robotech Reviews

Ozarks: Legacy & Legend (1995)

A little hokey, very Christian, but a real treat if that doesn't turn you off

[8/10 · 21 January 2012]

I come from a family that has been a long time in the Ozarks, and indeed took part in a locally-renowned blood feud about a century ago. The history of the Ozarks is a part of my heritage, and as such a movie about it will strike a strong chord with me.

(As an interesting side note, a brief scene in the film was shot at a small one-room schoolhouse owned by my family, dressed up to look like a church.)

The story of this movie is, let's be fair, a little hokey. It partakes of a number of time-honored clichés about the Ozarks, the Civil War, and hillbillies. The actors do a good job with the material, though, especially the child actors who are quite believable in their roles.

It is also strongly steeped in good old-fashioned down-home Fundamentalist Christianity (of the strong and devout religious belief in daily life sort, not the intolerance of anyone who believes differently sort). It even concludes with a depiction of a very-well- known Christian poem. I enjoyed this aspect of it very much, though it could conceivably turn off those who feel less kindly toward Christianity—and anyway, it's only in keeping with the beliefs of those individuals it depicts.

But when you get right down to it, the plot is really just an excuse for spectacle here—it forms the framework that lets them put Civil War battles, gorgeous Ozarks scenery, folk music, caverns, scuba-diving, a car chase, and an airplane flight over forests bursting with autumn color on a screen the size of a six story building.

The cinematography is amazing, and it's more than worth seeing at least once in the Branson IMAX theater just to immerse yourself in the spectacle—especially if you're from the Ozarks as I am and take justifiable pride in your native land. The airplane flight sequence alone is worth the price of admission to see on that huge of a screen.

The movie is also available on a $25 DVD sold at the Branson IMAX. And while it makes a great souvenir for people who enjoyed the movie, seeing it for the first time on this disc could be a less than optimal experience given that the picture quality really suffers in the translation.

Big Time Operators (1957)

Interesting for its historical perspective as well as entertaining

[8/10 · 24 December 2007]

I won't re-say everything that the people who've written comments about the film have already said. It's quite a delightful little film. It's easy for modern audiences to imagine that nothing in black and white could be remotely as funny as any modern film, but after the movie hits its stride the laughs come fast and furious.

The one major flaw is that apart from being "morally dubious," the ending smacks of deus ex machina. The film could and should have gone on for another thirty minutes to bring the contention between the two theaters to a more believable conclusion. It's as if the writers suddenly realized they only had about five minutes left of a strict time limit and grabbed at the first straw they could find to wrap it up. But that shouldn't detract from all of the movie BUT the ending, which is a perfectly delightful little comedy.

The thing that interests me the most is the historical perspective the movie offers on the era in which it is set. Modern filmgoers might be surprised to see how narrow and small the Bijou's screen is, compared to modern theaters'. It's a 1.33:1 screen, 4:3 like "full-frame" TV sets. That's how the size of television screens was set, in fact; the same as movie theaters of the day.

The problem was that people who got televisions were getting in the habit of staying home with the tube rather than going out to the cinema and having to put up with the crowds; in fact, television is specifically mentioned in Smallest Show as being a reason for the decline of business at the Bijou. (Funny how history is repeating itself in this era of the DVD player and home theater.) So, the film industry was looking at doing whatever they could to get butts back in seats.

One of those things was cinemascope—or what we would call "widescreen." It is mentioned here in this film, in passing; when the married couple and their lawyer are putting on that conversation for the benefit of the eavesdropper, one of the things they suggest doing is upgrading to cinemascope. The studios hoped that by showing their audience a wider picture than TVs could, they would entice people back to the theater. (They probably did not anticipate all the contention this would eventually cause when widescreen movies were shown on TV-compatible formats, with some people complaining about part of the picture being chopped away and others complaining about black bars on their screen.) Color movies were another such innovation, and so was 3D.

