Review: Moon (2009)

ABRIDGED SCRIPT/REVIEW FORMAT STOLEN FROM ROD HILTON BUT CURSE MY INABILITY TO MAKE IT LOOK AS GOOD

MOON

INT. GROUND STATION ON THE MOON

Sam Rockwell, tired of reading Merriam-Webster's definition of "Unfortunate Misfire" and only seeing the poster for Watchmen there, decides to mine for Moonium on the moon.

SAM ROCKWELL
I'm so glad I can be such an asset to this corporation and for everyone on Earth relying on this life-saving energy source. How prescient. Speaking of which, I think I get to go back soon, right Robot?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Yes, Sam, and it is very exciting. Would you a haircut or some dinner before you go?

SAM ROCKWELL
Sure, pal. Y'know, you seem... very intelligent for an articulated arm and some ball-bearings. We can carry on complex conversations and all. Why can't the company just put you in charge of this operation?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Because, Sam, that would spoil the secret concept operating behind the plot of this movie.

SAM ROCKWELL
Secret concept? I thought this was going to be about me going crazy from loneliness. What else could it be about?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Oh, you'll see...

EXT. OBVIOUS MINIATURE MOON LANDSCAPE

Sam Rockwell does work type-things in a crawler vehicle as his loneliness increases.

SAM ROCKWELL
Strange nightmares about my wife back on Earth, daylight hallucinations... I have to be going crazy. Even the awesome trailer for this movie said so. I- hey, what's that?

SAM is distracted by a THING, crashes his vehicle, and loses consciousness.

CUT TO:

INT. GROUND STATION

Sam Rockwell 2 suddenly wakes up on a hospital gurney.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Jesus, what the fuck just happened?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
You had an accident, Sam, and you need to rest. Please don't let my repeated insistence make you suspicious or anything.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Wow, you seem... very sophisticated, enough to be bad at lying. They really should have just let you man the station. Also, how did I get back here?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
STOP PRE-RUINING THE MOVIE. Now go to sleep and don't try to leave or anything.

Kevin Spacey-Bot floats away to do SECRET STUFF. Sam 2 follows and catches a snippet of a conversation between him and some CORPORATE SUITS on a monitor.

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Sam, what a shock to see you out of bed. Did you catch any
of that?

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Just enough to be incriminating, but oddly enough, my only question is why you're using the monitor. If you're connected to the station's systems, you could bypass any interface to send a message. It's just data.

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Very interesting, I will contemplate this-

Sam 2 busts open a valve that spills cheap CGI while Kevin Spacey-Bot is distracted.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Oh fuckle. Guess this means I have to go outside and fix it.

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Damn the conspirators' inability to make vital systems unavailable to you, thus making it easy to figure out THE SECRET.

CUT TO:

EXT. MINIATURE MOONSCAPE

Sam Rockwell 2 takes a spare spacesuit and a spare crawler (it had some) out to the site of the crawler accident. There he finds... another Sam Rockwell! Uh... the first one to be exact!

CUT TO:

INT. GROUND STATION

Injured SAM ROCKWELL 1 wakes up on a hospital bed with SAM ROCKWELL 2 brooding in the background.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
This is odd... there appears to be two of me. How weird. I will continue to have a nonplussed to reaction to this and only sorta try to figure this situation out, as it is progressing totally unlike what I imagined. Uh... Robot?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
No help from me until you ask again later.
(wheels away clunkily)

SAM ROCKWELL 1
And what about you, Other Me?

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Not really up for it. I mean, I was up for breaking shit a half an hour ago because of the tiniest of reasons, but now that I'm confronted with this huge proof of SOMETHING WRONG, I'm opting to be an insufferable dick for a bit, just to show off my ability to act to myself.

He does that for an incredibly irritating amount of time.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Okay, then. I wonder... for what reasons would I be having this hallucination? Why would I feel the need to split myself apart? Perhaps this is an id/ego thing, and sooner or later the superego is going to show up and explain it all. Or it has no meaning, other than my psyche creating a conflict to combat the mundane activies on the station. Surely some complex psychological reasons are afoot-

SAM ROCKWELL 2
I got it. We're clones.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
... Clones, did you say?

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Yes.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
... Okay, why?

