MiB 3: Behind the suits

Men in Black 3 was not at all what I was expecting from the latest installment of the series following the exploits of the super-secret government organization protecting the Earth from hostile aliens. What I expected was another humor-filled and action-packed adventure in which MiB partners J and K once again save the world from certain destruction.

Okay, well, that's sort of what really did actually happen in the movie, but it wasn't exactly how I expected it to occur, and it's not really what the movie is about.

For one thing, a serious plot with some genuinely poignant moments stands at the heart of this chapter. It answers some big questions about the two characters and their current outlooks on life and their roles in MiB. In spite of some minor flaws and some lulls in the action, MiB 3 delivers a satisfying if not knee-slappingly funny story.

In this episode, J must chase Boris the Animal, recently escaped from prison on the Moon, back in time and thwart his attempt to kill K in the past and prevent the Arcnet from being deployed to protect the Earth from alien invasion.  So, yes, first of all, the element of time travel has been introduced, which is always a veritable can of worms. The worst part is, if you want to travel back in time, you just stop by a music store and talk to a certain guy who has the devices that make it possible. Oddly enough, I saw a case supporting only two of the devices, but the log book he keeps makes it seem like he does this all the time, so one can only assume the devices are rentals and are returned after each time jump.

I'm not even going to bother going into all of the "but if you can time travel why didn't you ...?" speculation because, frankly, this would end up being a much longer and more convoluted exposition.

MiB 3 follows the logic that if you die in the past, then your present-day self, along with all memory of that self, ceases to exist, an idea that immediately took me back to a book from my childhood, the 1953 SF novel Danger: Dinosaurs! by Richard Marsten, aka Evan Hunter aka Ed McBain.

It's up to J to travel back in time and save K from being murdered and being able to deploy Earth's defense system. Naturally, we expect things not work out quite so easily, and it does in fact turn out to be a bit more complicated.

After J's time jump, which, as it turns out, involves a literal jump and a leap of faith all at once, we are introduced to the young K, played by Josh Brolin. I can't say enough about what an amazing job Brolin did impersonating Tommy Lee Jones' elder K. I'm not the kind of person who reads a lot about movies before I see them, preferring to take the films on their own merits, so it wasn't until later that I read much about Brolin's frustrations with and fear of failure in impersonating Jones. As I watched the film, I seriously believed—and, no, I am not joking—that Tommy Lee Jones' voice had been dubbed over Brolin's. That is not the case. It was actually Brolin doing the impression of Jones that he began toying with on the set of No Country for Old Men. Brolin had the voice and cadence down to a, well, down to a K.

Men in Black 3's got pretty much all of what you'd expect from an MiB film—the gross-out humor, the sight gags, the crazy gadgets—but a few aspects just kind of nag at me. For one, I had trouble seeing the Tommy Lee Jones K romantically involved with O, played by Emma Thompson. I just honestly had trouble seeing the old, craggy-faced Jones as a believable love interest to Thompson. I could easily buy the idea of the Josh Brolin K involved with the Alice Eve O and could even see the Josh Brolin K as a love interest to the Emma Thompson O, but Jones just seems, well, old. He's ready for his role as a sheriff in the sequel No Country for Grumpy Old Men. I suppose the real key to that working is more a matter of seeing it develop over time than dropping Thompson and Jones together and having to accept it as is.

And parts of the movie just feel kind of flat, almost as if we kind of know what's coming and we just want it to hurry up and get there. The real suspense isn't whether the MiB agents will save the day, but exactly how they'll do it. And that payoff doesn't come until the very end. While the film has its funny moments, as a whole, the jokes are merely humorous rather than hilarious. It's the kind of humor that elicits chuckles instead of guffaws.

That's fine to some extent because it's not really the humor and action that drive this movie; it's the underlying story about the nature of the relationship between J and K—and not just between J and K the agents, but between James and Kevin, their real identities behind the black suits. The question J keeps asking of K is, "What happened to you?" Central to what this film is really about is exploring the experiences and the underlying nature of the characters, especially the monotoned, unflappable, unexcitable K.

