Dreamscape (1984)

Title: Dreamscape (1984)

Director: Joseph Ruben

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Kate Capshaw, Max Von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, David Patrick Kelly

Review:

Dream movies are a special bunch of films; they offer things that no other kind of movie can offer us:   dream sequences that explore the surreal landscapes of the mind. In Dreamscape we meet Alex Gardner, a young man who can transport himself onto other people’s dreams. He is psychic, something we find out early on, when he wins a bunch of money at the horse track. His psychic abilities are what augment his dream traveling abilities. Once the government gets a whiff of Alex’s abilities, they kidnap him and convince him to help them with their new project; a project which consists of using a machine to enter other people’s minds. At first we are introduced to the benevolent side of the project, which is to help people confront their fears, but then we go into the negative applications of the technique, mainly, if you kill a person in the dream world, you can kill them in real life!

Dreamscape is a film that explores the fascinating world of dreams. I’ve always found dreams to be incredibly interesting and the idea that we can consciously control what happens in dreams? Mind blowing! These types of dreams are called ‘Lucid Dreams’ and in them you become aware that you are dreaming and attempt to control what happens in the dream. This is not fantasy, and it’s something you can look into and learn how to achieve. I read up on it and tried some of the techniques, and I gotta tell you guys, Lucid Dreaming actually works! I was personally successful in my attempt; I actually became aware that I was dreaming, while dreaming! The bitch of the thing is trying to stay asleep once you become conscious in the dream, because the minds natural reaction is to wake you up when you become conscious. But the few seconds that I managed to be conscious within my dream was actually kind of frightening and intense, but also strangely exhilarating. Dreams are something we can all identify with because it’s something we all experience; we all dream. We all confront our fears in those wee hours of the night, which is probably the reason why dream movies are big hits with audiences. I mean, look at the success of the  Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, or Tarsem’s The Cell (2000), two films that have a whole lot in common with Dreamscape, the film that explored these themes first.

I see Tarsem’s The Cell as an update on the ideas presented in Dreamscape, but done in a far more stylish manner because of Tarsem Singh’s involvement in directing the picture. The Cell is a superior film in many ways, but that’s due to the fact that it had a bigger budgetthan Dreamscape, which was made with a measly 6 million dollars, mere pocket change in Hollywood terms. The Cell on the other hand had 33 million dollars to play with. Still, even with its meager budget, Dreamscape is a film big on ideas. I love it when these films get made in spite of their small budgets. The filmmakers say:  “screw it, we’ll make do with what we got!” The amazing thing is that most of the time, something cool comes forth none the less, which was the case with Dreamscape. The ideas presented are pretty outlandish! The president of the United States is having nightmares because of the Cold War. He has nightmares of people dying in a nuclear blast! He can’t take the pressure of being the president and having to be responsible for pressing the proverbial button that can kill millions. Once again, same as many films from the 80’s fear of nuclear holocaust is present because this is what people were living through at the time. So the film not only explores the dream world and all the possibilities therein, it also deals with political and moral issues.

An interesting aspect of Dreamscape, and I mentioned a bit of this earlier, is how many similarities it shares with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. We got characters going in and out of dreams; we have an evil dream demon type of guy who even has claws, just like Freddy Krueger does! Plus, there’s the idea that if you die in your dreams, you can die in real life! Even more interesting is that both A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Dreamscape were being made at the same time, and released mere months apart. There’s a possibility that one studio was trying to copy the other studios dream film and so, we get two extremely similar films being released. But Dreamscape was released first in August 1984, while A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in November of the same year, so Dreamscape did it all first. Another connection that Dreamscape has with A Nightmare on Elm Street is that Dreamscape was partially written by Chuck Russell, the very same writer/director who ended up writing and directing A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), a film that shares many similarities with Dreamscape. On that particular Elm Street film we meet Kirsten and Nancy, two characters with the ability to enter other people’s dreams, they can even bring people into their own dreams. So I’m guessing that Chuck Russell’s experience with writing about dreams in Dreamscape landed him the gig to write and direct the third entry in the original Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