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Think about it, man. It's cheaper for a company to-

SAM ROCKWELL 1
No no no no! This is one of those movies?! It can't be! You're just jumping to the first available conclusion. It's early yet, something else will develop.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
(long pause)
Help me look for the secret door to the clone facility.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Jesus H Chist! Robot, this shit isn't true, is it?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Afraid so, Sam. Right on the money.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
But how, how is that right on the money? Even if we are clones, they wouldn't keep the cloning facility here. What if we happened to stumble across it? Besides, Robot has no way of transporting us from the growth tube to the hospital gurney. How-

Sam Rockwell 2 kicks open a hatch and they find the hidden room with a bunch of clones.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
... Well, I'll be damned.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Convinced?

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Only that this is fucking retarded. Look at the size of this fucking room. Explain to me how this is cheaper.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
I don't have time to explain how it's cheaper. I forgot to mention that I caught Robot ordering a rescue team to our location. Since the company has done nothing but lie to us so far, obviously "Medivac" means "Kill Squad" in corporate lingo.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Just as much of a leap as your other theory, but that turned out to be true, so this is too I guess. I mean, it's still stupid. We're on the fucking moon. They can deny us any means of communication and therefore any method of exposing THE SECRET, right Robot?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Actually, Sam, you'd be surprised how much is available on this rock. Just enough for everything to go wrong with their operation, actually.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
That means there must be an antennae jamming the signal to Earth! Quickly, let's go find it!

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Goddammit...

Sam Rockwell 2 goes and does that for a bit while Clint Mansell uses ambient noises to produce a score. Sam Rockwell 1 drives around too but gives up because he's bored. And sick and whatnot.

INT. GROUND STATION

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Robot, I'd like more confirmation on this matter. How would I go about getting that?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Easy, Sam.

Robot plays tapes of all the other Sam Rockwell clones getting sick and also getting vaporized in a chamber that is supposed to send them home.

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Well, they're consistently terrible conspirators, at least. Although the smart thing to do would be to vaporize me before I start getting sick.

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
That would eliminate opportunites to be lazily tragic. Speaking of which, Other Sam has found a way through the jamming signal. Would you like to call your wife and daughter on Earth?

SAM ROCKWELL 1
Am I going to say anything useful to them?

KEVIN SPACEY-BOT
Oh heavens no.

Sam 1 does that, then gets sick some more. Sam 2 returns, having found the jamming dish.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
I say we smuggle you into the Moonium capsule and send you home while I stay here and hold off the away team.

SAM ROCKWELL
Nah, why don't you go? I'm too depressed about the way this all turned out to care about going to Earth. But aren't you worried that the Moonium Capsule won't keep you alive?

SAM ROCKWELL 2
I'll bring an air tank.

SAM ROCKWELL
But what about the temperature? And the entry into the Earth's- you know what, fuck it, I'm sure it will be fine.

SAM ROCKWELL 2
One more thing we need to do is have Robot create one more clone, so they think we're both still here for as long as possible.

SAM ROCKWELL
But won't they kill the new clone immediately? Doesn't that go against this entire theme of "Every life, even that of a clone, is precious"?

SAM ROCKWELL 2
(shrugging)
Feh.

Sam Rockwell 2 erases Kevin Spacey-Bot's memory by pressing one button and rockets away in capsule while Sam Rockwell 1 stays behind and is killed by the very mean Medivac team.

INT. MOONIUM CAPSULE

SAM ROCKWELL 2
Hmm. Maybe Sam 1 was making sense... how is this cheaper for a corporation to do? Why couldn't they hire a team of illegal immigrants with no social security numbers? They do dangerous work for practically nothing. Maybe illegal immigration isn't a problem in the future...

The CODA tells us that it is.

THE END

5.4/10

Review: Bodyguard Kiba (1993)

Bodigaado Kiba (that's Bodyguard Kiba to you, I guess?) protects people for money. Sometimes that means protecting frightened American businessmen from random assassins merely to establish that he protects people for money. Kiba also gets assignments from the master of his Dojo, and apparently it's a huge fucking deal to be a part of a Dojo and to war with other Dojos in other regions. Kiba is a very nice man but will punch things when he must, and he mostly must. Very suddenly, he will get a weird "Years Later..." jump that doesn't appear to change any of the characters' appearance or context, and Kiba will get a new assignment wrought with danger and sudden fits of battling.

