sci-fi

Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe (1991)

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three star

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As a fan of both Arnold Schwarzenegger shoot ’em ups and films of questionable quality starring pro wrestlers, I had very little choice but to partake in the doomed-from-the-start prospect of watching Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe when its cheap DVD sleeve caught my eye at the second-hand store. As a Z-Grade Terminator knockoff starring Jesse “The Body” Ventura, Abraxas had almost zero potential to be a decent sci-fi cheapie, but almost all of the potential in the world to be a fabulous trainwreck. Its plot synopsis of about “intergalactic police officers” & “a hybrid being that has the power to destroy the universe” boasted a special sort of promise for a campy mess. What was most surprising about Abraxas, however, was not exactly how irredeemably bad it was (it was pretty bad) but what it happened to get right & wrong about the Terminator franchise.

The original Terminator film from 1984 has a lean efficiency to it that makes it feel like an especially well-funded Roger Corman production, right down to the Dick Miller cameo in the gun shop. Part of what James Cameron does so well in that film is keep his audience in the dark. He allows questions about the exact nature of Schwarzenegger’s time-traveling robot assassin to hang in the air until they need to be answered. The gradually unfolding plot creates an feeling of dread & mystique that makes the original film a fun watch to this day (four sequels later), at the very least in admiration of how a familiar, but complicated story gets laid out in an unfamiliar, but understandable way in its initial telling. Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe has no patience for this sort of gradual roll-out & instead blurts every idiotic idea it his on its mind directly to the audience in its opening exposition.

In just a few short minutes of Jesse Ventura’s helpfully explanatory grumbling we learn that his protagonist (the titular Abraxas, of course) is an 11,000 year old intergalactic supercop, known as a “Finder”, who has to renew his vows to “defend all life” every 100 years. His latest mission is to “find” (read: “terminate”) an ex-partner, Secundus, who has gone renegade. Secundus’ evil plan involves impregnating an “Earth woman” in order to give birth to some sort of cyborg anti-Christ with the power to destroy the universe. Before Abraxas can leave for this mission, however, he must undergo a painful “reinforcement” of his skeletal & muscular structure through “short-wave irradiation” & “ozone layering”, a highly risky process that requires him to (I’m not kidding) play word association games with an A.I. surgeon (that helpfully give us some background info on his home planet of Sargacia) so he doesn’t lose his mind from the pain. If this sounds like a lot of info to lay on the audience in a single soliloquy, that’s because it is. The whole ordeal is nearly as exhausting as the restructural “ozone layering” or whatever the Hell he was babbling about.

As wrongheaded as Abraxas is about rolling out a Terminator-type plot in an understandable way, it’s also oddly prescient about where the series would go in its second installment, T-2: Judgment Day. Released just weeks before T-2, Abraxas has way too many similarities to the cult classic to not have been a direct mockbuster version of it. It’s as if the entirety of the film were written based on the promotional materials of what Judgement Day was going to be about. For some strange reason, the ad campaign for T-2 made no bones about the fact that Schwarzenegger was going to be returning as a “good guy” in the second film, despite that twist’s potential to make for a fun shock for an unsuspecting audience. Abraxas mirrors T-2‘s basic structure of two superhuman warriors fighting over the fate of a young child, except that it muddles the details of which warrior (good or bad) would be structurally superior & what the good guy’s relationship with the would-be victim’s mother would look like (I don’t remember Schwarzenegger’s cyborg falling in love with Sarah Conner, but Abraxas totally falls for her thousands-of-years-too-young-for-him equivalent in this dreck; typical male-female Hollywood age differences, right?).

Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe certainly does very little to hide the fact that it exists solely to wean off some of those sweet, sweet Terminator bucks. The film shamelessly uses the word “terminate” at least three times, there’s a scene where the evil “Finder” Secundus vaporizes a dude just to steal his clothes, and both Secundus & Abraxas are more or less directly impersonating Arnold’s very recognizable accent throughout the film (with Secundus’ attempts being a much more accurate interpretation than Ventura’s). Given the obscene cheapness of the film’s sets (warehouses, camp sites, offices, wilderness, etc.), the fact that the futuristic laser guns that don’t shoot visible lasers (they just set off sparks & explosions), and the batshit insane repetition of certain (costly, I’m guessing) identical explosions shots in the film’s montages & final conflict, it’s entirely believable that Abraxas was created in a rush as a composite of ideas from the original Terminator film & ideas lifted from the promotional material for the second. Their weeks-apart release dates pretty much seal that thought completely.

