Luna Nueva and Terminator Four reviews by Adam Perry

Special guest critic Adam Perry weighs in on New Moon and Terminator: Salvation

´"Ten million flies can´t be wrong. Eat more shit."

-G.C. Hill

How long did it take Twilight to storm the most mundane hill in the world, that of mass appeal? The book Twilight came out in 2005, the final one, Breaking Dawn, in 2008. There are also apparently unpublished retellings and second parts to books one and two. The third book is called Eclipse, the second, New Moon. I think each book sold over ten copies. The author is Stephanie Meyer, a Mormon. She has never seen an R-rated film, except for parts of Interview with a Vampire.

The first film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, came out on November 21st, 2008. Twilight the movie looked as though, from it´s exceptionally atrocious previews, like everything was saturated in grey. Maybe those were the creative differences that drove Hardwicke from the film, although it was allegedly the production timeline for New Moon. It took three hundred and fifty-seven days for New Moon, re-titled The Twilight Saga: New Moon to appear onscreens, unless, like me, you were in Spain, in which case it came out two days earlier than it did state side.

I saw the first trailer for New Moon before Where the Wild Things Are. It was a single scene, consisting of Kristen Stewart, the heroine, being threatened by an unseen attacker, and a shirtless Taylor Lautner, who nearly went the way of Hardwicke himself, run and turn into a wolf, defending her. The effects were so horrendous looking that I thought to myself, I have to see this film. Twilight´s extremely poor-looking production value and foolish greys had already tempted me, and here was new moon, with a release date falling on my birthday, tempting me again. The first full trailer of the Chris Wietz directed film looked so awful I couldn´t believe it was from a real movie, thus solidfying my need to see it.

However, things, as always, did not go according to plan. I had an opportunity to travel with a good friend, and although it meant missing both Bad LT. Port of Call New Orleans, I had to leave the country. However, as was to be expected, New Moon was playing worldwide, even earlier than in the states! I bullied my friend, a reluctent fan of the first film only, not the books, into seeing New Moon in spanish.

Since I knew nothing of Twilight or New Moon's plot, the movie did not make much sense to me. I know that New Moon starts on Bella´s birthday (because I remembered from Spanish class that cumpleaños means birthday), and that she is almost assaulted by one of her vampire lover Edward´s friends. This prompts Edward to leave the story, which I figured out because I was only seeing shadowy images of Robert Pattinson, which let me know he was in those scenes only in Bella´s mind. I knew that she was growing close to the Ducky-like Jacob (soley in personality, as Jacob is muscular enough to shame any gym-going man), who turns out to be a wolf also. Then Bella travels to a foreign country I didn´t know because I don´t speak spanish, Dakota Fanning showed up for no reason, some ancient vampires lead by Michael Sheen let Edward go, and he and Bella return to the states. The film ends with the most anti-climactic confrontation between werewolf and vampire.

I knew when I was supposed to laugh, as the audience´s laughter told me something funny was happening, and more importantly, when I wasn´t supposed to, which would be when I was the only one laughing, usually at Robert Pattinson´s hilarious ghostly images.

First, the good. The soundtrack, the entire theatre letting out a collective orgasmic gasp the first time Jacob appears shirtless, and any time Robert Pattinson is on screen.

The bad. The differences between vampires and humans in this series seem only to be strength and agility. Nary a fang or even a bite is shown, and vampires walk about during the day time freely. I´m all for reinventing the wheel and everything, but it should be reinvented with talent, not a bunch of illogical and, frankly, uninteresting stylistic choices.

At least Chris Weitz allowed a color other than grey into the film. Next job: getting Kristen Stewart to crack a smile. Current grade: A for a hilarious time. I plan to watch and review both Twilight and New Moon in english.

This morning I re-watched Terminator: Salvation. I had seen it in theatres and left taking only the discovery of Sam Worthington with me as a positive, hating the rest. This was mostly because the trailer for the film that debuted with The Dark Knight looked amazing, with the best Nine Inch Nails song (the day the world went away) playing throughout. However, upon second viewing, the film can be seen as, if nothing else positive, ambitious. Unlike the first three Terminator films, which were exaclty the same film no matter what any one says, McG and his crew cooked up a plot that did not just involve running from a machine that is unstoppable until film´s end. He split the movie into two parts, one that followed Christian Bale as the fourth person to play John Connor (yeah, I´m counting The Sarah Connor Chronicles), and the other following executed criminal Marcus Wright, played by the revelatory Sam Worthington. The film lumbers along inoffensively and is even somewhat satisfying, but it has three major problems that can make it flunk-worthy to purists.

