Push

(Not based on a novel by Sapphire)

When Push first came out, I categorized it to myself as a guilty pleasure. Sure, the movie was fun, but at the time I thought of it as the sort of movie studios make when they realize something is "big" or "in" at the time. Around it's release, The X-Men and Spider-Man franchises had already hit their apexes, and the show Heroes still felt like it was one season away from re-capturing the charm of the first season. In other words "ordinary people dealing with superhuman abilities" was "in" and Push was a bit of a Johnny-come-lately.

The film centers around a group of ex-pat Americans (played by Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning) in Hong Kong with telekinetic abilities who are trying to lay low from a government agency called Division that wants to harness their powers. Take away the Hong Kong part and the plot sounds suspiciously like the first season of Heroes. In fact both stories heavily rely on characters with the ability to draw future events to move the story along, but while Heores's future predictions were drawn by acclaimed artist Tim Sale, Push's predictions were admittedly bad sketches done by Dakota Fanning's character. Probably because of this similarity, I brushed it off in my mind.

Then about a year after it's release, I watched Push again and realized that I actually liked it on it's own terms (and that Heroes had gotten embarrassingly bad). For one thing, I realized it wasn't an attempt at doing a superhero movie without a comic book franchise to back it up. Instead, it's more like an espionage movie with superpowers. The characters aren't constantly blasting each other with fireballs and what not, instead everybody is trying to outwit everybody else. The fight scenes that do ensue are reasonably good, in particular the ones involving a silent blonde guy that repels bullets with his mind, but the focus is more on the characters than the action.

Now, I will admit that this movie has some serious flaws in its execution, but if you accept them ahead of time, you can still enjoy the movie. For one thing, the movie starts off with Dakota Fanning explaining the mythology of the movie; what kinds of powers people have, what they're called and so on. It's an unnecessary info dump one that a better director would have let the audience figure out on its own.

The plot also becomes a bit too complicated towards the end on account of some characters' abilities to see into the future, and other characters' abilities to use mind control. The characters all come up with elaborate methods of side stepping each others' powers that make it easy to lose track of what's going on. But hey, even The Dark Knight got damn hard to follow halfway through, (can anybody honestly explain the Melvin White part?) so I say cut the little guy some slack.

Lastly, it's obvious that the producers had every intention of making this into a franchise. The ending is a bit abrupt and left open for the clear purpose of it leading into a sequel. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to this actually, but a tighter ending would have been nice. On the plus side, rumors have been circulating that this film has become enough of a sleeper hit on DVD that the story might get continued as a TV series.

Overall, Push isn't some sci-fi epic that everybody should have seen but didn't. Rather, it's more like the film Equilibrium, in that it's a fun action flick that could have been done better but it's entertaining enough as is. You catch it if it's on cable, or put it in your Netflix queue and pop it in on a weekday night when you feel like an action movie you haven't seen before. Not something you necessarily go out of your way to see, but you'll enjoy it when you get around to watching it.

And it's got Djimon Honsou in it. Yeah, he's been in the occasional bad movie, but have you ever seen him play a role badly?

Stephen King's The Mist

Yeah, I was surprised by this one too...

When I first saw the ads for this one, I just rolled my eyes. Maybe it was just the fact that for every well made Stephen King adaptation there is, there are a slew more memorably bad ones. More likely it's because this movie was released about a year after the The Fog, a horrendous remake of the John Carpenter movie with a similar premise. I probably would have forgotten about it entirely had it not been for a good amount of internet buzz legitimately praising as being a modern classic. When it came out on video, I kicked myself for not getting in on the ground floor of this one.

I tried to spread the gospel of this movie before starting this blog, but every time I tried explaining it to people, they kept assuming I was talking about the remake of The Fog. Once I cleared it up with them that it wasn't The Fog, they then assumed it was a shitty knock off of The Fog. So here I am breaking down reasons why you should see this movie.

1. It's not The Fog.

Seriously. It has nothing to do with it.

2. It's written and directed by Frank Darabont.

Don't recognize that name? He's the guy who gave us The Shawshank Redemption (which, interestingly enough, is another movie based on a Stephen King story that was initially overlooked) and The Green Mile. If you've seen either of those, this should be pretty self explanatory.

3. It's a damn good thriller.

Okay, here's where I'm going to devote the bulk of my efforts. This movie is essentially a B-movie made better than anybody should have ever made one. After a devastating storm hits a small New England town, (for any Stephen King fans out there, yes it's Castle Rock,) a mysterious mist rolls down from the mountains. The town residents find themselves trapped in the local grocery store when a man runs inside, covered in blood, claiming something in the mist is killing people. The "something" turns out to be a horde of alien creatures.

While the premise is strictly B-movie, the characters are developed up to A-movie standards. The heros, played by Thomas Jane and Laurie Holden, aren't a pair of hard-asses with quotable one-liners. Instead they're believeable as ordinary Joes who find themselves the voice of reason in and increasingly maddening situation.

