Reviews

I'm kind of ashamed to be writing this because it means I took the time to watch it. And it gets worse when you realize I'm taking more time to comment on it. Oh well, can't say you weren't warned. If the other reviews didn't slap some sense into you and cause you watch something useful like CITIZEN KANE or porn, then I've no sympathy for you. Normally, I would express my admiration of the nudity, attractive girls, gore, overall trashiness, nudity, callous and gleeful disdain of reality and nudity that a movie with a title of ATTACK GIRLS' SWIM TEAM might engender. Except... this movie may possess such attributes, but it's not done very well. An equivalent effect might be that of watching your parents dry-humping while talking dirty to each other (or so I'd assume- I've no experience to draw from, readers feel free to correct me at your leisure). You can't really discuss plot or characterization, except to say that the aforementioned undead or zombies don't appear until far too late and when they do, there's only about four or five. And they're in an all too brief scene of bloodletting... okay I'm bored with the zombies... but there is nudity! And a faux lesbian scene with incestuous undertones which would be worth a quick fast-forward to... but really, once that's done, it's a pretty dreary affair. The idea of 'so bad it's good' is always a dicey proposition to a viewer, but it never reaches the outlandish depths non-quality needs to be entertaining. It's just bad. It can't even muster the necessary 'movie magic' required to make you believe the whole production wasn't shot at an abandoned building with a couple of non-professionals on their lunch hour. And for all the hype of the title, the 'Swim Team' doesn't form until way too late and it then doesn't even do that much. Blaming this as an amateur effort seems overly cruel and is inaccurate- amateurs are at least striving. This thing is lazy. Kids, don't waste your time. Find something else. You're reading this on the internet. Something better is a click away.

And you'll love every second. I could comment at length about the excellent and fast director provided by the directors and animators, or the sound pattern and music that never lets up and is determined to not let a second of silence infect the pictures, but really, the reason this makes such a great cartoon is probably because there's no way it will ever get a DVD release today. Imagine every stereotype the Greatest Generation ever engaged in, and now set it to the music that same generation bopped out to before getting on the boat to go over there. And here's the thing: we have to laugh at 'Coal Black...' We have to laugh at it because the energy of piece never lets up. It starts out fast with quick music and dialog and keeps a beat- the pictures move in concert with the various ebbs and flows of the music. It's poetry in animated motion. And it's funny. The stereotypes are so silly and unrealistic that what gets the suits nervous make us laugh. We've got your Welfare Queen, your Dark Chocolate hottie, your Swingin' Playa, and your seven soul brothers. And an offer to kill Japs for free! This could only be misconstrued by the most humorless critic as insulting. They would have to so buried in their opinions and others' opinions that they would be prevented from seeing the beat and rhythm inside the cartoon's 7 minutes. You can't take it seriously. You can't take away a world view from it. All you can do, is laugh.

Brilliance need not be complex. In what is a series of sight gags, the audience is introduced to a lion that is crazy and the mouse that knows why. And that is all you need. Know what? It works. Tex Avery hits the viewer with absurd image after absurd image until he blasts it all apart with even sillier images. The short follows its own mad logic and creates a beautiful internal consistency. Ostensibly, the plot concerns a lion that used to be king of the jungle and is now rendered into a raving madman, or mad-lion. We know this because for six minutes, we're treated to crazy tableaux after crazy tableaux of the lion demonstrating his power and then falling prey to the very strength he used on the world around him. But that's the over-analyzed version. The real version is that funny things happen. And that's all that is needed to get the viewer to laugh- simple brilliance. The short is available on the 'Song of the Thin Man' DVD. Treat yourself.

There's no way to confront 'Zabriskie Point' from a rational standpoint or attempt to describe it using words and conventions you'd use for other movies. This is because it isn't a movie. It's an idea and a feeling that the filmmakers have that somehow got turned into an object as mundane as a film. What we see are not the unfoldings of a plot, but rather a sequence of events that we don't see in films every day but only imagine happening as the background we ourselves will supply when we hear about some tragic event in the news of or from friends. We we see is our imagination of people that are abstractions to us- no one we know, but we've doubtless heard of them in a book or on TV or somewhere. So what do we see? Events. We see people arguing, driving, and inevitably, escaping. Only the escape is from something intangible- it is the collective situation and cruelty that the mass of a civilization has allowed to exist though laziness, or...human nature. Set in late 1960s Los Angeles, our players act against and in response to the self-inflicted miseries of modern existence. These creatures are effectively blank slates that can display any trait we can imagine if we desire. Although the actions taken might be seen as criminal or irresponsible, , the characters are not themselves criminals. They are human beings seeking a return to a familiar, non-manufactured existence that is beyond the normalcy they experience everyday. Not that they are ever happy or sad, but they achieve a type of self actualization when they move beyond and away from the suicide of modern living. They only achieve true life in the natural world, even though that is the next victim of modern existence. At the end, 'Zabriski Point' is a eulogy of humanities attachment to the natural world. As even the most desolate pieces of the earth succumb to our notions of progress, we lose our souls on the path to death of the human spirit.

The first indication of trouble was the fact that this movie was not in anamorphic widescreen (Cinemascope), but rather 1.85:1 ratio- all the better for its afterlife in Home Video, I suppose. By not going with a Scope, the film has already told me it lacks ambition and for something that is going to use vampires, and werewolves and other monsters, you NEED ambition. Already, this movie is in trouble and I have not seen a single frame. But that didn't take long. Because it commits its first cardinal sin with the character of Dracula.

