STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI.

Video game adaptations are known for being bad on the whole. The first Street Fighter film was no exception. Neither is this one. Honestly, I don’t even want to waste my time going into the plot details (partly because I’m still not sure what the plot was). But it stars Kristen Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Moon Bloodgood, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Liu Kang—I mean, Robin Shou.

The acting was awful from everybody, though Chris Klein needs to be punched in the face for the performance he gave. The script and all of its dialogue was atrocious, including the voice over. You know how they say not to do voice over in movies because it acts as a cop-out? A visual telling over showing? Well, I’ve never understood that (because I’ve always seen voice over done well) until now. Most of it was so completely unnecessary, and the film would have been better if they’d have shown the struggles or whatever it was that was being narrated instead of just saying it happened. The story was all over the place; hence me not bothering to give a plot summary.

There were also so many different illogical happenings, so many different things that just didn’t make sense. I don’t even know where to start listing things… from thick, plastic bathroom stall doors that shatter like glass to a white baby growing up in Chinese slums and ending up with an Irish accent. Or of how a girl can be raised in China (looking less and less Asian as she gets older) and end up speaking perfect English with no accent and also fails to comprehend Chinese characters on a scroll (of course it’s explained as ancient Chinese, but still). And then there’s how the police are able to figure out name and complete backgrounds of somebody who they only have a blurry picture of when most cops can’t identify murder victims that they have the actual bodies of. Not to mention one of said cops and said person in the blurry picture suddenly find one another randomly having had no previous contact and act as if they’re old buddies (which they aren’t). The list just goes on and on.

The only two redeeming values (and they aren’t very redeeming) are the action sequences and Kristen Kreuk’s incredible hotness. But the only action scene that’s more than 30 seconds seems to be the climax battle, which includes one of the cheesiest and most poorly done special effects I’ve seen in a long time. With current technology, there was no need for it to look as awful as it did. But still, the action sequences were still, while not the best I've ever seen, rather entertaining. But the best part of the movie was when Chun-Li goes into a club and seduces another woman. It lasts all of 30 seconds or so, but it’s hot. However, everything is soon ruined when you realize the song in the background (or at least the background song that follows it… I wasn’t paying that close attention to the music at the time) is an almost beat-for-beat rip-off of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II “Ninja rap.” Seriously, it’s like they put “Go ninja go ninja go!” on repeat, but then exchanged the words for “Street Fighter!” It was so cheesy and lame that it was nearly laughable.

By the time the movie was over, I was literally so embarrassed that I had actually watched this movie in public by myself (with the intent of enjoyment, not making fun of it) that I didn’t want the lights to come on as the credits began to roll. However, I very generously give it the following score simply based on what was mentioned in the previous paragraph. But that’s all I’m gonna say on the matter.

The Zed Word

Short Review: The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Premise: Closet homosexual and sociopath Tom Ripley gets a little too attached to a millionaire's son in Italy, leading to dangerous consequences.

Starring: Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

My Reaction: Stunning acting. Great writing. Astonishing camera work. Brilliant symbolic cinematography. However, a bit on the long side and dragged a bit in the first hour, as well as toward the end. But it had a great, powerful ending.


A Keanu 'Whoa'

THE READER.

I went into this movie with low expectations already. So when I say that it was bad, I really rather mean it. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) is a mysterious woman who ends up having an affair with a teenager named Michael Berg (David Kross) during one summer. She has him read to her constantly when they’re not having sex. A few years later, Michael is in law school and goes to witness a court case for his seminar. The court case, however, is to convict a group of ex-Nazi guards at Auschwitz for some of the murders that occurred there. Unfortunately for Michael, Hanna turns out to be one of the main people on trial. The movie also stars Ralph Fiennes as an older Michael.

The movie nearly made me fall asleep. I was yawning half the time, checking my watch the other half. I felt absolutely nothing for any of the characters. That’s not to say the acting was bad (except for the beginning, which was just stiff… no innuendo intended). Winslet actually did a bang-up job in her role. But I actually liked the professor of the law school seminar better. At least he was intriguing.