Takashi Miike made the jump from television director to film director here, and the difficulty in pinpointing his style is even more difficult. Everything is simply executed, to the V-formation dialogue scenes to the cutaway-filled fight scenes. Like most of his films, there is a diametric emphasis on movement behind characters who are still, which meshes weird in a punchpunch movie. I think here is where he learned to control violence involving a crowd of actors in a small location. Miike's favorit-ist thing to do is put two characters against a giant moving body of water. WHATSITMEAN?

So anyhow. Story consits of following Kiba as he protects his client. Obstacles appear in his way. A conflict arises and continues without much of his involvement. Will the good guys survive? Yeah...

Oh, another word on this early Miike: that television work must have done a number on him because as soon as he gets the chance to do a sex scene, OH MAN does he ever do one. His characters are drenched in sweat, the lens is burned with red light and Miike gets positions, positions, close-ups of bouncing tits, more positions... god, I get it, sheesh. Although I suppose I should be enjoyed this celebration of two characters who love each other because very very soon, it's all RAPE RAPE RAPE.

Bodyguard Kiba a straight-forward, low budget, modern kung-fu film that is easy enough to watch other than it looks like it was made a decade before it actually was. I suppose it could have been worse.

5.2/10

Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

I have a strange relationship with this film. Seeing it in the theatre, I admired it at the time for having dialogue scenes lasting longer than five minutes and portraying historically notorious villains with things like motivations and personality, especially in an era where most films consider it unnecessary. On this day, where the projector failed FOR REAL during an important moment at the climax, I was left unsure about certain misgivings but felt content to say that the above aspects were what saved it.

Finally seeing it again, all the way through... I'm not so sure anymore.

There was a time when Quentin Tarantino's fragmented films could stand up to the highest levels of scrutiny. His scripts for True Romance and Natural Born Killers passed the ultimate test: being placed in chronological order. Jackie Brown, which now seems like a different century altogether, was his worst (unless you count Four Rooms) but remains interesting in repeat viewings; it has strong characters and a strong script, and the worst aspect of it is, dare I say it, the style he chose to do it in.

After a short hiatus, entering this sort of grace period wrought with denial on my part, Kill Bill is released in two "volumes" and carries some problems Tarantino's previous films don't have. Then Death Proof, part of a larger Grindhouse project and a little difficult to hold up to the same level of scrutiny, also has problems that one can forgive only if the rest is deemed worth the effort.

Now to Inglourious Basterds, and it's time to declare the grace period OVER. Tarantino had been talking about this film for awhile, and I don't know what I imagined other than "How is he going to fit a trunk POV shot into the story? Do WWII tanks have trunks?" For awhile, I think Michael Madsen and John Travolta were in it as Vega grandfathers and the title was "Untitled World War Two Epic." What would that film have been like?

Better, maybe. I'm told that, if this is a remake, it shares about as much kinship with the original Bastards as John Carpenter's The Thing does with the 50's version. Here, not even in name! So it's either a complete reimagining of the original with very little sense of loyalty to it, or it's an original screenplay retitled to tie into a 70's zeitgeist, as if his stlye weren't enough. Or he couldn't think of a better title.

Conspiracy theory time: this could be another case of Tarantino being dicked around by the Weinsteins. They used a Hanzo sword to cut Kill Bill into two separate releases, undermarketed the Grindhouse project, and shooting down the 'Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France' title, they say "Well, you can't put Bastard in a title. Fix it." And I think that same pressure forced Tarantino to make, I'll use his words, a "leaner, more concise film." Let's break it down.

1) Villains are introduced.
2) Title characters are introduced.
3) Third lead introduced/revenge plot formed.
4) Brief scene in Britain introducing a character that will die in the subsequent scene.

We are now halfway through a 2 1/2 hour movie.

5) Title characters appear in their second scene, half of them die.
6) Third lead refines revenge plot/title characters refine assassination plot.
7) Climax with all characters.

