usesoap Blog

Under discussion:

First Blood  (1982)

Rambo: First Blood Part II  (1985)

Rambo  (2008)

Now that Sylvester Stallone seems determined to dust off his most enduring screen roles, if he decides to shuffle back to the cinematic well, it will have to be from some of the lesser names of his canon.

Might I take a moment to offer a few suggestions:

Cobra 2: Time to Strike – Lieutenant Marion Cobretti dispatches his “Zombie Squad” to shady dealings at a senior citizens home, where most of the thugs from the original film now reside. It seems they’ve been running smack through the Metamucil supply. When one of the home’s members accidently ODs while trying to stay regular, she ruins Bingo Night and brings Cobra back on the scene. Can Cobra still be the cure (as long as there is a little ipecac in it)?

Over the Top II: Brothers in Arms : World Champion Arm Wrestler Lincoln Hawk first fought for his son’s love, now he wrasslin’ to save the twin brother he never knew he had. Stallone flexes his acting muscles in two roles, as Lincoln and his Lupus-afflicted brother, Cedrick. Danny Pintero (“Who’s the Boss”), meanwhile, plays Stallone’s now-grown son, who follows in his father’s footsteps by entering the now-popular sport of thumb wrestling.

Stop, or my Mom’s Ghost will Shoot!: Estelle Getty, whose health has prohibited her from reprising her role,  appears, via cutting-edge CGI, as a heat-packin’ apparition who still manages to get entangled with her son’s life from beyond the grave. Detective Bomowski (Stallone) is living out his final years on the force as a crossing guard, but when a local gang of ruffians (lead by Corey Feldman), begin harassing him, Tutti (Getty) gets back in action and haunts the quiet suburban streets with a vengeance that would make Freddy Krueger proud.

Judge Dredd 2: Dredder: The dystopian future of the original has since become utopian, after Judge Joe Dredd has been able to drive crime to extinction. Frustrated that his training in government-endorsed mass murder, Dredd goes undercover as a folk singer at the Worldwide Birkenstock Festival and decides to start crackin’ skulls of those damn hippies who he thinks are smoking a little too much peace pipe.

I enter “Rambo” with frustration – not so much with the concept, but the chronology. Follow me: if the first film was called “First Blood,” and its sequel was “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (which should actually make it “Second Blood,” but no bother). Then, the next sequel was titled “Rambo III.” I teach English, not math, but it is obvious even to me that there is something wrong with that equation.

Now we have “Rambo,” which is actually the title of the second film, minus the subheading.I know it seems inconsequential.

Perhaps it’s something I should just work out on the therapist’s couch.

Whatever the title, this latest revisit to the Sly Stallone hall of fame has John Rambo residing as a snake catcher in the depths of Burma. Why Burma, you ask? Even though the filmmakers make no mention of it, I would assume it’s because he spent his last film in Afghanistan helping those “freedom fighters” from Soviet reign. Yes, those same freedom fighters that went on to form al-Qaeda.

Thanks a bunch for that one, Rambo.

He’s approached by a group of Christian missionaries wanting to help the downtrodden by spooning them medicine and religion. Rambo reluctantly agrees to be their guide, but only because one of them is hot (forget the fact that she’s young enough to be his granddaughter-- eww). Obviously, things don’t go all that well for the group and they are on the losing end of enemy rifles, causing Rambo to join a mercenary team sent in the thick of it all.

And even through the bad guys are drawn as heartless, soulless killers, the film itself is an ethical quandary. The first few minutes are dedicated to actual documentary footage of the victims, but that is cheapened by having us root, cheer and applaud the same ruthless killing committed by Rambo and his soldiers of misfortune.

For wasn’t it just moments earlier in the film where he tells us many of these brutal thugs were actually kidnapped villagers, tortured and brainwashed into fighting, and yet we are meant to thrill when their legs are ripped off by Rambo’s tree-leveling machine gun?

With “Rocky Balboa,” the actor/director’s last attempt to breathe life into his left-for-dead franchises, Stallone was a gentle giant, hollowed out by years of loss. “Rambo” begins to flicker with the hope that this, too, may return the series to its far-superior first film.

But it seems he also want to satisfy the masses who longed for his slaughterhouse mentality of the latter two films, as well. Rambo is, at first, broken, cynical and indifferent, but appears all too quick to strap on the bow and arrow after some perfunctory soliloquy of “knowing who he is.”

The problem is, the audience does not.

Under discussion:

The Blair Witch Project  (1999)

Gojira  (1954)

Transformers  (2007)

Cloverfield  (2008)

For its many faults, “Cloverfield” must be given the highest of praise for this – it knows its target audience extremely well.

It began with a juicy-but-coy teaser trailer with this summer’s mega-blockbuster “Transformers.” It revealed no title, no recognizable stars (only producer J.J. Abrams name was credited) and no idea as to what it was really about.

The only tell-tale image was that of the head of the Statue of Liberty rolling like a bowling ball down a dark New York City Street while masses flee in panic.

In the following months, the internet was ablaze with speculation, conjecture, frame-by-frame analysis of the trailer, and complete dissection of the fractured bits of dialogue heard within. Then, various vague links began sprouting up that gave on tangential clues (Slusho, anyone?) as to what “Cloverfield” promised.

It was the same lightening-in-a-bottle momentum gathered by a little independent film called “The Blair Witch Project” was able to capture a decade ago.

So strictly does it adhere to its conviction of presenting us with a “first-person” account of a giant monster invasion, though, that it begins to work to “Cloverfield’s” disadvantage.

