Vampires, werewolves, and dusters, oh my!

Scott suggested to a group of friends this weekend that immortality and super-powers were not conveyed to people by magic, or viruses, or virtual reality, but rather by simply donning a long, black, leather duster jacket. That's what he has learned from watching the various Matrix movies and this weekend's box office leader, Underworld. Perhaps the best thing that can be said for Underworld is that it gets an awful lot of mileage out of Kate Beckinsale in a skin-tight black leather catsuit.

I would like to think that Kate Beckinsale, charming British waif that she is, could salvage any movie in which she appears. However, much as I enjoyed her in Cold Comfort Farm and The Last Days of Disco, my cinematic self-preservation instincts warned me away from Pearl Harbor and Serendipity. (A pity it didn't save me from Emma.) Underworld was interesting to look at, and the premise was fine, but the script was completely by the numbers, with nary a joke to give us respite from the grim, grim unlife of a vampire. The movie takes itself so darn seriously that the audience ceases to care -- if the tone of the film is the same all the way through, how can we be expected to figure out what's important to the characters?

Survivor 7 - Arrrrrr!

They should just subtitle this one "The Adventures of Rupert 'Hagrid' Boneham" and be done with it. Not only was he the first to act like a pirate (stealing the other team's shoes to trade to islanders for supplies), he was also the first to talk like one on camera. The skirt was an interesting choice, but it's not like his masculinity can't take the hit, and if it makes him more comfortable, it's all good.

Meanwhile the folks on the other tribe are off to a rocky start, behaving like morons from minute one. (A tribe member's pants are falling down, so let's all get naked? Wouldn't a length of rope have done the job?) At least their behavior isn't being rewarded (immunity challenge: lost), although I'm resigned to the fact that their only interesting members (the Scoutmaster and the geek) will get voted off as punishment for their inability to hang with the in-crowd. Meanwhile, anyone who describes herself as "perky" should be made to walk the plank. For real.

Aliens, Monsters, and Mexicans

Once Upon a Time in Mexico - Thank the maker, I think we can chalk up the awful Spy Kids 3-D as a horrible, horrible mistake on the part of Robert Rodriguez. Mexico is a return to form for the "guerilla" director -- and somehow he maintains that indie cred even when he's making thirty-million-dollar action flicks with Antonio Banderas. We sat towards the front for this one, which was a mistake, as I kept having to move my head to read the subtitles. Since the film's dialogue is about one-third Spanish (a good thing, in my view), that got old pretty quickly. (My wife likes to rest her feet on the railing in the first row of stadium seating, but I'm pretty much over it.) Still, great flick, very much in the tradition of the previous two films (El Mariachi and Desperado), if not quite a sequel to either one, since some of the plot details have been changed. Johnny Depp had better be careful, or he's going to get a reputation as a box-office draw. (Mexico made $24 million this past weekend.)

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - The wisecracks and lush animation kept this one from sinking into the oblivion of mediocrity that seems to be the "traditional" animated market these days. The script, amazingly enough, was written by John Logan, who also put together the jaw-clenchingly awful Star Trek: Nemesis and the recent Time Machine, which I haven't seen. More interesting than the movie itself was the venue in which we saw it. The Clearwater Cinema Cafe was pretty busy for a Sunday afternoon, mostly because one of their theaters was given over to showing a Bucs game. I can see why it's popular -- not only does the theater show the game on a movie-sized screen with an excellent digital video projector, but they also serve the usual bar food and beer. The smaller theater in which we saw Sinbad was threadbare but clean, and the aging vinyl seats were actually pretty comfy. The food was standard sports pub fare, but it arrived promptly and you can't beat the price: dinner and a movie for two, for under $25.

