what’s the explanation? i figure it’s that in the world of the internet, we aren’t separated by time or distance, so much as we are the next link. while you click around a bit – on my name, the history, the sleeper cell tab, or whatever you click, i’m really just a couple pixels away. words that i typed out 2 years ago, right there – just inches from your cursor.

in which case, you can imagine your entire life as one giant semi-formal dinner. you’re milling around, drinking gallons and gallons of accumulated tequila, you’re roaming from guest to guest looking to step into an interesting conversation, and evey once in a while, you amble over to my lil corner of existence to overhear whatever my decades-long conversation with the wall is about. and today, it happens to be the film adaptation of suzanne collins’ wildly successful young adult sci-fi novel, the hunger games. how ya been?

so i think, first off, it’s important i say that this isn’t a bad movie. actually, it’s better than Not Bad. this movie is actually kinda good. it’s important to say, firstish off, this is a pretty good – no wait, kinda good – this movie’s pretty darn good. i just didn’t like it all that much. which is ok! there are tons of movies out there that are pretty good but that i don’t like.

the one i always use to make the clearest point is THE WIZARD OF OZ. great movie. i don’t like it. my dad assures me that as a child, i LOVED it. i’ll take his word for it. but, in my defense, i also shat my pants a lot back then. we all grow.

besides, watch WoZ again. trust me, it’s not that great. so, granted, it’s not the best example. ANIMAL HOUSE? maybe another bad example – i’m not sure how well fans of that movie can read. how about THE GODFATHER? i’m sure most people who’ve seen the godfather have liked it. i’d say i might be in that group too if i could actually sit through the that self-indulgent, artsy-fartsy piece of 9 hour over-romantic, gangland nonsense. ok. lemme back up. i don’t want to start a fight. like i said, i haven’t even really seen that piece of crap yet. so to all you retards who like that movie, “i apologize.”

and really, there are TONS of bad movies out there! and how many GOOD movies can you think of? even if you bought all the movies you’ve ever even slightly liked, how many would you have? a thousand? two? out of the tens of thousands of movies out there? honestly, if you’re ever actually watching a movie, the odds are good that you’re watching a pretty bad movie. it’s a numbers game.

TOP 5 “GREAT” MOVIES ZACK HATES (the-c’mon-really?-he’s-seriously-still-doing-haikus haiku edition)

nothing's free, charlie

5 – it seems there’s also
no laughing in the war room,
gentlemen. Strangelove

4 – if their government
was this aimless, they’d be screwed…
oh wait. Amarcord

3 – honestly, i can’t
remember anything not
chariots. Ben Hur

2 – we dog singer’s dad
issues, but let pete jackson
off the hook? ALL THREE.

1 – rich shut-in loves kids?
wonka’s choco-factory
packs charlie’s fudge.

alright – i’ve decided there’s simply no way for me to address this movie without giving a few things away. and really, the few plot points i feel i need to mention are so monumentally obvious that if you consider it a “spoiler,” it’s either because you’re completely in the dark about the HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY by suzanne collins, or you have horrific critical thinking skills. if by chance you fall into either of those categories, read on at your own peril.

there’s nothing really BAD about this flick, unless you count pacing, it’s just that, well, it’s one of those that starts, entertains you for a couple hours, and then ends. it does have one standout scene, which i guess is more than most movies give you, but trust me, if you’ve seen the movie, it’s not the one you’re thinking i’m thinking. if you know the story at all, and odds are good you do, then you prolly know what’s gonna happen. it’s not super-suspensful. i’m sure that upon its release, readers of the book were hanging on every chapter wondering what would happen. but for those late to the trilogy (like m’self), it’s kinda hard to not know what’s around every corner. mainly ’cause, well, there’s a sequel. and that feeds into my major beef with this movie.

there’s little to no danger at all. and certainly no hunger. not to be THAT guy, but the book explains a few things which are left out here. first off, it’s called “the hunger games” for a reason – mainly, the 24 kids (i’d totally explain this, but there’s virtually ZERO chance that anyone reading this doesn’t know what’s going on here – however, if you happen to not know the story or what 24 kids have to do with the movie, ask down in the comments section so we can all laugh at you) have to stay in the arena until there is only one competitor left alive. which, given the size of the arena, could take awhile. but there’s never any sense that food will be hard to find.

