Jaws 3

I know, I know: this is getting ridiculous. The quality of films that I've seen so far this month has been pretty dismal (with a couple of exceptions). I'm sad to say that this post and the following post won't improve the quality factor in any way.

The following is all you need to see to grab the general gist of this film.

(WARNING: DO NOT WATCH IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO LAUGH.)
(P.S. - Watch the first 30-35 seconds, then wait until the whole thing has loaded and skip ahead to the :45 second mark. You owe it to yourself.)

There IS one piece of information that slightly redeems what you've just seen. The original theatrical title for this film was Jaws 3-D, and the tagline was "The third dimension is terror." This implies, of course, that what we've just seen is nowhere near as cool as the 3-D effect in the theater would have been to the audiences way back in 1983. However, relying on 3-D effects alone absolutely cannot save a horrifically acted, horrendously conceptualized, poorly executed train wreck of a film. Joe Alves gave it his all in the only movie he ever directed. He came up short of anything other than a moderately entertaining piece of crap.

The cast in this movie was almost as pitiful as the storyline. At SeaWorld, a new section of the park is about to open. Mike, the engineer who designed the new addition, happens to be the oldest son of Roy Schneider's (the cop in the first movie) Brody character, and his younger brother John comes to town to visit him and his girlfriend. After John meets a water-skier who works for the park, the foursome must fend off a great white shark that has infiltrated the park before its killing spree gets out of control. Of course, as is the case with nearly every shark film I've ever seen, it's not just one shark: The big mama/daddy shark shocks everyone when it makes its appearance. Haven't these characters seen Shark Attack 3: Megalodon? Crikey. (Author's Note: I'm well aware that Megalodon was not available in 1983, but it SHOULD have been.) Throw in the British TV News Superstar who wants to film the whole thing instead of just KILLING THE F-ING SHARK, and you've got yourself one heck of a plot. Dennis "Dragonheart" Quaid plays Mike, some joker who couldn't act his way into Knock Off plays John, and Lea Thompson (the mom in the Back to the Future franchise) is the water-skiing bimbo who gets quasi-naked in the water with a guy she met earlier that same night. (Sigh.) What a classic.

Normally, I like to give at least a LITTLE depth to these reviews by throwing in commentary about what I think the director was trying to accomplish, cinematography, etc. but this movie just doesn't lend itself to analyzation in any capacity. If you're looking for further information on this film, just watch the clip above again and you'll realize that you shouldn't be. Until next time...

Under Suspicion

I'm going to keep this post relatively short because I know that none of you have ever seen this film. What a great movie. Next time you're at Blockbuster for an hour and a half searching aimlessly for something decent to watch, give Under Suspicion a try. This amazingly acted drama has some fantastic scenes in it and the chemistry among the cast is nearly palpable.




Stephen Hopkins (The Ghost and the Darkness, Predator 2) directs a star-studded cast of Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane (The Punisher), and Monica Bellucci (The Matrix sequels) in this indie drama. Surprisingly, he succeeds in bringing the story to life. You can tell that this is a project that the actors involved have great respect for: it doesn't have a large budget, the story is very centralized around four major characters, and it takes place in about a four hour period. It's almost got a stage-play feel to it; and it works. With actors as awesome as Hackman and Freeman, you can pretty much just sit back and let them do their thing. Morgan Freeman (how old is this guy nowadays?) plays a detective trying to solve the rape and murder cases of two 12-year-old girls in Puerto Rico. The outstandingly ominous Gene Hackman is the high-ranking partner of a law firm questioned about the crime. Tom Jane's character, the wild card young detective, could have used a little more depth to him, but Jane pulled it off well for what he was given. Bellucci, as in most of her roles, does nothing more than breathe sexily through her lines and look hot - not surprisingly, she does this well.

