What Lisa and Erin Watched Last Night #85: Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal (dir by Tom McLaughlin)

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, my sister Erin and I watched the 2008 Lifetime Movie, Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal.

Why Were We Watching It?

This is my fourth favorite Lifetime movie, coming in right behind Confessions of a Go Go Girl, The Babysitter’s Seduction, and Mother, May I Sleep With Danger. It comes on every few weeks and, if I’m at home, I’ll usually end up watching it. I forced my sister Erin Nicole to watch it with me because she actually was a Texas cheerleader and I figured she would have some insight into the film that I might otherwise miss. Plus, it’s just fun to watch movies with Erin!

What Was It About?

Emma Carr (Jenna Dewan, who would later become Jenna Dewan-Tatum) is the new cheerleading coach at a small Texas high school. She views cheerleading as being the most important part of a young girl’s life and she quickly proves to be an inspirational and beloved teacher. However, five mean girls — the Fab Five of the title — are determined to do what they want, regardless of whether it’s good for the cheerleading squad, the school, or Coach Carr’s marriage. Making things especially difficult is the fact that the leader of the Fab Five (played by Amber Benson) is the daughter of the school principal (Tatum O’Neal). While Coach Carr tries to instill a sense of teamwork and self-esteem into the rest of the squad, the Fab Five spend their time drinking, hanging out in sex shops, and posting racy videos on YouTube.

Needless to say, this film is credited as being “based on a true story.”

What Worked?

Though the film was undoubtedly exaggerated, it still did manage to capture just what it’s like to go to an athletics-obsessed school in small town and suburban Texas. Seriously, it’s a world that only makes sense when you’re actually a part of it. Once you leave and think back, it all looks like a silly Lifetime movie.

Everytime after I see this movie, I find myself occasionally clapping my hands while chanting, “Pump, pump, pump it up/Pump that spirit, keep it up!” Seriously, it’s fun!

What Did Not Work?

Both Erin and I were occasionally amused and often annoyed by how seriously Coach Carr took cheerleading. Every time that Jenna Dewan started to give a speech about the importance of cheerleading (“You represent your school!”), Erin and I started laughing. She was just so serious about it that I found it hard to believe that her character wasn’t being played for laughs. Imagine my shock as I realized that the film meant for us to take her seriously.

(However, Erin has assured me that there are coaches out there who really do view cheerleading as being a mission from God.)

“Oh my God! Just like us!” Moments

As we watched the film, I continually asked my sister if this movie was an accurate portrayal of what it was like to be a scandalous high school cheerleader in Texas. According to Erin, the film was accurate but exaggerated. She said that she had known girls like the ones portrayed in this film but, even at their worst, they weren’t “as demonic” as the Fab Five. Erin also asked me to make clear that she was certainly never one of those girls. And I can vouch for that! There’s a reason why Erin’s nickname is “the nice one.”

When I first started high school, quite a few people told me that I needed to follow my sister’s example and try out for cheerleader and I have to admit that I was occasionally tempted to do so. However, I never did because I already had ballet and drama club, I wanted to establish my own identity, and Erin told me that being cheerleader meant that I had to be perky all the time and, quite frankly, I’ve always needed my time to sulk. So, I’ve never regretted not following the cheerleader route but I still found it amusing that the evil redheaded cheerleader in Fab Five was named Lisa.

Lessons Learned

My home state is the best! Seriously, would anyone ever want to watch a movie called The Vermont Cheerleader Scandal? I think not.

600full-fab-five_-the-texas-cheerleader-scandal-screenshot

“Seriously, what the Hell’s the point of Vermont?”

Film Review: Maniac (dir. by Franck Khalfoun)

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

By all logic, Maniac has no right to be as good a film as it is.

A remake of William Lustig’s notoriously sleazy (if grimly effective) 1980 film, Maniac tells the story of Frank Zito (Elijah Wood, taking on a role previously played to repulsive perfection by Joe Spinell). Frank is a twitchy young man who sells mannequins for a living, has frequent conversations with his dead mother, suffers from intense migraines, and relieves stress by scalping strangers. Much like the original Maniac, the remake is largely plotless. Frank stalks women. Frank yells at his mannequins. Frank pursues an unlikely romance with an incredibly naive photographer (played here by the very sympathetic Nora Arnezeder). Much blood is spilled and the film eventually comes to a conclusion that’s even darker than Lustig’s original.

One thing that does distinguish this remake from the original Maniac is that director Franck Khalfoun and producer (and screenwriter) Alexandre Aja attempt to truly put the viewers in Frank’s disturbed mind. With the exception of a few isolated moments, the entire film is a collection of p.o.v. shots. While we hear Frank talk throughout the film, the only time that we actually see him is during the rare moment that Frank takes the time to look at his reflection. That may sound gimmicky (and it is) but, at the same time, it actually works surprisingly well. Much like Frank, the audience spends the film trapped in his disturbed mind and often unsure about whether they’re seeing something real or having another hate-fueled hallucination.

