Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

There’s a Reason I Never Voted for You.

I took myself a little break, but when it came time to come back, I wasn’t entirely sure if my break was self-imposed or not.  I could not find anything in the theaters that interested me!  Whatever was I to do?!  But then I remembered an old friend that I don’t think I’ve spent any time with recently.  An old friend by the name of RedBox.  And there were a couple of movies to be found there that I wanted to see.  Not movies I wanted to see expecting quality, but movies I wanted to see expecting quality reviews to come out of them.  And by that I mean I expect them to suck.  But we’ll just have to wait a paragraph to find out after I tell you a little bit about Olympus Has Fallen, written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, directed by Antoine Fuqua, and starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Rick Yune, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Finley Jacobsen, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, and Ashley Judd.

Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is the head of the Presidential Detail.  While transporting President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), First Lady Margaret Asher (Ashley Judd), and their son Connor Asher (Finley Jacobsen) to Camp David, a tree branch lands on the windshield, sending the President’s limo off the road.  Banning is only able to save the President and his son.  The most ungrateful POTUS in history then demotes Banning to the Department of the Treasury.  This turns out to be a great idea when a group of North Korean terrorists – led by Kang Yeonsak (Rick Yune) – take control of the White House in order to use something called the Cerberus system to leave the United States defenseless from nuclear attacks.  But little do these Korean terrorists know that we’re still covered by America’s first line of defense: Gerard Butler.

I would give this movie credit for being better than I expected it to be.  My expectations were admittedly low, but it was better than them.  It’s just your fairly standard action movie.  I feel like I’d probably prefer White House Down since it seems almost identical without taking itself too seriously as this movie does.  This movie tries to do the same thing in a more heavy and emotional way that never really worked for me.  It started with the death of the First Lady.  I didn’t really care.  We hadn’t really spent enough time to get emotionally attached to her.  Plus I felt the whole situation was a little stupid, especially when the helicopters arrived right afterwards and I could just imagine everyone saying, “Oh man, that’s right!  We have helicopters!  We could’ve completely avoided this bad driving conditions and come through this situation with at least one more living First Lady!  Boy is my face red.”  And then you demote Banning because he only managed to keep you and your son alive but wasn’t quite able to go above and beyond the call of duty to save your wife too?  That’s some bullshit!  He’s clearly the best guy you have, as evidenced by how easily the Koreans waltzed into the White House.  It seemed like the movie was sending a message to Korea that, if they send enough men and garbage trucks, and if Gerard Butler is busy at the time, then they can take the White House down without too much effort.  Well, if he wasn’t available, then maybe we could settle for Maverick and Goose, ‘cause they never would’ve been taken down by that giant plane with the side-mounted Gatling guns.  They would’ve been flying upside down above that airplane taunting the enemy pilots and completely safe from side-mounted Gatling guns.  And who was aiming those things anyway?  Ah, never mind…

I also didn’t get the whole situation with Kang.  I guess I get his motivation and all, but how the government people not know who he is when they see his face when he’s the most wanted terrorist in the world?  They say that he’s never been photographed, but his picture pops up with his name pretty quickly for that to be true.  Well his plan seemed pretty solid though, at least up until the end.  ::SPOILER ALERT:: I thought his ruse with putting black hoods on everyone was fairly effective for not getting his people killed since they wouldn’t know which one was the President.  It would be effective for everyone but the girl in the crew, I suppose.  The sniper could probably feel pretty safe shooting the one person in the group with tits.  The problem I had with it was that I didn’t see the point of the ruse in the first place, beyond clearing out the rest of the unnecessary people before the climax.  Why bother killing off all your men to make everyone think the President was dead when you’d be activating the Cerberus system 2 minutes later, thus proving that both you and the President were still alive.  ::END SPOILERS::

One thing that I could say with confidence about this movie is that the cast did a great job.  Gerard Butler has made some shitty choices for movies in the past, but he can still bring it with the performances.  He’s a very believable badass, and that was the bulk of what was required of him here.  I did find it amusing that America was almost destroyed because Banning doesn’t use Twitter and doesn’t know what a hash tag is, or perhaps because the other douchebag decided to use “hash tag” instead of the more commonly understood “pound sign.”  I also took issue with the President of this movie, and not just because he demoted the man who saved his life.  …asshole…  I also took issue with the fact that he kept telling his cabinet members to give up their codes to save their lives.  I understand it would make the President look like an asshole if he let them die, but that’s about 5 people who might die as opposed to the millions that will die if they give up those codes.  Let them die bravely to protect the country and do the same yourself.  ‘MERICA!!  Also, Morgan Freeman is the man.  He should not only be the President in every movie, but he should be the President in real life too.

