Blade Runner: The Final Cut, dir. Ridley Scott (1982/2007)

NIKKI says:
The first time I watched Blade Runner was at the Allen Theatre in Annville, PA, with Steve and his brother, Mike. I fell asleep. I can't remember why, exactly. But I missed much of the movie, and, therefore, really didn't know all that much about it, apart from stuff Steve has mentioned over the years. Basically, it was a film I considered an indisputable classic, not because of my own opinion, but how revered it is, and, now, of course, because it merits a massive DVD release featuring five version of the thing. Does any film need five versions? What other movies out there would fans want to watch five times in five different ways? Maybe Star Wars... and Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, after viewing the movie again, I realised just why it's so revered. It really is a great picture, from storytelling to visuals. Hard to believe, sometimes, it was made back at the beginning of the '80s when "special effects" were just cheesy neon shooty lights and wires and stuff. This didn't have any cheesiness to it at all, really, which surprised me. I was also taken by the seriousness of the whole thing -- illegal robots inhabiting Los Angeles in 2019 and a rogue-ish cop is sent to destroy them! The potential for unintentional comedy is written all over that, but this was gripping. It was emotionally scarring. That's really what I'm taking away from it was just how sad I felt at the end that the replicants had to die. I was cursing the society that built them more than anything, which is likely the point. And, in turn, Harrison Ford's character wasn't really a hero. He was sad, too, in that he went about his robot slaying really without question. A job, sure, but more than that, especially after learning of Rachel's identity and listening to Roy Batty's speech at the end. I don't remember Ford questioning himself.

I can't compare the version I just saw with any other version, but I know Ford's character was debated as far as his replicant status in early versions, whereas this final version make it fairly clear he, too, is a replicant and that he and Rachel only have a short time together. I love this element of the story and I think it's beautiful. The end was great, with Ford finding the unicorn, and the other cop (Edward James Olmos) saying that it's a shame Rachel won't live. Just perfect, so tragic.

Great movie. In a way I'm annoyed I haven't enjoyed it more frequently over years. But then I'm happy this was the version I was able to see as my "first" experience of the story, because it was really effective.

Now, can someone get me the five-disc edition of The Breakfast Club? I'd watch that.

4/5

STEVE says:
Watching Ridley Scott's Final Cut of Blade Runner, I've finally come to realize what a wank George Lucas is.

Lucas' rape and pillage of the original Star Wars trilogy soured me on the idea of director's cuts and special editions. The original movies never met with his approval because special effects at the time couldn't bring his true vision to fruition. By 1997, though, technology had caught up with him and he released the Star Wars Special Editions. But by adding state-of-the-art effects to these classic films, he did nothing more than remove the credibility of the existing effects, making them look even dodgier by comparison than they did to begin with. As an artist, I can appreciate his wanting to see his vision realized. What I'm against is his refusal to let us enjoy the original movies.

I can't think of another special edition or director's cut where this is the case, especially since the DVD revolution. The Abyss, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, even Stargate, all come with the original as well as the special edition. Lucas, in a childish fit of "they're mine, not yours, I'll do what I want with them" has refused to release the original trilogy (even the new 2-disc editions of the original films only offer a pan and scan version, instead of the original widescreen presentation).

Ridley Scott, however, knows how to do a special edition. This new Blade Runner set has five versions of the movie: the original theatrical release, the international release (which doubled as the original vhs release in the States), the 1992 Director's Cut (which wasn't), the new Final Cut (which is), and just for fun, an early work-print. Good grief, Ridley.

Apart from the narration and the happy ending, the differences are mostly cosmetic: tighter editing, re-touched special effects, that sort of thing. When I heard that Scott got Joanna Cassidy back to re-film her character Zorah's death scene, I cringed, thinking immediately of Lucas and his retro-fitting. But it works here. I don't know why. Maybe it's just a psychological thing; I'm not offended by Scott's touch-ups because I know, should I want to, I can go back and watch the original version where it's not Cassidy but an obviously be-wigged stunt woman crashing through panes of glass and dying on the sidewalk. Not that I'm going to, but the option is there.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut gets a perfect score - 5/5

[Viewed again by Steve on Feb 13.]

No Country for Old Men, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen (2007)

NIKKI says:
No Country -- hard to make a bad movie from such stellar source material. The book is a brilliant meditation on life and fate, and the choices we make that effect who we become, who we interact with and the consequences of those interactions. Most every conversation in the book reminds us of this theme. The story highlights with it's violence and horror just how the simplest of motions can have the deepest impact.

The movie continues this theme, though not nearly as starkly. Notions of fate and choices are in there, but whereas Bell in the book (Tommy Lee Jones' character) is driven by one very specific choice he made back in the war, the Bell in the movie is simply a man on the land, doing his job in a society gone mad with drugs and violent crime. Bell's meditations in the book appear as introductions to new chapters, so, essentially, he guides us through this story, commenting all the while on its effect on himself, his family, and the main characters, Moss and Carla Jean. That is removed from the film almost entirely, popping up only as brief narrative in the beginning and peppered through conversations Bell has with various characters.

I realise it's a movie, though, and so it's difficult to include that narration, but if I really think about, I can see where perhaps the narration might have fit. But I guess I'm not a filmmaker, so maybe not. I was disappointed, too, that Moss's trip to the Desert Sands Motel was constructed differently in the movie, removing the hitchhiker character, who I thought was so very important in bringing out a bit more of the Moss character and his motivations. Moss is as concerned about choices and fate as Bell, and here is where we find that out. From the book, Moss talking to the hitchhiker:

You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? You life is made out of the days its made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess whos layin there?

Later he says:

There's a lot of bad luck out there. You hang around long enough and you'll come in for your share of it.

Prior to this, Moss is really just a man who, as he sums it up, took something from someone who wants it back (Moss stumbled on a drug deal gone bad in the desert and took a bag of money). Here, though, we realise there's much more to Moss. The movie version of the character is rarely anything more than a hunted man who refuses to yield. But his whole point is about following through with your choices, to see where they lead, what they teach you. One character in the movie remarks, "you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from", and this seems to illustrate Moss, too. Luck is luck and you play your hand.

The movie, I thought, was more a meditation on the land and the violence it creates, with dribs and drabs of social commentary about the world a-changin'. I was sad that some of those tiny bits that made the book so powerful to me were overlooked in the final film. Still, what a great movie. A stripped back version of the full story, I guess, which is usually the case in adaptations. I can't complain too much about the adaptation, though. The movie is, for the most part, a wonderful reconstruction of the novel. My complaints aside, it's its own work of art, suspenseful and violent, confronting and beautiful.

4/5

STEVE says:
I love the Coen brothers. They're constantly making that left-turn, 90 degrees from their last film, never a complete turn-about, but always different from the last. From Blood Simple to Raising Arizona to Miller's Crossing to Barton Fink all the way up to The Big Lebowski, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There and The Ladykillers. Not all of their movies have been stellar - Ladykillers for one, and I personally hated Fargo, so sue me - but they're always, indisputably Coen.