Otherwise, the whole thing was a mess. The whole movie was like one long string of montages. The first hour of the movie itself was nothing but just big one sex montage. Hopefully they give the Oscar to Kate Winslet’s breasts instead, because they had more screen time than any other part of her. And while normally I might not mind this… it just got to be too much. The first half of the movie was like high-budget, high-quality, softcore Cinemax porn. It didn’t give any time for character development (or even time to get to know the characters to begin with), which led to me not caring whatsoever about the characters. At the start of the relationship, right before their first sexual encounter, I started wondering if somebody based the script on some cheap erotica fiction from the internet… it was that random and coincidental. “Oh… you’re a dirty, dirty boy. Take off your clothes, and I’ll draw you a bath.” “Kay.” *bow chicka bow wow*

There was no focus on any scene for more than a minute. There was even one moment where they show him go home for about 20 seconds, and his family is all disgruntled with him, alluding to him having run away from home or something. But there was no way of knowing that before this point because the last 45 minutes had been a giant reading/sex montage.

The second half of the movie wasn’t much better about the massive montage sequences. That only died down a couple times toward the end, but that’s about it. I can seriously only remember maybe one major scene in the entire movie that lasted more than 2 minutes and stood on its own.

And of course there's the whole bit where the movie attempts to make us feel sorry for a character that we don't even like... and backfires quite a bit. The movie attempts to say that because she's naive, she's more innocent. I actually think that because she was so blase about the whole thing... that just makes her even worse. Which doesn't help when it comes back to the film trying to make the audience side with her... which just doesn't work.

I’m not sure what else to say about this film. I knew it had gotten a lot of so-so reviews, but I didn’t expect to dislike it as much as I did. All that said, there were a couple things I did like, the main of which I can’t say for spoiler reasons. And I suppose I can understand why it was Oscar-nominated. Although the holocaust topic probably helps, we all know the formula is Time Period Piece + Kate Winslet’s Boobs = Oscar Nomination. After all, it worked for Titanic.

The Zed Word

(P.S. The most entertaining parts to me was the old man behind me saying random stuff like "Where was she when I was 15?" and "I'd like Kate Winslet to give me a bath.").

What The F@#% Did I Just Watch?

Please allow me to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for this special news bulletin:


I just finished watching Feast 3: The Happy Finish. Feast was a masterpiece of horror/comedy. I wanted to like Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds, and I might have even given it a decent review, but in hindsight... no, it was pretty bad. But none of that could have prepared me for what I could expect in Feast 3.



Spoiler warning now, because I'm not gonna hold back (though I encourage you to read anyway and not waste your time with the actual film... plus, it might be more entertaining this way).



So the movie picks up right where the second left off. Honey Pie goes to stand up after being kinda killed... and then gets attacked by a monster. Her head gets ripped off. Then the monster eats her head. Then you see the camera go down the internal tubing. And then, I kid you not, the movie takes about 30 seconds to show the monster crap out her head.

Then we pick back up where the other characters left off. The guy who got a pipe blown through his lower jaw and into his brain is still alive, as is the Mexican wrestling midget who was inside a trashcan with dynamite when it exploded. They run and stuff until they break into the jail where they tried to get into the last movie and then beat the shit out of the hobo that had locked himself inside (literally... they beat him until he shits himself. And yes, one of the characters does make that joke in the movie).

So a bunch of other completely irrelevant stuff happens for another 20-30 minutes until one of the monsters butt-rapes a character through a hole in a shed... who immediately gets pregnant with a little monster and explodes.

Not long after that, they get stuck in a bus when a mentally handicapped guy in a cult-cloak that makes him look like he's late for a Dungeons and Dragons session shows up and apparently has some kind of control over the monsters (which you soon figure out how on your own in an incredibly easy fashion... though the other characters are morons and don't figure it out until later). The up side of this is that the guy is played by comedian Josh Blue (he was the comedian with multiple sclerosis from Last Comic Standing).

So Josh Blue takes them into the sewers where a character farts. Then, not too long after that, a sexy, topless, lesbian biker chick is killed by a crazy woman and her posse who are apparently cannibalistic and blood-crazy because a monster puked on them (which is NOT what happened in the first film). But then a young guy hops down out of nowhere and goes all karate on them with knives on his wrists, killing the attackers. He's Jean-Claude Seagal (no... seriously). But he eventually gets both his arms ripped off (which leads to the only good line in the movie, delivered by Bartender, the only character from the first movie left: "You don't need arms to kick ass.").

