Tag: Book Review

Bonfire of the Vanities Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Bonfire of the Vanities? More like Bonfire of the Banalities. I had a tough time figuring this movie out, and I’ll tell you why. Let’s go.

  • The Good – For much of the movie it is well acted. I was rather impressed with Hanks, Willis (surprisingly), and especially Melanie Griffith. It is, for decent stretches, at least fascinating. I would say I was more confused as to whether this was supposed to our world or a truly surreal satirical take on our world, and perhaps that is what kept my attention, but there were certainly bits I did like.
  • The Bad – Where to begin … I mean, I know this movie is a satire, but it does come across as genuinely racist. Like it is painting a picture of a world it imagines exists and then takes the unfortunate tack of taking down the strawman caricatures it creates, as if that is meaningful. I kept grasping at things, trying to think how I could make the movie better in some tangible way, but the unfortunate thing is: without reading the book I didn’t know! I knew the movie’s approach couldn’t be the book’s angle because it would have been torn down and cast out of society with vigor. But how it differed I didn’t know. Reading the IMDb notes and realizing they were forced to recast the judge as black (Morgan Freeman) makes oh so much sense. At times I really couldn’t believe what I was watching. I found it shocking. I knew it was supposed to be satire, but it is so weak that occasionally you get lulled into the sense that you are watching a real movie only to be shaken awake by angry and awful people and actions. I found the first half of the film stressful, and the second half unpleasant (if slowly relieving as you realize that things are kind of going to way you’d expect them to go). So there you go. I did not think this is was not that bad, but perhaps that is the mood I was in, willing to take this silly movie a bit too seriously. And yet my feelings seem to mirror the critical reception at the time, so I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt.
  • BMT – I’ll keep this short. I thought it was boring, but shocking enough to warrant a solid 25 and maybe (maybe) I’d throw it to someone with the tentative recommendation that you are watching a truly strange movie come to life. I do kind of want to read the book about the making of this movie. It must have been simply bonkers.

Let’s see. Sequel/Prequel/Reboot would be fun to try and figure out who would play all of the people in a reboot made this year (plus, hey, it’s not like we are having a serious discussion on race in the United States at the moment …). So in the Tom Hanks role I wanted someone with that boyish charm, who can play someone you kind of want to hate a bit, and as close to 35 as possible (a believable age for the social position Hanks was in in the movie), and I think Andrew Garfield in that role would work really well. You could definitely believe him on Wall Street and then sympathize as his world falls apart around him. Bruce Willis comes across a lot older than he actually is (also 35 at the time), but also the literal alcohol character is tough to pull off I feel like these days, they are either now much older or the perpetual party boy type deal (like Miles Teller in The Spectacular Now). I went a little older and found Danny McBride which I think could work, even has the comedy chops if they wanted to go that direction again. Jeremy Renner or Joel Edgerton could both work as well. Scarlett Johansson in the Griffith role rounds out the important bits. Recast Freeman in his own role and you got a stew cooking.

There isn’t much beyond the three leads to make this movie again if they cared. The rest of the cast you could debate back and forth, but really that is unimportant compared to actually getting the tone right.

Jamie

As we finish our Now A Major Motion Picture cycle heading into our transition week, I can start to think retrospectively about the collection of books that I’ve (largely suffered) through. In most cases the books and the films were either very similar, bordering on straight adaptations (Pinocchio, Phantoms, The Choice, and The 5th Wave) or wildly different (Fair Game, Get Carter, and Random Hearts). The Bonfire of the Vanities stands out because it’s not really in either category. The first half of the film is basically a straight adaptation, with only minor changes to how characters look or behave. Halfway through the film though, it veers wildly off course. Starting from a scene where our main character Sherman McCoy wanders out of a courtroom in which he has been indicted on charges of reckless endangerment, we, as the audience, also wander helplessly from a film that made some sense, to one that makes no sense. I was so confused by the tone change at that point (anchored by what I knew from the book) that I actually assumed for a while that what we were seeing was a dream sequence (spoiler alert: not the case). It seems at this point that the filmmaker decided that he no longer liked the film he was making (probably because all the characters are terrible people) and decided that the movie needed some bucking up. Let’s all of sudden make Peter Fallow a hero (rather than the shitty pulp tabloid man that he is in the book), let’s have Sherman comically brandish a shotgun in a crowded party, and let’s make the climax of the film be the just acquittal of our valiant hero (!!!) Sherman McCoy. In the book this climax was just only in that it took all the shitty, vain people involved in the story and destroyed them all in a blaze of glory. In the film none of the characters are developed enough to convey this (and the ones that are developed have been developed into nicer, softer characters) so that the climax is played straight. Gross.

Funny enough this probably wouldn’t have made a difference to me if I hadn’t read the book. I wondered if I would have thought the film was well-acted and well-written (albeit a bit aimless), and produced in that Hollywood way to make it pleasant enough. I thought that I might have even said It’s Not That Bad.™ With the book, though, it seemed like a disaster. In the end I think Patrick and I agreed though. The fact of the matter is that the book is considerably more shocking in its racism than the film and in that way you can see the satire. It creates caricatures of real NYC dwellers of the time, but magnifies the hidden racism that roils beneath in order to satirize the institutions in the city (police, law, finance, politics). But how the film reigned back the exaggeration and dared to soften the McCoy and Fallow characters destroys the satire and in turn makes it simple offensive. Basically, I was wrong in my assumption that I might not be offended if I didn’t have the book to anchor me. His recap proves that I would have probably been even more offended.