Olympus Has Fallen was roughly what I expected it to be: decent.  It didn’t impress, but it entertained.  And I guess that impressed me because it was more than I expected.  The story was a little over-simple, but the action was pretty good and the performances were better than I would’ve expected.  This movie doesn’t qualify with me as a purchase, but it’s decent enough for a rental.  Olympus Has Fallen gets “Newsflash asshole – I don’t work for you” out of “Why don’t you and I play a game of fuck off.  You go first.”

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Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012)

Everyone Has a Different Nightmare in Silent Hill. I Am Theirs.

I really wanted to see today’s movie, but not out of anything positive. I saw the first movie and thought it was okay, but definitely saw how people would think it was awful. I think I just have a special place in my heart for mindless crap. Plus, it’s based on a video game, and that makes up the rest of my heart. Then they made a sequel. And generally, when you add video game movie, sequel, sequel to a movie that wasn’t that great, and 3D, you’re looking at a terrible movie. I wouldn’t see this movie in theaters lest I think that I should just give in and see it in 3D, so I waited. Now it’s out on DVD, so I rented it that I might bring you my review of Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (in 2D), written and directed by Michael J. Bassett, and starring Adelaide Clemens, Erin Pitt, Kit Harington, Sean Bean, Carrie-Anne Moss, Malcolm McDowell, Martin Donovan, Deborah Kara Unger, Radha Mitchell, and Roberto Campanella.

Have you played Silent Hill 3? Then you’ve played this movie, pretty much. Heather Mason / Sharon Da Silva (Adelaide Clemens) is a nearly 18-year-old girl who moves from town to town with her adoptive father Christopher Da Silva (Sean Bean), on the run from the law because Chris killed a man in self-defense once. Heather has nightmares (whether she’s awake or not) about going to a town called Silent Hill that is filled with lots of icky creatures that are trying to kill her. She reluctantly (and quickly) befriends a boy named Vincent Cooper (Kit Harington), who drives her home after one of these episodes becomes a little too real and ends with a private investigator named Douglas Cartland (Martin Donovan) getting killed. When she returns home, she finds that her father has been kidnaped, and the abductors have left a note telling her to come to Silent Hill. Vincent agrees to drive her and the two head off to Silent Hill to find out the truth about her past.

This movie is not good times, but I would like to focus on giving credit where credit is due. So that part of this will be short. But this movie did capture a decent amount of Silent Hill … by mainly just taking the same story and putting it on film. On the other hand, I’ve never really been a fan of Silent Hill, so I still didn’t like it. But the parts of the movie I didn’t like weren’t really Silent Hill’s fault as much as it was bad writing. Like all the super sweaty exposition in the movie. It’s nice to not waste a lot of time with the backstory, but making sure we’re up to speed by having the characters talk in exposition that they would never say in real life is awkward. Things like, “This present is for you, my soon-to-be-18-year-old daughter!” I mean, that’s how I introduce most of my soon-to-be-30-year-old friends, but I acknowledge that I’m a weirdo. Another thing I didn’t get along with in the movie was the relationship between Heather and Vincent, and more specifically how quickly it developed. This girl is supposed to be really good at being solitary, and even has a whole speech developed for it, but they become super close friends in a matter of hours. When she has a secret, Vincent says, “It’s okay, you can tell me.” Yeah? Our six hour friendship has developed that level of trust already? Close enough to drive me across multiple state lines to save my father, who you have never met? Oh, well I guess that’s a thing too. I’m a pretty nice guy, and I’m willing to help out people to a degree, and I also acknowledge that this Heather chick is really cute, but this bitch had better put out if she wants a ride to anywhere more than a 20 minute drive away. There are other cute chicks around, and most of them don’t require 8 hours of driving and getting involved with a dangerous cult. Most of the dialogue is problematic as well. Like when Heather acts befuddled when Vincent tells her that his grandfather was locked up for seeing monsters walking around during the day. Yeah, Heather, his mom is the crazy one. That’s what normal people do. And when the cops bust in to Heather’s house and refer to the “Come to Silent Hill” message on the wall as “probable cause” in the death of the private investigator earlier. Do you know what that means? Are you suggesting that the detective guy busted into the house and wrote on Heather’s wall, and that’s why Heather followed him to a mall and killed him? That’s what “cause” means. This would be considered a “clue” at best. Also a bummer in this movie is the ending. The climax to the movie and the way Heather defeats Alessa is by hugging her for a few seconds, and then it’s over. There’s a little more to the movie after that, but hugging is not the battle I was looking for. Can you imagine that as a boss battle in the video game?