It helps that Elijah Wood gives a surprisingly credible performance in the role of Frank. While we only actually get to see his face a handful of times, Wood makes every one of those moments count. Unlike the original’s Joe Spinell (who gave a performance that was so incredibly sleazy that he almost seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of grime whenever he showed up on screen), Elijah Wood uses his youthful face and his deceptively gentle voice to turn Frank into a disturbingly plausible threat. With his nervous eyes and rather befuddled expression, Wood makes Frank into the murderer next door One reason why serial killers are so scary is because the majority of them look more like Elijah Wood than Joe Spinell. Director Khalfoun uses Wood’s passive screen presence to put the audience at ease, just as surely as Frank uses his innocent face to fool his victims. As a result, the viewers keep expecting Frank to show some shimmer of humanity. That’s make it all the more disturbing to watch as the film reveals just how much of a monster Frank truly is.

Playing the role of Frank’s love interest, Nora Arnezeder also deserves a lot of credit. While the original film definitely suffered because you never believed that Caroline Munro’s classy photographer would actually be attracted to Joe Spinell, the relationship between Wood and Arnezeder is a lot more plausible and hence, it also has the potential to be a lot more tragic. Without Arnezeder’s empathetic performance, Maniac would just be a numbing collection of scenes of people being murdered. However, Arnezeder creates a character that viewers will actually care about. We worry about her as we watch her relationship with Frank develop but, at the same time, we can understand what she thinks she sees in this shy and eccentric man. As opposed to the original film and despite all of the graphic violence (and it is graphic, make no mistake), the remake of Maniac never feels misogynistic and that’s largely due to the work of Nora Arnezeder. Arnezeder gives us something that the original never bothered to do, a character to sympathize with.

Finally, you can’t talk about the remake of Maniac without mentioning the film’s excellent score. Composed by a French composer who goes by the name of Rob, the synth-heavy score has a wonderfully retro feel to it that pays homage to both the old grindhouse films and also adds a propulsive element of menace to every scene. Much like the electronic score of the far different Upstream Color, the score of Maniac becomes a character all of its own. I would even go as far to say that it’s perhaps one of the best horror score that I’ve ever heard.

I wasn’t expecting much of Maniac. In fact, the only reason I saw it was out of curiosity. I was expecting to be a typical horror remake, a cynical film made solely to exploit the notoriety of its source.

Was I ever wrong!

Maniac is not a pleasant film. It’s a dark and gore-filled movie but, in its disturbing way, it’s also oddly effective and compelling. It’s a film that probably has no right to be good and yet, that’s exactly what it is.

Review: World War Z (dir. by Marc Forster)

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Arleigh

I’ll get this out of the way and just say it: World War Z the film pretty much has nothing in common with the acclaimed novel of the same name by author Max Brooks (reviewed almost at the very beginning of the site). Ok, now that we have that out of the way it’s time to get to the important part and that’s how did the film version turn out on it’s own merits.

World War Z was a film that took the long, winding and rough road to finally get to the big-screen. Whether it was the five different writers brought in to work on the script (J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame came onboard first with Christopher McQuarrie coming unofficially to help tighten a few scenes in the end) to the massive changes made to the original source material that was bound to anger the fans of the novel, the film by Marc Forster had an uphill climb to accomplish even before the final product even came to market.

I was as surprised as man others were that the finished product was better than I had anticipated. Some had very low expectations about World War Z coming in due to the rumors and news reports coming in about the problems during production, but it doesn’t change the fact that the unmitigated disaster predicted by every film blogger and critic beforehand never came to fruition.

World War Z might not have been what fans of the novel had wanted it to be, but when seen on it’s own merit the film was both exciting and tension-filled despite some flaws in the final script and use of well-worn horror tropes.

The film begins with a visual montage interspersing scenes of nature (particularly the swarming, hive-like behavior of certain animals like birds, fish, and insects), alarmist news media reporting and the mindless celebrity-driven entertainment media that’s so big around the world. From there we’re introduced to the main protagonist of the film in one Gerry Lane (played by Brad Pitt) and his family. We see that the Lane family definitely love and care for each other with his wife Karin (Mireille Enos in the supportive wife role) and their two young daughters, Rachel and Constance. The film could easily have spent a lot of time establishing this family and their relationship towards each other, but we move towards the film’s first major sequence pretty much right after the opening. It’s this choice to not linger on the characters too long that becomes both a strength and a weakness to the film’s narrative throughout.

World War Z finally shows why it’s not your typical zombie film with it’s first major sequence in the center of downtown Philadelphia as Gerry and his family sees themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. As they wait there are some subtle hints that something might just be somewhat awry ahead of them as we see more and more police racing towards some sort of emergency ahead of the family and more and more helicopters flying overhead. There’s a brief lull in the scene before all hell breaks loose and the film’s zombie apocalypse aspect goes from 0 straight to 11 in a split second.

It’s this sequence of all-encompassing chaos overtaking a major metropolitan city seen both on the ground through the eyes of Gerry Lane and then on flying overhead wide shots of the city that gives World War Z it’s epic scope that other zombie films (both great and awful) could never truly capture. It’s also in this opening action sequence that we find the film’s unique take on the tried-and-true zombie. While not the slow, shambling kind that was described in the novel, these fast-movers (owes a lot more on the Rage-infected from 28 Days Later) bring something new to the zomgie genre table by acting like a cross between a swarm of birds or insects with the rapidly infectious nature of a virus.

