Transporter 3 - 3 times dumber, 3 times less entertaining

Even though after 'Transporter' and 'Transporter 2' it was eyes-poking obvious I shouldn't expect more than the consecutive stupid-but-fun-to-watch action flick, even these low expectations weren't covered. As a matter of fact, only half of the above is true - 'Transporter 3' is a stupid action flick, but it turned out it wasn't especially fun to watch.

The story doesn't venture far from the already familiar pattern of the prequels - our absofuckinglutely invincible hero Frank Martin is forced by the uber-bad 'special services' provider Johnson to transport Valentina to Odessa. See, Valentina's father is a high-ranked Ukrainian politician who refuses to be bribed (now that's what I call 'one of a kind'), so Johnson has kidnapped her to force him sign a document which allows dumping of toxic wastes (and we're shown exactly how toxic - boo!) on Ukrainian territory. Now, I don't know about you, but I've read longer, richer and more original text messages. Anyway, hard to expect more from such a movie.

Acting... Yeah, yeah... Jason Statham is a constant factor - he is once again one tough motherfucker with a scowl, who doesn't speak much, makes the same striptease scene twice and beats the crap out of everyone. Oh! and outruns his own super-duper-fast Audi with a BMX... Robert Knepper is again handling predictably well the Master Baddie's role (still, I'd like to know who, when and how got the quasi-idea of casting him as a military other than a shabby deserter in DTESS?). But the sugar on top of it all is the first (please God, let it be the last!) role of Natalya Rudakova (talentless, pretty and dumb, spreading around sexappeal and freckles), who doesn't even manage the part of a transported floral decoration, popping extasy like candy and whining for a mercy fuck. She manages, however, to be extremely annoying (even if the freckles and, to a certain degree, her kinky/innocent looks make her in her own way easy on the eye).

The directing - Olivier Megaton (Megaton? MEGATON?!? well, he certainly is modest) dumped a megaton of garbage on my head with its two repeating fighting scenes, the most boring and non-dynamic car chase ever (quite strange for a film which is in its essence an overgrown Audi commercial), and the worst of all, the pathetic attempt for a romantic scene, which was so naive, boring and painfully amateurishly shot, that it made me wonder whether the director's portfolio includes anything more than a home video of the 'Funniest pets' kind.

Considering the raging financial crisis, I highly recommend you to save these money. It's quite possible to run into a washing powder commercial funnier and more entertaining than 'Transporter 3'.

Righteous Kill - corpse of a movie

Before getting to see it, I thought that all the bashing this movie has received is mostly due to the fact that everyone expected another 'Heat' and didn't get it. After I saw it, I understood that's not exactly true - it seems like everyone is trashing it because it's a piss-poor excuse for a movie. Let's start with the obvious - it's not another 'Heat'. It lacks the script, the tension, the tempo, the directing, and actually the participation of both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino is the only thing 'Righteous Kill' and 'Heat' have in common. However, this alone isn't a good enough reason to watch it, as it's impossible not to solve the 'mystery' ten miutes into the movie and then the only choice you are left with is to stare into the infinity through the screen for the rest of it. This is the point where the acting becomes annoying, because you can see the actors struggle to keep a secret that's in plain view and stick to a script which no longer makes any sense to anyone.

I find it unfair De Niro and Pacino took such a lot of lashing for their performances. I'd even go as far as to say that their acting was as good as ever, but as that couldn't save the movie, the angry mob with forks and torches went after the biggest targets. They were not even cast right - with all the respect I have for them, they are both way over 60 and it shows. Nothing bad with this, but why squeeze them into roles that they played successfully 20 years ago? If they have any fault, it's only in accepting these parts, which may be due to contract obligations - blame the producer for trying to milk the big names out.

The story is as trivial as it could be - a good cop turning vigilante, tsk-tsk. The problem is it lacks substance - there is no justification for his turning (actually there was, I just didn't find it satisfactory), no dialogue worth mentioning, no action scenes, just some people walking around or sitting here or there. Mediocre. Seeing as Jon Avnet is responsible for several of the most tedious movies I can remember, this isn't much of a shock. Do yourself a favour and spend those several bucks on something by Uwe Boll, chances are you will at least get some laughs.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - or several sentences on Viagra

Completely in the spirit of my expectations the probably most anticipated premiere for the winter turned out to be just the next disappointment. I've been always surprised at the abilities of some people to tell short and not especially full of matter stories for extremely long time. If a story encompasses a whole human life, is it absolutely necessary to tell it over the same time span?

