TRON: Legacy

When at the theatre to see "Black Swan" I was waiting for the person I was seeing it with to show up. As I waited I noticed a table set up with a few people sitting behind it, just giving away tickets to TRON. As I am a fan of free stuff I couldn't pass it up. (especially since a single ticket at that theatre is $12.50, fuck that!)

Having never seen TRON I didn't really know what to expect from this sequel. I knew there were motorcycles in it, that The Simpsons and Family Guy had both made fun of it, and that it was all just special effects.

Kevin Flynn was a computer programmer twenty years ago, and a video game maker. He disappeared right on the verge of a break through, something big enough to change everything about our world and solve its problems. His son (Sam) now an orphan is left to watch the company his father started become everything he was against. After a page comes his way from a number long disconnected he looks into it. That's when he accidentally transports himself into the world of TRON.

There's not much to say for the story, its basic, easy to follow, and leaves the narrative open to have tons of action and special effects battles to keep everyone entertained. That though was part of my problem with it, we get into this virtual world much to quickly. The story of Sam being an orphan and fighting the system was interesting, enough to keep the movie afloat with just that. But they rush it so then they can get into the "bread and butter" of what people came to the theatre to see.

When seeing a coming attraction for this my interest was piqued. Not so much in the story, I could care less, or the action, how much different could it be? No, I was interested in the lighting. Their suits although mostly dark latex or leather is contrasted by the lines of literal light they have going over them, they are lighting themselves. In a world that has no sun that makes their suits vitally important. When alone in a room its darker than if there are fifty people, interesting, and fun to play with. Sadly they don't push it hard enough, they don't use it to its full potential. In a world that is an ideal virtual world it doesn't have the room to be gritty, everything is slick and even. Which itself was really cool, every surface is polished and clean.

The acting is incidental to the story, it doesn't really matter, and Kevin Flynn, Jeff Bridges playing the character he did in the original is just having fun with the role. After winning an Oscar, and playing the U.S. Marshal in the up coming and for me very highly anticipated Coen brothers film "True Grit", I say let him have a little fun. Sam, played by Garrett Hedlund is adequate, he doesn't have to do much but be good looking, look confused most of the time, and then kick a little ass, but mostly watch other people do it. For me the real star of the movie was Olivia Wilde, for no other reason than she is gorgeous, and looks so in this movie. They must have had to pour her into her costumes. She also kicks a lot of ass, she does more fighting than anyone else in the movie, and was good at.

The effects at parts were pretty awesome, and seeing it in 3D, the second film I've seen in 3D in the last twenty years (The other being Alice in Wonderland) was interesting. I am not a fan of 3D for the most part, for to many reasons to start listing in this entry. But the 3D fit this well, and for the most part didn't mess with my eyes to much other than a few shots that were strange to have in 3D. Another problem I had with the effects was that there is a character called CLU, he is a computer version of Bridges, but hasn't aged at all since his creation. So he is basically a complete computer creation (funny right) since Bridges is to old for the role now. But his skin looked waxy, his lips didn't seem to move right, it was just generally a bother to watch him since I could tell so much that he was fake, surrounded by real actors.

The landscape of the virtual world was also problematic, instead of letting us see it for as it was, they just hid it behind mist. Mountains, oceans, everything but the city was obscured by this mist, and since there's no sun, and the light never changes, neither does that. Perhaps I'm putting to much expectations on a movie that's merely meant to be a spectacle, and a movie I didn't really care if I saw anyway. I can say that I was entertained for the most part, so I guess it worked and did the job it set out to do.

My few complaints aside I was amused while watching it. This was not meant to be much, cringing at the dialogue and throwing my hands into the air when the plot didn't make sense is merely a side effect of expecting it to be as good as other movies I've seen, its not going to be. Turn your brain off, stare at the pretty lights and girls and just enjoy it for what it is. 6/10 stars.

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde

P.S. Either have TRON be a main character, or at least important, or don't have him at all. He was a tacked on character that didn't make sense. With a story arc that was as bad and short as I've seen in some time.

Talhotblond

This will make you think twice about who you talk to online, maybe even make you think three or four times about it. We've all seen "To Catch a Predator" this is.... not that, the damage done here goes so much deeper.

I don't want to give away to much about this documentary, but I'll do my best to explain what it is. A man named Thomas Montgomery is bored with his life, his middle aged wife and two daughters, he works at a factory making guns. There is not much exciting about his life, that is until he meets a girl in a chat room, shes 18 and looking for an escape from the little town she lives in, in West Virginia, her screen name, Talhotblond, who says her name is Jessi. Thomas becomes Tommy, a fellow 18 year old, who's a sniper in the Marines, and they fall in love. When Montogomery's wife finds out she sends a letter to Jessi telling her the truth.

