B Plus Movies

The “Unrated Edition” or “Director’s Cut” used to be a movie geek holy grail, extending the joy brought by a particular movie or more often including some tidbit that made you say “I knew there was more to that”. Now, the “Unrated Edition” means they throw in a scene or two that should have been left out and sell you a second copy. Every once in a while, though, you find one that splices back in a few bits that takes a movie to another level, restoring actual plot points and story back from the cutting room floor.

That’s what I found in unrated edition of Ultraviolet.

I will not attempt to hide that this movie is mostly and excuse for Milla Jovovich to walk about in tight clothes and kill things in eye pleasing fashion. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a story, it’s just kind of convoluted: Milla’s character, Violet, is afflicted with a disease that mimics some external aspects of classic vampirism. The people suffering this, called Hemophages, get longer teeth, a sensitivity (though not flesh burning allergy) to sunlight plus heightened strength, reflexes and senses. Hemophages are feared, shunned and marginalized in society. An organization called the Arch Ministry (something like the SS crossed with the CDC) is in the process of rounding up and eliminating the diseased. But the vampires have formed a resistance.

One part of this resistance effort involves stealing something from their enemies. Enter Violet again who is more than bad ass enough to enter into the Arch Ministry and swipe the item right from under their noses. She does so, but it all goes bad when it turns out that the thing she stole was a little boy.

After this, a lot of bullets get fired and a lot of people get sliced with swords.

All this you will get with the theatrical version; the reason to go to the unrated edition is that what got left on the cutting room floor for this movie was some initial plot establishment and the mention that the reason it’s bad to be a hemophage is it shortens your lifespan dramatically. There’s no extra violence or shots of Mila’s naked behind (the one in the theatrical cut is nice enough on it’s own, thank you) but there is a fair bit of dialogue that makes the movie make far more sense.

Even with the extra depth, the director’s cut still has some of the same issues as the theatrical cut.  The opening voiceover is kind of lame. Also, there are a lot of techobabble you have to be willing to overlook in Ultraviolet to fully enjoy it: The Hemophages have access to technology that allows them to walk on walls and carry around a metric buttload of weaponry loaded into “flatspace” braclets,  which for no reason is specific to them and is miles ahead of anything else in society. The disease itself seems more of a plot device than a threat.

If you can look past these, I think you’ll find an enjoyable popcorn flick with some good one liners underneath.

Ultraviolet was directed by Kurt Wimmer who also directed B+ favorite Equilibrium. I’ve read in places that the studio took the movie away from him at one point and that what we see on the screen isn’t exactly his vision. Whether that means it came out the better or the worse for it, I’m not sure. The theatrical verison of Ultraviolet gets a C from me, but the unrated edition bumps up to a B. I’m sad I can’t give either a B+, but still I recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of flying bullets and comic book brawls.

And for that matter, anyone who’s a fan of Milla Jovovich’s butt. And isn’t that something we can all get behind?

I’ve ranted before about how I hate trailers. The people who decide what gets edited into trailers should get a nail hammered into their leg for every spoiler they include and a railroad spike for each minute of footage from the film’s climax.  I’m not sure that people who make misleading DVD cases are any better.

Thankfully, their efforts did not keep me from enjoying the movie Bound.

Bound was done by the Wachowski brothers before they had Keanu Reeves talking about spoons. It’s very stripped down film, most of the story taking place in apartments in the same building. And if you just judged it by the cover, you’d think it was about lesbians bondage porn.

Spoiler alert: It’s not.

Bound starts with Gina Gershon playing an ex-con trying to catch a break and start her life over. She takes a job as a handiwoman in an apartment that turns out to share a wall with the apartment of a member of the Italian mafia. The mafioso’s girlfriend, played by Jennifer Tilly, makes some subtle advances towards Gina Gershon’s character. Turns out the relationship between Tilly and her beau, played by Joe Pantoliano, is bitter and bad. Tilly wants to escape it, Gershon wants to help all they need is the means.

This is where the money comes in. A lot of money. And because of that, it all goes down quick. No pun intended.

There’s a lot to like in this crime drama. Tilly does an excellent job of keeping the audience guessing at her true motives and allegiances. The direction and cinematography works impressively toward establishing a mood of isolation and suspense. The writing keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering how it’s all going to go and the other actors in the movie give outstanding performances.

And yes, there’s a lesbian sex scene. You’re welcome.

