Death Wish (2018)

I’ve never been a huge fan of remakes.  Sometimes, if I’ve never seen the original, I can enjoy the remake to some extent.  However, I find that there’s usually little need to remake something that did well originally.  Bruce Willis stars in Death Wish, a remake of the 1974 movie starring Charles Bronson.  Although I haven’s seen the original, I still came away feeling like there was something lacking with the 2018 version.  (I currently don’t plan on seeing the original, as I’m not a fan of Charles Bronson, either.)

From what I can tell, the plot is fairly similar.  In this case, Bruce Willis plays Paul Kersey, a Chicago doctor who has to go to work one night.  He should be celebrating his birthday with his wife and daughter.  Due to the sudden change in plans, burglars break into the Kersey house expecting it to be empty.  The thieves end up killing Paul’s wife, Lucy, and putting their daughter, Jordan, into a coma.

It doesn’t take Paul long to look into buying a gun.  He decides not to do it legally, but manages to swipe a gun from a gang member-turned-patient after the gun falls on the ground.  (This is Chicago, after all.)  All he has to do is get some ammunition and he’s all set to go into vigilante mode.

His first time out, Paul manages to prevent a carjacking, but gets caught on video.  His face isn’t shown, which works in his favor.  He did sustain an injury, though.  Being emboldened by the experience leads Paul to try again and to ultimately go after the people that killed his wife.

The movie goes down pretty much as you’d expect.  The police don’t seem to be able to do much.  It’s not necessarily out of incompetence, though.  The detectives have dozens of similar cases, each requiring a good deal of attention.  Many cases that come across their desks don’t have much evidence to work with.

Buying a gun has all the normal hurdles, like waiting periods and paperwork.  It’s no surprise that Paul declines the legal route, yet jumps at a gun without his name attached to it.  (It also comes in handy later in the movie.)

I never got the impression that the movie was explicitly for or against gun violence.  You have radio and TV personalities giving commentary, but the violence seems more like a backdrop to one-liners and action sequences.  There doesn’t seem to be any attempt to have a pro- or anti-gun message.  This may actually benefit the story, though.  After watching the movie, I’m not sure that editorializing would have worked.  I can’t imagine Paul giving someone a lecture on the benefits or costs of owning a gun.

I’m not a big fan of violent movies.  Since I haven’t seen similar movies, it’s hard to judge if the movie is cliché or not.  It’s definitely not a parody.  The movie seems to take itself seriously.  However, it was lacking on any sort of a real plot.  I didn’t really feel like I was rooting for anyone.  I didn’t leave the movie thinking about any sort of message.

I wouldn’t go into the movie expecting anything grand or epic.  As I said, it’s mostly action with a few jokes here and there.  This is one of those movies that manages to stay very true to the coming attractions.  I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised as to whether or not they’ll like it.

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Impostor (2001)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

I remember someone saying that Saturday Night Live skits tended not to make good movies.  The problem was that you were taking something that did well as a short skit and trying to stretch it out into a feature-length film.  Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World both did well.  Both even had sequels.  However, there were a lot of movies that didn’t fare so well with the critics.  Does anyone even remember It’s Pat: the Movie or Stuart Saves His Family?  (It’s Pat was one of the few movies I couldn’t watch all the way through.)

We tend to have a similar problem turning short stories into movies.  Philip K. Dick provided the source for this one.  There have been other movies made from his work, including two based on We‘ll Remember it for you Wholesale.  (They were both called Total Recall.)  It’s understandable, given these movies and others like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which became Blade Runner, that people would love to get the movie rights to his work.  Impostor doesn’t seem to fare as well as the other titles.

The movie is based on a short story of the same name.  In the movie, Gary Sinise plays Spencer Olham.  Olham is a scientist working on a bomb to help destroy an alien threat from Alpha Centauri.  The aliens have a pretty powerful weapon of their own. They can replicate a person, give the replicant the memories of the original and send them off with a bomb that doesn’t assemble until the replicant is close enough to the target.  Since the replicant thinks that they’re the original, it’s extremely difficult to detect them.  Olham is suspected of being just such a weapon.

He’s taken from work one day and is about to be killed by Hathaway, but Olham escapes.  With some help, Olham makes it back to the city to get a scan that could prove his innocence, but that doesn’t work.  So, he makes one last-ditch effort to prove he’s really who he says he is.  I’m not going to say what happens, as there’s no point in ruining the movie.

