Whatever I may feel about the prequel trilogy and the ancillary stories that have clogged the arteries of Star Wars fandom since the publishing of Timothy Zahn’s post-Return of the Jedi novel Heir to the Empire back in 1991, I’ll admit that that particular fictional world continues to fascinate me. So it was that I was intrigued by James Luceno’s recent hardcover novel, Darth Plagueis. It details the backstory of the Dark Lord described by Chancellor Palpatine to young Anakin in the movie Revenge of the Sith.

While the movie only implied that Plagueis was the former master of Darth Sidious (Palpatine’s own Sith secret identity), the novel promised to make their relationship clear. I hoped that it might also clarify one of the nagging questions at the heart of the story, the matter of Anakin Skywalker’s parentage.

The first of the Star Wars prequels, The Phantom Menace, introduced a number of controversial elements. (I mean, besides Jar Jar.) Chief among these were the so-called “midi-chlorians,” quasi-scientific fictional organelles similar to our own mitochondria. They were said to provide a link to the mystical Force from which both the Jedi and Sith warriors drew their powers. Furthermore, it was suggested that these microscopic organisms had somehow impregnated Anakin’s mother, thus fulfilling the prophecy of a Chosen One who would bring “balance to the Force,” whatever that meant. (You know, I’m a little embarrassed just typing out all of this.)

In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine’s retelling of “The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis” included a reference to the Dark Lord’s ability to influence midi-chlorians not only to hold back death, but to create life. Many viewers inferred that the off-screen Plagueis might have astrally knocked-up Anakin’s mom as part of the decades-long scheme to subvert the Republic and its Jedi protectors.

Here was Lucas doubling down on some of the sillier bits of The Phantom Menace. And yet I was kinda willing to go along with it, if only because it made the Sith Lords’ plan that much more devious. I liked the idea that Plagueis might have taken advantage of the old Jedi prophecy to plant an unwitting mole in their midst.

So it was that I voluntarily dove into 368 pages’ worth of Sithtastic history.

Darth Plagueis, the novel, is the literary equivalent of spackling. It’s an attempt to tie together disparate story strands from various Star Wars spin-offs and explain what was going on behind the scenes in the lead-up to the Clone Wars. I’m not well-versed in many of the comics and novels, but even I recognized elements from Heir to the Empire, Shadows of the Empire, the current story arc of the Clone Wars TV show, and even the old Droids Saturday morning cartoon. Passages of the book read like an accounting of random Wookieepedia entries. An example:

If any Jedi were present, they would be sitting in contemplation, as Maul knew he should be doing, as well. Or if not meditating, then completing work on the graciously curved speeder bike he had named Bloodfin or the droid called C-3PX, or perfecting his skill at using the wrist-mounted projectile launcher know as the lanvarok.

Personages such as Wilhuff Tarkin, Jorus C’baoth and Mother Talzin are name-checked, but play no actual role in events. An enormous cast of characters exist on the periphery, there mostly to suggest that one is reading the Grand Unified Theory of Star Wars.

As befits a story set in the decades before the prequel trilogy, there’s a lot of politicking and discussion of interstellar commerce. If you ever wanted to know more about the taxation of trade routes cited in the opening crawl of The Phantom Menace, here’s your chance.

There’s also a surprising amount of gore for a universe in which people usually fall to cleanly-cauterized lightsaber wounds. Young Palpatine (no first name, he’s already that much of a douchebag) goes all serial killer on his family on his path to the Dark Side, and it’s pretty intense for a tie-in to what George Lucas keeps insisting is a property targeting 10-year-olds.

Your enjoyment of Darth Plagueis may depend on how much you like spending time around the unrepentantly evil. The Sith philosophy at times seems to be an especially noxious variant of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. But while the Dark Lords insist that they merely view the Force from a different perspective than the Jedi, they delight in cruelty. There are good guys in the book, but they’re off on the sidelines having adventures while our protagonists are front and center kicking puppies.

One objection that I have to the book is that some major events occur off the page. Luceno devotes an entire chapter to Plagueis’ hunt for those Force-sensitive individuals that his own former Sith Master had been grooming as potential disciples–a narrative dead-end–yet tosses away other actions of far more significance. More on this in a few moments.

