Balls of Fury review

This'll be brief. If you like old martial arts movies, or ping-pong, or both, this movie is very funny. Christopher Walken is hilarious, way over the top (unusual, right...), and eminently believable as the megalomaniac bad guy (yes, quite a stretch for him). Dan Fogler is funny, though I don't know I've seen him anywhere else. IMDB to the rescue again. No, not much that isn't brand-new. The real reason guys will enjoy this movie, though, is Maggie Q, who also made an appearance the earlier reviewed Die Hard sequel.

Worth a rental, especially if you have plenty of beer and maybe a ping-pong table available after the viewing.

Live Free or Die Hard review

Live Free or Die Hard - Yeah, they're stretching for titles in the series now. Well, I don't remember what the other ones were, so maybe they already were stretching, but this is a bit too much of the whole founding fathers deal. The movie doesn't do anything with the founding fathers, though, preferring to stick with the buddy movie schtick with the wisecracking Bruce Willis and the über-geek Justin Long (you'll recognize him from the Macintosh ads... I was kind of hoping the PC guy would make a guest appearance, but no such luck).

The effects were fabulous, of course. The scene where they duck between two cars to avoid a third car flying through the air at them, and the one where Willis' character flips a car off a ramp to hit a helicopter, were very cool, although completely unbelievable. You really need to turn off your brain for a good chunk of this movie.

Willis is still fun to watch, and Long is a good foil for him. Kevin Smith makes an appearance as a geek's geek (more über than über... mehrüber? German's just about gone, sorry) living in his mom's basement. He's frighteningly believable in the role. The most fun to watch in the movie, though, is Maggie Q. Watching her kick, climb, punch and jump here way through an extended fight scene, my movie companion asked, "Who is she, Spider-Man?" I wonder who her stunt double was... no way it was really her.

All in all, this was an enjoyable movie. If you can watch it with beer, all the better.

Bourne Ultimatum review

Surprise, surprise - yet another action flick that gives you a little to think about. Not a lot, mind you, but it was very interesting. The Bourne Ultimatum has all the non-stop action of its less thoughtful siblings, but it manages to keep you thinking. The chase scenes were fun, with a lot of weird twists & turns thrown in, and the fight scenes were gritty and brutal, as befits the genre.

Damon does a good job, as in previous installations, as Jason Bourne, but Joan Allen is the real star of this movie. Her role as the "tough but too smart to be brutal without cause" officer in whatever clandestine group they're in (NSA, I think, but who knows?) is extremely compelling, maybe because it implies there are people in such organizations with consciences.

This movie is worth seeing, but you'll want to see the previous two installments first.

Cane Toads review

For the library's science movie night ("Is it REAL science or REEL science?" Cute.) this month they showed Cane Toads. It wasn't really science fiction or horror. It wasn't even really your usual movie; it was a documentary. The way it was shot, though, with the menacing background music, strange camera angles, and way-hyped-up voice-overs and interviews, it came across as a spoof of a horror flick. The blurb described it something like "a documentary the way Monty Python might do it." Yes, very much so.

The meat of the documentary was alternately interesting and hilarious. The cane toads were apparently introduced to Australia in order to control cane grubs that were decimating the crops. Unfortunately, cane toads and cane grubs run in different circles, so to speak; there was no real way the toads would be able to prey on the grubs. The toads are very adept at survival, though, emitting poison when they're bitten and reproducing at an amazing rate. They've taken over in much of Northeastern Australia, and many of the people there treat them like pets.

Highlights of the movie include:

• The (I think American) researcher who had the most hilariously dramatic stories about how the cane toads had ruined his life
• The footage of a cane toad scarfing a mouse
• A guy in a Volkswagon mini-bus swerving back and forth across a road to hit toads
• Shots of a pond filled black with toad tadpoles

They are ugly beasts, but they're really amazing, too. It sounds like no one has any real ideas on how to control their population without doing something as bone-headed as what got them to Australia in the first place.

After the movie, a guy from the Hogle zoo put together a lecture on the non-native species introduced to Utah. Most of them were pets that people got sick of caring for, with a bunch of them being frogs. I guess frogs and toads are good at surviving. I asked him whether any of those species were on the receiving end of some sort of abatement program like what we practice against mosquitoes. He said that it didn't think that was merited for those species, and that they were more nuisances than significant problems.

The movie is worth seeing, but if you have a chance to go to science movie night, you should take it. They're scheduled the first Tuesday night of each month, I believe.

