Pixels (2015)

Pixels (2015)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Dan Aykroyd

Currently, it feels as if people are programmed to hate any Adam Sandler film released, even without having seen it. They’re prerogative is that Adam Sandler no longer makes “good movies”. Nowadays, you can’t read a review for an Adam Sandler film without it centering around how much Sandler sucks now and how he hasn’t made a good movie in eons and blah, blah, blah. I’m not into hating for hates sake, which is what is apparently happening with Sandler, it’s this hive like mentality of hatred towards Sandler. Where does the hatred stem from? Probably from the string of bad movies he’s been making. The last torturous one I saw was Jack and Jill (2011) and that one turned me off from seeing Sandler movies. How did I end up seeing that one in theaters you might ask? Well, I like to give movies the benefit of the doubt, sometimes I come out a winner and discover a film I would have not seen otherwise, but other times, like with Jack and Jill it’s just like“WHYYYYY?!” The way I see it and in Sandler’s defense I will say that we can’t really blame Sandler for making bland family movies, because that’s who he is, he’s the all encompassing actor who makes films that are supposed to appeal to everyone. He’s movies are made to be consumed in mass quantities and in order to do that, the film has to be a certain way. They can’t be too intense, or bloody, or offensive or violent, they gotta have that ‘feel good, nothing bad is going to happen’ vibe to them. Like, don’t take nothing to seriously, you’re here just to have some fun. Let’s just accept that he’s the guy who makes that type of film, that’s who he’s become. He’s gone the way of Eddie Murphy, but in a successful way? My advice is, if you don’t like the crappy pappy movies that Sandler makes, don’t go and see them! Just wait until he works with a good director, gets critical acclaim again and makes something like Punch Drunk Love (2002), his only truly good film if you ask me.

So just how squeaky clean is Pixels? Well, just by way of an example, in one scene when Sandler sees Pac-Man eat the hand of his creator, and Sandler he says “that was some weird….stuff” instead of “That was some weird…shit!” He even pauses before saying ‘stuff’ as if mentally correcting himself saying “nope, gotta keep it PG-13!” But whatever man, you can say “shit” in a PG-13 movie, it’s just that you’re so self censored that you can’t even bring yourself to say shit. The most basic of cusses. It feels as if Sandler is in a censored state of mind even as he films, in other words, no real space to cut loose and go crazy. Feels like there’s no improv and if you have a good comedian on your film, usually that’s where comedy gold is at, the improv. But no, dialog here is clean as a whistle, god forbid word of mouth spreads and a mother ends up saying something like “my kid is not going to see that nasty Adam Sandler movie, he’s always cussing”. So following Sandler’s squeaky clean movie rules, the film will have kids and families, often times dysfunctional families facing problems and overcoming them (like a divorce for example) and Sandler will be sympathetic and kind to the kid in the movie because that’s the target audience. So this is the kind of movie you can expect my friends. A film following a formula every step of the way. Nothing is to be taken too seriously; you can’t invest yourself emotionally because you know nobody will die. Not in a squeaky clean Adam Sandler family movie like this one, so just sit back and watch the fireworks, which is really the only thing that this movie is good for.

Some folks seem to think that this film was based on an episode of Futurama that has a similar premise, but in reality, this film is based on a French short film that lasts only about 2 ½ minutes, it is also called Pixels (which you can see here) and it sets the ground rules for the look and the mechanics of the’ video games come to life’ part of the film. The short makes no sense or meaning, it just shows us a guy putting an old television in the garbage and suddenly from said television all these old video games emerge. Suddenly Donkey Kong is on top of the Empire State building throwing barrels, Pac Man is eating street cars and Centipedes fly through the skies. In the short, the video game characters destroy the city by turning everything they touch into square little pixels, but that’s about as far as the thing goes. It has no story, no villains, no heroes, just a concept which Chris Columbus and Adam Sandler ran with and stretched into a film. And I say stretched because that’s what they did, the films premise is so simple, the story so non-existent, the characters so one note that they had to stretch things out. Pixels feels  repetitive and one note; we fight one video game, beat it, then fight the next one, and they go on and on like this till the end. There’s nothing unexpected here, this is as formulaic as it gets. Worst part? This is the kind of movie in which the trailer has shown you everything. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know, step by step how this movie is going to go.

