least a cursory glance on your Netflix queue. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a good movie. However, unless you’re one of the aforementioned Judge Dredd fans about to burn my house down, I’d say it may just entertain, even if you just laugh your ass off at how much these veterans of the silver screen ham it up. It may not be the best comic-book action-adventure ever made, but as long as X-Men: Origins: Wolverine is out there, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Judge Dredd.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Blazing Saddles

April 22, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

{Audio returns next week.}

Hatred is, unfortunately, nothing new. There are people even today who have built their lives, fortunes and reputations around rhetoric that perpetuates ignorance and blind intolerance. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Nazis, the Crusades to Mao’s Great Leap Forward, sooner or later somebody somewhere is going to react in a violent and ugly fashion to somebody who’s different. It falls to those of us with tolerance, love for our fellow man and enough wherewithal to keep the things that actually matter in mind to combat this fear and hatred any way we can – even if it’s just by taking the piss out of those cretins. Hence, Blazing Saddles.

The year is 1874. The location, an unnamed territory of the American West. The attorney general of the territory, Hedley Lamarr (no relation to the similarly named actress of the 70s), wants to cultivate the land with railways to earn himself even more wealth than he already has. Standing in the way of his railroad is the quaint frontier town of Rock Ridge. When their old sheriff is murdered in an attack by Lamarr’s goons, they wire the governor for a new one. In his effort to drive out the people, Lamarr conscripts a man named Bart. Bart, incidentally, is black.

At its best, comedy is a way of holding a mirror up to the more absurd aspects of modern life, calling attention to stupid things we take for granted or as the status quo through way of parody or satire. For a long time, the western was seen as perhaps the manliest of the movie genres, with rough and tumble two-fisted fighting men gunning their way to victory. Nearly every single one was white. Moreover, this was a time when minorities were just beginning to come into their civil rights, yet still had to deal with a great deal of hatred, pre-conceived notions and harsh epithets. Enter legendary comedic film-maker, biting satirist and prominent Jewish-American Mel Brooks. It takes perhaps a particular kind of genius or insanity to look at the litany of Western cinema up until this point, and say “You know what? Why don’t we have a black guy in the lead role?” You can guess how some people reacted.

This is a point covered in the movie, and in fact directly addressed in an exchange between Bart, played quite well by Cleavon Little, and the always memorable Gene Wilder as Jim the Waco Kid. I won’t spoil the line, as it’s one of many great ones in the flick, but suffice it to say Jim hits the nail directly on its racist head. The very notion of the black leading man with a white sidekick can be amusing enough to consider on its own, but with these two actors the combination’s dynamite. They have great chemistry which only makes the punchlines funnier.

Considering the amount of comedic firepower Brooks had at his disposal it’s no wonder Blazing Saddles is thought of by many as his best work. Harvey Korman adds the perfect mix of presence and insanity to Hedley Lamarr, the townsfolk of Rock Ridge are great and Madeline Kahn nearly stops the show as Bavarian bombshell Lily von Shtupp. Not because she’s devastatingly sexy, though she is in her prime here – it’s because she is, like so many other things in the movie, pointing out something just a tad absurd. Like stopping in the middle of a rustic narrative to have a good-looking woman do a song and dance routine. It’s out of place in most serious films; but here, with Lily sounding more like a dying badger than a breathless lady of the evening, it’s just funny. It takes talent to sing; it takes real talent to deliberately sing this badly.

If Blazing Saddles has a flaw it doesn’t manifest itself until halfway through the third act. A sprawling, rolling fistfight for the fate of Rock Ridge spills out of the town – and into a neighboring movie studio. What follows is one of the most complete evaporations of the fourth wall I think I’ve ever seen. Chaos is unleashed upon Warner Brothers studios even going as far as the famous Grauman’s Chinese theatre in Hollywood. It’s known that Brooks was sat down by studio executives before the film was released and given a list of changes they wanted him to make, toning down the racist language and otherwise de-fanging all of the humor. Brooks, who had final say in the cut of the film, diligently took notes at this meeting, and when it was concluded, threw his notes in the garbage. This sudden shift at the end of Blazing Saddles could be Brooks taking a shot at the excesses, expectations and general idiocy he saw in the studio system. Or he could just have trouble ending his movies.

Either way, Blazing Saddles is hysterical from beginning to end. A tightly-written script assisted by Richard Pryor (excepting perhaps that last bit) is packed with humor ranging from the aforementioned epithets to what some consider the very first cinematic fart joke. This stands with his History of the World Part 1 and Young Frankenstein as some of the funniest parodies ever made. So powerful was the imagery, humor and outright Western silliness of Blazing Saddles that it was many, many years before another serious Western was made in Hollywood. For all these reasons and more, it’s a movie that belongs on your Netflix queue. If you ever look around the world at crimes perpetuated for the sake of hate based on the color of a victim’s skin, their gender or the people with whom they fall in love, I suggest you watch Blazing Saddles. Not only will you find yourself laughing, you’ll be reminded that people who act, think and speak based on such hatreds have ignorance and ignorance alone on their side. Mel’s filmmaking, jokes and excellent cast will show you just how short-sighted, misinformed, brutish and downright stupid those morons are. And there’s a pretty great pie fight at the end, complete with Adolf Hitler.