what a cow

 CASTING NOTE
there was a bit of hubbub when jennifer lawrence was cast as the lead, katniss everdeen. mainly because she was a little too round. or pudgy. basically, she’s a giant fatass. obviously.

the character katniss is supposed to be on the verge of starvation throughout just about the entire novel. and lawrence is so totally does not have the deathcamp look. [and hey, if you're one of the people who hated on jennifer lawrence because she was too pretty, then you're prolly one of the same losers who hated on sam worthington for his hair in clash of the titans. scumbag.] so, it’s really too bad that while you’re trying to enjoy this movie, you’ll be forced to look at a beautiful young woman. i don’t know how these producers sleep at night.

but other than woody harrelson SAYING, “hey bros, find some water, ’cause you’re gonna be thirsty ‘n’ stuff,*” you have no idea that starvation is supposed to be a problem. [*not actual film dialogue]

and really, i’m getting rambly and long-winded again. the problem is danger. there’s no danger. could katniss die? nah. will she find food and water. why wouldn’t she? holy cow that firestorm almost slightly singed her hair! whew. close call.

other casting controversey?
spoiler alert #2: black actors were hired to play black characters.
this sweet little gal, Amandla Stenberg, plays Rue.

power

the name doesn’t give much away. i guess, if you were french, you could imagine someone french. or if you were american, maybe a cajun. still not quite definitive. so, where to look for some kind of physical description…. the text? no. that’s silly. why would an author ever actually DESCRIBE a character? hm. where else? oh what the hell. let’s check the text!

stick to the text, dude

now i don’t know about you, but that just SCREAMS elle fanning at me. and because it bears mentioning, Thresh, the other black competitor, is described as such: “He has the same dark brown skin and golden brown eyes as Rue.” and in fairness to the setting of the story, suzanne collins is obviously trying to create a multi-racial future where it’d be hard to find ANYone who you could describe with such a limiting phrase as african-american or caucasian. this is a world where all the races are mixing – we don’t all look chinese YET, but it’s a lot closer that we are now. and if you were imagining rue and thresh as cute, typical, little whities, because you just skimmed the direct description, that’s fine. people make mistakes. i finally read wuthering heights a few months back, and i still have no idea which linton was married to which cathy or catherine or someone was name earnshaw. fudge it.  i don’t blame you.

(regarding lenny kravitz? i’m really hoping it’s just because mos def had scheduling conflicts.)

and i know, i know. this has all been hashed out in the media ad-nauseum. i’m really only including it here to say that if you were pissed about being forced to actually give a shit about black characters, please, FUCK. OFF. fuck off, and don’t ever come back.

and really, even though i like lawrence in the role, it might only have been because she’s the only actor of the on-screen kiddies who realizes she’s in a major motion picture, and not a local high school one-act UIL meet. but this isn’t the first science fiction flick to ever ask its audience to suspend their disbelief. and it won’t be the last. even this year!

so would you believe i like it? ’cause i do. but i’m a liar. so watch it. in the theater no less – it’s a good crowd experience. still, in the overall scheme of things, i’d say it doesn’t get done what it wants to get done as much as Woman in Black. and really, if you’re looking for an awesome time in the theater with ridiculous action and morals so secondary they might as well not even be there, check out Wrath of the Titans!

woo!

We open with a seeming flashback … a message from earth urging an unknown crew of an unknown ship “godspeed.” Then! Corporal Bower wakes up after a looong time in hypersleep. (What is hypersleep? Haven’t you seen Alien? If not, half the visual cues in this movie will be lost on you. And on top of that you’re probably still a teenager. And think bands with complete sentences for names are cool, and you think Green Day has always been a sellout.  And you’re already discounting everything I say. How can I be a curmudgeon and still like movies made after 2005? Who cares. So Bower wakes up on a space ship and is probably part of the crew put to sleep to be awakened for an incredibly long space mission, but is all alone. And we’re not sure why he’s awake. And there’s no superior officer. Unless … the hypersleep chamber right next to him has a lieutenant in it! Maybe he’ll know what’s going on. I mean, he’s friggin Dennis Quaid after all!

Main Character Haiku

Corporal Bower
wakes up on the edge of space …
Here there be monsters.

