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Really Dire

Girls and Their Unicorns: Ridley Scott’s Legend

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Ridley Scott

Legend movie poster

 

Rid­ley Scott’s 1986 fan­tasy exper­i­ment Leg­end fea­tures a very young Tom Cruise (before he was “Tom Cruise”), costar­ring oppo­site vats upon vats of glit­ter. Cruise’s per­for­mance is bizarre and high-pitched, com­posed of crouched poses and unfo­cused stares. But to be fair, how else would any actor por­tray an unciv­i­lized wild-child with a weirdly mun­dane name like Jack? Mia Sara is unmem­o­rable as Princess Lily, save for the spec­tac­u­larly plung­ing neck­line she sports in the sec­ond half of the film (dur­ing which many par­ents were no doubt cov­er­ing the eyes of their innocents).

Tom Cruise in Ridley Scott's LegendThat nice Cruise boy

There is plenty of very pretty cin­e­matog­ra­phy to be enjoyed, but This Dork Reporter regrets to report that Leg­end is awful and almost painful to sit through. I recall lov­ing the roughly con­tem­po­rary fan­tasy film The Dark Crys­tal (1982) as a child, but ruined the pleas­ant mem­ory by watch­ing it again as an adult and dis­cov­er­ing it to be tedious and con­de­scend­ing (with, granted, some incred­i­ble pup­petry and art direc­tion). Per­haps if I had seen Leg­end as a kid I might feel similarly.

The entire plot hinges on the kinds of typ­i­cally arbi­trary rules that char­ac­ter­ize the fan­tasy genre. Pay atten­tion, kids: only a vir­gin can touch a uni­corn, it seems, but alas, they should never do so, lest the sun set for­ever and the world be con­sumed by The Lord of Dark­ness (Tim Curry). What’s a vir­gin, you ask? Shush. Not incon­sid­er­able run­ning time is taken up with awk­ward slap­stick involv­ing midgets, de rigueur in every movie fan­tasy since Terry Gilliam’s Time Ban­dits. Speak­ing of, Gilliam’s dark romp is by far the best of the 1980s hey­day of fan­tasy movies – a genre not to return to promi­nence for almost two decades until the lucra­tive fran­chises Harry Pot­ter, The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Mate­ri­als, and The Chron­i­cles of Narnia.

Mia Sara in Ridley Scott's LegendGirls and their uni­corns! This can only end in tears.

Even the old-school opti­cal spe­cial effects are crummy, for which it is no excuse to say the film came before the age of CGI. The uni­corns’ rub­ber horns vis­i­bly wob­ble, and a flut­ter­ing Tinkerbell-like fairy crea­ture is a painfully obvi­ous lit­tle light­bulb mounted on a wire dis­cernible even on a low-resolution TV screen. No inch of skin is left unpainted with glit­ter, and never have bub­ble machines worked so over­time since The Lawrence Welk Show. But per­haps the most puz­zling detail of all is in the sound design: uni­corns sing whalesong, evidently.

All sorts of ques­tions arise as screen­writer William Hjortsbertg’s plot comes to its train­wreck con­clu­sion: What hap­pens to The Prince of Dark­ness’ evilly goad­ing mother? Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman’s bril­liant Beowulf script did not fail to explore the vast Freudian story poten­tial of a monster’s manip­u­la­tive mother. And where did the last sur­viv­ing uni­corn find its mate at the end? Did the uni­corn killed ear­lier in the film revive some­how, and if so, why? Even Disney’s Bambi didn’t chicken out by resus­ci­tat­ing the mur­dered mother.

Buy any of these fine prod­ucts from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report:

 

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

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Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay movie poster

 

On the way to a hoped-for idyll in their spir­i­tual home Ams­ter­dam, our two beloved ston­ers Harold and Kumar take unin­tended detours through Cuba (as col­lat­eral dam­age in the War on Ter­ror), Florida (where they drop trou’ for a “bot­tom­less” party), Alabama (rudely inter­rupt­ing a Klu Klux Klan klatsch), and Texas (where­upon they pass the Mary Jane with the worst George W. Bush imper­son­ator ever).