These zombies do not stop to have a meal of it’s victims once they’ve bitten one but instead rapidly moves onto the next healthy human in order to spread the contagion it carries. We even get an idea of how quickly a bitten victim dies and then turns into one of “Zekes” as a soldier has ended up nicknaming them. It’s this new wrinkle in the zombie canon that adds to the film’s apocalyptic nature as we can see just how the speed of the infection and the swarm-like behavior of the zombies could easily take down the emergency services of not just a city and state but of entire nations.

World War Z works best when it doesn’t linger too long between action sequences. Trying to inject some of the themes and ideas that made the novel such a joy to read only comes off as an uncomfortable attempt to try and placate fans of the novel. When we get scenes like Philadelphia in settings like Jerusalem and, in smaller scales but no less tense, like in South Korea and on a plane, the film works as a nice piece of summer action fare. This works in the first two thirds of the film but a sudden shift in the final third in Cardiff, Wales could be too jarring of a tonal shift in storytelling for some.

While the change from epic and apocalyptic to intimate and contained in the final third was such a sudden change this sequence works, but also shows just how bad the original final third of the film was to make this sudden change. It proves to be somewhat anticlimactic when compared to the epic nature of the first two-thirds of the film. We get a final third that’s more your traditional horror film. In fact, one could easily see World War Z as two different films vying for control and, in the end, the two halves having to try to co-exist and make sense.

World War Z doesn’t bring much of the sort of societal commentaries and themes that we get from the very best of zombie stories, but it does bring the sort of action that we rarely get from zombie films. The film actually doesn’t come off as your traditional zombie film, but more like a disaster story that just happened to have zombies as the root cause instead of solar flares, sudden ice age or alien invasion.

So, while World War Z only shares the title with the source novel it was adapting and pretty much not much else, the film wasn’t the unmitigated disaster that had been predicted for months leading up to it’s release. It’s a fun, rollercoaster ride of film that actually manages to leave an audience wanting to know more instead of being bombarded with so much action that one becomes desensitized and bored by it. There’s no question that a better film, probably even a great one, lurks behind the fun mess that’s the World War Z we’ve received, but on it’s own the film more than delivers on the promise that most films during the summer fails to achieve and that’s to entertain.

Finally! It’s time for Six More Trailers!

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s been about two weeks since our last edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers. Personally, I blame the trailer kitties! It’s difficult to find good help nowadays, especially when your help insists on sleeping for 12 hours a day.

However, despite taking way too long to do so, the trailer kitties have returned with six more trailers!

1) Sex Kittens Go To College (1960)

2) Girls Town (1959)

3) Vice Raid (1960)

4) Gun Girls (1956)

5) The Cool and the Crazy (1958)

6) Common Law Wife (1963)

What do you think, Trailer Kitty?

Scenes That I Love: “Tomorrow Is A Drag” from High School Confidential

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, TCM has been showing a marathon a Mamie Van Doren films. I just sat through The Beat Generation, a 1959 film where Mamie is among the many women to fall victim to a crazed beatnik known as the Aspirin Kid.

Now, to be honest, The Beat Generation is not a very good film. In fact, it’s probably one of the most anti-female movies that I’ve ever seen. Watching it, I found myself very happy that I was not alive during the 50s.

However, it did remind me of the far superior High School Confidential, another film that featured a bunch of faux Beatniks and Mamie Van Doren in a supporting role. Released in 1958 and directed by Jack Arnold, High School Confidential is a lot of fun.

And that brings us to tonight’s scene that I love. In the scene below, “beatnik” poetess Philippa Fallon recites a poem while secret drug dealer Jackie Coogan plays the piano. I love this scene because it’s just so typical of the way that exploitation films from the 50s tended to portray the beat generation.

I have to admit that whenever I see one of these old films that attempted to cluelessly portray (and mock) the beatniks of the 50s, I’m reminded of the similarly clueless way that bloggers are portrayed in most current films and Aaron Sorkin-penned television series.

Before You See Anything Else — “Before Midnight”

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

So, this is it. You can keep your Man Of Steels, your Iron Man 3s, your Star Trek : Into Darknesses, and your Pacific Rims — fun popcorn fare some of those may be, but for me summer 2013 at the movies is all about the third installment in Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy’s long-running cinematic romance, Before Midnight. I won’t rehash the details of how and why this unlikeliest of indie “franchises” has meant so much to this armchair critic on a personal level over the years — hell, over the decades now! — as my reviews of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset last week covered that ground pretty damn thoroughly already, suffice to say that the chance to see Jesse and Celine living happily ever after is, at the risk of sounding hopelessly corny, a little bit of a celluloid dream come true for yours truly. And so here it is — and here they are, doing just that.

Or are they? Okay, sure, they’re together — and have been, apparently, since the conclusion of Before Sunset nine years ago. They’ve got twin daughters, successful careers (Jesse as a novelist and English professor, Celine as an environmental activist) in Paris, and are just winding up spending a magical summer at a writer’s retreat in the Greek Islands. Sounds ideal, right?

