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MOVIE REVIEW: Crank: High Voltage – A Jolt of Adrenaline/Electricity to the Heart! CLEAR!

Posted by   on April 19, 2009

in Movie Reviews,Movies

Crank: High Voltage steps up the adrenaline generating insanity that made Crank so much fun. Writers/Directors Neveldine and Taylor [who seem to have dropped their first names] have put together ninety minutes of craziness that picks up with Chev Chelios [Jason Statham] hitting the ground after falling thousands of feet from a helicopter – from which point, he is bundled into a van [literally shovelled off the sidewalk – a hint of the nuttiness to come], and finally awakes as his heart is being replaced with a temporary artificial pump to keep him alive until his other organs can be harvested.

Crank 2

To say he doesn’t take kindly to this state of affairs is an understatement. What follows is probably best not viewed by children of any age – especially the antics that follow when Chelios loses the pump’s battery pack and has to resort to several and varied means to generate enough juice to keep the thing working. Let’s just say that the movie’s sub-title, High Voltage, is entirely appropriate.

If there is a cinematic device available, it is used here – wide-angle shots, Dutch angles, hard cuts, jump cuts, dissolves, lap dissolves, even 8-bit Nintendo-type graphics, split screen and psychedelic polarization effects! Just in passing, we get a character with “Full Body Tourettes,” striking porn stars, public sex, self mutilation, and a character right out of Futurama. Then there are the colorful sub-titles that would be right at home in Timur Bekmambetov flick and the most outrageous fight sequences in recent memory.

Crank: High Voltage lives up to its title. It is whirlwind-paced, colorful, baked, twisted and spun out of LSD-laced cotton candy. Compared to Crank: High Voltage, most other action flicks are on Quaaludes. Seriously. If you want a film that is a genuine experience – and you have no problem with sex, violence and totally whacked-out humor, this is the movie that you need to see.

Final Grade: A

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MOVIE REVIEW: Fast & Furious is Exactly That!

Posted by   on April 4, 2009 · 2 comments

in Movie Reviews,Movies

The original cast of The Fast and the Furious reunites for this fourth film in the series – and it does exactly what it says on the label. Under the leadership of director Justin Lin, who also directed the Tokyo Drift instalment of the series, we get a car movie that will please fans of the previous movies.

fast-and-furious

The plot – Paul Walker’s FBI Agent O’Connor and Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretta are after a drug kingpin named Braga for their own reasons – is merely a device to let cars race [and, occasionally crash, smash or blow up]; guys brawl and women to wear skimpy clothing. It’s not Oscar® bait; neither is it indie art. It’s a popcorn movie of the most obvious order.

The races and various other stunts are different enough to feel fresh and get your adrenaline rushing. The stars – Walker, Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster – perform about as woodenly as they ever have, but that doesn’t matter. The villains [John Ortiz’s Campos, and Laz Alonso’s Fenix Rising] get the benefit of being portrayed by able character actors and chew the scenery admirably.

Fast & Furious is one of those movies that are just well enough made to work for its target audience. It’s nothing to write home about, but if you’re looking for a car/brawl/explosion movie with skimpily clad women, this is your movie. It probably won’t matter if you forget it mere seconds after you leave the theater.

Final Grade: C+

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MOVIE REVIEW: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li – Not The Worst Videogame Movie By Far

Posted by   on March 1, 2009

in Movie Reviews,Movies

You think I’d learn. Every time I check out a movie based on a videogame, I’m let down – sometimes to an extreme [like with Max Payne, DOOM and the original Street Fighter movie]; sometimes by the tiniest of margins. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is one of the latter.

streetfighter poster

Here’s a movie that features some of the wittier martial arts choreography to be filmed in the last few years, and there’s a clever – even wistful – parallel father/daughter arc that shows Chun-Li [Kristin Kreuk] to be treasured by her father [Edmund Chen], and Bison’s [Neal McDonough] daughter used solely as a repository for the last of the goodness in his soul.

Unfortunately, the film falls into the usual origin story knee-deep exposition and too little actual martial arts sequences. Performance-wise, the cast is pretty good. Kristin Kreuk is at least adequate as Chun-Li; Robin Shou gives Gen [her mentor] a combination of gravity and humor that works really well; Neal McDonough is suitably psycho as Bison, and the sly chemistry between Interpol agent Nash [Chris Klein] and Bangkok cop Maya [Moon Bloodgood]definitely adds to the mix. Only Michael Clarke Duncan [Balrog, Bison’s number one enforcer] doesn’t fit – more because of the script than Duncan.

Andrzej Bartkowiak’s direction is crisp enough but he simply has too much material to cram into the film’s ninety-six minutes. The result is a movie that does entertain on a basic level, but is missing the kind of pure excitement that it needs to reach the next level.

Final Grade: C+

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MOVIES: Sleek, Stylish and Slightly Skeevey, Taken Delivers The Goods!

