Conan the Destroyer

I’ve started this film multiple times, but never quite managed to make it through. Not because I didn’t like what I was seeing, but because I wanted to watch it from beginning to end. I had seen the first installment of Conan, and I found the first chapter to be much more…barbarian? Is that funny? I don’t know anymore.

Conan the Destroyer (1984)
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain

Story
This “sword and sorcery” tale is the sequel to 1982’s Conan the Barbarian (directed by John Milius), which was quite a bit darker and violent than its successor. Destroyer had that “campy” feel that Ben usually talks about, but I never get what he’s talking about. “They didn’t go camping in this,” I would say.

Anyway, the story starts with Conan (Schwarzenegger) kicking some serious ass. In the first two scenes he’s already punched a horse and a camel! How could this be bad? An evil sorceress then tricks him into helping her niece go on a long and dangerous quest for a key (it’s actually a diamond) that opens a temple to a mystical horn. The horn is then used to wake up the ancient deity Dagoth. Oh, and there's fights with barbarians of every tribe along the way! It's totally barbaric!

The fighting scenes were pretty tame, although there was some decapitation. But nothing lived up to the dark, barbaric feel of the first movie. I kept thinking of The Neverending Story (1986) because Conan’s environment was just so clean and fantastical that he didn’t really seem to fit in. Destroyer was more dependent on magic and myth than the battles and brutality of the first film.

Characters
Schwarzenegger proved again that he could play the emotionless brute, even though it seemed a bit laid back. I mean I’m not looking for him to go a hateful rampage, but at least get a little angry. Chamberlain did well as the Princess’ bodyguard, but his personality is one-dimensional at best. There weren’t any real annoying dwarf characters (i.e. Masters of the Universe), but Conan’s sidekicks Malak and Akiro are portrayed as goofy and infantile.

Final Thoughts
Although violent to some extent, this movie was clearly produced for a middle school/high school audience. With the exception of Grace Jones’ bare buttocks (meh.), there was no nudity, or swearing, or gratuitous sex; pretty much all things that immediately come to mind when I think barbarian were absent from this film.

Now, I’m not one to just call a movie “terrible” or “bad” and move on. Destroyer accomplished everything it set out to do: a quest was started and completed, there were numerous battles with Conan kicking some butt, and I was thoroughly entertained. But the fact that it makes the movie seem like a story in a chain of movies pisses me off, cause they never make the sequels. The best they produced was Red Sonja and Kull the Conqueror, with the latter being the most similar to a sequel to Conan the Destroyer, only with Kull as the protagonist. In short, Destroyer felt more like an interlude to a bigger story that never happened, and for that, I was pretty disappointed. But for those who enjoy a good, “campy” action movie set in a "sword and sorcery" environment, check this out. Hey, if you watch it with me, we may just get some Italian ice afterward. Sound good?

The Killing Room

I heard good buzz about Jonathan Liebesman's 2009 film The Killing Room after its premiere at Sundance last year, so I decided to check it out. It's a minimalistic thriller, set in mostly two rooms, and I've been a fan of films like that for a while now (movies like Tape, Hard Candy, Saw, Rear Window, and 1408 are good examples of other entries in the genre). So did the movie live up to the buzz? Read on to find out.

The Killing Room

Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Starring: Timothy Hutton, Nick Cannon, Chloe Sevigny

Since most of you have never heard of this movie, I'll embed the trailer below so you can check it out. (By the way, whoever converted that trailer for the web should be fired.) The story follows a group of volunteers who sign up to participate in an experiment. At the same time, a hotshot government employee is undergoing an interview process to join a covert operation. Her job is to monitor the experiments and give her evaluation to the man in charge, a shady man who is giving her unorthodox "interview." When she discovers that the experiments are part of the MK-ULTRA program, a real-life study involving mind control and brain manipulation thought to be defunct years prior, things ramp up as she realizes things aren't going to end well.

Overall, though, this movie just didn't do it for me. It wreaked of a Saw rip-off, going so far as to have an ending with a similar vibe (although very different plot-wise). It was well-directed, but the initial shot you see in the trailer was really the only time the film had me in its grasp. The rest of the time I was trying to remain engaged with the plot, but there really wasn't enough there to hold onto. I think this is a good example of an idea that sounds good in theory but doesn't pay off in execution. The material takes itself very seriously, and we're never truly given an explanation about how the Man in Charge is able to legally get away with his actions. (He vaguely responds that this project has always operated outside of governmental control and he has "full amnesty." I'm going to need something a bit more legit than that, Chief.)

The performances were OK, but there really wasn't anyone who stood out. Nick Cannon played one of the characters, but his acting was probably the worst of the bunch. He over-acted so heavily (he was supposed to be a down-and-out, possibly homeless, guy) that I was certain there must be a twist where his character is actually some sort of undercover badass, but alas - nothing nearly as interesting happened over the course of the film.

The pacing was really uneven throughout; even the editing seemed to change speed during certain scenes for no apparent reason. There was some action near the end, involving running through hallways and potential double-crosses, but the entire experience left me apathetic. There are so many better films out there (such as the ones listed above) that use the same structure, so I wouldn't recommend seeing The Killing Room. There are plenty of other movies that also feature the same themes and plot points (Richard Donner's Conspiracy Theory comes to mind), so the combination of the Saw-style setting and the familiar material left me feeling like I'd seen this movie before.

