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Mad Max 2 (1981)
A solid "12" rating on the 10 scale
"The Road Warrior" (Mad Max 2's original American distribution title) is in one of those genres not normally nominated for prestigious accolades of the type festooned upon more snooty fare, let alone expected to win any. So when one does (and this one did, to the tune of six Saturns, with one win), you can believe that it's much better than your standard drama dreck decked with Academy Awards.
Firstly, "The Road Warrior" does not suffer any of the grating afflictions of the modern (from say, circa mid-1990s onward) era: flagrantly incongruous quota-casting, shaky-cam, lack of ensemble interplay due to actors not being in the same location (hence stand-ins in dialogue scenes being ubiquitously shot-from-behind so we can't see two faces simultaneously), eardrum-bursting subwoofer blares interspersed with "whisper-speak", bad CGI, and god-awful incessant camera movement (especially those detestable "snail" tracking-shots in quiet scenes, which are a permanent viral infestation upon two decades of filmmaking by the date of this review).
Made at the apex of the early-1980s high-water mark of cinema, almost every scene is a unique gem of cinematography, set, prop, and wardrobe design. It is among the most-carefully cast films I've ever seen, I assert without hyperbole, and everyone is ably handled by a director not adverse to reshooting his disparate menagerie until they have at last interleaved their lines and movements without error.
All involved were unknown outside if Australia at the time, and, aside from Mel Gibson, most remain so. This was for the good here, as it is a regrettable aspect of stagecraft that, upon achieving fame, actors immediately season into incurable pink, clove-studded hams by dint of being to flex contractual muscle in new projects as well as overpower less-than-alpha directors. What do I mean by "ham"? Take William Shatner of Star Trek (in)fame(y), whose smirking, cock-sure face figuratively graces the third sense of the definition for "ham" in the dictionaries. But can you just guess who was the first, archetypal ham who made the mold for Shatner to occupy? Why, the one and only Orson Wells himself, in "Citizen Kane" no less! Yes, *that* "Citizen Kane", near-universally regarded as the best film ever made, and high exemplar of the sort of haughty tripe that sophisticated and cultured snobs can throw their support behind without worrying loss of social standing should it ever come to light that they ever once stooped to the gauche, gladiatorial entertainment of desperate men astride snarling machines. But you cannot watch "Citizen Kane" without being constantly reminded of an overbearing Orson Wells bearing down on you. --Hamming can work if the whole point of the picture is to showcase charisma rather than tell a story (e.g., the lengthy string of similarly-titled Bing Crosby and Bob Hope collaboration comedies), but it poisons straight fiction requiring immersion. "The Road Warrior", by virtue of its fresh faces, avoids this entirely, not to mention that the youthful and dour-depicted Max isn't a ready analog to Gibson's later, over-to-top eye-bulging in "Lethal Weapon" onward -- it's easily possible to assume, in a state of ignorance, that they are not the same actor. ("The Road Warrior" sequel "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" is not quite as pristine, although it remains very enjoyable. "Fury Road", the fourth and by far the most flaccid, try-hard film of the franchise, possesses none of the cast of the original trilogy, and the reboot suffocates under the weight of anachronistic, smuggled-in contemporary narratives, and less cohesive overall filmmaking in general. If your opening shot is of a charmless Tom Hardy urinating, you're doing it all wrong.)
~ ~ ~
"The Road Warrior"'s bleak setting is one of harsh abidance to brutal realities: There are no roundhouse-kicking ninja slasher-girls here, as a cold appreciation of fast-twitch muscle-fiber ferocity is immediately evident from the first scene. This is fiction, but decidedly not fantasy. The landscape is the definitive post-apocalyptic wasteland, and it has no place for even the least of weaknesses save behind the walls of fortified bunkers: The viewer is given a brief glimpse of tolerated insanity in the second act, and rightly recoils as if confronting a deadly disease.
What is taught in the pitiless, Darwinian landscape of "The Road Warrior"? We learn how a nucleus of civilization survives amidst depravity; that it requires guile, the wisdom to reject the temptation of the "easy", and the determined bravery of those who undertake the risks of struggle over submission.