I hate 3D. I don’t understand this new trend towards being super impressed by it when I remember seeing Captain EO in 3D when I was a child. This stuff has been around for a while, and it didn’t help tell a story back then either. I didn’t need to see this movie in 3D to be annoyed by it. I thought people stopped doing the cheesy, obvious 3D things like hitting a paddle ball at the camera to show off what 3D could do right after that became a joke. This movie does that jokey 3D stuff to try to be scary. They fail. It remains goofy. The rest of the look of the movie was fine. It looks vaguely Silent Hill and nothing seemed very poorly realized. The first movie captured an atmosphere much better than this movie did, but this one did fine enough.

The greater majority of the performances were underwhelming. Adelaide Clemens did a fairly good job of it, though. She was cute, looked an awful lot like Michelle Williams, and did a fine enough job in the movie. Her character was dumb as a post, but she can’t be blamed for that. I do get to wondering what Malcolm McDowell thinks when agreeing to make a movie. I would say he’s an inarguably great actor, but he does choose some less than fantastic movies to be in every now and then.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D was not good times. It was nice that it seemed to respect the game that gave it life, but bad that it wasn’t scary, wasn’t particularly interesting, and was full to the brim with sweaty, unconvincing dialogue. Some of that can be blamed on the performances, but I think most was in the writing. And, as a hater of 3D, I found myself annoyed by how many corny plays they made towards using the 3D. I was pretty much annoyed by the entire movie. I can’t recommend it. It has potential as fodder for mockery, but not much else. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D gets “I don’t think I like my reality” out of “The darkness is coming. It’s safer to be inside.”

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Pitch Black (2000)

You’re Dancing on Razor Blades Here

Today’s review request came from a coworker of mine by the name of Fabio.  The movie is a cult hit that is about 50% sci-fi, 50% action.  It’s also the movie that introduced me to Vin Diesel … so I’m not sure how I feel about that.  But we’ll worry about that when someone makes me sit through the Fast and the Furious or the XXX movies.  Today, we talk Riddick, or more specifically, Pitch Black, directed by David Twohy, and starring Radha Mitchell, Vin Diesel, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Rhiana Griffith, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, and Claudia Black (FROM UNCHARTED!  OMG TO THE MAX!).

There is a ship flying somewhere with some people on it when something happens and it crashes.  I am real good make writing!  The captain dies in the accident and so the docking pilot, Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell), must take over as acting captain with police officer, William J. Johns (Cole Hauser), as her military adviser.  Besides being stranded on a really sunny planet, the other major concern for all people living is a man named Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) – a murderer Johns is transporting to a prison planet – who has escaped and disappeared.  The people go out looking for civilization and find an abandoned facility with a ship they can get working.  Riddick decides to hero it up (kinda) for the promise of being able to disappear when they leave.  But there turns out to be a problem: nighttime is coming for the first time in 22 years, and with nighttime comes big bad creatures that start picking off the remaining crew.  Riddick becomes more necessary to the remaining crew because of a surgery he’s had to make himself able to see in the dark.  Will Riddick be a hero, or does he have ulterior motivation that will not benefit the crew?

This movie was not well received by critics, but was fairly well liked by the average Joe.  Being halfway in between, I decided I must declare this movie “meh”.  This movie probably should’ve connected with me more than it did, but it wasn’t able.  They story itself was fine enough.  I like a sci-fi movie and this was definitely that.  You’ve got space travel, alien planet, strange creatures, super powers, and plenty of things that easily qualify it as sci-fi.  But it also went for a lot suspense that I just didn’t feel was there.  And when you attempt suspense and fail, you end up with long, drawn out scenes with you waiting for something to finally happen.  The few fight scenes that were there were pretty fast and uneventful.  Riddick hangs down from the ceiling and attempts to choke Johns with his legs, this goes on for a bit, Johns starts hitting Riddick with a baton, Riddick falls down.  Back to square one.  They try to build a lot of tension in the scenes that are in total darkness with the threat of deadly creatures that they can’t see, but when one finally gets somebody, it’s over pretty quickly.  They, admirably, spent a decent amount of time developing some of the characters so that we were interested in them and kind of cared about.  It was mainly just Fry, Johns, Riddick, Jack, and Imam that were developed.  Everyone else just had a timer over their head before they were picked off.  The look was also pretty good for the time and the amount of money they probably got for this movie.  The first half of the movie is so damned bright that you sometimes can’t make out what you’re looking at.  This was nice because it bleached your eyes and made the darkness that much deeper when it shows up.  They used shadow very nicely.  There are scenes when Riddick slowly disappears into the shadow that are nicely executed and a nice scene where one of the crew members is bleeding out in the darkness, lit only by a bottle of alcohol turned into a Molotov lamp, and he spits alcohol onto it, creating a burst of flame and showing he’s surrounded by creatures.  That doesn’t end well for him, but it looked cool for us.