For the sake of balance, I want to say something bad about this movie but I can’t. It’s not life changing by any means but failing to change my perceptions is not a flaw. There’s some violence, some sexuality but the Wachowski’s manage to make it part of the story rather than trying to turn it into the story, the result being that things like the lesbian relationship in the movie become plot points than exploitative stumbling blocks.

All around, this is just a solid film.

Whatever you do though, don’t go look at a trailer for this movie before you see it. The theatrical trailer gave away just about every climactic moment in the movie that involved Tilly or Gershon. If you want to see Bound, do it with no more warning than what you see above.  Rent it, buy it, queue it up on Netflix but walk into it as blind as possible and you’re likely to walk out loving it.

I did and I give it a very, very solid B+.

Watching Jackie Chan’s American films, I often wonder if people who have not seen his Chinese films understand just how cool this man is. It’s not just that he did incredible stunts, but that he did them usually with no more to go on than some hand written calculations and a good guess. It’s not that he’s a comedic actor, but also a stunt choreographer and director, sometimes editing his own film. And it’s not just that he has made good movies, but that he’s made movies that completely change one’s expectations from cinema.

Case in point: Police Story.

The film starts with a slight goofball of a cop, played by Jackie Chan, who through a bit of luck and a lot of near fatal moments manages to arrest a crime lord. Afterward, he has to baby sit the crime lord’s secretary until the trial, causing tension and a great deal of misunderstanding between him and his girlfriend. As things progress, the crime lord starts making life a living hell for the cop, framing him for murder. The cop then must take extreme measures to clear his name, which leads to a great deal of mayhem and some really find martial artistry.

Jackie Chan made this movie as a reaction to the film The Protector, an American made action movie that he starred in but in the end thought was kinda bad (I only saw the end of that one, but I can see where he got his opinion). His efforts produced a work that elevated action movies to the next level.  Police Story did a number of things right, but the thing that set it apart was the intense, breathtaking stunts.

We see a shanty town destroyed by a car chase. We see Jackie holding onto a moving double decker bus by an umbrella. We see a motorcycle used as a melee weapon. And then there’s the climactic scene in the mall which is invariably listed as one of his best stunts ever.

Other movies have offered stunts of similar caliber, but what stitches Police Story together is the comedy that happens (mostly) when people aren’t flying across the screen or getting punched. Chan’s character, unlike the square jawed and humorless action heroes with which we are all familiar, seems remarkably approachable and believable, a man just trying to get through his day rather than someone who lives to stomp the wicked and spew bullets towards villainy.  Even when he’s doing things that humans shouldn’t be able to do, he seems the underdog and his success in no way seems inevitable, creating not only sympathy but tension for the viewer.

I don’t knock Jackie Chan’s American offerings. The Rush Hour films were enjoyable and I even liked The Medallion and The Tuxedo. But it’s his work done in China, the one’s where he’s operating without a safety net, by which all his other work must be compared. He may never outdo himself, but even 19 years after it’s release, Police Story shows that he’s got nothing to prove.

And around here, that gets a movie a B+

When people tell me that a movie was bad, it peaks my interest. I accept if not enjoy that my movie tastes are different than the mainstream and different from even some of the people who I can geek out with. But every once in a while, something tests my boundaries, pushes me too far and I have to say, yes, that was a bad movie.

And this is how my fascination ended with the movie Meet The Feebles.

I was psyched to see this movie. It’s directed by none other than Peter Jackson, Oscar winning director of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. When a friend insisted that all of us at her birthday party sit down and watch it, I was up for it.  Five seconds in I was shrieking internally “They gave this guy Lord of the Rings?” I felt a little part of all that was good and right in the world dying. I thought I was going to vomit. And then, it got worse.

The story in Meet the Feebles takes place behind the scenes on a children’s television program, much like unto The Muppet Show. Also like The Muppet Show, the fuzzy animal actors and plush actresses are not mere puppets, but just as they appear on screen. A hedgehog comes to join the cast and soon is pulled into a world of sex, corruption, drugs and violence.

No, really.

While in and of itself, the concept attracted me rather than turned me off, the execution is what made me physically ill. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the direction or the acting, it’s that they went straight past gross and dove head first into the repulsive. Jokes are made in broad swaths of feces and  vomit, followed by senseless tragedy and gore. Every place they could push the limits they did, from the sex scenes to the finale involving a depressed Hippo and an M-60 machine gun.

I couldn’t finish this movie. And I saw Howard the Duck twice on opening night.