So Bower wakes up his lieutenant and the¬†two try to figure what‚Äôs happened and why the mission has seemingly gone wrong and what the hell was the mission anyway and why is the whole ship, The Elysium, violently shaking every so often, and what’s up with all the Voldemort-lookin’ monsters eating everybody?

It‚Äôs a basic rule of filmmaking that if you‚Äôre making a horror movie, you have to create tension. It doesn‚Äôt do any good to have a monster in the water or (god forbid) on your boat if there‚Äôs no risk of the people you like being eaten. And trick #1 of tension is ‚Ķ bumbumbummm: ISOLATION. Brody, Hooper and Quint can‚Äôt rely on being saved, because they‚Äôre on the ocean. Nancy and company can‚Äôt be saved, because Freddy only comes when they‚Äôre asleep, and all alone. Steve McQueen and his foxy gal can‚Äôt be saved, because they‚Äôre only kids, and what cops are going to believe a couple¬†o’ teens saying a mysterious¬†blob is eating their buddies? So what better setup than having our hero awaken all alone with temporary amnesia on a spaceship with no mission, no direction and no orders?

That's great! That's just great! Where the hell are we now, huh?!

Pandorum by the Numbers (The Don’t You Miss Joe Bob Briggs Too? Edition)
2 Sacrificial Lambs
1 Sexy German Biologist
1 Hardcore Vietnamese Farmer
1 Vicious Monster Baby
2 Badly Animated CG Bloodsprays
1 Crazy Chef
1 Evil Space Disease
3 Strangely Well-Hewn Space Swords
And Lots and Lots of Evil Man-Eating Baddies

But it’s not enough to just isolate your characters from the rest of the human race. I mean, if you’re isolated, you deal with the situation and move on. There has to be a promise of reconnection. There has to be a side-quest of finding your wife. Remembering your past. Contacting Earth. Fixing the Radio. Remember Brody, Hooper and Quint? The whole trip wouldn’t have been so terrible if Quint hadn’t destroyed the radio. And probably not so terrible if there had never even been a radio. But because Brody is this close to getting help and getting out of the ocean, that your palms sweat just a little bit more. All you need now is that little reconnection to the human race that reminds you of your biological imperative to have babies.

Antje Traue as Nadia - Biology Badass

Co-Star Haiku

What cutie, foreign
biologist do you know
who can kick your ass?

Greenlight!

And the color pallet is awesome – the lighting scene to scene really calls attention to itself in the way that a normal space horror (like Event Horizon or even otherwise perfect movies like Alien or Galaxy of Terror) doesn’t seem to accomplish. Maybe that’s having a German director (Christian Alvart Рdirector of that other horror hit Case 39) and production team, and maybe it’s just a filmmaking team doing their best to elevate what’s usually seen as trash cinema. I mean, horror movies always make back their budgets, right? (see also Project Greenlight’s first ever profit) There is specific attention paid to creating moods out of background colors. Yellows and greens seem to act as DANGER cues while the soft blues help usher us into the world of the star-crossed space ship. So with all the distrust going around, along with the very likely possibility of being eaten by space monsters, why not make things fun and throw in a horrible, shaky-handed, space madness called … Pandorum!

BadGuy Haiku

Imagine Gieger’s
Necronom Number Four plus
Firefly’s reavers. Yipe!

This movie is all about payoff. I’m not saying there’s a real Shyamalan moment, but the first time I watched Pandorum, I got the feeling over and over again that I knew exactly where this movie was going, and exactly what typical horror buttons it was pushing. But you don’t get actors like Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid without having at least something worthwhile going on. The fun of familiar images (like Foster climbing through the air ducts looking amazingly like Captain Dallas looking for a xenomorph) really blends well with a few new sci-fi ideas thrown into the mix. And just the pure refreshment of having a space horror movie with a plot that is more than just “how many different ways can we disembowel our heroes” should be enough to get genre fans excited. Initially, Pandorum was a part of one of the worst months in movie theater history coming out with other gems like The Informant, Jennifer’s Body, Fame, Surrogates and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. And with Zombieland debuting only 2 weeks later, it was easy to forget you meant to see this. It’s ok. You’re forgiven. Just don’t let it happen again.