The only problem for me with Dreamscape is that sometimes the special effects look pretty outdated. There’s this one scene where we meet a half man, half snake creature, and the stop motion animation leaves a lot to be desired, I mean, not only is it stop motion animation, it’s bad stop motion animation. But aside from that, we get some trippy visuals every time we go into dream world, I sometimes got the feeling that the film was made for 3-D but never got around to getting converted. On the plus side of things, the film has an excellent cast, we get Dennis Quaid in the prime of his youth, actually, it might take you some time to get over how young he looks.  Christopher Plummer plays a political douche bag and Max Von Sydow his counterpart, the good natured scientist. Kate Capshaw (aka Spielberg’s wife) plays one of the heads of the dream project. And finally we get David “Warriors, come out and play” Patrick Kelly, playing the Freddy Krueger like villain of the piece. Final words on Dreamscape is that it’s a film with an interesting premise that did a lot with very little. Its budgetary limitations didn’t stop it from exploring its themes thoroughly; recommended to those who love movies that explore the fascinating world of dreams.

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5  

FOR A LOOK AT MEMORABLE DREAM SEQUENCES ON FILMS GO HERE!   

Innerspace (1987)

Title: Innerspace (1987)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Martin Short, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Robert Picardo, Kevin McCarthy

Review:

Innerspace is a film directed by Joe Dante, the guy behind Gremlins (1984), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and Explorers (1985). Here’s a guy who loves sci-fi and horror films and on top of that, he loves his Warner Bros. cartoons. You can tell the guy loves old genre films, all of his films are filled with little homage’s and nudges to his favorite films, for example in Explorers, one of the kids falls asleep watching War of the Worlds (1953), in Gremlins 2 he uses horror icon Christopher Lee to play a mad scientist, and in Matinee (1993), he paid a loving homage to genre director William Castle and his films. It’s no surprise then that Innerspace also serves as a homage to a classic science fiction film from the 60’s: Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage (1966), a film in which a group of scientists have to miniaturize themselves in order to enter a another scientist’s body so they can eliminate a blood clot from his brain. You see, this comatose scientist knows how to make the miniaturization process last indefinitely instead of a limited amount of time and if he dies, the secret is lost forever. Innerspace works with these ideas, but in a slightly more exciting and modern fashion.

In Innerspace we meet Lt. Tuck Pendleton, a pilot for the U.S. air force and a class A drunkard, yet  in spite of his drinking problem, Lt. Pendleton takes part in a history changing experiment that will miniaturize him and have him injected into a test bunny in order to conduct a series of experiments from within the bunny. Unfortunately, the minute Tuck is miniaturized and inserted into a syringe, terrorists attack the lab before he is injected into the test rabbit! Somebody wants to steal the top secret miniaturization technology! But, fear not, one of the scientists takes the syringe that has the miniaturized Tuck in it and runs away with it! The scientist ends up hiding in a mall, where he stumbles upon supermarket employee called Jack Putter.  In an attempt to save Tucks life, the scientist injects Tuck into Jacks left butt cheek! Now Tuck is inside of a complete stranger! Tucks mission is now to find a way to communicate with Jack and inform him of what’s happened. Oh, he also has to get back to the lab before his oxygen supply runs out! Will he make it on time before he dies inside of Jack?

While Innerspace shares the same basic premise seen in Fantastic Voyage, that of conducting experiments dealing with miniaturization, it is also a very different movie in many ways. First off, in the first film the main characters are inserted into the body of a comatose scientist, which immediately makes the film a bit slower in pace. In Innerspace the main character is injected into a hyper active, paranoid supermarket employee/nerdy guy called Jack Putter. Putter is played by the one and only Martin Short, who makes this film even more entertaining than it already is. I mean, for me, Martin Short has always been this incredibly funny comedian. In the right movie the guy can really shine. Ever seen him play Ned Nederlander in Three Amigos! (1986)? Do yourself a favor, hilarious! Innerspace was the first film he ever starred in as the main character, and he really took the opportunity to show what he’s made off. He plays this paranoid nerdy guy who gets extremely agitated, he lives in constant fear, basically, he’s afraid of life. The interesting part comes when Lt. Tuck Pendleton is injected into his body. Pendleton finds a way to communicate with Jack, who at first thinks he is possessed by demons when he hears Tucks voice inside his head. But once Jack understands what’s going on, Tuck becomes sort of this driving force inside of Jack, a force that gives him the push necessary to do things he would have never done before. Through Tuck, Jack gains an inner strength he never had, he evolves into someone who will go up against life instead of shrivel in fear of it, this is a character that we see evolve and grow through the course of the film.

