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We cover Michael Moores’ latest film, the upcoming film “Love”, and an Xbox 360 Arcade game titled Lucidity. We also talk a little about the motion picture “Moon”, “The Fountain”, and “The Watchmen”.

This week’s catastrophic malfunction is the audio, and some lens smootch. Enjoy.

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“…the Devil” was first surprising because I could see in my DVR-guide info it was released in 2009, but the film is shot as a film would have been in the 70’s. The film brings back to life the slow zooms, camera pans, and the quick and sudden “Exorcist” style jump cuts to ugly, horrible figures. At first I wondered if it had been shot and produced 30 years ago, and that this was a re-mastered release, or maybe even a discovery of a long forgot scary movie. I could almost feel the ghosts from the distant past surfacing in my psyche like Hitchcock’s shadow in San Francisco!

The production team, director, (Ti West) and the art department pull off the style and nuances of the 70’s through great camera work, wardrobe & hairstyle, color schemes, and editing that really work together to produce a unique throwback film to the 70’s-  a time that gave rise to some of the best occult indie and commercial horror film releases, such as:

• Rosemary’s Baby – though this was technically in the 60’s, in many ways it set the tone for the following decade )
• The Exorcist
• Don’t Look Now
• The Omen
• Audrey Rose
• Carrie
• Phantasm
• The Wicker Man
• The Amityville Horror
• Suspiria
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

“..the Devil’s” combines many aspects from these better known occult films, and mixes them all together in a homage. If you like the occult genre of horror, or feel particularly nostalgic about 70’s film, then I completely recommend finding a showing of “The House of the Devil” before the end of the weekend.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Quentin Tarantino’s latest foray in film, Inglourious Basterds, is a highly entertaining thrill-ride that follows the crusades of a fictional OSS squad as they brutalize and terrorize Nazi soldiers in WWII France. The film doesn’t stop there, though, not by any means. The movie provides other running story lines, like fantastic exaggerated Nazi villains, and a healthy portion of Quentinesque dialogue.  By the end of the 2 hours and 32 minutes, I found myself nearly standing out of my seat, hysterical–no, insane–as the film’s heroes ruthlessly bring justice and revenge against the evil Third Reich. Now that I think about it, there was something very cathartic about the movie, but that may be because I’m losing my mind. See this movie. I highly recommend it.

The film at its core is pure exploitation. I can only speculate whether Tarantino will try to reinvent himself after the Kill Bill and Grindhouse hoorah–and now of course Inglourious.  I can see why the Cannes’ film festival may have been unimpressed to some degree with the movie (though the film was nominated for the Palme d’or). It certainly lacks the luster that Pulp Fiction once provided with its unconventional chronology and focus on grand, sweeping dialogue-driven scenes. At least at the time, Pulp Fiction was being itself, and not shamelessly pulling almost exclusively from Sergio Leone’s and other 70’s exploitation films. In Inglourious, Quentin relies on certain devices to help the story read well… literally. He divides it up into chapters, and at some points has the post-production team label elements and characters with a scribbly white text and arrow.  That being probably my least favorite aspect of the movie, I feel compelled to mention additionally that, yes: he’s used more Ennio Morricone music. Again. Overall though, this is a must-see that I can’t wait to sit through again.

One small side note: something else to see is the new Avatar trailer. Looks beautiful!

*Spoiler Alert!* Important plot points may be revealed.

Hurt Locker is probably the best Iraq war film to date, and one of the best modern day war films. Right alongside movies like Blackhawk Down, the city and pedestrian surroundings are incredibly spot-on and serve as one of the most important characters in the film. You can feel the city closing in around the soldiers as pedestrians and spectators watch from windows and out from behind shadows as the soldiers attempt to diffuse bomb after bomb. The predicament of keeping peace, without killing innocent civilians becomes a constant threat, and a frustrating one as it seems to time and time again to give the enemy the upper hand.

We find as we come to know the main character William James, that like him, the film is torn between two competing sides: one – that war is terrible, senseless, unnecessary, and the other – that it is exciting, empowering, liberating. The Hurt Locker’s opening quote centers on “…war is a drug…”, an excerpt from Chris Hedges’, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. At times the movie seems very much like an army propaganda film, but this may be only because the movie’s central theme does not sink heavy into the horrors of war, or become too indulgent in our sympathy’s for the torn and distraught. For James, war gives him a purpose that far exceeds the importance, or thrill, of shopping with his baby son, and ex wife for groceries.