Some of the characters are cute when they’re not being disgusting. There’s also a neat moment where they parody the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter. That’s about as much as I can say positive about this cinematic abortion.

Occasionally the limits of good taste need to be pushed, lest we take ourselves too seriously. But even that in mind, there are things that should probably never be committed to celluloid. A good many of those are in this movie.

Meet the Feebles has the dubious honor of being the first movie I give an F.  While I’m sure that this will make Peter Jackson cry and blow his nose on a 100 bill, I tell you don’t go see this movie. If you fail to heed this warning, bring a strong stomach, an airsick bag and remember that what you see cannot be unseen.

While I’m not in favor of censorship or of huge fines for showing a nipple on TV or for putting chips in television sets so that parents don’t have to think, I do encourage people to look at a movie before they hand it over to their kids for viewing. This especially goes for cartoons, which occasionally rise above the status of “cute and for kids” and occasionally tackle big themes and horrifying images while still interspersing it with the whimsical and fantastic.

One thing that you should probably never hand a person whose age is still in the single digits is the 1977 Ralph Bakshi work, Wizards.

The reason I say to be cautious with this one is that, like many og Bakshi’s other animated works (American Pop, Fritz the Cat, etc.), this film talks about very adult topics: War, racism, organized religion and the consequences of failing to respect the environment. It just happens to do it with elves, fairies, and as the title suggests, wizards. The film was partially animated and partially rotoscoped and the film they traced over for the rotoscoping is from very real shots of war machines and their use.

The story behind Wizards is that we’ve got two nations, one of light and prosperity and the other of shadow and waste. The good guys have the wise Avatar, a wizard who enjoys his leisure but is more than capable. The bad guys are lead by Blackwolf, Avatar’s brother, who wishes to lead his nation, Scorch, into the good lands and subjegate those in his path. The movie picks up where Blackwolf and the armies of Scorch have discovered a weapon that will allow them to accomplish their goal and have begun to make their move. Avatar, along with an elf, a robot assassin and a faerie princess, must ride forth to end the threat and bring peace to the land once more.

Where Wizards succeeds is in that it tells the story that it wants to tell seriously while retaining its whimsy. Seeing this I smiled at the parts that were meant to be funny, winced at the parts that were meant to be brutal and felt bad at the parts meant to be sad. From where it stands, Wizards can see the line between commentary and sermonizing, but it thankfully doesn’t take the short trek to cross it.

Where Wizards fails, however, is in the execution of some of it’s moments. There are scenes meant to be heart wrenching that come off just as kinda “meh”. While I did occasionally feel that the heroes were in peril, I never fully got the sense of how the difference between victory or defeat was truly depending on their actions. As a teenager watching this for the first time, I went with it because I understood how much of my disbelief I was supposed to suspend. As an adult, this one makes that suspension a little harder.

As one of the milder introductions to Bakshi’s work and for the parts that it get’s right, I give Wizards the silver medal of B+ Movies, the B rating. I do recommend that if you enjoy animation and have some tolerance for hippy ethics that you check this one out. Just don’t mistake this fanciful tale for a kid’s film.

Trust me.

Some movies, one watches for the plot. Others, one watches for the characters or the acting. Still others are enjoyed based on dialogue. But most movies, one watches for the imagery.

And that is the best reason to watch MirrorMask.

MirrorMask was written and co-produced by Neil Gaiman, who wrote the comic book Sandman and a number of novels including Neverwhere and American Gods. It begins with a young girl whose desire is to run away from the circus, full into the throws of adolecent angst while working as a juggler in her father’s big top. When her mother falls ill, the girl finds herself transported to a strange and suprising world full of living books, masked people and fish swimming in the air.

As one might expect, soon she finds that her presence there may determine the fate of that world and perhaps much more.

If you were to watch this movie with the sound off, you’d get much the same experience as if you’d kept it audible. The art and detail in this piece is amazing. Even though it primarily takes place in a world of imagination and dreams, the scenery, whether CGI, drawn or born of stagecraft is captivating and engaging, often dipping into the creepy and bizzare. Every time I felt the movie losing me, the visuals were enough to bring me back and keep me engaged.

But that said, in places, the movie almost lost me.

MirrorMask is a fairy tale and it’s plot progression follows a fairly familar footpath. There are twists from it, such as the main character is certainly not a princess and early on, she begins to understand her relationship to this world, but beyond that there’s little to suprise you if you’ve seen Labyrinth or The Neverending Story.