An online fight ensues, but they end up talking again. Jessi now is talking to a coworkers of Thomas' a younger man in his early twenties. She is stirring up a jealousy and hatred in Thomas. He ends up killing this younger man, like a sniper would, and a man hunt begins as more secrets are revealed and the stakes become clear.

This is the real story of three people who had a love triangle with the two men never actually meeting the girl. They became so enthralled with their own online story they killed for it. It is a very well made documentary, it looks good, and keeps up a nice pace. They got access to people involved with this story that I wouldn't have thought they would have been able to pull off.

Its a scary thought that there are so many people out there who do this sort of thing, they build up these fantasies in their minds that they think it's real. Thomas actually thought that if he wished hard enough he could reenter youth, become 19 again, even have a bigger penis. Disturbing in so many ways, and so sad. What makes a person so delusional that they start to believe that sort of thing? Because of two peoples actions, someone ended up dead, lives in two different families were ruined, and for nothing, for absolutely nothing. They never met each other, how could they become this enraged, this homicidal from a chat room, from reading some misspelled writing scrawled in an IM window. Even taking into account this went on for months it still doesn't explain it all.

They do run into a few problems in how they have to tell the story, they need to have the conversations from online for us to see, there's no audio, just at times words coming up on the screen telling us what they were saying to one another. It was what they had to do, and they couldn't help it, but it still bothered me after a little while.

An interesting and sad watch. I wish that there weren't people out there like this, to many people that seem normal have this deep rooted psychosis, and its scary to me. 8/10 stars.

Director: Barbara Schroeder

A Taste of Cherry

It is very hard to care for a character when you know almost nothing about them. You don't know what their central conflict is, you don't know anything about their life, and they insist on using people like they have no feelings or right to express their opinion.

Mr. Badii is driving around his city looking for someone to help him, the job he has is simple and the pay is good. He wants some one to come to a hole that he has dug near a tree in the outskirts of town, yell his name twice, if he doesn't respond fill the whole with 20 spadefuls of dirt and leave. If he does answer, help him out of the grave. As he drives around and meets people he sees a cross section of the country he lives in. Immigrants, low income laborers, and a man who works at the natural history museum.

We spend almost the whole time in the car as he drives around, he is rude to people, short with them. If they express their opinion at all he tells them he doesn't want to hear it, he just wants them to do this job. He calls these people his friends, he manipulates them, and asks so much of them for a monetary compensation. To everyone he talks to the money is meaningless, they only want to help him. Badii is a selfish, and careless man. He gets frustrated when people wont do his bidding, people who would be more likely to kill themselves than him, they live sad and hard lives where he seems well off. We never know why he wants to kill himself though, so I cant say much about that.

It has a terrible non-ending, I'm sure you can guess from reading this where the story ends, so we get no closure on the story. There are some great moments in it, but because of the ending those moments are meaningless, if the whole story is about the last day of his life, or a day he nearly made a huge mistake we need to know that, this cant be left open.

They do some very interesting stuff with lighting and composition, but because the film is almost entirely in his car it becomes repetitive quickly. They also put in hints for things that never happen, what a waste. Example: Whenever he gets to the site where he dug the hole we can hear an injured or lost puppy somewhere nearby crying. To me it would seem like to end it he would save the dogs life, thus saving his own, but no. Its never referred to.

I cant really recommend this to anyone, it drags to often, and it not story enough to be a feature length, I think as a 45 minute short it would work very well, but at more than double that it simply flips about trying to run the clock out. 5/10 stars.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Actors: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Mir Hossein Noori

Trembling Before G-d

I was in the mood for a documentary last night, and one that felt familiar enough that I could passively watch and not get lost at all. So I picked this one, which in many ways felt similar to other docs. on the same subject, but with one glaring difference.

I've seen a lot of docs. about how Christians treat those who are homosexual, and this was the first one I saw about how Jews treat members of Judaism who are gay. Specifically it deals with how Hasids and Orthodox deal with this "problem." I was sad to see how those who are ultra religious can all act so similar, I've prided myself in the way homosexuality is viewed by the Jews, but was always looking at Reform, not Orthodox. Just like how Christian people are pushed out of their faith, so are religious Jews. A big difference though is that Jews keep to themselves, they don't try and force anything onto anyone, and thank G-d for that.

Its sad to see people pushed away like this, for something they cant help, and is just a part of them. It was important that they show this, Christians and Muslims shouldn't be the only ones bearing the brunt of the blame for being on edge with homosexuality. Listening to these people talk just reminded me of how far we've come, but also just how far we still need to go. Religion may never change, but at least on the government side we can fix the inequality.

