The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

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

After watching a lot of one- and two-star movies, I figured I’d try something different.  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time looked interesting, so I ordered it from Netflix.  The movie is about Makoto Konno.  Her day starts off normally.  She wakes up late, rushes out the door to school, doesn’t do well on a pop quiz, and nearly starts a fire while cooking.  To make matters worse, she nearly gets hit by a train.  The only thing that keeps the train from actually hitting her is that she’s developed the ability to jump back in time.

She finds herself having gone back a few minutes.  When she realizes what happened and that she has control over it, she begins to use it for several trivial jumps.  She now knows the answers to the pop quiz, which means that she can ace it.  She knows not to take a certain station in the cooking class.  Instead of being limited to an hour of fun, she can repeat the session over and over again.  Upset that her little sister ate Makoto’s pudding, she goes back to eat it herself.

She has no sense of the consequences or the possibilities.  (Other people don’t always like the outcome of her changes.)   She could date someone that she likes and if it doesn’t work out, she could literally go back to the way it was, as if nothing had happened.   She comes to realize that she has a limited number of jumps and she doesn’t have many left.  At this point, she does try to make things better, but there’s always that loose end.  It seems like there’s always one more thing she has to fix.

I hate to say it, but for many people, like my mother, anime tends to be a strike against a movie.  Any sort of sci-fi or fantasy tends to be another strike.  I happen to like both, so I don’t mind watching a movie like this, but it’s not really fair to a movie to not like it based on the style of presentation.  Also, the science-fiction aspect isn’t really that heavy.  You don’t get a lot of technical talk about how time travel is possible nor does the movie spend to much time on altered time lines and the butterfly effect.

Instead, it’s about Makoto and her learning to deal with the consequences of her actions.  She starts out with no real direction in life.  Many of her friends have some idea of what they want to do.  She has no sense at all of what she wants to do when she grows up.  I don’t know that she does when the movie ends, but she does have a slightly clearer sense of purpose.

This was one of those movies that I really enjoyed.  (Judging by the other reviews, I’m not alone.)  I really felt for Makoto.  Unfortunately, she was the only character that had any real development and she did seem to get the most screen time, but that did make for an engaging movie.  As you might expect with a time-travel movie, there were some repeated scenes.  (The time-jump animation got a lot of use, but not to the point where it was distracting.)

The movie has a PG-13 rating in the U.S., which I would think is for some mild language.  (Masturbation is mentioned once in the movie.  Beyond that, it’s nothing worse than damn and hell.)  It’s the kind of movie that anyone could enjoy assuming that they don’t mind that.

I’d definitely recommend the movie to anyone.  Runtime was 98 minutes, which was a good length.  I didn’t feel like it dragged at all, nor did I feel that the movie was missing anything.  I don’t know that there will be a sequel.  It’s one of those movies that’s probably better left open. 

The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

Note:  This was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Warning:  I’m not only going to give away details about the movie; I’m going to give away and pick apart the ending.  If you don’t want to know that much about the movie before reading it, now would be a good time to stop reading.



There are some movies that are so incredibly bad that I’m surprised people didn’t torch theaters in response to seeing them.  The Giant Gila Monster is one such movie.  As you might expect, The Giant Gila Monster is about a Giant Gila Monster (played brilliantly here by a Mexican bearded lizard) that has surprisingly gone unnoticed until two local teenagers go missing.

Naturally, since they were a couple and no one has yet seen the Gila Monster, it’s assumed that they ran of somewhere to get married or something.   Rather than assume what people are saying, Sheriff Jeff gets some of their friends to help look for them.  The group is led by Chase Winstead, who’s basically a good kid.  He works hard to help take care of his mother and sister.  What money they don’t need he puts into his hot rod.  Most of the other kids like and respect him.  When the father of the missing boy tries to impeach his character, the sheriff sticks up for him.

Since Chase tows cars for money, he comes across several things that would suggest something odd is going on.  In one case, a car skidded off the road at a right angle to the direction of traffic.  There’s no evidence of anything that would have caused a car to do this.  Next is a DJ traveling through town.  He describes a big black-and-pink-striped reptile that cut him off.  Since he was apparently drinking, the story is easily dismissed.

After some research and some theorizing, the sheriff soon comes to believe that there is, in fact, a large reptile on the loose.  It’s big enough that it can destroy a bridge by walking underneath it.  Eventually, the Giant Gila Monster shows up at a party that Chase is throwing.  The sheriff fires a few shots with no effect.  Chase gets the crazy idea to get some Nitroglycerine (that he just happens to have) and blow up the giant lizard.  The day is saved and Chase is a hero.

There are so many things that I could easily tear apart.  The most obvious choice for me is the title character.  The Giant Gila Monster is rarely shown and when he is, it’s fairly evident that forced perspective is being used.  This is because the Gila Monster is walking on sand.  If the Gila Monster is as big as it’s supposed to be, you shouldn’t be able to make out individual grains of sand.

This leads to pretty much no actual attack scenes.  The closest we get is seeing the Gila Monster’s giant foot coming towards the camera.  The scenes with the Gila Monster next to a car or building looked fake enough.  I think that any scene with the Gila Monster and a person would have been below even the standards of the crew of this movie.

Another thing I found odd, and this may be a generational thing, is that Chase liked to sing a lot.  He sang a rather odd song while working on a fender.  I can’t fault him there, considering that pretty much anything would sound better than a banging hammer.

He also sang a ridiculous song about the Lord wanting children to be happy.  The first time he did this, I didn’t mind so much because he was doing it to cheer up his little sister.  The second time was in front of his friends at the party.  I think if I sang that kind of song in front of most of the people I know, they either would have walked out on me or had me committed.  Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed them.  I mean, honestly.  Is this the kind of crap people sang in 1959?  Hadn’t anyone invented decent music yet?  I think that this was the impetus that caused Rock & Roll to come into existence.  Someone had to come up with something that rocked.

Speaking of Chase, the lizard busts through a barn wall during the second rendition of the Happy Children song.  Shortly thereafter, the Gila Monster destroys the front of the house that the sister is staying in.  When you consider that the Gila Monster also presumably ate two of his friends, it looks like this Gila Monster has it in for Chase.

The big question, which is barely addressed in the movie, was “Where the heck was this thing all this time?”  The theory is that the Gila Monster ate some special plants (or ate animals that ate special plants) that allowed for super growth.  Wouldn’t it stand to reason that other Gila Monsters had eaten the same stuff?  Why is this the first that we’ve seen of a gigantic lizard?  At the very least, there should have been a point where the sheriff said, “Gee… that explains all those missing people!”  Part of it may be that the lizard doesn’t look all that menacing.  I guess if anyone did see it, they probably didn’t think much of it.  (While thinking about this, I also asked myself something completely different:  Why have we never seen an abnormally large giraffe?  Now, that would be scary.)

The movie runs for 74 minutes and it’s almost all goofiness.  Aside from what I’ve mentioned above, we have a scene where the sheriff checks Harris’s sobriety by smelling his breath.  In another, Harris wants what he calls a soberty test.  He also compares buying a new car to getting married or going to New York.  It’s something you should do once, but never twice.