What this movie is though is a nostalgia bomb. If you were born in the 80’s and played video games in arcades the way I did, you will feel a shot of nostalgia in your system. I have to admit it was cool seeing a giant Pac-Man eating up taxi cabs and city streets, especially since I’m such a Pac-Man nut! It was awesome seeing a giant King Kong throwing barrels at Adam Sandler, and then there’s this scene where they simply throw as many old video game characters on the screen as they can, so you’ll see Frogger, Q-bert, Paperboy, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders…and that’s without counting all the other characters from 80’s pop culture that show up in the film like Max Headroom, Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Hall & Oates. The soundtrack is made up of hits from the 80’s all the way. So in this sense, the movie proves entertaining to an extent, you will be like “Oh there’s Q-Bert!” Still, I think they could have used even more classic video game characters on the film, apparently they could only afford to use a limited amount of characters. Where was the knight from Ghosts and Goblins? Sadly, the novelty of seeing old video game characters on screen is the only thing this film has to offer, the movie itself is just a bunch of empty calories starting by the fact that the villains in this movie are faceless, we never really know who they are because they talk through videogame characters. So suddenly, our favorite old school video games are evil. I mean, I never saw Pac-Man as a bad guy? But there he is eating people up! So yeah, this is yet another film with a weak villain whom we never even get to meet. Pixels is extremely simple and banal that’s all I can say.

Chris Columbus directs this film and it's sad to see him directing such a simplistic film, considering he's actually done decent family films like Home Alone and Home Alone 2, hell this is the guy who wrote Gremlins (1984) and freaking The Goonies (1985)! I would have liked something from Columbus with a little more story put into it, instead the whole film runs on a gag, not really even trying to get us invested. Pixel does have its moments, again, mostly its moments are associated with the appearance of the giant video game characters, but where’s the comedy? It’s not here; Pixels feels like they are not even really trying. I mean, you got all these good actors and comedians in your movie, why not have them throw in some of their own personality, let them improvise, let them put a little of their soul into the proceedings. This is the reason why Ghostbusters (1984) worked so well, it had a lot of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in it, it’s their personalities that bring those characters to life. In contrast, on Pixels Sandler seems to have no personality, he’s got this spaced out, bored look on his face all the time? Like he doesn’t even want to speak? He’s so laid back that he comes of as lifeless. So yeah, I get why people hate on Sandler so much, he’s just not doing anything relevant lately, I hope he gets his mojo back at some point. Still, Pixels isn’t terrible, it’s completely watchable, just not very engaging or hilarious. It’s simply put a very average film. But hey, there’s Frogger jumping and smashing a car into pieces! Cool!

Rating: 2 out of 5 

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

Title: The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Brian Cox, David Morse, Craig Bierko

Review:

The deal with The Long Kiss Goodnight is that it’s the kind of movie that makes you wonder why it tanked at the box office in such a big way. I mean, here’s a film that’s action packed, fast paced, has a great cast, and is quite frankly pure adrenaline filled fun, yet it didn’t manage to get audiences’ butts to the theater. There are a few reasons that we can blame for that, but I’ll get into them later. I hadn’t seen The Long Kiss Goodnight in such a long time that I decided to give it the old re-watch/reassessment, just because Shane Black is back on the radar writing and directing big budget action films like Iron Man 3 (2013). You see, Shane Black got a lot of heat for selling the script for The Long Kiss Goodnight for four million dollars! He suddenly became the highest paid writer in Hollywood, but also one of the most hated. I chalk it up to jealousy, anybody who is offered that much money for writing an action film is going to take the money! I know I would! The ones spewing the hatred were just jealous it wasn’t them getting paid four million dollars, that’s all. So this movie is notoriously famous for that alone;  but also because it was a huge flop. After this movie tanked the way it did, Shane Black went into hibernation, hiding away from Hollywood. Did The Long Kiss Goodnight deserve to flop so hard? Does the film stand the test of time? I say hells yeah! I’m glad I bought this one and re-watched it, its fun times all the way!