It was straightforward in its message, it wasn't shot great, but docs. don't have to be, so long as the message is strong and well supported I can overlook the way something is shot. 7/10 stars.

Director: Sandi Simcha Dubowski

The Horseman

I was in the mood this morning for something that wouldn't require a lot of brain power to watch, just something with action and some fighting, so I popped in "The Horseman" It indeed had action, but was much more gruesome than I had expected.

Christian is a man on a mission, his teenage daughter had disappeared and when she turns up in the morgue with cocaine, and heroine in her blood, as well as several semen samples on her, he goes out to find her killers. He systematically makes his way through the people who had anything to do with his daughters death, and last few hours. He is sent a tape in the mail, it is a porno, with his daughter being the doped up star just hours before she was dead. He uses this as a frame to work off of to find all involved. Along the way he comes upon a girl (Alice) who needs a ride down the way he's going, and as they drive together they share little bits of their lives. You would think that this is a story of redemption, or at least eventually, but it never gets to that point.

They get stuck on the revenge aspect of the story, and all the different ways someone could torture another person before finally killing them. This was an extremely violent movie, I'm not often caught off guard, or will wince when something happens, but I many times in this had trouble keeping my eyes on the screen. There are buckets of blood in this, and I'll have trouble thinking about an air pump for athletic balls again without this movie coming to mind.

The acting is all around okay, nothing extraordinary, but nothing overly amateur about it, it is obviously an indie film, so they work with what they have. Peter Marshall who plays Christian does a great job as the father out to find the killers, and is scary in the role. He plays the homicidal maniac at times with yells and screams, his eyes intense and glowing, and at other times plays it with a quiet smoldering when he tortures and kills people you might think he was merely doing the dishes. In both of these ways he is very successful, but because of that it makes the character work for me a little less. There are anti-heroes of course, but this man is cold and calculated, so it makes it hard for me to like him, let alone be on board with what hes doing.

They shot digital, and it works for the film, they keep the contrast high, and are unafraid to let black take over the frame. The makeup as well did a great job, and in that same vein the FX crew did a great job, it must be fun to work everyday with that sort of blood and gore...and fire.

If you aren't in a good mood, this will not help, I don't actually know what mood you would have to be in to want to watch this. The story is okay, nothing great, and I hate to say it, but not in the least original, they don't even bring something new to the table, or add some twist, it is just like so many other movies Ive seen about a father out for justice.

There is only one way for this sort of story to end, so from the first few minutes you know exactly where its headed, not to say the ride isn't one that takes you places. Enjoyable as it could be, but wish there was more differences than other movies of the same story. 6/10 stars.

Director: Steven Kastrissios

Starring: Peter Marshall, Caroline Marohasy, Brad McMurry, Jack Henry

Batman: Under the Red Hood

I was a little sceptical going into this movie, I was excited to see it, don't get me wrong, but there were a lot of ways that this could have went wrong, and just happy to say that I didn't run into many.

Batman is continuing his effort to rid Gotham of the criminals who call it home, when trying to stop a few thugs from delivering "Amazo" to Black Mask (the current Gotham kingpin) he watches as they are assassinated at long range by a sniper. Following the sniper and chasing them down only enhances the mystery. He moves like someone that Batman has known in his past, he's been trained, and been trained by the best. As Batman discovers more about the identity of the Red Hood, the sniper who killed the thugs, he finds a new enemy. The Red Hood is setting himself up to be the new kingpin in town, but not for the reasons you might think.

The story here is a combination of two separate Batman stories, one an older and very well known one, the other newer, but still a nice addition to the animated Batman film library. The older story is that of the loss of the second Robin at the hands of the Joker. Batman was unable to get to Jason (Robin) in time. The Joker beats him to near death with a crow bar, and then blows the building up. The second story they bring into this movie is the reemergence of the Red Hood. Many criminals have taken up the mantle of the Red Hood to hide their real identities at times, even people like the man who would eventually be known as the Joker. A man calling himself the Red Hood is in Gotham, and he is taking no prisoners as he rises to the top. I wont go into detail on that much further lest give away key elements of the story.

As I said I was a little wary going in, trying to take these two stories, one of them being very iconic and putting it to celluloid is a difficult notion considering the fickle nature of fans like me. With this in mind I can say that they certainly satisfied my idea of what this story should look like. I was so glad they had Black Mask in this, he is often ignored because he is a new villain and not well know, but in the last several years has been a very important character in the nature of how Gotham and its underbelly functions. The Joker is beefier than I would have expected, and I was not a fan of his voice. The voice wasn't bad, it just wasn't the Jokers voice, I can understand they wanted to distance themselves, even if only slightly from "Batman: The Animated Series" but they should have kept Mark Hamil as the Joker, his voice is the perfect fit for it, and he has been doing it for the last twenty years, I'm sure they would have been happy with his performance.