Don’t ask. Just watch the flick.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Shutter Island

April 15, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

{No audio this week, still adjusting to the new work schedule.}

I’m sure that most of the people reading this review have at least one dog-eared copy of a paperback novel lying around somewhere. Let me ask you something: why have you read that book more than once? I’m willing to hazard a guess. Even though you know how the story ends, the telling of the story is still a worthwhile and entertaining experience. That, in a nutshell, is how I would describe Shutter Island.

Set in the mid-50s, the eponymous island is home to an asylum for the criminally insane. One of the inmates has escaped and there’s a gigantic hurricane bearing down on Boston. Enter US Marshall Teddy Daniels and new partner Chuck Aule, arriving on the island just before the storm. As much as their primary purpose is to find the missing crazy woman, Daniels is also looking for something, or someone, else. And on this island, it seems like everybody has something to hide, including Teddy himself.

Now, it’s a year on from when this movie came out, and it’s highly likely you’ve at least seen a trailer, or gotten the twist ending spoiled for you. No, I’m not going to spoil it here, but even if you have figured out how this one is going to end, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch it. Like that beloved paperback, Shutter Island is less about telling a new story and more about telling a good one. And cinematic storytellers don’t come much better than Martin Scorsese.

Some of these visuals are just stunning.

It’s no secret Scorsese has an eye for talent. He’s worked with editor Thelma Schoonmaker since Raging Bull. He made eight films with Robert DeNiro, including the aforementioned Raging Bull which DeNiro convinced Scorsese to do for reasons that may have saved the director’s life. And here, in Shutter Island, we have his fourth collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio. Once again, Scorsese gives Leo an opportunity to show his chops as a wise-cracking tough guy, an emotionally scarred and troubled man, an intelligent detective and even a veteran. Pulling off these disparate beats while keeping the character consistent and compelling is no mean feat, but DiCaprio inhabits his role perfectly.

In addition to this strong lead, Shutter Island features a fantastic supporting cast of character actors. While Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams do a great deal of the heavy lifting in this tale, there are some small or even one-scene performances that stick out in one’s mind, speaking to the power of these actors in their roles. Ted Levine, Jackie Earl Haley and Elias Kostas do such a fantastic job nailing their characters down in just a handful of lines – or, in Kostas’ case, about two lines and some very effective leering – that they’re likely to be remembered long after the credits roll.

Forgive me, it’s Sir Ben Kingsley.

All of this great acting is framed in the extremely atmospheric setting of Shutter Island itself. Between the old Civil War construction, the archaic equipment and the period dress of the 1950s, the film takes on a noir detective feeling that works as a great, concrete counterpoint to the psychological horror that is the crux of the narrative. As much as Daniels begins to question and cling to his sanity, so does the audience attempt to hold onto the mystery as it was introduced, even as a new mystery slowly emerges to take its place. Granted, some viewers will have seen the ‘new’ mystery coming from the beginning, but as I said before, this is a yarn more concerned with telling the tale well than the tale being told.

In that aspect, the only real flaw that can be pointed out in Shutter Island is the nature of the plot that makes the twist at the end, in some measure, predictable. For a movie that seems to be aiming to be equal parts Inception and old carnival spook house (a comparison that wouldn’t have made sense when the movie came out), the lack of screenplay contrivance can seem incongruous, like it’s too straight-forward in the telling. The film, however, plays this weakness as a strength, making the plot just about the least important thing about it. The talent, artistry, atmosphere and characters completely overwhelm the plot and construct a very good storytelling experience. It belongs on your Netflix queue if you’re a fan of any of these actors, detective stories right at home in a Lovecraft anthology, old-fashioned head-screwy horror or, it goes without saying, Martin Scorsese. The man’s proven over and over that his talent for telling stories through film is peerless, and Shutter Island is no exception.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

April 8, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/bad_lieutenant.mp3]

In 1992, vocal independent director Abel Ferrara teamed up with Harvey Keitel to make Bad Lieutenant, the story of an abusive and sleazy cop of the NYPD charged with solving the case of a raped nun. While he was self-indulgent, scandalous and even downright cruel, there existed a glimmer of humanity in the man that few rarely saw. I’m talking of the nameless Lieutenant here, not Ferrara. When revolutionary director Werner Herzog picked up the notion of the corrupt cop for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, Abel Ferrara loudly and repeatedly declared that everybody involved in it should drop dead, despite the fact that this is neither a remake nor a sequel. It’d be like calling Moonraker a remake of Goldfinger.

