dan-1315 Reviews

The Brink's Job (1978)

A piece of infamous Boston history - I mean the movIe!

[7/10 · 7 September 2023]

Dino DeLaurentis' "The Brinks Job" actually holds an infamous place in Boston's cinematic history. In an attempt to distance itself from a cheap TV movie quickie (made to capitalize on the announcement of the big-budget film) director William Friedkin decided to shoot his version in Boston at the actual site of the crime -- the Brink's building -- long since converted into a neighborhood parking garage and available to rent out.

There had been a few movies shooting mostly exteriors in Boston in the 70s including the still locally remembered "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" in 1973. But "Brinks" was the largest production ever mounted with Friedkin completely shooting it in the Boston area. And because of what happened during the production, Hollywood avoided shooting anything of this size in Boston for 20 years!

When the movie trucks rolled in, the privateers descended. Suddenly, anything the movie company needed to buy was more expensive and the crew had to conceal who they were when purchasing goods and services. But the worst was what the Teamsters did.

The production wanted the key people of the film to be picked up by limos in the morning and brought back to their hotels in the evening. But the local Teamsters insisted that their drivers be paid to be standing by 24-hours a day, seven days a week which added $1 million to the film's budget. Two Teamster leaders were found guilty of racketeering and mail fraud and sentenced to jail time because of this shake-down. It was learned the Teamsters had been doing this to films shot in Boston for the previous 10 years.

Additionally, the film's Boston production office was held up by armed gunmen who made off with 15 reels of film which were held for $600,000 in ransom. The thieves later lowered their demand to $500,000, but were told over the phone by Friedkin that the footage was duplicates and they could keep them.

Word filtered back to Hollywood to avoid Boston and for nearly 20 years major productions skipped the city and used other places like Philadelphia to stand in for Boston. "A Civil Action" in 1997 represented a turning point and since then the city and the state of Massachusetts cleaned up their act and even sought out film productions by offering an unlimited 25% tax incentive.

Today, Boston and Massachusetts are bustling with more than 30 productions a year with three sound stage facilities and more planned for the area. But in the '80s and most of the '90s, the city was a no-man's land for movies as it paid the price for profiteering off "The Brinks Job."

Paper Girls (2022)

Couldn't stop watching it

[8/10 · 7 August 2022]

There's been a lot of comparisons to Stranger Things, but this series has a stronger SF basis and the core cast of four young girls is really strong. I couldn't stop watching it. Sofia Rosinsky as Mac stands out as she channels Edward Furlong from Terminator 2 in her performance. Some people have been disappointed with the special effects, but this series has a much lower budget than the $30 million an episode Stranger Things but still delivers. My only criticism is I'm tiring of cliffhanger endings to spur interest in a second season, but I will be looking forward to it.

Ascension (2014)

Disagreed with every element of the show

[7/10 · 27 December 2014]

I disagreed with the show's writers and producers on almost every element of this show, which destroyed my ability to suspend my disbelief. Yet, I have to be honest and say this was a very handsome production with a couple of "known" actors, honest acting, and an earnest desire to do a big science fiction story, more ambitious than usual, and it was watchable, which is why I gave it a 7 rating.

Some of the things that bothered me was that the technology on board the ship was more 1980s than 1960s, there would be less of a "Metropolis" class structure of a below decks/above decks population since a "voyage" of this type would take highly qualified people, and I kept asking where all the old people were: were they tossed out of the ship after age 40 or 50 like "Logan's Run?"

And on and on and on. The 600-crew limit wouldn't be sustainable unless they were pushing old people out of the airlock. I doubt the ability of the scientists inside the ship to be able to cobble together inventions such as an MRI machine with 1960s tech. And didn't anybody ever have to go outside the ship to fix something?

Mixed into all this are crime show/soap-opera-ish plots and a supernatural twist. The writers took a kitchen sink approach in throwing in as many sci-fi references (cliches) as they could. I think the logic behind showing all six episodes in three nights was probably to keep people from drifting away from waning interest had they been shown weekly.

I think I don't really care if there's a second season. I didn't care about any of the characters and found the situation unbelievable. But being a science fiction fan, I would probably watch it if it returns.

