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IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Trapped in Paradise

This week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! brought to you by a generous donation by Mike Jarossy. Thank you for your support!

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

The holiday season is upon us once again. Just today I saw my first snowfall. I caught sight of it while watching Trapped in Paradise, a caper comedy from the 90s. Why was I looking out the window instead of at the movie, you ask? Because, for once, we have a little truth in advertising. The key word in the title of this completely unfunny and utterly lifeless flick is not “paradise”, but rather “trapped.”

Bill Firpo is a reformed thief trying to run a restaurant in New York City. His brothers, Dave and Alvin, are let out of prison into Bill’s custody. Almost immediately, Dave yanks Bill into a plot to knock over a bank in a sleepy Pennsylvania town on Christmas Eve. The town is so sleepy and the bank’s security so lax, it practically robs itself. However, two other cons had been sizing up the bank, the local yokels running the general store are deputy sheriffs and there’s a major blizzard about to slap the town silly. And because that clearly wasn’t enough for the writers, save for the bank teller who gets a pass because she’s the love interest and Bill himself, everybody, and I mean everybody, is either incredibly nice or incredibly stupid. And… that’s funny? I guess?

I’ll say this for Trapped in Paradise – it’s shot crisply and cleanly. Considering this is a holiday movie and we want things looking nice and idyllic to get people in the mood for overindulgences in shopping, eating and passive-aggressive family awkwardness, you don’t want to catapult your audience out of the experience with shoddy camera work. And the locales do look nice. It definitely looks a lot like some of the small towns nestled into the forest-covered mountains of Pennsylvania, and I did find myself wishing I was in one of those towns. Playing a game of Arkham Horror, perhaps, or finding a local pub warmed by a wood-fueled fireplace and serving a nice stout. Hell, I’d have settled for watching rednecks waddle through Wal*Mart after a turkey binge over this crap.

And, seriously. What’s up with these hats?

The big draw of this movie is that two of its three leading men were pretty big comedians back when it was shot. Jon Lovitz is that kind of cynical comic who takes after Rodney Dangerfield, more often than not playing up his obvious lack of Hollywood handsomeness for laughs of varying degrees. His best work, in my opinion, was on Saturday Night Live as Master Thespian or on the short-lived animated series The Critic. In both instances his wit was acerbic, his timing was excellent and his physical presence adding to the comedy rather than being its focal point. Trapped in Paradise instead saddles him with either ADHD or some form of Asperger’s Syndrome, as he never seems to be able to remain focused when he’s outside of some scheme or other. Any comedian could have played this role. It wouldn’t have been any better, I’m just saying it’s utterly generic holiday caper stuff.

And then, there’s Dana Carvey. Here we have a comedic chameleon. I mean, this guy played Hans (of Hans & Franz), the Church Lady and Garth Algar, sometimes all within the same hour. He’s done all sorts of impressions, from George H.W. Bush to Johnny Carson, from Woody Allen to Frank Zappa. In this, he’s doing an impression… of a retard. Who’s also a kleptomaniac. Couldn’t they have written the script so he could be himself for once? Did they have to force him into a nasal, annoying, high-pitched voice for every line and make him stupid? Usually in a comedy of this type you have one part of the team who’s the straight man and the other one bumbling around. Trapped in Paradise tries to give us two bumblers and ends up dropping the whole enterprise when it tosses the plot to them and they start arguing about who gets to carry it.

Yeah. Hilarious.

The only – and I do mean only – saving grace in this disaster of writing and acting is Nicholas Cage. And even he gets mishandled every other scene. At first, he seemed to be yanked back and forth by his own compulsions. He wants to do the right thing but he’s something of a career thief. The moment the other two ignorant jerks get involved, however, they almost immediately bring out the worst in him. And I don’t mean in terms of crime, I mean in terms of schizophrenic flip-flopping between that straight and tortured portrayal and just plain torture. If anybody’s trapped in this movie, it’s poor Nick Cage. The director can’t even seem to give him a consistent accent or manner of speech. He’s so completely wasted in this trash it makes me want to cry.

