Reviews – Page 31 – Blue Ink Alchemy

Tag: Reviews (page 31 of 36)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Rise: Blood Hunter

(special request by Monica Flink. Thanks for your support!)

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

Vampires killing vampires really isn’t anything new. It’s ground that’s been trod pretty heavily. But while Blade focuses on gadgetry and the badassness of Wesley Snipes, and Underworld deals with the world of normal people as little as possible, Rise: Blood Hunter tells a tight, character-focused tale about a vampire killing other vampires and, all in all, does it pretty well. The film stars Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, James, D’Arcy, Carla Gugino, Mako and Marilyn Manson.

Lucy Liu plays Sadie Blake, a reporter covering a trend in the goth music & “sludge rock” scenes of people throwing over-the-top parties involving blood-drinking. One of her sources, Sadie Rawlins, ends up dead after one of these parties and her father, a cop (Michael Chiklis), becomes driven to uncover the truth behind the murder. Meanwhile, Sadie investigates and catches the attention of the vampires who are using the parties as a smokescreen for their feeding. They interrogate her, then rape and murder her. However, she wakes up in the morgue to discover that not only isn’t she dead, she can’t die by normal means – she throws herself into traffic to find that one out. She’s taken in by a benevolent, renegade vampire who trains her to fight in order to seek vengeance for herself. In the course of her roaring rampage, she encounters Rawlins, and after some tense arguments, they agree to help each other in finishing off the blood-suckers.

While the movie focuses more on characters than cool powers or gizmos, it should be mentioned that the characters are somewhat one-note. With the exception of Lucy Liu, the characters don’t grow or develop much over the course of the film. The cop’s driven, tough as nails and busted up over his daughter. The lead vampire’s an arrogant sex-driven jerk. The rest of the cast doesn’t get a lot of screen-time in which to develop. Carla Gugino’s Eve had potential to be interesting but she is killed off rather arbitrarily. On the one hand, I wanted to see more of her character (and not just because of her lesbian scenes with Lucy Liu), but on the other I believe this was a decision made to show the myopic drive of Lucy’s character and to keep the story moving without weighing it down with a lot of extra characters.

The story does amble along at an admirable pace. Despite it’s brisk clip, however, it doesn’t really go anywhere. The revenge plot isn’t overly complicated, be it dressed in the black skull-bearing gunplay of The Punisher or the sword and sandals epicness of Gladiator. Rise pretty much just gives the plot fangs and sends it on its way. While it’s nice to see a story that isn’t bogged down with glitzy CGI or over-complicated gizmos, the simplicity of the plot doesn’t really make it, or the characters who are a part of it, anything terribly interesting.

There’s one big hole in the plot that I’d be remiss in ignoring. When Sadie’s murdered, she’s left alone in the morgue to fend for herself. We learn later that her becoming a vampire was Eve’s doing. Now, most vampire stories & societies with which I’m familiar have the vampire responsible for the creation present with their offspring to guide them through the transition from breathing & mortal to dead but immortal, which is pretty jarring to say the least. This would especially apply if Eve was fed up with the preening self-centered prick who’d put Sadie in this position in the first place, and wanted to mentor Sadie into becoming the hunter. Instead, Sadie is left to wander around on her own and eventually just kills everybody she meets. Her mentor’s a relatively insignificant character in the grand scheme of things and is given all the development of a Polaroid shaken like a can of spray paint. While having Sadie spend time in the morgue so her family knows she’s dead is an effective tool in her transition, Eve would have made a much more interesting voice of guidance, especially in light of her conversation with Sadie after Sadie becomes a vampire. But, alas, I don’t write screenplays.

Despite these problems, Rise: Blood Hunter is still a solid story, if somewhat straightforward and simplistic. Lucy Liu does a good job of carrying the story, conveying what pathos she can in a few scant scenes that aren’t “Sadie shows up, kills a vampire & leaves,” and she and Chiklis have pretty good chemistry in the handful of scenes they share – although I for one was just waiting for Chiklis to have an excuse to tell us when it was clobberin’ time. The atmosphere is good, the action is grounded and the overall experience, while not setting the world on fire, does its job without overstaying its welcome. If you’re a fan of vampires, revenge plots or Lucy Liu kicking ass, you could do worse than Rise: Blood Hunter.

Did I mention the Carla Gugino/Lucy Liu lesbian scene? I think I did.