No Country, is no different. Almost a throwback to the Western Noir of their debut Blood Simple, but without the fun. The story of Josh Brolin's unstoppable force coming up against Javier Bardem's immovable object, I knew No Country wasn't going to be a barrel of laughs.

A meditation on fate, it wasn't going to have an easy ending, either. Not something you walk away from feeling good about yourself and the world you live in. You flinch, you look away, but it's the Coen's direction (shared here, at least in screen credit, for the first time) and Roger Deakins' cinematography that brings you back.

From the sound of things, something's getting lost in the translation from book to screen, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Maybe it's less to do with something getting lost than something being added. That "Barton Fink feeling" the Coens bring to the table.

3.5/5

Gates of Heaven, dir. Errol Morris (1980)

STEVE says:
Gates of Heaven had promise. But either through false advertising or bad salesmanship, it never lived up to that promise.

Here's what it says on the DVD packet:

"When financial hardship forces California's Foothill Pet Cemetery to close it's pearly gates, its dearly departed loved ones are relocated to the nearby Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park. During this tense transition, filmmaker [Errol] Morris meets a collection of eccentric cemetery operators and anguished animal lovers and elicits a meditation on love and loneliness..."

But that's not quite the movie we saw. Indeed, it starts off rather well, with Floyd "Mac" McClure telling the story of how Foothill Pet Cemetery came to be, and how through bad business dealings, it came to fold. Because of the investors' greed, the partnership was dissolved and all the pets interred at Foothill had to be moved.

Cut to Bubbling Well. It's not necessarily clear that ALL of the pets from Foothill were transferred to Bubbling Well, but that doesn't appear to have been the point. Had we followed the transport of the pets, seen them to their final final destination, heard more from the grieving owners, it may have held my attention. Instead, we meet the Harberts', the family who run Bubbling Well, and it seemed to become another documentary altogether.

We're introduced to Cal Harberts and his wife, and they seem like genuine, caring people, much like Mac. But when we meet the sons, Phil and Dan, we're treated to long-winded ramblings from Phil about his recent life in the insurance industry, his motivational speeches, his philosophies on life and yadda yadda yadda. Dan appears to speak more about the pet cemetery business, but also tends to go off about his music quite a bit. At one stage we're treated to a solo performance which, while beautifully shot, didn't do much to further the story of the pets from Foothill.

In my opinion, it was over-long and poorly edited; Roger Ebert thinks it's the greatest documentary ever made, so who am I to argue?

1.5/5

NIKKI says:
Was it me? Was it us? Do we just not get this kind of slow-paced, repetitive storytelling? I spent a great deal of time while watching this movie wondering exactly what Morris was trying to do. I considered the style, the slack pace, the telling and retelling of the same kinds of stories by the interviewees and I managed to come up with something akin to studied portraiture. You never tire looking at Dorothea Lange's work, for instance, of families during the Depression. Perhaps, I thought, Errol Morris wanted us to view the Harberts, say, in a similar fashion. The more we look at them, in the same spaces, saying basically the same things, the more fascinating they become? Same with the old folks in Vernon, Fla -- we trace the lines on the men's faces by the end of that film, and they are compelling people. But a snapshot is all Morris gives us -- the same people in the same spots rehashing the same stories.

The same happens here, or at least winds up happening after 25 minutes of a genuinely interesting story of the Foothills Pet Cemetery. I found myself far more interested in what happened to Mac, founder of Foothills, when the place went under, than Phillip Harberts style of parenting.

I understand Morris has a style, an approach perhaps unconventional, but I was nonetheless left out here. Maybe the film is not so much like a Lange photo at all. I look at "Migrant Mother" and the stories form in my head. The background is there -- the era, the kids -- but the full picture reveals itself only through my imagination, and Lange's darkness and light. If the woman in that photo sat and rabbited on about about the same watering hole or dirt pile for 85 minutes, she'd lose her fascination, wouldn't she?

2/5

Vernon, Florida, dir. Errol Morris (1982)

STEVE says:
Yeah, this one I just didn't get. Vernon, Florida is 55 minutes of people - mostly insane people - chatting away with no real point. You've got the turkey hunter, who was as interesting to watch as he was to listen to, always with one ear pointed to the field, should a turkey decide to step up. "You hear that?" he kept saying; the preacher who sermonizes about the etymology of the word "therefore"; and there was the old guy who collected animals - his tale of the mule carcass he pulled off the bottom of the fishing pond with 114 perch inside it will stick with me forever.

But then there was the just plain mental guy who took pictures of the moon and stars with a cheap camera and a pair of opera glasses; the guy who rambled on and on about "the four balls" in the brain and how, when all those balls are being used, "you're not a one-track mind, you're a four-track mind"; and the couple who thought their jar full of sand from White Sands, New Mexico was actually "growing" (as they put it), and would be full by next year.

Watching these people talk - not even tell their stories, but just talk, on and on - I couldn't help wondering what the point of this exercise was. But I was thanking Christ it was only 55 minutes long.

1.5/5

NIKKI says:
They just weren't that interesting.

I love, love, love slice-of-life storytelling. The idea that we can see a moment in a person's life and piece together histories and futures.That a single moment, a sentence, a few words can be used to sum up a person, a culture, a nature. I thought this movie would do that, but I didn't find it revealing really at all. Strange men live in Vernon, have a listen. As far as why they are that way, what their lives represent, what they mean, none of that matters, or seems to matter. So, is it just the snapshot and the precise moment that is supposed to compel me? I'm so torn with this. Normally, I'd be all for it, but it didn't work for me. I was enthralled in the first 15 minutes, but then my interest died.

And here's how I caught this turkey. And here's how I caught that turkey. And isn't this old guy nuts?

Ugh -- did I miss the point? I don't think so.

1.5/5

The Thin Blue Line, dir. Errol Morris (1988)

NIKKI says:
As expected, The Thin Blue Line scared and upset me. There are enough film now to make "innocent people sent to prison" a genre, a section at the video store. This, Murder on a Sunday Morning, Paradise Lost, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, and others could sit together on a shelf, shaming the United States' court system.

The story, simplified, goes like this: a police officer is shot and killed during a routine stop. After some investigation, 16-year-old David Harris is picked up for the shooting (after bragging about it to friends). He then points the finger at Randall Adams, a drifter he hung out with that same evening. Adams is forced to sign a statement outlining the events of the night in question, which the cops then start to label a confession. Adams is tried and convicted, and sentenced to death.

Of course, it's not that clear cut, and throughout the film we learn the prosecution went to some shady lengths to ensure a conviction. It's clear early on in the film that doubt hangs all over the case and the eventual trial. The end of the film undoes the lot with a taped recantation from Harris played before the closing credits. It's no surprise then, that Adams was released from jail -- something that happened as a direct result of the movie.