As for the film’s camp value outside of a Terminator-imitator, there are several things worth a chuckle. The repetition of the identical explosions is maddening, but also amusing. There’s also a completely needless side plot about space alien bureaucrats bitching about being assigned to “a planet no one’s ever heard of,” an over-the-top scene where not-Sarah Conner becomes pregnant & gives birth in the span of a minute at the wave of a hand, and an out-of-nowhere cameo from Jim Belushi as a befuddled principle that left me scratching my head. Most of the film’s non-Terminator camp value comes from “The Body” himself, though. Ventura could be a menace in the ring & on the mic ringside in his heyday, but in the early 90s he looked more like a bald stepdad confused with what to do with his gigantic body. As he tries to reconcile the super-serious “finding” mission at hand with his newfound tender feelings for an Earth woman, it’s pretty funny to watch Ventura try to make Abraxas out to be anything but a coldhearted robot, which the film often forgets he’s not. It’s not a knee-slappingly funny performance, but it’s definitely a fascinating one & definitely worth a look for a bored Terminator or oldschool WWF superfan looking to kill 90 minutes on an especially boring afternoon.

-Brandon Ledet

Terminator Genisys (2015)

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threehalfstar

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In the recent flood of reboots, remakes, reimaginings and good, old-fashioned sequels that have effectively taken over Hollywood, there’s been an occasional uproar about what these films are doing to the credibility of the films they’re resurrecting. A few rehashes of long-dead properties have been lauded as critical darlings (such as the fever dream action monster Mad Max: Fury Road), but a lot of them have been met with aploplectic rage, such as Paul Feig’s not-even-released-yet take on Ghostbusters. Part of what Feig is getting flack for is tampering with the original formula, trying his damnedest to give his reboot its own reason to exist, and being met with a resounding opposition that claims he’s “ruining their childhood.” It’s sort of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t endeavor, creatively speaking, since studios are pouring so much money into these retreads instead of fresh material, but it’d also be entirely pointless to just remake the original film faithfully, except with temporal markers like smart phones & drone-operated cameras to provide modern context (like in the utterly useless Poltergeist remake).

Terminator Genisys has a fun time not only acknowledging the fact that reboots & sequels have a tendency to tarnish the memory of the films that came before them (according to a hypersensitive few), but it revels in the idea. Using the time travel paradox theme from the first couple films in the series, Genisys tinkers with & dismantles its predecessors in a dismissive, disrespectful way that feels alarmingly bold for a film that eventually amounts to a long string of chase scenes. The first hour of the film features a jumble of timelines that interact not only with the 1984 & 1991 stories told in The Terminator & T-2: Judgement Day, but also fleshes out some of the 2024 revolution, makes a pitstop in 1972 that changes the whole game of the first film, and sets up an entirely new Skynet timeline that needs to be dismantled in 2017. It’s a doozy of an opening sequence that features cheap, literal imitations of exact scenes from the earlier movies & repurposes them for its own ends, the implications of how it unravels the first two films be damned. I respect its moxy in this respect, even if the execution was far from flawless.

There’s a televised news report in Terminator Genisys that features the hilariously self-aware headline “Has Genisys gone too far?” This plays like a direct nod to how the film is not only disrespectful to its audience as Terminator fans, but also calls them out as a bunch of technology-obsessed dolts who would allow a computer program to end human existence as long as it promised to make their lives easier. The idea of a killer app that links all of the world’s smartphone technology into one conveniently vulnerable control is far from unique. At the very least, I’ve already seen that concept play out twice this year in Furious 7 & Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s still interesting to see it tie into an action movie’s larger overriding idea that its own audience is worth disdain. There are so many shots of people emptily gazing into their smart phones as a doomsday scenario swirls around them that even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s give-the-people-what-they-want one-liners like “I’ll be back” feel like a dig at the audience’s expectations. It’s so weird to see a film both fulfil movie-goer’s desire to see an old scenario play out yet again & subvert that desire by tearing apart the timelines of the original films by making them irrelevant, or as Schwarzenegger’s cyborg says of himself in this film, obsolete.