With the words 'leaner, more concise' reverberating in the background, I can see where those missing scenes would go. In a perfect world, Inglourious Basterds would be a well-researched but dramatically-deviated action film set during WWII. Brad Pitt would spend over half the film on a Nazi-killing warpath unbound by the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, paralleling Patton's advance on Europe, the top brass could find ways to channel this into a strategic advantage, eventually happening upon the assassination plot to end the war. While this is going on, and entirely unrelated subplot about a Jewish girl escaping execution and stumbling across an opportunity to wreak vengeance on the man who killed her family is hatched coincidentally at the same time the Basterds' plot is to go down. Will she fuck up the plan? Who will survive? In a perfect world, this film would be 4 hours long.

On Shadow Earth, it's probably fantastic. Here, on Normal Earth (is it called Normal Earth?), we have to settle for the above bullet points. Point 1 is a brilliant way to begin the film, like Sergio Leone's insistence that it takes ten minutes for somebody to walk through a door. The tension rises beautifully, due to the unspoken deceptions going on during the dialogue. Things going on! Imagine!

I'll skip ahead here to Point 5, a scene that equals Point 1 when taken independantly from the rest of the film. A long conversation ends in a too-brief shootout and a lazy-ass killtransition to the next scene, what is basically the climax. Characters that we barely had any time to get to know are killed, setting the stage for a stupid, stupid plan. Its construction, however, is amazing. Tarantino is good at this, which I guess means he is good at fooling me.

Being "lean and concise," without MORE movie, these scenes are padding, set pieces at best. An ample amount of time is spent with Point 3 and her revenge scheme. On Shadow Earth, I would welcome the time spent with open arms. Here, it throws the film incredibly off-balance as it isn't broken apart and it takes too goddamn long.

At Point 7. We've spent two scenes with the title characters and have accelerated very suddenly to this assassination plot which feels in the film exactly as it feels outside of it: rushed, destined to fail. Plotlines don't so much converge as they do end in the same location. Both assassinations succeed anti-climactically (anti-historically) and due mainly to the conscious actions of the FILM'S VILLAIN.

This idea, that the war is ended by the enemy's participation, cannot be grappled with as it makes no statement about anything. There isn't a 'necessary evil' theme until this point, nor is there one about Brad Pitt learning to compromise until now. As it relates to Christoph Waltz, it doesn't even fit his character. He liked hunting Jews for the Reichsland, but now all of a sudden he doesn't. Okay, so what it is, then, is another attempt to fool me. I sure didn't see this ending coming... because it makes no sense!

It's one thing when a filmmaker is eventually crushed spirit-and-all by the weight of his environment, it's another when the machine is chruning slowly and the last functioning neurons are still firing. Great scenes are created in an otherwise frustrating, lazy excuse of a film.

6.5/10

Review: Extract (2009)

Dear Michael Rotenberg,

Every time I go to conventions, nerds won't leave me alone about Office Space. That horrible experience earns me more praise than Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill combined, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Usually, it's the broad caricatures that win people over in mass droves, not the accurate, tight-knit commentary on paper-pushers. This, and a weird reverse-marketing phenomenon caused by 20th Century Fox's burial of Idiocracy leads me to believe that my name alone has enough Cult Pull to make a third comedy on a modest budget. I was thinking about something a little quieter, a little easier to do; I want to make an ensemble piece, what would be like Altman's Short Cuts, but funnier or whatever.

I have some scripts for short films, left over from when I went to college. To summarize, they are:

1) A story about a guy who loses his balls in a freak factory accident.
2) A guy who pays somebody to seduce his wife so he can cheat on her guilt-free.
3) A couple lives next to a neighbor who won't leave them alone, and when they finally snap on him, the neighbor dies of a heart attack (this will be funnier when you read the script).
4) A guy tries to get out of smoking weed with his friends because he gets paranoid, but he ends up smoking some anyway. Then he gets punched in the face (this will be funnier when you read the script).
5) A hot girl cons people out of stuff because she's hot.
6) Gene Simmons is a lawyer.

Blending these together in the right way can create a life-is-hell, people-are-dumb theme that has worked so well for me in the past, and the ensemble nature means we don't have to rush anything.

Let me know what you think.