Perhaps it’s a byproduct of all these films being based on books, but we’ve had a nice little run of films with very distinct settings for Settings 101. Once again we have a film that gets an A! In this case The Bonfire of the Vanities is a takedown of the New York City elite. Obviously they couldn’t change the setting or else the entire message would be lost (instead they just lost the message through shitty character development). We get several shots of the New York skyline, a close-up shot of Sherman McCoy’s New York license plate, clear “Manhattan” and “Bronx” highway signs, and a climax that centers around the idea of a white Manhattanite running over an African American youth in The Bronx. Kinda hovers a bit between A- and A as there isn’t really a distinct New York landmark used as a prop. But as the setting itself is vital to the plot and unchangeable, I give it the A. Once again, misses out on the coveted A+ by not having the setting in the title of the film.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The 5th Wave Recap

Jamie

It’s pretty easy to sum up my feelings on The 5th Wave book/movie combo. They are both equally terrible. The book was quite the slog, coming in over 500 pages but reading like if they took the beginning of The Hungers Games (before she even gets picked for the games) and just streeeeeettttcccchhhed that right out. We are made aware of an alien attack and how four waves have decimated the Earth’s population, but then spend hundreds and hundreds of pages with our characters sitting around working out their feelings of loss and despair. They just kind of repeat over and over “I was a normal kid, but now I’m not so normal. Perhaps I am no longer even human. Alas, what is human? What is humanity? What is life? What makes it worth living? Alas. Woe is me.” You spend hours in these kids heads as they mostly do nothing but sit around. It’s tough. As for the film, I would have ventured to say that it was virtually unfilmable. Not enough happens in the book to make it interesting on the screen, and yet there is so much setup (presumably for the other books) that it can’t all fit into an effective storyline. They either needed to totally change the story or combine the books into a single film and just focus on the action that’s available. They, of course, just put the book directly to screen… It was basically the worst of both worlds. Not only did they retain the noticeable lack of action, but they brutalized the characters in order to fit the book into a 100 minute package. God I hope they don’t make more of these. I really don’t want to read the next book. Patrick?

In what has become a standard in the BMT review we are once again grading this film for Settings 101. Like all YA novels, this story takes place in Ohio (fine, it’s just I Am Number Four… but isn’t is weird that a different, alien-centric young adult novel with a number in the title is also set in Ohio?). We first become aware of the setting through news network maps depicting the location of the alien mothership hovering over Ohio. There is also a hint of location during the earthquake/tsunami wave, where our main characters explains that they were able to survive since they only had to worry about a smaller wave coming in from the Great Lakes. This would have been enough for a solid C rating. Adding to the grade though is the vital role that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (in Dayton, OH) plays in the plot! This is the alien base and is mentioned by name throughout the film. Additionally, when our main character is working her way to the base she uses a map of Ohio to do so with Dayton clearly marked and circled. Similar to Random Hearts I have to ultimately give this an A-. While the presence of Wright-Patterson as a major plot point is good, it could have been replaced by many other air force bases. It’s not iconic or irreplaceable.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone? The 5th Wave probably refers to how many overpowering waves of nausea you’ll experience while watching this film! (straight up roasts up here this week). Alright, we went YA with this, and as an expert in trash YA novels let’s get into it.

  • The Good – The acting across the board was adequate. Moretz and Schreiber (killing it again in BMT, right on the heels of his tour de force performance in Phantoms) in particular made it out mostly unscathed. The story for the most part was interesting, even if I needed Jamie to explain some of the secret book reasoning behind some choices.
  • The Bad – The love triangle was garbage, most adults in the film might as well have been faceless blobs for how relatable they are. The story structure is so classically droll (really? A voiceover flashback combination? I know it can make sense with a book, but mix it up, don’t “read” me the characterization of everybody. They end up completely botching the army storyline involving Zombie (who should have nipped that terrible nickname right in the bud when it came up, it is the worst).
  • The BMT – Yes, but especially if they can squeeze a few more adaptations out of it. I’ve read Hunger Games and Divergent and each of those tumbled straight downhill in quality. I’m tempted by Maze Runner as well (especially the Porch Trials). But this is by far the worst any of these series started out. And they almost always get worse as they go on. Give us one more, please. I need more Evan Walker in my life (not really, he was by far the worst actor in the film I thought).

Phew, I like YA novels and adaptation, especially when they are Sci Fi, but jeez louise, this is pretty mind melty. Especially when you have a true plot hole! I’m going to call this Major Sklog-servations a small discussion about a major revelation I had during Me and Jamie’s discussions about the film. In this case: In the book the revelation that (spoiler alert!) the aliens can take on human form is a rather well known fact apparently. It is a reason people distrust the army when they come around. In the movie this is not the case, they explicitly trust the army and do not find out about body snatching until the army tells them. The point at which the army tells the audience about this issue is one of crossroads for our protagonist played by Moretz. She has just missed the bus to the army base, she sees the entire refugee camp gunned down in the heat of argument, and she flees into the woods. There is no doubt that she couldn’t have heard or known about the body snatching from the army in the refugee camp … except moments later in her journal she discusses the issues concerning losing trust in humanity when anyone she knows could be an Other. Powerful stuff and a rare actual plot hole (most plot holes are usually just events that stretch credulity, not an actual plot inconsistency). She manages to intuit something inherently non-intuitive (and terrifying), that she cannot ask anyone for help because they may be an other. I would think this is clearly a plot point lost in translating the novel to the screen and either uncaught or left as a minor continuity issue. Fin.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Random Hearts Recap

Patrick

Guten Tag, allerseits! I was in Vienna this weekend, so we are still a little behind on things so I’ll try and make this quick. We watched Random Hearts (more like Not So Smarts! You have to give me a break on that, for some reason my mind was pulling me to “farts” rhyming with hearts which, while hilarious, seems below me, you know?), and I have to say: what? Seriously, I don’t understand. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – Some of the performances were quite good. If you are a fan of the 80s style political / crime drama this probably has a place deep within Netflix where you go “I’ve never heard of The Falcon and The Snowman, I guess I might as well watch that, it isn’t like I’m doing anything else …” you know? There are large swaths of this movie which from a writing perspective seem effective and well done. In fact, the only notable thing about the audio commentary by director Sydney Pollack was his intense love for the script.
  • The Bad – Whoever had the job of waking up Harrison Ford so that he could stumble onto set and deliver lines in a monotone did a poor job. Hard to watch. The entire B storyline involving a crooked cop and Ford’s job would make you go “oh yeah, I forgot this was part of the story … why do I care about this again”. Incredibly little payoff overall in the movie. The entire thing meanders around for like 2 hours before reaching the “climax” and then I looked at my watch and said to myself: “There is only 20 minutes left … that is not nearly enough time to untangle this story.” And it was not.
  • The BMT – Weird weird weird. My gut says no. I would never watch this again. I would only ever recommend this to a political / cop drama enthusiast looking for a movie recommendation (not as a bad movie) and it would be in the context of “want to see what happens when someone tried to make an 80s style drama in the late 90s? Seems super weird right?”. The blunt answer is no. I think this movie is merely bad. In a boring way. Not BMT. Sorry.