At the end of the movie, Chase kills the title reptile by loading his car with four canisters of nitroglycerine and aiming his car into the lizard before jumping out.  I always find it hard to believe that the car would stay on track and hit the lizard dead on.  It was also very convenient that Chase happened to come across a large quantity of nitroglycerine in the first place.  He had so much that I’m surprised that he didn’t load up enough of the stuff that it wouldn’t have mattered where he hit.  You’d think he’d want to be sure to be rid of the darned thing.

It’s one of those movies that it was worth the price of the DVD set just to be able to laugh at it.  I would actually check your listings or free on-demand section to see if this movie is available.  I’d hesitate to spend money on it unless you’re getting it with something else or you’re getting it from NetFlix.  This gives low-budget movies a bad name. 

Birth (2004)

I have this thing for strange movies. Some I honestly like while others I watch simply because they’re strange. There are some like Birth that I watch simply to see how they turn out. They get you interested and don’t let go until a very unusual ending.

The movie opens with a man saying that he doesn’t believe in reincarnation. Next is a man (presumably the same man) jogging. It’s a very simple, powerful scene. It looks like he’s jogging his usual route when all of a sudden, he collapses underneath a bridge. The next scene is a child being born.

Ten years pass since the man dies. The man’s wife, Anna, is getting married again, this time to a man named Joseph. One day, at a party, a ten-year-old boy walks in claiming to be Sean. It turns out his name is actually Sean, but he means Anna’s dead husband Sean. This freaks Anna out a little, but she begins to accept and believe the boy. He seems to know things about Sean, Sr., like where he died.

Most of the people surrounding Anna don’t believe. Anna’s mother is particularly resistant, threatening to call the police at one point. Even if Sean were to prove that he was who he claimed to be, it’s just not right for a woman of Anna’s age to have that kind of a relationship with a child of ten. (I should warn you that there’s a bathtub scene along those lines that may freak people out. It was staged, but it’s still a little freaky.)

Joseph is outright resistant to the idea that Sean is the reincarnation of the deceased. He’s had to wait a long time for Anna and be persistent. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want the boy in his house. After all, here’s this ten-year-old kid that practically walks right in to their lives and almost instantly wins Anna over, whereas he’s had to wait several years just to get her to say yes to a marriage proposal.

But is it even really Sean? The movie goes back and forth several times. Yes, he knows stuff, but he doesn’t know other things. There are also critical facts that the young Sean doesn’t know. He spends the entire movie seemingly convinced that he’s reincarnated, but what does he have to gain? What’s his game? Of all the people that could have been reincarnated and aware of it, why him? Why now?

That was what kept me watching the movie, even though it was slow and a little confusing. I kept waiting for some sort of major revelation, but I never got it. There was no heavy “Oh crap” moment where the entire movie came into focus. It would have been nice.

Don’t get me wrong. The acting was good. Nichole Kidman effectively played a woman that needed to believe. Lauren Bacall was great as a mother who knew that her daughter was digging a hole she might never get out of. But it was too strange a story. Reincarnation is one of those things that some people dismiss as mystic nonsense. I think that many of these people will turn the movie off within a half an hour. I can’t even say that that’s a bad thing.

I kind of wish I hadn’t watched the movie. Having watched it all the way to the end, I didn’t get it. Someone could come up to me and explain it and I probably still wouldn’t get it. I’m not sure what Anna was planning on doing at the end of the movie. Did she finally feel that she was being taken? I can’t recommend this movie.

Non-Stop (2014)

There’s not a whole lot you can do on an airplane.  With movies, any confined space is going to present problems.  It worked in Exam.  Several people are competing for one job.  When the turn on each other, not being able to leave the room adds to the suspense.  With Non-Stop, you have a similar problem.  Liam Neeson plays an air marshal named Bill Marks.  He’s not the best person.  He drinks.  He argues with people.  He even sneaks a smoke on the lavatory.  The good news is that he gets to travel a lot.  The bad news is that it’s the kind of work that can take a strain on you and your family.

It’s shaping up to be another routine flight when Marks gets a message over the secure network.  The person on the other end threatens to kill passengers at regular intervals unless money is transferred to a specific account.  He initially assumes it to be a joke by the flight’s other air marshal, Jack Hammond.  Hammond denies everything, even showing Marks his own pager.

It doesn’t seem like it would be that easy to pull off something like this.  There are several suspects, though.  Could it be the friendly woman that put forth some effort to sit next to Marks?  It would be too obvious if she took out a pager.  Could it be the angry guy that talks back?  Maybe it’s the token Arab/Muslim guy that everyone’s ready to point a finger at.

It doesn’t help that Marks has no proof.  At best, he looks paranoid.  Things get worse from there, especially when people actually start dying.  You’d think someone would notice a fellow passenger sending texts and turn them in.  The movie manages to go on for 1:46 with the bulk of it in the airplane.  You’d think Marks would be able to see the person given the right vantage point.  It’s never that simple.

That’s the big problem I had with the movie.  The movie is entertaining, but requires a certain suspension of disbelief.  You’d think two trained air marshals could figure out who one person is when the person they’re looking for is typing something on a wireless device.  It shouldn’t take that long to figure everything out.

It’s as if someone got the idea and tried to get it as close to two hours as they could.  It’s interesting to see how the next person will be killed, but that’s not really exciting enough to carry the film.  There is also part of the movie that would be a good candidate for Mythbusters, assuming there’s a way to test it at all.  Knowing that there’s a bomb on board, Marks proposes that they bury the bomb in luggage at a weak point in the plane to direct the blast.  I’m not sure that it would go down as expected.

This is one of those cases where I’m glad it was a free rental from Redbox.  The premise wasn’t enough to get me into the theater, but I did want to watch it.  The movie came off as a little too cliché to me.  If you can get it through Netflix, I’d say go for it.  Just don’t ask too much of the movie.

Iron Sky (2012)

They say ignorance is bliss.  I find this to be most true while watching movies.  When I notice scientific errors or when someone uses the wrong word to describe something, it sticks with me.  Iron Sky starts by explaining that the Nazis have a lunar base on the far side of the moon, which is described throughout the movie as the dark side of the moon, but more on that later.

The year is 2018 and an unnamed American president is thinking about reelection.  (Throughout the movie, she’s referred to simply as the President of the United States.)  As a publicity stunt, she sends two people to the moon.  It’s something that hasn’t been done in 50 years and is bound to get her name in the press.  Shortly after landing, one of the two astronauts discovers the aforementioned Nazi lunar base.  They’re planning to return to Earth, biding their time by mining Helium-3.  (Yes, that’s a real thing.)

That astronaut is shot, leaving the other astronaut to be captured and brought into the base.  As luck would have it, the captured astronaut is an African-American model named James Washington.  Washington is experimented upon while the Nazis prepare to invade Earth.  (They think that Washington and his fellow astronaut are an advance team as a prelude to invade the moon.)

Their new war ship isn’t quite ready, but it’s discovered that Washington’s phone has more processing power than all of the Nazis’ computers combined.  Klaus Adler kindly insists on going to Earth to get more such devices.  He brings along Washington, who claims to know the President personally.  (His fiancée, Renate Richter, secretly tags along.)  When they meet up with the President’s advisor, Vivian Wagner, both Adler and Wagner realize the opportunity that they’ve just been given.  Adler ditches Washington and hooks up with Wagner.

The movie is listed as a comedy, but it’s probably more appropriate to call it a satire.  In this regard, I can forgive a few mistakes.  2018 isn’t an election year, but the President strongly resembles Sarah Palin.  She’s not presented as being very bright.  Also, manned lunar missions are usually about a three-day trip one way.  I can forgive this as technology may progress in the next four years and it was never explicitly stated that it didn’t take 3-4 days.