-Mike Judge

YO MIKE:

That ensemble thing sounds stupid, and nobody likes those. All the rest sounds great tho! I dont know how you can get all of these elements to work in ONE STORY about ONE GUY, but you can pull it off i'm sure without making it seem like a total clusterfuck of stupid ideas! We can cast the Arrested Development guy to really reel in those Cult suckers, even if you cant make it work Fuck em they'll see anything.

Love Michael Rotenberg

P.S. last night's episode of the Goode Family was great!

4.8/10

Review: Avatar (2009)

Continuing 2009's trend of movies that don't deserve to make as much money as they do but do so because a large amount of people are very fucking stupid, we have Avatar, James Cameron's first technical theatrical release in over ten years. What did Cameron do before that? Well, he did a student film I have never seen, a terrible low-budget sequel to a barely watchable Joe Dante film, pissed Harlan Ellison off, pissed Ridley Scott off, made an environmentalist-agenda film used as an excuse to show off special effects, the greatest action film of all time (probably), a good action film, the best 3-D film of all time (to this day), a good romantic drama, a what-the-hell-is-this-thing, Dark Angel, ruined Solaris, made an uninteresting documentary, another fucking Titanic documentary jesus shut up already, a weird thing that doesn't appear to be available anywhere, and- oh, we're caught up. Before Avatar, Cameron was also somewhere in my top five directors, but... we'll get to that.

Avatar begins with a barrage of information about this world we are about to enter. PLEASE PUT ON YOUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATORS NOW. Apparently important information (i.e. informaton that pertains to nothing plot important, really) is that hypersleep sucks ass, Jake Sully's twin brother is dead and it is very sad, and that he has inherited a high-profile and extremely expensive project without doing all the hard work. He gets an all-expenses-paid trip to dangerous planet Pandora and, hey, because he's a cripple and gots nothing better to do, let's do it, semper fi.

All of this is told through a voice-over that, one would think, would either continue throughout the film or end as soon as they show the reason behind it: his first video log entry. SHUT OFF VIDEO LOG, FADE IN TITLE. But nope, you can expect it to appear sporadically when the storytelling gets lazy.

Information left curiously absent includes details about the Avatar Project that Jake has been thrust into. Instance: If resources are scant then how can this project exist if both military personnel and the corporation funding the operation on Pandora find it useless? Fuck you, you don't get to know. There is absolutely no other way to communicate with the Na'vi or collect plant samples other than using these engineered Blue Things? Fuck you, no. If you die in the Matrix, do you die in the real world? Fuck your mouth shut, stupid, and watch the pretty things that are behind the other pretty things.

And that's one word that is mind-numbingly appropriate for Avatar: pretty. Cameron took great pains to make the movie 1) beautiful, 2) well-designed. Everything about Pandora wildlife looks like it actually exists. For certain, Cameron is finally putting all that underwater study to good use... making a movie that won't take the time to create three-dimensional characters but create three-dimensional special effects. Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen.

It's not early on that the movie falls apart. We have a silent explanation for Jake accepting the Pandora Job: solely so he could drive a Thing with legs. While it's over quick and effectively eliminates any interesting dilemmas developing in the future by making his eventual betrayal an OBVIOUS CHOICE, it alone serves more a purpose than what the film then uses him for: running around with curiously one-dimensional Sigourney Weaver Blue Thing, looking at plants and collecting specimins. Uh... why do they need Jake again? Oh right, shut up, I remember.

Well, what you can do is force the movie to make sense by bringing a bunch of information to it, if that helps. Weaver brings in Jake to fill the Blue Thing body so her budget isn't cut, keeping up a false pretense to keep her position on the planet and satisfy the also-curiously-one-dimensional Giovanni Ribisi. Fine, but imagining that this is the case makes me think of a better movie that just didn't happen, a movie that spends its time giving me pertinent information, rather than wasting it as much as it wastes its talented actors. That's called RATIONALIZING, my psychologist girlfriend tells me.

Sully becomes a valuable member to both sides, to the military for providing strategic information, scientific information to the scientists, and... uh... cute comic distraction to the Blue Things, I guess. All the while we wait for Might-As-Well-Be-A-Racist-Tornado Military Man to do something heinous or shifty-eyed science nerd to betray Jake. The runtime goes up and up and the 3-D glasses hurt more and more as you try in vain to see Zoe Saldana's Blue Tits. By the end, everything has built to this point at the end that makes all the previous two hours an excuse... an excuse to have a large, effects-driven battle between two easily indentifiable sides, the villains being the biggest, easiest targets in any film (besides Nazis): human (American) CEOs, human (American) military. These two groups will always fuck things up and no one will care when their ranks die horribly, because hey, they spend 24/7 being huge dicks.