For even as a I sit a day following my screening of the film, I am at a loss for garnering that same pre-release rush that the film’s marketing department so masterfully executed.

A disclaimer: For anyone who has the slightest feeling of motion sickness, you have two options: 1) stop reading the review now, for there is no way in hell you should watch this film beyond the opening credits, or 2) read away and make sure to stock up on the Dramamine before purchase of your ticket.

For “Cloverfield” is a small-scale perspective of a monster with rather large scales. In other words, it re-imagines the old city-leveling creature features of yore for the “You Tube” generation.

It’s a rather nervy conceit. Where films from the the era of “Gojira” (known more popularly as “Godzilla”) were able to bolster suspense with creative editing, a swelling soundtrack and a more omnipotent perspective, “Cloverfield” is cramped behind the lens of a 20-something party boy who didn’t even want to take pictures in the first place and tells us the tale of destruction entirely from.

The “footage” that is “Cloverfield” is a government document, a recording found in the wake of the monster attack and also provides (for better or worse) the film its narrative structure. While throwing a going-away fiesta for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a group of pretty, empty yuppies decide to document the occasion with a farewell video. Rob’s dopey best bud, Hud (played by T.J. Miller) is reluctantly designated the cameraman. It is to our benefit that Hud is at least blessed with a Seth Rogan-like stoner wit, for he serves as our accidental narrator for the majority of the film.

He also comes in handy during some of the film’s unnecessary attempts to add human drama amidst the chaos. Rob’s girlfriend is trapped is a nearby building and Rob somehow convinces a cadre of idiots to duck and weave through the wreckage in an attempt to save her.

It is within those moments that almost brings the borough-busting beastie to a halt. The film’s shaky-cam perspective is made bearable in those moments where we get those fleeting, first-person glimpses at the encroaching terror. It plays out like sort of reality TV special that would immediately suck you in (“’America’s Craziest, Savage Monster Attacks’ will be right back after these messages!”). But for the sake of attempting a more traditional approach to storytelling, writer Drew Goddard felt obligated to saddle it with a love story as well.

Just as “Blair Witch” did years ago, I suspect “Cloverfield” may pick up momentum with its detractors, who view it as all build-up and a failed follow-through.

But while “Cloverfield’s most audacious gambit is its Achilles’s heel, it still does not diminish the countless jolts, nifty special effects and innovative approach to a tired genre that seemed destined to live the rest of its life on the Sci-Fi Channel.

It may become a cultural relic like “Witch,” known more for its marketing campaign than its content, but it deserves more credit for its visceral savvy than the majority of bloated, neutered thrillers greenlit by major studios, for its successful attempt to make city-stomping monsters matter to a new generation.

Under discussion:

A Few Good Men  (1992)

Misery  (1990)

The Princess Bride  (1987)

Stand by Me  (1986)

This Is Spinal Tap  (1984)

When Harry Met Sally  (1989)

Wild Hogs  (2007)

The Bucket List  (2007)

“I'll pair two of America's best-loved elder actors, give them oddly endearing eccentricities, saddle them with a terminal illness, but show how they learn to LOVE LIFE!!!” he says (exclamation marks are a necessity here).

So when a critic attempts to lay into the film for being rote and pandering, he or she will be derided for besmirching the actors' good names and callously drubbing those dealing with cancer.

Well, bring on the hate mail.

This is “Wild Hogs for the septuagenarian set (“Mild Hogs?” “Terminal Hogs?”), and it is a TV dinner of a film – everything spooned out in carefully measured proportions, pre-packaged and cold, without a hint of spice or surprise.

The two ailing leads are a cantankerous old wisecracking coot and a gentle, grounded guru who are both diagnosed with the big C. Take a guess at which one Jack Nicholson plays and which one Morgan Freeman plays.

I am convinced Nicholson doesn't even look at scripts to display his talents – he merely kicks back and waits for one to roll in that adapts to his persona.

It's hard to even recall his character's name, for it's the same part he's been playing on- and off-screen for the past decade. He's shallow, he's boisterous, and yet oh-so lovable.

Freeman, who has played everyone from the U.S. President (sigh. If only.) to God, is also in his comfort zone. Even though he's playing a humble mechanic, he's worldly and wise and never without a trivial tidbit to share like some Zen Pez dispenser.

Once they both receive the news, they jet set around the world (oh, yeah, Nicholson's character is loaded, by the way), checking off items of things to do before kicking the titular bucket.

Even though they visit post-card-perfect locales from across the planet (Italy, the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas), the same scene skips like a dusty DVD – Freeman spits out some obscure-yet-meaningful factoid. Nicholson gives a witty (read: sexist) rejoinder. They share a little bit more with each other.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

You could say it plays out over and over again, but to use the verb “play” may suggest something jovial about the proceedings. Make no mistake, this is as labored as it gets. The script (by relative newcomer Justin Zackham) seems as though it was merely a template in some computer screenwriting program that was not altered in the slightest. Every “spontaneous” scream of joy, every tear of sorrow feels scripted and calculated even to which direction said tear should travel down the cheek.

Beneath this mountain of sentiment sits Reiner, a man who had a laundry list of great films (“This is Spinal Tap,” “Princess Bride,” “Stand by Me,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Misery”) before it all got buried beneath the compost of his latter-day efforts (pretty much everything after 1992's “A Few Good Men”).

His career, like Nicholson's, seems to be coasting on auto-pilot of late. And for both of them to be included in a film that is supposed to be about taking risks is a sadly ironic twist.

Look, there is nothing wretched about anything in “The Bucket List,” but expectations from this caliber of talent raise the bar. And because of this, a movie that is supposed to be life-affirming is rather depressing.