Spirit of Dread (ful)

Oh right, THAT'S what this feels like.

2011 was a great year for superhero movies. Against all odds, Marvel Comics managed to release three such titles that collectively were actually very good, with Captain America, Thor and the excellent X-Men: First Class proving to not only be quality films but extremely profitable in the process. This was a huge difference from years past, in which Marvel wasn't exactly known for putting out the best product (Punisher, Daredevil and Elektra, to name a few). For years films based on the Marvel franchises were criticized by fans for failing to capture the essence of what made the comic books so attractive to people around the globe, while DC Comics  enjoyed a long line of success at the theaters. Much of that success has centered around the "Big Two" of Superman and Batman, however, with last year's bomb Green Lantern hinting that interest outside of Supes and Bats might not be as high. So with Marvel doing so well lately, it was only a matter of time before something like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance came along and ruined that new car smell. Movie-going sidekick Todd stated that she would suffer through Ghost Rider with me if I was going to watch it anyway, but never did I suspect that "suffer" would be the perfect definition for what we did for an hour and a half this past weekend.

Nicolas Cage has never looked better!

Former stuntman Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) has left home and life far behind, hiding out in Eastern Europe while battling with the demonic soul inside him, known as the Rider. When the Rider gets loose, it completely takes over Blaze and destroys evil people, and so Blaze has left to avoid accidentally hurting any of his family and friends (or maybe because it was cheap to film in Romania and Turkey). By avoiding contact with anyone, he can stop the Rider from emerging, but this is not meant to last: an envoy of a holy sect, named Moreau (Idris Elba), has sought Blaze out so that the rider can protect a child being hunted by the The Devil (Ciaran Hinds) to fulfill some bizarre prophecy. With a promise that the sect can also remove the spirit of Ghost Rider from his body, Blaze is in a race against time to protect the boy and his protective mother Nadya (Violante Placido) so that they cannot be harmed and prevent a new apocalypse on Earth.

This is where Charlton Heston went when he died.

If that story put you to sleep, well, I guess you're done reading. For those of you still conscious, this Ghost Rider sequel features the worst elements of cliched Hollywood screenwriting, surprising since David S. Goyer was the chief storyteller here. Goyer's best work has been writing superhero films including the Blade trilogy and with Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins, so it's actually kind of surprising that there's nothing to redeem Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a film that revels in showing us the completely ridiculous. Maybe that's the fault of the directors, though. The duo of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (known collectively as Neveldine/Taylor) has become well known for their irreverence and explosive action, and I really liked their 2009 look a the future of social media, Gamer. Elmo has also praised their addition to Jason Statham's action resume in Crank, and if there was one thing I had hoped going into this new release, it was that Neveldine/Taylor would make up for its faults by cranking the energy of the film all the way up to 11. Instead, Ghost Rider is far too much like Jonah Hex, the utter crap from 2010 for which they wrote the screenplay. Riddled with animated interludes, an excess of voice-overs (by a mentally unstable Cage, no less), and more cliches than you should legally be allowed to include, this was a story that never had a chance of success, even BEFORE you threw Nicholas Cage at it.

That chimichanga REALLY disagreed with him...

Ah, Nicolas Cage. He and I have enjoyed a love/hate relationship since I began this site a few years ago; he loves himself and I hate his movies. Dotting his resume are performances that prove he has talent as an actor (Brian could tell you more, but some include Kick-Ass, Adaptation, and Leaving Las Vegas). However, all this means is that there are some directors out there who manage to reign in his levels of crazy into something both tangible and entertaining on the big screen. Neveldine/Taylor are not those directors. Cage is regularly allowed to go balls-to-the-wall insane, and when he does the results are not as they should be. I'm okay with the fact that the screenplay includes an overdose of humor (if it hadn't, I never could have made it through the film), but regularly Cage's exploits as the Rider earn more unintentional laughter than they should. The character of Ghost Rider needs to be scary to be effective, but not once does the character do anything to frighten the audience. I'm shocked that the bad guys don't just keel over from laughter every time Cage is on the set, as that's all I would do in their place.

So much acting talent... it's just GONE...