During their time in the sewer, they come upon a random zombie rave including strobe light and have a bizarrely confusing (though kind of interesting) fight scene where you have no idea what's going on, but it looks cool. To me, that was the only good part of the film... and it wasn't even that good. Oh, and another part where somebody puts a bullet inside the pipe that sticking out of the one guy's head and hits the pipe with a hammer, which causes it to react like a gun and shoot out the opposite end.

Eventually, the majority of the cast dies, and they get up to the street again in a bigger city and find a dirt bike. One of the dying characters takes a pretty much dead monster on the bike with her and rides off into the streets to distract the other monsters so the last remaining 3 can survive or something.

So the three, including Clu Gulager's character Bartender (who is at least in his 80s), walk out into the street. So then out of nowhere, Bartender is like "We need to repopulate the Earth! We need to do it now!" and he rips off his shirt. But then a giant robot leg comes out of nowhere and steps on the other two survivors, crushing him. Bartender walks away, and a Mexican mariachi dressed like Elvis walks on screen and serenades the audience during the credits by summarizing the last 3 movies.

Yeah, I didn't make any of that last part up. I swear. I've never stared, speechless, mouth agape, at a screen like that before, asking myself "what the fuck did I just watch?" over and over in my head. And I'm still not sure.

My advice? Stick to the first Feast. It's a cult classic. The next two (which are, amazingly, made by the exact same writers and director) are... well, something else entirely.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.

CORALINE.

Take some Alice in Wonderland and mash it up with some Stepford Wives. Then have the incredibly imaginative and batshit crazy Neil Gaiman (Stardust, MirrorMask) write it out into a story. After that, snatch the guy who did The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, not Tim Burton) and have him make it into a movie with a similar style. What do you end up with? Coraline. And yes, it’s every bit as weird as you think it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad, either.

Coraline (Dakota Fanning) is a bored little girl whose parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) neglect her. All she really has is herself, a neighbor named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.) whom she can’t stand, and his cat (Keith David). She also has some other crazy neighbors, including the possibly drunk Russian, jumping-rat-circus ringmaster Mr. Bobinski (Ian McShane), as well as retired theatrics performers, Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miss Forcible (Dawn French). But then Coraline discovers a doorway to an alternate universe where her Other Mother and Other Father are pretty awesome, everything is fun, and the food is great. The only catch? Everybody has buttons for eyes, and if Coraline wants to stay in this creepy Wonderland, she’ll have to sew some into her own eyes.

The movie doesn’t really have much of a plot, per se. It’s more of a character study… with a lot of bizarre characters. At times I felt as if the movie was a bit all over the place, but by the time the climax came, everything tied together nicely. It's a nice little fairy tale.

I really don’t have much to say on the film. It had beautiful visuals, interesting music, and a good voice cast. It was funny, suspenseful, and just plain weird at times (but in a fun way). I saw it in 3D, which was a bit disappointing. The film didn’t take full advantage of the effect. Sure it had its poke-out-into-the-audience moments, but they were very few and far between. And there were numerous moments that weren’t taken advantage of that could have been great in 3D. But my favorite use of it, by far, was the tunnel between realms. Every time I saw that, it felt like I was really in the tunnel with Coraline, traveling with her to another world, and that was awesome. But besides all of that, I honestly can’t think of anything else to say. It was a fun time that I wouldn’t mind revisiting.

I Am McLovin!

(P.S. This was a difficult rating to give. I honestly had no idea what to rate it. If anything, it's a very high 'McLovin'. But the film as a whole didn't resonate deep within me, if that makes sense. So I really liked it, almost loved it, but not quite. Or something like that).

PUSH.