So... this formulation is obvious because we have seen this story before, haven't we? Yeah... King Kong. Peter Jackson's King Kong. The millions of dollars spend on facial capture technology, fantastical locale created entirely on bluescreen, an unfocused script that goes all over the place, one-dimensional characters, environmentalist message brought to you by a giant hammer that doesn't stop hitting you in the face, and an overwhelming amount of praise by the audience. Good lord, both even have a director that was a whole lot better in the 90's! I'm onto something.

Slightly softening the blow of James Cameron dipping so low after being so high for so long is not revisiting Titanic, considered by some to be one of the most overrated films of the 90's, but revisiting another film of Cameron's that is most similar to Avatar: The Abyss.

Like Avatar, The Abyss showed a conflict between benign scientists, hardened marines acting irrationally, and a third party of unknown lifeforms caught in between. Its third act makes a large case for environmentalism and points a big accussing finger at the human race for being just s'darn destructive. And of course, like Avatar, its final theme-push is a big anti-human statement that says 'you are only best as you are about to die.' Both movies are also overly-long and masturbate to the point of chafing, but what The Abyss does in the details makes it marginally better than Avatar. For one, Michael Biehn's character isn't a racist tornado, meaning he isn't 'just an asshole.' The story thinks up a reason for his sudden irrationality quite nicely, and as the film goes on, it becomes clear that the only way to solve this matter is to ice his ass. GOOD. What's better is that his role is only an obstacle. The story is still all about first contact with an unknown lifeform, and Biehn's insanity is secondary to that goal, and doesn't disappear once he is gone. Overall it's a tighter narrative and a more effective story (except for the ending, which sucks).

I've been convinced recently that Avatar also needed a nuke, somewhere.

It sounds dismissive to bring up all this 'environmentalist agenda' stuff, like that's what is bothering me. It isn't. The best example I can think of is Princess Mononoke, a movie that couldn't be any more anti-industry, pro-nature if it tried. However, Princess Mononoke doesn't preach, it demonstrates a struggle between two sides that have their merits and their failings. Its villain is barely a villain, one whose goal is understandable and, depending on where your values lie, preferable. Mononoke has an environmentalist message, but it's one that I can live with, because it makes its case. Avatar insists that its own message is self-evident.

But try telling all this to someone who loved the movie. They won't listen, or they'll shrug and say something like, "I'm a girl, I like pretty things." The current hysteria is baffling (note: as of writing this, Avatar is #37 on IMDB's 250 highest ranked films; Mononoke is at #120), and is incredibly frustrating that I have to keep talking about this fucking thing, politely. It's all I can do to keep from grabbing people by the throat and yelling "The Emperor doesn't have clothes! LOOK!"

Because he doesn't, y'know.

5.4/10

Review: Primer (2004)

I'll admit that I have two weakness. The first: Chocodiles. Those things are fucking delicious. The second: Time travel. (If you were going to say my second weakness was "connecting ideas" then you're an asshole).

Time travel as a subject (or a subsubgenre) has the power to elevate any material from boring to not-quite-as-boring, from romantic comedies to, uh, other things. Not to say there haven't been bad time travel films; there are at least a couple. Time travel has, however, yielded more benefits than detriments. It began a more mature era of Harry Potter films, the best action film ever made, an okay-by-me Van Damme film, a Terry Gilliam film that *gasp* made a profit, at least one good Supernatural episode with TWO DEAN WINCHESTERS, and in fiction, Steve Aylett's best book and the return of the good Palahniuk novel.

But until I saw Primer, I hadn't really seen ANY grounded science in the mix. Being a largely theorhetical/impossible concept, it was more of a speculative excuse for the average man to wield power, or fix his life, or have wacky time-related deaths-by-paradox. Primer is an injection of adrenaline in a long-atrophied muscle.