There were a few things that the movie got right.  As I said, Helium-3 is a real thing that is actually found on the moon and could be used for nuclear power.  One possible reason to go back to the moon might be to mine Helium-3.  Also, the swastika has been used by many cultures, including Hindus.  It’s conceivable that an Indian representative to the UN would be wearing a ring with that symbol.  It’s unfortunate that the Nazis used it as a symbol of hate.

I don’t think everyone will be interested in this movie.  That‘s not to say that most people won‘t like it.  A lot of this has to do with the use of Nazis.  The swastika and other propaganda is featured prominently in many scenes.  It’s a sensitive subject and with good reason.   There are a few people I know that might like it, but I wouldn‘t necessarily feel comfortable recommending it to them.

This is one of the advantages of having Netflix streaming.  If you’re not comfortable watching it with your roommates or kids around, you don’t have to worry about holding on to the disc for a few weeks until you get your chance.  There’s also a Netflix-exclusive director’s cut, so there’s a good chance that some version of the movie will be available streaming for a while.

Helium-3 mining on the lunar surface

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (13 Nov. 2007)

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

“Who are you going to believe… me or your own eyes?”

- Groucho Marx

I always found it odd that people were willing to take creationism at face value.  They believe that the Earth was created in six days and that God rested on the seventh.  They also believe that the Earth is about 6,000 years old and that humans were created in God’s image.  It just seemed odd that people were willing to take one book’s word for it.

Well, many of the people of Dover, PA, were no different.  A few years ago, a group of people decided that something called Intelligent Design (cough cough…creationism…cough cough) should be taught alongside evolution as science, or at least a viable alternate explanation.  This had been going on in other cities, as well, but Nova decided to document Dover’s case.

Those that believed in Evolution brought the issue to trial, claiming that ID had no scientific credibility.  After all, evolution had observation and explanations and stuff.  ID had… well, the advantage of being ‘obvious’.  I mean, look at us.  How could something as complex as a human be left to chance?  We had to have had an intelligent creator that created us as we are.

It’s kind of hard to give an in-depth analysis of the plot because of the fact that it’s so basic.  The episode simply follows the battle between science and ID.  To make the case, the prosecution had to prove that ID was either religious in nature or was designed to promote religion.  It was fairly easy to show that ID didn’t follow the same rigor as science, but the prosecution needed a smoking gun, which they found.  (I’ll let you be surprised if you’re interested in watching this.)

Now, here’s the thing.  As with other highly debated subjects, those that agree with the outcome (ID being thrown out of the school system) will see the episode of Nova as fair and balanced.  Thos that disagree will think that only a heathen whack job would believe it.  Being one of the heathen whack jobs, I’m glad that I’m not in school any more.  I’m glad that I was never tested on any form of ID because I would have hated life.

There are many Christians that  absolutely adamant that God created the Earth simply because the Bible says so.  They will never accept that bacteria do actually mutate and evolve.  They will refute fossils as a trick by God to test their faith.  They see something labeled as a theory and think that it’s not fact.  (Granted, it’s not actually complete…yet.  ‘Theory’ means that science has yet to work out the details.)

Yes, I’m an atheist.  The reason that I chose science over faith is that science has proof where faith has a book.  Faith doesn’t take well do doubt whereas science relies upon it.  I have a hard time accepting something simply because someone tells me it’s so.  This is why I’ll see a movie even if someone tells me it’s horrible.  There are some things that I have to know for myself.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

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

Steve Rogers has a dream.  All he wants to do is serve his country.  World War II is in full swing and he’s not going to let something like a medical deferment stop him.  You see, Rogers is small, weak and has a few health issues.  He can’t serve, as much as he wants to and as many times as he tries.  That’s where Dr. Abraham Erskine comes in.  He’s interested in using Rogers as a test subject.  Rogers agrees.  Even if it’s not for sure, it might get him into the armed forces.

Dr. Erskine has developed this serum that will turn an ordinary man into a super soldier.  He knows that Rogers is the right man for the job, despite the military’s skepticism.  Rogers is turned into a super-soldier.  The drawback is that the formula is lost, leaving Rogers as the only positive result.  This is useless to the military, as they were promised an entire army of super-soldiers.  But, they could always use him as a poster boy to sell war bonds…

This isn’t what Rogers signed up for.  Yes, he is serving his country, at least more so than when he started off.  The problem is that he’s going around in a silly costume that pleases civilians, but is seen as a joke by those on actual active duty.   When the opportunity presents itself, Rogers goes and saves his friend and many other soldiers, thus earning him the right to defend his country.  Rogers also brings back some good intelligence, giving him several more missions to go on.

HYDRA is the main group of bad guys.  They’re the Nazis' research wing and they’re developing some pretty nasty weapons.  If Rogers can take out the remaining factories, all will be saved.  HYDRA is led by Johann Schmidt.  He’s an earlier, failed attempt at the super-soldier.  To say he has issues is an understatement.  It’s not going to be easy to defeat Schmidt and HYDRA, but it is possible.

At this point, if you’ve been reading my reviews, you should have figured out that I’m going to watch the Avengers movie one of these days.  Of all the movies that feed into that movie, this one seems to be the most obvious in terms of setup.  It even has “The First Avenger” in the title.  (The only one that comes close is Thor.)  You even get a tie in or two.  In the beginning of the movie, Rogers and his friend are visiting the Stark Expo, hosted by Tony Stark’s father, Howard.  Howard Stark even plays an important role in the movie.  I don’t think that the references were too much.  It wasn’t really forced at all.

The movie took a while to get going.  There was a bit of setup and a while where we got to see what kind of person Rogers was.  I didn’t think it dragged, but the action doesn’t start immediately.  Rogers spends a good deal of time getting ready to be made into Captain America and spends a good deal of time before seeing action.  If you’re in it for the action, I don’t know that you’ll be disappointed, but you will have to wait for it.

Right now, the only movie I would want to see before seeing The Avengers is The Incredible Hulk.  I’ve seen Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Thor.  (I don’t think there are any other movies I need to see.  Please leave a comment if I’m mistaken.)  Of all the movies that I’d have to see, The Incredible Hulk is the one I’m not too crazy about.  If I hadn’t wanted to see The Avengers, I’d probably have watched this and the two Iron Man movies and maybe gotten around to watching Thor if it came on TV.  Since I don’t read comics, I don’t know how well it holds up to the comics, but it is definitely worth renting.

Argo (2012)

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

The movie starts in November of 1979.  Protesters are outside the American embassy’s compound and those inside are worried.  The former Iranian shah is in America for medical reasons and the Iranians want him back.  Six of the embassy workers manage to escape, but everyone else is taken hostage.  Those six manage to find refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador.  The U. S. State Department wants to get them out, but there’s no really plausible way to do that.  Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, finds reasons that each proposal might fail.

One night, while watching one of the Planet of the Apes movies, he realizes that movies will occasionally need to film on location.  This gives him the idea of posing as a studio employee meeting some ‘Canadian’ counterparts in Iran.  After a few days of ‘scouting’ for a location, they’ll all catch a flight back to North America.  Not only does Mendez have to train six people to learn their cover stories, but they’re operating under a deadline.  (It won’t take long for the hostage takers to realize that they’re short six hostages.)