At it's heart, the MiB films are buddy cop stories. The aspect that makes every buddy cop story work is that we like the characters; we have a vested interest in what happens to them. If you have two strong and likable characters, it really doesn't matter how implausible the plot is or how outrageous the stunts are—you care about what happens to the characters.

That, more than anything, is what makes MiB 3 work. We love the craggy, matter-of-fact K, and we love the contrast in the excitable, smart-alecky J. So when J sets out to save K, and in the process save the world, we want him to succeed. In spite of their differences, we know that J and K have a strong bond, even when J hangs up on K when the latter just seems to want to hear J's voice over the phone. The surprise ending to MiB 3 shows us that the relationship is even deeper and more significant than we would have otherwise guessed.

One could make the argument that there are also some serious continuity issues here, given what happened to K in the previous chapter and what it revealed about his history. Certainly valid criticisms, but, at the same time, really irrelevant to the story being told in MiB 3. This is a movie about James and Kevin and their significance to one another as both partners and friends. And that's why it works.

Will there be more MiB films? I'm sure that will be determined more by box office numbers than anything. But whatever the future holds for the franchise, MiB 3 has forever changed how we look at J and K.

Chronicle: An anti-hero take on the superhero movie?

Josh Trank and Mark Landis' Chronicle tells the story of three friends who gain telekinetic powers after coming in contact with a mysterious object in an underground cave. What is the object? Where did it come from? We may never know unless there's a sequel or prequel, and I'm guessing the probability is high. The film centers on troubled teen Andrew (I promise, you will never forget his name) who is bullied at home and at school and spends much of his time caring for his terminally ill mother. Though one cannot help feeling sympathy for Andrew and sadness at his spiraling decline, the film largely suffers from obstacles relating to the simple idea of suspension of disbelief that interfere with what would otherwise be a compelling examination of bullying, rage and revenge.

Andrew isn't a bad kid. We can see that in how he cares for his mother and endures the abuses of his alcoholic father. He's a loner and an outcast. The other kids at school make fun of him and push him around. The audience readily sympathizes with him. Andrew's charismatic cousin Matt tries hard to draw Andrew out of his shell and to lend him some emotional support. He's likable, even if he seems to be the dumb, jockish type. Matt eventually attempts to be Andrew's moral compass, but in doing so overreaches and further alienates Andrew. It is likely Matt's seeming betrayal that helped push Andrew past the point of no return, leading to his downfall.

Boiled down to its basic elements, Chronicle is a wish-fulfillment story. It's about revenge. Anyone who has ever been bullied can empathize with Andrew. Deep down, the bullied all want to strike back at those who have victimized them. The idea of a bullied loner gaining superpowers and suddenly turning the tables on his foes is nothing new. Peter Parker, after all, suffered the abuses of the jocks at his school before becoming Spider-Man. The key difference between Parker and Andrew is that Peter eventually realized that he shouldn't, couldn't, use his powers for petty reasons. In Andrew's defense, it is obvious that he has no control over the forces that drag him into despair and hatred.

After the death of his mother, Andrew finds himself utterly alone against the entire world. He strikes out at everyone around him, including his friends. His descent into madness is as much accident as it is intentional. Andrew sometimes does things with his new-found powers accidentally—with disastrous results. Though it is the death of his mother and Matt's betrayal that tip him over the brink, it is other events that ultimately lead to his destruction.

Matt and Steve, Andrew's new friend, attempt to draw Andrew out of his cocoon, to make him popular, to pull him away from his outcast, loner past. Their intentions are good, but because of Andrew's fragile emotional state, the manipulation is a formula for disaster. Steve succeeds in bringing Andrew out of the shadows into the light and even makes him the life of the party. One bad experience, however, throws Andrew back into the old role of outcast. The humiliation sends him deeper into darkness. He is soon overcome with shadow. His anger has taken control and become the driving force in his life.

