Collateral

Garden State

‘AVP: Alien Versus Predator’  (2004, 20^th Century Fox)

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson 

This one has been talked about and speculated for years.  There was even a comic book series dealing with it.  The concept was great: have two of the greatest movie monsters of all time battle it out on the big screen.  Give it a big budget too.  Make it the greatest battle ever.  Right?   No.  Unfortunately no.  And it kills me to write this, seeing as this should have been the action movie of the year.  Where to start?  The plot deals with an Antarctic expedition.  They find an ancient Aztec pyramid.  They find mangled human skeletons.  Uh oh, there are Aliens there, too.  To make matters worse, there are some coming-of-age Predators on their way, since the temple is sort of a Predator proving grounds.  Now the humans are caught in the middle.  Yikes. Yikes is right.   

First off, all the cool, "tough", characters are killed off way too early.  That counts most of the Predators too.  Then all we are left with are unlikable characters, characters who we don't care if they live or die.  This movie is rated PG 13.  Every other Alien or Predator movie was rated R.  What do we lose?  All the cool effects and viscera that filled the other films in the individual series.  And that is lame.  This was obviously cut in parts, so maybe one day a director’s cut DVD will come out, but it will hardly save the movie.  And what about the actual Alien versus Predator battles?  They suck!  Big time.  They’re edited at such a fast pace, with quick edits, that we don't get to see anything happening.  In fact, the editing makes it hard to tell what is even going on during some of the battles.  That is lame.  It feels like the whole thing was edited down and cleaned up (ie: dumbed down) for a larger, younger, audience. Way to alienate all the fans of the previous movies!   

My other big complaint is how the director makes the Predators look like the biggest pussies ever.  Most of them even get killed real early in the movie.  What happened to the master hunters of the other two Predator movies?  The ones with Alien skulls and dinosaur skulls in their ships?   It is explained that the Predators are coming of age, but still, they are made to look weak, and it ruined the movie for me.  I'[m not done yet either.  The whole chestburster way of working, as established in ALL the other

Alien movies, is changed.  It is sped up.  I mean, why not speed it up?   Some of the best character development in the previous Alien movies was during the time one of the characters had been impregnated.  Why would the director want to bother with character development?  Ugh.  I will say that the effects were cool.  CGI mostly, but still neat.  I did like the part where the Predator can see the Alien inside of a person with his heat vision.  But besides that, I can't say I liked much else.  Lance Henriksen was good, as always.  Oh, and be prepared to laugh (or cry) when the Predator takes his mask off at the end.  Even the predator design looked off.   

Overall, this movie was a huge waste of time.  Both series were changed around and mistreated.  This could have been a movie for the time.  But instead, it is nothing more than useless and forgettable.  The acting is bad, the characters unlikable, the action too messy, and the ending was completely lame.  Definitely the let down of the summer. (Edward Black)

‘The Card Player’ (2004, not currently released in the US) 

Directed by Dario Argento   

Dario Argento is a man who knows how to film the bizarre.  The subject matter and visuals in classic movies such as ‘Tenebrae’, ‘Deep Red’ and ‘Opera’, at one time, made him the number one horror director.  Not only did he know how to film the ghastly death scenes, but he always had a knack for memorable camera work.  That skill seemed to fade in the 90's with the release of the awful ‘Trauma’.  ‘The Stendahl Syndrome’ and ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ followed, and there is really nothing positive at all to say about those.  He attempted a come back with ‘Sleepless’ (2001), but aside from a few shocking and gory murders, the film really had nothing to offer.  Almost gone was the amazing visual flair he used to be known for.  Well, it's 2004 now, and time for another "return to his giallo roots".  And I'm sad to say that the results are piss-poor at best.  The plot follows a group of policemen and women and some others who are forced to play a game with a mystery killer who uses the internet/webcams/etc. to carry out his dastardly deeds.  When the "good guys" fail, the "bad guy" murders someone new.   

And it's all bad.  Most notably, the acting is terrible.  The actors playing the police are not believable for one minute, much less and entire movie.  They obviously did not have much to work with, script wise, but there is no excuse for this.  Yes, it is that bad.  There are a few nice shots of Rome, but besides that, where is all the nifty camera work he used to include in all his movies?  A lot of the scenes here seem culled from a TV movie, which would make sense, since there is a noticeable lack of violence or blood or anything else which used to make his films exciting.  There is no suspense either.  The score is not half bad, but this movie needs a lot more than a catchy soundtrack to save it.  The acting ruined it for me.  I was so uninvolved with the characters, that when anything noteworthy happened to them, I no longer cared.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't sit around expecting Dario Argento to remake ‘Tenebrae’ and ‘Suspiria’ over and over.  Hell, if he wants to try something new, go for it.  Just try and make it good.  However, there is no excuse for this.  Sure he has made some fantastic movies, but this is just not one of them.  (Edward Black)