But all is not, of course, well in paradise — Jesse’s torn about the son he left behind in the US and wants to be a more active part of his life, Celine feels stifled by the apparently-tranquil domesticity of her situation and has no desire to move back to America for Jesse to be near his kid, and both are struggling with the the ever-narrowing possibilities life offers up as we age and our thousands of dreams get whittled down to a more concrete set of responsibilities. The passing years have seen “must do”s replace “want to”s in their lives, and one of the running themes of all of these Before pictures is that of somehow finding a way for love and passion and the sheer wonder of being with another person who understands and accepts us for who we are to survive amidst all that.

They seem to be doing their best. Their sex life is still refreshingly healthy for a cinematic couple on the cusp of middle age, they still walk and talk like the two young lovebirds who met on the train to Vienna, and they still show a genuine affection for one another that can give all of us some small measure of hope. But half the film is consumed by a fairly heated and wide-ranging argument in a hotel room that lays bare the many fault lines underpinning in their relationship. The only question, it seems, is whether they’ll continue to navigate those together or choose to go their separate ways.

Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke, who collaborated on the screenplay together once again (though it’s still nice to see them share character-creation credits with Linklater’s friend, the late Kim Krizan), strike a very delicate balance here between presenting the “heaviest” material we’ve yet to see in this series with the most lighthearted, comedic sequences to date, as well, and the end result is a film that’s not just a joy to watch, but to absorb, from its first frame to its last.

My long-standing group of friends I’ve seen all these films with waited until we could all see it together, and over the customary after-movie drinks last night we all agreed on two things — we loved it to pieces, even though it was, in many instances, the most difficult of the bunch to take in; and we couldn’t wait to see it again. It’s just a bit too early to figure out where we’d rank this is the entire — uhhmmmm — “pantheon,” I guess, after only one viewing, ya see.

Now, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to unceremoniously transition into a personal plea here — rumors are swirling that this might be the final Before of the bunch, and if that’s the case, I think it’s well past time for Oscar to show it a little respect. Yes, this series enjoys a deeply passionate and committed following, but it sure would be nice if Hollywood’s establishment paid some attention to this evolving little piece of wonderment that’s been happening under their noses for nearly two decades. Hawke and Delpy have both affected subtle body-language shifts over the years to delineate their characters’ evolving personalities (he walks with more swagger than ever, for instance, while she exudes an air of peace-that’s-looking-for-any-excuse-to-erupt resignation) that perfectly complement their maturation on paper and each is deserving of a Best Actor/Actress in a Leading Role nomination, and if the three collaborators aren’t recognized with a nod for Best Original Screenplay, there seriously ought to be an investigation. Hell, unless something else comes along that completely knocks our collective socks off, there ought to be an investigation if they don’t win it. Let’s get the email, blog, forum, etc. pressure campaign started right here — who’s with me on this?

Before Midnight is the most authentically human picture to come down the pipeline in ages, and traverses a rocky yet rewarding emotional terrain with grace, warmth, and yes, even charm. It shows how love endures when initial , lustful ehuberance ages into a kind of occasionally- resplendent ardor, and how it finds its level and holds us aloft even when we get everything we’ve ever wanted only to find out it’s still not exactly what we were yearning for (humans, we’re so picky). It’s the “happily ever after” we’ve always wanted for Jesse and Celine — and for ourselves — warts and all. And I’m so completely in love with the cinema, and even with life, again it damn near hurts. If this is, indeed, the end — and I sincerely hope it’s not, I want to grow old with these characters — it couldn’t be more perfectly imperfect, more gloriously flawed, more tragically comedic, more uneasily blissful.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Man Of Steel”

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

I know that, in this day and age, we as a society seem to get off on tearing down our myths and legends and “humanizing” them, but seriously — when did Superman develop a split personality?

Before you jump to any conclusions based on that admitted “gotcha” of an opening line, allow me to state for the record that I didn’t actively dislike Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel, it’s just that it spends its first half or so rather half-heartedly trying to portray its title character in more human terms than we’ve seen in previous iterations before finally throwing all that out the window and deciding that it actually wants to tell a story about a God who walks (and flies) among us, and the film definitely suffers as a result of this abrupt shift in tone.

But first the “plus” side of the ledger : Man Of Steel is pretty much the most awesome visual spectacle the movies have ever produced. I’m no fan of CGI as a general rule, but damn if every single effects shot in this flick isn’t enough to take your breath away, particularly the sequences on Superman’s home planet of Krypton, which Snyder and his WETA-employed staff depict in a markedly new and exciting “biotech on steroids” fashion. When the action goes earthbound, the optical awesomeness continues, never fear, so if spectacle is what you’re after, you’ll walk away from this well pleased indeed.

Pitch-perfect (with one notable exception which we’ll get to in a moment) casting doesn’t hurt matters any, either — Henry Cavill makes an immediate impression in both his Superman and Clark Kent personas; Russell Crowe is suitably above it all as his Kryptonian father, Jor-El; Kevin Costner and Diane Lane are almost too spot-on for words as his adopted human parents; Laurence Fishburne’s Perry White is old-school newspaper vet all the way (even with the pierced ear); and the always-underrated Michael Shannon oozes psychotic menace as lead villain General Zod. Watching all these people at work is a genuine joy.