The rest of the cast is okay, though they rarely step above the level of "comic book movie" quality. Ciaran Hinds is excellent chewing scenery as The Devil, though he's featured very little, relatively speaking. Taking over for Peter Fonda in the original, Hinds has enjoyed a recent string of secondary roles in the past few years, and he's a talented actor with a unique look that will always find him a place in genre films. Idris Elba is another serious talent who adopts a French accent almost as believable as his American in HBO's The Wire. As a Golden Globe winner (for BBC series Luthor) it's a shame to see him bust his butt in small comic book movie roles like this and Thor, but at least he's getting regular work in Hollywood. I was less impressed by Johnny Whitworth, who is fine in smaller roles but not so much as this film's main antagonist. I liked Violante Placido in 2010's The American but she likewise doesn't have any real depth beyond the "desperate mother" role she plays dutifully. In the end, Cage is allowed to go psycho, while the rest of the cast is just trying to counteract that with actual acting.

Blaze was never invited kiting again.

If there's one saving grace to Spirit of Vengeance (besides the actually intentional humor), it is the special effects, which include post-production 3D. Think about that for a second. I have been more than vocal about my dislike of the technology explosion that has been 3D in film, to the point where I will avoid the topic even when relevant to avoid repeating myself over and over again. If I was to list my favorite films using 3D from the past few years, most of them would have one thing in common: they were filmed using 3D cameras, and not simply rendered in post-production. There are a few films with post-prod 3D that actually work (Piranha 3D is the only one that comes to mind), but for the most part the only way to make great 3D these days is to just spend the extra money for the cameras. Ghost Rider is a shocking change in the trend, lending credence to the idea that post-filming conversion has gotten much better in the short period of time since people gave Clash of the Titans crap for their 3D usage. I still believe there's nothing better at the moment than James Cameron's introduction of the 3D camera technology to the filmmaking process, but perhaps that won't be true for long.

Um, no, I'll walk. Thanks.

Of course, when the best thing you can say about a movie is that the 3D is great, you know you've just done yourself an injustice in your film-going choices. I normally would never say this so early in the year, but I harbor no doubts that Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance will be among the worst films I list at the end of 2012. Neveldine, Taylor and Cage aren't even trying, and their lack of effort drags this film into such a deep abyss that you pray it never escapes, lest the end of civilization as we know it follow. I'll have higher hopes for Marvel's next film event The Avengers, and hope Joss Whedon and crew can wash the taste of bile from my mouth at having volunteered to watch such a monumental cinematic mistake.

Hex Doesn't Mark the Spot

Just when you think superhero movies are getting better and more sophisticated, Hollywood churns out something that makes you regret that thought. While there's no denying that the genre is seeing a resurgence, with special thanks to Christopher Nolan's Batman films and Jon Favreu's Iron Man, it's still one that can sink into miserable depths if not treated properly. Such is the case with Jonah Hex, a post-civil war antihero film based on the pseudo-popular character from the DC Comics line.

Malkovich proves he CAN be in bad movies

The film follows the trails of bounty hunter Hex (Josh Brolin), scarred by the branding iron of the Confederate officer who killed his family in cold blood, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). Turnbull, thought to have died years ago, resurfaces to threaten the newly-recombined United States still sitting on the ashes of Civil War with an all-new super weapon, and the President hires Hex to track down and kill Turnbull. Jonah accepts, wanting to finish the business he never had a chance to so many years ago.

A face not even his mother would love

Seemingly everything you can do wrong with a movie like this was done wrong: wrong director, wrong actors, wrong soundtrack, bad screenplay, complete lack of respect for the source material, and mediocre special effects. Considering director Jimmy Hayward had no experience in this kind of film - his career prior to this title had mainly consisted of serving as an animator on children's CGI-animated movies - this probably should have come as a surprise to no one, especially the people who green-lighted $47 million to budget this flick. The screenplay by filmmakers Neveldine/Taylor (whose 2009 film Gamer I mostly enjoyed) is a mess, completely glossing over Hex's origin as unimportant while aimlessly shuffling from scene to scene for the first half until the main plot becomes obvious to everyone involved. It also relies too heavily on supernatural elements which either didn't exist or were of much less importance in the comics. What probably hurt the film most however was it's PG-13 rating, which muzzled what would have otherwise been a much more violent film, as befitting the character. While studios may hesitate at making superhero films too bloody, some licenses simply can't be marketed with a younger audience in mind. For every Superman, Green Lantern or Thor who can have stories told about them without being too adult, there is a Punisher, Elektra, Deadpool and, yes, Jonah Hex who simply don't work on that familial level.

"No, really... people aren't going to SEE this, are they?"