The Order (2001)

Decent

[5/10 · 26 May 2014]

I needed a DVD to test out whether the DVD reader in a laptop I was fixing was working, so I grabbed "The Order" out of a pile my father had left me to use. As I was playing the disc, I got hooked. I agree with the consensus of previous reviewers before me. This movie is nothing special, with thin plot, thin characters, and low-budget sets (when they're not using real locations). But what the movie has going for it is spectacular scenery, compliments of the Holy Land, decent chase scenes and stunts, and a very appealing Van Damme, probably at his most relaxed and confident. If you see it playing anywhere on cable, be sure to check it out. It's not cerebral, but it's entertaining and watchable (and short).

Metal Hurlant Chronicles (2012–2014)

Quite Enjoyable Sci-Fi Series

[8/10 · 30 March 2013]

My wife and I tore through these episodes pretty quickly. They were quite enjoyable and we made a game of trying to guess the "twist" endings. Most of the time, the twists had twists! In one episode, the twist was there wasn't a twist! Being a half-hour show also also eliminated the padding that you would have gotten with hour-long episodes. I also thought the series had pretty good special effects for a low budget effort. It succeeded in capturing the flavor of Heavy Metal magazine and it looked quite different than anything else on TV. I hope SyFi or some other network picks it up. It's great news that the producers are making a second season.

The Devil's Double (2011)

An Amazing Story

[9/10 · 11 February 2013]

I didn't know much about this film going in, but I was amazed by the story and by the performance of Dominic Cooper. I also thought it was a great look at what was happening in Iraq before the US invasion and how Saddam's son got away with what he did. Sure, the story skips through about 10 years in two hours, but such is the problem of shoehorning a real-life story into movie time constraints. There's also a great sequence where Ussay is driving around fulfilling his insane agenda while the US is bombing the heck out of Baghdad. But, once again, the best thing about the movie is Cooper's performance. If you see it's you'll know what I mean.

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Everything about this movie is true!

[8/10 · 19 November 2012]

How does a guy from Wales go to Indonesia, hook up with Indonesia's top- notch martial arts experts, and make one of Asia's greatest action movies of all time for a mere $1.1 million? I don't know, but all the reviews here are true, this is 100 minutes of non-stop action and violence with spectacular fight scenes and impressive fight choreography and direction. Sure, there's very little character development, but that's because there's simply no time for it.

This is the type of movie "Max Payne" and "Hitman" wanted to be. Hollywood should scoop director Gareth Evans up immediately and let him helm its biggest big-budgeted action pictures!

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Mood stays with you

[7/10 · 27 June 2012]

There's many ways to judge whether a film is successful, and certainly or some things to consider is whether it evokes a mood and whether it stays with you the next day. On those terms, I think "Never Let Me Go" is successful. I certainly felt the sadness and the inevitability these characters suffer, and I still thought about their situation the next day. The film is also beautifully shot and the images are stark and haunting.

But I do agree with the reviews that the science fiction elements of the story have been dialed down -- way down. The film chooses to emphasize the relationship between three friends who are taught from childhood that their purpose is to donate their organs in this alternative reality where apparently cloning was pioneered in 1952. Very little is actually explained about how this affects society except to keep everyone alive to age 100. Have the clones been totally brainwashed to accept their fate? Do none of the clones have the desire to run? Some of them seem to be child-like even in adulthood, is that the answer? And why are the doctors only taking one organ at a time?

You would expect in a fully realized world at least some people would be protesting the use of clones for replacement parts and there would be a movement for the rights of clones. But there's none of that here. And that's the film's problem. It's big on emotion, but weak on science fiction concepts. I was happy I saw it, but if you're looking for a big action sci-fi movie, this isn't it.

The Divide (2011)

Scientifically inaccurate

[3/10 · 20 June 2012]

Looking at the reviews here you will see some people really like this apocalyptic nightmare while others call it a worthless piece of trash. I think I figured out why there is such a wide division.

On the positive side, the technical aspects are top notch. The lighting and cinematography are great, the set design allows for plenty of nooks and crannies so that the shots don't get repetitious, and the cast is loaded with familiar and solid actors such as Michael Biehn (Terminator), Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes), Courtney B. Vance (Law & Order: CI) and Rosanna Arquette (Desperately Seeking Susan). Not bad for a $3 million film.

On the negative side, anyone familiar with Hiroshima and Chernobyl knows that radiation poisoning causes tiredness, weakness, nausea and eventually death and not the antics depicted here where the men go crazy with murder and lust. Sex would be the farthest thing from their minds, which makes that premise unbelievable. Also the director cranks up the tension, apparently to keep the audience from thinking about the massive plot holes such as how and why a bunch of soldiers in hazmat suits burst in on the survivors after their multi-story New York City apartment building collapses on top of them. Think about how long it took an army of workers to dig out the New York Trade Center. The scene exists solely to get a gun and a hazmat suit into the basement bomb shelter which could have been done in other ways.