Granted, the script — by Dark Knight veteran David S. Goyer (from a story co-plotted with the head honcho of this whole enterprise, Christopher Nolan) — doesn’t do any of them any favors dialogue-wise (apparently Kryptonians have evolved beyond good, old-fashioned conversation and speak entirely in grandiose pronouncements — but it’s not like the mere humans in this film are any less prone to dull, dry, wooden, faux-poetic waxings themselves), but the players by and large manage to rise above the material they’ve been handed.

I say “by and large” (and here comes that exception I talked about a moment ago) because, sadly, one has been dealt such a losing hand that I’m not sure what she could really have done about it — I’m speaking, of course, about Amy Adams’ Lois Lane. Goyer does some brave and interesting things in terms of shaking up the established Clark-Lois backstory ( let’s just say she won’t be sneaking glimpses of him at sly angles when his glasses are off to see how much he might or might not look like Superman), but the cold, emotionally distant nature of this particular big-budget beast means that the whole love story angle falls pretty flat. By the time Goyer, Nolan, and Snyder decide they want to play the Nietzchean uberman card for all it’s worth, the independent, confident journalist we meet at the outset is reduced to becoming more awestruck than she is lovestruck, and rather than being “Superman’s girlfriend” she comes off more as his disciple. Who just so happens to kiss him. I mentioned the abrupt tonal shift in the film at the outset of this review, and poor Lois definitely suffers the brunt of it.

The messianic poses Cavill is forced into during all the flight and battle sequences get pretty old pretty fast as well, it’s gotta be said, and with no real transition period in the way the story is structured between its “simple farm boy from Kansas” and its “demi-god here to save us all from the evil forces originating from his own homeworld” (that he inadvertently brought here himself, but hey, let’s not dwell on that) segments, well — let’s just say not much thought apparently went into how jarringly that would all play out. Hans Zimmer’s typically percussive, insistent musical score only augments the problem, and while there’s no way anybody was gonna have fans forgetting about John Williams, a “stripped-down,” “less over the top” orchestral accompaniment really doesn’t work when you’re trying to portray Superman as a fucking deity.

Superman purists, for their part, may also find themselves semi-outraged by more than the snakeskin-fetish-wear take on his costume. There’s no Jimmy Olsen here, no Lex Luthor (although the “Lexcorp” logo appears here and there on props throughout — as do the logos for Sears, 7-11, and an unending and highly annoying litany of corporate sponsors), and “Metropolis” is never mentioned by name even though the entire final act takes place there. So be ready for at least some “nerd-rage” on the internet. Still, if those were the only things that bugged me about Man Of Steel, I’d be feeling a little bit better about it as a whole right about now. Not that I’m all that pissed or disappointed —-just, well, kinda perplexed.

I can’t say that Man Of Steel isn’t a fun movie to watch, because it is — hell, it’s an absolute visual marvel, and if you want to shut your brain off and just be taken along for a wild adventure ride, you’re not gonna do much better this (or any other) summer Still —my mind kept drifting back to the famous first-encounter-between-Supes-and-Lois scene in Richard Donner’s Superman : The Movie (still the gold standard for all superhero flicks as far as I’m concerned) : when Lois asks him “who are you?,” and he replies, simply and with a smile, “a friend,” that told us all we needed to know right there. Sure, he was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but at the end of the day , Superman as envisioned by Richard Donner, Mario Puzo, and Christopher Reeve was one of us.

By contrast, Superman a la Snyder, Nolan, Goyer and Cavill is above us. He’s not here to help humanity, but to redeem it. He’s not our hero anymore, he’s our savior — whether we want one or not.

Film Review: Man of Steel (dir. by Zack Snyder)

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Leonard Wilson

Here the short of it, for anyone looking to make a decision based on what’s being written here (spoiler free part):

Man of Steel is a great film, though has it’s flaws. The film is a coming of age story of an individual who knows what he’s capable of, but in fearing the world’s reaction to his existence, keeps it at bay until he can discover who and what he is. Where Marvel celebrates the removal of the Masked Hero (with Iron Man), DC looks towards giving the audience a reason why Superman has to be Clark Kent, which I thought worked very well. Carried by some fantastic casting, the film manages to raise the stakes for Superman (and the damage level of anywhere there’s a fight – I’m talking Dragonball Z levels of damage) in a way that up until now really wasn’t depicted well. Rather than taking the lazy route of Superman Returns (which just took Superman II’s ending and ran with it, saying that III and IV just didn’t happen), Man of Steel tries to re-invent things a little, which works on some levels, but not on all.

The faults of the film lie in the same problems that plagued the entire Dark Knight Trilogy. There’s a scene or two that ends without “closing the loop” and work within a bubble of action – a catastrophe occurs for one or two people, but before you can wonder how everyone else in the area fared, you’re left to believe “Well, let’s just assume they’re all okay and everything was fixed.” It’s the same as the Joker throwing Rachel Dawes out of a window and leaving the audience to believe that the Joker’s crew just left the way they came with no fuss or muss. The film also suffers from the physical fight issues of “Batman Begins”. It all moves so fast that in some cases, you’re left with this shaky-cam feel. It almost warrants a second viewing just to try to see the punches / kicks you may have missed the first time around. And the last act has a lot of that. This is the thing that may hurt the film with older movie goers. Imagine having something you’ve grown up with for who knows how long displayed at a speed so fast, it moves like a video game? That could be jarring.