See what I mean? Weird. I will note that since we’ve gone through Ford before in Chain Reaction (Firewall and Hollywood Homicide) this makes the third Ford focused ( … see what I did there, I’m the best) Chain Reaction film. And I look forward to more in the future. I would have done an audio commentary review, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I’m going to a quick career BMTrospective for Harrison Ford to look forward to his prospects and where he might land in the BMT pantheon. So here are his BMT films with respective BMeTrics:

(47.6) Hollywood Homicide; (47.2) Random Hearts; (38.2) Six Days Seven Nights; (34.1) Paranoia; (33.9) Firewall; (26.6) The Expendables 3; (24.2) More American Graffiti; (23.9) The Devil’s Own; (10.8) Extraordinary Measures; (7.1) Crossing Over; (3.6) Getting Straight;

So first, Getting Straight (only 6 reviews on rotten tomatoes) and Crossing Over (released to only 42 theaters) I don’t think qualify. Extraordinary Measures I think will be done, but on a very special occasion. I’m personally too busy for it, some might say I already work around the clock. Out of them all Six Days Seven Nights might end up being a keystone in a certain number game Jamie might just be outlining below, so I think it is a definite. And More American Graffiti seems poised for a sweet Bad Sequel cycle. I think 3 more Ford films will find their way into BMT then to make a total of seven (plus Paranoia which was done on our own as a Razzie nominee I think). For such a long career that is a pretty solid hit rate to be honest, to only have those handful of duds available. That’s your life Harrison Ford. Auf wiedersehen, and back to you Jamie.

Jamie

Random Hearts is the perfect Chain Reaction film for this cycle. Is it a thriller? Is it a romance? Is it a political drama? Or is it a political-thriller-rom-dram? Whatever it is it hardly fits into a standard category and provides something a little different than our typical fare. Patrick expounded on the weirdness of this film, even without the baggage of the book. Why? Because the book is exponentially weirder. Even though the book has some of the political angle of the film, there is no doubt that it aims to be a straight romantic drama. The only problem is that there is nothing romantic about the book in the least. The story starts essentially the same as the film: two people find out their spouses were having an affair after they turn up in a plane crash sitting next to each other under false names. Good plot. It then deviates into the super philosophical about the nature of love and what it means. The characters feed off each others’ crazed neuroses brought on by their anger and grief. They throw everything they own out, they sell their houses, Vivien give her son to her parents and implies that she’s never coming back, and she gets rid of her dog all because they believe that if their love wasn’t real then nothing else they had was too (including her son!). He then loses his job and so they spend their days shacked up in an apartment together obsessing over finding the secret love nest that their spouses kept, having sex, and talking endlessly about their nihilistic view of love and how nothing can ever be promised or built because love has no future or past. It is depressing and horribly unromantic. You might wonder how this was ever adapted into a film. Well, when you have a simple nugget of a plot so good (the plane crash aspect) it not hard to see the desire to take that and turn it into a totally different film, which is what they did here. Other than that particular crux of the story very little of the film has any relation to the book, which was a relief. 

We got a great Settings 101 film in Random Hearts. The film is very specifically set in Washington D.C. with Harrison Ford being a part of the D.C. police department and Kristin Scott Thomas being a state representative from New Hampshire. We get a jogging scene in front of the National Mall, a jaunt to New Hampshire, Miami, and Maryland through the film (I like when there are specific secondary settings in a film, adds to the fun), and the major event in the film (the plane crash) is explicitly detailed as a flight from D.C. to Miami that crashes into the Potomac. You have to give it an A-. Why the minus? The setting plays a major role in the plot, but not in a particularly fun way. Has all the elements of an A settings film, but could have been set elsewhere without much of a hiccup (other than changing the occupation of Thomas).

Next up is the Sci Fi category in our Based on a Book cycle. Cheers,

The Sklogs

The Choice Recap

Jamie

This week was our Romance category, and nothing screams Romance like Nicholas Sparks’ instant classic The Choice! The Choice presents an interesting case for the based-on-a-book cycle. This is primarily because I found the book to be somewhat offensive. And not even in the hyperbolical sense (like “the editing in The Choice offended me”). It was truly offensive. For those who haven’t read the book, the plot isn’t too far off from the film: boy meets girl, girl has boyfriend, they fall in love, she leaves boyfriend, they get married, there is an accident, the boy must make a choice regarding whether to take the girl off life support. Thus the title The Choice. Now all this would simply be incredibly sad if this choice had to be made because Travis and Gabby (our main characters) had not thought through the situation in advance (which would be pretty common given how young they are). With no advance directives laid out, Travis would have a gut wrenching decision to make regarding the woman he loves. Is he ready to let her go given the quality of life that she would endure otherwise? Here’s the rub though: she did have an advance directive. She signed, with Travis and a lawyer witnessing, an advance directive stating that she wished to be taken off life-support in the event that she was in a coma for more than 120 days. So the choice is actually whether he is going to follow her advance directive… … … and he chooses not to. I understand that this is an incredibly tough decision, but ignoring an advance directive and going against Gabby’s wishes… that’s not right. That’s the wrong choice. I’m sorry. It is. It was her (and their) choice and they made it together and then he disregarded it. And then for Sparks to have the gall to have Gabby come out of the coma and imply to the reader that Travis made the correct choice is even worse. It’s offensive. Straight up. It’s all a little less offensive in the film for two reasons: 1. The movie is poorly told and edited, so the offense in question is actually kind of hard to grasp. I don’t think this is on purpose, but it softened it a bit nonetheless. 2. They seemed a bit more aware of the problem. There was a particular scene where Travis’ dad (a vet) decides that he is going to buy a new lizard for a little girl  whose pet has died and pretend that it lived by some miracle, instead of breaking the bad news to her. It’s almost a metareference to the entire story, “Yeah, here’s a miraculous story of Gabby coming out of the coma (when we know that the truth is much harder and harsher a reality). But it’s nicer for you sweet, naive audience.” As you can probably tell I had OPINIONS about the adaptation.