There was a moment while watching this movie, soon before it began to come to its climax, that I realized this was one of those movies where the ending was either going to really make or really break the whole film. Fortunately, it was the former. Nick (Chris Evans) is a second-generation Mover; in other words, he has telekinesis… and he sucks at it. Cassie (Dakota Fanning) is a second-generation Watcher; in other words, she can see the (ever-changing) future and draw it down… but she’s not the best at it. When Cassie forces her way into Nick’s life, she forces him to join her on a quest to locate a girl—Kira (Camilla Belle)—who has a case that could bring down the Division, a government agency that experiments on all types of people with extra abilities. Kira has been the sole survivor of a ‘power booster’ injection and has escaped the clutches of the Division, but has had her memory wiped. Now she, as well as Nick and Cassie, are being pursued by one of the elite members of Division, a Pusher (somebody who can make you believe and thus do anything) named Henry Carver (Djimon Hounsou).

Overall, it’s a pretty simple plot, but just very difficult to describe (mostly because there’s so many new terms introduced in the film). But first let me tackle the comparisons that have been made to such things like last year’s Jumper or the TV show Heroes. First, the movie is nothing like Jumper except that there are people with superpowers. The story is better, the characters are better, and the acting is infinitely better (for the most part). As for Heroes, I can give it that. The powers are incredibly similar to those of the TV show, especially with Watchers, who can see visions of the future (that are liable to change) and have to draw them down on paper. And then there’s a government-type agency involved with injecting people with abilities. Other than that, the story and characters are pretty different.

The story itself, like I said, is pretty straight forward, though it did lose me a few times regardless of that. For at least half the movie, I’m thinking that the Asian group after them is working with Division, then all of a sudden it comes out (or at least becomes clear) that they’re working on their own. So then who are they? Did I just miss that explanation? And something else I liked with the story is that they left it open for a possible sequel, but at the same time kept this one self-containing so a sequel wouldn’t be necessary (unlike the poor past attempts of similar ideas such as Jumper or The Covenant).

Now to discuss the acting. It can really be said with a couple sentences: Dakota Fanning stole the show and Camilla Belle was pretty bad. Chris Evans was somewhere in between. But I’ll expand for you. Dakota Fanning’s Cassie was, by far, the best character of the film. She made you laugh with her spunkiness and made you sad when she was upset. And boy, was she spunky. Though to the filmmakers: why would you give such a young teenager such a short skirt (and I mean short) and then proceed to take every advantage to shove the camera up her legs? Talk about uncomfortable. Camilla Belle did better facial acting than vocal acting, though that’s really not saying much. I know the girl can act (I’ve seen her do it at least once). But maybe something’s just gotten into her recently. Chris Evans, despite being the main character, really felt left out of the film too much to really show off. Sure he was always around, but I guess Dakota upstaged the guy so much that it seemed she was more the main character than he was.

But of course, you’re wondering about the powers. How were they? For the most part, they were really good. Some of the visuals were kinda bad (like any time a Mover floated a gun, which just looked fake), but overall a good job. The best abilities were those outside the telekinesis. Shadows can hide people or places, and the main Shadow of the movie was funny. Wipers can remove memory. Sniffs can smell any object and see the past of where it’s been and where the people who have touched it are now. Shifters can change the appearance of things for a short period of time (the main shifter of the film was pretty cool, too). Stitchers can manipulate the body by either healing it or painfully destroying it. And then Bleeders do some ultrasonic screams that can apparently break glass, explode fish, and disable or kill people. The face alteration of the Bleeders when they scream is just freaky. And I’ve already mentioned Pushers, Movers, and Watchers. But what I loved most about each of the characters with these abilities is that they weren’t just used once and then forgotten. They were continually brought back for different purposes, and you got to see basically every use of their abilities. The filmmakers really didn’t get lazy with this aspect of the film, and it’s very obvious. It really made the film.

But the coolest thing about the powers was toward the end with the Pushers. There’s a bit of a twist, but because of the nature of the Pushing ability, you can never be sure if it’s true or not. I sat there bouncing back and forth, never sure what to believe, even if you think there’s evidence to prove one way or the other. Just like they do with characters in the movie, the movie sometimes acts as Pusher, letting you never be certain if what you’re seeing is true or not until it’s too late.

