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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Revenge of the Villain Creep
When I first started reading details about Revenge of the Fallen sometime midway through the production, I was concerned about reports of there being 40+ robots in this film compared to the 10 or so in the original. This problem, villain creep, seems to be a disease that often strikes franchise movies, and usually not with positive results. Indeed, one of the major things that really killed Spiderman 3 was the number of villains – 3 – and there was scarcely enough story to go around.
Then, when the first reviews started coming in from overseas, quickly skimming through most of them gives pretty much the same consensus: too long, too chaotic, too convoluted, perhaps the worst movie of the year.
Regardless, I was going to see Revenge of the Fallen either way. I was an original Transformers fan in the dark ages of the early 80s, and these days my 8 year old son thinks he's Optimus Prime. The first Transformers movie gave me pretty much what I expected or wanted from a Transformers movie: big robots faithful enough to the spirit of the originals without looking boxy and stiff, a basic dumbed-down action movie plot that didn't involve a lot of mental heavy lifting, some pretty visuals (not the least of which was Megan Fox), some nice (if often incoherent) battles, and an identifiable, charismatic lead in Shia LaBeouf. Even if Megatron and Starscream, the two main Decepticon heavyweights, didn't evoke their Generation 1 counterparts as well as Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, or necessarily even have much to do or say, the movie was fast paced, funny, exciting, and overall enjoyable. I liked it a lot as a lightweight summer action movie, and couldn't have asked for more.
As for Revenge of the Fallen, the action sequences, particularly the robot fights, were pretty much as incomprehensible as warned. I was reminded of the old Tex Avery style cartoons where two cats fight furiously in an all-concealing ball of dust with the occasional arm, leg, or tail poking out in one direction or another. Many of the Autobots and Decepticons are so similar in color and so busy in design with the thousands of interconnecting plates making up their bodies, that it's often difficult to tell who exactly is fighting whom, and who's winning.
However, I didn't feel the movie was as unbearably long as most critics seem to indicate, and the storyline nowhere near as complex or convoluted. Even if there isn't always a lot of logic to it, it's a pretty straightforward bad-guys-want-to-take-over-the-universe-and-must-kill-all-good-guys plot. There's probably a store somewhere in Hollywood where they sell stencil templates you can lay on top of computer paper and just spray paint the script. Michael Bay probably even stocked up when there was a good sale going on. For a heavier movie, this would be a death knell, but for an early summer action movie based on a bunch of toys that came out almost 30 years ago, it's a good fit.
This time around, the Decepticons are looking for an alternative source of Energon located somewhere on Earth. The Allspark used to be the source of Energon that powered all the Transformers, until it was destroyed by Sam and Optimus Prime in the first movie. Here, Sam finds a sliver of the Allspark in an old shirt that gives him instant knowledge of advanced physics and mathematics, as well as (eventually), the location of the new Energon source. The Decepticons get their hands on it, and while they're inexplicably unable to learn as much from it as Sam did in about 30 seconds, they do use it to resurrect Megatron.
Meanwhile, the US Government is apparently trying to deport the Autobots, while they and Sam race around the globe trying to stop Megatron and the ancient Decepticon known as The Fallen from locating a device that will create Energon by destroying the Sun. Along the way, they meet and power up another ancient Decepticon warrior, Jetfire, who's been masquerading as an SR-71 Blackbird in the Smithsonian (how he didn't come to life when Ben Stiller was running through there earlier this summer is unknown). How he can be so ancient he has only prehistoric knowledge of the Earth and its people, yet is disguised as an airplane no more than 40 or 50 years old, is beyond me. But Jetfire's characterization as a cranky old war veteran who switches sides and helps the good guys was fun, and he's one of the few standout bots among the newcomers.
Ultimately, leaps of logic abound, as do a lot of action clichés such as the heroes running toward the camera as a gigantic explosion erupts behind them. Battles are indeed chaotic and often incomprehensible. And characters seem to show up in places you wouldn't really expect them to be, and where their presence serves no real purpose in the plot. Overall, though, there are enough laughs and thrilling set pieces to offset much of the headshaking nonsense. And while he uses spray-on stencil templates to write his scripts, I've always felt Michael Bay should be applauded for his craft in combining practical and CG effects to do what other directors would simply do in a computer. Bay may not be an artist, but he's at least an accomplished craftsman who knows how to put an action movie together in ways technically different from other similar directors.