There's the skeptic, a New York City lawyer vacationing in town. While B-movie skeptics tend to have the strange ability to doubt that the monster/demon/phantom attacking people is real, even when the evidence is staring him/her right in the face, in The Mist, we can kind of see the skeptic's point... for a while at least.

But the real surprise is how this movie uses the token religious nut, Mrs. Carmody, played by Marcia Gay Harden. She starts out as a simple cliche. She's the one who starts shouting bible verses in the background when it's apparent that monsters are among them. Yet as the movie progresses, she steps out of the background and emerges as the main villain, one worse than the monsters outside.

She begins to convince the people trapped within the store that the monsters are a punishment from God, whipping them into a frenzy that anybody who doesn't side with her must be sacrificed. This of course leaves the heroes in a catch 22 situation, where they can either be killed by the monsters outside, or killed by the people in the store.

As a horror movie, The Mist isn't really scary, but as a thriller, it's a genuine nail biter. Be warned that it's also frustrating to watch. You'll probably find yourself wanting to kill Mrs. Carmody halfway through the movie, yet find yourself feeling as helpless as the other characters in doing something about it. As for the monsters, while they aren't the focus of the film, when show up onscreen they're convincingly frightening, a rarity for sci-fi movies.

By the way, should you end up watching this and decide you want to own it, there's a two disc collectors edition available with a black and white version of the film included.

Fanboys

Plot Summary and Target Audience Described in One Word Title

There's a good chance that if you're some level of movie geek, you did hear about this movie. Most likely it was in the context of the controversy surrounding Harvey Weinstein's attempts to re-edit the film to remove a subplot where a character was dying of cancer. You also probably didn't see it because it rolled through theaters and onto DVD with barely a mention on even Adult Swim.

So to answer your questions in order, yes the cancer subplot is there and yes, if you liked Star Wars you'll probably enjoy this movie... but it does have it's faults.

Now for those of you who never heard of Fanboys, the story follows a group of friends from Ohio who made plans to infiltrate the Skywalker Ranch (George Lucas's home) when they were kids. By the time they've grown up, its 1998 and, one of the group, Eric, is primed to take over his family's used car business. The rest of his friends still act like they're in grade school. When another of the group, Linus, finds out he has cancer, they decide to go through with their childhood plan. In particular, they've decided they will steal a rough cut of Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace, so that Linus can see it before he dies.

Naturally, what follows is a madcap cross country road trip filled with nerd references and an occasional sexual encounter. They rumble with Trekkies at the town where Captain Kirk was born (Shatner's Kirk, not Chris Pine.) One of them gets beat up by Harry Knowles from Ain't It Cool News. An of course, and endless stream of Star Wars gags ranging from the overt to the subtle.

While there are alot of good gags, there are a few occasions where something was a bit off about the execution. The joke would be funny, but had the potential to be way funnier. For example, in the aforementioned Star Trek rumble, the filmmakers couldn't get the rights to use the actual Star Trek uniform designs, so instead they use "parody" uniforms. Its a minor distraction in that it took me a while to actually get that they were supposed to be Star Trek uniforms, which sort of took me out of the moment. However, the scene is saved by a cameo appearance by Seth Rogen as a Trekkie who does not take kindly to somebody ripping on Captain Kirk.

On top of that the subplots could have used a bit more fleshing out. Once they hit the road the film pretty much forgets that the characters are all supposed to be running away from something back home. Eric's story about taking over the family business would have been nice to see fleshed out, but you can't fault a movie too much for sticking to it's main premise.

In spite of all that, it's an alright movie It's not of the calibre of film that it would have been worth seeing in theaters, but it's certainly worth checking out as a rental. Clearly the people who made it have a deep love of all things Star Wars, but you'll probably leave it wondering why it wasn't directed by Kevin Smith. Sadly, he only makes a cameo appearance, but then again so does anybody else famous who's tied to Star Wars. My favorite might be Billy Dee Williams as Judge Reinhold. (It makes sense, trust me.)

The film's strengths come when it plays on the sense of nostalgia for the excitement alot of us felt at the prospect of a new trilogy of Star Wars movies coming out. If you're like me, you probably thought the original trilogy was the most amazing contribution to cinema ever, so the idea of there being more to the story was simply mind blowing. The characters capture that perfectly. It also brings back memories of what it was like being a nerd in the late 90's. You know, back when the internet was still new, and if you got the inside scoop on something it meant something. Not like today where if something gets leaked online, the whole world is going to know about it in half a day.

At the very least, it should bring back memories of your first time seeing Episode I. For me, I'd managed to rally friends together for the Special Edition releases of the original trilogy, and Episodes II and III, yet for some reason I couldn't get a damn one of my friends to go with me on opening day of Phantom Menace. Their reason? They wanted to wait until the crowd died down.

You guys kind of suck, you know that?