Anyone who has seen the trailers for the movie knows that things go bad. In a typical play off the classic superhero formula, one superpowered individual is left to play the hero against the one who has gone bad. Matt and Andrew fight it out in an epic, Avengers-style smash-up. It's entertaining, but it also feels like something of an insult to the serious theme at the heart of the story. Destroying cars and buildings and generally making a mess of things is fine popcorn fare, but what happened to the in-depth character study? You can't round out this character's story just by breaking a bunch of things. Something more sober is needed here.

Chronicle ambitiously attempts to find balance among three different elements: bringing the pseudo-documentary style to the superhero genre, taking a serious look at the psychological and emotional effects of bullying and telling an anti-hero story in the superhero genre. The real problem with this approach is that each tends to step on the toes of another. It's difficult to tell a superhero story using this first-person, unedited footage approach. The special effects required to pull it off also undermine its credibility in the same way the computer-generated monsters in every Syfy movie render the stories preposterous.

I was fully engaged with the film while it trod familiar paths of the three friends experimenting with their telekinetic abilities. The pranks were well in keeping with the anti-superhero theme. If Chronicle were a typical, mainstream comic-book from the 1960s, these three would no doubt have donned costumes, given themselves some catchy superhero team name and rushed off to do good with their powers. This, however, is a more cynical—and arguably more realistic—take on an old idea. What if teenagers gained telekinetic powers? In truth, they would likely do a lot of what these guys did: move people's cars around, pull the bubble gum out of someone's mouth and become experts at beer pong.

The movie started to lose me when the three were suddenly flying and playing football high up in the clouds. Whether this is plausible in the context of telekinetic superpowers is irrelevant; it reaches beyond the bounds of the story being told. And the movie does drag a bit as the three explore the limits of and grow into their powers. The story seems to get lost for a while. When it finally wakes from its reverie, it's a bit late. The audience just wants it to be over.

It's also when the movie gets back on track that all of the yelling starts and you wonder if you've suddenly tuned in to a TV reality show in which everyone hates each other and is constantly bickering. "Andrew, stop! It's not too late! Andrew, this is not you!" And that's how it goes for the final ten minutes of the movie until Matt finally saves the day.

In some ways, I applaud what Chronicle attempts to accomplish. At the core it's a serious and engaging story. Andrew is a sympathetic and empathetic character whose destructive descent is often poignant. The attempt to play too much with the superhero genre, however, causes the story to get lost and, like Andrew, morph into something it never should have become.

The Grey: So much potential thrown to the wolves

Joe Carnahan's The Grey, starring Liam Neeson, is a film about despair. We see this from the early moments when Neeson's character, Ottway, contemplates suicide and places the barrel of the rifle he uses to protect pipeline employees into his mouth. Death permeates the movie to such a degree that the one emotion that carries any weight at all is the despair Ottway and others feel. Ottway's despair is different, however, for he has lost his wife and, seemingly, his will to go on. In spite of this, he fights tenaciously and resourcefully to survive and to keep others alive, and, at the very brink of death, overcomes his loss of hope.

Ottway and a small group of other pipeline employees survive a plane crash and find themselves hunted by a pack of malevolent wolves. Ironically, Ottway's job on the pipeline is to patrol work sites, rifle in hand, and protect employees from wolf attacks. It is in his determination to help the other men survive the ordeal that Ottway comes to terms with his own despair.

The biggest problem with The Grey is that it seems torn between being a monster flick and a serious drama exploring the conflicting emotions in Ottway that lead him from a moment of pure despair, when he might have abruptly ended his life, to being the leader of the small group of survivors. In one sense, the story is a metaphor for the way we are under constant attack in our lives by forces we cannot control, forces that cause us to lose hope and want to give up.

Ottway's wife appears frequently in the film in flashbacks or dream sequences, her final message to him not to be afraid.

This aspect of the film is well handled. It's a tender, heart-wrenching story. Ottway writes a note to her in which he states, "You left me and I can't get you back." We know from the scene with the rifle that this is a suicide note. We do not know until the end of the film why his wife left him and under what circumstances. It is Ottway's flashback to his last moments with her when she tells him, "Don't be afraid" that galvanizes him, leading Ottway to steel himself for the fight of his life.

