Shmee.Me

May 10, 2013May 10, 2013

I Visit The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Having recently watched the rerelease of Jurassic Park on the IMAX, my wife and I have decided to watch its sequels as well. The Lost World: Jurassic Park came out in 1997 and was directed by Stephen Spielberg. It is not as good as its predecessor, but is still a lot of fun.

The movie starts with Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) being brought to John Hammond’s (Richard Attenborough) house to discuss something, and it turns out Hammond wants Malcolm to go to another island he owns that he cloned the dinosaurs on and help a team document them. I am never quite sure why he wants a theoretical mathematician to document the dinos, but oh well someone we know has to go, but he can only be convinced to go once he knows his girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is there already, so he goes to recue her, but then his daughter who wants some time with her dad sneaks on the boat and goes too. Things go okay until people show up and try and capture the dinosaurs, and then things go decidedly unokay.

The plot is a little contrived, but it works and it is mostly believable. Sadly a lot of the actors are not. They have some good people in this movie, but it seems like they are all just showing up to collect their paychecks. It is a shame too because without the wooden performances this movie could have been a lot better.

The special effects in this movie are good, but not as good as they were in the Jurassic Park. They use a lot more computer animation in this movie and it is not for the better. The first movie blended animatronics, puppets, and CG so well that it still holds up. This one the animatronics look worse and so does the CG, and the movie suffers for it.

All that being said it is still a fun movie, and watching dinosaurs is always good time which why I will probably watch JP4 when it comes out next year.

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

Star Trek was its own Nemesis!

Star Trek: Nemesis came out in 2002 and was directed by Stuart Baird. It was the first Star Trek film to be a total financial failure, so it was the last Star Trek movie to feature the Next Generation cast. This movie tried hard, but it still wasn’t very good.

The plot is fairly nonsensical, but it goes something like this: The Enterprise finds one of Data’s brothers, and then Romulans get taken over by their fellow solar system mates the Remans. The Remans offer to make peace with the Federation, so they send for a ship and as it turns out the closest ship is the USS Enterprise-E. Also the leader of the Remans is the clone of Captain Picard, and he probably doesn’t want peace after all.

There are a lot of problems with this story and it is full of holes, but I will give them that they tried to go deeper in to who Picard is by having him face his clone, and likewise Data by finding his primitive brother. They also tried to make the movie a little more action packed then Insurrection, and I would rather them swing and miss like this than just recycling the show like they did in the previous movie. I just think it could have used a few rewrites.

Another one of this movie’s problems is that Baird is not as good of a director as Jonathan Frakes, and I don’t think Insurrection was his fault, so the change did not make sense to me.

I don’t really need to talk about the acting at this point because they all just play the characters we know and love exactly like they always have, so if you were hoping for a change then this movie doesn’t have it.

This movie is not good, but it is way better than the feeble attempt that Insurrection was, and I think if you are a fan of the show or the movies then it is worth watching, but for casual fans, stay away.

May 5, 2013May 5, 2013

Star Trek stages an Insurrection

Star Trek: Insurrection is a 1998 film and the ninth Star Trek feature film. It is the second film to use only the Next Generation cast, and it is directed by Jonathon Frakes. Does it live up to the standard set buy First Contact? It sadly does not.

The films starts out with Commander Data going crazy and attacking his fellow Star Fleet members while monitoring an apparently less developed race the Ba’Ku, and then holds the Star Fleet members captive. Admiral Matthew Dougherty then calls Captain Picard for the Data’s schematics, so they can find a way to turn him off. Picard thinks something sounds a little off and then goes to the Ba’Ku home world to investigate, and of course he finds that all is not as it seems.

The main problem with this movie is the plot. It sounds kind of original when I condense it like that, but it is not. This movie is like several episodes that Star Trek: The Next Generation has done before, and what is so depressing is that in the movie they discuss needing every new race available to join the Federation so they can defend against the Borg and the Dominion, and either of those bad guys would have made a better movie than this, but instead we get a recycled and forgettable script from the TV show. I suppose we should be thankful it is a better then average episode.

The cast continues to do their jobs well, and they know how to play their characters. One of the nice things about this story is that planet rejuvenates people, so they all get to act young and a little silly. Jonathan Frakes continues to be a steady hand behind the camera and proves that he is a good director.

I liked Star Trek: Insurrection more this time I watched it, but I think it is because I hadn’t watched the show in so long that watching a longer then average episode of Star Trek: TNG wasn’t as disappointing, but still it is a shame that they hit a home run with all the same people in their previous outing, and they go and follow it up with a bunt.

May 4, 2013May 4, 2013

I Give Blade Runner a Second Chance

Blade Runner is the landmark 1982 Sci-Fi film by Ridley Scott. This movie has always been a source of conflict for me because it has things I like in a movie, a realistic dystopian future, a film noir atmosphere, and Harrison Ford at the top of his career, but I didn’t like it the first time I saw it, but since it is held in such high regard, and the Blu-Ray was five dollars on Amazon, I decided to give it another try.

The film is about a special type of police officer a Blade Runner that hunts down and ‘retires’ (kills) replicated human type beings (Replicants). This is because the Replicants had rebelled against their creators and thus banished from Earth. Harrison Ford plays Richard Decker a Blade Runner that has been enlisted to find four Replicants that have come to Earth to try and find the key to live past their four year lifespans.

Despite the Sci-Fi trappings, this is really just a Film Noir Detective Movie from the 1940s but made in the 1980’s, and that is probably why I didn’t like it the first time I watched it because these type of movies take their time to set the mood, drink a lot of whiskey, and be generally unhappy, and in my youth I didn’t have the patience for such things, but this time I was much more contented to let the movie suck me in. Like many good detective films this movie doesn’t answer all the questions it asks, and the people in the movie are no better off when the movie ends than when it started.

The best part of this movie is by far the set and production design: the always dark and rainy LA with the over crowding and neon Asian signs. It just seems like a real place, and you can tell why this movie set the look for so many films and shows that followed. Firefly and the new Total Recall to name a couple. Between this movie and Alien Ridley Scott cemented his place as one of Sci-Fi’s greatest film makers.

I liked this movie much more the second time I watched it. It blends the Sci-Fi setting and the Film Noir style so well that I am ashamed to have disliked it so much the first time I watched it. Maybe there are more films I need to revisit.

May 3, 2013May 3, 2013

Can you defeat The Man with the Iron Fists?

The Man with the Iron Fists is a Kung-Fu action movie written, directed, and stared in by Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA. He has created sound tracks for several movies, mostly by Quentin Tarantino, but can he translate that experience into successfully creating a full film? It is a valiant fist try, but it comes up a little short.

The movie’s plot is fairly simple. The Governor of the province is shipping gold through a town named Jungle Village. This town happens to be caught between a never ending conflict with its warring clans, so the Governor pays one of the clans to protect the gold, but things go quickly wrong, and soon it is every man for himself in Jungle Village.

This movie starts off great with a Kung-Fu fight choreographed with a killer Hip Hop beat, and if the whole movie would have been like this it would have been an instant action cult classic, but sadly it looses its way. When people are not fighting in this movie it is stilted and boring.

Most of the actors handle the action of this movie well, but once that talking starts they are awful. With the notable exceptions of Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe. They seem to having a great time in this movie being. It is like they are on vacation in a bad movie or something and it is wonderful to watch them. They took on their roles with vigor and kind of just went for it.

The Man with the Iron Fists could have been a great movie, but as it is it is just an amusing movie with Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu having a good time. It is a shame it couldn’t live up to the first few minutes of the movie.