Posted by   on February 2, 2009 · 1 comment

in Movie Reviews,Movies

A retired spy’s daughter is kidnapped to be sold as a sex slave [the slightly skeevey part]. The ex-spy hunts the men who kidnapped her. As premises go, this one is simple, direct and a bit odd to find in a PG-13 film – but we are talking about a Luc Besson production, so maybe it’s not really a surprise.

Taken - Neeson

What is a surprise is that Taken, co-written by Besson [Leon, The Professional and The Fifth Element] and Robert Mark Kamen [The Karate Kid, The Transporter], and directed by Pierre Morel [District B13], is better than the premise suggests. This mostly because it takes a bit of time to establish that our protagonist, Bryan Mills [Liam Neeson] has retired because he wants to reconnect with his daughter, Kim [Maggie Grace]. We believe him because we see how disappointed he is when her mother, Lenore [Famke Janssen] and step-father, Stuart [Xander Berkley] upstage him at her birthday party [he brings her an expensive karaoke machine, but Stuart gives her a horse].

When she and her mother persuade him to sign a waiver allowing Kim to go to Paris, his warnings of danger fall on deaf ears and – sure enough – she and her friend are kidnapped. Then comes the phone conversation we saw in the trailer – followed by Mills taking action. Although Neeson is not a small guy, he does a good job of making himself seem ordinary as he begins tracking down the kidnappers, but once he swings into action, he becomes a force of nature.

Morel keeps the action up front and his pacing builds as Mills works himself up the chain of command – starting with the spotter who set up Kim and her friend. The usual ingredients of a Besson production are here – fights, chases, explosions – but because we buy into Mills as a father, there is a little more gravity, a little more at stake than usual.

Taken is entertaining but, ultimately, reliant on one performance. If you buy Neeson as Mills, then you’ll enjoy the movie. If not, you won’t. I did.

Final Grade: B-

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HOLLYWOOD INSIDER: Burn Notice Creator Matt Nix Gives Surprising Intel!

Posted by   on January 23, 2009

in Hollywood Insider,Television

Nix1

How do you create and write a series like Burn Notice? What influences – from life and classic TV – go into the unique mix that is Burn Notice [USA, Thursdays, 10/9C]? Series creator Matt Nix answers these questions and more…

[click to continue…]

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TELEVISION: The Best and Worst of 2008!

Posted by   on January 2, 2009 · 2 comments

in Television,TV Reviews

Dexter

There was an overwhelming amount of great TV, this year [and, as you’ll see not too much later, an almost equally overwhelming amount of excessively bad TV]. Given the truly amazing amount of quality to be found between the networks and the various cable outlets, I’ve decided to list my favorite fifteen shows of the year.

[click to continue…]

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TELEVISION REVIEW: The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice – Still In Like Flynn

Posted by   on December 6, 2008

in Television

Every so often, you need a little low-budget, B-movie fun. The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice [TNT, Sunday, 8/7C] provides exactly that. This time, Flynn Carson’s [Noah Wyle] New Orleans vacation is interrupted in unique style as it comes to light that the Judas Chalice – the chalice made from the silver of the thirty coins paid to Judas Iscariot for Christ’s betrayal – has come to light. Obviously, The Library would like to add it to their private collection.

Librarian 3

Curse of the Judas Chalice continues to mine the Indiana Jones format to good effect. The movie opens with Carson bidding on a vase from the early Ming Dynasty [circa 1411] and having to destroy it to obtain the real treasure inside. There follows swordplay – and a throw pillow is involved – all of which leads to Carson’s girlfriend breaking up with him.

From there, a serious meltdown and a strange dream lead our hero to take a vacation in New Orleans – where he encounters a statue and a woman that were in said dream. Mix in a former KGB agent and Russian government official named Kubicek [Dirkan Tulaine], who has a lead on the chalice; a decrepit history professor named Professor Lazlo [Bruce Davison], and a legend that suggests that the Judas Chalice can resurrect vampires and you’ve got a potent mix for adventure. Once Carson encounters the woman from his dream, Simone [Stana Katic], singing in a club, the action comes fast and furious.

Curse of the Judas Chalice is a bit of a comeback for the franchise. As with the Indiana Jones films, the second chapter wasn’t quite right [and Gabrielle Anwar was no Sonja Walger – whom we see in the opening credits here for some reason]. Where the second Librarian movie was too silly, Curse is just silly enough. The idea of resurrecting vampires combines well with revelations that make sense of Judson’s [Bob Newhart] appearance in New Orleans to give the series an extra layer of the epic.

Jonathan Frakes keeps things light and breezy and Marco Schnabel’s script is witty and slightly deranged. Add in genial performances and solid effects and the result is an entertaining bit of froth that will provide a cheery couple of hours – which is exactly what it sets out to do.

Final Grade: B

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