After 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' I'm absolutely sure that the redundant accents on the completely uninteresting daily routine of the main character are no longer trademark of the untalented, working with low funding, inexplainably pretentious 'artists', who think that a three hours long scene, depicting a hay chewing cow, is the ultimate form of cinematographic art.

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is based on several sentences (including the title) of an otherwise good short story, stuffed with Viagra (yes, it does go on for hours), and turned by Eric Roth into a FrankenForestGump, completely devoid of the humour, the solid content and the wonderful special effects of the original he wrote and Robert Zemeckis directed.

The commonality with the 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is quite bleak and unpersuasive and I can't help but wonder why. Even the main concept of a rejuvenating person is twisted (again, why?) - in the short story Benjamin Button (depicted by Brad Pitt) is born physically and mentally developed as an old man (he can speak barely a few hours after being born) and his rejuvenation is also both physical and mental. In the movie he is born with an old man's body, reminding the one of the master jedi Yoda, and with the mental development of a new-born, and only is getting younger. And that's it. If the sight of a rejuvenating Brad Pitt riding a bike is enough to keep you almost for three hours in the theater - this movie is for you. I was expecting (probably for the last time) something more of David Fincher and Co.

To conclude: visually appealing, but annoyingly and groundlessly dragging and overextended. The acceptable acting of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett is held hostage by the weak screenplay, based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story barely enough to pass as an adaptation. The movie is filled to the brim with horribly pointless and stereotypic dialogue and lacks any hook or at least some attempt for a plausible character development. On top of that there is an irritating nasal overacted voiceover. Instead of watching something that doesn't contain anything you haven't seen before, just read the story again.

The X-Files: I want to believe (er... not I, it's the name of the movie)

Ok, I've got no one else to blame, I shot myself in the leg with this one. I knew it would suck, I just didn't know how much, I was curious - and wham-bam, the kitten has now 8 lives left. I should have seen it coming as I've never had the patience to watch an entire episode of the TV series, I didn't know there had been a previous feature film and I tend to laugh when someone tries to brainfuck me into believing in supernatural shit, extrafuckingterrestrials (at least of the anal probing type) and intelligent design (yeah, right).

So, in a sudden attack of what now seems to be a subconscious attempt to selfdestruct, the designated entertainment for the night was X-Files, a movie targeted at the audience of tabloids, specializing on headlines like 'My wife is a brain-eating monster from Outer space' or 'Aliens abducted a keg of beer in Iowa'. 

*Long pause* 
*Sigh* 
*Another long pause* 

I just don't know where to start... Should I start with the plot so ridiculous it's virtually unpredictable? From X-Files, one would expect something beyond our senses and beliefs, like monsters, aliens, or at least some ghosts... Next thing you know - it's our old friends, the Bad Russians™. What the fuck? Didn't we go through that stereotyping during the Cold War, like 20 years ago? Am I watching some Clancy-esque techno-thriller, Red Storm, Red Dawn, whatever? And besides, how hard can it be to find someone speaking proper Russian? Ok, Callum Keith Rennie (thumbs up!) did really well his imitation of Russian accent, but the extras? Then we are supposed to fear for the fate of someone we barely saw in the beginning, how stupid is that? Like that wasn't enough, the Bad Russians™ kidnap another nameless freshly introduced victim - see, now we should be trembling for her life too. 

Maybe I should continue with the unbearably corny mind-stunning lines like 'Maybe God has forgiven him after all' or 'I think maybe the darkness finds you and me', all accompanied by the inevitable sighs, rhetorical looks to the sky and the occasional sob. I almost expected a close-up of a huge green snot bubble hanging from someone's sniffing nose. The lines 'I want to believe' and 'Don't give up' are repeating like in some self-help motivational video, trying to brainwash the audience by the means of droning not-so-subtle subliminal messages. 

Don't even get me started on the supernatural part, which should be the main theme in something like X-Files... Everything we get are hints that maybe some old ex-priest ex-altarboy-fucker has turned part-time psychic and is sensing something somewhere because of a possible mental link of sorts to one of his old victims. Ok, so he helps solving a crime, big deal, never seen *that* before... 

