It’s time to save the world again! Hollywood believes you have an insatiable appetite for these movies. It’s a formula – we’ll put six people together in a space ship and send ‘em out to stop Armegeddon. One will be a foreigner, one will be a racial minority, one will be an annoyance the audience will want to see die, and two will fall in love. There, I just covered five out of the six person crew! I could have done that without ever setting foot in the theatre.
Now that I have that out of the way, “The Core” isn’t a bad movie at all. And the reason is simple – most of the actors stayed serious enough to make this work and the movie is full of special effects and lots of jargon to almost make you believe this could happen.
This time the problem is that the earth’s core is slowing up and needs a jump start. A handpicked crew of “special people” is assigned the task of drilling their way to the center and nuking the core back to life. Thank God for nuclear weapons, because without them we would never be able to save the world. But this movie does get off to a fine start as people with pacemakers collapse and die and birds start smashing into buildings. Oh, and the space shuttle crash lands. Can you say “inappropriate”?
One thing I appreciated about this movie is that there isn’t really a villain. Yes, there’s a shifty looking general lurking about, but he really turns out to be mostly about saving the planet. In fact, where’s the President in this movie? This general seems to have all the power, but isn’t that the way some of you feel about who really runs this country?
This movie didn’t need to be over two hours long. Much of the time is spent trying to figure out how to heroically kill off the crew members. But I have to say, how interesting can a trip to the core of the earth be? I mean, it’s not like deep space. What’s in there anyway? They did a very good job of creating some obstacles along the way with diamonds and huge crystals and, of course, lava. Good special effects here, don’t miss that space shuttle landing in the L.A. River. But too much mushy, pointless sentimental moments kill the momentum. “The Core” is a brave attempt at a very overworked premise. I give it a “5.0”.
Friday, March 21st, 2003
Stephen King is a rich guy. That’s all I can say. Whatever crap he writes, somebody’s there to make a movie out of it. “Dreamcatcher” is a movie about four guys about to save the world from a terrible extraterrestrial invasion.
They’re childhood friends, and, like all Stephen King characters, they’re stuck in Maine. I say that because in wintertime, this isn’t the best place to be to save the world. The guys end up in one of those isolated cabins during a major blizzard and that’s where they must make their stand.
The nasty aliens have landed and they mostly take the form of big ugly worms with gigantic teeth. They hop inside of people, gestate and then pop out the poop hole. Yep, you got that right. It’s not pretty. It’s a bad version of “Alien”, but at least in that movie, they came out of the belly. They’re led by a big one who has the ability to take over a whole human – think “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. In fact, a lot of this horror movie is derivative, but the bloody stuff was holding my attention.
The other angle here is the connection between the four guys and stopping the big monster. Twenty years ago, they saved a mentally disabled kid from a group of bullies and from that kid apparently acquired telepathic powers. I won’t ruin the reasons for that, but, if you hang in there, they will get to it. What I will tell you is that it’s pretty silly (resembling “Stand By Me”)and is typical for Stephen King, who likes to tap into our childhood memories of not fitting in or our nightmares of boogey men. I like it when I read it, it just never seems to work out when it’s translated to the big screen.
A waste in this movie is Morgan Freeman, playing a secret government guy charged with cleaning up these alien invasions. I thought he was spoofing us, spouting odd paranoid comments with a straight face when I thought he should really be laughing. He’s been at this for over twenty five years and, of course, American citizens are none the wiser. That itself is pretty funny, but this movie is not going for laughs.
“Dreamcatchers” starts and finishes horribly, but does have a decent middle as the alien creatures are popping out of people’s butts. But things get too silly for me – the lead alien who takes over one of the guys bodies has a snooty British accent(he’s actually called Mr. Gray, I kid you not) and that was a horrible idea. I can only give this movie a “3.0” on the scale.
Friday, March 7th, 2003
How’s that for a pretentious title? It sounds like the name of a song or a painting. “The Tears of the Sun” – yes, it looks like we’re in for a mighty moral ride. You must figure by now I am pretty cynical about this movie. I can’t stand moral manipulation when it is carried out so simply and heavy-handed and this movie certainly starts out on that theme.
The story is straight forward – Lieutenant A. K. Waters leads a squad of soldiers into Nigeria to escort an American doctor, some nuns and a priest out of hostile territory. There has been a military coup and the nasty rebels are conducting an “ethnic cleansing”. The doctor, played by an actress I’ve never heard of (Monica Bellucci) refuses to leave without a group of Nigerians she has come to know and love.
This Monica Bellucci, I’ll say this – she can’t act, but she can show some major cleavage. It’s actually very funny as she pleads with Waters to take the refugees. She bats her eyes, whines, argues, but always manages to look sexy in that smouldering foreign female way. Even after practically being blown up, she still has the hot and steamy look complete with cleavage showing. Aren’t these humanitarian doctor types always so beautiful? Note that the nuns and the priest, frumpy types, opt to stay behind and are butchered.
As for the good Lieutenant Waters, played by Bruce Willis. I could barely get over the fact that he is morphing into Clint Eastwood. By that, I mean “Squint” Eastwood. Bruce is the tough soldier all right and you’ll miss none of that message as he squints and scowls and spits his way through this movie. But, of course, he does the right thing and fights to get everyone out of there. The good news is that, like many Clint characters, he says little, which is fine because it could only sound stupid and cliched.
“Tears of The Sun” was headed down all the wrong roads until things got pretty chaotic during the last half hour. I have to say my interest picked up as the real hell of battle was very realistically portrayed. I’m a big fan of “Black Hawk Down”, the ultimate military quagmire movie and this started to resemble parts of that movie. Just in time I say – I give “Tears of The Sun” a “6.0”.
By the way, how about the timing of this movie? Released on the eve of war with Iraq, it is about freeing people from an evil military despot. Why, there is even talk of restoring democracy. And it stars Bruce Willis, who has spoken out in favor of the Bush administration. Can you say “wag the dog” Ah, just kidding.
