Review: FIRESTORM

HOWIE LONG DESERVES AN OSCAR

(reviewed on HBO with jack)

    “Firestorm” was the first action film to hit theaters in 1998, and with it came the premonition that action movies last year were going to suck.
    Well the premonition came true. 1998 was a horrible year for action movies. The reason was probably because there weren’t many of them. “Armageddon” didn’t have much action in it, “Lethal Weapon 4” was more humor based, and “Enemy of the State” I didn’t see (what a good reviewer I am).
    There wasn’t any big, rated-R, serious as a heart attack John Woo/gunfights/ultraviolent action films out there. I’m sad to admit it, but “Firestorm” is what is left of the action film. I’m sad because “Firestorm” sucks.
    The premise involves Howie Long as a smoke jumper, some dude who parachutes into the heart of a forest fire to prevent it. Some criminals escape from a prison bus and march through the forest looking for Canada, only to end up finding a professional bird watcher/photographer who they take as a hostage. Howie Long shows up and takes the girl and fights the prisoners until the gigantic ending that involves the firestorm.
    The reason pure action movies are more or less dead is the fact that “Firestorm” does everything by the book and ends up ridiculously bad. Howie Long isn’t the worldest greatest actor, but he doesn’t ruin the film. The script and the horrible f/x of the firestorm make the film bad.
    It’s laughable when it’s supposed to be serious, and it’s stupid when it’s supposed to be cool. “Firestorm” followed every step by the book and turned out a pure popcorn feature that is horrible. They did everything right, how come it isn’t a Die Hard or a Lethal Weapon? I’ll tell you why: it’s the same…old…shit. Nothing new. Nothing exciting. No good characters. No unique plot devices or action scenes. The special f/x are horrible, the ending is stupid, and the title of the film refers to what looks to me like an orange and yellow crayon-drawn picture when it’s supposed to be menacing, fierce, and cruel. Oh, well, there’s always next year. *1/2 (out of ****)

Review: U.S. MARSHALS

“THE FUGITIVE” – IT’S IQ = “U.S. MARSHALS”

(reviewed on HBO during spring break)

    What do you do when your movie makes a LOT of money? No, you don’t go buy a whore, you make a sequel, because there’s more green where that came from. Problem is, the first movie more or less resolved EVERYTHING. The good guy who had been framed was now innocent and everything was hunkey dorey. So what the fuck do you do? You could still make a sequel, but the main character can’t be in it, he’s off the hook. How about the supporting player…yeah, he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He’s perfect. We’ll make him the star this time, and we’ll have his boys from the first film back. But what will the new main charcter be doing? Okay, we’ll take the first film and add a new fugitive, this one will be black. And since the only good thing about the first film was the awesome train crash, we’ll add a plane crash which is twice the excitement! And we’ll add much more action this time, and forget Chicago, we’ll go to New York! To copy even more from the first film, the new fugitive will have to solve the mystery of who framed him and why. For all those men we’ll add a gorgeous chick. Make her French? Perfect. Let’s call it "The Fugitive 2!" No, wait, we don’t want to market it as a sequel per se, more like a brand new film with a few of the same characters. So it’s a new adventure, you don’t have to know about the first film, this one can stand on it’s own. We’ll call it “U.S. Marshals”, because the new main character is a U.S. Marshall.
    “Marshals” follows Tommy Lee Jones as Sam Gerard hunting a new fugitive, Wesley Snipes, who has to un-frame himself before they catch him. Of course everything wraps up into a nice little ball at the end, and there’s enough chases to make the movie watchable, but in the end it just doesn’t measure up to much.
    “The Fugitive”, in my mind, was overplayed. It had a killer train crash in it but the rest was just okay. The critics raved it and it racked up over one-hundred million. Tommy Lee Jones got his Oscar (which he didn’t deserve…since when do Oscars get handed to cardboard cutouts?) and the film turned into a classic drama which was more or less a popcorn Hollywood film in disguise. But at least “The Fugitive” pretended to be smart and at least had a slick anti-popcorn tone to it.
    “U.S. Marshals” is as stupid as a drunk donkey at 4 AM on a Tuesday. It doesn’t try to be smart (I hope it doesn’t…my God I hope) and that’s good, but it’s just so ridiculous. There are enough plot holes here to fit the Titanic through, and the characters are so under-developed that the movie, in the end, plays out like 2 hours and 6 minutes of chases. Chase through a swamp, chase through a building, chase through a cruise ship, chase through a cemetery. I like chase scenes, but these aren’t exactly anything special. Wesley Snipes’ story of how he was framed is idiotic and rigid at best. It doesn’t truly explain everything. If he was a special operative for the government why is he driving a tow truck in Chicago? Couldn’t he get a better job than that? I think the only reason for that is so he gets into a “cool” popcorn opening crash sequence, but he had all that money stashed away why was he working at all?
    And is his French girlfriend illegally in the country only so the marshals have a good blackmailing strategy?
    Regardless of how dumb and flimsy the film is, at least it entertains, and usually that’s all I ask for. But if the SATs consisted of you watching this film and writing the plot down exactly, you know that Ivy League school would become a distant dream. ** (out of ****)

