A Piece From The Collection: Batman (1989)

Alo Party Peoples.

The time has come again for me to talk about a movie in my DVD collection. This month's topic is, the first live-action Batman movie. Well, technically the Adam West show got a movie in 1966, but this is the earliest one that most people ever talk about.

If you were around in 1989, then you probably recognize that poster and I don't have to explain anything. This movie was a BIG deal. It got three sequels, and spawned a critically acclaimed and well remembered animated series, put Tim Burton on the map as a director, and has been praised for bringing the Caped Crusader into a serious light after the campy nonsense that was the Adam West show.

SIDE-NOTE- It might not have aged especially well, but the Adam West Batman show deserves some credit. This movie made the franchise a box office juggernaut, and the Nolan films gave it critical merit, but the Adam West show is what made it a household name.-END SIDE-NOTE

What do I think of it? I liked it, but I can't call it anything more than pretty decent. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. It is not a bad movie, at all, in fact I can think of many good things about the movie. Let's just get to the listing of points.

Story: Batman must stop the Joker from using cosmetic products to bring Gotham City to it's knees. It isn't terribly engaging, and that's my only serious problem, unfortunately it's kind of a big problem. Granted if I had seen this back in 1989 when it came out I might think more of it, but that is because the only thing I would have to compare it to would be Adam West show. I can't know how it felt to see this film back then anyway, because I did not yet exist.

Presentation: Tim Burton's signature aesthetic style is applied effectively, but it's only in play part of the time, and the dissonance between where it is and where it isn't really stands out. In fact, Burton himself has said that he wasn't satisfied with how the movie turned out, and only came back for Batman Returns in exchange for much greater creative control. The action scenes are serviceable, but there is no real stand out moment, and Micheal Keaton being unable to move in the Batsuit doesn't help. The sets look damn good, it is nice to see practical effects, and Danny Elfman's musical score is fantastic. Yeah, the Prince songs date the movie considerably, but I didn't mind them very much.

Cast: Micheal Keaton is the best Bruce Wayne/Batman combination*, even if the reaction to his casting wasn't unlike the controversy over Ben Affleck being cast in the same part for the Man of Steel sequel. Jack Nicholson as the Joker is a joy to watch, easily the best part of this movie. Those are the two major players, but everyone else does alright in their supporting roles.


In conclusion, it is a damn nice looking film, that just sort of drops the ball in terms of plot. If you haven't seen it, you don't need to rush out and do so, but if you want to, then know that it is a serviceable endeavor. As for the sequels, the only one I have seen is Batman Returns, and I have yet to finish it because I find it generally unpleasant.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

*Christian Bale does a better Bruce Wayne.

A Piece From The Collection: Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975)

NOTE: This article was originally put up on November 30th 2013. I have been organizing the blog's archive and accidentally put this up here. I would take it down, but I cannot do that and also put it back into it's original place. I apologize for this error.




Alo Party Peoples.

I Decree This Shalt Be A Recurring Segment.

Some of you might remember that a month ago I reviewed Pleasantville, a film from my DVD collection. I've decided to do so again, a film from the collection that is, not Pleasantville again.

On the last day of each month I will review a film from my DVD collection. The chosen film for November 2013 is: Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Let's not waste text space and get to it.

Story: This spoof about the divine quest of Arthur, King of the Britons, to aquire the Holy Grail is hilarious. I can't explain why it is hilarious, as that would spoil the jokes, but I can say that much of the humor is quite wordy. It doesen't play out like one story as much as a collection of loosely connected skits, but a comedy doesen't have to make sense* so long as it is funny. I assure you that this film is very funny.

Visuals: Much of the humor is visual in nature, and the animated segments are uniqely bizzare, but much of it looks like it was done on the cheap. That isn't a critisim, just an observation, most comedies don't have very large budgets anyway, and the visual humor is quite funny.

Acting: I haven't seen the Monty Python comedy group in action before so I can't judge this in comparision to their other work, but the acting here is wonderfully tounge-in-cheek.

In conclusion, this film is great comedy, and it is a classic for a reason. Track it down.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

*Though making sense is always a bonus.

A Piece From The Collection: The Matrix (1999)

Alo Party Peoples.

The end of the month has come again, the time when I look at a film in my DVD collection and tell you if I think you should do the same. December 2013's choice is, The Matrix. The Wachowski's second direction job was a big hit. It was very well received at the time by both the mass audience and critics. There have been homages, parodies, analysis, and ripoffs. Let's see if it is still good fourteen years later.

Setup: Do I really need to tell you the setup? Everybody knows it by now. A computer hacker called Neo discovers a strange program called the Matrix and wants to figure out what it is. He meets a man named Morpheus who gives him a red pill and reveals to him that reality is a lie. It's not 1999, it's closer to 2199, we're not sure of the date anymore. We built sentient machines that rebelled and took over the world, and now they use mankind's body heat as an energy source. To keep us complacent they put us into a computer simulation of the late 90's called the Matrix. The reason they don't just cut out the quite energy consuming brain is because, revenge I guess. Humans are terrible canadates for this kind of generator, but if they used cows we wouldn't have a movie.