Okay, I’m being hard on this book–which, objectively, is not very well written–but I won’t go as far as to say that I didn’t find it worthwhile. I came for the hole-filling, and enough holes were filled to leave me satisfied overall. But to talk about that I’m going to have to get into big-time spoilers. If you’re adverse to these, skip the following and rejoin me for the final paragraph.

One notable revelation is that Darth Plagueis is still alive and active throughout most of the events of The Phantom Menace. Whereas the movie tells us flat out that Darth Sidious and his own apprentice Darth Maul are the only two Sith Lords, Plagueis is there as well, observing events right up to the final few minutes. I suppose that this bit of retconning doesn’t really change anything, but I found it interesting nonetheless. (Sidious’ murder of his Master just prior to his own appointment as Supreme Chancellor of the Republic is a good scene, and I could easily hear actor Ian McDiarmid reading the dialogue in my head.)

The bigger deal was the long-awaited answer to the nature of Anakin’s baby daddy, and here’s where having things occur off-the-page left me confused. When Plagueis and Sidious learn of Anakin and his alleged virgin birth nine years earlier, both are shocked. Plagueis rushes (too late) to intercept the boy:

He had to see this Anakin Skywalker for himself; had to sense him for himself. He had to know if the Force had struck back again, nine years earlier, by conceiving a human being to restore balance to the galaxy.

Problem was that I couldn’t remember just what was the significance of nine years ago. Thanks to Wookieepedia, I found it buried back on page 280: a single paragraph devoted to Plagueis’ off-page attempt to influence the creation of a Force-sensitive being. The gist of this thread, apparently, is that Palpatine’s bedtime story from Revenge of the Sith wasn’t the whole tale. Plagueis didn’t slip a Force-roofie into Momma Skywalker’s blue milk; Anakin Skywalker’s conception wasn’t the direct result of the Sith’s machinations. Instead, he managed to piss off the Force, which in turn reacted by giving the universe actor Jake (“Yippee!”) Lloyd.

Got it? ‘Cause I didn’t. It might have helped had this plot point been treated as prominently as, say, Plagueis hunting down a Force-using gambler.

So, to sum up: Darth Plagueis is a book for hardcore fans only. If you want to know about Palpatine’s youthful troubles, or just who in the heck was Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, pick up a copy. But if you don’t know Hath Monchar from Gardulla the Hutt, you’re better off sticking to the films.

Dave Star Wars George Lucas is a hack and a ne'er-do-well, reviews

Movie remakes. Like trailers that give away the plot, they’ve been around about as long as has the cinema itself, but people still love to bitch about them. They’re a symptom of Hollywood’s lack of new ideas, they besmirch the good names of the originals, and blahbity blahbity blah blah. Blah.

Me, I’ve made my peace with remakes. In the world of theatre, no one bats an eye when someone mounts a new production of Othello or Our Town. There’s an appeal in seeing how a fresh cast and director interpret a familiar work. So, what’s so awful about someone taking another crack at a decades-old flick?

1985′s Fright Night was a minor classic and a clear antecedent to the monsters-in-suburbia comedy-thriller Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Chris Sarandon* played Jerry Dandridge, a centuries-old vampire who moved in next door to a single mom and her teenage son, Charlie. To combat the menace, the boy called on the help of Peter Vincent, a washed-up actor and alleged undead-slayer stuck introducing old monster movies on the local UHF TV station.

Fright Night was a great deal of fun, but it’s very much a product of its era. It’s not just the disco scene, either. Horror hosts have all but disappeared from the airwaves–Chicago’s Svengoolie a famous exception–and the sort of Famous Monsters Generation kid personified by Charlie Brewster now would be obsessing about ’80s slashers rather than ’60s Hammer Films bloodsuckers.

The redux Fright Night changes some elements and ditches others. Gone is Jerry’s ghoulish live-in handyman, as well as most of the gay subtext of the original. Peter Vincent is now a Criss Angel-like Vegas magician with a massive collection of supernatural memorabilia. And Charlie himself has abandoned his nerdery; it’s his former friend Ed who is monster-obsessed and convinced of Jerry’s undeadedness.

For the most part, the changes work. While it’s somewhat convenient that Charlie just happens to live within driving distance of a man with an entire armory of vampire-fighting hardware, it’s no more unlikely than having a Peter Cushing-level actor slumming on local TV. I did miss the slow build of the original; in the new version Ed just shows up and tells Charlie that his neighbor is a vicious beast.