In a comedy, if your leading team isn’t funny, the rest of the damn picture doesn’t stand a chance. The jokes fall flat almost immediately, the story nearly grinds to a halt several times, none of the lines feel genuine and Paradise is apparently built over an ancient mystical portal to another realm that constantly churns out patrol cars. I’ve seen some pretty horrible things lately: the latest round of elections in this country, the bills from my utility companies, the box off returns from Scott Pilgrim. But I would take getting told by tea baggers how much I hate freedom by supporting federal health care, get paddled by bill collectors and have anonymous douchebags on the Internet tell me how awesome The Expendables is over watching Trapped in Paradise again. Hopefully, by the time you read or hear this, I will be passed out and in the throes of a turkey coma so deep, I’ll have forgotten this stinking, steaming and utter turd of a movie ever existed.

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.

There Goes That Desert Bus

November 20, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

It’s that time again, folks.

The fine Canadian comedians of Loading Ready Run have taken to the road once more. In a manner of speaking. The 4th Annual Desert Bus For Hope, I believe subtitled “A New Hope”, is underway. They’ve already been playing the world’s most boring video game for 9 hours as of this writing.

For those of you who don’t know, this annual event is similar to the Extra Life challenge, in that intrepid gamers take on a marathon session for charity. Desert Bus, however, lasts much longer than 24 hours. It lasts as long as the donations do. And the crew at Loading Ready Run play only one game: Desert Bus, an unreleased game on Sega CD that was part of Penn & Teller’s Smoke & Mirrors. You drive a bus from Tuscon to Las Vegas. There’s no traffic, very little scenery and the bus occasionally veers a bit to the right, so you can’t tape down a button to do something else in order to complete the journey.

Sound like fun? It isn’t.

Last year they raised over $140,000 for the Child’s Play charity, which benefits children’s hospitals with donations of toys, games, books and cash. This year I’d love to see them break the $200,000 mark. That means they’d be playing Desert Bus for at least a week straight.

Visit their site or the special feature over at the Escapist. Give what you can. Check out the things they do to amuse themselves while they play this tedious excuse for a video game. There are auctions, special guests and more than a few surprises.

And remember, it’s for the children.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Demolition Man

October 29, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

This week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! brought to you by a generous donation by Maggie Carroll. Thank you for your support!

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

Let’s face it. If you’re over a certain age, you’re going to look back on past years more favorably than you do on the present. Food tasted better, games were more enjoyable, and movies didn’t suck as much. It’s a little thing called ‘nostalgia,’ and it can color criticism of things we experienced as we grew up. If you’re aware of this, you can push past those feelings of affection and avoid sounding like an unprofessional commentator stuck in a bygone time, much like the protagonist in Demolition Man. Eerily, as time goes on, the movie itself seems like a relic of the past.

The movie opens in 1996 Los Angeles where two very transparently named characters do battle. Police detective John Spartan tracks his arch-nemesis Simon Phoenix to an embattled warehouse and takes the bad guy down. In doing so, he is the unwitting cause of some civilian deaths and put on ice. Literally. The new cryogenic prison is tested on these two, with Spartan eligible for parole in 40 years while Phoenix is put away for life. Fast forward to 2032, and the coastal cities of California have been conglomerated under the direction of Doctor Raymond Cocteau, who has brought order out of anarchy through some benevolent social engineering that’s outlawed things like violence, “physical fluid exchange”, bad language and spicy food. Phoenix escapes his parole hearing into this sunshiny society, which is seeking to stamp out elements that enjoy eating meat, spraying graffiti and thinking for themselves. To stop the sudden rampage of violent murders, the ill-equipped and pseudo-intellectual police thaw out John Spartan. After all, sometimes you have send a maniac to catch a maniac.