Speaking of Arnold, he’s the only enjoyable member of the film’s cast, performing with a weary, but endearing charm that says both “I’m too old for this shit” & “This is all I know how to do”. As a lifelong fan, I’m delighted by the idea of Arnold stretching himself to try new things, but if that means more snoozers like Maggie instead of the one-liner-fueled killing machine performances like in Genisys & the surprisingly enjoyable The Last Stand, I’m also more than happy to just see him filling this role for the rest of his life. No one else in the cast makes much of an impression at all, which (along with a who-cares 2017 climax sequence) tampers my enthusiasm for the film a bit, but that’s okay too.

Look, this is a franchise that’s already been dragged through the mud. Its first two entries are undeniable classics, but Terminator 3 & worse yet, Salvation weren’t exactly memorable cinema. Although I admire Terminator Genisys‘ mission to go back in time & effectively murder its predecessors, it’s an impossible mission. No matter what, those movies still exist & they’re still great. You can revisit your un-ruined childhood anytime you want through Netflix or blu-Rays or murderous smart phone apps or whatever you like, really. They’re still there. We just now also have a serviceable sequel that jumbles the timelines of those films into a barely-coherent mess just to watch its audience squirm under the pressure. I happen to find that tactic pretty hilarious, even if it did have trouble sticking the landing.

-Brandon Ledet

Rewind Moment: Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

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Rewind Moments are those special scenes in films that deserve to revisited over & over again due to their overwhelming impact.

Mutated humanoid fish people terrorize a small harbor town by killing and raping its inhabitants. Only Roger Corman could make an excellent film with such an absurd plot. Humanoids from the Deep is the definition of a B-movie. It’s a ridiculous gore fest filled with nudity and all the other wonderful garbage terrible movies are made of.

My “rewind moment” from Humanoids is the final scene of the film. One of humanoid’s rape victims gives birth to a mutated fish baby, and it is guaranteed to scar you for life.

-Britnee Lombas

The Lazarus Effect (2015)

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Sometime in late 2012 I had the unique opportunity to catch the beautifully-filmed fine cuisine documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, (a movie most people have experienced through the power of Netflix) on the big screen. Running late from grabbing a sushi dinner myself, I had to sit in the front row, craning my head to take in the majestic sushi specimens that towered over me. It was an overwhelming experience, one I’m unlikely to ever forget. Never in my wildest imagination would I have assumed that the director, who was present at that screening for a Q&A, would follow up that beautiful film with a drearily cheap sci-fi horror that feels more like a particularly eccentric episode of a CSI type show or a SyFy Original Movie than anything that belongs in a proper theater, but that’s exactly what happened.

The Lazarus Effect is cheap. And ugly. And hopelessly shallow. Its worst quality of all, though, is the level of talent it roped into its murky depths. Not only is Jiro Dreams of Sushi director David Gelb suffering a sophomore slump here, respectable actors Mark Duplass, Donald Glover, Olivia Wilde, and Evan Peters (who had a great turn as Quicksilver last year in X-Men: Days of Future Past) are all dragged down by his misstep. The movie’s dire quality is apparent as early as the opening credits, which play over grotesque medical footage and a staged lab experiment in which a dead dog is revived. It’s a cheap way to fish for a reaction from the audience, flatly showing something horrific & ugly instead of building suspense to it the way a decent horror movie typically would. That approach is a major indication of what’s to come.

Since the movie’s atmosphere never allows tension to build properly, the best chance you have of enjoying The Lazarus Effect is as a camp fest. The basic premise is that a doctor named Frank (-enstein! Get it? Get it?) is experimenting on bringing deceased canines back to life in hopes his techniques will give surgeons more time to operate in life & death medical emergencies. But what if he’s bringing his subjects back from Doggie Hell instead of Doggie Heaven? Indeed, the first revived dog starts to act a little freaky, but that doesn’t stop Dr. Frank from going off the rails & reviving a love one who passes away unexpectedly. When his first human subject rises from the dead, she’s literally a ghost under a sheet, which is a sort of goofy moment. By the time she’s reading minds, abusing her telekinesis, and (the most evil thing of all!) levitating, she’s gone full goof.