In one of the eeriest scenes, a U.S. soldier is taken away at night by insurgents. His squad desperately follows to save him, catching only glimpses of him as he’s taken away behind corners and down alleys. The unnerving feeling that accompanies those images is not only from great production work, but also because one can’t help but reflect on the real life moments and situations when soldiers were kidnapped, and taken into the night.

In another scene, the squad comes across a group of contract soldiers escorting captured high priority insurgent leaders (the contractor leader played by Ralph Fiennes). At first, it seems as if the contract soldiers are a group of badass commandos, but after they come under fire from a hidden insurgent sniper, it becomes quickly apparent that the army squad is the better trained and most capable of saving all of their butts…well, the ones who survive that is.

This movie serves the soldier, and honors their commitment, courage and sacrifice. The Hurt Locker is a beautiful film that should certainly be considered for Oscar nominations.

*Spoiler Alert* The film by JJ Abrams will be discussed as if the reader has already seen it!

There is a point during J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek when the film crosses a certain threshold, a threshold that was anticipated partly by my skepticism that Abrams and his team of producer/writers (Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman) could pull off a decent and credible Star Trek plot. This was after all a complete rebuild of one of the best space adventure franchises of all time. I knew going into the film, Abrams and his cronies would feel compelled to think about demographics, and bottom lines. How could they write and present the film to a wider, trendier, ultimately more profitable audience, without totally compromising the important principles of a good Star Trek story? After all, the latest Star Trek television show “Enterprise” had disappointed even the most desperate of Star Trek connoisseurs. I understand it was only a matter of time. It was either this or no Star Trek at all. A dilemma, which (in my opinion), has not been settled, despite the movies popularity.

This threshold is crossed in the depths of an ice cave.

In this scene, Kirk is saved by a hooded man as he runs from a giant ice arthropod and nearly falls to his death. The hooded man turns out to be a much older Spock (played my Leonard Nimoy himself), who just so happens to be in the same 200 yard radius as Kirk, and how he was sent by Nero, (an evil, revenge bent Romulan played by Eric Bana) against his own will to watch the destruction of Vulcan in the sky.  This whole situation is highly ridiculous, but that doesn’t even really bother me personally. It’s a movie. Coincidences are not coincidences – they happen.

What’s truly ridiculous is the story that Spock tells Kirk by way of mind meld (that is: a poor man’s cinema version of a mind meld – consisting of narrative by Spock’s conscience, and a montage of tantalizing special effects and reaction shots). The threshold is here. Spock’s entire story begins with the dramatic words, “One hundred and twenty nine years from now, a star will explode, and threaten to destroy the galaxy.”

What Spock doesn’t say, is that the star is actually the Romulan sun, and that the real reason they’re in trouble is because Spock made a promise he couldn’t keep, and therefore pissed off some miner named Nero, who then went on a killing spree, and destroyed a handful of planets. I am unsure at what point the galaxy is ever in any danger from this.

At one scene, Old Spock tells his younger self that he told Jim the old Spock and new Spock couldn’t meet in person or there would be a space-time paradox, which was a lie so Jim would have to do things himself. So should we presume that the whole scene in the ice cave is just an overdramatized story given by Spock to a simpler minded James T? Does Abram’s and his producer writers think of the audience as a simpler minded James T, and they themselves are the Vulcan’s who will show us a oversimplified dumb down version of a story in order to appeal to our sensibilities?

Words like super nova, galaxies, and terms like threaten to destroy, coupled with epic special effects, giant explosions, 3d sound effects – all for the purpose of dazzling the senses, but with little substance at the heart of it: that’s not Star Trek. That might be Transformers, or Terminator Salvation, but it’s not Star Trek J.J.!

Star trek is the realm of awe inspiring science based fiction, about the human condition, and people of all races and species cooperating and setting out into the unknown galaxy.

I admit, I enjoyed the spectacle, and I even saw it twice. With that, I expect the next film to have more real science mixed in with the fiction, and more human elements – more heart and soul. Please.