I have to say that, while heavy-handed and sometimes coming off as a parody, the two futures presented by this 1993 film are equally bleak. It shows a 1996 LA torn apart by gang warfare, with fires, looting and anti-aircraft guns everywhere. The police have to roll into war zones with armored vehicles and riot weaponry. By contrast, 2032 San Angeles is the sort of clean, perfect society filled with nice, loquacious people that would give Aldous Huxley nightmares. Everybody is ‘low-jacked’ as one character puts it, nobody swears or commits violent crimes and people have food, shelter and comforts as long as they obey by the strict rules laid down by the good doctor in charge of it all. Since violence and crime itself are very nearly foreign concepts, the introduction of a gleeful killing machine like Simon Phoenix quickly flushes the place down the toilet.

It says something when Sly plays the more interesting character in the lead duo.

If it weren’t for the the whole “man out of time” angle, this Stallone action flick would be pretty generic. The bad guy chews through scenery and police officers who aren’t the hero with ease while the good guys never get shot by anybody without a name. It’s only the world of San Angeles and the reactions of Spartan and Phoenix to it that make this watchable. In particular, Stallone does a good job of conveying the discomfort, frustration and even loneliness of a driven, smarter-than-he-looks supercop thrust into a world where his violence is abhorred, his one-liners are chided and his approach towards women is considered repugnant. They also tried to turn him into a seamstress. It’d be horrifying if it weren’t so damn funny.

Speaking of funny, one of the best parts of this movie is Wesley Snipes cutting loose. You may think from the Blade movies that Snipes has no emotional range whatsoever. Not true. Simon Phoenix is a sadistic, wise-cracking, genre savvy madman, and his manic energy really fuels the narrative. The film actually seems to dim a bit when he’s not on-screen. Other elements do buoy the story and keep it moving when he’s not around, but when he’s on he’s having so much fun that it’s hard not to crack a smile. That page that will ruin your life describes him as “a Hip-Hop Joker.” I can’t think of a more spot-on description.

You can’t be taken seriously with that hairdo unless you kill every cracker you see.

The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Sandra Bullock’s character attempts to be endearing but can really start to grate on the nerves. Most of the other ‘proper’ San Angelenos have this pseudo-intellectual smugness that give the Architect from The Matrix a run for his money. There’s so much jargon and multi-syllable words spewing from these sanctimonious dorks that I for one am happy when things start blowing up. On the other hand, Denis Leary doesn’t so much play a character as he does himself if he were dropped into this world. That is to say, he starts messing shit up immediately. There’s even a rant heavily influenced by his “Asshole” song. It’s really nice to hear after an hour of future folk referring to everybody by their full names. At all times.

The movie holds together for most of its running time but there’s a point at which things kind of come undone. By the way, spoiler warning. So, Doctor Cocteau engineered this society to be free of crime and violence and everybody loves him because he saved them. Yet, he is the one who introduces Simon Phoenix into it, not just to hunt down Denis Leary, but to cause anarchy and chaos so he can rebuild the society. Again. In other words, he developed a utopia just so he could destroy it and build another utopia. For a good hour it seems like Cocteau is actually close to having a society free of irritants and yet he lets loose the biggest irritant of all. He easily could have kept Phoenix on a shorter leash and focused on the assassination rather than letting him run wild in San Angeles doing whatever the hell he wanted. For a character meant to be something of an evil mastermind, this strikes me as really, really stupid.

Maybe next time you’ll think your clever plan though, doc.