The problem with reading the film this way is that it’s rarely silly enough to be laughable. There’s some amusing moments involving the evil dog (who never gets to levitate or read minds himself, unfortunately) & I’m fairly certain this is the only film I’ve ever seen where a vape pen is used as a murder weapon, but for the most part it’s just hopelessly bland. The Lazarus Effect is much more concerned with exploring kiddy pool depth ideas about a scientific mind confronted with spiritual questions he can’t explain logically than it is with entertaining its audience or not looking like a pile of wet garbage. Whether you take the film seriously or try to enjoy it as a goof, there’s just not much there. I keep asking myself how this was made by the same guy who brought the world Jiro Dreams of Sushi and I just can’t come up with anything but the question itself. How? Just how? That’s about the only haunting or even vaguely interesting element at play here.

-Brandon Ledet

Tomorrowland (2015)

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threehalfstar

Don’t believe the (negative) hype. Brad Birds’ live action Disney epic Tomorrowland is a great kids’ movie. Three weeks into the movie’s theatrical release, it’s still $20 million dollars short of recouping its budget and most of that money came from outside of the United States. Tomorrowland might eventually break even, but considering those numbers & its middling critical response it’s still hard not to see it as an all-around flop. That fact has little to say about the movie’s quality, though. Just as with Disney’s other most infamous live action flops, The Rocketeer & John Carter, Tomorrowland is a little hokey & old-fashioned, but also way better than its reputation indicates. Actually, I’d even go far enoguh to say it’s an easy best out of the three.

Although it’s admittedly a ham-handed parable about the power of positive thinking, Tomorrowland also manages to be the exact kind of smart-scary-dark-ambitious kids’ media that people are supposedly hungry to make a comeback, the kind that doesn’t treat its pintsized audience like dolts. It’s not afraid to confront children with big sci-fi ideas like parallel universes & the ways utopias can devolve into dystopias. It’s also not afraid to feel dangerous. People get scuffed up, occasionally die even, in a way that suggests that actions have consequences. Characters zip around in jetpacks & rocket ships, but never in a way that feels completely safe from bodily harm. After suffering through the horrendous ad for the Minions sequel that preceded the film, it was refreshing to see Disney take a chance on something that challenges their younger audience’s imagination, intellect, and desire to be scared. It was also a bummer that it was a gamble that didn’t work out for them financially.

In an alternate reality, a George Clooney-starring sci-fi fantasy epic about saving the world from its inevitable demise through sheer optimism might have been a hit. In this world, it’s failed to make much of a splash at all. In a lot of unexpected ways, Tomorrowland reminds me of another live action children’s media flop from the past decade, 2008’s City of Ember. Although City of Ember didn’t do well at the box office, it’s a smart & scary parable that covers a lot of the same ground as Tomorrowland: climate change, the dangers of stagnant thinking & an over-controlling governing body that thinks it knows best, and the idea that optimism and self-actualization can change the course of world’s seemingly hopeless path to self-destruction.

I honestly believe that both Tomorrowland & City of Ember will connect with enough young minds to have a cultural staying power that will only grow as the years go on. In the meantime that kind of gradual cult following is going to do little to encourage studios to take risks on ambitious children’s media like Tomorrowland instead of churning out more Minions sequels or whatever, which is sad considering the vast difference in quality (something I’m guessing about, based solely on an ad). But maybe I should think more positively and hope for the best. The future might be better for it.

-Brandon Ledet

Ex Machina (2015)

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fourhalfstar

Sometimes a straight-forward, low-key picture is the exactly correct approach when dealing with larger than life concepts. This can especially be true with sci-fi. I had a lot of fun with the twisty trashiness of this year’s Predestination, which was anything but tasteful, and the ludicrous world-building of last year’s The Zero Theorem, but neither of those examples haunted me quite as much as Alex Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina. There’s something about Ex Machina’s straight-forward, no nonsense approach to sci-fi storytelling that struck a real chord in me. It’s not likely to win over folks who are looking to be surprised by every single development in its plot, but for those willing to enjoy the movie on its own stripped-down terms there’s a lot of intense visual rewards & interesting thematic explorations of, among other things, masculine romantic possessiveness that can be deeply satisfying. It’s a cold, tightly-controlled film that somehow echoes both the overwhelming psychedelic claustrophobia of Beyond the Black Rainbow & the you’re-in-over-your-head-kid misanthropy of last year’s brilliantly dark Frank without coming off as at all showy in the process. That’s no small feat.