Morris's style here is interesting to watch. I thought some of the theatrics, like the swinging watch to indicate hypnotism, were a bit over the top. Otherwise, Morris tells the story expertly, giving us the facts, then demonstrating how flimsy those facts actually are. It's hard to watch these cops and detectives justifying their lies and poor police work. Watching them with the benefit of hindsight is just sickening. Why is this allowed to happen? Since when was career advancement or the desire for swift resolutions reason to lie, to ruin lives, to eviscerate one's own credibility? Unless these people, like Judge David Metcalfe in this case, are just that stupid.

These films are so important. And we're so lucky to have people like Morris to fearlessly tear things up in this way. It's clear with the creation of similar films just how this film paved the way.

4.5/5

Shockwave, dir. Jim Wynorski (2006)

STEVE says:
Jim Wynorski is credited with directing Shockwave (or A.I. Assault, as it's also known) on the IMDb page. But on the disc we watched, credit goes to "Jay Andrews". This begs the question, "How bad does a movie have to be for Wynorski to use a pseudonym?"

In the opening scene, two army guys and two scientist types are running away from a giant spider-like robot. So we're off to a good start. The male scientist trips, lets out a girly scream, and is incinerated by the robot. Meanwhile, the army guys are shooting at the thing. And shooting. And shooting. I counted no less than 86 shots fired at this thing (with no time wasted on reloading) before the Major shouts, "Bullets don't work, try grenades!" and the second army guys heaves a grenade at the thing, which - shock! - does nothing. So he shoots at it again! Thirty-four times! Maybe he thought he used too many bullets last time. Realizing - or perhaps remembering - that bullets don't work, this clown lobs two more grenades at it, and wastes another 14 bullets before being decapitated by the thing.

And so on.

For nearly 90 minutes.

That's how bad.

The "star power" here consisted of Michael Dorn, Bill Mumy, George Takei, Alexandra Paul, Robert Picardo and Tim Thomerson, if that tells you anything about the level of quality. To be honest, I only watched Shockwave because Thomerson was in it, but he was tragically underused, his screen time limited to only three or four scenes.

This one doesn't deserve much of a rating, even on a MSTie level, but I'm giving it 1.5 out of 5 - and that's only for Thomerson.


NIKKI says:
I really wanted to go to bed. It was 2am, we'd just watched two not-great movies -- and now we were going to watch Shockwave, with Tim Thomerson, about Navy Seals fighting intelligent robots somewhere in the Pacific? All I kept thinking as it started: it's only 90 minutes, it's only 90 minutes. And, believe me, I watched that clock like a hawk.

But we were committed. Icon sent the store a screener with three "horror" movies on: Thr3e, 30 Days of Night, and this one. We decided to watch all the movies, just for fun. It's always fun before we start. Fifteen minutes into Thr3e and we actually shut it off, only to go back to it because we can't help ourselves. It's like we're addicted to lame horror. We wouldn't do it for any other genre. But horror -- we feast on crap, on purpose. I think we both need help.

So, guess what? Shockwave was lame! But fun, weirdly, because it so knew it was lame. Case in point: Robert Picardo, at one stage, emerges from a makeshift wheelchair with blue neon tubes stuck to his head.

Steve's jibes about the toy-looking spaceships, the guns, and Joe Lando's resemblance to Clive Owen made the time pass way quicker.

1.5 out of 5 -- and I think that's being really nice.

30 Days of Night, dir. David Slade (2007)

STEVE says:
I didn't expect much from 30 Days of Night - and in that regard, I wasn't disappointed.

Great idea, I thought - vampires in Alaska during (you guessed it) their 30 days of night period - but it was poorly executed. The vampires appeared to wipe out most of the town in the first 10 minutes of their assault - so why'd they have such a tough time finding the last seven people alive? And these people, tucked away in an attic for nearly three weeks, they're eating what? And why didn't the vampires just dive in and attack like they'd been doing? No, not very well thought out at all.

Josh Hartnett was Tommy Lee Jonesing through most of it, Melissa George could have been more annoying, and Danny Huston was interesting as always as the head vampire, but that's about as positive as I can get. Whoever decided to cast Maoris as Ennuits needs some more anthropological schooling.

2/5

NIKKI says:
I know it was terrible, and made no sense -- Day 17? WHAT? WHEN? -- but I have to admit, it kept me interested. Maybe it was Hartnett, who has finally achieved the seemingly impossible by becoming a real actor and not just a cute guy trying to hang out with the big kids. He was great, actually -- all emotional and hard. He, truth be told, made the movie compelling for me. Something I never thought would happen and won't admit in a large crowd.

More points for this: the vampires were creepy as, the claustrophobic setting was creepier still, and the bloody effects turned my stomach, which I consider a great thing in these days of lame I Am Legend-like fakery.

Still, what the hell was with the super-fast passing of time? How did these people not get killed on Day 16? What were the vampires doing? I don't think our core group were that hard to find. And why did Hartnett decide to inject himself with vampire blood to save Melissa George when the life-saving sun was just hours away? They'd stayed hidden for 30 freakin' days -- another one surely wouldn't have hurt.

Anyway -- a mixed bag. Interesting elements, cool stuff to look at, but ultimately a failure.

1.5/5

Thr3e, dir. Robby Henson (2006)

NIKKI says:
Things we knew about Thr3e before we watched it:

1. It's from 20th Century Fox's new Fox Faith division, for religion-friendly movies.
2. It's based on a novel by religious-thriller writer, Ted Dekker.
3. Internet rumblings have compared the film to Donald Kaufman's implausible, unfilmable script, The 3, outlined in the film, Adaptation.
4. It was universally panned by critics, receiving just 6% on Rotten Tomatoes.
5. There are hundreds of good movies on DVD in our house.

And yet we proceeded. So, basically, the fact that it was absolute shit, full of religious gobbledegook, badly acted and directed, with cheesy effects, a final act that boggled the mind for how stupid it was, and made us feel like we'd wasted precious minutes of our lives is entirely our fault. I accept the blame.

I would and will do it again.

0.5/5

STEVE says:
Just so we're clear: Thr3e sucked.

But I'll get to that in a minute.

Right now, let's clear something up: Thr3e is NOT in any way based on Donald Kaufman's screen play from Adaptation. I want to put a stop to that rumour right now. It's based on a novel by Ted Dekker, and it's quite possible that Kaufman's script (called The 3, incidentally) is a piss-take on that novel because it's so preposterous that a movie should ever be made out of such a story.

But Internet chatter, as is so often the case, flies in the face of such things as facts, and the idea that Thr3e and The 3 are one and the same has become indisputable.

In The 3, the serial killer, his latest victim/hostage and the cop are all the same person; it's a case of split personality that ends with a chase sequence.

Donald: The killer flees on horseback with the girl. The cop is after them on a motorcycle. It's like a battle between motors and horses.
Charlie: They're all still one person, right?
Donald: Yeah, hey, that's the big pay-off.

