WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 02/02/04

Saw a late-night (11PM) showing of Bubba Ho-tep at an independant theater tonight. The first thing I noticed when we got there was the crowd. It was the usual collection of freaks and geeks, lost of college kids and goth girls in black makeup and fishnet stockings. The theater was kind of crowded, but it was kind of fun having a art-house college film experience. It’s been a few years since I’d gone to one of those. The crowd was fun to watch the film with too. People were laughing, but nobody was being too loud or obnoxious.

The movie was a little disappointing. We were all kind of expecting a typical Bruce Campbell movie, but this was no Evil Dead or Army of Darkness. That wasn’t too surprising since it was a different director. There was one or two fun Sam Rami inspired moments though, like when Elvis is fighting a giant scarab. They did the standard camera tricks that Rami would do, and that was fun to watch. The scarab was also super-fake looking, which added to the amusement. And Jen was all sad when the beetle got squished. “Awww, he was cute” she whined, which got more laughs from us.

It did kind of drag in places, but I kind of liked it. It wasn’t great, but it had its moments, it was clever and I liked the characters. Bruce Campbell was great as an aging Elvis in a rest home. The story of him having switched places with an impersonator to get away from it all, then not being able switch back because his double died, was intriguing. It was kind of neat to see Bruce Campbell place such a restrained and understated role, and Elvis was a nice tragic figure.

Ossie Davis was great as a black guy who thought he was President Kennedy (“No offense Jack, but Kennedy was a white man.” “They died me this color so they could hide me!”). They played him as a nut, but there was just a little bit of uncertainty which let you believe his story was true if you wanted to. Either way the two of them were a fun team and their histories, real or imagined, added to the story. I also liked how it was all about the personal redemption of Elvis as a character getting his life back.

The setting of the rest home was very well done. The set designs just showed how the place was slowly crumbling apart and you got a real sense of decay to it. I liked how the old people stuck there were not just used for cheap laughs, but were handled with some care and the mood was sad and regretful.

The mummy didn’t actually play much into the film, which was a disappointment. It was funny how when he did show up he acted pretty much like a redneck. They found some egyptian graffiti he’d scrawled on a wall in one of the bathroom stalls, which roughly translated into something about Cleopatra’s sex life. Also, the couple of times the mummy spoke, they showed subtitles with both silly fake-glyph pictograms and also the english translation. One of the insults the mummy yells at Elvis was the line of the film: “Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass-wipe!” Very lowbrow, but too funny. One friend said that one of the pictograms for that was of a guy whipping his butt. I wish I’d caught that.

So it wasn’t a very good film, but it had its moments and had enough to entertain me. I did still like the main characters.

Originally Written 02/02/04

Caught The Butterfly Effect on Friday night. I’d heard mixed and middling reviews on the film, but I was still curious about it and wanted to check it out. The movie definitely had its faults. It was easy to find plot holes and the characters were fairly two dimensional. Still, I found the premise interesting and I could overlook that. The method of time-travel was never explained, but I found I was able to suspend belief on that. So even with its faults, I enjoyed the movie and found it was better than I was expecting. It wasn’t high science-fiction, but it had a really good premise at its core.

They did a lot of fun things with the idea and I liked how the different realities played out. The film had fun showing how the characters changed drastically between the main characters jumps back in time to try and put things right. The film had an interesting idea of causality, which didn’t quite hold up if you analyzed it too much, but disregarding that, the premise it created was pretty neat. It was one of those films where I appreciated it more after watching it and kept on thinking things over. The ending was also satisfying too. It could’ve been darker, but they also didn’t use a typical Hollywood-ending cheat to make everything okay, there was some loss at the end, which made it work better. While there’s no burning need to see the film in the theaters, I would suggest giving it a try as a rental. It’s by no means perfect, but it tries hard and does tell an interesting tale. It’s a bit of light sci-fi that brings up some ideas which are fun to think about.

Incidentally, the title refers to the popular chaos theory explanation about a butterfly beating its wings in Central Park causing it to rain in Brazil. When we first saw the trailer for it we were wondering about it referencing the old Ray Bradbury story about the guy going back in time to the Jurassic era. He steps on a butterfly and when he returns to the present the world and all of history has been completely changed.