~ ~ ~
My favorite scenes are all quite short, and each involves depictions of decision-making. In the first, Max has bartered for fuel to bring back a semi tractor-trailer, has secured it, and is set to return to the camp. He stops briefly on the empty road, seeming to weigh his options. He has bluffed his way out the camp (which holds his previous vehicle) but now he has another, with fuel to go. He knows where the raiders are and could avoid them if he so chose, leaving behind a bloody stand-off he wants no part of. -- Is important to realize that Max is not a selfless "knight in shining armor" who'll needlessly sacrifice himself for an altruistic good. Does his conscious nag him? Perhaps a little, but not excessively so; he is after all a survivor in the wasteland. But he knows that running is also wanting: How far could he really get in a big-rig on only fifteen gallons, before being on fumes again? ....much less far than in his car outfitted with two enormous supplemental fuel tanks, that is certain. Therefore, he will run the raider gauntlet to retrieve the car. He makes his decision, checks his weapon to assure that its shells are still there, nervously licks his lips, releases the clutch, and resumes his way back to the camp. Gibson's portrayal is appropriately apprehensive rather than superheroic. He talked the talk, and now he's gonna walk the walk he got himself into.
The second scene has "The Humungus" (the imposing leader of the raiders) retrieving a powerful, scoped, long-barreled revolver from its case; it is the apex weapon depicted in the film, and symbolic of lost, superior-craftsmanship technology. We see that he has only a half-dozen or so rounds of ammunition remaining. How many of these extremely precious bullets will he devote to the encounter? He selects just one to chamber. When it comes time to fire, he can choose only one of: targeting a driver hoping to kill him, or targeting the vehicle hoping to disable it.
The third scene is a brief bit of dialogue between Pappagallo, the leader of the refiners, and one of his subordinates: "You're letting him go! Well, let's keep his vehicle at least!", exhorts the underling, referring to Max, who has returned the semi and has had his car restored to him by Pappagallo per their agreement. "He fulfilled his contract; he's an honorable man," pensively replies Pappagallo, who has it fully within his capacity to renege and do as he determines best, and especially so because fuel is scare, and very soon quite finite indeed. But, he is a man of principle, and Max has proven that he is not raider "garbage". Pappagallo does not reveal his entire hand to Max, however, for there is one card whose importance secures the future of the entire settlement. It is a secret that Max does not need to know because he is not one of them, and hence it is not shared. --This context will not occur to the viewer until after he has completed the film, and likely not until he experiences the scene again in a subsequent viewing.
Less well-crafted films are absent these depictions of important decision-making, even though such scenes need occupy no more than a few seconds apiece, and hence they lack immersive verisimilitude.
~ ~ ~
Despite its heavy veneer of gratuitous gratification for fans of seemingly mindless action devoid of excess banter, "The Road Warrior" is an intricate and tightly-scripted film worthy of repeat viewing.
Lost in Space (2018)
Fun facts learned from watching "Lost in Space"
From the first four episodes....
1. A sizable body of water can freeze solid before a swimmer inches from the surface gets out, while characters above in an arctic environment headed toward -60 that night are conversing without their helmets on in temperatures warm enough that their breath isn't fogging.
2. A forest will grow thirty feet from the face of a glacier. This delicate vegetation is untouched by the tornadic gravel-cane that imperils our intrepid cast elsewhere.
3. Forests, glaciers, and scrub-desert can be found within two miles of each other.
4. Alien robots understand English, but will speak only three words.
5. In a mere thirty years, we will have interstellar-capable spacecraft whose furnishings and electronics remain intact and operational despite a day's immersion in water flooding the inside of the ship.
6. In these 2050s, chip-implants are the basis of security access, but fingerprint- and facial-recognition redundancy has been forgotten.
7. Flare gun kits come with only three flares despite room for a dozen more in the case, and flares costing like a dollar apiece, tops.