Gotham is just as dark as it should be, with a little more color than we saw in "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" but not pushing the limits like they very easily could have. The architecture of the buildings was spot on, as was the design of the Batcave and the various other locations we see in the film. I didn't like the look of Ras al Ghul's lair, but that's a minor complaint. The voice cast did a fantastic job, other than the Joker they all perfectly fit as I thought they should. The is a violent movie, and at times very bloody, the Joker cuts a mans throat with a shattered glass, a mans head explodes when attacked by the Red Hood, a few people are brutally set on fire, in that way it pulled no punches, pun intended.

The story (thank God) is not a look at super villains, or how bad ass Batman is, (and he is) but delves deeper into the psychology of Batman and all the thought that has went into building these characters for the last several decades. What makes Batman who he is? What makes the Joker what he is? And how are these two connected? Is it a mistake that Batman doesn't kill? All questions that they play with in this story, this film is by no means a children's movie simply because its animated, I still think for the most part its okay for kids to watch this, but like Harry Potter it wasn't originally intended for children.

Batman's greatest failures are on display here, should he ever have let the second Robin be Robin in the first place, and what if there was no changing him to begin with? These are the kinds of stories that they should be putting in these smaller animated Batman movies, and they do, at least for this one. Because of the Animated Series, and Mask of the Phantasm this movie had a groundwork of other dark Batman animated shows and movies to help it along. Without the other animated works that have been made in the last 15 years this story wouldn't have surfaced, and if it did it wouldn't have been the story it is here.

This was a well made and well timed venture, and I'm really glad not only that I saw it, but that someone allowed them to make it. 8/10 stars.

Director: Brandon Vietti

Starring: Bruce Greenwood, Jensen Ackles, John Di Maggio, Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Isaacs, Wade Williams, Jim Piddock

Cropsey

Everyone has heard the urban legend of the killer who grabs kids from the streets and from their neighborhoods and takes them away. He chops them up and buries them, sometimes with a hook for a hand, sometimes a blunt and bloody ax. This is where that legend originated.

Two filmmakers, both of which grew up on Stanton Island, and who both grew up with this story come together and try and piece together the truth. We start out with a quick history of the island, and how it was a dumping ground for the rest of NYC. After hearing peoples interpretation of the story from those who live on the island we move on to the actual story of the missing children on Stanton Island. The disappearance and ultimate discovery of the body of a young girl with down syndrome is the spark that ignites the fire which illuminates the other disappearances that had been happening, but some how kept quiet for a decade.

The introduction of the center of the island brings a big piece of the puzzle together. In the center of the island is a large wooded area, the only one left on the island since it had been suburbanized. Two groups used this land, one was a hospital for those with deadly infectious diseases, mainly tuberculosis, and the other was a mental institution known as Willowbrook. Seeing footage of how the mental institution was run, and how its "patients" were treated we get a very good idea of the horrors that must have went on there. Children who were mentally and physically challenged left in their own filth, sometimes naked, or bound so they couldn't move, all of this exposed by Geraldo (believe it or not) Even after this terrifying expose, the hospital continued to run for another decade before it was finally shut down.

People started to live in the abandoned building, many ex-patients, which brings us to Andre Rand, the man arrested and convicted with the abductions and murders. At this point in the film it quickly became like many others I've seen, the story of a wrongfully accused man being incarcerated and how the train was rolled against them. They never push the idea hard that he's innocent, but they certainly hint at it a lot, (Odds are he's guilty) but there are and were so many problems with the prosecutions case, so many holes and strange occurrences that he should never have been found guilty. With there being so much inconclusive evidence and conflicting statements its a shame to see someone lynched out of social justice, even if he is guilty.

The interviews in it aren't great in terms of ascetics, in content they were great. There was little lighting, the camera was either to close, or two far, and made people look not as nice as they might otherwise have looked. The backgrounds were distracting and to busy. The story twists and turns at the beginning, and I was glad to see that, in the second half when it turned into the "mind of a killer" thing, mixed with the "Trial gone crazy" I started to tire of it a little.

Its a very interesting story, and they did a great job with it, there weren't to many points that I felt they went off topic, or took unnecessary tangents to explain anything. The whole idea of urban legends is that they arise questions instead of answer, and this movie is like that, at the end I have more questions than when I went it. Having just finished reading "Devil in the White City" which has a very unique Chicago serial killer, it was interesting to see this uniquely NY serial killer, and even more specific Stanton Island killer. I give it 8/10 stars.

Directors: Barbara Brancaccio, Joshua Zeman