Fantastic Four review

Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer

Ah, it's nice when I'm not disappointed by a movie. Admittedly, my expectations weren't all that high for this one. A number of friends had said they liked it, but a number of reviews were reportedly negative, so I wasn't counting on anything brilliant. It wasn't, but it was very fun, and it had a number of things going for it:

• Great effects - Yeah, the man made of quicksilver has been done on film before, but this one was particularly well-done. The chase scene with the Torch trying to catch the Surfer was nifty.
• My favorite villain - Doctor Doom is back in this one, and the storyline follows one of those in the canon. I'm not sure how closely it followed it; I'm only aware of it from some old panels I remember seeing.
• Jessica Alba - Let's face it, she's a good enough reason to see a movie. She's entertaining in this movie, though it's still a bit disconcerting to see her as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Invisible Woman. Well, yeah - when she's invisible, you don't really notice those things, but you know what I mean.
  

Ok, that should be enough links to keep you busy for a while, assuming all this isn't old hat.

We get to see a bit of Michael Chiklis without his orange rock hide in a few scenes, so he does get a chance to do facial expressions and the like. I guess those are possible with all that make-up on, but I'd guess it's challenging. He plays a few scenes for laughs well, coming across as Joe Normal stuck in some very abnormal circumstances. There are a number of funny parts in this movie, but maybe you need to be a comic geek to enjoy them.

Nah. This movie was worth the regular admission price, and it's going to end up on a shelf with my other movies. If you're looking for a Summer adventure flick, this should fulfill that need.

28 Weeks Later review

I don't think this movie saw much time in the first-run theaters, as I barely remember seeing it advertised before it was at Brewvies, my favorite beer, pub food and movies place. I'm not sure why, except that it's a terrifying movie with some "Damn, but we're stupid" messages in the mix. 28 Days Later, its predecessor, is one of the scariest movies I've seen. This one was frightening and unsettling, too, but it didn't quite have the tension of the earlier movie.

The cast seemed to do a good job. It was interesting seeing Robert Carlyle of The Full Monte as one of the leads. Not quite the same character. I was a bit disappointed with the role Catherine McCormack got, but I've thought she was way hot since her Dangerous Beauty lead. There are a few other recognizable movie stars, but no A-listers, I don't believe.

[Spoiler alert]
The central schtick in the movie, that there are people immune to the effects of the rage virus, but that they are still carriers, is an interesting one. They reveal it quite early, though, and it seemed clear that it was going to play out badly in the ending. It did. Yeah, no real Sherlock Holmes stuff there, but it might have been more interesting if there were a less obvious twist.
[End spoiler]

As was true of its predecessor, 28 Weeks Later is a worthwhile zombie movie, throwing in the requisite phobias (there's a scene with a bunch of people in a very enclosed space... 'nuff said) and high body count. It doesn't really cover much ground that its predecessor didn't, though, and that's a bit sad. Recommended, but probably only with beer.

Yoga the Musical review

I saw a review of Yoga the Musical in the Salt Lake Tribune recently, and I noticed one of the aerobics instructors whose classes I used to take regularly was in it, so I decided to go. I ended up running into another instructor there, out on the town for her twelfth wedding anniversary with her husband, and we ended up sitting together. Twelfth... hard to spell, and hard to imagine. Anyway...

The show was hilarious. There are a lot of people who take yoga very seriously, and there are a lot of people who consider it just another form of calisthenics. I guess I fall somewhere in between there, so I got to laugh at the jokes poking at both extremes, while not getting whatever stereotype I fall into too scathed. I guess I did get a bit of teasing in there somewhere, but it was easy to take. The jokes and pokes were fast & furious, and the yoga-infused dance with vocals was very impressive. The troupe stayed for Q&A afterward, and it turned out there was one yoga-only member - not a real dancer, strictly speaking, but very accomplished.

I know I must've missed three-quarters of the jokes, and I'm sure it would be a bit hard to follow for folks who don't do yoga, but the piece does make some interesting points of what happens to various ideas when they're absorbed into the American mainstream. One bit where one of the practitioners characterized trying to have no ambitions as "quite ambitious" was fabulous. It's one of those yoga deals, kind of like a Zen koan, that just doesn't work in our Western mindset: You're not really supposed to strive for anything in yoga; you're supposed to let things happen organically as you practice. But if that's right, why would you practice yoga at all? Isn't that a form of striving? Yes, kind of, but you're not supposed to do it for reasons of ego. Still, how many of us would go to the gym if we were truly egoless? And around and around it goes.