1) the marginalization of John Connor.

for the main character of the film, John Connor is actually outmatched by Marcus Wright for screen time. It doesn´t help that the scenes he does have are full of tired shouting and predictable struggles with superiors, while Wright is an interesting, compelling, mysterious character that the audience will find way more interesting and exciting to follow. As John Connor, Christain Bale doesn´t really bring anything to the table, not giving a bad performance, but certainly not making the audience miss him when he is gone.

2) References to the other films

there are three of these that I find intolerable, one somewhat O.K. Young Kyle Reece, suprisingly not terribly played by Anton Yelchin, tells Marcus Wright "Come with me if you want to live." strike one. The second, which is atually somewhat more subtile, is Wright teaching Reece to tie his shotgun to himself, as Michael Biehn does in Terminator 1. The third is John Connor telling his wife, this time played by Bland, I mean Bryce, Dallas Howard, "I´ll be back." Not only does infuriate me to think how much that original line is taken out of context as it is, this "homage" solidified it. The fouth, and most unforgiveable, is a fake Arnold as the main terminator at the end of the film, revealed as though it is a huge surprise. Don´t treat me like an idiot McG, especially not after the dollars I pumped into Charlie´s Angels I and II and all the time I spent defending you, I know that ain´t Arnold Schwarzzenegger. Absolutly pointless.

3), and finally. the hated PG-13 rating

No, I did not want to see Moon Bloodgood naked. I wanted the old fashioned, and never abandoned unbrideled carnage of the first three films. Even the huge action set pieces that plagued Rise of the Machines were filled with the requisite creative blood-letting that had defined the franchise. The decision to make the film PG-13 felt purely financial, not artistic at all, and the bitch of it all is that Terminator: Salvation was a financial disappointment.

The film is worth it to watch simply for the Marcus Wright storyline, but mediocrity, along with the above stated issues, weigh the film down. It depends on the viewer as to how much. Marcus Wright parts, A-, Christian Bale: C-, film C plus (there is no plus sign on this spanish keyboard)

thanks for reading guys. -Adam

"The Box" & "Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day" Reviews

Guest Critic Adam Perry reviews Richard Kelly and Troy Duffy's latest films.

Recently I had reason to take in The Box at the movies. Coming from Richard “Donnie Darko” Kelly, I had little reason for excitement resume-wise. However, I cannot help but be interested in Kelly after watching the #1 Donnie Darko Fan: A Darkomentary short film DVD extra, in which a crazed, possibly fake fan explains on camera why he is the number one Donnie Darko fan. The fan eventually goes to a convention where Kelly is speaking, and asks him numerous mythology related questions about Donnie Darko. Kelly, a good-natured, jockish looking guy, responds, “I made it all up, man. I made it all up.” This answer intrigued me, as did the downward spiral of the fan in the video, and ever since his name has caught my eye, always made me read an article about his upcoming projects. So I saw The Box, my first Richard Kelly theatrical experience.

The story of The Box is simple, but it is also crowded with details. A struggling family receives a box and a key. The key opens up to a “button unit,” as Frank Langella says, and the button, when pressed, signals for the killing of an unknown individual. The family is then compensated with one million dollars cash. In 1976!

Kelly seems to have a fascination with disfigurement in this film; Cameron Diaz has only one toe as the result of botched x-ray radiation, and anyone who knows anything about this film has seen Frank “half his face was…gone” Langella in the ads. The make-up department gets points for it being slightly more realistic, and far more frightening, than Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, but Kelly never really uses this idea for anything other than shock value.

The button is pushed, and calamity ensues. Herein lie the film's best moments, with evil Langella unleashing a torrent of unknown menaces in the form of everyday people from earlier in the film, all of whom are under his complete control and suffer bloody noses for it. It is here also where Kelly throws in many plotlines, including alien invasions and the nefarious nature of government testing. The Mars theme is eerily reminiscent of Black Bush’s, and real Bush’s, Mars follies, if I may get my Peter Travers on for a moment. The alien bit, I will give Kelly credit, is done fairly well, and gets points for originality, if anything, aping a tad bit from Sphere.