I was glad that I saw MirrorMask, for the performace of the lead actress alone, but I wanted this to be something I was dragging people into dark rooms and duct taping them to a couch so that they didn’t miss it. I’m glad it exists, if for no other reason there are people who would find other movies of it’s kind corny or dated that will be hard pressed to make the same judgement about this one. But that said, where MirrorMask made me hope it would be an explosion of insightful fantasy, it turned out to be more of a puff of nostalgia and homage to it’s inspirations.

Mirrormask gets a C on my scale, though it pains me to say it. I love Gaiman’s other work and for that reason high hopes. Alas, high hopes sometimes result in substantial disappointment, and such was my reaction to this beautiful (if predictable) film.

The world of visual entertainment is changing. Not the way that we thought it would in the early 90’s, with interactive movies and virtual reality, but more in how we receive our media. It’s unlikely that if you’re reading this blog, you’ve not streamed video or downloaded a movie to your computer. Despite this, the industry that produces those neat moving pictures has not really altered how it makes it’s movies in light of the new viewing technologies.

What may herald the next generation of visual storytelling is a viral project called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

Many things set the tale of Dr. Horrible apart from other films. First of all, it is a production that was meant to be seen on the web first, before DVD or the big screen.  Second, it was a pretty low budget piece with name actors (Joss Whedon, director and producer, said that it was in the “low six figures” to make). And it’s advertisement was primarily by word of mouth.

The story itself is a catalog of B Movie staples that could have rendered it a horrid steaming pile of cliche’s but instead, by virtue of the talents involved, turned it into something amazing. Our story begins when would-be, big time supervillian Dr. Horrible (played by Neal Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother) plots his entry into the world’s premier group of supervillians, the Evil League of Evil. His chief obsticle is superhero and consumate jerk named Captain Hammer (portrayed with cheesy goodness by Nathan Fillion of Firefly and Slither). Also complicating matters is Dr. Horrible’s love for Penny (brought to life by actress Felicia Day), a kind hearted woman who doesn’t seem to know that he exists.

Clocking in at 45min or so total,  this story has everything you’d expect from most feature length movies and more than some TV shows have in a whole season: drama, romance, revenge, violence, comedy and singing. Oh yes, the singing. The music in this story is incorperated well, neither detracting from or overtaking the spoken dialogue, but instrumental in establishing the mood and pace of the story. The music from the second installment alone was enough to make me want to accquire the soundtrack.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog doesn’t give you a lot of time to overexamine it, which is good because if there’s anything that can be checked off in the “suck” column for this one, it’s that it requires a fair suspension of disbelief. It’s a four color comic book world we’re dealing with, which could be hard to get into for people not already familar with the feel and absurdity of such a setting. It might be easy to lose the passion and emotion of the characters when you have to first accept that Dr. Horrible’s current project is a time stopping freeze ray.

But if approached with even the slightest allowance for nonsense, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is the very definition of awesome. Starting with the absurd task of making something moving out of the spare time of a few entertainers and a shoestring budget, Dr. Horrible achieves and exceeds every expectation.

Keep in mind that people were buying it off of ITunes when it was still available for free on the internet. For that matter, people are buying it on DVD, though in truth that may have something to do with the special feature Commentary: The Musical.  Whedon has said he’d like to do more Dr. Horrible and I can only hope that he gets the chance, as I can use more things to put a B+ on.

Just like I’m putting on this installment of the story; Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a B+ feature and if you haven’t checked it out, I recommend taking the time to do so.

In fact, here’s the link: Watch it!

Sex sells. Frank discussions of sexuality, however, are hit and miss. If you take them off the mainstream, then it gets even iffier. Sometimes it doesn’t matter, though, if it sells or not. Sometimes, the tale just needs to be told.

Case in point: Trantasia.

Trantasia documents the first Most Beatuiful Transexual pageant which was held in Las Vegas. We see the contestants, all male to female transexuals, who are competing both for a crown and a job, the top contestants earning a spot in a show on the strip. Along the way, we get to see them at their best, their most catty and their most vulnerable.

Now compared to the images of guns, swords and monsters I usually recommend, you may be wondering why I’m suggesting you take an hour and a half to watch a bunch of women who were born boys. The reason is because this movie helps to erase much of what you thought you knew about the transgendered and helps the viewer understand just what it means to these individuals to have made the decision to be on the outside what they already were inside. You meet a number of the contestants on a personal level and through the camera get to know them not just as a group outside the norm, but as people with whom it is very easy to relate.