The show is going on next weekend, as well, also at the Rose Wagner center in downtown Salt Lake. I highly recommend it to folks who practice yoga, or those who might be interested.

Spider Man 3 review

I went to go see Spider Man 3 with a couple of my female friends who aren't afraid to be seen at a superhero movie. I figured they just liked Tobey Maguire, but they both denied it. Must be true, then.

Most of the reviews I've seen of SM3 panned it, some pretty badly. It seems to me that it does its job very well, stuffing as much action and twists in as possible, while advancing (though by the two steps forward / one step back method) the relationship between Peter & MJ. The story certainly doesn't fit the canon - for example, Gwen Stacey is Peter's rebound girlfriend after he & MJ split up, rather than being the original girlfriend snuffed by the elder Green Goblin; or Venom showing up at the same time as the Sandman, a villain introduced much earlier in the comic. Those sorts of twists do keep the comic reader guessing. I'd wondered in the first one whether the Goblin was going to kill MJ, since that was the fate of Gwen Stacey.

The special effects were stellar, with both the Sandman and Venom being rendered in great detail. I don't know if I quite bought Thomas Haden Church as the Sandman. He did grow on me as the movie progressed. Topher Grace as the slimy photographer out for Parker's job was a good pick, though I always get him and Maguire confused. Not in this movie, I mean, but in shows in general. Kirsten Dunst was hot, as usual, though having her do musical numbers was a bit much. I guess it was in furtherance of the plot, right? Yeah, right. Finally, Billy Campbell had a great bit, but I'll leave that for the viewers' pleasure.

So, they've mixed up generations a bit, and they've resolved the Goblin storyline. They've had the professor (I've forgotten the character's name) a number of times in the movies, so I'm wondering when they'll finally get one of my favorite villains, the Lizard, into the mix. There are a bunch of good candidates from the old days, including some cross-overs:

• Electro - Zap guy, who'd probably work very well with CGI.
• The Kingpin - He was the big bad in the Daredevil movie, but he was originally a SM villain, I believe.
• The Punisher - Yes, he started out as a villain. To have him, though, you'd probably need...
• The Jackal - And therein lies a problem, as part of the Jackal's motivation was Gwen Stacey's death. Still, he was a great villain.
• Kraven the Hunter - He's kind of a lion tamer / big game hunter. He probably won't translate too well.
• Doctor Doom - A staple of the Fantastic Four, but he tangled with Spidey a number of times.
• Hammerhead - Now that I think of it, this guy was really a Dick Tracey villain gone bad (or wherever villains go to get worse). Someone who attacks with the top of his head isn't likely to get much respect, either.
• The Rhino - Speaking of attacking with your head...

Yeah, that about exhausts my memory of those villains that were around while I was reading Spider Man. I'm sure I could check on-line, but why? It's a good enough list as-is.

So, I'd recommend seeing this movie, especially if you're a comics geek, or are a recovering one. It isn't as fresh as the earlier two, but frankly, Defoe and Molina made really compelling villains, and that's what really makes things interesting.

Pan's Labyrinth review

Of the two movies I saw during my recent Connecticut trip, Pan's Labyrinth was definitely the better of the two. Set in Franco's Spain, it's a very dark fantasy mixed with even darker reality. The young girl finds it a struggle to come to terms with her mother's marriage after her father's death, especially given her mother's choice of a fascist captain. Whether you believe the girl creates the fantasy world as an escape from her controlling father-to-be (yeah, that seems like the obvious choice to me) or that there really is a magical kingdom waiting for her return, the cinematic flourishes of the fantasy world are incredibly compelling.

While this seems like a children's movie - it reminds me a little of the colors seen in the recent Mirrormask - it's awfully grim in its tone and message. The resolution of the movie has the "good guys" winning (well, in a manner of speaking; historically, you know they're screwed), I think mostly to soften the story a bit. It's very much worth watching, and probably more than once, since the attention to detail is so pronounced. It may not be good for the kids, though.

Smokin' Aces review

While on my trip to Connecticut, I watched Smokin' Aces with some friends. It was about as violent as you'd expect, with a few twists and turns thrown into the plot to keep it from getting too predictable. It was still quite predictable. Piven was fun to watch, as he typically is, and there was plenty of star power to keep the movie worth sitting through, but it wasn't as much fun as it should have been. There were some nice touches, like the crazy long gun woman with the .50, and the magician with the dangerous wrist flick. It was a bit odd seeing Goodfellas star Ray Liotta as a law enforcement type.