For more on the visuals (outside of CGI), the cinematography was nice with a plethora of different colors and hues that inked over the picture—blues, greens… it made you feel like you were really in some kind of acid-trip music video, but in a positive way. And I liked the use of the poorer quality video shots to show when a Watcher is watching you. You’re not sure what it is at first (at least I wasn’t), but when you realize it, the rest of the film you’re like “Oh crap, somebody’s watching them” when it happens. Needless to say, the filmmakers made this one heck of an experience. Like I said with the Pushers, it’s like almost every ability of the characters is used somehow within the film itself to clue in or mess with the audience. And I think that was a brilliant tactic.

Overall, I thought I was going to have a difficult time rating the movie, but the more I write about it and reflect back on it, the more set I really am in my score and my thoughts. There were a few confusing bits (especially for what is essentially a straight-forward story), and there could have been a bit more character development with Chris Evans’ character, and they probably should have cast somebody besides Camilla Belle for Kira. But other than those things, I had a really great time with the movie. I didn’t look at my watch once.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

I’ve been waiting longer than you know to see this movie. And now I finally have. And my verdict? I’ll get to that. Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is a basic love story/pseudo-fairy tale told in a very entertaining and creative way. Jamal (Ayush Khedekar, Tanay Chheda, Dev Patel) and his brother Salim (Azharuddin Ismail, Ashutosh Gajiwala, Madhur Mittal) live in the slums of Mumbai. But after an attack on the city, they become orphans to survive on their own. They then meet Latika (Rubiana Ali, Tanvi Lonkar, Freida Pinto) who he comes to fall for, even as a young child. They go through many hardships together, sometimes even becoming separated for long periods of time. All of this eventually culminates in Jamal becoming a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? But something has to be wrong, because this boy from the slums is answering all these questions correctly when even doctors and lawyers couldn’t get as far as he had. So, one question at a time, Jamal must explain himself to the authorities how he knew each and every answer, all of which is shown in a series of flashbacks.

So what did I think of the film? Well, I saw two of my old professors there and we talked briefly afterward. I asked them what they thought, and they said it all in one word: brilliant. Everything about this film was brilliant. Let’s look at it one bit at a time, though. First we have the story. It was always the story that attracted me to the film, even before it started to get all its praise. And it turned out even more than I expected. The juxtaposition of stories between Jamal and Salim and how each turned out (one rising from the slums in the quintessential rags-to-riches story, and the other sinking down into its depths, stuck in its gnawing teeth and dastardly ways) was very unexpected. And the symbolism at the end there (to try and keep this vague and non-spoilery… themes of love and unwanted money) all converged tightly in the apex of the film. And while the final question was rather obvious (but still got a nice “OH!” reaction from the audience), you still had no idea if he was going to answer it correctly (because it was never about winning in that sense).

On the more technical side of things, I loved the frenetic camera work (which was more at the beginning and the end). And it mixed in nicely with the music. And on the subject of the music, I absolutely adored the soundtrack. This was probably one of my favorite soundtracks (at least of a non-musical) of this past year. The music fit so perfectly with every scene, always adding energy or dramatics.

As for the acting, well, it was great all around. I think the move to use real slum kids from Mumbai was (again) brilliant. For just being random kids off the street, they sure did a fantastic job with their parts, especially the youngest versions of Jamal and Salim. For the adult roles, of course Dev Patel shines through as the deeply longing and sometimes snarky Jamal. And Freida Pinto is incredibly hot. And she looks so much like Dilshad Vadsaria (who plays Rebecca Logan on the TV show “Greek”), who is also hot.

It’s really hard to review films you love in almost every way, because you get to that place where you don’t want to gush too much and it’s hard to find anything negative. If I did have anything negative at all to say, it would be that at times, some of the English was hard to understand because of the thick accents. But that only happened so few times (most of it toward the beginning of the film, which worried me at first, but that quickly went away). I do disagree with those people who say the movie is too straightforward with not many deeper levels. I found plenty of deeper levels, metaphors, etc. all throughout the film; you just have to know where to look. So my love of the film just continually built more and more until by the end of the movie, I had the exactly feelings within me that I had hoped to have in watching this movie: I had just watched something great, and I felt really good about that.

Royale With Cheese