The film opens in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina. The lead character of the title is one Terence McDonagh. He’s a bit of a selfish prick, keen to gamble and quick to dismiss the plight of others, but he’s still a cop in service to the public. Mostly. The events of the hurricane leave him with a back problem that puts him on Vicodin, which in turn leads to a whole slew of harder drugs and a lifestyle that verges on entirely self-destructive. If it weren’t for his work as a homicide detective, he’d unravel faster than a spool of yarn trapped in a spin cycle. But he does have that work, and he is good at it… when he’s not abusing his position to get whatever he wants from whomever he wants, whenever he wants.

This is going to be a divisive film. McDonagh is completely unapologetic in his pursuit of pleasure, intoxication and money. He’s either going to be seen as an unredeemable monster barely kept leashed by his ties to the police department, or the magnificent sort of crazy that just needs to be pointed in the right direction to get dizzying results. New Orleans is the perfect environment for him to fester, given its heady mix of music, magic, sleaze, indulgences and mystery. And I can’t think of an actor better equipped to give this character life than Nicholas Cage.

I’ve previously mentioned my affinity for the man, even when he’s being grossly mishandled. He, too, is a talent that requires a particular touch to get the most out of his manic energy. And McDonagh is just manic on his best days. The rest of the time he’s indulging in one behavior or another that’s going to land him square in an early grave, be it from overdosing or bullets. When they say “cop on the edge,” in the case of McDonagh, they mean it. Only in this case, that edge is the edge of total insanity. Cage projects this extremely well, etching the character of the bad lieutenant firmly in our minds and making his antics as memorable as they are deplorable.

Speaking of “the cop on the edge” in terms of movie cliches, there’s something I noticed as the film’s plot unfolded. There’s a teenager who witnessed the murders in question. McDonagh gets saddled with a dog. His girlfriend’s a hooker with a heart of gold. More and more of these get piled on, until one gets the impression that we’re not just watching a cop movie. We are, in a way, watching every cop movie ever, fed through the drug-stained filter of the bad lieutenant. These little tongue-in-cheek elements mixed with the noir nature of the case and its participants and the insanity of the lead character might have been too much for another director to handle, even the venerable Mr. Ferrara or even Tarantino, but not Werner Herzog. He makes it look easy.

Not only does Herzog mix these elements in just about the perfect balance, he underscores just how strange the world of McDonagh becomes. As quickly as we are made aware of the lead character’s skewed world view, the more adeptly that view is conveyed to us in a way so coherent our own masks of sanity may begin to slip. In most other productions, things like dancing souls or phantom iguana might seem like a totally out-of-nowhere, but here it’s only slightly more strange than some of the other stuff that happens. This is probably the most coherent incoherency you’ll see for quite some time, drive by the most memorable, sadistic and completely bonkers protagonist since American Psycho.

As I said, this is likely to be a divisive film. Some will appreciate the high-wire act Cage and Herzog are performing, others will wonder exactly how McDonagh pulls off some of the things that would make him a good cop if it weren’t for his off-duty habits, and still others will downright hate the thing due to the casual drug use, abusive language, violence, insanity and general sleaze. I feel that, whatever camp you fall into, you should check out Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans via the Netflix Instant service, because I guarantee you, you will not see anything like it any time soon, if ever again. The script is well-plotted, the acting is great on all fronts, the direction is top notch and the overall effect will stick with you long after the credits roll. Granted, you might want a shower to get that filthy stickiness off afterwards, but that’s up to the individual viewer. If nothing else, here is the perfect example of how to get the most out of Nicholas Cage, instead of sticking him in something completely lifeless like Trapped in Paradise. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans is anything but lifeless. It’s energetic, powerful, completely out of its mind, oblivious to any objections you might raise against it and while you might be wondering whether or not you want to watch it, let me assure you: it’s a bit like the One Ring. It wants to be watched.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Druids

April 1, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/druids.mp3]

There are a great many cautionary tales that carry the message “Be careful what you wish for.” Some of the most potent come from our own history. For example, never allow yourself to be dared to do something you normally do with compensation for free, just ‘for the fun of it.’ It isn’t fun at all when you need to review a movie like Druids.

