Santikos Cine-opsis

I was perusing Slashfilm when I saw a lively discussion about the possibilities of a third film in the “Mortal Kombat” franchise.  Sure it began 3 months ago, but it’s never too late to chime in!

I thought I’d comment on that, and it turned into a dissertation about video game movies in general that I thought might stimulate discussion in here that didn’t come from spammers.

Enjoy.  Oh, and here is the link to the slashfilm discussion on MK3.

“In general, video game movies don’t work because most video games are based on playing through levels of increasing difficulty, dating back to the first Mario Bros. game (and talk about a horrible idea for a movie!!)

It’s only been recently that advances in technology have allowed for video games to include cinematic plots, but even then, most players tend to buy games for their playability, and in the current environment, online playability.

Let’s look at World of Warcraft.  Blizzard created an entire universe complete with tolkienesque races and a lore-filled history.  Why do most players buy it?  To nerf their characters to the highest level and join guilds.  Or to run the same instance over and over.  Or to spend 5 hours as a ghost hitting the run button to find their mutilated bodies.

But even if we said that all these obstacles could be surmounted, a fighting game is still the most difficult to adapt to film.  Whereas most RPGs at least have a goal (save the princess, retrieve the artifact, kill Diablo) fighting games all follow some sort of tournament formula.  This makes writing a compelling script that stays true to the spirit of the game nigh impossible. You either abandon the initial premise (new street fighter movie) or try and follow it as closely as possible (MK1).  Either way, the result is usually pretty bad. And having just netflixed MK1, I echo the sentiment that it was mostly cheese, but still one of the better video game movies out there (not saying much).

In my opinion, the first “Resident Evil” was probably the most successful transition.  While the plot deviated from most of the games, it hit all the high notes and was for the most part an enjoyable zombie action flick.  I agree with the comments about “Silent Hill”.  But let’s not forget that there have been some successful Final Fantasy movies as well.

Currently, I think that the franchises that would best make the switch are Metal Gear: Solid and Soul Caliber (see!  I even picked a fighting game!)  The Metal Gear: Solid games are so close to movies already that it’s almost cheating to pick them, but they would be really easy to convert and they have great action and plot, so how could you fail? (I’ll answer that myself: by casting Nicolas Cage or Tom Cruise as Snake)  As for Soul Caliber, yes it’s a fighting game, but the Soul Caliber franchise has always had an interesting “story” behind it, and a tale could be weaved blending the Soul Caliber characters into an Arthurian model that could be quite successful. And no, we do not need another MK movie…unless it’s MK vs. DC Universe.  That would be sweet.

That’s my 2-million cents.  Any thoughts on who would make a good Snake?  Kurt Russell anyone? Hehheheheheh.”

Early on in “Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It,” a single line fades on and off the screen. “For the fans,” it says simply.  That’s what longtime Jackson sidekick and “This Is It” director Kenny Ortega would like the audience to believe… that this candid concert rehearsal tape made public is a chance for fans to get one last behind-the-scenes look at their beloved pop king in action.  But it’s clear that Ortega and the editors who cobbled the interviews and footage together wanted to help him be remembered by the fans as a performer instead of a tabloid tragedy.

However, what ends up resonating through the film even more than an appreciation for his talent or sadness at his passing is the anger that comes from the revelation that Michael Jackson’s death was not only entirely preventable and stupid, but that his untreated addictions and lack of self-control (or proper interventional medical care) off the stage ultimately crushed the dreams of the hundreds of co-workers he proclaimed to love who sacrificed so hard to make his swan song successful.

After the dedication, the opening frames of “This Is It” are not of Jackson announcing his comeback tour or of the King of Pop honing his moonwalk, but instead a series of testimonials from his backup dancers as they tearily announce how excited they are about performing with their idol.  We are taken through their audition process and shown the elation they feel when they are announced as the select few who get to be the “This Is It” dancers.

As the film progresses, they become a sort of peanut gallery, cheering Jackson on during he solo numbers and joking around with him during rehearsals.  Since we as an audience cannot hope to identify with Jackson, we identify with them.  That makes these scenes tough to watch as we know that their hard work will be in vain (other than the screen time they get in the postmortem documentary, of course).

