Shmee.Me

May 22, 2013

Don’t take a Flight with Denzel Washington!

Flight is a 2012 film by Robert Zemeckis, and it was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Actor (Denzel Washington), and Best Original Screen Play (John Gatins). For me, it did not scare me to fly, but it did try awful hard to put me to sleep.

The story starts off with Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) drinking and taking cocaine, and then jumping in the cockpit and flying a plane. As the plane nears its destination it starts to fall apart, and Whip through some amazing maneuvers is able to crash land the plane in an open field and save most of the people, but since there was a crash there will be a toxicology report, so will he or won’t he get blamed for this and go to jail.

I have to start off by saying Denzel is great in this movie, and it is easy to see why he gets an Oscar nomination for it, but the movie is two hours and eighteen minutes long, and the plane crash is over in the first thirty minutes, so then you are forced to watch Denzel drink and lie about it for an hour and forty-five minutes. They needed an editor to cut this down by at least a half hour, but as it is it just a way to see that Denzel can act, and see if the audience can stay awake.

I wanted to like this movie because I like most of the people in it, and that made it, but it is just too long for the subject matter, so I would say pass on it unless you are an Oscar movie buff and just want to see Denzel’s role.

May 19, 2013October 11, 2016

Visit Westworld!

Westworld is a 1973 film written and directed by Michael Crichton. It is considered a Sci-Fi classic and the precursor to Jurassic Park. It is the first film to use computer generated imagery, so I decided to give it a watch, and I am glad that I did.

In the future the Delos Corporation has developed life like androids, and they made amusement parks where you can interact with them: Romeworld, Medievalworld, and Westworld. The movie obviously takes place in the titular Westworld, but it shows flashes of the other lands, and the concept is that you can do whatever your heart desires in Westworld. Get in a bar fight, have a shoot out, become an outlaw, or anything else western, but since you will be killing and punching robots no one will get hurt. Sadly for James Brolin and Richard Benjamin they get there just in time for the parks to start acting up, and a visit from android Yul Brynner does not go as planned.

The movie works so well because you kind of want the bad things to happen to the characters because they are doing such bad things to the robots, but at the same time it forces you to root for the humans because they are trapped in a terrifying situation beyond their control.

An interesting point the movie mentions, in almost a throwaway sentence, is that they cannot figure out what is wrong with the robots since they were designed by other robots, and in real life that is a point we may get to in our lifetime. It is slightly scary to think about.

I had never seen a movie directed by the author Michael Crichton before (because it turns out that Westworld is the only one), but he does a good job of framing the action. He films the fantasy fight scenes and the real ones differently. The way he focuses in on the humans and lets us see their terror adds great tension to the movie versus the zoomed out ‘fun’ fantasy fights the guests delight in.

The actors, especially Yul Brynner, do great jobs with their roles. The way Brynner looks so lifelike when delivering his programmed lines, but then the way he turns in to an expressionless killing machine when the time comes is chilling.

This a good movie and it is streaming on Amazon Prime. It is no wonder they are thinking of remaking it, but I think the original was pretty darn good, and worth the watch.

May 17, 2013May 17, 2013

MST3K forced to watch Hamlet!

My wife was at bunko last night, and that means I got to watch a little MST3K. I decided that I would watch one with a little culture and watch Hamlet. It is a 1961 made for German TV version that has been dubbed, and it is as bad as it sounds.

If you don’t know the plot to Hamlet, shame on you, but here it is. The dead King visits his son, and says “Dude! Like your uncle killed me with ear poison, and then married his sister! You should kill him back!” Hamlet is like “that is probably true but I should check by staging a play first.” His uncle hates the play proving that he killed the king, so Hamlet kills his girlfriend’s dad, which makes sense. This causes his girlfriend go crazy and drown. Then her brother is like “Hamlet you a such a jerk!” Hamlet’s uncle is like “you should kill him with the poisoned sword because I like to kill people with poison”, so he does, but not before Hamlet kills him with the same sword, and his mom dinks some poison his uncle made for him, and then he kills his uncle with the sword too, so poisonings all around!