As there is no horse/motorcycle chase scene in Thr3e, you'd think that the chatter would cease, but no. It may be that because of such chatter I saw the ending to this one coming before we even brought it home. It may be, also, that I was prepared for the eventual outcome because of poor screen writing, but we'll never know. Damned Internet.

I was already expecting the split personality thing, so it was no great shock when it was revealed that our hero, Kevin Parson, might just be the killer. When his wannabe girlfriend follows him to the basement of his childhood home and sees Kevin and the killer standing toe to toe, I - for one fleeting moment - thought the movie was absolutely brilliant. The bad screen writing that gave away Kevin's split personality from the word go suddenly became a very clever bait-and-switch. I was cheering the movie, lauding the writers, chastising myself and jeering the critics all at once. How could they not love this?

As it does, the fleeting moment fled and the girlfriend herself was revealed to be yet another part of Kevin's split personality, taking me back to my original presumption that the movie was shite.

Way to ruin a great gimmick, fellas.

0.5/5

Trancers, dir. Charles Band (1985)

NIKKI says:

"I'm from another time, another world. I don't even know what you people eat for lunch!"

Cheap wine 'til 2am means our movie a day had to be short and fun. The slightest minute-drag and I would have been out. I actually chose Silver Bullet -- I haven't watched that one in a while, and it's jolty and scary enough to keep me awake. But then Trancers caught my eye, and I went with that. Its 80-minute running time, I must say, made it an easy choice.

"Dry hair's for squids!"

How great is Trancers? It's got everything you could ever want in a futuristic sci-fi noir picture -- scares, laughs, a suave hero, a stare-y-eyed bad guy, and frothy-mouthed zombie-like things. So Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) has to go back in time to 1985, when mohawks were in and neon was the favoured home wall decoration, to knock off Whistler, a guy who uses his evil stare to turn unsuspecting citizens into Trancers. Trancers are killing machines under Whistler's command, and they include everyone he can get his hands on from diner waitresses to store Santa Clauses. Jack Deth, being so awesome, kicks all their asses, and sends them, in a shock of orange light, to Trancer hell!

"Welcome to the 20th century, Jack Deth!"

Meanwhile, Jack gets to fall in love with Leena, played by Helen Hunt. There's lots of kissing scenes in the movie, which freaked me out a little because I felt like Lynne Stone was getting it on with someone's dad. I realise their 17-year age gap isn't particularly unheard of in Hollywood, but Tim's well-worn face and barrel-chest made me want to see him with Brooke Adams or Kathleen Turner ... someone a little close to his age. Still, Helen Hunt's "turn" here is completely bizarre in light of her future achievements. I like to think she has the poster on her wall.

So, my first pick of the year was awesome cheesy fun. Just what we needed. I give Trancers an enthusiastic 3 out of 5.

STEVE Says:
Trancers is really nothing more than a rip-off of Blade Runner and The Terminator. It offers nothing new in either the sci-fi or neo-noir departments; it's got some lame-ass special effects, a cheesy synth soundtrack, boom mics dipping into frame, and a plot that - if scrutinized at all - simply does not hold up.

Why then do I love this film so fucking much?

Can't begin to tell you. Maybe it's because of all these flaws that Trancers is such a cool flick. It knows it's a b-grade pic, and isn't afraid to fly that flag.

As Jack Deth, Tim Thomerson is playing yet another variation on the 40s noir detective, but that has less to do with trying to copy Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard from Blade Runner than simply channeling the hard-ass detectives from the noir films of the 40s and 50s. Thomerson has played this type of character before (check out Fade to Black), and would play it again (Dollman). He clearly loves this archetype, and it shows.

I'm giving Trancers a 3 out of 5.

Death Sentence, dir. James Wan (2007)

NIKKI says:
Sigh.

I said to Steve earlier in the day: This is how much I love Kevin Bacon: I'm watching a James Wan film. Wan and his partner Leigh Whannell are a disease; their Saw franchise has secured them comfy spots in Film Hell, and regular hell, too, if there's any justice in the world. My disdain for this pair of whores knows no bounds. Saw was a lame horror movie, but whatever -- lame horror movies abound. But three sequels in as many years? Can you ever have enough money, guys? Really?

Ugh, anyway. That's a whole other rant.

Death Sentence -- Kevin or no Kevin -- was shit. I've had a few hours to think about it, and, yep, it was terrible. I'm offended and appalled that this drivel has the words "based on a novel by Brian Garfield" in its opening credits. Which novel? Because this bears no resemblance whatsoever to Garfield's book of the same name. What So Ever. At best, it's remake of Death Wish II, if only because, like that movie, it shits all over every point Garfield ever tried to make in his books. There's no social value here, just excuses for shoot-outs and blood. And, spoiler alert, killing Kelly Preston was beyond stupid.

So we have a man pushed to the edge because gang members slaughtered his son in an initiation ritual -- he starts killing them back. But that's not good enough -- to really get mean, he needs to lose his wife and other son (almost), too. That's when he gets to head-shaving point, which any good movie watcher knows is the number one sign a character has gone over the edge. Ugh.

Kevin! Oh man. He tried to find the soul here, but he failed. He was always going to fail, because there's no evidence a soul was even lurking at the edges waiting to be found. The question here is not how far can we push a man before he turns into a killer, but how far can we push him (not just his son, but his WIFE too) until his killing becomes our sport? Paul Kersey's original murder-spree in Death Wish was horrible, to the point where the guy had to vomit in the bushes to rid himself of his own bile and disgust at what he was doing. He wanted to make a real change, and used his grief, however misguidedly, to do that. In this movie, it was just vicious violence as in retaliation for same.

And I say again, so Kevin kills them all and them the film is over: what does he do tomorrow? What has he really solved? The film breaks him so much, they forget he will actually LIVE at the end of it. But what has he got?

1.5 out of 5 because Kevin gave his all.


STEVE says:
Death Sentence bares only fleeting resemblance to the novel it's based on, and instead desperately wants to be a remake of the movie that the novel it's based on is a sequel to. (Follow that?) The story was adapted with the same degree of fidelity that Kubrick showed King's book when he made The Shining. "Big scary hotel, drunk guy, psychic kid - let's roll!" That's what Death Sentence feels like: it employed some of the elements of the original story, but only enough so that you'd be forgiven if you didn't recognize it. The same could be said about the recent Jodie Foster flick, The Brave One. While not "based on a book by Brian Garfield" (a book, not the book), Jodie's flick could just as easily fall into the Death Wish remake/sequel category - along with about a thousand other indistinguishable revenge fantasy flicks.

One thing you can say about Kevin Bacon: Even though he's made some questionable film choices (The Hollow Man, Trapped), he's always giving 100%. It's a shame to watch someone like that, acting the hell out of a part, when no one else involved seems to give much of a fuck one way or another.