The bottom line is this is an effective horror movie but a relatively bad science fiction movie that accounts for the division in fan reviews. Horror fans may like it, sci-fi fans may not.

John Carter (2012)

Decide for Yourself

[7/10 · 3 June 2012]

With the DVD/BluRay release of "John Carter," the home video audience will be able to decide for itself whether this movie deserved the terrible treatment that Disney gave it. For me, the film is visually stunning and gets better as it goes on, racing to a slam-bang finish. It's easily better than "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" and the three Transformer movies, all of which are in the $300 million+ domestic earnings club. With a little help from Disney, John Carter should have easily grossed about double its $75 million domestic take on top of the $210 million it took in internationally. The question of why it didn't will be a topic of discussion for some time. There might even be books written about it, especially since Rich Ross, chairman of Walt Disney Co.'s film unit, and a few others resigned because of the film's failure.

The simplest explanation is it was orphaned by current Disney chiefs who don't like science fiction movies and don't understand them. Other than "Tron" and the Witch Mountain movies, Disney has rarely done sci-fi, usually with dismal results. But some have suggested that Disney deliberately sabotaged it, needing a write-off to compensate for the huge profits The Avengers movie was going to bring in. After all, where is the famous Disney merchandise? The only thing Disney is selling is a T-shirt with the JCM symbol on it. Disney made $2 billion from "Cars 2" merchandise but it didn't even try to put out any "John Carter" merchandise. Strange.

Also Disney seems to have set up director Andrew Stanton for failure. It doesn't seem like the studio gave him any positive help or guidance other than apparently wanting him to throw out the novels and go in a different direction. In the end, it gave him tons of money to buy plenty of rope to hang himself with. If the film was a success, everyone would take credit. And if it was a failure, then it would be Stanton's fault.

Disney's highly vaunted marketing department also failed to give the film any help at all, perhaps even scaring away audiences and millions of dollars of earnings. It changed the title from a fantastically romantic one, "A Princess of Mars," to the more anonymous "John Carter of Mars," to removing the "of Mars" so audiences may not have even known it was sci-fi. The movie poster shows nothing of what is in the movie and is probably the worst seen in decades. The DVD/BluRay cover is even worse. making it look like a Conan the Barbarian movie rather than a sci-fi epic. The ineptitude shown here could not have been an accident.

As for the movie itself, it's slow going for most of the first half. Stanton is trying to juggle three prologues and material from the first three Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. Someone at Disney should have advised him to simplify the plot and stay within the confines of the first book but the script instead bears of the scars of too many ideas introduced by too many rewrites. By the second half it buckles down to the kind of swift action climax that Pixar, and Stanton's contributions to Pixar films, is known for.

Technically the movie is top-notch. The photography is beautiful. The CGI is really great. Costumes, production design, et al. are excellently executed.

There's a gem of a movie hidden here. If Disney hadn't been so eager to take a big loss on the film, the studio might have had another film franchise. Even so, the film is not as bad as it's been treated. Hopefully, home video audiences will see it for what it's worth.

Iron Sky (2012)

Hillariously Offensive

[8/10 · 3 June 2012]

Didn't know anything about the movie when I saw it, and I found it hilariously offensive. This is a Finnish-German-Australian science- fiction comedy made with fan donations that winds up making a lot of fun of Nazis, Americans, and even a few jokes about the Finns and the Australians.

Basically, the Nazis have been hiding out on the moon for 70 years making plans to conquer the world. The only thing holding them back is the development of a supercomputer, which conveniently falls into their lap in the form of an iPhone when a black US astronaut arrives on their doorstep. The Nazis are about to implement their invasion when the iPhone battery dies and they decide to go back to Earth, with the black astronaut now brainwashed and turned white (I told you it was offensive), to gather more iPhones.

On Earth, the Nazis wind up scripting a Sarah Palin-like US President's re-election campaign with Hitlerian speeches and Goebbels-like imagery before the all-out (slapstick) interplanetary war breaks out.

There's a large amount of referential humor and one-liners that help if you're up on current politics and WWII history. It's all pretty silly, but production values for this $10 million movie are quite outstanding, and it's one of only a handful of successful sci-fi comedies ever made. For a B-movie, it's really a lot of fun.