At the end of the day, Revenge of the Fallen is probably not as bad as most of the critics are indicating; neither is it as good as its predecessor. I'm sure there will be a sequel by 2011 or so. Hopefully Bay will be able to combine the positive elements of each of the first two and craft a genuine summer classic.
Star Trek (2009)
Exactly What Star Trek Needed
Sometime around the midpoint of Star Trek, the characters stand on the bridge of the Enterprise discussing the implications of living in an alternate universe, and what their lives might have been like had Captain Nero and the Narada not interfered with the timeline.
The inside knowledge of the characters gives them the intelligence to understand that this is not how things are supposed to be, but that (with the advice of the elder Spock), maybe things are destined to work out a certain way in any eventuality.
But for all of this ingenuity in setting the stage, Star Trek still has to tell a dramatic story, and it mostly succeeds in doing so.
Nero and Ambassador Spock have been catapulted back in time roughly 100 years, after succeeding in stopping a massive supernova, but failing to save Nero's home planet Romulus from destruction. That's the extent of the understanding required of the time travel plot. The rest is motivated purely by revenge by the grief-maddened Nero, and it's interesting that Nero is in many ways a sympathetic – although completely psychotic – villain. He's not evil. He's insane. A working man who's family was destroyed by a mistake he interprets as apathy or conspiracy.
Gene Roddenberry's original intentions for Star Trek – for Captain April of the USS Yorktown in the late 1950s to early 1960s – was an adventure show with a moral or allegorical undertone that could be exciting, believable enough from a science standpoint, but most of all, entertaining. Roddenberry felt that if it wasn't important for Joe Friday to explain how his revolver worked on Dragnet, it shouldn't be important for Captain April to explain how his phaser worked; its function should be evident in the way the characters reacted to it. In that respect, prevalence of the technology was less important that telling a story about believable characters in an exciting adventure with some kind of subtext.
This Star Trek is light on the allegory, but the subtext remains in spades.
Most affected are James Kirk and Spock, who's lives are irrevocably changed by Nero's actions.
In this reality, Kirk's father is killed in the moment of Kirk's birth, and instead of an upwardly mobile young man, we see a rebel with the duality of being the genius and leader he was born to be. An undisciplined, cocky miscreant with the swagger and mental ability of a great commander. The conflict and contrast here provides a meaningful portrait of someone struggling against destiny, and moreso than with any other character, studies the theories of nature vs nurture. "James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life," Nero suggests at one point in the film, but by the third act we see the shiftless and reckless rebel maturing into the Captain Kirk he was perhaps destined to become by any means.
Opposite Kirk is Spock. Spock's struggles are initially internal, a fight to reconcile the two halves of his physiology – the emotional, passionate human, and the logical, stoic Vulcan. Spock's conflict becomes external when his home planet Vulcan is destroyed by Nero, his species of people wiped out, and his mother killed. How Spock comes to terms with his conflicts is as central to the story as Kirk's.
And then there's adventure, which there is certainly plenty of, thanks to state of the art and expertly executed practical and CGI effects. Perhaps as importantly, the action sequences are well framed and well paced, so the film never feels so fast you can't keep up, nor so confusing you can't tell who's doing what. This is not an easy thing to accomplish, even for a veteran director.
Not everything is perfect, however. Some of the camera work, while inventive, can be disorienting, specifically some of the spiraling shots in the opening sequence. These don't detract from understanding of the flow of action, but come across as pretentiously gimmicky. Likewise, bright camera flares are often overused, especially on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Despite the abundance of Vulcan characters, there are also leaps of logic. Most notable of these is the sequence where Kirk and Scotty are beamed from Delta Vega to the Enterprise, which is at warp. Assuming the transporter has some sort of finite range (otherwise, one would not need a starship at all), and that the Enterprise is moving away at billions of miles per second, the feat doesn't seem to be in targeting such a fast moving object (as is portrayed), but instead a feat of long-distance beaming. If we can transport billions of miles, why do we need the starship we're beaming to? Likewise, the meeting of Kirk, Elder Spock, and Scotty on Delta Vega comes across as entirely coincidental, and at quite a stretch of the imagination. I suppose one could invoke destiny, but I don't think I buy it.