Southland Tales

Another Mind Blowing Sci-fi Movie From the Writer/Director of Donnie Darko

Southland Tales is director Richard Kelly's follow up to his cult hit Donnie Darko. Considering that Donnie Darko's popularity grew so huge that it's one of the few films I can think of that actually got a theatrically released director's cut, whatever Kelly released next seemed destined to be huge... at least in the nerd/art house film crowd. Yet Southland Tales is still a little known movie, a fact made even stranger considering the film's all star cast.

When I say "all star" I mean that in a pretty close to literal sense. Just about everybody with a speaking role is a well known actor, although most of them play characters unlike anything they've ever played before. No really. It's got Dwayne Johnson, Sean William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christopher Lambert, John Laroquette, Jon Lovitz, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Smith, Justin Timberlake and the bald dude from The Princess Bride.

With this many stars, it's no surprise that Janeane Gerafalo's role ended up getting cut down to a half second cameo.

So why haven't you probably heard of this movie? Truth be told, it didn't fare too well with critics in early screenings. They were mostly baffled by the film's intricately twisting storylines, and onslaught of geek references. Presumably, based on the bad early press, it was given a very small theatrical release, even by art house film standards. But this really isn't a movie for critics at all. This is a movie for fanboys looking for an out and out crazy piece of hard sci-fi.

Now you're going to ask me what it's about right? That's where it gets a bit tricky. The short version is that it's about the way the world ends. Not with a whisper, but with a bang.

The long version, is that it's a Bush-era fable about a world where government paranoia has gone rampant. Terrorists detonate a pair of nuclear bombs over Texas, prompting the nation throw control of Congress over to the Republicans. In turn, they put the nation on complete lockdown, with visas required for interstate travel and heavily armed soldiers in the streets.

Against this backdrop are interweaving stories about the citizens of L.A. in this new world. There's Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) an action star with political connections who has amnesia and finds himself in the company of Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star trying to go legit. There's Ronald Taverner (Sean William Scott), a cop who finds himself caught up with a group of Neo-Marxists trying to take down the government. We follow the government employees who believe that they're restoring order to the world, the Neo-Marxists who think they're doing the same thing, and everybody else who is caught up in between, whether deliberately or not.

However, it's not so much the plot that's the draw of this story as is the execution. If you've ever seen Donnie Darko, you should have some idea what to expect next. For starters, the one liners are fantastic. If you thought Samantha Darko asking "What's a fuck-ass?" at the dinner table was good, you ought to hear the stuff that comes out of Sarah Michelle Gellar's mouth.

Then there's the whole sci-fi aspect. Much like Donnie Darko, the characters find themselves subjected to things like parallel dimensions, time travel, destiny and religion. Yet there's never that moment where everybody figures out exactly what is going on. Suffice to say, things get really freakin' weird fast.

Thankfully, they never get weird in the David Lynch, I'm-never-going-to-figure-this-shit-out kind of way. You'll be able to follow the plot (mostly) on the first time through, but there's going to be a lot of stuff that is going to go over your head. This movie just politely asks that you sit back, enjoy the soundtrack, and let it blow your mind. It begs you to watch it again with the promise that you'll have a better understanding of what you just saw the next time around.

As you can guess, this is an extremely ambitious movie, a fact made more notable considering that the movie wasn't even envisioned as the entire story. You'll note that after an extensive prolog, the story starts out at chapter 4. That's because Richard Kelly conceived this story as a truly multi-media extravaganza, with parts of the story told in different formats. There was supposed to be a massive viral marketing campaign and a comic book mini-series leading up to the release. The comic, which tells the first three chapters of the story didn't get that wide a release and the online aspect was started but never really completed. For example, even two years after this movie's release, the website for the character Krysta Now, the porn star/aspiring businesswoman, still has a coming soon banner on most of its pages. In case you're wondering, it's not essential to read the comic before seeing the movie. The important parts of the comic are summarized at the start of the movie, but it gives the viewer a better understanding of the back story.

The soundtrack, as I mentioned before, is incredible. For one thing, Moby was such a fan of Donnie Darko that he agreed to score the film, which is something he rarely ever does. Then there's selections by the Pixies, Waylon Jennings, Blur and a nice little number sung by Sarah Michelle Gellar as Krysta Now called "Teen Horniness is Not a Crime." Of all of these, the showpiece is the scene where Justin Timberlake lip syncs to The Killers' "All These Things I've Done," during a hallucination filled with dancing nurses.

Like I said before, this is an ambitious movie, but while that's a phrase usually used to describe movies that aspire to be something great and fall extremely short, Southland Tales seems to be every bit the epic Richard Kelly hoped it would be when he started work on it. This is a movie that will probably never be part of the mainstream, but I suspect that over time it will find its audience and become a cult hit. That being said, I recommend renting it soon so that you can say you were one of the cool kids who saw it before everybody else.

Promo Art courtesy of Darko Entertainment