T. S. Eliot

A Note About T.S. Eliot
The famous quatrain “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper” is from T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Men.” Written from the point of view (probably) of souls in different areas of Death’s Kingdom, the poem describes Europe during the aftermath of World War I through the metaphor of the land of the dead. Eliot was viciously opposed to the Treaty of Versailles as he felt its punitive measures towards Germany were too lenient and in fact foreshadowed the ending of the British Empire. As a poem, “The Hollow Men” is one of Eliot’s landmark works in his career. Its epigraph, “A penny for the Old Guy,” is a reference to the straw-man effigies burned in Britain on November the fifth of each year to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, a commemoration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605, which saw the attempted arson of the Houses of Parliament at the hands of 13 conspirators who aimed to assassinate King James I. The attempt gave rise to multiple versions of the following Guy Fawkes Night song:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holla boys, holla boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!
The 4-line final stanza of “The Hollow Men,” being among the most quoted of Eliot’s work, alludes simultaneously to the capture of Guy Fawkes in the tunnels under the English House of Lords, the end of The Great War with the signing of an innefective treaty, and the slow demise of the English Empire.

The Conspirators

THE RIDICULOUS CAST LIST:
Dwayne Johnson – Boxer Santaros / Jericho Cane
Seann William Scott – Roland Taverner / Ronald Taverner
Sarah Michelle Gellar – Krista Kapowski / Krista Now

Kevin Smith as Simon Theory

Michele Durrett – Starla Von Luft (USIdent employee)
Wood Harris – Dion Element (Neo-Marxist)
Chistopher Lambert – Walter Mung (arms dealer – not immortal)
John Larroquette – Vaughn Smallhouse (politician)
Bai Ling – Serpentine (muscle)
Jon Lovitz – Officer Bart Bookman (complete badass)
Mandy Moore – Madeline Frost Santaros (Boxer’s wife)
Holmes Osborne – Senator Bobby Frost
Cheri Oteri – Zora Charmichaels (Neo-Marxist)
Amy Poehler – Veronica Mung / Dream (Neo-Marxist)
Lou Taylor Pucci – Martin Kefauver
Miranda Richardson – Nana Mae Frost
Zelda Rubenstein – Dr. Katarina Kuntzler
Will Sasso – Fortunio Balducci
Wallace Shawn – Baron von Westphalen
Kevin Smith – Simon Theory
Justin Timberlake – Private Pilot Abilene

Southland Tales is another movie that suffered due to its inability to find its proper audience. The movie was billed as a visual feast (which it kinda is, but not overly so) and a sci-fi thriller (which it really isn’t). Instead, the movie takes on the attitude more closely akin to RoboCop or Starship Troopers. I would even put it in the same category as Fight Club (even though it’s so much sillier than all three of those movies) insofar as it’s an over-the-top comedy that while cluing you in that it means to be a comedy, doesn’t provide you with pregnant pauses to let you laugh out loud. It takes itself as completely seriously as a 16 year old writing a love poem to their one true soul mate that, dammit, you just wouldn’t understand. Except that the movie, unlike all 16 year old poets, knows how ridiculous it is. This is a verbal slapstick comedy that just happens to leave out the pies to the face, the slips on the banana peels and the slide trombones.

If you’re not familiar with his work, you should know Richard Kelly makes big movies. Not in terms of box office or budget or presentation, but he tells a story regardless of how out of control it can get. His other two directorial efforts, Donnie Darko and The Box could both have easily been explained away as psychological thrillers, but he doesn’t short-change the audience with that lazy cop-out. Instead, if the world has to end, the set designer gets a good challenge. Even his screenplay for Domino (directed by Tony Scott) treats his characters fairly, and when all hell breaks loose, he doesn’t give you clever cutaways. He zooms in and makes sure the lighting is good. His movies challenge the scope of Hollywood story-telling as ambitiously as Alex Proyas (Dark City) or Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain) and Southland Tales is example number one.