I will say that this would have worked much better as a short movie or as part of an anthology like The Outer Limits.  This is primarily about Olham trying to prove that he’s not a fake.  This can end one of two ways:  Either he’s revealed to be Olham or he’s revealed to be the fake.  You could explore the aspect of what makes a person.  Is it their memories?  Is it biology?  Hathaway even points out that the aliens can’t copy a soul.  As much as a fake might think that they’re real, they can never be the authentic item.

The movie touches on this only briefly.  Instead, we have Hathaway chasing Olham and Olham trying to throw a few curve balls, many of which are kind of weak.  Olham takes an implant that can be used to track him.  It’s been surgically removed to prevent scanners from reading him, but he’s not shown to be given a new one.  I’ll admit it’s possible that only important people, like government employees are given one.  However, the government can still use it to track Olham almost in real time.  He gives it to Hathaway, who eventually realizes that he’s only chasing himself.

Notice that I described the plot in one paragraph, and a short one at that.  There’s really not that much to the movie.  The concept of what’s real and a person’s identity and nature has been done before and has been done better.  I don’t recall this movie being released in theaters.  It came out a little over ten years ago, in 2001.  This was back when I was going to movies more regularly.  Maybe it just wasn’t shown in any major theaters.  Maybe it was just that forgettable.

IMDb page

Happy Accidents (2000)

Note:   This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

 

I suppose that everyone has had their share of strange ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. Ruby Weaver seems to have had more than average. She seems to attract the weirdoes, like a heroine addict and someone with a foot fetish. Then, Sam Deed comes along. He finds Ruby while she’s reading in the park. The two start talking and it almost ends there. The thing is that she leaves her book on the bench; Sam returns it.

He seems like a normal guy from Dubuque, Iowa. He’s got a job as a caregiver for the elderly and doesn’t seem particularly interested in feet or illicit drugs. Ruby’s friends even like him. As time goes by, strange things start cropping up. Sam has no sense of popular music. He also can’t operate a record player to save his life. There’s even a bar code on his arm.

Ruby realizes that Sam may be in need of professional help when Sam starts claiming to be from the future. He claims to be from the year 2470 and even gives a rundown of history. Dubuque in his time will be on the Atlantic Coast. There are also gene dupes and no religion. He also calls asparagus pickles. The more Ruby finds out about Sam, the more she realizes that he’s not what he’s claiming to be.

I found this movie while looking for time-travel movies. Happy Accidents isn’t too heavy on the sci-fi angle. Instead, it’s more on the romance between Sam and Ruby and how they keep almost hitting it off. It’s sort of like K-PAX in that the main focus is on a few characters. As with Prot, you’re constantly wondering if Sam is a little crazy. You think that he may be telling the truth, but something always happens that makes you doubt the whole thing. For instance, Sam seems to have gotten his family pictures out of picture frames.

Those that don’t like time travel might be a little put off by that aspect of the movie, but really shouldn’t be. I think that it was a relatively minor point and actually worked well with Sam being just a little nutty. I think that a lot of science-fiction movies get a bad rap from people that are expecting flying saucers and little green men.

There was a sort of low-budget feel to the movie. It’s not that the scenes were poorly shot or that the acting was bad. In fact, one thing that made me rent it was that Vincent D’Onofrio and Marisa Tomei were in the movie. I think it was just an overall thing. I can’t place my finger on it. That’s not to say that the movie was bad. I thought it was actually very good. I’d actually give it five stars. I just can’t say that it’s for everyone.

IMDb page

Ed Wood (1994)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

If you’ve been reading my recent reviews, you know that I’ve been looking for really bad movies to watch.  One name that keeps popping up is Ed Wood, the director of Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 From Outer Space.  While people do recognize the names of his movies, the name of the director isn’t as well known.  Still, Edward D. Wood, Jr. gained such notoriety for being so bad that a movie was produced about him and his work.

Johnny Depp stars as the title character.  The movie starts with Wood working at a movie studio when a producer comes across a script.  Wood wants to direct it, but can’t as the rights were acquired by another studio.  So, Wood writes his own, semi-autobiographical version which goes on to become Glen or Glenda.  Despite having Bela Lugosi in it, the movie tanks and it tanks hard.  The producer calls to let Wood know that if he ever decides to set foot on studio property, Wood should first make out his last will and testament.

Wood goes on undeterred.  He has to struggle for funding and apparently would often do shots in one take regardless of how they came out.  He makes several other movies with Lugosi, including Bride of the Monster.  They all meet with very bad reviews.