Originally Written 01/09/04

I got to see Paycheck tonight. I was curious to how it would be since it was based on a story by Philip K. Dick. The authors works have been mined for several movies, about half of them good and the other half not so good. The quality of those films has ranged from the brilliant noir film Blade Runner all the way down to the horrible turd Screamers. I’d describe this film as kind of a Minority Report-lite. It wasn’t as good as that movie, but it touched on some similar ideas. The story was less complex and it was more of an action film. I’d put it on the same level as Total Recall, though it didn’t have tongue-in-cheek humor. It was still an entertaining story.

There were some obvious plot holes, but I was able to overlook them without them ruining things. The film had some clever bits playing on the central theme of sending yourself clues about the future which will help you out. It wore a little thin in a couple of places though and it really reminded me of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (“Hey I guess I really did steal my dad’s keys afterall” and “Remember, trash can…”)

I did have problems buying Ben Afleck as an action hero though, as I had in Dare Devil. Both he and Uma Thurman seemed to be miss-cast. The idea of brilliant scientists who happened to be hotties in top physical shape and could handle themselves in fight scenes and hand-to-hand combat was kind of silly. It was made more apparents by the other techie characters being kind of frumpy. That’s typical for Hollywood though and it too didn’t ruin things for me.

As I said this was more of an action movie. John Woo kept things a little restrained though, and except for a few of his standard flourishes, it didn’t feel as much like his vintage style. There was a couple of scenes with the standard Mexican standoff between two characters pointing guns at each others heads, which you’ve got to have. The movie wasn’t spectacular but it was fairly decent overall. It was nice to see John Woo do something decent for a change, since his last few projects have been utterly forgettable.

I got a real chuckle out of the first few scenes in the film. It opens up with Ben Afleck’s character doing a reverse-engineering job and the company whose project he rips off is named ARC. Since I work for the real ARC International, I really had to laugh at that. I wish we made something as cool as a 3D monitor.

Originally Written 09/29/03

We went and checked out Cabin Fever last night. I wasn’t expecting a lot from it, but it was kind of a neat, fun movie. It had it’s problems, and some things about it were just plain strange, but it was also kind of clever and had a nice dark humor and satire to it. It obviously referenced other movies, but it cribbed from the best, such as Evil Dead and Night of the Living Dead, and it copied the films in a good way.

Like NotLD it had some comments on a study of society in a microcosm. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun to watch. It was effective with the visceral horror in a couple of places too. I liked how it was a slasher/horror movie without any monsters or supernatural events, it was all biological. First 28 Days Later and now this, I wonder if we’re seeing a new trend?

We also saw Matchstick Men on Friday night. That was pretty good as well. I originally had some mixed feelings on it, but the more I thought about it after the movie was over, the more I appreciated the story and how things were set up. It was certainly an interesting situation and cast of characters.

I liked some of the visual effects they used to show Nicholas Cage’s character’s mental states when he was suffering from acute attacks of OCD, but at the same time, that got a little overwhelming, which was no doubt the intention of the director.

Originally Written 08/23/03

Watched Dark Water last night. It’s a VCD I got from a friend in Singapore awhile ago and had been meaning to watch it. It was directed by the guy who also did Ringu, which was later made into the domestic release, The Ring.

I can’t remember a lot about watching Ringu a few years ago, but from what I remember I liked the mood and atmosphere and the story, but did not find it all that scary. Creepy yes, but scary no. But my friends Steve and Yuan, both of whom are Chinese, found it more frightening than I did. So I wonder if it’s a cultural thing. From what I can remember comparing the two films, the American version was more scary and effective, but not as cerebral as the Japanese one. Cerebral is not quite the right word, but I found it more metaphorical andy lyrical.

The same thing could be said for Dark Water. It had a nice mood and atmosphere to it, and there were some creepy moments, but I was never really scared. I did like the idea and theme of the story though, and while the ending was anticlimactic, it gave some good closure and explained the characters motives. And while the film dealt with universal concepts: a lost child, mother-daughter bonds, sacrifice and protection, it felt more Eastern than typical American films. I guess that’s what I find interesting about it, where it shows the difference between the cultural mindsets and narrative styles.

I’ve also heard about this film, Audition, which I have mixed feelings about. The narrative sounds very clever how it twists perceptions to turn it into a psychological thriller, but it sounds like it might be more extreme a film than I’d want to stomach.

Update 04/20/10

Dark Water, the American version is probably my favorite remake of the Japanese films. It captured the creepy mood and atmosphere of dread from the original and gave it some powerful drama.