1.5/5

Death Wish II, dir. Michael Winner (1982)

NIKKI says:
So much death today. I'm voting for all comedies next. We'll be watching a fair few movies this week, I predict, as I'm on holidays. Yay. Usually, it's squeeze a movie in before Nikki nods off! Now, we've got all day and all night. Three comedies tomorrow? Let's hope so.

Oooh. So, Death Wish II -- where to begin with the monster failure this turned out to be? The first movie (which we watched a few weeks back) ended with Paul Kersey headed to Chicago with a new job and a new life. The final moments of that movie inform us in no uncertain terms, that Paul will forever take a stand against the perpetrators of senseless crime. This movie, however, starts with Paul living and working in Los Angeles. He has a new girlfriend and his daughter is with him, still catatonic, but making progress. It appears he's no longer patrolling the streets, looking for bad guys to wipe out. He's a comfortable family man with a soon-to-be new wife. UNTIL ... get this ... baddies come into his home, rape his housekeeper and steal his daughter, who they then rape, who then runs out a high window and dies via fence spikes through the stomach (like the guy in The Condemned, only this time it wasn't funny).

So, what else can Paul do but pick up his weapons and head out again, avenging? This time, though, it's not random criminals he attacks (as in the first movie -- fighting the issue at large, rather than individual perpetrators), but the specific attackers. How he finds them night in and night out on the bustling LA streets (and always mid-crime) is one of this film's many problems. The biggest problem is that duplicate opening. Paul must be one unlucky fella that such an horrendous crime can happen to him practically beat for beat twice on two separate sides of the country. I can't understand why the writers thought Paul needed further reason to take out his frustrations on criminals than the murder of his wife and the mental disabling of his daughter. Now we have to kill the daughter to get Paul avenging again?

It was just cruel, and, really, altered Paul's motivation. As stated in Death Sentence the book (and sequel to Death Wish the book), Paul is about taking the law into his own hands, fighting the disease of crime itself. Individual perpetrators and their individual crimes and motives are not priorities to Paul. In the book, he is so caught up in his need to get rid of Chicago's bad elements that he starts forcing crimes to occur, getting his wallet out and counting his cash in bad neighbourhoods, for instance, all but exploiting the very social issues and concerns that apparently cause crime in the first place.

Movie Paul just takes his revenge on the people that raped and killed his daughter and housekeeper removing all Garfield's social commentary which makes Paul so compelling in the first place. I'm so annoyed at this film, I'm finding it hard to give it any stars at all.

1.5/5

STEVE says:
Three words: Waste Of Time. This movie tries to tell the story of Paul Kersey after Death Wish, but only manages to serve a re-hashed, dumbed-down version that film, while offering nothing new in the bargain.

The less said about this one, the better, actually. William Goldman said, "Sequels are whore's movies." And Death Wish II stands to prove it.

1.5/5

Death & Texas, dir. Kevin DiNovis (2004)

NIKKI says:
Neither of us could go past the idea of a mockumentary about the death penalty that posits: Will condemned killer Barefoot Bobby Briggs be allowed out of prison the day before his execution to play in the Mega-Bowl? And it stars Charles Durning, so we were in. Results were mixed. Good as its arguments were regarding the death penalty and the screwed American judicial system, the film itself (just over an hour-long) didn't really live its potential.

It's main issue was indecisiveness about whether or not it was serious or satirical. Mary Kay Place, for instance, was comedic as the mother of the convenience store clerk killed by Briggs. In fact, everything she says, pretty much, seems like it's meant to be funny. And she overplays the hell out of the kitschy Texan mom character. But Durning is usually ultra-serious when he discusses anti-death penalty arguments and the poor case against his client. So, I didn't really know what the movie wanted to me to feel. Of course, it's preaching to the converted in our house, so we nodded along with the Abolition Coalition people, while rightfully scoffing at the "burn him!" factions.

An interesting experiment, but it failed for me. Its death row inmate, Briggs (played by Steve Harris), was likable, so were the lawyers, Briggs' family, and even Briggs' co-conspirator who all but admits he planned the whole thing and Briggs was an unwilling accomplice. So, I'm not challenged. I'm not forced to confront my beliefs in any way. It was too easy, I guess. And because of that lack, the satire (if that's indeed what Place and the Mega-Bowl were) fell very flat.

2/5

STEVE says:
Yeah, this one just didn't do it for me. I know not all mockumentaries are comedies - witness Interview with the Assassin and Death of a President - but the IMDb has Death & Texas clearly listed as a comedy, and I just didn't see it.

The "will-he-or-won't-he-play" Mega-bowl subplot was not very well thought out, I have to say. Why in the name of all that is holy was "Barefoot" Bobby Briggs let out of prison - and not just prison-prison, but death row - to play football? Is there a work-release program there that no one's heard about? This was glossed over very early on, explained away in mock legalese, so that we could get to the good stuff - which wasn't that good in the end anyway.

The satirical element here (at least as I saw it) was in taking the two things Texans love most - football and killin' - and putting them head-to-head, see which comes out on top. But even the ending was a cop-out because you know Bobby's going to play in the game, just as you know, win or lose, he's going to be put to death the next day. It's win-win for Texas.

I'm will concede that maybe I missed the point. If anyone wants to explain it to me, I'm willing to listen. But for now, Death & Texas gets 2 out of 5.

The Condemned, dir. Scott Wiper (2007)

NIKKI says:
I lost a bet. Why else would I spent my first day off in two weeks watching a Stone Cold Steve Austin movie produced by the WWE? I wasn't looking forward to it, but I felt compelled to get it done. At least, I thought, I can paint while it's on. Or clean up. Or sleep. Five minutes in, though, and I was glued. A reality TV producer throwing hardened prisoners on an island to fight to the death? It has entertainment written all over it.

I think the movie works because it's so well-made. I feared ultra-cheese, I feared bad direction, bad acting, unrealistic fight scenes. Instead, it was quite well done. The Queensland tropics substituted well for a remote island in latitude seven-something, the actors were reasonable (I didn't even notice the fake-accented Aussie actors until I spotted a Neighbours star as an FBI agent), the fight-scenes looked good, and the overall mood was seriously tense. I found myself rooting quite enthusiastically for Stone Cold (who is a really render actor, believe it or not) to beat the bad guys and find his way back to his lonely wife, Sarah. Even if he does look life a beast man from another planet who only dates Amazon women from the moon.

With all its pleasures, the film, not all that surprisingly, had its faults. The ego-maniacal TV producer was just a little bit too evil, and his film crew proved themselves a bit stupid when, after the torture of a female contestant, some of them have a change of heart about the whole experiment. The torture (by scary Vinnie Jones) was gruesome and harsh, but what part of "throwing prisoners on to an island to fight to the death" did these people not think would be harsh? They cheered when the first guy exploded -- why was that okay?

So, that annoyed me a bit. Plus, even though the island is remote and everything, the producer guy would so be arrested as soon as he re-entered the United States. Surely. So, it was a tad unbelievable and its emotions were a bit skitty, but, overall, I had fun.