Alright, well this can hardly be judged for Settings 101, but here it goes anyway. Everyone everywhere always knows that this book/film is set in North Carolina. Why? Because it’s a Nicholas Sparks book, duh. They are all set in North Carolina. Like Phantoms, though, they don’t really go out of their way to mention it much. Fortunately for The Choice it has a few things going for it: 1. License plates confirmed the location. 2. It was shot on location in the actual setting of Wilmington, N.C. so the restaurant and beaches and stuff are well known Wilmington landmarks (!). 2. Gabby is from Charleston and we see Travis drive there (passing a Welcome to South Carolina sign no less) along the coast, so realistically they can only either be in North Carolina or Georgia. All adds to a C. Now normally for a film that only definitively proves its location through license plates and the like you would be in the D range, but come on! They filmed in the small coastal town where the book took place! That’s kind of crazy. Gotta bump that up to a C.

Patrick

Olá a todos! That’s right, I was on holiday (as they say) in Portugal for the week and naturally I carved out some time to watch The Choice (more like … My Choice is Nope! (?) I’m not sure, there isn’t a good rhyme [EDIT: My brother pointed out that using the version of nice pronounced like noice you could get something like “The Choice?! More like Not Noice!”, it is pretty good. Better than the garbage I put out into the world. Thanks bro]) … not really, I watched it when I got back. And I must say, let’s get into it.

  • The Good – Huh, the main woman was kind of cute in a I-Can’t-Quite-Figure-Out-How-To-Do-An-American-Accent-Properly kind of way, so that’s nice for a rom dram. The scenery was unbelievable, really putting NC right up and center. Fighting the good fight in showing how the 1% are just like us, you know? (Seriously though, everyone in this movie was quietly and absurdly wealthy and they almost conspicuously don’t mention it).
  • The Bad – The main guy looks like a cartoon, in such a way that he could only ever exist in Civil War movies (jelly much Patrick? Whatever, he looks like a cartoon). The movie is pretty dull. The ending is absurd (you don’t just shake off a 100 day coma lady, c’mon!). The movie is 20 minutes too long. Both main actors are terrible. If I could freeze this movie in a time capsule I would as a testament to “this is what a bad romantic drama is”. The perfect ending to Nicholas Sparks’ production company I must say.
  • The BMT – Hell yeah. This movie is crazy bad and there is one scene that kind of saves it for me (think motorcycle ride in the rain ending with a singing church scene, it is amazing). But if someone said let’s watch this and make fun of it I would definitely do it … for an hour and then tell them to stop because it isn’t worth it at that point.

Phew. I did have opinions. Major opinions. I’ve felt like my responses have gotten a bit stale over the past few weeks so I’m going to go back to Sequel Prequel Remake and then start mulling over some new games when Jamie goes on vacation. Here I think we definitely need a Prequel where we see Travis just smashing it in NC for a summer. Fresh out of college you see him rebel a bit against his father’s dreams for him as a vet. He buys a boat, buys a sweet adirondack chair and makes a life promise with his best buds that they’ll never get married! But oh, a blast from the past as his old high school squeeze blows in threatening to derail all of the summer shenanigans for the newly minted graduates. Can this sleek southern gentleman juggle his friends, his summer plans, and his heart?! The Choice 2: Summer Fling. There is definitely some southern dreamboat on the CW who would kill in this role.

Obrigado,

The Sklogs

Phantoms Recap

Jamie

I’m going to try my best to stick to the adaptation, since that is my major contribution this cycle. As expected, Phantoms reminded me of Stephen King in the beginning. Often King starts with some major unexplained event and the characters confronted with the event must battle the unknown assailant, while also coming to terms with why they have been chosen to do battle. This is the same with Phantoms (where a set of characters find themselves in the midst of a town that has entirely disappeared). The big difference right away is that Koontz’s characters are primarily squeeky clean. They are goodie-two-shoes small towners with nary a blemish to their names. I prefer King’s method where the narrators are often outsiders with some real (or perceived) character flaw. Still, pretty similar in the beginning and I thought the creepy atmosphere of the book was actually really well done. Then it goes totally awry. Koontz spends long stretches of the back half of the book concerned with a total (pseudo)scientific explanation of the events at hand. As a result it became super slow. As for the adaptation, I can’t lie. I actually kinda dug the film Phantoms. It’s certainly not a scary horror film (I was not scared once during the whole experience), but I am a fan of Horror/Sci-Fi and this was at least halfway decent. It had OK atmosphere, a nice performance by Liev Schreiber as a smarmy deputy, and the occasional great practical effects. To boot, the adaptation was actually fairly impressive given that while I read the book I explicitly told Patrick that I thought it was unadaptable. I was wrong. They did fine. In fact I would say most changes made were actually for the better. My biggest gripe? A change to the ending. In the book the seemingly invincible monster is decisively destroyed. Hooray. In the film? We get a garbage precredits twist where the monster (in the guise of Liev Schreiber) appears in a different Colorado town waiting to kill again (in the sequel). Not digging that at all. Ventured one step too far into cliche. Anyway, I’ll let Patrick delve deeper into the film itself.

I am definitely going to do a Settings 101 for this film. This is a pretty good case of a low grade settings situation. Everywhere you look they talk about how this film was set in Colorado, so I was expecting them to be driving to the town passing a “Welcome to Colorado” sign or have insert titles tell the audience where we are. Nope. As far as I could they didn’t even say the word “Colorado” in the entire film. There was one instance of a zoom on a license plate, a 303 phone number is mentioned, and it was filmed in Georgetown, CO, so there isn’t really any doubt, but not as prominent as I would have though. Staunchly in the D+ category of settings. On top of that the book isn’t even set in Colorado (it’s set in California). Not sure why they bothered to change it. Bizarre.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Phantoms!? More like Phan-DUMBS!! How does the movie compare to the book? What was the deal with the setting of the film? Was Ben Affleck the bomb in Phantoms? All that and more literally immediately right now, let’s go!