The script is by Marti Noxon, who was the showrunner for the Buffy TV series during its most controversial run of episodes and therefore should be something of a red flag. But honestly, I think Noxon nailed the frothy fun of the original Fright Night while allowing for plenty of bloodletting. Make no mistake, jokey tone or not, there’s a torrent of the red stuff on the screen.

I liked that the movie subverted some genre tropes. There’s far less of the “nobody will believe me” schtick than usual. And I was glad to see the old “vampires can’t enter a house without an invitation” wheeze addressed in the way it never was in seven years of Buffy.

David (Doctor Who) Tennant plays Peter Vincent as a cross between the Tenth Doctor and Jack Sparrow, and his manic energy is matched by Colin Ferrell’s creepy, menacing intensity as his vampiric foe. Anton Yelchin, who was an adorable Chekov in the Star Trek remake, makes a good Charlie. His girlfriend Amy is played by a young actress with the highly unfortunate name of Imogen Poots.

Also unfortunate is that it’s unlikely we’ll see the further adventures of Peter Vincent. The movie took a stake to the heart at the box office this past weekend. It seems that vampires are only a draw if they’re shiny abstinence metaphors. Not even Colin Ferrell in a wife-beater and David Tennant in next-to-nothing were enough to attract a sizable audience.

Too bad, because the new Fright Night is a worthy remake and a heckuva lotta fun.

*Sarandon apparently makes a cameo in the remake, but I somehow missed him.

Dave Movies Fright Night, reviews, vampires

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching so many would-be blockbuster movies, it’s that an August release is usually an evil portent. If a studio is confident in a popcorn flick, they won’t wait until the summer is winding down to unleash it.

So why is it that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty damned good?

It seemed that Planet of the Apes, the original sci-fi film franchise, was dead and gone. Tim Burton, the go-to director when you’re looking for someone to entirely miss the point, had taken a shovel to its simian skull in his 2001 remake. Which made it a bit of a surprise when Fox announced Rise of the Apes.*

Rise is simultaneously a sequel and a prequel, a remake and a reboot. It covers roughly the same ground as that of 1972′s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, in which an intelligent ape named Caesar led a monkey revolt and set in motion the apocalyptic world visited four years earlier by Charlton Heston. However, it’s clearly establishing its own continuity, substituting genetic experimentation as the rationale for its evolved primates rather than the time-travel paradox of the original Apes cycle.

Renaissance man James Franco takes time out from his packed schedule** to appear as the scientist whose desire to cure his father (John Lithgow) of Alzheimer’s blinds him to ethical lapses in the creation of an intelligence-booster. A virus that makes super-smart monkeys? What could possibly go worng?

Of course, the real star of the show is Andy Serkis, who cements his reputation as this generation’s dot-covered Olivier in his motion-captured performance as Caesar. I make fun, but it really is a remarkable fusion of acting and technology. Whatever pathos the film has is entirely on his furry shoulders. A sideways glance here, a head tilt there, and the audience is under his spell, mentally urging the apes to win out over those horrid humans.

For a film that excels in large part due to its measured pace and its wordless passages–particularly in the primate sanctuary/prison section of the narrative–it’s decidedly less subtle in its frequent homages to the 1968 Apes. Some likely go unnoticed by all but the most devoted Ape-ophiles (for example, the orangutan named Maurice in honor of Maurice “Dr. Zaius” Evans), but when Draco Malfoy Tom Felton shouts “It’s a madhouse!” it’s a bit too on-the-nose. The most groan-inducing indulgence unfortunately undercuts what should have been the movie’s biggest shock. (I won’t give it away, but you’ll know it when you hear it.) I see what they were doing there, trying to turn one of the iconic moments of the original Apes on its head, but it’s just a quote too far.

Still, I don’t want to dwell on the occasional misstep. Rise is overall a very good installment of the venerable Apes series, and an entertaining, touching film in its own right. I suspect that we haven’t heard the last of Andy Serkis’ Caesar.

*I believe that it was of a reflection of the sorry state of the Apes franchise that the film was originally planned without a proper “Planet of the” title.

**During production, Franco achieved two more graduate degrees, composed an epic poem about the invention of the Linotype and created an Apes-based line of frozen confections. He is currently writing his 11th Master’s thesis and building a Mars rocket.