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo BayHarold and Kumar are the best of buds. Get it? “Buds”? Oh, never mind…

Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are the 21st Century’s answer to Cheech and Chong, and their first film was a rather enjoy­able, free­wheel­ing affair that rev­eled in its absur­dist plot twists and even aided in mak­ing Neil Patrick Har­ris a star again, deservedly. But this sequel unfor­tu­nately wastes too much time pair­ing Harold and Kumar off with their difficult-to-distinguish brunette love inter­ests. It’s as if, like Tal­ladega Nights (read The Dork Report review), it wants to toy with het­ero­sex­ual “gay panic” humor, but chick­ens out; the impli­ca­tion is that Harold and Kumar are actu­ally more in love with each other than any­body else, or even pot.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo BayDrop­pin’ LSD with the NPH

Offi­cial movie site: www.haroldandkumar.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Southland Tales

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Southland Tales

 

I don’t know if the roughly 140 minute ver­sion of South­land Tales that made it to DVD is a butchered or merely abbre­vi­ated ver­sion of a mas­ter­piece, but what I just saw is an unholy mess. I’m one of direc­tor Richard Kelly’s apol­o­gists for his divi­sive film Don­nie Darko, one of the few movies able to choke up this grown male Dork Reporter. Like South­land Tales, it was heav­ily edited down before release, and the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal ver­sion doesn’t even make log­i­cal sense. Its emo­tional appeal is hard to pin down, and yet I found it hugely involv­ing and mov­ing. I was root­ing for Kelly on his big follow-up, and even though it made the best-of-the-year lists of both The New York Times and The Vil­lage Voice, I guess I’m on the los­ing team now.

The open­ing moments recall Clover­field and Jeri­cho with acci­den­tal home video footage of a nuclear attack on Texas. A long bar­rage of info­graph­ics, tele­vi­sion frag­ments, and nar­ra­tion fol­lows, out­lin­ing a tremen­dously involved back­story. Kelly has obvi­ously cre­ated a huge fic­tional uni­verse, the bulk of which proves super­flu­ous to the com­par­a­tively sim­ple story that con­cerns the bulk of the film that fol­lows. Per­haps South­land Tales is the first entry in this Kel­ly­verse, and indeed, it is com­prised of four chap­ters (start­ing, no doubt mod­eled after Star Wars, with Chap­ter 4). But after this fail­ure it’s hard to imag­ine Kelly secur­ing the fund­ing to com­plete addi­tional chap­ters (at least as films; tele­vi­sion or comics seem both more appro­pri­ate and more frugal).

Wallace Shawn and Bai Ling in Southland TalesBe thank­ful I couldn’t find a still of them mak­ing out

The ensem­ble cast is extra­or­di­nar­ily weird, fea­tur­ing The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gel­lar, Seann William Scott, and a com­ple­ment of lit­tle peo­ple. No less than five past and present Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­bers also appear: Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, John Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and Janeane Garo­falo (cred­ited but I think I only spot­ted her in one shot near the end). Round­ing it out are Miranda Richard­son, John Laro­quette, Wood Har­ris (Avon Barks­dale in The Wire), and Kelly booster Kevin Smith. And is that the weird lit­tle French woman from The City of Lost Chil­dren? You haven’t seen a movie until you’ve seen one with Wal­lace Shawn and Bai Ling mak­ing out. But in a way I sup­pose that makes sense; they are both aliens from another planet. Dif­fer­ent plan­ets, maybe, but still.

Justin Timberlake in Southland TalesJustin Tim­ber­lake shills for Bud­weiser (not shown)

The music is like­wise eccen­tric: Jane’s Addiction’s punk/prog mas­ter­piece Three Days fig­ures in the dia­logue as an enig­matic proph­esy and as the intro­duc­tion to the offi­cial movie web­site, and Moby does his best Van­ge­lis impres­sion for his orig­i­nal score. Justin Tim­ber­lake (filmed in sep­a­ra­tion to most of the action) serves as nar­ra­tor but also stars in a bizarre musi­cal inter­lude and/or Bud­weiser com­mer­cial and/or Iraq war com­men­tary: “I got sold out by I’m not a sol­dier.” And, why not toss in pop star Mandy Moore?

Offi­cial movie site: www.southlandtales.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to me.

Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)

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Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD movie poster

 

Daleks’ Inva­sion Earth: 2150 A.D., the sec­ond Dr. Who fea­ture film, fol­lows Dr. Who & The Daleks by one short year, and clearly betrays where the public’s inter­est lay at the time by ditch­ing any men­tion to Dr. Who in the title. The first film largely dis­re­garded the TV show’s premise and con­ti­nu­ity, and the sequel sim­i­larly plays fast and loose with its own pre­de­ces­sor. Dr. Who has yet another young female rel­a­tive, a niece named Louise? Why does she call her uncle “Doc­tor”? Did Bar­bara elope with that twit Ian? At least Louise is much bet­ter look­ing, so one mustn’t com­plain. Oth­er­wise, the screen­play is loosely based on the orig­i­nal 1964 TV ser­ial “The Dalek Inva­sion of Earth,” star­ring William Hart­nell. It fol­lows the orig­i­nal far­ily closely, espe­cially in the early seqences show­ing a war-ravaged Lon­don and the iconic image (well, to Brits, any­way) of a Dalek ris­ing out of the Thames (actu­ally bet­ter real­ized in the orig­i­nal — here they cut away from a Dalek head pok­ing out of the water and back to it fully emerged).

It’s just barely slightly bet­ter in terms of action and spec­ta­cle (the Dalek fly­ing saucer ain’t half-bad, con­sid­er­ing), but nev­er­the­less just as mind-numbingly stu­pid. Let’s start with the title. Why is it set in the future? Everyone’s dressed in 1960s cloth­ing, with con­tem­po­rary rifles and cars. If there’s noth­ing gained, it might as well be set in present day. Plus it would be that much more of an excit­ing thought for kids to to imag­ine an inva­sion might hap­pen today rather than next century.

Look out, Robo-men! Why did the Robo-men take off their hel­mets and sud­denly become human again when the Doc­tor sim­ply orders them to attack the Daleks? And why do they scream like girls? Why do the Daleks have fire hydrant guns? Why do the Daleks only take male pris­on­ers? What do they do with the women?

Of course, there’s also the music. After another set of point­less psy­che­dlic open­ing titles, a sequence depict­ing a bank rob­bery is set to… Beethoven? WTF? After that we get a generic light­hearted score, deter­minedly whim­si­cal even when Dr. Who dis­cov­ers a corpse. Inci­den­tally, this Doc­tor is badass. Cross­ing the coun­try­side on foot, a Robo-Man orders him to halt. The Doc­tor shoots him and turns right back to map. “As I was saying…”

And finally, why did the Daleks invade Eng­land? The “mag­netic influ­ence of the North and South Poles” is located under Wat­ford, of course!

Dr. Who & The Daleks (1965)

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Doctor Who and The Daleks movie poster

 

Dr. Who & The Daleks is the first of two fea­ture films based on the clas­sic BBC TV series Doc­tor Who. They are, as the fans say, “non-canonical,” and thank god for it. The TV series was a true all-ages affair; typ­i­cally enjoy­able for chil­dren, but with extra lay­ers of sub­text for grownups (or at least attrac­tive ladies for the dads). But this movie is dumbed down to the point where it’s dull and con­de­scend­ing to even the youngest audi­ence member.

Screen leg­end Peter Cush­ing plays “Doc­tor Who” (in the movie, that’s appar­ently his actual name) as a silly old (human!) man, a harm­less mad sci­en­tist. The other char­ac­ters don’t fare well either. The orig­i­nal TV Ian and Bar­bara were intel­li­gent and capa­ble, both with the noble pro­fes­sion of school teach­ers. This Ian is a total prat, serv­ing mainly as comic relief, and Bar­bara is reduced to a scream­ing plot device.

Other things grate to fan­boys (it’s “the TARDIS,” not just “TARDIS”!) and reg­u­lar view­ers alike (the music is wretched). Truth be told, cheesy effects and silly tech­nob­a­b­ble are actu­ally great plea­sures to be found in the orig­i­nal series, but the extra money spent on the movie must have gone to the wrong places (the sets and extra Dalek props, evi­dently). The advanced Dalek tech­nol­ogy includes lava lamps (I’m not kid­ding). And make up your minds, Daleks, is it a neu­tron or neu­tronic bomb?

And finally, if it’s pitched so low, what are the moral lessons it has to teach young­sters? Based on what The Doc­tor has to teach the naïve glam-rock aliens threat­ened by the Daleks, don’t trust any­one who claims to want to help you. Instead, fight and kill them.

King Kong (1976)

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King Kong 1976 movie poster

 

About the only sav­ing graces of this piece of gorilla dung are: A) Jes­sica Lange actu­ally does a pretty good Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, and B) See­ing the movie now pro­vides some unin­ten­tional emo­tional oomph: Kong is actu­ally drawn into Man­hat­tan by the pri­mal lure of the World Trade Center.

Whose idea was it for Kong to walk upright? Would it have been too much work for the guy in the suit to hunch over and drag his knuck­les a lit­tle? And he throws like a girl.