Smokin' Aces review

While on my trip to Connecticut, I watched Smokin' Aces with some friends. It was

The Lives of Others review

Based on a recommendation of a friend of mine, I went to see The Lives of Others at one of the local art theaters. It was every bit as good as she'd led me to believe.

It's set in East Germany, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Stasi, the German secret police, kept taps on everyone of interest and made sure that anyone who got too interesting became markedly less so. The main character is a Stasi agent who begins monitoring a prominent author. That author is above reproach, believing in socialism and East Germany, and writing his plays in support of that system. The Stasi agent is suspicious of him for that very reason. One of his superiors decides to indulge the agent's suspicions, in order to curry favor with his superior, who covets the author's actress girlfriend. Clear so far? Hang on... there are potential spoilers in the next paragraph, so you may want to skip to the following one.

As the agent's spying on the author progresses, he comes to admire him, then to cover for him, and finally to extricate him from a major sting. The author's blacklisted friend had committed suicide, leading to the author's publishing a piece in Der Spiegel - a very risky undertaking, even under a pseudonym.

This movie is fabulously suspenseful. The abuse of near-total power by the Stasi elite, shown in contrast with the idealism of its agent, is striking. The lies that the artists and authors tell one another and themselves, trying to stay in the good graces of the authorities while still producing something worthwhile, is similarly intriguing.

The movie is in German with subtitles. I managed to catch quite a bit of the German, which is a bit surprising, since I haven't studied it in twenty years or so. I went with a friend of mine who didn't quite catch all the intrigue; I'm not sure I caught it all myself. I highly recommend catching this movie. It ran about two and a half hours, but it really flies by, even without any Hollywood-style action.

Reign Over Me review

Who'd've thought Adam Sandler could play a (semi-) serious role? He gets plenty of opportunity to goof around in Reign Over Me, but that's only part of his job here. He manages to come across as a damaged, deranged person who is slightly dangerous, without going overboard (well, too far, at least). Don Cheadle has a tougher role, I think, playing the normal guy with some issues of his own. It seems like it'd be harder to achieve the drama without the thump-over-the-head dramatic situation that Sandler's character finds himself in, but Cheadle does a great job, as he always seems to do. His scenes interacting with his stalker patient are either shocking or hilarious, depending on how sick your sense of humor is. His portrayal of his relationship with his wife, played by the exquisite Jada Pinkett Smith, is beyond believable, capturing a marriage in trouble that doesn't quite know why.

Children of Men review

Children of Men was a depressing movie. Some reviews I read compared it to Blade Runner, but while they both deal with anti-utopias, Children of Men isn't quite so futuristic, so it's much more recognizable and immediately believable. It's shot in that flat color I associate with war movies and dark TV series - appropriately so. Clive Owen continues to show versatility. Julianne Moore is compelling and stunning, as always. Michael Caine, though, is the best part of the movie, playing something of an aging hippie, a bit crushed by the terrible reality of the world, but still fighting to make things better.

I'm wondering now whether I found Children of Men more disturbing than, say, Blade Runner, because it's very easy to see something like what it describes happening, or if I was just more inclined to enjoy Blade Runner as a science fiction adventure with some interesting ideas behind it - more of an intellectual exercise, without any real consequence.

Depressing or not, this is a good movie, well worth watching carefully and thinking about more carefully. I'm thinking it's worth renting for a second viewing, but I doubt I'll do it. It's just a little too disturbing to watch again.

Dream Girls review

Ok, this is why I should post these reviews right after I see the movie, instead of waiting and putting them all in at once. I remember the movie, and it was good, but I can't remember half the things I wanted to write about it.

Eddie Murphy was great. Maybe he wasn't Oscar great, though. He's definitely out of the stand-up comic / wiseguy cop routine, and he did a great job with it.

The music was fabulous. We saw it at Brewvies, and they have an ok sound system, I guess, but I feel like it'd've been more fun in a bigger theater with a really booming system. As it was, the music was powerful and compelling. Beyonce is, well, Beyonce, and Jennifer Hudson was amazing. I don't know how much of the music they actually did - if any, it's impressive. It was nice seeing Sharon Leal of Boston Public again.