There are also a lot of technical details to worry about.  Mendez brings in some Hollywood people to help sell the cover story.  They buy an actual script to use, hire real actors and go through the process of pretending to make a movie.  The even set up an office for Iranian officials to call when the need arises.  There are also bureaucratic problems that they just have to hope will resolve themselves.

Part of the problem with movies based in history is that you may have some sense of how it ends.  Argo tells part of what went on with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which took place when I was only a few years old.  I saw the movie with my brother, who was only a few months old at the time.  There were a few references that he missed, like to Rock Hudson.  I’m sure that I missed one or two, myself.  (I have no memory of Carter as president.)

Most of the movie focuses on the rescue attempt.  We get to see the hostages a little before they meet Mendez, but it’s mostly to show that they’re getting cabin fever.  They can’t leave the ambassador’s residence for fear of someone recognizing them.  Once they’re out ‘scouting’ for a location, they have to stay in character the whole time.  (On that note, I’m not sure how much of the film was done for dramatic effect.  There were a few tense scenes where the six ‘houseguests’ were out and almost caught.)

One thing I thought about was the screenwriter whose film was purchased to use for the project.  I felt a little bad that it was purchased with the intent of not really making it.  My brother pointed out that it did help to save lives, but the mission was classified.  Mendez, who came up with the idea, was awarded the Intelligence Star, but couldn’t actually take it home.  This is how classified it was.  I don’t imagine that the State Department was going to let some screenwriter in on their little secret.  I’m sure projects fall through all the time, but it must be so weird to find something like that out years later.

I do recommend seeing the movie.  I liked seeing it in theaters.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to posting it until after it came out on DVD.  Another thing I noticed is that the Canadian government did a lot to help us, even jyst by letting the six Americans stay there.  I’m not sure how much that affected their relationship with the Iranians.  Definitely rent this movie if you get the chance. 

After the Dark/The Philosophers (2013)

You might have had one of those philosophical debates in class over who would get to go into a hypothetical fallout shelter.  You have maybe two or three times the number of open slots and you have to pick based on things like skills, profession and gender.  (How useful is a college student?  Is a woman more valuable because she’s of child-bearing age?)  Well, someone made a movie based on that premise.

It’s the last day of a philosophy class.  The students are subjected to a thought experiment by their teacher, Mr. Zimit.  He proposes that his students are on a field trip when nuclear war or some other disaster breaks out.  They happen to be in proximity to a fallout shelter, but there are 21 people (including Mr. Zimit) competing for 10 beds.  They can’t alternate sleeping schedules, as there’s only enough food and air to last 10 people exactly one year.  Each student is assigned a profession and the students have to decide which of them gets in.

The first time the students conduct the experiment, Mr. Zimit gets himself in as a wildcard.  He won’t say what his advantage is or what he does for a living.  For all anyone knows, he’s a traveling axe murderer.  He gets himself in.  Realizing that he may be leaning towards axe murderer, the remaining nine selected decide to lock Mr. Zimit out of the shelter.  This may be a bad move, as he claims to have the exit code.  (His profession was shelter builder.)

That doesn’t end well, leaving the students to try again.  This time, an additional detail is revealed.  A female student that had been a doctor is now a potential Ebola carrier.  Another student, who had been rejected for being a soldier, now has eidetic memory.  There’s also the added condition that they must produce at least one child by the end of their year in the bunker.  Again, this doesn’t end well.

The students have one last go at it.  This time, one of the students decides to take over.  In Petra’s version, everyone is on an island.  There’s no sign of volcanoes going off or nuclear blasts or anything.  Still, she selects ten people to go in.  Mr. Zimit is chased off, as everyone knows that he has a thing for shooting people.  Initially, Petra doesn’t want to go in, but one of the other students switches places with her.

Even though Petra’s selections aren’t optimal, everyone lives this time.  It turns out that the apocalypse didn’t affect their area.  Mr. Zimit doesn’t approve of her outcome.  There’s no way to get back to the rest of humanity, nor is there any hope to rebuild on the island.  All of the ‘useful’ people were sent off on the boat.

That’s essentially what it comes down to.  In both of the teacher’s scenarios, people of perceived use are selected, but everyone dies.  In Petra’s scenario, she selects based on her preferences.  There’s limited hope, but at least nearly everyone survives the first year.  Usefulness is of little consequence if no one makes it out alive.

It’s interesting to see how the scenarios play out.  Normally, when I’ve been given this exercise, it’s strictly in the sense of which traits are useful.  No one ever thinks about how it plays out.  A doctor is perceived as being useful because they know about medicine, but what kind of person are they?

A leader has the advantage of presumably being able to lead, but we don’t know what kind of leader they’d be.  Everyone has to be able to get along with everyone else.  10 people means 45 possible interpersonal relationships.  All sorts of factors play into this.

We do get to see Mr. Zimit lead his class.  Many of the students aren’t convinced of his leadership.  A few threaten to walk out at the beginning of the exercise.  We also get to see him be a bit of a control freak.  This is not a movie for children, mostly because of his actions.  I don’t want to give away too much, but he does take a few actions that small children wouldn’t be able to understand.  (At the very least, you should probably watch it before deciding if it’s appropriate for older children.)

Official Site

Monsters (2010)

Usually, synopses are pretty accurate. Not always, but usually.  Netflix has Monsters listed as an alien-invasion movie, but it’s not at all what I expected.  Instead of aliens coming in with guns blaring, it’s more of the invasive species type.  According to the movie’s timeline, a probe was sent out into space.  It returned with some sort of aliens.  When the probe crashed in Mexico, said aliens begin to multiply.  The entire northern part of Mexico is now quarantined.

Andrew Kaulder is a photojournalist who’s suddenly tasked with finding Samantha Wynden  and getting her the heck out of Mexico and back to the United States.  He wants to stay, as he’s in the area because of the monsters.  Getting the right photograph pays well.  However, Sam is the boss’s daughter, making her the priority.  So, he gets her to the coast only to find that it costs $5,000 to buy a ferry ticket back to the United States.

This isn’t a big problem at first.  Then, Andrew gets drunk, which leads to him getting drunk.  This gives a one-night stand the opportunity to steal their passports.  Now, Sam has to give up her engagement ring to get both of them home by land, which is a lot more dangerous.  This leads to a several-day journey where they survive and bond.  We learn about Sam and Andrew and those that are waiting for them at home.

I should warn you that the movie starts with the story’s last scene, which does kind of give things away.  I’m not crazy about this kind of movie, but I was able to get past it.  My big issue was that I was expecting more from the aliens.  Yes, they’re an ever-present threat, but they seem to only come out at night.  The only time you see them during the day is when they’re dead.  Mostly, this is done to add to the suspense.  You can’t quite see all of them, but you get to see enough that you no there might be trouble.  There are maybe two or three scenes where we get some suspense.

Instead, the movie is more about the two people that are being drawn closer together by shared risk.  Andrew is down there basically on business.  We never really find out why Sam is there.  They’re the opposites that eventually attract.

I did like watching the movie.  As a movie, it’s an interesting way to spend 93 minutes.  There is room for potential.  Very few are given about the aliens.  People will comment on mating habits and stuff, but that’s about it.  We don’t find out which planet they come from.  (It’s implied that they’re from within our own solar system.)  I don’t think they were even given a name.