However, bad acting and lame dialogue makes the movie semi-unwatchable. Cameron Diaz has a wretched southern accent, but does not give a terrible performance. James Marsden and whoever plays the couple’s son are both terrible. Frank Langella is, of course, amazingly hilarious as Arlington “more like 1/8 of a face” Steward. I would, of course, prefer to abstain from giving the film a grade; I guess it would be [B-]

And now The Boondock Saints, being viewed in its entirety for the first time since I was a high school freshman. First time ever on DVD format.

The film opens with the theme of Smoking and Irish Stuff, including religious imagery, the font of the credits, and the music. One of my Irish friends, who is an outspoken hater of movies that are “too Irish,” which for him include Mystic River, said he thought The Boondock Saints was “a complete Tarantino rip-off” and that he “thinks so much less of [me] because [I] like those movies.”

Troy Duffy, despite his faults, does bring an amount of personal flair to this “Tarantino rip-off.” Great musical numbers, particularly the introduction of Willem Dafoe, original and humorous action set pieces, and likeable characters distract the non-anal, i.e. average viewer from the films otherwise present Tarantino biting. Also, some will disparage the time-shuffling of the script, also crediting that to Tarantino, I’ve always found the way Duffy fools with time to be like a Guillermo Arriaga script. Funny enough that The Boondock Saints came out before any of Arriaga’s big scripts, which may make the comparison fail, but that says something about the nature of comparing a work to a work, and labeling something as a rip-off. No one is original anymore; it’s the way ideas are applied that make a film like this one worthy of many a repeat viewing.

Despite myself I enjoy this film. It has the gritty, late ‘90s shoe-string budget feel of such other Dafoe classics like Animal Factory. There are diverting scenes, full of as much spectacle as any scumbucket-worthy action fair such as T-formers II or G.I. Joe. Throughout the film we get four action pieces, each recalled upon after the fact. A fight at a bar, an improbable case of self-defense, a large shoot-up of a Russian gang meeting, and a three on one gunfight that involves at least twelve firearms. The ending is a toss-up; the eventual alliance of the McManus brothers and Agent Smecker is interesting, mostly because Duffy is so clear about Smecker’s guilt over allying himself with such blatant, justice-dispensing killers, but the way events play out is a little on the weak, unbelievable side.

After re-watching The Boondock Saints, it was on to see Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. The general public had been teased/threatened upon the general public for at least six years before a trailer and a release date were finally set, an interim during which Duffy was smeared/exposed as a megalomaniac, friend-alienating jerk in the film “Overnight,” and everyone except Norman Reedus aged noticeably. The film opens with Rocco, killed off in the first film, walking into a church, giving a monologue about being involved with the Saints. A priest is then murdered in the Saints’ style, in an effort to flush the McManus brothers out of hiding.

The hiding turns out to be Ireland, where the brothers have spent ten years growing their hair and beards and herding goats with their improbable father, Noah “Il Duce” McManus. Upon learning of the priest’s demise, the brother shave, cut hairs, and dig up the past in the form of a suitcase full of weapons, cash, and pennies. Boarding a freighter, they return to Boston, picking up Clifton “Gonzales Gonzales” Colins Jr. as a sidekick. When the Saints land in Boston, they uncover a multi-layered plan to flush them out, by Papa Joe Yakavetta’s son, Judd Nelson, who was in turn being used to lure Noah McManus out of hiding, so an old enemy can confront him. Extreme violence, time-shuffling, and unexpected cameos follow.

All Saints Day is truly a fan’s sequel. Duffy deftly recalls bits from his first film, like the brothers’ hilarious fight in a heating duct, without repeating them. The movie’s sweet spot for me was a fever dream that the McManus brothers have, in which Rocco expounds upon his death, saying, “I wouldn’t trade the good we did for the whole world…not a single minute of it.” Whether or not the viewer agrees with the film’s rampant vigilantism, it is hard not to identify with the themes of doing something with your life, even if your life ends up being the cost. Despite the films cartoonish nature, deaths sting and big ideas can blindside the viewer, while most serious films cannot even hope to evoke such feelings.

Duffy’s flair for violence is admirable, and the way his victims are shot echoes such films as The Wild Bunch, in the large scope of massacres that take place. His victims always die funny, being shot four or five times before the actor realizes that they are supposed to fall. Critics will deride his violence as unrealistic; I didn’t know we were watching Saving Private Ryan or A History of Violence here. The Saints are a cartoon unto themselves, their world is a fully realized one, and the sequel was made with that world and its fan base, all created with the first film, in mind. For entertainment value, southern Julie Benz, and crazily orchestrated scenes of carnage, look no further than the Saints, I and II. [A]. - Adam Perry.