Holding down the Frank end of that formula is incredibly talented Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson (who also starred in Frank, go figure), playing a young computer programmer who is recruited by a villainous half-Steve Jobs/half-Howard Hughes bro-type (played by the also talented Oscar Isaac) to test the consciousness of a just-invented AI robot called Ava. Despite her artificial appearance, Ava is incredibly human and challenges both her creator’s & her observer’s views of who & what she is, calling into question whether her confinement & lack of freedom is a form of abuse. As more is slowly revealed about Isaac’s mad scientist & the depthless intelligence Ava is hiding, the movie takes on a deeply sinister, misanthropic tone in which no one comes across as a good person, but rather all three parties are complicit in attempting to control, mislead, and manipulate, all for their own selfish reasons. In the cold confines of the remote compound where this three-way power struggle unfolds, there’s a deeply unsettling revelation about the worst aspects of human nature at play here, one that is in no way lessened by being able to see where the story is going before it arrives there.

The truly impressive thing about Ex Machina’s calm, controlled style is how striking of a visual effect the movie accomplishes through very simple, straightforward techniques. Throughout the film, there are frequent “power-outs” in the setting’s remote facility that bathe the screen in a threateningly intense red light. When the camera cuts from these images to the contrasting bright greens of nature outside, the movie not only draws a visual comparison between nature & artifice, it also creates a surprisingly psychedelic experience that recalls the futuristic medical facility of Beyond the Black Rainbow. Just like with its acting, story-telling, thematic explorations, tone, and pacing, the visual aesthetic established in Ex Machina is surprisingly effective for something so intentionally simple. It’s an impressive picture in how it makes no grand gestures to impress, relying on its inherent strengths instead of showy gimmickry to establish itself as a unique work. I found the effect of this approach both eerie and refreshing, both disturbing and poignant. In other words, it’s a great film.

-Brandon Ledet

Spring (2015)

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fourstar

As you may expect based on its title, the movie Spring begins with death & finality and gradually blooms into a colorful array of new life & reproduction. The muted, brownish haze of depression in the film’s color palette slowly changes into something much more vivid. The film’s own energy & creativity works this way as well. At first Spring feels like a cloudy, almost run-of-the mill romance story, but then it develops into something fresh & exciting. Halfway between a sci-fi horror Before Sunrise and a rom-com Possession, Spring refuses to be understood in the context of a strict genre. Instead, it feels like the blooming of something new & unknown.

It’d be difficult to explain too much of Spring’s plot without ruining what’s special about it. The bare bones premise is that a young American named Evan travels to Europe as a means of forgetting the mess that’s been made of his life. After a brief period of playing tourist with some wastoid jocks (“Bro, I fucking blazed the Wi-Fi code!”), Evan falls for an Italian woman named Louise that gives his life a new sense of purpose & excitement. There’s a struggle to convince her that their romance deserves a chance and the relationship becomes an outrageously exaggerated form of “it’s complicated”. Revealing too much about Spring’s story would be a disservice to you so I’m just going to have to stop there and ask you to take my word for it: it’s a great movie.

To illustrate how difficult the tone & intent are to pinpoint here, check out the genre listed on the film’s Wikipedia page: “supernatural romantic science fiction horror”- expialidocious. You can go ahead and add the word “comedy” to that list as well, as the film is frequently hilarious in a satisfyingly adult way, like the line “Mention WWII and every American becomes a historian” or in a scene where the main characters are arguing about whether an art exhibit is “fertility imagery” or “Roman porn”. The two leads at the heart of the film’s romance in the film may not be fully developed characters (little is done to define Evan as a person besides contrasting him with Wi-Fi code blazing macho types). Louise similarly is defined less by her personality and more by her circumstance. Much like with a lot of sci-fi, though, character development is not the apex of the film’s ambitions. Instead, their relationship is more of a launching pad for exploring ideas like the vulnerability of falling for a complete stranger & what it means to desperately beg someone to love you, even if you know they’re dangerous. The film becomes more & more funny-scary-sweet-sad-surprising as it delves into these ideas and it literally starts crawling with life: lizards, bugs, bunnies, howling cats, etc. Spring is just as rejuvenating & full of promise as the season it’s named for.