Dave Movies Planet of the Apes, reviews

I’ve always been a DC Comics kinda guy. Growing up, I preferred the square-jawed do-goodery of Superman and Green Lantern to Marvel Comics’ angsty superheroes. To this day, the sum total of Captain America, Thor and Iron Man issues I’ve read could be counted on the fingers of a single Infinity Gauntlet.

And that is what I find so frustrating about the current state of the superhero genre on film. It used to be that DC–which squats under the same corporate umbrella as Warner Bros.–enjoyed blockbuster adaptations of its books while Marvel suffered the indignities of grade-Z filmmakers.* Now DC founders, with flagship characters such as Wonder Woman and the Flash stuck in development hell, and the long-in-the-works Green Lantern feature film seen as a flop. Meanwhile, Marvel is engaged in an audacious, multi-year plan which will culminate in 2012′s The Avengers.

Some have criticized the Marvel movies for sacrificing too much of their own identities in service of the so-called “Avengers Initiative,” but I personally cannot help but be impressed with the way that the Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America flicks have formed a single meta-franchise. I’m very much looking forward to next year’s all-star team-up.

In general, Marvel has been having a heck of a year at the cineplex. Thor was an entertaining summer opener which saw director Kenneth Branagh (Kenneth frickin’ Branagh!) reproduce comics artist Jack Kirby’s designs with extreme fidelity. Excellent central performances and a cool ’60s vibe made First Class arguably the second-best installment of the X-Men series. And Captain America may have been the most entertaining of them all.

Granted that Captain America was in the dead-center of my wheelhouse, what with its ’40s pulp feel and its awe-shucks heroics. I love this brand of period adventure.

Setting events during World War II was the best possible move. Not only was it faithful to the character’s idiom, it made the his intrinsic, over-the-top patriotism less risible for a modern audience. Even within the context of the story, the Captain America concept and costume was initially treated as ridiculous. It’s only Cap’s own earnestness and bravery that made it laudable.

Though I’m not much of a Marvel buff, I know enough about that particular universe to have gotten a kick out of appearances by such characters as villainous scientist Armin Zola and derby-wearing soldier “Dum Dum” Dugan.** It was a hoot to see the fictional terrorist organization Hydra in action, complete with its trademark salute, “Cut off a limb and two more shall take its place! Hail Hydra!”

Captain America wasn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it was one of the most enjoyable two-fisted, Nazi-fighting escapades I’ve seen. And when Cap joins up with Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Nick Fury, Black Widow and Hawkeye next summer, this staunch DC Comics fan will be there for opening weekend.

*The nadir was the 1994 version of The Fantastic Four. It cost a mere $1.5 million and was made for the sole purpose of retaining movie rights to the property.

**Though I mostly associate Dugan with his Godzilla-fighting days.

Dave Movies Captain America, Marvel Comics, reviews

I wish to doff my Sorting Hat on the occasion of the opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the purportedly final* installment of the film series. It’s a remarkable achievement: eight big-budget fantasy flicks released over a ten-year period. Despite this rapid-fire production schedule, the movies improved in quality over time as both the storylines and the young stars grew up.

As I hoped, splitting J.K. Rowling’s seventh book into two installments makes for a tense, exciting second half. With all of the tent-sitting out of the way, there is plenty of time for a spectacular Battle of Hogwarts featuring hordes of dark wizards, giants, spiders, mugwumps, gorbats, smumpsmumps and  kitchensinkasauruses.

Ralph Fiennes’ Lord Voldemort is in full-on “kneel before Zod” mode, which makes his ultimate comeuppance even more satisfying. There are several “fuck yeah” moments, with our audience reserving its applause for the star turns by supporting players Neville Longbottom and Molly “not my daughter, you bitch” Weasley.

The trouble started when Voldemort was a child. Someone said, "Got your nose!" and never gave it back.

The movie improves on the book in a couple of ways. The business over the Elder Wand’s true ownership left me puzzled at a crucial point in the original narrative; here, the explanation is saved until the dust settles. Co-conspirators Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood, who were married off to random tertiary characters in J.K. Rowling’s post-novel interviews, instead make a more satisfying love connection with each other. (Though I still think Luna and Harry would’ve been a better pairing; one of the major disappointments of the books was that Rowling went with the entirely predictable choice of Ginny “hi, I’ll be your love interest” Weasley.)