Godzilla (1998) - After the disappointing Godzilla X Mechagodzilla, I decided to revisit the American incarnation of Godzilla to see how it stands up, five years later. The answer? Not that bad. Ignoring the issue of whether this particular giant lizard is the "real" Godzilla, it's actually an entertaining bit of science fiction and has much, much better interaction between man and beast than any other Godzilla movie in recent memory. In fact, not since Gamera, Guardian of the Universe has the monster-vs-human action been so well choreographed. This is likely because there wasn't another giant monster in the film for Godzilla to fight, so the only possible interaction was between Godzilla and New York City. True, Maria Pitillo isn't much of an actress, but Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, and Jean Reno acquit themselves well and most of the dialogue, while scientifically questionable, at least makes sense within the goofy context of the movie. Tristar-zilla haters, there are many other films more deserving of your enmity.

Alien Resurrection - I kinda buzzed through this one on the Tivo last night, trying to pick out the Joss Whedon dialogue and enjoying some of the performances. It's definitely Whedon's darkest work, and you can see some of Firefly's roots in the characters and set design. The revival of Ripley's character was deftly handled. A neat film, but not one I'm anxious to own.

Cats and monsters

I've seen a remarkable variety of movies since the last entry, so I'll just buzz through them quickly, since some of them will of course get covered more thoroughly on Stomp Tokyo.

The Cat's Meow - This isn't exactly Kirsten Dunst's finest acting work, but it's not terrible either, and the focus is definitely elsewhere in this bit of speculative fiction about 1920s Hollywood. Eddie Izzard is a particularly compelling incarnation of Charlie Chaplin, who becomes obsessed with Marion Davies (Dunst), the mistress of newspaper goliath William Randolph Hearst. The story attempts to explain the machinations behind the (accidental?) death of Thomas Ince (played here by the underused Cary Elwes), a film exec who fell mysteriously ill after celebrating his birthday with a cruise aboard Hearst's yacht, the Oneida. While little is known about what actually happened, or even who was aboard the Oneida at the time, screenwriter Steven Peros and director Peter Bogdanovich populate the film with a number of scurrilous thrill-seeking socialites, including gossip columnist Luella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly, who hits just the right notes) and Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley, who plays another smug Brit like her character in Cold Comfort Farm). Edward Herrmann is the undisputed star, however, as he takes W.R. Hearst from obsessive paranoia to outright panic and then to calculated steeliness. I haven't seen Machiavellian mood swings like this since Joe Pantoliano went slowly bonkers in Bound.

The Cat Returns - Another feline title, but very little like the last film. Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli created this film from a graphic novel, which began as a concept from Miyazaki himself. It's not a breathtaking film like Totoro or Mononoke, but it is of the level you'd expect from Studio Ghibli, which means it's better than 99% of the crap out there made for children by other film studios. Haru (voiced by Chizuru Ikewaki) is a young teenaged girl who rescues a cat from traffic one afternoon. When it turns out that the cat is feline royalty, Haru finds herself repaid in unexpected ways. Pure bliss for Ghibli junkies like me, and a highly amusing diversion for casual fans of animated movies.

Frailty - Plenty of other critics have hashed over the plot of this one, and while I can't say it ever really surprised me, I was happy that it chose the more difficult -- and philosophically stimulating -- road in the end. A bit too gory, but some brave filmmaking and sincere acting compensate. Bill Paxton keeps weaving over the line between ridiculousness and respectability. Pick a side, Bill!

Camille 2000 - I added this to my Netflix queue back when Radley Metzger's movies seemed intriguing, but this movie was such a typical example of '60s Eurotrash soft-core porn that I tuned out about half an hour in. If it got spectacularly better after that, let me know.

UltraSeven: The End of the Contract - Someone took the script for a particularly esoteric episode of Dr. Who and tacked on a fight between Ultraman (sorry, UltraSeven) and a giant monster at the end! I'm gonna have to see this one again before we review it at ST -- it was really weird. At least the fight was pretty good.

Space Ghost cartoons: one of my better bootleg scores as of late was this disc of the original Space Ghost adventures. Trippy! I wonder why space monkey Blip never shows up on the new show?

That's it for now. Hopefully updates will appear with more regularity.