  • The Good – There were a few solid practical effects all things considered. Also a few okay performances, Liev Schreiber’s performance at least seems like acting and made some semblance of sense. And it was a valiant attempt at adapting what is in reality a very difficult book to handle from both a length and … let’s call what needed to be done “necessary alterations” to a sci-fi horror book.
  • The Bad – Oof. Let’s start with how it failed as a horror film. It wasn’t scary. It didn’t have nearly enough characters to pull off the necessary kills to get you into the creature feature territory. And despite some good practical effects most were silly to the point that it made the bad guy laughable. Onto how it failed as an adaptation. It unnecessarily changed the motivations behind Affleck’s character to the most cliché choice possible. It aged up the Rose McGowan character unnecessarily. It completely botched the ending. It cut out one of the more effective side stories involving an escaped sociopath. And finally as a movie. Affleck literally yells throughout the movie, he is not the bomb. Rose McGowan is terrible, sorry. Sure, the horror genre isn’t great for literature, but this one was actually a pretty good read. And the movie is not good as a movie in its equivalent genre (at best).
  • The BMT – Surely. This movie though might be too small. It really does come across as a TV movie, kind of like what It ended up being for Stephen King. People treat it like a real movie (kind of) but it is really unpolished and silly and kind of low budget. And that is probably the best excuse you can give Phantoms. Dean Koontz has never successfully adapted a book into a movie, so they don’t really give him a chance, and this one gets weirdly close, but also kind of sucks.

Just to briefly touch on the setting before Jamie grades it: The change from California to Colorado was astonishing to me. We considered it for the mapl.d.map oh so long ago, but rejected it because the book was set in California and there was no immediate evidence watching the beginning of the movie that it was in fact Colorado, and then the biggest piece of evidence it was Colorado? The trailer! It doesn’t need to be Colorado, was California in the source, so why change the setting? Perhaps only Dean Koontz knows … where is an audio commentary when you need it?

And a little mini-book review myself as well. I thought this book was shockingly good personally. I don’t really go for horror books. I like the idea of them and read It and The Shining by King … but neither scared me. Not once. Phantoms though? Actually really creepy and effective in the first act. Koontz certainly seems to follow in the King footsteps with weak third acts, but Phantoms I think proudly stands next to King in pop-horror literature. All the more reason the lack of scares in the movie disappointed me in the end. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is by far Koontz’s best horror book though. And I agree with Jamie, his obsession with providing a scientific explanation bordered on ludicrous and does derail the book. The second and third acts are weaker, but I still liked it damn it!

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Get Carter Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Get Carter? More like Retched Art, Huh?! (Holy shit, that’s the worst I’ve done, bar none). Anywho, we went to crazy town and absorbed way too much information about this film. I’ll let Jamie cover the book, let’s get into a bit about the movie (and by extension its predecessor)!

  • The Good – I’m going to be honest, not much. Rourke worked for the character they were going for. With their tone choice (see below) I didn’t mind how they twisted the story to fit the tone so much. Jeez, yep.
  • The Bad – Sigh. It’s not like I loved the original, it was just an interestingly dark drama with one of the most profoundly detestable main characters you might see as your anti-hero of choice. This movie though softens it so much in favor of a lighter tone it kind of manages to destroy whatever it had going for it in adapting the source material a second time. Sly mumbles the entire time, it is way too flashy, the Alan Cumming character is nonsense. The entire thing leaves a sour taste in your mouth and isn’t even very interesting to boot because, to be honest, the lighter tone doesn’t work. Give me Sly as a drunk thug out for revenge, not some pinnacle of Family First nonsense we know and love from Fast and Furious. As I said, sigh. I might not be as jazzed as Jamie about it, but it really is rather detestable when you sit back and look at it.
  • The BMT – Yep, you could teach a master class on it. The only thing that doesn’t kick this up a notch to the legendary range is that Sly is at least somewhat competent. You put someone who is also just way out of his league in there and you got a stew going.

I’ll leave it there and close with a very abridged Audio Sklog-entary. This was yet another Director-only commentary with Stephen Key and I quit after thirty minutes. The only thing of remote interest is hearing Kay talk vaguely (although surprisingly frankly) about how intimidated he was by the project and by extension explaining a little of where things seemed to go a little wrong. But it is boring, filled with not-very-interesting factoids, technical nonsense (you can see at one point that they had to add a filler shot and so the gatekeeper transforms into an old man! Coooool), and no funny or interesting anecdotes. I stopped. I couldn’t do it. I have better things to listen to. F. An aggressive unyielding F. Although I’m willing to listen to someone if they tell me the last hour of the commentary is decent.

Jamie 

In many ways the Get Carter remake exemplifies the spirit of BMT. The film contains MonoSklogs, a prominent and specific setting (Seattle/Las Vegas), a horrifically bad side character (John C. McGinley), a horrifically bad bad guy (Alan Cumming), mirrors featured as metaphor (a la I Know Who Killed Me), Sly Stallone having a weird character quirk (OCD), Sly Stallone mumblemouth, randomly taking place during Christmas, dutch angles, Hollywood badass bars, Chekov’s guns (or in this case a Chekov’s cookie jar), etc. etc. etc. etc. All things that we have harped on over the years. Add on top of that the fact that there is waaaaaay too much source material to deal with (a book, two previous adaptations, and a commentary) and it’s like Hollywood asked us to make a film for BMT (although in our Get Carter adaptation John C. McGinley’s character is played by Chris Klein). If it was more fun in its badness it would probably be a BMTHoF candidate. As it stands it’s simply a case study. A film that would be taught in BMT lecture halls across the world, but just doesn’t go to the extreme in any one particular area to be pushed to the next level. Still fun to watch though.