After a dark sign of things to come in the form of a gruff voice over coming in on the receiving end of a telephone line, Primer showers us all in a technobabble bath, one that doesn't actually stop until the movie ends. Nearest I can tell, most of the technobabble in the first 15 minutes is useless to the time travel element and functions only to establish that the two main characters and their friends test things in their garage and are attemtping to create something innovative and most importantly, profitable.

In what is perhaps unique to time travel films, there is nothing obviously wrong about the main characters' lives. They have well-paying jobs, one of them has a wife and a house, and they enjoy a steady social life outside of work. Once they stumble across the time travel formula, there's no real incentive to meddle with the continuum outside of 'Let's see what happens.'

At the risk of ruining the plot (the film is only 77 minutes long so any specific detail is dangerously close to spoling the entire thing), I will just say that 'Ho man do they ever see.' Er, 'What happens, that is.' Even Primer's trailer has to resort to being incredibly misleading in order to sidestep ruination.

Being totally in the dark to the film's nuances is part of the experience, or in my case, continuing experience. The issues in sound design and acting quality, largely due to the budget, are unfortunate but not totally damaging. I love it. Carruth has created a complex story that refuses to hold my hand or promise an easy solution. Good.

Review: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Darren Lynn Bousman is a goddamn cunt and I hope the guy from Buffy fucks him to death.

Whoa. I'd better start over.

I DO NOT LIKE DARREN LYNN BOUSMAN'S FILMS BECAUSE I DO NOT THINK HE IS A GOOD DIRECTOR.

There we go.

Thankfully, after somebody told him that he was the Joel Schumacher of the Saw franchise (and left it in the hands of probably somebody worse, I don't know), he decided to pursue other projects. Bousman's first choice was an off-Broadway opera (operetta?) where, if the movie is anything like the stage production, every lyric of dialogue is belted out in the same monotonous rhyme pattern and features lines like "Cursed by my genetics!!!" Did she mean genes?

What snagged me and near-filled me to the brim with hope is the plot: In a future where organ failure is an apparent constant concern due to pollution (message), healthy organs from the GeneCo are a recession-proof addition to the market. Payment plans are available for those with low-income, but if you miss a payment, they send the Repo Man to cut you the fuck open and reappropriate the liver, the lungs, penis and what-have-you.

It sounded radical! But Bousman's involvement in directorial capacity still incited some concerns; he's a child throwing dark watercolors at a canvas in a way that SORTA KINDA MAYBE looks like it would work when fitted into the full landscape. "Who cares though, just get the smoke in there and light it with some flourescents and we'll fix it later even though we probably can't. Put it on the fridge, ma." He can't even imitate a directorial style, so how in the name of Barny Juno can he carry his own film?

Answer: He can't, and probably never will.

The rigid driving force of any musical, follow me, is the music. Characters can monologue and converse and lament about how they are cursed by an entire scientific field -- it is all accepted if the music is adequate, better if it is good, best if the scenes themselves aren't treated like they are set to rules in actual theatres. Since Repo! fails effectively at all three, there is little that can be reappropriated. (And I read somewhere that Bousman did direct some Repo! stage performances... really?!)

The plot is pure convoluted Shakespearian tragedy that has been obsolete for a very long time, so very fucking long, I'm not kidding, I fucking mean it. If every character has to die, surely there are ways that aren't caused by LACK OF COMMUNICATION and INCESSANT BITCHING. I really do want to care about these people, and if they all deserve it, you're wasting my fucking time.

If not the story, the characters, the directing or the music, what then? ... Violence? Sure, who doesn't like violence. The thing is, gore with Bousman is plentiful, but never effective. Any makeup artist worth half his weight in Geldons can get the blood the correct color and skin the correct consistency, but if you treat these gifts like a chew toy, it will not come across. Violence is an involved and intimate practice, and in a film where the main character is opening people up and stealing vital components of their continued existence, often while they are still conscious, it should hurt to watch. Even in hyper-reality I can extend some empathy if the movie obeys its theme. Something that rips off Phantom of the Opera so heavily in that department, I should feel guilt directly after sympathising with the Repo Man. I do not.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a masters course on what not to be, how not to act, and better than Bryan Singer could have ever taught you, how to not make a good film.

4.0/10