8. The airlock you're trapped inside will audibly count down the ten seconds until the outer door opens, evacuating you into a space (and a grisly death if you're not suited up), giving you plenty of time to abort...if only you could reach the controls on the other side of the door. Because there aren't controls on your side. Because space-station designers are thoroughgoing sadists who know these sorts of things are going to happen.
9. Precocious teenage girls know that a handful of salt will annoy the alien, fuel-eating eels swimming around in a flooded ship's hold. (The eels are eating a delicious hydrocarbon fuel because we're apparently still using those in spaceships. And because the hole in the hull that let the eels into the fuel doesn't just let all the fuel leak out of the ship.)
10. The mechanic will keep a pet chicken, because the producers have foreseen the need for someone in the cast to possess a smidgeon of charisma.
11. Oreos bind dysfunctional families together. Until they're gone, which is quickly.
12. Toby Stephens was so desperate for work after the conclusion of "Black Sails" that he agreed to a part whose script called for him to portray a cucked moron subservient to his domineering almost-ex and disobedient children. He gets less respect than Rodney Dangerfield.
13. If your wife slept with the MADtv UBS delivery-guy, you'll raise his kid as your own.
14. Communications employ old-style corded-wire hand-sets because those looked so cool in the "Battlestar Galactica" reboot, which had them for rational reasons as the Cylons could eavesdrop on WiFi.
15. When what you really should have on hand is a big, strong male to do a man's job shoving that heavy metal cylinder home in the engine-bay, it's a good thing there's another girl available when you need her there to demonstrate that you don't need no man after all. Estrogen-bonding FTW!
16. Jupiter landing craft share the same quality suspension parts as a 1999 Chrysler minivan.
17. A planet whose orbiting satellite is either so close or so large that its diameter is about twenty times Earth's moon won't be constantly subjected to magnitude-11 earthquakes and ocean tides oversweeping its continents.
18. Will Robinson is the only teenage boy in the universe hesitant to accept the gun that his pet robot 3D-printed for him. --Printed on the ship's 3D-printer despite weapon schematics being off-limits to everyone, including his father, the ship's captain. Lucky password guess?
19. Due to budgetary constraints, the show will now be named "Lost in British Columbia" for the rest of the season.
20. When you need your robot to push a 100-ton boulder out of the way, there's nothing it can't do when the ground it's standing on provides 100 tons worth of traction. Despite this apparent fortitude, it will later come apart at the seams during a fifty-foot fall.
21. The mechanic is the most gregarious and winsome person in a parsec. Naturally, he will be treated like sheep-dip by cast regulars whom we'd rather see less of. Much less of.
22. Communications take thirty minutes to come back on after a trivial, non-worrisome power-spike of the sort that can be caused by a boy deliberately flipping a circuit-breaker.
23. It's OK, Will; I understand perfectly: I would love your amnestic alien murderbot (concept *totally* stolen from "The Iron Giant") more than the rest of your family too. In fact, I would also run away from them with it on an uncharted planet with just a backpack full of supplies, because adventure-bound like Alby Mangels.
24. Claps make the flowers open, roars make them close. Evolutionary reason unknown (do clappers pollinate?)
25. You can save serious couch-change on monster CGI by having a couple guys run through foliage under a tarp in the distance.
26. Predator-cam is shaky-cam.
27. Robots understand all manner of danger that could potentially face Will Robinson, except for that posed by gravity while balancing on a tree trunk dropped across a bottomless chasm.
28. According to children mistrustful of adults, the amnestic alien murderbot needs to "remain our little secret", and they are actually capable of persuading others of this.
29. A hungry monster scared away won't eat a straggler sneaking along a few minutes later, alone at night. (Granted, the doctor stole a gun...but the monster wouldn't know that.)
30. Solar-powered electric-battery cars are just as big of pieces of crap in the future as they are today! (Maybe you didn't need to run all ten headlights at night?)
31. "He" is just a pronoun. It's no big deal, really. Why you so triggered?
The Orville: The Road Not Taken (2019)
Should have been a cliff-hanger
There are few things more quintessentially sci-fi than an alternate-history paradox in which the writers reward the fans' knowledge previous entrees in the franchise, all the while keeping any plotholes well below the level of immediately obvious.