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! Quarantine

November 6, 2009 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

(special request by Daniel Evan Cochran-Smith. Thanks for your support!)

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

So The Blair Witch Project was an indy success and groundbreaking in the horror genre. And everybody loves zombies for one reason or another. Putting the two together is like getting your chocolate in my peanut butter, right? Well, it could be. Quarantine shows us what happens when you actually put chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream and chunky peanut butter together in a blender, forget to secure the lid and power the thing with a glossy portable generator – the concept is tasty, but the execution is a loud, wet mess. The film stars Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech, Rade Šerbedžija and Greg Germann.

Angela Vidal is an up-and-coming reporter in Los Angeles who has come to a fire station with her cameraman Scott to spend some time with the firemen. From the beginning, it was hard for me to like Angela. She comes off less as a professional reporter and more like a sorority junior or senior taking a tour of the local frat house, especially with the way some of the firemen treat her. After about ten minutes of farting around and Jake, the most handsome firefighter, hitting pretty incessantly on Angela, the call finally comes in of a medical emergency at an apartment complex. And even on the way there Jake can’t stop talking about how brave he is in an effort to get in Angela’s pants. Then again, if I knew people might live or die based on my arrival at the scene, I might have an erection, too. Anyway, it’s not long after they get into the building that it becomes clear that something is very wrong with the residents, and the building is sealed from the outside with no clear explanation to the hapless residents, the bewildered law enforcement & rescue officers and our somewhat dim heroine. And I use that term loosely.

The movie follows some horror movie tropes that break us out of the intended immersion. For example, if you’re wearing a white shirt & tie, and act like a dick to the people in uniforms, you’re probably going to end up dead. There’s also the pointless dick-measuring shouting matches between Jake and the senior police officer, to the point where the cop pulls out his sidearm and threatens to shoot Jake in the face. While at that point I honestly wouldn’t have minded, doesn’t it occur to these people that there’s something going on just a little more important than who’s in charge? When the CDC types with their creepy Darth Vader-esque breath sounds show up, everybody’s very quick to band together. While this could have come across as a view of the mercurial nature of human relationships in a high stress environment, it’s simply glossed over as everybody in the building who’s still alive gets a big hate on for the government. And then there’s Angela. Every time it seems that stillness is being used effectively in the film, Angela opens her mouth, usually to say something profound like “Didja get that?” It seems that she subcribes to the Richard Thornburg motto of broadcast journalism: Be as colossal a moron as possible.

It’s not all bad. The primary caregiver in the building is a veterenarian who identifies the infection as rabies. He does a good job of remaining calm while everybody around him is losing their shit. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t drawn into the action now and again by the camera work and the acting. The writing stays somewhat mediocre throughout the experience before taking a nosedive at the end, but the actors are convincing and you do feel like this is the kind of situation where people would lose their minds. People tend to panic easily when faced with something they don’t understand, and when weapons aren’t available for the masses to get their killin’ on, they cower and quiver and yell at each other for being stupid. Talk about pots & kettles…

The herky-jerky first-person camera work at times seems very clear and others induces a little vertigo. On more than one occasion we lose track of what’s going on. As the story moves towards it conclusion in the same shambling, aimless and screaming way as the horrors that were once the building’s tenants, we’re teased with tidbits of information explaining the origin of the infection and the nefarious, disturbed mind behind it. That, however, is glossed over in favor of trick photography and more jump-out scares, and we are left in the dark just like the quivering, squealing Angela.

What really bothered me in this end sequence was the tape recorder. When it’s activated, the spools turn slowly and the voice is distorted. Rather than trying to adjust its playback, as most competent people with even a hint of experience with recording devices – cameras for example – might do, both Angela and Scott stare at it blankly like it’s an alien artifact. Angela even goes so far as to say “What the fuck is that?” IT’S A TAPE RECORDER, YOU DUMB BITCH! How about trying to adjust the speed of the tape’s playback so you and we can understand what’s going on, Angela, instead of standing there like an idiot getting intimidated by a voice that, while slowed to a crawl, is still faster than your response time?