As hinted above Get Carter was a masterpiece of source material. I read the book, watched the previous adaptation, and watched the new one and have to say: remarkable how similar they all are. The original film is ridiculously true to the book. Almost Pinocchio-esque. Most changes made were minor except for the final twist in the film which is more substantially changed (I’ll get to that later). The remake is much more divergent. They really softened everything up. To be true to the source Stallone’s character would have had to been an alcoholic rage monster that kills both men and women with no regard (which is exactly what Michael Caine is in the original film). Who can blame them for balking at that and instead making him an estranged uncle looking to forge a familial bond with his niece. So how do they all rank? Well you can kinda tell the quality by simply looking at how the ending twist was handled. Alright, so in all three cases the story ends with Carter confronting the man who killed his brother (Eddie in the book). In the book the main character is about to kill Eddie but lets his rage get the best of him. Eddie gains the upper hand, stabs Carter, and takes his gun (an antique rifle Carter and his brother bought as kids). When Eddie tries to shoot Carter it blows up in his face killing him instantly (remember it was an antique). Carter dies in the forest from the stab wound while still fulfilling his task of revenge. Great ending. Shocking and satisfying. Carter was an asshole, but you also wanted him to get revenge. Perfect. In the original film they weirdly chose to have Carter succeed in killing Eddie, only to be shot by a sniper sent by the mobsters a moment later. Really an odd choice. A tad too Deus Ex Machina for my taste. Not as satisfying for that reason. Finally in the remake the studio clearly didn’t want to kill Stallone so he kills his nemesis and then goes on the run, but not before imparting some valuable life lessons to his niece. Blech. So you see: book best, original film OK, remake terrible. Just have to look at that ending.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Fair Game Recap

Jamie

Fair Game, God damn! I love when we have a plethora of media to work our way through. I, of course, read the book that this (and the Sly Stallone masterpiece Cobra) was based on, A Running Duck by Paula Gosling. It’s a dime store thriller that was only available to me by ordering it in large-print edition (for the visually impaired) from a Wisconsin library. If there was ever anything that made me question everything that BMT stands for, it’s imagining a little old lady in Wisconsin working her arthritic fingers to the bone trying to find the only copy of A Running Duck that exists in the MN/WI area. She probably thought some other near-blind little old lady in MN wanted a thrill ride for the ages, but nope. Just me. Anyway, the book is nothing really to write home about. A standard thriller and honestly a bit boring. Someone wants to kill a woman, a Vietnam vet-turned-cop troubled by his violent past is set to protect her, they bone, he kills the bad guy. The only interesting thing to talk about with it is the odd similarities that exist between a book like this and current bestsellers like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. Throughout the book I was hit over the head with dominance/submission overtones. The male protagonist frets constantly over the safety of the female protagonist (who always seems to be defenseless and in a daze). Much like Twilight there is a powerful force out to get the female character and eventually the male character takes over her entire life to battle this force. There is a lot of talk of “doing as I say” and “learning to obey commands” with the idea that the female character will in the end be safer. And she of course realizes that this type of relationship is what she has been missing in her life and falls in love with him. You could have really replaced the characters in the book with Bella and Edward, and the assassin with a rival vampire and you would have basically had Twilight. Certainly interesting to think about.

As for the adaptation, to truly get a full picture of it I rewatched Cobra. This turned out to be a good thing because it helped realize that both adaptations are actually pretty good. They take key aspects of the plot of the book, but twist them in slightly different directions. They are neither too close or too far from the source material. In fact they are almost complements of each other, things that are changed in Cobra are often the same as in the book in Fair Game and vice versa. I think Cobra is the slightly better adaptation, because a lot of the changes for Fair Game were pretty silly and lame (the bad guys are now Russian hackers plotting a heist, random setting of Miami, Billy Baldwin is not a particularly good cop, etc.) while Cobra kept a lot of the cool shit. This by no means implies that Cobra or Fair Game are good films. They are not. They are both ridiculous.

Word up. Once again I’m going to go with the Settings 101 game that I love so much. Right away in Fair Game we get a clear idea of the city and state that we are dealing with. That’s because whenever there are cops involved in a film you can’t just make up a police department. Billy Baldwin has to be from the Miami PD. Perfecto. What takes this up to the B grade is the fact that the bad guys spend most of their time (life?) on La Tortuga, a boat that located off the coast of Miami. How do we know where it is? Because the film continually shows a map depicting exactly where in the ocean they are floating. Wonderful. Of course, Miami itself doesn’t really get to shine all that much in the end, so it can’t really make it up to A-level. In fact I honestly can’t really think of famous Miami landmarks. Are there any? I guess they would have had to set up a sting at a Marlins game or something (a la Abduction). Anyway, just for kicks we can also give Cobra a C+ or B-. It also clearly takes place in Los Angeles with the LAPD… but that’s all it really has. Kind of the bare minimum with a clear setting without resorting to license plates.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Fair Game?! More like Fairly Lame! Kind of true. This was a weird one, let’s get into it:

  • The Good  – The movie was pretty much composed of non-stop adrenaline-fueled in-your-face action, if that’s your thing. The actions scenes were also often quite impressive from a technical perspective (even if they were often ludicrous). The movie is more of a movie than I expected, but …
  • The Bad – The movie still felt like it was barely theatrical released. Basically Billy Baldwin was all that stood in the way of this being Firestorm starring Howie Long, and it was about two levels below the other A Running Duck adaptation Cobra in quality. Cindy Crawford was genuinely terrible and there is no excuse really. Selma Hayek’s character makes no sense.
  • The BMT – Yes. More so that Firestorm. 40-50 I think. Quality stuff, but again, not as much of a “real movie”™ as one would hope. Would I watch it again? Yeah, maybe. I could imagine it fitting in quite well with a Seagal / Van Damme / Baldwin trilogy bonanza. Like … On Deadly Ground / Timecop / Fair Game would make you question everything you’ve done with your life.

I’m going to keep this a bit short, so let’s think of a quick game. I’m feeling Sequel / Prequel / Remake and especially a sequel. Imagine an older Billy Baldwin and older Cindy Crawford running around like idiots pretending like any of this still makes sense? It would be truly glorious. I would even still make the bad guys Russian and the theme of the movie would still be heavily focused on the neo-Luddite ideals of technology allowing criminals to control the world. I would call it Fair Shake and could make it on a dime Netflix.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Material Girls Recap

Jamie

I’ll let Patrick sum up Material Girls. The film is small enough that probably just one perspective is needed. I’ll keep my notes limited to a comparison between this film and Sense and Sensibility (on which it is “based”).