And that’s one of the best things this film has, characters played by a great cast. True, Short steals the show here, but Dennis Quaid as Tuck also does a fantastic job, especially when we take in consideration that he acts 90% of the film while inside of this small pod; still he pulls it off majestically. Joe Dante uses a series of actors in all of his movies; for example he always uses Dick Miller in one form or another. Miller is sort of Dante’s good luck charm; on Innerspace he plays a cab driver. He also uses Kevin McCarthy a lot; on this one McCarthy plays the villainous Crimshaw, the guy after the miniaturization chip. By the way, the villains in this film are cartoony in nature, so the film has that sort of fun vibe going for it. It’s like a Warner Bros. cartoon at times, I love that about this one and of course, this cartoonish vibe goes perfectly within the context of a Joe Dante film, he being the WB cartoon lover he is. Look out for various WB cartoon references throughout the entire film, both visual and auditory. For example, when the miniaturization machine stars spinning, it makes the sound the Tazmanian devil would make when he spun like a tornado. So yeah, this is a Dante film through and through; he brings his love for old cartoons, genre films and his usual gang of actors. 

Of course, something has to be said about the special effects work on this movie, which is simply amazing. So much so that the film won an Academy Award for it. First up, when Lt. Tuck is miniaturized, we’re there with him the whole way, we see the interior of Jacks body and here’s where this film is different from Fantastic Voyage, the interior of Jacks body doesn’t look like a set the way they looked on Fantastic Voyage, sorry to hit on the classic, but it’s true. When I watched Fantastic Voyage, I couldn’t help getting this vibe like these actors where just floating on wires in a campy set, this is a problem that they fixed on Innerspace. There’s this amazing sequence when Tuck gets close to entering Jacks wildly pumping heart! That shot was amazingly well achieved, so much so that in his review for the film, Roger Ebert thought they had used real life footage of a heart! Dante had to let him know that it was all achieved through effects work. The guys at ILM where awarded the best visual effects award for their work on Innerspace. In the film, Lt. Tuck Pendleton can use this face altering technology; basically he pushes a few buttons on his pod and Jack’s face begins to convulse and twitch wildly until it changes completely. This is one of the most jaw dropping effects sequences in the whole film, achieved by makeup effects genius/guru Rob Bottin. Dante and Bottin had previously worked together on the groundbreaking effects work for The Howling (1981) and later again in Explorers (1985), two films that also excelled in the make up effects department. I personally had to freeze frame these sequences, I was so amazed by them, flawless work. So, all around great effects work on this show.

The comedy element is also fantastic on this one; the combination of Martin Short, Robert Picardo, and Kevin McCarthy was the perfect amalgamation necessary for a truly funny film, Dante knows that in order to get a funny picture, you need truly funny actors, and this combination of actors was the perfect comedy storm. So my friends, as you can see, this is one of those movies where everything just clicked to perfection. I mean, how funny is Robert Picardo as ‘The Cowboy’? Really funny, that’s how funny! By the way, Picardo is also one of those actors that Dante has used on more than one occasion, Picardo played the aliens on Explorers and he did that show stopping werewolf transformation sequence in The Howling as well. Across his career, Picardo has had extensive experience collaborating with make up effects artists, for example, he was also that water witch 'Meg Mucklebones' in Ridley Scott's Legend (1986), Innerspace is just another of the films where he participated in a make up effects heavy sequence. In closing I’ll say that this film is a true joy to watch. It is fast paced, extremely funny, has fantastic visual effects and a great cast, what’s not to like about this one? Dante was one of those directors who defined the 80’s for me, he had a great sense of humor and a love for the genre that is palpable in all of his films, that’s why his films are still watched and talked about after all these years. What? You haven’t seen Innerspace? Now that I don’t like! Do yourself a favor and rent/buy this one and have yourself a fantastic voyage of the Joe Dante kind, thank me by leaving a message below after you’ve seen it! 

