Category Archives: Movie Commentary

Lifeforce

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To participate in Final Girl’s film club, I had Netflix send me Lifeforce, a 1985 Tobe Hooper move about Naked Space Vampires.

Lifeforce

Reach into my brain and pull out the perfect woman, and she might look like Mathilda May, the naked chick who walks around sucking blue light out of people in Lifeforce. But why would she have two perfect naked guys with her? Those guys didn’t come out of my head, I’m certain of that. Also, if she came out of Steven Railsback’s brain, why isn’t she over-emoting massively? Instead, the perfect woman is ice-cold and creepy. But she does have perfect breasts.

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it here, again. Naked Space Vampire Movie is an automatic win. But Lifeforce is encumbered by dry British-ness, set against a weirdly screaming Steve Railsback, who is oddly distant when he’s not madly emoting. The plot, even with the restored footage that US distributors edited out, is muddy. You’d think space vampires would be straight-forward, but these things seem to have varying rules. Also, the initial contact story gets re-told three times, in different ways. The result is confusing, and action is disconnected. After a long, dry, procedural hunt, culminating in the strangest Patrick Stewart quivering ever, we suddenly shift to Zombie Apocalypse mode. Also, there’s a lot of flashing blue light streaks. The ending is vague. I’d say ambiguous, but that word means two clear options that oppose each other. In this case, the ending doesn’t really mean anything clearly.

Speaking of The Incredible Hulk

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I love cameos, but they raise an interesting question.  When you suddenly see, and recognize, Lou Ferrigno, you are participating in the movie, not as pure story, but as part of a continuum with other movies on the same topic, as well as the genre as a whole.  When Stan Lee shows up, or when a pizza parlor is called “Stanley’s”, we are not immersed in the movie as movie, but watching it and enjoying it’s connection to the Marvel Universe.

The reality level of the movie is not set at the story level, but at an understanding of the movie in context of other tellings of the same tale.

The Rundown

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Speaking of movies with action, guys with whips, and an ancient artifact, I watched The Rundown again the other night.  Originally, I told people that it wasn’t a great movie, but I liked it.  But after seeing Indiana Jones fall apart with a huge budget because of an utter lack of story, I appreciate more the simple focus of Beck (the Rock) trying to bring Travis (Seann William Scott) home to his father.  The story never forgets that that is Beck’s primary motivation, even though he keeps getting pulled into other struggles.  In Crystal Skull, on the other hand, we’re not sure why Indy is doing what he’s doing as he bounces from one action set-piece to the next.  Duane Johnson’s Beck is an interesting character who could be either self-serving or heroic and you’re never sure which way he’ll go.  Sort of like Han Solo.  Harrison Ford’s Indy, on the other hand, has been thoroughly defined and explained.  He’ll do the right thing, as soon as he thinks of it.  And he’s afraid of snakes.  We get that.  All of the character development was done in the first and third movies, the only thing left here is to have him walk through his paces. 
    Then there’s Christopher Walken.  In any role, he’s fun to watch.  Even Domino was fun when Christopher Walken was in it.  This time, he’s the bad guy, and he’s perfect.  Where Cate Blanchett played a generic, slightly threatening Ukrainian bitch, Walken is the ultimate plantation-style overseer.  He has charm, but he’s ruthless.  Inside, he thinks he’s doing the right thing.  Then there’s the sidekick.  Indiana Jones has to develop tension with a punk biker, played moderately by Shia LaBouf.  But the two are neither much alike, nor are they natural antagonists.  Really, LaBouf serves mostly as an audience for the greatness of Indiana Jones.  Seann William Scott is a perfect foil for the Rock.  He’s annoying, funny, and obviously in trouble.  The plot puts them at odds, and both play that very well.
    I had thought of The Rundown as one of those movies that I really like, but understand that they aren’t that good.  Like Hitman, Resident Evil, and Blade Trinity.  But now I’ve changed my mind.  This is a genuinely really good movie.

Indiana Jones

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Let’s start with Indiana Jones.

I love Indiana Jones, and the two good movies are among my all-time favorites.  Then there are the other two.  I have been arguing with my roommate over which is bad and which is worse.  She’s right about a lot of things, and claims to be right about everything. But but she is wrong about NASA, in general, and probably about Nuclear Power, and she is definitely wrong about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
It’s not very good, but she claims it is worse than Temple of Doom.  Empirically this can’t be the case, because Temple of Doom had:

  • An opening that consisted of a musical number
  • A hysterical female “romantic interest” who had no possible interest for any man, let alone a man as cool as Indiana Jones
  • An insipid twelve-year-old sidekick

She argues that Temple of Doom at least didn’t have stupid aliens who looked a bit like the ones in Close Encounters.  Which is true, but bad elements that start at the beginning of a movie outweigh bad elements that only pop to ruin the ending of a movie that actually had already ground to a halt.  So she’s wrong.

It may not be fair to look at Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as a movie.  It really isn’t.  It’s more like a Spielberg/Lucas tribute show, where they recreate scenes movies past.  We get a lot of Close Encounters, a hint of 1941, a touch of ET, and monkeys that act like Ewoks.  There’s even a shot that looks a lot like the T-Rex plowing through the jungle in Jurassic Park.  Some scenes appear more because Spielberg wanted to shoot them than because they had anything to do with the story, including a completely gratuitous take on The Day After.

Indiana Jones has always  teetered on the line between adventure and slapstick.  And when that balance holds, you get great scenes, such as the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the mansion scene in The Last Crusade with Indy and his father tied in chairs, and his father dropping the lighter on the rug.  But if the balance slips, and anything goes, then nothing is funny and nothing is believable any more.  That balance fell apart from the first moment of Temple of Doom.  In Crystal Skull, the balance lasts up until Indy climbs into a refrigerator.