The movie closes shortly after Wood finished making Plan 9 From Outer Space.  He has a Baptist Church backing him on this film, which does cause some tension.  They want to make major changes to the script and don’t really like that Wood wants to direct wearing women’s clothes.  A chance meeting with his idol gives Wood the inspiration to finish the movie.

The movie is a pretty straightforward account of Wood’s life.  It covered his best-known movies, although IMDb lists a lot more movies during that time frame.  Wood was apparently a very prolific director.  He was a man that wouldn’t take no for an answer, even if the answer was well justified.  Wood kept doing what he loved.  (As the saying goes, it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down; it matters how many times you get back up.)

The directing was great.  I’ve come to like a lot of Tim Burton’s movies, but this one was a little different.  As I said, it was very straightforward.  It’s not at all like Mars Attacks! or Edward Scissorhands.  Having the film shot in black and white was definitely a plus for the movie.

I also liked the acting.  Martin Landau was great as Lugosi.  Bill Murray was also great in his role.  I even enjoyed Sarah Jessica Parker.  This was one of her few roles where I didn’t find her to be over the top.  (She’s usually just a little too outgoing in most of her roles.)

Ed Wood is one of those movies that just comes together to work perfectly.  It’s a great movie about a director that was known for his horrible movies.  I find it strange, though, that his name isn’t better known.  At least his movies will live on.  I plan on watching Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda.  I have to wonder if I’ll want to see more of his movies after that or if I’ll be done with watching bad movies. 

IMDb page

Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Babysitting isn’t a particularly glorious job.  I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with it.  It’s just not really something most people aspire to be.  It’s the kind of thing that girls do in high school.  Chris would rather be on a date with her boyfriend Mike.  When he cancels at the last minute, she’s left with nothing to do, so she accepts an offer to watch Sara.  Sara’s brother, Brad, is supposed to be over at the house of his friend, Daryl, but Brad has a bit of a crush on Chris, so they both end up staying over at Brad’s place.

Normally a babysitting job would begin and end there.  They’d spend the night watching movies and eating popcorn.  Everyone would be in bed at an appropriate hour.  However, Chris gets a call from her friend, Brenda.  Brenda decided to run away from home, but failed to consider that the cab ride to the bus station would cost everything she had.  She has to call Chris collect to ask for a ride home.

This puts Chris in a difficult position.  She can’t leave her friend at the bus station, which is in a rough area.  She can’t leave the kids home alone, as she was paid to watch them.  She reluctantly agrees to take the kids to the rough area to get her friend, expecting that she’ll get there and back quickly.  That’s where the flat tire comes in.  A friendly tow-truck driver agrees to help, but takes a detour when he finds out that his wife is cheating on him.

The adventure begins when Chris, Brad, Daryl and Sara have to hide in a car to avoid the driver’s gunfire.  The car is being stolen by Joe Gipp.  Rather than let them out in a bad neighborhood, he takes them back to the chop shop where he works.  This doesn’t sit well with his employers.  They manage to escape, but not before Daryl takes an adult magazine that contains important information.  Chris and Co. now have to get the car back, pick up Brenda and get home before the parents do, which isn’t going to be easy, considering that they’ve got some bad people after them.

Much of the humor comes from the fact that something like this would probably never happen.  Even if a friend of yours did get stranded at a bus station, they’d probably have another friend they could call for help.  Even if you did have to pick them up, it probably would go smoothly.  Just take the scene in the blues place.  Chris has to get everyone to safety by singing the blues.  (“Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues.”)

Although I don’t recall watching this movie before, there is some nostalgia.  I’m part of a generation that remembers a time before cell phones.  I remember why forgetting a checkbook was a big deal.  Even if they had roadside assistance back then, they would have had to walk to get to a payphone.  Breaking down on a highway wasn’t good.

There are a few familiar faces.  Elisabeth Shue plays Chris.  (It took me a moment to place her.)  We also get to see Vincent D’Onofrio as the owner of the repair shop, who Sara mistakes for Thor.  (Sara’s a big fan of Thor.)  Also look out for Bradley Whitford as Chris’s boyfriend.

I’d say the movie is safe for teenagers and above.  There is some cursing and name calling and the characters are put in some dangerous situations.  (And, there’s a Playvboy that makes a few appearances.)  You might get nervous with some of the bus-station scenes, but it’s the kind of thing I would feel safe watching with my mother.

IMDb page

The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Note:  This review is reposted from Epinions.