The performances were surprisingly fine.  Radha Mitchell didn’t really surprise me.  I’ve seen her play a character at wit’s end before and she does it here very well.  She tries to keep a strong front but it cracks as more and more pressure is heaped upon her that she was in no way ready for.  Vin Diesel actually put on a solid performance, but there were problems with it.  Part of it was the fact that he always talks in a very raspy whisper and I can barely make out what he’s saying.  I guess that’s supposed to make him appear strong or something.  The writing takes away from the character somewhat.  He is seemingly omnipotent, being able to hear and smell things that aren’t happening anywhere near him, and a lot of his lines are cliche tough guy lines.  But I think Vin Diesel did what he could with the character and at least made him interesting.  Cole Hauser’s character was pretty interesting as well.  He starts off being portrayed as a good guy, but a drug problem, hidden identity, and some less than admirable intentions make us realize that Riddick is the actual anti-hero.  None of the other characters, not even my beloved Claudia Black, made much of an impression on me.  Mainly ’cause most of ’em died.

Pitch Black got me started in a good way by playing a commercial for Escape from Butcher Bay, a very revolutionary and awesome game from back in original X-Box days, but then took me down into meh territory with some bad, or typical, writing and less than inspired fight scenes.  I give it points for it’s solid visuals and decent performances, but it failed to capture my imagination.  I find myself on the fence about it, so I recommend giving the movie a chance.  Not necessary to buy it right off the bat, but it’s worth a rental to formulate your own opinions.  Personally, I give Pitch Black a “They say most of your brain shuts down during cryo-sleep” out of “You think I’m trying to prove something?”

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Silent Hill (2006)

Fire Doesn’t Cleanse. It Blackens!

More October Horror-thon madness, comin’ atcha! Little girls are creepy. Let’s stick with that theme. Today’s movie is a movie I actually saw with a girl. SO THERE! I told you I’m not gay, Mom! …cough… This movie is both a horror movie AND generally my least favorite type of movie: a video game port. Generally a video game does not translate into a quality film, and only two movies come to mind as being watchable video game flicks. One is Hitman, the other is this movie, Silent Hill. Silent Hill is directed by Christophe Gans and stars Radha Mitchell, Jodelle Ferland, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Alice Krige, and Kim Coates.

Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher Da Silva (Sean Bean) are having a few problems with their adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland). That problem? She likes to sleepwalk in the middle of the night down past busy highways and stop in front of treacherous cliffs, yelling the name of the town “Silent Hill”. Rose has had enough of having to wake up in the middle of the night and doesn’t want to take MY approach of tying the daughter to her bed at night. Is that illegal? Well okay. Then I’d kill her with a hammer. …What? Anyways, Rose’s idea is to take her daughter to Silent Hill, behind the back of her disapproving husband. On her way there, officer Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden), or as I call her, Dyke Cop, attempts to pull Rose of Sharon … I mean Rose AND Sharon (does anyone else get that reference?), but Rose decides, for reasons unbeknownst to us, that she must try to lose the cop. She’s done nothing wrong and Dyke Cop only became interested because Sharon freaked out around the cop. But it’s her actual daughter so she had nothing to worry about … unless she was holding some coke or something. Well this all would have been avoided if she’d just used her head, but she didn’t. She jets off in her car towards Silent Hill, smashing through a fence with reckless abandon, but crashes on the side of the road when a creepy lady walks in front of her car. When she wakes up, everything looks all foggy and creepy and she’s in Silent Hill … without her daughter. Sharon’s run off. Rose goes in to town to find her, but finds it completely abandoned. Apparently there was a coal fire a long time ago that’s still burning underground and is creating the ash in the sky. While exploring, a siren rings out and the world turns all dark and creepy. Then Rose is attacked by these 4 foot tall creepy baby-like things that look like they’ve been burnt to blackness. They disappear when the siren rings out again. Then she goes back to her car and Dyke Cop arrests her, but an armless creature spits black acid stuff at her and Rose escapes while Dyke Cop deals with the Smog. Rose continues her search for Sharon and tries to discover the mysteries of Silent Hill. It probably would’ve been safer to just play the video games.