It's just too bad this story is told through an entirely implausible battle against these very unwolflike wolves. The first hint we get that movie is going to veer off track comes in the opening minutes when Ottway shoots a wolf as it charges at a group of men working on the pipeline.

I grant you, I am no wolf expert, but I found myself doubting very seriously that any wolf would behave in that matter, openly attacking two or three human beings on its own.

It only gets worse from there.

After the plane crash, the survivors are stalked by the wolves, which, according to "wolf expert" Ottway, are protecting their territory from the human invaders. They will keep coming until all the men are dead because, it seems, they have ventured too close to the wolves' den. Ottway frequently spouts Wikipedia-like factoids about the territorial range of wolves in what is likely an attempt to justify to the audience what seems like very odd behavior.

The movie would have the audience believe that wolves are vicious and vengeful and willing to attack and kill , not for food, but to terrorize the interlopers trespassing on their territory.

It's a bit far fetched.

The alpha wolf even dares to stalk right into their camp to stare them down and intimidate them. This actually happens in the film. The wolf is huge and black and full of menace. It is not a real wolf.

And therein lies the problem: If this was intended to be the pure fantasy it became, then it should never have taken itself so seriously. We are expected to simply accept that real wolves do these things and that if your plane crashes in wolf territory, you will be stalked and intimidated and killed, so you better be prepared to fight for your survival.

I joked with my daughter that what the movie really needed was more Kate Beckinsale.

Though I said it in jest, I feel this is a legitimate criticism of the film. If you're going to use wolves as a metaphor to tell your story about despair, then do it honestly without the hyperbole, without the overblown fantasy. If all you want is to create a horrific situation to represent the despair, then go ahead and make this a horror film. Don't pretend it's realistic.

Ottway is bitten by a wolf shortly after the crash and jokes that he's going to become a wolfman. One gullible survivor asks if that really happens. Given how many implausible moments the movie expects the audience to swallow, I couldn't help thinking it would have been a far better werewolf flick than an attempt at serious drama.

The sadness Ottway experiences at losing his wife is very real, and Neeson is believable as the grieving husband. The scenes in which Ottway is depicted lying by her side are very poignant, and it is a truly sad moment when their last time together is revealed.

At the core of The Grey is a very powerful story. It's just too bad it had to be intertwined with such an implausible plot.

So much bad entertainment, so little time

I'm way, way overdue on my reviews of Megaforce and Dark Angel. I blame it on Diablo III, but I solemnly vow that I will sit down at some point and do a write-up on each of these. I have at least viewed all of Dark Angel. Again. I'm pretty sure I've only seen it once before way back when it was first released on video or made it to cable. I was interrupted in my viewing of Megaforce by hostile influences, so I need to get back to it.

Why am I reviewing these two movies in particular when there are so many others that could attract my attention? It's simple, really. I blame it on my daughter. She texted me one day to ask, "Where did the phrase 'I come in peace', 'You go in pieces' come from?" I remembered immediately that it was a Dolph Lundgren actioner from many years back, but I was conflicted over the title. I was thinking the actual title of the movie was "I Come in Peace," but that may have just been on the movie poster or video cover or something.

In any event, that launched the project for me to find a copy of this bad movie blast from the past.

But how is that connected to Megaforce? I'm not sure where the term was originally coined, but I first saw the phrase "Megaforce bad" on Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool News web site many years ago. It describes exactly how bad a movie is. Ain't It Cool News, by the way, is a great place to go for news about upcoming releases as well as reviews of new releases, mostly in the SF, horror and superhero genres. I'm happy to say that the site hasn't changed much over the years.

Megaforce was considered such a bad movie that it became the measuring stick by which all bad movies released since would be judged. In a sneak peek he offered of an upcoming release, Mr. Knowles stated emphatically that it would be "Megaforce bad." And we all knew that was really, really bad.

So when my daughter asked about "You go in pieces," I couldn't help but launch into a long description of this "megaforce bad" movie from before she was born. Being the curious sort I am, I couldn't help but wonder, "Exactly how bad is 'Megaforce bad'?" The only way to know for sure was to subject myself to the very film that led to the coining of the phrase.