The title’s misleading, in a way, as druids only exist peripherally to the historical tale of Gaul warlord and king Vercingetorix. It’s likely that the production companies behind this awful film figured that was too many syllables for large American mouths trying to talk around the processed meat of their Whoppers. Anyway, Vercingetorix united the fractured tribes of Gaul in 52 BC against rising Roman proconsul Gaius Julius Caesar. While other chieftains never managed to get more than a few tribes on their side before another chieftain decided he had bigger balls, Vercingetorix dropped his mighty brass ones on everybody’s faces until they fell in line, and introduced the world to scorched earth warfare. Unfortunately, the tribal leaders remained fractured without his leadership, and when he became beseiged at Alesia and sent out for aid, the aid that came was practically leaderless and faced fortified Roman positions. In the end, Vercingetorix surrendered in person to Caesar, who imprisoned him and later executed the King of the Gauls at his Triumph in 44 BC, just a few steps from the Senate where he would be stabbed to death himself.

As stories go, in and of themselves, that’s a pretty good one. It takes real effort to butcher the narrative into something nearly unwatchable. You begin with your basic Anachronism Stew, which in this case is equal parts middle ages European architecture, horned helmets for the Gauls, period inappropriate armor for the Romans and stirrups on all of the horses. Mix in the facts of the events from a Grade 9 history textbook, write some dialog with the skill and editorial sense of a Final Fantasy fanfic writer, give the actors their direction in the vein of a high school dramatics production, fill the scenes with generic music, and presto! You’ve got a shitty movie.

One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it isn’t sure how best to approach its material. On the one hand, it seems like they’re trying to convey the timbre and timing of the events as they happened before the birth of Christ. On the other, it feels like they’re trying to cast Vercingetorix as the bastard butt-baby of William Wallace and Conan the Barbarian. The involvement of the druids seems to indicate that our hero has a mystical destiny, or at the very least special powers or a magic sword. The way the camera slows down, then speeds up, then slows down again during his ‘training’ certainly point things in that direction. Then again, these shots are so disjointed and crappy I think the director might have been drunk through the entire production.

Get used to that expression, he wears it the whole film.

There are so many bad production and editorial decisions on display, I don’t even know where to begin. Playing the role of Vercingetorix is Christopher Lambert, who delivers his lines so woodenly I suspect he attends Entmoots with Hayden Christensen and Channing Tatum, which says nothing about a stare so dead it shames any game BioWare’s ever made. Max von Sydow is the archdruid and I kept asking the man what he was doing in this turd. Gone is the cultured gravitas of Leland Gaunt or the mystery of Doctor Kynes or the malevolent glee of Ming the fucking Merciless; hell, this makes me want to watch Judge Dredd again so I can see the man do something at least approaching his level of grandeur. And a robot that tears people’s limbs off, and Rob Schneider in a role where I didn’t completely hate his annoying ass. …What was I talking about? Oh, right, Druids. Or The Gaul. Or Vercingetorix or whatever it’s actually called in its native French. What’s French for “Don’t watch this turd”, I wonder?

That’s another thing. This film was shot in both French and English, but it’s all dubbed. One moment the characters are speaking synced English and the next they’re obviously speaking in French but the words we hear aren’t in that language. Hell, some of the English lines are so badly dubbed while English is being spoken it’s like they didn’t know how to speak any language properly. If it had all been in French with subtitles, at least I could change the emoting in my head to spice up the flat, lifeless dialogue. It’s writing so stilted and ungainly it makes me want to cry. People don’t talk like this, even when you translate French to English. Just ask Luc Besson. Or better yet, go watch The Professional or The Fifth Element. Don’t watch this film.

“No, Mr. Vercingetorix, I expect you to die.”

On top of the awful writing, the shoddy direction, the abyssmal soundtrack and the unforgivable abuse of pre-BCE French history, there’s the portrayal of Caesar. It’s one thing to portray one of the most influential figures in Roman history as an intelligent, calculating and ultimately ruthless man; it’s quite another to cast him as little more than a Bond villain. And yet here we have him, a noble Italian gentleman of both arms and letters, played by a roly-poly Austrian dude who’s biggest claim to fame is being… well, a Bond villain. The one from Never Say Never Again, in fact, where he plays a video game with Bond. He doesn’t so much display charm and aplomb as much as he oozes the sort of slimy, ambitious arrogance that just makes your skin crawl. I mean, sure, maybe Caesar really was like that but with this guy in the role it makes the Roman Reich feel a hell of a lot like the Third.

And… now that I’ve Godwin‘d this review it’s probably time to end it. I think I’ve made, belabored and overstated my point: Do not watch this film. Watch the HBO/BBC series Rome for a much better take on the history of the period. Watching the aformentioned Besson films for good French action and direction. Hell, go watch Flash Gordon to see Max von Sydow enjoying himself instead of letting the man who’s been dead inside since he stopped being the Highlander kick him in the ass.

Category: Netflix (page 10 of 27)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Judge Dredd

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Blazing Saddles

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Shutter Island

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Druids

Buy This Book!

Search the Blog

Recent Posts

Getcher Updates!

Works

Legal Stuff

Categories

Archives