I remember not caring for this movie when I first saw it, but have come to kind of enjoy the movie in the ensuing viewings. When I first saw it, I knew nothing about Silent Hill that I didn’t learn in the short demo I had played for the original game, and maybe a couple other pieces of information I had gleaned from magazines. But I’ve learned much more since the invention of Wikipedia and my favorite thing about this movie is that it totally captures the spirit and atmosphere of the game. I don’t know the stories that well, but it apparently takes heavily from the stories of Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3. Even the Sharon/Alessa character comes from the first Silent Hill, and the story seems similar (though I only glanced at it on Wikipedia). Also, Rose tends to have very little on hand to light her way through the evil side of Silent Hill – at first a lighter and later a shitty flashlight – which is a big thing in the games. She also has to run from fights often (as she’s scarcely ever armed), she has to squeeze through tight slots to move on, she has to pick up drawings from her kid, and she has to cut over-sized pictures to find things behind them, all things from the game. Even the music is heavily reminiscent of the games. And, of course, they had to put the most well-known Silent Hill character in this, Pyramid Head! He is such a badass in this. He tears a chick’s skin off by her tits! He literally grabs a handful of her chest, squeezes, and pulls, then flings the floppy skin mess at Rose.

As I said, the entire time in Silent Hill is creepy. Hell, right before Silent Hill, Rose stops at a place that is a combination diner, gas station, AND body-piercing establishment. That is creepy to me. And unsanitary. But once they get to Silent Hill, much as in the games, the town shifts between two different types of creepy. Day time Silent Hill is foggy with ash and quiet, which is always pretty creepy. Night time Silent Hill is probably one of the lower levels of Hell by the look of it. The creatures are really creepy. Them little burn babies are wrong on so many levels, and the Smog is disgusting. And what makes them so creepy? I’m pretty sure there’s a real person in those costumes, if I remember the “Making Of” properly. That is one uncomfortable contortionist. When we reach the school and go into the bathroom, there is a very creepy corpse I called Barb Wire Colin who later animates into a very creepy moving corpse. And the death of the cult leader was heavily reminiscent of a certain type of Japanese anime and I totally called it when I was watching. I saw on the movie’s Wikipedia page that it was inspired by a movie called Urotsukidoji, a movie I have seen and thought of as I watched the scene. The cult leader basically gets fucked by barbed wire and then torn in half, which is totally reminiscent of all that tentacle rape the Japanese anime likes to do.

The performances could be kind of hit and miss with me, but they were all at least passable. Radha Mitchell puts on a more emotional performance than a video game movie tends to get. Laurie Holden as Dyke Cop was annoying and nosy in the beginning, but then became a hero by the end. I was sad that she had to die for it, but it’s a very Silent Hill-esque thing to do. And how often do you get to see a woman dressed up like the T-1000? Alice Krige was totally creepy as the cult leader and pulled that off nicely. And Deborah Kara Unger played the crazy old hag mother of Alessa very well. They actually made her an ugly old hag for most of the movie, even though she’s actually an attractive lady. The little girl didn’t really do it for me though. Most of her time as Sharon she kind of acts like she has a mental deficiency of some sort. She has a few creepy moments as Alessa, like when she skipped around and danced in the blood raining down from the cult leader, but the part where she holds out her arms and says “Look at me, I’m burning” seemed like that line should have been a place holder for a GOOD line.

For another negative, I will have to spoil a bit. So ::SPOILER ALERT:: but I didn’t understand the ending at all, and even Wikipedia didn’t really offer an explanation. I understood what happened in Silent Hill, but right after, when Rose and Sharon return to Sean Bean and they’re in the same house but when we’re on them it’s still foggy and colorless but on him it’s colorful and real, and they don’t see each other but they kind of know each other are there, I don’t get it. I assume that Dyke Cop, Rose, and Sharon died when they crashed in the beginning and they’re ghosts now, but then that kind of takes the drama out of the movie because they were already dead and there’s no drama or suspense. A bad or confusing ending can take you out of a movie. ::END SPOILER::

Altogether a pretty solid flick and a nice addition to the Silent Hill franchise. They’re supposed to be making a sequel and, of course, it’s going to be 3D. I hope it just gets better and 3D can go fuck itself. But this movie is worth a watch, though you can probably get by just renting it. I give this movie a “Mother needs more food” out of “Mother is God in the eyes of a child.”

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others. It may help me get better.