The same sadness creeps in during scenes where the cast is re-shooting the beginning of “Thriller,” when directors are superimposing Jackson into a Bogart film for “Smooth Criminal,” and when his costume director is talking about sticking LED lights under sequins to light up his suit for “Billy Jean.”  This is not the fault of Ortega, and to his credit, he adds these scenes even though they provoke sadness instead of sentiment.  But it is a little disingenuous to then dedicate the film “to the fans” when the fans only care about the headliner and not how much effort backup dancer #7 put into his “worm” practices.

Not that fans won’t get their money’s worth.  There’s plenty of Michael to go around.  But even though we see his excitement about the coming tour and marvel that he’s this riveting a performer even when he’s just going through the motions, he IS, in fact, just going through the motions.  Jackson died before the final final dress rehearsals, so there’s no real concert here.  And while we see him making changes to the blocking and tinkering with the songs, there’s no real footage of Jackson when he’s not in business mode.  We don’t see the show at it’s best, or Jackson’s performance at it’s finest, or the real “behind the scenes” authenticity that documentarians require.

However, that didn’t stop me from getting goose-bumps during “Thriller,” and I’m not even a Michael Jackson fan.

But it was still “Thriller” at 60%, and that coupled with about 2 hours of footage of Jackson’s backup band busting their asses while he “conserves his throat” makes me  feel the anger they all must have felt when they got the news that their idol was dead and their dream tour was canceled.  Even though the movie ends before we get to that point, I saw enough to know that’s how they must have felt.

And even though the movie doesn’t really show Michael at home, I saw enough to know that nobody ever said no to him.  There’s a very telling scene where the director cut a couple of measures out of the end of one of the songs, and Michael chides the band for not playing it.  When the director says he told them to cut it, Jackson says it needs to “sizzle,” and sure enough, back in it goes.  Sure, it’s just a little scene, but the quiet potency of his celebrity status is evident throughout the film.  It’s easy to imagine Jackson telling his doctor how much pain medicine he needed, and the doctor signing off on that, knowing full well that if he didn’t, Jackson would just find someone who would and pay that guy gobs of money instead (although that’s not to say that the doctor isn’t ultimately responsible for giving Jackson the drugs that killed him, but since I’m a freaking movie critic and not a judge, I don’t really think that’s my call to make).  Again, I make these assumptions from “This Is It” even though they clearly weren’t the intention of the folks who edited the film, and more than likely are directly juxtaposed to whatever they wanted me to get out of it.

That’s because “This Is It” was made by those who were too close to Michael Jackson, and identified with him, not the backup dancers or light technicians or professional musicians or giant-animatronic-Black-Widow-Spider-makers who idolized him.  Even though most of them started out as fans and thus qualify for the dedication in a roundabout way, they became professionals in Michael Jackson’s industry with the hope that one day they could work next to him in front of thousands of fans.  And they just lost their dream jobs because the guy who was running the show never got the help he needed and died before realizing his dream, and therefore the dreams of all who worked with him.  “This Is It” can hide behind its “for the fans” platitudes all it wants, but this movie is clearly not for them.  It’s an apology from the producers of the tour to the people who worked so hard to make it a success, only to have that success disappear in front of them.

To those who argue that this movie is a shallow attempt to make a buck off of the sentimentality of Michael Jackson fans following his untimely death, my reply is a resounding “SO WHAT!!”  The people in that movie deserve to get paid.  And with a $20 million estimated worldwide gross on opening day, it looks like they will.  So go see “This Is It,” and help support your friendly neighborhood backup dancers.  They’ve earned it.

“Astro Boy” has been a fixture in the comic world for over half a century.  I read that on the info slate for the “Astro Boy” movie because I had no idea what  the heck “Astro Boy” was when I first heard about it.  I thought it was a current cartoon adapted into a big screen blockbuster, a la “Avatar.” (actually, I thought it was a giant statue often seen on top of old-fashioned pancake houses that Dr. Evil used as a secret base, but I digress).