And for those of you want to read more (it may get just a little – very little – on the spoilery side here):

I’ll start with this. I’m not a huge fan of Superman overall. Although I’ve seen all of the previous film (many of them at the movies), I’ve always thought of Superman as a seriously overpowered character. With the pieces of his own planet being the only thing that could hurt him, what were the chances anyone could find that stuff? For this, I found the Marvel characters more interesting and relatable. How many stories can you really write about the Hulk, or Namor / Aquaman for that matter? That’s where I put Superman in the scheme of things.

That said, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel did manage to invoke an emotion in me that I’ve never felt for the character in all these years – Sadness. It was like watching a Bond film and actually worry about Bond, imagine that. You figure this guy has all these powers, he can frickin fly, dammit. He has heat vision, x-ray vision and freezing breath. One could choose, with all that power to just dominate humanity. It’s Clark’s parents – all of them – that give him the power of choice. To decide as he grows to become who he wants to be and how to use those abilities. That has to be pretty difficult. One scene hit home for me, involving Clark learning an ability. It’s short, but reflects the isolation of someone who is considered very different from those around him.

I loved Man of Steel. It’s does have its issues, but for me it’s such a step in a better direction for the Superman franchise. That isn’t to say that the films before it were terrible or horrid (save for Quest of Peace, which was utter crap), but Man of Steel brings so much more action and love for the character overall. Where Superman Returns was more of a drama with slices of action, perhaps Man of Steel is best consider a reversal.

When it comes to the story – penned by Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, and with Goyer doing the screenplay – I liked where it went. It didn’t try to recreate anything from the first two movies, nor did it sway so far away from it that you wondered what it was all for (Amazing Spider Man, with its thousands of radioactive spiders that could make any scientist Spider-Man with a well timed bite). The origin parts are delivered piecemeal though flashbacks, which allowed the whole story to flow pretty evenly. It’s when the movie gets into the third act – the “Hero has to face said Event” sequence that Goyer loves so much that it starts turning right back into the Batman Begins train sequence. At least the level of the event is big enough so that only Superman could really deal with it, but personally, I’ll admit that I wanted a bit more for what was done.

Casting wise, I don’t think they could have done much better than this. Henry Cavill, who I remember from 2002’s The Count of Monte Cristo and Showtime’s The Tudors, is damn near perfect as the Man of Steel, though he has so much seriousness to him that you wanted to say…”Hey, Hakuna Matata, dude. It’ll all work out. Just lighten up a little.” There’s very little playing around here. Then again, given the way the character was written this time around, he doens’t have all that much to laugh about, I suppose.

Amy Adams really isn’t the Lois Lane I expected. She’s not written in the style of the intrepid reporter that has to get herself in trouble, but still manages to find herself facing problems in the pursuit of a good story. She wasn’t bad at all, really, but one smart thing the story does is forces her to have to be in the mix of this in less of a spectator role and more of a participant. That I enjoyed.

I gave Michael Shannon a lot of flak for his performance in last year’s Premium Rush, but I owe him an apology. All that craziness in that film is just gone here, his General Zod is subdued and even. I also enjoyed that they gave him something more to work with other than “Dominate the creatures of this planet because we hate the son of Jor-El”. His Villain has a fully plausible reason for what he’s doing, so much so that you could almost empathize with it. He’s not very different from Magneto against the X-Men in that fashion, and I felt it added quite a deal to this story. Don’t get me wrong. Terrence Stamp was great, and his “Kneel Before Zod” was always cool, but the premise in Superman II was a little odd. I figure they’d get bored with us kneeling after a while and just leave the planet once discovering our love for reality tv (Pawn Stars for me).

Someone pointed out online that both of Kal-El’s parents were Robin Hood. Both Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner do indeed play Clark’s fathers and both are used better in this than in previous versions. Each character has a view in what Clark can be become, and both individuals seem to be right, but between the two I thought Costner fared better. One thing about Crowe, he’s given quite a bit to do in this film, which surprised me. I did really didn’t expect to see much of him in this.

Diane Lane is a sweet Martha Kent. While I love Lane in her movies, I don’t know. I kind of feel anyone could have played that. She performs the role well, though. Laurence Fishburne makes for a good Perry White, channelling his character from Hannibal, as does Christopher Meloni as a Military General. I really want to see more from Meloni, actually. The scene stealer, by far (and future Hottie of the Day, if I can find enough pictures of her) is Pandorum’s Antje Traue as Zod’s henchwoman, Faora. Every scene she’s in makes her to be that Darth Maul / Hellboy kind of supporting baddie, providing as much of a challenge to Superman as Zod. And for the time she has on screen, Ayelet Zurer sells it totally as Lara, siding with her husband to send their child away for a chance at a better life. That can’t be an easy decision for anyone or anything, but I could at least feel she was bothered by it.

Personally, I didn’t want another origin tale. The way I view it, some of these characters are so burned into our minds that we really don’t need to know the back story. However, Man of Steel does provide an origin tale that seems to make sense with the way things are today. We don’t trust what we don’t understand and unless we can catalog and easily reference it to something comparable, we usually consider it something bad. As this story tells it, Superman may or may not have the luxury to openly say “Hey, I’m Kal-El, from Krypton, let me walk among you.” as easily as Tony Stark could proclaim he was Iron Man.

