Archive for March, 2005

Robots

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted March 11, 2005 at 2:15 am

A Film Review By Jason L. King

Rating:Rated PG for some brief language and suggestive humor
Starring:Voices of: including Ewan McGregor, Greg Kinnear, Amanda Bynes, Mel Brooks, Drew Carrey, Robin Williams, Jennifer Coolridge and Terry Bradshaw. Oh yeah, that Oscar Winner Halle “Catwoman” Berry is also in the film.
Directed By:Chris Wedge

Final Grade:

Everyone wants to try CGI now days. It’s just the way it goes. While Pixar leads the way, Fox and Dreamworks follow close on it’s tail, hoping for that one film to rise them ahead of their competitors. Fox has had some success with the Ice Age franchise, which has a sequel due out later this year. But this time Fox brings us Robots, the animated tale of misfit robots in a strange futuristic world.

Robots is the story of a robot named Stanley Copperbottom, a robot who loves to invent. Stanley makes a journey into Robot City to meet the great inventor of Robot Parts, Mr. Bigweld. Upon arriving at Robot City, Rodney finds that Bigweld’s days of ruling the robot world is over and now Bigweld industries is being run by Ratchet, an evil mama’s boy robot whose obsession with money. Ratchet and his mother form a plan that leads to scrapping all the old models of robots in order to scare them into buying his “robotic upgrades.” Rodney and some newfound friends decide to stand up to Ratchet, find Bigweld, who has been in hiding for years and restore order to Robot City.

This film is a great little flick for kids. It’s got lovable characters and a Disney like battle between someone truly good and someone truly evil. You quickly fall in love with the characters, even though one of them is a rather annoying Robin Williams Robot named Fender. Just like the real Robin Williams, Fender babbles endlessly about nothing, talks in circles and never gets anything accomplished once he gets wound up. And just like the real Robin Williams, his comedy gets old fast. None the less you still find yourself loving Fender even though he may be the most annoying creation since George Lucas introduced us to Jar Jar Binks. The flick recruited a cast of famous names to voice their characters, including Ewan McGregor, Greg Kinnear, Amanda Bynes, Mel Brooks, Drew Carrey, Robin Williams, Jennifer Coolridge and Terry Bradshaw. Oh yeah, that Oscar Winner Halle “Catwoman” Berry is also in the film. (I tried to forget that.) Each of the actors does a great job and provides some great voices to some unique looking robots.

The story line is simple, easy to follow and fun. It flows quickly from point to point and will entertain the young ones for a few hours. The problem with Robots is that it too quickly dismisses itself as being anything original when it tries to rely on fart jokes, toilet humor and sexual innuendoes for the adults right from the get go. When the film isn’t trying to be another “Shrek” it’s a lot of fun. When it starts trying to become an adult oriented flick as well, the film falters.

I’ll make this short and sweet. If you have a kid under the age of 8 go check out Robots. They will have a great time, and they will be mesmerized by the movie screen for an hour and half, giving you that long deserved break you need as a parent. But if you aren’t one of those parent types, save your buck on Robots. Pixar still leads the way in CGI animation, Fox is still trying to Tie Dreamworks for a distant Second Place.

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Filed under: Animated, Family, Movies

Hostage

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted at 12:28 am

A Film Review By The Mike

Rating:RATED R for Bloody Violence, Bad Language, and a Bong. 
Starring: Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollak, Ben Foster 
Directed By: Florent Siri 

Final Grade: 

Since Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day became such a hit in 2001, everyone’s been trying to capture the spirit of this new breed of “edgy” R-rated action films. Bruce Willis’ latest film, Hostage, is no exception. We’ve got a French director making his first-trip to Hollywood, an excessive amount of gory violence and villains who’re excessively immoral, and a total lack of anything interesting brought up by the plot.

The most interesting thing about the premise of Hostage, a film in which a hostage situation erupts – only to have the negotiating cop (Willis)’s family kidnapped by a blackmailing mystery man, was the tagline – “Would you sacrifice another family to save your own?” A moral dilemma like this could make for a great dramatic undercurrent that could inspire debate and discussion among filmgoers, or at the very least send some chills down the spine throughout the film. But, the question is never brought up, hinted at, or even considered in the film, paving the way for shoot-outs, stabbings, and all sorts of races against time.