I’ll be honest with you, I teared up during the “19 years later” epilogue. I’m going to miss these kids and their world. They’ve been among the few bright spots of the last decade.

*At least, until they make Luna Lovegood: A Spell of Murder. Luna is a tabloid reporter turned private investigator who, with her Crumple-Horned Snorkack named Erasmus, specializes in Muggle mysteries. Call me, J.K.

Dave Movies Harry Potter, reviews

This week it’s fashionable to chastise American moviegoers for dropping $180 million on Transformers: Dark of the Moon, never mind that the rest of the world seems equally willing to spend 154 minutes watching robots explode. It’s an easy target for sneering hipsters who resent the masses for not sharing their love of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Look, folks. Transformers isn’t hurting you. It’s not going to emerge from your closet in the middle of the night and belt you with a sockful of quarters. It’s not going to hold down Wes Anderson and mercilessly pummel him until he promises never again to pick up a camera. It’s not going to launch whipping mechanical tentacles to drag you out of your free trade coffee bar and force a pair of 3-D glasses onto your head.

Which is my way of saying that, yes, I saw Transformers: Dark of the Moon. And shut up.

I was pleasantly surprised by Michael Bay’s first Transformers film. It was fluff to be sure, but well-produced and enjoyable fluff. I skipped Revenge of the Fallen, partially because of its minstrel-show automatons, but mostly because even the people who like movies about exploding robots said that it didn’t have enough exploding robots.

This was not a problem with Dark of the Moon. The final third of the movie was a running battle through the streets of Chicago. And I’ll admit that the chief appeal for me was the opportunity to see Chi-Town take its lumps for the sake of the summer blockbuster.

3-D suits Michael Bay. It not only plays to his visual strengths, but it forces him to eschew hyper-active editing in favor of establishing spacial relationships. And, of course, it allows him an additional dimension in which to fetishize his female stars. The very first shot in the modern-day section of Dark of the Moon is a lingering embrace of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s panty-clad hindquarters. Walking up a flight of stairs. Bay knows what he likes.

One thing that I liked about Dark of the Moon was the lengthy alternate-history sequence that saw the ’60s space race recast as a struggle to capture the remains of a Cybertronian spacecraft. (Amusingly, the real-life Buzz Aldrin showed up too.*) Between this, X-Men: First Class‘ mutant spin on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Doctor Who‘s own Apollo 11 moment, it’s been a summer for divergent timelines.

Another famous spaceman, Leonard Nimoy, lent his gravelly voice as Sentinel Prime, former leader of the Autobots. And there were not just one, but two references to The Wrath of Khan, including a wicked twist on Mr. Spock’s classic “needs of the many” quote.

The human characters in Dark of the Moon were a strange lot. What I’m saying is that John Malkovich was in it, and he wasn’t the weirdest person on the screen. He would’ve needed a tiny John Cusack inside his brain to match up against the Bizarro World scenery-chewing of Frances McDormand, Alan Tudyk and Ken Jeong.

Yet the most off-putting person had to be Shia LaBeouf as ostensible hero Sam Witwicky. I don’t know what happened to Witwicky in Revenge of the Fallen, but Dark of the Moon had him pissed off and put upon, even though he managed to swing a huge Washington, D.C. loft apartment and a second smoking-hot girlfriend. I find myself wondering whether Michael Bay made a deliberate, subversive choice to make the good guy a douchebag, or whether LaBeouf showed up on the set that way and Bay said, “I can work with this.”

But, let’s face it, no one is going to see Transformers for the humans. Some days, you just want to watch Chicago blow up. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Don’t look at me like that.

*Yes, from the Apollo 11 mission to chatting with Optimus Prime.

Dave Movies hipsters, reviews, shit blows up, Transformers

The modern movie industry is a looking-glass universe in which making $93 million in 12 days is seen as a crushing disappointment. That’s the outlook for Green Lantern, Warner Bros.’ attempt to gear up its own integrated superhero movie franchise ala Marvel’s grand Avengers initiative.

I came of age in the era of Christopher Reeve’s Superman, which not only proved that a man could fly, but that a superhero could power a big budget Hollywood film. Yet I could never have imagined a summer like 2011, which kicked off with a Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor and saw $300 million lavished to make and market a Green Lantern flick.