The angle of an invasive species could have worked well against the backdrop of Mexico and the issue of illegal immigration.  For that matter, an invasive species could have worked well in its own right, showing us what happens when something comes in and displaces the local species.  Not much was really done in either regard.  We have a wall between the U.S. and Mexico that serves as a finish line, but that’s really about it.

IMDb shows Monsters: Dark Continent with a release date of November 28, 2014 in the UK, but it looks like there’s very little connection between the two movies.  The directors and writers are different.  I’m not sure what the story will be with that, but I would be interested in seeing it when I get the chance.


Official site

Age of Tomorrow (2014)

Note:  I’m going to give away major details, including the movie.  I don’t think there should be much risk of you watching it, since it’s a horrible movie.  If you want to be surprised, now would be a good time to stop reading.

I used to think that happy endings were kind of cliché.  It took something away from the movie knowing that someone would walk away happy.  Even in a horror movie, it may have been the bad guy, allowing for a sequel.  I’ve come to realize why this isn’t such a bad thing.

Age of Tomorrow starts off with what is called an asteroid heading for Earth.  (The reason I don’t say “appears to be” is that it has spikes all over its surface.  No asteroid should look like this.)  General Magowan calls on Captain James Wheeler to lead a team to destroy it.  Of course, Wheeler has sworn off the military due to having lost one person on a mission, but is convinced once he realizes the potential repercussions.  He demands to bring his own team.  Along for the ride is physicist Dr. Gordon.

When they get to the asteroid, they discover that it’s no asteroid.  They’re on an alien space ship, which explains the normal gravity and everything.  The team is attacked by a spherical machine, which Dr. Gordon instantly knows will transport them someplace else rather than kill them outright.  On Wheeler’s order, the rest of the team allows itself to be transported.

They find themselves on an alien planet.  They have a transmitter, but it will take an hour to charge.  While looking around, they notice humans being led into a facility by aliens.  Rather than hide the transmitter and to some reconnaissance, they leave the transmitter in plain sight and barge in.  All of the team members are eventually killed.  That’s what you get for taking a mission with a $3-million payday.

The B story, which takes place mostly on Earth, involves a firefighter that has to go in to work, despite it being his weekend with his daughter.  She wanders off into downtown L.A., which happens to be where the aliens are attacking.  He eventually finds her, only to see her transported to the alien world.  This leaves him to join up with the military and help with a rescue mission while General Magowan destroys the asteroid.

If only it were that easy.

General Magowan destroys the asteroid, but the daughter is shot.  Both Magowan and the father realize how screwed they are.  There are several dozen aliens surrounding the father, one of whom shows them Earth surrounded by several dozen asteroids.  The father decides to go down fighting.

This is one of those movies that’s going to be very easy to pick apart.  The first thing that caught my attention was that they happened to have a ship for the team to go up to the asteroid.  It’s said that it’s supposed to be some lunar-base supply ship.  I can excuse this, as it’s implied that the military is lying to Wheeler.  But it does seem rather convenient that the military has a lot more of these, which are shown later in the movie.  (The same goes for having Earth-like gravity on the supposed asteroid, as it’s not really an asteroid.)

The thing that gets me is that very little is mentioned about the physics of the blast.  They’re sending up a physicist, but she makes no mention of directing the blast.  It’s not really enough to destroy the asteroid.  If I understand correctly, spreading around the mass just spreads around the damage.

Also, why is it that alien planets always have trees and plants?  In some movies, it’s understandable.  You’re colonizing a planet.  You might even be terraforming the planet.  It would make sense to put trees on your new planet if they’re not already there.  Not only do the aliens look humanoid, they happen to have plant life that looks like ours.  I won’t even get into the fact that their technology looks almost identical.

The writing is bad all over.  This is one of those movies where the daughter tells her father that she’s in some random office building and he magically knows which one.  It seems like the characters, many of them trained professionals, are simply there to be killed.  We get some nice shots of people getting their heads blown off.  Still, I’d like to see someone stop for a moment and think about what they’re doing.  If you’re wondering, there’s no sex or nudity.  All of the objectionable imagery comes from the gore.  This is not a movie for children.

I’m not sure where the name comes from.  The official site doesn’t say much.  I think maybe it’s supposed to be a title that thinks it’s more awesome than it really is.  Quite frankly, so is the movie.  Kelly Hu and Robert Picardo are the only names that I recognized.  I wonder if they lost a bet or something.

IMDb page

Somewhere in Time (1980)

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

When I found Somewhere in Time, I was actually looking for time-travel movies. At first, it sounded like a straight-up time-travel movie. The more I read about it, the more I realized that it had more of a romance theme. I was still interested, though.

The story is about a playwright named Richard Collier, who’s destined to be a great writer. At the opening of his first play, an elderly woman approaches him, hands him a watch and tells him to return to her. Everyone (including Collier) wants to know who this woman is. Eight years pass; Collier has broken up with his girlfriend and is having trouble writing.

He decides to take a vacation, so he just gets in his car and drives. He almost passes a hotel, but decides to stop and check in. While visiting a display in one of the hotel’s rooms, Collier finds the picture of a woman. The picture is from 1912, but Collier becomes enamored with the woman. When he asks, he finds out that she was an actress named Elise McKenna.

Further research reveals that she’s the woman that handed him the watch 8 years ago. As you’ve probably figured out by now, that’s where the time travel comes in. Collier is determined to find a way to go back to 1912 to meet McKenna. It takes some work, but he does succeed. Where it goes from there, I won’t tell you.

I think part of the reason that the movie works is the simplicity of the story. It doesn’t rely on any sort of complicated machinery or temporal abnormalities. It’s not really asking you to buy into anything heavy. The main theme of the movie is the relationship between Collier and McKenna. Collier doesn’t try to explain that he came from the future, but is aware of the fact that it would sound strange to McKenna.

There were very few jokes related to time travel. The only one that stands out is when Collier first checks into the hotel in the present time. Arthur, a long-time employee of the hotel, senses something familiar about Collier. You know this is setting up a meeting in the past. Collier also gets to witness the taking of the picture that he originally saw in the hotel.

It took a while for Collier to find a way back into the past, but that’s understandable. You really can’t set up a movie like this in a few minutes. There are a lot of little things that help make the movie. One shot shows many of the awards that Collier received. One is for a play called “Passionate Apathy”. To simply rush back into the past wouldn’t have been a good idea.

It’s hard for me to explain exactly how or why this movie works, but it does. I actually found out that this movie has a fan club, so I know I’m not alone in this. (If you’re wondering about the club, there was a feature on the DVD that I rented that went into some detail about that.) I’d definitely recommend watching this movie. 

Odd Thomas (2013)

I have a lot of movies in my Netflix queue.  As in 446, not including those that aren’t available on DVD at the moment.  Some of them, I’m saving because they are or were available for streaming.  I’m not sure about the rest.  As I was going through the titles in my queue, I came across Odd Thomas.  It had been there for a few months.  I’m not sure how I found it, but it looked like one of the better selections.

The movie is based on a series of books by Dean Koontz.  It’s about a man actually named Odd Thomas.  He can see dead people and he is of the mind that he should do something about it.  The movie starts with Odd helping a recently deceased woman get her killer arrested.  He happens to be friends with Police Chief Wyatt Porter.  Helping Odd is Stormy Llewellyn, who manages an ice cream shop at the mall.