Now he must work with the few free humans left to resist the Agents of the Matrix and free the mankind from it's digital prison.

It is a good and engaging story, and there are some intriguing ideas to be mined from it. Is reality just what our minds perceive, or is there something more. Is it ethical to create artificial sentience? Is Agent Smith right that mankind is a detriment to the Earth? 

Obviously those questions are subjective and answers will vary from person to person, but my answers to them are the following. I am not a solipsist*, if you create sentience you must give it the rights that come with sentience, and man isn't the best thing for the Earth but it's stuck with us for the foreseeable future.

Presentation: This film might be starting to show it's age, but as of 2013 it still looks pretty good. 

The action here looks appropriately like a video game. Characters move with unnatural speed at odd angles and perform amazing acrobatic feats, the camera slows down and pans around them during fights as if it were a cutscene, and the Matrix itself looks like it could be the setting of a GTA game. The CG is dated now, but it is used well and with purpose.

The Matrix itself is washed out and gray, reflecting Neo's humdrum normal life. It looks like the kind of place you would want to escape from, but the real world is cramped, foreboding, and it can make you think that "ignorance is bliss" and the Matrix is a better option than "the desert of the real".

Overall it looks good.

Cast: This is where I am less impressed, but it's not terrible. Keanu Reeves is a bit too quiet i.e can you speak up as Neo, but he does okay. Joe Pantoliano is enjoyable as Cypher, a free human that regrets taking the red pill. Laurence Fishburne is great as Morpheus, Carrie Anne-Moss is engaging as Trinity, and Hugo Weaving is fantastic as Agent Smith, a program designed to hide glitches in the Matrix.


In conclusion, The Matrix is a pretty good film. Well written, well shot, acted competently, well choreographed, and intruiging. Is it dated? Sure, but not as much as I thought it would be going in. I don't know if it's the best ever, but I can certainly see why it is considered to be the best.

One last thing before I go. Before you ask about the sequels or the Animatrix, I haven't seen them. Maybe next year.

Happy New Year, And Many More To Come.

Greg.B

*People that believe there is nothing beyond their brain, and that the world is a figment of their imagination.

A Piece From The Collection: Pleasantville (1998)

Alo Party Peoples.

Money has been tight again, so I'm doing something from my DVD collection that you probably have never heard of.

Pleasantville was the brainchild of one Gary Ross, who hasn't done much since. The only significant thing he's done in fact was the Hunger Games movie. That is a real step down, because Pleasantville is incredible.

I love this movie, let's not waste any time.

Story: This film about a couple of teenagers that get trapped in a 1950s sitcom and their antics force it into color with the social turbulence of the sixties, would appear on the surface to just be a silly comedy, and comedy is certainly present, but it also goes for serious drama about how these people react to serious social change when Pleasantville has only ever been pleasant. And it does so with, well, flying colors.

Gary Ross creates a fantastic work that manages to juggle comedy, drama, and an actual relevant message, all at the same time.

Visuals: At the time this was made having color and black and white onscreen at the same time was a big deal. This was actually one of the first films to be shot digitally, they shot it in color and shaded the footage into monochrome where they didn't want color.

I'm sure it was impressive at the time, but in 2013 it's something anybody with moderate skill in Photoshop could do.

Acting: The actors are fantastic. Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon do a great job as our leads, William.H.Macy and Joan Allen do a wonderful job as the sitcom parents, and special note goes to Jeff Daniels as the owner of the soda shop that discovers art.

Music: I usually don't talk about soundtracks, because I just don't know music, but this film has an amazing one. Ranging from music from the actual fifties, to emotional heartstring pulling original work by Randy Newman.

In Conclusion: This movie is absolutely fantastic and I recommend it wholeheartedly, since you probably missed it on the big screen, go hunt it down for the small one. 

Greg.B

Sidenote- How does the director of this end up making the serviceable, but not very good Hunger Games movie?

Movie Magic!: Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme (2007) (PG-13)(Direct to DVD)

Alo Party Peoples.

You might remember that at the end of Trilogy Month I said that I would enlighten you about something. I planned to do so the following week. But then I had technical issues with the site that resulted in a couple posts being deleted. And then I ended up finally seeing Pacific Rim. 

Then I got press screening tickets to see Rush.... Anyways the point is the technical issues have blown over and I'm back now. So lets not waste any time now. Shall we?

Best described as Iron Man with magic instead of super science. Doctor Strange is a fictional superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel. He was an arrogant neurosurgeon who got in a car crash and wrecked his hands. 

After spending his fortune on surgeries to try and fix them. He ends up on abridge ready to commit suicide when a mysterious old man appears. He gives him an ancient map that will supposedly lead him ho a man who can fix his hands, and he spends the last of his money on a one way plane ticket to Tibet.

There he gets lost in the Himalayas and finds the old man there. He reveals himself to be a wizard and takes him on as an apprentice.