Some questions are hard to answer. What is reality? What is life? Why are we here? When a company creates a virtual reality, people have to start asking these questions. They create a rendition of the 1930s that’s a little off in terms of the colors, but otherwise seems real. There are seemingly real people who sleep in seemingly real beds and eat seemingly real food. A user can connect and take the identities of one of the characters.

Hannon Fuller, the man who created the system, figures out something incredibly disturbing. It’s so disturbing that he has to leave a note for Douglas Hall, one of his employees, in the system. The problem is that Hall is suspected of Fuller’s death. There’s a period of a couple of hours that he can’t remember, which puts doubt in his mind.

So, he goes into the system to find the note. Thing is that the guy he gave it to isn’t telling. He also finds out that Fuller had a daughter and that the daughter is here to shut down the project, as per Fuller’s wishes. Thing is that no one knew that Fuller had a daughter or that he wanted to shut down the project. After all the hard work that they put into it, why shut it down?

There are a lot of implications for a machine like that. There are some positives, like using it for training. Tweak the physics a little and you give police a chance to train in situations without risking death. You could also have virtual vacations if you perfected it. You would also have your own virtual playground, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on the user. (Imagine a virtual-reality Grand Theft Auto or interactive adult films.)

It does bring up the question of ‘being’ someone else. In the movie, the people generally assume the identities of people that look like them. However, you could put someone in the body of someone different. Someone could find out what it’s like to be bound to a wheelchair or what it’s like to be a minority. Those questions aren’t really dealt with in the movie. It's primarily a murder mystery. Did Hall really do it? If not, who did? You even get a twist midway through the movie.

Reality isn’t always what it seems. It’s also not all that it’s cracked up to be. The characters in the program go about their lives not knowing that they’re in a simulation. However, when one finds out, they begin to question what reality is. I have to give the movie credit for taking something that other books and movies have done and exploring it a little more. The movie gets four stars.

IMDb page

Men in Black (1997)

Note:  This is a review I originally posted on Epinions.  With the closing of Epinions, I’ve decided to repost many, if not all of my reviews here, on my blog.  I’ve made some minor modifications to reflect any changes that have occurred since first reviewing the movie.  With any luck, I will be doing this at least once per week.

One way of writing an alien movie is the alien-in-disguise, humanity-doesn't-know-the-truth way.  Aliens live among us, but we don't know about it because aliens either look human or can fit into an inconspicuous disguise.  In Men In Black, the title organization protects us from alien threats because, well, no one else is authorized to know that aliens even exist.

The movie starts with agents K and D on a mission.  D decides that it's time to quit.  He misses looking up at the sky and not knowing the truth.  That leaves K to find a new partner.  People are recruited from all manner of organizations, mainly military.  It's James Edward, a New York City police officer, that K seems interested in.  When James becomes Agent J, we get to find out all about the various things that let the MIB stay in the shadows.

To become J, James can  no longer exist.  His fingerprints are removed.  All files are erased.  Anyone that knew James has their memories of him erased with a device called a neuralyzer.  (This device also comes in useful for covering up major incidents.)

Meanwhile, a big bug crashes on Earth and kills Edgar to take his appearance.  You'd think something like this would get out.  Yes, the ship crashes in farmland, but someone has to have seen something.  It has to have made it into a newspaper.  That's where tabloids come in.  We all think they're full of crazy half-baked hoaxes, but they're really the best investigative journalism around.  J and K go to Edgar's house and talk to his wife, Beatrice.  After the interview, she's neuralized and the agents are on their way.  Around the same time, different aliens show up demanding The Galaxy.  The MIB have a galactic standard week (one hour) to find and deliver it.

The movie was based on a series of comic books.  From what I've read, though, there were more than a few changes.  The comic version hat the MIB investigating all sorts of things and could protect their identity however they saw fit.  I don't know how well that version would have done, mostly since I've never read the comics.

It's still a very dark movie.  There are a few scenes that aren't going to be appropriate for children.  For instance, when The Bug takes Edgar's skin as a disguise, you don't see The Bug actually killing Edgar, but you know what's going on.  Also, as the movie progresses, the skin deteriorates.

I remember liking this movie when it first came out.  For some reason, this is one of two movies that I can recall where the sequel seems to get more TV airplay than the original.  (Ghostbusters is the other.)  I'd like to watch it again, but I don't know that I want to rent it.  Two sequels have been made, both of which I‘ve subsequently seen.  I'd still love to get my hands on a neuralyzer.

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