Rating:  5 out of 5 

Pandorum (2009)

Title: Pandorum (2009)

Director: Christian Alvart

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Antje Traue

Review:

Don’t know about you guys, but lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the “end of the world”. There has been a recent slate of films where the films main premise and main theme is that humanity either has already ended, or is about to end. This recent fixation with “end of the world” movies probably stems from the coming of the year 2012. Some people out there actually think the world is going to go caput on that year. It could also have something to do with the economy, and how life isn’t really as easy as it used to be. My take on it is that every generation eventually ends up thinking that the world is going to end during their time. The sometimes chaotic nature of life can make us think that way. One look at sci-fi movie posters from the 50’s will let you know what I’m talking about, back then, people were just as obsessed with 'the end of life as we know it' as they are now. So many movies back then exploited this angle, this fear that the human race will one day disappear from existence. Truth is, time keeps going, the planet keeps going, and so far, so do we. My advice is to take it easy, soon it will all blow over, well get old and realize there was really nothing to worry about. Or maybe a giant meteorite will wipe us out and we wont even know it. In the mean time, we got some movies to watch. Like Pandorum, a film that also explores this notion.

On Pandorum, we are presented with an interesting premise. Planet Earth as we know it ceased to exist. It’s not specified how (“it was probably nuclear!”) but planet earth and all of humanity disappeared from the cosmos. Fortunately, one last spaceship was sent out into space with the last of the humans. They are headed towards a new planet that has been discovered and that has shown signs of being “earth like”. Only two people are needed to run the ship, the rest are safely kept away in hyper sleep. Movie starts out when two members of the flight crew wake up from hyper sleep to an abandoned and lonely ship. No one is running it, the power has failed, and no one really knows why. This is where the mystery begins. What has happened? Why is no one flying the ship? Did we make it to the planet or not?

So I liked that about this movie. It starts out with a great big mystery. No one knows anything, and we along with the two awakening crew members are slowly figuring everything out. It’s that initial sense of mystery that pulled me into the movie immediately; the not knowing what’s happening. I loved the setting of this gigantic haunting spaceship. It’s one of the main reasons why I love Event Horizon (1997) and The Black Hole (1979) so much, these are films where we explore a gigantic and ominous spaceship. The art direction was great in this film. The corridors of the spaceship look dark and ominous, the different rooms in the ship were well executed, and yeah, its true, more then a little influenced by Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), the film that Pandorum uses partially as its blue print, at least in look and feel. Its whole first half is a lot like Aliens (1986) as well, specially when it comes to those scenes with the crew waking up from hyper sleep. We even get a mysterious girl who has been surviving on her own and has turned almost savage in nature, ala Nute in James Cameron’s Aliens.

The makers of Pandorum fed from more then just the Alien franchise to make their film. It’s also got elements from films like Silent Running (1971), Wall-E (2008), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and Knowing (2009). It even fed of some sci-fi novels. I’m a huge Arthur C. Clarke fan, for those who don’t know, he is the Author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other excellent sci-fi novels. A lot of Arthur C. Clarkes books dealt with this premise of a spaceship with the last remaining members of the human race. The one that comes to mind is Songs from a Distant Earth (1986). In that novel a spaceship with the last remaining humans are on their way to another planet they hope will be their new home. It’s a very interesting premise to work with; unfortunately this angle wasn’t explored so much in Pandorum because the film was more concerned with becoming just another monster movie, and not a very original one at that.