There's one particular aspect of this film that I liked a lot, and it made it stand out from all the other films of this type that I've seen before. When Freeman is questioning Hackman about his whereabouts the nights of the murders, the movie switches to flashback format. What's cool about these scenes is that Morgan Freeman's detective character appears in the flashback with the people who were actually there - he's observing the situation as it was told by the person being interrogated. This is reminiscent of scenes in Boondock Saints in which Willem Dafoe's cop character attempts to piece together what happened at a crime scene from just the evidence left behind. His character also places himself in the scene as it happens. Cool stuff.

Although this was based on a French film (and we all know that French people suck), Under Suspicion is a good story with an excellent cast and a mediocre director. With these powers combined, it turns out to be a great film that explores the depth of relationships and personal secrets no one wants uncovered. Until next time...

D.E.B.S.

Joe told me that D.E.B.S. is near the top of his list of favorite films. I had never seen it, so I figured I'd watch it and see what all the fuss was about. Coming into it, I didn't think I'd like it too much. The premise is as such:
Four hot schoolgirls are in a crime-fighting sorority/secret agent group known as D.E.B.S (which according to Wikipedia stands for Discipline, Energy, Beauty, and Strength, although in the movie I don't think they included the "S" in the acronym). The best spy in the group, Amy (played by a super-hot Sara Foster) breaks up with her boyfriend in the beginning of the movie, and then falls for the uber-villainess Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster from Fast and the Furious) that Amy and her cohorts are supposed to bring to justice. Sounds kind of questionable, right?



I ended up actually enjoying it. It is obviously a love story at heart, but there were a lot of funny parts in it and the dialogue was solid for a parody of this caliber. Some of my favorite aspects were:
1. In Lucy Diamond's lair, there is a sign that reads "A GOOD D.E.B. IS A DEAD D.E.B."
2. Suction cups were used to scale a wall at one point.
3. Lucy Diamond leaves (gasp) diamonds as her calling card. But she seems to have a huge supply of them and just throw handfuls of them around at will.
4. Lucy is spurned by Amy at one time in the film and steps up to her super powered laser ray and says that she is going to sink Australia to make herself feel better. She is stopped by her right hand man, whose name is Scud.
5. The following quotes -
"Love is harder than crime."
"Why aren't you killing me?"
"This isn't the Girl Scouts - this is espionage!"
Lucy: "I didn't even want to be a criminal. I wanted to be a pirate."
Amy: "Pirates ARE criminals."

I think it's important to be clear that this is definitely a parody of spy films and not merely a horrible attempt at making a "women's spy movie" or anything like that. There were blatant jabs taken at the genre, as evidenced by a certain scene in which Homeland Security and the D.E.B.S. are suspended like 70 feet above the floor of a restaurant (but still inside the building) in mechanical swing chairs which they can move laterally or vertically at their command. Another outlandish poke at the secret agent genre is the use of teleportation by the adults in the film, who are the higher-ups in the D.E.B.S. department. They seem to appear and disappear at any time in any place, fully materializing and interacting with the characters and their environment, and then disappearing as if they were a hologram the whole time. But perhaps most outlandish of all is a bank robbery scene where the D.E.B.S. are trapped in the vault and suddenly huge metal spikes come out of the ceiling and the room starts to close in. The obvious question being, "How did Lucy Diamond and her cronies manage to take out all the armed guards at this massive bank and still have time to install spikes and motors behind the ceiling in the short time before the girls arrived on the scene?" All this just contributes to the fact that D.E.B.S. doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's the main reason it works so well.

Although director Angela Robinson is openly lesbian and showcases that through the script (she wrote and edited the movie, too), she's not overly feminist and the movie isn't political at all. This served to make it that much more enjoyable, because you are left to feel for the characters and hope that the two lovers get together in the end.