Justin Timberlake as Pilot Abilene

MEMORABLE QUOTES
“I haven’t had a bowel movement in six days.” — Ronald Taverner
“Did I just see two cars pork each other?” — Senator Bobby Frost
“You’re a pimp. Pimps don’t commit suicide.” — Serpentine

Like any other movie, Southland Tales has its faults. There’s pretty clumsy narration throughout the movie provided by JT’s Pilot Abilene. Voice over is usually due to a lack of trust in the audience, and this doesn’t seem to be an exception. The choreography for the musical number (which is set to one of my all-time favorite songs: “All These Things That I Have Done” by The Killers) doesn’t do anything to highlight Timberlake’s talents – kind of a waste. But altogether, this movie is just really really funny. I’ll reference Fight Club again to compare receptions. Fight Club was trashed by critics who thought it reflected all the worst parts of humanity. Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times called Fight Club “…a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence that actually thinks it’s saying something of significance.” Old Ken missed the joke. The point of satires isn’t what’s being satirized; it’s the irony. Don’t be like Ken. Movies like Fight Club and Southland Tales aren’t 1-level satirical wastes of time. These are movies that are not only poking fun at systems gone awry, but also at the counter-culture who stands up against them, and also at the philosophies the movies themselves put forth as¬†possible answers. Southland Tales is a tricky movie to navigate, because distributed amongst all the silliness and farce, are points of real artistic invention. It has one of the cooler arrangements of The Star-Spangled Banner I’ve heard in a while, and the scene between Roland and Ronald evokes real emotion. In the end, Southland Tales isn’t necessarily trying to tell us what we should think about The Patriot Act or alternate energy or politics in general, but that we¬†should be thinking about them. It’s not always what you believe, just so long as you believe in something. This movie should have changed things like a 1920s German expressionist. It’s audacious and ambitious and says screw the moon, we’re shooting for the stars.

First off, I feel it’s important to give respect to movies with awesome opening credits. In 1995 David Fincher’s Se7en really changed the game in terms of telling a part of the story through opening credit artwork, but the tradition really goes back throughout film history with classics from the 30s and 40s giving an entire cast list to the orchestral soundtrack with border work giving clues to the upcoming film’s tone. When I was 6 I never caught on that the entire credit sequence (set to Carmen McRae’s “You Took Advantage of Me”) details the history of human weaponry from a cave-drawing inspired depiction of a neolithic men as stick-thin figures firing arrows with¬†long-bows and the development of iron-age weapons such as a halbard¬†and mace all the way through the early stages of pistols and atomic bombs. Had I any idea what I was looking at, I would have understood the opening scene¬†much better.

The movie opens on a very serious (if not a little farcical) CIA meeting discussing the hypothetical new laser weapon dubbed “Crossbow” which has the capacity to vaporize a human target from space – The evil CIA guy (played by character actor Ed Lauter, Seabiscuit, Starship Troopers 2) wants the laser as a “peace-time weapon” to eliminate threats before they become truly dangerous.

We jump from the Capitol Hill headquarters to a high school science fair where we meet our young hero, Mitch (Gabe Jarrett, Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon), presenting his science project laser. Mitch has been accepted at the age of just 15 years to the Cal-Tech-inspired fictional school – Pacific Tech, fictional in real life I mean – it’s real in the movie. As in, the kid doesn’t go to an imaginary school in terms of the narration of the story – to him the school is real. But to me, and most people watching this movie as a piece of fictional story-telling, the school¬†isn’t real. There are even “real” teachers and students already attending classes in this fictional world, whereas in the “real” world, where I’m sitting in my black rocking chair with my laptop, no school called “Pacific Tech” has ever really existed. Not only that, but Mitch has been tabbed to work on Dr. Hathaway’s (William Atherton, Die Hard, do you really need another movie credit after Die Hard??) personal team to develop the very same laser the CIA wants for their weapon – which of course is all very top secret, and unbeknownst to the team of unwitting sciency college geniuses. He will help lead the team with National Physics Club legend, Chris Knight (Iceman).

Kurt

A Note on Science Without Philosophy:

It’s one thing for a person to be experimenting on stone by chipping away at a stone with, say, a different stone, and making a rough, pointy tool, that through yet more experimenting it’s discovered that this new pointy rock does one hell of a job at puncturing the tough skin of roaming herds of animals that can very ably feed¬†said person and¬†their nomadic family. Far be it for¬†this early scientist¬†to be able to predict that very same stone would do so equally a hell of a job puncturing the not-so-tough skin of another person. It is a very different thing for a much more learned person to experiment with certain petroleum-based compounds that have a nasty habit of sticking to the skin and clothes of still yet other persons and that have a particular knack for being lit on fire and staying that way until the fuel burns out. In these little reviews of mine, I have a little¬†habit of my own for blaming all my personal philosophy on the lectures of Kurt Vonnegut, which might be a little less factual than I make it seem. In any case, Kurt (I feel I can refer to him by his first name considering he’s no longer around to take umbridge with it *sniffle*) makes it abundantly clear in his 1969 address to the American Physical Society (presented in whole in his collection Wampeters Foma and Granfalloons) that “old-fashioned scientists,” who were allowed to experiment on whatever they found interesting, or maybe whatever got them a steady paycheck, are no longer able to exist. Or at least to exist without blame. The more “modern” scientist is required to think about what it is on which he is experimenting or inventing and what it may do to other living people. I happen to agree with this. Quoting another completely fictional statement in a nearly completely fictional movie called Kingdom of Heaven, directed by Ridley Scott, the English-born King of Jerusalem, King Baldwin IV says to that movie’s hero that “When you stand before God you cannot say ‘but I was told by others to do thus’ or that ‘virtue was not convinient at the time.’ This will not suffice. Remember that.”

And oh my god is this an 80s movie. There are a grand total of¬†four musical montages throughout this movie. And by god if they’re not all fantastic:

Mitch studies as he gets into the school groove to “I’m Falling” by The C. S. Angels (which sounds AWEsome at 1.5 speed). Chris redidicates himself to his work to “Number One” performed by the immortal Chaz Jankel. The short montage during Dr. Hathaway’s final exam is set to the instrumental “You’re the Only Love” by Paul Hyde and the Payolas. And finally, as our group of heroes spies on the evil Dr. to learn his plans for the laser-weapon, we’re treated to “Standing in Line” by The Textones. Rock! Special thanks to music supervisors Becky Mancuso and Michael Papale for forever altering the course of my life.

It's Work Time

Not to mention of course the beyond incredible hair-styles (as it happens by the way, it turns out that 90s hairstyles were really only 80s hairstyles with a lot of water thrown on them, as depicted in the Future Beautician party scene, incidentally set to Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.” Nice). This movie is solely responsible for my going close to 15 years of my life sans-sideburns. Who needs them? And after I left college having not found a single dorm hallway covered in sublimating ice nor a super-genius holing up in the abandoned steam tunnels under any of the campus buildings, life seemed just a little less colorful.

Jon Gries

Under-appreciated Actor of the Week: Jonathan Gries
For his consistent ability to portray the homeless as a humorous people in his appearances as Rusty in “Seinfeld.” For his incredible performances as Roger Linus in TV’s “Lost” and as the has-been football star Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, Jon, I salute you.

So if you haven’t guessed by now, Chris and Mitch spend their time mostly out of¬†lecture halls¬†experimenting on different types of lasers to create a 5 megawatt laser for the purposes of passing Dr. Hathaway’s class. The Evil Dr. is constantly pressured by the CIA to produce a working laser, and Mitch grows to be a strong, mature man. Maturing, of course, is a rough and brutal process, and through pranks by eternal brown-nosing Kent (Robert Prescott, The Good Shepherd, Burn After Reading), and his blossoming libido (directed towards genius cutie Jordan played by 80s starlet Michelle Meyrink of The Outsiders and Nice Girls Don’t Explode), Mitch navigates his way through adolescence. Wow. That sounds like a horrible movie. It is, instead, through the incredibly sharp writing of Neal Israel, Pat Proft and Peter Torokvei, much more interesting than any accurate synopsis would make it seem.

In short, if you haven’t see this movie yet, then your next life objective ought to be fairly clear. Real Genius isn’t yet available on Blu-ray, but don’t let that discourage you from spending the 3 dollars on the DVD version – there is nothing in the movie that will benefit greatly from the 1080 treatment. And while it might be cool to see in HD¬†just how horribly the Pegasus wings were actually animated for the Tri-Mark logo, or to see each individual kernel in the iconic “popcorn scene,” the 480 clarity is more than enough to deliver the total awesomeness of the incredible amount of one-liners in store for you. In fact, if you still have a working VHS, save the couple of bucks and go with the 75 cent tape copy from Half.com. Sometimes, seeing a movie in its original presentation can add to the effect. There’s nothing like popping in the un-mastered Night of the Living Dead every once in a while. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss horizontal scrolling lines through my movies every so often. So buy this movie, and then love it.

So, yeah, I recommend that whoever would eat their own grandmother with onions and pickles should go see Repo Men. Like I said; it is pretty tasty.