In the end, Star Trek seems to spend more time building back stories than it does working on its own present story, and the meat of the central drama might sometimes take a back seat to explaining who's who and why. That's not to say there isn't drama – good drama – just that there often isn't enough of it.
What we're left with here is an essential origin story to set up a new franchise – a franchise that, by all appearances, honors the philosophy of Gene Roddenberry and the characterizations and chemistry of his crew of the starship Enterprise, while not being afraid to try new things. This is a very good example of science fiction action and drama that relies more on characters and pacing than it does on meaningless technical explanations. A very emotional – if not cerebral – entry in the Star Trek mythos that does Gene Roddenberry proud and paves the way for better adventures to come.
Friday the 13th (2009)
Well.... Executed?
I had a hard time deciding just how good or bad a movie this one is, not because I was unsure of my reaction (I enjoyed it), but because I wasn't really sure what to compare it to.
Friday the 13th movies have always been a sort of guilty pleasure among the slasher breed. On one hand, you have Halloween, which had a very tight script, excellent direction and pacing with honest to god suspense, and no point whatsoever. On the other hand, you have The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was low on production value, gritty, exploitive horror violence in it's most primal and artistic form, and no point whatsoever. Neither of these movies had any value from a plot or character development perspective, but they were primal in nature, expertly crafted by filmmakers at the top of their game, and struck a very strong chord that made them bona fide classics of the genre.
And then there was Friday the 13th. The stalker aspects of Halloween combined with the brutality and grittiness of Texas Chainsaw, with possibly less of a point than either film, on their own storytelling merits. Since this movie is intended as an amalgamation of the first 4 Friday the 14th movies, it should be noted that the stalker element was heavy in those films. The formula involves a lot of POV and shots of the killer's feet, until the momentum towards the end chase. In later F13 movies, Jason was no big secret, and he was seen full-body from the get go. It's the same way here, and although this is a redux of the first 4 Friday movies, we lose much of the stalker POV aspect that made Jason kind of a ghost in the woods, and are given a Jason that is a huge, violent, brutal, *motivated* ambush killer.
I suppose it's worth noting that so many of the kills in the original Friday series involved Jason walking into frame, the victim cowering, defenseless, Jason sticking a sharp implement into the victim, and walking off screen. It wasn't really until Kane Hodder took over the role that there was any, for lack of a better concept, character development or emotion from Jason. Here, he's PO'd from the get-go, and there's no victim cowering in a corner just waiting to die on cue. Jason comes and gets them, brutally, and there's no sense that the victim is being killed because the script wants them to, but because *Jason* wants them to. I suppose that's a positive point.
Production value is another point. The original Texas Chainsaw was gritty and hand-held and looked like it could be an actual snuff film. That was part of its power. The remake managed to increase the production value without losing too much of the grittiness of the original. That was a positive point for that film, and one of the things I really liked about it. Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, on the other hand, somehow managed to have less production value than the cheaper original, as well as some arguably unnecessary core character changes, and was worse for it. The new Friday the 13th, if anything, might have *too* much production value on the screen for its own good. It's not quite dark and gritty enough.
On the other hand, it's been arguably 25 years since we've had a "serious" Jason-in-the-woods movie. Ignoring the New Beginning, Jason Lives and the later films played Jason up as an anti-hero and developed the formula into a comic book aspect with a "gimmick" for each film... the resurrections by lightning, the telekenisis, the toxic sludge, the demon worm, outer space, dueling with Freddy. So its been a long time coming that we have a back to the roots story of Jason running amok in the woods without a campy gimmick to make him the protagonist of the story instead of the villain. Here, he's definitely the villain and, like the movie itself, he means business.
What we have, in the end, is probably the best Friday the 13th movie ever made. But, that's not really saying much, since the originals weren't very good to begin with (although definitely my favorite guilty pleasure as far as horror goes). Friday the 13th 2009 looks a little too slick and is missing some of the ghost-in-the-woods stalker aspects that worked in the originals, but the new Jason is definitely very menacing. You don't get the sense that he can only catch you by teleporting or because the script says you have to fall down. He's coming to get you, and he's going to do something awful to you. Would-be victims fight back and are beaten down viciously. One rips the sack off his head and is stunned by Jason's deformations. Among the clutter of the attic setting is an old hockey mask. The ending, with Jason bursting up through the dock, is pure, classic Friday the 13th. And it has absolutely no point, whatsoever.