On this one we meet Samantha Caine, a school teacher and a mother.  She’s on the PTA and all that, she’s the perfect house wife/mom type of deal. But there’s one problem though, she can’t remember who she used to be. Two years prior, she woke up on a beach, half dead, unable to recall who she was before that, so she started a new life, a quiet life in the suburbs. Yet slowly but surely, in subtle ways, her old self is resurfacing. She has nightmares in which a mirror image of herself tells her that her real name is Charlie and that Charlie is “coming back!” Samantha suddenly becomes quite skilled at throwing knifes! Suddenly she’ll have these short outbursts of anger and tells her daughter to stop being such a baby! She tells her “life is pain! Get used to it!” These are all things she puts to the side and tries to ignore; she just tries to continue with her normal suburban life. The real problems start when a gang of thugs, dressed as Christmas carolers come knocking at her door shooting at her and her family with machine guns! Why do these guys want her dead? Who was she before being picture perfect mommy?

The Long Kiss Goodnight got a bad rap for a couple of reasons, number one being that this was the film that Renny Harlin directed after Cutthroat Island (1995), a film that was one of the biggest flops in cinematic history. Just so you get an idea of what kind of a flop Cutthroat Island was, it cost 98 million dollars yet made back only about 11 million at the box office! Dang, now that’s what I call a major flop! So anyhow, apparently audiences didn’t trust Harlin as a director because he’d done that “awful” pirate movie that turned out to be one of the biggest turkeys ever. On Cutthroat Islands’ behalf I will say that I never understood why it failed, I think that movie was huge fun as well. I mean, it was no less fun than those Pirates of the Caribbean movies that are so popular nowadays. I guess it was just the wrong time, or the wrong cast, or whatever. Who knows why audiences end up collectively turning their backs on a given project, sometimes it’s the stupidest of things. But in the case of The Long Kiss Goodnight, its failure probably came as a result of Cutthroat Islands colossal downfall. In Shane Black’s own words “I wish The Long Kiss Goodnight hadn’t been released after Cutthroat Island” Worldwide The Long Kiss Goodnight made close to 90 million, but domestically it didn’t even make half of its 65 million budget back.

Sad story too because this movie is a lot of fun, as an action movie, it hits all the right buttons. First we have that intrigue of Samantha having a second personality buried deep within her psyche, this side of the story is always fun because you just know that that second personality is gonna come bursting out at some point. In that sense it reminded me of Angelina Jolie in SALT (2010), a deadly female fatale who doesn’t quite understand her full potential…yet. Geena Davis is fantastic on this one, she plays the innocent, beautiful wife/mom, living the family life, then suddenly she does the 180 and turns into a hellish top secret agent who can kill you with her breath. She turns into a full blown action star on this one! I loved seeing Geena Davis with blond hair, lots of eye liner, holding a machine gun, shooting it with a mean look on her face! She looked freaking great! Mrs. Davis went on to state that she did most of her own stunts on this show, pretty impressive if you ask me! As Samuel Jackson’s character ‘Mitch’ puts it: “What I’m saying is, back when we first met you were all like “Oh Phooey! I burned the darned muffins!” Now you go into a bar, ten minutes later, sailors come running out, what up with that? ” I enjoyed that double personality twist. Mrs. Davis was married to Renny Harlin the director of this film; so Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight signified two back to back turkeys on Mrs. Davis’s resume, worst part is they were both directed by her husband! Kind of makes sense that two years later they divorced.