Personally, I’m burned out on movies that go for the “good guys running from the monsters” premise. And that’s entirely what this movie turns into. This is one of the main reasons why I was absolutely bored to death with Quarantine (2009). It’s so boring when we know exactly what’s going to happen in a film. I totally disconnected from Quarantine for this reason. But I stuck with Pandorum because I liked the “last members of the human race” premise and I wanted to see where they were going to go with that. But basically, these cannibal like creatures are running through the space ship and the good guys have to fight their way through them so that they can arrive at the ships power generator. Good guys need to turn the generator on so that the ships power is restored and they can make their way to this new planet they are supposed to reach at some point. That whole second act of the film, where we start to figure out what the creatures are, their behavior and how much of a threat they are, bored me to death. There’s nothing new or different about it.

To me, if you are going to do something dealing with the good guys running away from the monsters, you have to make sure it’s something original, something we have not seen before. Unfortunately, the original route is not the one this film wanted to take. The creatures resemble those we have seen in many other films. The one that first popped to mind was those creatures we saw in Neil Marshall’s The Descent (2005) where these creatures have been in the dark for so long they have become cannibals, they have begun to breed, they have pale skin and white eyes. If you’ve seen The Descent, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect from these beasties, they even have a similar scene in which the good guys fall in this pool of blood and skeletons...just like in The Descent! To the films credit, I will say that the make up effects were handled well, but these creatures don’t go past the guy in a suit thing we’ve seen thousands of times before. They are violent and filled with rage, similar also to “the reapers” seen in Joss Whedon’s Serenity (2005).

Somewhere around its third half, the film kicks back into an interesting gear; when the whole mystery is completely unraveled. Interesting thing is that with each human we meet on the ship, the further away from being civilized they are. I thought that was cool about the movie, obviously commenting on how easily our civilized behavior can disappear in extremely difficult circumstances. Also, the film has a very interesting twist in its last half that I loved.

Performance wise everyone did a good job, but nothing to call home about. I mean, is it just me or has Dennis Quaid been phoning in a lot of his performances lately. I don’t know, the guy just doesn’t seem to be trying anymore. His presence in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) for example was so replaceable. No special effort is put into his performances, same goes for Pandorum. His character works, but its nothing special.

Overall, this film wasn’t that bad. But it wasnt good either. It just wasn’t too original. Its second half with the monsters running after the bad guys almost had me disconnecting from it because it felt so “been there done that”. Same problem I had with another recent science fiction film called Outlander (2009) which was yet another sci-fi film that fed off a gazillion other movies we had already seen before. If I referenced a bunch of other films during this review, its because I couldnt help it, this movie rips off to many others. Here’s a message to all those filmmakers out there: you have to try harder with movies! You can’t keep given us the same old drivel we’ve seen on countless occasions before! You might have the budget, the production values, good direction, but if its more of the same, you risk audience disconnection. This is Lt. Film Connoisseur signing out, reporting from the blogosphere, anybody listening out there?

Rating: 3 out of 5

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Title: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Director: Stephen Summers

So the latest craze in Hollywood is taking a cartoon from the 80s and turning it into a big budget special effects filled movie. It happened with the Transformers, which Michael Bay and his trigger happy crew turned into a huge box office success. Not to mention that the film already spawned an equally successful sequel, which by the way was for me one of the worst films made this year, but that’s a whole other review. The latest of these 80’s cartoon adaptations is G.I. Joe, which was one of the most successful cartoon series to emerge out of the 80s. Whoever was a kid during those years has to remember the show. It lasted half an hour and basically served as a commercial to sell the Hasbro produced G.I. Joe toy line. Its basic premise was that of a top secret military operation which was trying to stop Cobra, a terrorist organization hell bent on conquering the world. Aside from that, the show itself also served as a propaganda machine for the U.S. Military. Now I see that, but when I was a kid I did not realize this at all, to me it was just a cool show. In reality, it was a show trying to infuse kids with a desire to serve the U.S. Military services with pride, get that patriotic pride going at an early age. I guess it was made in part to get kids to want to serve their country just like the characters did in the show. The main slogan of the show lets you know this: “G.I. Joe! A Real American Hero!” The premise of this new film has the Joe’s trying to stop Cobra from destroying the world with a new kind of technology. Basically, a bomb of nano machines (read: microscopic machines) that will eat through anything and continue eating through whatever comes along its path. The Joe’s have to stop Cobra from using this new weapon to bring the world to its knees.

