February 26, 2006
Two movies that failed to get off the ground
Two more movies I caught recently had similar themes: Red Eye and Flightplan.
I was surprised by how bad Red Eye was, it got fairly decent reviews and I had high hopes that Wes Craven could make a good movie after so many duds over the years. It can be divided into three parts:
√ Pre-flight: This part was actually pretty good We get introduced to Lisa [Rachel McAdams, yum!] a hotel manager trying to catch a red eye flight back to Miami after a funural in Dallas. At the airport she meets Jackson Rippner, a stranger who she seems to quickly strike up a rapport with. And we meet her father and the chick at her hotel.
↔ In-Flight: This is where the film begins to falter. We quickly learn what Jackson is up to. He changes completely from the nice guy we met in the terminal to this cold-blooded killer. Instead of using the charm he displayed earlier to manipulate Lisa into doing what he wants, he instead uses the cudgel of threatening her father's life to get his way. It's bit much. Of course Lisa tries to find a way to inform the other passengers, but Jackson is there to counter her at every turn. It's all rather pointless and doesn't go anywhere. I was hoping she would do something obvious, while also doing something more subtle that would slip by 'ol Jack, but no, this movie never dares to be that imaginitive. Case in point: she eventually just grabs a pen and stabs him in the neck. Woohoo, glad we suffered through all that cat-and-mouse foreplay so you could just wrap it up in such an obvious and easy manner.
↓ Arrival: Once back on the ground, this movie just goes from bad to worse. She runs out of the plane and evades security unto the main concourse, hops on a monorail just one step ahead of the dasdardly Jack. Steals an SUV, makes a phone call to her hotel just in time to save the VIP under attack from the neferious terrorists, then drives on to her father's place for the final showdown with the assassinator. And Jack. It's just plain stupid, and you'll finish the movie wondering what the fuck Wes Craven was thinking when he directed this turd.
No. Just you.
You can tell right off the bat that Flightplan is a very different movie. It stars Jodie Foster as a chick leaving Germany with her daughter and the body of her freshly deceased husband on a flight to New York City. Shortly after takeoff, her daughter goes missing and she is having fits trying to find the little rugrat on the damn plane. The crew try to help her, but eventually they begin to doubt she ever came on the plane with her daughter, and soon discover that her daughter is in fact dead, having died earlier with her husband. At this point I was enjoying the movie, because you kind of wonder if her daughter is really alive or is Jodie's character a freaking loon? The only complaint I had at this point is the terribly slow pacing. Some scenes take forever for no apparent reason than to make that audience uncomfortable. Yeah, we get it, now get on with the fucking story dammit.
Unfortunately, the film takes a huge nosedive once we discover what happened to her daughter and why. The plot has freaking huge holes in it. Huge. The plan needed to be sure that nobody saw her kid board the plane. That nobody would see them taking her kid. That nobody would believe her. That she would open her husband's casket. That they would get their ransom, no questions asked. It's just stupid. And then she blows up the plane, while she's in the plane with her fucking daughter. Yeah, never mind all the volatile jet fuel on board, I'm sure just the nose section with the bad guy in it will blow up, leaving the rest of the plane completely intact. Sure. Stupid fucking movie.
Two Asian Movies : Two Thumbs Up!
Watched a ton of movies lately! Not sure why, just bored I guess. A couple Asian films that I've heard a lot about: Oldboy and Audition. Oldboy is a strange, funny and sometimes horrifying film from South Korea's Chan-wook Park. I enjoyed it a great deal, pretty damn cool flick. Here's the summary:
"An average man is kidnapped and imprisoned in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. He then is released, equipped with money, a cellphone and expensive clothes. As he strives to explain his imprisonment and get his revenge, he soon finds out that not only his kidnapper has still plans for him, but that those plans will serve as the even worse finale to 15 years of imprisonment. "
I heard Audition was pretty violent, but to my surprise, it wasn't really that violent until a bit of stuff right at the end. It's a Japanese film from director Takashi Miike. It has an interesting premise: using a film audition to troll for a widower's new wife. The girl he picks is a bit strange and everybody around him warns him that she doesn't seem right, but he pursues her anyhow. A good film, but not quite as epic as Oldboy.
Damn Snow
Last week it was freezing cold, then this week it snowed and next week it's supposed to snow for much of the week. So much for our mild winter. Hopefully it'll chinook again soon. I wore my regular cycling shoes Wednesday and Thursday but my feet got soaking wet and cold, so on Friday I wore my big-ass Sorels. I couldn't get around as fast with those damn things, but they did keep my feet dry and toasty.
">Evolution of Link
Different versions of Link through most of the Zelda games. Got the original version from here via Joystiq.
February 19, 2006
Need for Speed: Underground
I finished Need for Speed: Underground on my Gamecube today. Woohoo! It was fairly easy, there were just a couple tracks that drove me nuts. Like track #85. And the low-rez graphics made the game a lot harder than on the PC because you could hardly make out what was coming up to react in time. On the other hand, I liked using the GC controller much more than a joystick on the PC. Much easier to control. Now I need to pick up NFS:U2, it's cheap nowadays too.