Falling Skies (2011–2015)

No Special Effects Budget

[5/10 · 30 December 2011]

I agree with what a lot of commenters have pointed out, but I think ultimately the show's biggest problem is it has a very limited special effects budget that sabotages the stories. A good example is the opening sequence in the pilot showing how the Earth is attacked and occupied. It's told through a series of children's drawings. This is a $1.98 writers' solution to the problem of not being able to afford a proper special effects opening. Imagine if Battlestar Galactica didn't show the Cylon attack or if V didn't show the coming of the alien ships. As a writer, you have to do a lot of tap dancing around to distract viewers from this.

After the lackluster pilot episode, the pace of the episodes pick up as the writers come up with a series of missions the Massachusetts 2nd has to go on. As people have pointed out, these are the typical missions to get food and medical supplies and look for loved ones captured by the aliens. But I think the action is well-directed and the writers successfully come up with situations that keep the special effects down to a minimum. My interest in the series picked up again through these middle episodes.

The big problem comes with the series' final episodes. The rebels spend four episodes getting ready to take the fight back to the aliens and the battle ISN'T EVEN SHOWN! Likewise several other regiments are destroyed, and WE DON'T SEE THAT EITHER! All the action happens "off stage" and we only see the aftermath.

In these "preparing for battle" episodes, the writers are forced to fall back to clichés and endless discussions about the characters' self- doubts, their problems, and what they hope to accomplish. Talk, talk, talk! And they have to come up with reasons of why the aliens, who know where the rebels are, just don't call in air strike and massacre them. The lack of a special effects budget cheat the viewers out of a payoff.

Science fiction series have long had to rely upon "ship" episodes to stretch their budgets. That's where an episode uses pre-existing sets, no guest stars, and a minimum of special effects to save up for a really expensive, special effects-laden episode. Falling Skies consists of nothing but "ship" episodes!

Sparks (I) (2009)

Strange but Fun

[8/10 · 16 May 2011]

I came across this short film directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and starring Carla Gugino and Eric Stoltz (and other well-known actors) on a DVD of short films called Wholphin DVD magazine. Not only was it the best of the bunch, but had it been longer, it would have been indistinguishable from a pro film and good enough to be released. Totally professional look and feel. Also it gave an excuse for Carla to sing rock and roll and Joseph to play drums (as he did on Saturday Night Live) as well as direct.

The film is based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, and Stoltz is an insurance investigator looking into the suspicious circumstances surrounding Carla's mansion burning down. Scenarios and theories go back and forth in a battle of wits in a modern-day film noir. As I said in the summary, it's a strange but fun film.

Journey to the Center of Time (1967)

Why it's similar to 1964's The Time Travelers

[4/10 · 14 October 2010]

As I understand it, Ib Melchior and Dave Hewitt had a falling out over 1964's The Time Travelers. Both are credited with coming up with the story, but Hewitt left the production and Melchior wrote the screenplay and directed this little sci-fi B-film classic himself. Hewitt wrote his own version of the movie and later directed it as 1967's Journey to the Center of Time, making just a slightly different version. I can't remember ever seeing what is essentially a remake arrive just three years after the first movie's release. But then again, both films were grist for drive-ins where few people probably noticed the similarities. These movies had me scratching my head wondering if I had seen it before on TV where, after repeated viewings, I was able to make the connection between the two films.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

What's the Point?

[4/10 · 13 April 2009]

After the first 20 minutes, I asked myself, where is this movie going? Unfortunately, I kept asking the same question for the next 2 hours -- where is this movie going? This is a portrait of a miserable man, whose only goal in life is to drill for oil and try to make as much money as possible. He never smiles. He doesn't enjoy life. He's not interested in women. He has no hobbies.

The story seems to violate the primary law of story-telling by featuring a character that evolves because of his experiences in life. For example, Scrooge becomes a nicer person in the end of A Christmas Carol, and Luke Skywalker becomes a man and discovers his powers in the Star Wars series. Even Darth Vader has a chance to redeem himself at the end. Here, the Daniel Day Lewis character is unchanged through the decades and we still don't know him at the end of the film.

As one reviewer pointed out, this is storytelling through minutiae -- we learn how people historically drilled for oil in the early days of the oil boom, and little more.

As another reviewer pointed out, the music is strange. My wife said it reminded her of the TV show Lost -- kind of spooky most of the time. The photography is beautiful, but there's not much of a story here. And I honestly can't tell you what the point of the movie was.