Repo Men starts off with a pretty clunky in medias res, where Remy (Jude Law from television‚Äôs “The Tailor of Gloucester”) sits in an abandoned hotel writing his memoirs on an old, busted typewriter, presumably on the run from his former employer. The rest of the movie however, plays in a traditional linear arc that follows Remy through his fall from an √ºber-successful repo man with ‚ÄúThe Union,‚Äù to being an outlaw himself. Without giving the year, the movie starts up in an obvious future world in line with¬†a universe from the likes of RoboCop or Blade Runner ‚Äì it‚Äôs dingy and dirty, but there are really clean spaces for rich people, and the cars still run on wheels. And, being the future, there are scientific advances, the headliner of which is the creation of bio-mechanical artificial organs: Artiforgs (an idea borrowed from Philip K. Dick‚Äôs Cantata-140, where in the year¬†2080, interplanetary travelers needing new Artif-Orgs are just a normal part of life). Artiforgs are more expensive than most houses and require special financing to purchase (playing off the current worldwide economic struggles, the movie makes it obvious that many, if not most, Artiforg recipients are delinquent on their loans), and if you are unfortunate enough to fall three months behind in your payments, a man like Remy will come and repossess.

There‚Äôs also the interesting bit of trivia, that this movie shares a vision with a previous film ‚Äì in 2007, Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich put together a movie with Saw 2, 3 and 4 director Darren Bousman called Repo! The Genetic Opera. While you have to give a trump card to Smith and Zdunich (they first performed Repo!, their small theatrical play, on stage in Los Angeles in 2000), Eric Garcia‚Äôs novel, The Repossession Mambo (upon which the movie is based) was developed completely independently of the small stage production and the larger movie. Sometimes that kind of thing just happens. Stephen King wrote his bestseller Cell and Scribner published it January 24, 2006 just about one year before the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, which premiered an indie horror film called The Signal. The two separate stories share similar plots of a transmission which¬†piggy-backs cell phone signals¬†in the case of Stephen King’s Cell¬†and television¬†transmissions in the case of The Signal, and in both stories, the victims of the signals are driven homicidally insane. The same is true of the invention of the light bulb. While Thomas Edison was working on his ideas to create the incandescent light bulb, English physicist Joseph Wilson Swan developed a light bulb using carbonized paper filaments and a partially evacuated glass bulb. Thomas Edison improved the design by producing a more efficient filament and a more complete vacuum.

Remy’s own life is falling apart – his wife Carol (the famous Dutch television actress Carice van Houten) wants him to transfer from repossessions to sales for reasons that are not made clear, but presumably have something to do with her morals and personal distaste for her husband taking peoples’ organs and leaving them for dead. While not necessarily wanting to change careers, Remy seems open to the idea, but his best friend since grade-school, Jake (Forest Whitaker of Bloodsport and Battlefield Earth) is strongly against losing his friend to a desk job. However, the decision is made for all three when a repossession goes wrong, and Remy is revived in a hospital with a brand new artificial heart pumping blood into his body and money out of his bank. Seemingly having lost the taste for the horrors of the job, Remy can’t make any money, and being unable to make his scheduled payments, goes on the lam, thinking of himself as both alive and dead.

Schrodinger's Cat

Schrodinger’s Cat

For the purposes of the story, the idea of Schrodinger’s Cat works perfectly (for reasons which operate completely in spoiler territory). But for the purposes of plot, I disagree with its employment in the movie. I honestly felt that I was watching one of my favorite movies of all time play out right in front of my eyes, but was mistaken. Repo Men is a movie which, unfortunately, does not equal the sum of its parts. While all the aspects of movie-making from the songs and sound effects to the lighting and computer graphics are on display here in tip-top form, the end product is a movie that I could never stand to watch again.

Grandma

Since 1960′s 2001: A Space Odyssey, there have been a ridiculous number of Kubrick wannabes. Rollerball is maybe the only successful copycat. The minimal sets and classical musical score (headlined by recurring “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” attributed to J.S. Bach) are obvious clones of 2001 and A Clockwork Orange. However, the movie still keeps its own style, and despite the very 70′s party scene (complete with psychedelic George Clinton-style grooves and free love), and unimaginative wardrobe, sets up a timeless atmosphere, and makes for one of my all time favorite sci-fi movies. Technologically, the movie predicts the consolidation of information, water-based information storage and a kind of worldwide information network ‚Äì really subtly genius ideas.