Odd knows that something big is coming.  He’s tipped off by the presence of bodachs, which are ghostly beings that seem to come around when someone important is about to die.  Not every death attracts one, but the presence of several dozen gets Odd’s attention.  He’s never seen that many at once.  (By the way, he’s the only one that can see them.)  Odd doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but he‘s given clues in the forms of dreams and hallucinations.

Fortunately, I didn’t seen much in the Netflix reviews comparing the movie with other media, not that I read a lot of reviews before watching a movie.  There’s always that temptation to compare the movie to something else.  (“If you liked the Dead Zone…”)  Yes, there is a reference to The Sixth Sense, but it’s not really harped upon.

Yes, this is a scary movie.  Netflix has it listed as NR, but IMDb has a self-applied PG-13 for the movie.  I don’t think this is a movie for children, mainly because of the bodachs.  This could give a young child nightmares, as they’re basically very scary.  They’re seen following people and occasionally possessing someone.

I think most adults will be able to handle the movie and even enjoy it.  I know my parents are often turned off by anything paranormal at first, even though they’ve enjoyed similar movies.  I’d be interested in reading the books.  This isn’t to see how closely the movie follows them, but rather to see more of the story.  I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more about the movie or the books.  Granted, I haven’t been watching movies in the theater much lately, but I’d think with a name like Koontz, someone would have mentioned this to me.

RoboCop (2014)

Note:  This review reveals major details about the movie.  If you haven’t seen the movie and don‘t want spoilers, you may want to wait before reading this review.  (There shouldn’t be many surprises, though, if you’ve seen the 1987 version.)


Remakes are a tricky business.  You’re basically using someone else’s idea and trying to make money off of it.  Yes, there’s safety in knowing that it’s already worked.  However, I’ve never really liked remakes because I always end up comparing it to the original, assuming I had seen the original first.  Total Recall is a perfect example of this.  The 2012 remake is looks nicer, but I would recommend the 1990 version any day.

Likewise, in 1987 we had a movie about a police officer named Alex Murphy who was killed on the job.  OmniCorp got the remains and remade him into RoboCop.  They needed a great new product and they could do whatever they wanted, as they ran the Detroit Police Department and Murphy was legally dead.  In 2014, a new version was made.  Replacing Peter Weller was Murphy was Joel Kinnaman.  I knew I was going to want to hate the remake, but I had to give it a fair shot.

The story is basically the same.  Police Officer Alex Murphy is trying to take down criminals.  When he crosses the wrong one, said criminal attempts to have Murphy killed.  Murphy lives, but just barely.  OmniCorp steps in and offers Mrs. Murphy the opportunity to have her husband remade into RoboCop.  She reluctantly agrees.

RoboCop also has his detractors, most of them criminals.  There are also politicians rallying against drones.  This is what necessitates Murphy’s involvement.  Most voters object to the use of drones on American soil.  However, a human in control of a robot isn’t so objectionable.

RoboCop takes a lot of work and a few unethical choices, but is initially a success.  When RoboCop is first introduced to the public, Clara knows something is wrong with her husband.  He doesn’t respond to her or their son.  However, he is able to apprehend a criminal who’s standing right next to two of Detroit’s finest.  RoboCop also doesn’t bother with briefings; he just goes out and gets the bad guys.

This comes at a cost.  As I said, there are ethical choices to be made.  Dr. Dennett Norton, who is leading the project, has to tinker with Murphy’s emotions.  He has to adjust Murphy’s physiology.  It’s not something he’s comfortable with, but the alternative is failure.  Murphy becomes unstable at certain points.  If RoboCop is to work and Murphy is to live, regrettable decisions will have to be made.

After being put into service, Murphy begins to reemerge.  One of the big problems is being given access to information on his own attempted murder.  He’s programmed not to react emotionally, but eventually goes after those that would have killed him.  In the end, Murphy gets the people that he’s after.

If you’ve seen the original movie, you will probably see most of the movie coming.  As I said, the basic details are the same.  Murphy is killed and comes back for revenge.  His final obstacle is not being able to hurt OmniCorp employees.  (Each movie resolves this differently.)  The movie deals with what it means to have free will.  Do we have it or is it an illusion?

We even get a few of the iconic lines repeated which is nice.  However, there are a lot of differences that fans of the original will notice.  There seemed to be more focus on Murphy.  The original had more focus on OmniCorp and the politics of getting RoboCop made.  Here, we get to see more of Murphy in action.  Speaking of which, Murphy’s memories weren’t wipe, as in the original.

This presented its own set of challenges, like getting Murphy to cooperate.  It also puts an entirely new spin on the movie.  Murphy is ‘erased’ more slowly.  He does make the same comeback, but he’s treated more as a human.  In the original, his family had left Detroit.  Here, he can visit them and even has his wife fighting for him.  It’s almost as if we’re dealing with two different movies.  (Interestingly, this version makes no mention of Detroit’s current bankruptcy.  I thought it was odd how the original seemed to call this.)

I wasn’t liking the movie too much for the first hour or so, but I have to admit that it is a decent movie in its own right.  I’m not saying that I love it or that I like it better than the original, but it is worth watching.


OmniCorp Web site

The Conspiracy (2012)

Note:  This review gives away major details about the movie and how it ends.  If you want to be surprised, you might want to stop reading here.


There’s the old adage that you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you.  Terrance might seem like you’re average ranting nut job.  Jim and Aaron are making a documentary about all of his crazy theories about a secret society pushing the world towards one government.  Is that guy on a bike really out to get him?  Maybe.  Is it odd that he disappears shortly after seeing said guy on bike?  Maybe.  Jim and Aaron check local hospitals and whatnot, but Terrance is gone.  His apartment is vacant.  There’s no trace of him.

Jim is willing to let it go.  Aaron, not so much.  Aaron saves various newspaper clippings and starts putting things together.  He puts dates into Google and comes up with The Tarsus Club.  This club seems to have meetings right before major events, such as the attack on the World Trade Center.  Did they really get to Terrance?

This has Jim’s attention, to say the least.  After more research, Jim and Aaron decide to infiltrate a Tarsus meeting.  This is not the best of ideas.  No one has ever gone in and gotten decent footage of a meeting.  Any secret society worth its salt has ways of remaining secret.

The movie starts with Jim saying that he never should have let Aaron go that far.  We get the impression that it won’t end well for Aaron.   The truth is that we see him being beaten up, but not to what extent.  We’re told that he moved away, presumably to the same place that Terrance went.  We never find out what happened to either.

Part of the problem with this angle is that you end up spending the entire movie waiting for something terrible to happen.  You expect Aaron to get hit by a car or something.  Even when it’s a surprise, you still see it coming.

I will say that the whole conspiracy angle is done well.  The title includes a blurred word, which is Mithras.  The movie is kind of what you’d expect a documentary of this type might look like.  If you wait for the end of the credits, you’ll see Chance Investment and Mithras Films credited.  (Chance is the last name of the leader of The Tarsus Group.)  I was able to get this streaming on Netflix.  I would say it’s worth renting the DVD if you can get it. 

Total Recall (2012)

I tend not to like remakes.  Rarely do they add anything except make it look modern.  In this case, we have two movies based on a short story.  (Both versions of Total Recall owe very basic elements to the story “We Can Remember it For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick.)  The short story is about a man who comes to realize that there‘s more to his life than what he thinks he remembers.  That’s where the similarity ends.