So technically Material Girls is based on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (so Book Review obvs). I did indeed read the book to make sure I got the full Material Girls experience. I can tell you… not necessary. If you squint you can map the characters between the book and the film (Elinor is Hilary Duff, Marianne is Haylie Duff, Edward is Tommy, Willoughby is Rick, and Colonel Brandon is Henry). Besides that there is literally no resemblance. I amused myself while watching the film by imagining what Sense and Sensibility would be like if its plot actually did resemble the plot of Material Girls. And it would go… a little something… like this: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are heirs to their father’s corset empire. Unfortunately upon his passing they learn that his corsets are dangerous and has led to the permanent deformation of its wearers. It can’t be! In order to clear their names, get their beaus and receive the inheritance they rightfully deserve, they must infiltrate the dances of their rivals to uncover the dastardly conspiracy to defame them. Along the way they learn that money isn’t everything and love can’t be bought. Boom. That would be the worst book. This reminds me of an idea I had (that would also be the worst) which is writing books-films-are-based-on… not books-based-on-films. Rather than just adapting the film directly into a book, you take the film and reimagine it as a book that it could have been based on. Get it? There’s a subtle difference… nevermind, it’s not important.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone? Material Girls, more like Makes Me Hurl! (oof, my wife had to help with that one). So you know how some movies feel like they aren’t real movies? No? Well this one was barely a movie. But I know the question on everyone’s mind: was it dog poo in my face? You’ll have to wait and see, let’s get into it:

  • The Good – I did not think Haylie Duff was substantially worse as an actress compared to the actors surrounding her, the story was surprisingly interesting, and what should have been a really terrible Erin Brockovich reference ended up being the best part of the movie.
  • The Bad – Data from Star Trek was not so good. Lukas Haas was straight dog poo in my face, more on that later. This is barely a movie, and so clearly involved (1) a studio trying to salvage a Olsen Twins movie gone wrong, and (2) was only released because someone in production (probably the director) had connections in the industry and got distribution.
  • The BMT – Yes! But I would put it at 30-40 just because of the size of the film. It was not straight up dog poo in my face because in its small way it was charming. I would never watch this film again exclusively because Haylie Duff and Lukas Haas have the single most excruciating romance in the history of cinema.

Alrighty. Quick hot take on the commentary, a mini Audio Sklog-entary, this was exclusively the director and confirmed for me that a single person commentary is necessarily inferior to multiple people. Also, while I know the director is well meaning, it comes across as kind of a shoddily put together film. The entire commentary is just about how they were trying to explain the story from A to Z, nothing really super interesting here beyond the fact that apparently the director herself convinced a very tentative Lukas Haas to act like a weirdo in a comedic role and it came out horribly, no joke. D+. I can imagine less interesting commentaries, but they’d be trainwrecks.

It looks like Jamie is doing a little Sense and Sensibility review, so I might as well rock a Settings 101. Am I allowed to? I’m not sure, but this movie was very much set in LA, complete with “hilarious” LA-has-terrible-public-transportation jokes. I think I give it a C+. It’s story doesn’t require the film to be set in LA necessarily, but they use the setting to solid effect in the end (the aforementioned bus gag, the boyfriend is a star on an OC-like show, a couple gift bag gags). Maybe Jamie can chime in on the scale and some examples of what is an A – D setting. Obviously an F setting is one which just doesn’t have a setting, like Trespass starring Nic Cage.

Taxi Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Taxi? More like Lacks Glee (I honestly am shocked I pulled an okay one out of that). Huh, a surprisingly high BMeTric? A genuinely interesting choice at director? Queen Latifah paired with Jimmy Fallon? I kind of knew this movie has the potential to confound … but I didn’t know quite to what degree. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – There were moments that were genuinely funny. Queen Latifah was actually quite good. I appreciated the way it inverted tropes (and was rather effective at it). The director knew his limitations and managed the action comedy admirably. Everyone seemed on board and the film was far more coherent than I could have ever expected.
  • The Bad – And yet it is a terrible movie. Boring, not funny. The music is terrible. Fallon is no good and also too bumbling to be admired or appreciated. The entire thing ends up just kind of falling apart in slow motion. And the movie is 15 minutes too long.
  • The BMT – This is a 40-50 BMeTric film for sure. But I wouldn’t watch it again unless it just happened to be on television. It isn’t entertaining or unintentionally funny enough to sustain the runtime, but it does have some cred that bumps it up. Specifically Fallon and Bunchen buoy this otherwise lifeless BMT dud. The end.

I got into it. You know what time it is … Audio Sklog-entary. That’s right, we are on a roll. This one was with the director Tim Story all by his lonesome. Things I appreciated: he was very open about his own failings as a director, and very open about how rushed this production was. That side of things was incredibly interesting. But a single person just lacks the same dynamism that a duo has by being able to play off each other. Verdict: B-.

Jamie

Not since Phone Booth have we had a film so quickly become irrelevant. Now this film would be remade and called Uber (not really, they would get sued), about a ride-sharing, racecar-driving wannabe helping out a down-on-his-luck cop. Instead, since this was made when there was no such thing as Uber, we got a complete carbon copy of the French film it was based on. And I’m not exaggerating. This film was almost shot-for-shot the same film (particularly the beginning and end), to the point where the trick at the end is just replicated. Not even a neat twist. I guess they assumed the general American audience wouldn’t watch the original like me (cause I’m insane). Even the changes that were made were all surface. The mom was just a mom in the original? Let’s make her an alcoholic. German bank robbers? Make them Brazilian super model bank robbers. The bank robbers use a cleaning service to pick up the money after the heist? Make it a garbage truck. Just slight changes for the sake of changing something. Actually made watching the film a bit dull. One of the unfortunate byproducts of obsessively consuming all related materials to the movies we watch.

The way I’ve been thinking about the commentaries is trying to sum up the main idea in a single sentence or word. In this case the word was: rushed. It sounded like he had a super short casting window and even purposefully hired a music video cinematographer because he knew the shooting schedule was tight. Probably why the movie is so similar to the French original. Easier to plan and shoot a direct remake rather than make major changes.