The camera work didn't particularly stand out in the movie, but the music played a pretty key role. I normally don't notice music too much in films, especially when they employ actual songs and not sweeping orchestral tunes, but D.E.B.S. did a nice job of placing the right song at the right point in the film. At one point there is some chick punk rock blaring in the background at a turning point in Amy and Lucy's relationship, and the lyrics scream out what they are too shy at this point to say to each other: "Take me to the backseat!" Another noticeable point came at the necessary separation of the two main characters in any love story about two thirds of the way through, when Amy was pondering life and her situation and "If everything's just the way it should be, why am I still hungry?" plays softly in the background, clearly mirroring her thought process.

Meagan Good (Brick, You Got Served) was well-cast as the jealous best friend and heir to the D.E.B.S. throne. Devon Aoki (Sin City) and some other girl who I'm too lazy to look up could have been replaced by anyone of the correct age and not been missed. Jordana Brewster didn't exactly pad her resume with fantastic acting, but it was passable enough, and she looked good, which was all that was necessary for a film like this. If you don't take it too seriously, D.E.B.S. is sure to entertain you and quench any need you have for hi-tech lesbian spy movies along the way. (Note: The film is rated PG-13, so don't let the lesbian stuff 1. scare you into not seeing it or 2. be your only reason for seeing it.) Until next time...

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

I decided to watch Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and it certainly wasn't the greatest idea I've ever had. Know this: I'm definitely a Stallone fan. Tango & Cash, Over the Top, Rockys, Rambos, and Spy Kids 3D's alike all did it for me. This film was awful.

Roger Spottiswoode (no, I'm not making that name up) directed this 1992 box office bomb, and it's considered by some to be the worst film ever made. I've DEFINITELY seen worse - Octopus 2, I'm talking to you - but I can see where people are coming from who make this assertion. There were plot holes bigger than Julia Roberts' lips at every corner. Why did it take the bad guys nearly two weeks to transfer illegal weapons from a burned-out warehouse to an airfield that is RIGHT NEXT to the warehouse? Why is Stallone's mom (played by Estelle Getty of "Golden Girls" fame) allowed to brandish weapons? Why did the main bad guy suddenly kill off one of his own henchmen? Why can Stallone ram the side of a moving airplane with an 18 wheeler and blow out the tire on the plane, but keep his own tire intact? How can the aforementioned 18 wheeler not explode and kill everyone within a 100 foot radius when the propeller of the plane actually starts ripping apart the hood of the car and churning into the engine block? All these and many more questions arose while watching this film, and the viewer is left with nothing to do but see if they can make it all the way through without turning it off (or, in Joe's case, falling asleep).


Look at that. Raise your eyes once again and look at that poster. How can someone approve this? I have no idea. If you guys don't know what the Razzie Awards are, allow me to enlighten you. The Oscars are obviously for what the Academy thinks are the "best" film and performances from the previous year, and the Razzies, judged by a different panel, are awarded to the worst. Stallone won "Worst Actor" for his performance in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Interesting side note: Stallone is the most "Razzed" individual in the history of the awards, garnering a mind-boggling thirty nominations and pulling down ten wins. The man's films have grossed over $3.5 billion worldwide, but he makes some pretty horrendous decisions sometimes.

I really can't write much more about this film without getting a headache. It was good for a couple of laughs, but there were so many atrocious one-liners that it was painful to watch. I was hoping it would be one of those "So bad, it's good" movies, but I was let down. I can't even give a legitimate plot summary because only about 15% of the film makes any logical sense. So I will leave you with this section, borrowed from the vast archives of Wikipedia:

"On Fox Sports' 'The Best Damn Sports Show Period', Stallone was a guest when another guest, Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Booker [sic] MacFarland told Stallone that he saw this film in the theater and that Stallone owed him $20. Stallone paid up."

I think the only redeeming factor in this movie was that it was only an hour and a half long. At least the filmmakers had the decency not to keep us involved in this train wreck for any longer than necessary. I think Joe summed it up pretty well when he said something to the effect of "This movie wouldn't be so bad if it just had a different plot." Well said, sir. Well said. Until next time...