Jamie Foxx got to play a fairly scummy character, and he was very believable. That's a good thing, you dope - it's acting, y'know. ;)

Dresden Files end of season

I'm a sci-fi geek, or at least I was when I was a kid, so when I finally got the Sci-fi Channel with my cable package, I had a field day checking out their shows. One of the shows that has been a pleasant surprise is The Dresden Files, which just aired its last episode of the season. It's very fun, and Valerie Cruz is simply hot as Lt. Murphy (Cuban playing Irish - ok, it's all about acting). It's got a bit of the Buffy feel to it, with magic and such interacting with our (mundane - but not so much) world, but with less of the demons and vampires running rampant (though the vamps do show up). It gets a little dark, but not too bad. I'm hoping Sci-Fi renews it next season.

300 in IMax

Watching 300 in IMax is kind of like being one of the photographers down on the field during a football game. You get some great shots, but you're likely to take a few shots, as well, running the risk of getting clobbered in the process. Ok, that's stretching it a bit, but you get the idea: Lots of blood and gore (it is, after all, about the battle of Thermopylae at which the 300 Spartans were eventually slaughtered), compelling scenes, an interesting set of story lines, and (did I mention?) lots of blood and gore make for a powerful experience, even without IMax.

Having looked through Frank Miller's graphic novel after watching the movie, I have say that I'm more impressed with the movie. Miller's drawing style is powerful and intriguing, but it's rough, in keeping with some of the subject matter. That's all well and good, but my personal preference for comics is a more polished illustration style. That's not always the case - Miller's Sin City has a very clean look, all black and white, stark and crisp. Even my favorite comic book artist, Jack Kirby, had his share of drawings where the precision of the illustration took a back seat to conveying the action or meaning of a given panel.

There were a number of scenes in the movie that were particularly striking: The discussion between Leonidas and Xerxes, where Xerxes walks down his immense, moving throne and on the backs of his bearers; the debate in the council of elders, where the (very hot) queen runs through the traitor; the confrontation between the young Leonidas and the wolf. Really, really good stuff.

By the way, this movie is not for kids. Please don't do what some of the folks in our audience did and bring in pre-teens. It's just not appropriate for them, whether the movie is based on a comic book or not. This isn't Disney, and I'm happy for that.

Day of the Triffids

Some time back, I went to the Salt Lake public library to watch Day of the Triffids, a sci-fi classic, and take in a lecture afterward on carnivorous plants. Like many of the movies in this lecture series, it's a bit campy. Like some movies of its era, it doesn't quite get the whole "how to build suspense" concept, though it does try. The special effects are fine for the period, and the set-up dealing with a meteor shower blinding most of humanity helps explain the whole "How do slowly-shambling plants catch anyone?" problem.

While the movie was amusing, the lecture following was fascinating. There are apparently a number of varieties of carnivorous plants, each with its own method of trapping and consuming prey. The biggest difference, as I believe the lecturer explained it, between real science and "reel science" (as the lecture series puts it) is that plants, even carnivorous ones, do not move themselves around in pursuit of dinner. Their M.O. tends to be more of the "Hey, check out this [fill in the blank]! It's tasty... just come on in." variety, followed by the inevitable springing of the trap.

Here in Utah, the conditions are not good for carnivorous plants. The lecturer keeps several in his greenhouse, feeding them whatever insects come around. He said he hadn't thought of using boxelder bugs before, but it sounded like he was going to. I have plenty to spare if he runs out.

If you have any interest in science or science fiction, this movie and lecture series is highly recommended. It's free, it's fun, and you'll likely manage to learn something in the process. The link here to the library events has the next one in the series, which I unfortunately will not be able to attend.

Who killed off Starbuck?

This wasn't the most recent episode, but it did serve as a reminder that this isn't your father's Battlestar Galactica. I guess that means that it isn't my Battlestar Galactica, though I'm not a dad, since the original show was my favorite when I was a kid. In that show, there was really no way one of the major characters was going to get killed off. I don't even remember any of the minor characters dying.

This new show is far better, no doubt about it. It has much more to think about, plenty of character development for characters with believable flaws (no, the original Starbuck's womanizing doesn't count), and some dandy plot twists. Still, snuffing the one rebel in the otherwise squeaky clean Viper pilot corps seems very sad. Ok, "squeaky clean" isn't accurate, but you know what I mean.

They have left the door a bit open for the character to come back. The original series had a whole "help from above" routine that involved angels, Iblis and some "sufficiently advanced technology", as it were. It's possible the current series is going that way, too, especially since they've been dabbling in the mysticism message since about the beginning.

Anyway, I'm sad to see her go. I guess we'll see if she stays dead.

Initial post

Ok, yet another blog. I think I'll use this one for reviews and such.

The editor looks nice - embedding pictures, editing HTML directly, spell check... all good stuff.