-Brandon Ledet

The Zero Theorem (2014)

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fourstar

The most frequent complaint about The Zero Theorem, Terry Gilliam’s latest film, is that it’s “more of the same” without adding much more to the conversation. That is to say that it borrows too much form Gilliam’s own oeuvre, specifically the themes & imagery established in two of his biggest works: Brazil & 12 Monkeys. Honestly, I find it hard to fault a director for exploring “more of the same”, when “the same” is such a delicious plethora of weird ideas & images. Gilliam has an absurd talent for making outlandish, mind-melting worlds feel authentically lived-in and The Zero Theorem does not disappoint in that way. The future world portrayed here not only feels reasonable, but almost probable. This is partly because it’s sketched out in small, intimate spaces instead of the grand, sweeping strokes typical to Gilliam’s work. This not only makes the film feel oddly believable; it also helps to fix a problem I usually have with his work: pacing. For me, Terry Gilliam films, despite being impressive & entertaining, tend to feel about 6 hours longer than their actual run times. By narrowing its focus The Zero Theorem is more of an effortless breeze to watch than his usual fare, feeling much more concise in its narrative. It may be “more of the same” visually & thematically, but structurally it’s a much tighter execution than Gilliam’s normal mode.

The world Gilliam builds in The Zero Theorem is overwhelming, but not at all unlikely. Glowing screens dominate the landscape, allowing advertisements to follow humble number cruncher Qohen (Christoph Waltz) to his oppressive office job where he sits before even more screens. Although the imagery is overstuffed with weird machines & high pop art fashion, there’s a lived-in grey grime that covers the surface of The Zero Theorem that makes its vision of the future feel authentic. An especially telling scene shows a house party where all of the celebrants are dancing to their own individual music players, headphones in ears, eyes affixed to the computer tablets in their hands. The isolation of technology & cubicle work is by no means a new concept, but Gilliam pushes it to an extreme here. At first Qohen is on a humble quest to work from home (due to a perceived Joe Vs the Volcano “brain cloud” type disease), but then he finds himself trying to prove that the Universe & life itself are meaningless. As Qohen attempts to make sense of the film’s swirling black holes, weird machines, and futuristic sex work, he proposes that “Nothing adds up.” He’s corrected, “You’ve got it backwards. Everything adds up to nothing.” Ultimately, the film works that way as well. There’s a lot of ideas & themes about romance, technology, corporate dystopia, and the surveillance state floating around The Zero Theorem, threatening to amount to a grand statement about life, love, and nature, but ultimately the film decides that everything means nothing and we are each alone in our plights.

It’s the small-scale implications of The Zero Theorem’s plot that anchor its larger, more philosophical thoughts on the emptiness of everything. Although Qohen is trying to uncover the basic significance of the universe at large, it’s the goings on inside his hermetic abandoned church home that constitute most of the run time. The focus on Qohen’s struggle for self-acceptance, his embarrassing attempts at a love life, and his slavish, Waiting for Godot dedication to a potential incoming phone call provides a steady foundation for the film’s more ludicrous, throwaway concepts like virtual therapy and The Church of Batman the Redeemer. Waltz also does a great job of anchoring the film with a quiet, unassuming performance that’s far from his over-the-top hamming in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes. He leaves that hamming up to relative newcomer Lucas Hedges, who easily steals the back half of the film (which is no small feat, considering that half features a rapping Tilda Swinton).  In a lot of ways The Zero Theorem is more of the same from Terry Gilliam, but its narrowed focus & intimate setting affords it a more concise-feeling execution of ideas & images he’s explored before rather than an exact retread. It’s not the greatest thing he’s ever done, but it’s by no means an inconsequential work either. Instead, it’s another great, intentionally overwhelming film from a director who’s built a storied career full of them.

-Brandon Ledet

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

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The worst part about hating Jupiter Ascending is that I was really rooting for it. I’m not a Wachowskis super fan or anything (I barely know of their work outside The Maxtrix & Speed Racer); I just liked the movie’s basic concept & attributes. The idea of a sci-fi action-adventure with a female lead hit a lot of my sweet spots right out of the gate, but every one of those elements in the final product fell embarrassingly flat. The female lead, played by Mila Kunis, is for the most part a passenger & an observer while the action swirls around her (she’s a literal princess in need of saving, even). The action itself alternates from occasionally engaging to just painfully awful, anchored mostly by an against-all-odds unsexy Channing Tatum figure skating through the air (thanks to some kind of goofy laser boots) while terrible CGI obstacles crash & burn in his wake. That leaves the film’s sci-fi concepts to carry the load, which they occasionally do in a Richard Kelly kitchen sink fashion, but even those fade to long stretches of unimpressive action sequences. In short, Jupiter Ascending is a failure, when I really, really didn’t want it to be.