Where the actors are not all untalented, they are still largely miscast for this film. Brolin is probably the closest to a believable character in this cast, but one thinks he was chosen more for his rising star and recognizable name than for being right for the part. His role mainly consists of grunting and maintaining the same facial expression throughout the film, with nary an expressed emotion the entire time. I'm looking forward more to his role in the upcoming True Grit remake as a mark of his talent than this film, which simply doesn't let him do much. Malkovich is similarly wasted. Much better in this year's RED, the veteran doesn't get an opportunity to display his disarming charm or wit here, instead forced in an "evil for evil's sake" character as a Confederate officer trying to disable the United States by any means necessary. He's side-kicked by Michael Fassbender as a somewhat psychotic Irish brawler who took part in killing Hex's family. Fassbender, who I liked in Centurion, has an interesting part and does well, but is ultimately more talented than he is allowed to show. Still, his Riddler/Alex DeLarge-inspired role was one of the film's better ones. Revolutionary Road's Michael Shannon, Benny & Joon's Aiden Quinn and The Wire's Lance Reddick are talented performers who have little to do in this film. And Will Arnett should never be cast as anything other than a comedic role. You can tell how bad a film is going to be by how serious Arnett's role is, as it does in casting him as US soldier and useless character Lieutenant Grass. Finally, we have Megan Fox, who plays a whore who can't act... oh wait, that's just Fox being herself. While I don't think anyone can deny her obvious wiles, Fox is no new Jolie, and has no business acting in any capacity. It's only a matter of time before studios realize this and stop offering her roles, most likely at the earliest moment her exotic looks begin to wither and fade.

Who cares if she doesn't have any talent?

The soundtrack for Jonah Hex was scored by the metal band Mastadon. While the music was certainly entertaining on it's own, it completely mismatched the film's attempted atmosphere, which would have benefited from a more traditional western soundtrack, instead of the merely western-tinged metal that littered the film's scenes. It's merely another obvious mistake the filmmakers made putting this movie together, and detracts from what already feels like a rushed, aimless project.

Hex gets set to burn the script. They never needed one anyway!

It's obvious Jonah Hex is nowhere near the top of the list for best movie of the year. What should have been carefully cultivated to an adult audience since it was based on a mid-card comic book character was rushed and hacked out the door and marketed to a younger audience for no good reason except perhaps to try to get more people to see a crap movie. That much is easy to see. What is a more interesting question is whether the film is worse than the one I've been touting nearly all year as 2010's worst, Legion. As we get towards the end of the year, I'll be looking into what I think are the worst feature films of 2010, and putting it into a comprehensive top 10 list might get messy. If anyone wants to name a film for the list, I'll be accepting all recommendations. We're getting down to the wire, the final month of 2010, and lots of films that haven't been gotten to yet. I'm looking forward to finishing this year on a high note, sharing my every movie and game-related notes with you all.

Game On

Yes, I watched Gamer. Yes, I know it was largely panned. Yes, the trailers looked poor and the movie seemed to be completely unimaginative. Yes, it seemed ridiculous, even. Yes, I had better options for movies to watch (Descent 2 being one of them). No, I'm not sure what I was thinking.

But I was curious. Here was another movie loosely based on the video game industry and reality shows (among other things) and a treatise about how jaded and unsympathetic our world may become if someone really wanted to take that next step.

Some time in the future, the real world sucks. It's a bleak place, with society in general mostly in the toilet. The only bright spots in the future are reality entertainment, created by multi-billionaire Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall). First, Castle created Society, a game not unlike the hugely popular Second Life in which the player takes control of a remote avatar and controls all their actions and interactions with others playing the game. Unlike the digital world of Second Life that people nowadays can subscribe to, however, those avatars are living, breathing people who are paid to be part of this fake reality.

We'll get back to Society later. The reason people tuned into this movie was Castle's other creation: Slayers. In Slayers, Death Row inmates are given the chance to compete in a real-life death match not unlike those in games like Team Fortress 2 or Day of Defeat. The idea is that if they survive 30 battles of Slayer, they get their prison sentences communed. The contestants don't control their own fates however, as their actions in-game are controlled by gamers on the outside. The best of these combatants is John "Kable" Tillman (Gerard Butler), an inmate we meet with just three games left until he can be released. His wife and daughter are on the outside, and are the only things keeping him sane. But even with freedom so close, as the story is told we learn that Ken Castle would very much rather not see Kable go free.

