Category: Reviews

Review: Step Into Liquid (Blu-Ray)

Step Into Liquid is the sort of Blu-Ray DVD that only has two levels of appeal; first, as a niche title appealing to a small but devoted demographic, and second, as a showcase for the wonders of 1080p high-definition format media. Watch the film on standard definition and it’s nowhere nearly as impressive on a visual scale, although the cinematography is quite nice throughout.

Step Into Liquid is a mix of documentary and pro-surfing propaganda, since 90 percent of those interviewed seem on a mission to convert everyone within earshot into a devotee of surfing while somehow, by and large, still maintaining a somewhat elitist tone. That’s a feat.

In the annuls of the Cold War, one of the most honest moments that led to a breakthrough in diplomacy is when pro-military strength Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan sat down opposite Mikhail Gorbachev and said, without blinking, “Here is why we don’t trust you.”

In similar fashion, while at times a great and thrilling testament to the sport of surfing, Step Into Liquid allows those it interviews to go off on elitist rants about the wonders of surfing, how surfers are so misunderstood and how only surfers “get” surfing. As such, Step Into Liquid stands as Exhibit A when this reviewer sits down opposite a surfing devotee and tell them, “Here’s why we think you’re an elitist snob.”

The movie gets a bit surreal as one moment, you have a seemingly down-to-earth guy like X-Files creator Chris Carter talking cogently about how surfers get wrongly portrayed as flakes, followed up by a nameless surfing elitist who then goes on a flakey rant about how maybe if we all just surfed a couple hours a day, there would be no wars. Way to undercut the flakiness charge, there, guys!

Still, there are some high points to the movie, like the five minutes or so spent on the Great Lakes surfing community in Wisconsin – something new I’d never been aware of before. Or how there was a real-life Gidget who the 1950s surfing movies were based on, and who is still an active surfer today, even though she needs more wrinkle creams than ice creams these days.

If someone is big into surfing and doesn’t mind some pro-surfing proselytizing, Step Into Liquid should be of some interest. However, after seeing it once to show off some of the details visible at 1080p that other lower-def screens just can’t achieve, I can’t imagine this being a long-term part of very many people’s Blu-Ray libraries. Unless, of course, as I said before, they are surfers.

Review: The Eye 3 (DVD)

No, you’re not in a time warp reading about a Jessica Alba sequel that won’t be made until 2012 (if ever). You see, The Eye may be familiar to US audiences as an Alba vehicle, but over in Korea, hot-shot Asian directors The Pang Brothers have already turned the movie into a somewhat successful series, of which The Eye 3 is only the most recent installment.

While the Pang Brothers’ version of The Eye and its American remake are similar, The Eye 3 may lead some viewers unfamiliar with the Korean original films a bit disoriented. By the third movie, gone is the concept of seeing ghosts because of a corneal transplant (The Eye) or because you attempted suicide while pregnant (The Eye 2), and instead, it is merely the challenge of getting to see the dead that drives the series forward.

Much like The Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows, the action of The Eye 3 focuses on a group of college students who, one somewhat inebriated night, decide they want to see ghosts. One of them has a list of methods, which includes corneal transplants and the suicide-while-pregnant thing, as a bow and a nod to the first two films, but then start listing odder methods that are less drastic, like banging chopsticks on noodle bowls to get the “hungry ghosts” to come out and play.

Of course, there are risks in seeking out the undead, and it goes well beyond the one drunken night, as these foolish kids soon learn. You can guess at how the plot unfolds from there, because spoilers end now on this one.

To be honest, the third movie is already beginning to stretch the core concept to the point of no return and personally, I felt The Eye 3 jumped the shark a bit; what’s next, being able to see ghosts via the use of a Canon Powershot? Wait, no… that’s Fatal Frame. Kinda.

Played for more comedy than the previous installments, The Eye 3 his some fun, mind-bending moments, but is scarce on the genuine chills. Although it delivers a PG-13-level thriller as the previous two installments did, this one just falls flat, and the special features are minimal, although there are English subtitles, thankfully, to help those of us who don’t speak Korean.

Review: The Eye (DVD & Blu-Ray)

Jessica Alba is the main reason most people will give The Eye a try, but the big secret of the movie is that it’s actually not that bad as a suspense-horror-thriller, either. An American remake of the 2002 original by the Pang Brothers, The Eye casts Alba as a blind violinist who has a chance to see again by undergoing a double corneal transplant.

The operation is an apparent success as Sydney (Alba) slowly learns to see again, her vision initially fuzzy and untrustworthy. She begins to see some things she thinks should not be there, although she is reassured by everyone that it’s all normal and part of her adjustment. But is it normal to see the spirits that reap souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead? Or is Sydney just paranoid and confusing dreams with reality.

It’s an intriguing premise that’s not unlike a handful of other horror stories where a transplant recipient of one sort or another have trouble when they find out the organ they received came from a criminal or a crime victim or some such thing. The core concept dates back at least as far as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with The Eye simply being the latest variation on that general theme.

One of The Eye’s cinematic forebears is Blink, which starred Madeline Stowe as a very similar character in a similar plot; however, that movie went off in a different direction, so you won’t confuse the two by the time it’s all done. Fans of the Pang Brothers will be pleased to note that American directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud maintain some of the style of the original Asian film, including a cameo by the “report card boy,” who has appeared in all three installments of The Eye directed by the Pang Brothers.

With virtually identical special features on Blu-Ray and standard DVD, The Eye is a rare commodity in today’s world of “unrated special editions.” It is a genuine PG-13 thriller that maintains a sense of suspense and horror without resorting to “director’s cut” excesses that amount to nothing more than a couple seconds more nudity, a few more cuss words and other needless toys; fortunately, The Eye delivers its spookiness without relying on offensive excesses.