Max Headroom (1987–1988)

Filmed at 30 frames a second

[10/10 · 15 July 2007]

Here's a piece of trivia. Max Headroom was filmed at 30 frames a second instead of the standard 24 frames a second. One of the reasons was so the series could more easily incorporate video with film, but a welcomed side-effect was that it gave the show a Hi-Def, futuristic look on 1980s television. It really did look different from any other show on TV.

What's interesting is that some current shows on video shoot at 24 or 25 frames a second to look more like film. It would be interesting to see what some filmed shows would look like in HDTV if they were shot at at 30 frames a second. You would get true HD.

Birds of Prey: Unaired Pilot (2002) Season 1, Episode 0

WB hated the original pilot but picked up the series for 13 episodes

[25 March 2006]

What's interesting about the unaired pilot is seeing what the original concept of the series was before the WB network started dictating changes for the short-lived series. Co-Executive Producer/Writer Hans Tobeason has said that it was a wonder that the show developed die-hard fans because it was a constant struggle between the WB network, DC Comics, the Warner Bros. TV and Warner Bros. movie divisions, and the Tollin/Robbins production company about the direction of the show and the way they wanted the characters portrayed.

The WB hated Oracle/Batgirl being in a wheel chair and wanted to push the younger Huntress character to attract the young adult audience. The writers didn't know what to do with the Dinah character, since she didn't have any super physical abilities, and they debated writing her out of the series. DC Comics nixed the use of any of the major DC characters, and the writers could only reference minor ones. The Warner Bros. movie division told the TV division hands off Batman and the Joker. The TV division had them shoot on the Warner lot instead of Toronto, which limited the scope of what they could do. Stories with non-meta villains were vetoed. The writers were exiled from the set and the production offices. The network wanted Harley Quinn dropped at one point. On and on.

The pilot differs from the first episode in a number of interesting ways. The biggest change is the re-shooting of all of Sherilyn Fenn's scenes with Mia Sara as Harley Quinn. Fenn is obviously miscast, reciting her lines as if comatose, and showing none of the required "evil genius" qualities that Sara brilliantly brings out in the broadcast version.

The opening of the pilot is more hard-hitting than the aired episode. The introductory sequence uses a newscaster reporting the break-up of the Joker's crime syndicate in New Gotham and the murder of Selina Kyle, also known as Catwoman. Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, sees this report on the TV and hears a knock at the door. She assumes it is Kyle's daughter Helena coming to her for help, but instead the Joker is there with a gun, shoots her, and leaves her for dead.

The visuals for the beginning are basically the same in the broadcast version, minus the newscaster footage, but the sequence is softened by having Alfred the butler narrate the events as if they were a flashback sequence.

The pilot then pretty much follows the same path as the first episode with a bit of editing here and there, and the insertion of the new scenes with Mia Sara as Harley Quinn. A major variance is an early scene where Barbara Gordon is actually breaking up with her boyfriend of six months, Wade Brixton, while the broadcast version substitutes a scene where Wade is asking Gordon out for the first time, thus creating a romantic sub-plot for the 13 episodes. This break-up scene was actually used in a later show to save money.

A minor variance is that in the broadcast version, a grown-up Helena Kyle blurts out that her father is Bruce Wayne in a session with Harley Quinn while in the pilot, Kyle is much more elusive and doesn't name names.

Although there's not a great deal of difference between the two versions, overall, the pilot pulls the viewer into the world of New Gotham quicker, while the broadcast version tries to explain things more, which is what the network insisted on.

This pilot showed great potential and succeeded in creating a fully realized comic book world. The various pressures put on the writers pulled subsequent shows in the direction of Smallville with freak-of-the-week plots and Helena Kyle coming to grips with being a meta-human in much the same way as Clark Kent has to embrace being Superboy.

After the series was officially canceled, the writers were relatively free from interference, and the show finale "Devil's Eyes" brought the series back to where it started, as an exciting super hero comic book show.

Confessions of a Hitman (1994)

Amateurish

[2/10 · 5 February 2006]

The acting is amateurish, the dialog is poor, and the photography looks like it was shot in 16mm. Seems like its director, Larry Leahy, has been trying for decades to break into the business, with a Transformers script and producer of a low-budget sci-fi flick in the 1980s, and as a script coordinator on Road to Perdition in 2002. This was probably his big break, and the only fun is watching how far this movie will wobble before it falls down. Even actor James Remar, who has had a long career as a character actor, is uneven here. Everyone in the cast looks a little strange and walk around like they're on Valium. Interestingly enough, this film popped up on my local UHF station, probably because all the big-budget studio pictures are tied up on cable.