Three great moments in The Condemned:
1. Helicopter swoops badly and one of the first contestants tossed onto the island lands back-first on a spiked fence. One down...
2. Vinnie Jones and the Kung-Fu guy, who have teamed up all through the film to get rid of their competition, finally eradicate Stone Cold to realise ... they are the last two left. The three-seconds it takes for both to come to this realisation is great.
3. Stone Cold blows up the producer. Very cool.

My next lost-bet movie? An American Pie: Beta House / Bratz Movie double-feature. I can't wait.

2.5/5

Steve did not view.

Critters, dir. Stephen Herek (1986)

STEVE says:
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem opened here this weekend, and I thought it'd be fun to go check that out. "The power of a thousand suns," Nikki told me, "couldn't pull me into a theatre to witness that abomination." She didn't say that exactly, 'cos she's not a character from a Robert E. Howard novel, but the point was pretty clear: No. Fucking. Way.

So I thought it might be fun to have a double-feature of Aliens and Predator 2. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), we don't own a copy of Predator 2, and watching Aliens without irony is just no fun either, so that plan was shot to hell before it even got off the ground.

And then Nikki pulled Critters off the shelf.

Ah, Critters.

As Nikki has previously pointed out, we own don't own a copy of Gremlins, but we do own Gremlins 2 (the superior of the two, in my opinion), the Ghoulies/Ghoulies 2 double-pack, and Critters. While I cannot in my wildest imagination come up with an argument to justify owning Ghoulies over Gremlins (or at all, to be honest), much less Ghoulies 2, I feel I can make a case for Critters.

But I'm not going to. Instead, I quote Oblio_11 over there at IMDb.com in the "Critters vs. Gremlins" thread.

"Critters would have the upper hand, because they'd just eat the Gremlins, get bigger, and eat more Gremlins. But if one or two gremlins get wet, you've got more gremlins than the critters can handle! BAM! Gremlins have the upper hand. Oh, wait, then the sun comes up, and the gremlins either go indoors or melt in the light. Hmmmmmm..... tough one."

Either he's talking about actual Critters vs. actual Gremlins, or a Critters vs. Gremlins movie (gods help us), but it doesn't matter which because he illustrates his point with a BAM! Gotta love that. And it ties back in with the whole AvP:R thing I mentioned before, so I thought it was worth including.

Anyway, Critters.

Saw this in the theatre when it first came out in 1986, and I don't believe I've seen it since. But I always remembered it as being pretty cool. Upon a 2nd viewing, nearly 22 years later, I'd have to say it holds up. Apart from the obvious and - it has to be said - lame animatronics, the cheese factor was pretty low. But you want a bit of cheese from a movie like this because it's a throwback to monster invasion flicks like The Blob and It Came from Outer Space, which were cheesy in their own right, and Critters is happy enough to oblige on that level. It's respectful to the genre while still managing to be it's own movie. Not a great movie by any means, but still light-years ahead of other Gremlins-inspired shite like the aforementioned Ghoulies, or (*shudder*) Hobgoblins - which should only be watched with Mike and the 'bots - and even then, have a friend come around later to see if you're alright.

I'm giving Critters a 3 out of 5. In all actuality, it probably only deserves a 2.5, but it gets an extra .5 for giving Dee Wallace Stone top billing.

NIKKI says:
Steve suggested after four days of films mostly new to us, we should choose an old fave, or something close to that. Admittedly, I was in the mood for just such a movie. I wasn't, however, up for one of our standard faves: Lebowski, Office Space, Shaun... I wanted something I knew, but couldn't necessarily recite. How we ended up choosing Critters, I'm not so sure. I had just come back from the pub where I was shouted three JagerBombs. (Did you know Red Bull is actually yellow-coloured? Fascinating.) Anyway, Critters it was.

I hadn't seen the movie in a long time. In fact, to hazard a guess, I'd say it's been about 17 years. Not quite as long as Steve, but long enough to forget just how mega-cheesy the Critter-effects are! They don't really look scary anymore, because they don't look entirely in proportion. Their scary, teeth-ridden mouths appear permanently wide open, so chomping actually looks like it might be hard for the creatures. But then an open Critter mouth hitting the body full-tilt would hurt -- much like the circular TB needle I had in Grade 5. Cheesy animatronics, though, are far better than stupid computer drawings like those in the recent I Am Legend.




Story... yeah, it was okay. Reminiscent of Night of the Creeps a little bit, with the ship in the beginning. I enjoyed how Scott Grimes' character (Brad) was hip to explosives right when explosives were just the thing needed to eradicate the Critter problem. Eighties movies worked like that -- back in simpler times. I was just as freaked out by Don Opper's teeth as I used to be, not to mention Terrence Mann's hair. The eighties were all over this movie, reveling in their colourful bigness. I could use last night's experience as a jumping off point to a week of campy horror films from the period -- Ghoulies, Xtro, Basket Case and the like. It takes me back.

I give Critters 3 out of 5 and strongly recommend Scott Grimes' tune for a warm Summer day. He just wants to fly away...

Bullitt, dir. Peter Yates (1968)

STEVE says:
Tonight, Friday night, was Steve’s Choice. I had the power to choose our movie without fear of contradiction. At first I was thinking I’d use this wild card to full advantage, watch something that Nikki would ordinarily veto – The Empire Strikes Back, maybe, or Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. But I wasn’t in the mood for anything like that. And rather than be predictable (she doesn’t know how close she came to having to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre again) I went with something I hadn’t yet seen, the Steve McQueen tour de force, Bullitt.

As the movie started, we’re thinking “That can’t be his real name. Surely it’s a nickname the cops gave him. His name’s Frank Maguire or something like that – Frank “Bullitt” Maguire.” But for the spelling. “Why would they misspell his nickname?” It didn’t make sense. And sure enough, before long someone referred to him as “Lt. Bullitt” and blew that thinly constructed theory to pieces.

The movie was tight, and the car chase through the streets of San Francisco was as tense as I've always heard it was. McQueen was just McQueen: cool and collected, always in charge, even when confronted by Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) about his maybe not-so-by-the-book police work. Bruce Willis might have quipped something and walked away smirking. Not so, McQueen. He politely excused himself and walked away. Class act.

At one stage, Nikki turned to me and asked when they were going to remake it. We figure it won't be long. Probably star Will Smith. That's okay, as long as he maintains McQueen's aura of cool.

Damn good movie. Can't believe it's taken me this long to see it.

3.5/5

NIKKI says:
Steve's Choice night! I love the our choice idea -- the chance to pick something, as Steve suggested, that one or the other of us might not initially jump for. It's succeeded in the past. Steve, for instance, might have looked past a movie like The Upside of Anger, while I would certainly have resisted Event Horizon, and yet sharing these movies, we've both found reason to enjoy them.