Here, we have a dystopian future where most of the planet is uninhabitable.  The two remaining areas are the United Federation of Britain and The Colony.  (The Colony is actually just Australia.  Why they couldn’t just call it Australia, I don’t know.)   A man named Doug Quaid is thinking about going to Rekall.  Quaid is a lowly factory worker.  He can’t afford to go on vacation, so Rekall will “remember it for him” as their ad goes.  A coworker warns him not to do it; Rekall has a reputation for lobotomizing people.  Another coworker tells Quaid not to worry about it.  He even recommends one of the technicians.

Well, the implantation goes bad when a SWAT team breaks into the Rekall lab.  Amazingly, Quaid is able to escape.  It turns out that he’s not really Doug Quaid and his lovely wife of several years is actually his handler.  His memories were erased and he was given a new life.  He manages to find out that he was part of a resistance.  People in The Colony are the lower class while the UFB is basically the upper-class people.  The UFB has some nefarious plan that Quaid’s former self didn’t want to see come to fruition.  Or did he?  Either way, it’s up to Quaid to stop it unless he’s not going to, assuming that was the plan all along.  Or was it?

I think this is one of those cases where if you saw and liked the 1990 version, you’re probably not going to be thrilled with this one.  The 1990 version was much better.  We had the issue of identity, which is brought up briefly here.  There’s the issue of what’s real and what’s an illusion, which is mentioned only in passing.  (It comes across mostly as a reference to the 1990 version, but more on that later.)

I remember hearing about the remake and wanting to see it.  I knew I probably wasn’t going to like it as much, but I had to see if they could improve upon it.  Not only did they not improve upon it, I think they even took something away.  Instead of being based on the same source material, this is more of a flashy action remake.  We have the same corrupt leader.  We have the same wife that’s not a wife.  There’s even a three-breasted woman and a comment on the desire for a third hand.  What we don’t have is anything to make you think about the movie.

As I mentioned, there were a few scenes that were referencing the original movie.  Quaid uses the same technology to get to The Colony, which I think was only called The Colony because there was a Martian colony in the original movie.  (Look closely when Quaid arrives in the UFB.  Pay attention to the woman going through security.)  In another scene, Quaid’s coworker is trying to talk Quaid into shooting his fellow resistance member, saying that this is all a dream back at Rekall.  If you’re thinking of seeing Total Recall, I’d recommend skipping this one and just watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger version. 

Total Recall (1990) 

Total Recall (1990)

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

Douglas Quaid is a relatively boring man.  He works in construction.  He doesn’t really do much aside from go to work and go home.  He does have a rather attractive wife, played by Sharon Stone.  Lately, he’s been having these strange dreams about a mysterious brunette and has developed an itch to go to Mars.

His wife isn’t too big on the idea.  There’s not much to do there and the political instability doesn’t make for a safe trip.  After all, Mars was colonized basically to mine material.  Yes, they have things to do, but it’s really not much of a resort destination.  He considers a company called Rekall, which specializes in fake vacations.   It sounds nice, but one of Quaid’s coworkers advises against it.  He heard that the lobotomized someone not to long ago.

Despite the coworker’s advice, Quaid checks it out.  They have the ability to implant memories of any trip you want to go on.  For a little extra, you can assume a different identity, such as a spy or a millionaire.  They will even give you some trinkets to take home as souvenirs.  Sounds great.  Quaid signs up.  Problem is that he starts freaking out, saying all sorts of crazy stuff.

He eventually escapes only to find that nothing is as it seems.  The aforementioned coworker tries to abduct Quaid at gunpoint.  It also looks like his beautiful wife was actually sent there to keep tabs on him.  Plus, Quaid may really be someone named Hauser.  Quaid finds a metal briefcase with all sorts of money and documents.  There’s also a message from Hauser telling Quaid what to do in case someone comes after him.  He’s to get to Mars and look for some members of the uprising there.

There’s one small problem:  Cohaagen, the CEO/dictator of Mars, is after him.  Quaid has some information that Cohaagen doesn’t want getting out.  It could hurt Cohaagen’s hold on power.  His company does supply a lot of material to Earth.  It would be a shame if he lost it all.  Cohaagen sends some of his hired guns after Quaid, but Quaid manages to make it to Mars and meet the woman that he was dreaming about.

I remember first seeing this a long time ago.  It’s one of those movies that seems to hold up on later viewings.  It’s one of those movies that you can watch several times and see it different ways each time.  The big theme is reality versus perception.  Did Quaid really get his fake vacation or did it go horribly wrong?  If it was fake, how was it that Quaid was already dreaming about the woman he met?  Yes, it could be that he had dreams about some random woman and the fake vacation simply incorporated it, but there are a lot of other clues that would indicate that the trip was imagined.

This is not a movie for small children.  For starters, it’s very violent.  When Quaid goes nuts in the Rekall lab, he kills and/or injures most of the staff there.  When Cohaagen’s men go after Quaid, they will shoot anyone in the way.  (Quaid even uses one of the casualties as a shield.)  According to IMDb, the death count is somewhere around 73.  Many of the deaths weren’t incredibly bloody, but there are a lot of deaths.

Another thing that you might want to know about before viewing the movie is that Mars has all sorts of mutants.  This comes from the fact that Mars has no natural atmosphere, thus letting in all of the radiation that causes our DNA to change rapidly.  Many look freakish, but you do end up with some interesting mutations.  (It seems that a lot of people remember the prostitute with three breasts.)

I bought Total Recall through iTunes to watch while going on vacation.  (My parents and I were going from Miami to the Tampa area and back, so I had some time on my hands.)  The only reason I bought it was that it was on sale.  I could definitely see watching it again with someone else in the near future, though.  It doesn’t seem that long at 113 minutes.  I’d definitely recommend watching it. 

David Simon - Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

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

Many years ago, there was a TV show called Homicide: Life on the Streets.  It was based on this book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.  Being a fan of the show, I decided to pick up a copy.  The book is written by David Simon, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.  In the book, Simon follows the Baltimore Police Department for a year.  (Simon wrote the about the police for the Sun, so writing this book wasn’t much of a stretch.)

As you might expect, the book takes place in Baltimore. It’s mostly in chronological order with a few exceptions.  In the book, you get to read a lot of detail that you normally wouldn’t get in a movie or TV show.  The book goes into a lot of detail about how criminals are caught and tricks that police use to get suspects to confess.

In the book Simon explains how few cases are ever made on evidence alone.  Witnesses forget or move; things like prints are circumstantial; even video doesn’t always mean anything.  A certain percentage of suspects will never see the inside of a courtroom.  Even those that make it to pretrial may get dismissed on a technicality.  For this reason, police are given some leeway in interrogating a suspect.  Most cases are cleared based on confession rather than trial.

Sometimes, they do catch a break, such as finding the murderer standing over the dead body and saying that they’re proud to have killed the person.  It’s not like TV, though.  Many times, the person believed to have committed a murder doesn’t go to jail.

It’s also a physically demanding job, and it‘s not just running after people.  If I recall correctly, the detectives would rotate shifts, meaning that they would have to work mornings one week, afternoons the next and nights the week after that.

The first year of Homicide: Life on the Streets relied heavily on this book, so if you’ve seen the show recently, you’ll probably recognize many of the characters and cases from the book as the people and events that they were based on.  This isn’t to say that it would ruin the book for you.  As I said, I was a fan of the show while it was on.  I had basically wanted to read the source material for the show.