How about acting? Duchovny sucks. As always, bar his Californication part. Anderson? Well, she was too busy wringing hands over the hospital drama and didn't participate much. Xzibit? Yo, check this out - pimp my ride, dude! Amanda Peet could be mistaken for just another scene prop, she hardly ever spoke and definitely steered clear of depicting emotions.

Still, I have to give this movie credit for being even dumber than I could ever imagine (and I refuse to blame my imagination for it). Avoid at all costs, unless you want your intelligence insulted and to put your own imagination to the same test.

The Day the Earth Stood Still ...the same day I nearly died of boredom

I just don't get it... I can't believe someone actually shelved the money to produce this ...thing. Did anyone in their right mind see the screenplay or storyboard before saying, 'Go, do it', or someone just thought, 'Why should I care, not my money, I get my salary either way' or even worse, 'Now is my chance to stick it back to the boss, I'll just sneak a couple of papers in the pile for him to sign and by the time they realize what's going on, it'll be far too late'? Or maybe nobody cared in the first place - a couple of renowned names cast, a trailer full of mysterious sounds and showing nothing and the big name of the original were thought sufficient to lure the unsuspecting victims to pay to see this tripe? Now that I think about it, choosing a rookie director makes sense from a cutting-corners point of view - plain and simple, they were after your buck and the trailer was considered enough, the movie itself is just a side effect. 

Let me start with the plot... there are no plot holes, that should be a saving grace, right? Wrong! There are no plot holes because there is no plot to make a hole in - warning, major spoiler ahead - aliens came and shut down the power switch, that's it. Did anyone think (I sure did) 'Boo-hoo, the horrors, it will take the human race what, like 20 minutes to replace the fuses and start again all engines'? Anyway, if the movie were consistent, it would be just plain and boring, but its tempo was chaotic and uneven, and that was further aggravated by scenes that lacked any justification or even common sense. Why did we get introduced to the initial tissue sampling (if that's what it was) back in 1928? It was completely irrelevant to the story and as it turned out later, quite redundant, as shown by the presence of 70-years old aliens later. The whole story looked like something glued together from randomly ripped pages from several classic SF books).

The cast... the cast looked as bored as I felt (but unlike them I had popcorn, I'm sure they wished they had too) and they were all donning pretty much the same desperate "Fuck, I know, I know, not my fault, contract obligations, just let's get done with that, get my check and get the fuck outta here" facial expression - that is, except for the kid, who was thrown in just for the cute factor (or someone was trying to suck up to Will Smith's ass?). Keanu's stiffness was understandable, after all he stated explicitly that being alien it would take some getting used to his body, but Jennifer Connely seemed as a pale shadow of her usual talented self, showing a range of emotions from wide-eyed amazement through wide-eyed disbelief to wide-eyed fear. Ok, maybe some wide-eyed diarrhea-related embarrassment as well. Granted, her eyes are pretty nice.

Visually - lots of bad CGI. Exampli gratia, the textures on that big robot were awful, and the particle-based destruction sequence was just some big chaos - that scene could have been shot in a bathtub of sand with a vacuum cleaner. The blue screen usage was quite obvious in several places because of inconsistent lighting - all in all everything seemed rushed and sloppy.

Long story short: 1. Don't pay to watch it. 2. Don't watch it even if somebody else paid for it. 3. Don't even try to pirate it, that would be a regrettable waste of bandwidth. 4. Friends don't let friends watch it. In particular don't take your girl/boyfriend to watch it, that may be considered an attempt to break up.

Appaloosa ...1st time writing, 2nd time directing - whaddya expect?

I really wish I could find something nice to say about this movie, honestly, I do. The cast includes several actors whose work over the years I've admired and respected, and while not being the lowest career point for either of them (Jeremy Irons still has to beat his 'Dragons and Dungeons' lo-score), I don't think any of them should be especially proud of their participation in this, shall we say, disappointing feature. This is especially true for Renee Zellweger whose character is remarkably unconvincing and for Ed Harris who should get a restriction order to prevent him from getting behind the camera.