These days it's usually pretty easy to find a movie. You just hop over to Amazon.com, plug in a title and order the DVD—or stream it if it's popular enough to warrant that treatment. Megaforce isn't. The only copy I could locate on Amazon was in some odd, obviously foreign, and likely subversive format called VHS. I think I have an old device in the closet gathering dust that might be able to translate VHS's cryptic runes, but I decided that ought to be a last resort. For crying out loud! This is the 21st century, after all.

So I kept looking. It also was unavailable on NetFlix and Vudu. I like Vudu a lot. Beautiful HD streaming on your high-def TV. Crisp picture, no lag. But I digress.

Eventually, I did in fact find a DVD copy of Megaforce at Sasquatch Video. It somehow seems appropriate to me that the namesake of a mysterious creature whose existence is known only from possibly faux footprints, grainy photographs and hoaxed videos would be in possession of a rare and forgotten gem of filmmaking badness believed by many to be mere legend.

After watching about 35 minutes before I was rudely interrupted, I can say that I have a feeling Megaforce is going to be deliciously, enjoyable bad with a heaping helping of cheese and hammy acting. In short, it may be the very definition of cinematic perfection.

Meanwhile, out of the blue as I was taking my morning walk, thoughts of an old '70s Saturday TV show I used to watch sprang unbidden into my mind. I really have no idea what prompted me to think of it, but I found myself suddenly pondering Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. No, seriously. I thought it could be something really hilarious, so, yes, I searched Amazon and found it's being released on DVD at the end of the month. And I did in fact order a copy. I should probably seek counseling for whatever condition it is I have. In the meantime, I'll continue watching weird stuff and writing about it.

The reviews of Dark Angel and Megaforce are coming soon. Whenever I can tear myself away from Diablo III, that is.

Avengers, assembled!

So the kids dragged me out to see some action flick last night. Can't remember the title, something about vengeance or some such nonsense.

Anyway, there's this one dude with a patch over one eye. I think it's Mace Windu, obviously having survived his battle with the Emperor at the expense of an eye. He's all tough and calling the shots, but he's got this problem with a glowing Rubix cube--and who wouldn't? If it's all one color, how can you solve the problem--and then this creepy guy with a mean stick shows up and takes it and all hell breaks loose.

And there's also this impossibly hot chick who likes to wear really tight clothes, but she kicks ass like Jason Statham on steroids. And she's got better hair. They call her Black Widow, which really didn't make sense to me because she's not black, she's not a spider, and I don't think she's ever been married. If she had been married, though, she probably very well would have been something like a black widow because she seems to wreak a lot of havoc wherever she goes.

Another guy has obviously traveled in time from the 1980s where he was the lead for a heavy metal band. He's still got the long hair and red cape, but he's replaced the electric guitar with a hammer. An odd choice if you ask me, but what the hey. He talks kind of funny too, which is how you know he's from the distant past.

One guy is an archer, so he must be from the past, too, but he actually looks like maybe he could have been in Deliverance. His bow is kind of cool. With a flick of his wrist he can make it telescope to full size, and he's got all kinds of tech to shoot arrows that blow things up or microwave full course meals in minutes. He and the hot red-haired chick have something going on. It's one of those love-hate things, I guess. I have a love-hate thing with her too: I hate it that she doesn't love me.

But I digress.

The archer has some good tech, but the Excalibur reject with the red armor has got the best. He's obviously a knight because he wears full plate armor, but he's also schizo because he's always talking to this guy in his head. At least the voice is very prim and proper and all and not telling him to go on a killing spree or something. The Templar definitely took care of this guy because he's loaded--in more ways than one because he also drinks a lot. He's a little arrogant and full of himself, so nobody likes him except his girlfriend Pepper, who is occasionaly as spicy as her name.

Then there's the guy who thinks he's Uncle Sam and was apparently frozen for along time. He walks around with a shiny trash can lid that's apparently bullet proof, magic proof and as aerodynamic as a Frisbee. The shield gets scratched up a lot, so I'm sure he keeps the Krylon people in business. He's kind of bossy, too, but I guess if you've been on ice for decades, you have a lot of time to work on your leadership skills.