But amusingly, and probably unintentionally, Smallest Show also hits upon some of the other things filmmakers tried—most notably William Castle. Castle was famous for enhancing the experiences of his films with gimmicks to make the audience feel like they were "participating" in the film—wiring up theater seats with joy buzzers, flying skeletons over the audience, and so on. If he COULD have shaken the entire theater when a train pulled in on screen, he probably would have. (Although, come to think of it, the Sensurround system a decade later would do more or less exactly that.) And turning up the heat during desert movies would probably have been right up his alley, too—though in his case, cashing in with cold drink sales would probably have been an afterthought.

Homemade Hillbilly Jam (2005)

Excellent music; so-so documentary

[6/10 · 29 August 2006]

I have been a fan of Big Smith's music for a while; I originally got started listening out of curiosity because I knew that my family and the Bilyeu family had been in a blood feud about a hundred years ago, and I found Big Smith's live concert recordings which had been made available through archive.org's eTree concert-tapes archive. I found I greatly enjoyed their music. Unlike the pasteurized, homogenized stuff that passes for country music these days, Big Smith plays the real, old-folksy stuff. It's music with heart.

I just got finished watching Homemade Hillbilly Jam at the Moxie, the local art theater in Springfield, Missouri--Big Smith's hometown. (After the show, Big Smith themselves came out, answered questions, and played a few songs for the sold-out audience.) I did enjoy the movie, for the chance to see and hear Big Smith performing, but I felt that as a documentary it really could have used a better narrative structure. In the end I'm not sure I really learned all that much about Big Smith beyond that they're hillbillies (or "neo-hillbillies"), have a strong religious and family life, and sing some darned good music. I would have liked to hear more about how they got started performing together, what their musical influences are beyond the folk and gospel music that was a part of their upbringing, and what their overall career has been like.

It's a great film for Big Smith fans. I'm just not sure how much non-fans will get out of it.

Jericho (2000)

Decent flick...not really a Western, though

[14 January 2004]

I saw this movie in a theater, with a Q&A by the director, in Springfield, MO, which is one of the places the director calls home and where one of the actors (Woody P. Snow, a local radio DJ) is from. It was a decent movie for its essentially shoe-string budget. Not really what you'd call a Western...it's more of a character study or psychological drama that dresses itself in Western trappings. (Sort of like how "Little House on the Prairie" was set in the west without having the constant gunfights and things that you associate with a Western.) It also had a few problems with the pacing, particularly toward the end where it suddenly and without warning drops into a 15-minute flashback. Had a few interesting ideas in it, though...particularly in regard to how what you think you see at the beginning isn't what you really see at all.

Equilibrium (2002)

Excellent movie!

[10/10 · 6 March 2003]

So what if it's essentially <i>Farenheit 451</i> meets <i>1984</i> with a dash of <i>Matrix</i> for spice? And so what if it's not as action-intensive as your average Ahnold movie? In my mind, it's the execution that matters, and I've been trained by Hong Kong action films to expect a bit of melodrama with my gunplay. As far as I'm concerned, <i>Equilibrium</i> is one of the greatest movies to come out of Hollywood or anywhere else in the last couple of years. In fact, judging from the content of the action, melodrama, and so on, I would call it the closest thing to a Hong Kong flick ever to be produced outside of Hong Kong. It seems about on a par with the <i>Heroic Trio</i> films to me.

The Bat (1959)

Very suspenseful...quite good for its day

[8/10 · 15 January 2003]

Some people don't like to watch anything that's not in color...they don't know what they're missing. Some people look down at anything made in the fifties or sixties as hopelessly hokey...and they don't know what they're missing either. The Bat is a taut, suspenseful story, and one which proves gore isn't strictly necessary in order to be frightening. Agnes Moorhead shows plenty of spunk, and the great Vincent Price steals every scene in which he appears.

The cinematography of this film is excellent...note the use of dark shadows to conceal and hide peoples' identities, just as the dark mask hides the Bat's face. Jump out of your skin as that eerily-clawed hand appears in frame for the first time. Ignore the truly awful fake-looking bat that appears for a few seconds. No movie's perfect.

And play the adult version of the "Scooby Doo" mystery game...where you try to figure out who are the red herrings and who is the real murderer. It's probably not who you think it is.

The Code (2001)

Not much that "geeks" don't already know, but still worthy

[6 August 2002]

This film, originally made as a documentary for Finnish television, is currently floating around on the giFT peer to peer network--a network which is largely restricted to Linux users, so it is unsurprising that it can be downloaded from over a dozen different people there.