As it turns out, “Astro Boy” has a long history both in the U.S. and in Japan will doubtlessly have eager fans of all ages jetting for tickets when it opens this Friday.  I borrowed my friend’s two little Astro Boys (both entering their tweens…the perfect Astro Boy demographic) and sat down for what I thought would be an entertaining flick about a robot kid fighting evil.

Then, Nicolas Cage ruined my afternoon.

Cage plays the voice of “Dr. Tenma,” the head of robotics for Metro City and the father of a bright but rambunctious son named Toby (Freddy Highmore).  When Tenma blows off a father/son trip with Toby to unveil a new robot weapon system for obviously evil president Stone (played by Donald Sutherland, as over the top as he can…which turns out to be slightly more animated than Ben Stein), Toby hot-wires his robot chauffeur and books it over to the unveiling.  That turns out to be a fatal decision, because the robot goes haywire and vaporizes Toby in a giant explosion.

This also turns out to be a fatal decision for the movie, because it forces Nic Cage to try and convey emotion through his voice.  “Where is my son?”, Tenma boringly inquires as he surveys the wreckage of both his work and family life.  He then decides emotionlessly to recreate his son as a robot, and thus, Astro Boy is born.

The film lags again when his dad decides to home school his robot son rather than subject him to the questions of the schoolyard (like “Hey! Weren’t you dead?).  Yay!  More Dr. Tenma!  After sighingly sending Toby to his room for making recreations of Da Vinci’s flying machines out of his precious books, Tenma lazily confesses to fellow scientist (and superior character actor) Dr. Elefun (Bill Nighy) that he doesn’t love his new creation.  When Toby overhears, Tenma tells him to go away with all of the fury of paint drying on wet noodles.

All of this occurs in the first 20 minutes of the film, but it’s enough to really sour the early moments of “Astro Boy.”  The film is ultimately ruined by Cage at the end when his character faces a pivotal decision.  It’s amazing how a bad voiceover can make an animated character seem so lifeless.

But even if Cage were recast, “Astro Boy” still has some serious manufacturing defects.  In the beginning of the film, we are told that Metro City was created when scientists lifted a giant chunk of land into the atmosphere to escape a world destroyed by the environment.  They used robot helpers to make life easy and then discarded them back on the surface.  How very “Wall-e” of you, “Astro Boy.”  There are plenty of other scenes lifted from other movies like “Iron Man,” “Shrek,” and other, more innovative films, but I’ll avoid giving away any more spoilers by listing them in detail.  Let’s just say that there’s nothing new in “Astro Boy,” which is a shame, because the premise had a lot of potential.

And while my test audience initially enjoyed the film when initially asked about it after the screening, about 10 minutes later they admitted to me that “it was ok” but they would have preferred to see “Where the Wild Things Are.”

That makes three of us.

(Expect a “WTWTA” review later in the week.  Or “Zombieland,” which I’m officially the last critic in the world to see)

“Paranormal Activity” will not be able to escape comparisons to “The Blair Witch Project”, especially after the weekend it had.  At just 160 locations, the little indie horror film that could, in fact DID $44 grand per theater this weekend.  A little over a decade ago, “The Blair Witch Project” opened followed a similar marketing strategy, promising scary scenes and shaky camerawork.  Audiences ate it up, giving the film a $29 million opening weekend and cementing its status as one of the most well-marketed pieces of b.s. filmmaking of all-time.

It’s unfortunate in a sense that “Paranormal Activity” had to follow “Blair Witch”, because “PA” is a much better, much scarier film.  But the silver lining for PA is that audiences have become much more assimilated to the style of testing a small budget film in limited release before making it a mainstream name…or a mainstream flop.  But PA’s success was assured not because of any marketing ploy or film-making gimmick, but by a suspenseful and refreshingly unique design that kept audiences riveted until the final freaky frame.

The plot of “Paranormal Activity” is simple enough.  A young San Diego couple, Micah and Katie,  pick up some video gear to document a “spirit” that has been following Katie since her childhood.  They hook up the camera and sure enough, things in the house are indeed going bump in the night.  The occurrences begin innocuously enough…a door cracks slightly, the keys that Katie places on the mantle end up on the floor.   For horror film veterans, the tedium of the first hour is outweighed by the realistic settings just enough to keep them watching.  And they are repaid for their patience, for as soon as it is learned that the spirit haunting Katie is in fact not a spirit at all, but a malevolent demon seeking nothing more than to inflict pain on others for it’s own amusement, well….let’s just say that’s when the fun begins.