There are some other details and events afterwards, but those are the essentials. Dr. Strange has always been pretty well liked. And my father is/was a big fan. There was a TV movie in the 70s ,which I haven't seen, but was only aired once, and only survives now because someone out there recorded it and, eventually, they put it up on the Internet. 

If your curious just type "doctor strange tv movie" into the search bar on YouTube and you should find it in ten minute parts.

The 1992 film "Dr. Mordrid" was going to be a live action Doctor Strange movie, but the license expired before they started production. 

And eventually Lionsgate did a direct to video movie in 2007. Which is today's subject for review. Marvel and Lionsgate actually did a bunch of these during the later years of the initial superhero boom. Before Marvel started its own film studio to do movies based on their characters in house. Overall they average out as being pretty good. 

Lets get started. I'm trying out a new review structure today so let me know what you think.

-Animation Quality: Design wise it looks almost animeish and is quite good. Character models are distinct, backgrounds are very well drawn, and action scenes are very smooth. On the other hand sometimes movements can be quite choppy. 

Maybe it was meant to be like that to show that his hands are screwed up, but it also happens in other scenes when Strange is in no way present. 

I know that animation is very dependent on budget and I shouldn't judge this by Disney standards, and considering said budget restraints they did a great job. But I'm not going to hold back a thought to make the Internet trolls happy.

-Sound: The voice actors do a great job, even if lip movements don't quite keep up with them. And the soundtrack is very fantasy.

-Story: This is a tough one. I like this movie. It's good. But it feels just a bit generic. Maybe it's because a majority of superhero movies are origin stories. In fact the only non sequel ones I can think of off the top of my head are The Avengers and Watchmen. Even then, Watchmen was adapted from a graphic novel, and Avengers was the feature length finale for Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I might have liked it more if the car crash was just a freak accident, instead of Strange being distracted by magical visions. Maybe if magic only started to show up after his accident, because it jostled his brain and made him able to see through the Mist.

But review the movie you have, not the movie you want.

In conclusion, it's perfectly serviceable and I was entertained. Just not enough for me to actually recommend it.

But if your curious, the DVD is easy to find on ebay. And it's on Netflix Instant Stream, which is how I watched it for this review even though I do own it. And Marvel Studios is doing a live action movie to be released in 2016 after Avengers 2 and Ant Man.

Hats off to all. And have a nice day.

Sidenote: Russia? I know that someone in Russia has read my blog. They haven't been around recently. But on the off chance that they read this. Would you kindly tell Putin to knock it the hell off. You know what I'm referring to.

Greg.B

Revisiting The Grid..... (Tron:1982, Tron Legacy:2010)

Alo Party Peoples.....




Right now we are using computers. I wonder.....


Does the Internet dream? Does it think? After all the human brain is just a series of electrical signals that run through several billions of little processors. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine that a computer with enough chips might develop a sense of itself......

Because I can't come up with a segway. -->


The original Tron was a movie about a computer programmer named Kevin Flynn who designed several arcade games which his bosses stole from him and fired him. While trying to hack into their systems to get incriminating evidence he gets zapped by a laser. That transports him into the computer, an environment realized with then experimental digital animation.


It certainly looked different than anything else. And it is a good movie. But while it in my opinion it holds up, it is overall a standard fantasy adventure. Covered in computer terminology. It came out in 1982 and was essentially forgotten by everyone except animation buffs, young geeks, and computer nerds. Who fell in love with it's living arcade visual scheme....

Tron (1982)

It is good. The visuals are good, by the standards of the time it's emphasis-ing amazing. By the standards of now....

Here is a still from Tron

Tron: Legacy (2010)

And here is a shot form it's sequel/remake from 2010

Speaking of which....

Over the course of thirty years....

The animation buffs took over Disney, the geeks took over Hollywood, and the computer nerds took over the planet. And thus by their decree in 2010 it was reborn as Tron Legacy. An attempt at creating another multi-sequel juggernaut like Pirates of the Caribbean (we will eventually get to that one trust me) while also being a love letter/apology to long suffering fans of the first movie. And I emphasis-ing love it. Overall it is a 10/14

Good but not quite great. Worth seeing for the amazing visuals and score. If you liked the original it's almost a must-see. Said visuals take the originals neon and black arcade aesthetic and beautifully merge it to and update it with the technical wonders of the present. I'm glad that they didn't try to change the grid to reflect the visual styles of modern video games. If they had we would be walking through an overcast grey city ruin for two hours. Of particular note is the score by French electronic musicians Daft Punk, it melds perfectly with the visuals. And the movie is worth seeing just for those.



But it isn't perfect. The characters are kind of one note. The performances, while not bad, are kind of forgettable. And it opens and closes with character introductions that land like huge reveals. That are then shoved off to the side. It is clear that they are meant to be important in the sequel. Which if they are making another one than I am most certainly interested. And the film while it is a sequel ends up being a play by play remake of the first. Disc battle, light-cycle chase, solar sail etc...

But while these problems keep it from being great, they don't keep it from being good, and certainly don't keep it from being worth seeing.

Hats off to all and have a nice day.


   Greg.B

Tron is owned by the Walt Disney Company