I’m just one dude, though! There’s a lot floating around in the film for people to latch onto. Beautiful, futuristic landscapes & architecture are populated with (unbelievably dumb-looking) alien weirdos like CGI lizard minions & humanoid owl things (that look like Ron Perlmen in Beauty and the Beast). Eddy Redmayne gives a (laughably) memorable performance as an evil alien dictator (who is just a wig & a sashay short of a killer drag routine). The aforementioned Richard Kelly brand of too-plentiful ideas contrast an undocumented immigrant’s life as a servant on Earth with distant & lavish alien aristocrats (who cares). There’s some (mildly amusing) honey bee worship (à la Upside Down) that results in the line “Bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty.” Other lines like “Your Earth is a very small part of a very large industry,” and “Time is the single most precious commodity in the universe,” also have a sort of a staying power (even if it’s as a joke). There’s a whole lot to love in Jupiter Ascending, but if you’re like me and have problems arriving on its wavelength, that excess gets ugly quickly.

If I had to boil what’s wrong with Jupiter Ascending down to a single fault it would be that it’s just so thoroughly uncool. I could be wrong and the movie’s late 90s Hot Topic raver aesthetic could be vintage enough to be cool again (if it was ever cool), but from my POV it just feels painfully outdated, like watching your stepdad desperately try to be hip. Imagine if The Fifth Element arrived 20 years late, dead serious (or at least not funny), and about as exciting as The Ice Pirates. Maybe a list of the character names will give you an idea of what I’m describing here: Jupiter Jones, Titus Abrasax, Phylo Percadium, Gemma Chatterjee, Stinger Apini, etc. If these names belong anywhere (and I’m not sure that they do) it’s on a TV screen, clogging up a low-rent Battlestar Galactica knockoff. Much of the film operates this way, feeling like a television show whose special effects budget was afforded way too much money and not nearly enough time to get the details right. I sincerely hope that there are people who have positive experiences with Jupiter Ascending, as I do find it interesting in concept, but it’s a movie I would love to never see or think about again. This might work out just fine, as even while I was watching I felt like it had been released nearly two decades ago.

-Brandon Ledet

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

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threehalfstar

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As I watched Disturbing Behavior for the very first time yesterday evening, something about it seemed strangely familiar. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was quite similar to The Faculty, which was also released in 1998. In The Faculty, high school students are turned into aliens by their extraterrestrial faculty members and in Disturbing Behavior, high school students are turned into robots by their human faculty members. And, of course, each film has “the new kid in town” main character (typical for 90s teen flicks). After reading a couple of articles about the film, many compare it to The Stepford Wives (1975). I’m guessing this is due to the human to robot transformations, but that’s really the only connection I noticed. Despite all of the similarities it has to other films, Disturbing Behavior does a good job of standing out on its own. It’s campy sci-fi horror with a dash of high school drama, and I really enjoyed the film.

Steve Clark (James Marsden) and his family move to the small town of Cradle Bay after the tragic suicide of his older brother. Like all new kids, he immediately connects with a couple of outcasts at his new high school, Rachel Wagner (Katie Holmes) and Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl). As the film progresses, some “disturbing behavior” begins to occur in the group known as the Blue Ribbons, a clique of popular kids decked out in letterman jackets. With the help of a wacky janitor, Steve and Rachel find out the horrific secret behind the Blue Ribbons and attempt to stop their reign of terror.

It’s always great to see Holmes in a “bad girl” role since she’s best known for being the girl next door in Dawson’s Creek. I really enjoyed her in this film because she is great at pulling off the “misunderstood teen” look and attitude, and the chemistry between her and Marsden is pretty damn hot. She starred in the music video for The Flys’ hit single, “Got You (Where I Want You),” and I always assumed she was selected to be in the video because she was a pretty big teen idol during the time it was released. It turns out that the song made its debut on the Disturbing Behavior soundtrack (it plays in the opening scene and during the credits), so that’s probably the reason she was in the video. Mystery solved!

Viewing Disturbing Behavior through a critical lens makes it a horrible viewing experience, and that’s because it’s not a film that should be taken seriously. It’s loads of mindless fun and totally worth a watch or two.

-Britnee Lombas