I would have liked to see a little more of this timeline, and think the production team missed a golden opportunity to build a cliffhanger around it.
Elementary: Fit to Be Tied (2018)
The writers took a lunch-break, and it showed.
A short list of credulity-defying things we learned in this episode:
1) The writers assumed that 2018 audiences would be interested in hearing Sherlock relay propaganda regarding 45 year-old South American events.
2) A shrewd legal professional in the age of ubiquitous surveillance decided that committing murder and framing an at-large serial-killer for the deed was their best means of dealing with an unfaithful spouse.
3) The villain blew his cool over a death that shouldn't unhinge him because he's been portrayed as a remorseless sociopath without a shred of emotion all season long.
4) Joan's smartphone, pepper-spray, taser, and kitchen cutlery all went AWOL right when she needed them.
5) It's a good thing that aircraft propellers are honed to scalpel sharpness just like they are the movies!
6) The FBI assumes that a person that they know has two broken ribs retains the fortitude to beat someone bigger than they are to death and then to drag them to the dump.
7) Jonny Lee Miller has become quite adept at sleepwalking through "dud" episodes without most of us noticing.
Rating: 4 stars, because even a lousy episode of "Elementary" remains better than 90% of television.
Westworld: Kiksuya (2018)
Far and away the best episode of the series so far
"Kiksuya" should win an Emmy, if only they knew how to hand those out anymore. Like all great works, it's a complete stand-alone that comes out of left field, totally unexpected.
You can watch it cold, without knowing a thing about the series it is set within, and it's arguably a better introduction than the first episode.
Star Trek: New Voyages: Blood and Fire: Part One (2008)
Boldly going where this fan doesn't give a damn
After a passably entertaining preceding episode, "World Enough and Time", featuring fan-favorite (and famously gay) George Takei dressed like Mongol barbarian, the two-parter "Blood and Fire" flogs flaccid all the reasons why this early example of an "SJW" smuggled-narratives script was prudently rejected during the ST:TNG run when it was offered then.
This is "Star Trek". It's a science-fiction show with spaceships and laser-battles, not "Days of Our Lives"-meets-"The Crying Game". --If you don't know that, you're making stuff for the wrong audience. (The episode goes into "creature feature" mode about five before the end, and really: you could skip straight to that point...or just watch the "recap" preceding Part Two, and not miss one thing.)
Justice League: War (2014)
I am convinced that DC Animation is now run by complete idiots
Comparison: go to YouTube and look for clips of the following: "Oban Star-Racers" (a series debuting around 2002), "On Leather Wings" (Pilot episode of Batman the Animated Series from 1990), and lastly, any trailers or clips from this show. -- Right away, you'll realize just how mediocre the animation is in this, because not only is the ten year old CGI of Oban better, but so is the hand-drawn material of a quarter-century ago.
And that's the high point of this review; because up next is the dreadful script, which, besides needlessly attempting to reboot "introductions" of a half-dozen meal-ticket characters simultaneously, has nearly the entire cast bickering like smart-mouth ten year olds dropping "douchebags" and "sonofabitches" among other PG-unfunny rated language which somebody at the producer level presumably thought was necessary for reasons I can't fathom. With the exception of Batman and Flash, everyone is in Full-Retard mode full-time. Darkseid possesses none of the sinister charismatic malevolence or intelligence of his 90s television counterpart. Meanwhile, the violence factor isn't upgraded past what could be shown on television, so sanguinary adult fans hoping to wallow in gore will be disappointed. There isn't much in the way of war in this "war" title.
-- Did DC for an instant stop to consider who their target audience is? The non-existent preteen market the brain-dead dialogue is in line with obviously isn't going to buy it; and adult fans weaned on the "Diniverse" aren't going to reward drivel with money. Look, guys; I can sympathize with the situation you're in with massive market fragmentation, but when your entire archive of 90s series is still waiting for a long-overdue remastering to 1080p Blu-Ray, why are you wasting any time and money at all producing bottom-of-the-barrel dreck like this?