Through this film, Linux is traced from its early days as a hobby project of Linus Torvalds's, through its rapid rise in popularity and number of users, to the dot-com boom and bust, and beyond. The differing ideologies of Richard "GNU" Stallman and Eric "Open Source" Raymond are also explored. Anybody who has been following Linux for very long, reading websites like Slashdot and Eric Raymond's "Cathedral and the Bazaar" essay will probably already know most this. However, for those people, the film does offer a chance to see and hear these Linux icons talk--putting faces and voices to people who might otherwise have been just words on a screen.

Despite its Finnish origin, most of this documentary is in English--either the naturally-spoken English of most of the Linux personalities, or a heavily-accented voiceover narrator--with Finnish subtitles. Only a few of the interviewees (Linus Torvalds's parents, employees of Chinese Linux corporations) are untranslated (since, after all, the show was originally aimed at Finns).

The 7th Portal (2000– )

Cheesy, yet Strangely Appealing

[2 February 2001]

At least Stan Lee is still out there trying new things.

Or, perhaps, it would be more apt to say that at least Stan Lee is still out there.

Either way, this sprightly old man has jumped into the Internet revolution with both feet, and this is the first fruit of his labor. It has its good and its bad aspects. Let's hit the bad first.

Seventh Portal is one of the cheesiest cartoons you're ever likely to see--bar none. It is cheesy in ways that only comic books can be. We are talking pure, premium, unadulterated, 100%-genuine dairy LIMBURGER, here. It's full of hackneyed cliches that could cause even non-comic-book readers to go, "Oh, no, not ANOTHER one." The storyline of "kids get sucked into computer and turned into superheroes" has been done so many times before, as has the "alternate world ruled by evil warlord with funky name and rebellious daughter, who wants to conquer earth" one. And some of the character names are even worse--since most of the good ones have been taken already, they had to resort to variant spellings of names (e.g. "Izayus") or flatly ridiculous handles (like "Conjure Man" for their clone of Mandrake the Magician. I mean, really. Does he do whatever a conjure can?). Also bad is the annoying framework for each episode, where about 1/4 of the running time is taken up by opening credits and an annoying "in our last episode" flashback, and the way each episode is really short.

But on the good side, the production values are pretty good--thanks to the magic of Shockwave, the show comes off as better-animated than many Saturday morning cartoons. And the character designs are pure classic 60s comic book style--which means that gravity must work in strange ways on these worlds, at least for the female gender. The plot, comic-bookish as it is (which means that both heroes and villains have to make some stupid mistake with alarming regularity), does grab the interest. The interaction between the characters has some good chemistry, and if Internet terminology is occasionally used in the wrong ways, well, at least they're trying. Watching the show costs only time, and the return on the investment is worth it.

What Stan Lee is really doing here, more or less, is reviving the concept of the "serial"--you know, the short films they showed back in the day to keep people coming to movies week after week. It seems to be working--even if it's a trifle cheesy, I know I'LL be tuning in for the next episode.

The Matrix (1999)

Why So "Groundbreaking"? It had STYLE!

[21 January 2001]

Perhaps the Matrix was not the all-time greatest movie ever made. Perhaps the acting was not the best. Perhaps the philosophy was not the best. But darn, did that movie ever have *style*. Yes, it borrowed from anime; it borrowed from Hong Kong action; it borrowed from cyberpunk. But there *is* nothing new under the sun, and almost everything borrows from something else these days. What matters is how seamlessly the movie tied the whole thing together. It couldn't please everyone, of course--what movie can?--but almost every element in the film worked to build a cohesive mise-en-scene that grabbed willing viewers by the throat and *yanked* them into its world. It was completely internally consistent. Upon reviewings, even little things made sense. It had good music, good action--and it created a dinstinctive atmosphere unique to itself, in the way that only truly great films (such as Star Wars) have managed to.

The Matrix more or less revitalized and renewed the cyberpunk genre, which Keanu's prior cyberpunk attempt (Johnny Mnemonic) had apparently proven dead in the water--much the same as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is doing for the martial arts film genre after a tired string of Jackie Chan and Jet Li imports that have flopped more often than not. And *that* is why so many people hold it in such awe.