Demolition Man has some good things going for it. The best parts of the relationship between Joker and the Batman are extant between Simon Phoenix and John Spartan. Seeing these two action movie types in the setting of a defanged world is fun, as is the way they crap all over it – literally at one point, in the case of Spartan. But at the end of the day, it’s difficult for me to recommend the movie. There are better, smarter action comedies out there. I have to say, though, that seeing a big, beefy guy like Sylverster Stallone picking up a ball of yarn and wondering how the hell he knows what a zipperfoot and a bobbin are is pretty much worth the price of admission. It’s an interesting relic of the early ’90s, and every once in a while you can call it up on Netflix to indulge that feeling of nostalgia I mentioned, but as a rule, this movie’s best when treated like Simon Phoenix: for your safety and the safety of others, keep it on ice. If you want to introduce a little fun chaos and anarchy, thaw it out. But please, for the love of God, do not let it thaw out any of its friends. You’ve been warned.

Movie Review: Red

October 19, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

Seeing Red was admittedly not a choice I’d have made on my own. But my mother recommended it to me. Mom doesn’t see too many action flicks, you see. She has an aversion to rampant bloodshed and casual cluster F-bombs. So going into Red, knowing its premise, seeing MovieBob’s review and able to name pretty much the entire speaking-role cast off the top of my head, I figured I knew what I was in for. And I was right: Red was a good time, albeit something of a tame one.

Not that this is a bad thing, per se. Not every movie needs to be full of gore, profanity and gratuitous full-frontal nudity.

…What? It doesn’t. Stop looking at me like that.

Based somewhat loosely on a graphic novel penned by Warren Ellis, the man who gave us Transmetropolitan, Red centers on Bruce Willis as Frank Moses, an aging covert operative put out to pasture by his superiors. He isn’t finding retired life agreeable, and it’s quickly apparent that part of him will never stop being a spy. His only real joy comes from conversations with a young woman at the pension office whom he calls just to hear the sound of her voice. Then some guys show up and try to kill him. They fail, mostly because Frank’s still a badass, and he leaves his quiet life behind to discover that someone has flagged him and some former associates as “Retired, Extremely Dangerous.”

Thus the premise is established for a cast of Oscar-winners, venerable screen actors and some very bright rising stars to come together to have fun shooting guns, driving cars faster than the speed limit and blowing things up. On the surface, it seems pretty flimsy. The action bounces from location to location somewhat abruptly and without any sense of time actually passing. But it’s hard to consider that a major problem in the film when the cast is clearly having a great time.

God save us from the Queen.

Indeed, the venerable leading ensemble is Red‘s greatest strength. Without this cast working this will together and this naturally, this film would fall apart. Everybody is here doing what they do best. Bruce Willis is quietly and thoroughly badass. Morgan Freeman is charming, grandfatherly and… well, Morgan Freeman. John Malkovich is crazy. No, I mean batshit crazy. Even President God chimes in with “There’s something wrong with that boy.”

They cast Dame Helen Mirren as a wetworks asset, but honestly, she’s a damn thief. She steals the movie any time she’s on screen. Richard Dreyfuss pulls a respectable Dick Cheney impression as the film’s heavyweight, and while we’re on the subject of heavies, isn’t it nice to see Brian Cox in a role where he’s not the bad guy? He gets to smile, dance with the beautiful British woman and do the same sort of casually awesome things as the other big names. It’s a joy to behold.

“I can think of worse punishments for being in Doom than getting beat up by Bruce Willis.”

The newcomers in the cast aren’t bad, either. I’ve always liked Karl Urban, and he’s got underutilized range for a guy who keeps getting roped into action flicks. Then again, most of his pedigree was pretty impressive before this. He’s Eomer, the new Dr. McCoy, and I hear he’s going to be Judge frakin’ Dredd. As long as they keep Sly away from that one, I’d say the Mega-Cities are in good hands. Anyway, he’s good in this. He holds his own with the big names and that’s no small feat, even in a movie like this.

Mary-Louise Parker, whom some may know from Weeds is the girl who isn’t the Dame. She’s the voice with whom Frank has fallen in love. She’s decent as well, never coming across as a shrinking violet damsel in distress. It’s nice to see two women with dimension in an action comedy like this, but unfortunately Red fails the Bechdel test. The two chat about men while they’re hunkered down in Victoria’s sniper perch. The other problem I had with her character was that there was no real growth. She’s just as eager for travel and adventure at the end as she is in the beginning. It’s a minor quibble. But this movie’s got more than a few minor quibbles to it.