Gamer is a very different film. A large-budget film that feels like a movie half it's budget size, it portrays society in three different lights. The brightest of these shades is Society, where the colors are so vibrant, the sunlight so bright, that you can't help but feel it's fake and showy, which of course is exactly what was intended. The users in Society are portrayed as connoisseurs of the seven deadly sins, exposing themselves, fulfilling rape fantasies or setting up their avatar to suffer bodily harm and laugh as their blood spills from gashes. The people who would subject their bodies to this treatment are usually of the desperate variety, not happy with their predicament but so desperate to escape the cruel outside world that it seems largely appealing by comparison. On the other end of the spectrum is Slayers. It's a dark, gritty, violent existence, where color rarely permeates unless it's blood red. Death can come suddenly, and it's only by the skill of their controllers that the participants make it to the end, or the "Save Point". In between is real life, where it seems poverty is up and nobody seems happy unless they're watching or playing the latest reality PPV. It's arguably the bleakest of the three existences, as people are more than willing to escape into something else, and unwilling to change the things around them.

If there's anything I found surprising about Gamer, it's just how GOOD the movie actually is. The twin writing/directing of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank 1 & 2) is solid, especially the camera work, which was often done on the fly by either director. There are definitely some faults, but we'll get to those later. The casting, however, was the truly inspired part of this film. Of course Butler has since moved on to romantic comedies at this point, but this was his first big action hit after 300. He's really a force to behold both in his combat scenes and in his more insular scenes which are more of the film than you might go in expecting. Hall (Six Feet Under, Dexter) is fun as Castle, the villain. He really seems to enjoy being the bad guy here, and it's always good to have a "fun" villain. Amber Valetta (Hitch, Transporter 2) plays Angie, Kable's wife on the outside and works as an Avatar on Society to either pay the bills or escape reality, or both. She was truly the surprise of this film, as I never would have expected her to play this part with such depth, and there's a stark difference in her performance between when she is herself and when she's played by a lascivious user, as there should be. Kyra Sedgewick (The Closer, Justice League: A New Fronteir)  plays an unscrupulous TV reporter and talk show host who is seeking out Kable. Honestly, it's great to see her in a movie but her character is largely unimportant. At least she does it well. Logan Lerman (3:10 to Yuma, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief) is great as Kable's controller, a widely respected cyber-athlete who's only 17-years-old. He's portrayed as being pretty spoiled and naive in the beginning, but the character goes through changes as the story progresses and Lerman pulls it off very well. Christopher Brian "Ludacris" Bridges (Hustle & Flow, RocknRolla) rounds out the main cast, playing the leader of a (for lack of a better word) terrorist group who call themselves "Humanz" who oppose Castle's evil plans. Kable finds himself tugged between these two factions during the course of the film, and it's good that they are led by Hall and Brown, who are both charismatic and good to see on screen.

There were also a large number of recognizable D and E-List stars who made appearances throughout the film, and it was fun to recognize John Leguizamo (Spawn, Romeo & Juliet), Aaron Yoo (21, Friday the 13'th), Allison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell, Beowulf), Terry Crews (The Expendables, The Longest Yard), Keith David (Platoon, Mass Effect 1 & 2), Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes, Rocky Balboa), Sam Witwer (Battlestar Galactica, Dexter), John de Lancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stargate SG1), and Zoe Bell, who has yet to truly get out from under the shadow of the best damn car chase scene EVER (Death Proof). Even though most of these characters did little to move the pace of the story forward, it was good to see so many recognizable faces, even if they were most definitely not big stars.

Now onto the bad stuff. To be fair, I only have two gripes with this film, but they're big ones.

Gripe #1:  One-dimensional bad guys

Remember how I praised Michael C. Hall's performance? I meant every word. He did an amazing job with that character. The problem was the character was a third-rate James Bond villain, all posturing and posing, never one to miss overlong speeches detailing his great plans and how wonderful he is. Even a surprise song and dance number near the end doesn't make him any more deep or complex, and his mindless exposition makes me wish he at least had an interesting second in command. No such luck, as his cronies are even more boring than he is. At then end, after the day is saved, the second in command says to the hero: "Well played." Yes, he says THOSE exact WORDS. No excuse.

Which brings me to the second gripe:

Gripe #2: Bad ending

There's not really any excuse for how badly the movie ended. The story leading to it was actually pretty good, cloak and dagger mixed with bullets and explosions mixed with exploitation. But the end felt mostly anti-climactic, without anything original, charming or intelligent, followed with a cliche hero driving off into the sunset. For the story to have done so well to end on such a sour note is distressing, after I'd been so pleasantly surprised with the rest of the content.

If you combined Gamer's strengths with that of a more popular summer movie in '09, say Terminator Salvation, you might have had a fantastic movie on your hands. Instead, the duo known as Neveldine/Taylor have made us a merely okay film, with a strong first half, good acting, and great action sequences and camera angles but marred by an incomplete second half and cliche ending. I don't regret watching it.

I just regret watching it FIRST.