But all that bull crap aside, I’m of the opinion this movie shouldn’t have tanked at all. The last half hour of this movie is nonstop action! Seriously, it’s a barrage of huge explosions, machine guns, cars flying through the air as they burst into flames….I mean, this one has one explosive ending! This movie is so much fun that both Harlin and Jackson have stated that out of all the films they’ve made, this is their favorite. One thing I found interesting about the script is how the bad guys are trying to pull off a 9/11 by planning a terrorist attack that they will blame on the Muslims, just so they can get more funding for their own purposes! I was like damn; did Shane Black have a magic ball that could look a couple of years into the future when he wrote this? Freaking weird! But thinking back a bit, Mr. Black was probably commenting a bit on the terrorist bombing that occurred on the World Trade Center in 1993, remember that one?

Directing wise, I think Harlin did a great job. This is a director whose films I’ve always enjoyed. He was responsible for Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), the most successful Nightmare on Elm Street film of them all. He also made Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990), a worthy sequel to the original and he had a taste of big time success when he made Cliffhanger (1993) with Sylvester Stallone. His career started going down after he did these two huge flops, but they were films that flopped for all the wrong reasons. I’ve seen far worse movies then these make gazillions at the box office, so let’s just chalk these two back to back bombs to bad circumstances. Harlin’s career never quite recuperated from that blow, he ended up directing truly bad films like Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) and The Convenant (2006). But back in his glory days, the guy was on fire! As it is, The Long Kiss Goodnight is so fast paced that I don’t think there’s a shot in the film that lasts more then 3 to 4 seconds! Literally! The only flaw I can find is that sometimes we go from plot point to plot point a bit too fast, so much so that sometimes you feel like there’s a gap in there somewhere, but overall, even with these few hiccups, the film is unabashedly entertaining. Recommend it for a night of over the top fun!

Rating : 4 out of 5

The Campaign (2012)

Title: The Campaign (2012)

Director: Jay Roach

Cast: Will Farrell, Zack Galifianakis, Dan Aykroyd, John Lithgow, Dylan McDermott, Brian Cox

Are you a Republican or a Democrat? Do you believe in a form of government that works for its people? Do you hate the savage way in which political parties throw dirt at each other all over the media? These are the questions you gotta keep in mind when watching The Campaign. I live on the island of Puerto Rico, and boy, political parties here tear each other apart in the media, election time in my country is not not that different from what we portrayed in this new Will Ferrell/Zack Galifianakis/Jay Roach comedy ‘The Campaign’. This film is a sincere and savage satire at the way the political game is played and how dirty it can get. It’s the kind of film that politicians don’t want you to watch because it exposes them for what they truly are: showmen looking to sell you an empty spectacle.

   

Ferrell plays the well oiled politician known as Cam Brady. He’s obviously The Republican candidate who’s the ‘All American Man’ he goes to church, he believes in his country and in supporting this nations troops, he’s a family man with a beautiful wife, and two kids! He also has a mistress on the side, and one night, when he decides to call her up and get kinky with her, he mistakenly ends up calling a Christian’s family’s home and leaves them a particularly nasty sexually charged message on their answering machine. This embarrassing turn of events causes a new candidate to move forward in the political race, his name is ‘Marty Huggins’ played by Zack Galifianakis. Huggins is a leader of the people, a person truly interested in doing something for his town. He tells the people to bring their brooms with him to Washington because, “It’s a mess!” Who will win this battle; the evil , selfish politician or the one who cares for the interests of the people? 

In my opinion, all the greatest comedies succeed because of the cast. Special effects movies, action movies, they can get away with having mediocre actors because there’s the action, and there are the effects to keep you interested. But in a comedy you can’t risk having bad actors. You have to get truly funny people in there or your reason for being is dead. In order to make your audience laugh, you need good comedians. Ghostbusters (1984), The Blues Brothers (1980), Coming to America (1988), Young Frankenstein (1974), all these super comedies worked because the cast is freaking amazing. Of course, great comedy directors where behind them as well, and it’s the combination of these two elements that make a great comedy. I think this was the case with The Campaign, a film made by some truly funny people and a trusted comedy director: Jay Roach.  

