Author: Dexter

Movie Review: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Posted on June 17, 2007 by Dexter

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Year Released: 2007
Directed by: Tim Story
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Julian McMahon
Production Company: 20th Century Fox
Review done 4:45 PM 5/16/2008

As you probably know, this is the story of four superheroes enbued with powers that fight crime. I think I just summed up the entire likeability factor in once sentence. That being said, I wish I could stop here, but I try to commit myself to writing a bit more than ‘don’t bother’. As it is, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is the dismal sequel follow up to the original Fantastic Four movie. Same director, same characters, some new nuanced plot, even the same villain (Dr.Doom) makes an appearance. I would probably be more forgiving, but seriously, I’m insulted as a comic book fanatic.

The characters are still one tracked and static. They all have the same goals and the same damn personalities plus a few more special effects to add ‘weight’. Additionally I’ll break down the characters as you’d expect. Although, this might sound familiar if you read my review of the first movie:

Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) is smart and a scientist because he’s constantly playing with new technological gadgets.

The Thing (Michael Chiklis) should focus on getting a Hulk/Thing cross over. Seriously.

Human Torch (Chris Evans) excels at being a dick. He is however, the most fun character and automatically the coolest character, and for some reason is the only person to have any sort of personality. This is INCREDIBLY sad.

Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba) looks good in skin tight blue spandex.

Silver Surfer (voiced by one very cool Laurence Fishburne) looks cool, an act cool, and is a complete and utter TOOL to Galactus. Plus, they screwed up his source, scope, and majesty of power.

The tone you’re hearing is the one of complete annoyance, basically because Hollywood decided to hand the keys to the FF franchise, which was built on over 60 years of excellent stories over to the guy who directed ‘Taxi’ starring that guy from SNL who can sing pretty good. And that movie sucked! If there were any justice left in the world, the producers would have made Silver Surfer the main character with the FF in a cameo role. Who really cares if Reed and Sue Richards are getting married? It’s not like there was any sort of impending doom that could stop this huge crux of marital vows, right? Oh, the Silver Surfer showed up. And he’s not really doing anything, he’s just scoping out the earth as a tasty treat for his boss, Galactus. So the Fantastic Four have to stop him from….looking around.


As an added treat [sic], Julian McMahon reprises his role as über evil Dr.Doom – who in the comics was a horribly scarred maniac despot ruler of Latvia, hell-bent on destroying the world with his superior scientific knowledge, some magical powers and GENIUS intellect. The movies however, opted for a good looking all American boy that prances around in a cape and is a millionaire industrialist, y’know: because business is evil. Anyway, Dr.Doom shows up, helps the military and the FF capture the Silver Surfer in perhaps the silliest way possible. At this point, he harnesses the Surfer’s power and it’s up to the most immature character, the human torch to take him down. All this is happening while: Galactus is on his way to make earth his next dinner. God, I wish this was made up – oh wait, it IS.

There’s quite a bit of build up to Galactus, he’s basically the quasi villain, the be-all, end-all of the earth. The ultimate destroyer of all humanity. And what are we treated with? A BIG FUCKING BLACK CLOUD. How entirely menacing is that? Even on paper it sounds ridiculous and it somehow got past the special effects team. If this thing eats worlds, it defies all logic of internal organs, stomachs, this thing must have a brain and reasoning if it gave powers to the Silver Surfer, yet it’s just A BIG FUCKING BLACK CLOUD.

***********some spoilers, like I care***********
Somehow, in this entirely too long, too loud, too stupid movie, the writers thought it would be smart to have the Surfer destroy Galactus WITH THE POWERS GIVEN TO HIM BY GALACTUS IN THE FIRST PLACE. And it was this bit of scientific writing that was supposed to bring all the events of this sitcom together and make sense.

FF: Rise of the Silver Surfer is just like 70’s big bellbottoms – utterly forgettable, short, loud, preposterous and full of stupid.

1 ouf of 10

Movie Review: Déjà Vu

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Dexter

Déjà Vu
Year Released: 2006
Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Jim Caviezel
Production Company: Touchstone Pictures

Déjà Vu: The feeling you’ve done something before. There’s a much wordier version of the definition, but for the purposes of my own dumbing-down, this will do fine. So, it feels familiar: Tony Scott teams up with Denzel Washington in another action flick. However, this movie deals with time travel, alternate realities and touches on fate. Pretty heavy fodder for adventure movie fare; In any case, it all works pretty well.

For you Action Jackson fanatics out there, you’ll have to wait until the third act when things like bullets start flying, it’s not super intense like old Scott movies, but it gets that fix in there. What’s really weighed pretty well is the balance of story, theory and physics. It’s all grounded in a very real reality that could be right now, if only you weren’t taking orders from a very fat Val Kilmer.

Déjà Vu starts with a literal bang, more like a boom actually; a New Orleans’ ferry is blown to bits: with all the passengers on board. The stakes really couldn’t be raised any higher. Washington is the ATF agent Doug Carlin, part of the explosives task force encompassed with the job of identifying the explosive and finding the culprit – albeit, the case becomes more and difficult with the lack of clues. In comes Agent Pryzwarra (Kilmer) with a fresh perspective; armed with a group of physicists, they’ve have successfully created a viewing tunnel (or rather, wormhole) four and a half days ago. It’s pretty cool technology, and the amount of additional filming must have been hell – the concept is that while you’re able to look four days in the past, you’re also able to view from any angle. Normally, this might present a problem to any normal filmmaker. Thankfully, Tony Scott has much experience in making use of beautiful camera angles, so it plays off beautifully and seamlessly. The case becomes personally for Carlin as he is smitten with Claire, a supposed victim of the ferry bombing, as he suspects she had expired a good hour before the bomb exploded. Using the very cool time leaping/folding technology, he focuses his time looking at Claire’s last days. As events unfold, he tries to send himself clues to the past, some of them with disastrous results: the message is there – don’t mess with the past! With hours remaining, and culprit in sight, Carlin decides to take matters into his own hands (what, you thought he was going to sit around?) and steps back into time itself. From there it’s a paradox within a paradox, within a tightly wound story.

The use of time and ability to watch events unfold in the past is a risky one, but it pays off. There’s a particular scene where the camera can go mobile attached to a Humvee – it’s a chase that happens in the present and the past. And yes, it’s both trippy and cool. Just trying to watch two screens at once in a completely black theatre will either make your head spin or give you attention deficit disorder.

In using the time line plot, everything else certainly helps serve it: the equipment, setting, even the characters. And that’s why I think this movie loses a few points. No one really matures to become a rounded character; everyone is basically static and helps along the story one piece at a time. Don’t get me wrong, when you see Adam Goldberg talk about the Wheeler Boundary, you get the feeling he’s given the speech to a bunch of MIT undergrads. They’re all very convincing, but they only help out this time folding technique. I even caught myself enjoying Val Kilmer’s performance for a change: could be because he’s taking a back seat to what could have easily been his own starring vehicle. Hey it could happen – if I told you back in 1990 that the star of Turner and Hooch would win an Oscar, you’d shoot me in the face.

Anyhow, Déjà Vu is gladly not the definition of the contents: you don’t get feeling you’re headed down the same path a hundred times before, rather you’re treated with some nice ooh’s and ahh’s that only Tony Scott can bring you. It’s just a good thing he got away from his over saturated color and blow out lighting done in Domino. Geez, that thing was a technicolor nightmare.

7 out of 10