I will admit that, Hostage is not entirely about the violence and action. There’s a lot of time spent on Willis’ character and his attempts to figure out a way to save both families. But never is the sacrificial aspect even considered. Both families are treated as separate stories by the script, which not only produces an uninteresting story, but also a disjointed one.

So, we’re left with a story about a cop trying to be God (or some video game commander, as he explains to the young boy who’s trapped in the house). He’s up against an invisible and ruthless sounding villain that has his family, while trying to make peace with the no-motive juvenile delinquents who’re holed up inside what other critics have called the “Panic House”, referring to David Fincher’s failure in the same genre, Panic Room.

Director Florent Siri brings a good taste of violence and bloody carnage to the film, and people looking for a lot of destruction will be pleased with the final act. Also on a positive note, Willis is his usual heroic self. But he also feels out of place dealing with three teenage misfits who’re either uncontrollably weak or unreasonably crazy (the group’s cannon, played by The Punisher’s Ben Foster, seems to have walked right out of the final act of a bad Italian slasher film) and a man in a mask who’s only selling point is a Willem Dafoe-ish accent.

Yes, we’re a long way from Die Hard, Training Day, or even Panic Room. Hostage raises no important or original points, features no twist that’s going to keep us guessing, and isn’t nearly as “hard” as it thinks it is. And if you’re going to make a movie that will kill a kid in the first five minutes or features a villain getting stabbed through the cheek without flinching, you’re also going to have to sell the viewer something more than that. Hostage doesn’t have enough thought or balls behind it to make it anything more than a standard action film, which is something it definitely doesn’t seem like it wanted to be.

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Filed under: Action, Movies, Suspense

The Jacket

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted March 5, 2005 at 12:49 am

A Film Review By Jason L. King

Rating:R for Violence, Nudity, and Vomiting
Starring: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson
Directed By: John Maybury

Final Grade:

Unlike most time-bending mind trips of late (I’m thinking of you, Donnie Darko and The Butterfly Effect), The Jacket seems to be strangely grounded in believability. I’m not sure why this film seems so much easier to accept than its genre peers, but I do know it’s easily the most accessible film of this sort I’ve seen in recent memory.

The film centers around Jack Starks (Adrien Brody), a Gulf War vet who’s graduated to roaming the countryside (with retrograde amnesia, a fact that oddly is never fully a part of the story) in late 1992. He meets and helps a stranded little girl and her inebriated mother, and is rewarded by being picked up soon after by a passing motorist. Unfortunately it seems this motorist is of ill repute, and a shoot-out with a cop ensues. When the criminal flees, and Jack is left with a dead cop, no one believes the motorist ever existed.

No one believes Jack is sane either, so he’s sent away to a decidedly unpleasant institution in the middle of the Vermont wilderness, where he meets two doctors. Dr. Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is kind, yet suspicious of Jack, while Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) is the opposite. Dr. Becker’s also testing a new method of treatment, and finds Jack to be a perfect guinea pig. And that’s where the titular restraint comes in.

It seems like I should be more speculative about a procedure in which a mixture of drugs, an old straight jacket, and a morgue-ish drawer transport you to the year 2007 and allow you to have sex with Keira Knightley, but I’m not. The Jacket never seems to give us any reason to stop and think “Wait a minute, how the hell could that ever happen?”, keeping its heels firmly dug into a realistic setting. And unlike other films in which people jump through time due to freak occurrences, the terror that is claustrophobia seems a perfect medium for the brain to do whatever it wants, giving the film a “free pass” in my eyes.

Sure, there are many questions to be answered, and if the viewer stops and thinks long and hard about the events that unfold, I’m sure they’ll want those answers. Credit must be given to the screenplay, which keeps the philosophical questions at bay, and keeps us attached more to the characters than the plot devices. This is helped even more by some great acting by nearly all involved and solid direction, leaving the film as a surprisingly satisfying take on the events that occur in our lives and how and why they come to pass.

The end result is a film that shows us a great vision of how there are things in life we can and can’t control, and how people can be affected forever by others in even the slightest of ways. If the viewer can avoid thinking about the scientific aspects of the film (and can get past the horrible advertising campaign) they’ll probably find a thought provoking drama that’ll stick with them for a while after they see it. The Jacket might not be a great film, but it’s much better than most films with similar premises are used to being, and might be the first can’t miss film of 2005.

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Filed under: Horror, Movies, Suspense
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