As a documentary, this movie works. Trantasia intersperses the human drama with just plain drama and sometimes with sex and other times with humor. We see the girls from all sides and I found myself rewarded with an entertaining ride for my interest.

While I don’t expect to reveiw a great number of documentaries as part of B+ Movies, I’m glad I found one that I have no problem giving the full B+. Check out Trantasia if you want something real, a touch bizarre and very, very honest.

And if you’re a guy finding the subjects just a little sexy, don’t worry. It’s normal. They may have been born male, but now they are all woman.

Biopics on musicians tend to go in a pattern: Young talented artist comes from nothing, deals with unscrupulous execs, makes a name, fights an addiction or fights becoming a jerk, then it all comes together in some sort of over-arching message. It’s been tried and true since movies about Elvis and Loretta Lynn.

This patter is cast utterly aside by the movie I’m Not There.

I’m Not There is about Bob Dylan, an examination of his life and work, spanning from childhood up to the seventies. The story is broken into six storylines and in each storyline, Dylan is portrayed by a different actor.

In one, Christian Bale protrays the idealistic and firey Dylan who shocked people with contreversy. In another, Cate Blanchett plays the Dylan who made thousands of hippies feel betrayed by going electric. In another, Heath Ledger shows him as a man just trying to deal with love and a wife and kids. Each part is distinct and powerful, complete in and of itself.

The movie delves not just into Dylan as an artist, but as a man trying to find himself; establish an identity rather than having one attached to him. By splitting him into pieces, the director is able to show him as a whole person.

Parts of the movie work better than others: The strongest is the “Jude” storyline, the one played by Blanchett. The most confusing one is Richard Gere’s bit in which he plays Dylan in self imposed exile and in which the story becomes even more allegorical and surreal. The opening storyline where Dylan is played by a young, African-American boy is good, but it pales in comparision to the angry take on Dylan in the “Arthur” storyline, which appears to be an interrigation and confession, tying the storylines together.

Bob Dylan is the very definition of what it means to be an influence. Seeing him brought back to earth by a little acid trip of a film is enlightening and engrossing, even if at the end you feel just a touch confused on some of the details. For the confusion, I give I’m Not There a B but still recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed Dylan’s music, the artists who have been inspired or performed songs by the man or for that matter anyone who has had the luxury of being able to ask “Who am I”.

There is a fine line between awesome and excessive. I found this out the hard way after the finest meal I’d ever had followed by one Wild Turkey too many, resulting in me seeing said meal again. Peter Jackson rode this line almost to the breaking point with the numerous false endings in Return of the King. But occasionally, you find someone who not only knows that this line exists, but how to play it like an E String.

I offer the final installment of my week of John Woo and Chow Yun Fat: Hard Boiled.

The story of Hard Boiled starts with Tequila, a cop who has a reputation for being ground zero for explosions of riotous mayhem. Of course there is a mob boss that Tequila has his sights set on and of course it’s getting him into trouble. Along the way, we meet an undercover cop going after the same gangster. At first, cop and undercover cop butt heads. Eventually, they figure out they are on the same side and go to finish the job together.

This film asks a lot of questions about the nature of cop vs. criminal, if there can be honor among thieves and when is doing your duty less of a virtue and more like suicide. Like the two other movies reviewed this week, Woo has managed to make the the violence in Hard Boiled be part of the story, frame and backdrop, with the dialogue and character interaction being the real focus and not just and excuse to set up shots of things detonating.

That said, lots of things detonate. And get shot. And bleed. And fly across the screen. Oh my blessed gods there is a lot of action in this movie. The first ten minutes contain more impressive gunplay than the whole Lethal Weapon trilogy. There are shootouts in a restaurant, a warehouse and a 30 minute running gunbattle in a hospital.

By the end credits, you may want to check yourself to make sure you got through the movie unwounded.

The legacy of this film is immense. The video game Stranglehold is a sequel to it. There’s been talks forever of an American made chapter staring Yun Fat and Nicholas Cage as Tequila chases someone to the states.  And O my stars and garters, you can get it at Wal Mart now, distributed by Dragon Dynasty.

Hard Boiled is B+. It should be required viewing for anyone wanting to make an action film. Anyone who is a fan of this genre needs to consider his status questionable until this one is in the “seen it” pile.

“Give him a gun and he’s Superman. Give him two guns and he’s God!”