Ben 10: Omniverse (2012)
From awesome to awful.
If, as a fan of Ben-10, you were hoping for a solid advance in the Ben 10/Alien/Ultimate franchise...you're not getting it. This is more of a reboot than a continuation; and aimed squarely at brain-dead elementary kids (and intending to keep them that way).
To start with, the animation and drawing-style are noticeably inferior to previous iterations of the series. Ben has gigantic eyes and a cartoonishly large head now -- in fact all the characters look ridiculous. While thankfully retaining the same voice-cast, the show has obviously been done on the cheap; and intelligently-written dialogue is a thing of the past.
Gwen and Kevin are now gone....and this a major mistake. Gwen locked in a girl audience to the series, and her character provided a needed reality-oriented anchor to Ben's perpetual temptation toward zany idiocy.
Last but not least: the theme music is atrocious (whereas the theme of the original show is perhaps one of the most fondly-remembered of any animated series); simply hearing a few seconds of it is enough to have you scrambling for the remote.
Prediction (made halfway through the first season): Omniverse will kill the franchise, and it'll be canceled before its full run.
The Green Hornet (2011)
Pleasantly enjoyable, but watch the TV series first.
First things first: if you are expecting a Marvel blockbuster or DC A-list superhero caliber Hollywood treatment simply because The Green Hornet wears a mask, uhm, dispel that notion right now or you're not going to have any fun at all. Think more along the lines of 1999's Mystery Men, and expect some cringe-worthy scenes.
-- "The Green Hornet" is a B-movie, as is befitting of a grade-B TV series canceled after only one season for being, uh, let's be charitable and only label it mediocre. The TV-show being saddled with a theme (media mogul by day, masked crusader by night) which precedes both the Clark Kent/Superman and Bruce Wayne/Batman alter-egos but which to the layman errantly appears to rip them off doesn't help (Britt's paper having a reporter who has a hate-on for the Hornet is similar to the often-seen Spiderman-cast-as-villain theme).
In other words, the existing radio/TV material was difficult to work with in that it couldn't be played straight without retreading very familiar ground.
I'd like the think that that the reason the film project remained in development hell so long is that everyone came to realize this after more than a moment's familiarity, and one that note, everyone should be thanking Seth Green that anything eventually saw the light of day at all. What he released was hammy to be sure; but it could have been worse. Much worse. At least you're not going to have to worry about listening to a bunch of tendentious philosophical mumbo-jumbo spouted by invulnerable juggernauts plodding their way through Deus ex Mechina confrontations (*cough* pick an X-Men movie *cough*). -- And there aren't any mad scientists dressing up as space-aliens in this (the TV series-killing season-ender stinker episodes), so there's that to look forward to.
While Seth's "stupid white boy" antics are predictably over-the-top, I ask you: who didn't know that going in? (It would have been more fun for me if Brett had been the car genius, however; and had, say, a time-served tour-of-duty overseas which would at least attempt to explain the plot hole of how these two espresso-sipping civilians manage to acquire military-grade heavy machineguns and rockets.) Chou was perfect in his role; the scene with him improbably drowning in the pool reined in (and spoofed) the incipient "omnipotent Asian sidekick" meme which had been previously building up. Unlike the original Bruce Lee, he can actually act his way out of a paper bag during dialogue scenes, and has a sense of humility absent in the martial-artists ubiquitously considered for the Kato role. (The film, I think, missed an opportunity to present Seth's portrayal of the Hornet as a man a little more capable in physical combat, at least in the sense of being able to, if not dish out, at least take punishment more effectively, a la inebriated Viking ancestor genes or some such.) The villain didn't do anything for me, but then they usually don't in these sorts of things.
Audience pleaser: a certain annoying and wholly unnecessary aspect-neigh-curse of modern civilization is blown to smithereens halfway through the film, and it'll have even you whooping in appreciation. Yes, even those of you who are steadfastly determined to hate everything else in the film while enjoy that scene.