But the story: executives have created a complete peaceful world with luxury and comfort for everyone on the planet. All they ask, all they have ever asked, of anyone, ever, is that no one interferes with management decisions.¬†The world has been split into corporations responsible for the needs of the society. Each corporation is its own city, and those particular cities each have a Rollerball team. It’s a world where all trust has been put into movers and shakers, where morale is created by knowing that you‚Äôre part of a bigger system. The cost: no one man can make a difference. No one grows too strong so that the illusion of a kind of round-table society is upheld. And because there isn‚Äôt anything to fight over anymore, there‚Äôs no war. So to deal with natural human aggression, the corporations have set up a violence proxy. Any anxious tendencies towards discontent are funneled into the ultraviolent Rollerball: a football/roller-derby crossover where you might be penalized for running over a skater with your motorcycle… but only for three minutes. It‚Äôs a game where no individual can possibly succeed without a team.

The plot revolves around Johnathan E. (James Caan of The Godfather, Misery and Santa‚Äôs Slay). He is Rollerball’s first and only superstar. Johnathan plays for the Houston team: the energy city.¬†He has become the game’s greatest player and over ten years, in the eyes of the world‚Äôs executives, has become a serious danger to the structure of society.

I know, it sounds like a boring and maybe more athletic version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But it stays out in front of any kind of tedious heavy-handedness by still being a sports movie. The action of the film opens onto the first round of the Rollerball playoffs with Houston facing Madrid, and the supreme ass-kicking of a round 1 playoff game. While the rules of the game are explained by clunky play-by-play narration, the stadium full of extras and the Jerry Glanville-style behavior of the Houston coach make it a more convincing event than most contemporary football movies like The Replacements or the completely unnecessary Adam Sandler reset of The Longest Yard.

But the message is clear – we need our heroes. And comfort and luxury are not all we need to be happy. Human beings are defined by their struggles, and the discontent in the characters is fully expressed during a great scene where the sycophants surrounding Johnathan’s success shoot at trees with a super-duper laser pistol. Trees explode in flames as the guests fight over who gets to shoot next, and as they almost destroy themselves, they laugh harder and harder – not because they are unaware of the danger in which the are placing themselves, but because it‚Äôs the only sense of excitement they can feel.

Rollerball was remade in 2002 by John McTiernan and starred Chris Klein. This watered-down action embarrassment focused on the ethics of television programming and tried to spice up the action of the game by including ramps and bonus zones with nifty push-button lights. The result was a disorganized, unfocused joke with LL Cool J’s awesomeness and a black-haired, tatted up Rebecca Romijn being the only good parts.  The original follows its very human hero through the increasing violence of the war-like sport as the executives try to make it impossible for Johnathan to continue by changing the rules for each subsequent game. While he attempts to discover who is making these corporate decisions and exactly who it is who wants him out of the game, he comes to understand that the rules and laws of civilization are only as strong and honorable as the men who enforce them.

So he plays the game. It‚Äôs not that he wants to continue playing, because he loves it. He isn‚Äôt even defiant out of a sense of defiance. He is after a life of free choice. It‚Äôs not necessarily what you do, but why you‚Äôre doing it. So he protests where he is strongest: in the game. “Johnathen E. That’s the name. Houston players come and go, but the champion plays on.”

The movie is based on the short story Roller Ball Murder by William Harrison (who also wrote the screen adaptation) and is reminiscent of the story ‚ÄúHarrison Bergeron‚Äù by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. In science fiction, there‚Äôs a rich history of stories based in an environment where society has become an ultimate democracy, where all people have any and all comforts and necessities at the expense of a lower social caste ‚Äì from Lois Lowry‚Äôs The Giver and Shirley Jackson‚Äôs “The Lottery” to H. G.¬†Wells‚Äô The Time Machine. In this case, the lower caste are the Rollerballers. The heroes of the society double as its sacrifices, and Johnathan is the greatest gladiator.

If you find yourself in this part of the US, you’ll do good to check this place out. It costs $15 and you could easily spend a few hours checking all this stuff out. If you’re really into music, the exhibit was quite extensive. As you can see from the video, I was much more interested in the Sci-Fi stuff but that’s just the nerd in me. Visit the EMP if you get a chance.

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