And, really, that may have been a big part of the problem. There’s no good reason to spend that much green on a B-list hero like DC’s intragalactic cop.

Bear me out; I like Green Lantern. I’m not interested in his recent adventures–which put him at the center of an absurdly convoluted War Between the Colors–but the basic premise of an Earthman drafted into a legion of space peacekeepers is rock-solid.

GL has become more prominent in recent years–comics fans apparently love seeing a box of ring-slinging Crayolas duke it out–yet to the general public he’s relatively obscure.

Of course, so was Iron Man. But that one had Robert Downey, Jr. And it didn’t cost 300 extra-large.

I didn’t see Green Lantern until the second weekend*–practically an epoch as far as the studio beancounters are concerned. While it wasn’t in any way the disaster that reviews suggested, I could see right away why it didn’t catch on with an audience that doesn’t know the planet Oa from a hole in the ground.

Has any truly good movie started off with a voiceover infodump? Green Lantern opens by way of a portentous  recitation of the history of the Guardians of the Universe and the all-consuming villain Parallax. The first ten minutes or so are all CGI aliens on green-screened backgrounds in a look unpopularized by the Star Wars prequels.

Once Ryan Reynolds shows up as hotshot pilot with a destiny Hal Jordan things pick up, but the script doesn’t give him enough opportunities to exploit his considerable charm. It doesn’t help that his romantic interest Carol Ferris is played by a block of wood Blake Lively.

Really, there’s nothing all that wrong with Green Lantern. No one is phoning it in.** There’s an effort to faithfully replicate the comics experience, complete with familiar supporting characters such as Sinestro, Kilowog and Tomar Re. (And if there’s anything almost as surprising as Kenneth Branagh directing a movie about The Mighty Thor, it’s hearing Geoffrey Rush voicing the fish-headed Tomar Re, introduced as a random alien Lantern in a 1961 issue.) When the slinging of the ring begins, it’s an entertaining spectacle.

While Warner Bros. suggests that we haven’t seen the last of Green Lantern, I find it hard to believe that they’ll follow up this movie with anything other than a direct-to-DVD sequel. Which is too bad, I think; this is a superhero movie that did a lot of things right even if if it didn’t add up to greatness.

*Instead, I had the opportunity to see Super 8 in IMAX. And I’m very glad that I did. It was an excellent Spielbergian throwback that benefited greatly from the extra-large, extra-sharp image.

**Even the block of wood acquits herself given her natural handicap of being made of pine.

Dave Movies block of wood, Green Lantern, reviews

Director Wes Craven’s 1996 effort Scream was best known as the horror film populated by characters familiar with the tropes of horror films. Their survival meant adhering to the “rules”: don’t have premarital sex, don’t say “I’ll be right back,” and, for goodness’ sake, don’t forget to look behind you.

That winking meta-commentary was fun, but it wasn’t the only thing I admired about Scream. It was also a murder mystery that played fair with the audience. There were red herrings aplenty, but the final reveal of its omnipresent, Halloween-masked killer held up under multiple viewings.

Furthermore, Scream and its sequels had something to say about how media and their audiences feed upon each other, howling around in an endless, recirculating wind. Scream 2 kicked off at the premiere of “Stab,” a film-within-the-film based upon the events of the previous installment’s “real-life” killings. And Scream 3 took place on the set of a sequel to “Stab,” with a parallel cast playing Hollywood analogues of the franchise’s regular characters.

Which brings us to Scream 4. Eleven years have passed since the previous chapter, and what a difference a decade makes. The original Scream played with the growing ubiquity of cell phones among the young, but the clunky handset seen in the clip of “Stab 5″ (or is it “Stab 6?”) serves as a reminder of how personal communications technology exploded in the Oughts. Webcams and social media figure heavily in the plot. Want to sound like the Ghost Face killer? There’s an app for that!

To some extent, the meta-meta-commentary this time around is too clever for its own good. The opening sequence–a series of fake-outs and reversals–is certainly fun, but there’s absolutely no comparison to the intense terror of Drew Barrymore’s deadly trivia game back in 1996. And having the characters hang a lampshade on the script’s deficiencies doesn’t excuse them. (The killer is even tripped up by the old “I never told you about [specific detail]” mistake.)