The Final Days (2000)

Clinton's one redeeming characteristic...

[10/10 · 29 December 2000]

...is that he has a sense of humor, and isn't above poking a little fun about himself. This little gem of a short film was made for a White House press dinner, and really does star President Clinton--not a celebrity impersonator. Not to be missed!

Armitage III: Poly-Matrix (1996 Video)

Exciting, thoughtful...but a bit confusing

[8/10 · 4 April 2000]

Having seen both the 4-episode OAV version of Armitage III and the Armitage III Polymatrix DVD, I note some interesting differences between the versions. Particularly interesting is the fact that the Polymatrix cinematic movie version was done _only_ in English, and subsequently subtitled for Japanese viewing--that's how the Japanese wanted it. There is no corresponding subtitled version of Polymatrix; it's an English-only film.

Polymatrix alters the storyline of the OAV series slightly, cutting a few scenes and adding a bit of new animation. It also adds two new voice actors, replacing the OAV dub cast: Kiefer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkley as the two leads. For the most part, these cuts are acceptable; they improve the pacing of the movie at the cost of some additional story and characterization. While I was watching, I hardly missed what was cut. (For those who are concerned with seeing the whole story, the four OAV episodes should be viewed, preferably in the subtitled versions.) The ending is also changed slightly, and seems to me to make more sense in this version.

The storyline of Armitage III is set on a colonized Mars, and concerns itself with a new third generation of robots ("Thirds") that can actually think and create. A madman by the name of Renee D'anclaude has found out about these Thirds and is going around killing them. What is less clear, and somewhat confusing even when it is explained late in the movie, is _why_. It took repeated viewings of the OAVs, then finally the movie itself, for me to figure out the full political motivations behind the murders--and why it was that the Thirds stood in the way of an important political treaty between Earth and Mars.

Although Armitage III becomes somewhat confusing in the last twenty minutes, it nonetheless is an interesting and thought-provoking movie that should not be missed.

Time Masters (1982)

It Ended in the Middle of the Movie

[4/10 · 1 April 2000]

Time Masters, which I saw in an English dub, was a truly wonderful and exciting movie for the first fifty-five minutes. Excitement built and quite a few fascinating concepts were played with. But just as it looked like we were starting to get to the really good part...the mother of all Deus Ex Machinae occurred, everything changed, and the movie was over almost before you even had time to blink. I felt cheated out of the time I'd put into watching the movie.

If it had simply been a bad movie, that would have been one thing. But to have been a good and exciting movie until the very last five minutes, with no indication whatsoever that it was about to end until it _did_...that really hurt.

Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming (1999)

Only a Trailer...but WHAT A TRAILER!

[9/10 · 20 February 2000]

So far, BSG: The Second Coming exists only as a trailer that Richard Hatch and Fred Stauffer take to conventions with them--as they did for VisionCon this weekend. Although it was produced on a shoestring budget, with volunteer labor, and financed by Richard Hatch's credit cards, the trailer is a sleek, professional-looking presentation with incredible CGI and good acting by old and new cast alike. Thrill to the new Scarlet-class Vipers! Shiver when the new Cylon baseships "unscrew" into their dual-disc shape! Stand and applaud madly when it ends!

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

Star Wars Lite--but still Star Wars!

[8/10 · 19 May 1999]

This is very much a Star Wars movie. It has the same feel to it, the same atmosphere. After sixteen years, that's a remarkable accomplishment.

The FX are top-notch, the acting isn't bad, the story is so-so--and that's the main way Phantom Menace falls down. Where Episode IV was a complete and completely satisfying story in and of itself, Episode I is of necessity a prelude, a setup for what is yet to come. Which means the story is a bit shallow, and characterization likewise, because it has to introduce everyone and everything and set things up for parts 2 and 3. When all is said and done, this will probably be recognized as the weakest of all the Star Wars movies.

And yet, it's still a Star Wars movie. It still has the power to take you away, back to your childhood when you saw the originals for the first time. Watch it and reminisce, and don't expect too much and you won't be too disappointed.