Director Jay Roach 

Ferrell, when he’s good he’s good and on this film he is truly on. I mean the guy is dead funny. I always enjoyed Will Ferrell’s take on president George W. Bush, he was so dead on with his Saturday Night Live sketches; it was always truly funny stuff in my book. The Campaign takes all those satirical sketches that Ferrell did on Saturday Night Live and takes them up to a hundred. Zack Galifianakis, I'm so glad he is on this one playing off of Will Ferrell's character, they are perfect for each other because they are both comedians that are very extreme, they'll go the lengths necessary to make us laugh, so this two explosively funny comedians on the screen is a match made in heaven as far as I'm concerned, I hope this film serves to push Galifianakis's career even further. There’s no mercy for politicians on this movie! I loved that about it, because come one, let’s face it, these political campaigns can get vicious and it’s that viciousness that works like magic on this movie. As it is in the real world, these guys really have no mercy for each other. And for those of you who think this film is only for liberals, well, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong because both parties are made fun off, but its primordially the rich republicans who get the heat. In this films eyes, Big Money and the politicians who play their evil game are the true villain. In The Campaign big business only cares about financially backing up a politician that they can easily manipulate. Sadly, same as in the real world, there are always politicians more then willing to play along.  These millionaires with huge businesses are the ones who could turn this world around because they have the money to do it, but instead they choose child slavery as an option. They choose to buy the elections, play dirty, keep slavery going in the world, only now they call it ‘less than minimum wage’. So these are the guys that The Campaign aims its guns at, which is actually perfectly alright by me. I think the film has every right to say that Washington is “a mess!”

Jay Roach is a director who has made many a fine comedy, in my book all three of the Austin Powers movies rocked; these are the kinds of comedies I like to watch over and over again. Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004), both hilarious in my book. It’s safe to say that Jay Roach has turned into one of those great comedy directors; it seems like Roach will be a mainstay in Hollywood; his comedies are hugely successful most of the time. Ultimately, what I loved most about the film is how it comments on the fakeness of politics, on how it manipulates the masses to think a certain way. The political game portrayed on this film and the one we see in real life are both one big circus attraction, one big show that tries to attract as many zombies as it can with its bright colorful lights, loud music and it’s confetti. They are simply trying to sell you a product that you will ultimately be disappointed by. Wouldn’t it be great if for once they would try to sell us a politician that wouldn’t disappoint?  One that would be worth a damn? The Campaign is well worth the watch, funny every step of the way and unafraid to sshow things the way they are, it gets a couple of extra points simply for that in my book!

Rating: 4 out of 5 

Trick R' Treat (2009)

Title: Trick or Treat (2009)

Director: Michael Dougherty

Review:

The Anthology horror film has been around for a while. Amongst them you can include Tales from the Crypt (1972) Vault of Horror (1973) The Illustrated Man (1969) and more recently Creepshow (1982) Tales from the Darkside: The Movie(1990) and Twilight Zone: The Movie(1983). I love these movies because they offer us short fast paced stories that aim to shock and get to the point quick, sometimes, that’s all we need. A quick horror jolt to the system! Same kind of thrill I get from watching old episodes of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt. Its that instant thrill and gratification of reading a short story that gets to the point quick.

The latest film to join the ranks of the horror anthology film is Trick R' Treat. A film that had a rocky production phase, where Warner Bros. suddenly pulled the film from its 2007 schedule, they pushed it back to 2008 and was finally released straight to DVD on October 2009 two years after it was produced. Why? Well, there’s various reasons swimming around. One, that they didn’t want the film to go up against Saw IV (yup, this movie has been made for that long!) which was also to be released in October 2007. Some also think that Michael Dougherty (the films director) was responsible in part for writing Superman Returns, and since that Superman flick was such a  flop, the studio retaliated by pulling Trick 'R Treat from its theatrical release. As of form of saying "thats what you get for writing such a crappy Superman flick!". To top things off, the film was produced by Legendary Pictures, Brian Syngers production company. If I remember correctly, expectation was high for that Superman flick, and more then one fanboy was disappointed by it, including myself. I enjoyed it, but lets face it, it could have been better. More then 300 million were spent in what was a very unimpressive flick. For that amount of money I was expecting Superman to go up against almighty God himself!