Quarantine is a remake of Spanish horror film REC. From what I understand, the American version of the film stripped out a lot of back story that had to do with the Vatican and just stuck with the zombies. The stunned silence from the ending of the film has as much to do with Jennifer Carpenter’s projected desperation, which is effective if a bit late to endear us towards her, as it does with unanswered questions. Did the CDC know what was really going on? Was the Bostonian in the attic working for them, or the doomsday cult we very briefly learn about from the clippings on the wall? We will never know. I recommend you take a pass on Quarantine. The most frightening thing about it is this: if this is what happens when works of foreign filmmakers land in the hands of Hollywood people, what would have happened to District 9?

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Special: Changeling Audio

November 1, 2009 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

Despite the fact I’m doing something else for the Escapist’s video contest, I still have this audio from my last IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! feature. If this format isn’t too atrocious, I might do another of these.

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

Download the MP3 here.

Original text is here.

On the Tube: White Collar

October 30, 2009 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

The major networks – CBS, NBC and ABC in this country – seem to have cornered the market on procedurals. In fact, it could be argued that procedurals are overrated. However, occasionally a show will try to take the procedural formula and go in a different direction. Take a cop show, for example, and give it military trappings. Or take a medical show and make the principle an insufferable douchebag. And then you have some of the shows on USA, which look at procedurals from an entirely different perspective – I’m taking a long, lingering look at you, Burn Notice. Come back soon.

Anyway, what we have here is a show that deals with major crimes – multi-million dollar art forgeries etc. Law & Order Criminal Intent does this with the typical Law & Order tropes. That is to say, everything’s very serious, the subjects are RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES and nobody cracks a smile. It leans so heavily on the non-comedic side of drama it occasionally makes Greek tragedies look light-hearted.

On the other side of things, we have White Collar.

This isn’t to say that White Collar is madcap or slapstick. It’s not playing things deliberately for laughs. It is, however, intelligently written and well-paced. The premise of a gentleman thief coming over to the lawful side of things in order to secure their freedom isn’t really new, but one of the things that makes White Collar stand out is that the two leads are equally intelligent and even before their partnership begins, there’s a grudging admiration for each other. It’s like if Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro’s characters in Heat came up against a more violent gang of bank robbers and joined forces to take them down.

Neal Caffery, as a character, is especially interesting because he does use his intelligence and charm to get what he wants, yet isn’t willing to use violence to achieve his ends, nor is he completely happy-go-lucky. He does have desires that extend beyond creature comforts and fine clothing. The fact that Matt Bomer’s so easy on the eyes puts the whole character together in a shiny package that’s very, very difficult to ignore.

Tim DeKay’s FBI Agent Peter Burke isn’t a slouch either. He’s just as smart as Neal, being the only person ever to catch Neal after years of chasing him down. His suspicion isn’t completely unfounded, yet he respects and even likes Neal, especially because Neal is smart enough not to do something stupid that would blow a case on which they’re working.

For example, instead of just going through a plan by the seat of his pants, Neal is seen studying a book on warrant law before heading into the lion’s den of a particularly nasty art forger. Since Neal is wearing a GPS ankle bracelet that goes off if he leaves a 2-mile radius within New York City, the FBI is informed he’s flown the coup. When Burke and his men arrive, they see he’s come to the suspicious warehouse the two visited earlier for which Burke did not have enough evidence to secure a warrant. Since they are in the course of apprehending a fugitive, the FBI can execute a search legally, and they nab the bad guys by the book. They couldn’t have done it without Neal, and when Burke sees where Neal has brought him, he grins.

It’s up there with Burn Notice in terms of enjoyability, writing and character writing. Let’s hope it stays at this level. My wife, one of the most critical people I know, has dubbed it “fuckawesome.”

I couldn’t agree more.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Changeling

October 16, 2009 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

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

It wasn’t too long ago when the words ‘A Clint Eastwood Film’ described an action flick featuring a character that was either Dirty Harry Callahan, The Man With No Name or somebody who existed between the two. Clint Eastwood is someone along the lines of Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino: a star with a long history of delivering both furious action fueled by pure manliness, and dramatic turns that set him on a different level from other so-called ‘actors’ that don’t deserve mention at the moment. And Clint has further distinguished himself in that nowadays, ‘A Clint Eastwood Film’ means one he’s directed. I plan on going over all of his directoral offerings, and Changeling is a great place to begin. The film stars Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan, Colm Feore and John Malkovich.