OH! I almost forgot. If for some reason you do decide to check out this movie, good luck understanding what people are saying. The cast mumbles its way through half of the dialogue, and the other half is spoken by the Man in Charge with a sporadic thick accent, so I went to turn on the subtitles just to comprehend what was going on. What's that, DVD? You only have a "Play Now" and a "Scene Selection" option on your menu? What is this, 1997? Step up your game! There weren't any subtitles, so I had to change the settings on my TV to "Speech," and even then I missed a good portion of the mumbles and slurs. Just a suggestion to all you filmmakers out there - if you want people to like your movie, you should probably make it clear what your characters are saying.

The Killing Room = weak sauce. Here's hoping the rest of March Madness is filled with higher quality content. From me, at least - I can't promise that Trehern won't throw another ninja movie into his queue before the end of the month. But if he does, hopefully it's watchable at the very least. Until next time...

The Jerk

I had never seen this 1979 Steve Martin classic before yesterday, and after recently completing my viewing of the entire run of "Freaks and Geeks" (in which they reference The Jerk in a few episodes), I figured March Madness was as good a time as any to rectify that situation. While I didn't find it uproariously hilarious, I definitely laughed a lot and can appreciate the movie as a precursor to the money-based comedies of the 1980's.

The Jerk

Director: Carl Reiner

Starring: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters

Before I get too far into this, let me explain what I mean when I say "money-based comedies of the 1980's." Since America was going through a ridiculous societal change at that point thanks in part to the influx of cocaine (profiled, among other places, in the fantastic documentary Cocaine Cowboys), the country became obsessed with money. Movies like Brewster's Millions, Trading Places, and even, to a lesser degree, Night Shift, had plots surrounding the rise (and sometimes fall) of normal people coming into insane amounts of wealth and showing how they deal with it. Outside of the comedy realm, movies like Oliver Stone's Wall Street reiterated the pervasiveness of money into America's subconscious. The Jerk popularized many of these story elements in the form of a film comedy, paving the way for countless movies to take aspects of the plot and repackage them until the story became a cliche.

But before the cliche, Steve Martin and Carl Reiner made cinematic history with Martin's first feature film. I can see why the film is referred to as a classic - not only for its trailblazing sensibilities as far as story goes in the genre, but for the specific manner in which the film accomplishes its mission. Steve Martin essentially plays a man-child (Will Ferrell, eat your heart out) named Navin Johnson, adopted by a black family in Mississippi. While his family sings and dances to music on their front porch, Navin can't seem to keep the beat and feels slightly out of place at various points in his life. One year on his birthday, he discovers he can dance when he hears a jazzy tune on the radio and undergoes a shift in perspective. "If THAT's out there," he shouts, pointing to the music emanating from the radio, "imagine what ELSE is out there!" So Navin leaves his home for the first time, and stumbles into all kinds of adventures after that point. I won't ruin them for you, as most of the fun comes seeing Navin tackle his ridiculous jobs throughout the movie.

One of my favorite scenes had nothing to do with comedy. When Navin meets Marie (Bernadette Peters) and asks her out on a date, they sing a duet (with Steve Martin playing ukulele) of "Tonight You Belong To Me" that I thought was really touching.

The film doesn't shy away from throwing these heartwarming moments in here and there, and I think the movie benefits greatly from that decision; it gives the movie a certain level of heart that is normally lost in other madcap comedies. Navin's innocence automatically makes us root for him, and his naive nature propels the story forward in an organic way.

The writing in this movie was perfect for Martin's comedy style. There were quick-witted lines of dialogue that shined on their own, as well as a solid overarching storyline and situational humor that worked really well for the characters created in this cinematic world.

That's all for now; I wouldn't want to ruin this for anyone else who hasn't seen it yet. I'd definitely recommend checking this out. Even if you don't necessarily care for the humor (hint: if you're a sophisticated female, your chances aren't good), you can probably still appreciate the movie for it's pioneering ways and connect the dots on your own from The Jerk up to the comedies of today. Until next time...

[Two things: This movie was apparently the first film to rent out theaters for a world premeire of a trailer. (I thought that was kind of a fun fact.) And my favorite scene? Probably the convenience store robbery.]

March Madness 2010

Welcome back to Ben's Movie Reviews, and welcome to March Madness 2010 Edition. One frequent guest collaborator has already beaten me to the punch with the first film of the month, and you can read his review of Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic by clicking the link or searching through the archives.

If you're reading this, then you probably know I've been writing for other sites for some time now, and this blog has fallen into a secondary position lately. I basically use it as an aggregate of my reviews from around the web. I've also started writing about TV at Media Consumed, another blog I started a while back, and I've recently engaged in a CBS Show Photoshop Pun War with The Solar Sentinel. The results of that battle are coming in as we speak over at The Playing Field, so keep checking there for the eventual winner.

The point being that "Not Just New Movies" has been pretty much, well, just new movies lately. I intend to use this year's March Madness to remedy that. So if you've got some old favorites that you want to see reviewed here, throw your suggestions in the comments section. I won't promise to review them, but who knows - you might spark some interest in me and I'll give your selection a whirl. For now, look for a review of Steve Martin's The Jerk coming to the site tomorrow. [Probably around 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific, if I had to guess.]

Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes glued here (and at Media Consumed, etc.) for more from me over the next month and beyond!