As for the DC Cinematic Universe, if this is the first film that’s going to lay the groundwork, it’s a nice start. It doesn’t leave any breadcrumbs for audience expectation for a Justice League movie, but if DC is smart, they’ll get whatever the next movie they want to do started right after this. That’s the hope, anyway.

With a new direction in tone also comes a new score. Hans Zimmer knocks the soundtrack out of the ballpark with this one. Bringing together nearly 12 drum legends for percussion (including Sheila E. And Jason Bonham), Zimmer creates a theme for the hero that will undoubtedly be reused in sports venues for years to come. It’s uplifting in places and creepy in others. Some themes borrow a little bit from his own Angels & Demons, but this is something Zimmer is known for. Having listened to the score for most of the week, I’m already humming it off and on.

And what about the kids? The kids should be fine seeing this. There’s a childbirth sequence in the very beginning that may require some explaining to the littlest of viewers, and there’s violence all over the place, but all it’s worth, there’s not a whole lot of blood and very little gore. Nothing anyone who plays Call of Duty on the regular couldn’t handle.

Oh, one more thing. The 3D is good here, particularly in the flight sequences, but you’re not really missing anything if you happen to catch it in 2D. Note that there isn’t anything after the credits with this film.

Film Review: After Earth (dir by M. Night Shyamalan)

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After Earth is the latest of many forgettable films to have been released in 2013.

The film’s plot — which will be familiar to anyone who has seen Oblivion or any other science fiction film — deals with a father (Will Smith) and his son (Jaden Smith). The father is a great military leader but is emotionally distant. (Will Smith, who is probably one of the most openly emotional actors working today, deals with being miscast by refusing to smile.) The son is desperate to prove himself to his father. When the two of them return to Earth (which was deserted a thousand years ago because of — you guessed it — pollution), their ship crashes. The father is critically injured and, of course, the son has to save both of their lives, deal with his past guilt, and become a man.

Or something like that.

Did you know that M. Night Shyamalan directed After Earth? If you didn’t, don’t feel bad. In the advertising campaign leading up to this film’s release, Columbia Pictures has treated Shyamalan’s involvement like a dirty secret. It’s understandable, really. After all, Shyamalan’s last two films were The Happening and The Last Airbender and you can only refer to him as being “the director of The Sixth Sense” for so long. That said, Shyamalan’s work here isn’t that bad. It’s not that memorable either. Instead, it’s the epitome of adequate and bland. Some scenes (like the crash landing on Earth) actually come close to being exciting but there’s little sense of wonder or surprise to the film’s version of the future and, while the majority of the film is about Jaden Smith trying to survive and conquer the cruelty of nature, the environment of After Earth never truly feels alive. Perhaps an Ang Lee or a Werner Herzog could have brought After Earth to life but all Shyamalan can do is keep the action plodding forward.

However, it’s unfair to put blame for After Earth on M. Night Shyamalan. If anybody can truly be considered the auteur of After Earth, it is Will Smith. Smith produced the film, came up with the film’s storyline, and gave the film’s lead role to his son. Thematically, After Earth fits into Smith’s feel-good, good-for-you brand of cinema. The problem, however, is that for an action film like this to work, you need a charismatic hero and, to judge from this film, Jaden Smith has inherited little of his father’s onscreen prowess. Fairly or not, it’s impossible to watch Jaden in this film without being aware that he (as opposed to an actor who doesn’t have a famous father) got the role solely because he was the producer’s son. As such, it’s far more difficult to forgive Jaden’s awkward screen presence than it might be otherwise.

After Earth is only 100 minutes long. It’s considerably shorter than both Iron Man 3 and the latest Star Trek film. However, when the film’s lack of surprise is combined with Jaden Smith’s bland lead performance, the end result is a film that feels a lot longer than it actually is.

When all I said and done, the only real question about After Earth is whether or not it’s worse than Oblivion. It’s hard to say because After Earth and Oblivion are both oddly forgettable sci-fi films with similar premises. In fact, while watching After Earth, I kept expecting Tom Cruise to pop up and say, “I thought I was the only man left on Earth!”

I guess the question really comes down to which film is more annoying and again, there are no easy answers. Considering how bland both Oblivion and After Earth really are, it’s interesting that both of them manage to feature some overdone accent work. It’s hard to know how to describe Will Smith’s vaguely Aruban (?) accent in After Earth but honestly, nothing could be more annoying than Melissa Leo’s butchering of the Southern accent in Oblivion. So, as far as bad accents are concerned, Oblivion has to be considered the winner.

(Add to that, as weird as Smith’s accent was, it could at least be justified by the fact that After Earth was meant to be taking place in the far future. There was absolutely no justifiable reason for Melissa Leo in Oblivion to sound like Cate Blanchett in Hanna.)