Why, Changeling? you might ask. Why not Unforgiven, his directoral breakout? Both it and Million Dollar Baby won him Oscars, why am I not starting there? What about Flags of Our Fathers, or Letters from Iwo Jima, his powerful war films? Why not Gran Turino, which includes perhaps the most manly and grit-filled rendition of “GET OFF MY LAWN” ever captured by a camera? These are valid questions, and I actually plan on taking time to review all of these – and no, it’s not just because I want to watch Gran Turino again.

Changeling is a good place to begin on Clint’s directoral work because it captures many of the aspects that make him such a visionary film-maker. With this riveting true story, we see the way Clint brings us into a bygone time, the handling of his actors and the framing of his shots. You might get some of these elements from Unforgiven, Flags of Our Fathers or even Mystic River, but Changeling does it with such natural grace that it feels less like 142 minutes of movie and more like an encapsulated lesson on how to effectively direct. Clint has brought us both the appeal and darkness of an oft-romanticised time in American history, along with a great performance from Angelina Jolie and one of the best turns by John Malkovich I’ve ever seen. Oh yeah, and he also gave us Jeffrey Donovan in a period suit with matching fedora.

An entire thesis could be written on the plot I haven’t mentioned yet, but here’s the short form and, as usual, it’s free of spoilers. Angelina Jolie is a hard-working supervisor at a telephone exchange in Los Angeles during the roaring ’20s. Her son is an intelligent, precocious youth who pulls off a pretty impressive feat by endearing himself towards us with only a few minutes of screentime. Mom comes home from work one day to find the house empty and the kid’s lunch uneaten in the icebox. A little police runaround brings her to the office of Jeffrey Donovan’s insufferable prick of a police captain who assures her that her son will be found. Sure enough, in a few months, she shows up at a train station when word comes her son’s been found, but after taking one look at the shorter, pudgier and more annoying child, she knows it’s not her child. The police disagree, citing her womanhood as the main cause for her baseless idea that the boy isn’t who they say he is. The mother insists, and soon it’s clear that the only person who’s fully in her corner and willing to match her zeal and devotion is the radio-broadcasting Presbyterian minister who believes the City of Angels has become a cesspool of corruption run by self-indulgent swine. It’s a little odd to see this compassionate yet occasionally brimstone-fueled spiritual leader being brought to us by way of Cyrus the Virus and Humma Kavula. I’m just glad he did something like this to wash the taste of that dreadful turn he did in Eragon out of our minds. I’ll keep praying he stays far away from anything related to Twilight.

Anyway, this is a fantastic film, and it features one of the cinematographic keys to Eastwood’s success. All of his films – that I’ve seen so far anyway, I still need to sit down and watch Unforgiven end to end – have what I like to call “a haunting etherealness.” Classic films can become dated in their look and material, and it can be difficult to hearken back to a bygone age without extensive set dressing or CGI which is often hit and miss in a drama. Clint Eastwood sends us back in time before we even realize we’ve been temporally displaced and has us invested in the characters just as quickly. Actors are, by and large, attractive folk (Angelina Jolie and Jeffrey Donovan in particular in this case) but Clint doesn’t let them get away with just being pretty faces. They believe in their material and we, in turn, believe in them. There’s no trick photography to distract us from the pace of the writing and the musical score does exactly what it says on the tin, underscoring the drama and action rather than overwhelming us with bombastic horns or one woman wails. Clint Eastwood’s careful and measured genius comes through in the final film as all of these elements, exemplary on their own, seamlessly fuse into a storytelling experience rarely seen in an age of mean-spirited gross-out money machines that laughably call themselves comedies, and video game adaptations that wouldn’t know a good story if it showed up at their door dressed in a corset and stockings.

I’m getting a little long-winded on this one, but I wanted to establish what I respect and love about the films of Clint Eastwood. As I said, I plan on reviewing them individually, but a common thread that defines them all is this singular excellence and haunting, timeless etherealness that puts him on the level of such seminal directors as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. If nothing else, he shows us that sometimes the best things we do in our lives might not happen until well into our adult years, which means we should never give up on our dreams and no matter how daunting the obstacles might be to reaching our goals, the only way we truly fail is if we quit. But I’m wandering off the point again. The point is: Changeling is an excellent, singular and unforgettable film, and you should put it on your Netflix queue without delay.

Tag: Reviews (page 31 of 36)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Rise: Blood Hunter

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Quarantine

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Special: Changeling Audio

On the Tube: White Collar

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Changeling

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