Review: Mama’s Boy (DVD)

Ever since his debut in the well-received Napoleon Dynamite, comic actor Jon Heder has been stuck in a series of low-budget comedies playing, essentially, the same slacker-loser-nerd character. Mama’s Boy isn’t the movie that is going to change Heder’s typecast career, but it is a movie with a bit more heart to it than some of the pale imitators that followed in the wake of Napoleon Dynamite.

This time out, Heder plays Jeffrey Mannus, a slacker-loser-nerd who, at 29, still lives with his mother and window-shops men’s jewelry. Heder knows his set up is sweet, but when his mother meets a motivational speaker who starts courting his mother, Jeffrey feels his set-up is threatened and begins to engage in the movie-world-typical war of undermining his mom’s suitor in ways that just never happen in real life. And of course, motivational speaker Mert responds in kind.

At this point there were two ways the movie could go; it could really ramp up the undermining hijinks of Jeffrey and Mert, pulling the movie in a Farrelly Brothers direction, and leaving any sense of real humanity behind for the rest of the film, or it could show some character growth. Unexpectedly, Mama’s Boy chooses the road less traveled: character growth.

This growth is, in part, sparked by the relationship Jeffrey suddenly finds himself forming with Nora, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter whose work is a bit over the top and ridiculous; yet the script ignores this and takes her career aspirations seriously in another atypical move for a Hollywood movie.

It’s as though Mama’s Boy is the result of a collaboration between two completely different writers; one, a Farrally Brothers wannabe and the other striving to be the next William Goldman. The result is a watchable movie that, although enjoyable, seems to be suffering from a greater identity crisis than its main character.

Does Mama’s Boy want to be a rolling-in-the-aisles gross-out comedy? Then its script is far too humane and takes its characters too seriously. Does Mama’s Boy want to be more of a thoughtful comedy-slash-social commentary? Then why have Anna Farris perform songs that wouldn’t even be good enough to get her in to be ridiculed by Simon, Randy and Paula?

The movie is pleasant enough in a quiet kind of way, but lacks the punch to be either one type of movie or another. The end result’s middle-of-the-road approach leaves the viewer feeling like it’s a cinematic experience that never fully realized its potential.

Review: The Recruit (Blu-Ray)

Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in this Blu-Ray release of The Recruit, a spy-in-training suspense film that is supposed to be about mind games. Farrell comports himself quite well in the role, managing to come off as more innocent and naïve than he has in most of his films. He plays a CIA recruit who is singled out by Al Pacino’s character for induction into the Agency.

The film makes good use of the talents of its two-star cast and gives them more screen time with each other than with anyone else. Unfortunately, the film is held back from being as shocking as it might otherwise be by two important elements.

The first element is that the script is a fairly by-the-numbers suspense flick that telegraphs its punches and never really keeps you guessing. Predictability is one of the seven deadly sins, right? Eh, maybe not, but it ought to be, at least in Hollywood.

The other element holding the film back is the filmic legacy of Pacino; when the time comes for various plot twists involving his character, it’s hard to be too shocked because of the acting legacy Pacino brings to any film he appears in, especially a film using him to “play to type,” rather than countering his established image.

The film is not without its merits; Bridget Moynahan appears and is effective in her role as a fellow recruit, but her character Layla is flat and uninspired despite the on-screen chemistry she pulls off with Farrell. While the film takes us through its mind-game paces, creative uses for shower faucets are among the many forms of mind-breaking that James Clayton (Farrell) faces. But I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot.

Although its pedestrian script holds the film back from being truly watchable, it’s also not unwatchable. In other words, the film is worth seeing once, but perhaps not quite worth owning; a better example of the genre is the film currently in theatres, Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. The Recruit is OK, but it’s not one you’ll want to go out of your way to see, unless you’re a devoted fan of either Farrell or Pacino.

Review: Mitch Albom’s For One More Day (DVD)

There is a solid audience for Oprah Winfrey-produced films, and I realize Mitch Albom has a following thanks to his early works like The Five People You Meet In Heaven and Tuesdays With Morrie. However, even among folks who normally like this sort of thing, including my wife, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day is both annoying and snooze-inducing. In fact, I dozed lightly a couple times watching it and my wife almost needed GPS tracking to lure me back to the land of the wide awake.

The story revolves around a washed up baseball player who has screwed up his life and his relationship with his family so badly, he’s at the verge of committing suicide; but just as he is about to pull the trigger, he sees his mother, nine years dead, looking on from the other side of a Little League diamond.

As the title predicts, he gets to spend “one more day” with his mom, who takes him on a sort of “Ghost of Christmas Past” journey of his life, ala “A Christmas Carol,” to see what an utter piece of doo-doo he’d been to his mom throughout his life, because he was so eager to please his emotionally distant dad.

The cast offers little to speak of in the way of allure. Ellyn Burstyn is the biggest name in the cast, although 1980s starlet Samantha Mathis, made mildly famous in the movie Dream A Little Dream, suddenly re-emerges from obscurity to play a younger, early-40s version of this guy’s mom.

While Albom has mixed sentimentality well in the past, and the book may be more effective, the movie is plodding and ponderous and about as riveting as watching paint dry. Also, I just don’t follow the logic of the movie; his mom’s ghost is there to convince him not to kill himself, and does this by … showing him what an ass he’s been all these years? Way to motivate a fellow that life’s worth living, huh?

The DVD is short on extras, but it’s not the sort of film most folks will want to spend extra time with. If you’re an Albom fan, I’d say pick up his novels and start reading, or if you must see Albom’s work on film, rent Tuesdays With Morrie instead. For One More Day is, for this reviewer, one day too many.