Of course, the Western genre is quite depleted by definition, you either stick to the cliches or it's not a Western at all, but there is still room for some originality and creativity, as proven by '3:10 to Yuma', 'Unforgiven' or even the not-exactly-western 'There will be blood'. However, 'Appaloosa' doesn't even come close to being original and creative, regardless of the efforts of its all-stars dream cast, the occasional humour lines and the wonderful scenery. The plot jerks at uneven steps (what the hell was the scene with the Indians supposed to mean and why did it take like half an hour?), often grinding to halt, and the Allison French character is completely ridiculous with the sexist portrayal of her immediate and unconditional attraction to the Alpha male in the pack. The story is straightforward, which is not necessarily a bad thing for a Western, the plot twist doesn't come as much of a surprise and all in all it would be a good, solid mainstream movie if it managed to somehow capture the attention of the audience and make them care about the characters instead of just looking at their watches and secretly wishing to finally see the lone rider disappear into the sunset (whoa, what a surprise - he did!).

Seems like the writers' strike from last year has some deeper going consequences - recently there's been an influx of badly written movies and one can only speculate this is a result of trying to introduce first time writers instead of the experienced ones. All the more too sad seeing a promising movie like 'Appaloosa' flopping mostly thanks to this tendency and wasting performances by actors such as Timothy Spall, Viggo Mortensen and Lance Henriksen, whom I was glad to see return in the spotlight.

Max Payne ...or two fingers my friends

Max Payne holds the distinction of being the one and only video game-based feature film that manages to be dumber than the original. Ok, I'll confess - I'm one of the avid fan boys of the game who didn't like the movie, so that alone makes me a walking talking clichee hater, but hey, it's a fucking shooter video game (even a good shooter is still nothing more than a shooter), and yet some inept first-time wanna-be writer (how the fuck did he get the deal landed in the first place?) somehow managed to screw up a script that was supposed to be a milk run - after all, the makers of "Resident Evil" or "Doom" had far less to work with (you could fit the plot of "Doom" and "Doom 2" combined on the back of a matchbox) and delivered more. I know it's an adaptation and I wouldn't mind a change in the plot (the game tempo would be inappropriate in a movie anyway and repeating the game word by word would earn shitloads of bashing for being unoriginal and boring for everyone familiar with the game, I thought - little did I know), but the plot wasn't so much changed as downright crippled. Mindlessly, as it turned out, because for instance the whole Nicole Horne character was rendered unnecessary, yet she appeared for absolutely no reason and left a plot line unresolved (hmmm... I can smell a rat here, they probably intend to make a sequel - Max has unfinished business). The frivolous chopping of the script also made a key character out of Jack Lupino (mostly because all others except BB were left out - Punchinello and his trio, Vinnie Gognitti, Alfred Woden, the Finito brothers, Boris Dime, Rico Muerte, Vladimir, Frankie 'The bat' Niagara), while in the game he is not much more than a henchman (albeit an important one), and he took way too much of the spotlight compared to his importance (all the more disappointing he just got shot after so much tension building up around him).

The hallmarks of the game (and what made it stand out and compelling) are mostly retained, however in such an inconsistent way it's irritating. We only get a voiceover in the beginning - once, while there are plenty of silent scenes that could use it to emphasize the Noir feeling of the original. Sadly, all the references ('I did like Chow Yun Fat', 'The password is John Woo', the scene with the mobsters disarming the bomb, 'Rico Muerte was a regular Keizer Soze' and so on) must have fallen victim to the above mentioned so-called writer (and I wouldn't hold it against him if he had come up with some new ones - which he didn't). The typical Noir-esque overblown phrases ('The final gunshot was an exclamation mark', 'Outside, the city was a cruel monster') were also notably absent and that didn't improve the overall feeling. Bullet time - check, once, in the shotgun scene. Hello, anybody home? Max Payne is supposedly an action hero, a cop with amazing shooting skills - then why not make the motherfucker shoot someone in a spectacular way? Humour - I didn't notice any, correct me if I'm wrong (a good part of it was coming from Vladimir anyway - "I'm gonna make you an offeRRR you cannot RRRefuse - hahah, I always wanted to say that!", "CleaRRR as vodka!").

I must admit though, visually they nailed it - everything was top notch, from Lupino's tattoos down to the Aesir building, and even the CGI demons didn't irritate the shit out of me. The actors were cast pretty well (Marky Mark will get his usual bashing no matter what he does, but he did ok, considering how little he had to work with) and acted all right - even if they didn't, the bad script would overshadow that. Both the overall sound and the soundtrack were good (as much I liked the original piano theme, maybe it wouldn't fit), but that alone didn't compensate for the lack of plot and action.

In conclusion: it just falls short. Of anything, Doom the movie included. The moral? Get a real fucking writer and send this one to make a screenplay adaptation of Lode Runner. Or Pacman.