So what we're left with is a brutal slasher film that's light on literary credit, a little too heavy on production values, but which pays due respects to the source material to be recognizable beyond the hockey mask and machete. A handful of the characters are either likable, memorable, or get under your skin. None of them is dynamic in any way. The plot is formulatic. Yeah, it's a Friday the 13th movie, and a pretty good one, as those things go. *Slightly* above average 6/10, with high hopes for a solid sequel next year that doesn't try to cram 4 movies worth of backstory into one script.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
A Rousing Adventure in the Old Tradition
In the case of movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, fanboys are extremely vocal and polarized in their opinion, and it's these fanboys that the movie's opening shot seems to directly address as the Paramount mountain fades into a molehill in the Nevada desert.
Watching Crystal Skull, the first Indy movie since I saw a Last Crusade 19 years ago in a now-defunct theater (and 27 years since I saw Raiders in also now-defunct theater), a kind of "small world" theory occurred to me. The first Indy movies were made in the 80s and set in the 30s; while the world of the 80s was certainly smaller than the world of the 30s, both are almost infinitesimally gigantic in proportion to how small the world has become in the new century, where we get breaking news as it happens from the deepest jungles of Indo China. It's hard to imagine then, for at least some viewers, a time when a man could wander into the wilderness and discover something that hasn't been seen in 5000 years; certainly it's registered on everyone's GPS today, like every other McDonalds on every other corner.
To me, that kind of sums up the challenge to getting into an Indy-type movie (I say "type," because Raiders certainly did invent a new kind of action/adventure for the latter 20th century): how do you get back into that large-world mode where it is possible to get lost and find something that hasn't been seen in hundreds or thousands of years? Enter Indiana Jones, 1957, in the middle of the Red Scare. Jones, now a US Military Colonel who worked Intelligence in Europe during WWII, has been kidnapped by the evil Commies and taken to a top secret US Air force hangar in the Nevada desert to retrieve an artifact he himself uncovered some time ago. What this artifact is, and what the Commies want with it, is unimportant, although it does lead into the main meat of the story. What's important in the first scenes of the movie is how Ford and co. shake off the rust of almost 20 years. Ford, for his part, comes off a little stiff in these opening scenes, and perhaps plays his age up a little too much. It doesn't take long, though, for that light to come back to his eyes, and suddenly Indy seems 10 years younger, and the movie really begins to roll.
While the first three movies played off the setting of the 1930s era, with evil Nazis and Biblical Implications, this new Indy moves us into the age of the Communists, fear of the A-Bomb, and interest in what may or may not be flying saucers and men from space. In this way, Crystal Skull evokes the mood of the period just as well as the earlier films, albeit a different period. To me, there's a sense of newness there, even if the actual film-making is reminiscent of Raiders in its pacing and action themes.
I personally find it difficult to understand how someone can accept Indiana Jones facing the literal Wrath of God (the sight of which melts the faces and bodies of those who look into its light) and the healing power of Christ, and not the paranormal aspects of Crystal Skull. It's almost like saying you can accept a house that has a refrigerator, but you draw the line at a microwave oven.
On special effects, I'll only note that for the most part, in any movie of any era, all effects look fake. It's only a matter of what kind of fake you want, and which kind of fake is more practical and economical to produce. Crystal Skull gives us the first dose of CG in an Indy movie, sure, but it also gives us the familiar desiccated mummies and practical explosions of previous outings. To me, it's a non-issue. The effects shots of the original Indy and Star Wars movies look no more real or fake than modern CG, they just look fake in a different kind of way. I don't think the effects shots of Crystal Skull take anything away from what is essentially the same old Indy in a new period of history.
Ford once again fills the Fedora with (except for the opening shots) the same light in his eyes and vitality of character, and Karen Allen's smile lights up the screen as Marion. And, fanboys of the world, silence your groans, but Shia LaBeouf is for real as a likable, charismatic action star of this and probably the next couple decades. He's maybe no Harrison Ford, but guys like Harrison Ford come along maybe only so often.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a very fitting entry in the franchise, and perhaps the best outing since Raiders. It has all the charm, elaborate set pieces, and sense of wonder of the originals, while updating the historical era and look correspondingly. 4-stars, or 9 out of 10 on the IMDb scale.