“Okay, sir, I’m going to have to transfer you to the Minor Quibbles department, please hold…”

Along with a flimsy premise, the plot’s also pretty standard. There’s no plot twist a movie-goer who’s seen at least a few action or espionage flicks won’t see coming. Sure, Red plays with an expectation or two, but for the most part there aren’t any big surprises to be had in here. Most of the best action & special-effects shots have been given away by the trailers. The one-liners are decent but I can’t remember a single one from the movie that’ll have me saying “That’s from Red” a year from now. Mostly because it was probably written elsewhere first. There’s also just a few too many stereotypes at work in here. Spoiler alert: The black guy dies. And the Russian guy’s name? Ivan.

At least he’s not the bad guy. Seeing him as an ally had me marking this above Salt right from the off. For its numerous plot problems — not holes, mind you, just problems with predictability — Red is actually decently written. None of the characters, stock though they may be, feel one-dimensional or caricatured. Except the Dick Cheney expy. But, seriously, screw that guy, he’s a dick. All in all, I can think of worse ways to spend an evening at the movies, especially when it’s on a parental dime.

“Son? Your mother sent us to have a word with you about your spending habits.”

Stuff I Liked: Karl Urban is back to kicking ass and he’s given something good to do with his skills. The action’s cleanly shot. The writing’s decent, especially for a Hollywood action comedy. It’s always cool to see Rebecca Pidgeon. And Ernest Borgnine looks pretty good for his many well-respected years.
Stuff I Didn’t Like: The plot’s terribly predictable. Mary-Louise Parker’s character doesn’t really go anywhere. I didn’t feel like I was seeing anything new; I couldn’t tell which bits were homages, which were parodies and which were meant to be both. Or neither.
Stuff I Loved: Damn, this cast. Great chemistry, well-paced banter, big-name movie people having a good time. There’s great little moments where a shot or a line can’t help but evoke a smile, from Frank’s gun of choice being the old Colt .45 automatic to just about anything Helen Mirren does. And Karl Urban’s precision F-strike is perfect.

Bottom Line: A cool little action comedy. Sure, it looks good on the big screen and you might have a decent time seeing it on the big screen, but I can’t help but think that the mediocrity might be smoothed over by some friends and booze.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Amélie

October 8, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

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

If one were to look up ‘charming’ in the dictionary, the definition would read something like this:

1. pleasing; delightful. 2. using charm; exercising magic power.

Of course, that’s an English dictionary. If one were to look up ‘charming’ in a French dictionary, I imagine you would likely see a picture of Audrey Tautou in her title role of the comedic romance Amélie. And knowing her, the picture would wink at you.

The full title of the film, translated from French, is “The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain” and we catch up with her in Paris where she works as a waitress. Her life has been somewhat odd, to say the least, and sadness and tragedy are all around her. But Amélie is unwilling to let such little things ruin her sunny disposition. A chance discovery behind a loose tile in her bathroom launches her on a transformative journey that soon sees her affecting the lives of those she encounters for the singular purpose of bringing joy. She is just as comfortable and as happy being a matchmaker as she is a prank-playing vigilante. The one life Amélie seems incapable of repairing, however, is her own — it will take someone as singularly steeped in imagination and quirkiness as herself to draw her out of her Technicolor shell. The young man who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths, for example.

Technicolor is no exaggeration. The color palate of this film leaps directly off of the screen. Paris is portrayed with a great deal of splendor and whimsy, though director Jean-Pierre Jeunet got a little bit of stick for not including more minorities. This is a minor quibble, compared to the volume of praise he’s rightly earned for the vibrant colors that permeate this film. Clever editing has underscored the tint of Amélie’s world without making the people look discolored. Unlike other tricks used to supersaturate a movie, like those in Revenge of the Fallen for example, these Parisians don’t look at all like they have cheap spray-on tans.