However, After Earth has a tacked-on environmental message, the type that makes Shyamalan’s The Happening seem subtle and intelligent by comparison. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not objecting to After Earth (or any other film) having a subtext. What I do object to is when a film uses an obvious and heavy-handed subtext to try to hide the fact that the movie itself isn’t that good. In the case of After Earth, the environmental message feels lazy and predictable. It almost feels as if, by paying lip service to a noble cause, Shyamalan is attempting to blackmail us into liking this film.

So, what’s worse? A bad accent or an insincere message?

Ultimately, that’s a decision that everyone must make on their own.

Or you could just ignore both After Earth and Oblivion altogether and instead make the effort to see and support truly unique films like Upstream Color.

The choice is yours.

Guilty Pleasure No. 8: Paparazzi

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I once got into an argument with a friend of mine about whether or not a film could actually be so bad that it was good.

His argument was that bad, by its very definition, was the opposite of good and therefore, nothing bad could be good and vice versa.

My argument was Paparazzi.

First released back in 2004, Paparazzi tells the story of Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser). Bo is an up-and-coming super star. As the film begins, we’re told — by a breathless correspondent from E! News — that Bo has arrived. He’s starring in what promises to be “the world’s biggest action franchise.” Bo has a wife (Robin Tunney), a son, and a beautiful house on the beach. Whenever he goes jogging, huge groups of women magically materialize so that they can giggle as he runs by.

However, not everything is perfect in the world of Bo Laramie. Like far too many defenseless celebrities, he’s being harassed by the paparazzi. At first, Bo attempts to be polite. However, a demonic photographer named Rex (Tom Sizemore) refuses to stop trying to take pictures of Bo at his son’s soccer game. Things escalate until eventually, Bo’s son is in a coma and Bo is coming up with ludicrously elaborate ways to kill all of Rex’s colleagues.

The thing that distinguishes Paparazzi is not that it’s a revenge film. What distinguishes Paparazzi is that it seems to seriously be arguing that celebrities have the right to kill people who annoy them. Rex and his colleagues are portrayed as being pure evil (one even laughs maniacally after snapping a picture) while Bo is the victim who has to deal with the issues that come from being a multimillionaire. Even the homicide detective played by Dennis Farina seems to be continually on the verge of saying, “Right on!” while looking over the results of Bo’s handiwork.

It’s so ludicrous and stupid and over-the-top that it can’t help but also be a lot of fun.

Don’t get me wrong. Paparazzi is a terrible film. In fact, it’s so terrible that, if a group of aliens ever somehow saw Paparazzi, they would probably hop in their spaceship and come to Earth specifically to wipe out the human race. However, as bad as the film is, it’s also one of those films that you simply cannot look away from. Watching this film is like witnessing a tornado of pure mediocrity coming straight at you. You know that you should just stop watching and get to safety but it’s such an unexpectedly odd sight that you can’t look away. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it and it becomes impossible not to become fascinated by the fact that such a terrible film could actually exist.

Consider the following:

1) When he’s not busy killing photographers, Bo Laramie is filming a movie called Adrenaline Force 2. Seriously, that title is so generic that I couldn’t help but smile every time it was mentioned. Can you imagine anyone saying, “I want to see that new movie, what’s it called, uhmm… Adrenaline Force 2?”

2) Speaking of generic, do you think that anyone named Bo Laramie could ever possibly become the biggest film star in the world?

3) In the role of Bo Laramie, Cole Hauser seems like he’s as confused by this movie as everyone else. However, towards the end of the film, he starts to flash a psychotic little grin and the contrast between that grin and Laramie’s previously stoic facade is oddly charming.

4) You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Tom Sizemore play the world’s sleaziest photographer.

5) Vince Vaughn has a cameo as himself! He’s co-starring in Adrenaline Force 2.

6) Mel Gibson has a cameo as himself! He’s seen sitting in a psychologist’s office. (No, seriously…)

7) Matthew McConaughey has a cameo as himself! He shows up out-of-nowhere, tells Bo that it’s a pleasure to meet him, and then goes, “Alright, alright…”

8) Chris Rock has a cameo as a …. pizza deliveryman! At first, I assumed that Chris Rock was playing himself and I kept waiting for him to explain why he was delivering a pizza to Bo Laramie’s house. However, according to the end credits, Vaughn, McConaughey, and Gibson were playing themselves while Rock was playing the role of “Pizza Guy.”

9) Plotwise, this film invites the viewer to play a game of, “What if everyone in this film wasn’t a total and complete idiot?” For all the effort that Bo puts into plotting his revenge, it’s hard not to feel that he just got extremely lucky.

10) The film manages to be both silly and completely humorless at the same time. As a result, it’s a good for more than a few laughs.

11) There’s a scene where, out of nowhere, Bo recites an inner monologue about the price of fame that will remind observant viewers of Tony Bennett’s classic narration from The Oscar.

12) At one point, Tom Sizemore says, “I am going to destroy your life and eat your soul. And I can’t wait to do it.”

13) The film’s director used to be Mel Gibson’s hairdresser.

14) Finally, the film was produced by Mel Gibson and that probably means that the film actually is making a sincere case for murdering members of the paparazzi.

If ever a film has deserved the description of being so bad that it’s good, it is Paparazzi. Between the sense of entitlement, the feverish fantasies of revenge, and the out-of-nowhere celebrity cameos, Paparazzi is a film that has earned the title of guilty pleasure.