Reviews
Wing Commander (1999)
Danger, Will Robinson. Danger.
In the past, I've discussed such brilliant cinematic masterworks such as Street Fighter: The Movie and Mortal Kombat, extolling their fantastic innovation on the feature film medium. And with Wing Commander headed to the silver screen, I figured that we'd once again experience a sci-fi spectacle that would make us forget all about Episode I. After all, Wing Commander is a cool game.
Freddie `Ray from I Know What You Did Last Summer' Prinze plays Christopher Blair, a cocky up-and-coming fighter pilot. Despite his skills in the cockpit, nobody seems to like our hero because of his `pilgrim' heritage I guess they're all jealous of the cool pointy hat he gets to wear on Thanksgiving.
Blair's buddy, `Maniac,' is portrayed by Matthew `Emmanuel Goldstein from Hackers' Lillard. `Maniac' is a loose cannon who enjoys fancy aerospace maneuvers, hot-dogging, and having sex with his clothes on. Despite the `fine' `job' of `acting' that Lillard does, I just can't agree with this casting decision. After all, we all know that Maniac is really Biff from Back to the Future. Shame.
Anyway, the two of them accompanied by some Norwegian guy whose accent keeps changing are farting about in deep space, when they get a distress signal from a group of Terrans under attack by the Kilrathi. This is our heroes' cue to go aboard the TCS Tiger's Claw, and start vaporizing space scum in stupid-looking fighters that resemble stubby A-10 Warthogs.
Once on board the Tiger's Claw (which looks suspiciously like a submarine, complete with manual gauges and monochrome vector-based monitors), Blair delivers the distress signal, conveniently placed on a Sony brand Minidisc. Soon, we are introduced to Blair's new wing commander, Angel' Devereaux, who has what looks like an enormous pimple on her left cheek. We also meet up with Rosie, a female pilot who has sex with Maniac, and is promptly blown up by the Kilrathi. Oh yeah, there's also some guy called `Ubutu,' whose name served as a major source of amusement for the next half-hour of the movie. Ubutu! Ubutu!
After some flying-around-and-shooting-stuff action entirely presented from a cockpit perspective, the Terran troops board a Kilrathi cruiser. Instead of resembling the sorta-cool Muppets of Wing Commander III, the Kilrathi look like WWF wrestlers wearing Halloween masks; fortunately, the Kilrathi keep pumping fog into their ship, making it hard to see how silly they look. After the Terran commandos retrieve something that looks like a car battery from the murky depths of the ship, Blair does some pseudo-mushy scene with Angel, and almost gets sucked into space in a remarkably monotonous action sequence.
All of this leads up to a climax that's about as exciting as plunging a clogged toilet. After Blair beats the bad guys, he flies back to the Tiger's Claw, where everyone is cheering that the damn movie is finally over and they can finally go home.
Is there any reason you should go see Wing Commander? I think so. After all, your local theatre is probably air-conditioned, and the relative emptiness of any Wing Commander screening will allow you to bring along a laptop and catch up on your work. You can also eat tasty popcorn and mack on the girls working there. And when you're done, you can retreat to the lobby and play cool pinball games hell, you can even go to a clean, fully-stocked bathroom, should you feel the need!
Even though Wing Commander is an anachronism-laden celluloid turd, you'll walk away from the cinema realizing that even though a movie sucks, American theatre-going offers many unique conveniences. Now give me a sequel, dammit!
Ringmaster (1998)
An enormous steaming turd that should be avoided at all costs.
I love watching Jerry as much as the rest of the world, but this poor excuse for a soft-core porno flick is needlessly offensive, lacks anything resembling wit, and serves merely as a vehicle of self-promotion for Springer. Even though it runs a quick 90 minutes, the film drags hideously, and I should have had the common sense to walk out. Simply atrocious.