It’s a little disappointing that Wes Craven didn’t do more to address changes to the horror genre during the intervening years. There are references to “torture porn,” “found footage” movies and Japanese ghost girls, but the actual murders remain old-school slasher stuff. It’s oddly charming in its way.

Unfortunately, this time I pegged the killer early. That may not be the film’s fault; prior to seeing Scream 4 I’d read something online that drew my attention to a particular character and had me tracking that person’s comings and goings. To the script’s credit, the murderer’s motivations make so much sense that I’m surprised we haven’t seen something similar in real life. Yet.

Another thing in the plus column is that the Scream films continue to have a point. This time there’s a wicked observation on the nature of fame in the 21st Century.

Scream 4 is good, grisly fun. I enjoyed revisiting these characters and wouldn’t mind catching up with them every decade or so. Next time, Ghost Face will be making taunts through subcutaneously-implanted phones.

Dave Movies reviews, Scream

I love Netflix Watch Instantly. Love. It. Hundreds of recent and classic films streaming across my Wii and iPad? Yes, please.

I’ve been able to catch up on a bunch of movies I missed at the theater, the latest being the 2009 British sci-fi story Moon. Like the previously-reviewed Monsters, Moon was praised for being thoughtful rather than flash-bangy. Unlike Monsters, I think that acclaim was largely deserved.

Moon is highly reminiscent of late ’60s/early ’70s theatrical sci-fi. Many have brought up the obvious parallel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, notably the relationship between Sam Rockwell’s lone lunar miner and the one-eyed computer GERTY, whose flat-toned voice is provided by Kevin Spacey. I think it’s closer to Silent Running or Dark Star with their stir-crazy, working-class astronauts, plus a bit of hallucinatory weirdness courtesy of Solaris.

Nearing the end of a three-year tour of duty as the sole inhabitant of a mostly-automated Helium-3 mining facility on the dark side of the moon, Sam Rockwell’s character (also named Sam) is almost completely cut off from human contact thanks to a perpetually-malfunctioning satellite uplink. He’s unable to interact in real-time with his wife and infant daughter, depending instead on delayed messages relayed from Jupiter.

With only three weeks to go, Sam begins to have visions of a teenaged girl, and then of himself. After a moon buggy accident, he wakes up in the infirmary with a loss of memory. Convincing the evasive GERTY to allow him outside the mining base, he investigates the crippled buggy and finds a second Sam trapped inside. Is he crazy, or is he a clone?

Overall, I thought Moon succeeded, though even at 97 minutes it ran out of material in the final half hour. I began to anticipate a further twist (see the spoiler section below) that never happened. And the physical deterioration of the second Sam–or is he the first Sam?–began to make my skin crawl after a time.

Highlights include Rockwell’s pair of effectively odd performances, as well as the visual elements of the moon base. GERTY–a computer tethered to a ceiling-mounted arm–is a clever design, conveying emotion through a changing smiley-face graphic display. And as far as I can tell, the effects appear to be old-school miniatures rather than CGI, giving the locations that extra bit of realism.

SPOILERS FROM HERE OUT – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

The two Sams are indeed clones. After the real Sam’s initial tour of duty, his employer decided that rather than going through the expense of training and transporting new miners, it would be cheaper to create a bunch of copies installed with the original’s memories and kept on ice in a secret chamber beneath the base. There are dozens, if not hundreds of Sams stored away, which in itself seems like a waste of money. At three years (more or less, depending upon accidents) per Sam, how many clones can they go through before the remainder pass their sell-by date?

One of the Sams gets outside the jamming array which prevents real-time communication and contacts his now-teenaged daughter. In the background we can hear her father, presumably the still-living original Sam. It struck me that Sam Prime must have been a colossal tool to participate in a project that would result in hundreds of copies of himself living alone with their false memories and ultimately being tricked into disintegrating themselves.

As I hinted, the business with the clones was given up early enough that I was waiting for a further twist. When the Sams went out in their respective buggies searching for the jamming towers, I fully expected them to find more mining bases manned by further Sams.

Dave Sci-Fi clones, moon, reviews

Last year I heard a lot about the cheapie independent sci-fi road movie Monsters. Reputed to have been made for under a half-million dollars–with special effects created using off-the-shelf software–it was supposed to be a brave, understated take on the giant monster subgenre, a Cloverfield for the art-house crowd.