So, the idea of Steve picking something, or myself, has the potential to open quite a few doors. We joke that for the project I'll make him watch High School Musical 2 and he'll sit me down to revisit the latest King Kong, but we figure this project is not about either of us suffering. It's about sharing, and mind-opening. So, I was excited for Steve to pick something he really wanted me (or us) to see. I thought, though, for his first Steve's Choice, he'd bring our a classic film noir picture, or a science-fiction film I'd yet to see. Instead, he brings out Bullitt, a film neither of us had seen, and have cursed ourselves for since it finished.

That's why I love this project -- discovery, learning, indulging in the history of film. Bullitt is a deserved classic. It's a slow and steady police-procedural-whodunit with car chases. It's also very smart. Even for its time, it resists overplaying its hand, so that we're still excitedly piecing together the mystery of Johnny Ross until moments before the end of the film.

It's during the final revelations, too, that you begin to suspect the mystery wasn't the most interesting bit of the movie. I found myself too glued to Steve McQueen's polite defiance of his superiors. That famous picture of him leaning against a doorway (used on the posters and DVD cover) radiates no-nonsense cop-ness in the style of Harry Callahan. Not so at all. I'm shocked a bit now, that Steve and I haven't had McQueen on the top of our favourite actor lists prior to watching this film. We both realised that we'd seen only a few of McQueen's movies, mine limited only to Papillon, The Towering Inferno, and The Great Escape -- none of which I remember discussing with McQueen at the centre of the conversation. This, I've come to find out, is a major blight on my record. Especially since I've seen every Eastwood cop movie, every Paul Newman detective movie, and even a few Chuck Norris kickboxing investigator films.

So here we are, Day 4 of the project and already a valuable lesson has been learned. More movies like this one. You can bet McQueen will show up again in our chats this year. (McQueen's final ribbing of Robert Vaughn in this movie will stay in my memory for a long time.)

Seriously, though, what could be more fun for me that listening to Steve rip into High School Musical 2, a movie made for the MST-ie treatment? Reconsider, won't you?

3.5/5

Severance, dir. Christopher Smith (2006)

STEVE says:
You read the synopsis of Severance and it sounds like it might not be too bad.

"A team building weekend in the mountains of Eastern Europe goes horribly wrong for the sales division of the multi national weapons company Palisade Defence when they become the victims of a group of crazed killers who will stop at nothing to see them dead."

Sounds like Southern Comfort meets Office Space. So it's got that going for it.

But Severance also had many strikes against it - strikes that the synopsis couldn't hope to erase with its promises of "crazed killers" who will "stop at nothing" to see the group "dead".

Strike One: It's billed as a horror-comedy. Not a big fan of that genre, me; it's done so often, and so rarely done well. For every Return of the Living Dead, there's a Dead and Breakfast; for every Dellamorte Dellamore there's a Dead-Alive; for every Evil Dead there's a... well, an Evil Dead 2. And let's not even talk about Cheerleader Camp, yeah?

Strike Two: It seemed to promise horror of the Saw/Hostel variety; short on story, more torture than gore, that sort of thing. It's not really horror at all, at that point, but random acts of mindless violence. Not that I'm against random acts of mindless violence, but a little story to string them together wouldn't go far wrong.

Strike Three: It was shot in Hungary. Nothing screams poor quality, my friends, like an Eastern European location. (Dark Corners, I'm looking at you.)

You'd be wondering by this stage why we bothered with it at all. In answer to this query, I give you this still shot from the back of the DVD packet.

I mean, come on.

Of course they pulled the old Bait-and-Switch on me. This picture leads one to believe that the topless-yet-suede-jacket-clad girl is the movie's heroine, the Final Girl who bests the madman and lives to jiggle another day. Alas, she and her friend there are only in the movie for about five minutes.

Yet somehow the movie did not disappoint. Probably the biggest surprise was that the comedy and horror were well-balanced. And the horror itself not as over-the-top as it could have been, apart from a scene involving one of the group getting his leg caught in a bear trap. But even this was presented in a comedic manner, so that you're looking away from the ghastliness of it, even as you're laughing at the absurdity.

We learned afterwards that the director of Severance, Christopher Smith, was the guy who made the phenomenally awful Creep. Had we known this going in, we may not have bothered with it at all, and what a shame that would have been.

Was Severance a great movie? Hell, no. It was never going to be. But we came away enjoying it far more than we'd expected.

3/5

NIKKI says:
I didn't want to watch Severance for several reasons: the silly front cover, the boob-infested back cover, the fact I recognised not a single name involved. Here we go again, I thought, more horror crap like The Breed. It's hard to find good horror these days, so Steve and I have taken it upon ourselves to grab horror movies off the new release shelf to watch knowing as we go in to expect the worst. Why do we purposefully watch bad horror movies? Because we love horror movies, and lately, if you don't watch bad horror, you don't watch horror at all.

Five minutes into Severance, and I'd changed my tune. I knew the horror was going to be ultra-gory when the dude ended up hanging from the tree, stabbed in the gut, and the comedy was actually funny. The laughs actually made me laugh, much of that having to do with the weird, but super-brilliant casting of Tim McInnerny from Blackadder as the leader of the group sent into the Hungarian wilderness for a team-building weekend. McInnerny is the absolute master of stuttery, embarrassed delivery, and the writers here give him so much to show that off. There's a bit where he's reassuring a pretty colleague that it's no big deal if she doesn't want dinner by telling her she's "perfect just the way she is" only to realise his goof and back-peddle by telling he he doesn't mean that in a sexual way, but as a woman-to-woman kind of thing and on and on, until another colleague shouts, "Keep digging mate, we can still see you." The comedy here, for once and hallelujah, was not forced, was not stupid, and our group of to-be-killed were genuinely entertaining and interesting.

How is it then, that the writer/director here also did Creep? One of the lamest horror movies ever and to which we often refer back in a "that was Creep bad" way? I'm figuring now that everyone is allowed a misstep, because that movie was heinous. Severance is so cool because it knows when and when not to take itself too seriously, and it revels in it's horror knowledge. Its purpose is to shock with some gross-out moments and to entertain -- and who could ask for more than that? We loved the bit where the heroine pops the apparently solo bad guy in the head and says, "I don't want to be accused of not killing him when I had the chance." And there's the bit with the spider and the bit on the diving board -- two tense moments that build to utterly unexpected pay-offs. And the reason they're unexpected is because we've seem similar scenes in other movies, but never have we seen them played out as they are here. It's as if Smith really desired to do something different with his horror movie, to surprise in genuine ways. We're not shocked by the varied kill-styles necessarily (if you've seen Wrong Turn 2, you know there's no new kills left -- that movie took them all), but by the movie's tender moments, its funny moments, the bonding that goes on between the characters. These people aren't in front of us for the sake of slaughter. They each fit into the group specifically and effectively, so that when they do lose body parts, we're as perturbed as their colleagues. Bottom line for me -- any horror movie that makes me like its little Indians gets an extra star for effort.