Going back to the BMTsolutions well for my game. Taxi is certainly not based on a book (it’s based on a French film, duh. I was literally just talking about it), but if it were, it would go… a little something… like this. Queen Latifah (yes the book also stars Queen Latifah) is a NASCAR driver. She’s on the rise and feeling super sweet. Unfortunately she gets in a terrible accident that leaves her shaken and confused. Falshforward a year after her recovery and she’s now a taxi driver, obeying the laws of the street, but longing for the race track. She hangs around the local speedway on the weekends and notices something kinda odd. A car that some of the new guys have been using have fancy tires on them that prevents blowouts. Tires that are only sold in Germany. And didn’t she see those same tires in some of the bank robbery footage on the news? She runs to the police to let them know. They, of course, think nothing of it. Who is this crazy lady who thinks she can identify thieves by their tires? Leave the police work to the police. But one officer recognizes her from her racing days and doesn’t think she’s crazy at all. In fact, he’s sure that she’s the only one that can catch these bank robbers in the act. They team up to catch the crooks. Feel the adrenaline of… TAXI.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Eragon Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Eragon? More like Era-Don’t! (I could think of something that actually rhymed, this was honestly the best I could do). Oh, I get to tell you guys the story of Eragon, what an absolute pleasure (I guess sarcasm is the main place that an email like this fails where a podcast would succeed, but such is life):

  • The Good – The landscapes were beautiful. The CGI was amazing (especially for the time). I’ve seen worse swords-and-sorcery movies. Jeremy Irons was solid. The story itself has something there, I can feel it. It’s just that …
  • The Bad – The story is so tired and the way it is told is so cookie-cutter and the overall result is just banal from top to bottom. As is usual when you get a bunch of professional actors together dress them up in ridiculous costumes and tell them to do what you want the performances were … spotty. The absolute reliance on this being a trilogy (eventual tetralogy) is kind of nuts.
  • The BMT – The more I think about it the more the movie kind of comes apart at the seams. It is kind of lower-mid table as far as its genre, so maybe 30/100 on our bad movie scale. Above average, but nothing special. The fact that it has a 60+ right now is a testament to just how angry fans of the book series got about it.

Audio Sklog-entary! Listened to the director commentary. The guy seems like a really solid visual effects supervisor. He was obsessed with sets and CGI and knew his stuff. But holy shit, he was just putting a movie together like it was a puzzle. Paint-by-numbers movie, what time is it? Can I talk to my CGI artists in Germany yet? Explains a bit I think. Seems like he probably just had no interest in directing a movie after the reception Eragon got.

Sequel/Prequel/Remake I’m going to go with Prequel. Tell me more about Bron the dragonrider and his adventures with the mad king Galbatorix! All real words. I’ll keep it short, because Jamie’s review is loooooong.

Jamie

Eragon fits nicely into the relatively rare subgenre of Sword and Sorcery and as BMT progresses we get a nice broader picture of these small subgenres. We can start to rank and put films into a bit of a hierarchy. I would say that we’ve watched five films that would fit the genre: Conan the Destroyer, Seventh Son, Eragon, Dungeons & Dragons, and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (I love writing out its full title). I’m sure you’re all gnashing your teeth and rending your clothes at the fact that I’ve left off Highlander II: The Quickening and The Legend of Hercules, but playa please. We’re talking true, blue Sword and Sorcery, not a film that takes place on Earth. I want imaginary worlds and made up bullshit, thank you very much.  So where do these five films fit in our BMT Sword and Sorcery landscape? Like a beautiful Bob Ross painting, Seventh Son is the happy little mountains in our fantasy realm. Eragon is a happy little tree off to the side and Conan the Destroyer is a happy little lake from which happy deer drink happily to sate their thirst. Dungeons & Dragons is unfortunately a happy little castle that Bob accidentally painted pink and couldn’t change it cause it was too late and besides he only has thirty minutes to paint this and the viewers probably won’t notice anyway… right? As for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Well that is the happy little toxic waste spill that poisons our happy little lake and ends up wiping out the entire happy little deer population in the valley. It’s poison leaks into the ground water destroying the ecosystem in the area for generations to come and causing widespread illness among the populous in our happy little valley. Oh woe are those in our Sword and Sorcery Valley. Woe indeed. Oh! And if you didn’t follow the metaphor: Seventh Son > Conan the Destroyer = Eragon > Dungeons & Dragons >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.

Obviously for my game I’ll be doing my BMTsolution. Eragon was definitely adapted from a book and I, of course, read it. It’s a *gulp* 500 page young adult novel following the adventures of our titular hero as he discovers he’s super lame (oh, and a dragon rider too). Probably the funniest thing about the book is just how similar it is to Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, except replace Edward/Christian Grey with a dragon and Bella/Anastasia with Eragon (no, I didn’t make a mistake in how I classified the characters). Eragon is super headstrong. He’s always getting into trouble and subsequently getting saved by his dragon. The dragon is always like, “I can’t handle you being in danger, you have to stay with me all the time so you can be safe,” and Eragon has to fight for his independence while also being like, “I love you so much dragon. It flips my world upside down. I was an ordinary boy a second ago and now you make me feel so special with your love.” Then if you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, Eragon rides his dragon for the first time and it hurts him badly. He is then resistant to riding the dragon again, for he is afraid of how much it hurt him the first time they did it. But the dragon is reassuring and wants him to ride her because that is how they are meant to be. Then when he finally plucks up the courage he realizes that flying doesn’t have to hurt and in fact is wonderful and they can look through each other’s eyes and souls while they fly together. Oh it’s beautiful! How it feels to fly with a dragon you feel so connected to!… … … Incredibly uncomfortable stuff. The whole time I was like, “He’s basically having sex with this dragon… and it’s weird as fuck.” Besides that, the book is a blatant rip-off of Wheel of Time (not Star Wars like the reviewers claimed for some reason), and so I probably would have loved if it came out when I was in 6th grade. Who am I kidding, I didn’t mind reading it now and I’m an adult(ish).

Cheerios,

The Sklogs