Basically this movie was exactly what I was expecting. Not much invested in depth or a good story, but lots invested in special effects an action. The movie brings absolutely nothing new to the table in terms of storytelling, in fact, it feels tired and done. Many of the plot devices on this film can be traced down to other films we’ve already seen before. For example, when you see the final confrontation between G.I. Joe and the Cobras where the Joes infiltrate Cobras hidden underwater lair, you kind of feel like you are watching a remake of Return of the Jedi or something. Right down to having the Joe’s go into the underwater base as if they were infiltrating the Death Star and escaping mere moments before it blows up into smithereens, just like the death star blows up in the last moments of Return of the Jedi. There’s a confrontation between two ninjas in the film (named Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow) that feels and looks a heck of a lot like the final confrontation between Darth Maul and Quai Gon Jin in Star Wars Episode I. The suits that the Joe’s use in the film which augment their strength and agility are directly influenced by Paramount Pictures Iron Man (2008). Scenes like that just let me see that the director wasn’t trying to be original at all. He was just going down the easy path of doing what others have already done. For Christ sake, we even get a character who is evil but tries to turn good, just like Anakin.

That’s the main problem with films like this one. They are produced so fast, and so little time is taken to come up with a worthwhile story to tell that we just end up getting more of the same. But aside from that, did the film entertain? Let’s face it, while watching a film of this kind, I don’t going in expecting a masterpiece. I was just looking for a fun time, and I went to the theater simply out of nostalgia for this old cartoon show I use to watch when I was 12 years old. I went to see these characters Id seen in my childhood brought to cinematic life. And I have to be honest, that’s exactly what I got. We get some of the key characters from the show, and they looked exactly like what I would have expected them too. The premise of the film mimicked that of the show, which was always about trying to stop Cobra from trying to take over the world. There was nothing ever truly profound of life changing about the shows themes, it was just a poorly animated show made to sell toys. The movie took the cartoons basic premise and went with it.

Have to admit it, nostalgia got the best part of me. It was cool to see the Joe’s secret facilities with all these nifty vehicles and jets, it brought me back to when I was 12, watching the show . It was cool to see Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow kicking each others asses. It was cool to see Cobra becoming Cobra and Destro becoming Destro. And I’m sure this is a movie that many a little kid will find entertaining. Me, I was just a big kid in the theater remembering the Joes. And I had a good time in doing so, there’s lots of car explosions, lots of non stop action sequences, and lots of fx to keep you entertained for half an hour. After a while though, you might feel the CGI overdose light go off inside your head, cause let me tell you, there are times when I felt like the only real thing in the film where the actors and the other 90% of the film was made up of computer generated images. But whatever, that’s a whole new genre of films that’s emerging. That’s where Hollywood wants to go now. I guess it brings down costs some, its cheaper to build something in a computer then building it for real. Sadly, this is the state of big budget special effects films, 90% of what you see on screen exists only within the confines of a computer.

But most of director Stephen Summers movies have always been like this. One look at his resume and you will find CGI infested films like The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Deep Rising and Van Helsing. Also one look at this films cast and you see that Summers has brought many of his old friends back, like Arnold Vosloo who played the mummy in The Mummy movies. Heck, even Brendan Frasier is here in a small role training some of the newer Joe’s.It was a fun movie for what it was. I recommend it to fans of the G.I. Joe cartoons. Those thirty something guys who grew up watching this show in their afternoons after school. I’m sure they will be happy to see their childhood heroes brought to life. Movie goers who dont know what the hell G.I. Joe is will find an empty yet entertaining special effects driven film, that’s derivative of other films and doesn’t try in the least to show us something new or meaningful. It simply wants to wow you with its gee whiz effects, never keep you bored for its entire duration, and have you leave the theater feeling like you just had a sugar rush, only thing is you'll probably forget the film five seconds after you leave the theater.

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5