Review: HAPPINESS

DEPRESSING ‘HAPPINESS’

(reviewed on video)

    The best possible thing I can say about Todd Solondz’s “Happiness” is the fact that you have never seen anything like it before. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on what kind of a person you are (soccer mom’s look away!).
    The 2 hour 19 minute film centers around three sisters in New Jersey. One is a lonely loser, one a popular man-friendly writer, and one a normal housewife. The film weaves in and out of each sister’s life, centering mostly on the sisters’ surroundings: the guy next door, the husband, the kid, the parents, etc.
    “Happiness” shuffles along a snail-crawl pace, going from character to character, each one looking for happiness in their life. There’s no real main plot, just character stories that seem like they were only written for shock value.
    Todd Solondz wrote and directed the indie-hit “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, a film about High School. He garnered even greater reviews for this, his sophomore feature, and here’s why: it’s shocking. Even for me it was kind of shocking. A perfect suburban father who happens to be a…pedophile. A regular overweight neighbor who happens to be a…murderer. A normal baseball playing kid who is desperately trying to…cum.
    The critics who did love this film probably had just watched ‘Urban Legend’, ‘What Dreams May Come’, and ‘Bride of Chucky’, and then saw this which is a 180 degree turn. It’s a definite anti-Hollywood film. It’s unrated and disturbing and creates comical situations from sickening scenarios.
    Critics liked it because it truly was independent. It was different from everything out there.
    So what did I think?
    Todd Solondz is a creative guy. There’s maybe 5 really great scenes here. All of the stories don’t work. The parent's story in Florida falls completely flat. The pedophile storyline and Lara Flynn Boyle’s sexually obsessed neighbor’s tale are great, but the others are stale. The film, for me anyway, shocks you more than entertains. It feels like Solondz had made his first feature and got such great publicity that he could really make any film and it would be made. So he created every disturbing thing he could think of and put it down on paper.
    I’m wondering what this clown is going to do for an encore. ** (out of ****)

Review: THE AVENGERS

I WANT YOU TO ‘AVENGE’ MY SEVEN BUCKS

(reviewed on ppv)

    “The Avengers” wasn’t screened for critics on it’s opening weekend way back in the heart of August. When it was eventually reviewed they tore it apart like rabid dogs on salty meat. It made little cash and whimpered away only to appear on video where it received even worse reviews. The movie seems to get worse the longer it is around, so I was a little hesitant to sit down and watch it.
    I watched a brief five minute sequence involving Sean Connery dressed up in a  teddy bear suit talking to a group of business men also in teddy bear (multi-colored) suits. You think I would have never looked back, but after all of the negative reviews, the part I saw didn’t seem that bad.
    So I watched the entire film and garnered it a *1/2 star rating.
    Here are my qualms, my bitches, my positives, my negatives, on…“The Avengers”
    It’s starts out bad and ends worse, but in between it’s at least somewhat watchable. I admit to have never seen nor heard of the old TV series which I’m guessing is a copy off of James Bond. This time around Ralph Fiennes plays an agent for The Ministry in England. Uma Thurman shows up as Emma Peel to help him thwart the evil Dr. August DeWynter, played by Sean Connery. The plot seems interesting, Connery is a bad guy who controls the weather. This is, unfortunately, the kind of film that probably couldn’t have been good no matter who made it.
    Fiennes and Thurman read their boring, outer space/robot-esque dialogue like they’re reading the words off of cue cards startegically placed behind the camera. They talk like this the entire film, stupid sentences that apparently echo the old TV series. It’s not cute, it’s not funny…it’s annoying.
    The “action” scenes are supposed to be cool because they feature quirky gadgets like flying, robotic bees and an M.C. Escher room where the stairs go nowhere even though they look as if they’re going down. (Shut up! It as to be seen to be believed!).
    The final bout between Fiennes and Connery is on a bridge with tidal waves crashing over them and lightning striking inches away from them.
    The film sounds good on paper, but up there on the screen it’s a walking, talking, ugly mess. Hopefully, film companies will now realize that re-making old TV shows into big, glossy films doesn’t exactly mean big profits just because that show kicked ass. Oh, wait, "The Flintsones 2: Viva Rock Vegas" is coming out? It’s a prequel? Two-hundred million, first weekend! *1/2 (out of ****)