Legion of Super Heroes (2006)
Lovingly-crafted and respectful of DCAU; simply wonderful - vote:10
With the cancellation of the "Teen Titans" and issuance of the hideously awful "Superman: Brainiac Attacks" simultaneously in 2006, I was sure I was witnessing the final end of the glorious reign of the intelligently-written and superbly-drawn and -scored sequence of DC superhero cartoons beginning in 1991 with Bruce Timm's Batman, and continuing on through the 1990s and 2000s with Superman, Batman Beyond, Static Shock, The Zeta Project, Justice League, and the "high anime" Titans. But just as I was about to curl up in a fetal position shaking from withdrawal, along comes the thoroughly delightful "Leagion of Super-Heroes" which pushes all the right buttons. From the look of especially the second episode, plots are going to be quite adventurous compared to the usually Earth-bound shows of the other series.
Animation style: I would describe the designs of the various characters as being between those of "New Batman" or Superman and those of the "Teen Titans", but closer to the former (and young Clark Kent wouldn't look at all out of place if he were appearing in a time-traveling episode of Justice League). ***There is NO "high anime" "mugging the camera" -- so "purists" and "fanboys" can take heart.*** The show appears to have a decent budget at least on par with Justice League (or a lesser one more frugally spent) to permit a good score and higher frame-rate polished-up animation which avoids any "only the lips are moving" or "clunky CGI" feelings. There's a noticeable amount of cheap "bouncing cut-outs" in the first episode (I'm guessing Ep1 is partly cobbled from recycled in-house promotional materials) -- but the second episode is a knock-out.
Target audience is children, but the writing isn't forcibly "dumbed-down" or insulting to the intelligence. If you're hoping to see blood or evil malevolences like Darkseid laying waste to the countryside with omega-beams, you can forget it -- but if you can put your "TV-14+ rating" preferences aside, you'll find you can have a good time on the couch alongside a grade-school kid. Rest-assured: Clark will get blasted, fried, squished, stomped into the concrete, you name it -- all in the very first episode. In short, whole lotta butt-whoopin' just the way there should be in a DC cartoon. The second episode demonstrates that, while red ink won't be overflowing the bathtubs, the series will be capable of creepy and mysterious scripts that'll definitely have little tykes freaked and cartoon-buff adults glued.
In my opinion, "Legion" is going to be a huge winner -- the creators have obviously done their homework.
Geek stuff: Care has been taken to not disrupt the "continuity" of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini "universe" by having the Legion "borrow" Clark Kent as a young man (big teenager?) prior to his even thinking of becoming Superman, and literally promise to bring him right back to the moment after they've left (hopefully after at least fifty episodes!) -- so nothing is "screwed up" by the basic premise. Nifty treat: The reason why Superman's cape is so indestructible may be finally answered. A continuity non-carryover I'm willing to put up with: Superman doesn't need a suit to survive in space.
Superman: Brainiac Attacks (2006)
A putrid piece of garbage
WHO STOLE BRAINIAC'S BRAIN? Well, folks; I hope you enjoyed the fifteen years between 1991 and 2006 with Bruce Timm's high standards of excellence in scripts and animation -- because the abysmally awful dialogue running through this moooovie is straight out of the worst of the 1970's Hanna-Barbarra lame-brain era.
How awfully bad is this movie? Lex Luther and Brainiac, evil geniuses extraordinaire, are reduced to smirking numbskulls uttering inane dialogue. -- I cannot fathom a *conscious* reason for this, either, since even "explanatory" dialogue (in which everyone always explains everything they're doing as they're doing it, so elementary school kiddies will "get it") needn't be as horrible as this.
Powers Booth? Lance Henrickson? -- I have an idea: Let's animate the corpse of Ted Knight, and let him read all the parts in the same lobotomized histrionics which put a fork in "Stupid Friends".
Everyone involved in production, writing and editing should be sentenced to the Agony Matrix: Direct neural stimulation of pain-receptors. All of them. Forever.
*Sigh*....back to anime for anything remotely engaging on television. Lord knows I won't get it from this, or Squidbillies, or any of the other stupefyingly rotten home-made junk the Cartoon Network is running now.