Tag Archives: action

Wow. I’ve really been slacking with blogging my thoughts and impressions on the various films I’ve seen recently. Sort of don’t see the point in trying to craft a decent review when a million other sites out there do it better. But I guess if you know me and share my tastes, some quick notes about the recent films I’ve seen might be worth reading.

10,000 BC – Had no interest in seeing this from day one. The first teaser trailer I saw had me thinking this would be Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, but with cavemen and woolly mammoths…I wasn’t far off. Unlike Gibson’s film this one fudges the history more to tell some silly story about a primitive civilization that ends up rebelling against the false Egyptian gods who are enslaving them. How is it that everyone in 10,000 BC speaks perfect English, are all well groomed, and have the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen? C+

Darkon – Decent documentary about Dungeons & Dragons type role players who battle each other with padded swords and shields in parks on the weekend. In the same vein as Trekkies but not as mocking. Maybe it was the nerd in me, but I enjoyed this. B

The Great Happiness Space – Another decent documentary about host boys in Osaka, Japan who make insane amounts of money (something like $10,000–$50,000 a month!) to entertain wealthy women in exclusive clubs. At first you think the women are just crazy rich and simply enjoy spending all their money on boys who look like they came straight out of a Final Fantasy game. Until you realize that 70% of these women are prostitutes, and after selling their bodies all day they use the money to have the hosts emotionally heal them. I found this one really interesting. A-

Eastern Promises – Viggo Mortensen gives another excellent performance, but I was sort of let down by the film. The only memorable takeaways for me were the bath house scenes (ouch!) and the role of tattoos in organized crime. If you were looking for a repeat of Croneberg’s A History of Violence, I don’t think you’ll get it with this film. B-

With temperatures hitting close to 90ºF here in Buffalo I decided I needed to hit up some place air conditioned. No better hideout than a movie theatre, for sure. Other than the Bourne Ultimatum nothing really pique my interest this week. Decided to check out Dipson’s offering and saw that the new Werner Herzog film Rescue Dawn was playing on Main Street.

The last Herzog film I saw was Grizzly Man and since he did a good job filming nature and all that, figured he couldn’t go wrong with the jungle settings of Vietnam. Add to the mix that Christian Bale was starring in Rescue Dawn and I was sold. I’ve loved him in all his roles; whether he’s playing a serial killer in American Psycho, a dragon slayer in Reign of Fire, a cleric in the future Utopian world of Equilibrium, a man who can’t sleep in The Machinist, a great magician in The Prestige, or the Dark Knight himself in Batman Begins.

So back to Rescue Dawn. It’s a film about Dieter Dengler, a US fighter pilot who gets shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War and then taken prisoner. Dieter ends up at a camp with some other American’s who have been there for over two years. Judging by Dieter’s facial hair growth, I’d estimate he was captive for a few months, depending on how accurate the filmmakers were with his appearance.

While captive, Dieter shows the other POW’s how to pick locks and gather left over rice in secret as he devises a plan for escape. The other prisoners are reluctant to leave their only source of food and water at the camp. If they leave they’d have to survive the jungle and probably just die there instead, since that is the real prison. Eventually driven to escape they kill their captors and flee to the jungle where we see Dieter picking leeches off his body and eating snakes for food.

The film is rated PG-13, so the scenes of torture are fairly mild and sparse. I don’t think that was the real goal of this film. In fact I couldn’t really tell you what the goal was. Sure it’s a movie about war, and we see some of the horrors of it. It’s also a movie about survival and the human condition, but everything is so understated as to really make up it’s mind as to what the major theme is.

Inspired by the true events of Dieter Dengler, I give Rescue Dawn a B- for excellent acting and a few moments of on screen brilliance.

Let me start of by saying; no we weren’t any of the guys wearing the Optimus Prime voice changing helmets at Regal Transit, unfortunately. With that out of the way… yes I have been following the developments of Transformers The Movie for two years, yes the plot has its problems, yes Michael Bay knows how to do action, and yes this movie exceeded every one of my expectations!

Everything about the movie just worked, which has me scared for the sequel because I’m not sure how it will be able to replicate it. Part of the charm of this movie is seeing the Transformers in action, similar to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, but larger in scale and scope. Maybe if Unicron shows up and morphs Megatron into Galvatron the sequel can top it. Hell they sort of hinted at the idea of the Matrix of Leadership with the whole Allspark in the chest deal so that plot-line could play out. Something tells me that storyline won’t translate into live action all that well, but I couldn’t imagine half of the stuff in this one working either.

I thought the balance between the human and Transformer stories was decent. Shia LaBeouf fit the part of Sam perfectly and brought some great comedic moments to the table with him and Bumblebee stealing the show. The talking through radio songs thing was corny but it worked well and got great laughs from the audience.

The effects were amazing, duh. The only problem I had was with all the constant transformations going on that it was hard to focus on the details. That all changed near the end when you see a few slow motion action sequences ala The Matrix’s bullet-time. If anyone thought they’d do camera tricks to hide the bots as much as possible, you’d be way off. These suckers are detailed, in full view, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, which boggles the mind when you think of someone sitting at a computer creating this stuff.

So how was it hearing them all talk after growing up with the original voices? Well for the most part it didn’t bother me. Optimus Prime sounded exactly the same thanks to Peter Cullen. Jazz, Bumblebee, and Ratchet were dead on in their characterization that the voices didn’t matter. The Decepticons didn’t talk much so I suppose they were ok, but it would have been nice to hear Starscream whine more and get abused by Megatron. Seriously, what the heck was up with Ironhide having a British accent? I’m probably being nit picky but that seemed way off, more so than Optimus having lips (which didn’t look bad at all).

Not sure what a non-Transformers fan would think of this movie. I guess it meant more to me because I was interested in seeing how the characters from my childhood turned out in a live action rendition. I could see the non fans not making the same emotional connection with the characters, but really at the end of the day they should be able to appreciate the amazing effects, decent story, and non stop action.

I’d be pretty surprised if this bad boy didn’t make a ton of money. When we left at 10:45ish there was a line for the 11PM showing. Not bad! You know they’ll be getting my money x2 when I see this again. I’m so lame…