I guess that’s how Hollywood plays the game. You make them loose a couple of million dollars and they put you on the black list. So anyhows, is Trick R’ Treat any good? Should Warner Bros. have let Trick R’ Treat have its theatrical run? Well, word on the net is that this is the best Halloween movie ever, that its great, that it deserves a place among the best Halloween themed movies out there. I myself saw the previews for this movie and thought it looked cool as hell, and wondered why the heck it had not been released yet. Well, low and behold, Warner Bros. finally decided to let this one out into the world. How was it?

The film has four stories that all happen on Halloween night. It’s a bit different to some anthology movies where usually we get a “wrap around” story that joins all the stories together. Here, the film plays out more like Pulp Fiction or Amores Perros where what holds the different stories together is one common theme, in this case, its that everything happens on Halloween night. Sometimes, you’ll see one character that died on one story, on the other one, same as in Pulp Fiction, where you would see Vincent Vega when he had already died in some other part of the movie. Same deal here.

My problem with the movie was that it was uneven in tone. At times it plays like a child like fairy tale. One of the stories “The Halloween School Bus Massacre Revisited” is about these four kids who want to play a prank on a nerdy girl, so they take her to this place where these kids died and try and scare her. Its that type of tale that’s spooky but not too scary, which kind of leads you to believe that this is the kind of story that wont go too far. It’ll try and be spooky, but not too out there. But then they have a story about a girl who's apparently trying to have sex for the first time. Its called “Surprise Party” turns out the story ends up having girls getting naked and dancing in the fire and suddenly the story goes into R rated territory. So I’m like, is this film directed to kids, or adults? Or what? But ultimately, this uneven tone didn't really matter to me because the whole film is just spooky, atmospheric, gory, bloody, Halloween fun. 

Fred Dekker's Monster Squad suffered a similar problem years ago when it was first released in 1987. Actually, this ambiguity in tone is what killed Monster Squad in theaters. People didn’t know if the film was aimed as a fun harmless horror movie for kids, or if it’s a hardcore horror film for adults. As a result, the film tanked at the box office. Same thing happened with this movie in my opinion, it had an uneven tone. Sometimes it plays like a Halloween movie for kids…suddenly its hot chicks with their tits coming out of their dresses apparently searching for guys to have sex with.

But okay, it’s uneven in tone. What else can I say about it? I liked that the film really exploits the fact that it’s a Halloween movie and fills every square inch of the screen with Halloween ornaments, Pumpkins, dried leafs, the wind blowing, trick or treaters, candy, you know the whole Halloween shebang. You kind of feel like your living in The Nightmare Before Christmas’s Halloween Town. So kudos to the filmmakers for really capturing the spirit of the holiday, it seems that Michael Dougherty, the films director, really loves Halloween.

As in any good anthology film, they save the best for last. On the last tale we get to meet Sam, that little guy on the poster. The origins of 'Sam' are interesting, back when Michael Dougherty was just a student filmmaker, he directed a short animated film called “Seasons Greetings”. You can watch it cause it’s the only extra that this dvd includes; and it’s the coolest little animated feature. It just oozes atmosphere. And it presents us with this little character that feels like it came right out of Tim Burton's imagination. Or something you'd see in that movie 9. So anyhow, he has a burlap bag over his head, has the height of a little kid. And kills people. Why. Who is he? Who the hell knows! But apparently, he doesn’t want you saying bad things about Halloween, or not liking Halloween cause then you are going to get it. Who is this little creature? That remains a mystery, but he will kill you if you don’t like Halloween!

Brian Cox plays a old hermit who is the Halloween equivalent of Mr. Scrooge. Ah Humbug! Halloween is meaningless! And so he gets a lesson from the little creature known as Sam. I thought that idea was cool, to have Halloween version of Mr. Scrooge and its by far the most original thing this movie has going for it, I hope Sam gets explored a little more if they ever make a sequel. This film is drenched in Halloween coolness, I’m sure it’s what’s going to help it live through the years as the perfect film to watch on Halloween night. 

Rating: 4 out of 5