Dracula is an icon. He's smooth, attractive, mystery hiding untold malevolence under that seductive and dangerous exterior. He speaks very little in his movies because he doesn't have to- his eyes and facial structure do that. A quick look at Bela Lugosi, Chris Lee, or Gary Oldman communicates the visual power of Dracula. Dracula as portrayed by Richard Roxburgh is a z-grade villain and conjures NONE of the power or allure of the Draculas of old. He's a meglomaniacal twit that wouldn't be out of place in a Die Hard rip-off. Visually, he wears black, and not in such a w ay that shocks you or gets your eyes open, but it's a formless black suit that seems far too grounded in reality to be frightening. And he talks too much, which wouldn't be a problem but what he says is bad. Worse than Prequel bad. The force that's going to drive this film is hobbled, fatally so with a hideous visual. And Dracula never drinks blood in this film. How can you have a Dracula that doesn't drink blood? It's one of his stock terrors- people fear Dracula because he'll drink their blood! I can't be afraid of something that isn't going to be scary! But the movie soon works its way into other sins. We have a Mr. Hyde that has some of the worse CGI in recent memory, worse than... Oh take your pick. And then we get into the logic flaws: like taking a boat to Transylvania, a LANDLOCKED region!!! Where we met the inhabitants of a village. That, by their own admission, serves as cattle for Dracula and his brides. I say cattle because they do nothing but run in terror like cow- whereas humans would look for places to hide. Where they might not get say... eaten by these flying 'Brides of Dracula.' Who are ugly. In a multi-million dollar picture, I want hot babes. They're recruiting in LA, I know there is no shortage of babes in LA so when you can't get hot babes for a big picture like this, the movie is SCREWED. Of course, I paid to experience this... including the acting. Which is godawful. Hugh Jackman has displayed more than a modicum of talent in the past, which is evident nowhere in this film. He maintains the same bad accent and hammy tone for the whole picture. And who did his hair? While long flowing locks may look great on the covers of romance novels, but this 1980s-reject style is woefully out of place. Kate Beckinsale has a great ass however, and it is wonderful to watch it. Far better than looking at her perpetually constipated facial expression. Some people think she's emoting pain of... whatever. By the time I've seen her face for the tenth time or so, I'm bored and thinking of happier things. Like car wrecks. Or plane crashes. And a final condemnation. I'm not sure if this was put in to pander to the Born-agains, but what the hell is a Christianity element doing here? Jackman crosses himself many a time and Beckinsale at one point says, 'God help us.' Only, this isn't a display of the faith of characters questioning or seeking solace, its just words and motions thrown out there to try and get the audience to imagine that these characters really have come to a point of desperation. Virtual faith if you will, all the elements are there but it's essentially empty of meaning. The whole film is empty, there's lots of stuff in it to try and invoke fond memories but it fails. The filmmakers don't give any of elements any meaning or weight. Everything in this movie is a pointless tool to sell toys and games and...junk. There's no love for our memories of these characters or the meanings they've accumulated over the decades. There's just exploitation of the meanings that the elements of Van Helsing should convey, but don't thanks to incompetent filmmaking.

Or Star Wars for the Born-Agains.

And I'm talking the prequels- not old School Star Wars. I don't get it. While I have the basic story down, I admit a deficit in the details of "Scripture." What was Gethesmane? Who are the Pharasiees? etc. And this is probably why 'Passion' sucks as a movie: It relies on viewers bringing their own knowledge and applying it to the events. There is considerable backstory that we never see and the film is thus hurt by it. There has been much made of anti-Semetism. I'm not Jewish and was not offended. And I'm not sure where the notion that the Jews killed Christ or that their descendants should continue paying for it came from. I found the Jews and Romans to be equally reprehensible and uninteresting. And then I have to address the myth that this film is successful because it is dealing with religious subject matter which has been neglected by Hollywood blah blah blah. Bull. Hollywood has and still deals with religious subject matter. Only they don't jackhammer your brain with it like 'Passion' does. What is the Matrix trilogy but an examination of the notion of Saviours and Salvation? What about 'Dogma'? And those are the most glaring examples. But because the target audience for the Passion (white people that didn't learn anything in school and believe in invisible men) can't think beyond the surface of a concept, they don't go to those films or bother to try and understand. They want things simple and without elaboration. Something they don't have to think too hard about. Well they've got it. 'Passion' is the ultimate no-brainer, in fact, it's best if you don't ask questions at all.

This is the first film I saw in the theaters. And it scared me to death (I was 4 at the time). It's a horror movie. There are giant metal monsters that can't be killed and destroy hundreds, our hero is essentially buried alive, giant monsters eat our robot friend, our other robot friend is dismembered, and the Main character has his hand cute off. Terrors. And I wouldn't have it any other way. To start, the production values can not be beat- there is care and craftsmanship in every frame. The filmmakers put together a fully realized world that seems very close to ours. And there's plenty of interesting action to move the story along. Exotic locations serve as a backdrop to the action and we think we've never seen this world before, but we're immediately comfortable there. And the actors at last seem comfortable in the characters, if they are living in fiction, then they believe it- there is angst and passion and humor and sarcasm and it all fits. This film improves with age. Keep in mind, when Lucas did the SEs in 1997, this is one film that didn't get that much added- it was perfect as is.