Severance, unlike recent horror movies from Wind Chill to Vacancy, held my attention right the way through. It was a good set-up that actually built to something beyond the basic, beyond the expected. Now, I reckon we'll be referring to Christopher Smith every time we see a decent horror movie, rather than a lame one: "That was Severance good," I'll say to Steve, and we'll both crack up a bit remembering Tim McInnerny's speech about the bears.

3/5

Lucky You, dir. Curtis Hanson (2007)

STEVE says:
I did not have a good feeling about Lucky You for two reasons. One: Curtis Hanson, apart from LA Confidential, has never done much to impress me. And two: I just plain don’t get poker. On the plus side, it co-stars Drew Barrymore, who I don’t hate.

But even Drew let me down, as she wandered through this by-the-numbers story, spouting naïve, corn-fed dialog one minute, and switching to sage wisdom as soon as Eric Roth’s script decides that Robert Duvall needs to hear it. Tell me something: If she’s so smart, why’s she keep getting together with Bana’s Hank Cheever (!) when he's lied to her, used her, slept with her and stole from her, all within 24 hours of their meet-cute at the casino? She never once points out that he might just have a gambling problem (which he has no trouble breaking by the end of the movie), but can spontaneously give Duvall advice on how to deal with his estranged son.

And it all started off so strong. My misgivings about the film dissipated immediately in the opening scene when Bana walks into a pawn shop, trying to get the woman there to give him $300 for his digital camera. She wants to give him $150 because she already has three just like it. "Well, here's what you can do with four cameras," he says, "that you can't do with three: You take two of the cameras, you price them identically. The third camera, you price a little less. The fourth camera, you price a little higher." He then spins her a line about how the fourth camera, his camera, still in the box, will entice a hypothetical customer into buying one of the regular priced cameras. "He either buys one of your cameras for the regular price, which he now thinks is a bargain, or he springs for the one in the box because he plans to give it to someone as a present and he needs the box so it looks new, and not like some camera he just picked up in a pawn shop."

The woman counters, telling him that all her cameras have boxes. Bana assesses her, says "If you can show me your boxes, I'll give you my camera for nothing. But if you can't, you'll pay three bills for mine." Her bluff called, the woman offers him $150, plus an extra $50 "for the entertainment" and Bana walks away a winner.

With this scene, the movie sets him up as not just a gambler, but as a Gambler... and then goes on to contradict that set-up in every successive scene; we never see such cunning from him again.

In the new Casino Royale, Bond explains to Treasury officer Vesper Lynde that “in poker you never play your hand, you play the man across from you”, and then goes on to win every game based on the cards in his hand, and not on any particular skill he has at playing people. Same thing in Lucky You – every single hand is won with the cards. Why bother setting this guy up as a player of people if it all comes down to the luck of the draw?

At 118 minutes, Lucky You was about 30 minutes too long. Had Hanson trimmed the poker scenes back and concentrated on character development, made me care about these people and – if not understand them, at least want to understand them, I might not have walked away feeling like I just got drowned in the river. Little poker simile for you there.

Not off to a great start here in the New Year. I give it 1.5 out of 5.

NIKKI says:
It is decided: you just can't fake good poker. It'd be good if you could, 'cause then Lucky You might have given us something worth watching. Like the podraces in The Phantom Menace -- at least something might have allayed the boredom. The poker, though, is as contrived and unthrilling as the rest of the film, with cards falling exactly as they need to depending on whatever moral or emotional turn the film requires. Bana on top? We’ll give him three of a kind; Bana needs to learn a harsh lessen? Toss him some twos. And give his dad the Aces – that’ll learn ‘im. Only it won’t. These characters played the hands they were dealt, as the adage goes, but they certainly had the cards when they needed them. Listen up Hollywood, one last time: It’s not a good poker win if you have the best hand. Well, not as good as it could be, should be, wanted to be in this movie.

Oh, and I was so into this. Mainly, to be honest, because of the poker. A good poker story needs telling, and I pinned a few too many hopes on this being the film to do it. I don’t really know why, come to think of it, as Curtis Hanson is remarkably hit and miss as a director. Then again, the writer, Eric Roth, did write Suspect, so I don’t know what the hell happened here. I figure after seeing the beautiful, time-honoured, classy game of Holdem raped, flogged, and burned at the stake in Casino Royale last year, perhaps I figured anything had to be better.

Annoyingly, this fails even as a standard romance. Card games aside, the she-loves-me-she-loves-me-not push-me-pull-you games played by Bana and Barrymore are flaccid at best. A surprise really, since Bana is way affable and Barrymore’s life’s work, these days, seems to be perfecting the flighty yet lovable romantic interest. Here he doesn’t know whether to be sensitive guy looking for love, or a light-fingered cad. And she can’t decide between naïve waif or wise woman just not “wanting to be lonely” (barf). The pair rarely light up the screen, but, really, through no fault of their own. Their dialogue is appalling, peppered with poker metaphors (“I made a good fold,” Drew says, as she walks away from poker-obsessed Bana for the second time), and devoid of any real meaning – how can we feel much from a woman who storms off accusing Bana of selfishness and greed and “it’s all about you!” and then continues to help him gamble and bet his way into a poker tournament? And Bana! Is it me, or does he only ever visit Drew when he needs money? When he’s ready to be the good guy?

I wasn’t really sure either of them gave anything specific to the other, and so, I didn’t know what to hold on as far as wanting them to stay together, knowing they were each other’s saviour. I thought Bana’s relationship with Debra Messing’s character was bucketloads more interesting. But she served no eventual purpose, except to warn Drew off the bad-news Bana but then never really explain why.

This is the main problem here – Bana never loses. He gets the girl, he loses her, she comes back. Same with his dad, his mom’s ring, his good fortune at the tables. There’s no bottom here. Bana just keeps on winning, on everyone else’s dime. And that selfishness Drew called him out for is never excised or really even acknowledged anywhere else in the film. Were Bana’s character the sort that gets by on hustle ability, then that’s one thing. But his hustling is overrun by exceeding stupidity. Get the girl in bed … steal from her! Get the ten grand needed to enter the poker championship … uh, lose it all to dad in a childish game of my Ace is bigger than your Ace. And in that scene, when his dad tries to give the money back, Bana’s all “I’m not that kind of player”. Um, you are. Take from someone else, Eric, it’s what you do! And, in the end, his obsession – the same obsession that caused Drew so much heartache – is tossed away because Bana suddenly gets a conscience, suddenly realizes that perhaps it’s not all about poker and winning. I can’t believe he didn’t come to that conclusion after running Benny Hill-style, sweat-soaked around a golf course for three hours (what was that?).

Too little, far too late. So badly written. But then, like the podraces, there was something sort of fun to do while Bana and Barrymore whined and sulked. We played Spot the Poker Star! Daniel Negreanu was in there, Erik Lindgren, the Magcian, Barry Greenstein. Steve missed seeing Vince Van Patten, I could tell.

1.5/5