aberger79 Reviews

The Running Man (1987)

Low brow, generic, 80's sci-fi action

[4/10 · 10 September 2019]

Now, I love me a good 80's sci-fi action movie, and Arnold was in some of the very best in that genre: Terminator, Predator, and Total Recall (technically 90's but it's got 80's written all over it.)

The Running Man is not a good movie. It is not even a decent movie. Everything about it except for maybe Richard Dawson's part screams "half-assed." The sets, costumes, and sound are all perfect examples of the worst kinds of 80's trends in design, fashion, and music. Neon lights, synths, garish spandex suits in shiny solid colors, and so on. It looks cheap and ugly all around.

There are many people on this site who seem to think this movie is a classic. I don't get it. Like I said, I have no bias against Arnold or this genre, and I love plenty of 80's movies. But this movie has nothing going for it-not even a single passable one liner for Arnie. Early on, when he kills the (one of many) buffoonish "stalker" called Sub-Zero (a large Japanese man who skates around with a lethal hockey stick), he yells to the camera, "Sub Zero-now Plain Zero!"

I can't imagine anyone laughing at that. The line should have been rejected as idiotic before whoever came up with it even put it down on paper. And yet, of the 10 or so one liners that follow, it only goes downhill from there. Truly an abysmal screenplay on all fronts.

And then there is the additional fact that this film is a total insult to its source material. "Very, very loosely based" on Stephen King's novel sounds about right, to the point where the two have only a title and the main character's name in common.

Rocketman (I) (2019)

Nonsensical, trite, and ultimately hollow

[3/10 · 3 September 2019]

The only words of praise I can bestow on this worse than average biopic of a famous musician (and "average" for this particular film genre is a truly low bar) are for the brief moments of genuine pathos we witness in Reggie Dwight's childhood. Not those scenes involving his parents, as they never register as anything more than cardboard cutouts of real human beings, but the few scenes involving his grandmother. She was apparently the only adult in his family who showed him genuine love in his childhood, and the director manages to convey this well in the short amount of time allotted to this minor (but not so minor) character.

It is all downhill from then on.

There are three colossal problems with this movie. The first is the lack of any adherence to the basic chronological facts of Elton John's musical career. You do not need to be a hardcore fan of his to know, or at least suspect, that John did not play "Crocodile Rock" at his opening gig in L.A., because that is a song that did not even exist in 1970, and wouldn't see release until the mid 70's. Similarly absurd is the scene in Dick James' office, well before John was even known in the music world, during which he rattles off the first few seconds of many recognizable songs that would later be major hits. Most notable among them is "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues"-a song that would not be released until 1983, nearly 15 years later. I realize this is supposed to be something of a musical "fantasy" and that I am supposed to "suspend my disbelief." Maybe I would have if the other elements of this movie covered into a satisfying whole. But they don't. Not even close.

The second major problem is the narrative concept of John telling the whole story of his life in rehab, during a group therapy session. Thus, the movie is one flashback after another. First, it is beyond stupid and actually insulting to think that we're supposed to believe something like this would actually happen. This is not how group therapy works-anywhere, for anyone, no matter how famous you are. For the whole movie, none of the ten or so other patients gets to say a damn thing. They just sit there and listen to the world famous, filthy rich Elton John moan about his supposedly awful life. Oh wait, the leader of the group therapy session gets to ask a few questions. Sorry. To make this situation even less realistic, John is alternately dressed in a ridiculous devil-with-wings costume, or simply in a bathrobe, naked underneath, wearing big glasses with pink glitter on the rims. Give me a break. Even if you have never spent time in rehab, you can see that none of this would fly in such a setting. People take turns talking. No one gets to hog the floor. It's as if the screenwriter and director knew nothing, absolutely nothing at all about addiction treatment. It's been a while since I have witnessed such a massive display of ignorance and stupidity on display in a major Hollywood production-and one that's gotten largely decent reviews, for God's sake.

Finally, and worst of all, is a flaw common to the majority of biopics-the period of time covered is too great, there is too much territory to cover, and so the result is that the majority of the film feels like a summary of the subject's life. When will these people learn that less is more? Why do you need to cram so much into so little time? Even though the movie is two hours long, the cramming "effect" still leads to patently absurd sequences such as John's ill fated marriage to a German recording engineer in the mid 80's. He meets her for the first time (apparently), they get married, and then they get divorced-all of this in the space of no more than 3 or 4 minutes. Renate Blauel, his wife for 4 years, is granted only 3 or 4 lines, all of them brief.

The last flaw above all is what kills so many biopics. This is why this genre is so aggressively, predictably mediocre, 9 times out of 10. "Rocketman" is worse than mediocre, however. It is a genuinely awful film, and worse, an awful film that has received a bizarre amount of enthusiastic praise from fans and critics, who are paid to know better, alike.

If this movie is superior to its 2019 counterpart "Bohemian Rhapsody", as so many have claimed, On the other hand, I do not think I can trust in that claim if its source is someone who believes Rocketman is an example of good filmmaking. Regardless, I've had my fill of rock star biopics.

My advice to other directors who take it upon themselves to tell the life story of so and so rockstar: don't tell their life story. Don't make a biopic. Focus on a year or two in their lives, or even a month, week, or single day. Give yourself time to flesh out the characters, to bring them to LIFE. Fast forwarding through a decade or more inevitably lends your story a "greatest hits" sort of feeling.

ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (2019 TV Movie)

Sam Cooke had a perfect voice and image but not a perfect character

[6/10 · 10 February 2019]

I don't mean to slander Cooke with that title. Even though he is my favorite singer of that era, and the owner of the sweetest, most graceful voice I have ever heard, I have to accept based on the research I've done (it doesn't take much) that he was not murdered. There was no conspiracy to kill him. He, with no help from anyone else, set in motion the chain of events that led to his incredibly tragic and humiliating death. He did this by behaving in a violent and unseemly manner, entirely unbecoming to the squeaky clean image he had so carefully cultivated.

I think this documentary does a great job highlighting the musical genius and wide array of other talents this man had. Sam's gift to the world will be everlasting, and he obviously had a tremendous impact on his many fans and of course the people who knew and loved him best.

But I think it was a big mistake to put such a strong emphasis on the "conspiracy" angle. It diminishes the impact of the rest of the film. That is, if you have done even 5 minutes of research into what happened that night, rather than taking the word of a friend or family member who, understandably, found it difficult to accept that Sam could have acted in such a way. I am sure plenty of people will come away from this movie thinking there was some organized, insidious effort to "do away" with Sam, and that is a shame. Why can't we just accept that he was not a perfect guy, and he made an ill judged, fatal decision that night? No one is perfect, and stars of his caliber were and always will be exposed to many more temptations than the average person.

I will end this by quoting from an NPR interview, in which the author of "Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke", Peter Guralnick, says the following:

"Well, his death carried such reverberations within the black community. You know, it was, in a sense, so inexplicable and so sordid in its circumstances and so contrary to the image of Sam Cooke, and the result is that, I would say, within the community, there is not a single person who believes that Sam Cooke died as he is said to have died, killed by a motel owner at a cheap motel in Los Angeles called the Hacienda, which he had gone to with a prostitute named Elisa Boyer. I could have filled 100 pages of the book with an appendix on all the theories about his death.

The central tenet of every one of those theories is that this was a case of another proud black man brought down by the white establishment who simply didn't want to see him grow any bigger. I looked into this very carefully. I had access to the private investigator's report, which nobody has seen and which filled in a good many more details. And no evidence has ever been adduced to show--to prove any of these theories. But, you know, it's--the love that people felt for Sam Cooke, I think, is far more significant than the circumstances of his death. But in the research that I did and also all the people who were closest to him, I don't know anyone who doubts the official story, as much as they might wish that it were otherwise."

Evil Dead (2013)

Most Overconfident Movie Tagline of All Time

[3/10 · 5 April 2013]

When the remake of the 1981 horror classic "The Evil Dead" was announced in late 2011, fans of the series reacted, unsurprisingly, with revulsion. At the heart of their outrage lay a simple question: Why? How could a remake possibly improve upon the original? The first film's charm had much to do with its shoestring budget and utter lack of prestige. The cast and crew were a ragtag group of amateurs who essentially had no clue what they were doing. The filming process was notoriously unpleasant, requiring the team to live in a primitive log-cabin in the backwoods of Eastern Tennessee. It shouldn't have worked. And yet, when The Evil Dead hit theaters, it won over audiences across the world with its simplistic, clumsy charm and unique sense of humor--not to mention its pioneering camera work and brilliant practical effects. It paved the way for a decade of ultra-violent, low budget horror movies (either the best thing to happen to the genre or the worst, depending on who you're talking to.) Few products of the medium have ever enjoyed such influence.

Though a more technically advanced film, Fede Alvarez' 2013 remake--backed, disappointingly, by Raimi and Campbell themselves-- is as shoddy a production as the original, but without the charm and humor to redeem it. The fundamental problem with Alvarez' version (and Diablo Cody's reworking of the script) is that it approaches the material with ludicrous self seriousness, thus making itself vulnerable to more intense scrutiny, against which it has little hope of defense. The film begins promisingly enough, opening with a disturbing scene of father-daughter filicide, but immediately tumbles downhill when the meat of the plot (what little there is) is revealed. The premise is this: A group of five twenty-somethings treks out into the woods for a high school reunion/intervention, hoping to permanently cure Mia (Jane Levy) of her heroin addiction. They hole up in Mia and her brother David's (Shiloh Fernandez) decrepit family cottage and steel themselves for the worst of the withdrawal symptoms to set in. However, their priorities soon shift when Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) discovers a copy of the Necronomicon (wrapped in barbed wire, bound in human skin, and with explicit admonishments written in bold red letters upon its pages) and recites the exact words the book warns him not to recite under any circumstance. What follows thereafter should, by all rights, be an entertaining, gory romp through the swamps. Instead, we are treated to seventy minutes of unrelenting stupidity and bad acting. The worst offender is the brainless David, our lackluster stand in for Bruce Campbell's Ash, who, for three quarters of the movie, simply can't get it through his thick skull that his sister has been possessed by a demon, despite all evidence leading to that conclusion. His dimwitted attempts to contain the situation are extraordinarily frustrating to watch, as is the extreme gullibility of the other characters. How many times will these fools fall for the old "I'm not a demon!" trick? Make it a drinking game. You'll be wasted by the end of the movie.

Again, all of these transgressions would be more easily forgiven if the movie didn't take itself so seriously. But there's nary an amusing one-liner or even a hint of self-awareness to get us through this study in tedium. Even the gore is disappointing--or, at least, it failed to impress this seasoned genre enthusiast. Recent films that top Evil Dead in that department include Slither, Feast, and Cabin Fever, among others.

Here's hoping the "Carrie" remake fares a little better.