Even if you haven’t seen the show, it’s worth the read.  As I said, many people watch police procedurals and think that every criminal is caught, or at least identified.  This isn’t the case.  Many cases go unsolved.  Many detectives spend their entire careers trying to put someone in jail only to have to retire knowing the case will never be resolved.

I’d recommend buying this book.

Rare Exports (2010)

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

We’ve always heard what a nice guy Santa is.  He comes around once a year to give out presents to those that make his list.  An American believes he’s found the burial mound of the creature that was the original Santa.  He’s in Russia, near the Finnish border.  Some reindeer herders on the other side of the border don’t know about this.  All they know is that there’s a hole in the fence and their reindeer are all dead.  This leads them to believe that the American and his team have let some Russian wolves through.  Either way, it means that they’re out a lot of money and they have debts to pay.

One of the herders, Rauno, sets up a wolf trap, which is illegal.  The fact that he catches an old man doesn’t make things easier on him.  When he and another one of the herders go to dispose of the body, they discover that he’s still alive, which eventually presents an even bigger problem:  The old man can smell children.  He reacts whenever Rauno’s son, Pietari, comes near.

Pietari has been reading up on the Santa legends.  He knows what’s really going on up there and why the old guy is reacting to him.  Pietari and his friend made the hole in the fence to go up and see what the American was doing.  He believes that this is Santa Claus coming to punish him for being naughty.  Unfortunately, none of them yet realize the true scope of the situation.

This isn’t a movie for children.  There aren’t many scenes that parents would find objectionable, but what there is might be very objectionable.  We get to see full male nudity, both front and back.  Granted, it’s some old men in a shower, but I don’t know if I’d be comfortable watching that with my parents.  Also, we get to see a herd of dead reindeer.  There is also a monster that we don’t get to see, but we know it’s big and probably very scary.

It is definitely a new play on the Santa story, at least that I’ve seen in movies.  We have this image of who Santa Claus is and it turns out that this is not at all the case.  There is apparently some truth to the story, insofar as it’s true to legends.  There was a culture that worshiped something similar to what’s presented in the movie.  (Look up Krampus.)  Here, it’s shown that they buried whatever it was.

There were a few unanswered questions.  For starters, why was the American even looking for Santa?  He seemed to have some idea of what the creature was capable of.  He hands out new safety rules to his crew, such as no swearing.  I guess he may have been a little mentally off balance, but it was never stated what he hoped to accomplish.  Maybe he thought the creature wasn’t that bad.  (There are other questions, but I don’t want to ruin it for anyone.)

One of the things I like about having Netflix streaming is that I can find all sorts of new and interesting movies.  Yes, some of them turn out to be crap, but some of them are like this one.  If you don’t come in expecting anything really deep or mind bending, it can be a fun movie.  It doesn’t even go into the legend or history that much except to show Pietari doing some research.  It’s three adults and a kid fighting Santa and his minions.

One problem is that Netflix didn’t have captioning.  There were subtitles for the Finnish dialogue, but there was some English dialogue that I couldn’t get subtitling for.  Other than that, I’d definitely recommend watching it.  You don’t even have to wait for Christmas to give it a shot.


Official site

IMDb page

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

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

There are some movies that just come together.  They’re not great because of any one thing.  It’s more like everything works great with all of the other things to produce something memorable.  I’ve come to realize that the opposite is true.  When you have a movie that doesn’t do anything well and doesn’t even make the attempt to produce a cohesive work, you have a horrible movie.

Take Plan 9 From Outer Space.  The movie was written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr., considered to be the worst director of all time.  The movie he made was about aliens that come to Earth to try to get us to end our destructive ways.  If we don’t, we’ll eventually make solaranite, something capable of destroying the entire universe.

Apparently, their first eight plans to stop us have failed.  They’re starting with their ninth plan, which has to do with the reanimation of corpses.  The exact nature of the plan isn’t stated, but the corpses tend to want to kill, much like a zombie.  It looks like the aliens are beyond trying to negotiate and have decided that killing humans is the only way to stop us from developing solaranite.

The aliens are first spotted by the crew of an airplane.  The captain knows he saw something, but is prevented by the military from saying anything.  Their official position is that aliens don’t exist, even though the aliens seem to leave lots of witnesses.  The aliens reanimate a man and his wife, neither of which is given a name, to test their reanimation capabilities.  Before long, a police inspector learns too much and is killed, then reanimated.  A military officer, a few local police officers and the airline pilot take it upon themselves to try and stop the aliens before they reanimate anyone else.

You may be thinking that this is at least a somewhat decent plot.  It is, but it’s poorly executed.  There weren’t many actors in the movie that had any acting ability outside of Ed Wood films.  Criswell, who introduced the film and did the narration, was a psychic of sorts, making predictions with a wide range of accuracy.  Vampira, who played the reanimated wife, had been in a few other movies and had even hosted her own short-lived TV show.

Bela Lugosi was the only actor I had heard of before watching the movie about Ed Wood.  Unfortunately, he had died before the movie was produced.  Some footage that Ed Wood had shot before the movie was written was used to established Lugosi as the husband distraught at losing his wife.  After dying and being brought back, the corpse is played by his then-girlfriend’s chiropractor, Tom Mason.  (Note that there’s a very obvious difference in height between Lugosi and Mason.)

Most of the acting was pretty bad.  It was what you’d expect from people that had just started acting.  Very, very flat and with almost no emotion.  The aliens were supposed to be arrogant, but came across as being very silly.  It’s like when people that know very little try to talk as if they know something.  (They kept describing humans as being “stupid” and as “idiots”.) 

It’s kind of hard to rate the effects using the system we have here on Epinions.  Since this was produced in the late 50s, they had no access to 90s technology.  But to say that you can’t see the strings is being kind as you can actually see the strings on several occasions.  It also changes between night and day several times.  The makeup was at least somewhat decent, but black-and-white film is a little more forgiving.

The plot and writing, as you may have guessed, aren’t the best, either.  How is it that a race mastered interplanetary travel, but can’t seem to affect any sort of change on Earth?  I mean, they’re enacting a really sucky plan that’s pretty much doomed to failure and they’re not even in the double digits yet.  They can tell that we’re on the verge of developing technology that could destroy everything in existence, but they can’t think of anything on the way over?  If they know enough to stop us, they must have dealt with similar issues on other planets.

There’s no real mention of the first eight plans, but I don’t imagine that they could have been that good.  It’s not even clear what they want to do with the zombies.  Do they hope to use them as an army?  Is it a show of power?  Maybe they just want to scare the living daylights out of people or force the military to admit the existence of aliens.  To think that such an advanced race ran out of good ideas so quickly.

Ed Wood had the desire to make movies, but seriously lacked talent.  In terms of production values, this has to be the worst movie I’ve ever seen.  It pretty much sets the standard for poorly made movies.  In terms of entertainment value, it is still kind of entertaining to watch.

This is one of those few movies that I’m forced to give one star, but would still recommend.  At 78 minutes, it’s not at all boring.  I’d recommend this to anyone who’s interested in movies.  You have to watch it just to see how bad it is.  As they say, no one’s a total failure.  At least you can serve as a negative example to others.

Plan 9 From Outer Space IMDb page

Plan 9 IMDb page (planned remake)