I didn’t manage to catch its brief theatrical run, but last night I sat down with it on Netflix Watch Instantly. I’d love to be able to proclaim that Monsters was all that and a bag of popcorn, but I found myself increasingly disappointed as the story unspooled, even moreso on further reflection.

Monsters is pitched as the movie that occurs once the invasion is over. Six years after a space probe crashed in the Mexican jungle, alien lifeforms have sprung up in a so-called “infected zone” bordering the American southwest. Titanic, bioluminescent creatures that appear to be the love children of octopi and giraffes roam by night, occasionally wandering into human-settled areas. The U.S. military conducts regular bombing runs against the beasts*, but for the most part people accept the new normal.

A photojournalist is tasked with escorting the daughter of his magazine’s publisher out of Mexico before the harbors close for good. But when their passports are stolen, they hitch a ride across the infected zone. Love blossoms. Sorta. It’s not so much passion as it is a mutual willingness to momentarily detach themselves from their own self-absorption.

Monsters wants to be the African Queen of kaiju films, but the uninvolving characters and improvised dialogue are an ocean away from Bogart and Hepburn’s romantic banter. It’s a movie that tells you what is happening, as when the photographer declares “the vibe just changed.” (People also ask a lot of questions of the “what’s that?” or “why are they carrying guns?” variety, as if they have forgotten about being surrounded by colossal calamari.)

This would be less damaging if there was more happening on the alien invader front, but the eponymous critters make only occasional, brief appearances. I’ll accept the premise that this was a conscious directorial choice rather than a budgetary mandate, but if so, writer/director Gareth Edwards should’ve spent more time making the humans worth caring about.

The roguish Andrew flirts with the boss’ daughter, but spends the night with a prostitute who steals most of his belongings. Oddly enough, Samantha doesn’t seem all that upset that her idiotic escort lost their passports. This may be because she’s not all that eager to get home to her fiancée, or it just may be that she’s bored. It’s hard to tell. We never find out why she went to Mexico in the first place, or why she spends the movie sporting a bandaged arm. Whatever her motivations, she’s far too willing to risk crossing an alien-overrun land rather than, say, sitting around the U.S. embassy until Daddy Warbucks charters a plane. Monsters or no monsters, are we really expected to believe that the world won’t help a rich, white girl?

Monsters comes with a heaping helping of metaphor. You see, it’s really about the U.S. response to illegal immigration, with glowing space squid filling in for undocumented domestics. And while I’m far from immune to the charms of sledgehammer allegory–I was a big fan of V, after all–this is the sort of movie in which people gaze out at a 100-meter-high concrete border wall and say “It’s different looking at America from the outside.” Point delivered. (Thwack!) And I’m not sure that I buy into the suggestion that the U.S. military are the true antagonists here when we’re shown the extent of the otherworldly infestation. It’s hard to root for an invasive species, especially when the Asian carp in question can topple buildings.

It’s not that I went into Monsters unprepared. I knew that the creatures stayed mostly in the background. I’m fine with menaces that are suggested rather than seen. And I don’t necessarily have a problem with improvised dialogue. I found The Blair Witch Project chilling (the first time, anyway) because its filmmakers suffused their story with a dread of the unknown. In Monsters, we start out with a fairly complete understanding of the aliens’ nature and motivations. Our protragonists knowingly and needlessly put themselves in harm’s way. And yet–aside from the final couple of minutes–there’s no sense of imminent threat. It’s not the lack of monsters that defuses Monsters, it’s the lack of tension.

Then there’s the non-ending. Okay, that’s not completely true: there is sort of a conclusion, if you know where to look for it. But, like M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, it seems less of an ambiguity than a case of the movie stopping just when the interesting part is about to happen.

I don’t want to come down too harshly on Monsters. I respect its do-it-yourself nature. The location shooting is beautiful. And I appreciate its attempt to take a more thoughtful approach to giant monster tropes. But I will say that I’m now kinda worried that Gareth Edwards has been given the keys to the forthcoming American Godzilla reboot. As a filmmaker’s calling card, Monsters achieves impressive results on a micro-budget, but as a romantic thriller, it falls flatter than Tokyo after a rampage.

*Bonus question: why are there so many crashed planes littering the zone? The aliens don’t appear to jump, fly or shoot death rays. Jet fighter vs. land squid would, at first glance, seem an unfair fight.

Dave Movies giant monsters, reviews