Expelled Grey Matter

I am one of those weird people who loved The Chronicles of Riddick .  I thought Pitch Black was okay, but Chronicles is what sold the character, and the universe he inhabits, to me.  Through the efforts of low-budget director David Twohy (whose films, like The Arrival and Terminal Velocity , I had enjoyed previously) and Vin Diesel, they scraped up what they needed to make a grand space adventure.  And it failed, miserably. This was largely due to a number of cuts to make it PG-13, and a good part of the story being lost.  Happily, I never saw that version.  I saw the version, as Twohy and Diesel intended, once it came out on DVD.  So did a number of other people, and the movie was somewhat redeemed.  What both of them had in common, though, was an abrupt ending.  Riddick (Diesel) had become the Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, a barbaric scourge upon the galaxy that destroys entire civilizations in their quest to find the mythical Underver...

David Bowie's recent passing has led to a number of theaters showing 1980s Jim Henson feature in his memory.  Not surprising, since Bowie wasn't that bad as an actor (it kind of went with his developing characters that went along with his music), but movies like The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger don't have as much drawing power as a coming-of-age fantasy with Muppets.  That this movie was largely ignored (and dismissed) at the time it came out doesn't seem to matter now.  Like The Dark Crystal , it has found its audience over the years, and there was always something great in the imaginations of Jim and Brian Henson and Frank Oz.  And, where the story was originally much darker, we have Bowie to thank for it being lighter in tone and giving it many of the quirks it does have - as well as a great soundtrack. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is a 16-year-old girl who still mourns the passing of her actress mother.  She hates her stepmother (Shelley Thompson...

The Marvel superhero films seem to be almost all there is in theaters over the summer these days.  Where once DC reigned supreme (and is trying to, again, with Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad ), Marvel has been churning out movies about every character it could since the first X-Men movie turned out to be surprisingly palatable by those of us who don't typically read comic books. Since then the films have been up and down affairs. They have managed to produce two of my favorite films in recent years, Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier .  The latter came out just prior to this, introducing the plot of Hydra (the secret organization from the original Captain America film) infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D.  It turned out to be a throwback to classic 1970s action films rather than a straight CGI fest. Unfortunately, the Hydra problem gets a quick wrap-up in Avengers: Age of Ultron , with the titular band of superheroes dispatching some of the l...

Back in 1999 something I thought would never happen finally came to pass.  16 years after Return of the Jedi , we were finally treated to a new Star Wars film.  Despite what George Lucas tried to pass as gospel truth, he had never intended to run through a trilogy and then present the back story.  This was all pie-in-the-sky ideas that he told the press after the original movie became a hit and The Empire Strikes Back turned out to be an even better movie than the original. We all know what happened with The Phantom Menace , however, and we should have seen it coming.  Lucas went back and retooled the original films, adding in tons of misplaced CGI and practically neutering Han Solo.  Sure, he did some things right, like getting rid of the Ewok celebration at the end of Jedi and digitally erasing some of the matte lines from around the spaceships, but most of the changes were unnecessary.  Still, in many ways I found The Phantom Menace to be better...

With the recent box set release that contained Penelope Spheeris's 1980 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization , which chronicled the 1979 hardcore punk scene in Los Angeles, it is interesting to again be reminded of how that scene really scared parents and society at the time.  While Decline offered performances and some frank looks at the bands and how they lived (as well as their fans), they mainly came off as misguided youth that you knew were going to be stuck in office jobs after a few years, looking at their safety-pinned jackets with sad nostalgia. Class of 1984 is pure exploitation of the fear that America had of their youth at the time, despite the fact the film is Canadian.  The city it is in is unnamed (although, being Abraham Lincoln High School, it's hinted that this is supposed to be the United States).  While some may see some parallels with what we see on the news about teenagers of today, the truth is the newspapers and local television stat...

I remember while Total Recall was still in production that the most press it was getting was because of its budget.  There were a number of articles at the time critical of spending what was then an almost unheard-of amount of money on a movie.  Sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger was at his peak, coming out with one hit after another, but Paul Verhoeven was largely known for the low-budget RoboCop (despite an impressive body of work in his native Netherlands).  The buzz was that this would be a major flop. And it almost was.  The crew battled constant food poisoning (as well as adverse breathing conditions) while filming in Mexico City, and at first Tri Star had no idea how to market the film.  In addition, the MPAA wanted to give it an X rating for the over-the-top violence.  However, Arnold loved it and pushed for it.  In the end, it truly became Verhoeven's major mainstream Hollywood breakthrough, despite the fact there is little mainstream about it ot...

In my opinion, Captain America: The First Avenger was the best of the pre- Avengers Marvel movies.  I thought Thor was pretty but hollow and didn't swoon over Iron Man like many did (I actually liked Iron Man 2 better).  There was something about a solid origin story and the ability to fit Captain America into the modern world that appealed to me.  I was surprised since this has always been one of the corniest of old-time superheroes. Happily, The Winter Soldier lives up to the expectations established by the first movie.  Set two years after the events in The Avengers , and meant to bridge the gap between that movie and the recent Age of Ultron , it was wisely infused with a number of classic political thriller elements rather than the rote superhero plot.  There is plenty of heroing happening, but in large part the main characters are in a vulnerable position throughout rather than invincible justice machines. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is adapting t...