Despite the initial lag in the action, much credit for “PA” goes to writer/director Oren Peli (”What?!?  You mean it wasn’t real??”)  Peli creates an intimate feeling of reality gone paranormal, sticking main actors Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat in moments that give their relationship a level of authenticity needed in a movie like this.  Much credit too goes to Sloat and Featherston for being believable in their roles, and repressing the new actor urge to make a splash and “act the crap out of” the script.  Featherston’s role is particularly hard to play, as the girl who has been haunted her whole life, but she manages to merge the terror of being messed with by ethereal beings with the knowledge that it’s been happening to her since childhood.   Although, I guess being haunted in your sleep never really “gets old”.

I will resist the urge to overhype this movie, since that’s what killed the Blair Witch, but I feel confident in saying that this sleeper hit has enough iconic scenes to be remembered as one of the great low budget success stories in modern cinema.

….And it’s scary enough to make your girlfriend jump into your arms, which never hurts, either.

“WHIP IT!”, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, comes out in theaters today.  It’s about a Texas beauty pageant contestant named Bliss (Ellen Page) who ditches the dress for the derby.  The Roller Derby.  The Austin Roller Derby.  In fact, much of the movie is a big, wet kiss to Austin life.  If you’ve ever been partying on 6th Street, you’ll get this movie.  If you think Austinites are pretentious, intoxicated, cooler-than-thou hippies….maybe not so much.

During a shopping trip to Austin (a very cute scene where Ellen Page’s mom, Marcia Gay Harden, compliments a head shop owner on his pretty “vases”), Bliss encounters a raucus group of roller babes, and gets an ad touting an upcoming match.  With her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) along for the ride, Bliss dives head-first into the hardcore world of women’s roller derby.  After a quick montage, Bliss has ditched her Barbie-scates for some real wheels and donned the derby name “Babe Ruthless”.  Not a bad derby name, for sure, but I think with a name like Bliss they could have come up with something better.  “Bliss-ter”, “Bliss-ed off”, “Bliss my ass”…you know, something like that.

Having had some run-ins with derby girls in the past (and I’m still scar-free!), I can tell you that the depictions of the characters found in a typical derby match are a little stereotypical, but also pretty accurate.  Roller Derby is a very rock’n'roll kinda thing, and Austin makes the perfect “cool” backdrop for Barrymore’s story.  As for the story itself, it’s “The Mighty Ducks” meets “Juno”…without the pregnancy.  And despite my pessimism, “WHIP IT!” had a nice balance to it.  The derby scenes, though predictable, were still enjoyable to watch, and the relationship/love interest stuff, while also predictable, avoided becoming too sappy.  This is a roller derby movie, after all.

In the acting department, Ellen Page again shows she can play the iconoclastic, free-spirited teen.  But there’s something different about Bliss…she’s lost some of the smart-alecky edge that Page’s character had in “Juno”, while still retaining her spunky nature.  Marcia Gay Hardin a perfect foil to Bliss’s nonconformist edge as a beauty-queen turned postal carrier and mother of two.  Daniel Stern is also really fun to watch as Bliss’s dad, a true Texas sports nut who never had a son.  Some of the best moments in the movie are his (the scene where Bliss and Dad sneak a beer while watching the game and talking about what makes a good block is one of my favorites) and he really takes the role seriously.  The derby gals are all fun, and Juliette Lewis is a great evil derby girl.

As I said, the movie is a big Austin love-fest, and it’s kinda fun to see Bliss’s frontman boyfriend take her to the Alamo Drafthouse on a date.  Barrymore paints the town red without too much fawning over how cool it is to be in Austin (right, Quentin Tarantino?).  Overall, “WHIP IT!” is a fun movie to watch, and a strong opening effort by Drew Barrymore.  Now if we can just keep her away from “Twilight” sequels, she’ll have a great career!