The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)
There Are Fates Worse Than Death -- and Watching This Is One of Them
No one goes to a movie like The Hills Have Eyes 2 and expects the second coming of Citizen Kane. The same is true for the majority of low-rent horror flicks, especially those Roger Ebert has dubbed "Dead Teenager Movies." The Hills Have Eyes 2 definitely qualifies as a Dead Teenager Movie, only here, the teenagers have been given the superficial appearance of military trainees.
Some will argue the line "it's only a movie" when questionable facts are raised in a movie review, but I've always been a firm believer that all good fantasy must be rooted in reality in order to be effective. In the Hills Have Eyes 2, we're to believe the main characters are military people on a training exercise, but they look and talk like high school kids camping in the desert. The dialog is awful and frequently vulgar to excess. Though the films aren't nearly comparable, I kept imagining these "soldiers" being in Platoon, and shuddering with dread.
Very little about the characters evokes a soldier other than rifles and fatigues: radio transmissions are carried out like teenage phone conversations; a Colonel is addresses as "hey, asshole" by a Private. And nobody seems to have the slightest idea what to do, or any sense of command structure, when things begin to go wrong. I think of the soldiers in James Cameron's Aliens, a film of pure fantasy, and how even those futuristic Marines behaved like real soldiers despite their fantastic situations. Fantasy rooted in reality.
I try to begin watching a movie as a 5 on a scale of 10, and judge it's strengths and weaknesses from there. You have to allow concessions for the material; there's no way Star Wars is as good of a movie as The Godfather, on equal terms. But both are excellent examples of their type.
In that respect, while the Hills Have Eyes 2 is a pretty dreadful exercise in amateur and immature writing, it's only modestly worse in that regard than the typical Dead Teenager Movie. On a technical side, the movie appears to have decent production values and is pretty well made from that perspective. Scenes that are intended to shock, or which are intended to evoke urgency or suspense generally work. So, while watching The Hills Have Eyes 2 may indeed be a fate worse than death, there are certainly far worse horror flicks in circulation.
It's worth a watch for those who enjoy this type of stuff without the usual fanboy baggage, or those who don't tend towards thinking every movie they see is either the Best Ever or the Worst Ever of all time. If you don't "get" horror, especially the Dead Teenager variety, you're not likely to have a good time with this one.
4/10
The Amityville Horror (2005)
Untruths about untrue events?
In Kindergarten we played a game where the teacher whispered a secret to the first student, who then whispered it to the next, and so forth down the line of 15 or so kids. The last student to hear the secret would then speak it out loud, and the lesson was how much difference there was between what the 15th student heard and what the teacher originally said.
Say what you will about the Lutz family's story, and Jay Anson's novel based on their story. I'm not up for the age old argument over hoax or truth, but at the very least even skeptics would have to admit that the Lutz family's story as told by Anson at least was not so completely preposterous as to be discarded out of hand.
The James Brolin/Margot Kidder version of the story deviated from Anson's version of the Lutz story, but at least remained faithful to the material enough to resemble what George and Kathy related as fact.
Now comes this disaster, 4th hand at best, worse if you count revisions to the original script written for the project. It's been a long time since I've read Anson's book, but I recall a tense, creepy, dreadful story which, if one were inclined to believe in the supernatural or at least approached with an open mind, came across as entirely plausible. This movie is such a departure from the original story it's no wonder George Lutz dismissed it entirely in a recent interview.
On some levels it works on it's own merit. Camera-work and acting are at times effective, and certain scenes evoke a sense of urgency if not fear or suspense, but the rest is completely preposterous for a work alleged to be based on a true story. Far too many weak horror clichés riddle the story... going up and up and up the house from the ground floor to the roof (yes, the roof)to escape a shotgun-wielding maniac being the biggest offense. Worse though is the total disregard for the "true" story the movie is based on. The changing of facts for no apparent plot reason, moving of the time line for reasons that aren't even convenient to the plot. As a journalistic endeavor, the writer would likely lose his job and be blacklisted. As a form of entertainment, he'll probably get another job once the box office totals are in.