Finally, there's this mild-mannered genius-doctor-physicist type. It's not really clear what his specialty is because he gives medical help to poor people but also throws around physics jargon in casual breakfast conversation. He's a really nice guy, so I couldn't figure out why everyone kept talking about his anger issues until all of a sudden he turned into a giant green monster with a penchant for breaking, like, everything. They called him "Banner," but I'm pretty sure that's a pseudonym because he's obviously really Dr. Jekyll.

All these guys come together and bicker and fight a lot like people do in all these reality TV programs. But eventually they learn how to work together and kick the living crap out of the bad guys. As it turns out, that's something they're really good at, so I think all along this was moving toward the group becoming a superhero team, you know, like the Justice League of America, only not quite as professional. Cap, that's what they call the Uncle Sam guy, is like the leader or something and tells everyone what to do; Iron-Man, the former Templar Knight-turned-alcoholic billionaire, is the smart guy with all the gadgets; Black Widow is the tough chick who knows how to get stuff done; the former rock star--Thor, they call him--he's just your standard, kick-ass warrior with a big hammer (no double entrendre intended); Hawkeye, the archer, is the scout/ranged attacker, the eyes of the team; Hulk, Banner's pea-green Hyde, just breaks things, apparently--whenever they want something broken, they say, "Hulk, smash," and he does. The patch-eye guy, Fury, is their boss or something. I never saw them get paid for what they did, so I have to assume they all have offshore accounts and money is wired electronically. And I'm not really sure who's going to pay to rebuild New York City because they trashed the whole damned thing, but good, well, Manhattan, anyway.

In the end, everyone's happy and able to sit down to enjoy a quiet meal together. The lesson of the whole movie is this: No matter what our differences, we're all in this together and we have to learn to get along. For the most part, anyway.

Haywire

I may be in the middle of a bad-movie binge. I can't help myself. Last night I treated myself to the aptly named Haywire, starring MMA fighter Gina Carano.

In spite of having what would appear on the surface to be all the right ingredients for a successful action flick, Haywire somehow falls flat. It boasts a cast of highly respected silver screen staples, including Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbander; the star delivers punches and kicks like a female Jason Statham; and the plot is standard actioner fare involving setups and betrayal. It features enough tech and gunplay to remind one of an episode of 24, and Carano's character, Mallory Kane, is rather Jack Bauer-like.

So where does it go wrong? I know what you're thinking: Duh--they put an MMA fighter, fitness model, former American Gladiator in a starring role. Recipe for disaster. But, really, that's not it. I expected Carano to be a bad actress, to be the kind of person who reads the lines instead of acting them. While there were plenty of moments I felt she could have asserted herself more and become a more confident screen presence, on the whole I was impressed with how comfortably she settled into the role of mercenary contractor Mallory Kane. The lines slipped so easily from her lips that the dialogue just seemed real to me, not made-up exchanges designed to elicit some kind of response from the audience. I found her to be very believable in her role.

As far as being a genuine Hollywood star, yes, Carano's a little rough around the edges, but she at least proved in this role that she has the ability to do it. I'm neither an acting coach nor a director, but if I were to offer her some advice on getting into these roles, I would tell her to be more confident about it, to assert herself on screen. To hold herself as if each scene belonged to her and everyone else was just an extra. One thing many of the most respected actors do is oversell their characters and lines. Just analyze the dialogue in one of your favorite action flicks and you'll see what I mean. The cheesiest lines can sound really good when the actors deliver them fanatical conviction. So, as crazy as it sounds, I'm telling Carano--don't be afraid to overdo it.

One of the most inexplicable areas in which Haywire fails is the fight scenes. Yes, I know, it's crazy. Here's this tough, superfit woman with some wicked moves, and the fight sequences in the movie are just kind of boring. And I say that with a small level of trepidation, given that Carano could kick my ass up and down the street without working up a sweat. 