I wish I had a better shot of this moment.

As pretty as the film might be, it absolutely would not work without the singular and unforgettable performance of Audrey Tautou. She inhabits the unique character Amélie with an innocent pixiness that makes her incredibly endearing. Many of the things she does are things that might not to occur to a “normal” person, but in her mind they make perfect sense and not once does Tautou convey any sort of confusion or even hesitation when it comes to her behavior. It’s a refreshing and unapologetic blast of optimism and goodwill in a cinema and culture dominated by “escapism” that tends more towards realism than surrealism. And isn’t escapism about escaping from the real world? Or at least, shouldn’t it be?

Amélie certainly thinks so, and challenges us to do the same thing as its blithely child-like protagonist. Not necessarily the introversion and pouring salt into people’s liquor, but finding joy in the little things during the course of our everyday lives. There’s no need for Amélie to boot up an expensive multi-player shoot-em-up experience or troll the Internet in search of the human contact she’s loathe to admit needing, when she gains just as much pleasure from skipping stones, sticking her hand in a sack of grain or wondering just how many people in her neighborhood are experiencing orgasms at a particular moment. As much as it’s necessary for her to occasionally emerge from the world she’s built herself inside her head, it’s still a world full of vibrant color and unabashed joy that has a universal appeal and, as much as some marketers would have you believe otherwise, is incapable of being captured in bottle, package or pill form.

Is this image showing Amélie, or us?

This movie’s title doesn’t mean it’s just about someone named Amélie. In a way, this movie is Amélie. It has a spring in its step, an overall lightness of tone undeterred by the harsh reality it runs into on occasion and an attitude that refuses to turn things down or conform to societal norms. It never crosses that line into ‘crass’ or ‘gross’ humor that seems required of so many American comedies. Oh, there are bits about sex aplenty in Amélie and it is definitely an adult comedy, but it’s every bit as smart as it is funny. And therein lies its greatest strength, in my opinion.

Rather than take your intelligence or imagination for granted, Amélie takes it by the hand and pulls it through the streets, breathlessly telling us everything we could be seeing if we just opened our eyes. There’s a sequence in the film itself that parallels this overall sentiment. We all have blind spots, where wonders and benefits and whimsy sit unnoticed, and the moments when those spots are illuminated need not be so rare. As much as the film wants to teach us this, it’s something Amélie herself needs to learn and so we’re learning right along with her. Despite the lightness of the movie’s tone, its meaning is pretty dense, in that there is a lot of it. With only a little smile and some whimsical music from an excellent soundtrack behind her, Amélie says a great deal more in a single moment than some other films can over the course of two hours.

“Obtenons dangereux!”

It’s not often that a movie takes on a life of its own in one’s headspace like this. Amélie isn’t trying to make you think in some socially conscious or disturbing way, however. It doesn’t come into your head bearing portents of doom or badly-written pamphlets full of shoddy logic. She brings mulled wine and her famous plum cake, just to make you smile. It’s a deeply personal and intimate movie that has the good sense never to take itself too seriously or dwell overmuch on its subject matter. Yet, at the same time, its whimsical lightness of tone completely belies the way it affects its viewer. For my part, at least, I found myself touched, encouraged, enchanted and delighted. The sort of feeling Amélie engenders is difficult to quantify and I for one wish I could bottle the feelings it’s given me. Not because I want to make a million dollars, though the money certainly wouldn’t hurt — I just want to feel this way more often. There’s too much darkness in the world, too much dour doom and gloom. If you’re as sick of it as I am, put Amélie on your Netflix queue. I guarantee that, among other things, you’ll never crack a fresh crème brûlée the same way again.

Tag: comedy (page 4 of 8)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Trapped in Paradise

There Goes That Desert Bus

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Demolition Man

Movie Review: Red

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Amélie

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