The takeaway here is that if you are going to take revenge do not kill your girlfriend’s dad, and if you find my plot inaccurate, good.

This version of The Bard’s Hamlet was awful. There are two sets, and it is extremely slow moving, and it makes you feel bad for German TV viewers. The Bots and Mike are uneven in this movie, and I think that is because they don’t want to make fun of Shakespeare’s dialog, and so that just left them with the sets and the bad acting, and there was a lot to go on there, but I had hoped for funnier.

It was still pretty funny, but they went for long periods of time without making a joke, but when they did make their joke it usually landed, but there are better MST3K episodes to watch.

May 16, 2013May 16, 2013

Back to the Begining of Star Trek!

Star Trek is the 2009 reboot for the Star Trek series by J.J. Abrams. This movie was the response to the bomb that was Star Trek: Nemesis. It worked. The movie made more than $385 million worldwide, making it the biggest film in the franchise, and Paramount responded by locking down the director and the actors for two more movies after it.

They cleverly made this movie in an alternate universe that Spock creates when trying to stop a super nova from destroying the galaxy, but not before it destroys the Romulan home world. A Romulan Nero comes through the black hole that Spock makes and ends up coming to the past and kills Kirks father, and it forever alters time. Kirk grows up a troubled child, but still ends up in Star Fleet Academy. He is forced on to the Enterprise when Nero destroys the Volcan home world as retribution. Kirk and the rest of the crew must stop him before he destroys Earth as well.

A lot of Star Trek Fans don’t like this movie because they made it too commercial and actiony, but I think they just focused on making a great film, and they did. This movie is easily one of the better Star Trek movies ever made, and it is in my top three: First Contact, Wrath of Kahn, and Star Trek.

I loved how they focused on what makes Spock tick in this movie. You get to see him from two points of view in this movie. When he is young and brash, and when he is old and wise. It was a very smart way to bridge the two universes, and it is just good to see Leonard Nimoy in anything. They do also show how Kirk’s life was different, but not quite as drastically.

The new cast they got was great. I think everybody did their jobs well, and they filled their storied rolls as best as could be hoped for, and I have to admit that lately I have kind of a man crush on Karl Urban. He is in everything I like these days, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Dredd for starters, so I hope he continues to do work that I approve of.

J.J. Abrams does a good job as director, and he shows us what a Star Trek movie should have been all the time, by showing us stuff they never could have done on a TV set. Sure his lens flare does get a little annoying, but if it means good movies I can deal with it.

I hope they keep up the good work with Star Trek Into Darkness because it is good to have Star Trek around even if it has changed a little, but things have to change to survive.

May 13, 2013

Hide from Jurassic Park III!

Jurassic Park III is the aptly named third Jurassic Park movie, but the first not directed by Stephen Spielberg, but instead by Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer). This movie is in the same vein as The Lost World, where it doesn’t live up to the fist movie, but it is still fun to watch.

The plot is short. Pretty much a boy (Trevor Morgan) gets lost on Isla Sorna while parasailing with his mom’s boyfriend, and his mom (Téa Leoni) and dad (William H. Macy) kidnap Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) to help them find him, but then they get attacked by dinosaurs and have to try and survive.

I actually like the simplicity of the plot. They didn’t try and over think things, and because of that it is believable, and really there aren’t any major holes. The only thing that is questionable is how the boy lived alone on the island for eight weeks, regardless of the fact that there are man eating animals on it.

The acting is believable, and Sam Neil as Dr. Alan Grant is great. You believe that he is a world renown paleontologist, and he makes more sense in this movie than Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the last movie. Everyone else just needs to scream and get eaten well, and they do.

The special effects are worse and better then the last movie, but still not up to Jurassic Park’s standards. The computer generated effects were better, but the animatronics looked worse, so it was kind of a mixed bag, but they were still good enough to not be distracting.

I liked this movie better than The Lost World. It was more focused, and streamlined, and Alan Grant is better than Ian Malcolm. It is not a great movie, but it is an enjoyable one.