There's no real drama here. Mallory gets hit, she hits back. She employs a host of familiar MMA moves to subdue her foes, but it's all utterly flat and uninteresting. You know there's something wrong with a movie's action scenes when you find yourself mentally critiquing the fighter's strategy. "Are you wanting to be a grappler or a striker? If you're doing the ground-and-pound, do the ground-and-pound. Come on now, if you get that armbar, you gotta go all out on it."

In the MMA few people escape from a deeply sunk rear-naked choke, but it happens routinely in Haywire. My biceps are actually sore from squeezing the choke holds myself while watching the fight scenes.

The fights needed to be bigger, bolder, more dramatic. Sure, Carano pulls off some pretty nifty moves, but we've seen all this before. If you're going to do it again, you've got to do it bigger and badder than your predecessors. Look at how Jason Statham does it. That's your template. Now throw in some of your own special recipe and make it your own. And do it big. If you've got three guests coming over for spaghetti, make enough for six. Or ten.

In the end all of the bad guys get beat up and Mallory Kane exacts her revenge on the guy who betrayed her. But it's all very routine. While watching the scene where the relentless tide approaches to do him in, I could not help but be reminded of a scene in another film and Leslie Nielsen's voice popped into my head: "I can hold my breath for a looooong time!"

The plot and structure are plans that I'm sure looked good on paper, but the execution was lifeless. Oh, we get flashbacks that happen seamlessly, but more often than not, these are unneeded because it's painfully obvious from the beginning what happened and who's zooming whom. Timing and delivery are key ingredients in comedy. How many times have you related what you felt was a hilarious anecdote to someone only to have them stare blankly at you at the end, leaving you to deliver the time-honored, guess you had to be there cliche?

That's exactly how I feel about Haywire. All of the right ingredients are here, the plot sounds decent--at least no worse than some successful action movies--but it just doesn't get pieced together very well. It's like Ziggy (the cartoon character) once said: It's not the big failures; it's the pitter-patter of little defeats. The little things come together to make this movie look all too much like its title.

Darkest Hour: It felt more like three

The other day, I noticed the horror/sci-fi (yes, in this case I eschew the industry accepted "SF") movie Darkest Hour was available on Vudu. It had received horrible reviews, but I've either become something of a connoisseur of bad movies or it's a really bad addiction that calls for an intervention.

I convinced my daughter we should watch it, so within a few clicks of the remote, we had the movie filling our big screen TV in all its HD glory.

The premise of the movie is simple: Alien beings of electrical energy have landed on Earth, and they like to eat us. Or something. People mostly just disintegrate, always leaving behind a shoe (I'm pretty sure it's always the left shoe) or a gun or something. You can't really see the aliens during the day except as swirling winds. Their arrival is always heralded by the flickering of lamps and a dull rumbling of dramatic music. And people are always shooting bullets at them even though it is made glaringly obvious in the film's early moments that they're bullet proof.

Horror movies with dramatic music tracks are always great. "Hide, you idiot! Can't you hear the dramatic music?! The killer is coming!" My kids are always worried about sharks when we go to the beach. I always tell them not to worry until you hear the da-duh, da-duh ...

The lamp just flickered! They're here! Quick, hide behind a transparent pane of glass!

Yes, I kid you not: The aliens cannot "see" through glass. My daughter and I decided that mankind needed to create armor made entirely out of glass.

And throwing stones would be made a capital offense.

Darkest Hour is one of those movies with entirely unlikable main characters. You can't help but actually want to see these people get disintegrated. I'm pretty sure the whole movie came about after someone messing around with digital effects discovered a really neat-o keen way of making it look like things are getting reduced to ash and sucked into an invisible void. What can we do with this? I know--we'll make a movie about aliens that disintegrate things! Awesome! What will they look like? It will take too much time and money to create digital aliens or to find extras to run around in badly designed suits, so we'll just make them invisible. Brilliant!


Then the aliens conspire to use the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator to blow up the Earth. Oh, wait. That was a different story entirely. And, arguably, a better one.

I confess we did not watch the whole film. Often it's fun to watch bad movies because they can be hilariously, entertainingly bad. Unfortunately, this is not the case with Darkest Hour. It's uninteresting, unimaginative and just not funny at being bad.

Sigh.