Like I've hinted at earlier on, I neither believe nor disbelieve the original Lutz story because the fact is, no one but George and the kids know the complete truth. Those who support it as a true story contradict each other, as do those convinced it was all a hoax. But to produce an account of an allegedly true event, only to remove all traces of plausibility in the name of grinding together a slurry of traditional post-Ring horror clichés, is not only a sell-out, but a complete disaster.
Open Range (2003)
Costner better behind the lense
I've never been a fan of Costner's ability as an actor. Something in his voice grates on me and seems to scream "I'm acting!"
However, there have been several movies to date with Costner in the lead that I count among my favorites, such as Bull Durham, Robin Hood (despite his lousy non-accent), Field of Dreams, and even For Love of the Game and Perfect World.
So while Costner the actor does, typically, come across more as Costner playing Charlie than he does embodying the role, the photography and storytelling of Open Range are very well grounded, honest, and often beautiful.
Development of characters isn't created by holding up cue cards with a detailed, written biography. It's revealed in subtle moments of dialog and action. We know that Costner has been a killer and a soldier and regrets both and wishes to be neither. We know that despite his sordid past he's generally honest, from his reaction to cheating at cards.
We know Boss is living out a lonely, sad existence following the death of his wife and child, whom he never had the time to tell how he really felt towards them. We know that Boss is an honorable and peaceful man with a strong believe in justice and is slow to violence and slower yet to killing.
Through Duvall's performance we see the difficulty of his decisions in letting men live until he's given no choice other than to kill them. We also that when it comes right down to it, he has the experience of age and a long hard life to know what needs to be done and how, and the ways in which Charlie and his younger companions are as sons to him.
All that and more is character development for those who care to listen to dialog rather than numerous successive explosions and senseless shootouts.
Photography-wise the film provides stunning vistas of the open prairie, and closer shots reflecting on the beauty of nature, such as a low shot across a clear shallow river. The photography of the climactic shootout uses several inventive and effective camera angles to provide us with information the characters don't have. And while a vast majority of films tend to have one recurring theme to the photography and setting, Open Range ranges from sun-drenched plains under a cloudless blue sky, to smoky saloons, to raging thunderstorms. Not many films work with such a pallet of lighting and setting, preferring to theme themselves as dark or light but rarely both.
The story itself is perhaps clichéd, perhaps formulaic. It's been said that every story has already been told at least once; the merit is in the freshness of the re-telling. For me, the photography and the character development really made the movie. There was terrific chemistry between Duvall and Costner in particular, and while the romance angle was perhaps underplayed or underwritten, subtle chemistry does exist between Costner and Bening.
Finally, in one of his last film roles, the late Michael Jeter provides a terrific offbeat performance as the livery owner who risks his life to help the good guys against the most powerful man in town.
Some of the fades between scenes seemed to happen a bit too abruptly, but I'm uncertain whether to fault Costner as the director, or the editing of Michael Duthie and Miklos Wright. In the end I'm convinced that from an artistic standpoint, Costner's strength lies primarily behind the camera rather than in front of it.
Open Range is essentially a two-character drama set in a beautifully photographed setting, and I believe it succeeds very well on those two levels.
8/10
Howling V: The Rebirth (1989)
The best Howling sequel
Howling V is definitely the best of the Howling sequels, but that really isn't saying much. The basic premise has a group of previously unrelated people brought to an ancient castle in darkest Europe, and before long they're left with the mystery of who is killing them off one by one. The pro log shows a previously failed attempt to kill off the bloodline of the werewolf in this same castle; we're to assume by this and of course by the title that the killer is a descendant of the survivor so many years ago.
Super low budget and looks it, with hardly a werewolf to be seen, but I think it works in it's own way. Fairly suspenseful, fairly well acted for what appears to be an amateur endeavor, with a good twist ending. Not a literary classic by any means, but definitely enjoyable. Howling 6 was a decent although lesser sequel. New Moon Rising is embarrassing to watch. Not only shot on video, but apparently shot on 8mm video to boot. The three entries in this series worth seeing are the original, this one, and to a lesser extent part 6. Avoid the others like the plague.
5/10